Introduction: the politics of theatre theory / Daniel Gerould The poetics (4th c. B.C.) / Aristotle The art of poetry (1st c. B.C.) / Horace Nātya'sāstra (1st c. A.D.?) / Bharata On the art of the Nō drama (15th c.) / Zeami The poetics of Aristotle (1570) / Lodovico Castelvetro The defense of Poesy (1583) / Philip Sydney The compendium of tragicomic poetry (1599) / Giambattista Guarini The new art of writing plays (1609) / Felix Lope de Vega The whole art of the stage (1657) / Franc̦ois Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac Of the three unities of action, time, and place (1660) / Pierre Corneille An essay of dramatic poetry (1668) / John Dryden Casual expressions of idle feelings (1671) / Li Yu Conversations on The natural son (1757) ; The paradox of acting (1773-8) / Denis Diderot An epistle to Mr. d'Alembert (1758) / Jean-Jacques Rousseau Preface to Shakespeare (1765) / Samuel Johnson Hamburg Dramaturgy (1767-9) / Gotthold Ephraim Lessing The stage as a moral institution (1784) ; On the use of chorus in tragedy (1803) / Friedrich Schiller Of the dramatic art (1810) / Mme de Staël Lectures on dramatic art (1809-11) / August Wilhelm Schlegel
Shakespeare once again (1815) / Johann Wolfgang Goethe
The world as will and idea (1819/1844) / Arthur Schopenhauer
Preface to Cromwell (1827) / Victor Hugo
The philosophy of fine art (1835) / Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Slavic drama (1843) / Adam Mickiewicz
The birth of tragedy (1872) / Friedrich Nietzsche
Preface to Thérèse Raquin (1873) ; Naturalism in the theatre (1881) / Emile Zola
Preface to Miss Julie (1888) / August Strindberg
The tragical in daily life (1896) / Maurice Maeterlinck
The actor and the Übermarionette (1907) / Gordon Craig
The tragic theatre (1910) / William Butler Yeats
The fairground booth (1912) / Vsevolod Meyerhold
The variety theatre (1913) / Filippo Marinetti
Tolstoy: tragedian or comedian? (1921) / Bernard Shaw
The theatre and its double (1938) / Antonin Artaud
The modern theatre is the epic theatre (1930) ; Alienation effects in Chinese acting (1935) / Bertolt Brecht
Theater of the oppressed (1974) / Augusto Boal
Drama and the African world-view (1976) / Wole Soyinka
Writing for the stage (1986) / Václav Havel.
