But because of the development in modern times of the physical conditions of the theatre, we have grown to exclude from the drama all non-dramatic elements.  Narrative and lyric, for their own sakes, have no place upon the modern stage; they may be introduced only for a definite dramatic purpose.  Only one of the three kinds of blank verse that the Elizabethan playwrights used is, therefore, serviceable on the modern stage.  But our poets, because of inexperience in the theatre, insist on writing the other two.  For this reason, and for this reason only, do modern actors like Mme. Nazimova complain of plays in verse.

Mr. Percy Mackaye’s verse in Jeanne d’Arc, for example, was at certain moments lyric, at most moments narrative, and scarcely ever dramatic in technical mold and manner.  It resembled the verse of Tennyson more nearly than it resembled that of any other master; and Tennyson was a narrative, not a dramatic, poet.  It set a value on literary expression for its own sake rather than for the purpose of the play; it was replete with elaborately lovely phrases; and it admitted the inversions customary in verse intended for the printed page.  But I am firm in the belief that verse written for the modern theatre should be absolutely simple.  It should incorporate no words, however beautiful, that are not used in the daily conversation of the average theatre-goer; it should set these words only in their natural order, and admit no inversions whatever for the sake of the line; and it should set a value on expression, never for its own sake, but solely for the sake of the dramatic purpose to be accomplished in the scene.  Verse such as this would permit of every rhythmical variation known in English prosody, and through the appeal of its rhythm would offer the dramatist opportunities for emotional effect that prose would not allow him; but at the same time it could be spoken with entire naturalness by actors as ultra-modern as Mme. Nazimova.

Mr. Stephen Phillips has not learned this lesson, and the verse that he has written in his plays is the same verse that he used in his narratives, Marpessa and Christ in Hades.  It is great narrative blank verse, but for dramatic uses it is too elaborate.  Mr. Mackaye has started out on the same mistaken road:  in Jeanne d’Arc his prosody is that of closet-verse, not theatre-verse.  The poetic drama will be doomed to extinction on the modern stage unless our poets learn the lesson of simplicity.  I shall append some lines of Shakespeare’s to illustrate the ideal of directness toward which our latter-day poetic dramatists should strive.  When Lear holds the dead Cordelia in his arms, he says: 

                       Her voice was ever soft,
    Gentle, and low,—­an excellent thing in woman.

Could any actor be unnatural in speaking words so simple, so familiar, and so naturally set?  Viola says to Orsino: 

My father had a daughter loved a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I woman,
I should your lordship.