When the twentieth century is history and American drama viewed in perspective, the plays of Arthur Miller will undoubtedly be preserved in the annals of dramatic literature. Few will dispute that Miller's plays, along with those of O'Neill and Albee and Williams, constitute the "best" of American theater. This may, however, be more a comment on the state of American drama than on the excellence of Arthur Miller, for, in a larger perspective, there is little in Miller's drama other than well-plotted social and psychological realism, coming decades after the form was established by Ibsen and Shaw.

When Miller defends such realism in his "Preface to an Adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People" (1951)—one of 23 essays and three interviews collected in [The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller]—one experiences a déjà vu and wonders why what by then was a donnée of the modern...