Chapter 5

the light and easy-souledWho shun the joyless truth in human things

to turn to more congenial pages than her tragedies. It is evident that she was concerned, thus early, with thejoyless truthwhich was to take possession—;absolute and somewhat depressing possession—;of the dramatists who came after her. Unlike them, however, by giving her truth the form of poetry she endowed it with the joyousness of art. She saw it, too, in the round: there is a largenessin her conception of it which gives her ‘intellectual drama’ greater dignity, and one would suppose greater permanence, than later ‘realistic’ work. Yet when one observes the ideas that govern some of her plays in this kind—;parental tyranny, the land question, marriage, or the conflict between an older and a newer order of civilization—;one recognizes at once the likeness to the motives of much more recent drama. Indeed, we might go further and demonstrate a rather later play—;Attila—;as an anticipation of Freud and the psycho-analysts.

The Father’s Tragedy, a play in five acts and a great many scenes, was written almost entirely by the younger of the two poets. Some parts of it were composed by her at the age of sixteen, and were in fact the means by which Michael discovered her dramatic talent. At the date of its publication (1885) Henry was only twenty-three, and it had been completed some months before. The play is, therefore, the work of a very young mind, and one is not surprised that its main feature is a vigorous and sympathetic study of youth. What does surprise one, however, is that the study of age in this struggle between a father and a son is also sympathetic; and although it is the son who is the victim of the father, the play is called, significantly, thefather’stragedy. Which is tosay that the profoundest depth of the tragedy is seen to be the moral defeat (one ought rather to say the moral annihilation) of the father. That is a conception not so youthful, perhaps, as the age of the author; just as the fierce dark strength of the drama would not appear to accord with her sex. There is something Brontesque in the sombre power of this tragedy; something too much of horror, barely relieved by two or three short scenes of hectic gaiety when the young prince has escaped temporarily to his boon companions. But only imagination of the highest kind could have conceived it.

The plot comes fromScotichroniconand the old chronicler Wyntoun, whose words are in one place almost exactly quoted. Robert III is shown to be pious, weak, superstitious, affectionate, desiring only the ‘good’ of his heir, the young Prince David, Duke of Rothsay. But David, intensely alive in his buoyant young manhood, loathes the dour ‘good’ that is forced upon him, and combats it. He has, in fact, more strength than his father, and the struggle becomes bitter and tragic only when Albany, the King’s brother, backs the King with a strength equal to David’s own, overbears the father’s weakness and perverts his affection, and eventually compasses the Prince’s death. The crisis is the enforced marriage of David to a bride whom he detests, he having been literally sold to her father as the highest bidder for a great match. He breaks into the council-chamber at the moment when the King and Albany are settling the price that the bride is to pay for him. Albany bids him be seated.

Rothsay.In the market-placeSlaves stand for sale. I will not sit; I’ll standIn purchasable shame before you allWho bargain for my manhood; stand and watchMy father sell the birthright of my flesh;Yea, stand and bear a sacrilege my youthMust damn itself to credit.King.David, peace!

King.David, peace!

. . . . .

Rothsay.Nothing gloriousIs marketable—;fame, nor love, nor deedsOf any virtue, youth nor happiness;Nothing, oh nothing, but the meanest things,Of which I am the meanest. On my soul,You drag me in the dirt, and there I’ll lieAnd dash it in your faces....Albany.Wherefore all this noiseAnd rampant passion? We would understandThe tossing cause thereof.Rothsay.Speak it! Oh no!’Twould want an old and worldly merchant, oneWho has a counting-house. I’m still a princeAbout the lips, nor know your tricks with coin,Your sales of man for woman, your low truckAnd miserable frauds. You’ve ruined me,And thrown my youth down to the bottom stepOf Pride’s high stairs. I’ll never climb again.

Albany.Wherefore all this noiseAnd rampant passion? We would understandThe tossing cause thereof.

