IV. THE TRAGEDIES—;II

I live now but to pardon and make peace,I am a mother.

Technically, the drama must, of course, be considered as a chronicle-play; and this cancels a criticism which might otherwise hold, that the end of the play, when Mary gives herself up and Bothwell flees, is weak. But the five acts go with a swing till that point is reached, and the energy of movement gets into the verse. That is often vehement to the measure of the vehement passions it expresses; and the relief of a character like Lethington, ironical, subtle, sceptical of the whole world but the innocence of his queen, is proportioned to the emotional intensity of the play as a whole. Bothwell is a finely contrasted study, compelling our belief in his lawless force, and in his mere physical reaction to Mary’s influence. His psychology, true as hers, chimes responsive to the masculine instinct of resentment in moments of mental crisis: when passion pulls fate down upon him, he is, in his angry conviction, the wronged one, and wrongedby the woman. Thus Mary, to him, is a temptress love,

The infamous soft creature with her sighs,Her innocence and wonder!

and he has been damned by her love. There is a scene between Bothwell and his wife, Jane Gordon, which is good in itself for its dramatic truth and its utility in the action, but which has the further interest of revealing the Queen as she looks through such different eyes. In Mary’s womanhood, seen thus from perhaps a dozen different angles, there is in truth an “infinite variety,” no gusty variation on the single theme of passion.

In Act III, Scene 2, Jane Gordon has consented to release Bothwell from his marriage with her, so that he may win the Queen:

Bothwell.It is a desperate scheme!How cold, and yet how kindly, are your eyes.I never hate you—;her I often hate.Lady Bothwell.Poor lady, for you love her! I have beenMore fortunate in winning your respect.You are a gallant fellow; but too wildFor the great fireside virtues....

Bothwell.It is a desperate scheme!How cold, and yet how kindly, are your eyes.I never hate you—;her I often hate.

Lady Bothwell.Poor lady, for you love her! I have beenMore fortunate in winning your respect.You are a gallant fellow; but too wildFor the great fireside virtues....

Bothwell tries to make his wife divulge what are Mary’s feelings toward him:

Lady Bothwell.For her sakeI am unknitting, James, our marriage-bond;I shall not then report her. At your feetThe gown of Spanish fur I recognizeAs her own mother’s wear. She loved her mother;She would not part with that except to oneShe trusted with a child’s simplicity.Prove worthy of her faith.[Exit.

. . . . .

Bothwell.Fie, this womanLeaves me with branded cheeks. To bid herpack; To break up house, to get myself divorcedFrom one so noble and so tolerantJust for a giddy hope!—;Ho, Paris,put This trumpery away. [Kicking the Spanish fur.]I must to-morrowBetimes conduct the queento Callander.Act III, Scene 2

Contrast the way in which Lethington—;scholar, wit, and statesman—;reacts to Mary’s character. There is a scene with him when the Queen is in the deepest gulf, her courage broken by treachery, her love for Bothwell humiliated, her life so netted in intrigue that she is helpless and despairing. With almost every soul about her counsels proved false, she still believes in Lethington, and he is in truth her friend. But he, with his itch for policy, had given his support long ago to the Bothwellconspiracy against Darnley, believing in good faith that it might help the Queen. Now the Bothwell marriage has proved disastrous: the people are in revolt, and Mary is accused of hideous crimes that she cannot refute. She turns for advice to the one man whose wisdom and whose honour she believes that she can trust; and Bothwell, enraged and brutally jealous, breaks upon their conference:

Bothwell.... Since you thwart meAnd magnify this pard—;I will unfoldThe smooth and cowardly creature you esteem.This man heard Morton promise me your hand,And to and fro he journeyed prosperingMy heady plans; he is the sorcererTo lure your mates to death, one after one;He sits, and sees them drop away from you,But yet he meddles not. Now chat together;He will advise you how you may entoilA second victim. I will leave you now. [Exit.Queen.To think that you were with me at Dunbar!Lethington.You saved my life.Queen[looking toward the door]. He cannot be a king;They wither, or are murdered, or grow madWho link themselves with me in sovereignty.Twilight and ruin settle on us both!Oh, might we be forgotten; could we lieIn the blank pardon of oblivion! That,Alack, can never be; there is no manCan give me safety, or protection, orPeace from vicissitude; I have no lover,Servant or friend; and yet I am belovedEven to marvel. I can pray no more,I have no more dependence upon God;And none on any of His creatures, none.Go, tell my story as you learnt it, addNew matter. If I sat beside the fireIn prison with my maids, and never spoke,While you put forth fresh libels, or confirmedThe common talk, you could not injure me:My silence would have privilege.. . . . .Lethington.LibellersAre sure of popularity. My brainTreasures a rare, untarnished miniature.With that I shall not part. [She gazes at him, sobbing.] Nay, pardon now,Full pardon, great, obliterating seaOf love o’erwhelm me! You have heaven’s own measure:The seventy-times-and-seven is in your eyes,Immeasurable grace....God shield you from dishonour! May He drawBlood of me, when my life has other useThan to protect your titles.Act V, Scene 3

Queen.To think that you were with me at Dunbar!

