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Yeats's Plays and Traditional Theatre

Of all the various genres penned by W. B. Yeats, his plays have remained the most controversial. Critics have generally been unfavourable to them and their presence in the wider theatrical world was always extremely modest, before dying out altogether. Far from trying to take a stand on the issue, the proposed article aims at unveiling elements of traditional theatre in his dramatic works, particularly in the so-called poetical or verse plays. While Yeats' indebtedness to the Japanese nō theatre is well-known and has attracted sufficient scholarly attention, what is left unsaid is the fact that it is only one of the world theatres sharing some traditional ideas and properties, that strikingly resemble what we find in Yeats' plays. Yeats himself took his dramatic endeavours very seriously, thought of them as a substantial component of his literary production, and it is my feeling that, apart from specifically studying the nō tradition, he, as a gifted traditionalist, intuitively recognized some stock elements of pre-modern theatre in general and included them in his experiments. In the article, comparison is especially made with the theatrical tradition of India.

Yeats, traditional theatre, Greek theatre, Indian theatre, no, kabuki, Indonesian theatre, jingxi

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