Foreword

MODERN DRAMA VOLUME 1 DECEMBER, 1958 NUMBER 3 Foreword If it is possible to make a generalization about the manuscripts received so far by Modem Drama, it would be that while there is a lively concern about the contemporary dramatists there seems to be less interest in the older playwrights. It is understandable that there . should have been comparatively few papers on Ibsen and Strindberg and Shaw as here Modem Drama competes with other journals. It is less easy to see why so few papers should have been received on dramatists such as Hauptmann, Benavente, Rostand, Maeterlinck, Gorki, Wilde, and Turgenev, to mention only a few of the older figures. When our journal was originated one of its expressed intentions was to aid the teacher of modem drama. May we call attention once again to this pedagogical purpose? Most courses in modem drama still begin with Ibsen and continue with representative European and American dramatists down to the present. In order that our quarterly may be more useful in the classroom, the editor wishes to direct attention to the need for more investigation of the dramatists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ...