Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts

Sylvan Barnet

Longman, 1997 - Drama - 1078 pages

The seventh edition of Types of Drama provides a complete course in drama in an easily portable book. This text offers a full range of plays from ancient Greece to the present, along with an introductory chapter on how to read plays; biographical notes for each dramatist; introductory comments for each play; topics for critical thinking and writing for each play; critical contexts (for instance, interviews with the authors) for fourteen plays; stage histories for most plays, often including reviews or interviews with directors; five photo-essays: "The Language of Drama"; "Ancient Greek Drama Today"; "Staging Shakespeare Today"; "African Americans on the Stage"; and "Representations of Gender in the Theater"; eleven short historical essays, such as "A Note on Hispanic-American Theater" and "A Note on Women's Theater"; and a substantial glossary of dramatic terms.

Contents

• WHAT IS DRAMA?: 3
• HOW TO READ A PLAY: 16
• Lady Gregory SPREADING the News: 25

About the author

Sylvan Saul Barnet was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 11, 1926. During World War II, he served in the Army for two years. He received a bachelor's degree in English from New York University in 1948 and a master's degree in 1950 and a doctorate in 1954 from Harvard University. For the next three decades, he taught freshman writing and literature at Tufts University. He wrote or edited numerous textbooks including An Introduction to Literature, A Short Guide to Writing About Literature, A Short Guide to Writing About Art, The Study of Literature: A Handbook of Critical Essays and Terms, and Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. In the early 1960s, he decided that his students at Tufts University needed an edition of Shakespeare with each play in a separate volume including an introduction and study aids. He presented the idea to editors at the New American Library. The editors approved of the idea and Barnet became the general editor of the Signet Classic Shakespeare series. He was the co-author with William Burto of Zen Ink Paintings, which was published in 1982. He died of cancer on January 11, 2016 at the age of 89.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts
• Author: Sylvan Barnet
• Editor: Sylvan Barnet
• Edition: 7
• Publisher: Longman, 1997
• Original from: Pennsylvania State University
• Digitized: Mar 9, 2011
• ISBN: 0673525147, 9780673525147
• Length: 1078 pages
• Subjects: Drama / Anthologies (multiple authors); Juvenile Nonfiction / Performing Arts / General; Literary Criticism / Drama; Performing Arts / General