Ideas in the Drama [antikvár]

Foreword A decade ago it would have required considerable temerity for scholars to consider the subject of "ideas" in literature, and to give serious consideration to the presence of ideas in the drama in recent years would have seemed downright quixotic—the last undisguised effort to do so in American scholarship appeared in 1946 when Eric Bentley published The Playwright as Thinner. That the English Institute should have devoted two conferences, in 1962 and 1963, to the subject may signify some relaxation of the reigning principle that the study of literature should be insulated against contamination by extraliterary and nonaesthetic considerations. It is too soon to determine how far the restoration of a balance between aesthetic and nonaesthetic considerations will go. It is also too early to decide how rewarding the enterprise is going to prove. It is certain only that a reinstated interest in ideas would not bring scholarship back to the bad old habit of confusing intellectual intentions with artistic execution. Some questions that may be expediently slurred over will ultimately have to be answered—chiefly, what it is that constitutes an idea in a nonessay-istic form of literature such as the drama and in what respects it is distinguishable from mere argument, demonstration, or propaganda. The fable, or mythos, as idea, characterization or orches-