William Morris: A Critical Study

by John Drinkwater

As my twin sister, young of years was she and slender,
Yellow blossoms of spring-tide her hands had been gathering,
But the gown-lap that held them had fallen adown
And had lain round her feet with the first of the singing;
Now her singing had ceased, though yet heaved her bosom
As with lips lightly parted and eyes of one seeking
She stood face to face with the Love that she knew not,
The love that she longed for and waited unwitting...

and there are numberless lines where the precision of statement is admirable, as—

In memory of days when my meat was but little
And my drink drunk in haste between saddle and straw...

and

I saw her
Stealing barefoot, bareheaded amidst of the tulips
Made grey by the moonlight...

but the experiment in a form that is not now, after four centuries of development, really natural to the language is, on the whole, a failure. It is, indeed, true that as we read through it the measure becomes more acceptable to the ear, but there is a difficulty in the outline which no familiarity can wholly overcome.

The structure of the play is mainly of Morris's own invention, and is of singular beauty. The figure of Love, who may be said to correspond roughly to the Doctor or Messenger of the early moralities, stands, not between the action and the audience, but between the action and the people of an outer play; and, again, beyond this we have a further group. The structure is, briefly, this. The morality itself; Love and The Music who act as spiritual interpreters and as chorus between the action and the Emperor and Empress for whom the townsfolk are having the play performed; and finally the peasants Giles and Joan who are equally interested in the play and its imaginary spectators, translate the spiritual commentaries of Love and The Music into terms of their own simple workaday existence, and, lastly, act in some sort as chorus between the whole representation and the actual audience. There is a subtlety of design in all this that reaches far beyond the conceptions of the sombre and rugged poets of pre-Shakespearean England, and although the play fails in other respects, Morris here shows more clearly even than in Sir Peter Harpdon's End that he understood the exact meaning of the element contributed by the chorus to drama more fully than any poet of recent times.

In the central action, the morality itself, there are three principal figures, Pharamond the King, Oliver his old counsellor and foster-father, and Azalais. Morris retains the method of his models in that these figures are not characters but rather abstractions. Pharamond is not so much a man as mankind, Everyman. Oliver is much more definitely a personality, but he is used as a symbol of the better nature of man, not able quite to understand spiritual nobility, but content, even eager, to follow it. Azalais is Love, both giving and taking. The motive of the play is stated clearly in the title, Love is Enough. Pharamond leaves kingship, fame, everything, and sets out to find this thing only, and in finding it proves and finds himself. But we must return to the motive a little later. The point next to be considered is this symbolic use of figures in action. The method of the old poets was to invest these figures at the outset with a certain presupposed and generally accepted significance, and to start from that point. They did not attempt to explain what Luxury, Riot, Riches, Knowledge, Humility and Charity were, but simply gave these names to their figures and trusted their audience to fill in the outlines. Then taking a central figure as protagonist, Everyman or Youth or some such symbol, they brought him into contact with the rest and allowed all the emotion of the play to arise out of the transition of his moods as he is influenced by them in turn. There is never the least doubt as to the lines along which each of these figures will work; they carry their natures in their names. We know that Pride will betray Youth as surely as we know that his Knowledge and Good Deeds alone will bide with Everyman. But there is nothing dramatic in the spectacle of Pride forsaking Youth until we see the complementary loyalty of Charity and Humility, and we are moved by the tenderness of Good Deeds and Knowledge towards Everyman simply because we have just seen Strength and Beauty desert him in his need. These transitions of mood are carried through with consistent swiftness and are defined by the direct contact of the figures, not by reflective comment, or only so in a subordinate degree. Everyman, which is the crown of these early plays, realizes these conditions most perfectly. The protagonist is commanded to make his reckoning before God. He asks Fellowship to accompany him on his journey through Death's gates. Fellowship refuses, and so in turn do Goods, Kindred, Strength, Discretion, Five Wits, and the rest of them, as we knew they would. Then he is aided by Knowledge, Good Deeds and Confession, and sets out content. Save for the few speeches that summarize the situation from time to time, there is absolutely no comment on the development of the play; the whole effect depends on the swift passage from one crude symbol to another. Within its own limitations, this simple method not only succeeded in holding the audience for whom it was first employed, but is completely effective to-day. The Elizabethan drama threw it aside to make room for its own greater glories, but it is not impossible that a great poet should yet return to it, and with the accumulated wisdom of the poets who have worked since then in his blood, refashion it into something of a strange new beauty. In Love is Enough Morris adopted it only to a point, and failed in consequence. He set out to enunciate a definite lesson, and he invested his figures with symbolic significance, but he carried the method no further. Pharamond, instead of passing swiftly from stage to stage in pursuit of his end and showing us that love is enough, pauses for long periods to tell us that love is enough. His speeches are, generally, lyrical developments of one theme, and wholly beautiful as many of them are as such they destroy the cohesion of the play as a whole. The design of Love is Enough is no wider in its scope than that of "Everyman," indeed not so wide, and yet the play is, roughly, three times as long. I am not, of course, attempting any comparison of the spirit of the two plays; there is no point at which this is possible; my comparison is merely between the uses to which they employ the same method.

Herein, it seems to me, lies the failure of Love is Enough in so far as it is a failure at all. The central part of the design is so carried out as to disturb the general balance. It was not necessary for Morris to choose this particular form for his inner play, but having done so he was mistaken in not observing its principles more closely. But, having said this, it is necessary to add that in many ways Love is Enough stands with Morris's finest achievements in poetry. In the morality of Pharamond itself, and apart from all difficulties of the verse-form, there is love-poetry that is scarcely to be surpassed in its depth and tenderness. In this play Morris departed from his usual ways. His narrative and epic writing and his lyrics have nothing of that didacticism which if not essential is at least proper to the greatest art. Art confesses to no limitations. In Love is Enough, however, he allowed himself this new privilege, and he translates his teaching into art with perfect instinct. Here, as throughout his work, it is impossible to point to any passage and say, "that is not poetry," and yet speech after speech is as specifically didactic as the Sermon on the Mount. In the words of Pharamond, in the stately heroic couplets spoken by Love, and in the exquisite stanzas of The Music he pursues the same theme, and over and over again he carries it to a sublime pitch of intensity.

What, Faithful—do I lie, that overshot
My dream-web is with that which happeneth not?
Nay, nay, believe it not!—love lies alone
In loving hearts like fire within the stone:
Then strikes my hand, and lo, the flax ablaze!
—Those tales of empty striving and lost days
Folk tell of sometimes—never lit my fire
Such ruin as this; but Pride and Vain-desire,
My counterfeits and foes, have done the deed.
Beware, Beloved! for they sow the weed
Where I the wheat: they meddle where I leave,
Take what I scorn, cast by what I receive,
Sunder my yoke, yoke that I would dissever,
Pull down the house my hands would build for ever.