T.S. Eliot as dramatist in the commercial theatre.

W. B. Yeats wrote, “Of all artistic forms that have had a large share of the world’s attention, the worst is the play about modern educated people. Except where it is super ficial or deliberately argumentative it fills one's soul with a sense of commonness as with dust.” Elsewhere he observed, “I think the theatre must be reformed in its plays, its speaking, its acting, and its scenery…. There is nothing good about it at present.” One can hardly doubt that T.S. Eliot was aware of the foregoing conclusions when, in 1939, he took his first step on the commercial stage; and for a “classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion" it was a bold step indeed