The Dynasts By Thomas Hardy: The Dynasts is an… by Thomas Hardy · Audiobook preview

This is an auto-narrated audio book generated by Google. Book, The Dynas. Author, Thomas Hardy. Preface. The spectacle here presented in the likeness of a drama is concerned with the great historical calamity, or clash of peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago. The choice of such a subject was mainly due to three accidents of locality. It chants that the writer was familiar with a part of England that lay within hail of the watering place in which King George III had his favorite summer residence during the war with the first Napoleon, and where he was visited by ministers and others who bore the weight of English affairs on their more or less competent shoulders at that stressful time. Secondly, this district, being also near the coast, which had echoed with rumors of invasion in their intensest form while the descent threatened, was formerly animated by memories and traditions of the desperate military preparations for that contingency. Thirdly, the same countryside happened to include the village which was the birthplace of Nelson's flag captain at Trafalgar. When, as the first published result of these accidents, the trumpet major was printed more than 20 years ago, I found myself in the tantalizing position of having touched the fringe of a vast international tragedy without being able, through limits of plan, knowledge, and opportunity, to enter further into its events, a restriction that prevailed for many years. But the slight regard paid to English influence and action throughout the struggle by those continental writers who had dealt imaginatively with Napoleon's career seemed always to leave room for a new handling of the theme which should re-embody the features of this influence in their true proportion. And accordingly, on a belated day about six years back, the following drama was outlined to be taken up now and then at wide intervals ever since. It may, I think, claim at least a tolerable fidelity to the facts of its date, as they are give in ordinary records. Whenever any evidence of the words really spoken or written by the characters in their various situations was attainable, as close a paraphrase has been aimed at as was compatible with the form chosen. And in all cases outside the oral tradition, accessible scenery, and existing relics, my indebtedness for detail to the abundant pages of the historian, the biographer, and the journalist, English and foreign, has been, of course, continuous. It was thought proper to introduce as supernatural spectators of the terrestrial action certain impersonated abstractions or intelligences called spirits. They are intended to be taken by the reader for what they may be worth as contrivances of the fancy merely. Their doctrines are but tentative and are advanced with little eye to a systematized philosophy warranted to lift the berthen of the mystery of this unintelligible world. The chief thing hoped for them is that they and their utterances may have dramatic plausibility enough to procure for them, in the words of Coleridge, that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. The wide prevalence of the monistic theory of the universe forbade in this 20th century the importation of divine personages from any antique mythology as ready-made sources or channels of causation, even in verse, and excluded the celestial machinery of, say, paradise lost as peremptorily as that of the Iliad or the Eddas. And the abandonment of the masculine pronoun in allusions to the first or fundamental energy seemed a necessary and logical consequence of the long abandonment by thinkers of the anthropomorphic conception of the same. These phantasmal intelligences are divided into groups of which one only, that of the pities, approximates to the universal sympathy of human nature, the spectator idealized one, of the Greek chorus. It is impressionable and inconsistent in its views, which sway hither and thither as wrought on by events. Another group approximates to the passionless insight of the ages. The remainder are eclectically chosen auxiliaries whose signification may be readily discerned. In point of literary form, the scheme of contrasted choruses and other conventions of this external feature was shaped with a single view to the modern expression of a modern outlook and in frank divergence from classical and other dramatic precedent, which ruled the ancient voicings of ancient themes. It may hardly be necessary to inform readers that in devising this chronicle piece, no attempt has been made to create that completely organic structure of action and closely webbed development of character and motive, which are demanded in a drama strictly self-contained. A panoramic show like the present is a series of historical ordinates, to use a term in geometry. The subject is familiar to all, and foreknowledge is assumed to fill in the junctions required to combine the scenes into an artistic