Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

NORTH.

It is. He belies his own experience. He cannot make up his mind to admit the irrational thought of belief which you at once reject and accept. But exactly the half acceptance, and the half rejection, separates poetry from – prose.

TALBOYS.

That is, sir, the poetical from the prosaic.

NORTH.

Just so. It is the life and soul of all poetry – the lusus – the make-believe – the glamour and the gramarye. I do not know – gentlemen – I wish to be told, whether I am now throwing away words upon the setting up of a pyramid which was built by Cheops, and is only here and there crumbling a little, or whether the world requires that the position shall be formally argued and acknowledged. Johnson, as you reminded me, Talboys, did not admit it.

TALBOYS.

That he tells us in so many words. Has any more versed and profound master in criticism, before or since, authentically and authoritatively, luminously, cogently, explicitly, psychologically, metaphysically, physiologically, psychologically, propounded, reasoned out, legislated, and enthroned the Dogma?

NORTH.

I know not, Talboys. Do you admit the Dogma?

TALBOYS.

I do.

NORTH.

Impersonation – Apostrophe – of the absent; every poetical motion of the Soul; the whole pathetic beholding of Nature – involve the secret existence and necessity of this irrational psychical state for grounding the Logic of Poesy.

BULLER.

Go on, sir.

NORTH.

I will – but in a new direction. Before everything else, I desire, for the settlement of this particular question, a foundation for, and some progress in the science of Murder Tragedies.

SEWARD.

I know properly two.

BULLER.

Two only? Pray name.

SEWARD.

This of Macbeth and Richard III.

BULLER.

The Agamemnon – the Choephoræ – the Electra – the Medea —

SEWARD.

In the Agamemnon, your regard is drawn to Agamemnon himself and to Cassandra. However, it is after a measure a prototype. Clytemnestra has in it a principality. Medea stands eminent – but then she is in the right.

BULLER.

In the right?

SEWARD.

Jason at least is altogether in the wrong. But we must – for obvious reasons – discuss the Greek drama by itself; therefore not a word more about it now.

NORTH.

Richard III., and Macbeth and his wife, are in their Plays the principal people. You must go along with them to a certain guarded extent – else the Play is done for. To be kept abhorring and abhorring, for Five Acts together, you can't stand.

SEWARD.

Oh! that the difference between Poetry and Life were once for all set down – and not only once for all, but every time that it comes in question.

BULLER.

My dear sir, do gratify Seward's very reasonable desire, and once for all set down the difference.

SEWARD.

You bear suicides on the stage, and tyrannicides and other cides – all simple homicide – much murder. Even Romeo's killing Tybalt in the street, in reparation for Mercutio's death, you would take rather differently, if happening to-day in Pall Mall, or Moray Place.

NORTH.

We have assuredly for the Stage a qualified scheme of sentiment – grounded no doubt on our modern or every-day morality – but specifically modified by Imagination – by Poetry – for the use of the dramatist. Till we have set down what we do bear, and why, we are not prepared for distinguishing what we won't bear, and why.

BULLER.

Oracular!

SEWARD.

Suggestive.

NORTH.

And if so, sufficient for the nonce. Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, seems to me to be the most that can be borne of one purely abhorrible. He is made disgusting besides – drunken and foul. Able he is – for he won the Queen by "witchcraft of his wit;" but he is made endurable by his diminished proportion in the Play – many others overpowering and hiding him.

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, but I have occasionally felt, in course of this conversation, that you were seeking – in opposition to Payne Knight – to reduce Macbeth to a species of Claudius. I agree with you in thinking that Shakspeare would not give a Claudius so large a proportion of his drama. The pain would be predominant and insupportable.