Write an essay on the
poetic Drama and its dramaticsts of the twentieth century.
Ans :
In the early years of the
twentieth century poetic drama could not gain much ground for most of the
dramatists of this period like Shaw, Galsworthy, Barker.They were more
interested in the presentation of the social and economic problems of their
times in a realistic manner.The use of flowery language in realistic plays was
out of place and drama, dealing with social problems, was prosaic rather than
poetic in the early decades of the twentieth century.
A change was noticed with the passage of time, and the dramatists
who followed the early realists, were captivated by the glamour and
charming loveliness of poetic plays, and
T.S. Eliot prepared the ground for them by stating that ‘ the craving for
poetic drama is permanent in human nature.’ Poetic dramas have been written on a variety of subjects.
Some plays have been written on the glorification; and adoration of
religion and the church. Some poetic plays are symbolic and spiritual in character.
Some plays have oriental magnificence and are inspired by oriental setting and
splendour, While others have aesthetic
enjoyment and glorification of sex-urge
as their main spring. Thus we have a wide variety of poetical plays in the twentieth
century and a large number of dramatists have preferred this art form to realistic or naturalistic plays.
Stephen Phillips (1864-1915)
Stephen
Phillips was among the earliest of the poetical dramatists of the modern age.
He produced five poetical plays between 1900 and 1908. His main works are
Herod, Ulysses, Nero, Faust and Paola and
Francesca. Phillips tried to revive the
old Elizabethan traditions in poetic drama.
OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900)
Oscar Wilde waved a new spray to
poetic drama by making it symbolic and aesthetic in characters. His claim as a writer of poetic drama has to
be recognized particularly by his two plays Salome and The Duchess of Padua.
Salome is a symbolic play and here Wilde unconsciously worked against
naturalist concepts. The play, in its
language and atmosphere, is essentially and anti-naturalist and being
anti-naturalist is the first step towards a poetical play. The play is quite successful and has a
distinctive place of its own in the
poetic drama of the present age. In The
Duchess of Padua, Wilde marched a step ahead and advanced further in his
technique against naturalism.
John Masefield (1878-1967)
John Masefield made creditable
contribution to poetic drama by writing
attractive religious plays : Good Friday, The Trial of Jesus, Easter : A
play for Singers and A Play of St.
George. These religious plays are most
interesting in view of the treatment of the well-known theme of the trial and crucification of
Christ. Masefield’s poetic plays have
beauty as well as romanticism in them.
He is emotional and excited, and there is something childlike and
unrefined in his attitude towards the emotional states of human life.
John Drinkwater (1882-1937)
John
Drinkwater who shot into immortality by
his great play Abraham Lincoln written in prose, made all possible efforts for
the revival of poetic drama in the 20th century. He mourned the evil days on which poetic
drama had fallen, and in his four plays, The Storm (1915), The God of Quiet
(1916), X = 0 (1917) and Cophetua
(1922), he established the supremacy of poetical plays over prose comedies. Of these plays The Storm and X = 0 are very
popular. The Storm deals with country
life.X=0 or A Night of Trojan War is
concerned with the horrors of war, and the entire play is an exposure of the
evils of war.
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
In 1920 Yeats published Four plays
of Dancers and with them he entered a new threshold of dramatic
possibility. In his plays Yeats gave a
new lease of life to national myths and legends and poetized primitive human
emotions. Being at heart a poet. Yeats presented in lyrical verse the emotions
of his characters.Yeats, however succeeded
in imparting lyricism and symbolism to poetic drama of the twentieth
century.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909)
Another Irish man who made considerable
contribution to modern poetic drama was J.M. Synge who had already achieved
great fame by his Riders to the Sea, a prose play. Later on he produced The Playboy of the
Western A World and The Shadow of the Glen.
Synge had a sure dramatic instinct and a keen insight into the motives
of human nature. He had also the gift of
touching the harmonies of our heart by his stirring words steeped in
pathos. He had the gift of transmuting
pathos and ugliness into poetry.Yeats and Synge have become names as remarkable
for modern ‘ poetic’ drama, as Marlowe and Kyd for the Elizabethan stage.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The poet who was largely
responsible for a new course in England towards verse drama and for its rebirth
is T.S. Eliot. The poetical plays which have come since 1935 – Murder in the
Cathedral (1935), family Reunion (1939), Cocktail Party (1949) and Confidential
Clerk (1935), and even the latest still unpublished, The Elder Statesman, show
him to have moved away, from even religious tradition to a deep ritualistic
pagan faith. The eminent success achieved by Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral led him to write
another poetic drama The Family Reunion..
W.H.
Auden (1907-73) and Christopher Isherwood (1904-86)
Somewhat in the same mood that
impelled T.S. Eliot to write The Family Reunion and other plays, W.H. Auden and
Christopher Isherwood have collaborated to write plays. Their joint plays are The Dog Beneath the
Skin or Where Is Francis? (1935), The Ascent of F 6 (1936) and On the
Frontier (1938). These dramatists have raised social issues to
a mythological plane.
Stephen Spender (1909-95)
Stpehen Spender is the most renowned communistic
playwright of modern poetical
plays. He is a leftist, and in his
poetic play The Trial of a Judge he is
definitely a ‘popular front Communist.’
The theme is a powerful representation of the fate of Liberals and
Communists in the hands of Hitler’s Nazism.
He represents the frustrating condition which produced Nazism in
Germany.
Christopher Fry (1907 - )
Christopher Fry was the only modern
metaphysical verse dramatist who
introduced the theme of philosophy in his plays. He has shown that modern verse drama need not be confined to the presentation of
tragic and religious themes. In Fry’s Lady’s not for Burning (1949) poetic
drama achieves another milestone. The play deals with the life of a young girl
who is condemned to be burned at the stake for she is convicted of witchcraft.
The period of the play is
the fifteenth century when there was a
general belief in witches and their wicked influence on human life. A young man offers himself for the lady and
says that the lady’s not for burning.
The girl does not accept the young man’s sacrifice and persuades him to
live rather than immolate himself for her sake.
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