Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/461

 commissioned by (Sir) George Alexander [q.v.] in 1898, allowed it to be applauded first as a printed book (1900). Eagerness to see it played was increased by the success both in the theatre (1900) and in print (1901) of his Herod, which (Sir) H. B. Tree [q.v.] produced with sumptuous accessories. When Paolo and Francesca was at last performed (1902), the author was greeted as the successor of Sophocles and Shakespeare, and his royalties rose to £150 a week. But affluence was not good for one of his generous and pleasure-loving nature. Always indolent and careless of his proof-sheets, he now left his producer to fix the fashion of his plays; and Tree's fashion is known. In Paolo and Francesca theatricality is thriftily employed to relieve an austere theme. In Herod it is more patent, but still legitimate, limelight. In Ulysses (1902) the Olympian prologue and the descent to Hades are merely kaleidoscopic extras. Nero (1906) is intermittently ablaze with melodramatic flares and wreathed in the smoke of rhetoric; while Faust (in which Phillips collaborated with J. Comyns Carr, 1908) is a pyrotechnic pantomime. In Pietro of Siena (1910) there are only fitful echoes of his first and best play. Phillips's day was over. His dramatic genius was intense, but of very limited range. He could invest a human relationship, under circumstances essentially simple though often overlaid by the pomp of empire, with an air of devastating fate. His chosen theme is maternal or fraternal love torn asunder by the intervention of some such primary force as sexual passion. Outside this field he lacks artistic pliability and moral strength; and so for variety he is tempted to specious devices. The Sin of David (1904, revised 1912) seems at first a return to the severity of his earlier manner; but the sterner air is accidental, due only to the Commonwealth setting (itself a device to overcome the Lord Chamberlain's ban on Biblical subjects), and there is greater effort in the play to force melodramatic situations than to depict austerity in passion. Aylmer's Secret (1905), a one-act prose play, and The Bride of Lammermoor (1908, also called The Last Heir) are bids for profit rather than for fame.

From 1908 Phillips passed out of sight for a while. He was penniless, and had separated from his wife. Odd guineas for poems in the press frequently saved him from starvation. The New Inferno (1911), his longest poem, presents in clumsy narrative a loose series of overdrawn pictures to illustrate trite moral texts. In 1912 a brighter period opened, as chance then allowed his friends to take his regeneration in hand. Lyrics and Dramas (1913) has flashes of the old spontaneity. But his susceptibilities are blunted, his themes more commonplace, and whereas, before, the seamy side of life was depicted with solemn pathos, now its lurid aspects are exploited. He affects at times a gay nonchalance, but usually relapses into apathetic pessimism. From January 1913 to his death, Phillips was editor of the Poetry Review, and in it once more urged the claims of poetic drama. In 1913 the Drama Society projected performances of three of his shorter pieces, Iole (written 1907), The King (1912), and The Adversary (1913)—plays recalling his finer powers, but perhaps only because their brevity confined him to simplicity of situation and of theme. The last of his plays to reach the stage, Armageddon (1915), has no merit beyond that of patriotic intention. His last volume of non-dramatic verse, Panama and Other Poems (1915), is his worst in that kind, and reveals nothing but an indifferent talent for narrative. Shortly before his death Phillips completed a verse play on the Norman Conquest, Harold, and wrote the scenario of one on John the Baptist. He died at Deal 9 December 1915, and was buried at Hastings. He was survived by his wife, May (Lidyard), whom he married in 1892, and by one son.

Phillips felt his life to be a losing struggle against a destiny which was himself: this is the theme of his earliest poem, written when fifteen (Destiny in Orestes and Other Poems), and recurs as a striking dramatic motive in The Adversary. Yet by nature he was open, hearty, and sociable, except when afflicted by recurrent fits of depression; he had a keen sense of humour, was an excellent raconteur, and a fine cricketer. As a poet, he was continually urged by varied influences to efforts alien from the bent of his genius. In the upshot, a gift for the simple and the elemental was subjected to all manner of sophistications. His shorter lyrics, in which the form itself imposes terseness and directness, are amongst his best works. Phillips's finest dramas are those in which an ancient story and an older world are used in order to exhibit such elemental impulses as still determine the common human lot. But then, almost invariably, he or his producer once more obscures what is essential by reconstructing the outer accidents for spectacular 435