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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tragedy
+
+Author: Ashley H. Thorndike
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2012 [EBook #38711]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAGEDY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Types of English Literature
+
+EDITED BY
+
+WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+BY
+
+ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
+
+
+
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
+
+PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
+AUTHOR OF "THE INFLUENCE OF BEAUMONT
+AND FLETCHER ON SHAKSPERE"
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1908 BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
+THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
+
+_Published May 1908_
+
+The Riverside Press
+CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
+PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
+
+Transcriber's Note: Underscores indicate italics and tildes (~) indicate
+bold in this text.
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book attempts to trace the course of English tragedy from its
+beginnings to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to indicate the
+part which it has played in the history both of the theatre and of
+literature. All tragedies of the sixteenth century are noticed, because of
+their historical interest and their close relationship to Shakespeare, but
+after 1600 only representative plays have been considered. The aim of this
+series has been kept in view, and the discussion, whether of individual
+plays or of dramatic conditions, has been determined by their importance in
+the study of a literary type. Tragedy in the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries has attracted very little critical attention, and in those fields
+the book is something of a pioneer. The Elizabethan drama, on the contrary,
+has been the subject of a vast amount of antiquarian, biographical, and
+literary research, without which such a treatment as I have attempted would
+be almost impossible. In order, however, to keep the main purpose in view,
+it has been necessary to omit nearly all notice of the processes of
+research or the debates of criticism, and to give only what seem to me the
+results. To indicate at every point my reliance on my own investigations or
+my indebtedness to the researches of others would, indeed, necessitate
+doubling the size of the book. Its readers will not require an apology for
+its brevity, but I regret that I can offer only this inadequate
+acknowledgment of the great assistance I have received not merely from the
+studies mentioned in the Bibliographical Notes, but also from many others
+that have directly or indirectly contributed to my discussion.
+
+I am indebted to Dr. Ernest Bernbaum, who very kindly read chapters viii
+and ix, and made a number of suggestions. I have also the pleasure of
+expressing my great obligations to Professors Brander Matthews, Jefferson
+B. Fletcher, and William A. Neilson, who have read both the manuscript and
+the proof-sheets and given me the generous benefit of their most helpful
+criticism.
+
+A. H. T.
+
+NEW YORK, March, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I. DEFINITIONS                                     1
+
+CHAPTER II. THE MEDIEVAL AND THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCES     21
+
+CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAGEDY                    48
+
+CHAPTER IV. MARLOWE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES                77
+
+CHAPTER V. SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES            136
+
+CHAPTER VI. SHAKESPEARE                                  181
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE LATER ELIZABETHANS                      196
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE RESTORATION                            243
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                       281
+
+CHAPTER X. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT                         326
+
+CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION                                   366
+
+      INDEX                                              379
+
+
+
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DEFINITIONS
+
+
+There is little difficulty in selecting the plays that should be included
+in a history of English tragedy. Since the middle of the sixteenth century
+there have always been plays commonly received as tragedies, and others so
+closely resembling these that they require consideration in any
+comprehensive study. How far these plays present the common characteristics
+of a type, how far they constitute a clearly defined form of the drama, and
+how far they may be connected from one period to another in a continuous
+development--are questions better answered at the book's end than at its
+beginning. Some questions of the definition of tragedy, however, may well
+be preliminary to a study of its history. The very term "English tragedy"
+involves two precarious abstractions. It separates tragedy from the drama
+of which it is a part, and it separates English tragedies from those of
+other languages to which they are related in character and origin. In
+attempting a definition, we may question the reality of these abstract
+separations by which our later discussions are to be conveniently limited;
+for a definition can be attained only through the distinction of tragedy
+from other forms of the drama, and through a consideration of the varying
+conceptions of tragedy in different periods and nations.
+
+We may begin very empirically with an element common to all tragedies and
+roughly distinguishing them from other forms of drama; noticed, indeed, in
+all theoretical definitions, though its importance is often blurred and it
+receives only scant attention from Aristotle. He refers to the third part
+of the plot as "the tragic incident, a destructive or painful action, such
+as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like." If his meaning
+of "a destructive or painful action" is extended to include mental as well
+as physical suffering, we have a definition of an indispensable element in
+tragedy and a conspicuous distinction from comedy.
+
+This definition has had ample recognition in practice and in popular
+opinion, as in the sixteenth-century idea of a tragedy as a play involving
+deaths, and in the present common conception of tragedy as requiring an
+unhappy ending. These uncritical opinions, however, introduce amendments
+that are not quite corollaries. The happy ending has never been completely
+excluded. Aristotle, while pronouncing in favor of the unhappy ending as
+best suited to producing tragic effect, recognized the possibility and
+popularity of a conclusion that limited punishment to the vicious. In
+modern times the salvation of the virtuous in tragedy has had warm
+defenders, including Racine and Dr. Johnson; and the essentiality of either
+an unhappy ending or of deaths has been generally denied. Evidently either
+is a natural but not inevitable accompaniment of suffering and disaster. A
+tragedy may permit of relief or even recovery for the good, or it may
+minimize the external and physical elements of suffering; but its action
+must be largely unhappy though its end is not, and destructive even if it
+does not lead to deaths.
+
+Our working definition, however, does not attempt to indicate the qualities
+necessary to excellence in tragedy or to particularize in respect to the
+treatment of the action. It offers no distinction, where recent critics
+have been careful to make one, between tragedy and what we to-day call
+melodrama.[1] The relation between the two is similar to that between
+comedy and farce. Melodrama is more sensational, less serious; it attains
+its effects by spectacles, machines, externals, while tragedy deals with
+character and motive; it reaches its conclusions through accidents and
+surprises, while tragedy seeks to show the cause of every effect. But the
+distinction is general and relative rather than specific and absolute. The
+use of witches to foretell actions and characters would of itself be a
+melodramatic device, and so it is in Middleton's "Witch," but not in
+"Macbeth." Congreve's "Mourning Bride" is a melodrama, judged by our
+standards at present, but for many years it was considered one of the great
+tragedies in the language. A stage presentation, in fact, almost
+presupposes external, spectacular, and sensational effects, which must
+vary according to the theatrical conditions and the taste of the day, as
+well as in response to the artistic purpose and treatment. The distinction
+between melodrama and tragedy, in short, is hardly more than between bad
+tragedy and good, or between a lower and a higher type. So far as a
+separation of the two has been made, it has been the result of centuries of
+experience. It cannot readily be fixed by rule or definition; it requires
+historical treatment.
+
+Our definition, again, affords a rough rather than an exact separation from
+comedy. The two species cannot, indeed, be absolutely distinguished. In the
+theatre to-day there are many plays which one hesitates to classify as
+either tragedy or comedy. And there have always been, even in the Greek
+theatre, classes of plays recognized as neither the one nor the other.
+Again, a play presenting various persons and incidents is necessarily
+complex in material and emotional effect, and may mingle suffering and ruin
+with happiness and success, so that whether its main effect is tragic or
+comic may depend on its point of view or its general tone. The divisions of
+tragedy and comedy are neither mutually exclusive, nor are they together
+inclusive of all drama. Theoretically, there is perhaps ground for doubting
+whether other divisions might not be established more essential and more
+comprehensive. Comedy in particular comprises plays differing so widely in
+every respect that almost no common characteristics can be found. Yet
+tragedy and comedy have long been, and still are, accepted as the main
+divisions of the drama. The very names of the other forms, "tragicomedy,"
+"_Schauspiel_" "emotional drama," "social drama," "_drame_," or merely
+"play," by their lack of distinctiveness, testify to the significance of
+the division of dramatic action and effects into the two classes, tragic
+and comic. From merely a theoretical point of view, indeed, we may
+recognize that a dramatic action, through its brevity and its stage
+presentation, if for no other reasons, has a suitability for these effects
+not possessed by other forms of literature. But the importance and
+definition of the two forms, and especially that of tragedy, depend less on
+theory than on historical origins and development.
+
+If we attempt to fortify our working definition so that it may more
+effectively separate tragedy on the one hand from melodrama and on the
+other from comedy and the more or less neutral species, we are driven to
+consider the numerous and shifting conceptions that have marked the
+progress of the classical tradition in modern Europe. Although some
+approach to the tragic may have been manifest from the beginnings of the
+drama in the mimetic ceremonies of primitive culture, our present
+distinction between tragedy and comedy traces back to Athens, where tragedy
+as a form of literature had its first great development and where it
+received its first critical definition. Nothing closely corresponding to
+the two forms, as there developed and defined, is to be found in the dramas
+of China, India, or medieval Europe. Tragedy is an inheritance from Greece
+and Rome, not received by Western Europe until the Renaissance. There was,
+to be sure, much that was tragical in the widespread religious drama of the
+Middle Ages; and there were a number of plays that in content and effect
+might claim a place with later tragedies; but it was not until the revival
+of the classics that the revelation of a highly developed form of drama led
+to the creation of a distinct species called tragedy, in the vernacular
+literatures of Spain, Italy, France, and England.
+
+The classical tradition in the beginning was affected by the mistaken
+theories of medieval encyclopedists and by humanistic misinterpretations of
+the classics. In every nation it came into conflict with the traditions of
+the medieval drama, and underwent great modifications; in England an
+amalgamation of the two traditions resulting in a tragedy widely different
+from either. During four centuries the changing theatrical conditions, the
+changing social conditions, the diversity of national peculiarities, have
+resulted in ideas of tragedy at variance with one another and with the
+classics. Shakespeare's conception of tragedy was very different from
+Aristotle's, and very different from Brunetière's or Ibsen's. Indeed, the
+conceptions formed by various of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Sidney,
+Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, and Fletcher, so far as we can determine, have
+pronounced differences though they have common resemblances. It would
+require a larger book than the present one to consider adequately the
+differences and agreements merely of critical theory and dogma in modern
+Europe. Yet the literary tradition, in spite of all these changes and
+variations, has remained continuous. Whether fixed in the form of rules, or
+discernible only in the general resemblances of current practices, or
+represented by the great models of Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Racine, it
+has influenced every playwright. He has striven to write more or less in
+accord with some critical theory, in imitation of some author, or in
+conformity to some fashion; or he has written in opposition to theory,
+example, or fashion.
+
+It is the purpose of this book to trace the course of this tradition in the
+English drama, to appraise the inheritance of each age from the preceding
+ages, its borrowings from other national inheritances, and the profit and
+loss due to its own invention or industry. All that may be attempted here
+by way of preliminary definition is a glance at the main European course of
+the classical tradition to see what have been from time to time considered
+the essentials of tragedy and to ask how far there has been any agreement
+in regard to these essentials.
+
+The basis for much of modern theorizing has been Aristotle's tentative yet
+searching analysis of Athenian tragedy. Many of the peculiarities of
+Athenian tragedy--its structure without acts but with a chorus, its
+limitation of three actors on the stage at once, its narrow range of
+mythological subjects--are evidently not essential to securing tragic
+effect. Even the unities, whether as observed in the Greek theatre or as
+defined by French and Italian critics, may, after generations of debate, be
+safely relegated as nonessential. Omitting, then, what no one would now
+insist upon as requisite, we may derive from the "Poetics" something like
+the following:--
+
+Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its
+action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune,
+involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be
+written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression.
+
+Much more than this has been derived from Aristotle by modern theorists,
+but this much of the classical conception has generally survived in modern
+tragedy. If the meaning of "a single and complete action" be stretched a
+little, this definition includes the plays of Shakespeare as well as those
+of Racine, and nearly all tragedies from the Renaissance to the present.
+
+In one important respect, however, this definition falls short of
+describing Greek tragedy, and is still more inadequate for modern.
+Aristotle emphasized the action above the characterization, and devoted
+much attention to the requirements of the plot. He did not, moreover,
+recognize the importance of the element of conflict, whether between man
+and circumstance, or between men, or within the mind of man. The Greek
+tragedies themselves had not failed to exhibit such conflicts; the medieval
+drama, notably in the moralities, emphasized moral conflict; and
+Renaissance tragedy, wherever it showed any independence, particularly in
+England and Shakespeare, took for its theme the conflict of human will with
+other forces. The importance of this modification of the Aristotelian view
+received only slow critical recognition. But it was everywhere exemplified
+in practice, in French classical drama as well as in Shakespeare, in plays
+imitating the Greeks as well as in plays revolting from their models. After
+a time this modification of the classical tradition came to have a distinct
+place in literary theory. Hegel gave it philosophical elaboration, and, in
+the romantic movement, when dramatists in different languages turned to
+Shakespeare for a model, they naturally assumed what may be called the
+Shakespearean definition. This important amendment to the tragic tradition
+may be briefly stated:--
+
+The action of a tragedy should represent a conflict of wills, or of will
+with circumstance, or will with itself, and should therefore be based on
+the characters of the persons involved. A typical tragedy is concerned with
+a great personality engaged in a struggle that ends disastrously.
+
+In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern
+conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of
+theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive.
+This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the
+definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in
+modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance
+given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated
+emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet
+"pity and fear" still serve as well as any other terms to describe the
+emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however,
+hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror,
+despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has
+appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The
+reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense
+of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as
+the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern
+tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though
+double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the
+Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a
+return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare
+instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the
+action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes
+have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been
+confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and
+pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of
+tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in
+England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the
+sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men
+and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary
+tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been
+reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but
+here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the
+last century, to prose.
+
+On examination, then, the particulars of the classical tradition have shown
+extraordinary powers of survival, but not one of them has gone without
+protest and violation. The thousands of tragedies written during four
+centuries have all had marked resemblances, and all important developments
+have preserved relationships to the classical species; yet it is impossible
+to insist on any one quality of that species as essential, without
+encountering examples of great tragedies that lack it. The close
+relationships among these many plays forbid the separation of a few,
+distinguished by certain qualities, to be named as tragedies, and the rest
+as something else; and the great variations forbid the confident selection
+of any qualities as essential in the future development of tragedy. The
+modern amendments, though represented by nearly universal practice, have
+not saved the classical tradition, and are themselves coming under
+question. The plays of Ibsen, which seem to have instituted the most
+important development in tragedy for two centuries, return to something of
+the simplicity of action required by Aristotle, and present the struggle of
+individual wills as did Shakespeare, but are in prose and deal with
+contemporary bourgeois life,--a combination of relationships to the
+tradition wholly new. While idealization in some degree must be exercised
+in tragedy as in all forms of literature, it is impossible, in the light of
+realistic plays, to maintain that tragic effects can be secured only
+through the stories of exceptional persons. Tragic greatness, in the sense
+demanded by the theorists, is, indeed, scarcely more manifest in the
+persons of "Romeo and Juliet" than in those of "Hedda Gabler." While
+conflict of some kind is essential to a dramatic action, yet it may
+evidently be minimized without destroying the artistic impressiveness of
+suffering and disaster. Even the requirement that tragedy deal with the
+characters of individual men is being questioned. It is conceivable that
+plays in the future may, like Hauptmann's "The Weavers," turn from the
+emotions of the individual to those of a class, or may find their
+destructive and painful actions in the oppression, disaster, or mere unrest
+of the mass.
+
+Any precise and compact definition is sure to lack in comprehensiveness and
+veracity. It cannot sum up the facts of the past and present, much less set
+rules for the future. We seem forced to reject the possibility of any exact
+limitations for the dramatic species, to include as tragedies all plays
+presenting painful or destructive actions, to accept the leading elements
+of a literary tradition derived from the Greeks as indicating the common
+bonds between such plays in the past, but to admit that this tradition,
+while still powerful, is variable, uncertain, and unauthoritative.
+
+But besides this literary tradition there has been a hardly less powerful
+theatrical tradition. Tragedy has always owed a double allegiance, to
+literature and to the theatre. A tragedy is a play, not merely a dialogue
+in poetry or prose, but a play to be interpreted by actors before an
+audience in a theatre. To these three factors it has had first of all to
+suit itself. And these factors have constituted conditions and standards,
+different and not less variable and transient than those of the literary
+tradition. The plays of Æschylus, of Shakespeare, of Calderon, and of
+Racine, for example, were planned for widely different conditions, and for
+conditions also widely different from those now present in the theatres.
+Excepting Shakespeare's, no English tragedies of the sixteenth,
+seventeenth, eighteenth, or, one might almost say, nineteenth century, are
+acted in our theatres to-day. The effect of the acted drama is consequently
+not only different from that of the drama when read, it is also subject to
+other and variable artistic standards. It aims at some effects not at all
+literary and at some likely to be limited by its own day and theatre. A
+history of tragedy must take into account the differences of the theatre of
+one nation from that of another, and of one period from another period. It
+must remember that to those temporary conditions each dramatist necessarily
+conformed and that by them his achievement was directed. It may find some
+hostile to the best dramatic art, tending to promote melodramatic rather
+than tragic effects. It may find others that are divorced from any
+permanent meaning for the drama or literature. But the fact that such
+conditions are temporary should not breed contempt, for much great
+literature has been aimed not at the world or posterity but at the audience
+of the day. Out of temporary and varying theatrical conditions have arisen
+the permanent criteria for dramatic excellence.
+
+In fact, the theatre has been a conservative influence, tending to oppose
+innovation and to maintain the integrity of the form of tragedy. The
+essentials of its literary form, its length conditioned by the time of the
+performance, the division into acts, scenes, or parts, and the growing
+importance of dialogue, have all been dependent on theatrical conditions.
+The characteristic qualities of national dramas have been in some measure
+the products of the national theatres, and only through the growing
+similarity of stage conditions are we likely to attain agreement in regard
+to the forms of drama. While there have been a multitude of tragedies that
+have never been acted, and some that have never been intended for acting,
+the attempt to write tragedy for the closet rather than for the stage has
+resulted either in adopting the supposed conditions of the Greek or some
+other foreign theatre, or in breaking away from the strict limits defined
+by the stage and writing lyrical medleys or dramatic monologues or
+imaginary conversations. As soon as tragedy has left the theatre, it has
+reverted to old forms or developed new and strange hybrids. Milton's
+"Samson Agonistes" and Swinburne's "Bothwell" are tragedies, if you will,
+but they have no place in the development of a national drama. Shelley's
+"Prometheus Unbound," Browning's "The Ring and the Book," and Landor's
+"Marcellus and Hannibal" are all dramatic, but they cannot be included in
+any definition of the species of tragedy. Object as tragedy rightly may at
+times to the limitations and trivialities of the theatre, it cannot safely
+leave its precincts without losing its own identity.
+
+In the past nearly all tragedies of any effect on the drama's development
+have not only been planned for the stage but have succeeded when acted.
+This seems likely to be the case in the future. For the reader of a play is
+confronted by difficulties not found in other fiction; and, in general,
+only a play suited to presentation on the stage is likely to secure for a
+reader the visualization, the impersonations, the illusion of actuality,
+similar to those experienced in the theatre. The fact that the drama
+requires the services of theatre and actors as well as author need not
+lessen our recognition of the responsibility and opportunities of the one
+or the other. The stage affords the first test of a play's emotional
+appeal, and perhaps the best test of its dramatic power. The consummation
+of tragedy has been attained only when the dramatist has availed himself of
+all the aids that the theatre has offered.
+
+Thus far our attempt at definition has had to do with what tragedy is or
+has been or is likely to be, rather than with what it ought to be. The more
+difficult question has not been shunned by criticism, and perhaps even our
+brief discussion ought not to omit a consideration of tragedy's function
+and opportunities. These certainly extend beyond the theatre and include
+whatever is possible for literature. As a form of literature, tragedy
+fulfills in general the same functions as other forms, especially as
+fiction, of which it is one division. It has similar opportunities and its
+effects are similar in kind. It must be judged by the same standards, by
+the nature and power of its emotional effect, and by the lasting meaning of
+its portrayal of life; and the census of the centuries will be necessary to
+establish its greatness.
+
+Special qualities have, however, been assumed for the emotional effect of
+tragedy altogether apart from its peculiarities as drama or fiction. A
+peculiar function, a special effect, differing from other forms of
+literature, have been ascribed to it. Aristotle declared its effect to be
+the purging of the emotions, a somewhat obscure expression, surely
+incorrect if taken in the literal sense that Aristotle seems to have
+intended, but variously interpreted as referring to moral or æsthetic
+reactions. Modern theories have too often regarded tragedy as a sort of
+exposition of the moral law, illustrating the ways of providence. To-day we
+require of tragedy a probing into human motive, an especial devotion to the
+study of character under great emotional stress. But has it a special
+function? Tragedy deals with pain, yet seeks to give us pleasure:--this
+crux has been greatly emphasized by the false antithesis between pain and
+pleasure. As a matter of fact, though our knowledge of the æsthetic
+emotions is scanty, a description of the effect of tragedy is hardly more
+obscure than that of any other form of literature or of any other of the
+fine arts. In life we are enormously interested in grief and suffering and
+disaster, as we are also in joy, pleasure, and success. Our newspapers
+abound in narratives of both sorts, and so do our novels. We are stirred by
+the painful emotions of our fellows as readily as by their pleasurable
+ones. The tragic plays a large part in many forms of literature and in
+sculpture, music, and painting. And tragedy, dedicated to painful actions,
+also interests, fascinates, absorbs us. It is not diverting, amusing; it is
+not for daily food or recreation, but no less it ministers to an active
+normal human interest.
+
+Does it carry an antidote to offset its demand upon our sympathies? Is
+there a katharsis that somehow transforms our pity and fear into relief and
+pleasure? There is something of the sort in the mere exercise of violent
+emotion, which in a measure carries its own relief and cure. There is
+something also of egotistical satisfaction, of self-congratulation that
+comes with the exercise of sympathy, a certain exaltation that virtue has
+gone out of us. There is something again of æsthetic delight in the
+artistic mastery which we feel in any great work of art. The harmony of the
+argument, the splendor of the verse, the grandeur of conception and
+expression may counterbalance the painfulness of the story. Yet more,
+tragedy may bring the inspiration of greatness and endurance, of purity and
+unselfishness of spirit. Its idealization of character, its revelation of
+beauty and power even in distress and downfall, may bring a reassurance
+that turns pity to exhilaration. In drama as in life there may come in
+moments of trial and ruin the visions of the eternities to console and
+exalt us.
+
+But is it true that these elements of relief are always felt, or are always
+triumphant over our depression and dismay? May not the impressions of pain
+and destruction be unrelieved and overwhelming? What relief or exaltation
+is there in the first impression from "Oedipus," "Lear," or "Ghosts"? We
+are filled with confusion, dismay, and pity. We cannot separate ourselves
+from the misery. We feel the intolerable burden of the world's woe. Our
+sympathies struggle beneath it, vainly, despairingly. How far such emotions
+have any potency for actual accomplishment in deed may be doubtful to the
+psychologists; but surely our recognition of tragedy as one of the greatest
+imaginative achievements needs no other warrant than our faith that virtue
+lies in human sympathy, in the only atonement that we can offer, the
+vicarious response of our emotions to share in suffering and defeat.
+
+From the nature of its subjects, tragedy may claim a certain preëminence in
+literature. If it be not truer, as is sometimes asserted, than comedy or
+other fiction, it has the opportunity to be more intense, more profound,
+more permeating in its emotional effect. As of all forms of literature, we
+ask for truth to life in incident, character, and word; of tragedy we ask
+for truth in regard to those things that affect us most deeply,--pain,
+disaster, failure, death. Like other forms, it may stimulate and excite,
+give pleasure and profit, convey new ideas and recall old, arouse questions
+of life and philosophy, excite multitudinous emotions; more exclusively
+than any other, it brings home to us the images of our own sorrows, and
+chastens the spirit through the outpouring of our sympathies, even our
+horror and despair, for the misfortunes of our fellows.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+The student of the theory of tragedy may extend his reading through most
+books dealing at all with the theatre or drama, works of literary history
+and criticism, treatments of æsthetics in psychology and philosophy, as
+well as the tragedies themselves. Only the briefest direction for such
+reading can be given here. Among recent works closely connected with the
+matter of the chapter, are: W. L. Courtney, _The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient
+and Modern Drama_ (1900); Lewis Campbell, _Tragic Drama in Æschylus,
+Sophocles, and Shakespeare_ (1904); Ferdinand Brunetière, _L'évolution
+littéraire de la tragédie_ (1903) (in vol. 7 of _Etudes critiques_); and
+_Melodrame ou Tragédie_ (_Variétés Littéraires_ 1904); Elizabeth
+Woodbridge, _The Drama, its Law and its Technique_ (1898), with
+bibliography. Several recent books on Shakespeare are concerned with
+dramatic theory: A. C. Bradley, _Shakespearean Tragedy_ (1905); T. R.
+Lounsbury, _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ (1901); G. P. Baker, _The
+Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_ (1907). A book now out of date
+and never sound, but of wide influence still, is Freytag's _Technik des
+Dramas_ (1881), translated as _The Technique of the Drama_, Chicago (3d ed.
+1900). For a study of literary criticism in reference to dramatic theory,
+Saintsbury's _History of Criticism_, 3 vols. (1900-04), furnishes a
+compendious directory and discussion. _An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism_, by C. M. Gayley and F. N. Scott (1899),
+furnishes full bibliographical references with comment and direction. Of
+great value in their special fields are Butcher's edition of Aristotle's
+_Poetics_ (3d ed. 1902); W. Cloetta's _Beitrãge zur Litteraturgeschichte
+des Mittelalters und der Renaissance_, Halle (1890), vol. i; and J. E.
+Spingarn's _Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_ (1899). English critical
+discussions of tragedy will be noted in the chapters on the various
+historical periods. For tragedy in relation to æsthetic theory, full
+references are given in Gayley and Scott; and Volkelt's _Æsthetik des
+Tragischen_, Munich (2d ed. 1906), supplies a valuable and comprehensive
+discussion and a directory and criticism of nearly all æsthetic theories
+since Kant. Especial mention should be made of A. W. Schlegel's
+_Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur_ (1817), translated into
+English in the Bohn edition; and to Hegel's _Vorlesungen über die
+Æsthetik_, which closes with a discussion of dramatic poetry that has been
+suggestive of much later theorizing.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For a discussion of an earlier meaning of the term "melodrama" and the
+origin of its present use, see chap. x.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MEDIEVAL AND THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCES
+
+
+English tragedy makes its appearance at the very beginning of Elizabeth's
+reign. In the Middle Ages nearly all knowledge of the drama of the Greeks
+and Romans was lost, and the medieval drama developed without aid from
+classical precedents or models. It resulted in various forms, of which the
+miracles and the moralities were the most important, but it produced
+nothing either in form or matter closely resembling classical tragedy or
+comedy, and manifested no evolution toward corresponding divisions of the
+drama. The Renaissance gave to the world the plays of Seneca, Plautus, and
+the Athenian dramatists, and, after a time, some knowledge of the classical
+theatre and dramatic art; then, through the imitation of these models and
+also through the innovations and experiments which they suggested, the
+influence of humanism came in conflict with that of medievalism throughout
+Europe, in the drama as in other fields of literature. In England this
+conflict was still active at the middle of the sixteenth century. Miracle
+plays were still performed after long established fashion, and moralities
+continued the most important and numerous species of drama; but in Latin
+imitations of the classical drama, in the theatrical activity of the
+schools and universities, and in the various developments of moralities,
+interludes, school-plays, and pageants, there were signs of a breaking away
+from old courses and of the adoption of new models, of the emergence of
+English comedy and tragedy as definite dramatic forms. Tragedy in England
+as elsewhere developed later and more slowly than comedy, but two years
+after Elizabeth's accession the first English tragedy that has been
+preserved was performed, and "Gorboduc" thus becomes the starting-point for
+a history of English tragedy.
+
+Modern tragedy, born in the Renaissance, the product of the germinating
+conflict of medieval and humanistic ideas and models, has never altogether
+lost the marks of its heritage from both lines of ancestry. Elizabethan
+tragedy, in particular, reveals in every lineament, in its scenic
+presentation, its methods of acting, its themes, structure, characters,
+style, theory, and artistic impulses, the influences both of the long
+centuries of medieval drama and also of the inspiration of the classics and
+the freer opportunity for individual effort which resulted from humanism.
+At the beginning we must attempt to separate and define these dominant
+influences.
+
+The contribution from the Middle Ages came largely from the religious
+drama. The folk games and plays and the performances of entertainers of
+various sorts contributed to the development of the drama principally on
+the side of comedy, and only incidentally to tragedy. Nor need the early
+centuries of the religious drama detain us. Its origin in the church
+service, its early liturgical forms, its growth and service in the hands of
+the church, and its gradual secularization are of importance for us only as
+leading to its culmination in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; in
+England notably in the great cycles of vernacular plays performed by the
+guilds. It should be remembered, however, that the miracle plays never felt
+the least influence from the drama of the Greeks and Romans. Knowledge of
+the classic drama was long confined mainly to the plays of Terence, and
+suggested even to the most learned no idea of relationship to the familiar
+miracle plays; and, on the other hand, the medieval stage gave no clue to a
+conception of the classical theatre. As late as Erasmus the curious notion
+survived that the classic plays were read by the author or a "recitator"
+from a pulpit above, while below the actors illustrated his lines by
+pantomime. Almost to the middle of the fifteenth century the miracle plays
+comprised all that was known of stage presentation in connection with
+serious drama. They were still performed through the sixteenth century; the
+boy Shakespeare may have been a spectator at a performance by the guilds;
+his father and grandfather and remoter forebears had seen them or perchance
+taken part in them. It was this abundant dramatic practice and ancient
+dramatic tradition that gave to Elizabethan England its fondness for
+play-acting, its recourse to the theatre for both amusement and
+edification, and the acceptance of the drama as an important factor in its
+daily life.
+
+A glance at some of the most notable differences of the miracles from
+classical plays reveals traits that remained potent in later drama. The
+miracles took their material from the Bible or from some saint's life, and
+their purpose was to make this material significant and impressive. They
+were, in fact, essentially translations of prose narratives into dramatic
+dialogue. Renaissance drama sought different material, but it found
+classical authority for basing tragedies on history, and so gave support to
+the medieval method of translation. In the Elizabethan period, dramatists
+rarely attempted the invention of their plots, but adopted and adhered to
+narrative sources. While they never suffered from the narrow
+conventionality imposed upon the authors of the miracles by the authority
+of the holy writ, yet something of the medieval subjection to sources was
+long manifest both in form and content. It is necessary to view the dramas
+of Shakespeare and all his predecessors as translations into dramatic form
+of stories already told in verse or prose.
+
+Because of their close adherence to sources and their distinctly expository
+purpose, the medieval dramatists made little or no distinction between what
+was suited for the stage and what was not. Their duty was primarily to
+present the narrative; and, though individual initiative might add
+something interesting or amusing, nothing in the Bible seemed unsuitable to
+presentation on the stage, and nothing that would aid its meaning seemed
+unsuitable for a drama. There was no thought of restricting a play to the
+presentation of one crisis or a single action, and there was consequently
+no possibility of an approach to anything like the structure of classical
+tragedy. The dramatist might take advantage of the dramatic value of a
+given situation like the sacrifice of Isaac, or he might make a series of
+plays lead up to the great events of the redemption, but he was blind to
+any opportunity to abstract from the narrative the events that dealt with
+an emotional crisis and to focus them upon that as the centre of a dramatic
+structure. There was no notion whatever of the difference between a
+narrative fable and a dramatic fable. Dramatic unity and values in a
+miracle play, on the tragic side at least, were usually the direct results
+of the narrative; unity on a larger scale in the cycle was the unity of
+history or of exposition, not of the drama. Such was the form which the
+Elizabethan drama inherited, and to the end the form of Elizabethan tragedy
+continued a development from medieval tradition and practice, not only in
+its failure to adopt the unities, the chorus, and other peculiarities of
+classical structure, but, more essentially, in its continued inability to
+restrict the story provided by a narrative source to the limits of a
+dramatic fable. Its final attainment of an organic structure, though
+promoted in part by the regularizing influence of classical theory and
+example, was in the main conditioned by the absence of dramaturgical
+restrictions, permitting an epic variety of events, the lack of which
+Aristotle had lamented in Greek tragedy, and by the consequent opportunity
+for a free and characteristic development.
+
+From the medieval drama the Elizabethans inherited not only dramatic form,
+but an entire method of stage presentation different from the classical.
+The typical medieval stage, whether in the form of the procession of
+pageants or the inclosed place with the stations for the various actors,
+had, indeed, given way to something much more like the modern platform,
+even before the production of "Gorboduc"; but in most particulars, in the
+importance placed upon costume, the historical anachronisms, the crudity
+but frequency of spectacle, and especially in the entire liberty as to what
+should be presented, medieval ideas still prevailed. In the miracle plays,
+heaven, hell, God, the devil, Noah's flood, the fall of Lucifer, and the
+Maries at the cross were all acted. The Elizabethan theatre showed scarcely
+less temerity.
+
+Another far-reaching inheritance from the miracle plays was derived from
+their treatment of tragic themes and situations and from their pervading
+seriousness of purpose. Their purpose was ethical and religious
+edification; their theme the tragedy of sin; their situations were derived
+from the stories of Cain, Lucifer, Judas, John the Baptist, the Slaughter
+of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion. If no formal tragedy resulted, and
+if in inculcating the triumph of righteousness the stories of the worthies
+and the martyrdoms of the saints took rather the cast of tragicomedy, it
+was nevertheless of great significance for later tragedy that, generations
+before Seneca became known with his bloody stories and sententious
+philosophy, the drama had been the vehicle for ethical instruction and for
+the presentation of the most terrible and pitiful events. The miracle plays
+had long familiarized men with tragic action, tragic conceptions in the
+drama, and tragic power in the treatment of situation.
+
+The tragic was often mingled with the comic. The dramatists mixed
+edification with amusement. The restraints of the sacred narrative were
+thrown aside for a moment, and in Herod, or Noah's wife, or the shepherds
+awaiting the announcement of the birth of the Messiah, opportunities were
+taken for the introduction of realistic portraiture of contemporary life.
+Horse-play and buffoonery or racy comedy often contrasted incongruously
+with events of momentous importance. This mixture of the comic and tragic
+survived in the popular drama despite the opposition of the humanists. It
+was indeed characteristic of medieval and Elizabethan manners and taste,
+and marks another important departure from classical precedent. We to-day
+are perhaps as near to the Athenians as to the Elizabethans in this
+respect. At all events, for the appreciation of Elizabethan tragedy, we
+sometimes need to reassert a childish and uncultivated disregard for the
+rapid changes of emotional tone, a liking for tears and laughter close
+together; or, perhaps there is ground for saying, we need to recognize the
+validity of the medieval taste for a comic contrast and relief in tragedy,
+and to accept in art the incongruities and grotesqueness of actual life.
+
+To the moralities, the second important species of drama in the later
+Middle Ages, the debt of English tragedy is more explicit than to the
+miracles, but not more essential. It is not more essential, because the
+moralities were in a way the successors and the substitutes for the
+miracles and contributed largely to the same effects. They were devoted to
+a serious purpose and presented tragic situations with a free admixture of
+comedy, and they continued many of the older traditions of stage
+performance and undramatic form. They differed from the miracles chiefly in
+that, like so much of medieval literature, they offered not a direct but a
+symbolic presentation of life. Instead of the Bible narrative, they
+presented the strife of vices and virtues; instead of real persons,
+personified abstractions. This change from individual characters to
+abstract qualities has usually been regarded as a retrogression by modern
+students, who deem the study of the motives of individual men and women as
+essential to the drama. But we have lately been reminded that on the stage
+it makes little difference whether an actor is called William or Everyman;
+and the attempt at the symbolization of life offered an opportunity for
+freedom of invention and freshness of emotional effect that in the miracles
+had been smothered by the stereotyped repetition of the Bible narrative.
+The temptation and suffering of the good, the temporary triumph of the
+evil, and the punishment that overtakes even the mighty were themes which
+the miracle had confused with many others. The morality gave them dramatic
+isolation and emphasis.
+
+Moreover, in substituting for a translation of the Bible narrative the
+symbolization of life as a conflict between folly and wisdom, or the vices
+and virtues, or the body and the soul, the moralities gave importance to
+one of the most essential elements in tragedy, that of moral strife. The
+world is a battlefield, the soul is beleaguered, the play is a conflict;
+and with this element of conflict there arises the opportunity for dramatic
+structure. If the story is of strife, there is likely to be a moment when
+the victory hangs in the balance; a reversal of fortune is implied; there
+is a chance for a rise and fall, a definite beginning, middle, and end. The
+moral conflict, moreover, encourages a study of human motive, of cause and
+effect in human action. In some of these plays, as "The Pride of Life,"
+"Everyman," "The Nice Wanton," the consequences of evil are clearly traced,
+and the action is representative not only of the conflict of good and evil
+in the universe, but of the battle of will in the individual. Evidently
+such plays are near relations of tragedy. They at least made plain to their
+successors the importance of the conflict of good and evil as a dramatic
+theme. Their text, the wages of sin are death, has continued to be an
+essential part of the conception of tragedy.
+
+The moralities, however, on the whole, made little advance, either in
+escape from conventionality, or in creation of structure, or in dramatic
+expression of the conflicts of will. They clung in the main to the dominant
+and already conventionalized allegory of the Middle Ages, the presentation
+of life as a conflict of body and soul, although they made interesting
+excursions into the fields of pedagogy and religious controversy. This
+allegory they treated with intense didacticism, sacrificing all dramatic
+interest to enforce the lesson, though in their later days the sermons were
+very generously mixed with farce. Their importance and explicit
+contribution to English tragedy arose from their historical position just
+at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
+They then served as a transition species, conforming, by a reduction in
+length and in the number of actors, to the conditions of performance which
+marked the change from the medieval stage to the Elizabethan theatre;
+amalgamating under humanistic influence now with this type of play, now
+with that; and imposing for a time their distinctive form and methods on
+the emerging types of comedy and tragedy. Some of the earliest tragedies,
+as we shall see, were direct developments from the moralities, and the
+influence of the peculiarities of the morality was for a while definite and
+considerable. But it soon disappeared under the demands of a new theatre
+and the innovations of a new art.
+
+The inheritance of tragedy from the Middle Ages includes an important
+legacy from literature entirely apart from the drama. In the separation of
+the medieval world from the classic, the terms tragedy and comedy ceased to
+be connected with scenic presentation, and were extended to cover all forms
+of narrative, whether in dialogue or not. The distinction between the two,
+though varying somewhat in the different lexicographers and
+encyclopedists, gradually arrived at an agreement which continued to affect
+ideas throughout the Renaissance. There was some insistence on the
+restrictions that tragedy dealt with history, and comedy with fiction;
+tragedy with exiles, murders, important and horrible deeds, and comedy with
+more domestic themes or with love and seduction. There was more general
+agreement that tragedy dealt with persons of rank and importance, kings or
+great leaders, and comedy with persons of low or middle rank, and that
+tragedy required a more elevated and ornamented style than comedy. The most
+important difference, however, was held to lie in the distinction that
+comedy begins unhappily and proceeds to a happy conclusion, while tragedy
+begins prosperously and ends miserably and terribly. Thus Dante's poem was
+a Divine Comedy, and Chaucer in the Monk's Prologue summed up the accepted
+opinion of the scholarship of his day.
+
+    "Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
+    As olde bokes maken us memorie,
+    Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
+    And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
+    Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly."
+
+These criteria for tragedy were fixed in the consciousness of the sixteenth
+century; and, though gradually correlated and amalgamated with criticism
+based on the newly found "Poetics," they continued to influence the theory
+and practice of the drama. Fitting these definitions and greatly increasing
+their importance and vogue, collections of tragedies attained wide
+popularity during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
+Boccaccio's "De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum," Chaucer's "Monk's
+Tale," and Lydgate's "Falls of Princes" are examples, and, far the most
+influential on English tragedy, "The Mirror for Magistrates." This
+collection, first printed in 1559 and later frequently re-edited and
+enlarged, suggested many themes for the historical drama. Elizabethan
+playwrights seeking for tragic stories turned naturally to this most famous
+collection of "tragedies" in the medieval sense. Consequently, the very
+idea of tragedy continued to carry the connotation of a sudden reversal of
+fortune, the fall of princes. Tragedy, indeed, has always remained very
+largely devoted to themes "de casibus illustrium virorum et feminarum."
+
+Turning now from the influence of medievalism to that of humanism, we may
+remember that in the drama even more than elsewhere humanism denotes a
+revolution in the spirit of the age, an emancipation of the individual mind
+from the fetters that had bound intellect and imagination through the
+Middle Ages. But we must deal first with one of the factors in
+accomplishing this emancipation, the reawakened knowledge of classical
+literature. There was some slight acquaintance with the Attic drama from
+the time that Greek was first taught at Oxford; the doughty Roger Ascham
+learned from his master Sir John Cheke to prefer Euripides to Seneca; and
+at the time when the study of Sophocles and Euripides was occupying the
+Italian dramatists, there must have been some similar response in England.
+Specific instances of this, however, are few and uncertain. The Greek
+dramatists seem to have exercised no appreciable direct influence on
+English tragedy of the sixteenth century; nor can their influence at any
+time during the seventeenth be said to have been considerable. For England,
+even more exclusively than for the Continent, the classical influence on
+the origin and early development of tragedy was confined to the ten plays
+which Renaissance scholarship attributed to the philosopher Seneca.
+
+Seneca's plays, probably not intended for stage presentation, were literary
+exercises following the models of Greek tragedy and more especially of
+Euripides. By the humanist, after he had acquired some slight knowledge of
+the classical theatre, they were naturally accepted as plays actually
+performed, and their artificial and elaborate diction, which is their most
+conscious departure from Attic standards, was eagerly appraised as a merit.
+Their themes, with the exception of that of the pseudo-Senecan "Octavia,"
+are borrowed from Greek mythology, with a strong preference for the most
+sensational and bloody stories of adultery, incest, the murder of parents
+by their children or of children by their parents. Whatever the revolting
+and bloody details, crime and its retribution make up the burden of each
+story. The plays present only the last phase of an action, and consequently
+open with lengthy exposition of preceding events. Much happens behind the
+scenes, little on the stage; there are many narrative and lyrical scenes,
+comparatively few dramatic. In comparison with the Athenian tragedies, they
+seem like prolonged rhetorical discussions of the familiar legends. Their
+structure involves a division into five acts, which had probably been
+earlier adopted in Latin tragedy and is noted in the "Ars Poetica," and the
+exclusion of the chorus from any participation in the action. It appears
+usually after each of the first four acts and indulges in philosophical
+reflections, hymns in praise of some deity, or lamentations. In each play a
+chief person or hero can be distinguished in conflict with one or more
+chief opponents; and each of the leading persons is accompanied by an
+adviser or confidant, usually a faithful friend for a hero and a nurse for
+the heroine. In addition to mortals, supernatural visitants, furies, gods,
+and especially ghosts, have a prominence that stirred Elizabethans to
+imitation. Though the presentation of character is not humanly vital, the
+long speeches and soliloquies display an elaborate analysis of moods of
+passion, with an absence of Athenian religion, a pagan cosmopolitanism, and
+an almost modern introspection. The style and philosophy were the chief
+recommendation of the plays to the Renaissance taste. Artificial, with
+constant use of antithesis, stichomythia, and hyperbole, oratorical,
+sonorous, bombastic, and thickly sprinkled with aphorisms and sentiments,
+the style seemed to the humanists to reach the height of tragic elevation
+and philosophic sententiousness.
+
+The reasons for the almost exclusive adoption of Seneca as a model seem to
+have been not only the comparative ignorance of Greek, but also the
+preference of Renaissance taste for the qualities just enumerated.
+Moreover, these lifeless and undramatic mixtures of rhetorical verbiage,
+melodramatic situations, and endless declamations had the advantage of
+being easy to imitate. In their encouragement to imitation and their
+absorption of interest away from the models of Greek tragedy, there was a
+danger of humanistic endeavor resulting in mere copying, a danger not
+altogether escaped in Italy and France, but happily averted in England.
+
+When, on the other hand, the characteristics of these unpromising models
+are considered in comparison with the conventionality of the miracles and
+moralities, they clearly offered much provocative of literary endeavor and
+the development of the _genre_ of tragedy. Through them secular stories,
+real persons, and dramatic plots took the place of the allegories and the
+abstractions. While they encouraged the selection of such stories as
+resembled the sensational myths favored by Seneca, they opened the door to
+history, romance, and the whole world of classical fable. Though their
+particular structure proved in the end impossible on the English stage,
+they enforced the division into acts already familiarized in comedy, and
+suggested the possibility of a dramatic fable in distinction from the
+miracles' adherence to a narrative one. Again, their presentation of
+character brought new persons, new motives, and new methods, calling
+attention to drama not as an exposition of events or as an allegory of
+life, but as a field for the study of human emotion. Their brilliant if
+bombastic rhetoric aroused enthusiasm for the drama as literature and
+poetry; and their reflective and aphoristic style encouraged an effort to
+elevate tragedy above its too familiar converse with comedy into the realm
+of austere philosophy. These influences, however, were general. Every
+particular of Seneca's plays had its sixteenth century imitators.
+
+The first signs of an intelligent interest in these plays appeared almost
+simultaneously at the very beginning of the fourteenth century in the
+commentary of the English Dominican, Nicholas Treveth, and in the study of
+the circle gathered about Lovato di Lovati at Padua. One of this school,
+Albertino Mussato, about 1314, wrote his "Eccerinis" on the fate of the
+Paduan tyrant, Ezzelino, of the preceding century. This first of the Latin
+tragedies of modern times aroused the admiration of scholars, and was
+followed by many other neo-Latin imitations of Seneca. These, while keeping
+to the Senecan form, often went beyond the stories of classical mythology
+and chose their subjects from the Bible or from ancient or modern history.
+Meanwhile neo-Latin comedy had had a beginning and was largely stimulated
+by the discovery, in 1427, of twelve hitherto unknown comedies of Plautus.
+All these neo-Latin plays were read and not acted; and the actual acting,
+either of the classical plays or their humanistic imitations, was not
+established until the close of the fifteenth century.
+
+The knowledge of the classical drama spread after a time across the Alps,
+and Terentian comedy in particular exercised a wide influence upon the
+drama. Of especial interest in relation to tragedy is the new school of
+neo-Latin comedy which arose about 1530 in Holland and spread over Germany
+and into France. It applied Terentian style and structure to many of the
+stories in the Old Testament and to the parable of the prodigal son. To its
+original purpose of substituting for Terentian immorality themes edifying
+for youth, it soon added a Protestant tone, and in Kirchmayer's
+"Pammachius" (1538) entered the field of violent religious controversy. As
+the number of these plays rapidly increased, there resulted a
+secularization of treatment and the admission of Senecan as well as
+Terentian influence. The stories of Judith, Susannah, Goliath, and others
+gave opportunities for recourse to Senecan imitation; and in the "Jephthes"
+and "Baptistes," which about 1540 George Buchanan wrote at Bordeaux for his
+students to act, we have the first tragedies north of the Alps written in
+distinctly classical form,--a form, it should be said, derived from his
+study and translation of Euripides as well as from Seneca.
+
+Seneca's preëminence as a model for tragedy, however, was in general not
+contested, but rather increased by the growing knowledge of Euripides and
+Sophocles. By the end of the fifteenth century there had been many
+translations of his plays in Italy; they were studied in the schools, and
+some had been given stage presentation. But the idea of a vernacular
+tragedy on the Senecan model was not put into effect until Trissino's
+"Sophonisba," written in 1515. This was followed by others, until by the
+time of "Gorboduc" Senecan tragedy in Italian was an established form, and
+Jodelle's "Cléopatre Captive" (1552) had marked the beginning of the
+Senecan _genre_ in France. The Italian tragedy had also introduced some
+departures, in the choice of romantic material and in the innovation of
+"tragicomedy," which supplied the Senecan model with a happy ending. But
+all these writers of tragedy worked with a common purpose, to revive
+Senecan drama in their own day, and their plays adapted their themes and
+methods to the Senecan model with the faithfulness of disciples. These
+Senecan imitations, it should be noted, were designed for special
+performances under academic or courtly auspices, and not for the popular
+theatre.
+
+In England during the first half of the sixteenth century there was a
+repetition of the inter-influence between the still flourishing forms of
+medieval drama and the new classical models which we have noted on the
+Continent. The early Renaissance in the reign of Henry VIII awakened an
+interest in Seneca; and the fragment of an English play introducing Lucrece
+has suggested to Mr. Chambers the possibility of an essay at Senecan
+tragedy thirty years before "Gorboduc." The main force of the humanistic
+influence seems, however, to have been in the direction of comedy. The
+drama was no longer confined to popular open-air presentations, but found a
+place at court, in the halls of noblemen, and especially at the schools
+and universities, where the comedies of Plautus and Terence and imitations
+both in Latin and English were frequently acted. The influence of the
+classical plays themselves and of the neo-Latin school and the
+controversial dramas of the Continent upon English moralities and
+interludes was extensive and distinct. This led to a multiplication and
+confusion of dramatic types out of which comedy emerged in such plays as
+"Gammer Gurton's Needle" and "Ralph Roister Doister." In Latin, but not in
+English, we can trace a similar movement toward tragedy. We hear of a
+"Dido" written by Ritwyse, master of St. Paul's, and performed by his
+pupils some time in the decade preceding 1532. "Absalon," written by Thomas
+Watson probably in the following decade, was highly praised by Roger
+Ascham, and, if it be identical with the play now in manuscript in the
+British Museum, is an example of biblical drama along Senecan lines. A
+non-extant "Jephthes" by Christopherson (1546), the "Archipropheta," with a
+romantic love episode and a clown, written by Grimald and acted at Oxford
+in 1547, and his "Christus Redivivus" published in 1543 as a "comoedia
+tragica," all belong to the same mixed species. A representative of the
+controversial drama appears in John Foxe's "Christus Triumphans" about
+1550, which drew much from the famous "Pammachius," already translated by
+Bale and acted at Oxford to the great scandal of Gardiner. Of plays in the
+vernacular we hear of a few called tragedies, but the term was used without
+any exactness, and no extant play has any just claim to the title. Ten
+tragedies and comedies are attributed by Bale to Ralph Radcliffe, a
+pedagogue, who in 1538 opened a theatre in his schoolhouse and gave plays
+before the 'plebs.' Some of these were certainly in Latin, but some may
+have been in English, and the titles are interesting as emphasizing again
+the prevailing humanistic influences. Of the tragedies, two, "The Burning
+of Sodom" and "The Delivery of Susannah," are on biblical themes evidently
+chosen for the purpose of edification; the third, "The Condemnation of John
+Huss," suggests the controversial type. Of the comedies, four have biblical
+themes, while three, "Patient Griselda," "Meliboeus," and "Titus and
+Gisippus," indicate the growing search for secular and even romantic
+themes. In this confusion of many species of drama, created by a mixture of
+medieval and humanistic influences, there is at least no clear evidence of
+any English tragedy on Senecan lines before "Gorboduc." Of the development
+of the moralities toward tragedy, of which signs are not lacking, we get
+the clearest examples in plays a little later, which will be treated in the
+next chapter.
+
+Special notice, however, must here be paid to one morality and the dramatic
+activity of its author. John Bale, born 1495, a converted Carmelite who
+became bishop under Edward VI and an exile during the reign of Mary, and
+who died not long after the accession of Elizabeth, was one of the most
+vigorous of Protestant controversialists and apparently the leader of what
+may be called the Protestant drama. His forty-six plays "in idiomate
+materno" seem to have been intended for presentation, and, while exhibiting
+classical influence, doubtless in the main followed medieval models. Of the
+five extant, written presumably about 1538, three, "God's Promises," "John
+the Baptist," and "The Temptation of our Lord," are miracle plays; one,
+"The Three Laws," is a morality. The fifth, "King John," inspired in its
+satirical and Protestant elements by "Pammachius" and perhaps also by
+Lindsay's "Three Estates," is the first example of a morality showing an
+approach to the later historical drama. It is in form a controversial
+morality, divided into two long parts or acts, but it follows roughly a
+chronological outline, and among its abstractions presents the king himself
+as the champion of Protestantism against the pope and Pandulph. Although
+the direct influence of the play on later drama cannot be traced, it is a
+notable advance, of which there were perhaps other examples, toward the
+treatment of English history and of individual persons rather than
+abstractions in the popular drama.
+
+The humanistic activities of the sixty years before "Gorboduc" thus
+resulted in a breaking away of allegiance to medieval models and the
+introduction of new types, rather than in any direct contribution to the
+form or matter of tragedy. The vernacular play approaching nearest to the
+field of tragedy is still a controversial morality exhibiting all the
+traits of medieval drama, and in its innovations pointing not toward
+classical models, but rather to a new extension of the morality toward the
+presentation of national history and real persons. During this time,
+however, the influence of Seneca's plays had been constantly extending and
+had been augmented by that of the imitations in Latin, French, and Italian.
+The interest of Seneca in the universities seems to have increased during
+the reigns of Edward and Mary and to have supplanted in a measure that in
+Latin comedy. In 1559 the appearance of the first English translation, that
+of the "Troades" by Jasper Heywood, opened the way to a wider interest and
+to the possibility of domiciling the Senecan drama on the English stage. By
+1561 translations of four other plays had been published; and, before the
+collected edition of 1581, all of the ten had appeared and attained a
+greater popularity with the reading public than they have ever since
+experienced.
+
+The first English tragedy was not a modification of current forms, but a
+direct imitation of Seneca. The production of "Gorboduc," however, only
+marked another stage in that conflict between medievalism and humanism
+which we have been tracing. In the next chapter we shall consider the
+conflict between Senecan imitations and popular tragedies that still kept
+to the morality form, a conflict that resulted in the discarding of both
+Senecan and morality incumbrances and the attainment in Marlowe and his
+followers of a form of tragedy very different from either, though
+inheriting bountifully from both.
+
+One source of classical influence other than Seneca's plays and their
+imitations was of enough importance to require special mention, that of
+Aristotle's "Poetics." First printed in 1508, it reinforced the dogmas
+derived from the "Ars Poetica," and became the basis of a rapidly
+increasing amount of dramatic criticism. This criticism, mostly Italian,
+interpreted Aristotle by means of the Senecan tragedies and so reinforced
+their influence; but it was also greatly modified by the medieval ideas of
+tragedy which we have already noticed. The resultant theory of tragedy,
+with special regard to its misinterpretations of Aristotle, may be briefly
+summarized. His dictum that tragedy is the imitation of a serious action
+was interpreted to mean an action illustrious because the actors are
+persons of the highest rank, thus adopting the medieval restriction of
+tragedy to princes. There was less agreement in the restriction of tragedy
+to history rather than fiction; and over the question of the propriety of a
+happy ending there was considerable debate. Tragi-comedies were written and
+defended, but critics in general recognized tragedy as restricted to an
+unhappy ending, which was universally interpreted to mean deaths. In regard
+to the function of tragedy there was great difference of opinion over the
+meaning of [Greek: katharsis], the weight of opinion inclining to emphasize
+the ethical aim of tragedy, that is, the reward of virtue and punishment of
+vice and the inculcation of morality by means of frequent precepts. From
+Aristotle's discussion of character there was derived the curious idea of
+"decorum," so important in later theories of the drama, that every
+character should represent a class and should always have the same
+characteristics,--the kings all acting after one prescribed fashion, the
+soldiers after another, the old men after another, and so on. From
+Aristotle's mention of the restriction of time to one revolution of the sun
+came the unities of time and place, confining the action to one city and
+twenty-four hours, which were soon made predominant over the third unity of
+action. These distinctions became fixed in Italian criticism and were given
+their first full expression in English in Sidney's "Apology for Poetry,"
+written about 1580; but before that they were more or less comprehended by
+most English students of Seneca. Although even a scholar in 1561 would have
+been unable to define the unities or decorum, he would have had some
+confused notion of them. The scope and function of tragedy were by that
+time assuming in the general literary consciousness a definition approved
+by both medieval and classical theory and later formulated by Puttenham:
+"Tragedy deals with doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted princes, for
+the purpose of reminding men of the mutability of fortune and of God's just
+punishment of a vicious life."
+
+Such definition of medieval and classical influences as we have been
+attempting necessitates a somewhat unreal separation of the two forces.
+Evidently, in the mind of any playwright, the two combined in a confusion
+of impulses, of the sources of many of which he must have been unaware.
+Absolute restriction to the old tradition or to the new inspiration is
+hardly to be expected in any English dramatist attempting tragedy in the
+neighborhood of 1562. Such an author would have open for his choice a
+wealth of stories, classical, medieval, or Italian, as yet untouched by
+drama; and, though he might choose a story whose events paralleled some
+Senecan plot, he would be likely to adhere closely to his narrative source
+after the medieval fashion. Even if he strove loyally after the Senecan
+form, his knowledge would be hardly sufficient to prevent departures from
+strict classical standards. Seneca does not always clearly observe the
+unities or remove violent action from the stage, and his Elizabethan
+follower would naturally err on the side in accord with popular dramatic
+tradition. Of the chorus, reduced in importance by Seneca, he would find it
+difficult to make much use. On the other hand, the adapter of the morality
+structure to tragic purpose would perhaps fail to derive anything from
+Seneca except his bombast and sensationalism. For whatever audience the
+dramatist was writing, he would have many spectators demanding the fun,
+horse-play, and crude horror of medieval tradition, while his own literary
+aspirations might lead him to prefer lofty declamation and aphoristic
+phrasing. But, whether his knowledge was large or small, he was likely to
+combine in his conception of tragedy, as did Puttenham, both the Christian
+idea of evil, thwarting good and meeting punishment, and the Senecan idea
+of a crime followed by retribution or revenge. And, whether he catered to
+popular taste or to literary ambition, he must have contemplated the
+presentation of a reversal of fortune, persons of royal or distinguished
+rank, and a catastrophe involving deaths.
+
+It is, after all, the main contribution of humanism that through the study
+of the classics there had come new impetus and authority for individual
+effort. Art was to be based on classic precedents, but it was forbidden by
+the spirit of the new age to remain after medieval fashion satisfied with
+repetitions and translations. For the dramatist there were not only new
+models, but a circulation of ideas, free opportunity, and the incentive of
+fame. For him, too, there was a public long habituated to the drama and now
+well tutored in novelties and variations of the old forms, a public that no
+longer expected a conventionalized stage, but was possessed of what the
+apostle Paul deemed the chief characteristic of the classical spirit, the
+desire to hear some new thing.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+The authorities on their respective subjects are: W. Creizenach,
+_Geschichte des neuren Dramas_, Halle, 1893-1903 (3 vols. and index,
+extending to 1570, have appeared); A. W. Ward, _A History of English
+Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne_, 1899, new and revised
+edition, 3 vols.; E. K. Chambers, _The Mediæval Stage_, Oxford, 1903. These
+all cover the matter of the present chapter and contain bibliographies.
+Ward gives full bibliographical notes to editions and monographs;
+Creizenach's index is substantially complete for all European plays;
+Chambers's Appendix X contains references to editions and descriptions of
+all English plays up to Elizabeth's accession. Klein, _Geschichte des
+Dramas_, 13 vols., 1865-76, and Collier, _History of English Dramatic
+Poetry_, new edition, 1879, are both somewhat out of date, though the
+latter contains much useful material. R. Pröloss, _Geschichte des neueren
+Dramas_ (1881-83), and K. Mantzius, _The History of Theatric Art_, 3 vols.
+(1904), are slighter. The only rapid and readable survey of European drama
+is by Brander Matthews, _The Development of the Drama_ (1906). For France,
+the authority for medieval drama is L. Petit de Julleville, _Histoire du
+Théâtre en France au Moyen Age_, 1880-86, 4 vols.; for Germany, R. Froning,
+_Das Drama des Mittelalters_, 1891; for Italy, A. Ancona, _Origini del
+Teatro italiano_, 1891, 2d edition. J. J. Jusserand, _Le Théâtre en
+Angleterre_ (1881, 2d ed.); J. A. Symonds, _Shakespeare's Predecessors in
+the English Drama_ (1884); G. Gregory Smith, _The Transition Period_ (1900,
+in _Periods of European Literature_); Gayley, _Plays of Our Forefathers_
+(1907), are of value. Dealing more specifically with matters discussed in
+this chapter are the volumes of Cloetta and Spingarn cited in the last
+chapter, C. H. Herford's _The Literary Relations of England and Germany in
+the Sixteenth Century_, Cambridge, 1886, J. W. Cunliffe's _The Influence of
+Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_, Manchester, 1893, and R. Fischer's _Zur
+Kunstentwickelung der Englischen Tragödie von ihren ersten Anfangen bis zu
+Shakespeare_, 1893. The Elizabethan translations of Seneca have been
+reprinted by the Spenser Society (1887). Within the last few years three
+new translations have appeared: by Watson Bradshaw, in prose (1902); by
+Miss E. A. Harris, in verse, two tragedies 1899, the remaining eight 1904;
+by F. J. Miller, in verse, with introduction on Seneca's Influence on
+English Drama by J. M. Manly (Chicago, 1907). Text and discussions of plays
+are presented by A. W. Pollard, _English Miracle Plays_, Oxford, 4th ed.,
+1904; A. Brandl, _Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England_, 1898; J. M.
+Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_, 1897 (2 vols., the third
+to contain notes and discussion). Dodsley's _Old Plays_, ed. W. C. Hazlitt,
+15 vols., 1874-76, also contains texts. The matter of this and subsequent
+chapters also receives treatment in the general histories of literature. J.
+J. Jusserand, _Literary History of the English People_, 2 vols., 1895-, is
+especially valuable in its account of the drama. The new _Cambridge History
+of English Literature_ (now in progress) will contain valuable monographs
+on the matter of this and subsequent chapters. _The Dictionary of National
+Biography_ is, of course, most valuable for individual writers. F. E.
+Schelling's _Elizabethan Drama_, 1558-1642, which appears as this volume is
+passing the press, is a general history of the drama of the period stated,
+with special reference to the development of dramatic species. It contains
+an extremely useful Bibliographical Essay and "A List of Plays" written,
+acted, or published in England, 1558-1642.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAGEDY
+
+
+In this chapter the development of tragedy is to be traced from 1562, the
+year of the production of "Gorboduc," to about 1587, the beginning of
+Marlowe's career. Our knowledge of the drama during this period is scanty,
+and there are few extant tragedies or plays resembling tragedy. Before
+examining these plays with the detail which their historical position
+demands, it will be necessary first to glance at the theatrical conditions.
+Reference has been made to some of the changes that had been working a
+transformation from the conditions of the popular performance of the
+religious drama in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through these,
+the drama had already to a large extent passed from the control of the
+guilds to that of small companies of amateur or professional actors; from
+the open air into the halls of noblemen or of the schools; from the large
+stage with its fixed stations for the different actors or the procession of
+pageants, to the small and perhaps improvised platform. Long plays with
+hosts of actors had given place to short plays with few parts, or many
+parts divisible among few actors, and constructed with a clear distinction
+between "on the stage" and "off the stage." Performances indoors, no
+specially prepared stage, few actors, and short plays represent the
+prevailing theatrical practice of the early sixteenth century.
+
+From 1562 on, however, theatrical conditions were various and shifting, and
+not always easily discernible by the modern student. While miracles were
+still performed after the old popular fashion, the traveling professional
+companies were growing in importance and tending to monopolize the acting
+of interludes. Amateur actors, however, at court, school, university, inns
+of court, or, indeed, among the Bottoms and mechanics of the villages,
+still contended with the professional for the control and maintenance of
+the drama. So far as tragedy is concerned, it will be convenient to keep in
+mind at least four distinct kinds of performance. First, the Gentlemen of
+the Inns of Court, who throughout the Elizabethan period showed themselves
+liberal patrons of the drama, occasionally gave plays, usually in
+connection with special festivities. Second, there were performances at the
+schools and universities which continued to exert an important dramatic
+influence, as they had for the preceding sixty years. Plays at the
+universities were generally in Latin, but there were English plays at both
+schools and universities, and companies from the Merchant Tailors and
+Westminster schools acted at court; these last performances falling
+properly in the third group. Third, companies of children were trained for
+performance at court; and these were in the course of time restricted to
+the choir boys of St. Paul's and of the Queen's chapel. Fourth, the
+traveling professional companies, numerous at the beginning of the period,
+acted in the inn-yards of London, at court, in the halls of noblemen, on
+the village greens, in the guild halls, even in the churches of the towns,
+or wherever else they could obtain an opportunity, until the most important
+of them found homes in the London theatres. On all four of these classes of
+actors the influence of the court was considerable, for it was the highest
+gratification of either amateur or professional to be engaged in a court
+performance, and performances at court were subject to greater preparation
+than those in public.
+
+Such were the conditions governing the presentation of tragedies in this
+period, but in the course of its twenty-five years the professional
+companies constantly grew in importance and in the end practically
+monopolized the business of giving plays. Schools, universities, and
+companies of amateurs became of decreasing moment in the development of the
+drama, while the choir boys were permitted to act plays publicly in their
+own theatres and thus became formidable professional rivals of the men's
+companies. In 1572 the statute compelling the common players to obtain the
+license of some nobleman reduced the number of the adult companies, but
+strengthened those that survived, which now became known as Lord
+Leicester's men, Lord Howard's men, and so on. In London they were able
+with the assistance of the court to establish and maintain themselves
+despite the active and constant opposition of the city authorities. The
+Theatre, built outside the city proper in 1576, was soon followed by other
+playhouses, and in 1583 a company was licensed under the Queen's personal
+patronage. Henceforth the history of the Elizabethan drama is in the main
+confined to four or five companies of men and one or two of children,
+acting regularly in their established theatres and occasionally in the
+provinces, or at court, or elsewhere.
+
+The character of a tragedy naturally varied with the circumstances of its
+presentation. A Latin play at one of the universities was much more
+dignified and scholarly than the performance of a few traveling actors for
+the delectation of a provincial audience; and a play by the Gentlemen of
+the Inner Temple was given with an elaborateness not to be expected in
+those by the choir boys, which were likely to be brief and to include a
+good deal of singing. The extant tragedies can consequently be best
+classified according to their methods of presentation. Before all
+audiences, it should be remembered, moralities of divers sorts were
+performed, but we are now concerned only with those that most closely
+approach tragedy. All the extant Latin plays were presented at the
+universities. Of English plays, "Gorboduc," "Tancred and Gismunda,"
+"Jocasta," and "The Misfortunes of Arthur" were acted by gentlemen of the
+Inner Temple or Gray's Inn, and are all Senecan tragedies. "Damon and
+Pithias" and "Appius and Virginia" were acted at court by children, and
+show little Senecan influence, but are medleys of tragedy, comedy, and
+music. No performance by an adult company of any extant tragedy is
+recorded, but "Horestes" and "Cambyses," both of which may have originally
+been intended for children, bear some evident marks of popular
+presentation, and both are mixtures of morality, farce, and tragedy. These
+plays, with the exception of "The Misfortunes of Arthur," acted in 1588 at
+the very end of the period, were all written and performed in the sixties.
+With the addition of "Promus and Cassandra" (1578), apparently not acted,
+they comprise all extant plays acted before 1586-87 which can be classed as
+tragedies or tragicomedies. Our knowledge of the professional drama may be
+supplemented from the titles of non-extant plays and from the Revels
+Accounts of performances at court; but it should be observed that our
+information in regard to the development of popular tragedy is very meagre,
+especially for the important period after 1570, and that the group of
+Senecan plays, which we are to examine first, owed their existence to no
+popular favor, but to amateur performances under special conditions.
+
+"Gorboduc," or "Ferrex and Porrex," printed surreptitiously in 1565 and
+with an authoritative text about 1570, was written by Thomas Norton and
+Thomas Sackville, the author of "The Complaint of Buckingham" and "The
+Induction" in "The Mirror for Magistrates," and afterwards Lord Buckhurst,
+Lord High Treasurer. It was performed before the Queen as a part of the
+elaborate Christmas entertainment of the Inner Temple in 1561-62. The plot
+is taken from a British legend that was introduced into literature by
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, and relates the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc
+between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, the murder of the elder by the
+younger, the murder of the younger by his mother, the murder of both father
+and mother by their subjects, the slaughter of the people by the nobles,
+and the resulting civil wars. The story, evidently chosen because of its
+likeness to Seneca's "Thebais," is treated in Senecan manner, each of the
+first four acts being followed by a chorus of "Foure auncient and sage men
+of Brittaine." The murders are not enacted but are related by messengers,
+but the unities of time and place are violated, as Sir Philip Sidney noted
+with disapproval. There is little characterization, much political
+moralizing, which delighted Sidney, and an abundance of long declamations,
+about eight hundred lines, nearly half of the play, being comprised in ten
+speeches. The play is written in blank verse, already used in Surrey's
+translation from the Æneid, and perhaps adopted in imitation of the
+unrhymed verse of the Italian tragedies. After the Italian fashion, each
+act is preceded by a dumb show, symbolizing the following action, and these
+dumb shows seem to have been utilized to provide the spectacle that was
+entirely wanting in the play proper. Supernatural visitants appear in the
+three furies before act iv; and before the last act the dumb show consists
+of a battle-scene, similar to those which later became the invariable
+accompaniments of the chronicle history play: "there came forth upon the
+stage a company of hargabusiers and of armed men all in order of
+battaile," who discharged their pieces and marched three times about the
+stage.
+
+In spite of the close adherence to the Senecan model, there is little
+direct borrowing from Seneca, and medieval elements are not lacking. The
+debates between the good and bad counselors are very like those of the
+moralities, and the structure is essentially that of a chronicle of a whole
+story rather than that of a classical tragedy. The first two acts are
+occupied by the interminable debates, and the last three by the
+catastrophe, or rather the succession of catastrophes, though the final
+scene of the fifth act is a sort of epilogue after Senecan fashion. The
+play has little literary value, though Marcella's recital is not without
+power and the disquisitions on discord and disloyalty in the state have the
+merit of earnestness; but it is clearly the beginning of a new species. It
+abandons current dramatic forms, and endeavors to depict the fall of
+English princes in accordance with the models of classical tragedy.
+
+"Jocasta," by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, acted 1566 by the Gentlemen of
+Gray's Inn, demands little attention. It is a translation in blank verse of
+Lodovico Dolce's "Giocasta," itself an adaptation of the "Phoenissæ" of
+Euripides. It thus furnishes additional evidence of the influence of
+Italian tragedy on English. The chorus numbers four, as in "Gorboduc," and
+the dumb shows, apparently of Gascoigne's invention, are notably elaborate
+and spectacular.[2]
+
+"Tancred and Gismunda," acted before the queen at the Inner Temple in 1568,
+under the title "Gismond of Salerne," was written in rhymed quatrains by
+five gentlemen of the Temple, and afterwards revised and put into blank
+verse by the author of the fifth act, Robert Wilmot, and first published in
+1591.[3] In both versions Cupid appears before the first and third acts as
+the director of the action, and Magæra comes on before the fourth act to
+superintend the revenge and murder. The play is based on Painter's version
+of Boccaccio's _novella_, which is followed closely, but the base-born
+lover becomes a count according to the prevailing theory of tragedy. The
+story itself has an obvious dramatic power and a certain dramatic structure
+which it imposes on the play. Gismunda's passion for the Count Palurin
+runs counter to her father's wishes; at the end of the third act love is
+triumphant, but in the fourth is defeated, and the gruesome catastrophe
+follows, Tancred and Gismunda dying on the stage. This is the earliest
+extant English play based on an Italian _novella_, and the first tragedy to
+adopt a romantic love story and to make the passion of love its central
+motive; and the authors accomplished their experiment with evident
+enthusiasm and some gracefulness and force of diction. They were, however,
+very conscious of their models. Seneca's "Thyestes," and "Phædra," itself
+presenting a story of passionate love, were perhaps their chief
+inspirations; but Buchanan's "Jephthes" and Beza's "Abraham," translated
+into English in 1577, are mentioned in Wilmot's dedication, and, together
+with other plays, supplied precedents for the treatment of the favorite
+tragic theme, the sacrifice of a child by a father. Moreover, Italian
+tragedies had, since Giraldi's "Orbecche," been turning to romantic fiction
+for their subjects instead of to history and mythology; and some of these,
+"Orbecche" itself, and, as Professor Creizenach notes,[4] Dolce's "Dido,"
+doubtless influenced the young templars. There had, indeed, already been
+Italian tragedies based on Boccaccio's _novella_, and one by Frederigo
+Asinari (1576) had added an Oedipean horror by making Tancred put out his
+eyes before killing himself, an augmentation adopted by Wilmot in his
+revision. The play was thus not only thoroughly Senecan, but the result of
+a tangle of derivative Senecan influences. The authors were probably
+unconscious of the incongruity so obvious to us between the classical form
+and the romantic material. They were interested in their story and were
+eager to give it all the advantages that erudition could discover; their
+intentions were doubtless perfectly reflected in the praise which William
+Webbe gave them for a play that "all men generally desired, as a work,
+either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of
+poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman
+Seneca the censurer."
+
+"The Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes, was acted and published in
+1588. The story from "The Morte D'Arthur" was suggested by its likeness to
+Senecan plots; and the play was an ambitious attempt to use British legend
+as Seneca had treated classical myth. The strife between father and son,
+with its accompaniments of adultery and incest, is viewed as constituting a
+Nemesis for the crimes of Arthur's father, Pendragon; and the ghost of the
+wronged Gorlois appears in the first scene to promise revenge, and in the
+final scene to triumph over its fulfillment. The author knew his models by
+heart, borrowed much, availed himself of all the particulars of the Senecan
+technic, and imitated everywhere with a good deal of spirit and success.
+The play has dramatic and poetic merits beyond its predecessors, but its
+late date makes it of small importance in our effort to trace the
+beginnings of English tragedy. Acted twenty-six years after "Gorboduc," it
+testifies less to the progress of dramatic art than to the
+conventionalizing effect of Senecan models. Though perhaps the most
+successful of English imitations of Seneca, it marks the failure of amateur
+actors and courtly audiences to revive the classical drama on the English
+stage. On the occasion of its performance before the Queen at Greenwich,
+its actors and authors may very likely have thought it full of significance
+for the future of the drama; but "Tamburlaine" had already been acted, and
+poetry had taken up its abode in the despised public theatres. The chief
+interest for us in "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is that it furnishes further
+illustration of the use of English history and of stories of revenge.
+
+To understand the full importance of the attempt to domicile Seneca in
+England, we must turn to the universities. Two English plays, which would
+be of interest, have not been preserved, "Ezechias," a tragedy by Udall,
+acted in 1564 at Cambridge, and "Palamon and Arcyte" by Edwards, the author
+of "Damon and Pithias," acted 1566. These are the only English plays at all
+tragical that are recorded; but the practice of giving Latin plays
+continued and grew in popularity.[5] We hear of "Dido" and an "Ajax
+Flagellifer," apparently a translation of Sophocles, both in 1564, and a
+"Progne" in 1566. The extant Latin tragedies are of a later date. Gager's
+"Meleager," "Oedipus," and "Dido," all acted in the early eighties, are
+modeled strictly on Seneca, the first two showing direct borrowings. In the
+fragment which we possess of the third, the ghost of Sichæus appears to
+warn Dido, and is followed by the storm, represented, we learn, by sugar
+for snow, sweetmeats for hail, and rose-water for rain. Gager's "Ulysses
+Redux," acted in 1591, a little beyond the limits of our period, presents a
+somewhat freer treatment of the Senecan form, the number of characters and
+of scenes being larger than in the earlier plays. Of uncertain date are a
+"Herodes," which takes the form of a revenge play introduced by the ghost
+of Mariemma, and "Solymannidæ" and "Tonumbeius," which apply Senecan
+methods to Eastern instead of to classical atrocities. "Roxana" (1632),
+acted before 1592, is a translation of "La Dalida" of Luigi Groto, and won
+some contemporary distinction and the praise of Dr. Johnson two centuries
+later. It is a revenge play with a ghost, combining Senecan gruesomeness
+with the motives of romantic comedy.
+
+More famous than any of these in its own day was "Richardus Tertius," a
+tragedy in three parts, each part acted on a separate night in 1579 at St.
+John's, Cambridge, the work of Thomas Legge, Master of Caius and afterwards
+Vice-Chancellor of the university. Legge seems to have felt the incongruity
+between the material of the chronicles, which he followed closely, and a
+strict Senecan form, and to have striven to overcome this by the
+mechanical expedient of prolonging the action over three plays. But the
+problem of presenting on the stage the events of a whole reign could not be
+solved in the terms of the Senecan formula. Legge copied the Senecan
+rhetoric, interpreted historical events and persons under the guidance of
+the formula, and retained much of its technic, the narration of deaths
+instead of their presentation, counsel scenes between hero and advisers,
+frequent use of the nuntius, and a vestige of a chorus. But the play
+departs as widely as popular dramas from the unities of time and place,
+contains many scenes with more than three speakers, is full of dramatic
+action, and presents processions, pageants, and battle scenes after the
+fashion of later chronicle plays in the public theatres. Its influence on
+popular drama may well have been considerable; though, on the other hand,
+its adherence to sources and its looseness of structure may have been
+reflections from the public stage. Whether the first chronicle play or not,
+it is the earliest extant play to indicate the result of the inevitable
+conflict between a narrow and stereotyped dramatic form and the wide range
+of material which the chronicles afforded.[6]
+
+In these university Latin plays there is evident a development similar to
+that traced in the English Senecan drama. Biblical themes disappear; close
+imitations of Seneca on classical themes give way to freer treatment of
+romantic or historical material. Revenge and the ghost are ever prominent;
+and English history introduces a host of events, varied, incongruous,
+panoramic, and bursting the bounds of the traditional structure. Nash,
+Marlowe, and others of the later dramatists were university men, and saw
+some of these plays performed, and perhaps took part in them. Their scenic
+spectacle, choices of themes, handling of situation, and general effect
+must have had an appreciable influence upon the subsequent course of the
+drama. To the various influences which we have denominated humanistic, and
+especially to the derivative influences reinforcing that of Seneca, we must
+add this of the Latin plays at Oxford and Cambridge. Latin tragedies
+continued to be acted at the universities for many years, but their
+influence on the popular drama can have been potent only during its
+formative period.
+
+When we turn from these academic and amateur productions to the more
+popular performances,[7] we have to deal with a very different class of
+plays. The four to be considered were all written by men of scholarly
+training, and all deal with classical themes, but the Senecan influence is
+slight and mainly discernible in the figurative and hyperbolic diction and
+the fondness for sententious maxims. None of the four are divided into
+acts; none have choruses or other characteristic marks of Senecan
+structure; all present action to the exclusion of reflection, and all are
+in rhymed verse, the favorite metre, at least in the serious portions,
+being doggerel. All admit comic and farcical scenes, and three are in a
+large measure moralities. In the tragic portions all admit violence and
+murders of all kinds on the stage; there is a beheading, a hanging, and, in
+the case of "Cambyses," a flaying, accomplished, the stage direction
+reassures us, "with a false skin."
+
+"Damon and Pithias" (1571), by Richard Edwards, was acted by the Children
+of the Chapel at court in 1563-64, and, judging from the title-page,
+probably also in public. The prologue, which contains a discussion of
+"decorum," explains that the term "tragicall comedy" is used because the
+story is a matter "mixed up with mirth and care." The serious portion of
+the play presents the tyrant Dionysius as well as the two faithful friends,
+and shows evidence of a study of Seneca; but it is intermixed with comedy,
+where the influence of Plautus is noticeable, and indeed with scenes of
+broadest farce. Carisophus, the parasite, is hardly distinguishable from
+the vice of the moralities, and is not only clown and mischief-maker, but
+the villain, whose infamy brings about the tragic entanglements. The play
+contains a number of songs, and this mixture of tragedy, farce, and musical
+comedy seems typical of the children's plays of this period.
+
+"Appius and Virginia" (S. R. 1567-68), by an unknown R. B., was also
+evidently acted by one of the children's companies, perhaps, as Mr. Fleay
+plausibly conjectures, by the boys of the Westminster school. It is much
+shorter than "Damon and Pithias," but, like that play, is styled a tragical
+comedy, is written in rhymed verse, mostly doggerel, and contains farcical
+scenes and many songs. The vice Haphazard is a clown and mischief-maker;
+and, in addition, a number of personified abstractions, Conscience,
+Justice, Comfort, Doctrina, etc., indicate the close relation of the play
+to the moralities. The main plot, however, is tragic and has no integral
+connection with the comic scenes. It begins with the domestic happiness of
+the family of Virginius, and proceeds promptly to the action. Virginia is
+beheaded, and the head is afterwards exhibited; Appius Claudius and
+Haphazard are executed out of the sight of the audience; and in the
+closing scene the tomb of Virginia is shown upon the stage, Memory
+inscribes her renown, while Justice, Reward, Doctrine, and Fame apparently
+join in a song "around about the tomb in honor of her name."
+
+"Horestes" (1567) by John Pickering was probably the "Orestes" acted at
+court 1567-68. It also seems to have been performed by children, but was
+very likely given public presentation by various companies. The title runs
+significantly, "A New Interlude of Vice, conteyninge the Historye of
+Horestes," etc. The vice, indeed, is hardly absent from the stage, and
+offers much that is new in his species. He is a clown, but apparently this
+is only a disguise, for he appears to Horestes as a messenger from the
+gods, urging him to revenge; later as Courage he is Horestes' faithful
+friend and supporter, then as Revenge he attends to the execution of
+Clytemnestra, and finally he appears as a beggar thrust out of court, since
+Revenge could not agree with the Amity dwelling there, and takes the
+opportunity to read a long lecture to women. The diversity of elements
+confused in this personage is typical of the play. It is in a large measure
+a morality; Nature appears to Horestes to dissuade him from including his
+mother in his vengeance, Fame appears as a judge and exempts him from
+guilt, and other abstractions are numerous and voluble. There are also a
+number of songs, Egisthus and Clytemnestra having just finished a love song
+when the messenger announces the avenger's approach. There are many scenes
+of sheer farce, where the humor lies wholly in fisticuffs and beatings;
+and the spectacular element suggests the later historical plays. Horestes
+is accompanied by an army which marches with drums about the stage and
+fights two pitched battles, one with the host of Egisthus and the other for
+the possession of the city. "Make your lively battel and let it be long,"
+says the stage direction. Still further, the classical elements are
+curiously confused. Although there are a number of quotations from Ovid and
+frequent citations of other classical worthies, there is no mention of
+Seneca, though the plot of "a revenge for a father" here makes its first
+appearance in the English drama, and the authors appear to have been
+entirely ignorant of the Greek tragedies. The ultimate source is the sixth
+book of Dictys Cretensis. The author follows closely one of the popular
+versions of the Troy legend, retains the anachronisms of the romantic
+version, and imposes on that the structure of the morality, the vice taking
+the place of the oracle of Apollo, and abstractions mingling with the
+knights and dukes of the Trojan war. The play is thus interesting as
+marking another step in the translation of the morality into the "history"
+type of tragedy. The closing scenes, in particular, illustrate the
+adherence to sources with morality embellishments. The play by no means
+ends with the murders. Horestes is approved by Fame, accused by Menelaus,
+who arrives, defended by Nestor, who throws down his glove as a gage, then
+reconciled to Menelaus, married to Hermione, crowned by Duty and Truth, and
+applauded and advised by Commons and Nobelles.
+
+"Cambyses" (S. R. 1569-70) was written by Thomas Preston, afterwards Master
+of Trinity Hall, and acted some time in the sixties. Perhaps originally
+intended for a school performance, it was later evidently acted in public,
+and seems more suited than even "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes" to a
+performance by an ordinary professional adult company. The title-page sets
+forth the plot with a terse emphasis of its various elements: "A Lamentable
+Tragedie mixed full of pleasant mirth containing the Life of Cambises King
+of Persia from the beginning of his kingdome unto his Death, his one good
+deede of execution, after that, many wicked deedes and tyrannous murders
+committed by and through him, and last of all, his odious death by Gods
+Justice appointed." Like "Horestes," this is a combination of morality and
+history, and the chronicle or epical method is enforced by the fact that we
+have the whole story of "the life and death," as later titles ran, of a
+monarch. The chronicle structure is mixed full of pleasant mirth and pays a
+certain regard to climax. Cambyses begins by executing an unjust judge, and
+proceeds to murder the child of his minister, then his brother, then his
+bride, and finally himself. The comic scenes have a link of connection with
+the tragic ones in Ambidexter, the vice and accomplice of the villanous
+tyrant. Seneca is appealed to as an authority in the prologue, but there is
+little trace of his influence, unless it is found in the central figure of
+the wicked tyrant and his gory career, or in the highfalutin of Cambyses'
+vein. The extraordinary list of _dramatis personae_ indicates sufficiently
+the hodge-podge of the action and the prominence of the morality influence.
+The deaths are managed by Cruelty or Murder; Commons Cry, Commons
+Complaint, Small Nobility, and Proof appeal against tyranny; the marriage
+feast is arranged by Preparation; the comic scenes are shared by Huf, Ruf,
+Snuf, Hob, and Lob; Venus and Cupid manage the love affairs; and Shame
+appears as a sort of tentative ghost:
+
+    "From among the grisly ghosts I come, from tyrants' testy train."
+
+The fall of the Prince Cambyses, it should be added, is accidentally or
+providentially upon his own sword; and only the exit of Ambidexter and a
+few words from the three lords, who pronounce the accident a just reward
+from heaven and promise princely burial, are required to bring the play to
+a close.
+
+In these plays we may trace the gradual emergence of tragedy in the popular
+drama in response to a growing knowledge of its functions and methods. It
+appears still mixed with farce and morality, but it has themes like those
+of Seneca, bloody, revolting, and sensational, and its freedom in stage
+presentation permits an emphasis on crime and death even greater than in
+the Senecan imitations. Notably, it introduces the stories of the downfall
+of a tyrant and the revenge of a son for a father. The structure has none
+of the Senecan characteristics, and consists merely in linking together, or
+rather in interrupting by extraneous comedy, a few scenes illustrating a
+story; but it is like that of the English Senecan plays in the space it
+gives to catastrophe. In general the plays begin conventionally with the
+depiction of peaceful and prosperous circumstances, and proceed at once to
+the disasters and deaths, with very little attention to the events or
+motives that lead to these results. The element of conflict is as yet
+hardly translated out of the abstract terms of the morality into those of
+actual life. The conflict of motives never leads to a dramatic crisis but
+keeps to the form of a medieval debate, as between Nature and Horestes, or,
+indeed, between the bad and good counselors in "Gorboduc." Characterization
+likewise depends mostly on the form of arguing abstractions, though certain
+types of importance later are already noticeable. The faithful friend and
+the aged counselor are ever at hand, and the part, if not the character, of
+the tragic hero is provided in Horestes and Virginius. The villain receives
+considerable attention. The English dramatists were puzzled to follow the
+classical tragedies in placing the source of evil in Fate or the decrees of
+the gods; and even when their stories provided them with persons
+sufficiently iniquitous to cause all the tragic trouble, they seem to have
+felt the need for a visible and special representative of the devil. Evil
+in "Gorboduc" may be said to arise from the counsels of the parasites as
+well as from the folly of the king and the envy of the princes. In "Tancred
+and Gismunda" it is due, after classical imitation, to the intervention of
+Cupid. In the popular plays the vice is borrowed from the moralities, and,
+in all except "Horestes," is made a mischief-maker, a source of evil, and
+the special representative of the devil. Questions in regard to the origin
+of the vice and his relationship to the devil of the medieval drama have
+not been freed from doubt by recent investigation, but it seems clear that
+in the early tragedies he was given some of the work later accomplished by
+the stage-villain and his accomplices. The part that women play in these
+early tragedies should also be noticed. Women and love, as Professor
+Creizenach has observed, receive far more attention in Renaissance tragedy
+than in Greek or Senecan. "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Promus and Cassandra"
+deal with stories of romantic love; Virginia and the queen in "Cambyses"
+present noteworthy though slight examples of the idealization of women so
+important in later drama. The purpose of all these plays, Senecan or
+popular, is superficially didactic, as is witnessed not only by the
+abundant moralizing in the Senecan imitations, but also in the popular
+plays by the emphasis in the closing scenes on the reward of virtue and the
+punishment of vice. In the last act of "Appius and Virginia" the lesson of
+the play is written on the tomb, and in "Horestes" the conduct of the hero
+is discussed by Nestor and Fame and finally rewarded by Hermione, Truth,
+and Duty. "Cambyses" is more in line with later tragedy in presenting the
+protagonist as a monster and in closing promptly after his punishment by
+death.
+
+The most certain accomplishment, however, in the development of the drama
+up to 1570 had been in the widening of its range of material. The bible
+narrative and moral allegory had been superseded by classical myth and
+history, and these in turn were being encroached upon by the romantic
+fiction of the Italian _novelle_ and by the chronicles of English history.
+Italian _novelle_ were open to dramatists mainly through a series of
+collections of translations, of which "Painter's Palace of Pleasure" (1566)
+was the chief. The interest in English history was stimulated and fed by
+"The Mirror for Magistrates" and the various editions of the chronicles;
+Grafton, Stowe, and the third edition of Fabyan appearing in the sixties,
+and Holinshed in 1577; while interest in the classics was maintained by
+numerous translations as well as by an increasing knowledge of Latin.
+Translation, indeed, had brought the stories of the world to the English
+mart, and the dramatic industry was now eager in its demand for material.
+
+Of the continued development of popular tragedy after 1570, and
+particularly of the sources drawn upon for dramatic material, we can get a
+few hints from the titles of non-extant plays. The incomplete Revels
+Accounts of performances at court preserve the names of over sixty plays
+acted between 1570 and 1585, and about thirty are derived from other
+sources. Of the court plays, none had biblical subjects; a number were
+moralities, a few were drawn from old romances; but the majority were from
+classical or Italian sources. Many of these must have contained tragic
+incidents,[8] though probably they were not much more classical in form
+than "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes." Only one title drawn from
+national history presents itself, "The King of Scots." The English
+chronicle play had evidently not yet made any stir at court; but many of
+the classical plays were drawn from Livy. Two other titles, "The Cruelty of
+a Stepmother" and "Murderous Michael" (Sussex's men, '78, '79), and a third
+of a play at Bristol in 1578, "What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man,"
+may possibly have had for sources accounts of contemporary murders, and
+thus have instituted the species of domestic tragedy. A few titles,
+suggestive of tragedy, with accompanying comments, have been preserved by
+Gosson, who praises: "The Jew," "representing the greediness of worldly
+chusers and bloody minds of usurers," apparently a forerunner of "The
+Merchant of Venice"; "Ptolemy," "describing the overthrow of seditious
+estates and rebellious commons"; "The Blacksmith's Daughter," "contayning
+the treachery of the Turkes, the honourable bountye of a noble mind, and
+the shining of virtue in distress"; and his own play, "Catilin's
+Conspiracy," "showing the reward of traitors."
+
+Some further information concerning the emergence of popular tragedy can be
+derived from the criticisms of the period. Gosson in his "Plays Confuted"
+(1582), declares:--
+
+     "For the poets drive it most commonly unto such points
+     as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical
+     speeches, or set their hearers agog with discourses of
+     love; or paint a few antics to fit their own humours
+     with scoffs and taunts or wring in a show to furnish
+     forth the stage when it is too bare; when the matter
+     itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of
+     the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull
+     it out.... So," he adds, "was the history of Cæsar and
+     Pompey and the play of the Fabii at the theatre, both
+     amplified where the drums might walk or the pen
+     ruffle."
+
+A similar criticism is made by Whetstone in his dedication of "Promus and
+Cassandra" (1578): "The Englishman in this qualitie, is most vaine,
+indiscreete, and out of order: he first groundes his work on
+impossibilities: then in three howers more likely ronnes he throwe the
+worlde: marryes, gets Children, makes Children men, men to conquer
+kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven and fetcheth
+Divels from Hel." Sidney in the well-known passage on the contemporary
+drama in his "Apologie for Poetrie" (1595, but written about 1580)
+amplified these same criticisms, deploring the lack of "noble moralitie,"
+the violation of the unities, and the admixture of farce in current
+tragedies, and especially animadverting on the histories and the "mongrel
+Tragy-comedie." He asks scornfully: "And doe they not knowe, that a
+Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not of Historie? not bound to
+follow the storie, but having liberty either to faine a quite new matter,
+or to frame the history to the most tragicall conveniencie. Againe, many
+things may be told, which cannot be shewed, if they knewe the difference
+betwixt reporting and representing,"--and he goes on to illustrate.
+Evidently the medieval methods were still potent rather than those of
+Sidney's models, Euripides, Seneca, and "Gorboduc"; and the tragedies in
+the theatres followed their sources without recognition of the difference
+between a narrative and a dramatic structure, and with an appeal to vulgar
+taste by means of hideous monsters, pitched fields, scurrility, or "some
+extreme shew of doltishness." From these critical comments we may infer
+that the popular drama had before 1585 triumphed over the Senecan. The few
+extant tragedies before that date have shown little which was not
+paralleled in the contemporary drama of western Europe; but in the
+popularization of a professional drama that rejected Senecan technic but
+still delighted in the presentation of tragic fact we have the first clear
+differentiation of English tragedy from that of other nations.
+Unfortunately we have only this indirect evidence that such differentiation
+was well under way before Marlowe.
+
+On the basis of such evidence, however, we may draw a few inferences in
+regard to the course of popular tragedy from 1570 to 1585. We may infer
+that Senecan imitations in the hands of amateurs did not multiply, and were
+not readily accepted even as object lessons by writers for the public
+theatres, who, whatever inspiration they may have received from amateur or
+academic plays, must have felt the increasing force of the demand from the
+public for amusement and sensation. While undoubtedly many traces of
+Senecan influence continued, and while classical themes persisted, the
+prevalent type of drama became neither right comedy nor right tragedy but
+the so-called "history." Whether based on history or fiction, its main
+purpose was the presentation of a story, the more marvelous the better;
+and, even if it ended in deaths, it was likely to contain a mixture of
+farce, romantic love, stage spectacle, and, as time went on, a diminishing
+inculcation of morality. Throughout the period, popular tragedy probably
+remained commingled with other species of drama. As it forsook the
+morality, it found itself wedded with farce or spectacle; or, perhaps more
+extensively, with history and romantic comedy. What course the popular
+drama farthest removed from court or academic influence may have taken, we
+can only surmise, though the presentation of contemporary murders, which
+found favor even at court, must presumably have flourished with less
+cultivated audiences. And it is impossible to resist the conjecture that
+English history must have received crude presentation in the public
+theatres much earlier than we have any record of.
+
+We may also surmise that in the quarter of a century from "Cambyses" to
+"Tamburlaine" there must have been some considerable development in the
+power to depict tragic fact, in the traditions of tragic acting, and in the
+cultivation of the taste of both audiences and authors for the genuinely
+terrible, pathetic, and heroic, but we must assume that tragedy still
+awaited the service of both literary and dramatic genius. The genius of
+Marlowe, however, had its way prepared by twenty-five years of
+extraordinary dramatic activity, during which the functions of comedy and
+tragedy had become known if not observed, comedy had attained a
+considerable development in Lyly and Peele, and tragedy had gained
+sufficient vigor to extend its themes, and to decide against a development
+imitative and scholarly, and in favor of one original and popular.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Most of the books in the list for the last chapter are useful in connection
+with the matter of this. Creizenach and Ward are the chief authorities;
+Collier, Symonds, and Jusserand deal with the period. Spingarn, Cunliffe,
+and Fischer are valuable for their special fields. Texts are to be found in
+Manly, Dodsley, Brandl, and discussions in the latter. For the stage
+history of the Elizabethan drama, the works of F. G. Fleay are very
+valuable, though marred by much unsupported conjecture: _A Biographical
+Chronicle of the English Drama_, 1559-1642, 2 vols. (1891); _A Chronicle
+History of the London Stage_, 1559-1642 (1890); _A Chronicle History of the
+Life and Work of William Shakespeare_ (1886). The first-named is the most
+reliable and useful of the three. Original documents and records are
+printed in part in Collier and Fleay; and in Halliwell-Phillipps's
+_Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_ (6th ed., 1886); Malone's _Variorum_
+ed. of Shakespeare, 1821; Cunningham's _Extracts from the Annals of the
+Revels at Court_, Shakespeare Society, 1842; Nichols's _The Progresses and
+Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth_, 3 vols., 1823; _Aussere Geschichte
+der englischen Theatertruppen_, 1559-1642, by Hermann Maas (Materialien zur
+Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas, 1907); Hazlitt's _English Drama and
+Stage_ (1869); Chamber's _Notes on the Revels Office_ (1906). The essays of
+Gosson, Sidney, Webbe, Puttenham, which supply most of the dramatic
+criticism of the period, are in Arber's Reprints; selections from these and
+other critical works with an introduction are collected in _Elizabethan
+Critical Essays_, G. Gregory Smith (1904). J. W. Cunliffe's edition of
+Gascoigne's _Posies_ (1907) contains the plays, which he has also edited
+with an introduction in _The Belles-Lettres Series_ (1906). A study of
+Legge's _Richardus Tertius_ is found in G. B. Churchill's _Richard III up
+to Shakespeare_ (Berlin, 1906); and an account of the Latin university
+plays in the article cited, by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller (_Shakspere
+Jahrbuch_, 1898). W. W. Greg's _A List of English Plays written before 1643
+and printed before 1700_ (London Bibliographical Society) is based on the
+title-pages of the original copies. Fleay's _Biographical Chronicle_
+includes all plays known, extant or not. Greg, Fleay, and Schelling
+supersede Halliwell-Phillipps's _Dictionary of Old English Plays_ (1860),
+and W. C. Hazlitt's _Manual of Old English Plays_ (1892). _English Drama, a
+Working Basis_, by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, Wellesley College (1895),
+is the only attempt at a directory to modern editions, and though very
+incomplete, is the most serviceable guide to the whole field of English
+drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Before the first act, "there came in upon the stage a king with an
+Imperiall Crowne upon his head ... sitting in a chariot very richely
+furnished, drawne in by foure kinges in their dublettes and hosen, with
+crownes upon their heades, representing unto us ambition," etc. And before
+the fifth act there is a similar exhibition of a woman in a chariot driving
+kings and slaves. These shows may have suggested to Marlowe the famous
+business of Tamburlaine and his chariot. The show before act ii introduces
+the paraphernalia of coffins and a grave, afterwards so frequent in popular
+tragedy.
+
+[3] The earlier version also survives in MS. and has been published by
+Professor Brandl in his _Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas_. The revised
+version is the result of elaborate care and reflects more highly developed
+dramatic conditions than existed in the sixties, but in some respects it
+may be closer to the original performance than is the manuscript. The songs
+of the chorus, now four maids of Gismunda's instead of four gentlemen of
+Salerne, and the dumb shows must have had some equivalents in the
+presentation before the Queen, though both are wanting in the earlier
+version. The dumb shows are noteworthy because, unlike those in _Gorboduc_
+and _Jocasta_, they are not allegorical, but represent important actions
+described or referred to in the text.
+
+[4] _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_, ii, 471.
+
+[5] For a list of Latin plays acted at the universities, see Fleay,
+_Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, vol. ii, 347-366. This list
+must be corrected in many particulars by an article, "Die Lateinischen
+Universitäts-Dramen in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth," by
+George B. Churchill and Wolfgang Keller, _Jahrbuch der Deutschen
+Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, xxxiv, 220-323.
+
+[6] Far more novel than any of the plays discussed in its departures from
+Senecan precedent, is _Perfidus Hetruscus_. So far as can be judged from
+the outline (_Jahrbuch_, xxxiv, 250-252), it offers no semblance of Senecan
+structure. There is no chorus, but there are six ghosts, a villain, two
+accomplices,--one a Capuchin, the other a Jesuit,--and an elaborate plot,
+as full of surprises as of poisonings. It seems to be a popular revenge
+play turned into Latin, and can hardly come within our period.
+
+[7] One play should be mentioned here as standing in some ways between the
+classical and popular plays. _Promus and Cassandra_, by George Whetstone,
+published 1578, cannot be placed in any of our four classes, for there is
+no evidence that it was ever acted. Like _Tancred and Gismunda_, it was
+based on an Italian _novella_, also the source of _Measure for Measure_,
+and it follows Latin comedy rather than tragedy. In its division into five
+acts, its frequent soliloquies, its attempted observance of decorum
+(especially vaunted in the preface), and in its serious purpose and moral
+sentiments, the play shows a pedantic clinging to classicism. In the main,
+however, it belongs with _Damon and Pithias_ and _Appius and Virginia_, and
+seems to have been intended for performance by children. It is a mixture of
+tragedy, comedy, farce, and songs; and this abundance of incongruous
+material seems to have led to its division into two plays, as Whetstone
+says, for the purpose of decorum. Here, as elsewhere in the period, the
+experiment of putting new material into old dramatic structures burst the
+bottles. Clowns, parasites, tyrants, prostitutes, hangmen, Egyptians, and
+girls in boys' clothing make up a pageant which is a sort of tragicomedy
+but which the learned author called by the more popular title, "a history."
+
+[8] _Ariodante and Genevra_ (_Orlando Furioso_), _Ajax and Ulysses_,
+_Agamemnon and Ulysses_, _Cæsar and Pompey_, _Cloridon and Radimanta_ _Duke
+of Milan_, _Effigenia_ (_Iphigenia_), _Four Sons of Fabius_, _Mutius
+Scævola_, _Quintus Fabius_, _Perseus and Andromeda_, _Sarpedon_, _Scipio
+Africanus_, _Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes_, _Telemo_, _Twelve Labors of
+Hercules_. Some titles suggesting medieval romance are: _Knight of the
+Burning Bush_, _Red Knight_, _Paris and Vienna_, _Solitary Knight_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MARLOWE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
+
+
+The growing national consciousness that reached its triumphant culmination
+in the defeat of Spain made itself felt in the drama, specifically in
+efforts to present the glories of English history, and still more potently
+in an awakened responsiveness to the new fields and new incentives for
+artistic ambition. The beginning of the greatness of the national drama is
+significantly coincident with the victory over the Armada. By that time the
+spirit of noble endeavor had found lodgment in every worthy breast. It
+animated Marlowe no less than Drake, and the author of the least successful
+chronicle play as well as admiral or counselor. The extraordinary
+achievements that had been contributing to the might of England as a
+political power were, indeed, but one expression of the freedom and
+eagerness of individual initiative that characterized this English
+Renaissance and found other expression in the activities and
+accomplishments of literature. In comparison with the men of preceding
+generations, the Elizabethan Englishman faced a world of new horizons, new
+ideas, boundless opportunities, and alluring rewards. Every career was open
+and promised an untrod pathway and unworn laurels. He might win fame as a
+pirate, philosopher, or poet; or in the new excitement of living he might
+crowd not one but many careers into the span of life. The versatility of a
+Raleigh only typifies the excitement and energy of deed, the lively
+movement of thought which quickened mind and body, and resulted, now in a
+voyage to Virginia, now in a conspiracy, now in a sonnet, and now in a
+history of the universe. And this feverishness to make trial of thronging
+opportunities was symptomatic not only of vigor of intellect, celerity of
+emotion, and independence of will, but also of an imaginative idealism that
+enlightened the daily living of many a sorry citizen, and was destined to
+live resplendent in the verses of Spenser and Shakespeare. In the stir of
+free ideas, the surprise of discovery, and the glow of accomplishment, life
+grew heroic, attainment seemed easy, and no ideals too lofty for the
+scaling ladders of human aspiration. Men achieved much and they dreamt of
+more. The apprentice went to the theatre to don Fortunatus's cap or to
+triumph with Tamburlaine; every one had his El Dorado distant only a short
+voyage; and, with the new world before them, poets and playwrights set sail
+in blithe confidence of splendid discovery. Never before, or perhaps since,
+have so many new things seemed within grasp, whether in literature or in
+life; never has all living so throbbed with a sense of the nearness of the
+unattainable, the kinship of the real and the ideal.
+
+In non-dramatic literature the incentives of the classics and of the
+Italians from Petrarch to Tasso had led on from translations and imitations
+to experiments and inventions. In the dozen years before the Armada, lyric
+poetry, criticism, and prose fiction had felt the stir of successful
+English innovation, and the time was almost ripe for the vast projects of
+Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon. In comedy the development had been earlier and
+more rapid than in tragedy, and had already in Peele and Lyly reached the
+stage of dexterous expression and varied innovation. Whether presenting a
+story of classical mythology or of medieval romance, whether farcical,
+Plautian, pastoral, sentimental, satirical, or spectacular, comedy was by
+the time of Marlowe ready with its examples to offer instruction to any
+writer attempting tragic themes. Tragedy could hardly remain longer in the
+stage of translation, imitation, and feeble experiment which we have been
+considering.
+
+Still further, a stimulus for tragedy was exercised by the daily events of
+that active era. These stirred men's imagination and ambition, and must
+almost inevitably have directed artistic impulse toward the heroic, the
+passionate, and the terrible. The abundance of bloodshed in Elizabethan
+tragedy may find some interpretation in the fact that Ben Jonson killed his
+man in a duel and that Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The time was
+one of bloodshed, violence, quick and brutal passion; a time in which the
+torture of a Gloster or the revenge of a Shylock was far closer to life, to
+the life at least of poets and dramatists, than such stories are to-day.
+Drake in his cabin drinking and praying with the unmoved lieutenant whom he
+was to hang the next day is a bit of fact that rivals in horror the
+devilries of a Barabas. Even if Seneca's example had not already approved
+themes of adultery, murder, blood-vengeance, the atrocities of tyranny, and
+the deadly strife of father and son, such themes must have stirred men's
+minds in the days of the Massacre of St. Bartholemew and the career of Mary
+Stuart. If tradition had not already selected the falls of princes as the
+especial field for tragedy, the history of monarchical Europe in the
+sixteenth century must have given such stories a power of appeal hardly to
+be appreciated now. In that strenuous generation the dramatist must have
+found artistic impulses from bloody and gruesome deeds, and no less from
+daring ambition, heroic struggle, and indomitable greatness of mind.
+
+The summons, however, which the tragic muse heeded came directly from the
+public theatres and the professional actors. The university men who at this
+time were writing for the theatre under the lash and loans of a
+slave-driving theatrical manager may have been tempted to forget that their
+sordid and Bohemian existence offered a means for triumphant artistic
+expression. The London theatres were now well established, patronized by
+the courtiers, and secured in prosperity by the motley audiences that
+crowded their performances. They had become important centres in the social
+life of the time, comparable to the newspaper offices of a
+twentieth-century city in their close touch with the daily life about them;
+and in their task of affording amusement and information fulfilling in part
+the functions of periodicals and novels as well as of the drama at
+present. The stage, without scenery, was still in a transition state
+between the medieval and modern, and, to our view, almost unrealizably
+crude. Places were sometimes indicated by signs; properties, beds, tables,
+or trees were brought on or off as occasion required; or, a heavier
+property, like a cave, might remain whether the scene was in cave-land or a
+counting-room. There was no drop curtain; actors went off, others came on,
+and the place changed from a seacoast to the palace; or, the actors merely
+moved across the platform, and it transpired that they had passed from "a
+fair and pleasant green" to a room in the house of Faustus. At the close of
+a tragedy all the survivors might be needed to bear off the bodies of the
+dead. A balcony in the rear of the stage stood in stead of a castle wall or
+the deck of a ship, while a curtained space below might represent an inner
+room or a dungeon vault. A curtain extending across the stage seems at
+times to have been used in managing a change of scene. Spectacular elements
+were not lacking: fireworks, ascents and descents of gods, armies,
+coronations, and battles delighted the eye. On costume, anachronistic but
+elaborate, the manager lavished his money and ingenuity. Cleopatra tightly
+laced, Tamburlaine in scarlet copper breeches are recorded facts, but
+Venuses, Apollos, mermaids, devils, satyrs, and nymphs leave something for
+fancy to conceive, as does the "gown to go invisible in" which perhaps
+shielded Ariel or Puck. Of the acting we have little information. Female
+parts were played by boys; clowns with their jigs were great favorites,
+but a considerable skill in acting must be supposed,--less subtle, less
+occupied with stage business than to-day, more declamatory possibly, and
+more attentive to the spoken word. Any superiority in the appreciation
+possessed by the audiences over those of to-day must be attributed not to
+their superior intelligence, but to their long training in listening to
+plays. They probably differed from uneducated audiences in the cheaper
+theatres of to-day chiefly, if at all, in spontaneity of emotions, a desire
+for emotional incongruity, and a cultivated delight in verbal fireworks or
+felicities. It is certain that in the time of Marlowe they were gaping for
+sensation and joyed in a comedy of beatings, a tragedy of murders, and a
+mixture of jigging and villany. For such audiences, for such a stage, under
+stress of immediate demand requiring hasty and collaborative work, Marlowe
+and his contemporaries wrote. They were hack writers, and so viewed by the
+literati of their day. Every one of them, Shakespeare included, had in the
+first place to satisfy the demands of the public theatres. This needs to be
+remembered no less than the fact that the plays of nearly all, of the
+meanest hack as well as Shakespeare, seem to have felt the stir and thrill
+of the effort to express thought in enduring words.
+
+In the course of the six or seven years ending with Marlowe's death in
+1593, tragedy experienced a rapid and multiform development. The various
+influences already noticed in the last chapter as at work were developed
+by the ingenuity and innovation of a dozen writers, and translated into the
+expression of individual genius by Marlowe and Shakespeare. No theory of
+tragedy ruled the theatres; no school of dramatists adopted any code of
+principles; the plays which we class as tragedies were mostly known as
+histories and were written in violence to the accepted literary conception.
+Nevertheless, tragedy was establishing itself as a popular species of
+drama, was separating its themes and their treatment clearly from those of
+comedy, and was defining the course which it was to follow until the
+Puritan revolution.
+
+The impossibility of determining a precise chronology of the stage history
+of the period renders the exact appraisal of indebtedness, or the tracing
+of any certain evolution, very insecure. The changes in the companies in
+1594 and the consequent publication of a large number of plays in the same
+year enable us to fix on a number of tragedies acted before Marlowe's
+death, and we may safely add a few others as not later than 1595. Among
+these extant tragedies and in the names of those that have not survived
+there are representatives of various types,--biblical plays, tragedies
+dealing with romantic love, domestic tragedies telling stories of
+contemporary crimes. In any one of these plays, indeed, various types may
+be combined; the writers were concerned with telling stories, not with
+_l'évolution des genres_. But the most salient and pervasive forces working
+in tragedy may be roughly denominated as (1) the chronicle history play,
+(2) the revenge type of tragedy, (3) the type of tragedy created by
+Marlowe. To these should perhaps be added romantic comedy with its
+idealized love story and its element of averted tragedy. But the first
+three types, though overlapping and not distinct, were of marked importance
+in the history of tragedy and need especial consideration in connection
+with the most important dramatists of this period, Peele, Kyd, Marlowe, and
+Shakespeare.
+
+The chronicle history play may claim attention first, not because it was
+demonstrably earlier in appearance than the others, but because it engaged
+the efforts of nearly every dramatic writer of the period, and because in
+its disregard of foreign influence or parallel in its methods and
+structure, and in its devotion to the demands of the London theatres, it is
+most typical of the drama of the period. The prime essential of a play was
+that it should tell a story. A playwright took his material from _novella_,
+poem, or chronicle, and strove to translate it into an interesting and
+varied series of scenes. In the chronicles he found material peculiarly
+suited to such translation. Everything was there,--battles, coronations,
+counsels, conspiracies, amours, speeches, characterization, and sentiments.
+No enlargement was necessary as in the case of a _novella_, no
+considerations of consistency of characterization, few incidents in
+addition to those in the highway or the byways of the narrative, and only a
+minimum of invention. The interest of a distinct plot was superseded by
+that of historical persons, events, and spectacles, and these compelled
+only such unity as might be secured by taking the reign of one monarch as
+the basis of a play, or sometimes of several plays. The presentation of
+history involved a large number of persons on the stage, many changes of
+place, a long stretch of time, and an incongruity of matter, all this
+loosely organized into scenes themselves often long and varied and
+admitting some change of place and lapse of time within their bounds.
+Though the scene, rather than the act, was the unit in popular drama, it
+had almost no structural value. A play was really a continuous performance,
+the actors coming and going, a battle intervening, and now and then a
+withdrawal of all the actors and the appearance of a new group presaging a
+marked change of place or the beginning of an entirely different action. In
+the arrangement of scenes, however, some attention to parallel, contrast,
+and climax soon became manifest; and some integration of the confused
+material from the chronicles, particularly in the separation from scenes
+abounding in action of those purely narrative or expository and those
+purely lyrical, chiefly lamentations. In spite of such beginnings of
+system, the early chronicle plays, "The Famous Victories of Henry V," "Jack
+Straw," "Leir," "Edward I," and "The Troublesome Reign" are less coherent
+in structure, more incongruous in material, and less regardful of any clear
+fable, tragic or comic, than are other contemporary plays.
+
+To determine criteria to define these plays and their successors as a class
+is by no means easy. They were usually based on the chronicles, but the
+method of composition just described was applied to legend or poem with
+similar results, and there were also plays based on chronicles of
+contemporary events. They had for their main purpose the presentation of
+history, but this was shared by plays on French and Roman as well as
+English history, and there were historical plays that had no marks of the
+chronicle method of structure. The English chronicle plays usually show a
+pronounced patriotic temper, but this is often subsidiary and neglected in
+the desire for farce or sensation. The spectacular features are a
+characteristic element, a battle-scene being perhaps the most indispensable
+element or ingredient of a chronicle play, but this again fails to supply
+even more than a superficial criterion. In the popularity of the
+presentations of historical facts, all kinds of stories were worked over
+into a likeness to "true chronicle history," and the genuine historical,
+legendary, and biographical plays are hardly distinguishable from the
+pretenders. An illuminating illustration of the characteristics of the
+national drama about 1590 can be found in a comparison of two dramatic
+versions of a romance in Cinthio's "Hecatommithi," one by Cinthio himself,
+the other by Robert Greene. The Italian play is a tragicomedy in strict
+Senecan form, in which Arrenopia (Greene's Dorothea) appears as a
+declamatory queen confiding her troubles to the attendant nurse. Greene
+took the romantic comedy, added some pseudo-historical events, patriotic
+sentiments, and a pitched field for the finale, and called the whole "The
+Scottish Historie of James IV, slaine at Flodden." For our purpose the
+chronicle plays are to be regarded less as a distinct type than as
+representing a set of practices in vogue at this period and widely
+influential on the drama's development. They possessed the following
+characteristics and imposed some or all of them on very different forms of
+drama: subjects drawn from English history, the presentation of historical
+and political events, an incongruous mixture of material, a narrative
+structure almost as unorganized as the chronicles themselves, patriotic
+sentiments, and the stage pageantry of court and camp.
+
+From their earliest appearance, however, the chronicle plays offered
+opportunities for developments later consummated by Shakespeare. Comic
+scenes were freely interspersed to enliven the tedium of royal
+declamations, and in these lay the possibility of the combination of
+history and comedy in the Falstaff plays. On the other hand, the history of
+a doleful fall of a prince or the retribution visited on some tyrant gave
+the plays a tragic tone and opened the way for "Macbeth" and "Lear." "The
+Troublesome Reign of King John,"[9] the basis of Shakespeare's play, is the
+best example of an early chronicle play presenting undeveloped
+possibilities for tragedy. It is written partly in blank verse, partly in
+rhyme, and partly in prose. It does not follow the chronicles with any
+fidelity, but twists history, adds fiction, and proclaims throughout a
+vigorous protestant patriotism. Battles, embassies, farce, orations, death,
+and much else mingle together, each scene being treated like another and no
+discernible method being followed in their arrangement or proportion,
+except that of a loose adherence to the scheme of "a life and death." The
+first part closes with John crowned and assured of the miscarriage of his
+intended murder of Arthur; in the second part, as the address to the reader
+declares,
+
+    "First scenes shows Arthur's death in infancie,
+    And last concludes John's fatall tragedie."
+
+"The Troublesome Reign" indicates what little advance had been made toward
+tragedy when Marlowe's first play appeared. The prologue to that play was a
+declaration of reform and innovation.
+
+    "From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
+    And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
+    We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,
+    Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
+    Threatening the world with high astounding terms,
+    And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword."
+
+The doggerel rhyme favored in the popular drama was to give place to blank
+verse, and the jigging clowns to heroic themes and "high astounding terms."
+Marlowe came to the theatre,[10] fresh from the university, his fancy
+aflame with the beauty of Latin verse and story, his mind storming with the
+problems and ambitions of adolescent genius. He threw aside Senecan
+traditions and devoted himself to meeting the demands of the professional
+stage. When a few years later he died, English tragedy had been created
+anew largely through his achievement.
+
+His independence and initiative are shown in his choice of subjects.
+Although in "Dido" he took a standard theme of humanistic tragedy, and in
+the Henry VI plays and "Edward II" followed the prevailing taste for
+English history, and in "The Massacre of Paris" another fashion for the
+dramatization of current atrocities; yet in "Tamburlaine" he chose the
+story of a world conqueror, in "Faustus" a legend that had just entered
+print in the German "Volksbuch" of 1587, and in "The Jew of Malta" he
+worked over unknown sources into a tragedy of revenge with evident freedom
+of invention. All three stories present notable contributions to tragic
+themes, and the last two disregard both the fashion for historical subjects
+and the requirement that tragedy deal only with princes. These new and
+varied themes gave a chance for a considerable revolution in the content of
+tragedy. Revenge, murders, battles, intrigue, physical horrors are still
+prominent; but the Senecan round of incest and adultery disappears, and the
+"Mirror for Magistrates" no longer represents the epitome of tragic action.
+Marlowe's choice and treatment of plots seem, indeed, dictated by a new
+conception of tragedy, as dealing not merely with a life and death, or a
+bloody crime, or a reversal of fortune, but with the heroic struggle of a
+great personality, doomed to inevitable defeat. "Tamburlaine" is scarcely a
+tragedy at all, but rather a chronicle of the hero's greatness; but in
+"Faustus" and "The Jew" heroes with ambitions boundless and passionate like
+Tamburlaine's are overwhelmed in the end by the inexorable destiny of human
+weakness. In "Edward II," where the hero is less dominant over the action,
+the study of historical facts results in a more restrained, more human
+presentation of the same theme, a ruling passion drawing the protagonist to
+pitiful defeat.
+
+In the structure of his plots Marlowe forsook the Senecan models and began
+with the methods of the chronicle play. "Tamburlaine" is a chronicle
+history, presenting the story of the events of a life and ending with
+death. Originally the play contained comic scenes, omitted in the published
+form and evidently of no value in structure or conception. Without these
+there is enough of a medley, though the amazing succession of conquests,
+defiances, murders, harangues, battles, funerals, wooings, and horrors is
+arranged with considerable skill. There is manifest regard for contrast in
+the alternating exhibitions of Tamburlaine's power and his enemies'
+weakness; his love for Zenocrate, an addition to the source, is integrated
+with the main story of conquest; and in Part I the climactical arrangement
+is emphasized by the division into acts. Each act comprises an important
+stage in Tamburlaine's career, act v presenting the culmination in the
+suicide of the Turkish emperor and empress, the conquest of Arabia,
+Zenocrate's former betrothed, and the submission of her conquered father to
+her marriage with Tamburlaine. Part II, the prologue implies, was an
+afterthought due to the popularity of Part I. The climax is carried on
+somewhat loosely up to the harnessing of the jades of Asia; but the
+reversal of fortune, though developed in the death of Zenocrate, the
+unworthiness of the eldest son, and the approach of death to Tamburlaine,
+is not given effective emphasis. Tamburlaine's death is merely the end of
+the play, not a tragic catastrophe. Epical and crude though their structure
+is, the two plays possess a firmer organization and a greater unity than
+any preceding popular tragedy. Everything centres in the protagonist; he
+keeps the middle of the stage; his towering passion and incessant
+declamation fix one's attention; episodes like the deaths of the Turks or
+of Olympia hardly divert the mind from his titanic personality.
+
+A similar unity governs the structure of "Faustus" and "The Jew." In each
+there are many actions, some comic, instead of one serious action, and the
+history of a lifetime instead of a great emotional crisis; but in each the
+dominant figure and the course of his controlling passion impose a certain
+unity of structure. Both begin with soliloquies, revealing the protagonists
+at the height of fortune and about to face crises in their careers; and it
+is significant of the increased importance given to inner conflict that
+reflective soliloquies, neglected in "Tamburlaine," play a considerable
+part, especially in "Faustus." In both plays there is also advance in the
+clear conception of catastrophe, which now controls the structure. In "The
+Jew" his thwarted lust for gold drives him through a series of villanous
+triumphs over difficulties until he is melodramatically hoist with his own
+petard. In "Faustus" the choice of the devilish magic leads through
+apparent success, past opportunities for repentance, to final remorse and
+damnation. In both plays, the domination of the protagonist by a passion,
+its conflicting joys and sorrows, and its final failure become points for
+emphasis. The history of a life thus becomes organized into a tragedy.
+
+In "Edward II," Marlowe's masterpiece in structure as in other respects,
+there is an absence of comedy, for which he seems to have had no aptitude,
+and adherence to the chronicles is governed by his maturing sense of the
+structural principles which should proportion the tragic story. Twenty
+years of confusion are condensed into five acts which attain dramatic
+organization not only under the direction of the central personality and
+the inevitable catastrophe, but also from the skillful handling of the
+counter-force. The play begins with a salient manifestation in the recall
+of Gaveston of the passion which is to be the king's downfall. The
+hazardous combination of the two similar careers of Gaveston and Spenser is
+adroitly managed; it develops the central theme of Edward's weakness and
+brings into active conflict the counter-force of the barons under the
+leadership of Mortimer. The alternating triumph and discomfiture of the
+king in his struggle with the barons leads to the climax of their
+humiliation at the end of act iii; and thus the turning-point of the action
+is given an emphasis not found in earlier plays. Henceforth the
+counter-force is in the ascendant, and the catastrophe is realized with a
+tremendous power that justifies Lamb's extravagance: "the death scene of
+Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern
+with which I am acquainted." The play, to be sure, has many faults of
+structure. It is the product of an immature period of the drama and of
+crude theatrical conditions; but it indicates clearly how Marlowe was
+developing tragic movement out of the confused narratives of the
+chronicles, and was giving to a presentation of diverse and crowded actions
+principles not altogether unlike those that Aristotle had found in the
+Attic drama.
+
+It should be added that the manifest excellences of the dramatic treatment
+lie less in the structure of any one play as a whole than in the handling
+of the separate scenes. These have, of course, the peculiarities of the
+popular stage and the chronicle plays. Events are sometimes reported by an
+intercalary narrative like scene ii, act i, of "Edward II," which consists
+of four lines by Gaveston, announcing that the nobles have gone to Lambeth,
+and four words of reply by Kent. Soliloquies are often used to explain
+action or character. In the task of translating incident into dramatic
+situation, however, Marlowe had the advantages of centuries of dramatic
+practice and the traditions of tragic acting, and his genius often worked
+with facility and power. These qualities are most manifest in the death
+scenes. Olympia, Bajazeth, Zabina, Zenocrate, all die with at least stage
+effectiveness; and in the deaths of Faustus and Edward, Marlowe's dramatic
+power reached its highest mark. Death, synonymous with tragic catastrophe,
+was revealed to future dramatists as something more than physical horror or
+the end of existence. Death became the loss of active and glorious living,
+the negation of individual power, the expiring struggle of the drama of
+life, its last defiance and its most irresistible appeal to pity and
+terror.
+
+Characterization, like conception and structure, in Marlowe's tragedy is
+largely an affair of the protagonist. Minor figures are for the most part
+mere sketches without any sustained and consistent delineation. Only in
+"Edward II" does the antagonist receive much attention, and only in that
+play is the character of the tragic hero free from lapses into caricature
+and absurdity. The protagonists, as in many tragedies before and since, are
+evil men intent on evil deeds. They appeal to our sympathy only in
+misfortune and disaster; in more fortunate circumstances they run counter
+to moral laws and excite a mixture of admiration, horror, and even
+contempt. Tamburlaine the atheist and Faust the dealer in magic invited a
+greater condemnation in every Christian then than now. Barabas is
+conceived, under the inspiration of Machiavelli and perhaps also of stage
+practice, as an intriguing villain with all the accompaniments ever since
+familiar in drama and fiction. He is the source of all evil and utterly
+without conscience; he avows his villany to the audience and he works by
+crafty intrigue with the aid of an equally conscienceless accomplice.
+Edward II, on the other hand, is of the type of tyrants, weak, vacillating,
+and self-indulgent, and he offers the difficult dramatic problem of a
+protagonist who is sometimes contemptible and must sometimes be heroic and
+pitiful. Marlowe's conception of a tragic hero, however, transcended any
+outlines furnished by his sources or any stage types such as villain and
+tyrant. He conceived his heroes first of all as men capable of great
+passions, consumed by their desires, abandoned to the pursuit of their
+lusts, whether they led to glory, butchery, loss of kingdom, or eternal
+damnation. This intensity of emotion gives them an elevation and a heroic
+interest that outlasts contemptibility or pathos. Nor are they without
+representational value. They linger in the mind as men, absurd,
+exaggerated, monstrous at times, but appealingly human in moments when
+their passion rings true, and impressively typical of the eternal struggle
+of passion and desire against the fixed limits of human attainment. It is
+in the realization of their emotions that the plays secure their great
+impressiveness. Tragedy has become not the presentation of history, myth,
+or events of any sort, but the presentation of the passionate struggle and
+pitiful defeat of an extraordinary human being.
+
+Genuine human passion and a vital conception of life's tragedy found
+expression in verse, sometimes inspired, sometimes absurd, but always
+spontaneous and unfaltering. Blank verse, borrowed from Italy and adopted
+in English Senecan plays, now became a new instrument, and its preëminent
+adaptability for tragic poetry henceforth long remained unquestioned. If it
+has had many greater masters since, it had none comparable before, and, in
+spite of stiffness, monotony, and great unevenness, it rises now and again
+to remarkable technical excellence. It is _sui generis_, without known
+models, though it gathers to itself many of the prevailing characteristics
+of Renaissance poetry. It has plenty of Senecan hyperbole, but curiously
+little of Senecan antithesis or aphorism; it abounds in rant and bombast;
+it is over-adorned with classical allusion; it delights in ornament and
+sonority; and in the main it is declamatory and lyrical rather than
+dramatically suited to character and situation. Again, it is mannered and
+often monotonous, especially in "Tamburlaine," where the repetition of
+names and the recurrence of polysyllabic words at the ends of lines give
+the familiar swing:--
+
+    "To ride in triumph through Persepolis"....
+
+    "Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate"....
+
+    "Then shall my native city, Samarcanda."
+
+Yet the lover of romantic poetry will find delight in the very impetuosity
+of the rant, the thunder of the declamation, the roll of the proper names,
+the color and pageantry of the descriptions, the occasional loveliness of
+the luxurious classicism, and yet more in the splendid surges of the verse
+to reveal the turmoil and anguish of passionate death. From the first
+moment Marlowe was an undoubted poet; and to his tremendous facility of
+words and rhythm he was adding, as "Edward II" reveals, a moderation of
+ornament, an evenness of power, and a dramatic consistency, while still
+retaining the potentiality of dazzling dramatic flash. He brought not only
+blank verse but poetry to the English drama, and the greatness of its style
+dates from his achievement.
+
+We must not, however, in the poet forget the playwright, or lose sight of
+Marlowe's contributions to the purely theatrical side of the drama.
+"Tamburlaine" set a standard in stage effects as well as in poetry. Kings
+and sultans appear in droves, crowns are handed about like toys, treaties
+are torn, cities stormed, battles fought. Frequently eight or ten
+chieftains crowd the stage with their trains. The tents of the conqueror
+are pitched and changed from white to red and then to black as the
+beleaguered city continues to withstand his power. An emperor and empress
+dash out their brains against the bars of their cages. Tamburlaine drives
+the bridled monarchs harnessed to his chariot. Two bodies are burnt; there
+are murders by the dozen; and there is a solemn funeral scene where the
+hearse advances in the light of a burning town. The popular stage had
+probably never seen such a spectacle before. In "Faustus" new and even more
+surprising stage effects are supplied to illustrate the wonders of magic.
+In "The Jew of Malta" there is a display of plots and atrocities which the
+plays of the next thirty years strove in vain to surpass. Apart from these
+spectacular elements, it is obvious that the characterization and
+declamation, in fact the very structure of the plays, were designed to
+supply full opportunity for the acting of Edward Alleyn. He was nearly
+seven feet tall, we are told, the greatest actor of his day, and especially
+skilled in majestic parts. So to him, perhaps, as well as to Marlowe's
+conception of tragedy, was due the one-part play, the sonorous lines, and
+the passionate protagonists.
+
+Such considerations recall the double purpose, hardly separable from the
+drama and particularly manifest in the Elizabethan dramatists, the two
+desires, to please their audiences and to create literature. The spectacle,
+bombast, and horrors, the new and startling stories of Marlowe's plays were
+certainly intended to win his public, and they probably caused no twinges
+to his artistic conscience. On the other hand, while hardly an element of
+the dramas is without the influence of theatrical conditions, and while of
+deliberate artistic theories there is little evidence, yet the study of
+character, the underlying conceptions, the maturing power of structure, as
+well as the beauty and wisdom of separate passages, reveal a mind of
+intellectual and emotional profundity seeking to give noble expression to
+the things in life that impressed him most vividly. In the traffic of the
+stage the young poet found a chance to study men and their motives, to seek
+"the immortal flowers of poetry," and to utter something of his own
+experience and view of life. Into the rapid translation of stories for the
+stage he threw his own conception of the rewards and defeats of an
+overmastering passion, of the glory of struggle, and the pity and terror of
+failure. In the further development of the drama, his influence continued
+not only in his series of tragedies forming a fairly definite type, but
+also as that of an inspiring personality.
+
+    "Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,
+    Had in him those brave translunary things
+    That the first poets had; his raptures were
+    All air and fire, which made his verses clere;
+    For that fine madnes still he did retaine,
+    Which rightly should possess a poet's braine."
+
+                    DRAYTON: _Epistle to Henry Reynolds._
+
+The influence upon the drama of Marlowe's whilom friend, Thomas Kyd, was
+not due to his personality, concerning which recently discovered documents
+create no very favorable impression, or to any remarkable poetic genius,
+but to a single play and the type of tragedy which it fathered. "The
+Spanish Tragedy,"[11] entered in the Stationers' Register, 1592, and
+probably acted at about the same time as "Tamburlaine," and earlier than
+Marlowe's other plays, was the first representative of this type of revenge
+tragedies, and it gained an immediate and lasting popularity, though after
+a time encountering the ridicule of Jonson and later dramatists. The story
+of revenge had already appeared in "Horestes" and in Latin plays at the
+universities; and theme, ghost, treatment, and structure were derived from
+Seneca by Kyd and adapted with great originality to the popular drama. At
+least, no other dramatist has as good a claim to be considered the creator
+of a species of tragedy that had a long series of representatives even
+after its culmination in Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
+
+The main theme of the play is revenge of a father for a son, superintended
+by a ghost; and this theme attaches to itself other motives important both
+here and in their later developments. The revenge is delayed by hesitation
+on the part of Hieronimo, who finds his task a difficult one and requires
+much proof and superabundant deliberation to spur his irresolution into
+activity. Madness is another accompaniment of the main theme; the second
+title of the 1602 quarto, "Old Hieronimo mad againe," indicating how
+important it was in the stage presentation. Hieronimo pretends madness, and
+his pretended madness often passes into real melancholy and distraction.
+Isabella, his wife, is driven by insanity to suicide. Intrigue used both
+against and by the avenger is another important element; the villain is a
+machinator and Hieronimo finally accomplishes his revenge by means of
+dissimulation and trickery. According to both Senecan and national
+precedents, vengeance moves in a pathway of blood; ten of the _dramatis
+personae_, innocent and guilty alike, pass to "the loathsome pool of
+Acheron," and the final slaughter leaves five bodies to be borne from the
+stage. Intrigue and slaughter characterize most of the tragedies of this
+period, notably "The Jew of Malta," but the ghost-directed revenge,
+hesitation, insanity, and the meditative soliloquies distinguished more
+specifically the Kydian species. In spite of the medley of intrigue and
+carnage, there is introduced, after Senecan fashion, much philosophizing
+and introspection. Meditations on fate, revenge, suicide, and similar
+subjects play a large part in the development of the story and are most
+frequently given the form of soliloquies. Hieronimo's inner struggle is
+revealed in lonely communings, now in defense, now in bitter condemnation
+of his delay.
+
+The structure is an interesting adaptation of Senecan and popular
+characteristics. The play does not confine itself to the last phase of an
+action, and it introduces various actions introductory or subsidiary to
+that of the revenge, and a mixture of comedy. Moreover, everything is
+represented on the stage with the freedom established in the popular drama.
+On the other hand, there is much exposition by means of narrative, and
+Revenge and the ghost of Andrea appear, after Senecan fashion, as a
+prologue, and after each act as a sort of vestigial chorus. While there is
+a surplus of violent and external action, the epic, lyric, and reflective
+scenes picture an inner conflict and supply both aphorisms and a searching
+psychology. When late in the play Hieronimo's revenge for his son is
+finally started, it has to contend with both his own hesitation and the
+intrigues of the villain. Its development, in comparison with "Hamlet," is
+absurdly faulty because of Kyd's failure to make clear from the start the
+character of the avenger; but, if it is studied as a first attempt to give
+structure to a complex theme, the vicissitudes of Hieronimo's irresolution
+and frenzy will seem carefully designed and strikingly prophetic of the
+course of Hamlet's struggle.
+
+Kyd's skill in devising stage situations is shown by the dramatic value and
+lasting effect on the public of the scene in which Hieronimo is called from
+his naked bed to discover the body of his son hanging in the arbor, or of
+the scene in which, offering a handkerchief to the weeping Senex, he draws
+forth the bloody napkin which he has kept as a reminder of his son's death.
+The play within the play, used here as a means of revenge; the scenes in
+which Isabella "runs lunatick"; the laments and final exultation of the
+ghost; the exhibition of the body of Horatio after the mock play, found
+later imitators and became usual accessories of revenge tragedies. Indeed,
+minor bits of stage business, as the wearing of black, the swearing by the
+cross of the sword, the capture of the accomplice by the watch, the reading
+of a book before a soliloquy, the falling on the ground as an expression of
+grief, though not the inventions of Kyd, were given their later vogue
+partly through the popularity of this play.
+
+Some of the types of character represented also appear again and again in
+later plays. Lorenzo is the villain par excellence; his accomplice is
+grotesque as well as evil; and Bel Imperia, both prettily sentimental and
+desperately revengeful, is of a type not uncommon in later tragedy. The
+character of Hieronimo, rudely as it is drawn, is not without subtlety of
+conception. This type of tragic hero, very different from Marlowe's,
+naturally good and noble, meditative by temperament, driven to melancholy
+and madness by the responsibility forced on him by crime, and at length
+accomplishing direful revenge through trickery and irony, is manifestly a
+precursor of Hamlet. Kyd's style justifies Nash's description, "whole
+handfulls of tragical speeches" and "a blank verse bodged up with ifs and
+ands." It displays the rhetorician rather than the poet and, like his
+conception and structure, gives evidence of an ingenious innovator adapting
+Seneca. It abounds in artificial balance, parallelism, antitheses,
+word-play, strained figures, and it harrows hell for its tragic vocabulary;
+but its love scenes have a verbal prettiness and its tirades and
+soliloquies helped to confer on subsequent tragic style sententiousness and
+elevation as well as rant. Far inferior to "Tamburlaine" as an artistic
+achievement, "The Spanish Tragedy" can no more than that play be pushed
+aside as a mere blood and thunder tirade. Beneath its absurdities there
+lies the conception of an inner struggle against overwhelming
+responsibility, and of the conflict of the individual against evil and
+fate.
+
+From the success of such a play Kyd may very naturally have turned to the
+similar story of revenge embodied in Belleforest's "Historie of Hamblet."
+From contemporary references we infer that the old "Hamlet" was a tragedy
+of blood, written under Senecan influence, and containing a ghost that
+cried "revenge." If, as seems undoubted, it was used by Shakespeare, traces
+of it must be found in the German version of Hamlet, in the corrupt first
+quarto, and even in Shakespeare's final version; but there is as yet no
+agreement among scholars as to what can be attributed to Shakespeare's
+borrowing rather than to his invention and transformation. It seems
+entirely probable, however, that the early play was a companion-piece to
+"The Spanish Tragedy," containing the motives of revenge, hesitation,
+insanity, intrigue, and slaughter, with the addition of the murderer's
+passion for the wife of the murdered. On the now established theory that
+the play was by Kyd, we may infer a protagonist like Hieronimo, much
+meditating and soliloquizing, a dramatic structure like that of "The
+Spanish Tragedy," a play within a play, a mad Ophelia, and an intrigue
+culminating in slaughter. There are evidences in Marston and later
+contributors to the revenge type that the original "Hamlet," fully as much
+as "The Spanish Tragedy," served as their model; while doubtless like "The
+Spanish Tragedy," Kyd's "Hamlet" must have borne a much closer resemblance
+than even that play to Shakespeare's masterpiece.
+
+"Soliman and Perseda," if not by Kyd, at least shows many evidences of his
+influence and is itself an interesting combination of the tragedy of
+revenge and romantic comedy. Love, Fortune, and Death make up a Kydian
+chorus and debate for supremacy until the close, when Death, like the
+Ghost, exults in an enumeration of the dead. The love story furnishes a
+clearly defined plot. The course of true love, despite the heroine's
+jealousy, an unintended murder by the hero, his banishment, the sack of
+Rhodes by the Turks, and the Sultan's passion for the heroine, ascends
+through the first four acts to the reunion and prospective happiness of the
+lovers. The fifth act proceeds to their separation and death through the
+Sultan's wickedness. Some of the incidents are those of romantic comedy,
+such as the use of the chain as a symbol of loyal love, its loss, the
+resulting jealousy, and the donning of boy's clothes by the heroine in
+order to receive death from the sword of the hated suitor. The fun of the
+piece is furnished by a _miles gloriosus_, Basilisco, and the extraordinary
+merit of his characterization furnishes the chief reason for doubting Kyd's
+authorship. Over lyric love, fortune, and fun, however, Death reigns
+supreme. This is his favorite tragedy, for eighteen persons are actually
+killed on the stage, and at the close not one of the _dramatis personae_ is
+left to bear off the bodies of the slain.
+
+The successes of Marlowe and Kyd gave tragic stories a new popularity with
+actors and audiences, and the stage was occupied with fiercely declaiming
+Asiatic conquerors, deep-dyed villains, and shrieking ghosts. Marlowe's
+themes, characters, and blank verse found many imitators, while Kyd's plays
+encouraged the presentation of stories of ghosts and revenge similar to
+those in Seneca and his English imitators. Direct imitations of Seneca in
+technic and language are also common. The abundance of bloodshed is
+invariable. A wide range of material was drawn upon, including Asiatic
+story, Italian _novelle_, Plutarch, Xenophon, and the Bible, although the
+English chronicles remained the favorite source, and the majority have at
+least the semblance of a historical setting. Many have a mixture of comic
+material, but they show in general a preponderance of tragic events and
+emotions far greater than in the early popular tragedies. There seems to
+have been a general effort in conformity with an address to the audience
+placed in the second act of "The Wars of Cyrus," acted by the Children of
+the Revels, which announces that they have "exiled from our tragicke stage"
+"needlesse antickes," and promises "mournfull plaints writ sad, and
+tragicke tearmes." The gentle reader will not linger long over any of these
+plays or discover in them signs of nascent genius, but they have a
+considerable interest in illustrating further the development of chronicle
+history toward tragedy, the influence of the Senecan tradition, and the
+dominating power of Marlowe's example. They also inform us of the
+conditions governing tragedy when Shakespeare began his career. In their
+many resemblances one to another we have evidence not so much of direct
+borrowings as of the close relations then existing among the few theatrical
+playwrights and companies. Any successful innovation was bound to have its
+immediate imitations, and on the other hand the keen rivalry for success
+was likely to result in innovation and novelty.
+
+Of these plays perhaps "Locrine"[12] has the most diverse indebtedness. It
+presents a story of a bloody family feud, but it is also of the chronicle
+history order, with a mixture of battles, patriotism, and farce. It
+exhibits borrowings from Spenser, imitations of "Tamburlaine," Ate as a
+chorus, dumb shows requiring a menagerie, two ghosts, one of whom takes
+part in the action, and a story of double revenge. The hero is occupied
+with revenge number one until the fourth act, when his infidelity makes him
+the object of a return revenge that culminates in his death. Among the
+plays mainly indebted to Marlowe are: Greene's "Alphonsus of Aragon," a
+comedy that is almost a travesty on the first part of "Tamburlaine";
+"Selimus," ascribed to Greene, which also shows Senecan structure and
+philosophy; "The Wounds of Civil War, or the Tragedies of Marius and
+Sylla," the first extant play based on Plutarch; "The Wars of Cyrus," in
+part romantic comedy; and Peele's "Battle of Alcazar," which has a
+presenter, dumb shows, three ghosts, and a Moorish villain of the same
+class as Marlowe's Barabas and Aaron in "Titus Andronicus."
+
+The English chronicle plays also felt Marlowe's influence, most notably in
+Shakespeare's early historical plays, to be considered in a moment, but
+also in several plays almost contemporary with "Edward II" and the first
+versions of "Henry VI." "The True Tragedy of Richard III" (1594), by an
+unknown author or authors, seems to have preceded Shakespeare's play and to
+have followed the third part of "Henry VI." It presents a combination of
+chronicle play with Marlowesque protagonist and a Kydian apparatus of
+revenge. The ghost of Clarence appears at the beginning crying, "Vindicta,"
+and Truth and Poetry supply the necessary exposition. The revenge element
+becomes prominent toward the end of the play, when the ghosts of Richard's
+victims appear to him in a dream, not visible as in Shakespeare, and the
+remorseful villain declares that not merely his victims but all the forces
+of nature, sun, moon, and planets, cry revenge:--
+
+    "The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge.
+    The silly lambs sit bleating for revenge."
+
+Richard is a man of powerful will carried away by ambition and evidently
+modeled on Tamburlaine; but unlike the Scythian and like Faustus, he is
+conscience-smitten, and his punishment comes in remorse as well as death.
+This conception, based on the chronicle, is treated with power, but in the
+main the play is a hodge-podge. More worthy examples of chronicle history
+are "Edward III," often ascribed to Marlowe and not unworthy of him, and
+the anonymous "Tragedy of Woodstock."[13] The latter shows frequent
+resemblances to "Edward II" and apparently preceded Shakespeare's "Richard
+II," leaving off at the point where that play begins. The events of half a
+reign are focused about the central personalities of Richard and Woodstock,
+a weak king beset by flatterers and an honorable and patriotic leader of
+the nobles. The construction is skillful in its integration of comedy with
+the main action and its alternation of tragic and comic, action and
+counsel, force and counter-force; and the characterization is remarkably
+well individualized. Woodstock, especially, has human appeal and is notable
+as a tragic hero, or at least the central figure of a history, who meets
+misfortune and death through no fault of his own but solely through the
+wickedness of others.
+
+Holinshed's chronicle is also the source of "Arden of Feversham" (1592),
+sometimes ascribed on very insufficient grounds to Shakespeare, the
+earliest extant domestic tragedy. The play deals with a notorious murder of
+some forty years before, and follows the crude dramaturgy of the earliest
+chronicle plays. The stage presentation of notably brutal murders is common
+to-day and was to be expected on the Elizabethan stage, but the play seems
+also to represent reaction from the royalties, marvels, and unrealities of
+the contemporary tragedy. The epilogue, indeed, offers a defiance of
+romanticism and the since well-worn creed of the realist.
+
+    "Gentlemen, we hope youle pardon this naked tragedy,
+    Wherein no filed points are foisted in
+    To make it gratious to the eare or eye;
+    For simple truth is gratious enough,
+    And needes no other points of glosing stuffe."
+
+Notwithstanding this protestation, occasional monologues reveal the common
+stylistic decorations. The play is tediously detailed and artlessly
+realistic, though it has some vigorous blank verse and several powerful
+scenes; the most powerful, when Michael in the middle of the night is
+awaiting the murderers of his master, recalling a well-known passage in
+"The Spanish Tragedy." But the greatest merit of the play lies in the
+portrait of Alice Arden, absorbed in a despicable passion, but cunning and
+unabashed, incomparably the most lifelike evil woman up to this time
+depicted in the drama.
+
+Peele's "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedie of
+Absalon," acted about 1591, has, unlike "Arden," many "filed points to make
+it gratious to the eare and eye." It gains a unique interest as the only
+extant tragedy of this period based on the biblical narrative. The bible
+story is treated just as a historical chronicle would have been; and the
+play, divided by choruses into three "discourses," offers no advance in
+conception, structure, or characterization on the average tragedy of the
+period. Yet it is the masterpiece of one of the most active among
+Shakespeare's predecessors and illustrates his most distinctive
+contribution to the drama's development. As the author of "Alcazar,"
+"Edward I," and possibly "Locrine," as well as "David and Bethsabe,"
+Peele's contribution deserves some note. His dramatic career began at
+Oxford, where he made a version of one of the "Iphigenias" of Euripides,
+which was acted at Christ Church, and where he also aided in the production
+of Dr. Gager's Latin plays. In London he became the friend of Nash, Greene,
+and Marlowe, and the versatile adopter of the latest dramatic modes,
+whether in comedy, pastoral, history, or tragedy. In his best work,
+however, and especially in "David and Bethsabe," there are graces of style
+which justify Nash's eulogy of his friend as "primus verborum artifex." The
+great innovation of this early drama was, after all, in poetic style; and
+in furthering this Peele may claim a place only second to Marlowe. If
+Marlowe gave sweep and grandeur to blank verse, Peele brought a sweetness
+of cadence and, as Professor Ward observes, "a vivacity of fancy and a
+variety of imagery." As Marlowe turned everything into sonorous phrase, now
+bombastic, now superb, so Peele turned every thought to music and fancy,
+sometimes banal, sometimes lovely. "David and Bethsabe," with its oriental
+setting, though treated with careless dramatic art, proved an inspiration
+to the stylist. The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary
+and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or
+situation. Absalon plays with conceits for twenty-five lines while hanging
+by his hair, and laments melodiously for fifteen lines more after being
+stabbed. But there is charm and gracefulness everywhere, in the choruses,
+in the defense of Hamon, and in the parables, and now and again the very
+allurement and luxury of words, as in the famous,
+
+    "Now comes my lover tripping like the roe
+    And brings my longings tangled in her hair."
+
+While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course
+be assigned wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its
+earliest and most influential purveyors.
+
+The dozen plays just noticed furnish departures from, as well as
+adaptations of, the Kydian and Marlowean types of tragedy, but they reveal
+no marked advance in conception or structure. In characterization, however,
+there is a development in various ways; thus, a hack play like "The True
+Tragedy" has considerable power in its conception of a conscience-smitten
+villain, in "Woodstock" there is clear individualization, and in Alice
+Arden and the Countess of "Edward III" female character becomes lifelike
+and impressive. Still more salient is the attention paid to style. The
+Elizabethan theatregoer was used to the spoken and not to the written word,
+and expected at the theatre to be delighted by verbal display. Dramatic
+style then had functions which have since been relegated to other arts. It
+was to be declamative, taking the place of oratory; descriptive, supplying
+in part the place of scenery; and operatic in its word-play and decorative
+phrasing, and in its lyric interludes and laments. Moreover, medieval
+tradition and Senecan models alike enforced the necessity in tragedy of a
+heightened style; and many dramatists doubtless agreed with Gosson in
+placing first among dramatic requirements "sweetness of words, fitness of
+epithets with metaphors, allegories." Still further, along with the
+excesses resultant from this delight in words, there was manifest a growing
+mastery of language to represent truthfully situation and character.
+"Arden" gave crude expression to this reaction toward realism in style;
+"Woodstock" much more effectively; and colloquial directness was mingled
+with the artificialities of "The Spanish Tragedy" and the beauties of
+"Edward II." Henceforth the Elizabethan drama exhibits a conflict between
+dramatic suitability of language and its declamatory, operatic, or
+aphoristic decorativeness, promoting on the one hand a realistic
+presentation of life, and on the other fantastic absurdity and imaginative
+idealism.
+
+The preceding discussion of Marlowe and his contemporaries must have made
+it apparent that Shakespeare cannot be treated as outside of the circle,
+although his plays have for convenience been reserved until now. The young
+actor and poet learned to meet successfully the demands of the stage
+through an apprenticeship of hack-work, collaboration, and revision, and
+progressed in his art by means of adaptation and imitation. He wrote in
+association and rivalry with his fellow playwrights, responding like them
+to theatrical fashions, and feeling like them the spur of current artistic
+impulses. The dramatic activity that we have been discussing bears at every
+point upon his early work. He shared both the limitations and the
+incentives, bowed to the commanding influences, and rose to the
+opportunities for initiative which characterize this period. His dramatic
+career probably began two or three years later than Marlowe's, and of the
+plays now to be considered several were probably not written until the
+years following Marlowe's death. "Titus Andronicus" and the three parts of
+"Henry VI" belong to the early nineties and should be classed with the
+tragedies of blood and the chronicle histories of those years. "King John,"
+"Richard III," and "Richard II" came somewhat later and form a part of the
+more advanced development of chronicle history variously represented by
+"Edward III," "Woodstock," and Marlowe's "Edward II." "Romeo and Juliet,"
+in its final form perhaps still later, is a great and original masterpiece,
+but one still very characteristic of the dramatic period of which it is the
+crown and flower.
+
+How much of "Titus Andronicus" is to be regarded as Shakespeare's remains a
+debated question, a recent and plausible theory being that it was his
+revision and combination of two old plays.[14] The play, which was coupled
+by Jonson with "The Spanish Tragedy" as popular twenty years after its
+first appearance, is mainly an imitation of Kyd, though the phrasing and
+rhythm frequently show an advance over that author's work. In situations
+and various specific passages the imitation is pronounced and the motives
+of the Kydian type are in the main repeated. The revenge of a father for
+his son is opposed by villanous intrigue, involves a play within the play,
+and leads the hero into madness. Kyd's finer conception of a tragic hero
+hesitating in the face of fearful responsibility is, however, lacking; the
+combination of the two revenge stories--Tamora for her child murdered by
+Titus, and Titus in return for the murder of his children--resembles
+"Locrine"; and the black Aaron is, like the negro-Moor in "Alcazar," one of
+the many Marlowesque villains. The play surpasses current revenge plays
+chiefly in its unapproached orgy of mutilation, murder, and horror.
+
+The three parts of "Henry VI"[15] are certainly only in part Shakespeare's
+and represent the complex form of collaboration not infrequently found in
+the drama. It is likely that Marlowe and Greene were concerned in the
+plays, and that Shakespeare's share was mainly in revision. The three plays
+were at all events very popular and occupy an important place among the
+early chronicle histories. The contention between the houses of York and
+Lancaster becomes an epic theme, uniting the three parts, and affords
+manifold opportunity for battles, defiances, coronations, usurpations, and
+patriotism. The structure as well as the material is of the chronicle,
+without any approach to tragic unity or coherence; but the plays do in some
+ways invade the field of tragedy. Comedy is practically excluded except in
+the Cade scenes; and the last two parts, as their titles indicate, present
+a series of "falls of princes"--"the death of the good Duke Humphrey; And
+the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the tragicall end of
+the proud cardinall of Winchester" and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke
+of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt." With themes of
+bloodshed and battle, material at least full of tragical possibilities, and
+under the schooling of Marlowe, Shakespeare served his apprenticeship for
+historical tragedy.
+
+In "King John" Shakespeare still followed chronicle history methods without
+any clear advance toward tragedy. He was engaged in rewriting the old
+"Troublesome Reign," and he followed its plot with great closeness, scene
+after scene with entrances and exits being the same in both plays. But here
+his indebtedness practically stops. He seems to have made out a careful
+scenario, following the old play with only such alterations and omissions
+as were necessary for the condensation of its two parts into a single
+play, and then to have thrown aside the old text and almost forgotten it.
+His improvements consequently coincide with the developments which we have
+found common in the tragedies of the period in that they concern
+characterization and style. Faulconbridge and Constance become incomparably
+more vital and impressive than in the old play and win our interest away
+from the battles and arguments of the rapid scenes. The style, almost never
+reminiscent of the early play, is mainly rhetorical, though always vigorous
+and usually surpassing the models which it frequently recalls. It often
+displays the conflict between the ornamental and naturalistic tendencies;
+as, for example, when Arthur, facing the murderer, quibbles for ten lines
+over the red-hot iron which is to put out his eyes, and then, as the
+attendants enter, forgets his rhetoric in words whose sincerity and
+simplicity have touched every reader.
+
+"Richard III" and "Richard II," though possibly earlier than "King John,"
+show the imitator and adapter rather than the reviser, and represent
+independent efforts to give tragic unity to the material of the English
+chronicles. While all the tragedies and histories so far considered have
+long since proved unfitted for the stage, "Richard III" has maintained its
+first popularity and continued to attract the greatest actors and to win
+the liking of the patrons of the theatre of each generation. Yet, though it
+has for three centuries exercised a profound impression on the popular
+imagination, it shows in the opinion of all critics a great indebtedness
+to Marlowe, and is so evidently imitative of current models that critics
+writing from such different points of view as Mr. Fleay and James Russell
+Lowell have been led to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. External and
+internal evidence both contradict such doubts emphatically, but the close
+relationship of the play to "Henry VI" makes it improbable that Shakespeare
+turned to the theme solely of his own initiative. "Richard III" is the
+fourth play of a tetralogy manifestly planned before the earlier members
+were completed. Margaret appears in all four plays; the character of
+Shakespeare's Richard is distinctly outlined in Part III; and it was
+evidently meant to end the contention of York and Lancaster with the
+triumph of the Tudor dynasty, and the long series of falls of princes with
+the tragedy of the villanous Gloster. The chronicle of Richard's reign had
+indeed been given a tragic unity in the history by Sir Thomas More and in a
+long saga of chronicle and literature which had developed still further the
+conception of this masterful and dreadful villain. The suitability of this
+material to current forms of tragedy was obvious. Dr. Legge had found in
+this saga the material for a Senecan play; the unknown author of "The True
+Tragedy" had discovered there a ready-made tragedy of blood and revenge;
+and there are indications of non-extant plays on the same theme. For either
+Marlowe or for Shakespeare working with him on the history of the struggle
+between York and Lancaster, the opportunity for a tragedy with a central
+hero of the type of Tamburlaine, Faustus, or Barabas must have been
+apparent.
+
+Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a
+detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy"
+supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle
+is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and
+made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic
+presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable
+addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince
+Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to
+the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in
+the play.[16] In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe,
+making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and
+the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only
+with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the
+tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore
+Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at
+least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing
+in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and
+gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a
+chorus,--curses, laments, and exultations. Moreover, with a tact unique at
+that time and not displayed by him in "Titus Andronicus," he perceived that
+the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather
+than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all
+the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way
+for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts
+into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven
+victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.
+
+An abundance of theatrical effects, already familiar on the stage, is
+indeed supplied. The murder of Clarence, with its prolonged dialogue
+between the murderers, the victims led away to execution, the orations
+before the battle, the funeral cortège, the battle scenes, the laments and
+curses, now multiplied and expanded beyond the verge of absurdity, all
+reflect current stage practices. The structure, still over-dependent on the
+chronicle sources, indulges after the current fashion in the retention and
+prolongation of undramatic material: such as the feeble forebodings of the
+citizens (ii, 3), the prolongation of Hastings's warning of death (iii, 2),
+and the useless soliloquy of the scrivener (iii, 6). Yet, in comparison
+with contemporary plays, there is great superiority both in dramatic
+construction and theatrical effectiveness. The main action progresses with
+rapidity and coherence to the moment of Richard's reversal of fortune (iv,
+4), thirteen years being condensed into a few days; and the interest from
+this climax to the catastrophe is maintained by startling melodramatic
+effects. But the great dramatic merit of the play lies in the use of
+contrast, surprise, and particularly of dramatic irony in the separate
+scenes and in their masterly integration to display the character of
+Richard himself.
+
+Following closely the character outlined in the chronicle, borrowing
+conception and treatment from Marlowe's protagonists, and mindful of the
+host of stage villains that had proved so popular in tragedy, Shakespeare
+constructed a cacodemon who remains not only a great stage figure but also
+alive and human in our imaginations. That he is the source of all evil in
+the play; that he is absurdly and impossibly diabolic; that he informs the
+audience of all his nefarious schemes; that he has a Machiavellian skill in
+intrigue; that he is in intellect and will easily the superior of all whom
+he encounters; that he is possessed by an egoism superhuman in its
+audacity; that he is an accomplished and ironical hypocrite; that he is
+conscienceless except when half asleep and dreaming; that from the
+beginning to the end he is a masterful and relentless pursuer of his
+ambition, uninfluenced by persons or events, alike subjects of his
+contempt,--all this indicates a skillful adaptation and continuation of
+sources and models. But Richard is more. He is dramatically immensely
+effective; he is always at hand at the right moment; he is never
+nonplussed; a murder is hardly over when he appears smiling and ironically
+repentant; he can ask for strawberries with murder in his heart, or play
+with the children or woo the woman whom he has already marked for doom.
+That these theatrical fascinations were the results of a consistent
+conception based on a profound ethical and psychological study can hardly
+be maintained. It may indeed be doubted whether in this respect there is
+much advance over Marlowe's villains, or even those of his contemporaries,
+to say nothing of an approach to Macbeth and Iago. Richard is sometimes a
+human being, sometimes a monster, and always a stage villain. But the very
+fact that critics have delighted to analyze and moralize over his traits is
+proof that Shakespeare, in spite of the monstrosities of his conception,
+gave to its dramatic presentation not only a stage effectiveness but also
+plausibility.
+
+This plausibility must be accredited largely to the vigorous colloquialism
+of his speeches. The play manifests the usual conflict of artificial and
+natural styles; the elaborate stichomythia and the wailing and cursing
+queens furnish examples of the common affectations of tragic style; and the
+rhetorical display appears not infrequently in Richard's speeches. But in
+the main he speaks with a naturalness and directness far greater than was
+usual in tragic heroes, and the natural-speaking Richard often makes
+plausible and convincing the theatrical and rhetorical villain. Thus, after
+the opening soliloquy he drops his rhetoric for the conversational tone of
+his conference with Clarence; and thus, the procession of ghosts remains
+still impressive on our stage because it is followed by a soliloquy that
+surpasses all except a few of Marlowe's in power and naturalness.
+Throughout the play, while others declaim, wail, and curse, the most
+impossible figure of them all becomes the only convincing human being, very
+largely because of the realism of his speech.
+
+In "Richard II," written at about the time of "Richard III," Shakespeare
+was also writing under the influence of Marlowe, but now in direct
+imitation and rivalry of "Edward II." The first part of the reign of
+Richard II had already received treatment in "Jack Straw" and "Woodstock,"
+and the theme of a weak king forced to abdicate had been presented in
+"Henry VI" as well as "Edward II." Shakespeare followed, as always
+hitherto, his source, Holinshed, very closely, and the historical material
+determined the plot and characterization, but Marlowe's example led him to
+an interpretation of the fifteen years' history as the tragedy of the
+reversal of fortune of a king whose temperament made him contemptible in
+prosperity but pitiable in adversity. Along with the story of the rise and
+progress of the conflict between Richard and the barons under Bolingbroke,
+there runs the story of "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty," which
+give a new pathos to that favorite theme of medieval tragedy and
+Elizabethan history, the vanquishment of a prince by scornful Fortune. The
+struggle within Richard's own heart, even more than in the case of Edward
+II, absorbs the interest and points the moral, the hollowness and
+uncertainty of earthly grandeur.
+
+Structurally there is no advance on "Edward II" in exposition, integration
+of action, or catastrophe. Adherence to the chronicle results in a long
+drawn out and iterative first act, a virtual repetition of Richard's
+struggle over the relinquishment of the crown in iii, 3, and iv, 1, and a
+slight and melodramatic treatment of the catastrophe. On the other hand,
+there are some changes from Marlowe's method of interest in connection with
+later tragedy. Elegiac scenes with their lamenting women, also conspicuous
+in "Richard III," are an addition to the historical source and an important
+factor in the structure; their distribution through the play indicating
+that they were employed to supply a relief from the scenes of much action
+and high tension, more suitable to tragedy than the relief of comic scenes,
+and also to take, as in "Richard III," the place of a chorus through their
+lyrical reinforcement of the tragic emotions excited by the action. Again,
+as the theme is Richard's reversal of fortune rather than his death, so the
+emotional crisis receives a structural prominence not unlike that given to
+Hamlet's, and the catastrophe of death is relegated to a postscript. The
+passage from crisis to catastrophe is managed, as in "Hamlet," "Lear," and
+"Macbeth," by the introduction of incidents extraneous to the main action,
+here the episode of Aumerle's conspiracy.
+
+The main departures from Marlowe, however, are to be found in those
+elements of dramatic composition to which in this period the genius of
+Shakespeare as well as the talent of his contemporaries most readily
+responded, the characterization and the style. Not only the king himself
+but many other persons in the play, and notably Bolingbroke, are presented
+with consistency and subtlety. The historical narrative is transformed into
+a gallery of full-length historical portraits that lead us to forget
+history and drama in our study of their personalities. The euphuistic and
+sentimental Richard gives a fair field for the stylist, but his example is
+infectious, and the Queen, Gaunt, York, Bolingbroke, the gardener, and in
+fact all the persons of the drama, employ word-play, periphrasis, and the
+various flourishes of Elizabethan rhetorical style. If one accepts the
+theory that tragedy is a game for rhetorical display, and further accepts
+the conventionalities of Elizabethan style, there must be unmeasured
+admiration for the extraordinary verbal skill displayed. Shakespeare
+employs the current artificialities of diction with abounding facility and
+zest, and often suits them skillfully to the delineation of character;
+while his constant attention to expression results in a sustained
+eloquence, which, if it blurs the outlines of reality, substitutes a haze
+of fancy, and sometimes the glory of magnificent beauty. The miserable
+years of Richard's downfall are forever associated in our minds with the
+picturesqueness of the two entries into London and with the splendor of the
+apostrophe to England and the recital of Norfolk's death.
+
+In the three chronicle histories just considered, although the historical
+material largely determines structure, tragic conception, and
+characterization, and although all these are obviously under Marlowe's
+influence, yet Shakespeare had reached a stage far more advanced than that
+of mere imitator or adapter. In "Richard III" he had added his own impress
+to the Marlowean type of tragedy, and in "Richard II" he had introduced
+innovations foreshadowing his later conceptions. As a playwright he had
+equaled any of his contemporaries in immediate popularity and outdone them
+in permanent theatrical effectiveness. He had acquired a complete mastery
+over the conditions and conventions of the stage, and had frequently, if
+not always, outdone the best of his rivals in dramatic ingenuity and power.
+Like his contemporaries, however, he was hampered by theatrical conditions
+and intractable historical material; and his chief interest was in the
+opportunities furnished by the chronicles for the delineation of character
+and the exercise of his gift of tongues. In range and verisimilitude his
+characters already far surpassed Marlowe's; and as a poet, whether in
+lyric, descriptive, or purely dramatic passages, whether in sustained
+treatment of situation or in splendid purple patches, he had shown himself
+the peer of his master.
+
+In "Romeo and Juliet" the same dramatic and poetic qualities are exhibited
+as in the historical plays, but the happy choice of the already well-known
+love story led Shakespeare outside of the direct range of Marlowe's
+example, freed him from the limits of the historical material, and gave his
+genius full scope. The importance of love as a motive in the Italian drama
+of the Renaissance is one of the traits that distinguish it from its
+classical models, and the influence of Italian drama and fiction was
+important in turning Elizabethan dramatists to stories of romantic passion.
+These had already been widely adopted in comedy and had formed the
+principle plots of "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda," as
+well as minor parts in other tragedies of the period. The story of Romeo
+and Juliet, which Brooke speaks of having seen "lately (1562) set forth on
+the stage with more commendation than I can look for," may have been made
+into an English play before Shakespeare was born.[17] It had at least been
+dramatized in France and Italy, where Luigi Groto's "Adriana" (1578)
+surpassed all contemporary plays in the number of its editions.
+
+Brooke's poem, "Romeus and Juliet" (1562), was the main source of the play
+and provided a story eminently adapted to dramatic representation. The
+plot, with its conflict between love and hate, the brief triumph of love,
+the interference of feud and family authority, the separation and death of
+the lovers, has been repeated in its essentials in thousands of stories,
+and has played an enormous part in the imaginations of four centuries; but
+it has hardly found a more effective scenario than that which lay imbedded
+in Brooke's long-spun narrative. A lesser genius than Shakespeare might
+have discovered it, but his powers of invention and construction are amply
+apparent, especially up to the turning-point of the play. The brawl and the
+love-sick Romeo of the first scene, dramatically expository and symbolic of
+the whole action, the meeting of the lovers at the dance, the balcony
+scene, the embassy and return of the nurse, the fatal fight with Tybalt,
+are all executed with a wealth of incidental invention, a sureness of
+technic, and a rapidity and directness of dramatic movement that relied but
+little on Brooke's narrative or contemporary example. The second half of
+the play, though skillfully condensed, follows the source more closely and,
+perhaps for this reason, impresses the modern reader less vividly.
+Shakespeare's dramatic skill is manifest in his departure from the current
+methods of the tragedy of blood as well as in his treatment of the
+narrative. What imitators of Seneca and of Kyd did with similar love
+stories we have seen in "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda";
+and "Romeo and Juliet" had an equal chance for ghosts, villany, and
+physical horrors. Some traces of the prevailing fashion do survive, as in
+the addition to Brooke of the murder of Paris and in the attention paid to
+the horrors of the tomb. But many of the best scenes are of the sort that
+occur in romantic comedy,--the repartee of gallants, the preparations for a
+feast, the dance, the street affray, the meetings and partings of the
+lovers,--and there is no villain, no figure of Nemesis, no ghost, no
+warring armies, and no pomp of courts. No tragedy had yet appeared with
+less theatrical sensationalism, and none which maintained the interest of
+the spectators upon the story with comparable dramatic intensity.
+
+The extraordinary advance over the historical plays in dramatic technic is,
+however, overshadowed in our appreciation of the play by the irresistible
+appeal made by the persons of the story. They are more closely realized
+for us than the friends and foes of our daily life, yet they dwell forever
+in the enchantment of idealized romance. To analyze Shakespeare's power to
+portray and at the same time to exalt human nature would be to unlock the
+very key to Shakespeare's heart; we may well be content to wonder and
+exclaim. Yet, we may note that, while characterization, which had been
+increasing in range and individualization in the historical plays, is here
+triumphant, the means and methods are not unlike those already noticed. The
+brilliant translation of prose narrative into monologue and dialogue gives
+us the nurse; the vivacious amplification of a type familiar in comedy--the
+garrulous old man--results in Capulet; and even the greatest creations
+naturally retain traces of contemporary influences. Mercutio is the prince
+of a throng of quick-witted quibblers, and Juliet is sometimes declamatory,
+sometimes fantastic, like Brooke's heroine. But they are Shakespeare's own,
+and the first representatives of two ways in which his imagination
+characteristically and supremely manifested itself in later plays. Mercutio
+is the first of those imaginative achievements that concentrate into a few
+lines of blank verse the complete individualization of a human being;
+Juliet is perhaps the first of the amazing series of idealized women. If
+one considers how often the young girl in love has been the theme of
+genius, and recalls Fielding, Scott, Browning, and Meredith, one may secure
+some measure of Shakespeare's achievement. When one seeks comparison with
+the naïve and likable young animal of Brooke's doggerel, or the women of
+preceding drama, even the charming heroines of Greene's comedies, the art
+that produced Juliet must seem miraculous. The idealization of woman was,
+to be sure, common in Renaissance art; and the union in her of wit and
+beauty, power and charm, passion and purity, innocence and wisdom, was not
+solely Shakespeare's conception; but the power to conceive such a being
+with truth and to realize her dramatically, alive, human, and consistent,
+was his alone.
+
+The conception and expression of character cannot be separated; there lies
+in the qualities of the poetic style some explanation of the impression we
+receive of idealized humanity. While colloquial directness is not wanting
+in the play, the prevailing style has the artificialities, the lyricism,
+and the exuberance we have found prevailing elsewhere. It exhibits about
+all the faults and affectations of the dramatic poetry of the time, but
+these are the defects of an art that finds poetry in everything and ever
+lingers to enjoy the beauty of words, whether over Queen Mab, or the
+apothecary's shop, or Friar Laurence's herbs. It stops to display its
+verbal ingenuity in a pun; it delights in lyric outbursts, sestette or
+sonnet, morning-song or epithalamium; it riots in the refrains on
+"banished," becomes grotesque in the wailing quartette, and finds its
+supreme opportunity in the fancy and music and passion of the lovers
+underneath the summer moon. It is this exuberance, this spontaneity, this
+carelessness of incongruity, this delight in ornamentation, this abandon to
+music and fancy that transfigures the Verona of brawls, dinners, nurses,
+and deaths, and, forever ascendant over our fancies, like Romeo's blessed
+moon, "tips everything with silver."
+
+It is in part this poetic style which distinguishes the play from the later
+tragedies, but the difference is everywhere manifest to our impressions.
+The evil and gloom and pessimism that help to make up the tragic fact in
+"Lear" and "Macbeth" are here scarcely felt. To joy comes sorrow, because
+of evil and through accident,--this is the tragic theme. In the course of
+its presentation one may find it suggestive of the passing of youth to age
+or of passionate love to oblivion, but surely no one comes from the poem
+with a dominant impression of the wickedness of family feuds, or of the
+inevitable brevity of romantic passion, or of the dangers of youthful
+precipitousness,--rather the mind glows with the beauty and joy revealed in
+life.
+
+In this impression the play has a kinship with the tragedies, even the poor
+and the maimed, that had preceded it. Tragedies so far have been strangely
+free from Christian teaching or sentiment. Compared with the medieval
+drama, early Elizabethan tragedy seems not only secular but pagan. This is
+partly because it followed its sources and treated of Romans, Moors,
+Scythians, and heroes of myths and legends; partly because it derived stoic
+and fatalistic sentiments from Seneca and other classical writers; but it
+also represents an entire departure from the medieval point of view, a
+departure necessarily emphasized in tragedy. In the medieval drama, death
+had been a translation to final reward or punishment,--the portals of
+heaven and hell were open on the stage. In the Renaissance conception of
+tragedy death was the point and pith of tragic fact. Faith, forgiveness,
+reliance on Providence, assurance of immortality are rarely alluded to.
+Chance, mysterious fate, the emissaries of the devil, the powers of evil in
+the mind of man are the forces to which tragedy must attend; and they lead
+to a death terrible and pitiful, to be met bravely and defiantly, it may
+be, but not peacefully and hopefully. And this emphasis of the gloom of
+death required an equal emphasis on the glory and beauty of life. Tragedy
+was the passing into darkness from under this majestic roof fretted with
+golden fire, the loss of noble reason and infinite faculty; and it must
+needs proclaim the beauty of the world as well as the quintessence of dust.
+
+And so, although writers of tragedy dwelt on the horrors of death and its
+accompaniments of blood and atrocity, and though they symbolized in their
+villains their sense of the reign of evil, yet, in Marlowe's treatment of
+an Asiatic conqueror or the ignoble fascination of Edward II, or in Peele's
+fancy that made musical the amours of David; everywhere indeed, in the
+Pantheas and Persedas, the Marii and Selimi, they were presenting human
+life as removed from the commonplace, the sordid, the usual, and as the
+abode of heroisms, splendors, and aspirations. Even evil deeds and
+villains, even death itself sometimes partook of this glorification; and
+tragic theory, moral purpose, and theological dogma were alike forgotten
+in the fascination of human character, passion, and achievement. This
+idealization of life was, as we noted at the beginning of the chapter,
+characteristic of the national temper and of the artistic impulses in every
+field of literature during its brief breathing spell between the Protestant
+and Puritan revolutions. Its power is curiously illustrated in the effect
+of the story of Romeo and Juliet upon Brooke in the course of his by no
+means despicable attempt to turn it into a tragic poem. In his Address to
+the Reader, he dilates with medieval propriety on the moral of the poem "to
+raise in the reader an hatefull lothyng of so filthy beastlynes." "And to
+this ende (good Reader) is this tragicall matter written to describe unto
+thee a coople of unfortunate lovers thralling themselves to unhonest
+desire, neglecting the authorite and advice of parents and frendes,
+conferring their principall counsels with dronken gossyppes, and
+superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instrumentes of
+unchastitie)"--and so on through all their evil doings until "finallye, by
+all meanes of unhonest lyfe hastyng to most unhappye death." So wrote the
+conscious Puritan; but the story charmed the artist. It enticed his meagre
+art to a share in the joys of the lovers, it led him to a delight in
+unhonest life, it dissolved his sermon into romance and poetry, and left
+him enamored even of his "superstitious frier."
+
+And so the tragedy of the lovers became for Shakespeare as for Brooke and
+as other stories had become for Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, the spur and
+the means to an idealization of life. It is not in the reconciliation of
+the families, still less in the sense of a deserved punishment, that we
+find an antidote for death and evil; but in the assurance that human
+passion may be so lovely, human nature so full of strength and beauty. "The
+sun for sorrow will not show his head," says Prince Escalus at the end, but
+we believe with Romeo that
+
+                        "Jocund day
+    Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward, Fleay, and Schelling are the best general guides for this period. The
+books already mentioned by Collier, Symonds, Jusserand, Cunliffe, Fischer,
+and Churchill bear directly on the matter of this chapter. The sources for
+documents and records are the same as for chapter iii, with the important
+addition of _Henslowe's Diary_, vol. i, 1904, ed. by W. W. Greg. The
+sources for lists of plays and bibliography are the same as in chapter
+ii,--Greg, Fleay, Hazlitt, Schelling, and Bates. There is no satisfactory
+and comprehensive treatment of Marlowe's work; J. H. Ingram's _Christopher
+Marlowe and his Associates_ (1904) supplies a full bibliography. Marlowe
+has been well edited by Dyce and by A. H. Bullen. Dyce's editions of Greene
+and Peele have long been standard. Bullen has also a good edition of Peele.
+The recent Clarendon Press editions of Greene, Lyly, Kyd supply careful
+texts and full introductions. My article, _The Relations of "Hamlet" to
+Contemporary Revenge Play_s (Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. 1902), has been drawn
+upon for the discussion of Kyd; it furnishes references to the various
+critical discussions of Kyd's work. Texts of the plays by minor writers are
+to be found in Dodsley; W. C. Hazlitt's _Shakespeare's Library_ (6 vols.,
+1875), containing old plays and other sources for Shakespeare's plays;
+Delius, _Pseudo-Shakspere'sche Dramen_ (1874); the Tauchnitz edition of
+_Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare_; and in the editions of several of the
+pseudo-Shakespearean plays by K. Warncke and L. Proescholdt, Halle. This
+last edition of _Arden of Feversham_ contains a valuable introduction. For
+direction to the bibliography of Shakespeare, see chapter v. On the Henry
+VI plays, Miss Jane Lee's paper, _New Shaks. Soc. Transactions_, 1875-76,
+still offers the most exhaustive treatment of the question of authorship.
+On _Titus Andronicus_, Mr. Harold DeW. Fuller's article, _Mod. Lang. Publ._
+(1901), and Mr. J. M. Robertson's _Did Shakespeare write Titus Andronicus?_
+(1905) are among the latest discussions. My review of Mr. Robertson's book,
+_Journal of Eng. and Germ. Philology_ (1907), treats in detail some of the
+discussion of this chapter. The latest studies of the Elizabethan theatre
+are C. Brodmeier's _Die Shakespeare-Bühne_ (Weimar, 1904), which reduces
+the "alternation" theory to an absurdity, and G. F. Reynold's _Some
+Principles of Elizabethan Staging_ (Chicago, 1905), which disposes of
+Brodmeier's theories, but goes a little too far in the other direction.
+See, also, Baker's _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ for a careful and
+detailed account of the London theatres. Miss V. C. Gildersleeve's
+_Governmental Regulation of the Shakespearean Drama_ (Columbia Univ.
+Studies in English, in press) is an exhaustive treatment of its subject and
+incidentally throws light on theatrical matters. Volume iv of Courthope's
+_History of English Poetry_ is on the "Development and Decline of the
+Poetic Drama," from Marlowe to 1642. Schelling's _The English Chronicle
+Play_ (1902) is the best discussion of this species. W. Bang's series,
+_Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen Dramas_, includes reprints
+and studies of interest in connection with this and the three following
+chapters.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] It consists of two parts published 1591, and acted, as the prologue
+indicates, shortly after _Tamburlaine_, perhaps in 1588. Its scenes cover
+about the same ground as Shakespeare's play, with the addition of a ribald
+account of the sack of a monastery, an explanation of the poisoning of John
+in his treatment of the clergy, and a scene of some power in which Philip
+obtains from his mother, Lady Fauconbridge, a confession that his father
+was Richard.
+
+[10] _Tamburlaine_ in two parts, certainly acted as early as 1588, gained
+an immediate and long-continued popularity, and was followed by a number of
+plays, all tragedies or histories. Without reckoning the numerous plays
+that have been assigned to Marlowe on no sufficient grounds, he
+collaborated on the _Tragedy of Dido_ (1594), perhaps an early work, and on
+the three parts of _Henry VI_; and was the author of _The Tragicall History
+of Dr. Faustus_, printed 1604, acted 1588 (?); _The Jew of Malta_, acted
+about 1589, and long the most popular of Henslow's repertoire: _The
+Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II_, printed 1594, acted
+about 1591; and _The Massacre of Paris_, of an unknown date of acting.
+
+[11] The only other play certainly by Kyd is a translation of Garnier's
+_Cornelia_, 1595, which was doubtless never acted. His authorship of the
+_First Part of Jeronimo_, 1605, is denied by recent critics, and at most
+the text represents a very corrupt abridgment of his work. _Soliman and
+Perseda_, S. R. 1592, is attributed to him solely on internal evidence, and
+may have been by an imitator. The non-extant _Hamlet_, alluded to by Nash
+in 1589, and not until twelve years later used by Shakespeare as the basis
+of his play, is now generally assigned to Kyd.
+
+[12] Printed 1594, "as newly set forth, overseen, and corrected by W. S.,"
+sometimes assigned to Peele, and in an earlier form perhaps acted about
+1590.
+
+[13] Preserved in MS. and first printed in the _Shakespeare Jahrbuch_ in
+1899.
+
+[14] Harold DeW. Fuller, _Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn._ 1901.
+
+[15] The collaborators on Part I (1623) are unknown, and Shakespeare's
+contribution to the present form seems likely to have been written later
+than the bulk of the play, a not very impressive example of chronicle
+history. Parts II and III (1623) exist also in the abridged and altered
+forms of the two quartos of 1594, _The First Part of The Contention_ and
+_The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York_. The problems of the relations
+of these two quarto plays to the folio texts are among the most puzzling
+encountered by Shakespearean scholars.
+
+[16] Somewhat similar situations between Lycus and Megæra in _Hercules
+Furens_, Locrine and Estrile in _Locrine_, and Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in
+_Tamburlaine_ must have been known to Shakespeare.
+
+[17] See H. DeW. Fuller, "Romeo and Julietta," _Modern Philology_, 1906. It
+seems clear, however, that Shakespeare drew directly from Brooke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
+
+
+After "Richard II" and "King John," Shakespeare turned aside from tragedy,
+and within the next half-dozen years produced his masterpieces of romantic
+comedy and non-tragical history. With the exception of "Titus Andronicus"
+and "Romeo and Juliet," the first half of his dramatic career was devoted
+entirely to comedy and history. With "Julius Cæsar," about 1600, began the
+period of tragedies and bitter comedies, which lasted until about 1608,
+when he turned again to romantic comedy and tragicomedy. In these main
+divisions and turning-points of his dramatic activity there is a
+correspondence with the development of the contemporary drama which we are
+able to mark with an approach to definiteness. Both romantic comedy and
+chronicle history had their hey-day during the dozen years that he was
+devoting to those species. Then at the close of the century various
+influences produced an abandonment of those forms, a revival of tragedy,
+and an extensive production of satirical and domestic comedy. About 1608,
+again, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher led a return to romance. The
+Shakespearean period of tragedy may thus be separated from the Marlowean by
+an interval, during which few tragedies of importance appeared; and its
+beginning was coincident with new and important developments in the drama.
+
+The leading force in initiating these changes was apparently Ben Jonson,
+whose prologue to "Every Man in His Humour" (acted 1598) avowed the
+principles which that play exemplified, and proclaimed the establishment of
+a comedy of humors. This change was heralded as the result of a more
+critical and conscious art, of a desire to free the drama from the
+absurdities and lawlessness of the past, and to supply it with literary
+standards and artistic aims. His practice, which during the next ten years
+was mostly in accord with his preaching, was followed or paralleled in many
+respects by most of the other dramatists. At the date of "Every Man in His
+Humour" Shakespeare was proclaiming in the choruses of "Henry V" his sense
+of the incongruities of the chronicle history play and bidding farewell to
+a form of drama that he had made preëminently his own; and Chapman and
+Middleton were forsaking romantic comedy for realistic comedies of London
+life. Perhaps a little earlier, the satires of Donne, Hall, and Marston had
+created considerable stir and doubtless had a share in turning literary
+endeavor from sentiment to satire. This satire and exposure of the follies
+and evils of society also received encouragement from the moral and social
+change that was working in England and especially in London. The healthy
+and aspiring national life that had found expression in the sound morality
+and the imaginative idealism of the earlier drama was now giving place to
+the moral corruption, social laxity, and lack of national pride that render
+the reign of James I notorious. At all events, whatever the causes, the
+comedy of the next seven or eight years was prevailingly realistic,
+domestic, or satirical.
+
+In tragedy the changes were similar, though less distinct. The protest
+against the lawlessness of the early drama was manifested in the
+infrequency of chronicle plays and the appearance of tragedies presenting
+foreign, and especially Roman, history with due regard for both historical
+truth and tragic structure. Realism appeared just at the beginning of the
+century in a number of domestic tragedies that violated the established
+conventions by dealing with actual events, contemporary society, and humble
+persons. Satire of contemporary manners became frequent in tragedy, and
+satirical comedies often dealt with tragic events and exercised an
+influence on pure tragedy similar to that exercised by romantic comedy in
+the earlier period. Up to this time popular tragedy had hardly received
+critical consideration even from the dramatists themselves. Marlowe, Kyd,
+Shakespeare, and others had been mainly concerned in telling stories on the
+stage without much consciousness of theory or of the types of drama which
+they were creating. In this period, however, the demarcation between
+tragedy and comedy and the definition of a conception of tragedy became
+positive both in occasional critical comment and in the practice of the
+dramatists. The old types, however, survived. Medleys of various kinds of
+tragedy and comedy, such as "Old Fortunatus" or "The Downfall and Death of
+Robert, Earl of Huntingdon," are not found much after the beginning of the
+century; but the revenge tragedy received a remarkable development by
+Marston, Chettle, Tourneur, Chapman, and Jonson, to say nothing of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Practically synchronous with the period of Shakespeare's great tragedies
+are these several interesting developments: the domestic tragedies, and
+especially the allied work of Heywood; the Roman historical tragedies,
+especially the two by Jonson; the French historical tragedies by Chapman;
+and the various revenge plays, beginning with Marston's "Antonio and
+Mellida." These dramatists, however, were mainly occupied with comedy, and
+no one of them devoted himself as exclusively to tragedy as did
+Shakespeare. Nor did any of them equal him in immediate popularity. The
+imitative methods of his artistic apprenticeship had given place to a
+maturity and independence of art that at once won a supremacy in tragedy
+even greater than that already attained in comedy. Yet in themes and
+treatment there is no divorce from the practice of his fellow dramatists.
+His genius continued responsive to the demands of the stage of the day, and
+it felt the changes in dramatic conditions, of which we have been noticing
+some symptoms, and which made the tragedies of others as well as his own
+more satirical and realistic than those of Marlowe's time, more concerned
+with the problem of evil, more conscious and critical in their art, and in
+their style less lyrical and descriptive, more reflective and sententious.
+
+Of the domestic tragedies, very much in fashion from 1597 to 1603, the few
+survivors show little advance over "Arden of Feversham." These
+presentations of hideous contemporary crimes maintain the protest initiated
+by that play against the conventionalities of "the ghost and revenge"
+drama, and echo its demand for realism. The satirical description of
+Tragedy in the induction to "A Warning for Fair Women" (1599) is
+particularly noteworthy as indicating the definiteness which the current
+conception of tragedy had assumed. The epilogue reiterates the cry of the
+realist in an era of romanticism:--
+
+    "Perhaps it may seem strange unto you all,
+    That one hath not avenged another's death
+    After the observation of such course:
+    The reason is that now of truth I sing."
+
+A second of these plays, "Two Lamentable Tragedies" (1601), is a curious
+combination of the story of the babes in the wood and that of the recent
+murder of one Beech. A third, "A Yorkshire Tragedy," acted by Shakespeare's
+company about 1605, and published with his name (1608), is remarkable for
+its naked realism and the vividness and rapidity of some of its prose.
+
+With these plays may be grouped Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness"
+(1607, acted 1603), for, although it does not deal with real events, it
+lacks the usual accompaniments of tragedy, courts, kings, ghosts, and
+battles, and presents a story of current English life. Its themes are the
+common ones of adultery and revenge, but it gives them an entirely novel
+treatment, the husband refusing to take vengeance on his guilty wife, who
+dies repentant and forgiven. After a fashion soon to become general, there
+is an underplot which, like the main plot, presents a problem of social
+ethics, the question of the sacrifice of chastity to save a brother's
+honor. Similar problems are common in contemporary comedy, and the play
+might be classed indifferently as a domestic tragedy or a tearful comedy.
+It is Heywood's masterpiece and exemplifies the qualities that won him the
+affection of Lamb, "generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depth of
+passion, sweetness, in a word, and gentleness." The wife falls too easily
+and repents too sentimentally to be of much interest, but the character of
+Frankfort is finely conceived and, especially in the great scene of the
+discovery, executed with a power and truth of feeling rarely combined
+outside of Shakespeare. In a very similar play, "The English Traveller,"
+written long afterwards, Heywood speaks of two hundred and twenty plays in
+which he had a main finger. Some of these lost plays must have further
+exemplified the method of "A Woman Killed with Kindness"; but his success
+failed to encourage other dramatists to attempt domestic themes and to
+abandon the tragic conventions. Such realism as his was left to comedy, and
+tragedy continued to seek its stories in romance or history.
+
+Ben Jonson's two tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline," reveal an effort to
+treat Roman history with accuracy and dignity, and to enforce on the
+public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragedy. Such
+representations of Roman history as "The Wounds of Civil War" or the still
+more incongruous medley of Heywood's "Lucrece" must have excited in him
+still greater condemnation than did the English chronicle plays. Even
+Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar" provoked a sneer, though its dramatization of
+Plutarch's portraits of the great conspirators apparently excited his
+emulation and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline.
+Incongruous spectacle and farce disappear from these plays, and the events
+are treated upon a well thought out theory of historical tragedy. Jonson
+strove to present the main events and characters with accurate fidelity to
+authorities, and even minor persons and deeds in constant harmony with the
+historical narrative. But the scholar overtopped the dramatist. "Sejanus"
+has a paraphernalia of notes like a doctor's dissertation; and "Catiline"
+long excerpts from Cicero's orations.
+
+His plays, however, were intended for the public stage, and are by no means
+to be classed with closet dramas like Daniel's "Philotas," the tragedies of
+Fulke Greville and Alexander, or the earlier translations of Kyd and the
+Countess of Pembroke. Jonson started with current popular forms, with
+"Julius Cæsar" rather than the Senecan models for a basis. His purpose was
+to rebuild these, not without some recognition of current dramatic method,
+but with his main reliance upon classical rules. His cardinal error was his
+acceptance of the current classical theory of tragedy, the belief that the
+essential difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance
+of the three unities and similar proprieties. As he was forced to confess,
+the ambitious careers of Sejanus and Catiline and the style of action
+demanded by the audiences of the day did not lend themselves easily to such
+limitations. But he persevered in his doughty fashion. If in "Sejanus" he
+gave up the unity of time, he maintained the unity of place; if he retained
+the comic scenes of the courtesan, he avoided any grotesque mixture of the
+comic and tragic; he omitted battles, jigs, and spectacles, and secured a
+coherent development of the main action. In "Catiline," which he boldly
+proclaimed a "dramatic poem," he adopted the Senecan technic of an
+introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. But though the action be one,
+perfect and entire, according to Jonson's understanding of those terms, he
+never learned Shakespeare's art of focusing events about a spiritual
+conflict.
+
+Yet in characterization Jonson's interest, like that of his contemporaries,
+largely centres. Catiline, Cicero, Sejanus, and Tiberius are thoughtfully
+conceived and faithfully represented. The representation, indeed, is that
+of exposition, each scene illustrating and emphasizing some trait without
+securing much illusion of life. The style, especially in the long speeches,
+is too often rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic
+power. Yet it is masterly in its way, careful and competent to its
+purposes, and free from obscurity or over-richness. His plays mark another
+failure to turn popular tragedy back into the classical mould. They
+contributed, perhaps, to a greater regularity of action on the part of his
+contemporaries and to a more serious consideration of the functions of
+drama, but the scholarly student of history failed to make it live, the
+author of "Bartholomew Fair" did not find his best opportunity in the
+acceptance of classicist theory.
+
+Chapman's tragedies attempted a field hitherto untried except in Marlowe's
+"Massacre," that of contemporary French history. While treating historical
+events with freedom of invention, he dealt with real persons and careers
+familiar to his audience. In the long-popular tragedy of "The Death of
+Bussy D'Ambois" (1607, acted 1600-1604) he turned to the court of Henry III
+and centred a story of treasonable ambition, conspiracy, and adultery about
+the interesting personality of the insolent and indomitable D'Ambois. After
+the fashion of Kyd and Marston, he followed "The Death" with a "Revenge of
+Bussy D'Ambois," which adopted the established technic of the revenge
+plays, with less alteration than might have been expected after
+Shakespeare's transformation in "Hamlet." The avenger, Clermont, is a
+"Senecal man," and his sententious and rhetorical philosophizing was
+doubtless incited by "Hamlet," though it followed a long-established
+precedent. The "Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron" (two parts, 1608, acted
+1607) dealt with important affairs in the reign of Henry IV that were still
+fresh in the memory of the audience, Biron having been executed in 1602.
+In the original form of the play, in fact, Queen Elizabeth was represented,
+and the French queen boxed the ears of her husband's mistress, but the
+protest of the French ambassador made a revision necessary.
+
+The new material of these plays did not lead Chapman to attempt any
+variations in form from the current drama, nor did it result in any advance
+in method; his fondness for long speeches and narrations resulting rather
+in a treatment more epical and less dramatic than is found in any of his
+contemporaries. Nor did his study of contemporary memoirs for his sources
+and his interest in political philosophy result in any advance in reality
+or vividness of characterization, though here he is often very felicitous,
+as in his portrait of Henry IV, and though his arrogant protagonists are
+interesting and original variations of the Marlowean tragic hero, not
+without successors in the later drama. But for Chapman, tragedy was in the
+main, as for the writers whom Gosson derided, an opportunity "to show the
+majesty of his pen in tragical speeches." The abundance, ingenuity, and
+beauty of his figurative language are simply amazing. Every person, deed,
+or sentiment calls for illustration and lets loose a flood of similes.
+Finished verse, a highly picturesque sense of the value of words, a
+remarkable union of pregnant sententiousness with vividness of description,
+have made his plays the delight of many a reader, though perhaps most of
+his admirers have experienced a fatigue that found satisfaction in Dryden's
+perverse criticism, "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words,
+repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles."
+For, though the thought is by no means dwarfish, the dress is often too big
+for it. We are wearied by the constant effort to write up to the tragic
+opportunity for a heightened and sententious eloquence. In this respect,
+Chapman's style partakes of the faults of his day. It has not the
+spontaneity and ease of Marlowe, Peele, and "Romeo and Juliet"; it is
+difficult, involved, pretentious, and self-conscious, yet its splendors
+remain. Its abundance of resource, its imaginative condensation, its
+suggestive power again and again compel comparison with Shakespeare
+himself.
+
+Revenge directed by a ghost found favor with both Jonson and Chapman, but
+they were preceded in the use of this popular motive by John Marston. In
+1598, at the age of twenty-three, he made something of a sensation by his
+satires and immediately proceeded to carry his censoriousness of human
+frailties into the drama. His earliest play, "Antonio and Mellida" (two
+parts, 1602, acted 1599-1600), reveals in Part I the still dominant
+influence of romantic comedy, despite its tragic trend; but Part II,
+"Antonio's Revenge," is a tragedy of the Kydian type. The play was followed
+by a number of comedies, all outspoken in satire of contemporary manners
+and in the exposure of social immorality. Several dealt with tragic
+material, and one, "The Malcontent," is a notable combination of a tragedy
+of blood and a satirical comedy. Its protagonist is of a type represented
+in the other comedies and not without influence on contemporary dramatists.
+Marston's malcontents are men of virtue and honor "who hate not man but
+man's lewd qualities"; in disfavor and out of joint with the world; given
+to melancholy and a showy pessimism that finds fitting expression only in
+images of filth and putrefaction. His tragedy "Sophonisba" (1606), which he
+seems to have deemed the most important of his plays, treats history with
+great freedom, and unites melodramatic horrors with his usual unflinching
+fondness for rankness of thought and imagery. The horrible realism of the
+Erichtho scenes comes in strange contrast with the songs, dances, and
+musical accompaniment suited to a performance by the child actors for whom
+all of Marston's plays were written.
+
+"Antonio's Revenge" is the earliest representative in this period of the
+Kydian type of revenge tragedy. The satirical passages in "A Warning for
+Fair Women" indicate the popularity of ghosts and revenge, and there are
+many evidences of the continued vogue of "The Spanish Tragedy" from 1597 to
+1602. Marston's play was evidently modeled on "The Spanish Tragedy," and
+probably still more directly on the Kydian "Hamlet." The story is the
+revenge of a son for a father murdered by a villanous duke who seeks to wed
+the hero's mother; the revenge is directed by the ghost of the father; the
+hero is driven to hesitation, irresolution, and the verge of madness; he
+pretends to be a fool; intrigue and trickery are indulged in by both hero
+and villain, and the revenge is accomplished with an abundance of
+bloodshed. There is a minor story of revenge, enforcing the main situation
+as does the Laertes story in "Hamlet" and the scene with the Senex in "The
+Spanish Tragedy"; and, doubtless as in the early "Hamlet," the passion of
+the murderer for the widow of his victim now becomes an important motive in
+the action. Moreover, the play abounds in psychological introspection and
+meditative philosophy set forth for the most part through the soliloquies
+of the hero.
+
+The indebtedness to the earlier revenge plays extends to details of the
+stage presentation. Revenge is accomplished much as in "The Spanish
+Tragedy," though by means of a masque instead of a play, and without the
+death of the hero. From similar scenes in the old "Hamlet" were probably
+derived the appearance of the ghost at midnight, the cry "Antonio,
+revenge!" and the second appearance of the ghost to the hero and his
+mother. The dumb show exhibiting the wooing of Maria, the use of the
+churchyard, the banquets, carousals, funerals, exhibition of the dead
+bodies, and the oaths of the conspirators were perhaps already conventional
+accompaniments of a revenge play. "Antonio's Revenge," however, is not
+wanting in inventiveness; its abundant horrors and its melodramatically
+ingenious stage effects were probably recognized as an advance upon the old
+favorites, and they excited the emulation of succeeding dramatists.
+
+The hero, too, is of the Kydian type. Like both Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
+is a scholar, interested in philosophy and also in theatrical performances.
+Like them he is distinguished by a tendency to reflection, and struggles in
+solitary meditation at each crisis in his career. Like them he is driven to
+the verge of madness by the pressure of his heavy responsibility and by his
+awakened sense of evil in the universe. Though he does not seek further
+proof, yet, like Hamlet after the revelations of the play, he becomes
+frantic and irresolute, neglects an opportunity to kill the duke, and
+wastes his vengeance upon an innocent child. Like Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
+is tricky, wild, and ranting. With all his overdrawn passion, however, his
+mental struggle occasionally attains intellectual depth and tragic power.
+As he tells us, it was "the stings of anguish," "the bruising stroke of
+chance" which made him run mad "as one confounded in a maze of mischief."
+
+Several years, then, before Shakespeare's "Hamlet," we have a play dealing
+with the old story of a revenge of a son for a father, following closely
+the methods introduced by Kyd, appealing to a taste that delighted in
+extravagant violence and melodramatic sensationalism, but also striving to
+simulate profundity of thought and a passionate sense of evil. It is
+difficult to-day to take Marston seriously. His plays have little merit,
+while his bombastic sententiousness gives an air of insincerity to
+everything that he wrote; yet a serious purpose and a considerable
+influence on later drama cannot be denied to his efforts in tragedy. Like
+so many others, he deserves to be remembered for what he attempted rather
+than for what he did. Absurd though "Antonio's Revenge" be as an artistic
+achievement, it is historically of importance as indicating an ambitious
+attempt to give poetical expression to the spiritual conflict of a mind
+brought to face dreadful evil. The prologue that he addressed to his London
+audience testifies sufficiently to his serious and ambitious intentions,
+and to the clear separation of tragedy from other forms of drama, which he
+and other poets were trying to force upon the theatre.
+
+                       "Therefore we proclaim,
+    If any spirit breathes within this round
+    Uncapable of weighty passion,
+    (As from his birth being hugged in the arms
+    And nuzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness,)
+    Who winks and shuts his apprehension up
+    From common sense of what men were, and are;
+    Who would not know what men must be: let such
+    Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;
+    We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,
+    Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart,
+    Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;
+    If there be any blood, whose heat is choked
+    And stifled with true sense of misery:
+    If aught of these strains fill this consort up,
+    They arrive most welcome."
+
+A number of plays dealing with "revenge for a father" followed. In 1602
+"The Revenge of Hamlet" was entered in the Stationers' Register; and the
+first quarto, a pirated and very corrupt edition, appeared in the following
+year. This quarto, in the opinion of a majority of critics, represents
+Shakespeare's partial revision of the old play, which was put on the stage
+by Burbage's company in 1601-02. In the same years Ben Jonson was receiving
+pay from Henslowe of the rival company for two sets of additions to "The
+Spanish Tragedy," and these were published in 1602. In that year Henslowe
+also paid Chettle for a tragedy, "Hoffman" (1631); and in 1602-03
+Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" (1611) was probably acted.[18] By 1603
+Shakespeare had given "Hamlet" its final form as represented by the second
+quarto (1604). The almost simultaneous appearance of these various plays is
+sufficient testimony to the popularity of the old revenge story with both
+audiences and authors. Dealing with similar plots, they naturally have many
+elements in common, but they exhibit few or no signs of servile imitation
+of one another. They represent independent developments of the type that
+Kyd had introduced a dozen years before and that Marston had revived, each
+retaining many of the old conventions, and each adding much that was new.
+
+Jonson's additions to "The Spanish Tragedy" are distinct from the rest of
+the play and affect the proportion and movement of the action rather for
+the worse. They deal in the main with Hieronimo; his irony is increased and
+made more effective; his reflections become more elaborate and pregnant;
+above all, his madness gains enormously in reality and intensity. His
+madness, indeed, receives a disproportionate development. Throughout the
+additions Jonson is picturing a mind diseased by grief, sometimes conscious
+of life's unrelaxing pain and again lost in frenzied delirium. Thus, the
+imaginative impulses that responded to the demand for revenge plays here
+stirred a great poet to a rehabilitation of the crude ravings of the old
+Hieronimo in a form more intellectual, more vitally human, and of immensely
+greater imaginative range.
+
+"Hoffman" is a sensational melodrama by a hack writer not unskillful in
+using prevailing conventions with theatrical effectiveness. The story is
+again the revenge of a son for a father, but there is no ghost, only the
+skeleton to excite him to vengeance. He banishes "clouds of melancholy" at
+the start and shows no hesitation in carrying out the revenge until turned
+from his purpose by his passion for the mother of his chief victim.
+Intrigue and slaughter reign supreme; and, as in "Locrine," there are two
+plots of revenge--Hoffman seeking revenge for his father and every one else
+seeking revenge on Hoffman. In the pathetic situation of Lucibella, driven
+insane by grief, Chettle made use of a character and a situation familiar
+on the stage in much the same fashion as they must have been presented in
+the old "Hamlet." Lucibella's madness, however, is made the instrument of
+some telling hits at the villain and the means of discovering his iniquity.
+While Ophelia's madness has no influence on the main action, that of
+Lucibella leads directly to the _dénouement_. Dramatically this is a very
+important difference and seems due to Chettle's invention. Unlike Marston
+or Jonson, he made little effort to give the story either imaginative
+intensity or philosophical significance. He took common theatrical motives
+and situations, added much and changed much, and constructed a good acting
+play not without some grace of verse. A play that was popular thirty years
+after it was written must have successfully met the stage demand.
