Poetical Tragedies Author:Wilfred Campbell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: William Briggs Subjects: Canadian drama Drama / General Drama / American Drama / Anthologies Drama / Canadian History / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or... more » missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PREFACE. The four tragedies included in this volume are widely separated in their subject-matter. It is a far call from Arthur of the Round Table, of ancient Celtic Britain, to Daulac, of the French Canadas, and they each are seemingly separated from the fortunes of the great Pope Gregory; yet these plays are included in the one volume because they deal with those eternal problems of the human soul which all of the world's thinkers have had at heart. Two of the plays, " Mordred " and " Hildebrand," were written in 1893, and published in a small edition in 1895, while the others now appear for the first time in book form. The author makes no apology for the form of these plays. Like other writers, he has his own literary ideals, and with the great mass of the sane British peoples, believes that Shakespeare is still the great dramatic poet of the modern world. If these plays, in spite of their imperfections, receive a kindly welcome, the author will later publish another group of his historical dramas and comedies in a separate volume. Ottawa, November, 1908. PREFACE. The Arthurian story is one of the most remarkable in human history or literature. There is strong reason to believe that modern scholars have been wrong in their attitude toward what is commonly called mythology. I believe that it will yet be acknowledged that what is now regarded as pure myth is in reality degenerate history, and that what has been considered mere fable and the outgr...« less