The Death of the Hired Man

In his 20s, Frost, certain that playwrights earned more than poets, contemplated a career in the theater. During the time he worked on “Hired Man,” Frost drafted dozens of plays although he published only one—1917’s A Way Out. Frost recognized that his kind of narrative poetry (and character-driven storytelling dominates the poems in North of Boston) was only as good as it was dramatic. Frost was intrigued by using language alone to create the immersive aesthetic environment of the theater.

“The Death of the Hired Man” is theatrical. The action uses a single setting (the front porch) and centers on an exchange of dialogue between two characters (the narrative high point, Silas’s death, happens off stage); as with a play, Warren and Mary grow increasingly complex psychologically the more they speak. The poem has no authorial commentary or even adverbs to direct the delivery and includes a scattering of staging directions. The poem moves to a dramatic climax: the curtain, as it were, ringing down after Warren delivers that dramatic final word—“Dead.”

Although “Hired Man” has been transcribed into a one-act play (adapted by Jay Reid Gould), the poem reflects Frost’s interest in closet dramas, a