The Drama 100

Daniel S. Burt's The Drama 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Plays of All Time strikes me as a gimmick right off the bat. All the more so as it follows on The Literary 100 and The Novel 100—is there no redundancy here?

The book purports to rank the world's top plays in order of greatness from 1 to 100 with four to six pages of summary and discussion, prefaced by a corroborative quotation from another source. In an appendix we get, in alphabetic order by author, another hundred honorary mentions.

I am not fond of lists but can make a slight allowance for 10 or 12 picks, especially if not in order of alleged greatness. A list that short is obviously a personal preference; in no way could one reduce the greatest of all time to that few. A hundred, however, assume a specious credibility, at least for the gullible.

To start with, how do you define “greatest”? Burt, a professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, attempts various criteria: “best represent[ing] the creative, intellectual, and cultural achievement of the form” or “the test of critical consensus and time,” although “literary history is rife with” upward and downward reversals. He claims to have tried “to balance the personal, critical, and popular . . . guided by both the established and evolving critical canon.” Furthermore, he “resisted the temptation of giving personal preference undue sway” and went for plays “exert[ing] the greatest impact, the greatest influence” and to be “performed, read, and enjoyed . . .centuries from now,” Finally borrowing a standard from Chekhov, “the ones that raised the most important questions.” You wonder just what measuring instruments he possesses.

Burt says he tried to achieve his goal by consulting with faculty colleagues and his own students—presumably the critical and popular vote, respectively. Though tempted, he rejected emphasizing “old valued friends” among plays, the ones he “would want to bring along on a desert island.” That, however subjective, strikes me as a sounder procedure—provided only you entitle it “great” rather than “greatest,” or, better yet, “favorite.”

Even then, what do you do with, say, Shakespeare, who alone could fill a modest list; and how do you rank things that are equally masterly: Hamlet and Lear, for instance? But, what the hell, let's try to play Burt's game.

A mere glance at the list reveals Death of a Salesman at 21 and Woyzeck at 22. Now it seems to me that Büchner's play is easily greater than Miller's. Another glance reveals Angels in America at 42, followed, in order, by A Midsummer Night's Dream, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Man and Superman and Phèdre. Lacking Burt's calipers, I find all four greater far than number 42.

Still, these are arguable matters. What isn't arguable is the absence, from both the greatest 100 and the 100 honorable mentions, of a single Polish or Hungarian play. No Gombrowicz or Witkiewicz; no Molnár or Örkény? How could two such highly literate nations not make even one group, even once? Austria itself, with Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal, can make it only into the also-rans—manifestly having produced nothing up to A Raisin in the Sun (70) or Glengarry Glen Ross (78).

The mini-essays about individual plays vary in quality: many are unexceptionable; others, say the one on Translations, are not. And, by he way, is Brian Friel's masterpiece (66) really inferior to The Crucible (64), Arthur Miller's second appearance among the 100 greatest? But here I go again, being personal.

Something about Burt's mindset is distinctly peculiar. He never mentions Shakespeare without calling him William Shakespeare, presumably so we won't confuse him with Dorothy or Olivia Shakespeare. On the other hand, what in English is usually called The Oresteia and The Trojan Women becomes in Burt just Oresteia and Trojan Women. Conversely, Dutchman expands into The Dutchman.

I am not impressed by a good many of the writers he quotes: journalistic hacks or obscure academics. Even where quotations from them are acceptable, better ones from better sources could readily have been found. One wonders, moreover, about Burt's not identifying the authors of translations he uses, and not justifying his choices among alternative ones.

Minor cavils would have to include calling Shaw George Bernard, even though he explicitly repudiated the George; and calling Ibsen's play A Doll's House even though A Doll House, the generic name of the toy, is intended. Lastly, there are in the book rather too many typos.

Aside from this, fine and dandy.

John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News.