The one genre of writing in which Durrell … has not achieved either popular or critical success, is the verse play…. Though full of beautiful passages of lyrical and meditative verse, [Sappho, his first play in this genre,] perhaps lacks the tensions and confrontations that are proper to drama; it is more like a versification of one of Landor's Imaginary Conversations. In his next verse play, Acte, Durrell took this lesson to heart, and it is a melodrama in the style of Corneille, about honour and self-sacrifice, in which the language … is noticeably more rhetorical than is usual in Durrell's verse.
The best of Durrell's verse plays seems to me to be An Irish Faustus, a morality play in nine scenes, alternately farcical and frightening. His Faustus is somewhat reminiscent of Prospero, a magician who throws away his wand…. I think that Durrell's verse plays, like those of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Browning, Tennyson, have suffered from his thinking of the verse play as primarily literature: he has never thought much of the problems of production, of timing, of the control of the audience, that 'great beast'. (p. 10)
This is a free excerpt of 188 words. There are 1,581 words (approx.
5 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Durrell, Lawrence 1912–: Critical Essay by G. S. Fraser Access Pass.
