A. M. Nagler and Theatre History in America

Abstract

Theatre history is a very young discipline. In the United States, A. M. Nagler now leads the second generation of theatre historians, one that followed those German, French, British, and American pioneers who first separated the academic study of theatre from philology. Only in the lifetime of Nagler's generation has our metier approached the stature of its siblings, the history of music and the history of art. Nagler's seventyfifth birthday provides an opportunity to view the American place in the field, and his singular contribution to it. So-called educational theatre in the United States is said to have begun with George Pierce Baker's 'English 47' workshop at Harvard. That is true for the teaching of a craft, but theatre scholarship at the university level started in America with the designation in 1899 of Brander Matthews as Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia. Small enough change from his previous appointment in English, but Matthews made it significant. His books and lectures-and the documents he edited, the collecting he initiated-witness Matthews's thorough understanding of theatre as a performing art, the history of which he studied and taught. In a sense, his work prepared the climate for Baker's. Eventually Baker left Harvard to establish a professional School of Drama at Yale in 1925, where he was succeeded by the British visitor, Allardyce Nicoll, who added the scholarly angle to professional training. Then, in 1946 an Austrian immigrant, A. M. Nagler, was appointed to teach 'Dramatic History' at Yale, and the first graduate Department of Theatre History in the United States was soon established there. During the thirty years between his first appointment and his retirement in 1976 as Henry McCormick Professor of Dramatic History, the Yale Graduate School awarded 35 Ph.D. degrees in History of Theatre, with Nagler as director of all dissertations. He also guided a number of D.F.A. theses at the School of Drama. Meanwhile, theatre historians from all over the world determined to link themselves in the process of defining their discipline more clearly, and in 1955 created the International Federation for Theatre Research. Nagler was among the founders; he served as president from 1959 to 1963. In 1956 he became instrumental in the formation of this country's national aaffiliate, the American Society for Theatre Research, and was elected its first chairman in 1957.