Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage by Irene Morra

Abstract

Reviewed by: Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage by Irene Morra Kayla McKinney Wiggins (bio) Irene Morra. Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage. Series editors Patrick Lonergan and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. Critical Companions Series. London, Bloomsbury, 2016. 304 pages. $94.00. Irene Morra is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University. In Modern Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015, she analyzes more than a hundred years of attempts by poets, playwrights, and theatre practitioners to return poetic drama to a valued place on the English stage. Morra’s study addresses the difficulty inherent in this endeavor given that verse is generally viewed as irrelevant to modern theatre on two counts: because Shakespeare is sufficient as the acknowledged poet of the national stage, and because verse is inappropriate expression for the subject matter of modern drama. Each section of the book considers a particular era of modern verse drama, followed by a more detailed analysis of individual playwrights and plays. Morra’s study is absorbing, if at times a bit erudite. The scholarship is exceptionally thorough. Although discussions of the better-known plays are understandably more accessible, Morra’s focus on performance, production, and poetry offers readers insight into even less familiar verse plays. In the introduction to her study, Morra notes that verse drama “occupies a vexed position in contemporary England, both on the mainstream national stage and in the historiography of modern British theatre.” She follows this observation with examples of recent verse plays and the critical response to them, observing that “verse drama is today seen at best as an anomaly, as an amusing embrace of anachronistic whimsy—and at worst as a regressive self-indulgence fundamentally opposed both to the essential demands of theatre and to the contemporary reality of the modern audience” (1). Morra contends, however, that this “assumption overlooks the extent to which the diverse tradition of modern verse drama in England has attempted variously to expand upon, revitalize and redefine the contemporary stage. It also risks overlooking the extent to which the very critical marginalization of that tradition might itself point to an essential conservatism” (6). Following an overview of the origins of verse drama in English, Morra addresses modern verse drama as an attempt to “articulate and develop [End Page 161] a much-needed and frequently experimental mode of contemporary theatrical expression” (10), concluding that it ultimately failed in this endeavor, in part because of its association with religious drama, but also because it was viewed as outmoded and “at odds with” a “socially progressive” national drama (15). The aim of Morra’s study, therefore, is to “advocate for a scholarly revaluation of what must be identified as an influential and overlooked tradition of aesthetic challenge and creativity” (15). She concludes that although verse dramatists never managed to achieve a lasting, cohesive movement, their work deserves critical attention and more general recognition. After setting the stage with a discussion of nineteenth-century poets who turned to verse drama more as poetic expression than theatre application, Morra’s first chapter considers the work of early twentieth-century verse dramatists Stephen Spender and James Elroy Flecker, who drew on the legacy of the Romantics and of Shakespeare to produce large-scale plays grounded in blank verse and history while still establishing the foundation for a verse drama that would attempt to respond to the demand for a modern theatre of new sensibilities. Chapter 2 considers early modernists who wrote verse drama that either embraced the new theatre movements of social and practical reform or reacted against those movements and toward a theatre of personal expression. Although these early twentieth-century verse dramatists rejected the “contemporary commercial stage to which Phillips and Flecker had aspired,” Morra notes that they nevertheless “found themselves in an unprecedented engagement with the realities of an innovative, progressive culture of theatrical reform” (41). This discussion considers the diverse range of possibilities in verse drama during the early twentieth-century and takes a closer look at the work of W. B. Yeats and Terence Gray, concluding that the contemporary tendency to dismiss verse drama as “‘coterie’ theatre. . .goes very...