The title of my thesis, “Speaking Without Words: The Significance of Dance in Yeats and Friel” suggests that my intention is to analyse the relation between dance and literature. I have chosen a world famous poet – William Butler Yeats – and a playwright – Brian Friel – who are both Irish, and they did a lot for the survival and success of their native literature. Yeats used different symbols through his career and one of them is the dance. I am going to concentrate on dancing as one of the main symbols of Yeats and its changes in his poetry.