Discipleship in art is a thing very commonly misunderstood. The poet
with centuries of activity behind him will inevitably find in this
voice or that an expression with which his own temperament is in more
or less direct sympathy, and, if his nature be not cramped, he will
make full acknowledgment of the fact. But this loving recognition of
fellowship has nothing whatever to do with imitation. In demanding
originality of the poet we do not expect him to sing as though he
moved in an untrodden world. We might as reasonably ask each man to
invent a new speech; we should be doing no more than carrying our
demand to its logical issue. We insist, and rightly, that the poet
shall interpret experience for us in the terms of his own
personality, but we must remember that the work of his predecessors
is an enormously important part of experience, and when he finds some
aspect of that work in correspondence with his own adventures he
will, quite naturally, take it up in some measure into his own
creation. Confusion in this matter has led to considerable injustice
in many estimates of Morris. His repeated announcements of Chaucer
as his master and his open allegiance throughout his life to certain
phases of mediæval art, have caused it to be said that his mood and
expression are alike archaic, the word being used to mean obsolete.
As to the mood, the suggestion is so preposterous as to be unworthy
of an answer; it is obsolete just in so far as the fundamental things
of life are obsolete. As to expression, Morris's free use of such
words as 'certes,' 'Fair sir,' 'I trow,' and so forth is supposed to
lend support to the suggestion. It does nothing of the kind, of
course. Morris uses these words not for their especial value, but as
simply and naturally as he does the common parts of speech. The
words in themselves are perfectly fit for use in poetry, and the
discredit into which they may have fallen is entirely due to inferior
writers who have sought to make them in themselves substitutes for
poetry. To rule that their abuse henceforth makes their proper use
impossible is, however, absurd. It may be discreet in a poet to-day
to avoid nymphs and Diana and the pipes of Pan, but to say beforehand
that his traffic with these will be disastrous is merely to lay
ourselves open to the most salutary correction at any moment. Morris
used words such as those of which I have spoken without hesitation,
but he always subordinated them to their right offices, and their
influence in either direction upon his general manner is negligible.
This question arises more naturally in the discussion of _Love is
Enough_ than elsewhere. Superficially the play may be said to be an
attempt to reconstruct the spirit and, in a smaller degree, the form
of the early English morality, but close consideration of the play
necessitates qualification of this statement at almost every step.
The resemblance in form is to be found not in the structure but in
the alliterative verse that Morris uses for the central action of the
play. But even in the verse there are qualities that belong to
Morris alone; he not only discarded rhyme, which was employed by Bale
and the unknown poets of an earlier day in their interludes and
mysteries, but he brought to his lines a greater regularity and
fulness. The pauses that play so important a part in the early
alliterative verse are replaced by syllabic values, and the
shortening of lines is far less arbitrary than in his models. The
result, especially of the added fulness, is that a certain bare
simplicity is lost, and curiously enough this poem, where he was
influenced by a form that with all its faults has an extraordinary
directness and incisiveness of statement, is the most difficult among
all his works to read. The long lines with their constant tightening
up of syllables are frequently too heavy for the statement. Many
passages are of great beauty, as for example:--
As my twin sister, young of years was she and slender,
Yellow blossoms of spring-tide her hands had been gathering,
But the gown-lap that held them had fallen adown
And had lain round her feet with the first of the singing;
Now her singing had ceased, though yet heaved her bosom
As with lips lightly parted and eyes of one seeking
She stood face to face with the Love that she knew not,
The love that she longed for and waited unwitting...
and there are numberless lines where the precision of statement is
admirable, as--
In memory of days when my meat was but little
And my drink drunk in haste between saddle and straw...
and
I saw her
Stealing barefoot, bareheaded amidst of the tulips
Made grey by the moonlight...
but the experiment in a form that is not now, after four centuries of
development, really natural to the language is, on the whole, a
failure. It is, indeed, true that as we read through it the measure
becomes more acceptable to the ear, but there is a difficulty in the
outline which no familiarity can wholly overcome.
The structure of the play is mainly of Morris's own invention, and is
of singular beauty. The figure of Love, who may be said to
correspond roughly to the Doctor or Messenger of the early
moralities, stands, not between the action and the audience, but
between the action and the people of an outer play; and, again,
beyond this we have a further group. The structure is, briefly,
this. The morality itself; Love and The Music who act as spiritual
interpreters and as chorus between the action and the Emperor and
Empress for whom the townsfolk are having the play performed; and
finally the peasants Giles and Joan who are equally interested in the
play and its imaginary spectators, translate the spiritual
commentaries of Love and The Music into terms of their own simple
workaday existence, and, lastly, act in some sort as chorus between
the whole representation and the actual audience. There is a
subtlety of design in all this that reaches far beyond the
conceptions of the sombre and rugged poets of pre-Shakespearean
England, and although the play fails in other respects, Morris here
shows more clearly even than in _Sir Peter Harpdon's End_ that he
understood the exact meaning of the element contributed by the chorus
to drama more fully than any poet of recent times.
In the central action, the morality itself, there are three principal
figures, Pharamond the King, Oliver his old counsellor and
foster-father, and Azalais. Morris retains the method of his models
in that these figures are not characters but rather abstractions.
