As a poem The Sin of David cannot compare for beauty with Paolo and Francesca, though it contains isolated lines which recall Mr. Phillips's earliest drama, such as the plea of Joyce, the condemned officer—
"Her face was close to me, and dimmed the world."
or Lisle's—
"Thou hast unlocked the loveliness of earth."
But then, of course, the exotic manner would here have been an impropriety. This is not Rimini; it is the English Fenland; and all the characters, with the exception of Miriam Mardyke (the Bathsheba of the piece), who was bred in France and had its sun in her blood, were of the Puritan pattern that does not accommodate itself very easily to the language of passion.
But all this we knew ten years ago, when The Sin of David was first published; and the only new interest was the question of its adaptability to the theatre. Poetic drama seldom gains much by presentation on the stage, unless it is full of action; and there is little action in this play except of the inward kind. In almost the only case where quick movement is here demanded one becomes conscious of the intrusion of words. When he knows that the relief of Pomfret depends upon his instant action, Lisle still finds time for conversations with his servant, with Miriam and with the doctor, and for a couple of well-sustained soliloquies.
Certain lines, again, whose literary flavour, when read, makes us overlook their inherent improbability in the mouth of the character that utters them, take on, when spoken, an air of artifice. Such are the lines in which Miriam describes her old sister-in-law, to her face, as
"living without sin
And reputably rusting to the grave."
And there is always the danger that actors will be content with a rather slurred and perfunctory recitation of lines that have no bearing on the action but are just inserted for joy as a rhetorical embroidery.