Yeats's Purgatorial Plays

Abstract

THREE OF YEATS'S PLAYS, The Dreaming of the Bones) The Words Upon the Window-Pane) and Purgatory) have a peculiar interest for the student of his dramaturgy. All three are ghost plays, of course, and as such form a convenient group, though this is not the primary reason why they claim our attention. Moreover, all three are unusual in that they are more pointedly occasional and more direct in their representation of recent history than are most of Yeats's other plays. Most significant, however, is the fact that it is fruitful to think of the three plays as constituting a series of experiments in the course of which a set of dramaturgical conventions is transmuted into a completely personal vehicle. The Dreaming of the Bones is one kind of Japanese Noh play, allowing for the limited nature of Yeats's understanding of the Noh. (The Words Upon the Window Pane may be regarded as a transitional stage in Yeats's treatment of the soul in purgatory.) The dramatic strategy of Purgatory is substantially different from that of the Noh, and yet Purgatory grows out of Yeats's experiences with it.