V. THE TRAGEDIES—;III

Rome for sale!The empire offered! Didius, do not listen;There is no verity behind this cry;The world may be possessed in many ways,It may not know its lord; but oh, believe me,It has its Cæsar; nothing alters that,No howling of a little, greedy crowd.Why should you rule this city? Have you raised itTo higher honour? Have you borne its griefs?Will it remember you?Act I

There follows a masterly passage in which Didius vacillates between the indignation of Marcia and the persuasions of his family. At length he yields to them (though still half afraid of Marcia) to the extent of sending Abascantus to bid for him; and then turns whining to Marcia:

Didius.Is Rome bought and sold?Alas, you see, she is. A purchaserIs not ashamed to trade in noblest blood,If once a state of servitude is owned.We traffic in all creatures, and, if fateAllow the traffic, we are justified.Marcia.You are forbidden; something holds you back.Rome to be bought! [Showing the city.] Look there!Didius.But if I stood,An army at my back to overwhelm,You would not interpose.Marcia.It is the strong,And they must be accoutred by the gods—;What helmets and what spears!—;who may prevailIn circumstance so awful. Dare you callThe Mighty Helpers who have fought for RomeTo aid you in this enterprise? I knowThe day will come she will bear many evils,And many kingdoms build their seat on her:But touch her with a manacle for gold!O Didius, do not dream that what is doneOf foolish men can ever come to pass;It is the Sibyls’ books that are fulfilled,The prophecies—;no doings of a crowd.They are laid by as dust. “If fate allow,”You say, “the traffic”! You may change the currentAnd passage of whole kingdoms by not knowingJust what is infamy; a common deedIt may be, nothing monstrous to the eye,And yet your children may entreat the hillsTo hide them from its terror.Act I

Marcia.You are forbidden; something holds you back.Rome to be bought! [Showing the city.] Look there!

Didius.But if I stood,An army at my back to overwhelm,You would not interpose.

Marcia.It is the strong,And they must be accoutred by the gods—;What helmets and what spears!—;who may prevailIn circumstance so awful. Dare you callThe Mighty Helpers who have fought for RomeTo aid you in this enterprise? I knowThe day will come she will bear many evils,And many kingdoms build their seat on her:But touch her with a manacle for gold!O Didius, do not dream that what is doneOf foolish men can ever come to pass;It is the Sibyls’ books that are fulfilled,The prophecies—;no doings of a crowd.They are laid by as dust. “If fate allow,”You say, “the traffic”! You may change the currentAnd passage of whole kingdoms by not knowingJust what is infamy; a common deedIt may be, nothing monstrous to the eye,And yet your children may entreat the hillsTo hide them from its terror.Act I

Julia Domna, the last of the three plays, is terrible in the fierce truth of its imagination, and contains in Act II the most powerful bit of drama that these poets have written. Once again they have taken the bare bones of history and made of them human creatures of almost appalling vitality and strength. The emperors Caracalla and Geta pursue a vague and erratic course through the scene of the historian, and a dry phrase about “fraternal discord” does not much illumine it or make it comprehensible. But the poet brings to it the light of vision, and sees in Julia Domna, their mother—;a woman of rare beauty, grace, and intelligence; able, subtle, of irresistible attraction and powerful personality—;the cause of the insane jealousy between the brothers which not only explains their career, but makes the catastrophe inevitable. And what gives this play its almost awful force is that Julia Domna, though loving deeply both her sons, herself precipitates the tragedy and brings about Geta’s murder. In this element of the drama there is a tragic irony which gets itself wrought into the mere dramaturgic irony of Act II with a total effect of great intensity. When the act begins Julia is rejoicing that she has succeeded in keeping both her sons in Rome. There had been a plan to divide the Empire and to give a separaterule in East and West to each of the two brothers; but she—;her affection mastering prudence—;had opposed it. She could not tolerate the pain of parting from Geta; and the plan was defeated. The opening conversation skilfully reveals the dangerous situation that she has thus created. Her two sons, ravenous for her favour and openly loathing each other, refuse to meet. It is only in deference to her that they consent to inhabit the same building, where they are lodged in separate suites. So long as she does not swerve a hair’s breadth from impartiality, and so long as her wit can devise means to soothe and flatter each in turn, she can hold them from violence. But secretly she is not quite impartial. For Geta, her younger son, with his sunnier and gentler nature, she has a deeper tenderness. And that betrays itself when, taking Caracalla in what seems a propitious mood, she proposes to him a reconciliation with his brother. His wrath is the more deadly in that he had felt himself, a moment earlier, alone and secure in his mother’s affection. He dissembles, and promises to make friends; but when Julia Domna goes out to bring Geta, he quickly plots to kill him. He hides soldiers behind his mother’s throne, instructs them to act upon a given signal, and when Geta enters receives him witha speech of welcome. The tragic irony of the scene is complete; Geta’s death, when it comes, is of the last horror, and his mother’s agony a thing only to be realized by a woman and expressed by a great poet.

