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M.E.G.-2
British Drama
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Q. 2. Discuss the play within the play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Ans. The Play-within-the Play: This play within a play is therefore used by Shakespeare to make a subtle point
about theatre, namely the fact that it is only acting. The Mechanicals like to perform a play at Theseus’ wedding.
Theseus is an enlightened ruler, notable for his wise judgement but there is a limit to his abilities: the problem Egeus
gives him seems incapable of solution, so he tries to buy time and work on Egeus and Demetrius. But there seems
little hope that the “harsh Athenian law” will produce a solution acceptable to all parties.
In this play the apparently anarchic tendencies of the young lovers, of the mechanicals-as-actors, and of Puck
are restrained by the “Sharp Athenian Law” and the law of the Palace Wood, by Theseus and Oberon, and their
respective consorts. This tension within the world of the play is matched in its construction: in performance it can at
times seem riotous and out of control, and yet the structure of the play shows a clear interest in symmetry and
patterning.
Confronted by the “sharp” law of Athens, and not wishing to obey it, Lysander thinks of escape. But he has no
idea that the wood, which he sees merely as a rendezvous before he and Hermia fly to his aunt, has its own law and
ruler. As Theseus is compromised by his own law, so is Oberon. Theseus wishes to overrule Egeus, but knows that
his own authority derives from the law, that this cannot be set aside when it does not suit the ruler’s wishes. He does
discover a merciful provision of the law which Egeus has overlooked (for Hermia to choose “the livery of a nun”)
but hopes to persuade Demetrius to relinquish his claim, insisting that Hermia take time before choosing her fate.
The lovers’ difficulties are made clear by the law of Athens, but arise from their own passions: thus, when they enter
the woods, they take their problems with them. Oberon is compromised because his quarrel with Titania has caused
him and her to neglect their duties: Oberon, who should rule firmly over the entire fairy kingdom cannot rule in his
own domestic arrangements. We see how each ruler, in turn, resolves this problem, without further breaking of his
law.
In the love relationships of Theseus and Hippolyta, of Oberon and Titania and of the two pairs of young lovers,
we see love which, in a manner appropriate to the status and character of the lovers, is idealized eventually. The duke
and his consort have had their quarrel before the action of the play begins, but Shakespeare’s choice of mythical ruler
means the audience well knows the “sword” and “injuries” referred to in 1.2; we see the resolution of the fairies’

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quarrel and that of the lovers during the play, and all is happy at its end. But whereas the rulers resolve their own
problems, as befits their maturity and status, the young lovers are not able to do so, and this task is shared by Oberon
and Theseus. Oberon orders Puck to keep Lysander and Demetrius from harming each other, and Theseus confirms
their wishes as he overbears Egeus’ will. He is not now breaking his own law, because Demetrius cannot be compelled
to marry against his will.
A ridiculous parallel case of young lovers so subject to passion that, after disobeying their parents’ law, they take
their own lives, is provided by Pyramus and Thisbe. Lysander and Demetrius laugh at the mechanicals’ exaggerated
portrayal of these unfortunates, but the audience has seen the same excessive passion in earnest from these two.
If Lysander breaks – or evades – the Athenian law knowingly, then the mechanicals break the law of the wood
unwittingly. Puck’s conversation with the first fairy in 2.1, makes clear that the wood is where Oberon and Titania
keep their court, though they travel further afield. (Oberon, according to Titania, has come “from the farthest steep
of India” because of the marriage of his favourite to Theseus, while the Fairy Queen has also been in India with the
mother of her changeling.)
In the end we can conclude that the story of Pyramus and Thisbe offers a very subtle return to a couple of the
main elements of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: lovers caught up in misunderstanding and sorrow enhanced by the
darkness of night. Like the main story of the outer play, the inner play consists of a tragic premise made comical by
the actors. The craftsmen’s unintentionally goofy portrayal of the woe of Pyramus and Thisbe makes the melodramatic
romantic entanglements of the young Athenian lovers seem even more comical.
