Part I. Immediate issues -- 1. By the ocean of time -- Time -- The argument we are caught in -- Time and drama -- Slow vs. Swift -- 2. The heavy as opposed to -- The heavy vs. the exhilarating -- Freud, civilization, and the heavy -- The descent into the heavy -- 3. Moral substance and ambiguity -- Morality and screenplays? -- Typing and volition in -- The heavy and moral -- But what are we morally ambiguous about? -- 4. Complexity vs. Fullness -- Belief vs. disbelief: complexity -- Fullness -- Typing, volition, and fullness -- Endings -- Part II. The cooked and the raw --5. The cooked and the raw -- Cooked emotion -- The raw -- Blending the cooked and the raw -- Antecedents -- 6. 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 -- 7. The lost poetics of comedy -- The comic universe -- Winnicott and play -- Some diagrams -- The two roads -- The bones of the comic angle of vision -- The cooked and comedy -- The new beginning in comedy -- The smart and dumb in comedy -- Part IV. The nature of dramatic action -- 8. The weight of the past -- What is the past? -- High noon -- Lantana -- Wild strawberries -- Lifting weights -- 9. The weight of the wrong decision -- The wrong decision in the past -- The wrong decision in the present -- True heroines and heroes and false -- 10. 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 -- 11. 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.