ABSTRACT
Edward Gordon Craig has been the object of much criticism, not least in the furore over the publication of Ellen Terry's correspondence with Bernard Shaw. The complex threads of expectation and behaviour, the range of possible influences on an individual, are all brought into question when considering the lives of Terry and Edward Gordon Craig. Like Lawrence of Arabia, who became myths in their own lifetime, Craig was both hailed as a prophet and dismissed as a charlatan. His aim was to embrace all art forms and artists in the art of the theatre in order to invigorate it. The short Socratic dialogue he wrote between an omniscient stage director and a naive playgoer which he called 'The Art of the Theatre' and published in 1905 was his early manifesto. It shows him, in the words of, wading through seas of theatrical blood to grasp his own crown.