Lethington.You saved my life.

Queen[looking toward the door]. He cannot be a king;They wither, or are murdered, or grow madWho link themselves with me in sovereignty.Twilight and ruin settle on us both!Oh, might we be forgotten; could we lieIn the blank pardon of oblivion! That,Alack, can never be; there is no manCan give me safety, or protection, orPeace from vicissitude; I have no lover,Servant or friend; and yet I am belovedEven to marvel. I can pray no more,I have no more dependence upon God;And none on any of His creatures, none.Go, tell my story as you learnt it, addNew matter. If I sat beside the fireIn prison with my maids, and never spoke,While you put forth fresh libels, or confirmedThe common talk, you could not injure me:My silence would have privilege.. . . . .Lethington.LibellersAre sure of popularity. My brainTreasures a rare, untarnished miniature.With that I shall not part. [She gazes at him, sobbing.] Nay, pardon now,Full pardon, great, obliterating seaOf love o’erwhelm me! You have heaven’s own measure:The seventy-times-and-seven is in your eyes,Immeasurable grace....God shield you from dishonour! May He drawBlood of me, when my life has other useThan to protect your titles.Act V, Scene 3

MICHAEL FIELD’S second dramatic period synchronizes almost exactly with the ‘eighteen-nineties.’ That is to say, it was contemporaneous with Wilde, Beardsley, andThe Yellow Book, and belonged in time to that decadent decade which has gained its reproachful title mainly because work like that of our poet was ignored, and eyes were drawn exclusively to the swagger of a noisier set. In all that clamour there was hardly a word uttered about her, though a stray reviewer here and there tried vainly to rouse the literary world to the fact that it had in its midst a veritable dramatic poet.

The seven plays came out one by one and passed quietly into the hands of the very few—;book-lovers or poetry-lovers—;who really cared for fine work. And nothing more was heard of them or their authors. Of the noisier and naughtier set a good deal was heard; and yet it may be that in the last judgment of literary values these seven plays will go far to redeem their epoch, vicariously, from a reproach too lightly made.

This poet and her work are in truth far enough removed from decadence. A heroic temper was hers, and mental courage, rare in her day, to face and present the problems oflife. A robust and militant morality—;no less moral because it sometimes shatters indignantly a mere moral convention—;informs her drama. She did not belong to any set, and was so far from swagger that her idea of advertisement was to print at the end of her books the bad as well as the good reviews. She lived secluded in the suburb of a great town, and there she laboured, with no hope of reward, at her daily toil in the service of poetry. Nevertheless, even so far withdrawn, the spirit of the age reached her and laid its mark upon her work. And that, ultimately, is the reason why this drama of the second period reveals itself, despite a continued sense of moral and spiritual problems, as drama in which Art is the primary value. If ever artist wrought, as some devout lover, for the sake of Art, it was Michael Field in this body of work; which, though it bears no relation to the trivial contemporarycliché, “Art for Art’s sake,” will be a bulwark (in the day of reckoning that one has foreseen) to the truth underlying that cry. But perhaps that is simply because this poet, as artist,wasthe devout lover, the reckless spendthrift of herself, the tenacious, tireless, painstaking follower of a vision.

But the proximate cause of the change from the characteristics of the first period lies in thechanged conditions of the poets’ life—;that, in its turn, of course determined by their mental development. They were in many ways different people from the authors ofCallirrhoë. Six years of living, as the artist lives, and the production of nine plays and at least one book of lyrics, had re-created them. Travel had made them free of a larger world, larger not merely in physical extent. For they were avid of the best in life; and they had the taste to gather and the temper to assimilate the finest things that the old cities of the Continent could offer. But whereas their early impulse had been toward Teutonic culture (Goethe had drawn them, and the German philosophers), now it was the art and the thought of the Latin races which held sway. Visits to Italy, and art friendships there and in London: research into medieval Latin chronicles, into French and Italian history: residence in Paris and contact with the Gallic sense of form—;all helped the trend of their mind. And when they determined to leave Clifton and settle at Reigate, the act was almost symbolic. For they removed themselves into what was at once a bigger and a smaller world, the resources of the metropolis lying accessible to the deliberate limits of their social existence, much as their greater mental area now lay subject to a stricter rule.

As a consequence, these plays are different in material, in spirit, and in manner from the plays of the first period. The material comes from the subjects which were most attractive to them at the time, much of it from old Roman history and the chronicles of medieval France. In spirit the work is withdrawn from the temporary, the immediate, and the actual, and is concerned with the more permanent issues of life; and in manner the sense of form which now ruled their æsthetic has constrained them to a finer balance, a sharper definition, and a greater simplicity of structure. The cumbrous Elizabethan machinery has been scrapped; and with a more careful economy of means, the plays are compressed into smaller compass. The wearisome and often redundant fifth act has disappeared. Three acts are the rule, with a fourth as an occasional exception. There is no subdivision into scenes, the movement of each act thus flowing uninterrupted. There are fewer long speeches, fewer soliloquies: dialogue is more nervous and forcible. Fine poetry is not wanting, but it is now in smaller proportion to dramatic and psychological truth. And action goes forward at its proper pace, pushed by the emotion of the moment, and freighted only by its just weight of reflection.

