The Social Significance of Modern Drama

The Modern Drama, as all modern literature, mirrors the complex struggle of life... -Emma Goldman, in the Foreword With her reputation as a political radical, it is often forgotten that much of Emma Goldman's activism was rooted in the arts. As a member of The Progressive Stage Society, a founding force in the experimental theater movement, and through her work as a theatrical manager herself, she moved in quite artistic circles. And in these 1914 essays, adapted from a lecture series, she turned her passionate and philosophical eye on the stage, blending social commentary and theatrical criticism as she dissects: · Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People · August Strindberg's Miss Julie and Comrades · Edmond Rostand's Chantecler · George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession and Major Barbara · William Butler Yeats's Where There Is Nothing · Anton Chekhov's The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard · Leonid Andreyev's King Hunger and others from Scandinavia, Germany, France, England, Ireland, and Russia who were the "social iconoclasts" of her time... and ours. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman. Anarchist and feminist EMMA GOLDMAN (1869-1940) is one of the towering figures in global radicalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Lithuania, she emigrated to the United States as a teenager, was deported in 1919 for her criticism of the U. S. military draft in World War I, and died in Toronto after a globetrotting life. An early advocate of birth control, women's rights, and workers unions, she was an important and influential figure in such far-flung geopolitical events as the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. Among her many books are My Disillusionment in Russia (1925) and Living My Life (1931).