Dynasts, The; an Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon, in Three Parts, Nineteen Acts and One Hundred and Thirty Scenes

Dynasts, The; an Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon, in Three Parts, Nineteen Acts and One Hundred and Thirty Scenes, by T. Hardy, published in three parts, 1904, 1906, 1908.

This great work is written partly in blank verse, partly in a variety of other metres, and partly in prose. The events of history with which it deals are recounted in the descriptive passages and stage directions. The work centres on the tragic figure of Napoleon. Part I opens with the year 1805, and Napoleon's threat of invasion.

Part II covers the defeat of the Prussians at Jena, the meeting of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, the battle of Wagram, the fall of Godoy and the abdication of the king of Spain, and war in Spain, the divorce of Josephine, and Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise.

Part III presents the Russian expedition of 1812, the British victories in the Pyrenees, the battle of Leipzig, Napoleon's abdication, his return from Elba, the ball in Brussels, Quatre-Bras, and Waterloo. Accompanying the major scenes are small vignettes, seen at close quarters, showing how these great events affected English rustics in Wessex, private soldiers, camp followers, and other ordinary people. Above them all, supernatural spectators of the terrestrial action, are impersonated abstractions, or Intelligences; the Ancient Spirit of the Years, the Spirit of the Pities, the Spirits Sinister and Ironic, and the Spirit of Rumour, with their attendant choruses, the Shade of the Earth, and the Recording Angels. Above all is the Immanent Will, the force, unconscious and heedless, that moves the world. They are introduced not, as the author is careful to point out in his preface, ‘as a systematized philosophy’ but to give by their comments a universal significance to the particular events recounted.