In moments of
profound insight I feel that _I_ am horribly like everybody else. If
it wasn't for that I should have no hope of achieving my modest
ambition."
"I'm not saying anything against your modesty or your ambition. I'm
not defying you to write a modern blank verse play; but I defy anybody
to act one."
"I know," said Rickman, "it's sad of course, but to the frivolous mind
of a critic there always will be something ridiculous in the notion of
blank verse spouted on the stage by a person in a frock-coat and a
top-hat. But do you think you'd see that frock-coat and top-hat if
once the great tragic passions got inside them?"
"Where _are_ the great tragic passions?"
"They exist and are poetic."
"As survivals only. They are poetic but not modern. We have the
passions of the divorce-court and the Stock Exchange. They are modern,
if you like, but not strikingly poetic."
"Well--even a stock-broker--if you insist on stockbrokers--"
"I don't. Take the people--take the women I know, the women you know.
Is there--honestly, is there any poetry in them?"
"There is--heaps. Oceans of poetry--There always has been and will be.
It's the poets, the great poets that don't turn up to time."
"Well; I don't care how great a poet you may be. Modern poetic drama
is the path of perdition for you. I wish," he added with an
unmistakable air of turning to a subject of real interest. "I wish I
knew what to do with Fulcher.
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