Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/269

 asserted that he had made occasional essays in the form. The field was not new to him, then. Of the many dramatizations of the novels he was probably responsible for at least one, The Three Wayfarers, a one-act pastoral play adapted from The Three Strangers, in Wessex Tales. What he objected to was the restriction imposed upon the dramatist by the external demands of the stage-technique of the day. The writing of The Dynasts showed no deviation from the principles here enunciated. No reliance was placed upon the powers of stage-craft to reproduce the desired setting; the imagination of the reader was assumed to be able to cope with the problem of adequate visualization of the scenes.

Even before the publication and actual production of The Dynasts, Hardy's dramatic talents occasionally revealed themselves. Commentators on the novels noted that the Wessex countrymen often played the part of chorus to the tragedy enacted. This was felt particularly in such a book as The Return of the Native, where the rustics not only assemble for their quasi-pagan bonfire festival and introduce the audience to the atmosphere and characters of the story to come, but also indulge in a wild sort of choric dance. Likewise Aunt Drusilla in Jude is essentially a chorus-figure in her comments on the action. The author prefixed a list of dramatis persona to A Pair of Blue Eyes, and the essential "dramatic unities" were observed in nearly all of the greater prose-tragedies.

In certain of the lyric poems also, we can detect a strong predilection for the drama. Hardy's liking for the dramatic monologue has already been touched upon.