'It is only now . . . that I realise, almost without noticing, that for some time my subject as a playwright has been faith', Hare has written. This has never been more true than for Skylight (1995), Amy's View (1997), My Zinc Bed (2000) and The Breath of Life (2002) - works that, as Richard Boon has observed, 'show a steady progress towards increasingly “private” plays'. Issues of faith are notoriously difficult to deal with on stage, and as a means of approaching them Hare began experimenting with what he himself has called 'stage poetry', a form that enables him to take his audiences to the heart of his characters' spiritual lives without sermonising - in fact, without necessarily using language at all. Besides explaining the themes of these important plays, this essay will unravel the mechanics of Hare's 'stage poetry'.