BL. W. B. Yeats

214. Knowland, A. S. Yeats: Dramatist of Vision. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1983.

A play-by-play reading of Yeats’s drama. Particularly in a section titled ‘The Central Achievement’, covering plays from At the Hawk’s Well (12) to A Full Moon in March (37b), Knowland makes reference to the nô, and though his aims are larger than tracing influence, his comments are perceptive: Yeats found in the ‘Pound-Fenollosa’ nô ‘features that confirmed and corroborated his own ideas about drama’, and he ‘took from Noh . . . what suited him’, for the form, ‘with its concentration, its fusion of language, music and movement, its stylization of character, its ritualization of action, its unity of imagery, helped him to hammer out the kind of drama that was appropriate to his concept of tragedy’ (pp. 109-10).