can theatre teach? fifty years of an alternative theatre

TONY JACKSON 29

Can theatre teach? Fifty years of an alternative theatre

Call a play 'didactic' and you have all but administered the kiss of death to its chances of success. No one likes being preached at, least of all in the theatre. And being preached at is what that word 'didactic' now seems to imply, Didactic theatre is 'dead theatre' because, as the dictionaries tell us, it sets out to 'instruct or edify' and that implies a message, even propaganda, a heavy seriousness of tone and, worst of all, a superior, patronising attitude to the audience on the part of the playwright. Which all seems to go quite against the notion that theatre should above all be a place of entertainment.

And yet there has been a development in British theatre over the past fif- teen years or so - and one of the most exciting developments since the war in fact - that has, blatantly, been about making theatre into a teaching instrument. Indeed its practitioners seem to see no contradiction in allying a medium of entertainment with explicitly educational objectives. Can theatre teach without on the one hand diminishing the subject-matter it is dealing with and on the other simply becoming boring? This article is an attempt first to track down the Theatre-in-Education movement (or TIE as it is often known for short) and describe some of the characteristic features which mark it out as a significant new theatre form, and, secondly, to identify TIE as part of a much larger, if often overlooked, movement in twentieth- century theatre: TIE is not an isolated phenomenon, rather a particular and unique extension of trends discernible in the theatre since the 1920s and even earlier.

There are not many movements in the theatre that can be dated with any precision. TIE, however, is an exception; its birth was at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, in 1965 when, as a result of growing interest in the use of drama in schools combined with the concern of the theatre's director to bring his theatre fully into the heart of the city's life, a pilot scheme was set up in which four 'actor-teachers' based at the theatre were given a brief to tour Coventry's primary and secondary schools with educational programmes.' The idea was to use theatrical techniques to stimulate and extend curriculum work in the classroom. From there the scheme developed and expanded, and within the following five years similar teams were established at the theatres in Bolton, Leeds, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Glas- gow. Before very much longer, a number of Education Authorities had decided not only to help fund such units but actually set up TIE units of their own: the most notable being perhaps Inner London's team at the Cockpit

30 Critical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4

Theatre. There are now about twenty-one fully-fledged TIE companies or Young People's Theatre companies with a strong commitment to TIE work. In addition there are probably in excess of sixty companies up and down the country whose work includes TIE projects on a more irregular basis or whose work is close to TIE in approach, such as theDance-in-Education companies, the educational puppet theatre companies and the more conventional tour- ing children's theatre companies. Were it not for the present economic cli- mate, there would undoubtedly be more. Why then this amount of theatre work in schools? Surprisingly it has little to do with attempts by the theatre at large to build up future audiences - most TIE teams vigorously deny such an intent and most strive for and uphold a strong degree of independence from the repertory theatre system for that very reason. What it does have to do with is the discovery, or perhaps re-discovery, that theatre can actually promote learning in a way that is unique. It is precisely because the teacher in the classroomcannot provide the stimulus provided by a theatre company and at the same time because a TIE programmecan feed into and extend the teaching in school, that the movement has won such a measure of support in educational circles. TIE is, then, in essence the use of the resources of theatre - actors in role,

character, plot, dialogue, often costume and set, and all the excitement, col- our and imaginative power of a performed event - to achieve carefully- thought-out educational ends. It is not children's theatre (the self-contained play performed to any number of children in school hall or theatre); nor is it remotely to do with the much-maligned school coach trip to the local rep. to see a school's matinee performance of the 0-level text. TIE is a specialised form of theatre. It involves presentation by professional actor-teachers who will generally have devised and researched the work themselves - and more often than not some form of audience participation. Above all it will always be closely geared to the age and needs of specific age groups. The usual pat- tern is that the company will work with only one or at most two classes at a time and, in the course of a programme that may last anything from one hour to a whole day, the pupils will be taken through an experience that they witness, or may even play a part in, to a point at which a decision or a judgement will be required of them. Learning through experience is a crucial tenet of the work. Subject matter will range from conventional curriculum areas, such as exploration of an 0-level set text, its themes and approach, to more general matters of social concern, such as racial prejudice or the environ- ment.

