Christopher Fry Poetic Drama - 2442 Words

Åžafak Horzum Poetic Drama and Its Revival in 20th Century in English Literature: A Brief Analysis of Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning Poetic drama, having had its roots in the Elizabethan Age in England with the great playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe who breathed into the English drama the life spirit of poetry by means of their mighty lines, struggled a lot to revive in the nineteenth century and succeeded in the first half of the twentieth century with playwrights such as E. Martin Browne, T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry. There were obstacles for this artistic form to find a place in the modern world which was in the turmoil of social and political alterations. With an emphasis on these†¦show more content†¦The shortage of theatre sector in terms of proper players and able management resulted in the silence of verse dramas. Although many things seemed to be on the contrary of this form, T. S. Eliot was determined to adapt poetic drama into the modern stage and he managed that as well. First of all, he observed his time and regarded that the naturalistic prose drama of Ibsen, Shaw and Galsworthy failed to comprehend the depth, tension and complexity of contemporary life. It addressed to the mind rather than the heart. He reached at a decision to make a thematic precision and included not the outer, but the inner/emotional matters. (Jones 21). After the thematic settlement of the verse drama in his mind, it was the time to arrange the poetic form of plays. Because Shakespeare strengthened and glorified â€Å"blank-verse† in its perfect form in his plays, imitating him and being able to compose as he did seemed acceptingly difficult to accomplish. Eliot wanted to organise the rhythms of verses suitable to the spoken language. After a lot of experimentations, Eliot achieved it; not in the traditional blank-verse style but neutral rhythm pattern closer to the contemporary spoken language. He revealed that poetry is not a decoration; it is the medium which creates poetic images to reveal the personalities of characters (Jones 35). According to Jones, Eliot emphasises in his works that â€Å"verse is natural language of men at moments of intense, emotional excitement† (21). Nevertheless,Show MoreRelatedEugene O’neill and the the Rebirth of Tragedy a Comparative Survey on Mourning Becomes Electra and Oresteia2317 Words   |  10 PagesCometh (1946). His plays probe the American Dream, race relations, class conflicts, sexuality, human aspirations and psychoanalysis. He often became immersed in the modernist movements of his time as he primarily sought to create â€Å"modern American drama† that would rival the great works of European modernists such as Ibsen, Strindberg and G.B. Shaw. O’Neill was a great admirer of classical theatre and as a young man he had read Friedrich Nietzsche’s work about the origin of Greek tragedy,