Abstract
To elucidate T. S. Eliot's idea of poetic drama, we must consider his essay, "A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry". In it he says that the tendency at any rate, of prose drama is to emphasise the ephemeral and superficial ; if we want to get at the permanent and universal we tend to express ourselves in verse, and the plays of Shakespeare are the most poetic and the most dramatic, and this not by a concurrence of two activities, but by the full expansion of one and the same activity. But it is of the highest importance that he writes on the "doubleness" of poetic drama in his essay, "John Marston". From these essays we must think his idea of poetic drama is formed on the ground that he aims to enlarge the world of expression by the "doubleness" of poetic drama, and the direct duty of the poet is to his language, first to preserve, and second to extend and improve. T. S. Eliot's belief in the value of poetic drama is based on the ground poetic drama is the fine resources which can express the permanent struggles and conflicts of human beings transcending the ephemeral and superficial.
