ABSTRACT
Films like Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments and Gone With the Wind were called ‘screen epics’. They were long and weighty; they had a cast of thousands; the term seemed natural. More recently, films have been made which show more appreciation of epic form. The first novels were often the work of established dramatists. Cervantes wrote thirty plays before the publication of Don Quixote in 1615. Ulysses is one of the world’s most civilized books. It may even in time be regarded as the greatest of all secondary epics. In a famous table of comparisons offered in his ‘Notes to the Opera Mahagonny’, Bertolt Brecht lists the differences between Dramatic Theatre and Epic Theatre. Between Shakespeare and Brecht two important experiments in epic drama had been made, Goethe’s Faust and Hardy’s The Dynasts.
