Drama and Ritual

Abstract

In a discussion found under the heading ‘Dramatis Personae’ in the Criterion magazine for April 1923 Eliot wrote that ‘the failure of the contemporary stage to satisfy the craving for ritual is one of the reasons why it is not a living art’. Like his Irish contemporary W. B. Yeats, Eliot put his faith in forms of ceremonial and hierarchic systems to restore order and purpose to many twentieth-century political and cultural organisms, and in the case of the modern drama which he viewed as simply content to mirror the most superficial and ephemeral aspects of contemporary life instead of transcending them, some attempt to return to the ancient preoccupations of the theatre seemed vital. Moreover, for a playwright not committed to a naturalistic style of presentation, ritual and dramatic conventions of a non-realistic nature would enable a number of intractable problems to be solved. Ritual can allow overt comment of a philosophical or moralistic kind to be introduced in a manner which would break the veneer of credibility in a naturalistic play: the Chorus in a Greek tragedy or the Prologue of an Elizabethan drama permits the authorial voice or at any rate that of a commentator standing outside the action to be heard.