Finding T.S. Eliot’s “Little Devils”: Marionettes and Sweeney Agonistes

Taking its cue from T.S. Eliot’s early marionette poems, this article argues that the puppet, and the puppet-like, played a vital but critically neglected role in the development of Eliot’s early dramaturgy and its practical, though partial, realization in his first play, Sweeney Agonistes (1926–27). Eliot’s penumbral evocations of the marionette in his reviews of human performers from the early 1920s point to his fascination with grotesque and inhuman styles of performance. This critical stance, along with modernist theatre’s broader preoccupation with puppets, shaped Eliot’s first foray into writing for the stage, resulting in a work that behaves like a puppet play, both on the page and in performance. Drawing on archival materials, the article goes on to consider the stylistic and thematic features of Sweeney Agonistes in light of their resonances with puppet performances and discusses how certain stage productions, especially those directed by Hallie Flanagan and Rupert Doone in the 1930s, made these connections explicit. It concludes that despite Eliot’s departure from this dramaturgy in his later plays, his turn to drama had significant but unacknowledged, because largely renounced, roots in an aesthetics of performance whose ideals were best manifested by the puppet.