The original edition was published in 1981.

This widely praised and remarkable study of the antipathy aroused by theatre over the centuries has been long out of print and rare to find. Major philosophers such as Plato, St. Augustine, Rousseau, and Nietzsche have been hostile toward theatre. The controversy has raged for more than two millennia and continues today, in contemporary scholarship addressing this phenomenon and in the writings of artists and visual arts who declared themselves against theatre's reliance on representation and the artifice of the actor. Barish's erudite volume is a foundational text in the philosophy of theatre, ranging from the classics to the post-war theatre.

The new edition includes a Foreword by Joseph Roach, the distinguished theatre historian and stage director, and professor emeritus, Dept. of English, Yale University. He is the author ofThe Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting and Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance.