BL. W. B. Yeats

201. Hasegawa, Toshimitsu. ‘Yeats and the Noh: The Supernatural in Drama’. Eibungaku hyôron 42 (1980): 25-56.

Hasegawa’s study of the transmission of the nô to Yeats and his assimilation of it focuses on the ways his understanding of the form as ‘a whole theatre art with [a] specific staging and acting system’ led to a method for voicing ontological convictions on stage. While Pound approached the nô primarily as literary text, Hasegawa argues, Yeats found in it dramatic possibilities, made manifest in Plays for Dancers (17), that ended his six year ‘silence’ as a dramatist, even if the relation between the dance plays and the nô is ‘not direct and total’. Includes insightful analysis of the role of Craig’s dramatic theories in this process (see also D17).