The Life of Thomas Hardy
rear, a wavering circle of eerie green light at last finds the center of the curtain and rests there. The curtain parts, a bearded figure in a brown shroud appears in the shadows of the aperture. It begins to speak, in stiff, declamatory fashion. . . .
"There’s old Tilley!" cries a woman.
But old Tilley becomes Hardy’s Merlin in a moment, with his words,
To raise up, in this modern hall
A tragedy of dire duress
That vexed the land of Lyonesse. . . .
Now the "muffled shades of dead old Cornish men and women" chanting, in dragged monotone, the choral induction, as they advance and take up their stations before the proscenium. Then, as the lights disclose an exact replica of Hardy’s own design for the interior of Tintagel Castle, appear the characters in the most pathetic episode in the great Arthurian legend, best beloved theme of every English poet. Again the story of Queen Iseult and her white-handed namesake, of King Mark, of Sir Tristram, child of Fate.
Your feeling is Greek. It was thus that Sophocles presented to an audience of his countrymen his own re-working of their great legendary inheritances. Here is Hardy’s tragic epos.
The play opens in this manner, lives for three quarters of an hour, closes again like a flower, the chanters receding as they advanced, Merlin once more appearing, reciting the brief epilogue, and vanishing.
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