The act is so complete a unity that to detach a part of it must necessarily do the poet an injustice. One risks taking the central passage, however, in the hope that even out of its context something may remain of the imaginative truth which sees Caracalla, lulled for the moment by his mother’s welcome, and exultantly promising her a boon, for that reason turned to fury the more vengeful when the boon that she names is begged for Geta. One may be prepossessed; one may, with the cumulative weight of the whole tragedy in one’s mind, see more in a phrase than the poets intended to put there. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that Caracalla’s answer to his mother, “Rise from your knees,” and her frightened rejoinder, “I am not kneeling,” are supreme touches, awful in their brief, pregnant, startling rightness.

Caracalla, happy to find his mother alone, has been protesting his love for her:

Caracalla.As wineI have flushed your face. Are you so weary nowAnd so dejected? But your very raimentShines in my presence and casts off a dustOf little stars.... What is the boon?Julia Domna.What boon?... I had forgot.Caracalla.But I will grant it,I must in this great prodigy of joyTo find you thus, to give you health againSimply by breathing near you. Majesty,No son, but Hercules I think in meHas pulled at Juno’s breasts again. I smackThe flavour still of those first draughts. Beloved,If you would ease my reeling brain, conferSome labour on me, some attempt; for youI would disjoint the hills.Julia Domna.Nay, of myselfAnd for myself I cannot heave a wish.Caracalla.But for your greater honour—;a fresh palace,Baths of more tempered coolness, any jewelThat the East buries....Julia Domna.... For my greater honour,And pride of glory! But there is a thing....Come to me, for you cannot understandUnless I speak it close.[She stretches her arms to Caracalla, andwhispers to him.Caracalla.Rise from your knees.Julia Domna.I am not kneeling.[Caracalla is silent. She turns away,terrified.Caracalla[with a slow smile]. But there is a powerI may myself invoke.Julia Domna[turning to him]. O Caracalla,Your daemon, the low voice of your own soul.Caracalla.You cannot name the power....

Caracalla.As wineI have flushed your face. Are you so weary nowAnd so dejected? But your very raimentShines in my presence and casts off a dustOf little stars.... What is the boon?

Julia Domna.What boon?... I had forgot.

Caracalla.But I will grant it,I must in this great prodigy of joyTo find you thus, to give you health againSimply by breathing near you. Majesty,No son, but Hercules I think in meHas pulled at Juno’s breasts again. I smackThe flavour still of those first draughts. Beloved,If you would ease my reeling brain, conferSome labour on me, some attempt; for youI would disjoint the hills.

Julia Domna.Nay, of myselfAnd for myself I cannot heave a wish.

Caracalla.But for your greater honour—;a fresh palace,Baths of more tempered coolness, any jewelThat the East buries....

Julia Domna.... For my greater honour,And pride of glory! But there is a thing....Come to me, for you cannot understandUnless I speak it close.[She stretches her arms to Caracalla, andwhispers to him.Caracalla.Rise from your knees.

Julia Domna.I am not kneeling.[Caracalla is silent. She turns away,terrified.Caracalla[with a slow smile]. But there is a powerI may myself invoke.

Julia Domna[turning to him]. O Caracalla,Your daemon, the low voice of your own soul.

Caracalla.You cannot name the power....

[After a pause, with a deep inclination.

When least you hope,Your prayer is heard. Lo, I extinguish strifeWith Geta, in your presence meet him here,Within your room; and we will give this palaceOne hearth, one board, one audience-chamber, oneGlad-smiling Lar—;for we will be as one,And rule as one. You shall embrace him evenBefore my eyes. Go, fetch him out of exile;Bring him to me.Julia Domna.If from your soul you speak....Caracalla.By Vesta’s Sacred Relics.Julia Domna.You will meet him?Caracalla.Within the hour.Julia Domna.And will become as one?Caracalla.Ay, as one son.[Julia Domna, still keeping her eyes onhim, goes out.The Syrian bitch, what guile![Calling to the soldiers in the anteroomto order the murder of Geta.Tarantus, heigh!

Julia Domna.If from your soul you speak....

Caracalla.By Vesta’s Sacred Relics.

Julia Domna.You will meet him?

Caracalla.Within the hour.

Julia Domna.And will become as one?

Caracalla.Ay, as one son.[Julia Domna, still keeping her eyes onhim, goes out.The Syrian bitch, what guile![Calling to the soldiers in the anteroomto order the murder of Geta.Tarantus, heigh!

