Tennyson's dramas then, surprising as they were when they first appeared, are merely the legitimate and almost the inevitable outcome of his course of development. Inevitable he seems to have felt them, for he persevered in the face of censure or half-hearted approval, perhaps it should be said, in the face of failure. A deep-rooted scepticism of his dramatic powers has stood in the way of a fair appreciation. The fame of his earlier poetry has cast a shadow over these later fruits of his genius; and the question, 'Is Saul also among the prophets?' was hardly asked with greater surprise than the question whether Tennyson could possibly be a dramatist. And, in truth, at sixty-six he had still to learn the rudiments of his business. _Queen Mary_ (1875) is a failure. It is not a great poem, and still less is it a great drama. The stage is overcrowded with _dramatis personæ_ who jostle each other and hide one another's features. _Harold_ (1876) showed a marked advance; but _Becket_ (1884) was the triumph which justified all the other experiments. It is a truly great drama, and, though not yet recognised as such, will probably rank finally among the greatest of Tennyson's works. The characters are firmly and clearly delineated. Becket and Henry, closely akin in some of their natural gifts, are different in circumstances and develop into very different men. Rosamond and Eleanor are widely contrasted types of female character, the former a little commonplace, the latter a subtle conception excellently worked out. All the materials out of which the play is built are great. No finer theme could be found than the mediæval conflict between Church and State; and Tennyson has seized it in the true dramatic way, as concentrated in the single soul of Becket, torn between his duty to the Church and his duty to the King, whose Chancellor and trusted friend he had been and to whom he owed his promotion. The minor dramatic pieces are of inferior worth, and in some of them, as for example, _The Promise of May_ and _The Falcon_, Tennyson showed a certain infelicity in his choice of subjects. But their failure leaves unimpaired the interest of the dramatic period. It seemed an almost wanton experiment on the part of Tennyson. But he was an artist all his life, and here too he was only obeying the inherent law of development of his art. Instead of wantonness, there is deep pathos in the old man's perseverance under unfamiliar conditions, and there can only be joy at his final success. There is surprise too that he who, from his earlier work, would have been judged one of the least dramatic of poets, should have so decidedly surpassed a poet so markedly dramatic as Browning.