Page:John Masefield.djvu/13

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a legend known as the forty-seven Ronin. Masefield keeps closely to the simple and dramatic situations of the original story. It is permeated with a heroic, Greek-like quality, and numerous critics consider it the best of Masefield's plays.

Good Friday, a dramatic poem telling of the Passion of Jesus, is characterized by dignity and simple beauty. The volume containing this play includes also a number of his best loved sonnets. This one-act play has been presented annually for the past three years on Palm Sunday by members of the Union Congregational Church in Boston. It was published in 1916.

The same year gave to the world the imperishable Gallipoli, that poignantly sad and so vividly realistic saga of the Dardanelles campaign—"Not as a tragedy nor as a mistake, but as a great human effort, which came, more than once, very

From "Gallipoli"

near to triumph, achieved the impossible many times, and failed in the end, as many great deeds of arms have failed from something which had nothing to do with arms nor with the men who bore them." The thirteenth edition of the book was published in 1925, which surely is an indication of the precious quality of this eloquent tribute to the 38,000 Englishmen who

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