예이츠의 마스크이론과 자신의 시적 이력은 강렬하고 복잡한 관계를 보이는데 이 점을 연구할 필요가 있다. 본 연구는 일생동안 시적자아와 실자적 사이에 항시 존재하는 긴장을 주목한다. 마스크는 시인의 분기된 자아를 나타내며 자신의 비밀스런 자아대신에 이 분기된 자아를 묘사하려고 한다. 이러한 일생의 도전은 자신을 객관화하는 기교를 찾아내는 것이었다. 예이츠의 이 여정은 자신의 좌절, 감정, 감흥을 비개성적인 객관화된 보편적 진실로 변화하는 여정이었다. 일견 간단해 보이는 이 마스크 이론은 그의 비전과 연결시킴으로써 복잡해진다. 이 이론은 시인을 극의 배우의 수준으로 끌어올리며 여기서 그는 자신을 실생활과 분리시킨다. 진실한 시인으로서의 예이츠는 마스크 이론을 성공적으로 승화시키며 개인뿐 아니라 전 아일랜드와 연결시킨다. 이렇게 마스크이론을 논할 때 아일랜드의 자유의 문제까지 대두하게 만든다.

This study is an attempt to analyze Yeats’s early poetry in the light of his theory of the mask. For this purpose the writer of the present study has first proposed to define the ‘mask’ to investigate the theory and has reached the conclusion that the ‘mask’ is a Yeatsian term for an ideal image of life which is always opposite to the natural self or the natural world, and the theory of the mask has three aspects−aesthetic, moral, and philosophical−according to the role of the mask. The aesthetic meaning of the theory demonstrates Yeats’s argument on the nature, the source, and the touchstone of a work of art: art is the embodiment of the writer’s mask of life and his inner struggle between mask and life sets him to his creative work; the quality of a work depends upon the expression of this tragic war. And all the more important, Yeats’s strong belief in polarity of the two terms of conflict is clarified. The study of Yeats’s early poetry in terms of his theory of the mask has concluded that Yeats’s early mask is the very transcendent realm which Yeats’s early symbolism proposes to evoke and the main symbols used to express this ideal world are the images of Arcadian island across the sea, rose, the Irish mythic world and Maud Gonne; and the synthesis of Yeats's theory of the mask and symbolism in his early poetry causes some distortions in both his theory of the mask and symbolism. The nature of his transcendent world is conveyed not by the symbols but by the imperfect realities in spite of his strong belief that “divine essence” can only be evoked by the symbols; the nature of this ideal world has also been distorted: it is not the super reality lying beyond reality like Mallarme’s but only an ideal place where all the impurities and imperfections of the real world are removed or corrected. As for the theory of the mask, polarity, the most important basis of the theory, has been impaired: only the value and the love of the ideal world is emphasized, whereas those of the earthly life are restrained or its weaknesses and painfulness are stated to describe the ideal world.

This paper focuses on the similarities and differences between Robert Browning's dramatic monologue and W. B. Yeats's mask theory. Even though two poets were not contemporaries, it is very interesting that they show some similarities in poetic skills and subjects. Unlike Romantics revealing a poet's subjective feeling directly in their poems, Robert Browning created the dramatic monologue to develop the field of the objective expression. In his “dramatic monologue,” a character instead of the poet utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment. This person addresses and interacts with other people and we know of his presence, as well as what they say and do, only from the clues in the discourse of the single speaker. In his “My Last Duchess” the Duke is negotiating with an emissary for a second marriage, and the reader can know the speaker's cruel character and intentions. In his “Andrea Del Sarto,” though Andrea was one of the greatest painters in the Renaissance period, he was a failure as an artist because of his artistic passion and indomitable spirit. Excusing his artistic frustration, he once more tries to believe his wife's lies. When Yeats entered art school in Dublin in 1884, he was an enthusiastic reader of English poetry, especially Browning. Yeats was an admiring reader of Browning's poetry, and Browning was one of the nineteenth-century forefather poets of Yeats. He explored, as Browning did, the themes of creative men divided within themselves and struggling to unify their inspirations toward love and intellect, aesthetic contemplation and heroic action. In this process, Yeats developed the concept of masks from the other self in contrast to the natural self perceiving a man as the conflicting existence between subjectivity and objectivity. In his doctrine of mask, Yeats provided a formal aesthetic for the poet's need to speak dramatically through the masks of other personalities; Browning had long practised dramatic poetry in principle in which he donned the masks of personalities totally unlike his own. Browning tended to hide his interests behind the masks of his characters, whereas Yeats more openly voiced a variety of mystical and antithetical thoughts. Yeats happened to find an occasional, almost incidental similarity of language and a shared attitude toward the sources of poetic inspiration with Browning's. By 1929, when he was sixty-four years old, rewriting and revising his poetry with an eye to a collected edition, he announced that he would be turned from Browning. Yeats was an appreciative reader of the older poet, but the great achievement of Yeats's poetry transformed and transcended the influence of Browning.