Drama: A Pocket Anthology (Penguin Academics Series)

That is a great seller and gets the item earlier than what you will expect.

This book presents a collection of the twelve most frequently studied plays along with a fairly short but well done introduction to the art of drama itself. The book is intended as a text for drama students with a wide collection of plays to be studied. The plays range from 'Oedipus the King' (first performed about 430 BC to 'How I Learned to Drive' - 1998 Pulizer Prize winner for drama. This is the third edition of this popular book. In this edition the number of plays has been expanded to twelve (from nine) and the introduction has been expanded with coverage of Greek 'old comedy' and the theater of the absurd. Finally the section on writing about drama has been both expanded and revised to conform to the sixth edition of the MLA handbook.

it has to be hard to put together a good anthology of drama, in such a short format. i know there are many other plays gwynn would have liked to have included in this collection, but being limited by space he had to pick and choose. the collection starts with Oedipus Rex, representing the earliest days of drama, and the best example of greek drama. gwynn then moves on to shakespeare with his selection of othello. there could be some arguement as to the shakespeare play to include, but othello is one of the better works. next is ibsen's a doll house, followed by chekov's three sisters (and what drama anthology would be complete without chekov). then gwyn has the glass menagerie and death of a salesman. it's understandable why oniel is not represented here, since both tennessee williams and arthur miller are here, oniel would have made it an overrepresentation of american plawrites in the period. a raisin in the sun follows. and he finishes the anthology with a one act, experimental play by Maria Irene Fornes, Dr. Kheal. this is the only weak point in the anthology, i think with a little more effort, he could have found a better selection to include.