Always the aim is both to illuminate and to involve the young people in the experience such that attitudes and preconceptions and prejudices will have been challenged and thinking will be more informed in future. Always,

Can theatre teach? Fifty years of an alternative theatre 31

too, the visit of the company is linked to advance discussions with teachers and is designed to lead into follow-up activity after the visit in which the experience itself and the larger questions raised may be further aired and discussed by teacher and pupils and used to stimulate further work. A sub- stantial ’teacher‘s pack‘ of the company’s research material, together with suggestions for follow-up will normally be given to each teacher who books the programme. Hence the use of the term ‘programme’ to describe the TIE package that the company provides. The visit itself, while it may constitute the core of the programme, is at the same time just one part of the larger educational pi’ocess that the team, together with the teachers, will be trying to promote.

What kinds of ‘programmes’, then, have there been? The range of content, theatrical method and type of audience catered for has been enormous. To note just four programmes here will not provide an adequate cross-section, but will at least give a clearer, more tangible idea of what TIE can offer. There is, for example, the TIE ‘classic’ Pow Wow (Belgrade TIE Company, Coven- try), a programme for infants (6-7years), that works on one level as an exciting story in its own right about a cowboy and an Indian whom the children meet, enacted in the classroom and then moving to the school hall; it also presents a highly informative and vivid account of the white man‘s conquest of America and of the Indian way of life that was in the process virtually extinguished; and at a deeper level it is about racial prejudice, the prejudice of the larger and more powerful group against the one who is different, who comes from a different culture from one’s own and whose values and prac- tices seem, at least at first, abnormal, even stupid. By the end of the one- and-a-half-hour programme the children are faced with having to make a judgement between the two opposed characters in whose story they have become so entwined. Whatever their decision and however difficult they find it to articulate their reasons for that decision after the characters have left, the pupils have been taken through an experience that has involved and challenged them at a level that has a meaning for them at their age and without in any way underestimating their capabilities; and the resonance of that experience is often very long-lasting. The teacher will, moreover, find he or she has a class of children highly motivated to find out more about the Wild West and the Indian culture. A complete contrast to this and yet also a programme for infants is I t Fits (The Perspectives team, Peterborough), designed to aid the children’s grasp of the ’new maths’ as it relates to three- dimensional shapes and ‘tessilation’ but also exploring and encouraging a lateral (as opposed to ‘logical’) approach to problem-solving. It involves two comic characters and a vast, multicoloured array of polystyrene cubes, cuboids, prisms and cylinders.


Poverty Knocks (Octagon TIE, Bolton) is another classic of its kind - a full participation programme for ten-to- twelve-year-olds about the Chartist movement in Lancashire in the 1830s and the consequent civil disturbances as textile workers fought for the right to vote. This involves seven characters in all and two visits by the company to each school with the children par- ticipating as hand-loom weavers and factory-workers. Marches: from ]arrow to Cable Street (Cockpit, London) is, unlike the other programmes men- tioned, a full-length self-contained play. Aimed at senior pupils and students, it is about Mosley and the Fascist movement in Britain between the wars, linking the marches of the unemployed in the 1930s with the notori- ous attempt by the British Union of Fascists to march provocatively through the streets of the East End of London in 1936. The play is, however, designed always to be followed by a half-day's 'workshop' in which pupils discuss, role-play, question characters from the play and generally explore in a variety of ways the various economic and social issues which the play raises and their relevance to the contemporary world.

