Drama

Abstract

Tennyson’s precocity in dramatic writing (a scene written at the age of fourteen survives, as well as The Devil and the Lady) does not indicate the suppression of a dramatist for a half-century of poetry. Several of his pre-marriage letters show that he was steeped in Shakespeare, but this devotion argues an interest in poetic language rather than in writing for the stage. Theatricals in which his sons took part, notably at Mrs Cameron’s, probably did something to sharpen his interest in dramatic art, but his play-writing from 1874 to 1882 is accounted for, partly from the lack of a large and important subject to engross him poetically after the completion of Idylls of the King, more positively because, living for a period each year in London, he was able to attend stage-performances which excited his dramatic ambition. The highlights at this critical juncture were Henry Irving’s performances in Richelieu and Hamlet, and Helen Faucit in As You Like It.