ABSTRACT
One criticism leveled at Craig is that his ideas were "a maze of suggestions ... a mass of evasions and contradictions," a maze for which he was incapable of providing practical illustrations. Consequently, it is argued, he produced so few designs that he was forced to reprint the same ones in publication after publication. 1 In fact, repetition in his work is even more extensive than such critics have perhaps realized, though it exists for clearly different reasons than those that have been suggested. The same visual ideas can be traced from sketchbook to sketchbook, and there are constant echoes among designs for very different plays. But this is the result of a deliberate working method, rather than any inadequacy, and it indicates that Craig's theories were based on a selected number of key principles. As such, this repetition demonstrates the small value he placed on the uniqueness of a play's text. But as most of these principles derive directly from his productions between 1899 and 1903, and from the Lyceum theater, what it really brings out is his commitment to the practicable, and suggests as well that his "new theater" was not so much diametrically opposed to the old as a logical development from it.
