John Drinkwater: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him

JOHN DRINKWATER: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WRITINGS ABOUT HIM By Peter Berven (Minneapolis, Minnesota) John Drinkwater (1882-1937) remains known primarily for his historical dramas. However, during his lifetime, after contributing to Edward Marsh's volumes of GEORGIAN POETRY (1912-1922) and especially after winning aceiaim as a playwright, his verse attracted a wide audience. Of great importance in the development of Drinkwater's career as a dramatist was his friendship with Barry Jackson, whom he met in 1904, and his experience as an actor and playwright for Jackson's Pilgrim Players, the group that evolved into the influential Birmingham Repertory Theatre. His association with Jackson and his early stage experience are best detailed in the second volume of his autobiography, Discovery (I932). Although the verse plays he wrote for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre between 1914 and 1917 gained him some degree of deserved recognition, it was his Abraham Lincoln (I918) that alone won him international fame and guaranteed him a large and continued audience for all his work. So great was the effect of Abraham Lincoln's immense popular success that in 1922, as J. Middleton Murray has noted, the only poet in England more popular than Drinkwater was Masefield. After the Lincoln play, Drinkwater wrote three more historical dramas, experimenting with the same form and techniques developed in Abraham Lincoln; in none of them, however, did he achieve as great popular success or critical acclaim. Drinkwater's considerable literary output in the 1920's as a dramatist, poet, critic, biographer, and anthologist kept an interest in him alive, but in the 1930's critical study of his work decreased sharply, and since his death critics have paid him little attention. There still exists no full-length critical study of his work. JOHN DRINKWATER, THE MAN AND HIS WORK (n.d.), listed in Fred Millet's CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE (1935). is either a ghost, as Houghton Mifflin writes that no record of the title can be found in their catalogs and files, or an insignificant advertising pamphlet. Drinkwater's poetry, in general, suffers from a lack of distinctiveness , and most reviewers, even those who admired the sincerity and refined craftsmanship of his poems, have stressed Drinkwater's lack of imagination, his sentimentality, and the derivative nature of his verse. Some critics, such as Robert Graves and Laura Riding, have characterized the style and subject matter of his verse as typical of a deplorable artificiality and decadence found in the work of many poets of the time. Drinkwater 's early poetic plays generally were well received; among these, X=O, A Night of the Trojan War (1917) is usually considered the most successful. The best discussion of the verse plays can be found in Priscilla Thouless' MODERN POETIC DRAMA (1934) and H. H. Anniah Gowda's THE REVIVAL OF ENGLISH POETIC DRAMA (1972). Most of the criticism of Drinkwater's work has focussed on his innovative historical dramas. All four historical plays have been widely criticized for various technical and conceptual flaws; however, particularly with Abraham Lincoln, critics have been 10 divided regarding the ultimate value and success of the plays. Some have seen Abraham Lincoln as an enduring, moving tragedy and as an important contribution to dramatic form while others have seen it as a sentimental melodrama, remarkable only in its great appeal to the public's patriotic sentiment after World War I. Much attention has centered on the theory behind the structure of Drinkwater's historical or chronicle plays. Most critics now would agree with Robert Spiller's assessment that Drinkwater's innovations have not contributed greatly to modern dramatic technique . Although Drinkwater's continued influence on dramatic form has been slight, a number of critics have stressed his instrumental role in reviving public interest in serious theater after the war. Additionally, his feel for the elements of successful stage production, perhaps resulting from his long practical stage experience, seems to have been great; even reviewers who have questioned the value of a particular play as a piece of dramatic literature often have praised the production of the play for its acting and overall impact. Particularly important for their treatment of the historical plays are Arthur Ropes' "History...