"I have learnt them. After all, what am I to do? I am modern—modern as my hat," said Rickman, turning it in his hands. "I admit that my hat isn't even a fugitive form of the eternal and absolute beauty. It is, I'm afraid, horribly like everybody else's hat. In moments of profound insight I feel that I am horribly like everybody else. If it wasn't for that I should have no hope of achieving my modest ambition."
"I'm not saying anything against your modesty or your ambition. I'm not defying you to write a modern blank verse play; but I defy anybody to act one."
"I know," said Rickman, "it's sad of course, but to the frivolous mind of a critic there always will be something ridiculous in the notion of blank verse spouted on the stage by a person in a frock-coat and a top-hat. But do you think you'd see that frock-coat and top-hat if once the great tragic passions got inside them?"
"Where are the great tragic passions?"
"They exist and are poetic."
"As survivals only. They are poetic but not modern. We have the passions of the divorce-court and the Stock Exchange. They are modern, if you like, but not strikingly poetic."
"Well—even a stock-broker—if you insist on stockbrokers—"
"I don't. Take the people—take the women I know, the women you know. Is there—honestly, is there any poetry in them?"
"There is—heaps. Oceans of poetry—There always has been and will be. It's the poets, the great poets that don't turn up to time."
"Well; I don't care how great a poet you may be. Modern poetic drama is the path of perdition for you. I wish," he added with an unmistakable air of turning to a subject of real interest. "I wish I knew what to do with Fulcher."