Chapter IV: Part 4

The art of acting is not altogether dependent upon the measure of contemporary literary productivity, even in France, where the connexion between dramatic literature and the stage has perhaps been more continuously intimate than in many other countries. Talma and Mlle Mars flourished in one of the most barren ages of the French literary drama; and though this cannot be asserted of the two most brilliant stars of the French 19th century tragic stage, Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt, or of their comic contemporaries from Frederick-Lemaitre down to types less unique than the "Talma of the boulevards," the constantly accumulating experience of the successive schools of acting in France may here ensure to the art a future not less notable than its past. Moreover, the French theatre has long been, and is more than ever likely to continue, an affair of the state as well as of the nation; and the judicious policy of not leaving the chief theatres at the mercy of shifting fashion and the base demands of idleness and sensuality will remain the surest guarantee for the maintenance of a high standard both in principle and in practice. So long as France continues to maintain her ascendancy over other nations in matters of taste, and in much else that adorns, brightens and quickens social life, the predominant influence of the French theatre over the theatres of other nations is likewise assured. But dramatic literature is becoming international to a degree hardly dreamt of half a century ago; and the distinctive development of the French theatre cannot fail to be affected by the success or failure of the national drama in retaining and developing its own most characteristic qualities. Its history shows periods of marvellously rapid advance, of hardly less swift decline, and of frequent though at times fitful recovery. Its future may be equally varied; but it will remain not less dependent on the conditions which in every people, ancient or modern, have proved to be indispensable to national vigour and vitality. (A. W. W.)

_Recent French Drama._--The last twenty-five years of the 19th century witnessed an important change in the constructive methods, as well as in the moral tendencies, of the French playwrights. Of the two leading dramatists who reigned supreme over the _haute comedie_ in 1875, one, Emile Augier, had almost ended his career, but the other, Alexandre Dumas, was to maintain his ascendancy for many years longer. Sardou's fertility of invention, and extraordinary cleverness at manipulating a complicated intrigue, were also greatly admired, and much was expected from Edouard Pailleron's brilliant and--as it seemed--inexhaustible wit in satirizing the whims and weaknesses of high-born and highly-cultured society. Alexandre Dumas had created and still monopolized the problem play, of which _Le Demi-monde_, _Le Fils naturel_, _La Question d'argent_, _Les Idees de Madame Aubray_, _La Femme de Claude_, _Monsieur Alphonse_, _La Visite de noces_, _L'Etrangere_, _Francillon_ and _Denise_ may be mentioned as the most characteristic specimens. The problem play is the presentation of a particular case, with a view to a general conclusion on some important question of human conduct. This afforded the author, who was, in his way, a moralist and a reformer, excellent opportunities for humorous discussions and the display of that familiar eloquence which was his greatest gift and most effective faculty. Among other subjects, the social position of women had an all-powerful attraction for his mind, and many of his later plays were written with the object of placing in strong relief the remarkable inequality of the sexes, both as regards freedom of action and responsibility, in modern marriage. Like all the dramatists of his time, he adhered to Scribe's mode of play-writing--a mixture of the _drame bourgeois_, as initiated by Diderot, and the comedy of character and manners, long in vogue--from the days of Moliere, Regnard, Destouches and Marivaux, down to the beginning of the 19th century. In his prefaces Dumas often undertook the defence of the system which, in his estimation, was best calculated to serve the purpose of the artist, the humorist and the moralist--a dramatist being, as he conceived, a combination of the three.

Though the majority of French playgoers continued to side with him, and to cling to the time-honoured theatrical beliefs, a few young men were beginning to murmur against the too elaborate mechanism and artificial logic. Scribe and his successors, whose plays were a combination of comedy and drama, were wont to devote the first act to a brilliant and witty presentation of personages, then to crowd the following scenes with incidents, until the action was brought to a climax about the end of the fourth act, invariably concluding, in the fifth, with an optimistic _denouement_, just before midnight, the time appointed by police regulations for the closing of playhouses. At the same time a more serious and far-reaching criticism was levelled at the very principles on which the conception of human life was then dependent. A new philosophy, based on scientific research, had been gradually gaining ground and penetrating the French mind. A host of bold writers had been trying, with considerable firmness and continuity of purpose, to start a new kind of fiction, writing in perfect accordance with the determinist theories of Auguste Comte, Darwin and Taine. The long-disputed success of the Naturalistic School carried everything before it during the years 1875-1885, and its triumphant leaders were tempted to make the best of their advantage by annexing a new province and establishing a footing on the stage. In this they failed signally, either when they were assisted by professional dramatists or when left to their own resources. It became evident that Naturalism, to be made acceptable on the stage, would have to undergo a special process of transformation and be handled in a peculiar way. Henry Becque succeeded in embodying the new theories in two plays, which at first met with very indifferent success, but were revived at a later period, and finally obtained permanent recognition in the French theatre--even with the acquiescence of the most learned critics, when they discovered, or fancied they discovered, that Becque's comedies agreed, in the main, with Moliere's conception of dramatic art. In _Les Corbeaux_ and _La Parisienne_ the plot is very simple; the episodes are incidents taken from ordinary life. No extraneous character is introduced to discuss moral and social theories, or to acquaint us with the psychology of the real _dramatis personae_, or to suggest humorous observations about the progress of the dramatic action. The characters are left to tell their own tale in their own words, which are sometimes very comical, sometimes very repulsive, but purport to be always true to nature. Human will, which was the soul and mainspring of French tragedy in the 17th century, and played such a paramount part in the _drame bourgeois_ and the _haute comedie_ of the 19th, appears in M. Becque's plays to have fallen from its former exalted position and to have ceased to be a free agent. It is a mere passive instrument to our inner desires and instincts and appetites, which, in their turn, obey natural laws. Thus, in Becque's comedies, as in the old Greek drama, destiny, not man, is the chief actor, the real but unseen protagonist.

