The (Ab)normalcy of poetry in twentieth-century Anglo-American theatre: the case of T. S. Eliot

Resumen

From the 1930s onwards, T. S. Eliot pursued a theatrical career with the specific goal, stated in numerous essays, of approaching verse drama to twentieth-century settings and, especially, to everyday speech. Eliot claimed that when applied to the stage poetry could convey transcendent truths better than prose. To achieve this, however, poetry had to adapt itself to the ear of contemporary audiences, estranged from the ritualistic nature of Greek theatre, the prevalence of verse in everyday life in Shakespearean times, or the rural folklore inherent in Yeats’s plays. According to his theories about poetry onstage in his own era, “the verse rhythm should have its effect upon the hearers, without being conscious of it” (“Poetry and Drama,” 1951). Consequently, Eliot devised a kind of “conversational line” that he used in his theatre plays The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1959).This paper discusses Eliot’s attempts at verse drama within the wider context of twentieth-century poetic theatre in Western culture, exploring the particularities of his proposal in comparison with those of other playwrights. In addition, it traces Eliot’s own evolution on the stage, from the major success of Murder in the Cathedral in 1935 (prior to the metrical innovations introduced later) to the partial acceptance of the verse experimentation in his later plays. Finally, this paper analyzes the characteristics of the verse that Eliot created specifically for the London stage of the 1940s and 1950s in terms of meter and rhythm, as well as the extent to which this verse resembles the rhythm of conversation in English.