BOOKS.

MICHAEL FIELD'S NEW PLAYS.* MICHAEL FIELD has certainly not achieved in this volume any- thing as good as his play of Fair Rosamund. The new plays have plenty of dispersed power in them, and passages of very- remarkable force ; but only one of them, William Rufus, strikes us as a fine whole, and even that has not the vivacity and general splendour of Pair _Rosamund. The first and most elaborate effort, The Father's Tragedy, —the play in which the tragic end of Robert III. of Scotland, a.weak king and miserable father, is depicted,—is a partial failure, partly in consequence of the difficulty of the subject chosen, and partly of the excessively inadequate treatment of the darkest char- acter it contains. The cruel Duke of Albany, who not only starved his own nephew to death, but incurred this horrible guilt without even the excuse that he was hoping to found a new and splendid dynasty for his own sons, should have been a great feature in the play, a sort of masculine edition of Lady Macbeth, with all the power and if not all the remorse of that great creation, then with such an exhibition of remorse- lessness as should have given to the ghastly picture its full measure of horror. The Duke of Albany, however, in The • A Father's Tragedy. William Rufus. Loyalty or Jove? London : George Bell and Sons; Clifton : J. Baker and Sons.

Father's Tragedy, is simply an uninteresting devil. There is not a single scene in which one is struck by the delineation of the sort of passion needful to make such a character dramatic ; and the one scene in which the only symptoms of remorse are shown is feeble and ineffectual. The following speech of the Duke's concerning the nephew he was to murder, and against whom he was already plotting, seems to us much the best that is put into his month in the play; but it is inadequately followed up, and, as a whole, the Duke of Albany remains to us rather a name of atrocious wickedness, than one whose fiery evil-hearted- ness we can in any way comprehend as we comprehend Lady Macbeth's :—

"Albany. And each a bubble of humanity Must keep me from the throne and float between Me and the Regency ! He lives a life Blown out of pleasure's mouth and woven all Of ardent feebleness—the chosen staff On which the senses paint their fickle will In colours of the rainbow. I've a storm Within could burst this gay impediment Should it but reach him. Time will settle that."

The note of ambition here firmly struck is not sustained. We are left to wonder at the singular pitilessness of the man, without even beholding his passion pouring forth in any great and tumultuous flood. The Duke of Albany, who should have been the central shadow of the play, is, even at the close, rather a disgusting riddle to us than a vision of power. And the scene between him and the Prior, to whom he applies for abso- lution for a sin which he has not repented, and which he is just about to repeat towards his first victim's brother, is a most ineffective one. Surely a man strong enough in evil purpose to do what he had done, and to repeat it, would not have dallied in that feeble way with the attempt to gain an absolution which he was strong enough to know no act of dis- simulation could obtain,—though it might even make the guilt yet deeper. Then, again, the poor old king's agonies are a very difficult subject for tragedy. A writer who wishes to make so very weak a man's woes tragic, must take more pains than Michael Field has taken to make his weakness loveable. The present writer, at least, has quite failed to feel even that depth of pity for, and sympathy with, Robert III. which were essential for the purpose of entering into the pain of his breaking heart. Partly, perhaps, the Duke of Rothsay's own dislike and contempt for his father are reflected in the reader's mind. One fancies that without a lingering love in the son, there can hardly have been that depth of love in the father which his words express. Again, the two women,—the one who wishes to marry the Duke of Rothsay out of ambition, and who -cries out when she is foiled for " reven—ge "—(surely Michael Field should know that the physical breakdown of the voice cannot be representul in a written play at all), and the one who hates marrying him, and does marry him, only at her father's command, are sketches too slight to interest us deeply. The one powerful study in the play,—and it is very powerful,— is the study of the Duke of Rothsay's "ardent feebleness,"— his pleasure-loving- selfishness,—his anger when his gallantry in war fails to win praise and appreciation,—and his wretched cowardice in lonely suffering and death. This is a very grim study indeed; but it is a very powerful study, and is the one

portion of the play which makes it a conspicuous effort of genius. Without that study we should even call the play a failure. But no one can justly deny the grandeur and the horror of the starvation scenes, or their complete harmony with

the idle, pleasure-loving frivolity, and purely physical and sensuous military ardour, which precede it. Michael Field has

a power in depicting the deep animal foundations of our human nature which is almost unsurpassed. What we may call Eleanor's maternal savagery in Fair Rosamund, and Rothsay's passion of famine in The Father's Tragedy, are painted with an almost overwhelming force :— "Rothsay. I cannot tell if it is night or day—