Becque was not a prolific writer, and when he died, in 1899, it was remarked that he had spent the last ten years of his life in comparative inactivity. But during these years his young and ardent disciples had spared no effort in putting their master's theories to the test. It had occurred to a gifted and enterprising actor-manager, named Andre Antoine, that the time had come for trying dramatic experiments in a continued and methodical manner. For this purpose he gathered around him a number of young authors, and produced their plays before a select audience of subscribers, who had paid in advance for their season-tickets. The entertainment was a strictly private one. In this way Antoine made himself independent of the censors, and at the same time was no longer obliged to consider the requirements of the average playgoer, as is the case with ordinary managers, anxious, above all things, to secure long runs. At the Theatre Libre the most successful play was not to be performed for more than three nights.

The reform attempted was to consist in the elimination of what was contrary to nature in Dumas's and Augier's comedies: of the _intrigue parallele_ or underplot, of the over-numerous and improbable incidents which followed the first act and taxed the spectator's memory to the verge of fatigue; and, lastly, of the conventional _denouement_ for which there was no justification. A true study of character was to take the place of Sardou's complicated fabrications and Dumas's problem plays. The authors would present the spectator with a fragment of life, but would force no conclusion upon him at the termination of the play. The reformation in histrionic art was to proceed apace. The actors and actresses of the preceding period had striven to give full effect to certain witty utterances of the author, or to preserve and to develop their own personal peculiarities or oddities. Antoine and his fellow-artists did their best to make the public realize, in every word and every gesture, the characteristic features and ruling passions of the men and women they were supposed to represent.

It was in the early autumn of 1887 that the Theatre Libre opened its doors for the first time. It struggled on for eight years amidst unfailing curiosity, but not without encountering some adverse, or even derisive, criticism from a considerable portion of the public and the press. The Theatre Libre brought under public notice such men as George Courteline and George Ancey, who gave respectively, in _Bonbouroche_ and _La Dupe_, specimens of a comic vein called the "_comique cruel_." Fabre, in _L'Argent_, approached if not surpassed his master, Henry Becque. Brieux, in _Blanchette_, gave promise of talent, which he has since in a great measure justified. In _Les Fossiles_ and _L'Envers d'une sainte_, by Francois de Curel, were found evidences of dramatic vigour and concentrated energy, allied with a remarkable gift for the minute analysis of feeling. Antoine's activity was not exclusively confined to the efforts of the French Naturalistic School; he included the Norwegian drama in his programme, and successively produced several of Ibsen's plays. They received a large amount of attention from the critics, the views then expressed ranging from the wildest enthusiasm to the bitterest irony. Francisque Sarcey was decidedly hostile, and Jules Lemaitre, who ranked next to him in authority, ventured to suggest that Ibsen's ideas were nothing better than long-discarded social and literary paradoxes, borrowed from Pierre Leroux through George Sand, and returned to the French market as novelties. Ibsen was not understood by the French public at large, though his influence could be clearly traced on thoughtful men like Paul Hervieu and Francois de Curel.

The authors of the Theatre Libre were sadly wanting in tact and patience. They went at once to extremes, and, while trying to free themselves from an obsolete form of drama, fell into a state of anarchy. If a too elaborate plot is a fault, no plot at all is an absurdity. The old school had been severely taken to task for devoting the first act to the delineation of character, and the delineation of character was now found to have extended over the whole play; and worse still, most of these young men seemed to find pleasure in importing a low vocabulary on to the stage; they made it their special object to place before the spectator revolting pictures of the grossest immorality. In this they were supported by a knot of noisy and unwise admirers, whose misplaced approval largely contributed towards bringing an otherwise useful and interesting undertaking into disrepute. The result was that after the lapse of eight years the little group collected round Antoine had lost in cohesion and spirit, that it was both less hopeful and less compact than it had been at the outset of the campaign. But some authors who had kept aloof from the movement were not slow in reaping the moral and intellectual profit of these tentative experiments. Among them must be cited George de Porto-Riche, Henri Lavedan, Paul Hervieu, Maurice Donnay and Jules Lemaitre. Alone among the authors of the Theatre Libre, E. Brieux secured an assured position on the regular stage. Instead of attacking the vices and follies of his times, he has made a name by satirizing the weak points or the wrong application of certain fundamental principles by which modern institutions are supported. He mocked at universal suffrage in _L'Engrenage_, at art in _Menages d'artistes_, at popular instruction in _Blanchette_, at charity in _Les Bienfaiteurs_, at science in _L'Evasion_, and then at law in _La Robe rouge_. Of _Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont_, one is an old maid with a strong bent towards mysticism, another is a star in the demi-monde, and the third is married. Neither religion, nor free love, nor marriage has made one of the three happy. The strange fact about Brieux is that he propounds his uncomfortable ideas with an incredible amount of dash and spirit.

