ABSTRACT
‘Children's literature’ is a term which asks for subtle and flexible definitions, but as commonly used it has the almost universal common features of adult authorship, child readership, professional publication and a stable text. If these criteria are applied to drama, and we think of an equivalent ‘dramatic literature for children’, then the field is a very narrow one. It begins only in the late nineteenth century, falls into relative inertia in the years between the two World Wars, and gathers momentum only after 1945. Even now, many plays for children achieve only local performance, remain unpublished, and fail to win a regular place in the repertoire.
