Overview
Modern Verse Drama explores the emergence of the form at the turn
of the century and its development into the twenty-first, offering key
case studies of well-known verse dramatists alongside explorations of
less-discussed but equally influential writers within the form.
Dramatists
discussed include T. S. Eliot, Gordon Bottomley, Charles Williams, W.
H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Ronald Duncan, Christopher Fry, John
Arden, Anne Ridler, Tony Harrison, Ted Hughes, and Caryl Churchill. The
book explores the negotiation of these dramatists with the changing
position of verse drama in relation to constructions of national and
communal audience, aesthetic challenge, and dramatic heritage. Key to
the study is the self-conscious positioning of many of these dramatists
in relation to an assumed mainstream tradition – and the various
critical responses that that positioning has provoked.