+
+Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" differs in many respects from all preceding
+revenge plays. The revenge is for a father murdered by an uncle and
+directed by a ghost. The revenge, however, is left to Providence; the ghost
+is Christian; the avenging son not only hesitates, but after a little
+irresolution overcomes his inclinations to revenge, and, obeying the
+ghost's behests, resignedly awaits the judgment of heaven. In stage
+presentation the play also shows a wide departure from Kyd, especially in
+the indescribable comic underplot. There are, however, three appearances of
+the ghost,--one to soldiers on watch,--churchyard scenes, banquets, sword
+fights, suicides, scaffolds, and death's-heads. In the accumulation of
+horrors, in the development of the villain's character, in the emphasis on
+new sensational motives at the expense of revenge, and in the more
+elaborate handling of the intrigue, it may be said to carry the general
+development of the revenge tragedy a step farther than Marston or Chettle,
+and a step nearer to Webster. On the other hand, in its definite attempt to
+present an intellectual conception not lacking in moral grandeur, it
+sometimes, more closely than any of the other plays considered, approaches
+"Hamlet." The change in the revenge motive is especially manifest in the
+soliloquies and reflective passages, which unite in a fairly well connected
+argument that points the moral of the action, the omnipotence of God's
+providence.
+
+When, after an interval of some half dozen years, Shakespeare returned to
+tragedy, evidently both the demands of the theatres and the artistic
+impulses of the poets were different from those of Marlowe's day. The plays
+of Marlowe and Kyd were still active forces in the drama, but in 1600-01,
+when Shakespeare was perhaps writing both "Julius Cæsar" and the first
+revision of "Hamlet," the man of the hour in tragedy was Marston.
+
+In "Julius Cæsar" Shakespeare availed himself of a theme already a
+favorite. The story of the overthrow of a tyrant, the progress of a
+conspiracy, the fall of a prince, and his revenge upon the murderers
+furnished material well approved for tragedy, while the greatness of the
+events and the actors both gave assurance of popular interest and incited
+the poet to his best. Shakespeare was not directed by scrupulous regard for
+historical accuracy, but his genius was stirred by that of Plutarch to give
+the events of the Roman civil war the interest and vitality he had given to
+the reigns of English kings. In dealing with a story that followed so
+closely the standard lines of tragedy,--the murder and the
+revenge,--Shakespeare adopted some of the methods current in contemporary
+plays. There is really no evidence to support Mr. Fleay's ingenious surmise
+that the play was originally in two parts,--I, The Death, and II, The
+Revenge of Cæsar,--but the play seems to have separated itself naturally
+into those two divisions. The rise of the action traces the rise of the
+conspiracy to Cæsar's death; the return of the action proceeds to the
+failure and deaths of the conspirators. But from the beginning Shakespeare
+must have found his interest engaged less by the story of conspiracy or
+revenge, or even by the presentation of the turmoil of an empire, than by
+the delineation of the character of Brutus. There, for him, lay the kernel
+of the tragedy, in the struggle of a highly gifted nature with a task unfit
+for his accomplishment. The play became not a tragedy of over-reaching
+ambition, as Marlowe might have made "The Tragedy of Cæsar," nor the
+tragedy of supernaturally ordained revenge, as Kyd might have made "Cæsar's
+Revenge," but the tragedy of Brutus,--the fateful struggle of a noble mind
+against counter actors and against chance, and also against an incurable
+deficiency in his own temperament.
+
+Similarly, in revising the old "Hamlet," Shakespeare must have been
+attracted by the possibilities in the character of the hesitating avenger.
+Here, however, as we have seen, the influence of his contemporaries was
+considerable and complex. The plot, situations, types of character, and
+leading motives of the old "Hamlet" were already familiar to the stage in
+several plays. Revenge, directed by a ghost, hesitation on the part of the
+hero, insanity real or feigned, intrigue, copious bloodshed, a secondary
+revenge plot, meditative philosophizing in the form of soliloquies, were
+all essential elements probably of the Kydian "Hamlet," certainly of
+several other revenge plays. The refusal of an opportunity to kill the
+villain, the songs and wild talk of a mad woman, the murder of an innocent
+intruder, scenes in a churchyard, the appearance of the ghost to soldiers
+of the watch, the play within the play,--all these as well as many more
+minor conventionalities, such as the swearing on the sword hilt, or the
+voice of the ghost in the cellar, had appeared in other plays than the old
+"Hamlet." And Hamlet himself, wild and ranting at times, crafty and
+dissimulating at others, cynical and ironical, given to melancholy and
+meditation, hesitating in bewilderment, harassed by the unavoidable "whips
+and scorns of time,"--so far as we can analyze the tragic hero, his
+characteristics had been already used by contemporary dramatists. Dramatic
+ingenuity was all that was required to make a new play out of this
+abundance of old material. Chettle succeeded in doing just this. Marston,
+Jonson, and Tourneur, however, had been trying to give the old story
+philosophical significance and a highly imaginative phrasing. They had
+glimpses of the dramatic and poetic possibilities that lay in the situation
+of the hesitating revenger, and at moments they succeeded in realizing
+these. Shakespeare set himself to their task, and naturally enough he was
+in many ways limited and directed by their efforts. It was perfectly
+possible for him to change the plot completely, or to omit the ghost in the
+cellar, or to remove the bloodthirsty and intriguing elements from the part
+of Hamlet, or to give a more Christian interpretation to the revenge; but
+in these and other matters he followed the practice of the earlier plays.
+There was no dramatic need of so many long soliloquies; the meditative
+avenger need not have been ironical; insanity might have received less
+elaboration; but in these respects Shakespeare was in agreement with his
+contemporaries. The themes which they took inspired him. He succeeded in
+doing what they vainly attempted.
+
+He by no means neglected the external story or denied the theatrical demand
+for sensation. He, perhaps, did not radically change the course of events
+as depicted in the old play, but he unquestionably improved on any
+preceding tragedy in the mere effectiveness of the scenic presentation of a
+sensational story. How great this effectiveness is may be judged by the
+continued popularity of "Hamlet" as a stage performance even before
+unlettered auditors. We may surmise that had poetry and philosophy both
+perished, it would still draw its crowds as it does to-day on the remote
+borders of civilization. This theatrical triumph is due in part to dramatic
+excellence of structure and presentation. From the old play probably came a
+story restricted by semi-Senecan technic to a great emotional crisis; but
+Shakespeare at least resisted the temptation, to which his contemporaries
+succumbed, of extending the action over the events leading up to the
+murder. And assuredly to him rather than to Kyd or another is due the
+recognition of the dramatic values of the story's beginning, middle, and
+end. Magnificent as is his development of the ghost scenes at the
+beginning, still more important structurally is his realization of the
+value of the middle of the tragedy and treatment of the play within the
+play and its immediate sequences; and if the end is developed with an
+Elizabethan looseness of coherence that will not correspond to any logical
+scheme of structure, yet the pathos of the Ophelia scenes and the wonderful
+grotesquery of the graveyard excite and renew the spectator's interest to
+the final catastrophe. The scenic presentation, while telling a sensational
+story with preëminent effectiveness, becomes as never before in English
+drama the means for exhibiting the inner struggle of the protagonist.
+Parallel with the external conflict between murderer and avenger, beginning
+with the advent of the ghost and ending with a holocaust, there runs the
+story of a man's moods and thoughts; and this story of doubt and melancholy
+overpowering resolution imposes its unity of structure and emotional tone
+upon the external conflict so full of visible action. The throng of
+dreadful happenings becomes a foil to set off the inner struggle of
+thought. Their climax is only the brink of resolution from which Hamlet
+shrinks. Their catastrophe is the end of irresolution in silence.
+
+The reflections and moralizings and broodings over misfortunes inherited
+from Seneca, and long an essential element in the revenge plays, are also,
+like the sensational incidents, integrated and humanized by the conception
+of the hero's character. The soliloquies, though keeping to the themes and
+methods of contemporary drama, become landmarks in the depiction of the
+inner struggle and in the general progress of the action. The absurd
+convention of speaking aloud one's unformed and unbidden thoughts becomes
+theatrically exciting, dramatically essential, and, through the reach of
+Shakespeare's imaginative expression, representative of the eternal battle
+of human frailty against the mysteries of chance and evil.
+
+Analysis might, indeed, continue to discover in the multiform
+impressiveness of the characterization and the poetry survivals of old
+conventions and hints of the method of Shakespeare's transformation. Taken
+apart, various passages seem overburdened with rhetoric, after the style of
+the day, and others over-sententious. Taken piece by piece, the sarcasm,
+the irony, the pessimism, the stoic philosophy, even the passionate protest
+against destiny, have much in common with the ideas then current in other
+plays. But here again the transformation accomplished through unrivaled
+powers of expression and knowledge of human nature seems to result from an
+absorbing interest in the meditating and hesitating temperament of the
+hero. The union of a drama of blood-vengeance with a drama of thought, a
+union that had been often attempted by others, is finally achieved,
+because here for the first time there is full recognition of the tragic
+interest, movement, and significance of a man's battle with himself. The
+tragic drama of character has been consummated.
+
+In Shakespeare's conception of the tragic hero we find many characteristics
+and some incongruities that belong to the old avengers; but there is new
+penetration into the sources of human motive that results in an essentially
+new view of the functions and scope of the tragic drama. As in most
+tragedies since "Tamburlaine," the play is a one-part play, presenting a
+hero far above the average in mental and moral power, but for the time
+mainly under the sway of one dominating mood or emotion. Like the other
+heroes of revenge tragedies, Hamlet is a good man brought suddenly face to
+face with evil. Again, like the heroes of Seneca and of most tragedies
+dealing with a reversal of fortune, Hamlet is a strong man brought to face
+the enmity of chance. He is an individual forced to struggle against a
+hostile environment. Again, he is a man in a tragic crisis that requires
+the exercise of all possible powers on his part if he is to avoid disaster,
+who finds himself afflicted with a temperamental weakness that makes
+failure possible or indeed inevitable. Critics emphasize now one and now
+another element of his character as they emphasize one or another of these
+conflicts as the most important. Shakespeare here, as again in later plays,
+united in one hero all the varieties of conflict catalogued by the
+critics. But if we ask which is most peculiarly Shakespearean, it must be
+said to be the conflict with his own temperamental unfitness, call that
+irresolution, melancholy, meditativeness, or what you will. Here lies
+Shakespeare's main differentiation from preceding tragedy, though one
+distinctly presaged in "Julius Cæsar." At all events, we have a conception
+of tragedy carried out in his succeeding plays. The hero, noble and
+righteous, is brought into conflict with the results of evil and
+circumstance, and he is crippled by his own inability or weakness. Tragedy
+becomes inherent in character, in the incompleteness that marks the best
+and mightiest of mankind.
+
+Our consideration of "Hamlet" has been prolonged partly because its
+relations to contemporary drama can be traced more readily than those of
+Shakespeare's other tragedies, and partly because it is the first of his
+plays to afford a full definition of tragedy, a conception of prime
+importance both in the development of Shakespeare's art and in the future
+history of the drama. A sensational struggle is presented, and the
+abounding incidents are wrought into effective if loosely connected
+stage-scenes, dealing with material similar to that then current in the
+theatres,--villains, ghosts, murders, insanity, grim farce, meditations,
+aphorisms. But the scenic presentation and the dramatic structure are to
+express not only an external conflict between hero and counter-force, but
+an inner struggle of the hero himself. They are to be the effects and
+results, nay, the very mirror of the inner thought and feeling. And the
+disaster that falls upon the hero and those by him beloved comes home to
+us as due not merely to external forces or circumstances or to evil working
+within, but also to an inherent unfitness of his own.
+
+This conception of tragedy found further exemplification in "Othello,"[19]
+freer from Elizabethan methods than any of the other tragedies, and the
+most masterful of all as a play. The fable was found in an Italian novella
+that related, like so many of its class, a bald story of love, jealousy,
+and villany. The very baldness of the narrative in comparison with the
+fullness of incident and characterization of the chronicles or Plutarch,
+gave Shakespeare's imagination an untrammeled opportunity. The ingredients
+of the story, common in romantic comedy and already combined by Shakespeare
+in "Much Ado about Nothing," were also not unfamiliar in tragedy, but
+Shakespeare enlarged and interpreted them to fit the conception of his two
+preceding tragedies, the presentation of a spiritual struggle in which
+goodness is attacked by evil at its point of greatest vulnerability. The
+credulity of Othello, however, is assaulted by a more active agent of evil
+than in "Julius Cæsar" or "Hamlet." Malignant evil is embodied in Iago, and
+it is against his machinations that the nobly idealized characters of
+Othello and Desdemona prove incompetent and defenseless. He is the person
+who dominates the action and gives explanation and plausibility to the
+circumstances. He not only opposes the hero in the external action, he
+creates through his insinuations all the evil suspicions that struggle in
+Othello's mind. He might almost be considered the protagonist of the
+tragedy.
+
+In structure there is a notable advance over preceding plays, accomplished
+apparently in part through deliberate intent. The first act with its
+account of Iago's craft and the marriage is a distinct introduction. The
+remaining four acts present a practically continuous action, confined to
+Cyprus and representing about thirty-six hours. Moreover, by a skillful
+ambiguity, which Christopher North called "the double clock," Shakespeare,
+while securing this rapid and uninterrupted process of time, has succeeded
+in conveying an impression of protracted intrigue and slowly-developing
+motives. Thus, without lessening the variety and importance of the events
+and emotions, he gains, by a closer observance of unity than in the other
+tragedies, a greater degree of theatrical illusion and of dramatic
+intensity. Again, "Othello" technically is noticeable among the tragedies
+for its relinquishment of many current methods. It is neither a chronicle
+history nor a Senecan tragedy. There is no presentation of history and
+little of court ceremonies. There are no battles, no long exposition, no
+spectacles, no ghosts, no insanity, and almost no comedy. It has few
+persons and virtually a single action. The underplot is subordinated and
+closely united to the main action, and there are no delays and new
+excitements between crisis and catastrophe as in "Hamlet" and "Lear."
+Nowhere else in Shakespeare is the progress of character, emotion, and deed
+toward the final event so consecutive and so uninterrupted. This advance in
+coherence and proportion seems due less to the contributing causes just
+enumerated than to the explanation of action by character. Accept the
+unbelievable malignity of Iago--and you do accept it before you have
+proceeded far--and every step of the appalling chain of intrigue seems a
+natural outcome of the motives of the persons before us.
+
+In consequence of this integration of character and action, the characters
+are, more than in the other tragedies, distinct and unmistakable. As if to
+make stronger the contrast between good and evil, the good man is a Moor,
+apparently, as in the case of the Moors in "Titus Andronicus" and
+"Selimus," hardly distinguishable from a negro; and the bad man is deprived
+of the motive which in the _novella_ rendered his wickedness intelligible.
+Yet nowhere, even in Shakespeare, are generosity and greatness of soul more
+admirable than in Othello, nowhere is villany more human than in Iago. The
+stage villain here receives his apotheosis as the avenging hero did in
+"Hamlet." The source of all the evil in the play, the Machiavellian
+machinator, the subtle hypocrite whose every action is a pose to conceal
+its purpose, the simulator of honesty and bluntness, the shameless egoist
+who proudly avows his villany and bawls it to the gallery, the intellectual
+master who plays every one for a dupe, and especially his accomplice--all
+this had been embodied in the villains of Kyd and Marlowe. Although
+intelligible to Elizabethan psychology and theology, and credible in the
+light of Tudor politics and feuds, such a type would seem to lack enduring
+truth. While preserving all the attributes of the stage type, Shakespeare
+made it the means for that searching analysis of human depravity to which
+his contemporaries were less successfully dedicating their efforts. This
+soliloquizing devil becomes identified with the suggestions and sinuosities
+of evil that partake of the flux of our consciousness. Hypocrisy, cynicism,
+cruelty, the absence of human sympathies, the pride and malignity of
+intellectual superiority have henceforth their symbol in Iago. Impossible,
+diabolical, inhuman as Barabas or Richard III, he is never for a moment
+unplausible, because he ever unearths a corresponding potentiality in us.
+
+The persons of the play, while unusually effective on the stage, and while
+human and real in their discourse, have a universality of appeal essential
+in the greatest works of art, desired by Aristotle and dimly foreshadowed
+in Elizabethan efforts after greatness and typicality. Othello, Desdemona,
+and Iago create fresh reflection and new impulse in every reader of every
+generation. And to each they are not only real persons but also symbols and
+ideals of the generosity, sweetness, and iniquity of the universe. This
+idealization of character is accomplished with wonderful clarity by means
+of an expression, splendidly eloquent, untroubled by conceit or obscurity,
+equally masterful in prose or verse, magnificently adapted to the
+representation of every mood or temperament. Shakespeare here realized the
+ideal toward which English tragedy under the leadership of Marlowe had been
+struggling, the presentation of human greatness in blank verse beautiful
+and dramatic.
+
+If "Othello" is comparatively free from current conventions, "Lear" is in
+many respects the most Elizabethan of Shakespeare's tragedies. Story,
+themes, situations, stage effects constantly recall the plays of his
+predecessors; and if his creative imagination here attains the most
+astounding triumph in all literature, it cannot be said to free itself
+entirely from a confusion of archaisms and absurdities.
+
+Returning to English history, Shakespeare selected a story that had
+outgrown the chronicles and been narrated by several poets and in one
+drama. From the early "Leir" he took a few important hints, but he treated
+the material of the chronicles with a freedom which both its obviously
+legendary character and its remoulding by other poets permitted. He was
+only slightly concerned with the presentation of history and hurried over
+the battles and the shows, the still indispensable accompaniment of
+historical plays. He was concerned solely with the tragic entanglements of
+character, with the devastations of evil and folly.
+
+The kernel of the story, Lear's trick and Cordelia's unsatisfactory reply,
+though possessing a kind of objectivity suitable for the stage, is of
+itself so absurd and childish as to impede illusion of truth. Its
+development is full of inconsistency, and the interwoven themes of madness,
+villany, lust, ambition, family feud, and ideal virtue suggest no break
+from the Elizabethan canon of tragedy. To the story of Lear and his
+daughters, Shakespeare added the still more childish parallel story of
+Gloster and his sons. This common device of a reinforcing sub-plot is here
+extended to every situation and motive. Even the devoted Kent is balanced
+by Goneril's faithful creature, Oswald; the inhuman sisters are supported
+by the machinating Edmund; and, most extraordinary of all, the assumed
+madness of Edgar becomes an accompaniment for the real madness of Lear. The
+elaboration of the sub-plot causes an unprecedented complexity of persons
+and events, and it dislocates the structure. The intense interest which is
+absorbed in the sufferings of Lear finds itself distracted and dissipated
+in a medley of incidents so incongruous and so confusing that one wonders
+how a rational mind could have selected them. The crowded scenes which
+separate the climax of the third act from the catastrophe assuredly form
+one of the least happy instances of the Elizabethan habit of introducing a
+change of interest and a variety of incident in the fourth and fifth acts.
+Yet the structure of the play, if far from faultless, reveals amazing
+mastery. The development of the action in the first three acts with the
+constantly increasing tension of feeling, and the final gathering of all
+the different actions in the wonderfully condensed catastrophe, are among
+the greatest achievements of dramatic plotting. Moreover, in spite of his
+zest for crowded and diversified action, Shakespeare's feeling for unity of
+emotional effect caused him to omit one motive that modern renovators have
+never been able to forego. He found a place for battles, villany, childish
+intrigue, the clown's songs and jests, the plucking out of Gloster's eyes,
+and the protracted foolery between Edgar and his helpless father, but he
+refused to admit romantic love into this drama of the madness that
+separates father and child.
+
+Though Shakespeare chose to involve himself in these manifold difficulties
+of story and structure, he hardly felt his fetters. No play depends less on
+mere incident and event. The inconsistencies and confusion of the action
+are forgotten in the wild turmoil of human passions. Wild, terrible,
+elementary, brutal, grotesque, or sublime,--everything in the play is
+touched with the imaginative truth that gives it limitless range of
+suggestion, applicable to any discord of parents and children or to the
+most dreadful spiritual torture. Insanity, long a favorite theme of
+Elizabethan tragedy, and fantastic grotesqueness, often its bane, summon
+his imagination to its most wonderful creation when the feigning Bedlam
+counters the mad king mid the jests of the fool and the havoc of the storm.
+Such a conception could have been attempted only in an age which took its
+emotions strong and mixed, which found insanity a subject for laughter as
+well as horror, and which refused to limit the imagination by reason or
+rule. In that age a lesser than Shakespeare might have formed the bare
+design of making his audience laugh at the fool and poor Tom, and shudder
+at the eyeless Gloster and the raving Ancient. Something akin to it may be
+found in many scenes, in that in which Marlowe's emperor and empress dash
+out their brains against the bars of their cage in a frenzy of humiliation,
+or that in which Webster's duchess stands undazzled amid the dancing ring
+of obscene maniacs. The Elizabethan drama had prepared the opportunity for
+the full and terrible presentation of the discords and agony of a breaking
+mind. The London audience was ready for the scenes on the heath.
+
+Madness is only one element that contributes to the overwhelming effect of
+the play. Its so-called pessimism is the only other on which our meagre
+survey may dwell. English tragedy had from the beginning concerned itself
+mainly with heinous crime and sin; and during the years immediately
+preceding and following "Lear" there was a distinct conception of tragedy
+as the representation not only of the depths of iniquity but of the moral
+confusion and blackness that beset us all. In "Hamlet," "Othello," and
+"Measure for Measure" the sense of evil is ever present. In "Lear" it
+grips the reader like the rack. As in "Othello," evil, here represented by
+the two fiendish daughters as well as by an intriguing villain, dominates
+the action, and carries all that is good along with it to destruction. But
+evil is only one of the forces that cause suffering and ruin. Lear and
+Cordelia contend against their own imperfections and against chance and
+circumstance so hostile that they seem directed by gods who sport with men
+as with flies and loose the fury of the elements to torment their victims.
+Where else in tragedy are the forces that make for ruin so appalling and so
+irresistible; and where else are suffering and ruin so dreadful and so
+complete? The sufferers are powerless. Suffering does not here arouse a
+Promethean defiance, but it discovers and purifies human virtue. If evil is
+dominant over the action, Cordelia, Kent, the Fool, and the chastened and
+purified Lear are dominant in our reflections. The end is not the fall and
+cessation of all that is good. Even in our dismay at the convulsion which
+evil may cause, there remains the memory of the perfection of human
+devotion and love. The final impression must, however, partake of confusion
+and horror at the blackness and ruthlessness of a moral order that can
+sacrifice perfect virtue in an effort to free itself from the hideous
+enormity of evil. This is the tragedy of life as Shakespeare saw it, and
+the cry of bewilderment and agony seems to come from the poet's own heart.
+The language, sometimes crowded and difficult, has hardly a trace of
+artifice. Rarely as perfectly mastered as in "Hamlet" and "Othello," it
+surpasses even those plays in the tremendous sincerity of its passion. If
+passionate despair at things human has a language, it is the speech of
+Lear.
+
+"Macbeth" offers a marked contrast to "Lear" in its brevity and rapidity.
+In spite of a few probable interpolations, the text is so short that it may
+likely represent a condensation of the original version. In none of the
+tragedies is the story told with more breathless directness, or with more
+effective presentation of the externals of the action. The play is more
+dependent on the chronicle than "Lear," and pays more attention to the
+representation of history. In "Lear" the political and national importance
+of the events is forgotten, but in "Macbeth" the convulsion of the kingdom
+is kept in mind, and the battles, political intrigue, and the prophecies of
+future dynasties recall the early chronicle plays. The story in Holinshed's
+chronicle, however, conforms to the current ideas of tragedy, so closely
+indeed that one wonders that some writer had not earlier attempted its
+dramatization.[20] Apparently it awaited a Scottish king and a general
+interest in Scottish affairs. The story is one of crime and retribution
+with a rather striking likeness to some of the classical dramas. It
+coincides with the Senecan plan of a crime committed and then revenged
+through the accompaniment of supernatural agencies. It is the story,
+familiar to both humanistic and popular tragedy, of a usurper who becomes
+a bloody tyrant and is overthrown after a reign of increasing crime.
+Macbeth's inordinate and fatal ambition also offers an obvious chance for a
+development akin to that of Marlowe's protagonists. Again, as in most
+English tragedies from "Cambyses" to "Sejanus," the story presents the
+punishment of evil rather than the suffering of the good, and, except for
+the absence of lust as a motive, might have found favor with any
+contemporary dramatist. All these possibilities in the story were seized
+upon by Shakespeare and adapted to his purpose. "Macbeth" might be studied
+as the complement of "Lear" in the reflection and summarizing of all
+preceding essays at tragedy.
+
+Shakespeare's use of these various potentialities of the story and the
+definiteness of his unifying purpose may both be seen by a comparison with
+his treatment of the very similar materials furnished by the chronicles for
+"Richard III." There, following closely the Marlowean methods, he for some
+reason minimized the motive of remorse emphasized in his sources, and left
+Richard as conscienceless as Tamburlaine or Barabas. In "Macbeth" the story
+of ambition is also a story of the temptation, defeat, and remorse of
+conscience. As in the other great tragedies, Shakespeare informed the old
+material with the struggle of the human will. At the same time he made the
+most of the hints in the chronicle that the protagonist was driven by fate
+or some forces beyond his control. He united with marvelous dramatic tact
+the destiny tragedy of the Greeks and the villain tragedy of the
+Elizabethans. As a result the character of Macbeth has its paradoxes that
+are the despair of the analysts. We do not quite know how far free-will and
+how far superhuman agencies determined his course. But while the superhuman
+agencies give his villany a mystery and impressiveness, they never confuse
+for a moment the distinctions of good and evil. The powers of right and
+wrong are clearly marshaled, and the triumph of evil leads to anguish as
+well as to ruin.
+
+Shakespeare's transforming and vitalizing use of both the suggestions of
+Holinshed and the established conventions of tragedy in order to suit this
+changed purpose is manifest at every turn, but nowhere so transcendently as
+in his treatment of the supernatural. The ghost that interrupts the banquet
+is no shrieking revenger, hardly more than a hallucination of the murderer.
+The invisibility of the ghost to all but the one whom he would frighten or
+admonish has other examples in the drama, but by 1605 most of the
+playwrights made their ghosts either melodramatically horrible or vulgarly
+familiar. In "Macbeth" Shakespeare not only etherealizes the ghost as in
+"Julius Cæsar" and "Hamlet," but makes him a part of the very mood and
+temper of the murderer. And similarly, the witches, drawn from Holinshed's
+hints, represent a supernatural interference very different from that of
+the furies, devils, or sorcerers usual in the theatre. Some of their stage
+effects are archaic enough, as the shows of the head, the bloody child, and
+the monarchs; some, like their vanishing in air, may have been novel on
+the stage of the Globe; certainly they were all intended to surpass in mere
+theatrical novelty and effectiveness any of the supernatural or magical
+creatures of the contemporary drama. Delighting the groundlings and
+appealing to the current interest in witchcraft, they are none the less
+essential to the drama, inwrapt in the conception of character. The foul
+hags of superstition, they seem also to have the attributes of the
+classical Fates. Novel and effective on the stage, they are the supervisors
+of Macbeth's destiny. They lay bare the path to his crimes, yet they seem
+to obey rather than to govern his inclinations. The embodiments of the
+desires hid in his bosom, they become, like the dagger in the air and the
+ghost of Banquo, the symptoms of his soul's disease.
+
+The disease of the soul is the theme, and the attention is centred upon
+crime and its accompaniments, as in many contemporary plays, but with less
+relief than in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. While the range of
+crime is confined, lust for instance never appearing as a motive, there is
+an unrelieved concentration on the evil course of ambition. The virtuous
+and noble have only minor parts. Lady Macbeth is an instigator and
+accomplice in crime. For the first time since Shakespeare's early plays,
+there is no idealized woman. The wickedness of Iago and the wolfish sisters
+was relieved by the lovableness of Desdemona and Cordelia, unavailing for
+the time but unforgettable in the sympathies of the reader. The eternal
+stars never glimmer through the blackness that broods over Macbeth.
+
+Because of this concentration on one process of evil and the absence of any
+idealization of goodness, the play has a less intense appeal to our
+sympathies than the three preceding tragedies. Again, because of its
+concern with historical and political results, it removes itself from
+immediate relationship to common experience. In these respects it links
+itself with the two Roman historical tragedies that followed it.
+
+"Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus," like "Julius Cæsar," are dramas of
+great historical characters already splendidly described in Plutarch. They
+are consequently far more limited by their sources than are the other
+tragedies. Shakespeare was circumscribed by the main historical facts of
+persons and events, and he was writing as the translator and interpreter of
+Plutarch; yet his conception and methods remained the same as in "Hamlet"
+or "Macbeth." An idealization of the tragic struggle of the protagonist is
+environed by a wealth of incidents and persons, and accomplished by a
+gathering and transformation of the methods and matters of current tragedy.
+The world of antiquity is not faithfully reproduced, but it is made alive
+and akin to our daily experience in the same fashion as are the Elsinore of
+Polonius and the grave-diggers, and the Britain of Osric and Kent. And the
+tragic conflicts that involve the great persons, if confused in the
+spectacles and actions of this varied stage, are the accompaniments of
+momentous national crises, themselves of hardly less imaginative appeal
+than the spiritual struggles which they parallel. The mental battles of
+Macbeth and Lear are reflected and magnified by the incantations of the
+weird sisters and the turmoil of the elements; those of Coriolanus and
+Antony by the battle of the powerful and the oppressed and by the throes of
+a dying civilization.
+
+In "Antony and Cleopatra," the subject of many Renaissance tragedies,
+Shakespeare chose for a theme an ignoble infatuation that leads counter to
+duty and on to destruction. The difficulties of the historical material led
+to a remarkable reversion in dramatic structure to the methods of the early
+chronicle plays, innumerable and loosely connected scenes, constant
+shifting of place, prolonged time, and an absence of tragic unity. The
+problem of a confused and intricate action, voluntarily imposed in "Lear,"
+is here forced upon the dramatist who will combine the wars of the
+triumvirs, the conflict of East and West, and the story of an enchantress
+and her victim. The tragic course of the conflict between infatuation and
+ambition is incumbered by historical details and stage spectacles, but in
+style and characterization few plays more greatly reveal Shakespeare's
+genius. In no play is the idealization of character more magnificent; no
+other dramatist has made Antony in the lures of a strumpet still
+representative of what is illustrious and magnanimous in mankind, no other
+has made a woman with the manners and heart of a strumpet the rightful
+empress of the imagination. The interest in the play is less centred than
+in the other tragedies. It is divided between the spectacle of historical
+events and the conflict of motives; it lies as much in the persons as
+vitalizations of history as in their fate as human beings. But this is the
+triumph of historical tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. Its scenic
+presentation makes alive the events and persons, and through a grandiose
+panorama interprets the passions that ravished both empires and the souls
+of their possessors.
+
+The human drama in "Coriolanus" is involved not only in historical
+circumstances, but also in the eternal conflict between the upper and the
+lower classes, the incurable disease of the body politic. While their pride
+in class, their blindness to the rights of others, and their failure in
+patriotism are made apparent, the patricians are treated as the
+representatives of righteousness and nobility. The plebeians, on the
+contrary, are depicted without appreciation of their sufferings or rights,
+as ignorant, imbecile, and the dupes of tricky demagogues. Contempt for the
+mob was a common sentiment in Renaissance literature, and the people as a
+factor in history held little place in the thoughts of the sixteenth
+century or in the historical drama. But here and in "Julius Cæsar"
+Shakespeare treats them with far less consideration than does Fletcher or
+Massinger, with a contempt, indeed, that can hardly have flattered his
+audiences and that has often been taken as indicative of strong personal
+feeling. Shakespeare must have foreseen at least some of the political
+lessons which would be derived from the play, but one may easily exaggerate
+its importance as an exposition of his political theory. He was following
+Plutarch closely, with an eye for interesting theatrical scenes as in
+"Antony and Cleopatra," but with less than his usual inspiration. The lack
+of individuality in the persons, a certain typicality in the
+characterization, and the heaviness and complexity of the style may have
+been caused less by an intrusion of political theory than by a lapsing of
+that splendid power of characterization so long maintained. Moreover, the
+political partisanship is in part a dramatic necessity, almost compelled by
+Shakespeare's conception of tragedy and his dramatic method. Coriolanus
+must be given resplendent virtues. The populace as a foil and contrast must
+be made contemptible and the ready tool of vice. Pride, the fatal defect of
+the hero, must be exposed as was the sensuality of Antony, but it must be
+made the flaw of an Achilles. The rôle of villain is left for the
+demagogues, and that of the witless accomplice for the people. Again, here,
+as in all his histories, Shakespeare is blind to the importance of the
+people, because for him, as for his contemporaries, the dramatization of
+history was the dramatization of its great personages, and their passions,
+vices, and ambitions.
+
+The loss of power discernible in "Coriolanus" is conspicuous in "Timon."
+Its corrupt text and unfinished condition and the certainty that only part
+of the play is Shakespeare's render uncertain its importance among the
+tragedies. Here, however, as in "Coriolanus," though the interest in the
+causes that make man's misery is still keen, the lack of inspiration
+results in an exaggerated type for a protagonist and in an unconvincing
+exposition of human baseness. If Coriolanus's politics were Shakespeare's,
+certainly Timon's misanthropy was not.
+
+With these themes Shakespeare's interest in tragedy exhausted itself.
+Possibly influenced by the success of Beaumont and Fletcher's early
+romantic plays, he attempted in "Cymbeline," and perfected in "A Winter's
+Tale" and "The Tempest," a type of play combining tragic and idyllic
+elements, full of romantic variety of incident, and resulting in surprising
+and happy _dénouements_. The possibilities for tragedy are there; jealousy,
+villany, and intrigue abound; even death is introduced. But the main
+actions are not of suffering and ruin; love and forgiveness heal all ills;
+and the end is reconciliation and marriage. These romantic tragicomedies
+are not only departures from the established tragic forms, but from any
+consideration of tragic themes and problems comparable in seriousness or
+intensity with that of the plays which we have just discussed.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward, Fleay, and Schelling continue to be the best general guides.
+Important critical discussions of Shakespeare's tragedies by Professors A.
+C. Bradley, Lounsbury, and Baker were noted in the Bibliographical Note to
+chapter i. Other recent books of special interest are: _Shakespeare_,
+Walter Raleigh (1907, English Men of Letters Series); _William Shakespere_,
+Barrett Wendell (1894); _Shakespeare and his Predecessors_, F. S. Boas
+(1896). For a general surrey of the course of Shakespearean criticism, see
+Ward, vol. i, chap. iv; or Lounsbury, _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_,
+and _Shakespeare and Voltaire_; or the bibliographical lists in the various
+volumes of Furness's Variorum edition. This edition, now in progress, and
+Malone's Variorum edition of 1821, are the most valuable in furnishing
+information. Nearly all recent editions of Shakespeare supply fairly
+adequate information in regard to critical conclusions on matters of date,
+sources, and text. Probably the most serviceable bibliography of
+Shakespearean editions and criticism up to 1870, and to a considerable
+extent for the Elizabethan drama, is to be found in the _Catalogue of the
+Barton Collection_ of the Boston Public Library (1888), accessible in most
+large libraries in this country. A complete Shakespearean bibliography
+since 1865 is supplied by the bibliographies published in the _Jahrbuch der
+Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_. These also comprise nearly all
+monographs of importance dealing with the drama from 1557 to 1642.
+
+The present chapter borrows from my article on Hamlet and the Revenge Plays
+(_Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn._ 1902), referred to in chap. iv. E. E. Stoll's
+_John Webster_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1905) gives a further discussion of the
+Revenge Plays, and especially of Marston. Bullen's edition of Marston is
+the standard. The editions of Heywood's Works (1874) and of Chapman's
+(1873-75) attempt no scholarly discussion. F. S. Boas's edition of the two
+Bussy D'Ambois plays in the _Belles-Lettres Series_ (Boston, 1905) has a
+valuable introduction. Gifford's edition of Jonson (1816) is unfortunately
+not yet superseded. The careful editions of various of his plays in the
+_Yale Studies in English_ as yet include none of his tragedies. _Ben
+Jonson, l'homme et l'oeuvre_ Paris, 1907, by Maurice Castelain is very
+elaborate, and contains a full bibliography with a preliminary descriptive
+note of editions. A new edition of Jonson edited by C. H. Herford and P.
+Simpson is announced.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] Mr. Elmer Stoll's argument against this early date does not seem to me
+convincing. See the Appendix to his _John Webster_, Cambridge, 1904.
+
+[19] _Troilus and Cressida_ in some form was probably acted in 1602. The
+editors of the Folio apparently first intended to class it with the
+tragedies, but they changed their minds while the book was printing and
+placed _Troilus_ without pagination between the histories and tragedies.
+The preface to one of the quartos of 1609 classes it with the comedies, and
+the prologue inclines that way. For an interesting though not always
+convincing discussion of the many difficulties offered by the play, the
+reader is referred to Mr. R. A. Small's _The Stage Quarrel between Ben
+Jonson and The So-called Poetasters_ (1899), pp. 139-170. The play offers
+problems of importance in Shakespearean criticism, but in a history of
+tragedy it seems negligible. The concluding scenes (v, 7-10) are clearly
+not by Shakespeare, and the Prologue and v, 4-6 are doubtful.
+
+[20] There is in fact a reference in Kempe's _Nine Days Wonder_ (1600) to
+the story, which may possibly indicate an earlier play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+Our study has perhaps already made it evident that Shakespeare's tragedies
+were in many ways the product of a rapid and complex evolution. At the same
+time it is clear that, until Shakespeare, Elizabethan tragedy with all its
+genius and innovations had failed to attain finality of art, or to mark out
+any sure pathway thither. It was still in its formative period when he
+created out of it something new and immortal, and its development continued
+after his death mainly in response to forces not of his initiating. For the
+past two centuries, to a constantly increasing body of spectators and
+readers, his tragedies have had a life entirely unconnected with the works
+of his contemporaries, an existence that has dominated our theatres and our
+conceptions of tragedy, and become a part of the daily living and the
+permanent ideals of the race. It is therefore necessary to separate his
+plays from the mass of tragedies, and to review them for a moment as the
+creations of a genius that was the chief creator as well as the glory of
+English tragedy.
+
+Two points of view that have been largely maintained in nineteenth century
+criticism of Shakespeare may, however, be neglected in our summary. His
+plays have been viewed as the reflection of his personal experiences and
+emotions; and his return to tragic themes about 1600 and his occupation
+with them for the next eight years have been connected with a supposed
+period of spiritual depression in his own life. Again, the generalization
+of experience and the abundant wisdom of his tragedies have been viewed as
+the result of a conscious and rather systematic philosophy of life. Much
+might be said for these attitudes of criticism. Any attempt to describe the
+plays in terms of our emotions as readers is likely to result in the
+attribution of those emotions to the author, an interesting process of
+analogy and one hardly to be disproved. Any attempt to survey his work as a
+whole and to relate its parts is likely to result in the systemization of
+his message and philosophy. But for students of the growth of his dramatic
+art under the peculiar conditions of the reigns of Elizabeth and James,
+these nineteenth century points of view involve dangerous critical
+anachronisms. Shakespeare does not seem to have been a lyric Shelley or
+Byron, making poetry out of his changing moods, or a Tennyson or Browning
+generalizing life in the persons of his men and women. There seems no
+reason for separating him from his companion poets and playwrights. Like
+them he was in the first place telling a story for the stage; like them he
+found in these plays opportunity for the expression of his knowledge of
+human motives in the guise of beautiful verse; and like them, when he chose
+tragic themes, he became absorbed in the presentation of the tragic facts
+and problems of life. Our attempt to determine his relations to them is not
+to discover indebtedness large or minute, but rather by the safest approach
+to arrive at a right appreciation of his genius and its transcendent
+contribution to tragedy.
+
+For the purpose of our survey we may have the four great tragedies chiefly
+in mind. The early tragedies are manifestly the products of an experimental
+period and the precursors of the latter plays; and the three Roman
+histories have a subordinate and contributory rather than an essential and
+preëminent part in his achievement in tragedy. Whatever can be said of the
+four great tragedies applies in its essentials to all.
+
+All these plays taken together illustrate the extraordinary amalgamation of
+the medieval and classical inheritances that English tragedy had received
+as a birthright. No play escapes from its narrative sources, and some are
+bound closely by them; yet the choice of sources often indicates the
+influence of the Senecan formula, sensational externals giving opportunity
+for an introspective analysis of emotional crises, notably in the stories
+of crime, revenge, and retribution. Their enormous variety of incident,
+their mingling of the comic and the tragic, their admission of physical
+horrors, deaths, and spectacles mark the survival of the medieval
+tradition, while the aphoristic and heightened style, the ghosts and the
+soliloquies are derivatives from Seneca. The freedom of the medieval stage
+to the presentation of all sorts of matters accounts in part for their
+splendid comprehensiveness, while classical theory is partly responsible
+for their restriction to momentous events and supernormal persons. Their
+structure remains epic and popular, but progress toward dramatic unity
+seems conditioned by the Senecan five-act scheme. The medieval idea of the
+pagan deity Fortune is preserved; and conceptions of good and evil, like
+those of the morality, stand side by side with classical conceptions of the
+struggle between the individual and fate. The union of these diverse
+elements has become too close for disentanglement. "Macbeth," based upon
+Holinshed's chronicle, comes nearest in conception and treatment to
+classical tragedy; "Antony and Cleopatra" in structure and method reverts
+the nearest to medieval models.
+
+More distinct contemporary influences reappear similarly amalgamated and
+transformed. In "Hamlet" we have a play closely related to those of a
+particular species; but in the other plays of Shakespeare's maturity
+nothing like close relationship can be found to the great examples of
+Marlowe, to the peculiar type introduced by Kyd and developed by Marston,
+or to the contemporary efforts of Chapman and Jonson. Any one play
+doubtless responded to a tangle of influences not now to be separated.
+Current popular plays, practices on the stage, the personalities of the
+actors, Shakespeare's own preceding plays, contemporary non-dramatic
+literature, current events such as the Essex rebellion or the Gunpowder
+Plot, and hosts of other influences were at work directing the development
+of an old story into a tragedy. Taking the plays as a body, some of the
+more important of these limiting and directing influences still remain
+discernible in the transformed result.
+
+All the tragedies but "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet," only partial
+exceptions, relate the falls of princes and the revolutions of kingdoms.
+These stories of princes are of the same kind as in other Elizabethan
+tragedy. In a setting of court and camp they place sensational crimes, and
+trace the accompaniments and consequences. Their themes are revenge,
+madness, tyranny, conspiracy, lust, adultery, and jealousy. They abound in
+villany, intrigue, and slaughter. They avoid Senecan atrocities and the
+abnormal phases of lust; but the tearing out of Gloster's eyes recalls the
+horrors of the early plays; while revenge, conspiracy, and villany are as
+prominent as in the contemporary tragedies of Marston, Jonson, and Chapman.
+Three of the stories include ghosts, while in "Macbeth" the weird sisters
+offer an opportunity for a most original treatment of the supernatural.
+Comedy is always combined with tragedy, and the medieval tradition and the
+popular taste for an emotional contrast receive artistic vindication in the
+grotesqueness of "Hamlet" and "Lear." Each plot, like those of Marlowe's
+plays, centres about a great personality and illustrates a temperament
+dominated by passion. It traces the course of folly, mistake, or sin to the
+wages of death as in "Lear," "Othello," and "Antony and Cleopatra"; or it
+begins with a murder and records its progeny of crime and death as in
+"Julius Cæsar," "Hamlet," and "Macbeth."
+
+Shakespeare's choice of stories was clearly determined by the Elizabethan
+conception of tragedy and by the current tastes of the theatre. And by
+these stories his imagination was directed and limited. However absorbed he
+became in character or ethics, he never neglected the plot or the theatre.
+Consequently the great revelation of tragic fact which he gave to posterity
+was limited by these stories of crime and hampered by their improbabilities
+and stage effects. The tragedy of ambition is limited to the story of a
+murderer who sees a ghost; and the tragedy of ingratitude is joined to a
+relation of senile folly, crime, and the humors of Tom of Bedlam. Even his
+interpretation of human motives suffers, for the bloodthirstiness of Hamlet
+and the perverse reticence of Cordelia belong to the old plots as much as
+to the characters. Yet Shakespeare's greatness of mind no less than his
+responsiveness to contemporary taste appears in his very choice of
+material. Whether he took the oft-told tragedies of Cæsar, Brutus, Antony
+and Cleopatra, or the old plays of Hamlet and Lear, or the neglected themes
+of Othello and Macbeth, he chose always stories of great dramatic interest
+and those that presented the range and vicissitudes of human passion. His
+attraction for each story was evidently in the emotional conflict that made
+each protagonist a great acting part and also a fascinating study of human
+motive.
+
+Moreover, in his general treatment of this material there is a uniformity
+that gives some hint of a Shakespearean definition of tragedy. In each play
+a man of great attainments is presented as involved in a moral conflict
+that results in his death. This conflict is two-fold, internal between
+opposing desires, and external against some persons of the counter-actions.
+Conflicting forces contend for mastery in the hero's breast, and from their
+confusion he drives on to action that is disastrous. The unusual powers,
+the best potentialities, of his nature are opposed and thwarted by the
+forces of chance and circumstance beyond his control; by the force of evil,
+whether in his own breast or represented by the crime and intrigue of
+others; and still further, by a defect or deficiency in his own
+personality. The force of chance, equivalent to the Greek Fate, plays a
+part in all tragic story and drama; the power of evil without or within was
+the counter-force in medieval drama, and was the theme most powerfully
+dwelt upon by Shakespeare's immediate contemporaries. The fateful power of
+incompatibility of temperament with conditions of life seems to have been
+Shakespeare's own conception.
+
+In Sophocles, arrogance and audacity are accounted evil; in Marlowe and
+Chapman, it is intensity of desire that drives to disaster; but in
+Shakespeare the melancholy and reflective temper of Hamlet and the generous
+and credulous magnanimity of Othello are the allies of untoward
+circumstance and designing villany in bringing suffering to the good and
+failure to the potent. The greatness of Shakespeare's conception, however,
+results from the massing of all these combatants against the hero. The
+conflict thus gains in the comprehensiveness of its presentation of life;
+and human nature in the face of such odds becomes magnificent even in
+failure. Hero wars with villain; human intrepidity and wisdom with chance
+and destiny; conscience with sin; greatness of purpose with crippling
+defects of temperament.
+
+Such a conception of tragedy involves a recognition of the blindness of
+chance that cannot be squared with any theory of poetic justice or
+theological view of the rewards due to virtue. But it also involves a
+recognition of moral law that results in the punishment of its violators.
+The villains never escape as they do in comedy. The wages of sin are always
+death, though the reward of virtue is not happiness. The vastness of evil
+in the world, its malignant influence, its temporary triumphs are conceived
+in a manner not different from that of contemporary thought. The doctrines
+of total depravity and of moral responsibility go side by side as in
+medieval drama, theology, and psychology. In the depiction of the waste of
+effort, the expense of spirit, the crippling of greatness by weakness, the
+ineffectually of virtue, Shakespeare gave a far more comprehensive and a
+far more penetrating representation of tragic fact than the world had yet
+known, but without professing any solution of its mysteries.
+
+Such a conception gives unity to the action of each play, but not always a
+unity that governs details of structure. The structure of a tragedy cannot
+be described in terms of a system, for the dramatic presentation of each
+play differs from the others and conforms to the story it relates. There
+are many survivals of the early epic lawlessness, as in "Antony and
+Cleopatra" and "Lear"; and in no play is the main action kept entirely free
+from intruding incongruities. Neither act nor scene receives much regard as
+an integral unit of structure. The most noticeable structural division is
+due to an event of extraordinary importance reached somewhere in the middle
+of the play. This point, to which the terms climax or crisis are sometimes
+applicable, brings to an end one important development of the action, and
+thus divides the play into two parts. Cæsar's murder, Duncan's murder,
+Lear's madness complete one course of tragic incident and introduce us to
+another.
+
+The effectiveness of Shakespeare's construction, however, was not due to a
+formulation of system or rule but to his intuition and experience. His
+sense of what parts of a narrative should be acted and what parts not, had
+developed beyond that of most of his contemporaries. In comparison with his
+own earlier plays the tragedies contain little, whether comic, spectacular,
+or essential to the main tragic action, which had not a manifest value on
+the stage. His ability to create great dramatic situations was also at its
+height, and the great scenes are prepared for and emphasized by what
+precedes, so that they gain all the effect possible from the dramatic
+construction. Thus, the appearance of the ghost, the play within the play,
+the funeral of Ophelia, and the final slaughter are given a value in the
+mere narration of the story for which there is no parallel in the many
+other treatments of similar stories. Of far more importance is his use of
+the developments of character as the determining factors of the progress of
+the dramatic narrative. The rapidity with which the first two acts of
+"Macbeth" hurry us to the murder of Duncan, the tremendous climactic
+pressure of the first three acts of "Lear," are extraordinary examples of
+his power to compel incidents to reveal the course of motive convincingly.
+In each play the order of incidents becomes a logical development from the
+characters of the actors; each deed, thought, or speech has its sequence.
+There are no tricks, no surprises, no sudden conversions of character. Once
+admit the premises, a person of a certain temperament, facing a certain
+situation, and subject to a certain accident, mistake, or folly, and we
+cannot escape the conclusion. The dramatic necessities of character are
+never violated. From the clear exposition of the first scene, the progress
+is inevitable to the end.
+
+The persons of the plays spring from the old stories, and by these the
+study of their motives is in many ways limited. It is limited again by the
+types and conditions of stage-land. The bloody tyrant, the hesitating
+avenger, the Machiavellian villain come hence. The acts which they commit,
+their moods, motives, their very language depend in part on the
+representatives of these types that had long been familiar to the audiences
+of the theatres. Yet the host of individual personalities are the result
+of a most profound and fresh observation of an almost boundless range of
+life. That interest in characterization which distinguishes the early drama
+and finds its main illustration in Shakespeare's own practice in the
+preceding decade here comes to its culmination. Not only the main actor,
+but the most conventional part, the most absurd business, the merest
+supernumerary, receives its touch of truth. And something more than truth
+to life or knowledge of motive is manifest. The great characters are cast
+in large moulds. They represent the courses of the master passions.
+Smallness of horizon, triviality of design, feebleness of mind or body are
+absent. Momentous crises that try men's souls are the real subjects of the
+tragedies. The accidents of dress, or manner, or time, or race, the
+incidents of action, are forgotten as revenge, jealousy, irresolution, and
+lust seize their splendid prey. The greatness of human nature, the power of
+the human will, the responsibility of the individual remain. There is no
+belittling of reason even when it breaks under the crash of the storm. Iago
+is no mere stage villain, though he has all the characteristics of the
+type; nor is he merely a transcript from life, though he has all the
+variety and plausibility of a human being. He is the embodiment of our
+countless evil impulses, the incarnation of depravity. So with all the
+others. They are human in their truth; they are magnificent idealizations
+in the range and value of their manifold suggestiveness; they leave the
+stage to become the habitants of our imaginations, contributing to our
+reflections their embodiments of good and evil, folly and reason,
+resolution and doubt.
+
+They speak a language all their own, though with resemblances to their
+kinsmen in the other Elizabethan tragedies. The blank verse, far more
+flexible than in the early plays, presents a triumphant union of the
+conflicting tendencies toward decoration and naturalness observed in the
+other dramatists; and it is freely mingled with hardly less masterly prose.
+Marvelous in comparison with preceding verse is its extreme condensation in
+spite of its opulence of figures and aphorisms. Although crowded with
+thought and image, it is nevertheless, in its response to the varying
+persons and moods, superbly dramatic. A critic who is both a poet and a
+philosopher[21] objects to Macbeth's dagger "unmannerly breech'd with gore"
+as violent and crude in comparison with the historical reminiscences with
+which Homer might have made Achilles describe the weapon. But recall the
+scene. Macbeth has murdered the grooms and rushes from the chamber to
+confront the fearful suspicions of Duncan's sons and friends. Surely, his
+false and frenzied excuses must be over-fanciful, violent, and crude.
+
+                              "Here lay Duncan,
+    His silver skin laced with his golden blood,
+    And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
+    For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
+    Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers
+    Unmannerly breech'd with gore."
+
+Such a style, however, does not readily give up opportunities for aphorism
+or beauty for the sake of absolute truth to situation or character. Still
+less does it mimic actual speech. It does give a potency to the stories,
+otherwise hardly conceivable; and it adds to truth of character the
+allurement of music and picture, and the idealization of a magnified
+suggestiveness. A father has reason to curse his daughter--gesture and
+incoherent words might correctly represent life; a plain sentence of
+Ibsen's might convey the tragedy of the situation--but it is the
+extravagant and terrible imprecation of Lear that has for centuries made
+men's imaginations shudder. Style such as this the drama will never
+recover. We shall sooner find another Shakespeare to blend its diverse
+elements than a host of dramatists, like the Elizabethans, fascinated by a
+newly discovered world of poetry and daringly adventurous in search of
+melody of verse, wealth of aphorism, luxury of fantasy, and truth to
+character.
+
+The effect of Shakespeare's tragedies on spectator or reader is so complex
+as to defy analysis. Incidental wisdom, effective scene, immortal story all
+contribute; but the main sources of their abiding impressiveness have
+surely been the characterization and the poetic style. If we must continue
+to seek for a katharsis, do not they supply it? The great tragedies are
+full of disaster, wrong, and suffering. The world they reveal is not the
+abode of happiness, but of darkness and remorse. Though the bad are
+punished, the good are not rewarded. Sweetness and innocence suffer and
+perish along with foulness and malevolence. The noblest spirits are
+broken; the wages of mortal effort are failure. There are many "breaches in
+nature for ruin's wasteful entrance." Nor does the life hereafter offer a
+promise of compensation. Death ends all,--that is the great catastrophe
+toward which human endeavor precipitates itself. This is not Shakespeare's
+view of life, but it is his view of the tragedy of life, and its effect
+upon us is gloomy, overpowering, heartrending. But everywhere this tragedy
+of life is revealed in verse infinitely appealing to intellectual analysis
+and to imaginative exhilaration. Everywhere there are men and women, not
+dead but living, representative of much that is most intensely and
+universally interesting in life, and the permanent guests of our
+reflection. The old ethical adage that it does not so much matter what men
+do as what they are has a particular truth when applied to the people of
+Shakespeare. That they do this or that, love, murder, die, is in the story;
+what they are remains the possession of humanity. Our horror at the
+successful villany of Iago finds a certain relief in the intellectual
+pleasure and admiration at the creator's achievement; it accomplishes a
+certain purification in its application to the Iago in ourselves. Still
+more do the persons who most excite our sympathy survive the intolerable
+emotions that first greet their misfortunes. When we read "Othello" we feel
+an overwhelming pity, a fierce resentment, but we would not erase from our
+possession the memory of Desdemona and her Moor. The misery and wrong and
+death go to make up in our reflection the beings whom we love and cherish.
+It is Lear's fivefold "never" that completes for us the loveliness of
+Cordelia.
+
+A comparison of the tragedies with the masterpieces of other national
+dramas might disclose their faults but would not diminish their glories.
+Faults in plenty there surely are, whether judgment be taken of classicists
+or realists, or of the best standards of the Elizabethans. There are many
+quibbles or fantasies of diction that might be criticised, many bits of
+dialogue or stage spectacle that might be omitted without detracting from
+the total impressiveness. How many minor inconsistencies of plot or
+characterization might be corrected. How complicated and bewildering is
+"Hamlet" in comparison with the simpler harmony of "Antigone." How involved
+and cumbrous, and how undignified in its appeal to the emotions, is much of
+"Antony and Cleopatra" in comparison with "Phèdre." How impossible and
+fantastic is much of "Lear" in comparison with "Ghosts." But Shakespeare's
+defects and deficiencies belong to his time and to his methods. They are
+inseparable, indeed, from the very means on which depend his consummate
+results. Not in response to literary tradition, but to the public theatre;
+not by a refined but by a daring art; not by simplicity and unity, but by
+complexity and opulence of effect; not by devotion to creed or science or
+fact, but by the idealization and sublimation of man's emotional nature,
+did Shakespeare give to his dramas their imperishable wealth of life.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] George Santayana, _Reason in Art_, p. 113.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LATER ELIZABETHANS[22]
+
+
+Shakespeare's great tragedies did not create a new epoch in the development
+of the drama. In themes and general treatment they made no marked departure
+from the past. Their translation of story and circumstance into the
+conflicts and processes of character was beyond the reach of imitation,
+and, indeed, not likely to gain full recognition from contemporaries. They
+were rather the consummation of the old than the heralds of a new era,
+though their influence on succeeding dramatists was wide and permeating,
+especially as time and publication brought a growing appreciation of their
+greatness as literature. Meanwhile, the old types of tragedy continued
+their sway, sometimes little touched by Shakespeare's influence. English
+history plays were rare; Roman history plays frequent; Senecan closet
+dramas continued; the Marlowean and Kydian traditions received further
+development. The revenge play, in particular, continued to be one of the
+most conspicuous types. Further, a most important innovating force appeared
+just at the close of Shakespeare's tragic period in the heroic romances of
+Beaumont and Fletcher, which gained an immediate popularity and created new
+practices in both tragedy and tragicomedy.
+
+The times were changing. The improved social status of the theatre, the
+support of the court, the vogue of private theatres like Blackfriars, the
+increasing interest in the stage on the part of the lettered and
+fashionable classes, supplied more intelligent and critical audiences; but
+the increasing Puritanism separated the drama more and more from sympathy
+with the main public. The drama became less national, more critical, and
+less moral. The corrupt society of the reign of James I supplied little of
+that imaginative idealism which had found expression at the time of the
+Armada. It offered the serious drama either objects for satire and cynicism
+or sophisticated and courtly ideals of conduct. In consequence, a more
+conscious art found itself less competent than in the early drama to depict
+greatness of mind, and resorted to the tracing of abnormal passion, the
+casuistical inquiry into moral problems, the exposure of evil, or to
+romance without moral intention.
+
+Yet dramatic enterprise continued unabated. The theatre continued to
+attract poetic ambition. Scholars, men of letters, gentlemen of rank turned
+to the popular stage. There was as yet no suspicion of decadence. Rather
+the past seemed to offer, through a recognition of its merits and a pruning
+of its faults, encouragement for a greater achievement in the future. In
+spite of critical realization of the absurdities of the early drama, and
+of the necessity for a better regulated art, the integrity of the national
+tradition was recognized and maintained. In 1612, in a preface to his
+"White Devil," Webster, after explaining that he had departed from the
+classical standards "willingly, and not ignorantly," proceeds to extol his
+contemporaries and masters:--
+
+     "Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: for mine
+     owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of
+     other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and
+     haightened stile of Maister Chapman, the labor'd and
+     understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse
+     worthy composures of the both worthily excellent
+     Maister Beamont & Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without
+     wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious
+     industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood;
+     wishing that what I write may be read by their light;
+     protesting that, in the strength of mine owne
+     judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest
+     silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare
+     (without flattery) fix that of Martiall:
+
+          --non morunt haec monumenta mori."
+
+After a time the greatness of the past masters proved rather an impediment
+than a stimulus. But in 1612 their work seemed to offer encouragement for
+even greater achievement in the immediate future.
+
+For the historian this period offers less difficulties than the preceding
+ones. After 1610 comparatively few plays of importance are non-extant, and
+few of the extant plays are anonymous. The bulk of the important plays was
+produced by a few dramatists, who dominated the theatres and whose careers
+determined the drama's development. After examining the revenge plays
+which about 1612 gave a further extension to that species, and the heroic
+romances of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration, which were produced within
+a few years before that date, we may trace the succeeding developments of
+tragedy mainly in the work of Fletcher, Massinger, Middleton, Ford, and
+Shirley.
+
+The main line of the development of the revenge tragedy is represented by
+Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," the anonymous "Second Maiden's Tragedy,"
+and Webster's "White Devil" and "Duchess of Malfi." The four plays may be
+said to constitute a new species whose differences from the old type seem
+clearly unconnected with Shakespeare's "Hamlet" but directly traceable to
+Marston's plays, especially his "Malcontent."
+
+Revenge is no longer the main motive but is a subsidiary element in
+complicated stories of revolting lust and depravity. Tragedy has become the
+representation of vice and sin, with a proneness for their foulest
+entanglements. In one play a brother plays the part of pandar to his
+sister; in another a father to his daughter; and in a third a mother to her
+daughter. Nor is revenge, even in its subordinate position, the simple
+blood-for-blood requital that it is in Kyd. It may be for various causes
+beside murder; it is born of malice rather than duty; it may share in the
+moral turpitude of the rest of the action. The ghost no longer directs the
+course of revenge, and may disappear entirely. In "The Revenger's Tragedy"
+the skull of the betrothed, as the skeleton in "Hoffman," takes the place
+of the apparition; and in other plays the duties of the ghost are
+minimized or farmed out among various supernatural agents, two female
+ghosts appearing. Hesitation on the part of the avenger does not appear.
+Indeed, his entire character has changed. He may be a villain, as in
+"Hoffman," or the villain's accomplice, or one of Marston's "malcontents,"
+or a combination of these parts. The other leading elements in the Kydian
+type are preserved. Insanity of various forms, real and pretended, is
+prominent. Intrigue of a complicated kind abounds, but is often dependent,
+after the fashion of current comedy, largely on improbable disguises.
+Deaths are as frequent as ever and more horrible. Much of the old stage
+effect reappears, as in the masques, funerals, ghosts, and exhibition of
+dead bodies, but there is a great increase in the number and ingenuity of
+melodramatic sensations. Each play is a chamber of horrors. In one, a wife
+dies from kissing the poisoned portrait of her husband; in another, the
+lustful king sucks poison from the jaw of a skull; and in a third, from the
+painted lips of a corpse. Comets blaze, there are many portents, the time
+is ever midnight, the scene the graveyard, the air smells of corruption,
+skulls and corpses are the _dramatis personae_. Every means seems to be
+employed to make theatrically effective the horrors of death and decay. And
+once, at least, these means are used with tremendous power in the riot of
+madness, torture, and corruption that preludes the death of the Duchess of
+Malfi.
+
+All or nearly all of the active characters are black with sin. The
+extraordinary exploitation of villany in Elizabethan tragedy here reaches
+its culmination. The arch-villain as ruthlessly devoted to crime as
+Hoffman, the accomplice assiduous in revolting baseness, the villain
+touched by remorse, the malcontent reviling human life,--all these
+appear--sometimes all combined in one person--and play their parts along
+with unshrinking prostitutes and lustful monarchs. The study of villany,
+however, has gained intensity and plausibility over the earlier plays. If
+none of the villains take to themselves much individuality, most of them
+have moments of dramatic impressiveness, and they are intended to be
+realistic. They are drawn with an accumulation of detail, a fondness for
+probing into depravity, with a sense of the dramatic value of devilry, and
+with a bitterness and cynicism that often seem sincere and searching. It is
+this cynicism which gives character to the reflective elements of these
+plays. The Kydian soliloquy on fate has given way to the prevailing
+satirical and bitter tone that finds its favorite themes in the sensuality
+of women and the hypocrisy and greed of courts, and its favorite means of
+expression in the connotation of the obscene and bestial.
+
+The qualities attributed to these four plays recall "Hoffman" and "The
+Atheist's Tragedy," and still more Marston's plays, and the satirical
+comedy of the preceding decade as well as the tragedy. Though the four
+plays are thus classed together, their differences are marked. "The Second
+Maiden's Tragedy" manifests more than the others the influence of Beaumont
+and Fletcher. Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," far superior to his earlier
+"Atheist's Tragedy," surpasses Marston and reveals brilliant dramatic
+talent. Full of thrills and unspeakable juxtapositions, it is governed by a
+sheer delight in horror and unrelieved by any moral standard. Webster, on
+the contrary, made his horrors impressive in both poetry and moral.
+Dependent at every step on the work of predecessors, he succeeded as did no
+other poet except Shakespeare in transforming the revenge play into a work
+of art and truth. Chapman was, perhaps, his chief model, but the processes
+of his transforming art, though not its results, bear resemblances to
+Shakespeare's. He was possessed by an interest in the effects of crime upon
+character, and had the power to realize these momentarily with amazing
+truth. Hence his great portraits of Vittoria, the Cardinal, and the
+Duchess, and the ingeniously and vividly though not very consistently drawn
+figure of Bosola. As Shakespeare in "Macbeth" and "Lear," fascinated by the
+wickedness of the world, reveled in images of blackness, corruption, and
+despair, so Webster, more laboriously and inquisitively, was ever seeking
+fantastic expression for the old truth that all is vanity. In his
+masterpiece, "The Duchess of Malfi," and in a lesser degree in "The White
+Devil," his recognition of moral values again recalls Shakespeare. We are
+moved by the pitifulness of the suffering as well as by the horror of the
+evil. There is no confusion of good and bad; and if the prevailing view of
+life is cynical, it is not unrelieved by respect for fortitude and
+conscience. The tragedy of revenge reached a new altitude in this play,
+which, though poorly constructed, tells a story of criminal and horrible
+revenge with a vivid delineation of character, a pervading moral sense, and
+with flashes of speech that attain both poetic and dramatic sublimity.[23]
+
+The collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher was finished by the time that
+Webster published his acknowledgment of their mastership. Gentlemen by
+birth and breeding, they began writing for the stage apparently as pupils
+of Jonson, entered into collaboration by 1607, and in the next five years,
+by the time that Beaumont was twenty-seven and Fletcher thirty-three,
+produced some ten plays that gained them a popularity surpassing that of
+Shakespeare's later years, and extending well through the Restoration. So
+far as tragedy is concerned, the main result of their collaboration was the
+formation of a new species of heroic romances, some tragedies and some
+tragicomedies. Six plays serve to define the type, though other plays of
+the collaboration have resemblances to it and, after Beaumont's retirement,
+the type was continued in the work of Fletcher and others. These six plays,
+"Four Plays in One," "Thierry and Theodoret," "Cupid's Revenge,"
+"Philaster," "A King and No King," and "The Maid's Tragedy," probably owe
+more to Beaumont than to Fletcher. "The Maid's Tragedy" and the two
+tragicomedies, "Philaster" and "A King and No King," are the masterpieces,
+but the six plays resemble one another so closely that one analysis will
+answer for all.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher did not, like most of their predecessors, turn to
+English or Roman history for their plots, and they preserved but few traces
+of the Marlowean tragedy with its central protagonist and dominating
+passion, or of the revenge type in any of its amplifications. Their plots,
+largely of their own invention, are highly ingenious and complicated. They
+deal with heroic actions in imaginary foreign realms. The conquests,
+usurpations, and passions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, but there
+are no battles or armies, and the action is usually confined to the rooms
+of the palace or a neighboring forest. Usually contrasting a story of gross
+sensual passion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of
+incidents, and aim at a constant but varied excitement. Love of one sort or
+another, honor also of many kinds, and friendship, which is somewhat more
+steadfast, are ever in conflict. We are given seats in an anteroom of the
+palace, and at once the flow of events engrosses us,--conspiracies,
+imprisonments, insurrections, wars, adultery, seduction, murder, the talk
+of courtiers, gossip of women, banquets of the monarch, and the laments of
+the love-lorn. Or, after a tumultuous hour, we may retire to the adjoining
+forest, where the lovers wander to forget their misfortunes, and by its
+fountains weave their laments into lyrical garlands. A few hours, and
+kingdoms have trembled in the balance; the heroine has been proved guilty
+and innocent again; and the lover has been ecstatic, frantic, jealous,
+cowardly, implacable, and forgiving, and finally wins or dies with his
+honor secure.
+
+The tragedies differ from those preceding in structure as well as in
+material. Their main purpose is theatrical effectiveness; their means of
+securing it the constant use of surprise. Beaumont and Fletcher did not
+follow their narrative sources closely; they invented their own stories or
+used old ones as the frame for their favorite situations and characters.
+The tragic, idyllic, and sensational matter is skillfully constructed into
+a number of theatrically telling situations which lead by a series of
+suspenses and surprises to very effective climaxes or catastrophes. All
+signs of the epic methods of construction found in the early drama have
+disappeared, and the interest in the action is maintained at fever heat. In
+"The Maid's Tragedy," the climax of the play comes at the end of the fourth
+act with the murder of the king by his mistress, Evadne, the wife of
+Amintor. But in the fifth act the main action absorbs the sub-plot and
+continues its course of thrills and surprises until the very end. In "A
+King and No King," the love of Arbaces for his supposed sister furnishes
+many entanglements, and it is not until the end of Act V that we know that
+the princess is not his sister, and the tragedy of incest is resolved into
+romance. There is no inevitableness in the action of these plays. Usually,
+until the last moment there is a chance for either a happy or an unhappy
+ending, and in every case the _dénouement_ or catastrophe is elaborately
+planned and complicated.
+
+From the nature of their material and treatment there is little difference
+between the tragedies and tragicomedies. Tragicomedy as a species had up to
+this time hardly been recognized in the English drama, although there are
+sporadic instances of the use of the term and although romantic comedy
+usually offered tragic elements. Fletcher's definition (borrowed from
+Guarini) in the preface to "The Faithful Shepherdess," may be taken as
+sufficiently distinguishing the form from other species,--"A tragicomedy is
+not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants
+deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it,
+which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of
+familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so
+that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a
+comedy." The example of Beaumont and Fletcher, moreover, gave popularity
+and importance to this class of plays. Borrowing motives familiar in
+romantic narrative and the preceding drama, they yet created a departure
+from preceding romantic comedy, both in the constant emphasis which they
+place upon the contrast between the tragic and idyllic elements of their
+plots and in the especial attention they pay to surprising and complicated
+_dénouements_. They aim not merely at a mixture of the sentimental and
+tragic but at involving every one in a tangle of disastrous complications,
+resolved only by a series of final surprises. Although only two of the six
+romances are tragicomedies, the imitators of Beaumont and Fletcher most
+frequently adopted the form, realizing apparently the theatrical value of
+keeping the spectators thrilled and excited until the end and then
+relieving their sympathetic suspense by a happy solution.
+
+The _dramatis personae_ of the six plays belong to the impossible and
+romantic situations rather than to life, and are usually of certain
+types,--the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt
+outspoken soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden
+disguised as a page in order that she may serve the hero; an evil woman
+defiant in her crimes; and the poltroon, usually a comic personage. With
+the addition of a king, some gentlemen and ladies of the court, and a few
+persons from the lower ranks, the cast is complete. The various persons
+introduce one another in long descriptions; and, after the introductory
+speech, the character remains fixed, except as the shifting situations
+demand some unexpected revolution. There is no shading or subtlety in the
+characterization, little discrimination or individuality in the different
+representatives of the favorite types, who, however, are by no means
+wanting in originality. They do not reveal the depths or complexities of
+human nature, but they exhibit fresh and ingenious variations of the old
+types, audacious humor and abundant spirit, and the power of their
+creators to rise to a situation and to express dramatic emotion. Thus,
+their type of evil woman acquires tremendous force in the scenes where
+Evadne plays her part; and their heroines suffer, serve, weep, love,
+forgive, and die, in lines that somehow preserve the grace of simplicity,
+though they wear all the jewels of allusion and imagery that the authors
+possess. Moreover, their men and women talk like real persons. Dryden
+declared that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen
+much better than Shakespeare, a distinction that in some respects is clear
+to-day. The men of preceding tragedies had spoken a language elevated and
+removed from ordinary discourse, but in Beaumont and Fletcher the romantic
+scenes and impossible changes of character are made plausible by an absence
+of archaism and a directness and lucidity of speech.
+
+In the main, what reality the characters retain in our memories is due to
+the power of the verse to reflect clearly the emotions of the moment. There
+is a notable absence of the merely sonorous, the turgid declamation, the
+mouthing of strange words, and an absence of over-crowding thought or
+fancy. Beaumont and Fletcher had no desire to make their style sententious,
+weighty, and philosophical. They knew what they wanted to say, and they
+said it clearly and rapidly. They had room for ornament and rhetorical
+device, but none for eccentricity or obscurity. Another remark of Dryden's,
+that they perfected the English language, deserves consideration as the
+view of a century later, and can be appreciated even now. The
+characteristics of their style, so far as it can be considered as a common
+property, seem due to an effort to make dialogue correspond as nearly as
+possible to natural speech. This is particularly true of Fletcher, who is
+the more revolutionary of the two and the more persistent in his
+mannerisms. His structure is loose and conversational, and his blank verse
+overruns the borders of the rigid pentameter and approaches the
+irregularity of prose. Numerous added syllables and a large percentage of
+feminine endings further mark his departures from past models, and,
+combined with his end-stopped lines, give his verse a peculiar monotony.
+Both writers rise now and then to an intensely imaginative phrase or a
+beautifully wrought description. The verse of neither is suggestive of the
+intricacies of human feeling or the splendor of human intellect, but the
+verse of both, of Fletcher preëminently, reveals a fertility of imagination
+and an extraordinary mobility of words.
+
+These merits of style gave Beaumont and Fletcher their seventeenth century
+reputation and have continued to attract readers in the generations since.
+Ethical objections to their plays drove them from the stage in spite of
+their theatrical effectiveness. They wrote with little ethical intention.
+Unlike some of their contemporaries, they did not seek to discover the
+abodes of sin and to chastise the monster, nor did they study human nature
+in the light of moral law. They dealt with themes that would please their
+audience and would offer a sufficient range of emotions for the exhibition
+of their poetic powers. Without imaginations that touched spiritual heights
+or penetrated to the real significance of moral conflict, they entered
+unhesitatingly upon the task of holding up a mirror to a society loose in
+manners and unprincipled in morals. They were not so much guilty of
+intentional immorality as impotent to produce moral effect. If their
+imaginations kept too frequent company with the gross and the unhealthy,
+they also sought at times the sweeter and nobler aspects of life. What won
+for their ethics high laudation from their contemporaries was their
+rhetorical and dramatic exaltation of ideals of magnanimity and dreams of
+idyllic love and devoted friendship.
+
+Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in
+the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in
+our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted
+the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their
+collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and
+characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in
+execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most
+important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as
+of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new
+habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their
+devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their
+dalliance with the artificial and abnormal aspects of passion, and their
+disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics
+furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next
+generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or
+comprehensive or noble reflection of life.
+
+Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with
+Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and possibly on a
+lost play, "Cardenio." The partnership resulted in no distinct departures
+from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of
+incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself
+more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre,
+composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with
+Massinger, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of
+the time until his death in 1625.
+
+Perhaps if Beaumont had lived, the two might have advanced to maturer and
+worthier achievement, but Fletcher's work alone rather displays the
+superficialities and artificialities of the collaboration. His amazing
+cleverness appears in every scene, but he evidently wrote more and more for
+immediate success, and relied more and more on his readinesss of wit and
+invention to take the place of earnest and serious purpose. The long series
+of plays in which he had at least a considerable share, range in kind from
+comedies of manners to tragedies of blood and revenge, but practically all
+may be described as romantic drama, having, that is, strange improbable
+events, foreign and remote scenes, variety and surprise in action, and love
+as the central motive. His sense of dramatic value in theme or incident was
+constantly alert, and in Spanish stories, especially the "Novellas
+Exemplares" of Cervantes, he found mazes of complicated action which
+exactly suited his fancy, and which he managed with adroit dramaturgy. The
+Spanish influence is more noticeable in the comedies than in the more
+serious plays; but, whatever the theme or the source, Fletcher added bustle
+and excitement. The distinctions between tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and
+romantic comedy often become barely discernible. The material and treatment
+are similar. Tragic situations occur in comedies as well as tragedies, and
+in either case, though finely conceived and admirably expressed, are yet
+always directed by the desire for surprise and thrills. The tragicomedies
+conform most closely to the conventionalities and repetitions of the heroic
+romances, though they exhibit abundant originality of invention. Through
+their example, romantic and melodramatic tragicomedy became perhaps the
+most popular and characteristic dramatic species of the reign of Charles I,
+and a direct progenitor of the heroic plays of the Restoration.
+
+In his tragedies Fletcher's prostitution to theatrical effectiveness admits
+a recognition of the literary tradition. At least, the two which are the
+result of his unaided efforts are composed with more care and with more
+evidence of artistic responsibility than his other dramas. In
+"Valentinian"[24] he turned from his usual sources and themes to those long
+approved in pure tragedy, and found in Roman history a story of revenge and
+lust. Though treating the material with great freedom, he unfortunately
+followed his source in continuing the action beyond the murder of
+Valentinian through the counter revenge on Maximus. The first two acts,
+that tell of the attempted seduction of Lucina and her final ruin, are
+among the best sustained tragic developments in Fletcher, and, in
+comparison with many similar scenes in contemporary drama, testify to his
+remarkable poetic gifts. But the later scheming and the overthrow of her
+husband involve a conversion of character and a descent into absurd
+improbability. In "Bonduca," Fletcher's invention moved unhampered.
+Historical sources are used merely as hints and incentives. The stories of
+Bonduca and Caratach are combined; and the interest in their tragic fates
+diversified by the stories of Bonduca's daughters and their Roman lovers,
+by the episode of the noble Poenius, by the pathos of the child Hengo, and
+also by some gross and brutal comedy. All these interests are skillfully
+interwoven and focused upon the great central scene of the battle. There is
+stirring presentation of camp life, and throughout the action moves with
+abounding spirit. The play is not tragedy at all if one judges it strictly
+by Aristotle's precepts or by Shakespeare's example, or even in comparison
+with the emotional tension of "The Maid's Tragedy." But it is an admirable
+example of the blending of the romantic, historical, heroic, pathetic,
+comic, and tragic, full of human nature as well as incident, conspicuous
+for poetic expression as well as theatrical ingenuity, one of the
+masterpieces of the romantic drama.
+
+The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Massinger or others offer
+few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The
+False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all
+melodramas in which Massinger's moral earnestness and rhetorical
+seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever
+stage-craft, noble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmanship are
+indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt"
+carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already
+exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months
+of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial
+study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable illustration of the
+readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an
+occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and
+Massinger's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and
+almost at their very best.
+
+The most striking illustration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its
+prostitution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The Bloody
+Brother; or Rollo, Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Massinger
+and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes
+of tragedy, the story of family feud and a bloody tyrant. In comparison,
+however, with any preceding dramas of this class, whether in early
+imitations of Seneca or later treatments of lust and revenge, the play
+shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its
+purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of
+tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar
+material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of
+talent. When the height of tragic passion is required he rises to it, or
+very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her
+father's life, a scene which Dyce pronounced the most real in its
+passionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But
+the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine
+passion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play.
+
+     Edith, whose father has been killed by the bloody and
+     lustful Rollo, is planning to murder him. She has
+     pretended to yield to his solicitations, and has
+     arranged a secret meeting with him at her house. Enter
+     Edith, splendidly dressed--a banquet prepared. She
+     kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may
+     forget all pity and kill the tyrant--
+
+     "His heaven forgot, and all his lusts upon him."
+
+     Then, as her boy sings the lovely song, perhaps
+     Shakespeare's,
+
+     "Take, oh take those lips away
+     That so sweetly were forsworn--"
+
+     Enter Rollo. By one of Fletcher's sudden conversions,
+     he has changed to a subtle hypocrite and appears
+     humble, repentant, begging for pity and love,
+
+             "in whiteness of my wash'd repentance,
+     In my heart's tears and love of truth to Edith,
+     In my fair life hereafter."
+
+     Edith, surprised and unnerved, gradually forgets her
+     purpose, and as she informs the audience in several
+     asides, is yielding; when--Enter Hamond and the guard.
+     Hamond, a brave blunt soldier, is seeking revenge on
+     Rollo because the tyrant has killed his brother and
+     outraged him by commanding him to murder the noble
+     Audrey. Hamond announces that he has come to kill
+     Rollo, who seizes Edith and interposes her as a
+     defense. She, aroused now to Rollo's real nature, draws
+     her dagger, but he snatches it from her. In the
+     struggle that follows Rollo and Hamond are both killed.
+
+All this occupies only one hundred and fifty lines of verse and must be
+accounted a most skillful bit of playmaking, a scene such as only Fletcher
+among the Elizabethans could contrive. But there is neither truth to life
+nor dramatic logic; on the contrary, there are two improbable conversions
+of character. It is not tragedy, it is hardly serious drama, it is
+theatrical claptrap; yet Fletcher's poetry is as fine, and, for all that
+one can see, as sincere as in the scene of genuine passion. Such dramatic
+impossibilities as this Fletcher faced with eager recklessness, and gayly
+spurred his Pegasus for the leap.
+
+"The Bloody Brother" further illustrates the union of the material and
+methods of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances with the conventions of the
+tragedy of revenge and lust. That union, manifest also in Fletcher's
+"Valentinian," is henceforth characteristic of the tragedy of the age. The
+dramatists belonged to a late period of an artistic development and had
+many examples both native and foreign to draw upon. They were men of talent
+or even genius whose creations were independent and original but rarely
+without large indebtedness to their predecessors. While Shakespeare and
+Jonson were often borrowed from, the majority of the tragedies clung to the
+examples of Webster and Tourneur or mingled revenge and horrors with the
+romantic plots and novel technic of Beaumont and Fletcher. A marked
+similarity consequently exists in the plays of men of different
+temperaments and purposes. Lustful tyrants and their intriguing favorites,
+love crossed by honor and often allied with revenge, illicit and abnormal
+passion, romantic princes and princesses, an action confined to the rooms
+of a palace, situations involving seduction or temptation, stage-effects
+whether by horrors or by masques and pageants, and a style more equable,
+less fantastic than in the early drama,--these are the ingredients which
+characterize tragedy for the quarter century after Shakespeare's death.
+
+Middleton's tragedies and tragicomedies came late in his career, following
+a period of realistic comedies, in which his observant and satirical
+imagination found free play. Though affected by Beaumont and Fletcher's
+romanticism, he preserved most of the traits of the tragedy of revenge in
+its late development, including such penetrating analysis of character
+swayed by evil as we have found in Marston and Webster. In some of his
+romantic dramas, as the tragicomedy "The Witch," there is little of this
+serious purpose. The various revenge motives--of the duchess on the duke
+who has compelled her to drink from the skull of her murdered father, of
+the lover upon the husband who has married his betrothed, and of the
+jealous husband upon his wife--are all treated with melodramatic
+insincerity though with an ingenious accompaniment of spectacular and
+supernatural interference on the part of the witches. Attempted murder
+results in wounds that easily heal; the deadly potion proves harmless; the
+duke discovered dead comes to life. In the single tragedy written by
+Middleton alone, "Women Beware Women," the revenge species appears
+unadulterated. Isabella's illicit relation with her uncle, the use of a
+masque to bring about the final slaughter, the scenes of seduction, and the
+abominable wickedness of all the persons, are elements that recall the
+Tourneurian group. The fluency and eloquence of Middleton's style and his
+admirable delineation of character by rapid dialogue are best shown in the
+early scenes; after the old mother, so beautifully and truly drawn, has
+disappeared from the action, the rest is unrelieved murder and lust.
+
+The two famous plays that were the results of Middleton's collaboration
+with Rowley have somewhat different characteristics. Rowley, a playwright
+used to rude and fantastic comedy, and the author of "All's Lost by Lust,"
+a clumsy tragedy of revenge, wrote most of the comic scenes and had some
+share in the serious plots. In "The Fair Quarrel," the hesitation of
+Captain Ager to defend the honor of his mother unless convinced of her
+purity; and in "The Changeling," the entanglement of Beatrice with the
+loathed follower whom she has persuaded to murder her accepted suitor,
+offer situations novel and ingenious. In both plays, the opportunity for
+mere melodrama with sudden conversions of character is refused, and the
+series of startling situations made the basis for a study of human motive.
+It is this which gives "The Fair Quarrel," in spite of its absurdities,
+superiority over most of the tragicomedies of the time. In "The
+Changeling," one may easily imagine what havoc Fletcher would have made of
+the characterization in order to over-emphasize situations, sensational
+enough in themselves; but Middleton and Rowley followed the best tradition
+of Webster. The rash and pampered Beatrice retains our sympathies even in
+her degradation, and remains convincingly alive, whether in her incipient
+love for De Flores or her final cry for forgiveness. De Flores,
+clear-headed and well-motived, is the most powerful and individual of the
+post-Shakespearean villains. The comic relief supplied by the mad scenes
+spoils the tragic unity of the play. But, except in Shakespeare and
+Webster, the old combination of murder, revenge, sinful love, villany,
+madness, and ghosts had never been made so consistently the result of human
+motive and so effective in its appeal to our sympathies.
+
+Massinger's dramatic career, ranking in productiveness with Shakespeare's
+or Fletcher's, extended from the time of Shakespeare's withdrawal from the
+theatre to within a few years of the Civil War. For ten years he was mainly
+occupied in collaborating with Fletcher for the king's men; and of the
+nineteen plays usually classed as his own, none were acted before 1622. His
+work, therefore, falls roughly into two periods, the first when he was the
+assistant of Fletcher, the second when he had succeeded Fletcher as the
+main reliance of the leading London company.
+
+Of his work with Fletcher the tragedies have already been considered. In
+most of the plays of the collaboration, Fletcher's share is the more
+important, especially in the treatment of the dramatic crises. In plays, as
+"The Queen of Corinth" and "The Laws of Candy," where Fletcher's hand is
+least apparent, there is an excess of melodramatic ingenuity without the
+Fletcherian vivacity, Massinger's temperament reveals itself, however, from
+the first in the gravity of his style and the seriousness of his morality.
+From Fletcher he acquired his stage-craft and his attachment to the
+romantic drama of thrills and surprises, but his art was meanwhile
+developing a responsibility and purposes all its own.
+
+Of the plays written without the aid of Fletcher, two, "A New Way to Pay
+Old Debts" and "The City Madam," are domestic comedies of manners. The
+others are romantic dramas which can be classified only with some
+difficulty as comedies, tragicomedies, and tragedies. A number of the
+tragicomedies are to be distinguished from the tragedies only by the happy
+endings and the absence of bloodshed. Nor are these always decisive. Of
+the tragedies, "Believe as You List" and "The Virgin Martyr" result in
+victory as well as death, and in the tragicomedy, "The Maid of Honor,"
+suitors worthy and unworthy are rejected and the vindicated heroine enters
+a nunnery. The tragedies in the main deal with more serious and important
+actions and rely less on intrigue than the tragicomedies; but it may be
+said of Massinger, with even more truth than of Fletcher, that he dealt
+with romantic stories abounding in tragic possibilities, usually resulting
+in happy endings, but occasionally taking a loftier tone and a fatal
+conclusion.
+
+The plays as a whole reveal a remarkable variety of stories and a treatment
+of sources fully as free and ingenious as Fletcher's and often contriving a
+political as well as a moral lesson. Honor and religion play conspicuous
+parts as in contemporary Spanish drama, to which Massinger apparently owed
+a considerable debt; although in only one instance, "The Renegade," has
+direct indebtedness to a Spanish play been traced. The earlier drama is
+also freely drawn upon. At this date it was in fact almost impossible to
+compose a play without traversing motives and incidents that were familiar
+on the stage; and Massinger borrowed from many, from Shakespeare as freely
+as from Fletcher, and from minor dramatists as well. The story of the
+usurper Sebastian, told in "The Battle of Alcazar," is retold in "Believe
+as You List"; and the poisoning by kissing the painted corpse, related in
+"The Second Maiden's Tragedy," reappears in his "Duke of Milan." In spite
+of their variety and ingenuity, his plays are very like others of the
+period. There are the same court and courtiers, general, favorite, rival
+lovers, rival mistresses, and the same trials of chastity or intrigues of
+lust and malice.
+
+Yet the independence of Massinger's invention and the truth of his
+conceptions of human motive are by no means small. In "The Bashful Lover"
+there is a presentation of idealizing and self-sacrificing love, far
+surpassing the courtly compliments of Fletcher and rivaling the magnanimity
+of Browning's conceptions. In such themes, just removed from the exaltation
+and the horror thought necessary for tragedy, yet serious and exalted above
+the average of comedy, Massinger is at his best. An outline of his "Maid of
+Honor" may serve to illustrate both the independence of his imaginative
+conceptions and the careful integration of his structure.
+
+     Act i opens at the court of Roberto, King of Sicily,
+     who, after much eloquent solicitation, permits his
+     natural brother Bertoldo to lead an expedition against
+     Gonzaga, a knight of Malta, who is relieving Sienna,
+     captured by Ferdinand, Duke of Urbin, in his effort to
+     win the duchess by force. Camiola, the maid of honor,
+     after some buffoonery on the part of Sylli, a
+     Malvolio-like wooer, has a parting interview with
+     Bertoldo and confesses that his vow as a knight of
+     Malta is the only bar to her acceptance of his offers
+     of marriage. In act ii, after some further buffoonery
+     by Sylli, who serves throughout as a comic contrast to
+     Camiola's other suitors, Fulgentio, the King's minion,
+     solicits Camiola, but is tartly repulsed, and threatens
+     to slander her. The scene changes to Sienna, the camp
+     of Gonzaga, and then to the citadel held by Ferdinand.
+     Bertoldo and his followers are defeated and made
+     prisoners, Gonzaga tearing the cross from Bertoldo's
+     breast. In act iii all the prisoners are released by
+     ransom, except Bertoldo, who thereupon bewails the
+     falseness of his brother the King. The scene changing
+     to Sicily, Adorni, a faithful follower of Camiola's
+     father, soliloquizes on his love for her and his
+     intention to take vengeance on Fulgentio. Later he
+     appears wounded before Camiola and presents the
+     minion's recantation, but is blamed by her for his
+     presumption in assuming a task proper only for her
+     lover. Upon the arrival of news of Bertoldo's plight,
+     Camiola, who is as energetic as loyal, decides to
+     sacrifice her fortune to pay her lover's ransom, and
+     summons Adorni to act as her agent in freeing Bertoldo.
+     Adorni dutifully undertakes the mission that promises
+     to ruin his hopes. In act iv the Duchess Aurelia
+     arrives at Sienna and Ferdinand surrenders. Bertoldo in
+     prison reads Seneca, soliloquizes on suicide, falls on
+     the ground, and threatens to rend the bowels of the
+     earth, quite in Kydian fashion. Adorni enters, and
+     Bertoldo, upon hearing of Camiola's sacrifice, blesses
+     her name and promises marriage. It is now Adorni's turn
+     to soliloquize on suicide. Bertoldo is brought before
+     Aurelia, who, suddenly enamored, offers him herself and
+     duchy. After some resistance he yields. Adorni now
+     begins to hope. In Sicily Camiola has convinced the
+     King of Fulgentio's worthlessness. In act v Camiola
+     receives from Adorni the news of Bertoldo's fickleness,
+     but she still scorns Adorni and resolves to seek
+     redress from the King. Accordingly, at the marriage of
+     Bertoldo and Aurelia, she breaks in, states her case
+     with eloquence and temper, and appeals to the King.
+     Aurelia suddenly feels all her love quenched, and
+     Bertoldo pleads for pity. All await the fulfillment of
+     Camiola's promise that she will declare whom she will
+     marry, and are astonished when Father Paula announces
+     that she has decided to become the bride of the church.
+     Before taking the veil, she obtains Fulgentio's pardon,
+     gives one half of her wealth to the faithful Adorni,
+     and commands Bertoldo to resume the cross of Malta.
+
+In his six tragedies there is less of romantic love and more of the blacker
+passions. "The Unnatural Combat," "The Duke of Milan," "The Fatal Dowry"
+(in collaboration with Field), and "The Roman Actor" deal with lust and
+revenge in the quantity and quality long prescribed. In the last named,
+however, Massinger broke away from the conventional treatment and made his
+protagonist neither the cruel tyrant nor the lustful queen, but a dignified
+and noble representative of the actor's profession, and took the
+opportunity of effectively expanding the old device of a play within a
+play. The other two tragedies present still more originality of conception
+and treatment: "Believe As You List," dealing with the fortune of a
+rightful claimant to the crown, and "The Virgin Martyr," perhaps a revision
+of an early play by Dekker, returning to the old material of the Miracles,
+the story of a martyrdom that converts the persecutors. In each of these
+tragedies, as in "The Maid of Honor," a number of stories are organized
+into a single action, introduced by admirable exposition, and usually
+carried through with direct and logical progress. In the treatment of
+catastrophe, always heightened, prolonged, and sometimes full of surprise
+after Fletcher's fashion, Massinger is less competent. Massinger could not
+keep to the inevitable development of character as did Shakespeare, nor
+could he sacrifice character to situation as light-heartedly as did
+Fletcher. In consequence he falls between two stools; and his fifth act is
+usually clumsy and unconvincing.
+
+Massinger's art was not only less reckless than Fletcher's; it was linked
+to a serious moral view of human affairs. He always worked under a sense of
+responsibility both as a dramatic artist and as a preacher of political and
+personal morality. Neither the heedlessness of Fletcher nor the perversion
+of Ford is discoverable in his plays. Bad and good are clearly
+differentiated, despite the improbabilities of the romantic vicissitudes;
+and poetic justice is administered with decision. Following his venturesome
+and nimble master, he pursues his pathway gravely, judicially, somewhat
+heavily. His careful art and sincere morality lack the leaven of dramatic
+genius. The orator and the rhetorician are always elbowing the dramatist
+off the scene. His style, never splendid, never excessively figurative, is
+always contained and clear. At its best in sustained declamation, it often
+descends to a tone approaching prose and rarely rises to the more stirring
+or impelling emotions. His abundant inventiveness also fails him in the
+great crises of passion. Again and again when the heroine is at bay, or the
+hero within the jaws of ruin, Massinger resorts to oratory. As in "The Maid
+of Honor," eloquence is the _deus ex machina_ which solves the difficulties
+of the plot. In consequence, the characterization, though involving subtle
+and penetrating conceptions of human nature, and often logical and
+consistent, rarely results in living beings. An exception must be made of
+some of his men, whose virility and dignity are akin to his own temper and
+can be made real through his favorite rhetorical means. The women, with
+few exceptions, of whom Camiola is chief, are, for reverse reasons, bad
+failures. Chastity cannot be revealed by an oratorical appeal, and the evil
+women only grow impossible when they add rhetoric to lust.
+
+The passing of the greatness of the Elizabethan drama is manifest in
+Massinger as in his contemporaries. He retains, to be sure, most of the
+external characteristics of his predecessors; he writes constantly in the
+light of their achievements; he would restrain Fletcher's theatricality by
+a more cautious and responsible art. Like Shakespeare he maintains a moral
+standard despite the exigencies of a romantic plot. But the old fervor as
+well as the old extravagance of diction have gone; and a careful dramaturgy
+now finds itself incompetent to meet the requirements of great tragic
+crises. His tragedies recapitulate what has been done before, without
+important advance or departure, and without attaining one unforgettable
+phrase or one moment that electrifies the reader with an undeniable
+conviction of its dramatic truth.
+
+In Ford the results of servile imitation and original genius were curiously
+combined. The first dramatist to feel the overshadowing effect of
+Shakespeare's tragedies, he borrowed freely from "Lear," "Othello," and
+"Romeo and Juliet," and he was hardly less indebted to Beaumont and
+Fletcher and the school of Webster. As a playwright he was, in fact,
+usually imitative and often unskillful. As a poet his consciousness of the
+greatness of earlier dramatists now chilled him to bald copying and now
+incited him to a unique development of some of the old tragic motives. With
+Dekker and Rowley he collaborated on "The Witch of Edmonton," a tragicomedy
+dealing with a contemporary crime and linking itself with the domestic
+tragedies. "Perkin Warbeck," a revival of the chronicle history, is without
+battles or pageants, and is less concerned with the scenic presentation of
+history than with the delineation of the character of the claimant. His
+other tragedies, "Love's Sacrifice," "The Broken Heart," and "'Tis Pity
+She's a Whore," are at once both more in accord with prevailing modes in
+the drama and more characteristic of Ford's imaginative temperament. In
+spite of their worthless comic scenes, their conventional material, and
+their melodramatic situations, they present tragic passion with an
+intensity and truth possible only to dramatic genius.
+
+Love is the theme, and an excess of sentiment and passion in conflict with
+friendship, right, or natural law, is the particular province that Ford
+makes his own. A favorite in love with the wife of his lord, a brother in
+love with a sister, are the situations over which his genius casts an
+oppressive melancholy that lasts until the final heart-breaks. The monarch,
+his favorite, a buffoon or two, and lords and ladies, love-sick or
+passion-inflamed, play with the casuistry of love and mingle dances and
+revels with bloodshed and horror. Villany and revenge appear but are not
+very essential. The seeds of fatal passions have been already sown when the
+play begins; it is the stifling hothouse in which they luxuriate. The end
+is inevitable, though it may be long held in suspense and attained through
+some surprise in the final act.
+
+"The Broken Heart" is the most healthy of his plays. Orgilus, whose life
+has been blighted because Penthea has married Bassanio through the
+intervention of her brother, the great General Ithocles, pursues his
+revenge upon Ithocles in spite of much delay and apparent reconciliation.
+Finally he stabs Ithocles to death just as Ithocles is to be married to the
+princess Calantha, and just as Penthea dies of madness and starvation. The
+familiar round of revenge, madness, and torture here reappears, but it is
+told in a story full of romantic sentiment and human passion, and not
+without sunshine as well as shadow. It is the final scenes, however, which
+every reader remembers. Calantha is dancing when the tidings of the deaths
+of her father and her lover are brought to her, and she dances on, hiding
+her grief and playing her part nobly, until, duty accomplished, her heart
+is free to yield to its bursting sorrow.
+
+It is in scenes like these, showing passion restrained or overborne for the
+moment, or the strain and suspense preceding the crash, that Ford is at his
+best. The marvelous parting scene between brother and sister in "'Tis Pity"
+is perfection itself. His imagination dissolves the horrible story into the
+very language of the breaking heart. His verse, lacking both the old
+rhetorical artificiality and the vivacity and adaptability of Fletcher's,
+possesses a restraint and moderation of language and a complex and
+beautiful melody all its own. At times it is the thinnest of translucent
+veils "through which passion is burning as the radiant lines of morning."
+
+One may find in him somewhat of the perverse inquisitiveness of Donne. A
+wayward and solitary searcher in the realms of poetry, he voyaged only to
+regions unexplored or forbidding. But, as we have seen, his imagination,
+wayward though it was, took direction from his contemporaries, and he was
+representative of much in current tragedy. Though Ford's ethical attitude
+is perhaps more non-committal than that of any of his contemporaries, yet
+his casuistical interest in moral problems, and the emphasis which he
+places on such problems at the expense of his stories, are traits common in
+the drama of the time, and especially in the collaborative work of
+Middleton and Rowley. His absorption with questions of sex, his searching
+for new sensation, his attempt to bestow on moral perversion the
+enticements of poetry correspond with what is most decadent in Fletcher and
+Shirley. Like his fine-spoken and well-mannered courtiers and impulsive
+ladies, Ford imagined in an atmosphere of unhealthy emotion. His plays are
+immoral because their passion is so often morbid and their sentiment
+mawkish. His power to reveal character and passion, which rank him with the
+greatest of the Elizabethans, was discovered in his searching the by-paths
+of the abnormal and pathological. Pathos for him was a flower plucked from
+a poisonous exotic.
+
+Beginning about 1625 and extending to the Civil War, Shirley's dramatic
+career overlapped and continued Massinger's as Massinger's did Fletcher's.
+After leaving the university he took orders, but shortly became converted
+to Catholicism, and then, after a volume of poems, turned to the public
+theatres for employment. The last of the brilliant series of poets who made
+the London stage the home of poesy and contributed to the great period of
+the English drama, at the closing of the theatres he was the dean of his
+profession. His thirty odd plays, while naturally continuing the methods
+and types of Massinger and of Fletcher, his avowed master, and while
+reminiscent of much in earlier writers, especially Webster and Shakespeare,
+also reflect about all the characteristics manifest in the drama during the
+reign of Charles I.
+
+Shirley's remarkable talents challenge comparison with his predecessors. He
+had a share of Massinger's seriousness of purpose and painstaking art, and
+of Fletcher's freshness of fancy and sprightliness of style. In invention
+he is hardly less ingenious than either, and in careful construction and
+theatrical craftsmanship he approaches Massinger's undoubted mastership.
+His verse seems modeled on Fletcher's, but it often has a spontaneity of
+movement and a richness of decoration that recall Elizabethan style in its
+early flights. Little of early aphorism, however, or of the later obscurity
+and confusion remains; these are replaced, sometimes indeed by a hackneyed
+declamation, but often by natural and fluent dialogue.
+
+Yet, in spite of his talents, Shirley's own position and his contribution
+to the drama are difficult of definition, because he is so constantly
+reminiscent of his predecessors and so constantly approaching, though never
+quite equaling, their preëminent models. His plays, like Massinger's, seem
+to the reader of to-day repetitions of one another. Each coalesces in the
+mind with other comedies of manners, or other tragedies of blood, or with
+the tragicomedies of Massinger and Fletcher. Whatever the species, love is
+the theme, lust is pursuing, chastity is tried by intrigue and by
+declamation; but the real interest is in the plot, the tricks, disguises,
+subterfuges, villains, and surprises that end--as the case may be--in the
+discomfiture of the fools, or the marriage of the lovers, or the downfall
+of a dynasty.
+
+The drama had become conventionalized. The dramatists were no longer
+searching for new themes and characters in a wide range of stories; they
+were inventing their plots but were restricted in their materials. The
+ingredients of early plays served Shirley's purpose, and by a few new
+devices or changes in motive he gave his fashionable ladies, his lustful
+monarchs, scheming favorites, and exiled heroes new names and adventures,
+and so produced a play. The cleverness of the plot occupies your attention,
+or occasionally a beautiful passage or a fine conception of character
+arrests the mind, but at the close you are at a loss to separate the play
+from a dozen similar ones.
+
+In Shirley, as in Massinger, the most representative plays, and certainly
+those most satisfactory to our taste, are the tragicomedies. Bloodshed and
+horror and grossness of language and situation may all be absent, and the
+story of love and intrigue, even if it does not exalt the mind or purify
+the passions, may be altogether delightful. In "The Royal Master," one of
+the best, the rôle of the lustful monarch is assumed for a single scene,
+only to cure a really charming heroine of her infatuation for royalty; and
+the intriguing favorite is foiled, the banished noble vindicated, and two
+love matches completed with gracefulness of language and dexterity of plot.
+Unfortunately Shirley's land of romance is rarely so wholesome as here or
+the inhabitants so agreeable.
+
+His tragedies mainly conform to the hackneyed models, no matter what the
+sources may be or how large his own invention may seem. The earliest, "The
+Maid's Revenge," relating a Spanish story of the rivalry in love of two
+sisters that ends in a fatal duel between brother and lover, is wholly in
+the tone of romantic melodrama. "The Politician," a more ambitious effort,
+combines the villain play with the Beaumont-Fletcher romance. Gotharius,
+the politician, is the villain; Marpisa, the evil woman, is his mistress
+and about to be married to the king; Albina, the loyal and long-suffering
+heroine, is the villain's wife; Turgesius is the prince and hero; and
+Olaus, a blunt soldier, is his faithful friend. There is an insurrection,
+as so often in Fletcher; and after a long intrigue the villain and the evil
+woman perish, and the prince marries the heroine. In "Love's Cruelty," a
+more original conception is worked out with telling realism and a good deal
+of dramatic truth. Clariana becomes infatuated with her husband's friend
+Hippolito; and, even after the guilty lovers have been permitted to go
+unpunished by the husband, her passion continues until her jealousy at her
+lover's approaching marriage to Eubella drives her to his murder. Rarely
+elsewhere in the Elizabethan drama is the story of illicit love told with
+less of glamour and more veracity. These merits are perhaps counterbalanced
+by the extreme realism of the language and the stage action.
+
+In this play the deceived husband dies of grief, but Eubella, who had
+earlier resisted the lustful duke, is solaced after the death of her
+betrothed by a promise of marriage from the duke himself. Both "The
+Politician" and "The Duke's Mistress," a tragedy along hackneyed lines, end
+with reward for the virtuous and punishment only for the vicious. Such
+application of poetic justice had been earlier expounded by Ben Jonson in
+defense of the punishments inflicted in his comedy, "Volpone." The
+applications of the doctrine in Shirley and Massinger were, however,
+probably due not so much to theoretical criticism as to the popular
+preference for the restriction of the catastrophe to the bad, a preference
+recorded by Aristotle and evidently shared by a generation in which
+romantic tragicomedy was the most popular dramatic form.
+
+Shirley's tragic masterpieces, however, offered no alleviation of horror
+and bloodshed. "The Traitor" and "The Cardinal" are plays of revenge, lust,
+intrigue, and villany, in which all the accretions of this kind of tragedy
+from Kyd and Marlowe down to Webster and Massinger seem to be represented.
+The villains are as black as Barabas and as crafty as those of Webster;
+plots are as intricately entangled with counterplots as in Tourneur; and
+surprises follow as rapidly as in Fletcher. The corpse kissed by the
+repentant duke is again presented; there is attempted rape and assumed
+madness; in each play a bridegroom is murdered as he takes his place in the
+wedding procession; and in each revenge strews the final scene with the
+dead. But the old motives still had power to convey poetic inspiration, and
+the examples of all his predecessors summoned Shirley to his best efforts.
+Perhaps in no other plays does he so constantly recall their work;
+certainly in no others do the poetic quality of his language, the vigorous
+delineation of character, and the dramatic depiction of passion so worthily
+maintain what were even for men of his day the great traditions of English
+tragedy.
+
+Tragedies by minor writers during the years from 1620 to 1642 offer little
+that is distinctive. Occasionally, as in the anonymous "Nero" of 1624, we
+have a play spontaneous in phrase and lifelike in characterization, worthy
+of the best days of the drama; but in the main the plays only repeat what
+is to be found in Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. In spite of the vogue of
+tragicomedy, tragedy was by no means neglected, nearly fifty tragedies
+being preserved from the twenty years, in addition to those by the authors
+mentioned. These include several by Suckling, Glapthorne's pastoral
+tragedy, "Argalus and Parthenia," and his worthless "Wallenstein," May's
+plays on classical history, and others by Killigrew, Davenant, Carlell,
+Heming, Davenport, and less known men.
+
+The large majority conform to the later type of revenge play as exemplified
+in Massinger and Shirley. Sometimes the romantic love element supersedes
+the intrigue and horrors, but oftener the horrors have full sway. A double
+plot, usually with an elaborate surprise in the fifth act, revolves about
+lust and revenge with some attention to untarnished honor and unconquered
+chastity. The lustful duke and his intriguing favorite, or the tyrannical
+usurper and the rightful prince alternate at the centre of the stage along
+with the evil woman, perhaps a Lady Potiphar, and a distressed maiden,
+likely to be disguised as a boy. Madness is frequently represented, eyes
+are plucked out, brains dashed upon the stage, and many of the old horrors
+reproduced, but ghosts rarely appear. The action consists largely of
+adultery, seduction, and rape; and these are represented with a horrid
+detail that rivals Marston. When chastity is preserved it is often by a
+device similar to that used in "Measure for Measure," although occasionally
+there is an exchange of men instead of women. Tragedy is for the most part
+confined to stories of crime. The monstrous politicians and libertines
+differ from their sixteenth century predecessors chiefly in the greater
+ingenuity and complexity of their intrigue, their subordination of ambition
+or other motives to those of love or lust, and in the prosaic flatness of
+their blank verse.
+
+Often there are manifest borrowings, and occasionally a dramatist evidently
+strove to include everything that had ever been known on the tragic stage.
+"The Rebellion," by Thomas Rawlins, presents Machiavel, a villain, whose
+soliloquies might be burlesques on Barabas and Richard III, two mad scenes,
+a nurse from "Romeo and Juliet," a Moor, who is another villain, attempted
+rape, and frequent bursts of poetry:--
+
+    "The lazy moon has scarcely trimm'd herself
+    To entertain the sun; she still retains
+    The slimy tincture of the banish'd night."
+
+On the other hand, the usual type of tragedy, with reminiscences of
+Shakespeare and Fletcher, sometimes shows a genuine poetic gift, as notably
+in Lord Falkland's "The Marriage Night." The most marked trait, however, of
+these minor tragedies is their eagerness to out-Herod Herod and to make
+good their weakness in dramatic truth by means of stage horrors or rant.
+"The Valiant Scot," a tragedy dealing with the career of Wallace,
+represents the cutting out of the tongue of one English ambassador and the
+putting out of the eyes of another. In "Mirza" the protagonist kills his
+seven-year-old daughter,--"Takes Fatima by the neck, breaks it, and swings
+her about." The taste for atrocities seems to have been most highly
+developed at Oxford, where the students acted Goffe's outrageous plays and
+a Samuel Harding published "Sicily and Naples," a medley introducing
+revenge for a father, a maiden disguised as a boy, a villain-favorite, the
+Mariana device, and combining rape, murder, madness, and incest in a
+fashion not equaled since "Titus Andronicus."
+
+Absurd plays of this sort were common enough from the days of "Cambyses,"
+and cannot be fairly taken as evidences of the drama's decadence. Nor do
+the main differences that are apparent between tragedy after 1620 and that
+of the early or of the Shakespearean period point to decadence as
+unmistakably as critics are wont to assume. There is a waning of poetic
+power; blank verse descends to prose, and its flowers have a jaded air; but
+there is poetic imagination in Glapthorne as well as in Shirley, noble
+rhetoric in Massinger, and sheer poetry in Ford. The ethical tone has in
+general suffered deterioration. The moral insight of Shakespeare or even of
+Webster is not maintained; courtly and sophisticated ideals ring false; the
+language becomes gross; the vulgarities of the early plays are replaced by
+mawkish sentimentality or lewd suggestiveness. There seems to be increasing
+difficulty in presenting persons normally good. The reiteration of scenes
+of rape and seduction bespeak an unhealthy moral atmosphere. Yet tragedy,
+though at tunes perverse or forgetful, still clings to its moral standards.
+It still endeavors to expose and chastise sin and to incite to virtue.
+
+Decadence is more manifest in the restriction and conventionalizing of the
+material of tragedy. The love for the impossible, the craving for
+stupendous emotions and supernormal passions had given place to theatrical
+court intrigues. The daring attempts of Marlowe and Shakespeare to depict
+the great round of the emotions had given way to a continual harping on
+illicit love. Dramatists were no longer striving to give beautiful
+expression to the terrible, heroic, or pitiable in story, but seeking to
+construct acting plays out of stock situations and stock characters. There
+was a lack of fresh impulse. French romance and Spanish drama seem to have
+encouraged no marked innovations, and French classicism was only just
+making itself heard at the closing of the theatres. A man of original
+genius like Ford staggered under the recognition of the greatness of
+earlier achievement and turned to the abnormalities and excesses of passion
+for his themes. Shirley, more typical of the period, devoted talents of a
+high order to repeating familiar models.
+
+Yet there was progress as well as stagnation. Dramatists had shaken off the
+medieval adherence to sources and learned to invent, though their invention
+unhappily followed current theatrical fashions rather than fresh creative
+impulses. The art of making plays had advanced, not as Shakespeare had
+pointed the way, by making construction dependent upon character, but as
+Beaumont and Fletcher had fashioned, by making character subordinate to a
+varied and rapid action. There is more complication, more coherence in
+plot, more ingenuity in situation, and a far greater use of surprise than
+in the early plays, but no great gain in consistent motivation. Yet many of
+the early absurdities have disappeared; and in discovering what is to be
+acted and what not, in the quick excitement of the spectator's interest,
+and in the careful integration of the various lines of action, the
+dramaturgy is, in comparison with the period before Shakespeare, noticeably
+modern.
+
+The differences which distinguish the different periods do not conceal the
+essential unity of the entire development from 1562 to 1642. The changes
+that take place in the prevailing types are of degree and not of kind.
+Nearly all the tragedies might be called tragedies of blood, for nearly all
+deal with crime and bloodshed. A narrower division like that of the tragedy
+of revenge keeps its integrity from Kyd onward, the hesitation motive
+finding transformation in "Hamlet," the union of revenge, intrigue, and
+madness finding a different development in Webster and others, and
+remaining until the end the most prevalent type of tragedy. A majority of
+Elizabethan plays are romantic rather than classical or realistic, though
+the romance is of many kinds and drawn from many widely different sources,
+as Boccaccio, D'Urfé, or Lope de Vega. For a time it is mainly confined to
+romantic comedy, but it soon enters into tragedy and tragicomedy. In
+tragedy it plays a fitful part, but in tragicomedy it conquers the
+theatres. The course of tragedy from its inception in an amalgamation of
+medieval and classical elements, through its establishment by Marlowe, its
+development of types and methods, the transformation of these by
+Shakespeare into a dramatic form that changed and enlarged the meaning of
+tragedy for the centuries since then, the further development of types and
+methods under the innovations of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the splendid
+contribution that tragedy still received from Webster, Middleton, Ford, and
+Massinger,--all this was comprised within a single century; all that was
+most significant, within a single lifetime.
+
+Tragedy throughout this development remained popular. Less than the ballad
+but more than any other form of literature prior to the pamphlet, novel,
+and newspaper, the drama was the result of popular taste, thought, and
+desire. Tragedy early shook off the bonds of classical tradition, and it
+never ceased to aim first at pleasing the audiences. Shakespeare as well as
+Dekker or Shirley was their servant. Even in the later days when increasing
+Puritanism alienated a large portion of the public from the theatres,
+literary standards failed to overthrow the sovereignty of the people,
+though, as the dramatists paid allegiance to a restricted and less
+representative audience, the drama waned. Without a guiding criticism,
+without any reliance on authority or tradition, appealing first to the
+public theatre and only secondly to court or culture or posterity, tragedy
+at its best was not distinguished by impeccability of literary art. It
+lacked simplicity of theme and precision of treatment; it was fantastic in
+design and language. It lacked refinement; it was vulgar in diction and
+scene; it was revolting in its horrors and bloodshed. It lacked reserve and
+definiteness of literary purpose; it was sensational, incongruous, or naïve
+in its address to the intelligence. But from the same conditions that gave
+rise to its faults and excesses came its excellences. A delight in verbal
+felicity, a welcome for diverse excitement, and a craving for story on the
+part of the public made possible the wealth of incident and character, the
+varied emotional appeal, and the fervid poetry of Elizabethan tragedy. It
+was free to avail itself of every resource of poet or playwright in order
+to present human passion of all kinds, human individuals of many varieties.
+Its virtues as well as its faults are summed up in Shakespeare. After his
+death it developed in dramatic dexterity rather than in the
+comprehensiveness of its mirror of life. Yet, without Shakespeare, the
+fabrics of its vision comprise
+
+    "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+    The solemn temples, the great globe itself."
+
+Even without him, the legacy of Elizabethan tragedy is an unfaded pageant
+of the greatness and the pain, the passion and the poetry of our little
+life.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward, Fleay, Schelling, and the bibliographies in the Shakespeare
+_Jahrbuch_ continue to be the best guides. Dyce's admirable edition of
+Beaumont and Fletcher (11 vols., 1843-46) has long been the standard, but
+two new complete editions of their works are now in progress, one under the
+general editorship of A. H. Bullen (London, 1904-), the other edited by A.
+Glover and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905-). The discussion in this chapter
+is in part based on my _Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_
+(1901) and my edition of _The Maid's Tragedy_ and _Philaster_ in the
+_Belles-Lettres Series_ (Boston, 1906). I must refer to the latter for a
+full bibliography of both texts and critical works. Miss Hatcher's _John
+Fletcher_ (Chicago, 1905) should be added. Webster has been well edited by
+Dyce and Hazlitt; and his two principal tragedies by M. W. Sampson in the
+_Belles-Lettres Series_, with full bibliography. E. E. Stoll's monograph,
+_John Webster_, referred to in chapter v, has been drawn upon in the
+discussion in this chapter. Tourneur has been edited by J. Churton Collins
+(1878); Middleton by A. H. Bullen; Massinger very poorly by Gifford (2d
+ed., 1815); Ford by Gifford (1827, revised by Dyce, 1869); and Shirley by
+Dyce (1833). Editions of selections from all these dramatists will also be
+found in the _Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists_, with introductions of
+varying value. Bibliographical references to all dramatists of this period
+will be found in Ward and Schelling, and in general more comprehensive
+discussion of their plays than are to be found elsewhere. Of especial value
+in the study of sources are E. Koeppel's two volumes, _Quellen Studien zu
+den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's und Beaumont und Fletcher's_ (1895)
+and _Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Massinger's und
+John Ford's_ (1897).
+
+Among the critical appreciations of the dramatists of this and the
+preceding chapters are: Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_,
+Hazlitt's _Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_, Jeffrey's _Essay
+on Ford_, Lowell's _Old English Dramatists_, G. C. Macaulay's _Francis
+Beaumont_ (1883), Swinburne's _Ben Jonson_ (1889), and his essays on other
+dramatists.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] Elizabethan has been used to designate the whole period of the drama
+from 1559 to 1642.
+
+[23] For a somewhat different view of the play, emphasizing its crudity as
+a drama, see Mr. William Archer's "Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne," _New
+Review_, January, 1893.
+
+[24] See Coleridge, _Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher_, for a characteristic
+and valuable criticism of the play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE RESTORATION
+
+
+The drama of the Restoration was separated from the earlier periods by
+sixteen years of closed theatres and a virtual cessation of all dramatic
+composition. To the drama, as to other forms of literature, the Restoration
+brought not only a revival but also a revolution--new fashions, new models,
+new foreign influence, a new age, and a changed society. No such break in
+theatrical conditions has occurred since then, and nothing so nearly
+revolutionary in the history of the drama. Since then the theatres have
+been always open, the dramatists always writing. Changes have been gradual,
+the history continuous. Due recognition must, therefore, be given to the
+last years before the closing of the theatres and the first years after
+their reopening as marking an end and a beginning. Really, however, the new
+was a continuation of the old; the pause was by no means a severing of
+traditions; and the Restoration drama inherited far more from the
+Elizabethan than it imported from France or originated under the
+inspiration of that illustrious patron of poetry, Charles II.
+
+Signs of continued interest in the theatre had not been wanting during the
+Commonwealth. The theatres were reopened in 1648 but promptly suppressed
+and dismantled. Drolls or short farces derived from popular plays were
+performed here and there in London or in the country, and the continued
+publication of old plays revealed a considerable demand from the reading
+public. In 1656 Davenant obtained permission for the performance of his
+"Siege of Rhodes" "made a Representation by the Art of Perspective Scenes,
+and the story sung in Recitative Music." Thus, even before the revival of
+the regular drama, came its rival the opera, and the important innovation
+of movable scenes. Two years later Davenant produced another entertainment,
+and was performing regular plays before Monk had entered London. Two
+companies, the King's and the Duke of York's, were presently licensed;
+these, united from 1682 to 1695, sufficed for sixty years to supply the
+needs of the London public, and maintained their monopoly until well into
+the nineteenth century. Before 1642 the open public theatres had largely
+given place to the "private" theatres in inclosed rooms. These and the
+contemporary French theatres served as models for the Restoration
+buildings. The stage still protruded into the auditorium and was frequently
+crowded with gallants as in the Elizabethan days, but the use of scenery, a
+drop curtain shutting off all the stage but the proscenium, the
+performances by artificial light, together with the women actors, who now
+for the first time interpreted Shakespeare's heroines, brought the
+Restoration stage closer to that of our own day than to that of the
+preceding generation. This transformation from a half-medieval to a nearly
+modern stage resulted in far-reaching changes in the drama; among others,
+in a new importance to female parts and in alterations in structure due to
+the use of scenery and curtain. Few of the old actors were still alive,
+though enough had been gathered to make up the nucleus of the companies and
+to transmit the traditions of the Globe and the Blackfriars. The acting of
+the Restoration probably soon surpassed that of the earlier period, and the
+great triumphs of Betterton and Mrs. Barry set new and long influential
+traditions in English tragedy. The changes which most fundamentally
+affected the drama were those in the stage and the actors.
+
+The influence exerted upon the drama by the new opera may also be described
+as largely theatrical. The opera of the Restoration is to be distinguished
+from the form as it has prevailed since the introduction of Italian opera
+into England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The term was
+loosely used to describe a variety of entertainments, in which the dialogue
+might be altogether sung, or in part spoken, and in which the dancing and
+decoration were regarded as not less essential than the music. Derived from
+France, where the opera gained great favor and attracted the services of
+Corneille and Quinault, the English species was closely related to two
+national forms of drama, the masque and the tragedy. In music, dancing, and
+machinery it resembled the former; in theme, plot, and persons, often the
+latter. A resemblance between the opera and the heroic tragedy is also
+observable in the prominence given by each to heroic love. Tragedies were
+readily transformed into operas as in the case of Lee's "Theodosius" and
+Tate's "Brutus of Alba," and of Fletcher's "Island Princess" and
+"Prophetess." Throughout the period the relations between the two remain
+close. They were presented in the same theatre; the same actors often
+played in one and sang in the other; an orchestral band was provided to
+play between the acts in tragedy; and tragedy availed itself of songs,
+scenery, and machines. Entirely apart from its place in the history of
+English music, English opera is of some importance in the development of
+tragedy, partly as a rival and partly because it promoted operatic elements
+in tragedy itself. Tragedy came in the Restoration period to rely more than
+ever before upon the externals of its stage presentation, and on elements
+then considered distinctively operatic,--scenery, spectacle, and music.
+
+From changes in theatrical conditions, friends of the drama doubtless found
+hope for its higher development; but the main source of promise seemed to
+lie in the patronage of the court. The court of Charles II indeed exerted a
+greater influence on the drama than any court since or, perhaps, before,
+but the influence was mainly toward social and political immorality.
+Patronage rather than public support was relied upon by both dramatists and
+actors. In consequence, the theatres became servile purveyors to the
+amusement and taste of the king and his favorites, and blindly partisan
+adherents of the royal politics. The failure to represent the nation and
+the consequent loss both in range of artistic impulse and in soundness of
+moral standards that had characterized the drama in the reigns of the two
+earlier Stuarts were now greatly intensified. In tragedy, grossness of
+language and manners had less opportunity than in comedy, but political
+subserviency had freer play. Political allegory combined with tragedy in
+plays contemptible as specimens of either species. This unworthy
+partisanship and this catering to a society mean and corrupt necessarily
+maimed that branch of the drama supposed to devote itself to heroic and
+lofty themes.
+
+The influences making most for innovation in the poetry and art of the
+drama came from France, partly owing to the instigation of the court. The
+character of this French influence, like its sources, differed from time to
+time, but from 1660 until after the death of Voltaire it was continuous and
+powerful. In tragedy, shortly after the Restoration, the heroic romances of
+Calprenède, Scudéry, and others, and the French plays which they had
+fostered, were the sources and models of much in the English heroic plays.
+There was constant borrowing and adapting from French romances and
+tragedies, as from French comedies. The "Cid" had been translated and acted
+in the reign of Charles I; several other of Corneille's plays were
+translated before 1670, his subjects and style were often imitated, and
+toward the end of the century the influence of Racine was marked upon
+English drama. The French influence on tragedy, however, was less a matter
+of models than of rules and theory. The English dramatists never in this
+period got very close to Corneille or Racine, but they were greatly
+impressed by French criticism and precept. In an age of reason and
+modernity, English tragedy, like other forms of literature, found its
+reaction from the crudities of an earlier age and its reform of the
+excesses of an untrained art in the pseudo-classicism of France.
+
+An effort was made, which proved far more portentous than preceding ones,
+to wrest tragedy back into conformity with the supposed rules of Aristotle.
+The conflict between English and French models, between Shakespeare and
+Corneille, between romantic license and classical proprieties had begun, a
+conflict to be continued in criticism as well as practice for over a
+century. Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" introduces us at once to the
+questions at issue and the state of the debate. The main questions were:
+first, the unities, recognized in French drama as necessities and
+supposedly derived from Aristotle; second, the mixture of tragedy and
+comedy, or, more especially, the introduction of low comedy into tragedy;
+and third, the use of rhyme as in French tragedy or of blank verse as in
+English, prose by general consent being restricted to comedy. In these the
+English tradition was directly opposed by French practice and theory, and
+in many minor matters as well: in the _liaison_ of scenes, favored, as was
+the unity of place, by the use of scenery; in certain proprieties in the
+conduct of kings and of subjects to kings; in the restriction of tragedy
+to historical, classical, or at least heroical persons and themes; and,
+notably, in the avoidance of violence and bloodshed in the action. Dryden's
+discussion reveals French practice and classical practice, not clearly
+differentiated, set up against the English tradition, and recognizes much
+in the former that seems reasonable and authoritative. But, on the other
+hand, it insists on the excellence and impressiveness of the English
+achievement. Such was the state of opinion shortly after the Restoration,
+and such, with varying emphasis and refinement, remained the consensus of
+opinion of dramatists and critics for a century. The laws of the
+pseudo-classicists were held to be measurably good, but Shakespeare without
+those laws had been undeniably great.
+
+Throughout the Restoration the main influence on the theatre was that of
+the earlier English drama. When the theatres were opened the old plays were
+acted. Literally hundreds were revived, many of which long held the stage.
+After a time changes in taste and theatrical conditions led to revisions
+and alterations; but the alterations of Shakespeare and others not only
+illustrate this perversion of taste, but also testify to the continuance of
+the English tradition. Not merely revisions and adaptations, but the whole
+drama bears witness to its descent. The characteristics of the tragedy of
+1630 are those of the tragedy of 1670. The influence of the
+Beaumont-Fletcher romances and of the tragedy of revenge are hardly less
+marked after 1660 than before. The comic scenes, blank verse, complicated
+plots, physical horrors, and supernatural agents, the mixture of
+idealization and realism that characterize Elizabethan tragedy, persist
+throughout the Restoration period.
+
+The conflict between the contending theories of tragedy may be studied in
+criticism. Dryden's various essays recur again and again to the main issues
+of the war, and define with changing emphasis his attempted reconciliation
+of the two opposites. Rymer came forward as a thoroughgoing exponent of
+classicism, and at the beginning of the next century Dennis, Gildon, and
+Addison carried on the discussion. The conflict is also represented in the
+work of nearly every dramatist. There are tragedies in blank verse and
+tragedies in rhyme, tragicomedies, tragedies with comic scenes, tragedies
+without deaths and with happy endings, tragedies translated from the
+French, others based on Greek originals, and still others in their medleys
+of farce, horror, and rant as Elizabethan as "The Jew of Malta" itself.
+Many of these varieties are represented in the work of a single writer, as
+Crowne, or Lee, or Otway. The career of Dryden sums up and reflects nearly
+all the changes in opinion or practice. His plays, and with them the whole
+course of tragedy from 1660 to 1700, fall roughly into certain divisions.
+For a few years after the Restoration, ending at about the time of the
+"Essay," is the period of the dominance of the earlier drama, a period of
+which Davenant is the leading figure. About 1664 began the heroic tragedies
+in rhyme which for a time carried all before them. In a dozen years,
+however, the fashion wore out, and Dryden's "All for Love" in 1678 marked
+the abandonment of rhyme and led the return to Shakespeare. From 1678 on,
+the course of tragedy again takes to varied streams. To this period belong
+the most notable alterations of Shakespeare, the most permanent of
+Restoration tragedies in the plays of Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and also the
+growth of French methods and of the influence of Racine, culminating in the
+pseudo-classical triumph at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
+
+At the opening of the theatres, tragedy and tragicomedy took up their
+courses about where they had left off. The plays of Davenant, the main
+connecting link between the two periods, might be treated in connection
+with either, without seeming in the least out of place. Tragicomedy of the
+type current in the thirties continued in the sixties; tragedy oscillated
+between honor and horror, fine writing and perverted lust, as in Massinger,
+Shirley, and Glapthorne. Spanish stories, long influential in the drama,
+promised for a time to prove still more important. Dryden's first two
+plays, "The Wild Gallant" (1663)[25] and "The Rival Ladies" (1664), were
+based, like many other contemporary plays, on Spanish originals; but the
+second introduced rhyme and some of the elements of the plots of the heroic
+plays. It was, however, the Elizabethan plays that the audiences went to
+see, and that the dramatists had constantly before them. The plays of the
+Marlowean period were regarded as out of date, and very few were revived,
+practically none of the tragedies except the early ones of Shakespeare. Of
+the later Elizabethans, Beaumont and Fletcher were the most popular, for a
+time surpassing Shakespeare. Over thirty of their plays were revived, and
+many of these were constantly acted. Of tragedies and tragicomedies, "The
+Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster," "Bonduca," "A King and No King,"
+"Valentinian," and "Rollo" held the stage till the end of the century, the
+first three much longer. Jonson's tragedies, as well as his comedies, were
+revived; and Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," Webster's "White Devil,"
+Chapman's "Bussy D'Ambois," Shirley's "Cardinal" and "Traitor" were among
+the plays that carried on the traditions of the tragedy of blood.
+Shakespeare's comedies fell into disfavor, but his tragedies were popular
+from the start. This was due in part to the genius of Betterton, who found
+his best opportunities in depicting their protagonists, in part to their
+merits as stage plays for both actors and audiences; but, whatever the
+causes of their success, they soon exercised a large and increasing
+influence upon the theory and practice of tragedy.
+
+The Elizabethan plays, however, had almost from the first to encounter a
+rivalry with a new fashion. Davenant, their reviver, was also the first
+with the new. His "Siege of Rhodes" (1656), with its scenery, machines,
+music, rhyme, and heroics, may be said to inaugurate both the opera and the
+heroic play. Howard's "Indian Queen" (1664), in which Dryden had a hand,
+was followed by Dryden's "Indian Emperor" (1665), in rhyme and displaying
+the full-fledged heroic formula. The love-complications of its plot are of
+a kind constantly reappearing not only in the heroic plays but in later
+tragedy as well.
+
+     Montezeuma and Cortez are the historical heroes;
+     Almeria, daughter of the Indian Queen, is the vengeful
+     passionate heroine; Cydaria, daughter of Montezeuma, is
+     the angelic heroine. Montezeuma's sons, Odmar and
+     Guyomar, Almeria's sister, Alibech, and her brother,
+     Orbellan, all in love with some one, add to the
+     criss-crossing of affections. Almeria is loved by
+     Montezeuma, but loves Cortez, who does not love her.
+     Cydaria is loved by Cortez and also by Orbellan. The
+     two heroines, as well as the two heroes, are thus
+     rivals, and the vengeful one directs the intrigue. The
+     brothers Odmar and Guyomar, to say nothing of a Spanish
+     captain, both love Alibech, and provide the usual story
+     of fraternal rivalry. After duels, captures,
+     imprisonments, conflicts of honor, renunciations, and
+     jealousies, finally the vengeful heroine succumbs. One
+     of the brothers is preserved for Alibech; Cortez weds
+     the angelic heroine; the rest, including six of the
+     leading actors and several supernumeraries, are killed
+     or commit suicide.
+
+Dryden's dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery gives some
+support to the latter's claim to have been the introducer of the rhymed
+heroic species, though his first play acted was probably "Henry V," in
+1664. Whoever the originators, their example was soon followed by Crowne,
+Lee, Settle, Otway, and most of the dramatists of the day; and for fifteen
+years or so English efforts in tragedy were confined to the heroic model.
+
+The use of the heroic couplet was its distinguishing mark; of course, an
+imitation of French practice. The plots, too, were direct borrowings, or
+close imitations, of contemporary French romances or dramas. Moreover, the
+themes and their treatment, the conception of honor, the importance given
+to love, and the pseudo-history, all followed French ideas. The unities
+were attended to, if not strictly observed; incidents, persons, and scenes
+greatly reduced in number in comparison with Elizabethan practice; and
+fixed rules of propriety in characterization and language observed, all in
+French fashion.
+
+The English plays, however, formed a type unknown in France or anywhere
+else on sea or land. The plots of all the "Sieges," "Rivals," and
+"Conquests" are mainly concerned with love, which inspires heroic sentiment
+and valor, encounters much jealousy and intrigue, runs counter to
+friendship and honor, and works its sorrows and joys among persons
+illustrious in history. In the end, the hero, a man of prodigious valor and
+most exemplary honor, weds the heroine, who is equally skilled in the
+artificial code of honor, while the deaths of the ambitious villain and the
+evil princess, in love with the hero and seeking revenge on the heroine,
+provide a tragic catastrophe. The persons are usually historical, English,
+Classical, or Eastern, and a little historical fact was intended to give a
+kind of grandeur to the story. The Alexanders and Montezumas, however, have
+manners and sentiments drawn partly from the courts of Louis and Charles
+and partly from the world of romance. The curious conception of honor as
+superhuman valor and magnanimity combined with formal propriety leads to
+impossibilities like those in a child's book of wonders. Duels and rescues
+take the place of pitched fields; the valorous champion puts to rout an
+army, exchanges compliments and courtesies with the grace of a
+fashion-plate, boasts and rants in Cambyses' vein, and is near to expire in
+an ecstasy of declamation when the heroine extends her hand for him to
+kiss. The two rival lovers and the two rival ladies generally play their
+game of jealousy, ambition, and wounded honor during a conquest or a siege;
+but world and empire count for naught. _Amor vincit omnia._
+
+A mere summary of their leading traits may suggest, what a careful
+examination of the various representatives of the class will confirm, that
+the heroic plays were by no means a fresh importation from France, but
+rather a result of tendencies distinctly manifest in the English drama, at
+least since the Beaumont-Fletcher romances.[26] The _genre_ of heroic
+romances begun by Beaumont and Fletcher, continued in tragedy and
+especially in tragicomedy by Fletcher, Massinger, and Shirley, here takes a
+further but not very diverse development under the spell of French romance
+and drama. The conflicts of honor, the rivalries in love, the few types of
+character constantly recurring, the extraordinary surprises and
+discoveries, the women, sentimental and sensational, offered nothing new in
+English drama. The avoidance of bloodshed, the observance of poetic
+justice, the exaltation of love as the whole theme, the preference for the
+sensational and astounding rather than the natural or inevitable, have all
+been found distinguishing drama since Fletcher. On the other hand, the
+hateful intrigue and abnormal lust, the horrors and gloom of Webster and
+Ford found little place in the heroic plays. One survival from the revenge
+plays, however, took on new life. Ghosts became as numerous and voluble as
+in the days of Kyd. But in the main the heroic plays represent the
+continuance of the heroic romance and tragicomedy corrected in accord with
+French standards of dramatic art and French conceptions of gallantry and
+heroism.
+
+It is in this aspect that they are of the most interest in the history of
+English tragedy. They are not a freak variation but a species lineally
+related to those which precede and follow. They carry the restriction and
+conventionalization of the material of tragedy much farther than did the
+plays of Shirley and his contemporaries; and, somewhat before Racine, they
+confine the main course of tragedy to sentimental love. Though their main
+innovation, the employment of rhyme, did not prevail, and though their
+changes in technic were rejected by many later Restoration dramatists, yet
+they were a powerful force in habituating the theatre to the structure and
+methods of French tragedy and in promoting the triumph of these methods in
+the next century. They also mark a further change in the conception of the
+field and functions of tragedy. The result of developments from tragicomedy
+rather than from tragedy, they exhibit a blending of the two forms and a
+redivision along new lines. Before the Restoration, nearly all tragedies
+had presented a mixture of comedy or of farce. Tragicomedy had been
+distinguished from tragedy not by the presence of comedy but by the fact
+that its leading persons were brought near to death yet saved for a happy
+ending. Moreover, tragicomedies as a class developed along the lines of the
+Beaumont-Fletcher romances. The heroic plays inherited the traits of this
+class and also to some extent the happy endings. In some, as Orrery's
+"Henry V," there is no suffering and everything turns out well; in others,
+as Orrery's later plays, there is bloodshed enough; but in nearly all death
+is visited only on the evil; the heroic are married. All plays with heroic
+themes, however, were called tragedies. There was no hint of heroic comedy
+as in France. The distinction between tragedy and comedy, which the
+Restoration drama drew much more closely than the Elizabethan, came to
+depend less on the presence of deaths or of an unhappy ending, and more on
+the nature of the material and form. After the decline of the heroic plays,
+tragedy returned, as we shall see, to bloodshed, deaths, and horrors, but
+meantime the heroic plays had emphasized as essential certain elements
+that long continued their ascendency in both critical and popular views of
+tragedy. Henceforth every one associated with tragedy heroic actions,
+illustrious persons, verse, whether rhymed or blank, a love story, and an
+inflated diction. The curious heroic rant, indeed, supplied a vocabulary
+and a manner that lasted long after the jingle of the rhyming couplets had
+been abandoned. Its "furies," "vows," "chains," "transports," "ecstasies,"
+and "Etnas burning within the breast" remained the language of despairing
+innocence and palpitating passion. Tragic became almost synonymous with
+artificial and inflated.
+
+A worthier achievement must also be credited to the heroic plays. The
+spacious realms of romance which the Elizabethans had loved were closing
+their gates to the imagination of the later seventeenth century. Even
+Shakespeare's isles of the blest that so delighted Elizabeth and James were
+strangely inaccessible to Restoration fancy, which took pleasure in only
+the "Merry Wives of Windsor" among his comedies. The narrowing of romance
+had been manifest in the drama since 1600, and it was a theatrical and
+artificial domain of thrills, sentiments, and honor that the Restoration
+received for its heritage. Poor enough as is this kingdom, absurd its
+inhabitants, it is still the land of the wonderful and impossible, and its
+monarchs now and then remind us of Tamburlaine and Hotspur. At the time of
+Wycherley's comedies and Rochester's patronage of literature, men and women
+sighed and thrilled with Albumazor, dreamed of love, and fancied
+themselves kings and queens in China and Peru. When Romance was banished
+from other forms of literature,--unless in pastoral or opera,--tragedy
+still remained dedicated to the banished goddess, and in its precincts
+scanty flames still burned on the altars of heroism, enthusiasm, romantic
+aspiration, and extravagant love.
+
+The rise and wane of the heroic plays is sufficiently illustrated in the
+career of their chief exponent. After his "Indian Emperor" (1665), Dryden
+turned in "Secret Love" (1667) to tragicomedy with a mixture of verse,
+rhyme, and prose and a mixture of heroic and lively comedy. After various
+comedies and the adaptation of "The Tempest," "Tyrannic Love" (1669) and
+"The Conquest of Granada" (1669) accomplished the full triumph of rhymed
+verse and "the grand scale." At times Dryden's rapidity and vigor almost
+justify the rhymed couplets and redeem the absurdities of the conventions.
+It was in the Epilogue to "The Conquest" that he attacked the Elizabethans,
+vaunting the superiority of an age when
+
+    "Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
+    In conversation, than those poets writ."
+
+In 1671 came the burlesque "Rehearsal," which, if its attack did not centre
+on heroic plays, made Dryden and the popular "Conquest of Granada" the
+butts of its most telling fun. Then followed Dryden's "Essay of Heroic
+Plays," two comedies, his inexcusable tragedy of "Amboyna" (written in a
+month to support the war with the Dutch, yet, in conformity to the
+fashion, tracing the Dutch atrocities to a heroic love), and the opera
+based on Milton's "Paradise Lost." In 1675 came "Aureng Zebe," the last of
+his heroic plays, without supernatural machinery, and somewhat tamed in
+style.
+
+The vogue of the heroic play was about over. In 1678 came Rymer's attempt
+at a model heroic tragedy and his "Tragedies of the Last Age," a severe
+attack upon the Elizabethan drama from the point of view of extreme
+pseudo-classicism. But in the same year was acted Dryden's "All for Love,"
+in blank verse, with a preface extolling Shakespeare, rejecting the models
+of the ancients as "too little for English tragedy," discarding "the nicety
+of manners of the French," yet claiming credit for an observance of the
+unities. This was the one play in which, as he declared, Dryden followed
+his own bent unheedful of stage fashions, and it seems to have set the
+fashion and led the way back to blank verse and to Shakespeare. Rhymed
+plays continued to appear occasionally, but blank verse was henceforth
+recognized as the proper medium for tragedy.
+
+Even Dryden's praise of Shakespeare is modified by his respect for French
+rules, and by the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare's genius lacked the
+improvements readily secured by an application of the accepted formulas of
+art. That a certain improvement is accomplished cannot be denied. The
+incoherent profusion of scenes, the host of distracting incidents are
+reduced to order, the unities of time and place give a directness and
+rapidity to the action that "Antony and Cleopatra" greatly lacks. In
+characterization and poetry Dryden's play is, to be sure, not comparable
+with Shakespeare's, but in both respects it far surpasses the numerous
+other English dramas on the subject. This is faint praise. By following
+Shakespeare without imitating him, and by adapting a play to the stage
+requirements of the day without bowing to the absurdities of the heroic
+models, Dryden succeeded in producing a great and original poetical drama.
+Not in response to mere theatrical fashion or to French taste or theory,
+but in response to the inspiration of Shakespeare came the finest product
+of Restoration tragedy.
+
+In this same year as "All for Love" appeared "Oedipus," written in
+collaboration with Lee, in which the authors brought to their classical
+model the methods of the Elizabethans. Eurydice and Adrastus furnish the
+necessary love story, and Creon becomes the hateful rival and intriguing
+villain. The declamation sometimes shows Dryden at his best, the bombast
+and horrors are in Lee's worst vein. In the next year appeared Dryden's
+improvement of "Troilus and Cressida" with his careful essay on "The
+Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," in which he criticises after the fashion
+set by Rymer the errors of Shakespeare and Fletcher, insists on the
+necessity of unity, order, and greatness in action, and praises the
+excellence of Fletcher and especially of Shakespeare in character and
+passion. Nowhere else, perhaps, has Dryden expressed so discriminatingly
+and so finally his own views and, on the whole, the views of his age, on
+tragedy. Shakespeare's greatness is recognized as preëminent in the
+presentation of character and passion; his faults in coherence and unity of
+structure and his archaism in manners and proprieties are admitted.
+
+From this time on Dryden's contributions to the drama were less frequent.
+In "The Spanish Fryar" (1681), he added the best Restoration example of
+tragicomedy, availing himself of Fletcher's example, a double plot, and a
+happy ending. "The Duke of Guise" (1682), a political allegory, written in
+collaboration with Lee, deserves little consideration as satire or drama.
+After two operas and an absence of several years from the stage, came "Don
+Sebastian" (1690), which Sir Walter Scott thought the best of his
+tragedies. It is heroic in its pairs of lovers and tangle of love and
+jealousy, and in the exploits, boasts, and love-making of the hero; French
+in its general structure; Elizabethan in its mixture of comedy, its use of
+horror and incest, and its imitation of Shakespeare. It recalls the
+tragedies before 1642, with their heroic love after the style of Beaumont
+and Fletcher, their horrors and incest following the Websterian school, and
+their emulation of famous passages in Shakespeare. "Cleomenes" (1692),
+which repeats the Potiphar's wife story, is still more Elizabethan, and
+"Love Triumphant," a tragicomedy (1693), deals with an incestuous passion
+proved innocent at last, a motive very popular since "A King and No King."
+
+Dryden never gave the theatre a whole-hearted service. Responding readily
+to its conditions, he wrote with facility and vigor comedies, tragedies,
+operas, and political allegories of the kind that changing fashion or
+patrons demanded. When, after a long slavery, he had acquired mastery of
+his art and confidence to lead rather than to follow, circumstances arose
+to call him away from the theatre. We may wish that he had earlier and
+oftener tried to do his best, as in "All for Love," "The Spanish Friar,"
+and "Don Sebastian"; but his genius was not essentially dramatic, and we
+may not regret the time taken from the theatre for the Satires and Fables.
+His greatness can be best seen by comparison with the work of his
+contemporaries. Whatever he tried, he did on the whole better than they,
+and in comprehensiveness and adaptability as well as in sheer poetic
+faculty he was their master.
+
+Up to "Aureng Zebe" Dryden's tragedies reflected the prevailing fashion;
+his "All for Love" marked a turning-point in the course of tragedy; and his
+criticism reviewed, summed up, and discriminated the current views of
+Shakespeare and the French. His later work was less representative of the
+general course of the drama, yet the various species exhibited in his work
+recur in that of his contemporaries, and the partial return to Elizabethan
+methods that marks his latest plays is perhaps the leading characteristic
+of the last twenty years of the century.
+
+Crowne's "Thyestes" is the only attempt besides Dryden's "Orestes" to adapt
+a classical play to the popular stage, and neither returns much nearer to
+the Greek than Seneca. The only play closely modeled on the Greek is
+Milton's "Samson Agonistes." The preface renounces the stage with a scorn
+that includes not only the Restoration tragedies but apparently those of
+Shakespeare as well. Though the play stands by itself, it may be said to
+represent a tendency to turn to Greek rather than to French models, a
+tendency boasted of by Dryden and Crowne, and fully manifest in the next
+century. And it takes its place at the head of the numerous, if sporadic,
+tragedies on Greek models that extend from the Restoration to the present
+day.
+
+In the return to Shakespeare, Dryden's influence was more potent, though
+here, as in the case of the Greeks, an increased appreciation was shown
+partly through alterations and adaptations. Before "All for Love," only
+"Measure for Measure," "Macbeth," and "The Tempest" of Shakespeare's plays
+had suffered alterations, and in two of these Dryden had a share. In the
+four years after 1678, no less than ten alterations were produced, the
+majority of which long usurped the stage. The restorers, sincere enough in
+their admiration for Shakespeare, were following Dryden's precept and
+example, correcting Shakespeare's faults in diction or structure, and
+preserving his poetry and characters. While their entire readiness to cut
+or to add resulted in part from ignorant vanity, it depended far more on
+their confidence in the panacea afforded by Art for all diseases of genius.
+Art, according to their prescription, was compounded of closeness of
+structure in the French style and a declamatory vocabulary in accord with
+the latest pseudo-classic conventions. The alterations are so various in
+their audacities that a brief general description is hardly possible. The
+main purpose in each case was the remaking of Shakespeare's disordered
+beauties into "a play," and, beyond the formulas of Art, the most usual
+improvement was the addition of a love story. Thus, Alcibiades marries the
+daughter of Timon, and Cordelia's loyalty is rewarded by the hand of Edgar.
+Perhaps the most that can be said for the restorers is, first, that they
+rescued for the stage some of the less dramatic plays, as "Troilus and
+Cressida," "Timon," "Henry IV," "Coriolanus," and "Cymbeline," and thereby
+greatly extended the knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare; and,
+second, that they left "Hamlet" and "Othello" untouched. Adaptations were
+made of practically all Elizabethan authors, and Shakespeare fared as his
+fellows. A more elaborate history of the drama than the present one might
+trace the changes in the conception of tragedy and in the taste of the
+theatres as indicated by these alterations. The main consideration here is
+that, however mutilated or embellished, a half dozen of his tragedies were
+among the favorite plays of the Restoration. Before the end of the century
+they had outclassed the other Elizabethan plays, even those of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, in popular regard. The Restoration did what his own age had not
+done; it recognized Shakespeare's supremacy in English tragedy.
+
+It would be tedious to trace the infatuation for the heroic plays and the
+partial return to the Elizabethans in the work of the various dramatists
+whose careers paralleled Dryden's. His rival, Settle, wrote heroic plays, a
+sensational political play on the Whig side, "Pope Joan, or the Female
+Prelate," and a long series of tragedies and comedies extending well into
+the next century. John Crowne, another contemporary, began with tragic
+comedies and heroic rhymed plays, proceeded to Shakespearean alterations,
+"Thyestes," and blank verse plays in the Elizabethan tradition, and ended
+his career with a rhymed "Caligula." Among those who in tragedy confined
+themselves mainly to adaptations or borrowings from the Elizabethans were
+Tate, Ravenscroft, and D'Urfey; and a group of women should be
+mentioned,--Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Pix, and Mrs. Centlivre,--who in
+the later half of the period devoted considerable attention to tragedy
+without creating any marked departure from the commonplace. We must confine
+ourselves to the authors whose tragedies had a more extended interest.
+
+Nathaniel Lee wrote his first play in 1675, when he was eighteen years old,
+and produced ten tragedies, in addition to the two in which he collaborated
+with Dryden, before the close of 1684, when he became insane. The first
+three, "Nero," "Sophonisba," and "Gloriana," were rhymed, but the fourth,
+"The Rival Queens" (1677), preceded Dryden in its return to blank verse and
+won an enormous success, maintaining itself on the stage long after the
+death of Betterton. His remaining tragedies were in blank verse,
+"Mithridates," "Oedipus," "Theodosius," "Cæsar Borgia," "Lucius Junius
+Brutus," "Duke of Guise," "Constantine," and "The Massacre of Paris," which
+with the tragicomedy "The Princess of Cleve" was acted after his release
+from the madhouse.
+
+All his plays are pretty much of a kind. The juvenile and worthless "Nero"
+unites the conventions of heroic love with the ghosts, lust, bloodshed, and
+madness of the later Elizabethan revenge plays. The later blank verse
+plays, though to a large extent based on French romances, envelop the love
+interest in a Tourneurian medley of depravity and horror. They revive the
+late Elizabethan type of tragedy that united the sentimental and the
+terrible and delighted to present loving and devoted womanhood in an
+environment of undiluted villany, abnormal lust, and physical torture. They
+add somewhat of the closeness of structure of French models, the spectacle
+of an unproved stage that displays ballets and temples along with bloody
+heavens, human sacrifice, and crucifixions, and a style that out-Herods the
+Elizabethans in the extravagance and vehemence of its rant. "Theodosius"
+tells of the fatal result of the rival love of brothers for the same woman;
+"Brutus" of the judicial murder of a son by a father; "Cæsar Borgia"
+introduces Machiavelli again as a machinating villain in a story of
+fraternal rivalry in love; "Constantine" and "Gloriana" deal with the rival
+loves of son and father. This theme, a favorite with Lee, reappears in
+"Mithridates," the contents of which are fairly typical of the revolting
+intrigues to which Lee mainly confined himself.
+
+     The leading persons are Mithridates, the lustful
+     dotard; his two sons, Ziphares and Pharnaces; Monima,
+     the gentle heroine, contracted to Mithridates;
+     Semandra, the chief heroine, in love with and loved by
+     Ziphares; her father, a noble soldier; and two
+     conspiring villains. The Romans are at the gates of
+     Synope, where the scene is placed. Pharnaces, at feud
+     with his brother and desirous of Monima for himself,
+     conspires with the villains to thwart the marriage of
+     Mithridates to Monima and direct the passion of the
+     king to Semandra. Mithridates condemns Ziphares to
+     death and pursues Semandra, but is persuaded to relent
+     in order that Ziphares may lead the army against the
+     Romans. Semandra and Ziphares exchange parting vows of
+     fidelity as he leaves for battle. The conspirators
+     again incite Mithridates; and Semandra, in order to
+     save the life of her lover, repulses him upon his
+     return in triumph. In consequence he believes her false
+     and leaves her in the power of his father. The fourth
+     act opens with Mithridates, who has ravished Semandra,
+     "encompassed with the ghosts of his sons, who set
+     daggers to his breast and vanish." He is attacked by
+     remorse; Pharnaces betrays the city to the Romans;
+     Semandra and Ziphares have a last interview and commit
+     suicide; Mithridates dies after condemning the captured
+     conspirators and Pharnaces to execution.
+
+It is interesting to compare this with Racine's play of the same title and
+dealing with the same historical incidents, acted four years earlier.
+Though neither play represents its author at his best, and Lee's was
+apparently written without any knowledge of Racine's, the two illustrate
+the differences between the two theatres, and may remind us how far Lee
+was from forsaking the English tradition for the French. In Racine, all the
+stage spectacles, temples, portents, and ghosts, all the horrors and frenzy
+are lacking; so, too, are the characters of Archilaus the noble soldier and
+Semandra the all-important person in Lee. In addition to Mithridates,
+Monima, and the two sons, the only persons are two confidants and a
+servant. The intrigue is of the simplest. Monima, contracted to
+Mithridates, is loved by both of his sons and returns the love of Xipharés.
+In the end Pharnaces forsakes his father, who dies, leaving Monima and
+Xipharés to face impending ruin. Mithridates is not the lustful tyrant
+traditional on the English stage, but a monarch who cherishes great
+projects and counts magnanimity a royal duty. Nor is Pharnaces the
+traditional English villain with accomplices, as in Lee, though he has a
+villain's part to play. The interest is psychological, centring on
+emotional crises in the lives of all, and without resort to sensationalism,
+horrors, or complication of incident.
+
+Otway, like Lee, began with rhymed plays, "Alcibiades" (1675) and "Don
+Carlos" (1676), the second winning an extraordinary and long-continued
+success on the stage. The next year appeared his "Titus and Berenice," a
+free and sympathetic translation of Racine's "Berenice" that was surpassed
+in the favor of the theatre by Crowne's treatment of the same subject.
+After several comedies he followed the fashion for Shakespearean
+adaptations in his "History and Fall of Caius Marius" (1680).[27] This
+monstrous play, about half of which, as Otway acknowledged in his prologue,
+is from "Romeo and Juliet," provides a large mixture of comedy, and
+presents Juliet (Lavinia) dressed as a page, the servant of her lover,
+after the style of Beaumont and Fletcher's Bellario. For sixty years this
+play superseded "Romeo and Juliet" upon the stage. Otway's two other
+tragedies, "The Orphan" (1680) and "Venice Preserved" (1682), are his
+masterpieces. They continued to be stage favorites for a century and a
+half, and procured for Otway the place next to Shakespeare in the
+admiration of the eighteenth century.
+
+"Venice Preserved" may be classed with the many tragedies of the day that
+maintain the Elizabethan traditions. These are manifest in the general
+structure, the large number of actors, the changing scenes, the gross
+comedy, the abundance of incidents, the terrors, ghosts, and madness. Not
+only the frequent reminiscences of Shakespeare and Fletcher, but the whole
+conception and treatment testify to an inspiration from the earlier and
+better days of the drama.
+
+     The story, not long ago too well known to need
+     retelling, relates how Jaffier, in poverty and
+     desperation, is induced to join a conspiracy against
+     the state, and is then persuaded by his wife,
+     Belvidera, to save the state and her father by turning
+     informer. He seeks to sacrifice himself for the friend
+     whom he has betrayed, and in the end stabs both himself
+     and his friend upon the scaffold. A curiously
+     Elizabethan prolongation of the catastrophe follows in
+     the apparition of the ghosts of the friends, and the
+     madness and death of Belvidera.
+
+The essentials of great tragedy, of Shakespearean tragedy, are here. The
+opposition of character, the struggle of the generous but pliable Jaffier
+under the conflicting influences of his wife and the steadfast 'Roman'
+Pierre, the joy and tenderness and ruin that come with his love for
+Belvidera, are all drawn with a truth of passion in conception and language
+that reaches the heart. "Nature is there," wrote Dryden, "which is the
+greatest beauty." Marred as a whole by buffoonery and excess, the play is
+still among the two or three best tragedies of the Restoration. If it were
+all equal to the tremendous fourth act, Otway would be sure of a place
+among the immortals.
+
+Marked by the same power of swaying the emotions of tenderness and pity,
+"The Orphan" attains these effects by means of the situations rather than
+through the study of motives. The plot deals with the rivalry of two
+brothers in love with their father's ward. She is secretly married to one;
+the other substitutes himself by trick on the marriage night. The
+situation, which has parallels in preceding tragedy, is abhorrent enough to
+kill all interest in the persons concerned; but Otway's power to depict
+love and distress triumphs over one's repugnance. The play is remarkable in
+many ways. Its few characters, its observance of the unities, its
+confinement of the action, give it the simplicity and directness of French
+tragedy. Its theme and its poetry recall Elizabethan rather than
+Restoration examples. But it departs from the canons of either theatre in
+presenting neither historical persons, nobles, kings, nor illustrious
+actions. Based on a story, supposedly of fact, related in a contemporary
+pamphlet, it merely transfers the scene to Bohemia, without adding the
+usual accessories of tragedy. Though it keeps something of a court setting
+and does not venture into middle-class society, it is like the Elizabethan
+plays of crime in its presentation of contemporaneous fact, and like
+Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness" in telling a story of domestic
+distress. It might by a little extension of the term be called a domestic
+tragedy, and it still further departs from the canons in relating the
+misery of an innocent sufferer who is the victim of a cruel mistake. Otway
+should, therefore, be remembered as a dramatist who, in a time when tragedy
+was largely artificial, imitative, and conventional, painted suffering and
+tenderness with truth to nature, and who violated the accepted rules of his
+art in order to reach the hearts of his audience. That he could not also
+escape the moral perversion of taste that marked his time has brought its
+punishment in the final neglect of his masterpieces; but it is a sign of
+genius to turn away from heroic plays, Racine, and Shakespeare, to write
+plays different from any written before, and to stir all men's hearts for
+over a century.
+
+Of the many dramatists who wrote tragedies in the last decade of the
+seventeenth century and bridged the way from the age of Dryden to the age
+of Pope, only Banks, Southerne, and Congreve produced plays of continuing
+popularity and influence through the eighteenth century. Banks ended a
+prolific career with "Cyrus the Great, or the Tragedy of Love" in 1696, but
+his popularity was mainly due to his three English historical tragedies,
+"Virtue Betrayed, or Anne Bullen," "The Island Queens" (Elizabeth and Mary
+Stuart), and "The Unhappy Favorite" (the Earl of Essex). These plays are
+interesting as an illustration of the survival on the stage of a dramatic
+species in a debased form. Though in blank verse, their material is that of
+the heroic play; their formula, much love-making and a pretense of
+portentous events; their persons, rivals in love,--two men with the same
+woman or two women with the same man,--a wicked minister, a revengeful
+woman, and the queen at the centre of the stage. There is no comedy, no
+physical horrors, and even the portents are reduced to a peculiar
+decorum:--
+
+    "Last night no sooner was I laid to rest
+    But just three drops of blood fell from my nose."
+
+The construction is on French models with few actors, continuity of scenes,
+and observance of the unities. Puerile in conception and more ridiculous in
+their bombast than Fielding's burlesque, they have enough rapidity of
+action, vivacity of claptrap, and extravagance of changing emotions to
+account for their stage success.
+
+Thomas Southerne finished "Cleomenes" for Dryden, with whom he was closely
+associated, and his tragedies follow Dryden's later work in maintaining
+the Elizabethan traditions of blank verse, comedy, double plots, shifting
+scenes, horrors, and persons of varied ranks. His "Loyal Brother" (1682) is
+wholly commonplace, and "The Spartan Dame" (1719) and "The Fate of Capua"
+(1700) do not depart from usual themes and methods, though the latter is in
+some respects Southerne's best play; but his two most successful plays,
+"The Fatal Marriage" (1694) and "Oroonoko" (1696), both based on novels by
+Mrs. Behn, present decided innovations in theme. "Oroonoko, or the Royal
+Slave" contains much comedy, and has little merit besides the novelty of
+the story, presenting the virtues of a negro slave. "The Fatal Marriage, or
+the Innocent Adultery" introduces the Enoch Arden story, attached to an
+outrageous comic underplot derived in part from Fletcher's "Nightwalker."
+
+     In the main plot, Biron, oldest son of Baldwin, has
+     been captured by pirates and is supposed to be dead,
+     his letters being kept secret and answered by his
+     villanous brother, Carlos, who urges his wife Isabella
+     to marry. After Baldwin, instigated by Carlos, has
+     thrust her out from his house, she accepts the devoted
+     Villeroy. Biron returns; she goes mad in a scene of
+     great imaginative power; Carlos and his assistants
+     endeavor to kill Biron, who is rescued by the returning
+     Villeroy. Biron, however, dies; and an accomplice of
+     Carlos, tortured upon the rack (on the stage),
+     confesses and exposes Carlos. Then "enter Isabella
+     distracted, her little son running in before, being
+     afraid of her." She stabs herself.
+
+Like Otway's "Orphan," this is virtually a domestic tragedy, for there are
+no interests of state or court, and our sympathy is centred solely on the
+innocent distress of the heroine. Like Otway, again, Southerne gains his
+greatest effects by an appeal to pity. The sentimentality that we attribute
+to the days of Richardson's "Clarissa" earlier triumphed on the stage in
+the heroines of Lee, Otway, and Southerne.
+
+Not less successful on the stage than the plays of Banks and Southerne was
+the single tragedy of Congreve. First acted in 1697, "The Mourning Bride"
+continued without alteration through the next century, and furnished Mrs.
+Siddons with one of her greatest parts. Congreve's remarkable dramatic
+ingenuity was skillfully exercised in combining all the elements that the
+average audience delighted in, and yet presenting these draped sufficiently
+to avoid offending the judicious. Classical form and technic permit a
+sensational and gruesome fifth act; dignified and facile verse gives way at
+times to outrageous rant; the usual plot of the rival ladies and rival
+lovers is ingeniously complicated to supply suspense, surprise, and a happy
+ending.
+
+     It is the day after the death of King Anselmo, prisoner
+     of Manuel, King of Granada, whose daughter Almeira has
+     been secretly married to Alphonso, son of Anselmo, and
+     then separated from him by shipwreck. She confesses
+     this marriage to her confidant, mourns Anselmo, and
+     declares that she will never yield to her father and
+     marry Garcia, son of the premier Gonzales. King Manuel
+     returns from battle, having slain the Moorish king, and
+     brings the queen Zara and other prisoners, among them a
+     valiant warrior, Osmyn--Alphonso in disguise. At the
+     tomb of Anselmo, Osmyn-Alphonso and Almeira meet and
+     dissolve in grief.
+
+     The king is in love with Zara and Zara with Osmyn. She
+     offers to procure Osmyn's escape and to fly with him;
+     but later on, discovering him with Almeira, she betrays
+     them to the king. The king and Zara are now torn by
+     love and jealousy. She obtains permission to have Osmyn
+     strangled by one of her mutes, and the suspicious
+     Gonzales assumes the costume of the mute in order to
+     make sure of the execution. Meanwhile the king,
+     learning of Zara's passion for Osmyn, determines to
+     have him killed and then assume his clothing in order
+     to confront Zara. Osmyn makes his escape; Gonzales
+     kills the king, taking him for Osmyn; Zara, taking the
+     body to be Osmyn's, drinks poison; Almeira is about to
+     make the same mistake, when the soldiers enter with
+     Osmyn at their head.
+
+Perhaps no other single play is so representative of the various features
+of Restoration tragedy. It is not a tragedy, at all if one insists that
+tragedy should be logical and psychological; but it was praised by Voltaire
+and Dr. Johnson and approved by the London public for over a century.
+
+Although the years from 1660 to 1700 offer little in tragedy that has
+proved of permanent value, they mark the continuance of the _genre_ in a
+full tide of popularity. Probably in no forty years since then have so many
+original tragedies appeared in the London theatres; certainly in no forty
+years since have so many Elizabethan tragedies been revived. Tragedies and
+tragicomedies together are in numbers almost equal to the comedies which we
+think of as especially distinguishing the Restoration stage. There was
+hardly a writer for the theatre who did not try his hand at tragedy. In
+spite of the rivalry of opera and comedy, it continued from Davenant to
+Southerne to delight the age. Its literary as well as its theatrical
+importance was maintained. Noble authors as well as the greatest wits, the
+Earl of Orrery, Granville, Dryden, and Congreve, courted the tragic muse.
+Tragedy written for the popular stage had, indeed, a literary eminence
+hardly recognized before, even in the generation preceding the Civil War.
+In comparison with their Elizabethan predecessors the tragedies of this
+time are, in fact, literary rather than popular. They draw their themes
+from French or English plays; they display little innovation and still less
+study of life; they adopt rules and regulations; they are conventional and
+artificial. They respond to literary traditions; they hardly express the
+sentiments or ideas of their age. Some exceptions there are; but even plays
+like those of Banks, which gained theatrical success without literary
+distinction, resembled their more worthy brethren in their adherence to
+convention rather than nature.
+
+In the main Restoration tragedy must be regarded as a continuation and
+development of Elizabethan. The influence of Beaumont and Fletcher
+continued in the heroic plays and their after-effects. The wane of the
+heroic plays brought a return to the Elizabethans, and, notably in Lee, to
+some of the most characteristic features of the later revenge plays. The
+increasing influence of Shakespeare was felt not only in the worthy
+emulation of "All for Love" and in the various adaptations, but also in
+the debates of the critics and through the whole warp and woof of tragedy.
+But what were preëminent in many of Shakespeare's contemporaries as in
+Shakespeare himself, poetry, passion, and characterization, were beyond the
+reach of any of the playwrights except Dryden, Lee, and Otway at their
+best. The worst excesses, the most undesirable conventions of the
+Elizabethans, excited imitation as much as their excellences. The
+Elizabethan bloom had gone to seed in unfavorable soil. It is not strange
+that after the horrors, bloodshed, and supernaturalism of Lee and Otway,
+and after the gross buffoonery that spoils tragedies otherwise so noble as
+"Don Sebastian," "Venice Preserved," and "The Fatal Marriage," there should
+have followed in the opening years of the next century a marked reaction to
+the decencies of French tragedy. In the Restoration period, however, the
+French influence, though manifest in the great vogue of the heroic plays
+and in a wide adoption of French ideas of structure and propriety, won only
+a partial triumph in checking and modifying the Elizabethan tradition. Its
+effect in supplying fresh incentives for worthy endeavor was slight,
+indeed, hardly discernible unless in the influence of Racine upon Otway.
+Tragedy, then, as handed down to the eighteenth century, was not a fixed
+and definite form, though measurably more so than a century before. It was
+still a conglomerate of various forms and tendencies, mingling relics of
+the medieval stage with reminiscences of Shakespeare and the manners of the
+court of Louis XIV. The sentimental tragedies of Southerne and Otway,
+telling stories of distressed womanhood and exciting pity without any
+accessories of grandeur, were perhaps the most independent achievements of
+Restoration tragedy; the preservation of Shakespearean influence was its
+most important. But, in comparison with a century before, the changes in
+tragedy that were most noticeable and permanent were the restriction of
+themes, the narrowing of structure, and the conventionality and
+artificiality that extended to character and language as well as to themes
+and plots.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward continues to supply the best history of the drama. Henceforth the
+standard authority for the history of the stage is Genest's _Some Account
+of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830_, 10 vols., Bath,
+1832. This is an invaluable collection of facts in regard to plays and
+actors, superseding preceding books on the subject and supplying material
+for subsequent ones. Other histories of the theatre are: Chetwood's
+_General History of the Stage_ (1749); _The Dramatic Mirror_ (1808); D. E.
+Baker's _Biographica Dramatica_ (1764, continued by Isaac Reed and Stephen
+Jones, 3d ed. 1812); Dibdin's _Complete History of the English Stage_
+(1800). Lowe's _Bibliographical Account of English Dramatic Literature_
+(1888) will guide in their use. More recent histories of the theatre are:
+P. Fitzgerald's _New History of the Stage_ (1882); Lowe's new edition of
+Doran's _Their Majesties' Servants_ (1888); and H. B. Baker's _The London
+Stage_, 1576-1903 (1904).
+
+Works of the Restoration period on the drama or theatre include a number of
+Dryden's essays, notably, _The Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, _The Defence of
+the Essay_, _The Defence of the Epilogue_, _Of Heroic Plays_, and _The
+Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy_; Wright's _Historia Histrionica_ (1699,
+reprinted in Dodsley and in Cibber's Life); Edward Phillips's _Theatrum
+Poetarum_ (1675); Langbaine's _Account of the English Dramatic Poets_
+(1691); Rymer's _Tragedies of the Last Age_ (1678) and _A Short View of
+Tragedy_ (1693); Dennis's _The Impartial Critic_ (1693); and Jeremy
+Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English
+Stage_ (1698). Downes's _Roscius Anglicanus_ (1708, facsimile reprint,
+1886) also contains interesting information on the period. Corneille,
+Boileau, Saint Evremond, the Abbé D'Aubignac, and Rapin are the French
+critics of most influence on the drama of this period, especially Rapin,
+whose _Reflexions sur la poëtique_ was translated by Rymer (1674). J. E.
+Spingarn's _Seventeenth Century Critical Essays_ (now in press) will
+contain all the critical work of the period of importance, with a valuable
+discussion of its relation to French criticism.
+
+There are collected editions of the works of most of the Restoration
+dramatists, but none of Settle or Banks. The Scott-Saintsbury edition is
+the standard for Dryden. Individual plays are to be found in many
+collections: _The Modern British Drama_, 5 vols. (1811); Oxberry's _New
+English Drama_ (1812-25); Mrs. Inchbald's _Modern Theatre_ (1811); Bell's
+_British Theatre_ (1797) and supplement. _Dramatists of the Restoration_,
+edited by Maidment and Logan, 14 vols., Edinburgh, 1872-79, includes the
+plays of Crowne, Davenant, Tatham, and John Wilson. Ward and the _English
+Drama_ (by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, _op. cit._) direct to editions
+and monographs of the individual authors of this period.
+
+J. J. Jusserand's _Shakespeare en France_ (1898), Professor Lounsbury's
+_Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_, and Miss Canfield's _Corneille and
+Racine in England_ (1905) are important for certain phases of the drama.
+Concerning the heroic plays there is a considerable literature; see,
+especially, P. Holzhausen on Dryden's heroic plays, _Englische Studien_,
+vols. xiii, xv, and xvi (1890-92); L. N. Chase, _The English Heroic Play_
+(1903); J. W. Tupper, _The Relation of the Heroic Play to Beaumont and
+Fletcher_, Mod. Lang. Assn. Publ. 1905. C. G. Child, _The Rise of the
+Heroic Play_, Mod. Lang. Notes, 1904. Alex. Beljame's _Le Public et les
+Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au xviii^{e} siècle_ (1881) deals fully
+with Dryden and has an elaborate bibliography.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] In this and subsequent chapters the dates in brackets give the year of
+the first presentation in the case of acted plays. The date of publication
+usually coincides with the year of acting.
+
+[26] _Cf._ James W. Tupper, _Relation of the Heroic Play to the Romances of
+Beaumont and Fletcher_. Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. 1905.
+
+[27] Ward (iii, 415) is in error in crediting public taste with
+condemnation of this play. Lavinia seems to have been one of Mrs. Barry's
+most successful parts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+In tragedy the division between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
+less marked than that which distinguishes in general the literatures of the
+Restoration and the Augustan eras. Yet by 1700 most of the leading
+dramatists of the preceding generation had ceased to write for the stage;
+and the death of Dryden marked the end of the old, as the beginning of the
+reign of Anne, with its important changes in politics, society, and
+literature, marked the beginning of a new development in tragedy. The
+attack of Jeremy Collier (1698) was also an important landmark in the
+history of the drama, assisting in a notable change from the preceding
+licentiousness and toward a moralized and sentimentalized comedy. A similar
+change in tragedy was its most apparent departure from Restoration models.
+Chastened language and a stricter moral censorship of both subjects and
+sentiments reflected that refinement of which the age of Addison and Pope
+was wont to boast.
+
+The theatrical conditions governing the reign of Queen Anne were not very
+different from those of the Restoration. There was a general complaint, as
+there has been ever since, that operas and spectacles were crowding the
+serious drama out of favor, but there was still abundant opportunity to see
+many of the best plays of the Elizabethan and Restoration periods. Of
+tragedies, we find in a single season, 1703-04, "Hamlet," "Othello,"
+"Julius Cæsar," and alterations of "Macbeth," "Lear," "Richard III,"
+"Timon," and "Titus Andronicus," Shirley's "Traitor," and Beaumont and
+Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," "Valentinian," and "A King and No King," "The
+Loyal Subject," and other of their tragicomedies. "Henry VIII," "Rollo,"
+"Bonduca," and "Philaster" were performed within the next few years. Of
+Restoration tragedies, Banks's "Unhappy Favorite" and Lee's "Rival Queens"
+were perhaps the most popular, and other plays of Banks, Lee, Otway,
+Dryden, Congreve, and Southerne were acted yearly. A number of the heroic
+plays also still kept the stage, including Howard's "Indian Queen,"
+Dryden's "Conquest of Granada," "Indian Emperor," and "Aureng Zebe."
+Throughout the century both the London and the provincial theatres
+presented each year a large number of old plays, including many of these
+already mentioned. The Elizabethan tragedies, except Shakespeare's, and the
+heroic plays gradually disappeared from the regular repertoire, but
+Shakespeare's tragedies steadily gained in popularity, and "The Unhappy
+Favorite" (rewritten as "The Earl of Essex"), "The Orphan," "Venice
+Preserved," "Oronooko," "The Fatal Marriage" (altered as "Isabella"), "All
+for Love," and "The Mourning Bride" maintained their places into the
+nineteenth century. Tragedy thus had its permanent representatives in this
+group of stock plays, to which newcomers gained admission only by marked
+success on the stage.
+
+To these stock plays no writer of the eighteenth century made more notable
+additions than Nicholas Rowe, the first editor of Shakespeare, whose work
+began the century, borrowed much from his predecessors, and yet introduced
+most of the changes which distinguish the eighteenth century type of
+tragedy from that of the Restoration or Elizabethan period. His first play
+was followed by four other tragedies by 1707, and, after an interval of
+seven years, by "Jane Shore" (1714) and "Lady Jane Grey" (1715). Of the
+first five, three are of little interest except as representing common
+variations of the prevailing type. They all relate love stories of rivalry
+and intrigue among heroic personages, and all observe the French
+proprieties in structure. "The Ambitious Stepmother," like so many
+predecessors and successors, places the scene in an oriental court;
+"Ulysses" more daringly invades Homeric territory; and "The Royal Convert"
+turns to early English history, a field which literary patriotism was
+appropriating for tragedy.
+
+In "Tamerlane" (1702), love and intrigue play subordinate parts to the
+political and moral interest which the author endeavored to centre upon his
+protagonist. Tamerlane, who, we are told, was patterned on William III, is
+an extremely pious pagan, who overtops conquest with mercy and adorns every
+occasion with a moralizing discourse. Had he ever encountered his
+Marlowean namesake, he would have shed the pitying tear. In general, the
+structure is on the French plan, but the large number of characters and the
+considerable amount of action recall Elizabethan models. The verse, too,
+with its feminine endings, occasionally reminds one of Fletcher, and the
+figures of speech are feebly patterned on Shakespeare, while the ravings of
+Bajazet are worthy of Nat Lee. The play, long acted every November fifth,
+seems to have owed its great success to its high moral tone and its
+patriotic eloquence. It set the key for many similarly patriotic tunes.
+
+"The Fair Penitent" (1703) links itself with the two later "She-tragedies,"
+to borrow a term from one of their epilogues. Its prologue proclaims an
+innovation from the usual tragic themes of monarchs' cares and lost
+royalty, because--
+
+    "We ne'er can pity what we ne'er can share
+
+    *....*....*....*
+
+    Therefore an humbler Theme our Author chose,
+    A melancholy Tale of Private Woes."
+
+This was the play of which Dr. Johnson said that "scarcely any work of any
+poet is at once so interesting by the fable and so delightful by the
+language." The domestic theme, the female protagonist, and the insistent
+appeal to pity were all already familiar in the plays of Otway and
+Southerne. Rowe gave these a larger popularity; and from his Lothario and
+Calista Richardson received suggestions for Lovelace and Clarissa.
+
+"The Fair Penitent" is also interesting as an adaptation of an Elizabethan
+play. Rowe borrowed the plot and some hints in the characterization from
+"The Fatal Dowry" of Massinger and Field, but he refashioned the scenes and
+rewrote the verse in accord with current modes. While "The Fatal Dowry" is
+by no means one of the best of Elizabethan tragedies, a comparison of it
+with Rowe's version of the story emphasizes the losses which tragedy was
+suffering as it moved farther and farther from its old traditions.[28] "The
+Fair Penitent" reduces the host of _dramatis personae_ to eight, the fair
+penitent, her husband, his rival, his sister, and three friends or
+confidants, and confines the action to one place and something over
+twenty-four hours. Much of the action of the early play is omitted or
+reduced to narrative, including all the opening scenes of the funeral of
+the husband's father and the origin of his friendship with the father of
+the heroine. The various attempts of the faithful friend to mend matters
+are also restricted, and Massinger's usual trial scene omitted. The result
+of these structural changes is a loss of verisimilitude. The old play had
+something of the illusion of a true history; in "The Fair Penitent" the
+action, though narrowed, is still far too much for the time supposed, and
+improbabilities are solved by well-worn theatrical devices. The guilt is
+discovered by means of a lost letter and an over-heard conversation, and
+throughout literary and moral proprieties lead to a reduction of action and
+an increase of talk. This is well illustrated in the scenes in which the
+husband confronts the guilty wife. In "The Fair Penitent," the wife and
+Lothario are having a final meeting, or declamation contest, on the day
+after the wedding. She upbraids him and incidentally relates the story of
+her seduction; the husband overhears. In "The Fatal Dowry," the husband
+comes unexpectedly to the house of Aymer where the lovers have an
+assignation. Aymer is attempting to divert him with music, when a laugh is
+heard within,--more music, and the lady's laugh again. The husband rushes
+from the stage and returns driving in the lovers. Further, the restricted
+action of Rowe's play causes a conventionalizing of the characters. The
+wife and her lover are shallow persons in Massinger's play, but they have
+some plausibility. In Rowe, he becomes the avenging rival; she, an
+impossible declaimer, now the evil woman of the heroic plays, now the
+lachrymose moralizer. The moralizing, emphatic in all of Rowe's plays, also
+adds to the general artificiality. Calista dies after most voluble
+repentance, and her husband matches her "groan for groan and tear for
+tear."
+
+If the Elizabethan play is confused, long spun out, and not especially
+edifying, it is yet occasionally intense in its emotional effect and
+maintains some verisimilitude of life and character. Rowe's artificially
+ingenious and morally mellifluous play, if edifying, is never thrilling.
+Its conventional persons and scenes do not depict life by action; they
+declaim sentimentally a story that ends in a sermon. In its
+conventionalization and moralization Rowe illustrates the main tendencies
+of the drama, tendencies derived largely from the French, but it must not
+be thought that either his play or the majority in the century altogether
+forsake English models for French. Rowe's declamations and laments,
+immeasurably inferior in all respects, differ essentially from Racine's in
+that they fail to disclose psychological moments and emotional crises. They
+also differ from Racine in their retention of spectacle, incident, and
+business in accord with English tradition. Like other of his contemporaries
+and successors, Rowe was prone to copy the Elizabethans at their worst. The
+most Elizabethan thing in his play, though not found in "The Fatal Dowry,"
+is the setting for the long famous fifth act. "The Scene is a Room hung
+with Black; on one side, Lothario's body on a Bier; on the other, a Table
+with a Scull and other Bones, a Book, and a Lamp on it. Calista is
+discovered on a Couch in Black, her Hair hanging loose and disordered:
+After Musick and a Song, she rises and comes forward"--and begins her
+midnight soliloquy. Perhaps, as Dr. Ward surmises, this business went far
+to give the act its great effectiveness.
+
+Of the two later "She-tragedies," "Lady Jane Grey" presents the usual love
+intrigue (fomented here by the discarded rival), the female protagonist,
+and much Protestant and Whig patriotism, but nothing not paralleled in
+Rowe's other plays. "Jane Shore" (1714), one of the most popular plays of
+the century, represents another treatment of "the fair penitent," this time
+not only in a story used in the Elizabethan drama, but in a style avowedly
+in imitation of Shakespeare's.
+
+     Gloster, who is closely modeled on Shakespeare's
+     Richard III, plays an important part, usually in
+     consultation with his two confidants, Catesby and
+     Radcliffe. Hastings, suspected by Gloster of loyalty to
+     the child prince, becomes enamored of Jane Shore, the
+     former mistress of Edward IV. She, now dedicated to
+     penitence, resists his persuasions, in which she is
+     encouraged by Dumont (her husband in disguise) and his
+     confidant Bellmour. When Hastings resorts to force,
+     Dumont comes to the rescue and disarms him. Alicia,
+     deserted by Hastings, is the jealous and vengeful
+     woman, well known in tragedy; and she denounces
+     Hastings and Jane Shore in a letter which she
+     substitutes for the petition for the release of Dumont,
+     imprisoned through Hastings, that Jane Shore presents
+     to Gloster. Gloster, upon testing Hastings and Jane
+     Shore, is met by frank protestations from both of their
+     loyalty to the prince. Hastings is condemned to death,
+     but has time for a final interview with Alicia, and the
+     exchange of mutual upbraidings, confessions, and
+     forgiveness. Jane Shore is condemned to public penance.
+     She has a parting interview with Alicia, who has gone
+     mad, and then encounters Dumont, who, after a long
+     discussion with his confidant, has decided to reveal
+     himself and forgive his wife. She dies and he is led
+     away to prison.
+
+      "Let those who view this sad Example, know
+      What Fate attends the broken Marriage Vow;
+      And teach their Children in succeeding Times,
+      No common Vengeance waits upon their Crimes,
+      When such severe Repentance could not save
+      From Want, from Shame, and an untimely Grave."
+
+The play is undoubtedly Rowe's masterpiece, the closing scenes having a
+natural pathos that he rarely attains elsewhere. The only Shakespearean
+imitation now discernible is in the character of Gloster, though Rowe may
+have endeavored in his female characters to supply the naturalness and
+greatness of emotions which he recognized as characteristic of
+Shakespeare's men, but curiously thought lacking in his women. Here and
+elsewhere in language and metaphors Rowe reverts at times to the
+Elizabethans, as also in the admission of much action and spectacle, in
+pale horrors, and in the plots of his two best known plays. In the general
+conception and structure of his plays he follows Otway. Taken as a whole,
+however, his plays, without comedy, with much heroic love, with few
+persons, and a restricted action, come nearer to French models than those
+of any preceding writer of large reputation. Sentimentalized, moralized,
+conventionalized as the plays are, Rowe may be said to have made a novel
+departure in tragedy, though one accomplished a century before by Heywood's
+"A Woman Killed with Kindness." Penitence is the sole theme of his two
+famous plays, and the moral lesson is constantly enforced. The protagonist
+is a repentant sinner for whom we feel pity because of her punishment,
+which we nevertheless regard as just.
+
+Rowe's plays, tame as they are, seem to have been too exciting and too rude
+for the coterie of wits who set the standards of criticism; and before the
+appearance of "Jane Shore" an effort was made under the direction of
+Addison toward still greater refinement and closer accord with French
+rules. Smith's "Phædra and Hippolitus" (1706), an adaptation of Racine,
+failed on the stage in spite of Addison's approval, but it was later often
+revived, and it prepared the way for the great success of Ambrose Philips's
+"Distrest Mother" (1712), a translation of the "Andromaque." This success,
+promoted by the zealous support of Mr. Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverley,
+was due in large measure to the story, sentimental and moral in accord with
+the taste of the day.[29] In these respects "The Distrest Mother" had the
+advantage of "Phædra," though both illustrate the tendency, growing since
+Lee and Otway, of making the heroine the protagonist. At all events, the
+success of Philips's translation was not only great for the moment, but
+long continued. It remained a popular stock play through the century, gave
+a favorite part to Mrs. Siddons, and introduced Macready to a London
+audience.
+
+In the flush of Philips's first success, Addison was emboldened to present
+his long withheld "Cato" upon the stage. The political circumstances made
+the first night one of the most memorable in the history of the theatre,
+and gave the play what was then the enormous initial run of a month.
+Voltaire praised; and, with the exception of the doughty Dennis, English
+critics seemed agreed that here at last was an English tragedy in full
+accord with classical precedents and the rules of reason. The play
+continued a favorite on the stage into the nineteenth century, and even
+after the retirement of Kemble, who found in Cato one of his great parts.
+It would be vain to search for dramatic merits to account for this great
+success. The play combines love intrigues, as absurd as those usual in
+contemporary plays, with lucid declamation and aphoristic moralizing.
+Aphorism and declamation have, indeed, rarely been absent from the tragedy
+of any period or nation, but they were especially delightful to the taste
+of the Augustan era. Addison was only continuing the success of Rowe's
+"Tamerlane," reducing its rant to a more reasonable pattern. The reforming
+classicists, like the theatre-pleasing Rowe, hit on the two themes which
+pleased the public, the distressed female and the patriotic moralizer.
+
+The success of "The Distrest Mother" and "Cato" was the beginning of the
+long triumph of French influence over English tragedy, yet the victory was
+never more than half won. There was no capitulation, and the battle
+continued through the century both among the critics and on the stage.
+Rowe's plays maintained at least a feeble English tradition, and
+Shakespeare's won increasing admiration. If critical opinion was for a time
+warm in support of French classicism, the theatre still clung to
+Elizabethan practices. Later, when imitations of the French models had
+established themselves in some degree upon the stage, criticism turned to
+condemnation of the unities and renewed its laudations of Shakespeare. The
+lines of battle were often obscured. Between Rowe's refinements of
+Elizabethan plays and Addison's imitation of the French there is little
+difference; and later, in spite of the din of critical essays and prefaces,
+the representatives of "Shakespeare's school" and of "correct taste" have a
+great similarity.
+
+The Elizabethan tradition was directly represented by Elizabethan
+imitations and revivals, by many new plays that reverted in one way or
+another to the early methods, by the conservatism of actors and playgoers,
+and by the tragedies of Shakespeare. As Shakespeare grew in the
+appreciation of readers and critics, there was a tendency toward the
+restoration of a real Shakespearean text to the stage. There were, to be
+sure, innumerable new alterations and adaptations, but these were mostly of
+little importance on the stage. They dealt with the minor plays, as
+"Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," or "Timon;" or they were the essays of admiring
+amateurs with a bent for restringing the rough diamonds of the original, or
+of playwrights trying to meet the theatrical demands of the moment.
+Cibber's "Richard III" and Tate's "Lear" held the stage well into the next
+century, but "Julius Cæsar," "Hamlet" (except for Garrick's alteration,
+1772-80), and "Othello" admitted no alterations. After 1744 Shakespeare's
+"Macbeth" took the place of Davenant's, and "Romeo and Juliet" of Otway's
+"Caius Marius." "Coriolanus," variously revised, altered, and finally
+combined with Thomson's play of the same name, was toward the end of the
+century given a great vogue by Kemble; and, indeed, the only one of the
+tragedies neglected during the century was "Antony and Cleopatra."[30]
+Dryden's "All for Love" had usurped its place. As the critical tone toward
+Shakespeare grew more admiring and less tainted by condescension, so the
+attitude of actors and audiences grew in heartiness of appreciation. The
+revival of the romantic comedies marked an important change of taste,
+though not calling for more than mention here. Year after year his
+comedies, histories, and tragedies were acted oftener and to larger
+audiences, and gave opportunity for the best efforts of a long series of
+great actors and actresses. Garrick's revivals and triumphs were followed
+by those of Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Now one play became a favorite, now
+another, under the influence of a great impersonation; but few were
+neglected, and over the theatre Shakespeare's domination was unquestioned.
+
+Except for Shakespeare the direct influence of the Elizabethans was small.
+A few of the tragedies were acted intermittently in the first half of the
+century, and a few comedies kept their places in the stock list much
+longer. Revivals, though not infrequent, were rarely permanent. Revampings
+sometimes resulted in an almost unconditional surrender to the French.
+Theobald in the first half of the century attempted a reversion to the
+Elizabethans without much success, and later a revival of interest in
+Massinger succeeded in restoring only his two comedies to the theatre. As
+sources of incentive for those writers who shunned French modes, Otway,
+Southerne, and Rowe took the places of the Elizabethans other than
+Shakespeare. The English tradition which these names represent had, as we
+have seen, already been much subject to French influence, though protected
+by the adherence of the theatre to old custom. Consequently, while the
+majority of eighteenth century tragedies retain some Elizabethan practices,
+there is not one of importance that is a thoroughgoing representative of
+the old methods and technic.
+
+French influence, on the contrary, had many representatives among the new
+plays. The success of "The Distrest Mother" led to a number of
+translations. In the first quarter of the century there were ten of
+Racine's plays and four of Corneille's; and of these fourteen, eight were
+acted, and several with success. Later on, Whitehead's "Roman Father"
+(1750), an adaptation of Corneille's "Horace," won a place in the stock
+list. But the leading factor in the French influence on English tragedy
+during the century was Voltaire. The long critical debate which he waged in
+behalf of the rules and against the barbarities of Shakespeare has its
+importance in English as well as French literary history. But while the
+English critics grew more and more eager as the century advanced to uphold
+the glory of Shakespeare and to denounce an atheist who denied this, or to
+proclaim their freedom from the narrowing rules which were French, yet the
+triumphs of Voltaire's plays upon the English stage continued unabated.
+Adaptations of no less than nine of his tragedies had appeared on the
+London stage before the English translation of his full works in 1779-80,
+and there were manifold borrowings from him in many other plays.[31] A
+number of the translations, Hill's "Zara" and "Merope," Miller's "Mahomet,"
+and Murphy's "Orphan of China," made notable successes. From the production
+of "Brutus" to that of "Semiramis" in 1776 Voltaire may be said to have
+been the most popular and influential of the writers of tragedy for the
+English theatre.[32]
+
+The translations of these tragedies, however, indicate the influence of
+English traditions. The long speeches are shortened, the dialogue is broken
+and enlivened, the minor proprieties disregarded, the sentiments and morals
+Anglicized, and some business and bloodshed introduced on the stage. In
+Hill's "Merope," for example, the great scene where Merope strives to kill
+the murderer of her long-lost son and discovers the supposed murderer to be
+her son himself, loses all its simplicity as well as its poetry. It is
+ornamented by Hill with processions, virgins in white, music, a sacrificial
+song, and many starts and strains. Where on the French stage Egisthe
+decorously withdraws behind the scenes as his mother approaches with the
+dagger, on the English stage everything was in full sight. If some of the
+other translations are less altered, the imitations and unavowed
+adaptations are much more so. Hoole's "Cyrus" (1768), a popular play, is
+obviously based on "Merope," but adds a much complicated plot, a mad woman,
+a love intrigue between the long-lost son and the daughter of the old
+tutor, and a returning husband for Mandane (Merope). The great success of
+Voltaire in England did not, in fact, produce any very marked change in the
+course of tragedy. He represents the continuance of French influence but
+established no departures of note from the general type established in the
+English theatres by 1725. Virtually no English tragedies in the eighteenth
+century introduced comedy; few reveled in horrors and bloodshed, the
+majority observed the unities, nearly all had few persons, a restricted
+action, and themes and situations confined to slight variations of a
+stereotyped love story; and nearly all had regard for poetic justice. The
+differences between French and English tragedy were largely those which
+adapters of Voltaire eliminated when they made over his plays for the
+London theatres and gave them a more broken dialogue and more stage action,
+and perhaps a mad woman or a villain. Moreover, the amelioration of the
+differences between the two theatres was not all on one side, as is shown
+by Voltaire's own imitations of Shakespeare and his introduction of ghosts
+and horrors, and by the growing interest in France in Shakespeare and
+other English dramatists.[33] Voltaire, with his ingenious plots and
+telling crises, was nearer than Racine to the English tradition, and he
+wrote at a time when the differences between the two national theatres were
+minimized to a degree that made intercommunication easy. His talents gave
+him an easy superiority over any English writer of tragedies after the
+classical formulas.
+
+In the course of the century there were also a considerable number of plays
+that turned from French to Greek models. While these cannot be regarded as
+wholly representative of a reaction from a pseudo to a truer classicism,
+they certainly offered hardly more resemblance to Voltaire than to
+Shakespeare. The Greek influence was, however, variously manifested.
+Adaptations of Euripides were numerous, half a dozen of which were
+presented at the theatres. In addition, a number of original plays were
+written, following the Greek form. Most famous of these were two by Gray's
+friend Mason, "Elfrida" and "Caractacus." The latter, while stilted and
+academic, compares favorably in point of literary excellence with most
+tragedies of the century, and not altogether unworthily takes its place in
+a series that includes "Samson Agonistes" and "Prometheus Unbound." "Read
+Shakespeare," wrote Lyttleton to Aaron Hill, "but study Racine and
+Sophocles." But the classicists were occupied in the main with neither
+poet, but in discussing various minor questions of dramatic propriety:
+Should any violence or bloodshed be permitted? Should rhyme tags end the
+scenes? Should the epilogue be comic or serious? Should figures of speech
+be allowed? Should long speeches be shortened for presentation? Classicism
+in both England and France was not greatly imitative of either Sophocles or
+Racine, but mainly insistent on immaterialities.
+
+If we attempt to follow the diminishing differences between English and
+French standards in the work of individual authors, Young's "Busiris"
+(1719) and "Revenge" (1721) are the most important of those tragedies in
+the first quarter of the century which cling to some of the characteristics
+of the early English drama, while his "Brothers," written at about the same
+time but not acted until 1753, is based upon Thomas Corneille's "Persée et
+Demetrius." In "Busiris" there is no villain, but tyranny, conspiracy, and
+a passionate revenging queen play their usual parts. There is an attempt,
+both in incidents and expression, at Elizabethan force and horror; the main
+action deals with a rape, and five of the principal persons are killed upon
+the stage. "The Revenge" is still more Elizabethan, being a palpable
+imitation of "Othello." The prologue declares that the proper field for
+tragedy is not villany but "the tumults of a Godlike mind," yet the
+villain, the Moor Zanga, is the chief character and was acted by Garrick,
+Kemble, and Kean. The villain's part, it is interesting to note, affords
+the most striking difference between this popular play and the even more
+popular "Zara." In both, the heroine, pure and innocent, is killed by the
+husband, Othello-like in both magnanimity and jealousy; but in Voltaire the
+jealousy is occasioned by the heroine's meetings with her brother, a
+captive Christian, in Young by the busy and ponderous intrigues of a
+Moorish Iago.
+
+In opposition to Young, Thomson represents the vogue of classicism both in
+literary circles and in the theatres. His early tragedies, "Sophonisba"
+(1730), "Agammemnon" (1738), and "Edward and Eleonora," prohibited by the
+censor because of its attacks upon Walpole, won little favor except in the
+circle of wits who attempted to dictate the national taste in letters and
+among the opponents of Walpole. The first was dedicated to the Queen and
+the two later to the Princess of Wales, and "Tancred and Sigismunda" (1743)
+to Frederick, Prince of Wales, the patron of the drama and the hope of the
+Tories. This play, the presentation of which was fathered and superintended
+by Lyttleton and Pitt, achieved a large popular success; and portions of
+"Coriolanus," acted after the author's death in 1749, were combined with
+Shakespeare's tragedy in versions by Thomas Sheridan and Kemble, and
+supplied the latter with his greatest part. All Thomson's plays endeavor
+to retell stories often used in tragedy, in strict accord with the rules,
+with absolute propriety of diction, some reference to political events, and
+a due inculcation of moral sentiments. In the language of one of their
+admirers, they were intended to be "reasonable entertainments becoming
+virtue itself to behold with tears of approbation."[34] "Sophonisba" is
+sternly heroic in its subordination of love to patriotic hate of Rome in
+the character of its heroine, and sternly classic in the simplicity of its
+plot and the heaviness of its inflated rhetoric. "Agammemnon," also a
+"She-tragedy," is designed after the school of Racine rather than of
+Corneille; and its wavering, inconsistent Clytemnestra, who closes the play
+with a torrent of remorse and a faint, its Melisander saved from a desert
+island, and its courtly love-sick Egisthus are queer denizens of the house
+of Atreus. "Edward and Eleanor," telling of the queen who sucked poison
+from her husband's wound, and of the sultan who, suspected of the attempted
+murder, bore a truly miraculous antidote to the Christian camp, owes
+allegiance to Voltaire. Its emotional changes and elaborate intrigue bring
+it also more closely in accord with the prevailing English type. "Tancred
+and Sigismunda," based on the story as told in "Gil Blas,"[35] makes the
+lover a claimant to the throne and the intervention of the father due to
+reasons of state. The plot is developed with more skill than is usual in
+Thomson, and the rival lovers, the marriage in revenge, the midnight
+interview, the duel, and the murder of the heroine are quite in conformity
+to the prevailing model. "Coriolanus," the subject of many French tragedies
+and of Shakespearean alterations by Tate and Dennis, illustrates the
+inferiority of the classic scheme to the Elizabethan in the presentation of
+history. The action, beginning with the arrival of Coriolanus as a
+suppliant for Tullus's hospitality, crowds the remaining events and the
+changes in the two rivals within the impossible confines of the unities of
+time and place. Coriolanus himself exemplifies the effort toward "Nature,"
+that is, typicality and reasonableness, in pseudo-classical
+characterization. He expresses the sentiments and manners approved by the
+eighteenth century, and, even when pride and revenge most fire his passion,
+is a very tame lion. The moral lessons, somewhat clouded in Shakespeare,
+are distinctly enunciated and finally summed up by Galesus:--
+
+    "This man was once the glory of his age,
+    Disinterested, just, with every virtue
+    Of civil life adorn'd, in arms unequall'd.
+    His only blot was this; that, much provok'd,
+    He rais'd his vengeful arm against his country," etc. (v. 4).
+
+In Thomson's other plays the inflated declamation occasionally gives way to
+a bit of description that recalls "The Seasons," but in "Coriolanus" he
+follows the promise of the Prologue to "Tancred" with unerring fidelity:--
+
+    "Your taste rejects the glittering false sublime,
+    To sigh in metaphor, and die in rhyme.
+    High _rant_ is tumbled from his gallery throne;
+    Description, dreams,--nay, similes are gone."
+
+He was obviously seeking what he called Shakespeare's "simple, plain
+sublime," and his declamations occasionally reach a sententious lucidity
+worthy of Addison, but the pseudo-classic diction freezes every emotion
+with its "transports," "charms," and "nuptial loves." This is Volumnia's
+appeal to Coriolanus, her husband in Thomson's play:--
+
+                    "Ah Coriolanus!
+    Is then this hand, this hand to be devoted,
+    The pledge of nuptial love, that has so long
+    Protected, bless'd, and shelter'd us with kindness,
+    Now lifted up against us? Yet I love it,
+    And, with submissive veneration, bow
+    Beneath th' affliction which it heaps upon us.
+    But O! what nobler transports would it give thee!
+    What joy beyond expression! couldst thou once
+    Surmount the furious storm of fierce revenge,
+    And yield ye to the charms of love and mercy.
+    Oh make the glorious trial!" (v. 1).
+
+Thomson's plays were not esteemed even by his master Voltaire as
+contributing greatly to that perfection of art possibly attainable by a
+"due mixture of the French taste and English energy." For, though "wisely
+intricated and elegantly writ," Voltaire found him, like Addison, lacking
+in warmth, an "iced genius."[36] Frigid to his contemporaries, the
+tragedies were long since decently interred. They constitute,
+nevertheless, the most considerable attempt made by any author of the
+eighteenth century to conserve the classic theory of tragedy, and they
+recall nearly every variety of pseudo-classic endeavor. Of classicism it
+might be said, as of Thomson, that it attempted classic and early English
+history, that it found in partisan patriotism its favorite theme for
+rhetoric, that its French rules and taste usually pleased readers better
+than spectators, but that when it took one of Shakespeare's tragedies as
+the basis for an infusion of classical theory, or when it was tempered with
+a love story and a lively action, it triumphed in the theatre.
+
+Thomson's friends, Mallet and the versatile and indefatigable Aaron Hill,
+joined him in his efforts to redeem the tragic muse. Hill's efforts, if no
+more successful than Thomson's and much less consistent, are at least more
+amusing. His general theory seems to have been not unlike that which
+actually controlled theatrical practice; he purposed a combination of
+French rules with romantic incident, theatrical bustle, and his own
+inimitable style. His "Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam" (1716), he boasted,
+had "a deeper and more surprising plot than any play which has been
+published, that I know of, in the English tongue; and yet is written in
+strict observance of the dramatic rules" and affords "room for topical
+reflections, large description, love, war, show, and passion," and also "a
+very high regard to decoration." The play is noticeable for its tangle of
+trite dramatic motives.
+
+     The emperor's vision is of a son who shall kill him and
+     usurp the throne. The two elder sons are in love with
+     the Princess of Siam. Sworn by her to kill their
+     father, and condemned by him for a murder they did not
+     commit, they die fighting in his behalf. The third son
+     kills the emperor, marries the princess, and ascends
+     the throne. In his rapid advance he is aided by the
+     banished empress, who has returned to court and
+     attained high power, disguised as the favorite eunuch.
+
+Hill adapted three of Voltaire's plays, "Zara," "Alzira," and "Merope." To
+the first he wrote some comic choruses intended to be sung between the
+acts, and to the third he prefixed his revised and final opinion of
+Voltaire and French tragedy:--
+
+     "Our unpolished English stage (as he assumes the
+     liberty of calling it) has entertained a nobler taste
+     of dignify'd simplicity, than to deprive dramatic
+     poetry of all that animates its passions; in pursuit of
+     a _cold, starv'd, tame abstinence_, which, from an
+     affectation to shun _figure_, sinks to _flatness_: an
+     _elaborate escape_ from _energy_ into a groveling,
+     wearisome, bald, barren, unalarming _chilness_ of
+     expression, that _emasculates_ the mind, instead of
+     _moving it_."