How many nights and days have gone outside, And I been hungry here. 'Tis all one night, One dream of anguish. I can only think Of bread, bread—bread!—the pulling hot desire That ever strains to seize upon the thought And eat it into nothing. 0, without Are many cornfields—and the river ! God !

I scarcely can remember anything But the white floods, and the last scrap of meat I emptied from my wallet. Once I fed, Could drink at will, and all the lads about Laughing together. Past all things, 'tis strange That owe I laughed. Would I had ne'er been born! I'm nothing but a heap of crying bones And maddened flesh. 0 that the earth would gape! Would it were famished too !—The holy bread, They give it to the dying and the taste Would make me live. But I'm forgotten clean,

As I had lived a thousand years ago—

Mere unrequiring dust—and every atom Is grasping like a murderer ! I'll lie Flat on the ground, for then my hunger's less, It pities my submission. On my face ! They put thorn with it upward in the grave That they may rise ; but I would fall and hide Where life can never come. The other way Is hope—the proneness of my head despair."

And here again in the scene with the wretches who torture him in his famine :—

"Rothsay. As you're men, and made In this poor fading image ; as you have Lips—flesh that fails, as fire at curfew-time, Unless 'tis fed ; as you have appetite, That struggles like a lion in his net Till the first mouthful frees it ; as you've blood, That is a river dried by famishment; As you have teeth, tongue, stomach, all the parts That give us glad renewal ; if you've known Faintness and hollow suffering and thirst; If you have seen the table spread, have drunk Your fill with friends, have tasted the cold brook Or seen the harvest grow, pity my want, My pain, my tortured memory.

Selkirk. How fine We talk for belly's sake ! As to your feasts, I've seen you with your swinish company Rocking the bench from which you thrust us out To the mastiff i' the yard.

Wright. We'll cast you now Back to your barking stomach.

Rothsay. Pity me ! I am so young—so young in my desire For food—so strong, so helpless are my pangs. Have you fed children ?—I am scarce eighteen. I've all their need. If you will fetch me bread, I'll love 3',on better than my father.

Selkirk. Ay,

That were small lore, and scarcely worth a kick.

[To Wright.] Come, we'll begone ; our dinner's on the air.

'Twill taste the better—la!—for this lean talk. [Exeunt.

Rothsay. Bread, bread ! The mocking stones !

[Flings himself on the ground.

Would I were old, With one weak thread to crack and so to die; But, oh ! the mighty cable of my youth That knots me to despair !—I ever thought Death was a shadow.—I myself am Death. • I fed and never knew it ; now I starve.

Here is the skeleton I've seen in books !

'Tis I—the knarled and empty bones.—Here, here—

The grinning dints! I thought Death anywhere But near my life ; and it is in the pith And centre of my body. Horrible!

I was conceived, shaped in Mortality's Own ribbed and ghastly image ; but the bread, The bread that is denied me, hid the thing I am—it clothed me. I am naked now.

Its clothes I want to dress this skeleton, And wrap it from my sight. Death is not dead ; 0 God! he lives in me—in me must die; And I must watch him with these burning eyes, Like candles set aflare upon my corpse.

Hell? Hell itself to this were Paradise, For there there is no waiting for an end, Heart-wringing expectation of a term To madden'd vigil. Weald I were in Hell, Immortal and contemned. An, torturing fires, They're in my brow ; come out and circle me, So only I may burn with you, nor stop To all Eternity.—A sound outside !

