The Return of Ulysses by W.B. Yeats

I.

M. Maeterlinck, in his beautiful _Treasure of the Humble_, compares the / dramas of our stage to the paintings of an obsolete taste; and the dramas / of the stage for which he hopes, to the paintings of a taste that cannot / become obsolete. 'The true artist,' he says, 'no longer chooses Marius / triumphing over the Cimbrians, or the assassination of the Duke of Guise, / as fit subjects for his art; for he is well aware that the psychology of / victory or murder is but elementary and exceptional, and that the solemn / voice of men and things, the voice that issues forth so timidly and / hesitatingly, cannot be heard amidst the idle uproar of acts of violence. / And therefore will he place on his canvas a house lost in the heart of the / country, a door open at the end of a passage, a face or hands at rest. ' I / do not understand him to mean that our dramas should have no victories or / murders, for he quotes for our example plays that have both, but only that / their victories and murders shall not be to excite our nerves, but to / illustrate the reveries of a wisdom which shall be as much a part of the / daily life of the wise as a face or hands at rest. And certainly the / greater plays of the past ages have been built after such a fashion. If / this fashion is about to become our fashion also, and there are signs that / it is, plays like some of Mr. Robert Bridges will come out of that / obscurity into which all poetry, that is not lyrical poetry, has fallen, / and even popular criticism will begin to know something about them.