LIDIA VIANU

T.S. Eliot - An Author for All Seasons

DRAMA

BEHIND THE SCENES
(THE QUEST AND QUESTION PLAYS)

Quest and question plays, beyond doubt, Eliot's poetic dialogues actually are. Their main common feature is the scantiness of dramatic devices. Each play has a minimum number of characters. Even those few characters are hardly memorable; which means that the dramatic plot does not support them. Their words make up poems. Their actions are rather symbolic than believable, true. Eliot is more of a dramatist in his poems and essays, than in his plays. He knows how to set a poem so as to make us feel we are situated at the same time both in front and at the very centre of the stage. There are innumerable and unforgettable characters in his poetry. In fact, there is hardly any poem in which lyrical Eliot does not wear several dramatic masks. He deeply enjoys staging himself. He also enjoys staging his ideas. He is a perfect stage manager of his critical arguments. His essays of literary criticism have a well-timed scenario. They unfurl their plot of critical appraisal in a very cunning way, gradually, without haste. Both his poems and his literary criticism mean to take us by surprise. His plays fail to do so. The unpredictable poet and critic that was T.S. Eliot turns into a much too predictable playwright. It seems that, between 1935 and 1959 (while his five plays were written), his dramatic Ariel refused to obey him. However, his literary powers had not totally deserted his plays. Of course, it is perfectly true: these plays are hardly stageable, because they lack the dramatic essentials. They are, in exchange, some of the most consummate readable plays ever written. Uttering them aloud almost spoils the charm of words. Reading them in the whisper of our mind, we cannot fail to perceive their poetic force. Each character is engaged in a lyrical quest of his most beautifully allusive and ambiguous words. Which, among other things, of course makes the plays rather questionable as such. Each plot is an open poem, a question left for our minds to rephrase, to think over and over, like a refrain hummed now and then, between bits of yesterday, of tomorrow, of today.

Eliot used, in his five plays, every lyrical device he could think of. It looks as if he had not dared be direct in his poetry, and is trying to make up for that powerlessness now. These plays are very much like long poems. While in his poetry Eliot was indirect at all costs, in his drama (the same as in his Quartets) he deftly discloses his thoughts and feelings in front of us. Direct quests and questions, then, these plays are.

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL

THE FAMILY REUNION

THE CONFIDENTIAL CLERK

THE ELDER STATESMAN