Rothsay.Speak it! Oh no!’Twould want an old and worldly merchant, oneWho has a counting-house. I’m still a princeAbout the lips, nor know your tricks with coin,Your sales of man for woman, your low truckAnd miserable frauds. You’ve ruined me,And thrown my youth down to the bottom stepOf Pride’s high stairs. I’ll never climb again.

. . . . .

Oh, write your contract, for it joins my lifeTo snaky-headed Sin, in whose hot breastI’ll know what pleasure is. Call forth your priest—;He’s but a pander in the guise of Heaven.Let Hymen’s torches flare—;they smell of pitchAnd sulph’rous fever of contemn’d desire;Ring from your steeples—;’tis the curfew-bell;Prepare your bridal-veil—;’tis hiding night;Present your hateful bride to pulseless arms—;And Lust receives the harlot in its clasp.Act I, Scene 3

Rothsay.Oh, all the shameYou’ve struck into my being will be there,When it is opened to its secret depthBefore the Judgment seat, and lo! old menWill answer for the sins that they have doneAcross the years to those in backward Time’sMost lovely season.Act II, Scene 2

The scenes in Act IV, when Rothsay is starving to death in Falkland Castle, are vividly imagined:

Rothsay.I can only thinkOf bread, bread, bread!...... Oh, withoutAre many cornfields—;and the river! God!I scarcely can remember anythingBut the white floods, and the last scrap of meatI emptied from my wallet.

. . . . .

I ever thoughtDeath was a shadow.—;I myself am Death.I fed and never knew it: now I starve.Here is the skeleton I’ve seen in books!’Tis I—;the knarled and empty bones. Here—;Here—;The grinning dints! I thought Death anywhereBut near my life; and it is in the pithAnd centre of my body. Horrible!Act IV, Scene 2

King Robert does not know that David is dying, and the tragic irony of Scene 5 of this act is masterly. It is a wild night, and the King, crouching over the fire of a room high up in the castle, hears the wind shriek outside and thinks of his boy, whom he believes to be merely shut up like a naughty child to recover from his rage:

K. Robert.My poor lad,My David, who is fearful of the dark,Would he were here this bleak and scolding night!He used to throw a cushion on the floor,And lay him down as featly as the hound,His foolish yellow head against my knee;And so he’d laugh and chat and sing old songs,Or gaily sneer at our last grave debate,Drop sudden crude suggestions that anonOur older counsel ripened into act;Until for some light word I’d give rebuke,When either with a peal of railleryHe’d toss me back a penitent bright face,Or with a shaded humour spring apart,No place from me too far. Good Albany,You would not have our Rothsay longer shutIn such grim-tempered darkness?Act IV, Scene 5

William Rufus(1885), a full-dress drama of five acts, is without a woman character. It is based on Freeman’s history of Rufus, and was suggested to the poet, as she explains in the preface, by a visit to the New Forest. There she found the stone which marks the spot where Rufus fell, pierced by an arrow glancing from an oak, “as if directed,” to use her own phrase, “by Nature’s anger at the destruction of her food-bearing fields for the insolence of pleasure.”

So there, again, peeps out the ulterior motive. The idea of the play is explicitly to be the land question; and that it had, in fact, a political bearing is confirmed by the poet’s letters on the subject. Yet one is glad to discover, as we quickly do, that here as elsewhere in her intellectual drama Michael Field has been better than her creed: her dramatic instinct has subdued the idea to itself. So that, if we had no other evidence than that of the play, we should be convinced that the idea grew out of the theme, and was not imposed upon it. It was never a case of the poets’ exclaiming, “Go to, we will write a problem-play!” but rather of a sudden perception, in their travels or their reading, “What a subject for drama!” and then, as an afterthought, “And see what profound significance!” But as a fact all the evidence points in the same direction: a character would arrest them, they would be attracted by its story, would absorb themselves in the study of it, and become literally possessed by it—;working out the implicit idea as something subsidiary.

