Dionysus and the Cultured Policeman

Abstract

Recently Richard Schechner has attacked critics of the drama for relying so heavily on the views of the Cambridge school of comparative anthropology, at a time when their evidence for the ritual origins of Greek drama is viewed skeptically by most classical scholars [Approaches to Theory/Criticism, T32]. Whether right or not, he states, “origin theories, I think, are irrelevant to studying theatre,” and in place of a fruitless search for the origins of drama, he puts forward a critical approach of his own. The subject is an important one. But it seems to me that Schechner's discussion of the ritual question rests on a narrow, possibly a too academic, approach and misses its significance, while his own system of analysis is likely to lead us further from a sensitive appreciation of the drama than the theories it is intended to supersede.