At the Hawk’s Well

Abstract

This is the first of the plays Yeats wrote which were the product of the impact on his own theories of drama, as they had developed over a long period of time, of the Japanese Noh drama. As early as 1899 he was envisaging a theatre ‘for ourselves and our friends’ (‘The Theatre’, E&I 166), free from the demands of commercialism, where words could be restored to their sovereignty over gesture and scenery, and the element of ritual in drama rediscovered. These ideas were developed in the 1903 essay ‘The Reform of the Theatre’ (E 107), in which he desiderates a theatre reformed in its plays, its speaking, its acting and its scenery. Its plays, serving the cause of beauty and truth, which will be the only justification they. need, must be such as will make the theatre a place of intellectual excitement. They will require a stronger feeling for beautiful and appropriate language than is found in the ordinary theatre. Gesture must become merely an accompaniment to speech, not its rival. Acting must be simplified, shedding everything that draws attention away from the sound of the voice. Scenery and costume, like the background to a portrait, must contribute to the total effect.