Eric Bentley's graceful look at George Bernard Shaw was first published over 50 years ago, and time has only strengthened the conviction of his ideas and arguments about Shaw. When it arrived in the late 1940's, this book was hailed by the great poet William Carlos Williams as "the best treatise on contemporary manners I think I have ever read. I was fascinated and rewarded in the depths of my soul." Even Shaw himself described the book as "the best critical description of my public activities I have yet come across."

First published in 1967 The Theatre of Commitment presents miscellaneous collection of seven essays written over fifteen years. Eric Bentley deals with themes like is the drama an extinct species; the American drama; what is theatre; the pro and con of political theatre; letter to a would-be playwright and the theatre of commitment. For most people, theatre of commitment is political theater, though Bentley indicates that the word commitment is broad enough to embrace the work of any serious writer even if the commitment is to non-commitment. This is an interesting read for students of theatre and performance studies.

Brecht presents the vivid and changing scene of Hitler's war machine. There is a worker who only mumbles "Heil Hitlers" and a S.A. man whose suspicion of him is enough to mark him for life. There is an assaulted Jew who did no wrong and a judge who has a tragic inclination to be just. There are a mother and father who have good cause to fear that their son has informed on them. The war machine moves across Europe, bringing ruin and misery everywhere.

Drama / Characters: 14 male, 4 female

Sacrificed to powers larger than himself, Woyzeck is one of drama's first anti-heroes. He serves a German captain and makes money by allowing a doctor to experiment on him, but his deeper morality leads him to a tragic end.

Translated and adapted by Eric Bentley Music by Arnold Black, William Bolcom, Lucas Mason, and Peter Winkler Flexible casting, 1m., 1f. or expanded to more actors as needed /Musical Revue A first draft of this entertainment was produced at The Ballroom in New York City in 1994, starring Alvin Epstein and directed by Isaiah Sheffer. Howard Kissel, Daily News, commented: "Bentley's pungent translations of Wedekind's lyrics have been set deftly by three composers, Arnold Black, William Bolcom and Peter Winkler... Tingle Tangle as the work was then called] is well performed and invariably fascinating." For the Wedekind renaissance of the 21st century Eric Bentley has re-arranged the material and added to it. The piece now consists of two cabaret programs which could be performed together in one long evening or separately. The first program is framed by two Bentley ballads telling the stories of Spring's Awakening and The First Lulu, respectively. Within that frame is a varied series of Wedekind songs and spoken poems. The second program is framed by two Wedekind short stories, neither of them ever before presented on an American (or any other) stage. Within this second frame come poems and songs in which we meet another Wedekind, a wild poet who also had a tender, even elegiac side. The two-part show ends with a song by Eric Bentley and Arnold Black which celebrates, not Wedekind the rebel, but Wedekind the artist.

Full Length, Drama w/music / 18m, 5f, extras /Int./5 Exts. This German play was written in 1939 and was first produced in Zurich in 1941. In America, it was published in English right away (1941, by New Directions) but did not reach Broadway till 1963 - in a memorable production directed by Jerome Robbins and starring Anne Bancroft. It had, of course, by that time been produced to much acclaim all over the world. When Bertolt Brecht directed the play in Munich (1950), Eric Bentley, Assistant Director, at his bidding started to translate the play into English. He was eventually to make several different English versions of it. The most interesting of these is published here. It was a collaboration with the eminent French composer Darius Milhaud. Together they made this remarkable contribution to musical theatre.

Based on John Gay's eighteenth century Beggar's Opera, The Threepenny Opera, first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, is a vicious satire on the bourgeois capitalist society of the Weimar Republic, but set in a mock-Victorian Soho. With Kurt Weill's unforgettable music - one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz to the theatre - it became a popular hit throughout the western world. Published in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, this edition features extensive notes and commentary including an introduction to the play, Brecht's own notes on the play, a full appendix of textual variants, a note by composer Kurt Weill, a transcript of a discussion about the play between Brecht and a theatre director, plus editorial notes on the genesis of the play.

The play is a parable inspired by the Chinese play Chalk Circle. Written at the close of World War II, the story is set in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia, and retells the tale of King Solomon and a child claimed by two mothers. A chalk circle is metaphorically drawn around a society misdirected in its priorities. Brecht's statements about class are cloaked in the innocence of a fable that whispers insistently to the audience.

In 1952, Hannah Arendt hailed Bertolt Brecht as "beyond a doubt the greatest living German poet and possibly the greatest living European playwright." His plays, widely taught and studied, are searing critiques of civilizations run amok.

During the thirties, the subversive nature of his work sent Brecht from Germany to Scandinavia and later to the United States. The Good Woman of Setzuan, written during Brecht's exile and set in Communist China, is a parable of a young woman torn between obligation and reality, between love and practicality, and between her own needs and those of her friends and neighbors.

Adhering closely to the original German text, this is a performance-friendly translation of one of Brecht's most popular plays.

All the farces of Russia's greatest dramatist are rendered here in the classic lively translations which audiences and scholars alike applaud on the stage and in the classroom. The blustering, stuttering eloquence of Chekhov's unlikely heroes has endured to shape the voice of contemporary theatre. This volume presents seven minor masterpieces: Harmfulness of Tobacco, Swan Song, The Brute, Marriage Proposal, Summer in the Country, A Wedding, The Celebration.

(Applause Books). The complete play scripts to: The Misanthrope by Moliere, English version by Richard Wilbur; Phaedra by Racine, English version by Robert Lowell; The Cid by Corneille, English version by James Schevill; and Figaro's Marriage by Beaumarchais, English version by Jacques Barzun.

This book was written between 1946 and 1952, and first published in 1953. It is now widely regarded as the standard portrait of the European and American theater in the turbulent and seminal years following World War II; but it is far more than that. It ranges back as far as Ibsen and even Shakespeare, and has contributed very substantially to a number of reputations that would long outlast 1950, such as those of Bertolt Brecht, Charles Chaplin and Martha Graham. For Bentley fans, it is an essential link in a chain that runs from The Playwright as Thinker to The Life of the Drama to The Brecht Memoir and Thinking About the Playwright.

(Applause Books). Including Antoin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, E. Gordon Craig, Luigi Pirandello, Konstantin Stanislavsky, W. B. Yeats, and Emile Zolaing.

This volume contains the best of Shaw's musical writing, including sections on Gluck, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Verdi, Berlioz, pieces on opera, musical analysis, oratorios, Gilbert and Sullivan, plus a long autobiographical preface, one of Shaw's most self-revealing works. The result is a book of unparalleled brilliance and grace by a writer who, according to W.H. Auden, "was probably the greatest music critic who ever lived." "For all music collections." - Library Journal

Includes: Leonce and Lena - George Buchner; Spring's Awakening - Frank Wedekind; La Ronde - Arthur Schnitzler; The Underpants - Carl Sternheim.

This wonderful collection of Spanish drama from the golden age features four plays translated into English by Roy Campbell, and expertly edited by Eric Bentley: Siege of Numantia (Miguel de Cervantes), Fuente Ovejuna (Lope de Vega), The Trickster of Seville (Tirso de Molina) and Life Is a Dream (Calderon de la Barca). Includes an introduction by Bentley.

An anthology of four classic Italian plays edited by Eric Bentley. Also includes directorial and technical notes. Includes the title work by Goldoni as well as EThe King StagE (Gozzi) EThe MandrakeE (Machiavelli) ERuzzante Returns from the WarsE (Beolco).