The Social Significance of the Modern Drama is a 1914 treatise by Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....

 on political implications of significant playwrights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Goldman, who had done significant work with Modernist dramatists (managing tours, hosting, publicizing, and lecturing), here published her analyses of the political implications of modern drama. The book featured analyses of the political -- even radical -- implications of the work of playwrights including Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

, August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

, Hermann Sudermann

Hermann Sudermann

Hermann Sudermann was a German dramatist and novelist.- Early career :He was born at Matzicken, a village just to the east of Heydekrug in the Province of Prussia , close to the Russian frontier...

, Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...

, Frank Wedekind

Frank Wedekind

Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...

, Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...

, Edmond Rostand

Edmond Rostand

Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...

, Brieux

Brieux

Brieux is a commune in the Orne department in north-western France. The town famously gave its name to the ancestors of Robert the Bruce, Bruce being the Anglicisation of "Brieux"....

, George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...

, Stanley Houghton, Githa Sowerby, William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

, Lennox Robinson

Lennox Robinson

Esmé Stuart Lennox Robinson was an Irish dramatist, poet and theatre producer and director who was involved with the Abbey Theatre....

, T. G. Murray, Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, Anton Tchekhof (more familiar in English as "Anton Chekhov"), Maxim Gorki, and Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history...

. Goldman published the book as she set out on a tour, hoping to acquaint radicals and ordinary citizens alike to the radical potential of modern drama.

The book was first published in 1914, Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, in Boston, and in Toronto, the Copp Clark Co., Ltd. The book was not a commercial success, and was quickly out of print.

External links

• Available online at the Anarchist Archives
• Google Books (full-text, PDF, links to commentary in other books)
• Political Literary Criticism, Excerpts, 1883-2003 - Brief excerpts from Goldman and commentary on Goldman's work by other critics