Human shadows bright as glass

This book attempts a fresh approach to the dramatic experience. It begins with a consideration of Edmund Husserl's attempt to clarify our understanding of immediate experience and takes into account Martin Heidegger's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's movements from that phenomenology toward the individual's complex interactions and involvements in a world.

The play's relationship to its world is a reflection of that complexity, which can be observed in theory ranging from Aristotle's thoughts on mimesis to Gadamer's idea of "transformation into structure." Since direct experience is complicated by memory and acculturation, the plays discussed, although predominantly modern, range across time from Aeschylus to Pinter.