Speeches: dramatic and poetic

The aim of the serious dramatist is to invent a situation in which several characters reveal — in a way which is spontaneous because it is produced by the situation — the fundamental nature of their being and their attitude to life. Now the poet is someone who devotes his life to exactly such a process of self-revelation as drama attempts to produce in characters: his poems are speeches from the drama of the time in which he is living.

Stephen Spender