Literary Critic and Poet
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Modern Drama
For the last forty years I have been directing an annual four-day Living Theatre course in London, on which we see six major productions. For ten or twelve years I ran a similar course at the Edinburgh festival. On almost all of these courses I have given a preparatory talk on one of the plays or dramatists. Since I have also done many Theatre in the North West courses, several lunch-time lectures at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and taught a good deal of drama in my adult classes, I have thus accumulated a great many notes and essays on modern drama, few of which have been published.
The following can be downloaded free, either as Word documents or as pdf. They may be quoted with due acknowledgement to this website.
| Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906): | ||
| 1. A Chronology of his Plays. | Word | |
| 2. A Biographical Introduction. | Word | |
| 3. Rosmersholm. | Word | |
| 4. The Lady from the Sea. | Word | |
| 5. Hedda Gabler. | Word | |
| Anton Chehov (1860-1904): | ||
| 1. A Biographical Introduction. | Word | |
| 2. Chehov’s Theatre. | Word | |
| 3. The Seagull. | Word | |
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936): |
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| Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV | Word | |
| D.H.Lawrence (1885-1930): | ||
| ‘D.H.Lawrence: Dramatist’. | Word | |
| Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): | ||
| The Caucasian Chalk Circle. | Word | |
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989): |
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| Waiting for Godot. | Word | |
Tennessee Williams (1914-1983): |
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| ‘What Mr. Williams has made of D.H.Lawrence’. | Word | |
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Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) |
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| Madame de Sade | Word | |
Brian Friel (b. 1929) |
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| Dancing at Lughnasa | ||
| Harold Pinter (1930-2008): | Word | |
| The Caretaker. | ||
Athol Fugard (b. 1932) |
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| Dimetos |
Further essays and notes will be added to this page in the near future, including:
Susan Glaspell (1876-1948): biographical summary and notes on The Inheritors.
Harley Granville Barker (1877-1946): biographical summary and notes on Waste.
Bertold Brecht: biographical summary; essay on Man Equals Man; notes on Mother Courage and The Good Person of Szechwan.
Samuel Beckett: notes on Endgame.
Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994): essay on the Berenger plays - The Killer. Rhinoceros, A Stroll in the Air, The King Dies and Hunger and Thirst.
Friedrich Durrenmatt (1921-1992): notes on The Physicists.
John Osborne (1929-1994): notes on Look Back in Anger.
Tom Stoppard (b.1937): notes on Arcadia.
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