There have been programmes about pollution, about attitudes to mental health, about the problems of athetosis, and programmes devised specifi- cally for the educationally sub-normal and for children of immigrant families with English language difficulties. The list could go on and on. What emerges, however, is not just the range of subject matter but the challenge that such programmes so frequently offer to pupils to look again and think again about that subject matter. 'Children's theatre' has in the past tended towards entertainment and been educational only in the broadest sense - not that there is anything wrong with that - but the achievement of TIE has been to demonstrate that theatre is a vital and valuable tool for use in schools as a means of opening up seemingly inaccessible or 'heavy' or 'off-putting' subject areas. It can motivate, provide fresh insight, challenge preconcep tions and provoke further thought and investigation. And the particular bonus for teachers is that the event is not just a 'one-off, enjoyable while it lasted and then forgotten, but creates ripples and a strong memorable stimulus fora sustained programme of work in the classroom. Often too TIE, because it comes from outside the school, can win the attention of pupils who feel 'written-off' by the school, caught in the vicious cycle of low achievement producing low expectations, in turn producing further low achievement. And for similar reasons it can often deal with subjects of great contemporary relevance which may loosely fall under the umbrella of 'social studies' but which are difficult to introduce as viable curriculum topics because of the sensitivities they involve (the number of programmes in recent years dealing with racial prejudice provides one obvious example).

I do not here, though, want to argue in detail the educational case for TIE.


Suffice to say that where there are good TIE teams it is often the teachers who will fight hardest to ensure the service continues to be grant-aided at times of economic squeeze. I have not, either, examined the relationship between TIE and the developments over the past two decades in educational drama (ie. drama as a regular curriculum subject taught by specialist teachers on the school staff). The overlaps between the two fields are sub- stantial and indeed TIE has often drawn its personnel from trained drama teachers, so the cross-connections have been direct and frequent.

What I do want to establish now is the connection between TIE and larger movements in twentieth-century theatre and to look at several particular developments by way of example. For TIE is not just another educational resource: it is also theatre. The potency of TIE lies in the educational use made of a powerful event that deliberately engages and manipulates the emotions of its spectatorsIparticipants. The event itself is an aesthetic experience and draws upon fundamental theatrical resources. The use made of those resources and the actual structuring of that experience may be new but the theatricality of TIE is not; nor is the underlying purpose to which it is put. It is important, then, to see TIE not only as a method of education, nor as a totally new form of theatre. Its generic antecedents are many.

Theatre with an educational purpose has a long history, probably as long as that of theatre itself. But the twentieth century has seen the emergence of a veritable barrage of experiments in ’educative theatre’. From the final years of the last century onwards, from Shaw‘s championing of the essentially ’utilitarian’ value of the ’new drama’ and of h e n ’ s plays in particular,* there has been a constant and energetic hammering away at the theatre medium to find ways of making it more useful in society. Broadly, this movement has had to do with a general shift in ideas about what theatre is, what it is for, what it ought to be doing and how it can re-establish its roots in the community it serves, and above all about how effectively theatre can teach. It has been embodied in an astounding range of theatrical forms, contexts and ideas, but may perhaps be represented most clearly in the work between the two world wars of Piscator and his ’theatre for the people’, the small but loud-voiced ‘agit-prop’ (’agitation and propaganda’) groups of the 1920s and 1930s’ the didactic theatre of Brecht (particularly the early ’Lehrs- tiicke’, or ’teaching plays‘) and the ’living newpapers’ produced by the Fed- eral Theatre Project in America in the late 1930s. Since the Second World War the theatre’s search for an effective social role has found expression in even more diverse ways: from Joan Littlewood‘s Theatre Workshop which emerged from a small but thriving workers‘ theatre group in Manchester in the 1930s through to the current wide range of political theatre companies, ’alternative’ companies, community theatre and of course children’s theatre.


Children’s theatre has grown particularly fast since the war, notably in Britain through the pioneering work of, first, Caryl Jenner, who in 1948 formed her first company which eventually became the Unicorn Theatre for Young People based at the Arts Theatre in London, and secondly, Brian Way, whose Theatre Centre was established in London in 1953 and soon became a base for national school tours by his several companies of participatory and often consciously educational plays for school students - providing yet another formative influence upon the subsequent development of TIE.

