by the specific social forms of theatrical action. His lyric, even when it seems to win an independent life, is the poetry of an alchemist—ornate, Parnassian. It tends toward the madrigal and the tour de force. And we want things in their essence. The drama is composite. It is the first historic form of spoken art—it derives from magic pantomimes, from primitive ceremonies, from sacred mysteries—and it is therefore the most limited and the least legitimate of arts. It carries with it so many social, external, material, and mythical weights and motives that it cannot completely absorb us and convince us. Tragedy presupposes faith—some sort of faith, whatsoever it may be, even an irreligious faith—it presupposes a system of morality, a system of law, and the possibility of opposition between life and law and between life and faith. Death and tragedy spring from the clash between passion and discipline. But today we have lost faith and morality. We have no law, no discipline: the myths and divinities of all the ages are dead and turned to clay. We are beyond struggle, beyond stageable tragedy, beyond the capacity for sharing with eager passion in the old dramatic antitheses. The drama is receding from us, and with it Shakespeare too recedes. The very qualities that have brought him greatness and glory hitherto will hereafter bring forgetfulness and disesteem. We of today feel poetry,
