“The first is the voice of the poet talking to himself—or to nobody. The second is the voice of the poet addressing an audience, whether large or small. The third is the voice of the poet when he attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse.”
Poet, playwright, and publisher T. S. ELIOT delivered at Harvard on November 21 the first Theodore Spencer Lecture in memory of his friend who was a poet, a Shakespearean scholar, and the Boylston Professor. The paper he prepared for the occasion falls into three parts; it is affectionate, calmly objective in its self-criticism, and compelling in the power of its prose. Mr. Eliot, whose play The Cocktail Party is a hit in New York and London, was educated at Harvard, at the University of Paris, and at Oxford. He edited The Criterion from 1923 to 1939, is a director of Faber & Faber, and in 1948 teas awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.