The Saints Tragedy

The Saint's Tragedy

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Saint's Tragedy, by Charles
Kingsley
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Title: The Saint's Tragedy
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release Date: February 27, 2004 [eBook #11346]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
SAINT'S TRAGEDY***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

THE SAINT'S TRAGEDY

PREFACE BY THE REV. F. D. MAURICE, M.A. (1848)

The writer of this play does not differ with his countrymen generally,
as to the nature and requirements of a Drama. He has learnt from our
Great Masters that it should exhibit human beings engaged in some
earnest struggle, certain outward aspects of which may possibly be a
spectacle for the amusement of idlers, but which in itself is for the
study and the sympathy of those who are struggling themselves. A
Drama, he feels, should not aim at the inculcation of any definite
maxim; the moral of it lies in the action and the character. It must be
drawn out of them by the heart and experience of the reader, not forced
upon him by the author. The men and women whom he presents are not
to be his spokesmen; they are to utter themselves freely in such
language, grave or mirthful, as best expresses what they feel and what
they are. The age to which they belong is not to be contemplated as if it
were apart from us; neither is it to be measured by our rules; to be held
up as a model; to be condemned for its strangeness. The passions which
worked in it must be those which are working in ourselves. To the same
eternal laws and principles are we, and it, amenable. By beholding
these a poet is to raise himself, and may hope to raise his readers, above
antiquarian tastes and modern conventions. The unity of the play
cannot be conferred upon it by any artificial arrangements; it must
depend upon the relation of the different persons and events to the
central subject. No nice adjustments of success and failure to right and
wrong must constitute its poetical justice; the conscience of the readers
must be satisfied in some deeper way than this, that there is an order in
the universe, and that the poet has perceived and asserted it.
Long before these principles were reduced into formal canons of
orthodoxy, even while they encountered the strong opposition of critics,
they were unconsciously recognised by Englishmen as sound and
national. Yet I question whether a clergyman writing in conformity
with them might not have incurred censure in former times, and may
not incur it now. The privilege of expressing his own thoughts,
sufferings, sympathies, in any form of verse is easily conceded to him;
if he liked to use a dialogue instead of a monologue, for the purpose of

enforcing a duty, or illustrating a doctrine, no one would find fault with
him; if he produced an actual Drama for the purpose of defending or
denouncing a particular character, or period, or system of opinions, the
compliments of one party might console him for the abuse or contempt
of another.
But it seems to be supposed that he is bound to keep in view one or
other of these ends: to divest himself of his own individuality that he
may enter into the working of other spirits; to lay aside the authority
which pronounces one opinion, or one habit of mind, to be right and
another wrong, that he may exhibit them in their actual strife; to deal
with questions, not in an abstract shape, but mixed up with the
affections, passions, relations of human creatures, is a course which
must lead him, it is thought, into a great forgetfulness of his office, and
of all that is involved in it.
No one can have less interest than I have in claiming poetical privileges
for the clergy; and no one, I believe, is more thoroughly convinced that
the standard which society prescribes for us, and to which we ordinarily
conform ourselves, instead of being too severe and lofty, is far too
secular and grovelling. But I apprehend the limitations of this kind
which are imposed upon us are themselves exceedingly secular,
betokening an entire misconception of the nature of our work,
proceeding from maxims and habits which tend to make it utterly
insignificant and abortive. If a man confines himself to the utterance of
his own experiences, those experiences are likely to become every day
more narrow and less real. If he confines himself to