NOTES ON AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY
angles and edges of each, recalling each, so far as we are able, as a whole. Then, at once, the prime differences emerge; the long leisurely accumulated novel; the little contracted play; the emotion all split up, dissipated and then woven together, slowly and gradually massed into a whole, in the novel; the emotion concentrated, generalised, heightened in the play. What moments of intensity, what phrases of astonishing beauty the play shot at us!
I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture,
When one news straight came huddling on another
Of death! and death! and death! still I danced forward.
or
Neglected cassia or the natural sweets
Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither’d.
With all her reality, Anna Karenina could never say
Neglected cassia”.
Some of the most profound of human emotions are therefore beyond her reach. The extremes of passion are not for the novelist; the perfect marriages of sense and sound are not for him; he must tame his swiftness to sluggardry; keep his eyes on the ground not on the sky: suggest by description, not reveal by illumination. Instead of singing
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