Eliot’s Thoughts on the Possibility of a Poetic Drama in ‘The Possibility of a Poetic Drama’ and Other Essays

Abstract

In the essays entitled “The Possibility of a Poetic Drama” and “A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry,” Eliot attempts to find a possible answer to that question by looking into the issues such as form and relation of religion to literature. In another essays, “The Romantic Englishman, the Comic Spirit, and the Function of Criticism” and “Marie Lloyd,” focus on the form of music hall comedy and one of its most representative artist to find the possibility of reviving the poetic drama in the modern age. This poetic drama, as Eliot makes it clear, is not a play that is put in verse but something else altogether. It is in a way more realistic than the ‘naturalistic drama’ because it should take away the familiar surface of things and lay bare what lies underneath or within.