R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

162 Harley Granville-Barkeraccount upon a first reading of Paracelsus. But (his owntouchy temper apart) we see his theatre as a poor schoolfor a renascent drama, too set in its methods, uninspiring,the actor and his egoisms in firm possession; hehimself, poor man, plagued on all sides, and self-plagued.The main fault, however, may have been in the nationaldisposition of the time towards a certain moral contentment,new-found creature comfort and the fire side.Great drama with its emotional stirrings and the ironyof comedy, are enemies to content; and it is not thetheatre's business to be at odds with its public, as itspublic will soon make plain.Not till Meredith was dead did anyone know—though,knowing him, it might have been guessed—that the Essayon Comedy was but the critical shadow of a creative impulse ;not till the fragments of three or four plays were foundamong other work laid aside. He had liked in his old ageto talk of plays that he might have written, might stillwrite (though he was then writing no more), had likedto scheme them at length; elaborate fantastic comedies.But these fragments he never fetched out. Well, he haddone enough not to be troubled by the thought of whathe might have done. It is for us to sigh over them a little—more than a little.Swinburne had kept his earliest plays within thetheatre's compass, whether with an eye to their acting orno. Bothwell must be about 15,000 lines long, and wouldoutlast a winter's night; but The Queen Mother, Rosamund,Chastelard, are physically actable at least 1 . We canhardly see him happy, though, in the theatre, amenableto its discipline, content with its compromisings ortolerant of its small follies. Because he saw Fechter give1For the benefit of those to whom such measurements meannothing, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is a little over threethousand lines long.