As a handy label, it is convenient to classifythis drama as a Latin group. Its most prominent feature is, indeed, a Roman trilogy which the poets were engaged upon (though not exclusively) for seven years. These three plays are, in historical order,The Race of Leaves(1901),The World at Auction(1898), andJulia Domna(1903). Another Roman play, despite its title, isAttila, my Attila!(1896); and two whose subjects belong to French history and are drawn from medieval Latin chronicles areAnna Ruina(1899) andIn the Name of Time. This last was, by the evidence of letters, being worked upon as early as 1890, but it was probably not finished until much later; and one imagines that after the poets’ conversion to the Roman Church theological scruples withheld them from publishing it. It did not appear until after their death, in 1919; but it belongs, in spirit and in form, to their work of the nineties.

Anna Ruina, a Russian princess, daughter of Jaroslav, became queen to Henry I of France in the middle of the eleventh century. Henry was prompted to seek a wife in so distant a country because nearer royal houses were already allied; and the medieval popes had an uncomfortable habit of excommunicating princes who married within the forbidden degrees. His Russian wife secured him fromsuch molestation; but when, after his death, his widow married his kinsman Raoul, Conte de Valois, the pope of the moment annulled the marriage and ordered Raoul to take back his former wife—;a woman notoriously evil—;whom he had divorced. Our play is concerned with the loves of Anna and Raoul, their struggle with the Church, and the disastrous conflict between Anna’s passion and her piety which brought ruin on them both.

So much it seems necessary to premise concerning this somewhat unfamiliar story, which the poets appear to have gathered from French and Latin chroniclers who stress very quaintly Anna’s piety. One old historian thus describes her:

Icele dame pensoit plus aux choses a venir que aux choses presentes ... dont il avint qu’ele fist estorer a Senliz une Yglise en l’enor S. Vincent.

The Abbey at Senlis which she built, and in particular St Vincent’s tower, is used very effectively both as a setting for the play and as a symbol of that in Anna’s character which was deep and strong enough to defeat her love. The strength of this religious sense, and the consequent rigour of the conflict, are of course to be measured by her love; for which reason the whole first act is devoted to a vigorouspresentment of Anna, the widowed queen, mother and regent of the young king, putting off her royalty to claim Raoul’s love, and sweeping aside every obstacle in order to become his wife. It is, therefore, as no feeble puppet of the Church that she twice betrays her love to her faith at the crucial moment; for she has force, decision, independence of character. It is from something deeper than these, which also the poet is careful to indicate in the first act—;a religious instinct which lies at the roots of her nature and which is, in some of its aspects, identical with her love. Thus when, in the opening of the second act, the Pope orders her to renounce Raoul, she at first joins in his defiance, and yields only to the archbishop’s lurid prophecy of the damnation present and to come which she will bring upon Raoul. The third act finds her in retreat at the convent which she endowed, profoundly discouraged and disillusioned. She perceives her act to have been foolish and futile, of the worst cruelty to Raoul, because it has driven him back to his wife and a life of debauchery. At the command of the Church, in a kind of perverse obedience, he has taken back the repudiated Aliénor, and both have plunged into an orgy of sensuality. Stories of their abandoned living penetrate the Abbey walls, are whispered among the sisterhood, and reach Anna’s ears. They cost her remorse for her own folly, and wrath against Raoul’s infamous wife. The act opens in the convent garden on a winter afternoon. Twilight is falling rapidly, and an old nun who has been talking to Anna puts away her gardening-tools and goes into the convent. Anna, left alone in the gathering darkness, sees the gate open and the figure of a man enter. She recognizes instantly that it is Raoul; but he strides forward without knowing her.

