THE last group of tragedies is that which was published from the year 1905 onward to the poets’ death—;and afterward; but it was not a product of their latest creative activity. That activity was lyrical: or, if it ventured at all into the region of tragedy (as in an unpublished piece called Iphigenia in Arsarcia) it was with tragic genius shorn and subdued by Christian hope, Christian meekness, and Christian triumph over death—;which is to say, that it was tragedy no longer.
One may not assert in round terms that, of the eleven plays in this last group, not one was written after Michael Field entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1907. But the evidence suggests that they were all conceived before that date; and although certain revision may have been done afterward to some of them, the more important plays were completed before the poets’ conversion.
After that event their minds were possessed by the exaltation of the mystic, and their days were largely occupied in devotional exercises. Obviously they were not in the mood for the objective imagining of the dramatist; and an artistic cause is thus added to the philosophic one for the suspension of dramatic impulse.
In the Name of Time, as I have elsewhere stated, must be put back as far as 1890; A Question of Memory was written and played in 1893. Deirdre in its first form was in existence years before they died, and with Borgia would rank in style with their earlier chronicle-plays. These two belong to the last dramatic phase only in their tragic motive. Mariamne was finished in 1905, The Accuser by January 1907, and one at least of the Tristan plays by 1903.
I have called these plays an Eastern group, because the most prominent of them are Eastern in theme—;and for another reason. But several come much nearer home for their subject. Two of them, Tristan de Leonois and The Tragedy of Pardon, deal with different aspects of the Tristan legend; and one treats (en fantaisie) of that great lover, Diane de Poytiers. Nevertheless, whatever the theme, all possess the characteristic which makes a second reason for describing them as Eastern—;namely, an almost Oriental violence of passion. Thus Cesare Borgia is hurled to the abyss down the immense ascent of his ambition. Deirdre’s love—;too noble for caution, too great to calculate, and too proud to dissemble—;compels catastrophe. Herod’s passion passes into a destroying madness. Ras Byzance consumes his universe in the hell of his own jealousy; and the messiah Sabbatai, distilling a cold spiritual pride, cries from its lonely central ice, “I am a god,” only to shrivel incontinently at the first touch of the world’s derision. It is as though Michael Field were consciously ruled in this last phase of her Tragic Muse by the lines from the Antigone which she has set upon the first page of her Deirdre, “Nothing that is vast enters into the life of man without a curse.” For it is with the vast, the excessive, the overwhelming that she deals here; and since she is a tragic poet, she sees the vast forces accompanied by their curse, and life persistently followed by its attendant shadow.
The Herodian trilogy is the clearest illustration of this, because the material has been reduced to its simplest elements. It is, too, a good example of the poet’s dramatic art in its final manner, since therein is developed almost to an extreme her compacted, elliptical method of presentation. She had from the first a gift of seizing character into expression which, though intensely poetical, was often abrupt, fragmentary, and disjointed; the swift words leaping from the cloud of passion like lightning in a night of storm, and laying bare in one instant the whole earth and sky. In these plays, and especially in Queen Mariamne, this characteristic economy is practised to an extent which sometimes almost defeats itself.
Only two plays of the trilogy were completed, Queen Mariamne and The Accuser. But neither suffers from the absence of the third; for while the first is the tragedy of Mariamne and the second the tragedy of Herod, the two together form a complete dramatic presentment of the historical figure of Herod the Great. It is a subject made for drama; and although for a century before Michael Field no great rendering of it had been made, the flair of the early seventeenth-century dramatists had unerringly tracked it down and fastened upon it. Fenton’s Mariamne (a hundred years later) is a rather blustering affair, mainly occupied with intrigue and family feuds, and presenting Mariamne as an inferior kind of gramophone with a very limited number of records.
But a pleasing and significant fact about the origins of Michael Field’s Queen Mariamne is that this was the subject of the first English drama ever published by a woman. In 1613 a play appeared called The Tragedie of Mariam, the faire Queene of Jewry, written by that learned, vertuous and truly noble Ladie, E. C. And although there has been some question as to which of two possible individuals this “truly noble” E. C. represented, both of them were women; and it seems to have been established now that the author was certainly Lady Elizabeth Carew. Whether our poets knew of this play and its authorship does not appear: they seem to have gone straight to Josephus for their material, and to have been completely loyal to him. Indeed, so close do they keep to the historical record of their persons, that the transformation they effect is the more magical. They take the rugged facts, and breathe life into them. Thus their Mariamne grows out of history like a tree out of a bare hillside, made from the rock and rooted in it, and yet a new and living thing. She is very clearly and strongly drawn, a nature that clings with racial tenacity fast to the ties of family, and which therefore cannot forget the dead grandfather and brother who lie between herself and Herod. She does not wish to avenge them: she possesses an integrity which holds her loyal to the man her husband “who had slain her kin”; but she cannot love him, and she finds it impossible to be polite to his relatives. That intriguing Idumean set! Mariamne the Maccabee, impolitic and proud, allows herself to sneer at their Edomite origin and their creeping ways. But she will not countenance, either, the plots of her own mother; and stands alone, a noble if scornful figure, between their snarling camps.
The question as to whether Herod’s passion for Mariamne does at last win her love is one which attracts the modern romantic, though it was, of course, irrelevant to Josephus. To him the damning fact about her was that she permitted herself to be haughty to her husband; and Michael Field respects her original so far as to leave the question unsolved. Yet it is possible to see in a hint or two the gradual filming over, so to speak, of the wounds that Mariamne had suffered at Herod’s hands; and an appeal to his love, as to a refuge, from the spiteful, clamorous hatreds of both their families. The tentative response makes her tragedy the more poignant. But even had she loved Herod, her pride could not have borne the insult of that fatal summons to his pleasure. The Asmonean princess denied the Edomite, and, lighting up his wrath, thereby fell into the hands of those malignant enemies their relatives. These, when Herod would have annulled the death-sentence passed on her, fanned his jealousy and outraged pride, and compassed her end.
