Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/272

 ink!") with the motivation of the mortal characters according to the dictates of the doctrine of complete free-will.

The particular "Epic-Drama" form of The Dynasts is an original invention with Hardy; yet, before hitting upon it, he must have consciously or unconsciously been influenced by a number of somewhat similar literary monuments produced by great cosmic poets before him. Perhaps his favorite Book of Job suggested something of the idea of having celestial machinery to surround and to account for the course of human events; perhaps the Shakespearean "Histories" fired his ambitions to present England's heroes in the poetical drama of action; perhaps the angelic choruses of Goethe's Faust had something to do with his conception of commenting choruses of spiritual essences and chanting recording angels; perhaps the Prometheus Unbound of Shelley influenced both the form and the "irreconcilable" content of the work. All of these literary progenitors, in fact, can be made to present remarkable similarities in point of view and subject matter in the realm of pure idea, as well as in form and structure, and it is perhaps in conjunction with another work, such as one of these, similar in scope, power and imagination, that the characteristics of The Dynasts can be best studied. None of the works mentioned, however, can vie with the tragedies of Æschylus in the richness of comparative material presented. It would be hard to find two poets, produced by two entirely different civilizations, so closely allied in the problems they choose for treatment and in their manner of treating them, as the Æschylus of Eleusis,