However, it is important to recognize as well that the inherent structure of a play-within-a-play allows Shakespeare
to show off his talent by inserting a gem of pure comedy. The conflicts have been resolved and a happy ending
procured for all; the performance, thus, has no impact on the plot. Rather, the craftsmen’s hilarious bungling of the
heavy tragedy allows the audience, and the melodramatic Athenian lovers, to laugh and take delight in the spectacle
of the play.
Q. 3. What is the importance of Hamlet’s soliloquies in the play?
Ans. Shakespeare’s soliloquies in Hamlet differ radically from their common convention as in essential speeches
to augment audience understanding. On the contrary, they are just as important, if not more so, as the segments
where character interaction occurs. Without the soliloquies, the play would be vacuous and sporadic. Highly dra-
matic, they give it momentum; propel it forward to new and exciting levels by influencing plot, characterisation and
mood, as well as expressing key themes. This is primarily based on the fact that much of Hamlet involves a struggle
with the self; there are conflicts between characters, but there are also individual, existential, psychological con-
flicts. Hamlet’s highly dramatic second and third soliloquies are two such arias. Hence, in Hamlet, soliloquies
should not be considered standalone speeches as they are integral to play action.
Hamlet’s soliloquies both influence are influenced by plot. It is through the soliloquies that the intrinsic theme
of Hamlet’s procrastination is extended and realised by the audience. If he did not constantly remind us of his
inaction through self-directed harangues, the audience would scarcely notice his procrastination nor realise the
extent to which he agonises over his inexplicable delay. The first and second soliloquies function in bringing this to
light. The former does this through Hamlet’s violent criticism of himself– “I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall to make
oppression bitter”–and at the through revealing that doubt of the ghosts validity has weakened his purpose. In the
second, Hamlet contemplates how “enterprises of great pitch and moment” (as his resolution to avenge his father)
“lose their name of action” by thinking too much about them.

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 To examine the importance of soliloquies in terms of how they contribute to action, it is first necessary to define
the nature of this ‘action’. What must be understood is that Hamlet is largely a play about inaction. The plot centres
on his persistent irresolution to fulfil his filial and moral duty. In Hamlet’s second soliloquy, he begins “o, what a
rogue and peasant slave am I!” He compares his dismal deficiency in passion to an actor, who had ‘tears in his eyes,
distraction in his aspect’ for a work of fiction. More importantly, it is because of his soliloquies that action eludes
him. He is cursed with an excessive meditative faculty – by concentrating too much on whether or not he should act,
“the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought”.
Action characteristically influences further action– it is a never-ending and overlapping sequence of cause and
effect. Hence, we should not consider soliloquies as isolated passages – but should broaden the scope of analysis to
judge how they act as a catalyst for future events. Hamlet makes a profound decision to use a play to determine the
validity of the ghost and “catch the conscience of the king”. This decision leads to a vital turning point, and dictates
the plots direction from there on. The third soliloquy follows the second without any section in between where
Hamlet interacts with other characters. After indulging in this prolific amount of self-pity and arousing acute mel-
ancholy, his abnormally violent reaction to Ophelia’s rejection is not so surprising- especially when he just reflected
on the ‘pangs of dipriz’d love.” Plot fluctuations hence are highly dependent on Hamlet’s soliloquies, and therefore
play a significant role in the action of the play.
Hamlet’s character is filled out and further clarified through his soliloquies, and hence the interpretation of our
hero very much depends on them. These intimate revelations permit the audience to examine and discern Hamlet’s
true emotions. On scrutiny by the entire kingdom, it is necessary to constrain or disguise real feeling in the presence
of others. One palpable impression that is portrayed via his ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy is his fixation and yearning
for death, and conversely his disgust at the banality of life. Melancholy has completely percolated his character, until
existence seems nothing but a ‘mortal coil’— something which ropes him down brutally to humanity in a useless
fleshy package.
