ABSTRACT
The title of David Mamet’s 1998 book of reflections on the theater teases its readers: Why ever would three brief essay-lectures subtitled “on the nature and purpose of drama” collectively be called Three Uses of the Knife? What link could possibly exist between an instrument most readily associated with acts of violence and the production of art? A knife’s potential, as the title passage of Mamet’s modest treatise reminds us, is multifaceted and shifting, ranging from morally neutral to culpable: “Huddie Ledbetter, also known as Leadbelly, said: You take a knife, you use it to cut the bread, so you’ll have strength to work; you use it to shave, so you’ll look nice for your lover; on discovering her with another, you use it to cut out her lying heart” (66). Mamet, as his title may indicate, has not penned an “aspects of the drama” according to what E.M.Forster famously did for the novel; his intention here appears more sharply polemical.