Raoul.What are you,Crossing my pathway, like a ghost?Anna.You come?Raoul.To search this convent. Aliénor, my wife,Is here in hiding. I am come to kill her.Say where she hides.Anna.I cannot.Raoul.By all saints,You are a hypocrite. I shall discoverMy victim in your bleating flock. [He passes on.Anna.I think,Oh, I believe he does not know my voice;He passes on beyond me—;to what deed?To one most righteous, one that long agoHe should have wrought. But is it possibleThat she abides here? Ah! I recollect....I have the clew!—;My lord!Raoul[turning].And who are you?Your name? Your purpose? [Coming closer.]Well, my crystal flower,What is the part you play? Are you a Queen,My Countess, or a little temptress nun?Give me the word.Anna.Who am I—;dear, my lord,Your handmaid if you come, wronged in your honour,To punish treason. I will lead the way.But first a light.... [Stooping to kindle the lantern.] This evening in the darkA woman crept along; the chapel doorReceived her. But I have not seen her face.[Looking toward the chapel.How dark and shut!She sleeps, if she is sleeping, in a tomb....If she is sleeping.Raoul.Is the chapel locked?But you have entry. Give me up the key.Anna.Then waken her. To slay one in one’s sleepIs like a murder.Raoul.Anna, you are cold,These hands are far more icy than the keys....Some wrath is in your heart.Anna.O love, beloved,That she could so betray you! Take the light,Swift to your vengeance!Raoul.Guide me to the door....There is the siren in your voice. I falter....Say, Anna—;we are lovers, it is dark,And if I have your love that is revenge,The sweetest to my lips.Anna.Go, strike her dead.It is my swift command. Betwixt us twainThere is no secret moment while she lives.Strike swiftly, for I perish.Raoul.But lead on;It was your promise....Anna.I will look no moreUpon her face, or dead or living. Strike,With an open-dealing justice.[She turns with the lantern away.Raoul.And no light,Your will, but shifting Luna.[He disappears in the gloom.Anna.I would pray....[Facing the tower.How still and awful! I could wish the bellsWould jangle on my ear: through the open turretTwo stars at gaze, but no sharp monitor.And there is peril. Treason moves aboutSomewhere, though indistinct. Some wrong is doneThat the wide stream of starlight warns me of.What is it? [She remains looking steadily up.Raoul[returning]. But the door is barred within....I cannot enter. Quick, take up the lanternAnd light me to my work.... You will not come?... You are dazed,Staring at that high belfry. Off again!An instant, you have lost the scent, poor Lulla!What puts a woman off the scent of lifeLike this religion! [Catching her wrist.] But you shall not damn meA second time with your uncertain strengthAnd eddying virtue. Come, take the lanternAnd tremble to the doorway.[She holds the light steadily, looks in hisface, and stretches her arm as abarrier between him and the chapel.Anna.... Count of Valois,No further! I am taken unawaresIn a great sin. That woman is my foe,I am thirsting for her death.... We may not touch her.She is in sanctuary.Raoul.But I am come,An angel sent to carry her to hell;She is misplaced among the just, and ifYou would escape damnation with the damned,Light me to fling her down the great abyss.Unbar your arms.Anna.She rests beneath my roof,The tower I raised, and, as I am a Queen,Her life shall be untouched.Act III

Raoul.What are you,Crossing my pathway, like a ghost?

Anna.You come?

Raoul.To search this convent. Aliénor, my wife,Is here in hiding. I am come to kill her.Say where she hides.

Anna.I cannot.

Raoul.By all saints,You are a hypocrite. I shall discoverMy victim in your bleating flock. [He passes on.

Anna.I think,Oh, I believe he does not know my voice;He passes on beyond me—;to what deed?To one most righteous, one that long agoHe should have wrought. But is it possibleThat she abides here? Ah! I recollect....I have the clew!—;My lord!

Raoul[turning].And who are you?Your name? Your purpose? [Coming closer.]Well, my crystal flower,What is the part you play? Are you a Queen,My Countess, or a little temptress nun?Give me the word.

Anna.Who am I—;dear, my lord,Your handmaid if you come, wronged in your honour,To punish treason. I will lead the way.But first a light.... [Stooping to kindle the lantern.] This evening in the darkA woman crept along; the chapel doorReceived her. But I have not seen her face.[Looking toward the chapel.How dark and shut!She sleeps, if she is sleeping, in a tomb....If she is sleeping.

Raoul.Is the chapel locked?But you have entry. Give me up the key.

Anna.Then waken her. To slay one in one’s sleepIs like a murder.

Raoul.Anna, you are cold,These hands are far more icy than the keys....Some wrath is in your heart.

Anna.O love, beloved,That she could so betray you! Take the light,Swift to your vengeance!

Raoul.Guide me to the door....There is the siren in your voice. I falter....Say, Anna—;we are lovers, it is dark,And if I have your love that is revenge,The sweetest to my lips.

Anna.Go, strike her dead.It is my swift command. Betwixt us twainThere is no secret moment while she lives.Strike swiftly, for I perish.

Raoul.But lead on;It was your promise....

Anna.I will look no moreUpon her face, or dead or living. Strike,With an open-dealing justice.[She turns with the lantern away.Raoul.And no light,Your will, but shifting Luna.[He disappears in the gloom.Anna.I would pray....[Facing the tower.How still and awful! I could wish the bellsWould jangle on my ear: through the open turretTwo stars at gaze, but no sharp monitor.And there is peril. Treason moves aboutSomewhere, though indistinct. Some wrong is doneThat the wide stream of starlight warns me of.What is it? [She remains looking steadily up.

