[188] I myself am accquainted with sorrow, inconsolable father. I am young, and yet I have already wept much.
DE VERE’S “MARY TUDOR.”[189]
There is nothing more unjust than the neglect sometimes shown to literary performances of the highest merit. But it is not always difficult to account for this. We have before us a case in point. Here is a drama on a subject of peculiar interest—a model of classic elegance, and exhibiting at once a dramatic power and a dignity of language which have not been surpassed, if equalled, since Shakspere. Yet this work has been suffered to sink into obscurity. Why? For the excellent reason, surely, that the Protestant author presents Catholic claims and personages with a very unusual fairness—a fairness, moreover, which was specially unacceptable at the date of the book’s publication, when the excitement over what is called the Oxford movement was at its height.
After the lapse of nearly thirty years, Sir Aubrey De Vere’s drama has a new field opened to it, and will not, we trust, be again ignored, but receive from critics and literary circles its full meed of praise. The occasion of its fresh appeal to public attention is Tennyson’s effort on the same subject. We read Queen Mary with our wonted relish of the melodious English and faultless diction for which Tennyson stands alone, and with full appreciation of the peculiar originality, which some call affectation, but to which, as we consider, he has more than proved his right; but were conscious throughout of a very undramatic
vagueness, and painfully sensible that a great poet had prostituted his genius to a most unworthy cause. When we came to Mary Tudor, how different our experience! We seemed to be reading the product of some erudite pen of the Elizabethan era, and even to be witnessing the play’s performance—the personæ speaking in the manner of their time, and standing before us as if actually on the stage. We found, too, the author’s intent very clear—namely, to draw the characters, both Catholic and Protestant, with perfect impartiality and in accordance with his information; and this not merely with a view to show that the right was not all on one side and the wrong all on the other (which, of course, is perfectly true), but rather, as it seems to us, to represent both parties as very much the sport of circumstances, and struggling for what each thought the truth. There is a mistake here, but an amiable mistake; and whatever prejudices lie at the bottom of it, they are the prejudices of the author’s informants, not his own.
He wisely divides his drama into two distinct plays of five acts each; and we purpose to make each “Part” the subject of a separate article. Indeed, we feel that, to do the work full justice, we ought to take a single Act at a time; for every scene will bear minute analysis. As it is, we must resist the temptation of quoting largely—a necessity the more to be regretted because the merit of dramatic poetry speaks for itself far better than the critic can speak for it.
Part I. opens with the death of Edward VI., and ends with the execution of Jane Grey. The plot is simple—as historical plots have to be.
In the first Act John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, contrives, with the help of Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to work upon the conscience of the schoolboy king, till he signs away the throne to the Lady Jane Grey, wife of Guilford Dudley, Northumberland’s son. Jane has been nursing Edward, who has come to regard her as a sister. The Princess Mary, the rightful heir, has been kept from her dying brother’s side by a device of Dudley’s, who sends for her, indeed, at the last, but so that she arrives too late to prevent the signing. Edward attributes her absence, as also Elizabeth’s, to indifference. Jane Grey protests against the succession being forced upon herself, but yields sufficient consent to be implicated in the treason. Northumberland defies Mary’s claim, and the princess has to fly with her three faithful adherents, Sir Henry Bedingfield, Sir Henry Jerningham, and Fakenham, her confessor—a character depicted throughout as not only inoffensive but saintly; indeed, as Mary’s good genius, though, unhappily, too seldom successful in his influence.