The Antipodes - Style

Style

No critic has ever claimed that Brome was a great dramatic poet or a truly distinctive literary stylist; his verse and prose are generally nothing more than functional, and certainly lack the vivid eloquence of Shakespeare and the intellectual knottiness of his idol Jonson. In The Antipodes, however, the richness of Brome's material appears to inspire him to an imaginative quality that he rarely achieves elsewhere — as in this passage from Act I scene vi, on Sir John Mandeville and the talking trees of the Antipodes:

But he had reach'd

To this place here — yes here — this wilderness,

And seen the trees of the Sun and Moon, that speak,

And told King Alexander of his death; he then

Had left a passage ope for travellers,

That now is kept and guarded by wild beasts,

Dragons, and serpents, elephants white and blue

Unicorns, and lions of many colours,

And monsters more as numberless as nameless.