The Irish Drama of Europe from Yeats to Beckett

This study provides a European perspective on the drama of Yeats and of the Irish playwrights – Wilde and Synge, O’Casey and Beckett – who share in the achievement of creating a modern ‘drama of the interior’. Professor Worth traces in particular the influence of Maeterlinck, examining his ‘static drama’ in some detail. A dominant theme is the importance of total theatre techniques to the playwrights of the interior from Wilde in Salomé to O’Casey in plays like Cock-a-Doodle Dandy. Yeats is seen as the great pioneer, assimilating inspiration from the French, with Arthur Symons as guide, from Synge, from Gordon Craig and from the No drama, and evolving a modern technique for a drama of complex self-consciousness.