All the plays written by the above-mentioned authors, and by those who follow in their steps, have been said to constitute the "new comedy." But one may question the advisability of applying the same name to literary works which present so little, if any, family likeness. It was tacitly agreed to remove the intricacies of the plot and the forced _denouement_. But no one will trace in those plays the uniformity of moral purpose which would justify us in comprising them under the same head, as products of the same school. Then, before the Naturalistic, or half-Naturalistic, School had attained to a practical result or taken a definite shape, a wave of Romanticism swept over the French public, and in a measure brought back the old artistic and literary dogmas propounded by Victor Hugo and the generation of 1830. Signs of a revival in French dramatic poetry were not lacking. The success of _La Fille de Roland_, by the Vicomte de Bornier, was restricted to the more cultivated classes, but the vogue of Jean Richepin's _Chemineau_ was at once general and lasting. _Cyrano de Bergerac_, produced in the last days of 1897, brought a world-wide reputation to its young author, Edmond Rostand. This play combines sparkling wit and brilliancy of imagination with delightful touches of pathos and delicate tenderness. It was assumed that Rostand was endowed to an extraordinary degree both with theatrical genius and the poetic faculty. _L'Aiglon_ fell short of this too favourable judgment. It is more a dramatic poem than a real drama, and the author handles history with the same childish incompetence and inaccuracy as Hugo did in _Cromwell_, in _Ruy Blas_ and _Hernani_. The persistent approbation of the public seemed, however, to indicate a growing taste for poetry, even when unsupported by dramatic interest--a curious symptom among the least poetical of modern European races.

To sum up, the French, as regards the present condition of their drama, were confronted with two alternative movements. Naturalism, furthered by science and philosophy, was contending against traditions three centuries old, and seemed unable to crystallize into masterly works; while romantic drama, founded on vague and exploded theories, had become embodied in productions of real artistic beauty, which have been warmly welcomed by the general playgoer. It should nevertheless be noted that in _Cyrano_ and _L'Aiglon_ human will, which was the main-spring of Corneille's tragedy and Hugo's drama, tried to reassert itself, but was baffled by circumstance, and had to submit to inexorable laws. This showed that the victorious school would have to reckon with the doctrines of the defeated party, and suggested that a determinist theatre might be the ultimate outcome of a compromise. (A. FI.)

(f) _English Drama._

Among the nations of Germanic descent the English alone succeeded, mainly through the influence of the Renaissance movement, in transforming the later growths of the medieval drama into the beginnings of a great and enduring national dramatic literature, second neither in volume nor in splendour to any other in the records of the world. And, although in England, as elsewhere, the preparatory process had been continuing for some generations, its consummation coincided with one of the greatest epochs of English national history, and indeed forms one of the chief glories of that epoch itself; so that, in thinking or speaking of the Elizabethan age and the Elizabethan drama, the one can scarcely be thought or spoken of without the other.

Beginnings of the regular drama.

It is of course conceivable that the regular drama, or drama proper, might in England have been called into life without the direct influence of classical examples. Already in the reign of Edward VI. the spirit of the Reformation had (with the aid of a newly awakened desire for the study of history, which was no doubt largely due to Italian examples) quickened the relatively inanimate species of the morality into the beginning of a new development.[155] But though the _Kyng Johan_ of Bale (much as this author abhorred the chronicles as written by ecclesiastics) came very near to the chronicle histories, there is no proof whatever that the work, long hidden away for very good reasons, actually served as a transition to the new species; and Bale's production was entirely unknown to the particular chronicle history which treated the same subject. Before the earliest example of this transitional species was produced, English tragedy had directly connected its beginnings with classical models.

Imitation of classical examples.

Much in the same way, nothing could have been more natural and in accordance with the previous sluggish evolution of the English drama than that a gradual transition, however complete in the end, should have been effected from the moralities to comedy. It was not, however, John Heywood himself who was to accomplish any such transition; possibly, he was himself the author of the morality _Genus humanum_ performed at the coronation feast of Queen Mary, whose council speedily forbade the performance of interludes without the queen's licence. Nor are we able to conjecture the nature of the pieces bearing this name composed by Richard Farrant, afterwards the master of the Children of St George's at Windsor, or of William Hunnis, master under Queen Elizabeth of the Children of the Chapel Royal. But the process of transition is visible in productions, also called interludes, but charged with serious purpose, such as T. Ingeland's noteworthy _Disobedient Child_ (before 1560), and plays in which the element of abstractions is perceptibly yielding to that of real personages, or in which the characters are for the most part historical or the main element in the action belongs to the sphere of romantic narrative.[156] The demonstration would, however, be alien to the purpose of indicating the main conditions of the growth of the English drama. The immediate origin of the earliest extant English comedy must, like that of the first English tragedy, be sought, not in the development of any popular literary or theatrical antecedents, but in the imitation, more or less direct, of classical models. This cardinal fact, unmistakable though it is, has frequently been ignored or obscured by writers intent upon investigating the _origines_ of our drama, and to this day remains without adequate acknowledgment in most of the literary histories accessible to the great body of students.

It is true that in tracing the entrance of the drama into the national literature there is no reason for seeking to distinguish very narrowly between the several tributaries to the main stream which fertilized this as well as other fields under Renaissance culture. The universities then still remained, and for a time became more prominently than ever, the leading agents of education in all its existent stages; and it is a patent fact that no influence could have been so strong upon the Elizabethan dramatists as that to which they had been subjected during the university life through which the large majority of them had passed. The corporate life of the universities, and the enthusiasms (habitually unanimous) of their undergraduates and younger graduates, communicated this influence, as it were automatically, to the students, and to the learned societies themselves, of the Inns of Court. In the Tudor, as afterwards in the early Stuart, times, these Inns were at once the seminaries of loyalty, and the obvious resort for the supply of young men of spirit desirous of honouring a learned court by contributing to its choicer amusements. Thus, whether we trace them in the universities, in the "bowers" or halls of the lawyers, or in the palaces of the sovereign, the beginnings of the English academical drama, which in later Elizabethan and Jacobean literature cannot claim to be more than a subordinate species of the national drama, in an earlier period served as the actual link between classical tragedy and comedy and the surviving native growths, and supplied the actual impulse towards the beginnings of English tragedy and comedy.

