SOURCE: “Art and Commerce: The New Drama in the West End Marketplace,” in Contemporary English Drama, edited by C. W. E. Bigsby, Edward Arnold, 1981, pp. 177-88.

In the following excerpt, Taylor discusses whether the New Drama loses its ideals in an effort to be commercially successful, pointing out that Ayckbourn has maintained the ideal while achieving success.

… The main distinguishing feature of the New Drama was that in various ways its writers challenged our view of reality, or even denied that it existed at all (‘What have I seen’, inquired one of Pinter's characters, ‘the scum or the essence?’). Traditional dramatists, on the other hand, however much they might challenge our received ideas about intellectual, social, political or moral issues, usually left reality as such alone: maybe they recognized that it was ‘a joint pretence’ on which we all depended to continue (Pinter again), but if so they...