WHILE THE greatness of William Butler Yeats as a poet is seldom disputed today, his position as a playwright is more open to question. Despite enthusiastic acclaim of his dramatic technique by Archibald MacLeish and Eric Bentley, Yeats' plays are little performed in this country outside of the universities. Actually, Yeats himself was well aware of certain qualities which he purposefully built into his plays and which he knew would diminish the chances of their success on the conventional, commercial stage. One such quality is, of course, their poetic diction and construction, although it would be unfair to imply that the connection between his poetry and his drama is that simple. For it is fairly obvious, in retrospect, that Yeats' immersion in the drama, beginning slightly before the turn of the century, was at first perhaps a symptom of his desire to alter his style and later a cause of the change toward a more colloquial diction in his poetry. This influence of dramatic technique on poetry has been well demonstrated by Thomas Parkinson in his study, W. B. Yeats, Self-Critic (1951).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.