The Life of the Theatre: Shakespeare, Wagner, Ibsen and the Theatre of the Age

Abstract

Most realistic plays of any ambition written in the twentieth century have been — more or less — like the plays of Ibsen or like the plays of Chekhov. That is to say they have been, if Ibsenite, firm in structure, decisive in characterisation, and often focused on questions of public morality; if Chekhovian, they have been freer, more episodic in structure, comparatively ambiguous in characterisation, and focused on private, psycho-sexual concerns. This over-simplification may beg to be refuted, or at least qualified because it is unjust to the complexity of the modern theatre and reductive of the two great masters whose names are here appropriated, but not on the grounds that it ignores a notable comic tradition deriving from the work of Bernard Shaw. No such tradition, after all, exists. It is extraordinary that the other two initial masters of modern drama should be so profoundly influential that, at least arguably, subsequent plays have been in modes delineated by their work, whereas Shaw remains a solitary giant, in art as in life childless.