Construction of the Official Tradition of British Political Drama

In light of the accepted view of literary tradition, British political drama has no official tradition, whereas it has already had a de facto tradition of more than one hundred years. The difficulty in constructing the official tradition of British political drama reveals the confusion of the concepts of "tradition" and "canon" on the one hand, and on the other hand, it exposes the fact that in the classicization of literary works, cultural hegemony in the area of social class is even harder to eradicate than that in racial and gender areas. In fact, British political drama is the cultural product of the middle class and the working class from creation to performance. Therefore, it is not only necessary but also possible to "open" the dramatic tradition and construct a tradition for the overtly radical and anti-establishment literary genre, which is of apparent significance for cultural restructuring and social integration.