Raoul[returning]. But the door is barred within....I cannot enter. Quick, take up the lanternAnd light me to my work.... You will not come?... You are dazed,Staring at that high belfry. Off again!An instant, you have lost the scent, poor Lulla!What puts a woman off the scent of lifeLike this religion! [Catching her wrist.] But you shall not damn meA second time with your uncertain strengthAnd eddying virtue. Come, take the lanternAnd tremble to the doorway.[She holds the light steadily, looks in hisface, and stretches her arm as abarrier between him and the chapel.Anna.... Count of Valois,No further! I am taken unawaresIn a great sin. That woman is my foe,I am thirsting for her death.... We may not touch her.She is in sanctuary.

Raoul.But I am come,An angel sent to carry her to hell;She is misplaced among the just, and ifYou would escape damnation with the damned,Light me to fling her down the great abyss.Unbar your arms.

Anna.She rests beneath my roof,The tower I raised, and, as I am a Queen,Her life shall be untouched.Act III

In the Name of Timeis the most exciting of Michael Field’s plays, because it presents the high adventure of a soul. It is the work of her mid-career, the expression of a mature philosophy, and of fine, though not faultless, technique. It was conceived and in great part written when she was in love with life, a worshipper at the altar of her art, and—;this is the most significant condition of its being—;when she was entirely free from theological prepossession. For the play is concerned with an idea—;the greatest of all, perhaps, since it is the idea of God. Carloman, the protagonist, determines in its first lines to possessthe Great Reality; and the drama follows him through one avenue after another of baffled quest until, dying in a prison, he murmurs his latest creed:

... I for myselfDrink deep to life here in my prison cell.Fellowship, pleasure,These are the treasure—;So, I believe, so, in the name of Time....

One sees why, after the poets became Roman Catholics, they hesitated to publish this work; for the protagonist is that Carloman (son of Charles Martel, King of the Franks to A.D. 741) who renounced a kingdom for the monastic life. But in Michael Field’s presentation of him he is no submissive son of the Church. He has the independence and audacity of intellect of the poets themselves at this period; and he is the absolute visionary which they were capable of being and sometimes were. Nevertheless theplay is not a polemic; and though it is vastly interesting on the speculative side, it is no philosophical treatise. It is genuine drama, and a striking example of the way in which our poets could at this stage fuse thought and form. Carloman’s spiritual adventures move us because they are enacted in human stuff; the events of his life utter his character. We see them through the renunciation of his royalty, the abandonment of his faithless wife and their child, the first convent life and its disillusion, the craving for freedom and the reawakening of ambition, the journey to Rome and dismissal to a second monastery, the revolt against bondage, the escape and armed rebellion against the Pope, the return to his home and his now prostituted wife, his recapture, imprisonment, and death. But being thus true to life, these spiritual adventures are, in their primary quest, inconclusive. For all the passion of pursuit, the vehement rejection of the outworn, the eager clutch at experience, the joyful confidence at every new turn of the road that now at last the Great Reality is in sight do but lead Carloman back to the common things of life, and only furnish him with light enough to keep a foothold in the actual world. Carloman does not find the Great Reality, though glimpses of its nature fitfully shine on him. But he discovers how to live—;that human existence to be tolerable must be sweetened by fellowship and ennobled by pleasure. Those bare elements are all that he attains; but he throws off, in the process of arriving at something so simple, hints and gleams of truth more complex and more vivid. To gather merely those flashes may do an injustice to the work as drama; but one must risk that, for its thought is at least of equal importance. And since these fragments express the character of Carloman as he passes stage after stage of his quest, it follows that they cannot be a coherent philosophy.

There is no vanity in life; life uttersUnsparing truth to us,—;there is no lineOr record in our body of her printingThat stamps a falsehood. Do not so confound,Father, life’s transience and sincerity.* * *The thing to doIs simply just the sole thing to be done.* * *There should have been no tears, no taking leave,A freeman can do anything he will.* * *Oh, do not put your trust in Time;Put on at onceforever, leap to God!Have done with age and death and faltering friends,Assailing circumstance, the change of frontThat one is always meeting in oneself,The plans and vacillations—;let them go!And you will put on immortalityAs simply as a vesture.* * *Heaven detestsA beggar’s whining. God is made for Kings,Who need no favours, come to Him for nothingExcept Himself.* * *We must escapeFrom anything that is become a bond,No matter who has forged the chain—;ourselves,An enemy, a friend: and this escape,This readjustment is the penitence....* * *But there is no such thing—;A vow! As well respect the case that sheathesThe chrysalis, when the live creature stirs!We make these fetters for ourselves, and thenWe grow and burst them. It is clear no manCan so forecast the changes of his courseThat he can promiseso I will remain,Such, and no other. Words like these are strawsThe current plays with as it moves along.* * *... You cannot see that TimeIs God’s own movement, all that He can doBetween the day a man is born and dies.... Think what the vines would beIf they were glued forever, and one monthGave them a law—;the richness that would cease,The flower, the shade, the ripening. We are men,With fourscore years for season, and we alterSo exquisitely often on our wayTo harvest and the end.* * *It never is too late for any seeing,For any recognition we are wrong.* * *Earth’s wisdom will beginWhen all relationships are put away,With their dull pack of duties, and we lookCurious, benignant, with a great compassionInto each other’s lives.* * *Pepin.And are you not a rebel?Carloman.I am, I am, because I am alive—;And not a slave who sleeps through Time, unableTo share its agitation.* * *The God I worship. He is justto-day—;Not dreaming of the future,—;in itself,Breath after breath divine! Oh, He becomes!He cannot be of yesterday, for youthCould not then walk beside Him, and the youngMust walk with God: and He is most aliveWherever life is of each living thing.To-morrow and to-morrow,—;those to-daysOf unborn generations.