Other Roman work of this period isStephania(1892), a trialogue dealing not very convincingly with the vengeance taken by thewife of the Roman consul Crescentius on Otto III. There is much interest and not a little beauty in this play, but no dramatic conviction. One comes, therefore, finally, toAttila, my Attila!(1896), which refuses to be passed over in complete silence, though it does not lend itself to quotation. The intellectual motive here is much more conscious than in the other plays of the group. Indeed, the play is in spirit a survival from the earlier period, and belongs to this one only in external things of matter, form, and date.

Honoria, the heroine, is described by the poets as “the new woman of the fifth century,” and the mere record of that fact is enough to indicate the nature of the problem which will be dealt with. But Michael Field did herself a greater injustice than usual in trying to define the meaning of this drama in terms which suggest a local and temporary phase. For just as neither Honoria nor the ‘new woman’ of the nineteenth century was really new and transitory, but rather a reassertion of very old and permanent things, so this play belies its preface; and instead of treating a mere ‘movement’ in a given epoch, it is found to deal with perennial human stuff.

Honoria, the little princess ofA.D.450, to whom even Gibbon was sympathetic, is nomere smasher of windows—;though she does that too in her own way, by an illicit union with a young chamberlain of the palace whom she loves against prudence and convention. She is, however, in her complete significance, something more than a rebel against convention. The poet wrought better than she knew, and gave in her Honoria a woman’s presentation of the woman’s right to love and motherhood. She had formulated the idea before, tentatively and somewhat in disguise, inThe Cup of Water; and her letters at that time amusingly reveal both trepidation lest her real meaning should be discovered, and anger at the blunderers who did not detect it. She need have had no fear: no one guessed. The time was not ripe; and now, ten years after, with the production ofAttila, it still was not ripe. It may even be that we have had to wait for the teaching of Freud to make plain all that is implied in this play. Of him the poets knew nothing; and could they have known, would have disliked intensely, as most healthy minds do, his obsession with the idea of sex. Yet they have done the poet’s work so well—;which is to say, they have observed so carefully, thought so fearlessly, and so vividly imagined—;that they have presented (without in the least intending to do so) an almost pathological study ofsuppressed instinct: one which illumines and is in its turn illuminated by the residuum of truth which does underlie the fantastic theories of the psycho-analyst.

Yet once again it is necessary to qualify an impression of too stark a problem. One repeats, therefore, that the problem, though distinct and weighty, is implicit; it grew up in the artist’s despite. Honoria is not a peg on which to hang a theory or a puppet with which to illustrate one. She is a creature of great vitality who wins our affection and our pity by her eager challenge of life and her disastrous defeat. We watch her developing from an immature and impulsive girl who follows innocently her newly awakened maternal instinct into a woman whose rich emotional power and mental strength have been thwarted by repression and perverted to an insane infatuation for the Hun king, Attila. But it follows from those elements that the chief value of the play is its psychology and not its dramatic power. The work will charm for half a dozen reasons—;its sympathy with the youthful rebel, its gem-like utterances on love, its mental courage, its penetration, its dramatic truth; but it never rises to the force of the great scenes of the trilogy.

THE last group of tragedies is that which was published from the year 1905 onward to the poets’ death—;and afterward; but it was not a product of their latest creative activity. That activity was lyrical: or, if it ventured at all into the region of tragedy (as in an unpublished piece calledIphigenia in Arsarcia) it was with tragic genius shorn and subdued by Christian hope, Christian meekness, and Christian triumph over death—;which is to say, that it was tragedy no longer.

One may not assert in round terms that, of the eleven plays in this last group, not one was written after Michael Field entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1907. But the evidence suggests that they were all conceived before that date; and although certain revision may have been done afterward to some of them, the more important plays were completed before the poets’ conversion.

After that event their minds were possessed by the exaltation of the mystic, and their days were largely occupied in devotional exercises. Obviously they were not in the mood for the objective imagining of the dramatist; and an artistic cause is thus added to the philosophic one for the suspension of dramatic impulse.

In the Name of Time, as I have elsewherestated, must be put back as far as 1890;A Question of Memorywas written and played in 1893.Deirdrein its first form was in existence years before they died, and withBorgiawould rank in style with their earlier chronicle-plays. These two belong to the last dramatic phase only in their tragic motive.Mariamnewas finished in 1905,The Accuserby January 1907, and one at least of the Tristan plays by 1903.