Mariamne’s death, even in the plain statement of the historian, is one of the sublime tragedies of the world. Our poet does not move a hair’s breadth from the facts, nor colour them. She was probably tempted to do so, for there is a sense in which the facts were undramatic enough to defeat her. Mariamne makes no defence when she is accused, no protest when she is condemned; and the poignancy of her tragedy lies largely in her silence and her isolation. This pitiful loneliness is difficult to handle as drama; and the poet has been so true to the record that, after the short crucial scene at the beginning of Act V which provokes the catastrophe, Mariamne has no more to say than a single line as she goes to her execution. Yet the whole act is permeated by her personality and visibly moved by the forces that the poet has set alight in her. Thus even Salome and Herod’s mother, spying fearfully upon Herod after the sentence has been decreed, are obsessed by the thought of her:
Cypros. Do you hear him—;hear my son; his ceaseless treading
As the creatures tread at night?
Salome. I hear him, mother;
He is stepping out her doom.
Cypros. You hear his treading,
Soft on the carpet, struck against the marble?
Would she were dead, who hated him to death!
. . . . .
Salome. Had he but looked on her,
Those mournful, sable eyes and lids in shadow
Under the pearl-laced crown, that brow in shadow,
And the obdurate mouth had been a charm
To honour as to fortitude. But, mother,
She strives to send no message; she is silent
As trophies or cold statues.
Act V, Scene 2
Thus Herod, the first fury of his anger spent, begins to be possessed by the haunting apparition of Mariamne which will not leave him any more; and to dream, while there is yet time, of reprieve:
Herod. But there are fortresses—;
Masada by the Dead Sea coast;
There I could bury her as in a coffin,
Each sigh of wind a death-song over her.
Were not that best? A tower her monument,
Yet she not dead, not out of all account,
Still mortal....
Unseen of living nature, but alive....
With the cloud eyes of her, the silken cheek,
Even the voice of rough-edged undertone,
Enamouring offence. There none would love her,
None! But my treasury
Would have sealed riches, not a destitute,
Defaulting cave. Among the coins and jewels,
Locked-up regalia and spoil—;a queen....
The difference!...
There in the rusty gloom accessible.
The difference! I think she shall not die.
Act V, Scene 2
Salome, however, has different views on the matter; and though Herod is at first strengthened in his project by her opposition to it, he reverts to the mood of vengeance when a member of the Sanhedrin comes to plead for Mariamne’s life:
Herod. My wrath is on you.
Old man, I am the judge, I am the king—;
There will not be a queen: I am her husband.
... Go back,
Far off!—;Bid those that sit and croak with you
Remember how august the Sanhedrin
Would rule the sons of Jacob. Say the king
Will turn not from his sentence for an hour.
Shemaiah. God save you!
Salome. Herod—;
Herod. I shall stay here, Salome; not with you,
But not alone.... There is no track for sleep
To wander after me; I shall not sleep.
Send Nicholas to read his History.
. . . . .
If I listen
To Nicholas it will be as a sea—;
What men have done and suffered—;as a sea
Pouring upon my ears; and it will tangle
Imagination that it shall not raise me
My bridal chamber at Samaria,
The adored head on my bosom, the young body
Loving me close, in very oneness, flesh
Even of my flesh—;our bridal a flower’s heart
Of balsam, and our secrecy.... To-morrow
The people watch her to her death.
Salome,
Call Nicholas....
I shall stay here, for dawn
Comes on the other side: the sun
Comes on the other side.
Send Nicholas!
Of the final scene, and of the rendering of Herod’s madness after Mariamne’s execution, one can only say that history provided the poets with a magnificent opportunity and that they rose to the height of it. But it is necessary to quote at least one other passage to illustrate the progress of the plot through the development of character. Accident plays no part in the march of the story: intrigue notwithstanding, the protagonists are betrayed from within, and events proceed inevitably, like a conspiracy of life itself. Almost any scene would indicate this; but one chooses that which follows, for the further reason that it treats a well-known incident of the story, and one which reveals at once Herod’s character and the nature of his love for Mariamne. I mean, of course, the secret command which he gave on two separate occasions when starting upon a dangerous expedition, that if he should die Mariamne should be instantly killed. It is an action in which the elements of his nature are stripped bare by his frantic passion. At least, the casual eye will see nothing more in it than a savage and treacherous cruelty verging on madness. How much more the poet can see need not be indicated in giving this quotation from Act II, Scene 2. Herod has returned in safety from Rome, and discovers that Joseph, who had charge of Mariamne, has betrayed to her the order to slay her in the event of Herod’s death. His jealousy immediately concludes that she has bribed Joseph by her favour:
Herod. Could he have said it of himself alone?
Could he have dared so break his oath? My silence—;
Was it unsealed by him?
. . . . .
Mariamne, so you pleaded for your life,
And you prevailed. Will you not plead with me?
Will you not recollect and feign again
To me, your husband, with the words you feigned,
The love you feigned to love ... or was the man
Beloved, who was your lover?
[Mariamne stands quite still.
Is this pride?
You are a Maccabee, an Israelite,
King Alexander’s daughter—;I of Edom,
Descended from a slave of Ascalon,
Not to be answered by your royal lips.
[Mariamne sighs a little: then, raising
her eyes, speaks quietly.
Mariamne. How was it drawn from him?
As the night comes up into the evening-tide.
I was sad, and he was sorrowful to death
That he had sworn a cruelty and wrong
So unavailing to repent, if done.
Spare him, lord, in belief of my clear words.
[Herod gazes at her with awe, then muffles
his face in his robe, and speaks slowly.
Herod. Were you so sad at dying, when to die
Was but to rise up at my bidding, Come!
Was but to quicken to my cry, Receive me
Back in your arms? Oh, you are slow of heart!
When I was dying of the pest in Rome,
And knew not I should look upon you more,
Death was not cold, death glowed with Mariamne,
I had prepared her welcome on that shore!
[She flashes one rapid glance at him.
Mariamne. I will wait you on that shore, my lord the king.
Herod. O my gazelle, my noble distance-keeper,
Wilt thou indeed await me? Then why tarry?
Mariamne. But do not cast between us any more
One that is dead. Spare Joseph, merciful!
Herod. The dead between us, Mariamne? Doe
Of the high places.... How?
