Essay: THE MODERN THEATER OR, THE WORLD AS A METAPHOR OF DREAD

THE theater is the Lazarus of the arts. Two thousand years of "worst seasons ever" between Periclean Athens "and Elizabethan England failed to bury it. Indeed, in the two and a half millenniums since Aeschylus, the number of dramatic geniuses could be counted on one and a half hands. The theater does not live on its masterpieces but between them. Man created the theater in his own image, and it wears two masks and a thousand faces. The mask of tragedy says weep—and bear it. The mask of comedy says grin—and bear it. The...