[In Presences, Taylor has selected] the ghost play as the genre which will best permit him to objectify some of the prevailing influences he senses in his characters' lives. In reading these dramas, however, with full awareness of Taylor's prior accomplishments, we note two other kinds of "presences" emerge as well: the first, as palpable as any characters on the stage, are those remembered Taylor traits of theme and technique which are again embodied in these very plays; the second, like apparitions hovering in a background mist, are those traits so dominant in Taylor's fiction which have no counterpart in drama and must be banished from the stage, yet linger as after-images, felt absences whose loss or deprivation is itself a kind of presence….

[The ghosts in all the plays are] encumbrances the characters must struggle under or against. Taylor has often attempted to represent the same sort...