"verse-play" or "spoken ballet"? W. H. Auden, Rupert Doone, and a New Poetic Drama

This article draws on previously neglected archival material to reexamine the first poetic drama written for Rupert Doone's Group Theatre, W. H. Auden's The Dance of Death (1933). I show that Doone, guided by the Ballets Russes's "marriage of the arts," worked alongside Auden to craft an innovative form of poetic drama whose meaning was generated not by the script on its own, but rather by the complex interaction of poetic text, visual metaphor, and corporeal rhetoric. Analyzing the choreographic aspects of The Dance of Death alongside its textuality thus brings into focus underexplored facets of the work's notoriously ambiguous politics. Considering these politics within their historical context illuminates the significance of Doone's dance -informed approach to theater, both for the Lord Chamberlain's efforts regarding stage censorship and for Auden's beliefs about the future of British poetic drama.