Stephen Phillips's Ulysses

IN a stout binding of green, which suggests the shallow seas about Ogygia and first editions of Tennyson’s dramas, Mr. Stephen Phillips’s Ulysses¹ comes auspiciously from the press. To true-born lovers of poetry this is an event of singular interest. Mr. Phillips is a poet of exceptional promise, who has, nevertheless, seemed to many to be in the dangerous way of defeating expectation, while to some he has appeared an almost tragic figure striving to reassert the integrity of dramatic poetry in a time of theatrical commercialism. It is, then, a matter of moment to see what kind of a play he has wrought from the swift, eventful story of the Odyssey, and what manner of protagonist he has made of Ulysses.

The action of the piece is simple and closely knit. It is, as Mr. Phillips says in his note, the action of the Odyssey “ rearranged, reimagined, and, above all, unsparingly accelerated and cut down.” First comes a Prologue on Olympus, where Athene and Poseidon dispute the fate of Ulysses, until Zeus, by eloquent and expressive thundering, decides that he shall, if he wishes, return to Ithaca and Penelope. The Prologue is written in a subtly ironic vein, which suggests the air of the gods in exile, or their bearing in that northern island inhabited by Lutherans, of which Mr. Gosse has lately written. It is noteworthy that the parley of the gods is carried on in resonant pentameter couplets, sounding not with the clear, metallic chime of Pope’s, or the wandering melodies which Keats evoked from the old form, but with a kind of contrapuntal harmony which curiously suggests the seventeenth-century wielders of the couplet, Dryden, or Cowley at his best.

The beginning of the drama proper shows us the woe of Ithaca obsessed by the suitors of the queen, and Penelope’s wistful constancy. Then, suddenly, the scene shifts to Ogygia, where Ulysses lies in a sea cave, enthralled by Calypso, yet happy in his thralldom. But as he sleeps Hermes comes from Zeus, warning the enchantress that freedom must lie within the will of Ulysses, touching the sleeper with his caduceus that his will may be free. Ulysses, upon awaking, talks some excellent poetry with Calypso, elects to leave her, calls his joyful companions to push his ship from the shingle, and embarks for Ithaca ; leaving one rather pitiful for Calypso, who generously raises a wind to propel her departing lover. In the second act Ulysses fulfills the hard condition of his return that has been set by Zeus ; he goes down the facile descent to Hades, and with brooding, Virgilian pity, broken by fits of terror, moves among the sorrowful shades. In the third and last act Ulysses is shipwrecked on the shores of Ithaca. Stirring scenes ensue. In the disguise which we all remember, Ulysses enters his hall at the fatal hour when Penelope is to choose from the suitors. After a series of strikingly dramatic situations there comes a rather robustious scene of slaughter. Then Penelope and Ulysses are emparadised in an embrace, while from behind is heard the voice of a minstrel singing the refrain : —

The possibilities of this structure as a splendid, quasi-poetic spectacle are obvious. Indeed, all accounts of the London performance agree as to its decisive success. But its value as dramatic poetry is another matter. It will hold the reader throughout, and certain passages will stir him, as true poetry must, but the final effect of great stage poetry is wanting. The characters are suggested, not realized. They pause too often in the dramatic expression of their thought to gather poetical poesies by the way ; yet their heightened speech never has the superb unction, the joyous inevitableness, which can atone for this. Save in the third act the action moves somewhat leisurely, without the bustle and clash one expects in the mimic world. The impression made by the piece, even when played by the skilled stock company which most experienced readers take about under their hats, is theatrical in the less admirable sense.

Nevertheless, when all is said, Ulysses is a fair continuance of promise. The poetic style is less eclectic than in either Paolo and Francesca or Herod, and Mr. Phillips’s characteristic and mature manner is seen to be quite that which was foretold in his incomparable Marpessa. The thing he does best, the thing in which he is, one thinks, most of his age, is the moving and melodious expression of a mood of anxious wistfulness. Perhaps the most characteristic lines in the play are in Penelope’s lament in the first act:

But it is to elegiac rather than to dramatic composition that Mr. Phillips’s poetic quality is best suited. F. G.