I have called these plays an Eastern group, because the most prominent of them are Eastern in theme—;and for another reason. But several come much nearer home for their subject. Two of them,Tristan de LeonoisandThe Tragedy of Pardon, deal with different aspects of the Tristan legend; and one treats (en fantaisie) of that great lover, Diane de Poytiers. Nevertheless, whatever the theme, all possess the characteristic which makes a second reason for describing them as Eastern—;namely, an almost Oriental violence of passion. Thus Cesare Borgia is hurled to the abyss down the immense ascent of his ambition. Deirdre’s love—;too noble for caution, too great to calculate, and too proud to dissemble—;compels catastrophe. Herod’s passion passes into a destroying madness. Ras Byzance consumes his universe in the hell of his own jealousy; and the messiah Sabbatai, distilling a cold spiritualpride, cries from its lonely central ice, “I am a god,” only to shrivel incontinently at the first touch of the world’s derision. It is as though Michael Field were consciously ruled in this last phase of her Tragic Muse by the lines from theAntigonewhich she has set upon the first page of herDeirdre, “Nothing that is vast enters into the life of man without a curse.” For it is with the vast, the excessive, the overwhelming that she deals here; and since she is a tragic poet, she sees the vast forces accompanied by their curse, and life persistently followed by its attendant shadow.

The Herodian trilogy is the clearest illustration of this, because the material has been reduced to its simplest elements. It is, too, a good example of the poet’s dramatic art in its final manner, since therein is developed almost to an extreme her compacted, elliptical method of presentation. She had from the first a gift of seizing character into expression which, though intensely poetical, was often abrupt, fragmentary, and disjointed; the swift words leaping from the cloud of passion like lightning in a night of storm, and laying bare in one instant the whole earth and sky. In these plays, and especially inQueen Mariamne, this characteristic economy is practised to an extent which sometimes almost defeats itself.

Only two plays of the trilogy were completed,Queen MariamneandThe Accuser. But neither suffers from the absence of the third; for while the first is the tragedy of Mariamne and the second the tragedy of Herod, the two together form a complete dramatic presentment of the historical figure of Herod the Great. It is a subject made for drama; and although for a century before Michael Field no great rendering of it had been made, theflairof the early seventeenth-century dramatists had unerringly tracked it down and fastened upon it. Fenton’sMariamne(a hundred years later) is a rather blustering affair, mainly occupied with intrigue and family feuds, and presenting Mariamne as an inferior kind of gramophone with a very limited number of records.

But a pleasing and significant fact about the origins of Michael Field’sQueen Mariamneis that this was the subject of the first English drama ever published by a woman. In 1613 a play appeared calledThe Tragedie of Mariam, the faire Queene of Jewry, written by that learned, vertuous and truly noble Ladie, E. C.And although there has been some question as to which of two possible individuals this “truly noble” E. C. represented, both of them were women; and it seems to have been established now that the author was certainly Lady Elizabeth Carew.Whether our poets knew of this play and its authorship does not appear: they seem to have gone straight to Josephus for their material, and to have been completely loyal to him. Indeed, so close do they keep to the historical record of their persons, that the transformation they effect is the more magical. They take the rugged facts, and breathe life into them. Thus their Mariamne grows out of history like a tree out of a bare hillside, made from the rock and rooted in it, and yet a new and living thing. She is very clearly and strongly drawn, a nature that clings with racial tenacity fast to the ties of family, and which therefore cannot forget the dead grandfather and brother who lie between herself and Herod. She does not wish to avenge them: she possesses an integrity which holds her loyal to the man her husband “who had slain her kin”; but she cannot love him, and she finds it impossible to be polite to his relatives. That intriguing Idumean set! Mariamne the Maccabee, impolitic and proud, allows herself to sneer at their Edomite origin and their creeping ways. But she will not countenance, either, the plots of her own mother; and stands alone, a noble if scornful figure, between their snarling camps.

The question as to whether Herod’s passion for Mariamne does at last win her love is onewhich attracts the modern romantic, though it was, of course, irrelevant to Josephus. To him the damning fact about her was that she permitted herself to be haughty to her husband; and Michael Field respects her original so far as to leave the question unsolved. Yet it is possible to see in a hint or two the gradual filming over, so to speak, of the wounds that Mariamne had suffered at Herod’s hands; and an appeal to his love, as to a refuge, from the spiteful, clamorous hatreds of both their families. The tentative response makes her tragedy the more poignant. But even had she loved Herod, her pride could not have borne the insult of that fatal summons to his pleasure. The Asmonean princess denied the Edomite, and, lighting up his wrath, thereby fell into the hands of those malignant enemies their relatives. These, when Herod would have annulled the death-sentence passed on her, fanned his jealousy and outraged pride, and compassed her end.