+
+"Athelwold" (1731), a revision of his early "Elfrid," is colorlessly
+conventional; "The Roman Revenge" (1753) is an alteration of "Julius
+Cæsar"; "The Insolvent" (1758) is a rewriting of "The Fatal Dowry," making
+the heroine an innocent object of jealousy. Most Aaronic of all is "Henry
+V" (1723). Here he gives up French unities and technic, and introduces many
+characters, shifting scenes, a bit of comedy, and the "genius of England,"
+who sings a song. His greatest addition to Shakespeare is his Harriet, who
+starts out like one of the evil queens in the heroic tragedies. When
+abandoned by Henry, she is still jealous and revengeful; next she appears
+disguised as a page in the French camp, and, Viola-like, relates a story of
+a love-lorn sister; then recaptured by Henry, she storms and melts; but the
+Jane Shore mood is transient, and, like a tragedy queen again, she stabs
+herself. A man who could write a comic duet for Voltaire's "Zaïre" and
+could supply Prince Hal with a paramour whose grandmothers were Viola and
+the Indian Queen, ought not to be wholly forgotten.
+
+Hill's career may remind us both of the din of the critics over Voltaire
+and Shakespeare, and also of the virtual compromise and amalgamation that
+had taken place on the stage between French and English traditions. English
+tragedy, after a long national development, had become materially modified
+by French influence and had assumed a fixed and restricted form. This type,
+recognizable early in the century, continues to prevail nearly to the end.
+The century had little power of innovation, little that can be called a
+development in the history of tragedy. The pendulum swings now toward
+French, now toward Elizabethan models, but its oscillations are slight and
+regulated. The plays thus far considered offer unimportant variations from
+the type, and plays after the middle of the century vary still less. Home's
+famous "Douglas" (1757), that thrilled every heart and in the opinion of
+the judicious redeemed the stage anew from barbarism, fails now to
+distinguish itself from its fellows, unless by its touches of melancholy,
+medievalism, and nature, that hint of romanticism. Here, as so often, a
+much suffering woman is beset by villany and jealousy. Home's other
+tragedies and those of Glover, Hoole, Brown, Murphy, and Cumberland offer
+even less of novelty, except that toward the end of the century refinement
+in sentiments and morals becomes increasingly attenuated. Miss Hannah More
+best represents this feminization of the type. Her "Percy" (1777), a very
+successful play, is devoted to the sentiment:--
+
+    "Will it content me that her person's pure?
+    No, if her alien heart doats on another,
+    She is unchaste."
+
+"The Fatal Falsehood" (1779) presents in a domestic guise the usual plot of
+rivals in love and an intriguing villain, with the addition of a love-sick
+lady who runs mad. "The curtain falls to soft music." The century has one
+marked innovation in the realistic plays of Lillo and Moore, and after 1780
+there are signs of the romanticism stirring elsewhere in literature; but in
+the main the new tragedies are hopelessly commonplace representatives of an
+extremely conventionalized form.
+
+Yet tragedy was by no means neglected in literature or on the stage.
+Several hundred tragedies were published during the century and many of
+them went through several editions. Three or four were brought out every
+year in the theatres, and many of these maintained themselves for a time as
+stock plays. Most men of letters essayed tragedy,--Addison, Johnson,
+Young, Thomson, Gay, the laureates Cibber, Rowe, Whitehead, Pye, and a host
+of minor celebrities. Besides the tragedies acted, there were almost as
+many not acted but printed. Closet dramas, common in the Elizabethan
+period, grew more numerous after the Restoration. Whether the writer
+scorned or was scorned by the manager, an appeal to the reading public was
+always easy and apparently sometimes profitable. Tragedies were bought and
+read; a popular play might start with an edition of five thousand and run
+through a number of editions. Even after the novel had supplanted the drama
+among readers, there was no diminution of printed plays. The non-acted
+plays, however, offer nothing of importance for the history of the drama.
+The majority are unactable; others follow the usual formulas; a few Greek
+plays, alterations of Shakespeare, and sacred dramas have some interest as
+curiosities. The increase in the number of these plays does indicate a
+growing separation between the drama and the theatre. Plays were no longer
+written by a set of dramatists who made a profession; they were written by
+any one who had literary pretensions. Only a few new plays were required;
+the supply greatly exceeded the demand. The theatrical monopoly maintained
+by the two patented theatres offered no great encouragement to dramatists,
+and the number who wrote without any acquaintance or knowledge of the stage
+increased. Literary fame rather than success in the theatre was perhaps the
+greater incentive in the case of tragedy. Whatever the incentive,
+individual ambition resulted in no individuality of expression. The popular
+ballad of tradition is scarcely less expressive of personality than the
+average eighteenth century tragedy. Even the plays of temporary importance
+have no flavor of their own.[37]
+
+The features of this type have often been mentioned in connection with
+particular plays, but it may be convenient to collect them in a composite
+picture. In structure and technic French models are mainly followed. Very
+long speeches, indeed, are rare, bloodshed and violence are permitted on
+the stage, and there is a good deal of incident; but bloodshed and horrors
+after the Elizabethan style no longer appear. Comedy also has disappeared,
+and is tabooed even in adaptations of Shakespeare or of Restoration plays.
+Comedy is reserved for the farce which is always performed after a tragedy.
+Each tragedy concerns itself with a single plot, involving only from six to
+ten persons, and observing the unities, even after Johnson's salutary
+condemnation of them. There are few changes of scene, ordinarily none
+within an act. With the disappearance of other medieval characteristics
+there has also departed the medieval freedom in respect to the suitability
+of an action for the stage. The range of incidents possible for
+presentation is very limited; exposition is largely by narrative;
+supernatural elements, common in Lee, are unusual; the ghost at last rests
+in peace. Madness, however, is still retained, especially in the case of
+the long-suffering heroine. Battles, armies, stage spectacles of all kinds,
+are restricted, though the scenes may be elaborate, and processions,
+sacrifices, even music and songs are permissible. The first essential for
+the action is a love story, the second some kind of historical setting. The
+fatal or hazardous loves of princes and queens are the themes; Eastern,
+classic, or early English courts are the scenes.
+
+The love story itself often keeps to the form customary in the heroic
+plays. Two rivals in love, two heroines, major and minor, a tyrant, an
+intriguing minister, and the accompanying confidants appear again and again
+to assist in similar stories of jealousy, ambition, and villany. The old
+Elizabethan motives continue, as "Rape" and "The Fate of Villany," the
+titles of two plays acted in 1729-30, may witness, but usually they are
+refined and tamed. Incest and rape are averted; the tyrant in love with the
+heroine only threatens; the villain who pursues casts suspicion on her
+virtue but abstains from violence; the two brothers, or the son and the
+father, in love with the same lady sometimes find renunciation possible.
+Unjustified jealousy is perhaps the leading motive, and there are many
+feeble imitations of "Othello." A secret marriage, a long-lost son, and
+marriages, either for revenge or in order to save a lover, are common
+elements in the plot. Hero and heroine are examples of virtue. Their
+difficulties or ruin are sometimes due to one fatal error duly emphasized,
+or they may be due wholly to the machinations of the villain. In the latter
+case, poetic justice is usually regarded and the good are saved.
+
+The villain is the most constant reminder of Elizabethan tragedy. He has
+all the traits of the stage Machiavellis of Marlowe and Kyd, and sometimes
+imitates Iago. He is wholly black at heart, but he is apparently frank and
+honest; his revenge or ambition works by most devious intrigue; he confides
+his schemes to the audience in long soliloquies, yet his accomplished
+hypocrisy long baffles the rest of the _dramatis personae_. As in late
+Elizabethan and Restoration plays, he is often a prime minister. A
+collection of these villains' speeches would illustrate the
+conventionalized character of eighteenth century tragedy and the tendency
+of stage types to perpetuate themselves in theatrical tradition. A few
+lines from two may be sufficient. The first is the opening soliloquy of
+Seyfert in "The Heroine of the Cave," a play of some popularity acted in
+1774.
+
+    "Revenge, thou art the deity I adore!--
+    From thy auspicious shrine I hope a cure
+    For the corroding pain that rends my heart.
+    The vain Alberti being thus preferr'd
+    By fair Constantia, passeth all enduring!
+    Colredo I have rouz'd--another wooer--
+    And in his name are such reflections dropp'd,
+    As 'twixt the two a duel must provoke--
+    My purpose is, whoe'er the conqu'ror be,
+    To reap advantage for my private views," etc.
+
+The second is the opening soliloquy of Bertrand in Miss Hannah More's
+"Fatal Falsehood" (1779).
+
+    "What fools are serious melancholy villains!
+    I play a surer game, and screen my heart
+    With easy looks and undesigning smiles;
+    And while my actions spring from sober thought,
+    They still appear th' effect of wild caprice,
+    And I, the thoughtless slave of giddy chance.
+    What but this frankness has engag'd the promise
+    Of young Orlando, to confide in me
+    That secret grief which preys upon his heart?
+    'Tis dangerous, indiscreet hypocrisy
+    To seem too good: I am the _careless_ Bertrand,
+    The honest, undesigning, plain, blunt man:" etc.
+
+The continuance of the stage villain is worthy of some note beyond its
+evidence of conventionalization. It calls attention to the fact that
+English tragedy has always been largely concerned with evil persons. Though
+the utterly bad were condemned as tragic figures by Aristotle, and the
+overthrow of the wicked as a tragic theme has ever since been held in some
+contempt by theorizers; yet from the time of Marlowe, or even earlier,
+English tragedy has told the stories of evil-doers with careers of cruelty
+or lust, or of machinators who have turned to bitterness and disaster the
+lives of the pure and the good. Of the first class are the tyrants,
+usurpers, lustful monarchs, and bloody avengers; of the second, the
+Machiavellian prime ministers, the hypocritical counselors, and the
+traitorous friends; and the two are often united as in Barabas or Richard
+III. English authors, actors, and audiences have delighted in a visible
+representative of the devil upon the stage, in an impersonation of the
+source of evil. Given grandeur of ambition, the evil one becomes the
+protagonist; given mere revenge and hatred as motives, he is still the main
+opponent of the hero. Perhaps the highest kind of tragic feeling is not
+aroused either by the fall of the depraved or by the ruin of the noble
+through trickery and cunning, yet "Richard III" and "Macbeth" deal with the
+one theme, and "Othello" and "Lear" with the other. Shakespeare's
+tragedies, indeed, represent other conflicts than this between good and
+evil, and in the representation of that conflict they are not confined by
+theological or dramatic formulas. Such formulas were just what eighteenth
+century writers enjoyed, and in attacking the problem of evil they clung to
+one of the most artificial if also one of the most typical persons in
+literature, the Elizabethan stage machinator. The conflict of bad and good,
+a natural if not inevitable motive of a drama descending from medieval
+times, found its expression in the excessively amiable hero and heroine and
+the utterly black villain, stage types that have maintained themselves in
+fiction as well as the drama through Scott and Dickens down to the present
+day. The stage villain, a theory of poetic justice that refused to punish
+the good except for some distinctly emphasized fault, and a faith in the
+potency of moral precepts, these are the devil, providence, and salvation
+of a theatrical theology, which, along with conventional technic, narrowed
+plots, and some refinement in moral taste, distinguish the eighteenth
+century type of tragedy.
+
+The bird, caged and clipped, no longer sang. There was no poetry left in
+tragedy, and no human nature. Was there anything, then, in this type that
+showed advance over the preceding centuries, or anything that offered
+promise for future development? Not one of the literary forms in which the
+eighteenth century excelled, and not one fully representing the
+pseudo-classical theories, tragedy cannot be fairly judged as representing
+classicism _versus_ romanticism. It merely presents a deteriorated English
+tradition modified and narrowed by pseudo-classical rules and theory. Yet
+it corrected and modified English tradition where it needed corrections and
+modifications, without quite denationalizing it. The admixture of comedy,
+prone to become gross farce, the horrors and bloodshed, and the brutal and
+revolting themes were rightly abandoned. In structure there was a more
+positive reformation. Stage illusion and precision of effect may be aided
+by an observance of the unities, and the limitation of the action to a
+single plot, a few persons, and a few scenes,--Shakespeare and encomiasts
+of his art to the contrary notwithstanding. It must be added that in
+practice the unities are likely to result in a counter-balancing defect, in
+a concentration of incident improbable and artificial, as often in
+eighteenth century tragedies, and even in Ibsen. The pseudo-classicists
+erred mainly in taking their rules as masters instead of as guides. Yet
+eighteenth century tragedy deserves this meed of praise that it sought for
+literary form, which preceding tragedy had largely lacked; and its attempts
+to secure this offered useful lessons for the future. But here the
+usefulness of its dramatic art ends. In the limitation of what could be
+acted and of what belonged to the species, it was suicidal. French tragedy
+in its effort to imitate Greek failed to take advantage of the resources of
+modern theatres; and English tragedy, halting between English and French
+precedents, simply confined itself to well-worn theatrical customs. There
+are not only no new subjects or characters, there are no new situations,
+surprises, or catastrophes, no new methods of exposition or dialogue. Some
+of the worst of the old conventions survived, as the soliloquies, which
+continue long, frequent, and undisguised, but it would be hard to find even
+a bit of stage business that was new. Eighteenth century tragedy made no
+adequate demands of its splendid theatres and great actors.[38]
+
+The only daring departure from the prevailing type, and the most important
+contribution to the general development of European tragedy in the
+eighteenth century, came in the success of "George Barnwell, or the London
+Merchant" (1731). This was the first tragedy of George Lillo, a London
+jeweler, who had hitherto had no known theatrical or literary connections,
+save for one unsuccessful play. It was followed within a few years by
+another domestic tragedy, "Fatal Curiosity," two tragedies of the regular
+type, "The Christian Hero" and the posthumous "Elmerick," and by
+adaptations of "Pericles" and "Arden of Feversham." The two domestic
+tragedies differ somewhat in both form and purpose. "The London Merchant,"
+in prose, tells the story of Barnwell's downfall through the courtesan
+Millwood, his murder of his uncle at her instigation, and the final
+execution of both criminals. Barnwell's repentance is much dwelt upon, and
+the moral lesson is enforced in every line. "The Fatal Curiosity," in blank
+verse, tells of a frightful murder of a son by a father at the instigation
+of the mother. From the innocent "curiosity" of the long-lost son in
+concealing his identity from his parents, there is traced the chain of
+circumstances which finally drive the poverty-stricken and wretched couple
+to the murder of the stranger. The play is thus nearer to Greek than modern
+ideas of tragedy, in that it represents destiny as something separate from
+character, and it links itself with the German species of
+_Schicksalstragödie_, which indeed it directly influenced. "The London
+Merchant," on the contrary, seeks the causes and effects of crime in a
+crude and popular presentation of character that always makes the most of
+human will and sentiment.
+
+Daring and important as was Lillo's innovation, it was by no means without
+progenitors and near kinsmen. The relations of his plays to Elizabethan
+domestic tragedies are evident. Like "Arden of Feversham," which Lillo may
+have been copying, "The London Merchant" presents a murder, portrays a
+monstrous woman, and ends with an execution. Like the Elizabethan plays,
+Lillo's are bald, detailed, and moralizing. The very pleas that he advances
+in his dedication for realism and liberty had been advanced in "Arden" and
+the "Warning for Fair Women." Moreover, while since 1660 no tragedies had
+dealt solely with middle-class society, there had been much chafing against
+the restrictions that limited tragedy to princes; and from English writers
+as well as Corneille had come forecasts of the sweeping democracy of
+Lillo's creed:--
+
+     "What I would infer is this, I think, evident truth;
+     that tragedy is so far from losing its dignity, by
+     being accommodated to the circumstances of the
+     generality of mankind, that it is more truly august in
+     proportion to the extent of its influence, and the
+     numbers that are properly affected by it. As it is more
+     truly great to be the instrument of good to many, who
+     stand in need of our assistance, than to a very small
+     part of that number."[39]
+
+Southerne, Otway, and Rowe had won great success for domestic themes, and
+their examples were naturally cited in the prologue which introduced "The
+Merchant." Comedy might also have been summoned to support. After the
+scourging from Collier it had joined in the general movement at the
+beginning of the century toward sentiment and moralizing. Sentimental
+comedy, seeking both pathos and a moral, may be said to begin in England
+at least as early as Colley Cibber's "Careless Husband" (1704) and Steele's
+"Tender Husband" (1705). Steele's "Conscious Lovers" (1722) shows the
+species in full development. More general but not less important
+encouragements for realism in tragedy came from the realistic tendencies
+manifest in the literature of the preceding generation, notably in the
+novels of Defoe, and from the moralistic tendencies everywhere manifest in
+both fiction and drama. Lillo was one with his time, though out with truth
+and art, in thinking "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy
+is, the more excellent that piece must be of its kind."[40] The ascendancy
+of the middle class in letters, their expanding social life, their
+attachment to a conventional morality and a utilitarian art, and their
+delight in sentimentality, all help to explain the appearance of "George
+Barnwell." Lillo was writing for a generation that had "The Fair Penitent"
+and was waiting for "Pamela."
+
+Lillo's work, however, was none the less that of a pioneer. "The Fatal
+Curiosity" had a special influence, beginning forty years after its
+appearance, in the German tragedies of destiny; and "The London Merchant,"
+soon after its publication, became of importance in both France and
+Germany. In France its welcome was prepared by the growth of a species of
+sentimental comedy paralleling the English, and it was translated in time
+(1748) to serve as an example and stimulant to Diderot's plays and
+theories. Even before the publication of his "Le Fils Naturel"[41] (1757),
+and "Le Père de Famille"[42] (1758), Lessing's "Miss Sara Sampson" (1755)
+had appeared directly modeled on "The London Merchant." Through Diderot and
+Lessing and, a little later, through German translations of Lillo's plays,
+domestic tragedy continued its leavening work in the German drama. By that
+time, sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy were returning from France
+and Germany to influence the English drama.
+
+In England the direct stream of domestic tragedy never flowed high. A
+one-act play, "Fatal Extravagance," in prose, had appeared in 1721 under
+the patronage of Aaron Hill, and was revived the year before the success of
+"Barnwell," and later enlarged into five acts. There were a few
+successors--"Caelia, or the Perjured Lover" (1732), by Charles Johnson,
+presenting a Lovelace-like protagonist; "Love the Cause and Cure of Grief"
+(1743), a three-act play in prose; and Victor's adaptation of "A Woman
+Killed with Kindness" (1776). Far more important than any of these was
+Moore's "Gamester" (1753), long a stock play, and almost as influential on
+the continent as "Barnwell." Like "The Yorkshire Tragedy," it pictures the
+horrors of gaming. The gamester, his long-suffering wife, a faithful
+servant, a spirited girl, her lover, the intriguing villain, and his
+accomplices play a story of far more insistent dramatic power than Lillo's
+and of no less sentimental and moral conclusiveness. Cumberland's
+"Mysterious Husband" (1783) is a later and less crude representative of the
+same species.[43]
+
+     Lord Davenant has deceived his wife into marrying him
+     by slandering her lover Dormer. Later he has entrapped
+     Dormer's sister into a pretended marriage and then
+     deserted her. She, supposing her husband dead, marries
+     Lord Davenant's son. On their marriage day, Dormer
+     returns; Lord Davenant is discovered and kills himself.
+
+Though a man and not a woman is the central figure of this social
+entanglement, we are reminded of the Tanquerays and Ebbsmiths of a later
+day in its powerful and not unveracious presentation of domestic ruin.
+
+One reason for the failure of Lillo's pioneering to arouse a larger
+following in tragedy was the possession which comedy had taken of both
+domestic sentiment and morality. The species of sentimental and tearful
+comedy, which had already by 1730 appeared in both England and France, soon
+flourished in both countries. Their vogue was diminished by the success of
+"She Stoops to Conquer" and "The Rivals," but there was a further
+development during the last thirty years of the century in the plays of
+Cumberland, Holcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, and others. A certain amount of low
+comedy was, after "The Rivals," admitted to be necessary, as Holcroft avows
+in the preface to "Duplicity," but in such plays as his "Duplicity" and
+"Road to Ruin," or Cumberland's "The Jew" and "The Wheel of Fortune,"
+suffering abounds, ruin is imminent, there is much weeping, and a salient
+moral lesson. The suffering usually is confined to loss of fortune or
+temptation of virtue, and the moral lesson is directed against gaming, or
+loose living, or marital infidelity upon the part of the husband. The
+intriguing villain in this kind of play sinks to insignificance, and the
+moving force is likely to be a humanitarian benefactor who rescues the lost
+fortune or saves the heroine from the hated marriage. Occasionally this
+type of serious comedy comes close to tragedy. In Holcroft's "Deserted
+Daughter" (1795), a revamping of Cumberland's "Fashionable Lover," the
+father has disowned his daughter by his first marriage, and, through his
+wicked agent, she has been sent to a house of ill-fame. Not knowing his own
+daughter, the father, ruined in fortune and conscience, plans to aid a
+friend to secure her, and himself visits her. The situation is ghastly
+enough, but all comes out happily. The happy ending was in fact the dram of
+eale that corrupted the whole substance of this sentimental comedy. The
+theatrical necessity of a happy ending forbade either tragedy or a serious
+study of life. It compelled the dramatist to devote a large part of a play
+to preparing for the reconciliation, to spend much time on youthful love,
+to maintain a lightness of tone throughout; and it destroyed the
+possibility of tracing out character and incident to anything like a
+logical conclusion. The domestic drama, devoted to a serious presentation
+of social life, had its opportunity in the eighteenth as well as in the
+twentieth century. It shrank from tragedy; it advanced as far as attacking
+fashionable excesses, or as dramatizing moral theses, but it never got
+beyond the lovers who must be united and the everything that must come out
+well. It resigned itself to sentimentality and false conclusions, and was
+naturally overwhelmed by the theatrically more captivating sentimentality
+and falsity of Kotzebue. When "The London Merchant" and "The Gamester"
+encouraged the vogue of sentimental comedy, they nourished an ingrate which
+destroyed the legitimate brood of domestic tragedy. In the theatres men
+took their realism sugared by a sentimentality that sent them home
+contented. But Lillo's work was not unheeded by the genius who in "Tom
+Jones" and "Amelia" gave literary greatness to a realistic study of manners
+and morals. The sentimentalizing and moralizing of the middle classes,
+which from the time of Southerne had threatened to have their say on the
+stage, found their spokesman in the author of "Clarissa Harlowe."
+
+In the last third of the century the various social, intellectual, and
+imaginative changes that make up the beginnings of the Romantic movement
+had their effect upon tragedy, but only in a partial and secondary fashion.
+The drama was already losing place to the novel in popularity, and showing
+signs of becoming a sort of literary by-product. Successful novels were
+made over into plays, and the various romantic tendencies to medievalism,
+melancholy, supernaturalism, and naturalism found expression in novel or
+verse rather than in play. The reawakening interest in the Elizabethan
+dramatists was represented by a revival of a number of the plays of
+Massinger and of Beaumont and Fletcher,[44] and imitations of Elizabethan
+diction became frequent. A more important departure was furnished by the
+so-called Terrific School of fiction. Medieval stories and scenes, and the
+various accessories of horror, ghosts, graveyards, dungeons, vaults, and
+the midnight bell had never been lacking in eighteenth century tragedy, but
+the novels of Walpole and his successors offered some novelties. Walpole's
+own unacted "Mysterious Mother" (1768), perhaps the most powerful of the
+Gothic tragedies, was the pioneer of the movement. Robert Jephson, whose
+"Braganza" (1775) was heralded as
+
+    "His; no French tragedy,--tame, polish'd, dull by rule!
+    Vigorous he comes, and warm from Shakespeare's school,"
+
+produced in 1781 an adaptation of Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," called
+"The Count of Narbonne," which, as the epilogue boasts,
+
+               "Midst the placid murmurings of Love
+    Rolls the rough tide of Gothick force along."
+
+His "Julia" (1787), another popular play with his usual abundance of
+soliloquies, tells a story of Elizabethan villany; and there were a few
+other Gothic attempts, as Cumberland's "Carmelite" (1784), before Lewis's
+"Castle Spectre" (1797) carried the town by storm. The further history of
+the terrific tragedies belongs to the next chapter, as does that of the
+German importations which culminated in the craze for Kotzebue, but it may
+be noted here that "Werter," acted in 1785, and "Emilia Galotti," acted in
+1794, were among the earlier indications of German influence on the stage.
+
+By 1790 the decadence of English tragedy had apparently run its course and
+nearly come to a full stop. The freedom and independence of Elizabethan
+days had degenerated by the time of Charles I into a fairly definite type.
+That type, maintained in the Restoration period, though with modifications
+and innovations, had now become conventionalized, debased, sterile. French
+influence had proved unprocreative. In spite of the activities of the
+theatres, the inspiration of Shakespeare, and the assistance of great
+actors and actresses, tragedy had failed to produce literature comparable
+to that of its rival, the novel. The drama, to be sure, had played a large
+part, both in tragedy and comedy, in reflecting and promoting the
+sentimentality and moralizing common in the literature of the century;
+Otway, Southerne, and Rowe had in a way fathered the sentimental novels.
+But in tragedy their Isabellas and Calistas had no successors to rank with
+Clarissa and Amelia. If tragedy through its alliance with sentiment failed
+of permanent advance, it was still more unsuccessful in representing the
+reasonableness, typicality, and austerity which the classical conception
+required. It was half-hearted, turning now to Shakespeare, now to Voltaire,
+but never producing anything not conventionalized and dull. The escapes
+from its dullness remained until the very end of the century only
+half-opened doors. Through the door opened by "Barnwell" and "The
+Gamester," the drama saw only the broad path that led back to
+sentimentality and overlooked the straight and narrow way leading to
+realism and truth. Over the threshold that opened to medieval castles and
+chambers of horrors it was still hesitating. The divorce between literature
+and the stage had widened, and tragedy failed to attract genius to its
+rescue. Crabbe did not write a tragedy of the village, and Burns did not
+summon poetry and passion to the stage.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward's _History of Dramatic Literature_ ends with the death of Queen Anne;
+and there is no adequate history of the English drama for the last two
+centuries, and no good bibliography. Genest continues to be the main source
+of information. Lowe's _Bibliographical Account_ and the histories of the
+theatre noted in the last chapter are useful for the matter of the present.
+In addition, _The History and Illustration of the London Theatres_, by
+Chas. Dibdin, Jr. (1826); Victor's _History of the Theatres of London and
+Dublin_ (1761); W. C. Dalton's _History of the Theatres_, 1771-95; and _The
+Dramatic Censor_ (1770) become available for this period. A large number of
+memoirs of actors also supply information in regard to the drama. _An
+Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, written by himself_
+(1750), reviews the Restoration period as well. Others of interest are:
+Davies's _Memoirs of Garrick_ (1780); Murphy's _Life of Garrick_ (1801);
+Boaden's _Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons_ (1827) and _Memoirs of Kemble_ (1825);
+Cumberland's _Memoir_ (1806); Mudford's _Critical Examination of the
+Writings of Richard Cumberland_, etc. (1812); Boaden's _Memoirs of Mrs.
+Inchbald_ (1833); _Private Correspondence of David Garrick_ (1831-32);
+Holcroft's _Memoirs_, ed. by Hazlitt (1816); Cooke's _Memoirs of Charles
+Macklin_ (2d ed., 1808).
+
+The plays by authors of note can be found in the collected editions of
+their works, the more popular plays in the various collections noted in the
+last chapter. The majority of the tragedies, however, have never been
+reprinted and can be obtained only in the original editions. Dramatic
+criticism of the period can be studied in various essays by Addison,
+Steele, Gildon, Dennis, and Dr. Johnson, especially his Preface to the
+edition of Shakespeare and his _Lives of the Poets_. Lord Kames's _Elements
+of Criticism_ (1762) was highly approved in its own day; and several essays
+on tragedy are of historical interest: William Guthrie's _Essay on Tragedy_
+(1747); Mrs. Montagu's _Essay on the Genius and Writing of Shakespeare_
+(1769); Edwin Taylor's _Cursory Remarks on Tragedy_ (1774); William Cook's
+_Elements of Dramatic Criticism_ (1775); and Hodson's _Observations on
+Tragedy_, prefixed to his tragedy _Zoraida_ (1780).
+
+Beljame's _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre_ bears on this
+as on the preceding chapter. Voltaire's influence on English tragedy has
+never been fully studied, but the following recent books bear on his
+relations with England: A. Ballantyne's _Voltaire's Visit to England_
+(1893); J. Churton Collins's _Bolingbroke, a historical study, and Voltaire
+in England_ (1886); Lounsbury's _Shakespeare and Voltaire_ (1902), which
+gives much information on the drama and criticism of the period and
+sufficient directory to Voltaire's comment on the English drama; and
+Jusserand's _Shakespeare en France_, which is also very valuable for this
+period. Miss Canfield's study of _Corneille and Racine in England_ is also
+of marked service; and L. Morel's _James Thomson_ (Paris, 1895) gives a
+very full study of Thomson's plays and literary relations. The
+_Belles-Lettres Series_ contains editions with introductions of plays of
+Rowe, ed. Miss Sophie Hart; and of Lillo, ed. A. W. Ward (1906). Dr. Ward's
+introduction is particularly valuable for its sketch of the course of
+domestic tragedy and sentimental comedy on the continent. From the notes in
+these various studies, and from _La Littérature comparée, essai
+bibliographique_, by Louis P. Betz, Strasbourg, 1904, direction can be had
+to a number of monographs dealing with special phases of the relations
+between the dramas of England and France, and, toward the end of the
+century, between England and Germany.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[28] For comparisons of the two plays, see Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on the
+Drama," Cumberland's _Observer_, Nos. 77, 78, 79; and Gifford's
+introduction to his edition of Massinger.
+
+[29] See _Corneille and Racine in England_. Dorothea Canfield. New York,
+1904.
+
+[30] Its only appearance on the stage recorded by Genest was in Capell's
+adaptation, acted six times by Garrick in 1759.
+
+[31] _Brutus_ (1734), _Zara_ (1736), _Alzira_ (1736), _Mahomet_ (1744),
+_Merope_ (1749), _Orphan of China_ (1759), _Orestes_ (1769), _Almida_
+(1771) (from _Tancrède_), _Semiramis_ (1776). See, also, Hoole's _Cyrus_
+(1768), Cradock's _Zobeide_ (1771), Murphy's _Alzuma_ (1773), and Brooke's
+_Imposter_ (1778), not acted.
+
+[32] Professor Lounsbury seems mistaken in finding a "sudden cessation of
+interest in Voltaire" after 1750. _Shakespere and Voltaire_, pp. 304, 305.
+He neglects the later popularity of _The Orphan of China_ and the continued
+popularity of plays earlier translated.
+
+[33] _Le théâtre anglais_ (1746-49) of Pierre de La Place contained in its
+8 vols. synopses and partial translations of the following plays:
+_Othello_, _3 Henry VI_, Richard III, Hamlet, _Macbeth_, _Cymbeline_,
+_Julius Cæsar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens_, _Merry Wives of
+Windsor_, _The Maid's Tragedy_, _Catiline_, _The Fair Penitent_, _Venice
+Preserved_, _Aureng Zebe_, _The Mourning Bride_, _Tamerlane_, _Siege of
+Damascus_ (by Hughes, 1720), _Busiris_, _Love for Love_, _The Innocent
+Adultery_, _Cato_, _The Funeral_ (Steele, 1702). This list, in which it
+will be noticed tragedy greatly predominates, represents fairly the English
+taste of the time.
+
+[34] Dr. Rundle, Letters, quoted by Morel, _James Thomson_, p. 82.
+
+[35] _Gil Blas_, Book 4, "Le Mariage de vengeance."
+
+[36] For various references to Thomson in Voltaire's Letters, see Morel,
+_op. cit._ pp. 192-194; and a letter on the French translation of _Tancred
+and Sigismunda_, p. 153.
+
+[37] The following list includes all eighteenth century tragedies, not
+mentioned in the text, that achieved any considerable popularity. These all
+became stock plays, and most were acted in the nineteenth century. Hughes,
+_Siege of Damascus_(1720); Fenton, _Mariamne_(1723); Jones, _Earl of Essex_
+(1753), which superseded Banks's play as a stage favorite; Brown,
+_Barbarossa_ (1754); Francklin, _Earl of Warwick_ (1766); Hartson,
+_Countess of Salisbury_ (1767); Murphy, _Zenobia_ (1768), and _The Grecian
+Daughter_ (1772), which gave a famous part, Euphrasia, to Mrs. Siddons and
+later to Miss Fannie Kemble.
+
+[38] The eighteenth century was not blind to the absurdities of its
+tragedies, but made fun of them without stint. The number of burlesque
+tragedies is large and includes: Gay's _What d'ye Call It_ (1715); Carey's
+_Chrononhotonthologos_ (1734); Fielding's _Tom Thumb_ (1730); Foote's
+_Tragedy a la Mode_ (1764); and Sheridan's _Critic_ (1779).
+
+[39] Dedication to _The London Merchant_.
+
+[40] Dedication to _The London Merchant_.
+
+[41] Translated into English as _Dorval, or the Test of Virtue_(1767).
+
+[42] Translated 1770, and as _A Family Picture_ (1781). Also, cf. General
+Burgoyne's _Heiress_ (1786), which borrows from _Le Père de Famille_, and
+Holcroft's _Love's Frailties_ (1794), based on a German adaptation.
+
+[43] Criticised in _The Critical Review_, lv, 151, because of its
+introduction of a comic character.
+
+[44] The elder Colman was a leader in this revival. Besides the few
+comedies which remained on the stock list and "Philaster," which was
+frequently acted at this time, the following Elizabethan plays were revived
+in the decade 1778-88: _Bonduca_, _Bondman_, _City Madam_, _Duke of Milan_,
+_Knight of Malta_, _A King and No King_, _Marcella_ (based on _The
+Changeling_), _Maid of Honor_, _The Picture_, _The Pilgrim_, _Scornful
+Lady_ (altered as _The Capricious Lady_), _Triumph of Honor_, _Women
+Pleased_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
+
+
+The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the
+nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The
+eighteenth century had been, as we have seen, a time of stagnation in
+tragedy and of little dramatic advance in any direction. The theatregoer of
+1720 would in 1780 have found the same plays or others similar in kind;
+but, had he postponed his visit yet twenty years, he would have entered a
+new theatrical world of romance, musical plays, and German novelties. By
+that time nearly all the factors of importance in the history of the stage
+during the first half of the nineteenth century had made their appearance.
+New departures in both tragedy and comedy, and a theatrically important
+_tertium quid_ were all instituted. And new ideas, new themes, and new
+stories witnessed the changing taste and gave promise of the enlargement of
+the imaginative horizon which the new romanticism was to produce.
+
+We have seen that, while neither realistic tragedy nor sentimental comedy
+had experienced a notable development, they had been departures from
+long-standing conventions. Tragedies in three acts, tragedies in prose,
+tragedies on domestic themes, tragedies without princes, tragedies of the
+present, all gave some encouragement for further novelty and experiment.
+The several varieties of "soft tragedy and genteel comedy" departed far
+enough from the standards of both species to suggest a dramatic development
+that should discard the traditional limitations. This changing taste,
+however, was seized by German plays and dramatized "tales of terror." The
+large and varied influence of German poetry, criticism, and philosophy upon
+the romantic movement in England can be noticed here only so far as it
+affected the drama. The plays of Lessing and the early plays of Goethe and
+Schiller made little impression on the English stage, though they exercised
+an immediate influence on the reading public and on most of the young men
+"standing on the forehead of the age to come." The conquest of the English
+stage was made at its point of greatest vulnerability--its
+sentimentality--by one who seemed the very Napoleon of the drama, Kotzebue,
+the conqueror of the theatres of all western Europe. In 1798 "The Stranger"
+("Menschenhass und Reue") took Drury Lane by storm, and the next year
+Sheridan's "Pizarro," an adaptation of "Die Spanier in Peru," plus some
+eloquence and some songs, gained a still more brilliant success and drew
+even George III to the theatre. For several years Kotzebue reigned supreme;
+twenty or more of his plays were translated; many were acted; "Pizarro"
+alone had passed through twenty-nine editions by 1811, besides other
+English and American versions of the play. Kotzebue's triumph was due in
+part to his great skill in stage-craft, and in part to his adroit appeal to
+the more superficial sentiments for social and political revolution that
+were everywhere stirring. When it is compared with preceding sentimental
+comedy, the success of "The Stranger" is easily understood. It has the
+theatrical merit of arousing curiosity at the beginning and keeping it on
+question until the last moment; and it deals, over-sentimentally of course,
+with a social question of dramatic value and of especial piquancy at a time
+when many conventions seemed tottering,--should an erring wife be taken
+back again by her husband? The theme of "A Woman Killed with Kindness,"
+"Jane Shore," and "The Fair Penitent" was given a new interest and a new
+solution. "Pizarro," retaining much of the plot familiar in English tragedy
+since the time of Dryden's "Indian Emperor," has two lovers, opponents in
+war, and two heroines, one vengeful, the other angelic, but makes the real
+hero the renouncing lover, who sacrifices all for the happiness of the
+angel who loves not him but his friend. Under these new auspices the fair
+penitent and the renunciatory hero began long careers in English drama and
+fiction. But neither these nor any other of Kotzebue's plays offered any
+guidance toward a serious interpretation of life or any innovations of real
+consequence in the English tragic tradition.
+
+If Kotzebue's plays offered little promise for the national drama, the
+native plays which rivaled them in popularity offered less. Castles, monks,
+dungeons, and so on had already become somewhat common in musical plays
+and operas[45] and occasionally in tragedies, when "The Castle Spectre" of
+Monk Lewis opened the flood-gates to "tales of terror" and their medieval
+and supernatural paraphernalia. "The Castle Spectre," which in the season
+of 1797-98 surpassed "The Stranger" and for a while held its own with
+Kotzebue, represents a new reign of romance. The new queen did not come
+from "perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." She belonged to the earlier
+days of the romantic movement, and made her conquest at the head of
+squadrons of medievalistic, terroristic, and Germanistic Goths. She is
+adequately described in the prologue to the play:--
+
+    "Far from the haunts of men, of vice the foe,
+    The moon-struck child of genius and of woe,
+    Versed in each magic spell, and dear to fame,
+    A fair enchantress dwells, Romance her name,
+    She loathes the sun or blazing taper's light:
+    The moon-beam'd landscape and tempestuous night
+    Alone she loves; and oft, with glimmering lamp,
+    Near graves new-opened, or midst dungeons damp,
+    Drear forests, ruin'd aisles, and haunted towers,
+    Forlorn she roves, and raves away the hours!
+    Anon, when storms howl loud and lash the deep,
+    Desperate she climbs the sea-rock's beetling steep;
+    There wildly strikes her harp's fantastic strings,
+    Tells to the moon how grief her bosom wrings,
+    And while her strange song chaunts fictitious ills,
+    In wounded hearts Oblivion's balm distils."
+
+The "drama," as it was called, is in prose, and is a medley of the various
+terroristic novels, including the two most famous, "The Castle of Otranto"
+and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and adding something from Schiller's
+"Robbers" and from Shakespeare. There is a haunted castle, a jocose monk, a
+fool, a marvelous dungeon, a fisherman's hut, a ghost, a midnight bell, and
+songs and elaborate scenery. The villain, a feudal baron attended by
+negroes, is finally killed by the heroine, who saves her imprisoned father
+and escapes with the hero.
+
+The signs of life that succeeded the long petrifaction of the eighteenth
+century drama and the beginning of the revolutionary epoch thus resulted
+only in theatrical novelties and in no serious dramatic movement. All
+serious drama was, indeed, threatened by the ascendancy of the
+"illegitimate" drama of music and dumb show. The causes leading to the rise
+of this class and its ensuing history were in large measure connected with
+the theatres themselves. Even before the new romanticism had invaded the
+drama, changes in theatrical conditions of far-reaching importance were
+well under way. The monopoly exercised by the Drury Lane and Covent Garden
+theatres was first threatened about 1730 by the success of a few minor
+theatres which gave musical, acrobatic, or dramatic entertainments. The old
+theatres were successful in maintaining their monopoly in regular plays,
+but the irregular houses gained permission to give performances under the
+loosely defined term "burletta." A "burletta" was supposed to have a
+musical accompaniment, but it proved difficult to say how little music and
+how much of a drama might be included under the term. Henceforth, the
+regular drama had, in addition to the rivalry of Italian and English
+operas, that of musical and dramatic medleys; and the patent houses had to
+face the rivalry of playhouses that infringed as far as they dared on the
+legitimate drama. The patent theatres, with their vested rights in the
+stock plays and their obligation to maintain Dryden, Otway, and
+Shakespeare, offered no great inducements to new authors. This was
+particularly true, after the rebuilding and enlargement of both theatres in
+1791 and 1794, when the increased cost of bringing out a play and the
+increased difficulty in acting or hearing an unfamiliar play led Kemble
+practically to abandon any attempt to produce new tragedies. The minor
+theatres, which were growing in importance, legally limited to the field of
+musical performances, and excluded from the regular drama except by trick,
+could offer little support to the serious dramatist. As a result, musical
+plays, operettas, and finally a new type, the "melodrame," flourished in
+the minor houses and found their way soon into the two great theatres. When
+in 1808-09 these were burned, the rivalry with the minors had become acute.
+The old theatres were rebuilt of so great a size that they proved
+unsuitable for any spoken drama. Through their great actors, Kemble, Kean,
+and later Macready, they maintained Shakespearean drama and a few of the
+old stock plays; but they were forced for the rest of the time to resort to
+melodrama, spectacle, or pantomime. The minors, though they now became
+more daring in their invasions of legitimate drama, naturally continued the
+kind of entertainments at which they had succeeded and to which they had
+forced the great theatres to succumb. The long struggle for a free stage
+was now nearing its end; the patent theatres were maintained with
+increasing difficulty; the minors prospered. With the death of Kean in
+1833, a great prop of the patent theatres fell; and though the agitation
+for parliamentary reform in that year failed, and the final legislation
+against theatrical monopoly was not passed until 1847, the great theatres
+ceased to determine the history of the drama. Macready's two periods of
+management, 1837-39 and 1841-43, were the final efforts to restore the old
+régime that had maintained tragedy since the Restoration.
+
+The "illegitimate" drama that triumphed in the theatres comprised a wide
+range of entertainments, mostly farcical in their dramatic elements. Toward
+the end of the eighteenth century the rage for dumb show and musical
+additions invaded the regular drama. Even Kotzebue had to be decked out
+with songs and choruses. Moreover, a peculiar species of the illegitimate
+drama developed in the plays of Andrews, Dibdin, Reynolds, Boaden, and
+Colman the younger that served as a half substitute for tragedy. This
+species seems to have been mainly due to the ingenuity of George Colman.
+Those of his plays verging on tragedy, of which "The Battle of Hexham"
+(1789), "The Surrender of Calais" (1791), "The Mountaineers" (1793), and
+"The Iron Chest" (1796) are the chief, are lively medleys of tragedy,
+comedy, opera, and farce. In each a tragic story is told in blank verse,
+audaciously Shakespearean, and this is mixed with broad comedy or farce in
+prose. There is a bustling action with shifting scenes, much spectacle,
+many songs, solos, duets, or choruses, for which a crowd of soldiers,
+monks, beggars, foresters, or the like, is always within call. "The
+Surrender of Calais" tells the story of Queen Philippa's mercy; "The Iron
+Chest" is a dramatization of "Caleb Williams"; "The Battle of Hexham" is a
+sort of musicalized chronicle history, presenting the adventures of Adeline
+in search of her husband, who turns out to be a captain of a band of
+robbers and the rescuer of Queen Margaret and the prince after the battle
+of Hexham. "The Mountaineers," suggested by a story in "Don Quixote," finds
+its land of romance in Spain, where a Christian prisoner elopes with the
+daughter of his Moorish jailer, accompanied by a stage Irishman as
+_gracioso_; and this group, when recaptured, are rescued by Octavian, a
+half-mad tragic soliloquizer, who also recovers his long-lost love, and was
+thought to be extremely impressive when impersonated by Kemble. In his use
+of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of
+Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable
+cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a
+curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the
+theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the
+Elizabethan drama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His
+method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to
+connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and
+varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very
+phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their
+parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so
+well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity
+and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He
+popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English
+tragedy, and passed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession
+of the illegitimate drama.
+
+At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a
+still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the
+peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment
+there, the _mélodrame_. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its
+most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long
+ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The
+peculiar novelties of the _mélodrame_ were the supplementing of the
+dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both
+dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its
+songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding
+musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate
+held full sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and
+many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or
+machinery. From the start, _mélodrame_ allied itself to most of the
+paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon
+showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned
+Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in
+prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for
+thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels
+supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with
+one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several
+versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first
+large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a
+singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange
+scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and
+good among the characters, lent itself readily to a dramatization that
+required a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of action, music, and
+machinery. Comic scenes were, of course, _de rigueur_. "The Slave," by
+Morton, was one of the most enduring of the Colmanesque type. The serious
+plot, which presents Gambia, the slave, as the sacrificing hero, borrows
+from "The Curfew" and "Oronooko," and for its great scene improves upon the
+escape over the bridge in "Pizarro."[46]
+
+     After Clifton and Zelinda (whom Gambia hopelessly
+     adores) escape across the hanging bridge, Gambia climbs
+     up the tree from which it is suspended and cuts the
+     rope. The pursuing villains are foiled on the brink.
+     "We are safe, my husband," cries Zelinda from the other
+     side; but her child, safely hidden by Gambia, hears her
+     voice, and runs from his hiding-place,--on the wrong
+     side of the river.
+
+     _Child._ It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!
+
+     _Zelinda._ Alas! my child!
+
+     _Somerdyke._ Her child! Then we triumph--seize him! (_A
+     slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of
+     rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues._) Move one
+     step further, and you will see him buried in the
+     waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (_Holding
+     him up in the act of precipitating him._)
+
+     _Zelinda._ I do submit.
+
+     _Gambia._ Never! (_Gambia, who has concealed himself in
+     the branches, snatches the child up into the tree._)
+     Father, receive your child! (_Throws the child across
+     the stream._) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha!
+     (_Curtain._)
+
+The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species
+brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending
+for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than
+characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor
+features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show,
+strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the
+essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no
+literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres
+and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth
+century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, and music did not
+further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama.
+There was in England no relationship between the two as between Pixérécourt
+and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it
+absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes,
+rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to
+these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is
+curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of
+theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.
+
+The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of
+Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its
+medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments
+indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression
+suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in
+Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the
+popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of
+the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and
+thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth
+century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public
+favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the
+melodrama, tragedy has tended either to assume the garb of its rivals, or
+to conform its appeal to a select audience.
+
+In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and the melodrama and the
+melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy.
+The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century
+had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays
+with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or
+otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men,
+Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were associated with
+the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were
+quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little
+literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction
+in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be
+acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists,
+while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its
+reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth,
+Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser
+poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted.
+These plays fall into two main classes, those that were acted and carried
+on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted.
+This second class, which for the first time becomes of some importance in
+the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are
+tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There
+are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to
+its requirements, and might easily be adapted for presentation. There are
+others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's
+later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre.
+These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that
+can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various classes of closet
+drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality
+that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the
+tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite
+variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they
+are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare
+and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage
+demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they
+seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage
+demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music,
+spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in
+terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in
+the beauty of verse.
+
+The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna
+Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first
+volume of her "Plays on the Passions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and
+"The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on
+hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series,
+illustrating each of the dominant passions by a tragedy and a comedy. Her
+preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who
+at Alfoxden were polishing their own tragedies and planning a revolution in
+poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama.
+She proposed to devote a play to the illustration of a single passion, to
+trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that
+passion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This
+absorption with a study of emotion _per se_ led to a subordination of plot
+and all external incident, and--so she proposed--all poetic embellishment,
+to a searching study of isolated passion. Her first volume attracted
+attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without
+success. She continued, however, writing and publishing, completing the
+series of plays on passions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays,"
+twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a
+variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with
+witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults,
+knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon shining through vaulted windows.
+Her conception of a play of passion forbids motiving of character, or
+integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly
+observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls.
+There are many improbabilities, and the passions are exposed mainly in
+soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one
+wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purple patches. It rarely
+if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the
+plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and
+much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a
+bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one
+being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the
+admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers.
+Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose
+won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more
+imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the
+theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was
+justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the
+Michigan Historical Society."
+
+Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing
+tragedies of passions[47] arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like
+her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's
+"Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he
+thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the
+revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of
+Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated
+by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice." Coleridge's
+"Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books
+rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and
+pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage
+success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres.
+The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and
+seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the
+inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle
+were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was
+Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic
+modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the
+villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan
+revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the
+main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the
+interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not
+contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made
+veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the
+beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic
+passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little
+philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the
+"Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the
+movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge
+gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the
+managers. But even had he made the revisions that they required, he could
+hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his
+melodramatic action.
+
+Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and
+offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the
+exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness
+of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches
+something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his
+obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something
+of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though
+feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and
+Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they,
+and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like
+them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening
+outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing.
+"The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and
+refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two
+acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.
+
+From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813),
+literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. Godwin's plays,
+"Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's
+"Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted
+tragedy. When Lewis tried to give his terrific vein a little dignity and
+blank verse, even he failed on the stage.[48]
+
+After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the
+poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a
+large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half
+dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the
+"Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's
+plays was "Evadne," based on Shirley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted
+1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any
+preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements.
+Fazio's wife, jealous because of his infatuation for a countess, betrays
+her husband, and then for the remainder of the play is wildly remorseful.
+In spite of the extreme improbability of both the persons and the language,
+the story is told with dramatic directness and affords manifest
+opportunities for a great actress, seized upon by Miss O'Neill and later by
+Miss Cushman and, in an Italian adaptation, by Madame Ristori. A still
+greater theatrical success was won by Kean in "Brutus" (1818), a pastiche
+of the plays of Lee, Cumberland, and Downman composed by the American, John
+Howard Payne. Sheridan Knowles's "Virginius" (1820), followed by his "Caius
+Gracchus" (1823), and "William Tell" (1825), gave promise of a more
+permanent revival of the poetical drama. Knowles, an actor and a practical
+playwright, was also the friend and in a way the pupil of Lamb and Hazlitt,
+and he gained the coöperation of a great and ambitious actor, Macready. He
+united as no other writer of the generation had done, stage-craft and
+poetic ideals. "Virginius," the best of his tragedies, is still
+acted--excepting Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu," the only relic of early
+nineteenth century tragedy. The story, with its one great acting scene, is
+told after the Shakespearean model in very ornate and artificial verse. It
+mingles much scoffing at the rabble with romantic appeals for liberty,
+tricks Virginia out with a lover, and ends with the insanity of Virginius.
+Knowles's tragedies at the time of their presentation were only moderately
+successful, far less so than his absurd comedy, "The Hunchback"; and
+several poetic dramas by other writers fared worse. Thomas Wade's "Woman's
+Love," based on the Patient Griselda story, obtained a hearing in 1808, but
+his Marlowesque "Jew of Aragon" was hooted off the stage in 1830. But
+Procter's "Mirandola" was acted sixteen times in 1821, and Miss Mitford's
+"Rienzi" (1828) and Byron's "Werner" (1830) gained veritable triumphs.
+
+For about a decade longer poetic tragedy continued to contend for the
+theatre. Its main hope lay in Macready, and its hey-day was during his two
+periods of management of Drury Lane, 1837-39 and 1841-42. After the success
+of "Werner" ("Marino Faliero" had been earlier produced in 1821),
+"Sardanapalus" was brought out by Macready in 1833-34; and "The Two
+Foscari" later. Knowles's "Alfred the Great" and his "Bridal," an
+adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," won considerable
+success; and "The Pledge," a version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," in 1831
+heralded new support for romantic poetry in the drama. In the years 1836-37
+Macready introduced three new writers in the "Ion" of Talfourd, "Strafford"
+of Browning, and the "Duchess de la Vallière" of Bulwer-Lytton. Talfourd's
+tragedies, including two, "The Athenian Captive" and "Glencoe," later acted
+by Macready, are stiff and wooden, contributing little to the drama.
+Bulwer-Lytton's later plays, "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) and "Richelieu"
+(1839), were extremely successful and surpassed any preceding efforts of
+the romanticists to adapt poetry to the stage. "Richelieu" is by no means a
+great poem or free from claptrap, but it has the merit of being written to
+be spoken and in having its characters designed as parts of the action. The
+interest is not in the poetry--it reads much better with the omissions made
+for acting--but in the development of the character of the cardinal through
+the incidents. The failure of "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon" in 1843 marks
+the end of Macready's management and the end of romantic tragedy on the
+stage.
+
+Many of these acted plays gained what suitability they had for the stage by
+accident rather than design. Milman's "Fazio" was published several years
+before it was acted, and his later tragedies were decidedly closet dramas.
+Miss Mitford's "Julian" made little impression on the stage, and her other
+tragedies, except "Rienzi," still less. Byron's tragedies, which succeeded
+largely no doubt because of his reputation, were acted against his wish or
+after his death. And the various poetic tragedies that were written at
+about the same time as Byron's and Shelley's were mostly composed without
+thought of stage presentation. The surpassing genius of the greater poets
+has thrown into obscurity the work of these other young men, who in the
+decade after Waterloo faced the world with thin volumes of verse. But there
+have been few times in our literary history when the Muses have been so
+alluring, and Melpomene had her share of devotees. In John Wilson's "City
+of the Plague" (1816) a young naval officer wanders about plague-stricken
+London, through its bacchanals and horrors, buries his mother, discovers
+his betrothed, the ministering angel of the afflicted, and at last finds
+rest with her in the terrible crowded churchyard. The poem is grandly
+conceived and beautifully written in verse, occasionally Wordsworthian but
+without affectation or over-ornament. Two other closet dramatists offer
+rather less sincerity and impressiveness of conception but even more of
+poetic beauty. "Joseph and his Brethren" (1823), by Charles Wells, for a
+time the friend of Keats, was published when the author was twenty-three,
+and fifty years later revived and rewritten because of the appreciation of
+Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. Like the plays of Thomas Wade, it shows the
+influence of Marlowe in verse and plan. Long drawn out and in the main
+undramatic, there is imagination everywhere, especially in the remarkable
+scenes that depict the passion-inflamed Phraxanor, Potiphar's wife. Of the
+Elizabethans, too, was Beddoes, who studied Webster and Tourneur as well as
+Shelley and Keats, and whose verse at times fairly surpasses his masters.
+His "Bride's Tragedy" (1821), written when he was nineteen, is a play only
+in name, but it is a poem that joins terror and fascination as scarcely
+another since Webster and Ford. Here, as in his incompleted dramas and his
+"Death's Jest Book," published much later, loveliness masks with madness
+and death, and mockery with passion. It seems as if he were lavishing over
+strange juxtapositions of beauty and decay all the sensuous fascination of
+Keats and the lingering suggestiveness of Shelley's lyrics. One's
+admiration for his genius is tempered only by the thought of the greater
+things he might have done.
+
+Earlier than these poems was Landor's "Count Julian" (1812), which, like
+them, presents qualities suited for the closet and not for the stage. As in
+some of the "Imaginary Conversations," Landor takes it for granted that his
+audience understands the story and the motives of the actors as well as he
+himself. The reader gradually disentangles the situations and is stirred by
+the splendid poetry; but no audience could make out what it was all about.
+His other poetical tragedies, written a quarter of a century later, show no
+improvement of these defects, nor do they present dramatic themes as
+interesting or as powerfully conceived as those in "Count Julian."
+
+"Otho the Great," the tragedy which Keats hoped would lift him out of the
+mire,[49] was devised for Kean, and apparently accepted for Drury Lane.
+Charles Brown furnished him "description of each scene entire, with the
+characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with
+it"; and Keats merely wrote the verse up to the fifth act, when he took the
+entire management into his own hands. The result of this peculiar
+collaboration was what might have been expected. The plot and
+characterization follow old types; and the poetry, though not lacking in
+fine passages, is inferior to nearly everything else that Keats wrote in
+his _annus mirabilis_, 1819.
+
+Scott's dramas are somewhat out of place when grouped with these other
+closet tragedies, for they are varied in character, representing a number
+of the proclivities that we have noticed in the romantic drama.[50] "The
+House of Aspen," written in prose at about the time of "Goetz," was
+intended for the stage and considered by Kemble for representation. Based
+on a German tale and showing the influence of "Goetz," it offers no
+important deviations from the terroristic drama. "The Doom of Devorgoil,"
+designed for Terry at the Adelphi, is a melodrama with many songs and a
+mixture of mimic goblins with supernatural machinery that was found to be
+so objectionable as to prevent its performance. It is interesting as one of
+the very few cases in which a man of literary reputation undertook to meet
+the requirements of the illegitimate drama. None of the other plays, which
+are in blank verse, was intended for the stage. "Macduff's Cross" is a mere
+sketch in one act; "Halidon Hill" a two-act dramatization of border
+warfare; "Auchindrane," in three acts, is a more fully developed tragedy.
+"Halidon Hill" has a clearness and directness of characterization and a
+vigor of movement which suggest that had the auspices been more favorable,
+the historical drama might have had another great exponent. "Auchindrane,"
+though retaining a little of the Radcliffian mystery and mystification
+which Scott never quite outgrew, also tells its domestic story with a
+directness and verisimilitude not usual among the romanticists. German
+translation, terroristic tragedy, spectral melodrama, dramatic sketches for
+the closet, and domestic tragedy are all illustrated by these six plays;
+and their subjects and treatment also reflect the various attachments of
+Scott's literary career. They illustrate also the inability of literary
+genius to aid the theatre in this period, but they differ from most of the
+literary drama in their absence of subjectivity or attachment to theory.
+
+Byron's plays, like other poetical tragedies of the time, were written in
+accord with the writer's theories and counter to the prevailing theatrical
+practices; but Byron prided himself on departing from the methods of the
+Elizabethans or of his fellow romanticists, and on following the guidance
+of eighteenth century models. "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," and
+"Sardanapalus," all written 1820-21, attempt regularity of plot and
+observance of the unities, and profess Alfieri as a model. The two Venetian
+plays, however, recall Otway's "Venice Preserved," and their exaggeration
+of strange passions is quite in accord with the general practice of the
+romanticists. The plots are improbable, though selected from history, and
+aloof from general interest, for the resentment of the old doge at the
+insult to his wife and the unyielding vengeance of Loredano and, indeed,
+all the major passions are treated with an extravagance that becomes
+melodramatic and renders the persons all but unintelligible. With
+"Sardanapalus" the case is different. The dissolute, luxurious, but
+nobly-aspiring hero and his better angel, Myrrha, derive from the
+characters of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli a truth of passion that
+animates the rapid and spectacular action. A tragedy of palace intrigue,
+after the eighteenth century type, is thus reanimated by the romantic
+fervor of its passion, philosophy, and poetry. Any time from "The Mourning
+Bride" to "Zenobia" it might have triumphed on the stage, and so it did
+triumph when finally acted; but it summoned only a tithe of Byron's power.
+Quite different from any of these three plays, his "Werner" was obviously
+suited to its own day. Based on one of Harriet Lee's novels, it forsakes
+classical structure and exhibits all the paraphernalia and emotional
+horrors of the terrific drama. It was one of the greatest stage successes
+of the romantic drama, but it is no more deserving, either as a play or a
+poem, than a dozen of its rivals.
+
+Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from
+fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species.
+Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred"
+and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the
+Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that
+made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic
+poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned
+descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of
+elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to
+men."[51] The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their
+nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his
+fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its
+presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic
+tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds
+expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so
+characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man
+against society and providence make up the tragic theme. The tragedy of
+individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality,
+is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to
+the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation
+of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great
+dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion.
+Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet
+and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly
+seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of
+their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an
+eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to
+realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.
+
+Shelley's "Cenci" in a different way mirrors this eternal defeat that human
+struggle after justice must encounter. Deeply impressed by the current
+tradition about Beatrice Cenci, he made this story of incest and parricide
+the expression of his view of life and history as a conflict between
+tyranny and downtrodden innocence. Nowhere else in Shelley, not even in
+"Prometheus Unbound," does this world drama come out of the clouds and
+reveal itself with such clarity and power. There is passion in the persons,
+climax in the situations, and directness in the language such as the
+romantic drama had rarely shown. The philosophical conception and the
+tangle of human motives do not indeed quite harmonize. Beatrice's lie and
+her unworthy seeking after life are bits of the story which interfere with
+our acceptance of Beatrice the martyr, flaws that Browning would not have
+admitted. On the other hand, Shelley's philosophy overrides the story, as
+may be seen by a comparison of the tragedy with one of the earliest to show
+dawning romanticism. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother," which at this time
+Byron was praising as "the last tragedy," treats a more horrible story of
+incest with the interest mainly in the plot, holding in suspense the
+fearful solution until the end; "The Cenci" begins with the act of incest,
+and then tries to carry our interest solely to the two characters, one the
+embodiment of all inherited evil, the other, a pure and beautiful spirit
+striving madly and in vain to free herself from wrong that is might. The
+conquest of the stage, the writing of dramatic blank verse, and the
+endowment of this story of crime with representational truth were tasks too
+large to be accomplished in a single play; but, though faulty in the
+details of dramatic art, "The Cenci" is, for a first tragedy, without an
+equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry. The poet who
+shrank from comedy as from a wicked thing and who thought a story of incest
+possible in a London theatre, had much to learn before he could master the
+stage. But "The Cenci" reveals the maturing Shelley, who was opening his
+mind to new impressions, admiring "Cain" and "Don Juan," profiting from
+Æschylus and Calderon as well as Shakespeare, and who was seeing his
+allegories clothed in human form, and no longer only in images of mist and
+flame. As one reads one wonders,--had the play not been the last as well
+as his first tragedy? had it come at the beginning instead of nearly at the
+close of the romantic movement?
+
+In "Prometheus Unbound" there is even greater achievement in the
+presentation of this world conflict; and there Cain triumphs and Beatrice
+is purified. But the achievement is lyrical rather than dramatic, and has
+no proper place in the history of tragedy.
+
+In all these tragedies, whether acted or not, and whether works of genius
+or not, certain resemblances have been noted. They exhibit most of the
+elements that characterize the romantic movement as it stirred English
+poetry from the "Lyrical Ballads" to the first publications of Tennyson and
+Browning. Without realism in plot or language, and dealing always with what
+is unusual, improbable, and removed from the present, they made little
+effort to catch the interest of the average audience or to excite an
+interest common to ordinary experience. Their reaction against the
+frivolity of contemporary melodrama was as decided as their reaction
+against eighteenth century conventionality; but both impulses led to
+poetry, passion, and Shakespeare, but not to drama. They did not succeed in
+working out cause and effect of character through incident; when they
+desired to gain stage effectiveness, they merely borrowed from current
+melodrama or from the Elizabethans.
+
+Elizabethan influence is usually apparent in the choice of themes, in the
+devising of plot and situations, and particularly in the figurative and
+ornate phrasing. The revival of some Elizabethan plays on the stage, the
+vulgarization in the illegitimate drama of many of their incidents, and the
+general interest among readers at this time in the Elizabethan drama, all
+encouraged a fondness for madness, incest, battles, villany, and
+unrestrained passion of various kinds. In phrasing, the Elizabethan
+influence appears in all degrees; in the sympathetic emulation of Keats, in
+the amazing reproductions of Beddoes, or in the starched artificiality of
+the poetic embellishments of Milman, Knowles, or Procter. In general the
+style is redundant and florid. In such plays as were adapted for the stage,
+it will almost always be found that the mere curtailing of the figures,
+soliloquies, and episodes causes a marked improvement in the dramatic
+quality of the dialogue. Byron and Shelley both attempted to free their
+dramatic blank verse from conceits and artificialities, and to give it
+directness and lack of ornamentation corresponding to natural speech. In
+consequence, Byron's blank verse often makes a slovenly approach to prose,
+and Shelley's loses something of the beauty of his non-dramatic
+masterpieces; but on the whole, "Sardanapalus" and still more "Cain" and
+"The Cenci" show their greatness in this as in other respects, in the
+dramatic quality of their verse.
+
+Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror.
+The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral
+melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like
+Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is something of this in
+Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one
+of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a
+tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species.
+After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still
+found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate
+villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing
+influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising
+the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which
+furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have
+been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the
+devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy
+perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's
+"Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least
+encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of
+passion.
+
+Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley
+novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences
+of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the
+interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature,
+whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals,
+for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The
+treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss
+Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge, now became essential to tragedy; and we
+find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of
+the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which
+he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems
+to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on
+the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio"
+and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly
+for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius
+Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of
+these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic
+emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but
+they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities
+for rhetorical fervors.
+
+In nearly all the plays the main interest is not in plot, as in the
+eighteenth century, and not primarily in story, as in the Elizabethan
+period, but in the delineation of individual passion. "Lear," "Othello,"
+"Hamlet," and "Macbeth" are the models; but the passions are more
+distempered, more isolated, more abstracted from reason or sense than in
+Shakespeare. As in the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the
+influence of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans is most unmistakable in the
+prominence given to insanity and villany. But this prominence is also a
+natural result of the romanticists' prepossession with passion. In tragedy,
+they felt that some passions must be very evil and some ruinous; hence
+they devoted themselves to a study of malice and madness. Their villains
+are more vigorous than those of the eighteenth century, but they, too,
+imitate Iago; and the mad scenes always recall either Lear or Ophelia. The
+romanticists can realize passion for the moment, or display its variable
+moods; but they rarely succeed in making its extended portrayal convincing.
+They clung to the idea that the only way to depict passion was to eliminate
+all else. Even in the great writers passion absorbs the interest; in the
+minor plays it tears itself to tatters. Tragedy after tragedy represents
+passions, not conflicting but alternating, until one or the other turns to
+madness. As Lewis's prologue declared, Romance "raves away the hours." The
+conception of tragedy seems to be the burning up of the soul in passion,
+and the poets' main concern to describe the conflagration. The romanticists
+needed Lyttleton's advice, to read Shakespeare, but to study Racine.
+
+The conception of tragedy that requires the expression of passion working
+in individual men, and seeks in history or legend for examples of isolated
+effects of the great emotions, clearly involves something different from a
+veracious representation of life as we all see it, and something more than
+the confusion of passions run wild. According to contemporary philosophical
+criticism, as that of Schiller and Schelling, or that of Coleridge and
+Shelley, tragedy should take part in the search for universal truth; not
+universal in the eighteenth-century conception of typical characters and
+aphoristic generalizations, but universal in the sense that, in the words
+of Carlyle, it seeks the "interpretation of the divine idea in the world."
+Tragedy should investigate, as Lamb declared, "the grounds of the passion,
+its correspondence to a great and heroic nature," and should also seek to
+find in the riots of evil or the storms of passion symptoms of the struggle
+of Nature to rid itself of disease and fever, the presage of a higher unity
+for both man and the universe. Something of this is discernible in
+"Remorse" or elsewhere; there is a passionate demand for ethical realities
+in "Cain"; but the only positive presentation of an idealistic theory of
+tragedy is "The Cenci."
+
+Though tragedy thus reflects the changes working in the ideas and forms of
+literature, these changes are, of course, more distinctly indicated
+elsewhere. If we had no knowledge of other literature, and only tragedy to
+judge from, we could not clearly discern the far-reaching changes wrought
+by the romantic revival. Tragedy from 1800 to 1830 could be described as
+marking a return to the Elizabethans and Shakespeare, an absorption in the
+depiction of passion, a revival of poetic imagination in expression, an
+appeal to terror rather than to pity, and to the strange and mysterious
+rather than the reasonable; but it could not be said that the summation of
+these changes resulted in an extensive or enduring development.
+
+It is not easy to find a stopping-place for a history of English tragedy.
+In the case of the acted drama the close of Macready's management offers a
+definite end, for the ensuing twenty-five years are nearly a blank as far
+as acted tragedy is concerned. In the case of the unacted drama, however,
+there is no point of marked change. The deaths of Scott and Goethe mark a
+stage in European literature; and the Victorian era introduces new poets
+and novelists, new social and political conditions, and a new foreign
+influence in the French romanticists. But the closet dramas after 1830 are
+in many ways closely related to those of the generation before. Closet
+tragedy in the plays of Browning, Sir Henry Taylor, Matthew Arnold,
+Swinburne, and others, was largely the outcome of the theatrical and
+literary conditions which we have been tracing. Separated from the theatre,
+it offers, one must fear, little that is vital in the development of the
+drama, however impressive it may be as poetry. The appearance of new
+semi-dramatic species was a natural accompaniment of the continued
+departure of drama from the stage. Miss Mitford and Bulwer-Lytton had
+written "dramatic scenes." Later Landor's genius found its truest
+opportunity not in poetic plays, but in prose imaginary conversations, at
+their best splendidly dramatic. Browning turned from the theatre to
+dramatic lyrics, romances, and monologues. In fact, in the work of all the
+romantic dramatists, including Browning and Swinburne, dramatic power
+reveals itself in scenes and passages rather than in whole plays. Tragedy
+as a literary form, it may be repeated, is dependent for its life upon the
+theatre. Removed from the theatre, its integrity is gone, it develops
+strange and varied forms. Instead of tragedy, we have "My Last Duchess,"
+"The Ring and the Book," and the Mary Stuart trilogy.
+
+It is this separation from the theatre that seems to have been the main
+cause for the failure of the romantic movement in tragedy. We may, to be
+sure, find other causes in plenty. The genius of its great poets was
+lyrical rather than dramatic. Lyrical and narrative poetry and, above all,
+the novel absorbed both public interest and imaginative genius. Again,
+there was no free play for a revolution in tragedy, because there had been
+no tyranny. Classicism had never dominated the drama as in other European
+nations. In English tragedy of the eighteenth century, blank verse, however
+tainted by affectation, had kept the Elizabethan fondness for figure;
+structure, though following after French models, had maintained the
+traditions of English freedom; the subjects had kept open a wide range and
+had not neglected the medieval field; and sentiment, if not passion, had
+reigned. While the German and French romanticists found in Shakespeare an
+incentive to something new, the English romanticists could only elevate to
+omnipotence one who had long been the idol of the theatres. He was for them
+no innovator, but rather the unrecognized tyrant who held them back from
+real innovation. As Beddoes recognized in theory though not in practice,
+"the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold tramping fellow,--no
+reviver, even however good."
+
+But if we still ask why Coleridge or Beddoes should not have written
+tragedy as well as Schiller or Victor Hugo, why the tragedy of passion,
+revolt, and idealism, applied to history or legend, did not flourish in the
+time of the French Revolution and Napoleon, of Kemble and Kean, of Byron
+and Browning, the best answer must be found in the fact that theatrical
+conditions offered no encouragement to tragic drama, but almost forbade a
+serious attempt to learn the ways of the theatre or to deal in its debased
+wares.
+
+If theatrical conditions had been favorable, if the union of Macready and
+Browning could have continued, one fancies that the romantic drama might
+yet have succeeded. The chronicle of English tragedy finds its climax in
+the first act, with Shakespeare as its protagonist; henceforth, directed by
+his ghost, its action goes haltingly, vainly awaiting another climax and
+another protagonist. In Browning, it was, perhaps, nearer than ever before
+to finding both. Since the Restoration, no poet had come to the theatre so
+gifted with dramatic genius, no poet so concerned with the study of the
+vicissitudes of human motive, so alive to the dramatic values of crucial
+moments, so curious as to the meaning of passion and pain, suffering and
+evil, in the drama of life. "Strafford" and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" have
+the weaknesses of youth and experiment, but they are the plays of a pioneer
+who is not content with returning to the Elizabethans or the Greeks, but is
+seeking to convey through his stories and persons the truth that is in him.
+The study of Strafford is almost the first independent and acute study of
+an Englishman of history in all the historical tragedies since "Henry V";
+"A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" one of the few plays to realize individual
+passions since Otway. And the dramatic defects--the failure to meet his
+audience half-way, the awkwardness and garrulity of expression, the lack of
+repression in form, while defects that continue in Browning's later
+poetry--are the very faults for which a severe apprenticeship to the
+theatre might have been the best discipline. An apprenticeship such as
+Shakespeare served might have turned Browning's monologues and lyrics into
+dramas; but the age was incapable of furnishing such a training, and the
+fiasco with Macready was the end of the period and the defeat of the
+poetical drama.
+
+What comes after in the nineteenth century may best be left to the future
+historian, who will be able to interpret its plays in the light of a
+succeeding development. The plays of Tennyson, reverting again to
+Shakespeare, and the poems of Swinburne may, after all, be the forerunners
+of a new revival of poetical tragedy. Or the great development in technic
+that has proceeded, first under the guidance of the French dramatists, and
+then of Ibsen, and the serious essays of dramatists of the passing
+generation may be the pioneers of a national drama of first-rate importance
+in the generation to come. Certainly Ibsen, with his revolution in both the
+content and the form of the tragic drama, has been the great force in later
+nineteenth century tragedy. His work as it affects England and America,
+however neglected, postponed, or modified, must be the text of a
+succeeding chapter on English tragedy, which cannot yet be written.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Genest's _Account of the English Stage_ stops at 1830. A continuation of
+this work down to the present time is much to be desired. There is no
+thorough history or bibliography of the drama of this period. In addition
+to the histories of the theatre already mentioned, W. C. Oulton's _History
+of the Theatres of London_, 1795-1817, may be consulted. Memoirs of the
+Kembles are useful for this period, and also Macready's _Reminiscences_,
+ed. Sir F. Pollock (1875), Moore's _Life of Sheridan_ (1825), Molloy's
+_Life of Edmund Kean_ (1888), William Archer's admirable life of Macready
+(_Eminent Actors Series_), are all valuable. _Random Recollections_ by
+Colman the younger, and memoirs of Kelly, O'Keefe, and Reynolds supply
+information in regard to the theatre and illegitimate drama. John
+Cumberland's collections, _British Theatre_ (41 vols., 1829) and the _Minor
+Theatre_ (15 vols.), are printed from acting copies, and the second
+comprises many illegitimate plays.
+
+Dramatic criticism of the period includes Coleridge (see criticism of
+Maturin's _Bertram_ in _Biographia Literaria_), Hazlitt, _A View of the
+English Stage_ (1818); Leigh Hunt, _Critical Essays on the Performers of
+the London Theatres_ (1807) (selections from same, ed. W. Archer and R. W.
+Lowe, 1894); Lamb (see _Lamb's Dramatic Essays_, ed. Brander Matthews,
+1893). See, also, R. H. Horne's _New Spirit of the Age_ (1844), containing
+criticism of Knowles, Macready, Bulwer-Lytton, and Browning.
+
+The dramatic work of the chief poets has been studied in connection with
+their other poetry by many editors and critics, but rarely in its relation
+to the drama of the period. Professor Beers's two volumes, _English
+Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_ (1899), and _English Romanticism in
+the Nineteenth Century_ (1901), deal with the German influence; C. H.
+Herford has an excellent though brief account of the drama of the period in
+his _Age of Wordsworth_; Watson Nicholson's _The Struggle for a Free Stage
+in London_ (1906) is full and valuable. Ernest Bates's monograph on _The
+Cenci_ (1908) discusses that tragedy and its relations to contemporary
+drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[45] See _The Haunted Tower_, an opera (1789), acted eighty times in two
+seasons.
+
+[46] Its borrowings are noted by Genest, viii, 603. The scene is quoted in
+Archer's _Life of Macready_ (Eminent Actors Series), p. 40.
+
+[47] _The Fall of Robespierre_ (1794), by Southey and Coleridge, and
+Southey's _Wat Tyler_ (1817), written in 1794, hardly require even mention
+as tragedies.
+
+[48] In this and the two following paragraphs the bracketed dates are those
+of the first performances in London. Some of the plays were first acted
+elsewhere.
+
+[49] "I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising
+against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a
+weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." Letter to
+his sister, December, 1819.
+
+[50] The translation of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ (1799), _The
+House of Aspen_ (1830), _Halidon Hill_ (1822), _Macduff's Cross_ (1823),
+_The Doom of Devorgoil_ (1830), _Auchindrane_ (1830).
+
+[51] Herford, _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 227.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found
+their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many
+common characteristics, they do separate themselves from other plays of
+their periods, they are connected from one period to another in a
+continuous development. English tragedies constitute a dramatic type, a
+literary form. This type has, to be sure, permitted many
+variations,--revenge tragedy, chronicle play, tragicomedy, domestic
+tragedy, sentimental tragedy, heroic play, or the closet tragedy of the
+romanticists--but every one of these species has had its connections with
+others, and in every period the tragedies of varying kinds have been
+related not only to one another but to those that have gone before. With
+changing theatrical conditions, with new literary impulses, with new views
+of the old traditions, with new influences from Spain or France or Germany,
+the type has taken new characteristics or made new alliances, but has never
+lost its integrity. At any time during the three centuries it would have
+been possible to frame a definition of tragedy that would include over nine
+tenths of the tragedies of the period, and the other tenth would offer only
+definable variations. However strong the foreign influences, tragedy has
+maintained the national tradition; however great the innovations, it has
+never broken with the past. From Marlowe to Shelley there has been an
+unbroken continuity in themes, stories, types of persons, nature of
+emotional appeal, structure, and even in the blank verse.
+
+So marked is the integrity and continuity of the type that tragedy lends
+itself, better perhaps than most other forms, to the biological analogy.
+The processes which we have been tracing are evolutionary. Whether we
+consider the main type or its varying forms, we are reminded constantly of
+the laws governing the origin and development of natural species. The
+history of the Elizabethan drama in particular affords an example of the
+origin, development, culmination, and degeneration of a literary species,
+which might be analyzed closely as Brunetière has analyzed French tragedy
+of the seventeenth century. Created from a cross-fertilization of Seneca on
+the medieval drama, it appears in dubious forms of morality and chronicle,
+springs into full integrity in Marlowe, reaches its culmination in
+Shakespeare, and degenerates under the changed environment of the social
+and theatrical conditions that followed the death of Elizabeth. But the
+analogy is not less applicable to the whole history of tragedy. The slow
+development of variations and new species under changing environment is
+found in every period, as in the formation and growth of the revenge play
+or in the development of the sentimental tragedy of the eighteenth century.
+The quick formation of species by mutation also has its parallels, as in
+the sudden appearance of Marlowe or of the heroic tragedy bred from the
+Beaumont-Fletcher play and French romance. In the persistence of the stage
+villain through all forms and periods, we might even discover one of
+Mendel's unit characters. The reversion to an earlier form appears in the
+return of Lee or of the Romanticists to the Elizabethans. And the tendency
+of individual plays to regress to the main type has been a constant and on
+the whole perhaps the most potent force of the development.
+
+We may find the nature of the literary species determined by constant
+principles corresponding to environment and heredity in the evolution of
+natural species. Environment as a factor in literature has long been
+recognized by criticism, and has been apparent in every play that we have
+examined. Each period has been distinguished by theatrical, social, and
+literary conditions peculiar to itself and constituting the
+change-producing environment of the drama. Tragedy has at every stage
+responded to these changing conditions. And the law of heredity is also
+paralleled. No play has been without its inheritance. The most original, as
+Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Otway's "Orphan," Lillo's "Barnwell," and Shelley's
+"Cenci," have shown their indebtedness no less clearly, if less slavishly,
+than the more commonplace individuals. The classical tradition transformed
+the English breed as the Arabian stock has the racing-horse; the French
+influence changed the very anatomy of the species. Our study must surely
+have called attention to the extraordinary force that imitation has
+exercised in the creation of tragedy. It seems, indeed, the generating
+power. Men are forever imitating, but they cannot imitate without change.
+In these changes, the variations due to environment--personal, theatrical,
+literary, social--arise the individual peculiarities, the beginnings of new
+species, the element of growth. The great mass of tragedies, however,
+differentiate themselves only feebly or slightly from the type. They are
+imitations that preserve all the essential characteristics of their
+originals. Some ideas, some plays, some traditions, have an astonishing
+fecundity; other stocks, procreative for a while, soon turn barren. But,
+destroy the faculty of imitation, and the generation of literary forms
+would seem wellnigh impossible.
+
+Thus far, perhaps, the biological analogy may be pressed, if we remember
+that it is only an analogy. The evolution of a wagon or a battleship might
+offer an equally suggestive and an equally unsafe comparison. No one should
+be deceived by the analogy into thinking that what we call environment and
+heredity in literary species correspond in fact with their namesakes in the
+physical world. One play does not create another. It, along with countless
+other things, suggests ideas and impressions which are made into a play by
+the author. Each tragedy is the child of a mind, whose creative processes
+have little real resemblance to physical generation. To call the influence
+of "Hamlet" heredity, and the influence of the author's newspaper reading,
+or of his family, or his political beliefs, environment, is merely to
+assign arbitrary names. Again, art, unlike nature, is careless of the type
+and careful of the individual. A single play may live longer and have
+greater generating power than a whole species. "Othello" during the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has, perhaps, had more influence upon
+English tragedy than all non-Shakespearean tragedies together. Sophocles is
+still germinating. It is as if we now had the venerable chief of the
+mastodons, surviving many of the species he had originated, and still
+creating his offspring to confuse the evolutions of the many other species
+he had already aided in forming. In literature we are attempting to trace
+the development of species, of which individuals live forever; to
+discriminate the agents in a complex creative process which we do not at
+all understand; to call one play the child of another when it is more truly
+the kaleidoscopic aggregate of much reading, much observation, much
+experience shaken into a new form by the author's creative imagination.
+
+Literary criticism may borrow from the natural sciences the evolutionary
+conception and some of its accompaniments; in particular, the demarcation
+of literary forms by the persistence of certain characteristics through
+changing conditions of nation or period, and the recognition of imitation
+as an important element in the creative process. It would seem, however,
+that further progress in the classification and explanation of literary
+phenomena is not to be gained by searching for additional analogies, but in
+the study and analysis of the phenomena themselves in the effort to
+discover the principles and laws of the mental processes peculiar to
+literature.
+
+We may put the case, then, without further reliance on the evolution of
+physical species. For three hundred years Englishmen have been writing
+tragedies, all much alike, all related in origin, nature, and purpose. In
+our study of their relationships, the influences governing their creation
+have been grouped in two main classes: first, that of the theatre itself,
+and second, that which has been called the literary tradition. In the
+theatre has been included the influence of actors and audience and all
+pertaining to the theatrical presentation. Changes in the mere stage and
+its appurtenances have been factors determining the very nature of tragedy.
+The scenery and women actors of the Restoration compelled important
+modifications in the drama; the large theatres of Kemble's day drove
+tragedy from the stage and encouraged a pantomime hybrid. The influence of
+theatrical fashions and traditions, always in part changing and transitory,
+has been felt in every variation, advance, or retrogression of the acted
+drama. Yet it is the influence of the theatre that has maintained the
+integrity of form and has thus been the main force in preserving the
+species. The literary tradition, even more complex in its elements than
+that of the theatre, altering and cumulative, composed of classical or
+French as well as English masterpieces, drawn from the novel or other forms
+as well as the drama, affected by all social movements, passing through
+such transformations as those of the classical and the romantic periods,
+has nevertheless, on the whole, conserved the form and content of tragedy.
+During the periods that we have examined, blank verse, illustrious persons,
+the pomp of courts, the great passions of revenge, ambition, jealousy,
+lust, love, and hate, hideous crimes, and the conflict of potent wills have
+been the usual accompaniments of the actions of suffering and ruin. There
+has been only occasional departure from the Shakespearean conception of
+tragedy as representation of great personalities engaged in disastrous
+conflict. Shakespeare, in fact, at least since Dryden's "All for Love," has
+been a constant and often the dominating element in this complex and
+variable literary tradition. The two classes of influence, theatrical and
+literary, have thus proved both variable and conserving. The theatre, while
+crying for novelty, holds tenaciously to its traditions. Literature, while
+enforcing rules, precedents, prejudices, while clinging to its models and
+demanding imitation, yet incites to rivalry and originality, to new
+endeavor, variation, and excellence.
+
+These two main classes of influence have rarely if ever run parallel. At
+times the theatre has attracted literature, as in the Elizabethan era, at
+times it has repelled literature, as in the early nineteenth century.
+Usually, what the stage of the day desires and what the literature of the
+past encourages have been quite different and often irreconcilable. In our
+study we have consequently had to keep in mind not only two main lines of
+influence, but two points of view and two standards of judgment. It is the
+purpose of dramatic art to bring about their reconciliation, to harmonize
+the technic of the theatre, the necessities of the drama, and the standards
+of literary excellence. Our history records no attainment of such an ideal;
+rather the two antinomies seem farther from final unity in the time of
+Byron than in that of Shakespeare. Yet, through the discarding of temporary
+fashions, the growing knowledge of structure, and the multiplication of
+theatrical means, the material and experience necessary for further
+progress have at least been accumulating. Perhaps a survey of the drama of
+the last century on the continent would result in a more sanguine view of
+the development of the principles of dramatic art freed from the
+temporalities of theatrical fashion. There is probability in Professor
+Brander Matthews's suggestion that in our growing cosmopolitanism national
+divergencies in content will exist with a growing agreement in form. We may
+hope that this will be merely an agreement in making quick trial of new
+ideas, from whatever theatre derived, and that the principles of art
+established will not, as so often in the past, prove pedantic and
+hampering. This much seems fairly certain,--literary genius and theatrical
+experience must unite in order to produce great tragedy. From the theatre
+the writer must learn dramatic art, the first rule of which is to win his
+audience; from literature he must learn the elements that will give his
+work lasting value. Only after an experience with the theatre can he
+venture on innovations likely to be permanent. Only if he have literary
+genius will he depart in triumph from literary traditions. The double
+mastery comes to one only rarely, and then only after a double service.
+
+The relationships of tragedy, however, are not confined to the theatre or
+to literature. That tragedy, like other forms of literature, is an
+imitation of life, is a platitude whose meaning sometimes fails to impress
+us. But its truth has a witness in every writer of tragedy. However
+insignificant or thoughtless, he has been trying to put into his play
+something of life as he knows it, trying to find some relationships in the
+world of fact that will carry meaning and interest to his fellows. Whether
+he has been writing mainly to meet the desires of actors and audience, or
+has been voyaging alone toward some discovery of beauty and grandeur of
+human passion, whether he has been building his house of intrigue according
+to well-conned rules of dramatic structure, or has been copying some tangle
+of fact, he has been studying the ways and means of human actions.
+Trivially or greatly, as the case may be, he has been seeking to interpret
+life. Classicist, romanticist, and realist have been by different processes
+seeking the same end, the discovery of meaning in the facts of existence.
+They have all viewed the Art that they have so differently formulated, as a
+means of approach to Nature, the deity whom they all profess. Neither high
+seriousness, nor sublime theme, nor a complete philosophy is a necessary
+accompaniment of Matthew Arnold's definition. Whether the poet write of
+"the tangles of Neæra's hair" or of that disobedience that first "brought
+death into the world," he is attempting a criticism of life. This
+definition does not state the primary aim of literature, for it must first
+of all interest us, or its sole function, for it seeks beauty as well as
+truth and cannot always unite them; but it does indicate the most permanent
+and vitalizing element in the creation of literature, the most organic
+relationship that connects its many manifestations.
+
+The greatness of tragedy depends upon its allegiance to this meaning of
+literature. The dramatic form gives opportunity for a close approach to the
+semblance of actuality. The very subjects of tragedy, suffering and
+disaster, discourage the seeking of mere amusement or a contentment with
+mere beauty of expression. They require, if not high seriousness or a
+teleology, at least a concern with the most interesting, inescapable, and
+dreadful of human facts. This baleful portion of human existence is the
+field of tragedy's research, where it may find grandeur and violence,
+malevolence and magnanimity, optimism or pessimism, harmony or anarchy, but
+where it can only with difficulty escape a serious attempt at the study of
+character and deed. No other literary form has so nobly responded to this
+great mission as that adopted by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Calderon,
+Corneille, and Ibsen. It has constrained drama and literature to their duty
+of research, interpretation, discovery in the almost impenetrable maze of
+human fact, by the very nature of its chosen field, by the preëminence of
+its great examples, and even by the continued endeavor of its humblest
+servants. As one reads through these forgotten tragedies, as when one
+scans closely any large field of human effort, the main impression is one
+of futility. Beauty is not attained, life is not revealed, everything is
+imitative, feeble, and absurd. Yet, even among those hundreds of eighteenth
+century tragedies, with their rhyming tags that neatly sum up their
+authors' generalizations on life, one may find reason for sympathy and
+interest. They record what had meaning for their day, the heroisms,
+sentiments, and morals that somehow stirred men's hearts and elevated their
+resolves. They represent some degree of temporary success in giving
+relations and significance to their world. The lastingly significant
+representation of life is found not in the many but in the few, but the
+mediocrities and the failures continue the effort and maintain the form
+that make possible the few masterpieces. The very greatest set no
+impassable bound, for the ever-widening expanse of tragic fact continually
+invites new explorers. Progress can come not by resting admiringly on the
+greatness of the past, but only through a free opportunity for new pioneers
+and discoverers. Were the achievement of English tragedy far less than it
+has been, the very expenditure of effort should give it some interest for
+study. Its history, however, includes in Shakespeare's tragedies a few of
+the unapproached achievements of the human mind, many other plays that for
+a while greatly interested and persuaded men, not a few that still have
+searching meaning for us, and hundreds more that have maintained an
+unselfish, a social, a moral inquiry into life, and that, while perishing
+themselves, have aided others to live. In such a history, even he who runs
+may read a record of human endeavor not alien to his interest.
+
+Tragedy takes an abiding place among the great courses of continuous human
+activity dedicated to an inquiry into the meanings of life. Its imaginative
+and intellectual study of suffering and ruin must continue, however its
+form may alter, if the theatre is to be a social force of importance, if
+literature is to offer an intelligent, serious, and comprehensive view of
+life, if the two are to unite in something better than a trivial and
+selfish entertainment. Its methods may not commend themselves in an age of
+physical and mechanical sciences, its aim may not commend itself at a time
+when splendid discoveries in the physical world blur the importance of an
+interpretation of moral and social relations. But tragedy has survived many
+ages and creeds, and seems likely to survive as long as men try to
+understand other men, to sympathize with their troubles, and to relate
+these somehow to their own beliefs and ideals. In the future as in the
+past, when a nation or community is at a period of culminating advance,
+when society is most mindful of its greatness and its obligations, tragedy
+should find its most helpful encouragement and its greatest opportunity.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+The Index contains the titles of works, the names of authors, and the names
+of a few actors referred to in the text or footnotes. The Bibliographical
+Notes are not indexed. Alterations of plays are not indexed separately
+unless they have separate titles. References of importance are indicated by
+heavy-faced figures.
+
+
+_Abraham_, 56.
+
+_Absalon_, 39.
+
+Addison, Joseph, 250, 289-291, 302, 307.
+
+_Adriana_, 127.
+
+Æschylus, 13, 354.
+
+_Agamemnon_ (by Thomson), 299, 300.
+
+_Agamemnon and Ulysses_, 70 n.
+
+_Ajax and Ulysses_, 70 n.
+
+_Ajax Flagellifer_, 58.
+
+_Alcazar, The Battle of_, 108, 111, 115, 221.
+
+_Alcibiades_, 269.
+
+Alexander, W., 142.
+
+_Alfred the Great_, 346.
+
+Alleyn, Edward, 98.
+
+_All for Love_, 25, 260, 261, 263, 264, 277, 282, 293, 372.
+
+_All's Lost by Lust_, 218.
+
+_Almida_, 295 n.
+
+_Alphonsus of Aragon_, 107.
+
+_Alzira_, 295 n., 304.
+
+_Alzuma_, 295 n.
+
+_Ambitious Stepmother, The_, 283.
+
+_Amboyna_, 259.
+
+_Amelia_, 321.
+
+Andrews, P. M., 332.
+
+_Andromaque_, 290.
+
+_Antigone_, 195.
+
+_Antonio_, 343.
+
+_Antony and Cleopatra_, ~175-177~, 178, 184, 185, 189, 195, 261,
+293, 297 n.
+
+_Antonio and Mellida_ (see _Antonio's Revenge_), 139, 146.
+
+_Antonio's Revenge_, 146, ~147-149.~
+
+_Apology for Poetry_, 44, 72.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 51, 62 n., ~63~, ~64~, 66, 69, 71.
+
+Archer, Wm., 203 n., 335 n.
+
+_Archipropheta_, 39.
+
+_Arden of Feversham_, 109, 110, 113, 140;
+  (adaptation by Lillo), 315, 316.
+
+_Argalus and Parthenia_, 234.
+
+_Ariodante and Genevra_, 70 n.
+
+Aristotle, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, 25, 43, 44, 165, 248.
+
+Arnold, Matthew, 361, 374.
+
+_Ars Poetica_, 34, 43.
+
+Ascham, Roger, 32, 39.
+
+Asinari, Frederigo, 56.
+
+_Atheist's Tragedy, The_, 151, ~153~, ~154~, 201, 202.
+
+_Athelwold_, 304.
+
+_Athenian Captive, The_, 346.
+
+_Auchindrane_, 349 n., 350.
+
+_Aureng Zebe_, 260, 282, 297 n.
+
+
+Bacon, Lord, 79.
+
+Baillie, Joanna, ~339-341~, 343, 357.
+
+Bale, John, 39, 40, 41.
+
+Banks, John, 273, 277, 282, 308 n.
+
+_Baptistes_, 37.
+
+_Barbarossa_, 308 n.
+
+_Barnavelt, Tragedy of Sir John van Olden_, 214.
+
+_Bartholomew Fair_, 144.
+
+_Bashful Lover, The_, 222.
+
+_Basil_, 339.
+
+_Battle of Hexham, The_, 332, 333.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher (see, also, Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John), 136,
+179, 197, 199, 202, ~203-211~, 229, 232, 238, 240, 249, 251, 255, 257,
+262, 265, 270, 277, 282, 322, 346, 368.
+
+Beaumont, Francis (see Beaumont and Fletcher), 198, 204, 211.
+
+Beddoes, T. L., 348, 356, 357, 362.
+
+Behn, Mrs. Afra, 266, 274.
+
+_Believe as You List_, 221, 224.
+
+Belleforest, 104.
+
+_Berenice_, 269.
+
+_Bertram_, 344, 357.
+
+Betterton, T., 245, 252, 266.
+
+Beza, T. de, 56.
+
+_Blacksmith's Daughter, The_, 71.
+
+_Bloody Brother, The, or Rollo, Duke of Normandy_, ~214-216~, 252,
+282.
+
+_Blot on the 'Scutcheon, The_, 346, 363, 364.
+
+Boaden, J., 332.
+
+Boccaccio, 32, 55, 56, 239.
+
+_Bondman, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Bonduca_, ~213~, 252, 282, 322 n.
+
+_Borderers, The_, 341.
+
+_Bothwell_, 14.
+
+_Braganza_, 322.
+
+Brandl, Alois, 55 n.
+
+_Bridal, The_, 346.
+
+_Bride's Tragedy, The_, 348.
+
+_Broken Heart, The_, 227, ~228~.
+
+Brooke, Arthur, 127, 129, 133.
+
+Brooke, H., 295.
+
+_Brothers, The_, 298.
+
+Brown, Charles, 349.
+
+Brown, John, 306, 308 n.
+
+Browning, Robert, 14, 129, 182, 222, 346, 354, 355, 361, 363, 364.
+
+Brunetière, Ferdinand, 6, 367.
+
+_Brutus_, 295 n.;
+  (by John Howard Payne), 344.
+
+_Brutus of Alba_, 246.
+
+Buchanan, George, 37, 56.
+
+Bulwer-Lytton, 345, 346, 361.
+
+Burgoyne, Gen., 318 n.
+
+_Burning of Sodom, The_, 40.
+
+Burns, Robert, 324.
+
+_Busiris_, 297 n., 298.
+
+_Bussy D'Ambois, The Death of_, 144, 252;
+  _The Revenge of_, 144.
+
+Byron, Lord, 182, 338, 345, 347, ~350-353~, 354, 356-358, 363, 373.
+
+_Byron, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of_, 144.
+
+
+_Caelia, or the Perjured Lover_, 318.
+
+_Cæsar and Pompey_, 70 n.
+
+_Cæsar Borgia_, 267.
+
+_Cain_, 339, 352, 354, 356, 360.
+
+_Caius Gracchus_, 344.
+
+_Caius Marius, History and Fall of_, 269, 292.
+
+Calderon, 13, 354, 375.
+
+_Caleb Williams_, 333.
+
+_Caligula_, 266.
+
+Calprenède, 247.
+
+_Cambyses_, 52, 62, ~66~, ~67~, 69, 74, ~172~, 237.
+
+Campbell, Thomas, 341.
+
+Canfield, Dorothea, 290 n.
+
+Capell, Edward, 293.
+
+_Caractacus_, 297.
+
+_Cardenio_, 211.
+
+_Cardinal, The_, 233, 252.
+
+_Careless Husband, The_, 317.
+
+Carey, H., 314 n.
+
+Carlell, L., 235.
+
+Carlyle, T., 360.
+
+_Carmelite, The_, 323.
+
+_Castle of Otranto, The_, 322, 330.
+
+_Castle Spectre, The_, 323, 329.
+
+_Catiline_, ~141-144~, 297 n.
+
+_Catilin's Conspiracy_, 71.
+
+_Cato_, ~290~, ~291~, 297 n.
+
+_Cenci, The_, 353, ~354~, 356, ~361~, ~368~.
+
+Centlivre, Mrs., 266.
+
+Cervantes, 212.
+
+Chambers, E. K., 38.
+
+_Changeling, The_, ~219~.
+
+Chapman, George, 6, 137, 139, ~144-146~, 184, 185, 187, 198, 202, 214,
+252.
+
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, 31, 32.
+
+Cheke, Sir John, 32.
+
+Chettle, Henry, 139, 151, ~152~, ~153~, 156.
+
+_Christian Hero, The_, 315.
+
+Christopherson, J., 39.
+
+_Christus Redivivus_, 39.
+
+_Christus Triumphans_, 39.
+
+_Chrononhotonthologos_, 314 n.
+
+Churchill, George B., 58 n.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 292, 307, 317.
+
+Cicero, 142.
+
+_Cid, The_, 247.
+
+Cinthio, Giraldi, 56, 86.
+
+_City Madam, The_, 220, 322 n.
+
+_City of the Plague, The_, 347.
+
+_Clarissa Harlowe_, 275, 321.
+
+_Cleomenes_, 262, 273.
+
+_Cléopatre Captive_, 38.
+
+_Cloridon and Radimanta_, 70 n.
+
+Coleridge, S. T., 213 n., 337, 338, ~341~, ~342~, 343, 357, 359,
+362.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 281, 316.
+
+Colman, George, 322 n.
+
+Colman, George (the younger), ~332-334~, 337.
+
+_Complaint of Buckingham, The_, 52.
+
+_Condemnation of John Huss, The_, 40.
+
+_Confidant, The_, 343.
+
+Congreve, Wm., 3, 273, ~275~, 277, 282.
+
+_Conquest of Granada_, 259, 282.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, The_, 317.
+
+_Constantine_, 267.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 175, ~177~, ~178~, 265, 292;
+  (by Thomson), 299, 301, 302.
+
+Corneille, Pierre, 245, 248, 294, 300, 316, 375.
+
+Corneille, Thomas, 298.
+
+_Cornelia_ (translation of Garnier's), 100 n.
+
+_Countess of Salisbury, The_, 308 n.
+
+_Count Julian_, 348, 349.
+
+_Count of Narbonne, The_ (adaptation of Castle of Otranto), 322.
+
+Crabbe, George, 324, 343.
+
+Cradock, J., 295 n.
+
+Creizenach, W., 56, 69.
+
+_Critic, The_, 314 n.
+
+Crowne, John, 250, 253, 266, 269.
+
+_Cruelty of a Stepmother, The_, 71.
+
+Cumberland, Richard, 285, 306, 319, 320, 323, 344.
+
+_Cupid's Revenge_, 203.
+
+_Curfew, The_, 335, 343.
+
+Cushman, Miss Charlotte, 344.
+
+_Cymbeline_, 179, 265, 292, 297 n.
+
+_Cyrus_, 295 n., 296.
+
+_Cyrus the Great, or the Tragedy of Love_, 273.
+
+
+_Dalida, La_, see _Roxana_.
+
+_Damon and Pythias_, 51, 58, 62, ~63~.
+
+Daniel, Samuel, 142.
+
+Dante, 31.
+
+Davenant, Sir Wm., 235, 244, 251, 252, 277, 292.
+
+Davenport, R., 235.
+
+_David and Bethsabe_, 110, 111.
+
+_Death's Jest Book_, 348.
+
+_De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum_, 32.
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 317.
+
+_Deformed Transformed, The_, 357.
+
+Dekker, Thomas, 198, 224, 227, 240.
+
+_Delivery of Susannah, The_, 40.
+
+_De Montfort_, 339, 340, 343.
+
+Dennis, John, 250, 290, 301.
+
+_Deserted Daughter, The_, 320.
+
+Dibdin, T., 332, 338.
+
+Dickens, Charles, 312.
+
+Dictys Cretensis, 65.
+
+Diderot, D., 317, 318.
+
+_Dido_ (by Dolce), 56;
+  (by Gager), 59;
+  (by Ritwyse), 39;
+  (by unknown), 58.
+
+_Dido, Tragedy of_ (by Marlowe and Nash), 89.
+
+_Distressed Mother, The_, 290, 291, 294.
+
+_Divine Comedy, The_, 31.
+
+Dolce, Lodovico, 54, 56.
+
+_Doll's House, The_, 10.
+
+_Don Carlos_, 269.
+
+_Don Juan_, 354.
+
+Donne, John, 137, 229.
+
+_Don Quixote_, 333.
+
+_Don Sebastian_, 262, 263, 278, 335.
+
+_Doom of Devorgoil, The_, 349.
+
+_Dorval, or the Test of Virtue_ (translated from Le Fils Naturel), 318 n.
+
+_Double Marriage, The_, 214.
+
+_Douglas_, 305.
+
+_Downfall and Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, The_, 139.
+
+Downman, H., 344.
+
+Drayton, M., 99.
+
+Dryden, John, 145, 208, 248-251, 253, ~259-263~, 264, 266, 271-274, 277,
+278, 281, 282, 293, 328, 331, 335, 372.
+
+_Duchess de la Valière_, 346.
+
+_Duchess of Malfi, The_, ~199~, 200, 202.
+
+_Duke of Guise, The_, 262, 267.
+
+_Duke of Milan, The_, 71 n., 222, 224, 322 n.
+
+_Duke's Mistress, The_, 233.
+
+_Duplicity_, 319, 320.
+
+D'Urfé, Honoré, 239.
+
+D'Urfey, T., 266.
+
+Dyce, Alexander, 215.
+
+
+_Earl of Essex, The_ (adaptation of the Unhappy Favorite, q. v.), 282.
+
+_Earl of Essex, The_ (by Jones), 308 n.
+
+_Earl of Warwick, The_, 308 n.
+
+_Eccerinis_, 36.
+
+_Edward I_, 85, 111.
+
+_Edward II_, 89, 90, ~92~, ~93~, 94, 95, 97, 108, 109, 113,
+114, 132.
+
+_Edward III_, 108, 109, 112, 114.
+
+_Edward and Eleonora_, 299.
+
+Edwards, Richard, 58, 62.
+
+_Effigenia_ (Iphigenia), 71 n., 111.
+
+_Elfrid_, 304.
+
+_Elfrida_, 297.
+
+_Elmerick_, 315.
+
+_Emilia Galotti_, 323.
+
+_English Traveller, The_, 141.
+
+Erasmus, 23.
+
+_Essay of Heroic Plays_, 259.
+
+_Essay on Dramatic Poetry_, 248, 250.
+
+Euripides, 32, 33, 37, 54, 72, 111, 297.
+
+_Evadne_, 344.
+
+_Everyman_, 29.
+
+_Every Man in His Humour_, 137.
+
+_Ezechias_, 58.
+
+
+Fabyan, R., 70.
+
+_Fair Penitent, The_, ~284-287~, ~297 n.~, 317, 328.
+
+_Fair Quarrel, The_, 219.
+
+_Faithful Shepherdess, The_, 206.
+
+Falkland, Lord, 236.
+
+_Fall of Jerusalem, The_, 358.
+
+_Fall of Robespierre, The_, 341 n.
+
+_Falls of Princes, The_, 32.
+
+_False One, The_, 214.
+
+_Family Picture, A_, 318 n.
+
+_Famous Victories of Henry V, The_, 85.
+
+_Fashionable Lover, The_, 320.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, The_, 315, 317.
+
+_Fatal Dowry, The_, 224, 285-287, 304, 344.
+
+_Fatal Extravagance_, 318.
+
+_Fatal Falsehood, The_, 306, 311.
+
+_Fatal Marriage, The_, ~274~, 278, 282.
+
+_Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam, The_, 303, 304.
+
+_Fate of Capua, The_, 274.
+
+_Fate of Villany, The_, 309.
+
+_Faulkner_, 343.
+
+_Faust_, 357.
+
+_Faustus_, 89, 90, ~92~, ~98~.
+
+_Fazio_, 344, 358.
+
+Fenton, E., 308 n.
+
+_Ferrex and Porrex._ See _Gorboduc_.
+
+Field, Nathaniel, 224, 285.
+
+Fielding, Henry, 129, 273, 314 n.
+
+_Fils Naturel, Le_, 318.
+
+Fleay, F. G., 58 n., 63, 118, 155.
+
+Fletcher, John (see, also, Beaumont and Fletcher), 6, 177, 198, 199, ~211-216~,
+219-221, 224-226, 229, 230-232, 234, 238, 246, 255, 256, 261, 262,
+270, 274, 284.
+
+Foote, S., 314 n.
+
+Ford, John, 199, 225, ~226-229~, 234, 237, 240, 256, 348.
+
+_Four Plays in One_, 203.
+
+_Four Sons of Fabius_, 71 n.
+
+Foxe, John, 39.
+
+Francklin, T., 308 n.
+
+Fuller, Harold De W., 114 n., 127 n.
+
+_Funeral, The_, 297 n.
+
+
+Gager, Wm., 59, 111.
+
+_Gamester, The_, 318, 321, 324.
+
+_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, 39.
+
+Gardiner, Bishop, 39.
+
+Garrick, David, 292, 293.
+
+Gascoigne, George, 54.
+
+Gay, John, 307, 314 n.
+
+Genest, J., 335 n.
+
+_George Barnwell, or the London Merchant_, ~314-318~, 321, 324, 368.
+
+_Ghosts_, 18, 195.
+
+Gifford, Wm., 285.
+
+_Gil Blas_, 300.
+
+Gildon, Charles, 250.
+
+_Giocasta_, 54.
+
+_Gismund of Salerne._ See _Tancred and Gismunda._
+
+Glapthorne, Henry, 234, 237, 251.
+
+_Glencoe_, 346.
+
+_Gloriana_, 266.
+
+Glover R., 306.
+
+_God's Promises_, 41.
+
+Godwin, Wm., 341, 343.
+
+Goethe, 327, 349 n., 361.
+
+_Goetz von Berlichingen_, 349.
+
+Goffe, Thomas, 236.
+
+_Gorboduc_, 22, 26, 38, ~40-42~, ~48~, ~51~, ~52-54~,
+55 n., 57, 68, 73.
+
+Gosson, S., 71, 72, 113, 145.
+
+Grafton, Richard, 70.
+
+Granville, Earl of, 277.
+
+Gray, Thomas, 297.
+
+_Grecian Daughter, The_, 308 n.
+
+Greene, Robert, 86, 107, 108, 111, 115, 130, 133.
+
+Greville, Fulke, 142.
+
+Grimald, Nicholas, 39.
+
+Groto, Luigi, 59, 127.
+
+_Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, The_, 261.
+
+Guarini, G. B., 206.
+
+
+_Halidon Hill_, 349 n., 350.
+
+Hall, Bishop, 137.
+
+_Hamblet, Historie of_, 104.
+
+_Hamlet_ (the early), 100 n., ~104~, ~105~, 147, 148, 152, 156.
+
+_Hamlet_, 100, 102, 105, 124, 144, 148, 150, 151, 154, ~155-162~,
+163-165, 169, 171, 173, 175, 184-186, 195, 199, 239, 265, 282, 297 n., 358,
+368, 369.
+
+_Hamlet, Revenge of_, 150.
+
+Harding, Samuel, 236.
+
+Hartson, H., 308 n.
+
+_Haunted Tower, The_, 329 n.
+
+Hauptmann, G., 12.
+
+Hazlitt, Wm., 340, 345.
+
+_Hecatommithi_, 86.
+
+_Hedda Gabler_, 12.
+
+Hegel, G. W. F., ~9.~
+
+_Heiress, The_, 318 n.
+
+Heming, Wm., 235.
+
+_Henry IV_, 265.
+
+_Henry V_ (by Aaron Hill), 304;
+  (by Shakespeare), 137, 364;
+  (by the Earl of Orrery), 253, 257.
+
+_Henry VI_, 89, 108, 114, ~115~, ~116~, 118, 297 n.
+
+_Henry VIII_, 211, 282.
+
+_Hercules Furens_, 119 n.
+
+Herford, C. H., 352 n.
+
+_Hernani_, 346.
+
+_Herodes_, 59.
+
+_Heroine of the Cave, The_, 310.
+
+Heywood, Jasper, 42.
+
+Heywood, Thomas, 139, ~140~, ~141~, 142, 198, 272, 289.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 295, 298, ~303-305~, 318.
+
+_Hoffman_, 151, ~152~, ~153~, 199, 200, 201.
+
+Holcroft, T., 318 n.; 319, 320, 334.
+
+Holinshed, R., 70, 109, 123, 171, 173, 184.
+
+Home, John, 305, 306.
+
+Homer, 192.
+
+Hooker, Richard, 79.
+
+Hoole, J., 295 n., 296, 306.
+
+_Horace_, 294.
+
+_Horestes_, 52, ~64~, 65, 66, 68, 69, ~71~, ~100~.
+
+_House of Aspen, The_, 349.
+
+Howard, Sir Robert, 253, 282.
+
+Hughes, Thomas, 57, 297 n., 308 n.
+
+Hugo, Victor, 337, 346, 363.
+
+_Hunchback, The_, 345.
+
+
+Ibsen, Henrik, 6, 11, 313, 364, 375.
+
+_Imaginary Conversation, The_, 348.
+
+_Imposter, The_, 295 n.
+
+Inchbald, Mrs., 319.
+
+_Indian Emperor, The_, ~253~, 259, 282, 328.
+
+_Indian Queen, The_, 253, 282, 305.
+
+_Innocent Adultery, The_, 297 n.
+
+_Insolvent, The_, 304.
+
+_Ion_, 346.
+
+_Iron Chest, The_, 332, 333.
+
+_Isabella_, 282.
+
+_Island Princess, The_, 246.
+
+_Island Queens, The_ (by Banks), 273.
+
+
+_Jack Straw_, 85.
+
+_James IV, Scottish Historie of_, 87.
+
+_Jane Shore_, 283, ~287-289~, 328.
+
+Jephson, Robert, 322.
+
+_Jephthes_ (by Buchanan), ~37~;
+  (by Christopherson), 39, 56.
+
+_Jeronimo, First Part of_, 100 n.
+
+_Jew, The_ (by Cumberland), 320;
+  (by Unknown), 71.
+
+_Jew of Aragon, The_, 345.
+
+_Jew of Malta, The_, 89, 90, ~92~, 95, 98, 101, 250, 344.
+
+_Jocasta_, 51, ~54~, 55 n.
+
+Jodelle, E., 38.
+
+_John the Baptist_, 41.
+
+_John Woodvil_, 343.
+
+Johnson, Charles, 318.
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 2, 59, 276, 284, 307, 308.
+
+Jones, Henry, 308 n.
+
+Jonson, Ben, 6, 79, 100, 115, 137, 139, ~141-144~, 146, ~151~,
+~152~, 153, 156, 184, 185, 203, 215, 217, 233, 252.
+
+_Joseph and his Brethren_, 339, 347.
+
+_Julia_, 322.
+
+_Julian_, 347.
+
+_Julius Cæsar_, 136, 142, ~154~, ~155~, 161, 163, 173, 175,
+177, 186, 282, 292, 297 n., 304.
+
+
+Kean, Edmund, 299, 331, 332, 334, 349, 363.
+
+Keats, John, 338, 347, 348, ~349~, 356, 357.
+
+Keller, Wolfgang, 58 n.
+
+Kemble, Charles, 393.
+
+Kemble, John P., 291-293, 299, 331, 333, 340, 343, 349, 363, 371.
+
+Kemble, Miss Fanny, 308 n.
+
+Kempe, Wm., 171 n.
+
+Killigrew, T., 235.
+
+_King and No King, A_, ~203-205~, 252, 262, 282, 322 n.
+
+_King John_, 114, ~116~, ~117~, 136;
+  (by Bale), 41. See _Troublesome Reign._
+
+_King of Scots, The_, 71.
+
+Kinwelmarsh, F., 54.
+
+Kirchmayer, 37.
+
+_Knight of Malta, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Knight of the Burning Bush_, 71 n.
+
+Knowles, Sheridan, 344-346, 356.
+
+Kotzebue, A. F. F. von, 321, 323, ~327~, ~328~, 332, 337.
+
+Kyd, Thomas, his plays, 99-106;
+  their influence, 106-110, 112-115, 127, 128, 138, 142, 144;
+  on revenge plays and Shakespeare, 147-155, 156, 158, 165, 184;
+  on later revenge tragedy, 196, 199, 200, 201, 223, 239;
+  resemblance to in later plays, 256, 310.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 283, 287.
+
+_Lady of Lyons, The_, 346.
+
+Lamb, Charles, 93, 141, ~343~, 345, 360.
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, 14, 338, ~348~, ~349~, 361.
+
+La Place, Pierre de, 297 n.
+
+_Laws of Candy, The_, 220.
+
+_Lear, King_, 18, 87, 124, 131, 164, ~166-171~, 172, 176, 185, 189,
+190, 195, 202, 226, 282, 292, 312, 358.
+
+Lee, Harriet, 352.
+
+Lee, Nathaniel, 246, 250, 251, 253, 261, 262, ~266-269~, 275, 277, 278,
+282, 284, 290, 309, 344, 368.
+
+Legge, Thomas, 59, 60, 118.
+
+_Leir, King_, 85, 166.
+
+Lessing, G. E., 318, 327.
+
+Lewis, Matthew, 323, ~328~, ~329~, 342, 343, 357, 359.
+
+Lillo, George, 306, ~314-318~, 319, 321, 368.
+
+Lindsay, Sir David, 41.
+
+Livy, 71.
+
+_Locrine_, 107, 111, 115, 119 n., 152.
+
+Lope de Vega, 239.
+
+Lounsbury, Prof. T., 295 n.
+
+Lovati, Lovato di, 36.
+
+_Love for Love_, 297 n.
+
+_Love's Cruelty_, 232, 233.
+
+_Love's Frailties_, 318 n.
+
+_Love's Sacrifice_, 227.
+
+_Love the Cause and Cure of Grief_, 318.
+
+_Love Triumphant_, 262.
+
+Lowell, James Russell, 118.
+
+_Loyal Brother, The_, 274.
+
+_Loyal Subject, The_, 282.
+
+_Lucius Junius Brutus_, 267, 358.
+
+_Lucrece_, 142.
+
+Lydgate, John, 32.
+
+Lyly, John, 75, 79.
+
+_Lyrical Ballads, The_, 339, 355.
+
+Lyttleton, Lord, 298, 299, 359.
+
+
+_Macbeth_, 3, 87, 119, 124, 131, ~171-175~, 184-186, 190, 202, 264,
+282, 292, 297 n., 312, 358.
+
+_Macduff's Cross_, 349 n., 350.
+
+Machiavelli, 95, 165, 190, 236, 267, 310, 311.
+
+Macready, Wm., 290, 331, 332, 335, ~345~, ~346~, 360, 363, 364.
+
+_Mahomet_, 295 n.
+
+_Maid of Honor, The_, 221, ~222~, ~223~, 224, 225, 322 n.
+
+_Maid's Revenge, The_, 232.
+
+_Maid's Tragedy, The_, 203, 204, ~205-210~, 252, 282, 297 n., 346.
+
+_Malcontent, The_, 146, 199.
+
+Mallet, D., 303.
+
+_Manfred_, 352, 357.
+
+Manley, Mrs., 266.
+
+_Marcella_, 322 n.
+
+_Marcellus and Hannibal_, ~14.~
+
+_Mariamne_, 308 n.
+
+_Marino Faliero_, 345, 351.
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 6, 42, 48, 55 n., 61, 73, 74, 75;
+  his relations to his times, 77-84; his tragedies, 88-99;
+  his influence on his contemporaries, 106-113;
+  on Shakespeare, 113-126, 132, 133, 138;
+  on Chapman, 144-146;
+  on Shakespeare's later tragedy, 154, 155, 165, 166, 169, 172, 184, 185, 187;
+  on later Elizabethan tragedy, 196, 214, 234, 239;
+  his plays not acted during Restoration, 252;
+  survival of his type of villain, 310, 311;
+  revival of his influence on the Romanticists, 347, 353;
+  his importance in the development of the species, 367, 368.
+
+_Marriage Night, The_, 236.
+
+Marston, John, 105, 137, 139, 144, ~146-150~, 151, 153, 154, 156, 184,
+185, 199, 200, 201, 202, 218, 235.
+
+_Mary Stuart_, 357.
+
+Mason, Wm., 297.
+
+_Massacre of Paris, The_ (by Lee), 267;
+  (by Marlowe), 89, 144.
+
+Massinger, Philip, 177, 199, 211, 214, 215, ~219-226~, 230, 231, 233-235,
+237, 240, 251, 252, 255, 285, 293, 322.
+
+Matthews, Brander, 373.
+
+Maturin, C. R., 344.
+
+May, Thomas, 235.
+
+_Measure for Measure_, 61 n., 169, 235, 264.
+
+_Meleager_, 59.
+
+_Meliboeus_, 40.
+
+_Merchant of Venice, The_, 71.
+
+_Merope_, 295 n., 296, 304.
+
+_Merry Wives of Windsor_, 258, 297 n.
+
+Middleton, Thomas, 3, 137, 199, 215, ~217-219~, 229, 240.
+
+Miller, James, 295.
+
+Milman, H. H., 344, 346, 356, 358.
+
+Milton, John, 14, 260, 264.
+
+_Mirandola_, 345, 358.
+
+_Mirror for Magistrates, The_, 32, 52, 70, 90.
+
+_Mirza_, 236.
+
+_Misfortunes of Arthur, The_, 51, 52, ~57~, ~58~.
+
+_Miss Sara Sampson_, 318.
+
+Mitford, Miss, 345, 347, 358, 361.
+
+_Mithridates_, 267, ~268~, ~269~.
+
+_Monk's Tale, The_, 31, 32.
+
+Moore, Edward, 306, 318.
+
+More, Miss Hannah, 306, 311.
+
+More, Sir Thomas, 118, 119.
+
+Morel, L., 300 n., 302 n.
+
+_Morte D'Arthur, The_, 57.
+
+Morton, T., 335, 338.
+
+_Mountaineers, The_, 332, 333.
+
+_Mourning Bride, The_, 3, ~275~, ~276~, 297 n., 351.
+
+_Much Ado about Nothing_, 162.
+
+_Murderous Michael_, 71.
+
+Murphy, Arthur, 295, 306, 308 n.
+
+Mussato, Albertino, 36.
+
+_Mutius Scævola_, 71 n.
+
+_My Last Duchess_, 362.
+
+_Mysteries of Udolpho_, 330.
+
+_Mysterious Husband, The_, 319.
+
+_Mysterious Mother, The_, 322, 354.
+
+
+Nash, Thomas, 61, 100 n., 103, 111.
+
+_Nero_ (by Lee), 266, 267.
+
+_Nero, Tragedy of_ (Anon.), 234.
+
+_New Way to Pay Old Debts, A_, 220.
+
+_Nice Wanton, The_, 29.
+
+_Nightwalker, The_, 274.
+
+_Nine Days Wonder, The_, 171 n.
+
+North, Christopher. See Wilson, John.
+
+Norton, Thomas, 52.
+
+_Novellas Exemplares_, 212.
+
+
+_Octavia_, 33.
+
+_Oedipus_ (by Dryden and Lee), 261, 267;
+  (by Gager), 59;
+  (by Sophocles), 18.
+
+_Old Fortunatus_, 139.
+
+O'Neil, Miss, 344.
+
+_Orbecche_, 56.
+
+_Orestes_ (adaptation from ~Voltaire~), 295 n.;
+  (by Dryden), 263.
+
+_Oroonoko_, 274, 282, 335.
+
+_Orphan, The_, 270, ~271~, 274, ~282~, ~368~.
+
+_Orphan of China, The_, 295 n.
+
+Orrery, Earl of, 253, 257, ~277~.
+
+_Osorio_, 342.
+
+_Othello_, ~162-166~, 169, 170, 171, 185, 194, 226, 265, 282, 292,
+297 n., 299, 309, 312, 358, 370.
+
+_Otho the Great_, 349.
+
+Otway, Thomas, 250, 251, 253, ~269-272~, 274, 275, 278, 279, 282, 284,
+289, 290, 292, 294, 316, 323, 331, 351, 364, 368.
+
+
+_Painter's Palace of Pleasure_, 55, 70.
+
+_Palamon and Arcyte_, 58.
+
+_Pamela_, 317.
+
+_Pammachius_, 37, 39, 41.
+
+_Paradise Lost_, 260.
+
+_Paris and Vienna_, 71 n.
+
+_Patient Griselda_, 40, 345.
+
+Payne, John Howard, 344.
+
+Peele, George, 75, 79, 84, ~107~ n., ~108~, ~110-112~, 132,
+133, 146.
+
+Pembroke, Countess of, 142.
+
+_Percy_, 306.
+
+_Père de Famille, Le_, 318.
+
+_Perfidus Hetruscus_, 60 n.
+
+_Perkin Warbeck_, 227.
+
+_Pericles_ (adaptation by Lillo), ~315.~
+
+_Persée et Demetrius_, 298.
+
+_Perseus and Andromeda_, 71 n.
+
+Petrarch, 78.
+
+_Phædra_(by Seneca), 56.
+
+_Phædra and Hippolitus_ (Smith's adaptation of Racine), 289, 290.
+
+_Phèdre_, 195.
+
+_Philaster_, 203, 204, 282, 322 n.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 290.
+
+_Philotas_, 142.
+
+_Phoenissæ_, 54.
+
+Pickering, John, 64.
+
+_Picture, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Pilgrim, The_, 322 n.
+
+Pix, Mrs., 266.
+
+Pixérécourt, René de, 337.
+
+_Pizarro_, 327, 328, 335.
+
+Plautus, 21, 36, 39, 63.
+
+_Plays Confuted_, 72.
+
+_Plays on the Passions_, 339.
+
+_Pledge, The_, 346.
+
+Plutarch, 106, 108, 142, 154, 162, 175.
+
+_Poetics of Aristotle, The_, 8, 31, 43.
+
+_Political Justice_, 341.
+
+_Politician, The_, 232, 233.
+
+Pope, Alexander, 273.
+
+_Pope Joan, or the Female Prelate_, 266.
+
+Preston, Thomas, 66.
+
+_Pride of Life, The_, 29.
+
+_Princess of Cleve, The_, 267.
+
+Procter, B., 345, 356.
+
+_Progne_, 58.
+
+_Prometheus Unbound_, 14, 298, 353, 355.
+
+_Promus and Cassandra_, 52, ~61~ n., ~62~ n., 69, 72.
+
+_Prophetess, The_, 214, 246.
+
+_Ptolemy_, 71.
+
+Puttenham, George, 44, 45.
+
+Pye, H. J., 307.
+
+
+_Queen of Corinth, The_, 214, 220.
+
+_Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas_, 55 n.
+
+Quinault, P., 245.
+
+_Quintus Fabius_, 71 n.
+
+
+Racine, 2, 7, 8, 13, 247, 248, 251, 256, 268, 269, 272, 278, 287, 294, 297,
+298, 300, 359.
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs., 356.
+
+Radcliffe, Ralph, 40.
+
+_Ralph Roister Doister_, 39.
+
+_Rape_, 309.
+
+Ravenscroft, Edward, 266.
+
+Rawlins, Thomas, 236.
+
+_Red Knight, The_, 71 n.
+
+_Rebellion, The_, 236.
+
+_Rehearsal, The_, 259.
+
+_Remorse_, ~342~, ~343~, 344, 360.
+
+_Renegado, The_, 221.
+
+_Revenge_, 298.
+
+_Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, The_ (see _Bussy D'Ambois_), 144.
+
+_Revenge of Hamlet_, 150.
+
+_Revenger's Tragedy, The_, 199, 202.
+
+Reynolds, F., 332, 335, 338.
+
+_Richard II_, 109, 114, 117, ~123-125~, 126, 136;
+  anonymous play on, see _Woodstock_.
+
+_Richard III_ (by Shakespeare), 114, ~117-123~, 125, 172, 282, 292,
+297 n., 311, 312.
+
+_Richard III, True Tragedy of_, ~108~, ~109~, 112, 118, 119.
+
+_Richard Duke of York, True Tragedy of_, 115 n., 116.
+
+Richardson, Samuel, 275, 284.
+
+_Richardus Tertius_, 59.
+
+_Richelieu_, 345, ~346~, 358.
+
+_Rienzi_, 345, 358.
+
+_Ring and Book, The_, 14, 362.
+
+Ristori, Madame, 344.
+
+Ritwyse, John, 39.
+
+_Rival Ladies, The_, 251, 253.
+
+_Rival Queens, The_, 266, 282.
+
+_Rivals, The_, 319.
+
+_Road to Ruin, The_, 320.
+
+_Robbers, The_, 330, 342, 357.
+
+_Rob Roy_, 335.
+
+Rochester, Earl of, 258.
+
+_Rollo._ See _Bloody Brother_.
+
+_Roman Actor, The_, 224.
+
+_Roman Father, The_, 294.
+
+_Roman Revenge, The_, 304.
+
+_Romeo and Juliet_, 12, 114, ~126-134~, 136, 146, 185, 226, 236,
+270, 292.
+
+_Romeus and Juliet_, 127.
+
+Rossetti, D. G., 347.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, ~283-289~, 291, 294, 307, 316, 323.
+
+Rowley, William, ~218~, ~219~, 227, 229.
+
+_Royal Convert, The_, 283.
+
+_Royal Master, The_, 232.
+
+_Roxana_, 59.
+
+Rymer, T., 250, 260.
+
+Sackville, Thomas, 52.
+
+_Samson Agonistes_, 14, 264, 298.
+
+Santayana, George, 192 n.
+
+_Sardanapalus_, 345, ~351~, 358.
+
+_Sarpedon_, 71 n.
+
+Schelling, F. W. J. von, 359.
+
+Schiller, F. von, 327, 341, 357, ~359~, 363.
+
+_Scipio, Africanus_, 71 n.
+
+_Scornful Lady, The_, 322 n.
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 129, 262, 285, 312, 335, 339, 341, ~349~, ~350~,
+357, 361.
+
+Scudéry, G. de, 247.
+
+_Second Maiden's Tragedy, The_, 199, 201, 221.
+
+_Secret Love_, 259.
+
+_Sejanus_, ~141-144~, 172.
+
+_Selimus_, 108, 164.
+
+_Semiramis_, 295 n.
+
+Seneca, characteristics of his tragedies, 33-36;
+  their revival on the continent, 36-38;
+  in England, 38-46;
+  English imitations of, 51-58;
+  Latin imitations of at the English universities, 58-61;
+  influence of on popular plays, 62-69, 73-75;
+  his models rejected by Marlowe, 89-90;
+  adapted by Kyd and others, 100-108, 113;
+  his influence on _Richard III_, 118, 119;
+  on Ben Jonson, 143;
+  on Chapman, 144;
+  on Marston and revenge tragedies, 146-154 _passim_;
+  on _Hamlet_, 159, 160;
+  and traceable elsewhere in Shakespeare, 183-185;
+  in later drama, 196, 215.
+
+Settle, Elkanah, 253, 266.
+
+Sheil, R. L., 344.
+
+Shakespeare, his conception of tragedy, 8, 9;
+  his relations to Kyd, 100, 104, 105;
+  to other predecessors, 107-111;
+  his early tragedies and histories, 113-116;
+  _King John_, 116, 117;
+  _Richard III_, 117-123;
+  _Richard II_, 123-126;
+  _Romeo and Juliet_, 126-133;
+  his relations to his contemporaries, 136-147 _passim_;
+  to the revenge tragedies, 147-154;
+  _Julius Cæsar_, 154;
+  _Hamlet_, 155-162;
+  _Othello_, 162-166;
+  _Lear_, 166-175;
+  _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_, 175-179;
+  summary of his work in tragedy, 181-195;
+  his influence on Elizabethan successors, 196-241 _passim_;
+  Restoration criticisms and alterations of his tragedies, 248-252, 260-262,
+    264-266, 269, 270, 277-279;
+  his plays in the eighteenth century, 282, 292-294;
+  Rowe's indebtedness to, 288, 289;
+  Thomson's indebtedness, 301, 302;
+  Hill's, 304, 305;
+  influence of _Othello_, 309;
+  his plays in the patent theatres, 331, 332;
+  his influence on the romanticists, 339;
+  on Wordsworth, 341;
+  on Coleridge, 342;
+  on Lamb, 343;
+  his influence dominant in nineteenth century tragedy, 355-363 _passim_;
+  and through the whole course of English tragedy, 370, 372, 376.
+
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 14, 182, 338, 347, 348, ~353-355~, 356-359, 367,
+368.
+
+Sheridan, R. B., 327.
+
+Sheridan, Thomas, 299.
+
+_She Stoops to Conquer_, 319.
+
+Shirley, James, 199, ~229-234~, 235, 237, 238, 240, 251, 252, 255, 256,
+282, 344.
+
+_Sicily and Naples_, 236.
+
+Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 275, 290, 293, 308 n., 340.
+
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 6, 44, 53, 72, 73.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, The_, 297 n., 308 n.
+
+_Siege of Rhodes, The_, 244, 252.
+
+_Slave, The_, 335, 336.
+
+Small, R. A., 162 n.
+
+Smith, Edmund, 289.
+
+Soane, G., 338.
+
+_Soliman and Perseda_, 100 n., ~105~, ~106~, 127, 128.
+
+_Solitary Knight, The_, 71 n.
+
+_Solymannidæ_, 59.
+
+Sophocles, 7, 9, 32, 37, 58, 187, 298, 370, 375.
+
+_Sophonisba_ (by Lee), 266;
+  (by Marston), 147;
+  (by Thomson), 299, 300;
+  (by Trissino), 38.
+
+Southerne, Thomas, ~273-275~, 277, 279, 282, 284, 294, 316, 321, 323.
+
+Southey, Robert, 337, 341.
+
+_Spanish Friar, The_, 262, 263.
+
+_Spanish Tragedy, The_, ~100-105~, 110, 113, 115, 147, 148, 151.
+
+_Spartan Dame, The_, 274.
+
+Spenser, Edmund, 78, 79, 107.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 297 n., 317.
+
+Stoll, Elmer, E., 151 n.
+
+Stowe, John, 70.
+
+_Strafford_, 346, 363.
+
+_Stranger, The_, 327, 328.
+
+Suckling, Sir John, 234.
+
+_Surrender of Calais, The_, 332, 333.
+
+Surrey, Earl of, 53.
+
+Swinburne, A., 14, 339, 347, 361, 364.
+
+
+_Tale of Mystery, The_, 334.
+
+Talfourd, Sir Thomas N., 346.
+
+_Tamburlaine_, 58, 74, ~87-97~ _passim_, 100, 104, 107, 119 n.
+
+_Tamerlane_, ~283~, ~284~, 291, 297 n.
+
+_Tancred and Gismunda_, 51, ~55-57~, 61 n., 68, 69, 127, 128.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 299, 300, 302.
+
+_Tancrède_, 295 n.
+
+Tasso, 78.
+
+Tate, Nahum, 246, 266, 292, 301.
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 361.
+
+_Telemo_, 71 n.
+
+_Tempest, The_, 179, 259, 264.
+
+_Temptation of Our Lord, The_, 41.
+
+_Tender Husband, The_, 317.
+
+Tennyson, Alfred, 182, 355, 364.
+
+Terence, 23, 37, 39.
+
+Terry, Daniel, 338, 350.
+
+_Thebias_, 53.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 293.
+
+_Theodosius_, 246, 267.
+
+_Thierry and Theodoret_, 203.
+
+Thomson, James, 292, ~299-302~, 307.
+
+_Three Estates, The_, 41.
+
+_Three Laws, The_, 41.
+
+_Thyestes_ (by Crowne), 263, 266;
+  (by Seneca), 56.
+
+_Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes_, 71 n.
+
+_Timon of Athens_, 178, 265, 282, 297 n.
+
+_'Tis Pity She's a Whore_, 227, 228.
+
+_Titus Andronicus_, 108, ~114~, ~115~, 120, 136, 164, 237, 282.
+
+_Titus and Berenice_, 269.
+
+_Titus and Gisippus_, 40.
+
+Tobin, John, 343.
+
+_Tom Jones_, 321.
+
+_Tom Thumb_, 314 n.
+
+_Tonumbeius_, 59.
+
+Tourneur, Cyril, 139, 151, ~153~, ~154~, 156, 199, 202, 217, 234,
+267, 348.
+
+_Tragedy a la Mode_, 314 n.
+
+_Tragedies of the Last Age_, 260.
+
+_Traitor, The_, 233, 252, 282, 344.
+
+Treveth, Nicholas, 36.
+
+_Trial, The_, 339.
+
+Trissino, G. G., 38.
+
+_Triumph of Honor, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Troades_, 42.
+
+_Troilus and Cressida_, 162 n., 261, 265.
+
+_Troublesome Reign of King John, The_, 85, ~87~, ~88~.
+
+Tupper, J. W., 255 n.
+
+_Twelve Labors of Hercules, The_, 71 n.
+
+_Two Foscari, The_, 346, 351.
+
+_Two Lamentable Tragedies, The_, 140.
+
+_Two Noble Kinsmen, The_, 211.
+
+_Tyrannic Love_, 259.
+
+
+Udall, Nicholas, 58.
+
+_Ulysses_, 283.
+
+_Ulysses Redux_, 59.
+
+_Unhappy Favorite, The_, 273, 282.
+
+_Unnatural Combat, The_, 224.
+
+
+_Valentinian_, ~213~, 217, 252, 282.
+
+_Valiant Scot, The_, 236.
+
+_Venice Preserved_, ~270~, ~271~, 278, 282, 297 n., 351.
+
+Victor, B., 318.
+
+Virgil, Polydore, 119.
+
+_Virginius_, 344, ~345~, 358.
+
+_Virgin Martyr, The_, 221, 224, 252.
+
+_Virtue Betrayed, or Anne Bullen_, 273.
+
+_Volpone_, 233.
+
+Voltaire, 247, 276, 290, ~294-297~, 299, 302, 304, 305, 324.
+
+
+Wade, Thomas, 345, 347.
+
+_Wallenstein_ (by Glapthorne), 235;
+  (by Schiller), 357.
+
+Walpole, Horace, 322, 354.
+
+Ward, A. W., 111, 270 n., 287.
+
+_Warning for Fair Women, A_, 140, ~147~, 316.
+
+_Wars of Cyrus, The_, 106, 108.
+
+Watson, Thomas, 39.
+
+_Wat Tyler_, 341 n.
+
+_Weavers, The_, 12.
+
+Webbe, William, 57.
+
+Webster, John, 153, 169, 198, 199, ~202~, ~203~, 217-219, 226, 230,
+234, 237, 239, 240, 252, 256, 262, 348.
+
+Wells, Charles, 339, 347.
+
+_Werner_, 345, ~351~, 357.
+
+_Werter_, 323.
+
+_What d'ye Call It_, 314 n.
+
+_What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man_, 71.
+
+_Wheel of Fortune, The_, 320.
+
+Whetstone, George, 61 n., 62 n., 72.
+
+_White Devil, The_, 198, 199, 202, 252.
+
+Whitehead, William, 294, ~307~.
+
+_Wife's Trial, The_, 343.
+
+_Wild Gallant, The_, 251.
+
+_William Tell_, 344.
+
+Wilmot, Robert, 55, 56.
+
+Wilson, John, 163, 347.
+
+_Winter's Tale, A_, 179, 342.
+
+_Witch, The_, 3, 218.
+
+_Witch of Edmonton, The_, 227.
+
+_Woodstock_, ~109~, 112, 114.
+
+_Woman Killed with Kindness, A_, ~140~, ~141~, 272, 289, 318,
+328.
+
+_Woman's Love_, 345.
+
+_Women Beware Women_, 218.
+
+_Women Pleased_, 322 n.
+
+Wordsworth, William, 337, 338, ~341~, 343, 357.
+
+_Wounds of Civil War, The_, 108, 142.
+
+Wycherley, William, 258.
+
+
+Xenophon, 106.
+
+
+_Yorkshire Tragedy, The_, 140, 318.
+
+Young, Edward, ~298~, ~299~, 307.
+
+
+_Zapolya_, 342.
+
+_Zara_, 295 n., 299, 304, 305.
+
+_Zenobia_, 308 n., 351.
+
+_Zobeide_, 295 n.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Types Of English Literature, by Ashley H. Thorndike.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tragedy
+
+Author: Ashley H. Thorndike
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2012 [EBook #38711]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAGEDY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>The Types of English Literature</h2>
+
+<h4>EDITED BY</h4>
+
+<h3>WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON</h3>
+
+<h1>TRAGEDY</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>TRAGEDY</h1>
+
+<h2>BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY<br />
+AUTHOR OF "THE INFLUENCE OF BEAUMONT<br />
+AND FLETCHER ON SHAKSPERE"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="150" height="196" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+COPYRIGHT 1908 BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE<br />
+<br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE<br />
+THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM<br />
+<br />
+<i>Published May 1908</i><br />
+<br />
+The Riverside Press<br />
+CAMBRIDGE &middot; MASSACHUSETTS<br />
+PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>This book attempts to trace the course of English tragedy from its
+beginnings to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to indicate the
+part which it has played in the history both of the theatre and of
+literature. All tragedies of the sixteenth century are noticed, because of
+their historical interest and their close relationship to Shakespeare, but
+after 1600 only representative plays have been considered. The aim of this
+series has been kept in view, and the discussion, whether of individual
+plays or of dramatic conditions, has been determined by their importance in
+the study of a literary type. Tragedy in the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries has attracted very little critical attention, and in those fields
+the book is something of a pioneer. The Elizabethan drama, on the contrary,
+has been the subject of a vast amount of antiquarian, biographical, and
+literary research, without which such a treatment as I have attempted would
+be almost impossible. In order, however, to keep the main purpose in view,
+it has been necessary to omit nearly all notice of the processes of
+research or the debates of criticism, and to give only what seem to me the
+results. To indicate at every point my reliance on my own investigations or
+my indebtedness to the researches of others would, indeed, necessitate
+doubling the size of the book. Its readers will not require an apology for
+its brevity, but I regret that I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> offer only this inadequate
+acknowledgment of the great assistance I have received not merely from the
+studies mentioned in the Bibliographical Notes, but also from many others
+that have directly or indirectly contributed to my discussion.</p>
+
+<p>I am indebted to Dr. Ernest Bernbaum, who very kindly read chapters viii
+and ix, and made a number of suggestions. I have also the pleasure of
+expressing my great obligations to Professors Brander Matthews, Jefferson
+B. Fletcher, and William A. Neilson, who have read both the manuscript and
+the proof-sheets and given me the generous benefit of their most helpful
+criticism.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+A. H. T.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">New York</span>, March, 1908.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Chapter I.</span> <span class="smcap">Definitions</span>                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter II.</span> <span class="smcap">The Medieval and the Classical Influences</span>    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_21'>21</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter III.</span> <span class="smcap">The Beginnings of Tragedy</span>                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_48'>48</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter IV.</span> <span class="smcap">Marlowe and his Contemporaries</span>               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_77'>77</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter V.</span> <span class="smcap">Shakespeare and his Contemporaries</span>           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_136'>136</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter VI.</span> <span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_181'>181</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter VII.</span> <span class="smcap">The Later Elizabethans</span>                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_196'>196</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter VIII.</span> <span class="smcap">The Restoration</span>                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_243'>243</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter IX.</span> <span class="smcap">The Eighteenth Century</span>                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_281'>281</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter X.</span> <span class="smcap">The Romantic Movement</span>                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_326'>326</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Chapter XI.</span> <span class="smcap">Conclusion</span>                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_366'>366</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;"><span class="smcap">Index</span>           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_379'>379</a></span></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>TRAGEDY</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>DEFINITIONS</h3>
+
+
+<p>There is little difficulty in selecting the plays that should be included
+in a history of English tragedy. Since the middle of the sixteenth century
+there have always been plays commonly received as tragedies, and others so
+closely resembling these that they require consideration in any
+comprehensive study. How far these plays present the common characteristics
+of a type, how far they constitute a clearly defined form of the drama, and
+how far they may be connected from one period to another in a continuous
+development&mdash;are questions better answered at the book's end than at its
+beginning. Some questions of the definition of tragedy, however, may well
+be preliminary to a study of its history. The very term "English tragedy"
+involves two precarious abstractions. It separates tragedy from the drama
+of which it is a part, and it separates English tragedies from those of
+other languages to which they are related in character and origin. In
+attempting a definition, we may question the reality of these abstract
+separations by which our later discussions are to be conveniently limited;
+for a definition can be attained only through the distinction of tragedy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+from other forms of the drama, and through a consideration of the varying
+conceptions of tragedy in different periods and nations.</p>
+
+<p>We may begin very empirically with an element common to all tragedies and
+roughly distinguishing them from other forms of drama; noticed, indeed, in
+all theoretical definitions, though its importance is often blurred and it
+receives only scant attention from Aristotle. He refers to the third part
+of the plot as "the tragic incident, a destructive or painful action, such
+as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like." If his meaning
+of "a destructive or painful action" is extended to include mental as well
+as physical suffering, we have a definition of an indispensable element in
+tragedy and a conspicuous distinction from comedy.</p>
+
+<p>This definition has had ample recognition in practice and in popular
+opinion, as in the sixteenth-century idea of a tragedy as a play involving
+deaths, and in the present common conception of tragedy as requiring an
+unhappy ending. These uncritical opinions, however, introduce amendments
+that are not quite corollaries. The happy ending has never been completely
+excluded. Aristotle, while pronouncing in favor of the unhappy ending as
+best suited to producing tragic effect, recognized the possibility and
+popularity of a conclusion that limited punishment to the vicious. In
+modern times the salvation of the virtuous in tragedy has had warm
+defenders, including Racine and Dr. Johnson; and the essentiality of either
+an unhappy ending or of deaths<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> has been generally denied. Evidently either
+is a natural but not inevitable accompaniment of suffering and disaster. A
+tragedy may permit of relief or even recovery for the good, or it may
+minimize the external and physical elements of suffering; but its action
+must be largely unhappy though its end is not, and destructive even if it
+does not lead to deaths.</p>
+
+<p>Our working definition, however, does not attempt to indicate the qualities
+necessary to excellence in tragedy or to particularize in respect to the
+treatment of the action. It offers no distinction, where recent critics
+have been careful to make one, between tragedy and what we to-day call
+melodrama.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The relation between the two is similar to that between
+comedy and farce. Melodrama is more sensational, less serious; it attains
+its effects by spectacles, machines, externals, while tragedy deals with
+character and motive; it reaches its conclusions through accidents and
+surprises, while tragedy seeks to show the cause of every effect. But the
+distinction is general and relative rather than specific and absolute. The
+use of witches to foretell actions and characters would of itself be a
+melodramatic device, and so it is in Middleton's "Witch," but not in
+"Macbeth." Congreve's "Mourning Bride" is a melodrama, judged by our
+standards at present, but for many years it was considered one of the great
+tragedies in the language. A stage presentation, in fact, almost
+presupposes external, spectacular, and sensational<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> effects, which must
+vary according to the theatrical conditions and the taste of the day, as
+well as in response to the artistic purpose and treatment. The distinction
+between melodrama and tragedy, in short, is hardly more than between bad
+tragedy and good, or between a lower and a higher type. So far as a
+separation of the two has been made, it has been the result of centuries of
+experience. It cannot readily be fixed by rule or definition; it requires
+historical treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Our definition, again, affords a rough rather than an exact separation from
+comedy. The two species cannot, indeed, be absolutely distinguished. In the
+theatre to-day there are many plays which one hesitates to classify as
+either tragedy or comedy. And there have always been, even in the Greek
+theatre, classes of plays recognized as neither the one nor the other.
+Again, a play presenting various persons and incidents is necessarily
+complex in material and emotional effect, and may mingle suffering and ruin
+with happiness and success, so that whether its main effect is tragic or
+comic may depend on its point of view or its general tone. The divisions of
+tragedy and comedy are neither mutually exclusive, nor are they together
+inclusive of all drama. Theoretically, there is perhaps ground for doubting
+whether other divisions might not be established more essential and more
+comprehensive. Comedy in particular comprises plays differing so widely in
+every respect that almost no common characteristics can be found. Yet
+tragedy and comedy have long been, and still are,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> accepted as the main
+divisions of the drama. The very names of the other forms, "tragicomedy,"
+"<i>Schauspiel</i>" "emotional drama," "social drama," "<i>drame</i>," or merely
+"play," by their lack of distinctiveness, testify to the significance of
+the division of dramatic action and effects into the two classes, tragic
+and comic. From merely a theoretical point of view, indeed, we may
+recognize that a dramatic action, through its brevity and its stage
+presentation, if for no other reasons, has a suitability for these effects
+not possessed by other forms of literature. But the importance and
+definition of the two forms, and especially that of tragedy, depend less on
+theory than on historical origins and development.</p>
+
+<p>If we attempt to fortify our working definition so that it may more
+effectively separate tragedy on the one hand from melodrama and on the
+other from comedy and the more or less neutral species, we are driven to
+consider the numerous and shifting conceptions that have marked the
+progress of the classical tradition in modern Europe. Although some
+approach to the tragic may have been manifest from the beginnings of the
+drama in the mimetic ceremonies of primitive culture, our present
+distinction between tragedy and comedy traces back to Athens, where tragedy
+as a form of literature had its first great development and where it
+received its first critical definition. Nothing closely corresponding to
+the two forms, as there developed and defined, is to be found in the dramas
+of China, India, or medieval Europe. Tragedy is an inheritance from Greece
+and Rome, not received<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> by Western Europe until the Renaissance. There was,
+to be sure, much that was tragical in the widespread religious drama of the
+Middle Ages; and there were a number of plays that in content and effect
+might claim a place with later tragedies; but it was not until the revival
+of the classics that the revelation of a highly developed form of drama led
+to the creation of a distinct species called tragedy, in the vernacular
+literatures of Spain, Italy, France, and England.</p>
+
+<p>The classical tradition in the beginning was affected by the mistaken
+theories of medieval encyclopedists and by humanistic misinterpretations of
+the classics. In every nation it came into conflict with the traditions of
+the medieval drama, and underwent great modifications; in England an
+amalgamation of the two traditions resulting in a tragedy widely different
+from either. During four centuries the changing theatrical conditions, the
+changing social conditions, the diversity of national peculiarities, have
+resulted in ideas of tragedy at variance with one another and with the
+classics. Shakespeare's conception of tragedy was very different from
+Aristotle's, and very different from Bruneti&egrave;re's or Ibsen's. Indeed, the
+conceptions formed by various of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Sidney,
+Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, and Fletcher, so far as we can determine, have
+pronounced differences though they have common resemblances. It would
+require a larger book than the present one to consider adequately the
+differences and agreements merely of critical theory and dogma in modern
+Europe. Yet the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> literary tradition, in spite of all these changes and
+variations, has remained continuous. Whether fixed in the form of rules, or
+discernible only in the general resemblances of current practices, or
+represented by the great models of Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Racine, it
+has influenced every playwright. He has striven to write more or less in
+accord with some critical theory, in imitation of some author, or in
+conformity to some fashion; or he has written in opposition to theory,
+example, or fashion.</p>
+
+<p>It is the purpose of this book to trace the course of this tradition in the
+English drama, to appraise the inheritance of each age from the preceding
+ages, its borrowings from other national inheritances, and the profit and
+loss due to its own invention or industry. All that may be attempted here
+by way of preliminary definition is a glance at the main European course of
+the classical tradition to see what have been from time to time considered
+the essentials of tragedy and to ask how far there has been any agreement
+in regard to these essentials.</p>
+
+<p>The basis for much of modern theorizing has been Aristotle's tentative yet
+searching analysis of Athenian tragedy. Many of the peculiarities of
+Athenian tragedy&mdash;its structure without acts but with a chorus, its
+limitation of three actors on the stage at once, its narrow range of
+mythological subjects&mdash;are evidently not essential to securing tragic
+effect. Even the unities, whether as observed in the Greek theatre or as
+defined by French and Italian critics, may, after generations of debate, be
+safely relegated as nonessential. Omitting, then, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> no one would now
+insist upon as requisite, we may derive from the "Poetics" something like
+the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its
+action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune,
+involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be
+written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression.</p>
+
+<p>Much more than this has been derived from Aristotle by modern theorists,
+but this much of the classical conception has generally survived in modern
+tragedy. If the meaning of "a single and complete action" be stretched a
+little, this definition includes the plays of Shakespeare as well as those
+of Racine, and nearly all tragedies from the Renaissance to the present.</p>
+
+<p>In one important respect, however, this definition falls short of
+describing Greek tragedy, and is still more inadequate for modern.
+Aristotle emphasized the action above the characterization, and devoted
+much attention to the requirements of the plot. He did not, moreover,
+recognize the importance of the element of conflict, whether between man
+and circumstance, or between men, or within the mind of man. The Greek
+tragedies themselves had not failed to exhibit such conflicts; the medieval
+drama, notably in the moralities, emphasized moral conflict; and
+Renaissance tragedy, wherever it showed any independence, particularly in
+England and Shakespeare, took for its theme the conflict of human will with
+other forces. The importance of this modification of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> Aristotelian view
+received only slow critical recognition. But it was everywhere exemplified
+in practice, in French classical drama as well as in Shakespeare, in plays
+imitating the Greeks as well as in plays revolting from their models. After
+a time this modification of the classical tradition came to have a distinct
+place in literary theory. Hegel gave it philosophical elaboration, and, in
+the romantic movement, when dramatists in different languages turned to
+Shakespeare for a model, they naturally assumed what may be called the
+Shakespearean definition. This important amendment to the tragic tradition
+may be briefly stated:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The action of a tragedy should represent a conflict of wills, or of will
+with circumstance, or will with itself, and should therefore be based on
+the characters of the persons involved. A typical tragedy is concerned with
+a great personality engaged in a struggle that ends disastrously.</p>
+
+<p>In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern
+conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of
+theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive.
+This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the
+definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in
+modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance
+given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated
+emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet
+"pity and fear"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> still serve as well as any other terms to describe the
+emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however,
+hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror,
+despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has
+appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The
+reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense
+of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as
+the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern
+tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though
+double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the
+Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a
+return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare
+instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the
+action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes
+have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been
+confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and
+pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of
+tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in
+England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the
+sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men
+and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary
+tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but
+here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the
+last century, to prose.</p>
+
+<p>On examination, then, the particulars of the classical tradition have shown
+extraordinary powers of survival, but not one of them has gone without
+protest and violation. The thousands of tragedies written during four
+centuries have all had marked resemblances, and all important developments
+have preserved relationships to the classical species; yet it is impossible
+to insist on any one quality of that species as essential, without
+encountering examples of great tragedies that lack it. The close
+relationships among these many plays forbid the separation of a few,
+distinguished by certain qualities, to be named as tragedies, and the rest
+as something else; and the great variations forbid the confident selection
+of any qualities as essential in the future development of tragedy. The
+modern amendments, though represented by nearly universal practice, have
+not saved the classical tradition, and are themselves coming under
+question. The plays of Ibsen, which seem to have instituted the most
+important development in tragedy for two centuries, return to something of
+the simplicity of action required by Aristotle, and present the struggle of
+individual wills as did Shakespeare, but are in prose and deal with
+contemporary bourgeois life,&mdash;a combination of relationships to the
+tradition wholly new. While idealization in some degree must be exercised
+in tragedy as in all forms of literature, it is impossible, in the light of
+realistic plays, to maintain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> that tragic effects can be secured only
+through the stories of exceptional persons. Tragic greatness, in the sense
+demanded by the theorists, is, indeed, scarcely more manifest in the
+persons of "Romeo and Juliet" than in those of "Hedda Gabler." While
+conflict of some kind is essential to a dramatic action, yet it may
+evidently be minimized without destroying the artistic impressiveness of
+suffering and disaster. Even the requirement that tragedy deal with the
+characters of individual men is being questioned. It is conceivable that
+plays in the future may, like Hauptmann's "The Weavers," turn from the
+emotions of the individual to those of a class, or may find their
+destructive and painful actions in the oppression, disaster, or mere unrest
+of the mass.</p>
+
+<p>Any precise and compact definition is sure to lack in comprehensiveness and
+veracity. It cannot sum up the facts of the past and present, much less set
+rules for the future. We seem forced to reject the possibility of any exact
+limitations for the dramatic species, to include as tragedies all plays
+presenting painful or destructive actions, to accept the leading elements
+of a literary tradition derived from the Greeks as indicating the common
+bonds between such plays in the past, but to admit that this tradition,
+while still powerful, is variable, uncertain, and unauthoritative.</p>
+
+<p>But besides this literary tradition there has been a hardly less powerful
+theatrical tradition. Tragedy has always owed a double allegiance, to
+literature and to the theatre. A tragedy is a play, not merely a dialogue
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> poetry or prose, but a play to be interpreted by actors before an
+audience in a theatre. To these three factors it has had first of all to
+suit itself. And these factors have constituted conditions and standards,
+different and not less variable and transient than those of the literary
+tradition. The plays of &AElig;schylus, of Shakespeare, of Calderon, and of
+Racine, for example, were planned for widely different conditions, and for
+conditions also widely different from those now present in the theatres.
+Excepting Shakespeare's, no English tragedies of the sixteenth,
+seventeenth, eighteenth, or, one might almost say, nineteenth century, are
+acted in our theatres to-day. The effect of the acted drama is consequently
+not only different from that of the drama when read, it is also subject to
+other and variable artistic standards. It aims at some effects not at all
+literary and at some likely to be limited by its own day and theatre. A
+history of tragedy must take into account the differences of the theatre of
+one nation from that of another, and of one period from another period. It
+must remember that to those temporary conditions each dramatist necessarily
+conformed and that by them his achievement was directed. It may find some
+hostile to the best dramatic art, tending to promote melodramatic rather
+than tragic effects. It may find others that are divorced from any
+permanent meaning for the drama or literature. But the fact that such
+conditions are temporary should not breed contempt, for much great
+literature has been aimed not at the world or posterity but at the audience
+of the day. Out of temporary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and varying theatrical conditions have arisen
+the permanent criteria for dramatic excellence.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the theatre has been a conservative influence, tending to oppose
+innovation and to maintain the integrity of the form of tragedy. The
+essentials of its literary form, its length conditioned by the time of the
+performance, the division into acts, scenes, or parts, and the growing
+importance of dialogue, have all been dependent on theatrical conditions.
+The characteristic qualities of national dramas have been in some measure
+the products of the national theatres, and only through the growing
+similarity of stage conditions are we likely to attain agreement in regard
+to the forms of drama. While there have been a multitude of tragedies that
+have never been acted, and some that have never been intended for acting,
+the attempt to write tragedy for the closet rather than for the stage has
+resulted either in adopting the supposed conditions of the Greek or some
+other foreign theatre, or in breaking away from the strict limits defined
+by the stage and writing lyrical medleys or dramatic monologues or
+imaginary conversations. As soon as tragedy has left the theatre, it has
+reverted to old forms or developed new and strange hybrids. Milton's
+"Samson Agonistes" and Swinburne's "Bothwell" are tragedies, if you will,
+but they have no place in the development of a national drama. Shelley's
+"Prometheus Unbound," Browning's "The Ring and the Book," and Landor's
+"Marcellus and Hannibal" are all dramatic, but they cannot be included in
+any definition of the species of tragedy. Object<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> as tragedy rightly may at
+times to the limitations and trivialities of the theatre, it cannot safely
+leave its precincts without losing its own identity.</p>
+
+<p>In the past nearly all tragedies of any effect on the drama's development
+have not only been planned for the stage but have succeeded when acted.
+This seems likely to be the case in the future. For the reader of a play is
+confronted by difficulties not found in other fiction; and, in general,
+only a play suited to presentation on the stage is likely to secure for a
+reader the visualization, the impersonations, the illusion of actuality,
+similar to those experienced in the theatre. The fact that the drama
+requires the services of theatre and actors as well as author need not
+lessen our recognition of the responsibility and opportunities of the one
+or the other. The stage affords the first test of a play's emotional
+appeal, and perhaps the best test of its dramatic power. The consummation
+of tragedy has been attained only when the dramatist has availed himself of
+all the aids that the theatre has offered.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far our attempt at definition has had to do with what tragedy is or
+has been or is likely to be, rather than with what it ought to be. The more
+difficult question has not been shunned by criticism, and perhaps even our
+brief discussion ought not to omit a consideration of tragedy's function
+and opportunities. These certainly extend beyond the theatre and include
+whatever is possible for literature. As a form of literature, tragedy
+fulfills in general the same functions as other forms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> especially as
+fiction, of which it is one division. It has similar opportunities and its
+effects are similar in kind. It must be judged by the same standards, by
+the nature and power of its emotional effect, and by the lasting meaning of
+its portrayal of life; and the census of the centuries will be necessary to
+establish its greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Special qualities have, however, been assumed for the emotional effect of
+tragedy altogether apart from its peculiarities as drama or fiction. A
+peculiar function, a special effect, differing from other forms of
+literature, have been ascribed to it. Aristotle declared its effect to be
+the purging of the emotions, a somewhat obscure expression, surely
+incorrect if taken in the literal sense that Aristotle seems to have
+intended, but variously interpreted as referring to moral or &aelig;sthetic
+reactions. Modern theories have too often regarded tragedy as a sort of
+exposition of the moral law, illustrating the ways of providence. To-day we
+require of tragedy a probing into human motive, an especial devotion to the
+study of character under great emotional stress. But has it a special
+function? Tragedy deals with pain, yet seeks to give us pleasure:&mdash;this
+crux has been greatly emphasized by the false antithesis between pain and
+pleasure. As a matter of fact, though our knowledge of the &aelig;sthetic
+emotions is scanty, a description of the effect of tragedy is hardly more
+obscure than that of any other form of literature or of any other of the
+fine arts. In life we are enormously interested in grief and suffering and
+disaster, as we are also in joy, pleasure, and success. Our newspapers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+abound in narratives of both sorts, and so do our novels. We are stirred by
+the painful emotions of our fellows as readily as by their pleasurable
+ones. The tragic plays a large part in many forms of literature and in
+sculpture, music, and painting. And tragedy, dedicated to painful actions,
+also interests, fascinates, absorbs us. It is not diverting, amusing; it is
+not for daily food or recreation, but no less it ministers to an active
+normal human interest.</p>
+
+<p>Does it carry an antidote to offset its demand upon our sympathies? Is
+there a katharsis that somehow transforms our pity and fear into relief and
+pleasure? There is something of the sort in the mere exercise of violent
+emotion, which in a measure carries its own relief and cure. There is
+something also of egotistical satisfaction, of self-congratulation that
+comes with the exercise of sympathy, a certain exaltation that virtue has
+gone out of us. There is something again of &aelig;sthetic delight in the
+artistic mastery which we feel in any great work of art. The harmony of the
+argument, the splendor of the verse, the grandeur of conception and
+expression may counterbalance the painfulness of the story. Yet more,
+tragedy may bring the inspiration of greatness and endurance, of purity and
+unselfishness of spirit. Its idealization of character, its revelation of
+beauty and power even in distress and downfall, may bring a reassurance
+that turns pity to exhilaration. In drama as in life there may come in
+moments of trial and ruin the visions of the eternities to console and
+exalt us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But is it true that these elements of relief are always felt, or are always
+triumphant over our depression and dismay? May not the impressions of pain
+and destruction be unrelieved and overwhelming? What relief or exaltation
+is there in the first impression from "&OElig;dipus," "Lear," or "Ghosts"? We
+are filled with confusion, dismay, and pity. We cannot separate ourselves
+from the misery. We feel the intolerable burden of the world's woe. Our
+sympathies struggle beneath it, vainly, despairingly. How far such emotions
+have any potency for actual accomplishment in deed may be doubtful to the
+psychologists; but surely our recognition of tragedy as one of the greatest
+imaginative achievements needs no other warrant than our faith that virtue
+lies in human sympathy, in the only atonement that we can offer, the
+vicarious response of our emotions to share in suffering and defeat.</p>
+
+<p>From the nature of its subjects, tragedy may claim a certain pre&euml;minence in
+literature. If it be not truer, as is sometimes asserted, than comedy or
+other fiction, it has the opportunity to be more intense, more profound,
+more permeating in its emotional effect. As of all forms of literature, we
+ask for truth to life in incident, character, and word; of tragedy we ask
+for truth in regard to those things that affect us most deeply,&mdash;pain,
+disaster, failure, death. Like other forms, it may stimulate and excite,
+give pleasure and profit, convey new ideas and recall old, arouse questions
+of life and philosophy, excite multitudinous emotions; more exclusively
+than any other, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> brings home to us the images of our own sorrows, and
+chastens the spirit through the outpouring of our sympathies, even our
+horror and despair, for the misfortunes of our fellows.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>The student of the theory of tragedy may extend his reading through most
+books dealing at all with the theatre or drama, works of literary history
+and criticism, treatments of &aelig;sthetics in psychology and philosophy, as
+well as the tragedies themselves. Only the briefest direction for such
+reading can be given here. Among recent works closely connected with the
+matter of the chapter, are: W. L. Courtney, <i>The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient
+and Modern Drama</i> (1900); Lewis Campbell, <i>Tragic Drama in &AElig;schylus,
+Sophocles, and Shakespeare</i> (1904); Ferdinand Bruneti&egrave;re, <i>L'&eacute;volution
+litt&eacute;raire de la trag&eacute;die</i> (1903) (in vol. 7 of <i>Etudes critiques</i>); and
+<i>Melodrame ou Trag&eacute;die</i> (<i>Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s Litt&eacute;raires</i> 1904); Elizabeth
+Woodbridge, <i>The Drama, its Law and its Technique</i> (1898), with
+bibliography. Several recent books on Shakespeare are concerned with
+dramatic theory: A. C. Bradley, <i>Shakespearean Tragedy</i> (1905); T. R.
+Lounsbury, <i>Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist</i> (1901); G. P. Baker, <i>The
+Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist</i> (1907). A book now out of date
+and never sound, but of wide influence still, is Freytag's <i>Technik des
+Dramas</i> (1881), translated as <i>The Technique of the Drama</i>, Chicago (3d ed.
+1900). For a study of literary criticism in reference to dramatic theory,
+Saintsbury's <i>History of Criticism</i>, 3 vols. (1900-04), furnishes a
+compendious directory and discussion. <i>An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism</i>, by C. M. Gayley and F. N. Scott (1899),
+furnishes full bibliographical references with comment and direction. Of
+great value in their special fields are Butcher's edition of Aristotle's
+<i>Poetics</i> (3d ed. 1902); W. Cloetta's <i>Beitr&atilde;ge zur Litteraturgeschichte
+des Mittelalters und der Renaissance</i>, Halle (1890), vol. i; and J. E.
+Spingarn's <i>Literary Criticism in the Renaissance</i> (1899). English critical
+discussions of tragedy will be noted in the chapters on the various
+historical periods. For tragedy in relation to &aelig;sthetic theory, full
+references are given in Gayley and Scott; and Volkelt's <i>&AElig;sthetik des
+Tragischen</i>, Munich (2d ed. 1906), supplies a valuable and comprehensive
+discussion and a directory and criticism of nearly all &aelig;sthetic theories
+since Kant. Especial mention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> should be made of A. W. Schlegel's
+<i>Vorlesungen &uuml;ber dramatische Kunst und Litteratur</i> (1817), translated into
+English in the Bohn edition; and to Hegel's <i>Vorlesungen &uuml;ber die
+&AElig;sthetik</i>, which closes with a discussion of dramatic poetry that has been
+suggestive of much later theorizing.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For a discussion of an earlier meaning of the term "melodrama"
+and the origin of its present use, see chap. x.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MEDIEVAL AND THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCES</h3>
+
+
+<p>English tragedy makes its appearance at the very beginning of Elizabeth's
+reign. In the Middle Ages nearly all knowledge of the drama of the Greeks
+and Romans was lost, and the medieval drama developed without aid from
+classical precedents or models. It resulted in various forms, of which the
+miracles and the moralities were the most important, but it produced
+nothing either in form or matter closely resembling classical tragedy or
+comedy, and manifested no evolution toward corresponding divisions of the
+drama. The Renaissance gave to the world the plays of Seneca, Plautus, and
+the Athenian dramatists, and, after a time, some knowledge of the classical
+theatre and dramatic art; then, through the imitation of these models and
+also through the innovations and experiments which they suggested, the
+influence of humanism came in conflict with that of medievalism throughout
+Europe, in the drama as in other fields of literature. In England this
+conflict was still active at the middle of the sixteenth century. Miracle
+plays were still performed after long established fashion, and moralities
+continued the most important and numerous species of drama; but in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Latin
+imitations of the classical drama, in the theatrical activity of the
+schools and universities, and in the various developments of moralities,
+interludes, school-plays, and pageants, there were signs of a breaking away
+from old courses and of the adoption of new models, of the emergence of
+English comedy and tragedy as definite dramatic forms. Tragedy in England
+as elsewhere developed later and more slowly than comedy, but two years
+after Elizabeth's accession the first English tragedy that has been
+preserved was performed, and "Gorboduc" thus becomes the starting-point for
+a history of English tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Modern tragedy, born in the Renaissance, the product of the germinating
+conflict of medieval and humanistic ideas and models, has never altogether
+lost the marks of its heritage from both lines of ancestry. Elizabethan
+tragedy, in particular, reveals in every lineament, in its scenic
+presentation, its methods of acting, its themes, structure, characters,
+style, theory, and artistic impulses, the influences both of the long
+centuries of medieval drama and also of the inspiration of the classics and
+the freer opportunity for individual effort which resulted from humanism.
+At the beginning we must attempt to separate and define these dominant
+influences.</p>
+
+<p>The contribution from the Middle Ages came largely from the religious
+drama. The folk games and plays and the performances of entertainers of
+various sorts contributed to the development of the drama principally on
+the side of comedy, and only incidentally to tragedy. Nor need the early
+centuries of the religious drama detain us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Its origin in the church
+service, its early liturgical forms, its growth and service in the hands of
+the church, and its gradual secularization are of importance for us only as
+leading to its culmination in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; in
+England notably in the great cycles of vernacular plays performed by the
+guilds. It should be remembered, however, that the miracle plays never felt
+the least influence from the drama of the Greeks and Romans. Knowledge of
+the classic drama was long confined mainly to the plays of Terence, and
+suggested even to the most learned no idea of relationship to the familiar
+miracle plays; and, on the other hand, the medieval stage gave no clue to a
+conception of the classical theatre. As late as Erasmus the curious notion
+survived that the classic plays were read by the author or a "recitator"
+from a pulpit above, while below the actors illustrated his lines by
+pantomime. Almost to the middle of the fifteenth century the miracle plays
+comprised all that was known of stage presentation in connection with
+serious drama. They were still performed through the sixteenth century; the
+boy Shakespeare may have been a spectator at a performance by the guilds;
+his father and grandfather and remoter forebears had seen them or perchance
+taken part in them. It was this abundant dramatic practice and ancient
+dramatic tradition that gave to Elizabethan England its fondness for
+play-acting, its recourse to the theatre for both amusement and
+edification, and the acceptance of the drama as an important factor in its
+daily life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A glance at some of the most notable differences of the miracles from
+classical plays reveals traits that remained potent in later drama. The
+miracles took their material from the Bible or from some saint's life, and
+their purpose was to make this material significant and impressive. They
+were, in fact, essentially translations of prose narratives into dramatic
+dialogue. Renaissance drama sought different material, but it found
+classical authority for basing tragedies on history, and so gave support to
+the medieval method of translation. In the Elizabethan period, dramatists
+rarely attempted the invention of their plots, but adopted and adhered to
+narrative sources. While they never suffered from the narrow
+conventionality imposed upon the authors of the miracles by the authority
+of the holy writ, yet something of the medieval subjection to sources was
+long manifest both in form and content. It is necessary to view the dramas
+of Shakespeare and all his predecessors as translations into dramatic form
+of stories already told in verse or prose.</p>
+
+<p>Because of their close adherence to sources and their distinctly expository
+purpose, the medieval dramatists made little or no distinction between what
+was suited for the stage and what was not. Their duty was primarily to
+present the narrative; and, though individual initiative might add
+something interesting or amusing, nothing in the Bible seemed unsuitable to
+presentation on the stage, and nothing that would aid its meaning seemed
+unsuitable for a drama. There was no thought of restricting a play to the
+presentation of one crisis or a single action, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> there was consequently
+no possibility of an approach to anything like the structure of classical
+tragedy. The dramatist might take advantage of the dramatic value of a
+given situation like the sacrifice of Isaac, or he might make a series of
+plays lead up to the great events of the redemption, but he was blind to
+any opportunity to abstract from the narrative the events that dealt with
+an emotional crisis and to focus them upon that as the centre of a dramatic
+structure. There was no notion whatever of the difference between a
+narrative fable and a dramatic fable. Dramatic unity and values in a
+miracle play, on the tragic side at least, were usually the direct results
+of the narrative; unity on a larger scale in the cycle was the unity of
+history or of exposition, not of the drama. Such was the form which the
+Elizabethan drama inherited, and to the end the form of Elizabethan tragedy
+continued a development from medieval tradition and practice, not only in
+its failure to adopt the unities, the chorus, and other peculiarities of
+classical structure, but, more essentially, in its continued inability to
+restrict the story provided by a narrative source to the limits of a
+dramatic fable. Its final attainment of an organic structure, though
+promoted in part by the regularizing influence of classical theory and
+example, was in the main conditioned by the absence of dramaturgical
+restrictions, permitting an epic variety of events, the lack of which
+Aristotle had lamented in Greek tragedy, and by the consequent opportunity
+for a free and characteristic development.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the medieval drama the Elizabethans inherited not only dramatic form,
+but an entire method of stage presentation different from the classical.
+The typical medieval stage, whether in the form of the procession of
+pageants or the inclosed place with the stations for the various actors,
+had, indeed, given way to something much more like the modern platform,
+even before the production of "Gorboduc"; but in most particulars, in the
+importance placed upon costume, the historical anachronisms, the crudity
+but frequency of spectacle, and especially in the entire liberty as to what
+should be presented, medieval ideas still prevailed. In the miracle plays,
+heaven, hell, God, the devil, Noah's flood, the fall of Lucifer, and the
+Maries at the cross were all acted. The Elizabethan theatre showed scarcely
+less temerity.</p>
+
+<p>Another far-reaching inheritance from the miracle plays was derived from
+their treatment of tragic themes and situations and from their pervading
+seriousness of purpose. Their purpose was ethical and religious
+edification; their theme the tragedy of sin; their situations were derived
+from the stories of Cain, Lucifer, Judas, John the Baptist, the Slaughter
+of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion. If no formal tragedy resulted, and
+if in inculcating the triumph of righteousness the stories of the worthies
+and the martyrdoms of the saints took rather the cast of tragicomedy, it
+was nevertheless of great significance for later tragedy that, generations
+before Seneca became known with his bloody stories and sententious
+philosophy, the drama had been the vehicle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> for ethical instruction and for
+the presentation of the most terrible and pitiful events. The miracle plays
+had long familiarized men with tragic action, tragic conceptions in the
+drama, and tragic power in the treatment of situation.</p>
+
+<p>The tragic was often mingled with the comic. The dramatists mixed
+edification with amusement. The restraints of the sacred narrative were
+thrown aside for a moment, and in Herod, or Noah's wife, or the shepherds
+awaiting the announcement of the birth of the Messiah, opportunities were
+taken for the introduction of realistic portraiture of contemporary life.
+Horse-play and buffoonery or racy comedy often contrasted incongruously
+with events of momentous importance. This mixture of the comic and tragic
+survived in the popular drama despite the opposition of the humanists. It
+was indeed characteristic of medieval and Elizabethan manners and taste,
+and marks another important departure from classical precedent. We to-day
+are perhaps as near to the Athenians as to the Elizabethans in this
+respect. At all events, for the appreciation of Elizabethan tragedy, we
+sometimes need to reassert a childish and uncultivated disregard for the
+rapid changes of emotional tone, a liking for tears and laughter close
+together; or, perhaps there is ground for saying, we need to recognize the
+validity of the medieval taste for a comic contrast and relief in tragedy,
+and to accept in art the incongruities and grotesqueness of actual life.</p>
+
+<p>To the moralities, the second important species of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> drama in the later
+Middle Ages, the debt of English tragedy is more explicit than to the
+miracles, but not more essential. It is not more essential, because the
+moralities were in a way the successors and the substitutes for the
+miracles and contributed largely to the same effects. They were devoted to
+a serious purpose and presented tragic situations with a free admixture of
+comedy, and they continued many of the older traditions of stage
+performance and undramatic form. They differed from the miracles chiefly in
+that, like so much of medieval literature, they offered not a direct but a
+symbolic presentation of life. Instead of the Bible narrative, they
+presented the strife of vices and virtues; instead of real persons,
+personified abstractions. This change from individual characters to
+abstract qualities has usually been regarded as a retrogression by modern
+students, who deem the study of the motives of individual men and women as
+essential to the drama. But we have lately been reminded that on the stage
+it makes little difference whether an actor is called William or Everyman;
+and the attempt at the symbolization of life offered an opportunity for
+freedom of invention and freshness of emotional effect that in the miracles
+had been smothered by the stereotyped repetition of the Bible narrative.
+The temptation and suffering of the good, the temporary triumph of the
+evil, and the punishment that overtakes even the mighty were themes which
+the miracle had confused with many others. The morality gave them dramatic
+isolation and emphasis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Moreover, in substituting for a translation of the Bible narrative the
+symbolization of life as a conflict between folly and wisdom, or the vices
+and virtues, or the body and the soul, the moralities gave importance to
+one of the most essential elements in tragedy, that of moral strife. The
+world is a battlefield, the soul is beleaguered, the play is a conflict;
+and with this element of conflict there arises the opportunity for dramatic
+structure. If the story is of strife, there is likely to be a moment when
+the victory hangs in the balance; a reversal of fortune is implied; there
+is a chance for a rise and fall, a definite beginning, middle, and end. The
+moral conflict, moreover, encourages a study of human motive, of cause and
+effect in human action. In some of these plays, as "The Pride of Life,"
+"Everyman," "The Nice Wanton," the consequences of evil are clearly traced,
+and the action is representative not only of the conflict of good and evil
+in the universe, but of the battle of will in the individual. Evidently
+such plays are near relations of tragedy. They at least made plain to their
+successors the importance of the conflict of good and evil as a dramatic
+theme. Their text, the wages of sin are death, has continued to be an
+essential part of the conception of tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The moralities, however, on the whole, made little advance, either in
+escape from conventionality, or in creation of structure, or in dramatic
+expression of the conflicts of will. They clung in the main to the dominant
+and already conventionalized allegory of the Middle Ages, the presentation
+of life as a conflict of body and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> soul, although they made interesting
+excursions into the fields of pedagogy and religious controversy. This
+allegory they treated with intense didacticism, sacrificing all dramatic
+interest to enforce the lesson, though in their later days the sermons were
+very generously mixed with farce. Their importance and explicit
+contribution to English tragedy arose from their historical position just
+at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
+They then served as a transition species, conforming, by a reduction in
+length and in the number of actors, to the conditions of performance which
+marked the change from the medieval stage to the Elizabethan theatre;
+amalgamating under humanistic influence now with this type of play, now
+with that; and imposing for a time their distinctive form and methods on
+the emerging types of comedy and tragedy. Some of the earliest tragedies,
+as we shall see, were direct developments from the moralities, and the
+influence of the peculiarities of the morality was for a while definite and
+considerable. But it soon disappeared under the demands of a new theatre
+and the innovations of a new art.</p>
+
+<p>The inheritance of tragedy from the Middle Ages includes an important
+legacy from literature entirely apart from the drama. In the separation of
+the medieval world from the classic, the terms tragedy and comedy ceased to
+be connected with scenic presentation, and were extended to cover all forms
+of narrative, whether in dialogue or not. The distinction between the two,
+though varying somewhat in the different lexicographers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> and
+encyclopedists, gradually arrived at an agreement which continued to affect
+ideas throughout the Renaissance. There was some insistence on the
+restrictions that tragedy dealt with history, and comedy with fiction;
+tragedy with exiles, murders, important and horrible deeds, and comedy with
+more domestic themes or with love and seduction. There was more general
+agreement that tragedy dealt with persons of rank and importance, kings or
+great leaders, and comedy with persons of low or middle rank, and that
+tragedy required a more elevated and ornamented style than comedy. The most
+important difference, however, was held to lie in the distinction that
+comedy begins unhappily and proceeds to a happy conclusion, while tragedy
+begins prosperously and ends miserably and terribly. Thus Dante's poem was
+a Divine Comedy, and Chaucer in the Monk's Prologue summed up the accepted
+opinion of the scholarship of his day.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As olde bokes maken us memorie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of him that stood in greet prosperitee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is y-fallen out of heigh degree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These criteria for tragedy were fixed in the consciousness of the sixteenth
+century; and, though gradually correlated and amalgamated with criticism
+based on the newly found "Poetics," they continued to influence the theory
+and practice of the drama. Fitting these definitions and greatly increasing
+their importance and vogue,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> collections of tragedies attained wide
+popularity during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
+Boccaccio's "De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum," Chaucer's "Monk's
+Tale," and Lydgate's "Falls of Princes" are examples, and, far the most
+influential on English tragedy, "The Mirror for Magistrates." This
+collection, first printed in 1559 and later frequently re-edited and
+enlarged, suggested many themes for the historical drama. Elizabethan
+playwrights seeking for tragic stories turned naturally to this most famous
+collection of "tragedies" in the medieval sense. Consequently, the very
+idea of tragedy continued to carry the connotation of a sudden reversal of
+fortune, the fall of princes. Tragedy, indeed, has always remained very
+largely devoted to themes "de casibus illustrium virorum et feminarum."</p>
+
+<p>Turning now from the influence of medievalism to that of humanism, we may
+remember that in the drama even more than elsewhere humanism denotes a
+revolution in the spirit of the age, an emancipation of the individual mind
+from the fetters that had bound intellect and imagination through the
+Middle Ages. But we must deal first with one of the factors in
+accomplishing this emancipation, the reawakened knowledge of classical
+literature. There was some slight acquaintance with the Attic drama from
+the time that Greek was first taught at Oxford; the doughty Roger Ascham
+learned from his master Sir John Cheke to prefer Euripides to Seneca; and
+at the time when the study of Sophocles and Euripides was occupying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> the
+Italian dramatists, there must have been some similar response in England.
+Specific instances of this, however, are few and uncertain. The Greek
+dramatists seem to have exercised no appreciable direct influence on
+English tragedy of the sixteenth century; nor can their influence at any
+time during the seventeenth be said to have been considerable. For England,
+even more exclusively than for the Continent, the classical influence on
+the origin and early development of tragedy was confined to the ten plays
+which Renaissance scholarship attributed to the philosopher Seneca.</p>
+
+<p>Seneca's plays, probably not intended for stage presentation, were literary
+exercises following the models of Greek tragedy and more especially of
+Euripides. By the humanist, after he had acquired some slight knowledge of
+the classical theatre, they were naturally accepted as plays actually
+performed, and their artificial and elaborate diction, which is their most
+conscious departure from Attic standards, was eagerly appraised as a merit.
+Their themes, with the exception of that of the pseudo-Senecan "Octavia,"
+are borrowed from Greek mythology, with a strong preference for the most
+sensational and bloody stories of adultery, incest, the murder of parents
+by their children or of children by their parents. Whatever the revolting
+and bloody details, crime and its retribution make up the burden of each
+story. The plays present only the last phase of an action, and consequently
+open with lengthy exposition of preceding events. Much happens behind the
+scenes, little on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> stage; there are many narrative and lyrical scenes,
+comparatively few dramatic. In comparison with the Athenian tragedies, they
+seem like prolonged rhetorical discussions of the familiar legends. Their
+structure involves a division into five acts, which had probably been
+earlier adopted in Latin tragedy and is noted in the "Ars Poetica," and the
+exclusion of the chorus from any participation in the action. It appears
+usually after each of the first four acts and indulges in philosophical
+reflections, hymns in praise of some deity, or lamentations. In each play a
+chief person or hero can be distinguished in conflict with one or more
+chief opponents; and each of the leading persons is accompanied by an
+adviser or confidant, usually a faithful friend for a hero and a nurse for
+the heroine. In addition to mortals, supernatural visitants, furies, gods,
+and especially ghosts, have a prominence that stirred Elizabethans to
+imitation. Though the presentation of character is not humanly vital, the
+long speeches and soliloquies display an elaborate analysis of moods of
+passion, with an absence of Athenian religion, a pagan cosmopolitanism, and
+an almost modern introspection. The style and philosophy were the chief
+recommendation of the plays to the Renaissance taste. Artificial, with
+constant use of antithesis, stichomythia, and hyperbole, oratorical,
+sonorous, bombastic, and thickly sprinkled with aphorisms and sentiments,
+the style seemed to the humanists to reach the height of tragic elevation
+and philosophic sententiousness.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for the almost exclusive adoption of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Seneca as a model seem to
+have been not only the comparative ignorance of Greek, but also the
+preference of Renaissance taste for the qualities just enumerated.
+Moreover, these lifeless and undramatic mixtures of rhetorical verbiage,
+melodramatic situations, and endless declamations had the advantage of
+being easy to imitate. In their encouragement to imitation and their
+absorption of interest away from the models of Greek tragedy, there was a
+danger of humanistic endeavor resulting in mere copying, a danger not
+altogether escaped in Italy and France, but happily averted in England.</p>
+
+<p>When, on the other hand, the characteristics of these unpromising models
+are considered in comparison with the conventionality of the miracles and
+moralities, they clearly offered much provocative of literary endeavor and
+the development of the <i>genre</i> of tragedy. Through them secular stories,
+real persons, and dramatic plots took the place of the allegories and the
+abstractions. While they encouraged the selection of such stories as
+resembled the sensational myths favored by Seneca, they opened the door to
+history, romance, and the whole world of classical fable. Though their
+particular structure proved in the end impossible on the English stage,
+they enforced the division into acts already familiarized in comedy, and
+suggested the possibility of a dramatic fable in distinction from the
+miracles' adherence to a narrative one. Again, their presentation of
+character brought new persons, new motives, and new methods, calling
+attention to drama not as an exposition of events or as an allegory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> of
+life, but as a field for the study of human emotion. Their brilliant if
+bombastic rhetoric aroused enthusiasm for the drama as literature and
+poetry; and their reflective and aphoristic style encouraged an effort to
+elevate tragedy above its too familiar converse with comedy into the realm
+of austere philosophy. These influences, however, were general. Every
+particular of Seneca's plays had its sixteenth century imitators.</p>
+
+<p>The first signs of an intelligent interest in these plays appeared almost
+simultaneously at the very beginning of the fourteenth century in the
+commentary of the English Dominican, Nicholas Treveth, and in the study of
+the circle gathered about Lovato di Lovati at Padua. One of this school,
+Albertino Mussato, about 1314, wrote his "Eccerinis" on the fate of the
+Paduan tyrant, Ezzelino, of the preceding century. This first of the Latin
+tragedies of modern times aroused the admiration of scholars, and was
+followed by many other neo-Latin imitations of Seneca. These, while keeping
+to the Senecan form, often went beyond the stories of classical mythology
+and chose their subjects from the Bible or from ancient or modern history.
+Meanwhile neo-Latin comedy had had a beginning and was largely stimulated
+by the discovery, in 1427, of twelve hitherto unknown comedies of Plautus.
+All these neo-Latin plays were read and not acted; and the actual acting,
+either of the classical plays or their humanistic imitations, was not
+established until the close of the fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of the classical drama spread after a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> time across the Alps,
+and Terentian comedy in particular exercised a wide influence upon the
+drama. Of especial interest in relation to tragedy is the new school of
+neo-Latin comedy which arose about 1530 in Holland and spread over Germany
+and into France. It applied Terentian style and structure to many of the
+stories in the Old Testament and to the parable of the prodigal son. To its
+original purpose of substituting for Terentian immorality themes edifying
+for youth, it soon added a Protestant tone, and in Kirchmayer's
+"Pammachius" (1538) entered the field of violent religious controversy. As
+the number of these plays rapidly increased, there resulted a
+secularization of treatment and the admission of Senecan as well as
+Terentian influence. The stories of Judith, Susannah, Goliath, and others
+gave opportunities for recourse to Senecan imitation; and in the "Jephthes"
+and "Baptistes," which about 1540 George Buchanan wrote at Bordeaux for his
+students to act, we have the first tragedies north of the Alps written in
+distinctly classical form,&mdash;a form, it should be said, derived from his
+study and translation of Euripides as well as from Seneca.</p>
+
+<p>Seneca's pre&euml;minence as a model for tragedy, however, was in general not
+contested, but rather increased by the growing knowledge of Euripides and
+Sophocles. By the end of the fifteenth century there had been many
+translations of his plays in Italy; they were studied in the schools, and
+some had been given stage presentation. But the idea of a vernacular
+tragedy on the Senecan model was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> not put into effect until Trissino's
+"Sophonisba," written in 1515. This was followed by others, until by the
+time of "Gorboduc" Senecan tragedy in Italian was an established form, and
+Jodelle's "Cl&eacute;opatre Captive" (1552) had marked the beginning of the
+Senecan <i>genre</i> in France. The Italian tragedy had also introduced some
+departures, in the choice of romantic material and in the innovation of
+"tragicomedy," which supplied the Senecan model with a happy ending. But
+all these writers of tragedy worked with a common purpose, to revive
+Senecan drama in their own day, and their plays adapted their themes and
+methods to the Senecan model with the faithfulness of disciples. These
+Senecan imitations, it should be noted, were designed for special
+performances under academic or courtly auspices, and not for the popular
+theatre.</p>
+
+<p>In England during the first half of the sixteenth century there was a
+repetition of the inter-influence between the still flourishing forms of
+medieval drama and the new classical models which we have noted on the
+Continent. The early Renaissance in the reign of Henry VIII awakened an
+interest in Seneca; and the fragment of an English play introducing Lucrece
+has suggested to Mr. Chambers the possibility of an essay at Senecan
+tragedy thirty years before "Gorboduc." The main force of the humanistic
+influence seems, however, to have been in the direction of comedy. The
+drama was no longer confined to popular open-air presentations, but found a
+place at court, in the halls of noblemen, and especially at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> schools
+and universities, where the comedies of Plautus and Terence and imitations
+both in Latin and English were frequently acted. The influence of the
+classical plays themselves and of the neo-Latin school and the
+controversial dramas of the Continent upon English moralities and
+interludes was extensive and distinct. This led to a multiplication and
+confusion of dramatic types out of which comedy emerged in such plays as
+"Gammer Gurton's Needle" and "Ralph Roister Doister." In Latin, but not in
+English, we can trace a similar movement toward tragedy. We hear of a
+"Dido" written by Ritwyse, master of St. Paul's, and performed by his
+pupils some time in the decade preceding 1532. "Absalon," written by Thomas
+Watson probably in the following decade, was highly praised by Roger
+Ascham, and, if it be identical with the play now in manuscript in the
+British Museum, is an example of biblical drama along Senecan lines. A
+non-extant "Jephthes" by Christopherson (1546), the "Archipropheta," with a
+romantic love episode and a clown, written by Grimald and acted at Oxford
+in 1547, and his "Christus Redivivus" published in 1543 as a "com&oelig;dia
+tragica," all belong to the same mixed species. A representative of the
+controversial drama appears in John Foxe's "Christus Triumphans" about
+1550, which drew much from the famous "Pammachius," already translated by
+Bale and acted at Oxford to the great scandal of Gardiner. Of plays in the
+vernacular we hear of a few called tragedies, but the term was used without
+any exactness, and no extant play<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> has any just claim to the title. Ten
+tragedies and comedies are attributed by Bale to Ralph Radcliffe, a
+pedagogue, who in 1538 opened a theatre in his schoolhouse and gave plays
+before the 'plebs.' Some of these were certainly in Latin, but some may
+have been in English, and the titles are interesting as emphasizing again
+the prevailing humanistic influences. Of the tragedies, two, "The Burning
+of Sodom" and "The Delivery of Susannah," are on biblical themes evidently
+chosen for the purpose of edification; the third, "The Condemnation of John
+Huss," suggests the controversial type. Of the comedies, four have biblical
+themes, while three, "Patient Griselda," "Melib&oelig;us," and "Titus and
+Gisippus," indicate the growing search for secular and even romantic
+themes. In this confusion of many species of drama, created by a mixture of
+medieval and humanistic influences, there is at least no clear evidence of
+any English tragedy on Senecan lines before "Gorboduc." Of the development
+of the moralities toward tragedy, of which signs are not lacking, we get
+the clearest examples in plays a little later, which will be treated in the
+next chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Special notice, however, must here be paid to one morality and the dramatic
+activity of its author. John Bale, born 1495, a converted Carmelite who
+became bishop under Edward VI and an exile during the reign of Mary, and
+who died not long after the accession of Elizabeth, was one of the most
+vigorous of Protestant controversialists and apparently the leader of what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+may be called the Protestant drama. His forty-six plays "in idiomate
+materno" seem to have been intended for presentation, and, while exhibiting
+classical influence, doubtless in the main followed medieval models. Of the
+five extant, written presumably about 1538, three, "God's Promises," "John
+the Baptist," and "The Temptation of our Lord," are miracle plays; one,
+"The Three Laws," is a morality. The fifth, "King John," inspired in its
+satirical and Protestant elements by "Pammachius" and perhaps also by
+Lindsay's "Three Estates," is the first example of a morality showing an
+approach to the later historical drama. It is in form a controversial
+morality, divided into two long parts or acts, but it follows roughly a
+chronological outline, and among its abstractions presents the king himself
+as the champion of Protestantism against the pope and Pandulph. Although
+the direct influence of the play on later drama cannot be traced, it is a
+notable advance, of which there were perhaps other examples, toward the
+treatment of English history and of individual persons rather than
+abstractions in the popular drama.</p>
+
+<p>The humanistic activities of the sixty years before "Gorboduc" thus
+resulted in a breaking away of allegiance to medieval models and the
+introduction of new types, rather than in any direct contribution to the
+form or matter of tragedy. The vernacular play approaching nearest to the
+field of tragedy is still a controversial morality exhibiting all the
+traits of medieval drama, and in its innovations pointing not toward
+classical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> models, but rather to a new extension of the morality toward the
+presentation of national history and real persons. During this time,
+however, the influence of Seneca's plays had been constantly extending and
+had been augmented by that of the imitations in Latin, French, and Italian.
+The interest of Seneca in the universities seems to have increased during
+the reigns of Edward and Mary and to have supplanted in a measure that in
+Latin comedy. In 1559 the appearance of the first English translation, that
+of the "Troades" by Jasper Heywood, opened the way to a wider interest and
+to the possibility of domiciling the Senecan drama on the English stage. By
+1561 translations of four other plays had been published; and, before the
+collected edition of 1581, all of the ten had appeared and attained a
+greater popularity with the reading public than they have ever since
+experienced.</p>
+
+<p>The first English tragedy was not a modification of current forms, but a
+direct imitation of Seneca. The production of "Gorboduc," however, only
+marked another stage in that conflict between medievalism and humanism
+which we have been tracing. In the next chapter we shall consider the
+conflict between Senecan imitations and popular tragedies that still kept
+to the morality form, a conflict that resulted in the discarding of both
+Senecan and morality incumbrances and the attainment in Marlowe and his
+followers of a form of tragedy very different from either, though
+inheriting bountifully from both.</p>
+
+<p>One source of classical influence other than Seneca's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> plays and their
+imitations was of enough importance to require special mention, that of
+Aristotle's "Poetics." First printed in 1508, it reinforced the dogmas
+derived from the "Ars Poetica," and became the basis of a rapidly
+increasing amount of dramatic criticism. This criticism, mostly Italian,
+interpreted Aristotle by means of the Senecan tragedies and so reinforced
+their influence; but it was also greatly modified by the medieval ideas of
+tragedy which we have already noticed. The resultant theory of tragedy,
+with special regard to its misinterpretations of Aristotle, may be briefly
+summarized. His dictum that tragedy is the imitation of a serious action
+was interpreted to mean an action illustrious because the actors are
+persons of the highest rank, thus adopting the medieval restriction of
+tragedy to princes. There was less agreement in the restriction of tragedy
+to history rather than fiction; and over the question of the propriety of a
+happy ending there was considerable debate. Tragi-comedies were written and
+defended, but critics in general recognized tragedy as restricted to an
+unhappy ending, which was universally interpreted to mean deaths. In regard
+to the function of tragedy there was great difference of opinion over the
+meaning of [Greek: katharsis], the weight of opinion inclining to emphasize
+the ethical aim of tragedy, that is, the reward of virtue and punishment of
+vice and the inculcation of morality by means of frequent precepts. From
+Aristotle's discussion of character there was derived the curious idea of
+"decorum," so important in later theories of the drama, that every
+character should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> represent a class and should always have the same
+characteristics,&mdash;the kings all acting after one prescribed fashion, the
+soldiers after another, the old men after another, and so on. From
+Aristotle's mention of the restriction of time to one revolution of the sun
+came the unities of time and place, confining the action to one city and
+twenty-four hours, which were soon made predominant over the third unity of
+action. These distinctions became fixed in Italian criticism and were given
+their first full expression in English in Sidney's "Apology for Poetry,"
+written about 1580; but before that they were more or less comprehended by
+most English students of Seneca. Although even a scholar in 1561 would have
+been unable to define the unities or decorum, he would have had some
+confused notion of them. The scope and function of tragedy were by that
+time assuming in the general literary consciousness a definition approved
+by both medieval and classical theory and later formulated by Puttenham:
+"Tragedy deals with doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted princes, for
+the purpose of reminding men of the mutability of fortune and of God's just
+punishment of a vicious life."</p>
+
+<p>Such definition of medieval and classical influences as we have been
+attempting necessitates a somewhat unreal separation of the two forces.
+Evidently, in the mind of any playwright, the two combined in a confusion
+of impulses, of the sources of many of which he must have been unaware.
+Absolute restriction to the old tradition or to the new inspiration is
+hardly to be expected in any English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> dramatist attempting tragedy in the
+neighborhood of 1562. Such an author would have open for his choice a
+wealth of stories, classical, medieval, or Italian, as yet untouched by
+drama; and, though he might choose a story whose events paralleled some
+Senecan plot, he would be likely to adhere closely to his narrative source
+after the medieval fashion. Even if he strove loyally after the Senecan
+form, his knowledge would be hardly sufficient to prevent departures from
+strict classical standards. Seneca does not always clearly observe the
+unities or remove violent action from the stage, and his Elizabethan
+follower would naturally err on the side in accord with popular dramatic
+tradition. Of the chorus, reduced in importance by Seneca, he would find it
+difficult to make much use. On the other hand, the adapter of the morality
+structure to tragic purpose would perhaps fail to derive anything from
+Seneca except his bombast and sensationalism. For whatever audience the
+dramatist was writing, he would have many spectators demanding the fun,
+horse-play, and crude horror of medieval tradition, while his own literary
+aspirations might lead him to prefer lofty declamation and aphoristic
+phrasing. But, whether his knowledge was large or small, he was likely to
+combine in his conception of tragedy, as did Puttenham, both the Christian
+idea of evil, thwarting good and meeting punishment, and the Senecan idea
+of a crime followed by retribution or revenge. And, whether he catered to
+popular taste or to literary ambition, he must have contemplated the
+presentation of a reversal of fortune, persons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> of royal or distinguished
+rank, and a catastrophe involving deaths.</p>
+
+<p>It is, after all, the main contribution of humanism that through the study
+of the classics there had come new impetus and authority for individual
+effort. Art was to be based on classic precedents, but it was forbidden by
+the spirit of the new age to remain after medieval fashion satisfied with
+repetitions and translations. For the dramatist there were not only new
+models, but a circulation of ideas, free opportunity, and the incentive of
+fame. For him, too, there was a public long habituated to the drama and now
+well tutored in novelties and variations of the old forms, a public that no
+longer expected a conventionalized stage, but was possessed of what the
+apostle Paul deemed the chief characteristic of the classical spirit, the
+desire to hear some new thing.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>The authorities on their respective subjects are: W. Creizenach,
+<i>Geschichte des neuren Dramas</i>, Halle, 1893-1903 (3 vols. and index,
+extending to 1570, have appeared); A. W. Ward, <i>A History of English
+Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne</i>, 1899, new and revised
+edition, 3 vols.; E. K. Chambers, <i>The Medi&aelig;val Stage</i>, Oxford, 1903. These
+all cover the matter of the present chapter and contain bibliographies.
+Ward gives full bibliographical notes to editions and monographs;
+Creizenach's index is substantially complete for all European plays;
+Chambers's Appendix X contains references to editions and descriptions of
+all English plays up to Elizabeth's accession. Klein, <i>Geschichte des
+Dramas</i>, 13 vols., 1865-76, and Collier, <i>History of English Dramatic
+Poetry</i>, new edition, 1879, are both somewhat out of date, though the
+latter contains much useful material. R. Pr&ouml;loss, <i>Geschichte des neueren
+Dramas</i> (1881-83), and K. Mantzius, <i>The History of Theatric Art</i>, 3 vols.
+(1904), are slighter. The only rapid and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> readable survey of European drama
+is by Brander Matthews, <i>The Development of the Drama</i> (1906). For France,
+the authority for medieval drama is L. Petit de Julleville, <i>Histoire du
+Th&eacute;&acirc;tre en France au Moyen Age</i>, 1880-86, 4 vols.; for Germany, R. Froning,
+<i>Das Drama des Mittelalters</i>, 1891; for Italy, A. Ancona, <i>Origini del
+Teatro italiano</i>, 1891, 2d edition. J. J. Jusserand, <i>Le Th&eacute;&acirc;tre en
+Angleterre</i> (1881, 2d ed.); J. A. Symonds, <i>Shakespeare's Predecessors in
+the English Drama</i> (1884); G. Gregory Smith, <i>The Transition Period</i> (1900,
+in <i>Periods of European Literature</i>); Gayley, <i>Plays of Our Forefathers</i>
+(1907), are of value. Dealing more specifically with matters discussed in
+this chapter are the volumes of Cloetta and Spingarn cited in the last
+chapter, C. H. Herford's <i>The Literary Relations of England and Germany in
+the Sixteenth Century</i>, Cambridge, 1886, J. W. Cunliffe's <i>The Influence of
+Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy</i>, Manchester, 1893, and R. Fischer's <i>Zur
+Kunstentwickelung der Englischen Trag&ouml;die von ihren ersten Anfangen bis zu
+Shakespeare</i>, 1893. The Elizabethan translations of Seneca have been
+reprinted by the Spenser Society (1887). Within the last few years three
+new translations have appeared: by Watson Bradshaw, in prose (1902); by
+Miss E. A. Harris, in verse, two tragedies 1899, the remaining eight 1904;
+by F. J. Miller, in verse, with introduction on Seneca's Influence on
+English Drama by J. M. Manly (Chicago, 1907). Text and discussions of plays
+are presented by A. W. Pollard, <i>English Miracle Plays</i>, Oxford, 4th ed.,
+1904; A. Brandl, <i>Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England</i>, 1898; J. M.
+Manly, <i>Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama</i>, 1897 (2 vols., the third
+to contain notes and discussion). Dodsley's <i>Old Plays</i>, ed. W. C. Hazlitt,
+15 vols., 1874-76, also contains texts. The matter of this and subsequent
+chapters also receives treatment in the general histories of literature. J.
+J. Jusserand, <i>Literary History of the English People</i>, 2 vols., 1895-, is
+especially valuable in its account of the drama. The new <i>Cambridge History
+of English Literature</i> (now in progress) will contain valuable monographs
+on the matter of this and subsequent chapters. <i>The Dictionary of National
+Biography</i> is, of course, most valuable for individual writers. F. E.
+Schelling's <i>Elizabethan Drama</i>, 1558-1642, which appears as this volume is
+passing the press, is a general history of the drama of the period stated,
+with special reference to the development of dramatic species. It contains
+an extremely useful Bibliographical Essay and "A List of Plays" written,
+acted, or published in England, 1558-1642.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAGEDY</h3>
+
+
+<p>In this chapter the development of tragedy is to be traced from 1562, the
+year of the production of "Gorboduc," to about 1587, the beginning of
+Marlowe's career. Our knowledge of the drama during this period is scanty,
+and there are few extant tragedies or plays resembling tragedy. Before
+examining these plays with the detail which their historical position
+demands, it will be necessary first to glance at the theatrical conditions.
