Contents:Part I. The classical world: The trojan women / Euripides. -- The Birds / Aristophanes. -- The Rope / Plautus
Part II. The feudal world: The sacriface of Isaac. -- Master Pierre Pathelin. -- Komachi at Sekidera (Sekidera Komachi) / Kanze Motokiyo Zeami
Part III. The world of Renaissance Europe and Elizabeth England: The pedant. -- Doctor Faustus / Christopher Marlowe. --Measure for measure / William Shakespeare
Part IV. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and England: Life is a dream / Calderón de la Barca. -- Phèdre / Jean Racine. -- The misanthrope / Molière. -- The Rover / Aphra Behn. -- She stoops to conquer / Oliver Goldsmith
Part V. Nineteenth-century Romanticism, melodrama, and the well-made play: Hernani / Victor Hugo. -- Under the Gaslight / Augustin Daly. -- Ghosts / Henrik Ibsen. -- The sea gull / Anton Chekhov. -- Arms and the man / George Bernard Shaw
Part VI. The early twentieth century in Europe and the United States: A dream play / August Strindberg. -- Riders to the sea / John Millington Synge. -- The hairy ape / Eugene O'Neill. -- The threepenny opera / Bertolt Brecht. -- Cat on a hot tin roof / Tennessee Williams. -- The birthday party / Harold Pinter. -- Play / Samuel Beckett
Part VII. American voices of the 1960s and 1970s: Dutchman / Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones]. -- Wine in the Wilderness / Alice Childress. -- Bernabé / Luis Valdez. -- The chickencoop chinaman / Frank Chin. -- The tooth of crime / Sam Shepard
Part VIII. Late twentieth-century experiments: Death and the king's horseman / Wole Soyinka. -- Double gothic / Michael Kirby. -- Still life / Emily Mann. -- Painting churches / Tina Howe. -- The conduct of life / Maria Irene Fornes. -- Largo Desolato / Václav Havel