Pharamond is not so much a man as mankind, Everyman. Oliver is much
more definitely a personality, but he is used as a symbol of the
better nature of man, not able quite to understand spiritual
nobility, but content, even eager, to follow it. Azalais is Love,
both giving and taking. The motive of the play is stated clearly in
the title, Love is Enough. Pharamond leaves kingship, fame,
everything, and sets out to find this thing only, and in finding it
proves and finds himself. But we must return to the motive a little
later. The point next to be considered is this symbolic use of
figures in action. The method of the old poets was to invest these
figures at the outset with a certain presupposed and generally
accepted significance, and to start from that point. They did not
attempt to explain what Luxury, Riot, Riches, Knowledge, Humility and
Charity were, but simply gave these names to their figures and
trusted their audience to fill in the outlines. Then taking a
central figure as protagonist, Everyman or Youth or some such symbol,
they brought him into contact with the rest and allowed all the
emotion of the play to arise out of the transition of his moods as he
is influenced by them in turn. There is never the least doubt as to
the lines along which each of these figures will work; they carry
their natures in their names. We know that Pride will betray Youth
as surely as we know that his Knowledge and Good Deeds alone will
bide with Everyman. But there is nothing dramatic in the spectacle
of Pride forsaking Youth until we see the complementary loyalty of
Charity and Humility, and we are moved by the tenderness of Good
Deeds and Knowledge towards Everyman simply because we have just seen
Strength and Beauty desert him in his need. These transitions of
mood are carried through with consistent swiftness and are defined by
the direct contact of the figures, not by reflective comment, or only
so in a subordinate degree. _Everyman_, which is the crown of these
early plays, realizes these conditions most perfectly. The
protagonist is commanded to make his reckoning before God. He asks
Fellowship to accompany him on his journey through Death's gates.
Fellowship refuses, and so in turn do Goods, Kindred, Strength,
Discretion, Five Wits, and the rest of them, as we knew they would.
Then he is aided by Knowledge, Good Deeds and Confession, and sets
out content. Save for the few speeches that summarize the situation
from time to time, there is absolutely no comment on the development
of the play; the whole effect depends on the swift passage from one
crude symbol to another. Within its own limitations, this simple
method not only succeeded in holding the audience for whom it was
first employed, but is completely effective to-day. The Elizabethan
drama threw it aside to make room for its own greater glories, but it
is not impossible that a great poet should yet return to it, and with
the accumulated wisdom of the poets who have worked since then in his
blood, refashion it into something of a strange new beauty. In _Love
is Enough_ Morris adopted it only to a point, and failed in
consequence. He set out to enunciate a definite lesson, and he
invested his figures with symbolic significance, but he carried the
method no further. Pharamond, instead of passing swiftly from stage
to stage in pursuit of his end and showing us that love is enough,
pauses for long periods to tell us that love is enough. His speeches
are, generally, lyrical developments of one theme, and wholly
beautiful as many of them are as such they destroy the cohesion of
the play as a whole. The design of _Love is Enough_ is no wider in
its scope than that of "Everyman," indeed not so wide, and yet the
play is, roughly, three times as long. I am not, of course,
attempting any comparison of the spirit of the two plays; there is no
point at which this is possible; my comparison is merely between the
uses to which they employ the same method.
Herein, it seems to me, lies the failure of _Love is Enough_ in so
far as it is a failure at all. The central part of the design is so
carried out as to disturb the general balance. It was not necessary
for Morris to choose this particular form for his inner play, but
having done so he was mistaken in not observing its principles more
closely. But, having said this, it is necessary to add that in many
ways _Love is Enough_ stands with Morris's finest achievements in
poetry. In the morality of Pharamond itself, and apart from all
difficulties of the verse-form, there is love-poetry that is scarcely
to be surpassed in its depth and tenderness. In this play Morris
departed from his usual ways. His narrative and epic writing and his
lyrics have nothing of that didacticism which if not essential is at
least proper to the greatest art. Art confesses to no limitations.
In _Love is Enough_, however, he allowed himself this new privilege,
and he translates his teaching into art with perfect instinct. Here,
as throughout his work, it is impossible to point to any passage and
say, "that is not poetry," and yet speech after speech is as
specifically didactic as the Sermon on the Mount. In the words of
Pharamond, in the stately heroic couplets spoken by Love, and in the
exquisite stanzas of The Music he pursues the same theme, and over
and over again he carries it to a sublime pitch of intensity.
What, Faithful--do I lie, that overshot
My dream-web is with that which happeneth not?
Nay, nay, believe it not!--love lies alone
In loving hearts like fire within the stone:
Then strikes my hand, and lo, the flax ablaze!
--Those tales of empty striving and lost days
Folk tell of sometimes--never lit my fire
Such ruin as this; but Pride and Vain-desire,
My counterfeits and foes, have done the deed.
Beware, Beloved! for they sow the weed
Where I the wheat: they meddle where I leave,
Take what I scorn, cast by what I receive,
Sunder my yoke, yoke that I would dissever,
Pull down the house my hands would build for ever.
In this poem, too, we find the isolated instances wherein Morris
makes some allusion to the desire for seeing beyond the veils of our
existence, some suggestion of the hope of spring when leaves are
falling. Even here there is none of the exultant certainty of the
_Ode to the West Wind_, but a quiet fearlessness that is no less
inspiring and consoling in its way--
Live on, for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken
By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning,
When the dead and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
And the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.