Mariamne. My grandfather ...
[He grips her wrist.
[In a whisper.] My brother....
Herod. Peace! Were you drowning in my arms,
Your voice would sink before me so, your thoughts
Would drop bewildered so....
. . . . .
Mariamne. Spare Joseph, merciful!
Herod. Mariamne, I would reason with you. Speak!
I would question the great blood in you: a servant
False to his oath, a soldier in accord
With foes, a sentinel
Who to the nearing spy betrays the path—;
Can such men live? Are they for kings to use?
[She moves away, looking out over the
tombs of her ancestors. He follows.
Flesh of their dust, pronounce: can such men live?
The poets call their Borgia a period-play; and in its large scale, its manner of handling history, and its elaborate construction it resembles their earlier chronicle-plays rather than those of the last period. Written in six acts and a great many scenes, it has not the simplicity of design of Mariamne, A Messiah, or Ras Byzance. It moves through a wider circuit, embraces many more incidents, and develops character at greater leisure. It has, of course, a complex and exacting theme; one of no less magnitude, indeed, than the Italian Renaissance, centred upon the portentous Borgia trinity—;Pope Alexander VI and his children Cesare and Lucrezia.
Nevertheless, though the full measure of the play cannot be gauged except by reference to the complexity and sheer extent of its material, the tragedy is reducible to much simpler terms. For it is as the rise and fall of Cesare Borgia that one finally sees it: his stupendous ambition dominates it; and the last and deepest impression of it is the news of his end brought to Lucrezia by his page Juanito, who had found his mangled body:
Juanito. Dawn found me tangled by the night, and crying
In the alien, stone wilderness, a captive.
They brought his arms,
His sparkling arms; they questioned of the Prince
Who wore them.
Lucrezia. But the moment....
Juanito. Of a sudden
The foe retreated, leaving me: I reached
The rough-hewn gorge....
[Near to her and in a changed voice.
He lay there, naked;
He lay—;his face under the sky: his wounds
A hero’s—;twenty-three; across his loins
A bloodied stone, his life-blood round the rocks,
His hair a weft of red. How beautiful,
And wild and out of memory was his face!
The great wind swept him and the sun rose up....
Act VI, Scene 3
That scene is a lasting memory, as, indeed, are others to which we shall come; but the play’s the thing. The poets seem to indicate this in their sub-title, suggesting that the value of the work is its value as a whole; and bare courtesy would constrain one so to regard it. But that is not an easy thing to do. Poetic drama always draws heavily on the concentration and imaginative sympathy of its readers; and this one more than most makes that demand if one is to appreciate it fully. As tragedy—;that is, as pure art—;its appeal is direct and irresistible, and could not be escaped by the most casual person who is likely to take up a book of this kind. But the casual person will not, perhaps, perceive its other significance—;in values of history, of portraiture, of the marshalling, selecting, and grouping of facts, of the evocation of atmosphere, of what is, in short, the re-creation of a very brilliant epoch.
Take the historical aspect first. At the time the poets wrote their play the principal authorities on the subject were Gregorovius and Yriarte. The fresh data of Professor Woodward, published in 1913, and the dry light in which he presents the life of Cesare Borgia, were not accessible to them. Moreover, Yriarte, whom they seem to have chiefly followed, is now accused (in what looks to the lay mind so much like the invariable formula of successive ‘authorities’) of inaccuracy. It would not be surprising, therefore, if the poets were caught out in matters of fact or, a graver fault, in false deductions from the facts, to accord with Yriarte’s romanticism. An obvious defence would be at hand. But the truth is that there is no need to take up the cudgels for them on this score. Apart from scenes of minor importance, they have selected as the main events of their ‘plot’ incidents so well documented as the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s remorse and penitence, his complicity after the event, his support of Cesare’s schemes, his death at the crisis of Cesare’s fortunes. Thus, too, we have Lucrezia’s betrothal and marriage with Don Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglia, Cesare’s hatred of her husband, his assassination, and Lucrezia’s remarriage with Don Alfonso of Este. And for Cesare himself such established facts are taken as will conveniently serve to reveal his character; for example, his renunciation of the cardinalship, his military ambition, his marriage of policy, and his master-stroke of treachery in the betrayal of the Condottieri at Sinigaglia. Details of policy are avoided. Cesare’s campaigns, important as they are, are wisely indicated by these unmilitary authors only in their effect on his fortunes. While as to more sinister things, rank scandal with which the air of the time was foul, a quotation will best illustrate our poets’ method of dealing with material of this kind. In Scene 4 of Act IV Cesare and the Pope, having discussed matters of weight, are reminded by a paper lying on the ground of things more trivial:
Cesare. What is this parchment?
Alexander. You have read it,
They told me. ’Tis the libel from Taranto
Sent to Savelli.
Christ, we are a kindred!
Carnage and rapine, perfidy....
Cesare. Why mince it?
Assassination, incest!
[Rising from the ground with clenched hands.
Alexander. But the Latin!
The dulcitude of apophthegm, the style!
What sap in all this rankness. Cesare,
I laughed an hour, applauded with wet eyes—;
Literae humaniores—;so the salt
Of the strong farce compelled me.
Do you stoop
To anger? Consul Julius Cæsar laughed
When choice Catullus spat an epigram,
And dined him that same evening.
One does not claim exact historical accuracy for the play, of course. Certain incidents are introduced which will not be found in the records, but which possess the essential truth of being in character; and the scenes they inspire are the fruit not of dramatic imagination alone, but of that power operating upon very great knowledge of the life of the time and the place. It is, indeed, in its re-creation of that life that the chief interest of the play resides. As scientific history it may fail the test—;though not by a very wide margin. But scientific history never yet re-created life, and perhaps one has as little right to expect from it this, the great function of art, as to expect of art a precise accuracy. Yet one may claim for Michael Field that she has achieved the re-creation with a high degree of truth to fact; and further, that the poetic truth of her creation comes surprisingly near, in its implicit judgments, the final verdict of the historian. There is, of course, no overt judgment in her work: the human spectacle holds us too fascinated, pitiful, and terrified to leave room for censure. We are not concerned to weigh the guilt of Lucrezia, allured and appalled as we are by her fatal suppleness and passivity. We are in no mood to reckon the total of Cesare’s crimes, terrified as we are at the stupendous force to which they but serve as a convenient means. And it is not our poet’s doing, but of the mere data of history, that Rodrigo Borgia, his Holiness Pope Alexander VI, pronounces inexorable judgment on himself. This he does when, stricken by the murder of his son Giovanni, Duke of Gandia, he is filled with remorse and penitence. A vision of his son in Paradise induces the softer mood:
Alexander. Poto,
There was no scar on him, not the least wound;
That is the truth: and he stood armed again.
