NOTES ON AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY
To die and be quit of it all is their desire; the bell that tolls throughout the drama is death and disenchantment.
When we’re gone, we’re there.
Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. To this, life at its most reckless and abundant, they reply
No root in comforts; all his power to live
Is given to no end but t’ have power to grieve.
It is this echo flung back and back from the other side of the play which, if it has not the name, still has the effect of the presence of the Gods.
So we ramble through the jungle, forest, and wilderness of Elizabethan drama. So we consort with Emperors and clowns, jewellers and unicorns, and laugh and exult and marvel at the splendour and humour and fantasy of it all. A noble rage consumes us when the curtain falls; we are bored too, and nauseated by the wearisome old tricks and florid bombast. A dozen deaths of full-grown men and women move us less than the suffering of one of Tolstoi’s flies. Wandering in the maze of the impossible and tedious
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