General Introduction

Abstract

When we in the English-speaking countries think of drama around 1900, the plays that most readily come to mind will probably be by Chekhov and Shaw or, in lighter vein, by Oscar Wilde or Feydeau. The works of these authors, and of Ibsen before them, colour our view of the period. In our mind’s eye we see ladies in white under white parasols conducting endless, clever dialogues with idealistic young intellectuals or elderly men of the world in summer gardens or on the white-painted terraces of houses in the country; or we remember equally fluent but rather more witty conversations over teacups and cucumber sandwiches in Edwardian drawing-rooms, and astute gentlemen and archly pretty women passing in review the problems of the world they lived in, the trivial shot through with graver implications. This, at least, is the impression generally conveyed by the plays which have survived from the turn of the century. But how accurate is this impression, and what does it leave out?