The earlier academical drama.

The academical drama of the early years of Elizabeth's reign and of the preceding part of the Tudor period--including the school-drama in the narrower sense of the term and other performances of academical origin--consisted, apart from actual reproductions of classical plays in original Latin or in Latin versions of the Greek, in adaptations of Latin originals, or of Latin or English plays directly modelled on classical examples. A notable series of plays of this kind was performed in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, from the first year of Edward VI. onward, when N. Grimald's _Archipropheta_, treating in classic form the story of St John the Baptist, but introducing the Vice and comic scenes, was brought out.[157] Others were J. Calfhill's _Progne_ and R. Edwardes' _Palaemon and Arcyte_ (both 1566), and, from about 1580 onwards, a succession of Latin plays by William Gager, beginning with the tragedy _Meleager_, and including, with other tragedies,[158] a comedy _Rivales_. Yet another comedy, acted at Christ Church, and extolled in 1591 by Harington for "harmless mirth," was the _Bellum grammaticale_, or Civil War between Nouns and Verbs, which may have been a revision of a comedy written by Bale's friend, R. Radcliff, in 1538, but of which in any case the ultimate origin was a celebrated Italian allegorical treatise.[159] In Cambridge, as is not surprising, the activity of the early academical friends and favourers of the drama was even more marked. At St John's College, where Bishop Watson's Latin tragedy called _Absolom_ was produced within the years 1534 and 1544, plays were, according to Ascham, repeatedly performed about the middle of the century; at Christ's a controversial drama in the Lutheran interest called _Pammachius_, of which Gardiner complained to the privy council, and which seems afterwards to have been translated by Bale, was acted in 1544; and at Trinity there was a long series of performances which began with Christopherson's _Jephtha_ about 1546, and consisted partly of reproductions of classical works,[160] partly of plays and "shows" unnamed; while on one occasion at all events, in 1559, "two English plays" were produced. In 1560 was acted, doubtless in the original Latin, and not in Palsgrave's English translation (1540) for schoolboys, the celebrated "comedy" of _Acolastus_, by W. Gnaphaeus, on the story of the Prodigal Son. The long series of Trinity plays interspersed with occasional plays at King's (where Udall's _Ezechias_ was produced in English in 1564), at St John's (where T. Legge's _Richardus III._ was first acted in 1573), and, as will be seen below, at Christ's, continued, with few noticeable breaks, up to the time when the Elizabethan drama was in full activity.[161] Among the "academical" plays not traceable to any particular university source may be mentioned, as acted at court so early as the end of 1565 or the beginning of 1566, the Latin _Sapientia Solomonis_, which generally follows the biblical narrative, but introduces a comic element in the sayings of the popular Marcolph, who here appears as a court fool.

Influence of Seneca.

It was under the direct influence of the Renaissance, viewed primarily, in England as elsewhere, as a revival of classical studies, and in connexion with the growing taste in university and cognate circles of society, and at a court which prided itself on its love and patronage of learning, that English tragedy and comedy took their actual beginnings. Those of comedy, as it would seem, preceded those of tragedy by a few years. Already in Queen Mary's reign, translation was found the readiest form of expression offering itself to literary scholarship; and Italian examples helped to commend Seneca, the most modern of the ancient tragedians, and the imitator of the most human among the masters of Attic tragedy, as a favourite subject for such exercises. In the very year of Elizabeth's accession--seven years after Jodelle had brought out the earliest French tragedy--a group of English university scholars began to put forth a series of translations of the ten tragedies of Seneca, which one of them, T. Newton, in 1581 collected into a single volume. The earliest of these versions was that of the _Troades_ (1559) by Jasper Heywood, a son of the author of the _Interludes_. He also published the _Thyestes_ (1560) and the _Hercules Furens_ (1561); the names of his fellow-translators were A. Neville, T. Nuce, J. Studley and the T. Newton aforesaid. These translations, which occasionally include original interpolations ("additions," a term which was to become a technical one in English dramaturgy), are in no instance in blank verse, the favourite metre of the dialogue being the couplets of fourteen-syllable lines best known through Chapman's _Homer_.

Earliest English tragedies.

The authority of Seneca, once established in the English literary world, maintained itself there long after English drama had emancipated itself from the task of imitating this pallid model, and, occasionally, Seneca's own prototype, Euripides.[162] Nor can it be doubted that some translation of the Latin tragic poet had at one time or another passed through Shakespeare's own hands. But what is of present importance is that to the direct influence of Seneca is to be ascribed the composition of the first English tragedy which we possess. Of _Gorboduc_ (afterwards re-named _Ferrex and Porrex_), first acted on the 18th of January 1562 by the members of the Inner Temple before Queen Elizabeth, the first three acts are stated to have been written by T. Norton; the rest of the play (if not more) was the work of T. Sackville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst and earl of Dorset, whom Jasper Heywood praised for his sonnets, but who is better known for his leading share in The _Mirror for Magistrates_. Though the subject of _Gorboduc_ is a British legend, and though the action is neither copied nor adapted from any treated by Seneca, yet the resemblance between this tragedy and the _Thebais_ is too strong to be fortuitous. In all formal matters--chorus, messengers, &c.--_Gorboduc_ adheres to the usage of classical tragedy; but the authors show no respect for the unities of time or place. Strong in construction, the tragedy is--like its model, Seneca--weak in characterization. The dialogue, it should be noticed, is in blank verse; and the device of the _dumb-show_, in which the contents of each act are in succession set forth in pantomime only, is employed at once to instruct and to stimulate the spectator.

