SOURCE: Gates, Laura Doyle. “Jean Cocteau and ‘La Poésie du Théâtré’”. Romance Quarterly 35, no. 4 (November 1988): 435-41.

In the following essay, Gates considers Cocteau's attitude toward poetry and the physical aspects of theatre, particularly in three of his plays: Parade, Le Boeuf sur le toit, and Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel.

In his earliest dramatic works, Jean Cocteau concerned himself almost exclusively with plastic and architectural aspects of the theatre as opposed to literary or psychological ones. The importance of the mise-en-scène cannot be overestimated for Parade, Le Boeuf sur le toit, and Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel. From the beginning, Cocteau classified all of his great variety of work as “poésie.” He considered these three theatrical experiments to be poetry as well, although overwhelming emphasis was placed on the physical elements of the sets. For Cocteau during this early period...