The Modern American Theater [antikvár]

Introduction hy Alvin B. Kernan "Exult each patriot heart, this night is shewn a piece which we may fairly call our own." (Prologue to Royall Tyler's The Contrast, 1787, the first play written by an American and produced by professionals) These high hopes voiced on the first night of the American theater have not been borne out. Although we have produced during our relatively short national history a reasonable number of first-rate poets and novelists, who have brought the peculiar quality of the American experience into focus and raised it to the level of great literature, we have had only a very few plays comparable to our best novels and poetry. For myself, I would list only The Skin of Our Teeth, A Long Day's Journey Into Night, Death of A Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, and—somewhat more hesitantly —Zoo Story. Each of these has, of course, its violent critics; and there are many whose judgment I respect who would deny that some or any of them can rightly be termed great drama. That we have never created a theater that speaks for us as, say, the theater of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere spoke for the France of Louis XIV, puzzles us in the same way that the educated Roman may have been puzzled when he compared Plautus, Terence, and Seneca with Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, After all, we have been busy theatrically. Enormous amounts of money from individual backers, from foundations, and from government have gone into theaters to support many types of plays. Nor has money been lacking for numerous conferences on theater and the publication of an endless outpouring of books and articles that deal with