BL. W. B. Yeats

138. Tsukimura, Reiko. ‘A Comparison of Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well [12] and Its Noh Version Taka no izumi’. Literature East and West 11 (1967): 385-97.

Argues that the structure of Yeats’s ‘dance plays’ is fundamentally different than that of the nô. While At the Hawk’s Well and other dance plays revolve around the ‘Western theatrical convention’ of ‘the presentation of a[n antithetical] theme through characters in conflict’, nô structure more often requires ‘lyrical concentration’ on a ‘re-creation of the protagonist’s past experience’. Tsukimura’s analysis of Yeats’s play and the structurally and thematically contrasting modern nô based on it, by Yokomichi Mario, is fascinating, and illuminates as clearly as any treatment of the subject the degree to which Yeats’s plays are not nô, though the tendency to fault Yeats to the degree that he does not adhere to classical nô structure represents a fundamental misunderstanding of his intentions and his work. See 239 for a radically different approach to the same material.

 

 

 

 


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