As bright as San Michele he looked down
Upon us from the wall, his gonfalon
Swathing around him as he stood. His face
Was to me as an angel’s.
[He weeps quietly.] I repent,
I will change all to meet that boy again
In Paradise, no wound on him, no scar.
And yet the sight of him,
O Poto, drove down to the rasping quick
Of conscience through my heart. All shall be changed,
The Vatican be cleared of sin. These bastards....
Let me not see them more! Joffré, Lucrezia—;
Joffré must mind his government afar,
I banish him. Lucrece—;oh, I shall gather
The seas between us; she shall dwell in Spain,
Dwell in Valencia, deep, where I was born,
White little demon-girl!
[He rises, trembling, and Poto robes him.
No priest henceforward
Shall hold two benefices; simony
No more shall breed among us. God would punish
Some sin in us; it could not be Giovanni
Deserved a death so cruel. Gently, Poto,
You are too violent.
Poto. Patience, Holiness,
You slit the silk.
Act I, Scene 5
A cardinal point is the poet’s conception of her three Borgia persons as one, united by every possible tie—;of blood, of sympathy, of ambition, of deep affinity. They are devoted to each other, and vowed as one mind to the aggrandizement of Cesare. Indeed, the core of the tragedy is, astonishingly, this simple human feeling. But the affection between them might never appear, under their sinister star, as a natural family bond. It was suspect from its origin. Thus the thread which binds the play together, and might have been so clear and firm a line, wavers and slips in those slippery high places of Renaissance Italy; and, however innocent in fact, takes from so much corruption the colour of guilt. Round the three persons of her trinity Michael Field has made to revolve the vivid life of the epoch they made and were made by—;warm, coloured, gay, radically unmoral and strictly religious, sparkling with wit and gravely learned, rejoicing equally in the sensible world and the things of the intellect, adoring art and pursuing science; at once fierce and cunning, militant and politic, barbarous and polished; frivolous, worldly, and voluptuous, and yet saintly, serious, and capable of profound concentration and dogged industry.
The magnificence of the Renaissance is here—;in feasts, dances, military triumphs, and ecclesiastical pomp: in Cesare’s resplendent trappings that provoke the covert sneer at the French Court, and in Lucrezia’s countless pearls. The art of the Renaissance enters, with Pintoriccio and Michelangelo and others, to foster Cesare’s love of exquisite handicraft. Its poetry comes in the person of Cavaliere; its science in the engineering works of Leonardo; its statecraft in that astute and watchful envoy from Florence, already brooding upon his Il Principe. And its very atmosphere clings about the scene, bright with a kind of glare, almost dazzling the spiritual sight; hot, heavy, and enervating to the moral sense. The poets were apparently well justified in calling their Borgia a period play.
The subject of Act I would make a complete tragedy in itself, and has in fact been so treated by other poets. Its central event is the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s sorrow and penitence, his discovery that Cesare is the murderer, and the subdual of his will to Cesare’s immense designs. In Scene 1, on the occasion of Lucrezia’s betrothal, the Duke is reported missing. Poto, the Chamberlain, suggests that he shall be searched for; and the Pope turns to the company, which includes his young mistress, Giulia, with a jesting protest:
Alexander. O Poto, Poto, search
His haunts! The malice of these chamberlains!
Madonna Giulia, Monsignore Poto
Would search the place where Don Giovanni hides.
Have mercy on my son!
Giulia. Monsignore finds
Your Holiness so jovial he is conquered
By the same vein.
Lucrezia. Excuse him!
Alexander. Even our ladies, Poto,
Plead for the Duke’s seclusion. Without doubt
He waits for sundown to forsake the place
Where he was sociable.
But in Scene 2 levity is turned to fear. Cesare, who was last in his brother’s company two nights before at a banquet given by their mother, Vanozza de’ Catanei, is commanded to the Pope’s presence, and succeeds in turning his father’s suspicion in the direction of the Orsini. In Scene 3 the Pope, in desperate anxiety, is watching from a window of the Vatican the darkening Tiber, where fishermen are dragging for Giovanni’s body. He turns suddenly to the cardinals about him:
Alexander. Where is he—;my young son,
My beautiful Giovanni? You stand round,
Wise with the Church’s wisdom, but where is he?
He may be living, tortured, gagged.... He is not!
No, there is come a change in me: I know
He is not breathing with me any more,
And yet I cannot bid you pray for him;
I do not count him dead. He is but lost,
And lost so deep I do not think a creature,
Not even his Creator knows the place
That he has wandered to....
Cardinal Borgia. Have faith, his body will be found.
Alexander. His body!
When last I saw the boy
He shook his golden poll with merriment
That I received his Spanish mistress here,
A most devout and humble Catholic,
With eyes dark wells for Cupid’s thirst. He laughed,
Till all the room was sunbeams from his mirth.
If God
Turn such a thing as that to carrion—;then
I shall curse God. [Turning to Lucrezia.
Well, wanton, you look white!
What comfort have you? Would you be a nun
That you crept to San Sisto from your palace
Soon as you heard? Is not this missing boy
Your brother?...
You have been with the boy: you know
Where he loved, where he was hated. All our loves
And hates are in your hands. You have grown more blind
Than any woman ever made herself
That she might see in the dark.
Give up your witness.
[Lucrezia remains before him silent,
with open mouth.
A little devil, circumspect,
When I would have rank truth.
As he wrathfully dismisses the circle Madonna de’ Catanei enters:
Alexander. God’s breath,
His mother!
[She falls at his feet: he raises her.
O Vanozza,
Poor heart!
