The Most Vivid Image of Life: Theatre and Drama

Abstract

‘Reviewing my critical output for the last thirty years,’ T. S. Eliot commented in 1950, ‘I am impressed to find how constantly I have returned to the drama.’¹ Yeats might well have used similar words about himself two decades earlier—though no doubt, his interests being wider, he would not have forgotten to include the theatre and its problems.

I think the theatre must be reformed in its plays, its speaking, its acting, and its scenery. That is to say, I think there is nothing good about it at present.

What attracts me to drama is that it is, in the most obvious way, what all the arts are upon a last analysis…It is an energy, an eddy of life purified from everything but itself .—W.B. Yeats

From this proceeded thirty years of toil Leading a nation in the ways of thought, Founding a theatre, making playwrights write, And actors speak, and painters decorate; Pouring sweet oil on many an angry wound, Fighting misunderstanding, hatred, falsehood, Encouraging, exhorting and expounding…—John Masefield