Books: The Homeless Muse

THE DEATH OF TRAGEDY (354 pp.)—George Steiner—Knopf ($5).

"Attention must be paid to such a person," says Mrs. Willy Loman of her husband in Death of a Salesman. It is a poignant plaint, and she repeats it as if she did not quite believe it. The fact is, no one is really convinced that the tormented figures of modern drama have the stature of tragic heroes. The measure of that disbelief is to imagine Jocasta asking an audience to pay attention to Oedipus, or Cordelia to Lear. Try not paying attention to them.

Does the decline of tragedy imply its death? Critic George...