unity. Should the mental spectator be unwilling or unable to do this, a historical presentment on an intermittent plan, in which the dramatist's personae number some hundreds, exclusive of crowds and armies, becomes in his individual case unsuitable. In this assumption of a completion of the action by those to whom the drama is addressed, it is interesting, if unnecessary, to name an exemplar as old as Aeschylus, whose plays are, as Dr. Vero reminds us, two scenes from stories taken as known and would be unintelligible without supplementary scenes of the imagination. Readers will readily discern, too, that the dynas is intended simply for mental performance and not for the stage. Some critics have averred that to declare a drama three as being not for the stage is to make an announcement whose subject and predicate cancel each other. The question seems to be an unimportant matter of terminology. Compositions cast in this shape were, without doubt, originally written for the stage only. And as a consequence, their nomenclature of act, scene, and the like was drawn directly from the vehicle of representation. But in the course of time, such a shape would reveal itself to be an eminently readable one. Moreover, by dispensing with the theater altogether, a freedom of treatment was attainable in this form that was denied where the material possibilities of stagery had to be rigorously remembered. With the careless mechanicism of human speech, the technicalities of practical mumming were retained in these productions when they had ceased to be concerned with the stage at all. To say then in the present case that a writing in play shape is not to be played is merely another way of stating that such writing has been done in a form for which there are chances to be no brief definition, save one already in use for works that it superficially but not entirely resembles. Whether mental performance alone may not eventually be the fate of all drama other than that of contemporary or frivolous life is a kindred question not without interest. The mind naturally flies to the triumphs of the Hellenic and Elizabethan theater in exhibiting scenes laid far in the unapparent and asks why they should not be repeated. But the meditative world is older, more invidious, more nervous, more quizzical than it once was and being unhappily perplexed by. Riddles of death thieves never knew. Maybe less ready and less able than Hellas and old England were to look through the insistent and often grotesque substance at the thing signified. In respect of such plays of poesy and dream, a practicable compromise may conceivably result taking the shape of a monotonic delivery of speeches with dreamy conventional gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers. The curiously hypnotizing impressiveness of whose automatic style, that of persons who spoke by no will of their own, may be remembered by all who ever experienced it. Gauzes or screens to blur outlines might still further shut off the actual as has indeed already been done in exceptional cases. But with this branch of the subject, we are not concerned here. T.H. September 1903. Topic, The Dynasts, An Epic Drama of the War with Napoleon. Part First. Topic, Characters. 1. Phantom Intelligences. The Ancient Spirit of the Years, Chorus of the Years. The Spirit of the Pitys, Chorus of the Pitys. Spirit Sinister and Ironic, Choruses of Sinister and Ironic Spirits. The Spirit of Rumor, Chorus of Rumors. The Shade of the Earth. Spirit Messengers. Recording Angels. 2. Persons the names in lowercase are mute figures. Men George III. The Duke of Cumberland, Pitt. Fox. Sheridan. Wyndham. Whitbread. Tierney. Bathurst and Fuller. Lord Chancellor Illdon. Earl of Malmesbury. Lord Mulgrave. Another Cabinet Minister. Lord Grenville. Viscount Casselry. Viscount Sidmouth. Another Noble Lord. Rose. Canning. Percival. Grey. Speaker Abbott. Tomlin, Bishop of Lincoln. Sir Walter Farquhar. Count Munster. Other Peers, Ministers, Ex-Ministers, Members of Parliament, and Persons of Quality. Nelson. Collingwood. Hardy. Secretary Scott. Dr. Beatty. Dr. McGrath. Dr. Alexander Scott. Burke Purser. Lieutenant Pascoe. Another Lieutenant. Pollard, a Midshipman. Captain Adair. Lieutenants Ram and Whipple. Other English Naval Officers. Sergeant Major Secker and Marines. Staff and other Officers of the English Army. A Company of Soldiers. Regiments of the English Army and Hanoverian. Sailors and Boatmen. A Militiaman. Naval Crews. The Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. A Gentleman of Fashion. Wiltshire, a Country Gentleman, a Horseman. Two Beacon Watchers. English Citizens and Burgesses. Coach and other Highway Passengers. Messengers. Servants and Rustics. Napoleon Bonaparte. Daru, Napoleon's War Secretary. Loriston, aide de camp. Monge, a Philosopher. Berthier. Marat, brother-in-law. Of Napoleon. Soult. Ney. Lanz. Bernadotte. Marmont. Dupont. Oudinot. Devout. Vendamme. Other French Marshals. A Sub-Officer. Villeneuve, Napoleon's