+Reference has been made to some of the changes that had been working a
+transformation from the conditions of the popular performance of the
+religious drama in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through these,
+the drama had already to a large extent passed from the control of the
+guilds to that of small companies of amateur or professional actors; from
+the open air into the halls of noblemen or of the schools; from the large
+stage with its fixed stations for the different actors or the procession of
+pageants, to the small and perhaps improvised platform. Long plays with
+hosts of actors had given place to short plays with few parts, or many
+parts divisible among few actors, and constructed with a clear distinction
+between "on the stage" and "off the stage." Performances indoors, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+specially prepared stage, few actors, and short plays represent the
+prevailing theatrical practice of the early sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>From 1562 on, however, theatrical conditions were various and shifting, and
+not always easily discernible by the modern student. While miracles were
+still performed after the old popular fashion, the traveling professional
+companies were growing in importance and tending to monopolize the acting
+of interludes. Amateur actors, however, at court, school, university, inns
+of court, or, indeed, among the Bottoms and mechanics of the villages,
+still contended with the professional for the control and maintenance of
+the drama. So far as tragedy is concerned, it will be convenient to keep in
+mind at least four distinct kinds of performance. First, the Gentlemen of
+the Inns of Court, who throughout the Elizabethan period showed themselves
+liberal patrons of the drama, occasionally gave plays, usually in
+connection with special festivities. Second, there were performances at the
+schools and universities which continued to exert an important dramatic
+influence, as they had for the preceding sixty years. Plays at the
+universities were generally in Latin, but there were English plays at both
+schools and universities, and companies from the Merchant Tailors and
+Westminster schools acted at court; these last performances falling
+properly in the third group. Third, companies of children were trained for
+performance at court; and these were in the course of time restricted to
+the choir boys of St. Paul's and of the Queen's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> chapel. Fourth, the
+traveling professional companies, numerous at the beginning of the period,
+acted in the inn-yards of London, at court, in the halls of noblemen, on
+the village greens, in the guild halls, even in the churches of the towns,
+or wherever else they could obtain an opportunity, until the most important
+of them found homes in the London theatres. On all four of these classes of
+actors the influence of the court was considerable, for it was the highest
+gratification of either amateur or professional to be engaged in a court
+performance, and performances at court were subject to greater preparation
+than those in public.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the conditions governing the presentation of tragedies in this
+period, but in the course of its twenty-five years the professional
+companies constantly grew in importance and in the end practically
+monopolized the business of giving plays. Schools, universities, and
+companies of amateurs became of decreasing moment in the development of the
+drama, while the choir boys were permitted to act plays publicly in their
+own theatres and thus became formidable professional rivals of the men's
+companies. In 1572 the statute compelling the common players to obtain the
+license of some nobleman reduced the number of the adult companies, but
+strengthened those that survived, which now became known as Lord
+Leicester's men, Lord Howard's men, and so on. In London they were able
+with the assistance of the court to establish and maintain themselves
+despite the active and constant opposition of the city authorities. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+Theatre, built outside the city proper in 1576, was soon followed by other
+playhouses, and in 1583 a company was licensed under the Queen's personal
+patronage. Henceforth the history of the Elizabethan drama is in the main
+confined to four or five companies of men and one or two of children,
+acting regularly in their established theatres and occasionally in the
+provinces, or at court, or elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>The character of a tragedy naturally varied with the circumstances of its
+presentation. A Latin play at one of the universities was much more
+dignified and scholarly than the performance of a few traveling actors for
+the delectation of a provincial audience; and a play by the Gentlemen of
+the Inner Temple was given with an elaborateness not to be expected in
+those by the choir boys, which were likely to be brief and to include a
+good deal of singing. The extant tragedies can consequently be best
+classified according to their methods of presentation. Before all
+audiences, it should be remembered, moralities of divers sorts were
+performed, but we are now concerned only with those that most closely
+approach tragedy. All the extant Latin plays were presented at the
+universities. Of English plays, "Gorboduc," "Tancred and Gismunda,"
+"Jocasta," and "The Misfortunes of Arthur" were acted by gentlemen of the
+Inner Temple or Gray's Inn, and are all Senecan tragedies. "Damon and
+Pithias" and "Appius and Virginia" were acted at court by children, and
+show little Senecan influence, but are medleys of tragedy, comedy, and
+music. No performance by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> an adult company of any extant tragedy is
+recorded, but "Horestes" and "Cambyses," both of which may have originally
+been intended for children, bear some evident marks of popular
+presentation, and both are mixtures of morality, farce, and tragedy. These
+plays, with the exception of "The Misfortunes of Arthur," acted in 1588 at
+the very end of the period, were all written and performed in the sixties.
+With the addition of "Promus and Cassandra" (1578), apparently not acted,
+they comprise all extant plays acted before 1586-87 which can be classed as
+tragedies or tragicomedies. Our knowledge of the professional drama may be
+supplemented from the titles of non-extant plays and from the Revels
+Accounts of performances at court; but it should be observed that our
+information in regard to the development of popular tragedy is very meagre,
+especially for the important period after 1570, and that the group of
+Senecan plays, which we are to examine first, owed their existence to no
+popular favor, but to amateur performances under special conditions.</p>
+
+<p>"Gorboduc," or "Ferrex and Porrex," printed surreptitiously in 1565 and
+with an authoritative text about 1570, was written by Thomas Norton and
+Thomas Sackville, the author of "The Complaint of Buckingham" and "The
+Induction" in "The Mirror for Magistrates," and afterwards Lord Buckhurst,
+Lord High Treasurer. It was performed before the Queen as a part of the
+elaborate Christmas entertainment of the Inner Temple in 1561-62. The plot
+is taken from a British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> legend that was introduced into literature by
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, and relates the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc
+between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, the murder of the elder by the
+younger, the murder of the younger by his mother, the murder of both father
+and mother by their subjects, the slaughter of the people by the nobles,
+and the resulting civil wars. The story, evidently chosen because of its
+likeness to Seneca's "Thebais," is treated in Senecan manner, each of the
+first four acts being followed by a chorus of "Foure auncient and sage men
+of Brittaine." The murders are not enacted but are related by messengers,
+but the unities of time and place are violated, as Sir Philip Sidney noted
+with disapproval. There is little characterization, much political
+moralizing, which delighted Sidney, and an abundance of long declamations,
+about eight hundred lines, nearly half of the play, being comprised in ten
+speeches. The play is written in blank verse, already used in Surrey's
+translation from the &AElig;neid, and perhaps adopted in imitation of the
+unrhymed verse of the Italian tragedies. After the Italian fashion, each
+act is preceded by a dumb show, symbolizing the following action, and these
+dumb shows seem to have been utilized to provide the spectacle that was
+entirely wanting in the play proper. Supernatural visitants appear in the
+three furies before act iv; and before the last act the dumb show consists
+of a battle-scene, similar to those which later became the invariable
+accompaniments of the chronicle history play: "there came forth upon the
+stage a company of hargabusiers and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> of armed men all in order of
+battaile," who discharged their pieces and marched three times about the
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the close adherence to the Senecan model, there is little
+direct borrowing from Seneca, and medieval elements are not lacking. The
+debates between the good and bad counselors are very like those of the
+moralities, and the structure is essentially that of a chronicle of a whole
+story rather than that of a classical tragedy. The first two acts are
+occupied by the interminable debates, and the last three by the
+catastrophe, or rather the succession of catastrophes, though the final
+scene of the fifth act is a sort of epilogue after Senecan fashion. The
+play has little literary value, though Marcella's recital is not without
+power and the disquisitions on discord and disloyalty in the state have the
+merit of earnestness; but it is clearly the beginning of a new species. It
+abandons current dramatic forms, and endeavors to depict the fall of
+English princes in accordance with the models of classical tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Jocasta," by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, acted 1566 by the Gentlemen of
+Gray's Inn, demands little attention. It is a translation in blank verse of
+Lodovico Dolce's "Giocasta," itself an adaptation of the "Ph&oelig;niss&aelig;" of
+Euripides. It thus furnishes additional evidence of the influence of
+Italian tragedy on English. The chorus numbers four, as in "Gorboduc," and
+the dumb shows, apparently of Gascoigne's invention, are notably elaborate
+and spectacular.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+<p>"Tancred and Gismunda," acted before the queen at the Inner Temple in 1568,
+under the title "Gismond of Salerne," was written in rhymed quatrains by
+five gentlemen of the Temple, and afterwards revised and put into blank
+verse by the author of the fifth act, Robert Wilmot, and first published in
+1591.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> In both versions Cupid appears before the first and third acts as
+the director of the action, and Mag&aelig;ra comes on before the fourth act to
+superintend the revenge and murder. The play is based on Painter's version
+of Boccaccio's <i>novella</i>, which is followed closely, but the base-born
+lover becomes a count according to the prevailing theory of tragedy. The
+story itself has an obvious dramatic power and a certain dramatic structure
+which it imposes on the play.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Gismunda's passion for the Count Palurin
+runs counter to her father's wishes; at the end of the third act love is
+triumphant, but in the fourth is defeated, and the gruesome catastrophe
+follows, Tancred and Gismunda dying on the stage. This is the earliest
+extant English play based on an Italian <i>novella</i>, and the first tragedy to
+adopt a romantic love story and to make the passion of love its central
+motive; and the authors accomplished their experiment with evident
+enthusiasm and some gracefulness and force of diction. They were, however,
+very conscious of their models. Seneca's "Thyestes," and "Ph&aelig;dra," itself
+presenting a story of passionate love, were perhaps their chief
+inspirations; but Buchanan's "Jephthes" and Beza's "Abraham," translated
+into English in 1577, are mentioned in Wilmot's dedication, and, together
+with other plays, supplied precedents for the treatment of the favorite
+tragic theme, the sacrifice of a child by a father. Moreover, Italian
+tragedies had, since Giraldi's "Orbecche," been turning to romantic fiction
+for their subjects instead of to history and mythology; and some of these,
+"Orbecche" itself, and, as Professor Creizenach notes,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Dolce's "Dido,"
+doubtless influenced the young templars. There had, indeed, already been
+Italian tragedies based on Boccaccio's <i>novella</i>, and one by Frederigo
+Asinari (1576) had added an &OElig;dipean horror by making Tancred put out his
+eyes before killing himself, an augmentation adopted by Wilmot in his
+revision. The play was thus not only thoroughly Senecan, but the result of
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> tangle of derivative Senecan influences. The authors were probably
+unconscious of the incongruity so obvious to us between the classical form
+and the romantic material. They were interested in their story and were
+eager to give it all the advantages that erudition could discover; their
+intentions were doubtless perfectly reflected in the praise which William
+Webbe gave them for a play that "all men generally desired, as a work,
+either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of
+poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman
+Seneca the censurer."</p>
+
+<p>"The Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes, was acted and published in
+1588. The story from "The Morte D'Arthur" was suggested by its likeness to
+Senecan plots; and the play was an ambitious attempt to use British legend
+as Seneca had treated classical myth. The strife between father and son,
+with its accompaniments of adultery and incest, is viewed as constituting a
+Nemesis for the crimes of Arthur's father, Pendragon; and the ghost of the
+wronged Gorlois appears in the first scene to promise revenge, and in the
+final scene to triumph over its fulfillment. The author knew his models by
+heart, borrowed much, availed himself of all the particulars of the Senecan
+technic, and imitated everywhere with a good deal of spirit and success.
+The play has dramatic and poetic merits beyond its predecessors, but its
+late date makes it of small importance in our effort to trace the
+beginnings of English tragedy. Acted twenty-six years after "Gorboduc," it
+testifies less to the progress of dramatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> art than to the
+conventionalizing effect of Senecan models. Though perhaps the most
+successful of English imitations of Seneca, it marks the failure of amateur
+actors and courtly audiences to revive the classical drama on the English
+stage. On the occasion of its performance before the Queen at Greenwich,
+its actors and authors may very likely have thought it full of significance
+for the future of the drama; but "Tamburlaine" had already been acted, and
+poetry had taken up its abode in the despised public theatres. The chief
+interest for us in "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is that it furnishes further
+illustration of the use of English history and of stories of revenge.</p>
+
+<p>To understand the full importance of the attempt to domicile Seneca in
+England, we must turn to the universities. Two English plays, which would
+be of interest, have not been preserved, "Ezechias," a tragedy by Udall,
+acted in 1564 at Cambridge, and "Palamon and Arcyte" by Edwards, the author
+of "Damon and Pithias," acted 1566. These are the only English plays at all
+tragical that are recorded; but the practice of giving Latin plays
+continued and grew in popularity.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> We hear of "Dido" and an "Ajax
+Flagellifer," apparently a translation of Sophocles, both in 1564, and a
+"Progne"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> in 1566. The extant Latin tragedies are of a later date. Gager's
+"Meleager," "&OElig;dipus," and "Dido," all acted in the early eighties, are
+modeled strictly on Seneca, the first two showing direct borrowings. In the
+fragment which we possess of the third, the ghost of Sich&aelig;us appears to
+warn Dido, and is followed by the storm, represented, we learn, by sugar
+for snow, sweetmeats for hail, and rose-water for rain. Gager's "Ulysses
+Redux," acted in 1591, a little beyond the limits of our period, presents a
+somewhat freer treatment of the Senecan form, the number of characters and
+of scenes being larger than in the earlier plays. Of uncertain date are a
+"Herodes," which takes the form of a revenge play introduced by the ghost
+of Mariemma, and "Solymannid&aelig;" and "Tonumbeius," which apply Senecan
+methods to Eastern instead of to classical atrocities. "Roxana" (1632),
+acted before 1592, is a translation of "La Dalida" of Luigi Groto, and won
+some contemporary distinction and the praise of Dr. Johnson two centuries
+later. It is a revenge play with a ghost, combining Senecan gruesomeness
+with the motives of romantic comedy.</p>
+
+<p>More famous than any of these in its own day was "Richardus Tertius," a
+tragedy in three parts, each part acted on a separate night in 1579 at St.
+John's, Cambridge, the work of Thomas Legge, Master of Caius and afterwards
+Vice-Chancellor of the university. Legge seems to have felt the incongruity
+between the material of the chronicles, which he followed closely, and a
+strict Senecan form, and to have striven to overcome this by the
+mechanical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> expedient of prolonging the action over three plays. But the
+problem of presenting on the stage the events of a whole reign could not be
+solved in the terms of the Senecan formula. Legge copied the Senecan
+rhetoric, interpreted historical events and persons under the guidance of
+the formula, and retained much of its technic, the narration of deaths
+instead of their presentation, counsel scenes between hero and advisers,
+frequent use of the nuntius, and a vestige of a chorus. But the play
+departs as widely as popular dramas from the unities of time and place,
+contains many scenes with more than three speakers, is full of dramatic
+action, and presents processions, pageants, and battle scenes after the
+fashion of later chronicle plays in the public theatres. Its influence on
+popular drama may well have been considerable; though, on the other hand,
+its adherence to sources and its looseness of structure may have been
+reflections from the public stage. Whether the first chronicle play or not,
+it is the earliest extant play to indicate the result of the inevitable
+conflict between a narrow and stereotyped dramatic form and the wide range
+of material which the chronicles afforded.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>In these university Latin plays there is evident a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> development similar to
+that traced in the English Senecan drama. Biblical themes disappear; close
+imitations of Seneca on classical themes give way to freer treatment of
+romantic or historical material. Revenge and the ghost are ever prominent;
+and English history introduces a host of events, varied, incongruous,
+panoramic, and bursting the bounds of the traditional structure. Nash,
+Marlowe, and others of the later dramatists were university men, and saw
+some of these plays performed, and perhaps took part in them. Their scenic
+spectacle, choices of themes, handling of situation, and general effect
+must have had an appreciable influence upon the subsequent course of the
+drama. To the various influences which we have denominated humanistic, and
+especially to the derivative influences reinforcing that of Seneca, we must
+add this of the Latin plays at Oxford and Cambridge. Latin tragedies
+continued to be acted at the universities for many years, but their
+influence on the popular drama can have been potent only during its
+formative period.</p>
+
+<p>When we turn from these academic and amateur productions to the more
+popular performances,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> to deal with a very different class of
+plays. The four to be considered were all written by men of scholarly
+training, and all deal with classical themes, but the Senecan influence is
+slight and mainly discernible in the figurative and hyperbolic diction and
+the fondness for sententious maxims. None of the four are divided into
+acts; none have choruses or other characteristic marks of Senecan
+structure; all present action to the exclusion of reflection, and all are
+in rhymed verse, the favorite metre, at least in the serious portions,
+being doggerel. All admit comic and farcical scenes, and three are in a
+large measure moralities. In the tragic portions all admit violence and
+murders of all kinds on the stage; there is a beheading, a hanging, and, in
+the case of "Cambyses," a flaying, accomplished, the stage direction
+reassures us, "with a false skin."</p>
+
+<p>"Damon and Pithias" (1571), by Richard Edwards, was acted by the Children
+of the Chapel at court in 1563-64, and, judging from the title-page,
+probably also in public. The prologue, which contains a discussion of
+"decorum," explains that the term "tragicall comedy" is used because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> the
+story is a matter "mixed up with mirth and care." The serious portion of
+the play presents the tyrant Dionysius as well as the two faithful friends,
+and shows evidence of a study of Seneca; but it is intermixed with comedy,
+where the influence of Plautus is noticeable, and indeed with scenes of
+broadest farce. Carisophus, the parasite, is hardly distinguishable from
+the vice of the moralities, and is not only clown and mischief-maker, but
+the villain, whose infamy brings about the tragic entanglements. The play
+contains a number of songs, and this mixture of tragedy, farce, and musical
+comedy seems typical of the children's plays of this period.</p>
+
+<p>"Appius and Virginia" (S. R. 1567-68), by an unknown R. B., was also
+evidently acted by one of the children's companies, perhaps, as Mr. Fleay
+plausibly conjectures, by the boys of the Westminster school. It is much
+shorter than "Damon and Pithias," but, like that play, is styled a tragical
+comedy, is written in rhymed verse, mostly doggerel, and contains farcical
+scenes and many songs. The vice Haphazard is a clown and mischief-maker;
+and, in addition, a number of personified abstractions, Conscience,
+Justice, Comfort, Doctrina, etc., indicate the close relation of the play
+to the moralities. The main plot, however, is tragic and has no integral
+connection with the comic scenes. It begins with the domestic happiness of
+the family of Virginius, and proceeds promptly to the action. Virginia is
+beheaded, and the head is afterwards exhibited; Appius Claudius and
+Haphazard are executed out of the sight of the audience; and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the
+closing scene the tomb of Virginia is shown upon the stage, Memory
+inscribes her renown, while Justice, Reward, Doctrine, and Fame apparently
+join in a song "around about the tomb in honor of her name."</p>
+
+<p>"Horestes" (1567) by John Pickering was probably the "Orestes" acted at
+court 1567-68. It also seems to have been performed by children, but was
+very likely given public presentation by various companies. The title runs
+significantly, "A New Interlude of Vice, conteyninge the Historye of
+Horestes," etc. The vice, indeed, is hardly absent from the stage, and
+offers much that is new in his species. He is a clown, but apparently this
+is only a disguise, for he appears to Horestes as a messenger from the
+gods, urging him to revenge; later as Courage he is Horestes' faithful
+friend and supporter, then as Revenge he attends to the execution of
+Clytemnestra, and finally he appears as a beggar thrust out of court, since
+Revenge could not agree with the Amity dwelling there, and takes the
+opportunity to read a long lecture to women. The diversity of elements
+confused in this personage is typical of the play. It is in a large measure
+a morality; Nature appears to Horestes to dissuade him from including his
+mother in his vengeance, Fame appears as a judge and exempts him from
+guilt, and other abstractions are numerous and voluble. There are also a
+number of songs, Egisthus and Clytemnestra having just finished a love song
+when the messenger announces the avenger's approach. There are many scenes
+of sheer farce, where the humor lies wholly in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> fisticuffs and beatings;
+and the spectacular element suggests the later historical plays. Horestes
+is accompanied by an army which marches with drums about the stage and
+fights two pitched battles, one with the host of Egisthus and the other for
+the possession of the city. "Make your lively battel and let it be long,"
+says the stage direction. Still further, the classical elements are
+curiously confused. Although there are a number of quotations from Ovid and
+frequent citations of other classical worthies, there is no mention of
+Seneca, though the plot of "a revenge for a father" here makes its first
+appearance in the English drama, and the authors appear to have been
+entirely ignorant of the Greek tragedies. The ultimate source is the sixth
+book of Dictys Cretensis. The author follows closely one of the popular
+versions of the Troy legend, retains the anachronisms of the romantic
+version, and imposes on that the structure of the morality, the vice taking
+the place of the oracle of Apollo, and abstractions mingling with the
+knights and dukes of the Trojan war. The play is thus interesting as
+marking another step in the translation of the morality into the "history"
+type of tragedy. The closing scenes, in particular, illustrate the
+adherence to sources with morality embellishments. The play by no means
+ends with the murders. Horestes is approved by Fame, accused by Menelaus,
+who arrives, defended by Nestor, who throws down his glove as a gage, then
+reconciled to Menelaus, married to Hermione, crowned by Duty and Truth, and
+applauded and advised by Commons and Nobelles.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Cambyses" (S. R. 1569-70) was written by Thomas Preston, afterwards Master
+of Trinity Hall, and acted some time in the sixties. Perhaps originally
+intended for a school performance, it was later evidently acted in public,
+and seems more suited than even "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes" to a
+performance by an ordinary professional adult company. The title-page sets
+forth the plot with a terse emphasis of its various elements: "A Lamentable
+Tragedie mixed full of pleasant mirth containing the Life of Cambises King
+of Persia from the beginning of his kingdome unto his Death, his one good
+deede of execution, after that, many wicked deedes and tyrannous murders
+committed by and through him, and last of all, his odious death by Gods
+Justice appointed." Like "Horestes," this is a combination of morality and
+history, and the chronicle or epical method is enforced by the fact that we
+have the whole story of "the life and death," as later titles ran, of a
+monarch. The chronicle structure is mixed full of pleasant mirth and pays a
+certain regard to climax. Cambyses begins by executing an unjust judge, and
+proceeds to murder the child of his minister, then his brother, then his
+bride, and finally himself. The comic scenes have a link of connection with
+the tragic ones in Ambidexter, the vice and accomplice of the villanous
+tyrant. Seneca is appealed to as an authority in the prologue, but there is
+little trace of his influence, unless it is found in the central figure of
+the wicked tyrant and his gory career, or in the highfalutin of Cambyses'
+vein. The extraordinary list of <i>dramatis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> personae</i> indicates sufficiently
+the hodge-podge of the action and the prominence of the morality influence.
+The deaths are managed by Cruelty or Murder; Commons Cry, Commons
+Complaint, Small Nobility, and Proof appeal against tyranny; the marriage
+feast is arranged by Preparation; the comic scenes are shared by Huf, Ruf,
+Snuf, Hob, and Lob; Venus and Cupid manage the love affairs; and Shame
+appears as a sort of tentative ghost:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From among the grisly ghosts I come, from tyrants' testy train."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The fall of the Prince Cambyses, it should be added, is accidentally or
+providentially upon his own sword; and only the exit of Ambidexter and a
+few words from the three lords, who pronounce the accident a just reward
+from heaven and promise princely burial, are required to bring the play to
+a close.</p>
+
+<p>In these plays we may trace the gradual emergence of tragedy in the popular
+drama in response to a growing knowledge of its functions and methods. It
+appears still mixed with farce and morality, but it has themes like those
+of Seneca, bloody, revolting, and sensational, and its freedom in stage
+presentation permits an emphasis on crime and death even greater than in
+the Senecan imitations. Notably, it introduces the stories of the downfall
+of a tyrant and the revenge of a son for a father. The structure has none
+of the Senecan characteristics, and consists merely in linking together, or
+rather in interrupting by extraneous comedy, a few scenes illustrating a
+story; but it is like that of the English Senecan plays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> in the space it
+gives to catastrophe. In general the plays begin conventionally with the
+depiction of peaceful and prosperous circumstances, and proceed at once to
+the disasters and deaths, with very little attention to the events or
+motives that lead to these results. The element of conflict is as yet
+hardly translated out of the abstract terms of the morality into those of
+actual life. The conflict of motives never leads to a dramatic crisis but
+keeps to the form of a medieval debate, as between Nature and Horestes, or,
+indeed, between the bad and good counselors in "Gorboduc." Characterization
+likewise depends mostly on the form of arguing abstractions, though certain
+types of importance later are already noticeable. The faithful friend and
+the aged counselor are ever at hand, and the part, if not the character, of
+the tragic hero is provided in Horestes and Virginius. The villain receives
+considerable attention. The English dramatists were puzzled to follow the
+classical tragedies in placing the source of evil in Fate or the decrees of
+the gods; and even when their stories provided them with persons
+sufficiently iniquitous to cause all the tragic trouble, they seem to have
+felt the need for a visible and special representative of the devil. Evil
+in "Gorboduc" may be said to arise from the counsels of the parasites as
+well as from the folly of the king and the envy of the princes. In "Tancred
+and Gismunda" it is due, after classical imitation, to the intervention of
+Cupid. In the popular plays the vice is borrowed from the moralities, and,
+in all except "Horestes," is made a mischief-maker, a source<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> of evil, and
+the special representative of the devil. Questions in regard to the origin
+of the vice and his relationship to the devil of the medieval drama have
+not been freed from doubt by recent investigation, but it seems clear that
+in the early tragedies he was given some of the work later accomplished by
+the stage-villain and his accomplices. The part that women play in these
+early tragedies should also be noticed. Women and love, as Professor
+Creizenach has observed, receive far more attention in Renaissance tragedy
+than in Greek or Senecan. "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Promus and Cassandra"
+deal with stories of romantic love; Virginia and the queen in "Cambyses"
+present noteworthy though slight examples of the idealization of women so
+important in later drama. The purpose of all these plays, Senecan or
+popular, is superficially didactic, as is witnessed not only by the
+abundant moralizing in the Senecan imitations, but also in the popular
+plays by the emphasis in the closing scenes on the reward of virtue and the
+punishment of vice. In the last act of "Appius and Virginia" the lesson of
+the play is written on the tomb, and in "Horestes" the conduct of the hero
+is discussed by Nestor and Fame and finally rewarded by Hermione, Truth,
+and Duty. "Cambyses" is more in line with later tragedy in presenting the
+protagonist as a monster and in closing promptly after his punishment by
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The most certain accomplishment, however, in the development of the drama
+up to 1570 had been in the widening of its range of material. The bible
+narrative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> and moral allegory had been superseded by classical myth and
+history, and these in turn were being encroached upon by the romantic
+fiction of the Italian <i>novelle</i> and by the chronicles of English history.
+Italian <i>novelle</i> were open to dramatists mainly through a series of
+collections of translations, of which "Painter's Palace of Pleasure" (1566)
+was the chief. The interest in English history was stimulated and fed by
+"The Mirror for Magistrates" and the various editions of the chronicles;
+Grafton, Stowe, and the third edition of Fabyan appearing in the sixties,
+and Holinshed in 1577; while interest in the classics was maintained by
+numerous translations as well as by an increasing knowledge of Latin.
+Translation, indeed, had brought the stories of the world to the English
+mart, and the dramatic industry was now eager in its demand for material.</p>
+
+<p>Of the continued development of popular tragedy after 1570, and
+particularly of the sources drawn upon for dramatic material, we can get a
+few hints from the titles of non-extant plays. The incomplete Revels
+Accounts of performances at court preserve the names of over sixty plays
+acted between 1570 and 1585, and about thirty are derived from other
+sources. Of the court plays, none had biblical subjects; a number were
+moralities, a few were drawn from old romances; but the majority were from
+classical or Italian sources. Many of these must have contained tragic
+incidents,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> though probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> they were not much more classical in form
+than "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes." Only one title drawn from
+national history presents itself, "The King of Scots." The English
+chronicle play had evidently not yet made any stir at court; but many of
+the classical plays were drawn from Livy. Two other titles, "The Cruelty of
+a Stepmother" and "Murderous Michael" (Sussex's men, '78, '79), and a third
+of a play at Bristol in 1578, "What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man,"
+may possibly have had for sources accounts of contemporary murders, and
+thus have instituted the species of domestic tragedy. A few titles,
+suggestive of tragedy, with accompanying comments, have been preserved by
+Gosson, who praises: "The Jew," "representing the greediness of worldly
+chusers and bloody minds of usurers," apparently a forerunner of "The
+Merchant of Venice"; "Ptolemy," "describing the overthrow of seditious
+estates and rebellious commons"; "The Blacksmith's Daughter," "contayning
+the treachery of the Turkes, the honourable bountye of a noble mind, and
+the shining of virtue in distress"; and his own play, "Catilin's
+Conspiracy," "showing the reward of traitors."</p>
+
+<p>Some further information concerning the emergence of popular tragedy can be
+derived from the criticisms of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the period. Gosson in his "Plays Confuted"
+(1582), declares:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"For the poets drive it most commonly unto such points
+as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical
+speeches, or set their hearers agog with discourses of
+love; or paint a few antics to fit their own humours
+with scoffs and taunts or wring in a show to furnish
+forth the stage when it is too bare; when the matter
+itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of
+the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull
+it out.... So," he adds, "was the history of C&aelig;sar and
+Pompey and the play of the Fabii at the theatre, both
+amplified where the drums might walk or the pen
+ruffle."</p></div>
+
+<p>A similar criticism is made by Whetstone in his dedication of "Promus and
+Cassandra" (1578): "The Englishman in this qualitie, is most vaine,
+indiscreete, and out of order: he first groundes his work on
+impossibilities: then in three howers more likely ronnes he throwe the
+worlde: marryes, gets Children, makes Children men, men to conquer
+kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven and fetcheth
+Divels from Hel." Sidney in the well-known passage on the contemporary
+drama in his "Apologie for Poetrie" (1595, but written about 1580)
+amplified these same criticisms, deploring the lack of "noble moralitie,"
+the violation of the unities, and the admixture of farce in current
+tragedies, and especially animadverting on the histories and the "mongrel
+Tragy-comedie." He asks scornfully: "And doe they not knowe, that a
+Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not of Historie? not bound to
+follow the storie, but having liberty either to faine a quite new matter,
+or to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> frame the history to the most tragicall conveniencie. Againe, many
+things may be told, which cannot be shewed, if they knewe the difference
+betwixt reporting and representing,"&mdash;and he goes on to illustrate.
+Evidently the medieval methods were still potent rather than those of
+Sidney's models, Euripides, Seneca, and "Gorboduc"; and the tragedies in
+the theatres followed their sources without recognition of the difference
+between a narrative and a dramatic structure, and with an appeal to vulgar
+taste by means of hideous monsters, pitched fields, scurrility, or "some
+extreme shew of doltishness." From these critical comments we may infer
+that the popular drama had before 1585 triumphed over the Senecan. The few
+extant tragedies before that date have shown little which was not
+paralleled in the contemporary drama of western Europe; but in the
+popularization of a professional drama that rejected Senecan technic but
+still delighted in the presentation of tragic fact we have the first clear
+differentiation of English tragedy from that of other nations.
+Unfortunately we have only this indirect evidence that such differentiation
+was well under way before Marlowe.</p>
+
+<p>On the basis of such evidence, however, we may draw a few inferences in
+regard to the course of popular tragedy from 1570 to 1585. We may infer
+that Senecan imitations in the hands of amateurs did not multiply, and were
+not readily accepted even as object lessons by writers for the public
+theatres, who, whatever inspiration they may have received from amateur or
+academic plays, must have felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the increasing force of the demand from the
+public for amusement and sensation. While undoubtedly many traces of
+Senecan influence continued, and while classical themes persisted, the
+prevalent type of drama became neither right comedy nor right tragedy but
+the so-called "history." Whether based on history or fiction, its main
+purpose was the presentation of a story, the more marvelous the better;
+and, even if it ended in deaths, it was likely to contain a mixture of
+farce, romantic love, stage spectacle, and, as time went on, a diminishing
+inculcation of morality. Throughout the period, popular tragedy probably
+remained commingled with other species of drama. As it forsook the
+morality, it found itself wedded with farce or spectacle; or, perhaps more
+extensively, with history and romantic comedy. What course the popular
+drama farthest removed from court or academic influence may have taken, we
+can only surmise, though the presentation of contemporary murders, which
+found favor even at court, must presumably have flourished with less
+cultivated audiences. And it is impossible to resist the conjecture that
+English history must have received crude presentation in the public
+theatres much earlier than we have any record of.</p>
+
+<p>We may also surmise that in the quarter of a century from "Cambyses" to
+"Tamburlaine" there must have been some considerable development in the
+power to depict tragic fact, in the traditions of tragic acting, and in the
+cultivation of the taste of both audiences and authors for the genuinely
+terrible, pathetic, and heroic,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> but we must assume that tragedy still
+awaited the service of both literary and dramatic genius. The genius of
+Marlowe, however, had its way prepared by twenty-five years of
+extraordinary dramatic activity, during which the functions of comedy and
+tragedy had become known if not observed, comedy had attained a
+considerable development in Lyly and Peele, and tragedy had gained
+sufficient vigor to extend its themes, and to decide against a development
+imitative and scholarly, and in favor of one original and popular.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Most of the books in the list for the last chapter are useful in connection
+with the matter of this. Creizenach and Ward are the chief authorities;
+Collier, Symonds, and Jusserand deal with the period. Spingarn, Cunliffe,
+and Fischer are valuable for their special fields. Texts are to be found in
+Manly, Dodsley, Brandl, and discussions in the latter. For the stage
+history of the Elizabethan drama, the works of F. G. Fleay are very
+valuable, though marred by much unsupported conjecture: <i>A Biographical
+Chronicle of the English Drama</i>, 1559-1642, 2 vols. (1891); <i>A Chronicle
+History of the London Stage</i>, 1559-1642 (1890); <i>A Chronicle History of the
+Life and Work of William Shakespeare</i> (1886). The first-named is the most
+reliable and useful of the three. Original documents and records are
+printed in part in Collier and Fleay; and in Halliwell-Phillipps's
+<i>Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare</i> (6th ed., 1886); Malone's <i>Variorum</i>
+ed. of Shakespeare, 1821; Cunningham's <i>Extracts from the Annals of the
+Revels at Court</i>, Shakespeare Society, 1842; Nichols's <i>The Progresses and
+Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth</i>, 3 vols., 1823; <i>Aussere Geschichte
+der englischen Theatertruppen</i>, 1559-1642, by Hermann Maas (Materialien zur
+Kunde des &auml;lteren Englischen Dramas, 1907); Hazlitt's <i>English Drama and
+Stage</i> (1869); Chamber's <i>Notes on the Revels Office</i> (1906). The essays of
+Gosson, Sidney, Webbe, Puttenham, which supply most of the dramatic
+criticism of the period, are in Arber's Reprints; selections from these and
+other critical works with an introduction are collected in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> <i>Elizabethan
+Critical Essays</i>, G. Gregory Smith (1904). J. W. Cunliffe's edition of
+Gascoigne's <i>Posies</i> (1907) contains the plays, which he has also edited
+with an introduction in <i>The Belles-Lettres Series</i> (1906). A study of
+Legge's <i>Richardus Tertius</i> is found in G. B. Churchill's <i>Richard III up
+to Shakespeare</i> (Berlin, 1906); and an account of the Latin university
+plays in the article cited, by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller (<i>Shakspere
+Jahrbuch</i>, 1898). W. W. Greg's <i>A List of English Plays written before 1643
+and printed before 1700</i> (London Bibliographical Society) is based on the
+title-pages of the original copies. Fleay's <i>Biographical Chronicle</i>
+includes all plays known, extant or not. Greg, Fleay, and Schelling
+supersede Halliwell-Phillipps's <i>Dictionary of Old English Plays</i> (1860),
+and W. C. Hazlitt's <i>Manual of Old English Plays</i> (1892). <i>English Drama, a
+Working Basis</i>, by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, Wellesley College (1895),
+is the only attempt at a directory to modern editions, and though very
+incomplete, is the most serviceable guide to the whole field of English
+drama.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Before the first act, "there came in upon the stage a king
+with an Imperiall Crowne upon his head ... sitting in a chariot very
+richely furnished, drawne in by foure kinges in their dublettes and hosen,
+with crownes upon their heades, representing unto us ambition," etc. And
+before the fifth act there is a similar exhibition of a woman in a chariot
+driving kings and slaves. These shows may have suggested to Marlowe the
+famous business of Tamburlaine and his chariot. The show before act ii
+introduces the paraphernalia of coffins and a grave, afterwards so frequent
+in popular tragedy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The earlier version also survives in MS. and has been
+published by Professor Brandl in his <i>Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas</i>. The
+revised version is the result of elaborate care and reflects more highly
+developed dramatic conditions than existed in the sixties, but in some
+respects it may be closer to the original performance than is the
+manuscript. The songs of the chorus, now four maids of Gismunda's instead
+of four gentlemen of Salerne, and the dumb shows must have had some
+equivalents in the presentation before the Queen, though both are wanting
+in the earlier version. The dumb shows are noteworthy because, unlike those
+in <i>Gorboduc</i> and <i>Jocasta</i>, they are not allegorical, but represent
+important actions described or referred to in the text.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Geschichte des neueren Dramas</i>, ii, 471.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> For a list of Latin plays acted at the universities, see
+Fleay, <i>Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama</i>, vol. ii, 347-366.
+This list must be corrected in many particulars by an article, "Die
+Lateinischen Universit&auml;ts-Dramen in der Zeit der K&ouml;nigin Elisabeth," by
+George B. Churchill and Wolfgang Keller, <i>Jahrbuch der Deutschen
+Shakespeare-Gesellschaft</i>, xxxiv, 220-323.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Far more novel than any of the plays discussed in its
+departures from Senecan precedent, is <i>Perfidus Hetruscus</i>. So far as can
+be judged from the outline (<i>Jahrbuch</i>, xxxiv, 250-252), it offers no
+semblance of Senecan structure. There is no chorus, but there are six
+ghosts, a villain, two accomplices,&mdash;one a Capuchin, the other a
+Jesuit,&mdash;and an elaborate plot, as full of surprises as of poisonings. It
+seems to be a popular revenge play turned into Latin, and can hardly come
+within our period.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> One play should be mentioned here as standing in some ways
+between the classical and popular plays. <i>Promus and Cassandra</i>, by George
+Whetstone, published 1578, cannot be placed in any of our four classes, for
+there is no evidence that it was ever acted. Like <i>Tancred and Gismunda</i>,
+it was based on an Italian <i>novella</i>, also the source of <i>Measure for
+Measure</i>, and it follows Latin comedy rather than tragedy. In its division
+into five acts, its frequent soliloquies, its attempted observance of
+decorum (especially vaunted in the preface), and in its serious purpose and
+moral sentiments, the play shows a pedantic clinging to classicism. In the
+main, however, it belongs with <i>Damon and Pithias</i> and <i>Appius and
+Virginia</i>, and seems to have been intended for performance by children. It
+is a mixture of tragedy, comedy, farce, and songs; and this abundance of
+incongruous material seems to have led to its division into two plays, as
+Whetstone says, for the purpose of decorum. Here, as elsewhere in the
+period, the experiment of putting new material into old dramatic structures
+burst the bottles. Clowns, parasites, tyrants, prostitutes, hangmen,
+Egyptians, and girls in boys' clothing make up a pageant which is a sort of
+tragicomedy but which the learned author called by the more popular title,
+"a history."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Ariodante and Genevra</i> (<i>Orlando Furioso</i>), <i>Ajax and
+Ulysses</i>, <i>Agamemnon and Ulysses</i>, <i>C&aelig;sar and Pompey</i>, <i>Cloridon and
+Radimanta</i> <i>Duke of Milan</i>, <i>Effigenia</i> (<i>Iphigenia</i>), <i>Four Sons of
+Fabius</i>, <i>Mutius Sc&aelig;vola</i>, <i>Quintus Fabius</i>, <i>Perseus and Andromeda</i>,
+<i>Sarpedon</i>, <i>Scipio Africanus</i>, <i>Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes</i>,
+<i>Telemo</i>, <i>Twelve Labors of Hercules</i>. Some titles suggesting medieval
+romance are: <i>Knight of the Burning Bush</i>, <i>Red Knight</i>, <i>Paris and
+Vienna</i>, <i>Solitary Knight</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>MARLOWE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The growing national consciousness that reached its triumphant culmination
+in the defeat of Spain made itself felt in the drama, specifically in
+efforts to present the glories of English history, and still more potently
+in an awakened responsiveness to the new fields and new incentives for
+artistic ambition. The beginning of the greatness of the national drama is
+significantly coincident with the victory over the Armada. By that time the
+spirit of noble endeavor had found lodgment in every worthy breast. It
+animated Marlowe no less than Drake, and the author of the least successful
+chronicle play as well as admiral or counselor. The extraordinary
+achievements that had been contributing to the might of England as a
+political power were, indeed, but one expression of the freedom and
+eagerness of individual initiative that characterized this English
+Renaissance and found other expression in the activities and
+accomplishments of literature. In comparison with the men of preceding
+generations, the Elizabethan Englishman faced a world of new horizons, new
+ideas, boundless opportunities, and alluring rewards. Every career was open
+and promised an untrod pathway and unworn laurels. He might win fame as a
+pirate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> philosopher, or poet; or in the new excitement of living he might
+crowd not one but many careers into the span of life. The versatility of a
+Raleigh only typifies the excitement and energy of deed, the lively
+movement of thought which quickened mind and body, and resulted, now in a
+voyage to Virginia, now in a conspiracy, now in a sonnet, and now in a
+history of the universe. And this feverishness to make trial of thronging
+opportunities was symptomatic not only of vigor of intellect, celerity of
+emotion, and independence of will, but also of an imaginative idealism that
+enlightened the daily living of many a sorry citizen, and was destined to
+live resplendent in the verses of Spenser and Shakespeare. In the stir of
+free ideas, the surprise of discovery, and the glow of accomplishment, life
+grew heroic, attainment seemed easy, and no ideals too lofty for the
+scaling ladders of human aspiration. Men achieved much and they dreamt of
+more. The apprentice went to the theatre to don Fortunatus's cap or to
+triumph with Tamburlaine; every one had his El Dorado distant only a short
+voyage; and, with the new world before them, poets and playwrights set sail
+in blithe confidence of splendid discovery. Never before, or perhaps since,
+have so many new things seemed within grasp, whether in literature or in
+life; never has all living so throbbed with a sense of the nearness of the
+unattainable, the kinship of the real and the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>In non-dramatic literature the incentives of the classics and of the
+Italians from Petrarch to Tasso had led on from translations and imitations
+to experiments and inventions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> In the dozen years before the Armada, lyric
+poetry, criticism, and prose fiction had felt the stir of successful
+English innovation, and the time was almost ripe for the vast projects of
+Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon. In comedy the development had been earlier and
+more rapid than in tragedy, and had already in Peele and Lyly reached the
+stage of dexterous expression and varied innovation. Whether presenting a
+story of classical mythology or of medieval romance, whether farcical,
+Plautian, pastoral, sentimental, satirical, or spectacular, comedy was by
+the time of Marlowe ready with its examples to offer instruction to any
+writer attempting tragic themes. Tragedy could hardly remain longer in the
+stage of translation, imitation, and feeble experiment which we have been
+considering.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, a stimulus for tragedy was exercised by the daily events of
+that active era. These stirred men's imagination and ambition, and must
+almost inevitably have directed artistic impulse toward the heroic, the
+passionate, and the terrible. The abundance of bloodshed in Elizabethan
+tragedy may find some interpretation in the fact that Ben Jonson killed his
+man in a duel and that Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The time was
+one of bloodshed, violence, quick and brutal passion; a time in which the
+torture of a Gloster or the revenge of a Shylock was far closer to life, to
+the life at least of poets and dramatists, than such stories are to-day.
+Drake in his cabin drinking and praying with the unmoved lieutenant whom he
+was to hang the next day is a bit of fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> that rivals in horror the
+devilries of a Barabas. Even if Seneca's example had not already approved
+themes of adultery, murder, blood-vengeance, the atrocities of tyranny, and
+the deadly strife of father and son, such themes must have stirred men's
+minds in the days of the Massacre of St. Bartholemew and the career of Mary
+Stuart. If tradition had not already selected the falls of princes as the
+especial field for tragedy, the history of monarchical Europe in the
+sixteenth century must have given such stories a power of appeal hardly to
+be appreciated now. In that strenuous generation the dramatist must have
+found artistic impulses from bloody and gruesome deeds, and no less from
+daring ambition, heroic struggle, and indomitable greatness of mind.</p>
+
+<p>The summons, however, which the tragic muse heeded came directly from the
+public theatres and the professional actors. The university men who at this
+time were writing for the theatre under the lash and loans of a
+slave-driving theatrical manager may have been tempted to forget that their
+sordid and Bohemian existence offered a means for triumphant artistic
+expression. The London theatres were now well established, patronized by
+the courtiers, and secured in prosperity by the motley audiences that
+crowded their performances. They had become important centres in the social
+life of the time, comparable to the newspaper offices of a
+twentieth-century city in their close touch with the daily life about them;
+and in their task of affording amusement and information fulfilling in part
+the functions of periodicals<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> and novels as well as of the drama at
+present. The stage, without scenery, was still in a transition state
+between the medieval and modern, and, to our view, almost unrealizably
+crude. Places were sometimes indicated by signs; properties, beds, tables,
+or trees were brought on or off as occasion required; or, a heavier
+property, like a cave, might remain whether the scene was in cave-land or a
+counting-room. There was no drop curtain; actors went off, others came on,
+and the place changed from a seacoast to the palace; or, the actors merely
+moved across the platform, and it transpired that they had passed from "a
+fair and pleasant green" to a room in the house of Faustus. At the close of
+a tragedy all the survivors might be needed to bear off the bodies of the
+dead. A balcony in the rear of the stage stood in stead of a castle wall or
+the deck of a ship, while a curtained space below might represent an inner
+room or a dungeon vault. A curtain extending across the stage seems at
+times to have been used in managing a change of scene. Spectacular elements
+were not lacking: fireworks, ascents and descents of gods, armies,
+coronations, and battles delighted the eye. On costume, anachronistic but
+elaborate, the manager lavished his money and ingenuity. Cleopatra tightly
+laced, Tamburlaine in scarlet copper breeches are recorded facts, but
+Venuses, Apollos, mermaids, devils, satyrs, and nymphs leave something for
+fancy to conceive, as does the "gown to go invisible in" which perhaps
+shielded Ariel or Puck. Of the acting we have little information. Female
+parts were played by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> boys; clowns with their jigs were great favorites,
+but a considerable skill in acting must be supposed,&mdash;less subtle, less
+occupied with stage business than to-day, more declamatory possibly, and
+more attentive to the spoken word. Any superiority in the appreciation
+possessed by the audiences over those of to-day must be attributed not to
+their superior intelligence, but to their long training in listening to
+plays. They probably differed from uneducated audiences in the cheaper
+theatres of to-day chiefly, if at all, in spontaneity of emotions, a desire
+for emotional incongruity, and a cultivated delight in verbal fireworks or
+felicities. It is certain that in the time of Marlowe they were gaping for
+sensation and joyed in a comedy of beatings, a tragedy of murders, and a
+mixture of jigging and villany. For such audiences, for such a stage, under
+stress of immediate demand requiring hasty and collaborative work, Marlowe
+and his contemporaries wrote. They were hack writers, and so viewed by the
+literati of their day. Every one of them, Shakespeare included, had in the
+first place to satisfy the demands of the public theatres. This needs to be
+remembered no less than the fact that the plays of nearly all, of the
+meanest hack as well as Shakespeare, seem to have felt the stir and thrill
+of the effort to express thought in enduring words.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the six or seven years ending with Marlowe's death in
+1593, tragedy experienced a rapid and multiform development. The various
+influences already noticed in the last chapter as at work were developed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+by the ingenuity and innovation of a dozen writers, and translated into the
+expression of individual genius by Marlowe and Shakespeare. No theory of
+tragedy ruled the theatres; no school of dramatists adopted any code of
+principles; the plays which we class as tragedies were mostly known as
+histories and were written in violence to the accepted literary conception.
+Nevertheless, tragedy was establishing itself as a popular species of
+drama, was separating its themes and their treatment clearly from those of
+comedy, and was defining the course which it was to follow until the
+Puritan revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The impossibility of determining a precise chronology of the stage history
+of the period renders the exact appraisal of indebtedness, or the tracing
+of any certain evolution, very insecure. The changes in the companies in
+1594 and the consequent publication of a large number of plays in the same
+year enable us to fix on a number of tragedies acted before Marlowe's
+death, and we may safely add a few others as not later than 1595. Among
+these extant tragedies and in the names of those that have not survived
+there are representatives of various types,&mdash;biblical plays, tragedies
+dealing with romantic love, domestic tragedies telling stories of
+contemporary crimes. In any one of these plays, indeed, various types may
+be combined; the writers were concerned with telling stories, not with
+<i>l'&eacute;volution des genres</i>. But the most salient and pervasive forces working
+in tragedy may be roughly denominated as (1) the chronicle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> history play,
+(2) the revenge type of tragedy, (3) the type of tragedy created by
+Marlowe. To these should perhaps be added romantic comedy with its
+idealized love story and its element of averted tragedy. But the first
+three types, though overlapping and not distinct, were of marked importance
+in the history of tragedy and need especial consideration in connection
+with the most important dramatists of this period, Peele, Kyd, Marlowe, and
+Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>The chronicle history play may claim attention first, not because it was
+demonstrably earlier in appearance than the others, but because it engaged
+the efforts of nearly every dramatic writer of the period, and because in
+its disregard of foreign influence or parallel in its methods and
+structure, and in its devotion to the demands of the London theatres, it is
+most typical of the drama of the period. The prime essential of a play was
+that it should tell a story. A playwright took his material from <i>novella</i>,
+poem, or chronicle, and strove to translate it into an interesting and
+varied series of scenes. In the chronicles he found material peculiarly
+suited to such translation. Everything was there,&mdash;battles, coronations,
+counsels, conspiracies, amours, speeches, characterization, and sentiments.
+No enlargement was necessary as in the case of a <i>novella</i>, no
+considerations of consistency of characterization, few incidents in
+addition to those in the highway or the byways of the narrative, and only a
+minimum of invention. The interest of a distinct plot was superseded by
+that of historical persons, events,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> and spectacles, and these compelled
+only such unity as might be secured by taking the reign of one monarch as
+the basis of a play, or sometimes of several plays. The presentation of
+history involved a large number of persons on the stage, many changes of
+place, a long stretch of time, and an incongruity of matter, all this
+loosely organized into scenes themselves often long and varied and
+admitting some change of place and lapse of time within their bounds.
+Though the scene, rather than the act, was the unit in popular drama, it
+had almost no structural value. A play was really a continuous performance,
+the actors coming and going, a battle intervening, and now and then a
+withdrawal of all the actors and the appearance of a new group presaging a
+marked change of place or the beginning of an entirely different action. In
+the arrangement of scenes, however, some attention to parallel, contrast,
+and climax soon became manifest; and some integration of the confused
+material from the chronicles, particularly in the separation from scenes
+abounding in action of those purely narrative or expository and those
+purely lyrical, chiefly lamentations. In spite of such beginnings of
+system, the early chronicle plays, "The Famous Victories of Henry V," "Jack
+Straw," "Leir," "Edward I," and "The Troublesome Reign" are less coherent
+in structure, more incongruous in material, and less regardful of any clear
+fable, tragic or comic, than are other contemporary plays.</p>
+
+<p>To determine criteria to define these plays and their successors as a class
+is by no means easy. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> usually based on the chronicles, but the
+method of composition just described was applied to legend or poem with
+similar results, and there were also plays based on chronicles of
+contemporary events. They had for their main purpose the presentation of
+history, but this was shared by plays on French and Roman as well as
+English history, and there were historical plays that had no marks of the
+chronicle method of structure. The English chronicle plays usually show a
+pronounced patriotic temper, but this is often subsidiary and neglected in
+the desire for farce or sensation. The spectacular features are a
+characteristic element, a battle-scene being perhaps the most indispensable
+element or ingredient of a chronicle play, but this again fails to supply
+even more than a superficial criterion. In the popularity of the
+presentations of historical facts, all kinds of stories were worked over
+into a likeness to "true chronicle history," and the genuine historical,
+legendary, and biographical plays are hardly distinguishable from the
+pretenders. An illuminating illustration of the characteristics of the
+national drama about 1590 can be found in a comparison of two dramatic
+versions of a romance in Cinthio's "Hecatommithi," one by Cinthio himself,
+the other by Robert Greene. The Italian play is a tragicomedy in strict
+Senecan form, in which Arrenopia (Greene's Dorothea) appears as a
+declamatory queen confiding her troubles to the attendant nurse. Greene
+took the romantic comedy, added some pseudo-historical events, patriotic
+sentiments, and a pitched field for the finale, and called the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> "The
+Scottish Historie of James IV, slaine at Flodden." For our purpose the
+chronicle plays are to be regarded less as a distinct type than as
+representing a set of practices in vogue at this period and widely
+influential on the drama's development. They possessed the following
+characteristics and imposed some or all of them on very different forms of
+drama: subjects drawn from English history, the presentation of historical
+and political events, an incongruous mixture of material, a narrative
+structure almost as unorganized as the chronicles themselves, patriotic
+sentiments, and the stage pageantry of court and camp.</p>
+
+<p>From their earliest appearance, however, the chronicle plays offered
+opportunities for developments later consummated by Shakespeare. Comic
+scenes were freely interspersed to enliven the tedium of royal
+declamations, and in these lay the possibility of the combination of
+history and comedy in the Falstaff plays. On the other hand, the history of
+a doleful fall of a prince or the retribution visited on some tyrant gave
+the plays a tragic tone and opened the way for "Macbeth" and "Lear." "The
+Troublesome Reign of King John,"<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> the basis of Shakespeare's play, is the
+best example of an early<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> chronicle play presenting undeveloped
+possibilities for tragedy. It is written partly in blank verse, partly in
+rhyme, and partly in prose. It does not follow the chronicles with any
+fidelity, but twists history, adds fiction, and proclaims throughout a
+vigorous protestant patriotism. Battles, embassies, farce, orations, death,
+and much else mingle together, each scene being treated like another and no
+discernible method being followed in their arrangement or proportion,
+except that of a loose adherence to the scheme of "a life and death." The
+first part closes with John crowned and assured of the miscarriage of his
+intended murder of Arthur; in the second part, as the address to the reader
+declares,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"First scenes shows Arthur's death in infancie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And last concludes John's fatall tragedie."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The Troublesome Reign" indicates what little advance had been made toward
+tragedy when Marlowe's first play appeared. The prologue to that play was a
+declaration of reform and innovation.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Threatening the world with high astounding terms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The doggerel rhyme favored in the popular drama was to give place to blank
+verse, and the jigging clowns to heroic themes and "high astounding terms."
+Marlowe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> came to the theatre,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> fresh from the university, his fancy
+aflame with the beauty of Latin verse and story, his mind storming with the
+problems and ambitions of adolescent genius. He threw aside Senecan
+traditions and devoted himself to meeting the demands of the professional
+stage. When a few years later he died, English tragedy had been created
+anew largely through his achievement.</p>
+
+<p>His independence and initiative are shown in his choice of subjects.
+Although in "Dido" he took a standard theme of humanistic tragedy, and in
+the Henry VI plays and "Edward II" followed the prevailing taste for
+English history, and in "The Massacre of Paris" another fashion for the
+dramatization of current atrocities; yet in "Tamburlaine" he chose the
+story of a world conqueror, in "Faustus" a legend that had just entered
+print in the German "Volksbuch" of 1587, and in "The Jew of Malta" he
+worked over unknown sources into a tragedy of revenge with evident freedom
+of invention. All three stories present notable contributions to tragic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+themes, and the last two disregard both the fashion for historical subjects
+and the requirement that tragedy deal only with princes. These new and
+varied themes gave a chance for a considerable revolution in the content of
+tragedy. Revenge, murders, battles, intrigue, physical horrors are still
+prominent; but the Senecan round of incest and adultery disappears, and the
+"Mirror for Magistrates" no longer represents the epitome of tragic action.
+Marlowe's choice and treatment of plots seem, indeed, dictated by a new
+conception of tragedy, as dealing not merely with a life and death, or a
+bloody crime, or a reversal of fortune, but with the heroic struggle of a
+great personality, doomed to inevitable defeat. "Tamburlaine" is scarcely a
+tragedy at all, but rather a chronicle of the hero's greatness; but in
+"Faustus" and "The Jew" heroes with ambitions boundless and passionate like
+Tamburlaine's are overwhelmed in the end by the inexorable destiny of human
+weakness. In "Edward II," where the hero is less dominant over the action,
+the study of historical facts results in a more restrained, more human
+presentation of the same theme, a ruling passion drawing the protagonist to
+pitiful defeat.</p>
+
+<p>In the structure of his plots Marlowe forsook the Senecan models and began
+with the methods of the chronicle play. "Tamburlaine" is a chronicle
+history, presenting the story of the events of a life and ending with
+death. Originally the play contained comic scenes, omitted in the published
+form and evidently of no value in structure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> or conception. Without these
+there is enough of a medley, though the amazing succession of conquests,
+defiances, murders, harangues, battles, funerals, wooings, and horrors is
+arranged with considerable skill. There is manifest regard for contrast in
+the alternating exhibitions of Tamburlaine's power and his enemies'
+weakness; his love for Zenocrate, an addition to the source, is integrated
+with the main story of conquest; and in Part I the climactical arrangement
+is emphasized by the division into acts. Each act comprises an important
+stage in Tamburlaine's career, act v presenting the culmination in the
+suicide of the Turkish emperor and empress, the conquest of Arabia,
+Zenocrate's former betrothed, and the submission of her conquered father to
+her marriage with Tamburlaine. Part II, the prologue implies, was an
+afterthought due to the popularity of Part I. The climax is carried on
+somewhat loosely up to the harnessing of the jades of Asia; but the
+reversal of fortune, though developed in the death of Zenocrate, the
+unworthiness of the eldest son, and the approach of death to Tamburlaine,
+is not given effective emphasis. Tamburlaine's death is merely the end of
+the play, not a tragic catastrophe. Epical and crude though their structure
+is, the two plays possess a firmer organization and a greater unity than
+any preceding popular tragedy. Everything centres in the protagonist; he
+keeps the middle of the stage; his towering passion and incessant
+declamation fix one's attention; episodes like the deaths of the Turks or
+of Olympia hardly divert the mind from his titanic personality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A similar unity governs the structure of "Faustus" and "The Jew." In each
+there are many actions, some comic, instead of one serious action, and the
+history of a lifetime instead of a great emotional crisis; but in each the
+dominant figure and the course of his controlling passion impose a certain
+unity of structure. Both begin with soliloquies, revealing the protagonists
+at the height of fortune and about to face crises in their careers; and it
+is significant of the increased importance given to inner conflict that
+reflective soliloquies, neglected in "Tamburlaine," play a considerable
+part, especially in "Faustus." In both plays there is also advance in the
+clear conception of catastrophe, which now controls the structure. In "The
+Jew" his thwarted lust for gold drives him through a series of villanous
+triumphs over difficulties until he is melodramatically hoist with his own
+petard. In "Faustus" the choice of the devilish magic leads through
+apparent success, past opportunities for repentance, to final remorse and
+damnation. In both plays, the domination of the protagonist by a passion,
+its conflicting joys and sorrows, and its final failure become points for
+emphasis. The history of a life thus becomes organized into a tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In "Edward II," Marlowe's masterpiece in structure as in other respects,
+there is an absence of comedy, for which he seems to have had no aptitude,
+and adherence to the chronicles is governed by his maturing sense of the
+structural principles which should proportion the tragic story. Twenty
+years of confusion are condensed into five<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> acts which attain dramatic
+organization not only under the direction of the central personality and
+the inevitable catastrophe, but also from the skillful handling of the
+counter-force. The play begins with a salient manifestation in the recall
+of Gaveston of the passion which is to be the king's downfall. The
+hazardous combination of the two similar careers of Gaveston and Spenser is
+adroitly managed; it develops the central theme of Edward's weakness and
+brings into active conflict the counter-force of the barons under the
+leadership of Mortimer. The alternating triumph and discomfiture of the
+king in his struggle with the barons leads to the climax of their
+humiliation at the end of act iii; and thus the turning-point of the action
+is given an emphasis not found in earlier plays. Henceforth the
+counter-force is in the ascendant, and the catastrophe is realized with a
+tremendous power that justifies Lamb's extravagance: "the death scene of
+Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern
+with which I am acquainted." The play, to be sure, has many faults of
+structure. It is the product of an immature period of the drama and of
+crude theatrical conditions; but it indicates clearly how Marlowe was
+developing tragic movement out of the confused narratives of the
+chronicles, and was giving to a presentation of diverse and crowded actions
+principles not altogether unlike those that Aristotle had found in the
+Attic drama.</p>
+
+<p>It should be added that the manifest excellences of the dramatic treatment
+lie less in the structure of any one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> play as a whole than in the handling
+of the separate scenes. These have, of course, the peculiarities of the
+popular stage and the chronicle plays. Events are sometimes reported by an
+intercalary narrative like scene ii, act i, of "Edward II," which consists
+of four lines by Gaveston, announcing that the nobles have gone to Lambeth,
+and four words of reply by Kent. Soliloquies are often used to explain
+action or character. In the task of translating incident into dramatic
+situation, however, Marlowe had the advantages of centuries of dramatic
+practice and the traditions of tragic acting, and his genius often worked
+with facility and power. These qualities are most manifest in the death
+scenes. Olympia, Bajazeth, Zabina, Zenocrate, all die with at least stage
+effectiveness; and in the deaths of Faustus and Edward, Marlowe's dramatic
+power reached its highest mark. Death, synonymous with tragic catastrophe,
+was revealed to future dramatists as something more than physical horror or
+the end of existence. Death became the loss of active and glorious living,
+the negation of individual power, the expiring struggle of the drama of
+life, its last defiance and its most irresistible appeal to pity and
+terror.</p>
+
+<p>Characterization, like conception and structure, in Marlowe's tragedy is
+largely an affair of the protagonist. Minor figures are for the most part
+mere sketches without any sustained and consistent delineation. Only in
+"Edward II" does the antagonist receive much attention, and only in that
+play is the character of the tragic hero<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> free from lapses into caricature
+and absurdity. The protagonists, as in many tragedies before and since, are
+evil men intent on evil deeds. They appeal to our sympathy only in
+misfortune and disaster; in more fortunate circumstances they run counter
+to moral laws and excite a mixture of admiration, horror, and even
+contempt. Tamburlaine the atheist and Faust the dealer in magic invited a
+greater condemnation in every Christian then than now. Barabas is
+conceived, under the inspiration of Machiavelli and perhaps also of stage
+practice, as an intriguing villain with all the accompaniments ever since
+familiar in drama and fiction. He is the source of all evil and utterly
+without conscience; he avows his villany to the audience and he works by
+crafty intrigue with the aid of an equally conscienceless accomplice.
+Edward II, on the other hand, is of the type of tyrants, weak, vacillating,
+and self-indulgent, and he offers the difficult dramatic problem of a
+protagonist who is sometimes contemptible and must sometimes be heroic and
+pitiful. Marlowe's conception of a tragic hero, however, transcended any
+outlines furnished by his sources or any stage types such as villain and
+tyrant. He conceived his heroes first of all as men capable of great
+passions, consumed by their desires, abandoned to the pursuit of their
+lusts, whether they led to glory, butchery, loss of kingdom, or eternal
+damnation. This intensity of emotion gives them an elevation and a heroic
+interest that outlasts contemptibility or pathos. Nor are they without
+representational value. They linger in the mind as men, absurd,
+exaggerated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> monstrous at times, but appealingly human in moments when
+their passion rings true, and impressively typical of the eternal struggle
+of passion and desire against the fixed limits of human attainment. It is
+in the realization of their emotions that the plays secure their great
+impressiveness. Tragedy has become not the presentation of history, myth,
+or events of any sort, but the presentation of the passionate struggle and
+pitiful defeat of an extraordinary human being.</p>
+
+<p>Genuine human passion and a vital conception of life's tragedy found
+expression in verse, sometimes inspired, sometimes absurd, but always
+spontaneous and unfaltering. Blank verse, borrowed from Italy and adopted
+in English Senecan plays, now became a new instrument, and its pre&euml;minent
+adaptability for tragic poetry henceforth long remained unquestioned. If it
+has had many greater masters since, it had none comparable before, and, in
+spite of stiffness, monotony, and great unevenness, it rises now and again
+to remarkable technical excellence. It is <i>sui generis</i>, without known
+models, though it gathers to itself many of the prevailing characteristics
+of Renaissance poetry. It has plenty of Senecan hyperbole, but curiously
+little of Senecan antithesis or aphorism; it abounds in rant and bombast;
+it is over-adorned with classical allusion; it delights in ornament and
+sonority; and in the main it is declamatory and lyrical rather than
+dramatically suited to character and situation. Again, it is mannered and
+often monotonous, especially in "Tamburlaine," where the repetition of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+names and the recurrence of polysyllabic words at the ends of lines give
+the familiar swing:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To ride in triumph through Persepolis"....<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate"....<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then shall my native city, Samarcanda."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet the lover of romantic poetry will find delight in the very impetuosity
+of the rant, the thunder of the declamation, the roll of the proper names,
+the color and pageantry of the descriptions, the occasional loveliness of
+the luxurious classicism, and yet more in the splendid surges of the verse
+to reveal the turmoil and anguish of passionate death. From the first
+moment Marlowe was an undoubted poet; and to his tremendous facility of
+words and rhythm he was adding, as "Edward II" reveals, a moderation of
+ornament, an evenness of power, and a dramatic consistency, while still
+retaining the potentiality of dazzling dramatic flash. He brought not only
+blank verse but poetry to the English drama, and the greatness of its style
+dates from his achievement.</p>
+
+<p>We must not, however, in the poet forget the playwright, or lose sight of
+Marlowe's contributions to the purely theatrical side of the drama.
+"Tamburlaine" set a standard in stage effects as well as in poetry. Kings
+and sultans appear in droves, crowns are handed about like toys, treaties
+are torn, cities stormed, battles fought. Frequently eight or ten
+chieftains crowd the stage with their trains. The tents of the conqueror
+are pitched and changed from white to red and then to black as the
+beleaguered city continues<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> to withstand his power. An emperor and empress
+dash out their brains against the bars of their cages. Tamburlaine drives
+the bridled monarchs harnessed to his chariot. Two bodies are burnt; there
+are murders by the dozen; and there is a solemn funeral scene where the
+hearse advances in the light of a burning town. The popular stage had
+probably never seen such a spectacle before. In "Faustus" new and even more
+surprising stage effects are supplied to illustrate the wonders of magic.
+In "The Jew of Malta" there is a display of plots and atrocities which the
+plays of the next thirty years strove in vain to surpass. Apart from these
+spectacular elements, it is obvious that the characterization and
+declamation, in fact the very structure of the plays, were designed to
+supply full opportunity for the acting of Edward Alleyn. He was nearly
+seven feet tall, we are told, the greatest actor of his day, and especially
+skilled in majestic parts. So to him, perhaps, as well as to Marlowe's
+conception of tragedy, was due the one-part play, the sonorous lines, and
+the passionate protagonists.</p>
+
+<p>Such considerations recall the double purpose, hardly separable from the
+drama and particularly manifest in the Elizabethan dramatists, the two
+desires, to please their audiences and to create literature. The spectacle,
+bombast, and horrors, the new and startling stories of Marlowe's plays were
+certainly intended to win his public, and they probably caused no twinges
+to his artistic conscience. On the other hand, while hardly an element of
+the dramas is without the influence of theatrical conditions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> and while of
+deliberate artistic theories there is little evidence, yet the study of
+character, the underlying conceptions, the maturing power of structure, as
+well as the beauty and wisdom of separate passages, reveal a mind of
+intellectual and emotional profundity seeking to give noble expression to
+the things in life that impressed him most vividly. In the traffic of the
+stage the young poet found a chance to study men and their motives, to seek
+"the immortal flowers of poetry," and to utter something of his own
+experience and view of life. Into the rapid translation of stories for the
+stage he threw his own conception of the rewards and defeats of an
+overmastering passion, of the glory of struggle, and the pity and terror of
+failure. In the further development of the drama, his influence continued
+not only in his series of tragedies forming a fairly definite type, but
+also as that of an inspiring personality.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had in him those brave translunary things<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the first poets had; his raptures were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All air and fire, which made his verses clere;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For that fine madnes still he did retaine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which rightly should possess a poet's braine."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Drayton</span>: <i>Epistle to Henry Reynolds.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The influence upon the drama of Marlowe's whilom friend, Thomas Kyd, was
+not due to his personality, concerning which recently discovered documents
+create no very favorable impression, or to any remarkable poetic genius,
+but to a single play and the type of tragedy which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> it fathered. "The
+Spanish Tragedy,"<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> entered in the Stationers' Register, 1592, and
+probably acted at about the same time as "Tamburlaine," and earlier than
+Marlowe's other plays, was the first representative of this type of revenge
+tragedies, and it gained an immediate and lasting popularity, though after
+a time encountering the ridicule of Jonson and later dramatists. The story
+of revenge had already appeared in "Horestes" and in Latin plays at the
+universities; and theme, ghost, treatment, and structure were derived from
+Seneca by Kyd and adapted with great originality to the popular drama. At
+least, no other dramatist has as good a claim to be considered the creator
+of a species of tragedy that had a long series of representatives even
+after its culmination in Shakespeare's "Hamlet."</p>
+
+<p>The main theme of the play is revenge of a father for a son, superintended
+by a ghost; and this theme attaches to itself other motives important both
+here and in their later developments. The revenge is delayed by hesitation
+on the part of Hieronimo, who finds his task a difficult one and requires
+much proof and superabundant deliberation to spur his irresolution into
+activity. Madness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> is another accompaniment of the main theme; the second
+title of the 1602 quarto, "Old Hieronimo mad againe," indicating how
+important it was in the stage presentation. Hieronimo pretends madness, and
+his pretended madness often passes into real melancholy and distraction.
+Isabella, his wife, is driven by insanity to suicide. Intrigue used both
+against and by the avenger is another important element; the villain is a
+machinator and Hieronimo finally accomplishes his revenge by means of
+dissimulation and trickery. According to both Senecan and national
+precedents, vengeance moves in a pathway of blood; ten of the <i>dramatis
+personae</i>, innocent and guilty alike, pass to "the loathsome pool of
+Acheron," and the final slaughter leaves five bodies to be borne from the
+stage. Intrigue and slaughter characterize most of the tragedies of this
+period, notably "The Jew of Malta," but the ghost-directed revenge,
+hesitation, insanity, and the meditative soliloquies distinguished more
+specifically the Kydian species. In spite of the medley of intrigue and
+carnage, there is introduced, after Senecan fashion, much philosophizing
+and introspection. Meditations on fate, revenge, suicide, and similar
+subjects play a large part in the development of the story and are most
+frequently given the form of soliloquies. Hieronimo's inner struggle is
+revealed in lonely communings, now in defense, now in bitter condemnation
+of his delay.</p>
+
+<p>The structure is an interesting adaptation of Senecan and popular
+characteristics. The play does not confine itself to the last phase of an
+action, and it introduces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> various actions introductory or subsidiary to
+that of the revenge, and a mixture of comedy. Moreover, everything is
+represented on the stage with the freedom established in the popular drama.
+On the other hand, there is much exposition by means of narrative, and
+Revenge and the ghost of Andrea appear, after Senecan fashion, as a
+prologue, and after each act as a sort of vestigial chorus. While there is
+a surplus of violent and external action, the epic, lyric, and reflective
+scenes picture an inner conflict and supply both aphorisms and a searching
+psychology. When late in the play Hieronimo's revenge for his son is
+finally started, it has to contend with both his own hesitation and the
+intrigues of the villain. Its development, in comparison with "Hamlet," is
+absurdly faulty because of Kyd's failure to make clear from the start the
+character of the avenger; but, if it is studied as a first attempt to give
+structure to a complex theme, the vicissitudes of Hieronimo's irresolution
+and frenzy will seem carefully designed and strikingly prophetic of the
+course of Hamlet's struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Kyd's skill in devising stage situations is shown by the dramatic value and
+lasting effect on the public of the scene in which Hieronimo is called from
+his naked bed to discover the body of his son hanging in the arbor, or of
+the scene in which, offering a handkerchief to the weeping Senex, he draws
+forth the bloody napkin which he has kept as a reminder of his son's death.
+The play within the play, used here as a means of revenge; the scenes in
+which Isabella "runs lunatick"; the laments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> and final exultation of the
+ghost; the exhibition of the body of Horatio after the mock play, found
+later imitators and became usual accessories of revenge tragedies. Indeed,
+minor bits of stage business, as the wearing of black, the swearing by the
+cross of the sword, the capture of the accomplice by the watch, the reading
+of a book before a soliloquy, the falling on the ground as an expression of
+grief, though not the inventions of Kyd, were given their later vogue
+partly through the popularity of this play.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the types of character represented also appear again and again in
+later plays. Lorenzo is the villain par excellence; his accomplice is
+grotesque as well as evil; and Bel Imperia, both prettily sentimental and
+desperately revengeful, is of a type not uncommon in later tragedy. The
+character of Hieronimo, rudely as it is drawn, is not without subtlety of
+conception. This type of tragic hero, very different from Marlowe's,
+naturally good and noble, meditative by temperament, driven to melancholy
+and madness by the responsibility forced on him by crime, and at length
+accomplishing direful revenge through trickery and irony, is manifestly a
+precursor of Hamlet. Kyd's style justifies Nash's description, "whole
+handfulls of tragical speeches" and "a blank verse bodged up with ifs and
+ands." It displays the rhetorician rather than the poet and, like his
+conception and structure, gives evidence of an ingenious innovator adapting
+Seneca. It abounds in artificial balance, parallelism, antitheses,
+word-play, strained figures, and it harrows hell for its tragic vocabulary;
+but its love scenes have a verbal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> prettiness and its tirades and
+soliloquies helped to confer on subsequent tragic style sententiousness and
+elevation as well as rant. Far inferior to "Tamburlaine" as an artistic
+achievement, "The Spanish Tragedy" can no more than that play be pushed
+aside as a mere blood and thunder tirade. Beneath its absurdities there
+lies the conception of an inner struggle against overwhelming
+responsibility, and of the conflict of the individual against evil and
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>From the success of such a play Kyd may very naturally have turned to the
+similar story of revenge embodied in Belleforest's "Historie of Hamblet."
+From contemporary references we infer that the old "Hamlet" was a tragedy
+of blood, written under Senecan influence, and containing a ghost that
+cried "revenge." If, as seems undoubted, it was used by Shakespeare, traces
+of it must be found in the German version of Hamlet, in the corrupt first
+quarto, and even in Shakespeare's final version; but there is as yet no
+agreement among scholars as to what can be attributed to Shakespeare's
+borrowing rather than to his invention and transformation. It seems
+entirely probable, however, that the early play was a companion-piece to
+"The Spanish Tragedy," containing the motives of revenge, hesitation,
+insanity, intrigue, and slaughter, with the addition of the murderer's
+passion for the wife of the murdered. On the now established theory that
+the play was by Kyd, we may infer a protagonist like Hieronimo, much
+meditating and soliloquizing, a dramatic structure like that of "The
+Spanish Tragedy," a play<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> within a play, a mad Ophelia, and an intrigue
+culminating in slaughter. There are evidences in Marston and later
+contributors to the revenge type that the original "Hamlet," fully as much
+as "The Spanish Tragedy," served as their model; while doubtless like "The
+Spanish Tragedy," Kyd's "Hamlet" must have borne a much closer resemblance
+than even that play to Shakespeare's masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>"Soliman and Perseda," if not by Kyd, at least shows many evidences of his
+influence and is itself an interesting combination of the tragedy of
+revenge and romantic comedy. Love, Fortune, and Death make up a Kydian
+chorus and debate for supremacy until the close, when Death, like the
+Ghost, exults in an enumeration of the dead. The love story furnishes a
+clearly defined plot. The course of true love, despite the heroine's
+jealousy, an unintended murder by the hero, his banishment, the sack of
+Rhodes by the Turks, and the Sultan's passion for the heroine, ascends
+through the first four acts to the reunion and prospective happiness of the
+lovers. The fifth act proceeds to their separation and death through the
+Sultan's wickedness. Some of the incidents are those of romantic comedy,
+such as the use of the chain as a symbol of loyal love, its loss, the
+resulting jealousy, and the donning of boy's clothes by the heroine in
+order to receive death from the sword of the hated suitor. The fun of the
+piece is furnished by a <i>miles gloriosus</i>, Basilisco, and the extraordinary
+merit of his characterization furnishes the chief reason for doubting Kyd's
+authorship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> Over lyric love, fortune, and fun, however, Death reigns
+supreme. This is his favorite tragedy, for eighteen persons are actually
+killed on the stage, and at the close not one of the <i>dramatis personae</i> is
+left to bear off the bodies of the slain.</p>
+
+<p>The successes of Marlowe and Kyd gave tragic stories a new popularity with
+actors and audiences, and the stage was occupied with fiercely declaiming
+Asiatic conquerors, deep-dyed villains, and shrieking ghosts. Marlowe's
+themes, characters, and blank verse found many imitators, while Kyd's plays
+encouraged the presentation of stories of ghosts and revenge similar to
+those in Seneca and his English imitators. Direct imitations of Seneca in
+technic and language are also common. The abundance of bloodshed is
+invariable. A wide range of material was drawn upon, including Asiatic
+story, Italian <i>novelle</i>, Plutarch, Xenophon, and the Bible, although the
+English chronicles remained the favorite source, and the majority have at
+least the semblance of a historical setting. Many have a mixture of comic
+material, but they show in general a preponderance of tragic events and
+emotions far greater than in the early popular tragedies. There seems to
+have been a general effort in conformity with an address to the audience
+placed in the second act of "The Wars of Cyrus," acted by the Children of
+the Revels, which announces that they have "exiled from our tragicke stage"
+"needlesse antickes," and promises "mournfull plaints writ sad, and
+tragicke tearmes." The gentle reader will not linger long over any of these
+plays or discover in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> them signs of nascent genius, but they have a
+considerable interest in illustrating further the development of chronicle
+history toward tragedy, the influence of the Senecan tradition, and the
+dominating power of Marlowe's example. They also inform us of the
+conditions governing tragedy when Shakespeare began his career. In their
+many resemblances one to another we have evidence not so much of direct
+borrowings as of the close relations then existing among the few theatrical
+playwrights and companies. Any successful innovation was bound to have its
+immediate imitations, and on the other hand the keen rivalry for success
+was likely to result in innovation and novelty.</p>
+
+<p>Of these plays perhaps "Locrine"<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> has the most diverse indebtedness. It
+presents a story of a bloody family feud, but it is also of the chronicle
+history order, with a mixture of battles, patriotism, and farce. It
+exhibits borrowings from Spenser, imitations of "Tamburlaine," Ate as a
+chorus, dumb shows requiring a menagerie, two ghosts, one of whom takes
+part in the action, and a story of double revenge. The hero is occupied
+with revenge number one until the fourth act, when his infidelity makes him
+the object of a return revenge that culminates in his death. Among the
+plays mainly indebted to Marlowe are: Greene's "Alphonsus of Aragon," a
+comedy that is almost a travesty on the first part of "Tamburlaine";<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+"Selimus," ascribed to Greene, which also shows Senecan structure and
+philosophy; "The Wounds of Civil War, or the Tragedies of Marius and
+Sylla," the first extant play based on Plutarch; "The Wars of Cyrus," in
+part romantic comedy; and Peele's "Battle of Alcazar," which has a
+presenter, dumb shows, three ghosts, and a Moorish villain of the same
+class as Marlowe's Barabas and Aaron in "Titus Andronicus."</p>
+
+<p>The English chronicle plays also felt Marlowe's influence, most notably in
+Shakespeare's early historical plays, to be considered in a moment, but
+also in several plays almost contemporary with "Edward II" and the first
+versions of "Henry VI." "The True Tragedy of Richard III" (1594), by an
+unknown author or authors, seems to have preceded Shakespeare's play and to
+have followed the third part of "Henry VI." It presents a combination of
+chronicle play with Marlowesque protagonist and a Kydian apparatus of
+revenge. The ghost of Clarence appears at the beginning crying, "Vindicta,"
+and Truth and Poetry supply the necessary exposition. The revenge element
+becomes prominent toward the end of the play, when the ghosts of Richard's
+victims appear to him in a dream, not visible as in Shakespeare, and the
+remorseful villain declares that not merely his victims but all the forces
+of nature, sun, moon, and planets, cry revenge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The silly lambs sit bleating for revenge."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Richard is a man of powerful will carried away by ambition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> and evidently
+modeled on Tamburlaine; but unlike the Scythian and like Faustus, he is
+conscience-smitten, and his punishment comes in remorse as well as death.
+This conception, based on the chronicle, is treated with power, but in the
+main the play is a hodge-podge. More worthy examples of chronicle history
+are "Edward III," often ascribed to Marlowe and not unworthy of him, and
+the anonymous "Tragedy of Woodstock."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> The latter shows frequent
+resemblances to "Edward II" and apparently preceded Shakespeare's "Richard
+II," leaving off at the point where that play begins. The events of half a
+reign are focused about the central personalities of Richard and Woodstock,
+a weak king beset by flatterers and an honorable and patriotic leader of
+the nobles. The construction is skillful in its integration of comedy with
+the main action and its alternation of tragic and comic, action and
+counsel, force and counter-force; and the characterization is remarkably
+well individualized. Woodstock, especially, has human appeal and is notable
+as a tragic hero, or at least the central figure of a history, who meets
+misfortune and death through no fault of his own but solely through the
+wickedness of others.</p>
+
+<p>Holinshed's chronicle is also the source of "Arden of Feversham" (1592),
+sometimes ascribed on very insufficient grounds to Shakespeare, the
+earliest extant domestic tragedy. The play deals with a notorious murder of
+some forty years before, and follows the crude dramaturgy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> of the earliest
+chronicle plays. The stage presentation of notably brutal murders is common
+to-day and was to be expected on the Elizabethan stage, but the play seems
+also to represent reaction from the royalties, marvels, and unrealities of
+the contemporary tragedy. The epilogue, indeed, offers a defiance of
+romanticism and the since well-worn creed of the realist.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Gentlemen, we hope youle pardon this naked tragedy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein no filed points are foisted in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make it gratious to the eare or eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For simple truth is gratious enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And needes no other points of glosing stuffe."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this protestation, occasional monologues reveal the common
+stylistic decorations. The play is tediously detailed and artlessly
+realistic, though it has some vigorous blank verse and several powerful
+scenes; the most powerful, when Michael in the middle of the night is
+awaiting the murderers of his master, recalling a well-known passage in
+"The Spanish Tragedy." But the greatest merit of the play lies in the
+portrait of Alice Arden, absorbed in a despicable passion, but cunning and
+unabashed, incomparably the most lifelike evil woman up to this time
+depicted in the drama.</p>
+
+<p>Peele's "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedie of
+Absalon," acted about 1591, has, unlike "Arden," many "filed points to make
+it gratious to the eare and eye." It gains a unique interest as the only
+extant tragedy of this period based on the biblical narrative. The bible
+story is treated just as a historical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> chronicle would have been; and the
+play, divided by choruses into three "discourses," offers no advance in
+conception, structure, or characterization on the average tragedy of the
+period. Yet it is the masterpiece of one of the most active among
+Shakespeare's predecessors and illustrates his most distinctive
+contribution to the drama's development. As the author of "Alcazar,"
+"Edward I," and possibly "Locrine," as well as "David and Bethsabe,"
+Peele's contribution deserves some note. His dramatic career began at
+Oxford, where he made a version of one of the "Iphigenias" of Euripides,
+which was acted at Christ Church, and where he also aided in the production
+of Dr. Gager's Latin plays. In London he became the friend of Nash, Greene,
+and Marlowe, and the versatile adopter of the latest dramatic modes,
+whether in comedy, pastoral, history, or tragedy. In his best work,
+however, and especially in "David and Bethsabe," there are graces of style
+which justify Nash's eulogy of his friend as "primus verborum artifex." The
+great innovation of this early drama was, after all, in poetic style; and
+in furthering this Peele may claim a place only second to Marlowe. If
+Marlowe gave sweep and grandeur to blank verse, Peele brought a sweetness
+of cadence and, as Professor Ward observes, "a vivacity of fancy and a
+variety of imagery." As Marlowe turned everything into sonorous phrase, now
+bombastic, now superb, so Peele turned every thought to music and fancy,
+sometimes banal, sometimes lovely. "David and Bethsabe," with its oriental
+setting, though treated with careless dramatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> art, proved an inspiration
+to the stylist. The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary
+and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or
+situation. Absalon plays with conceits for twenty-five lines while hanging
+by his hair, and laments melodiously for fifteen lines more after being
+stabbed. But there is charm and gracefulness everywhere, in the choruses,
+in the defense of Hamon, and in the parables, and now and again the very
+allurement and luxury of words, as in the famous,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now comes my lover tripping like the roe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brings my longings tangled in her hair."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course
+be assigned wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its
+earliest and most influential purveyors.</p>
+
+<p>The dozen plays just noticed furnish departures from, as well as
+adaptations of, the Kydian and Marlowean types of tragedy, but they reveal
+no marked advance in conception or structure. In characterization, however,
+there is a development in various ways; thus, a hack play like "The True
+Tragedy" has considerable power in its conception of a conscience-smitten
+villain, in "Woodstock" there is clear individualization, and in Alice
+Arden and the Countess of "Edward III" female character becomes lifelike
+and impressive. Still more salient is the attention paid to style. The
+Elizabethan theatregoer was used to the spoken and not to the written word,
+and expected at the theatre to be delighted by verbal display.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> Dramatic
+style then had functions which have since been relegated to other arts. It
+was to be declamative, taking the place of oratory; descriptive, supplying
+in part the place of scenery; and operatic in its word-play and decorative
+phrasing, and in its lyric interludes and laments. Moreover, medieval
+tradition and Senecan models alike enforced the necessity in tragedy of a
+heightened style; and many dramatists doubtless agreed with Gosson in
+placing first among dramatic requirements "sweetness of words, fitness of
+epithets with metaphors, allegories." Still further, along with the
+excesses resultant from this delight in words, there was manifest a growing
+mastery of language to represent truthfully situation and character.
+"Arden" gave crude expression to this reaction toward realism in style;
+"Woodstock" much more effectively; and colloquial directness was mingled
+with the artificialities of "The Spanish Tragedy" and the beauties of
+"Edward II." Henceforth the Elizabethan drama exhibits a conflict between
+dramatic suitability of language and its declamatory, operatic, or
+aphoristic decorativeness, promoting on the one hand a realistic
+presentation of life, and on the other fantastic absurdity and imaginative
+idealism.</p>
+
+<p>The preceding discussion of Marlowe and his contemporaries must have made
+it apparent that Shakespeare cannot be treated as outside of the circle,
+although his plays have for convenience been reserved until now. The young
+actor and poet learned to meet successfully the demands of the stage
+through an apprenticeship of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> hack-work, collaboration, and revision, and
+progressed in his art by means of adaptation and imitation. He wrote in
+association and rivalry with his fellow playwrights, responding like them
+to theatrical fashions, and feeling like them the spur of current artistic
+impulses. The dramatic activity that we have been discussing bears at every
+point upon his early work. He shared both the limitations and the
+incentives, bowed to the commanding influences, and rose to the
+opportunities for initiative which characterize this period. His dramatic
+career probably began two or three years later than Marlowe's, and of the
+plays now to be considered several were probably not written until the
+years following Marlowe's death. "Titus Andronicus" and the three parts of
+"Henry VI" belong to the early nineties and should be classed with the
+tragedies of blood and the chronicle histories of those years. "King John,"
+"Richard III," and "Richard II" came somewhat later and form a part of the
+more advanced development of chronicle history variously represented by
+"Edward III," "Woodstock," and Marlowe's "Edward II." "Romeo and Juliet,"
+in its final form perhaps still later, is a great and original masterpiece,
+but one still very characteristic of the dramatic period of which it is the
+crown and flower.</p>
+
+<p>How much of "Titus Andronicus" is to be regarded as Shakespeare's remains a
+debated question, a recent and plausible theory being that it was his
+revision and combination of two old plays.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The play, which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> coupled
+by Jonson with "The Spanish Tragedy" as popular twenty years after its
+first appearance, is mainly an imitation of Kyd, though the phrasing and
+rhythm frequently show an advance over that author's work. In situations
+and various specific passages the imitation is pronounced and the motives
+of the Kydian type are in the main repeated. The revenge of a father for
+his son is opposed by villanous intrigue, involves a play within the play,
+and leads the hero into madness. Kyd's finer conception of a tragic hero
+hesitating in the face of fearful responsibility is, however, lacking; the
+combination of the two revenge stories&mdash;Tamora for her child murdered by
+Titus, and Titus in return for the murder of his children&mdash;resembles
+"Locrine"; and the black Aaron is, like the negro-Moor in "Alcazar," one of
+the many Marlowesque villains. The play surpasses current revenge plays
+chiefly in its unapproached orgy of mutilation, murder, and horror.</p>
+
+<p>The three parts of "Henry VI"<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> are certainly only in part Shakespeare's
+and represent the complex form of collaboration not infrequently found in
+the drama. It is likely that Marlowe and Greene were concerned in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+plays, and that Shakespeare's share was mainly in revision. The three plays
+were at all events very popular and occupy an important place among the
+early chronicle histories. The contention between the houses of York and
+Lancaster becomes an epic theme, uniting the three parts, and affords
+manifold opportunity for battles, defiances, coronations, usurpations, and
+patriotism. The structure as well as the material is of the chronicle,
+without any approach to tragic unity or coherence; but the plays do in some
+ways invade the field of tragedy. Comedy is practically excluded except in
+the Cade scenes; and the last two parts, as their titles indicate, present
+a series of "falls of princes"&mdash;"the death of the good Duke Humphrey; And
+the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the tragicall end of
+the proud cardinall of Winchester" and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke
+of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt." With themes of
+bloodshed and battle, material at least full of tragical possibilities, and
+under the schooling of Marlowe, Shakespeare served his apprenticeship for
+historical tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In "King John" Shakespeare still followed chronicle history methods without
+any clear advance toward tragedy. He was engaged in rewriting the old
+"Troublesome Reign," and he followed its plot with great closeness, scene
+after scene with entrances and exits being the same in both plays. But here
+his indebtedness practically stops. He seems to have made out a careful
+scenario, following the old play with only such alterations and omissions
+as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> were necessary for the condensation of its two parts into a single
+play, and then to have thrown aside the old text and almost forgotten it.
+His improvements consequently coincide with the developments which we have
+found common in the tragedies of the period in that they concern
+characterization and style. Faulconbridge and Constance become incomparably
+more vital and impressive than in the old play and win our interest away
+from the battles and arguments of the rapid scenes. The style, almost never
+reminiscent of the early play, is mainly rhetorical, though always vigorous
+and usually surpassing the models which it frequently recalls. It often
+displays the conflict between the ornamental and naturalistic tendencies;
+as, for example, when Arthur, facing the murderer, quibbles for ten lines
+over the red-hot iron which is to put out his eyes, and then, as the
+attendants enter, forgets his rhetoric in words whose sincerity and
+simplicity have touched every reader.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard III" and "Richard II," though possibly earlier than "King John,"
+show the imitator and adapter rather than the reviser, and represent
+independent efforts to give tragic unity to the material of the English
+chronicles. While all the tragedies and histories so far considered have
+long since proved unfitted for the stage, "Richard III" has maintained its
+first popularity and continued to attract the greatest actors and to win
+the liking of the patrons of the theatre of each generation. Yet, though it
+has for three centuries exercised a profound impression on the popular
+imagination, it shows in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> opinion of all critics a great indebtedness
+to Marlowe, and is so evidently imitative of current models that critics
+writing from such different points of view as Mr. Fleay and James Russell
+Lowell have been led to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. External and
+internal evidence both contradict such doubts emphatically, but the close
+relationship of the play to "Henry VI" makes it improbable that Shakespeare
+turned to the theme solely of his own initiative. "Richard III" is the
+fourth play of a tetralogy manifestly planned before the earlier members
+were completed. Margaret appears in all four plays; the character of
+Shakespeare's Richard is distinctly outlined in Part III; and it was
+evidently meant to end the contention of York and Lancaster with the
+triumph of the Tudor dynasty, and the long series of falls of princes with
+the tragedy of the villanous Gloster. The chronicle of Richard's reign had
+indeed been given a tragic unity in the history by Sir Thomas More and in a
+long saga of chronicle and literature which had developed still further the
+conception of this masterful and dreadful villain. The suitability of this
+material to current forms of tragedy was obvious. Dr. Legge had found in
+this saga the material for a Senecan play; the unknown author of "The True
+Tragedy" had discovered there a ready-made tragedy of blood and revenge;
+and there are indications of non-extant plays on the same theme. For either
+Marlowe or for Shakespeare working with him on the history of the struggle
+between York and Lancaster, the opportunity for a tragedy with a central
+hero of the type<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> of Tamburlaine, Faustus, or Barabas must have been
+apparent.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a
+detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy"
+supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle
+is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and
+made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic
+presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable
+addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince
+Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to
+the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in
+the play.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe,
+making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and
+the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only
+with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the
+tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore
+Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at
+least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing
+in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and
+gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a
+chorus,&mdash;curses, laments, and exultations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> Moreover, with a tact unique at
+that time and not displayed by him in "Titus Andronicus," he perceived that
+the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather
+than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all
+the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way
+for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts
+into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven
+victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.</p>
+
+<p>An abundance of theatrical effects, already familiar on the stage, is
+indeed supplied. The murder of Clarence, with its prolonged dialogue
+between the murderers, the victims led away to execution, the orations
+before the battle, the funeral cort&egrave;ge, the battle scenes, the laments and
+curses, now multiplied and expanded beyond the verge of absurdity, all
+reflect current stage practices. The structure, still over-dependent on the
+chronicle sources, indulges after the current fashion in the retention and
+prolongation of undramatic material: such as the feeble forebodings of the
+citizens (ii, 3), the prolongation of Hastings's warning of death (iii, 2),
+and the useless soliloquy of the scrivener (iii, 6). Yet, in comparison
+with contemporary plays, there is great superiority both in dramatic
+construction and theatrical effectiveness. The main action progresses with
+rapidity and coherence to the moment of Richard's reversal of fortune (iv,
+4), thirteen years being condensed into a few days; and the interest from
+this climax to the catastrophe is maintained by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> startling melodramatic
+effects. But the great dramatic merit of the play lies in the use of
+contrast, surprise, and particularly of dramatic irony in the separate
+scenes and in their masterly integration to display the character of
+Richard himself.</p>
+
+<p>Following closely the character outlined in the chronicle, borrowing
+conception and treatment from Marlowe's protagonists, and mindful of the
+host of stage villains that had proved so popular in tragedy, Shakespeare
+constructed a cacodemon who remains not only a great stage figure but also
+alive and human in our imaginations. That he is the source of all evil in
+the play; that he is absurdly and impossibly diabolic; that he informs the
+audience of all his nefarious schemes; that he has a Machiavellian skill in
+intrigue; that he is in intellect and will easily the superior of all whom
+he encounters; that he is possessed by an egoism superhuman in its
+audacity; that he is an accomplished and ironical hypocrite; that he is
+conscienceless except when half asleep and dreaming; that from the
+beginning to the end he is a masterful and relentless pursuer of his
+ambition, uninfluenced by persons or events, alike subjects of his
+contempt,&mdash;all this indicates a skillful adaptation and continuation of
+sources and models. But Richard is more. He is dramatically immensely
+effective; he is always at hand at the right moment; he is never
+nonplussed; a murder is hardly over when he appears smiling and ironically
+repentant; he can ask for strawberries with murder in his heart, or play
+with the children or woo the woman whom he has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> already marked for doom.
+That these theatrical fascinations were the results of a consistent
+conception based on a profound ethical and psychological study can hardly
+be maintained. It may indeed be doubted whether in this respect there is
+much advance over Marlowe's villains, or even those of his contemporaries,
+to say nothing of an approach to Macbeth and Iago. Richard is sometimes a
+human being, sometimes a monster, and always a stage villain. But the very
+fact that critics have delighted to analyze and moralize over his traits is
+proof that Shakespeare, in spite of the monstrosities of his conception,
+gave to its dramatic presentation not only a stage effectiveness but also
+plausibility.</p>
+
+<p>This plausibility must be accredited largely to the vigorous colloquialism
+of his speeches. The play manifests the usual conflict of artificial and
+natural styles; the elaborate stichomythia and the wailing and cursing
+queens furnish examples of the common affectations of tragic style; and the
+rhetorical display appears not infrequently in Richard's speeches. But in
+the main he speaks with a naturalness and directness far greater than was
+usual in tragic heroes, and the natural-speaking Richard often makes
+plausible and convincing the theatrical and rhetorical villain. Thus, after
+the opening soliloquy he drops his rhetoric for the conversational tone of
+his conference with Clarence; and thus, the procession of ghosts remains
+still impressive on our stage because it is followed by a soliloquy that
+surpasses all except a few of Marlowe's in power and naturalness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+Throughout the play, while others declaim, wail, and curse, the most
+impossible figure of them all becomes the only convincing human being, very
+largely because of the realism of his speech.</p>
+
+<p>In "Richard II," written at about the time of "Richard III," Shakespeare
+was also writing under the influence of Marlowe, but now in direct
+imitation and rivalry of "Edward II." The first part of the reign of
+Richard II had already received treatment in "Jack Straw" and "Woodstock,"
+and the theme of a weak king forced to abdicate had been presented in
+"Henry VI" as well as "Edward II." Shakespeare followed, as always
+hitherto, his source, Holinshed, very closely, and the historical material
+determined the plot and characterization, but Marlowe's example led him to
+an interpretation of the fifteen years' history as the tragedy of the
+reversal of fortune of a king whose temperament made him contemptible in
+prosperity but pitiable in adversity. Along with the story of the rise and
+progress of the conflict between Richard and the barons under Bolingbroke,
+there runs the story of "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty," which
+give a new pathos to that favorite theme of medieval tragedy and
+Elizabethan history, the vanquishment of a prince by scornful Fortune. The
+struggle within Richard's own heart, even more than in the case of Edward
+II, absorbs the interest and points the moral, the hollowness and
+uncertainty of earthly grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>Structurally there is no advance on "Edward II" in exposition, integration
+of action, or catastrophe. Adherence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> to the chronicle results in a long
+drawn out and iterative first act, a virtual repetition of Richard's
+struggle over the relinquishment of the crown in iii, 3, and iv, 1, and a
+slight and melodramatic treatment of the catastrophe. On the other hand,
+there are some changes from Marlowe's method of interest in connection with
+later tragedy. Elegiac scenes with their lamenting women, also conspicuous
+in "Richard III," are an addition to the historical source and an important
+factor in the structure; their distribution through the play indicating
+that they were employed to supply a relief from the scenes of much action
+and high tension, more suitable to tragedy than the relief of comic scenes,
+and also to take, as in "Richard III," the place of a chorus through their
+lyrical reinforcement of the tragic emotions excited by the action. Again,
+as the theme is Richard's reversal of fortune rather than his death, so the
+emotional crisis receives a structural prominence not unlike that given to
+Hamlet's, and the catastrophe of death is relegated to a postscript. The
+passage from crisis to catastrophe is managed, as in "Hamlet," "Lear," and
+"Macbeth," by the introduction of incidents extraneous to the main action,
+here the episode of Aumerle's conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p>The main departures from Marlowe, however, are to be found in those
+elements of dramatic composition to which in this period the genius of
+Shakespeare as well as the talent of his contemporaries most readily
+responded, the characterization and the style. Not only the king himself
+but many other persons in the play, and notably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> Bolingbroke, are presented
+with consistency and subtlety. The historical narrative is transformed into
+a gallery of full-length historical portraits that lead us to forget
+history and drama in our study of their personalities. The euphuistic and
+sentimental Richard gives a fair field for the stylist, but his example is
+infectious, and the Queen, Gaunt, York, Bolingbroke, the gardener, and in
+fact all the persons of the drama, employ word-play, periphrasis, and the
+various flourishes of Elizabethan rhetorical style. If one accepts the
+theory that tragedy is a game for rhetorical display, and further accepts
+the conventionalities of Elizabethan style, there must be unmeasured
+admiration for the extraordinary verbal skill displayed. Shakespeare
+employs the current artificialities of diction with abounding facility and
+zest, and often suits them skillfully to the delineation of character;
+while his constant attention to expression results in a sustained
+eloquence, which, if it blurs the outlines of reality, substitutes a haze
+of fancy, and sometimes the glory of magnificent beauty. The miserable
+years of Richard's downfall are forever associated in our minds with the
+picturesqueness of the two entries into London and with the splendor of the
+apostrophe to England and the recital of Norfolk's death.</p>
+
+<p>In the three chronicle histories just considered, although the historical
+material largely determines structure, tragic conception, and
+characterization, and although all these are obviously under Marlowe's
+influence, yet Shakespeare had reached a stage far more advanced than that
+of mere imitator or adapter. In "Richard III" he had added his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> own impress
+to the Marlowean type of tragedy, and in "Richard II" he had introduced
+innovations foreshadowing his later conceptions. As a playwright he had
+equaled any of his contemporaries in immediate popularity and outdone them
+in permanent theatrical effectiveness. He had acquired a complete mastery
+over the conditions and conventions of the stage, and had frequently, if
+not always, outdone the best of his rivals in dramatic ingenuity and power.
+Like his contemporaries, however, he was hampered by theatrical conditions
+and intractable historical material; and his chief interest was in the
+opportunities furnished by the chronicles for the delineation of character
+and the exercise of his gift of tongues. In range and verisimilitude his
+characters already far surpassed Marlowe's; and as a poet, whether in
+lyric, descriptive, or purely dramatic passages, whether in sustained
+treatment of situation or in splendid purple patches, he had shown himself
+the peer of his master.</p>
+
+<p>In "Romeo and Juliet" the same dramatic and poetic qualities are exhibited
+as in the historical plays, but the happy choice of the already well-known
+love story led Shakespeare outside of the direct range of Marlowe's
+example, freed him from the limits of the historical material, and gave his
+genius full scope. The importance of love as a motive in the Italian drama
+of the Renaissance is one of the traits that distinguish it from its
+classical models, and the influence of Italian drama and fiction was
+important in turning Elizabethan dramatists to stories of romantic passion.
+These had already been widely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> adopted in comedy and had formed the
+principle plots of "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda," as
+well as minor parts in other tragedies of the period. The story of Romeo
+and Juliet, which Brooke speaks of having seen "lately (1562) set forth on
+the stage with more commendation than I can look for," may have been made
+into an English play before Shakespeare was born.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> It had at least been
+dramatized in France and Italy, where Luigi Groto's "Adriana" (1578)
+surpassed all contemporary plays in the number of its editions.</p>
+
+<p>Brooke's poem, "Romeus and Juliet" (1562), was the main source of the play
+and provided a story eminently adapted to dramatic representation. The
+plot, with its conflict between love and hate, the brief triumph of love,
+the interference of feud and family authority, the separation and death of
+the lovers, has been repeated in its essentials in thousands of stories,
+and has played an enormous part in the imaginations of four centuries; but
+it has hardly found a more effective scenario than that which lay imbedded
+in Brooke's long-spun narrative. A lesser genius than Shakespeare might
+have discovered it, but his powers of invention and construction are amply
+apparent, especially up to the turning-point of the play. The brawl and the
+love-sick Romeo of the first scene, dramatically expository and symbolic of
+the whole action, the meeting of the lovers at the dance, the balcony
+scene, the embassy and return of the nurse, the fatal fight with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> Tybalt,
+are all executed with a wealth of incidental invention, a sureness of
+technic, and a rapidity and directness of dramatic movement that relied but
+little on Brooke's narrative or contemporary example. The second half of
+the play, though skillfully condensed, follows the source more closely and,
+perhaps for this reason, impresses the modern reader less vividly.
+Shakespeare's dramatic skill is manifest in his departure from the current
+methods of the tragedy of blood as well as in his treatment of the
+narrative. What imitators of Seneca and of Kyd did with similar love
+stories we have seen in "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda";
+and "Romeo and Juliet" had an equal chance for ghosts, villany, and
+physical horrors. Some traces of the prevailing fashion do survive, as in
+the addition to Brooke of the murder of Paris and in the attention paid to
+the horrors of the tomb. But many of the best scenes are of the sort that
+occur in romantic comedy,&mdash;the repartee of gallants, the preparations for a
+feast, the dance, the street affray, the meetings and partings of the
+lovers,&mdash;and there is no villain, no figure of Nemesis, no ghost, no
+warring armies, and no pomp of courts. No tragedy had yet appeared with
+less theatrical sensationalism, and none which maintained the interest of
+the spectators upon the story with comparable dramatic intensity.</p>
+
+<p>The extraordinary advance over the historical plays in dramatic technic is,
+however, overshadowed in our appreciation of the play by the irresistible
+appeal made by the persons of the story. They are more closely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> realized
+for us than the friends and foes of our daily life, yet they dwell forever
+in the enchantment of idealized romance. To analyze Shakespeare's power to
+portray and at the same time to exalt human nature would be to unlock the
+very key to Shakespeare's heart; we may well be content to wonder and
+exclaim. Yet, we may note that, while characterization, which had been
+increasing in range and individualization in the historical plays, is here
+triumphant, the means and methods are not unlike those already noticed. The
+brilliant translation of prose narrative into monologue and dialogue gives
+us the nurse; the vivacious amplification of a type familiar in comedy&mdash;the
+garrulous old man&mdash;results in Capulet; and even the greatest creations
+naturally retain traces of contemporary influences. Mercutio is the prince
+of a throng of quick-witted quibblers, and Juliet is sometimes declamatory,
+sometimes fantastic, like Brooke's heroine. But they are Shakespeare's own,
+and the first representatives of two ways in which his imagination
+characteristically and supremely manifested itself in later plays. Mercutio
+is the first of those imaginative achievements that concentrate into a few
+lines of blank verse the complete individualization of a human being;
+Juliet is perhaps the first of the amazing series of idealized women. If
+one considers how often the young girl in love has been the theme of
+genius, and recalls Fielding, Scott, Browning, and Meredith, one may secure
+some measure of Shakespeare's achievement. When one seeks comparison with
+the na&iuml;ve and likable young animal of Brooke's doggerel, or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> women of
+preceding drama, even the charming heroines of Greene's comedies, the art
+that produced Juliet must seem miraculous. The idealization of woman was,
+to be sure, common in Renaissance art; and the union in her of wit and
+beauty, power and charm, passion and purity, innocence and wisdom, was not
+solely Shakespeare's conception; but the power to conceive such a being
+with truth and to realize her dramatically, alive, human, and consistent,
+was his alone.</p>
+
+<p>The conception and expression of character cannot be separated; there lies
+in the qualities of the poetic style some explanation of the impression we
+receive of idealized humanity. While colloquial directness is not wanting
+in the play, the prevailing style has the artificialities, the lyricism,
+and the exuberance we have found prevailing elsewhere. It exhibits about
+all the faults and affectations of the dramatic poetry of the time, but
+these are the defects of an art that finds poetry in everything and ever
+lingers to enjoy the beauty of words, whether over Queen Mab, or the
+apothecary's shop, or Friar Laurence's herbs. It stops to display its
+verbal ingenuity in a pun; it delights in lyric outbursts, sestette or
+sonnet, morning-song or epithalamium; it riots in the refrains on
+"banished," becomes grotesque in the wailing quartette, and finds its
+supreme opportunity in the fancy and music and passion of the lovers
+underneath the summer moon. It is this exuberance, this spontaneity, this
+carelessness of incongruity, this delight in ornamentation, this abandon to
+music and fancy that transfigures the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> Verona of brawls, dinners, nurses,
+and deaths, and, forever ascendant over our fancies, like Romeo's blessed
+moon, "tips everything with silver."</p>
+
+<p>It is in part this poetic style which distinguishes the play from the later
+tragedies, but the difference is everywhere manifest to our impressions.
+The evil and gloom and pessimism that help to make up the tragic fact in
+"Lear" and "Macbeth" are here scarcely felt. To joy comes sorrow, because
+of evil and through accident,&mdash;this is the tragic theme. In the course of
+its presentation one may find it suggestive of the passing of youth to age
+or of passionate love to oblivion, but surely no one comes from the poem
+with a dominant impression of the wickedness of family feuds, or of the
+inevitable brevity of romantic passion, or of the dangers of youthful
+precipitousness,&mdash;rather the mind glows with the beauty and joy revealed in
+life.</p>
+
+<p>In this impression the play has a kinship with the tragedies, even the poor
+and the maimed, that had preceded it. Tragedies so far have been strangely
+free from Christian teaching or sentiment. Compared with the medieval
+drama, early Elizabethan tragedy seems not only secular but pagan. This is
+partly because it followed its sources and treated of Romans, Moors,
+Scythians, and heroes of myths and legends; partly because it derived stoic
+and fatalistic sentiments from Seneca and other classical writers; but it
+also represents an entire departure from the medieval point of view, a
+departure necessarily emphasized in tragedy. In the medieval drama, death<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+had been a translation to final reward or punishment,&mdash;the portals of
+heaven and hell were open on the stage. In the Renaissance conception of
+tragedy death was the point and pith of tragic fact. Faith, forgiveness,
+reliance on Providence, assurance of immortality are rarely alluded to.
+Chance, mysterious fate, the emissaries of the devil, the powers of evil in
+the mind of man are the forces to which tragedy must attend; and they lead
+to a death terrible and pitiful, to be met bravely and defiantly, it may
+be, but not peacefully and hopefully. And this emphasis of the gloom of
+death required an equal emphasis on the glory and beauty of life. Tragedy
+was the passing into darkness from under this majestic roof fretted with
+golden fire, the loss of noble reason and infinite faculty; and it must
+needs proclaim the beauty of the world as well as the quintessence of dust.</p>
+
+<p>And so, although writers of tragedy dwelt on the horrors of death and its
+accompaniments of blood and atrocity, and though they symbolized in their
+villains their sense of the reign of evil, yet, in Marlowe's treatment of
+an Asiatic conqueror or the ignoble fascination of Edward II, or in Peele's
+fancy that made musical the amours of David; everywhere indeed, in the
+Pantheas and Persedas, the Marii and Selimi, they were presenting human
+life as removed from the commonplace, the sordid, the usual, and as the
+abode of heroisms, splendors, and aspirations. Even evil deeds and
+villains, even death itself sometimes partook of this glorification; and
+tragic theory, moral purpose, and theological dogma were alike<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> forgotten
+in the fascination of human character, passion, and achievement. This
+idealization of life was, as we noted at the beginning of the chapter,
+characteristic of the national temper and of the artistic impulses in every
+field of literature during its brief breathing spell between the Protestant
+and Puritan revolutions. Its power is curiously illustrated in the effect
+of the story of Romeo and Juliet upon Brooke in the course of his by no
+means despicable attempt to turn it into a tragic poem. In his Address to
+the Reader, he dilates with medieval propriety on the moral of the poem "to
+raise in the reader an hatefull lothyng of so filthy beastlynes." "And to
+this ende (good Reader) is this tragicall matter written to describe unto
+thee a coople of unfortunate lovers thralling themselves to unhonest
+desire, neglecting the authorite and advice of parents and frendes,
+conferring their principall counsels with dronken gossyppes, and
+superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instrumentes of
+unchastitie)"&mdash;and so on through all their evil doings until "finallye, by
+all meanes of unhonest lyfe hastyng to most unhappye death." So wrote the
+conscious Puritan; but the story charmed the artist. It enticed his meagre
+art to a share in the joys of the lovers, it led him to a delight in
+unhonest life, it dissolved his sermon into romance and poetry, and left
+him enamored even of his "superstitious frier."</p>
+
+<p>And so the tragedy of the lovers became for Shakespeare as for Brooke and
+as other stories had become for Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, the spur and
+the means to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> an idealization of life. It is not in the reconciliation of
+the families, still less in the sense of a deserved punishment, that we
+find an antidote for death and evil; but in the assurance that human
+passion may be so lovely, human nature so full of strength and beauty. "The
+sun for sorrow will not show his head," says Prince Escalus at the end, but
+we believe with Romeo that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">"Jocund day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Ward, Fleay, and Schelling are the best general guides for this period. The
+books already mentioned by Collier, Symonds, Jusserand, Cunliffe, Fischer,
+and Churchill bear directly on the matter of this chapter. The sources for
+documents and records are the same as for chapter iii, with the important
+addition of <i>Henslowe's Diary</i>, vol. i, 1904, ed. by W. W. Greg. The
+sources for lists of plays and bibliography are the same as in chapter
+ii,&mdash;Greg, Fleay, Hazlitt, Schelling, and Bates. There is no satisfactory
+and comprehensive treatment of Marlowe's work; J. H. Ingram's <i>Christopher
+Marlowe and his Associates</i> (1904) supplies a full bibliography. Marlowe
+has been well edited by Dyce and by A. H. Bullen. Dyce's editions of Greene
+and Peele have long been standard. Bullen has also a good edition of Peele.
+The recent Clarendon Press editions of Greene, Lyly, Kyd supply careful
+texts and full introductions. My article, <i>The Relations of "Hamlet" to
+Contemporary Revenge Play</i>s (Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. 1902), has been drawn
+upon for the discussion of Kyd; it furnishes references to the various
+critical discussions of Kyd's work. Texts of the plays by minor writers are
+to be found in Dodsley; W. C. Hazlitt's <i>Shakespeare's Library</i> (6 vols.,
+1875), containing old plays and other sources for Shakespeare's plays;
+Delius, <i>Pseudo-Shakspere'sche Dramen</i> (1874); the Tauchnitz edition of
+<i>Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare</i>; and in the editions of several of the
+pseudo-Shakespearean plays by K. Warncke and L. Proescholdt, Halle. This
+last edition of <i>Arden of Feversham</i> contains a valuable introduction. For
+direction to the bibliography of Shakespeare, see chapter v. On the Henry
+VI plays,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> Miss Jane Lee's paper, <i>New Shaks. Soc. Transactions</i>, 1875-76,
+still offers the most exhaustive treatment of the question of authorship.
+On <i>Titus Andronicus</i>, Mr. Harold DeW. Fuller's article, <i>Mod. Lang. Publ.</i>
+(1901), and Mr. J. M. Robertson's <i>Did Shakespeare write Titus Andronicus?</i>
+(1905) are among the latest discussions. My review of Mr. Robertson's book,
+<i>Journal of Eng. and Germ. Philology</i> (1907), treats in detail some of the
+discussion of this chapter. The latest studies of the Elizabethan theatre
+are C. Brodmeier's <i>Die Shakespeare-B&uuml;hne</i> (Weimar, 1904), which reduces
+the "alternation" theory to an absurdity, and G. F. Reynold's <i>Some
+Principles of Elizabethan Staging</i> (Chicago, 1905), which disposes of
+Brodmeier's theories, but goes a little too far in the other direction.
+See, also, Baker's <i>Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist</i> for a careful and
+detailed account of the London theatres. Miss V. C. Gildersleeve's
+<i>Governmental Regulation of the Shakespearean Drama</i> (Columbia Univ.
+Studies in English, in press) is an exhaustive treatment of its subject and
+incidentally throws light on theatrical matters. Volume iv of Courthope's
+<i>History of English Poetry</i> is on the "Development and Decline of the
+Poetic Drama," from Marlowe to 1642. Schelling's <i>The English Chronicle
+Play</i> (1902) is the best discussion of this species. W. Bang's series,
+<i>Materialien zur Kunde des &auml;lteren englischen Dramas</i>, includes reprints
+and studies of interest in connection with this and the three following
+chapters.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> It consists of two parts published 1591, and acted, as the
+prologue indicates, shortly after <i>Tamburlaine</i>, perhaps in 1588. Its
+scenes cover about the same ground as Shakespeare's play, with the addition
+of a ribald account of the sack of a monastery, an explanation of the
+poisoning of John in his treatment of the clergy, and a scene of some power
+in which Philip obtains from his mother, Lady Fauconbridge, a confession
+that his father was Richard.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Tamburlaine</i> in two parts, certainly acted as early as 1588,
+gained an immediate and long-continued popularity, and was followed by a
+number of plays, all tragedies or histories. Without reckoning the numerous
+plays that have been assigned to Marlowe on no sufficient grounds, he
+collaborated on the <i>Tragedy of Dido</i> (1594), perhaps an early work, and on
+the three parts of <i>Henry VI</i>; and was the author of <i>The Tragicall History
+of Dr. Faustus</i>, printed 1604, acted 1588 (?); <i>The Jew of Malta</i>, acted
+about 1589, and long the most popular of Henslow's repertoire: <i>The
+Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II</i>, printed 1594, acted
+about 1591; and <i>The Massacre of Paris</i>, of an unknown date of acting.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The only other play certainly by Kyd is a translation of
+Garnier's <i>Cornelia</i>, 1595, which was doubtless never acted. His authorship
+of the <i>First Part of Jeronimo</i>, 1605, is denied by recent critics, and at
+most the text represents a very corrupt abridgment of his work. <i>Soliman
+and Perseda</i>, S. R. 1592, is attributed to him solely on internal evidence,
+and may have been by an imitator. The non-extant <i>Hamlet</i>, alluded to by
+Nash in 1589, and not until twelve years later used by Shakespeare as the
+basis of his play, is now generally assigned to Kyd.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Printed 1594, "as newly set forth, overseen, and corrected by
+W. S.," sometimes assigned to Peele, and in an earlier form perhaps acted
+about 1590.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Preserved in MS. and first printed in the <i>Shakespeare
+Jahrbuch</i> in 1899.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Harold DeW. Fuller, <i>Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn.</i> 1901.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> The collaborators on Part I (1623) are unknown, and
+Shakespeare's contribution to the present form seems likely to have been
+written later than the bulk of the play, a not very impressive example of
+chronicle history. Parts II and III (1623) exist also in the abridged and
+altered forms of the two quartos of 1594, <i>The First Part of The
+Contention</i> and <i>The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York</i>. The problems of
+the relations of these two quarto plays to the folio texts are among the
+most puzzling encountered by Shakespearean scholars.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Somewhat similar situations between Lycus and Meg&aelig;ra in
+<i>Hercules Furens</i>, Locrine and Estrile in <i>Locrine</i>, and Tamburlaine and
+Zenocrate in <i>Tamburlaine</i> must have been known to Shakespeare.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> See H. DeW. Fuller, "Romeo and Julietta," <i>Modern Philology</i>,
+1906. It seems clear, however, that Shakespeare drew directly from Brooke.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES</h3>
+
+
+<p>After "Richard II" and "King John," Shakespeare turned aside from tragedy,
+and within the next half-dozen years produced his masterpieces of romantic
+comedy and non-tragical history. With the exception of "Titus Andronicus"
+and "Romeo and Juliet," the first half of his dramatic career was devoted
+entirely to comedy and history. With "Julius C&aelig;sar," about 1600, began the
+period of tragedies and bitter comedies, which lasted until about 1608,
+when he turned again to romantic comedy and tragicomedy. In these main
+divisions and turning-points of his dramatic activity there is a
+correspondence with the development of the contemporary drama which we are
+able to mark with an approach to definiteness. Both romantic comedy and
+chronicle history had their hey-day during the dozen years that he was
+devoting to those species. Then at the close of the century various
+influences produced an abandonment of those forms, a revival of tragedy,
+and an extensive production of satirical and domestic comedy. About 1608,
+again, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher led a return to romance. The
+Shakespearean period of tragedy may thus be separated from the Marlowean by
+an interval, during which few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> tragedies of importance appeared; and its
+beginning was coincident with new and important developments in the drama.</p>
+
+<p>The leading force in initiating these changes was apparently Ben Jonson,
+whose prologue to "Every Man in His Humour" (acted 1598) avowed the
+principles which that play exemplified, and proclaimed the establishment of
+a comedy of humors. This change was heralded as the result of a more
+critical and conscious art, of a desire to free the drama from the
+absurdities and lawlessness of the past, and to supply it with literary
+standards and artistic aims. His practice, which during the next ten years
+was mostly in accord with his preaching, was followed or paralleled in many
+respects by most of the other dramatists. At the date of "Every Man in His
+Humour" Shakespeare was proclaiming in the choruses of "Henry V" his sense
+of the incongruities of the chronicle history play and bidding farewell to
+a form of drama that he had made pre&euml;minently his own; and Chapman and
+Middleton were forsaking romantic comedy for realistic comedies of London
+life. Perhaps a little earlier, the satires of Donne, Hall, and Marston had
+created considerable stir and doubtless had a share in turning literary
+endeavor from sentiment to satire. This satire and exposure of the follies
+and evils of society also received encouragement from the moral and social
+change that was working in England and especially in London. The healthy
+and aspiring national life that had found expression in the sound morality
+and the imaginative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> idealism of the earlier drama was now giving place to
+the moral corruption, social laxity, and lack of national pride that render
+the reign of James I notorious. At all events, whatever the causes, the
+comedy of the next seven or eight years was prevailingly realistic,
+domestic, or satirical.</p>
+
+<p>In tragedy the changes were similar, though less distinct. The protest
+against the lawlessness of the early drama was manifested in the
+infrequency of chronicle plays and the appearance of tragedies presenting
+foreign, and especially Roman, history with due regard for both historical
+truth and tragic structure. Realism appeared just at the beginning of the
+century in a number of domestic tragedies that violated the established
+conventions by dealing with actual events, contemporary society, and humble
+persons. Satire of contemporary manners became frequent in tragedy, and
+satirical comedies often dealt with tragic events and exercised an
+influence on pure tragedy similar to that exercised by romantic comedy in
+the earlier period. Up to this time popular tragedy had hardly received
+critical consideration even from the dramatists themselves. Marlowe, Kyd,
+Shakespeare, and others had been mainly concerned in telling stories on the
+stage without much consciousness of theory or of the types of drama which
+they were creating. In this period, however, the demarcation between
+tragedy and comedy and the definition of a conception of tragedy became
+positive both in occasional critical comment and in the practice of the
+dramatists. The old types, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> survived. Medleys of various kinds of
+tragedy and comedy, such as "Old Fortunatus" or "The Downfall and Death of
+Robert, Earl of Huntingdon," are not found much after the beginning of the
+century; but the revenge tragedy received a remarkable development by
+Marston, Chettle, Tourneur, Chapman, and Jonson, to say nothing of
+Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>Practically synchronous with the period of Shakespeare's great tragedies
+are these several interesting developments: the domestic tragedies, and
+especially the allied work of Heywood; the Roman historical tragedies,
+especially the two by Jonson; the French historical tragedies by Chapman;
+and the various revenge plays, beginning with Marston's "Antonio and
+Mellida." These dramatists, however, were mainly occupied with comedy, and
+no one of them devoted himself as exclusively to tragedy as did
+Shakespeare. Nor did any of them equal him in immediate popularity. The
+imitative methods of his artistic apprenticeship had given place to a
+maturity and independence of art that at once won a supremacy in tragedy
+even greater than that already attained in comedy. Yet in themes and
+treatment there is no divorce from the practice of his fellow dramatists.
+His genius continued responsive to the demands of the stage of the day, and
+it felt the changes in dramatic conditions, of which we have been noticing
+some symptoms, and which made the tragedies of others as well as his own
+more satirical and realistic than those of Marlowe's time, more concerned
+with the problem of evil, more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> conscious and critical in their art, and in
+their style less lyrical and descriptive, more reflective and sententious.</p>
+
+<p>Of the domestic tragedies, very much in fashion from 1597 to 1603, the few
+survivors show little advance over "Arden of Feversham." These
+presentations of hideous contemporary crimes maintain the protest initiated
+by that play against the conventionalities of "the ghost and revenge"
+drama, and echo its demand for realism. The satirical description of
+Tragedy in the induction to "A Warning for Fair Women" (1599) is
+particularly noteworthy as indicating the definiteness which the current
+conception of tragedy had assumed. The epilogue reiterates the cry of the
+realist in an era of romanticism:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Perhaps it may seem strange unto you all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That one hath not avenged another's death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After the observation of such course:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The reason is that now of truth I sing."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A second of these plays, "Two Lamentable Tragedies" (1601), is a curious
+combination of the story of the babes in the wood and that of the recent
+murder of one Beech. A third, "A Yorkshire Tragedy," acted by Shakespeare's
+company about 1605, and published with his name (1608), is remarkable for
+its naked realism and the vividness and rapidity of some of its prose.</p>
+
+<p>With these plays may be grouped Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness"
+(1607, acted 1603), for, although it does not deal with real events, it
+lacks the usual accompaniments of tragedy, courts, kings, ghosts, and
+battles, and presents a story of current English life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> Its themes are the
+common ones of adultery and revenge, but it gives them an entirely novel
+treatment, the husband refusing to take vengeance on his guilty wife, who
+dies repentant and forgiven. After a fashion soon to become general, there
+is an underplot which, like the main plot, presents a problem of social
+ethics, the question of the sacrifice of chastity to save a brother's
+honor. Similar problems are common in contemporary comedy, and the play
+might be classed indifferently as a domestic tragedy or a tearful comedy.
+It is Heywood's masterpiece and exemplifies the qualities that won him the
+affection of Lamb, "generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depth of
+passion, sweetness, in a word, and gentleness." The wife falls too easily
+and repents too sentimentally to be of much interest, but the character of
+Frankfort is finely conceived and, especially in the great scene of the
+discovery, executed with a power and truth of feeling rarely combined
+outside of Shakespeare. In a very similar play, "The English Traveller,"
+written long afterwards, Heywood speaks of two hundred and twenty plays in
+which he had a main finger. Some of these lost plays must have further
+exemplified the method of "A Woman Killed with Kindness"; but his success
+failed to encourage other dramatists to attempt domestic themes and to
+abandon the tragic conventions. Such realism as his was left to comedy, and
+tragedy continued to seek its stories in romance or history.</p>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson's two tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline," reveal an effort to
+treat Roman history with accuracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> and dignity, and to enforce on the
+public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragedy. Such
+representations of Roman history as "The Wounds of Civil War" or the still
+more incongruous medley of Heywood's "Lucrece" must have excited in him
+still greater condemnation than did the English chronicle plays. Even
+Shakespeare's "Julius C&aelig;sar" provoked a sneer, though its dramatization of
+Plutarch's portraits of the great conspirators apparently excited his
+emulation and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline.
+Incongruous spectacle and farce disappear from these plays, and the events
+are treated upon a well thought out theory of historical tragedy. Jonson
+strove to present the main events and characters with accurate fidelity to
+authorities, and even minor persons and deeds in constant harmony with the
+historical narrative. But the scholar overtopped the dramatist. "Sejanus"
+has a paraphernalia of notes like a doctor's dissertation; and "Catiline"
+long excerpts from Cicero's orations.</p>
+
+<p>His plays, however, were intended for the public stage, and are by no means
+to be classed with closet dramas like Daniel's "Philotas," the tragedies of
+Fulke Greville and Alexander, or the earlier translations of Kyd and the
+Countess of Pembroke. Jonson started with current popular forms, with
+"Julius C&aelig;sar" rather than the Senecan models for a basis. His purpose was
+to rebuild these, not without some recognition of current dramatic method,
+but with his main reliance upon classical rules. His cardinal error was his
+acceptance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> current classical theory of tragedy, the belief that the
+essential difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance
+of the three unities and similar proprieties. As he was forced to confess,
+the ambitious careers of Sejanus and Catiline and the style of action
+demanded by the audiences of the day did not lend themselves easily to such
+limitations. But he persevered in his doughty fashion. If in "Sejanus" he
+gave up the unity of time, he maintained the unity of place; if he retained
+the comic scenes of the courtesan, he avoided any grotesque mixture of the
+comic and tragic; he omitted battles, jigs, and spectacles, and secured a
+coherent development of the main action. In "Catiline," which he boldly
+proclaimed a "dramatic poem," he adopted the Senecan technic of an
+introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. But though the action be one,
+perfect and entire, according to Jonson's understanding of those terms, he
+never learned Shakespeare's art of focusing events about a spiritual
+conflict.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in characterization Jonson's interest, like that of his contemporaries,
+largely centres. Catiline, Cicero, Sejanus, and Tiberius are thoughtfully
+conceived and faithfully represented. The representation, indeed, is that
+of exposition, each scene illustrating and emphasizing some trait without
+securing much illusion of life. The style, especially in the long speeches,
+is too often rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic
+power. Yet it is masterly in its way, careful and competent to its
+purposes, and free from obscurity or over-richness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> His plays mark another
+failure to turn popular tragedy back into the classical mould. They
+contributed, perhaps, to a greater regularity of action on the part of his
+contemporaries and to a more serious consideration of the functions of
+drama, but the scholarly student of history failed to make it live, the
+author of "Bartholomew Fair" did not find his best opportunity in the
+acceptance of classicist theory.</p>
+
+<p>Chapman's tragedies attempted a field hitherto untried except in Marlowe's
+"Massacre," that of contemporary French history. While treating historical
+events with freedom of invention, he dealt with real persons and careers
+familiar to his audience. In the long-popular tragedy of "The Death of
+Bussy D'Ambois" (1607, acted 1600-1604) he turned to the court of Henry III
+and centred a story of treasonable ambition, conspiracy, and adultery about
+the interesting personality of the insolent and indomitable D'Ambois. After
+the fashion of Kyd and Marston, he followed "The Death" with a "Revenge of
+Bussy D'Ambois," which adopted the established technic of the revenge
+plays, with less alteration than might have been expected after
+Shakespeare's transformation in "Hamlet." The avenger, Clermont, is a
+"Senecal man," and his sententious and rhetorical philosophizing was
+doubtless incited by "Hamlet," though it followed a long-established
+precedent. The "Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron" (two parts, 1608, acted
+1607) dealt with important affairs in the reign of Henry IV that were still
+fresh in the memory of the audience,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> Biron having been executed in 1602.
+In the original form of the play, in fact, Queen Elizabeth was represented,
+and the French queen boxed the ears of her husband's mistress, but the
+protest of the French ambassador made a revision necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The new material of these plays did not lead Chapman to attempt any
+variations in form from the current drama, nor did it result in any advance
+in method; his fondness for long speeches and narrations resulting rather
+in a treatment more epical and less dramatic than is found in any of his
+contemporaries. Nor did his study of contemporary memoirs for his sources
+and his interest in political philosophy result in any advance in reality
+or vividness of characterization, though here he is often very felicitous,
+as in his portrait of Henry IV, and though his arrogant protagonists are
+interesting and original variations of the Marlowean tragic hero, not
+without successors in the later drama. But for Chapman, tragedy was in the
+main, as for the writers whom Gosson derided, an opportunity "to show the
+majesty of his pen in tragical speeches." The abundance, ingenuity, and
+beauty of his figurative language are simply amazing. Every person, deed,
+or sentiment calls for illustration and lets loose a flood of similes.
+Finished verse, a highly picturesque sense of the value of words, a
+remarkable union of pregnant sententiousness with vividness of description,
+have made his plays the delight of many a reader, though perhaps most of
+his admirers have experienced a fatigue that found satisfaction in Dryden's
+perverse criticism,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words,
+repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles."
+For, though the thought is by no means dwarfish, the dress is often too big
+for it. We are wearied by the constant effort to write up to the tragic
+opportunity for a heightened and sententious eloquence. In this respect,
+Chapman's style partakes of the faults of his day. It has not the
+spontaneity and ease of Marlowe, Peele, and "Romeo and Juliet"; it is
+difficult, involved, pretentious, and self-conscious, yet its splendors
+remain. Its abundance of resource, its imaginative condensation, its
+suggestive power again and again compel comparison with Shakespeare
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Revenge directed by a ghost found favor with both Jonson and Chapman, but
+they were preceded in the use of this popular motive by John Marston. In
+1598, at the age of twenty-three, he made something of a sensation by his
+satires and immediately proceeded to carry his censoriousness of human
+frailties into the drama. His earliest play, "Antonio and Mellida" (two
+parts, 1602, acted 1599-1600), reveals in Part I the still dominant
+influence of romantic comedy, despite its tragic trend; but Part II,
+"Antonio's Revenge," is a tragedy of the Kydian type. The play was followed
+by a number of comedies, all outspoken in satire of contemporary manners
+and in the exposure of social immorality. Several dealt with tragic
+material, and one, "The Malcontent," is a notable combination of a tragedy
+of blood and a satirical comedy. Its protagonist is of a type represented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+in the other comedies and not without influence on contemporary dramatists.
+Marston's malcontents are men of virtue and honor "who hate not man but
+man's lewd qualities"; in disfavor and out of joint with the world; given
+to melancholy and a showy pessimism that finds fitting expression only in
+images of filth and putrefaction. His tragedy "Sophonisba" (1606), which he
+seems to have deemed the most important of his plays, treats history with
+great freedom, and unites melodramatic horrors with his usual unflinching
+fondness for rankness of thought and imagery. The horrible realism of the
+Erichtho scenes comes in strange contrast with the songs, dances, and
+musical accompaniment suited to a performance by the child actors for whom
+all of Marston's plays were written.</p>
+
+<p>"Antonio's Revenge" is the earliest representative in this period of the
+Kydian type of revenge tragedy. The satirical passages in "A Warning for
+Fair Women" indicate the popularity of ghosts and revenge, and there are
+many evidences of the continued vogue of "The Spanish Tragedy" from 1597 to
+1602. Marston's play was evidently modeled on "The Spanish Tragedy," and
+probably still more directly on the Kydian "Hamlet." The story is the
+revenge of a son for a father murdered by a villanous duke who seeks to wed
+the hero's mother; the revenge is directed by the ghost of the father; the
+hero is driven to hesitation, irresolution, and the verge of madness; he
+pretends to be a fool; intrigue and trickery are indulged in by both hero
+and villain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> and the revenge is accomplished with an abundance of
+bloodshed. There is a minor story of revenge, enforcing the main situation
+as does the Laertes story in "Hamlet" and the scene with the Senex in "The
+Spanish Tragedy"; and, doubtless as in the early "Hamlet," the passion of
+the murderer for the widow of his victim now becomes an important motive in
+the action. Moreover, the play abounds in psychological introspection and
+meditative philosophy set forth for the most part through the soliloquies
+of the hero.</p>
+
+<p>The indebtedness to the earlier revenge plays extends to details of the
+stage presentation. Revenge is accomplished much as in "The Spanish
+Tragedy," though by means of a masque instead of a play, and without the
+death of the hero. From similar scenes in the old "Hamlet" were probably
+derived the appearance of the ghost at midnight, the cry "Antonio,
+revenge!" and the second appearance of the ghost to the hero and his
+mother. The dumb show exhibiting the wooing of Maria, the use of the
+churchyard, the banquets, carousals, funerals, exhibition of the dead
+bodies, and the oaths of the conspirators were perhaps already conventional
+accompaniments of a revenge play. "Antonio's Revenge," however, is not
+wanting in inventiveness; its abundant horrors and its melodramatically
+ingenious stage effects were probably recognized as an advance upon the old
+favorites, and they excited the emulation of succeeding dramatists.</p>
+
+<p>The hero, too, is of the Kydian type. Like both Hieronimo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> and Hamlet, he
+is a scholar, interested in philosophy and also in theatrical performances.
+Like them he is distinguished by a tendency to reflection, and struggles in
+solitary meditation at each crisis in his career. Like them he is driven to
+the verge of madness by the pressure of his heavy responsibility and by his
+awakened sense of evil in the universe. Though he does not seek further
+proof, yet, like Hamlet after the revelations of the play, he becomes
+frantic and irresolute, neglects an opportunity to kill the duke, and
+wastes his vengeance upon an innocent child. Like Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
+is tricky, wild, and ranting. With all his overdrawn passion, however, his
+mental struggle occasionally attains intellectual depth and tragic power.
+As he tells us, it was "the stings of anguish," "the bruising stroke of
+chance" which made him run mad "as one confounded in a maze of mischief."</p>
+
+<p>Several years, then, before Shakespeare's "Hamlet," we have a play dealing
+with the old story of a revenge of a son for a father, following closely
+the methods introduced by Kyd, appealing to a taste that delighted in
+extravagant violence and melodramatic sensationalism, but also striving to
+simulate profundity of thought and a passionate sense of evil. It is
+difficult to-day to take Marston seriously. His plays have little merit,
+while his bombastic sententiousness gives an air of insincerity to
+everything that he wrote; yet a serious purpose and a considerable
+influence on later drama cannot be denied to his efforts in tragedy. Like
+so many others, he deserves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> to be remembered for what he attempted rather
+than for what he did. Absurd though "Antonio's Revenge" be as an artistic
+achievement, it is historically of importance as indicating an ambitious
+attempt to give poetical expression to the spiritual conflict of a mind
+brought to face dreadful evil. The prologue that he addressed to his London
+audience testifies sufficiently to his serious and ambitious intentions,
+and to the clear separation of tragedy from other forms of drama, which he
+and other poets were trying to force upon the theatre.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">"Therefore we proclaim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If any spirit breathes within this round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uncapable of weighty passion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(As from his birth being hugged in the arms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nuzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who winks and shuts his apprehension up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From common sense of what men were, and are;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who would not know what men must be: let such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there be any blood, whose heat is choked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stifled with true sense of misery:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If aught of these strains fill this consort up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They arrive most welcome."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A number of plays dealing with "revenge for a father" followed. In 1602
+"The Revenge of Hamlet" was entered in the Stationers' Register; and the
+first quarto, a pirated and very corrupt edition, appeared in the following
+year. This quarto, in the opinion of a majority of critics, represents
+Shakespeare's partial revision of the old play,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> which was put on the stage
+by Burbage's company in 1601-02. In the same years Ben Jonson was receiving
+pay from Henslowe of the rival company for two sets of additions to "The
+Spanish Tragedy," and these were published in 1602. In that year Henslowe
+also paid Chettle for a tragedy, "Hoffman" (1631); and in 1602-03
+Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" (1611) was probably acted.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> By 1603
+Shakespeare had given "Hamlet" its final form as represented by the second
+quarto (1604). The almost simultaneous appearance of these various plays is
+sufficient testimony to the popularity of the old revenge story with both
+audiences and authors. Dealing with similar plots, they naturally have many
+elements in common, but they exhibit few or no signs of servile imitation
+of one another. They represent independent developments of the type that
+Kyd had introduced a dozen years before and that Marston had revived, each
+retaining many of the old conventions, and each adding much that was new.</p>
+
+<p>Jonson's additions to "The Spanish Tragedy" are distinct from the rest of
+the play and affect the proportion and movement of the action rather for
+the worse. They deal in the main with Hieronimo; his irony is increased and
+made more effective; his reflections become more elaborate and pregnant;
+above all, his madness gains enormously in reality and intensity. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+madness, indeed, receives a disproportionate development. Throughout the
+additions Jonson is picturing a mind diseased by grief, sometimes conscious
+of life's unrelaxing pain and again lost in frenzied delirium. Thus, the
+imaginative impulses that responded to the demand for revenge plays here
+stirred a great poet to a rehabilitation of the crude ravings of the old
+Hieronimo in a form more intellectual, more vitally human, and of immensely
+greater imaginative range.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoffman" is a sensational melodrama by a hack writer not unskillful in
+using prevailing conventions with theatrical effectiveness. The story is
+again the revenge of a son for a father, but there is no ghost, only the
+skeleton to excite him to vengeance. He banishes "clouds of melancholy" at
+the start and shows no hesitation in carrying out the revenge until turned
+from his purpose by his passion for the mother of his chief victim.
+Intrigue and slaughter reign supreme; and, as in "Locrine," there are two
+plots of revenge&mdash;Hoffman seeking revenge for his father and every one else
+seeking revenge on Hoffman. In the pathetic situation of Lucibella, driven
+insane by grief, Chettle made use of a character and a situation familiar
+on the stage in much the same fashion as they must have been presented in
+the old "Hamlet." Lucibella's madness, however, is made the instrument of
+some telling hits at the villain and the means of discovering his iniquity.
+While Ophelia's madness has no influence on the main action, that of
+Lucibella leads directly to the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>. Dramatically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> this is a very
+important difference and seems due to Chettle's invention. Unlike Marston
+or Jonson, he made little effort to give the story either imaginative
+intensity or philosophical significance. He took common theatrical motives
+and situations, added much and changed much, and constructed a good acting
+play not without some grace of verse. A play that was popular thirty years
+after it was written must have successfully met the stage demand.</p>
+
+<p>Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" differs in many respects from all preceding
+revenge plays. The revenge is for a father murdered by an uncle and
+directed by a ghost. The revenge, however, is left to Providence; the ghost
+is Christian; the avenging son not only hesitates, but after a little
+irresolution overcomes his inclinations to revenge, and, obeying the
+ghost's behests, resignedly awaits the judgment of heaven. In stage
+presentation the play also shows a wide departure from Kyd, especially in
+the indescribable comic underplot. There are, however, three appearances of
+the ghost,&mdash;one to soldiers on watch,&mdash;churchyard scenes, banquets, sword
+fights, suicides, scaffolds, and death's-heads. In the accumulation of
+horrors, in the development of the villain's character, in the emphasis on
+new sensational motives at the expense of revenge, and in the more
+elaborate handling of the intrigue, it may be said to carry the general
+development of the revenge tragedy a step farther than Marston or Chettle,
+and a step nearer to Webster. On the other hand, in its definite attempt to
+present an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> intellectual conception not lacking in moral grandeur, it
+sometimes, more closely than any of the other plays considered, approaches
+"Hamlet." The change in the revenge motive is especially manifest in the
+soliloquies and reflective passages, which unite in a fairly well connected
+argument that points the moral of the action, the omnipotence of God's
+providence.</p>
+
+<p>When, after an interval of some half dozen years, Shakespeare returned to
+tragedy, evidently both the demands of the theatres and the artistic
+impulses of the poets were different from those of Marlowe's day. The plays
+of Marlowe and Kyd were still active forces in the drama, but in 1600-01,
+when Shakespeare was perhaps writing both "Julius C&aelig;sar" and the first
+revision of "Hamlet," the man of the hour in tragedy was Marston.</p>
+
+<p>In "Julius C&aelig;sar" Shakespeare availed himself of a theme already a
+favorite. The story of the overthrow of a tyrant, the progress of a
+conspiracy, the fall of a prince, and his revenge upon the murderers
+furnished material well approved for tragedy, while the greatness of the
+events and the actors both gave assurance of popular interest and incited
+the poet to his best. Shakespeare was not directed by scrupulous regard for
+historical accuracy, but his genius was stirred by that of Plutarch to give
+the events of the Roman civil war the interest and vitality he had given to
+the reigns of English kings. In dealing with a story that followed so
+closely the standard lines of tragedy,&mdash;the murder and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> the
+revenge,&mdash;Shakespeare adopted some of the methods current in contemporary
+plays. There is really no evidence to support Mr. Fleay's ingenious surmise
+that the play was originally in two parts,&mdash;I, The Death, and II, The
+Revenge of C&aelig;sar,&mdash;but the play seems to have separated itself naturally
+into those two divisions. The rise of the action traces the rise of the
+conspiracy to C&aelig;sar's death; the return of the action proceeds to the
+failure and deaths of the conspirators. But from the beginning Shakespeare
+must have found his interest engaged less by the story of conspiracy or
+revenge, or even by the presentation of the turmoil of an empire, than by
+the delineation of the character of Brutus. There, for him, lay the kernel
+of the tragedy, in the struggle of a highly gifted nature with a task unfit
+for his accomplishment. The play became not a tragedy of over-reaching
+ambition, as Marlowe might have made "The Tragedy of C&aelig;sar," nor the
+tragedy of supernaturally ordained revenge, as Kyd might have made "C&aelig;sar's
+Revenge," but the tragedy of Brutus,&mdash;the fateful struggle of a noble mind
+against counter actors and against chance, and also against an incurable
+deficiency in his own temperament.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, in revising the old "Hamlet," Shakespeare must have been
+attracted by the possibilities in the character of the hesitating avenger.
+Here, however, as we have seen, the influence of his contemporaries was
+considerable and complex. The plot, situations, types of character, and
+leading motives of the old "Hamlet"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> were already familiar to the stage in
+several plays. Revenge, directed by a ghost, hesitation on the part of the
+hero, insanity real or feigned, intrigue, copious bloodshed, a secondary
+revenge plot, meditative philosophizing in the form of soliloquies, were
+all essential elements probably of the Kydian "Hamlet," certainly of
+several other revenge plays. The refusal of an opportunity to kill the
+villain, the songs and wild talk of a mad woman, the murder of an innocent
+intruder, scenes in a churchyard, the appearance of the ghost to soldiers
+of the watch, the play within the play,&mdash;all these as well as many more
+minor conventionalities, such as the swearing on the sword hilt, or the
+voice of the ghost in the cellar, had appeared in other plays than the old
+"Hamlet." And Hamlet himself, wild and ranting at times, crafty and
+dissimulating at others, cynical and ironical, given to melancholy and
+meditation, hesitating in bewilderment, harassed by the unavoidable "whips
+and scorns of time,"&mdash;so far as we can analyze the tragic hero, his
+characteristics had been already used by contemporary dramatists. Dramatic
+ingenuity was all that was required to make a new play out of this
+abundance of old material. Chettle succeeded in doing just this. Marston,
+Jonson, and Tourneur, however, had been trying to give the old story
+philosophical significance and a highly imaginative phrasing. They had
+glimpses of the dramatic and poetic possibilities that lay in the situation
+of the hesitating revenger, and at moments they succeeded in realizing
+these. Shakespeare set himself to their task, and naturally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> enough he was
+in many ways limited and directed by their efforts. It was perfectly
+possible for him to change the plot completely, or to omit the ghost in the
+cellar, or to remove the bloodthirsty and intriguing elements from the part
+of Hamlet, or to give a more Christian interpretation to the revenge; but
+in these and other matters he followed the practice of the earlier plays.
+There was no dramatic need of so many long soliloquies; the meditative
+avenger need not have been ironical; insanity might have received less
+elaboration; but in these respects Shakespeare was in agreement with his
+contemporaries. The themes which they took inspired him. He succeeded in
+doing what they vainly attempted.</p>
+
+<p>He by no means neglected the external story or denied the theatrical demand
+for sensation. He, perhaps, did not radically change the course of events
+as depicted in the old play, but he unquestionably improved on any
+preceding tragedy in the mere effectiveness of the scenic presentation of a
+sensational story. How great this effectiveness is may be judged by the
+continued popularity of "Hamlet" as a stage performance even before
+unlettered auditors. We may surmise that had poetry and philosophy both
+perished, it would still draw its crowds as it does to-day on the remote
+borders of civilization. This theatrical triumph is due in part to dramatic
+excellence of structure and presentation. From the old play probably came a
+story restricted by semi-Senecan technic to a great emotional crisis; but
+Shakespeare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> at least resisted the temptation, to which his contemporaries
+succumbed, of extending the action over the events leading up to the
+murder. And assuredly to him rather than to Kyd or another is due the
+recognition of the dramatic values of the story's beginning, middle, and
+end. Magnificent as is his development of the ghost scenes at the
+beginning, still more important structurally is his realization of the
+value of the middle of the tragedy and treatment of the play within the
+play and its immediate sequences; and if the end is developed with an
+Elizabethan looseness of coherence that will not correspond to any logical
+scheme of structure, yet the pathos of the Ophelia scenes and the wonderful
+grotesquery of the graveyard excite and renew the spectator's interest to
+the final catastrophe. The scenic presentation, while telling a sensational
+story with pre&euml;minent effectiveness, becomes as never before in English
+drama the means for exhibiting the inner struggle of the protagonist.
+Parallel with the external conflict between murderer and avenger, beginning
+with the advent of the ghost and ending with a holocaust, there runs the
+story of a man's moods and thoughts; and this story of doubt and melancholy
+overpowering resolution imposes its unity of structure and emotional tone
+upon the external conflict so full of visible action. The throng of
+dreadful happenings becomes a foil to set off the inner struggle of
+thought. Their climax is only the brink of resolution from which Hamlet
+shrinks. Their catastrophe is the end of irresolution in silence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The reflections and moralizings and broodings over misfortunes inherited
+from Seneca, and long an essential element in the revenge plays, are also,
+like the sensational incidents, integrated and humanized by the conception
+of the hero's character. The soliloquies, though keeping to the themes and
+methods of contemporary drama, become landmarks in the depiction of the
+inner struggle and in the general progress of the action. The absurd
+convention of speaking aloud one's unformed and unbidden thoughts becomes
+theatrically exciting, dramatically essential, and, through the reach of
+Shakespeare's imaginative expression, representative of the eternal battle
+of human frailty against the mysteries of chance and evil.</p>
+
+<p>Analysis might, indeed, continue to discover in the multiform
+impressiveness of the characterization and the poetry survivals of old
+conventions and hints of the method of Shakespeare's transformation. Taken
+apart, various passages seem overburdened with rhetoric, after the style of
+the day, and others over-sententious. Taken piece by piece, the sarcasm,
+the irony, the pessimism, the stoic philosophy, even the passionate protest
+against destiny, have much in common with the ideas then current in other
+plays. But here again the transformation accomplished through unrivaled
+powers of expression and knowledge of human nature seems to result from an
+absorbing interest in the meditating and hesitating temperament of the
+hero. The union of a drama of blood-vengeance with a drama of thought, a
+union that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> had been often attempted by others, is finally achieved,
+because here for the first time there is full recognition of the tragic
+interest, movement, and significance of a man's battle with himself. The
+tragic drama of character has been consummated.</p>
+
+<p>In Shakespeare's conception of the tragic hero we find many characteristics
+and some incongruities that belong to the old avengers; but there is new
+penetration into the sources of human motive that results in an essentially
+new view of the functions and scope of the tragic drama. As in most
+tragedies since "Tamburlaine," the play is a one-part play, presenting a
+hero far above the average in mental and moral power, but for the time
+mainly under the sway of one dominating mood or emotion. Like the other
+heroes of revenge tragedies, Hamlet is a good man brought suddenly face to
+face with evil. Again, like the heroes of Seneca and of most tragedies
+dealing with a reversal of fortune, Hamlet is a strong man brought to face
+the enmity of chance. He is an individual forced to struggle against a
+hostile environment. Again, he is a man in a tragic crisis that requires
+the exercise of all possible powers on his part if he is to avoid disaster,
+who finds himself afflicted with a temperamental weakness that makes
+failure possible or indeed inevitable. Critics emphasize now one and now
+another element of his character as they emphasize one or another of these
+conflicts as the most important. Shakespeare here, as again in later plays,
+united in one hero all the varieties of conflict catalogued by the
+critics.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> But if we ask which is most peculiarly Shakespearean, it must be
+said to be the conflict with his own temperamental unfitness, call that
+irresolution, melancholy, meditativeness, or what you will. Here lies
+Shakespeare's main differentiation from preceding tragedy, though one
+distinctly presaged in "Julius C&aelig;sar." At all events, we have a conception
+of tragedy carried out in his succeeding plays. The hero, noble and
+righteous, is brought into conflict with the results of evil and
+circumstance, and he is crippled by his own inability or weakness. Tragedy
+becomes inherent in character, in the incompleteness that marks the best
+and mightiest of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Our consideration of "Hamlet" has been prolonged partly because its
+relations to contemporary drama can be traced more readily than those of
+Shakespeare's other tragedies, and partly because it is the first of his
+plays to afford a full definition of tragedy, a conception of prime
+importance both in the development of Shakespeare's art and in the future
+history of the drama. A sensational struggle is presented, and the
+abounding incidents are wrought into effective if loosely connected
+stage-scenes, dealing with material similar to that then current in the
+theatres,&mdash;villains, ghosts, murders, insanity, grim farce, meditations,
+aphorisms. But the scenic presentation and the dramatic structure are to
+express not only an external conflict between hero and counter-force, but
+an inner struggle of the hero himself. They are to be the effects and
+results, nay, the very mirror of the inner thought and feeling. And the
+disaster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> that falls upon the hero and those by him beloved comes home to
+us as due not merely to external forces or circumstances or to evil working
+within, but also to an inherent unfitness of his own.</p>
+
+<p>This conception of tragedy found further exemplification in "Othello,"<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+freer from Elizabethan methods than any of the other tragedies, and the
+most masterful of all as a play. The fable was found in an Italian novella
+that related, like so many of its class, a bald story of love, jealousy,
+and villany. The very baldness of the narrative in comparison with the
+fullness of incident and characterization of the chronicles or Plutarch,
+gave Shakespeare's imagination an untrammeled opportunity. The ingredients
+of the story, common in romantic comedy and already combined by Shakespeare
+in "Much Ado about Nothing," were also not unfamiliar in tragedy, but
+Shakespeare enlarged and interpreted them to fit the conception of his two
+preceding tragedies, the presentation of a spiritual struggle in which
+goodness is attacked by evil at its point of greatest vulnerability.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> The
+credulity of Othello, however, is assaulted by a more active agent of evil
+than in "Julius C&aelig;sar" or "Hamlet." Malignant evil is embodied in Iago, and
+it is against his machinations that the nobly idealized characters of
+Othello and Desdemona prove incompetent and defenseless. He is the person
+who dominates the action and gives explanation and plausibility to the
+circumstances. He not only opposes the hero in the external action, he
+creates through his insinuations all the evil suspicions that struggle in
+Othello's mind. He might almost be considered the protagonist of the
+tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In structure there is a notable advance over preceding plays, accomplished
+apparently in part through deliberate intent. The first act with its
+account of Iago's craft and the marriage is a distinct introduction. The
+remaining four acts present a practically continuous action, confined to
+Cyprus and representing about thirty-six hours. Moreover, by a skillful
+ambiguity, which Christopher North called "the double clock," Shakespeare,
+while securing this rapid and uninterrupted process of time, has succeeded
+in conveying an impression of protracted intrigue and slowly-developing
+motives. Thus, without lessening the variety and importance of the events
+and emotions, he gains, by a closer observance of unity than in the other
+tragedies, a greater degree of theatrical illusion and of dramatic
+intensity. Again, "Othello" technically is noticeable among the tragedies
+for its relinquishment of many current methods. It is neither a chronicle
+history nor a Senecan tragedy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> There is no presentation of history and
+little of court ceremonies. There are no battles, no long exposition, no
+spectacles, no ghosts, no insanity, and almost no comedy. It has few
+persons and virtually a single action. The underplot is subordinated and
+closely united to the main action, and there are no delays and new
+excitements between crisis and catastrophe as in "Hamlet" and "Lear."
+Nowhere else in Shakespeare is the progress of character, emotion, and deed
+toward the final event so consecutive and so uninterrupted. This advance in
+coherence and proportion seems due less to the contributing causes just
+enumerated than to the explanation of action by character. Accept the
+unbelievable malignity of Iago&mdash;and you do accept it before you have
+proceeded far&mdash;and every step of the appalling chain of intrigue seems a
+natural outcome of the motives of the persons before us.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of this integration of character and action, the characters
+are, more than in the other tragedies, distinct and unmistakable. As if to
+make stronger the contrast between good and evil, the good man is a Moor,
+apparently, as in the case of the Moors in "Titus Andronicus" and
+"Selimus," hardly distinguishable from a negro; and the bad man is deprived
+of the motive which in the <i>novella</i> rendered his wickedness intelligible.
+Yet nowhere, even in Shakespeare, are generosity and greatness of soul more
+admirable than in Othello, nowhere is villany more human than in Iago. The
+stage villain here receives his apotheosis as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> avenging hero did in
+"Hamlet." The source of all the evil in the play, the Machiavellian
+machinator, the subtle hypocrite whose every action is a pose to conceal
+its purpose, the simulator of honesty and bluntness, the shameless egoist
+who proudly avows his villany and bawls it to the gallery, the intellectual
+master who plays every one for a dupe, and especially his accomplice&mdash;all
+this had been embodied in the villains of Kyd and Marlowe. Although
+intelligible to Elizabethan psychology and theology, and credible in the
+light of Tudor politics and feuds, such a type would seem to lack enduring
+truth. While preserving all the attributes of the stage type, Shakespeare
+made it the means for that searching analysis of human depravity to which
+his contemporaries were less successfully dedicating their efforts. This
+soliloquizing devil becomes identified with the suggestions and sinuosities
+of evil that partake of the flux of our consciousness. Hypocrisy, cynicism,
+cruelty, the absence of human sympathies, the pride and malignity of
+intellectual superiority have henceforth their symbol in Iago. Impossible,
+diabolical, inhuman as Barabas or Richard III, he is never for a moment
+unplausible, because he ever unearths a corresponding potentiality in us.</p>
+
+<p>The persons of the play, while unusually effective on the stage, and while
+human and real in their discourse, have a universality of appeal essential
+in the greatest works of art, desired by Aristotle and dimly foreshadowed
+in Elizabethan efforts after greatness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> typicality. Othello, Desdemona,
+and Iago create fresh reflection and new impulse in every reader of every
+generation. And to each they are not only real persons but also symbols and
+ideals of the generosity, sweetness, and iniquity of the universe. This
+idealization of character is accomplished with wonderful clarity by means
+of an expression, splendidly eloquent, untroubled by conceit or obscurity,
+equally masterful in prose or verse, magnificently adapted to the
+representation of every mood or temperament. Shakespeare here realized the
+ideal toward which English tragedy under the leadership of Marlowe had been
+struggling, the presentation of human greatness in blank verse beautiful
+and dramatic.</p>
+
+<p>If "Othello" is comparatively free from current conventions, "Lear" is in
+many respects the most Elizabethan of Shakespeare's tragedies. Story,
+themes, situations, stage effects constantly recall the plays of his
+predecessors; and if his creative imagination here attains the most
+astounding triumph in all literature, it cannot be said to free itself
+entirely from a confusion of archaisms and absurdities.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to English history, Shakespeare selected a story that had
+outgrown the chronicles and been narrated by several poets and in one
+drama. From the early "Leir" he took a few important hints, but he treated
+the material of the chronicles with a freedom which both its obviously
+legendary character and its remoulding by other poets permitted. He was
+only slightly concerned with the presentation of history and hurried over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+the battles and the shows, the still indispensable accompaniment of
+historical plays. He was concerned solely with the tragic entanglements of
+character, with the devastations of evil and folly.</p>
+
+<p>The kernel of the story, Lear's trick and Cordelia's unsatisfactory reply,
+though possessing a kind of objectivity suitable for the stage, is of
+itself so absurd and childish as to impede illusion of truth. Its
+development is full of inconsistency, and the interwoven themes of madness,
+villany, lust, ambition, family feud, and ideal virtue suggest no break
+from the Elizabethan canon of tragedy. To the story of Lear and his
+daughters, Shakespeare added the still more childish parallel story of
+Gloster and his sons. This common device of a reinforcing sub-plot is here
+extended to every situation and motive. Even the devoted Kent is balanced
+by Goneril's faithful creature, Oswald; the inhuman sisters are supported
+by the machinating Edmund; and, most extraordinary of all, the assumed
+madness of Edgar becomes an accompaniment for the real madness of Lear. The
+elaboration of the sub-plot causes an unprecedented complexity of persons
+and events, and it dislocates the structure. The intense interest which is
+absorbed in the sufferings of Lear finds itself distracted and dissipated
+in a medley of incidents so incongruous and so confusing that one wonders
+how a rational mind could have selected them. The crowded scenes which
+separate the climax of the third act from the catastrophe assuredly form
+one of the least happy instances of the Elizabethan habit of introducing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> a
+change of interest and a variety of incident in the fourth and fifth acts.
+Yet the structure of the play, if far from faultless, reveals amazing
+mastery. The development of the action in the first three acts with the
+constantly increasing tension of feeling, and the final gathering of all
+the different actions in the wonderfully condensed catastrophe, are among
+the greatest achievements of dramatic plotting. Moreover, in spite of his
+zest for crowded and diversified action, Shakespeare's feeling for unity of
+emotional effect caused him to omit one motive that modern renovators have
+never been able to forego. He found a place for battles, villany, childish
+intrigue, the clown's songs and jests, the plucking out of Gloster's eyes,
+and the protracted foolery between Edgar and his helpless father, but he
+refused to admit romantic love into this drama of the madness that
+separates father and child.</p>
+
+<p>Though Shakespeare chose to involve himself in these manifold difficulties
+of story and structure, he hardly felt his fetters. No play depends less on
+mere incident and event. The inconsistencies and confusion of the action
+are forgotten in the wild turmoil of human passions. Wild, terrible,
+elementary, brutal, grotesque, or sublime,&mdash;everything in the play is
+touched with the imaginative truth that gives it limitless range of
+suggestion, applicable to any discord of parents and children or to the
+most dreadful spiritual torture. Insanity, long a favorite theme of
+Elizabethan tragedy, and fantastic grotesqueness, often its bane, summon
+his imagination<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> to its most wonderful creation when the feigning Bedlam
+counters the mad king mid the jests of the fool and the havoc of the storm.
+Such a conception could have been attempted only in an age which took its
+emotions strong and mixed, which found insanity a subject for laughter as
+well as horror, and which refused to limit the imagination by reason or
+rule. In that age a lesser than Shakespeare might have formed the bare
+design of making his audience laugh at the fool and poor Tom, and shudder
+at the eyeless Gloster and the raving Ancient. Something akin to it may be
+found in many scenes, in that in which Marlowe's emperor and empress dash
+out their brains against the bars of their cage in a frenzy of humiliation,
+or that in which Webster's duchess stands undazzled amid the dancing ring
+of obscene maniacs. The Elizabethan drama had prepared the opportunity for
+the full and terrible presentation of the discords and agony of a breaking
+mind. The London audience was ready for the scenes on the heath.</p>
+
+<p>Madness is only one element that contributes to the overwhelming effect of
+the play. Its so-called pessimism is the only other on which our meagre
+survey may dwell. English tragedy had from the beginning concerned itself
+mainly with heinous crime and sin; and during the years immediately
+preceding and following "Lear" there was a distinct conception of tragedy
+as the representation not only of the depths of iniquity but of the moral
+confusion and blackness that beset us all. In "Hamlet," "Othello," and
+"Measure for Measure" the sense of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> evil is ever present. In "Lear" it
+grips the reader like the rack. As in "Othello," evil, here represented by
+the two fiendish daughters as well as by an intriguing villain, dominates
+the action, and carries all that is good along with it to destruction. But
+evil is only one of the forces that cause suffering and ruin. Lear and
+Cordelia contend against their own imperfections and against chance and
+circumstance so hostile that they seem directed by gods who sport with men
+as with flies and loose the fury of the elements to torment their victims.
+Where else in tragedy are the forces that make for ruin so appalling and so
+irresistible; and where else are suffering and ruin so dreadful and so
+complete? The sufferers are powerless. Suffering does not here arouse a
+Promethean defiance, but it discovers and purifies human virtue. If evil is
+dominant over the action, Cordelia, Kent, the Fool, and the chastened and
+purified Lear are dominant in our reflections. The end is not the fall and
+cessation of all that is good. Even in our dismay at the convulsion which
+evil may cause, there remains the memory of the perfection of human
+devotion and love. The final impression must, however, partake of confusion
+and horror at the blackness and ruthlessness of a moral order that can
+sacrifice perfect virtue in an effort to free itself from the hideous
+enormity of evil. This is the tragedy of life as Shakespeare saw it, and
+the cry of bewilderment and agony seems to come from the poet's own heart.
+The language, sometimes crowded and difficult, has hardly a trace of
+artifice. Rarely as perfectly mastered as in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> "Hamlet" and "Othello," it
+surpasses even those plays in the tremendous sincerity of its passion. If
+passionate despair at things human has a language, it is the speech of
+Lear.</p>
+
+<p>"Macbeth" offers a marked contrast to "Lear" in its brevity and rapidity.
+In spite of a few probable interpolations, the text is so short that it may
+likely represent a condensation of the original version. In none of the
+tragedies is the story told with more breathless directness, or with more
+effective presentation of the externals of the action. The play is more
+dependent on the chronicle than "Lear," and pays more attention to the
+representation of history. In "Lear" the political and national importance
+of the events is forgotten, but in "Macbeth" the convulsion of the kingdom
+is kept in mind, and the battles, political intrigue, and the prophecies of
+future dynasties recall the early chronicle plays. The story in Holinshed's
+chronicle, however, conforms to the current ideas of tragedy, so closely
+indeed that one wonders that some writer had not earlier attempted its
+dramatization.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Apparently it awaited a Scottish king and a general
+interest in Scottish affairs. The story is one of crime and retribution
+with a rather striking likeness to some of the classical dramas. It
+coincides with the Senecan plan of a crime committed and then revenged
+through the accompaniment of supernatural agencies. It is the story,
+familiar to both humanistic and popular tragedy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> of a usurper who becomes
+a bloody tyrant and is overthrown after a reign of increasing crime.
+Macbeth's inordinate and fatal ambition also offers an obvious chance for a
+development akin to that of Marlowe's protagonists. Again, as in most
+English tragedies from "Cambyses" to "Sejanus," the story presents the
+punishment of evil rather than the suffering of the good, and, except for
+the absence of lust as a motive, might have found favor with any
+contemporary dramatist. All these possibilities in the story were seized
+upon by Shakespeare and adapted to his purpose. "Macbeth" might be studied
+as the complement of "Lear" in the reflection and summarizing of all
+preceding essays at tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's use of these various potentialities of the story and the
+definiteness of his unifying purpose may both be seen by a comparison with
+his treatment of the very similar materials furnished by the chronicles for
+"Richard III." There, following closely the Marlowean methods, he for some
+reason minimized the motive of remorse emphasized in his sources, and left
+Richard as conscienceless as Tamburlaine or Barabas. In "Macbeth" the story
+of ambition is also a story of the temptation, defeat, and remorse of
+conscience. As in the other great tragedies, Shakespeare informed the old
+material with the struggle of the human will. At the same time he made the
+most of the hints in the chronicle that the protagonist was driven by fate
+or some forces beyond his control. He united with marvelous dramatic tact
+the destiny tragedy of the Greeks and the villain tragedy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> the
+Elizabethans. As a result the character of Macbeth has its paradoxes that
+are the despair of the analysts. We do not quite know how far free-will and
+how far superhuman agencies determined his course. But while the superhuman
+agencies give his villany a mystery and impressiveness, they never confuse
+for a moment the distinctions of good and evil. The powers of right and
+wrong are clearly marshaled, and the triumph of evil leads to anguish as
+well as to ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's transforming and vitalizing use of both the suggestions of
+Holinshed and the established conventions of tragedy in order to suit this
+changed purpose is manifest at every turn, but nowhere so transcendently as
+in his treatment of the supernatural. The ghost that interrupts the banquet
+is no shrieking revenger, hardly more than a hallucination of the murderer.
+The invisibility of the ghost to all but the one whom he would frighten or
+admonish has other examples in the drama, but by 1605 most of the
+playwrights made their ghosts either melodramatically horrible or vulgarly
+familiar. In "Macbeth" Shakespeare not only etherealizes the ghost as in
+"Julius C&aelig;sar" and "Hamlet," but makes him a part of the very mood and
+temper of the murderer. And similarly, the witches, drawn from Holinshed's
+hints, represent a supernatural interference very different from that of
+the furies, devils, or sorcerers usual in the theatre. Some of their stage
+effects are archaic enough, as the shows of the head, the bloody child, and
+the monarchs; some, like their vanishing in air, may have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> been novel on
+the stage of the Globe; certainly they were all intended to surpass in mere
+theatrical novelty and effectiveness any of the supernatural or magical
+creatures of the contemporary drama. Delighting the groundlings and
+appealing to the current interest in witchcraft, they are none the less
+essential to the drama, inwrapt in the conception of character. The foul
+hags of superstition, they seem also to have the attributes of the
+classical Fates. Novel and effective on the stage, they are the supervisors
+of Macbeth's destiny. They lay bare the path to his crimes, yet they seem
+to obey rather than to govern his inclinations. The embodiments of the
+desires hid in his bosom, they become, like the dagger in the air and the
+ghost of Banquo, the symptoms of his soul's disease.</p>
+
+<p>The disease of the soul is the theme, and the attention is centred upon
+crime and its accompaniments, as in many contemporary plays, but with less
+relief than in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. While the range of
+crime is confined, lust for instance never appearing as a motive, there is
+an unrelieved concentration on the evil course of ambition. The virtuous
+and noble have only minor parts. Lady Macbeth is an instigator and
+accomplice in crime. For the first time since Shakespeare's early plays,
+there is no idealized woman. The wickedness of Iago and the wolfish sisters
+was relieved by the lovableness of Desdemona and Cordelia, unavailing for
+the time but unforgettable in the sympathies of the reader. The eternal
+stars never glimmer through the blackness that broods over Macbeth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Because of this concentration on one process of evil and the absence of any
+idealization of goodness, the play has a less intense appeal to our
+sympathies than the three preceding tragedies. Again, because of its
+concern with historical and political results, it removes itself from
+immediate relationship to common experience. In these respects it links
+itself with the two Roman historical tragedies that followed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus," like "Julius C&aelig;sar," are dramas of
+great historical characters already splendidly described in Plutarch. They
+are consequently far more limited by their sources than are the other
+tragedies. Shakespeare was circumscribed by the main historical facts of
+persons and events, and he was writing as the translator and interpreter of
+Plutarch; yet his conception and methods remained the same as in "Hamlet"
+or "Macbeth." An idealization of the tragic struggle of the protagonist is
+environed by a wealth of incidents and persons, and accomplished by a
+gathering and transformation of the methods and matters of current tragedy.
+The world of antiquity is not faithfully reproduced, but it is made alive
+and akin to our daily experience in the same fashion as are the Elsinore of
+Polonius and the grave-diggers, and the Britain of Osric and Kent. And the
+tragic conflicts that involve the great persons, if confused in the
+spectacles and actions of this varied stage, are the accompaniments of
+momentous national crises, themselves of hardly less imaginative appeal
+than the spiritual struggles which they parallel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> The mental battles of
+Macbeth and Lear are reflected and magnified by the incantations of the
+weird sisters and the turmoil of the elements; those of Coriolanus and
+Antony by the battle of the powerful and the oppressed and by the throes of
+a dying civilization.</p>
+
+<p>In "Antony and Cleopatra," the subject of many Renaissance tragedies,
+Shakespeare chose for a theme an ignoble infatuation that leads counter to
+duty and on to destruction. The difficulties of the historical material led
+to a remarkable reversion in dramatic structure to the methods of the early
+chronicle plays, innumerable and loosely connected scenes, constant
+shifting of place, prolonged time, and an absence of tragic unity. The
+problem of a confused and intricate action, voluntarily imposed in "Lear,"
+is here forced upon the dramatist who will combine the wars of the
+triumvirs, the conflict of East and West, and the story of an enchantress
+and her victim. The tragic course of the conflict between infatuation and
+ambition is incumbered by historical details and stage spectacles, but in
+style and characterization few plays more greatly reveal Shakespeare's
+genius. In no play is the idealization of character more magnificent; no
+other dramatist has made Antony in the lures of a strumpet still
+representative of what is illustrious and magnanimous in mankind, no other
+has made a woman with the manners and heart of a strumpet the rightful
+empress of the imagination. The interest in the play is less centred than
+in the other tragedies. It is divided between the spectacle of historical
+events<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> and the conflict of motives; it lies as much in the persons as
+vitalizations of history as in their fate as human beings. But this is the
+triumph of historical tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. Its scenic
+presentation makes alive the events and persons, and through a grandiose
+panorama interprets the passions that ravished both empires and the souls
+of their possessors.</p>
+
+<p>The human drama in "Coriolanus" is involved not only in historical
+circumstances, but also in the eternal conflict between the upper and the
+lower classes, the incurable disease of the body politic. While their pride
+in class, their blindness to the rights of others, and their failure in
+patriotism are made apparent, the patricians are treated as the
+representatives of righteousness and nobility. The plebeians, on the
+contrary, are depicted without appreciation of their sufferings or rights,
+as ignorant, imbecile, and the dupes of tricky demagogues. Contempt for the
+mob was a common sentiment in Renaissance literature, and the people as a
+factor in history held little place in the thoughts of the sixteenth
+century or in the historical drama. But here and in "Julius C&aelig;sar"
+Shakespeare treats them with far less consideration than does Fletcher or
+Massinger, with a contempt, indeed, that can hardly have flattered his
+audiences and that has often been taken as indicative of strong personal
+feeling. Shakespeare must have foreseen at least some of the political
+lessons which would be derived from the play, but one may easily exaggerate
+its importance as an exposition of his political theory. He was following
+Plutarch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> closely, with an eye for interesting theatrical scenes as in
+"Antony and Cleopatra," but with less than his usual inspiration. The lack
+of individuality in the persons, a certain typicality in the
+characterization, and the heaviness and complexity of the style may have
+been caused less by an intrusion of political theory than by a lapsing of
+that splendid power of characterization so long maintained. Moreover, the
+political partisanship is in part a dramatic necessity, almost compelled by
+Shakespeare's conception of tragedy and his dramatic method. Coriolanus
+must be given resplendent virtues. The populace as a foil and contrast must
+be made contemptible and the ready tool of vice. Pride, the fatal defect of
+the hero, must be exposed as was the sensuality of Antony, but it must be
+made the flaw of an Achilles. The r&ocirc;le of villain is left for the
+demagogues, and that of the witless accomplice for the people. Again, here,
+as in all his histories, Shakespeare is blind to the importance of the
+people, because for him, as for his contemporaries, the dramatization of
+history was the dramatization of its great personages, and their passions,
+vices, and ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of power discernible in "Coriolanus" is conspicuous in "Timon."
+Its corrupt text and unfinished condition and the certainty that only part
+of the play is Shakespeare's render uncertain its importance among the
+tragedies. Here, however, as in "Coriolanus," though the interest in the
+causes that make man's misery is still keen, the lack of inspiration
+results in an exaggerated type for a protagonist and in an unconvincing
+exposition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> of human baseness. If Coriolanus's politics were Shakespeare's,
+certainly Timon's misanthropy was not.</p>
+
+<p>With these themes Shakespeare's interest in tragedy exhausted itself.
+Possibly influenced by the success of Beaumont and Fletcher's early
+romantic plays, he attempted in "Cymbeline," and perfected in "A Winter's
+Tale" and "The Tempest," a type of play combining tragic and idyllic
+elements, full of romantic variety of incident, and resulting in surprising
+and happy <i>d&eacute;nouements</i>. The possibilities for tragedy are there; jealousy,
+villany, and intrigue abound; even death is introduced. But the main
+actions are not of suffering and ruin; love and forgiveness heal all ills;
+and the end is reconciliation and marriage. These romantic tragicomedies
+are not only departures from the established tragic forms, but from any
+consideration of tragic themes and problems comparable in seriousness or
+intensity with that of the plays which we have just discussed.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Ward, Fleay, and Schelling continue to be the best general guides.
+Important critical discussions of Shakespeare's tragedies by Professors A.
+C. Bradley, Lounsbury, and Baker were noted in the Bibliographical Note to
+chapter i. Other recent books of special interest are: <i>Shakespeare</i>,
+Walter Raleigh (1907, English Men of Letters Series); <i>William Shakespere</i>,
+Barrett Wendell (1894); <i>Shakespeare and his Predecessors</i>, F. S. Boas
+(1896). For a general surrey of the course of Shakespearean criticism, see
+Ward, vol. i, chap. iv; or Lounsbury, <i>Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist</i>,
+and <i>Shakespeare and Voltaire</i>; or the bibliographical lists in the various
+volumes of Furness's Variorum edition. This edition, now in progress, and
+Malone's Variorum edition of 1821,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> are the most valuable in furnishing
+information. Nearly all recent editions of Shakespeare supply fairly
+adequate information in regard to critical conclusions on matters of date,
+sources, and text. Probably the most serviceable bibliography of
+Shakespearean editions and criticism up to 1870, and to a considerable
+extent for the Elizabethan drama, is to be found in the <i>Catalogue of the
+Barton Collection</i> of the Boston Public Library (1888), accessible in most
+large libraries in this country. A complete Shakespearean bibliography
+since 1865 is supplied by the bibliographies published in the <i>Jahrbuch der
+Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft</i>. These also comprise nearly all
+monographs of importance dealing with the drama from 1557 to 1642.</p>
+
+<p>The present chapter borrows from my article on Hamlet and the Revenge Plays
+(<i>Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn.</i> 1902), referred to in chap. iv. E. E. Stoll's
+<i>John Webster</i> (Cambridge, Mass., 1905) gives a further discussion of the
+Revenge Plays, and especially of Marston. Bullen's edition of Marston is
+the standard. The editions of Heywood's Works (1874) and of Chapman's
+(1873-75) attempt no scholarly discussion. F. S. Boas's edition of the two
+Bussy D'Ambois plays in the <i>Belles-Lettres Series</i> (Boston, 1905) has a
+valuable introduction. Gifford's edition of Jonson (1816) is unfortunately
+not yet superseded. The careful editions of various of his plays in the
+<i>Yale Studies in English</i> as yet include none of his tragedies. <i>Ben
+Jonson, l'homme et l'&oelig;uvre</i> Paris, 1907, by Maurice Castelain is very
+elaborate, and contains a full bibliography with a preliminary descriptive
+note of editions. A new edition of Jonson edited by C. H. Herford and P.
+Simpson is announced.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Mr. Elmer Stoll's argument against this early date does not
+seem to me convincing. See the Appendix to his <i>John Webster</i>, Cambridge,
+1904.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> in some form was probably acted in
+1602. The editors of the Folio apparently first intended to class it with
+the tragedies, but they changed their minds while the book was printing and
+placed <i>Troilus</i> without pagination between the histories and tragedies.
+The preface to one of the quartos of 1609 classes it with the comedies, and
+the prologue inclines that way. For an interesting though not always
+convincing discussion of the many difficulties offered by the play, the
+reader is referred to Mr. R. A. Small's <i>The Stage Quarrel between Ben
+Jonson and The So-called Poetasters</i> (1899), pp. 139-170. The play offers
+problems of importance in Shakespearean criticism, but in a history of
+tragedy it seems negligible. The concluding scenes (v, 7-10) are clearly
+not by Shakespeare, and the Prologue and v, 4-6 are doubtful.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> There is in fact a reference in Kempe's <i>Nine Days Wonder</i>
+(1600) to the story, which may possibly indicate an earlier play.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>SHAKESPEARE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Our study has perhaps already made it evident that Shakespeare's tragedies
+were in many ways the product of a rapid and complex evolution. At the same
+time it is clear that, until Shakespeare, Elizabethan tragedy with all its
+genius and innovations had failed to attain finality of art, or to mark out
+any sure pathway thither. It was still in its formative period when he
+created out of it something new and immortal, and its development continued
+after his death mainly in response to forces not of his initiating. For the
+past two centuries, to a constantly increasing body of spectators and
+readers, his tragedies have had a life entirely unconnected with the works
+of his contemporaries, an existence that has dominated our theatres and our
+conceptions of tragedy, and become a part of the daily living and the
+permanent ideals of the race. It is therefore necessary to separate his
+plays from the mass of tragedies, and to review them for a moment as the
+creations of a genius that was the chief creator as well as the glory of
+English tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Two points of view that have been largely maintained in nineteenth century
+criticism of Shakespeare may,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> however, be neglected in our summary. His
+plays have been viewed as the reflection of his personal experiences and
+emotions; and his return to tragic themes about 1600 and his occupation
+with them for the next eight years have been connected with a supposed
+period of spiritual depression in his own life. Again, the generalization
+of experience and the abundant wisdom of his tragedies have been viewed as
+the result of a conscious and rather systematic philosophy of life. Much
+might be said for these attitudes of criticism. Any attempt to describe the
+plays in terms of our emotions as readers is likely to result in the
+attribution of those emotions to the author, an interesting process of
+analogy and one hardly to be disproved. Any attempt to survey his work as a
+whole and to relate its parts is likely to result in the systemization of
+his message and philosophy. But for students of the growth of his dramatic
+art under the peculiar conditions of the reigns of Elizabeth and James,
+these nineteenth century points of view involve dangerous critical
+anachronisms. Shakespeare does not seem to have been a lyric Shelley or
+Byron, making poetry out of his changing moods, or a Tennyson or Browning
+generalizing life in the persons of his men and women. There seems no
+reason for separating him from his companion poets and playwrights. Like
+them he was in the first place telling a story for the stage; like them he
+found in these plays opportunity for the expression of his knowledge of
+human motives in the guise of beautiful verse; and like them, when he chose
+tragic themes, he became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> absorbed in the presentation of the tragic facts
+and problems of life. Our attempt to determine his relations to them is not
+to discover indebtedness large or minute, but rather by the safest approach
+to arrive at a right appreciation of his genius and its transcendent
+contribution to tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>For the purpose of our survey we may have the four great tragedies chiefly
+in mind. The early tragedies are manifestly the products of an experimental
+period and the precursors of the latter plays; and the three Roman
+histories have a subordinate and contributory rather than an essential and
+pre&euml;minent part in his achievement in tragedy. Whatever can be said of the
+four great tragedies applies in its essentials to all.</p>
+
+<p>All these plays taken together illustrate the extraordinary amalgamation of
+the medieval and classical inheritances that English tragedy had received
+as a birthright. No play escapes from its narrative sources, and some are
+bound closely by them; yet the choice of sources often indicates the
+influence of the Senecan formula, sensational externals giving opportunity
+for an introspective analysis of emotional crises, notably in the stories
+of crime, revenge, and retribution. Their enormous variety of incident,
+their mingling of the comic and the tragic, their admission of physical
+horrors, deaths, and spectacles mark the survival of the medieval
+tradition, while the aphoristic and heightened style, the ghosts and the
+soliloquies are derivatives from Seneca. The freedom of the medieval stage
+to the presentation of all sorts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> of matters accounts in part for their
+splendid comprehensiveness, while classical theory is partly responsible
+for their restriction to momentous events and supernormal persons. Their
+structure remains epic and popular, but progress toward dramatic unity
+seems conditioned by the Senecan five-act scheme. The medieval idea of the
+pagan deity Fortune is preserved; and conceptions of good and evil, like
+those of the morality, stand side by side with classical conceptions of the
+struggle between the individual and fate. The union of these diverse
+elements has become too close for disentanglement. "Macbeth," based upon
+Holinshed's chronicle, comes nearest in conception and treatment to
+classical tragedy; "Antony and Cleopatra" in structure and method reverts
+the nearest to medieval models.</p>
+
+<p>More distinct contemporary influences reappear similarly amalgamated and
+transformed. In "Hamlet" we have a play closely related to those of a
+particular species; but in the other plays of Shakespeare's maturity
+nothing like close relationship can be found to the great examples of
+Marlowe, to the peculiar type introduced by Kyd and developed by Marston,
+or to the contemporary efforts of Chapman and Jonson. Any one play
+doubtless responded to a tangle of influences not now to be separated.
+Current popular plays, practices on the stage, the personalities of the
+actors, Shakespeare's own preceding plays, contemporary non-dramatic
+literature, current events such as the Essex rebellion or the Gunpowder
+Plot, and hosts of other influences were at work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> directing the development
+of an old story into a tragedy. Taking the plays as a body, some of the
+more important of these limiting and directing influences still remain
+discernible in the transformed result.</p>
+
+<p>All the tragedies but "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet," only partial
+exceptions, relate the falls of princes and the revolutions of kingdoms.
+These stories of princes are of the same kind as in other Elizabethan
+tragedy. In a setting of court and camp they place sensational crimes, and
+trace the accompaniments and consequences. Their themes are revenge,
+madness, tyranny, conspiracy, lust, adultery, and jealousy. They abound in
+villany, intrigue, and slaughter. They avoid Senecan atrocities and the
+abnormal phases of lust; but the tearing out of Gloster's eyes recalls the
+horrors of the early plays; while revenge, conspiracy, and villany are as
+prominent as in the contemporary tragedies of Marston, Jonson, and Chapman.
+Three of the stories include ghosts, while in "Macbeth" the weird sisters
+offer an opportunity for a most original treatment of the supernatural.
+Comedy is always combined with tragedy, and the medieval tradition and the
+popular taste for an emotional contrast receive artistic vindication in the
+grotesqueness of "Hamlet" and "Lear." Each plot, like those of Marlowe's
+plays, centres about a great personality and illustrates a temperament
+dominated by passion. It traces the course of folly, mistake, or sin to the
+wages of death as in "Lear," "Othello," and "Antony and Cleopatra"; or it
+begins with a murder and records its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> progeny of crime and death as in
+"Julius C&aelig;sar," "Hamlet," and "Macbeth."</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's choice of stories was clearly determined by the Elizabethan
+conception of tragedy and by the current tastes of the theatre. And by
+these stories his imagination was directed and limited. However absorbed he
+became in character or ethics, he never neglected the plot or the theatre.
+Consequently the great revelation of tragic fact which he gave to posterity
+was limited by these stories of crime and hampered by their improbabilities
+and stage effects. The tragedy of ambition is limited to the story of a
+murderer who sees a ghost; and the tragedy of ingratitude is joined to a
+relation of senile folly, crime, and the humors of Tom of Bedlam. Even his
+interpretation of human motives suffers, for the bloodthirstiness of Hamlet
+and the perverse reticence of Cordelia belong to the old plots as much as
+to the characters. Yet Shakespeare's greatness of mind no less than his
+responsiveness to contemporary taste appears in his very choice of
+material. Whether he took the oft-told tragedies of C&aelig;sar, Brutus, Antony
+and Cleopatra, or the old plays of Hamlet and Lear, or the neglected themes
+of Othello and Macbeth, he chose always stories of great dramatic interest
+and those that presented the range and vicissitudes of human passion. His
+attraction for each story was evidently in the emotional conflict that made
+each protagonist a great acting part and also a fascinating study of human
+motive.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, in his general treatment of this material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> there is a uniformity
+that gives some hint of a Shakespearean definition of tragedy. In each play
+a man of great attainments is presented as involved in a moral conflict
+that results in his death. This conflict is two-fold, internal between
+opposing desires, and external against some persons of the counter-actions.
+Conflicting forces contend for mastery in the hero's breast, and from their
+confusion he drives on to action that is disastrous. The unusual powers,
+the best potentialities, of his nature are opposed and thwarted by the
+forces of chance and circumstance beyond his control; by the force of evil,
+whether in his own breast or represented by the crime and intrigue of
+others; and still further, by a defect or deficiency in his own
+personality. The force of chance, equivalent to the Greek Fate, plays a
+part in all tragic story and drama; the power of evil without or within was
+the counter-force in medieval drama, and was the theme most powerfully
+dwelt upon by Shakespeare's immediate contemporaries. The fateful power of
+incompatibility of temperament with conditions of life seems to have been
+Shakespeare's own conception.</p>
+
+<p>In Sophocles, arrogance and audacity are accounted evil; in Marlowe and
+Chapman, it is intensity of desire that drives to disaster; but in
+Shakespeare the melancholy and reflective temper of Hamlet and the generous
+and credulous magnanimity of Othello are the allies of untoward
+circumstance and designing villany in bringing suffering to the good and
+failure to the potent. The greatness of Shakespeare's conception, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+results from the massing of all these combatants against the hero. The
+conflict thus gains in the comprehensiveness of its presentation of life;
+and human nature in the face of such odds becomes magnificent even in
+failure. Hero wars with villain; human intrepidity and wisdom with chance
+and destiny; conscience with sin; greatness of purpose with crippling
+defects of temperament.</p>
+
+<p>Such a conception of tragedy involves a recognition of the blindness of
+chance that cannot be squared with any theory of poetic justice or
+theological view of the rewards due to virtue. But it also involves a
+recognition of moral law that results in the punishment of its violators.
+The villains never escape as they do in comedy. The wages of sin are always
+death, though the reward of virtue is not happiness. The vastness of evil
+in the world, its malignant influence, its temporary triumphs are conceived
+in a manner not different from that of contemporary thought. The doctrines
+of total depravity and of moral responsibility go side by side as in
+medieval drama, theology, and psychology. In the depiction of the waste of
+effort, the expense of spirit, the crippling of greatness by weakness, the
+ineffectually of virtue, Shakespeare gave a far more comprehensive and a
+far more penetrating representation of tragic fact than the world had yet
+known, but without professing any solution of its mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>Such a conception gives unity to the action of each play, but not always a
+unity that governs details of structure. The structure of a tragedy cannot
+be described<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> in terms of a system, for the dramatic presentation of each
+play differs from the others and conforms to the story it relates. There
+are many survivals of the early epic lawlessness, as in "Antony and
+Cleopatra" and "Lear"; and in no play is the main action kept entirely free
+from intruding incongruities. Neither act nor scene receives much regard as
+an integral unit of structure. The most noticeable structural division is
+due to an event of extraordinary importance reached somewhere in the middle
+of the play. This point, to which the terms climax or crisis are sometimes
+applicable, brings to an end one important development of the action, and
+thus divides the play into two parts. C&aelig;sar's murder, Duncan's murder,
+Lear's madness complete one course of tragic incident and introduce us to
+another.</p>
+
+<p>The effectiveness of Shakespeare's construction, however, was not due to a
+formulation of system or rule but to his intuition and experience. His
+sense of what parts of a narrative should be acted and what parts not, had
+developed beyond that of most of his contemporaries. In comparison with his
+own earlier plays the tragedies contain little, whether comic, spectacular,
+or essential to the main tragic action, which had not a manifest value on
+the stage. His ability to create great dramatic situations was also at its
+height, and the great scenes are prepared for and emphasized by what
+precedes, so that they gain all the effect possible from the dramatic
+construction. Thus, the appearance of the ghost, the play within the play,
+the funeral of Ophelia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> and the final slaughter are given a value in the
+mere narration of the story for which there is no parallel in the many
+other treatments of similar stories. Of far more importance is his use of
+the developments of character as the determining factors of the progress of
+the dramatic narrative. The rapidity with which the first two acts of
+"Macbeth" hurry us to the murder of Duncan, the tremendous climactic
+pressure of the first three acts of "Lear," are extraordinary examples of
+his power to compel incidents to reveal the course of motive convincingly.
+In each play the order of incidents becomes a logical development from the
+characters of the actors; each deed, thought, or speech has its sequence.
+There are no tricks, no surprises, no sudden conversions of character. Once
+admit the premises, a person of a certain temperament, facing a certain
+situation, and subject to a certain accident, mistake, or folly, and we
+cannot escape the conclusion. The dramatic necessities of character are
+never violated. From the clear exposition of the first scene, the progress
+is inevitable to the end.</p>
+
+<p>The persons of the plays spring from the old stories, and by these the
+study of their motives is in many ways limited. It is limited again by the
+types and conditions of stage-land. The bloody tyrant, the hesitating
+avenger, the Machiavellian villain come hence. The acts which they commit,
+their moods, motives, their very language depend in part on the
+representatives of these types that had long been familiar to the audiences
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> theatres. Yet the host of individual personalities are the result
+of a most profound and fresh observation of an almost boundless range of
+life. That interest in characterization which distinguishes the early drama
+and finds its main illustration in Shakespeare's own practice in the
+preceding decade here comes to its culmination. Not only the main actor,
+but the most conventional part, the most absurd business, the merest
+supernumerary, receives its touch of truth. And something more than truth
+to life or knowledge of motive is manifest. The great characters are cast
+in large moulds. They represent the courses of the master passions.
+Smallness of horizon, triviality of design, feebleness of mind or body are
+absent. Momentous crises that try men's souls are the real subjects of the
+tragedies. The accidents of dress, or manner, or time, or race, the
+incidents of action, are forgotten as revenge, jealousy, irresolution, and
+lust seize their splendid prey. The greatness of human nature, the power of
+the human will, the responsibility of the individual remain. There is no
+belittling of reason even when it breaks under the crash of the storm. Iago
+is no mere stage villain, though he has all the characteristics of the
+type; nor is he merely a transcript from life, though he has all the
+variety and plausibility of a human being. He is the embodiment of our
+countless evil impulses, the incarnation of depravity. So with all the
+others. They are human in their truth; they are magnificent idealizations
+in the range and value of their manifold suggestiveness; they leave the
+stage to become the habitants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> of our imaginations, contributing to our
+reflections their embodiments of good and evil, folly and reason,
+resolution and doubt.</p>
+
+<p>They speak a language all their own, though with resemblances to their
+kinsmen in the other Elizabethan tragedies. The blank verse, far more
+flexible than in the early plays, presents a triumphant union of the
+conflicting tendencies toward decoration and naturalness observed in the
+other dramatists; and it is freely mingled with hardly less masterly prose.
+Marvelous in comparison with preceding verse is its extreme condensation in
+spite of its opulence of figures and aphorisms. Although crowded with
+thought and image, it is nevertheless, in its response to the varying
+persons and moods, superbly dramatic. A critic who is both a poet and a
+philosopher<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> objects to Macbeth's dagger "unmannerly breech'd with gore"
+as violent and crude in comparison with the historical reminiscences with
+which Homer might have made Achilles describe the weapon. But recall the
+scene. Macbeth has murdered the grooms and rushes from the chamber to
+confront the fearful suspicions of Duncan's sons and friends. Surely, his
+false and frenzied excuses must be over-fanciful, violent, and crude.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">"Here lay Duncan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His silver skin laced with his golden blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unmannerly breech'd with gore."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Such a style, however, does not readily give up opportunities for aphorism
+or beauty for the sake of absolute truth to situation or character. Still
+less does it mimic actual speech. It does give a potency to the stories,
+otherwise hardly conceivable; and it adds to truth of character the
+allurement of music and picture, and the idealization of a magnified
+suggestiveness. A father has reason to curse his daughter&mdash;gesture and
+incoherent words might correctly represent life; a plain sentence of
+Ibsen's might convey the tragedy of the situation&mdash;but it is the
+extravagant and terrible imprecation of Lear that has for centuries made
+men's imaginations shudder. Style such as this the drama will never
+recover. We shall sooner find another Shakespeare to blend its diverse
+elements than a host of dramatists, like the Elizabethans, fascinated by a
+newly discovered world of poetry and daringly adventurous in search of
+melody of verse, wealth of aphorism, luxury of fantasy, and truth to
+character.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of Shakespeare's tragedies on spectator or reader is so complex
+as to defy analysis. Incidental wisdom, effective scene, immortal story all
+contribute; but the main sources of their abiding impressiveness have
+surely been the characterization and the poetic style. If we must continue
+to seek for a katharsis, do not they supply it? The great tragedies are
+full of disaster, wrong, and suffering. The world they reveal is not the
+abode of happiness, but of darkness and remorse. Though the bad are
+punished, the good are not rewarded. Sweetness and innocence suffer and
+perish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> along with foulness and malevolence. The noblest spirits are
+broken; the wages of mortal effort are failure. There are many "breaches in
+nature for ruin's wasteful entrance." Nor does the life hereafter offer a
+promise of compensation. Death ends all,&mdash;that is the great catastrophe
+toward which human endeavor precipitates itself. This is not Shakespeare's
+view of life, but it is his view of the tragedy of life, and its effect
+upon us is gloomy, overpowering, heartrending. But everywhere this tragedy
+of life is revealed in verse infinitely appealing to intellectual analysis
+and to imaginative exhilaration. Everywhere there are men and women, not
+dead but living, representative of much that is most intensely and
+universally interesting in life, and the permanent guests of our
+reflection. The old ethical adage that it does not so much matter what men
+do as what they are has a particular truth when applied to the people of
+Shakespeare. That they do this or that, love, murder, die, is in the story;
+what they are remains the possession of humanity. Our horror at the
+successful villany of Iago finds a certain relief in the intellectual
+pleasure and admiration at the creator's achievement; it accomplishes a
+certain purification in its application to the Iago in ourselves. Still
+more do the persons who most excite our sympathy survive the intolerable
+emotions that first greet their misfortunes. When we read "Othello" we feel
+an overwhelming pity, a fierce resentment, but we would not erase from our
+possession the memory of Desdemona and her Moor. The misery and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> wrong and
+death go to make up in our reflection the beings whom we love and cherish.
+It is Lear's fivefold "never" that completes for us the loveliness of
+Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>A comparison of the tragedies with the masterpieces of other national
+dramas might disclose their faults but would not diminish their glories.
+Faults in plenty there surely are, whether judgment be taken of classicists
+or realists, or of the best standards of the Elizabethans. There are many
+quibbles or fantasies of diction that might be criticised, many bits of
+dialogue or stage spectacle that might be omitted without detracting from
+the total impressiveness. How many minor inconsistencies of plot or
+characterization might be corrected. How complicated and bewildering is
+"Hamlet" in comparison with the simpler harmony of "Antigone." How involved
+and cumbrous, and how undignified in its appeal to the emotions, is much of
+"Antony and Cleopatra" in comparison with "Ph&egrave;dre." How impossible and
+fantastic is much of "Lear" in comparison with "Ghosts." But Shakespeare's
+defects and deficiencies belong to his time and to his methods. They are
+inseparable, indeed, from the very means on which depend his consummate
+results. Not in response to literary tradition, but to the public theatre;
+not by a refined but by a daring art; not by simplicity and unity, but by
+complexity and opulence of effect; not by devotion to creed or science or
+fact, but by the idealization and sublimation of man's emotional nature,
+did Shakespeare give to his dramas their imperishable wealth of life.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> George Santayana, <i>Reason in Art</i>, p. 113.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LATER ELIZABETHANS<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></h3>
+
+
+<p>Shakespeare's great tragedies did not create a new epoch in the development
+of the drama. In themes and general treatment they made no marked departure
+from the past. Their translation of story and circumstance into the
+conflicts and processes of character was beyond the reach of imitation,
+and, indeed, not likely to gain full recognition from contemporaries. They
+were rather the consummation of the old than the heralds of a new era,
+though their influence on succeeding dramatists was wide and permeating,
+especially as time and publication brought a growing appreciation of their
+greatness as literature. Meanwhile, the old types of tragedy continued
+their sway, sometimes little touched by Shakespeare's influence. English
+history plays were rare; Roman history plays frequent; Senecan closet
+dramas continued; the Marlowean and Kydian traditions received further
+development. The revenge play, in particular, continued to be one of the
+most conspicuous types. Further, a most important innovating force appeared
+just at the close of Shakespeare's tragic period<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> in the heroic romances of
+Beaumont and Fletcher, which gained an immediate popularity and created new
+practices in both tragedy and tragicomedy.</p>
+
+<p>The times were changing. The improved social status of the theatre, the
+support of the court, the vogue of private theatres like Blackfriars, the
+increasing interest in the stage on the part of the lettered and
+fashionable classes, supplied more intelligent and critical audiences; but
+the increasing Puritanism separated the drama more and more from sympathy
+with the main public. The drama became less national, more critical, and
+less moral. The corrupt society of the reign of James I supplied little of
+that imaginative idealism which had found expression at the time of the
+Armada. It offered the serious drama either objects for satire and cynicism
+or sophisticated and courtly ideals of conduct. In consequence, a more
+conscious art found itself less competent than in the early drama to depict
+greatness of mind, and resorted to the tracing of abnormal passion, the
+casuistical inquiry into moral problems, the exposure of evil, or to
+romance without moral intention.</p>
+
+<p>Yet dramatic enterprise continued unabated. The theatre continued to
+attract poetic ambition. Scholars, men of letters, gentlemen of rank turned
+to the popular stage. There was as yet no suspicion of decadence. Rather
+the past seemed to offer, through a recognition of its merits and a pruning
+of its faults, encouragement for a greater achievement in the future. In
+spite of critical realization of the absurdities of the early drama, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+of the necessity for a better regulated art, the integrity of the national
+tradition was recognized and maintained. In 1612, in a preface to his
+"White Devil," Webster, after explaining that he had departed from the
+classical standards "willingly, and not ignorantly," proceeds to extol his
+contemporaries and masters:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: for mine
+owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of
+other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and
+haightened stile of Maister Chapman, the labor'd and
+understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse
+worthy composures of the both worthily excellent
+Maister Beamont &amp; Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without
+wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious
+industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, &amp; M. Heywood;
+wishing that what I write may be read by their light;
+protesting that, in the strength of mine owne
+judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest
+silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare
+(without flattery) fix that of Martiall:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;non morunt haec monumenta mori."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>After a time the greatness of the past masters proved rather an impediment
+than a stimulus. But in 1612 their work seemed to offer encouragement for
+even greater achievement in the immediate future.</p>
+
+<p>For the historian this period offers less difficulties than the preceding
+ones. After 1610 comparatively few plays of importance are non-extant, and
+few of the extant plays are anonymous. The bulk of the important plays was
+produced by a few dramatists, who dominated the theatres and whose careers
+determined the drama's development. After examining the revenge plays
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> about 1612 gave a further extension to that species, and the heroic
+romances of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration, which were produced within
+a few years before that date, we may trace the succeeding developments of
+tragedy mainly in the work of Fletcher, Massinger, Middleton, Ford, and
+Shirley.</p>
+
+<p>The main line of the development of the revenge tragedy is represented by
+Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," the anonymous "Second Maiden's Tragedy,"
+and Webster's "White Devil" and "Duchess of Malfi." The four plays may be
+said to constitute a new species whose differences from the old type seem
+clearly unconnected with Shakespeare's "Hamlet" but directly traceable to
+Marston's plays, especially his "Malcontent."</p>
+
+<p>Revenge is no longer the main motive but is a subsidiary element in
+complicated stories of revolting lust and depravity. Tragedy has become the
+representation of vice and sin, with a proneness for their foulest
+entanglements. In one play a brother plays the part of pandar to his
+sister; in another a father to his daughter; and in a third a mother to her
+daughter. Nor is revenge, even in its subordinate position, the simple
+blood-for-blood requital that it is in Kyd. It may be for various causes
+beside murder; it is born of malice rather than duty; it may share in the
+moral turpitude of the rest of the action. The ghost no longer directs the
+course of revenge, and may disappear entirely. In "The Revenger's Tragedy"
+the skull of the betrothed, as the skeleton in "Hoffman," takes the place
+of the apparition; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> in other plays the duties of the ghost are
+minimized or farmed out among various supernatural agents, two female
+ghosts appearing. Hesitation on the part of the avenger does not appear.
