other forms of emotion, generalised. The appeal in what seems to you
these childish manoeuvres is to a finer, because to a more intimately
poetic, sense of things than the merely rationalistic appeal of very
modern plays. If at times we laugh, it is with wonder at seeing humanity
so gay, heroic, and untiring. There is the romantic suggestion of magic
in this beauty.

Maeterlinck wrote on the title-page of one of his volumes "Drames pour
marionettes," no doubt to intimate his sense of the symbolic value, in
the interpretation of a profound inner meaning of that external nullity
which the marionette by its very nature emphasises. And so I find my
puppets, where the extremes meet, ready to interpret not only the
"Agamemnon," but "La Mort de Tintagiles"; for the soul, which is to
make, we may suppose, the drama of the future, is content with as simple
a mouthpiece as Fate and the great passions, which were the classic
drama.




PLAYS AND ACTING




NIETZSCHE ON TRAGEDY


I have been reading Nietzsche on the Origin of Tragedy with the delight
of one who discovers a new world, which he has seen already in a dream.