Francis Fergusson, for many years head of the Drama Department at Bennington College and later director of the Princeton seminars in literary criticism, investigates the idea of a theater by examining ten plays: four classics of dramatic literature - Sophocles' Oedipus Rec, Racine's Berenice, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Then he considers three modern versions of the art of the drama: the realism of Ibsen and Chekhov in Ghosts and The Cherry Orchard; the works of Shaw and Pirandello with special reference to Six Characters in Search of an Author and contemporary attempts to create a modern poetic drama in Cocteau's The Infernal Machine, Obey's Noah, and Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

An original and beautifully written book on changing perspectives in the art of theater. Through a study of nine plays―Oedipus Rex, Bérénice, Tristan und Isolde, Hamlet, Ghosts, The Cherry Orchard, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Noah, Murder in the Cathedral―the author shows how all playwrights seek to "hold the mirror up to nature" and how in this respect the art of drama is always the same, varying only with the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of each age. The Idea of a Theater will delight both readers with a special interest in drama and those who read drama as a source of insight into man's nature and man’s changing ideas of himself.