Contents -- Preface -- Part I: Immediate Issues -- ONE: BY THE OCEAN OF TIME -- Time -- The Argument We Are Caught In -- Time and Drama -- Slow vs. Swift -- TWO: THE HEAVY AS OPPOSED TO... -- The Heavy vs. the Exhilarating -- Freud, Civilization, and the Heavy -- The Descent into the Heavy -- THREE: MORAL SUBSTANCE AND AMBIGUITY -- Morality and Screenplays? -- Typing and Volition in . . . -- The Heavy and Moral . . . -- But What Are We Morally Ambiguous About? -- FOUR: COMPLEXITY VS. FULLNESS -- Belief vs. Disbelief: Complexity -- Fullness -- Typing, Volition, and Fullness -- Endings -- Part II: The Cooked and the Raw -- FIVE: THE COOKED AND THE RAW -- Cooked Emotion -- The Raw -- Blending the Cooked and the Raw -- Antecedents -- SIX: THE SMART AND THE DUMB -- Flat and Round -- Hamlet and the Dumb -- John Nash and the Smart -- Plot-Handling Implications -- Part III: The Lost Poetics of Comedy -- SEVEN: THE LOST POETICS OF COMEDY -- The Comic Universe -- Winnicott and Play -- The Two Roads -- The Bones of the Comic Angle of Vision: The Impulse to Illogic and Perseverance of Style -- The Cooked and Comedy -- The New Beginning in Comedy -- The Smart and Dumb in Comedy -- Part IV: The Nature of Dramatic Action -- EIGHT: THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST -- What Is the Past? -- High Noon -- Lantana -- Wild Strawberries -- Lifting Weights -- NINE: THE WEIGHT OF THE WRONG DECISION -- The Wrong Decision in the Past -- The Wrong Decision in the Present -- True Heroines and Heroes and False -- TEN: THE NATURE OF THE HERO'S JOURNEY -- Campbell's Hero -- The Dramatic Hero -- 1. Arresting Life -- 2. Complying with the False -- 3. Awakening -- 4. Confused Growth-and the Pursuit of Error -- 5. Failure of the False Solution -- 6. The Discovery of the True Solution -- 7. The Heroic Deed -- 8. Suffering -- 9. The New Life -- Part V: The Death and Life of Drama.

ELEVEN: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF DRAMA -- Prometheus in Athens, Gladiator in Rome -- Shakespeare in Elizabeth's London -- The Argument We Are Having with Ourselves -- Appendix: A Case Study: Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander -- Notes -- Film and Drama List.