The nearly contemporary _Apius and Virginia_ (c. 1563), though it takes its subject--destined to become a perennial one on the modern stage--from Roman story; the _Historie of Horestes_ (pr. 1567); and T. Preston's _Cambises King of Percia_ (1569-1570), are somewhat rougher in form, and, the first and last of them at all events, more violent in diction, than _Gorboduc_. They still contain elements of the moralities (above all the Vice) and none of the formal features of classical tragedy. But a _Julyus Sesyar_ seems to have been performed, in precisely the same circumstances as _Gorboduc_, so early as 1562; and, four years later, G. Gascoigne, the author of the satire _The Steele Glass_, produced with the aid of two associates (F. Kinwelmersh and Sir Christopher Yelverton, who wrote an epilogue), _Jocasta_, a virtual translation of L. Dolce's _Giocasta_, which was an adaptation, probably, of R. Winter's Latin translation of the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides.[163] Between the years 1567 and 1580 a large proportion of the plays presented at court by choir- or school-boys, and by various companies of actors, were taken from Greek legend or Roman history; as was R. Edwardes' _Damon and Pithias_ (perhaps as early as 1564-1565), which already shades off from tragedy into what soon came to be called tragi-comedy.[164] Simultaneously with the influence, exercised directly or indirectly, of classical literature, that of Italian, both dramatic and narrative, with its marked tendency to treat native themes, asserted itself, and, while diversifying the current of early English tragedy, infused into it a long-abiding element of passion. There are sufficient grounds for concluding that a play on the subject of _Romeo and Juliet_, which L. da Porto and M. Bandello had treated in prose narrative--that of the latter having through a French version formed itself into an English poem--was seen on an English stage in or before 1562. _Gismonde of Salerne_, a play founded on Boccaccio, was acted before Queen Elizabeth at the Inner Temple in 1568, nearly a generation before it was published, rewritten in blank verse by R. Wilmot, one of the performers, then in holy orders; G. Whetstone's _Promos and Cassandra_, founded on G. Cinthio (from which came the plot of _Measure for Measure_), followed, printed in 1578; and there were other "casts of Italian devices" belonging to this age, in which the choice of a striking theme still seemed the chief preoccupation of English tragic poets.

From the double danger which threatened English tragedy in the days of its infancy--that it would congeal on the wintry heights of classical themes, or dissolve its vigour in the glowing heat of a passion fiercer than that of the Italians--_Ingleso Italianato e un diavolo incarnato_--it was preserved more than by any other cause by its happy association with the traditions of the national history. An exceptional position might seem to be in this respect occupied by T. Hughes' interesting tragedy _The Misfortunes of Arthur_ (1587). But the author of this play--in certain portions of whose framework there were associated with him seven other members of Gray's Inn, including Francis Bacon, and which was presented before Queen Elizabeth like _Gorboduc_--in truth followed the example of the authors of that work both in choice of theme, in details of form, and in a general though far from servile imitation of the manner of Seneca; nor does he represent any very material advance upon the first English tragedy.

Chronicle histories.

Fortunately, at the very time when from such beginnings as those just described the English tragic drama was to set forth upon a course in which it was to achieve so much, a new sphere of activity suggested itself. And in this, after a few more or less tentative efforts, English dramatists very speedily came to feel at home. In their direct dramatization of passages or portions of English history (in which the doings and sufferings of King Arthur could only by courtesy or poetic licence be included) classical models would be of scant service, while Italian examples of the treatment of national historical subjects, having to deal with material so wholly different, could not be followed with advantage. The native species of the _chronicle history_, which designedly assumed this name in order to make clear its origin and purpose, essayed nothing more or less than a dramatic version of an existing chronicle. Obviously, while the transition from half historical, half epical narrative often implied carrying over into the new form some of the features of the old, it was only when the subject matter had been remoulded and recast that a true dramatic action could result. But the _histories_ to be found among the plays of Shakespeare and one or two other Elizabethans are true dramas, and it would be inconvenient to include these in the transitional species of those known as _chronicle histories_. Among these ruder compositions, which intermixed the blank verse introduced on the Stage by _Gorboduc_ with prose, and freely combined or placed side by side tragic and comic ingredients, we have but few distinct examples. One of these is _The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth_, known to have been acted before 1588; in which both the verse and the prose are frequently of a very rude sort, while it is neither divided into acts or scenes nor, in general, constructed with any measure of dramatic skill. But its vigour and freshness are considerable, and in many passages we recognize familiar situations and favourite figures in later masterpieces of the English historical drama. The second is _The Troublesome Raigne of King John_, in two parts (printed in 1591), an epical narrative transferred to the stage, neither a didactic effort like Bale's, nor a living drama like Shakespeare's, but a far from contemptible treatment of its historical theme. _The True Chronicle History of King Leir_ (acted in 1593) in form resembles the above, though it is not properly on a national subject (its story is taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth); but, with all its defects, it seems only to await the touch of the master's hand to become a tragedy of supreme effectiveness. A yet further step was taken in the _Tragedy of Sir Thomas More_ (c. 1590)--in which Shakespeare's hand has been thought traceable, and which deserves its designation of "tragedy" not so much on account of the relative nearness of the historical subject to the date of its dramatic treatment, as because of the tragic responsibility of character here already clearly worked out.

