all is one to me: and for my part
I thank God I shall die without regret
Of anything that I have done alive.

These simple beginnings are apt indeed to lead to their end by ways as
tortuous as this:

Indeed I have done all this if aught I have,
And loved at all or loathed, save what mine eye
Hath ever loathed or loved since first it saw
That face which taught it faith and made it first
Think scorn to turn and look on change, or see
How hateful in my love's sight are their eyes
That give love's light to others.

But, even when speech is undiluted, and expresses with due fire or
calmness the necessary feeling of the moment, it is nearly always mere
speech, a talking about action or emotion, not itself action or emotion.
And every scene, even the finest, is thought of as a scene of talk, not
as visible action; the writer hears his people speak, but does not see
their faces or where or how they stand or move. It is this power of
visualisation that is the first requirement of the dramatist; by itself
it can go no further than the ordering of dumb show; but all drama must
begin with the ordering of dumb show, and should be playable without
words.

It was once said by William Morris that Swinburne's poems did not make
pictures. The criticism was just, but mattered little; because they make
harmonies. No English poet has ever shown so great and various a mastery
over harmony in speech, and it is this lyrical quality which has given
him a place among the great lyrical poets of England. In drama the
lyrical gift is essential to the making of great poetic drama, but to
the dramatist it should be an addition rather than a substitute.
Throughout all these plays it is first and last and all but everything.
It is for this reason that a play like _Locrine_, which is confessedly,
by its very form, a sequence of lyrics, comes more nearly to being
satisfactory as a whole than any of the more 'ambitious, conscientious,
and comprehensive' plays. _Marino Faliero_, though an episode of
history, comes into somewhat the same category, and repeats with nobler
energy the song-like character of _Chastelard_. The action is brief and
concentrated, tragic and heroic. Its 'magnificent monotony,' its
'fervent and inexhaustible declamation,' have a height and heat in them
which turn the whole play into a poem rather than a play, but a poem
comparable with the 'succession of dramatic scenes or pic