Admiral. Deckers, Minister of Marine. Flag Captain Magendie. Lieutenant Doudignon. Lieutenant Fournier. Captain Lucas. Other French Naval Officers and Petty Officers. Seamen of the French and Spanish Navies. Regiments of the French Army. Couriers. Heralds. Aides, Officials, Pages, etc. Attendants. French Citizens. Cardinal Caprera. Priests, Acolytes and Choristers. Italian Doctors and Presidents of Institutions. Milanese Citizens. The Emperor Francis. The Archduke Ferdinand. Prince John. Of Liechtenstein. Prince Schwarzenberg. Mack, Austrian General. Gelachich. Rieske. Weeruther. Another Austrian General. Two Austrian Officers. The Emperor Alexander. Prince Kutuzov, Russian Field Marshal. Count Langerin. Count Buxhoveden. Count Miloradovich. Doctor of. Joulet, Gottesheim, Klenau and Przhebyshevsky. Regiments. Of the Austrian Army. Regiments of the Russian Army. Women. Queen Charlotte. English Princesses. Ladies of the English. Court. Lady Hester Stanhope. A Lady. Lady Caroline Lamb, Mrs. Dahmer and other. English Ladies. The Empress Josephine. Princesses and Ladies of. Josephine's Court. Seven Milanese Young Ladies. City and Towns Women. Country Women. A Militiaman's Wife. A Street Woman. Ship Women. Servants. Topic, Foreseen the Overworld. Enter the ancient spirit and chorus of the years. The spirit and chorus of the pities. The shade of the earth. The spirits sinister and ironic with their choruses, rumors, spirit messengers and recording angels. Shade of the earth. What of the imminent will and its designs? Spirit of the years. It works unconsciously as heretofore eternal artistries in circumstance whose patterns wrought by rapt aesthetic rote seem in themselves its single listless aim and not their consequence. Chorus of the pities, aerial music. Still thus, still thus, ever unconscious. An automatic sense unweeding why or whence. Be then the inevitable as of old, although that so it be we dare not hold. Spirit of the years. Hold what you list, fond believing sprites. You cannot swerve the pulsion of the abyss which thinking on yet weighing not its thought unchecks its clock-like laws. Spirit sinister aside. Good as before. My little engines then will still have play. Spirit of the pities. Why doth it so and so and ever so, this viewless, voiceless turner of the wheel? Spirit of the years. As one sad story runs, it lends its heed to other worlds being wearied out with this, wherefore its mindlessness of earthly woes. Some too have told at wiles that rightfully its wearfulness, its care, this planet lost when in her early growth and crudity by bad mad acts of severance men contrived, working such any science by their own device. Yea, so it stands in certain chronicles though not in mine. Spirit of the pities. Meet is it nonetheless to bear in thought that though its consciousness may be estranged, engrossed afar or sealed, sublunar shocks may wake its watch-anon. Spirit of the years. Nay, in the foretime, even to the germ of being, nothing appears of shape to indicate that cognizance has marshaled things to rean, or will such as my thinking in my span. Rather they show that like a knitter drowsed whose fingers play in skilled unmindfulness, the will has woven with an absent heed since life first was and ever will so weave. Spirit sinister. Hence we've rare dramas going more so since it wove its web in the Egexian womb. Spirit of the years. Well, no more this on what no mind can meet. Our scope is but to register and watch by means of this great gift accorded us the free trajection of our entities. Spirit of the pities. On things to rean then I would say that though the human news wherewith the rumors stirred us may please thy temper years, toward better far such deeds were nulled and the strange man's career wound up as making inharmonious jars in her creation whose meek wraith we know. The more that he turned man of mere traditions now profits not. For the large potencies instilled into his idiosyncrasy to throne fair liberty and privilege room are taking taint and sink to common plots for his own gain. Shade of the earth. And who then, cordial one, would substitute for this intractable? Chorus of the earth. We would establish those of kindlier build in fair compassion skilled, men of deep art in life development. Watchers and warders of thy varied lands, men surfeited of laying heavy hands upon the innocent, the mild, the fragile, the obscure content among the myriads of thy family. Those too who love the true, the excellent and make their daily moves a melody. Shade of the earth. They may come, will they? I am not averse. Yet know I am but the ineffectual shade of her, the travaille, herself a thrall to it in all her laborings curbed and kinged. Spirit of the years. Shall such be mooted now? Already change hath played strange pranks since first I brooded here. But old laws operate yet, and phase and phase of men's dynastic and imperial moils shape on accustomed lines. Though as for me, I care not thy shape or what