More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 4 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

Clowns are far more vital in modern Anglo-Irish than in English drama. Age-old clown types can be recognized, and slapstick techniques recur time and again. But the functions of these modern clowns differ markedly according to the dramatic intentions of the author. Low comic entertainment, affirmation, contrast and satire are major functions of the clown from Boucicault to O'Casey. Although supposedly typical of the contemporary period, the «tragicomic», symbolic role found in Beckett proves to be an exception in Anglo-Irish drama.

Abstracted in Dissertation abstracts international, v. 39 (1979) no. 3, p. 7055-A.