Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/19

 Rh Many Englishmen who have seen it have been immensely impressed by it. Laurence Irving wrote me: "I suppose England is the only country in Europe where The Power of Darkness has not been acted. It ought to be done. It is a stupendous tragedy; the effect on the stage is unparalleled." Bernard Shaw, writing to Tolstoy, said: "I remember nothing in the whole range of drama that fascinated me more than the old soldier in your Power of Darkness. One of the things that struck me in that play was the feeling that the preaching of the old man, right as he was, could never be of any use—that it could only anger his son and rub the last grains of self-respect out of him. But what the pious and good father could not do, the old rascal of a soldier did as if he was the voice of God. To me that scene where the two drunkards are wallowing in the straw and the older rascal lifts the younger one above his cowardice and his selfishness, has an intensity of effect that no merely romantic scene could possibly attain." Arthur Symons wrote: "More than any play I have ever seen, this astounding play of Tolstoy's seems to me to fulfil Aristotle's demand upon tragedy: 'Through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.' I had never read it; my impression was gained directly from seeing it on the