In this play the idea is completely assimilated to imagination. There is no bald presentation of it on the plane of everyday existence, for that surely is a function of comedy. And though the King’s cruelty in appropriating the peasants’ land is shown in its effect upon the lives of individuals, a larger vision of the problem is presented in the figure of one old man, Beowulf, who is, as it were, the wronged spirit of the Earth in human shape. In him the idea is made both concrete and spiritual, as the genius of poetry can make it. He is a very real, rough-hewn old countryman, with a vigorous part in the movement of the drama;and yet there is a touch upon him that is weird and supernatural, which relates him to fierce elemental forces and makes him at one and the same time a rustic and an avenging deity. He is blind; his eyes were put out long ago for trespass; and he feels his way to the gallows where the body of his grandson has now been hanged for killing a deer:

Beowulf.I feel it’s here; I have no need to see.I’m glad they murdered him, not made him dark;For now he’s dead the Earth will think on himAs she unweaves his body bit by bit.She’ll have time like the women-folk at workTo turn all over in her mind, and getHis wrongs by heart.... Who is here?Wilfrith.Wilfrith! I often come to pray for him!...Beowulf.Pray! Pray! Are you a wench to chatter so?Does not your tongue grow rigid in your head,A corpse to bear that silence company?Have you no death in you? Oh, say your prayers;I will keep mourning in my ruined earsThe passing of his voice.Act II, Scene 1

Wilfrith.Wilfrith! I often come to pray for him!...

Beowulf.Pray! Pray! Are you a wench to chatter so?Does not your tongue grow rigid in your head,A corpse to bear that silence company?Have you no death in you? Oh, say your prayers;I will keep mourning in my ruined earsThe passing of his voice.Act II, Scene 1

Beowulf.Do you think the Earth’s a thing that makes your fleshSoft for the worms?—;the harvests lie asleepUpon her bosom; she has reared the spring;The seasons are her change of countenance;She lives, and now for many thousand yearsHath ruled the toiling and the rest of men.... She’ll judge.Old Man.Do thou make known this matter to the Lord;He will avenge.Beowulf.The Lord! Oh, He’s above!There’s something lying at the roots of thingsI burrow for.Act IV, Scene 1

Old Man.Do thou make known this matter to the Lord;He will avenge.

Beowulf.The Lord! Oh, He’s above!There’s something lying at the roots of thingsI burrow for.Act IV, Scene 1

Beowulf[his last speech, after Rufus has beenkilled]. Yea, bear him through the woods like a gashed boar,Present him dripping to your angry God;He may not be implacable. In hasteCloak the foul thing beneath the minster tower;Heap soil on him....... There are wormsAbout his darkness; I am satisfied.End of Act V

The people of this drama are vigorous creatures, as sharply drawn and clear-cut as types, but very far from the merely typical. The poet has created, and not constructed, them; and each one possesses his own soul. Rufus is a credible villain, a man and not a monster. He can melt at the sight of filial piety, unbend to a jest, warm to affection. Anselm may standas a figure which shall represent the insulted Church, but he is a very holy and gentle old priest. Philosopher and saint, he was, of course, historically studied; but he is, despite verisimilitude, an almost complete embodiment of the two qualities of our poet’s mind which make so rare a combination—;her religious temper and her philosophic intellect. Two short quotations from him may help to illustrate this:

Anselm.God gives His bread to children who are sweetWith golden faith; to thinkers and to menOf striving reason He presents a stone.. . . . .Faith is the child’s gift, and PhilosophyThe man’s achievement. Blessèd toil, to walkWhere babes are carried past on angel-wings.... It is PhilosophyThat knocks at Heaven’s gate: Faith finds the doorWide open.Act II, Scene 2

But of all the characters, one supposes Leofric to have engaged the poets’ affection most. He is a ‘mason’: which is to say he is the architect, sculptor, and builder all in one who was the medieval artist. It is evident that the poets had particular joy in imagining him, absorbed and happy in his real world of art, with the actual world as mere stuff for hismodelling. If Leofric ever allows himself to be disturbed by the King’s greedy inroads, it is from no ‘political’ reason, but simply that the noisy hunters make such havoc of the woodland peace:

