Page 198 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 26: Twentieth Century (Poetic Drama and Problem Play)

But that does not mean that poetic drama was dead beyond hope. At least a few early twentieth- Notes
century dramatists like Stephen Philips did write poetic drama. In the later years of the century,
thanks to Yeats, Abercrombie, Bottomley, and most of all, T. S. Eliot, poetic drama came to its own
once again and could thereafter compete with prose drama without needing any special excuses. In
fact, in the twenties of our century there is a clear evidence of a marked reaction against the
naturalistic drama of the earlier years; there is, conversely what Allardyce Nicoll in British Drama
calls, “a renascence of imagination.” The ascendency of imagination and the challenge to realism
took in the field of drama three divergent directions as below:
(i) The establishment of poetic drama.
(ii) The coming into its own of the modernistic Continental School.
(iii) The arrival of the historical dramatists.

26.1.1 Stephen Phillips (1864-1915)

But even before this “renascence of imagination” we find some dramatists writing verse drama in
the early years of the twentieth century. Of these dramatist Stephen Phillips deserves the first
mention. Paolo and Francesco was his greatest achievement, though he wrote some other verse
plays also, like Herod, Ulysses, The Sin of David, and Nero. His work is not original, for unlike T.
S. Eliot, he does not try to subject an old traditional style to the needs of the modern age. “He,” says
Nicoll, “looks backward always and can think of nothing save the continuance of the wornout
nineteenth century styles based on uncritical admiration of the Elizabethans.” Now that is just not
sufficient. Phillips is a fossilized Elizabethan. In spite of their flamboyantly melodramatic elements
and wooden characters, his plays dazzled nis contemporaries, at least for a time, but could not
succeed in creating an appreciable public demand for poetic drama.

His Followers

Nor did he found a tradition, though some dramatists like Rudolf Besier and J. E. Flecker tended
somewhat in his direction. Besier’s The virgin Goddess is written much in the same style as
Phillips’. Flecker’s Hassan (published in 1922 and staged in 1923) is different in the sense that it is
related to the Middle East. It does capture much of the gorgeous splendour of the East with its
hedonistic lustfulness and grotesque sadism, but its characterisation and incidents (mostly of the
melodramatic kind) are quite crude and incapable of interesting the more discerning of readers
and spectators. There is some really splendid poetry also no doubt, but, to quote Allardyce Nicoll,
it is “a mere patchwork of heterogeneous elements without harmony and without form.”

Did u know? Edward Knoblock’s Kismet (1912) is another Eastern phantasmagoria.

26.1.2 John Masefield (1878-1967)

John Masefield was not affected by the Middle East, but he was influenced a great deal-especially
in his later dramatic work-by the Japanese drama which was introduced in English for the first
time in 1913. In the beginning Masefield tried his hand at domestic and historical themes, in such
plays as The Tragedy of Nan, the prose play The Tragedy of Pompey the Great, and Philip the King
(written in heroic couplets). The Japanese influence is perceptible first in The Faithful (1915). His
later plays mostly on religious and historical themes, show an appreciable evidence of the Japanese
influence. Good Friday(1915), A King’s Daughter (1923), The Trial of’ Jesus (1925), Tristran and
Isolt (1927), and The Coming of Christ (1928) are his important later plays. In them he skilfully
combines prose and verse, and, following the precedent of the ancient classical stage, introduces
choral interludes. His language is well-wrought but lucid. His Christianity is quite conventional
and as such unacceptable to the moderns. But there is a childlike quality in his conception and
presentation which cannot go unobserved and uncommended.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 191