+Indeed, his entire character has changed. He may be a villain, as in
+"Hoffman," or the villain's accomplice, or one of Marston's "malcontents,"
+or a combination of these parts. The other leading elements in the Kydian
+type are preserved. Insanity of various forms, real and pretended, is
+prominent. Intrigue of a complicated kind abounds, but is often dependent,
+after the fashion of current comedy, largely on improbable disguises.
+Deaths are as frequent as ever and more horrible. Much of the old stage
+effect reappears, as in the masques, funerals, ghosts, and exhibition of
+dead bodies, but there is a great increase in the number and ingenuity of
+melodramatic sensations. Each play is a chamber of horrors. In one, a wife
+dies from kissing the poisoned portrait of her husband; in another, the
+lustful king sucks poison from the jaw of a skull; and in a third, from the
+painted lips of a corpse. Comets blaze, there are many portents, the time
+is ever midnight, the scene the graveyard, the air smells of corruption,
+skulls and corpses are the <i>dramatis personae</i>. Every means seems to be
+employed to make theatrically effective the horrors of death and decay. And
+once, at least, these means are used with tremendous power in the riot of
+madness, torture, and corruption that preludes the death of the Duchess of
+Malfi.</p>
+
+<p>All or nearly all of the active characters are black with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> sin. The
+extraordinary exploitation of villany in Elizabethan tragedy here reaches
+its culmination. The arch-villain as ruthlessly devoted to crime as
+Hoffman, the accomplice assiduous in revolting baseness, the villain
+touched by remorse, the malcontent reviling human life,&mdash;all these
+appear&mdash;sometimes all combined in one person&mdash;and play their parts along
+with unshrinking prostitutes and lustful monarchs. The study of villany,
+however, has gained intensity and plausibility over the earlier plays. If
+none of the villains take to themselves much individuality, most of them
+have moments of dramatic impressiveness, and they are intended to be
+realistic. They are drawn with an accumulation of detail, a fondness for
+probing into depravity, with a sense of the dramatic value of devilry, and
+with a bitterness and cynicism that often seem sincere and searching. It is
+this cynicism which gives character to the reflective elements of these
+plays. The Kydian soliloquy on fate has given way to the prevailing
+satirical and bitter tone that finds its favorite themes in the sensuality
+of women and the hypocrisy and greed of courts, and its favorite means of
+expression in the connotation of the obscene and bestial.</p>
+
+<p>The qualities attributed to these four plays recall "Hoffman" and "The
+Atheist's Tragedy," and still more Marston's plays, and the satirical
+comedy of the preceding decade as well as the tragedy. Though the four
+plays are thus classed together, their differences are marked. "The Second
+Maiden's Tragedy" manifests<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> more than the others the influence of Beaumont
+and Fletcher. Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," far superior to his earlier
+"Atheist's Tragedy," surpasses Marston and reveals brilliant dramatic
+talent. Full of thrills and unspeakable juxtapositions, it is governed by a
+sheer delight in horror and unrelieved by any moral standard. Webster, on
+the contrary, made his horrors impressive in both poetry and moral.
+Dependent at every step on the work of predecessors, he succeeded as did no
+other poet except Shakespeare in transforming the revenge play into a work
+of art and truth. Chapman was, perhaps, his chief model, but the processes
+of his transforming art, though not its results, bear resemblances to
+Shakespeare's. He was possessed by an interest in the effects of crime upon
+character, and had the power to realize these momentarily with amazing
+truth. Hence his great portraits of Vittoria, the Cardinal, and the
+Duchess, and the ingeniously and vividly though not very consistently drawn
+figure of Bosola. As Shakespeare in "Macbeth" and "Lear," fascinated by the
+wickedness of the world, reveled in images of blackness, corruption, and
+despair, so Webster, more laboriously and inquisitively, was ever seeking
+fantastic expression for the old truth that all is vanity. In his
+masterpiece, "The Duchess of Malfi," and in a lesser degree in "The White
+Devil," his recognition of moral values again recalls Shakespeare. We are
+moved by the pitifulness of the suffering as well as by the horror of the
+evil. There is no confusion of good and bad; and if the prevailing view<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of
+life is cynical, it is not unrelieved by respect for fortitude and
+conscience. The tragedy of revenge reached a new altitude in this play,
+which, though poorly constructed, tells a story of criminal and horrible
+revenge with a vivid delineation of character, a pervading moral sense, and
+with flashes of speech that attain both poetic and dramatic sublimity.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>The collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher was finished by the time that
+Webster published his acknowledgment of their mastership. Gentlemen by
+birth and breeding, they began writing for the stage apparently as pupils
+of Jonson, entered into collaboration by 1607, and in the next five years,
+by the time that Beaumont was twenty-seven and Fletcher thirty-three,
+produced some ten plays that gained them a popularity surpassing that of
+Shakespeare's later years, and extending well through the Restoration. So
+far as tragedy is concerned, the main result of their collaboration was the
+formation of a new species of heroic romances, some tragedies and some
+tragicomedies. Six plays serve to define the type, though other plays of
+the collaboration have resemblances to it and, after Beaumont's retirement,
+the type was continued in the work of Fletcher and others. These six plays,
+"Four Plays in One," "Thierry and Theodoret," "Cupid's Revenge,"
+"Philaster," "A King and No King," and "The Maid's Tragedy," probably owe
+more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> to Beaumont than to Fletcher. "The Maid's Tragedy" and the two
+tragicomedies, "Philaster" and "A King and No King," are the masterpieces,
+but the six plays resemble one another so closely that one analysis will
+answer for all.</p>
+
+<p>Beaumont and Fletcher did not, like most of their predecessors, turn to
+English or Roman history for their plots, and they preserved but few traces
+of the Marlowean tragedy with its central protagonist and dominating
+passion, or of the revenge type in any of its amplifications. Their plots,
+largely of their own invention, are highly ingenious and complicated. They
+deal with heroic actions in imaginary foreign realms. The conquests,
+usurpations, and passions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, but there
+are no battles or armies, and the action is usually confined to the rooms
+of the palace or a neighboring forest. Usually contrasting a story of gross
+sensual passion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of
+incidents, and aim at a constant but varied excitement. Love of one sort or
+another, honor also of many kinds, and friendship, which is somewhat more
+steadfast, are ever in conflict. We are given seats in an anteroom of the
+palace, and at once the flow of events engrosses us,&mdash;conspiracies,
+imprisonments, insurrections, wars, adultery, seduction, murder, the talk
+of courtiers, gossip of women, banquets of the monarch, and the laments of
+the love-lorn. Or, after a tumultuous hour, we may retire to the adjoining
+forest, where the lovers wander to forget their misfortunes, and by its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+fountains weave their laments into lyrical garlands. A few hours, and
+kingdoms have trembled in the balance; the heroine has been proved guilty
+and innocent again; and the lover has been ecstatic, frantic, jealous,
+cowardly, implacable, and forgiving, and finally wins or dies with his
+honor secure.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedies differ from those preceding in structure as well as in
+material. Their main purpose is theatrical effectiveness; their means of
+securing it the constant use of surprise. Beaumont and Fletcher did not
+follow their narrative sources closely; they invented their own stories or
+used old ones as the frame for their favorite situations and characters.
+The tragic, idyllic, and sensational matter is skillfully constructed into
+a number of theatrically telling situations which lead by a series of
+suspenses and surprises to very effective climaxes or catastrophes. All
+signs of the epic methods of construction found in the early drama have
+disappeared, and the interest in the action is maintained at fever heat. In
+"The Maid's Tragedy," the climax of the play comes at the end of the fourth
+act with the murder of the king by his mistress, Evadne, the wife of
+Amintor. But in the fifth act the main action absorbs the sub-plot and
+continues its course of thrills and surprises until the very end. In "A
+King and No King," the love of Arbaces for his supposed sister furnishes
+many entanglements, and it is not until the end of Act V that we know that
+the princess is not his sister, and the tragedy of incest is resolved into
+romance. There is no inevitableness in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> the action of these plays. Usually,
+until the last moment there is a chance for either a happy or an unhappy
+ending, and in every case the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> or catastrophe is elaborately
+planned and complicated.</p>
+
+<p>From the nature of their material and treatment there is little difference
+between the tragedies and tragicomedies. Tragicomedy as a species had up to
+this time hardly been recognized in the English drama, although there are
+sporadic instances of the use of the term and although romantic comedy
+usually offered tragic elements. Fletcher's definition (borrowed from
+Guarini) in the preface to "The Faithful Shepherdess," may be taken as
+sufficiently distinguishing the form from other species,&mdash;"A tragicomedy is
+not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants
+deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it,
+which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of
+familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so
+that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a
+comedy." The example of Beaumont and Fletcher, moreover, gave popularity
+and importance to this class of plays. Borrowing motives familiar in
+romantic narrative and the preceding drama, they yet created a departure
+from preceding romantic comedy, both in the constant emphasis which they
+place upon the contrast between the tragic and idyllic elements of their
+plots and in the especial attention they pay to surprising and complicated
+<i>d&eacute;nouements</i>. They aim not merely at a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> mixture of the sentimental and
+tragic but at involving every one in a tangle of disastrous complications,
+resolved only by a series of final surprises. Although only two of the six
+romances are tragicomedies, the imitators of Beaumont and Fletcher most
+frequently adopted the form, realizing apparently the theatrical value of
+keeping the spectators thrilled and excited until the end and then
+relieving their sympathetic suspense by a happy solution.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>dramatis personae</i> of the six plays belong to the impossible and
+romantic situations rather than to life, and are usually of certain
+types,&mdash;the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt
+outspoken soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden
+disguised as a page in order that she may serve the hero; an evil woman
+defiant in her crimes; and the poltroon, usually a comic personage. With
+the addition of a king, some gentlemen and ladies of the court, and a few
+persons from the lower ranks, the cast is complete. The various persons
+introduce one another in long descriptions; and, after the introductory
+speech, the character remains fixed, except as the shifting situations
+demand some unexpected revolution. There is no shading or subtlety in the
+characterization, little discrimination or individuality in the different
+representatives of the favorite types, who, however, are by no means
+wanting in originality. They do not reveal the depths or complexities of
+human nature, but they exhibit fresh and ingenious variations of the old
+types, audacious humor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> and abundant spirit, and the power of their
+creators to rise to a situation and to express dramatic emotion. Thus,
+their type of evil woman acquires tremendous force in the scenes where
+Evadne plays her part; and their heroines suffer, serve, weep, love,
+forgive, and die, in lines that somehow preserve the grace of simplicity,
+though they wear all the jewels of allusion and imagery that the authors
+possess. Moreover, their men and women talk like real persons. Dryden
+declared that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen
+much better than Shakespeare, a distinction that in some respects is clear
+to-day. The men of preceding tragedies had spoken a language elevated and
+removed from ordinary discourse, but in Beaumont and Fletcher the romantic
+scenes and impossible changes of character are made plausible by an absence
+of archaism and a directness and lucidity of speech.</p>
+
+<p>In the main, what reality the characters retain in our memories is due to
+the power of the verse to reflect clearly the emotions of the moment. There
+is a notable absence of the merely sonorous, the turgid declamation, the
+mouthing of strange words, and an absence of over-crowding thought or
+fancy. Beaumont and Fletcher had no desire to make their style sententious,
+weighty, and philosophical. They knew what they wanted to say, and they
+said it clearly and rapidly. They had room for ornament and rhetorical
+device, but none for eccentricity or obscurity. Another remark of Dryden's,
+that they perfected the English language, deserves consideration as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> the
+view of a century later, and can be appreciated even now. The
+characteristics of their style, so far as it can be considered as a common
+property, seem due to an effort to make dialogue correspond as nearly as
+possible to natural speech. This is particularly true of Fletcher, who is
+the more revolutionary of the two and the more persistent in his
+mannerisms. His structure is loose and conversational, and his blank verse
+overruns the borders of the rigid pentameter and approaches the
+irregularity of prose. Numerous added syllables and a large percentage of
+feminine endings further mark his departures from past models, and,
+combined with his end-stopped lines, give his verse a peculiar monotony.
+Both writers rise now and then to an intensely imaginative phrase or a
+beautifully wrought description. The verse of neither is suggestive of the
+intricacies of human feeling or the splendor of human intellect, but the
+verse of both, of Fletcher pre&euml;minently, reveals a fertility of imagination
+and an extraordinary mobility of words.</p>
+
+<p>These merits of style gave Beaumont and Fletcher their seventeenth century
+reputation and have continued to attract readers in the generations since.
+Ethical objections to their plays drove them from the stage in spite of
+their theatrical effectiveness. They wrote with little ethical intention.
+Unlike some of their contemporaries, they did not seek to discover the
+abodes of sin and to chastise the monster, nor did they study human nature
+in the light of moral law. They dealt with themes that would please their
+audience and would offer a sufficient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> range of emotions for the exhibition
+of their poetic powers. Without imaginations that touched spiritual heights
+or penetrated to the real significance of moral conflict, they entered
+unhesitatingly upon the task of holding up a mirror to a society loose in
+manners and unprincipled in morals. They were not so much guilty of
+intentional immorality as impotent to produce moral effect. If their
+imaginations kept too frequent company with the gross and the unhealthy,
+they also sought at times the sweeter and nobler aspects of life. What won
+for their ethics high laudation from their contemporaries was their
+rhetorical and dramatic exaltation of ideals of magnanimity and dreams of
+idyllic love and devoted friendship.</p>
+
+<p>Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in
+the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in
+our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted
+the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their
+collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and
+characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in
+execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most
+important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as
+of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new
+habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their
+devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their
+dalliance with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> artificial and abnormal aspects of passion, and their
+disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics
+furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next
+generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or
+comprehensive or noble reflection of life.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with
+Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and possibly on a
+lost play, "Cardenio." The partnership resulted in no distinct departures
+from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of
+incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself
+more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre,
+composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with
+Massinger, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of
+the time until his death in 1625.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if Beaumont had lived, the two might have advanced to maturer and
+worthier achievement, but Fletcher's work alone rather displays the
+superficialities and artificialities of the collaboration. His amazing
+cleverness appears in every scene, but he evidently wrote more and more for
+immediate success, and relied more and more on his readinesss of wit and
+invention to take the place of earnest and serious purpose. The long series
+of plays in which he had at least a considerable share, range in kind from
+comedies of manners to tragedies of blood and revenge, but practically all
+may be described<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> as romantic drama, having, that is, strange improbable
+events, foreign and remote scenes, variety and surprise in action, and love
+as the central motive. His sense of dramatic value in theme or incident was
+constantly alert, and in Spanish stories, especially the "Novellas
+Exemplares" of Cervantes, he found mazes of complicated action which
+exactly suited his fancy, and which he managed with adroit dramaturgy. The
+Spanish influence is more noticeable in the comedies than in the more
+serious plays; but, whatever the theme or the source, Fletcher added bustle
+and excitement. The distinctions between tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and
+romantic comedy often become barely discernible. The material and treatment
+are similar. Tragic situations occur in comedies as well as tragedies, and
+in either case, though finely conceived and admirably expressed, are yet
+always directed by the desire for surprise and thrills. The tragicomedies
+conform most closely to the conventionalities and repetitions of the heroic
+romances, though they exhibit abundant originality of invention. Through
+their example, romantic and melodramatic tragicomedy became perhaps the
+most popular and characteristic dramatic species of the reign of Charles I,
+and a direct progenitor of the heroic plays of the Restoration.</p>
+
+<p>In his tragedies Fletcher's prostitution to theatrical effectiveness admits
+a recognition of the literary tradition. At least, the two which are the
+result of his unaided efforts are composed with more care and with more
+evidence of artistic responsibility than his other dramas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> In
+"Valentinian"<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> he turned from his usual sources and themes to those long
+approved in pure tragedy, and found in Roman history a story of revenge and
+lust. Though treating the material with great freedom, he unfortunately
+followed his source in continuing the action beyond the murder of
+Valentinian through the counter revenge on Maximus. The first two acts,
+that tell of the attempted seduction of Lucina and her final ruin, are
+among the best sustained tragic developments in Fletcher, and, in
+comparison with many similar scenes in contemporary drama, testify to his
+remarkable poetic gifts. But the later scheming and the overthrow of her
+husband involve a conversion of character and a descent into absurd
+improbability. In "Bonduca," Fletcher's invention moved unhampered.
+Historical sources are used merely as hints and incentives. The stories of
+Bonduca and Caratach are combined; and the interest in their tragic fates
+diversified by the stories of Bonduca's daughters and their Roman lovers,
+by the episode of the noble Poenius, by the pathos of the child Hengo, and
+also by some gross and brutal comedy. All these interests are skillfully
+interwoven and focused upon the great central scene of the battle. There is
+stirring presentation of camp life, and throughout the action moves with
+abounding spirit. The play is not tragedy at all if one judges it strictly
+by Aristotle's precepts or by Shakespeare's example, or even in comparison
+with the emotional tension<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> of "The Maid's Tragedy." But it is an admirable
+example of the blending of the romantic, historical, heroic, pathetic,
+comic, and tragic, full of human nature as well as incident, conspicuous
+for poetic expression as well as theatrical ingenuity, one of the
+masterpieces of the romantic drama.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Massinger or others offer
+few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The
+False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all
+melodramas in which Massinger's moral earnestness and rhetorical
+seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever
+stage-craft, noble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmanship are
+indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt"
+carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already
+exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months
+of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial
+study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable illustration of the
+readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an
+occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and
+Massinger's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and
+almost at their very best.</p>
+
+<p>The most striking illustration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its
+prostitution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The Bloody
+Brother; or Rollo,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Massinger
+and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes
+of tragedy, the story of family feud and a bloody tyrant. In comparison,
+however, with any preceding dramas of this class, whether in early
+imitations of Seneca or later treatments of lust and revenge, the play
+shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its
+purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of
+tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar
+material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of
+talent. When the height of tragic passion is required he rises to it, or
+very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her
+father's life, a scene which Dyce pronounced the most real in its
+passionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But
+the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine
+passion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Edith, whose father has been killed by the bloody and
+lustful Rollo, is planning to murder him. She has
+pretended to yield to his solicitations, and has
+arranged a secret meeting with him at her house. Enter
+Edith, splendidly dressed&mdash;a banquet prepared. She
+kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may
+forget all pity and kill the tyrant&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"His heaven forgot, and all his lusts upon him."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then, as her boy sings the lovely song, perhaps
+Shakespeare's,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Take, oh take those lips away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That so sweetly were forsworn&mdash;"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Enter Rollo. By one of Fletcher's sudden conversions,
+he has changed to a subtle hypocrite and appears
+humble, repentant, begging for pity and love,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"in whiteness of my wash'd repentance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In my heart's tears and love of truth to Edith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In my fair life hereafter."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Edith, surprised and unnerved, gradually forgets her
+purpose, and as she informs the audience in several
+asides, is yielding; when&mdash;Enter Hamond and the guard.
+Hamond, a brave blunt soldier, is seeking revenge on
+Rollo because the tyrant has killed his brother and
+outraged him by commanding him to murder the noble
+Audrey. Hamond announces that he has come to kill
+Rollo, who seizes Edith and interposes her as a
+defense. She, aroused now to Rollo's real nature, draws
+her dagger, but he snatches it from her. In the
+struggle that follows Rollo and Hamond are both killed.</p></div>
+
+<p>All this occupies only one hundred and fifty lines of verse and must be
+accounted a most skillful bit of playmaking, a scene such as only Fletcher
+among the Elizabethans could contrive. But there is neither truth to life
+nor dramatic logic; on the contrary, there are two improbable conversions
+of character. It is not tragedy, it is hardly serious drama, it is
+theatrical claptrap; yet Fletcher's poetry is as fine, and, for all that
+one can see, as sincere as in the scene of genuine passion. Such dramatic
+impossibilities as this Fletcher faced with eager recklessness, and gayly
+spurred his Pegasus for the leap.</p>
+
+<p>"The Bloody Brother" further illustrates the union of the material and
+methods of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances with the conventions of the
+tragedy of revenge and lust. That union, manifest also in Fletcher's
+"Valentinian,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> is henceforth characteristic of the tragedy of the age. The
+dramatists belonged to a late period of an artistic development and had
+many examples both native and foreign to draw upon. They were men of talent
+or even genius whose creations were independent and original but rarely
+without large indebtedness to their predecessors. While Shakespeare and
+Jonson were often borrowed from, the majority of the tragedies clung to the
+examples of Webster and Tourneur or mingled revenge and horrors with the
+romantic plots and novel technic of Beaumont and Fletcher. A marked
+similarity consequently exists in the plays of men of different
+temperaments and purposes. Lustful tyrants and their intriguing favorites,
+love crossed by honor and often allied with revenge, illicit and abnormal
+passion, romantic princes and princesses, an action confined to the rooms
+of a palace, situations involving seduction or temptation, stage-effects
+whether by horrors or by masques and pageants, and a style more equable,
+less fantastic than in the early drama,&mdash;these are the ingredients which
+characterize tragedy for the quarter century after Shakespeare's death.</p>
+
+<p>Middleton's tragedies and tragicomedies came late in his career, following
+a period of realistic comedies, in which his observant and satirical
+imagination found free play. Though affected by Beaumont and Fletcher's
+romanticism, he preserved most of the traits of the tragedy of revenge in
+its late development, including such penetrating analysis of character
+swayed by evil as we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> found in Marston and Webster. In some of his
+romantic dramas, as the tragicomedy "The Witch," there is little of this
+serious purpose. The various revenge motives&mdash;of the duchess on the duke
+who has compelled her to drink from the skull of her murdered father, of
+the lover upon the husband who has married his betrothed, and of the
+jealous husband upon his wife&mdash;are all treated with melodramatic
+insincerity though with an ingenious accompaniment of spectacular and
+supernatural interference on the part of the witches. Attempted murder
+results in wounds that easily heal; the deadly potion proves harmless; the
+duke discovered dead comes to life. In the single tragedy written by
+Middleton alone, "Women Beware Women," the revenge species appears
+unadulterated. Isabella's illicit relation with her uncle, the use of a
+masque to bring about the final slaughter, the scenes of seduction, and the
+abominable wickedness of all the persons, are elements that recall the
+Tourneurian group. The fluency and eloquence of Middleton's style and his
+admirable delineation of character by rapid dialogue are best shown in the
+early scenes; after the old mother, so beautifully and truly drawn, has
+disappeared from the action, the rest is unrelieved murder and lust.</p>
+
+<p>The two famous plays that were the results of Middleton's collaboration
+with Rowley have somewhat different characteristics. Rowley, a playwright
+used to rude and fantastic comedy, and the author of "All's Lost by Lust,"
+a clumsy tragedy of revenge, wrote most of the comic scenes and had some
+share in the serious plots. In "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> Fair Quarrel," the hesitation of
+Captain Ager to defend the honor of his mother unless convinced of her
+purity; and in "The Changeling," the entanglement of Beatrice with the
+loathed follower whom she has persuaded to murder her accepted suitor,
+offer situations novel and ingenious. In both plays, the opportunity for
+mere melodrama with sudden conversions of character is refused, and the
+series of startling situations made the basis for a study of human motive.
+It is this which gives "The Fair Quarrel," in spite of its absurdities,
+superiority over most of the tragicomedies of the time. In "The
+Changeling," one may easily imagine what havoc Fletcher would have made of
+the characterization in order to over-emphasize situations, sensational
+enough in themselves; but Middleton and Rowley followed the best tradition
+of Webster. The rash and pampered Beatrice retains our sympathies even in
+her degradation, and remains convincingly alive, whether in her incipient
+love for De Flores or her final cry for forgiveness. De Flores,
+clear-headed and well-motived, is the most powerful and individual of the
+post-Shakespearean villains. The comic relief supplied by the mad scenes
+spoils the tragic unity of the play. But, except in Shakespeare and
+Webster, the old combination of murder, revenge, sinful love, villany,
+madness, and ghosts had never been made so consistently the result of human
+motive and so effective in its appeal to our sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>Massinger's dramatic career, ranking in productiveness with Shakespeare's
+or Fletcher's, extended from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the time of Shakespeare's withdrawal from the
+theatre to within a few years of the Civil War. For ten years he was mainly
+occupied in collaborating with Fletcher for the king's men; and of the
+nineteen plays usually classed as his own, none were acted before 1622. His
+work, therefore, falls roughly into two periods, the first when he was the
+assistant of Fletcher, the second when he had succeeded Fletcher as the
+main reliance of the leading London company.</p>
+
+<p>Of his work with Fletcher the tragedies have already been considered. In
+most of the plays of the collaboration, Fletcher's share is the more
+important, especially in the treatment of the dramatic crises. In plays, as
+"The Queen of Corinth" and "The Laws of Candy," where Fletcher's hand is
+least apparent, there is an excess of melodramatic ingenuity without the
+Fletcherian vivacity, Massinger's temperament reveals itself, however, from
+the first in the gravity of his style and the seriousness of his morality.
+From Fletcher he acquired his stage-craft and his attachment to the
+romantic drama of thrills and surprises, but his art was meanwhile
+developing a responsibility and purposes all its own.</p>
+
+<p>Of the plays written without the aid of Fletcher, two, "A New Way to Pay
+Old Debts" and "The City Madam," are domestic comedies of manners. The
+others are romantic dramas which can be classified only with some
+difficulty as comedies, tragicomedies, and tragedies. A number of the
+tragicomedies are to be distinguished from the tragedies only by the happy
+endings and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> absence of bloodshed. Nor are these always decisive. Of
+the tragedies, "Believe as You List" and "The Virgin Martyr" result in
+victory as well as death, and in the tragicomedy, "The Maid of Honor,"
+suitors worthy and unworthy are rejected and the vindicated heroine enters
+a nunnery. The tragedies in the main deal with more serious and important
+actions and rely less on intrigue than the tragicomedies; but it may be
+said of Massinger, with even more truth than of Fletcher, that he dealt
+with romantic stories abounding in tragic possibilities, usually resulting
+in happy endings, but occasionally taking a loftier tone and a fatal
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The plays as a whole reveal a remarkable variety of stories and a treatment
+of sources fully as free and ingenious as Fletcher's and often contriving a
+political as well as a moral lesson. Honor and religion play conspicuous
+parts as in contemporary Spanish drama, to which Massinger apparently owed
+a considerable debt; although in only one instance, "The Renegade," has
+direct indebtedness to a Spanish play been traced. The earlier drama is
+also freely drawn upon. At this date it was in fact almost impossible to
+compose a play without traversing motives and incidents that were familiar
+on the stage; and Massinger borrowed from many, from Shakespeare as freely
+as from Fletcher, and from minor dramatists as well. The story of the
+usurper Sebastian, told in "The Battle of Alcazar," is retold in "Believe
+as You List"; and the poisoning by kissing the painted corpse, related in
+"The Second Maiden's Tragedy," reappears in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> "Duke of Milan." In spite
+of their variety and ingenuity, his plays are very like others of the
+period. There are the same court and courtiers, general, favorite, rival
+lovers, rival mistresses, and the same trials of chastity or intrigues of
+lust and malice.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the independence of Massinger's invention and the truth of his
+conceptions of human motive are by no means small. In "The Bashful Lover"
+there is a presentation of idealizing and self-sacrificing love, far
+surpassing the courtly compliments of Fletcher and rivaling the magnanimity
+of Browning's conceptions. In such themes, just removed from the exaltation
+and the horror thought necessary for tragedy, yet serious and exalted above
+the average of comedy, Massinger is at his best. An outline of his "Maid of
+Honor" may serve to illustrate both the independence of his imaginative
+conceptions and the careful integration of his structure.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Act i opens at the court of Roberto, King of Sicily,
+who, after much eloquent solicitation, permits his
+natural brother Bertoldo to lead an expedition against
+Gonzaga, a knight of Malta, who is relieving Sienna,
+captured by Ferdinand, Duke of Urbin, in his effort to
+win the duchess by force. Camiola, the maid of honor,
+after some buffoonery on the part of Sylli, a
+Malvolio-like wooer, has a parting interview with
+Bertoldo and confesses that his vow as a knight of
+Malta is the only bar to her acceptance of his offers
+of marriage. In act ii, after some further buffoonery
+by Sylli, who serves throughout as a comic contrast to
+Camiola's other suitors, Fulgentio, the King's minion,
+solicits Camiola, but is tartly repulsed, and threatens
+to slander her. The scene changes to Sienna, the camp
+of Gonzaga, and then to the citadel held by Ferdinand.
+Bertoldo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> and his followers are defeated and made
+prisoners, Gonzaga tearing the cross from Bertoldo's
+breast. In act iii all the prisoners are released by
+ransom, except Bertoldo, who thereupon bewails the
+falseness of his brother the King. The scene changing
+to Sicily, Adorni, a faithful follower of Camiola's
+father, soliloquizes on his love for her and his
+intention to take vengeance on Fulgentio. Later he
+appears wounded before Camiola and presents the
+minion's recantation, but is blamed by her for his
+presumption in assuming a task proper only for her
+lover. Upon the arrival of news of Bertoldo's plight,
+Camiola, who is as energetic as loyal, decides to
+sacrifice her fortune to pay her lover's ransom, and
+summons Adorni to act as her agent in freeing Bertoldo.
+Adorni dutifully undertakes the mission that promises
+to ruin his hopes. In act iv the Duchess Aurelia
+arrives at Sienna and Ferdinand surrenders. Bertoldo in
+prison reads Seneca, soliloquizes on suicide, falls on
+the ground, and threatens to rend the bowels of the
+earth, quite in Kydian fashion. Adorni enters, and
+Bertoldo, upon hearing of Camiola's sacrifice, blesses
+her name and promises marriage. It is now Adorni's turn
+to soliloquize on suicide. Bertoldo is brought before
+Aurelia, who, suddenly enamored, offers him herself and
+duchy. After some resistance he yields. Adorni now
+begins to hope. In Sicily Camiola has convinced the
+King of Fulgentio's worthlessness. In act v Camiola
+receives from Adorni the news of Bertoldo's fickleness,
+but she still scorns Adorni and resolves to seek
+redress from the King. Accordingly, at the marriage of
+Bertoldo and Aurelia, she breaks in, states her case
+with eloquence and temper, and appeals to the King.
+Aurelia suddenly feels all her love quenched, and
+Bertoldo pleads for pity. All await the fulfillment of
+Camiola's promise that she will declare whom she will
+marry, and are astonished when Father Paula announces
+that she has decided to become the bride of the church.
+Before taking the veil, she obtains Fulgentio's pardon,
+gives one half of her wealth to the faithful Adorni,
+and commands Bertoldo to resume the cross of Malta.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In his six tragedies there is less of romantic love and more of the blacker
+passions. "The Unnatural Combat," "The Duke of Milan," "The Fatal Dowry"
+(in collaboration with Field), and "The Roman Actor" deal with lust and
+revenge in the quantity and quality long prescribed. In the last named,
+however, Massinger broke away from the conventional treatment and made his
+protagonist neither the cruel tyrant nor the lustful queen, but a dignified
+and noble representative of the actor's profession, and took the
+opportunity of effectively expanding the old device of a play within a
+play. The other two tragedies present still more originality of conception
+and treatment: "Believe As You List," dealing with the fortune of a
+rightful claimant to the crown, and "The Virgin Martyr," perhaps a revision
+of an early play by Dekker, returning to the old material of the Miracles,
+the story of a martyrdom that converts the persecutors. In each of these
+tragedies, as in "The Maid of Honor," a number of stories are organized
+into a single action, introduced by admirable exposition, and usually
+carried through with direct and logical progress. In the treatment of
+catastrophe, always heightened, prolonged, and sometimes full of surprise
+after Fletcher's fashion, Massinger is less competent. Massinger could not
+keep to the inevitable development of character as did Shakespeare, nor
+could he sacrifice character to situation as light-heartedly as did
+Fletcher. In consequence he falls between two stools; and his fifth act is
+usually clumsy and unconvincing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Massinger's art was not only less reckless than Fletcher's; it was linked
+to a serious moral view of human affairs. He always worked under a sense of
+responsibility both as a dramatic artist and as a preacher of political and
+personal morality. Neither the heedlessness of Fletcher nor the perversion
+of Ford is discoverable in his plays. Bad and good are clearly
+differentiated, despite the improbabilities of the romantic vicissitudes;
+and poetic justice is administered with decision. Following his venturesome
+and nimble master, he pursues his pathway gravely, judicially, somewhat
+heavily. His careful art and sincere morality lack the leaven of dramatic
+genius. The orator and the rhetorician are always elbowing the dramatist
+off the scene. His style, never splendid, never excessively figurative, is
+always contained and clear. At its best in sustained declamation, it often
+descends to a tone approaching prose and rarely rises to the more stirring
+or impelling emotions. His abundant inventiveness also fails him in the
+great crises of passion. Again and again when the heroine is at bay, or the
+hero within the jaws of ruin, Massinger resorts to oratory. As in "The Maid
+of Honor," eloquence is the <i>deus ex machina</i> which solves the difficulties
+of the plot. In consequence, the characterization, though involving subtle
+and penetrating conceptions of human nature, and often logical and
+consistent, rarely results in living beings. An exception must be made of
+some of his men, whose virility and dignity are akin to his own temper and
+can be made real through his favorite rhetorical means. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> women, with
+few exceptions, of whom Camiola is chief, are, for reverse reasons, bad
+failures. Chastity cannot be revealed by an oratorical appeal, and the evil
+women only grow impossible when they add rhetoric to lust.</p>
+
+<p>The passing of the greatness of the Elizabethan drama is manifest in
+Massinger as in his contemporaries. He retains, to be sure, most of the
+external characteristics of his predecessors; he writes constantly in the
+light of their achievements; he would restrain Fletcher's theatricality by
+a more cautious and responsible art. Like Shakespeare he maintains a moral
+standard despite the exigencies of a romantic plot. But the old fervor as
+well as the old extravagance of diction have gone; and a careful dramaturgy
+now finds itself incompetent to meet the requirements of great tragic
+crises. His tragedies recapitulate what has been done before, without
+important advance or departure, and without attaining one unforgettable
+phrase or one moment that electrifies the reader with an undeniable
+conviction of its dramatic truth.</p>
+
+<p>In Ford the results of servile imitation and original genius were curiously
+combined. The first dramatist to feel the overshadowing effect of
+Shakespeare's tragedies, he borrowed freely from "Lear," "Othello," and
+"Romeo and Juliet," and he was hardly less indebted to Beaumont and
+Fletcher and the school of Webster. As a playwright he was, in fact,
+usually imitative and often unskillful. As a poet his consciousness of the
+greatness of earlier dramatists now chilled him to bald copying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> and now
+incited him to a unique development of some of the old tragic motives. With
+Dekker and Rowley he collaborated on "The Witch of Edmonton," a tragicomedy
+dealing with a contemporary crime and linking itself with the domestic
+tragedies. "Perkin Warbeck," a revival of the chronicle history, is without
+battles or pageants, and is less concerned with the scenic presentation of
+history than with the delineation of the character of the claimant. His
+other tragedies, "Love's Sacrifice," "The Broken Heart," and "'Tis Pity
+She's a Whore," are at once both more in accord with prevailing modes in
+the drama and more characteristic of Ford's imaginative temperament. In
+spite of their worthless comic scenes, their conventional material, and
+their melodramatic situations, they present tragic passion with an
+intensity and truth possible only to dramatic genius.</p>
+
+<p>Love is the theme, and an excess of sentiment and passion in conflict with
+friendship, right, or natural law, is the particular province that Ford
+makes his own. A favorite in love with the wife of his lord, a brother in
+love with a sister, are the situations over which his genius casts an
+oppressive melancholy that lasts until the final heart-breaks. The monarch,
+his favorite, a buffoon or two, and lords and ladies, love-sick or
+passion-inflamed, play with the casuistry of love and mingle dances and
+revels with bloodshed and horror. Villany and revenge appear but are not
+very essential. The seeds of fatal passions have been already sown when the
+play begins; it is the stifling hothouse in which they luxuriate. The end
+is inevitable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> though it may be long held in suspense and attained through
+some surprise in the final act.</p>
+
+<p>"The Broken Heart" is the most healthy of his plays. Orgilus, whose life
+has been blighted because Penthea has married Bassanio through the
+intervention of her brother, the great General Ithocles, pursues his
+revenge upon Ithocles in spite of much delay and apparent reconciliation.
+Finally he stabs Ithocles to death just as Ithocles is to be married to the
+princess Calantha, and just as Penthea dies of madness and starvation. The
+familiar round of revenge, madness, and torture here reappears, but it is
+told in a story full of romantic sentiment and human passion, and not
+without sunshine as well as shadow. It is the final scenes, however, which
+every reader remembers. Calantha is dancing when the tidings of the deaths
+of her father and her lover are brought to her, and she dances on, hiding
+her grief and playing her part nobly, until, duty accomplished, her heart
+is free to yield to its bursting sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>It is in scenes like these, showing passion restrained or overborne for the
+moment, or the strain and suspense preceding the crash, that Ford is at his
+best. The marvelous parting scene between brother and sister in "'Tis Pity"
+is perfection itself. His imagination dissolves the horrible story into the
+very language of the breaking heart. His verse, lacking both the old
+rhetorical artificiality and the vivacity and adaptability of Fletcher's,
+possesses a restraint and moderation of language and a complex and
+beautiful melody all its own. At<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> times it is the thinnest of translucent
+veils "through which passion is burning as the radiant lines of morning."</p>
+
+<p>One may find in him somewhat of the perverse inquisitiveness of Donne. A
+wayward and solitary searcher in the realms of poetry, he voyaged only to
+regions unexplored or forbidding. But, as we have seen, his imagination,
+wayward though it was, took direction from his contemporaries, and he was
+representative of much in current tragedy. Though Ford's ethical attitude
+is perhaps more non-committal than that of any of his contemporaries, yet
+his casuistical interest in moral problems, and the emphasis which he
+places on such problems at the expense of his stories, are traits common in
+the drama of the time, and especially in the collaborative work of
+Middleton and Rowley. His absorption with questions of sex, his searching
+for new sensation, his attempt to bestow on moral perversion the
+enticements of poetry correspond with what is most decadent in Fletcher and
+Shirley. Like his fine-spoken and well-mannered courtiers and impulsive
+ladies, Ford imagined in an atmosphere of unhealthy emotion. His plays are
+immoral because their passion is so often morbid and their sentiment
+mawkish. His power to reveal character and passion, which rank him with the
+greatest of the Elizabethans, was discovered in his searching the by-paths
+of the abnormal and pathological. Pathos for him was a flower plucked from
+a poisonous exotic.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning about 1625 and extending to the Civil War, Shirley's dramatic
+career overlapped and continued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Massinger's as Massinger's did Fletcher's.
+After leaving the university he took orders, but shortly became converted
+to Catholicism, and then, after a volume of poems, turned to the public
+theatres for employment. The last of the brilliant series of poets who made
+the London stage the home of poesy and contributed to the great period of
+the English drama, at the closing of the theatres he was the dean of his
+profession. His thirty odd plays, while naturally continuing the methods
+and types of Massinger and of Fletcher, his avowed master, and while
+reminiscent of much in earlier writers, especially Webster and Shakespeare,
+also reflect about all the characteristics manifest in the drama during the
+reign of Charles I.</p>
+
+<p>Shirley's remarkable talents challenge comparison with his predecessors. He
+had a share of Massinger's seriousness of purpose and painstaking art, and
+of Fletcher's freshness of fancy and sprightliness of style. In invention
+he is hardly less ingenious than either, and in careful construction and
+theatrical craftsmanship he approaches Massinger's undoubted mastership.
+His verse seems modeled on Fletcher's, but it often has a spontaneity of
+movement and a richness of decoration that recall Elizabethan style in its
+early flights. Little of early aphorism, however, or of the later obscurity
+and confusion remains; these are replaced, sometimes indeed by a hackneyed
+declamation, but often by natural and fluent dialogue.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, in spite of his talents, Shirley's own position and his contribution
+to the drama are difficult of definition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> because he is so constantly
+reminiscent of his predecessors and so constantly approaching, though never
+quite equaling, their pre&euml;minent models. His plays, like Massinger's, seem
+to the reader of to-day repetitions of one another. Each coalesces in the
+mind with other comedies of manners, or other tragedies of blood, or with
+the tragicomedies of Massinger and Fletcher. Whatever the species, love is
+the theme, lust is pursuing, chastity is tried by intrigue and by
+declamation; but the real interest is in the plot, the tricks, disguises,
+subterfuges, villains, and surprises that end&mdash;as the case may be&mdash;in the
+discomfiture of the fools, or the marriage of the lovers, or the downfall
+of a dynasty.</p>
+
+<p>The drama had become conventionalized. The dramatists were no longer
+searching for new themes and characters in a wide range of stories; they
+were inventing their plots but were restricted in their materials. The
+ingredients of early plays served Shirley's purpose, and by a few new
+devices or changes in motive he gave his fashionable ladies, his lustful
+monarchs, scheming favorites, and exiled heroes new names and adventures,
+and so produced a play. The cleverness of the plot occupies your attention,
+or occasionally a beautiful passage or a fine conception of character
+arrests the mind, but at the close you are at a loss to separate the play
+from a dozen similar ones.</p>
+
+<p>In Shirley, as in Massinger, the most representative plays, and certainly
+those most satisfactory to our taste, are the tragicomedies. Bloodshed and
+horror and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> grossness of language and situation may all be absent, and the
+story of love and intrigue, even if it does not exalt the mind or purify
+the passions, may be altogether delightful. In "The Royal Master," one of
+the best, the r&ocirc;le of the lustful monarch is assumed for a single scene,
+only to cure a really charming heroine of her infatuation for royalty; and
+the intriguing favorite is foiled, the banished noble vindicated, and two
+love matches completed with gracefulness of language and dexterity of plot.
+Unfortunately Shirley's land of romance is rarely so wholesome as here or
+the inhabitants so agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>His tragedies mainly conform to the hackneyed models, no matter what the
+sources may be or how large his own invention may seem. The earliest, "The
+Maid's Revenge," relating a Spanish story of the rivalry in love of two
+sisters that ends in a fatal duel between brother and lover, is wholly in
+the tone of romantic melodrama. "The Politician," a more ambitious effort,
+combines the villain play with the Beaumont-Fletcher romance. Gotharius,
+the politician, is the villain; Marpisa, the evil woman, is his mistress
+and about to be married to the king; Albina, the loyal and long-suffering
+heroine, is the villain's wife; Turgesius is the prince and hero; and
+Olaus, a blunt soldier, is his faithful friend. There is an insurrection,
+as so often in Fletcher; and after a long intrigue the villain and the evil
+woman perish, and the prince marries the heroine. In "Love's Cruelty," a
+more original conception is worked out with telling realism and a good deal
+of dramatic truth. Clariana becomes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> infatuated with her husband's friend
+Hippolito; and, even after the guilty lovers have been permitted to go
+unpunished by the husband, her passion continues until her jealousy at her
+lover's approaching marriage to Eubella drives her to his murder. Rarely
+elsewhere in the Elizabethan drama is the story of illicit love told with
+less of glamour and more veracity. These merits are perhaps counterbalanced
+by the extreme realism of the language and the stage action.</p>
+
+<p>In this play the deceived husband dies of grief, but Eubella, who had
+earlier resisted the lustful duke, is solaced after the death of her
+betrothed by a promise of marriage from the duke himself. Both "The
+Politician" and "The Duke's Mistress," a tragedy along hackneyed lines, end
+with reward for the virtuous and punishment only for the vicious. Such
+application of poetic justice had been earlier expounded by Ben Jonson in
+defense of the punishments inflicted in his comedy, "Volpone." The
+applications of the doctrine in Shirley and Massinger were, however,
+probably due not so much to theoretical criticism as to the popular
+preference for the restriction of the catastrophe to the bad, a preference
+recorded by Aristotle and evidently shared by a generation in which
+romantic tragicomedy was the most popular dramatic form.</p>
+
+<p>Shirley's tragic masterpieces, however, offered no alleviation of horror
+and bloodshed. "The Traitor" and "The Cardinal" are plays of revenge, lust,
+intrigue, and villany, in which all the accretions of this kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> tragedy
+from Kyd and Marlowe down to Webster and Massinger seem to be represented.
+The villains are as black as Barabas and as crafty as those of Webster;
+plots are as intricately entangled with counterplots as in Tourneur; and
+surprises follow as rapidly as in Fletcher. The corpse kissed by the
+repentant duke is again presented; there is attempted rape and assumed
+madness; in each play a bridegroom is murdered as he takes his place in the
+wedding procession; and in each revenge strews the final scene with the
+dead. But the old motives still had power to convey poetic inspiration, and
+the examples of all his predecessors summoned Shirley to his best efforts.
+Perhaps in no other plays does he so constantly recall their work;
+certainly in no others do the poetic quality of his language, the vigorous
+delineation of character, and the dramatic depiction of passion so worthily
+maintain what were even for men of his day the great traditions of English
+tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Tragedies by minor writers during the years from 1620 to 1642 offer little
+that is distinctive. Occasionally, as in the anonymous "Nero" of 1624, we
+have a play spontaneous in phrase and lifelike in characterization, worthy
+of the best days of the drama; but in the main the plays only repeat what
+is to be found in Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. In spite of the vogue of
+tragicomedy, tragedy was by no means neglected, nearly fifty tragedies
+being preserved from the twenty years, in addition to those by the authors
+mentioned. These include several by Suckling, Glapthorne's pastoral
+tragedy, "Argalus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> and Parthenia," and his worthless "Wallenstein," May's
+plays on classical history, and others by Killigrew, Davenant, Carlell,
+Heming, Davenport, and less known men.</p>
+
+<p>The large majority conform to the later type of revenge play as exemplified
+in Massinger and Shirley. Sometimes the romantic love element supersedes
+the intrigue and horrors, but oftener the horrors have full sway. A double
+plot, usually with an elaborate surprise in the fifth act, revolves about
+lust and revenge with some attention to untarnished honor and unconquered
+chastity. The lustful duke and his intriguing favorite, or the tyrannical
+usurper and the rightful prince alternate at the centre of the stage along
+with the evil woman, perhaps a Lady Potiphar, and a distressed maiden,
+likely to be disguised as a boy. Madness is frequently represented, eyes
+are plucked out, brains dashed upon the stage, and many of the old horrors
+reproduced, but ghosts rarely appear. The action consists largely of
+adultery, seduction, and rape; and these are represented with a horrid
+detail that rivals Marston. When chastity is preserved it is often by a
+device similar to that used in "Measure for Measure," although occasionally
+there is an exchange of men instead of women. Tragedy is for the most part
+confined to stories of crime. The monstrous politicians and libertines
+differ from their sixteenth century predecessors chiefly in the greater
+ingenuity and complexity of their intrigue, their subordination of ambition
+or other motives to those of love or lust, and in the prosaic flatness of
+their blank verse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Often there are manifest borrowings, and occasionally a dramatist evidently
+strove to include everything that had ever been known on the tragic stage.
+"The Rebellion," by Thomas Rawlins, presents Machiavel, a villain, whose
+soliloquies might be burlesques on Barabas and Richard III, two mad scenes,
+a nurse from "Romeo and Juliet," a Moor, who is another villain, attempted
+rape, and frequent bursts of poetry:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The lazy moon has scarcely trimm'd herself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To entertain the sun; she still retains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The slimy tincture of the banish'd night."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the usual type of tragedy, with reminiscences of
+Shakespeare and Fletcher, sometimes shows a genuine poetic gift, as notably
+in Lord Falkland's "The Marriage Night." The most marked trait, however, of
+these minor tragedies is their eagerness to out-Herod Herod and to make
+good their weakness in dramatic truth by means of stage horrors or rant.
+"The Valiant Scot," a tragedy dealing with the career of Wallace,
+represents the cutting out of the tongue of one English ambassador and the
+putting out of the eyes of another. In "Mirza" the protagonist kills his
+seven-year-old daughter,&mdash;"Takes Fatima by the neck, breaks it, and swings
+her about." The taste for atrocities seems to have been most highly
+developed at Oxford, where the students acted Goffe's outrageous plays and
+a Samuel Harding published "Sicily and Naples," a medley introducing
+revenge for a father, a maiden disguised as a boy, a villain-favorite, the
+Mariana device, and combining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> rape, murder, madness, and incest in a
+fashion not equaled since "Titus Andronicus."</p>
+
+<p>Absurd plays of this sort were common enough from the days of "Cambyses,"
+and cannot be fairly taken as evidences of the drama's decadence. Nor do
+the main differences that are apparent between tragedy after 1620 and that
+of the early or of the Shakespearean period point to decadence as
+unmistakably as critics are wont to assume. There is a waning of poetic
+power; blank verse descends to prose, and its flowers have a jaded air; but
+there is poetic imagination in Glapthorne as well as in Shirley, noble
+rhetoric in Massinger, and sheer poetry in Ford. The ethical tone has in
+general suffered deterioration. The moral insight of Shakespeare or even of
+Webster is not maintained; courtly and sophisticated ideals ring false; the
+language becomes gross; the vulgarities of the early plays are replaced by
+mawkish sentimentality or lewd suggestiveness. There seems to be increasing
+difficulty in presenting persons normally good. The reiteration of scenes
+of rape and seduction bespeak an unhealthy moral atmosphere. Yet tragedy,
+though at tunes perverse or forgetful, still clings to its moral standards.
+It still endeavors to expose and chastise sin and to incite to virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Decadence is more manifest in the restriction and conventionalizing of the
+material of tragedy. The love for the impossible, the craving for
+stupendous emotions and supernormal passions had given place to theatrical
+court intrigues. The daring attempts of Marlowe and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> Shakespeare to depict
+the great round of the emotions had given way to a continual harping on
+illicit love. Dramatists were no longer striving to give beautiful
+expression to the terrible, heroic, or pitiable in story, but seeking to
+construct acting plays out of stock situations and stock characters. There
+was a lack of fresh impulse. French romance and Spanish drama seem to have
+encouraged no marked innovations, and French classicism was only just
+making itself heard at the closing of the theatres. A man of original
+genius like Ford staggered under the recognition of the greatness of
+earlier achievement and turned to the abnormalities and excesses of passion
+for his themes. Shirley, more typical of the period, devoted talents of a
+high order to repeating familiar models.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was progress as well as stagnation. Dramatists had shaken off the
+medieval adherence to sources and learned to invent, though their invention
+unhappily followed current theatrical fashions rather than fresh creative
+impulses. The art of making plays had advanced, not as Shakespeare had
+pointed the way, by making construction dependent upon character, but as
+Beaumont and Fletcher had fashioned, by making character subordinate to a
+varied and rapid action. There is more complication, more coherence in
+plot, more ingenuity in situation, and a far greater use of surprise than
+in the early plays, but no great gain in consistent motivation. Yet many of
+the early absurdities have disappeared; and in discovering what is to be
+acted and what not, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the quick excitement of the spectator's interest,
+and in the careful integration of the various lines of action, the
+dramaturgy is, in comparison with the period before Shakespeare, noticeably
+modern.</p>
+
+<p>The differences which distinguish the different periods do not conceal the
+essential unity of the entire development from 1562 to 1642. The changes
+that take place in the prevailing types are of degree and not of kind.
+Nearly all the tragedies might be called tragedies of blood, for nearly all
+deal with crime and bloodshed. A narrower division like that of the tragedy
+of revenge keeps its integrity from Kyd onward, the hesitation motive
+finding transformation in "Hamlet," the union of revenge, intrigue, and
+madness finding a different development in Webster and others, and
+remaining until the end the most prevalent type of tragedy. A majority of
+Elizabethan plays are romantic rather than classical or realistic, though
+the romance is of many kinds and drawn from many widely different sources,
+as Boccaccio, D'Urf&eacute;, or Lope de Vega. For a time it is mainly confined to
+romantic comedy, but it soon enters into tragedy and tragicomedy. In
+tragedy it plays a fitful part, but in tragicomedy it conquers the
+theatres. The course of tragedy from its inception in an amalgamation of
+medieval and classical elements, through its establishment by Marlowe, its
+development of types and methods, the transformation of these by
+Shakespeare into a dramatic form that changed and enlarged the meaning of
+tragedy for the centuries since then, the further development of types and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+methods under the innovations of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the splendid
+contribution that tragedy still received from Webster, Middleton, Ford, and
+Massinger,&mdash;all this was comprised within a single century; all that was
+most significant, within a single lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>Tragedy throughout this development remained popular. Less than the ballad
+but more than any other form of literature prior to the pamphlet, novel,
+and newspaper, the drama was the result of popular taste, thought, and
+desire. Tragedy early shook off the bonds of classical tradition, and it
+never ceased to aim first at pleasing the audiences. Shakespeare as well as
+Dekker or Shirley was their servant. Even in the later days when increasing
+Puritanism alienated a large portion of the public from the theatres,
+literary standards failed to overthrow the sovereignty of the people,
+though, as the dramatists paid allegiance to a restricted and less
+representative audience, the drama waned. Without a guiding criticism,
+without any reliance on authority or tradition, appealing first to the
+public theatre and only secondly to court or culture or posterity, tragedy
+at its best was not distinguished by impeccability of literary art. It
+lacked simplicity of theme and precision of treatment; it was fantastic in
+design and language. It lacked refinement; it was vulgar in diction and
+scene; it was revolting in its horrors and bloodshed. It lacked reserve and
+definiteness of literary purpose; it was sensational, incongruous, or na&iuml;ve
+in its address to the intelligence. But from the same conditions that gave
+rise to its faults and excesses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> came its excellences. A delight in verbal
+felicity, a welcome for diverse excitement, and a craving for story on the
+part of the public made possible the wealth of incident and character, the
+varied emotional appeal, and the fervid poetry of Elizabethan tragedy. It
+was free to avail itself of every resource of poet or playwright in order
+to present human passion of all kinds, human individuals of many varieties.
+Its virtues as well as its faults are summed up in Shakespeare. After his
+death it developed in dramatic dexterity rather than in the
+comprehensiveness of its mirror of life. Yet, without Shakespeare, the
+fabrics of its vision comprise</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The solemn temples, the great globe itself."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Even without him, the legacy of Elizabethan tragedy is an unfaded pageant
+of the greatness and the pain, the passion and the poetry of our little
+life.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Ward, Fleay, Schelling, and the bibliographies in the Shakespeare
+<i>Jahrbuch</i> continue to be the best guides. Dyce's admirable edition of
+Beaumont and Fletcher (11 vols., 1843-46) has long been the standard, but
+two new complete editions of their works are now in progress, one under the
+general editorship of A. H. Bullen (London, 1904-), the other edited by A.
+Glover and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905-). The discussion in this chapter
+is in part based on my <i>Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare</i>
+(1901) and my edition of <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i> and <i>Philaster</i> in the
+<i>Belles-Lettres Series</i> (Boston, 1906). I must refer to the latter for a
+full bibliography of both texts and critical works. Miss Hatcher's <i>John
+Fletcher</i> (Chicago, 1905) should be added. Webster has been well edited by
+Dyce and Hazlitt; and his two principal tragedies by M. W. Sampson in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+<i>Belles-Lettres Series</i>, with full bibliography. E. E. Stoll's monograph,
+<i>John Webster</i>, referred to in chapter v, has been drawn upon in the
+discussion in this chapter. Tourneur has been edited by J. Churton Collins
+(1878); Middleton by A. H. Bullen; Massinger very poorly by Gifford (2d
+ed., 1815); Ford by Gifford (1827, revised by Dyce, 1869); and Shirley by
+Dyce (1833). Editions of selections from all these dramatists will also be
+found in the <i>Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists</i>, with introductions of
+varying value. Bibliographical references to all dramatists of this period
+will be found in Ward and Schelling, and in general more comprehensive
+discussion of their plays than are to be found elsewhere. Of especial value
+in the study of sources are E. Koeppel's two volumes, <i>Quellen Studien zu
+den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's und Beaumont und Fletcher's</i> (1895)
+and <i>Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Massinger's und
+John Ford's</i> (1897).</p>
+
+<p>Among the critical appreciations of the dramatists of this and the
+preceding chapters are: Lamb's <i>Specimens of English Dramatic Poets</i>,
+Hazlitt's <i>Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth</i>, Jeffrey's <i>Essay
+on Ford</i>, Lowell's <i>Old English Dramatists</i>, G. C. Macaulay's <i>Francis
+Beaumont</i> (1883), Swinburne's <i>Ben Jonson</i> (1889), and his essays on other
+dramatists.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Elizabethan has been used to designate the whole period of
+the drama from 1559 to 1642.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> For a somewhat different view of the play, emphasizing its
+crudity as a drama, see Mr. William Archer's "Webster, Lamb, and
+Swinburne," <i>New Review</i>, January, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> See Coleridge, <i>Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, for a
+characteristic and valuable criticism of the play.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RESTORATION</h3>
+
+
+<p>The drama of the Restoration was separated from the earlier periods by
+sixteen years of closed theatres and a virtual cessation of all dramatic
+composition. To the drama, as to other forms of literature, the Restoration
+brought not only a revival but also a revolution&mdash;new fashions, new models,
+new foreign influence, a new age, and a changed society. No such break in
+theatrical conditions has occurred since then, and nothing so nearly
+revolutionary in the history of the drama. Since then the theatres have
+been always open, the dramatists always writing. Changes have been gradual,
+the history continuous. Due recognition must, therefore, be given to the
+last years before the closing of the theatres and the first years after
+their reopening as marking an end and a beginning. Really, however, the new
+was a continuation of the old; the pause was by no means a severing of
+traditions; and the Restoration drama inherited far more from the
+Elizabethan than it imported from France or originated under the
+inspiration of that illustrious patron of poetry, Charles II.</p>
+
+<p>Signs of continued interest in the theatre had not been wanting during the
+Commonwealth. The theatres were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> reopened in 1648 but promptly suppressed
+and dismantled. Drolls or short farces derived from popular plays were
+performed here and there in London or in the country, and the continued
+publication of old plays revealed a considerable demand from the reading
+public. In 1656 Davenant obtained permission for the performance of his
+"Siege of Rhodes" "made a Representation by the Art of Perspective Scenes,
+and the story sung in Recitative Music." Thus, even before the revival of
+the regular drama, came its rival the opera, and the important innovation
+of movable scenes. Two years later Davenant produced another entertainment,
+and was performing regular plays before Monk had entered London. Two
+companies, the King's and the Duke of York's, were presently licensed;
+these, united from 1682 to 1695, sufficed for sixty years to supply the
+needs of the London public, and maintained their monopoly until well into
+the nineteenth century. Before 1642 the open public theatres had largely
+given place to the "private" theatres in inclosed rooms. These and the
+contemporary French theatres served as models for the Restoration
+buildings. The stage still protruded into the auditorium and was frequently
+crowded with gallants as in the Elizabethan days, but the use of scenery, a
+drop curtain shutting off all the stage but the proscenium, the
+performances by artificial light, together with the women actors, who now
+for the first time interpreted Shakespeare's heroines, brought the
+Restoration stage closer to that of our own day than to that of the
+preceding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> generation. This transformation from a half-medieval to a nearly
+modern stage resulted in far-reaching changes in the drama; among others,
+in a new importance to female parts and in alterations in structure due to
+the use of scenery and curtain. Few of the old actors were still alive,
+though enough had been gathered to make up the nucleus of the companies and
+to transmit the traditions of the Globe and the Blackfriars. The acting of
+the Restoration probably soon surpassed that of the earlier period, and the
+great triumphs of Betterton and Mrs. Barry set new and long influential
+traditions in English tragedy. The changes which most fundamentally
+affected the drama were those in the stage and the actors.</p>
+
+<p>The influence exerted upon the drama by the new opera may also be described
+as largely theatrical. The opera of the Restoration is to be distinguished
+from the form as it has prevailed since the introduction of Italian opera
+into England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The term was
+loosely used to describe a variety of entertainments, in which the dialogue
+might be altogether sung, or in part spoken, and in which the dancing and
+decoration were regarded as not less essential than the music. Derived from
+France, where the opera gained great favor and attracted the services of
+Corneille and Quinault, the English species was closely related to two
+national forms of drama, the masque and the tragedy. In music, dancing, and
+machinery it resembled the former; in theme, plot, and persons, often the
+latter. A resemblance between the opera and the heroic tragedy is also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+observable in the prominence given by each to heroic love. Tragedies were
+readily transformed into operas as in the case of Lee's "Theodosius" and
+Tate's "Brutus of Alba," and of Fletcher's "Island Princess" and
+"Prophetess." Throughout the period the relations between the two remain
+close. They were presented in the same theatre; the same actors often
+played in one and sang in the other; an orchestral band was provided to
+play between the acts in tragedy; and tragedy availed itself of songs,
+scenery, and machines. Entirely apart from its place in the history of
+English music, English opera is of some importance in the development of
+tragedy, partly as a rival and partly because it promoted operatic elements
+in tragedy itself. Tragedy came in the Restoration period to rely more than
+ever before upon the externals of its stage presentation, and on elements
+then considered distinctively operatic,&mdash;scenery, spectacle, and music.</p>
+
+<p>From changes in theatrical conditions, friends of the drama doubtless found
+hope for its higher development; but the main source of promise seemed to
+lie in the patronage of the court. The court of Charles II indeed exerted a
+greater influence on the drama than any court since or, perhaps, before,
+but the influence was mainly toward social and political immorality.
+Patronage rather than public support was relied upon by both dramatists and
+actors. In consequence, the theatres became servile purveyors to the
+amusement and taste of the king and his favorites, and blindly partisan
+adherents of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> royal politics. The failure to represent the nation and
+the consequent loss both in range of artistic impulse and in soundness of
+moral standards that had characterized the drama in the reigns of the two
+earlier Stuarts were now greatly intensified. In tragedy, grossness of
+language and manners had less opportunity than in comedy, but political
+subserviency had freer play. Political allegory combined with tragedy in
+plays contemptible as specimens of either species. This unworthy
+partisanship and this catering to a society mean and corrupt necessarily
+maimed that branch of the drama supposed to devote itself to heroic and
+lofty themes.</p>
+
+<p>The influences making most for innovation in the poetry and art of the
+drama came from France, partly owing to the instigation of the court. The
+character of this French influence, like its sources, differed from time to
+time, but from 1660 until after the death of Voltaire it was continuous and
+powerful. In tragedy, shortly after the Restoration, the heroic romances of
+Calpren&egrave;de, Scud&eacute;ry, and others, and the French plays which they had
+fostered, were the sources and models of much in the English heroic plays.
+There was constant borrowing and adapting from French romances and
+tragedies, as from French comedies. The "Cid" had been translated and acted
+in the reign of Charles I; several other of Corneille's plays were
+translated before 1670, his subjects and style were often imitated, and
+toward the end of the century the influence of Racine was marked upon
+English drama. The French influence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> on tragedy, however, was less a matter
+of models than of rules and theory. The English dramatists never in this
+period got very close to Corneille or Racine, but they were greatly
+impressed by French criticism and precept. In an age of reason and
+modernity, English tragedy, like other forms of literature, found its
+reaction from the crudities of an earlier age and its reform of the
+excesses of an untrained art in the pseudo-classicism of France.</p>
+
+<p>An effort was made, which proved far more portentous than preceding ones,
+to wrest tragedy back into conformity with the supposed rules of Aristotle.
+The conflict between English and French models, between Shakespeare and
+Corneille, between romantic license and classical proprieties had begun, a
+conflict to be continued in criticism as well as practice for over a
+century. Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" introduces us at once to the
+questions at issue and the state of the debate. The main questions were:
+first, the unities, recognized in French drama as necessities and
+supposedly derived from Aristotle; second, the mixture of tragedy and
+comedy, or, more especially, the introduction of low comedy into tragedy;
+and third, the use of rhyme as in French tragedy or of blank verse as in
+English, prose by general consent being restricted to comedy. In these the
+English tradition was directly opposed by French practice and theory, and
+in many minor matters as well: in the <i>liaison</i> of scenes, favored, as was
+the unity of place, by the use of scenery; in certain proprieties in the
+conduct of kings and of subjects to kings; in the restriction of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> tragedy
+to historical, classical, or at least heroical persons and themes; and,
+notably, in the avoidance of violence and bloodshed in the action. Dryden's
+discussion reveals French practice and classical practice, not clearly
+differentiated, set up against the English tradition, and recognizes much
+in the former that seems reasonable and authoritative. But, on the other
+hand, it insists on the excellence and impressiveness of the English
+achievement. Such was the state of opinion shortly after the Restoration,
+and such, with varying emphasis and refinement, remained the consensus of
+opinion of dramatists and critics for a century. The laws of the
+pseudo-classicists were held to be measurably good, but Shakespeare without
+those laws had been undeniably great.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Restoration the main influence on the theatre was that of
+the earlier English drama. When the theatres were opened the old plays were
+acted. Literally hundreds were revived, many of which long held the stage.
+After a time changes in taste and theatrical conditions led to revisions
+and alterations; but the alterations of Shakespeare and others not only
+illustrate this perversion of taste, but also testify to the continuance of
+the English tradition. Not merely revisions and adaptations, but the whole
+drama bears witness to its descent. The characteristics of the tragedy of
+1630 are those of the tragedy of 1670. The influence of the
+Beaumont-Fletcher romances and of the tragedy of revenge are hardly less
+marked after 1660 than before. The comic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> scenes, blank verse, complicated
+plots, physical horrors, and supernatural agents, the mixture of
+idealization and realism that characterize Elizabethan tragedy, persist
+throughout the Restoration period.</p>
+
+<p>The conflict between the contending theories of tragedy may be studied in
+criticism. Dryden's various essays recur again and again to the main issues
+of the war, and define with changing emphasis his attempted reconciliation
+of the two opposites. Rymer came forward as a thoroughgoing exponent of
+classicism, and at the beginning of the next century Dennis, Gildon, and
+Addison carried on the discussion. The conflict is also represented in the
+work of nearly every dramatist. There are tragedies in blank verse and
+tragedies in rhyme, tragicomedies, tragedies with comic scenes, tragedies
+without deaths and with happy endings, tragedies translated from the
+French, others based on Greek originals, and still others in their medleys
+of farce, horror, and rant as Elizabethan as "The Jew of Malta" itself.
+Many of these varieties are represented in the work of a single writer, as
+Crowne, or Lee, or Otway. The career of Dryden sums up and reflects nearly
+all the changes in opinion or practice. His plays, and with them the whole
+course of tragedy from 1660 to 1700, fall roughly into certain divisions.
+For a few years after the Restoration, ending at about the time of the
+"Essay," is the period of the dominance of the earlier drama, a period of
+which Davenant is the leading figure. About 1664 began the heroic tragedies
+in rhyme which for a time carried all before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> them. In a dozen years,
+however, the fashion wore out, and Dryden's "All for Love" in 1678 marked
+the abandonment of rhyme and led the return to Shakespeare. From 1678 on,
+the course of tragedy again takes to varied streams. To this period belong
+the most notable alterations of Shakespeare, the most permanent of
+Restoration tragedies in the plays of Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and also the
+growth of French methods and of the influence of Racine, culminating in the
+pseudo-classical triumph at the beginning of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>At the opening of the theatres, tragedy and tragicomedy took up their
+courses about where they had left off. The plays of Davenant, the main
+connecting link between the two periods, might be treated in connection
+with either, without seeming in the least out of place. Tragicomedy of the
+type current in the thirties continued in the sixties; tragedy oscillated
+between honor and horror, fine writing and perverted lust, as in Massinger,
+Shirley, and Glapthorne. Spanish stories, long influential in the drama,
+promised for a time to prove still more important. Dryden's first two
+plays, "The Wild Gallant" (1663)<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> and "The Rival Ladies" (1664), were
+based, like many other contemporary plays, on Spanish originals; but the
+second introduced rhyme and some of the elements of the plots of the heroic
+plays.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> It was, however, the Elizabethan plays that the audiences went to
+see, and that the dramatists had constantly before them. The plays of the
+Marlowean period were regarded as out of date, and very few were revived,
+practically none of the tragedies except the early ones of Shakespeare. Of
+the later Elizabethans, Beaumont and Fletcher were the most popular, for a
+time surpassing Shakespeare. Over thirty of their plays were revived, and
+many of these were constantly acted. Of tragedies and tragicomedies, "The
+Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster," "Bonduca," "A King and No King,"
+"Valentinian," and "Rollo" held the stage till the end of the century, the
+first three much longer. Jonson's tragedies, as well as his comedies, were
+revived; and Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," Webster's "White Devil,"
+Chapman's "Bussy D'Ambois," Shirley's "Cardinal" and "Traitor" were among
+the plays that carried on the traditions of the tragedy of blood.
+Shakespeare's comedies fell into disfavor, but his tragedies were popular
+from the start. This was due in part to the genius of Betterton, who found
+his best opportunities in depicting their protagonists, in part to their
+merits as stage plays for both actors and audiences; but, whatever the
+causes of their success, they soon exercised a large and increasing
+influence upon the theory and practice of tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The Elizabethan plays, however, had almost from the first to encounter a
+rivalry with a new fashion. Davenant, their reviver, was also the first
+with the new. His "Siege of Rhodes" (1656), with its scenery, machines,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+music, rhyme, and heroics, may be said to inaugurate both the opera and the
+heroic play. Howard's "Indian Queen" (1664), in which Dryden had a hand,
+was followed by Dryden's "Indian Emperor" (1665), in rhyme and displaying
+the full-fledged heroic formula. The love-complications of its plot are of
+a kind constantly reappearing not only in the heroic plays but in later
+tragedy as well.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Montezeuma and Cortez are the historical heroes;
+Almeria, daughter of the Indian Queen, is the vengeful
+passionate heroine; Cydaria, daughter of Montezeuma, is
+the angelic heroine. Montezeuma's sons, Odmar and
+Guyomar, Almeria's sister, Alibech, and her brother,
+Orbellan, all in love with some one, add to the
+criss-crossing of affections. Almeria is loved by
+Montezeuma, but loves Cortez, who does not love her.
+Cydaria is loved by Cortez and also by Orbellan. The
+two heroines, as well as the two heroes, are thus
+rivals, and the vengeful one directs the intrigue. The
+brothers Odmar and Guyomar, to say nothing of a Spanish
+captain, both love Alibech, and provide the usual story
+of fraternal rivalry. After duels, captures,
+imprisonments, conflicts of honor, renunciations, and
+jealousies, finally the vengeful heroine succumbs. One
+of the brothers is preserved for Alibech; Cortez weds
+the angelic heroine; the rest, including six of the
+leading actors and several supernumeraries, are killed
+or commit suicide.</p></div>
+
+<p>Dryden's dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery gives some
+support to the latter's claim to have been the introducer of the rhymed
+heroic species, though his first play acted was probably "Henry V," in
+1664. Whoever the originators, their example was soon followed by Crowne,
+Lee, Settle, Otway, and most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> of the dramatists of the day; and for fifteen
+years or so English efforts in tragedy were confined to the heroic model.</p>
+
+<p>The use of the heroic couplet was its distinguishing mark; of course, an
+imitation of French practice. The plots, too, were direct borrowings, or
+close imitations, of contemporary French romances or dramas. Moreover, the
+themes and their treatment, the conception of honor, the importance given
+to love, and the pseudo-history, all followed French ideas. The unities
+were attended to, if not strictly observed; incidents, persons, and scenes
+greatly reduced in number in comparison with Elizabethan practice; and
+fixed rules of propriety in characterization and language observed, all in
+French fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The English plays, however, formed a type unknown in France or anywhere
+else on sea or land. The plots of all the "Sieges," "Rivals," and
+"Conquests" are mainly concerned with love, which inspires heroic sentiment
+and valor, encounters much jealousy and intrigue, runs counter to
+friendship and honor, and works its sorrows and joys among persons
+illustrious in history. In the end, the hero, a man of prodigious valor and
+most exemplary honor, weds the heroine, who is equally skilled in the
+artificial code of honor, while the deaths of the ambitious villain and the
+evil princess, in love with the hero and seeking revenge on the heroine,
+provide a tragic catastrophe. The persons are usually historical, English,
+Classical, or Eastern, and a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> historical fact was intended to give a
+kind of grandeur to the story. The Alexanders and Montezumas, however, have
+manners and sentiments drawn partly from the courts of Louis and Charles
+and partly from the world of romance. The curious conception of honor as
+superhuman valor and magnanimity combined with formal propriety leads to
+impossibilities like those in a child's book of wonders. Duels and rescues
+take the place of pitched fields; the valorous champion puts to rout an
+army, exchanges compliments and courtesies with the grace of a
+fashion-plate, boasts and rants in Cambyses' vein, and is near to expire in
+an ecstasy of declamation when the heroine extends her hand for him to
+kiss. The two rival lovers and the two rival ladies generally play their
+game of jealousy, ambition, and wounded honor during a conquest or a siege;
+but world and empire count for naught. <i>Amor vincit omnia.</i></p>
+
+<p>A mere summary of their leading traits may suggest, what a careful
+examination of the various representatives of the class will confirm, that
+the heroic plays were by no means a fresh importation from France, but
+rather a result of tendencies distinctly manifest in the English drama, at
+least since the Beaumont-Fletcher romances.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> The <i>genre</i> of heroic
+romances begun by Beaumont and Fletcher, continued in tragedy and
+especially in tragicomedy by Fletcher, Massinger, and Shirley, here takes a
+further but not very diverse development under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> spell of French romance
+and drama. The conflicts of honor, the rivalries in love, the few types of
+character constantly recurring, the extraordinary surprises and
+discoveries, the women, sentimental and sensational, offered nothing new in
+English drama. The avoidance of bloodshed, the observance of poetic
+justice, the exaltation of love as the whole theme, the preference for the
+sensational and astounding rather than the natural or inevitable, have all
+been found distinguishing drama since Fletcher. On the other hand, the
+hateful intrigue and abnormal lust, the horrors and gloom of Webster and
+Ford found little place in the heroic plays. One survival from the revenge
+plays, however, took on new life. Ghosts became as numerous and voluble as
+in the days of Kyd. But in the main the heroic plays represent the
+continuance of the heroic romance and tragicomedy corrected in accord with
+French standards of dramatic art and French conceptions of gallantry and
+heroism.</p>
+
+<p>It is in this aspect that they are of the most interest in the history of
+English tragedy. They are not a freak variation but a species lineally
+related to those which precede and follow. They carry the restriction and
+conventionalization of the material of tragedy much farther than did the
+plays of Shirley and his contemporaries; and, somewhat before Racine, they
+confine the main course of tragedy to sentimental love. Though their main
+innovation, the employment of rhyme, did not prevail, and though their
+changes in technic were rejected by many later Restoration dramatists, yet
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> were a powerful force in habituating the theatre to the structure and
+methods of French tragedy and in promoting the triumph of these methods in
+the next century. They also mark a further change in the conception of the
+field and functions of tragedy. The result of developments from tragicomedy
+rather than from tragedy, they exhibit a blending of the two forms and a
+redivision along new lines. Before the Restoration, nearly all tragedies
+had presented a mixture of comedy or of farce. Tragicomedy had been
+distinguished from tragedy not by the presence of comedy but by the fact
+that its leading persons were brought near to death yet saved for a happy
+ending. Moreover, tragicomedies as a class developed along the lines of the
+Beaumont-Fletcher romances. The heroic plays inherited the traits of this
+class and also to some extent the happy endings. In some, as Orrery's
+"Henry V," there is no suffering and everything turns out well; in others,
+as Orrery's later plays, there is bloodshed enough; but in nearly all death
+is visited only on the evil; the heroic are married. All plays with heroic
+themes, however, were called tragedies. There was no hint of heroic comedy
+as in France. The distinction between tragedy and comedy, which the
+Restoration drama drew much more closely than the Elizabethan, came to
+depend less on the presence of deaths or of an unhappy ending, and more on
+the nature of the material and form. After the decline of the heroic plays,
+tragedy returned, as we shall see, to bloodshed, deaths, and horrors, but
+meantime the heroic plays had emphasized as essential<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> certain elements
+that long continued their ascendency in both critical and popular views of
+tragedy. Henceforth every one associated with tragedy heroic actions,
+illustrious persons, verse, whether rhymed or blank, a love story, and an
+inflated diction. The curious heroic rant, indeed, supplied a vocabulary
+and a manner that lasted long after the jingle of the rhyming couplets had
+been abandoned. Its "furies," "vows," "chains," "transports," "ecstasies,"
+and "Etnas burning within the breast" remained the language of despairing
+innocence and palpitating passion. Tragic became almost synonymous with
+artificial and inflated.</p>
+
+<p>A worthier achievement must also be credited to the heroic plays. The
+spacious realms of romance which the Elizabethans had loved were closing
+their gates to the imagination of the later seventeenth century. Even
+Shakespeare's isles of the blest that so delighted Elizabeth and James were
+strangely inaccessible to Restoration fancy, which took pleasure in only
+the "Merry Wives of Windsor" among his comedies. The narrowing of romance
+had been manifest in the drama since 1600, and it was a theatrical and
+artificial domain of thrills, sentiments, and honor that the Restoration
+received for its heritage. Poor enough as is this kingdom, absurd its
+inhabitants, it is still the land of the wonderful and impossible, and its
+monarchs now and then remind us of Tamburlaine and Hotspur. At the time of
+Wycherley's comedies and Rochester's patronage of literature, men and women
+sighed and thrilled with Albumazor, dreamed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> of love, and fancied
+themselves kings and queens in China and Peru. When Romance was banished
+from other forms of literature,&mdash;unless in pastoral or opera,&mdash;tragedy
+still remained dedicated to the banished goddess, and in its precincts
+scanty flames still burned on the altars of heroism, enthusiasm, romantic
+aspiration, and extravagant love.</p>
+
+<p>The rise and wane of the heroic plays is sufficiently illustrated in the
+career of their chief exponent. After his "Indian Emperor" (1665), Dryden
+turned in "Secret Love" (1667) to tragicomedy with a mixture of verse,
+rhyme, and prose and a mixture of heroic and lively comedy. After various
+comedies and the adaptation of "The Tempest," "Tyrannic Love" (1669) and
+"The Conquest of Granada" (1669) accomplished the full triumph of rhymed
+verse and "the grand scale." At times Dryden's rapidity and vigor almost
+justify the rhymed couplets and redeem the absurdities of the conventions.
+It was in the Epilogue to "The Conquest" that he attacked the Elizabethans,
+vaunting the superiority of an age when</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Our ladies and our men now speak more wit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In conversation, than those poets writ."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1671 came the burlesque "Rehearsal," which, if its attack did not centre
+on heroic plays, made Dryden and the popular "Conquest of Granada" the
+butts of its most telling fun. Then followed Dryden's "Essay of Heroic
+Plays," two comedies, his inexcusable tragedy of "Amboyna" (written in a
+month to support the war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> with the Dutch, yet, in conformity to the
+fashion, tracing the Dutch atrocities to a heroic love), and the opera
+based on Milton's "Paradise Lost." In 1675 came "Aureng Zebe," the last of
+his heroic plays, without supernatural machinery, and somewhat tamed in
+style.</p>
+
+<p>The vogue of the heroic play was about over. In 1678 came Rymer's attempt
+at a model heroic tragedy and his "Tragedies of the Last Age," a severe
+attack upon the Elizabethan drama from the point of view of extreme
+pseudo-classicism. But in the same year was acted Dryden's "All for Love,"
+in blank verse, with a preface extolling Shakespeare, rejecting the models
+of the ancients as "too little for English tragedy," discarding "the nicety
+of manners of the French," yet claiming credit for an observance of the
+unities. This was the one play in which, as he declared, Dryden followed
+his own bent unheedful of stage fashions, and it seems to have set the
+fashion and led the way back to blank verse and to Shakespeare. Rhymed
+plays continued to appear occasionally, but blank verse was henceforth
+recognized as the proper medium for tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Even Dryden's praise of Shakespeare is modified by his respect for French
+rules, and by the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare's genius lacked the
+improvements readily secured by an application of the accepted formulas of
+art. That a certain improvement is accomplished cannot be denied. The
+incoherent profusion of scenes, the host of distracting incidents are
+reduced to order, the unities of time and place give a directness and
+rapidity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> to the action that "Antony and Cleopatra" greatly lacks. In
+characterization and poetry Dryden's play is, to be sure, not comparable
+with Shakespeare's, but in both respects it far surpasses the numerous
+other English dramas on the subject. This is faint praise. By following
+Shakespeare without imitating him, and by adapting a play to the stage
+requirements of the day without bowing to the absurdities of the heroic
+models, Dryden succeeded in producing a great and original poetical drama.
+Not in response to mere theatrical fashion or to French taste or theory,
+but in response to the inspiration of Shakespeare came the finest product
+of Restoration tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In this same year as "All for Love" appeared "&OElig;dipus," written in
+collaboration with Lee, in which the authors brought to their classical
+model the methods of the Elizabethans. Eurydice and Adrastus furnish the
+necessary love story, and Creon becomes the hateful rival and intriguing
+villain. The declamation sometimes shows Dryden at his best, the bombast
+and horrors are in Lee's worst vein. In the next year appeared Dryden's
+improvement of "Troilus and Cressida" with his careful essay on "The
+Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," in which he criticises after the fashion
+set by Rymer the errors of Shakespeare and Fletcher, insists on the
+necessity of unity, order, and greatness in action, and praises the
+excellence of Fletcher and especially of Shakespeare in character and
+passion. Nowhere else, perhaps, has Dryden expressed so discriminatingly
+and so finally his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> own views and, on the whole, the views of his age, on
+tragedy. Shakespeare's greatness is recognized as pre&euml;minent in the
+presentation of character and passion; his faults in coherence and unity of
+structure and his archaism in manners and proprieties are admitted.</p>
+
+<p>From this time on Dryden's contributions to the drama were less frequent.
+In "The Spanish Fryar" (1681), he added the best Restoration example of
+tragicomedy, availing himself of Fletcher's example, a double plot, and a
+happy ending. "The Duke of Guise" (1682), a political allegory, written in
+collaboration with Lee, deserves little consideration as satire or drama.
+After two operas and an absence of several years from the stage, came "Don
+Sebastian" (1690), which Sir Walter Scott thought the best of his
+tragedies. It is heroic in its pairs of lovers and tangle of love and
+jealousy, and in the exploits, boasts, and love-making of the hero; French
+in its general structure; Elizabethan in its mixture of comedy, its use of
+horror and incest, and its imitation of Shakespeare. It recalls the
+tragedies before 1642, with their heroic love after the style of Beaumont
+and Fletcher, their horrors and incest following the Websterian school, and
+their emulation of famous passages in Shakespeare. "Cleomenes" (1692),
+which repeats the Potiphar's wife story, is still more Elizabethan, and
+"Love Triumphant," a tragicomedy (1693), deals with an incestuous passion
+proved innocent at last, a motive very popular since "A King and No King."</p>
+
+<p>Dryden never gave the theatre a whole-hearted service.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> Responding readily
+to its conditions, he wrote with facility and vigor comedies, tragedies,
+operas, and political allegories of the kind that changing fashion or
+patrons demanded. When, after a long slavery, he had acquired mastery of
+his art and confidence to lead rather than to follow, circumstances arose
+to call him away from the theatre. We may wish that he had earlier and
+oftener tried to do his best, as in "All for Love," "The Spanish Friar,"
+and "Don Sebastian"; but his genius was not essentially dramatic, and we
+may not regret the time taken from the theatre for the Satires and Fables.
+His greatness can be best seen by comparison with the work of his
+contemporaries. Whatever he tried, he did on the whole better than they,
+and in comprehensiveness and adaptability as well as in sheer poetic
+faculty he was their master.</p>
+
+<p>Up to "Aureng Zebe" Dryden's tragedies reflected the prevailing fashion;
+his "All for Love" marked a turning-point in the course of tragedy; and his
+criticism reviewed, summed up, and discriminated the current views of
+Shakespeare and the French. His later work was less representative of the
+general course of the drama, yet the various species exhibited in his work
+recur in that of his contemporaries, and the partial return to Elizabethan
+methods that marks his latest plays is perhaps the leading characteristic
+of the last twenty years of the century.</p>
+
+<p>Crowne's "Thyestes" is the only attempt besides Dryden's "Orestes" to adapt
+a classical play to the popular stage, and neither returns much nearer to
+the Greek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> than Seneca. The only play closely modeled on the Greek is
+Milton's "Samson Agonistes." The preface renounces the stage with a scorn
+that includes not only the Restoration tragedies but apparently those of
+Shakespeare as well. Though the play stands by itself, it may be said to
+represent a tendency to turn to Greek rather than to French models, a
+tendency boasted of by Dryden and Crowne, and fully manifest in the next
+century. And it takes its place at the head of the numerous, if sporadic,
+tragedies on Greek models that extend from the Restoration to the present
+day.</p>
+
+<p>In the return to Shakespeare, Dryden's influence was more potent, though
+here, as in the case of the Greeks, an increased appreciation was shown
+partly through alterations and adaptations. Before "All for Love," only
+"Measure for Measure," "Macbeth," and "The Tempest" of Shakespeare's plays
+had suffered alterations, and in two of these Dryden had a share. In the
+four years after 1678, no less than ten alterations were produced, the
+majority of which long usurped the stage. The restorers, sincere enough in
+their admiration for Shakespeare, were following Dryden's precept and
+example, correcting Shakespeare's faults in diction or structure, and
+preserving his poetry and characters. While their entire readiness to cut
+or to add resulted in part from ignorant vanity, it depended far more on
+their confidence in the panacea afforded by Art for all diseases of genius.
+Art, according to their prescription, was compounded of closeness of
+structure in the French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> style and a declamatory vocabulary in accord with
+the latest pseudo-classic conventions. The alterations are so various in
+their audacities that a brief general description is hardly possible. The
+main purpose in each case was the remaking of Shakespeare's disordered
+beauties into "a play," and, beyond the formulas of Art, the most usual
+improvement was the addition of a love story. Thus, Alcibiades marries the
+daughter of Timon, and Cordelia's loyalty is rewarded by the hand of Edgar.
+Perhaps the most that can be said for the restorers is, first, that they
+rescued for the stage some of the less dramatic plays, as "Troilus and
+Cressida," "Timon," "Henry IV," "Coriolanus," and "Cymbeline," and thereby
+greatly extended the knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare; and,
+second, that they left "Hamlet" and "Othello" untouched. Adaptations were
+made of practically all Elizabethan authors, and Shakespeare fared as his
+fellows. A more elaborate history of the drama than the present one might
+trace the changes in the conception of tragedy and in the taste of the
+theatres as indicated by these alterations. The main consideration here is
+that, however mutilated or embellished, a half dozen of his tragedies were
+among the favorite plays of the Restoration. Before the end of the century
+they had outclassed the other Elizabethan plays, even those of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, in popular regard. The Restoration did what his own age had not
+done; it recognized Shakespeare's supremacy in English tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>It would be tedious to trace the infatuation for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> heroic plays and the
+partial return to the Elizabethans in the work of the various dramatists
+whose careers paralleled Dryden's. His rival, Settle, wrote heroic plays, a
+sensational political play on the Whig side, "Pope Joan, or the Female
+Prelate," and a long series of tragedies and comedies extending well into
+the next century. John Crowne, another contemporary, began with tragic
+comedies and heroic rhymed plays, proceeded to Shakespearean alterations,
+"Thyestes," and blank verse plays in the Elizabethan tradition, and ended
+his career with a rhymed "Caligula." Among those who in tragedy confined
+themselves mainly to adaptations or borrowings from the Elizabethans were
+Tate, Ravenscroft, and D'Urfey; and a group of women should be
+mentioned,&mdash;Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Pix, and Mrs. Centlivre,&mdash;who in
+the later half of the period devoted considerable attention to tragedy
+without creating any marked departure from the commonplace. We must confine
+ourselves to the authors whose tragedies had a more extended interest.</p>
+
+<p>Nathaniel Lee wrote his first play in 1675, when he was eighteen years old,
+and produced ten tragedies, in addition to the two in which he collaborated
+with Dryden, before the close of 1684, when he became insane. The first
+three, "Nero," "Sophonisba," and "Gloriana," were rhymed, but the fourth,
+"The Rival Queens" (1677), preceded Dryden in its return to blank verse and
+won an enormous success, maintaining itself on the stage long after the
+death of Betterton. His remaining tragedies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> were in blank verse,
+"Mithridates," "&OElig;dipus," "Theodosius," "C&aelig;sar Borgia," "Lucius Junius
+Brutus," "Duke of Guise," "Constantine," and "The Massacre of Paris," which
+with the tragicomedy "The Princess of Cleve" was acted after his release
+from the madhouse.</p>
+
+<p>All his plays are pretty much of a kind. The juvenile and worthless "Nero"
+unites the conventions of heroic love with the ghosts, lust, bloodshed, and
+madness of the later Elizabethan revenge plays. The later blank verse
+plays, though to a large extent based on French romances, envelop the love
+interest in a Tourneurian medley of depravity and horror. They revive the
+late Elizabethan type of tragedy that united the sentimental and the
+terrible and delighted to present loving and devoted womanhood in an
+environment of undiluted villany, abnormal lust, and physical torture. They
+add somewhat of the closeness of structure of French models, the spectacle
+of an unproved stage that displays ballets and temples along with bloody
+heavens, human sacrifice, and crucifixions, and a style that out-Herods the
+Elizabethans in the extravagance and vehemence of its rant. "Theodosius"
+tells of the fatal result of the rival love of brothers for the same woman;
+"Brutus" of the judicial murder of a son by a father; "C&aelig;sar Borgia"
+introduces Machiavelli again as a machinating villain in a story of
+fraternal rivalry in love; "Constantine" and "Gloriana" deal with the rival
+loves of son and father. This theme, a favorite with Lee, reappears in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+"Mithridates," the contents of which are fairly typical of the revolting
+intrigues to which Lee mainly confined himself.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The leading persons are Mithridates, the lustful
+dotard; his two sons, Ziphares and Pharnaces; Monima,
+the gentle heroine, contracted to Mithridates;
+Semandra, the chief heroine, in love with and loved by
+Ziphares; her father, a noble soldier; and two
+conspiring villains. The Romans are at the gates of
+Synope, where the scene is placed. Pharnaces, at feud
+with his brother and desirous of Monima for himself,
+conspires with the villains to thwart the marriage of
+Mithridates to Monima and direct the passion of the
+king to Semandra. Mithridates condemns Ziphares to
+death and pursues Semandra, but is persuaded to relent
+in order that Ziphares may lead the army against the
+Romans. Semandra and Ziphares exchange parting vows of
+fidelity as he leaves for battle. The conspirators
+again incite Mithridates; and Semandra, in order to
+save the life of her lover, repulses him upon his
+return in triumph. In consequence he believes her false
+and leaves her in the power of his father. The fourth
+act opens with Mithridates, who has ravished Semandra,
+"encompassed with the ghosts of his sons, who set
+daggers to his breast and vanish." He is attacked by
+remorse; Pharnaces betrays the city to the Romans;
+Semandra and Ziphares have a last interview and commit
+suicide; Mithridates dies after condemning the captured
+conspirators and Pharnaces to execution.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is interesting to compare this with Racine's play of the same title and
+dealing with the same historical incidents, acted four years earlier.
+Though neither play represents its author at his best, and Lee's was
+apparently written without any knowledge of Racine's, the two illustrate
+the differences between the two theatres,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> and may remind us how far Lee
+was from forsaking the English tradition for the French. In Racine, all the
+stage spectacles, temples, portents, and ghosts, all the horrors and frenzy
+are lacking; so, too, are the characters of Archilaus the noble soldier and
+Semandra the all-important person in Lee. In addition to Mithridates,
+Monima, and the two sons, the only persons are two confidants and a
+servant. The intrigue is of the simplest. Monima, contracted to
+Mithridates, is loved by both of his sons and returns the love of Xiphar&eacute;s.
+In the end Pharnaces forsakes his father, who dies, leaving Monima and
+Xiphar&eacute;s to face impending ruin. Mithridates is not the lustful tyrant
+traditional on the English stage, but a monarch who cherishes great
+projects and counts magnanimity a royal duty. Nor is Pharnaces the
+traditional English villain with accomplices, as in Lee, though he has a
+villain's part to play. The interest is psychological, centring on
+emotional crises in the lives of all, and without resort to sensationalism,
+horrors, or complication of incident.</p>
+
+<p>Otway, like Lee, began with rhymed plays, "Alcibiades" (1675) and "Don
+Carlos" (1676), the second winning an extraordinary and long-continued
+success on the stage. The next year appeared his "Titus and Berenice," a
+free and sympathetic translation of Racine's "Berenice" that was surpassed
+in the favor of the theatre by Crowne's treatment of the same subject.
+After several comedies he followed the fashion for Shakespearean
+adaptations in his "History and Fall of Caius<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> Marius" (1680).<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> This
+monstrous play, about half of which, as Otway acknowledged in his prologue,
+is from "Romeo and Juliet," provides a large mixture of comedy, and
+presents Juliet (Lavinia) dressed as a page, the servant of her lover,
+after the style of Beaumont and Fletcher's Bellario. For sixty years this
+play superseded "Romeo and Juliet" upon the stage. Otway's two other
+tragedies, "The Orphan" (1680) and "Venice Preserved" (1682), are his
+masterpieces. They continued to be stage favorites for a century and a
+half, and procured for Otway the place next to Shakespeare in the
+admiration of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>"Venice Preserved" may be classed with the many tragedies of the day that
+maintain the Elizabethan traditions. These are manifest in the general
+structure, the large number of actors, the changing scenes, the gross
+comedy, the abundance of incidents, the terrors, ghosts, and madness. Not
+only the frequent reminiscences of Shakespeare and Fletcher, but the whole
+conception and treatment testify to an inspiration from the earlier and
+better days of the drama.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The story, not long ago too well known to need
+retelling, relates how Jaffier, in poverty and
+desperation, is induced to join a conspiracy against
+the state, and is then persuaded by his wife,
+Belvidera, to save the state and her father by turning
+informer. He seeks to sacrifice himself for the friend
+whom he has betrayed, and in the end stabs both himself
+and his friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> upon the scaffold. A curiously
+Elizabethan prolongation of the catastrophe follows in
+the apparition of the ghosts of the friends, and the
+madness and death of Belvidera.</p></div>
+
+<p>The essentials of great tragedy, of Shakespearean tragedy, are here. The
+opposition of character, the struggle of the generous but pliable Jaffier
+under the conflicting influences of his wife and the steadfast 'Roman'
+Pierre, the joy and tenderness and ruin that come with his love for
+Belvidera, are all drawn with a truth of passion in conception and language
+that reaches the heart. "Nature is there," wrote Dryden, "which is the
+greatest beauty." Marred as a whole by buffoonery and excess, the play is
+still among the two or three best tragedies of the Restoration. If it were
+all equal to the tremendous fourth act, Otway would be sure of a place
+among the immortals.</p>
+
+<p>Marked by the same power of swaying the emotions of tenderness and pity,
+"The Orphan" attains these effects by means of the situations rather than
+through the study of motives. The plot deals with the rivalry of two
+brothers in love with their father's ward. She is secretly married to one;
+the other substitutes himself by trick on the marriage night. The
+situation, which has parallels in preceding tragedy, is abhorrent enough to
+kill all interest in the persons concerned; but Otway's power to depict
+love and distress triumphs over one's repugnance. The play is remarkable in
+many ways. Its few characters, its observance of the unities, its
+confinement of the action, give it the simplicity and directness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> of French
+tragedy. Its theme and its poetry recall Elizabethan rather than
+Restoration examples. But it departs from the canons of either theatre in
+presenting neither historical persons, nobles, kings, nor illustrious
+actions. Based on a story, supposedly of fact, related in a contemporary
+pamphlet, it merely transfers the scene to Bohemia, without adding the
+usual accessories of tragedy. Though it keeps something of a court setting
+and does not venture into middle-class society, it is like the Elizabethan
+plays of crime in its presentation of contemporaneous fact, and like
+Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness" in telling a story of domestic
+distress. It might by a little extension of the term be called a domestic
+tragedy, and it still further departs from the canons in relating the
+misery of an innocent sufferer who is the victim of a cruel mistake. Otway
+should, therefore, be remembered as a dramatist who, in a time when tragedy
+was largely artificial, imitative, and conventional, painted suffering and
+tenderness with truth to nature, and who violated the accepted rules of his
+art in order to reach the hearts of his audience. That he could not also
+escape the moral perversion of taste that marked his time has brought its
+punishment in the final neglect of his masterpieces; but it is a sign of
+genius to turn away from heroic plays, Racine, and Shakespeare, to write
+plays different from any written before, and to stir all men's hearts for
+over a century.</p>
+
+<p>Of the many dramatists who wrote tragedies in the last decade of the
+seventeenth century and bridged the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> way from the age of Dryden to the age
+of Pope, only Banks, Southerne, and Congreve produced plays of continuing
+popularity and influence through the eighteenth century. Banks ended a
+prolific career with "Cyrus the Great, or the Tragedy of Love" in 1696, but
+his popularity was mainly due to his three English historical tragedies,
+"Virtue Betrayed, or Anne Bullen," "The Island Queens" (Elizabeth and Mary
+Stuart), and "The Unhappy Favorite" (the Earl of Essex). These plays are
+interesting as an illustration of the survival on the stage of a dramatic
+species in a debased form. Though in blank verse, their material is that of
+the heroic play; their formula, much love-making and a pretense of
+portentous events; their persons, rivals in love,&mdash;two men with the same
+woman or two women with the same man,&mdash;a wicked minister, a revengeful
+woman, and the queen at the centre of the stage. There is no comedy, no
+physical horrors, and even the portents are reduced to a peculiar
+decorum:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Last night no sooner was I laid to rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But just three drops of blood fell from my nose."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The construction is on French models with few actors, continuity of scenes,
+and observance of the unities. Puerile in conception and more ridiculous in
+their bombast than Fielding's burlesque, they have enough rapidity of
+action, vivacity of claptrap, and extravagance of changing emotions to
+account for their stage success.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Southerne finished "Cleomenes" for Dryden, with whom he was closely
+associated, and his tragedies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> follow Dryden's later work in maintaining
+the Elizabethan traditions of blank verse, comedy, double plots, shifting
+scenes, horrors, and persons of varied ranks. His "Loyal Brother" (1682) is
+wholly commonplace, and "The Spartan Dame" (1719) and "The Fate of Capua"
+(1700) do not depart from usual themes and methods, though the latter is in
+some respects Southerne's best play; but his two most successful plays,
+"The Fatal Marriage" (1694) and "Oroonoko" (1696), both based on novels by
+Mrs. Behn, present decided innovations in theme. "Oroonoko, or the Royal
+Slave" contains much comedy, and has little merit besides the novelty of
+the story, presenting the virtues of a negro slave. "The Fatal Marriage, or
+the Innocent Adultery" introduces the Enoch Arden story, attached to an
+outrageous comic underplot derived in part from Fletcher's "Nightwalker."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In the main plot, Biron, oldest son of Baldwin, has
+been captured by pirates and is supposed to be dead,
+his letters being kept secret and answered by his
+villanous brother, Carlos, who urges his wife Isabella
+to marry. After Baldwin, instigated by Carlos, has
+thrust her out from his house, she accepts the devoted
+Villeroy. Biron returns; she goes mad in a scene of
+great imaginative power; Carlos and his assistants
+endeavor to kill Biron, who is rescued by the returning
+Villeroy. Biron, however, dies; and an accomplice of
+Carlos, tortured upon the rack (on the stage),
+confesses and exposes Carlos. Then "enter Isabella
+distracted, her little son running in before, being
+afraid of her." She stabs herself.</p></div>
+
+<p>Like Otway's "Orphan," this is virtually a domestic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> tragedy, for there are
+no interests of state or court, and our sympathy is centred solely on the
+innocent distress of the heroine. Like Otway, again, Southerne gains his
+greatest effects by an appeal to pity. The sentimentality that we attribute
+to the days of Richardson's "Clarissa" earlier triumphed on the stage in
+the heroines of Lee, Otway, and Southerne.</p>
+
+<p>Not less successful on the stage than the plays of Banks and Southerne was
+the single tragedy of Congreve. First acted in 1697, "The Mourning Bride"
+continued without alteration through the next century, and furnished Mrs.
+Siddons with one of her greatest parts. Congreve's remarkable dramatic
+ingenuity was skillfully exercised in combining all the elements that the
+average audience delighted in, and yet presenting these draped sufficiently
+to avoid offending the judicious. Classical form and technic permit a
+sensational and gruesome fifth act; dignified and facile verse gives way at
+times to outrageous rant; the usual plot of the rival ladies and rival
+lovers is ingeniously complicated to supply suspense, surprise, and a happy
+ending.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>It is the day after the death of King Anselmo, prisoner
+of Manuel, King of Granada, whose daughter Almeira has
+been secretly married to Alphonso, son of Anselmo, and
+then separated from him by shipwreck. She confesses
+this marriage to her confidant, mourns Anselmo, and
+declares that she will never yield to her father and
+marry Garcia, son of the premier Gonzales. King Manuel
+returns from battle, having slain the Moorish king, and
+brings the queen Zara and other prisoners, among them a
+valiant warrior, Osmyn&mdash;Alphonso in disguise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> At the
+tomb of Anselmo, Osmyn-Alphonso and Almeira meet and
+dissolve in grief.</p>
+
+<p>The king is in love with Zara and Zara with Osmyn. She
+offers to procure Osmyn's escape and to fly with him;
+but later on, discovering him with Almeira, she betrays
+them to the king. The king and Zara are now torn by
+love and jealousy. She obtains permission to have Osmyn
+strangled by one of her mutes, and the suspicious
+Gonzales assumes the costume of the mute in order to
+make sure of the execution. Meanwhile the king,
+learning of Zara's passion for Osmyn, determines to
+have him killed and then assume his clothing in order
+to confront Zara. Osmyn makes his escape; Gonzales
+kills the king, taking him for Osmyn; Zara, taking the
+body to be Osmyn's, drinks poison; Almeira is about to
+make the same mistake, when the soldiers enter with
+Osmyn at their head.</p></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps no other single play is so representative of the various features
+of Restoration tragedy. It is not a tragedy, at all if one insists that
+tragedy should be logical and psychological; but it was praised by Voltaire
+and Dr. Johnson and approved by the London public for over a century.</p>
+
+<p>Although the years from 1660 to 1700 offer little in tragedy that has
+proved of permanent value, they mark the continuance of the <i>genre</i> in a
+full tide of popularity. Probably in no forty years since then have so many
+original tragedies appeared in the London theatres; certainly in no forty
+years since have so many Elizabethan tragedies been revived. Tragedies and
+tragicomedies together are in numbers almost equal to the comedies which we
+think of as especially distinguishing the Restoration stage. There was
+hardly a writer for the theatre who did not try<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> his hand at tragedy. In
+spite of the rivalry of opera and comedy, it continued from Davenant to
+Southerne to delight the age. Its literary as well as its theatrical
+importance was maintained. Noble authors as well as the greatest wits, the
+Earl of Orrery, Granville, Dryden, and Congreve, courted the tragic muse.
+Tragedy written for the popular stage had, indeed, a literary eminence
+hardly recognized before, even in the generation preceding the Civil War.
+In comparison with their Elizabethan predecessors the tragedies of this
+time are, in fact, literary rather than popular. They draw their themes
+from French or English plays; they display little innovation and still less
+study of life; they adopt rules and regulations; they are conventional and
+artificial. They respond to literary traditions; they hardly express the
+sentiments or ideas of their age. Some exceptions there are; but even plays
+like those of Banks, which gained theatrical success without literary
+distinction, resembled their more worthy brethren in their adherence to
+convention rather than nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the main Restoration tragedy must be regarded as a continuation and
+development of Elizabethan. The influence of Beaumont and Fletcher
+continued in the heroic plays and their after-effects. The wane of the
+heroic plays brought a return to the Elizabethans, and, notably in Lee, to
+some of the most characteristic features of the later revenge plays. The
+increasing influence of Shakespeare was felt not only in the worthy
+emulation of "All for Love" and in the various adaptations, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> also in
+the debates of the critics and through the whole warp and woof of tragedy.
+But what were pre&euml;minent in many of Shakespeare's contemporaries as in
+Shakespeare himself, poetry, passion, and characterization, were beyond the
+reach of any of the playwrights except Dryden, Lee, and Otway at their
+best. The worst excesses, the most undesirable conventions of the
+Elizabethans, excited imitation as much as their excellences. The
+Elizabethan bloom had gone to seed in unfavorable soil. It is not strange
+that after the horrors, bloodshed, and supernaturalism of Lee and Otway,
+and after the gross buffoonery that spoils tragedies otherwise so noble as
+"Don Sebastian," "Venice Preserved," and "The Fatal Marriage," there should
+have followed in the opening years of the next century a marked reaction to
+the decencies of French tragedy. In the Restoration period, however, the
+French influence, though manifest in the great vogue of the heroic plays
+and in a wide adoption of French ideas of structure and propriety, won only
+a partial triumph in checking and modifying the Elizabethan tradition. Its
+effect in supplying fresh incentives for worthy endeavor was slight,
+indeed, hardly discernible unless in the influence of Racine upon Otway.
+Tragedy, then, as handed down to the eighteenth century, was not a fixed
+and definite form, though measurably more so than a century before. It was
+still a conglomerate of various forms and tendencies, mingling relics of
+the medieval stage with reminiscences of Shakespeare and the manners of the
+court of Louis XIV. The sentimental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> tragedies of Southerne and Otway,
+telling stories of distressed womanhood and exciting pity without any
+accessories of grandeur, were perhaps the most independent achievements of
+Restoration tragedy; the preservation of Shakespearean influence was its
+most important. But, in comparison with a century before, the changes in
+tragedy that were most noticeable and permanent were the restriction of
+themes, the narrowing of structure, and the conventionality and
+artificiality that extended to character and language as well as to themes
+and plots.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Ward continues to supply the best history of the drama. Henceforth the
+standard authority for the history of the stage is Genest's <i>Some Account
+of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830</i>, 10 vols., Bath,
+1832. This is an invaluable collection of facts in regard to plays and
+actors, superseding preceding books on the subject and supplying material
+for subsequent ones. Other histories of the theatre are: Chetwood's
+<i>General History of the Stage</i> (1749); <i>The Dramatic Mirror</i> (1808); D. E.
+Baker's <i>Biographica Dramatica</i> (1764, continued by Isaac Reed and Stephen
+Jones, 3d ed. 1812); Dibdin's <i>Complete History of the English Stage</i>
+(1800). Lowe's <i>Bibliographical Account of English Dramatic Literature</i>
+(1888) will guide in their use. More recent histories of the theatre are:
+P. Fitzgerald's <i>New History of the Stage</i> (1882); Lowe's new edition of
+Doran's <i>Their Majesties' Servants</i> (1888); and H. B. Baker's <i>The London
+Stage</i>, 1576-1903 (1904).</p>
+
+<p>Works of the Restoration period on the drama or theatre include a number of
+Dryden's essays, notably, <i>The Essay of Dramatic Poesy</i>, <i>The Defence of
+the Essay</i>, <i>The Defence of the Epilogue</i>, <i>Of Heroic Plays</i>, and <i>The
+Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy</i>; Wright's <i>Historia Histrionica</i> (1699,
+reprinted in Dodsley and in Cibber's Life); Edward Phillips's <i>Theatrum
+Poetarum</i> (1675); Langbaine's <i>Account of the English Dramatic Poets</i>
+(1691); Rymer's <i>Tragedies of the Last Age</i> (1678) and <i>A Short View of
+Tragedy</i> (1693); Dennis's <i>The Impartial Critic</i> (1693); and Jeremy
+Collier's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span><i>Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English
+Stage</i> (1698). Downes's <i>Roscius Anglicanus</i> (1708, facsimile reprint,
+1886) also contains interesting information on the period. Corneille,
+Boileau, Saint Evremond, the Abb&eacute; D'Aubignac, and Rapin are the French
+critics of most influence on the drama of this period, especially Rapin,
+whose <i>Reflexions sur la po&euml;tique</i> was translated by Rymer (1674). J. E.
+Spingarn's <i>Seventeenth Century Critical Essays</i> (now in press) will
+contain all the critical work of the period of importance, with a valuable
+discussion of its relation to French criticism.</p>
+
+<p>There are collected editions of the works of most of the Restoration
+dramatists, but none of Settle or Banks. The Scott-Saintsbury edition is
+the standard for Dryden. Individual plays are to be found in many
+collections: <i>The Modern British Drama</i>, 5 vols. (1811); Oxberry's <i>New
+English Drama</i> (1812-25); Mrs. Inchbald's <i>Modern Theatre</i> (1811); Bell's
+<i>British Theatre</i> (1797) and supplement. <i>Dramatists of the Restoration</i>,
+edited by Maidment and Logan, 14 vols., Edinburgh, 1872-79, includes the
+plays of Crowne, Davenant, Tatham, and John Wilson. Ward and the <i>English
+Drama</i> (by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, <i>op. cit.</i>) direct to editions
+and monographs of the individual authors of this period.</p>
+
+<p>J. J. Jusserand's <i>Shakespeare en France</i> (1898), Professor Lounsbury's
+<i>Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist</i>, and Miss Canfield's <i>Corneille and
+Racine in England</i> (1905) are important for certain phases of the drama.
+Concerning the heroic plays there is a considerable literature; see,
+especially, P. Holzhausen on Dryden's heroic plays, <i>Englische Studien</i>,
+vols. xiii, xv, and xvi (1890-92); L. N. Chase, <i>The English Heroic Play</i>
+(1903); J. W. Tupper, <i>The Relation of the Heroic Play to Beaumont and
+Fletcher</i>, Mod. Lang. Assn. Publ. 1905. C. G. Child, <i>The Rise of the
+Heroic Play</i>, Mod. Lang. Notes, 1904. Alex. Beljame's <i>Le Public et les
+Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au xviii<sup>e</sup> si&egrave;cle</i> (1881) deals fully
+with Dryden and has an elaborate bibliography.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> In this and subsequent chapters the dates in brackets give
+the year of the first presentation in the case of acted plays. The date of
+publication usually coincides with the year of acting.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Cf.</i> James W. Tupper, <i>Relation of the Heroic Play to the
+Romances of Beaumont and Fletcher</i>. Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. 1905.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Ward (iii, 415) is in error in crediting public taste with
+condemnation of this play. Lavinia seems to have been one of Mrs. Barry's
+most successful parts.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h3>
+
+
+<p>In tragedy the division between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
+less marked than that which distinguishes in general the literatures of the
+Restoration and the Augustan eras. Yet by 1700 most of the leading
+dramatists of the preceding generation had ceased to write for the stage;
+and the death of Dryden marked the end of the old, as the beginning of the
+reign of Anne, with its important changes in politics, society, and
+literature, marked the beginning of a new development in tragedy. The
+attack of Jeremy Collier (1698) was also an important landmark in the
+history of the drama, assisting in a notable change from the preceding
+licentiousness and toward a moralized and sentimentalized comedy. A similar
+change in tragedy was its most apparent departure from Restoration models.
+Chastened language and a stricter moral censorship of both subjects and
+sentiments reflected that refinement of which the age of Addison and Pope
+was wont to boast.</p>
+
+<p>The theatrical conditions governing the reign of Queen Anne were not very
+different from those of the Restoration. There was a general complaint, as
+there has been ever since, that operas and spectacles were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> crowding the
+serious drama out of favor, but there was still abundant opportunity to see
+many of the best plays of the Elizabethan and Restoration periods. Of
+tragedies, we find in a single season, 1703-04, "Hamlet," "Othello,"
+"Julius C&aelig;sar," and alterations of "Macbeth," "Lear," "Richard III,"
+"Timon," and "Titus Andronicus," Shirley's "Traitor," and Beaumont and
+Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," "Valentinian," and "A King and No King," "The
+Loyal Subject," and other of their tragicomedies. "Henry VIII," "Rollo,"
+"Bonduca," and "Philaster" were performed within the next few years. Of
+Restoration tragedies, Banks's "Unhappy Favorite" and Lee's "Rival Queens"
+were perhaps the most popular, and other plays of Banks, Lee, Otway,
+Dryden, Congreve, and Southerne were acted yearly. A number of the heroic
+plays also still kept the stage, including Howard's "Indian Queen,"
+Dryden's "Conquest of Granada," "Indian Emperor," and "Aureng Zebe."
+Throughout the century both the London and the provincial theatres
+presented each year a large number of old plays, including many of these
+already mentioned. The Elizabethan tragedies, except Shakespeare's, and the
+heroic plays gradually disappeared from the regular repertoire, but
+Shakespeare's tragedies steadily gained in popularity, and "The Unhappy
+Favorite" (rewritten as "The Earl of Essex"), "The Orphan," "Venice
+Preserved," "Oronooko," "The Fatal Marriage" (altered as "Isabella"), "All
+for Love," and "The Mourning Bride" maintained their places into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> the
+nineteenth century. Tragedy thus had its permanent representatives in this
+group of stock plays, to which newcomers gained admission only by marked
+success on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>To these stock plays no writer of the eighteenth century made more notable
+additions than Nicholas Rowe, the first editor of Shakespeare, whose work
+began the century, borrowed much from his predecessors, and yet introduced
+most of the changes which distinguish the eighteenth century type of
+tragedy from that of the Restoration or Elizabethan period. His first play
+was followed by four other tragedies by 1707, and, after an interval of
+seven years, by "Jane Shore" (1714) and "Lady Jane Grey" (1715). Of the
+first five, three are of little interest except as representing common
+variations of the prevailing type. They all relate love stories of rivalry
+and intrigue among heroic personages, and all observe the French
+proprieties in structure. "The Ambitious Stepmother," like so many
+predecessors and successors, places the scene in an oriental court;
+"Ulysses" more daringly invades Homeric territory; and "The Royal Convert"
+turns to early English history, a field which literary patriotism was
+appropriating for tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In "Tamerlane" (1702), love and intrigue play subordinate parts to the
+political and moral interest which the author endeavored to centre upon his
+protagonist. Tamerlane, who, we are told, was patterned on William III, is
+an extremely pious pagan, who overtops conquest with mercy and adorns every
+occasion with a moralizing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> discourse. Had he ever encountered his
+Marlowean namesake, he would have shed the pitying tear. In general, the
+structure is on the French plan, but the large number of characters and the
+considerable amount of action recall Elizabethan models. The verse, too,
+with its feminine endings, occasionally reminds one of Fletcher, and the
+figures of speech are feebly patterned on Shakespeare, while the ravings of
+Bajazet are worthy of Nat Lee. The play, long acted every November fifth,
+seems to have owed its great success to its high moral tone and its
+patriotic eloquence. It set the key for many similarly patriotic tunes.</p>
+
+<p>"The Fair Penitent" (1703) links itself with the two later "She-tragedies,"
+to borrow a term from one of their epilogues. Its prologue proclaims an
+innovation from the usual tragic themes of monarchs' cares and lost
+royalty, because&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We ne'er can pity what we ne'er can share<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">*....*....*....*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore an humbler Theme our Author chose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A melancholy Tale of Private Woes."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This was the play of which Dr. Johnson said that "scarcely any work of any
+poet is at once so interesting by the fable and so delightful by the
+language." The domestic theme, the female protagonist, and the insistent
+appeal to pity were all already familiar in the plays of Otway and
+Southerne. Rowe gave these a larger popularity; and from his Lothario and
+Calista Richardson received suggestions for Lovelace and Clarissa.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Fair Penitent" is also interesting as an adaptation of an Elizabethan
+play. Rowe borrowed the plot and some hints in the characterization from
+"The Fatal Dowry" of Massinger and Field, but he refashioned the scenes and
+rewrote the verse in accord with current modes. While "The Fatal Dowry" is
+by no means one of the best of Elizabethan tragedies, a comparison of it
+with Rowe's version of the story emphasizes the losses which tragedy was
+suffering as it moved farther and farther from its old traditions.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> "The
+Fair Penitent" reduces the host of <i>dramatis personae</i> to eight, the fair
+penitent, her husband, his rival, his sister, and three friends or
+confidants, and confines the action to one place and something over
+twenty-four hours. Much of the action of the early play is omitted or
+reduced to narrative, including all the opening scenes of the funeral of
+the husband's father and the origin of his friendship with the father of
+the heroine. The various attempts of the faithful friend to mend matters
+are also restricted, and Massinger's usual trial scene omitted. The result
+of these structural changes is a loss of verisimilitude. The old play had
+something of the illusion of a true history; in "The Fair Penitent" the
+action, though narrowed, is still far too much for the time supposed, and
+improbabilities are solved by well-worn theatrical devices. The guilt is
+discovered by means of a lost letter and an over-heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> conversation, and
+throughout literary and moral proprieties lead to a reduction of action and
+an increase of talk. This is well illustrated in the scenes in which the
+husband confronts the guilty wife. In "The Fair Penitent," the wife and
+Lothario are having a final meeting, or declamation contest, on the day
+after the wedding. She upbraids him and incidentally relates the story of
+her seduction; the husband overhears. In "The Fatal Dowry," the husband
+comes unexpectedly to the house of Aymer where the lovers have an
+assignation. Aymer is attempting to divert him with music, when a laugh is
+heard within,&mdash;more music, and the lady's laugh again. The husband rushes
+from the stage and returns driving in the lovers. Further, the restricted
+action of Rowe's play causes a conventionalizing of the characters. The
+wife and her lover are shallow persons in Massinger's play, but they have
+some plausibility. In Rowe, he becomes the avenging rival; she, an
+impossible declaimer, now the evil woman of the heroic plays, now the
+lachrymose moralizer. The moralizing, emphatic in all of Rowe's plays, also
+adds to the general artificiality. Calista dies after most voluble
+repentance, and her husband matches her "groan for groan and tear for
+tear."</p>
+
+<p>If the Elizabethan play is confused, long spun out, and not especially
+edifying, it is yet occasionally intense in its emotional effect and
+maintains some verisimilitude of life and character. Rowe's artificially
+ingenious and morally mellifluous play, if edifying, is never thrilling.
+Its conventional persons and scenes do not depict life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> by action; they
+declaim sentimentally a story that ends in a sermon. In its
+conventionalization and moralization Rowe illustrates the main tendencies
+of the drama, tendencies derived largely from the French, but it must not
+be thought that either his play or the majority in the century altogether
+forsake English models for French. Rowe's declamations and laments,
+immeasurably inferior in all respects, differ essentially from Racine's in
+that they fail to disclose psychological moments and emotional crises. They
+also differ from Racine in their retention of spectacle, incident, and
+business in accord with English tradition. Like other of his contemporaries
+and successors, Rowe was prone to copy the Elizabethans at their worst. The
+most Elizabethan thing in his play, though not found in "The Fatal Dowry,"
+is the setting for the long famous fifth act. "The Scene is a Room hung
+with Black; on one side, Lothario's body on a Bier; on the other, a Table
+with a Scull and other Bones, a Book, and a Lamp on it. Calista is
+discovered on a Couch in Black, her Hair hanging loose and disordered:
+After Musick and a Song, she rises and comes forward"&mdash;and begins her
+midnight soliloquy. Perhaps, as Dr. Ward surmises, this business went far
+to give the act its great effectiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two later "She-tragedies," "Lady Jane Grey" presents the usual love
+intrigue (fomented here by the discarded rival), the female protagonist,
+and much Protestant and Whig patriotism, but nothing not paralleled in
+Rowe's other plays. "Jane Shore" (1714), one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> most popular plays of
+the century, represents another treatment of "the fair penitent," this time
+not only in a story used in the Elizabethan drama, but in a style avowedly
+in imitation of Shakespeare's.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Gloster, who is closely modeled on Shakespeare's
+Richard III, plays an important part, usually in
+consultation with his two confidants, Catesby and
+Radcliffe. Hastings, suspected by Gloster of loyalty to
+the child prince, becomes enamored of Jane Shore, the
+former mistress of Edward IV. She, now dedicated to
+penitence, resists his persuasions, in which she is
+encouraged by Dumont (her husband in disguise) and his
+confidant Bellmour. When Hastings resorts to force,
+Dumont comes to the rescue and disarms him. Alicia,
+deserted by Hastings, is the jealous and vengeful
+woman, well known in tragedy; and she denounces
+Hastings and Jane Shore in a letter which she
+substitutes for the petition for the release of Dumont,
+imprisoned through Hastings, that Jane Shore presents
+to Gloster. Gloster, upon testing Hastings and Jane
+Shore, is met by frank protestations from both of their
+loyalty to the prince. Hastings is condemned to death,
+but has time for a final interview with Alicia, and the
+exchange of mutual upbraidings, confessions, and
+forgiveness. Jane Shore is condemned to public penance.
+She has a parting interview with Alicia, who has gone
+mad, and then encounters Dumont, who, after a long
+discussion with his confidant, has decided to reveal
+himself and forgive his wife. She dies and he is led
+away to prison.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Let those who view this sad Example, know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What Fate attends the broken Marriage Vow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And teach their Children in succeeding Times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No common Vengeance waits upon their Crimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When such severe Repentance could not save<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Want, from Shame, and an untimely Grave."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The play is undoubtedly Rowe's masterpiece, the closing scenes having a
+natural pathos that he rarely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> attains elsewhere. The only Shakespearean
+imitation now discernible is in the character of Gloster, though Rowe may
+have endeavored in his female characters to supply the naturalness and
+greatness of emotions which he recognized as characteristic of
+Shakespeare's men, but curiously thought lacking in his women. Here and
+elsewhere in language and metaphors Rowe reverts at times to the
+Elizabethans, as also in the admission of much action and spectacle, in
+pale horrors, and in the plots of his two best known plays. In the general
+conception and structure of his plays he follows Otway. Taken as a whole,
+however, his plays, without comedy, with much heroic love, with few
+persons, and a restricted action, come nearer to French models than those
+of any preceding writer of large reputation. Sentimentalized, moralized,
+conventionalized as the plays are, Rowe may be said to have made a novel
+departure in tragedy, though one accomplished a century before by Heywood's
+"A Woman Killed with Kindness." Penitence is the sole theme of his two
+famous plays, and the moral lesson is constantly enforced. The protagonist
+is a repentant sinner for whom we feel pity because of her punishment,
+which we nevertheless regard as just.</p>
+
+<p>Rowe's plays, tame as they are, seem to have been too exciting and too rude
+for the coterie of wits who set the standards of criticism; and before the
+appearance of "Jane Shore" an effort was made under the direction of
+Addison toward still greater refinement and closer accord with French
+rules. Smith's "Ph&aelig;dra and Hippolitus"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> (1706), an adaptation of Racine,
+failed on the stage in spite of Addison's approval, but it was later often
+revived, and it prepared the way for the great success of Ambrose Philips's
+"Distrest Mother" (1712), a translation of the "Andromaque." This success,
+promoted by the zealous support of Mr. Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverley,
+was due in large measure to the story, sentimental and moral in accord with
+the taste of the day.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> In these respects "The Distrest Mother" had the
+advantage of "Ph&aelig;dra," though both illustrate the tendency, growing since
+Lee and Otway, of making the heroine the protagonist. At all events, the
+success of Philips's translation was not only great for the moment, but
+long continued. It remained a popular stock play through the century, gave
+a favorite part to Mrs. Siddons, and introduced Macready to a London
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>In the flush of Philips's first success, Addison was emboldened to present
+his long withheld "Cato" upon the stage. The political circumstances made
+the first night one of the most memorable in the history of the theatre,
+and gave the play what was then the enormous initial run of a month.
+Voltaire praised; and, with the exception of the doughty Dennis, English
+critics seemed agreed that here at last was an English tragedy in full
+accord with classical precedents and the rules of reason. The play
+continued a favorite on the stage into the nineteenth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> century, and even
+after the retirement of Kemble, who found in Cato one of his great parts.
+It would be vain to search for dramatic merits to account for this great
+success. The play combines love intrigues, as absurd as those usual in
+contemporary plays, with lucid declamation and aphoristic moralizing.
+Aphorism and declamation have, indeed, rarely been absent from the tragedy
+of any period or nation, but they were especially delightful to the taste
+of the Augustan era. Addison was only continuing the success of Rowe's
+"Tamerlane," reducing its rant to a more reasonable pattern. The reforming
+classicists, like the theatre-pleasing Rowe, hit on the two themes which
+pleased the public, the distressed female and the patriotic moralizer.</p>
+
+<p>The success of "The Distrest Mother" and "Cato" was the beginning of the
+long triumph of French influence over English tragedy, yet the victory was
+never more than half won. There was no capitulation, and the battle
+continued through the century both among the critics and on the stage.
+Rowe's plays maintained at least a feeble English tradition, and
+Shakespeare's won increasing admiration. If critical opinion was for a time
+warm in support of French classicism, the theatre still clung to
+Elizabethan practices. Later, when imitations of the French models had
+established themselves in some degree upon the stage, criticism turned to
+condemnation of the unities and renewed its laudations of Shakespeare. The
+lines of battle were often obscured. Between Rowe's refinements of
+Elizabethan plays and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> Addison's imitation of the French there is little
+difference; and later, in spite of the din of critical essays and prefaces,
+the representatives of "Shakespeare's school" and of "correct taste" have a
+great similarity.</p>
+
+<p>The Elizabethan tradition was directly represented by Elizabethan
+imitations and revivals, by many new plays that reverted in one way or
+another to the early methods, by the conservatism of actors and playgoers,
+and by the tragedies of Shakespeare. As Shakespeare grew in the
+appreciation of readers and critics, there was a tendency toward the
+restoration of a real Shakespearean text to the stage. There were, to be
+sure, innumerable new alterations and adaptations, but these were mostly of
+little importance on the stage. They dealt with the minor plays, as
+"Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," or "Timon;" or they were the essays of admiring
+amateurs with a bent for restringing the rough diamonds of the original, or
+of playwrights trying to meet the theatrical demands of the moment.
+Cibber's "Richard III" and Tate's "Lear" held the stage well into the next
+century, but "Julius C&aelig;sar," "Hamlet" (except for Garrick's alteration,
+1772-80), and "Othello" admitted no alterations. After 1744 Shakespeare's
+"Macbeth" took the place of Davenant's, and "Romeo and Juliet" of Otway's
+"Caius Marius." "Coriolanus," variously revised, altered, and finally
+combined with Thomson's play of the same name, was toward the end of the
+century given a great vogue by Kemble; and, indeed, the only one of the
+tragedies neglected during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> the century was "Antony and Cleopatra."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+Dryden's "All for Love" had usurped its place. As the critical tone toward
+Shakespeare grew more admiring and less tainted by condescension, so the
+attitude of actors and audiences grew in heartiness of appreciation. The
+revival of the romantic comedies marked an important change of taste,
+though not calling for more than mention here. Year after year his
+comedies, histories, and tragedies were acted oftener and to larger
+audiences, and gave opportunity for the best efforts of a long series of
+great actors and actresses. Garrick's revivals and triumphs were followed
+by those of Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Now one play became a favorite, now
+another, under the influence of a great impersonation; but few were
+neglected, and over the theatre Shakespeare's domination was unquestioned.</p>
+
+<p>Except for Shakespeare the direct influence of the Elizabethans was small.
+A few of the tragedies were acted intermittently in the first half of the
+century, and a few comedies kept their places in the stock list much
+longer. Revivals, though not infrequent, were rarely permanent. Revampings
+sometimes resulted in an almost unconditional surrender to the French.
+Theobald in the first half of the century attempted a reversion to the
+Elizabethans without much success, and later a revival of interest in
+Massinger succeeded in restoring only his two comedies to the theatre. As
+sources of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> incentive for those writers who shunned French modes, Otway,
+Southerne, and Rowe took the places of the Elizabethans other than
+Shakespeare. The English tradition which these names represent had, as we
+have seen, already been much subject to French influence, though protected
+by the adherence of the theatre to old custom. Consequently, while the
+majority of eighteenth century tragedies retain some Elizabethan practices,
+there is not one of importance that is a thoroughgoing representative of
+the old methods and technic.</p>
+
+<p>French influence, on the contrary, had many representatives among the new
+plays. The success of "The Distrest Mother" led to a number of
+translations. In the first quarter of the century there were ten of
+Racine's plays and four of Corneille's; and of these fourteen, eight were
+acted, and several with success. Later on, Whitehead's "Roman Father"
+(1750), an adaptation of Corneille's "Horace," won a place in the stock
+list. But the leading factor in the French influence on English tragedy
+during the century was Voltaire. The long critical debate which he waged in
+behalf of the rules and against the barbarities of Shakespeare has its
+importance in English as well as French literary history. But while the
+English critics grew more and more eager as the century advanced to uphold
+the glory of Shakespeare and to denounce an atheist who denied this, or to
+proclaim their freedom from the narrowing rules which were French, yet the
+triumphs of Voltaire's plays upon the English stage continued unabated.
+Adaptations of no less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> than nine of his tragedies had appeared on the
+London stage before the English translation of his full works in 1779-80,
+and there were manifold borrowings from him in many other plays.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> A
+number of the translations, Hill's "Zara" and "Merope," Miller's "Mahomet,"
+and Murphy's "Orphan of China," made notable successes. From the production
+of "Brutus" to that of "Semiramis" in 1776 Voltaire may be said to have
+been the most popular and influential of the writers of tragedy for the
+English theatre.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>The translations of these tragedies, however, indicate the influence of
+English traditions. The long speeches are shortened, the dialogue is broken
+and enlivened, the minor proprieties disregarded, the sentiments and morals
+Anglicized, and some business and bloodshed introduced on the stage. In
+Hill's "Merope," for example, the great scene where Merope strives to kill
+the murderer of her long-lost son and discovers the supposed murderer to be
+her son himself, loses all its simplicity as well as its poetry. It is
+ornamented by Hill with processions, virgins in white, music, a sacrificial
+song, and many starts and strains. Where on the French stage Egisthe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+decorously withdraws behind the scenes as his mother approaches with the
+dagger, on the English stage everything was in full sight. If some of the
+other translations are less altered, the imitations and unavowed
+adaptations are much more so. Hoole's "Cyrus" (1768), a popular play, is
+obviously based on "Merope," but adds a much complicated plot, a mad woman,
+a love intrigue between the long-lost son and the daughter of the old
+tutor, and a returning husband for Mandane (Merope). The great success of
+Voltaire in England did not, in fact, produce any very marked change in the
+course of tragedy. He represents the continuance of French influence but
+established no departures of note from the general type established in the
+English theatres by 1725. Virtually no English tragedies in the eighteenth
+century introduced comedy; few reveled in horrors and bloodshed, the
+majority observed the unities, nearly all had few persons, a restricted
+action, and themes and situations confined to slight variations of a
+stereotyped love story; and nearly all had regard for poetic justice. The
+differences between French and English tragedy were largely those which
+adapters of Voltaire eliminated when they made over his plays for the
+London theatres and gave them a more broken dialogue and more stage action,
+and perhaps a mad woman or a villain. Moreover, the amelioration of the
+differences between the two theatres was not all on one side, as is shown
+by Voltaire's own imitations of Shakespeare and his introduction of ghosts
+and horrors, and by the growing interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> in France in Shakespeare and
+other English dramatists.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Voltaire, with his ingenious plots and
+telling crises, was nearer than Racine to the English tradition, and he
+wrote at a time when the differences between the two national theatres were
+minimized to a degree that made intercommunication easy. His talents gave
+him an easy superiority over any English writer of tragedies after the
+classical formulas.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the century there were also a considerable number of plays
+that turned from French to Greek models. While these cannot be regarded as
+wholly representative of a reaction from a pseudo to a truer classicism,
+they certainly offered hardly more resemblance to Voltaire than to
+Shakespeare. The Greek influence was, however, variously manifested.
+Adaptations of Euripides were numerous, half a dozen of which were
+presented at the theatres. In addition, a number of original plays were
+written, following the Greek form. Most famous of these were two by Gray's
+friend Mason, "Elfrida" and "Caractacus." The latter, while stilted and
+academic, compares favorably in point of literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> excellence with most
+tragedies of the century, and not altogether unworthily takes its place in
+a series that includes "Samson Agonistes" and "Prometheus Unbound." "Read
+Shakespeare," wrote Lyttleton to Aaron Hill, "but study Racine and
+Sophocles." But the classicists were occupied in the main with neither
+poet, but in discussing various minor questions of dramatic propriety:
+Should any violence or bloodshed be permitted? Should rhyme tags end the
+scenes? Should the epilogue be comic or serious? Should figures of speech
+be allowed? Should long speeches be shortened for presentation? Classicism
+in both England and France was not greatly imitative of either Sophocles or
+Racine, but mainly insistent on immaterialities.</p>
+
+<p>If we attempt to follow the diminishing differences between English and
+French standards in the work of individual authors, Young's "Busiris"
+(1719) and "Revenge" (1721) are the most important of those tragedies in
+the first quarter of the century which cling to some of the characteristics
+of the early English drama, while his "Brothers," written at about the same
+time but not acted until 1753, is based upon Thomas Corneille's "Pers&eacute;e et
+Demetrius." In "Busiris" there is no villain, but tyranny, conspiracy, and
+a passionate revenging queen play their usual parts. There is an attempt,
+both in incidents and expression, at Elizabethan force and horror; the main
+action deals with a rape, and five of the principal persons are killed upon
+the stage. "The Revenge" is still more Elizabethan, being a palpable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+imitation of "Othello." The prologue declares that the proper field for
+tragedy is not villany but "the tumults of a Godlike mind," yet the
+villain, the Moor Zanga, is the chief character and was acted by Garrick,
+Kemble, and Kean. The villain's part, it is interesting to note, affords
+the most striking difference between this popular play and the even more
+popular "Zara." In both, the heroine, pure and innocent, is killed by the
+husband, Othello-like in both magnanimity and jealousy; but in Voltaire the
+jealousy is occasioned by the heroine's meetings with her brother, a
+captive Christian, in Young by the busy and ponderous intrigues of a
+Moorish Iago.</p>
+
+<p>In opposition to Young, Thomson represents the vogue of classicism both in
+literary circles and in the theatres. His early tragedies, "Sophonisba"
+(1730), "Agammemnon" (1738), and "Edward and Eleonora," prohibited by the
+censor because of its attacks upon Walpole, won little favor except in the
+circle of wits who attempted to dictate the national taste in letters and
+among the opponents of Walpole. The first was dedicated to the Queen and
+the two later to the Princess of Wales, and "Tancred and Sigismunda" (1743)
+to Frederick, Prince of Wales, the patron of the drama and the hope of the
+Tories. This play, the presentation of which was fathered and superintended
+by Lyttleton and Pitt, achieved a large popular success; and portions of
+"Coriolanus," acted after the author's death in 1749, were combined with
+Shakespeare's tragedy in versions by Thomas Sheridan and Kemble, and
+supplied the latter with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> greatest part. All Thomson's plays endeavor
+to retell stories often used in tragedy, in strict accord with the rules,
+with absolute propriety of diction, some reference to political events, and
+a due inculcation of moral sentiments. In the language of one of their
+admirers, they were intended to be "reasonable entertainments becoming
+virtue itself to behold with tears of approbation."<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> "Sophonisba" is
+sternly heroic in its subordination of love to patriotic hate of Rome in
+the character of its heroine, and sternly classic in the simplicity of its
+plot and the heaviness of its inflated rhetoric. "Agammemnon," also a
+"She-tragedy," is designed after the school of Racine rather than of
+Corneille; and its wavering, inconsistent Clytemnestra, who closes the play
+with a torrent of remorse and a faint, its Melisander saved from a desert
+island, and its courtly love-sick Egisthus are queer denizens of the house
+of Atreus. "Edward and Eleanor," telling of the queen who sucked poison
+from her husband's wound, and of the sultan who, suspected of the attempted
+murder, bore a truly miraculous antidote to the Christian camp, owes
+allegiance to Voltaire. Its emotional changes and elaborate intrigue bring
+it also more closely in accord with the prevailing English type. "Tancred
+and Sigismunda," based on the story as told in "Gil Blas,"<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> makes the
+lover a claimant to the throne and the intervention of the father due to
+reasons of state. The plot is developed with more skill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> than is usual in
+Thomson, and the rival lovers, the marriage in revenge, the midnight
+interview, the duel, and the murder of the heroine are quite in conformity
+to the prevailing model. "Coriolanus," the subject of many French tragedies
+and of Shakespearean alterations by Tate and Dennis, illustrates the
+inferiority of the classic scheme to the Elizabethan in the presentation of
+history. The action, beginning with the arrival of Coriolanus as a
+suppliant for Tullus's hospitality, crowds the remaining events and the
+changes in the two rivals within the impossible confines of the unities of
+time and place. Coriolanus himself exemplifies the effort toward "Nature,"
+that is, typicality and reasonableness, in pseudo-classical
+characterization. He expresses the sentiments and manners approved by the
+eighteenth century, and, even when pride and revenge most fire his passion,
+is a very tame lion. The moral lessons, somewhat clouded in Shakespeare,
+are distinctly enunciated and finally summed up by Galesus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"This man was once the glory of his age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disinterested, just, with every virtue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of civil life adorn'd, in arms unequall'd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His only blot was this; that, much provok'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He rais'd his vengeful arm against his country," etc. (v. 4).<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In Thomson's other plays the inflated declamation occasionally gives way to
+a bit of description that recalls "The Seasons," but in "Coriolanus" he
+follows the promise of the Prologue to "Tancred" with unerring fidelity:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Your taste rejects the glittering false sublime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To sigh in metaphor, and die in rhyme.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High <i>rant</i> is tumbled from his gallery throne;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Description, dreams,&mdash;nay, similes are gone."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He was obviously seeking what he called Shakespeare's "simple, plain
+sublime," and his declamations occasionally reach a sententious lucidity
+worthy of Addison, but the pseudo-classic diction freezes every emotion
+with its "transports," "charms," and "nuptial loves." This is Volumnia's
+appeal to Coriolanus, her husband in Thomson's play:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">"Ah Coriolanus!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is then this hand, this hand to be devoted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pledge of nuptial love, that has so long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Protected, bless'd, and shelter'd us with kindness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now lifted up against us? Yet I love it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, with submissive veneration, bow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath th' affliction which it heaps upon us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But O! what nobler transports would it give thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What joy beyond expression! couldst thou once<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surmount the furious storm of fierce revenge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yield ye to the charms of love and mercy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh make the glorious trial!" (v. 1).<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson's plays were not esteemed even by his master Voltaire as
+contributing greatly to that perfection of art possibly attainable by a
+"due mixture of the French taste and English energy." For, though "wisely
+intricated and elegantly writ," Voltaire found him, like Addison, lacking
+in warmth, an "iced genius."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Frigid to his contemporaries, the
+tragedies were long since<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> decently interred. They constitute,
+nevertheless, the most considerable attempt made by any author of the
+eighteenth century to conserve the classic theory of tragedy, and they
+recall nearly every variety of pseudo-classic endeavor. Of classicism it
+might be said, as of Thomson, that it attempted classic and early English
+history, that it found in partisan patriotism its favorite theme for
+rhetoric, that its French rules and taste usually pleased readers better
+than spectators, but that when it took one of Shakespeare's tragedies as
+the basis for an infusion of classical theory, or when it was tempered with
+a love story and a lively action, it triumphed in the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson's friends, Mallet and the versatile and indefatigable Aaron Hill,
+joined him in his efforts to redeem the tragic muse. Hill's efforts, if no
+more successful than Thomson's and much less consistent, are at least more
+amusing. His general theory seems to have been not unlike that which
+actually controlled theatrical practice; he purposed a combination of
+French rules with romantic incident, theatrical bustle, and his own
+inimitable style. His "Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam" (1716), he boasted,
+had "a deeper and more surprising plot than any play which has been
+published, that I know of, in the English tongue; and yet is written in
+strict observance of the dramatic rules" and affords "room for topical
+reflections, large description, love, war, show, and passion," and also "a
+very high regard to decoration." The play is noticeable for its tangle of
+trite dramatic motives.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The emperor's vision is of a son who shall kill him and
+usurp the throne. The two elder sons are in love with
+the Princess of Siam. Sworn by her to kill their
+father, and condemned by him for a murder they did not
+commit, they die fighting in his behalf. The third son
+kills the emperor, marries the princess, and ascends
+the throne. In his rapid advance he is aided by the
+banished empress, who has returned to court and
+attained high power, disguised as the favorite eunuch.</p></div>
+
+<p>Hill adapted three of Voltaire's plays, "Zara," "Alzira," and "Merope." To
+the first he wrote some comic choruses intended to be sung between the
+acts, and to the third he prefixed his revised and final opinion of
+Voltaire and French tragedy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our unpolished English stage (as he assumes the
+liberty of calling it) has entertained a nobler taste
+of dignify'd simplicity, than to deprive dramatic
+poetry of all that animates its passions; in pursuit of
+a <i>cold, starv'd, tame abstinence</i>, which, from an
+affectation to shun <i>figure</i>, sinks to <i>flatness</i>: an
+<i>elaborate escape</i> from <i>energy</i> into a groveling,
+wearisome, bald, barren, unalarming <i>chilness</i> of
+expression, that <i>emasculates</i> the mind, instead of
+<i>moving it</i>."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Athelwold" (1731), a revision of his early "Elfrid," is colorlessly
+conventional; "The Roman Revenge" (1753) is an alteration of "Julius
+C&aelig;sar"; "The Insolvent" (1758) is a rewriting of "The Fatal Dowry," making
+the heroine an innocent object of jealousy. Most Aaronic of all is "Henry
+V" (1723). Here he gives up French unities and technic, and introduces many
+characters, shifting scenes, a bit of comedy, and the "genius of England,"
+who sings a song. His greatest addition to Shakespeare is his Harriet, who
+starts out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> like one of the evil queens in the heroic tragedies. When
+abandoned by Henry, she is still jealous and revengeful; next she appears
+disguised as a page in the French camp, and, Viola-like, relates a story of
+a love-lorn sister; then recaptured by Henry, she storms and melts; but the
+Jane Shore mood is transient, and, like a tragedy queen again, she stabs
+herself. A man who could write a comic duet for Voltaire's "Za&iuml;re" and
+could supply Prince Hal with a paramour whose grandmothers were Viola and
+the Indian Queen, ought not to be wholly forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Hill's career may remind us both of the din of the critics over Voltaire
+and Shakespeare, and also of the virtual compromise and amalgamation that
+had taken place on the stage between French and English traditions. English
+tragedy, after a long national development, had become materially modified
+by French influence and had assumed a fixed and restricted form. This type,
+recognizable early in the century, continues to prevail nearly to the end.
+The century had little power of innovation, little that can be called a
+development in the history of tragedy. The pendulum swings now toward
+French, now toward Elizabethan models, but its oscillations are slight and
+regulated. The plays thus far considered offer unimportant variations from
+the type, and plays after the middle of the century vary still less. Home's
+famous "Douglas" (1757), that thrilled every heart and in the opinion of
+the judicious redeemed the stage anew from barbarism, fails now to
+distinguish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> itself from its fellows, unless by its touches of melancholy,
+medievalism, and nature, that hint of romanticism. Here, as so often, a
+much suffering woman is beset by villany and jealousy. Home's other
+tragedies and those of Glover, Hoole, Brown, Murphy, and Cumberland offer
+even less of novelty, except that toward the end of the century refinement
+in sentiments and morals becomes increasingly attenuated. Miss Hannah More
+best represents this feminization of the type. Her "Percy" (1777), a very
+successful play, is devoted to the sentiment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Will it content me that her person's pure?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, if her alien heart doats on another,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is unchaste."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The Fatal Falsehood" (1779) presents in a domestic guise the usual plot of
+rivals in love and an intriguing villain, with the addition of a love-sick
+lady who runs mad. "The curtain falls to soft music." The century has one
+marked innovation in the realistic plays of Lillo and Moore, and after 1780
+there are signs of the romanticism stirring elsewhere in literature; but in
+the main the new tragedies are hopelessly commonplace representatives of an
+extremely conventionalized form.</p>
+
+<p>Yet tragedy was by no means neglected in literature or on the stage.
+Several hundred tragedies were published during the century and many of
+them went through several editions. Three or four were brought out every
+year in the theatres, and many of these maintained themselves for a time as
+stock plays. Most men of letters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> essayed tragedy,&mdash;Addison, Johnson,
+Young, Thomson, Gay, the laureates Cibber, Rowe, Whitehead, Pye, and a host
+of minor celebrities. Besides the tragedies acted, there were almost as
+many not acted but printed. Closet dramas, common in the Elizabethan
+period, grew more numerous after the Restoration. Whether the writer
+scorned or was scorned by the manager, an appeal to the reading public was
+always easy and apparently sometimes profitable. Tragedies were bought and
+read; a popular play might start with an edition of five thousand and run
+through a number of editions. Even after the novel had supplanted the drama
+among readers, there was no diminution of printed plays. The non-acted
+plays, however, offer nothing of importance for the history of the drama.
+The majority are unactable; others follow the usual formulas; a few Greek
+plays, alterations of Shakespeare, and sacred dramas have some interest as
+curiosities. The increase in the number of these plays does indicate a
+growing separation between the drama and the theatre. Plays were no longer
+written by a set of dramatists who made a profession; they were written by
+any one who had literary pretensions. Only a few new plays were required;
+the supply greatly exceeded the demand. The theatrical monopoly maintained
+by the two patented theatres offered no great encouragement to dramatists,
+and the number who wrote without any acquaintance or knowledge of the stage
+increased. Literary fame rather than success in the theatre was perhaps the
+greater incentive in the case of tragedy. Whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the incentive,
+individual ambition resulted in no individuality of expression. The popular
+ballad of tradition is scarcely less expressive of personality than the
+average eighteenth century tragedy. Even the plays of temporary importance
+have no flavor of their own.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>The features of this type have often been mentioned in connection with
+particular plays, but it may be convenient to collect them in a composite
+picture. In structure and technic French models are mainly followed. Very
+long speeches, indeed, are rare, bloodshed and violence are permitted on
+the stage, and there is a good deal of incident; but bloodshed and horrors
+after the Elizabethan style no longer appear. Comedy also has disappeared,
+and is tabooed even in adaptations of Shakespeare or of Restoration plays.
+Comedy is reserved for the farce which is always performed after a tragedy.
+Each tragedy concerns itself with a single plot, involving only from six to
+ten persons, and observing the unities, even after Johnson's salutary
+condemnation of them. There are few changes of scene, ordinarily none
+within an act. With the disappearance of other medieval characteristics
+there has also departed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> medieval freedom in respect to the suitability
+of an action for the stage. The range of incidents possible for
+presentation is very limited; exposition is largely by narrative;
+supernatural elements, common in Lee, are unusual; the ghost at last rests
+in peace. Madness, however, is still retained, especially in the case of
+the long-suffering heroine. Battles, armies, stage spectacles of all kinds,
+are restricted, though the scenes may be elaborate, and processions,
+sacrifices, even music and songs are permissible. The first essential for
+the action is a love story, the second some kind of historical setting. The
+fatal or hazardous loves of princes and queens are the themes; Eastern,
+classic, or early English courts are the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>The love story itself often keeps to the form customary in the heroic
+plays. Two rivals in love, two heroines, major and minor, a tyrant, an
+intriguing minister, and the accompanying confidants appear again and again
+to assist in similar stories of jealousy, ambition, and villany. The old
+Elizabethan motives continue, as "Rape" and "The Fate of Villany," the
+titles of two plays acted in 1729-30, may witness, but usually they are
+refined and tamed. Incest and rape are averted; the tyrant in love with the
+heroine only threatens; the villain who pursues casts suspicion on her
+virtue but abstains from violence; the two brothers, or the son and the
+father, in love with the same lady sometimes find renunciation possible.
+Unjustified jealousy is perhaps the leading motive, and there are many
+feeble imitations of "Othello." A secret<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> marriage, a long-lost son, and
+marriages, either for revenge or in order to save a lover, are common
+elements in the plot. Hero and heroine are examples of virtue. Their
+difficulties or ruin are sometimes due to one fatal error duly emphasized,
+or they may be due wholly to the machinations of the villain. In the latter
+case, poetic justice is usually regarded and the good are saved.</p>
+
+<p>The villain is the most constant reminder of Elizabethan tragedy. He has
+all the traits of the stage Machiavellis of Marlowe and Kyd, and sometimes
+imitates Iago. He is wholly black at heart, but he is apparently frank and
+honest; his revenge or ambition works by most devious intrigue; he confides
+his schemes to the audience in long soliloquies, yet his accomplished
+hypocrisy long baffles the rest of the <i>dramatis personae</i>. As in late
+Elizabethan and Restoration plays, he is often a prime minister. A
+collection of these villains' speeches would illustrate the
+conventionalized character of eighteenth century tragedy and the tendency
+of stage types to perpetuate themselves in theatrical tradition. A few
+lines from two may be sufficient. The first is the opening soliloquy of
+Seyfert in "The Heroine of the Cave," a play of some popularity acted in
+1774.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Revenge, thou art the deity I adore!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy auspicious shrine I hope a cure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the corroding pain that rends my heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vain Alberti being thus preferr'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By fair Constantia, passeth all enduring!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Colredo I have rouz'd&mdash;another wooer&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his name are such reflections dropp'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As 'twixt the two a duel must provoke&mdash;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">My purpose is, whoe'er the conqu'ror be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To reap advantage for my private views," etc.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The second is the opening soliloquy of Bertrand in Miss Hannah More's
+"Fatal Falsehood" (1779).</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What fools are serious melancholy villains!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I play a surer game, and screen my heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With easy looks and undesigning smiles;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while my actions spring from sober thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They still appear th' effect of wild caprice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I, the thoughtless slave of giddy chance.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What but this frankness has engag'd the promise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of young Orlando, to confide in me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That secret grief which preys upon his heart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis dangerous, indiscreet hypocrisy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To seem too good: I am the <i>careless</i> Bertrand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The honest, undesigning, plain, blunt man:" etc.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The continuance of the stage villain is worthy of some note beyond its
+evidence of conventionalization. It calls attention to the fact that
+English tragedy has always been largely concerned with evil persons. Though
+the utterly bad were condemned as tragic figures by Aristotle, and the
+overthrow of the wicked as a tragic theme has ever since been held in some
+contempt by theorizers; yet from the time of Marlowe, or even earlier,
+English tragedy has told the stories of evil-doers with careers of cruelty
+or lust, or of machinators who have turned to bitterness and disaster the
+lives of the pure and the good. Of the first class are the tyrants,
+usurpers, lustful monarchs, and bloody avengers; of the second, the
+Machiavellian prime ministers, the hypocritical counselors, and the
+traitorous friends; and the two are often united as in Barabas or Richard
+III. English authors, actors,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> and audiences have delighted in a visible
+representative of the devil upon the stage, in an impersonation of the
+source of evil. Given grandeur of ambition, the evil one becomes the
+protagonist; given mere revenge and hatred as motives, he is still the main
+opponent of the hero. Perhaps the highest kind of tragic feeling is not
+aroused either by the fall of the depraved or by the ruin of the noble
+through trickery and cunning, yet "Richard III" and "Macbeth" deal with the
+one theme, and "Othello" and "Lear" with the other. Shakespeare's
+tragedies, indeed, represent other conflicts than this between good and
+evil, and in the representation of that conflict they are not confined by
+theological or dramatic formulas. Such formulas were just what eighteenth
+century writers enjoyed, and in attacking the problem of evil they clung to
+one of the most artificial if also one of the most typical persons in
+literature, the Elizabethan stage machinator. The conflict of bad and good,
+a natural if not inevitable motive of a drama descending from medieval
+times, found its expression in the excessively amiable hero and heroine and
+the utterly black villain, stage types that have maintained themselves in
+fiction as well as the drama through Scott and Dickens down to the present
+day. The stage villain, a theory of poetic justice that refused to punish
+the good except for some distinctly emphasized fault, and a faith in the
+potency of moral precepts, these are the devil, providence, and salvation
+of a theatrical theology, which, along with conventional technic, narrowed
+plots, and some refinement in moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> taste, distinguish the eighteenth
+century type of tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The bird, caged and clipped, no longer sang. There was no poetry left in
+tragedy, and no human nature. Was there anything, then, in this type that
+showed advance over the preceding centuries, or anything that offered
+promise for future development? Not one of the literary forms in which the
+eighteenth century excelled, and not one fully representing the
+pseudo-classical theories, tragedy cannot be fairly judged as representing
+classicism <i>versus</i> romanticism. It merely presents a deteriorated English
+tradition modified and narrowed by pseudo-classical rules and theory. Yet
+it corrected and modified English tradition where it needed corrections and
+modifications, without quite denationalizing it. The admixture of comedy,
+prone to become gross farce, the horrors and bloodshed, and the brutal and
+revolting themes were rightly abandoned. In structure there was a more
+positive reformation. Stage illusion and precision of effect may be aided
+by an observance of the unities, and the limitation of the action to a
+single plot, a few persons, and a few scenes,&mdash;Shakespeare and encomiasts
+of his art to the contrary notwithstanding. It must be added that in
+practice the unities are likely to result in a counter-balancing defect, in
+a concentration of incident improbable and artificial, as often in
+eighteenth century tragedies, and even in Ibsen. The pseudo-classicists
+erred mainly in taking their rules as masters instead of as guides. Yet
+eighteenth century tragedy deserves this meed of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> praise that it sought for
+literary form, which preceding tragedy had largely lacked; and its attempts
+to secure this offered useful lessons for the future. But here the
+usefulness of its dramatic art ends. In the limitation of what could be
+acted and of what belonged to the species, it was suicidal. French tragedy
+in its effort to imitate Greek failed to take advantage of the resources of
+modern theatres; and English tragedy, halting between English and French
+precedents, simply confined itself to well-worn theatrical customs. There
+are not only no new subjects or characters, there are no new situations,
+surprises, or catastrophes, no new methods of exposition or dialogue. Some
+of the worst of the old conventions survived, as the soliloquies, which
+continue long, frequent, and undisguised, but it would be hard to find even
+a bit of stage business that was new. Eighteenth century tragedy made no
+adequate demands of its splendid theatres and great actors.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p>The only daring departure from the prevailing type, and the most important
+contribution to the general development of European tragedy in the
+eighteenth century, came in the success of "George Barnwell, or the London
+Merchant" (1731). This was the first tragedy of George Lillo, a London
+jeweler, who had hitherto had no known theatrical or literary connections,
+save for one unsuccessful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> play. It was followed within a few years by
+another domestic tragedy, "Fatal Curiosity," two tragedies of the regular
+type, "The Christian Hero" and the posthumous "Elmerick," and by
+adaptations of "Pericles" and "Arden of Feversham." The two domestic
+tragedies differ somewhat in both form and purpose. "The London Merchant,"
+in prose, tells the story of Barnwell's downfall through the courtesan
+Millwood, his murder of his uncle at her instigation, and the final
+execution of both criminals. Barnwell's repentance is much dwelt upon, and
+the moral lesson is enforced in every line. "The Fatal Curiosity," in blank
+verse, tells of a frightful murder of a son by a father at the instigation
+of the mother. From the innocent "curiosity" of the long-lost son in
+concealing his identity from his parents, there is traced the chain of
+circumstances which finally drive the poverty-stricken and wretched couple
+to the murder of the stranger. The play is thus nearer to Greek than modern
+ideas of tragedy, in that it represents destiny as something separate from
+character, and it links itself with the German species of
+<i>Schicksalstrag&ouml;die</i>, which indeed it directly influenced. "The London
+Merchant," on the contrary, seeks the causes and effects of crime in a
+crude and popular presentation of character that always makes the most of
+human will and sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Daring and important as was Lillo's innovation, it was by no means without
+progenitors and near kinsmen. The relations of his plays to Elizabethan
+domestic tragedies are evident. Like "Arden of Feversham,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> which Lillo may
+have been copying, "The London Merchant" presents a murder, portrays a
+monstrous woman, and ends with an execution. Like the Elizabethan plays,
+Lillo's are bald, detailed, and moralizing. The very pleas that he advances
+in his dedication for realism and liberty had been advanced in "Arden" and
+the "Warning for Fair Women." Moreover, while since 1660 no tragedies had
+dealt solely with middle-class society, there had been much chafing against
+the restrictions that limited tragedy to princes; and from English writers
+as well as Corneille had come forecasts of the sweeping democracy of
+Lillo's creed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"What I would infer is this, I think, evident truth;
+that tragedy is so far from losing its dignity, by
+being accommodated to the circumstances of the
+generality of mankind, that it is more truly august in
+proportion to the extent of its influence, and the
+numbers that are properly affected by it. As it is more
+truly great to be the instrument of good to many, who
+stand in need of our assistance, than to a very small
+part of that number."<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Southerne, Otway, and Rowe had won great success for domestic themes, and
+their examples were naturally cited in the prologue which introduced "The
+Merchant." Comedy might also have been summoned to support. After the
+scourging from Collier it had joined in the general movement at the
+beginning of the century toward sentiment and moralizing. Sentimental
+comedy, seeking both pathos and a moral, may be said to begin in England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+at least as early as Colley Cibber's "Careless Husband" (1704) and Steele's
+"Tender Husband" (1705). Steele's "Conscious Lovers" (1722) shows the
+species in full development. More general but not less important
+encouragements for realism in tragedy came from the realistic tendencies
+manifest in the literature of the preceding generation, notably in the
+novels of Defoe, and from the moralistic tendencies everywhere manifest in
+both fiction and drama. Lillo was one with his time, though out with truth
+and art, in thinking "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy
+is, the more excellent that piece must be of its kind."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> The ascendancy
+of the middle class in letters, their expanding social life, their
+attachment to a conventional morality and a utilitarian art, and their
+delight in sentimentality, all help to explain the appearance of "George
+Barnwell." Lillo was writing for a generation that had "The Fair Penitent"
+and was waiting for "Pamela."</p>
+
+<p>Lillo's work, however, was none the less that of a pioneer. "The Fatal
+Curiosity" had a special influence, beginning forty years after its
+appearance, in the German tragedies of destiny; and "The London Merchant,"
+soon after its publication, became of importance in both France and
+Germany. In France its welcome was prepared by the growth of a species of
+sentimental comedy paralleling the English, and it was translated in time
+(1748) to serve as an example and stimulant to Diderot's plays and
+theories. Even before the publication of his "Le Fils<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> Naturel"<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> (1757),
+and "Le P&egrave;re de Famille"<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> (1758), Lessing's "Miss Sara Sampson" (1755)
+had appeared directly modeled on "The London Merchant." Through Diderot and
+Lessing and, a little later, through German translations of Lillo's plays,
+domestic tragedy continued its leavening work in the German drama. By that
+time, sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy were returning from France
+and Germany to influence the English drama.</p>
+
+<p>In England the direct stream of domestic tragedy never flowed high. A
+one-act play, "Fatal Extravagance," in prose, had appeared in 1721 under
+the patronage of Aaron Hill, and was revived the year before the success of
+"Barnwell," and later enlarged into five acts. There were a few
+successors&mdash;"Caelia, or the Perjured Lover" (1732), by Charles Johnson,
+presenting a Lovelace-like protagonist; "Love the Cause and Cure of Grief"
+(1743), a three-act play in prose; and Victor's adaptation of "A Woman
+Killed with Kindness" (1776). Far more important than any of these was
+Moore's "Gamester" (1753), long a stock play, and almost as influential on
+the continent as "Barnwell." Like "The Yorkshire Tragedy," it pictures the
+horrors of gaming. The gamester, his long-suffering wife, a faithful
+servant, a spirited girl, her lover, the intriguing villain, and his
+accomplices<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> play a story of far more insistent dramatic power than Lillo's
+and of no less sentimental and moral conclusiveness. Cumberland's
+"Mysterious Husband" (1783) is a later and less crude representative of the
+same species.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Lord Davenant has deceived his wife into marrying him
+by slandering her lover Dormer. Later he has entrapped
+Dormer's sister into a pretended marriage and then
+deserted her. She, supposing her husband dead, marries
+Lord Davenant's son. On their marriage day, Dormer
+returns; Lord Davenant is discovered and kills himself.</p></div>
+
+<p>Though a man and not a woman is the central figure of this social
+entanglement, we are reminded of the Tanquerays and Ebbsmiths of a later
+day in its powerful and not unveracious presentation of domestic ruin.</p>
+
+<p>One reason for the failure of Lillo's pioneering to arouse a larger
+following in tragedy was the possession which comedy had taken of both
+domestic sentiment and morality. The species of sentimental and tearful
+comedy, which had already by 1730 appeared in both England and France, soon
+flourished in both countries. Their vogue was diminished by the success of
+"She Stoops to Conquer" and "The Rivals," but there was a further
+development during the last thirty years of the century in the plays of
+Cumberland, Holcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, and others. A certain amount of low
+comedy was, after "The Rivals," admitted to be necessary, as Holcroft avows
+in the preface to "Duplicity," but in such plays as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> his "Duplicity" and
+"Road to Ruin," or Cumberland's "The Jew" and "The Wheel of Fortune,"
+suffering abounds, ruin is imminent, there is much weeping, and a salient
+moral lesson. The suffering usually is confined to loss of fortune or
+temptation of virtue, and the moral lesson is directed against gaming, or
+loose living, or marital infidelity upon the part of the husband. The
+intriguing villain in this kind of play sinks to insignificance, and the
+moving force is likely to be a humanitarian benefactor who rescues the lost
+fortune or saves the heroine from the hated marriage. Occasionally this
+type of serious comedy comes close to tragedy. In Holcroft's "Deserted
+Daughter" (1795), a revamping of Cumberland's "Fashionable Lover," the
+father has disowned his daughter by his first marriage, and, through his
+wicked agent, she has been sent to a house of ill-fame. Not knowing his own
+daughter, the father, ruined in fortune and conscience, plans to aid a
+friend to secure her, and himself visits her. The situation is ghastly
+enough, but all comes out happily. The happy ending was in fact the dram of
+eale that corrupted the whole substance of this sentimental comedy. The
+theatrical necessity of a happy ending forbade either tragedy or a serious
+study of life. It compelled the dramatist to devote a large part of a play
+to preparing for the reconciliation, to spend much time on youthful love,
+to maintain a lightness of tone throughout; and it destroyed the
+possibility of tracing out character and incident to anything like a
+logical conclusion. The domestic drama, devoted to a serious presentation
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> social life, had its opportunity in the eighteenth as well as in the
+twentieth century. It shrank from tragedy; it advanced as far as attacking
+fashionable excesses, or as dramatizing moral theses, but it never got
+beyond the lovers who must be united and the everything that must come out
+well. It resigned itself to sentimentality and false conclusions, and was
+naturally overwhelmed by the theatrically more captivating sentimentality
+and falsity of Kotzebue. When "The London Merchant" and "The Gamester"
+encouraged the vogue of sentimental comedy, they nourished an ingrate which
+destroyed the legitimate brood of domestic tragedy. In the theatres men
+took their realism sugared by a sentimentality that sent them home
+contented. But Lillo's work was not unheeded by the genius who in "Tom
+Jones" and "Amelia" gave literary greatness to a realistic study of manners
+and morals. The sentimentalizing and moralizing of the middle classes,
+which from the time of Southerne had threatened to have their say on the
+stage, found their spokesman in the author of "Clarissa Harlowe."</p>
+
+<p>In the last third of the century the various social, intellectual, and
+imaginative changes that make up the beginnings of the Romantic movement
+had their effect upon tragedy, but only in a partial and secondary fashion.
+The drama was already losing place to the novel in popularity, and showing
+signs of becoming a sort of literary by-product. Successful novels were
+made over into plays, and the various romantic tendencies to medievalism,
+melancholy, supernaturalism, and naturalism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> found expression in novel or
+verse rather than in play. The reawakening interest in the Elizabethan
+dramatists was represented by a revival of a number of the plays of
+Massinger and of Beaumont and Fletcher,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> and imitations of Elizabethan
+diction became frequent. A more important departure was furnished by the
+so-called Terrific School of fiction. Medieval stories and scenes, and the
+various accessories of horror, ghosts, graveyards, dungeons, vaults, and
+the midnight bell had never been lacking in eighteenth century tragedy, but
+the novels of Walpole and his successors offered some novelties. Walpole's
+own unacted "Mysterious Mother" (1768), perhaps the most powerful of the
+Gothic tragedies, was the pioneer of the movement. Robert Jephson, whose
+"Braganza" (1775) was heralded as</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"His; no French tragedy,&mdash;tame, polish'd, dull by rule!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vigorous he comes, and warm from Shakespeare's school,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>produced in 1781 an adaptation of Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," called
+"The Count of Narbonne," which, as the epilogue boasts,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i11">"Midst the placid murmurings of Love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rolls the rough tide of Gothick force along."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His "Julia" (1787), another popular play with his usual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> abundance of
+soliloquies, tells a story of Elizabethan villany; and there were a few
+other Gothic attempts, as Cumberland's "Carmelite" (1784), before Lewis's
+"Castle Spectre" (1797) carried the town by storm. The further history of
+the terrific tragedies belongs to the next chapter, as does that of the
+German importations which culminated in the craze for Kotzebue, but it may
+be noted here that "Werter," acted in 1785, and "Emilia Galotti," acted in
+1794, were among the earlier indications of German influence on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>By 1790 the decadence of English tragedy had apparently run its course and
+nearly come to a full stop. The freedom and independence of Elizabethan
+days had degenerated by the time of Charles I into a fairly definite type.
+That type, maintained in the Restoration period, though with modifications
+and innovations, had now become conventionalized, debased, sterile. French
+influence had proved unprocreative. In spite of the activities of the
+theatres, the inspiration of Shakespeare, and the assistance of great
+actors and actresses, tragedy had failed to produce literature comparable
+to that of its rival, the novel. The drama, to be sure, had played a large
+part, both in tragedy and comedy, in reflecting and promoting the
+sentimentality and moralizing common in the literature of the century;
+Otway, Southerne, and Rowe had in a way fathered the sentimental novels.
+But in tragedy their Isabellas and Calistas had no successors to rank with
+Clarissa and Amelia. If tragedy through its alliance with sentiment failed
+of permanent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> advance, it was still more unsuccessful in representing the
+reasonableness, typicality, and austerity which the classical conception
+required. It was half-hearted, turning now to Shakespeare, now to Voltaire,
+but never producing anything not conventionalized and dull. The escapes
+from its dullness remained until the very end of the century only
+half-opened doors. Through the door opened by "Barnwell" and "The
+Gamester," the drama saw only the broad path that led back to
+sentimentality and overlooked the straight and narrow way leading to
+realism and truth. Over the threshold that opened to medieval castles and
+chambers of horrors it was still hesitating. The divorce between literature
+and the stage had widened, and tragedy failed to attract genius to its
+rescue. Crabbe did not write a tragedy of the village, and Burns did not
+summon poetry and passion to the stage.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Ward's <i>History of Dramatic Literature</i> ends with the death of Queen Anne;
+and there is no adequate history of the English drama for the last two
+centuries, and no good bibliography. Genest continues to be the main source
+of information. Lowe's <i>Bibliographical Account</i> and the histories of the
+theatre noted in the last chapter are useful for the matter of the present.
+In addition, <i>The History and Illustration of the London Theatres</i>, by
+Chas. Dibdin, Jr. (1826); Victor's <i>History of the Theatres of London and
+Dublin</i> (1761); W. C. Dalton's <i>History of the Theatres</i>, 1771-95; and <i>The
+Dramatic Censor</i> (1770) become available for this period. A large number of
+memoirs of actors also supply information in regard to the drama. <i>An
+Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, written by himself</i>
+(1750), reviews the Restoration period as well. Others of interest are:
+Davies's <i>Memoirs of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> Garrick</i> (1780); Murphy's <i>Life of Garrick</i> (1801);
+Boaden's <i>Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons</i> (1827) and <i>Memoirs of Kemble</i> (1825);
+Cumberland's <i>Memoir</i> (1806); Mudford's <i>Critical Examination of the
+Writings of Richard Cumberland</i>, etc. (1812); Boaden's <i>Memoirs of Mrs.
+Inchbald</i> (1833); <i>Private Correspondence of David Garrick</i> (1831-32);
+Holcroft's <i>Memoirs</i>, ed. by Hazlitt (1816); Cooke's <i>Memoirs of Charles
+Macklin</i> (2d ed., 1808).</p>
+
+<p>The plays by authors of note can be found in the collected editions of
+their works, the more popular plays in the various collections noted in the
+last chapter. The majority of the tragedies, however, have never been
+reprinted and can be obtained only in the original editions. Dramatic
+criticism of the period can be studied in various essays by Addison,
+Steele, Gildon, Dennis, and Dr. Johnson, especially his Preface to the
+edition of Shakespeare and his <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. Lord Kames's <i>Elements
+of Criticism</i> (1762) was highly approved in its own day; and several essays
+on tragedy are of historical interest: William Guthrie's <i>Essay on Tragedy</i>
+(1747); Mrs. Montagu's <i>Essay on the Genius and Writing of Shakespeare</i>
+(1769); Edwin Taylor's <i>Cursory Remarks on Tragedy</i> (1774); William Cook's
+<i>Elements of Dramatic Criticism</i> (1775); and Hodson's <i>Observations on
+Tragedy</i>, prefixed to his tragedy <i>Zoraida</i> (1780).</p>
+
+<p>Beljame's <i>Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre</i> bears on this
+as on the preceding chapter. Voltaire's influence on English tragedy has
+never been fully studied, but the following recent books bear on his
+relations with England: A. Ballantyne's <i>Voltaire's Visit to England</i>
+(1893); J. Churton Collins's <i>Bolingbroke, a historical study, and Voltaire
+in England</i> (1886); Lounsbury's <i>Shakespeare and Voltaire</i> (1902), which
+gives much information on the drama and criticism of the period and
+sufficient directory to Voltaire's comment on the English drama; and
+Jusserand's <i>Shakespeare en France</i>, which is also very valuable for this
+period. Miss Canfield's study of <i>Corneille and Racine in England</i> is also
+of marked service; and L. Morel's <i>James Thomson</i> (Paris, 1895) gives a
+very full study of Thomson's plays and literary relations. The
+<i>Belles-Lettres Series</i> contains editions with introductions of plays of
+Rowe, ed. Miss Sophie Hart; and of Lillo, ed. A. W. Ward (1906). Dr. Ward's
+introduction is particularly valuable for its sketch of the course of
+domestic tragedy and sentimental comedy on the continent. From the notes in
+these various studies, and from <i>La Litt&eacute;rature compar&eacute;e, essai
+bibliographique</i>, by Louis P. Betz, Strasbourg, 1904, direction can be had
+to a number of monographs dealing with special phases of the relations
+between the dramas of England and France, and, toward the end of the
+century, between England and Germany.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> For comparisons of the two plays, see Sir Walter Scott's
+"Essay on the Drama," Cumberland's <i>Observer</i>, Nos. 77, 78, 79; and
+Gifford's introduction to his edition of Massinger.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> See <i>Corneille and Racine in England</i>. Dorothea Canfield. New
+York, 1904.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Its only appearance on the stage recorded by Genest was in
+Capell's adaptation, acted six times by Garrick in 1759.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Brutus</i> (1734), <i>Zara</i> (1736), <i>Alzira</i> (1736), <i>Mahomet</i>
+(1744), <i>Merope</i> (1749), <i>Orphan of China</i> (1759), <i>Orestes</i> (1769),
+<i>Almida</i> (1771) (from <i>Tancr&egrave;de</i>), <i>Semiramis</i> (1776). See, also, Hoole's
+<i>Cyrus</i> (1768), Cradock's <i>Zobeide</i> (1771), Murphy's <i>Alzuma</i> (1773), and
+Brooke's <i>Imposter</i> (1778), not acted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Professor Lounsbury seems mistaken in finding a "sudden
+cessation of interest in Voltaire" after 1750. <i>Shakespere and Voltaire</i>,
+pp. 304, 305. He neglects the later popularity of <i>The Orphan of China</i> and
+the continued popularity of plays earlier translated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Le th&eacute;&acirc;tre anglais</i> (1746-49) of Pierre de La Place
+contained in its 8 vols. synopses and partial translations of the following
+plays: <i>Othello</i>, <i>3 Henry VI</i>, Richard III, Hamlet, <i>Macbeth</i>,
+<i>Cymbeline</i>, <i>Julius C&aelig;sar</i>, <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <i>Timon of Athens</i>,
+<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i>, <i>Catiline</i>, <i>The Fair
+Penitent</i>, <i>Venice Preserved</i>, <i>Aureng Zebe</i>, <i>The Mourning Bride</i>,
+<i>Tamerlane</i>, <i>Siege of Damascus</i> (by Hughes, 1720), <i>Busiris</i>, <i>Love for
+Love</i>, <i>The Innocent Adultery</i>, <i>Cato</i>, <i>The Funeral</i> (Steele, 1702). This
+list, in which it will be noticed tragedy greatly predominates, represents
+fairly the English taste of the time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Dr. Rundle, Letters, quoted by Morel, <i>James Thomson</i>, p.
+82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Gil Blas</i>, Book 4, "Le Mariage de vengeance."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> For various references to Thomson in Voltaire's Letters, see
+Morel, <i>op. cit.</i> pp. 192-194; and a letter on the French translation of
+<i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i>, p. 153.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> The following list includes all eighteenth century tragedies,
+not mentioned in the text, that achieved any considerable popularity. These
+all became stock plays, and most were acted in the nineteenth century.
+Hughes, <i>Siege of Damascus</i>(1720); Fenton, <i>Mariamne</i>(1723); Jones, <i>Earl
+of Essex</i> (1753), which superseded Banks's play as a stage favorite; Brown,
+<i>Barbarossa</i> (1754); Francklin, <i>Earl of Warwick</i> (1766); Hartson,
+<i>Countess of Salisbury</i> (1767); Murphy, <i>Zenobia</i> (1768), and <i>The Grecian
+Daughter</i> (1772), which gave a famous part, Euphrasia, to Mrs. Siddons and
+later to Miss Fannie Kemble.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> The eighteenth century was not blind to the absurdities of
+its tragedies, but made fun of them without stint. The number of burlesque
+tragedies is large and includes: Gay's <i>What d'ye Call It</i> (1715); Carey's
+<i>Chrononhotonthologos</i> (1734); Fielding's <i>Tom Thumb</i> (1730); Foote's
+<i>Tragedy a la Mode</i> (1764); and Sheridan's <i>Critic</i> (1779).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Dedication to <i>The London Merchant</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Dedication to <i>The London Merchant</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Translated into English as <i>Dorval, or the Test of
+Virtue</i>(1767).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Translated 1770, and as <i>A Family Picture</i> (1781). Also, cf.
+General Burgoyne's <i>Heiress</i> (1786), which borrows from <i>Le P&egrave;re de
+Famille</i>, and Holcroft's <i>Love's Frailties</i> (1794), based on a German
+adaptation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Criticised in <i>The Critical Review</i>, lv, 151, because of its
+introduction of a comic character.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> The elder Colman was a leader in this revival. Besides the
+few comedies which remained on the stock list and "Philaster," which was
+frequently acted at this time, the following Elizabethan plays were revived
+in the decade 1778-88: <i>Bonduca</i>, <i>Bondman</i>, <i>City Madam</i>, <i>Duke of Milan</i>,
+<i>Knight of Malta</i>, <i>A King and No King</i>, <i>Marcella</i> (based on <i>The
+Changeling</i>), <i>Maid of Honor</i>, <i>The Picture</i>, <i>The Pilgrim</i>, <i>Scornful
+Lady</i> (altered as <i>The Capricious Lady</i>), <i>Triumph of Honor</i>, <i>Women
+Pleased</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT</h3>
+
+
+<p>The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the
+nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The
+eighteenth century had been, as we have seen, a time of stagnation in
+tragedy and of little dramatic advance in any direction. The theatregoer of
+1720 would in 1780 have found the same plays or others similar in kind;
+but, had he postponed his visit yet twenty years, he would have entered a
+new theatrical world of romance, musical plays, and German novelties. By
+that time nearly all the factors of importance in the history of the stage
+during the first half of the nineteenth century had made their appearance.
+New departures in both tragedy and comedy, and a theatrically important
+<i>tertium quid</i> were all instituted. And new ideas, new themes, and new
+stories witnessed the changing taste and gave promise of the enlargement of
+the imaginative horizon which the new romanticism was to produce.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that, while neither realistic tragedy nor sentimental comedy
+had experienced a notable development, they had been departures from
+long-standing conventions. Tragedies in three acts, tragedies in prose,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+tragedies on domestic themes, tragedies without princes, tragedies of the
+present, all gave some encouragement for further novelty and experiment.
+The several varieties of "soft tragedy and genteel comedy" departed far
+enough from the standards of both species to suggest a dramatic development
+that should discard the traditional limitations. This changing taste,
+however, was seized by German plays and dramatized "tales of terror." The
+large and varied influence of German poetry, criticism, and philosophy upon
+the romantic movement in England can be noticed here only so far as it
+affected the drama. The plays of Lessing and the early plays of Goethe and
+Schiller made little impression on the English stage, though they exercised
+an immediate influence on the reading public and on most of the young men
+"standing on the forehead of the age to come." The conquest of the English
+stage was made at its point of greatest vulnerability&mdash;its
+sentimentality&mdash;by one who seemed the very Napoleon of the drama, Kotzebue,
+the conqueror of the theatres of all western Europe. In 1798 "The Stranger"
+("Menschenhass und Reue") took Drury Lane by storm, and the next year
+Sheridan's "Pizarro," an adaptation of "Die Spanier in Peru," plus some
+eloquence and some songs, gained a still more brilliant success and drew
+even George III to the theatre. For several years Kotzebue reigned supreme;
+twenty or more of his plays were translated; many were acted; "Pizarro"
+alone had passed through twenty-nine editions by 1811, besides other
+English and American versions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> of the play. Kotzebue's triumph was due in
+part to his great skill in stage-craft, and in part to his adroit appeal to
+the more superficial sentiments for social and political revolution that
+were everywhere stirring. When it is compared with preceding sentimental
+comedy, the success of "The Stranger" is easily understood. It has the
+theatrical merit of arousing curiosity at the beginning and keeping it on
+question until the last moment; and it deals, over-sentimentally of course,
+with a social question of dramatic value and of especial piquancy at a time
+when many conventions seemed tottering,&mdash;should an erring wife be taken
+back again by her husband? The theme of "A Woman Killed with Kindness,"
+"Jane Shore," and "The Fair Penitent" was given a new interest and a new
+solution. "Pizarro," retaining much of the plot familiar in English tragedy
+since the time of Dryden's "Indian Emperor," has two lovers, opponents in
+war, and two heroines, one vengeful, the other angelic, but makes the real
+hero the renouncing lover, who sacrifices all for the happiness of the
+angel who loves not him but his friend. Under these new auspices the fair
+penitent and the renunciatory hero began long careers in English drama and
+fiction. But neither these nor any other of Kotzebue's plays offered any
+guidance toward a serious interpretation of life or any innovations of real
+consequence in the English tragic tradition.</p>
+
+<p>If Kotzebue's plays offered little promise for the national drama, the
+native plays which rivaled them in popularity offered less. Castles, monks,
+dungeons, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> so on had already become somewhat common in musical plays
+and operas<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> and occasionally in tragedies, when "The Castle Spectre" of
+Monk Lewis opened the flood-gates to "tales of terror" and their medieval
+and supernatural paraphernalia. "The Castle Spectre," which in the season
+of 1797-98 surpassed "The Stranger" and for a while held its own with
+Kotzebue, represents a new reign of romance. The new queen did not come
+from "perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." She belonged to the earlier
+days of the romantic movement, and made her conquest at the head of
+squadrons of medievalistic, terroristic, and Germanistic Goths. She is
+adequately described in the prologue to the play:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Far from the haunts of men, of vice the foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moon-struck child of genius and of woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Versed in each magic spell, and dear to fame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fair enchantress dwells, Romance her name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She loathes the sun or blazing taper's light:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moon-beam'd landscape and tempestuous night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alone she loves; and oft, with glimmering lamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Near graves new-opened, or midst dungeons damp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drear forests, ruin'd aisles, and haunted towers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forlorn she roves, and raves away the hours!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Anon, when storms howl loud and lash the deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desperate she climbs the sea-rock's beetling steep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There wildly strikes her harp's fantastic strings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tells to the moon how grief her bosom wrings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while her strange song chaunts fictitious ills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In wounded hearts Oblivion's balm distils."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The "drama," as it was called, is in prose, and is a medley of the various
+terroristic novels, including the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> two most famous, "The Castle of Otranto"
+and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and adding something from Schiller's
+"Robbers" and from Shakespeare. There is a haunted castle, a jocose monk, a
+fool, a marvelous dungeon, a fisherman's hut, a ghost, a midnight bell, and
+songs and elaborate scenery. The villain, a feudal baron attended by
+negroes, is finally killed by the heroine, who saves her imprisoned father
+and escapes with the hero.</p>
+
+<p>The signs of life that succeeded the long petrifaction of the eighteenth
+century drama and the beginning of the revolutionary epoch thus resulted
+only in theatrical novelties and in no serious dramatic movement. All
+serious drama was, indeed, threatened by the ascendancy of the
+"illegitimate" drama of music and dumb show. The causes leading to the rise
+of this class and its ensuing history were in large measure connected with
+the theatres themselves. Even before the new romanticism had invaded the
+drama, changes in theatrical conditions of far-reaching importance were
+well under way. The monopoly exercised by the Drury Lane and Covent Garden
+theatres was first threatened about 1730 by the success of a few minor
+theatres which gave musical, acrobatic, or dramatic entertainments. The old
+theatres were successful in maintaining their monopoly in regular plays,
+but the irregular houses gained permission to give performances under the
+loosely defined term "burletta." A "burletta" was supposed to have a
+musical accompaniment, but it proved difficult to say how little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> music and
+how much of a drama might be included under the term. Henceforth, the
+regular drama had, in addition to the rivalry of Italian and English
+operas, that of musical and dramatic medleys; and the patent houses had to
+face the rivalry of playhouses that infringed as far as they dared on the
+legitimate drama. The patent theatres, with their vested rights in the
+stock plays and their obligation to maintain Dryden, Otway, and
+Shakespeare, offered no great inducements to new authors. This was
+particularly true, after the rebuilding and enlargement of both theatres in
+1791 and 1794, when the increased cost of bringing out a play and the
+increased difficulty in acting or hearing an unfamiliar play led Kemble
+practically to abandon any attempt to produce new tragedies. The minor
+theatres, which were growing in importance, legally limited to the field of
+musical performances, and excluded from the regular drama except by trick,
+could offer little support to the serious dramatist. As a result, musical
+plays, operettas, and finally a new type, the "melodrame," flourished in
+the minor houses and found their way soon into the two great theatres. When
+in 1808-09 these were burned, the rivalry with the minors had become acute.
+The old theatres were rebuilt of so great a size that they proved
+unsuitable for any spoken drama. Through their great actors, Kemble, Kean,
+and later Macready, they maintained Shakespearean drama and a few of the
+old stock plays; but they were forced for the rest of the time to resort to
+melodrama, spectacle, or pantomime. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> minors, though they now became
+more daring in their invasions of legitimate drama, naturally continued the
+kind of entertainments at which they had succeeded and to which they had
+forced the great theatres to succumb. The long struggle for a free stage
+was now nearing its end; the patent theatres were maintained with
+increasing difficulty; the minors prospered. With the death of Kean in
+1833, a great prop of the patent theatres fell; and though the agitation
+for parliamentary reform in that year failed, and the final legislation
+against theatrical monopoly was not passed until 1847, the great theatres
+ceased to determine the history of the drama. Macready's two periods of
+management, 1837-39 and 1841-43, were the final efforts to restore the old
+r&eacute;gime that had maintained tragedy since the Restoration.</p>
+
+<p>The "illegitimate" drama that triumphed in the theatres comprised a wide
+range of entertainments, mostly farcical in their dramatic elements. Toward
+the end of the eighteenth century the rage for dumb show and musical
+additions invaded the regular drama. Even Kotzebue had to be decked out
+with songs and choruses. Moreover, a peculiar species of the illegitimate
+drama developed in the plays of Andrews, Dibdin, Reynolds, Boaden, and
+Colman the younger that served as a half substitute for tragedy. This
+species seems to have been mainly due to the ingenuity of George Colman.
+Those of his plays verging on tragedy, of which "The Battle of Hexham"
+(1789), "The Surrender of Calais" (1791), "The Mountaineers" (1793), and
+"The Iron Chest"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> (1796) are the chief, are lively medleys of tragedy,
+comedy, opera, and farce. In each a tragic story is told in blank verse,
+audaciously Shakespearean, and this is mixed with broad comedy or farce in
+prose. There is a bustling action with shifting scenes, much spectacle,
+many songs, solos, duets, or choruses, for which a crowd of soldiers,
+monks, beggars, foresters, or the like, is always within call. "The
+Surrender of Calais" tells the story of Queen Philippa's mercy; "The Iron
+Chest" is a dramatization of "Caleb Williams"; "The Battle of Hexham" is a
+sort of musicalized chronicle history, presenting the adventures of Adeline
+in search of her husband, who turns out to be a captain of a band of
+robbers and the rescuer of Queen Margaret and the prince after the battle
+of Hexham. "The Mountaineers," suggested by a story in "Don Quixote," finds
+its land of romance in Spain, where a Christian prisoner elopes with the
+daughter of his Moorish jailer, accompanied by a stage Irishman as
+<i>gracioso</i>; and this group, when recaptured, are rescued by Octavian, a
+half-mad tragic soliloquizer, who also recovers his long-lost love, and was
+thought to be extremely impressive when impersonated by Kemble. In his use
+of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of
+Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable
+cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a
+curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the
+theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the
+Elizabethan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> drama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His
+method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to
+connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and
+varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very
+phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their
+parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so
+well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity
+and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He
+popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English
+tragedy, and passed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession
+of the illegitimate drama.</p>
+
+<p>At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a
+still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the
+peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment
+there, the <i>m&eacute;lodrame</i>. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its
+most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long
+ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The
+peculiar novelties of the <i>m&eacute;lodrame</i> were the supplementing of the
+dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both
+dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its
+songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding
+musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate
+held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> full sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and
+many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or
+machinery. From the start, <i>m&eacute;lodrame</i> allied itself to most of the
+paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon
+showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned
+Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in
+prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for
+thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels
+supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with
+one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several
+versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first
+large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a
+singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange
+scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and
+good among the characters, lent itself readily to a dramatization that
+required a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of action, music, and
+machinery. Comic scenes were, of course, <i>de rigueur</i>. "The Slave," by
+Morton, was one of the most enduring of the Colmanesque type. The serious
+plot, which presents Gambia, the slave, as the sacrificing hero, borrows
+from "The Curfew" and "Oronooko," and for its great scene improves upon the
+escape over the bridge in "Pizarro."<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>After Clifton and Zelinda (whom Gambia hopelessly
+adores) escape across the hanging bridge, Gambia climbs
+up the tree from which it is suspended and cuts the
+rope. The pursuing villains are foiled on the brink.
+"We are safe, my husband," cries Zelinda from the other
+side; but her child, safely hidden by Gambia, hears her
+voice, and runs from his hiding-place,&mdash;on the wrong
+side of the river.</p>
+
+<p><i>Child.</i> It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!</p>
+
+<p><i>Zelinda.</i> Alas! my child!</p>
+
+<p><i>Somerdyke.</i> Her child! Then we triumph&mdash;seize him! (<i>A
+slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of
+rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues.</i>) Move one
+step further, and you will see him buried in the
+waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (<i>Holding
+him up in the act of precipitating him.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Zelinda.</i> I do submit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gambia.</i> Never! (<i>Gambia, who has concealed himself in
+the branches, snatches the child up into the tree.</i>)
+Father, receive your child! (<i>Throws the child across
+the stream.</i>) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha!
+(<i>Curtain.</i>)</p></div>
+
+<p>The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species
+brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending
+for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than
+characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor
+features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show,
+strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the
+essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no
+literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres
+and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth
+century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> music did not
+further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama.
+There was in England no relationship between the two as between Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court
+and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it
+absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes,
+rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to
+these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is
+curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of
+theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of
+Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its
+medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments
+indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression
+suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in
+Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the
+popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of
+the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and
+thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth
+century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public
+favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the
+melodrama, tragedy has tended either to assume the garb of its rivals, or
+to conform its appeal to a select audience.</p>
+
+<p>In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> melodrama and the
+melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy.
+The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century
+had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays
+with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or
+otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men,
+Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were associated with
+the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were
+quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little
+literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction
+in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be
+acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists,
+while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its
+reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth,
+Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser
+poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted.
+These plays fall into two main classes, those that were acted and carried
+on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted.
+This second class, which for the first time becomes of some importance in
+the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are
+tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There
+are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to
+its requirements, and might easily be adapted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> for presentation. There are
+others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's
+later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre.
+These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that
+can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various classes of closet
+drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality
+that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the
+tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite
+variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they
+are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare
+and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage
+demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they
+seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage
+demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music,
+spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in
+terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in
+the beauty of verse.</p>
+
+<p>The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna
+Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first
+volume of her "Plays on the Passions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and
+"The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on
+hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series,
+illustrating each of the dominant passions by a tragedy and a comedy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> Her
+preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who
+at Alfoxden were polishing their own tragedies and planning a revolution in
+poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama.
+She proposed to devote a play to the illustration of a single passion, to
+trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that
+passion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This
+absorption with a study of emotion <i>per se</i> led to a subordination of plot
+and all external incident, and&mdash;so she proposed&mdash;all poetic embellishment,
+to a searching study of isolated passion. Her first volume attracted
+attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without
+success. She continued, however, writing and publishing, completing the
+series of plays on passions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays,"
+twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a
+variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with
+witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults,
+knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon shining through vaulted windows.
+Her conception of a play of passion forbids motiving of character, or
+integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly
+observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls.
+There are many improbabilities, and the passions are exposed mainly in
+soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one
+wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> patches. It rarely
+if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the
+plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and
+much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a
+bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one
+being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the
+admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers.
+Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose
+won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more
+imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the
+theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was
+justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the
+Michigan Historical Society."</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing
+tragedies of passions<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like
+her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's
+"Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he
+thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the
+revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of
+Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated
+by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> Coleridge's
+"Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books
+rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and
+pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage
+success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres.
+The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and
+seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the
+inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle
+were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was
+Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic
+modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the
+villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan
+revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the
+main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the
+interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not
+contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made
+veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the
+beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic
+passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little
+philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the
+"Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the
+movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge
+gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the
+managers. But even had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> he made the revisions that they required, he could
+hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his
+melodramatic action.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and
+offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the
+exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness
+of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches
+something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his
+obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something
+of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though
+feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and
+Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they,
+and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like
+them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening
+outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing.
+"The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and
+refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two
+acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.</p>
+
+<p>From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813),
+literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. Godwin's plays,
+"Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's
+"Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted
+tragedy. When Lewis tried to give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> his terrific vein a little dignity and
+blank verse, even he failed on the stage.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the
+poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a
+large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half
+dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the
+"Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's
+plays was "Evadne," based on Shirley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted
+1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any
+preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements.
+Fazio's wife, jealous because of his infatuation for a countess, betrays
+her husband, and then for the remainder of the play is wildly remorseful.
+In spite of the extreme improbability of both the persons and the language,
+the story is told with dramatic directness and affords manifest
+opportunities for a great actress, seized upon by Miss O'Neill and later by
+Miss Cushman and, in an Italian adaptation, by Madame Ristori. A still
+greater theatrical success was won by Kean in "Brutus" (1818), a pastiche
+of the plays of Lee, Cumberland, and Downman composed by the American, John
+Howard Payne. Sheridan Knowles's "Virginius" (1820), followed by his "Caius
+Gracchus" (1823), and "William Tell" (1825), gave promise of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> more
+permanent revival of the poetical drama. Knowles, an actor and a practical
+playwright, was also the friend and in a way the pupil of Lamb and Hazlitt,
+and he gained the co&ouml;peration of a great and ambitious actor, Macready. He
+united as no other writer of the generation had done, stage-craft and
+poetic ideals. "Virginius," the best of his tragedies, is still
+acted&mdash;excepting Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu," the only relic of early
+nineteenth century tragedy. The story, with its one great acting scene, is
+told after the Shakespearean model in very ornate and artificial verse. It
+mingles much scoffing at the rabble with romantic appeals for liberty,
+tricks Virginia out with a lover, and ends with the insanity of Virginius.
+Knowles's tragedies at the time of their presentation were only moderately
+successful, far less so than his absurd comedy, "The Hunchback"; and
+several poetic dramas by other writers fared worse. Thomas Wade's "Woman's
+Love," based on the Patient Griselda story, obtained a hearing in 1808, but
+his Marlowesque "Jew of Aragon" was hooted off the stage in 1830. But
+Procter's "Mirandola" was acted sixteen times in 1821, and Miss Mitford's
+"Rienzi" (1828) and Byron's "Werner" (1830) gained veritable triumphs.</p>
+
+<p>For about a decade longer poetic tragedy continued to contend for the
+theatre. Its main hope lay in Macready, and its hey-day was during his two
+periods of management of Drury Lane, 1837-39 and 1841-42. After the success
+of "Werner" ("Marino Faliero" had been earlier produced in 1821),
+"Sardanapalus" was brought out by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> Macready in 1833-34; and "The Two
+Foscari" later. Knowles's "Alfred the Great" and his "Bridal," an
+adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," won considerable
+success; and "The Pledge," a version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," in 1831
+heralded new support for romantic poetry in the drama. In the years 1836-37
+Macready introduced three new writers in the "Ion" of Talfourd, "Strafford"
+of Browning, and the "Duchess de la Valli&egrave;re" of Bulwer-Lytton. Talfourd's
+tragedies, including two, "The Athenian Captive" and "Glencoe," later acted
+by Macready, are stiff and wooden, contributing little to the drama.
+Bulwer-Lytton's later plays, "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) and "Richelieu"
+(1839), were extremely successful and surpassed any preceding efforts of
+the romanticists to adapt poetry to the stage. "Richelieu" is by no means a
+great poem or free from claptrap, but it has the merit of being written to
+be spoken and in having its characters designed as parts of the action. The
+interest is not in the poetry&mdash;it reads much better with the omissions made
+for acting&mdash;but in the development of the character of the cardinal through
+the incidents. The failure of "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon" in 1843 marks
+the end of Macready's management and the end of romantic tragedy on the
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>Many of these acted plays gained what suitability they had for the stage by
+accident rather than design. Milman's "Fazio" was published several years
+before it was acted, and his later tragedies were decidedly closet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> dramas.
+Miss Mitford's "Julian" made little impression on the stage, and her other
+tragedies, except "Rienzi," still less. Byron's tragedies, which succeeded
+largely no doubt because of his reputation, were acted against his wish or
+after his death. And the various poetic tragedies that were written at
+about the same time as Byron's and Shelley's were mostly composed without
+thought of stage presentation. The surpassing genius of the greater poets
+has thrown into obscurity the work of these other young men, who in the
+decade after Waterloo faced the world with thin volumes of verse. But there
+have been few times in our literary history when the Muses have been so
+alluring, and Melpomene had her share of devotees. In John Wilson's "City
+of the Plague" (1816) a young naval officer wanders about plague-stricken
+London, through its bacchanals and horrors, buries his mother, discovers
+his betrothed, the ministering angel of the afflicted, and at last finds
+rest with her in the terrible crowded churchyard. The poem is grandly
+conceived and beautifully written in verse, occasionally Wordsworthian but
+without affectation or over-ornament. Two other closet dramatists offer
+rather less sincerity and impressiveness of conception but even more of
+poetic beauty. "Joseph and his Brethren" (1823), by Charles Wells, for a
+time the friend of Keats, was published when the author was twenty-three,
+and fifty years later revived and rewritten because of the appreciation of
+Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. Like the plays of Thomas Wade, it shows the
+influence of Marlowe in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> verse and plan. Long drawn out and in the main
+undramatic, there is imagination everywhere, especially in the remarkable
+scenes that depict the passion-inflamed Phraxanor, Potiphar's wife. Of the
+Elizabethans, too, was Beddoes, who studied Webster and Tourneur as well as
+Shelley and Keats, and whose verse at times fairly surpasses his masters.
+His "Bride's Tragedy" (1821), written when he was nineteen, is a play only
+in name, but it is a poem that joins terror and fascination as scarcely
+another since Webster and Ford. Here, as in his incompleted dramas and his
+"Death's Jest Book," published much later, loveliness masks with madness
+and death, and mockery with passion. It seems as if he were lavishing over
+strange juxtapositions of beauty and decay all the sensuous fascination of
+Keats and the lingering suggestiveness of Shelley's lyrics. One's
+admiration for his genius is tempered only by the thought of the greater
+things he might have done.</p>
+
+<p>Earlier than these poems was Landor's "Count Julian" (1812), which, like
+them, presents qualities suited for the closet and not for the stage. As in
+some of the "Imaginary Conversations," Landor takes it for granted that his
+audience understands the story and the motives of the actors as well as he
+himself. The reader gradually disentangles the situations and is stirred by
+the splendid poetry; but no audience could make out what it was all about.
+His other poetical tragedies, written a quarter of a century later, show no
+improvement of these defects, nor do they present dramatic themes as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
+interesting or as powerfully conceived as those in "Count Julian."</p>
+
+<p>"Otho the Great," the tragedy which Keats hoped would lift him out of the
+mire,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> was devised for Kean, and apparently accepted for Drury Lane.
+Charles Brown furnished him "description of each scene entire, with the
+characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with
+it"; and Keats merely wrote the verse up to the fifth act, when he took the
+entire management into his own hands. The result of this peculiar
+collaboration was what might have been expected. The plot and
+characterization follow old types; and the poetry, though not lacking in
+fine passages, is inferior to nearly everything else that Keats wrote in
+his <i>annus mirabilis</i>, 1819.</p>
+
+<p>Scott's dramas are somewhat out of place when grouped with these other
+closet tragedies, for they are varied in character, representing a number
+of the proclivities that we have noticed in the romantic drama.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> "The
+House of Aspen," written in prose at about the time of "Goetz," was
+intended for the stage and considered by Kemble for representation. Based
+on a German tale and showing the influence of "Goetz," it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> offers no
+important deviations from the terroristic drama. "The Doom of Devorgoil,"
+designed for Terry at the Adelphi, is a melodrama with many songs and a
+mixture of mimic goblins with supernatural machinery that was found to be
+so objectionable as to prevent its performance. It is interesting as one of
+the very few cases in which a man of literary reputation undertook to meet
+the requirements of the illegitimate drama. None of the other plays, which
+are in blank verse, was intended for the stage. "Macduff's Cross" is a mere
+sketch in one act; "Halidon Hill" a two-act dramatization of border
+warfare; "Auchindrane," in three acts, is a more fully developed tragedy.
+"Halidon Hill" has a clearness and directness of characterization and a
+vigor of movement which suggest that had the auspices been more favorable,
+the historical drama might have had another great exponent. "Auchindrane,"
+though retaining a little of the Radcliffian mystery and mystification
+which Scott never quite outgrew, also tells its domestic story with a
+directness and verisimilitude not usual among the romanticists. German
+translation, terroristic tragedy, spectral melodrama, dramatic sketches for
+the closet, and domestic tragedy are all illustrated by these six plays;
+and their subjects and treatment also reflect the various attachments of
+Scott's literary career. They illustrate also the inability of literary
+genius to aid the theatre in this period, but they differ from most of the
+literary drama in their absence of subjectivity or attachment to theory.</p>
+
+<p>Byron's plays, like other poetical tragedies of the time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> were written in
+accord with the writer's theories and counter to the prevailing theatrical
+practices; but Byron prided himself on departing from the methods of the
+Elizabethans or of his fellow romanticists, and on following the guidance
+of eighteenth century models. "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," and
+"Sardanapalus," all written 1820-21, attempt regularity of plot and
+observance of the unities, and profess Alfieri as a model. The two Venetian
+plays, however, recall Otway's "Venice Preserved," and their exaggeration
+of strange passions is quite in accord with the general practice of the
+romanticists. The plots are improbable, though selected from history, and
+aloof from general interest, for the resentment of the old doge at the
+insult to his wife and the unyielding vengeance of Loredano and, indeed,
+all the major passions are treated with an extravagance that becomes
+melodramatic and renders the persons all but unintelligible. With
+"Sardanapalus" the case is different. The dissolute, luxurious, but
+nobly-aspiring hero and his better angel, Myrrha, derive from the
+characters of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli a truth of passion that
+animates the rapid and spectacular action. A tragedy of palace intrigue,
+after the eighteenth century type, is thus reanimated by the romantic
+fervor of its passion, philosophy, and poetry. Any time from "The Mourning
+Bride" to "Zenobia" it might have triumphed on the stage, and so it did
+triumph when finally acted; but it summoned only a tithe of Byron's power.
