Shaw, Rattigan, Stoppard: the Play of Ideas vs. the Play of Character and Situation

In the early 20th Century George Bernard Shaw, following Ibsen’s model, sought to introduce the Play of Ideas into British Drama, i.e., plays that dramatized current philosophical and social issues. We will study his Man and Superman as representative of such drama. At the mid-century Terence Rattigan argued against Shaw that plays should be about people and tell stories, not about ideas. We shall read plays of his, such as The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version to understand his art of implication and understatement. Shaw and Rattigan’s argument has played itself out in the dazzling late 20th century plays of Tom Stoppard who starts as a playwright of ideas. We shall try to understand where he and the debate come out in a play such as his Arcadia. 3 hrs. lect.