Abstract

My purpose in this essay is to study the evolution of Yeats's dramatic style from The Shadowy Waters to At the Hawk's Well. I will be considering changes in dramatic technique as well as in Yeats's world-view. As a middle point between these two plays, I have also chosen to study The Hour-Glass (1914), the last play that Yeats wrote before adopting the Noh form in At the Hawk's Well (1917), and which, for Francisco Javier Torres Ribelles "can be considered the expression of Yeats's own symbolist theories" (26). The version of The Shadowy Waters that I will be referring to is the final acting version of 1911. Occasional references to other works by Yeats, both dramatic and poetic, will nevertheless be included.

Highlights

  • My purpose in this essay is to study the evolution of Yeats's dramatic style from The Shadowy Waters to At the Hawk's Well

  • There is a difference, though: In The Shadowy Waters, the changes from prose to verse correspond to changing speakers— obviously no such changes occur in the 1906 versión, which is all verse and "must be considered as a poem only" (Yeats, Collected Poems 473)—whereas in The Hour-Glass the changes occur within the speech of given characters, namely the Wise Man and the pupils

  • If we were to speak of the different levéis of reality proper which effectively opérate in this play, we would have to refer to (a) Forgael in his sleep, (b) Forgael awake, (c) the other characters enchanted by Forgael, (d) the other characters not enchanted by Forgael, (e) the actual reality, shared by the audience, of the play being performed on stage

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Summary

Introduction

My purpose in this essay is to study the evolution of Yeats's dramatic style from The Shadowy Waters to At the Hawk's Well.

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