SOURCE: "Modernity and Drama," in Modernism: Challenges and Perspectives, edited by Monique Chefdor, Ricardo Quinones, and Albert Wachtel, University of Illinois Press, 1986, pp. 54-65.

In the following essay, Esslin provides an overview of the sources and characteristics of Modernist drama.

Concepts, it must be said at the outset, like modernity, modernism, and the avant-garde fill me with apprehension and doubt. They are, after all, concepts of relation rather than fact. To ask, "What is the avant-garde? What is modern?" is rather like asking: "How long is a piece of string?" In relation to yesterday's art, today's art is modern, or avant-garde. As the great illuminator Oderisi tells Dante in the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio:

Credette Cimabue nella pittura
 tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
 sì che la fama di colui è scura.

Così ha tolto l'uno a l'altro Guido
 la gloria de la lingua; e...