This comprehensive volume contains nine of the most important, most indispensable plays of the modern theatre. What Harold Clurman has done in this seminal collection is to create for us a portrait of the progress and turmoil of the twentieth century. Ranging from the eerie realism of Pinter's sinister Birthday Party, to the absurd literalism of Ionesco's conformist city in Rhinoceros, to the baroque fantasy world of Genet's brothel in The Balcony, to the tragic hilarity of Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, these nine plays, each entirely distinct, together form an incisive, compelling, and sometimes heartbreaking mosaic of our time.