Leofric.... A horn!Methinks the forest hath another useThese precious hours of morning, when the worldIs at some process of its perfecting’Twere well to learn the trick of. Wilfrith toils,Tearing yon fibre from the ground a-sweatWith effort; while for me!—;my eyes are full;I have no want; the world is excellent;There is no prickle in the holly wrong.How bossily it clusters!... Oh do not thinkWe travel so untreasured in resourceWe needs must earn the bread of every joyBy sweat of soul. If life’s a desert—;Ah!There’s manna in the waste; it lies about,And the wise idle soul is satisfied.Act I, Scene 4

The motive ofCanute the Great(1887) presents a curious difficulty. For if we are to accept the poet’s own statement of what she meant by the play (and it does seem as if she ought to have known), then we are forced to conclude that she attempted the impossible, and therefore failed. But one has the suspicion that she didnotquite know what she meant byit—;which is not so impertinent as it sounds, and only means that her artistic instinct was stronger and truer in this case than her philosophy. For in the preface she declares that she is here dealing with the theory of evolution; and she elaborates an idea which, had it really operated as a motive force, would surely have paralysed her Muse and struck it dumb. Canute, however, is no paralytic: on the contrary, he has his creator’s vehement life and passion, at least for the first half of the drama. But in those scenes he is far enough from any abstract theory. Yet when his vitality flags, as it does sometimes, and when the play becomes, as a consequence, to that extent unsuccessful, the cause lies in a certain resemblance which the theme does bear to the poet’s definition of it. For it is possible to regard the character of Canute in the abstract as a transition between two ages and a link between two orders of civilization. That is, of course, the meaning which the poet saw in it—;when she was writing her preface. But in the process of making the drama the wise æsthetic impulse seized and worked upon something simpler, more definite, and more moving—;the potential conflict that exists everywhere and always among human creatures between their instincts and their reason. That, surely, is a tragic motive ofuniversal validity; and it may precipitate at any moment, and at any stage of civilization, the revolt of the half-tamed instincts which is true stuff of tragedy, whether it be enacted within the small orbit of an individual soul or in the insane immensity of a world-war. So long as Canute is at grips with the rebel powers—;dramatized in his struggle with Edmund—;he is a great dramatic figure; but when his creator raises the conflict—;with his penitence for Edmund’s death—;to the plane of pure thought, the life goes out of him and he becomes but a type, though a very noble one, of spiritual struggle. Even at those moments, however, one may find passages where the æsthetic sense has subdued theory to itself with fine effect. Thus the poet has touched Canute’s love for Emma with symbolism, seeing her as the gentler and riper civilization into which Canute is adopted; and again, the wild Northern land of his origin, the elements which went to the making of his race, the secret compulsive urge of heredity, are embodied in the figure of a weird prophetess who is to him his other self, the incarnate spirit of those ancient forces. The speech which follows is made by Canute when he is recalling his first meeting with Emma. There are passages with her, love-scenes between the young sea-king and the maturequeen, which are adroitly and boldly handled, and are drama in essence and in fact. But here, in a reverie, is the poet’s opportunity for putting her theory into a symbol:

Canute.... Above me bentA sweet, soft-shouldered woman, with supreme,Abashing eyes, and such maturity—;The perfect flower of years—;such June of face....So ceremonious, and yet so fearlessIn passionate grace, that I was struck with shame,And knew not where I was, nor how to speak,Confounded to the heart. She made me feelThat I was lawless and uncivilised,—;Barbarian! In all my brave arrayI shrank from her, as she had caught me strippedFor some brute pastime. Is this womanhood?There’s more to see each time one looks at her,There’s music in her; she has listened much,Pored o’er the lustrous missals, learnt how softOne speaks to God....Act I, Scene 4

