TENNYSON'S DRAMA
I. A review of Queen Mary. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: J. R. Osgood. 1875. Originally published in The Galaxy, September, 1875.
Queen Mary was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in 1876. Mr. Irving playing the part of Philip II. It was Tennyson's wish that he should appear as Cardinal Pole, but in the acting version that character was eliminated. The part of Philip has been immortalized by Whistler's celebrated painting of Irving in that rôle. Ed.
II. A review of Harold. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. London. 1877. Originally published in The Nation, January 18, 1877.
TENNYSON'S DRAMA
I. QUEEN MARY
ANEW poem by Mr. Tennyson is certain to be largely criticised, and if the new poem is a drama, the performance must be a great event for criticism as well as for poetry. Great surprise, great hopes, and great fears had been called into being by the announcement that the author of so many finely musical lyrics and finished, chiselled specimens of narrative verse, had tempted fortune in the perilous field of the drama.
Few poets seemed less dramatic than Tennyson, even in his most dramatic attempts—in "Maud," in "Enoch Arden," or in certain of the Idyls of the King. He had never used the dramatic form, even by snatches; and though no critic was qualified to affirm that he had no slumbering ambition in that direction, it seemed likely that a poet who had apparently passed the meridian of his power had nothing absolutely new to show us. On the other hand, if he had for years been keeping a gift in reserve, and suffering it to ripen and mellow in some deep corner of his genius, while shallower tendencies waxed and waned above it, it was not unjust to expect that the consummate fruit would prove magnificent.
On the whole, we think that doubt was uppermost in the minds of those persons who to a lively appreciation of the author of "Maud" added a vivid conception of the exigencies of the drama. But at last Queen Mary appeared, and conjecture was able to merge itself in knowledge. There was a momentary interval, during which we all read, among the cable telegrams in the newspapers, that the London Times affirmed the new drama to contain more "true fire" than anything since Shakespeare had laid down the pen. This gave an edge to our impatience; for "fire," true or false, was not what the Laureate's admirers had hitherto claimed for him. In a day or two, however, most people had the work in their hands.