Chapter XIII: Act I: , for the first time more than a prelude, consists

nevertheless, after Hecuba’s opening monologue, of responsive
lyrics between her and the chorus. The envoy Talthybius arrives
toward the end. Act II, mainly a debate between Andromache
and Ulysses, introduces Helen and Astyanax and closes with a
chorus. Act III, bringing back Hecuba and Talthybius, adds
Pyrrhe, Agamemnon, Calchas, and Polyxena. Act IV brings
together Hecuba and Andromache. The murder of Astyanax and
the death, already forecast, of Polyxena are announced by
messenger. Act V gives main place to Polymestor, who appears
for the first time. The act is in effect an appendix, adding
the _Hecuba_ of Euripides to Seneca.

Evidently Garnier has not grasped the composing habit of Greek tragedy. At most he has managed somewhat more interaction between such groups of persons as he had begun by keeping apart in separate acts. He is working at literature, not at drama. Hence his evident intelligence carries his experience only so far. The argument of _Antigone_ (1580) cites the Theban plays of all three great Greek dramatists, and adds Statius to Seneca. The plot generally uses Seneca for the first three acts, the _Antigone_ of Sophocles for the last two. The combination is rather piecing than fusion, and shows no appreciation of the dramaturgy of Sophocles. In 1582 Garnier was adventurous enough to attempt a dramatization of Ariosto. _Bradamante_, which he calls a tragicomedy,[45] is hardly more than a division of certain parts of the _Orlando_ into scenes which are far from being dramatic units. As in the earlier plays, the five acts are in effect three. Some characterization is achieved in the minor persons Aymon and Beatrix. Bradamante herself is chosen, of course, for those lyric tirades with which Ariosto had delighted the century.

But Garnier lived to vindicate tragedy within his own limits. _Les Juifves_ (1583) has more values for representation and, in the pervasive suggestion of the inextinguishable mission of Israel, a certain unity of tone. “The subject is taken,” says the argument, “from the 24th and 25th chapters of the fourth book of Kings, the 36th chapter of the second book of Chronicles, and the 29th chapter of Jeremiah, and is more amply treated by Josephus in the 9th and 10th chapters of his Antiquities.”

The persons are the Prophet, Nebuchadnezzar, Nabuz, and Amital; the Jewish Queens and Nebuchadnezzar’s Queen; a Duenna and a Provost; and the frequently appearing Chorus. Two other main persons, Zedekiah and the High Priest, appear first in IV; the Prophet, only in I and V. As in the earlier tragedies, I is a monologue of lamentation on the Captivity plus a chorus, that is, an expository prelude; and V, reporting the slaughter of the children, is an epilogue urging submission to the will of God and the hope of deliverance by Cyrus. Though the groups are somewhat better combined, there is little change in the habit of composition.

Such effectiveness as this tragedy has beyond spectacle is mainly lyric. The abundant choruses and responses are both expert as verse and inspired by Psalms and Prophets to eloquence: Adieu, native land (II. v); How shall we sing in a strange land? (III. iii); Wretched daughters of Sion (IV. i). Though there is some interaction of plea and refusal, some suspense, all the decisions have been made beforehand. There remain to animate a play the sight and sound of communal fortitude. _Les Juifves_ is a noble poem; its literary type is still clear in the nobler _Samson Agonistes_ of Milton.

That Garnier’s classicism is thoroughly of his time is vouched by forty editions in less than thirty years. He was classical superficially in following the custom of mythological ornament. He was classical further in imitations on classical themes with classical persons, and still further in going from Seneca to Euripides and even to Sophocles. But his classicism kept sixteenth-century limits in looking away from composition to style. As to the Middle Age, dramatic meant to his time not a distinctive movement, but a certain style. Though he was intelligent and serious enough to use Seneca in his own way, less than the Elizabethans for melodrama, more for moral urgency, he did not see beyond the Senecan conception of drama as oratory plus lyric. He found his own oratory, his own lyric; but his progress was rather in tragic diction than in tragedy.[46]

3. HISTORY PLAYS

The most distinctive Elizabethan stage experiments of the waning sixteenth century were the “histories.” Generally lacking focus, series rather than sequence, often made over, sometimes nationalistic propaganda, they still keep some of their Elizabethan stir. For the putting of great men on the stage not only satisfied a story appetite growing too fast for print; it showed prowess, as no story can quite show, in action. Thus a history play, though it might be tragedy only in the medieval sense of the fall of a prince, though it might be Senecan enough in style, might teach stage values beyond Seneca. Widening the field of tragedy beyond Greek legend to the opening East and to national history, it also opened other methods of characterization and other dramatic forms than were taught by either the Greek or the Latin tradition.