Another and more powerful example of our poet’s genius for giving form to the abstract, and triumphing dramatically over a most stubborn theory, is in her creation of Gunhild, the Scandinavian prophetess. Gunhild is something more than a symbol—;though she is that, and stands for ancestry, the ancient gods, and the wild fight with nature of the barbaric order which Canute is renouncing. But she is,besides, a terrifying old witch: an ugly, clinging creature who will not be cast off. She enters to Canute just at the moment when he is thinking of Emma:

Canute [to Hardegon].Whom hast thou brought?A brooding face, with windy sea of hair,And eyes whose ample vision ebbs no moreThan waters from a fiord. I conceiveA dread of things familiar as she breathes.Gunhild.O King.Canute.Ay, Scandinavia.Gunhild.He seesHow with a country’s might I cross his door;How in me all his youth was spent, in meHis ancestors are buried; on my browsInscribed is his religion; through my framePress the great, goading forces of the waves.Canute.Art thou a woman?Gunhild.Not to thee. I amThy past.Canute.Her arms are knotted in her bosomLike ivy stems. What does she here, so fixedBefore my seat?. . . . .Gunhild.Hearken!... All eve I stoodAnd gathered in your fate. You raise your handsTo other gods, you speak another tongue,You learn strange things on which is Odin’s sealThat men should know them not, you cast the billowsBehind your back, and leap upon the horse.You love no more the North that fashioned you,The ancestors whose blood is in your heart—;These things you have forgotten.Canute.Yes.Gunhild.But theyWill have a longer memory.. . . . .... Oh, indestructibleAre the first bonds of living. Fare thee well.Thou wilt engender thine own ancestry;Nature will have her permanence.Canute.And IWill have my impulse.Gunhild.Oh, the blue fir-bough,The bird, the fern, and iris at my feet!The whole world talks of birth, it is the secretThat shudders through all sap. [Exit.Act I, Scene 4

Gunhild.O King.

Canute.Ay, Scandinavia.

Gunhild.He seesHow with a country’s might I cross his door;How in me all his youth was spent, in meHis ancestors are buried; on my browsInscribed is his religion; through my framePress the great, goading forces of the waves.

Canute.Art thou a woman?

Gunhild.Not to thee. I amThy past.

Canute.Her arms are knotted in her bosomLike ivy stems. What does she here, so fixedBefore my seat?. . . . .Gunhild.Hearken!... All eve I stoodAnd gathered in your fate. You raise your handsTo other gods, you speak another tongue,You learn strange things on which is Odin’s sealThat men should know them not, you cast the billowsBehind your back, and leap upon the horse.You love no more the North that fashioned you,The ancestors whose blood is in your heart—;These things you have forgotten.

Canute.Yes.

Gunhild.But theyWill have a longer memory.. . . . .... Oh, indestructibleAre the first bonds of living. Fare thee well.Thou wilt engender thine own ancestry;Nature will have her permanence.

Canute.And IWill have my impulse.

Gunhild.Oh, the blue fir-bough,The bird, the fern, and iris at my feet!The whole world talks of birth, it is the secretThat shudders through all sap. [Exit.Act I, Scene 4

In illustrating poetic drama, one chooses inevitably such passages as these, where poetic imagination is concentrated at high power. But they, by their nature, cannot represent the suppler and swifter dramatic qualities of this poetry. And they do no more than hint at what is, in our poet, a very great gift—;psychological insight flashing into expression as vivid and as true as itself. It is well-nigh impossible to illustrate this by quotation, because the effect is cumulative. The phrase which darts into the mind is full of what the mind already holds,but which was dark and inchoate until the flash came. One or two minor examples may be given from this play, as when Edric (conceived by the poet as entirely base) is sounding Canute on the subject of a marriage with Emma:

Canute.I have no doubtBut I shall marry.Edric.Where’s the wife to matchAn eagle of your plumage?Canute.All the worldIs full of stately women.Edric.I have seenBut one, the late king’s widow. She is primeAmong all dames.Canute.You think that you have seen her,Because you know she has a radiant skin,And strange, proud eyes!

