This course examines western drama from the middle of the nineteenth century through the First World War, which aspired to new levels of theatrical and social realism, and then experimented with piercing the boundaries of the realism that it had just achieved. Readings will include plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Wedekind, Synge, Shaw, Granville Barker, Elizabeth Robins, and Chekhov.