While Hamlet reveals this repugnance earlier during his conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his
already pessimistic attitude has exacerbated since then, so that he teeters near the brink of suicide. A release from the
‘whips’ ‘scorns’ ‘insolence’ and ‘pangs’ annexed to a ‘weary life’ has become something ‘devoutly to be wished’.
His sensitivity to the injustice in the world marks his idealistic desire for a moral world. Integrity is especially
important to him, and he agonises over which is ‘nobler’; to endure life’s ills with patience, or to ‘take arms’ against
them in intrepid defiance. This value also links to his struggle to define ‘truth’. While some regard Hamlet as
enigmatic and profound, others interpret Hamlet’s soliloquies as little more than another example of extreme intro-
version.
Indeed, his mind lapses into disconsolate philosophizing whenever he is alone, complaining unremittently. We
also realise how prone he is to making sweeping statements, using the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’, when his observations
on human sociology appertain mainly to himself. This links to the next passage, when he remarks to Ophelia that
men are “arrant knaves, all of us”. Furthermore, Hamlet states death is “the undiscovered country from whose bourn
no traveller returns.” Depending on how one interprets this line, it may reveal that Hamlet is prone to indulging in
grandiose and melodramatic axioms, without consulting memory first. For his father ‘returns’, at least in spirit, to
the mortal realm–he has witnessed the spectre himself. This tendency to give in to his dramatic side links to his rash
conflict with Laertes in the graveyard scene. Soliloquies are just as important to play action as other sections be-
cause they illustrate crucial character features.

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 Hamlet’s soliloquies are vital in establishing the mood and themes of the play. Without the soliloquies, Hamlet
would remain an entertaining revenge drama. But that enigmatic and sordid quality which suffuses the tragedy
would be significantly diminished. The soliloquies, triggered by self-doubt and distress at the corruption of Den-
mark, explore the dimensions of the human character through Hamlet’s sordid contemplation. The play becomes a
dense examination of how external difficulties (the incestuous marriage between Hamlet’s mother and uncle, the
‘unweeded garden’ of the Kingdom, the onus of forced revenge) affect man psychologically. We see the self-directed
anger and torment in his second soliloquy:
“I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak/ like a John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,/and can say nothing-
no, not for a king”.
A heart-wrenching hopelessness is also established. Hamlet knows that he has all the motive in the world to kill
Claudius – the man murdered his father, married his mother, and usurped his rightful position on the throne. The
spectre of his father’s spirit demanded revenge. And yet, he cannot act, and he doesn’t know why. “Fie upon’it!
Foh!” he explodes, when he realises that all his ranting on the “remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindles villain”
mean nothing in the end, because it achieves nothing.
Even through remarking on his procrastination, he is still procrastinating. The third soliloquy is structured
similarly to a scholar’s argument; but the subject of this contention is weighty – ‘to be, or not to be’. To live, or to die.
He desires the latter, but, a ‘coward’, fearful of ‘what dreams may come’ after death, he resigns himself to life. This
theme of death hangs over the entire play; we see Hamlet’s ideas develop on it later during the graveyard scene.
Soliloquies affect the mood of the entire play, and are thus part of the action.
Hamlet’s soliloquies constitute a crucial and dramatic part of play dynamics. Often highly intimate, they do not
merely reflect on the plays general happenings, but are interwoven into the action. Acting as portals into Hamlet’s
psyche, they establish crucial elements of character. Furthermore, they are infinitely important in the interpretation
of plot, especially through exploring the theme of Hamlet’s procrastination. The tumultuous state of his mind affects
and explains some of his following actions. Additionally, important decisions are made which steer the course of the
play. The fact that psychological action is part of the physical action means that the mood of the play becomes more
complex. If the audience weren’t privy to the hero’s agonising thoughts, no doubt the play would have only half the
reputation it holds today.
