ONE would feel happier about the future of poetry on the stage were it not for the defensiveness of those who proclaim it. Poetry had used the theatre and the theatre had used poetry for thousands of ...

Sometimes drama and lyricism comes together perfectly. These are three dramatic one-hit wonders from the 1980s that sound ...

IT is probably safe to say that since the days of Shirley, that is, since the experience of men who might have known Shakespeare, the present is the first occasion upon which two dramatic poems, of ...

Poetry on stage — or poetic drama — is a natural extension of poetry on the page. The ancient Greeks wrote their great tragedies and comedies in verse, as did the Romans. Medieval morality plays such ...

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Despite the ubiquity of the usage, it was not always so: John Dryden and Alexander Pope did not speak of a poet’s ...