Mariamne’s death, even in the plain statement of the historian, is one of the sublime tragedies of the world. Our poet does not move a hair’s breadth from the facts, nor colour them. She was probably tempted to do so, for there is a sense in which the facts were undramatic enough to defeat her. Mariamne makes nodefence when she is accused, no protest when she is condemned; and the poignancy of her tragedy lies largely in her silence and her isolation. This pitiful loneliness is difficult to handle as drama; and the poet has been so true to the record that, after the short crucial scene at the beginning of Act V which provokes the catastrophe, Mariamne has no more to say than a single line as she goes to her execution. Yet the whole act is permeated by her personality and visibly moved by the forces that the poet has set alight in her. Thus even Salome and Herod’s mother, spying fearfully upon Herod after the sentence has been decreed, are obsessed by the thought of her:

Cypros.Do you hear him—;hear my son; his ceaseless treadingAs the creatures tread at night?Salome.I hear him, mother;He is stepping out her doom.Cypros.You hear his treading,Soft on the carpet, struck against the marble?Would she were dead, who hated him to death!. . . . .Salome.Had he but looked on her,Those mournful, sable eyes and lids in shadowUnder the pearl-laced crown, that brow in shadow,And the obdurate mouth had been a charmTo honour as to fortitude. But, mother,She strives to send no message; she is silentAs trophies or cold statues.Act V, Scene 2

Cypros.Do you hear him—;hear my son; his ceaseless treadingAs the creatures tread at night?

Salome.I hear him, mother;He is stepping out her doom.

Cypros.You hear his treading,Soft on the carpet, struck against the marble?Would she were dead, who hated him to death!. . . . .Salome.Had he but looked on her,Those mournful, sable eyes and lids in shadowUnder the pearl-laced crown, that brow in shadow,And the obdurate mouth had been a charmTo honour as to fortitude. But, mother,She strives to send no message; she is silentAs trophies or cold statues.Act V, Scene 2

Thus Herod, the first fury of his anger spent, begins to be possessed by the haunting apparition of Mariamne which will not leave him any more; and to dream, while there is yet time, of reprieve:

Herod.But there are fortresses—;Masada by the Dead Sea coast;There I could bury her as in a coffin,Each sigh of wind a death-song over her.Were not that best? A tower her monument,Yet she not dead, not out of all account,Still mortal....Unseen of living nature, but alive....With the cloud eyes of her, the silken cheek,Even the voice of rough-edged undertone,Enamouring offence. There none would love her,None! But my treasuryWould have sealed riches, not a destitute,Defaulting cave. Among the coins and jewels,Locked-up regalia and spoil—;a queen....The difference!...There in the rusty gloom accessible.The difference! I think she shall not die.Act V, Scene 2

Salome, however, has different views on the matter; and though Herod is at first strengthened in his project by her opposition to it, hereverts to the mood of vengeance when a member of the Sanhedrin comes to plead for Mariamne’s life:

Herod.My wrath is on you.Old man, I am the judge, I am the king—;There will not be a queen: I am her husband.... Go back,Far off!—;Bid those that sit and croak with youRemember how august the SanhedrinWould rule the sons of Jacob. Say the kingWill turn not from his sentence for an hour.Shemaiah.God save you!Salome.Herod—;Herod.I shall stay here, Salome; not with you,But not alone.... There is no track for sleepTo wander after me; I shall not sleep.Send Nicholas to read his History.. . . . .If I listenTo Nicholas it will be as a sea—;What men have done and suffered—;as a seaPouring upon my ears; and it will tangleImagination that it shall not raise meMy bridal chamber at Samaria,The adored head on my bosom, the young bodyLoving me close, in very oneness, fleshEven of my flesh—;our bridal a flower’s heartOf balsam, and our secrecy.... To-morrowThe people watch her to her death.Salome,Call Nicholas....I shall stay here, for dawnComes on the other side: the sunComes on the other side.Send Nicholas!

Shemaiah.God save you!

Salome.Herod—;

Herod.I shall stay here, Salome; not with you,But not alone.... There is no track for sleepTo wander after me; I shall not sleep.Send Nicholas to read his History.. . . . .If I listenTo Nicholas it will be as a sea—;What men have done and suffered—;as a seaPouring upon my ears; and it will tangleImagination that it shall not raise meMy bridal chamber at Samaria,The adored head on my bosom, the young bodyLoving me close, in very oneness, fleshEven of my flesh—;our bridal a flower’s heartOf balsam, and our secrecy.... To-morrowThe people watch her to her death.Salome,Call Nicholas....

I shall stay here, for dawnComes on the other side: the sunComes on the other side.Send Nicholas!