Earliest comedies.

Such had been the beginnings of tragedy in England up to the time when the genius of English dramatists was impelled by the spirit that dominates a great creative epoch of literature to seize the form ready to their hands. The birth of English comedy, at all times a process of less labour and eased by an always ready popular responsiveness to the most tentative efforts of art, had slightly preceded that of her serious sister. As has been seen from the brief review given above of the early history of the English academical drama, isolated Latin comedies had been performed in the original or in English versions as early as the reign of Henry VIII.--perhaps even earlier; while the morality and its direct descendant, the interlude, pointed the way towards popular treatment in the vernacular of actions and characters equally well suited for the diversion of Roman, Italian and English audiences. Thus there was no innovation in the adaptation by N. Udal (q.v.) of the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus under the title of _Ralph Roister Doister_, which may claim to be the earliest extant English comedy. It has a genuinely popular vein of humour, and the names fit the characters after a fashion familiar to the moralities. The second English comedy--in the opinion of at least one high authority our first--is _Misogonus_, which was certainly written as early as 1560. Its scene is laid in Italy; but the Vice, commonly called "Cacurgus," is both by himself and others frequently designated as "Will Summer," in allusion to Henry VIII.'s celebrated jester. _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, long regarded as the earliest of all _English_ comedies, was printed in 1575, as acted "not long ago in Christ's College, Cambridge." Its authorship was till recently attributed to John Still (afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells), who was a resident M.A. at Christ's, when a play was performed there in 1566. But the evidence of his authorship is inconclusive, and the play "made by Mr. S., Master of Arts," may be by William Stevenson, or by some other contemporary. This comedy is slighter in plot and coarser in diction than _Ralph Roister Doister_, but by no means unamusing.

In the main, however, early English comedy, while occasionally introducing characters and scenes of thoroughly native origin and complexion (e.g. Grim, the Collier of Croydon),[165] was content to borrow its themes from classical or Italian sources.[166] G. Gascoigne's _Supposes_ (acted at Gray's Inn in 1566) is a translation of _I Suppositi_ of Ariosto, remarkable for the flowing facility of its prose. While, on the one hand, the mixture of tragic with comic motives, which was to become so distinctive a feature of the Elizabethan drama, was already leading in the direction of tragi-comedy, the precedent of the Italian pastoral drama encouraged the introduction of figures and stories derived from classical mythology; and the rapid and diversified influence of Italian comedy, in close touch with Italian prose fiction, seemed likely to affect and quicken continuously the growth of the lighter branch of the English drama.

Conditions of the early Elizabethan drama.

Out of such promises as these the glories of English drama were ripened by the warmth and light of the great Elizabethan age--of which the beginnings may fairly be reckoned from the third decennium of the reign to which it owes its name. The queen's steady love of dramatic entertainments could not of itself have led, though it undoubtedly contributed, to such a result. Against the attacks which a nascent puritanism was already directing against the stage by the hands of J. Northbrooke,[167] the repentant playwright S. Gosson,[168] P. Stubbes,[169] and others,[170] were to be set not only the frugal favour of royalty and the more liberal patronage of great nobles,[171] but the fact that literary authorities were already weighing the endeavours of the English drama in the balance of respectful criticism, and that in the abstract at least the claims of both tragedy and comedy were upheld by those who shrank from the desipience of idle pastimes. It is noticeable that this period in the history of the English theatre coincides with the beginning of the remarkable series of visits made to Germany by companies of English comedians, which did not come to an end till the period immediately before the Thirty Years' War, and were occasionally resumed after its close. As at home the popularity of the stage increased, the functions of playwright and actor, whether combined or not, began to hold out a reasonable promise of personal gain. Nor, above all, was that higher impulse which leads men of talent and genius to attempt forms of art in harmony with the tastes and tendencies of their times wanting to the group of writers who can be remembered by no nobler name than that of Shakespeare's predecessors.

The predecessors of Shakespeare.

The lives of all of these are, of course, in part contemporary with the life of Shakespeare himself; nor was there any substantial difference in the circumstances under which most of them, and he, led their lives as dramatic authors. A distinction was manifestly kept up between poets and playwrights. Of the contempt entertained for the actor's profession some fell to the share of the dramatist; "even Lodge," says C. M. Ingleby, "who had indeed never trod the stage, but had written several plays, and had no reason to be ashamed of his antecedents, speaks of the vocation of the play-maker as sharing the odium attaching to the actor." Among the dramatists themselves good fellowship and literary partnership only at times asserted themselves as stronger than the tendency to mutual jealousy and abuse; of all chapters of dramatic history, the annals of the early Elizabethan stage perhaps least resemble those of Arcadia.

History of the Elizabethan stage.

