The History of Southern Drama - Hardcover

"Watson's book gathers together in one place for the first time an enormous amount of primary information about this badly understudied topic. Watson has a masterful command of the sources he uses." -- Jackson Bryer "How grateful we should be to Charles Watson reminding us, once again, of the diversity of southern drama. Reminding us, too, of our indebtedness to early playwrights like Paul Green, and teachers of playwriting like Frederick Koch, and making vividly clear how southern dramatists, both black and white, responded each in his own way to an ever changing South." -- Horton Foote "Provides both a catalog of dramatists and plays ripe for further investigation and significant insight into southern politics, social issues, and cultural resources, topics that should be of interest to any serious student of drama or southern history." -- Alabama Review "The first general introduction to the subject, and the local detail he provides is sharp and revealing." -- Year's Work in English Studies "The depth of his research, the diversity of his approach, and the wealth of the material he presents make this an invaluable resource for anyone interested in dramatic history and Southern culture." -- Southern Register "Watson's study covers a lot of ground and a great many figures." -- Sewanee Review "An important contribution to literary history." -- North Carolina Historical Review "Brings to our attention many facts and figures we otherwise might have overlooked." -- Nineteenth-Century Literature "Watson has performed a significant service to drama scholars." -- Modern Drama "It is the first job of literary history to provide such guidance into the past, and Charles Watson's History of Southern Drama provides it with refreshing thoroughness and clarity." -- Mississippi Quarterly "Throughout, his arguments are frequently fresh and persuasive. Thoroughly researched and stylishly written." -- Library Journal "An indispensable genesis for students of southern culture, high and low." -- Journal of Southern History "Watson has masterfully mixed the history of more than two hundred years of southern drama with a lifetime of careful reading and thoughtful observation." -- In-Between "Watson demonstrates the link between southern dramatists and other writers and shows that from the earliest days drama has been a significant element in the South's cultural and political history." -- Georgia Historical Quarterly "A valuable resource." -- Choice "Such a volume has not previously existed." -- Canadian Review of Comparative Literature "The materials extensively uncovered here, and the lines of connection between them, are certainly such as to bear out Watson's claims for southern drama as 'a valuable body of knowledge.'" -- American Studies "Provides, finally, the first comprehensive survey of the genre. This landmark volume stands as a corrective to the exclusionary politics within the critical enterprise that have long made dramatists 'the stepchildren of southern literature.'" -- American Literature

Charles Watson explores this field from its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century roots through the Southern Literary Renaissance and Tennessee Williams's triumphs to the plays of Horton Foote, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize. Such well known modern figures as Lillian Hellman and DuBose Heyward earn fresh looks, as does Tennessee Williams's changing depiction of the South - from sensitive analysis to outraged indictment - in response to the Civil Rights movement. Two chapters devoted to drama by southern blacks begin with slave-born William Wells Brown, author of two plays as well as Clotelle, the first novel by an African American. Watson recognizes the trail-blazing plays of Zora Neale Hurston and closely examines the extensive output of Randolph Edmonds, author of forty-seven plays and a central force in encouraging black dramatic writing and production.