The third tragedy, _Philip II_., is a national drama, although its scene is not laid in Flanders. Much as Charles de Coster in his _Thyl Ulenspiegel_ had, with a Fleming's deadly hatred, seen in Philip II. the hereditary enemy of liberty, Verhaeren, who with the lyric poetry of his _Toute la Flandre_ became the representative singer of his native land, painted this gloomy figure with hatred. Philip II. is here, as in _Thyl Ulenspiegel,_ the hard, inflexible king who would fain put life out because it burns too red for him, who wishes to have the world as cool and marble-like as the chambers of the Escorial. Here of a sudden the reverse side of Roman Catholicism, whose passion was immortalised in _Le Cloître_, is rent open; its pitilessness and asceticism; its obstinate effort to overthrow the irrefragable joy of life. Don Carlos, however, is the fervent friend of the people, the friend of Flanders; he is the will to enjoyment, to merry moods, to passion. And this struggle between the 'yes' and the 'no' of life, this fight of Verhaeren's own lyric crisis, this fight between the denial and the passionate approval of enjoyment--at bottom, toe, the deepest cause of the war between Spain and the Netherlands--is here symbolised in characters. Of course, any comparison with Schiller's _Don Carlos_ must tell against Verhaeren, for the German drama is far more dramatic and conceived on a scale of greater magnificence; but Verhaeren did not aim at a complete rounding off, at a plenitude of characters; all that he wanted was to show these two feelings in their struggle with each other, the enthusiasm of life and its suppression by force. A comparison with Schiller's drama best shows Verhaeren's disregard of dramatic canons, and at the same time the immense new lyric power of the play. For Spain is here seen with a strength and intensity of vision which is probably without a parallel in tragedy. The cold, hypocritical atmosphere can be felt; and better than from words the character of Philip can be perceived in that one silent scene in which he suddenly appears stealthily creeping to watch his son in the arms of the countess, and then, without a gleam in his rigid eyes, without the slightest movement of anger, vanishes again into the dark. Behind him, however, behind the spy and the eavesdropper, glides another shadow, the monk of the Inquisition: the eavesdropper is himself shadowed, the ruler is himself ruled. Visions like these, with the ecstasy of certain scenes, are the strongest motive power in Verhaeren's poetic construction. His dramatic art, like the art of his lyrics, does not rise in a steady ascent, but in sudden wild leaps and starts.