138 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



poor staging may inflict a serious wound on a drama, poor acting 

 deals the death blow, leaving only a corpse for the bookman to gal- 

 vanize into a merely literary existence. A poetic drama must be 

 well staged and well acted, or, in a certain sense, it remains poetry 

 rather than drama. 



VII 



Herewith it would seem that this article must conclude without 

 any serious foreboding; for the writer, while emphasizing certain 

 defects, has admitted that Mr. Phillips can choose excellent dramatic 

 material, that he can weave a strong plot, that he can make a char- 

 acter live, that he can write beautiful verse and that he is a thorough 

 master of stagecraft. Manifestly little remains save apparently 

 unimportant details; but it is exactly from these trifles that one's 

 foreboding may spring. For instance, great tragedians have often 

 used some such device as oracle, dream or prophecy to declare the 

 future with unmistakable significance, and the dramatic effect is 

 frequently strong, occasionally tremendous; but Mr. Phillips resorts 

 thereto with dangerous freedom. In Paolo and Francesca we have 

 the vaticinations of Angela and the reiterated warnings of Lucrezia; 

 in Ulysses we have the decision of the Olympian council; in Herod, 

 the prediction of the astrologer; in The Sin of David, it is the self- 

 righteous prayer of Lisle after he condemns Joyce to death; in Nero, 

 it is again an astrologer. Moreover, in addition to utilizing these 

 more or less general predictions, Mr. Phillips fairly toys with the 

 future at every turn. Thus he drops lurking suggestions such as 

 we find in the avowal of Francesca: 



I have wept but on the pages of a book, 

 And I have longed for sorrow of my own. 



So Herod hints at his coming fate when he says: 



And I, if she were dead, I too would die, 

 Or linger in the sunlight without life. 



In the same category belongs the abrupt decision of Ulysses — 

 I'd go down into hell, if hell led home! 



