Surveying a period of over one hundred and fifty years, he provides an entertaining, perceptive intellectual history of Europe, a history personified by playwrights and thinkers: Goethe, Schiller, Wagner. Strindberg, Ibsen, Pirandello, Sartre, Brecht.

As witty and contentious as when it was first published, The Playwright as Thinker now stands out more incontestably than ever for what it is: it classic that both prophesied and helped bring about the transformation of American theater. After four decades of nearly continuous publication, HBJ is proud to issue the definitive version of Bentley's original text, complete with foreword, plus a new afterword by the author and an appreciative introduction by the distinguished critic Richard Gilman.