The dramatist of the future
will have more to learn from Maeterlinck than from any other playwright
of our time. He has seen his puppets against the permanent darkness,
which we had cloaked with light; he has given them supreme silences.
In d'Annunzio we have an art partly shaped by Maeterlinck, in which all
is atmosphere, and a home for sensations which never become vital
passions. The roses in the sarcophagus are part of the action in
"Francesca," and in "The Dead City" the whole action arises out of the
glorious mischief hidden like a deadly fume in the grave of Agamemnon.
Speech and drama are there, clothing but not revealing one another; the
speech always a lovely veil, never a human outline.
We have in England one man, and one only, who has some public claim to
be named with these artists, though his aim is the negation of art. Mr.
Shaw is a mind without a body, a whimsical intelligence without a soul.
He is one of those tragic buffoons who play with eternal things, not
only for the amusement of the crowd, but because an uneasy devil capers
in their own brains. He is a merry preacher, a petulant critic, a great
talker.
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