as possible. But, as it seems to me,
the aim of the poetic drama is to create a new world in a new
atmosphere, where the laws of human existence are no longer recognised.
The aim of the poetic drama is beauty, not truth; and Shakespeare, to
take the supreme example, is great, not because he makes Othello
probable as a jealous husband, or gives him exactly the words that a
jealous husband might have used, but because he creates in him an image
of more than human energy, and puts into his mouth words of a more
splendid poetry than any one but Shakespeare himself could have found to
say. Fetter the poetic drama to an imitation of actual speech, and you
rob it of the convention which is its chief glory and best opportunity.
A new colour may certainly be given to that convention, by which a
certain directness, rather of Dante than of Shakespeare, may be employed
for its novel kind of beauty, convention being still recognised as
convention. No doubt that is really Swinburne's aim, and to have
succeeded in it is to show that he can master every form, and do as he
pleases with language. And there are passages in the play, like this
one, which have a fervid colour of their own, fully characteristic of
the writer who has put more Southern colouring into English verse than
any other English poet:

This sun--no sun like ours--burns out my soul.
I would, when June takes hold on us like fire,
The wind could waft and whirl us northward: here
The splendour and the sweetness of the world
Eat out all joy of life or manhood. Earth
Is here too hard on heaven--the Italian air
Too bright to breathe, as fire, its next of kin,
Too keen to handle. God, whoe'er God be,
Keep us from withering as the lords of Rome--
Slackening and sickening toward the imperious end
That wiped them out of empire! Yea, he shall.

The atmosphere of the play is that of June at Verona, and the sun's heat
seems to beat upon us all through its brief and fevered action.
Swinburne's words never make pictures, but they are unparalleled in
their power of conveying atmosphere. He sees with a certain generalised
vision--it might almost be said that he sees musically; but no English
poet has ever presented bodily sensation with such curious and subtle
intensity. And just as he renders bodily sensation carried to the point
of agony, so he is at his best when dealing, as here, with emotion
tortured to the last limit