The Poetic Drama

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 20^th 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.

In modern poetical plays myths, religion, politics, modern life, have been well represented.  Radio programmes are given further impetus  to poetical plays.  The future of poetical plays is bright.  If we survey the history of the last  half century of English verse drama, we cannot say that a rich poetic harvest  has been acquired every year. Its growth is slow and steady and the past achievement in this direction should fill us with faith and hope for the future, for it is  faith that creates and hope that sustains.