Modern English Drama [antikvár]

Modern English drama had its beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century as part of a general literary revolt by poets, novelists, and playwrights. Rejecting the artificial restrictions which the Victorian period had imposed on both form and content, these writers began to create a new literature—one that had vigor and originality and that was concerned with the social, economic, and moral problems of contemporary life. The need for such a literature was especially great in the field of drama. Victorian drama consisted largely of sensational melodramas, sentimental comedies, and farces which had merit as light entertainment but little merit as literature. English drama had once been a distinguished and flourishing form of literary expression. Modem playwrights hoped that by breaking away from the prevailing emptiness and superficiality and by making serious interpretations of life, they could restore drama to a position of importance in the theater and in literature. The new drama won acceptance slowly, grudgingly, and in the face of open hostility from critics, moralists, and public. That it did win and also continued to develop was due in part to changes in attitude apparent during the 1880's and 1890's. Much of the writing of those decades reveals that a critical, corrective spirit was abroad and that human problems were being balanced, weighed, and judged. Playwrights turned to scientists, philosophers, economists, and social critics for ideas that would give vitality and significance to their plays. Whether these ideas were presented subtly through incident and dialogue or in an obviously didactic manner, they gave to drama an intellectual tone it had recently lost. The naturalistic playwrights chose as their subject matter the condition and problems of the ordinary man, and the observations they made about him were, on the whole, objectively sympathetic. They viewed him as a relatively hopeless creature whose hfe was shaped by forces over which he had little or no control, such as environment and heredity. On the Continent, where natviralism [viii