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The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
By Michael Patterson
Oxford University Press £25
523 pages
Dateline: 6th August, 2005
Reading a dictionary from cover to cover sounds like the worst kind
of torture. Since it is perfectly possible not only to read The Oxford
Dictionary of Plays from start to finish but to enjoy the experience,
it seems reasonable to conclude that the title of this weighty volume
is a misnomer.
Academic Michael Patterson has chosen the 1,000 plays that he considers
to be the most important and written relatively brief overviews of each
in an alphabetic format that might better be entitled an encyclopaedia.
The format is very simple. For each play, Patterson writes one, potentially
very long paragraph summarising the plot and a second paragraph giving
a brief critical opinion - and in some cases justifying his inclusion
- of the chosen play. For plays that he considers more important, the
formula varies slightly in that the entries are rather longer, although
the two paragraph structure remains.
His writing is pithy but he has a knack of summarising the plot of
a play very quickly, if sometimes rather breathlessly, as is inevitable
when are many twists and turns and a large number of characters. The
critical judgements generally appear sound and the breadth of Patterson's
knowledge about theatrical history is astounding.
The professor takes a very academic approach to his subject, particularly
in the matter of selection of plays and excludes completely both musicals
and adaptations from other media such as books and films.
As he identifies, everybody will be trying to catch him out by finding
plays that he has failed to select which would be on their own Hot 1,000
lists. To be fair, it is quite difficult to do this, although, unlike
those who select the best football team ever and fail to pick anybody
born before 1950, he has a penchant for the historically interesting
older play rather than the flashy new pretenders.
This means that playwrights like Wallace Shawn and Neil Labute do not
get a look in while many almost completely unknown plays from the distant
past are included. The classic example is the Chester Mystery Cycle
which few readers will have seen, since the last recorded performance
was in 1575.
There might also be a question about the above-average number of plays
by British writers and also those written in the English language. By
contrast, plays from the Indian sub-continent and The Far East score
very poorly.
In addition to the text, there are various different tables of information,
including a detailed index of characters, an index of playwrights and
a list of plays ordered according to country of origin and period. There
is also has some fascinating statistical information which, inter
alia, informs us that the average cast comprises 9.7 male characters
and 3.8 female, a ratio of over 2.5:1 although when the playwright was
female (only 6.5% of cases), the masculine predominance remains but
is reduced to only 1.2:1.
Part of the pleasure of reading this book is to find out about plays
of which you have never heard or that you have never seen performed.
As a rule, the author is able to convey both the action and the political
and historical importance of such plays in few words. As such, this
book is strongly to be recommended.
Philip Fisher
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