Of the final scene, and of the rendering of Herod’s madness after Mariamne’s execution, one can only say that history provided the poets with a magnificent opportunity and that they rose to the height of it. But it is necessary to quote at least one other passage to illustrate the progress of the plot through the development of character. Accident plays no part in the march of the story: intrigue notwithstanding, the protagonists are betrayed from within, and events proceed inevitably, like a conspiracy of life itself. Almost any scene would indicate this; but one chooses that which follows, for the further reason that it treats a well-known incident of the story, and one which reveals at once Herod’s character and the nature of his love for Mariamne. I mean, of course, the secret command which he gave on two separate occasions when starting upon a dangerous expedition, that if he should die Mariamne should be instantly killed. It is an action in which the elements of his nature are stripped bare by his frantic passion. At least, the casual eye will see nothing more in it than a savage and treacherous cruelty verging on madness. Howmuch more the poet can see need not be indicated in giving this quotation from Act II, Scene 2. Herod has returned in safety from Rome, and discovers that Joseph, who had charge of Mariamne, has betrayed to her the order to slay her in the event of Herod’s death. His jealousy immediately concludes that she has bribed Joseph by her favour:

Herod.Could he have said it of himself alone?Could he have dared so break his oath? My silence—;Was it unsealed by him?. . . . .Mariamne, so you pleaded for your life,And you prevailed. Will you not plead with me?Will you not recollect and feign againTo me, your husband, with the words you feigned,The love you feigned to love ... or was the manBeloved, who was your lover?[Mariamne stands quite still.Is this pride?You are a Maccabee, an Israelite,King Alexander’s daughter—;I of Edom,Descended from a slave of Ascalon,Not to be answered by your royal lips.[Mariamne sighs a little: then, raisingher eyes, speaks quietly.Mariamne.How was it drawn from him?As the night comes up into the evening-tide.I was sad, and he was sorrowful to deathThat he had sworn a cruelty and wrongSo unavailing to repent, if done.Spare him, lord, in belief of my clear words.[Herod gazes at her with awe, then muffleshis face in his robe, and speaks slowly.Herod.Were you so sad at dying, when to dieWas but to rise up at my bidding,Come!Was but to quicken to my cry,Receive meBack in your arms?Oh, you are slow of heart!When I was dying of the pest in Rome,And knew not I should look upon you more,Death was not cold, death glowed with Mariamne,I had prepared her welcome on that shore![She flashes one rapid glance at him.Mariamne.I will wait you on that shore, my lord the king.Herod.O my gazelle, my noble distance-keeper,Wilt thou indeed await me? Then why tarry?Mariamne.But do not cast between us any moreOne that is dead. Spare Joseph, merciful!Herod.The dead between us, Mariamne? DoeOf the high places.... How?Mariamne.My grandfather ...[He grips her wrist.[In a whisper.] My brother....Herod.Peace! Were you drowning in my arms,Your voice would sink before me so, your thoughtsWould drop bewildered so..... . . . .Mariamne.Spare Joseph, merciful!Herod.Mariamne, I would reason with you. Speak!I would question the great blood in you: a servantFalse to his oath, a soldier in accordWith foes, a sentinelWho to the nearing spy betrays the path—;Can such men live? Are they for kings to use?[She moves away, looking out over thetombs of her ancestors. He follows.Flesh of their dust, pronounce: can such men live?

Herod.O my gazelle, my noble distance-keeper,Wilt thou indeed await me? Then why tarry?

Mariamne.But do not cast between us any moreOne that is dead. Spare Joseph, merciful!

Herod.The dead between us, Mariamne? DoeOf the high places.... How?

Mariamne.My grandfather ...[He grips her wrist.[In a whisper.] My brother....

Herod.Peace! Were you drowning in my arms,Your voice would sink before me so, your thoughtsWould drop bewildered so..... . . . .Mariamne.Spare Joseph, merciful!

Herod.Mariamne, I would reason with you. Speak!I would question the great blood in you: a servantFalse to his oath, a soldier in accordWith foes, a sentinelWho to the nearing spy betrays the path—;Can such men live? Are they for kings to use?[She moves away, looking out over thetombs of her ancestors. He follows.Flesh of their dust, pronounce: can such men live?

The poets call theirBorgiaa period-play; and in its large scale, its manner of handling history, and its elaborate construction it resembles their earlier chronicle-plays rather than those of the last period. Written in six acts and a great many scenes, it has not the simplicity of design ofMariamne,A Messiah, orRas Byzance. It moves through a wider circuit, embraces many more incidents, and develops character at greater leisure. It has, of course, a complex and exacting theme; one of no less magnitude, indeed, than the Italian Renaissance, centred upon the portentous Borgia trinity—;Pope Alexander VI and his children Cesare and Lucrezia.

