Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts

by Sylvan Barnet, William E. Burto, Lesley Ferris

Types of Drama, 8/e offers a full range of plays from ancient Greece to the present. Like the earlier editions, this collection gives strong representation of such familiar authors as the Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and O'Neill as well as to contemporary classic authors such as Miller, Williams and Churchill. New to the eighth edition are twenty-eight works including a commedia dell'arte scenario, a Noh play, an opera by Gertrude Stein, a farce by Dario Fo, Elizabeth Robins's neglected Votes for Women , and Suzan-Lori-Parks's newest play, In the Blood . For individuals interested in expanding their knowledge and critical understanding of dramatic performances, their histories and the important role of reviewers.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

1584 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Sylvan Barnet is an American literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. He is a Fletcher Professor of English Emeritus at Tufts University.

Barnet is the author of numerous books and articles on Shakespeare. He is the general editor of the Signet Classics Shakespeare,[1] the author of A Short Guide to Shakespeare,[2] and has written many textbooks. He is the co-author with William Burto of occasional essays on aspects of Japanese art.[3] He has also written books about the art of writing.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A drama text book so the essays were a little dry, but a good broad collection of plays spanning the centuries.

[Kim Kaso · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this while teaching literature and writing at the Naval Academy Preparatory School. It was a treat to have a new text which broadened our reading choices. One of my majors in college was Speech and Drama, and it was nice to see some old friends as well as newer plays. It is not a perfect text, some of the essays are a little behind cultural advances, but it has a wide variety of plays and was a pleasure to have as a resource.