they be. Spirit of the pities. You seem to have small sense of mercy, sire. Spirit of the years. Mercy I view not urge, nor more than mark what designate your titles good and ill. Tis not in me to feel with or against these flesh-hinged mannequins its hand you peewinds to click-clack off its pre-adjusted laws, but only through my centuries to behold their aspects and their movements and their mold. Spirit of the pities. They are shapes that bleed, mere mannequins or no, and each has parcel in the total will. Spirit of the years. Which overrides them as a whole its parts in other entities. Spirit sinister, aside. Limbs of itself, each one a jot of it in quaint disguise. I'll fear all men henceforward. Spirit of the pities. Go to. Let this terrestrial tragedy. Spirit ironic. Nay, comedy. Spirit of the pities. Let this earth tragedy whereof we spake afford a spectacle forthwith conned closelier than your custom is. Spirit of the years. How does it stand? To a recording angel open and chant the page thou slately writ that sums these happenings in brief reminder of their instant points slighted by us amid our converse here. Recording angel from a book in recitative. Now mellow-eyed peace is made captive and vengeance is chartered to deal forth its dooms on the peoples with sword and with spear. Men's musings are busy with forecasts of muster and battle and visions of shock and disaster rise red on the year. The easternmost ruler sits wistful and tense, he to midward. The king to the west months his borders in front and in rear. While one may I flushed from his crowning ranks legions around him to shake the annihiled neighbor nation and close her career. Semi-chorus I of rumors, aerial music. O woven winged squadrons of Toulon and fellows of Rochefort, wait, wait for a wind and draw westward ere Nelson be near. For he reads not your force or your freightage of warriors fell handed or when they will join for the onset or whither they steer. Semi-chorus II. O Nelson so zealous a watcher through months long of cruising thy foes may elide thee a moment put forth and get clear and rendezvous westerly straightway with Spain's aiding navies and hasten to head violation of Albion's frontier. Spirit of the years. Methinks too much assurance thrills your note on secrets in my locker gentle sprites but it may serve. Our thought being now reflex to forces operant on this English isle behoves it as to enter scene by scene and watch the spectacle of Europe's moves in her embroil as they were self-ordained according to the naive and liberal creed of our great hearted young compassionates for getting the prime mover of the gear as puppet watchers him who pulls the strings you'll mark the twitchings of this bonaparte as he with other figures foots his reel until he twitch him into his lonely grave. Also regard the frail ones that his flings have made gyrate like animalcula in tepid pools. Hence to the precinct then and count as framework to the stagery yon architraves of sunbeam smitten cloud. So may you judge earth's jack o'clock to be no foogled by one will but function free. The nether sky opens and Europe is disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure. The Alps shaping like a backbone and the branching mountain chains like ribs the peninsular plateau of Spain forming ahead. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from the north of France across Russia like a gray green garment hemmed by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic ocean. The point of view then sinks downwards through space and draws near to the surface of the perturbed countries where the peoples distressed by events which they did not cause are seen writhing, crawling, heaving and vibrating in their various cities and nationalities. Spirit of the years to the spirit of the pities. As key scene to the whole I first lay bare the will webs of thy fearful questioning for know that of my antique privileges this gift to visualize the mode is won though by exhaustive strain and effort only. See then and learn ere my power pass again. A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle enduring men and things with a seeming transparency and exhibiting as one organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and vitalized matter included in the display. Spirit of the pities. Amid this scene of bodies substantive strange waves I sight like winds grown visible which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils twining and serpenting round and through. Also retracting threads like gossamers except in being irresistible which complicate with some and balance all. Spirit of the years. These are the prime volitions fibrils, veins, will tissues, nerves and pulses of the cause that heave throughout the earth's compositor. There some is like the lobule of a brain evolving always that it wats not of a brain whose whole connotes the everywhere and whose procedure may but be discerned by phantom eyes like ours. The while unguest of those it stirs