Nevertheless, though the full measure of the play cannot be gauged except by reference to the complexity and sheer extent of its material, the tragedy is reducible to much simpler terms. For it is as the rise and fall of Cesare Borgia that one finally sees it: his stupendous ambition dominates it; and the last and deepest impression of it is the news of his end brought to Lucrezia by his page Juanito, who had found his mangled body:

Juanito.Dawn found me tangled by the night, and cryingIn the alien, stone wilderness, a captive.They brought his arms,His sparkling arms; they questioned of the PrinceWho wore them.Lucrezia.But the moment....Juanito.Of a suddenThe foe retreated, leaving me: I reachedThe rough-hewn gorge....[Near to her and in a changed voice.He lay there, naked;He lay—;his face under the sky: his woundsA hero’s—;twenty-three; across his loinsA bloodied stone, his life-blood round the rocks,His hair a weft of red. How beautiful,And wild and out of memory was his face!The great wind swept him and the sun rose up....Act VI, Scene 3

Juanito.Dawn found me tangled by the night, and cryingIn the alien, stone wilderness, a captive.They brought his arms,His sparkling arms; they questioned of the PrinceWho wore them.

Lucrezia.But the moment....

Juanito.Of a suddenThe foe retreated, leaving me: I reachedThe rough-hewn gorge....[Near to her and in a changed voice.He lay there, naked;He lay—;his face under the sky: his woundsA hero’s—;twenty-three; across his loinsA bloodied stone, his life-blood round the rocks,His hair a weft of red. How beautiful,And wild and out of memory was his face!The great wind swept him and the sun rose up....Act VI, Scene 3

That scene is a lasting memory, as, indeed, are others to which we shall come; but the play’s the thing. The poets seem to indicate this in their sub-title, suggesting that the value of the work is its value as a whole; and bare courtesy would constrain one so to regard it. But that is not an easy thing to do. Poetic drama always draws heavily on the concentration and imaginative sympathy of its readers; and this one more than most makes that demand if one is to appreciate it fully. As tragedy—;that is, as pure art—;its appeal is direct and irresistible, and could not be escaped by the most casual person who is likely to take up a book of this kind. But the casual person will not, perhaps, perceive its other significance—;in values of history, of portraiture, of the marshalling, selecting, and grouping of facts, of the evocation of atmosphere, of what is, in short, the re-creation of a very brilliant epoch.

Take the historical aspect first. At the time the poets wrote their play the principal authorities on the subject were Gregorovius and Yriarte. The fresh data of Professor Woodward, published in 1913, and the dry light in which he presents the life of Cesare Borgia, were not accessible to them. Moreover, Yriarte, whom they seem to have chiefly followed, is now accused (in what looks to thelay mind so much like the invariable formula of successive ‘authorities’) of inaccuracy. It would not be surprising, therefore, if the poets were caught out in matters of fact or, a graver fault, in false deductions from the facts, to accord with Yriarte’s romanticism. An obvious defence would be at hand. But the truth is that there is no need to take up the cudgels for them on this score. Apart from scenes of minor importance, they have selected as the main events of their ‘plot’ incidents so well documented as the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s remorse and penitence, his complicity after the event, his support of Cesare’s schemes, his death at the crisis of Cesare’s fortunes. Thus, too, we have Lucrezia’s betrothal and marriage with Don Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglia, Cesare’s hatred of her husband, his assassination, and Lucrezia’s remarriage with Don Alfonso of Este. And for Cesare himself such established facts are taken as will conveniently serve to reveal his character; for example, his renunciation of the cardinalship, his military ambition, his marriage of policy, and his master-stroke of treachery in the betrayal of the Condottieri at Sinigaglia. Details of policy are avoided. Cesare’s campaigns, important as they are, are wisely indicated by these unmilitary authors only in their effect onhis fortunes. While as to more sinister things, rank scandal with which the air of the time was foul, a quotation will best illustrate our poets’ method of dealing with material of this kind. In Scene 4 of Act IV Cesare and the Pope, having discussed matters of weight, are reminded by a paper lying on the ground of things more trivial:

Cesare.What is this parchment?Alexander.You have read it,They told me. ’Tis the libel from TarantoSent to Savelli.Christ, we are a kindred!Carnage and rapine, perfidy....Cesare.Why mince it?Assassination, incest![Rising from the ground with clenched hands.Alexander.But the Latin!The dulcitude of apophthegm, the style!What sap in all this rankness. Cesare,I laughed an hour, applauded with wet eyes—;Literae humaniores—;so the saltOf the strong farce compelled me.Do you stoopTo anger? Consul Julius Cæsar laughedWhen choice Catullus spat an epigram,And dined him that same evening.

Cesare.What is this parchment?

Alexander.You have read it,They told me. ’Tis the libel from TarantoSent to Savelli.Christ, we are a kindred!Carnage and rapine, perfidy....

Cesare.Why mince it?Assassination, incest![Rising from the ground with clenched hands.Alexander.But the Latin!The dulcitude of apophthegm, the style!What sap in all this rankness. Cesare,I laughed an hour, applauded with wet eyes—;Literae humaniores—;so the saltOf the strong farce compelled me.Do you stoopTo anger? Consul Julius Cæsar laughedWhen choice Catullus spat an epigram,And dined him that same evening.