Q. 5. Can Eliza in Pygmalion be termed as feminist? Elaborate.
Ans. The relationship between men and women, and how they interact, is often the basis of many novels and
plays. Struggle and conflict between them is very evident, yet the meaning and reason for the conflict are sometimes
deeper than what is on the outside.
Bernard Shaw uses the play Pygmalion to also comment upon the conflict which exists between the sexes. This
conflict is most clearly brought out through the relationship between Eliza and Henry Higgins.
Higgins is a polished teacher of phonetics and is introduced as a person who is ‘of the energetic, scientific type,
heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject and careless about himself
and other people, including their feelings. These traits of character are bound to lead to conflict with Eliza Doolittle,
a common flower girl who, by a contrivance of plot, brings her to learn to speak like a lady in a flower shop from
Henry Higgins. Eliza has ambition and dignity and resents being bullied by Higgins, a social superior.
From the beginning of the play we notice an element of conflict which characterises their entire relationship. At
their first meeting she rebukes him when he insults her by calling her ‘a squashed cabbage leaf’ and an ‘incarnate

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insult to the English language.’ Even when she comes to Wimpole Street to ask to be taught, she does not beg but
uses an attitude of defiance telling him: ‘If my money is not good enough, I can go elsewhere. She speaks back to
him when he doesn’t ‘speak sensible’ to her and calls him a ‘great bully’.
Higgins continues to bully her. This is done even as he is ‘free of malice’. He is attracted by the challenge which
teaching Eliza presents: ‘It’s almost irresistible. She’s so deliciously low, so horribly dirty. He vows to make ‘a
Duchess out of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe’ and imperiously dismisses all criticism and advice when he is asked,
‘what is to become of her’? The stage is set for conflict from the time Eliza enters Wimpole Street. This is reflected
of Shaw’s philosophy regarding the conflict of the sexes. Since neither party is willing to submit to the domination
of the other, challenge, confrontation and petty revenge is bound to follow. Eliza accepts Higgins superiority as a
teacher, but not without challenge. It is not the conventional teacher-taught relationship. On being told to say her
alphabet she shoots back with ‘I know my alphabet. Do you think I know nothing?’ Unable to break her spirit,
Higgins threatens to drag her around the room three times by her hair.
Their relationship is one of inequality. Higgins has status, education, confidence, self-reliance and all that goes
into making a mature gentleman. Eliza, due to her background, has no culture, polished speech, education or money
to make her, in any way, an equal to Higgins. Yet, due to her personal dignity and confidence in herself, she is able
to ward off all attempts by Higgins to dominate her.
It is an irony in the play that while Shaw studiously tried to avoid the suggestion that Higgins and Eliza were in
love, the general audience prefers to see a happy ending to their relationship. Shaw twisted the principles of drama
by not allowing a natural ending. When the theatre-going public mistook a romantic ending to the play, he was
incensed enough to write a ‘sequel’ to explain that their relationship was not one of love.
Eliza realizes that she is only as important to Higgins as ‘them slippers’ as Higgins will never be able to make
Eliza the first and most important thing in life. On the other hand, Higgins with his individuality would never submit
to being a women’s plaything. With the recent social conquest that Eliza made at the Embassy Ball, Eliza realizes
that it would not be worth marrying someone in whose she would not be the first priority when she could get any
other suitable gentleman who would be devoted to her.
The conflict therefore continues. Eliza rejects Higgins while Higgins is always conscious that he never loved
Eliza but learned to respect her as a person and become ‘accustomed to her voice, her face, her soul’. He tells her to
come back to Wimpole Street the morning after she left throwing the slippers at him. He tells her to come back ‘for
the fun of it’ and significantly compares their living together to being like ‘three old bachelors’ rather than ‘two men
and a silly girl’. Through this statement he expresses that his regard for Eliza is not on account of her being attractive
woman, but because he has learned to respect her individuality in the same way as he respects Pickering.