Canute.I have no doubtBut I shall marry.

Edric.Where’s the wife to matchAn eagle of your plumage?

Canute.All the worldIs full of stately women.

Edric.I have seenBut one, the late king’s widow. She is primeAmong all dames.

Canute.You think that you have seen her,Because you know she has a radiant skin,And strange, proud eyes!

And again, when Edric asks for some message, a “sugared speech” to take to Emma:

Canute[aside].The fool!I cannot speak.—;Take her my silence, Thane.Act I, Scene 4

Canute[aside].The fool!I cannot speak.—;Take her my silence, Thane.

Act I, Scene 4

The Cup of Water, published in the same volume withCanute, is an idyll whose delicate beauty one almost fears to touch. That it too astonishingly carries a problem one would hardly guess; and even in face of the poet’s confession of the fact, and her anxiety lest the problem should be misunderstood, one woulddemur that here again her practice has been better than her precept. For these exquisite love-scenes, these magnanimous friends and lovers, and this clear greatness of thought issuing simply in noble action might bear some relation to a ‘marriage question’ in Utopia, but would have little enough to do with such a problem in the actual world. That, however, is rather a cause for rejoicing to those who can delight in the ideal beauty of the work, and who can see in its ethical audacity an innocence which only could dare to follow up so boldly a logical attack upon the conventions of morality.

The theme was adopted from a projected poem of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; but in taking it over our poet has moralized it far from its origin. The story as she tells it is concerned with the love of a young king, Almund, for a peasant-girl, his renunciation of her from motives of loyalty, and his ultimate discovery that in giving her up he has sinned against something in her and in himself which has a deeper sanction than loyalty—;that, in a word, fulfilment is a higher good than renunciation. But this he finds out too late:

Almund.I shall findAll the great years of Hell inadequateTo mourn this mighty error and defeat—;To put such gift away, and youth and manhoodStirring within me!Act III, Scene 2. . . . .Oh, we must learnTo drink life’s pleasures if we would be pure,Deep, holy draughts....Act III, Scene 2. . . . .Love, Love, Love,Without which we are made of the mere clayOf the world’s agèd floor.Act II, Scene 1

In the first scene the King and his friend Hubert have encountered Cara in the forest, and have begged of her a drink of water. She does not know them, and is unconscious that both are enchanted by her wild prettiness. She fills her cup with water, and brings it straight to Almund, though Hubert teasingly tries to intercept it; and the King desires her to serve his friend first. The merest touches put us in possession of the tragic knot—;that both of the young men love her and that she loves Almund; but that he, in the moment of realizing his passion, feels upon him the bonds of honour to his betrothed wife and loyalty to his friend. As they ride away, his mind is full of the conflict:

Almund[aside].She is mine.The water came not straighter from the earth,Than she herself to me.Hubert.You are unmindful.I vainly prate to one in reverie—;Indifferent to my fortune.Almund.May you win her!You are my friend.Hubert.I doubt not she will listen;The small, cold cheek grew ruddy. We shall wed,When you espouse your Millicent.Almund[aside]. Thus GodSevers, without the clemency of death.Act I, Scene 1

Almund[aside].She is mine.The water came not straighter from the earth,Than she herself to me.

Hubert.You are unmindful.I vainly prate to one in reverie—;Indifferent to my fortune.

Almund.May you win her!You are my friend.

Hubert.I doubt not she will listen;The small, cold cheek grew ruddy. We shall wed,When you espouse your Millicent.

Almund[aside]. Thus GodSevers, without the clemency of death.

Act I, Scene 1

Scene 2 proceeds to Hubert’s wooing of Cara, whom he seeks next day in the forest. But her thoughts are far away from him:

Hubert.Oh, now I know there isfor everTo make room for such loving.Cara.Do you thinkThat he can love like that?Hubert.You mean the king?Cara.No, not the king. My lover is a manWho tells me he is thirsty....

