ABSTRACT

Charles Morgan [...] No one who met [Hardy] during his last years will cease to treasure recollection of the meeting. The opportunity came to me early in 1920 when I was an undergraduate at Oxford. The Oxford University Dramatic Society, having been reorganized after the war by Maurice Colbourne, had sought for a play that should mark its rebirth.1 I had suggested The Dynasts, partly because its subject – the struggle with Napoleon – seemed appropriate to the time, partly because it seemed fitting that a society, whose activities were generally confined to Greek and Shakespearean plays, should, when it turned to the work of living writers, choose Hardy’s great epic. But we doubted Hardy’s consent; he might well have objected to a performance by undergraduates of chosen scenes from his work. We asked for his permission, and he gave it, not grudgingly but with extraordinary graciousness. He was, it seemed, genuinely pleased that young men should wish to perform his work, and consented to leave his home at Dorchester and make a Winter journey to Oxford that he might see our attempt.