74 The Future Poetry
of incident and movement was there, much power of exuberant
dialogue, a knack of expression both in verse and prose, some
skill in the trick of putting the language of the passions into
the mouth of cleverly constructed human figures which walk
actively about the stage, if not in a quite natural manner, yet with
enough of it to give for the time the illusion of living creatures.
Especially, it was a time in which there was a fresh and vivid
interest in life and man and action, in the adventure and wonder
and appeal of the mere vital phenomenon of living and feeling
and thinking, and their work is full of this freshness and interest
and intense spontaneous delight in living and acting. All this,
it might be thought, is quite enough to build a great dramatic
poetry; and certainly, if we require no more than this, we shall
give a prominent place to the Elizabethan drama, higher perhaps
than to the Greek or any other. But these things are enough only
to produce plays which will live their time on the stage and in the
library; they are not, by themselves, sufficient for great dramatic
creation. Something else is needed for that, which we get in
Shakespeare, in Racine, Corneille and Moliere, in Calder` on, in ́
the great Greeks, in the leading Sanskrit dramatists; but these
other Elizabethans show themselves in the bulk of their work
to be rather powerful writers and playwrights than inspired
dramatic poets and creators.
Dramatic poetry cannot live by the mere presentation of
life and action and the passions, however truly they may be
portrayed or however vigorously and abundantly pushed across
the scene. Its object is something greater and its conditions of
success much more onerous. It must have, to begin with, as the
fount of its creation or in its heart an interpretative vision and
in that vision an explicit or implicit seeing idea of life and the
human being; and the vital presentation which is its outward
instrument, must arise out of that deeper sight harmoniously,
whether by a spontaneous creation, as in Shakespeare, or by the
compulsion of an intuitive artistic will, as with the Greeks. This
interpretative vision and seeing idea have in the presentation to
seem to arise out of the inner life of a few vital types of the
human soul or individual representatives of its enigma and to