David Hare stands as a leader in the generation of young British dramatists who came to the fore in the 1970s, a group that includes David Edgar, Trevor Griffiths, Steven Poliakoff, and the so-called "wild bunch," Howard Brenton, Snoo Wilson, Howard Barker, and Hare himself. He is doubly important because he has assisted the others as a founder of fringe companies that first mounted their work and as the director of some of their first productions. For example, he is credited with commissioning and then directing one of Howard Brenton's first important plays, Christie in Love (1969). At the Royal Court Theatre, he directed Snoo Wilson's The Pleasure Principle (1973) and Tony Bicât's Devil's Island (1977). At the National Theatre, he directed Brenton's Weapons of Happiness (1976), and for the BBC he directed his own teleplay, Dreams of Leaving (1980). So total a man of the theater is he that his...