There is no doubt that the relationship between Eliza and Higgins at the end of the play is very different to their
relationship at the beginning. Higgins as ‘Pygmalion’ has brought his ‘Galatea’ to life out of stone. We see the way
in which this is accomplished by Higgins. Higgins first provides her with a unique social privilege which is superior
speech. This gives Eliza upward social mobility which she would otherwise never be able to achieve. Eliza then
becomes a puppet, programmed to carry out Higgins ‘instructions at Mrs Higgins’ At Home and later when she is a
brilliant success at the Embassy Ball. It is at this time that Eliza undergoes another metamorphosis. The Galatea
walks out of stone. Ironically this Galatea does not love her Pygmalion, her Creator, but instead rebels against him,
throwing his slippers in his face. It is only later that she matures into an elegant sophisticated woman fit to be ‘a
consort for a King’.

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 Eliza becomes conscious of her new-found equality and refuses to be treated like dirt under Higgins’ feet. She is
justly upset at not being given credit for winning Higgins’ bet and complains ‘I don’t matter I suppose’. She sees
Higgins in the role of an exploiter who has used her to win his bet while studiously ignoring her future. She wounds
him deeply by suggesting that he might accuse her of stealing and ‘drinks in his emotion like nectar and nags him to
provoke a further supply’.
Eliza is now in a position of advantage to bargain with Higgins. She appears at Mrs Higgins’ home in Act V as
‘sunny, self-possessed and giving a staggeringly convincing exhibition of ease of manner’. She can now tell Higgins
where he has been wrong and prove he is no gentleman. Clearly the tables have been reversed. Speaking about their
relationship Eliza says, ‘the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is
treated’.
Shaw shows us how the conflict between the sexes can be resolved if both recognize the dignity of the other
individual. Higgins resents Eliza trying to possess him and vehemently tell her: ‘get out of my way; for I won’t stop for
you’. On the other hand Eliza’s complaint is ‘I won’t be passed over’. The question is not whether I treat you rudely but
whether you have ever heard me treat anyone else better’. To this she tells him ‘I want a little kindness…I’m not dirt
under your feet…I did it because we were pleasant together…and I came to love for you, not to want you to make love
to me; and not forgetting to difference between us; but more friendly like’.
Q. 6. What are the comic strategies used in The Playboy of the Western World?
Ans. According to modern views, Comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or
to amuse by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film and stand-up comedy. In modern times the
comic from has been exploited in different ways. As a result there is an extraordinary variety of comedy available in
the twentieth century.
The term is dark comedy which is the title of the book from which the above quotation has been cited. The old
tragicomedy also continues to be used. The dark comedy, is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and
events that are usually treated seriously (death, murder, mass murder, suicide, blackmail, violence, domestic violence,
disease, insanity, handicaps, environmental disasters, famine, fear, child abuse, drug abuse, rape, castration, war,
terrorism, racism, sexism, homophobia, bestiality, child pornography, line-cutting, etc.) are treated in a satirical
manner while still being portrayed as the negative events that they are.
This form of humour will usually go beyond the mere act of telling jokes, some works focusing rather on
situational comedy, Dr. Strangelove being one example. Movies that alternate between comedy and tragedy, like
Full Metal Jacket, are not black comedy, since by definition Black Comedy draws humor from the tragic parts.
Synge’s “Playboy of the Western World” is a dark comedy that explores what it is we value in our heroes.
Christy, a man who allegedly killed his father, saunters into town and tell his gory story in mock humility. The
women were the first to show him special attention. They adore Christy because he represents danger and excitement,
any girl’s dream, compared to the dull, pious men like Shawn. Then the men begin to have respect for him, because
he has done something they have all desired to do in a moment of rage. Pegeen even admires Christy’s feet; when he
take off his boots she is “standing beside him, watching him with delight”. What normally would cause a person to
look away in disgust is now a subject of appeal.
