ABSTRACT

Tippett assesses intellectual worth in terms of literary knowledge and critical ability; he tends to place his own works within a literary, rather than musical, dramatic tradition. Throughout his writings. Significantly, though, much of what characterizes verse drama is also present in many British operas of the second renaissance, speculation and paradox, an emphatic interest in the allegorical potential and contemporary relevance of myth, and a conscious manipulation of various verse forms and verbal images. These apparent sympathies between verse drama and opera give extra weight to Tippett's claims, and to Duncan's extensive complaint against the English Stage Company. The subject of Elegy, with its multi-charactered, pseudo-allegorical examination of the role of the poet in society, is close to that of Auden's verse dramas. This return to the traditional subject matter and themes of Auden's verse drama might be attributed to the fact that, for the first time, Auden and Kallman were writing an entirely original scenario.