Naturalism In Contemporary Society

INTRODUCTION
Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859) is considered a milestone in the history of human evolution. It marks the beginning of the naturalistic movement in the different spheres of life. This movement never remains confined to science but has its impact on history, art, culture, criticism, and theatre. The contemporary life of people and their problems become the subject-matter of art and literature. Actual, real life situations that are mirrored in the plays make the theatre naturalistic. Such playwrights as Ibsen, Shaw, John Osborne, Sean O’Casey, T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, etc., enrich the tradition of realistic plays with their innovative ideas and devices. Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams, the American playwrights, represent in their plays the inadequacies of modern man and the false values of the contemporary society. In the post-war period, T.S. Eliot, a poet, critic, and playwright deals with the psychological, religious, and secular problems of modern life in his poetic drama. Naturalistic elements go side by side with idealistic elements in the symbolic aspects of his poetic plays. In Poetry and Drama, the Harvard Lecture of 1950, he explains: “He wanted a poetic drama based on modern life, with people, living in apartments like us and using telephones and motor-cars.”
The post-war plays differ radically from the previous conventional plays. Instead of presenting imaginary places of human fancy, the post-war