DRAMA NOW
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8.
Devotees of the drama probably have a pretty clear notion of
the course of dramatic history in recent decades. The years 1880-1914
saw the most significant crop of plays since Schiller if not since Mo–
liere. In the years 1919-1933 these plays were splendidly produced,
especially in Germany and Russia, along with new plays along lines
which the earlier generation had laid down. The last dozen years
have not been so creative. Fascism has swept the continent; Socialist
Realism produced no important dramatist in Russia; in England and
America there were minor experiments in social drama and poetic
drama. Of course the cry of a theatrical renascence was raised.
It
always is. But where is Clifford Odets today? Where is the Federal
Theatre? The last war, some one will say, introduced a lively decade
of theatre, why shouldn't this one? The answer, I feel, is that the
last war was immediately preceded by Ibsen and Strindberg on
whose steam the next generation could forge ahead. Between the
generatio s such a man as Max Reinhardt was an essential linlc This
time the links, or most of them, have been broken. The most one can
say is that the theatre at present fulfills the first pre-condition of
renascence. It is dead.
