Welsh Journals

At the present time it is particularly necessary that this word should be recovered, for though, as it seems to me, there is a movement in this direction, the battle is not entirely won. The last generation, with a few notable exceptions, was at once broad- minded in the bad sense, and almost more than any THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF ENGLISH DRAMA-11 BY PROFESSOR GILBERT NORWOOD A yfl R. MASEFIELD'S case is quite different. In downright genius he is one of the greatest Englishman now engaged in letters I should have said the greatest had not Mr. Thomas Hardy just given us a new book. He has not yet succeeded in founding a school, and seems himself to have diverged into lyrics and bad language, to the delight of reviewers and (apparently) to his own satisfaction. Nevertheless, he has done splendid work for the stage. In Pompey the Great we have simply a good theatrical history-play. But The Tragedy of Nan is a drama of extraordinary merit. It is so sound in characteriza- tion, so realistic in scene and thought, that one might boldly label its author a semi-Ibsenist like Mr. Besier, did he not exhibit a poetical charm, a splendour of dark tinting, above all, a richness of atmosphere, which sunder him utterly from every other play- wright of our days. Unfortunately he does, in fact, stand alone at present in this enthralling type of work wherein intellect is not clouded, but illuminated, by emotional sympathy and poetical imagination for Mr. Barker, who gave distinct signs of it in Ann Leete, has passed over to a post-Ibsenist manner, and Mr. Stephen Phillips, who appears now to have finally written himself out, was (even at his zenith) really a lyrist masquerading as a playwright. Those glorious pieces of emotional declamation in Ulysses and Paolo and Francesco, over which England went into ecstasies -and quite rightly-in the first years of the century, are not dramatic, or dramatic only if judged by the standard of Prometheus Unbound. Thus at last we come to the authors whom I have put into a third section-Mr. Shaw, Mr. Barker, Mr. Galsworthy, and the late St. John Hankin. Each of these has special merits and faults, but there can be preceeding generation acutely party-spirited, for the two go often hand in hand; it could tolerate anything except the definite, but that it attacked with all the venom in its power. Bernard Shaw and Father Stanton were alike anathema, and that is its sufficient condemnation. R. F. Wright. no doubt that they form a distinct body as compared with such writers as Pinero or Masefield. They are the English Ibsenists, the realist school. But before we discuss them separately, let us be clear as to what we mean by realism. Without making any claim to metaphysical accuracy, I may say that there are at least two sorts of reality. On the one hand are the facts of life and nature as we meet them every day. On the other are facts, not as we see them, but as they are. We may use the phrases simple truths and generalities fact and fiction the world as it is to man, and the world as it is viewed by God or lastly life and art. There are (that is) two final ways of looking at phenomena isolated, as an animal sees them grouped as the Divine Mind sees them, an organised whole Between these extremes lies the view of that divine animal, Man. By the law of his intellect he groups things so that he may understand them, though he for ever groups them imperfectly. The more scientific a man's brain, the more he will systematize his know- ledge of physical facts; he will understand more deeply and more widely, in some measure thinking God's thoughts after Him. That is what is meant by science. The more poetical a man's spirit, the more he will systematize his sympathy with emotional fact the passions and conduct of an individual will be viewed more and more as the symbol and expression of the Divine Soul, expressing itself through all humanity. That is the soul of Art. It follows then, that the artist never renders things as they appear to the incurious gaze. It cannot be said of him always that he touched nothing that he did not adorn," but it is always true that he touches nothing that he does not alter. Set George Frederick Watts to paint the