Hubert.Oh, now I know there isfor everTo make room for such loving.

Cara.Do you thinkThat he can love like that?

Hubert.You mean the king?

Cara.No, not the king. My lover is a manWho tells me he is thirsty....

Hubert tries to make her understand the facts: that the King is betrothed already, and that he cannot therefore love her.

Cara.... He is mine;A thief has hold of him, my own, my own,My king, my love, my love!Hubert.He never was,Never will be your love.... The king would laughTo hear you chirp such folly.Cara.It’s more wickedThan anything that’s done....And it is such a lie! The king would laugh?He had a still, grave face; I am quite sureThat he would never laugh at anythingSo terrible and sudden. Why, the oakHas a white, bony bough amid the leaves;That’s where the lightning struck. I do not laugh,I think what it must suffer ’neath the green,So scathed and ugly.Hubert.Cara, do not putSuch hatred in your eyes; if the great ladyWho loves the king—;Cara.Great ladies cannot love.You must be poor and famished to be hungry.. . . . .If you meet him,Oh, tell him I am his, a weary child,Tired out since yesterday.

Cara.... He is mine;A thief has hold of him, my own, my own,My king, my love, my love!

Hubert.He never was,Never will be your love.... The king would laughTo hear you chirp such folly.

Cara.It’s more wickedThan anything that’s done....And it is such a lie! The king would laugh?He had a still, grave face; I am quite sureThat he would never laugh at anythingSo terrible and sudden. Why, the oakHas a white, bony bough amid the leaves;That’s where the lightning struck. I do not laugh,I think what it must suffer ’neath the green,So scathed and ugly.

Hubert.Cara, do not putSuch hatred in your eyes; if the great ladyWho loves the king—;

Cara.Great ladies cannot love.You must be poor and famished to be hungry.. . . . .If you meet him,Oh, tell him I am his, a weary child,Tired out since yesterday.

[Exit Hubert mournfully.

I’ll go alongThe wood, and say it over to myself,He cannot, cannot love me; but I knowDeep in my heart he does. There was a gift—;The king had something for me in his eyes;And when he waved good-bye ... I am quitesureGod made him for me: he will come again.

The Tragic Mary(1890) returns to chronicles for its subject, and belongs to our first categoryfor that reason only. It has no specifically intellectual theme, and for its tragic motive should rather be classed in the third group of dramas, where “passions spin the plot.” Not that the poet has neglected the element of fatal circumstance in Mary’s life, nor the very intricate machinery of action in which she was involved. The incidence of political intrigue, domestic plot, and religious feud is clearly shown, and their mere data are used to carry forward the brisk movement of the play. The Marian legend is, in fact, handled boldly; some of the blackest charges against the Queen are confronted, even those on which the historian has pronounced that there is no evidence. But the whole tragedy is seen in its relation to character, with Mary as the centre and source of it, not merely because she is a beautiful queen precariously enthroned among false enemies and falser friends, but because she carries in her nature the seed of tragedy. Admirable balance is kept in picking a path through the mazy inconsistencies of the old story: neither extreme of antithetical judgment is adopted. And if Michael Field has not plucked out the heart of Mary Stuart’s mystery, she has at least brought it out of the region of the incredible. Her Mary is human: of such vivid humanity, indeed, as to draw for that reasonthe lightnings of fate. She is a richly dowered nature, capable of intense love and fierce anger and deep tenderness, free and frank to the world’s measure of indiscretion, sensitive, eager, and responsive to the world’s measure of excess; and of clemency wide enough for the silly and the cynical to ban as complaisance. She has a swift, gay temper; but underneath the flashing faults of incaution and a rapier wit there lies an innocence which is from its nature incapable of suspecting evil in others, or of calculating beforehand how her ardour and friendliness would appear to meaner eyes. She is, in short, an imperfect but large-hearted human creature; and she discovers that to be one inch greater than a small world is to draw inevitably, if not the bolts of Jove, at any rate the slings and arrows of a punier race.