Carloman.I am, I am, because I am alive—;And not a slave who sleeps through Time, unableTo share its agitation.* * *The God I worship. He is justto-day—;Not dreaming of the future,—;in itself,Breath after breath divine! Oh, He becomes!He cannot be of yesterday, for youthCould not then walk beside Him, and the youngMust walk with God: and He is most aliveWherever life is of each living thing.To-morrow and to-morrow,—;those to-daysOf unborn generations.

The Roman trilogy dramatizes the epoch in which the decline of the Empire began, andcovers, in the period from A.D. 180 to 212, the disastrous reigns of Commodus, of Didius Julianus, and the co-emperors Caracalla and Geta. The interlude of Pertinax and his heroic effort to stop the downward movement is not treated, except that his assassination is the starting-point ofThe World at Auction; and the military adventures of Septimius Severus offered the poets no suitable material. The three plays have not, therefore, a common protagonist: royal persons were killed off too quickly to be of service in this respect. But there is, nevertheless, a real bond between the three plays in the idea of the State; and there are physical links in certain persons of the drama. Thus Marcia, the noble Christian slave who was so closely associated with Commodus that her figure appears engraved with his on certain coins of the period, plays a very important part in the two first tragedies, with Eclectus her lover. Fadilla, sister to Commodus, and Pylades, a Greek dancer and pantomime, appear in all three plays—;Pylades giving the poets a welcome opportunity to present the character of artist that they always delighted in.

The first play of the trilogy,The Race of Leaves, is concerned simply with the downfall of Commodus. There is, of course, no deliberate presentation of a problem in any of theseplays of the second period, though a problem of some sort is implicit in every one. It is not, in the trilogy, capable of statement as one clear force fighting another to a single issue; but as the complex, fluctuating, diverse elements of the epoch, making for conflict of morals, of religion, of class, of political and Imperial interests. And if it be protested that that is altogether too vague and abstract as a motive for drama, the reply is, of course, that it is by no means presented as theory. It is wrought into the persons of the drama and impels them. Imagination has so possessed itself of the historical situation that what was rotten in the State has crept insidiously into the life of the play, which goes to its tragic end in consequence.

It would be a fascinating study, illuminative of the different mental processes of the historian and the poet, to compare, throughout the trilogy, what Gibbon made of the same materials. One must not be beguiled far along that path; but in respect of Commodus, he is for Gibbon (and, of course, the evidence supports his judgment) an unnatural monster with “every sentiment of virtue and humanity extinct.” Which is to say that the historian has collated the facts and fitted them together into a certain pattern. The poet has done more than that. She has absorbed the spirit of the time;she has penetrated to the very soul of each of the persons of her drama, and that sympathetically: she hasfeltnot only their individual reaction to the forces of their age of transition, but the subtle, disintegrating influence of the age itself.

Hence no rigid datum is postulated, even about Commodus. We see him, through the action of the play, in the process of becoming what he was. We see how and why he became a creature so abandoned to lust and cruelty that Marcia, a Christian and his loyal friend, could yet bring herself to mix for him the poison-cup. We see the whole desperate business already implicit in his origins: not, as Gibbon somewhat mechanically saw it, from the partiality of Marcus Aurelius for his beautiful young son, but from the elements in Commodus of Faustina’s amoral nature, and his reaction from his father’s stoical austerity. Thus we find Fadilla, in Act I, speaking to her sister Lucilla of their father:

Philosophy,That smiles on life, till life is made ashamed,And sunders from each end for which it throbs,Praise, glory, pleasure, how should it directYouth through its awful rapine? By the godsMarcus is held as good and our fair motherAs evil ... yet our father poisoned lifeIn each of us from childhood, for his voiceWithered illusion, and our urgent youthTo him was nothingness, to us a lieThat could not prove the truth it made us feel.He spoke of us as leaves within a wind,Leaves shaken diversely: and so we are,Unhappy children!

