The Norton Anthology of Drama

Citation

Gainor, J. E., Garner, S. B., Jr., & Puchner, M. (Eds.). (2024). The Norton Anthology of Drama (4th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition is a single paperback volume of about 2,100 pages. According to Norton, it merges the two volumes of the full third edition into one expanded anthology, keeping thirty-one plays that a survey of more than 150 instructors found most popular and adding seven new ones, for thirty-eight plays in all. The plays are arranged chronologically and each is introduced by a headnote and annotated. Two kinds of extra material appear beside particular plays: Critical Perspectives (extracts of drama criticism and theory, nine in all) and Plays in Performance features on notable productions, now placed next to the play they discuss rather than grouped in the middle of the book. Six plays are marked in the contents as drawn from the full third edition.

Introduction

The volume opens with a preface and an introduction whose centre is a revised Short History of Theater, which the publisher describes as covering essential events and artists from ancient Greece to the present. In the ebook this section is accompanied by new videos and "listen as you read" audio.

Ancient Greek and Classical Asian Drama

Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos; Euripides, Medea; and Aristophanes, Lysistrata appear in new translations by Emily Wilson, Sheila Murnaghan and Aaron Poochigian. Oedipus is paired with an extract from Aristotle's Poetics and a Plays in Performance feature. The section continues with Shudraka's Little Clay Cart (ca. 100–300 C.E.), Guan Hanqing's Injustice to Dou E, or Snow in Midsummer (in a new translation by Wilt Idema) and Zeami Motokiyo's Atsumori, with Zeami's own "A Mirror Held to the Flower" as its critical perspective.

Medieval and Early Modern Drama

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim's Dulcitius (ca. 975) and the anonymous Everyman (with an extract from Robert Potter on the English morality play) lead to the early modern stage: Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Twelfth Night (with Samuel Johnson's "Preface" to Shakespeare), Calderón's Life Is a Dream, Molière's Tartuffe, Aphra Behn's The Rover and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Loa to The Divine Narcissus.

Nineteenth Century and Early Modern Theatre

William Wells Brown's The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858), new to this edition, is followed by Ibsen's A Doll House (with Shaw's The Quintessence of Ibsenism), Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Jarry's Ubu the King, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and, new to this edition, Tagore's one-act Chitra (1913) with an extract from Tagore's "The Stage".

Twentieth-Century Drama to 1960

Susan Glaspell's Trifles, Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Tawfiq al-Hakim's Song of Death, Beckett's Waiting for Godot (with Martin Esslin on the Theatre of the Absurd) and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

Drama since 1975

Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, August Wilson's Fences (with Wilson's "The Ground on Which I Stand"), David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches and Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive precede five plays new to this edition: Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, Caryl Churchill's A Number, Luis Alfaro's Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, Lynn Nottage's Sweat and Larissa FastHorse's The Thanksgiving Play (2023). The final critical perspective is an extract from Monique Mojica's "Theatrical Diversity on Turtle Island".

Key Concepts

Introduction and Apparatus

• Short History of Theater: the introductory survey of theatre from ancient Greece to the present that frames the plays.
• Headnotes and annotations: brief introductions to each play and notes on unfamiliar references that, in Norton's words, do not interpret the work for the student.
• Critical Perspectives: short documents of drama criticism and theory placed beside nine of the plays.
• Plays in Performance: features on notable productions, placed next to the plays they discuss.

The Plays

• Chronological arrangement: plays run from fifth-century B.C.E. Athens to 2023, so changes in form can be traced across periods.
• Translation: the Greek plays are in new translations chosen, the publisher says, for accessibility.
• Range of traditions: Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, colonial Mexican, modern Indian, Egyptian and Nigerian plays appear alongside the European and American canon, and the final play and critical perspective come from Native American writers.
• One-act plays: shorter works such as Chitra and A Number were added at instructors' request because they are easier to assign.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• One affordable volume. By merging the two volumes of the full third edition, the fourth edition puts the whole sweep from Sophocles to FastHorse in a single book, which Norton presents as the easiest volume to assign for courses on drama, theatre history, performance or playwriting.
• Classic and new plays together. The selection keeps canonical works (Oedipus, Hamlet, A Doll House, Waiting for Godot) while adding plays from the last two decades and from outside Europe. In an interview published by Cornell, J. Ellen Gainor describes the aim as plays from many historical moments and places, arranged chronologically and balanced with newer works.
• Theory and performance beside the text. Critical Perspectives connect plays with classic arguments (Aristotle, Johnson, Shaw, Esslin, August Wilson), and the Plays in Performance features keep the stage in view.
• Fresh translations. New versions of the three Greek plays by Wilson, Murnaghan and Poochigian replace older translations.

Limitations

• A selection, not a library. Thirty-eight plays across 2,500 years means many traditions are represented by one or two works. Readers using the 2018 shorter third edition will also find that several plays it contained, including Miss Julie, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Death of a Salesman, The Homecoming, Cloud Nine and Ruined, are not in this edition's contents.
• Theatre history only in outline. The Short History is part of the introduction, so the anthology cannot replace a dedicated history of theatre.
• Performance at second hand. Plays are printed as texts with a limited number of production features; the videos are part of the ebook and student site rather than the print volume.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the drama course this is the primary-text collection: it supplies the plays that the other books analyse. Mick Wallis and Simon Shepherd's Studying Plays teaches how to read a play text as material for performance and works well as a companion from the first week, applied to plays chosen from Norton. Theatre Histories: An Introduction by Tobin Nellhaus and colleagues and Christopher Balme's The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies are the next step for students who want the history and methods that the anthology's introduction only outlines. Marvin Carlson's Theories of the Theatre is a full history of dramatic theory and extends the short Critical Perspectives into a continuous account. The course also lists Hamlet separately; the anthology's text, with its Plays in Performance feature, is enough for most students, while a single-play edition offers fuller notes.

How to Use This Book

The anthology suits introductory drama and theatre courses and readers who want a broad shelf of plays in one place; no prior study is needed. Read the Short History of Theater first, then return to the relevant part of it before each play.

A practical approach:

• Work by pairs and contrasts. The contents invite comparisons: Medea with Alfaro's Mojada, Everyman with Doctor Faustus, A Doll House with Trifles and Machinal, A Raisin in the Sun with Fences and Sweat.
• Use the apparatus deliberately. Read the headnote before the play and the Critical Perspective after it, and treat the Plays in Performance features as prompts to look for recordings or production photographs.
• Read for performance. For each play, note what must be decided in staging (space, casting, sound), using Studying Plays for method.
• Plan a core list. A one-term course can be built from about a dozen plays across the periods, with the one-act plays (Trifles, Chitra, A Number) for shorter weeks.

Instructors have access to an instructor's guide with teaching notes, notable productions, paper topics and thematic pairings, and the student site includes the ebook videos and a Writing About Drama ebook.