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Sweeney Agonistes in noh mask: T. S. Eliot, Japanese noh, and the fragments of world drama

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Abstract

The expansive reach of the ancient Japanese noh theater as it influenced modernist performance and poetics took in T. S. Eliot as well as Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats, the more commonly recognized noh aficionados. Pound and Eliot attended the premiere of Yeats’s noh-inspired retelling of Irish legend, At the Hawk’s Well, in 1916. This essay considers the influence of that production on Eliot’s later work, discussing his review of Pound’s translations of noh plays based on drafts by Ernest Fenollosa and focusing on two productions of Eliot’s dramatic fragment Sweeney Agonistes. Incorporating influences from noh, classical tragedy, and American minstrel performance, among others, Sweeney Agonistes is an example of world drama. But, Eliot’s play is best served by a definition of world drama that does not oppose national theatrical traditions, one that recognizes the emergence of world drama from a critical practice that focuses on global allusion and inspirations and the transnational exchange of performance ideas and techniques.

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Notes

  1. The PFHYI translations appeared as Certain noble plays of Japan (1916) and ‘Noh’ or accomplishment: A study of the classical stage of Japan (1917). I reference the more readily available edition The classic noh theatre of Japan (1959) by the full author group PFHYI.

  2. For an account of At the Hawk’s Well’s other influences on world drama cf. my book Learning to kneel: Noh, Modernism, and journeys in teaching (2016).

  3. Cf. Rath (2004).

  4. PFHYI (1959, p. 4).

  5. Ibid., p. 98.

  6. Tyler (1992, p. 101).

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., p. 99.

  9. PFHYI (1959, p. 76).

  10. Eliot (1917, p. 102).

  11. Cf. Hickey (2000).

  12. Eliot (1917, p. 103).

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. PFHYI (1959, p. 27).

  16. Ibid., pp. 103–104.

  17. Cf. Bush (1981).

  18. PFHYI (1959, p. 151).

  19. Eliot (1946, p. 326).

  20. Eliot (1975a [1940], p. 255).

  21. Eliot (1975b [1951], p. 145).

  22. Milton (1671, p. 65).

  23. Ibid., pp. 65–66.

  24. Eliot (1975b [1947], p. 268).

  25. Ibid., p. 273.

  26. Robinson (2009, pp. 231–232).

  27. Eliot (1975c [1951], p. 132).

  28. Flanagan (1943, p. 82).

  29. Ibid., p. 83.

  30. Takeishi and David (2006, p. 9).

  31. Ibid., p. 20.

  32. PFHYI (1959, p. 158).

  33. Pound (1987 [1939], p. 156).

  34. Flanagan (1943, p. 83).

  35. Dulac (1924, pp. 423).

  36. Flanagan (1943, p. 83).

  37. Eliot (1978 [1947]).

  38. Eliot (1974 [1936], p. 130).

  39. Ibid., p. 134.

  40. Ibid., p. 146.

  41. Smith (1963, p. 72).

  42. Flanagan (1943, p. 83).

  43. Ibid., pp. 83–84.

  44. Blough (1933, p. 4).

  45. Flanagan (1943, p. 83).

  46. Eliot (1974 [1936], pp. 131, 132).

  47. Flanagan (1943, p. 84).

  48. Blough (1933, p. 1).

  49. Daniel (2011, p. 449).

  50. Billingham (2002, p. 8).

  51. Sidnell (1984, p. 103).

  52. Ibid., p. 324, nt. 27.

  53. Ibid., p. 103.

  54. Ibid., p. 104. Cf. Avery.

  55. Daniel (2011, p. 450).

  56. Eliot (1974 [1936], p. 135).

  57. Sidnell (1984, pp. 104–105). C.f. Medley (1983).

  58. Punch (1935, 412).

  59. Sidnell (1984, pp. 104–105).

  60. Daniel (2011, p. 451). Daniel reads the removal of the masks as a metatheatrical gesture that exposes the actor behind the character.

  61. Daniel (2011, p. 450).

  62. Cf. Chinitz (2003).

  63. Sidnell (1984, p. 105).

  64. Gale (2004, p. 330).

  65. Buttram (2009, p. 180).

  66. Sidnell (1984, p. 108).

  67. Ibid., p. 107.

  68. Bella Abzug was a lawyer, politician, and social activist associated with the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

  69. Cf. “remedial,” Oxford English dictionary online.

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    Carrie J. Preston

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Preston, C.J. Sweeney Agonistes in noh mask: T. S. Eliot, Japanese noh, and the fragments of world drama. Neohelicon 46, 97–113 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-0467-4

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