unsuccessful, though written, despite Tennyson’s advanced years, with much fine force and vividness of character delineation.  These dramas (to enumerate them in their historic order) were “Harold,” “Becket,” and “Queen Mary.”  “Becket” is the best and most ambitious of them, though not, as “Queen Mary” is, a play designed for the stage.  It is a vigorous Englishman’s closet study of a prolonged and bitter struggle—­the conflict in Henry II.’s time between the church and the crown—­as exhibited in the person and dominant ecclesiastical attitude of the audacious prelate who met his tragic end by Canterbury’s altar.  “Harold” strikingly realizes to the modern reader the stirring activities of a strenuous time,—­that of the English conquest by Norman William, opposed to the death by Harold at Senlac in 1066.  The drama is as rich in character as it is swift and energetic in action.  “Queen Mary” deals with the religious and political dissensions (the struggle between the Papacy and the Reformation) of Mary Tudor’s era, with her love for and marriage with Philip of Spain, and her hopeless yearning for an heir to the double crown of England and Spain.  An important and prized addition to our English literature the drama undoubtedly is, but it is not more than a careful, accurate, and elaborate historical study.  It lacks, both in spirit and movement, the characteristics of the Shakespearian drama.  Its characters, however, are vividly brought out, and its situations are often picturesque and telling.  The personages, moreover, are wanting in the play of creative effect, and the incidents lack the stir of inventive resource.  Further, though the story of Mary’s life is essentially dramatic, and the incidents of her reign are tragic in the extreme, the poet does not seem to have extracted from either that which goes to the making of a great drama.  This evidently is the result of following too faithfully the events of history and the records of the time, as well as, in some degree, from want of sympathy, which Tennyson could not impart, with the leading characters and their actions.  Still, much is made of the materials; and though the personages and incidents appear in the narrative in the neutral tints of history, yet the period is made to reappear with a freshness and distinctness which, while it satisfies the scholar, gives a true charm to every lover of the drama.  Again and again, as we read, are we reminded of the Laureate’s rare poetical fancy and fine literary instinct, and the dialogues contain many passages of striking thought and noble utterance.  But the work is overcast by the great gloom of its central figure,—­the gloom of bigotry, passion, jealousy, disappointment, and despair which ever environs the miserable Queen; and much though the poet has striven to brighten the picture and awaken sympathy for the weakness of the woman, who, royal mistress though she was, could not command her love to be requited, the poetic measure of his lines roughens and hardens to the close, when the curtain falls on what is felt to be a tragic and unlovely life.