Tony Harrison Critical Essay | Tony Harrison

Critical Essay by Alan Young

SOURCE: “Weeds and White Roses: The Poetry of Tony Harrison,” in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 26, Nos. 1 and 2, Spring-Summer, 1984, pp. 157-63.

[In the following essay, Young asserts Harrison's skill as a poetic dramatist, but notes that, “His now established trade as writer for the theatre—including music-theatre—should not allow us to forget that originally he was, and is still, a poet of unique and disturbing character.”]

In 1929 the publishers J. M. Dent & Sons chose Baker and Miller's 1739 English translation of Molière's plays for their popular Everyman series because ‘it is thought to have more of the spirit of the original than would be found in a more modern version’ （Introduction p. xix）. Here is part of a speech from Le Misanthrope in this edition. Alcèste, the man-hater of the title, takes his coquettish mistress Célimène to task about another of her many men friends:

But, however,...
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