There has been no cnified or coherent movement, rather a consistent impulse evident throughout twentieth-century theatre - though it may find expression in vaned ways - to explore and exploit the theatre’s educative potential. And in the welter of experiment - and achievement - it has been demonstrated over and over again that theatre (or entertainment) and learning need not be incompatible. Bertolt Brecht, defending his own didactic plays against hostile criticism, argued forcefully for a change in established attitudes and wrote in 1936

Generally there is felt to be a very sharp distinction between learning and amusing oneself. The first may be useful, but only the second is pleasant. . . Well, all that can be said is that the contrast between learning and amusing oneself is not laid down by divine rule; it is not one that has always been and must continue to be. . .

Theatre remains theatre, even when it is instructive theatre, and in so far as it is good theatre it will amuse.3

It was Brecht above all who emerged as the most articulate spokesman and most brilliant exponent of ‘theatre with a social function’. The theatre that Brecht preached and practised (though his theory and his practice were rarely in total synchronisation) was a theatre that could teach; a theatre that offered people a forum for the examination and debate of ideas about the world they lived in; a theatre that could be at once unashamedly didactic and entertaining a theatre that was a service to the community. His belief in the educative function of theatre is well known. Less well known are his overtly didactic plays (Or‘Lehrstiicke’) of the late 1920s and early 1930s in which he sought to preach an uncompromising Marxist message but at the same time explore new ways of using the theatre to trigger off thought and debate within his audience.

At one point towards the end of The Measures Taken (1929/30), the four political agitators, asked to account for the death of one of their number while on a mission, turn towards the members of the audience and challenge them to pause and think if they could have found a better way. This comrade had constantly endangered their mission by acting on humanitarian, indi-


vidualistic impulses rather than according to party discipline. Should they have allowed him to live, or were they right to have shot him in the largexol- lective interests of the party? What would the audience have done in the cir- cumstances? The play stops for a few moments while the audience considers before moving on to its conclusion. The important thing to note here is the change in the relationship between actors and audience that this play effects. The audience, addressed in this manner, are, if only momentarily, placed in role: they are active not passive spectators, for the moment judgeslparticipants in the trial. No physical or vocal participation is required and the play’s conclusion is fixed, but the role of the audience has been rede- fined. Whether or not individual audience members would wish to dispute the final judgement, they have been involved in a dialectical process, pushed into a position where, confronted with a challenge, they must make up their minds, or at least consider their stance on the issue involved. And that is precisely the dynamic relationship between character and audience that Brecht worked for in various ways through most of his later career.

The Lehrstiicke are not the most resonant of his plays but they demonstrate vividly one aspect of his aim to make theatre a vehicle for learning. At the same time he experimented with various other forms of audience participation, aiming at ‘a type of theatrical performance that could influence the thinking of all the people engaged in i t . . .‘4 and for a number of years worked outside the four walls of the theatre, devising productions and writ- ing ‘Lehrstiicke’ for performance by a variety of social groups, including schools. Art was something to be participated in rather than consumed and these theatrical performances were thus meant ‘not so much for the spec- tator as for those who were engaged in the performan~e’.~ Brecht of course moved on from this experimental stage but the work certainly informed and enriched his later plays; and it does represent an important development in educative the atre.

Brecht was by no means the only one to explore the theatre’s educative potential, and I want now to look at just a few of the examples of ’didactic theatre’ between the wars that illustrate the advances made in theatrical method - and which indirectly set precedents for modem TIE. The examples are all from the arena of left-wing political theatre activity simply because that is where the advances were being made - perhaps inevitably in a time of Depression, high unemployment and anxiety about the rapid growth of fascism. My concern here, though, is more with theatre form than with political content.

The attention devoted so fully and frequently to Brecht has tended to obsure the work and influence of Erwin Piscator. Brecht himself acknow- ledged his debt to Piscator and claimed that ‘It was Piscator who made the


most radical attempt to give the theatre a didactic character. . . Without exception (his productions) were designed to strengthen the teaching potential of the theatre.’6 In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Piscator, a committed communist, became a leading figure in the growing worker‘s theatre movement and in 1920 established the Proletarisches Theater in Berlin (in which the audience were addressed as ‘comrades’), and from which many productions were toured around the beer-halls and wherever workers congregated. The plays may not have been of great literary quality (they were often hastily devised by Piscator and his company) but they are interesting for what they strove to achieve, which was an impact on actual events outside the theatre - for Piscator saw drama as, in his own words, ’a political tool. . . An instrument of propaganda, of ed~cat ion.’~ BrechYs account of his approach is worth returning to and quoting from at some length.

