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

166 Harley Granville-BarkerShakespeare survived? Tennyson went to school toShakespeare; no English poet turning playwright but byinstinct does that! The trouble with him was that he neverquite grasped what he had to learn, nor the significance ofwhat he did learn there. There is much that is fine inQueen Mary. Tennyson is a poet, and he can frame characterand see history in terms of drama. There is even, atmoments, something of the absolute dramatist in him,for he can project a scene, fully significant only in itsaction, conceived so, evidently, not plotted out on paper.Had he trusted to his native dramatic instinct, whateverits worth, it would finally have been better for his play.There is, of course, no such arbitrary division betweendrama and the theatre as it suited him to assume. Whydo English men of letters find it so hard to approach thetheatre unselfconsciously? Some native dramatic instinctwe all have. Acting, singing and dancing are,fundamentally, as nearly instinctive as art can be. Thelaws of the theatre, about which he was so graciouslydiffident! There are none. There are none, at least, thatthe true dramatist cannot remake to his purpose as hegoes along. The theatre is an element. We ought all tofeel at home in it; but, whether or no, we must plungeinto it, to sink or swim, as one takes a plunge into thesea. Learn a few strokes by all means; but if we arenever to be beyond the need of swimming bladders, weare not in our element, and there's an end. The bestbrains are not needed to make a swimmer. We can cryout as we sink that swimming is a very vulgar art. But allthat need be learnt of the laws of the theatre is soonlearnt, and then the sooner it is forgotten the better,even as we cease to use an alphabet when we know howto read. The truly great dramatists, who have made oldthings new in drama, gained this unconscious masterybetimes. Shakespeare did, so did Moliere, and Ibsen.