DRAMA an essay in contemporary drama, was a disastrous failure, while The Falcon (1879) and The Foresters (acted by an American company in 1893) made little impression. Lord Tennyson was certainly not lacking in dramatic faculty, but he worked in an outworn form which he had no longer the strength to renovate. Mr Swinburne has continued now and then to cast his creations in the dramatic mould, but it cannot be said that his dramas have attained either the vitality or the popularity of his lyrical poems. Mary Stuart (1881) brought his Marian trilogy to a close. In Locrine he produced a tragedy in heroic couplets—a thing probably unattempted since the age of Dryden. The Sisters is a tragedy of modern date (1816), with a mediaeval drama inserted by way of interlude. Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards (1899), perhaps approached more nearly than any of his former works to the concentration essential to drama. It may be doubted, however, whether his copious and ebullient style could ever really subject itself to the trammels of dramatic form. Of other dramas on the Elizabethan model, the most notable, perhaps, have been the works of two ladies who adopt the pseudonym of “ Michael Field.” They have written Callirrho'e (1884), Brutus Ultor (1887), and many other dramas, all of which show considerable power of imagination and expression, but are burdened by a deliberate archaism both of technique and style. Mr Alfred Austin has put forth several volumes in dramatic form, such as Savonarola (1881), Prince Lucifer (1887), and England’s Darling (1896). They are laudable in intention and fluent in utterance. Notable additions to the purely literary drama were made by Mr Robert Bridges in his Prometheus (1883), Nero (1885), The Feast of Bacchus (1889), and other solid plays in verse, full of science and skill, but less charming than his lyrical poems. Sir Lewis Morris made a dramatic experiment in Gycia, but has not been encouraged to repeat it. Poets of a younger generation have contributed some noteworthy works to the literary drama. Mr John Davidson’s volume of Plays contains more poetry, perhaps, than drama properly so called, but is by no means a negligible production. In his earlier efforts, such as An Unhistorical Pastoral, Mr Davidson gave himself up to luxuriant imitation of Shakespeare in his most luxuriant mood; but there is strong writing in Smith: a Tragedy (1886), and genuinely dramatic vigour in Bruce: a Chronicle Play (1884). Scaramouch on Naxos (1888) is a somewhat too fantastic fantasy. Mr W. B. Yeats has written two plays on subjects borrowed from Irish folklore: The Countess Kathleen (1892) and The Land of Hearts Desire (1894). They are tender and exquisite poems, with a real element of drama in them, and both have met with some acceptance on the stage. “John Oliver Hobbes ” (Mrs Craigie) has produced in Osbern and Ursyne (1899) a tragedy of considerable merit, marred by obscurities of style. Mention has already been made of the plays of Mr Stephen Phillips, which belong no less to theatrical than to literary drama. From the point of view of literary history, Mr Phillips may be. regarded as a rebel against the supremacy of the Elizabethan tradition in English poetic drama. While choosing romantic subjects, he seeks to give them classic dignity, repose, and compression. He has shown a gift of dramatic story-telling unequalled among the poets of our time, .while in his diction he has avoided at once the obscurity arising from over-conciseness and the tedium involved in redundant verbiage. The collaboration of Robert Louis Stevenson with Mr William Ernest Henley produced a short series of interesting experiments in drama, two of which, Beau Austin
523 (1883) and Admiral Guinea (1884), have more than a merely experimental value. The former is an emotional comedy, treating with rare distinction of touch a difficult, almost an impossible, subject; the latter is a nautical melodrama, raised by force of imagination and diction into the region of literature. It is much to be regretted that, in the later years of Stevenson’s life, his health, and the absence from England which it entailed, should have kept the collaborators so much apart as to prevent the continuance of the series. The most prolific and, it would seem, the ablest of the literary contingent—of those, that is to say, who do not approach the drama primarily through the stage-door —is Mr George Bernard Shaw7, whose three volumes, Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, and Plays for Puritans, contain some very remarkable writing. After some insignificant and needlessly disagreeable ’prentice-pieces, Mr Shaw produced, in Mrs JVarren’s Profession, a drama of remarkable, though crude, power, and in Arms and the Man a brilliant comedy-extravaganza. The same description applies to You Never Can Tell and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion ; while The Devil’s Disciple is a satiric melodrama, and CcBsar and Cleopatra a curious compound of historic drama with topical burlesque. Mr George Moore has made two experiments in drama—The Strike at Arlingford and The Bending of the Bough. The latter, with its somewhat ill-digested symbolism, is a characteristic outcome of the Irish Literary Movement, to which we also owe Mr Edward Martyn’s sombre but able drama, The Heather Field, and his tragic fantasy entitled Maeve. Other published plays of interest are Mr Alfred Sutro’s Cave of Illusion, and Mr Gilbert Murray’s Carlyon Sahib and Andromache, the latter a noteworthy attempt to go to the very sources of Greek inspiration and treat a sagatheme in the saga spirit. . (W- A>) French Drama (since 1875).—The last twenty-five years of the 19th century witnessed an important change in the constructive methods, as well as in the moral tendencies, of the French playwrights. The old favourites disappeared ; new men came to the front. Various influences, some proceeding from foreign quarters, Preach rama some closely connected with the evolution of national thought and manners, have been working, not very harmoniously, together, often in totally opposite directions. It would be rash, and indeed almost impossible, to offer a general opinion on the French drama of this period, as no identity of moral purpose, and hardly any artistic relationship, can be traced between the leading writers; but it may be profitable to note the different experiments w7hich have been tried, more or less successfully, during the last quarter of a century, and the crisis through which the French theatre has been slowly and laboriously working its way towards an unknown future. Of the two leading dramatists who reigned supreme over the haute comedie in 1875, one, Emile Augier, had almost ended his career; but the other, Alexandre Dumas, was to maintain his ascendancy for many years longer. Sardou’s fertility of invention, and extraordinary cleverness at manipulating a complicated intrigue, were also greatly admired, and much was expected from Edouard Pailleron’s brilliant and—as it seemed—inexhaustible wit in satirizing the whims and weaknesses of high-born and highly cultured society. Alexandre Dumas had created and still monopolized the problem play, of which Le Demi-Monde, IjC Fils A aturel, La Question d’Argent, Les I dees de Madame Aubray, La Femme de Claude, Monsieur Alphonse, La Visite de Noces, L’Etrangere, Francillon, and Denise may be mentioned as the most characteristic specimens. The problem play is the presentation of a particular case, with a view to a general conclusion on some important question