Vanozza. My Lord, your Holiness, I came—;
Forgive me.
Alexander. Nay!
[He falls sobbing on her shoulder.
We mourn together. Where we had a son
For eyes’ delight, there is nothing.
[Soothing and patting Vanozza.] Hush, you must not!
Little beloved, you suckled him. You must not!
Go home; pray to Madonna.—;She will hear.
And let me see your face.
[Drawing her veil.] It is the same;
As honest and as good.
Vanozza. I have good children.
I am so richly blessed ... and this dear boy,
A Prince from Spain, came back again and kissed me.
Alexander. Good son and enviable righteousness
To kiss this face in filial piety.
There, there, you must forget him!
At this moment a waterman is brought in. He relates how he saw a body brought down to the Tiber, and where it was flung into it. A messenger is sent to direct the dragging of the fishermen to the spot he indicates; and the Pope returns to the window to watch the lights of their boats. The psychology of this passage will be observed. When the Chamberlain enters and gives the Pope the fatal news he appears not to hear, but continues something he had been saying. Then he is silent while rapid question and answer pass between the cardinals; but at the mention of Giovanni’s wounds he falls to the ground with a cry:
Alexander [watching]. A constellation!
Malign, bright stars! Giovanni! But the lights
Are moving onward to Sant’ Angelo.
They move along in state. It is my son!
They dazzle me.... They pass me....
[Enter Monsignore Burchard.
Burchard. Holy Father,
The illustrious Duke of Gandia has been found
In velvet coat and cloak, the dagger sheathed,
His ducats in his purse.
Alexander. It sails, it sails, it sails
On to Sant’ Angelo. The torches ...
Cardinal Segovia. Nothing is stol’n?
Burchard. No, not a single gem.
Cardinal Segovia. Vendetta? Are there wounds?
Burchard. I counted seven.
One mortal in the throat. His hands were tied.
Alexander [with a howl like a lion’s]. God, by God’s blood, my curse!
[He falls in a swoon.
One must not stop to analyse the play, or even this first act, completely. But one ought at least to indicate its extraordinary combination of subtlety with passion. In the scenes we have glanced at, the Pope passes from pole to pole of his nature. The poets have the difficult task of indicating this transit—;from vast sorrow and horror, through remorse and penitence, suspicion, wrath, and dread at the accusation laid against Cesare, to forgiveness, reconciliation, compliance, and even a compact with Giovanni’s murderer. In a cold historical statement one either finds these facts incredible, or is tempted to account for them, in Renaissance fashion, by believing the Borgia nature to have been something monstrous and unhuman. From the artistic standpoint such a transition would appear well-nigh impossible to represent convincingly. Yet it is done, and we never question that the thing really happened so. The means used to this end are often very quiet. By the lightest touches—;a broken phrase, an exclamation, or even a silence—;the poet will register the swiftly changing current of emotion. One cannot easily illustrate this by quotation; but an example occurs in a passage already quoted—;that in which the Pope, having seen a vision of Giovanni, is filled with remorse. It will be remembered that he rails against his children, and particularly Lucrezia. Yet two minutes afterward, when he inquires for her and is informed that she is praying in the convent, he murmurs “Sweet soul!”; and one sees his rage and remorse crumble, and the whole fabric of his penitence come toppling down. In touches like this the incredible is made to look only too easy to the ductile Borgia temperament. But they are often the merest hints, as in this tiny masterpiece, Scene 4. The papal Court is by this time seething with rumour. Suspicion has fallen upon one after another of the enemies of Giovanni; but within the innermost circle there is a whisper that Cesare was the murderer. It is this that has driven Lucrezia to her convent; but at midnight she creeps out and comes to Cesare:
Lucrezia. Madonna Adriana brought me here;
She stays without: I go back to the convent.
Cesare—;tell me all that I should pray.
Cesare [turning his head back towards her from
the couch]. Amanda, that your scruples be removed.
That I be Cesar.
Lucrezia. Take a little rest.
Cesare. Shall you, from prayer?
To-night you look a sibyl.
Who did this deed?
Lucrezia. Let Juan play the lute;
You must have music through these restless nights.
How lost you look!
Cesare. You startled me. How lost!
[He closes his eyes.
Lucrezia. He is dreaming; he has quite forgotten me.
Come, Adriana, soft! As an astronomer
He must not be disturbed: he is quite lost.
One leaves Borgia reluctantly, having done so much less than justice to it: nevertheless, it is refreshing to turn to Deirdre after an atmosphere so charged and tropical. Not that Deirdre is set on any lower plane of emotion, for it also deals with vast passions. But in this play we pass visibly to a more northerly latitude, to an austerer race and a more primitive age; and it is in an air swept clean by storm that the business of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind goes forward.
Michael Field has made a noble rendering of this old Irish story which, its subject dating from the first century, suggests a cause no less remote than that for the ancient feud between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. The story is well known: the birth of Deirdre and the prophecies of doom to Ulster through her; the defiance of the doom by Conchobar the king, and the fostering of Deirdre to be his wife; the carrying off of Deirdre on the eve of her wedding by Naisi and their flight to Alba; the invitation to Naisi and his brothers to return under Conchobar’s promise of forgiveness; and the treacherous assassination of them upon their arrival. There are many variants of the legend; and our poet has chosen the oldest of them all, that preserved in the Book of Leinster, for the chief events of her drama. She was compelled to alter the story at one point, for it would hardly have been convenient to represent the Sons of Usnach slain, all three at one stroke, by the magic sword. But in varying the manner of their death she was enabled to adopt another form of the legend, in which Naisi and his two brothers were overcome by a Druid’s enchantment, and, believing themselves to be drowning, dropped their weapons and were immediately overpowered by Conchobar’s men. There was, however, a difficulty here too; for whereas three heads lopped off at one blow was a little too dynamic even for the purposes of drama, an unseen spell of wizardry was altogether too static; and the poet therefore contrived a scene in which Naisi’s comrades are actually drowned, and he, left alone to protect Deirdre, is slain by Eogan.
