European Theories of the Drama
An Anthology of Dramatic Theory and Criticism from
Aristotle to the Present Day, In a Series of
Selected Texts, With Commentaries,
Biographies and Bibliographies
By BARRETT H. CLARK
AUTHOR OF
“Contemporary French Dramatists,” “The Continental Drama of Today,” “British and American Drama of Today,” etc., etc.
A book of paramount importance. This monumental anthology brings together for the first time the epoch-making theories and criticisms of the drama which have affected our civilization from the beginnings in Greece down to the present day. Beginning with Aristotle, each utterance on the subject has been chosen with reference to its importance, and its effect on subsequent dramatic writing. The texts alone would be of great interest and value, but the author, Barrett H. Clark, has so connected each period by means of inter-chapters that his comments taken as a whole constitute a veritable history of dramatic criticism, in which each text bears out his statements.
Nowhere else is so important a body of doctrine on the subject of the drama to be obtained. It cannot fail to appeal to anyone who is interested in the theater, and will be indispensable to students.
The introduction to each section of the book is followed by an exhaustive bibliography; each writer whose work is represented is made the subject of a brief biography, and the entire volume is rendered doubly valuable by the index, which is worked out in great detail.
Prof. Brander Matthews, of Columbia University, says: “Mr. Clark deserves high praise for the careful thoroughness with which he has performed the task he set for himself. He has done well what was well worth doing. In these five hundred pages he has extracted the essence of several five-foot shelves. His anthology will be invaluable to all students of the principles of playmaking; and it ought to be welcomed by all those whose curiosity has been aroused by the frequent references of our latter-day theorists of the theater to their predecessors Aristotle and Horace, Castelvetro and Scaliger, Sidney and Jonson, d’Aubignac and Boileau, Lessing and Schlegel, Goethe and Coleridge.”
Wm. Lyon Phelps, of Yale University, writes: “Mr. Clark’s book, ‘European Theories of the Drama,’ is an exceedingly valuable work and ought to be widely useful.”