BL. W. B. Yeats

123. Nathan, Leonard E. The Tragic Drama of William Butler Yeats: Figures in a Dance. New York: Columbia UP, 1965.

Chapter 4, ‘The Development of the Theatre’s Antiself’, a careful reading of Per Amica Silentia Lunae (13), ‘Certain Noble Plays of Japan’ (11), and At the Hawk’s Well (12), documents ways Yeats’s discovery of the ‘catalyst’ of the nô verified and extended both his ontology and his dramatic theory, culminating in a form that in the post-1916 plays ‘released the Yeatsian theme from . . . the severely limited and repetitive dramatic expression’ of his earlier plays. Includes other passing references to the nô in other plays (see index). Based on ‘W. B. Yeats’s Development as a Tragic Dramatist’, PhD thesis, University of California Berkeley, 1961.