ABSTRACT
Craig's view that piecemeal reforms could never change the essential nature of the theater or reverse the long-standing trend toward realism may have been correct. But the comprehensive nature of his alternative was equally self-defeating. Its scope was overambitious for one man, however gifted, and it was hardly surprising that the principles he formulated were never fully translated into practice. As a result they lacked the definition that comes only from tangible demonstration and, despite his descriptive references to parallels in other dramatic traditions, his theories seem curiously abstract. Even his stage productions and the designs that established his influence hardly provide examples, because he dismissed them as compromises with the kind of theater they were originally intended to replace. Commenting on his famous production of Hamlet in 1912, for example, he described it as "old work. I have passed it all, gone into places where I have really seen something - a glimpse of something wonderful." Similarly, he warned the reader of Towards A New Theatre that the drawings, which appeared to illustrate his vision, in fact bore little relationship to his ideal: "All that I have put in the book now lies behind me." 1 As he repeated in both his notebooks and his published work, his theater existed only in the imagination. Although he believed he was moving toward it, he never claimed actually to have reached it.
