All theater is about ideas, but in this century George Bernard Shaw and his disciples have evolved an explicit Theater of Ideas, a vision of playwriting as a means of conducting urbane debates on great issues of the day. In these plays, beauty of language, depth of character and universal truths of human nature are subordinated to the stately combat of conflicting points of view, whether about feminism and prostitution in Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession (1902) or about the moral impact of colonialism in Tom Stoppard's Night and / Day (1978). The excitement comes from hearing important arguments stirringly phrased: plays...
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