MR. DRINKWATER'S " OLIVER CROMWETJ,."* Ma. DIUNXWATEVS new play opens
in about the year 1639 in Cromwell's house at Ely, and we are at once introduced to one of the most attractive characters in the piece—old Mrs. Cromwell, Oliver's mother, a sardonic, sharp-tongued old lady who reads Herrick and Herbert. Here is also Elizabeth Cromwell, Oliver's wife, a pleasant, more or less colourless woman, and Bridget Cromwell, who, with Ireton, provides the slight love interest in the piece. Later come Hampden, Ireton, Cromwell himself, and the farm hands. The scene closes with the introduction of a character called Seth Tanner—a pleasant, handsome young labourer with a sweet singing voice, and the reader is well launched into the story. In the next scene we have the Commons in session in St. Stephen's Chapel and some not ineffective oratory upon the Grand Remonstrance, in which Cromwell and his party snake it clear that they are willing to risk the accusation of personal hostility to King Charles if he does not mend his ways. Upon the House dividing, the Remonstrance is passed. " There is a wide disturbance," and the Speaker breaks up the session by leaving his chair and the House :- " CROMWELL (To Hampden) : It is the beginning. RAMPDEN : It may mean terror in this land."
The issue between Liberty and Star Chamber government is here cunningly illustrated. It emerges that the young Irorkman Seth of the previous act has been arrested by the Star Chamber for sedition. Bridget and the boy's old father
• Oiiasr Oronstarik By John Drinkwater. London : Mdiwtok and Jackson. act. net.]
come up to try to find out what has happened to him. They question an officer. Cromwell asks if he has heard any Star Chamber news these days :—
" BASSETT : Jollyboy was one. That's an anyhow name for a man now, isn't it ? Lupton there was, too. He was cropped both ears—said a bishop was a man. That was blasphemous. And a fellow about ship money. That was savage. Tanner his name was.
AMOS Yes—but not Seth—it wasn't Seth Tanner ? BASSETT : Tanner was all I heard.
Amos : It wouldn't be Seth.
BRIDGET : What did they do to him ? BassErr : It's not proper hearing for your sort. But they let him go.
CROMWELL : What was it ? The girl has heart enough. Bassorr : Both thumbs, both ears, the tongue, and a T on the forehead."
When the next scene opens the Civil War is launched. Old Mrs. Cromwell and Bridget receive news of Edgehill, and Ireton asks Bridget to marry him. Scene IV. is one of the most effective scenes of the play. It opens at dawn on the day of Naseby. Fairfax and Ireton are holding a council of war, and wonder why Cromwell does not come. It is not till Scene VI. that we are introduced to Charles, when Cromwell, friendly and respectful, suddenly finds proof of the king's double-dealing in the matter of the Scottish envoys and learns how willing he is to provoke civil war again. From the stage point of view the matter of the king's execution is most ingeniously managed. It is by the usual device of the characters on the stage watching a procession from the windows, but Mr. Drinkwater has used the method with unusual skill. Tho last scene shows Cromwell, installed as Protector, praying at his mother's bedside.
This scanty outline will give the reader some idea of the play's merits. Its defects are a certain monotony and a certain flatness of treatment. For instance, nearly every scene ends with a prayer or hymn ; yet Cromwell is never shown " wrestling with the Lord." Mr. Drinkwater has left out all the fierceness and the fervour. He has not, of course, committed the vulgar error of regarding Cromwell as an illiterate boor ; he shows him as a cultivated gentleman, a man of integrity, " very pitiful to sufferers." He was all this, but he was a good many other things too. He had, for instance, certain qualities that stamped him as a man of his epoch. These made him able to impose his will upon men of his own generation. Some of these were qualities which to us in this age may seem strange or even repulsive. But, if we even in a measure approve the work he did, we must not wish him without them, for deprived of them he could never have carried his work through. He was a man of integrity, but it was a fierce, burning integrity. He was " zealous for the Lord." His was a tortured and tormented spirit that achieved only now and then the sweetness and tranquillity which he longed for, and which Mr. Drinkwater shows us as his prevailing mood. Where, too, is the withering irony with which he now and then flattened out pompous and foolish opponents ? "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken." Above all, Cromwell was naturally a man of action. Long before political abuses caught his mind his active spirit drove him up and down the country evangelizing. Mr. Drinkwater's Cromwell would have stayed at home. Cromwell tormented himself upon minute questions of doctrine, he suffered agonies from loss of faith, tore his flesh on pin-points of dogma. Mr. Drinkwater's Cromwell, bland and reasonable, would not have worn out his spirit over such things. But let us not repine ; let us take the good with the bad. Here is a play which avoids gross errors, which deals with great characters in a simple and dignified spirit, which will send us back to our books with renewed pleasure, but which will also keep us attentive in the theatre. Moreover, the prose in which it is written is beautiful. Mr. Drinkwater has fully grasped the first principle of writing " historic " dialogue, i.e., of using only words common both to the readers' and the subject's epoch. It is querulous to demand perfection when we are offered so finely conceived and so well made a piece of work. TARN.
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