Dramatic Literature: Reading Ibsen, Shaw, and O’Neill
S06
Steven Bach
Dramatic Literature focuses on three great playwrights whose influence is everywhere still felt in world literature, drama, and film: Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O’Neill.

Students will read and discuss plays as literature, aware that they were created for the theater and the special needs of dramatic presentation. Close reading will include such titles as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, An Enemy of the People, and The Master Builder; Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra, Saint Joan, Major Barbara, and possibly Man and Superman; and O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon, The Emperor Jones, Long Voyage Home, The Iceman Cometh, Ah, Wilderness!, and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Critical papers will be required.