Another modification, with less warrant from the documents, perhaps, but of even greater interest, is that which introduces into this primitive world the first gleam of Christianity. The fact might suggest that the Deirdre play was written after the poets’ conversion, did one not know that they were at work on the theme some time before. But it is extremely probable that the passage in which the wise woman Lebarcham tries to turn Conchobar from brooding on vengeance by the tale of a new god who refused to avenge himself on his enemies was inserted after the first draft of the play was made. It is written in prose, and, placed at the beginning of Act III, hardly affects the subsequent action. From that point of view it might be considered superfluous; but Michael, though not Henry, was capable of so much over-zeal. She was, however, also capable of justifying her act artistically. The interpolation is at least not an anachronism. It is possible, there in Ireland, that even so early had penetrated “the story of how a god met his death ... young, radiant ... bearing summer in his hands.” But it might have been a menace to the unity of the drama: it might have destroyed the satisfying wholeness which, in whatever form one finds it, the pagan story possesses. Michael Field avoided that calamity. She threw her glimmer of Christian light across the scene in such a way that it reveals more strongly by contrast the dark elements of which the story is composed. By it one instinctively measures the barbarity of the age out of which the story came, and realizes its antiquity. The poet does not allow it to influence action, for that would weaken the tragedy; but she uses the occasion to humanize and make credible that which, in the Conchobar of the records, seems almost monstrous. In those ancient tales Conchobar plans his vengeance on Naisi and his brothers with a coldness that is diabolic and a precision almost mechanical. He provides for his own safety, too, with comical caution, carefully sounding one after another of his knights until he finds one who does not immediately threaten to kill him for suggesting such a dastardly deed as the murder of the Sons of Usnach. Yet, as our poet has re-created Conchobar, he is a human soul driven this way and that in a running fight with passion; pitiable in his hopeless love for Deirdre, comprehensible in his wrath against Naisi, sinister and terrifying in his revenge. And underneath the overt drama lies a profounder irony; for while he is plotting in his heart the enormous treachery, Lebarcham tells of the young god who was betrayed by his friends, and he says:
Hush, woman, for my heart is broken. Would I had been there, I who can deal division between hosts. I would have set the Bound One free. If I could avenge him!
The play is written in five acts and a prologue; but is not divided into scenes. Its form is for the most part blank verse—;the iambic pentameter of Michael Field which is so often neither iambic nor a pentameter. Her verse is, indeed, a very variable line, changing its unit as frequently as will consist with a regular form; and as flexible, sinewy, and nervous as will consist with dignity, grace, and splendid colour. Prose passages occur in Acts III and V; and a form of lyrical rhapsody is used to express the Druid prophecies and Deirdre’s lament. The use of lyrics in her drama was not new to Michael Field, who from the beginning could always relieve the strain of intense emotion by a graceful song. But in this case she is following, with her accustomed fidelity, lines laid down in older renderings of the legend.
The most notable feature of this play is its ending. No author of the more important modern versions of this theme has dared to take his conclusion from the oldest one of all. Usually he has preferred the variant which tells of Deirdre, broken-hearted at Naisi’s murder, falling dead into his grave. This is, of course, in some respects a more ‘poetic’ passing: it lends itself to romantic treatment, and its tragedy is more immediate and final. Moreover, from the dramaturgic point of view the action is easier to handle and more certain of its effect. Michael Field was not, however, attracted by mere facility. Truth drew her with a stronger lure, and to her the more ancient story would make a claim deeper than loyalty. For she would see Deirdre’s survival not only as a more probable thing, but as something more profoundly tragic; and the manner of her death, when it came, as more clearly of a piece with the old saga and essentially of Deirdre’s wilful and resolute character.
Deirdre is no Helen, though her legend has features so similar. The mere outline of her which the old story gives indicates a creature who will compel destiny rather than suffer it; and our poet has but completed, imaginatively, what the original suggests—;a girl whose instinct of chastity drives her away from marriage without love; whose ardour and courage claim her proper mate; whose fidelity keeps her unalterably true; and whose head is at least as sound as her heart is tender. For although she is a rather tearful creature, she is also very astute; and Naisi need not have died quite so young if he had only listened to her warning and condescended to take her advice. Deirdre is, in short, of her race and of her time as surely as Lucrezia Borgia is a daughter of Pope Alexander VI and a child of the Italian Renaissance. Michael Field’s range in the creation of women characters is very wide, and the verisimilitude with which she presents natures so alien from herself as the courtesan and the voluptuary might be astonishing if one thought of her simply as a Victorian lady, and not as a great creative artist. Nevertheless, in the re-creation of Deirdre one feels that she must have taken an especial joy, as witness the opening passage of Act I, where Lebarcham and Medv the nurse are discussing their fosterling. It is the morning of her sixteenth birthday, and King Conchobar is coming to the little secluded house where Deirdre has been brought up to claim her as his bride:
Medv. But look at her!
Lebarcham. Ay, Medv, it is not for our eyes to look.
The beauty!
Medv. She is dreaming.
Lebarcham. She sees true;
Therefore she is no poet. Gentle Medv,
My sister with the mother-eyes that rest
But when they rest on her, she is not ours,
Nor fate’s, nor any man’s; for she will choose,
Close prisoner as she is, her destiny,
Choose for herself the havoc she will make,
The tears that she will draw from other eyes,
The tears that will burn through her, the delights
That she will ravish from the world. She knows
So definitely all she wants: such souls
Attain. She is not dreaming; look at her!
Medv. She does not sigh as other maids kept close;
She is soft as a wood-pigeon, but no crooning—;
And when I speak of love—;King Conchobar
To be her lord—;she laughs.
Lebarcham. A wanton laugh!
Medv. No, no! Dear heart, she has no wantonness;
And yet I am afraid to hear her laughter,
It is so low and sure. My maid, my maid!
What shall I do that bitter day the King
Tears her away from me?
Lebarcham. Be comforted.
She loves you, she will bless you all her years:
But if she hate—;I would not be the creature
To cross her path, not if I were the chieftain
Of Ulla, or of Alba, or the world.
Medv. She has no malice. Would you slander her?
Lebarcham. I praise her! She can hate as only those
Of highest race, without remorse, for ever.