who even as ye do dream their motions free their ordering supreme each life apart from each with power to meet its own day's measures balanced, self-complete though they subsist but atoms of the one laboring through all divisible from none but this no further now. Deem yet man's deed self-done. General chorus of intelligences. Aerial music. We'll close up time as a bird, its fan will traverse space as spirits can link pulses severed by leagues and years bring cradles into touch with beers so that the far off consequence appear prompt at the heel of foregone cause the prime that willed air awareness was whose brain perchances space whose thought its laws which we as threads and streams discern we may but muse on never learn. End of the four scene. A.C.T. first. Scene one. England. A ridge in Wessex. The time is a fine day in March 1805. A highway crosses the ridge which is near the sea and the south coast is seen bounding the landscape below the open channel extending beyond. Spirits of the years. Hark now and gather how the martial mood stirs England's humblest hearts. Anon will trace its heavings in the upper coteries there. Spirit sinister. I begin small and so lead up to the greater. It is a sound dramatic principle. I always aim to follow it in my pestilences, fires, famines, and other comedies. And though to be sure I did not in my Lisbon earthquake I did in my French terror and my St. Domingo burlesque. Spirit of the years. Thy Lisbon earthquake, thy French terror. Wait. Thinking thou willst, thou dost but indicate. A stagecoach enters with passengers outside. Their voices after the foregoing sound small and commonplace as from another medium. First passenger. There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway even at this time o' year. Second passenger. Yes. It is because the king and court are coming down here later on. They wake up this part rarely. See now how the channel and coast open out like a chart. That patch of mist below us is the town we are bound for. There's the Isle of Slingers beyond like a floating snail. That wide bay on the right is where the Abergavenny Captain John Wordsworth was wrecked last month. One can see half across to France up here. First passenger. Half across. And then another little half. And then all that's behind the Corsican mischief. Second passenger. Yes. People who live here about I am a native of these parts feel the nearness of France more than they do inland. First passenger. That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the road. This year, his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon. Second passenger. May we be ready. First passenger. Well, we ought to be. We've had alarms enough. God knows. Some companies of infantry are seen ahead and the coach presently overtakes them. Soldiers singing as they walk. We be the king's men. Hail and hearty. Marching to meet one Buonaparte. If you won't sail, lest the wind should blow, we shall have marched for nothing. Oh. Rightfolol. We be the king's men. Hail and hearty. Marching to meet one Buonaparte. If you be seasick, says no, no. We shall have marched for nothing. Oh. Rightfolol. The soldiers draw aside and the coach passes on. Second passenger. Is there truth in it that Bonaparte wrote a letter to the king last month? First passenger. Yes, sir. A letter in his own hand in which he expected the king to reply to him in the same manner. Soldiers continuing as they are left behind. We be the king's men. Hail and hearty. Marching to meet one Buonaparte. Never mind mates. We'll be merry, though we may have marched for nothing. Oh. Rightfolol. Third passenger. And was Bony's letter friendly? First passenger. Certainly, sir. He requested peace with the king. Third passenger. And why shouldn't the king reply in the same manner? First passenger. What? Encourage this man in an act of shameless presumption and give him the pleasure of considering himself the equal of the king of England, whom he actually calls his brother. Third passenger. He must be taken for what he is, not for what he was. And if he calls King George his brother, it doesn't speak badly for his friendliness. First passenger. Whether or no the king, rightly enough, did not reply in person, but through Lord Mulgrave, our foreign minister, to the effect that his Britannic Majesty cannot give a specific answer till he has communicated with the continental powers. Third passenger. Both the manner and the matter of the reply are British, but a huge mistake. First passenger. Sir, am I to deem you a friend of Bonaparte, a traitor to your country? Third passenger. Damn my wig, sir, if I'll be called a traitor by you or any court sycophant at all at all. He unpacks a case of pistols. Second passenger. Gentlemen forbear, forbear. Should such differences be suffered to arise on a spot where we may in less than three months. We hope you enjoyed this preview. To continue listening to this audio book on Google Play Books, use the link in the video description.