oul o' the purpose, ere 'tis shaped as act,
Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king."[1]

For his endeavour is not to set men in action for the pleasure of seeing
them move; but to see and show, in their action and inaction alike, the
real impulses of their being: to see how each soul conceives of itself.

This individuality of presentment is carried out equally in the domain
of life and of thought; as each man lives, so he thinks and perceives,
so he apprehends God and truth, for himself only. It is evident that
this special standpoint will give not only a unity but an originality to
the work of which it may be called the root; equally evident that it
will demand a special method and a special instrument.

The dramatic poet, in the ordinary sense, in the sense in which we apply
it to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, aims at showing, by means of
action, the development of character as it manifests itself to the world
in deeds. His study is character, but it is character in action,
considered only in connection with a particular grouping of events, and
only so far as it produces or operates upon these. The processes are
concealed from us, we see the result. In the very highest realisations
of this dramatic power, and always in intention, we are presented with a
perfect picture, in which every actor lives, and every word is audible;
perfect, complete in itself, without explanation, without comment; a
dogma incarnate, which we must accept as it is given us, and explain and
illustrate for ourselves. If we wish to know what this character or that
thought or felt in his very soul, we may perhaps have data from which to
construct a more or less probable hypothesis; but that is all. We are
told nothing, we care to know nothing of what is going on in the
thought; of the infinitely subtle meshes of motive or emotion which will
perhaps find no direct outcome in speech, no direct manifestation in
action, but by which the soul's life in reality subsists. This is not
the intention: it is a spectacle of life we are beholding; and life is
action.

But is there no other sense in which a poet may be dramatic, besides
this sense of the acting drama? no new form possible, which

"Peradventure may outgrow,
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a nobler stage the soul itself,
In shifting fancies and celestial lights,