Piscator‘s experiments began by creating total chaos in the theatre. He might transform the stage into a factory assembly shop or the auditorium into a meeting hall. Piscator saw the theatre as a parliament, the audience as a legislative body. The social problems of the day, so urgently requiring attention and decisions, were enacted before the eyes of this parliament. Instead of a delegate making a speech about certain intolerable conditions, these conditions would be shown on stage. His theatre was designed to enable parliament, his audience, to make political decisions on the basis of what they had seen on stage on the evidence of representation, statistics and slogans. . . his first priority was to stimulate discussion. His plays were designed not merely to provide an experience but to force the audience into deciding actively to come to grips with life. He used every means open to him to achieve this end.8

One of his earlier, lesser-known productions will illustrate well one significant aspect of Piscatois contribution to educative theatre, a theatre that went beyond agit-prop and explored new ’educative’ relationships with its audience. In 1929130 one of the plays performed on tour by Piscator‘s company was a play by KarlCrkdk called Section 2 28. ‘Section 218 referred to the current legislqtion on abortion which was being applied with great harshness during the’poverty-sticken years of the Depression and had caused considerable suffering and public discontent. The play was an expression of protest against this particular law. Very deliberately the dividing line between art and life was undermined by endeavouring to turn the theatre event into a debating chamber-cum-political rally. Thus reports from each day‘s news- papers were inserted into the play from performance to performance, accen- tuating the actuality of the play’s subject matter. Piscator went to great lengths to involve the audience directly in the stage action, believing that the ‘fourth wall’ dividing stage from auditorium ’had to be eliminated if revolutionary material was to be communicated as a directly felt experi-


e n ~ e ' . ~ The performance was to be a political discussion, the outcome of which was to be decided by the audience. Thus, in the words of a contemporary reviewer, 'the public participated through speeches and shouts. . . until finally this (involvement) reached its culmination with a real vote that swept the public into an almost unanimous rejection of Section 218 of the criminal code by a show of hands, through which for the first time the end- ing of a play corresponded to a public meeting.10

The excitement of the event would have been generated in part by the placing of actors among the audience so that often a dialogue would be taking place across the footlights during the course of the play. Even, on occasion, representative members of the local community (lawyers, doctors, teachers) would be asked to take part in the debate in the auditorium. Few productions of the time went as far as this one did in actually incorporating debate and an audience vote within the play itself (the parallels with modern TIE methods are startlingly close), but many did provoke heated discussion after the performance - the desired effect. It is sobering to discover how far along the road towards educative, 'participatory' theatre Piscator went in those early days. Of course the general thrust of each production was overtly political and the party-line was rarely in doubt - a major difference from the practice of TIE. But the methods employed were fascinating, revolutionary and were carried out in the belief that didactic theatre could teach and not merely preach. It was, as John Willett puts it, 'a vehicle for Marxist analysis rather than for merely revolutionary exhortation or the. . . exposure of social abuses'." And audiences were to be involved as closely as possible in the analytic process on stage.

Piscator's methods have been accused of being little more than theatrical trickery and it is difficult to make any final judgements given the inevitable transience of his productions, relying as they did upon topicality, tempo and the immediacy of the audience response - a response which cannot adequately be evaluated. But his influence was felt not only by Brecht and others inGermany but in Europe generally andNorth America too (to which he emigrated in 1938). There were the 'Living Newspapex' productions of America's Federal Theatre programme in the 1930s - which dealt with significant issues and events of the time, making full use of the theatre's resources in order to show ordinary people how their own lives were being affected by those events and what they themselves could do. Subjects treated included America's poor (One Third of a Nation), the*plight of the American farmer (Triple A plowed under), and the problem of syphilis, its history and how it was being combatted (Spirochete). And there was Waitingfor Leffy, Clifford Odets' play of 1935 that soon became a famous theatrical rally- ing point for socialist groups throughout the USA and Europe. In the course


of the play the audience ’become’ an audience of workers at a trade union meeting at which strike action is being debated, interspersed with which are dramatic flashbacks to moments from the lives of workers in different walks of life. As in productions by Piscator, stooges in the audience added to the sense of reality and excitement generated in performance such that the final moments, culminating in the decision to call for strike action, invariably received spontaneous roars of approval from the audience. Audience- participation was, for a while, in vogue.

