The work of Appia, Artaud, Brecht, E. Gordon Craig, Pirandello, Shaw, Stanislavsky, Richard Wagner, Yeats and Zola is the subject of the first part of this anthology. Their ideas about their art and about the future possibilities of drama are revealed through either their own words or those of their best expositors. The second part contains excerpts from the writings of such commentators as George Lukacs, Romain Rolland and Alexis de Tocqueville, which bring together the threads of part one to give an overview of the development of theatre from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century.