Twentieth Century Scottish Drama

Book excerpt: Edited and introduced by Cairns Craig and Randall Stevenson. Ever since the major revival of dramatic writing and production in the 1970s, the style and the subject matter of Scottish writing for stage and screen has been a continuing influence on our contemporary culture, exciting, offending and challenging audiences in equal measure. Yet modern Scottish drama has a history of controversy, conflict and entertainment going back to the 1920s, notable at every turn for the vigour of its language and its direct confrontation with telling issues. The plays in this anthology offer a unique chance to grasp the different topics and also the recurrent themes of Scottish drama in the twentieth century. Gathered together in a single omnibus volume, there is the poetic eeriness of Barrie and the political commitment of Joe Corrie and Sue Glover; there is the Brechtian debate of Bridie and the verbal brilliance of John Byrne and Liz Lochhead; there is working-class experience and feminist insight; broad Scots and existential anxiety; street realism and a meeting with the devil; social injustice and raucous humour; historical comedy and tragic loss. Here is both the breadth and the continuity of the modern Scottish tradition in a single volume.