No English poet since the seventeenth century made a more promising approach to the theater than young Auden. That he did not develop as a playwright after 1938 may be attributed to the radical transformation in his circumstances and outlook that coincided with his immigration to the United States just before World War II and to his proclivity for the operatic stage. But though the "legitimate" theater lost, in Auden, a potential dramatist of genius, the plays that he wrote in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in the 1930s retain much of their intellectual vitality and, given their proper musical settings, their theatricality. One of them, The Dog Beneath The Skin or Where Is Francis" (1936), is a classic of its kind and time. This early phase of his career, when Auden was a dramatist proper, is emphasized here, though he continued to be a prolific creator of works for performance...