In the tragedies of Shakspere, as in all his dramas, the distinct personality of every one of the characters, high and low, is impressed upon us with vivid distinctness. But the principal personages in the tragedies dilate before us in heroic proportions as the portentous struggle progresses. Whether it be King Lear, or King John, or King Richard, or Othello, or Lady Macbeth, or Lady Constance, or the widowed Princess of Wales, or Ophelia, or whoever else, we look on with bated breath, as did the spectators of the boat-race with which Æneas celebrated the suicide of his regal paramour, and we come away at its close a prey to the storm of emotions which the magic art of the island sorcerer has conjured up within us.
But the drama, or tragedy, as we prefer to call it, we read with but languid interest. The psychical struggle is neither very obvious nor very critical, there is no very striking revelation of the sublime beauty or tragic overthrow of human nature, and although the canvas is crowded with figures, not one of them impresses any very distinct image of his or her individuality on our mind and heart. Instead of, as Shakspere’s creations, retaining every one of them as a distinct and intimate acquaintance, whom we may summon into our company at will, we rise from the perusal of _Queen Mary_ without having received any very definite impression of any, even the principal, personages, and we forget all about them almost as soon as we have read the play.
This vital defect in a drama the author has rendered doubly fatal through his having carried his imitation of Shakspere to the extent of adopting his simplicity of plot. Shakspere could afford to do this. The inspired verisimilitude of the struggle of the two natures in every one of his human creations, the profoundness of his development of the innermost working of the human microcosm, often by a few master-touches, surround every one of his _dramatis personæ_ with all the rapt suspense and sustained interest of a plot. Every one of his characters is, as it were, a plot in itself. But it is quite certain that Mr. Tennyson--and it is no depreciation of him--has not this power. He has, therefore, every right to call to his aid the interest of an elaborate plot, which itself would also, we think, cause him to develop more vividly his characters. It is in this the late Lord Lytton, whose poetical pretensions are very much below Mr. Tennyson’s, achieved whatever success he had as a dramatist. Mr. Tennyson has not to depend on this solely, as was very nearly the case with Lord Lytton, but it would contribute very much to a higher success. The great dramatist he is unwise enough so avowedly to imitate peoples the simplest plot with a whole world of stirring destinies. He moves his quickening wand, and lo! as by the master-will of a creator, appear a Hamlet or a Malvolio, a Lady Macbeth or a Goneril or Miranda, an Ariel or a Caliban, contribute their precise share to the history, which would not have been complete without them, and then disappear from the scene, but never from our memory. A magic word or two has smitten them into _it_, and they live for aye in our mind and heart. His heroes and his heroines he clothes with such a majesty of poetry that we watch anxiously with bated breath their every gesture, word, or look; we cannot bear their absence, until, entranced into their destiny, and half unconscious, we watch them disappear in the catastrophe, our ears are blank, all voices mute, the brilliant theatre is the chamber of death, and they who, to us, were but now living flesh and blood, in whose destinies our innermost soul was rapt, have passed away, amidst a tempest of emotions, and are no more.