The play is about a woman’s sacrifice of her soul for starving people. It is short and brief like most of Yeats’
other plays; it is a one-act play with five short scenes. As characters we have Shemus, a peasant; and his wife, Mary;
their son Teigue; Aleel, a poet; The Countess Cathleen; her foster mother, Oona; and two Demops disguised as

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Merchants. There are also peasant, servant of Countess Cathleen, and Angelical beings. In the first scene we are in
the room where Shemus and Teigue are talking. There is a. fire in the room, and through the open door, the trees of
a wood can be seen. The scene has the effect of a painting.
To sum it up, black humor is a type of comedy that deals with negative aspects of life, deriving humour due to it
being shocking and unexpected, Family Guy having dead babies singing for example, being shockingly cruel (and
thus unexpected,) and in part because it many time reflects a truth that might be too grim to state seriously, something
quite common for example in Soviet Russia, and quite abundant in political humour.
Most of the characters in the play make us laugh because of their absurdities or weakness. Drunkenness is most
often amusing and we here have four heavy drunkards-Michael James, Philly, Jimmy, and Old Mahon. Michael and
his friends make it a point to go to a wake in order to drink the free liquor that is served there. Old Mahon once drank
himself almost to a state of paralysis when he was in the company of Limerick girls. Cowardice is another comic
trait. Shawn Keogh of Killakeen amuses us not only by his refusal to fight Christy but by refusing even to feel
jealous of “a man did slay his da.”
The dialogue in the play too is a source of rich comedy. Leaving aside a few speeches which may momentarily
depress us or put us in a serious mood, the rest of the dialogue amuses us greatly. The verbal duel between Pegeen
and Widow Quin is one of the comic highlights of the play. Widow Quin slanders Pegeen by saying that the latter
goes “helter-skeltering” after any man who winks at her on a road, and Pegeen accuses the widow of having reared
a ram at her own breast. Then there are the satirical remarks Pegeen makes to Shawn. She tells him that he is the kind
of lover who would remind a grit of a bullock’s liver rather than of the lily or the rose. And then she ironically
advises him to find for himself a wealthy wife who looks radiant with “the diamond jewelleries of Pharaoh’s ma.
Q. 7. Discuss Murder in the Cathedral as a poetic drama.
Ans. A poetic drama is one in which poetry and drama are fused. Since the dialogue between the characters is in
verse, the play becomes a combination of music, imagery, and ritual. These factors create high intensity and dramatic
effectEliot’s plays attempt to revitalize verse drama and usually treat the same themes as in his poetry. For a very
long period verse drama was the dominant form of drama in Europe (and was also important in non-European
cultures). Greek tragedy and Racine’s plays are written in verse, as is almost all of Shakespeare’s drama, and
Goethe’s Faust.
Verse drama is particularly associated with the seriousness of tragedy, providing an artistic reason to write in
this form, as well as the practical one that verse lines are easier for the actors to memorize exactly. In the second half
of the twentieth century verse drama fell almost completely out of fashion with dramatists writing in English (the
plays of Christopher Fry and T. S. Eliot being possibly the end of a long tradition). Since Eliot began his career as
a writer during the second decade of this century, there has been just a single shift in his mental focus and his turn
over to the Poetic Stage is connected with this positional displacement. This focal shift in his approach does not
involve any fundamental twist in his outlook. The original stand he took was one of repulsion to the bourgeois
liberalist civilisation with its stress on realism, skepticism –‘the dry-rock, waste-land symbolism’ and from this he
was logically led on to the subsequent position, that of deep respect for tradition and an understanding faith in
theology and ecclesiastical authority. The poetic dramas which have come since 1935 – Murder in the Cathedral
(1935), Family Reunion (1939), Cocktail Party (1949) and Confidential Clerk (1953), show him to have moved
away, even from mere ecclesiastical tradition, to a deep ritualistic pagan faith.
