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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/38711-8.txt b/38711-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c266cd --- /dev/null +++ b/38711-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11509 @@ +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. 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Thorndike. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .tocnum {position: absolute; top: auto; right: 10%;} + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .right {text-align: right;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i11 {display: block; margin-left: 5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i16 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i19 {display: block; margin-left: 9em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i20 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i26 {display: block; margin-left: 13em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<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 · 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—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 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<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—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<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:—</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:—</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,—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 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<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 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<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 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.<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 "Œdipus," "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 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<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 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, <i>The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient +and Modern Drama</i> (1900); Lewis Campbell, <i>Tragic Drama in Æschylus, +Sophocles, and Shakespeare</i> (1904); Ferdinand Brunetière, <i>L'évolution +littéraire de la tragédie</i> (1903) (in vol. 7 of <i>Etudes critiques</i>); and +<i>Melodrame ou Tragédie</i> (<i>Variétés Littéraires</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>Beitrãge 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 æsthetic theory, full +references are given in Gayley and Scott; and Volkelt's <i>Æsthetik des +Tragischen</i>, Munich (2d ed. 1906), supplies a valuable and comprehensive +discussion and a directory and criticism of nearly all æsthetic 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 über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur</i> (1817), translated into +English in the Bohn edition; and to Hegel's <i>Vorlesungen über die +Æsthetik</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,—a form, it should be said, derived from his +study and translation of Euripides as well as from Seneca.</p> + +<p>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<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 "Cléopatre 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 "comœdia +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," "Melibœus," 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,—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 Mediæval 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. Pröloss, <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 +Théâtre 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 Théâtre 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 Tragödie 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 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<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 "Phœnissæ" 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 Magæra 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 "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,<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 Œdipean 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," "Œdipus," 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.</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:—</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 Cæsar 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,"—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 älteren 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 Universitäts-Dramen in der Zeit der Königin 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,—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.</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>Cæsar 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 Scævola</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,—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,—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'évolution 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,—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 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 <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:—</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:—</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—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.</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"—"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,—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 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<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,—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,—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.</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—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<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,—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.</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,—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)"—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,—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-Bühne</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 älteren 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 Megæra 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 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<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 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<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:—</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 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.</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 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<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—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>dénouement</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,—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<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 Cæsar" and the first +revision of "Hamlet," the man of the hour in tragedy was Marston.</p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> 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.</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,—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<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 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.<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 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.</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,—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 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.</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—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.</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—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,—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 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<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 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.<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 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<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 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.</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>dénouements</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'œuvre</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 +preëminent 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 Cæsar," "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 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.</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. Cæsar'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—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.</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,—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 "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.</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:—</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 & 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:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">—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,—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.</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,—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>dénouement</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,—"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>dénouements</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,—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 preëminently, 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—a banquet prepared. She +kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may +forget all pity and kill the tyrant—</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—"<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—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,—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—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.</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 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.</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 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.</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:—</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,—"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'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<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,—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 naïve +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—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,—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 +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<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,—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.</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 "Œdipus," 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 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.</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,—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.</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," "Œdipus," "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.</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; "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<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 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.</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,—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:—</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—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 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<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 Abbé D'Aubignac, and Rapin are the French +critics of most influence on the drama of this period, especially Rapin, +whose <i>Reflexions sur la poëtique</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> siècle</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 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<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—</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,—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"—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 "Phædra 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 "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.</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 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<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 "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<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:—</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>—</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,—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:—</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:—</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 +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<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 "Zaïre" 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:—</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,—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!—<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—another wooer—<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—<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,—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>Schicksalstragödie</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:—</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 Père 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—"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,—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 Littérature comparée, 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>Tancrède</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 théâtre 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 Cæsar</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 Père 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—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<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,—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:—</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 +régime 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>mélodrame</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>mélodrame</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>mélodrame</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,—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—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 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.</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—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<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 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.</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 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.</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 +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> 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?</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,—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—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.</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,—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<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 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<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—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.</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,—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 Neæra'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 preëminence 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 /> +Æschylus, <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 /> +Brunetière, 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>Cæsar and Pompey</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a> n.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Cæsar 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 /> +Calprenède, <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>Cléopatre 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 Valière</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'Urfé, Honoré, <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 Cæsar</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>Melibœus</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 Scævola</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>Œdipus</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>Père 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>Persée 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>Phædra</i>(by Seneca), <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Phædra and Hippolitus</i> (Smith's adaptation of Racine), <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Phèdre</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>Phœnissæ</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 /> +Pixérécourt, René 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 /> +Scudéry, 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 Cæsar</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>Solymannidæ</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>Tancrède</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. 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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. 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