This comprehensive, multicultural text presents the history of theater within a framework of cultural and social ideas.

1. Introduction. 2. Classical Athens. 3. Rome. 4. The Medieval Era. 5. Visual Spectacle in the Italian Renaissance. 6. Elizabethan Theatre in the English Renaissance. 7. The Golden Age of Renaissance Spain. 8. Classicism in the French Renaissance. 9. The Traditional Theatre of Japan. 10. English Theatre, 1660-1800. 11. The 18th Century in Europe. 12. Romanticism, 1780-1830. 13. The 19th Century: The Growth of Popular Theatre. 14. The Traditional Theatres of China. 15. In Search of a New Theatre, 1880-1920. 16. Theatre in Transition, 1920-1945. 17. Reaction and Recovery, 1945-1968. 18. In Search of a Future, Post-1968.