y the use of prose, for he carries his
psychology far with it. Yet it remains prose, a meaner method, a
limiting restraint, and his drama a thing less fundamental than the
drama of the poets. Only one modern writer has brought something which
is almost the equivalent of poetry out of prose speech: Tolstoi, in "The
Powers of Darkness." The play is horrible and uncouth, but it is
illuminated by a great inner light. There is not a beautiful word in it,
but it is filled with beauty. And that is because Tolstoi has the vision
which may be equally that of the poet and of the prophet. It is often
said that the age of poetry is over, and that the great forms of the
future must be in prose. That is the "exquisite reason" of those whom
the gods have not made poetical. It is like saying that there will be
no more music, or that love is out of date. Forms change, but not
essence; and Whitman points the way, not to prose, but to a poetry which
shall take in wider regions of the mind.

Yet, though it is by its poetry that, as Lamb pointed out, a play of
Shakespeare differs from a play of Banks or Lillo, the poetry is not
more essential to its making than the living substance, the melodrama.
Poets who have written plays for reading have wasted their best
opportunities. Why wear chains for dancing? The limitations necessary to
the drama before it can be fitted to the stage are but hindrances and
disabilities to the writer of a book. Where can we find more spilt
wealth than in the plays of Swinburne, where all the magnificent speech
builds up no structure, but wavers in orchestral floods, without
beginning or ending? It has been said that Shakespeare will sacrifice
his drama to his poetry, and even "Hamlet" has been quoted against him.
But let "Hamlet" be rightly acted, and whatever has seemed mere
lingering meditation will be recognised as a part of that thought which
makes or waits on action. If poetry in Shakespeare may sometimes seem to
delay action, it does but deepen it. The poetry is the life blood, or
runs through it. Only bad actors and managers think that by stripping
the flesh from the skeleton they can show us a more living body. The
outlines of "Hamlet" are crude, irresistible melodrama, still
irresistible to the gallery; and the greatness of the play, though it
comes to us by means of the poetry, comes to us legitimately, as a
growth out of melodrama.

The failure, the comparative failure, of every contemporary dramatist,