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Alfred Tennyson by Andrew Lang
page 167 of 219 (76%)
persons not of his own fleeting shade of theological opinion. These
men had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly forgotten by
Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been primarily
responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they had treated
others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and women had dared the
fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or
forgotten, since Mary began cerdonibus esse timenda. Mary was not
essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she
spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared
Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by
grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be
pardoned by England. "Few men or women have lived less capable of
doing knowingly a wrong thing," says Mr Froude, a great admirer of
Tennyson's play. Yet, taking Mr Froude's own view, Mary's abject and
superannuated passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her supposed
pregnancy; "the forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with
her knees drawn to her face," with all her "symptoms of hysterical
derangement, leave little room, as we think of her, for other
feelings than pity." Unfortunately, feelings of pity for a person so
distraught, so sourly treated by fortune, do not suffice for tragedy.
When we contemplate Antigone or OEdipus, it is not with a sentiment
of pity struggling against abhorrence.

For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good dramatic
subject. The unity is given by Mary herself and her fortunes, and
these are scarcely dramatic. History prevents the introduction of
Philip till the second scene of the third act. His entrance is
manque; he merely accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the
scene, and Philip does not get in a word till after a long
conversation between the Queen and the Cardinal. Previously Philip
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