and Moliere; and lesser men may be called brilliant, talented or able—­anything you will but great.  Consider the scenes from the supreme plays of Shakespeare and compare with them the innumerable plays now coming forth and note a vital difference.  These give us excitement, where Shakespeare gave us vision.  We may be reminded of Shakespeare’s duels and brawls and battles and blood; his generation revelled in excitement.  Yes, they craved it, and he gave it to them, but shot through with wonder, subtlety, ecstasy; and his splendid creations, like mighty worlds, keep us wondering for ever.  We must get back that supreme note of blended music and wonder, that makes the spirit beautiful and tempts it to soar, till it rise over common things and mere commotion, spreading its wings for the finer air where reason faints and falls to earth.

VII

A dramatist cannot make a great play out of little people.  His chief characters at least must be great of heart and soul—­the great hearts that fight great causes.  When such are caught, in the inevitable struggle of affections and duties and the general clash of life their passionate spirits send up all the elements that make great literature.  The writer who cannot enter into their battles and espouse their cause cannot give utterance to their hearts; and we don’t want what he thinks about them; we want what they think about themselves.  He who is in passionate sympathy with them feels their emotion and writing from the heart does great things.  The artist who is in mortal dread of being thought a politician or suspected of motives cannot feel, and will as surely fail, as the one who sits down to play the role of politician disguised as play-right.  That is what the artist has got to see; and he has got to see that while the Irish Revolution for centuries has attracted the greatest hearts and brains of Ireland, for him carefully to avoid it is to avoid the line of greatness.  For a propagandist to sit down to give it utterance would be as if a handy-man were to set out to build a cathedral.  The Revolution does not need to be argued; it justifies itself—­all we need is to give it utterance—­give it utterance once greatly.  Then the writer may proceed to give utterance to every good thing under the sun.  But our artists are making, and will continue to make, only second-class literature, for they are afraid of the Revolution, and it is all over our best of life; they are afraid of that life.  But to enter the arena of greatness they must give it a voice.  That is the vocation of the poet.

VIII