Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to second edition
- Introduction
- 1 The growth of the poet's mind
- PART ONE 1905–1912 – AN INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- Oxford University Extension Lectures
- PART TWO 1912–1922 – ‘SHALL I AT LEAST SET MY LANDS IN ORDER?’
- PART THREE 1922–1930 – ‘ORDINA QUEST’ AMORE, O TU CHE M' AMI'
- PART FOUR 1931–1939 – THE WORD IN THE DESERT
- 7 The design of the drama
- 8 Dust in sunlight
- PART FIVE 1939–1945 – APOCALYPSE
- AFTERWORDS
- APPENDICES
- Notes
- Index
7 - The design of the drama
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to second edition
- Introduction
- 1 The growth of the poet's mind
- PART ONE 1905–1912 – AN INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- Oxford University Extension Lectures
- PART TWO 1912–1922 – ‘SHALL I AT LEAST SET MY LANDS IN ORDER?’
- PART THREE 1922–1930 – ‘ORDINA QUEST’ AMORE, O TU CHE M' AMI'
- PART FOUR 1931–1939 – THE WORD IN THE DESERT
- 7 The design of the drama
- 8 Dust in sunlight
- PART FIVE 1939–1945 – APOCALYPSE
- AFTERWORDS
- APPENDICES
- Notes
- Index
Summary
… through the dramatic action of men into a spiritual action which transcends it. When we understand necessity … we are free because we assent.
From 1931 until the outbreak of war in 1939 most of Eliot's writing in verse was directed towards dramatic performance, as his preoccupation with selfperfection expanded into a concern for the perfection of society. The fruition of this development is to be found in the three wartime Quartets; and the main interest of the plays of the 1930s, if it is the poetry one is interested in, is that they enable us to follow the transition from Ash-Wednesday to Four Quartets. The plays, together with his thinking about the possibilities of poetic drama, can provide an introduction to the new kind of poetry which he wrote during the war.
The action of Eliot's plays arises from no ordinary kind of dramatic conflict, but rather from the contradiction of the sort of experience which is the usual stuff of drama by the religious vision cultivated in his poetry. This is the constant theme of his writings about poetry in the theatre. In the essay on Marston (1934), which is of great interest in relation to Burnt Norton as well as Murder in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion, he wrote:
It is possible that what distinguishes poetic drama from prosaic drama is a kind of doubleness in the action, as if it took place on two planes at once… Or the drama has an underpattern, less manifest than the theatrical one.
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- Information
- Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet , pp. 163 - 181Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995