+Quite different from any of these three plays, his "Werner" was obviously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+suited to its own day. Based on one of Harriet Lee's novels, it forsakes
+classical structure and exhibits all the paraphernalia and emotional
+horrors of the terrific drama. It was one of the greatest stage successes
+of the romantic drama, but it is no more deserving, either as a play or a
+poem, than a dozen of its rivals.</p>
+
+<p>Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from
+fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species.
+Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred"
+and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the
+Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that
+made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic
+poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned
+descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of
+elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to
+men."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their
+nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his
+fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its
+presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic
+tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds
+expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so
+characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man
+against society and providence make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> up the tragic theme. The tragedy of
+individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality,
+is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to
+the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation
+of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great
+dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion.
+Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet
+and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly
+seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of
+their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an
+eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to
+realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>Shelley's "Cenci" in a different way mirrors this eternal defeat that human
+struggle after justice must encounter. Deeply impressed by the current
+tradition about Beatrice Cenci, he made this story of incest and parricide
+the expression of his view of life and history as a conflict between
+tyranny and downtrodden innocence. Nowhere else in Shelley, not even in
+"Prometheus Unbound," does this world drama come out of the clouds and
+reveal itself with such clarity and power. There is passion in the persons,
+climax in the situations, and directness in the language such as the
+romantic drama had rarely shown. The philosophical conception and the
+tangle of human motives do not indeed quite harmonize. Beatrice's lie and
+her unworthy seeking after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> life are bits of the story which interfere with
+our acceptance of Beatrice the martyr, flaws that Browning would not have
+admitted. On the other hand, Shelley's philosophy overrides the story, as
+may be seen by a comparison of the tragedy with one of the earliest to show
+dawning romanticism. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother," which at this time
+Byron was praising as "the last tragedy," treats a more horrible story of
+incest with the interest mainly in the plot, holding in suspense the
+fearful solution until the end; "The Cenci" begins with the act of incest,
+and then tries to carry our interest solely to the two characters, one the
+embodiment of all inherited evil, the other, a pure and beautiful spirit
+striving madly and in vain to free herself from wrong that is might. The
+conquest of the stage, the writing of dramatic blank verse, and the
+endowment of this story of crime with representational truth were tasks too
+large to be accomplished in a single play; but, though faulty in the
+details of dramatic art, "The Cenci" is, for a first tragedy, without an
+equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry. The poet who
+shrank from comedy as from a wicked thing and who thought a story of incest
+possible in a London theatre, had much to learn before he could master the
+stage. But "The Cenci" reveals the maturing Shelley, who was opening his
+mind to new impressions, admiring "Cain" and "Don Juan," profiting from
+&AElig;schylus and Calderon as well as Shakespeare, and who was seeing his
+allegories clothed in human form, and no longer only in images of mist and
+flame. As one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> reads one wonders,&mdash;had the play not been the last as well
+as his first tragedy? had it come at the beginning instead of nearly at the
+close of the romantic movement?</p>
+
+<p>In "Prometheus Unbound" there is even greater achievement in the
+presentation of this world conflict; and there Cain triumphs and Beatrice
+is purified. But the achievement is lyrical rather than dramatic, and has
+no proper place in the history of tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In all these tragedies, whether acted or not, and whether works of genius
+or not, certain resemblances have been noted. They exhibit most of the
+elements that characterize the romantic movement as it stirred English
+poetry from the "Lyrical Ballads" to the first publications of Tennyson and
+Browning. Without realism in plot or language, and dealing always with what
+is unusual, improbable, and removed from the present, they made little
+effort to catch the interest of the average audience or to excite an
+interest common to ordinary experience. Their reaction against the
+frivolity of contemporary melodrama was as decided as their reaction
+against eighteenth century conventionality; but both impulses led to
+poetry, passion, and Shakespeare, but not to drama. They did not succeed in
+working out cause and effect of character through incident; when they
+desired to gain stage effectiveness, they merely borrowed from current
+melodrama or from the Elizabethans.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabethan influence is usually apparent in the choice of themes, in the
+devising of plot and situations, and particularly in the figurative and
+ornate phrasing. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> revival of some Elizabethan plays on the stage, the
+vulgarization in the illegitimate drama of many of their incidents, and the
+general interest among readers at this time in the Elizabethan drama, all
+encouraged a fondness for madness, incest, battles, villany, and
+unrestrained passion of various kinds. In phrasing, the Elizabethan
+influence appears in all degrees; in the sympathetic emulation of Keats, in
+the amazing reproductions of Beddoes, or in the starched artificiality of
+the poetic embellishments of Milman, Knowles, or Procter. In general the
+style is redundant and florid. In such plays as were adapted for the stage,
+it will almost always be found that the mere curtailing of the figures,
+soliloquies, and episodes causes a marked improvement in the dramatic
+quality of the dialogue. Byron and Shelley both attempted to free their
+dramatic blank verse from conceits and artificialities, and to give it
+directness and lack of ornamentation corresponding to natural speech. In
+consequence, Byron's blank verse often makes a slovenly approach to prose,
+and Shelley's loses something of the beauty of his non-dramatic
+masterpieces; but on the whole, "Sardanapalus" and still more "Cain" and
+"The Cenci" show their greatness in this as in other respects, in the
+dramatic quality of their verse.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror.
+The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral
+melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like
+Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> of this in
+Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one
+of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a
+tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species.
+After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still
+found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate
+villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing
+influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising
+the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which
+furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have
+been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the
+devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy
+perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's
+"Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least
+encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley
+novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences
+of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the
+interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature,
+whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals,
+for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The
+treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss
+Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> now became essential to tragedy; and we
+find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of
+the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which
+he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems
+to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on
+the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio"
+and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly
+for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius
+Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of
+these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic
+emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but
+they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities
+for rhetorical fervors.</p>
+
+<p>In nearly all the plays the main interest is not in plot, as in the
+eighteenth century, and not primarily in story, as in the Elizabethan
+period, but in the delineation of individual passion. "Lear," "Othello,"
+"Hamlet," and "Macbeth" are the models; but the passions are more
+distempered, more isolated, more abstracted from reason or sense than in
+Shakespeare. As in the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the
+influence of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans is most unmistakable in the
+prominence given to insanity and villany. But this prominence is also a
+natural result of the romanticists' prepossession with passion. In tragedy,
+they felt that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> some passions must be very evil and some ruinous; hence
+they devoted themselves to a study of malice and madness. Their villains
+are more vigorous than those of the eighteenth century, but they, too,
+imitate Iago; and the mad scenes always recall either Lear or Ophelia. The
+romanticists can realize passion for the moment, or display its variable
+moods; but they rarely succeed in making its extended portrayal convincing.
+They clung to the idea that the only way to depict passion was to eliminate
+all else. Even in the great writers passion absorbs the interest; in the
+minor plays it tears itself to tatters. Tragedy after tragedy represents
+passions, not conflicting but alternating, until one or the other turns to
+madness. As Lewis's prologue declared, Romance "raves away the hours." The
+conception of tragedy seems to be the burning up of the soul in passion,
+and the poets' main concern to describe the conflagration. The romanticists
+needed Lyttleton's advice, to read Shakespeare, but to study Racine.</p>
+
+<p>The conception of tragedy that requires the expression of passion working
+in individual men, and seeks in history or legend for examples of isolated
+effects of the great emotions, clearly involves something different from a
+veracious representation of life as we all see it, and something more than
+the confusion of passions run wild. According to contemporary philosophical
+criticism, as that of Schiller and Schelling, or that of Coleridge and
+Shelley, tragedy should take part in the search for universal truth; not
+universal in the eighteenth-century conception<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> of typical characters and
+aphoristic generalizations, but universal in the sense that, in the words
+of Carlyle, it seeks the "interpretation of the divine idea in the world."
+Tragedy should investigate, as Lamb declared, "the grounds of the passion,
+its correspondence to a great and heroic nature," and should also seek to
+find in the riots of evil or the storms of passion symptoms of the struggle
+of Nature to rid itself of disease and fever, the presage of a higher unity
+for both man and the universe. Something of this is discernible in
+"Remorse" or elsewhere; there is a passionate demand for ethical realities
+in "Cain"; but the only positive presentation of an idealistic theory of
+tragedy is "The Cenci."</p>
+
+<p>Though tragedy thus reflects the changes working in the ideas and forms of
+literature, these changes are, of course, more distinctly indicated
+elsewhere. If we had no knowledge of other literature, and only tragedy to
+judge from, we could not clearly discern the far-reaching changes wrought
+by the romantic revival. Tragedy from 1800 to 1830 could be described as
+marking a return to the Elizabethans and Shakespeare, an absorption in the
+depiction of passion, a revival of poetic imagination in expression, an
+appeal to terror rather than to pity, and to the strange and mysterious
+rather than the reasonable; but it could not be said that the summation of
+these changes resulted in an extensive or enduring development.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to find a stopping-place for a history of English tragedy.
+In the case of the acted drama the close<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> of Macready's management offers a
+definite end, for the ensuing twenty-five years are nearly a blank as far
+as acted tragedy is concerned. In the case of the unacted drama, however,
+there is no point of marked change. The deaths of Scott and Goethe mark a
+stage in European literature; and the Victorian era introduces new poets
+and novelists, new social and political conditions, and a new foreign
+influence in the French romanticists. But the closet dramas after 1830 are
+in many ways closely related to those of the generation before. Closet
+tragedy in the plays of Browning, Sir Henry Taylor, Matthew Arnold,
+Swinburne, and others, was largely the outcome of the theatrical and
+literary conditions which we have been tracing. Separated from the theatre,
+it offers, one must fear, little that is vital in the development of the
+drama, however impressive it may be as poetry. The appearance of new
+semi-dramatic species was a natural accompaniment of the continued
+departure of drama from the stage. Miss Mitford and Bulwer-Lytton had
+written "dramatic scenes." Later Landor's genius found its truest
+opportunity not in poetic plays, but in prose imaginary conversations, at
+their best splendidly dramatic. Browning turned from the theatre to
+dramatic lyrics, romances, and monologues. In fact, in the work of all the
+romantic dramatists, including Browning and Swinburne, dramatic power
+reveals itself in scenes and passages rather than in whole plays. Tragedy
+as a literary form, it may be repeated, is dependent for its life upon the
+theatre. Removed from the theatre, its integrity is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> gone, it develops
+strange and varied forms. Instead of tragedy, we have "My Last Duchess,"
+"The Ring and the Book," and the Mary Stuart trilogy.</p>
+
+<p>It is this separation from the theatre that seems to have been the main
+cause for the failure of the romantic movement in tragedy. We may, to be
+sure, find other causes in plenty. The genius of its great poets was
+lyrical rather than dramatic. Lyrical and narrative poetry and, above all,
+the novel absorbed both public interest and imaginative genius. Again,
+there was no free play for a revolution in tragedy, because there had been
+no tyranny. Classicism had never dominated the drama as in other European
+nations. In English tragedy of the eighteenth century, blank verse, however
+tainted by affectation, had kept the Elizabethan fondness for figure;
+structure, though following after French models, had maintained the
+traditions of English freedom; the subjects had kept open a wide range and
+had not neglected the medieval field; and sentiment, if not passion, had
+reigned. While the German and French romanticists found in Shakespeare an
+incentive to something new, the English romanticists could only elevate to
+omnipotence one who had long been the idol of the theatres. He was for them
+no innovator, but rather the unrecognized tyrant who held them back from
+real innovation. As Beddoes recognized in theory though not in practice,
+"the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold tramping fellow,&mdash;no
+reviver, even however good."</p>
+
+<p>But if we still ask why Coleridge or Beddoes should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> not have written
+tragedy as well as Schiller or Victor Hugo, why the tragedy of passion,
+revolt, and idealism, applied to history or legend, did not flourish in the
+time of the French Revolution and Napoleon, of Kemble and Kean, of Byron
+and Browning, the best answer must be found in the fact that theatrical
+conditions offered no encouragement to tragic drama, but almost forbade a
+serious attempt to learn the ways of the theatre or to deal in its debased
+wares.</p>
+
+<p>If theatrical conditions had been favorable, if the union of Macready and
+Browning could have continued, one fancies that the romantic drama might
+yet have succeeded. The chronicle of English tragedy finds its climax in
+the first act, with Shakespeare as its protagonist; henceforth, directed by
+his ghost, its action goes haltingly, vainly awaiting another climax and
+another protagonist. In Browning, it was, perhaps, nearer than ever before
+to finding both. Since the Restoration, no poet had come to the theatre so
+gifted with dramatic genius, no poet so concerned with the study of the
+vicissitudes of human motive, so alive to the dramatic values of crucial
+moments, so curious as to the meaning of passion and pain, suffering and
+evil, in the drama of life. "Strafford" and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" have
+the weaknesses of youth and experiment, but they are the plays of a pioneer
+who is not content with returning to the Elizabethans or the Greeks, but is
+seeking to convey through his stories and persons the truth that is in him.
+The study of Strafford is almost the first independent and acute study of
+an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> Englishman of history in all the historical tragedies since "Henry V";
+"A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" one of the few plays to realize individual
+passions since Otway. And the dramatic defects&mdash;the failure to meet his
+audience half-way, the awkwardness and garrulity of expression, the lack of
+repression in form, while defects that continue in Browning's later
+poetry&mdash;are the very faults for which a severe apprenticeship to the
+theatre might have been the best discipline. An apprenticeship such as
+Shakespeare served might have turned Browning's monologues and lyrics into
+dramas; but the age was incapable of furnishing such a training, and the
+fiasco with Macready was the end of the period and the defeat of the
+poetical drama.</p>
+
+<p>What comes after in the nineteenth century may best be left to the future
+historian, who will be able to interpret its plays in the light of a
+succeeding development. The plays of Tennyson, reverting again to
+Shakespeare, and the poems of Swinburne may, after all, be the forerunners
+of a new revival of poetical tragedy. Or the great development in technic
+that has proceeded, first under the guidance of the French dramatists, and
+then of Ibsen, and the serious essays of dramatists of the passing
+generation may be the pioneers of a national drama of first-rate importance
+in the generation to come. Certainly Ibsen, with his revolution in both the
+content and the form of the tragic drama, has been the great force in later
+nineteenth century tragedy. His work as it affects England and America,
+however neglected, postponed, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> modified, must be the text of a
+succeeding chapter on English tragedy, which cannot yet be written.</p>
+
+
+<h3>NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+<p>Genest's <i>Account of the English Stage</i> stops at 1830. A continuation of
+this work down to the present time is much to be desired. There is no
+thorough history or bibliography of the drama of this period. In addition
+to the histories of the theatre already mentioned, W. C. Oulton's <i>History
+of the Theatres of London</i>, 1795-1817, may be consulted. Memoirs of the
+Kembles are useful for this period, and also Macready's <i>Reminiscences</i>,
+ed. Sir F. Pollock (1875), Moore's <i>Life of Sheridan</i> (1825), Molloy's
+<i>Life of Edmund Kean</i> (1888), William Archer's admirable life of Macready
+(<i>Eminent Actors Series</i>), are all valuable. <i>Random Recollections</i> by
+Colman the younger, and memoirs of Kelly, O'Keefe, and Reynolds supply
+information in regard to the theatre and illegitimate drama. John
+Cumberland's collections, <i>British Theatre</i> (41 vols., 1829) and the <i>Minor
+Theatre</i> (15 vols.), are printed from acting copies, and the second
+comprises many illegitimate plays.</p>
+
+<p>Dramatic criticism of the period includes Coleridge (see criticism of
+Maturin's <i>Bertram</i> in <i>Biographia Literaria</i>), Hazlitt, <i>A View of the
+English Stage</i> (1818); Leigh Hunt, <i>Critical Essays on the Performers of
+the London Theatres</i> (1807) (selections from same, ed. W. Archer and R. W.
+Lowe, 1894); Lamb (see <i>Lamb's Dramatic Essays</i>, ed. Brander Matthews,
+1893). See, also, R. H. Horne's <i>New Spirit of the Age</i> (1844), containing
+criticism of Knowles, Macready, Bulwer-Lytton, and Browning.</p>
+
+<p>The dramatic work of the chief poets has been studied in connection with
+their other poetry by many editors and critics, but rarely in its relation
+to the drama of the period. Professor Beers's two volumes, <i>English
+Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century</i> (1899), and <i>English Romanticism in
+the Nineteenth Century</i> (1901), deal with the German influence; C. H.
+Herford has an excellent though brief account of the drama of the period in
+his <i>Age of Wordsworth</i>; Watson Nicholson's <i>The Struggle for a Free Stage
+in London</i> (1906) is full and valuable. Ernest Bates's monograph on <i>The
+Cenci</i> (1908) discusses that tragedy and its relations to contemporary
+drama.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> See <i>The Haunted Tower</i>, an opera (1789), acted eighty times
+in two seasons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Its borrowings are noted by Genest, viii, 603. The scene is
+quoted in Archer's <i>Life of Macready</i> (Eminent Actors Series), p. 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>The Fall of Robespierre</i> (1794), by Southey and Coleridge,
+and Southey's <i>Wat Tyler</i> (1817), written in 1794, hardly require even
+mention as tragedies.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> In this and the two following paragraphs the bracketed dates
+are those of the first performances in London. Some of the plays were first
+acted elsewhere.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> "I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually
+rising against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a
+weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." Letter to
+his sister, December, 1819.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> The translation of Goethe's <i>Goetz von Berlichingen</i> (1799),
+<i>The House of Aspen</i> (1830), <i>Halidon Hill</i> (1822), <i>Macduff's Cross</i>
+(1823), <i>The Doom of Devorgoil</i> (1830), <i>Auchindrane</i> (1830).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Herford, <i>Age of Wordsworth</i>, p. 227.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>CONCLUSION</h3>
+
+
+<p>The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found
+their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many
+common characteristics, they do separate themselves from other plays of
+their periods, they are connected from one period to another in a
+continuous development. English tragedies constitute a dramatic type, a
+literary form. This type has, to be sure, permitted many
+variations,&mdash;revenge tragedy, chronicle play, tragicomedy, domestic
+tragedy, sentimental tragedy, heroic play, or the closet tragedy of the
+romanticists&mdash;but every one of these species has had its connections with
+others, and in every period the tragedies of varying kinds have been
+related not only to one another but to those that have gone before. With
+changing theatrical conditions, with new literary impulses, with new views
+of the old traditions, with new influences from Spain or France or Germany,
+the type has taken new characteristics or made new alliances, but has never
+lost its integrity. At any time during the three centuries it would have
+been possible to frame a definition of tragedy that would include over nine
+tenths of the tragedies of the period, and the other tenth would offer only
+definable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> variations. However strong the foreign influences, tragedy has
+maintained the national tradition; however great the innovations, it has
+never broken with the past. From Marlowe to Shelley there has been an
+unbroken continuity in themes, stories, types of persons, nature of
+emotional appeal, structure, and even in the blank verse.</p>
+
+<p>So marked is the integrity and continuity of the type that tragedy lends
+itself, better perhaps than most other forms, to the biological analogy.
+The processes which we have been tracing are evolutionary. Whether we
+consider the main type or its varying forms, we are reminded constantly of
+the laws governing the origin and development of natural species. The
+history of the Elizabethan drama in particular affords an example of the
+origin, development, culmination, and degeneration of a literary species,
+which might be analyzed closely as Bruneti&egrave;re has analyzed French tragedy
+of the seventeenth century. Created from a cross-fertilization of Seneca on
+the medieval drama, it appears in dubious forms of morality and chronicle,
+springs into full integrity in Marlowe, reaches its culmination in
+Shakespeare, and degenerates under the changed environment of the social
+and theatrical conditions that followed the death of Elizabeth. But the
+analogy is not less applicable to the whole history of tragedy. The slow
+development of variations and new species under changing environment is
+found in every period, as in the formation and growth of the revenge play
+or in the development of the sentimental tragedy of the eighteenth century.
+The quick formation of species<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> by mutation also has its parallels, as in
+the sudden appearance of Marlowe or of the heroic tragedy bred from the
+Beaumont-Fletcher play and French romance. In the persistence of the stage
+villain through all forms and periods, we might even discover one of
+Mendel's unit characters. The reversion to an earlier form appears in the
+return of Lee or of the Romanticists to the Elizabethans. And the tendency
+of individual plays to regress to the main type has been a constant and on
+the whole perhaps the most potent force of the development.</p>
+
+<p>We may find the nature of the literary species determined by constant
+principles corresponding to environment and heredity in the evolution of
+natural species. Environment as a factor in literature has long been
+recognized by criticism, and has been apparent in every play that we have
+examined. Each period has been distinguished by theatrical, social, and
+literary conditions peculiar to itself and constituting the
+change-producing environment of the drama. Tragedy has at every stage
+responded to these changing conditions. And the law of heredity is also
+paralleled. No play has been without its inheritance. The most original, as
+Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Otway's "Orphan," Lillo's "Barnwell," and Shelley's
+"Cenci," have shown their indebtedness no less clearly, if less slavishly,
+than the more commonplace individuals. The classical tradition transformed
+the English breed as the Arabian stock has the racing-horse; the French
+influence changed the very anatomy of the species. Our study must surely
+have called attention to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> the extraordinary force that imitation has
+exercised in the creation of tragedy. It seems, indeed, the generating
+power. Men are forever imitating, but they cannot imitate without change.
+In these changes, the variations due to environment&mdash;personal, theatrical,
+literary, social&mdash;arise the individual peculiarities, the beginnings of new
+species, the element of growth. The great mass of tragedies, however,
+differentiate themselves only feebly or slightly from the type. They are
+imitations that preserve all the essential characteristics of their
+originals. Some ideas, some plays, some traditions, have an astonishing
+fecundity; other stocks, procreative for a while, soon turn barren. But,
+destroy the faculty of imitation, and the generation of literary forms
+would seem wellnigh impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, perhaps, the biological analogy may be pressed, if we remember
+that it is only an analogy. The evolution of a wagon or a battleship might
+offer an equally suggestive and an equally unsafe comparison. No one should
+be deceived by the analogy into thinking that what we call environment and
+heredity in literary species correspond in fact with their namesakes in the
+physical world. One play does not create another. It, along with countless
+other things, suggests ideas and impressions which are made into a play by
+the author. Each tragedy is the child of a mind, whose creative processes
+have little real resemblance to physical generation. To call the influence
+of "Hamlet" heredity, and the influence of the author's newspaper reading,
+or of his family, or his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> political beliefs, environment, is merely to
+assign arbitrary names. Again, art, unlike nature, is careless of the type
+and careful of the individual. A single play may live longer and have
+greater generating power than a whole species. "Othello" during the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has, perhaps, had more influence upon
+English tragedy than all non-Shakespearean tragedies together. Sophocles is
+still germinating. It is as if we now had the venerable chief of the
+mastodons, surviving many of the species he had originated, and still
+creating his offspring to confuse the evolutions of the many other species
+he had already aided in forming. In literature we are attempting to trace
+the development of species, of which individuals live forever; to
+discriminate the agents in a complex creative process which we do not at
+all understand; to call one play the child of another when it is more truly
+the kaleidoscopic aggregate of much reading, much observation, much
+experience shaken into a new form by the author's creative imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Literary criticism may borrow from the natural sciences the evolutionary
+conception and some of its accompaniments; in particular, the demarcation
+of literary forms by the persistence of certain characteristics through
+changing conditions of nation or period, and the recognition of imitation
+as an important element in the creative process. It would seem, however,
+that further progress in the classification and explanation of literary
+phenomena is not to be gained by searching for additional analogies, but in
+the study and analysis of the phenomena themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> in the effort to
+discover the principles and laws of the mental processes peculiar to
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>We may put the case, then, without further reliance on the evolution of
+physical species. For three hundred years Englishmen have been writing
+tragedies, all much alike, all related in origin, nature, and purpose. In
+our study of their relationships, the influences governing their creation
+have been grouped in two main classes: first, that of the theatre itself,
+and second, that which has been called the literary tradition. In the
+theatre has been included the influence of actors and audience and all
+pertaining to the theatrical presentation. Changes in the mere stage and
+its appurtenances have been factors determining the very nature of tragedy.
+The scenery and women actors of the Restoration compelled important
+modifications in the drama; the large theatres of Kemble's day drove
+tragedy from the stage and encouraged a pantomime hybrid. The influence of
+theatrical fashions and traditions, always in part changing and transitory,
+has been felt in every variation, advance, or retrogression of the acted
+drama. Yet it is the influence of the theatre that has maintained the
+integrity of form and has thus been the main force in preserving the
+species. The literary tradition, even more complex in its elements than
+that of the theatre, altering and cumulative, composed of classical or
+French as well as English masterpieces, drawn from the novel or other forms
+as well as the drama, affected by all social movements, passing through
+such transformations as those of the classical and the romantic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> periods,
+has nevertheless, on the whole, conserved the form and content of tragedy.
+During the periods that we have examined, blank verse, illustrious persons,
+the pomp of courts, the great passions of revenge, ambition, jealousy,
+lust, love, and hate, hideous crimes, and the conflict of potent wills have
+been the usual accompaniments of the actions of suffering and ruin. There
+has been only occasional departure from the Shakespearean conception of
+tragedy as representation of great personalities engaged in disastrous
+conflict. Shakespeare, in fact, at least since Dryden's "All for Love," has
+been a constant and often the dominating element in this complex and
+variable literary tradition. The two classes of influence, theatrical and
+literary, have thus proved both variable and conserving. The theatre, while
+crying for novelty, holds tenaciously to its traditions. Literature, while
+enforcing rules, precedents, prejudices, while clinging to its models and
+demanding imitation, yet incites to rivalry and originality, to new
+endeavor, variation, and excellence.</p>
+
+<p>These two main classes of influence have rarely if ever run parallel. At
+times the theatre has attracted literature, as in the Elizabethan era, at
+times it has repelled literature, as in the early nineteenth century.
+Usually, what the stage of the day desires and what the literature of the
+past encourages have been quite different and often irreconcilable. In our
+study we have consequently had to keep in mind not only two main lines of
+influence, but two points of view and two standards of judgment. It is the
+purpose of dramatic art to bring about their reconciliation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> to harmonize
+the technic of the theatre, the necessities of the drama, and the standards
+of literary excellence. Our history records no attainment of such an ideal;
+rather the two antinomies seem farther from final unity in the time of
+Byron than in that of Shakespeare. Yet, through the discarding of temporary
+fashions, the growing knowledge of structure, and the multiplication of
+theatrical means, the material and experience necessary for further
+progress have at least been accumulating. Perhaps a survey of the drama of
+the last century on the continent would result in a more sanguine view of
+the development of the principles of dramatic art freed from the
+temporalities of theatrical fashion. There is probability in Professor
+Brander Matthews's suggestion that in our growing cosmopolitanism national
+divergencies in content will exist with a growing agreement in form. We may
+hope that this will be merely an agreement in making quick trial of new
+ideas, from whatever theatre derived, and that the principles of art
+established will not, as so often in the past, prove pedantic and
+hampering. This much seems fairly certain,&mdash;literary genius and theatrical
+experience must unite in order to produce great tragedy. From the theatre
+the writer must learn dramatic art, the first rule of which is to win his
+audience; from literature he must learn the elements that will give his
+work lasting value. Only after an experience with the theatre can he
+venture on innovations likely to be permanent. Only if he have literary
+genius will he depart in triumph from literary traditions. The double
+mastery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> comes to one only rarely, and then only after a double service.</p>
+
+<p>The relationships of tragedy, however, are not confined to the theatre or
+to literature. That tragedy, like other forms of literature, is an
+imitation of life, is a platitude whose meaning sometimes fails to impress
+us. But its truth has a witness in every writer of tragedy. However
+insignificant or thoughtless, he has been trying to put into his play
+something of life as he knows it, trying to find some relationships in the
+world of fact that will carry meaning and interest to his fellows. Whether
+he has been writing mainly to meet the desires of actors and audience, or
+has been voyaging alone toward some discovery of beauty and grandeur of
+human passion, whether he has been building his house of intrigue according
+to well-conned rules of dramatic structure, or has been copying some tangle
+of fact, he has been studying the ways and means of human actions.
+Trivially or greatly, as the case may be, he has been seeking to interpret
+life. Classicist, romanticist, and realist have been by different processes
+seeking the same end, the discovery of meaning in the facts of existence.
+They have all viewed the Art that they have so differently formulated, as a
+means of approach to Nature, the deity whom they all profess. Neither high
+seriousness, nor sublime theme, nor a complete philosophy is a necessary
+accompaniment of Matthew Arnold's definition. Whether the poet write of
+"the tangles of Ne&aelig;ra's hair" or of that disobedience that first "brought
+death into the world," he is attempting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> a criticism of life. This
+definition does not state the primary aim of literature, for it must first
+of all interest us, or its sole function, for it seeks beauty as well as
+truth and cannot always unite them; but it does indicate the most permanent
+and vitalizing element in the creation of literature, the most organic
+relationship that connects its many manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>The greatness of tragedy depends upon its allegiance to this meaning of
+literature. The dramatic form gives opportunity for a close approach to the
+semblance of actuality. The very subjects of tragedy, suffering and
+disaster, discourage the seeking of mere amusement or a contentment with
+mere beauty of expression. They require, if not high seriousness or a
+teleology, at least a concern with the most interesting, inescapable, and
+dreadful of human facts. This baleful portion of human existence is the
+field of tragedy's research, where it may find grandeur and violence,
+malevolence and magnanimity, optimism or pessimism, harmony or anarchy, but
+where it can only with difficulty escape a serious attempt at the study of
+character and deed. No other literary form has so nobly responded to this
+great mission as that adopted by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Calderon,
+Corneille, and Ibsen. It has constrained drama and literature to their duty
+of research, interpretation, discovery in the almost impenetrable maze of
+human fact, by the very nature of its chosen field, by the pre&euml;minence of
+its great examples, and even by the continued endeavor of its humblest
+servants. As one reads through these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> forgotten tragedies, as when one
+scans closely any large field of human effort, the main impression is one
+of futility. Beauty is not attained, life is not revealed, everything is
+imitative, feeble, and absurd. Yet, even among those hundreds of eighteenth
+century tragedies, with their rhyming tags that neatly sum up their
+authors' generalizations on life, one may find reason for sympathy and
+interest. They record what had meaning for their day, the heroisms,
+sentiments, and morals that somehow stirred men's hearts and elevated their
+resolves. They represent some degree of temporary success in giving
+relations and significance to their world. The lastingly significant
+representation of life is found not in the many but in the few, but the
+mediocrities and the failures continue the effort and maintain the form
+that make possible the few masterpieces. The very greatest set no
+impassable bound, for the ever-widening expanse of tragic fact continually
+invites new explorers. Progress can come not by resting admiringly on the
+greatness of the past, but only through a free opportunity for new pioneers
+and discoverers. Were the achievement of English tragedy far less than it
+has been, the very expenditure of effort should give it some interest for
+study. Its history, however, includes in Shakespeare's tragedies a few of
+the unapproached achievements of the human mind, many other plays that for
+a while greatly interested and persuaded men, not a few that still have
+searching meaning for us, and hundreds more that have maintained an
+unselfish, a social, a moral inquiry into life, and that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> while perishing
+themselves, have aided others to live. In such a history, even he who runs
+may read a record of human endeavor not alien to his interest.</p>
+
+<p>Tragedy takes an abiding place among the great courses of continuous human
+activity dedicated to an inquiry into the meanings of life. Its imaginative
+and intellectual study of suffering and ruin must continue, however its
+form may alter, if the theatre is to be a social force of importance, if
+literature is to offer an intelligent, serious, and comprehensive view of
+life, if the two are to unite in something better than a trivial and
+selfish entertainment. Its methods may not commend themselves in an age of
+physical and mechanical sciences, its aim may not commend itself at a time
+when splendid discoveries in the physical world blur the importance of an
+interpretation of moral and social relations. But tragedy has survived many
+ages and creeds, and seems likely to survive as long as men try to
+understand other men, to sympathize with their troubles, and to relate
+these somehow to their own beliefs and ideals. In the future as in the
+past, when a nation or community is at a period of culminating advance,
+when society is most mindful of its greatness and its obligations, tragedy
+should find its most helpful encouragement and its greatest opportunity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+<p>The Index contains the titles of works, the names of authors, and the names
+of a few actors referred to in the text or footnotes. The Bibliographical
+Notes are not indexed. Alterations of plays are not indexed separately
+unless they have separate titles. References of importance are indicated by
+heavy-faced figures.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+<p>
+<i>Abraham</i>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Absalon</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Addison, Joseph, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>-291, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Adriana</i>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&AElig;schylus, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Agamemnon</i> (by Thomson), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Agamemnon and Ulysses</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ajax and Ulysses</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ajax Flagellifer</i>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Alcazar, The Battle of</i>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Alcibiades</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Alexander, W., <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Alfred the Great</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Alleyn, Edward, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>All for Love</i>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>All's Lost by Lust</i>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Almida</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Alphonsus of Aragon</i>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Alzira</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n., <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Alzuma</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ambitious Stepmother, The</i>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Amboyna</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Amelia</i>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Andrews, P. M., <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Andromaque</i>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Antigone</i>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Antonio</i>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <b><a href='#Page_175'>175</a>-177</b>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Antonio and Mellida</i> (see <i>Antonio's Revenge</i>), <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Antonio's Revenge</i>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <b><a href='#Page_147'>147</a>-149.</b><br />
+<br />
+<i>Apology for Poetry</i>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Appius and Virginia</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a> n., <b><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_64'>64</a></b>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Archer, Wm., <a href='#Page_203'>203</a> n., <a href='#Page_335'>335</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Archipropheta</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Arden of Feversham</i>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(adaptation by Lillo), <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Argalus and Parthenia</i>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ariodante and Genevra</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Aristotle, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Arnold, Matthew, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ars Poetica</i>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ascham, Roger, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Asinari, Frederigo, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Atheist's Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <b><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_154'>154</a></b>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Athelwold</i>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Athenian Captive, The</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Auchindrane</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a> n., <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Aureng Zebe</i>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Bacon, Lord, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Baillie, Joanna, <b><a href='#Page_339'>339</a>-341</b>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bale, John, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Banks, John, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Baptistes</i>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Barbarossa</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Barnavelt, Tragedy of Sir John van Olden</i>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bartholomew Fair</i>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bashful Lover, The</i>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span><i>Basil</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Battle of Hexham, The</i>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beaumont and Fletcher (see, also, Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John), <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <b><a href='#Page_203'>203</a>-211</b>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beaumont, Francis (see Beaumont and Fletcher), <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beddoes, T. L., <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Behn, Mrs. Afra, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Believe as You List</i>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Belleforest, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Berenice</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bertram</i>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Betterton, T., <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beza, T. de, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Blacksmith's Daughter, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bloody Brother, The, or Rollo, Duke of Normandy</i>, <b><a href='#Page_214'>214</a>-216</b>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Blot on the 'Scutcheon, The</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Boaden, J., <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Boccaccio, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bondman, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bonduca</i>, <b><a href='#Page_213'>213</a></b>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Borderers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bothwell</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Braganza</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brandl, Alois, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bridal, The</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bride's Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Broken Heart, The</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <b><a href='#Page_228'>228</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+Brooke, Arthur, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brooke, H., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Brothers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brown, Charles, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brown, John, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Browning, Robert, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bruneti&egrave;re, Ferdinand, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_367'>367</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Brutus</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by John Howard Payne), <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Brutus of Alba</i>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Buchanan, George, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bulwer-Lytton, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Burgoyne, Gen., <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Burning of Sodom, The</i>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Burns, Robert, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Busiris</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bussy D'Ambois, The Death of</i>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The Revenge of</i>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Byron, Lord, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <b><a href='#Page_350'>350</a>-353</b>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>-358, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Byron, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of</i>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Caelia, or the Perjured Lover</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>C&aelig;sar and Pompey</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>C&aelig;sar Borgia</i>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cain</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Caius Gracchus</i>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Caius Marius, History and Fall of</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Calderon, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Caleb Williams</i>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Caligula</i>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Calpren&egrave;de, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cambyses</i>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <b><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_67'>67</a></b>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <b><a href='#Page_172'>172</a></b>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Campbell, Thomas, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Canfield, Dorothea, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Capell, Edward, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Caractacus</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cardenio</i>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cardinal, The</i>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Careless Husband, The</i>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Carey, H., <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Carlell, L., <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, T., <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Carmelite, The</i>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Castle of Otranto, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Castle Spectre, The</i>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Catiline</i>, <b><a href='#Page_141'>141</a>-144</b>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Catilin's Conspiracy</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cato</i>, <b><a href='#Page_290'>290</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_291'>291</a></b>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cenci, The</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>, <b><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></b>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>, <b><a href='#Page_361'>361</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_368'>368</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+Centlivre, Mrs., <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cervantes, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chambers, E. K., <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Changeling, The</i>, <b><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>Chapman, George, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <b><a href='#Page_144'>144</a>-146</b>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cheke, Sir John, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chettle, Henry, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <b><a href='#Page_152'>152</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></b>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Christian Hero, The</i>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Christopherson, J., <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Christus Redivivus</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Christus Triumphans</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Chrononhotonthologos</i>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Churchill, George B., <a href='#Page_58'>58</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Cibber, Colley, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cicero, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cid, The</i>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cinthio, Giraldi, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>City Madam, The</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>City of the Plague, The</i>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cleomenes</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cl&eacute;opatre Captive</i>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cloridon and Radimanta</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Coleridge, S. T., <a href='#Page_213'>213</a> n., <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <b><a href='#Page_341'>341</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_342'>342</a></b>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <a href='#Page_359'>359</a>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Collier, Jeremy, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Colman, George, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Colman, George (the younger), <b><a href='#Page_332'>332</a>-334</b>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Complaint of Buckingham, The</i>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Condemnation of John Huss, The</i>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Confidant, The</i>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Congreve, Wm., <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <b><a href='#Page_275'>275</a></b>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Conquest of Granada</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Conscious Lovers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Constantine</i>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <b><a href='#Page_177'>177</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_178'>178</a></b>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Thomson), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Corneille, Pierre, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Corneille, Thomas, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cornelia</i> (translation of Garnier's), <a href='#Page_100'>100</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Countess of Salisbury, The</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Count Julian</i>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Count of Narbonne, The</i> (adaptation of Castle of Otranto), <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Crabbe, George, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cradock, J., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Creizenach, W., <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Critic, The</i>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Crowne, John, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cruelty of a Stepmother, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cumberland, Richard, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Curfew, The</i>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cushman, Miss Charlotte, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cymbeline</i>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cyrus</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n., <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cyrus the Great, or the Tragedy of Love</i>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Dalida, La</i>, see <i>Roxana</i>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Damon and Pythias</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <b><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+Daniel, Samuel, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dante, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Davenant, Sir Wm., <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Davenport, R., <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>David and Bethsabe</i>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Death's Jest Book</i>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum</i>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Defoe, Daniel, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Deformed Transformed, The</i>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dekker, Thomas, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Delivery of Susannah, The</i>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>De Montfort</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dennis, John, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Deserted Daughter, The</i>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dibdin, T., <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dickens, Charles, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dictys Cretensis, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Diderot, D., <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Dido</i> (by Dolce), <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Gager), <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Ritwyse), <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by unknown), <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Dido, Tragedy of</i> (by Marlowe and Nash), <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Distressed Mother, The</i>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Divine Comedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dolce, Lodovico, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Doll's House, The</i>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Don Carlos</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Don Juan</i>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Donne, John, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span><i>Don Quixote</i>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Don Sebastian</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Doom of Devorgoil, The</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Dorval, or the Test of Virtue</i> (translated from Le Fils Naturel), <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Double Marriage, The</i>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Douglas</i>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Downfall and Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, The</i>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Downman, H., <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Drayton, M., <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dryden, John, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-251, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <b><a href='#Page_259'>259</a>-263</b>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>-274, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Duchess de la Vali&egrave;re</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Duchess of Malfi, The</i>, <b><a href='#Page_199'>199</a></b>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Duke of Guise, The</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Duke of Milan, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n., <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Duke's Mistress, The</i>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Duplicity</i>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.<br />
+<br />
+D'Urf&eacute;, Honor&eacute;, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.<br />
+<br />
+D'Urfey, T., <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dyce, Alexander, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Earl of Essex, The</i> (adaptation of the Unhappy Favorite, q. v.), <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Earl of Essex, The</i> (by Jones), <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Earl of Warwick, The</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Eccerinis</i>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Edward I</i>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Edward II</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <b><a href='#Page_92'>92</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_93'>93</a></b>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Edward III</i>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Edward and Eleonora</i>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Edwards, Richard, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Effigenia</i> (Iphigenia), <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n., <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Elfrid</i>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Elfrida</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Elmerick</i>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Emilia Galotti</i>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>English Traveller, The</i>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Erasmus, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Essay of Heroic Plays</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Essay on Dramatic Poetry</i>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Euripides, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Evadne</i>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Everyman</i>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Every Man in His Humour</i>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ezechias</i>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Fabyan, R., <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fair Penitent, The</i>, <b><a href='#Page_284'>284</a>-287</b>, <b><a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.</b>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fair Quarrel, The</i>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Faithful Shepherdess, The</i>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Falkland, Lord, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fall of Jerusalem, The</i>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fall of Robespierre, The</i>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Falls of Princes, The</i>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>False One, The</i>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Family Picture, A</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Famous Victories of Henry V, The</i>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fashionable Lover, The</i>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fatal Curiosity, The</i>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fatal Dowry, The</i>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>-287, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fatal Extravagance</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fatal Falsehood, The</i>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fatal Marriage, The</i>, <b><a href='#Page_274'>274</a></b>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam, The</i>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fate of Capua, The</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fate of Villany, The</i>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Faulkner</i>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Faust</i>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Faustus</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <b><a href='#Page_92'>92</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_98'>98</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fazio</i>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fenton, E., <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ferrex and Porrex.</i> See <i>Gorboduc</i>.<br />
+<br />
+Field, Nathaniel, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fielding, Henry, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fils Naturel, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fleay, F. G., <a href='#Page_58'>58</a> n., <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fletcher, John (see, also, Beaumont and Fletcher), <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <b><a href='#Page_211'>211</a>-216</b>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>-221, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>-226, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-232, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Foote, S., <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Ford, John, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <b><a href='#Page_226'>226</a>-229</b>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span><i>Four Plays in One</i>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Four Sons of Fabius</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Foxe, John, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Francklin, T., <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Fuller, Harold De W., <a href='#Page_114'>114</a> n., <a href='#Page_127'>127</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Funeral, The</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gager, Wm., <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Gamester, The</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Gammer Gurton's Needle</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gardiner, Bishop, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Garrick, David, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gascoigne, George, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gay, John, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Genest, J., <a href='#Page_335'>335</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>George Barnwell, or the London Merchant</i>, <b><a href='#Page_314'>314</a>-318</b>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ghosts</i>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gifford, Wm., <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Gil Blas</i>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gildon, Charles, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Giocasta</i>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Gismund of Salerne.</i> See <i>Tancred and Gismunda.</i><br />
+<br />
+Glapthorne, Henry, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Glencoe</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Gloriana</i>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Glover R., <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>God's Promises</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Godwin, Wm., <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Goethe, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a> n., <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Goetz von Berlichingen</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Goffe, Thomas, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Gorboduc</i>, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <b><a href='#Page_40'>40</a>-42</b>, <b><a href='#Page_48'>48</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_51'>51</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_52'>52</a>-54</b>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a> n., <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gosson, S., <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grafton, Richard, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Granville, Earl of, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gray, Thomas, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Grecian Daughter, The</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Greene, Robert, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Greville, Fulke, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grimald, Nicholas, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Groto, Luigi, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Guarini, G. B., <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Halidon Hill</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a> n., <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hall, Bishop, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hamblet, Historie of</i>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hamlet</i> (the early), <a href='#Page_100'>100</a> n., <b><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></b>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hamlet</i>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <b><a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-162</b>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>-165, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>-186, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hamlet, Revenge of</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Harding, Samuel, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hartson, H., <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Haunted Tower, The</i>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Hauptmann, G., <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hazlitt, Wm., <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hecatommithi</i>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hedda Gabler</i>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hegel, G. W. F., <b><a href='#Page_9'>9</a>.</b><br />
+<br />
+<i>Heiress, The</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Heming, Wm., <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Henry IV</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Henry V</i> (by Aaron Hill), <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Shakespeare), <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by the Earl of Orrery), <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Henry VI</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <b><a href='#Page_115'>115</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_116'>116</a></b>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Henry VIII</i>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hercules Furens</i>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Herford, C. H., <a href='#Page_352'>352</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hernani</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Herodes</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Heroine of the Cave, The</i>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Heywood, Jasper, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Heywood, Thomas, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <b><a href='#Page_140'>140</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_141'>141</a></b>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hill, Aaron, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <b><a href='#Page_303'>303</a>-305</b>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hoffman</i>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <b><a href='#Page_152'>152</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></b>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Holcroft, T., <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> n.; <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Holinshed, R., <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Home, John, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Homer, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hooker, Richard, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hoole, J., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n., <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Horace</i>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span><i>Horestes</i>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <b><a href='#Page_64'>64</a></b>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <b><a href='#Page_71'>71</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_100'>100</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>House of Aspen, The</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Howard, Sir Robert, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hughes, Thomas, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Hugo, Victor, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Hunchback, The</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ibsen, Henrik, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Imaginary Conversation, The</i>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Imposter, The</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Inchbald, Mrs., <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Indian Emperor, The</i>, <b><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></b>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Indian Queen, The</i>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Innocent Adultery, The</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Insolvent, The</i>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ion</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Iron Chest, The</i>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Isabella</i>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Island Princess, The</i>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Island Queens, The</i> (by Banks), <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jack Straw</i>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>James IV, Scottish Historie of</i>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jane Shore</i>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <b><a href='#Page_287'>287</a>-289</b>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jephson, Robert, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jephthes</i> (by Buchanan), <b><a href='#Page_37'>37</a></b>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Christopherson), <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jeronimo, First Part of</i>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jew, The</i> (by Cumberland), <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Unknown), <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jew of Aragon, The</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jew of Malta, The</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <b><a href='#Page_92'>92</a></b>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jocasta</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <b><a href='#Page_54'>54</a></b>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Jodelle, E., <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>John the Baptist</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>John Woodvil</i>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Charles, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Samuel, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jones, Henry, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Jonson, Ben, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <b><a href='#Page_141'>141</a>-144</b>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <b><a href='#Page_151'>151</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_152'>152</a></b>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Joseph and his Brethren</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Julia</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Julian</i>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Julius C&aelig;sar</i>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <b><a href='#Page_154'>154</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_155'>155</a></b>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Kean, Edmund, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Keats, John, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>, <b><a href='#Page_349'>349</a></b>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Keller, Wolfgang, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Kemble, Charles, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kemble, John P., <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>-293, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kemble, Miss Fanny, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Kempe, Wm., <a href='#Page_171'>171</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Killigrew, T., <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>King and No King, A</i>, <b><a href='#Page_203'>203</a>-205</b>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>King John</i>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <b><a href='#Page_116'>116</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_117'>117</a></b>, 136;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Bale), <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>. See <i>Troublesome Reign.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>King of Scots, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kinwelmarsh, F., <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kirchmayer, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Knight of Malta, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Knight of the Burning Bush</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Knowles, Sheridan, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>-346, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kotzebue, A. F. F. von, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <b><a href='#Page_327'>327</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_328'>328</a></b>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kyd, Thomas, his plays, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>-106;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their influence, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-110, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>-115, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on revenge plays and Shakespeare, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>-155, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on later revenge tragedy, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">resemblance to in later plays, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Lady Jane Grey</i>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Lady of Lyons, The</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lamb, Charles, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <b><a href='#Page_343'>343</a></b>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Landor, Walter Savage, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <b><a href='#Page_348'>348</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_349'>349</a></b>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.<br />
+<br />
+La Place, Pierre de, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Laws of Candy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Lear, King</i>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <b><a href='#Page_166'>166</a>-171</b>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>Lee, Harriet, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lee, Nathaniel, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <b><a href='#Page_266'>266</a>-269</b>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Legge, Thomas, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Leir, King</i>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lessing, G. E., <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lewis, Matthew, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <b><a href='#Page_328'>328</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_329'>329</a></b>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <a href='#Page_359'>359</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lillo, George, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <b><a href='#Page_314'>314</a>-318</b>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lindsay, Sir David, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Livy, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Locrine</i>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a> n., <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lope de Vega, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lounsbury, Prof. T., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Lovati, Lovato di, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Love for Love</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Love's Cruelty</i>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Love's Frailties</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Love's Sacrifice</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Love the Cause and Cure of Grief</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Love Triumphant</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lowell, James Russell, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Loyal Brother, The</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Loyal Subject, The</i>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Lucius Junius Brutus</i>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Lucrece</i>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lydgate, John, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lyly, John, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Lyrical Ballads, The</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lyttleton, Lord, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_359'>359</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Macbeth</i>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <b><a href='#Page_171'>171</a>-175</b>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>-186, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Macduff's Cross</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a> n., <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Machiavelli, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Macready, Wm., <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <b><a href='#Page_345'>345</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_346'>346</a></b>, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mahomet</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Maid of Honor, The</i>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <b><a href='#Page_222'>222</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></b>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Maid's Revenge, The</i>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Maid's Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>, <b><a href='#Page_205'>205</a>-210</b>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Malcontent, The</i>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mallet, D., <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Manfred</i>, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Manley, Mrs., <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Marcella</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Marcellus and Hannibal</i>, <b><a href='#Page_14'>14</a>.</b><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mariamne</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Marino Faliero</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Marlowe, Christopher, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a> n., <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to his times, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>-84; his tragedies, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>-99;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his influence on his contemporaries, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-113;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Shakespeare, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-126, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Chapman, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>-146;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Shakespeare's later tragedy, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on later Elizabethan tragedy, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his plays not acted during Restoration, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">survival of his type of villain, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">revival of his influence on the Romanticists, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his importance in the development of the species, <a href='#Page_367'>367</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Marriage Night, The</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Marston, John, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <b><a href='#Page_146'>146</a>-150</b>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mary Stuart</i>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mason, Wm., <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Massacre of Paris, The</i> (by Lee), <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Marlowe), <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Massinger, Philip, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <b><a href='#Page_219'>219</a>-226</b>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>-235, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Matthews, Brander, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Maturin, C. R., <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+May, Thomas, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Measure for Measure</i>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a> n., <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Meleager</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Melib&oelig;us</i>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Merchant of Venice, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Merope</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n., <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>Middleton, Thomas, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <b><a href='#Page_217'>217</a>-219</b>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Miller, James, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milman, H. H., <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, John, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mirandola</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mirror for Magistrates, The</i>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mirza</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Misfortunes of Arthur, The</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <b><a href='#Page_57'>57</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_58'>58</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Miss Sara Sampson</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mitford, Miss, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mithridates</i>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>, <b><a href='#Page_268'>268</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_269'>269</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Monk's Tale, The</i>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Moore, Edward, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+More, Miss Hannah, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.<br />
+<br />
+More, Sir Thomas, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Morel, L., <a href='#Page_300'>300</a> n., <a href='#Page_302'>302</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Morte D'Arthur, The</i>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Morton, T., <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mountaineers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mourning Bride, The</i>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <b><a href='#Page_275'>275</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_276'>276</a></b>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Murderous Michael</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Murphy, Arthur, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Mussato, Albertino, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mutius Sc&aelig;vola</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>My Last Duchess</i>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mysteries of Udolpho</i>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mysterious Husband, The</i>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mysterious Mother, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Nash, Thomas, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a> n., <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Nero</i> (by Lee), <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Nero, Tragedy of</i> (Anon.), <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>New Way to Pay Old Debts, A</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Nice Wanton, The</i>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Nightwalker, The</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Nine Days Wonder, The</i>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+North, Christopher. See Wilson, John.<br />
+<br />
+Norton, Thomas, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Novellas Exemplares</i>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Octavia</i>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>&OElig;dipus</i> (by Dryden and Lee), <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Gager), <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Sophocles), <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Old Fortunatus</i>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>.<br />
+<br />
+O'Neil, Miss, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Orbecche</i>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Orestes</i> (adaptation from <b>Voltaire</b>), <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Dryden), <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Oroonoko</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Orphan, The</i>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <b><a href='#Page_271'>271</a></b>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <b><a href='#Page_282'>282</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_368'>368</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Orphan of China, The</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Orrery, Earl of, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <b><a href='#Page_277'>277</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Osorio</i>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Othello</i>, <b><a href='#Page_162'>162</a>-166</b>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>, <a href='#Page_370'>370</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Otho the Great</i>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Otway, Thomas, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <b><a href='#Page_269'>269</a>-272</b>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Painter's Palace of Pleasure</i>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Palamon and Arcyte</i>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pamela</i>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pammachius</i>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Paris and Vienna</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Patient Griselda</i>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Payne, John Howard, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Peele, George, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <b><a href='#Page_107'>107</a></b> n., <b><a href='#Page_108'>108</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_110'>110</a>-112</b>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pembroke, Countess of, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Percy</i>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>P&egrave;re de Famille, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Perfidus Hetruscus</i>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Perkin Warbeck</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pericles</i> (adaptation by Lillo), <b><a href='#Page_315'>315</a>.</b><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pers&eacute;e et Demetrius</i>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Perseus and Andromeda</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Petrarch, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ph&aelig;dra</i>(by Seneca), <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ph&aelig;dra and Hippolitus</i> (Smith's adaptation of Racine), <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ph&egrave;dre</i>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Philaster</i>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Philips, Ambrose, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Philotas</i>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ph&oelig;niss&aelig;</i>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>Pickering, John, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Picture, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pilgrim, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Pix, Mrs., <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court, Ren&eacute; de, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pizarro</i>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Plautus, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Plays Confuted</i>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Plays on the Passions</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pledge, The</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Plutarch, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Poetics of Aristotle, The</i>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Political Justice</i>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Politician, The</i>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pope, Alexander, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pope Joan, or the Female Prelate</i>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Preston, Thomas, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pride of Life, The</i>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Princess of Cleve, The</i>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Procter, B., <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Progne</i>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Prometheus Unbound</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Promus and Cassandra</i>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <b><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></b> n., <b><a href='#Page_62'>62</a></b> n., <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Prophetess, The</i>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ptolemy</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Puttenham, George, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pye, H. J., <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Queen of Corinth, The</i>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas</i>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Quinault, P., <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Quintus Fabius</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Racine, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_359'>359</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Radcliffe, Mrs., <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Radcliffe, Ralph, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ralph Roister Doister</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rape</i>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ravenscroft, Edward, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rawlins, Thomas, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Red Knight, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rebellion, The</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rehearsal, The</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Remorse</i>, <b><a href='#Page_342'>342</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_343'>343</a></b>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Renegado, The</i>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Revenge</i>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, The</i> (see <i>Bussy D'Ambois</i>), <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Revenge of Hamlet</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Revenger's Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Reynolds, F., <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Richard II</i>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <b><a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-125</b>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">anonymous play on, see <i>Woodstock</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Richard III</i> (by Shakespeare), <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <b><a href='#Page_117'>117</a>-123</b>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Richard III, True Tragedy of</i>, <b><a href='#Page_108'>108</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></b>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Richard Duke of York, True Tragedy of</i>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a> n., <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Richardson, Samuel, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Richardus Tertius</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Richelieu</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <b><a href='#Page_346'>346</a></b>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rienzi</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ring and Book, The</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ristori, Madame, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ritwyse, John, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rival Ladies, The</i>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rival Queens, The</i>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rivals, The</i>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Road to Ruin, The</i>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Robbers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rob Roy</i>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rochester, Earl of, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rollo.</i> See <i>Bloody Brother</i>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Actor, The</i>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Father, The</i>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Revenge, The</i>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <b><a href='#Page_126'>126</a>-134</b>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Romeus and Juliet</i>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rossetti, D. G., <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rowe, Nicholas, <b><a href='#Page_283'>283</a>-289</b>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rowley, William, <b><a href='#Page_218'>218</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></b>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Royal Convert, The</i>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Royal Master, The</i>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Roxana</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>Rymer, T., <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Sackville, Thomas, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Samson Agonistes</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Santayana, George, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sardanapalus</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <b><a href='#Page_351'>351</a></b>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sarpedon</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Schelling, F. W. J. von, <a href='#Page_359'>359</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Schiller, F. von, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <b><a href='#Page_359'>359</a></b>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Scipio, Africanus</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Scornful Lady, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Scott, Sir Walter, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>, <b><a href='#Page_349'>349</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_350'>350</a></b>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Scud&eacute;ry, G. de, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Second Maiden's Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Secret Love</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sejanus</i>, <b><a href='#Page_141'>141</a>-144</b>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Selimus</i>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Semiramis</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Seneca, characteristics of his tragedies, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>-36;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their revival on the continent, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>-38;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in England, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>-46;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">English imitations of, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>-58;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Latin imitations of at the English universities, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>-61;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of on popular plays, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>-69, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>-75;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his models rejected by Marlowe, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>-90;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">adapted by Kyd and others, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-108, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his influence on <i>Richard III</i>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Ben Jonson, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Chapman, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Marston and revenge tragedies, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>-154 <i>passim</i>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on <i>Hamlet</i>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and traceable elsewhere in Shakespeare, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>-185;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in later drama, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Settle, Elkanah, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sheil, R. L., <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, his conception of tragedy, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to Kyd, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">to other predecessors, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>-111;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his early tragedies and histories, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-116;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>King John</i>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Richard III</i>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>-123;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Richard II</i>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-126;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>-133;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations to his contemporaries, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>-147 <i>passim</i>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">to the revenge tragedies, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>-154;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Julius C&aelig;sar</i>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Hamlet</i>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-162;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Othello</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>-166;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Lear</i>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>-175;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> and <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>-179;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">summary of his work in tragedy, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>-195;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his influence on Elizabethan successors, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>-241 <i>passim</i>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Restoration criticisms and alterations of his tragedies, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-252, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>-262, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>-266, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>-279;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his plays in the eighteenth century, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>-294;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rowe's indebtedness to, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thomson's indebtedness, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hill's, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of <i>Othello</i>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his plays in the patent theatres, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his influence on the romanticists, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Wordsworth, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Coleridge, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Lamb, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his influence dominant in nineteenth century tragedy, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>-363 <i>passim</i>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and through the whole course of English tragedy, <a href='#Page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>, <b><a href='#Page_353'>353</a>-355</b>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>-359, <a href='#Page_367'>367</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sheridan, R. B., <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sheridan, Thomas, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>She Stoops to Conquer</i>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Shirley, James, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <b><a href='#Page_229'>229</a>-234</b>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sicily and Naples</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n., <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Siege of Damascus, The</i>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Siege of Rhodes, The</i>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Slave, The</i>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Small, R. A., <a href='#Page_162'>162</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Smith, Edmund, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Soane, G., <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Soliman and Perseda</i>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a> n., <b><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_106'>106</a></b>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Solitary Knight, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Solymannid&aelig;</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>Sophocles, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sophonisba</i> (by Lee), <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Marston), <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Thomson), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Trissino), <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Southerne, Thomas, <b><a href='#Page_273'>273</a>-275</b>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Southey, Robert, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Spanish Friar, The</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Spanish Tragedy, The</i>, <b><a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-105</b>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Spartan Dame, The</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Spenser, Edmund, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Steele, Sir Richard, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Stoll, Elmer, E., <a href='#Page_151'>151</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Stowe, John, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Strafford</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Stranger, The</i>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Suckling, Sir John, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Surrender of Calais, The</i>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Surrey, Earl of, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, A., <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tale of Mystery, The</i>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Talfourd, Sir Thomas N., <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tamburlaine</i>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <b><a href='#Page_87'>87</a>-97</b> <i>passim</i>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tamerlane</i>, <b><a href='#Page_283'>283</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_284'>284</a></b>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tancred and Gismunda</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <b><a href='#Page_55'>55</a>-57</b>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a> n., <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tancr&egrave;de</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Tasso, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tate, Nahum, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Taylor, Sir Henry, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Telemo</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tempest, The</i>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Temptation of Our Lord, The</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tender Husband, The</i>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, Alfred, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Terence, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Terry, Daniel, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Thebias</i>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Theobald, Lewis, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Theodosius</i>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Thomson, James, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <b><a href='#Page_299'>299</a>-302</b>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Three Estates, The</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Three Laws, The</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Thyestes</i> (by Crowne), <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Seneca), <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Timon of Athens</i>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>'Tis Pity She's a Whore</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_228'>228</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Titus Andronicus</i>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <b><a href='#Page_114'>114</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_115'>115</a></b>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Titus and Berenice</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Titus and Gisippus</i>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tobin, John, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tom Jones</i>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tom Thumb</i>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tonumbeius</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tourneur, Cyril, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <b><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_154'>154</a></b>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tragedy a la Mode</i>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tragedies of the Last Age</i>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Traitor, The</i>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Treveth, Nicholas, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Trial, The</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Trissino, G. G., <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Triumph of Honor, The</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Troades</i>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a> n., <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Troublesome Reign of King John, The</i>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <b><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_88'>88</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+Tupper, J. W., <a href='#Page_255'>255</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Twelve Labors of Hercules, The</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Two Foscari, The</i>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Two Lamentable Tragedies, The</i>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Two Noble Kinsmen, The</i>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tyrannic Love</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Udall, Nicholas, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ulysses</i>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ulysses Redux</i>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Unhappy Favorite, The</i>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Unnatural Combat, The</i>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Valentinian</i>, <b><a href='#Page_213'>213</a></b>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Valiant Scot, The</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Venice Preserved</i>, <b><a href='#Page_270'>270</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_271'>271</a></b>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a> n., <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Victor, B., <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Virgil, Polydore, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span><i>Virginius</i>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>, <b><a href='#Page_345'>345</a></b>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Virgin Martyr, The</i>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Virtue Betrayed, or Anne Bullen</i>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Volpone</i>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Voltaire, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <b><a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-297</b>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wade, Thomas, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wallenstein</i> (by Glapthorne), <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(by Schiller), <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Walpole, Horace, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ward, A. W., <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a> n., <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Warning for Fair Women, A</i>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <b><a href='#Page_147'>147</a></b>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wars of Cyrus, The</i>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Watson, Thomas, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wat Tyler</i>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Weavers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Webbe, William, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Webster, John, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <b><a href='#Page_202'>202</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_203'>203</a></b>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>-219, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wells, Charles, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Werner</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <b><a href='#Page_351'>351</a></b>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Werter</i>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>What d'ye Call It</i>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+<i>What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wheel of Fortune, The</i>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whetstone, George, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a> n., <a href='#Page_62'>62</a> n., <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>White Devil, The</i>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whitehead, William, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <b><a href='#Page_307'>307</a></b>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wife's Trial, The</i>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wild Gallant, The</i>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>William Tell</i>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wilmot, Robert, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wilson, John, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Winter's Tale, A</i>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Witch, The</i>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Witch of Edmonton, The</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Woodstock</i>, <b><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></b>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Woman Killed with Kindness, A</i>, <b><a href='#Page_140'>140</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_141'>141</a></b>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Woman's Love</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Women Beware Women</i>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Women Pleased</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> n.<br />
+<br />
+Wordsworth, William, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <b><a href='#Page_341'>341</a></b>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Wounds of Civil War, The</i>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wycherley, William, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Xenophon, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Yorkshire Tragedy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Young, Edward, <b><a href='#Page_298'>298</a></b>, <b><a href='#Page_299'>299</a></b>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Zapolya</i>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Zara</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n., <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Zenobia</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> n., <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Zobeide</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a> n.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
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+</pre>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tragedy
+
+Author: Ashley H. Thorndike
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2012 [EBook #38711]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAGEDY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Types of English Literature
+
+EDITED BY
+
+WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+BY
+
+ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
+
+
+
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
+
+PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
+AUTHOR OF "THE INFLUENCE OF BEAUMONT
+AND FLETCHER ON SHAKSPERE"
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1908 BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
+THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
+
+_Published May 1908_
+
+The Riverside Press
+CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
+PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
+
+Transcriber's Note: Underscores indicate italics and tildes (~) indicate
+bold in this text.
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book attempts to trace the course of English tragedy from its
+beginnings to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to indicate the
+part which it has played in the history both of the theatre and of
+literature. All tragedies of the sixteenth century are noticed, because of
+their historical interest and their close relationship to Shakespeare, but
+after 1600 only representative plays have been considered. The aim of this
+series has been kept in view, and the discussion, whether of individual
+plays or of dramatic conditions, has been determined by their importance in
+the study of a literary type. Tragedy in the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries has attracted very little critical attention, and in those fields
+the book is something of a pioneer. The Elizabethan drama, on the contrary,
+has been the subject of a vast amount of antiquarian, biographical, and
+literary research, without which such a treatment as I have attempted would
+be almost impossible. In order, however, to keep the main purpose in view,
+it has been necessary to omit nearly all notice of the processes of
+research or the debates of criticism, and to give only what seem to me the
+results. To indicate at every point my reliance on my own investigations or
+my indebtedness to the researches of others would, indeed, necessitate
+doubling the size of the book. Its readers will not require an apology for
+its brevity, but I regret that I can offer only this inadequate
+acknowledgment of the great assistance I have received not merely from the
+studies mentioned in the Bibliographical Notes, but also from many others
+that have directly or indirectly contributed to my discussion.
+
+I am indebted to Dr. Ernest Bernbaum, who very kindly read chapters viii
+and ix, and made a number of suggestions. I have also the pleasure of
+expressing my great obligations to Professors Brander Matthews, Jefferson
+B. Fletcher, and William A. Neilson, who have read both the manuscript and
+the proof-sheets and given me the generous benefit of their most helpful
+criticism.
+
+A. H. T.
+
+NEW YORK, March, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I. DEFINITIONS                                     1
+
+CHAPTER II. THE MEDIEVAL AND THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCES     21
+
+CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAGEDY                    48
+
+CHAPTER IV. MARLOWE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES                77
+
+CHAPTER V. SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES            136
+
+CHAPTER VI. SHAKESPEARE                                  181
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE LATER ELIZABETHANS                      196
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE RESTORATION                            243
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                       281
+
+CHAPTER X. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT                         326
+
+CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION                                   366
+
+      INDEX                                              379
+
+
+
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DEFINITIONS
+
+
+There is little difficulty in selecting the plays that should be included
+in a history of English tragedy. Since the middle of the sixteenth century
+there have always been plays commonly received as tragedies, and others so
+closely resembling these that they require consideration in any
+comprehensive study. How far these plays present the common characteristics
+of a type, how far they constitute a clearly defined form of the drama, and
+how far they may be connected from one period to another in a continuous
+development--are questions better answered at the book's end than at its
+beginning. Some questions of the definition of tragedy, however, may well
+be preliminary to a study of its history. The very term "English tragedy"
+involves two precarious abstractions. It separates tragedy from the drama
+of which it is a part, and it separates English tragedies from those of
+other languages to which they are related in character and origin. In
+attempting a definition, we may question the reality of these abstract
+separations by which our later discussions are to be conveniently limited;
+for a definition can be attained only through the distinction of tragedy
+from other forms of the drama, and through a consideration of the varying
+conceptions of tragedy in different periods and nations.
+
+We may begin very empirically with an element common to all tragedies and
+roughly distinguishing them from other forms of drama; noticed, indeed, in
+all theoretical definitions, though its importance is often blurred and it
+receives only scant attention from Aristotle. He refers to the third part
+of the plot as "the tragic incident, a destructive or painful action, such
+as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like." If his meaning
+of "a destructive or painful action" is extended to include mental as well
+as physical suffering, we have a definition of an indispensable element in
+tragedy and a conspicuous distinction from comedy.
+
+This definition has had ample recognition in practice and in popular
+opinion, as in the sixteenth-century idea of a tragedy as a play involving
+deaths, and in the present common conception of tragedy as requiring an
+unhappy ending. These uncritical opinions, however, introduce amendments
+that are not quite corollaries. The happy ending has never been completely
+excluded. Aristotle, while pronouncing in favor of the unhappy ending as
+best suited to producing tragic effect, recognized the possibility and
+popularity of a conclusion that limited punishment to the vicious. In
+modern times the salvation of the virtuous in tragedy has had warm
+defenders, including Racine and Dr. Johnson; and the essentiality of either
+an unhappy ending or of deaths has been generally denied. Evidently either
+is a natural but not inevitable accompaniment of suffering and disaster. A
+tragedy may permit of relief or even recovery for the good, or it may
+minimize the external and physical elements of suffering; but its action
+must be largely unhappy though its end is not, and destructive even if it
+does not lead to deaths.
+
+Our working definition, however, does not attempt to indicate the qualities
+necessary to excellence in tragedy or to particularize in respect to the
+treatment of the action. It offers no distinction, where recent critics
+have been careful to make one, between tragedy and what we to-day call
+melodrama.[1] The relation between the two is similar to that between
+comedy and farce. Melodrama is more sensational, less serious; it attains
+its effects by spectacles, machines, externals, while tragedy deals with
+character and motive; it reaches its conclusions through accidents and
+surprises, while tragedy seeks to show the cause of every effect. But the
+distinction is general and relative rather than specific and absolute. The
+use of witches to foretell actions and characters would of itself be a
+melodramatic device, and so it is in Middleton's "Witch," but not in
+"Macbeth." Congreve's "Mourning Bride" is a melodrama, judged by our
+standards at present, but for many years it was considered one of the great
+tragedies in the language. A stage presentation, in fact, almost
+presupposes external, spectacular, and sensational effects, which must
+vary according to the theatrical conditions and the taste of the day, as
+well as in response to the artistic purpose and treatment. The distinction
+between melodrama and tragedy, in short, is hardly more than between bad
+tragedy and good, or between a lower and a higher type. So far as a
+separation of the two has been made, it has been the result of centuries of
+experience. It cannot readily be fixed by rule or definition; it requires
+historical treatment.
+
+Our definition, again, affords a rough rather than an exact separation from
+comedy. The two species cannot, indeed, be absolutely distinguished. In the
+theatre to-day there are many plays which one hesitates to classify as
+either tragedy or comedy. And there have always been, even in the Greek
+theatre, classes of plays recognized as neither the one nor the other.
+Again, a play presenting various persons and incidents is necessarily
+complex in material and emotional effect, and may mingle suffering and ruin
+with happiness and success, so that whether its main effect is tragic or
+comic may depend on its point of view or its general tone. The divisions of
+tragedy and comedy are neither mutually exclusive, nor are they together
+inclusive of all drama. Theoretically, there is perhaps ground for doubting
+whether other divisions might not be established more essential and more
+comprehensive. Comedy in particular comprises plays differing so widely in
+every respect that almost no common characteristics can be found. Yet
+tragedy and comedy have long been, and still are, accepted as the main
+divisions of the drama. The very names of the other forms, "tragicomedy,"
+"_Schauspiel_" "emotional drama," "social drama," "_drame_," or merely
+"play," by their lack of distinctiveness, testify to the significance of
+the division of dramatic action and effects into the two classes, tragic
+and comic. From merely a theoretical point of view, indeed, we may
+recognize that a dramatic action, through its brevity and its stage
+presentation, if for no other reasons, has a suitability for these effects
+not possessed by other forms of literature. But the importance and
+definition of the two forms, and especially that of tragedy, depend less on
+theory than on historical origins and development.
+
+If we attempt to fortify our working definition so that it may more
+effectively separate tragedy on the one hand from melodrama and on the
+other from comedy and the more or less neutral species, we are driven to
+consider the numerous and shifting conceptions that have marked the
+progress of the classical tradition in modern Europe. Although some
+approach to the tragic may have been manifest from the beginnings of the
+drama in the mimetic ceremonies of primitive culture, our present
+distinction between tragedy and comedy traces back to Athens, where tragedy
+as a form of literature had its first great development and where it
+received its first critical definition. Nothing closely corresponding to
+the two forms, as there developed and defined, is to be found in the dramas
+of China, India, or medieval Europe. Tragedy is an inheritance from Greece
+and Rome, not received by Western Europe until the Renaissance. There was,
+to be sure, much that was tragical in the widespread religious drama of the
+Middle Ages; and there were a number of plays that in content and effect
+might claim a place with later tragedies; but it was not until the revival
+of the classics that the revelation of a highly developed form of drama led
+to the creation of a distinct species called tragedy, in the vernacular
+literatures of Spain, Italy, France, and England.
+
+The classical tradition in the beginning was affected by the mistaken
+theories of medieval encyclopedists and by humanistic misinterpretations of
+the classics. In every nation it came into conflict with the traditions of
+the medieval drama, and underwent great modifications; in England an
+amalgamation of the two traditions resulting in a tragedy widely different
+from either. During four centuries the changing theatrical conditions, the
+changing social conditions, the diversity of national peculiarities, have
+resulted in ideas of tragedy at variance with one another and with the
+classics. Shakespeare's conception of tragedy was very different from
+Aristotle's, and very different from Brunetiere's or Ibsen's. Indeed, the
+conceptions formed by various of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Sidney,
+Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, and Fletcher, so far as we can determine, have
+pronounced differences though they have common resemblances. It would
+require a larger book than the present one to consider adequately the
+differences and agreements merely of critical theory and dogma in modern
+Europe. Yet the literary tradition, in spite of all these changes and
+variations, has remained continuous. Whether fixed in the form of rules, or
+discernible only in the general resemblances of current practices, or
+represented by the great models of Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Racine, it
+has influenced every playwright. He has striven to write more or less in
+accord with some critical theory, in imitation of some author, or in
+conformity to some fashion; or he has written in opposition to theory,
+example, or fashion.
+
+It is the purpose of this book to trace the course of this tradition in the
+English drama, to appraise the inheritance of each age from the preceding
+ages, its borrowings from other national inheritances, and the profit and
+loss due to its own invention or industry. All that may be attempted here
+by way of preliminary definition is a glance at the main European course of
+the classical tradition to see what have been from time to time considered
+the essentials of tragedy and to ask how far there has been any agreement
+in regard to these essentials.
+
+The basis for much of modern theorizing has been Aristotle's tentative yet
+searching analysis of Athenian tragedy. Many of the peculiarities of
+Athenian tragedy--its structure without acts but with a chorus, its
+limitation of three actors on the stage at once, its narrow range of
+mythological subjects--are evidently not essential to securing tragic
+effect. Even the unities, whether as observed in the Greek theatre or as
+defined by French and Italian critics, may, after generations of debate, be
+safely relegated as nonessential. Omitting, then, what no one would now
+insist upon as requisite, we may derive from the "Poetics" something like
+the following:--
+
+Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its
+action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune,
+involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be
+written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression.
+
+Much more than this has been derived from Aristotle by modern theorists,
+but this much of the classical conception has generally survived in modern
+tragedy. If the meaning of "a single and complete action" be stretched a
+little, this definition includes the plays of Shakespeare as well as those
+of Racine, and nearly all tragedies from the Renaissance to the present.
+
+In one important respect, however, this definition falls short of
+describing Greek tragedy, and is still more inadequate for modern.
+Aristotle emphasized the action above the characterization, and devoted
+much attention to the requirements of the plot. He did not, moreover,
+recognize the importance of the element of conflict, whether between man
+and circumstance, or between men, or within the mind of man. The Greek
+tragedies themselves had not failed to exhibit such conflicts; the medieval
+drama, notably in the moralities, emphasized moral conflict; and
+Renaissance tragedy, wherever it showed any independence, particularly in
+England and Shakespeare, took for its theme the conflict of human will with
+other forces. The importance of this modification of the Aristotelian view
+received only slow critical recognition. But it was everywhere exemplified
+in practice, in French classical drama as well as in Shakespeare, in plays
+imitating the Greeks as well as in plays revolting from their models. After
+a time this modification of the classical tradition came to have a distinct
+place in literary theory. Hegel gave it philosophical elaboration, and, in
+the romantic movement, when dramatists in different languages turned to
+Shakespeare for a model, they naturally assumed what may be called the
+Shakespearean definition. This important amendment to the tragic tradition
+may be briefly stated:--
+
+The action of a tragedy should represent a conflict of wills, or of will
+with circumstance, or will with itself, and should therefore be based on
+the characters of the persons involved. A typical tragedy is concerned with
+a great personality engaged in a struggle that ends disastrously.
+
+In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern
+conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of
+theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive.
+This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the
+definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in
+modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance
+given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated
+emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet
+"pity and fear" still serve as well as any other terms to describe the
+emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however,
+hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror,
+despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has
+appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The
+reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense
+of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as
+the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern
+tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though
+double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the
+Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a
+return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare
+instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the
+action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes
+have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been
+confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and
+pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of
+tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in
+England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the
+sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men
+and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary
+tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been
+reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but
+here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the
+last century, to prose.
+
+On examination, then, the particulars of the classical tradition have shown
+extraordinary powers of survival, but not one of them has gone without
+protest and violation. The thousands of tragedies written during four
+centuries have all had marked resemblances, and all important developments
+have preserved relationships to the classical species; yet it is impossible
+to insist on any one quality of that species as essential, without
+encountering examples of great tragedies that lack it. The close
+relationships among these many plays forbid the separation of a few,
+distinguished by certain qualities, to be named as tragedies, and the rest
+as something else; and the great variations forbid the confident selection
+of any qualities as essential in the future development of tragedy. The
+modern amendments, though represented by nearly universal practice, have
+not saved the classical tradition, and are themselves coming under
+question. The plays of Ibsen, which seem to have instituted the most
+important development in tragedy for two centuries, return to something of
+the simplicity of action required by Aristotle, and present the struggle of
+individual wills as did Shakespeare, but are in prose and deal with
+contemporary bourgeois life,--a combination of relationships to the
+tradition wholly new. While idealization in some degree must be exercised
+in tragedy as in all forms of literature, it is impossible, in the light of
+realistic plays, to maintain that tragic effects can be secured only
+through the stories of exceptional persons. Tragic greatness, in the sense
+demanded by the theorists, is, indeed, scarcely more manifest in the
+persons of "Romeo and Juliet" than in those of "Hedda Gabler." While
+conflict of some kind is essential to a dramatic action, yet it may
+evidently be minimized without destroying the artistic impressiveness of
+suffering and disaster. Even the requirement that tragedy deal with the
+characters of individual men is being questioned. It is conceivable that
+plays in the future may, like Hauptmann's "The Weavers," turn from the
+emotions of the individual to those of a class, or may find their
+destructive and painful actions in the oppression, disaster, or mere unrest
+of the mass.
+
+Any precise and compact definition is sure to lack in comprehensiveness and
+veracity. It cannot sum up the facts of the past and present, much less set
+rules for the future. We seem forced to reject the possibility of any exact
+limitations for the dramatic species, to include as tragedies all plays
+presenting painful or destructive actions, to accept the leading elements
+of a literary tradition derived from the Greeks as indicating the common
+bonds between such plays in the past, but to admit that this tradition,
+while still powerful, is variable, uncertain, and unauthoritative.
+
+But besides this literary tradition there has been a hardly less powerful
+theatrical tradition. Tragedy has always owed a double allegiance, to
+literature and to the theatre. A tragedy is a play, not merely a dialogue
+in poetry or prose, but a play to be interpreted by actors before an
+audience in a theatre. To these three factors it has had first of all to
+suit itself. And these factors have constituted conditions and standards,
+different and not less variable and transient than those of the literary
+tradition. The plays of AEschylus, of Shakespeare, of Calderon, and of
+Racine, for example, were planned for widely different conditions, and for
+conditions also widely different from those now present in the theatres.
+Excepting Shakespeare's, no English tragedies of the sixteenth,
+seventeenth, eighteenth, or, one might almost say, nineteenth century, are
+acted in our theatres to-day. The effect of the acted drama is consequently
+not only different from that of the drama when read, it is also subject to
+other and variable artistic standards. It aims at some effects not at all
+literary and at some likely to be limited by its own day and theatre. A
+history of tragedy must take into account the differences of the theatre of
+one nation from that of another, and of one period from another period. It
+must remember that to those temporary conditions each dramatist necessarily
+conformed and that by them his achievement was directed. It may find some
+hostile to the best dramatic art, tending to promote melodramatic rather
+than tragic effects. It may find others that are divorced from any
+permanent meaning for the drama or literature. But the fact that such
+conditions are temporary should not breed contempt, for much great
+literature has been aimed not at the world or posterity but at the audience
+of the day. Out of temporary and varying theatrical conditions have arisen
+the permanent criteria for dramatic excellence.
+
+In fact, the theatre has been a conservative influence, tending to oppose
+innovation and to maintain the integrity of the form of tragedy. The
+essentials of its literary form, its length conditioned by the time of the
+performance, the division into acts, scenes, or parts, and the growing
+importance of dialogue, have all been dependent on theatrical conditions.
+The characteristic qualities of national dramas have been in some measure
+the products of the national theatres, and only through the growing
+similarity of stage conditions are we likely to attain agreement in regard
+to the forms of drama. While there have been a multitude of tragedies that
+have never been acted, and some that have never been intended for acting,
+the attempt to write tragedy for the closet rather than for the stage has
+resulted either in adopting the supposed conditions of the Greek or some
+other foreign theatre, or in breaking away from the strict limits defined
+by the stage and writing lyrical medleys or dramatic monologues or
+imaginary conversations. As soon as tragedy has left the theatre, it has
+reverted to old forms or developed new and strange hybrids. Milton's
+"Samson Agonistes" and Swinburne's "Bothwell" are tragedies, if you will,
+but they have no place in the development of a national drama. Shelley's
+"Prometheus Unbound," Browning's "The Ring and the Book," and Landor's
+"Marcellus and Hannibal" are all dramatic, but they cannot be included in
+any definition of the species of tragedy. Object as tragedy rightly may at
+times to the limitations and trivialities of the theatre, it cannot safely
+leave its precincts without losing its own identity.
+
+In the past nearly all tragedies of any effect on the drama's development
+have not only been planned for the stage but have succeeded when acted.
+This seems likely to be the case in the future. For the reader of a play is
+confronted by difficulties not found in other fiction; and, in general,
+only a play suited to presentation on the stage is likely to secure for a
+reader the visualization, the impersonations, the illusion of actuality,
+similar to those experienced in the theatre. The fact that the drama
+requires the services of theatre and actors as well as author need not
+lessen our recognition of the responsibility and opportunities of the one
+or the other. The stage affords the first test of a play's emotional
+appeal, and perhaps the best test of its dramatic power. The consummation
+of tragedy has been attained only when the dramatist has availed himself of
+all the aids that the theatre has offered.
+
+Thus far our attempt at definition has had to do with what tragedy is or
+has been or is likely to be, rather than with what it ought to be. The more
+difficult question has not been shunned by criticism, and perhaps even our
+brief discussion ought not to omit a consideration of tragedy's function
+and opportunities. These certainly extend beyond the theatre and include
+whatever is possible for literature. As a form of literature, tragedy
+fulfills in general the same functions as other forms, especially as
+fiction, of which it is one division. It has similar opportunities and its
+effects are similar in kind. It must be judged by the same standards, by
+the nature and power of its emotional effect, and by the lasting meaning of
+its portrayal of life; and the census of the centuries will be necessary to
+establish its greatness.
+
+Special qualities have, however, been assumed for the emotional effect of
+tragedy altogether apart from its peculiarities as drama or fiction. A
+peculiar function, a special effect, differing from other forms of
+literature, have been ascribed to it. Aristotle declared its effect to be
+the purging of the emotions, a somewhat obscure expression, surely
+incorrect if taken in the literal sense that Aristotle seems to have
+intended, but variously interpreted as referring to moral or aesthetic
+reactions. Modern theories have too often regarded tragedy as a sort of
+exposition of the moral law, illustrating the ways of providence. To-day we
+require of tragedy a probing into human motive, an especial devotion to the
+study of character under great emotional stress. But has it a special
+function? Tragedy deals with pain, yet seeks to give us pleasure:--this
+crux has been greatly emphasized by the false antithesis between pain and
+pleasure. As a matter of fact, though our knowledge of the aesthetic
+emotions is scanty, a description of the effect of tragedy is hardly more
+obscure than that of any other form of literature or of any other of the
+fine arts. In life we are enormously interested in grief and suffering and
+disaster, as we are also in joy, pleasure, and success. Our newspapers
+abound in narratives of both sorts, and so do our novels. We are stirred by
+the painful emotions of our fellows as readily as by their pleasurable
+ones. The tragic plays a large part in many forms of literature and in
+sculpture, music, and painting. And tragedy, dedicated to painful actions,
+also interests, fascinates, absorbs us. It is not diverting, amusing; it is
+not for daily food or recreation, but no less it ministers to an active
+normal human interest.
+
+Does it carry an antidote to offset its demand upon our sympathies? Is
+there a katharsis that somehow transforms our pity and fear into relief and
+pleasure? There is something of the sort in the mere exercise of violent
+emotion, which in a measure carries its own relief and cure. There is
+something also of egotistical satisfaction, of self-congratulation that
+comes with the exercise of sympathy, a certain exaltation that virtue has
+gone out of us. There is something again of aesthetic delight in the
+artistic mastery which we feel in any great work of art. The harmony of the
+argument, the splendor of the verse, the grandeur of conception and
+expression may counterbalance the painfulness of the story. Yet more,
+tragedy may bring the inspiration of greatness and endurance, of purity and
+unselfishness of spirit. Its idealization of character, its revelation of
+beauty and power even in distress and downfall, may bring a reassurance
+that turns pity to exhilaration. In drama as in life there may come in
+moments of trial and ruin the visions of the eternities to console and
+exalt us.
+
+But is it true that these elements of relief are always felt, or are always
+triumphant over our depression and dismay? May not the impressions of pain
+and destruction be unrelieved and overwhelming? What relief or exaltation
+is there in the first impression from "Oedipus," "Lear," or "Ghosts"? We
+are filled with confusion, dismay, and pity. We cannot separate ourselves
+from the misery. We feel the intolerable burden of the world's woe. Our
+sympathies struggle beneath it, vainly, despairingly. How far such emotions
+have any potency for actual accomplishment in deed may be doubtful to the
+psychologists; but surely our recognition of tragedy as one of the greatest
+imaginative achievements needs no other warrant than our faith that virtue
+lies in human sympathy, in the only atonement that we can offer, the
+vicarious response of our emotions to share in suffering and defeat.
+
+From the nature of its subjects, tragedy may claim a certain preeminence in
+literature. If it be not truer, as is sometimes asserted, than comedy or
+other fiction, it has the opportunity to be more intense, more profound,
+more permeating in its emotional effect. As of all forms of literature, we
+ask for truth to life in incident, character, and word; of tragedy we ask
+for truth in regard to those things that affect us most deeply,--pain,
+disaster, failure, death. Like other forms, it may stimulate and excite,
+give pleasure and profit, convey new ideas and recall old, arouse questions
+of life and philosophy, excite multitudinous emotions; more exclusively
+than any other, it brings home to us the images of our own sorrows, and
+chastens the spirit through the outpouring of our sympathies, even our
+horror and despair, for the misfortunes of our fellows.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+The student of the theory of tragedy may extend his reading through most
+books dealing at all with the theatre or drama, works of literary history
+and criticism, treatments of aesthetics in psychology and philosophy, as
+well as the tragedies themselves. Only the briefest direction for such
+reading can be given here. Among recent works closely connected with the
+matter of the chapter, are: W. L. Courtney, _The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient
+and Modern Drama_ (1900); Lewis Campbell, _Tragic Drama in AEschylus,
+Sophocles, and Shakespeare_ (1904); Ferdinand Brunetiere, _L'evolution
+litteraire de la tragedie_ (1903) (in vol. 7 of _Etudes critiques_); and
+_Melodrame ou Tragedie_ (_Varietes Litteraires_ 1904); Elizabeth
+Woodbridge, _The Drama, its Law and its Technique_ (1898), with
+bibliography. Several recent books on Shakespeare are concerned with
+dramatic theory: A. C. Bradley, _Shakespearean Tragedy_ (1905); T. R.
+Lounsbury, _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ (1901); G. P. Baker, _The
+Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_ (1907). A book now out of date
+and never sound, but of wide influence still, is Freytag's _Technik des
+Dramas_ (1881), translated as _The Technique of the Drama_, Chicago (3d ed.
+1900). For a study of literary criticism in reference to dramatic theory,
+Saintsbury's _History of Criticism_, 3 vols. (1900-04), furnishes a
+compendious directory and discussion. _An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism_, by C. M. Gayley and F. N. Scott (1899),
+furnishes full bibliographical references with comment and direction. Of
+great value in their special fields are Butcher's edition of Aristotle's
+_Poetics_ (3d ed. 1902); W. Cloetta's _Beitrage zur Litteraturgeschichte
+des Mittelalters und der Renaissance_, Halle (1890), vol. i; and J. E.
+Spingarn's _Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_ (1899). English critical
+discussions of tragedy will be noted in the chapters on the various
+historical periods. For tragedy in relation to aesthetic theory, full
+references are given in Gayley and Scott; and Volkelt's _AEsthetik des
+Tragischen_, Munich (2d ed. 1906), supplies a valuable and comprehensive
+discussion and a directory and criticism of nearly all aesthetic theories
+since Kant. Especial mention should be made of A. W. Schlegel's
+_Vorlesungen ueber dramatische Kunst und Litteratur_ (1817), translated into
+English in the Bohn edition; and to Hegel's _Vorlesungen ueber die
+AEsthetik_, which closes with a discussion of dramatic poetry that has been
+suggestive of much later theorizing.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For a discussion of an earlier meaning of the term "melodrama" and the
+origin of its present use, see chap. x.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MEDIEVAL AND THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCES
+
+
+English tragedy makes its appearance at the very beginning of Elizabeth's
+reign. In the Middle Ages nearly all knowledge of the drama of the Greeks
+and Romans was lost, and the medieval drama developed without aid from
+classical precedents or models. It resulted in various forms, of which the
+miracles and the moralities were the most important, but it produced
+nothing either in form or matter closely resembling classical tragedy or
+comedy, and manifested no evolution toward corresponding divisions of the
+drama. The Renaissance gave to the world the plays of Seneca, Plautus, and
+the Athenian dramatists, and, after a time, some knowledge of the classical
+theatre and dramatic art; then, through the imitation of these models and
+also through the innovations and experiments which they suggested, the
+influence of humanism came in conflict with that of medievalism throughout
+Europe, in the drama as in other fields of literature. In England this
+conflict was still active at the middle of the sixteenth century. Miracle
+plays were still performed after long established fashion, and moralities
+continued the most important and numerous species of drama; but in Latin
+imitations of the classical drama, in the theatrical activity of the
+schools and universities, and in the various developments of moralities,
+interludes, school-plays, and pageants, there were signs of a breaking away
+from old courses and of the adoption of new models, of the emergence of
+English comedy and tragedy as definite dramatic forms. Tragedy in England
+as elsewhere developed later and more slowly than comedy, but two years
+after Elizabeth's accession the first English tragedy that has been
+preserved was performed, and "Gorboduc" thus becomes the starting-point for
+a history of English tragedy.
+
+Modern tragedy, born in the Renaissance, the product of the germinating
+conflict of medieval and humanistic ideas and models, has never altogether
+lost the marks of its heritage from both lines of ancestry. Elizabethan
+tragedy, in particular, reveals in every lineament, in its scenic
+presentation, its methods of acting, its themes, structure, characters,
+style, theory, and artistic impulses, the influences both of the long
+centuries of medieval drama and also of the inspiration of the classics and
+the freer opportunity for individual effort which resulted from humanism.
+At the beginning we must attempt to separate and define these dominant
+influences.
+
+The contribution from the Middle Ages came largely from the religious
+drama. The folk games and plays and the performances of entertainers of
+various sorts contributed to the development of the drama principally on
+the side of comedy, and only incidentally to tragedy. Nor need the early
+centuries of the religious drama detain us. Its origin in the church
+service, its early liturgical forms, its growth and service in the hands of
+the church, and its gradual secularization are of importance for us only as
+leading to its culmination in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; in
+England notably in the great cycles of vernacular plays performed by the
+guilds. It should be remembered, however, that the miracle plays never felt
+the least influence from the drama of the Greeks and Romans. Knowledge of
+the classic drama was long confined mainly to the plays of Terence, and
+suggested even to the most learned no idea of relationship to the familiar
+miracle plays; and, on the other hand, the medieval stage gave no clue to a
+conception of the classical theatre. As late as Erasmus the curious notion
+survived that the classic plays were read by the author or a "recitator"
+from a pulpit above, while below the actors illustrated his lines by
+pantomime. Almost to the middle of the fifteenth century the miracle plays
+comprised all that was known of stage presentation in connection with
+serious drama. They were still performed through the sixteenth century; the
+boy Shakespeare may have been a spectator at a performance by the guilds;
+his father and grandfather and remoter forebears had seen them or perchance
+taken part in them. It was this abundant dramatic practice and ancient
+dramatic tradition that gave to Elizabethan England its fondness for
+play-acting, its recourse to the theatre for both amusement and
+edification, and the acceptance of the drama as an important factor in its
+daily life.
+
+A glance at some of the most notable differences of the miracles from
+classical plays reveals traits that remained potent in later drama. The
+miracles took their material from the Bible or from some saint's life, and
+their purpose was to make this material significant and impressive. They
+were, in fact, essentially translations of prose narratives into dramatic
+dialogue. Renaissance drama sought different material, but it found
+classical authority for basing tragedies on history, and so gave support to
+the medieval method of translation. In the Elizabethan period, dramatists
+rarely attempted the invention of their plots, but adopted and adhered to
+narrative sources. While they never suffered from the narrow
+conventionality imposed upon the authors of the miracles by the authority
+of the holy writ, yet something of the medieval subjection to sources was
+long manifest both in form and content. It is necessary to view the dramas
+of Shakespeare and all his predecessors as translations into dramatic form
+of stories already told in verse or prose.
+
+Because of their close adherence to sources and their distinctly expository
+purpose, the medieval dramatists made little or no distinction between what
+was suited for the stage and what was not. Their duty was primarily to
+present the narrative; and, though individual initiative might add
+something interesting or amusing, nothing in the Bible seemed unsuitable to
+presentation on the stage, and nothing that would aid its meaning seemed
+unsuitable for a drama. There was no thought of restricting a play to the
+presentation of one crisis or a single action, and there was consequently
+no possibility of an approach to anything like the structure of classical
+tragedy. The dramatist might take advantage of the dramatic value of a
+given situation like the sacrifice of Isaac, or he might make a series of
+plays lead up to the great events of the redemption, but he was blind to
+any opportunity to abstract from the narrative the events that dealt with
+an emotional crisis and to focus them upon that as the centre of a dramatic
+structure. There was no notion whatever of the difference between a
+narrative fable and a dramatic fable. Dramatic unity and values in a
+miracle play, on the tragic side at least, were usually the direct results
+of the narrative; unity on a larger scale in the cycle was the unity of
+history or of exposition, not of the drama. Such was the form which the
+Elizabethan drama inherited, and to the end the form of Elizabethan tragedy
+continued a development from medieval tradition and practice, not only in
+its failure to adopt the unities, the chorus, and other peculiarities of
+classical structure, but, more essentially, in its continued inability to
+restrict the story provided by a narrative source to the limits of a
+dramatic fable. Its final attainment of an organic structure, though
+promoted in part by the regularizing influence of classical theory and
+example, was in the main conditioned by the absence of dramaturgical
+restrictions, permitting an epic variety of events, the lack of which
+Aristotle had lamented in Greek tragedy, and by the consequent opportunity
+for a free and characteristic development.
+
+From the medieval drama the Elizabethans inherited not only dramatic form,
+but an entire method of stage presentation different from the classical.
+The typical medieval stage, whether in the form of the procession of
+pageants or the inclosed place with the stations for the various actors,
+had, indeed, given way to something much more like the modern platform,
+even before the production of "Gorboduc"; but in most particulars, in the
+importance placed upon costume, the historical anachronisms, the crudity
+but frequency of spectacle, and especially in the entire liberty as to what
+should be presented, medieval ideas still prevailed. In the miracle plays,
+heaven, hell, God, the devil, Noah's flood, the fall of Lucifer, and the
+Maries at the cross were all acted. The Elizabethan theatre showed scarcely
+less temerity.
+
+Another far-reaching inheritance from the miracle plays was derived from
+their treatment of tragic themes and situations and from their pervading
+seriousness of purpose. Their purpose was ethical and religious
+edification; their theme the tragedy of sin; their situations were derived
+from the stories of Cain, Lucifer, Judas, John the Baptist, the Slaughter
+of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion. If no formal tragedy resulted, and
+if in inculcating the triumph of righteousness the stories of the worthies
+and the martyrdoms of the saints took rather the cast of tragicomedy, it
+was nevertheless of great significance for later tragedy that, generations
+before Seneca became known with his bloody stories and sententious
+philosophy, the drama had been the vehicle for ethical instruction and for
+the presentation of the most terrible and pitiful events. The miracle plays
+had long familiarized men with tragic action, tragic conceptions in the
+drama, and tragic power in the treatment of situation.
+
+The tragic was often mingled with the comic. The dramatists mixed
+edification with amusement. The restraints of the sacred narrative were
+thrown aside for a moment, and in Herod, or Noah's wife, or the shepherds
+awaiting the announcement of the birth of the Messiah, opportunities were
+taken for the introduction of realistic portraiture of contemporary life.
+Horse-play and buffoonery or racy comedy often contrasted incongruously
+with events of momentous importance. This mixture of the comic and tragic
+survived in the popular drama despite the opposition of the humanists. It
+was indeed characteristic of medieval and Elizabethan manners and taste,
+and marks another important departure from classical precedent. We to-day
+are perhaps as near to the Athenians as to the Elizabethans in this
+respect. At all events, for the appreciation of Elizabethan tragedy, we
+sometimes need to reassert a childish and uncultivated disregard for the
+rapid changes of emotional tone, a liking for tears and laughter close
+together; or, perhaps there is ground for saying, we need to recognize the
+validity of the medieval taste for a comic contrast and relief in tragedy,
+and to accept in art the incongruities and grotesqueness of actual life.
+
+To the moralities, the second important species of drama in the later
+Middle Ages, the debt of English tragedy is more explicit than to the
+miracles, but not more essential. It is not more essential, because the
+moralities were in a way the successors and the substitutes for the
+miracles and contributed largely to the same effects. They were devoted to
+a serious purpose and presented tragic situations with a free admixture of
+comedy, and they continued many of the older traditions of stage
+performance and undramatic form. They differed from the miracles chiefly in
+that, like so much of medieval literature, they offered not a direct but a
+symbolic presentation of life. Instead of the Bible narrative, they
+presented the strife of vices and virtues; instead of real persons,
+personified abstractions. This change from individual characters to
+abstract qualities has usually been regarded as a retrogression by modern
+students, who deem the study of the motives of individual men and women as
+essential to the drama. But we have lately been reminded that on the stage
+it makes little difference whether an actor is called William or Everyman;
+and the attempt at the symbolization of life offered an opportunity for
+freedom of invention and freshness of emotional effect that in the miracles
+had been smothered by the stereotyped repetition of the Bible narrative.
+The temptation and suffering of the good, the temporary triumph of the
+evil, and the punishment that overtakes even the mighty were themes which
+the miracle had confused with many others. The morality gave them dramatic
+isolation and emphasis.
+
+Moreover, in substituting for a translation of the Bible narrative the
+symbolization of life as a conflict between folly and wisdom, or the vices
+and virtues, or the body and the soul, the moralities gave importance to
+one of the most essential elements in tragedy, that of moral strife. The
+world is a battlefield, the soul is beleaguered, the play is a conflict;
+and with this element of conflict there arises the opportunity for dramatic
+structure. If the story is of strife, there is likely to be a moment when
+the victory hangs in the balance; a reversal of fortune is implied; there
+is a chance for a rise and fall, a definite beginning, middle, and end. The
+moral conflict, moreover, encourages a study of human motive, of cause and
+effect in human action. In some of these plays, as "The Pride of Life,"
+"Everyman," "The Nice Wanton," the consequences of evil are clearly traced,
+and the action is representative not only of the conflict of good and evil
+in the universe, but of the battle of will in the individual. Evidently
+such plays are near relations of tragedy. They at least made plain to their
+successors the importance of the conflict of good and evil as a dramatic
+theme. Their text, the wages of sin are death, has continued to be an
+essential part of the conception of tragedy.
+
+The moralities, however, on the whole, made little advance, either in
+escape from conventionality, or in creation of structure, or in dramatic
+expression of the conflicts of will. They clung in the main to the dominant
+and already conventionalized allegory of the Middle Ages, the presentation
+of life as a conflict of body and soul, although they made interesting
+excursions into the fields of pedagogy and religious controversy. This
+allegory they treated with intense didacticism, sacrificing all dramatic
+interest to enforce the lesson, though in their later days the sermons were
+very generously mixed with farce. Their importance and explicit
+contribution to English tragedy arose from their historical position just
+at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
+They then served as a transition species, conforming, by a reduction in
+length and in the number of actors, to the conditions of performance which
+marked the change from the medieval stage to the Elizabethan theatre;
+amalgamating under humanistic influence now with this type of play, now
+with that; and imposing for a time their distinctive form and methods on
+the emerging types of comedy and tragedy. Some of the earliest tragedies,
+as we shall see, were direct developments from the moralities, and the
+influence of the peculiarities of the morality was for a while definite and
+considerable. But it soon disappeared under the demands of a new theatre
+and the innovations of a new art.
+
+The inheritance of tragedy from the Middle Ages includes an important
+legacy from literature entirely apart from the drama. In the separation of
+the medieval world from the classic, the terms tragedy and comedy ceased to
+be connected with scenic presentation, and were extended to cover all forms
+of narrative, whether in dialogue or not. The distinction between the two,
+though varying somewhat in the different lexicographers and
+encyclopedists, gradually arrived at an agreement which continued to affect
+ideas throughout the Renaissance. There was some insistence on the
+restrictions that tragedy dealt with history, and comedy with fiction;
+tragedy with exiles, murders, important and horrible deeds, and comedy with
+more domestic themes or with love and seduction. There was more general
+agreement that tragedy dealt with persons of rank and importance, kings or
+great leaders, and comedy with persons of low or middle rank, and that
+tragedy required a more elevated and ornamented style than comedy. The most
+important difference, however, was held to lie in the distinction that
+comedy begins unhappily and proceeds to a happy conclusion, while tragedy
+begins prosperously and ends miserably and terribly. Thus Dante's poem was
+a Divine Comedy, and Chaucer in the Monk's Prologue summed up the accepted
+opinion of the scholarship of his day.
+
+    "Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
+    As olde bokes maken us memorie,
+    Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
+    And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
+    Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly."
+
+These criteria for tragedy were fixed in the consciousness of the sixteenth
+century; and, though gradually correlated and amalgamated with criticism
+based on the newly found "Poetics," they continued to influence the theory
+and practice of the drama. Fitting these definitions and greatly increasing
+their importance and vogue, collections of tragedies attained wide
+popularity during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
+Boccaccio's "De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum," Chaucer's "Monk's
+Tale," and Lydgate's "Falls of Princes" are examples, and, far the most
+influential on English tragedy, "The Mirror for Magistrates." This
+collection, first printed in 1559 and later frequently re-edited and
+enlarged, suggested many themes for the historical drama. Elizabethan
+playwrights seeking for tragic stories turned naturally to this most famous
+collection of "tragedies" in the medieval sense. Consequently, the very
+idea of tragedy continued to carry the connotation of a sudden reversal of
+fortune, the fall of princes. Tragedy, indeed, has always remained very
+largely devoted to themes "de casibus illustrium virorum et feminarum."
+
+Turning now from the influence of medievalism to that of humanism, we may
+remember that in the drama even more than elsewhere humanism denotes a
+revolution in the spirit of the age, an emancipation of the individual mind
+from the fetters that had bound intellect and imagination through the
+Middle Ages. But we must deal first with one of the factors in
+accomplishing this emancipation, the reawakened knowledge of classical
+literature. There was some slight acquaintance with the Attic drama from
+the time that Greek was first taught at Oxford; the doughty Roger Ascham
+learned from his master Sir John Cheke to prefer Euripides to Seneca; and
+at the time when the study of Sophocles and Euripides was occupying the
+Italian dramatists, there must have been some similar response in England.
+Specific instances of this, however, are few and uncertain. The Greek
+dramatists seem to have exercised no appreciable direct influence on
+English tragedy of the sixteenth century; nor can their influence at any
+time during the seventeenth be said to have been considerable. For England,
+even more exclusively than for the Continent, the classical influence on
+the origin and early development of tragedy was confined to the ten plays
+which Renaissance scholarship attributed to the philosopher Seneca.
+
+Seneca's plays, probably not intended for stage presentation, were literary
+exercises following the models of Greek tragedy and more especially of
+Euripides. By the humanist, after he had acquired some slight knowledge of
+the classical theatre, they were naturally accepted as plays actually
+performed, and their artificial and elaborate diction, which is their most
+conscious departure from Attic standards, was eagerly appraised as a merit.
+Their themes, with the exception of that of the pseudo-Senecan "Octavia,"
+are borrowed from Greek mythology, with a strong preference for the most
+sensational and bloody stories of adultery, incest, the murder of parents
+by their children or of children by their parents. Whatever the revolting
+and bloody details, crime and its retribution make up the burden of each
+story. The plays present only the last phase of an action, and consequently
+open with lengthy exposition of preceding events. Much happens behind the
+scenes, little on the stage; there are many narrative and lyrical scenes,
+comparatively few dramatic. In comparison with the Athenian tragedies, they
+seem like prolonged rhetorical discussions of the familiar legends. Their
+structure involves a division into five acts, which had probably been
+earlier adopted in Latin tragedy and is noted in the "Ars Poetica," and the
+exclusion of the chorus from any participation in the action. It appears
+usually after each of the first four acts and indulges in philosophical
+reflections, hymns in praise of some deity, or lamentations. In each play a
+chief person or hero can be distinguished in conflict with one or more
+chief opponents; and each of the leading persons is accompanied by an
+adviser or confidant, usually a faithful friend for a hero and a nurse for
+the heroine. In addition to mortals, supernatural visitants, furies, gods,
+and especially ghosts, have a prominence that stirred Elizabethans to
+imitation. Though the presentation of character is not humanly vital, the
+long speeches and soliloquies display an elaborate analysis of moods of
+passion, with an absence of Athenian religion, a pagan cosmopolitanism, and
+an almost modern introspection. The style and philosophy were the chief
+recommendation of the plays to the Renaissance taste. Artificial, with
+constant use of antithesis, stichomythia, and hyperbole, oratorical,
+sonorous, bombastic, and thickly sprinkled with aphorisms and sentiments,
+the style seemed to the humanists to reach the height of tragic elevation
+and philosophic sententiousness.
+
+The reasons for the almost exclusive adoption of Seneca as a model seem to
+have been not only the comparative ignorance of Greek, but also the
+preference of Renaissance taste for the qualities just enumerated.
+Moreover, these lifeless and undramatic mixtures of rhetorical verbiage,
+melodramatic situations, and endless declamations had the advantage of
+being easy to imitate. In their encouragement to imitation and their
+absorption of interest away from the models of Greek tragedy, there was a
+danger of humanistic endeavor resulting in mere copying, a danger not
+altogether escaped in Italy and France, but happily averted in England.
+
+When, on the other hand, the characteristics of these unpromising models
+are considered in comparison with the conventionality of the miracles and
+moralities, they clearly offered much provocative of literary endeavor and
+the development of the _genre_ of tragedy. Through them secular stories,
+real persons, and dramatic plots took the place of the allegories and the
+abstractions. While they encouraged the selection of such stories as
+resembled the sensational myths favored by Seneca, they opened the door to
+history, romance, and the whole world of classical fable. Though their
+particular structure proved in the end impossible on the English stage,
+they enforced the division into acts already familiarized in comedy, and
+suggested the possibility of a dramatic fable in distinction from the
+miracles' adherence to a narrative one. Again, their presentation of
+character brought new persons, new motives, and new methods, calling
+attention to drama not as an exposition of events or as an allegory of
+life, but as a field for the study of human emotion. Their brilliant if
+bombastic rhetoric aroused enthusiasm for the drama as literature and
+poetry; and their reflective and aphoristic style encouraged an effort to
+elevate tragedy above its too familiar converse with comedy into the realm
+of austere philosophy. These influences, however, were general. Every
+particular of Seneca's plays had its sixteenth century imitators.
+
+The first signs of an intelligent interest in these plays appeared almost
+simultaneously at the very beginning of the fourteenth century in the
+commentary of the English Dominican, Nicholas Treveth, and in the study of
+the circle gathered about Lovato di Lovati at Padua. One of this school,
+Albertino Mussato, about 1314, wrote his "Eccerinis" on the fate of the
+Paduan tyrant, Ezzelino, of the preceding century. This first of the Latin
+tragedies of modern times aroused the admiration of scholars, and was
+followed by many other neo-Latin imitations of Seneca. These, while keeping
+to the Senecan form, often went beyond the stories of classical mythology
+and chose their subjects from the Bible or from ancient or modern history.
+Meanwhile neo-Latin comedy had had a beginning and was largely stimulated
+by the discovery, in 1427, of twelve hitherto unknown comedies of Plautus.
+All these neo-Latin plays were read and not acted; and the actual acting,
+either of the classical plays or their humanistic imitations, was not
+established until the close of the fifteenth century.
+
+The knowledge of the classical drama spread after a time across the Alps,
+and Terentian comedy in particular exercised a wide influence upon the
+drama. Of especial interest in relation to tragedy is the new school of
+neo-Latin comedy which arose about 1530 in Holland and spread over Germany
+and into France. It applied Terentian style and structure to many of the
+stories in the Old Testament and to the parable of the prodigal son. To its
+original purpose of substituting for Terentian immorality themes edifying
+for youth, it soon added a Protestant tone, and in Kirchmayer's
+"Pammachius" (1538) entered the field of violent religious controversy. As
+the number of these plays rapidly increased, there resulted a
+secularization of treatment and the admission of Senecan as well as
+Terentian influence. The stories of Judith, Susannah, Goliath, and others
+gave opportunities for recourse to Senecan imitation; and in the "Jephthes"
+and "Baptistes," which about 1540 George Buchanan wrote at Bordeaux for his
+students to act, we have the first tragedies north of the Alps written in
+distinctly classical form,--a form, it should be said, derived from his
+study and translation of Euripides as well as from Seneca.
+
+Seneca's preeminence as a model for tragedy, however, was in general not
+contested, but rather increased by the growing knowledge of Euripides and
+Sophocles. By the end of the fifteenth century there had been many
+translations of his plays in Italy; they were studied in the schools, and
+some had been given stage presentation. But the idea of a vernacular
+tragedy on the Senecan model was not put into effect until Trissino's
+"Sophonisba," written in 1515. This was followed by others, until by the
+time of "Gorboduc" Senecan tragedy in Italian was an established form, and
+Jodelle's "Cleopatre Captive" (1552) had marked the beginning of the
+Senecan _genre_ in France. The Italian tragedy had also introduced some
+departures, in the choice of romantic material and in the innovation of
+"tragicomedy," which supplied the Senecan model with a happy ending. But
+all these writers of tragedy worked with a common purpose, to revive
+Senecan drama in their own day, and their plays adapted their themes and
+methods to the Senecan model with the faithfulness of disciples. These
+Senecan imitations, it should be noted, were designed for special
+performances under academic or courtly auspices, and not for the popular
+theatre.
+
+In England during the first half of the sixteenth century there was a
+repetition of the inter-influence between the still flourishing forms of
+medieval drama and the new classical models which we have noted on the
+Continent. The early Renaissance in the reign of Henry VIII awakened an
+interest in Seneca; and the fragment of an English play introducing Lucrece
+has suggested to Mr. Chambers the possibility of an essay at Senecan
+tragedy thirty years before "Gorboduc." The main force of the humanistic
+influence seems, however, to have been in the direction of comedy. The
+drama was no longer confined to popular open-air presentations, but found a
+place at court, in the halls of noblemen, and especially at the schools
+and universities, where the comedies of Plautus and Terence and imitations
+both in Latin and English were frequently acted. The influence of the
+classical plays themselves and of the neo-Latin school and the
+controversial dramas of the Continent upon English moralities and
+interludes was extensive and distinct. This led to a multiplication and
+confusion of dramatic types out of which comedy emerged in such plays as
+"Gammer Gurton's Needle" and "Ralph Roister Doister." In Latin, but not in
+English, we can trace a similar movement toward tragedy. We hear of a
+"Dido" written by Ritwyse, master of St. Paul's, and performed by his
+pupils some time in the decade preceding 1532. "Absalon," written by Thomas
+Watson probably in the following decade, was highly praised by Roger
+Ascham, and, if it be identical with the play now in manuscript in the
+British Museum, is an example of biblical drama along Senecan lines. A
+non-extant "Jephthes" by Christopherson (1546), the "Archipropheta," with a
+romantic love episode and a clown, written by Grimald and acted at Oxford
+in 1547, and his "Christus Redivivus" published in 1543 as a "comoedia
+tragica," all belong to the same mixed species. A representative of the
+controversial drama appears in John Foxe's "Christus Triumphans" about
+1550, which drew much from the famous "Pammachius," already translated by
+Bale and acted at Oxford to the great scandal of Gardiner. Of plays in the
+vernacular we hear of a few called tragedies, but the term was used without
+any exactness, and no extant play has any just claim to the title. Ten
+tragedies and comedies are attributed by Bale to Ralph Radcliffe, a
+pedagogue, who in 1538 opened a theatre in his schoolhouse and gave plays
+before the 'plebs.' Some of these were certainly in Latin, but some may
+have been in English, and the titles are interesting as emphasizing again
+the prevailing humanistic influences. Of the tragedies, two, "The Burning
+of Sodom" and "The Delivery of Susannah," are on biblical themes evidently
+chosen for the purpose of edification; the third, "The Condemnation of John
+Huss," suggests the controversial type. Of the comedies, four have biblical
+themes, while three, "Patient Griselda," "Meliboeus," and "Titus and
+Gisippus," indicate the growing search for secular and even romantic
+themes. In this confusion of many species of drama, created by a mixture of
+medieval and humanistic influences, there is at least no clear evidence of
+any English tragedy on Senecan lines before "Gorboduc." Of the development
+of the moralities toward tragedy, of which signs are not lacking, we get
+the clearest examples in plays a little later, which will be treated in the
+next chapter.
+
+Special notice, however, must here be paid to one morality and the dramatic
+activity of its author. John Bale, born 1495, a converted Carmelite who
+became bishop under Edward VI and an exile during the reign of Mary, and
+who died not long after the accession of Elizabeth, was one of the most
+vigorous of Protestant controversialists and apparently the leader of what
+may be called the Protestant drama. His forty-six plays "in idiomate
+materno" seem to have been intended for presentation, and, while exhibiting
+classical influence, doubtless in the main followed medieval models. Of the
+five extant, written presumably about 1538, three, "God's Promises," "John
+the Baptist," and "The Temptation of our Lord," are miracle plays; one,
+"The Three Laws," is a morality. The fifth, "King John," inspired in its
+satirical and Protestant elements by "Pammachius" and perhaps also by
+Lindsay's "Three Estates," is the first example of a morality showing an
+approach to the later historical drama. It is in form a controversial
+morality, divided into two long parts or acts, but it follows roughly a
+chronological outline, and among its abstractions presents the king himself
+as the champion of Protestantism against the pope and Pandulph. Although
+the direct influence of the play on later drama cannot be traced, it is a
+notable advance, of which there were perhaps other examples, toward the
+treatment of English history and of individual persons rather than
+abstractions in the popular drama.
+
+The humanistic activities of the sixty years before "Gorboduc" thus
+resulted in a breaking away of allegiance to medieval models and the
+introduction of new types, rather than in any direct contribution to the
+form or matter of tragedy. The vernacular play approaching nearest to the
+field of tragedy is still a controversial morality exhibiting all the
+traits of medieval drama, and in its innovations pointing not toward
+classical models, but rather to a new extension of the morality toward the
+presentation of national history and real persons. During this time,
+however, the influence of Seneca's plays had been constantly extending and
+had been augmented by that of the imitations in Latin, French, and Italian.
+The interest of Seneca in the universities seems to have increased during
+the reigns of Edward and Mary and to have supplanted in a measure that in
+Latin comedy. In 1559 the appearance of the first English translation, that
+of the "Troades" by Jasper Heywood, opened the way to a wider interest and
+to the possibility of domiciling the Senecan drama on the English stage. By
+1561 translations of four other plays had been published; and, before the
+collected edition of 1581, all of the ten had appeared and attained a
+greater popularity with the reading public than they have ever since
+experienced.
+
+The first English tragedy was not a modification of current forms, but a
+direct imitation of Seneca. The production of "Gorboduc," however, only
+marked another stage in that conflict between medievalism and humanism
+which we have been tracing. In the next chapter we shall consider the
+conflict between Senecan imitations and popular tragedies that still kept
+to the morality form, a conflict that resulted in the discarding of both
+Senecan and morality incumbrances and the attainment in Marlowe and his
+followers of a form of tragedy very different from either, though
+inheriting bountifully from both.
+
+One source of classical influence other than Seneca's plays and their
+imitations was of enough importance to require special mention, that of
+Aristotle's "Poetics." First printed in 1508, it reinforced the dogmas
+derived from the "Ars Poetica," and became the basis of a rapidly
+increasing amount of dramatic criticism. This criticism, mostly Italian,
+interpreted Aristotle by means of the Senecan tragedies and so reinforced
+their influence; but it was also greatly modified by the medieval ideas of
+tragedy which we have already noticed. The resultant theory of tragedy,
+with special regard to its misinterpretations of Aristotle, may be briefly
+summarized. His dictum that tragedy is the imitation of a serious action
+was interpreted to mean an action illustrious because the actors are
+persons of the highest rank, thus adopting the medieval restriction of
+tragedy to princes. There was less agreement in the restriction of tragedy
+to history rather than fiction; and over the question of the propriety of a
+happy ending there was considerable debate. Tragi-comedies were written and
+defended, but critics in general recognized tragedy as restricted to an
+unhappy ending, which was universally interpreted to mean deaths. In regard
+to the function of tragedy there was great difference of opinion over the
+meaning of [Greek: katharsis], the weight of opinion inclining to emphasize
+the ethical aim of tragedy, that is, the reward of virtue and punishment of
+vice and the inculcation of morality by means of frequent precepts. From
+Aristotle's discussion of character there was derived the curious idea of
+"decorum," so important in later theories of the drama, that every
+character should represent a class and should always have the same
+characteristics,--the kings all acting after one prescribed fashion, the
+soldiers after another, the old men after another, and so on. From
+Aristotle's mention of the restriction of time to one revolution of the sun
+came the unities of time and place, confining the action to one city and
+twenty-four hours, which were soon made predominant over the third unity of
+action. These distinctions became fixed in Italian criticism and were given
+their first full expression in English in Sidney's "Apology for Poetry,"
+written about 1580; but before that they were more or less comprehended by
+most English students of Seneca. Although even a scholar in 1561 would have
+been unable to define the unities or decorum, he would have had some
+confused notion of them. The scope and function of tragedy were by that
+time assuming in the general literary consciousness a definition approved
+by both medieval and classical theory and later formulated by Puttenham:
+"Tragedy deals with doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted princes, for
+the purpose of reminding men of the mutability of fortune and of God's just
+punishment of a vicious life."
+
+Such definition of medieval and classical influences as we have been
+attempting necessitates a somewhat unreal separation of the two forces.
+Evidently, in the mind of any playwright, the two combined in a confusion
+of impulses, of the sources of many of which he must have been unaware.
+Absolute restriction to the old tradition or to the new inspiration is
+hardly to be expected in any English dramatist attempting tragedy in the
+neighborhood of 1562. Such an author would have open for his choice a
+wealth of stories, classical, medieval, or Italian, as yet untouched by
+drama; and, though he might choose a story whose events paralleled some
+Senecan plot, he would be likely to adhere closely to his narrative source
+after the medieval fashion. Even if he strove loyally after the Senecan
+form, his knowledge would be hardly sufficient to prevent departures from
+strict classical standards. Seneca does not always clearly observe the
+unities or remove violent action from the stage, and his Elizabethan
+follower would naturally err on the side in accord with popular dramatic
+tradition. Of the chorus, reduced in importance by Seneca, he would find it
+difficult to make much use. On the other hand, the adapter of the morality
+structure to tragic purpose would perhaps fail to derive anything from
+Seneca except his bombast and sensationalism. For whatever audience the
+dramatist was writing, he would have many spectators demanding the fun,
+horse-play, and crude horror of medieval tradition, while his own literary
+aspirations might lead him to prefer lofty declamation and aphoristic
+phrasing. But, whether his knowledge was large or small, he was likely to
+combine in his conception of tragedy, as did Puttenham, both the Christian
+idea of evil, thwarting good and meeting punishment, and the Senecan idea
+of a crime followed by retribution or revenge. And, whether he catered to
+popular taste or to literary ambition, he must have contemplated the
+presentation of a reversal of fortune, persons of royal or distinguished
+rank, and a catastrophe involving deaths.
+
+It is, after all, the main contribution of humanism that through the study
+of the classics there had come new impetus and authority for individual
+effort. Art was to be based on classic precedents, but it was forbidden by
+the spirit of the new age to remain after medieval fashion satisfied with
+repetitions and translations. For the dramatist there were not only new
+models, but a circulation of ideas, free opportunity, and the incentive of
+fame. For him, too, there was a public long habituated to the drama and now
+well tutored in novelties and variations of the old forms, a public that no
+longer expected a conventionalized stage, but was possessed of what the
+apostle Paul deemed the chief characteristic of the classical spirit, the
+desire to hear some new thing.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+The authorities on their respective subjects are: W. Creizenach,
+_Geschichte des neuren Dramas_, Halle, 1893-1903 (3 vols. and index,
+extending to 1570, have appeared); A. W. Ward, _A History of English
+Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne_, 1899, new and revised
+edition, 3 vols.; E. K. Chambers, _The Mediaeval Stage_, Oxford, 1903. These
+all cover the matter of the present chapter and contain bibliographies.
+Ward gives full bibliographical notes to editions and monographs;
+Creizenach's index is substantially complete for all European plays;
+Chambers's Appendix X contains references to editions and descriptions of
+all English plays up to Elizabeth's accession. Klein, _Geschichte des
+Dramas_, 13 vols., 1865-76, and Collier, _History of English Dramatic
+Poetry_, new edition, 1879, are both somewhat out of date, though the
+latter contains much useful material. R. Proeloss, _Geschichte des neueren
+Dramas_ (1881-83), and K. Mantzius, _The History of Theatric Art_, 3 vols.
+(1904), are slighter. The only rapid and readable survey of European drama
+is by Brander Matthews, _The Development of the Drama_ (1906). For France,
+the authority for medieval drama is L. Petit de Julleville, _Histoire du
+Theatre en France au Moyen Age_, 1880-86, 4 vols.; for Germany, R. Froning,
+_Das Drama des Mittelalters_, 1891; for Italy, A. Ancona, _Origini del
+Teatro italiano_, 1891, 2d edition. J. J. Jusserand, _Le Theatre en
+Angleterre_ (1881, 2d ed.); J. A. Symonds, _Shakespeare's Predecessors in
+the English Drama_ (1884); G. Gregory Smith, _The Transition Period_ (1900,
+in _Periods of European Literature_); Gayley, _Plays of Our Forefathers_
+(1907), are of value. Dealing more specifically with matters discussed in
+this chapter are the volumes of Cloetta and Spingarn cited in the last
+chapter, C. H. Herford's _The Literary Relations of England and Germany in
+the Sixteenth Century_, Cambridge, 1886, J. W. Cunliffe's _The Influence of
+Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_, Manchester, 1893, and R. Fischer's _Zur
+Kunstentwickelung der Englischen Tragoedie von ihren ersten Anfangen bis zu
+Shakespeare_, 1893. The Elizabethan translations of Seneca have been
+reprinted by the Spenser Society (1887). Within the last few years three
+new translations have appeared: by Watson Bradshaw, in prose (1902); by
+Miss E. A. Harris, in verse, two tragedies 1899, the remaining eight 1904;
+by F. J. Miller, in verse, with introduction on Seneca's Influence on
+English Drama by J. M. Manly (Chicago, 1907). Text and discussions of plays
+are presented by A. W. Pollard, _English Miracle Plays_, Oxford, 4th ed.,
+1904; A. Brandl, _Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England_, 1898; J. M.
+Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_, 1897 (2 vols., the third
+to contain notes and discussion). Dodsley's _Old Plays_, ed. W. C. Hazlitt,
+15 vols., 1874-76, also contains texts. The matter of this and subsequent
+chapters also receives treatment in the general histories of literature. J.
+J. Jusserand, _Literary History of the English People_, 2 vols., 1895-, is
+especially valuable in its account of the drama. The new _Cambridge History
+of English Literature_ (now in progress) will contain valuable monographs
+on the matter of this and subsequent chapters. _The Dictionary of National
+Biography_ is, of course, most valuable for individual writers. F. E.
+Schelling's _Elizabethan Drama_, 1558-1642, which appears as this volume is
+passing the press, is a general history of the drama of the period stated,
+with special reference to the development of dramatic species. It contains
+an extremely useful Bibliographical Essay and "A List of Plays" written,
+acted, or published in England, 1558-1642.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAGEDY
+
+
+In this chapter the development of tragedy is to be traced from 1562, the
+year of the production of "Gorboduc," to about 1587, the beginning of
+Marlowe's career. Our knowledge of the drama during this period is scanty,
+and there are few extant tragedies or plays resembling tragedy. Before
+examining these plays with the detail which their historical position
+demands, it will be necessary first to glance at the theatrical conditions.
+Reference has been made to some of the changes that had been working a
+transformation from the conditions of the popular performance of the
+religious drama in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through these,
+the drama had already to a large extent passed from the control of the
+guilds to that of small companies of amateur or professional actors; from
+the open air into the halls of noblemen or of the schools; from the large
+stage with its fixed stations for the different actors or the procession of
+pageants, to the small and perhaps improvised platform. Long plays with
+hosts of actors had given place to short plays with few parts, or many
+parts divisible among few actors, and constructed with a clear distinction
+between "on the stage" and "off the stage." Performances indoors, no
+specially prepared stage, few actors, and short plays represent the
+prevailing theatrical practice of the early sixteenth century.
+
+From 1562 on, however, theatrical conditions were various and shifting, and
+not always easily discernible by the modern student. While miracles were
+still performed after the old popular fashion, the traveling professional
+companies were growing in importance and tending to monopolize the acting
+of interludes. Amateur actors, however, at court, school, university, inns
+of court, or, indeed, among the Bottoms and mechanics of the villages,
+still contended with the professional for the control and maintenance of
+the drama. So far as tragedy is concerned, it will be convenient to keep in
+mind at least four distinct kinds of performance. First, the Gentlemen of
+the Inns of Court, who throughout the Elizabethan period showed themselves
+liberal patrons of the drama, occasionally gave plays, usually in
+connection with special festivities. Second, there were performances at the
+schools and universities which continued to exert an important dramatic
+influence, as they had for the preceding sixty years. Plays at the
+universities were generally in Latin, but there were English plays at both
+schools and universities, and companies from the Merchant Tailors and
+Westminster schools acted at court; these last performances falling
+properly in the third group. Third, companies of children were trained for
+performance at court; and these were in the course of time restricted to
+the choir boys of St. Paul's and of the Queen's chapel. Fourth, the
+traveling professional companies, numerous at the beginning of the period,
+acted in the inn-yards of London, at court, in the halls of noblemen, on
+the village greens, in the guild halls, even in the churches of the towns,
+or wherever else they could obtain an opportunity, until the most important
+of them found homes in the London theatres. On all four of these classes of
+actors the influence of the court was considerable, for it was the highest
+gratification of either amateur or professional to be engaged in a court
+performance, and performances at court were subject to greater preparation
+than those in public.
+
+Such were the conditions governing the presentation of tragedies in this
+period, but in the course of its twenty-five years the professional
+companies constantly grew in importance and in the end practically
+monopolized the business of giving plays. Schools, universities, and
+companies of amateurs became of decreasing moment in the development of the
+drama, while the choir boys were permitted to act plays publicly in their
+own theatres and thus became formidable professional rivals of the men's
+companies. In 1572 the statute compelling the common players to obtain the
+license of some nobleman reduced the number of the adult companies, but
+strengthened those that survived, which now became known as Lord
+Leicester's men, Lord Howard's men, and so on. In London they were able
+with the assistance of the court to establish and maintain themselves
+despite the active and constant opposition of the city authorities. The
+Theatre, built outside the city proper in 1576, was soon followed by other
+playhouses, and in 1583 a company was licensed under the Queen's personal
+patronage. Henceforth the history of the Elizabethan drama is in the main
+confined to four or five companies of men and one or two of children,
+acting regularly in their established theatres and occasionally in the
+provinces, or at court, or elsewhere.
+
+The character of a tragedy naturally varied with the circumstances of its
+presentation. A Latin play at one of the universities was much more
+dignified and scholarly than the performance of a few traveling actors for
+the delectation of a provincial audience; and a play by the Gentlemen of
+the Inner Temple was given with an elaborateness not to be expected in
+those by the choir boys, which were likely to be brief and to include a
+good deal of singing. The extant tragedies can consequently be best
+classified according to their methods of presentation. Before all
+audiences, it should be remembered, moralities of divers sorts were
+performed, but we are now concerned only with those that most closely
+approach tragedy. All the extant Latin plays were presented at the
+universities. Of English plays, "Gorboduc," "Tancred and Gismunda,"
+"Jocasta," and "The Misfortunes of Arthur" were acted by gentlemen of the
+Inner Temple or Gray's Inn, and are all Senecan tragedies. "Damon and
+Pithias" and "Appius and Virginia" were acted at court by children, and
+show little Senecan influence, but are medleys of tragedy, comedy, and
+music. No performance by an adult company of any extant tragedy is
+recorded, but "Horestes" and "Cambyses," both of which may have originally
+been intended for children, bear some evident marks of popular
+presentation, and both are mixtures of morality, farce, and tragedy. These
+plays, with the exception of "The Misfortunes of Arthur," acted in 1588 at
+the very end of the period, were all written and performed in the sixties.
+With the addition of "Promus and Cassandra" (1578), apparently not acted,
+they comprise all extant plays acted before 1586-87 which can be classed as
+tragedies or tragicomedies. Our knowledge of the professional drama may be
+supplemented from the titles of non-extant plays and from the Revels
+Accounts of performances at court; but it should be observed that our
+information in regard to the development of popular tragedy is very meagre,
+especially for the important period after 1570, and that the group of
+Senecan plays, which we are to examine first, owed their existence to no
+popular favor, but to amateur performances under special conditions.
+
+"Gorboduc," or "Ferrex and Porrex," printed surreptitiously in 1565 and
+with an authoritative text about 1570, was written by Thomas Norton and
+Thomas Sackville, the author of "The Complaint of Buckingham" and "The
+Induction" in "The Mirror for Magistrates," and afterwards Lord Buckhurst,
+Lord High Treasurer. It was performed before the Queen as a part of the
+elaborate Christmas entertainment of the Inner Temple in 1561-62. The plot
+is taken from a British legend that was introduced into literature by
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, and relates the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc
+between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, the murder of the elder by the
+younger, the murder of the younger by his mother, the murder of both father
+and mother by their subjects, the slaughter of the people by the nobles,
+and the resulting civil wars. The story, evidently chosen because of its
+likeness to Seneca's "Thebais," is treated in Senecan manner, each of the
+first four acts being followed by a chorus of "Foure auncient and sage men
+of Brittaine." The murders are not enacted but are related by messengers,
+but the unities of time and place are violated, as Sir Philip Sidney noted
+with disapproval. There is little characterization, much political
+moralizing, which delighted Sidney, and an abundance of long declamations,
+about eight hundred lines, nearly half of the play, being comprised in ten
+speeches. The play is written in blank verse, already used in Surrey's
+translation from the AEneid, and perhaps adopted in imitation of the
+unrhymed verse of the Italian tragedies. After the Italian fashion, each
+act is preceded by a dumb show, symbolizing the following action, and these
+dumb shows seem to have been utilized to provide the spectacle that was
+entirely wanting in the play proper. Supernatural visitants appear in the
+three furies before act iv; and before the last act the dumb show consists
+of a battle-scene, similar to those which later became the invariable
+accompaniments of the chronicle history play: "there came forth upon the
+stage a company of hargabusiers and of armed men all in order of
+battaile," who discharged their pieces and marched three times about the
+stage.
+
+In spite of the close adherence to the Senecan model, there is little
+direct borrowing from Seneca, and medieval elements are not lacking. The
+debates between the good and bad counselors are very like those of the
+moralities, and the structure is essentially that of a chronicle of a whole
+story rather than that of a classical tragedy. The first two acts are
+occupied by the interminable debates, and the last three by the
+catastrophe, or rather the succession of catastrophes, though the final
+scene of the fifth act is a sort of epilogue after Senecan fashion. The
+play has little literary value, though Marcella's recital is not without
+power and the disquisitions on discord and disloyalty in the state have the
+merit of earnestness; but it is clearly the beginning of a new species. It
+abandons current dramatic forms, and endeavors to depict the fall of
+English princes in accordance with the models of classical tragedy.
+
+"Jocasta," by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, acted 1566 by the Gentlemen of
+Gray's Inn, demands little attention. It is a translation in blank verse of
+Lodovico Dolce's "Giocasta," itself an adaptation of the "Phoenissae" of
+Euripides. It thus furnishes additional evidence of the influence of
+Italian tragedy on English. The chorus numbers four, as in "Gorboduc," and
+the dumb shows, apparently of Gascoigne's invention, are notably elaborate
+and spectacular.[2]
+
+"Tancred and Gismunda," acted before the queen at the Inner Temple in 1568,
+under the title "Gismond of Salerne," was written in rhymed quatrains by
+five gentlemen of the Temple, and afterwards revised and put into blank
+verse by the author of the fifth act, Robert Wilmot, and first published in
+1591.[3] In both versions Cupid appears before the first and third acts as
+the director of the action, and Magaera comes on before the fourth act to
+superintend the revenge and murder. The play is based on Painter's version
+of Boccaccio's _novella_, which is followed closely, but the base-born
+lover becomes a count according to the prevailing theory of tragedy. The
+story itself has an obvious dramatic power and a certain dramatic structure
+which it imposes on the play. Gismunda's passion for the Count Palurin
+runs counter to her father's wishes; at the end of the third act love is
+triumphant, but in the fourth is defeated, and the gruesome catastrophe
+follows, Tancred and Gismunda dying on the stage. This is the earliest
+extant English play based on an Italian _novella_, and the first tragedy to
+adopt a romantic love story and to make the passion of love its central
+motive; and the authors accomplished their experiment with evident
+enthusiasm and some gracefulness and force of diction. They were, however,
+very conscious of their models. Seneca's "Thyestes," and "Phaedra," itself
+presenting a story of passionate love, were perhaps their chief
+inspirations; but Buchanan's "Jephthes" and Beza's "Abraham," translated
+into English in 1577, are mentioned in Wilmot's dedication, and, together
+with other plays, supplied precedents for the treatment of the favorite
+tragic theme, the sacrifice of a child by a father. Moreover, Italian
+tragedies had, since Giraldi's "Orbecche," been turning to romantic fiction
+for their subjects instead of to history and mythology; and some of these,
+"Orbecche" itself, and, as Professor Creizenach notes,[4] Dolce's "Dido,"
+doubtless influenced the young templars. There had, indeed, already been
+Italian tragedies based on Boccaccio's _novella_, and one by Frederigo
+Asinari (1576) had added an Oedipean horror by making Tancred put out his
+eyes before killing himself, an augmentation adopted by Wilmot in his
+revision. The play was thus not only thoroughly Senecan, but the result of
+a tangle of derivative Senecan influences. The authors were probably
+unconscious of the incongruity so obvious to us between the classical form
+and the romantic material. They were interested in their story and were
+eager to give it all the advantages that erudition could discover; their
+intentions were doubtless perfectly reflected in the praise which William
+Webbe gave them for a play that "all men generally desired, as a work,
+either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of
+poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman
+Seneca the censurer."
+
+"The Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes, was acted and published in
+1588. The story from "The Morte D'Arthur" was suggested by its likeness to
+Senecan plots; and the play was an ambitious attempt to use British legend
+as Seneca had treated classical myth. The strife between father and son,
+with its accompaniments of adultery and incest, is viewed as constituting a
+Nemesis for the crimes of Arthur's father, Pendragon; and the ghost of the
+wronged Gorlois appears in the first scene to promise revenge, and in the
+final scene to triumph over its fulfillment. The author knew his models by
+heart, borrowed much, availed himself of all the particulars of the Senecan
+technic, and imitated everywhere with a good deal of spirit and success.
+The play has dramatic and poetic merits beyond its predecessors, but its
+late date makes it of small importance in our effort to trace the
+beginnings of English tragedy. Acted twenty-six years after "Gorboduc," it
+testifies less to the progress of dramatic art than to the
+conventionalizing effect of Senecan models. Though perhaps the most
+successful of English imitations of Seneca, it marks the failure of amateur
+actors and courtly audiences to revive the classical drama on the English
+stage. On the occasion of its performance before the Queen at Greenwich,
+its actors and authors may very likely have thought it full of significance
+for the future of the drama; but "Tamburlaine" had already been acted, and
+poetry had taken up its abode in the despised public theatres. The chief
+interest for us in "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is that it furnishes further
+illustration of the use of English history and of stories of revenge.
+
+To understand the full importance of the attempt to domicile Seneca in
+England, we must turn to the universities. Two English plays, which would
+be of interest, have not been preserved, "Ezechias," a tragedy by Udall,
+acted in 1564 at Cambridge, and "Palamon and Arcyte" by Edwards, the author
+of "Damon and Pithias," acted 1566. These are the only English plays at all
+tragical that are recorded; but the practice of giving Latin plays
+continued and grew in popularity.[5] We hear of "Dido" and an "Ajax
+Flagellifer," apparently a translation of Sophocles, both in 1564, and a
+"Progne" in 1566. The extant Latin tragedies are of a later date. Gager's
+"Meleager," "Oedipus," and "Dido," all acted in the early eighties, are
+modeled strictly on Seneca, the first two showing direct borrowings. In the
+fragment which we possess of the third, the ghost of Sichaeus appears to
+warn Dido, and is followed by the storm, represented, we learn, by sugar
+for snow, sweetmeats for hail, and rose-water for rain. Gager's "Ulysses
+Redux," acted in 1591, a little beyond the limits of our period, presents a
+somewhat freer treatment of the Senecan form, the number of characters and
+of scenes being larger than in the earlier plays. Of uncertain date are a
+"Herodes," which takes the form of a revenge play introduced by the ghost
+of Mariemma, and "Solymannidae" and "Tonumbeius," which apply Senecan
+methods to Eastern instead of to classical atrocities. "Roxana" (1632),
+acted before 1592, is a translation of "La Dalida" of Luigi Groto, and won
+some contemporary distinction and the praise of Dr. Johnson two centuries
+later. It is a revenge play with a ghost, combining Senecan gruesomeness
+with the motives of romantic comedy.
+
+More famous than any of these in its own day was "Richardus Tertius," a
+tragedy in three parts, each part acted on a separate night in 1579 at St.
+John's, Cambridge, the work of Thomas Legge, Master of Caius and afterwards
+Vice-Chancellor of the university. Legge seems to have felt the incongruity
+between the material of the chronicles, which he followed closely, and a
+strict Senecan form, and to have striven to overcome this by the
+mechanical expedient of prolonging the action over three plays. But the
+problem of presenting on the stage the events of a whole reign could not be
+solved in the terms of the Senecan formula. Legge copied the Senecan
+rhetoric, interpreted historical events and persons under the guidance of
+the formula, and retained much of its technic, the narration of deaths
+instead of their presentation, counsel scenes between hero and advisers,
+frequent use of the nuntius, and a vestige of a chorus. But the play
+departs as widely as popular dramas from the unities of time and place,
+contains many scenes with more than three speakers, is full of dramatic
+action, and presents processions, pageants, and battle scenes after the
+fashion of later chronicle plays in the public theatres. Its influence on
+popular drama may well have been considerable; though, on the other hand,
+its adherence to sources and its looseness of structure may have been
+reflections from the public stage. Whether the first chronicle play or not,
+it is the earliest extant play to indicate the result of the inevitable
+conflict between a narrow and stereotyped dramatic form and the wide range
+of material which the chronicles afforded.[6]
+
+In these university Latin plays there is evident a development similar to
+that traced in the English Senecan drama. Biblical themes disappear; close
+imitations of Seneca on classical themes give way to freer treatment of
+romantic or historical material. Revenge and the ghost are ever prominent;
+and English history introduces a host of events, varied, incongruous,
+panoramic, and bursting the bounds of the traditional structure. Nash,
+Marlowe, and others of the later dramatists were university men, and saw
+some of these plays performed, and perhaps took part in them. Their scenic
+spectacle, choices of themes, handling of situation, and general effect
+must have had an appreciable influence upon the subsequent course of the
+drama. To the various influences which we have denominated humanistic, and
+especially to the derivative influences reinforcing that of Seneca, we must
+add this of the Latin plays at Oxford and Cambridge. Latin tragedies
+continued to be acted at the universities for many years, but their
+influence on the popular drama can have been potent only during its
+formative period.
+
+When we turn from these academic and amateur productions to the more
+popular performances,[7] we have to deal with a very different class of
+plays. The four to be considered were all written by men of scholarly
+training, and all deal with classical themes, but the Senecan influence is
+slight and mainly discernible in the figurative and hyperbolic diction and
+the fondness for sententious maxims. None of the four are divided into
+acts; none have choruses or other characteristic marks of Senecan
+structure; all present action to the exclusion of reflection, and all are
+in rhymed verse, the favorite metre, at least in the serious portions,
+being doggerel. All admit comic and farcical scenes, and three are in a
+large measure moralities. In the tragic portions all admit violence and
+murders of all kinds on the stage; there is a beheading, a hanging, and, in
+the case of "Cambyses," a flaying, accomplished, the stage direction
+reassures us, "with a false skin."
+
+"Damon and Pithias" (1571), by Richard Edwards, was acted by the Children
+of the Chapel at court in 1563-64, and, judging from the title-page,
+probably also in public. The prologue, which contains a discussion of
+"decorum," explains that the term "tragicall comedy" is used because the
+story is a matter "mixed up with mirth and care." The serious portion of
+the play presents the tyrant Dionysius as well as the two faithful friends,
+and shows evidence of a study of Seneca; but it is intermixed with comedy,
+where the influence of Plautus is noticeable, and indeed with scenes of
+broadest farce. Carisophus, the parasite, is hardly distinguishable from
+the vice of the moralities, and is not only clown and mischief-maker, but
+the villain, whose infamy brings about the tragic entanglements. The play
+contains a number of songs, and this mixture of tragedy, farce, and musical
+comedy seems typical of the children's plays of this period.
+
+"Appius and Virginia" (S. R. 1567-68), by an unknown R. B., was also
+evidently acted by one of the children's companies, perhaps, as Mr. Fleay
+plausibly conjectures, by the boys of the Westminster school. It is much
+shorter than "Damon and Pithias," but, like that play, is styled a tragical
+comedy, is written in rhymed verse, mostly doggerel, and contains farcical
+scenes and many songs. The vice Haphazard is a clown and mischief-maker;
+and, in addition, a number of personified abstractions, Conscience,
+Justice, Comfort, Doctrina, etc., indicate the close relation of the play
+to the moralities. The main plot, however, is tragic and has no integral
+connection with the comic scenes. It begins with the domestic happiness of
+the family of Virginius, and proceeds promptly to the action. Virginia is
+beheaded, and the head is afterwards exhibited; Appius Claudius and
+Haphazard are executed out of the sight of the audience; and in the
+closing scene the tomb of Virginia is shown upon the stage, Memory
+inscribes her renown, while Justice, Reward, Doctrine, and Fame apparently
+join in a song "around about the tomb in honor of her name."
+
+"Horestes" (1567) by John Pickering was probably the "Orestes" acted at
+court 1567-68. It also seems to have been performed by children, but was
+very likely given public presentation by various companies. The title runs
+significantly, "A New Interlude of Vice, conteyninge the Historye of
+Horestes," etc. The vice, indeed, is hardly absent from the stage, and
+offers much that is new in his species. He is a clown, but apparently this
+is only a disguise, for he appears to Horestes as a messenger from the
+gods, urging him to revenge; later as Courage he is Horestes' faithful
+friend and supporter, then as Revenge he attends to the execution of
+Clytemnestra, and finally he appears as a beggar thrust out of court, since
+Revenge could not agree with the Amity dwelling there, and takes the
+opportunity to read a long lecture to women. The diversity of elements
+confused in this personage is typical of the play. It is in a large measure
+a morality; Nature appears to Horestes to dissuade him from including his
+mother in his vengeance, Fame appears as a judge and exempts him from
+guilt, and other abstractions are numerous and voluble. There are also a
+number of songs, Egisthus and Clytemnestra having just finished a love song
+when the messenger announces the avenger's approach. There are many scenes
+of sheer farce, where the humor lies wholly in fisticuffs and beatings;
+and the spectacular element suggests the later historical plays. Horestes
+is accompanied by an army which marches with drums about the stage and
+fights two pitched battles, one with the host of Egisthus and the other for
+the possession of the city. "Make your lively battel and let it be long,"
+says the stage direction. Still further, the classical elements are
+curiously confused. Although there are a number of quotations from Ovid and
+frequent citations of other classical worthies, there is no mention of
+Seneca, though the plot of "a revenge for a father" here makes its first
+appearance in the English drama, and the authors appear to have been
+entirely ignorant of the Greek tragedies. The ultimate source is the sixth
+book of Dictys Cretensis. The author follows closely one of the popular
+versions of the Troy legend, retains the anachronisms of the romantic
+version, and imposes on that the structure of the morality, the vice taking
+the place of the oracle of Apollo, and abstractions mingling with the
+knights and dukes of the Trojan war. The play is thus interesting as
+marking another step in the translation of the morality into the "history"
+type of tragedy. The closing scenes, in particular, illustrate the
+adherence to sources with morality embellishments. The play by no means
+ends with the murders. Horestes is approved by Fame, accused by Menelaus,
+who arrives, defended by Nestor, who throws down his glove as a gage, then
+reconciled to Menelaus, married to Hermione, crowned by Duty and Truth, and
+applauded and advised by Commons and Nobelles.
+
+"Cambyses" (S. R. 1569-70) was written by Thomas Preston, afterwards Master
+of Trinity Hall, and acted some time in the sixties. Perhaps originally
+intended for a school performance, it was later evidently acted in public,
+and seems more suited than even "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes" to a
+performance by an ordinary professional adult company. The title-page sets
+forth the plot with a terse emphasis of its various elements: "A Lamentable
+Tragedie mixed full of pleasant mirth containing the Life of Cambises King
+of Persia from the beginning of his kingdome unto his Death, his one good
+deede of execution, after that, many wicked deedes and tyrannous murders
+committed by and through him, and last of all, his odious death by Gods
+Justice appointed." Like "Horestes," this is a combination of morality and
+history, and the chronicle or epical method is enforced by the fact that we
+have the whole story of "the life and death," as later titles ran, of a
+monarch. The chronicle structure is mixed full of pleasant mirth and pays a
+certain regard to climax. Cambyses begins by executing an unjust judge, and
+proceeds to murder the child of his minister, then his brother, then his
+bride, and finally himself. The comic scenes have a link of connection with
+the tragic ones in Ambidexter, the vice and accomplice of the villanous
+tyrant. Seneca is appealed to as an authority in the prologue, but there is
+little trace of his influence, unless it is found in the central figure of
+the wicked tyrant and his gory career, or in the highfalutin of Cambyses'
+vein. The extraordinary list of _dramatis personae_ indicates sufficiently
+the hodge-podge of the action and the prominence of the morality influence.
+The deaths are managed by Cruelty or Murder; Commons Cry, Commons
+Complaint, Small Nobility, and Proof appeal against tyranny; the marriage
+feast is arranged by Preparation; the comic scenes are shared by Huf, Ruf,
+Snuf, Hob, and Lob; Venus and Cupid manage the love affairs; and Shame
+appears as a sort of tentative ghost:
+
+    "From among the grisly ghosts I come, from tyrants' testy train."
+
+The fall of the Prince Cambyses, it should be added, is accidentally or
+providentially upon his own sword; and only the exit of Ambidexter and a
+few words from the three lords, who pronounce the accident a just reward
+from heaven and promise princely burial, are required to bring the play to
+a close.
+
+In these plays we may trace the gradual emergence of tragedy in the popular
+drama in response to a growing knowledge of its functions and methods. It
+appears still mixed with farce and morality, but it has themes like those
+of Seneca, bloody, revolting, and sensational, and its freedom in stage
+presentation permits an emphasis on crime and death even greater than in
+the Senecan imitations. Notably, it introduces the stories of the downfall
+of a tyrant and the revenge of a son for a father. The structure has none
+of the Senecan characteristics, and consists merely in linking together, or
+rather in interrupting by extraneous comedy, a few scenes illustrating a
+story; but it is like that of the English Senecan plays in the space it
+gives to catastrophe. In general the plays begin conventionally with the
+depiction of peaceful and prosperous circumstances, and proceed at once to
+the disasters and deaths, with very little attention to the events or
+motives that lead to these results. The element of conflict is as yet
+hardly translated out of the abstract terms of the morality into those of
+actual life. The conflict of motives never leads to a dramatic crisis but
+keeps to the form of a medieval debate, as between Nature and Horestes, or,
+indeed, between the bad and good counselors in "Gorboduc." Characterization
+likewise depends mostly on the form of arguing abstractions, though certain
+types of importance later are already noticeable. The faithful friend and
+the aged counselor are ever at hand, and the part, if not the character, of
+the tragic hero is provided in Horestes and Virginius. The villain receives
+considerable attention. The English dramatists were puzzled to follow the
+classical tragedies in placing the source of evil in Fate or the decrees of
+the gods; and even when their stories provided them with persons
+sufficiently iniquitous to cause all the tragic trouble, they seem to have
+felt the need for a visible and special representative of the devil. Evil
+in "Gorboduc" may be said to arise from the counsels of the parasites as
+well as from the folly of the king and the envy of the princes. In "Tancred
+and Gismunda" it is due, after classical imitation, to the intervention of
+Cupid. In the popular plays the vice is borrowed from the moralities, and,
+in all except "Horestes," is made a mischief-maker, a source of evil, and
+the special representative of the devil. Questions in regard to the origin
+of the vice and his relationship to the devil of the medieval drama have
+not been freed from doubt by recent investigation, but it seems clear that
+in the early tragedies he was given some of the work later accomplished by
+the stage-villain and his accomplices. The part that women play in these
+early tragedies should also be noticed. Women and love, as Professor
+Creizenach has observed, receive far more attention in Renaissance tragedy
+than in Greek or Senecan. "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Promus and Cassandra"
+deal with stories of romantic love; Virginia and the queen in "Cambyses"
+present noteworthy though slight examples of the idealization of women so
+important in later drama. The purpose of all these plays, Senecan or
+popular, is superficially didactic, as is witnessed not only by the
+abundant moralizing in the Senecan imitations, but also in the popular
+plays by the emphasis in the closing scenes on the reward of virtue and the
+punishment of vice. In the last act of "Appius and Virginia" the lesson of
+the play is written on the tomb, and in "Horestes" the conduct of the hero
+is discussed by Nestor and Fame and finally rewarded by Hermione, Truth,
+and Duty. "Cambyses" is more in line with later tragedy in presenting the
+protagonist as a monster and in closing promptly after his punishment by
+death.
+
+The most certain accomplishment, however, in the development of the drama
+up to 1570 had been in the widening of its range of material. The bible
+narrative and moral allegory had been superseded by classical myth and
+history, and these in turn were being encroached upon by the romantic
+fiction of the Italian _novelle_ and by the chronicles of English history.
+Italian _novelle_ were open to dramatists mainly through a series of
+collections of translations, of which "Painter's Palace of Pleasure" (1566)
+was the chief. The interest in English history was stimulated and fed by
+"The Mirror for Magistrates" and the various editions of the chronicles;
+Grafton, Stowe, and the third edition of Fabyan appearing in the sixties,
+and Holinshed in 1577; while interest in the classics was maintained by
+numerous translations as well as by an increasing knowledge of Latin.
+Translation, indeed, had brought the stories of the world to the English
+mart, and the dramatic industry was now eager in its demand for material.
+
+Of the continued development of popular tragedy after 1570, and
+particularly of the sources drawn upon for dramatic material, we can get a
+few hints from the titles of non-extant plays. The incomplete Revels
+Accounts of performances at court preserve the names of over sixty plays
+acted between 1570 and 1585, and about thirty are derived from other
+sources. Of the court plays, none had biblical subjects; a number were
+moralities, a few were drawn from old romances; but the majority were from
+classical or Italian sources. Many of these must have contained tragic
+incidents,[8] though probably they were not much more classical in form
+than "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes." Only one title drawn from
+national history presents itself, "The King of Scots." The English
+chronicle play had evidently not yet made any stir at court; but many of
+the classical plays were drawn from Livy. Two other titles, "The Cruelty of
+a Stepmother" and "Murderous Michael" (Sussex's men, '78, '79), and a third
+of a play at Bristol in 1578, "What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man,"
+may possibly have had for sources accounts of contemporary murders, and
+thus have instituted the species of domestic tragedy. A few titles,
+suggestive of tragedy, with accompanying comments, have been preserved by
+Gosson, who praises: "The Jew," "representing the greediness of worldly
+chusers and bloody minds of usurers," apparently a forerunner of "The
+Merchant of Venice"; "Ptolemy," "describing the overthrow of seditious
+estates and rebellious commons"; "The Blacksmith's Daughter," "contayning
+the treachery of the Turkes, the honourable bountye of a noble mind, and
+the shining of virtue in distress"; and his own play, "Catilin's
+Conspiracy," "showing the reward of traitors."
+
+Some further information concerning the emergence of popular tragedy can be
+derived from the criticisms of the period. Gosson in his "Plays Confuted"
+(1582), declares:--
+
+     "For the poets drive it most commonly unto such points
+     as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical
+     speeches, or set their hearers agog with discourses of
+     love; or paint a few antics to fit their own humours
+     with scoffs and taunts or wring in a show to furnish
+     forth the stage when it is too bare; when the matter
+     itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of
+     the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull
+     it out.... So," he adds, "was the history of Caesar and
+     Pompey and the play of the Fabii at the theatre, both
+     amplified where the drums might walk or the pen
+     ruffle."
+
+A similar criticism is made by Whetstone in his dedication of "Promus and
+Cassandra" (1578): "The Englishman in this qualitie, is most vaine,
+indiscreete, and out of order: he first groundes his work on
+impossibilities: then in three howers more likely ronnes he throwe the
+worlde: marryes, gets Children, makes Children men, men to conquer
+kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven and fetcheth
+Divels from Hel." Sidney in the well-known passage on the contemporary
+drama in his "Apologie for Poetrie" (1595, but written about 1580)
+amplified these same criticisms, deploring the lack of "noble moralitie,"
+the violation of the unities, and the admixture of farce in current
+tragedies, and especially animadverting on the histories and the "mongrel
+Tragy-comedie." He asks scornfully: "And doe they not knowe, that a
+Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not of Historie? not bound to
+follow the storie, but having liberty either to faine a quite new matter,
+or to frame the history to the most tragicall conveniencie. Againe, many
+things may be told, which cannot be shewed, if they knewe the difference
+betwixt reporting and representing,"--and he goes on to illustrate.
+Evidently the medieval methods were still potent rather than those of
+Sidney's models, Euripides, Seneca, and "Gorboduc"; and the tragedies in
+the theatres followed their sources without recognition of the difference
+between a narrative and a dramatic structure, and with an appeal to vulgar
+taste by means of hideous monsters, pitched fields, scurrility, or "some
+extreme shew of doltishness." From these critical comments we may infer
+that the popular drama had before 1585 triumphed over the Senecan. The few
+extant tragedies before that date have shown little which was not
+paralleled in the contemporary drama of western Europe; but in the
+popularization of a professional drama that rejected Senecan technic but
+still delighted in the presentation of tragic fact we have the first clear
+differentiation of English tragedy from that of other nations.
+Unfortunately we have only this indirect evidence that such differentiation
+was well under way before Marlowe.
+
+On the basis of such evidence, however, we may draw a few inferences in
+regard to the course of popular tragedy from 1570 to 1585. We may infer
+that Senecan imitations in the hands of amateurs did not multiply, and were
+not readily accepted even as object lessons by writers for the public
+theatres, who, whatever inspiration they may have received from amateur or
+academic plays, must have felt the increasing force of the demand from the
+public for amusement and sensation. While undoubtedly many traces of
+Senecan influence continued, and while classical themes persisted, the
+prevalent type of drama became neither right comedy nor right tragedy but
+the so-called "history." Whether based on history or fiction, its main
+purpose was the presentation of a story, the more marvelous the better;
+and, even if it ended in deaths, it was likely to contain a mixture of
+farce, romantic love, stage spectacle, and, as time went on, a diminishing
+inculcation of morality. Throughout the period, popular tragedy probably
+remained commingled with other species of drama. As it forsook the
+morality, it found itself wedded with farce or spectacle; or, perhaps more
+extensively, with history and romantic comedy. What course the popular
+drama farthest removed from court or academic influence may have taken, we
+can only surmise, though the presentation of contemporary murders, which
+found favor even at court, must presumably have flourished with less
+cultivated audiences. And it is impossible to resist the conjecture that
+English history must have received crude presentation in the public
+theatres much earlier than we have any record of.
+
+We may also surmise that in the quarter of a century from "Cambyses" to
+"Tamburlaine" there must have been some considerable development in the
+power to depict tragic fact, in the traditions of tragic acting, and in the
+cultivation of the taste of both audiences and authors for the genuinely
+terrible, pathetic, and heroic, but we must assume that tragedy still
+awaited the service of both literary and dramatic genius. The genius of
+Marlowe, however, had its way prepared by twenty-five years of
+extraordinary dramatic activity, during which the functions of comedy and
+tragedy had become known if not observed, comedy had attained a
+considerable development in Lyly and Peele, and tragedy had gained
+sufficient vigor to extend its themes, and to decide against a development
+imitative and scholarly, and in favor of one original and popular.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Most of the books in the list for the last chapter are useful in connection
+with the matter of this. Creizenach and Ward are the chief authorities;
+Collier, Symonds, and Jusserand deal with the period. Spingarn, Cunliffe,
+and Fischer are valuable for their special fields. Texts are to be found in
+Manly, Dodsley, Brandl, and discussions in the latter. For the stage
+history of the Elizabethan drama, the works of F. G. Fleay are very
+valuable, though marred by much unsupported conjecture: _A Biographical
+Chronicle of the English Drama_, 1559-1642, 2 vols. (1891); _A Chronicle
+History of the London Stage_, 1559-1642 (1890); _A Chronicle History of the
+Life and Work of William Shakespeare_ (1886). The first-named is the most
+reliable and useful of the three. Original documents and records are
+printed in part in Collier and Fleay; and in Halliwell-Phillipps's
+_Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_ (6th ed., 1886); Malone's _Variorum_
+ed. of Shakespeare, 1821; Cunningham's _Extracts from the Annals of the
+Revels at Court_, Shakespeare Society, 1842; Nichols's _The Progresses and
+Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth_, 3 vols., 1823; _Aussere Geschichte
+der englischen Theatertruppen_, 1559-1642, by Hermann Maas (Materialien zur
+Kunde des aelteren Englischen Dramas, 1907); Hazlitt's _English Drama and
+Stage_ (1869); Chamber's _Notes on the Revels Office_ (1906). The essays of
+Gosson, Sidney, Webbe, Puttenham, which supply most of the dramatic
+criticism of the period, are in Arber's Reprints; selections from these and
+other critical works with an introduction are collected in _Elizabethan
+Critical Essays_, G. Gregory Smith (1904). J. W. Cunliffe's edition of
+Gascoigne's _Posies_ (1907) contains the plays, which he has also edited
+with an introduction in _The Belles-Lettres Series_ (1906). A study of
+Legge's _Richardus Tertius_ is found in G. B. Churchill's _Richard III up
+to Shakespeare_ (Berlin, 1906); and an account of the Latin university
+plays in the article cited, by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller (_Shakspere
+Jahrbuch_, 1898). W. W. Greg's _A List of English Plays written before 1643
+and printed before 1700_ (London Bibliographical Society) is based on the
+title-pages of the original copies. Fleay's _Biographical Chronicle_
+includes all plays known, extant or not. Greg, Fleay, and Schelling
+supersede Halliwell-Phillipps's _Dictionary of Old English Plays_ (1860),
+and W. C. Hazlitt's _Manual of Old English Plays_ (1892). _English Drama, a
+Working Basis_, by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, Wellesley College (1895),
+is the only attempt at a directory to modern editions, and though very
+incomplete, is the most serviceable guide to the whole field of English
+drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Before the first act, "there came in upon the stage a king with an
+Imperiall Crowne upon his head ... sitting in a chariot very richely
+furnished, drawne in by foure kinges in their dublettes and hosen, with
+crownes upon their heades, representing unto us ambition," etc. And before
+the fifth act there is a similar exhibition of a woman in a chariot driving
+kings and slaves. These shows may have suggested to Marlowe the famous
+business of Tamburlaine and his chariot. The show before act ii introduces
+the paraphernalia of coffins and a grave, afterwards so frequent in popular
+tragedy.
+
+[3] The earlier version also survives in MS. and has been published by
+Professor Brandl in his _Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas_. The revised
+version is the result of elaborate care and reflects more highly developed
+dramatic conditions than existed in the sixties, but in some respects it
+may be closer to the original performance than is the manuscript. The songs
+of the chorus, now four maids of Gismunda's instead of four gentlemen of
+Salerne, and the dumb shows must have had some equivalents in the
+presentation before the Queen, though both are wanting in the earlier
+version. The dumb shows are noteworthy because, unlike those in _Gorboduc_
+and _Jocasta_, they are not allegorical, but represent important actions
+described or referred to in the text.
+
+[4] _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_, ii, 471.
+
+[5] For a list of Latin plays acted at the universities, see Fleay,
+_Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, vol. ii, 347-366. This list
+must be corrected in many particulars by an article, "Die Lateinischen
+Universitaets-Dramen in der Zeit der Koenigin Elisabeth," by
+George B. Churchill and Wolfgang Keller, _Jahrbuch der Deutschen
+Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, xxxiv, 220-323.
+
+[6] Far more novel than any of the plays discussed in its departures from
+Senecan precedent, is _Perfidus Hetruscus_. So far as can be judged from
+the outline (_Jahrbuch_, xxxiv, 250-252), it offers no semblance of Senecan
+structure. There is no chorus, but there are six ghosts, a villain, two
+accomplices,--one a Capuchin, the other a Jesuit,--and an elaborate plot,
+as full of surprises as of poisonings. It seems to be a popular revenge
+play turned into Latin, and can hardly come within our period.
+
+[7] One play should be mentioned here as standing in some ways between the
+classical and popular plays. _Promus and Cassandra_, by George Whetstone,
+published 1578, cannot be placed in any of our four classes, for there is
+no evidence that it was ever acted. Like _Tancred and Gismunda_, it was
+based on an Italian _novella_, also the source of _Measure for Measure_,
+and it follows Latin comedy rather than tragedy. In its division into five
+acts, its frequent soliloquies, its attempted observance of decorum
+(especially vaunted in the preface), and in its serious purpose and moral
+sentiments, the play shows a pedantic clinging to classicism. In the main,
+however, it belongs with _Damon and Pithias_ and _Appius and Virginia_, and
+seems to have been intended for performance by children. It is a mixture of
+tragedy, comedy, farce, and songs; and this abundance of incongruous
+material seems to have led to its division into two plays, as Whetstone
+says, for the purpose of decorum. Here, as elsewhere in the period, the
+experiment of putting new material into old dramatic structures burst the
+bottles. Clowns, parasites, tyrants, prostitutes, hangmen, Egyptians, and
+girls in boys' clothing make up a pageant which is a sort of tragicomedy
+but which the learned author called by the more popular title, "a history."
+
+[8] _Ariodante and Genevra_ (_Orlando Furioso_), _Ajax and Ulysses_,
+_Agamemnon and Ulysses_, _Caesar and Pompey_, _Cloridon and Radimanta_ _Duke
+of Milan_, _Effigenia_ (_Iphigenia_), _Four Sons of Fabius_, _Mutius
+Scaevola_, _Quintus Fabius_, _Perseus and Andromeda_, _Sarpedon_, _Scipio
+Africanus_, _Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes_, _Telemo_, _Twelve Labors of
+Hercules_. Some titles suggesting medieval romance are: _Knight of the
+Burning Bush_, _Red Knight_, _Paris and Vienna_, _Solitary Knight_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MARLOWE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
+
+
+The growing national consciousness that reached its triumphant culmination
+in the defeat of Spain made itself felt in the drama, specifically in
+efforts to present the glories of English history, and still more potently
+in an awakened responsiveness to the new fields and new incentives for
+artistic ambition. The beginning of the greatness of the national drama is
+significantly coincident with the victory over the Armada. By that time the
+spirit of noble endeavor had found lodgment in every worthy breast. It
+animated Marlowe no less than Drake, and the author of the least successful
+chronicle play as well as admiral or counselor. The extraordinary
+achievements that had been contributing to the might of England as a
+political power were, indeed, but one expression of the freedom and
+eagerness of individual initiative that characterized this English
+Renaissance and found other expression in the activities and
+accomplishments of literature. In comparison with the men of preceding
+generations, the Elizabethan Englishman faced a world of new horizons, new
+ideas, boundless opportunities, and alluring rewards. Every career was open
+and promised an untrod pathway and unworn laurels. He might win fame as a
+pirate, philosopher, or poet; or in the new excitement of living he might
+crowd not one but many careers into the span of life. The versatility of a
+Raleigh only typifies the excitement and energy of deed, the lively
+movement of thought which quickened mind and body, and resulted, now in a
+voyage to Virginia, now in a conspiracy, now in a sonnet, and now in a
+history of the universe. And this feverishness to make trial of thronging
+opportunities was symptomatic not only of vigor of intellect, celerity of
+emotion, and independence of will, but also of an imaginative idealism that
+enlightened the daily living of many a sorry citizen, and was destined to
+live resplendent in the verses of Spenser and Shakespeare. In the stir of
+free ideas, the surprise of discovery, and the glow of accomplishment, life
+grew heroic, attainment seemed easy, and no ideals too lofty for the
+scaling ladders of human aspiration. Men achieved much and they dreamt of
+more. The apprentice went to the theatre to don Fortunatus's cap or to
+triumph with Tamburlaine; every one had his El Dorado distant only a short
+voyage; and, with the new world before them, poets and playwrights set sail
+in blithe confidence of splendid discovery. Never before, or perhaps since,
+have so many new things seemed within grasp, whether in literature or in
+life; never has all living so throbbed with a sense of the nearness of the
+unattainable, the kinship of the real and the ideal.
+
+In non-dramatic literature the incentives of the classics and of the
+Italians from Petrarch to Tasso had led on from translations and imitations
+to experiments and inventions. In the dozen years before the Armada, lyric
+poetry, criticism, and prose fiction had felt the stir of successful
+English innovation, and the time was almost ripe for the vast projects of
+Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon. In comedy the development had been earlier and
+more rapid than in tragedy, and had already in Peele and Lyly reached the
+stage of dexterous expression and varied innovation. Whether presenting a
+story of classical mythology or of medieval romance, whether farcical,
+Plautian, pastoral, sentimental, satirical, or spectacular, comedy was by
+the time of Marlowe ready with its examples to offer instruction to any
+writer attempting tragic themes. Tragedy could hardly remain longer in the
+stage of translation, imitation, and feeble experiment which we have been
+considering.
+
+Still further, a stimulus for tragedy was exercised by the daily events of
+that active era. These stirred men's imagination and ambition, and must
+almost inevitably have directed artistic impulse toward the heroic, the
+passionate, and the terrible. The abundance of bloodshed in Elizabethan
+tragedy may find some interpretation in the fact that Ben Jonson killed his
+man in a duel and that Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The time was
+one of bloodshed, violence, quick and brutal passion; a time in which the
+torture of a Gloster or the revenge of a Shylock was far closer to life, to
+the life at least of poets and dramatists, than such stories are to-day.
+Drake in his cabin drinking and praying with the unmoved lieutenant whom he
+was to hang the next day is a bit of fact that rivals in horror the
+devilries of a Barabas. Even if Seneca's example had not already approved
+themes of adultery, murder, blood-vengeance, the atrocities of tyranny, and
+the deadly strife of father and son, such themes must have stirred men's
+minds in the days of the Massacre of St. Bartholemew and the career of Mary
+Stuart. If tradition had not already selected the falls of princes as the
+especial field for tragedy, the history of monarchical Europe in the
+sixteenth century must have given such stories a power of appeal hardly to
+be appreciated now. In that strenuous generation the dramatist must have
+found artistic impulses from bloody and gruesome deeds, and no less from
+daring ambition, heroic struggle, and indomitable greatness of mind.
+
+The summons, however, which the tragic muse heeded came directly from the
+public theatres and the professional actors. The university men who at this
+time were writing for the theatre under the lash and loans of a
+slave-driving theatrical manager may have been tempted to forget that their
+sordid and Bohemian existence offered a means for triumphant artistic
+expression. The London theatres were now well established, patronized by
+the courtiers, and secured in prosperity by the motley audiences that
+crowded their performances. They had become important centres in the social
+life of the time, comparable to the newspaper offices of a
+twentieth-century city in their close touch with the daily life about them;
+and in their task of affording amusement and information fulfilling in part
+the functions of periodicals and novels as well as of the drama at
+present. The stage, without scenery, was still in a transition state
+between the medieval and modern, and, to our view, almost unrealizably
+crude. Places were sometimes indicated by signs; properties, beds, tables,
+or trees were brought on or off as occasion required; or, a heavier
+property, like a cave, might remain whether the scene was in cave-land or a
+counting-room. There was no drop curtain; actors went off, others came on,
+and the place changed from a seacoast to the palace; or, the actors merely
+moved across the platform, and it transpired that they had passed from "a
+fair and pleasant green" to a room in the house of Faustus. At the close of
+a tragedy all the survivors might be needed to bear off the bodies of the
+dead. A balcony in the rear of the stage stood in stead of a castle wall or
+the deck of a ship, while a curtained space below might represent an inner
+room or a dungeon vault. A curtain extending across the stage seems at
+times to have been used in managing a change of scene. Spectacular elements
+were not lacking: fireworks, ascents and descents of gods, armies,
+coronations, and battles delighted the eye. On costume, anachronistic but
+elaborate, the manager lavished his money and ingenuity. Cleopatra tightly
+laced, Tamburlaine in scarlet copper breeches are recorded facts, but
+Venuses, Apollos, mermaids, devils, satyrs, and nymphs leave something for
+fancy to conceive, as does the "gown to go invisible in" which perhaps
+shielded Ariel or Puck. Of the acting we have little information. Female
+parts were played by boys; clowns with their jigs were great favorites,
+but a considerable skill in acting must be supposed,--less subtle, less
+occupied with stage business than to-day, more declamatory possibly, and
+more attentive to the spoken word. Any superiority in the appreciation
+possessed by the audiences over those of to-day must be attributed not to
+their superior intelligence, but to their long training in listening to
+plays. They probably differed from uneducated audiences in the cheaper
+theatres of to-day chiefly, if at all, in spontaneity of emotions, a desire
+for emotional incongruity, and a cultivated delight in verbal fireworks or
+felicities. It is certain that in the time of Marlowe they were gaping for
+sensation and joyed in a comedy of beatings, a tragedy of murders, and a
+mixture of jigging and villany. For such audiences, for such a stage, under
+stress of immediate demand requiring hasty and collaborative work, Marlowe
+and his contemporaries wrote. They were hack writers, and so viewed by the
+literati of their day. Every one of them, Shakespeare included, had in the
+first place to satisfy the demands of the public theatres. This needs to be
+remembered no less than the fact that the plays of nearly all, of the
+meanest hack as well as Shakespeare, seem to have felt the stir and thrill
+of the effort to express thought in enduring words.
+
+In the course of the six or seven years ending with Marlowe's death in
+1593, tragedy experienced a rapid and multiform development. The various
+influences already noticed in the last chapter as at work were developed
+by the ingenuity and innovation of a dozen writers, and translated into the
+expression of individual genius by Marlowe and Shakespeare. No theory of
+tragedy ruled the theatres; no school of dramatists adopted any code of
+principles; the plays which we class as tragedies were mostly known as
+histories and were written in violence to the accepted literary conception.
+Nevertheless, tragedy was establishing itself as a popular species of
+drama, was separating its themes and their treatment clearly from those of
+comedy, and was defining the course which it was to follow until the
+Puritan revolution.
+
+The impossibility of determining a precise chronology of the stage history
+of the period renders the exact appraisal of indebtedness, or the tracing
+of any certain evolution, very insecure. The changes in the companies in
+1594 and the consequent publication of a large number of plays in the same
+year enable us to fix on a number of tragedies acted before Marlowe's
+death, and we may safely add a few others as not later than 1595. Among
+these extant tragedies and in the names of those that have not survived
+there are representatives of various types,--biblical plays, tragedies
+dealing with romantic love, domestic tragedies telling stories of
+contemporary crimes. In any one of these plays, indeed, various types may
+be combined; the writers were concerned with telling stories, not with
+_l'evolution des genres_. But the most salient and pervasive forces working
+in tragedy may be roughly denominated as (1) the chronicle history play,
+(2) the revenge type of tragedy, (3) the type of tragedy created by
+Marlowe. To these should perhaps be added romantic comedy with its
+idealized love story and its element of averted tragedy. But the first
+three types, though overlapping and not distinct, were of marked importance
+in the history of tragedy and need especial consideration in connection
+with the most important dramatists of this period, Peele, Kyd, Marlowe, and
+Shakespeare.
+
+The chronicle history play may claim attention first, not because it was
+demonstrably earlier in appearance than the others, but because it engaged
+the efforts of nearly every dramatic writer of the period, and because in
+its disregard of foreign influence or parallel in its methods and
+structure, and in its devotion to the demands of the London theatres, it is
+most typical of the drama of the period. The prime essential of a play was
+that it should tell a story. A playwright took his material from _novella_,
+poem, or chronicle, and strove to translate it into an interesting and
+varied series of scenes. In the chronicles he found material peculiarly
+suited to such translation. Everything was there,--battles, coronations,
+counsels, conspiracies, amours, speeches, characterization, and sentiments.
+No enlargement was necessary as in the case of a _novella_, no
+considerations of consistency of characterization, few incidents in
+addition to those in the highway or the byways of the narrative, and only a
+minimum of invention. The interest of a distinct plot was superseded by
+that of historical persons, events, and spectacles, and these compelled
+only such unity as might be secured by taking the reign of one monarch as
+the basis of a play, or sometimes of several plays. The presentation of
+history involved a large number of persons on the stage, many changes of
+place, a long stretch of time, and an incongruity of matter, all this
+loosely organized into scenes themselves often long and varied and
+admitting some change of place and lapse of time within their bounds.
+Though the scene, rather than the act, was the unit in popular drama, it
+had almost no structural value. A play was really a continuous performance,
+the actors coming and going, a battle intervening, and now and then a
+withdrawal of all the actors and the appearance of a new group presaging a
+marked change of place or the beginning of an entirely different action. In
+the arrangement of scenes, however, some attention to parallel, contrast,
+and climax soon became manifest; and some integration of the confused
+material from the chronicles, particularly in the separation from scenes
+abounding in action of those purely narrative or expository and those
+purely lyrical, chiefly lamentations. In spite of such beginnings of
+system, the early chronicle plays, "The Famous Victories of Henry V," "Jack
+Straw," "Leir," "Edward I," and "The Troublesome Reign" are less coherent
+in structure, more incongruous in material, and less regardful of any clear
+fable, tragic or comic, than are other contemporary plays.
+
+To determine criteria to define these plays and their successors as a class
+is by no means easy. They were usually based on the chronicles, but the
+method of composition just described was applied to legend or poem with
+similar results, and there were also plays based on chronicles of
+contemporary events. They had for their main purpose the presentation of
+history, but this was shared by plays on French and Roman as well as
+English history, and there were historical plays that had no marks of the
+chronicle method of structure. The English chronicle plays usually show a
+pronounced patriotic temper, but this is often subsidiary and neglected in
+the desire for farce or sensation. The spectacular features are a
+characteristic element, a battle-scene being perhaps the most indispensable
+element or ingredient of a chronicle play, but this again fails to supply
+even more than a superficial criterion. In the popularity of the
+presentations of historical facts, all kinds of stories were worked over
+into a likeness to "true chronicle history," and the genuine historical,
+legendary, and biographical plays are hardly distinguishable from the
+pretenders. An illuminating illustration of the characteristics of the
+national drama about 1590 can be found in a comparison of two dramatic
+versions of a romance in Cinthio's "Hecatommithi," one by Cinthio himself,
+the other by Robert Greene. The Italian play is a tragicomedy in strict
+Senecan form, in which Arrenopia (Greene's Dorothea) appears as a
+declamatory queen confiding her troubles to the attendant nurse. Greene
+took the romantic comedy, added some pseudo-historical events, patriotic
+sentiments, and a pitched field for the finale, and called the whole "The
+Scottish Historie of James IV, slaine at Flodden." For our purpose the
+chronicle plays are to be regarded less as a distinct type than as
+representing a set of practices in vogue at this period and widely
+influential on the drama's development. They possessed the following
+characteristics and imposed some or all of them on very different forms of
+drama: subjects drawn from English history, the presentation of historical
+and political events, an incongruous mixture of material, a narrative
+structure almost as unorganized as the chronicles themselves, patriotic
+sentiments, and the stage pageantry of court and camp.
+
+From their earliest appearance, however, the chronicle plays offered
+opportunities for developments later consummated by Shakespeare. Comic
+scenes were freely interspersed to enliven the tedium of royal
+declamations, and in these lay the possibility of the combination of
+history and comedy in the Falstaff plays. On the other hand, the history of
+a doleful fall of a prince or the retribution visited on some tyrant gave
+the plays a tragic tone and opened the way for "Macbeth" and "Lear." "The
+Troublesome Reign of King John,"[9] the basis of Shakespeare's play, is the
+best example of an early chronicle play presenting undeveloped
+possibilities for tragedy. It is written partly in blank verse, partly in
+rhyme, and partly in prose. It does not follow the chronicles with any
+fidelity, but twists history, adds fiction, and proclaims throughout a
+vigorous protestant patriotism. Battles, embassies, farce, orations, death,
+and much else mingle together, each scene being treated like another and no
+discernible method being followed in their arrangement or proportion,
+except that of a loose adherence to the scheme of "a life and death." The
+first part closes with John crowned and assured of the miscarriage of his
+intended murder of Arthur; in the second part, as the address to the reader
+declares,
+
+    "First scenes shows Arthur's death in infancie,
+    And last concludes John's fatall tragedie."
+
+"The Troublesome Reign" indicates what little advance had been made toward
+tragedy when Marlowe's first play appeared. The prologue to that play was a
+declaration of reform and innovation.
+
+    "From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
+    And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
+    We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,
+    Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
+    Threatening the world with high astounding terms,
+    And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword."
+
+The doggerel rhyme favored in the popular drama was to give place to blank
+verse, and the jigging clowns to heroic themes and "high astounding terms."
+Marlowe came to the theatre,[10] fresh from the university, his fancy
+aflame with the beauty of Latin verse and story, his mind storming with the
+problems and ambitions of adolescent genius. He threw aside Senecan
+traditions and devoted himself to meeting the demands of the professional
+stage. When a few years later he died, English tragedy had been created
+anew largely through his achievement.
+
+His independence and initiative are shown in his choice of subjects.
+Although in "Dido" he took a standard theme of humanistic tragedy, and in
+the Henry VI plays and "Edward II" followed the prevailing taste for
+English history, and in "The Massacre of Paris" another fashion for the
+dramatization of current atrocities; yet in "Tamburlaine" he chose the
+story of a world conqueror, in "Faustus" a legend that had just entered
+print in the German "Volksbuch" of 1587, and in "The Jew of Malta" he
+worked over unknown sources into a tragedy of revenge with evident freedom
+of invention. All three stories present notable contributions to tragic
+themes, and the last two disregard both the fashion for historical subjects
+and the requirement that tragedy deal only with princes. These new and
+varied themes gave a chance for a considerable revolution in the content of
+tragedy. Revenge, murders, battles, intrigue, physical horrors are still
+prominent; but the Senecan round of incest and adultery disappears, and the
+"Mirror for Magistrates" no longer represents the epitome of tragic action.
+Marlowe's choice and treatment of plots seem, indeed, dictated by a new
+conception of tragedy, as dealing not merely with a life and death, or a
+bloody crime, or a reversal of fortune, but with the heroic struggle of a
+great personality, doomed to inevitable defeat. "Tamburlaine" is scarcely a
+tragedy at all, but rather a chronicle of the hero's greatness; but in
+"Faustus" and "The Jew" heroes with ambitions boundless and passionate like
+Tamburlaine's are overwhelmed in the end by the inexorable destiny of human
+weakness. In "Edward II," where the hero is less dominant over the action,
+the study of historical facts results in a more restrained, more human
+presentation of the same theme, a ruling passion drawing the protagonist to
+pitiful defeat.
+
+In the structure of his plots Marlowe forsook the Senecan models and began
+with the methods of the chronicle play. "Tamburlaine" is a chronicle
+history, presenting the story of the events of a life and ending with
+death. Originally the play contained comic scenes, omitted in the published
+form and evidently of no value in structure or conception. Without these
+there is enough of a medley, though the amazing succession of conquests,
+defiances, murders, harangues, battles, funerals, wooings, and horrors is
+arranged with considerable skill. There is manifest regard for contrast in
+the alternating exhibitions of Tamburlaine's power and his enemies'
+weakness; his love for Zenocrate, an addition to the source, is integrated
+with the main story of conquest; and in Part I the climactical arrangement
+is emphasized by the division into acts. Each act comprises an important
+stage in Tamburlaine's career, act v presenting the culmination in the
+suicide of the Turkish emperor and empress, the conquest of Arabia,
+Zenocrate's former betrothed, and the submission of her conquered father to
+her marriage with Tamburlaine. Part II, the prologue implies, was an
+afterthought due to the popularity of Part I. The climax is carried on
+somewhat loosely up to the harnessing of the jades of Asia; but the
+reversal of fortune, though developed in the death of Zenocrate, the
+unworthiness of the eldest son, and the approach of death to Tamburlaine,
+is not given effective emphasis. Tamburlaine's death is merely the end of
+the play, not a tragic catastrophe. Epical and crude though their structure
+is, the two plays possess a firmer organization and a greater unity than
+any preceding popular tragedy. Everything centres in the protagonist; he
+keeps the middle of the stage; his towering passion and incessant
+declamation fix one's attention; episodes like the deaths of the Turks or
+of Olympia hardly divert the mind from his titanic personality.
+
+A similar unity governs the structure of "Faustus" and "The Jew." In each
+there are many actions, some comic, instead of one serious action, and the
+history of a lifetime instead of a great emotional crisis; but in each the
+dominant figure and the course of his controlling passion impose a certain
+unity of structure. Both begin with soliloquies, revealing the protagonists
+at the height of fortune and about to face crises in their careers; and it
+is significant of the increased importance given to inner conflict that
+reflective soliloquies, neglected in "Tamburlaine," play a considerable
+part, especially in "Faustus." In both plays there is also advance in the
+clear conception of catastrophe, which now controls the structure. In "The
+Jew" his thwarted lust for gold drives him through a series of villanous
+triumphs over difficulties until he is melodramatically hoist with his own
+petard. In "Faustus" the choice of the devilish magic leads through
+apparent success, past opportunities for repentance, to final remorse and
+damnation. In both plays, the domination of the protagonist by a passion,
+its conflicting joys and sorrows, and its final failure become points for
+emphasis. The history of a life thus becomes organized into a tragedy.
+
+In "Edward II," Marlowe's masterpiece in structure as in other respects,
+there is an absence of comedy, for which he seems to have had no aptitude,
+and adherence to the chronicles is governed by his maturing sense of the
+structural principles which should proportion the tragic story. Twenty
+years of confusion are condensed into five acts which attain dramatic
+organization not only under the direction of the central personality and
+the inevitable catastrophe, but also from the skillful handling of the
+counter-force. The play begins with a salient manifestation in the recall
+of Gaveston of the passion which is to be the king's downfall. The
+hazardous combination of the two similar careers of Gaveston and Spenser is
+adroitly managed; it develops the central theme of Edward's weakness and
+brings into active conflict the counter-force of the barons under the
+leadership of Mortimer. The alternating triumph and discomfiture of the
+king in his struggle with the barons leads to the climax of their
+humiliation at the end of act iii; and thus the turning-point of the action
+is given an emphasis not found in earlier plays. Henceforth the
+counter-force is in the ascendant, and the catastrophe is realized with a
+tremendous power that justifies Lamb's extravagance: "the death scene of
+Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern
+with which I am acquainted." The play, to be sure, has many faults of
+structure. It is the product of an immature period of the drama and of
+crude theatrical conditions; but it indicates clearly how Marlowe was
+developing tragic movement out of the confused narratives of the
+chronicles, and was giving to a presentation of diverse and crowded actions
+principles not altogether unlike those that Aristotle had found in the
+Attic drama.
+
+It should be added that the manifest excellences of the dramatic treatment
+lie less in the structure of any one play as a whole than in the handling
+of the separate scenes. These have, of course, the peculiarities of the
+popular stage and the chronicle plays. Events are sometimes reported by an
+intercalary narrative like scene ii, act i, of "Edward II," which consists
+of four lines by Gaveston, announcing that the nobles have gone to Lambeth,
+and four words of reply by Kent. Soliloquies are often used to explain
+action or character. In the task of translating incident into dramatic
+situation, however, Marlowe had the advantages of centuries of dramatic
+practice and the traditions of tragic acting, and his genius often worked
+with facility and power. These qualities are most manifest in the death
+scenes. Olympia, Bajazeth, Zabina, Zenocrate, all die with at least stage
+effectiveness; and in the deaths of Faustus and Edward, Marlowe's dramatic
+power reached its highest mark. Death, synonymous with tragic catastrophe,
+was revealed to future dramatists as something more than physical horror or
+the end of existence. Death became the loss of active and glorious living,
+the negation of individual power, the expiring struggle of the drama of
+life, its last defiance and its most irresistible appeal to pity and
+terror.
+
+Characterization, like conception and structure, in Marlowe's tragedy is
+largely an affair of the protagonist. Minor figures are for the most part
+mere sketches without any sustained and consistent delineation. Only in
+"Edward II" does the antagonist receive much attention, and only in that
+play is the character of the tragic hero free from lapses into caricature
+and absurdity. The protagonists, as in many tragedies before and since, are
+evil men intent on evil deeds. They appeal to our sympathy only in
+misfortune and disaster; in more fortunate circumstances they run counter
+to moral laws and excite a mixture of admiration, horror, and even
+contempt. Tamburlaine the atheist and Faust the dealer in magic invited a
+greater condemnation in every Christian then than now. Barabas is
+conceived, under the inspiration of Machiavelli and perhaps also of stage
+practice, as an intriguing villain with all the accompaniments ever since
+familiar in drama and fiction. He is the source of all evil and utterly
+without conscience; he avows his villany to the audience and he works by
+crafty intrigue with the aid of an equally conscienceless accomplice.
+Edward II, on the other hand, is of the type of tyrants, weak, vacillating,
+and self-indulgent, and he offers the difficult dramatic problem of a
+protagonist who is sometimes contemptible and must sometimes be heroic and
+pitiful. Marlowe's conception of a tragic hero, however, transcended any
+outlines furnished by his sources or any stage types such as villain and
+tyrant. He conceived his heroes first of all as men capable of great
+passions, consumed by their desires, abandoned to the pursuit of their
+lusts, whether they led to glory, butchery, loss of kingdom, or eternal
+damnation. This intensity of emotion gives them an elevation and a heroic
+interest that outlasts contemptibility or pathos. Nor are they without
+representational value. They linger in the mind as men, absurd,
+exaggerated, monstrous at times, but appealingly human in moments when
+their passion rings true, and impressively typical of the eternal struggle
+of passion and desire against the fixed limits of human attainment. It is
+in the realization of their emotions that the plays secure their great
+impressiveness. Tragedy has become not the presentation of history, myth,
+or events of any sort, but the presentation of the passionate struggle and
+pitiful defeat of an extraordinary human being.
+
+Genuine human passion and a vital conception of life's tragedy found
+expression in verse, sometimes inspired, sometimes absurd, but always
+spontaneous and unfaltering. Blank verse, borrowed from Italy and adopted
+in English Senecan plays, now became a new instrument, and its preeminent
+adaptability for tragic poetry henceforth long remained unquestioned. If it
+has had many greater masters since, it had none comparable before, and, in
+spite of stiffness, monotony, and great unevenness, it rises now and again
+to remarkable technical excellence. It is _sui generis_, without known
+models, though it gathers to itself many of the prevailing characteristics
+of Renaissance poetry. It has plenty of Senecan hyperbole, but curiously
+little of Senecan antithesis or aphorism; it abounds in rant and bombast;
+it is over-adorned with classical allusion; it delights in ornament and
+sonority; and in the main it is declamatory and lyrical rather than
+dramatically suited to character and situation. Again, it is mannered and
+often monotonous, especially in "Tamburlaine," where the repetition of
+names and the recurrence of polysyllabic words at the ends of lines give
+the familiar swing:--
+
+    "To ride in triumph through Persepolis"....
+
+    "Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate"....
+
+    "Then shall my native city, Samarcanda."
+
+Yet the lover of romantic poetry will find delight in the very impetuosity
+of the rant, the thunder of the declamation, the roll of the proper names,
+the color and pageantry of the descriptions, the occasional loveliness of
+the luxurious classicism, and yet more in the splendid surges of the verse
+to reveal the turmoil and anguish of passionate death. From the first
+moment Marlowe was an undoubted poet; and to his tremendous facility of
+words and rhythm he was adding, as "Edward II" reveals, a moderation of
+ornament, an evenness of power, and a dramatic consistency, while still
+retaining the potentiality of dazzling dramatic flash. He brought not only
+blank verse but poetry to the English drama, and the greatness of its style
+dates from his achievement.
+
+We must not, however, in the poet forget the playwright, or lose sight of
+Marlowe's contributions to the purely theatrical side of the drama.
+"Tamburlaine" set a standard in stage effects as well as in poetry. Kings
+and sultans appear in droves, crowns are handed about like toys, treaties
+are torn, cities stormed, battles fought. Frequently eight or ten
+chieftains crowd the stage with their trains. The tents of the conqueror
+are pitched and changed from white to red and then to black as the
+beleaguered city continues to withstand his power. An emperor and empress
+dash out their brains against the bars of their cages. Tamburlaine drives
+the bridled monarchs harnessed to his chariot. Two bodies are burnt; there
+are murders by the dozen; and there is a solemn funeral scene where the
+hearse advances in the light of a burning town. The popular stage had
+probably never seen such a spectacle before. In "Faustus" new and even more
+surprising stage effects are supplied to illustrate the wonders of magic.
+In "The Jew of Malta" there is a display of plots and atrocities which the
+plays of the next thirty years strove in vain to surpass. Apart from these
+spectacular elements, it is obvious that the characterization and
+declamation, in fact the very structure of the plays, were designed to
+supply full opportunity for the acting of Edward Alleyn. He was nearly
+seven feet tall, we are told, the greatest actor of his day, and especially
+skilled in majestic parts. So to him, perhaps, as well as to Marlowe's
+conception of tragedy, was due the one-part play, the sonorous lines, and
+the passionate protagonists.
+
+Such considerations recall the double purpose, hardly separable from the
+drama and particularly manifest in the Elizabethan dramatists, the two
+desires, to please their audiences and to create literature. The spectacle,
+bombast, and horrors, the new and startling stories of Marlowe's plays were
+certainly intended to win his public, and they probably caused no twinges
+to his artistic conscience. On the other hand, while hardly an element of
+the dramas is without the influence of theatrical conditions, and while of
+deliberate artistic theories there is little evidence, yet the study of
+character, the underlying conceptions, the maturing power of structure, as
+well as the beauty and wisdom of separate passages, reveal a mind of
+intellectual and emotional profundity seeking to give noble expression to
+the things in life that impressed him most vividly. In the traffic of the
+stage the young poet found a chance to study men and their motives, to seek
+"the immortal flowers of poetry," and to utter something of his own
+experience and view of life. Into the rapid translation of stories for the
+stage he threw his own conception of the rewards and defeats of an
+overmastering passion, of the glory of struggle, and the pity and terror of
+failure. In the further development of the drama, his influence continued
+not only in his series of tragedies forming a fairly definite type, but
+also as that of an inspiring personality.
+
+    "Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,
+    Had in him those brave translunary things
+    That the first poets had; his raptures were
+    All air and fire, which made his verses clere;
+    For that fine madnes still he did retaine,
+    Which rightly should possess a poet's braine."
+
+                    DRAYTON: _Epistle to Henry Reynolds._
+
+The influence upon the drama of Marlowe's whilom friend, Thomas Kyd, was
+not due to his personality, concerning which recently discovered documents
+create no very favorable impression, or to any remarkable poetic genius,
+but to a single play and the type of tragedy which it fathered. "The
+Spanish Tragedy,"[11] entered in the Stationers' Register, 1592, and
+probably acted at about the same time as "Tamburlaine," and earlier than
+Marlowe's other plays, was the first representative of this type of revenge
+tragedies, and it gained an immediate and lasting popularity, though after
+a time encountering the ridicule of Jonson and later dramatists. The story
+of revenge had already appeared in "Horestes" and in Latin plays at the
+universities; and theme, ghost, treatment, and structure were derived from
+Seneca by Kyd and adapted with great originality to the popular drama. At
+least, no other dramatist has as good a claim to be considered the creator
+of a species of tragedy that had a long series of representatives even
+after its culmination in Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
+
+The main theme of the play is revenge of a father for a son, superintended
+by a ghost; and this theme attaches to itself other motives important both
+here and in their later developments. The revenge is delayed by hesitation
+on the part of Hieronimo, who finds his task a difficult one and requires
+much proof and superabundant deliberation to spur his irresolution into
+activity. Madness is another accompaniment of the main theme; the second
+title of the 1602 quarto, "Old Hieronimo mad againe," indicating how
+important it was in the stage presentation. Hieronimo pretends madness, and
+his pretended madness often passes into real melancholy and distraction.
+Isabella, his wife, is driven by insanity to suicide. Intrigue used both
+against and by the avenger is another important element; the villain is a
+machinator and Hieronimo finally accomplishes his revenge by means of
+dissimulation and trickery. According to both Senecan and national
+precedents, vengeance moves in a pathway of blood; ten of the _dramatis
+personae_, innocent and guilty alike, pass to "the loathsome pool of
+Acheron," and the final slaughter leaves five bodies to be borne from the
+stage. Intrigue and slaughter characterize most of the tragedies of this
+period, notably "The Jew of Malta," but the ghost-directed revenge,
+hesitation, insanity, and the meditative soliloquies distinguished more
+specifically the Kydian species. In spite of the medley of intrigue and
+carnage, there is introduced, after Senecan fashion, much philosophizing
+and introspection. Meditations on fate, revenge, suicide, and similar
+subjects play a large part in the development of the story and are most
+frequently given the form of soliloquies. Hieronimo's inner struggle is
+revealed in lonely communings, now in defense, now in bitter condemnation
+of his delay.
+
+The structure is an interesting adaptation of Senecan and popular
+characteristics. The play does not confine itself to the last phase of an
+action, and it introduces various actions introductory or subsidiary to
+that of the revenge, and a mixture of comedy. Moreover, everything is
+represented on the stage with the freedom established in the popular drama.
+On the other hand, there is much exposition by means of narrative, and
+Revenge and the ghost of Andrea appear, after Senecan fashion, as a
+prologue, and after each act as a sort of vestigial chorus. While there is
+a surplus of violent and external action, the epic, lyric, and reflective
+scenes picture an inner conflict and supply both aphorisms and a searching
+psychology. When late in the play Hieronimo's revenge for his son is
+finally started, it has to contend with both his own hesitation and the
+intrigues of the villain. Its development, in comparison with "Hamlet," is
+absurdly faulty because of Kyd's failure to make clear from the start the
+character of the avenger; but, if it is studied as a first attempt to give
+structure to a complex theme, the vicissitudes of Hieronimo's irresolution
+and frenzy will seem carefully designed and strikingly prophetic of the
+course of Hamlet's struggle.
+
+Kyd's skill in devising stage situations is shown by the dramatic value and
+lasting effect on the public of the scene in which Hieronimo is called from
+his naked bed to discover the body of his son hanging in the arbor, or of
+the scene in which, offering a handkerchief to the weeping Senex, he draws
+forth the bloody napkin which he has kept as a reminder of his son's death.
+The play within the play, used here as a means of revenge; the scenes in
+which Isabella "runs lunatick"; the laments and final exultation of the
+ghost; the exhibition of the body of Horatio after the mock play, found
+later imitators and became usual accessories of revenge tragedies. Indeed,
+minor bits of stage business, as the wearing of black, the swearing by the
+cross of the sword, the capture of the accomplice by the watch, the reading
+of a book before a soliloquy, the falling on the ground as an expression of
+grief, though not the inventions of Kyd, were given their later vogue
+partly through the popularity of this play.
+
+Some of the types of character represented also appear again and again in
+later plays. Lorenzo is the villain par excellence; his accomplice is
+grotesque as well as evil; and Bel Imperia, both prettily sentimental and
+desperately revengeful, is of a type not uncommon in later tragedy. The
+character of Hieronimo, rudely as it is drawn, is not without subtlety of
+conception. This type of tragic hero, very different from Marlowe's,
+naturally good and noble, meditative by temperament, driven to melancholy
+and madness by the responsibility forced on him by crime, and at length
+accomplishing direful revenge through trickery and irony, is manifestly a
+precursor of Hamlet. Kyd's style justifies Nash's description, "whole
+handfulls of tragical speeches" and "a blank verse bodged up with ifs and
+ands." It displays the rhetorician rather than the poet and, like his
+conception and structure, gives evidence of an ingenious innovator adapting
+Seneca. It abounds in artificial balance, parallelism, antitheses,
+word-play, strained figures, and it harrows hell for its tragic vocabulary;
+but its love scenes have a verbal prettiness and its tirades and
+soliloquies helped to confer on subsequent tragic style sententiousness and
+elevation as well as rant. Far inferior to "Tamburlaine" as an artistic
+achievement, "The Spanish Tragedy" can no more than that play be pushed
+aside as a mere blood and thunder tirade. Beneath its absurdities there
+lies the conception of an inner struggle against overwhelming
+responsibility, and of the conflict of the individual against evil and
+fate.
+
+From the success of such a play Kyd may very naturally have turned to the
+similar story of revenge embodied in Belleforest's "Historie of Hamblet."
+From contemporary references we infer that the old "Hamlet" was a tragedy
+of blood, written under Senecan influence, and containing a ghost that
+cried "revenge." If, as seems undoubted, it was used by Shakespeare, traces
+of it must be found in the German version of Hamlet, in the corrupt first
+quarto, and even in Shakespeare's final version; but there is as yet no
+agreement among scholars as to what can be attributed to Shakespeare's
+borrowing rather than to his invention and transformation. It seems
+entirely probable, however, that the early play was a companion-piece to
+"The Spanish Tragedy," containing the motives of revenge, hesitation,
+insanity, intrigue, and slaughter, with the addition of the murderer's
+passion for the wife of the murdered. On the now established theory that
+the play was by Kyd, we may infer a protagonist like Hieronimo, much
+meditating and soliloquizing, a dramatic structure like that of "The
+Spanish Tragedy," a play within a play, a mad Ophelia, and an intrigue
+culminating in slaughter. There are evidences in Marston and later
+contributors to the revenge type that the original "Hamlet," fully as much
+as "The Spanish Tragedy," served as their model; while doubtless like "The
+Spanish Tragedy," Kyd's "Hamlet" must have borne a much closer resemblance
+than even that play to Shakespeare's masterpiece.
