Chapter 4 - Form

Summary

W. B. Yeats began work on his theory of theatre in the early 1900s in his writings for the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey, and these included a series of precepts for dramaturgy that encompassed character, action, and language.For Yeats, dramatic character was not simply a mimetic representation of a personality; instead, it was a set of human possibilities defined by an action.Yeats would ultimately relate this theory to his wider understanding of personality and action developed in his poetry, and in writings such as A Vision.Likewise, his theories of the language appropriate to drama, and the techniques that should be used to capture the quality of speech, are closely related to his own development as a poet.Indeed, there is an argument to be made that all of his poetry from about 1900 onwards is theatrical, in the sense that it implies a voice.Collectively, Yeats’s writings on theory constitute a coherent treatise on dramatic construction.