Produced by C. P. Boyko
The Theatrocrat
A TRAGIC PLAY OF CHURCH AND STAGEBYJOHN DAVIDSON
LONDONE. GRANT RICHARDS1905
TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
Break—break it open; let the knocker rust:
Consider no "shalt not", and no man's "must":
And, being entered, promptly take the lead,
Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;
Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam;
Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream:
Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;
High hearts and youth are destiny enough.
The mystery and the power enshrined in you
Are old as time and as the moment new:
And none but you can tell what part you play,
Nor can you tell until you make assay,
For this alone, this always, will succeed,
The miracle and magic of the deed.
John Davidson.
INTRODUCTIONWORDSWORTH'S IMMORALITY AND MINE
Poetry is immoral. It will state any and every morality. It has doneso. There is no passion of man or passion of Matter outside itsprovince. It will expound with equal zest the twice incestuousintrigue of Satan, Sin, and Death, and the discarnate adoration ofDante for the most beatified lady in the world's record. There is nohorror of deluge, fire, plague, or war it does not rejoice to utter;no evanescent hue, or scent, or sound, it cannot catch, secure, andreproduce in word and rhythm. The worship of Aphrodite and theworship of the Virgin are impossible without its ministration. Itwill celebrate the triumph of the pride of life riding to victoryroughshod over friend and foe, and the flame-clad glory of the martyrwho lives in obloquy and dies in agony for an idea or a dream. Poetryis a statement of the world and of the Universe as the world can knowit. Sometimes it is of its own time: sometimes it is ahead of time,reaching forward to a new and newer understanding andinterpretation. In the latter case poetry is not only immoral in theUniversal order; but also in relation to its own division of time: agreat poet is very apt to be, for his own age and time, a greatimmoralist. This is a hard saying in England, where the currentmeaning of immorality is so narrow, nauseous, and stupid. I wish totransmute this depreciated word, to make it so eminent that men shalldesire to be called immoralists. To be immoral is to be different:that says it precisely, stripped of all accretions, barnacles andseaweed, rust and slime: the keen keel swift to furrow the deep. Thedifference is always one of conduct: there is no other differencebetween man and man: from the first breath to the last, life in allits being and doing is conduct. The difference may be as slight as achange in the form of poetical expression or the mode of wearing thehair; or it may be as important as the sayings of Christ, as vastand significant as the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon.Nothing in life is interesting except that differentiation which isimmorality: the world would be a putrid stagnation without it, andgreatness and glory impossible. Morality would never have founded theBritish Empire in India; it was English piracy that wrested fromIberia the control of the Spanish Main and the kingdom of the sea.War is empowered immorality: poetry is a warfare.
What I mean by Wordsworth's immorality begins to appear. This mostnaive and majestic person, leading the proudest, cleanest, sweetestof lives, was, during all his poetical time, immoralist sans tache.In his boyhood he can think of no other atonement for a slightindignity done him than suicide; he is perverse and obstinate, defieschastisement—is rather proud of it, and slashes his whip through