Abstract

The work of playwrights Bertolt Brecht and W. B. Yeats is generally perceived to be unrelated in style, approach or philosophy. Brecht's development of epic theatre is focused on post-industrial social problems and it uses methods of breaking the frame and illusion of theatre to instigate a response toward political activism on the part of the audience. His subject matter is formed around the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy of modern life and his actors use specialized methods of estrangement from the characters they are playing in order to comment on the action of the play while they are performing it. ;Yeats' work is decidedly mystical, allied to the Symbolist Movement. His characters are based on legendary Irish figures or are a reification of symbolic ideas. The content of Yeats' plays are woven through with multiple layers of codes, emblems, referrents, and associative images. The meaning of Yeats' plays is to be discovered by the audience through an intuitive grasping of ideas. Yeats' actors do not reflect an attitude about the characters they play, but merely serve as committed representatives or doubles. ;From the center of the differences between Brecht and Yeats, I have found common ground. The two playwrights make use of the concept of mask: each employs literal masks on stage and incorporates metaphorical masking throughout his theoretical and artistic work. Further, at the core of the work of both is the notion of opposition and contradiction. ;The purpose of this dissertation is to connect the use of mask by Brecht and Yeats and to use that point of conjunction as a key to defining the modernist concept of the self. Brecht and Yeats each use the theme of opposition and the method of mask as a fundamental approach. Conceptually, Brecht's dependence on dialectical materialism is allied to Yeats' theory of the anti-mask. Each supports the proposition that the modernist self is marked by a dynamic, performative, contradictory nature reliant on social masks as a means of survival and communication. This point is developed through an analysis of selected plays and theoretical essays by Brecht and Yeats