It is, however, in comprehending Mary Stuart’s womanhood and its bearing upon the tragedy that this study by a woman poet may claim its proper value. No Cleopatra this: no male apprehension of femininity as sheer sex-impulse. Mary’s love of loving and of being loved is shown to be profound and instinctive, an impulse to give, to cherish, and to bless which every normal woman shares in some degree. Michael Field has seen it for the complex and subtle power it is, and not merelyas a lure to attract a lover. Raised as it is, in Mary Stuart, to the measure of her human stature—;the range of her sympathies, the keenness of her perception, her gift of understanding, the goodwill that prompts her clear intimacy of approach—;it is a power that becomes a danger in a circle which could not rise to the same height. But it was a danger primarily to herself: she was its chief victim.

“Terrible in love: no compromise between ecstasy and death,” says one of her Maries; and another, speaking of her manner to those she deems her friends, that she is “fond and familiar”; while a third declares of her sympathy and insight, “There is not a balmy nook of one’s soul undiscovered of her.” Thus, too, after she has dismissed Bothwell, indignant at his proposal of marriage so soon after Darnley’s death, her anger ebbs as she remembers hownatural it seems to hear the man’s love in his voice. And on another occasion, when she is thinking of him after Darnley has deserted her:

... It was for courtesyI stooped and let Lord Bothwell kiss my hands,For sweet to me is love in human eyes,As daylight to the world.Act III, Scene 1

One observes, too, how the feminine author has perceived the incidence of the feminineinstinct of self-accusal on Mary’s tragedy, arriving by intuition at a truth of psychology which the mental doctors declare to be invariable. To a sensitive nature that instinct will often give the colour of guilt, or will at least render disavowal impotent. Thus the ancient lie attributing complicity in Darnley’s murder credibly takes its rise in an access of remorse for an imagined sin—;as when Mary, in the shock of the news of Darnley’s death, remembers how she had once wished him such an evil fate, on the night that he murdered David Riccio:

... Heaven has creptInto my ancient thoughts, and done the deed,I, David,—;I half-prompted in my prayers,When I besought God’s pity on your soul.I am a guilty woman....Act III, Scene 7

And again, when she is thinking of Bothwell’s wooing and her growing love for him:

I never shall grow holy among men,And yet I wish them ever good, not evil,And long to give them pleasure of such portionOf wit or beauty as were made my dower.

It is significant, too, that Mary’s motherhood is seen to be a deep force in her, and therefore in the tragedy. She is found to be an instinctive mother, not only in the primaryfact of rejoicing to bear a child, but in a profound sense of the value of life and an urgent impulse to protect it. Hence the supreme villainy of David Riccio’s murder is seen by our poet to lie in the fact that he is struck down in Mary’s presence, and desperately clinging to her for help, when she is within a few weeks of the birth of her child. And this by the husband whose sacred duty was to protect her. That is perceived to be Darnley’s unpardonable sin, and it prepares for much that follows. But observe how the poet has indicated the greatness of a mother-instinct which leaps to parry even a shattering blow like this. Mary sees that she is hemmed in by plots, that her life is in danger; and she makes a swift plan to escape through the vaults of the ruined Abbey of Holyrood. But it is a daunting project:

... If I were struck stone-deadFor horror at the grim, distorted tombs;If I should bring forth a strange, spectral child,To catch the bats that flit from roof to roof,And wink at daylight! God, it shall not be!For I will nurse him royally with my soft,Wild, wayward songs, and he shall lie and laughAcross my knees, until the happy tuneDrop off into a drowse.Act I, Scene 3

There is much to illustrate this aspect ofMary’s womanhood; but one other short quotation must suffice. It is after the birth of her son, and she has forgiven and reinstated Darnley. Lethington has presented another petition to her, and she replies:

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