Moreover, the theatre had hardly found its strength as a powerful element in the national life, when it was involved in a bitter controversy, with which it had originally no connexion, on behalf of an ally whose sympathy with it can only have been of a very limited kind. The Marprelate controversy, into which, among leading playwrights, Lyly and Nashe were drawn, in 1589 led to a stoppage of stage-plays which proved only temporary; but the general result of the attempt to make the stage a vehicle of political abuse and invective was beyond a doubt to coarsen and degrade both plays and players. Scurrilous attempts and rough repression continued during the years 1590-1593; and the true remedy was at last applied, when from about 1594, the chief London actors became divided into two great rival companies--the lord chamberlain's and the lord admiral's--which alone received licences. Instead of half a dozen or more companies whose jealousies communicated themselves to the playwrights belonging to them, there were now, besides the Children of the Chapel, two established bodies of actors, directed by steady and, in the full sense of the word, respectable men. To the lord chamberlain's company, which, after being settled at "the Theater" (opened as early as 1576 or 1577), moved to Blackfriars, purchased by James Burbage, in 1596, and to the Globe on the Bankside in 1599, Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, the greatest of the Elizabethan actors, belonged; the lord admiral's was managed by Philip Henslowe, the author of the _Diary_, and Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, and was ultimately, in 1600, settled at the Fortune. In these and other houses were performed the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists, with few adventitious aids, the performance being crowded into a brief afternoon, when it is obvious that only the idler sections of the population could attend. No woman might appear at a playhouse, unless masked; on the stage, down to the Restoration, women's parts continued to be acted by boys.

It is futile to take no account of such outward circumstances as these and many which cannot here be noted in surveying the progress of the literature of the Elizabethan drama. Like that of the Restoration--and like that of the present day--it was necessarily influenced in its method and spirit of treatment by the conditions and restrictions which governed the place and circumstances of the performance of plays, including the construction of theatre and stage, as well as by the social composition of its audiences, which the local accommodation, not less than the entertainment, provided for them had to take into account. But to these things a mere allusion must suffice. It may safely be said, at the same time, that no dramatic literature which has any claim to rank beside the Elizabethan--not that of Athens nor those of modern Italy and Spain, nor those of France and Germany in their classic periods--had to contend against such odds; a mighty inherent strength alone ensured to it the vitality which it so triumphantly asserted, and which enabled it to run so unequalled a course.

Lyly.

Kyd.

Marlowe.

Peele.

Greene.

Among Shakespeare's predecessors, John Lyly, whose plays were all written for the Children of the Chapel and the Children of St Paul's, holds a position apart in English dramatic literature. The euphuism, to which his famous romance gave its name, likewise distinguishes his mythological,[172] quasi-historical,[173] allegorical,[174] and satirical[175] comedies. But his real service to the progress of English drama is to be sought neither in his choice of subjects nor in his imagery--though to his fondness for fairylore and for the whole phantasmagoria of legend, classical as well as romantic, his contemporaries, and Shakespeare in particular, were indebted for a stimulative precedent, and though in his _Endimion_ at all events he excites curiosity by an allegorical treatment of contemporary characters and events. It does not even lie in the songs interspersed in his plays, though none of his predecessors had in the slightest degree anticipated the lyric grace which distinguishes some of these incidental efforts. It consists in his adoption of Gascoigne's innovation of writing plays in prose; and in his having, though under the fetters of an affected and pretentious style, given the first example of brisk and vivacious dialogue--an example to which even such successors as Shakespeare and Jonson were indebted. Thomas Kyd, the author of the _Spanish Tragedy_ (preceded or followed by the first part of _Jeronimo_), and probably of several plays whose author was unnamed, possesses some of the characteristics, but none of the genius, of the greatest tragic dramatist who preceded Shakespeare. No slighter tribute than this is assuredly the due of Christopher Marlowe, whose violent end prematurely closed a poetic career of dazzling brilliancy. His earliest play, _Tamburlaine the Great_, in which the use of blank verse was introduced upon the English public stage, while full of the "high astounding terms" of an extravagant and often bombastic diction, is already marked by the passion which was the poet's most characteristic feature, and which was to find expression so luxuriantly beautiful in his _Doctor Faustus,_ and so surpassingly violent in his _Jew of Malta_. His masterpiece, _Edward II._, is a tragedy of singular pathos and of a dramatic power unapproached by any of his contemporaries. George Peele was a far more versatile writer even as a dramatist; but, though his plays contain passages of exquisite beauty, not one of them is worthy to be ranked by the side of Marlowe's _Edward II._, compared with which, if indeed not absolutely, Peele's _Chronicle of Edward I._ still stands on the level of the species to which its title and character alike assign it. His finest play is undoubtedly _David and Bethsabe_, which resembles _Edward I._ in construction, but far surpasses it in beauty of language and versification, besides treating its subject with greatly superior dignity. If the difference between Peele and Shakespeare is still, in many respects besides that of genius, an immeasurable one, we seem to come into something like a Shakespearian atmosphere in more than one passage of the plays of the unfortunate Robert Greene--unfortunate perhaps in nothing more enduringly than in the proof which he left behind him of his supercilious jealousy of Shakespeare. Greene's genius, most conspicuous in plays treating English life and scenes, could, notwithstanding his academic self-sufficiency, at times free itself from the pedantry apt to beset the flight of Peele's and at times even of Marlowe's muse; and his most delightful work[176] seems to breathe something of the air, sweet and fresh like no other, which blows over an English countryside. Thomas Lodge, whose dramatic, and much less of course his literary activity, is measured by the only play that we know to have been wholly his;[177] Thomas Nashe, the redoubtable pamphleteer and the father of the English picaresque novel;[178] Henry Chettle, who worked the chords of both pity[179] and terror[180] with equal vigour, and Anthony Munday, better remembered for his city pageants than for his plays, are among the other more important writers of the early Elizabethan drama, though not all of them can strictly speaking be called predecessors of Shakespeare. It is not possible here to enumerate the more interesting of the anonymous plays which belong to this "pre-Shakespearian" period of the Elizabethan drama; but many of them are by intrinsic merit as well as for special causes deserving of the attention of the student.