His early poem, The Waste Land (1921), which has become now a pass-word to pretended acquaintance with
modern literature among pseudo-intellectuals, is a rapid-moving- disjointed-yet-having-unity-picture of what scientific

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rationalism has made of human society. His vision could take in only the world’s decay; he could not stomach the
superficial optimism and shallow romantic outlook, full of smug assumptions regarding ‘the beautiful, the true and
the noble’. In general, during the Post-Versaillesian world, there was a penetrating search for ‘a general theory of
evaluation’. This attempt at rigid evaluation, mentally, undertaken by poets like Eliot and literary thinkers like T. E.
Hume, exposed the false basis of Romanticism. The romanticist in his pre-occupation with the self tended to minimise
the influence of environment; he believed ‘that man the individual is an infinite reservoir of possibilities.’ This
attitude led to the gradual elimination of interest in the collective-consciousness as exhibited through ritual, folk-
symbolism and myths. Thus romanticism, this worm-eaten liberalism, was exposed as a self-centred corruption of
facts and there was an attempt at reviving deep interest in ritual, mystic symbols and ancient myths.
In this search, the East, ancient Egypt and the primitive tribes with their mystical rites and symbolism, became
quite a reservoir from which to draw inspiring images. The study of social anthropology by such pioneers as Sir
James Frazer and Miss Jessie L. Weston revealed an enormous wealth of mythical customs and rituals, and Eliot
drew deeply from this source to build up his edifice of symbols, into which could be put his impressions. Writers
earlier to Eliot, like Emerson, had drawn much from Oriental beliefs, as in poems like Brahma and Hamatreya. In
fact, the impact of the East had its own part to play in the resurgence of poetic drama in Europe.
This basic movement away from the realistic, rationalist approach of the modern mind, into the thrilling but
eerie world of myths, contributed to the development of the allegorical, symbolical style of writers between the two
wars, men like D. H. Lawrence, Auden and Eliot. That realism is brittle and. inadequate to express the deep struggle
in the consciousness of man, became evident as the war ended, and Eliot, being a man of extraordinary grasp, the
necessity to evolve a new form with the help o tradition. The value of that underlying continuity in thought-process,
that which is called tradition, had been minimised by the ‘romanticists’; but was deeply realised by Eliot as he wrote
his famous early essay, Tradition and Individual Talent (1917):
“No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation
of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him for contrast and comparison,
among the dead.”
What was required was the diversion of interest from the Poet to the Poetry and the realisation of the fact that the
actual written work has to be studied and analysed, instead of the idealisation of the Poet’s personality:
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but
an escape from personality”.
As F. A. Mathiessen puts it, the poet’s work, according to Eliot, is a process of continual self-sacrifice, the surrender
of himself to the work to be performed. So in poems like ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘Ash Wednesday’ the collective
symbolism is reflective of the barrenness in the environments rather than of a purely personal world of ideas. The many
suggestive symbolical phrases, which come in rapid succession, provide a picture of what the inherent state of the
present civilisation is – the many references to bones like the one in ‘Ash Wednesday’:
Under a Juniper tree the bones sang, scattered and shining. We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to
each other. Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand Forgetting themselves and each other,
united In the quiet of the desert.
This imagist trend in Eliot is much evident in The Waste Land. In the second part with the title A Game of Chess,
he seems to have the satirical pleasure which Pope derived while describing Belinda’s toilet in ‘The Rape of the
Lock’:

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 The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
The glitter of jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes
Unguent, powdered, or liquid.
In the same section of the poem, is one of the best illustrations for Eliot’s synthesis of the modern imagist trend
with ancient classical myths, the sad story of Philomela’s violation by Tereus, her sister Procne’s husband:
“The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice.
And still she cried, and still the world pursued
‘Jug’, ‘Jug’ to dirty years.”
(The Waste Land)
The repetition of sordid images connected with rats, shows the nausea felt by the poet, looking at what is called
civilisation.
“I think we are in rat’s alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”
Also, another reference in ‘The Hollow Men’:
Rat’s feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.
In his later plays such symbolical suggestions abound and they convey the same picture of a world which has
lost its faith, just as the mention of ‘the cry of bats’ in The Cocktail Party.
