Yeats and the Theater: A Selected Bibliography

YEATS AND THE THEATER: A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY YEATS'S INTEREST IN DRAMA spanned the whole of his productive career and manifested itself in varied forms, such as practical participation in the creation of the Abbey Theatre and the founding of the national theater movement in Ireland, production·of extensive prose work on dramatic theory and criticism, collaboration with other playwrights , composing the English versions of two Greek plays, dramatic exploration of the world of Irish folklore a~d of the traditional Japanese Noh theater, and, most important, creation of a considerable body of original and experimental drama in verse and prose. The range of Yeats's interests in the drama creates special problems for the student of Yeats as a playwright or as a participant in the growth of the modern Irish dramatic movement. These special problems exist within the larger sphere of the problems any student of Yeats encounters, for the multiplicity of Yeats's interests in the world of the theater is an index to the wide range of his thought and interests in general. The student of the plays, like the student of the poems, will be faced with a need to pursue Yeats as man and thinker, in and out of the theater. This is a pursuit no bibliography can chart, and it is not my intention in this specialized bibliography to attempt to do so, but helpful clues are available in anyone of several excellent critical biographies, including the official biography by Joseph Hone. Yeats's Letters (ed. by Allan Wade, London: R. HartDavis , 1954) also offer a record of his interests in any given period as well as of his many dramatic activities and his personal reactions to the demands of the theater. The newcomer to Yeats and his plays who may not wish to make the effort necessary to examine the background of the playwright may find a very specific play-by-play guide in George Brandon Saul's Prolegomena to the Stud), of Yeats's Plays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958). Saul not only indicates the principal versions of any given play, but also suggests sources and, very briefly, critical reception. Dramatis Personae I896-I902 (available in The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, New York: Macmillan, 1938 and [paper] Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1958, as well as in separate vol64 1963 YEATS AND THEATRE: A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 65 umes and various collections) records Yeats's own comments on and (sometimes mistaken) memories of his early plays in the Irish theater movement. (For another, often dissenting view, see George Moore, Hail and Farewell, London: William Heineman, 1911 and 1912.) Besides the record provided by Dramatis Personae, Yeats's general dramatic theory and criticism is to be found in several essays in The Cutting of an Agate (New York: Macmillan, 1912), of which the English edition of 1919 contains additional essays, including "Certain Noble Plays of Japan," an essay on Yeats's conception of the Japanese Noh theater-material essential to an understanding of the Plays for Dancers and all of the dramatic work after 1916. Originally the introduction to the Cuala Press edition of Ernest FenolIosa's Noh translations , the essay is easily available in the paperback publication of Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa, The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan (New York: New Directions, 1959), a volume of particular interest since it reprints the Japanese plays which afforded Yeats his introduction to the Noh drama. Finally, Yeats's Plays and Controversies (London : Macmillan, 1923), containing the series of essays collected as The Irish Dramatic Movement, completes the survey of Yeats's essential , general comments on the dramatic art. In addition to Yeats's general essays, he often made extensive remarks about his own plays in the form of Prefaces, Notes, and Introductions . The most important of these are available in Plays and Controversies [The Countess Cathleen, Land of the Heart's Desire and the Four Plays for Dancers] and Wheels and Butterflies (London: Macmillan, 1935) [The Words upon the Window-pane, Fighting the Waves, The Resurrection, The Cat and the Moon]. The selective bibliography which follows is intended to indicate the most helpful work which has been done on Yeats and the...