Sir T. Euripides? A decadent, I thought.
St. J. Matter knows nothing of decadence, a word
Corrupt with spirit: only chance and change,
Power and imagination. Let me speak.—
The war with Persia, Marathon, Salamis,
Battles and victories by land and sea,
Revived in Attic bosoms, Attic brains,
Profound regard for things of Attica,
With ardent interest in the Universe
Whereof it felt itself the heart and soul.
In England next after two thousand years,
The most instinctive people in the world,
The mightiest and the freest, having undone
With axe and fire the strangling Roman creed,
That like a caul about their fancy clung,
Forthwith despatched to hell the rivalry
Of Spain, redeemed the seas, began to stretch
Their giant limbs in isles and continents,
And take the measure of the quartered globe.
Thus the imagination of these lands
Became one living cord, whereon were strung
All story, legend, lore; and like a birth
Miraculous, divine dramatic art,
Which to be truly great demands a great
Impassioned people for an audience, rose
From out the loftiest minds and shaped itself
The mirror of a master people's pride.
And now a greater England about to break
The husk of Christendom, as in its youth
It sloughed off Rome, begins the world anew,
Imperial England of itself aware,
And man, the conscience of the Universe.
I mean to spend my fortune and my life
In the high service of imagination
For England's sake and man's. The dreams, the lore,
The rags and rust of thirty centuries:
To cast these wholly, and accoutre man
In all the beauty, splendour, scope and power
Of this material, eternal fate,
The Universe, whereof he is the nerve—
The inmost fibre, flowering in brain and blood!
For this I would give up my life in pain.
Sir T. This will I help you in with all my power:
It dazzles me; it seizes on my soul.
St. J. A greater drama than the world has known
Is shrouded here in darkness.
Sir T. We must knead
The public mind into the shape of this
To make it possible. The play's the thing!
St. J. Yes; not the pulpit, not the press: the play,
Loftier and broader than religious rites,
The mirror of an empire's pride, of man's
Imagination, from the past released,
Dowered with the freedom of the Universe.
Sir T. What will this drama be?
St. J. I cannot tell.
My own play is the first step in a path
Untrodden. At the journey's end I see
A new world purged of God and purged of Sin,
Where men are healthy, women beautiful,
All men, all women, beautiful and strong.
[Re-enter Lady Sumner.]
Sir T. Martha! How like a ghost you steal upon us!
Where have you been?