This collection of essays, drawn from scholarship over the last forty years, explores the drama of four of the most influential proponents of modernism in European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, and Beckett.

Although there are other dramatists who also contributed to Modernism, these four illustrate widely different and contrasting aspects to the movement. Since discussions of Modernism are generally restricted to poetry, novels, or the fine arts (painting, sculpture), examining theatre from this perspective covers new ground. The choice of these four dramatists as the subjects of the volume reflects the large percentage of essays dealing with their work published by Modern Drama, the leading scholarly journal in the field, which in turn is a measure of the centrality of these particular playwrights in critical discourse. The essays here have been selected to cover the main elements of the work of each of the four dramatists, with the aim of creating a useful teaching tool for university courses.

Since some of the essays selected go back to the 1960s, while others are very contemporary, this volume also offers a perspective on the historical development of critical theory.