Mr. Tennyson's Drama

By James, Henry

Book Id: WPLBN0000622471
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 32.29 KB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	Mr. Tennyson's Drama
Author:	James, Henry
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Blackmask Online Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Blackmask Online


Citation APA MLA Chicago James, H. (n.d.). Mr. Tennysons Drama. Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.cc/

Description
Excerpt: A NEW poem by Mr. Tennyson is certain to be largely criticised, and if the new poem is a drama, the performance must be a great event for criticism as well as for poetry. Great surprise, great hopes, and great fears had been called into being by the announcement that the author of so many finely musical lyrics and finished, chiselled specimens of narrative verse, had tempted fortune in the perilous field of the drama. Few poets seemed less dramatic than Tennyson, even in his most dramatic attempts?in ?Maud,? in ?Enoch Arden,? or in certain of the ?Idyls of the King.? He had never used the dramatic form, even by snatches; and though no critic was qualified to affirm that he had no slumbering ambition in that direction, it seemed likely that a poet who had apparently passed the meridian of his power had nothing absolutely new to show us. On the other hand, if he had for years been keeping a gift in reserve, and suffering it to ripen and mellow in some deep corner of his genius, while shallower tendencies waxed and waned above it, it was not unjust to expect that the consummate fruit would prove magnificent. On the whole, we think that doubt was uppermost in the minds of those persons who to a lively appreciation of the author of ?Maud? added a vivid conception of the exigencies of the drama. But at last ?Queen Mary? appeared, and conjecture was able to merge itself in knowledge. There was a momentary interval, during which we all read, among the cable telegrams in the newspapers, that the London ?Times? affirmed the new drama to contain more ?true fire? than anything since Shakespeare had laid down the pen. This gave an edge to our impatience; for ?fire,? true or false, was not what the Laureate?s admirers had hitherto claimed for him. In a day or two, however, most people had the work in their hands.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: Mr. Tennyson's Drama, 1 -- By Henry James, 1





Literature, Literature & thought, Writing. The Witch Hare The Forest Monster of Oz (by Evans, Bob) The Life of a Ship (by Ballantyne, Robert Michael) The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (by Taine, Hippolyte A.) 1492 (by Johnston, Mary) Cowmen and Rustlers (by Ellis, Edward S.) Sanders' Union Fourth Reader (by Sanders, Charles Walton) The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Book ... (by Rousseau, Jean Jacques) The Pursuit of the Houseboat (by Bangs, John Kendrick) Mr. Tennyson's Drama (by James, Henry) Homeward Bound; Or, The Chase. A Tale of... (by Cooper, James Fenimore) The Letter of the Churches of Vienna and... (by Lugdunum, Vienna) Linutile Beaute (by De Maupassant, Guy) The Mind in the Making (by Robinson, James Harvey) The Worm Ouroboros (by Eddison, E. R.)