+
+"Soliman and Perseda," if not by Kyd, at least shows many evidences of his
+influence and is itself an interesting combination of the tragedy of
+revenge and romantic comedy. Love, Fortune, and Death make up a Kydian
+chorus and debate for supremacy until the close, when Death, like the
+Ghost, exults in an enumeration of the dead. The love story furnishes a
+clearly defined plot. The course of true love, despite the heroine's
+jealousy, an unintended murder by the hero, his banishment, the sack of
+Rhodes by the Turks, and the Sultan's passion for the heroine, ascends
+through the first four acts to the reunion and prospective happiness of the
+lovers. The fifth act proceeds to their separation and death through the
+Sultan's wickedness. Some of the incidents are those of romantic comedy,
+such as the use of the chain as a symbol of loyal love, its loss, the
+resulting jealousy, and the donning of boy's clothes by the heroine in
+order to receive death from the sword of the hated suitor. The fun of the
+piece is furnished by a _miles gloriosus_, Basilisco, and the extraordinary
+merit of his characterization furnishes the chief reason for doubting Kyd's
+authorship. Over lyric love, fortune, and fun, however, Death reigns
+supreme. This is his favorite tragedy, for eighteen persons are actually
+killed on the stage, and at the close not one of the _dramatis personae_ is
+left to bear off the bodies of the slain.
+
+The successes of Marlowe and Kyd gave tragic stories a new popularity with
+actors and audiences, and the stage was occupied with fiercely declaiming
+Asiatic conquerors, deep-dyed villains, and shrieking ghosts. Marlowe's
+themes, characters, and blank verse found many imitators, while Kyd's plays
+encouraged the presentation of stories of ghosts and revenge similar to
+those in Seneca and his English imitators. Direct imitations of Seneca in
+technic and language are also common. The abundance of bloodshed is
+invariable. A wide range of material was drawn upon, including Asiatic
+story, Italian _novelle_, Plutarch, Xenophon, and the Bible, although the
+English chronicles remained the favorite source, and the majority have at
+least the semblance of a historical setting. Many have a mixture of comic
+material, but they show in general a preponderance of tragic events and
+emotions far greater than in the early popular tragedies. There seems to
+have been a general effort in conformity with an address to the audience
+placed in the second act of "The Wars of Cyrus," acted by the Children of
+the Revels, which announces that they have "exiled from our tragicke stage"
+"needlesse antickes," and promises "mournfull plaints writ sad, and
+tragicke tearmes." The gentle reader will not linger long over any of these
+plays or discover in them signs of nascent genius, but they have a
+considerable interest in illustrating further the development of chronicle
+history toward tragedy, the influence of the Senecan tradition, and the
+dominating power of Marlowe's example. They also inform us of the
+conditions governing tragedy when Shakespeare began his career. In their
+many resemblances one to another we have evidence not so much of direct
+borrowings as of the close relations then existing among the few theatrical
+playwrights and companies. Any successful innovation was bound to have its
+immediate imitations, and on the other hand the keen rivalry for success
+was likely to result in innovation and novelty.
+
+Of these plays perhaps "Locrine"[12] has the most diverse indebtedness. It
+presents a story of a bloody family feud, but it is also of the chronicle
+history order, with a mixture of battles, patriotism, and farce. It
+exhibits borrowings from Spenser, imitations of "Tamburlaine," Ate as a
+chorus, dumb shows requiring a menagerie, two ghosts, one of whom takes
+part in the action, and a story of double revenge. The hero is occupied
+with revenge number one until the fourth act, when his infidelity makes him
+the object of a return revenge that culminates in his death. Among the
+plays mainly indebted to Marlowe are: Greene's "Alphonsus of Aragon," a
+comedy that is almost a travesty on the first part of "Tamburlaine";
+"Selimus," ascribed to Greene, which also shows Senecan structure and
+philosophy; "The Wounds of Civil War, or the Tragedies of Marius and
+Sylla," the first extant play based on Plutarch; "The Wars of Cyrus," in
+part romantic comedy; and Peele's "Battle of Alcazar," which has a
+presenter, dumb shows, three ghosts, and a Moorish villain of the same
+class as Marlowe's Barabas and Aaron in "Titus Andronicus."
+
+The English chronicle plays also felt Marlowe's influence, most notably in
+Shakespeare's early historical plays, to be considered in a moment, but
+also in several plays almost contemporary with "Edward II" and the first
+versions of "Henry VI." "The True Tragedy of Richard III" (1594), by an
+unknown author or authors, seems to have preceded Shakespeare's play and to
+have followed the third part of "Henry VI." It presents a combination of
+chronicle play with Marlowesque protagonist and a Kydian apparatus of
+revenge. The ghost of Clarence appears at the beginning crying, "Vindicta,"
+and Truth and Poetry supply the necessary exposition. The revenge element
+becomes prominent toward the end of the play, when the ghosts of Richard's
+victims appear to him in a dream, not visible as in Shakespeare, and the
+remorseful villain declares that not merely his victims but all the forces
+of nature, sun, moon, and planets, cry revenge:--
+
+    "The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge.
+    The silly lambs sit bleating for revenge."
+
+Richard is a man of powerful will carried away by ambition and evidently
+modeled on Tamburlaine; but unlike the Scythian and like Faustus, he is
+conscience-smitten, and his punishment comes in remorse as well as death.
+This conception, based on the chronicle, is treated with power, but in the
+main the play is a hodge-podge. More worthy examples of chronicle history
+are "Edward III," often ascribed to Marlowe and not unworthy of him, and
+the anonymous "Tragedy of Woodstock."[13] The latter shows frequent
+resemblances to "Edward II" and apparently preceded Shakespeare's "Richard
+II," leaving off at the point where that play begins. The events of half a
+reign are focused about the central personalities of Richard and Woodstock,
+a weak king beset by flatterers and an honorable and patriotic leader of
+the nobles. The construction is skillful in its integration of comedy with
+the main action and its alternation of tragic and comic, action and
+counsel, force and counter-force; and the characterization is remarkably
+well individualized. Woodstock, especially, has human appeal and is notable
+as a tragic hero, or at least the central figure of a history, who meets
+misfortune and death through no fault of his own but solely through the
+wickedness of others.
+
+Holinshed's chronicle is also the source of "Arden of Feversham" (1592),
+sometimes ascribed on very insufficient grounds to Shakespeare, the
+earliest extant domestic tragedy. The play deals with a notorious murder of
+some forty years before, and follows the crude dramaturgy of the earliest
+chronicle plays. The stage presentation of notably brutal murders is common
+to-day and was to be expected on the Elizabethan stage, but the play seems
+also to represent reaction from the royalties, marvels, and unrealities of
+the contemporary tragedy. The epilogue, indeed, offers a defiance of
+romanticism and the since well-worn creed of the realist.
+
+    "Gentlemen, we hope youle pardon this naked tragedy,
+    Wherein no filed points are foisted in
+    To make it gratious to the eare or eye;
+    For simple truth is gratious enough,
+    And needes no other points of glosing stuffe."
+
+Notwithstanding this protestation, occasional monologues reveal the common
+stylistic decorations. The play is tediously detailed and artlessly
+realistic, though it has some vigorous blank verse and several powerful
+scenes; the most powerful, when Michael in the middle of the night is
+awaiting the murderers of his master, recalling a well-known passage in
+"The Spanish Tragedy." But the greatest merit of the play lies in the
+portrait of Alice Arden, absorbed in a despicable passion, but cunning and
+unabashed, incomparably the most lifelike evil woman up to this time
+depicted in the drama.
+
+Peele's "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedie of
+Absalon," acted about 1591, has, unlike "Arden," many "filed points to make
+it gratious to the eare and eye." It gains a unique interest as the only
+extant tragedy of this period based on the biblical narrative. The bible
+story is treated just as a historical chronicle would have been; and the
+play, divided by choruses into three "discourses," offers no advance in
+conception, structure, or characterization on the average tragedy of the
+period. Yet it is the masterpiece of one of the most active among
+Shakespeare's predecessors and illustrates his most distinctive
+contribution to the drama's development. As the author of "Alcazar,"
+"Edward I," and possibly "Locrine," as well as "David and Bethsabe,"
+Peele's contribution deserves some note. His dramatic career began at
+Oxford, where he made a version of one of the "Iphigenias" of Euripides,
+which was acted at Christ Church, and where he also aided in the production
+of Dr. Gager's Latin plays. In London he became the friend of Nash, Greene,
+and Marlowe, and the versatile adopter of the latest dramatic modes,
+whether in comedy, pastoral, history, or tragedy. In his best work,
+however, and especially in "David and Bethsabe," there are graces of style
+which justify Nash's eulogy of his friend as "primus verborum artifex." The
+great innovation of this early drama was, after all, in poetic style; and
+in furthering this Peele may claim a place only second to Marlowe. If
+Marlowe gave sweep and grandeur to blank verse, Peele brought a sweetness
+of cadence and, as Professor Ward observes, "a vivacity of fancy and a
+variety of imagery." As Marlowe turned everything into sonorous phrase, now
+bombastic, now superb, so Peele turned every thought to music and fancy,
+sometimes banal, sometimes lovely. "David and Bethsabe," with its oriental
+setting, though treated with careless dramatic art, proved an inspiration
+to the stylist. The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary
+and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or
+situation. Absalon plays with conceits for twenty-five lines while hanging
+by his hair, and laments melodiously for fifteen lines more after being
+stabbed. But there is charm and gracefulness everywhere, in the choruses,
+in the defense of Hamon, and in the parables, and now and again the very
+allurement and luxury of words, as in the famous,
+
+    "Now comes my lover tripping like the roe
+    And brings my longings tangled in her hair."
+
+While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course
+be assigned wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its
+earliest and most influential purveyors.
+
+The dozen plays just noticed furnish departures from, as well as
+adaptations of, the Kydian and Marlowean types of tragedy, but they reveal
+no marked advance in conception or structure. In characterization, however,
+there is a development in various ways; thus, a hack play like "The True
+Tragedy" has considerable power in its conception of a conscience-smitten
+villain, in "Woodstock" there is clear individualization, and in Alice
+Arden and the Countess of "Edward III" female character becomes lifelike
+and impressive. Still more salient is the attention paid to style. The
+Elizabethan theatregoer was used to the spoken and not to the written word,
+and expected at the theatre to be delighted by verbal display. Dramatic
+style then had functions which have since been relegated to other arts. It
+was to be declamative, taking the place of oratory; descriptive, supplying
+in part the place of scenery; and operatic in its word-play and decorative
+phrasing, and in its lyric interludes and laments. Moreover, medieval
+tradition and Senecan models alike enforced the necessity in tragedy of a
+heightened style; and many dramatists doubtless agreed with Gosson in
+placing first among dramatic requirements "sweetness of words, fitness of
+epithets with metaphors, allegories." Still further, along with the
+excesses resultant from this delight in words, there was manifest a growing
+mastery of language to represent truthfully situation and character.
+"Arden" gave crude expression to this reaction toward realism in style;
+"Woodstock" much more effectively; and colloquial directness was mingled
+with the artificialities of "The Spanish Tragedy" and the beauties of
+"Edward II." Henceforth the Elizabethan drama exhibits a conflict between
+dramatic suitability of language and its declamatory, operatic, or
+aphoristic decorativeness, promoting on the one hand a realistic
+presentation of life, and on the other fantastic absurdity and imaginative
+idealism.
+
+The preceding discussion of Marlowe and his contemporaries must have made
+it apparent that Shakespeare cannot be treated as outside of the circle,
+although his plays have for convenience been reserved until now. The young
+actor and poet learned to meet successfully the demands of the stage
+through an apprenticeship of hack-work, collaboration, and revision, and
+progressed in his art by means of adaptation and imitation. He wrote in
+association and rivalry with his fellow playwrights, responding like them
+to theatrical fashions, and feeling like them the spur of current artistic
+impulses. The dramatic activity that we have been discussing bears at every
+point upon his early work. He shared both the limitations and the
+incentives, bowed to the commanding influences, and rose to the
+opportunities for initiative which characterize this period. His dramatic
+career probably began two or three years later than Marlowe's, and of the
+plays now to be considered several were probably not written until the
+years following Marlowe's death. "Titus Andronicus" and the three parts of
+"Henry VI" belong to the early nineties and should be classed with the
+tragedies of blood and the chronicle histories of those years. "King John,"
+"Richard III," and "Richard II" came somewhat later and form a part of the
+more advanced development of chronicle history variously represented by
+"Edward III," "Woodstock," and Marlowe's "Edward II." "Romeo and Juliet,"
+in its final form perhaps still later, is a great and original masterpiece,
+but one still very characteristic of the dramatic period of which it is the
+crown and flower.
+
+How much of "Titus Andronicus" is to be regarded as Shakespeare's remains a
+debated question, a recent and plausible theory being that it was his
+revision and combination of two old plays.[14] The play, which was coupled
+by Jonson with "The Spanish Tragedy" as popular twenty years after its
+first appearance, is mainly an imitation of Kyd, though the phrasing and
+rhythm frequently show an advance over that author's work. In situations
+and various specific passages the imitation is pronounced and the motives
+of the Kydian type are in the main repeated. The revenge of a father for
+his son is opposed by villanous intrigue, involves a play within the play,
+and leads the hero into madness. Kyd's finer conception of a tragic hero
+hesitating in the face of fearful responsibility is, however, lacking; the
+combination of the two revenge stories--Tamora for her child murdered by
+Titus, and Titus in return for the murder of his children--resembles
+"Locrine"; and the black Aaron is, like the negro-Moor in "Alcazar," one of
+the many Marlowesque villains. The play surpasses current revenge plays
+chiefly in its unapproached orgy of mutilation, murder, and horror.
+
+The three parts of "Henry VI"[15] are certainly only in part Shakespeare's
+and represent the complex form of collaboration not infrequently found in
+the drama. It is likely that Marlowe and Greene were concerned in the
+plays, and that Shakespeare's share was mainly in revision. The three plays
+were at all events very popular and occupy an important place among the
+early chronicle histories. The contention between the houses of York and
+Lancaster becomes an epic theme, uniting the three parts, and affords
+manifold opportunity for battles, defiances, coronations, usurpations, and
+patriotism. The structure as well as the material is of the chronicle,
+without any approach to tragic unity or coherence; but the plays do in some
+ways invade the field of tragedy. Comedy is practically excluded except in
+the Cade scenes; and the last two parts, as their titles indicate, present
+a series of "falls of princes"--"the death of the good Duke Humphrey; And
+the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the tragicall end of
+the proud cardinall of Winchester" and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke
+of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt." With themes of
+bloodshed and battle, material at least full of tragical possibilities, and
+under the schooling of Marlowe, Shakespeare served his apprenticeship for
+historical tragedy.
+
+In "King John" Shakespeare still followed chronicle history methods without
+any clear advance toward tragedy. He was engaged in rewriting the old
+"Troublesome Reign," and he followed its plot with great closeness, scene
+after scene with entrances and exits being the same in both plays. But here
+his indebtedness practically stops. He seems to have made out a careful
+scenario, following the old play with only such alterations and omissions
+as were necessary for the condensation of its two parts into a single
+play, and then to have thrown aside the old text and almost forgotten it.
+His improvements consequently coincide with the developments which we have
+found common in the tragedies of the period in that they concern
+characterization and style. Faulconbridge and Constance become incomparably
+more vital and impressive than in the old play and win our interest away
+from the battles and arguments of the rapid scenes. The style, almost never
+reminiscent of the early play, is mainly rhetorical, though always vigorous
+and usually surpassing the models which it frequently recalls. It often
+displays the conflict between the ornamental and naturalistic tendencies;
+as, for example, when Arthur, facing the murderer, quibbles for ten lines
+over the red-hot iron which is to put out his eyes, and then, as the
+attendants enter, forgets his rhetoric in words whose sincerity and
+simplicity have touched every reader.
+
+"Richard III" and "Richard II," though possibly earlier than "King John,"
+show the imitator and adapter rather than the reviser, and represent
+independent efforts to give tragic unity to the material of the English
+chronicles. While all the tragedies and histories so far considered have
+long since proved unfitted for the stage, "Richard III" has maintained its
+first popularity and continued to attract the greatest actors and to win
+the liking of the patrons of the theatre of each generation. Yet, though it
+has for three centuries exercised a profound impression on the popular
+imagination, it shows in the opinion of all critics a great indebtedness
+to Marlowe, and is so evidently imitative of current models that critics
+writing from such different points of view as Mr. Fleay and James Russell
+Lowell have been led to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. External and
+internal evidence both contradict such doubts emphatically, but the close
+relationship of the play to "Henry VI" makes it improbable that Shakespeare
+turned to the theme solely of his own initiative. "Richard III" is the
+fourth play of a tetralogy manifestly planned before the earlier members
+were completed. Margaret appears in all four plays; the character of
+Shakespeare's Richard is distinctly outlined in Part III; and it was
+evidently meant to end the contention of York and Lancaster with the
+triumph of the Tudor dynasty, and the long series of falls of princes with
+the tragedy of the villanous Gloster. The chronicle of Richard's reign had
+indeed been given a tragic unity in the history by Sir Thomas More and in a
+long saga of chronicle and literature which had developed still further the
+conception of this masterful and dreadful villain. The suitability of this
+material to current forms of tragedy was obvious. Dr. Legge had found in
+this saga the material for a Senecan play; the unknown author of "The True
+Tragedy" had discovered there a ready-made tragedy of blood and revenge;
+and there are indications of non-extant plays on the same theme. For either
+Marlowe or for Shakespeare working with him on the history of the struggle
+between York and Lancaster, the opportunity for a tragedy with a central
+hero of the type of Tamburlaine, Faustus, or Barabas must have been
+apparent.
+
+Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a
+detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy"
+supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle
+is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and
+made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic
+presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable
+addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince
+Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to
+the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in
+the play.[16] In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe,
+making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and
+the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only
+with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the
+tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore
+Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at
+least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing
+in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and
+gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a
+chorus,--curses, laments, and exultations. Moreover, with a tact unique at
+that time and not displayed by him in "Titus Andronicus," he perceived that
+the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather
+than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all
+the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way
+for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts
+into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven
+victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.
+
+An abundance of theatrical effects, already familiar on the stage, is
+indeed supplied. The murder of Clarence, with its prolonged dialogue
+between the murderers, the victims led away to execution, the orations
+before the battle, the funeral cortege, the battle scenes, the laments and
+curses, now multiplied and expanded beyond the verge of absurdity, all
+reflect current stage practices. The structure, still over-dependent on the
+chronicle sources, indulges after the current fashion in the retention and
+prolongation of undramatic material: such as the feeble forebodings of the
+citizens (ii, 3), the prolongation of Hastings's warning of death (iii, 2),
+and the useless soliloquy of the scrivener (iii, 6). Yet, in comparison
+with contemporary plays, there is great superiority both in dramatic
+construction and theatrical effectiveness. The main action progresses with
+rapidity and coherence to the moment of Richard's reversal of fortune (iv,
+4), thirteen years being condensed into a few days; and the interest from
+this climax to the catastrophe is maintained by startling melodramatic
+effects. But the great dramatic merit of the play lies in the use of
+contrast, surprise, and particularly of dramatic irony in the separate
+scenes and in their masterly integration to display the character of
+Richard himself.
+
+Following closely the character outlined in the chronicle, borrowing
+conception and treatment from Marlowe's protagonists, and mindful of the
+host of stage villains that had proved so popular in tragedy, Shakespeare
+constructed a cacodemon who remains not only a great stage figure but also
+alive and human in our imaginations. That he is the source of all evil in
+the play; that he is absurdly and impossibly diabolic; that he informs the
+audience of all his nefarious schemes; that he has a Machiavellian skill in
+intrigue; that he is in intellect and will easily the superior of all whom
+he encounters; that he is possessed by an egoism superhuman in its
+audacity; that he is an accomplished and ironical hypocrite; that he is
+conscienceless except when half asleep and dreaming; that from the
+beginning to the end he is a masterful and relentless pursuer of his
+ambition, uninfluenced by persons or events, alike subjects of his
+contempt,--all this indicates a skillful adaptation and continuation of
+sources and models. But Richard is more. He is dramatically immensely
+effective; he is always at hand at the right moment; he is never
+nonplussed; a murder is hardly over when he appears smiling and ironically
+repentant; he can ask for strawberries with murder in his heart, or play
+with the children or woo the woman whom he has already marked for doom.
+That these theatrical fascinations were the results of a consistent
+conception based on a profound ethical and psychological study can hardly
+be maintained. It may indeed be doubted whether in this respect there is
+much advance over Marlowe's villains, or even those of his contemporaries,
+to say nothing of an approach to Macbeth and Iago. Richard is sometimes a
+human being, sometimes a monster, and always a stage villain. But the very
+fact that critics have delighted to analyze and moralize over his traits is
+proof that Shakespeare, in spite of the monstrosities of his conception,
+gave to its dramatic presentation not only a stage effectiveness but also
+plausibility.
+
+This plausibility must be accredited largely to the vigorous colloquialism
+of his speeches. The play manifests the usual conflict of artificial and
+natural styles; the elaborate stichomythia and the wailing and cursing
+queens furnish examples of the common affectations of tragic style; and the
+rhetorical display appears not infrequently in Richard's speeches. But in
+the main he speaks with a naturalness and directness far greater than was
+usual in tragic heroes, and the natural-speaking Richard often makes
+plausible and convincing the theatrical and rhetorical villain. Thus, after
+the opening soliloquy he drops his rhetoric for the conversational tone of
+his conference with Clarence; and thus, the procession of ghosts remains
+still impressive on our stage because it is followed by a soliloquy that
+surpasses all except a few of Marlowe's in power and naturalness.
+Throughout the play, while others declaim, wail, and curse, the most
+impossible figure of them all becomes the only convincing human being, very
+largely because of the realism of his speech.
+
+In "Richard II," written at about the time of "Richard III," Shakespeare
+was also writing under the influence of Marlowe, but now in direct
+imitation and rivalry of "Edward II." The first part of the reign of
+Richard II had already received treatment in "Jack Straw" and "Woodstock,"
+and the theme of a weak king forced to abdicate had been presented in
+"Henry VI" as well as "Edward II." Shakespeare followed, as always
+hitherto, his source, Holinshed, very closely, and the historical material
+determined the plot and characterization, but Marlowe's example led him to
+an interpretation of the fifteen years' history as the tragedy of the
+reversal of fortune of a king whose temperament made him contemptible in
+prosperity but pitiable in adversity. Along with the story of the rise and
+progress of the conflict between Richard and the barons under Bolingbroke,
+there runs the story of "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty," which
+give a new pathos to that favorite theme of medieval tragedy and
+Elizabethan history, the vanquishment of a prince by scornful Fortune. The
+struggle within Richard's own heart, even more than in the case of Edward
+II, absorbs the interest and points the moral, the hollowness and
+uncertainty of earthly grandeur.
+
+Structurally there is no advance on "Edward II" in exposition, integration
+of action, or catastrophe. Adherence to the chronicle results in a long
+drawn out and iterative first act, a virtual repetition of Richard's
+struggle over the relinquishment of the crown in iii, 3, and iv, 1, and a
+slight and melodramatic treatment of the catastrophe. On the other hand,
+there are some changes from Marlowe's method of interest in connection with
+later tragedy. Elegiac scenes with their lamenting women, also conspicuous
+in "Richard III," are an addition to the historical source and an important
+factor in the structure; their distribution through the play indicating
+that they were employed to supply a relief from the scenes of much action
+and high tension, more suitable to tragedy than the relief of comic scenes,
+and also to take, as in "Richard III," the place of a chorus through their
+lyrical reinforcement of the tragic emotions excited by the action. Again,
+as the theme is Richard's reversal of fortune rather than his death, so the
+emotional crisis receives a structural prominence not unlike that given to
+Hamlet's, and the catastrophe of death is relegated to a postscript. The
+passage from crisis to catastrophe is managed, as in "Hamlet," "Lear," and
+"Macbeth," by the introduction of incidents extraneous to the main action,
+here the episode of Aumerle's conspiracy.
+
+The main departures from Marlowe, however, are to be found in those
+elements of dramatic composition to which in this period the genius of
+Shakespeare as well as the talent of his contemporaries most readily
+responded, the characterization and the style. Not only the king himself
+but many other persons in the play, and notably Bolingbroke, are presented
+with consistency and subtlety. The historical narrative is transformed into
+a gallery of full-length historical portraits that lead us to forget
+history and drama in our study of their personalities. The euphuistic and
+sentimental Richard gives a fair field for the stylist, but his example is
+infectious, and the Queen, Gaunt, York, Bolingbroke, the gardener, and in
+fact all the persons of the drama, employ word-play, periphrasis, and the
+various flourishes of Elizabethan rhetorical style. If one accepts the
+theory that tragedy is a game for rhetorical display, and further accepts
+the conventionalities of Elizabethan style, there must be unmeasured
+admiration for the extraordinary verbal skill displayed. Shakespeare
+employs the current artificialities of diction with abounding facility and
+zest, and often suits them skillfully to the delineation of character;
+while his constant attention to expression results in a sustained
+eloquence, which, if it blurs the outlines of reality, substitutes a haze
+of fancy, and sometimes the glory of magnificent beauty. The miserable
+years of Richard's downfall are forever associated in our minds with the
+picturesqueness of the two entries into London and with the splendor of the
+apostrophe to England and the recital of Norfolk's death.
+
+In the three chronicle histories just considered, although the historical
+material largely determines structure, tragic conception, and
+characterization, and although all these are obviously under Marlowe's
+influence, yet Shakespeare had reached a stage far more advanced than that
+of mere imitator or adapter. In "Richard III" he had added his own impress
+to the Marlowean type of tragedy, and in "Richard II" he had introduced
+innovations foreshadowing his later conceptions. As a playwright he had
+equaled any of his contemporaries in immediate popularity and outdone them
+in permanent theatrical effectiveness. He had acquired a complete mastery
+over the conditions and conventions of the stage, and had frequently, if
+not always, outdone the best of his rivals in dramatic ingenuity and power.
+Like his contemporaries, however, he was hampered by theatrical conditions
+and intractable historical material; and his chief interest was in the
+opportunities furnished by the chronicles for the delineation of character
+and the exercise of his gift of tongues. In range and verisimilitude his
+characters already far surpassed Marlowe's; and as a poet, whether in
+lyric, descriptive, or purely dramatic passages, whether in sustained
+treatment of situation or in splendid purple patches, he had shown himself
+the peer of his master.
+
+In "Romeo and Juliet" the same dramatic and poetic qualities are exhibited
+as in the historical plays, but the happy choice of the already well-known
+love story led Shakespeare outside of the direct range of Marlowe's
+example, freed him from the limits of the historical material, and gave his
+genius full scope. The importance of love as a motive in the Italian drama
+of the Renaissance is one of the traits that distinguish it from its
+classical models, and the influence of Italian drama and fiction was
+important in turning Elizabethan dramatists to stories of romantic passion.
+These had already been widely adopted in comedy and had formed the
+principle plots of "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda," as
+well as minor parts in other tragedies of the period. The story of Romeo
+and Juliet, which Brooke speaks of having seen "lately (1562) set forth on
+the stage with more commendation than I can look for," may have been made
+into an English play before Shakespeare was born.[17] It had at least been
+dramatized in France and Italy, where Luigi Groto's "Adriana" (1578)
+surpassed all contemporary plays in the number of its editions.
+
+Brooke's poem, "Romeus and Juliet" (1562), was the main source of the play
+and provided a story eminently adapted to dramatic representation. The
+plot, with its conflict between love and hate, the brief triumph of love,
+the interference of feud and family authority, the separation and death of
+the lovers, has been repeated in its essentials in thousands of stories,
+and has played an enormous part in the imaginations of four centuries; but
+it has hardly found a more effective scenario than that which lay imbedded
+in Brooke's long-spun narrative. A lesser genius than Shakespeare might
+have discovered it, but his powers of invention and construction are amply
+apparent, especially up to the turning-point of the play. The brawl and the
+love-sick Romeo of the first scene, dramatically expository and symbolic of
+the whole action, the meeting of the lovers at the dance, the balcony
+scene, the embassy and return of the nurse, the fatal fight with Tybalt,
+are all executed with a wealth of incidental invention, a sureness of
+technic, and a rapidity and directness of dramatic movement that relied but
+little on Brooke's narrative or contemporary example. The second half of
+the play, though skillfully condensed, follows the source more closely and,
+perhaps for this reason, impresses the modern reader less vividly.
+Shakespeare's dramatic skill is manifest in his departure from the current
+methods of the tragedy of blood as well as in his treatment of the
+narrative. What imitators of Seneca and of Kyd did with similar love
+stories we have seen in "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda";
+and "Romeo and Juliet" had an equal chance for ghosts, villany, and
+physical horrors. Some traces of the prevailing fashion do survive, as in
+the addition to Brooke of the murder of Paris and in the attention paid to
+the horrors of the tomb. But many of the best scenes are of the sort that
+occur in romantic comedy,--the repartee of gallants, the preparations for a
+feast, the dance, the street affray, the meetings and partings of the
+lovers,--and there is no villain, no figure of Nemesis, no ghost, no
+warring armies, and no pomp of courts. No tragedy had yet appeared with
+less theatrical sensationalism, and none which maintained the interest of
+the spectators upon the story with comparable dramatic intensity.
+
+The extraordinary advance over the historical plays in dramatic technic is,
+however, overshadowed in our appreciation of the play by the irresistible
+appeal made by the persons of the story. They are more closely realized
+for us than the friends and foes of our daily life, yet they dwell forever
+in the enchantment of idealized romance. To analyze Shakespeare's power to
+portray and at the same time to exalt human nature would be to unlock the
+very key to Shakespeare's heart; we may well be content to wonder and
+exclaim. Yet, we may note that, while characterization, which had been
+increasing in range and individualization in the historical plays, is here
+triumphant, the means and methods are not unlike those already noticed. The
+brilliant translation of prose narrative into monologue and dialogue gives
+us the nurse; the vivacious amplification of a type familiar in comedy--the
+garrulous old man--results in Capulet; and even the greatest creations
+naturally retain traces of contemporary influences. Mercutio is the prince
+of a throng of quick-witted quibblers, and Juliet is sometimes declamatory,
+sometimes fantastic, like Brooke's heroine. But they are Shakespeare's own,
+and the first representatives of two ways in which his imagination
+characteristically and supremely manifested itself in later plays. Mercutio
+is the first of those imaginative achievements that concentrate into a few
+lines of blank verse the complete individualization of a human being;
+Juliet is perhaps the first of the amazing series of idealized women. If
+one considers how often the young girl in love has been the theme of
+genius, and recalls Fielding, Scott, Browning, and Meredith, one may secure
+some measure of Shakespeare's achievement. When one seeks comparison with
+the naive and likable young animal of Brooke's doggerel, or the women of
+preceding drama, even the charming heroines of Greene's comedies, the art
+that produced Juliet must seem miraculous. The idealization of woman was,
+to be sure, common in Renaissance art; and the union in her of wit and
+beauty, power and charm, passion and purity, innocence and wisdom, was not
+solely Shakespeare's conception; but the power to conceive such a being
+with truth and to realize her dramatically, alive, human, and consistent,
+was his alone.
+
+The conception and expression of character cannot be separated; there lies
+in the qualities of the poetic style some explanation of the impression we
+receive of idealized humanity. While colloquial directness is not wanting
+in the play, the prevailing style has the artificialities, the lyricism,
+and the exuberance we have found prevailing elsewhere. It exhibits about
+all the faults and affectations of the dramatic poetry of the time, but
+these are the defects of an art that finds poetry in everything and ever
+lingers to enjoy the beauty of words, whether over Queen Mab, or the
+apothecary's shop, or Friar Laurence's herbs. It stops to display its
+verbal ingenuity in a pun; it delights in lyric outbursts, sestette or
+sonnet, morning-song or epithalamium; it riots in the refrains on
+"banished," becomes grotesque in the wailing quartette, and finds its
+supreme opportunity in the fancy and music and passion of the lovers
+underneath the summer moon. It is this exuberance, this spontaneity, this
+carelessness of incongruity, this delight in ornamentation, this abandon to
+music and fancy that transfigures the Verona of brawls, dinners, nurses,
+and deaths, and, forever ascendant over our fancies, like Romeo's blessed
+moon, "tips everything with silver."
+
+It is in part this poetic style which distinguishes the play from the later
+tragedies, but the difference is everywhere manifest to our impressions.
+The evil and gloom and pessimism that help to make up the tragic fact in
+"Lear" and "Macbeth" are here scarcely felt. To joy comes sorrow, because
+of evil and through accident,--this is the tragic theme. In the course of
+its presentation one may find it suggestive of the passing of youth to age
+or of passionate love to oblivion, but surely no one comes from the poem
+with a dominant impression of the wickedness of family feuds, or of the
+inevitable brevity of romantic passion, or of the dangers of youthful
+precipitousness,--rather the mind glows with the beauty and joy revealed in
+life.
+
+In this impression the play has a kinship with the tragedies, even the poor
+and the maimed, that had preceded it. Tragedies so far have been strangely
+free from Christian teaching or sentiment. Compared with the medieval
+drama, early Elizabethan tragedy seems not only secular but pagan. This is
+partly because it followed its sources and treated of Romans, Moors,
+Scythians, and heroes of myths and legends; partly because it derived stoic
+and fatalistic sentiments from Seneca and other classical writers; but it
+also represents an entire departure from the medieval point of view, a
+departure necessarily emphasized in tragedy. In the medieval drama, death
+had been a translation to final reward or punishment,--the portals of
+heaven and hell were open on the stage. In the Renaissance conception of
+tragedy death was the point and pith of tragic fact. Faith, forgiveness,
+reliance on Providence, assurance of immortality are rarely alluded to.
+Chance, mysterious fate, the emissaries of the devil, the powers of evil in
+the mind of man are the forces to which tragedy must attend; and they lead
+to a death terrible and pitiful, to be met bravely and defiantly, it may
+be, but not peacefully and hopefully. And this emphasis of the gloom of
+death required an equal emphasis on the glory and beauty of life. Tragedy
+was the passing into darkness from under this majestic roof fretted with
+golden fire, the loss of noble reason and infinite faculty; and it must
+needs proclaim the beauty of the world as well as the quintessence of dust.
+
+And so, although writers of tragedy dwelt on the horrors of death and its
+accompaniments of blood and atrocity, and though they symbolized in their
+villains their sense of the reign of evil, yet, in Marlowe's treatment of
+an Asiatic conqueror or the ignoble fascination of Edward II, or in Peele's
+fancy that made musical the amours of David; everywhere indeed, in the
+Pantheas and Persedas, the Marii and Selimi, they were presenting human
+life as removed from the commonplace, the sordid, the usual, and as the
+abode of heroisms, splendors, and aspirations. Even evil deeds and
+villains, even death itself sometimes partook of this glorification; and
+tragic theory, moral purpose, and theological dogma were alike forgotten
+in the fascination of human character, passion, and achievement. This
+idealization of life was, as we noted at the beginning of the chapter,
+characteristic of the national temper and of the artistic impulses in every
+field of literature during its brief breathing spell between the Protestant
+and Puritan revolutions. Its power is curiously illustrated in the effect
+of the story of Romeo and Juliet upon Brooke in the course of his by no
+means despicable attempt to turn it into a tragic poem. In his Address to
+the Reader, he dilates with medieval propriety on the moral of the poem "to
+raise in the reader an hatefull lothyng of so filthy beastlynes." "And to
+this ende (good Reader) is this tragicall matter written to describe unto
+thee a coople of unfortunate lovers thralling themselves to unhonest
+desire, neglecting the authorite and advice of parents and frendes,
+conferring their principall counsels with dronken gossyppes, and
+superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instrumentes of
+unchastitie)"--and so on through all their evil doings until "finallye, by
+all meanes of unhonest lyfe hastyng to most unhappye death." So wrote the
+conscious Puritan; but the story charmed the artist. It enticed his meagre
+art to a share in the joys of the lovers, it led him to a delight in
+unhonest life, it dissolved his sermon into romance and poetry, and left
+him enamored even of his "superstitious frier."
+
+And so the tragedy of the lovers became for Shakespeare as for Brooke and
+as other stories had become for Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, the spur and
+the means to an idealization of life. It is not in the reconciliation of
+the families, still less in the sense of a deserved punishment, that we
+find an antidote for death and evil; but in the assurance that human
+passion may be so lovely, human nature so full of strength and beauty. "The
+sun for sorrow will not show his head," says Prince Escalus at the end, but
+we believe with Romeo that
+
+                        "Jocund day
+    Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward, Fleay, and Schelling are the best general guides for this period. The
+books already mentioned by Collier, Symonds, Jusserand, Cunliffe, Fischer,
+and Churchill bear directly on the matter of this chapter. The sources for
+documents and records are the same as for chapter iii, with the important
+addition of _Henslowe's Diary_, vol. i, 1904, ed. by W. W. Greg. The
+sources for lists of plays and bibliography are the same as in chapter
+ii,--Greg, Fleay, Hazlitt, Schelling, and Bates. There is no satisfactory
+and comprehensive treatment of Marlowe's work; J. H. Ingram's _Christopher
+Marlowe and his Associates_ (1904) supplies a full bibliography. Marlowe
+has been well edited by Dyce and by A. H. Bullen. Dyce's editions of Greene
+and Peele have long been standard. Bullen has also a good edition of Peele.
+The recent Clarendon Press editions of Greene, Lyly, Kyd supply careful
+texts and full introductions. My article, _The Relations of "Hamlet" to
+Contemporary Revenge Play_s (Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. 1902), has been drawn
+upon for the discussion of Kyd; it furnishes references to the various
+critical discussions of Kyd's work. Texts of the plays by minor writers are
+to be found in Dodsley; W. C. Hazlitt's _Shakespeare's Library_ (6 vols.,
+1875), containing old plays and other sources for Shakespeare's plays;
+Delius, _Pseudo-Shakspere'sche Dramen_ (1874); the Tauchnitz edition of
+_Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare_; and in the editions of several of the
+pseudo-Shakespearean plays by K. Warncke and L. Proescholdt, Halle. This
+last edition of _Arden of Feversham_ contains a valuable introduction. For
+direction to the bibliography of Shakespeare, see chapter v. On the Henry
+VI plays, Miss Jane Lee's paper, _New Shaks. Soc. Transactions_, 1875-76,
+still offers the most exhaustive treatment of the question of authorship.
+On _Titus Andronicus_, Mr. Harold DeW. Fuller's article, _Mod. Lang. Publ._
+(1901), and Mr. J. M. Robertson's _Did Shakespeare write Titus Andronicus?_
+(1905) are among the latest discussions. My review of Mr. Robertson's book,
+_Journal of Eng. and Germ. Philology_ (1907), treats in detail some of the
+discussion of this chapter. The latest studies of the Elizabethan theatre
+are C. Brodmeier's _Die Shakespeare-Buehne_ (Weimar, 1904), which reduces
+the "alternation" theory to an absurdity, and G. F. Reynold's _Some
+Principles of Elizabethan Staging_ (Chicago, 1905), which disposes of
+Brodmeier's theories, but goes a little too far in the other direction.
+See, also, Baker's _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ for a careful and
+detailed account of the London theatres. Miss V. C. Gildersleeve's
+_Governmental Regulation of the Shakespearean Drama_ (Columbia Univ.
+Studies in English, in press) is an exhaustive treatment of its subject and
+incidentally throws light on theatrical matters. Volume iv of Courthope's
+_History of English Poetry_ is on the "Development and Decline of the
+Poetic Drama," from Marlowe to 1642. Schelling's _The English Chronicle
+Play_ (1902) is the best discussion of this species. W. Bang's series,
+_Materialien zur Kunde des aelteren englischen Dramas_, includes reprints
+and studies of interest in connection with this and the three following
+chapters.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] It consists of two parts published 1591, and acted, as the prologue
+indicates, shortly after _Tamburlaine_, perhaps in 1588. Its scenes cover
+about the same ground as Shakespeare's play, with the addition of a ribald
+account of the sack of a monastery, an explanation of the poisoning of John
+in his treatment of the clergy, and a scene of some power in which Philip
+obtains from his mother, Lady Fauconbridge, a confession that his father
+was Richard.
+
+[10] _Tamburlaine_ in two parts, certainly acted as early as 1588, gained
+an immediate and long-continued popularity, and was followed by a number of
+plays, all tragedies or histories. Without reckoning the numerous plays
+that have been assigned to Marlowe on no sufficient grounds, he
+collaborated on the _Tragedy of Dido_ (1594), perhaps an early work, and on
+the three parts of _Henry VI_; and was the author of _The Tragicall History
+of Dr. Faustus_, printed 1604, acted 1588 (?); _The Jew of Malta_, acted
+about 1589, and long the most popular of Henslow's repertoire: _The
+Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II_, printed 1594, acted
+about 1591; and _The Massacre of Paris_, of an unknown date of acting.
+
+[11] The only other play certainly by Kyd is a translation of Garnier's
+_Cornelia_, 1595, which was doubtless never acted. His authorship of the
+_First Part of Jeronimo_, 1605, is denied by recent critics, and at most
+the text represents a very corrupt abridgment of his work. _Soliman and
+Perseda_, S. R. 1592, is attributed to him solely on internal evidence, and
+may have been by an imitator. The non-extant _Hamlet_, alluded to by Nash
+in 1589, and not until twelve years later used by Shakespeare as the basis
+of his play, is now generally assigned to Kyd.
+
+[12] Printed 1594, "as newly set forth, overseen, and corrected by W. S.,"
+sometimes assigned to Peele, and in an earlier form perhaps acted about
+1590.
+
+[13] Preserved in MS. and first printed in the _Shakespeare Jahrbuch_ in
+1899.
+
+[14] Harold DeW. Fuller, _Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn._ 1901.
+
+[15] The collaborators on Part I (1623) are unknown, and Shakespeare's
+contribution to the present form seems likely to have been written later
+than the bulk of the play, a not very impressive example of chronicle
+history. Parts II and III (1623) exist also in the abridged and altered
+forms of the two quartos of 1594, _The First Part of The Contention_ and
+_The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York_. The problems of the relations
+of these two quarto plays to the folio texts are among the most puzzling
+encountered by Shakespearean scholars.
+
+[16] Somewhat similar situations between Lycus and Megaera in _Hercules
+Furens_, Locrine and Estrile in _Locrine_, and Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in
+_Tamburlaine_ must have been known to Shakespeare.
+
+[17] See H. DeW. Fuller, "Romeo and Julietta," _Modern Philology_, 1906. It
+seems clear, however, that Shakespeare drew directly from Brooke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
+
+
+After "Richard II" and "King John," Shakespeare turned aside from tragedy,
+and within the next half-dozen years produced his masterpieces of romantic
+comedy and non-tragical history. With the exception of "Titus Andronicus"
+and "Romeo and Juliet," the first half of his dramatic career was devoted
+entirely to comedy and history. With "Julius Caesar," about 1600, began the
+period of tragedies and bitter comedies, which lasted until about 1608,
+when he turned again to romantic comedy and tragicomedy. In these main
+divisions and turning-points of his dramatic activity there is a
+correspondence with the development of the contemporary drama which we are
+able to mark with an approach to definiteness. Both romantic comedy and
+chronicle history had their hey-day during the dozen years that he was
+devoting to those species. Then at the close of the century various
+influences produced an abandonment of those forms, a revival of tragedy,
+and an extensive production of satirical and domestic comedy. About 1608,
+again, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher led a return to romance. The
+Shakespearean period of tragedy may thus be separated from the Marlowean by
+an interval, during which few tragedies of importance appeared; and its
+beginning was coincident with new and important developments in the drama.
+
+The leading force in initiating these changes was apparently Ben Jonson,
+whose prologue to "Every Man in His Humour" (acted 1598) avowed the
+principles which that play exemplified, and proclaimed the establishment of
+a comedy of humors. This change was heralded as the result of a more
+critical and conscious art, of a desire to free the drama from the
+absurdities and lawlessness of the past, and to supply it with literary
+standards and artistic aims. His practice, which during the next ten years
+was mostly in accord with his preaching, was followed or paralleled in many
+respects by most of the other dramatists. At the date of "Every Man in His
+Humour" Shakespeare was proclaiming in the choruses of "Henry V" his sense
+of the incongruities of the chronicle history play and bidding farewell to
+a form of drama that he had made preeminently his own; and Chapman and
+Middleton were forsaking romantic comedy for realistic comedies of London
+life. Perhaps a little earlier, the satires of Donne, Hall, and Marston had
+created considerable stir and doubtless had a share in turning literary
+endeavor from sentiment to satire. This satire and exposure of the follies
+and evils of society also received encouragement from the moral and social
+change that was working in England and especially in London. The healthy
+and aspiring national life that had found expression in the sound morality
+and the imaginative idealism of the earlier drama was now giving place to
+the moral corruption, social laxity, and lack of national pride that render
+the reign of James I notorious. At all events, whatever the causes, the
+comedy of the next seven or eight years was prevailingly realistic,
+domestic, or satirical.
+
+In tragedy the changes were similar, though less distinct. The protest
+against the lawlessness of the early drama was manifested in the
+infrequency of chronicle plays and the appearance of tragedies presenting
+foreign, and especially Roman, history with due regard for both historical
+truth and tragic structure. Realism appeared just at the beginning of the
+century in a number of domestic tragedies that violated the established
+conventions by dealing with actual events, contemporary society, and humble
+persons. Satire of contemporary manners became frequent in tragedy, and
+satirical comedies often dealt with tragic events and exercised an
+influence on pure tragedy similar to that exercised by romantic comedy in
+the earlier period. Up to this time popular tragedy had hardly received
+critical consideration even from the dramatists themselves. Marlowe, Kyd,
+Shakespeare, and others had been mainly concerned in telling stories on the
+stage without much consciousness of theory or of the types of drama which
+they were creating. In this period, however, the demarcation between
+tragedy and comedy and the definition of a conception of tragedy became
+positive both in occasional critical comment and in the practice of the
+dramatists. The old types, however, survived. Medleys of various kinds of
+tragedy and comedy, such as "Old Fortunatus" or "The Downfall and Death of
+Robert, Earl of Huntingdon," are not found much after the beginning of the
+century; but the revenge tragedy received a remarkable development by
+Marston, Chettle, Tourneur, Chapman, and Jonson, to say nothing of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Practically synchronous with the period of Shakespeare's great tragedies
+are these several interesting developments: the domestic tragedies, and
+especially the allied work of Heywood; the Roman historical tragedies,
+especially the two by Jonson; the French historical tragedies by Chapman;
+and the various revenge plays, beginning with Marston's "Antonio and
+Mellida." These dramatists, however, were mainly occupied with comedy, and
+no one of them devoted himself as exclusively to tragedy as did
+Shakespeare. Nor did any of them equal him in immediate popularity. The
+imitative methods of his artistic apprenticeship had given place to a
+maturity and independence of art that at once won a supremacy in tragedy
+even greater than that already attained in comedy. Yet in themes and
+treatment there is no divorce from the practice of his fellow dramatists.
+His genius continued responsive to the demands of the stage of the day, and
+it felt the changes in dramatic conditions, of which we have been noticing
+some symptoms, and which made the tragedies of others as well as his own
+more satirical and realistic than those of Marlowe's time, more concerned
+with the problem of evil, more conscious and critical in their art, and in
+their style less lyrical and descriptive, more reflective and sententious.
+
+Of the domestic tragedies, very much in fashion from 1597 to 1603, the few
+survivors show little advance over "Arden of Feversham." These
+presentations of hideous contemporary crimes maintain the protest initiated
+by that play against the conventionalities of "the ghost and revenge"
+drama, and echo its demand for realism. The satirical description of
+Tragedy in the induction to "A Warning for Fair Women" (1599) is
+particularly noteworthy as indicating the definiteness which the current
+conception of tragedy had assumed. The epilogue reiterates the cry of the
+realist in an era of romanticism:--
+
+    "Perhaps it may seem strange unto you all,
+    That one hath not avenged another's death
+    After the observation of such course:
+    The reason is that now of truth I sing."
+
+A second of these plays, "Two Lamentable Tragedies" (1601), is a curious
+combination of the story of the babes in the wood and that of the recent
+murder of one Beech. A third, "A Yorkshire Tragedy," acted by Shakespeare's
+company about 1605, and published with his name (1608), is remarkable for
+its naked realism and the vividness and rapidity of some of its prose.
+
+With these plays may be grouped Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness"
+(1607, acted 1603), for, although it does not deal with real events, it
+lacks the usual accompaniments of tragedy, courts, kings, ghosts, and
+battles, and presents a story of current English life. Its themes are the
+common ones of adultery and revenge, but it gives them an entirely novel
+treatment, the husband refusing to take vengeance on his guilty wife, who
+dies repentant and forgiven. After a fashion soon to become general, there
+is an underplot which, like the main plot, presents a problem of social
+ethics, the question of the sacrifice of chastity to save a brother's
+honor. Similar problems are common in contemporary comedy, and the play
+might be classed indifferently as a domestic tragedy or a tearful comedy.
+It is Heywood's masterpiece and exemplifies the qualities that won him the
+affection of Lamb, "generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depth of
+passion, sweetness, in a word, and gentleness." The wife falls too easily
+and repents too sentimentally to be of much interest, but the character of
+Frankfort is finely conceived and, especially in the great scene of the
+discovery, executed with a power and truth of feeling rarely combined
+outside of Shakespeare. In a very similar play, "The English Traveller,"
+written long afterwards, Heywood speaks of two hundred and twenty plays in
+which he had a main finger. Some of these lost plays must have further
+exemplified the method of "A Woman Killed with Kindness"; but his success
+failed to encourage other dramatists to attempt domestic themes and to
+abandon the tragic conventions. Such realism as his was left to comedy, and
+tragedy continued to seek its stories in romance or history.
+
+Ben Jonson's two tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline," reveal an effort to
+treat Roman history with accuracy and dignity, and to enforce on the
+public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragedy. Such
+representations of Roman history as "The Wounds of Civil War" or the still
+more incongruous medley of Heywood's "Lucrece" must have excited in him
+still greater condemnation than did the English chronicle plays. Even
+Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" provoked a sneer, though its dramatization of
+Plutarch's portraits of the great conspirators apparently excited his
+emulation and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline.
+Incongruous spectacle and farce disappear from these plays, and the events
+are treated upon a well thought out theory of historical tragedy. Jonson
+strove to present the main events and characters with accurate fidelity to
+authorities, and even minor persons and deeds in constant harmony with the
+historical narrative. But the scholar overtopped the dramatist. "Sejanus"
+has a paraphernalia of notes like a doctor's dissertation; and "Catiline"
+long excerpts from Cicero's orations.
+
+His plays, however, were intended for the public stage, and are by no means
+to be classed with closet dramas like Daniel's "Philotas," the tragedies of
+Fulke Greville and Alexander, or the earlier translations of Kyd and the
+Countess of Pembroke. Jonson started with current popular forms, with
+"Julius Caesar" rather than the Senecan models for a basis. His purpose was
+to rebuild these, not without some recognition of current dramatic method,
+but with his main reliance upon classical rules. His cardinal error was his
+acceptance of the current classical theory of tragedy, the belief that the
+essential difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance
+of the three unities and similar proprieties. As he was forced to confess,
+the ambitious careers of Sejanus and Catiline and the style of action
+demanded by the audiences of the day did not lend themselves easily to such
+limitations. But he persevered in his doughty fashion. If in "Sejanus" he
+gave up the unity of time, he maintained the unity of place; if he retained
+the comic scenes of the courtesan, he avoided any grotesque mixture of the
+comic and tragic; he omitted battles, jigs, and spectacles, and secured a
+coherent development of the main action. In "Catiline," which he boldly
+proclaimed a "dramatic poem," he adopted the Senecan technic of an
+introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. But though the action be one,
+perfect and entire, according to Jonson's understanding of those terms, he
+never learned Shakespeare's art of focusing events about a spiritual
+conflict.
+
+Yet in characterization Jonson's interest, like that of his contemporaries,
+largely centres. Catiline, Cicero, Sejanus, and Tiberius are thoughtfully
+conceived and faithfully represented. The representation, indeed, is that
+of exposition, each scene illustrating and emphasizing some trait without
+securing much illusion of life. The style, especially in the long speeches,
+is too often rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic
+power. Yet it is masterly in its way, careful and competent to its
+purposes, and free from obscurity or over-richness. His plays mark another
+failure to turn popular tragedy back into the classical mould. They
+contributed, perhaps, to a greater regularity of action on the part of his
+contemporaries and to a more serious consideration of the functions of
+drama, but the scholarly student of history failed to make it live, the
+author of "Bartholomew Fair" did not find his best opportunity in the
+acceptance of classicist theory.
+
+Chapman's tragedies attempted a field hitherto untried except in Marlowe's
+"Massacre," that of contemporary French history. While treating historical
+events with freedom of invention, he dealt with real persons and careers
+familiar to his audience. In the long-popular tragedy of "The Death of
+Bussy D'Ambois" (1607, acted 1600-1604) he turned to the court of Henry III
+and centred a story of treasonable ambition, conspiracy, and adultery about
+the interesting personality of the insolent and indomitable D'Ambois. After
+the fashion of Kyd and Marston, he followed "The Death" with a "Revenge of
+Bussy D'Ambois," which adopted the established technic of the revenge
+plays, with less alteration than might have been expected after
+Shakespeare's transformation in "Hamlet." The avenger, Clermont, is a
+"Senecal man," and his sententious and rhetorical philosophizing was
+doubtless incited by "Hamlet," though it followed a long-established
+precedent. The "Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron" (two parts, 1608, acted
+1607) dealt with important affairs in the reign of Henry IV that were still
+fresh in the memory of the audience, Biron having been executed in 1602.
+In the original form of the play, in fact, Queen Elizabeth was represented,
+and the French queen boxed the ears of her husband's mistress, but the
+protest of the French ambassador made a revision necessary.
+
+The new material of these plays did not lead Chapman to attempt any
+variations in form from the current drama, nor did it result in any advance
+in method; his fondness for long speeches and narrations resulting rather
+in a treatment more epical and less dramatic than is found in any of his
+contemporaries. Nor did his study of contemporary memoirs for his sources
+and his interest in political philosophy result in any advance in reality
+or vividness of characterization, though here he is often very felicitous,
+as in his portrait of Henry IV, and though his arrogant protagonists are
+interesting and original variations of the Marlowean tragic hero, not
+without successors in the later drama. But for Chapman, tragedy was in the
+main, as for the writers whom Gosson derided, an opportunity "to show the
+majesty of his pen in tragical speeches." The abundance, ingenuity, and
+beauty of his figurative language are simply amazing. Every person, deed,
+or sentiment calls for illustration and lets loose a flood of similes.
+Finished verse, a highly picturesque sense of the value of words, a
+remarkable union of pregnant sententiousness with vividness of description,
+have made his plays the delight of many a reader, though perhaps most of
+his admirers have experienced a fatigue that found satisfaction in Dryden's
+perverse criticism, "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words,
+repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles."
+For, though the thought is by no means dwarfish, the dress is often too big
+for it. We are wearied by the constant effort to write up to the tragic
+opportunity for a heightened and sententious eloquence. In this respect,
+Chapman's style partakes of the faults of his day. It has not the
+spontaneity and ease of Marlowe, Peele, and "Romeo and Juliet"; it is
+difficult, involved, pretentious, and self-conscious, yet its splendors
+remain. Its abundance of resource, its imaginative condensation, its
+suggestive power again and again compel comparison with Shakespeare
+himself.
+
+Revenge directed by a ghost found favor with both Jonson and Chapman, but
+they were preceded in the use of this popular motive by John Marston. In
+1598, at the age of twenty-three, he made something of a sensation by his
+satires and immediately proceeded to carry his censoriousness of human
+frailties into the drama. His earliest play, "Antonio and Mellida" (two
+parts, 1602, acted 1599-1600), reveals in Part I the still dominant
+influence of romantic comedy, despite its tragic trend; but Part II,
+"Antonio's Revenge," is a tragedy of the Kydian type. The play was followed
+by a number of comedies, all outspoken in satire of contemporary manners
+and in the exposure of social immorality. Several dealt with tragic
+material, and one, "The Malcontent," is a notable combination of a tragedy
+of blood and a satirical comedy. Its protagonist is of a type represented
+in the other comedies and not without influence on contemporary dramatists.
+Marston's malcontents are men of virtue and honor "who hate not man but
+man's lewd qualities"; in disfavor and out of joint with the world; given
+to melancholy and a showy pessimism that finds fitting expression only in
+images of filth and putrefaction. His tragedy "Sophonisba" (1606), which he
+seems to have deemed the most important of his plays, treats history with
+great freedom, and unites melodramatic horrors with his usual unflinching
+fondness for rankness of thought and imagery. The horrible realism of the
+Erichtho scenes comes in strange contrast with the songs, dances, and
+musical accompaniment suited to a performance by the child actors for whom
+all of Marston's plays were written.
+
+"Antonio's Revenge" is the earliest representative in this period of the
+Kydian type of revenge tragedy. The satirical passages in "A Warning for
+Fair Women" indicate the popularity of ghosts and revenge, and there are
+many evidences of the continued vogue of "The Spanish Tragedy" from 1597 to
+1602. Marston's play was evidently modeled on "The Spanish Tragedy," and
+probably still more directly on the Kydian "Hamlet." The story is the
+revenge of a son for a father murdered by a villanous duke who seeks to wed
+the hero's mother; the revenge is directed by the ghost of the father; the
+hero is driven to hesitation, irresolution, and the verge of madness; he
+pretends to be a fool; intrigue and trickery are indulged in by both hero
+and villain, and the revenge is accomplished with an abundance of
+bloodshed. There is a minor story of revenge, enforcing the main situation
+as does the Laertes story in "Hamlet" and the scene with the Senex in "The
+Spanish Tragedy"; and, doubtless as in the early "Hamlet," the passion of
+the murderer for the widow of his victim now becomes an important motive in
+the action. Moreover, the play abounds in psychological introspection and
+meditative philosophy set forth for the most part through the soliloquies
+of the hero.
+
+The indebtedness to the earlier revenge plays extends to details of the
+stage presentation. Revenge is accomplished much as in "The Spanish
+Tragedy," though by means of a masque instead of a play, and without the
+death of the hero. From similar scenes in the old "Hamlet" were probably
+derived the appearance of the ghost at midnight, the cry "Antonio,
+revenge!" and the second appearance of the ghost to the hero and his
+mother. The dumb show exhibiting the wooing of Maria, the use of the
+churchyard, the banquets, carousals, funerals, exhibition of the dead
+bodies, and the oaths of the conspirators were perhaps already conventional
+accompaniments of a revenge play. "Antonio's Revenge," however, is not
+wanting in inventiveness; its abundant horrors and its melodramatically
+ingenious stage effects were probably recognized as an advance upon the old
+favorites, and they excited the emulation of succeeding dramatists.
+
+The hero, too, is of the Kydian type. Like both Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
+is a scholar, interested in philosophy and also in theatrical performances.
+Like them he is distinguished by a tendency to reflection, and struggles in
+solitary meditation at each crisis in his career. Like them he is driven to
+the verge of madness by the pressure of his heavy responsibility and by his
+awakened sense of evil in the universe. Though he does not seek further
+proof, yet, like Hamlet after the revelations of the play, he becomes
+frantic and irresolute, neglects an opportunity to kill the duke, and
+wastes his vengeance upon an innocent child. Like Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
+is tricky, wild, and ranting. With all his overdrawn passion, however, his
+mental struggle occasionally attains intellectual depth and tragic power.
+As he tells us, it was "the stings of anguish," "the bruising stroke of
+chance" which made him run mad "as one confounded in a maze of mischief."
+
+Several years, then, before Shakespeare's "Hamlet," we have a play dealing
+with the old story of a revenge of a son for a father, following closely
+the methods introduced by Kyd, appealing to a taste that delighted in
+extravagant violence and melodramatic sensationalism, but also striving to
+simulate profundity of thought and a passionate sense of evil. It is
+difficult to-day to take Marston seriously. His plays have little merit,
+while his bombastic sententiousness gives an air of insincerity to
+everything that he wrote; yet a serious purpose and a considerable
+influence on later drama cannot be denied to his efforts in tragedy. Like
+so many others, he deserves to be remembered for what he attempted rather
+than for what he did. Absurd though "Antonio's Revenge" be as an artistic
+achievement, it is historically of importance as indicating an ambitious
+attempt to give poetical expression to the spiritual conflict of a mind
+brought to face dreadful evil. The prologue that he addressed to his London
+audience testifies sufficiently to his serious and ambitious intentions,
+and to the clear separation of tragedy from other forms of drama, which he
+and other poets were trying to force upon the theatre.
+
+                       "Therefore we proclaim,
+    If any spirit breathes within this round
+    Uncapable of weighty passion,
+    (As from his birth being hugged in the arms
+    And nuzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness,)
+    Who winks and shuts his apprehension up
+    From common sense of what men were, and are;
+    Who would not know what men must be: let such
+    Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;
+    We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,
+    Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart,
+    Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;
+    If there be any blood, whose heat is choked
+    And stifled with true sense of misery:
+    If aught of these strains fill this consort up,
+    They arrive most welcome."
+
+A number of plays dealing with "revenge for a father" followed. In 1602
+"The Revenge of Hamlet" was entered in the Stationers' Register; and the
+first quarto, a pirated and very corrupt edition, appeared in the following
+year. This quarto, in the opinion of a majority of critics, represents
+Shakespeare's partial revision of the old play, which was put on the stage
+by Burbage's company in 1601-02. In the same years Ben Jonson was receiving
+pay from Henslowe of the rival company for two sets of additions to "The
+Spanish Tragedy," and these were published in 1602. In that year Henslowe
+also paid Chettle for a tragedy, "Hoffman" (1631); and in 1602-03
+Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" (1611) was probably acted.[18] By 1603
+Shakespeare had given "Hamlet" its final form as represented by the second
+quarto (1604). The almost simultaneous appearance of these various plays is
+sufficient testimony to the popularity of the old revenge story with both
+audiences and authors. Dealing with similar plots, they naturally have many
+elements in common, but they exhibit few or no signs of servile imitation
+of one another. They represent independent developments of the type that
+Kyd had introduced a dozen years before and that Marston had revived, each
+retaining many of the old conventions, and each adding much that was new.
+
+Jonson's additions to "The Spanish Tragedy" are distinct from the rest of
+the play and affect the proportion and movement of the action rather for
+the worse. They deal in the main with Hieronimo; his irony is increased and
+made more effective; his reflections become more elaborate and pregnant;
+above all, his madness gains enormously in reality and intensity. His
+madness, indeed, receives a disproportionate development. Throughout the
+additions Jonson is picturing a mind diseased by grief, sometimes conscious
+of life's unrelaxing pain and again lost in frenzied delirium. Thus, the
+imaginative impulses that responded to the demand for revenge plays here
+stirred a great poet to a rehabilitation of the crude ravings of the old
+Hieronimo in a form more intellectual, more vitally human, and of immensely
+greater imaginative range.
+
+"Hoffman" is a sensational melodrama by a hack writer not unskillful in
+using prevailing conventions with theatrical effectiveness. The story is
+again the revenge of a son for a father, but there is no ghost, only the
+skeleton to excite him to vengeance. He banishes "clouds of melancholy" at
+the start and shows no hesitation in carrying out the revenge until turned
+from his purpose by his passion for the mother of his chief victim.
+Intrigue and slaughter reign supreme; and, as in "Locrine," there are two
+plots of revenge--Hoffman seeking revenge for his father and every one else
+seeking revenge on Hoffman. In the pathetic situation of Lucibella, driven
+insane by grief, Chettle made use of a character and a situation familiar
+on the stage in much the same fashion as they must have been presented in
+the old "Hamlet." Lucibella's madness, however, is made the instrument of
+some telling hits at the villain and the means of discovering his iniquity.
+While Ophelia's madness has no influence on the main action, that of
+Lucibella leads directly to the _denouement_. Dramatically this is a very
+important difference and seems due to Chettle's invention. Unlike Marston
+or Jonson, he made little effort to give the story either imaginative
+intensity or philosophical significance. He took common theatrical motives
+and situations, added much and changed much, and constructed a good acting
+play not without some grace of verse. A play that was popular thirty years
+after it was written must have successfully met the stage demand.
+
+Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" differs in many respects from all preceding
+revenge plays. The revenge is for a father murdered by an uncle and
+directed by a ghost. The revenge, however, is left to Providence; the ghost
+is Christian; the avenging son not only hesitates, but after a little
+irresolution overcomes his inclinations to revenge, and, obeying the
+ghost's behests, resignedly awaits the judgment of heaven. In stage
+presentation the play also shows a wide departure from Kyd, especially in
+the indescribable comic underplot. There are, however, three appearances of
+the ghost,--one to soldiers on watch,--churchyard scenes, banquets, sword
+fights, suicides, scaffolds, and death's-heads. In the accumulation of
+horrors, in the development of the villain's character, in the emphasis on
+new sensational motives at the expense of revenge, and in the more
+elaborate handling of the intrigue, it may be said to carry the general
+development of the revenge tragedy a step farther than Marston or Chettle,
+and a step nearer to Webster. On the other hand, in its definite attempt to
+present an intellectual conception not lacking in moral grandeur, it
+sometimes, more closely than any of the other plays considered, approaches
+"Hamlet." The change in the revenge motive is especially manifest in the
+soliloquies and reflective passages, which unite in a fairly well connected
+argument that points the moral of the action, the omnipotence of God's
+providence.
+
+When, after an interval of some half dozen years, Shakespeare returned to
+tragedy, evidently both the demands of the theatres and the artistic
+impulses of the poets were different from those of Marlowe's day. The plays
+of Marlowe and Kyd were still active forces in the drama, but in 1600-01,
+when Shakespeare was perhaps writing both "Julius Caesar" and the first
+revision of "Hamlet," the man of the hour in tragedy was Marston.
+
+In "Julius Caesar" Shakespeare availed himself of a theme already a
+favorite. The story of the overthrow of a tyrant, the progress of a
+conspiracy, the fall of a prince, and his revenge upon the murderers
+furnished material well approved for tragedy, while the greatness of the
+events and the actors both gave assurance of popular interest and incited
+the poet to his best. Shakespeare was not directed by scrupulous regard for
+historical accuracy, but his genius was stirred by that of Plutarch to give
+the events of the Roman civil war the interest and vitality he had given to
+the reigns of English kings. In dealing with a story that followed so
+closely the standard lines of tragedy,--the murder and the
+revenge,--Shakespeare adopted some of the methods current in contemporary
+plays. There is really no evidence to support Mr. Fleay's ingenious surmise
+that the play was originally in two parts,--I, The Death, and II, The
+Revenge of Caesar,--but the play seems to have separated itself naturally
+into those two divisions. The rise of the action traces the rise of the
+conspiracy to Caesar's death; the return of the action proceeds to the
+failure and deaths of the conspirators. But from the beginning Shakespeare
+must have found his interest engaged less by the story of conspiracy or
+revenge, or even by the presentation of the turmoil of an empire, than by
+the delineation of the character of Brutus. There, for him, lay the kernel
+of the tragedy, in the struggle of a highly gifted nature with a task unfit
+for his accomplishment. The play became not a tragedy of over-reaching
+ambition, as Marlowe might have made "The Tragedy of Caesar," nor the
+tragedy of supernaturally ordained revenge, as Kyd might have made "Caesar's
+Revenge," but the tragedy of Brutus,--the fateful struggle of a noble mind
+against counter actors and against chance, and also against an incurable
+deficiency in his own temperament.
+
+Similarly, in revising the old "Hamlet," Shakespeare must have been
+attracted by the possibilities in the character of the hesitating avenger.
+Here, however, as we have seen, the influence of his contemporaries was
+considerable and complex. The plot, situations, types of character, and
+leading motives of the old "Hamlet" were already familiar to the stage in
+several plays. Revenge, directed by a ghost, hesitation on the part of the
+hero, insanity real or feigned, intrigue, copious bloodshed, a secondary
+revenge plot, meditative philosophizing in the form of soliloquies, were
+all essential elements probably of the Kydian "Hamlet," certainly of
+several other revenge plays. The refusal of an opportunity to kill the
+villain, the songs and wild talk of a mad woman, the murder of an innocent
+intruder, scenes in a churchyard, the appearance of the ghost to soldiers
+of the watch, the play within the play,--all these as well as many more
+minor conventionalities, such as the swearing on the sword hilt, or the
+voice of the ghost in the cellar, had appeared in other plays than the old
+"Hamlet." And Hamlet himself, wild and ranting at times, crafty and
+dissimulating at others, cynical and ironical, given to melancholy and
+meditation, hesitating in bewilderment, harassed by the unavoidable "whips
+and scorns of time,"--so far as we can analyze the tragic hero, his
+characteristics had been already used by contemporary dramatists. Dramatic
+ingenuity was all that was required to make a new play out of this
+abundance of old material. Chettle succeeded in doing just this. Marston,
+Jonson, and Tourneur, however, had been trying to give the old story
+philosophical significance and a highly imaginative phrasing. They had
+glimpses of the dramatic and poetic possibilities that lay in the situation
+of the hesitating revenger, and at moments they succeeded in realizing
+these. Shakespeare set himself to their task, and naturally enough he was
+in many ways limited and directed by their efforts. It was perfectly
+possible for him to change the plot completely, or to omit the ghost in the
+cellar, or to remove the bloodthirsty and intriguing elements from the part
+of Hamlet, or to give a more Christian interpretation to the revenge; but
+in these and other matters he followed the practice of the earlier plays.
+There was no dramatic need of so many long soliloquies; the meditative
+avenger need not have been ironical; insanity might have received less
+elaboration; but in these respects Shakespeare was in agreement with his
+contemporaries. The themes which they took inspired him. He succeeded in
+doing what they vainly attempted.
+
+He by no means neglected the external story or denied the theatrical demand
+for sensation. He, perhaps, did not radically change the course of events
+as depicted in the old play, but he unquestionably improved on any
+preceding tragedy in the mere effectiveness of the scenic presentation of a
+sensational story. How great this effectiveness is may be judged by the
+continued popularity of "Hamlet" as a stage performance even before
+unlettered auditors. We may surmise that had poetry and philosophy both
+perished, it would still draw its crowds as it does to-day on the remote
+borders of civilization. This theatrical triumph is due in part to dramatic
+excellence of structure and presentation. From the old play probably came a
+story restricted by semi-Senecan technic to a great emotional crisis; but
+Shakespeare at least resisted the temptation, to which his contemporaries
+succumbed, of extending the action over the events leading up to the
+murder. And assuredly to him rather than to Kyd or another is due the
+recognition of the dramatic values of the story's beginning, middle, and
+end. Magnificent as is his development of the ghost scenes at the
+beginning, still more important structurally is his realization of the
+value of the middle of the tragedy and treatment of the play within the
+play and its immediate sequences; and if the end is developed with an
+Elizabethan looseness of coherence that will not correspond to any logical
+scheme of structure, yet the pathos of the Ophelia scenes and the wonderful
+grotesquery of the graveyard excite and renew the spectator's interest to
+the final catastrophe. The scenic presentation, while telling a sensational
+story with preeminent effectiveness, becomes as never before in English
+drama the means for exhibiting the inner struggle of the protagonist.
+Parallel with the external conflict between murderer and avenger, beginning
+with the advent of the ghost and ending with a holocaust, there runs the
+story of a man's moods and thoughts; and this story of doubt and melancholy
+overpowering resolution imposes its unity of structure and emotional tone
+upon the external conflict so full of visible action. The throng of
+dreadful happenings becomes a foil to set off the inner struggle of
+thought. Their climax is only the brink of resolution from which Hamlet
+shrinks. Their catastrophe is the end of irresolution in silence.
+
+The reflections and moralizings and broodings over misfortunes inherited
+from Seneca, and long an essential element in the revenge plays, are also,
+like the sensational incidents, integrated and humanized by the conception
+of the hero's character. The soliloquies, though keeping to the themes and
+methods of contemporary drama, become landmarks in the depiction of the
+inner struggle and in the general progress of the action. The absurd
+convention of speaking aloud one's unformed and unbidden thoughts becomes
+theatrically exciting, dramatically essential, and, through the reach of
+Shakespeare's imaginative expression, representative of the eternal battle
+of human frailty against the mysteries of chance and evil.
+
+Analysis might, indeed, continue to discover in the multiform
+impressiveness of the characterization and the poetry survivals of old
+conventions and hints of the method of Shakespeare's transformation. Taken
+apart, various passages seem overburdened with rhetoric, after the style of
+the day, and others over-sententious. Taken piece by piece, the sarcasm,
+the irony, the pessimism, the stoic philosophy, even the passionate protest
+against destiny, have much in common with the ideas then current in other
+plays. But here again the transformation accomplished through unrivaled
+powers of expression and knowledge of human nature seems to result from an
+absorbing interest in the meditating and hesitating temperament of the
+hero. The union of a drama of blood-vengeance with a drama of thought, a
+union that had been often attempted by others, is finally achieved,
+because here for the first time there is full recognition of the tragic
+interest, movement, and significance of a man's battle with himself. The
+tragic drama of character has been consummated.
+
+In Shakespeare's conception of the tragic hero we find many characteristics
+and some incongruities that belong to the old avengers; but there is new
+penetration into the sources of human motive that results in an essentially
+new view of the functions and scope of the tragic drama. As in most
+tragedies since "Tamburlaine," the play is a one-part play, presenting a
+hero far above the average in mental and moral power, but for the time
+mainly under the sway of one dominating mood or emotion. Like the other
+heroes of revenge tragedies, Hamlet is a good man brought suddenly face to
+face with evil. Again, like the heroes of Seneca and of most tragedies
+dealing with a reversal of fortune, Hamlet is a strong man brought to face
+the enmity of chance. He is an individual forced to struggle against a
+hostile environment. Again, he is a man in a tragic crisis that requires
+the exercise of all possible powers on his part if he is to avoid disaster,
+who finds himself afflicted with a temperamental weakness that makes
+failure possible or indeed inevitable. Critics emphasize now one and now
+another element of his character as they emphasize one or another of these
+conflicts as the most important. Shakespeare here, as again in later plays,
+united in one hero all the varieties of conflict catalogued by the
+critics. But if we ask which is most peculiarly Shakespearean, it must be
+said to be the conflict with his own temperamental unfitness, call that
+irresolution, melancholy, meditativeness, or what you will. Here lies
+Shakespeare's main differentiation from preceding tragedy, though one
+distinctly presaged in "Julius Caesar." At all events, we have a conception
+of tragedy carried out in his succeeding plays. The hero, noble and
+righteous, is brought into conflict with the results of evil and
+circumstance, and he is crippled by his own inability or weakness. Tragedy
+becomes inherent in character, in the incompleteness that marks the best
+and mightiest of mankind.
+
+Our consideration of "Hamlet" has been prolonged partly because its
+relations to contemporary drama can be traced more readily than those of
+Shakespeare's other tragedies, and partly because it is the first of his
+plays to afford a full definition of tragedy, a conception of prime
+importance both in the development of Shakespeare's art and in the future
+history of the drama. A sensational struggle is presented, and the
+abounding incidents are wrought into effective if loosely connected
+stage-scenes, dealing with material similar to that then current in the
+theatres,--villains, ghosts, murders, insanity, grim farce, meditations,
+aphorisms. But the scenic presentation and the dramatic structure are to
+express not only an external conflict between hero and counter-force, but
+an inner struggle of the hero himself. They are to be the effects and
+results, nay, the very mirror of the inner thought and feeling. And the
+disaster that falls upon the hero and those by him beloved comes home to
+us as due not merely to external forces or circumstances or to evil working
+within, but also to an inherent unfitness of his own.
+
+This conception of tragedy found further exemplification in "Othello,"[19]
+freer from Elizabethan methods than any of the other tragedies, and the
+most masterful of all as a play. The fable was found in an Italian novella
+that related, like so many of its class, a bald story of love, jealousy,
+and villany. The very baldness of the narrative in comparison with the
+fullness of incident and characterization of the chronicles or Plutarch,
+gave Shakespeare's imagination an untrammeled opportunity. The ingredients
+of the story, common in romantic comedy and already combined by Shakespeare
+in "Much Ado about Nothing," were also not unfamiliar in tragedy, but
+Shakespeare enlarged and interpreted them to fit the conception of his two
+preceding tragedies, the presentation of a spiritual struggle in which
+goodness is attacked by evil at its point of greatest vulnerability. The
+credulity of Othello, however, is assaulted by a more active agent of evil
+than in "Julius Caesar" or "Hamlet." Malignant evil is embodied in Iago, and
+it is against his machinations that the nobly idealized characters of
+Othello and Desdemona prove incompetent and defenseless. He is the person
+who dominates the action and gives explanation and plausibility to the
+circumstances. He not only opposes the hero in the external action, he
+creates through his insinuations all the evil suspicions that struggle in
+Othello's mind. He might almost be considered the protagonist of the
+tragedy.
+
+In structure there is a notable advance over preceding plays, accomplished
+apparently in part through deliberate intent. The first act with its
+account of Iago's craft and the marriage is a distinct introduction. The
+remaining four acts present a practically continuous action, confined to
+Cyprus and representing about thirty-six hours. Moreover, by a skillful
+ambiguity, which Christopher North called "the double clock," Shakespeare,
+while securing this rapid and uninterrupted process of time, has succeeded
+in conveying an impression of protracted intrigue and slowly-developing
+motives. Thus, without lessening the variety and importance of the events
+and emotions, he gains, by a closer observance of unity than in the other
+tragedies, a greater degree of theatrical illusion and of dramatic
+intensity. Again, "Othello" technically is noticeable among the tragedies
+for its relinquishment of many current methods. It is neither a chronicle
+history nor a Senecan tragedy. There is no presentation of history and
+little of court ceremonies. There are no battles, no long exposition, no
+spectacles, no ghosts, no insanity, and almost no comedy. It has few
+persons and virtually a single action. The underplot is subordinated and
+closely united to the main action, and there are no delays and new
+excitements between crisis and catastrophe as in "Hamlet" and "Lear."
+Nowhere else in Shakespeare is the progress of character, emotion, and deed
+toward the final event so consecutive and so uninterrupted. This advance in
+coherence and proportion seems due less to the contributing causes just
+enumerated than to the explanation of action by character. Accept the
+unbelievable malignity of Iago--and you do accept it before you have
+proceeded far--and every step of the appalling chain of intrigue seems a
+natural outcome of the motives of the persons before us.
+
+In consequence of this integration of character and action, the characters
+are, more than in the other tragedies, distinct and unmistakable. As if to
+make stronger the contrast between good and evil, the good man is a Moor,
+apparently, as in the case of the Moors in "Titus Andronicus" and
+"Selimus," hardly distinguishable from a negro; and the bad man is deprived
+of the motive which in the _novella_ rendered his wickedness intelligible.
+Yet nowhere, even in Shakespeare, are generosity and greatness of soul more
+admirable than in Othello, nowhere is villany more human than in Iago. The
+stage villain here receives his apotheosis as the avenging hero did in
+"Hamlet." The source of all the evil in the play, the Machiavellian
+machinator, the subtle hypocrite whose every action is a pose to conceal
+its purpose, the simulator of honesty and bluntness, the shameless egoist
+who proudly avows his villany and bawls it to the gallery, the intellectual
+master who plays every one for a dupe, and especially his accomplice--all
+this had been embodied in the villains of Kyd and Marlowe. Although
+intelligible to Elizabethan psychology and theology, and credible in the
+light of Tudor politics and feuds, such a type would seem to lack enduring
+truth. While preserving all the attributes of the stage type, Shakespeare
+made it the means for that searching analysis of human depravity to which
+his contemporaries were less successfully dedicating their efforts. This
+soliloquizing devil becomes identified with the suggestions and sinuosities
+of evil that partake of the flux of our consciousness. Hypocrisy, cynicism,
+cruelty, the absence of human sympathies, the pride and malignity of
+intellectual superiority have henceforth their symbol in Iago. Impossible,
+diabolical, inhuman as Barabas or Richard III, he is never for a moment
+unplausible, because he ever unearths a corresponding potentiality in us.
+
+The persons of the play, while unusually effective on the stage, and while
+human and real in their discourse, have a universality of appeal essential
+in the greatest works of art, desired by Aristotle and dimly foreshadowed
+in Elizabethan efforts after greatness and typicality. Othello, Desdemona,
+and Iago create fresh reflection and new impulse in every reader of every
+generation. And to each they are not only real persons but also symbols and
+ideals of the generosity, sweetness, and iniquity of the universe. This
+idealization of character is accomplished with wonderful clarity by means
+of an expression, splendidly eloquent, untroubled by conceit or obscurity,
+equally masterful in prose or verse, magnificently adapted to the
+representation of every mood or temperament. Shakespeare here realized the
+ideal toward which English tragedy under the leadership of Marlowe had been
+struggling, the presentation of human greatness in blank verse beautiful
+and dramatic.
+
+If "Othello" is comparatively free from current conventions, "Lear" is in
+many respects the most Elizabethan of Shakespeare's tragedies. Story,
+themes, situations, stage effects constantly recall the plays of his
+predecessors; and if his creative imagination here attains the most
+astounding triumph in all literature, it cannot be said to free itself
+entirely from a confusion of archaisms and absurdities.
+
+Returning to English history, Shakespeare selected a story that had
+outgrown the chronicles and been narrated by several poets and in one
+drama. From the early "Leir" he took a few important hints, but he treated
+the material of the chronicles with a freedom which both its obviously
+legendary character and its remoulding by other poets permitted. He was
+only slightly concerned with the presentation of history and hurried over
+the battles and the shows, the still indispensable accompaniment of
+historical plays. He was concerned solely with the tragic entanglements of
+character, with the devastations of evil and folly.
+
+The kernel of the story, Lear's trick and Cordelia's unsatisfactory reply,
+though possessing a kind of objectivity suitable for the stage, is of
+itself so absurd and childish as to impede illusion of truth. Its
+development is full of inconsistency, and the interwoven themes of madness,
+villany, lust, ambition, family feud, and ideal virtue suggest no break
+from the Elizabethan canon of tragedy. To the story of Lear and his
+daughters, Shakespeare added the still more childish parallel story of
+Gloster and his sons. This common device of a reinforcing sub-plot is here
+extended to every situation and motive. Even the devoted Kent is balanced
+by Goneril's faithful creature, Oswald; the inhuman sisters are supported
+by the machinating Edmund; and, most extraordinary of all, the assumed
+madness of Edgar becomes an accompaniment for the real madness of Lear. The
+elaboration of the sub-plot causes an unprecedented complexity of persons
+and events, and it dislocates the structure. The intense interest which is
+absorbed in the sufferings of Lear finds itself distracted and dissipated
+in a medley of incidents so incongruous and so confusing that one wonders
+how a rational mind could have selected them. The crowded scenes which
+separate the climax of the third act from the catastrophe assuredly form
+one of the least happy instances of the Elizabethan habit of introducing a
+change of interest and a variety of incident in the fourth and fifth acts.
+Yet the structure of the play, if far from faultless, reveals amazing
+mastery. The development of the action in the first three acts with the
+constantly increasing tension of feeling, and the final gathering of all
+the different actions in the wonderfully condensed catastrophe, are among
+the greatest achievements of dramatic plotting. Moreover, in spite of his
+zest for crowded and diversified action, Shakespeare's feeling for unity of
+emotional effect caused him to omit one motive that modern renovators have
+never been able to forego. He found a place for battles, villany, childish
+intrigue, the clown's songs and jests, the plucking out of Gloster's eyes,
+and the protracted foolery between Edgar and his helpless father, but he
+refused to admit romantic love into this drama of the madness that
+separates father and child.
+
+Though Shakespeare chose to involve himself in these manifold difficulties
+of story and structure, he hardly felt his fetters. No play depends less on
+mere incident and event. The inconsistencies and confusion of the action
+are forgotten in the wild turmoil of human passions. Wild, terrible,
+elementary, brutal, grotesque, or sublime,--everything in the play is
+touched with the imaginative truth that gives it limitless range of
+suggestion, applicable to any discord of parents and children or to the
+most dreadful spiritual torture. Insanity, long a favorite theme of
+Elizabethan tragedy, and fantastic grotesqueness, often its bane, summon
+his imagination to its most wonderful creation when the feigning Bedlam
+counters the mad king mid the jests of the fool and the havoc of the storm.
+Such a conception could have been attempted only in an age which took its
+emotions strong and mixed, which found insanity a subject for laughter as
+well as horror, and which refused to limit the imagination by reason or
+rule. In that age a lesser than Shakespeare might have formed the bare
+design of making his audience laugh at the fool and poor Tom, and shudder
+at the eyeless Gloster and the raving Ancient. Something akin to it may be
+found in many scenes, in that in which Marlowe's emperor and empress dash
+out their brains against the bars of their cage in a frenzy of humiliation,
+or that in which Webster's duchess stands undazzled amid the dancing ring
+of obscene maniacs. The Elizabethan drama had prepared the opportunity for
+the full and terrible presentation of the discords and agony of a breaking
+mind. The London audience was ready for the scenes on the heath.
+
+Madness is only one element that contributes to the overwhelming effect of
+the play. Its so-called pessimism is the only other on which our meagre
+survey may dwell. English tragedy had from the beginning concerned itself
+mainly with heinous crime and sin; and during the years immediately
+preceding and following "Lear" there was a distinct conception of tragedy
+as the representation not only of the depths of iniquity but of the moral
+confusion and blackness that beset us all. In "Hamlet," "Othello," and
+"Measure for Measure" the sense of evil is ever present. In "Lear" it
+grips the reader like the rack. As in "Othello," evil, here represented by
+the two fiendish daughters as well as by an intriguing villain, dominates
+the action, and carries all that is good along with it to destruction. But
+evil is only one of the forces that cause suffering and ruin. Lear and
+Cordelia contend against their own imperfections and against chance and
+circumstance so hostile that they seem directed by gods who sport with men
+as with flies and loose the fury of the elements to torment their victims.
+Where else in tragedy are the forces that make for ruin so appalling and so
+irresistible; and where else are suffering and ruin so dreadful and so
+complete? The sufferers are powerless. Suffering does not here arouse a
+Promethean defiance, but it discovers and purifies human virtue. If evil is
+dominant over the action, Cordelia, Kent, the Fool, and the chastened and
+purified Lear are dominant in our reflections. The end is not the fall and
+cessation of all that is good. Even in our dismay at the convulsion which
+evil may cause, there remains the memory of the perfection of human
+devotion and love. The final impression must, however, partake of confusion
+and horror at the blackness and ruthlessness of a moral order that can
+sacrifice perfect virtue in an effort to free itself from the hideous
+enormity of evil. This is the tragedy of life as Shakespeare saw it, and
+the cry of bewilderment and agony seems to come from the poet's own heart.
+The language, sometimes crowded and difficult, has hardly a trace of
+artifice. Rarely as perfectly mastered as in "Hamlet" and "Othello," it
+surpasses even those plays in the tremendous sincerity of its passion. If
+passionate despair at things human has a language, it is the speech of
+Lear.
+
+"Macbeth" offers a marked contrast to "Lear" in its brevity and rapidity.
+In spite of a few probable interpolations, the text is so short that it may
+likely represent a condensation of the original version. In none of the
+tragedies is the story told with more breathless directness, or with more
+effective presentation of the externals of the action. The play is more
+dependent on the chronicle than "Lear," and pays more attention to the
+representation of history. In "Lear" the political and national importance
+of the events is forgotten, but in "Macbeth" the convulsion of the kingdom
+is kept in mind, and the battles, political intrigue, and the prophecies of
+future dynasties recall the early chronicle plays. The story in Holinshed's
+chronicle, however, conforms to the current ideas of tragedy, so closely
+indeed that one wonders that some writer had not earlier attempted its
+dramatization.[20] Apparently it awaited a Scottish king and a general
+interest in Scottish affairs. The story is one of crime and retribution
+with a rather striking likeness to some of the classical dramas. It
+coincides with the Senecan plan of a crime committed and then revenged
+through the accompaniment of supernatural agencies. It is the story,
+familiar to both humanistic and popular tragedy, of a usurper who becomes
+a bloody tyrant and is overthrown after a reign of increasing crime.
+Macbeth's inordinate and fatal ambition also offers an obvious chance for a
+development akin to that of Marlowe's protagonists. Again, as in most
+English tragedies from "Cambyses" to "Sejanus," the story presents the
+punishment of evil rather than the suffering of the good, and, except for
+the absence of lust as a motive, might have found favor with any
+contemporary dramatist. All these possibilities in the story were seized
+upon by Shakespeare and adapted to his purpose. "Macbeth" might be studied
+as the complement of "Lear" in the reflection and summarizing of all
+preceding essays at tragedy.
+
+Shakespeare's use of these various potentialities of the story and the
+definiteness of his unifying purpose may both be seen by a comparison with
+his treatment of the very similar materials furnished by the chronicles for
+"Richard III." There, following closely the Marlowean methods, he for some
+reason minimized the motive of remorse emphasized in his sources, and left
+Richard as conscienceless as Tamburlaine or Barabas. In "Macbeth" the story
+of ambition is also a story of the temptation, defeat, and remorse of
+conscience. As in the other great tragedies, Shakespeare informed the old
+material with the struggle of the human will. At the same time he made the
+most of the hints in the chronicle that the protagonist was driven by fate
+or some forces beyond his control. He united with marvelous dramatic tact
+the destiny tragedy of the Greeks and the villain tragedy of the
+Elizabethans. As a result the character of Macbeth has its paradoxes that
+are the despair of the analysts. We do not quite know how far free-will and
+how far superhuman agencies determined his course. But while the superhuman
+agencies give his villany a mystery and impressiveness, they never confuse
+for a moment the distinctions of good and evil. The powers of right and
+wrong are clearly marshaled, and the triumph of evil leads to anguish as
+well as to ruin.
+
+Shakespeare's transforming and vitalizing use of both the suggestions of
+Holinshed and the established conventions of tragedy in order to suit this
+changed purpose is manifest at every turn, but nowhere so transcendently as
+in his treatment of the supernatural. The ghost that interrupts the banquet
+is no shrieking revenger, hardly more than a hallucination of the murderer.
+The invisibility of the ghost to all but the one whom he would frighten or
+admonish has other examples in the drama, but by 1605 most of the
+playwrights made their ghosts either melodramatically horrible or vulgarly
+familiar. In "Macbeth" Shakespeare not only etherealizes the ghost as in
+"Julius Caesar" and "Hamlet," but makes him a part of the very mood and
+temper of the murderer. And similarly, the witches, drawn from Holinshed's
+hints, represent a supernatural interference very different from that of
+the furies, devils, or sorcerers usual in the theatre. Some of their stage
+effects are archaic enough, as the shows of the head, the bloody child, and
+the monarchs; some, like their vanishing in air, may have been novel on
+the stage of the Globe; certainly they were all intended to surpass in mere
+theatrical novelty and effectiveness any of the supernatural or magical
+creatures of the contemporary drama. Delighting the groundlings and
+appealing to the current interest in witchcraft, they are none the less
+essential to the drama, inwrapt in the conception of character. The foul
+hags of superstition, they seem also to have the attributes of the
+classical Fates. Novel and effective on the stage, they are the supervisors
+of Macbeth's destiny. They lay bare the path to his crimes, yet they seem
+to obey rather than to govern his inclinations. The embodiments of the
+desires hid in his bosom, they become, like the dagger in the air and the
+ghost of Banquo, the symptoms of his soul's disease.
+
+The disease of the soul is the theme, and the attention is centred upon
+crime and its accompaniments, as in many contemporary plays, but with less
+relief than in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. While the range of
+crime is confined, lust for instance never appearing as a motive, there is
+an unrelieved concentration on the evil course of ambition. The virtuous
+and noble have only minor parts. Lady Macbeth is an instigator and
+accomplice in crime. For the first time since Shakespeare's early plays,
+there is no idealized woman. The wickedness of Iago and the wolfish sisters
+was relieved by the lovableness of Desdemona and Cordelia, unavailing for
+the time but unforgettable in the sympathies of the reader. The eternal
+stars never glimmer through the blackness that broods over Macbeth.
+
+Because of this concentration on one process of evil and the absence of any
+idealization of goodness, the play has a less intense appeal to our
+sympathies than the three preceding tragedies. Again, because of its
+concern with historical and political results, it removes itself from
+immediate relationship to common experience. In these respects it links
+itself with the two Roman historical tragedies that followed it.
+
+"Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus," like "Julius Caesar," are dramas of
+great historical characters already splendidly described in Plutarch. They
+are consequently far more limited by their sources than are the other
+tragedies. Shakespeare was circumscribed by the main historical facts of
+persons and events, and he was writing as the translator and interpreter of
+Plutarch; yet his conception and methods remained the same as in "Hamlet"
+or "Macbeth." An idealization of the tragic struggle of the protagonist is
+environed by a wealth of incidents and persons, and accomplished by a
+gathering and transformation of the methods and matters of current tragedy.
+The world of antiquity is not faithfully reproduced, but it is made alive
+and akin to our daily experience in the same fashion as are the Elsinore of
+Polonius and the grave-diggers, and the Britain of Osric and Kent. And the
+tragic conflicts that involve the great persons, if confused in the
+spectacles and actions of this varied stage, are the accompaniments of
+momentous national crises, themselves of hardly less imaginative appeal
+than the spiritual struggles which they parallel. The mental battles of
+Macbeth and Lear are reflected and magnified by the incantations of the
+weird sisters and the turmoil of the elements; those of Coriolanus and
+Antony by the battle of the powerful and the oppressed and by the throes of
+a dying civilization.
+
+In "Antony and Cleopatra," the subject of many Renaissance tragedies,
+Shakespeare chose for a theme an ignoble infatuation that leads counter to
+duty and on to destruction. The difficulties of the historical material led
+to a remarkable reversion in dramatic structure to the methods of the early
+chronicle plays, innumerable and loosely connected scenes, constant
+shifting of place, prolonged time, and an absence of tragic unity. The
+problem of a confused and intricate action, voluntarily imposed in "Lear,"
+is here forced upon the dramatist who will combine the wars of the
+triumvirs, the conflict of East and West, and the story of an enchantress
+and her victim. The tragic course of the conflict between infatuation and
+ambition is incumbered by historical details and stage spectacles, but in
+style and characterization few plays more greatly reveal Shakespeare's
+genius. In no play is the idealization of character more magnificent; no
+other dramatist has made Antony in the lures of a strumpet still
+representative of what is illustrious and magnanimous in mankind, no other
+has made a woman with the manners and heart of a strumpet the rightful
+empress of the imagination. The interest in the play is less centred than
+in the other tragedies. It is divided between the spectacle of historical
+events and the conflict of motives; it lies as much in the persons as
+vitalizations of history as in their fate as human beings. But this is the
+triumph of historical tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. Its scenic
+presentation makes alive the events and persons, and through a grandiose
+panorama interprets the passions that ravished both empires and the souls
+of their possessors.
+
+The human drama in "Coriolanus" is involved not only in historical
+circumstances, but also in the eternal conflict between the upper and the
+lower classes, the incurable disease of the body politic. While their pride
+in class, their blindness to the rights of others, and their failure in
+patriotism are made apparent, the patricians are treated as the
+representatives of righteousness and nobility. The plebeians, on the
+contrary, are depicted without appreciation of their sufferings or rights,
+as ignorant, imbecile, and the dupes of tricky demagogues. Contempt for the
+mob was a common sentiment in Renaissance literature, and the people as a
+factor in history held little place in the thoughts of the sixteenth
+century or in the historical drama. But here and in "Julius Caesar"
+Shakespeare treats them with far less consideration than does Fletcher or
+Massinger, with a contempt, indeed, that can hardly have flattered his
+audiences and that has often been taken as indicative of strong personal
+feeling. Shakespeare must have foreseen at least some of the political
+lessons which would be derived from the play, but one may easily exaggerate
+its importance as an exposition of his political theory. He was following
+Plutarch closely, with an eye for interesting theatrical scenes as in
+"Antony and Cleopatra," but with less than his usual inspiration. The lack
+of individuality in the persons, a certain typicality in the
+characterization, and the heaviness and complexity of the style may have
+been caused less by an intrusion of political theory than by a lapsing of
+that splendid power of characterization so long maintained. Moreover, the
+political partisanship is in part a dramatic necessity, almost compelled by
+Shakespeare's conception of tragedy and his dramatic method. Coriolanus
+must be given resplendent virtues. The populace as a foil and contrast must
+be made contemptible and the ready tool of vice. Pride, the fatal defect of
+the hero, must be exposed as was the sensuality of Antony, but it must be
+made the flaw of an Achilles. The role of villain is left for the
+demagogues, and that of the witless accomplice for the people. Again, here,
+as in all his histories, Shakespeare is blind to the importance of the
+people, because for him, as for his contemporaries, the dramatization of
+history was the dramatization of its great personages, and their passions,
+vices, and ambitions.
+
+The loss of power discernible in "Coriolanus" is conspicuous in "Timon."
+Its corrupt text and unfinished condition and the certainty that only part
+of the play is Shakespeare's render uncertain its importance among the
+tragedies. Here, however, as in "Coriolanus," though the interest in the
+causes that make man's misery is still keen, the lack of inspiration
+results in an exaggerated type for a protagonist and in an unconvincing
+exposition of human baseness. If Coriolanus's politics were Shakespeare's,
+certainly Timon's misanthropy was not.
+
+With these themes Shakespeare's interest in tragedy exhausted itself.
+Possibly influenced by the success of Beaumont and Fletcher's early
+romantic plays, he attempted in "Cymbeline," and perfected in "A Winter's
+Tale" and "The Tempest," a type of play combining tragic and idyllic
+elements, full of romantic variety of incident, and resulting in surprising
+and happy _denouements_. The possibilities for tragedy are there; jealousy,
+villany, and intrigue abound; even death is introduced. But the main
+actions are not of suffering and ruin; love and forgiveness heal all ills;
+and the end is reconciliation and marriage. These romantic tragicomedies
+are not only departures from the established tragic forms, but from any
+consideration of tragic themes and problems comparable in seriousness or
+intensity with that of the plays which we have just discussed.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward, Fleay, and Schelling continue to be the best general guides.
+Important critical discussions of Shakespeare's tragedies by Professors A.
+C. Bradley, Lounsbury, and Baker were noted in the Bibliographical Note to
+chapter i. Other recent books of special interest are: _Shakespeare_,
+Walter Raleigh (1907, English Men of Letters Series); _William Shakespere_,
+Barrett Wendell (1894); _Shakespeare and his Predecessors_, F. S. Boas
+(1896). For a general surrey of the course of Shakespearean criticism, see
+Ward, vol. i, chap. iv; or Lounsbury, _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_,
+and _Shakespeare and Voltaire_; or the bibliographical lists in the various
+volumes of Furness's Variorum edition. This edition, now in progress, and
+Malone's Variorum edition of 1821, are the most valuable in furnishing
+information. Nearly all recent editions of Shakespeare supply fairly
+adequate information in regard to critical conclusions on matters of date,
+sources, and text. Probably the most serviceable bibliography of
+Shakespearean editions and criticism up to 1870, and to a considerable
+extent for the Elizabethan drama, is to be found in the _Catalogue of the
+Barton Collection_ of the Boston Public Library (1888), accessible in most
+large libraries in this country. A complete Shakespearean bibliography
+since 1865 is supplied by the bibliographies published in the _Jahrbuch der
+Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_. These also comprise nearly all
+monographs of importance dealing with the drama from 1557 to 1642.
+
+The present chapter borrows from my article on Hamlet and the Revenge Plays
+(_Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn._ 1902), referred to in chap. iv. E. E. Stoll's
+_John Webster_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1905) gives a further discussion of the
+Revenge Plays, and especially of Marston. Bullen's edition of Marston is
+the standard. The editions of Heywood's Works (1874) and of Chapman's
+(1873-75) attempt no scholarly discussion. F. S. Boas's edition of the two
+Bussy D'Ambois plays in the _Belles-Lettres Series_ (Boston, 1905) has a
+valuable introduction. Gifford's edition of Jonson (1816) is unfortunately
+not yet superseded. The careful editions of various of his plays in the
+_Yale Studies in English_ as yet include none of his tragedies. _Ben
+Jonson, l'homme et l'oeuvre_ Paris, 1907, by Maurice Castelain is very
+elaborate, and contains a full bibliography with a preliminary descriptive
+note of editions. A new edition of Jonson edited by C. H. Herford and P.
+Simpson is announced.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] Mr. Elmer Stoll's argument against this early date does not seem to me
+convincing. See the Appendix to his _John Webster_, Cambridge, 1904.
+
+[19] _Troilus and Cressida_ in some form was probably acted in 1602. The
+editors of the Folio apparently first intended to class it with the
+tragedies, but they changed their minds while the book was printing and
+placed _Troilus_ without pagination between the histories and tragedies.
+The preface to one of the quartos of 1609 classes it with the comedies, and
+the prologue inclines that way. For an interesting though not always
+convincing discussion of the many difficulties offered by the play, the
+reader is referred to Mr. R. A. Small's _The Stage Quarrel between Ben
+Jonson and The So-called Poetasters_ (1899), pp. 139-170. The play offers
+problems of importance in Shakespearean criticism, but in a history of
+tragedy it seems negligible. The concluding scenes (v, 7-10) are clearly
+not by Shakespeare, and the Prologue and v, 4-6 are doubtful.
+
+[20] There is in fact a reference in Kempe's _Nine Days Wonder_ (1600) to
+the story, which may possibly indicate an earlier play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+Our study has perhaps already made it evident that Shakespeare's tragedies
+were in many ways the product of a rapid and complex evolution. At the same
+time it is clear that, until Shakespeare, Elizabethan tragedy with all its
+genius and innovations had failed to attain finality of art, or to mark out
+any sure pathway thither. It was still in its formative period when he
+created out of it something new and immortal, and its development continued
+after his death mainly in response to forces not of his initiating. For the
+past two centuries, to a constantly increasing body of spectators and
+readers, his tragedies have had a life entirely unconnected with the works
+of his contemporaries, an existence that has dominated our theatres and our
+conceptions of tragedy, and become a part of the daily living and the
+permanent ideals of the race. It is therefore necessary to separate his
+plays from the mass of tragedies, and to review them for a moment as the
+creations of a genius that was the chief creator as well as the glory of
+English tragedy.
+
+Two points of view that have been largely maintained in nineteenth century
+criticism of Shakespeare may, however, be neglected in our summary. His
+plays have been viewed as the reflection of his personal experiences and
+emotions; and his return to tragic themes about 1600 and his occupation
+with them for the next eight years have been connected with a supposed
+period of spiritual depression in his own life. Again, the generalization
+of experience and the abundant wisdom of his tragedies have been viewed as
+the result of a conscious and rather systematic philosophy of life. Much
+might be said for these attitudes of criticism. Any attempt to describe the
+plays in terms of our emotions as readers is likely to result in the
+attribution of those emotions to the author, an interesting process of
+analogy and one hardly to be disproved. Any attempt to survey his work as a
+whole and to relate its parts is likely to result in the systemization of
+his message and philosophy. But for students of the growth of his dramatic
+art under the peculiar conditions of the reigns of Elizabeth and James,
+these nineteenth century points of view involve dangerous critical
+anachronisms. Shakespeare does not seem to have been a lyric Shelley or
+Byron, making poetry out of his changing moods, or a Tennyson or Browning
+generalizing life in the persons of his men and women. There seems no
+reason for separating him from his companion poets and playwrights. Like
+them he was in the first place telling a story for the stage; like them he
+found in these plays opportunity for the expression of his knowledge of
+human motives in the guise of beautiful verse; and like them, when he chose
+tragic themes, he became absorbed in the presentation of the tragic facts
+and problems of life. Our attempt to determine his relations to them is not
+to discover indebtedness large or minute, but rather by the safest approach
+to arrive at a right appreciation of his genius and its transcendent
+contribution to tragedy.
+
+For the purpose of our survey we may have the four great tragedies chiefly
+in mind. The early tragedies are manifestly the products of an experimental
+period and the precursors of the latter plays; and the three Roman
+histories have a subordinate and contributory rather than an essential and
+preeminent part in his achievement in tragedy. Whatever can be said of the
+four great tragedies applies in its essentials to all.
+
+All these plays taken together illustrate the extraordinary amalgamation of
+the medieval and classical inheritances that English tragedy had received
+as a birthright. No play escapes from its narrative sources, and some are
+bound closely by them; yet the choice of sources often indicates the
+influence of the Senecan formula, sensational externals giving opportunity
+for an introspective analysis of emotional crises, notably in the stories
+of crime, revenge, and retribution. Their enormous variety of incident,
+their mingling of the comic and the tragic, their admission of physical
+horrors, deaths, and spectacles mark the survival of the medieval
+tradition, while the aphoristic and heightened style, the ghosts and the
+soliloquies are derivatives from Seneca. The freedom of the medieval stage
+to the presentation of all sorts of matters accounts in part for their
+splendid comprehensiveness, while classical theory is partly responsible
+for their restriction to momentous events and supernormal persons. Their
+structure remains epic and popular, but progress toward dramatic unity
+seems conditioned by the Senecan five-act scheme. The medieval idea of the
+pagan deity Fortune is preserved; and conceptions of good and evil, like
+those of the morality, stand side by side with classical conceptions of the
+struggle between the individual and fate. The union of these diverse
+elements has become too close for disentanglement. "Macbeth," based upon
+Holinshed's chronicle, comes nearest in conception and treatment to
+classical tragedy; "Antony and Cleopatra" in structure and method reverts
+the nearest to medieval models.
+
+More distinct contemporary influences reappear similarly amalgamated and
+transformed. In "Hamlet" we have a play closely related to those of a
+particular species; but in the other plays of Shakespeare's maturity
+nothing like close relationship can be found to the great examples of
+Marlowe, to the peculiar type introduced by Kyd and developed by Marston,
+or to the contemporary efforts of Chapman and Jonson. Any one play
+doubtless responded to a tangle of influences not now to be separated.
+Current popular plays, practices on the stage, the personalities of the
+actors, Shakespeare's own preceding plays, contemporary non-dramatic
+literature, current events such as the Essex rebellion or the Gunpowder
+Plot, and hosts of other influences were at work directing the development
+of an old story into a tragedy. Taking the plays as a body, some of the
+more important of these limiting and directing influences still remain
+discernible in the transformed result.
+
+All the tragedies but "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet," only partial
+exceptions, relate the falls of princes and the revolutions of kingdoms.
+These stories of princes are of the same kind as in other Elizabethan
+tragedy. In a setting of court and camp they place sensational crimes, and
+trace the accompaniments and consequences. Their themes are revenge,
+madness, tyranny, conspiracy, lust, adultery, and jealousy. They abound in
+villany, intrigue, and slaughter. They avoid Senecan atrocities and the
+abnormal phases of lust; but the tearing out of Gloster's eyes recalls the
+horrors of the early plays; while revenge, conspiracy, and villany are as
+prominent as in the contemporary tragedies of Marston, Jonson, and Chapman.
+Three of the stories include ghosts, while in "Macbeth" the weird sisters
+offer an opportunity for a most original treatment of the supernatural.
+Comedy is always combined with tragedy, and the medieval tradition and the
+popular taste for an emotional contrast receive artistic vindication in the
+grotesqueness of "Hamlet" and "Lear." Each plot, like those of Marlowe's
+plays, centres about a great personality and illustrates a temperament
+dominated by passion. It traces the course of folly, mistake, or sin to the
+wages of death as in "Lear," "Othello," and "Antony and Cleopatra"; or it
+begins with a murder and records its progeny of crime and death as in
+"Julius Caesar," "Hamlet," and "Macbeth."
+
+Shakespeare's choice of stories was clearly determined by the Elizabethan
+conception of tragedy and by the current tastes of the theatre. And by
+these stories his imagination was directed and limited. However absorbed he
+became in character or ethics, he never neglected the plot or the theatre.
+Consequently the great revelation of tragic fact which he gave to posterity
+was limited by these stories of crime and hampered by their improbabilities
+and stage effects. The tragedy of ambition is limited to the story of a
+murderer who sees a ghost; and the tragedy of ingratitude is joined to a
+relation of senile folly, crime, and the humors of Tom of Bedlam. Even his
+interpretation of human motives suffers, for the bloodthirstiness of Hamlet
+and the perverse reticence of Cordelia belong to the old plots as much as
+to the characters. Yet Shakespeare's greatness of mind no less than his
+responsiveness to contemporary taste appears in his very choice of
+material. Whether he took the oft-told tragedies of Caesar, Brutus, Antony
+and Cleopatra, or the old plays of Hamlet and Lear, or the neglected themes
+of Othello and Macbeth, he chose always stories of great dramatic interest
+and those that presented the range and vicissitudes of human passion. His
+attraction for each story was evidently in the emotional conflict that made
+each protagonist a great acting part and also a fascinating study of human
+motive.
+
+Moreover, in his general treatment of this material there is a uniformity
+that gives some hint of a Shakespearean definition of tragedy. In each play
+a man of great attainments is presented as involved in a moral conflict
+that results in his death. This conflict is two-fold, internal between
+opposing desires, and external against some persons of the counter-actions.
+Conflicting forces contend for mastery in the hero's breast, and from their
+confusion he drives on to action that is disastrous. The unusual powers,
+the best potentialities, of his nature are opposed and thwarted by the
+forces of chance and circumstance beyond his control; by the force of evil,
+whether in his own breast or represented by the crime and intrigue of
+others; and still further, by a defect or deficiency in his own
+personality. The force of chance, equivalent to the Greek Fate, plays a
+part in all tragic story and drama; the power of evil without or within was
+the counter-force in medieval drama, and was the theme most powerfully
+dwelt upon by Shakespeare's immediate contemporaries. The fateful power of
+incompatibility of temperament with conditions of life seems to have been
+Shakespeare's own conception.
+
+In Sophocles, arrogance and audacity are accounted evil; in Marlowe and
+Chapman, it is intensity of desire that drives to disaster; but in
+Shakespeare the melancholy and reflective temper of Hamlet and the generous
+and credulous magnanimity of Othello are the allies of untoward
+circumstance and designing villany in bringing suffering to the good and
+failure to the potent. The greatness of Shakespeare's conception, however,
+results from the massing of all these combatants against the hero. The
+conflict thus gains in the comprehensiveness of its presentation of life;
+and human nature in the face of such odds becomes magnificent even in
+failure. Hero wars with villain; human intrepidity and wisdom with chance
+and destiny; conscience with sin; greatness of purpose with crippling
+defects of temperament.
+
+Such a conception of tragedy involves a recognition of the blindness of
+chance that cannot be squared with any theory of poetic justice or
+theological view of the rewards due to virtue. But it also involves a
+recognition of moral law that results in the punishment of its violators.
+The villains never escape as they do in comedy. The wages of sin are always
+death, though the reward of virtue is not happiness. The vastness of evil
+in the world, its malignant influence, its temporary triumphs are conceived
+in a manner not different from that of contemporary thought. The doctrines
+of total depravity and of moral responsibility go side by side as in
+medieval drama, theology, and psychology. In the depiction of the waste of
+effort, the expense of spirit, the crippling of greatness by weakness, the
+ineffectually of virtue, Shakespeare gave a far more comprehensive and a
+far more penetrating representation of tragic fact than the world had yet
+known, but without professing any solution of its mysteries.
+
+Such a conception gives unity to the action of each play, but not always a
+unity that governs details of structure. The structure of a tragedy cannot
+be described in terms of a system, for the dramatic presentation of each
+play differs from the others and conforms to the story it relates. There
+are many survivals of the early epic lawlessness, as in "Antony and
+Cleopatra" and "Lear"; and in no play is the main action kept entirely free
+from intruding incongruities. Neither act nor scene receives much regard as
+an integral unit of structure. The most noticeable structural division is
+due to an event of extraordinary importance reached somewhere in the middle
+of the play. This point, to which the terms climax or crisis are sometimes
+applicable, brings to an end one important development of the action, and
+thus divides the play into two parts. Caesar's murder, Duncan's murder,
+Lear's madness complete one course of tragic incident and introduce us to
+another.
+
+The effectiveness of Shakespeare's construction, however, was not due to a
+formulation of system or rule but to his intuition and experience. His
+sense of what parts of a narrative should be acted and what parts not, had
+developed beyond that of most of his contemporaries. In comparison with his
+own earlier plays the tragedies contain little, whether comic, spectacular,
+or essential to the main tragic action, which had not a manifest value on
+the stage. His ability to create great dramatic situations was also at its
+height, and the great scenes are prepared for and emphasized by what
+precedes, so that they gain all the effect possible from the dramatic
+construction. Thus, the appearance of the ghost, the play within the play,
+the funeral of Ophelia, and the final slaughter are given a value in the
+mere narration of the story for which there is no parallel in the many
+other treatments of similar stories. Of far more importance is his use of
+the developments of character as the determining factors of the progress of
+the dramatic narrative. The rapidity with which the first two acts of
+"Macbeth" hurry us to the murder of Duncan, the tremendous climactic
+pressure of the first three acts of "Lear," are extraordinary examples of
+his power to compel incidents to reveal the course of motive convincingly.
+In each play the order of incidents becomes a logical development from the
+characters of the actors; each deed, thought, or speech has its sequence.
+There are no tricks, no surprises, no sudden conversions of character. Once
+admit the premises, a person of a certain temperament, facing a certain
+situation, and subject to a certain accident, mistake, or folly, and we
+cannot escape the conclusion. The dramatic necessities of character are
+never violated. From the clear exposition of the first scene, the progress
+is inevitable to the end.
+
+The persons of the plays spring from the old stories, and by these the
+study of their motives is in many ways limited. It is limited again by the
+types and conditions of stage-land. The bloody tyrant, the hesitating
+avenger, the Machiavellian villain come hence. The acts which they commit,
+their moods, motives, their very language depend in part on the
+representatives of these types that had long been familiar to the audiences
+of the theatres. Yet the host of individual personalities are the result
+of a most profound and fresh observation of an almost boundless range of
+life. That interest in characterization which distinguishes the early drama
+and finds its main illustration in Shakespeare's own practice in the
+preceding decade here comes to its culmination. Not only the main actor,
+but the most conventional part, the most absurd business, the merest
+supernumerary, receives its touch of truth. And something more than truth
+to life or knowledge of motive is manifest. The great characters are cast
+in large moulds. They represent the courses of the master passions.
+Smallness of horizon, triviality of design, feebleness of mind or body are
+absent. Momentous crises that try men's souls are the real subjects of the
+tragedies. The accidents of dress, or manner, or time, or race, the
+incidents of action, are forgotten as revenge, jealousy, irresolution, and
+lust seize their splendid prey. The greatness of human nature, the power of
+the human will, the responsibility of the individual remain. There is no
+belittling of reason even when it breaks under the crash of the storm. Iago
+is no mere stage villain, though he has all the characteristics of the
+type; nor is he merely a transcript from life, though he has all the
+variety and plausibility of a human being. He is the embodiment of our
+countless evil impulses, the incarnation of depravity. So with all the
+others. They are human in their truth; they are magnificent idealizations
+in the range and value of their manifold suggestiveness; they leave the
+stage to become the habitants of our imaginations, contributing to our
+reflections their embodiments of good and evil, folly and reason,
+resolution and doubt.
+
+They speak a language all their own, though with resemblances to their
+kinsmen in the other Elizabethan tragedies. The blank verse, far more
+flexible than in the early plays, presents a triumphant union of the
+conflicting tendencies toward decoration and naturalness observed in the
+other dramatists; and it is freely mingled with hardly less masterly prose.
+Marvelous in comparison with preceding verse is its extreme condensation in
+spite of its opulence of figures and aphorisms. Although crowded with
+thought and image, it is nevertheless, in its response to the varying
+persons and moods, superbly dramatic. A critic who is both a poet and a
+philosopher[21] objects to Macbeth's dagger "unmannerly breech'd with gore"
+as violent and crude in comparison with the historical reminiscences with
+which Homer might have made Achilles describe the weapon. But recall the
+scene. Macbeth has murdered the grooms and rushes from the chamber to
+confront the fearful suspicions of Duncan's sons and friends. Surely, his
+false and frenzied excuses must be over-fanciful, violent, and crude.
+
+                              "Here lay Duncan,
+    His silver skin laced with his golden blood,
+    And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
+    For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
+    Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers
+    Unmannerly breech'd with gore."
+
+Such a style, however, does not readily give up opportunities for aphorism
+or beauty for the sake of absolute truth to situation or character. Still
+less does it mimic actual speech. It does give a potency to the stories,
+otherwise hardly conceivable; and it adds to truth of character the
+allurement of music and picture, and the idealization of a magnified
+suggestiveness. A father has reason to curse his daughter--gesture and
+incoherent words might correctly represent life; a plain sentence of
+Ibsen's might convey the tragedy of the situation--but it is the
+extravagant and terrible imprecation of Lear that has for centuries made
+men's imaginations shudder. Style such as this the drama will never
+recover. We shall sooner find another Shakespeare to blend its diverse
+elements than a host of dramatists, like the Elizabethans, fascinated by a
+newly discovered world of poetry and daringly adventurous in search of
+melody of verse, wealth of aphorism, luxury of fantasy, and truth to
+character.
+
+The effect of Shakespeare's tragedies on spectator or reader is so complex
+as to defy analysis. Incidental wisdom, effective scene, immortal story all
+contribute; but the main sources of their abiding impressiveness have
+surely been the characterization and the poetic style. If we must continue
+to seek for a katharsis, do not they supply it? The great tragedies are
+full of disaster, wrong, and suffering. The world they reveal is not the
+abode of happiness, but of darkness and remorse. Though the bad are
+punished, the good are not rewarded. Sweetness and innocence suffer and
+perish along with foulness and malevolence. The noblest spirits are
+broken; the wages of mortal effort are failure. There are many "breaches in
+nature for ruin's wasteful entrance." Nor does the life hereafter offer a
+promise of compensation. Death ends all,--that is the great catastrophe
+toward which human endeavor precipitates itself. This is not Shakespeare's
+view of life, but it is his view of the tragedy of life, and its effect
+upon us is gloomy, overpowering, heartrending. But everywhere this tragedy
+of life is revealed in verse infinitely appealing to intellectual analysis
+and to imaginative exhilaration. Everywhere there are men and women, not
+dead but living, representative of much that is most intensely and
+universally interesting in life, and the permanent guests of our
+reflection. The old ethical adage that it does not so much matter what men
+do as what they are has a particular truth when applied to the people of
+Shakespeare. That they do this or that, love, murder, die, is in the story;
+what they are remains the possession of humanity. Our horror at the
+successful villany of Iago finds a certain relief in the intellectual
+pleasure and admiration at the creator's achievement; it accomplishes a
+certain purification in its application to the Iago in ourselves. Still
+more do the persons who most excite our sympathy survive the intolerable
+emotions that first greet their misfortunes. When we read "Othello" we feel
+an overwhelming pity, a fierce resentment, but we would not erase from our
+possession the memory of Desdemona and her Moor. The misery and wrong and
+death go to make up in our reflection the beings whom we love and cherish.
+It is Lear's fivefold "never" that completes for us the loveliness of
+Cordelia.
+
+A comparison of the tragedies with the masterpieces of other national
+dramas might disclose their faults but would not diminish their glories.
+Faults in plenty there surely are, whether judgment be taken of classicists
+or realists, or of the best standards of the Elizabethans. There are many
+quibbles or fantasies of diction that might be criticised, many bits of
+dialogue or stage spectacle that might be omitted without detracting from
+the total impressiveness. How many minor inconsistencies of plot or
+characterization might be corrected. How complicated and bewildering is
+"Hamlet" in comparison with the simpler harmony of "Antigone." How involved
+and cumbrous, and how undignified in its appeal to the emotions, is much of
+"Antony and Cleopatra" in comparison with "Phedre." How impossible and
+fantastic is much of "Lear" in comparison with "Ghosts." But Shakespeare's
+defects and deficiencies belong to his time and to his methods. They are
+inseparable, indeed, from the very means on which depend his consummate
+results. Not in response to literary tradition, but to the public theatre;
+not by a refined but by a daring art; not by simplicity and unity, but by
+complexity and opulence of effect; not by devotion to creed or science or
+fact, but by the idealization and sublimation of man's emotional nature,
+did Shakespeare give to his dramas their imperishable wealth of life.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] George Santayana, _Reason in Art_, p. 113.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LATER ELIZABETHANS[22]
+
+
+Shakespeare's great tragedies did not create a new epoch in the development
+of the drama. In themes and general treatment they made no marked departure
+from the past. Their translation of story and circumstance into the
+conflicts and processes of character was beyond the reach of imitation,
+and, indeed, not likely to gain full recognition from contemporaries. They
+were rather the consummation of the old than the heralds of a new era,
+though their influence on succeeding dramatists was wide and permeating,
+especially as time and publication brought a growing appreciation of their
+greatness as literature. Meanwhile, the old types of tragedy continued
+their sway, sometimes little touched by Shakespeare's influence. English
+history plays were rare; Roman history plays frequent; Senecan closet
+dramas continued; the Marlowean and Kydian traditions received further
+development. The revenge play, in particular, continued to be one of the
+most conspicuous types. Further, a most important innovating force appeared
+just at the close of Shakespeare's tragic period in the heroic romances of
+Beaumont and Fletcher, which gained an immediate popularity and created new
+practices in both tragedy and tragicomedy.
+
+The times were changing. The improved social status of the theatre, the
+support of the court, the vogue of private theatres like Blackfriars, the
+increasing interest in the stage on the part of the lettered and
+fashionable classes, supplied more intelligent and critical audiences; but
+the increasing Puritanism separated the drama more and more from sympathy
+with the main public. The drama became less national, more critical, and
+less moral. The corrupt society of the reign of James I supplied little of
+that imaginative idealism which had found expression at the time of the
+Armada. It offered the serious drama either objects for satire and cynicism
+or sophisticated and courtly ideals of conduct. In consequence, a more
+conscious art found itself less competent than in the early drama to depict
+greatness of mind, and resorted to the tracing of abnormal passion, the
+casuistical inquiry into moral problems, the exposure of evil, or to
+romance without moral intention.
+
+Yet dramatic enterprise continued unabated. The theatre continued to
+attract poetic ambition. Scholars, men of letters, gentlemen of rank turned
+to the popular stage. There was as yet no suspicion of decadence. Rather
+the past seemed to offer, through a recognition of its merits and a pruning
+of its faults, encouragement for a greater achievement in the future. In
+spite of critical realization of the absurdities of the early drama, and
+of the necessity for a better regulated art, the integrity of the national
+tradition was recognized and maintained. In 1612, in a preface to his
+"White Devil," Webster, after explaining that he had departed from the
+classical standards "willingly, and not ignorantly," proceeds to extol his
+contemporaries and masters:--
+
+     "Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: for mine
+     owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of
+     other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and
+     haightened stile of Maister Chapman, the labor'd and
+     understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse
+     worthy composures of the both worthily excellent
+     Maister Beamont & Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without
+     wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious
+     industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood;
+     wishing that what I write may be read by their light;
+     protesting that, in the strength of mine owne
+     judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest
+     silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare
+     (without flattery) fix that of Martiall:
+
+          --non morunt haec monumenta mori."
+
+After a time the greatness of the past masters proved rather an impediment
+than a stimulus. But in 1612 their work seemed to offer encouragement for
+even greater achievement in the immediate future.
+
+For the historian this period offers less difficulties than the preceding
+ones. After 1610 comparatively few plays of importance are non-extant, and
+few of the extant plays are anonymous. The bulk of the important plays was
+produced by a few dramatists, who dominated the theatres and whose careers
+determined the drama's development. After examining the revenge plays
+which about 1612 gave a further extension to that species, and the heroic
+romances of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration, which were produced within
+a few years before that date, we may trace the succeeding developments of
+tragedy mainly in the work of Fletcher, Massinger, Middleton, Ford, and
+Shirley.
+
+The main line of the development of the revenge tragedy is represented by
+Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," the anonymous "Second Maiden's Tragedy,"
+and Webster's "White Devil" and "Duchess of Malfi." The four plays may be
+said to constitute a new species whose differences from the old type seem
+clearly unconnected with Shakespeare's "Hamlet" but directly traceable to
+Marston's plays, especially his "Malcontent."
+
+Revenge is no longer the main motive but is a subsidiary element in
+complicated stories of revolting lust and depravity. Tragedy has become the
+representation of vice and sin, with a proneness for their foulest
+entanglements. In one play a brother plays the part of pandar to his
+sister; in another a father to his daughter; and in a third a mother to her
+daughter. Nor is revenge, even in its subordinate position, the simple
+blood-for-blood requital that it is in Kyd. It may be for various causes
+beside murder; it is born of malice rather than duty; it may share in the
+moral turpitude of the rest of the action. The ghost no longer directs the
+course of revenge, and may disappear entirely. In "The Revenger's Tragedy"
+the skull of the betrothed, as the skeleton in "Hoffman," takes the place
+of the apparition; and in other plays the duties of the ghost are
+minimized or farmed out among various supernatural agents, two female
+ghosts appearing. Hesitation on the part of the avenger does not appear.
+Indeed, his entire character has changed. He may be a villain, as in
+"Hoffman," or the villain's accomplice, or one of Marston's "malcontents,"
+or a combination of these parts. The other leading elements in the Kydian
+type are preserved. Insanity of various forms, real and pretended, is
+prominent. Intrigue of a complicated kind abounds, but is often dependent,
+after the fashion of current comedy, largely on improbable disguises.
+Deaths are as frequent as ever and more horrible. Much of the old stage
+effect reappears, as in the masques, funerals, ghosts, and exhibition of
+dead bodies, but there is a great increase in the number and ingenuity of
+melodramatic sensations. Each play is a chamber of horrors. In one, a wife
+dies from kissing the poisoned portrait of her husband; in another, the
+lustful king sucks poison from the jaw of a skull; and in a third, from the
+painted lips of a corpse. Comets blaze, there are many portents, the time
+is ever midnight, the scene the graveyard, the air smells of corruption,
+skulls and corpses are the _dramatis personae_. Every means seems to be
+employed to make theatrically effective the horrors of death and decay. And
+once, at least, these means are used with tremendous power in the riot of
+madness, torture, and corruption that preludes the death of the Duchess of
+Malfi.
+
+All or nearly all of the active characters are black with sin. The
+extraordinary exploitation of villany in Elizabethan tragedy here reaches
+its culmination. The arch-villain as ruthlessly devoted to crime as
+Hoffman, the accomplice assiduous in revolting baseness, the villain
+touched by remorse, the malcontent reviling human life,--all these
+appear--sometimes all combined in one person--and play their parts along
+with unshrinking prostitutes and lustful monarchs. The study of villany,
+however, has gained intensity and plausibility over the earlier plays. If
+none of the villains take to themselves much individuality, most of them
+have moments of dramatic impressiveness, and they are intended to be
+realistic. They are drawn with an accumulation of detail, a fondness for
+probing into depravity, with a sense of the dramatic value of devilry, and
+with a bitterness and cynicism that often seem sincere and searching. It is
+this cynicism which gives character to the reflective elements of these
+plays. The Kydian soliloquy on fate has given way to the prevailing
+satirical and bitter tone that finds its favorite themes in the sensuality
+of women and the hypocrisy and greed of courts, and its favorite means of
+expression in the connotation of the obscene and bestial.
+
+The qualities attributed to these four plays recall "Hoffman" and "The
+Atheist's Tragedy," and still more Marston's plays, and the satirical
+comedy of the preceding decade as well as the tragedy. Though the four
+plays are thus classed together, their differences are marked. "The Second
+Maiden's Tragedy" manifests more than the others the influence of Beaumont
+and Fletcher. Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," far superior to his earlier
+"Atheist's Tragedy," surpasses Marston and reveals brilliant dramatic
+talent. Full of thrills and unspeakable juxtapositions, it is governed by a
+sheer delight in horror and unrelieved by any moral standard. Webster, on
+the contrary, made his horrors impressive in both poetry and moral.
+Dependent at every step on the work of predecessors, he succeeded as did no
+other poet except Shakespeare in transforming the revenge play into a work
+of art and truth. Chapman was, perhaps, his chief model, but the processes
+of his transforming art, though not its results, bear resemblances to
+Shakespeare's. He was possessed by an interest in the effects of crime upon
+character, and had the power to realize these momentarily with amazing
+truth. Hence his great portraits of Vittoria, the Cardinal, and the
+Duchess, and the ingeniously and vividly though not very consistently drawn
+figure of Bosola. As Shakespeare in "Macbeth" and "Lear," fascinated by the
+wickedness of the world, reveled in images of blackness, corruption, and
+despair, so Webster, more laboriously and inquisitively, was ever seeking
+fantastic expression for the old truth that all is vanity. In his
+masterpiece, "The Duchess of Malfi," and in a lesser degree in "The White
+Devil," his recognition of moral values again recalls Shakespeare. We are
+moved by the pitifulness of the suffering as well as by the horror of the
+evil. There is no confusion of good and bad; and if the prevailing view of
+life is cynical, it is not unrelieved by respect for fortitude and
+conscience. The tragedy of revenge reached a new altitude in this play,
+which, though poorly constructed, tells a story of criminal and horrible
+revenge with a vivid delineation of character, a pervading moral sense, and
+with flashes of speech that attain both poetic and dramatic sublimity.[23]
+
+The collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher was finished by the time that
+Webster published his acknowledgment of their mastership. Gentlemen by
+birth and breeding, they began writing for the stage apparently as pupils
+of Jonson, entered into collaboration by 1607, and in the next five years,
+by the time that Beaumont was twenty-seven and Fletcher thirty-three,
+produced some ten plays that gained them a popularity surpassing that of
+Shakespeare's later years, and extending well through the Restoration. So
+far as tragedy is concerned, the main result of their collaboration was the
+formation of a new species of heroic romances, some tragedies and some
+tragicomedies. Six plays serve to define the type, though other plays of
+the collaboration have resemblances to it and, after Beaumont's retirement,
+the type was continued in the work of Fletcher and others. These six plays,
+"Four Plays in One," "Thierry and Theodoret," "Cupid's Revenge,"
+"Philaster," "A King and No King," and "The Maid's Tragedy," probably owe
+more to Beaumont than to Fletcher. "The Maid's Tragedy" and the two
+tragicomedies, "Philaster" and "A King and No King," are the masterpieces,
+but the six plays resemble one another so closely that one analysis will
+answer for all.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher did not, like most of their predecessors, turn to
+English or Roman history for their plots, and they preserved but few traces
+of the Marlowean tragedy with its central protagonist and dominating
+passion, or of the revenge type in any of its amplifications. Their plots,
+largely of their own invention, are highly ingenious and complicated. They
+deal with heroic actions in imaginary foreign realms. The conquests,
+usurpations, and passions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, but there
+are no battles or armies, and the action is usually confined to the rooms
+of the palace or a neighboring forest. Usually contrasting a story of gross
+sensual passion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of
+incidents, and aim at a constant but varied excitement. Love of one sort or
+another, honor also of many kinds, and friendship, which is somewhat more
+steadfast, are ever in conflict. We are given seats in an anteroom of the
+palace, and at once the flow of events engrosses us,--conspiracies,
+imprisonments, insurrections, wars, adultery, seduction, murder, the talk
+of courtiers, gossip of women, banquets of the monarch, and the laments of
+the love-lorn. Or, after a tumultuous hour, we may retire to the adjoining
+forest, where the lovers wander to forget their misfortunes, and by its
+fountains weave their laments into lyrical garlands. A few hours, and
+kingdoms have trembled in the balance; the heroine has been proved guilty
+and innocent again; and the lover has been ecstatic, frantic, jealous,
+cowardly, implacable, and forgiving, and finally wins or dies with his
+honor secure.
+
+The tragedies differ from those preceding in structure as well as in
+material. Their main purpose is theatrical effectiveness; their means of
+securing it the constant use of surprise. Beaumont and Fletcher did not
+follow their narrative sources closely; they invented their own stories or
+used old ones as the frame for their favorite situations and characters.
+The tragic, idyllic, and sensational matter is skillfully constructed into
+a number of theatrically telling situations which lead by a series of
+suspenses and surprises to very effective climaxes or catastrophes. All
+signs of the epic methods of construction found in the early drama have
+disappeared, and the interest in the action is maintained at fever heat. In
+"The Maid's Tragedy," the climax of the play comes at the end of the fourth
+act with the murder of the king by his mistress, Evadne, the wife of
+Amintor. But in the fifth act the main action absorbs the sub-plot and
+continues its course of thrills and surprises until the very end. In "A
+King and No King," the love of Arbaces for his supposed sister furnishes
+many entanglements, and it is not until the end of Act V that we know that
+the princess is not his sister, and the tragedy of incest is resolved into
+romance. There is no inevitableness in the action of these plays. Usually,
+until the last moment there is a chance for either a happy or an unhappy
+ending, and in every case the _denouement_ or catastrophe is elaborately
+planned and complicated.
+
+From the nature of their material and treatment there is little difference
+between the tragedies and tragicomedies. Tragicomedy as a species had up to
+this time hardly been recognized in the English drama, although there are
+sporadic instances of the use of the term and although romantic comedy
+usually offered tragic elements. Fletcher's definition (borrowed from
+Guarini) in the preface to "The Faithful Shepherdess," may be taken as
+sufficiently distinguishing the form from other species,--"A tragicomedy is
+not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants
+deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it,
+which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of
+familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so
+that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a
+comedy." The example of Beaumont and Fletcher, moreover, gave popularity
+and importance to this class of plays. Borrowing motives familiar in
+romantic narrative and the preceding drama, they yet created a departure
+from preceding romantic comedy, both in the constant emphasis which they
+place upon the contrast between the tragic and idyllic elements of their
+plots and in the especial attention they pay to surprising and complicated
+_denouements_. They aim not merely at a mixture of the sentimental and
+tragic but at involving every one in a tangle of disastrous complications,
+resolved only by a series of final surprises. Although only two of the six
+romances are tragicomedies, the imitators of Beaumont and Fletcher most
+frequently adopted the form, realizing apparently the theatrical value of
+keeping the spectators thrilled and excited until the end and then
+relieving their sympathetic suspense by a happy solution.
+
+The _dramatis personae_ of the six plays belong to the impossible and
+romantic situations rather than to life, and are usually of certain
+types,--the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt
+outspoken soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden
+disguised as a page in order that she may serve the hero; an evil woman
+defiant in her crimes; and the poltroon, usually a comic personage. With
+the addition of a king, some gentlemen and ladies of the court, and a few
+persons from the lower ranks, the cast is complete. The various persons
+introduce one another in long descriptions; and, after the introductory
+speech, the character remains fixed, except as the shifting situations
+demand some unexpected revolution. There is no shading or subtlety in the
+characterization, little discrimination or individuality in the different
+representatives of the favorite types, who, however, are by no means
+wanting in originality. They do not reveal the depths or complexities of
+human nature, but they exhibit fresh and ingenious variations of the old
+types, audacious humor and abundant spirit, and the power of their
+creators to rise to a situation and to express dramatic emotion. Thus,
+their type of evil woman acquires tremendous force in the scenes where
+Evadne plays her part; and their heroines suffer, serve, weep, love,
+forgive, and die, in lines that somehow preserve the grace of simplicity,
+though they wear all the jewels of allusion and imagery that the authors
+possess. Moreover, their men and women talk like real persons. Dryden
+declared that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen
+much better than Shakespeare, a distinction that in some respects is clear
+to-day. The men of preceding tragedies had spoken a language elevated and
+removed from ordinary discourse, but in Beaumont and Fletcher the romantic
+scenes and impossible changes of character are made plausible by an absence
+of archaism and a directness and lucidity of speech.
+
+In the main, what reality the characters retain in our memories is due to
+the power of the verse to reflect clearly the emotions of the moment. There
+is a notable absence of the merely sonorous, the turgid declamation, the
+mouthing of strange words, and an absence of over-crowding thought or
+fancy. Beaumont and Fletcher had no desire to make their style sententious,
+weighty, and philosophical. They knew what they wanted to say, and they
+said it clearly and rapidly. They had room for ornament and rhetorical
+device, but none for eccentricity or obscurity. Another remark of Dryden's,
+that they perfected the English language, deserves consideration as the
+view of a century later, and can be appreciated even now. The
+characteristics of their style, so far as it can be considered as a common
+property, seem due to an effort to make dialogue correspond as nearly as
+possible to natural speech. This is particularly true of Fletcher, who is
+the more revolutionary of the two and the more persistent in his
+mannerisms. His structure is loose and conversational, and his blank verse
+overruns the borders of the rigid pentameter and approaches the
+irregularity of prose. Numerous added syllables and a large percentage of
+feminine endings further mark his departures from past models, and,
+combined with his end-stopped lines, give his verse a peculiar monotony.
+Both writers rise now and then to an intensely imaginative phrase or a
+beautifully wrought description. The verse of neither is suggestive of the
+intricacies of human feeling or the splendor of human intellect, but the
+verse of both, of Fletcher preeminently, reveals a fertility of imagination
+and an extraordinary mobility of words.
+
+These merits of style gave Beaumont and Fletcher their seventeenth century
+reputation and have continued to attract readers in the generations since.
+Ethical objections to their plays drove them from the stage in spite of
+their theatrical effectiveness. They wrote with little ethical intention.
+Unlike some of their contemporaries, they did not seek to discover the
+abodes of sin and to chastise the monster, nor did they study human nature
+in the light of moral law. They dealt with themes that would please their
+audience and would offer a sufficient range of emotions for the exhibition
+of their poetic powers. Without imaginations that touched spiritual heights
+or penetrated to the real significance of moral conflict, they entered
+unhesitatingly upon the task of holding up a mirror to a society loose in
+manners and unprincipled in morals. They were not so much guilty of
+intentional immorality as impotent to produce moral effect. If their
+imaginations kept too frequent company with the gross and the unhealthy,
+they also sought at times the sweeter and nobler aspects of life. What won
+for their ethics high laudation from their contemporaries was their
+rhetorical and dramatic exaltation of ideals of magnanimity and dreams of
+idyllic love and devoted friendship.
+
+Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in
+the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in
+our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted
+the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their
+collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and
+characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in
+execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most
+important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as
+of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new
+habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their
+devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their
+dalliance with the artificial and abnormal aspects of passion, and their
+disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics
+furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next
+generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or
+comprehensive or noble reflection of life.
+
+Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with
+Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and possibly on a
+lost play, "Cardenio." The partnership resulted in no distinct departures
+from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of
+incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself
+more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre,
+composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with
+Massinger, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of
+the time until his death in 1625.
+
+Perhaps if Beaumont had lived, the two might have advanced to maturer and
+worthier achievement, but Fletcher's work alone rather displays the
+superficialities and artificialities of the collaboration. His amazing
+cleverness appears in every scene, but he evidently wrote more and more for
+immediate success, and relied more and more on his readinesss of wit and
+invention to take the place of earnest and serious purpose. The long series
+of plays in which he had at least a considerable share, range in kind from
+comedies of manners to tragedies of blood and revenge, but practically all
+may be described as romantic drama, having, that is, strange improbable
+events, foreign and remote scenes, variety and surprise in action, and love
+as the central motive. His sense of dramatic value in theme or incident was
+constantly alert, and in Spanish stories, especially the "Novellas
+Exemplares" of Cervantes, he found mazes of complicated action which
+exactly suited his fancy, and which he managed with adroit dramaturgy. The
+Spanish influence is more noticeable in the comedies than in the more
+serious plays; but, whatever the theme or the source, Fletcher added bustle
+and excitement. The distinctions between tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and
+romantic comedy often become barely discernible. The material and treatment
+are similar. Tragic situations occur in comedies as well as tragedies, and
+in either case, though finely conceived and admirably expressed, are yet
+always directed by the desire for surprise and thrills. The tragicomedies
+conform most closely to the conventionalities and repetitions of the heroic
+romances, though they exhibit abundant originality of invention. Through
+their example, romantic and melodramatic tragicomedy became perhaps the
+most popular and characteristic dramatic species of the reign of Charles I,
+and a direct progenitor of the heroic plays of the Restoration.
+
+In his tragedies Fletcher's prostitution to theatrical effectiveness admits
+a recognition of the literary tradition. At least, the two which are the
+result of his unaided efforts are composed with more care and with more
+evidence of artistic responsibility than his other dramas. In
+"Valentinian"[24] he turned from his usual sources and themes to those long
+approved in pure tragedy, and found in Roman history a story of revenge and
+lust. Though treating the material with great freedom, he unfortunately
+followed his source in continuing the action beyond the murder of
+Valentinian through the counter revenge on Maximus. The first two acts,
+that tell of the attempted seduction of Lucina and her final ruin, are
+among the best sustained tragic developments in Fletcher, and, in
+comparison with many similar scenes in contemporary drama, testify to his
+remarkable poetic gifts. But the later scheming and the overthrow of her
+husband involve a conversion of character and a descent into absurd
+improbability. In "Bonduca," Fletcher's invention moved unhampered.
+Historical sources are used merely as hints and incentives. The stories of
+Bonduca and Caratach are combined; and the interest in their tragic fates
+diversified by the stories of Bonduca's daughters and their Roman lovers,
+by the episode of the noble Poenius, by the pathos of the child Hengo, and
+also by some gross and brutal comedy. All these interests are skillfully
+interwoven and focused upon the great central scene of the battle. There is
+stirring presentation of camp life, and throughout the action moves with
+abounding spirit. The play is not tragedy at all if one judges it strictly
+by Aristotle's precepts or by Shakespeare's example, or even in comparison
+with the emotional tension of "The Maid's Tragedy." But it is an admirable
+example of the blending of the romantic, historical, heroic, pathetic,
+comic, and tragic, full of human nature as well as incident, conspicuous
+for poetic expression as well as theatrical ingenuity, one of the
+masterpieces of the romantic drama.
+
+The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Massinger or others offer
+few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The
+False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all
+melodramas in which Massinger's moral earnestness and rhetorical
+seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever
+stage-craft, noble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmanship are
+indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt"
+carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already
+exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months
+of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial
+study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable illustration of the
+readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an
+occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and
+Massinger's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and
+almost at their very best.
+
+The most striking illustration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its
+prostitution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The Bloody
+Brother; or Rollo, Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Massinger
+and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes
+of tragedy, the story of family feud and a bloody tyrant. In comparison,
+however, with any preceding dramas of this class, whether in early
+imitations of Seneca or later treatments of lust and revenge, the play
+shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its
+purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of
+tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar
+material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of
+talent. When the height of tragic passion is required he rises to it, or
+very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her
+father's life, a scene which Dyce pronounced the most real in its
+passionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But
+the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine
+passion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play.
+
+     Edith, whose father has been killed by the bloody and
+     lustful Rollo, is planning to murder him. She has
+     pretended to yield to his solicitations, and has
+     arranged a secret meeting with him at her house. Enter
+     Edith, splendidly dressed--a banquet prepared. She
+     kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may
+     forget all pity and kill the tyrant--
+
+     "His heaven forgot, and all his lusts upon him."
+
+     Then, as her boy sings the lovely song, perhaps
+     Shakespeare's,
+
+     "Take, oh take those lips away
+     That so sweetly were forsworn--"
+
+     Enter Rollo. By one of Fletcher's sudden conversions,
+     he has changed to a subtle hypocrite and appears
+     humble, repentant, begging for pity and love,
+
+             "in whiteness of my wash'd repentance,
+     In my heart's tears and love of truth to Edith,
+     In my fair life hereafter."
+
+     Edith, surprised and unnerved, gradually forgets her
+     purpose, and as she informs the audience in several
+     asides, is yielding; when--Enter Hamond and the guard.
+     Hamond, a brave blunt soldier, is seeking revenge on
+     Rollo because the tyrant has killed his brother and
+     outraged him by commanding him to murder the noble
+     Audrey. Hamond announces that he has come to kill
+     Rollo, who seizes Edith and interposes her as a
+     defense. She, aroused now to Rollo's real nature, draws
+     her dagger, but he snatches it from her. In the
+     struggle that follows Rollo and Hamond are both killed.
+
+All this occupies only one hundred and fifty lines of verse and must be
+accounted a most skillful bit of playmaking, a scene such as only Fletcher
+among the Elizabethans could contrive. But there is neither truth to life
+nor dramatic logic; on the contrary, there are two improbable conversions
+of character. It is not tragedy, it is hardly serious drama, it is
+theatrical claptrap; yet Fletcher's poetry is as fine, and, for all that
+one can see, as sincere as in the scene of genuine passion. Such dramatic
+impossibilities as this Fletcher faced with eager recklessness, and gayly
+spurred his Pegasus for the leap.
+
+"The Bloody Brother" further illustrates the union of the material and
+methods of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances with the conventions of the
+tragedy of revenge and lust. That union, manifest also in Fletcher's
+"Valentinian," is henceforth characteristic of the tragedy of the age. The
+dramatists belonged to a late period of an artistic development and had
+many examples both native and foreign to draw upon. They were men of talent
+or even genius whose creations were independent and original but rarely
+without large indebtedness to their predecessors. While Shakespeare and
+Jonson were often borrowed from, the majority of the tragedies clung to the
+examples of Webster and Tourneur or mingled revenge and horrors with the
+romantic plots and novel technic of Beaumont and Fletcher. A marked
+similarity consequently exists in the plays of men of different
+temperaments and purposes. Lustful tyrants and their intriguing favorites,
+love crossed by honor and often allied with revenge, illicit and abnormal
+passion, romantic princes and princesses, an action confined to the rooms
+of a palace, situations involving seduction or temptation, stage-effects
+whether by horrors or by masques and pageants, and a style more equable,
+less fantastic than in the early drama,--these are the ingredients which
+characterize tragedy for the quarter century after Shakespeare's death.
+
+Middleton's tragedies and tragicomedies came late in his career, following
+a period of realistic comedies, in which his observant and satirical
+imagination found free play. Though affected by Beaumont and Fletcher's
+romanticism, he preserved most of the traits of the tragedy of revenge in
+its late development, including such penetrating analysis of character
+swayed by evil as we have found in Marston and Webster. In some of his
+romantic dramas, as the tragicomedy "The Witch," there is little of this
+serious purpose. The various revenge motives--of the duchess on the duke
+who has compelled her to drink from the skull of her murdered father, of
+the lover upon the husband who has married his betrothed, and of the
+jealous husband upon his wife--are all treated with melodramatic
+insincerity though with an ingenious accompaniment of spectacular and
+supernatural interference on the part of the witches. Attempted murder
+results in wounds that easily heal; the deadly potion proves harmless; the
+duke discovered dead comes to life. In the single tragedy written by
+Middleton alone, "Women Beware Women," the revenge species appears
+unadulterated. Isabella's illicit relation with her uncle, the use of a
+masque to bring about the final slaughter, the scenes of seduction, and the
+abominable wickedness of all the persons, are elements that recall the
+Tourneurian group. The fluency and eloquence of Middleton's style and his
+admirable delineation of character by rapid dialogue are best shown in the
+early scenes; after the old mother, so beautifully and truly drawn, has
+disappeared from the action, the rest is unrelieved murder and lust.
+
+The two famous plays that were the results of Middleton's collaboration
+with Rowley have somewhat different characteristics. Rowley, a playwright
+used to rude and fantastic comedy, and the author of "All's Lost by Lust,"
+a clumsy tragedy of revenge, wrote most of the comic scenes and had some
+share in the serious plots. In "The Fair Quarrel," the hesitation of
+Captain Ager to defend the honor of his mother unless convinced of her
+purity; and in "The Changeling," the entanglement of Beatrice with the
+loathed follower whom she has persuaded to murder her accepted suitor,
+offer situations novel and ingenious. In both plays, the opportunity for
+mere melodrama with sudden conversions of character is refused, and the
+series of startling situations made the basis for a study of human motive.
+It is this which gives "The Fair Quarrel," in spite of its absurdities,
+superiority over most of the tragicomedies of the time. In "The
+Changeling," one may easily imagine what havoc Fletcher would have made of
+the characterization in order to over-emphasize situations, sensational
+enough in themselves; but Middleton and Rowley followed the best tradition
+of Webster. The rash and pampered Beatrice retains our sympathies even in
+her degradation, and remains convincingly alive, whether in her incipient
+love for De Flores or her final cry for forgiveness. De Flores,
+clear-headed and well-motived, is the most powerful and individual of the
+post-Shakespearean villains. The comic relief supplied by the mad scenes
+spoils the tragic unity of the play. But, except in Shakespeare and
+Webster, the old combination of murder, revenge, sinful love, villany,
+madness, and ghosts had never been made so consistently the result of human
+motive and so effective in its appeal to our sympathies.
+
+Massinger's dramatic career, ranking in productiveness with Shakespeare's
+or Fletcher's, extended from the time of Shakespeare's withdrawal from the
+theatre to within a few years of the Civil War. For ten years he was mainly
+occupied in collaborating with Fletcher for the king's men; and of the
+nineteen plays usually classed as his own, none were acted before 1622. His
+work, therefore, falls roughly into two periods, the first when he was the
+assistant of Fletcher, the second when he had succeeded Fletcher as the
+main reliance of the leading London company.
+
+Of his work with Fletcher the tragedies have already been considered. In
+most of the plays of the collaboration, Fletcher's share is the more
+important, especially in the treatment of the dramatic crises. In plays, as
+"The Queen of Corinth" and "The Laws of Candy," where Fletcher's hand is
+least apparent, there is an excess of melodramatic ingenuity without the
+Fletcherian vivacity, Massinger's temperament reveals itself, however, from
+the first in the gravity of his style and the seriousness of his morality.
+From Fletcher he acquired his stage-craft and his attachment to the
+romantic drama of thrills and surprises, but his art was meanwhile
+developing a responsibility and purposes all its own.
+
+Of the plays written without the aid of Fletcher, two, "A New Way to Pay
+Old Debts" and "The City Madam," are domestic comedies of manners. The
+others are romantic dramas which can be classified only with some
+difficulty as comedies, tragicomedies, and tragedies. A number of the
+tragicomedies are to be distinguished from the tragedies only by the happy
+endings and the absence of bloodshed. Nor are these always decisive. Of
+the tragedies, "Believe as You List" and "The Virgin Martyr" result in
+victory as well as death, and in the tragicomedy, "The Maid of Honor,"
+suitors worthy and unworthy are rejected and the vindicated heroine enters
+a nunnery. The tragedies in the main deal with more serious and important
+actions and rely less on intrigue than the tragicomedies; but it may be
+said of Massinger, with even more truth than of Fletcher, that he dealt
+with romantic stories abounding in tragic possibilities, usually resulting
+in happy endings, but occasionally taking a loftier tone and a fatal
+conclusion.
+
+The plays as a whole reveal a remarkable variety of stories and a treatment
+of sources fully as free and ingenious as Fletcher's and often contriving a
+political as well as a moral lesson. Honor and religion play conspicuous
+parts as in contemporary Spanish drama, to which Massinger apparently owed
+a considerable debt; although in only one instance, "The Renegade," has
+direct indebtedness to a Spanish play been traced. The earlier drama is
+also freely drawn upon. At this date it was in fact almost impossible to
+compose a play without traversing motives and incidents that were familiar
+on the stage; and Massinger borrowed from many, from Shakespeare as freely
+as from Fletcher, and from minor dramatists as well. The story of the
+usurper Sebastian, told in "The Battle of Alcazar," is retold in "Believe
+as You List"; and the poisoning by kissing the painted corpse, related in
+"The Second Maiden's Tragedy," reappears in his "Duke of Milan." In spite
+of their variety and ingenuity, his plays are very like others of the
+period. There are the same court and courtiers, general, favorite, rival
+lovers, rival mistresses, and the same trials of chastity or intrigues of
+lust and malice.
+
+Yet the independence of Massinger's invention and the truth of his
+conceptions of human motive are by no means small. In "The Bashful Lover"
+there is a presentation of idealizing and self-sacrificing love, far
+surpassing the courtly compliments of Fletcher and rivaling the magnanimity
+of Browning's conceptions. In such themes, just removed from the exaltation
+and the horror thought necessary for tragedy, yet serious and exalted above
+the average of comedy, Massinger is at his best. An outline of his "Maid of
+Honor" may serve to illustrate both the independence of his imaginative
+conceptions and the careful integration of his structure.
+
+     Act i opens at the court of Roberto, King of Sicily,
+     who, after much eloquent solicitation, permits his
+     natural brother Bertoldo to lead an expedition against
+     Gonzaga, a knight of Malta, who is relieving Sienna,
+     captured by Ferdinand, Duke of Urbin, in his effort to
+     win the duchess by force. Camiola, the maid of honor,
+     after some buffoonery on the part of Sylli, a
+     Malvolio-like wooer, has a parting interview with
+     Bertoldo and confesses that his vow as a knight of
+     Malta is the only bar to her acceptance of his offers
+     of marriage. In act ii, after some further buffoonery
+     by Sylli, who serves throughout as a comic contrast to
+     Camiola's other suitors, Fulgentio, the King's minion,
+     solicits Camiola, but is tartly repulsed, and threatens
+     to slander her. The scene changes to Sienna, the camp
+     of Gonzaga, and then to the citadel held by Ferdinand.
+     Bertoldo and his followers are defeated and made
+     prisoners, Gonzaga tearing the cross from Bertoldo's
+     breast. In act iii all the prisoners are released by
+     ransom, except Bertoldo, who thereupon bewails the
+     falseness of his brother the King. The scene changing
+     to Sicily, Adorni, a faithful follower of Camiola's
+     father, soliloquizes on his love for her and his
+     intention to take vengeance on Fulgentio. Later he
+     appears wounded before Camiola and presents the
+     minion's recantation, but is blamed by her for his
+     presumption in assuming a task proper only for her
+     lover. Upon the arrival of news of Bertoldo's plight,
+     Camiola, who is as energetic as loyal, decides to
+     sacrifice her fortune to pay her lover's ransom, and
+     summons Adorni to act as her agent in freeing Bertoldo.
+     Adorni dutifully undertakes the mission that promises
+     to ruin his hopes. In act iv the Duchess Aurelia
+     arrives at Sienna and Ferdinand surrenders. Bertoldo in
+     prison reads Seneca, soliloquizes on suicide, falls on
+     the ground, and threatens to rend the bowels of the
+     earth, quite in Kydian fashion. Adorni enters, and
+     Bertoldo, upon hearing of Camiola's sacrifice, blesses
+     her name and promises marriage. It is now Adorni's turn
+     to soliloquize on suicide. Bertoldo is brought before
+     Aurelia, who, suddenly enamored, offers him herself and
+     duchy. After some resistance he yields. Adorni now
+     begins to hope. In Sicily Camiola has convinced the
+     King of Fulgentio's worthlessness. In act v Camiola
+     receives from Adorni the news of Bertoldo's fickleness,
+     but she still scorns Adorni and resolves to seek
+     redress from the King. Accordingly, at the marriage of
+     Bertoldo and Aurelia, she breaks in, states her case
+     with eloquence and temper, and appeals to the King.
+     Aurelia suddenly feels all her love quenched, and
+     Bertoldo pleads for pity. All await the fulfillment of
+     Camiola's promise that she will declare whom she will
+     marry, and are astonished when Father Paula announces
+     that she has decided to become the bride of the church.
+     Before taking the veil, she obtains Fulgentio's pardon,
+     gives one half of her wealth to the faithful Adorni,
+     and commands Bertoldo to resume the cross of Malta.
+
+In his six tragedies there is less of romantic love and more of the blacker
+passions. "The Unnatural Combat," "The Duke of Milan," "The Fatal Dowry"
+(in collaboration with Field), and "The Roman Actor" deal with lust and
+revenge in the quantity and quality long prescribed. In the last named,
+however, Massinger broke away from the conventional treatment and made his
+protagonist neither the cruel tyrant nor the lustful queen, but a dignified
+and noble representative of the actor's profession, and took the
+opportunity of effectively expanding the old device of a play within a
+play. The other two tragedies present still more originality of conception
+and treatment: "Believe As You List," dealing with the fortune of a
+rightful claimant to the crown, and "The Virgin Martyr," perhaps a revision
+of an early play by Dekker, returning to the old material of the Miracles,
+the story of a martyrdom that converts the persecutors. In each of these
+tragedies, as in "The Maid of Honor," a number of stories are organized
+into a single action, introduced by admirable exposition, and usually
+carried through with direct and logical progress. In the treatment of
+catastrophe, always heightened, prolonged, and sometimes full of surprise
+after Fletcher's fashion, Massinger is less competent. Massinger could not
+keep to the inevitable development of character as did Shakespeare, nor
+could he sacrifice character to situation as light-heartedly as did
+Fletcher. In consequence he falls between two stools; and his fifth act is
+usually clumsy and unconvincing.
+
+Massinger's art was not only less reckless than Fletcher's; it was linked
+to a serious moral view of human affairs. He always worked under a sense of
+responsibility both as a dramatic artist and as a preacher of political and
+personal morality. Neither the heedlessness of Fletcher nor the perversion
+of Ford is discoverable in his plays. Bad and good are clearly
+differentiated, despite the improbabilities of the romantic vicissitudes;
+and poetic justice is administered with decision. Following his venturesome
+and nimble master, he pursues his pathway gravely, judicially, somewhat
+heavily. His careful art and sincere morality lack the leaven of dramatic
+genius. The orator and the rhetorician are always elbowing the dramatist
+off the scene. His style, never splendid, never excessively figurative, is
+always contained and clear. At its best in sustained declamation, it often
+descends to a tone approaching prose and rarely rises to the more stirring
+or impelling emotions. His abundant inventiveness also fails him in the
+great crises of passion. Again and again when the heroine is at bay, or the
+hero within the jaws of ruin, Massinger resorts to oratory. As in "The Maid
+of Honor," eloquence is the _deus ex machina_ which solves the difficulties
+of the plot. In consequence, the characterization, though involving subtle
+and penetrating conceptions of human nature, and often logical and
+consistent, rarely results in living beings. An exception must be made of
+some of his men, whose virility and dignity are akin to his own temper and
+can be made real through his favorite rhetorical means. The women, with
+few exceptions, of whom Camiola is chief, are, for reverse reasons, bad
+failures. Chastity cannot be revealed by an oratorical appeal, and the evil
+women only grow impossible when they add rhetoric to lust.
+
+The passing of the greatness of the Elizabethan drama is manifest in
+Massinger as in his contemporaries. He retains, to be sure, most of the
+external characteristics of his predecessors; he writes constantly in the
+light of their achievements; he would restrain Fletcher's theatricality by
+a more cautious and responsible art. Like Shakespeare he maintains a moral
+standard despite the exigencies of a romantic plot. But the old fervor as
+well as the old extravagance of diction have gone; and a careful dramaturgy
+now finds itself incompetent to meet the requirements of great tragic
+crises. His tragedies recapitulate what has been done before, without
+important advance or departure, and without attaining one unforgettable
+phrase or one moment that electrifies the reader with an undeniable
+conviction of its dramatic truth.
+
+In Ford the results of servile imitation and original genius were curiously
+combined. The first dramatist to feel the overshadowing effect of
+Shakespeare's tragedies, he borrowed freely from "Lear," "Othello," and
+"Romeo and Juliet," and he was hardly less indebted to Beaumont and
+Fletcher and the school of Webster. As a playwright he was, in fact,
+usually imitative and often unskillful. As a poet his consciousness of the
+greatness of earlier dramatists now chilled him to bald copying and now
+incited him to a unique development of some of the old tragic motives. With
+Dekker and Rowley he collaborated on "The Witch of Edmonton," a tragicomedy
+dealing with a contemporary crime and linking itself with the domestic
+tragedies. "Perkin Warbeck," a revival of the chronicle history, is without
+battles or pageants, and is less concerned with the scenic presentation of
+history than with the delineation of the character of the claimant. His
+other tragedies, "Love's Sacrifice," "The Broken Heart," and "'Tis Pity
+She's a Whore," are at once both more in accord with prevailing modes in
+the drama and more characteristic of Ford's imaginative temperament. In
+spite of their worthless comic scenes, their conventional material, and
+their melodramatic situations, they present tragic passion with an
+intensity and truth possible only to dramatic genius.
+
+Love is the theme, and an excess of sentiment and passion in conflict with
+friendship, right, or natural law, is the particular province that Ford
+makes his own. A favorite in love with the wife of his lord, a brother in
+love with a sister, are the situations over which his genius casts an
+oppressive melancholy that lasts until the final heart-breaks. The monarch,
+his favorite, a buffoon or two, and lords and ladies, love-sick or
+passion-inflamed, play with the casuistry of love and mingle dances and
+revels with bloodshed and horror. Villany and revenge appear but are not
+very essential. The seeds of fatal passions have been already sown when the
+play begins; it is the stifling hothouse in which they luxuriate. The end
+is inevitable, though it may be long held in suspense and attained through
+some surprise in the final act.
+
+"The Broken Heart" is the most healthy of his plays. Orgilus, whose life
+has been blighted because Penthea has married Bassanio through the
+intervention of her brother, the great General Ithocles, pursues his
+revenge upon Ithocles in spite of much delay and apparent reconciliation.
+Finally he stabs Ithocles to death just as Ithocles is to be married to the
+princess Calantha, and just as Penthea dies of madness and starvation. The
+familiar round of revenge, madness, and torture here reappears, but it is
+told in a story full of romantic sentiment and human passion, and not
+without sunshine as well as shadow. It is the final scenes, however, which
+every reader remembers. Calantha is dancing when the tidings of the deaths
+of her father and her lover are brought to her, and she dances on, hiding
+her grief and playing her part nobly, until, duty accomplished, her heart
+is free to yield to its bursting sorrow.
+
+It is in scenes like these, showing passion restrained or overborne for the
+moment, or the strain and suspense preceding the crash, that Ford is at his
+best. The marvelous parting scene between brother and sister in "'Tis Pity"
+is perfection itself. His imagination dissolves the horrible story into the
+very language of the breaking heart. His verse, lacking both the old
+rhetorical artificiality and the vivacity and adaptability of Fletcher's,
+possesses a restraint and moderation of language and a complex and
+beautiful melody all its own. At times it is the thinnest of translucent
+veils "through which passion is burning as the radiant lines of morning."
+
+One may find in him somewhat of the perverse inquisitiveness of Donne. A
+wayward and solitary searcher in the realms of poetry, he voyaged only to
+regions unexplored or forbidding. But, as we have seen, his imagination,
+wayward though it was, took direction from his contemporaries, and he was
+representative of much in current tragedy. Though Ford's ethical attitude
+is perhaps more non-committal than that of any of his contemporaries, yet
+his casuistical interest in moral problems, and the emphasis which he
+places on such problems at the expense of his stories, are traits common in
+the drama of the time, and especially in the collaborative work of
+Middleton and Rowley. His absorption with questions of sex, his searching
+for new sensation, his attempt to bestow on moral perversion the
+enticements of poetry correspond with what is most decadent in Fletcher and
+Shirley. Like his fine-spoken and well-mannered courtiers and impulsive
+ladies, Ford imagined in an atmosphere of unhealthy emotion. His plays are
+immoral because their passion is so often morbid and their sentiment
+mawkish. His power to reveal character and passion, which rank him with the
+greatest of the Elizabethans, was discovered in his searching the by-paths
+of the abnormal and pathological. Pathos for him was a flower plucked from
+a poisonous exotic.
+
+Beginning about 1625 and extending to the Civil War, Shirley's dramatic
+career overlapped and continued Massinger's as Massinger's did Fletcher's.
+After leaving the university he took orders, but shortly became converted
+to Catholicism, and then, after a volume of poems, turned to the public
+theatres for employment. The last of the brilliant series of poets who made
+the London stage the home of poesy and contributed to the great period of
+the English drama, at the closing of the theatres he was the dean of his
+profession. His thirty odd plays, while naturally continuing the methods
+and types of Massinger and of Fletcher, his avowed master, and while
+reminiscent of much in earlier writers, especially Webster and Shakespeare,
+also reflect about all the characteristics manifest in the drama during the
+reign of Charles I.
+
+Shirley's remarkable talents challenge comparison with his predecessors. He
+had a share of Massinger's seriousness of purpose and painstaking art, and
+of Fletcher's freshness of fancy and sprightliness of style. In invention
+he is hardly less ingenious than either, and in careful construction and
+theatrical craftsmanship he approaches Massinger's undoubted mastership.
+His verse seems modeled on Fletcher's, but it often has a spontaneity of
+movement and a richness of decoration that recall Elizabethan style in its
+early flights. Little of early aphorism, however, or of the later obscurity
+and confusion remains; these are replaced, sometimes indeed by a hackneyed
+declamation, but often by natural and fluent dialogue.
+
+Yet, in spite of his talents, Shirley's own position and his contribution
+to the drama are difficult of definition, because he is so constantly
+reminiscent of his predecessors and so constantly approaching, though never
+quite equaling, their preeminent models. His plays, like Massinger's, seem
+to the reader of to-day repetitions of one another. Each coalesces in the
+mind with other comedies of manners, or other tragedies of blood, or with
+the tragicomedies of Massinger and Fletcher. Whatever the species, love is
+the theme, lust is pursuing, chastity is tried by intrigue and by
+declamation; but the real interest is in the plot, the tricks, disguises,
+subterfuges, villains, and surprises that end--as the case may be--in the
+discomfiture of the fools, or the marriage of the lovers, or the downfall
+of a dynasty.
+
+The drama had become conventionalized. The dramatists were no longer
+searching for new themes and characters in a wide range of stories; they
+were inventing their plots but were restricted in their materials. The
+ingredients of early plays served Shirley's purpose, and by a few new
+devices or changes in motive he gave his fashionable ladies, his lustful
+monarchs, scheming favorites, and exiled heroes new names and adventures,
+and so produced a play. The cleverness of the plot occupies your attention,
+or occasionally a beautiful passage or a fine conception of character
+arrests the mind, but at the close you are at a loss to separate the play
+from a dozen similar ones.
+
+In Shirley, as in Massinger, the most representative plays, and certainly
+those most satisfactory to our taste, are the tragicomedies. Bloodshed and
+horror and grossness of language and situation may all be absent, and the
+story of love and intrigue, even if it does not exalt the mind or purify
+the passions, may be altogether delightful. In "The Royal Master," one of
+the best, the role of the lustful monarch is assumed for a single scene,
+only to cure a really charming heroine of her infatuation for royalty; and
+the intriguing favorite is foiled, the banished noble vindicated, and two
+love matches completed with gracefulness of language and dexterity of plot.
+Unfortunately Shirley's land of romance is rarely so wholesome as here or
+the inhabitants so agreeable.
+
+His tragedies mainly conform to the hackneyed models, no matter what the
+sources may be or how large his own invention may seem. The earliest, "The
+Maid's Revenge," relating a Spanish story of the rivalry in love of two
+sisters that ends in a fatal duel between brother and lover, is wholly in
+the tone of romantic melodrama. "The Politician," a more ambitious effort,
+combines the villain play with the Beaumont-Fletcher romance. Gotharius,
+the politician, is the villain; Marpisa, the evil woman, is his mistress
+and about to be married to the king; Albina, the loyal and long-suffering
+heroine, is the villain's wife; Turgesius is the prince and hero; and
+Olaus, a blunt soldier, is his faithful friend. There is an insurrection,
+as so often in Fletcher; and after a long intrigue the villain and the evil
+woman perish, and the prince marries the heroine. In "Love's Cruelty," a
+more original conception is worked out with telling realism and a good deal
+of dramatic truth. Clariana becomes infatuated with her husband's friend
+Hippolito; and, even after the guilty lovers have been permitted to go
+unpunished by the husband, her passion continues until her jealousy at her
+lover's approaching marriage to Eubella drives her to his murder. Rarely
+elsewhere in the Elizabethan drama is the story of illicit love told with
+less of glamour and more veracity. These merits are perhaps counterbalanced
+by the extreme realism of the language and the stage action.
+
+In this play the deceived husband dies of grief, but Eubella, who had
+earlier resisted the lustful duke, is solaced after the death of her
+betrothed by a promise of marriage from the duke himself. Both "The
+Politician" and "The Duke's Mistress," a tragedy along hackneyed lines, end
+with reward for the virtuous and punishment only for the vicious. Such
+application of poetic justice had been earlier expounded by Ben Jonson in
+defense of the punishments inflicted in his comedy, "Volpone." The
+applications of the doctrine in Shirley and Massinger were, however,
+probably due not so much to theoretical criticism as to the popular
+preference for the restriction of the catastrophe to the bad, a preference
+recorded by Aristotle and evidently shared by a generation in which
+romantic tragicomedy was the most popular dramatic form.
+
+Shirley's tragic masterpieces, however, offered no alleviation of horror
+and bloodshed. "The Traitor" and "The Cardinal" are plays of revenge, lust,
+intrigue, and villany, in which all the accretions of this kind of tragedy
+from Kyd and Marlowe down to Webster and Massinger seem to be represented.
+The villains are as black as Barabas and as crafty as those of Webster;
+plots are as intricately entangled with counterplots as in Tourneur; and
+surprises follow as rapidly as in Fletcher. The corpse kissed by the
+repentant duke is again presented; there is attempted rape and assumed
+madness; in each play a bridegroom is murdered as he takes his place in the
+wedding procession; and in each revenge strews the final scene with the
+dead. But the old motives still had power to convey poetic inspiration, and
+the examples of all his predecessors summoned Shirley to his best efforts.
+Perhaps in no other plays does he so constantly recall their work;
+certainly in no others do the poetic quality of his language, the vigorous
+delineation of character, and the dramatic depiction of passion so worthily
+maintain what were even for men of his day the great traditions of English
+tragedy.
+
+Tragedies by minor writers during the years from 1620 to 1642 offer little
+that is distinctive. Occasionally, as in the anonymous "Nero" of 1624, we
+have a play spontaneous in phrase and lifelike in characterization, worthy
+of the best days of the drama; but in the main the plays only repeat what
+is to be found in Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. In spite of the vogue of
+tragicomedy, tragedy was by no means neglected, nearly fifty tragedies
+being preserved from the twenty years, in addition to those by the authors
+mentioned. These include several by Suckling, Glapthorne's pastoral
+tragedy, "Argalus and Parthenia," and his worthless "Wallenstein," May's
+plays on classical history, and others by Killigrew, Davenant, Carlell,
+Heming, Davenport, and less known men.
+
+The large majority conform to the later type of revenge play as exemplified
+in Massinger and Shirley. Sometimes the romantic love element supersedes
+the intrigue and horrors, but oftener the horrors have full sway. A double
+plot, usually with an elaborate surprise in the fifth act, revolves about
+lust and revenge with some attention to untarnished honor and unconquered
+chastity. The lustful duke and his intriguing favorite, or the tyrannical
+usurper and the rightful prince alternate at the centre of the stage along
+with the evil woman, perhaps a Lady Potiphar, and a distressed maiden,
+likely to be disguised as a boy. Madness is frequently represented, eyes
+are plucked out, brains dashed upon the stage, and many of the old horrors
+reproduced, but ghosts rarely appear. The action consists largely of
+adultery, seduction, and rape; and these are represented with a horrid
+detail that rivals Marston. When chastity is preserved it is often by a
+device similar to that used in "Measure for Measure," although occasionally
+there is an exchange of men instead of women. Tragedy is for the most part
+confined to stories of crime. The monstrous politicians and libertines
+differ from their sixteenth century predecessors chiefly in the greater
+ingenuity and complexity of their intrigue, their subordination of ambition
+or other motives to those of love or lust, and in the prosaic flatness of
+their blank verse.
+
+Often there are manifest borrowings, and occasionally a dramatist evidently
+strove to include everything that had ever been known on the tragic stage.
+"The Rebellion," by Thomas Rawlins, presents Machiavel, a villain, whose
+soliloquies might be burlesques on Barabas and Richard III, two mad scenes,
+a nurse from "Romeo and Juliet," a Moor, who is another villain, attempted
+rape, and frequent bursts of poetry:--
+
+    "The lazy moon has scarcely trimm'd herself
+    To entertain the sun; she still retains
+    The slimy tincture of the banish'd night."
+
+On the other hand, the usual type of tragedy, with reminiscences of
+Shakespeare and Fletcher, sometimes shows a genuine poetic gift, as notably
+in Lord Falkland's "The Marriage Night." The most marked trait, however, of
+these minor tragedies is their eagerness to out-Herod Herod and to make
+good their weakness in dramatic truth by means of stage horrors or rant.
+"The Valiant Scot," a tragedy dealing with the career of Wallace,
+represents the cutting out of the tongue of one English ambassador and the
+putting out of the eyes of another. In "Mirza" the protagonist kills his
+seven-year-old daughter,--"Takes Fatima by the neck, breaks it, and swings
+her about." The taste for atrocities seems to have been most highly
+developed at Oxford, where the students acted Goffe's outrageous plays and
+a Samuel Harding published "Sicily and Naples," a medley introducing
+revenge for a father, a maiden disguised as a boy, a villain-favorite, the
+Mariana device, and combining rape, murder, madness, and incest in a
+fashion not equaled since "Titus Andronicus."
+
+Absurd plays of this sort were common enough from the days of "Cambyses,"
+and cannot be fairly taken as evidences of the drama's decadence. Nor do
+the main differences that are apparent between tragedy after 1620 and that
+of the early or of the Shakespearean period point to decadence as
+unmistakably as critics are wont to assume. There is a waning of poetic
+power; blank verse descends to prose, and its flowers have a jaded air; but
+there is poetic imagination in Glapthorne as well as in Shirley, noble
+rhetoric in Massinger, and sheer poetry in Ford. The ethical tone has in
+general suffered deterioration. The moral insight of Shakespeare or even of
+Webster is not maintained; courtly and sophisticated ideals ring false; the
+language becomes gross; the vulgarities of the early plays are replaced by
+mawkish sentimentality or lewd suggestiveness. There seems to be increasing
+difficulty in presenting persons normally good. The reiteration of scenes
+of rape and seduction bespeak an unhealthy moral atmosphere. Yet tragedy,
+though at tunes perverse or forgetful, still clings to its moral standards.
+It still endeavors to expose and chastise sin and to incite to virtue.
+
+Decadence is more manifest in the restriction and conventionalizing of the
+material of tragedy. The love for the impossible, the craving for
+stupendous emotions and supernormal passions had given place to theatrical
+court intrigues. The daring attempts of Marlowe and Shakespeare to depict
+the great round of the emotions had given way to a continual harping on
+illicit love. Dramatists were no longer striving to give beautiful
+expression to the terrible, heroic, or pitiable in story, but seeking to
+construct acting plays out of stock situations and stock characters. There
+was a lack of fresh impulse. French romance and Spanish drama seem to have
+encouraged no marked innovations, and French classicism was only just
+making itself heard at the closing of the theatres. A man of original
+genius like Ford staggered under the recognition of the greatness of
+earlier achievement and turned to the abnormalities and excesses of passion
+for his themes. Shirley, more typical of the period, devoted talents of a
+high order to repeating familiar models.
+
+Yet there was progress as well as stagnation. Dramatists had shaken off the
+medieval adherence to sources and learned to invent, though their invention
+unhappily followed current theatrical fashions rather than fresh creative
+impulses. The art of making plays had advanced, not as Shakespeare had
+pointed the way, by making construction dependent upon character, but as
+Beaumont and Fletcher had fashioned, by making character subordinate to a
+varied and rapid action. There is more complication, more coherence in
+plot, more ingenuity in situation, and a far greater use of surprise than
+in the early plays, but no great gain in consistent motivation. Yet many of
+the early absurdities have disappeared; and in discovering what is to be
+acted and what not, in the quick excitement of the spectator's interest,
+and in the careful integration of the various lines of action, the
+dramaturgy is, in comparison with the period before Shakespeare, noticeably
+modern.
+
+The differences which distinguish the different periods do not conceal the
+essential unity of the entire development from 1562 to 1642. The changes
+that take place in the prevailing types are of degree and not of kind.
+Nearly all the tragedies might be called tragedies of blood, for nearly all
+deal with crime and bloodshed. A narrower division like that of the tragedy
+of revenge keeps its integrity from Kyd onward, the hesitation motive
+finding transformation in "Hamlet," the union of revenge, intrigue, and
+madness finding a different development in Webster and others, and
+remaining until the end the most prevalent type of tragedy. A majority of
+Elizabethan plays are romantic rather than classical or realistic, though
+the romance is of many kinds and drawn from many widely different sources,
+as Boccaccio, D'Urfe, or Lope de Vega. For a time it is mainly confined to
+romantic comedy, but it soon enters into tragedy and tragicomedy. In
+tragedy it plays a fitful part, but in tragicomedy it conquers the
+theatres. The course of tragedy from its inception in an amalgamation of
+medieval and classical elements, through its establishment by Marlowe, its
+development of types and methods, the transformation of these by
+Shakespeare into a dramatic form that changed and enlarged the meaning of
+tragedy for the centuries since then, the further development of types and
+methods under the innovations of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the splendid
+contribution that tragedy still received from Webster, Middleton, Ford, and
+Massinger,--all this was comprised within a single century; all that was
+most significant, within a single lifetime.
+
+Tragedy throughout this development remained popular. Less than the ballad
+but more than any other form of literature prior to the pamphlet, novel,
+and newspaper, the drama was the result of popular taste, thought, and
+desire. Tragedy early shook off the bonds of classical tradition, and it
+never ceased to aim first at pleasing the audiences. Shakespeare as well as
+Dekker or Shirley was their servant. Even in the later days when increasing
+Puritanism alienated a large portion of the public from the theatres,
+literary standards failed to overthrow the sovereignty of the people,
+though, as the dramatists paid allegiance to a restricted and less
+representative audience, the drama waned. Without a guiding criticism,
+without any reliance on authority or tradition, appealing first to the
+public theatre and only secondly to court or culture or posterity, tragedy
+at its best was not distinguished by impeccability of literary art. It
+lacked simplicity of theme and precision of treatment; it was fantastic in
+design and language. It lacked refinement; it was vulgar in diction and
+scene; it was revolting in its horrors and bloodshed. It lacked reserve and
+definiteness of literary purpose; it was sensational, incongruous, or naive
+in its address to the intelligence. But from the same conditions that gave
+rise to its faults and excesses came its excellences. A delight in verbal
+felicity, a welcome for diverse excitement, and a craving for story on the
+part of the public made possible the wealth of incident and character, the
+varied emotional appeal, and the fervid poetry of Elizabethan tragedy. It
+was free to avail itself of every resource of poet or playwright in order
+to present human passion of all kinds, human individuals of many varieties.
+Its virtues as well as its faults are summed up in Shakespeare. After his
+death it developed in dramatic dexterity rather than in the
+comprehensiveness of its mirror of life. Yet, without Shakespeare, the
+fabrics of its vision comprise
+
+    "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+    The solemn temples, the great globe itself."
+
+Even without him, the legacy of Elizabethan tragedy is an unfaded pageant
+of the greatness and the pain, the passion and the poetry of our little
+life.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward, Fleay, Schelling, and the bibliographies in the Shakespeare
+_Jahrbuch_ continue to be the best guides. Dyce's admirable edition of
+Beaumont and Fletcher (11 vols., 1843-46) has long been the standard, but
+two new complete editions of their works are now in progress, one under the
+general editorship of A. H. Bullen (London, 1904-), the other edited by A.
+Glover and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905-). The discussion in this chapter
+is in part based on my _Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_
+(1901) and my edition of _The Maid's Tragedy_ and _Philaster_ in the
+_Belles-Lettres Series_ (Boston, 1906). I must refer to the latter for a
+full bibliography of both texts and critical works. Miss Hatcher's _John
+Fletcher_ (Chicago, 1905) should be added. Webster has been well edited by
+Dyce and Hazlitt; and his two principal tragedies by M. W. Sampson in the
+_Belles-Lettres Series_, with full bibliography. E. E. Stoll's monograph,
+_John Webster_, referred to in chapter v, has been drawn upon in the
+discussion in this chapter. Tourneur has been edited by J. Churton Collins
+(1878); Middleton by A. H. Bullen; Massinger very poorly by Gifford (2d
+ed., 1815); Ford by Gifford (1827, revised by Dyce, 1869); and Shirley by
+Dyce (1833). Editions of selections from all these dramatists will also be
+found in the _Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists_, with introductions of
+varying value. Bibliographical references to all dramatists of this period
+will be found in Ward and Schelling, and in general more comprehensive
+discussion of their plays than are to be found elsewhere. Of especial value
+in the study of sources are E. Koeppel's two volumes, _Quellen Studien zu
+den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's und Beaumont und Fletcher's_ (1895)
+and _Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Massinger's und
+John Ford's_ (1897).
+
+Among the critical appreciations of the dramatists of this and the
+preceding chapters are: Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_,
+Hazlitt's _Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_, Jeffrey's _Essay
+on Ford_, Lowell's _Old English Dramatists_, G. C. Macaulay's _Francis
+Beaumont_ (1883), Swinburne's _Ben Jonson_ (1889), and his essays on other
+dramatists.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] Elizabethan has been used to designate the whole period of the drama
+from 1559 to 1642.
+
+[23] For a somewhat different view of the play, emphasizing its crudity as
+a drama, see Mr. William Archer's "Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne," _New
+Review_, January, 1893.
+
+[24] See Coleridge, _Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher_, for a characteristic
+and valuable criticism of the play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE RESTORATION
+
+
+The drama of the Restoration was separated from the earlier periods by
+sixteen years of closed theatres and a virtual cessation of all dramatic
+composition. To the drama, as to other forms of literature, the Restoration
+brought not only a revival but also a revolution--new fashions, new models,
+new foreign influence, a new age, and a changed society. No such break in
+theatrical conditions has occurred since then, and nothing so nearly
+revolutionary in the history of the drama. Since then the theatres have
+been always open, the dramatists always writing. Changes have been gradual,
+the history continuous. Due recognition must, therefore, be given to the
+last years before the closing of the theatres and the first years after
+their reopening as marking an end and a beginning. Really, however, the new
+was a continuation of the old; the pause was by no means a severing of
+traditions; and the Restoration drama inherited far more from the
+Elizabethan than it imported from France or originated under the
+inspiration of that illustrious patron of poetry, Charles II.
+
+Signs of continued interest in the theatre had not been wanting during the
+Commonwealth. The theatres were reopened in 1648 but promptly suppressed
+and dismantled. Drolls or short farces derived from popular plays were
+performed here and there in London or in the country, and the continued
+publication of old plays revealed a considerable demand from the reading
+public. In 1656 Davenant obtained permission for the performance of his
+"Siege of Rhodes" "made a Representation by the Art of Perspective Scenes,
+and the story sung in Recitative Music." Thus, even before the revival of
+the regular drama, came its rival the opera, and the important innovation
+of movable scenes. Two years later Davenant produced another entertainment,
+and was performing regular plays before Monk had entered London. Two
+companies, the King's and the Duke of York's, were presently licensed;
+these, united from 1682 to 1695, sufficed for sixty years to supply the
+needs of the London public, and maintained their monopoly until well into
+the nineteenth century. Before 1642 the open public theatres had largely
+given place to the "private" theatres in inclosed rooms. These and the
+contemporary French theatres served as models for the Restoration
+buildings. The stage still protruded into the auditorium and was frequently
+crowded with gallants as in the Elizabethan days, but the use of scenery, a
+drop curtain shutting off all the stage but the proscenium, the
+performances by artificial light, together with the women actors, who now
+for the first time interpreted Shakespeare's heroines, brought the
+Restoration stage closer to that of our own day than to that of the
+preceding generation. This transformation from a half-medieval to a nearly
+modern stage resulted in far-reaching changes in the drama; among others,
+in a new importance to female parts and in alterations in structure due to
+the use of scenery and curtain. Few of the old actors were still alive,
+though enough had been gathered to make up the nucleus of the companies and
+to transmit the traditions of the Globe and the Blackfriars. The acting of
+the Restoration probably soon surpassed that of the earlier period, and the
+great triumphs of Betterton and Mrs. Barry set new and long influential
+traditions in English tragedy. The changes which most fundamentally
+affected the drama were those in the stage and the actors.
+
+The influence exerted upon the drama by the new opera may also be described
+as largely theatrical. The opera of the Restoration is to be distinguished
+from the form as it has prevailed since the introduction of Italian opera
+into England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The term was
+loosely used to describe a variety of entertainments, in which the dialogue
+might be altogether sung, or in part spoken, and in which the dancing and
+decoration were regarded as not less essential than the music. Derived from
+France, where the opera gained great favor and attracted the services of
+Corneille and Quinault, the English species was closely related to two
+national forms of drama, the masque and the tragedy. In music, dancing, and
+machinery it resembled the former; in theme, plot, and persons, often the
+latter. A resemblance between the opera and the heroic tragedy is also
+observable in the prominence given by each to heroic love. Tragedies were
+readily transformed into operas as in the case of Lee's "Theodosius" and
+Tate's "Brutus of Alba," and of Fletcher's "Island Princess" and
+"Prophetess." Throughout the period the relations between the two remain
+close. They were presented in the same theatre; the same actors often
+played in one and sang in the other; an orchestral band was provided to
+play between the acts in tragedy; and tragedy availed itself of songs,
+scenery, and machines. Entirely apart from its place in the history of
+English music, English opera is of some importance in the development of
+tragedy, partly as a rival and partly because it promoted operatic elements
+in tragedy itself. Tragedy came in the Restoration period to rely more than
+ever before upon the externals of its stage presentation, and on elements
+then considered distinctively operatic,--scenery, spectacle, and music.
+
+From changes in theatrical conditions, friends of the drama doubtless found
+hope for its higher development; but the main source of promise seemed to
+lie in the patronage of the court. The court of Charles II indeed exerted a
+greater influence on the drama than any court since or, perhaps, before,
+but the influence was mainly toward social and political immorality.
+Patronage rather than public support was relied upon by both dramatists and
+actors. In consequence, the theatres became servile purveyors to the
+amusement and taste of the king and his favorites, and blindly partisan
+adherents of the royal politics. The failure to represent the nation and
+the consequent loss both in range of artistic impulse and in soundness of
+moral standards that had characterized the drama in the reigns of the two
+earlier Stuarts were now greatly intensified. In tragedy, grossness of
+language and manners had less opportunity than in comedy, but political
+subserviency had freer play. Political allegory combined with tragedy in
+plays contemptible as specimens of either species. This unworthy
+partisanship and this catering to a society mean and corrupt necessarily
+maimed that branch of the drama supposed to devote itself to heroic and
+lofty themes.
+
+The influences making most for innovation in the poetry and art of the
+drama came from France, partly owing to the instigation of the court. The
+character of this French influence, like its sources, differed from time to
+time, but from 1660 until after the death of Voltaire it was continuous and
+powerful. In tragedy, shortly after the Restoration, the heroic romances of
+Calprenede, Scudery, and others, and the French plays which they had
+fostered, were the sources and models of much in the English heroic plays.
+There was constant borrowing and adapting from French romances and
+tragedies, as from French comedies. The "Cid" had been translated and acted
+in the reign of Charles I; several other of Corneille's plays were
+translated before 1670, his subjects and style were often imitated, and
+toward the end of the century the influence of Racine was marked upon
+English drama. The French influence on tragedy, however, was less a matter
+of models than of rules and theory. The English dramatists never in this
+period got very close to Corneille or Racine, but they were greatly
+impressed by French criticism and precept. In an age of reason and
+modernity, English tragedy, like other forms of literature, found its
+reaction from the crudities of an earlier age and its reform of the
+excesses of an untrained art in the pseudo-classicism of France.
+
+An effort was made, which proved far more portentous than preceding ones,
+to wrest tragedy back into conformity with the supposed rules of Aristotle.
+The conflict between English and French models, between Shakespeare and
+Corneille, between romantic license and classical proprieties had begun, a
+conflict to be continued in criticism as well as practice for over a
+century. Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" introduces us at once to the
+questions at issue and the state of the debate. The main questions were:
+first, the unities, recognized in French drama as necessities and
+supposedly derived from Aristotle; second, the mixture of tragedy and
+comedy, or, more especially, the introduction of low comedy into tragedy;
+and third, the use of rhyme as in French tragedy or of blank verse as in
+English, prose by general consent being restricted to comedy. In these the
+English tradition was directly opposed by French practice and theory, and
+in many minor matters as well: in the _liaison_ of scenes, favored, as was
+the unity of place, by the use of scenery; in certain proprieties in the
+conduct of kings and of subjects to kings; in the restriction of tragedy
+to historical, classical, or at least heroical persons and themes; and,
+notably, in the avoidance of violence and bloodshed in the action. Dryden's
+discussion reveals French practice and classical practice, not clearly
+differentiated, set up against the English tradition, and recognizes much
+in the former that seems reasonable and authoritative. But, on the other
+hand, it insists on the excellence and impressiveness of the English
+achievement. Such was the state of opinion shortly after the Restoration,
+and such, with varying emphasis and refinement, remained the consensus of
+opinion of dramatists and critics for a century. The laws of the
+pseudo-classicists were held to be measurably good, but Shakespeare without
+those laws had been undeniably great.
+
+Throughout the Restoration the main influence on the theatre was that of
+the earlier English drama. When the theatres were opened the old plays were
+acted. Literally hundreds were revived, many of which long held the stage.
+After a time changes in taste and theatrical conditions led to revisions
+and alterations; but the alterations of Shakespeare and others not only
+illustrate this perversion of taste, but also testify to the continuance of
+the English tradition. Not merely revisions and adaptations, but the whole
+drama bears witness to its descent. The characteristics of the tragedy of
+1630 are those of the tragedy of 1670. The influence of the
+Beaumont-Fletcher romances and of the tragedy of revenge are hardly less
+marked after 1660 than before. The comic scenes, blank verse, complicated
+plots, physical horrors, and supernatural agents, the mixture of
+idealization and realism that characterize Elizabethan tragedy, persist
+throughout the Restoration period.
+
+The conflict between the contending theories of tragedy may be studied in
+criticism. Dryden's various essays recur again and again to the main issues
+of the war, and define with changing emphasis his attempted reconciliation
+of the two opposites. Rymer came forward as a thoroughgoing exponent of
+classicism, and at the beginning of the next century Dennis, Gildon, and
+Addison carried on the discussion. The conflict is also represented in the
+work of nearly every dramatist. There are tragedies in blank verse and
+tragedies in rhyme, tragicomedies, tragedies with comic scenes, tragedies
+without deaths and with happy endings, tragedies translated from the
+French, others based on Greek originals, and still others in their medleys
+of farce, horror, and rant as Elizabethan as "The Jew of Malta" itself.
+Many of these varieties are represented in the work of a single writer, as
+Crowne, or Lee, or Otway. The career of Dryden sums up and reflects nearly
+all the changes in opinion or practice. His plays, and with them the whole
+course of tragedy from 1660 to 1700, fall roughly into certain divisions.
+For a few years after the Restoration, ending at about the time of the
+"Essay," is the period of the dominance of the earlier drama, a period of
+which Davenant is the leading figure. About 1664 began the heroic tragedies
+in rhyme which for a time carried all before them. In a dozen years,
+however, the fashion wore out, and Dryden's "All for Love" in 1678 marked
+the abandonment of rhyme and led the return to Shakespeare. From 1678 on,
+the course of tragedy again takes to varied streams. To this period belong
+the most notable alterations of Shakespeare, the most permanent of
+Restoration tragedies in the plays of Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and also the
+growth of French methods and of the influence of Racine, culminating in the
+pseudo-classical triumph at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
+
+At the opening of the theatres, tragedy and tragicomedy took up their
+courses about where they had left off. The plays of Davenant, the main
+connecting link between the two periods, might be treated in connection
+with either, without seeming in the least out of place. Tragicomedy of the
+type current in the thirties continued in the sixties; tragedy oscillated
+between honor and horror, fine writing and perverted lust, as in Massinger,
+Shirley, and Glapthorne. Spanish stories, long influential in the drama,
+promised for a time to prove still more important. Dryden's first two
+plays, "The Wild Gallant" (1663)[25] and "The Rival Ladies" (1664), were
+based, like many other contemporary plays, on Spanish originals; but the
+second introduced rhyme and some of the elements of the plots of the heroic
+plays. It was, however, the Elizabethan plays that the audiences went to
+see, and that the dramatists had constantly before them. The plays of the
+Marlowean period were regarded as out of date, and very few were revived,
+practically none of the tragedies except the early ones of Shakespeare. Of
+the later Elizabethans, Beaumont and Fletcher were the most popular, for a
+time surpassing Shakespeare. Over thirty of their plays were revived, and
+many of these were constantly acted. Of tragedies and tragicomedies, "The
+Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster," "Bonduca," "A King and No King,"
+"Valentinian," and "Rollo" held the stage till the end of the century, the
+first three much longer. Jonson's tragedies, as well as his comedies, were
+revived; and Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," Webster's "White Devil,"
+Chapman's "Bussy D'Ambois," Shirley's "Cardinal" and "Traitor" were among
+the plays that carried on the traditions of the tragedy of blood.
+Shakespeare's comedies fell into disfavor, but his tragedies were popular
+from the start. This was due in part to the genius of Betterton, who found
+his best opportunities in depicting their protagonists, in part to their
+merits as stage plays for both actors and audiences; but, whatever the
+causes of their success, they soon exercised a large and increasing
+influence upon the theory and practice of tragedy.
+
+The Elizabethan plays, however, had almost from the first to encounter a
+rivalry with a new fashion. Davenant, their reviver, was also the first
+with the new. His "Siege of Rhodes" (1656), with its scenery, machines,
+music, rhyme, and heroics, may be said to inaugurate both the opera and the
+heroic play. Howard's "Indian Queen" (1664), in which Dryden had a hand,
+was followed by Dryden's "Indian Emperor" (1665), in rhyme and displaying
+the full-fledged heroic formula. The love-complications of its plot are of
+a kind constantly reappearing not only in the heroic plays but in later
+tragedy as well.
+
+     Montezeuma and Cortez are the historical heroes;
+     Almeria, daughter of the Indian Queen, is the vengeful
+     passionate heroine; Cydaria, daughter of Montezeuma, is
+     the angelic heroine. Montezeuma's sons, Odmar and
+     Guyomar, Almeria's sister, Alibech, and her brother,
+     Orbellan, all in love with some one, add to the
+     criss-crossing of affections. Almeria is loved by
+     Montezeuma, but loves Cortez, who does not love her.
+     Cydaria is loved by Cortez and also by Orbellan. The
+     two heroines, as well as the two heroes, are thus
+     rivals, and the vengeful one directs the intrigue. The
+     brothers Odmar and Guyomar, to say nothing of a Spanish
+     captain, both love Alibech, and provide the usual story
+     of fraternal rivalry. After duels, captures,
+     imprisonments, conflicts of honor, renunciations, and
+     jealousies, finally the vengeful heroine succumbs. One
+     of the brothers is preserved for Alibech; Cortez weds
+     the angelic heroine; the rest, including six of the
+     leading actors and several supernumeraries, are killed
+     or commit suicide.
+
+Dryden's dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery gives some
+support to the latter's claim to have been the introducer of the rhymed
+heroic species, though his first play acted was probably "Henry V," in
+1664. Whoever the originators, their example was soon followed by Crowne,
+Lee, Settle, Otway, and most of the dramatists of the day; and for fifteen
+years or so English efforts in tragedy were confined to the heroic model.
+
+The use of the heroic couplet was its distinguishing mark; of course, an
+imitation of French practice. The plots, too, were direct borrowings, or
+close imitations, of contemporary French romances or dramas. Moreover, the
+themes and their treatment, the conception of honor, the importance given
+to love, and the pseudo-history, all followed French ideas. The unities
+were attended to, if not strictly observed; incidents, persons, and scenes
+greatly reduced in number in comparison with Elizabethan practice; and
+fixed rules of propriety in characterization and language observed, all in
+French fashion.
+
+The English plays, however, formed a type unknown in France or anywhere
+else on sea or land. The plots of all the "Sieges," "Rivals," and
+"Conquests" are mainly concerned with love, which inspires heroic sentiment
+and valor, encounters much jealousy and intrigue, runs counter to
+friendship and honor, and works its sorrows and joys among persons
+illustrious in history. In the end, the hero, a man of prodigious valor and
+most exemplary honor, weds the heroine, who is equally skilled in the
+artificial code of honor, while the deaths of the ambitious villain and the
+evil princess, in love with the hero and seeking revenge on the heroine,
+provide a tragic catastrophe. The persons are usually historical, English,
+Classical, or Eastern, and a little historical fact was intended to give a
+kind of grandeur to the story. The Alexanders and Montezumas, however, have
+manners and sentiments drawn partly from the courts of Louis and Charles
+and partly from the world of romance. The curious conception of honor as
+superhuman valor and magnanimity combined with formal propriety leads to
+impossibilities like those in a child's book of wonders. Duels and rescues
+take the place of pitched fields; the valorous champion puts to rout an
+army, exchanges compliments and courtesies with the grace of a
+fashion-plate, boasts and rants in Cambyses' vein, and is near to expire in
+an ecstasy of declamation when the heroine extends her hand for him to
+kiss. The two rival lovers and the two rival ladies generally play their
+game of jealousy, ambition, and wounded honor during a conquest or a siege;
+but world and empire count for naught. _Amor vincit omnia._
+
+A mere summary of their leading traits may suggest, what a careful
+examination of the various representatives of the class will confirm, that
+the heroic plays were by no means a fresh importation from France, but
+rather a result of tendencies distinctly manifest in the English drama, at
+least since the Beaumont-Fletcher romances.[26] The _genre_ of heroic
+romances begun by Beaumont and Fletcher, continued in tragedy and
+especially in tragicomedy by Fletcher, Massinger, and Shirley, here takes a
+further but not very diverse development under the spell of French romance
+and drama. The conflicts of honor, the rivalries in love, the few types of
+character constantly recurring, the extraordinary surprises and
+discoveries, the women, sentimental and sensational, offered nothing new in
+English drama. The avoidance of bloodshed, the observance of poetic
+justice, the exaltation of love as the whole theme, the preference for the
+sensational and astounding rather than the natural or inevitable, have all
+been found distinguishing drama since Fletcher. On the other hand, the
+hateful intrigue and abnormal lust, the horrors and gloom of Webster and
+Ford found little place in the heroic plays. One survival from the revenge
+plays, however, took on new life. Ghosts became as numerous and voluble as
+in the days of Kyd. But in the main the heroic plays represent the
+continuance of the heroic romance and tragicomedy corrected in accord with
+French standards of dramatic art and French conceptions of gallantry and
+heroism.
+
+It is in this aspect that they are of the most interest in the history of
+English tragedy. They are not a freak variation but a species lineally
+related to those which precede and follow. They carry the restriction and
+conventionalization of the material of tragedy much farther than did the
+plays of Shirley and his contemporaries; and, somewhat before Racine, they
+confine the main course of tragedy to sentimental love. Though their main
+innovation, the employment of rhyme, did not prevail, and though their
+changes in technic were rejected by many later Restoration dramatists, yet
+they were a powerful force in habituating the theatre to the structure and
+methods of French tragedy and in promoting the triumph of these methods in
+the next century. They also mark a further change in the conception of the
+field and functions of tragedy. The result of developments from tragicomedy
+rather than from tragedy, they exhibit a blending of the two forms and a
+redivision along new lines. Before the Restoration, nearly all tragedies
+had presented a mixture of comedy or of farce. Tragicomedy had been
+distinguished from tragedy not by the presence of comedy but by the fact
+that its leading persons were brought near to death yet saved for a happy
+ending. Moreover, tragicomedies as a class developed along the lines of the
+Beaumont-Fletcher romances. The heroic plays inherited the traits of this
+class and also to some extent the happy endings. In some, as Orrery's
+"Henry V," there is no suffering and everything turns out well; in others,
+as Orrery's later plays, there is bloodshed enough; but in nearly all death
+is visited only on the evil; the heroic are married. All plays with heroic
+themes, however, were called tragedies. There was no hint of heroic comedy
+as in France. The distinction between tragedy and comedy, which the
+Restoration drama drew much more closely than the Elizabethan, came to
+depend less on the presence of deaths or of an unhappy ending, and more on
+the nature of the material and form. After the decline of the heroic plays,
+tragedy returned, as we shall see, to bloodshed, deaths, and horrors, but
+meantime the heroic plays had emphasized as essential certain elements
+that long continued their ascendency in both critical and popular views of
+tragedy. Henceforth every one associated with tragedy heroic actions,
+illustrious persons, verse, whether rhymed or blank, a love story, and an
+inflated diction. The curious heroic rant, indeed, supplied a vocabulary
+and a manner that lasted long after the jingle of the rhyming couplets had
+been abandoned. Its "furies," "vows," "chains," "transports," "ecstasies,"
+and "Etnas burning within the breast" remained the language of despairing
+innocence and palpitating passion. Tragic became almost synonymous with
+artificial and inflated.
