The present study concentrates upon the literary aspects of the plays of the greatest dramatics of the last century. Eliot’s concern and attempt to revive poetic drama in our age of prose are well known. His aims and object of poetic drama are explicitly stated by him in his various lectures, essays and articles. Eliot’s own dramatic practice is an illustration of the application of his ideal of poetic drama. His efforts, both theoretical and practical, are marked by continuing experimentation, modification of his ideals and conscious realization of his failure. The present study ‘seeks to assess the extent of the dramatist’s success in realizing his aims, and analyze the factors responsible for his failure to attain to the height of his ideal, which, to the last moment, remained a bright vision floating before his ken. The analyses of the plays, which are enriched by their reference to Eliot’s later poetry, are fairly comprehensive and explain how Eliot’s Christian bias and lack of ‘negative capability’ and the requisite lively curiosity about common men and women with their mundane concerns contributed to a great extent to his failure as a dramatist. Other aspects of his dramaturgy, such as the ‘union of poetry and drama’, and the place of feelings and emotions in drama, and aesthetic credibility resulting from the interaction of action and suffering or experience have been discussed by the writer of the present book with an open mind in an extremely lucid style. The book is thoroughly documented and as it claims, it is a ‘necessary and useful supplement to whatever has already been written of Eliot’s plays’.
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