Again, in the same first act, when Deirdre has prevailed on Lebarcham to bring Naisi to the hut, and the two have spoken of their love, it is she who at once perceives where that confession must lead. Naisi would rather kiss and part than rob the mighty Conchobar of his bride. But for Deirdre, having kissed, there shall be no parting:
Deirdre. But we shall never part again, O Naisi,
Bear me away with you. I cannot speak,
Not much, not anything to listen to,
Yet I shall lie awake at night to ease
The pain it is to think of you by thinking
More constantly each moment. Bear me with you
To Alba, to the loveable, soft land.
[Naisi pauses stupefied: then turns away.
Naisi. But he has waited
For sixteen years; I am his chosen knight:
At dance, at feasting never has he turned
His eyes on woman, or if idly turned
An instant, he was back with Lebarcham
Asking of thee, thy years.
Where are you stepping?
Your feet are towards the waves.
Deirdre. For I shall travel
Either across this narrow sea with you,
Or else alone with the currents and the creatures
That travel fleet and silent underneath.
Naisi. O vehement, mad girl, it is for freedom
That you would draw this ruin on us all,
On the great King my Overlord, on Erin.
It is not well.
Women are ever captive
In their spirits and their bodies: so the gods
Have fashioned it and there is no escape.
Deirdre. You will not give me love?
Naisi. Your liberty
I shall not give you, if I give you love.
Love is the hardest bondage in the world.
I would not put such chains on any woman
To love me....
Deirdre. Let me be with you, the name
Of being with you call it what you will—;
Bondage or freedom, I should still be happy,
Yea, for a year, yea, for a brood of years.
It is, however, in the last act that Michael Field again triumphantly proves her mettle as poet and dramatist. She had stubborn material here, harsh and crude stuff which kept the poets long at bay. For Deirdre’s end as related by the old bard is a bit of primitive savagery matched in terms of the plainest realism. Conchobar, after Naisi is enticed back to Ulster and murdered, takes possession of Deirdre; and she remains in his house for a year. But her constant reproaches and lamentation weary him; and at last, in order to subdue her, he threatens to lend her for a year to the man she hates most, Eogan, the slayer of Naisi. She is thereupon driven off in Eogan’s chariot, apparently subdued, seated in shame between him and Conchobar. At a gross taunt from Conchobar, however, she springs up, and flings herself out upon the ground. “There was a large rock near: she hurled her head at the stone so that she broke her skull, and killed herself.”
Our poet does not try to make this pretty or pleasing: and at one point at least she uses the exact terminology of the translation from which she worked. Its brutal elements are not disguised: Deirdre’s humiliation and the animal rage of Conchobar and Eogan remain hideous even after the poet, accepting all the material, has wrought it into a tragedy of consummate beauty. Its beauty has, indeed, more terror than pity in it—;it is brimmed with life’s actual bitterness—;but the depth and power of this Deirdre are not equalled by any other.
In quoting the closing passage of the play one does not afflict the reader by a comment on it; but there is a technical point which should be noticed. It is the device of the Messenger by which the poet avoids the representation of Deirdre’s death. The manner of that death was not only too awkward to present, but its horror as a spectacle was too great for artistic control. In causing it to be related by the charioteer Fergna, the poet has, in classic fashion, removed it from actual vision, but has enabled the mind to contemplate what the eyes could not have borne to look upon.
The chariot has driven off with Deirdre, Eogan, and Conchobar; and Lebarcham watches it till it passes out of sight beyond the mound that marks Naisi’s grave. Then she turns away, lamenting; and suddenly Fergna, the charioteer, re-enters, scared and breathless:
Lebarcham. Speak, Fergna! Are they dead?
Fergna. I scarce may say.
The woman’s shoulders panted on the rocks,
And over her a struggle fiercely raged
Of Conchobar with Eogan.
Lebarcham. Fosterling,
My Deirdre! Had they cast her from the car,
That thus she lay on the sharp rocks of stone?
Fergna. None touched her. She had gazed on yonder mound,
Setting her eyes on it, while car and horses
Moved on, until the little crests at last
Rose over it; then she awoke and swept
One fierce glance over Eogan, set before,
And slid one glance as fierce toward Conchobar,
Behind her and more close! It was one hatred,
The hatred of each glance. A shudder ran
All through my body: and through all the air
Ran laughter.
Lebarcham. Hers?—;her laughter?
Fergna. No, the king’s.
And then his words, the words of jest that followed!
“Deirdre, the glance a ewe
Would cast between two rams you cast on us,
Eogan and me.”
She started, and the horses
Started beneath my hand. I tightened rein,
And the whole chariot shivered as she leapt
Upon the rocks before her. Then those two
Sprung to the place where she was dashed, their breath
Whistled like winds: their crossing swords, with gnash
Of hungry teeth, affrighted me. I fled,
Leaving behind the chariot stopped by trees,
Rock-rooted....
He returns—;
The king! He leads the horses of his car
Slowly along. They come, but yet as night
Comes by long twilight.
Lebarcham. Lonely Conchobar!
[Re-enter Conchobar solemnly leading
the chariot.
O king....
Conchobar. Your horses, Fergna! Take the reins;
Lead them....
Fergna. My lord, forgive me. I will lead them
Back to their stable.
Lebarcham. Deirdre? Where is Eogan?
And Deirdre—;where?
Conchobar [with a hoarse laugh]. Ho, they have passed the borders,
Passed from my realm.
Nay, Fergna,
Lead the great car, checking the horses’ heads
Beside yon barrow of a hero: there
Unyoke them. Dig a neighbour sepulchre.
And let the bases of each monument
Touch where they spring.
Fergna. My lord ... and shall I seek
Among the rocks?
Conchobar. You shall but lift its burthen
Forth of the chariot to the hollowed grave.
Lebarcham. O Deirdre! She is hidden by that cloak.
O shattered loveliness of Erin, hidden
From the ages, evermore! Thy Lebarcham,
Who saw thee come from hiding to our light,
Will go with thee along
To thy last screening cover, to thy tomb.
[Exit, following the chariot led by Fergna.
