Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/221

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Of both truth to life and truth to physical nature there are two poetic exhibits: the first, Breadth, and universiality.broad; the second, minute and analytic. The greater the poet, the simpler and larger his statement, however fine in detail when need be. Seeking that presentment of human character and experience which is universal, we go to the poets and idylists of the Bible, to Homer and the Attic dramatists, to Cervantes and Shakespeare, to Molière, and to the great novelists of the modern age. In poetry life has never been treated at once with so much intensity and truth, by many contemporaries, as in the Elizabethan period. This The Elizabethans.was inevitable. Our early dramatists wrote for instant stage production; their poetic text was of much import in default of the perfected acting and accessories which now render the text less essential,—in fact, far too subordinate. In such "effects" as the stage production then made practicable, Shakespeare and his group have not been excelled. But life—truth of life and character—then was all in all; a false transcript was instantly detected; the dramatic poet, however exuberant, founded his work in unflinching realism. Situations and trivial sentiment now make the playwright, and even Tennyson and Browning have been unable to restore the muse conspicuously to the stage. The laureate's genius, to be sure, is the reverse of dramatic. Browning had the requisite passion and dramatic instinct; life and motive engrossed him