The developments that have occurred since the Second World War are all much more familiar to us. There is in one respect a strong line of continuity between then and now - seen most clearly in the considerable number of companies that now exist who specialise in taking theatre to factories, trade union meeting places, working men’s clubs and the like. ‘784‘ and ’North West Spanner‘ are two notable examples of companies that work in this way, managing to combine entertainment and a message without being either patronising or simplistic. But the differences are just as striking as the similarities. Educative theatre has widened out considerably from the rela- tively narrow political base of so much of the work in the 1930s. And the widening-out has been both in subject-matter and in kinds of audience aimed at. Where a single ’party-line’ response would have been angled for in the 1930s - through exciting and persuasive, if aggressive, theatrical tactics - today a greater realism pervades. Quick, overnight transformations of attitude have become less and less the objective of even the most politi- cally committed theatre groups. And the increased concern now among so many companies with providing a theatre service for young people in their own right has underlined the need for careful and thoughtful assessment of what theatre can ho and how far it can go.

In this very brief survey of some of the historical antecedents of TIE I have tried to indicate the range of theatrical explorations and activities (particularly during the period of the 1920s and 1930s) that in some way seem to have ahsen from newly sensed, powerful impulses to renew the theatre’s role in society. And it is from these impulses that TIE springs too, impulses that link with the belief that theatre is more than just a means of escape or entertainment, or of bringing life to the classics, more than a social occasion, more than an aesthetic event in its own right, and hence with the assertion that theatre is capable of saying things meaningful and directly relevant to its audiences and their world and may actually be beneficial as a means, not of release from the pressure of daily living but of gaining clearer insight into that world and perhaps even of helping to reshape it.

What TIE has done, I believe, is to rediscover theatre’s potential as a form of education where other more propagandist and shrill-voiced experiments


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have failed. And it has succeeded because it has recognised its need for a base within a community where it can know its audience and respond to its needs and problems and indeed be part of its concerns; because it allows for and indeed encourages a depth and complexity of response; and because its method of work demands, of necessity, that educational objectives be ham- mered out, tested in performance and built upon programme after programme.

One key difference between TIE and these other forms of educative theatre lies in its captive audience. TIE companies can control the age, num- bers, and, to an extent, the expectations, of their audience. This fact has two important ramifications: (1) it allows greater freedom for exploring new methods (especially the uses of audience-participation), and (2) it places enormous responsibility upon those who practise TIE professionally to ensure that their work is educationally sound and theatrically sensitive and well performed. Given the vitality and achievement of TIE companies over the past decade and a half, the hope must be that ‘didactic theatre’ is here to stay.

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Notes SeeG. Vallins, ‘The beginnings of TIE‘ in Learning through theafre, ed. T. Jack- son, pp. 2-15. Shaw in an essay written in 1895, claimed that h e n ’ s ’ADoll’sHouse will be as flat as ditchwater when A Midsummer Night’s Dream will still be as fresh as paint; but it will have done more work in the world. . .’ (‘Should social problems be freely dealt with in the Drama?’ in The Humanitarian VI (May 1895); quoted in E. J. West (ed.), Shaw on Theatre, p. 63). Brecht, from ’Theatre for pleasure or theatre for instruction’ (about 1936); reprinted in Brecht on Theatre, ed. J. Willett, pp. 72-3. Brecht, ’The German drama: pre-Hitler,’ in Brecht on Theatre, p. 80. Ibid Brecht, from ’fher experimentales Theater‘ in Schriften zum Theater, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1964); reprinted in Erwin Piscator: Political Theatre 292066, ed. L. Hoffman, pp. 31-2. Quoted in C. D. Innes, Erwin Pisca tor’s Political Theater, p. 22. I am indebted to Mr Innes’s book for the wealth of information on Piscator which it provides and particularly for details of the production of Section 218, discussed later in the article. Brecht, from ’ h r experimentales Theater‘, op. cit. lnnes, op. cit., p. 137. Quoted in Innes, op. cit., p. 137. Willet, untitled essay in Erwin Piscator: Political Theatre 2920-66, p. 11.

