The Possibilities and Perils of Modern Tragedy

Extract

A question that continues to agitate literary circles is whether it is possible to write tragedy in modern times and whether indeed it has been possible to produce tragedies at all ever since Ibsen's generation abandoned romanticism. The subject has become a veritable vested interest of academic criticism, but has also involved non-academic critics and creative writers. It has been impossible to declare a moratorium on the question because it thrusts itself into the foreground of discussions of the worth and pretensions of the modern theatre. Playwrights and critics who deplore the vogue of realism or the absence of poetry on the stage are especially inclined to make the impossibility of writing tragedy for the commercial theatre an article of faith. And it appears to be an absolute conviction on the part of some commentators that modern drama should be excluded from the aristocracy of letters altogether.