Any reference work that attempts to define “the 1,000 most significant plays of world theatre” must court a measure of controversy. This reader, for one, was piqued by the omission of Brenton and Hare's Pravda or Marie Jones's Stones in His Pockets, in view of some of the works included here. To his credit, the author, Professor of Theatre at De Montfont University, UK, anticipates such objections and acknowledges the “contentiousness” of about a third of his choices. A concise preface explains that the Dictionary is intended to identify the plays “likely to be of most interest to the Anglophone theatregoer, reader and scholar”. It includes texts that can be performed by live actors and excludes musicals, operas and most adaptations from other mediums except where these have become successful in their own right. Patterson, a specialist in German theatre, has had the assistance of three advisory editors, for American, British and classical drama respectively. In truth, although some 26 entries hail from Asia or Africa, the range of plays, from Aeschylus's Persians (c.472 BCE ) to Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out (2002), largely reflects these Anglo‐American and European interests.
The structure of the entries, arranged A to Z by play title, is clearly explained in the preface. The title is in bold and is then followed by numerous features which aid quick reference: alternative/variant title, first performance, publication, date of translation into English if appropriate, whether text is in verse or prose, genre, setting and number of roles by gender. One could quibble about a few of the genre definitions – Sophocles's Philoctetes is arguably a tragedy rather than just, as here, a “drama” (a much more general term) for example, but this is a minor criticism. These descriptors are followed by a plot synopsis and brief, one paragraph, comments, which together average about 200 words. There is good, consistent, cross‐referencing throughout: for example, one is directed to the entry for Twelfth Night from its lesser‐known variant title What You Will, and to the parent‐title for the trilogy, Oresteia, from Agamemnon.
However, despite Patterson's insistence that the brief commentary is not intended to summarise a play's significance, it is this feature which jars just a little unsatisfactorily, when browsing randomly as well as reading entries in alphabetical sequence. It is at least arguable whether Brecht's Life of Galileo is “undoubtedly” the twentieth century's best play about a historical figure, or Frayn's Noises Off its “cleverest farce”. Nor can one see the primacy of caring over ownership expounded by Caucasian Chalk Circle, “both good Marxism and good sense”, being accepted universally. And as for Private Lives “acknowledging the disturbing fact that sexual attraction and marital harmony seldom go together”, well, the spirit of Thomas Hardy clearly lives. Important information, for example that Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun won its author the first New York Drama Circle award accorded to a black playwright, is also sometimes surprisingly omitted. Hyperbole, generalisation and omission aside, another reservation is that although a more famous play like Hamlet or Waiting for Godot is accorded a longer entry, the majority of this is still taken up by a plot summary. A guide to further reading where significant secondary literature exists would aid further study. The overall bibliography given, with only 23 titles, is very select indeed.
Useful supplementary features include a genealogical table of main characters in Shakespeare's history plays. Given the 42 plays from Ancient Greece included, similar tables clarifying its mythology would have been a bonus. There is also a prefatory list of the thousand plays listed chronologically by country and period, from the Greeks to post‐war European and American drama. Bold titles indicate longer entries: interestingly Othello is not deemed as worthy of attention by this method as Shakespeare's other three great tragedies. The Dictionary is rounded off by an index of up to four character‐names from each play, interestingly including their appearances in works not included in the book “for comparison”, and an index of playwrights, including dates.
How successfully does the Dictionary serve the needs of its own intended audience – of theatregoers, readers and scholars? This is an excellent and attractive quick reference handbook for the general reader, the theatre‐goer and theatre practitioner. Conversely, its subjectivity and superficiality, although unavoidable, mean that it will probably not be of much use to the serious academic researcher.
