[Dukes was an important English playwright and drama critic during the first half of the twentieth century. He is most noted for his works on modern European theater, particularly poetic drama, and introduced English audiences to the work of several French and German dramatists. In the following essay, he discusses Drinkwater's historical dramas.]

Abraham Lincoln owed as much to President Wilson as to its own titular hero. It was a play of the hour, and in every line an allusion to the momentous issues of the hour could be heard. For large audiences (including returned soldiers among their number) it was the first drama to break the spiritual silence of five years. After the manner of plays with a message, it was open to more than one interpretation. Its sternness may have fortified those stalwarts who saw in the enemies of their country a band of moral outlaws and harbingers of slavery. Its sublimation of the passions was equally a reminder that other wars than that of North and South are wars of brothers, and its appeal to statesmanship was an invocation to Versailles. The play brought a new audience into the theatre. The Puritans (who are more numerous than the Nonconformists) found the author zealous in good works. Everywhere he was acclaimed by men of goodwill. In fine, the importance of Lincoln was ethical, political, social, and Mr. Drinkwater was not yet a biographer, but a prophet.

With the advent of Mary Stuart it was necessary to reconsider him as an artist. A historian, plainly, he was not. No historical dramatist is a historian. From Æschylus to Shakespeare and our day, historical drama has always been a masquerade of the contemporary spirit. Nor was he in the narrower sense a biographer. A good portrait, it has been well said, is one in which we recognize the painter. A good play is one in which we recognize the author. What we shall look for in this Mary Stuart is a portrait of Mr. Drinkwater. Mary's own portrait (as in the prologue) may hang on the wall, and the incidents of her life may be reviewed for the sake of a young man smarting under the loss of a young wife's affection. But we shall not believe in Mary Stuart absolutely. We shall believe in her relatively, and it rests with the author to furnish the relation. We return always to what Mr. Drinkwater thinks about her, which is very much what he thought about Abraham Lincoln, and very much what he thinks about the world in general. This woman has distinction and beauty of character; she has courage and wit. Can it be truly said that she lives? It is foreshadowed in the prologue that at the heart of her history lies "the one glowing reality, a passionate woman." She lives as the illustration of her moral; she lives up to it, as people say. She explains herself satisfactorily. She coquets with Rizzio, she despises Darnley as we all despise him, she accepts Bothwell with a shrug; and the end of it is that she intellectualizes for us "the one glowing reality" of the modern prologue. She sets out deliberately to be an abstraction, and there she succeeds.

Abstractions, nevertheless, have their qualities. The best of this play is its quality of unexpectedness—the turning away from empty rhetoric that fills out dramatic situations, the turning inward to the idea behind the drama. In that respect Mr. Drinkwater belongs to his age, and is in touch with the movement that is surely spreading over the European theatre. He accepts no cheap appearances; he is for what he believes to be the inward truth at all costs. When Mary learns that the wretched Darnley, murderer of Rizzio, is himself about to be murdered by his rebel lords with Bothwell's knowledge, she mutters the few words: "Poison—this life—all of it. Barbs, barbs." No rhetoric here, no playing with smooth verses or smooth prose lines that round off the dramatic effect, but a concentration on the symbols that express emotion. "There are tides in me as fierce as any that have troubled women," says this Mary. And again, "I am wiser even than my blood." The urgent force of the idea is there. Its springs lie deeper than realism, deeper also than wit or what is conventionally called poetry (meaning the declamation of speeches). There is dynamic power in these words that gather up the thought, and are themselves gathered up and thrown like spray from a wave of feeling. It is only one step from this dynamic force to the last embodiment of the dramatic idea, which is ecstasy; but it is a long step for Mr. Drinkwater to take. The Puritans who are his natural audience mistrust ecstasy, rapture, poetic exaltation, or whatever it may be called that lifts men in a non-moral sense above themselves. If Mary Stuart were ever rapturous we might understand her better, and know why it was that she broke hearts and troubled kingdoms. She is always wiser than her blood—too much wiser, as we feel. Hers is a composite portrait. A little history and much philosophy and some poetry have gone to its making; but behind the lineaments of this spirited beautiful creature in ruff and farthingale a discerning eye may note the sterner features of Praise-God Barebones.

Oliver Cromwell is surely a play after the dramatist's heart. However fond Mr. Drinkwater may have grown of Mary Stuart, we feel that in the end he was glad to be rid of the minx, with her Renaissance airs and graces breaking in upon the solemnity of sermon-time. The clank of spurs and the thump of brass-bound Bibles are indeed manlier to the ear. And this play, more than the other, offers scope for the craft of the true biographer—the craft of reflected portraiture, the mirroring of mind in mind. "Mr. Milton has been reading to me this afternoon," says old Mrs. Cromwell as she lies abed. What Mrs. Cromwell says may not be dramatic evidence, and yet it carries weight with the jury. John Milton, we may be sure, wasted none of his leisure hours in reading "Paradise Regained" at the bedside of the Stuarts. When Milton crossed a threshold and grasped a hand, the hand was clean and the hearth something more than Puritan. He came as the world's ambassador to the court of greatness. Oliver Cromwell was a plain country gentleman, but he was Milton's friend; he was a stern soldier, but he was also "our chief of men." As with Milton, who remains a hearsay witness, so it is with Hampden and Ireton, who appear. Their friendship trans-figures Cromwell, illumines his sombre character, lends eloquence to his curt speech. So let Little Arthur rage, and W. G. Wills imagine a vain thing. This Cromwell has his faults, but he is still "our chief of men."

His biographer also is a dramatist. He makes no pretence of aloofness, but himself speaks with friendly warmth. Upon the whole he speaks well, though his literary silences are hard to endure. It is in the nature of the subject that Cromwell should at times overwhelm us by his nobility. If presbyter be priest writ large, we must accept the pontifical immensity of the Arch-Independent, or Lord High Nonconformist, in the full blast of benediction upon friends and malediction upon enemies. It is in the nature of the subject that Cromwell should sometimes appear to address himself to our particular pew; and we leave the theatre with a feeling of surprise that the singing of the Doxology, or at least of the Old Hundredth, should not bring the proceedings to a close. Puritanism belongs to the spirit of the man; it is a ray of the light of character that streams from him.

And Robert E. Lee? We who are not moral biographers, but common hero-worshippers, may be pardoned for grudging to the great Southern general a degree of nobility that was proper to the characters of Lincoln and Cromwell. The pedestal we have each of us privately built for greatness is threatened with overcrowding at the summit. We admit a new claimant with the utmost unwillingness. We yearn secretly for a Frederick the Great or a Machiavelli who will lend stability to the lower portion of the structure. And yet, as his author proves, General Lee has an incontestable right to high place. We believe in him as a great soldier, a far-sighted citizen, a magnanimous enemy, a warm-hearted friend. We accept his strategy and his tactics, his victories and his defeats, his generous impulses and his sagacious reticences. We believe even in his sense of humour, for a twinkle seems to enliven that weather-beaten eye. If he have a fault, it is that of being over-rational. His wisdom flows too readily from the springs of action. He pauses in the midst of a natural gesture to utter the unnatural word. The roar of battle is suddenly hushed, and reason speaks. Our consolation must be found in the doubt whether the annals of history contain enough men both great and good to last Mr. Drinkwater for the rest of his natural life as a dramatist. One day he will have to start on the rogues. It will be a joyous occasion.