AN OLD TALE NEW TOLD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2861, 13 January 1909, Page 77

AN OLD TALE NEW TOLD.

By Jessis Mackat. 11. The fickle wind of popular favour, or let us say popular criticism, has chopped round as regards the dramatic poetry of Stephen Phillips. The storm of acclamation that gieeted "Paolo and Francesca," his first play, had not died away when he again challenged London with '•Herod,"' and the second venture was hailed with almost equal plaudits. It is not difficult, however, when both are shipped of the tinsel of staging, to determine which is the finer work. "Paolo and Francesca" is % deep, pur© rose of passion, petalperfect; one had almost said "Herod" is of the same stuff, but thinner. The coie of the rose is shapely and deep, but the outer leaves are bleached and scentless. There was not magic enough to touch the lesser characters with light and life. Herod and Mariamne stand out aloiie, instinct with life and fire : but the figures that pass and repass, drawing them into the net of doom, are scarcely more than marionettes. And this attenuation of art has gone on, though the worshipping critics took iong to acknowledge it. iiut a decisive i reverse seems to have encountered hi» latest play, written in collaboration. It is soundly declared by many that in these later dramas the poet is but the shadow •of him who rounded the mellow beauty of "Marpessa," and attaiaed the sombre magnificence of "Christ in- Had.es." The art of da-am atio presentment is not wholly dependent on poetry, however; and Stephen Phillips is a master of properties, so to speak. None of the loose ends that imitate or the ravelled ends that contuse is allowed to mar the form and sequence of the play. Thin, but stageable, it holds the interest throughout, though the death of Mariamne removes the one humanly loveable character in it. Stephen Phillips has kept to history with unusual fidelity, an easy virtue when reality, as reflected in the pages of Josep"hus, was so charged with tragic power. In two points only is there any material difference. Mariamne' s fat© is naturally hastened for dramatic effect ; it would seem her bridal wreath was scarcely fad-ed before the death-flowers w-are laid upon her royal bier. No mention is made of the princely boys whose alter fate darkened the tyrant's last years with a seoond agony of remorse. Moreovei . the guilt of the Idumrean shewolf, Herod's sister Salome, is so fax lightened that the murder of Mariamne alone lies at her door. In reality, her treacheory procured the death of her own husband. It is not difficult to see why the author eschewed this double- thread of ' tragedy, ami centred all interest in the j story of the King and Queen. On Herod 1 and iJariamne, too, the author has spent j aU the power of character-drawing which j touched the ampler canvas of "Paolo and j Francesca" with subtle life. Herod, the I keen opportunist ; Herod, the daring man i of destiny ; Hexod, the man-tiger, whose humanity, centred in' his great love for Mariamne. strive® with Titanic loss against the elemental forces of his being; — Mariamne, the strong, proud Maccabaean princess ; Mariamne, tne tender bride, glorying in the compelling greatness of the man she loved; Mariamne, the marble statue whose rigid queenliness covered a murdered heart long before death claimed her lovely form — both these royal figures stand out in fine relief. And it is no small compliment to the poet to say that Aiaaiamne is the truer conception of the two, being the harmonious blending of three lasting types. She is the incarnation of delicate glowing girlhood, x-ipe for noble pass-ion, and no less is f'e the incarnate spirit of Juda-h, not bo bo broken, not to be deflected, not to be lulled to short-sighted or ignoble repose. Ard both types are transmuted at last into the fateful age-enduring spirit of womanhood awake and aware, the spirit that man through all the cycles has never been able to utterly break or tiuly win. There is a tentative delkacy in the prophetic touches that foreshow the dawn of the world's great Hope, as here, where the yearninij of the people towards Mariamnc's young fciother is indicated: — And all behind him i<« A sense of something coming on the world, A crying of dead prophets from their tombs, A p;nging of deat 1 pcets frcan their graves; r.-xl a^?in where Herod himself speaks of th? "child-king he has heaid murmur of in Jerusiileiim at night: And he shall s'ull 'hat old sob of the ec», And heal the unhappy fancies of the wind, I Ard turn the moon from all that hopeless quest. B:u: and bright, the love dream of .Muriamne leioh-rs the summit of earthly \A'"*<-. She reoa'ls in an hour of paa'tins; th-p Tiikl midrighl rescue from beleaguered Masada : ) Hercd, my Herod, . Xow clasp me close as thcax didst clasp me I then; 1 When hke a hundred ligbtniiigs brands upt sprung j ]In the night sudden Then did you laugh I I CUT j I I And wliir'etl me hke a gcd thrcttgli the dark ! a-.vay. j Kvr-n n< *)>■> ei-t^l-- tne r>. Jy <^f her j Liuil r. I,,'i.v 1 : J ia tLo blue- j 00l 1. or. 1 I the city, is borne- to the marble ttcp of

