''Sweeney Agonistes'' by T. S. Eliot was his first attempt at writing a verse drama although he was unable to complete the piece. In 1926 and 1927 he separately published two scenes from this attempt and then collected them in 1932 in a small book under the title ''Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama''. The scenes are frequently performed together as a one-act play. ''Sweeney Agonistes'' is currently available in print in Eliot's ''Collected Poems: 1909–1962'' listed under his "Unfinished Poems" with the "Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama" part of the play's original title removed. The scenes are separately titled "Fragment of a Prologue" and "Fragment of an

Agon Agon ( Greek ) is a Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', ...

Composition

The scholar Kinley Roby notes that Eliot started writing the scene "Fragment of A Prologue" in 1924 and wrote to his friend, the writer

Arnold Bennett Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboratio ...

about his concept for the unfinished play. Bennett noted that Eliot wanted "to write a drama of modern life (furnished flat sort of people) in a rhythmic prose 'perhaps with centain things in it accentuated by drum-beats.'"Roby, Kinley. "Introduction." ''Critical Essays on T.S. Eliot: The Sweeney Motif''. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1985. Roby also points out that the style of the play is frequently associated with the rhythm of jazz music as well as the "rhythm of the common speech of his time." Other critics, like Marjorie Lightfoot, associated the play with the "conventions of

music-hall Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in ...

comedy," and she notes that Eliot never wrote another play with the musical rhythms of ''Sweeney''.

Characters

Sweeney, the title character, only appears in the second scene, "Fragment of an Agon." Eliot had used the character of Sweeney in four poems prior to ''Sweeney Agonistes'': "Sweeney Among the Nightingales" (1918), "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" (1918), "Sweeney Erect" (1919) and ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of Modernist poetry in English, modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the ...

'' (1922). Although Sweeney only appears briefly or as a character sketch in the poems and never speaks, in "Fragment of an Agon" he is the main character with most of the dialogue. The characters in "Fragment of a Prologue" consist of the female prostitutes Doris Dorrance and Dusty who are visited by Sam Wauchope, a former soldier from the

Canadian Expeditionary Force The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was the expeditionary field force of Canada during the First World War. It was formed following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 15 August 1914, with an initial strength of one infantry divisi ...

, who introduces his war buddies whom he has brought along: Mr. Klipstein and Mr. Krumpacker (two American businessmen) and Captain Horsfall. All of these characters, plus Sweeney, also appear in "Fragment of an Agon" which also includes the minor characters of Swarts and Snow. The character of Doris also appears with Sweeney in the poem "Sweeney Erect" and Eliot used the name Doris in a collection of three poems published in November 1924 in ''Chapbook'' magazine. The third of "Doris's Dream Songs" ("This is the dead land/This is the cactus land") was later incorporated into Eliot's poem "

The Hollow Men "The Hollow Men" (1925) is a poem by the modernist writer T. S. Eliot. Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post– World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised: compare ...

Notable performances

The first performance of ''Sweeney Agonistes'' was on 6 May 1933 at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...

Poughkeepsie, New York Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeeps ...

, under the direction of

Hallie Flanagan Hallie Flanagan Davis (August 27, 1889 in Redfield, South Dakota – June 23, 1969 in Old Tappan, New Jersey) was an American theatrical producer and director, playwright, and author, best known as director of the Federal Theatre Project, a pa ...

. The cast was a mixture of students and local amateurs with a physician playing the part of Sweeney. Eliot, who was teaching at Harvard University at the time, managed to attend. He had had a correspondence with Flanagan prior to the performance giving her suggestions on presentation and a brief ending. In November 1934 Eliot also saw ''Sweeney'' in London with friends in a production by the experimental Group Theatre.Gordon, p. 288 The following year it was revived by the Group Theatre under the direction of

Rupert Doone Rupert Doone (born Reginald Woodfield, 14 August 1903 – 4 March 1966) was a British dancer, choreographer, theatre director, and teacher in London. Biography Doone was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, from a Worcestershire family in reduced ...