Common characteristics of the early Elizabethans.

The common characteristics of nearly all these dramatists and plays were in accordance with those of the great age to which they belonged. Stirring times called for stirring themes, such as those of "Mahomet, Scipio and Tamerlane"; and these again for a corresponding vigour of treatment. Neatness and symmetry of construction were neglected for fulness and variety of matter. Novelty and grandeur of subject seemed well matched by a swelling amplitude and often reckless extravagance of diction. As if from an inner necessity, the balance of rhymed couplets gave way to the impetuous march of blank verse; "strong lines" were as inevitably called for as strong situations and strong characters. Although the chief of these poets are marked off from one another by the individual genius which impressed itself upon both the form and the matter of their works, yet the stamp of the age is upon them all. Writing for the stage only, of which some of them possessed a personal experience and from which none of them held aloof, they acquired an instinctive insight into the laws of dramatic cause and effect, and infused a warm vitality into the dramatic literature which they produced, so to speak, for immediate consumption. On the other hand, the same cause made rapidity of workmanship indispensable to a successful playwright. _How_ a play was produced, how many hands had been at work upon it, what loans and what spoliations had been made in the process, were considerations of less moment than the question _whether_ it was produced, and whether it succeeded. His harness--frequently double or triple--was inseparable from the lusty Pegasus of the early English drama, and its genius toiled, to borrow the phrase of the Attic comedian, "like an Arcadian mercenary."

Progress of tragedy and comedy before Shakespeare.

This period of the English drama, though it is far from being one of crude effort, could not therefore yet be one of full consummation. In tragedy the advance which had been made in the choice of great themes, in knitting closer the connection between the theatre and the national history, in vindicating to passion its right to adequate expression, was already enormous. In comedy the advance had been less decisive and less independent; much had been gained in reaching greater freedom of form and something in enlarging the range of subjects; but artificiality had proved a snare in the one direction, while the licence of the comic stage, upheld by favourite "clowns," such as Kemp or Tarlton, had not succumbed before less elastic demands. The way of escaping from the dilemma had, however, been already recognized to lie in the construction of suitable plots, for which a full storehouse was open in the popular traditions preserved in national ballads, and in the growing literature of translated foreign fiction, or of native imitations of it. Meanwhile, the aberration of the comic stage to political and religious controversy, which it could never hope to treat with Attic freedom in a country provided with a strong monarchy and a dogmatic religion, seemed likely to extinguish the promise of the beginnings of English romantic comedy.

Shakespeare.

These were the circumstances under which the greatest of dramatists began to devote his genius to the theatre. Shakespeare's career as a writer of plays can have differed little in its beginnings from those of his contemporaries and rivals. Before or while he was proceeding from the re-touching and re-writing of the plays of others to original dramatic composition, the most gifted of those whom we have termed his predecessors had passed away. He had been decried as an actor before he was known as an author; and after living through days of darkness for the theatre, if not for himself, attained, before the close of the century, to the beginnings of his prosperity and the beginnings of his fame. But if we call him fortunate, it is not because of such rewards as these. As a poet, Shakespeare was no doubt happy in his times, which intensified the strength of the national character, expanded the activities of the national mind, and were able to add their stimulus even to such a creative power as his. He was happy in the antecedents of the form of literature which commended itself to his choice, and in the opportunities which it offered in so many directions for an advance to heights yet undiscovered and unknown. What he actually accomplished was due to his genius, whose achievements are immeasurable like itself. His influence upon the progress of English drama divides itself in very unequal proportions into a direct and an indirect influence. To the former alone reference can here be made.

Shakespeare and the national historical drama.

Already the first editors of Shakespeare's works in a collected form recognized so marked a distinction between his plays taken from English history and those treating other historical subjects (whether ancient or modern) that, while they included the latter among the tragedies at large, they grouped the former as _histories_ by themselves. These _histories_ are in their literary genesis a development of the _chronicle histories_ of Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries, the taste for which had greatly increased towards the beginning of his own career as a dramatist, in accordance with the general progress of national life and sentiment in this epoch. Though it cannot be assumed that Shakespeare composed his several dramas from English history in the sequence of the chronology of their themes, his genius gave to the entire series an inner harmony, and a continuity corresponding to that which is distinctive of the national life, such as not unnaturally inspired certain commentators with the wish to prove it a symmetrically constructed whole. He thus brought this peculiarly national species to a perfection which made it difficult, if not impossible, for his later contemporaries and successors to make more than an occasional addition to his series. None of them was, however, found able or ready to take up the thread where Shakespeare had left it, after perfunctorily attaching the present to the past by a work (probably not all his own) which must be regarded as the end rather than the crown of the series of his _histories_.[181] But to furnish such supplements accorded little with the tastes and tendencies of the later Elizabethans; and with the exception of an isolated work,[182] the national historical drama in Shakespeare reached at once its perfection and its close. The ruder form of the old chronicle history for a time survived the advance made upon it; but the efforts in this field of T. Heywood,[183] S. Rowley,[184] and others are, from a literary point of view, anachronisms.