There are indicated in Commodus from the beginning the portents of what he afterward became; but there are also spiritual graces (his love for Marcia, his love for his sister Lucilla, and his faith in Cleander) which hold him to humanity and reasonableness. But the seed comes to its fruit through the logic of events: the grace and sweetness of humanity wither as, one by one, those whom he loved and trusted prove traitors. His deepest affection had been for Lucilla, and her plot to murder him shakes him to the soul. But he cannot bring himself to sentence her, and it is only under the shock of another perfidy that he is hardened sufficiently to order her death. That act is the spiritual crisis of his life, for in committing it he sins against the last ray of light left in him. When Cleander is revealed as a traitor, and Commodus rushes out to destroy his sister, he does in fact compass his own destruction, both moral and physical. The scene occurs in Act II, and I quote it for the reason that it is the crucial incident of the drama. But the rightness of itspsychology steadily wins the mind as one perceives how the memory of Lucilla’s crime works in him at first to reject the warning of Marcia and Fadilla because they are women; the reaction to pity after he has condemned Cleander; his revulsion to hatred of Marcia because she brings evil tidings and comes in ugly clothing; the swift change when he appeals to her sympathy; his turning to perverse rage again when she cannot weep with him for the traitor, and he rushes out to sentence Lucilla—;this, finally, in order to avenge himself on Marcia because she had begged him to spare his sister.

Fadilla and Marcia have broken upon his revels, dressed in mourning as a sign of their ominous news, and Commodus has commanded them to speak at once, on pain of death:

Marcia.’Tis you must die,My lord, unless—;[to Fadilla]—;but tell him, Princess, all.He will believe a lady of his blood.Tell him of ruin, tell him he has lostThe Roman people, tell him he has lostThe moiety of his guard, that he must dreadFrom his own subjects what could never chanceBy hand of barbarous nation.Eclectus.All is lost;Your Guard is broken; you are now defenceless,And on the brink of slaughter....Fadilla.Outside these walls a fiery hatred marshalsThe citizens. They have a single shoutOf hunger after justice, and one nameFor all they hate—;Cleander. Every voiceDemands his head.Commodus.An execrable plot!I cannot listen any more to words;They are the language of conspirators.[To Marcia.] But you have put your beauty quite away,Made yourself hideous, distasteful. ThereAgain I catch design; my sister too—;Cleander smote her lover. Envious, Ha!That was Lucilla’s keynote. Agony!I will not give him up.Marcia.He is a traitor.I say this in Truth’s name.Commodus.And through your eyesI look as to the bottom of the well.Marcia, come nearer! You are deadly sure ...?Marcia.Eclectus!Commodus.No, swear to me by your eyes....Marcia.Cleander is a traitor. He has broughtA host together, he has armed your peopleTo strike you dead unless you quell this strife:He fraudulently bore the public grainTo private granaries, till famine raged,And still it rages on. Although I trembleTo move you with the sorrow worst to manOf finding falsehood in the servicesThat fashioned every day, I, who must dieSo soon beside you, yet proclaim with RomeCleander is a traitor.[She gazes into his eyes.Commodus.So you doom him,So! Woman, how I hate you. From his youthWhen every office nearest to myselfWas his, and he familiar with my pleasures,My needs, my health, my privacy, my sleep,Even then he was a traitor? All must endIf such a hollow, such inanityGape round me as existence.[Re-enter Cleander.... Let him die!Cleander.... The cup!Commodus.He promised meTo bring it. It is brought. A poison-bowl!Drink, drink, Cleander; pledge me![Cleander drops the cup and crouches at his feet.Cleander.I am lost,Crushed by your sudden anger. Could I drink?’Twas an oblation. Are you not a god,And through my service? Dare you cast me off?Dare you discard such deep fidelity?Gods do not so desert.Eclectus.You are condemned.The crowd impatient.Cleander.Master, by our youth,By all my fond devotion.... If I erred,It was for you. I twisted circumstanceFor you, I stole, I lied....Marcia[calling].Laetus!Cleander.Her voice—;The harlot, my accuser!Marcia.Laetus! [Laetus enters with soldiers.Commodus.TakeYour victim, offer him![Cleander is dragged away. Commodus wrapshis face in his mantle.I shut my ears.Truly I am a god; ’tis on this wiseThe gods abandon, deaf to circumstance.You cannot rate him. Why, he kept my rooms:A little Phrygian slave, the cryer offered,They bought him for me, and he jigged a danceOf the mountain-loving Mother the first nightHe placed my pillow. Marcia, cling to me!Marcia.My lord!Commodus.Cling, cling as to a drowning man.O Veritas, I loved him. Do not weep.[A distant cry and shouts are heard.For me, I must. A ghost cries after me;And at the little bloodless Hades-moanMy heart grows soft.Marcia.Oh, steel yourself. CleanderHas fallen justly.Commodus.So you will not weep!He shall have justice in the Shadow-land.Some parchment—;Quick!—;[Exit.Fadilla.What moves him?Marcia.Something moves,Something! When men rise restless from their tearsOne must not ask their errand....[Re-enter Commodus.. . . . .Commodus[to Pylades]. Bear this sentenceForth to the hall, to Laetus. It condemnsOne I found wholly guilty: she must die.Fadilla.Gods, ’tis Lucilla!Commodus.Bear the sentence, beauty....Ah, Marcia, this is well; you do not move.Marcia.How could I?Commodus.What a rigid ugliness you stand. I hate you.