In addition to this symbolical exhibition of the decay in modern civilisation, there is the recurring mention or the
passage of time. Eliot’s love of tradition is somehow synthesised with the concept of Time both as understood in the
ancient scriptures and as interpreted by modern philosophy. Time is as continuous as the flow of water in a river, in
which like ripples are events; “what is actual is actual only for one time”, and only for one place.
Eliot grasped the psychical Possibilities of this Concept of Time in his later work – The Four Quartets where he
assumed the existence of the Timeless, that Something which is beyond Time (God?), and of Reality as ‘the point of
intersection of the timeless with time’. The mythical vision as mentioned in ancient texts like the Bhagavad-gita
gave him the vision of the regeneration of life from time to time–The Rebirth, experience of the Now, an incessantly
moving Now.
Among all the types in literature, it is in the field of dramatic poetry that Eliot discovered the deepest tradition of
myths, symbolical representations and other ritualistic forms, as much as in the case of Yeats who derived the same
satisfaction out of Celtic myths.
Drama, since the most ancient days has always been ‘poetic’ in garb and ‘symbolist or mythical’ in content. Eliot
expressed, as Dryden did in 1681 in his famous Essay on Dramatic Poesy, all his thought on drama in the modern
context in the form of a dialogue among individuals representing differing angles of view of the same poetic drama.
There are seven individuals A, B, C, D, E, and F, instead of the more informal persona1 names used by Dryden –
Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander, but all are supporters of the poetic drama. There is a general criticism of

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the ‘realistic drama,’ of Shaw, William Archer and such others who championed ‘the play with a purpose.’ To Eliot,
deeply stained by that weakness for ritualistic tradition, contemporary drama lacked ‘the more formal element, a
system of traditional symbolical and highly skilled movement’. Might be that Eliot was influenced by the Natya
Sastra of Bharata, with its detailed doctrinaire attitude to drama, or the Kabuki and No-technique of the Japanese.
But the ‘Ballet russe’ with its systematic movements and strict art-form appealed to him so much that he wished to
incorporate into dramatic poetry an element of ritualistic rigour along with the usual plot and action. If what is
permanent and universal is to be represented, then highly formalised poetry is to be added on to the dramatic action:
“The more fluid, the more chaotic the religious and ethical beliefs, the more the drama must tend in the direction
of liturgy……”
He is convinced that modern drama fails to reach sublime heights, because “plays are written by poets who have
no knowledge of the stage and also plays are written by men who know the stage and are not poets.” The reasons that
drew Eliot to the poetic stage are ritualistic symbolism, deep distrust of realistic and problem plays which are as bald
as the lines:
He’s been in the army four years,
he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him,
there’s others will, I said
Oh, is there, she said.
(The Waste Land)
The early attempts of Eliot at poetic drama are to be seen in that ‘Aristophanic Melodrama’, Sweeney Agonistes
(1932) and The Rock (1934). But the most developed of his poetic plays came later at long intervals, starting with
Murder in the Cathedral ((1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949) and The Confidential
Clerk (1953). Of these the first mentioned does not show that deep mystic symbolism of the cycle of regeneration
that Eliot developed in the Four Quartets and which is evident in the last mentioned plays. As he is moving through
the latter three plays, the feeling is inescapable that Eliot is even giving up his stand on the ecclesiastic tradition of
the Catholic Church and is becoming more universal in his grasp of values.
The poet obviously feels an apparent contradiction in their totality; events appear to repeat themselves, though
individually they look separate and unconnected. That ‘Time past is time forgotten,’ may appear a truism, but another
great passage spoken late in the play by the impetuous Archbishop completely brings out the Time-factor involved in
the chain of causation. The common fallacy of the ordinary logic is “to argue by results”–“to settle if an act be good
or bad.” But the cause and effect interchange their position in the continuity of time – “And as in time results of
many deeds are blended So good and evil in the end become confounded.”

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