. Doone had all but Sweeney wear masks until an unmasking at the end. He also added a scene at the end where Sweeney raises a razor and chases a woman. A police whistle is blown and there is a pounding on the door. A woman's scream is heard as the stage lights go down. This production was seen by Eliot's wife,

Vivienne Vivian (and variants such as Vivien and Vivienne) is a given name, and less often a surname, derived from a Latin name of the Roman Empire period, masculine ''Vivianus'' and feminine '' Viviana'', which survived into modern use because it is the n ...

(they were separated at this time,) who "wondered how she managed not to faint at the 'absolute horror of the thing'." A six-cassette package called "The Poet's Voice" was released by

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in 1978 that included Eliot's rendition of "A Fragment of an Agon" recorded at Harvard's

Woodberry Poetry Room The George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room is a special collections room of the library system at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overview Named for literary critic and poet George Edward Woodberry, the Woodberry Poetry Room was fou ...

in 1948. Directed by Judith Malina and designed by Julian Beck, ''Sweeney Agonistes'' was produced by The Living Theatre on a very low budget: 35 dollars. It opened on March 2, 1952, at ''The Loft'', a wooden building still standing on Broadway at West 100th Street, in New York. It concluded their first financially successful production: a program called ''An Evening of Bohemian Theatre'' which included Picasso's ''Desire Trapped by the Tail'', preceded by Gertrude Stein's ''Ladies Voices''.

Interpretation

In "The Fragments of a Journey: The Drama in T. S. Eliot's ''Sweeney Agonistes''," David Galef writes, "Through the play's Greek forms, religious symbolism, and jazz syncopation, critics have perceived Christian themes but more as motifs than as underlying structure: the horror of spiritual awareness amidst modern ignorance, and the trepidation of the soul at the brink of salvation." In the essay "Sweeney and the Jazz Age," Carol H. Smith writes, "What Eliot expresses in this fragmentary play is both the agony of the saint and private anguish and rage of the man trapped in a world of demanding relationships with women. . .In Sweeney's story of violence and horror, sexual love leads to spiritual purgation, and yet this theme is by definition incommunicable to a world terrified of death and unaware of anything beyond it."

Rachel Blau DuPlessis Rachel Blau DuPlessis (born December 14, 1941) is an American poet and essayist, known as a feminist critic and scholar with a special interest in modernist and contemporary poetry. Her work has been widely anthologized. Early life DuPlessis ...

in the essay '"HOO HOO HOO": Some Episodes in the Construction of Modern Whiteness' calls attention to the repeated use of the word "hoo" towards the end of the 1927 "Fragment of an Agon" section and its relation to the use of the same word in

Vachel Lindsay Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (; November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931) was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern ''singing poetry,'' as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted. Early years Lindsay was bor ...

's 1914 poem "Congo: (A Study of the Negro Race)," and how the word's use relates to issues of race and racism. The title was probably inspired by Milton's tragic poem ''

Samson Agonistes ''Samson Agonistes'' (from Greek Σαμσών ἀγωνιστής, "Samson the champion") is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's '' Paradise Regained'' in 1671, as the title page of that volume ...

'' (1671, "

Samson Samson (; , '' he, Šīmšōn, label= none'', "man of the sun") was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges (chapters 13 to 16) and one of the last leaders who "judged" Israel before the institution o ...

the

Champion A champion (from the late Latin ''campio'') is the victor in a challenge, contest or competition. There can be a territorial pyramid of championships, e.g. local, regional / provincial, state, national, continental and world championships, a ...

").''A Dawn Miraculous'': T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes
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References

* * * * * * *

, '"HOO HOO HOO": Some Episodes in the Construction of Modern Whiteness', ''American Literature'' 67:4 (December 1995), pp. 667–700. *

Composition

Characters

Notable performances

Interpretation

References

Notes and citations

Further reading