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Spenser, too, loved this luxury of sound, as he shows in such

passages as this:

"Now was Aldebaran uplifted high

Above the starry Cassiopeia's chair."

And I fancy he would have put him there to make music, even had it been astronomically impossible, but he never strung such names in long necklaces, as Marlowe and Milton were fond of doing.

Was Marlowe, then, a great poet? For such a title he had hardly range enough of power, hardly reach enough of thought. But surely he had some of the finest qualities that go to the making of a great poet; and his poetic instinct, when he had time to give himself wholly over to its guidance, was unerring. I say when he had time enough, for he, too, like his fellows, was forced to make the daily task bring in the daily bread. We have seen how fruitful his influence has been, and perhaps his genius could have no surer warrant than that the charm of it lingered in the memory of poets, for theirs is the memory of mankind. If we allow him genius, what need to ask for more? And perhaps it would be only to him among the group of dramatists who surrounded Shakespeare that we should allow it. He was the herald that dropped dead in announcing the victory in whose fruits he was not to share.

III

WEBSTER

IN In my first lecture I spoke briefly of the deficiency in respect of Form which characterizes nearly all the dramatic literature of which we are taking a summary survey, till the example of Shakespeare and the precepts of Ben Jonson wrought their natural effect. Teleology, or the argument from means to end, the argument of adaptation, is not so much in fashion in some spheres of thought and speculation as it once was, but here it applies admirably. We have a piece of work, and we know the maker of it. The next question that we ask ourselves is the very natural one-how far it shows marks of intelligent design. In a play we not only expect a succession of scenes, but that each scene should lead, by a logic more or less stringent, if not to the next, at any rate to something that is to follow, and that all should contribute their fraction of impulse towards the inevitable catastrophe. That is to say, the structure should be organic, with a necessary and harmonious connection and relation of parts, and not merely mechanical, with an arbitrary or haphazard joining of one part to another. It is in the former sense alone that any production can be called a work of art.

And when we apply the word Form in this sense to some creation of the mind, we imply that there

is a life, or, what is still better, a soul in it. That there is an intimate relation, or, at any rate, a close analogy, between Form in this its highest attribute and Imagination, is evident if we remember that the Imagination is the shaping faculty. This is, indeed, its preeminent function, to which all others are subsidiary. Shakespeare, with his usual depth of insight and the precision that comes of it, tells us that "imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown." In his maturer creations there is generally some central thought about which the action revolves like a moon, carried along with it in its appointed orbit, and permitted the gambol of a Ptolemaic epicycle now and then. But the word Form has also more limited applications, as, for example, when we use it to imply that nice sense of proportion and adaptation which results in Style. We may apply it even to the structure of a verse, or of a short poem in which every advantage has been taken of the material employed, as in Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn," which seems as perfect in its outline as the thing it so lovingly celebrates. In all these cases there often seems also to be something intuitive or instinctive in the working of certain faculties of the poet, and to this we unconsciously testify when we call it genius. But in the technic of this art, perfection can be reached only by long training, as was evident in the case of Coleridge. Of course, without the genius all the training in the world will produce only a mechanical and lifeless result; but even if the genius is there, there is nothing too seemingly trifling to deserve

its study. The "Elegy in a Country Church-yard” owes much of the charm that makes it precious, even with those who perhaps undervalue its sentiment, to Gray's exquisite sense of the value of vowel sounds.

Let us, however, come down to what is within the reach and under the control of talent and of a natural or acquired dexterity. And such a thing is the plot or arrangement of a play. In this part of their business our older playwrights are especially unskilled or negligent. They seem perfectly content if they have a story which they can divide at proper intervals by acts and scenes, and bring at last to a satisfactory end by marriage or murder, as the case may be. A certain variety of characters is necessary, but the motives that compel and control them are almost never sufficiently apparent. And this is especially true of the dramatic motives, as distinguished from the moral. The personages are brought in to do certain things and perform certain purposes of the author, but too often there seems to be no special reason why one of them should do this or that more than another. They are servants of all work, ready to be villains or fools at a moment's notice if required. The obliging simplicity with which they walk into traps which everybody can see but themselves, is sometimes almost delightful in its absurdity. Ben Jonson was perfectly familiar with the traditional principles of construction. He tells us that the fable of a drama (by which he means the plot or action) should have a beginning, a middle, and an end;

and that "as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the action, either in comedy or tragedy, without his fit bounds." But he goes on to say "that as every bound, for the nature of the subject, is esteemed the best that is largest, till it can increase no more; so it behoves the action in tragedy or comedy to be let grow till the necessity ask a conclusion; wherein two things are to be considered first, that it exceed not the compass of one day; next, that there be place left for digression and art." The weakness of our earlier playwrights is that they esteemed those bounds best that were largest, and let their action grow till they had to stop it.

Many of Shakespeare's contemporary poets must have had every advantage that he had in practical experience of the stage, and all of them had probably as familiar an intercourse with the theatre as he. But what a difference between their manner of constructing a play and his! In all his dramatic works his skill in this is more or less apparent. In the best of them it is unrivalled. From the first scene of them he seems to have beheld as from a tower the end of all. In "Romeo and Juliet," for example, he had his story before him, and he follows it closely enough; but how naturally one scene is linked to the next, and one event leads to another! If this play were meant to illustrate anything, it would seem to be that our lives were ruled by chance. Yet there is nothing left to chance in the action of the play, which advances with the unvac illating foot of destiny. And the characters are

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