The story play, then, should not be ruled out as _a priori_ undramatic. Aristotelian theory and classical experience exhibit dramatic movement as typically distinct from narrative, not the telling of the story, but the compelling of its crisis to an emotional issue. In this aspect the Greek tragic theater exhibits sharp contrasts to the Elizabethan: the one vast, open, removing the audience so far as to compel orotund delivery and preclude facial expression, the other small, closed, bringing the audience so near as to invite facial play and even aside; the one limited to a few persons, the other inviting many; the one unifying plot for the sake of unbroken, cumulative sequence to an inevitable issue, the other dispersing it over time and space for narrative values and for individualizing characterization; the one crisis play, the other story play. But the contrast is not absolute, nor does it establish exclusive superiority. Greek tragedy is too great in its kind to need any cult of it as the _beau idéal_. The sixteenth century might have progressed faster for understanding that dramaturgy; but Shakspere came before Corneille and by another road. Elizabethan drama, often bungling, sometimes sprawling at first, and slow to master the essentially dramatic method of interaction, was yet a school of various experience. Though the experience of the “histories” was valuable mainly as preparatory, it also vindicated the dramatic validity of a story play.

Marlowe’s _Tamburlaine_ (1587) is poetry not only in what the Middle Age called high style, but in dramatic conception. Though his sequel failed to make it a tragedy, it is history brought home in heroic action. The fourth act, indeed, lapses into spectacle; the fifth pushes the ruthlessness beyond credibility, and the close is a formal gesture; but for three acts we are in the thick. Not sustained as a sequence, this activity is nevertheless dramatic to the extent of being typically distinct from Seneca. For all its oratory, _Tamburlaine_ is story in action. Thus was opened the way for Shakspere’s “histories” of the 90’s. We shall do his revolting _Richard III_ more justice if we neither excuse it as carrying over an earlier appeal of blood, nor blame it for failing to focus the monster in a tragedy. _Richard III_ is not tragedy dulled by dispersion; it is dramatic story, dramatic in the interactions of that princely world poisoned by treachery, story in cumulative damnation. Shakspere had written the _Merchant of Venice_ and was writing _As You Like It_, when he put on another “history” in _Henry V_ (1599).

4. PASTORAL AND RUSTIC COMEDY

Before the dramatic experience of the “histories” bore its best fruit in a widening of tragedy, another sort of story enriched comedy. Dramatic training through Latin comedy had been continuous from the Middle Age through the Renaissance. As Ariosto had begun with _I suppositi_ in 1509, so Shakspere wrote the _Comedy of Errors_ in 1591. In Latin and in vernacular, in translation and in imitation, the quick, smart formula of Plautus and Terence[47] continued its lessons. But the abundant Renaissance pageantry of solemn entries, the court shows, and the vogue of pastoral, had yielded here and there some dramatic experience. This is evident as early as Poliziano,[48] whose _Orfeo_ is classical in its pagan gods and demigods, specifically pastoral in its shepherds. It is also myth, both in the original story of Orpheus and Eurydice and in Poliziano’s shaping. His myth is effective spectacle; his dialogue more than conventional responses. He has action enough to conclude upon vociferous melodrama. _Orfeo_ is a play so far as it goes; but it is too brief to make its dramatic sequence convincing. Mythological drama is rather opened than established. In 1573 Tasso, fulfilling a similar commission for a court show at Urbino, conformed his _Aminta_[49] strictly to unity of place and time. But its sequence, though uninterrupted, is hardly dramatic. It proceeds oftener by musical recitative than by action. Lovely to see and hear, it gives more hints for opera than for drama. Battista Guarini (1538-1612), professor of rhetoric and poetic at Ferrara, and chief court poet after the withdrawal of Tasso, spent years on his pastoral drama _Il pastor fido_.

Begun in 1580, finished in 1583, read aloud, revised, it was finally published at Venice 1589/90. Apparently it was first staged in 1595. The Venice edition of 1602 is the twentieth. Called tragicomedy, tragedy in its crisis of life and death, comedy in its satyr and in its happy issue, it is above all, in its persons, its scene, its mythology, consistently pastoral. A prologue celebrating Arcadia as a blest retreat of peace, and Caterina d’Este as worthy of her illustrious house, is spoken by the river Alfeo. Besides this personification, and four choruses, there are eighteen personae. Of these the majority are servants or companions serving merely as interlocutors. Three, the temple officiant Nicander, Corisca’s lover Corydon, and a messenger, are quite superfluous. No person is characterized except as a type: the hero Mirtillo as a devotedly faithful lover, the heroine Amaryllis as virtuous, Corisca as a plotter. All are duly paganized.

I. The play opens with old Linco’s advice to athletic young
Silvio: go love betimes. A dialogue between Mirtillo expounds
the plot. Corisca’s monologue tells the audience that she is
in love with Mirtillo, and must have revenge for his disdain.
Three elders, Tityrus, the priest Montano, and Dameta, further
expound the situation in reminiscence. A satyr, in a monologue
on love, vows to seize the tricky Corisca. The persons having
been thus presented in separate sets, the act ends with a
chorus.