Conchobar. The land!... I wended hither: car and horses
Are wending from me. Did I move like that,
So solitary, dark above the grass?—;But
to no goal. In one of those near graves
She will be with him, one of them will open;
There can but be one tomb. The chariot lingers
Its way in happy sloth: so wheat is carried
Till night-fall to the barn....
[He remains watching in the silence.
The car
Has turned the cromlech.…
So wheat is carried.
* * *
In concluding this very brief survey of Michael Field’s life and poetry, one turns back with a sense of illumination to her sonnet called The Poet, which has been already quoted. For therein Michael Field has indicated the nature of her own genius and the conditions of its activity. She was not thinking of herself, of course, but of the poetic nature in the abstract, when she declared in the first two lines of the sestet that the poet is
a work of some strange passion
Life has conceived apart from Time’s harsh drill.
Those verses apply in some degree to the whole race of poets, which is, indeed, the test of their truth. Yet it is significant that in choosing precisely that form of expression for the truth, Michael Field has inadvertently stated the essential meaning of her own life, of her long service to literature, and of the peculiar greatness and possible limitation of her poetry.
“A work of some strange passion.” Strange, indeed, and in many ways. For, first, it is no common thing to find, in a world preoccupied with traffic and ambition, two souls completely innocent of both. Not small souls, nor stupid nor ignorant ones—;as clever people might aver in order to account for the phenomenon—;but of full stature, intelligent, level-headed, and with their sober measure of English common sense. They knew themselves, too—;were aware that they possessed genius, that they had first-rate minds and were artists of great accomplishment. Moreover, for the larger part of their life they were on terms with ‘the world’; they welcomed experience as few Victorian women dared, gathered knowledge eagerly wherever it was to be found, and had business ability sufficient to direct prudently their own affairs.
They would have denied that there was anything of the fanatic or the visionary in the dedication of themselves to their art, believing fanaticism to be incongruous with the undiluted English strain of which they boasted. And, indeed, there is something typical of the race in this deliberate setting of a course and dogged persistence in it. Yet there is hardly an English precedent for their career; and it is to France one must look—;to the Goncourts or to Erckmann-Chatrian—;to match the long collaboration, or to find similar examples of their artistic method. And not even there, so far as I know, will be found another such case of disinterested service.
But the lines we have noted have an application to the work as well as to the life of Michael Field. They may be used almost literally, to summarize in a convenient definition the nature of her poetry. For in this body of work one sees passion as an almost over-powering element, and it is of surprising strangeness. However fully one may recognize the truth that there is no sex in genius, I suppose that we shall always be startled at the appearance of an Emily Brontë or a Michael Field. They seem such slight instruments for the primeval music that the earth-mother plays upon them. And their vehemence mingles so oddly with tenderer and more delicate strains that it will always be possible for a reviewer to sneer at what is “to the Greeks foolishness”—;he having no perception of the fact that in gentleness added to strength a larger humanity is expressed. Such an eye as Meredith’s could perceive that, and, catching sight of some reviewing stupidity about it, would flash lightnings of wrath in that direction, and send indignant sympathy to the poets.
There is strangeness, too, of another kind in the passion which was the impulse of this poetry. Under the restraint that art has put upon it, it is, as we have seen, an elemental thing. It is a creative force akin to that of Emily Brontë or of Byron, and is tamer than their wild genius only in appearance. Its more ordered manner grew from two causes: that one of the collaborators blessedly possessed a sense of form, and that both of them lived withdrawn from the brawl of life. They were placed, perhaps, a little too far from “Time’s harsh drill.” Their lives were, on the whole, easier and happier ones than are given to most people. That is why the loss of their Chow dog caused them a grief which seems exaggerated to minds not so sensitively tuned as theirs. Until the agony of the last three years overtook them, their share of the common lot of sorrow had been the barest minimum: adversity did not so much as look their way: poverty laid no finger on them, and was but vaguely apprehended, in the distance, as something pitiful for its ugliness. Therefore, secure and leisured, they envisaged life, in the main, through art, through philosophy, through literature, and hardly ever through the raw stuff of life itself. And thence comes the peculiar character which the passion of their poetry acquired, as of some fierce creature caught and bound in golden chains.
It may be that this seclusion from life will be felt in Michael Field’s poetry as a limitation; that the final conviction imposed upon the mind by the authority of experience is wanting; and that the work lacks a certain dry wisdom of which difficult living is a necessary condition. It may be so; but I do not think the stricture a valid charge against their work, first because of our poets’ great gift of imagination, and second because they chose so rightly their artistic medium. Comedy may require the discipline of experience, the observing eye constantly fixed upon the object, and a rich knowledge of the world; but surely tragedy requires before everything else creative imagination, sympathy, and a certain greatness of heart and mind. Those gifts Michael Field possessed in very large degree; so large that one often stands in amazement before the protagonists of her drama, demanding, in the name of all things wonderful, how two Victorian women “ever came to think of that.” A Renaissance pope, a Saxon peasant, or a priest of Dionysos—;decadent emperors, austere Roman patriots, or a Frankish king turned monk—;those are only a few of the surprising creatures of her imagination, conceived not as historical figures merely, but as living souls. And by the range of her women characters—;from the dignity of a Julia Domna to the wild-rose sweetness of a Rosamund; from the Scottish Mary, with her rich capacity for loving, to the fierce chastity of an Irish Deirdre, or the soul of goodness in a courtesan; from the subtlety of a Lucrezia Borgia to the proud singleness of a Mariamne; from the virago-venom of an Elinor to the sensitive simplicity of a country-girl, or the wrong-headedness of a little princess whose instincts have been perverted by frustration—;Michael Field has greatly enriched the world’s knowledge of womanhood.
She did not set out to do that, of course. Her sanity is evident once more in the moderation with which she held her feminist sympathies, despite the clamour of the time and the provocation she received from masculine mishandling of her work. Herein too she had removed herself from “Time’s harsh drill,” having too great a reverence for her art to use it for the purposes of propaganda. That fact leads us again to her sonnet and the light it throws upon herself. For in studying her work one sees that she fulfilled completely her own conception of the poet—;as an artist withdrawn from the common struggle to wrestle with a fiercer power, and subdue it to a shape of recognizable beauty.