bility. There is little attempt at 1 color "; the Moors invoke the saints, ve knightly usages, and even sing of

-llis."

st example in English of the Supermanof "the will to power." Almanzor's e plot is apt to be loose and episodic, no prolonged suspense (opportunities it are rejected), not working up to a s, not intimately growing out of the per- lities, but accidental and successive, and Dryden Ce up of commonplace elements.

far from being a born dramatist. In all e plays the general formula for plot is conflict between love and honor. In this the plot is of three parts, well interen, dealing with the loves of Almanzor, ahide, and Boabdelin, with those of Aba, Lyndaraxa, and Abdelmelech, and with se of Ozmyn and Benzayda. The Second t is equally intricate, ending in the cape of Granada by the Spaniards, the death Boabdelin, the prospective union of his ow Almahide with Almanzor, and the lly unprepared-tor recognition of the latas the long-lost son of the Duke of Arcos. → commonplaceness of the plot is someat concealed by the incessant bustling ion, and the amorous framework by the istant drums and tramplings of conquests,

alarums and excursions of domestic lice and foreign levies. As a critic has I said, the play combines French artificial llantry with the English love of sound and ry. The noisy motion was doubtless one ason for its popularity on the stage. There ing no one point of deep interest, the us of attention is constantly shifted. The tline of the play is narrative, epic, rather an dramatic.

This point bears equally on the most charteristic feature of the heroic play, its eatment of personality. Here too its naire and origin is rather epic than dramatic. s in the epic, the characters are of the highit rank. Dryden stated that his originals

›r Almanzor were Homer's Achilles and asso's Rinaldo. Almanzor, however, did not erfectly please contemporary critics. To us ; seems more odd to censure him as no erfect pattern of heroic virtue," a "conemner of kings," who changes sides, than to arp at him for performing impossibilities - he falls short of, and exceeds, the convenjonal notion of his kind. Dryden makes the lefence that heroic plays are not subject to he laws of probability, and that, being a Coreigner, Almanzor was bound to neither of the Moorish factions. The hero's very first words, as he goes to aid one of them, are

I cannot stay to ask which cause is best:
But this is so to me because opprest;

and later he declares,

True, I would wish my friend the juster side; But, in the unjust, my kindness more is tried.

Thus from the first he declares his indifference to ordinary rules of conduct. With his frantic self-assertion and megalomania, “a confidence of himself, almost approaching to an arrogance," Dryden moderately says, Almanzor and his fellow-heroes are the combiggest talk does no more than justice to his deeds, he faces kings, armies and ghosts (Part II.) with like equanimity.

What, in another, vanity would seem, Appears but noble confidence in him. But heroic arrogance is not exhibited merely for its own sake. Almanzor's chief virtues Dryden meant to be "a frank and open nobleness of nature, an easiness to forgive his conquered enemies, and to protect them in distress; and, above all, an inviolable faith in his affection." He towers above the world of men that his subjection to woman and love may be more flattering and delightful. Love is the giant's only weakness; what a tribute to love! Love is at first sight, but as constant as it is sudden. An etiquette controls it, even if repented of. Almahide, though loving Almanzor, feels as much bound by her betrothal to the weak Boabdelin as by her marriage-vow, and must be faithful not only to his person but to his memory; at the end of Part II she dedicates a year's widowhood to les convenances. What a tribute to the virtue of constancy and loyalty, when even the almighty Almanzor is kept waiting! But if love and honor hopelessly conflict, usually honor goes to the wall. Boabdelin prefers his love to his crown.

Hardly less important than the characters, in the mind of Dryden and his auditors, were the "sentiments," the views and ideals discoursed upon. Some of these plays devote much space to arguments and controversies among the characters, as here in the second act. The ideals are mainly of love and honor; 'betwixt their love and virtue they are tost; " honor being partly glory and partly a rigid sense of propriety. In each case the ideal is a thoroughly individualistic one; the love is passion, and the honor is largely selfish virtue. Though occasionally a personage is so Quixotic as to contemplate killing himself to spare another the guilt of killing him, of patriotism there is scarcely a hint. "Honor is what myself and friends I owe," Almanzor announces. "L'état c'est moi" is the principle of all of them. With an empire of eight hundred years nearing its fall the Moors think only of private revenge, private ambition, and private passion. Here as elsewhere Dryden sacrificed nature and breadth to intensity. Yet insight is not wholly wanting; a passage in Part II has often been quoted:

A blush remains in a forgiven face:
It wears the silent tokens of disgrace,
Forgiveness to the injur'd does belong:
But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.

Such passages, and even rhodomontade and commonplace, gain impressiveness by Dryden's matchless style. Not always great as an imaginative poet, or as a dramatist, he was a master of dramatic rhetoric, unsubtle, bold. His verse sweeps one along like a wave on its rhythmic rise and fall, with endless nerve and verve and never a sign of faltering; it reads aloud superbly. The form of verse is, as regularly in the heroic plays, the ten-syllable couplet, the "heroic couplet," treated with some variety, such as occasional short lines. His lyric gift enabled him also to introduce charming songs, which contrast with the masculine march of the other verse, and also sometimes with its high moral tone.

An artificial idealism, in a word, is what this play embodies. There is plenty of idealism in Shakespeare, but it comes from a heightening of human nature as it is; his people are merely more fully and intensely what they are than they would be in life. Dryden's are not imitated from life, but from the vague ideals of the unideal, artificial aristo

crats for whom he wrote. The reality these people appears in the comedy of age. Sexual morality and personal ho were at a low ebb; in these plays they lauded in an unreal and exaggerated man Because such people cared little for idea these serious plays are artificial. They a the somewhat perfunctory homage which R toration vice paid to virtue. Their ar ficiality links them closely to another high artificial dramatic type, which grew up abo the same time and from much the same orig - the opera. Both were felt to be indepe ent of nature and probability, both were re mote and aristocratic, both were simple an conventional in their elements, both deal largely with the heroic and with love. Th sonorous lyric verse which is the accompa ment of Dryden's plays in a sense takes the place of the music which is that of the opera The spirit of The Conquest of Granada there fore still survives on the boards of the opera house.