An indispensible guide to over a hundred years of drama, The Mirror Behind the Curtain provides an invigorating and illuminating study of the work of over twenty-five playwrights who wrote for the proscenium arch stage. Beginning with the work of the great writers from the late nineteenth century - Strindberg, Chekhov and Ibsen - Dromgoole takes the reader on an exhilarating journey into the work of writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Pinter, and as recent as Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill. Along the way, the plays of such luminaries as Coward,Tennessee Williams, Miller, Beckett, Friel and MacPherson are considered in a series of essays that display all of Dromgoole's characteristic panache and insight. A hymn to the plays produced on the proscenium arch stage, The Mirror Behind the Curtain examines how each writer responded to and reflected the world as they saw it in their work. For anyone interested in the arts, it offers a majestic introduction to 130 years of theatre by the artistic director of the Globe Theatre and author of the 'irresistibly seductive' and 'utterly original and relishable' Will & Me.