The setting of “Hassan”, and the manner in which it is outlined through the characters, is the feature of a work whose merits are legion. The background is one of liquid beauty, a tissue woven of moonbeams and fancies, and of all the things in which the East finds inspiration. The lyric passages are delightful, and sometimes burst spontaneously into haunting poetry.
Upon this background there move living characters. Hassan, a humble confectioner of Bagdad at the time of Haroun Al Raschid, is an ugly man with a poetic soul. He falls in love, and his love is not returned until the Caliph Haroun raises him to power. With loss of power, love leaves him again. Subtle touches of humor and innuendo abound in the play, and serve to outline its essential tragedy.
In the Oriental spirit which “Hassan” so well portrays, there is a gorgeousness of beauty which is too highly colored long to retain its first unfaded charm for a Westerner. Perhaps the reason why “Hassan’s” influence holds is that in it a Westerner has given his own practical application to the scenes he describes, from a mind kindred to our own. However that may be, the work is strong and fundamental, and fascinatingly interprets an unfamiliar view of life. The setting is painted in enduring colors from Hassan’s love lyric to those final deep-toned stanzas:
“We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.
“White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born; but surely we are brave,