Ours would appear to be an era of unprecedented variation in the mediation of meaning - television, computer, and the older forms of radio and print. But this profusion of resources has not iteself brough enhanced sophistication or profundity in our modes of understanding. Thus the matter of the continued relevence of cultural form, dependant upon human voice and ritualization is raised. What, in particular, is the contemporary usefulness for the building of societies on one of our oldest and culturally valued rituals, that of drama? The Fourth Seamus Heaney Lectures addresses this and other questions, with Thomas Kilroy, Patrick Mason, and others weighing in.