Eclectus.All is lost;Your Guard is broken; you are now defenceless,And on the brink of slaughter....

Fadilla.Outside these walls a fiery hatred marshalsThe citizens. They have a single shoutOf hunger after justice, and one nameFor all they hate—;Cleander. Every voiceDemands his head.

Commodus.An execrable plot!I cannot listen any more to words;They are the language of conspirators.[To Marcia.] But you have put your beauty quite away,Made yourself hideous, distasteful. ThereAgain I catch design; my sister too—;Cleander smote her lover. Envious, Ha!That was Lucilla’s keynote. Agony!I will not give him up.

Marcia.He is a traitor.I say this in Truth’s name.

Commodus.And through your eyesI look as to the bottom of the well.Marcia, come nearer! You are deadly sure ...?

Marcia.Eclectus!

Commodus.No, swear to me by your eyes....

Marcia.Cleander is a traitor. He has broughtA host together, he has armed your peopleTo strike you dead unless you quell this strife:He fraudulently bore the public grainTo private granaries, till famine raged,And still it rages on. Although I trembleTo move you with the sorrow worst to manOf finding falsehood in the servicesThat fashioned every day, I, who must dieSo soon beside you, yet proclaim with RomeCleander is a traitor.[She gazes into his eyes.

Commodus.So you doom him,So! Woman, how I hate you. From his youthWhen every office nearest to myselfWas his, and he familiar with my pleasures,My needs, my health, my privacy, my sleep,Even then he was a traitor? All must endIf such a hollow, such inanityGape round me as existence.[Re-enter Cleander.... Let him die!

Cleander.... The cup!

Commodus.He promised meTo bring it. It is brought. A poison-bowl!Drink, drink, Cleander; pledge me![Cleander drops the cup and crouches at his feet.Cleander.I am lost,Crushed by your sudden anger. Could I drink?’Twas an oblation. Are you not a god,And through my service? Dare you cast me off?Dare you discard such deep fidelity?Gods do not so desert.

Eclectus.You are condemned.The crowd impatient.

Cleander.Master, by our youth,By all my fond devotion.... If I erred,It was for you. I twisted circumstanceFor you, I stole, I lied....

Marcia[calling].Laetus!

Cleander.Her voice—;The harlot, my accuser!

Marcia.Laetus! [Laetus enters with soldiers.

Commodus.TakeYour victim, offer him![Cleander is dragged away. Commodus wrapshis face in his mantle.I shut my ears.Truly I am a god; ’tis on this wiseThe gods abandon, deaf to circumstance.You cannot rate him. Why, he kept my rooms:A little Phrygian slave, the cryer offered,They bought him for me, and he jigged a danceOf the mountain-loving Mother the first nightHe placed my pillow. Marcia, cling to me!

Marcia.My lord!

Commodus.Cling, cling as to a drowning man.O Veritas, I loved him. Do not weep.[A distant cry and shouts are heard.For me, I must. A ghost cries after me;And at the little bloodless Hades-moanMy heart grows soft.

Marcia.Oh, steel yourself. CleanderHas fallen justly.

Commodus.So you will not weep!He shall have justice in the Shadow-land.Some parchment—;Quick!—;[Exit.

Fadilla.What moves him?

Marcia.Something moves,Something! When men rise restless from their tearsOne must not ask their errand....[Re-enter Commodus.. . . . .Commodus[to Pylades]. Bear this sentenceForth to the hall, to Laetus. It condemnsOne I found wholly guilty: she must die.

Fadilla.Gods, ’tis Lucilla!

Commodus.Bear the sentence, beauty....Ah, Marcia, this is well; you do not move.

Marcia.How could I?

Commodus.What a rigid ugliness you stand. I hate you.

The World at AuctionfollowsThe Race of Leaveshistorically (though it appeared earlier) with the inglorious episode of the reign of Didius Julianus. This is he who is said to have bought the Empire with his fortune and to have paid for it with his head; and that barter is the whole plot of the drama.Julia Domnatakes up the chronicle after the death of Severus has left his sons Caracalla and Geta joint emperors. Its plot is concerned with the jealous struggle between the two brothers and its fatal issue, which all the astuteness and the passionate devotion of their mother, Julia Domna, could not avert.

Lack of space prevents one from dealing fully with these plays; and fromThe World at Auctionit is impossible to do more than quote, from the initial incident of the barter, Marcia’s protest. The Prætorian Guard has just assassinated the uncomfortably virtuous Pertinax,and the Imperial seat is vacant. We are introduced to the house of Didius, and are shown his wealth, his vanity, his weakness, and the greed and ambition of his wife and daughter; that is to say, the elements which make for his downfall. His treasurer, Abascantus, enters with the news that the Prætorians are putting Rome up for sale, and he proposes that Didius shall bid for it. Marcia interposes, horrified:

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