Out in the blessed world where there's the sun, The fresh-grown wheat, the wild carousing wind, Man's gay, habitual intercourse, the chime Of frequent laughter, happy wonted sleep, The daily meal. Bread, bread ! I cannot starve,

Grow strange to all that gave me joy. 0 Earth,

Sprout me some strangled grains here in the dark ; For see! I die because I have no bread."

The scene, too, with the poor woman who has lost her child, and who feeds the Duke of Rothsay from her breast rather than let him starve, is a scene of very striking power. We read it with a thrill of anguish, so full is it of the true bereaved mother's instinct and the weak man's yearning for life.

Of Will ia»z. Rufus we can speak with some confidence as a more complete and perfect whole, though there is, perhaps, nothing in it quite so powerful as the study of the Duke of Rothsay's pleasure-loving nature and cruel fate. The view Michael Field takes of Rufus is Mr. Freeman's view, Mr. Langton Sanford's view, the view, we believe, of all genuine

historians ; but the attempt to imitate William's stutter when he was overwhelmed by passion, is rather a mistake, and we should have liked the portrait of the King who defies God, rather than disbelieves in him, better, if there had been less effort to represent the physical weaknesses which passion brings upon him. Anselm, too, though there are one or two fine delineations of him, does not furnish the central interest. The central interest, as is usual with Michael Field, is naturalistic, —the power with which the Saxon's sympathy with the soil, and all that the soil produces, is painted,—the patient, slow, naturalistic partnership with the earth into which the Saxon has entered, and the vital sympathy with it which he betrays in many forms. Here is a conversation between one of the old Saxon race whom the Norman Conqueror has blinded, and his grand- son, who has been taught by his spiritual teachers that he ought to forgive :— "Beolvaif. We must avenge.

Wilfrith. We are so helpless.

Beowulf. You have eyes and youth.

Age in despair is weaker than a child ; its weather. beaten hope is mightier Than any fitful ferment of the blood.

From the first moment of the rimless dark In which I wake, slumber, and feel the sun, A hope struck root, I felt it in the soil

Of my blocked brain, where thonght went burrowing—

A tedious mole—and sense writhed underground.

The fibres of this hope took hold of me, Pierced, ramified my subterranean life; Now it has heaved out to the upper light And spreads I know not whither.—I am blind.

Wilfrith [aside]. He frightens me : it's like one in the grave Who can lie quiet till the judgment-day, Brooding his wrongs. [Aloud.] But must we not forgive ?

The Conqueror Left our king Harold's body on the beach In his great battle-fury. Afterward He buried it at Waltham, penitent.

Beowulf. We must submit, be penitent, forgive !—

Bat that's to change your mind ; I never thought That God changed His—I thought within myself The seasons were not surer than the Lord, You might depend on Him. It's altered now ; He's God of Battle Abbey ; on the beach He let them huddle up King Harold's bones, He's strewn our prayers as ashes to the wind, Suffered such resurrection of men's bones As modest Death cries shame of.—He repents, His past is not prophetic of to-day ; But at the breaking-places of the wave AU keepeth constant to its habitude; There is no change of custom in the air ; You oak drops acorns; I am comforted.

The earth is English still; the soil gives suck ; It will not rear strange children."

And here, again, is the fashion in which a Saxon peasant muses on the meaning of Providence, when he has found a Norman lying murdered in the forest :—

"Purkis. By your looks you have not seen

What's lying underneath the splintered fir. Now, grand-dad, clap a great fist to your ear And take the news A Norman 's dead, I found him lying stiff down in the glade ; And it's a prince, his cloak all broidered o'er Thick as the May-buds, and that blasted red Streaking his golden hair. Leofric. Where does he lie ?

Purkis. Up higher half a mile. Don't start, ye fools ; No meddling with him. One might feel him o'er As if be were a dog ; when we are dead We are all peasants, churl and prince alike, Except they carry us to Winchester.

And yet I dare not touch him for my eyes.

[Old dad, they gouged yours out ; I had to keep You grumbling through a night of twenty year.] We must not smell about a fallen stag ; Just let him wither like an autumn leaf.

