The Bedford Introduction To Drama By Lee A Jacobus

Getting Through Jacobus's Drama Anthology Without Losing Your Mind

If you're staring at a syllabus that lists The Bedford Introduction To Drama By Lee A Jacobus as required reading, you probably already know this thing is massive. We're talking several hundred pages of plays, scene excerpts, critical essays, and introduction material crammed into one volume. I've taught with this book across multiple semesters and watched students struggle with it in ways the preface never warns you about. Most students treat Jacobus like they're supposed to read it cover to cover before class. That's the fastest way to burn out. The book is structured as a reference anchor, not a novel. You're meant to dip in and out, using the introductory essays as maps rather than assignments to be devoured. The strong point of this anthology is its chronological spread. You get ancient Greek drama alongside contemporary work, and the critical essays bridge the gap between historical context and modern performance practice. That structure only helps you if you pay attention to the transitions between pieces. The editorial choices matter. Jacobus deliberately places certain plays next to others to create conversations you'd miss if you're just highlighting text for a test.

I remember a student once asked me why we spent three full sessions on a single scene from Sophocles when there were eight plays in the book. The answer is that the book rewards slow reading of selected passages far more than rapid coverage of everything. Two hours of close reading on one play typically pays off more than six hours of skimming ten of them. That's counter to how most English classes train you to approach assigned reading.

The Gaps And Where They Hurt

The Bedford Introduction To Drama by Lee A Jacobus has real limitations that instructors sometimes gloss over. The global representation is thin. You get a solid foundation in Western theatrical tradition, but if your course emphasizes non-Western drama, you'll need supplementary material. The book leans heavily on European and American works, with only brief excerpts from other traditions. That's not a flaw in the editing per se, but it's a structural reality you should know before the semester starts. Another issue is the date range of the critical essays. Some of the scholarship is dated. Performance studies and queer theory readings have moved forward significantly since many of these pieces were published. When I assign this book, I pair it with at least two newer journal articles to counterbalance that aging. Students who only read the included criticism tend to produce papers that sound like they were written in 1998. The price is also a factor. New copies run steep, and while used copies exist, pagination differences between editions can make collaborative work frustrating. I've had groups of students try to work together using different editions and end up wasting time crossing references that don't align. Check your edition number before buying.

Practical Approach To Using This Text

Here's how I actually use this book in a classroom setting. We pick two or three full plays per unit and treat the rest as contextual reading. The introductory material gets assigned selectively, not comprehensively. The performance history sections are worth more time than the theoretical frameworks for most students, especially those encountering drama for the first time. One specific workflow that works well: read the play straight through once without annotations, then reread it scene by scene with the critical essay nearby. The second pass reveals everything the first pass misses. This usually takes about forty-five minutes for a one-act play and roughly two hours for a full-length tragedy. Planning your schedule around that ratio prevents the late-night panic that happens when students underestimate text density. For the essay portions, skip the ones that feel redundant on first read. Jacobus includes multiple critical perspectives on some plays, and they often overlap significantly. I keep a list of which essays actually add new insight versus which ones repeat the same argument in different language. That list saves students hours over a full semester.

If you're working independently without an instructor guiding you, start with the Greek tragedies and Shakespeare selections. Those are the backbone of most drama curricula and the critical apparatus around them is strongest. The contemporary plays later in the book sometimes lack the same depth of supporting scholarship, which makes them harder to unpack on your own.

A Note On Digital Access

The Bedford Introduction To Drama by Lee A Jacobus is available through various academic platforms and book retailers. Some universities provide institutional access that includes the digital version with search functionality, which changes how you interact with the text considerably. Being able to search across all the critical essays for a specific term like "catharsis" or "defamiliarization" takes about thirty seconds and often reveals connections between essays you wouldn't spot through linear reading. Physical copies remain useful for marginalia, but the digital version's search capability is genuinely worth using if your institution has it. I've caught students who owned print copies insisting they couldn't find certain critical arguments, only to discover those arguments existed in adjacent essays they hadn't read because the search function would have led them there directly. The book works best when you stop treating it like a chore and start using it like a toolkit. Pick the plays that matter for your course, read the criticism selectively, and let the structure do some of the teaching for you.