Suburban sonnet 41

Some books to look out for on Theatre in Education and related movements D. Bradby and J. McCormick, People’s Theatre (Croom Helm, 1978) S. Craig (ed.), Dreams and Deconstructions; Alternatrue Theatre in Britain (Amber Lane,

T. Jackson (ed.), Learning Through Theatre: Essays and Casebooks on Theatre in Education

J. O’Toole, Theatre in Education (Hodder & Stoughton, 1976) P. Schweitzer (ed.), Theatre in Education Programmes (scripts), in 3 vols. (Methuen,

1980)

(Manchester, 1980)

1980)

JONATHAN TAYLOR

Suburban sonnet In the suburb of thought we live most, move Where mansions crumble and repairs are too Expensive, sleep in rented flats, and love Where frilly nylon curtains block the view. Our smallest patterns circulate in buff Official folders endlessly, and do No more than grand designs in turning of A world which turns in spite, and drags us through. But though in grey years when you find these lines, Discover ‘live’, ‘move‘, ’sleep’, and ’love’, you’ll q - Or laugh - at these young hopes long gone, or at The then mistaken world being kicked, yet that Revisit might discern an arguing artistry And clear long vistas something beautiful defines.

RUTH NEVO

The study of the nature of comedy is currently one of the most contentiousareasof literary debate, and the issue of the nature of Shakespearean comedy is a particularly fertile area within it. In this study of Shakespeare's ten early comedies from The Comedy of Errors to Twelfth Night Ruth Nevo develops the concept of a dynamic of comic form and examines the powerful relations between the formal complexity and the naturalistic verisimilitude of these plays. 240 pages Hardback 0 416 73880 X €8.95 Paperback 0 416 73890 7 €3.95

Edited by Kenneth Muir

This collection of essays by the first General Editor of the New Arden Shakespeare is selected from two volumes, The Fronriers of Drama and the posthumous Shakespeare the Dramatist. The volume is prefaced by Kenneth Muir, and it brings together the best of Una Ellis- Fermor's Shakespearean criticism. 192 pages Hardback 0 416 74090 1 €10.95 Paperback 0 416 74100 2 €4.95

NORMAN SAUNDERS, RICHARD SOUTHERN, T.W. CRAlK and LOIS POTTER

Volume I1 1500-1576 This volume surveys the period of English drama which saw the transition from the medieval religious drama to the secular drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The tudor 'interlude' covers a wide variety of dramatic context and form, and thisvolumeexamines that variety, relates thedrama to itscontext of conflicts and social changes, and investigates the methods of dramatic presentation and the fortunes of the acting companies of men and boys. 334 pages illustrated Hardback 0 416 13030 5 f22.00

BRIAN GIBBONS

Second Edition The first decade of the Jacobean age witnessed a sudden profusion of comedies satirizing city life; among these were comedies by Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Middleton, as well as the bulk of the repertory of the newly established children's companies at Blackfriars and Paul's. The .playwrights self- consciously forged a new genre which attracted London audiences with its images of folly and vice in Court and City. This second edition takes account of recent critical and scholarly work in the field and the author has added a new essay on Bartholomew Fair and a select bibliography. 200 pages Hardback 0 416 73450 2 €10.50 Paperback 0 416 73460 X €4.95

Comic Transformations in Shakespeare

UNA ELLIS-FERMOR

Shakespeare's Drama

The Revels History of Drama in English

Jacobean City Comedy

can theatre teach? fifty years of an alternative theatre

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