+
+A worthier achievement must also be credited to the heroic plays. The
+spacious realms of romance which the Elizabethans had loved were closing
+their gates to the imagination of the later seventeenth century. Even
+Shakespeare's isles of the blest that so delighted Elizabeth and James were
+strangely inaccessible to Restoration fancy, which took pleasure in only
+the "Merry Wives of Windsor" among his comedies. The narrowing of romance
+had been manifest in the drama since 1600, and it was a theatrical and
+artificial domain of thrills, sentiments, and honor that the Restoration
+received for its heritage. Poor enough as is this kingdom, absurd its
+inhabitants, it is still the land of the wonderful and impossible, and its
+monarchs now and then remind us of Tamburlaine and Hotspur. At the time of
+Wycherley's comedies and Rochester's patronage of literature, men and women
+sighed and thrilled with Albumazor, dreamed of love, and fancied
+themselves kings and queens in China and Peru. When Romance was banished
+from other forms of literature,--unless in pastoral or opera,--tragedy
+still remained dedicated to the banished goddess, and in its precincts
+scanty flames still burned on the altars of heroism, enthusiasm, romantic
+aspiration, and extravagant love.
+
+The rise and wane of the heroic plays is sufficiently illustrated in the
+career of their chief exponent. After his "Indian Emperor" (1665), Dryden
+turned in "Secret Love" (1667) to tragicomedy with a mixture of verse,
+rhyme, and prose and a mixture of heroic and lively comedy. After various
+comedies and the adaptation of "The Tempest," "Tyrannic Love" (1669) and
+"The Conquest of Granada" (1669) accomplished the full triumph of rhymed
+verse and "the grand scale." At times Dryden's rapidity and vigor almost
+justify the rhymed couplets and redeem the absurdities of the conventions.
+It was in the Epilogue to "The Conquest" that he attacked the Elizabethans,
+vaunting the superiority of an age when
+
+    "Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
+    In conversation, than those poets writ."
+
+In 1671 came the burlesque "Rehearsal," which, if its attack did not centre
+on heroic plays, made Dryden and the popular "Conquest of Granada" the
+butts of its most telling fun. Then followed Dryden's "Essay of Heroic
+Plays," two comedies, his inexcusable tragedy of "Amboyna" (written in a
+month to support the war with the Dutch, yet, in conformity to the
+fashion, tracing the Dutch atrocities to a heroic love), and the opera
+based on Milton's "Paradise Lost." In 1675 came "Aureng Zebe," the last of
+his heroic plays, without supernatural machinery, and somewhat tamed in
+style.
+
+The vogue of the heroic play was about over. In 1678 came Rymer's attempt
+at a model heroic tragedy and his "Tragedies of the Last Age," a severe
+attack upon the Elizabethan drama from the point of view of extreme
+pseudo-classicism. But in the same year was acted Dryden's "All for Love,"
+in blank verse, with a preface extolling Shakespeare, rejecting the models
+of the ancients as "too little for English tragedy," discarding "the nicety
+of manners of the French," yet claiming credit for an observance of the
+unities. This was the one play in which, as he declared, Dryden followed
+his own bent unheedful of stage fashions, and it seems to have set the
+fashion and led the way back to blank verse and to Shakespeare. Rhymed
+plays continued to appear occasionally, but blank verse was henceforth
+recognized as the proper medium for tragedy.
+
+Even Dryden's praise of Shakespeare is modified by his respect for French
+rules, and by the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare's genius lacked the
+improvements readily secured by an application of the accepted formulas of
+art. That a certain improvement is accomplished cannot be denied. The
+incoherent profusion of scenes, the host of distracting incidents are
+reduced to order, the unities of time and place give a directness and
+rapidity to the action that "Antony and Cleopatra" greatly lacks. In
+characterization and poetry Dryden's play is, to be sure, not comparable
+with Shakespeare's, but in both respects it far surpasses the numerous
+other English dramas on the subject. This is faint praise. By following
+Shakespeare without imitating him, and by adapting a play to the stage
+requirements of the day without bowing to the absurdities of the heroic
+models, Dryden succeeded in producing a great and original poetical drama.
+Not in response to mere theatrical fashion or to French taste or theory,
+but in response to the inspiration of Shakespeare came the finest product
+of Restoration tragedy.
+
+In this same year as "All for Love" appeared "Oedipus," written in
+collaboration with Lee, in which the authors brought to their classical
+model the methods of the Elizabethans. Eurydice and Adrastus furnish the
+necessary love story, and Creon becomes the hateful rival and intriguing
+villain. The declamation sometimes shows Dryden at his best, the bombast
+and horrors are in Lee's worst vein. In the next year appeared Dryden's
+improvement of "Troilus and Cressida" with his careful essay on "The
+Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," in which he criticises after the fashion
+set by Rymer the errors of Shakespeare and Fletcher, insists on the
+necessity of unity, order, and greatness in action, and praises the
+excellence of Fletcher and especially of Shakespeare in character and
+passion. Nowhere else, perhaps, has Dryden expressed so discriminatingly
+and so finally his own views and, on the whole, the views of his age, on
+tragedy. Shakespeare's greatness is recognized as preeminent in the
+presentation of character and passion; his faults in coherence and unity of
+structure and his archaism in manners and proprieties are admitted.
+
+From this time on Dryden's contributions to the drama were less frequent.
+In "The Spanish Fryar" (1681), he added the best Restoration example of
+tragicomedy, availing himself of Fletcher's example, a double plot, and a
+happy ending. "The Duke of Guise" (1682), a political allegory, written in
+collaboration with Lee, deserves little consideration as satire or drama.
+After two operas and an absence of several years from the stage, came "Don
+Sebastian" (1690), which Sir Walter Scott thought the best of his
+tragedies. It is heroic in its pairs of lovers and tangle of love and
+jealousy, and in the exploits, boasts, and love-making of the hero; French
+in its general structure; Elizabethan in its mixture of comedy, its use of
+horror and incest, and its imitation of Shakespeare. It recalls the
+tragedies before 1642, with their heroic love after the style of Beaumont
+and Fletcher, their horrors and incest following the Websterian school, and
+their emulation of famous passages in Shakespeare. "Cleomenes" (1692),
+which repeats the Potiphar's wife story, is still more Elizabethan, and
+"Love Triumphant," a tragicomedy (1693), deals with an incestuous passion
+proved innocent at last, a motive very popular since "A King and No King."
+
+Dryden never gave the theatre a whole-hearted service. Responding readily
+to its conditions, he wrote with facility and vigor comedies, tragedies,
+operas, and political allegories of the kind that changing fashion or
+patrons demanded. When, after a long slavery, he had acquired mastery of
+his art and confidence to lead rather than to follow, circumstances arose
+to call him away from the theatre. We may wish that he had earlier and
+oftener tried to do his best, as in "All for Love," "The Spanish Friar,"
+and "Don Sebastian"; but his genius was not essentially dramatic, and we
+may not regret the time taken from the theatre for the Satires and Fables.
+His greatness can be best seen by comparison with the work of his
+contemporaries. Whatever he tried, he did on the whole better than they,
+and in comprehensiveness and adaptability as well as in sheer poetic
+faculty he was their master.
+
+Up to "Aureng Zebe" Dryden's tragedies reflected the prevailing fashion;
+his "All for Love" marked a turning-point in the course of tragedy; and his
+criticism reviewed, summed up, and discriminated the current views of
+Shakespeare and the French. His later work was less representative of the
+general course of the drama, yet the various species exhibited in his work
+recur in that of his contemporaries, and the partial return to Elizabethan
+methods that marks his latest plays is perhaps the leading characteristic
+of the last twenty years of the century.
+
+Crowne's "Thyestes" is the only attempt besides Dryden's "Orestes" to adapt
+a classical play to the popular stage, and neither returns much nearer to
+the Greek than Seneca. The only play closely modeled on the Greek is
+Milton's "Samson Agonistes." The preface renounces the stage with a scorn
+that includes not only the Restoration tragedies but apparently those of
+Shakespeare as well. Though the play stands by itself, it may be said to
+represent a tendency to turn to Greek rather than to French models, a
+tendency boasted of by Dryden and Crowne, and fully manifest in the next
+century. And it takes its place at the head of the numerous, if sporadic,
+tragedies on Greek models that extend from the Restoration to the present
+day.
+
+In the return to Shakespeare, Dryden's influence was more potent, though
+here, as in the case of the Greeks, an increased appreciation was shown
+partly through alterations and adaptations. Before "All for Love," only
+"Measure for Measure," "Macbeth," and "The Tempest" of Shakespeare's plays
+had suffered alterations, and in two of these Dryden had a share. In the
+four years after 1678, no less than ten alterations were produced, the
+majority of which long usurped the stage. The restorers, sincere enough in
+their admiration for Shakespeare, were following Dryden's precept and
+example, correcting Shakespeare's faults in diction or structure, and
+preserving his poetry and characters. While their entire readiness to cut
+or to add resulted in part from ignorant vanity, it depended far more on
+their confidence in the panacea afforded by Art for all diseases of genius.
+Art, according to their prescription, was compounded of closeness of
+structure in the French style and a declamatory vocabulary in accord with
+the latest pseudo-classic conventions. The alterations are so various in
+their audacities that a brief general description is hardly possible. The
+main purpose in each case was the remaking of Shakespeare's disordered
+beauties into "a play," and, beyond the formulas of Art, the most usual
+improvement was the addition of a love story. Thus, Alcibiades marries the
+daughter of Timon, and Cordelia's loyalty is rewarded by the hand of Edgar.
+Perhaps the most that can be said for the restorers is, first, that they
+rescued for the stage some of the less dramatic plays, as "Troilus and
+Cressida," "Timon," "Henry IV," "Coriolanus," and "Cymbeline," and thereby
+greatly extended the knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare; and,
+second, that they left "Hamlet" and "Othello" untouched. Adaptations were
+made of practically all Elizabethan authors, and Shakespeare fared as his
+fellows. A more elaborate history of the drama than the present one might
+trace the changes in the conception of tragedy and in the taste of the
+theatres as indicated by these alterations. The main consideration here is
+that, however mutilated or embellished, a half dozen of his tragedies were
+among the favorite plays of the Restoration. Before the end of the century
+they had outclassed the other Elizabethan plays, even those of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, in popular regard. The Restoration did what his own age had not
+done; it recognized Shakespeare's supremacy in English tragedy.
+
+It would be tedious to trace the infatuation for the heroic plays and the
+partial return to the Elizabethans in the work of the various dramatists
+whose careers paralleled Dryden's. His rival, Settle, wrote heroic plays, a
+sensational political play on the Whig side, "Pope Joan, or the Female
+Prelate," and a long series of tragedies and comedies extending well into
+the next century. John Crowne, another contemporary, began with tragic
+comedies and heroic rhymed plays, proceeded to Shakespearean alterations,
+"Thyestes," and blank verse plays in the Elizabethan tradition, and ended
+his career with a rhymed "Caligula." Among those who in tragedy confined
+themselves mainly to adaptations or borrowings from the Elizabethans were
+Tate, Ravenscroft, and D'Urfey; and a group of women should be
+mentioned,--Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Pix, and Mrs. Centlivre,--who in
+the later half of the period devoted considerable attention to tragedy
+without creating any marked departure from the commonplace. We must confine
+ourselves to the authors whose tragedies had a more extended interest.
+
+Nathaniel Lee wrote his first play in 1675, when he was eighteen years old,
+and produced ten tragedies, in addition to the two in which he collaborated
+with Dryden, before the close of 1684, when he became insane. The first
+three, "Nero," "Sophonisba," and "Gloriana," were rhymed, but the fourth,
+"The Rival Queens" (1677), preceded Dryden in its return to blank verse and
+won an enormous success, maintaining itself on the stage long after the
+death of Betterton. His remaining tragedies were in blank verse,
+"Mithridates," "Oedipus," "Theodosius," "Caesar Borgia," "Lucius Junius
+Brutus," "Duke of Guise," "Constantine," and "The Massacre of Paris," which
+with the tragicomedy "The Princess of Cleve" was acted after his release
+from the madhouse.
+
+All his plays are pretty much of a kind. The juvenile and worthless "Nero"
+unites the conventions of heroic love with the ghosts, lust, bloodshed, and
+madness of the later Elizabethan revenge plays. The later blank verse
+plays, though to a large extent based on French romances, envelop the love
+interest in a Tourneurian medley of depravity and horror. They revive the
+late Elizabethan type of tragedy that united the sentimental and the
+terrible and delighted to present loving and devoted womanhood in an
+environment of undiluted villany, abnormal lust, and physical torture. They
+add somewhat of the closeness of structure of French models, the spectacle
+of an unproved stage that displays ballets and temples along with bloody
+heavens, human sacrifice, and crucifixions, and a style that out-Herods the
+Elizabethans in the extravagance and vehemence of its rant. "Theodosius"
+tells of the fatal result of the rival love of brothers for the same woman;
+"Brutus" of the judicial murder of a son by a father; "Caesar Borgia"
+introduces Machiavelli again as a machinating villain in a story of
+fraternal rivalry in love; "Constantine" and "Gloriana" deal with the rival
+loves of son and father. This theme, a favorite with Lee, reappears in
+"Mithridates," the contents of which are fairly typical of the revolting
+intrigues to which Lee mainly confined himself.
+
+     The leading persons are Mithridates, the lustful
+     dotard; his two sons, Ziphares and Pharnaces; Monima,
+     the gentle heroine, contracted to Mithridates;
+     Semandra, the chief heroine, in love with and loved by
+     Ziphares; her father, a noble soldier; and two
+     conspiring villains. The Romans are at the gates of
+     Synope, where the scene is placed. Pharnaces, at feud
+     with his brother and desirous of Monima for himself,
+     conspires with the villains to thwart the marriage of
+     Mithridates to Monima and direct the passion of the
+     king to Semandra. Mithridates condemns Ziphares to
+     death and pursues Semandra, but is persuaded to relent
+     in order that Ziphares may lead the army against the
+     Romans. Semandra and Ziphares exchange parting vows of
+     fidelity as he leaves for battle. The conspirators
+     again incite Mithridates; and Semandra, in order to
+     save the life of her lover, repulses him upon his
+     return in triumph. In consequence he believes her false
+     and leaves her in the power of his father. The fourth
+     act opens with Mithridates, who has ravished Semandra,
+     "encompassed with the ghosts of his sons, who set
+     daggers to his breast and vanish." He is attacked by
+     remorse; Pharnaces betrays the city to the Romans;
+     Semandra and Ziphares have a last interview and commit
+     suicide; Mithridates dies after condemning the captured
+     conspirators and Pharnaces to execution.
+
+It is interesting to compare this with Racine's play of the same title and
+dealing with the same historical incidents, acted four years earlier.
+Though neither play represents its author at his best, and Lee's was
+apparently written without any knowledge of Racine's, the two illustrate
+the differences between the two theatres, and may remind us how far Lee
+was from forsaking the English tradition for the French. In Racine, all the
+stage spectacles, temples, portents, and ghosts, all the horrors and frenzy
+are lacking; so, too, are the characters of Archilaus the noble soldier and
+Semandra the all-important person in Lee. In addition to Mithridates,
+Monima, and the two sons, the only persons are two confidants and a
+servant. The intrigue is of the simplest. Monima, contracted to
+Mithridates, is loved by both of his sons and returns the love of Xiphares.
+In the end Pharnaces forsakes his father, who dies, leaving Monima and
+Xiphares to face impending ruin. Mithridates is not the lustful tyrant
+traditional on the English stage, but a monarch who cherishes great
+projects and counts magnanimity a royal duty. Nor is Pharnaces the
+traditional English villain with accomplices, as in Lee, though he has a
+villain's part to play. The interest is psychological, centring on
+emotional crises in the lives of all, and without resort to sensationalism,
+horrors, or complication of incident.
+
+Otway, like Lee, began with rhymed plays, "Alcibiades" (1675) and "Don
+Carlos" (1676), the second winning an extraordinary and long-continued
+success on the stage. The next year appeared his "Titus and Berenice," a
+free and sympathetic translation of Racine's "Berenice" that was surpassed
+in the favor of the theatre by Crowne's treatment of the same subject.
+After several comedies he followed the fashion for Shakespearean
+adaptations in his "History and Fall of Caius Marius" (1680).[27] This
+monstrous play, about half of which, as Otway acknowledged in his prologue,
+is from "Romeo and Juliet," provides a large mixture of comedy, and
+presents Juliet (Lavinia) dressed as a page, the servant of her lover,
+after the style of Beaumont and Fletcher's Bellario. For sixty years this
+play superseded "Romeo and Juliet" upon the stage. Otway's two other
+tragedies, "The Orphan" (1680) and "Venice Preserved" (1682), are his
+masterpieces. They continued to be stage favorites for a century and a
+half, and procured for Otway the place next to Shakespeare in the
+admiration of the eighteenth century.
+
+"Venice Preserved" may be classed with the many tragedies of the day that
+maintain the Elizabethan traditions. These are manifest in the general
+structure, the large number of actors, the changing scenes, the gross
+comedy, the abundance of incidents, the terrors, ghosts, and madness. Not
+only the frequent reminiscences of Shakespeare and Fletcher, but the whole
+conception and treatment testify to an inspiration from the earlier and
+better days of the drama.
+
+     The story, not long ago too well known to need
+     retelling, relates how Jaffier, in poverty and
+     desperation, is induced to join a conspiracy against
+     the state, and is then persuaded by his wife,
+     Belvidera, to save the state and her father by turning
+     informer. He seeks to sacrifice himself for the friend
+     whom he has betrayed, and in the end stabs both himself
+     and his friend upon the scaffold. A curiously
+     Elizabethan prolongation of the catastrophe follows in
+     the apparition of the ghosts of the friends, and the
+     madness and death of Belvidera.
+
+The essentials of great tragedy, of Shakespearean tragedy, are here. The
+opposition of character, the struggle of the generous but pliable Jaffier
+under the conflicting influences of his wife and the steadfast 'Roman'
+Pierre, the joy and tenderness and ruin that come with his love for
+Belvidera, are all drawn with a truth of passion in conception and language
+that reaches the heart. "Nature is there," wrote Dryden, "which is the
+greatest beauty." Marred as a whole by buffoonery and excess, the play is
+still among the two or three best tragedies of the Restoration. If it were
+all equal to the tremendous fourth act, Otway would be sure of a place
+among the immortals.
+
+Marked by the same power of swaying the emotions of tenderness and pity,
+"The Orphan" attains these effects by means of the situations rather than
+through the study of motives. The plot deals with the rivalry of two
+brothers in love with their father's ward. She is secretly married to one;
+the other substitutes himself by trick on the marriage night. The
+situation, which has parallels in preceding tragedy, is abhorrent enough to
+kill all interest in the persons concerned; but Otway's power to depict
+love and distress triumphs over one's repugnance. The play is remarkable in
+many ways. Its few characters, its observance of the unities, its
+confinement of the action, give it the simplicity and directness of French
+tragedy. Its theme and its poetry recall Elizabethan rather than
+Restoration examples. But it departs from the canons of either theatre in
+presenting neither historical persons, nobles, kings, nor illustrious
+actions. Based on a story, supposedly of fact, related in a contemporary
+pamphlet, it merely transfers the scene to Bohemia, without adding the
+usual accessories of tragedy. Though it keeps something of a court setting
+and does not venture into middle-class society, it is like the Elizabethan
+plays of crime in its presentation of contemporaneous fact, and like
+Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness" in telling a story of domestic
+distress. It might by a little extension of the term be called a domestic
+tragedy, and it still further departs from the canons in relating the
+misery of an innocent sufferer who is the victim of a cruel mistake. Otway
+should, therefore, be remembered as a dramatist who, in a time when tragedy
+was largely artificial, imitative, and conventional, painted suffering and
+tenderness with truth to nature, and who violated the accepted rules of his
+art in order to reach the hearts of his audience. That he could not also
+escape the moral perversion of taste that marked his time has brought its
+punishment in the final neglect of his masterpieces; but it is a sign of
+genius to turn away from heroic plays, Racine, and Shakespeare, to write
+plays different from any written before, and to stir all men's hearts for
+over a century.
+
+Of the many dramatists who wrote tragedies in the last decade of the
+seventeenth century and bridged the way from the age of Dryden to the age
+of Pope, only Banks, Southerne, and Congreve produced plays of continuing
+popularity and influence through the eighteenth century. Banks ended a
+prolific career with "Cyrus the Great, or the Tragedy of Love" in 1696, but
+his popularity was mainly due to his three English historical tragedies,
+"Virtue Betrayed, or Anne Bullen," "The Island Queens" (Elizabeth and Mary
+Stuart), and "The Unhappy Favorite" (the Earl of Essex). These plays are
+interesting as an illustration of the survival on the stage of a dramatic
+species in a debased form. Though in blank verse, their material is that of
+the heroic play; their formula, much love-making and a pretense of
+portentous events; their persons, rivals in love,--two men with the same
+woman or two women with the same man,--a wicked minister, a revengeful
+woman, and the queen at the centre of the stage. There is no comedy, no
+physical horrors, and even the portents are reduced to a peculiar
+decorum:--
+
+    "Last night no sooner was I laid to rest
+    But just three drops of blood fell from my nose."
+
+The construction is on French models with few actors, continuity of scenes,
+and observance of the unities. Puerile in conception and more ridiculous in
+their bombast than Fielding's burlesque, they have enough rapidity of
+action, vivacity of claptrap, and extravagance of changing emotions to
+account for their stage success.
+
+Thomas Southerne finished "Cleomenes" for Dryden, with whom he was closely
+associated, and his tragedies follow Dryden's later work in maintaining
+the Elizabethan traditions of blank verse, comedy, double plots, shifting
+scenes, horrors, and persons of varied ranks. His "Loyal Brother" (1682) is
+wholly commonplace, and "The Spartan Dame" (1719) and "The Fate of Capua"
+(1700) do not depart from usual themes and methods, though the latter is in
+some respects Southerne's best play; but his two most successful plays,
+"The Fatal Marriage" (1694) and "Oroonoko" (1696), both based on novels by
+Mrs. Behn, present decided innovations in theme. "Oroonoko, or the Royal
+Slave" contains much comedy, and has little merit besides the novelty of
+the story, presenting the virtues of a negro slave. "The Fatal Marriage, or
+the Innocent Adultery" introduces the Enoch Arden story, attached to an
+outrageous comic underplot derived in part from Fletcher's "Nightwalker."
+
+     In the main plot, Biron, oldest son of Baldwin, has
+     been captured by pirates and is supposed to be dead,
+     his letters being kept secret and answered by his
+     villanous brother, Carlos, who urges his wife Isabella
+     to marry. After Baldwin, instigated by Carlos, has
+     thrust her out from his house, she accepts the devoted
+     Villeroy. Biron returns; she goes mad in a scene of
+     great imaginative power; Carlos and his assistants
+     endeavor to kill Biron, who is rescued by the returning
+     Villeroy. Biron, however, dies; and an accomplice of
+     Carlos, tortured upon the rack (on the stage),
+     confesses and exposes Carlos. Then "enter Isabella
+     distracted, her little son running in before, being
+     afraid of her." She stabs herself.
+
+Like Otway's "Orphan," this is virtually a domestic tragedy, for there are
+no interests of state or court, and our sympathy is centred solely on the
+innocent distress of the heroine. Like Otway, again, Southerne gains his
+greatest effects by an appeal to pity. The sentimentality that we attribute
+to the days of Richardson's "Clarissa" earlier triumphed on the stage in
+the heroines of Lee, Otway, and Southerne.
+
+Not less successful on the stage than the plays of Banks and Southerne was
+the single tragedy of Congreve. First acted in 1697, "The Mourning Bride"
+continued without alteration through the next century, and furnished Mrs.
+Siddons with one of her greatest parts. Congreve's remarkable dramatic
+ingenuity was skillfully exercised in combining all the elements that the
+average audience delighted in, and yet presenting these draped sufficiently
+to avoid offending the judicious. Classical form and technic permit a
+sensational and gruesome fifth act; dignified and facile verse gives way at
+times to outrageous rant; the usual plot of the rival ladies and rival
+lovers is ingeniously complicated to supply suspense, surprise, and a happy
+ending.
+
+     It is the day after the death of King Anselmo, prisoner
+     of Manuel, King of Granada, whose daughter Almeira has
+     been secretly married to Alphonso, son of Anselmo, and
+     then separated from him by shipwreck. She confesses
+     this marriage to her confidant, mourns Anselmo, and
+     declares that she will never yield to her father and
+     marry Garcia, son of the premier Gonzales. King Manuel
+     returns from battle, having slain the Moorish king, and
+     brings the queen Zara and other prisoners, among them a
+     valiant warrior, Osmyn--Alphonso in disguise. At the
+     tomb of Anselmo, Osmyn-Alphonso and Almeira meet and
+     dissolve in grief.
+
+     The king is in love with Zara and Zara with Osmyn. She
+     offers to procure Osmyn's escape and to fly with him;
+     but later on, discovering him with Almeira, she betrays
+     them to the king. The king and Zara are now torn by
+     love and jealousy. She obtains permission to have Osmyn
+     strangled by one of her mutes, and the suspicious
+     Gonzales assumes the costume of the mute in order to
+     make sure of the execution. Meanwhile the king,
+     learning of Zara's passion for Osmyn, determines to
+     have him killed and then assume his clothing in order
+     to confront Zara. Osmyn makes his escape; Gonzales
+     kills the king, taking him for Osmyn; Zara, taking the
+     body to be Osmyn's, drinks poison; Almeira is about to
+     make the same mistake, when the soldiers enter with
+     Osmyn at their head.
+
+Perhaps no other single play is so representative of the various features
+of Restoration tragedy. It is not a tragedy, at all if one insists that
+tragedy should be logical and psychological; but it was praised by Voltaire
+and Dr. Johnson and approved by the London public for over a century.
+
+Although the years from 1660 to 1700 offer little in tragedy that has
+proved of permanent value, they mark the continuance of the _genre_ in a
+full tide of popularity. Probably in no forty years since then have so many
+original tragedies appeared in the London theatres; certainly in no forty
+years since have so many Elizabethan tragedies been revived. Tragedies and
+tragicomedies together are in numbers almost equal to the comedies which we
+think of as especially distinguishing the Restoration stage. There was
+hardly a writer for the theatre who did not try his hand at tragedy. In
+spite of the rivalry of opera and comedy, it continued from Davenant to
+Southerne to delight the age. Its literary as well as its theatrical
+importance was maintained. Noble authors as well as the greatest wits, the
+Earl of Orrery, Granville, Dryden, and Congreve, courted the tragic muse.
+Tragedy written for the popular stage had, indeed, a literary eminence
+hardly recognized before, even in the generation preceding the Civil War.
+In comparison with their Elizabethan predecessors the tragedies of this
+time are, in fact, literary rather than popular. They draw their themes
+from French or English plays; they display little innovation and still less
+study of life; they adopt rules and regulations; they are conventional and
+artificial. They respond to literary traditions; they hardly express the
+sentiments or ideas of their age. Some exceptions there are; but even plays
+like those of Banks, which gained theatrical success without literary
+distinction, resembled their more worthy brethren in their adherence to
+convention rather than nature.
+
+In the main Restoration tragedy must be regarded as a continuation and
+development of Elizabethan. The influence of Beaumont and Fletcher
+continued in the heroic plays and their after-effects. The wane of the
+heroic plays brought a return to the Elizabethans, and, notably in Lee, to
+some of the most characteristic features of the later revenge plays. The
+increasing influence of Shakespeare was felt not only in the worthy
+emulation of "All for Love" and in the various adaptations, but also in
+the debates of the critics and through the whole warp and woof of tragedy.
+But what were preeminent in many of Shakespeare's contemporaries as in
+Shakespeare himself, poetry, passion, and characterization, were beyond the
+reach of any of the playwrights except Dryden, Lee, and Otway at their
+best. The worst excesses, the most undesirable conventions of the
+Elizabethans, excited imitation as much as their excellences. The
+Elizabethan bloom had gone to seed in unfavorable soil. It is not strange
+that after the horrors, bloodshed, and supernaturalism of Lee and Otway,
+and after the gross buffoonery that spoils tragedies otherwise so noble as
+"Don Sebastian," "Venice Preserved," and "The Fatal Marriage," there should
+have followed in the opening years of the next century a marked reaction to
+the decencies of French tragedy. In the Restoration period, however, the
+French influence, though manifest in the great vogue of the heroic plays
+and in a wide adoption of French ideas of structure and propriety, won only
+a partial triumph in checking and modifying the Elizabethan tradition. Its
+effect in supplying fresh incentives for worthy endeavor was slight,
+indeed, hardly discernible unless in the influence of Racine upon Otway.
+Tragedy, then, as handed down to the eighteenth century, was not a fixed
+and definite form, though measurably more so than a century before. It was
+still a conglomerate of various forms and tendencies, mingling relics of
+the medieval stage with reminiscences of Shakespeare and the manners of the
+court of Louis XIV. The sentimental tragedies of Southerne and Otway,
+telling stories of distressed womanhood and exciting pity without any
+accessories of grandeur, were perhaps the most independent achievements of
+Restoration tragedy; the preservation of Shakespearean influence was its
+most important. But, in comparison with a century before, the changes in
+tragedy that were most noticeable and permanent were the restriction of
+themes, the narrowing of structure, and the conventionality and
+artificiality that extended to character and language as well as to themes
+and plots.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward continues to supply the best history of the drama. Henceforth the
+standard authority for the history of the stage is Genest's _Some Account
+of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830_, 10 vols., Bath,
+1832. This is an invaluable collection of facts in regard to plays and
+actors, superseding preceding books on the subject and supplying material
+for subsequent ones. Other histories of the theatre are: Chetwood's
+_General History of the Stage_ (1749); _The Dramatic Mirror_ (1808); D. E.
+Baker's _Biographica Dramatica_ (1764, continued by Isaac Reed and Stephen
+Jones, 3d ed. 1812); Dibdin's _Complete History of the English Stage_
+(1800). Lowe's _Bibliographical Account of English Dramatic Literature_
+(1888) will guide in their use. More recent histories of the theatre are:
+P. Fitzgerald's _New History of the Stage_ (1882); Lowe's new edition of
+Doran's _Their Majesties' Servants_ (1888); and H. B. Baker's _The London
+Stage_, 1576-1903 (1904).
+
+Works of the Restoration period on the drama or theatre include a number of
+Dryden's essays, notably, _The Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, _The Defence of
+the Essay_, _The Defence of the Epilogue_, _Of Heroic Plays_, and _The
+Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy_; Wright's _Historia Histrionica_ (1699,
+reprinted in Dodsley and in Cibber's Life); Edward Phillips's _Theatrum
+Poetarum_ (1675); Langbaine's _Account of the English Dramatic Poets_
+(1691); Rymer's _Tragedies of the Last Age_ (1678) and _A Short View of
+Tragedy_ (1693); Dennis's _The Impartial Critic_ (1693); and Jeremy
+Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English
+Stage_ (1698). Downes's _Roscius Anglicanus_ (1708, facsimile reprint,
+1886) also contains interesting information on the period. Corneille,
+Boileau, Saint Evremond, the Abbe D'Aubignac, and Rapin are the French
+critics of most influence on the drama of this period, especially Rapin,
+whose _Reflexions sur la poetique_ was translated by Rymer (1674). J. E.
+Spingarn's _Seventeenth Century Critical Essays_ (now in press) will
+contain all the critical work of the period of importance, with a valuable
+discussion of its relation to French criticism.
+
+There are collected editions of the works of most of the Restoration
+dramatists, but none of Settle or Banks. The Scott-Saintsbury edition is
+the standard for Dryden. Individual plays are to be found in many
+collections: _The Modern British Drama_, 5 vols. (1811); Oxberry's _New
+English Drama_ (1812-25); Mrs. Inchbald's _Modern Theatre_ (1811); Bell's
+_British Theatre_ (1797) and supplement. _Dramatists of the Restoration_,
+edited by Maidment and Logan, 14 vols., Edinburgh, 1872-79, includes the
+plays of Crowne, Davenant, Tatham, and John Wilson. Ward and the _English
+Drama_ (by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, _op. cit._) direct to editions
+and monographs of the individual authors of this period.
+
+J. J. Jusserand's _Shakespeare en France_ (1898), Professor Lounsbury's
+_Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_, and Miss Canfield's _Corneille and
+Racine in England_ (1905) are important for certain phases of the drama.
+Concerning the heroic plays there is a considerable literature; see,
+especially, P. Holzhausen on Dryden's heroic plays, _Englische Studien_,
+vols. xiii, xv, and xvi (1890-92); L. N. Chase, _The English Heroic Play_
+(1903); J. W. Tupper, _The Relation of the Heroic Play to Beaumont and
+Fletcher_, Mod. Lang. Assn. Publ. 1905. C. G. Child, _The Rise of the
+Heroic Play_, Mod. Lang. Notes, 1904. Alex. Beljame's _Le Public et les
+Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au xviii^{e} siecle_ (1881) deals fully
+with Dryden and has an elaborate bibliography.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] In this and subsequent chapters the dates in brackets give the year of
+the first presentation in the case of acted plays. The date of publication
+usually coincides with the year of acting.
+
+[26] _Cf._ James W. Tupper, _Relation of the Heroic Play to the Romances of
+Beaumont and Fletcher_. Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. 1905.
+
+[27] Ward (iii, 415) is in error in crediting public taste with
+condemnation of this play. Lavinia seems to have been one of Mrs. Barry's
+most successful parts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+In tragedy the division between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
+less marked than that which distinguishes in general the literatures of the
+Restoration and the Augustan eras. Yet by 1700 most of the leading
+dramatists of the preceding generation had ceased to write for the stage;
+and the death of Dryden marked the end of the old, as the beginning of the
+reign of Anne, with its important changes in politics, society, and
+literature, marked the beginning of a new development in tragedy. The
+attack of Jeremy Collier (1698) was also an important landmark in the
+history of the drama, assisting in a notable change from the preceding
+licentiousness and toward a moralized and sentimentalized comedy. A similar
+change in tragedy was its most apparent departure from Restoration models.
+Chastened language and a stricter moral censorship of both subjects and
+sentiments reflected that refinement of which the age of Addison and Pope
+was wont to boast.
+
+The theatrical conditions governing the reign of Queen Anne were not very
+different from those of the Restoration. There was a general complaint, as
+there has been ever since, that operas and spectacles were crowding the
+serious drama out of favor, but there was still abundant opportunity to see
+many of the best plays of the Elizabethan and Restoration periods. Of
+tragedies, we find in a single season, 1703-04, "Hamlet," "Othello,"
+"Julius Caesar," and alterations of "Macbeth," "Lear," "Richard III,"
+"Timon," and "Titus Andronicus," Shirley's "Traitor," and Beaumont and
+Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," "Valentinian," and "A King and No King," "The
+Loyal Subject," and other of their tragicomedies. "Henry VIII," "Rollo,"
+"Bonduca," and "Philaster" were performed within the next few years. Of
+Restoration tragedies, Banks's "Unhappy Favorite" and Lee's "Rival Queens"
+were perhaps the most popular, and other plays of Banks, Lee, Otway,
+Dryden, Congreve, and Southerne were acted yearly. A number of the heroic
+plays also still kept the stage, including Howard's "Indian Queen,"
+Dryden's "Conquest of Granada," "Indian Emperor," and "Aureng Zebe."
+Throughout the century both the London and the provincial theatres
+presented each year a large number of old plays, including many of these
+already mentioned. The Elizabethan tragedies, except Shakespeare's, and the
+heroic plays gradually disappeared from the regular repertoire, but
+Shakespeare's tragedies steadily gained in popularity, and "The Unhappy
+Favorite" (rewritten as "The Earl of Essex"), "The Orphan," "Venice
+Preserved," "Oronooko," "The Fatal Marriage" (altered as "Isabella"), "All
+for Love," and "The Mourning Bride" maintained their places into the
+nineteenth century. Tragedy thus had its permanent representatives in this
+group of stock plays, to which newcomers gained admission only by marked
+success on the stage.
+
+To these stock plays no writer of the eighteenth century made more notable
+additions than Nicholas Rowe, the first editor of Shakespeare, whose work
+began the century, borrowed much from his predecessors, and yet introduced
+most of the changes which distinguish the eighteenth century type of
+tragedy from that of the Restoration or Elizabethan period. His first play
+was followed by four other tragedies by 1707, and, after an interval of
+seven years, by "Jane Shore" (1714) and "Lady Jane Grey" (1715). Of the
+first five, three are of little interest except as representing common
+variations of the prevailing type. They all relate love stories of rivalry
+and intrigue among heroic personages, and all observe the French
+proprieties in structure. "The Ambitious Stepmother," like so many
+predecessors and successors, places the scene in an oriental court;
+"Ulysses" more daringly invades Homeric territory; and "The Royal Convert"
+turns to early English history, a field which literary patriotism was
+appropriating for tragedy.
+
+In "Tamerlane" (1702), love and intrigue play subordinate parts to the
+political and moral interest which the author endeavored to centre upon his
+protagonist. Tamerlane, who, we are told, was patterned on William III, is
+an extremely pious pagan, who overtops conquest with mercy and adorns every
+occasion with a moralizing discourse. Had he ever encountered his
+Marlowean namesake, he would have shed the pitying tear. In general, the
+structure is on the French plan, but the large number of characters and the
+considerable amount of action recall Elizabethan models. The verse, too,
+with its feminine endings, occasionally reminds one of Fletcher, and the
+figures of speech are feebly patterned on Shakespeare, while the ravings of
+Bajazet are worthy of Nat Lee. The play, long acted every November fifth,
+seems to have owed its great success to its high moral tone and its
+patriotic eloquence. It set the key for many similarly patriotic tunes.
+
+"The Fair Penitent" (1703) links itself with the two later "She-tragedies,"
+to borrow a term from one of their epilogues. Its prologue proclaims an
+innovation from the usual tragic themes of monarchs' cares and lost
+royalty, because--
+
+    "We ne'er can pity what we ne'er can share
+
+    *....*....*....*
+
+    Therefore an humbler Theme our Author chose,
+    A melancholy Tale of Private Woes."
+
+This was the play of which Dr. Johnson said that "scarcely any work of any
+poet is at once so interesting by the fable and so delightful by the
+language." The domestic theme, the female protagonist, and the insistent
+appeal to pity were all already familiar in the plays of Otway and
+Southerne. Rowe gave these a larger popularity; and from his Lothario and
+Calista Richardson received suggestions for Lovelace and Clarissa.
+
+"The Fair Penitent" is also interesting as an adaptation of an Elizabethan
+play. Rowe borrowed the plot and some hints in the characterization from
+"The Fatal Dowry" of Massinger and Field, but he refashioned the scenes and
+rewrote the verse in accord with current modes. While "The Fatal Dowry" is
+by no means one of the best of Elizabethan tragedies, a comparison of it
+with Rowe's version of the story emphasizes the losses which tragedy was
+suffering as it moved farther and farther from its old traditions.[28] "The
+Fair Penitent" reduces the host of _dramatis personae_ to eight, the fair
+penitent, her husband, his rival, his sister, and three friends or
+confidants, and confines the action to one place and something over
+twenty-four hours. Much of the action of the early play is omitted or
+reduced to narrative, including all the opening scenes of the funeral of
+the husband's father and the origin of his friendship with the father of
+the heroine. The various attempts of the faithful friend to mend matters
+are also restricted, and Massinger's usual trial scene omitted. The result
+of these structural changes is a loss of verisimilitude. The old play had
+something of the illusion of a true history; in "The Fair Penitent" the
+action, though narrowed, is still far too much for the time supposed, and
+improbabilities are solved by well-worn theatrical devices. The guilt is
+discovered by means of a lost letter and an over-heard conversation, and
+throughout literary and moral proprieties lead to a reduction of action and
+an increase of talk. This is well illustrated in the scenes in which the
+husband confronts the guilty wife. In "The Fair Penitent," the wife and
+Lothario are having a final meeting, or declamation contest, on the day
+after the wedding. She upbraids him and incidentally relates the story of
+her seduction; the husband overhears. In "The Fatal Dowry," the husband
+comes unexpectedly to the house of Aymer where the lovers have an
+assignation. Aymer is attempting to divert him with music, when a laugh is
+heard within,--more music, and the lady's laugh again. The husband rushes
+from the stage and returns driving in the lovers. Further, the restricted
+action of Rowe's play causes a conventionalizing of the characters. The
+wife and her lover are shallow persons in Massinger's play, but they have
+some plausibility. In Rowe, he becomes the avenging rival; she, an
+impossible declaimer, now the evil woman of the heroic plays, now the
+lachrymose moralizer. The moralizing, emphatic in all of Rowe's plays, also
+adds to the general artificiality. Calista dies after most voluble
+repentance, and her husband matches her "groan for groan and tear for
+tear."
+
+If the Elizabethan play is confused, long spun out, and not especially
+edifying, it is yet occasionally intense in its emotional effect and
+maintains some verisimilitude of life and character. Rowe's artificially
+ingenious and morally mellifluous play, if edifying, is never thrilling.
+Its conventional persons and scenes do not depict life by action; they
+declaim sentimentally a story that ends in a sermon. In its
+conventionalization and moralization Rowe illustrates the main tendencies
+of the drama, tendencies derived largely from the French, but it must not
+be thought that either his play or the majority in the century altogether
+forsake English models for French. Rowe's declamations and laments,
+immeasurably inferior in all respects, differ essentially from Racine's in
+that they fail to disclose psychological moments and emotional crises. They
+also differ from Racine in their retention of spectacle, incident, and
+business in accord with English tradition. Like other of his contemporaries
+and successors, Rowe was prone to copy the Elizabethans at their worst. The
+most Elizabethan thing in his play, though not found in "The Fatal Dowry,"
+is the setting for the long famous fifth act. "The Scene is a Room hung
+with Black; on one side, Lothario's body on a Bier; on the other, a Table
+with a Scull and other Bones, a Book, and a Lamp on it. Calista is
+discovered on a Couch in Black, her Hair hanging loose and disordered:
+After Musick and a Song, she rises and comes forward"--and begins her
+midnight soliloquy. Perhaps, as Dr. Ward surmises, this business went far
+to give the act its great effectiveness.
+
+Of the two later "She-tragedies," "Lady Jane Grey" presents the usual love
+intrigue (fomented here by the discarded rival), the female protagonist,
+and much Protestant and Whig patriotism, but nothing not paralleled in
+Rowe's other plays. "Jane Shore" (1714), one of the most popular plays of
+the century, represents another treatment of "the fair penitent," this time
+not only in a story used in the Elizabethan drama, but in a style avowedly
+in imitation of Shakespeare's.
+
+     Gloster, who is closely modeled on Shakespeare's
+     Richard III, plays an important part, usually in
+     consultation with his two confidants, Catesby and
+     Radcliffe. Hastings, suspected by Gloster of loyalty to
+     the child prince, becomes enamored of Jane Shore, the
+     former mistress of Edward IV. She, now dedicated to
+     penitence, resists his persuasions, in which she is
+     encouraged by Dumont (her husband in disguise) and his
+     confidant Bellmour. When Hastings resorts to force,
+     Dumont comes to the rescue and disarms him. Alicia,
+     deserted by Hastings, is the jealous and vengeful
+     woman, well known in tragedy; and she denounces
+     Hastings and Jane Shore in a letter which she
+     substitutes for the petition for the release of Dumont,
+     imprisoned through Hastings, that Jane Shore presents
+     to Gloster. Gloster, upon testing Hastings and Jane
+     Shore, is met by frank protestations from both of their
+     loyalty to the prince. Hastings is condemned to death,
+     but has time for a final interview with Alicia, and the
+     exchange of mutual upbraidings, confessions, and
+     forgiveness. Jane Shore is condemned to public penance.
+     She has a parting interview with Alicia, who has gone
+     mad, and then encounters Dumont, who, after a long
+     discussion with his confidant, has decided to reveal
+     himself and forgive his wife. She dies and he is led
+     away to prison.
+
+      "Let those who view this sad Example, know
+      What Fate attends the broken Marriage Vow;
+      And teach their Children in succeeding Times,
+      No common Vengeance waits upon their Crimes,
+      When such severe Repentance could not save
+      From Want, from Shame, and an untimely Grave."
+
+The play is undoubtedly Rowe's masterpiece, the closing scenes having a
+natural pathos that he rarely attains elsewhere. The only Shakespearean
+imitation now discernible is in the character of Gloster, though Rowe may
+have endeavored in his female characters to supply the naturalness and
+greatness of emotions which he recognized as characteristic of
+Shakespeare's men, but curiously thought lacking in his women. Here and
+elsewhere in language and metaphors Rowe reverts at times to the
+Elizabethans, as also in the admission of much action and spectacle, in
+pale horrors, and in the plots of his two best known plays. In the general
+conception and structure of his plays he follows Otway. Taken as a whole,
+however, his plays, without comedy, with much heroic love, with few
+persons, and a restricted action, come nearer to French models than those
+of any preceding writer of large reputation. Sentimentalized, moralized,
+conventionalized as the plays are, Rowe may be said to have made a novel
+departure in tragedy, though one accomplished a century before by Heywood's
+"A Woman Killed with Kindness." Penitence is the sole theme of his two
+famous plays, and the moral lesson is constantly enforced. The protagonist
+is a repentant sinner for whom we feel pity because of her punishment,
+which we nevertheless regard as just.
+
+Rowe's plays, tame as they are, seem to have been too exciting and too rude
+for the coterie of wits who set the standards of criticism; and before the
+appearance of "Jane Shore" an effort was made under the direction of
+Addison toward still greater refinement and closer accord with French
+rules. Smith's "Phaedra and Hippolitus" (1706), an adaptation of Racine,
+failed on the stage in spite of Addison's approval, but it was later often
+revived, and it prepared the way for the great success of Ambrose Philips's
+"Distrest Mother" (1712), a translation of the "Andromaque." This success,
+promoted by the zealous support of Mr. Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverley,
+was due in large measure to the story, sentimental and moral in accord with
+the taste of the day.[29] In these respects "The Distrest Mother" had the
+advantage of "Phaedra," though both illustrate the tendency, growing since
+Lee and Otway, of making the heroine the protagonist. At all events, the
+success of Philips's translation was not only great for the moment, but
+long continued. It remained a popular stock play through the century, gave
+a favorite part to Mrs. Siddons, and introduced Macready to a London
+audience.
+
+In the flush of Philips's first success, Addison was emboldened to present
+his long withheld "Cato" upon the stage. The political circumstances made
+the first night one of the most memorable in the history of the theatre,
+and gave the play what was then the enormous initial run of a month.
+Voltaire praised; and, with the exception of the doughty Dennis, English
+critics seemed agreed that here at last was an English tragedy in full
+accord with classical precedents and the rules of reason. The play
+continued a favorite on the stage into the nineteenth century, and even
+after the retirement of Kemble, who found in Cato one of his great parts.
+It would be vain to search for dramatic merits to account for this great
+success. The play combines love intrigues, as absurd as those usual in
+contemporary plays, with lucid declamation and aphoristic moralizing.
+Aphorism and declamation have, indeed, rarely been absent from the tragedy
+of any period or nation, but they were especially delightful to the taste
+of the Augustan era. Addison was only continuing the success of Rowe's
+"Tamerlane," reducing its rant to a more reasonable pattern. The reforming
+classicists, like the theatre-pleasing Rowe, hit on the two themes which
+pleased the public, the distressed female and the patriotic moralizer.
+
+The success of "The Distrest Mother" and "Cato" was the beginning of the
+long triumph of French influence over English tragedy, yet the victory was
+never more than half won. There was no capitulation, and the battle
+continued through the century both among the critics and on the stage.
+Rowe's plays maintained at least a feeble English tradition, and
+Shakespeare's won increasing admiration. If critical opinion was for a time
+warm in support of French classicism, the theatre still clung to
+Elizabethan practices. Later, when imitations of the French models had
+established themselves in some degree upon the stage, criticism turned to
+condemnation of the unities and renewed its laudations of Shakespeare. The
+lines of battle were often obscured. Between Rowe's refinements of
+Elizabethan plays and Addison's imitation of the French there is little
+difference; and later, in spite of the din of critical essays and prefaces,
+the representatives of "Shakespeare's school" and of "correct taste" have a
+great similarity.
+
+The Elizabethan tradition was directly represented by Elizabethan
+imitations and revivals, by many new plays that reverted in one way or
+another to the early methods, by the conservatism of actors and playgoers,
+and by the tragedies of Shakespeare. As Shakespeare grew in the
+appreciation of readers and critics, there was a tendency toward the
+restoration of a real Shakespearean text to the stage. There were, to be
+sure, innumerable new alterations and adaptations, but these were mostly of
+little importance on the stage. They dealt with the minor plays, as
+"Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," or "Timon;" or they were the essays of admiring
+amateurs with a bent for restringing the rough diamonds of the original, or
+of playwrights trying to meet the theatrical demands of the moment.
+Cibber's "Richard III" and Tate's "Lear" held the stage well into the next
+century, but "Julius Caesar," "Hamlet" (except for Garrick's alteration,
+1772-80), and "Othello" admitted no alterations. After 1744 Shakespeare's
+"Macbeth" took the place of Davenant's, and "Romeo and Juliet" of Otway's
+"Caius Marius." "Coriolanus," variously revised, altered, and finally
+combined with Thomson's play of the same name, was toward the end of the
+century given a great vogue by Kemble; and, indeed, the only one of the
+tragedies neglected during the century was "Antony and Cleopatra."[30]
+Dryden's "All for Love" had usurped its place. As the critical tone toward
+Shakespeare grew more admiring and less tainted by condescension, so the
+attitude of actors and audiences grew in heartiness of appreciation. The
+revival of the romantic comedies marked an important change of taste,
+though not calling for more than mention here. Year after year his
+comedies, histories, and tragedies were acted oftener and to larger
+audiences, and gave opportunity for the best efforts of a long series of
+great actors and actresses. Garrick's revivals and triumphs were followed
+by those of Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Now one play became a favorite, now
+another, under the influence of a great impersonation; but few were
+neglected, and over the theatre Shakespeare's domination was unquestioned.
+
+Except for Shakespeare the direct influence of the Elizabethans was small.
+A few of the tragedies were acted intermittently in the first half of the
+century, and a few comedies kept their places in the stock list much
+longer. Revivals, though not infrequent, were rarely permanent. Revampings
+sometimes resulted in an almost unconditional surrender to the French.
+Theobald in the first half of the century attempted a reversion to the
+Elizabethans without much success, and later a revival of interest in
+Massinger succeeded in restoring only his two comedies to the theatre. As
+sources of incentive for those writers who shunned French modes, Otway,
+Southerne, and Rowe took the places of the Elizabethans other than
+Shakespeare. The English tradition which these names represent had, as we
+have seen, already been much subject to French influence, though protected
+by the adherence of the theatre to old custom. Consequently, while the
+majority of eighteenth century tragedies retain some Elizabethan practices,
+there is not one of importance that is a thoroughgoing representative of
+the old methods and technic.
+
+French influence, on the contrary, had many representatives among the new
+plays. The success of "The Distrest Mother" led to a number of
+translations. In the first quarter of the century there were ten of
+Racine's plays and four of Corneille's; and of these fourteen, eight were
+acted, and several with success. Later on, Whitehead's "Roman Father"
+(1750), an adaptation of Corneille's "Horace," won a place in the stock
+list. But the leading factor in the French influence on English tragedy
+during the century was Voltaire. The long critical debate which he waged in
+behalf of the rules and against the barbarities of Shakespeare has its
+importance in English as well as French literary history. But while the
+English critics grew more and more eager as the century advanced to uphold
+the glory of Shakespeare and to denounce an atheist who denied this, or to
+proclaim their freedom from the narrowing rules which were French, yet the
+triumphs of Voltaire's plays upon the English stage continued unabated.
+Adaptations of no less than nine of his tragedies had appeared on the
+London stage before the English translation of his full works in 1779-80,
+and there were manifold borrowings from him in many other plays.[31] A
+number of the translations, Hill's "Zara" and "Merope," Miller's "Mahomet,"
+and Murphy's "Orphan of China," made notable successes. From the production
+of "Brutus" to that of "Semiramis" in 1776 Voltaire may be said to have
+been the most popular and influential of the writers of tragedy for the
+English theatre.[32]
+
+The translations of these tragedies, however, indicate the influence of
+English traditions. The long speeches are shortened, the dialogue is broken
+and enlivened, the minor proprieties disregarded, the sentiments and morals
+Anglicized, and some business and bloodshed introduced on the stage. In
+Hill's "Merope," for example, the great scene where Merope strives to kill
+the murderer of her long-lost son and discovers the supposed murderer to be
+her son himself, loses all its simplicity as well as its poetry. It is
+ornamented by Hill with processions, virgins in white, music, a sacrificial
+song, and many starts and strains. Where on the French stage Egisthe
+decorously withdraws behind the scenes as his mother approaches with the
+dagger, on the English stage everything was in full sight. If some of the
+other translations are less altered, the imitations and unavowed
+adaptations are much more so. Hoole's "Cyrus" (1768), a popular play, is
+obviously based on "Merope," but adds a much complicated plot, a mad woman,
+a love intrigue between the long-lost son and the daughter of the old
+tutor, and a returning husband for Mandane (Merope). The great success of
+Voltaire in England did not, in fact, produce any very marked change in the
+course of tragedy. He represents the continuance of French influence but
+established no departures of note from the general type established in the
+English theatres by 1725. Virtually no English tragedies in the eighteenth
+century introduced comedy; few reveled in horrors and bloodshed, the
+majority observed the unities, nearly all had few persons, a restricted
+action, and themes and situations confined to slight variations of a
+stereotyped love story; and nearly all had regard for poetic justice. The
+differences between French and English tragedy were largely those which
+adapters of Voltaire eliminated when they made over his plays for the
+London theatres and gave them a more broken dialogue and more stage action,
+and perhaps a mad woman or a villain. Moreover, the amelioration of the
+differences between the two theatres was not all on one side, as is shown
+by Voltaire's own imitations of Shakespeare and his introduction of ghosts
+and horrors, and by the growing interest in France in Shakespeare and
+other English dramatists.[33] Voltaire, with his ingenious plots and
+telling crises, was nearer than Racine to the English tradition, and he
+wrote at a time when the differences between the two national theatres were
+minimized to a degree that made intercommunication easy. His talents gave
+him an easy superiority over any English writer of tragedies after the
+classical formulas.
+
+In the course of the century there were also a considerable number of plays
+that turned from French to Greek models. While these cannot be regarded as
+wholly representative of a reaction from a pseudo to a truer classicism,
+they certainly offered hardly more resemblance to Voltaire than to
+Shakespeare. The Greek influence was, however, variously manifested.
+Adaptations of Euripides were numerous, half a dozen of which were
+presented at the theatres. In addition, a number of original plays were
+written, following the Greek form. Most famous of these were two by Gray's
+friend Mason, "Elfrida" and "Caractacus." The latter, while stilted and
+academic, compares favorably in point of literary excellence with most
+tragedies of the century, and not altogether unworthily takes its place in
+a series that includes "Samson Agonistes" and "Prometheus Unbound." "Read
+Shakespeare," wrote Lyttleton to Aaron Hill, "but study Racine and
+Sophocles." But the classicists were occupied in the main with neither
+poet, but in discussing various minor questions of dramatic propriety:
+Should any violence or bloodshed be permitted? Should rhyme tags end the
+scenes? Should the epilogue be comic or serious? Should figures of speech
+be allowed? Should long speeches be shortened for presentation? Classicism
+in both England and France was not greatly imitative of either Sophocles or
+Racine, but mainly insistent on immaterialities.
+
+If we attempt to follow the diminishing differences between English and
+French standards in the work of individual authors, Young's "Busiris"
+(1719) and "Revenge" (1721) are the most important of those tragedies in
+the first quarter of the century which cling to some of the characteristics
+of the early English drama, while his "Brothers," written at about the same
+time but not acted until 1753, is based upon Thomas Corneille's "Persee et
+Demetrius." In "Busiris" there is no villain, but tyranny, conspiracy, and
+a passionate revenging queen play their usual parts. There is an attempt,
+both in incidents and expression, at Elizabethan force and horror; the main
+action deals with a rape, and five of the principal persons are killed upon
+the stage. "The Revenge" is still more Elizabethan, being a palpable
+imitation of "Othello." The prologue declares that the proper field for
+tragedy is not villany but "the tumults of a Godlike mind," yet the
+villain, the Moor Zanga, is the chief character and was acted by Garrick,
+Kemble, and Kean. The villain's part, it is interesting to note, affords
+the most striking difference between this popular play and the even more
+popular "Zara." In both, the heroine, pure and innocent, is killed by the
+husband, Othello-like in both magnanimity and jealousy; but in Voltaire the
+jealousy is occasioned by the heroine's meetings with her brother, a
+captive Christian, in Young by the busy and ponderous intrigues of a
+Moorish Iago.
+
+In opposition to Young, Thomson represents the vogue of classicism both in
+literary circles and in the theatres. His early tragedies, "Sophonisba"
+(1730), "Agammemnon" (1738), and "Edward and Eleonora," prohibited by the
+censor because of its attacks upon Walpole, won little favor except in the
+circle of wits who attempted to dictate the national taste in letters and
+among the opponents of Walpole. The first was dedicated to the Queen and
+the two later to the Princess of Wales, and "Tancred and Sigismunda" (1743)
+to Frederick, Prince of Wales, the patron of the drama and the hope of the
+Tories. This play, the presentation of which was fathered and superintended
+by Lyttleton and Pitt, achieved a large popular success; and portions of
+"Coriolanus," acted after the author's death in 1749, were combined with
+Shakespeare's tragedy in versions by Thomas Sheridan and Kemble, and
+supplied the latter with his greatest part. All Thomson's plays endeavor
+to retell stories often used in tragedy, in strict accord with the rules,
+with absolute propriety of diction, some reference to political events, and
+a due inculcation of moral sentiments. In the language of one of their
+admirers, they were intended to be "reasonable entertainments becoming
+virtue itself to behold with tears of approbation."[34] "Sophonisba" is
+sternly heroic in its subordination of love to patriotic hate of Rome in
+the character of its heroine, and sternly classic in the simplicity of its
+plot and the heaviness of its inflated rhetoric. "Agammemnon," also a
+"She-tragedy," is designed after the school of Racine rather than of
+Corneille; and its wavering, inconsistent Clytemnestra, who closes the play
+with a torrent of remorse and a faint, its Melisander saved from a desert
+island, and its courtly love-sick Egisthus are queer denizens of the house
+of Atreus. "Edward and Eleanor," telling of the queen who sucked poison
+from her husband's wound, and of the sultan who, suspected of the attempted
+murder, bore a truly miraculous antidote to the Christian camp, owes
+allegiance to Voltaire. Its emotional changes and elaborate intrigue bring
+it also more closely in accord with the prevailing English type. "Tancred
+and Sigismunda," based on the story as told in "Gil Blas,"[35] makes the
+lover a claimant to the throne and the intervention of the father due to
+reasons of state. The plot is developed with more skill than is usual in
+Thomson, and the rival lovers, the marriage in revenge, the midnight
+interview, the duel, and the murder of the heroine are quite in conformity
+to the prevailing model. "Coriolanus," the subject of many French tragedies
+and of Shakespearean alterations by Tate and Dennis, illustrates the
+inferiority of the classic scheme to the Elizabethan in the presentation of
+history. The action, beginning with the arrival of Coriolanus as a
+suppliant for Tullus's hospitality, crowds the remaining events and the
+changes in the two rivals within the impossible confines of the unities of
+time and place. Coriolanus himself exemplifies the effort toward "Nature,"
+that is, typicality and reasonableness, in pseudo-classical
+characterization. He expresses the sentiments and manners approved by the
+eighteenth century, and, even when pride and revenge most fire his passion,
+is a very tame lion. The moral lessons, somewhat clouded in Shakespeare,
+are distinctly enunciated and finally summed up by Galesus:--
+
+    "This man was once the glory of his age,
+    Disinterested, just, with every virtue
+    Of civil life adorn'd, in arms unequall'd.
+    His only blot was this; that, much provok'd,
+    He rais'd his vengeful arm against his country," etc. (v. 4).
+
+In Thomson's other plays the inflated declamation occasionally gives way to
+a bit of description that recalls "The Seasons," but in "Coriolanus" he
+follows the promise of the Prologue to "Tancred" with unerring fidelity:--
+
+    "Your taste rejects the glittering false sublime,
+    To sigh in metaphor, and die in rhyme.
+    High _rant_ is tumbled from his gallery throne;
+    Description, dreams,--nay, similes are gone."
+
+He was obviously seeking what he called Shakespeare's "simple, plain
+sublime," and his declamations occasionally reach a sententious lucidity
+worthy of Addison, but the pseudo-classic diction freezes every emotion
+with its "transports," "charms," and "nuptial loves." This is Volumnia's
+appeal to Coriolanus, her husband in Thomson's play:--
+
+                    "Ah Coriolanus!
+    Is then this hand, this hand to be devoted,
+    The pledge of nuptial love, that has so long
+    Protected, bless'd, and shelter'd us with kindness,
+    Now lifted up against us? Yet I love it,
+    And, with submissive veneration, bow
+    Beneath th' affliction which it heaps upon us.
+    But O! what nobler transports would it give thee!
+    What joy beyond expression! couldst thou once
+    Surmount the furious storm of fierce revenge,
+    And yield ye to the charms of love and mercy.
+    Oh make the glorious trial!" (v. 1).
+
+Thomson's plays were not esteemed even by his master Voltaire as
+contributing greatly to that perfection of art possibly attainable by a
+"due mixture of the French taste and English energy." For, though "wisely
+intricated and elegantly writ," Voltaire found him, like Addison, lacking
+in warmth, an "iced genius."[36] Frigid to his contemporaries, the
+tragedies were long since decently interred. They constitute,
+nevertheless, the most considerable attempt made by any author of the
+eighteenth century to conserve the classic theory of tragedy, and they
+recall nearly every variety of pseudo-classic endeavor. Of classicism it
+might be said, as of Thomson, that it attempted classic and early English
+history, that it found in partisan patriotism its favorite theme for
+rhetoric, that its French rules and taste usually pleased readers better
+than spectators, but that when it took one of Shakespeare's tragedies as
+the basis for an infusion of classical theory, or when it was tempered with
+a love story and a lively action, it triumphed in the theatre.
+
+Thomson's friends, Mallet and the versatile and indefatigable Aaron Hill,
+joined him in his efforts to redeem the tragic muse. Hill's efforts, if no
+more successful than Thomson's and much less consistent, are at least more
+amusing. His general theory seems to have been not unlike that which
+actually controlled theatrical practice; he purposed a combination of
+French rules with romantic incident, theatrical bustle, and his own
+inimitable style. His "Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam" (1716), he boasted,
+had "a deeper and more surprising plot than any play which has been
+published, that I know of, in the English tongue; and yet is written in
+strict observance of the dramatic rules" and affords "room for topical
+reflections, large description, love, war, show, and passion," and also "a
+very high regard to decoration." The play is noticeable for its tangle of
+trite dramatic motives.
+
+     The emperor's vision is of a son who shall kill him and
+     usurp the throne. The two elder sons are in love with
+     the Princess of Siam. Sworn by her to kill their
+     father, and condemned by him for a murder they did not
+     commit, they die fighting in his behalf. The third son
+     kills the emperor, marries the princess, and ascends
+     the throne. In his rapid advance he is aided by the
+     banished empress, who has returned to court and
+     attained high power, disguised as the favorite eunuch.
+
+Hill adapted three of Voltaire's plays, "Zara," "Alzira," and "Merope." To
+the first he wrote some comic choruses intended to be sung between the
+acts, and to the third he prefixed his revised and final opinion of
+Voltaire and French tragedy:--
+
+     "Our unpolished English stage (as he assumes the
+     liberty of calling it) has entertained a nobler taste
+     of dignify'd simplicity, than to deprive dramatic
+     poetry of all that animates its passions; in pursuit of
+     a _cold, starv'd, tame abstinence_, which, from an
+     affectation to shun _figure_, sinks to _flatness_: an
+     _elaborate escape_ from _energy_ into a groveling,
+     wearisome, bald, barren, unalarming _chilness_ of
+     expression, that _emasculates_ the mind, instead of
+     _moving it_."
+
+"Athelwold" (1731), a revision of his early "Elfrid," is colorlessly
+conventional; "The Roman Revenge" (1753) is an alteration of "Julius
+Caesar"; "The Insolvent" (1758) is a rewriting of "The Fatal Dowry," making
+the heroine an innocent object of jealousy. Most Aaronic of all is "Henry
+V" (1723). Here he gives up French unities and technic, and introduces many
+characters, shifting scenes, a bit of comedy, and the "genius of England,"
+who sings a song. His greatest addition to Shakespeare is his Harriet, who
+starts out like one of the evil queens in the heroic tragedies. When
+abandoned by Henry, she is still jealous and revengeful; next she appears
+disguised as a page in the French camp, and, Viola-like, relates a story of
+a love-lorn sister; then recaptured by Henry, she storms and melts; but the
+Jane Shore mood is transient, and, like a tragedy queen again, she stabs
+herself. A man who could write a comic duet for Voltaire's "Zaire" and
+could supply Prince Hal with a paramour whose grandmothers were Viola and
+the Indian Queen, ought not to be wholly forgotten.
+
+Hill's career may remind us both of the din of the critics over Voltaire
+and Shakespeare, and also of the virtual compromise and amalgamation that
+had taken place on the stage between French and English traditions. English
+tragedy, after a long national development, had become materially modified
+by French influence and had assumed a fixed and restricted form. This type,
+recognizable early in the century, continues to prevail nearly to the end.
+The century had little power of innovation, little that can be called a
+development in the history of tragedy. The pendulum swings now toward
+French, now toward Elizabethan models, but its oscillations are slight and
+regulated. The plays thus far considered offer unimportant variations from
+the type, and plays after the middle of the century vary still less. Home's
+famous "Douglas" (1757), that thrilled every heart and in the opinion of
+the judicious redeemed the stage anew from barbarism, fails now to
+distinguish itself from its fellows, unless by its touches of melancholy,
+medievalism, and nature, that hint of romanticism. Here, as so often, a
+much suffering woman is beset by villany and jealousy. Home's other
+tragedies and those of Glover, Hoole, Brown, Murphy, and Cumberland offer
+even less of novelty, except that toward the end of the century refinement
+in sentiments and morals becomes increasingly attenuated. Miss Hannah More
+best represents this feminization of the type. Her "Percy" (1777), a very
+successful play, is devoted to the sentiment:--
+
+    "Will it content me that her person's pure?
+    No, if her alien heart doats on another,
+    She is unchaste."
+
+"The Fatal Falsehood" (1779) presents in a domestic guise the usual plot of
+rivals in love and an intriguing villain, with the addition of a love-sick
+lady who runs mad. "The curtain falls to soft music." The century has one
+marked innovation in the realistic plays of Lillo and Moore, and after 1780
+there are signs of the romanticism stirring elsewhere in literature; but in
+the main the new tragedies are hopelessly commonplace representatives of an
+extremely conventionalized form.
+
+Yet tragedy was by no means neglected in literature or on the stage.
+Several hundred tragedies were published during the century and many of
+them went through several editions. Three or four were brought out every
+year in the theatres, and many of these maintained themselves for a time as
+stock plays. Most men of letters essayed tragedy,--Addison, Johnson,
+Young, Thomson, Gay, the laureates Cibber, Rowe, Whitehead, Pye, and a host
+of minor celebrities. Besides the tragedies acted, there were almost as
+many not acted but printed. Closet dramas, common in the Elizabethan
+period, grew more numerous after the Restoration. Whether the writer
+scorned or was scorned by the manager, an appeal to the reading public was
+always easy and apparently sometimes profitable. Tragedies were bought and
+read; a popular play might start with an edition of five thousand and run
+through a number of editions. Even after the novel had supplanted the drama
+among readers, there was no diminution of printed plays. The non-acted
+plays, however, offer nothing of importance for the history of the drama.
+The majority are unactable; others follow the usual formulas; a few Greek
+plays, alterations of Shakespeare, and sacred dramas have some interest as
+curiosities. The increase in the number of these plays does indicate a
+growing separation between the drama and the theatre. Plays were no longer
+written by a set of dramatists who made a profession; they were written by
+any one who had literary pretensions. Only a few new plays were required;
+the supply greatly exceeded the demand. The theatrical monopoly maintained
+by the two patented theatres offered no great encouragement to dramatists,
+and the number who wrote without any acquaintance or knowledge of the stage
+increased. Literary fame rather than success in the theatre was perhaps the
+greater incentive in the case of tragedy. Whatever the incentive,
+individual ambition resulted in no individuality of expression. The popular
+ballad of tradition is scarcely less expressive of personality than the
+average eighteenth century tragedy. Even the plays of temporary importance
+have no flavor of their own.[37]
+
+The features of this type have often been mentioned in connection with
+particular plays, but it may be convenient to collect them in a composite
+picture. In structure and technic French models are mainly followed. Very
+long speeches, indeed, are rare, bloodshed and violence are permitted on
+the stage, and there is a good deal of incident; but bloodshed and horrors
+after the Elizabethan style no longer appear. Comedy also has disappeared,
+and is tabooed even in adaptations of Shakespeare or of Restoration plays.
+Comedy is reserved for the farce which is always performed after a tragedy.
+Each tragedy concerns itself with a single plot, involving only from six to
+ten persons, and observing the unities, even after Johnson's salutary
+condemnation of them. There are few changes of scene, ordinarily none
+within an act. With the disappearance of other medieval characteristics
+there has also departed the medieval freedom in respect to the suitability
+of an action for the stage. The range of incidents possible for
+presentation is very limited; exposition is largely by narrative;
+supernatural elements, common in Lee, are unusual; the ghost at last rests
+in peace. Madness, however, is still retained, especially in the case of
+the long-suffering heroine. Battles, armies, stage spectacles of all kinds,
+are restricted, though the scenes may be elaborate, and processions,
+sacrifices, even music and songs are permissible. The first essential for
+the action is a love story, the second some kind of historical setting. The
+fatal or hazardous loves of princes and queens are the themes; Eastern,
+classic, or early English courts are the scenes.
+
+The love story itself often keeps to the form customary in the heroic
+plays. Two rivals in love, two heroines, major and minor, a tyrant, an
+intriguing minister, and the accompanying confidants appear again and again
+to assist in similar stories of jealousy, ambition, and villany. The old
+Elizabethan motives continue, as "Rape" and "The Fate of Villany," the
+titles of two plays acted in 1729-30, may witness, but usually they are
+refined and tamed. Incest and rape are averted; the tyrant in love with the
+heroine only threatens; the villain who pursues casts suspicion on her
+virtue but abstains from violence; the two brothers, or the son and the
+father, in love with the same lady sometimes find renunciation possible.
+Unjustified jealousy is perhaps the leading motive, and there are many
+feeble imitations of "Othello." A secret marriage, a long-lost son, and
+marriages, either for revenge or in order to save a lover, are common
+elements in the plot. Hero and heroine are examples of virtue. Their
+difficulties or ruin are sometimes due to one fatal error duly emphasized,
+or they may be due wholly to the machinations of the villain. In the latter
+case, poetic justice is usually regarded and the good are saved.
+
+The villain is the most constant reminder of Elizabethan tragedy. He has
+all the traits of the stage Machiavellis of Marlowe and Kyd, and sometimes
+imitates Iago. He is wholly black at heart, but he is apparently frank and
+honest; his revenge or ambition works by most devious intrigue; he confides
+his schemes to the audience in long soliloquies, yet his accomplished
+hypocrisy long baffles the rest of the _dramatis personae_. As in late
+Elizabethan and Restoration plays, he is often a prime minister. A
+collection of these villains' speeches would illustrate the
+conventionalized character of eighteenth century tragedy and the tendency
+of stage types to perpetuate themselves in theatrical tradition. A few
+lines from two may be sufficient. The first is the opening soliloquy of
+Seyfert in "The Heroine of the Cave," a play of some popularity acted in
+1774.
+
+    "Revenge, thou art the deity I adore!--
+    From thy auspicious shrine I hope a cure
+    For the corroding pain that rends my heart.
+    The vain Alberti being thus preferr'd
+    By fair Constantia, passeth all enduring!
+    Colredo I have rouz'd--another wooer--
+    And in his name are such reflections dropp'd,
+    As 'twixt the two a duel must provoke--
+    My purpose is, whoe'er the conqu'ror be,
+    To reap advantage for my private views," etc.
+
+The second is the opening soliloquy of Bertrand in Miss Hannah More's
+"Fatal Falsehood" (1779).
+
+    "What fools are serious melancholy villains!
+    I play a surer game, and screen my heart
+    With easy looks and undesigning smiles;
+    And while my actions spring from sober thought,
+    They still appear th' effect of wild caprice,
+    And I, the thoughtless slave of giddy chance.
+    What but this frankness has engag'd the promise
+    Of young Orlando, to confide in me
+    That secret grief which preys upon his heart?
+    'Tis dangerous, indiscreet hypocrisy
+    To seem too good: I am the _careless_ Bertrand,
+    The honest, undesigning, plain, blunt man:" etc.
+
+The continuance of the stage villain is worthy of some note beyond its
+evidence of conventionalization. It calls attention to the fact that
+English tragedy has always been largely concerned with evil persons. Though
+the utterly bad were condemned as tragic figures by Aristotle, and the
+overthrow of the wicked as a tragic theme has ever since been held in some
+contempt by theorizers; yet from the time of Marlowe, or even earlier,
+English tragedy has told the stories of evil-doers with careers of cruelty
+or lust, or of machinators who have turned to bitterness and disaster the
+lives of the pure and the good. Of the first class are the tyrants,
+usurpers, lustful monarchs, and bloody avengers; of the second, the
+Machiavellian prime ministers, the hypocritical counselors, and the
+traitorous friends; and the two are often united as in Barabas or Richard
+III. English authors, actors, and audiences have delighted in a visible
+representative of the devil upon the stage, in an impersonation of the
+source of evil. Given grandeur of ambition, the evil one becomes the
+protagonist; given mere revenge and hatred as motives, he is still the main
+opponent of the hero. Perhaps the highest kind of tragic feeling is not
+aroused either by the fall of the depraved or by the ruin of the noble
+through trickery and cunning, yet "Richard III" and "Macbeth" deal with the
+one theme, and "Othello" and "Lear" with the other. Shakespeare's
+tragedies, indeed, represent other conflicts than this between good and
+evil, and in the representation of that conflict they are not confined by
+theological or dramatic formulas. Such formulas were just what eighteenth
+century writers enjoyed, and in attacking the problem of evil they clung to
+one of the most artificial if also one of the most typical persons in
+literature, the Elizabethan stage machinator. The conflict of bad and good,
+a natural if not inevitable motive of a drama descending from medieval
+times, found its expression in the excessively amiable hero and heroine and
+the utterly black villain, stage types that have maintained themselves in
+fiction as well as the drama through Scott and Dickens down to the present
+day. The stage villain, a theory of poetic justice that refused to punish
+the good except for some distinctly emphasized fault, and a faith in the
+potency of moral precepts, these are the devil, providence, and salvation
+of a theatrical theology, which, along with conventional technic, narrowed
+plots, and some refinement in moral taste, distinguish the eighteenth
+century type of tragedy.
+
+The bird, caged and clipped, no longer sang. There was no poetry left in
+tragedy, and no human nature. Was there anything, then, in this type that
+showed advance over the preceding centuries, or anything that offered
+promise for future development? Not one of the literary forms in which the
+eighteenth century excelled, and not one fully representing the
+pseudo-classical theories, tragedy cannot be fairly judged as representing
+classicism _versus_ romanticism. It merely presents a deteriorated English
+tradition modified and narrowed by pseudo-classical rules and theory. Yet
+it corrected and modified English tradition where it needed corrections and
+modifications, without quite denationalizing it. The admixture of comedy,
+prone to become gross farce, the horrors and bloodshed, and the brutal and
+revolting themes were rightly abandoned. In structure there was a more
+positive reformation. Stage illusion and precision of effect may be aided
+by an observance of the unities, and the limitation of the action to a
+single plot, a few persons, and a few scenes,--Shakespeare and encomiasts
+of his art to the contrary notwithstanding. It must be added that in
+practice the unities are likely to result in a counter-balancing defect, in
+a concentration of incident improbable and artificial, as often in
+eighteenth century tragedies, and even in Ibsen. The pseudo-classicists
+erred mainly in taking their rules as masters instead of as guides. Yet
+eighteenth century tragedy deserves this meed of praise that it sought for
+literary form, which preceding tragedy had largely lacked; and its attempts
+to secure this offered useful lessons for the future. But here the
+usefulness of its dramatic art ends. In the limitation of what could be
+acted and of what belonged to the species, it was suicidal. French tragedy
+in its effort to imitate Greek failed to take advantage of the resources of
+modern theatres; and English tragedy, halting between English and French
+precedents, simply confined itself to well-worn theatrical customs. There
+are not only no new subjects or characters, there are no new situations,
+surprises, or catastrophes, no new methods of exposition or dialogue. Some
+of the worst of the old conventions survived, as the soliloquies, which
+continue long, frequent, and undisguised, but it would be hard to find even
+a bit of stage business that was new. Eighteenth century tragedy made no
+adequate demands of its splendid theatres and great actors.[38]
+
+The only daring departure from the prevailing type, and the most important
+contribution to the general development of European tragedy in the
+eighteenth century, came in the success of "George Barnwell, or the London
+Merchant" (1731). This was the first tragedy of George Lillo, a London
+jeweler, who had hitherto had no known theatrical or literary connections,
+save for one unsuccessful play. It was followed within a few years by
+another domestic tragedy, "Fatal Curiosity," two tragedies of the regular
+type, "The Christian Hero" and the posthumous "Elmerick," and by
+adaptations of "Pericles" and "Arden of Feversham." The two domestic
+tragedies differ somewhat in both form and purpose. "The London Merchant,"
+in prose, tells the story of Barnwell's downfall through the courtesan
+Millwood, his murder of his uncle at her instigation, and the final
+execution of both criminals. Barnwell's repentance is much dwelt upon, and
+the moral lesson is enforced in every line. "The Fatal Curiosity," in blank
+verse, tells of a frightful murder of a son by a father at the instigation
+of the mother. From the innocent "curiosity" of the long-lost son in
+concealing his identity from his parents, there is traced the chain of
+circumstances which finally drive the poverty-stricken and wretched couple
+to the murder of the stranger. The play is thus nearer to Greek than modern
+ideas of tragedy, in that it represents destiny as something separate from
+character, and it links itself with the German species of
+_Schicksalstragoedie_, which indeed it directly influenced. "The London
+Merchant," on the contrary, seeks the causes and effects of crime in a
+crude and popular presentation of character that always makes the most of
+human will and sentiment.
+
+Daring and important as was Lillo's innovation, it was by no means without
+progenitors and near kinsmen. The relations of his plays to Elizabethan
+domestic tragedies are evident. Like "Arden of Feversham," which Lillo may
+have been copying, "The London Merchant" presents a murder, portrays a
+monstrous woman, and ends with an execution. Like the Elizabethan plays,
+Lillo's are bald, detailed, and moralizing. The very pleas that he advances
+in his dedication for realism and liberty had been advanced in "Arden" and
+the "Warning for Fair Women." Moreover, while since 1660 no tragedies had
+dealt solely with middle-class society, there had been much chafing against
+the restrictions that limited tragedy to princes; and from English writers
+as well as Corneille had come forecasts of the sweeping democracy of
+Lillo's creed:--
+
+     "What I would infer is this, I think, evident truth;
+     that tragedy is so far from losing its dignity, by
+     being accommodated to the circumstances of the
+     generality of mankind, that it is more truly august in
+     proportion to the extent of its influence, and the
+     numbers that are properly affected by it. As it is more
+     truly great to be the instrument of good to many, who
+     stand in need of our assistance, than to a very small
+     part of that number."[39]
+
+Southerne, Otway, and Rowe had won great success for domestic themes, and
+their examples were naturally cited in the prologue which introduced "The
+Merchant." Comedy might also have been summoned to support. After the
+scourging from Collier it had joined in the general movement at the
+beginning of the century toward sentiment and moralizing. Sentimental
+comedy, seeking both pathos and a moral, may be said to begin in England
+at least as early as Colley Cibber's "Careless Husband" (1704) and Steele's
+"Tender Husband" (1705). Steele's "Conscious Lovers" (1722) shows the
+species in full development. More general but not less important
+encouragements for realism in tragedy came from the realistic tendencies
+manifest in the literature of the preceding generation, notably in the
+novels of Defoe, and from the moralistic tendencies everywhere manifest in
+both fiction and drama. Lillo was one with his time, though out with truth
+and art, in thinking "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy
+is, the more excellent that piece must be of its kind."[40] The ascendancy
+of the middle class in letters, their expanding social life, their
+attachment to a conventional morality and a utilitarian art, and their
+delight in sentimentality, all help to explain the appearance of "George
+Barnwell." Lillo was writing for a generation that had "The Fair Penitent"
+and was waiting for "Pamela."
+
+Lillo's work, however, was none the less that of a pioneer. "The Fatal
+Curiosity" had a special influence, beginning forty years after its
+appearance, in the German tragedies of destiny; and "The London Merchant,"
+soon after its publication, became of importance in both France and
+Germany. In France its welcome was prepared by the growth of a species of
+sentimental comedy paralleling the English, and it was translated in time
+(1748) to serve as an example and stimulant to Diderot's plays and
+theories. Even before the publication of his "Le Fils Naturel"[41] (1757),
+and "Le Pere de Famille"[42] (1758), Lessing's "Miss Sara Sampson" (1755)
+had appeared directly modeled on "The London Merchant." Through Diderot and
+Lessing and, a little later, through German translations of Lillo's plays,
+domestic tragedy continued its leavening work in the German drama. By that
+time, sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy were returning from France
+and Germany to influence the English drama.
+
+In England the direct stream of domestic tragedy never flowed high. A
+one-act play, "Fatal Extravagance," in prose, had appeared in 1721 under
+the patronage of Aaron Hill, and was revived the year before the success of
+"Barnwell," and later enlarged into five acts. There were a few
+successors--"Caelia, or the Perjured Lover" (1732), by Charles Johnson,
+presenting a Lovelace-like protagonist; "Love the Cause and Cure of Grief"
+(1743), a three-act play in prose; and Victor's adaptation of "A Woman
+Killed with Kindness" (1776). Far more important than any of these was
+Moore's "Gamester" (1753), long a stock play, and almost as influential on
+the continent as "Barnwell." Like "The Yorkshire Tragedy," it pictures the
+horrors of gaming. The gamester, his long-suffering wife, a faithful
+servant, a spirited girl, her lover, the intriguing villain, and his
+accomplices play a story of far more insistent dramatic power than Lillo's
+and of no less sentimental and moral conclusiveness. Cumberland's
+"Mysterious Husband" (1783) is a later and less crude representative of the
+same species.[43]
+
+     Lord Davenant has deceived his wife into marrying him
+     by slandering her lover Dormer. Later he has entrapped
+     Dormer's sister into a pretended marriage and then
+     deserted her. She, supposing her husband dead, marries
+     Lord Davenant's son. On their marriage day, Dormer
+     returns; Lord Davenant is discovered and kills himself.
+
+Though a man and not a woman is the central figure of this social
+entanglement, we are reminded of the Tanquerays and Ebbsmiths of a later
+day in its powerful and not unveracious presentation of domestic ruin.
+
+One reason for the failure of Lillo's pioneering to arouse a larger
+following in tragedy was the possession which comedy had taken of both
+domestic sentiment and morality. The species of sentimental and tearful
+comedy, which had already by 1730 appeared in both England and France, soon
+flourished in both countries. Their vogue was diminished by the success of
+"She Stoops to Conquer" and "The Rivals," but there was a further
+development during the last thirty years of the century in the plays of
+Cumberland, Holcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, and others. A certain amount of low
+comedy was, after "The Rivals," admitted to be necessary, as Holcroft avows
+in the preface to "Duplicity," but in such plays as his "Duplicity" and
+"Road to Ruin," or Cumberland's "The Jew" and "The Wheel of Fortune,"
+suffering abounds, ruin is imminent, there is much weeping, and a salient
+moral lesson. The suffering usually is confined to loss of fortune or
+temptation of virtue, and the moral lesson is directed against gaming, or
+loose living, or marital infidelity upon the part of the husband. The
+intriguing villain in this kind of play sinks to insignificance, and the
+moving force is likely to be a humanitarian benefactor who rescues the lost
+fortune or saves the heroine from the hated marriage. Occasionally this
+type of serious comedy comes close to tragedy. In Holcroft's "Deserted
+Daughter" (1795), a revamping of Cumberland's "Fashionable Lover," the
+father has disowned his daughter by his first marriage, and, through his
+wicked agent, she has been sent to a house of ill-fame. Not knowing his own
+daughter, the father, ruined in fortune and conscience, plans to aid a
+friend to secure her, and himself visits her. The situation is ghastly
+enough, but all comes out happily. The happy ending was in fact the dram of
+eale that corrupted the whole substance of this sentimental comedy. The
+theatrical necessity of a happy ending forbade either tragedy or a serious
+study of life. It compelled the dramatist to devote a large part of a play
+to preparing for the reconciliation, to spend much time on youthful love,
+to maintain a lightness of tone throughout; and it destroyed the
+possibility of tracing out character and incident to anything like a
+logical conclusion. The domestic drama, devoted to a serious presentation
+of social life, had its opportunity in the eighteenth as well as in the
+twentieth century. It shrank from tragedy; it advanced as far as attacking
+fashionable excesses, or as dramatizing moral theses, but it never got
+beyond the lovers who must be united and the everything that must come out
+well. It resigned itself to sentimentality and false conclusions, and was
+naturally overwhelmed by the theatrically more captivating sentimentality
+and falsity of Kotzebue. When "The London Merchant" and "The Gamester"
+encouraged the vogue of sentimental comedy, they nourished an ingrate which
+destroyed the legitimate brood of domestic tragedy. In the theatres men
+took their realism sugared by a sentimentality that sent them home
+contented. But Lillo's work was not unheeded by the genius who in "Tom
+Jones" and "Amelia" gave literary greatness to a realistic study of manners
+and morals. The sentimentalizing and moralizing of the middle classes,
+which from the time of Southerne had threatened to have their say on the
+stage, found their spokesman in the author of "Clarissa Harlowe."
+
+In the last third of the century the various social, intellectual, and
+imaginative changes that make up the beginnings of the Romantic movement
+had their effect upon tragedy, but only in a partial and secondary fashion.
+The drama was already losing place to the novel in popularity, and showing
+signs of becoming a sort of literary by-product. Successful novels were
+made over into plays, and the various romantic tendencies to medievalism,
+melancholy, supernaturalism, and naturalism found expression in novel or
+verse rather than in play. The reawakening interest in the Elizabethan
+dramatists was represented by a revival of a number of the plays of
+Massinger and of Beaumont and Fletcher,[44] and imitations of Elizabethan
+diction became frequent. A more important departure was furnished by the
+so-called Terrific School of fiction. Medieval stories and scenes, and the
+various accessories of horror, ghosts, graveyards, dungeons, vaults, and
+the midnight bell had never been lacking in eighteenth century tragedy, but
+the novels of Walpole and his successors offered some novelties. Walpole's
+own unacted "Mysterious Mother" (1768), perhaps the most powerful of the
+Gothic tragedies, was the pioneer of the movement. Robert Jephson, whose
+"Braganza" (1775) was heralded as
+
+    "His; no French tragedy,--tame, polish'd, dull by rule!
+    Vigorous he comes, and warm from Shakespeare's school,"
+
+produced in 1781 an adaptation of Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," called
+"The Count of Narbonne," which, as the epilogue boasts,
+
+               "Midst the placid murmurings of Love
+    Rolls the rough tide of Gothick force along."
+
+His "Julia" (1787), another popular play with his usual abundance of
+soliloquies, tells a story of Elizabethan villany; and there were a few
+other Gothic attempts, as Cumberland's "Carmelite" (1784), before Lewis's
+"Castle Spectre" (1797) carried the town by storm. The further history of
+the terrific tragedies belongs to the next chapter, as does that of the
+German importations which culminated in the craze for Kotzebue, but it may
+be noted here that "Werter," acted in 1785, and "Emilia Galotti," acted in
+1794, were among the earlier indications of German influence on the stage.
+
+By 1790 the decadence of English tragedy had apparently run its course and
+nearly come to a full stop. The freedom and independence of Elizabethan
+days had degenerated by the time of Charles I into a fairly definite type.
+That type, maintained in the Restoration period, though with modifications
+and innovations, had now become conventionalized, debased, sterile. French
+influence had proved unprocreative. In spite of the activities of the
+theatres, the inspiration of Shakespeare, and the assistance of great
+actors and actresses, tragedy had failed to produce literature comparable
+to that of its rival, the novel. The drama, to be sure, had played a large
+part, both in tragedy and comedy, in reflecting and promoting the
+sentimentality and moralizing common in the literature of the century;
+Otway, Southerne, and Rowe had in a way fathered the sentimental novels.
+But in tragedy their Isabellas and Calistas had no successors to rank with
+Clarissa and Amelia. If tragedy through its alliance with sentiment failed
+of permanent advance, it was still more unsuccessful in representing the
+reasonableness, typicality, and austerity which the classical conception
+required. It was half-hearted, turning now to Shakespeare, now to Voltaire,
+but never producing anything not conventionalized and dull. The escapes
+from its dullness remained until the very end of the century only
+half-opened doors. Through the door opened by "Barnwell" and "The
+Gamester," the drama saw only the broad path that led back to
+sentimentality and overlooked the straight and narrow way leading to
+realism and truth. Over the threshold that opened to medieval castles and
+chambers of horrors it was still hesitating. The divorce between literature
+and the stage had widened, and tragedy failed to attract genius to its
+rescue. Crabbe did not write a tragedy of the village, and Burns did not
+summon poetry and passion to the stage.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Ward's _History of Dramatic Literature_ ends with the death of Queen Anne;
+and there is no adequate history of the English drama for the last two
+centuries, and no good bibliography. Genest continues to be the main source
+of information. Lowe's _Bibliographical Account_ and the histories of the
+theatre noted in the last chapter are useful for the matter of the present.
+In addition, _The History and Illustration of the London Theatres_, by
+Chas. Dibdin, Jr. (1826); Victor's _History of the Theatres of London and
+Dublin_ (1761); W. C. Dalton's _History of the Theatres_, 1771-95; and _The
+Dramatic Censor_ (1770) become available for this period. A large number of
+memoirs of actors also supply information in regard to the drama. _An
+Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, written by himself_
+(1750), reviews the Restoration period as well. Others of interest are:
+Davies's _Memoirs of Garrick_ (1780); Murphy's _Life of Garrick_ (1801);
+Boaden's _Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons_ (1827) and _Memoirs of Kemble_ (1825);
+Cumberland's _Memoir_ (1806); Mudford's _Critical Examination of the
+Writings of Richard Cumberland_, etc. (1812); Boaden's _Memoirs of Mrs.
+Inchbald_ (1833); _Private Correspondence of David Garrick_ (1831-32);
+Holcroft's _Memoirs_, ed. by Hazlitt (1816); Cooke's _Memoirs of Charles
+Macklin_ (2d ed., 1808).
+
+The plays by authors of note can be found in the collected editions of
+their works, the more popular plays in the various collections noted in the
+last chapter. The majority of the tragedies, however, have never been
+reprinted and can be obtained only in the original editions. Dramatic
+criticism of the period can be studied in various essays by Addison,
+Steele, Gildon, Dennis, and Dr. Johnson, especially his Preface to the
+edition of Shakespeare and his _Lives of the Poets_. Lord Kames's _Elements
+of Criticism_ (1762) was highly approved in its own day; and several essays
+on tragedy are of historical interest: William Guthrie's _Essay on Tragedy_
+(1747); Mrs. Montagu's _Essay on the Genius and Writing of Shakespeare_
+(1769); Edwin Taylor's _Cursory Remarks on Tragedy_ (1774); William Cook's
+_Elements of Dramatic Criticism_ (1775); and Hodson's _Observations on
+Tragedy_, prefixed to his tragedy _Zoraida_ (1780).
+
+Beljame's _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre_ bears on this
+as on the preceding chapter. Voltaire's influence on English tragedy has
+never been fully studied, but the following recent books bear on his
+relations with England: A. Ballantyne's _Voltaire's Visit to England_
+(1893); J. Churton Collins's _Bolingbroke, a historical study, and Voltaire
+in England_ (1886); Lounsbury's _Shakespeare and Voltaire_ (1902), which
+gives much information on the drama and criticism of the period and
+sufficient directory to Voltaire's comment on the English drama; and
+Jusserand's _Shakespeare en France_, which is also very valuable for this
+period. Miss Canfield's study of _Corneille and Racine in England_ is also
+of marked service; and L. Morel's _James Thomson_ (Paris, 1895) gives a
+very full study of Thomson's plays and literary relations. The
+_Belles-Lettres Series_ contains editions with introductions of plays of
+Rowe, ed. Miss Sophie Hart; and of Lillo, ed. A. W. Ward (1906). Dr. Ward's
+introduction is particularly valuable for its sketch of the course of
+domestic tragedy and sentimental comedy on the continent. From the notes in
+these various studies, and from _La Litterature comparee, essai
+bibliographique_, by Louis P. Betz, Strasbourg, 1904, direction can be had
+to a number of monographs dealing with special phases of the relations
+between the dramas of England and France, and, toward the end of the
+century, between England and Germany.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[28] For comparisons of the two plays, see Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on the
+Drama," Cumberland's _Observer_, Nos. 77, 78, 79; and Gifford's
+introduction to his edition of Massinger.
+
+[29] See _Corneille and Racine in England_. Dorothea Canfield. New York,
+1904.
+
+[30] Its only appearance on the stage recorded by Genest was in Capell's
+adaptation, acted six times by Garrick in 1759.
+
+[31] _Brutus_ (1734), _Zara_ (1736), _Alzira_ (1736), _Mahomet_ (1744),
+_Merope_ (1749), _Orphan of China_ (1759), _Orestes_ (1769), _Almida_
+(1771) (from _Tancrede_), _Semiramis_ (1776). See, also, Hoole's _Cyrus_
+(1768), Cradock's _Zobeide_ (1771), Murphy's _Alzuma_ (1773), and Brooke's
+_Imposter_ (1778), not acted.
+
+[32] Professor Lounsbury seems mistaken in finding a "sudden cessation of
+interest in Voltaire" after 1750. _Shakespere and Voltaire_, pp. 304, 305.
+He neglects the later popularity of _The Orphan of China_ and the continued
+popularity of plays earlier translated.
+
+[33] _Le theatre anglais_ (1746-49) of Pierre de La Place contained in its
+8 vols. synopses and partial translations of the following plays:
+_Othello_, _3 Henry VI_, Richard III, Hamlet, _Macbeth_, _Cymbeline_,
+_Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens_, _Merry Wives of
+Windsor_, _The Maid's Tragedy_, _Catiline_, _The Fair Penitent_, _Venice
+Preserved_, _Aureng Zebe_, _The Mourning Bride_, _Tamerlane_, _Siege of
+Damascus_ (by Hughes, 1720), _Busiris_, _Love for Love_, _The Innocent
+Adultery_, _Cato_, _The Funeral_ (Steele, 1702). This list, in which it
+will be noticed tragedy greatly predominates, represents fairly the English
+taste of the time.
+
+[34] Dr. Rundle, Letters, quoted by Morel, _James Thomson_, p. 82.
+
+[35] _Gil Blas_, Book 4, "Le Mariage de vengeance."
+
+[36] For various references to Thomson in Voltaire's Letters, see Morel,
+_op. cit._ pp. 192-194; and a letter on the French translation of _Tancred
+and Sigismunda_, p. 153.
+
+[37] The following list includes all eighteenth century tragedies, not
+mentioned in the text, that achieved any considerable popularity. These all
+became stock plays, and most were acted in the nineteenth century. Hughes,
+_Siege of Damascus_(1720); Fenton, _Mariamne_(1723); Jones, _Earl of Essex_
+(1753), which superseded Banks's play as a stage favorite; Brown,
+_Barbarossa_ (1754); Francklin, _Earl of Warwick_ (1766); Hartson,
+_Countess of Salisbury_ (1767); Murphy, _Zenobia_ (1768), and _The Grecian
+Daughter_ (1772), which gave a famous part, Euphrasia, to Mrs. Siddons and
+later to Miss Fannie Kemble.
+
+[38] The eighteenth century was not blind to the absurdities of its
+tragedies, but made fun of them without stint. The number of burlesque
+tragedies is large and includes: Gay's _What d'ye Call It_ (1715); Carey's
+_Chrononhotonthologos_ (1734); Fielding's _Tom Thumb_ (1730); Foote's
+_Tragedy a la Mode_ (1764); and Sheridan's _Critic_ (1779).
+
+[39] Dedication to _The London Merchant_.
+
+[40] Dedication to _The London Merchant_.
+
+[41] Translated into English as _Dorval, or the Test of Virtue_(1767).
+
+[42] Translated 1770, and as _A Family Picture_ (1781). Also, cf. General
+Burgoyne's _Heiress_ (1786), which borrows from _Le Pere de Famille_, and
+Holcroft's _Love's Frailties_ (1794), based on a German adaptation.
+
+[43] Criticised in _The Critical Review_, lv, 151, because of its
+introduction of a comic character.
+
+[44] The elder Colman was a leader in this revival. Besides the few
+comedies which remained on the stock list and "Philaster," which was
+frequently acted at this time, the following Elizabethan plays were revived
+in the decade 1778-88: _Bonduca_, _Bondman_, _City Madam_, _Duke of Milan_,
+_Knight of Malta_, _A King and No King_, _Marcella_ (based on _The
+Changeling_), _Maid of Honor_, _The Picture_, _The Pilgrim_, _Scornful
+Lady_ (altered as _The Capricious Lady_), _Triumph of Honor_, _Women
+Pleased_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
+
+
+The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the
+nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The
+eighteenth century had been, as we have seen, a time of stagnation in
+tragedy and of little dramatic advance in any direction. The theatregoer of
+1720 would in 1780 have found the same plays or others similar in kind;
+but, had he postponed his visit yet twenty years, he would have entered a
+new theatrical world of romance, musical plays, and German novelties. By
+that time nearly all the factors of importance in the history of the stage
+during the first half of the nineteenth century had made their appearance.
+New departures in both tragedy and comedy, and a theatrically important
+_tertium quid_ were all instituted. And new ideas, new themes, and new
+stories witnessed the changing taste and gave promise of the enlargement of
+the imaginative horizon which the new romanticism was to produce.
+
+We have seen that, while neither realistic tragedy nor sentimental comedy
+had experienced a notable development, they had been departures from
+long-standing conventions. Tragedies in three acts, tragedies in prose,
+tragedies on domestic themes, tragedies without princes, tragedies of the
+present, all gave some encouragement for further novelty and experiment.
+The several varieties of "soft tragedy and genteel comedy" departed far
+enough from the standards of both species to suggest a dramatic development
+that should discard the traditional limitations. This changing taste,
+however, was seized by German plays and dramatized "tales of terror." The
+large and varied influence of German poetry, criticism, and philosophy upon
+the romantic movement in England can be noticed here only so far as it
+affected the drama. The plays of Lessing and the early plays of Goethe and
+Schiller made little impression on the English stage, though they exercised
+an immediate influence on the reading public and on most of the young men
+"standing on the forehead of the age to come." The conquest of the English
+stage was made at its point of greatest vulnerability--its
+sentimentality--by one who seemed the very Napoleon of the drama, Kotzebue,
+the conqueror of the theatres of all western Europe. In 1798 "The Stranger"
+("Menschenhass und Reue") took Drury Lane by storm, and the next year
+Sheridan's "Pizarro," an adaptation of "Die Spanier in Peru," plus some
+eloquence and some songs, gained a still more brilliant success and drew
+even George III to the theatre. For several years Kotzebue reigned supreme;
+twenty or more of his plays were translated; many were acted; "Pizarro"
+alone had passed through twenty-nine editions by 1811, besides other
+English and American versions of the play. Kotzebue's triumph was due in
+part to his great skill in stage-craft, and in part to his adroit appeal to
+the more superficial sentiments for social and political revolution that
+were everywhere stirring. When it is compared with preceding sentimental
+comedy, the success of "The Stranger" is easily understood. It has the
+theatrical merit of arousing curiosity at the beginning and keeping it on
+question until the last moment; and it deals, over-sentimentally of course,
+with a social question of dramatic value and of especial piquancy at a time
+when many conventions seemed tottering,--should an erring wife be taken
+back again by her husband? The theme of "A Woman Killed with Kindness,"
+"Jane Shore," and "The Fair Penitent" was given a new interest and a new
+solution. "Pizarro," retaining much of the plot familiar in English tragedy
+since the time of Dryden's "Indian Emperor," has two lovers, opponents in
+war, and two heroines, one vengeful, the other angelic, but makes the real
+hero the renouncing lover, who sacrifices all for the happiness of the
+angel who loves not him but his friend. Under these new auspices the fair
+penitent and the renunciatory hero began long careers in English drama and
+fiction. But neither these nor any other of Kotzebue's plays offered any
+guidance toward a serious interpretation of life or any innovations of real
+consequence in the English tragic tradition.
+
+If Kotzebue's plays offered little promise for the national drama, the
+native plays which rivaled them in popularity offered less. Castles, monks,
+dungeons, and so on had already become somewhat common in musical plays
+and operas[45] and occasionally in tragedies, when "The Castle Spectre" of
+Monk Lewis opened the flood-gates to "tales of terror" and their medieval
+and supernatural paraphernalia. "The Castle Spectre," which in the season
+of 1797-98 surpassed "The Stranger" and for a while held its own with
+Kotzebue, represents a new reign of romance. The new queen did not come
+from "perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." She belonged to the earlier
+days of the romantic movement, and made her conquest at the head of
+squadrons of medievalistic, terroristic, and Germanistic Goths. She is
+adequately described in the prologue to the play:--
+
+    "Far from the haunts of men, of vice the foe,
+    The moon-struck child of genius and of woe,
+    Versed in each magic spell, and dear to fame,
+    A fair enchantress dwells, Romance her name,
+    She loathes the sun or blazing taper's light:
+    The moon-beam'd landscape and tempestuous night
+    Alone she loves; and oft, with glimmering lamp,
+    Near graves new-opened, or midst dungeons damp,
+    Drear forests, ruin'd aisles, and haunted towers,
+    Forlorn she roves, and raves away the hours!
+    Anon, when storms howl loud and lash the deep,
+    Desperate she climbs the sea-rock's beetling steep;
+    There wildly strikes her harp's fantastic strings,
+    Tells to the moon how grief her bosom wrings,
+    And while her strange song chaunts fictitious ills,
+    In wounded hearts Oblivion's balm distils."
+
+The "drama," as it was called, is in prose, and is a medley of the various
+terroristic novels, including the two most famous, "The Castle of Otranto"
+and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and adding something from Schiller's
+"Robbers" and from Shakespeare. There is a haunted castle, a jocose monk, a
+fool, a marvelous dungeon, a fisherman's hut, a ghost, a midnight bell, and
+songs and elaborate scenery. The villain, a feudal baron attended by
+negroes, is finally killed by the heroine, who saves her imprisoned father
+and escapes with the hero.
+
+The signs of life that succeeded the long petrifaction of the eighteenth
+century drama and the beginning of the revolutionary epoch thus resulted
+only in theatrical novelties and in no serious dramatic movement. All
+serious drama was, indeed, threatened by the ascendancy of the
+"illegitimate" drama of music and dumb show. The causes leading to the rise
+of this class and its ensuing history were in large measure connected with
+the theatres themselves. Even before the new romanticism had invaded the
+drama, changes in theatrical conditions of far-reaching importance were
+well under way. The monopoly exercised by the Drury Lane and Covent Garden
+theatres was first threatened about 1730 by the success of a few minor
+theatres which gave musical, acrobatic, or dramatic entertainments. The old
+theatres were successful in maintaining their monopoly in regular plays,
+but the irregular houses gained permission to give performances under the
+loosely defined term "burletta." A "burletta" was supposed to have a
+musical accompaniment, but it proved difficult to say how little music and
+how much of a drama might be included under the term. Henceforth, the
+regular drama had, in addition to the rivalry of Italian and English
+operas, that of musical and dramatic medleys; and the patent houses had to
+face the rivalry of playhouses that infringed as far as they dared on the
+legitimate drama. The patent theatres, with their vested rights in the
+stock plays and their obligation to maintain Dryden, Otway, and
+Shakespeare, offered no great inducements to new authors. This was
+particularly true, after the rebuilding and enlargement of both theatres in
+1791 and 1794, when the increased cost of bringing out a play and the
+increased difficulty in acting or hearing an unfamiliar play led Kemble
+practically to abandon any attempt to produce new tragedies. The minor
+theatres, which were growing in importance, legally limited to the field of
+musical performances, and excluded from the regular drama except by trick,
+could offer little support to the serious dramatist. As a result, musical
+plays, operettas, and finally a new type, the "melodrame," flourished in
+the minor houses and found their way soon into the two great theatres. When
+in 1808-09 these were burned, the rivalry with the minors had become acute.
+The old theatres were rebuilt of so great a size that they proved
+unsuitable for any spoken drama. Through their great actors, Kemble, Kean,
+and later Macready, they maintained Shakespearean drama and a few of the
+old stock plays; but they were forced for the rest of the time to resort to
+melodrama, spectacle, or pantomime. The minors, though they now became
+more daring in their invasions of legitimate drama, naturally continued the
+kind of entertainments at which they had succeeded and to which they had
+forced the great theatres to succumb. The long struggle for a free stage
+was now nearing its end; the patent theatres were maintained with
+increasing difficulty; the minors prospered. With the death of Kean in
+1833, a great prop of the patent theatres fell; and though the agitation
+for parliamentary reform in that year failed, and the final legislation
+against theatrical monopoly was not passed until 1847, the great theatres
+ceased to determine the history of the drama. Macready's two periods of
+management, 1837-39 and 1841-43, were the final efforts to restore the old
+regime that had maintained tragedy since the Restoration.
+
+The "illegitimate" drama that triumphed in the theatres comprised a wide
+range of entertainments, mostly farcical in their dramatic elements. Toward
+the end of the eighteenth century the rage for dumb show and musical
+additions invaded the regular drama. Even Kotzebue had to be decked out
+with songs and choruses. Moreover, a peculiar species of the illegitimate
+drama developed in the plays of Andrews, Dibdin, Reynolds, Boaden, and
+Colman the younger that served as a half substitute for tragedy. This
+species seems to have been mainly due to the ingenuity of George Colman.
+Those of his plays verging on tragedy, of which "The Battle of Hexham"
+(1789), "The Surrender of Calais" (1791), "The Mountaineers" (1793), and
+"The Iron Chest" (1796) are the chief, are lively medleys of tragedy,
+comedy, opera, and farce. In each a tragic story is told in blank verse,
+audaciously Shakespearean, and this is mixed with broad comedy or farce in
+prose. There is a bustling action with shifting scenes, much spectacle,
+many songs, solos, duets, or choruses, for which a crowd of soldiers,
+monks, beggars, foresters, or the like, is always within call. "The
+Surrender of Calais" tells the story of Queen Philippa's mercy; "The Iron
+Chest" is a dramatization of "Caleb Williams"; "The Battle of Hexham" is a
+sort of musicalized chronicle history, presenting the adventures of Adeline
+in search of her husband, who turns out to be a captain of a band of
+robbers and the rescuer of Queen Margaret and the prince after the battle
+of Hexham. "The Mountaineers," suggested by a story in "Don Quixote," finds
+its land of romance in Spain, where a Christian prisoner elopes with the
+daughter of his Moorish jailer, accompanied by a stage Irishman as
+_gracioso_; and this group, when recaptured, are rescued by Octavian, a
+half-mad tragic soliloquizer, who also recovers his long-lost love, and was
+thought to be extremely impressive when impersonated by Kemble. In his use
+of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of
+Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable
+cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a
+curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the
+theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the
+Elizabethan drama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His
+method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to
+connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and
+varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very
+phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their
+parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so
+well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity
+and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He
+popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English
+tragedy, and passed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession
+of the illegitimate drama.
+
+At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a
+still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the
+peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment
+there, the _melodrame_. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its
+most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long
+ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The
+peculiar novelties of the _melodrame_ were the supplementing of the
+dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both
+dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its
+songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding
+musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate
+held full sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and
+many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or
+machinery. From the start, _melodrame_ allied itself to most of the
+paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon
+showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned
+Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in
+prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for
+thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels
+supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with
+one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several
+versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first
+large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a
+singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange
+scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and
+good among the characters, lent itself readily to a dramatization that
+required a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of action, music, and
+machinery. Comic scenes were, of course, _de rigueur_. "The Slave," by
+Morton, was one of the most enduring of the Colmanesque type. The serious
+plot, which presents Gambia, the slave, as the sacrificing hero, borrows
+from "The Curfew" and "Oronooko," and for its great scene improves upon the
+escape over the bridge in "Pizarro."[46]
+
+     After Clifton and Zelinda (whom Gambia hopelessly
+     adores) escape across the hanging bridge, Gambia climbs
+     up the tree from which it is suspended and cuts the
+     rope. The pursuing villains are foiled on the brink.
+     "We are safe, my husband," cries Zelinda from the other
+     side; but her child, safely hidden by Gambia, hears her
+     voice, and runs from his hiding-place,--on the wrong
+     side of the river.
+
+     _Child._ It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!
+
+     _Zelinda._ Alas! my child!
+
+     _Somerdyke._ Her child! Then we triumph--seize him! (_A
+     slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of
+     rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues._) Move one
+     step further, and you will see him buried in the
+     waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (_Holding
+     him up in the act of precipitating him._)
+
+     _Zelinda._ I do submit.
+
+     _Gambia._ Never! (_Gambia, who has concealed himself in
+     the branches, snatches the child up into the tree._)
+     Father, receive your child! (_Throws the child across
+     the stream._) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha!
+     (_Curtain._)
+
+The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species
+brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending
+for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than
+characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor
+features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show,
+strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the
+essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no
+literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres
+and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth
+century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, and music did not
+further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama.
+There was in England no relationship between the two as between Pixerecourt
+and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it
+absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes,
+rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to
+these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is
+curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of
+theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.
+
+The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of
+Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its
+medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments
+indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression
+suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in
+Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the
+popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of
+the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and
+thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth
+century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public
+favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the
+melodrama, tragedy has tended either to assume the garb of its rivals, or
+to conform its appeal to a select audience.
+
+In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and the melodrama and the
+melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy.
+The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century
+had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays
+with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or
+otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men,
+Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were associated with
+the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were
+quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little
+literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction
+in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be
+acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists,
+while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its
+reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth,
+Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser
+poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted.
+These plays fall into two main classes, those that were acted and carried
+on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted.
+This second class, which for the first time becomes of some importance in
+the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are
+tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There
+are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to
+its requirements, and might easily be adapted for presentation. There are
+others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's
+later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre.
+These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that
+can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various classes of closet
+drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality
+that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the
+tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite
+variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they
+are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare
+and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage
+demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they
+seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage
+demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music,
+spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in
+terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in
+the beauty of verse.
+
+The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna
+Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first
+volume of her "Plays on the Passions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and
+"The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on
+hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series,
+illustrating each of the dominant passions by a tragedy and a comedy. Her
+preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who
+at Alfoxden were polishing their own tragedies and planning a revolution in
+poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama.
+She proposed to devote a play to the illustration of a single passion, to
+trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that
+passion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This
+absorption with a study of emotion _per se_ led to a subordination of plot
+and all external incident, and--so she proposed--all poetic embellishment,
+to a searching study of isolated passion. Her first volume attracted
+attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without
+success. She continued, however, writing and publishing, completing the
+series of plays on passions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays,"
+twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a
+variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with
+witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults,
+knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon shining through vaulted windows.
+Her conception of a play of passion forbids motiving of character, or
+integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly
+observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls.
+There are many improbabilities, and the passions are exposed mainly in
+soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one
+wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purple patches. It rarely
+if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the
+plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and
+much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a
+bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one
+being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the
+admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers.
+Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose
+won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more
+imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the
+theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was
+justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the
+Michigan Historical Society."
+
+Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing
+tragedies of passions[47] arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like
+her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's
+"Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he
+thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the
+revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of
+Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated
+by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice." Coleridge's
+"Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books
+rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and
+pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage
+success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres.
+The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and
+seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the
+inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle
+were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was
+Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic
+modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the
+villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan
+revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the
+main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the
+interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not
+contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made
+veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the
+beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic
+passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little
+philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the
+"Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the
+movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge
+gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the
+managers. But even had he made the revisions that they required, he could
+hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his
+melodramatic action.
+
+Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and
+offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the
+exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness
+of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches
+something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his
+obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something
+of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though
+feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and
+Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they,
+and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like
+them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening
+outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing.
+"The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and
+refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two
+acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.
+
+From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813),
+literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. Godwin's plays,
+"Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's
+"Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted
+tragedy. When Lewis tried to give his terrific vein a little dignity and
+blank verse, even he failed on the stage.[48]
+
+After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the
+poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a
+large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half
+dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the
+"Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's
+plays was "Evadne," based on Shirley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted
+1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any
+preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements.
+Fazio's wife, jealous because of his infatuation for a countess, betrays
+her husband, and then for the remainder of the play is wildly remorseful.
+In spite of the extreme improbability of both the persons and the language,
+the story is told with dramatic directness and affords manifest
+opportunities for a great actress, seized upon by Miss O'Neill and later by
+Miss Cushman and, in an Italian adaptation, by Madame Ristori. A still
+greater theatrical success was won by Kean in "Brutus" (1818), a pastiche
+of the plays of Lee, Cumberland, and Downman composed by the American, John
+Howard Payne. Sheridan Knowles's "Virginius" (1820), followed by his "Caius
+Gracchus" (1823), and "William Tell" (1825), gave promise of a more
+permanent revival of the poetical drama. Knowles, an actor and a practical
+playwright, was also the friend and in a way the pupil of Lamb and Hazlitt,
+and he gained the cooperation of a great and ambitious actor, Macready. He
+united as no other writer of the generation had done, stage-craft and
+poetic ideals. "Virginius," the best of his tragedies, is still
+acted--excepting Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu," the only relic of early
+nineteenth century tragedy. The story, with its one great acting scene, is
+told after the Shakespearean model in very ornate and artificial verse. It
+mingles much scoffing at the rabble with romantic appeals for liberty,
+tricks Virginia out with a lover, and ends with the insanity of Virginius.
+Knowles's tragedies at the time of their presentation were only moderately
+successful, far less so than his absurd comedy, "The Hunchback"; and
+several poetic dramas by other writers fared worse. Thomas Wade's "Woman's
+Love," based on the Patient Griselda story, obtained a hearing in 1808, but
+his Marlowesque "Jew of Aragon" was hooted off the stage in 1830. But
+Procter's "Mirandola" was acted sixteen times in 1821, and Miss Mitford's
+"Rienzi" (1828) and Byron's "Werner" (1830) gained veritable triumphs.
+
+For about a decade longer poetic tragedy continued to contend for the
+theatre. Its main hope lay in Macready, and its hey-day was during his two
+periods of management of Drury Lane, 1837-39 and 1841-42. After the success
+of "Werner" ("Marino Faliero" had been earlier produced in 1821),
+"Sardanapalus" was brought out by Macready in 1833-34; and "The Two
+Foscari" later. Knowles's "Alfred the Great" and his "Bridal," an
+adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," won considerable
+success; and "The Pledge," a version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," in 1831
+heralded new support for romantic poetry in the drama. In the years 1836-37
+Macready introduced three new writers in the "Ion" of Talfourd, "Strafford"
+of Browning, and the "Duchess de la Valliere" of Bulwer-Lytton. Talfourd's
+tragedies, including two, "The Athenian Captive" and "Glencoe," later acted
+by Macready, are stiff and wooden, contributing little to the drama.
+Bulwer-Lytton's later plays, "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) and "Richelieu"
+(1839), were extremely successful and surpassed any preceding efforts of
+the romanticists to adapt poetry to the stage. "Richelieu" is by no means a
+great poem or free from claptrap, but it has the merit of being written to
+be spoken and in having its characters designed as parts of the action. The
+interest is not in the poetry--it reads much better with the omissions made
+for acting--but in the development of the character of the cardinal through
+the incidents. The failure of "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon" in 1843 marks
+the end of Macready's management and the end of romantic tragedy on the
+stage.
+
+Many of these acted plays gained what suitability they had for the stage by
+accident rather than design. Milman's "Fazio" was published several years
+before it was acted, and his later tragedies were decidedly closet dramas.
+Miss Mitford's "Julian" made little impression on the stage, and her other
+tragedies, except "Rienzi," still less. Byron's tragedies, which succeeded
+largely no doubt because of his reputation, were acted against his wish or
+after his death. And the various poetic tragedies that were written at
+about the same time as Byron's and Shelley's were mostly composed without
+thought of stage presentation. The surpassing genius of the greater poets
+has thrown into obscurity the work of these other young men, who in the
+decade after Waterloo faced the world with thin volumes of verse. But there
+have been few times in our literary history when the Muses have been so
+alluring, and Melpomene had her share of devotees. In John Wilson's "City
+of the Plague" (1816) a young naval officer wanders about plague-stricken
+London, through its bacchanals and horrors, buries his mother, discovers
+his betrothed, the ministering angel of the afflicted, and at last finds
+rest with her in the terrible crowded churchyard. The poem is grandly
+conceived and beautifully written in verse, occasionally Wordsworthian but
+without affectation or over-ornament. Two other closet dramatists offer
+rather less sincerity and impressiveness of conception but even more of
+poetic beauty. "Joseph and his Brethren" (1823), by Charles Wells, for a
+time the friend of Keats, was published when the author was twenty-three,
+and fifty years later revived and rewritten because of the appreciation of
+Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. Like the plays of Thomas Wade, it shows the
+influence of Marlowe in verse and plan. Long drawn out and in the main
+undramatic, there is imagination everywhere, especially in the remarkable
+scenes that depict the passion-inflamed Phraxanor, Potiphar's wife. Of the
+Elizabethans, too, was Beddoes, who studied Webster and Tourneur as well as
+Shelley and Keats, and whose verse at times fairly surpasses his masters.
+His "Bride's Tragedy" (1821), written when he was nineteen, is a play only
+in name, but it is a poem that joins terror and fascination as scarcely
+another since Webster and Ford. Here, as in his incompleted dramas and his
+"Death's Jest Book," published much later, loveliness masks with madness
+and death, and mockery with passion. It seems as if he were lavishing over
+strange juxtapositions of beauty and decay all the sensuous fascination of
+Keats and the lingering suggestiveness of Shelley's lyrics. One's
+admiration for his genius is tempered only by the thought of the greater
+things he might have done.
+
+Earlier than these poems was Landor's "Count Julian" (1812), which, like
+them, presents qualities suited for the closet and not for the stage. As in
+some of the "Imaginary Conversations," Landor takes it for granted that his
+audience understands the story and the motives of the actors as well as he
+himself. The reader gradually disentangles the situations and is stirred by
+the splendid poetry; but no audience could make out what it was all about.
+His other poetical tragedies, written a quarter of a century later, show no
+improvement of these defects, nor do they present dramatic themes as
+interesting or as powerfully conceived as those in "Count Julian."
+
+"Otho the Great," the tragedy which Keats hoped would lift him out of the
+mire,[49] was devised for Kean, and apparently accepted for Drury Lane.
+Charles Brown furnished him "description of each scene entire, with the
+characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with
+it"; and Keats merely wrote the verse up to the fifth act, when he took the
+entire management into his own hands. The result of this peculiar
+collaboration was what might have been expected. The plot and
+characterization follow old types; and the poetry, though not lacking in
+fine passages, is inferior to nearly everything else that Keats wrote in
+his _annus mirabilis_, 1819.
+
+Scott's dramas are somewhat out of place when grouped with these other
+closet tragedies, for they are varied in character, representing a number
+of the proclivities that we have noticed in the romantic drama.[50] "The
+House of Aspen," written in prose at about the time of "Goetz," was
+intended for the stage and considered by Kemble for representation. Based
+on a German tale and showing the influence of "Goetz," it offers no
+important deviations from the terroristic drama. "The Doom of Devorgoil,"
+designed for Terry at the Adelphi, is a melodrama with many songs and a
+mixture of mimic goblins with supernatural machinery that was found to be
+so objectionable as to prevent its performance. It is interesting as one of
+the very few cases in which a man of literary reputation undertook to meet
+the requirements of the illegitimate drama. None of the other plays, which
+are in blank verse, was intended for the stage. "Macduff's Cross" is a mere
+sketch in one act; "Halidon Hill" a two-act dramatization of border
+warfare; "Auchindrane," in three acts, is a more fully developed tragedy.
+"Halidon Hill" has a clearness and directness of characterization and a
+vigor of movement which suggest that had the auspices been more favorable,
+the historical drama might have had another great exponent. "Auchindrane,"
+though retaining a little of the Radcliffian mystery and mystification
+which Scott never quite outgrew, also tells its domestic story with a
+directness and verisimilitude not usual among the romanticists. German
+translation, terroristic tragedy, spectral melodrama, dramatic sketches for
+the closet, and domestic tragedy are all illustrated by these six plays;
+and their subjects and treatment also reflect the various attachments of
+Scott's literary career. They illustrate also the inability of literary
+genius to aid the theatre in this period, but they differ from most of the
+literary drama in their absence of subjectivity or attachment to theory.
+
+Byron's plays, like other poetical tragedies of the time, were written in
+accord with the writer's theories and counter to the prevailing theatrical
+practices; but Byron prided himself on departing from the methods of the
+Elizabethans or of his fellow romanticists, and on following the guidance
+of eighteenth century models. "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," and
+"Sardanapalus," all written 1820-21, attempt regularity of plot and
+observance of the unities, and profess Alfieri as a model. The two Venetian
+plays, however, recall Otway's "Venice Preserved," and their exaggeration
+of strange passions is quite in accord with the general practice of the
+romanticists. The plots are improbable, though selected from history, and
+aloof from general interest, for the resentment of the old doge at the
+insult to his wife and the unyielding vengeance of Loredano and, indeed,
+all the major passions are treated with an extravagance that becomes
+melodramatic and renders the persons all but unintelligible. With
+"Sardanapalus" the case is different. The dissolute, luxurious, but
+nobly-aspiring hero and his better angel, Myrrha, derive from the
+characters of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli a truth of passion that
+animates the rapid and spectacular action. A tragedy of palace intrigue,
+after the eighteenth century type, is thus reanimated by the romantic
+fervor of its passion, philosophy, and poetry. Any time from "The Mourning
+Bride" to "Zenobia" it might have triumphed on the stage, and so it did
+triumph when finally acted; but it summoned only a tithe of Byron's power.
+Quite different from any of these three plays, his "Werner" was obviously
+suited to its own day. Based on one of Harriet Lee's novels, it forsakes
+classical structure and exhibits all the paraphernalia and emotional
+horrors of the terrific drama. It was one of the greatest stage successes
+of the romantic drama, but it is no more deserving, either as a play or a
+poem, than a dozen of its rivals.
+
+Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from
+fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species.
+Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred"
+and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the
+Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that
+made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic
+poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned
+descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of
+elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to
+men."[51] The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their
+nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his
+fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its
+presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic
+tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds
+expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so
+characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man
+against society and providence make up the tragic theme. The tragedy of
+individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality,
+is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to
+the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation
+of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great
+dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion.
+Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet
+and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly
+seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of
+their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an
+eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to
+realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.
+
+Shelley's "Cenci" in a different way mirrors this eternal defeat that human
+struggle after justice must encounter. Deeply impressed by the current
+tradition about Beatrice Cenci, he made this story of incest and parricide
+the expression of his view of life and history as a conflict between
+tyranny and downtrodden innocence. Nowhere else in Shelley, not even in
+"Prometheus Unbound," does this world drama come out of the clouds and
+reveal itself with such clarity and power. There is passion in the persons,
+climax in the situations, and directness in the language such as the
+romantic drama had rarely shown. The philosophical conception and the
+tangle of human motives do not indeed quite harmonize. Beatrice's lie and
+her unworthy seeking after life are bits of the story which interfere with
+our acceptance of Beatrice the martyr, flaws that Browning would not have
+admitted. On the other hand, Shelley's philosophy overrides the story, as
+may be seen by a comparison of the tragedy with one of the earliest to show
+dawning romanticism. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother," which at this time
+Byron was praising as "the last tragedy," treats a more horrible story of
+incest with the interest mainly in the plot, holding in suspense the
+fearful solution until the end; "The Cenci" begins with the act of incest,
+and then tries to carry our interest solely to the two characters, one the
+embodiment of all inherited evil, the other, a pure and beautiful spirit
+striving madly and in vain to free herself from wrong that is might. The
+conquest of the stage, the writing of dramatic blank verse, and the
+endowment of this story of crime with representational truth were tasks too
+large to be accomplished in a single play; but, though faulty in the
+details of dramatic art, "The Cenci" is, for a first tragedy, without an
+equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry. The poet who
+shrank from comedy as from a wicked thing and who thought a story of incest
+possible in a London theatre, had much to learn before he could master the
+stage. But "The Cenci" reveals the maturing Shelley, who was opening his
+mind to new impressions, admiring "Cain" and "Don Juan," profiting from
+AEschylus and Calderon as well as Shakespeare, and who was seeing his
+allegories clothed in human form, and no longer only in images of mist and
+flame. As one reads one wonders,--had the play not been the last as well
+as his first tragedy? had it come at the beginning instead of nearly at the
+close of the romantic movement?
+
+In "Prometheus Unbound" there is even greater achievement in the
+presentation of this world conflict; and there Cain triumphs and Beatrice
+is purified. But the achievement is lyrical rather than dramatic, and has
+no proper place in the history of tragedy.
+
+In all these tragedies, whether acted or not, and whether works of genius
+or not, certain resemblances have been noted. They exhibit most of the
+elements that characterize the romantic movement as it stirred English
+poetry from the "Lyrical Ballads" to the first publications of Tennyson and
+Browning. Without realism in plot or language, and dealing always with what
+is unusual, improbable, and removed from the present, they made little
+effort to catch the interest of the average audience or to excite an
+interest common to ordinary experience. Their reaction against the
+frivolity of contemporary melodrama was as decided as their reaction
+against eighteenth century conventionality; but both impulses led to
+poetry, passion, and Shakespeare, but not to drama. They did not succeed in
+working out cause and effect of character through incident; when they
+desired to gain stage effectiveness, they merely borrowed from current
+melodrama or from the Elizabethans.
+
+Elizabethan influence is usually apparent in the choice of themes, in the
+devising of plot and situations, and particularly in the figurative and
+ornate phrasing. The revival of some Elizabethan plays on the stage, the
+vulgarization in the illegitimate drama of many of their incidents, and the
+general interest among readers at this time in the Elizabethan drama, all
+encouraged a fondness for madness, incest, battles, villany, and
+unrestrained passion of various kinds. In phrasing, the Elizabethan
+influence appears in all degrees; in the sympathetic emulation of Keats, in
+the amazing reproductions of Beddoes, or in the starched artificiality of
+the poetic embellishments of Milman, Knowles, or Procter. In general the
+style is redundant and florid. In such plays as were adapted for the stage,
+it will almost always be found that the mere curtailing of the figures,
+soliloquies, and episodes causes a marked improvement in the dramatic
+quality of the dialogue. Byron and Shelley both attempted to free their
+dramatic blank verse from conceits and artificialities, and to give it
+directness and lack of ornamentation corresponding to natural speech. In
+consequence, Byron's blank verse often makes a slovenly approach to prose,
+and Shelley's loses something of the beauty of his non-dramatic
+masterpieces; but on the whole, "Sardanapalus" and still more "Cain" and
+"The Cenci" show their greatness in this as in other respects, in the
+dramatic quality of their verse.
+
+Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror.
+The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral
+melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like
+Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is something of this in
+Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one
+of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a
+tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species.
+After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still
+found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate
+villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing
+influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising
+the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which
+furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have
+been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the
+devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy
+perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's
+"Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least
+encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of
+passion.
+
+Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley
+novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences
+of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the
+interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature,
+whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals,
+for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The
+treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss
+Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge, now became essential to tragedy; and we
+find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of
+the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which
+he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems
+to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on
+the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio"
+and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly
+for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius
+Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of
+these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic
+emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but
+they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities
+for rhetorical fervors.
+
+In nearly all the plays the main interest is not in plot, as in the
+eighteenth century, and not primarily in story, as in the Elizabethan
+period, but in the delineation of individual passion. "Lear," "Othello,"
+"Hamlet," and "Macbeth" are the models; but the passions are more
+distempered, more isolated, more abstracted from reason or sense than in
+Shakespeare. As in the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the
+influence of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans is most unmistakable in the
+prominence given to insanity and villany. But this prominence is also a
+natural result of the romanticists' prepossession with passion. In tragedy,
+they felt that some passions must be very evil and some ruinous; hence
+they devoted themselves to a study of malice and madness. Their villains
+are more vigorous than those of the eighteenth century, but they, too,
+imitate Iago; and the mad scenes always recall either Lear or Ophelia. The
+romanticists can realize passion for the moment, or display its variable
+moods; but they rarely succeed in making its extended portrayal convincing.
+They clung to the idea that the only way to depict passion was to eliminate
+all else. Even in the great writers passion absorbs the interest; in the
+minor plays it tears itself to tatters. Tragedy after tragedy represents
+passions, not conflicting but alternating, until one or the other turns to
+madness. As Lewis's prologue declared, Romance "raves away the hours." The
+conception of tragedy seems to be the burning up of the soul in passion,
+and the poets' main concern to describe the conflagration. The romanticists
+needed Lyttleton's advice, to read Shakespeare, but to study Racine.
+
+The conception of tragedy that requires the expression of passion working
+in individual men, and seeks in history or legend for examples of isolated
+effects of the great emotions, clearly involves something different from a
+veracious representation of life as we all see it, and something more than
+the confusion of passions run wild. According to contemporary philosophical
+criticism, as that of Schiller and Schelling, or that of Coleridge and
+Shelley, tragedy should take part in the search for universal truth; not
+universal in the eighteenth-century conception of typical characters and
+aphoristic generalizations, but universal in the sense that, in the words
+of Carlyle, it seeks the "interpretation of the divine idea in the world."
+Tragedy should investigate, as Lamb declared, "the grounds of the passion,
+its correspondence to a great and heroic nature," and should also seek to
+find in the riots of evil or the storms of passion symptoms of the struggle
+of Nature to rid itself of disease and fever, the presage of a higher unity
+for both man and the universe. Something of this is discernible in
+"Remorse" or elsewhere; there is a passionate demand for ethical realities
+in "Cain"; but the only positive presentation of an idealistic theory of
+tragedy is "The Cenci."
+
+Though tragedy thus reflects the changes working in the ideas and forms of
+literature, these changes are, of course, more distinctly indicated
+elsewhere. If we had no knowledge of other literature, and only tragedy to
+judge from, we could not clearly discern the far-reaching changes wrought
+by the romantic revival. Tragedy from 1800 to 1830 could be described as
+marking a return to the Elizabethans and Shakespeare, an absorption in the
+depiction of passion, a revival of poetic imagination in expression, an
+appeal to terror rather than to pity, and to the strange and mysterious
+rather than the reasonable; but it could not be said that the summation of
+these changes resulted in an extensive or enduring development.
+
+It is not easy to find a stopping-place for a history of English tragedy.
+In the case of the acted drama the close of Macready's management offers a
+definite end, for the ensuing twenty-five years are nearly a blank as far
+as acted tragedy is concerned. In the case of the unacted drama, however,
+there is no point of marked change. The deaths of Scott and Goethe mark a
+stage in European literature; and the Victorian era introduces new poets
+and novelists, new social and political conditions, and a new foreign
+influence in the French romanticists. But the closet dramas after 1830 are
+in many ways closely related to those of the generation before. Closet
+tragedy in the plays of Browning, Sir Henry Taylor, Matthew Arnold,
+Swinburne, and others, was largely the outcome of the theatrical and
+literary conditions which we have been tracing. Separated from the theatre,
+it offers, one must fear, little that is vital in the development of the
+drama, however impressive it may be as poetry. The appearance of new
+semi-dramatic species was a natural accompaniment of the continued
+departure of drama from the stage. Miss Mitford and Bulwer-Lytton had
+written "dramatic scenes." Later Landor's genius found its truest
+opportunity not in poetic plays, but in prose imaginary conversations, at
+their best splendidly dramatic. Browning turned from the theatre to
+dramatic lyrics, romances, and monologues. In fact, in the work of all the
+romantic dramatists, including Browning and Swinburne, dramatic power
+reveals itself in scenes and passages rather than in whole plays. Tragedy
+as a literary form, it may be repeated, is dependent for its life upon the
+theatre. Removed from the theatre, its integrity is gone, it develops
+strange and varied forms. Instead of tragedy, we have "My Last Duchess,"
+"The Ring and the Book," and the Mary Stuart trilogy.
+
+It is this separation from the theatre that seems to have been the main
+cause for the failure of the romantic movement in tragedy. We may, to be
+sure, find other causes in plenty. The genius of its great poets was
+lyrical rather than dramatic. Lyrical and narrative poetry and, above all,
+the novel absorbed both public interest and imaginative genius. Again,
+there was no free play for a revolution in tragedy, because there had been
+no tyranny. Classicism had never dominated the drama as in other European
+nations. In English tragedy of the eighteenth century, blank verse, however
+tainted by affectation, had kept the Elizabethan fondness for figure;
+structure, though following after French models, had maintained the
+traditions of English freedom; the subjects had kept open a wide range and
+had not neglected the medieval field; and sentiment, if not passion, had
+reigned. While the German and French romanticists found in Shakespeare an
+incentive to something new, the English romanticists could only elevate to
+omnipotence one who had long been the idol of the theatres. He was for them
+no innovator, but rather the unrecognized tyrant who held them back from
+real innovation. As Beddoes recognized in theory though not in practice,
+"the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold tramping fellow,--no
+reviver, even however good."
+
+But if we still ask why Coleridge or Beddoes should not have written
+tragedy as well as Schiller or Victor Hugo, why the tragedy of passion,
+revolt, and idealism, applied to history or legend, did not flourish in the
+time of the French Revolution and Napoleon, of Kemble and Kean, of Byron
+and Browning, the best answer must be found in the fact that theatrical
+conditions offered no encouragement to tragic drama, but almost forbade a
+serious attempt to learn the ways of the theatre or to deal in its debased
+wares.
+
+If theatrical conditions had been favorable, if the union of Macready and
+Browning could have continued, one fancies that the romantic drama might
+yet have succeeded. The chronicle of English tragedy finds its climax in
+the first act, with Shakespeare as its protagonist; henceforth, directed by
+his ghost, its action goes haltingly, vainly awaiting another climax and
+another protagonist. In Browning, it was, perhaps, nearer than ever before
+to finding both. Since the Restoration, no poet had come to the theatre so
+gifted with dramatic genius, no poet so concerned with the study of the
+vicissitudes of human motive, so alive to the dramatic values of crucial
+moments, so curious as to the meaning of passion and pain, suffering and
+evil, in the drama of life. "Strafford" and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" have
+the weaknesses of youth and experiment, but they are the plays of a pioneer
+who is not content with returning to the Elizabethans or the Greeks, but is
+seeking to convey through his stories and persons the truth that is in him.
+The study of Strafford is almost the first independent and acute study of
+an Englishman of history in all the historical tragedies since "Henry V";
+"A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" one of the few plays to realize individual
+passions since Otway. And the dramatic defects--the failure to meet his
+audience half-way, the awkwardness and garrulity of expression, the lack of
+repression in form, while defects that continue in Browning's later
+poetry--are the very faults for which a severe apprenticeship to the
+theatre might have been the best discipline. An apprenticeship such as
+Shakespeare served might have turned Browning's monologues and lyrics into
+dramas; but the age was incapable of furnishing such a training, and the
+fiasco with Macready was the end of the period and the defeat of the
+poetical drama.
+
+What comes after in the nineteenth century may best be left to the future
+historian, who will be able to interpret its plays in the light of a
+succeeding development. The plays of Tennyson, reverting again to
+Shakespeare, and the poems of Swinburne may, after all, be the forerunners
+of a new revival of poetical tragedy. Or the great development in technic
+that has proceeded, first under the guidance of the French dramatists, and
+then of Ibsen, and the serious essays of dramatists of the passing
+generation may be the pioneers of a national drama of first-rate importance
+in the generation to come. Certainly Ibsen, with his revolution in both the
+content and the form of the tragic drama, has been the great force in later
+nineteenth century tragedy. His work as it affects England and America,
+however neglected, postponed, or modified, must be the text of a
+succeeding chapter on English tragedy, which cannot yet be written.
+
+
+NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+Genest's _Account of the English Stage_ stops at 1830. A continuation of
+this work down to the present time is much to be desired. There is no
+thorough history or bibliography of the drama of this period. In addition
+to the histories of the theatre already mentioned, W. C. Oulton's _History
+of the Theatres of London_, 1795-1817, may be consulted. Memoirs of the
+Kembles are useful for this period, and also Macready's _Reminiscences_,
+ed. Sir F. Pollock (1875), Moore's _Life of Sheridan_ (1825), Molloy's
+_Life of Edmund Kean_ (1888), William Archer's admirable life of Macready
+(_Eminent Actors Series_), are all valuable. _Random Recollections_ by
+Colman the younger, and memoirs of Kelly, O'Keefe, and Reynolds supply
+information in regard to the theatre and illegitimate drama. John
+Cumberland's collections, _British Theatre_ (41 vols., 1829) and the _Minor
+Theatre_ (15 vols.), are printed from acting copies, and the second
+comprises many illegitimate plays.
+
+Dramatic criticism of the period includes Coleridge (see criticism of
+Maturin's _Bertram_ in _Biographia Literaria_), Hazlitt, _A View of the
+English Stage_ (1818); Leigh Hunt, _Critical Essays on the Performers of
+the London Theatres_ (1807) (selections from same, ed. W. Archer and R. W.
+Lowe, 1894); Lamb (see _Lamb's Dramatic Essays_, ed. Brander Matthews,
+1893). See, also, R. H. Horne's _New Spirit of the Age_ (1844), containing
+criticism of Knowles, Macready, Bulwer-Lytton, and Browning.
+
+The dramatic work of the chief poets has been studied in connection with
+their other poetry by many editors and critics, but rarely in its relation
+to the drama of the period. Professor Beers's two volumes, _English
+Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_ (1899), and _English Romanticism in
+the Nineteenth Century_ (1901), deal with the German influence; C. H.
+Herford has an excellent though brief account of the drama of the period in
+his _Age of Wordsworth_; Watson Nicholson's _The Struggle for a Free Stage
+in London_ (1906) is full and valuable. Ernest Bates's monograph on _The
+Cenci_ (1908) discusses that tragedy and its relations to contemporary
+drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[45] See _The Haunted Tower_, an opera (1789), acted eighty times in two
+seasons.
+
+[46] Its borrowings are noted by Genest, viii, 603. The scene is quoted in
+Archer's _Life of Macready_ (Eminent Actors Series), p. 40.
+
+[47] _The Fall of Robespierre_ (1794), by Southey and Coleridge, and
+Southey's _Wat Tyler_ (1817), written in 1794, hardly require even mention
+as tragedies.
+
+[48] In this and the two following paragraphs the bracketed dates are those
+of the first performances in London. Some of the plays were first acted
+elsewhere.
+
+[49] "I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising
+against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a
+weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." Letter to
+his sister, December, 1819.
+
+[50] The translation of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ (1799), _The
+House of Aspen_ (1830), _Halidon Hill_ (1822), _Macduff's Cross_ (1823),
+_The Doom of Devorgoil_ (1830), _Auchindrane_ (1830).
+
+[51] Herford, _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 227.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found
+their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many
+common characteristics, they do separate themselves from other plays of
+their periods, they are connected from one period to another in a
+continuous development. English tragedies constitute a dramatic type, a
+literary form. This type has, to be sure, permitted many
+variations,--revenge tragedy, chronicle play, tragicomedy, domestic
+tragedy, sentimental tragedy, heroic play, or the closet tragedy of the
+romanticists--but every one of these species has had its connections with
+others, and in every period the tragedies of varying kinds have been
+related not only to one another but to those that have gone before. With
+changing theatrical conditions, with new literary impulses, with new views
+of the old traditions, with new influences from Spain or France or Germany,
+the type has taken new characteristics or made new alliances, but has never
+lost its integrity. At any time during the three centuries it would have
+been possible to frame a definition of tragedy that would include over nine
+tenths of the tragedies of the period, and the other tenth would offer only
+definable variations. However strong the foreign influences, tragedy has
+maintained the national tradition; however great the innovations, it has
+never broken with the past. From Marlowe to Shelley there has been an
+unbroken continuity in themes, stories, types of persons, nature of
+emotional appeal, structure, and even in the blank verse.
+
+So marked is the integrity and continuity of the type that tragedy lends
+itself, better perhaps than most other forms, to the biological analogy.
+The processes which we have been tracing are evolutionary. Whether we
+consider the main type or its varying forms, we are reminded constantly of
+the laws governing the origin and development of natural species. The
+history of the Elizabethan drama in particular affords an example of the
+origin, development, culmination, and degeneration of a literary species,
+which might be analyzed closely as Brunetiere has analyzed French tragedy
+of the seventeenth century. Created from a cross-fertilization of Seneca on
+the medieval drama, it appears in dubious forms of morality and chronicle,
+springs into full integrity in Marlowe, reaches its culmination in
+Shakespeare, and degenerates under the changed environment of the social
+and theatrical conditions that followed the death of Elizabeth. But the
+analogy is not less applicable to the whole history of tragedy. The slow
+development of variations and new species under changing environment is
+found in every period, as in the formation and growth of the revenge play
+or in the development of the sentimental tragedy of the eighteenth century.
+The quick formation of species by mutation also has its parallels, as in
+the sudden appearance of Marlowe or of the heroic tragedy bred from the
+Beaumont-Fletcher play and French romance. In the persistence of the stage
+villain through all forms and periods, we might even discover one of
+Mendel's unit characters. The reversion to an earlier form appears in the
+return of Lee or of the Romanticists to the Elizabethans. And the tendency
+of individual plays to regress to the main type has been a constant and on
+the whole perhaps the most potent force of the development.
+
+We may find the nature of the literary species determined by constant
+principles corresponding to environment and heredity in the evolution of
+natural species. Environment as a factor in literature has long been
+recognized by criticism, and has been apparent in every play that we have
+examined. Each period has been distinguished by theatrical, social, and
+literary conditions peculiar to itself and constituting the
+change-producing environment of the drama. Tragedy has at every stage
+responded to these changing conditions. And the law of heredity is also
+paralleled. No play has been without its inheritance. The most original, as
+Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Otway's "Orphan," Lillo's "Barnwell," and Shelley's
+"Cenci," have shown their indebtedness no less clearly, if less slavishly,
+than the more commonplace individuals. The classical tradition transformed
+the English breed as the Arabian stock has the racing-horse; the French
+influence changed the very anatomy of the species. Our study must surely
+have called attention to the extraordinary force that imitation has
+exercised in the creation of tragedy. It seems, indeed, the generating
+power. Men are forever imitating, but they cannot imitate without change.
+In these changes, the variations due to environment--personal, theatrical,
+literary, social--arise the individual peculiarities, the beginnings of new
+species, the element of growth. The great mass of tragedies, however,
+differentiate themselves only feebly or slightly from the type. They are
+imitations that preserve all the essential characteristics of their
+originals. Some ideas, some plays, some traditions, have an astonishing
+fecundity; other stocks, procreative for a while, soon turn barren. But,
+destroy the faculty of imitation, and the generation of literary forms
+would seem wellnigh impossible.
+
+Thus far, perhaps, the biological analogy may be pressed, if we remember
+that it is only an analogy. The evolution of a wagon or a battleship might
+offer an equally suggestive and an equally unsafe comparison. No one should
+be deceived by the analogy into thinking that what we call environment and
+heredity in literary species correspond in fact with their namesakes in the
+physical world. One play does not create another. It, along with countless
+other things, suggests ideas and impressions which are made into a play by
+the author. Each tragedy is the child of a mind, whose creative processes
+have little real resemblance to physical generation. To call the influence
+of "Hamlet" heredity, and the influence of the author's newspaper reading,
+or of his family, or his political beliefs, environment, is merely to
+assign arbitrary names. Again, art, unlike nature, is careless of the type
+and careful of the individual. A single play may live longer and have
+greater generating power than a whole species. "Othello" during the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has, perhaps, had more influence upon
+English tragedy than all non-Shakespearean tragedies together. Sophocles is
+still germinating. It is as if we now had the venerable chief of the
+mastodons, surviving many of the species he had originated, and still
+creating his offspring to confuse the evolutions of the many other species
+he had already aided in forming. In literature we are attempting to trace
+the development of species, of which individuals live forever; to
+discriminate the agents in a complex creative process which we do not at
+all understand; to call one play the child of another when it is more truly
+the kaleidoscopic aggregate of much reading, much observation, much
+experience shaken into a new form by the author's creative imagination.
+
+Literary criticism may borrow from the natural sciences the evolutionary
+conception and some of its accompaniments; in particular, the demarcation
+of literary forms by the persistence of certain characteristics through
+changing conditions of nation or period, and the recognition of imitation
+as an important element in the creative process. It would seem, however,
+that further progress in the classification and explanation of literary
+phenomena is not to be gained by searching for additional analogies, but in
+the study and analysis of the phenomena themselves in the effort to
+discover the principles and laws of the mental processes peculiar to
+literature.
+
+We may put the case, then, without further reliance on the evolution of
+physical species. For three hundred years Englishmen have been writing
+tragedies, all much alike, all related in origin, nature, and purpose. In
+our study of their relationships, the influences governing their creation
+have been grouped in two main classes: first, that of the theatre itself,
+and second, that which has been called the literary tradition. In the
+theatre has been included the influence of actors and audience and all
+pertaining to the theatrical presentation. Changes in the mere stage and
+its appurtenances have been factors determining the very nature of tragedy.
+The scenery and women actors of the Restoration compelled important
+modifications in the drama; the large theatres of Kemble's day drove
+tragedy from the stage and encouraged a pantomime hybrid. The influence of
+theatrical fashions and traditions, always in part changing and transitory,
+has been felt in every variation, advance, or retrogression of the acted
+drama. Yet it is the influence of the theatre that has maintained the
+integrity of form and has thus been the main force in preserving the
+species. The literary tradition, even more complex in its elements than
+that of the theatre, altering and cumulative, composed of classical or
+French as well as English masterpieces, drawn from the novel or other forms
+as well as the drama, affected by all social movements, passing through
+such transformations as those of the classical and the romantic periods,
+has nevertheless, on the whole, conserved the form and content of tragedy.
+During the periods that we have examined, blank verse, illustrious persons,
+the pomp of courts, the great passions of revenge, ambition, jealousy,
+lust, love, and hate, hideous crimes, and the conflict of potent wills have
+been the usual accompaniments of the actions of suffering and ruin. There
+has been only occasional departure from the Shakespearean conception of
+tragedy as representation of great personalities engaged in disastrous
+conflict. Shakespeare, in fact, at least since Dryden's "All for Love," has
+been a constant and often the dominating element in this complex and
+variable literary tradition. The two classes of influence, theatrical and
+literary, have thus proved both variable and conserving. The theatre, while
+crying for novelty, holds tenaciously to its traditions. Literature, while
+enforcing rules, precedents, prejudices, while clinging to its models and
+demanding imitation, yet incites to rivalry and originality, to new
+endeavor, variation, and excellence.
+
+These two main classes of influence have rarely if ever run parallel. At
+times the theatre has attracted literature, as in the Elizabethan era, at
+times it has repelled literature, as in the early nineteenth century.
+Usually, what the stage of the day desires and what the literature of the
+past encourages have been quite different and often irreconcilable. In our
+study we have consequently had to keep in mind not only two main lines of
+influence, but two points of view and two standards of judgment. It is the
+purpose of dramatic art to bring about their reconciliation, to harmonize
+the technic of the theatre, the necessities of the drama, and the standards
+of literary excellence. Our history records no attainment of such an ideal;
+rather the two antinomies seem farther from final unity in the time of
+Byron than in that of Shakespeare. Yet, through the discarding of temporary
+fashions, the growing knowledge of structure, and the multiplication of
+theatrical means, the material and experience necessary for further
+progress have at least been accumulating. Perhaps a survey of the drama of
+the last century on the continent would result in a more sanguine view of
+the development of the principles of dramatic art freed from the
+temporalities of theatrical fashion. There is probability in Professor
+Brander Matthews's suggestion that in our growing cosmopolitanism national
+divergencies in content will exist with a growing agreement in form. We may
+hope that this will be merely an agreement in making quick trial of new
+ideas, from whatever theatre derived, and that the principles of art
+established will not, as so often in the past, prove pedantic and
+hampering. This much seems fairly certain,--literary genius and theatrical
+experience must unite in order to produce great tragedy. From the theatre
+the writer must learn dramatic art, the first rule of which is to win his
+audience; from literature he must learn the elements that will give his
+work lasting value. Only after an experience with the theatre can he
+venture on innovations likely to be permanent. Only if he have literary
+genius will he depart in triumph from literary traditions. The double
+mastery comes to one only rarely, and then only after a double service.
+
+The relationships of tragedy, however, are not confined to the theatre or
+to literature. That tragedy, like other forms of literature, is an
+imitation of life, is a platitude whose meaning sometimes fails to impress
+us. But its truth has a witness in every writer of tragedy. However
+insignificant or thoughtless, he has been trying to put into his play
+something of life as he knows it, trying to find some relationships in the
+world of fact that will carry meaning and interest to his fellows. Whether
+he has been writing mainly to meet the desires of actors and audience, or
+has been voyaging alone toward some discovery of beauty and grandeur of
+human passion, whether he has been building his house of intrigue according
+to well-conned rules of dramatic structure, or has been copying some tangle
+of fact, he has been studying the ways and means of human actions.
+Trivially or greatly, as the case may be, he has been seeking to interpret
+life. Classicist, romanticist, and realist have been by different processes
+seeking the same end, the discovery of meaning in the facts of existence.
+They have all viewed the Art that they have so differently formulated, as a
+means of approach to Nature, the deity whom they all profess. Neither high
+seriousness, nor sublime theme, nor a complete philosophy is a necessary
+accompaniment of Matthew Arnold's definition. Whether the poet write of
+"the tangles of Neaera's hair" or of that disobedience that first "brought
+death into the world," he is attempting a criticism of life. This
+definition does not state the primary aim of literature, for it must first
+of all interest us, or its sole function, for it seeks beauty as well as
+truth and cannot always unite them; but it does indicate the most permanent
+and vitalizing element in the creation of literature, the most organic
+relationship that connects its many manifestations.
+
+The greatness of tragedy depends upon its allegiance to this meaning of
+literature. The dramatic form gives opportunity for a close approach to the
+semblance of actuality. The very subjects of tragedy, suffering and
+disaster, discourage the seeking of mere amusement or a contentment with
+mere beauty of expression. They require, if not high seriousness or a
+teleology, at least a concern with the most interesting, inescapable, and
+dreadful of human facts. This baleful portion of human existence is the
+field of tragedy's research, where it may find grandeur and violence,
+malevolence and magnanimity, optimism or pessimism, harmony or anarchy, but
+where it can only with difficulty escape a serious attempt at the study of
+character and deed. No other literary form has so nobly responded to this
+great mission as that adopted by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Calderon,
+Corneille, and Ibsen. It has constrained drama and literature to their duty
+of research, interpretation, discovery in the almost impenetrable maze of
+human fact, by the very nature of its chosen field, by the preeminence of
+its great examples, and even by the continued endeavor of its humblest
+servants. As one reads through these forgotten tragedies, as when one
+scans closely any large field of human effort, the main impression is one
+of futility. Beauty is not attained, life is not revealed, everything is
+imitative, feeble, and absurd. Yet, even among those hundreds of eighteenth
+century tragedies, with their rhyming tags that neatly sum up their
+authors' generalizations on life, one may find reason for sympathy and
+interest. They record what had meaning for their day, the heroisms,
+sentiments, and morals that somehow stirred men's hearts and elevated their
+resolves. They represent some degree of temporary success in giving
+relations and significance to their world. The lastingly significant
+representation of life is found not in the many but in the few, but the
+mediocrities and the failures continue the effort and maintain the form
+that make possible the few masterpieces. The very greatest set no
+impassable bound, for the ever-widening expanse of tragic fact continually
+invites new explorers. Progress can come not by resting admiringly on the
+greatness of the past, but only through a free opportunity for new pioneers
+and discoverers. Were the achievement of English tragedy far less than it
+has been, the very expenditure of effort should give it some interest for
+study. Its history, however, includes in Shakespeare's tragedies a few of
+the unapproached achievements of the human mind, many other plays that for
+a while greatly interested and persuaded men, not a few that still have
+searching meaning for us, and hundreds more that have maintained an
+unselfish, a social, a moral inquiry into life, and that, while perishing
+themselves, have aided others to live. In such a history, even he who runs
+may read a record of human endeavor not alien to his interest.
+
+Tragedy takes an abiding place among the great courses of continuous human
+activity dedicated to an inquiry into the meanings of life. Its imaginative
+and intellectual study of suffering and ruin must continue, however its
+form may alter, if the theatre is to be a social force of importance, if
+literature is to offer an intelligent, serious, and comprehensive view of
+life, if the two are to unite in something better than a trivial and
+selfish entertainment. Its methods may not commend themselves in an age of
+physical and mechanical sciences, its aim may not commend itself at a time
+when splendid discoveries in the physical world blur the importance of an
+interpretation of moral and social relations. But tragedy has survived many
+ages and creeds, and seems likely to survive as long as men try to
+understand other men, to sympathize with their troubles, and to relate
+these somehow to their own beliefs and ideals. In the future as in the
+past, when a nation or community is at a period of culminating advance,
+when society is most mindful of its greatness and its obligations, tragedy
+should find its most helpful encouragement and its greatest opportunity.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+The Index contains the titles of works, the names of authors, and the names
+of a few actors referred to in the text or footnotes. The Bibliographical
+Notes are not indexed. Alterations of plays are not indexed separately
+unless they have separate titles. References of importance are indicated by
+heavy-faced figures.
+
+
+_Abraham_, 56.
+
+_Absalon_, 39.
+
+Addison, Joseph, 250, 289-291, 302, 307.
+
+_Adriana_, 127.
+
+AEschylus, 13, 354.
+
+_Agamemnon_ (by Thomson), 299, 300.
+
+_Agamemnon and Ulysses_, 70 n.
+
+_Ajax and Ulysses_, 70 n.
+
+_Ajax Flagellifer_, 58.
+
+_Alcazar, The Battle of_, 108, 111, 115, 221.
+
+_Alcibiades_, 269.
+
+Alexander, W., 142.
+
+_Alfred the Great_, 346.
+
+Alleyn, Edward, 98.
+
+_All for Love_, 25, 260, 261, 263, 264, 277, 282, 293, 372.
+
+_All's Lost by Lust_, 218.
+
+_Almida_, 295 n.
+
+_Alphonsus of Aragon_, 107.
+
+_Alzira_, 295 n., 304.
+
+_Alzuma_, 295 n.
+
+_Ambitious Stepmother, The_, 283.
+
+_Amboyna_, 259.
+
+_Amelia_, 321.
+
+Andrews, P. M., 332.
+
+_Andromaque_, 290.
+
+_Antigone_, 195.
+
+_Antonio_, 343.
+
+_Antony and Cleopatra_, ~175-177~, 178, 184, 185, 189, 195, 261,
+293, 297 n.
+
+_Antonio and Mellida_ (see _Antonio's Revenge_), 139, 146.
+
+_Antonio's Revenge_, 146, ~147-149.~
+
+_Apology for Poetry_, 44, 72.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 51, 62 n., ~63~, ~64~, 66, 69, 71.
+
+Archer, Wm., 203 n., 335 n.
+
+_Archipropheta_, 39.
+
+_Arden of Feversham_, 109, 110, 113, 140;
+  (adaptation by Lillo), 315, 316.
+
+_Argalus and Parthenia_, 234.
+
+_Ariodante and Genevra_, 70 n.
+
+Aristotle, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, 25, 43, 44, 165, 248.
+
+Arnold, Matthew, 361, 374.
+
+_Ars Poetica_, 34, 43.
+
+Ascham, Roger, 32, 39.
+
+Asinari, Frederigo, 56.
+
+_Atheist's Tragedy, The_, 151, ~153~, ~154~, 201, 202.
+
+_Athelwold_, 304.
+
+_Athenian Captive, The_, 346.
+
+_Auchindrane_, 349 n., 350.
+
+_Aureng Zebe_, 260, 282, 297 n.
+
+
+Bacon, Lord, 79.
+
+Baillie, Joanna, ~339-341~, 343, 357.
+
+Bale, John, 39, 40, 41.
+
+Banks, John, 273, 277, 282, 308 n.
+
+_Baptistes_, 37.
+
+_Barbarossa_, 308 n.
+
+_Barnavelt, Tragedy of Sir John van Olden_, 214.
+
+_Bartholomew Fair_, 144.
+
+_Bashful Lover, The_, 222.
+
+_Basil_, 339.
+
+_Battle of Hexham, The_, 332, 333.
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher (see, also, Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John), 136,
+179, 197, 199, 202, ~203-211~, 229, 232, 238, 240, 249, 251, 255, 257,
+262, 265, 270, 277, 282, 322, 346, 368.
+
+Beaumont, Francis (see Beaumont and Fletcher), 198, 204, 211.
+
+Beddoes, T. L., 348, 356, 357, 362.
+
+Behn, Mrs. Afra, 266, 274.
+
+_Believe as You List_, 221, 224.
+
+Belleforest, 104.
+
+_Berenice_, 269.
+
+_Bertram_, 344, 357.
+
+Betterton, T., 245, 252, 266.
+
+Beza, T. de, 56.
+
+_Blacksmith's Daughter, The_, 71.
+
+_Bloody Brother, The, or Rollo, Duke of Normandy_, ~214-216~, 252,
+282.
+
+_Blot on the 'Scutcheon, The_, 346, 363, 364.
+
+Boaden, J., 332.
+
+Boccaccio, 32, 55, 56, 239.
+
+_Bondman, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Bonduca_, ~213~, 252, 282, 322 n.
+
+_Borderers, The_, 341.
+
+_Bothwell_, 14.
+
+_Braganza_, 322.
+
+Brandl, Alois, 55 n.
+
+_Bridal, The_, 346.
+
+_Bride's Tragedy, The_, 348.
+
+_Broken Heart, The_, 227, ~228~.
+
+Brooke, Arthur, 127, 129, 133.
+
+Brooke, H., 295.
+
+_Brothers, The_, 298.
+
+Brown, Charles, 349.
+
+Brown, John, 306, 308 n.
+
+Browning, Robert, 14, 129, 182, 222, 346, 354, 355, 361, 363, 364.
+
+Brunetiere, Ferdinand, 6, 367.
+
+_Brutus_, 295 n.;
+  (by John Howard Payne), 344.
+
+_Brutus of Alba_, 246.
+
+Buchanan, George, 37, 56.
+
+Bulwer-Lytton, 345, 346, 361.
+
+Burgoyne, Gen., 318 n.
+
+_Burning of Sodom, The_, 40.
+
+Burns, Robert, 324.
+
+_Busiris_, 297 n., 298.
+
+_Bussy D'Ambois, The Death of_, 144, 252;
+  _The Revenge of_, 144.
+
+Byron, Lord, 182, 338, 345, 347, ~350-353~, 354, 356-358, 363, 373.
+
+_Byron, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of_, 144.
+
+
+_Caelia, or the Perjured Lover_, 318.
+
+_Caesar and Pompey_, 70 n.
+
+_Caesar Borgia_, 267.
+
+_Cain_, 339, 352, 354, 356, 360.
+
+_Caius Gracchus_, 344.
+
+_Caius Marius, History and Fall of_, 269, 292.
+
+Calderon, 13, 354, 375.
+
+_Caleb Williams_, 333.
+
+_Caligula_, 266.
+
+Calprenede, 247.
+
+_Cambyses_, 52, 62, ~66~, ~67~, 69, 74, ~172~, 237.
+
+Campbell, Thomas, 341.
+
+Canfield, Dorothea, 290 n.
+
+Capell, Edward, 293.
+
+_Caractacus_, 297.
+
+_Cardenio_, 211.
+
+_Cardinal, The_, 233, 252.
+
+_Careless Husband, The_, 317.
+
+Carey, H., 314 n.
+
+Carlell, L., 235.
+
+Carlyle, T., 360.
+
+_Carmelite, The_, 323.
+
+_Castle of Otranto, The_, 322, 330.
+
+_Castle Spectre, The_, 323, 329.
+
+_Catiline_, ~141-144~, 297 n.
+
+_Catilin's Conspiracy_, 71.
+
+_Cato_, ~290~, ~291~, 297 n.
+
+_Cenci, The_, 353, ~354~, 356, ~361~, ~368~.
+
+Centlivre, Mrs., 266.
+
+Cervantes, 212.
+
+Chambers, E. K., 38.
+
+_Changeling, The_, ~219~.
+
+Chapman, George, 6, 137, 139, ~144-146~, 184, 185, 187, 198, 202, 214,
+252.
+
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, 31, 32.
+
+Cheke, Sir John, 32.
+
+Chettle, Henry, 139, 151, ~152~, ~153~, 156.
+
+_Christian Hero, The_, 315.
+
+Christopherson, J., 39.
+
+_Christus Redivivus_, 39.
+
+_Christus Triumphans_, 39.
+
+_Chrononhotonthologos_, 314 n.
+
+Churchill, George B., 58 n.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 292, 307, 317.
+
+Cicero, 142.
+
+_Cid, The_, 247.
+
+Cinthio, Giraldi, 56, 86.
+
+_City Madam, The_, 220, 322 n.
+
+_City of the Plague, The_, 347.
+
+_Clarissa Harlowe_, 275, 321.
+
+_Cleomenes_, 262, 273.
+
+_Cleopatre Captive_, 38.
+
+_Cloridon and Radimanta_, 70 n.
+
+Coleridge, S. T., 213 n., 337, 338, ~341~, ~342~, 343, 357, 359,
+362.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 281, 316.
+
+Colman, George, 322 n.
+
+Colman, George (the younger), ~332-334~, 337.
+
+_Complaint of Buckingham, The_, 52.
+
+_Condemnation of John Huss, The_, 40.
+
+_Confidant, The_, 343.
+
+Congreve, Wm., 3, 273, ~275~, 277, 282.
+
+_Conquest of Granada_, 259, 282.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, The_, 317.
+
+_Constantine_, 267.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 175, ~177~, ~178~, 265, 292;
+  (by Thomson), 299, 301, 302.
+
+Corneille, Pierre, 245, 248, 294, 300, 316, 375.
+
+Corneille, Thomas, 298.
+
+_Cornelia_ (translation of Garnier's), 100 n.
+
+_Countess of Salisbury, The_, 308 n.
+
+_Count Julian_, 348, 349.
+
+_Count of Narbonne, The_ (adaptation of Castle of Otranto), 322.
+
+Crabbe, George, 324, 343.
+
+Cradock, J., 295 n.
+
+Creizenach, W., 56, 69.
+
+_Critic, The_, 314 n.
+
+Crowne, John, 250, 253, 266, 269.
+
+_Cruelty of a Stepmother, The_, 71.
+
+Cumberland, Richard, 285, 306, 319, 320, 323, 344.
+
+_Cupid's Revenge_, 203.
+
+_Curfew, The_, 335, 343.
+
+Cushman, Miss Charlotte, 344.
+
+_Cymbeline_, 179, 265, 292, 297 n.
+
+_Cyrus_, 295 n., 296.
+
+_Cyrus the Great, or the Tragedy of Love_, 273.
+
+
+_Dalida, La_, see _Roxana_.
+
+_Damon and Pythias_, 51, 58, 62, ~63~.
+
+Daniel, Samuel, 142.
+
+Dante, 31.
+
+Davenant, Sir Wm., 235, 244, 251, 252, 277, 292.
+
+Davenport, R., 235.
+
+_David and Bethsabe_, 110, 111.
+
+_Death's Jest Book_, 348.
+
+_De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum_, 32.
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 317.
+
+_Deformed Transformed, The_, 357.
+
+Dekker, Thomas, 198, 224, 227, 240.
+
+_Delivery of Susannah, The_, 40.
+
+_De Montfort_, 339, 340, 343.
+
+Dennis, John, 250, 290, 301.
+
+_Deserted Daughter, The_, 320.
+
+Dibdin, T., 332, 338.
+
+Dickens, Charles, 312.
+
+Dictys Cretensis, 65.
+
+Diderot, D., 317, 318.
+
+_Dido_ (by Dolce), 56;
+  (by Gager), 59;
+  (by Ritwyse), 39;
+  (by unknown), 58.
+
+_Dido, Tragedy of_ (by Marlowe and Nash), 89.
+
+_Distressed Mother, The_, 290, 291, 294.
+
+_Divine Comedy, The_, 31.
+
+Dolce, Lodovico, 54, 56.
+
+_Doll's House, The_, 10.
+
+_Don Carlos_, 269.
+
+_Don Juan_, 354.
+
+Donne, John, 137, 229.
+
+_Don Quixote_, 333.
+
+_Don Sebastian_, 262, 263, 278, 335.
+
+_Doom of Devorgoil, The_, 349.
+
+_Dorval, or the Test of Virtue_ (translated from Le Fils Naturel), 318 n.
+
+_Double Marriage, The_, 214.
+
+_Douglas_, 305.
+
+_Downfall and Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, The_, 139.
+
+Downman, H., 344.
+
+Drayton, M., 99.
+
+Dryden, John, 145, 208, 248-251, 253, ~259-263~, 264, 266, 271-274, 277,
+278, 281, 282, 293, 328, 331, 335, 372.
+
+_Duchess de la Valiere_, 346.
+
+_Duchess of Malfi, The_, ~199~, 200, 202.
+
+_Duke of Guise, The_, 262, 267.
+
+_Duke of Milan, The_, 71 n., 222, 224, 322 n.
+
+_Duke's Mistress, The_, 233.
+
+_Duplicity_, 319, 320.
+
+D'Urfe, Honore, 239.
+
+D'Urfey, T., 266.
+
+Dyce, Alexander, 215.
+
+
+_Earl of Essex, The_ (adaptation of the Unhappy Favorite, q. v.), 282.
+
+_Earl of Essex, The_ (by Jones), 308 n.
+
+_Earl of Warwick, The_, 308 n.
+
+_Eccerinis_, 36.
+
+_Edward I_, 85, 111.
+
+_Edward II_, 89, 90, ~92~, ~93~, 94, 95, 97, 108, 109, 113,
+114, 132.
+
+_Edward III_, 108, 109, 112, 114.
+
+_Edward and Eleonora_, 299.
+
+Edwards, Richard, 58, 62.
+
+_Effigenia_ (Iphigenia), 71 n., 111.
+
+_Elfrid_, 304.
+
+_Elfrida_, 297.
+
+_Elmerick_, 315.
+
+_Emilia Galotti_, 323.
+
+_English Traveller, The_, 141.
+
+Erasmus, 23.
+
+_Essay of Heroic Plays_, 259.
+
+_Essay on Dramatic Poetry_, 248, 250.
+
+Euripides, 32, 33, 37, 54, 72, 111, 297.
+
+_Evadne_, 344.
+
+_Everyman_, 29.
+
+_Every Man in His Humour_, 137.
+
+_Ezechias_, 58.
+
+
+Fabyan, R., 70.
+
+_Fair Penitent, The_, ~284-287~, ~297 n.~, 317, 328.
+
+_Fair Quarrel, The_, 219.
+
+_Faithful Shepherdess, The_, 206.
+
+Falkland, Lord, 236.
+
+_Fall of Jerusalem, The_, 358.
+
+_Fall of Robespierre, The_, 341 n.
+
+_Falls of Princes, The_, 32.
+
+_False One, The_, 214.
+
+_Family Picture, A_, 318 n.
+
+_Famous Victories of Henry V, The_, 85.
+
+_Fashionable Lover, The_, 320.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, The_, 315, 317.
+
+_Fatal Dowry, The_, 224, 285-287, 304, 344.
+
+_Fatal Extravagance_, 318.
+
+_Fatal Falsehood, The_, 306, 311.
+
+_Fatal Marriage, The_, ~274~, 278, 282.
+
+_Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam, The_, 303, 304.
+
+_Fate of Capua, The_, 274.
+
+_Fate of Villany, The_, 309.
+
+_Faulkner_, 343.
+
+_Faust_, 357.
+
+_Faustus_, 89, 90, ~92~, ~98~.
+
+_Fazio_, 344, 358.
+
+Fenton, E., 308 n.
+
+_Ferrex and Porrex._ See _Gorboduc_.
+
+Field, Nathaniel, 224, 285.
+
+Fielding, Henry, 129, 273, 314 n.
+
+_Fils Naturel, Le_, 318.
+
+Fleay, F. G., 58 n., 63, 118, 155.
+
+Fletcher, John (see, also, Beaumont and Fletcher), 6, 177, 198, 199, ~211-216~,
+219-221, 224-226, 229, 230-232, 234, 238, 246, 255, 256, 261, 262,
+270, 274, 284.
+
+Foote, S., 314 n.
+
+Ford, John, 199, 225, ~226-229~, 234, 237, 240, 256, 348.
+
+_Four Plays in One_, 203.
+
+_Four Sons of Fabius_, 71 n.
+
+Foxe, John, 39.
+
+Francklin, T., 308 n.
+
+Fuller, Harold De W., 114 n., 127 n.
+
+_Funeral, The_, 297 n.
+
+
+Gager, Wm., 59, 111.
+
+_Gamester, The_, 318, 321, 324.
+
+_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, 39.
+
+Gardiner, Bishop, 39.
+
+Garrick, David, 292, 293.
+
+Gascoigne, George, 54.
+
+Gay, John, 307, 314 n.
+
+Genest, J., 335 n.
+
+_George Barnwell, or the London Merchant_, ~314-318~, 321, 324, 368.
+
+_Ghosts_, 18, 195.
+
+Gifford, Wm., 285.
+
+_Gil Blas_, 300.
+
+Gildon, Charles, 250.
+
+_Giocasta_, 54.
+
+_Gismund of Salerne._ See _Tancred and Gismunda._
+
+Glapthorne, Henry, 234, 237, 251.
+
+_Glencoe_, 346.
+
+_Gloriana_, 266.
+
+Glover R., 306.
+
+_God's Promises_, 41.
+
+Godwin, Wm., 341, 343.
+
+Goethe, 327, 349 n., 361.
+
+_Goetz von Berlichingen_, 349.
+
+Goffe, Thomas, 236.
+
+_Gorboduc_, 22, 26, 38, ~40-42~, ~48~, ~51~, ~52-54~,
+55 n., 57, 68, 73.
+
+Gosson, S., 71, 72, 113, 145.
+
+Grafton, Richard, 70.
+
+Granville, Earl of, 277.
+
+Gray, Thomas, 297.
+
+_Grecian Daughter, The_, 308 n.
+
+Greene, Robert, 86, 107, 108, 111, 115, 130, 133.
+
+Greville, Fulke, 142.
+
+Grimald, Nicholas, 39.
+
+Groto, Luigi, 59, 127.
+
+_Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, The_, 261.
+
+Guarini, G. B., 206.
+
+
+_Halidon Hill_, 349 n., 350.
+
+Hall, Bishop, 137.
+
+_Hamblet, Historie of_, 104.
+
+_Hamlet_ (the early), 100 n., ~104~, ~105~, 147, 148, 152, 156.
+
+_Hamlet_, 100, 102, 105, 124, 144, 148, 150, 151, 154, ~155-162~,
+163-165, 169, 171, 173, 175, 184-186, 195, 199, 239, 265, 282, 297 n., 358,
+368, 369.
+
+_Hamlet, Revenge of_, 150.
+
+Harding, Samuel, 236.
+
+Hartson, H., 308 n.
+
+_Haunted Tower, The_, 329 n.
+
+Hauptmann, G., 12.
+
+Hazlitt, Wm., 340, 345.
+
+_Hecatommithi_, 86.
+
+_Hedda Gabler_, 12.
+
+Hegel, G. W. F., ~9.~
+
+_Heiress, The_, 318 n.
+
+Heming, Wm., 235.
+
+_Henry IV_, 265.
+
+_Henry V_ (by Aaron Hill), 304;
+  (by Shakespeare), 137, 364;
+  (by the Earl of Orrery), 253, 257.
+
+_Henry VI_, 89, 108, 114, ~115~, ~116~, 118, 297 n.
+
+_Henry VIII_, 211, 282.
+
+_Hercules Furens_, 119 n.
+
+Herford, C. H., 352 n.
+
+_Hernani_, 346.
+
+_Herodes_, 59.
+
+_Heroine of the Cave, The_, 310.
+
+Heywood, Jasper, 42.
+
+Heywood, Thomas, 139, ~140~, ~141~, 142, 198, 272, 289.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 295, 298, ~303-305~, 318.
+
+_Hoffman_, 151, ~152~, ~153~, 199, 200, 201.
+
+Holcroft, T., 318 n.; 319, 320, 334.
+
+Holinshed, R., 70, 109, 123, 171, 173, 184.
+
+Home, John, 305, 306.
+
+Homer, 192.
+
+Hooker, Richard, 79.
+
+Hoole, J., 295 n., 296, 306.
+
+_Horace_, 294.
+
+_Horestes_, 52, ~64~, 65, 66, 68, 69, ~71~, ~100~.
+
+_House of Aspen, The_, 349.
+
+Howard, Sir Robert, 253, 282.
+
+Hughes, Thomas, 57, 297 n., 308 n.
+
+Hugo, Victor, 337, 346, 363.
+
+_Hunchback, The_, 345.
+
+
+Ibsen, Henrik, 6, 11, 313, 364, 375.
+
+_Imaginary Conversation, The_, 348.
+
+_Imposter, The_, 295 n.
+
+Inchbald, Mrs., 319.
+
+_Indian Emperor, The_, ~253~, 259, 282, 328.
+
+_Indian Queen, The_, 253, 282, 305.
+
+_Innocent Adultery, The_, 297 n.
+
+_Insolvent, The_, 304.
+
+_Ion_, 346.
+
+_Iron Chest, The_, 332, 333.
+
+_Isabella_, 282.
+
+_Island Princess, The_, 246.
+
+_Island Queens, The_ (by Banks), 273.
+
+
+_Jack Straw_, 85.
+
+_James IV, Scottish Historie of_, 87.
+
+_Jane Shore_, 283, ~287-289~, 328.
+
+Jephson, Robert, 322.
+
+_Jephthes_ (by Buchanan), ~37~;
+  (by Christopherson), 39, 56.
+
+_Jeronimo, First Part of_, 100 n.
+
+_Jew, The_ (by Cumberland), 320;
+  (by Unknown), 71.
+
+_Jew of Aragon, The_, 345.
+
+_Jew of Malta, The_, 89, 90, ~92~, 95, 98, 101, 250, 344.
+
+_Jocasta_, 51, ~54~, 55 n.
+
+Jodelle, E., 38.
+
+_John the Baptist_, 41.
+
+_John Woodvil_, 343.
+
+Johnson, Charles, 318.
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 2, 59, 276, 284, 307, 308.
+
+Jones, Henry, 308 n.
+
+Jonson, Ben, 6, 79, 100, 115, 137, 139, ~141-144~, 146, ~151~,
+~152~, 153, 156, 184, 185, 203, 215, 217, 233, 252.
+
+_Joseph and his Brethren_, 339, 347.
+
+_Julia_, 322.
+
+_Julian_, 347.
+
+_Julius Caesar_, 136, 142, ~154~, ~155~, 161, 163, 173, 175,
+177, 186, 282, 292, 297 n., 304.
+
+
+Kean, Edmund, 299, 331, 332, 334, 349, 363.
+
+Keats, John, 338, 347, 348, ~349~, 356, 357.
+
+Keller, Wolfgang, 58 n.
+
+Kemble, Charles, 393.
+
+Kemble, John P., 291-293, 299, 331, 333, 340, 343, 349, 363, 371.
+
+Kemble, Miss Fanny, 308 n.
+
+Kempe, Wm., 171 n.
+
+Killigrew, T., 235.
+
+_King and No King, A_, ~203-205~, 252, 262, 282, 322 n.
+
+_King John_, 114, ~116~, ~117~, 136;
+  (by Bale), 41. See _Troublesome Reign._
+
+_King of Scots, The_, 71.
+
+Kinwelmarsh, F., 54.
+
+Kirchmayer, 37.
+
+_Knight of Malta, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Knight of the Burning Bush_, 71 n.
+
+Knowles, Sheridan, 344-346, 356.
+
+Kotzebue, A. F. F. von, 321, 323, ~327~, ~328~, 332, 337.
+
+Kyd, Thomas, his plays, 99-106;
+  their influence, 106-110, 112-115, 127, 128, 138, 142, 144;
+  on revenge plays and Shakespeare, 147-155, 156, 158, 165, 184;
+  on later revenge tragedy, 196, 199, 200, 201, 223, 239;
+  resemblance to in later plays, 256, 310.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 283, 287.
+
+_Lady of Lyons, The_, 346.
+
+Lamb, Charles, 93, 141, ~343~, 345, 360.
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, 14, 338, ~348~, ~349~, 361.
+
+La Place, Pierre de, 297 n.
+
+_Laws of Candy, The_, 220.
+
+_Lear, King_, 18, 87, 124, 131, 164, ~166-171~, 172, 176, 185, 189,
+190, 195, 202, 226, 282, 292, 312, 358.
+
+Lee, Harriet, 352.
+
+Lee, Nathaniel, 246, 250, 251, 253, 261, 262, ~266-269~, 275, 277, 278,
+282, 284, 290, 309, 344, 368.
+
+Legge, Thomas, 59, 60, 118.
+
+_Leir, King_, 85, 166.
+
+Lessing, G. E., 318, 327.
+
+Lewis, Matthew, 323, ~328~, ~329~, 342, 343, 357, 359.
+
+Lillo, George, 306, ~314-318~, 319, 321, 368.
+
+Lindsay, Sir David, 41.
+
+Livy, 71.
+
+_Locrine_, 107, 111, 115, 119 n., 152.
+
+Lope de Vega, 239.
+
+Lounsbury, Prof. T., 295 n.
+
+Lovati, Lovato di, 36.
+
+_Love for Love_, 297 n.
+
+_Love's Cruelty_, 232, 233.
+
+_Love's Frailties_, 318 n.
+
+_Love's Sacrifice_, 227.
+
+_Love the Cause and Cure of Grief_, 318.
+
+_Love Triumphant_, 262.
+
+Lowell, James Russell, 118.
+
+_Loyal Brother, The_, 274.
+
+_Loyal Subject, The_, 282.
+
+_Lucius Junius Brutus_, 267, 358.
+
+_Lucrece_, 142.
+
+Lydgate, John, 32.
+
+Lyly, John, 75, 79.
+
+_Lyrical Ballads, The_, 339, 355.
+
+Lyttleton, Lord, 298, 299, 359.
+
+
+_Macbeth_, 3, 87, 119, 124, 131, ~171-175~, 184-186, 190, 202, 264,
+282, 292, 297 n., 312, 358.
+
+_Macduff's Cross_, 349 n., 350.
+
+Machiavelli, 95, 165, 190, 236, 267, 310, 311.
+
+Macready, Wm., 290, 331, 332, 335, ~345~, ~346~, 360, 363, 364.
+
+_Mahomet_, 295 n.
+
+_Maid of Honor, The_, 221, ~222~, ~223~, 224, 225, 322 n.
+
+_Maid's Revenge, The_, 232.
+
+_Maid's Tragedy, The_, 203, 204, ~205-210~, 252, 282, 297 n., 346.
+
+_Malcontent, The_, 146, 199.
+
+Mallet, D., 303.
+
+_Manfred_, 352, 357.
+
+Manley, Mrs., 266.
+
+_Marcella_, 322 n.
+
+_Marcellus and Hannibal_, ~14.~
+
+_Mariamne_, 308 n.
+
+_Marino Faliero_, 345, 351.
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 6, 42, 48, 55 n., 61, 73, 74, 75;
+  his relations to his times, 77-84; his tragedies, 88-99;
+  his influence on his contemporaries, 106-113;
+  on Shakespeare, 113-126, 132, 133, 138;
+  on Chapman, 144-146;
+  on Shakespeare's later tragedy, 154, 155, 165, 166, 169, 172, 184, 185, 187;
+  on later Elizabethan tragedy, 196, 214, 234, 239;
+  his plays not acted during Restoration, 252;
+  survival of his type of villain, 310, 311;
+  revival of his influence on the Romanticists, 347, 353;
+  his importance in the development of the species, 367, 368.
+
+_Marriage Night, The_, 236.
+
+Marston, John, 105, 137, 139, 144, ~146-150~, 151, 153, 154, 156, 184,
+185, 199, 200, 201, 202, 218, 235.
+
+_Mary Stuart_, 357.
+
+Mason, Wm., 297.
+
+_Massacre of Paris, The_ (by Lee), 267;
+  (by Marlowe), 89, 144.
+
+Massinger, Philip, 177, 199, 211, 214, 215, ~219-226~, 230, 231, 233-235,
+237, 240, 251, 252, 255, 285, 293, 322.
+
+Matthews, Brander, 373.
+
+Maturin, C. R., 344.
+
+May, Thomas, 235.
+
+_Measure for Measure_, 61 n., 169, 235, 264.
+
+_Meleager_, 59.
+
+_Meliboeus_, 40.
+
+_Merchant of Venice, The_, 71.
+
+_Merope_, 295 n., 296, 304.
+
+_Merry Wives of Windsor_, 258, 297 n.
+
+Middleton, Thomas, 3, 137, 199, 215, ~217-219~, 229, 240.
+
+Miller, James, 295.
+
+Milman, H. H., 344, 346, 356, 358.
+
+Milton, John, 14, 260, 264.
+
+_Mirandola_, 345, 358.
+
+_Mirror for Magistrates, The_, 32, 52, 70, 90.
+
+_Mirza_, 236.
+
+_Misfortunes of Arthur, The_, 51, 52, ~57~, ~58~.
+
+_Miss Sara Sampson_, 318.
+
+Mitford, Miss, 345, 347, 358, 361.
+
+_Mithridates_, 267, ~268~, ~269~.
+
+_Monk's Tale, The_, 31, 32.
+
+Moore, Edward, 306, 318.
+
+More, Miss Hannah, 306, 311.
+
+More, Sir Thomas, 118, 119.
+
+Morel, L., 300 n., 302 n.
+
+_Morte D'Arthur, The_, 57.
+
+Morton, T., 335, 338.
+
+_Mountaineers, The_, 332, 333.
+
+_Mourning Bride, The_, 3, ~275~, ~276~, 297 n., 351.
+
+_Much Ado about Nothing_, 162.
+
+_Murderous Michael_, 71.
+
+Murphy, Arthur, 295, 306, 308 n.
+
+Mussato, Albertino, 36.
+
+_Mutius Scaevola_, 71 n.
+
+_My Last Duchess_, 362.
+
+_Mysteries of Udolpho_, 330.
+
+_Mysterious Husband, The_, 319.
+
+_Mysterious Mother, The_, 322, 354.
+
+
+Nash, Thomas, 61, 100 n., 103, 111.
+
+_Nero_ (by Lee), 266, 267.
+
+_Nero, Tragedy of_ (Anon.), 234.
+
+_New Way to Pay Old Debts, A_, 220.
+
+_Nice Wanton, The_, 29.
+
+_Nightwalker, The_, 274.
+
+_Nine Days Wonder, The_, 171 n.
+
+North, Christopher. See Wilson, John.
+
+Norton, Thomas, 52.
+
+_Novellas Exemplares_, 212.
+
+
+_Octavia_, 33.
+
+_Oedipus_ (by Dryden and Lee), 261, 267;
+  (by Gager), 59;
+  (by Sophocles), 18.
+
+_Old Fortunatus_, 139.
+
+O'Neil, Miss, 344.
+
+_Orbecche_, 56.
+
+_Orestes_ (adaptation from ~Voltaire~), 295 n.;
+  (by Dryden), 263.
+
+_Oroonoko_, 274, 282, 335.
+
+_Orphan, The_, 270, ~271~, 274, ~282~, ~368~.
+
+_Orphan of China, The_, 295 n.
+
+Orrery, Earl of, 253, 257, ~277~.
+
+_Osorio_, 342.
+
+_Othello_, ~162-166~, 169, 170, 171, 185, 194, 226, 265, 282, 292,
+297 n., 299, 309, 312, 358, 370.
+
+_Otho the Great_, 349.
+
+Otway, Thomas, 250, 251, 253, ~269-272~, 274, 275, 278, 279, 282, 284,
+289, 290, 292, 294, 316, 323, 331, 351, 364, 368.
+
+
+_Painter's Palace of Pleasure_, 55, 70.
+
+_Palamon and Arcyte_, 58.
+
+_Pamela_, 317.
+
+_Pammachius_, 37, 39, 41.
+
+_Paradise Lost_, 260.
+
+_Paris and Vienna_, 71 n.
+
+_Patient Griselda_, 40, 345.
+
+Payne, John Howard, 344.
+
+Peele, George, 75, 79, 84, ~107~ n., ~108~, ~110-112~, 132,
+133, 146.
+
+Pembroke, Countess of, 142.
+
+_Percy_, 306.
+
+_Pere de Famille, Le_, 318.
+
+_Perfidus Hetruscus_, 60 n.
+
+_Perkin Warbeck_, 227.
+
+_Pericles_ (adaptation by Lillo), ~315.~
+
+_Persee et Demetrius_, 298.
+
+_Perseus and Andromeda_, 71 n.
+
+Petrarch, 78.
+
+_Phaedra_(by Seneca), 56.
+
+_Phaedra and Hippolitus_ (Smith's adaptation of Racine), 289, 290.
+
+_Phedre_, 195.
+
+_Philaster_, 203, 204, 282, 322 n.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 290.
+
+_Philotas_, 142.
+
+_Phoenissae_, 54.
+
+Pickering, John, 64.
+
+_Picture, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Pilgrim, The_, 322 n.
+
+Pix, Mrs., 266.
+
+Pixerecourt, Rene de, 337.
+
+_Pizarro_, 327, 328, 335.
+
+Plautus, 21, 36, 39, 63.
+
+_Plays Confuted_, 72.
+
+_Plays on the Passions_, 339.
+
+_Pledge, The_, 346.
+
+Plutarch, 106, 108, 142, 154, 162, 175.
+
+_Poetics of Aristotle, The_, 8, 31, 43.
+
+_Political Justice_, 341.
+
+_Politician, The_, 232, 233.
+
+Pope, Alexander, 273.
+
+_Pope Joan, or the Female Prelate_, 266.
+
+Preston, Thomas, 66.
+
+_Pride of Life, The_, 29.
+
+_Princess of Cleve, The_, 267.
+
+Procter, B., 345, 356.
+
+_Progne_, 58.
+
+_Prometheus Unbound_, 14, 298, 353, 355.
+
+_Promus and Cassandra_, 52, ~61~ n., ~62~ n., 69, 72.
+
+_Prophetess, The_, 214, 246.
+
+_Ptolemy_, 71.
+
+Puttenham, George, 44, 45.
+
+Pye, H. J., 307.
+
+
+_Queen of Corinth, The_, 214, 220.
+
+_Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas_, 55 n.
+
+Quinault, P., 245.
+
+_Quintus Fabius_, 71 n.
+
+
+Racine, 2, 7, 8, 13, 247, 248, 251, 256, 268, 269, 272, 278, 287, 294, 297,
+298, 300, 359.
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs., 356.
+
+Radcliffe, Ralph, 40.
+
+_Ralph Roister Doister_, 39.
+
+_Rape_, 309.
+
+Ravenscroft, Edward, 266.
+
+Rawlins, Thomas, 236.
+
+_Red Knight, The_, 71 n.
+
+_Rebellion, The_, 236.
+
+_Rehearsal, The_, 259.
+
+_Remorse_, ~342~, ~343~, 344, 360.
+
+_Renegado, The_, 221.
+
+_Revenge_, 298.
+
+_Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, The_ (see _Bussy D'Ambois_), 144.
+
+_Revenge of Hamlet_, 150.
+
+_Revenger's Tragedy, The_, 199, 202.
+
+Reynolds, F., 332, 335, 338.
+
+_Richard II_, 109, 114, 117, ~123-125~, 126, 136;
+  anonymous play on, see _Woodstock_.
+
+_Richard III_ (by Shakespeare), 114, ~117-123~, 125, 172, 282, 292,
+297 n., 311, 312.
+
+_Richard III, True Tragedy of_, ~108~, ~109~, 112, 118, 119.
+
+_Richard Duke of York, True Tragedy of_, 115 n., 116.
+
+Richardson, Samuel, 275, 284.
+
+_Richardus Tertius_, 59.
+
+_Richelieu_, 345, ~346~, 358.
+
+_Rienzi_, 345, 358.
+
+_Ring and Book, The_, 14, 362.
+
+Ristori, Madame, 344.
+
+Ritwyse, John, 39.
+
+_Rival Ladies, The_, 251, 253.
+
+_Rival Queens, The_, 266, 282.
+
+_Rivals, The_, 319.
+
+_Road to Ruin, The_, 320.
+
+_Robbers, The_, 330, 342, 357.
+
+_Rob Roy_, 335.
+
+Rochester, Earl of, 258.
+
+_Rollo._ See _Bloody Brother_.
+
+_Roman Actor, The_, 224.
+
+_Roman Father, The_, 294.
+
+_Roman Revenge, The_, 304.
+
+_Romeo and Juliet_, 12, 114, ~126-134~, 136, 146, 185, 226, 236,
+270, 292.
+
+_Romeus and Juliet_, 127.
+
+Rossetti, D. G., 347.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, ~283-289~, 291, 294, 307, 316, 323.
+
+Rowley, William, ~218~, ~219~, 227, 229.
+
+_Royal Convert, The_, 283.
+
+_Royal Master, The_, 232.
+
+_Roxana_, 59.
+
+Rymer, T., 250, 260.
+
+Sackville, Thomas, 52.
+
+_Samson Agonistes_, 14, 264, 298.
+
+Santayana, George, 192 n.
+
+_Sardanapalus_, 345, ~351~, 358.
+
+_Sarpedon_, 71 n.
+
+Schelling, F. W. J. von, 359.
+
+Schiller, F. von, 327, 341, 357, ~359~, 363.
+
+_Scipio, Africanus_, 71 n.
+
+_Scornful Lady, The_, 322 n.
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 129, 262, 285, 312, 335, 339, 341, ~349~, ~350~,
+357, 361.
+
+Scudery, G. de, 247.
+
+_Second Maiden's Tragedy, The_, 199, 201, 221.
+
+_Secret Love_, 259.
+
+_Sejanus_, ~141-144~, 172.
+
+_Selimus_, 108, 164.
+
+_Semiramis_, 295 n.
+
+Seneca, characteristics of his tragedies, 33-36;
+  their revival on the continent, 36-38;
+  in England, 38-46;
+  English imitations of, 51-58;
+  Latin imitations of at the English universities, 58-61;
+  influence of on popular plays, 62-69, 73-75;
+  his models rejected by Marlowe, 89-90;
+  adapted by Kyd and others, 100-108, 113;
+  his influence on _Richard III_, 118, 119;
+  on Ben Jonson, 143;
+  on Chapman, 144;
+  on Marston and revenge tragedies, 146-154 _passim_;
+  on _Hamlet_, 159, 160;
+  and traceable elsewhere in Shakespeare, 183-185;
+  in later drama, 196, 215.
+
+Settle, Elkanah, 253, 266.
+
+Sheil, R. L., 344.
+
+Shakespeare, his conception of tragedy, 8, 9;
+  his relations to Kyd, 100, 104, 105;
+  to other predecessors, 107-111;
+  his early tragedies and histories, 113-116;
+  _King John_, 116, 117;
+  _Richard III_, 117-123;
+  _Richard II_, 123-126;
+  _Romeo and Juliet_, 126-133;
+  his relations to his contemporaries, 136-147 _passim_;
+  to the revenge tragedies, 147-154;
+  _Julius Caesar_, 154;
+  _Hamlet_, 155-162;
+  _Othello_, 162-166;
+  _Lear_, 166-175;
+  _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_, 175-179;
+  summary of his work in tragedy, 181-195;
+  his influence on Elizabethan successors, 196-241 _passim_;
+  Restoration criticisms and alterations of his tragedies, 248-252, 260-262,
+    264-266, 269, 270, 277-279;
+  his plays in the eighteenth century, 282, 292-294;
+  Rowe's indebtedness to, 288, 289;
+  Thomson's indebtedness, 301, 302;
+  Hill's, 304, 305;
+  influence of _Othello_, 309;
+  his plays in the patent theatres, 331, 332;
+  his influence on the romanticists, 339;
+  on Wordsworth, 341;
+  on Coleridge, 342;
+  on Lamb, 343;
+  his influence dominant in nineteenth century tragedy, 355-363 _passim_;
+  and through the whole course of English tragedy, 370, 372, 376.
+
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 14, 182, 338, 347, 348, ~353-355~, 356-359, 367,
+368.
+
+Sheridan, R. B., 327.
+
+Sheridan, Thomas, 299.
+
+_She Stoops to Conquer_, 319.
+
+Shirley, James, 199, ~229-234~, 235, 237, 238, 240, 251, 252, 255, 256,
+282, 344.
+
+_Sicily and Naples_, 236.
+
+Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 275, 290, 293, 308 n., 340.
+
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 6, 44, 53, 72, 73.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, The_, 297 n., 308 n.
+
+_Siege of Rhodes, The_, 244, 252.
+
+_Slave, The_, 335, 336.
+
+Small, R. A., 162 n.
+
+Smith, Edmund, 289.
+
+Soane, G., 338.
+
+_Soliman and Perseda_, 100 n., ~105~, ~106~, 127, 128.
+
+_Solitary Knight, The_, 71 n.
+
+_Solymannidae_, 59.
+
+Sophocles, 7, 9, 32, 37, 58, 187, 298, 370, 375.
+
+_Sophonisba_ (by Lee), 266;
+  (by Marston), 147;
+  (by Thomson), 299, 300;
+  (by Trissino), 38.
+
+Southerne, Thomas, ~273-275~, 277, 279, 282, 284, 294, 316, 321, 323.
+
+Southey, Robert, 337, 341.
+
+_Spanish Friar, The_, 262, 263.
+
+_Spanish Tragedy, The_, ~100-105~, 110, 113, 115, 147, 148, 151.
+
+_Spartan Dame, The_, 274.
+
+Spenser, Edmund, 78, 79, 107.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 297 n., 317.
+
+Stoll, Elmer, E., 151 n.
+
+Stowe, John, 70.
+
+_Strafford_, 346, 363.
+
+_Stranger, The_, 327, 328.
+
+Suckling, Sir John, 234.
+
+_Surrender of Calais, The_, 332, 333.
+
+Surrey, Earl of, 53.
+
+Swinburne, A., 14, 339, 347, 361, 364.
+
+
+_Tale of Mystery, The_, 334.
+
+Talfourd, Sir Thomas N., 346.
+
+_Tamburlaine_, 58, 74, ~87-97~ _passim_, 100, 104, 107, 119 n.
+
+_Tamerlane_, ~283~, ~284~, 291, 297 n.
+
+_Tancred and Gismunda_, 51, ~55-57~, 61 n., 68, 69, 127, 128.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 299, 300, 302.
+
+_Tancrede_, 295 n.
+
+Tasso, 78.
+
+Tate, Nahum, 246, 266, 292, 301.
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 361.
+
+_Telemo_, 71 n.
+
+_Tempest, The_, 179, 259, 264.
+
+_Temptation of Our Lord, The_, 41.
+
+_Tender Husband, The_, 317.
+
+Tennyson, Alfred, 182, 355, 364.
+
+Terence, 23, 37, 39.
+
+Terry, Daniel, 338, 350.
+
+_Thebias_, 53.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 293.
+
+_Theodosius_, 246, 267.
+
+_Thierry and Theodoret_, 203.
+
+Thomson, James, 292, ~299-302~, 307.
+
+_Three Estates, The_, 41.
+
+_Three Laws, The_, 41.
+
+_Thyestes_ (by Crowne), 263, 266;
+  (by Seneca), 56.
+
+_Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes_, 71 n.
+
+_Timon of Athens_, 178, 265, 282, 297 n.
+
+_'Tis Pity She's a Whore_, 227, 228.
+
+_Titus Andronicus_, 108, ~114~, ~115~, 120, 136, 164, 237, 282.
+
+_Titus and Berenice_, 269.
+
+_Titus and Gisippus_, 40.
+
+Tobin, John, 343.
+
+_Tom Jones_, 321.
+
+_Tom Thumb_, 314 n.
+
+_Tonumbeius_, 59.
+
+Tourneur, Cyril, 139, 151, ~153~, ~154~, 156, 199, 202, 217, 234,
+267, 348.
+
+_Tragedy a la Mode_, 314 n.
+
+_Tragedies of the Last Age_, 260.
+
+_Traitor, The_, 233, 252, 282, 344.
+
+Treveth, Nicholas, 36.
+
+_Trial, The_, 339.
+
+Trissino, G. G., 38.
+
+_Triumph of Honor, The_, 322 n.
+
+_Troades_, 42.
+
+_Troilus and Cressida_, 162 n., 261, 265.
+
+_Troublesome Reign of King John, The_, 85, ~87~, ~88~.
+
+Tupper, J. W., 255 n.
+
+_Twelve Labors of Hercules, The_, 71 n.
+
+_Two Foscari, The_, 346, 351.
+
+_Two Lamentable Tragedies, The_, 140.
+
+_Two Noble Kinsmen, The_, 211.
+
+_Tyrannic Love_, 259.
+
+
+Udall, Nicholas, 58.
+
+_Ulysses_, 283.
+
+_Ulysses Redux_, 59.
+
+_Unhappy Favorite, The_, 273, 282.
+
+_Unnatural Combat, The_, 224.
+
+
+_Valentinian_, ~213~, 217, 252, 282.
+
+_Valiant Scot, The_, 236.
+
+_Venice Preserved_, ~270~, ~271~, 278, 282, 297 n., 351.
+
+Victor, B., 318.
+
+Virgil, Polydore, 119.
+
+_Virginius_, 344, ~345~, 358.
+
+_Virgin Martyr, The_, 221, 224, 252.
+
+_Virtue Betrayed, or Anne Bullen_, 273.
+
+_Volpone_, 233.
+
+Voltaire, 247, 276, 290, ~294-297~, 299, 302, 304, 305, 324.
+
+
+Wade, Thomas, 345, 347.
+
+_Wallenstein_ (by Glapthorne), 235;
+  (by Schiller), 357.
+
+Walpole, Horace, 322, 354.
+
+Ward, A. W., 111, 270 n., 287.
+
+_Warning for Fair Women, A_, 140, ~147~, 316.
+
+_Wars of Cyrus, The_, 106, 108.
+
+Watson, Thomas, 39.
+
+_Wat Tyler_, 341 n.
+
+_Weavers, The_, 12.
+
+Webbe, William, 57.
+
+Webster, John, 153, 169, 198, 199, ~202~, ~203~, 217-219, 226, 230,
+234, 237, 239, 240, 252, 256, 262, 348.
+
+Wells, Charles, 339, 347.
+
+_Werner_, 345, ~351~, 357.
+
+_Werter_, 323.
+
+_What d'ye Call It_, 314 n.
+
+_What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man_, 71.
+
+_Wheel of Fortune, The_, 320.
+
+Whetstone, George, 61 n., 62 n., 72.
+
+_White Devil, The_, 198, 199, 202, 252.
+
+Whitehead, William, 294, ~307~.
+
+_Wife's Trial, The_, 343.
+
+_Wild Gallant, The_, 251.
+
+_William Tell_, 344.
+
+Wilmot, Robert, 55, 56.
+
+Wilson, John, 163, 347.
+
+_Winter's Tale, A_, 179, 342.
+
+_Witch, The_, 3, 218.
+
+_Witch of Edmonton, The_, 227.
+
+_Woodstock_, ~109~, 112, 114.
+
+_Woman Killed with Kindness, A_, ~140~, ~141~, 272, 289, 318,
+328.
+
+_Woman's Love_, 345.
+
+_Women Beware Women_, 218.
+
+_Women Pleased_, 322 n.
+
+Wordsworth, William, 337, 338, ~341~, 343, 357.
+
+_Wounds of Civil War, The_, 108, 142.
+
+Wycherley, William, 258.
+
+
+Xenophon, 106.
+
+
+_Yorkshire Tragedy, The_, 140, 318.
+
+Young, Edward, ~298~, ~299~, 307.
+
+
+_Zapolya_, 342.
+
+_Zara_, 295 n., 299, 304, 305.
+
+_Zenobia_, 308 n., 351.
+
+_Zobeide_, 295 n.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike
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