W. B. Yeats began to write his works when Ireland was struggling for its independence from England. Young Yeats hoped to be a national poet and was naturally concerned about the future of his fatherland. The way Yeats chose for his country was a cultural one, not a military or political one. He believed in the Irish people’s artistic sensibilities and believed that his country could be a healthier and better country than England through the ’Unity of Culture’. Yeats was attracted to drama because of its usefulness as a public art. He wanted to establish a national drama based on Irish folklore and myth. He believed that drama could achieve or revive the ’Unity of Culture’ which he equated with the national unity of Ireland. Yeats’s main idea was that to achieve ’Unity of Culture’, the support of common people for art would be essential. Yeats’s early play, The King’s Threshold shows the unity of the poet and common people well. The story is based on an Irish myth. The king, a man of action, banishes Seanchan the poet, a man of words, from his court (affairs of state) and the poet choose to die on a hunger-strike for his rights in the court, that is, for the value of art in society. The poet works for the common people and expects their support, of which the king is much afraid. The King’s Threshold dramatizes the theme that concerned Yeats so deeply, the role of art in society. And another main point of the play is that poetry transcends politics. Yeats satirizes the defects and deficiencies of a society which no longer recognizes the artist’s role. But the poet dies, and we are not shown any effect that his death may have had on either society or the individual. The modern Irish people were not what the young poet had expected. Though the young poet’s dream for the ’Unity of Culture’ may be naive, the play shows us Yeats’s view of art and his belief in the poet’s role in society.

• 윤기호(충북대) | Yoon, Kiho