Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-fnpn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T04:17:21.537Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Newness of the New Drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2022

R. J. Kaufmann
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Even shapes and colours acquire their meaning only in cultural contexts. The less we know of this context the more we are forced to dream it up.”

E. H. Gombrich

It is a commonplace truth that irresponsible artists dream up contexts for fictions set in the past, but it is harder to realize that only the best artist, gifted with the Shavian power to “imagine things as they really are” can conjure up an adequate vision of the context of our present lives. Moreover, imaginative concentration on context or situation in the new drama is, paradoxically, a result of a deep wish to restore reverence for human character. This essay will repeatedly address this paradox as we try to isolate our period style. In drama as in other things, not everything is possible in every period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tulane Drama Review , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , June 1962 , pp. 94 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 The Tulane Drama Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Endnote: I have found especially useful in making this study Martin Esslin, “The Theatre of the Absurd” and Adolf Klarmann, “Friedrich Duerrenmatt and the Tragic Sense of Comedy,” both in TDR, IV (May, 1960), and E. H. Gombrich, “Andre Malraux and the Crisis of Expressionism,” Burlington Magazine, XCVI (Dec, 1954). An earlier phase of the argument is developed in, R. J. Kaufmann, “On the Supersession of the Modern Classic Style,” Modern Drama, II (Feb., 1960).