MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS AS A WRITER OF TRAGEDY II9 



ventured to make a simple estimate of Mr. Phillips' actual achieve- 

 ments and of the grounds for hope or fear as to his future. With this 

 modest aim before me I have essayed a review of the six plays hitherto 

 published, taking up in order our author's choice of tragic material, 

 treatment of plot and dramatic motive, depiction of character, 

 poetic diction and scenic presentment. 



II 



If we first cast a general glance over the dramas we find that three 

 of them may be called tragedies of love, one a tragic masque, the 

 fifth a dramatic character study, while the latest is frankly an adap- 

 tation of Goethe's masterpiece. In the earliest of the love tragedies 

 Mr. Phillips has gone to Dante for his story and has chosen that 

 aspect of the myriad-faced problem wherein the love of the principal 

 characters appears as a phase of Fate, "that god behind all gods." 

 From the moment when Paolo enters out of sunlight leading Fran- 

 cesca, until in the gloomy hall the bodies are reverently covered 

 over, we feel that in most solemn sooth "his kiss was on her lips 

 e'er she was born." Their love was as inevitable as life or death. 

 Indeed, it was at one with the love in the old Empedoclean or new 

 Haeckelian scheme of the universe, the love that operates from the 

 primordial atom to the enthralling of the earth by the sun, from the 

 lowest protozoon to the loftiest soul of man with its godlike uprushing 

 toward pure truth and pure beauty. Despite our conventions we 

 realize that the love of these twain does raise them above themselves; 

 and the glorious allegorizing of Plato in the Phaedrus and Symposium^ 

 along with Dante's kindred vision, is immediately recalled by the 

 scene in which we hear the glowing prayer of Paolo: 



Let me with kisses burn this body away, 

 That our two souls may dart together free. 

 I fret at intervention of the flesh, 

 And I would clasp you — you that but inhabit 

 This lovely house. 



Howbeit, love of the spirit with absolutely no fretting intervention 

 of the flesh is as impossible for us in our mortal houses as it is unde- 