Herod's throne, and the shadow tJia* has gloomed behind her like the first dark' curl of a thunder cloud WTaps her soul in blackness ever after. When again they meet, Herod flushed with the conquest of Caesar's friendship, she is s- woman of stone who speaks of her dead love as a mother might of her stillborn babe : Herod, because I once did love you so — How long since is it? And because that j love j "With, time had grown much greater, now I speak. Even the red misery of my brother's murder, That extreme pang, is pale beside this Loss, This drying up within me of my soul. Her steadfast spirit is not shaken -when, accused by Cypxos of poisoning Herod's cup, she is bidden to drink the -wine hexself: Now farewell! Jerusalem, city of God, farewell : My cradle first, my home, and now my grave. For I, the last of all the Maccabees. I, the lone daughter of that holy line, I perish without foar and without cry; For a i'oo-m has come upon us, and an ci.ding. Brcther, I drink, and hasten do<wn to you. . A triumph of Hei<xuan craft is the King's mastery by fair promises of the mob that comes to kill him : Here's my breast. Now strike who wills. Does any hesitate? Why, such a blew as this none ever struck J That breathed s...ce the beginning of the j world : | For he who strikes this breast strikes at a. i city, Who stabs at this my heart stabs at a kingdom; Th-ete veins are rivers, and these arteries Are very roads : this body is your country The .Tob falls back, set-iii^ in him the embodied protection of Imperiil .Rome. M'uiamne, reprieved once by Herod's relenting affection, is again accused by ths fiendish malevolence of his mother and filter Still the King puts the horror from him : Would you commit such beauty to the earth ? Thoi-e eyes that bring upon us endless thoughts! That face that seems as it had come to pass Like a thing prophesied! But at las: tne older is wrung from his jealous frenzy in the moment that Caesar's envoys declare him lord of added kingdoms. Alter this, like moonlight coming on storm. ■is depicted ths madness of Hercd, in which he appeals to his attendants, to tell him of Alariamne's waking from sleep. ; Ev&a the she-wolf Salome is moved to pity and remorse, and Cypros breaks into a : mother's wail :- l | My child, I bore thee 'neath »■ wild moon by the eea. Ihe King, loilom, unkempt, and earthstained, tum.s 1 s wanderiEg mind to visions of the Icniple, whose building in some way soothe<? his pain : j I dreamed last night of a dome of beaten gold, To be a counter-glory to the sun. There shall the eagle blindly dash himself, There the first beam shall strike, and there the mcon Shall aim all night her argent archery; And it shall be the tryst of sundered stars, The haunt of dead and dreaming Solomon. A wilder ivuaay seizes him when the reality of MariamnVs death begins to force itself on his tortured brain : If there hath been mischance to her — I ray not There hath been— yet so fineless is my will, I'll re-create her out of endless yearning, j And flesh shall cleave to. bone, and blood I shall run. ' j Do I ;not know her, every vein? Can I ' Not imitate in furious ecstacy i What God hath coldly made? I'll re-create My love with bone for bone and vein for ■ vein. ■' ' The eyes, the eyes again, the' hands, -the hair. And that which I have made, 0 that shall love mo. A slr*ir%"e, still •climax crowns this last j act. Herod, touching the cold brow of the dead Mariamne, stands in a cataleptic trance, unheeding the Romans who come to pioffer the crown of Arabia. Slowly the people of the Court melt from around [ him, and he is left alone with his word- | less grief under the cold stars.