One does not claim exact historical accuracy for the play, of course. Certain incidents are introduced which will not be found in therecords, but which possess the essential truth of being in character; and the scenes they inspire are the fruit not of dramatic imagination alone, but of that power operating upon very great knowledge of the life of the time and the place. It is, indeed, in its re-creation of that life that the chief interest of the play resides. As scientific history it may fail the test—;though not by a very wide margin. But scientific history never yet re-created life, and perhaps one has as little right to expect from it this, the great function of art, as to expect of art a precise accuracy. Yet one may claim for Michael Field that she has achieved the re-creation with a high degree of truth to fact; and further, that the poetic truth of her creation comes surprisingly near, in its implicit judgments, the final verdict of the historian. There is, of course, no overt judgment in her work: the human spectacle holds us too fascinated, pitiful, and terrified to leave room for censure. We are not concerned to weigh the guilt of Lucrezia, allured and appalled as we are by her fatal suppleness and passivity. We are in no mood to reckon the total of Cesare’s crimes, terrified as we are at the stupendous force to which they but serve as a convenient means. And it is not our poet’s doing, but of the mere data of history, that Rodrigo Borgia, his Holiness Pope Alexander VI, pronounces inexorable judgment on himself. This he does when, stricken by the murder of his son Giovanni, Duke of Gandia, he is filled with remorse and penitence. A vision of his son in Paradise induces the softer mood:

Alexander.Poto,There was no scar on him, not the least wound;That is the truth: and he stood armed again.As bright as San Michele he looked downUpon us from the wall, his gonfalonSwathing around him as he stood. His faceWas to me as an angel’s.[He weeps quietly.] I repent,I will change all to meet that boy againIn Paradise, no wound on him, no scar.And yet the sight of him,O Poto, drove down to the rasping quickOf conscience through my heart. All shall be changed,The Vatican be cleared of sin. These bastards....Let me not see them more! Joffré, Lucrezia—;Joffré must mind his government afar,I banish him. Lucrece—;oh, I shall gatherThe seas between us; she shall dwell in Spain,Dwell in Valencia, deep, where I was born,White little demon-girl![He rises, trembling, and Poto robes him.No priest henceforwardShall hold two benefices; simonyNo more shall breed among us. God would punishSome sin in us; it could not be GiovanniDeserved a death so cruel. Gently, Poto,You are too violent.Poto.Patience, Holiness,You slit the silk.Act I, Scene 5

Poto.Patience, Holiness,You slit the silk.Act I, Scene 5

A cardinal point is the poet’s conception of her three Borgia persons as one, united by every possible tie—;of blood, of sympathy, of ambition, of deep affinity. They are devoted to each other, and vowed as one mind to the aggrandizement of Cesare. Indeed, the core of the tragedy is, astonishingly, this simple human feeling. But the affection between them might never appear, under their sinister star, as a natural family bond. It was suspect from its origin. Thus the thread which binds the play together, and might have been so clear and firm a line, wavers and slips in those slippery high places of Renaissance Italy; and, however innocent in fact, takes from so much corruption the colour of guilt. Round the three persons of her trinity Michael Field has made to revolve the vivid life of the epoch they made and were made by—;warm, coloured, gay, radically unmoral and strictly religious, sparkling with wit and gravely learned, rejoicing equally in the sensible world and the things of the intellect, adoring art and pursuing science; at once fierceand cunning, militant and politic, barbarous and polished; frivolous, worldly, and voluptuous, and yet saintly, serious, and capable of profound concentration and dogged industry.

The magnificence of the Renaissance is here—;in feasts, dances, military triumphs, and ecclesiastical pomp: in Cesare’s resplendent trappings that provoke the covert sneer at the French Court, and in Lucrezia’s countless pearls. The art of the Renaissance enters, with Pintoriccio and Michelangelo and others, to foster Cesare’s love of exquisite handicraft. Its poetry comes in the person of Cavaliere; its science in the engineering works of Leonardo; its statecraft in that astute and watchful envoy from Florence, already brooding upon hisIl Principe. And its very atmosphere clings about the scene, bright with a kind of glare, almost dazzling the spiritual sight; hot, heavy, and enervating to the moral sense. The poets were apparently well justified in calling theirBorgiaa period play.

The subject of Act I would make a complete tragedy in itself, and has in fact been so treated by other poets. Its central event is the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s sorrow and penitence, his discovery that Cesare is the murderer, and the subdual of his will to Cesare’s immense designs. In Scene 1, on the occasionof Lucrezia’s betrothal, the Duke is reported missing. Poto, the Chamberlain, suggests that he shall be searched for; and the Pope turns to the company, which includes his young mistress, Giulia, with a jesting protest:

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