'The highest moral purpose,' he remarks, 'aimed at in the highest species
of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and
antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of
which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and
kind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is no fit place for
the enforcement of them.' He fully realises that it is by a conflict
between our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatest
dramatic effects are produced. 'It is in the restless and anatomising
casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel
that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious
horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge,
that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.'

In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission of
the dramatist and the meaning of the drama.

And yet I hardly think that the production of The Cenci, its absolute
presentation on the stage, can be said to have added anything to its
beauty, its pathos, or even its realism. Not that the principal actors
were at all unworthy of the work of art they interpreted; Mr. Hermann
Vezin's Cenci was a noble and magnificent performance; Miss Alma Murray
stands now in the very first rank of our English actresses as a mistress
of power and pathos; and Mr. Leonard Outram's Orsino was most subtle and
artistic; but that The Cenci needs for the production of its perfect
effect no interpretation at all. It is, as we read it, a complete work
of art--capable, indeed, of being acted, but not dependent on theatric
presentation; and the impression produced by its exhibition on the stage
seemed to me to be merely one of pleasure at the gratification of an
intellectual curiosity of seeing how far Melpomene could survive the
wagon of Thespis.

In producing the play, however, the members of the Shelley Society were
merely carrying out the poet's own wishes, and they are to be
congratulated on the success of their experiment--a success due not to
any gorgeous scenery or splendid pageant, but to the excellence of the
actors who aided them.

HELENA IN TROAS

(Dramatic Review, May 22, 1880.)

One might have thought that to have produced As You Like It in an English
forest would have satisfied the most ambitious spirit; but Mr. Godwin has
not contented himself with his sylvan triumphs. From Shakespeare he has
passed to Sophocles, and has given us the most perfect exhibition of a
Greek dramatic performance that has as yet been seen in this country.
For, beautiful as were the productions of the Agamemnon at Oxford and the
Eumenides at Cambridge, their effects were marred in no small or
unimportant degree by the want of a proper orchestra for the chorus with
its dance and song, a want that was fully supplied in Mr. Godwin's
presentation by the use of the arena of a circus.