In 1977, John Arden produced a collection of essays called To Present the Pretence, in which he tried to articulate for himself and for us the main lines of his development, and to define, through his various projects and enthusiasms for other playwrights, what theatre is and what it might become. Arden's book is a fascinating work which chronicles the itinerary of a man who took the risk of opening himself and his art to the great forces of contemporary history and whose work increasingly bears the marks of the contradictions in that history. At the ideological level, these essays mark the stages in Arden's progress from a vague Left-Wing quasi-liberalism and pacificism tinged with anarchism, to a more affirmative neo-Marxism which still bears some traces of his early idealism. This political development brought with it an increasing pressure on Arden's theory and practice; and perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of his career is the tense interplay between the demands of political praxis and those implied by what he calls ‘the Ancient Principles of Drama’.