I think he died by nature, sort of struck. [To Beowulf.] Ay, chuckle, grand-dad, there's an eye in Heaven Peering at loophole, though our chinks be bunged. [To himself.] He finds a sort of comfort in it like, To feel there's some one scanning; for my part This staring at misfortune in the way It pleases Providence to practise,—well,

It's like the cattle ; they'll stare by the hour—

They never move : the watching simply galls, If there's no heave of rescue in the eye. But all the same I'm pleased this happens pat To cheer the old man up. [Aloud.] A pretty lad, We think it's young Prince Richard."

That Saxon comment on the patient, apparently passive, vigilance of Providence, strikes us as containing a touch of the truest genius. Bufue is a play without a woman in it, and one does not, for once, feel the need of a woman. It is a drama on the Saxon thirst for vengeance; and when, at length, Rufus is struck by the rebound of Tyrrel's arrow from an oak in the New Forest, the drama ends in this splendid picture of the half-prophetic, half-shortsighted triumph of the Saxon genius :—

"Beowulf. I will have charge of him ; Give him to me. It was the oak that struck ; He wounded it; it gathered up the wrongs Of generations in its storied pile, And for the people bath poured out revenge. The Earth shall leper him ; each trampled blade Of grass shall bear a drop of blood for dew ; Nature shall part the spoil; the gallows fowl Must not be left nnsummoned, the maimed doge Must mutilate the quarry.

Purkis. Father, bush! Satan has hold of you ; you would not curse A murdered man. I'll fetch the cart to bear His bones to Winchester; he must be laid 'Mid the old royal tombs.

Beowulf. Is he not damned ?

Purkis. We are poor folk, and he has rated us.

God 's king; He'll have a fellow-feeling like; No vengeance in His heart. Leave Him to judge.

Beowulf. Yea, bear him through the woods like a gashed boar, Present him dripping to your angry God ; He may not be implacable. In haste Cloak the foul thing beneath the minster tow'r ; Heap soil on him ; choke your remembrance Of his unnat'ral crime; establish him

In the untaxed dominion of a grave ;

Earth will unhonse him from his tenement ; He shall be dispossessed. The crumbling tow'r Shall spread in ruins over him : his vault Shall crack her walls, and open up her roof To let foul, rushing weather on the clay That shall rot down with refuse and be lost, The laud-mark broken down, the boundary And guarding hallowed precinct of a tomb.

Purkis [aside]. La! he is terrible. I cannot doubt He's some great advocate to press his wrongs.

It's odd now I should tremble to entrust A dead man to the keeping of a blind.

Great king, you're in the clutch of Destiny !

Death looks a strong-ceiled house ; ah me! I fear It is a sorry sanctuary from sin.

There's much remains. Some hoary influence Sits at the chimney. corner of our lives, Holding a rightful end in store for all.

There's little we can alter. All the same It's simple we must give him burial.

I'll fetch the cart with Wilfrith.

Beowulf [carefully feeling the corpse]. There are worms.

About his darkness. I am satisfied.

[Leaping the body, he props himself against the oak.

Earth, Earth, 0 Earth ! the tyrant is struck down.

Thou drew'st the arrow from Fate's sluggish hand; Thou sped'st it mortally. Though thy blind sons Dishonour thee, seeking the younger love Of Country, swayed by her caprice, to strive For law or liberty, while thou art bond, Far off thou hearest Freedom's yeanling cry, Orphaned, necessitous; thy motherhood, 0 Earth, is prophecy ! Thou wilt prevail."

On the third drama, Loyally or Love ? we do not propose to comment. It seems to us too entangled a picture for true art. The characters are too little sculptured, too little outlined even, to be worthy of Michael Field. Like all he writes, it contains some very fine passages ; but the effect of it is confusing, and the subject of it is in the highest degree unpleasing. There is but one character of real nobility in it; and the mixture of cruelty, fraud, and lust of which the Sicilian orgie is made up, is too unpleasant to make it worth the reader's while to con over it till he sees more clearly what the author really intended but has hardly contrived to paint.