Volume 29, Number 2 · February 18, 1982
The Illegitimate Theater
By Nigel Dennis
The Antitheatrical Prejudice
by Jonas Barish
University of California Press, 499 pp., $24.50
The subject of Jonas Barish's large book is what he calls 'antitheatricality'—a state of mind that ranges from a cold dislike of the stage to a furious desire to burn every theater to the ground and dispatch all actors to the flaming underworld. 'These pages... propose no polemical thesis,' Professor Barish writes, but the fact that not a single antitheatrical writer from Plato to Yvor Winters is allowed to express himself without being taken apart by Professor Barish gives a polemical flavor to every page of the book. The author half admits this when he says in his peculiar prose: 'Sometimes I have temerariously engaged in debate with authors dangerous to disagree with.'
Review, 2622 words
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