The Lantern & The Torch of Peace

by Gabriel Marcel, K.R. Hanley

This volume presents for the first time in book form, two exciting plays by Gabriel Marcel: a powerful one act drama, The Lantern, that is in the permanent repertory of the Comedie FranAaise, and, for the first time in English, a full-length comedy in three acts, Colombyre or The Torch of Peace. This work also includes as its foreword a previously unpublished essay by Gabriel Marcel, "From Comic Theater to Musical Creation," in which Marcel analyzes the role of comedy in his theater. An introduction by Joseph Cunnen situates Marcel's theater in the context of modern drama. An editor's preface introduces the two plays, and a list of Marcel's thirty plays completes the volume. Original illustrations, "The Lantern" and "Colombyre" have been sketched by Steve Healy.

164 pages, Hardcover

Published August 4, 1988

About the author

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) was a philosopher, drama critic, playwright and musician. He converted to Catholicism in 1929 and his philosophy was later described as “Christian Existentialism” (most famously in Jean-Paul Sartre's “Existentialism is a Humanism”) a term he initially endorsed but later repudiated. In addition to his numerous philosophical publications, he was the author of some thirty dramatic works. Marcel gave the Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen in 1949–1950, which appeared in print as the two-volume The Mystery of Being, and the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1961–1962, which were collected and published as The Existential Background of Human Dignity.

Reviews

[sare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic plays when considered separately; only gave it 4 stars because they didn't go together at all, don't know what KR Hanley was thinking, publishing them in one volume. Marcel's plays spark off the page.