Revival of Poetic Drama

T. S. Eliot is a major twentieth century poet, playwright, and critic. He has greatly influenced the English literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Eliot’s works are marked for their innovative quality and rich ambiguity. As such, they lead to a variety of interpretations. Eliot emerged as a major proponent of poetic plays for which he also made adequate ground in his criticism. With the publication of the first two plays – Murder in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion – the case for poetic drama was furthered and strengthened, and it caught the imagination of other contemporary writers. Many critics have said that poetry and drama are two separate modes of literary expression whereas Eliot seems to believe that poetry and drama are unified and they bear closely upon one another. In his opinion, poetry and drama constitute parts of a unity and they are essentially unified modes of literary expression.