course, absurd to ask, my purpose is not to show Milton in the least at fault, but to indicate that this situation, which passes unnoticed in Comus, would not pass unnoticed in Romeo and Juliet, and that therefore a mask has not the same requirements that a drama has. So far then from being at fault, Milton is quite right in going to no more trouble to prove his case than his auditors require. In a fairy tale, 'Once upon a time' sufficiently dates the story; in an anecdote of real life this easy and convenient chronology will not serve. All of this is perhaps too patent to discuss; but it seems worth while to show that the only partly dramatic method of Comus is entirely reasonable as the method of a mask.

The opening speech of the mask Comus is addressed mainly to the audience, and is epic in character, rather than dramatic: that is, the Attendant Spirit tells us things that could have been brought out in action. Compare with this the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet, which shows in visible action the quarreling houses of Montague and Capulet. To make the contrast sharper, note the speech of Chorus before the Shakespearean play begins—it is interesting, but unnecessary; and very tame in comparison with the movement of the first scene itself. Now the opening of Comus is in the manner of the extra-dramatic Chorus, not in the manner of the dramatic scene. Note again the beginning of Julius Cæsar, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet:

the things that it is necessary for us to know immediately are presented in dialogue and action, not in mere narrative monologue. Even where Shakespeare begins with a monologue, as he does in Richard III., he uses it to reveal character, not to take the place of action, which speedily follows in vivid. dialogue.* This opening speech of Comus is typical of the whole mask,-slow moving, only slightly dramatic, charmingly conceived, beautifully worded, -poetry carelessly wearing the drama's robe but not assuming the drama's functions.

One other situation may be discussed briefly,—the Lady has been freed from the power of Comus and released from her fixed and motionless' position, through the several efforts of the Brothers, the Attendant Spirit, and the nymph Sabrina. But although she had with splendid moral and intellectual power resisted the enticements of Comus, the Lady has now lapsed into a mere puppet without a word to say in the rest of the mask. A long speech of gratitude would undoubtedly be tedious at this point in the plot, but from the dramatic point of view, the Lady's utter silence seems an inadequate treatment of the situation.* But the mask comes the more

* The formal opening speech, or prologue, is often, however, a satisfying part of Greek drama, which, owing to the continuous presence of the chorus later, needed an opportunity to present compactly things that could not readily be uttered in the presence of the chorus.

† Comus, 942-3, suggests a reason, which, however, is not adequate.

readily to its cheerful end, and who has noticedmuch less lamented-the strange reticence of her whose words a short minute before even Comus had felt were set off by some superior power'?

SAMSON AGONISTES.

The dramatic structure of Samson Agonistes, imitating, as it does, the structure of a Greek drama, is necessarily severer and compacter, though not necessarily more complicated, than that of Comus. And inasmuch as, quite apart from the subjectmatter, a Greek tragedy is a far more serious form of art than is a mask, the standard of constructive technique that Milton has set for himself is perforce a high one; and it makes more difference if he does not attain it, both in general plan and in detail. That the main situation as it stands in Milton's general conception is ample and lofty enough to meet the needs of the form, there can be no real doubt. The magnitude of the issue, the depth of the suffering, the strength and sweep of the passion,— these are qualities that both in seriousness and importance fitly place Samson Agonistes in a form of art that gave adequate scope to the genius of Sophocles. Of course, the immense difference will always remain, that to the Greek tragic dramatists the choral tragedy was a practicable art,—the dramas were written to be acted,-while to Milton the form was one of past greatness, not, save in a

spiritual sense, a form of present dramatic possibilities.

Practically, such a difference works out in this way those who wrote when the art flourished accommodated their work to what had to be; reconstructors of an antique form accommodate their work to their notions of what must have been. Almost inevitably in the re-creation, the vitality of the form itself is impaired, although the vitality of the underlying spirit may not essentially suffer. The mechanical points in the form may be observed, but the stimulus that a living form gives is lacking. In imitating the virtues of a bygone species, an artist uses no small part of his energy in the mere adherence to rule, in the avoidance of faults; the very nature of the case prohibits him from attempting that supreme thing in literary creation, the invention of new possibilities in the form of expression he happens to be using. To attempt more than imitation with the form, without the possibility of practical test of its efficiency, is to direct one's force into the air. And this, therefore, makes one's particular success lie in some one else's formula, and not in one's own. Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, each made the mere form he used do more for him than it had done for others; at best, Milton in Samson Agonistes could only imitate the best form that some one else had established. It is safe to say, then, that a perfect poise of great thought and great form may hardly

be looked for in any reconstruction. The spontaneity of the living form is absent, and even wonderful dexterity of an imitative kind cannot give to the world the best that a creative genius has to utter.

*

There is, perhaps, but one exception to this general proposition, and that is when a great artist makes subjective self expression his essential theme, and yet wishes to veil his expression, for fear its literal meaning be too widely and too dangerously apprehended; and hence uses a past form, half symbolically, rather than a present or a new form. In such a case the effort of the artist is partly to say a thing indirectly, and therefore that

*The personal interest that the reader of Samson Agonistes feels in its author is peculiarly great. No one who knows the essential facts of Milton's life can fail to feel the deep likeness, as well as the superficial resemblance, between the latter days of Samson and of Milton, blind among enemies.' The episode of Dalila, too, albeit in a much less edifying way, recalls vividly Milton's unfortunate first marriage. This personal interest, however, should not be allowed to make an allegory of the drama, although here and there a passage has a double meaning. Nor on the other hand should this personal element be ignored. The simple fact is that the poet chose a subject that in itself called for the expression of the deepest personal emotions he himself had experienced; and in writing of them, therefore, he spoke with unmistakable passion. The drama is the better for it, and our appreciation not less because we know the secret. In a word, without regarding Samson Agonistes as something written to elucidate Milton's life, we may think of Milton's life as elucidating his drama,