MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS AS A WRITER OF TRAGEDY 13I 



Herod. The towered world; 



And we, we two, will grasp it, we will burst 



Out of the East unto the setting sun. 

 Mariamne. Thou art a man. 

 Herod. With thee will be a god; 



Now stand we on the hill in red sunrise. 

 Mariamne. Now hand in hand into the morning. 

 • Herod. Ever 



Upward and upward — ever hand in hand. 



Here is the pity of it. This seems a living possibility, which Herod 

 slays by the same stroke with which he slays Aristobulus; and 

 whereas under conceivable circumstances he might have moved into 

 the morning with Mariamne at his side, he is engulfed in a fearsome 

 night, groping vainly for a vanished hand. And yet. even while 

 we see this possibility, we understand that he could not have dwelt 

 in the morning to the end; for his character and his fate were too 

 closely allied. 



In The Sin of David, on the other hand, one discovers a real weak- 

 ness, inasmuch as there has been set forth absolutely nothing in 

 Lisle's character or actions to prepare us for his instantaneous con- 

 ception of a love that he was bound to regard as alike unhallowed and 

 impossible. Here, certainly, plot and character have not been 

 welded. The explanation is probably to be found in the change 

 from David to Lisle, due to the interference of the English arbiter 

 of dramatic morals. If David had been in question we should have 

 been thoroughly prepared for his prompt surrender to his passion; 

 but in the case of Lisle there is a distinct jar, and, since this is the 

 turning point of the whole drama, the defect is a serious one. 



In Faust, Ulysses and Nero the problem hardly presents itself; 

 for in the two first named both plot and character are fixed in the 

 hearer's mind before the curtain rises, and the third, as we have 

 said, is essentially a character-study. 



On the whole the major personages are adequately depicted. 

 We have neither photographic realism on the one hand nor mere 

 impressionistic adumbration on the other. Miriam, for instance, 

 is a real woman, set before us in clear, essential portraiture, even 



