ALEX. Thou hast done this deed. CAESAR. Thou hast said it. ALEX. Dost thou think To live, and look upon me? CAESAR. Some while yet. ALEX. I would there were a God--that he might hear. CAESAR. 'Tis pity there should be--for thy sake--none. ALEX. Wilt thou slay me? CAESAR. Why? ALEX. Am I not thy sire? CAESAR. And Christendom's to boot. ALEX. I pray thee, man, Slay me. CAESAR. And then myself? Thou art crazed, but I Sane. ALEX. Art thou very flesh and blood? CAESAR. They say, Thine. ALEX. If the heaven stand still and smite thee not, There is no God indeed. CAESAR. Nor thou nor I Know. ALEX. I could pray to God that God might be, Were I but mad. Thou sayest I am mad: thou liest: I do not pray. There, surely, is great dramatic speech, and the two men who speak face to face are seen clearly before us, naked to the sight. Yet even these lines do not make drama that would hold the stage. How is it that only one of our greater poets since the last of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that one Shelley, has understood the complete art of the playwright, and achieved it? Byron, Coleridge, Browning, Tennyson, all wrote plays for the stage; all had their chance of being acted; Tennyson only made even a temporary success, and _Becket_ is likely to have gone out with Irving. Landor wrote plays full of sublime poetry, but not meant for the stage; and now we have Swinburne following his example, but with an unexampled lyrical quality. Why, without capacity to deal with it, are our poets so insistent on using the only form for which a special faculty, outside the pure poetic gift, is inexorably required?