II. Mirtillo tells Ergasto how he fell in love forever with
Amaryllis. Dorinda in vain woos Silvio by detaining and
restoring his hound. Corisca’s monologue exults in the outlook
of her plot, and her dialogue misleading Amaryllis ends with
soliloquy. The satyr seizing her, she cajoles, insults, and
finally breaks away, thus providing action for the first time.
The concluding chorus moralizes the past.

III. Mirtillo, after apostrophizing spring and love, is
brought, through a game of nymphs devised by Corisca, to
Amaryllis, declares his passion, exchanges longer and longer
speeches, and finding her obdurate, vows to die. In a monologue
she tells the audience that she loves him nevertheless. Corisca
tricks them separately into seeking a cave. Each exhales a
monologue on the way. This is the complication. The satyr
unwittingly furthers it by blocking the cave with a rock, thus
imprisoning the two innocents. The chorus meditates on love.

IV. At this point all that remains of the action is to disclose
Corisca’s trick, correct the mistaken identity, and reveal the
true intent of the oracle. But since the play must have five
acts Guarini reserves all this to V, and makes IV a stalling
interlude of monologues, reports, and choruses. The only action
is in the last scene (ix), where Silvio, accidentally wounding
Dorinda, begins to fall in love with her.

V. Mirtillo’s foster-father, arriving from far, finds him about
to be sacrificed, having offered himself in place of Amaryllis.
The disclosure that these two are the fated couple meant by the
oracle is made gradually through five scenes, and capped by the
arrival of the blind seer Tirenio in vi. Silvio is reported
duly in love with the healed Dorinda. Even Corisca is pardoned;
and the play ends with hymeneal choruses.

The play is not moved by the actions of its persons. Complication, indeed, comes through Corisca, who is the only person carried through the play; but the solution is through persons brought in at the end solely for that purpose. As with Garnier, the persons are presented in separate groups; and they are on the stage to talk. The style is expertly careful. Guarini has learned from Tasso how to modulate his verse. The notes record constant reminiscences of the classics, both Greek and Latin, and many borrowings; but the surcharging, again after the example of Tasso, is discreetly harmonized. Pastoral drama, then, rather prolonged pastoral than advanced drama. But its opportunities for spectacle, dance, music, and imaginative suggestion were among the motives finally woven into a play by Shakspere.

Meantime real rustics also, actual farmers, laborers, villagers, had long been dramatized for gentlefolk and bourgeois by amateurs and increasingly by professional companies. Angelo Beolco (1502-1542), called from one of his favorite impersonations Ruzzante, even localized them on the stage in Ferrara and Venice by Paduan dialect. As the shepherds of the Towneley _Secunda pastorum_, his rustics are presented realistically. Here is the essential difference from pastoral. The actual rudeness of such impersonations, may, indeed, be dramatically exaggerated; but it must always seem actual. Ruzzante’s vivid realizations transcend his Paduan dialect by the appeal of actual peasant life, rudeness, shrewdness, lewdness unveiled by the social conventions of a higher society, talking in their own terms. Such rustic drama in time helped to discover a dramatic interest beyond types in individuals. Types remain useful in comedy because they are readily recognizable, the braggart soldier or the clever rascal; and dramatic theory urges nothing more. But the stage attempts with rustic persons sometimes opened in comedy of manners the further appeal of characterization. The verisimilitude and propriety of the theorists gave way to dramatic creation. As later in the “histories,” so in rustic comedies, theory was widened by stage experience.

Ruzzante’s life was too short to bring his art to maturity. At forty, though he had already triumphed in single characterizations, he was still groping in the forms of Plautus. Much of his work is what is now called sketch, rather dialogue or even monologue than play.

A characteristic piece is his _First Dialogue_. A soldier, reminiscent here and elsewhere of the _miles gloriosus_, but characterized with some individuality, is returning from the war ragged and wistful, but still boastful. Catechized by an old friend, he gives his experiences, his theory of life, and something of himself. So far the form is hardly more than monologue; for the friend merely listens, questions, and comments. There is no interaction. The effect, however, even in print, is dramatic to the extent of vivid representation. The racy language has constant suggestions of manner, gesture, stage business. It differs essentially from the diction of Garnier. We come to know this man.

Then the soldier meets his wife. She is interested, not moved. Having had to shift for herself in his absence, she cannot now break off convenient relations for sentiment. Here is interaction, even a situation, and the lines given to the man and to the woman clearly suggest it; but more than lines are needed to make it a play. So Ruzzante took this second part for the motive of his _Second Dialogue_. He saw the situation; he gave it some complication, and closed upon violent action; but he did not sustain the interaction of man and woman, and his third person, her senile lover, remains almost separate.

So Ruzzante’s collected pieces[50] generally show less achievement than promise. He was learning rapidly from the stage itself. Imperfect playwright at his untimely death, he was already famous as a writer and actor of “parts.” These Italian stage experiments of the 1530’s were essentially like the Elizabethan fifty years later in giving to an old field new stage values. Though they had rather a local success than any general influence, they are significant now for what they opened.

In 1586 John Lyly gave the persons of his _Endymion_ Greek or Latin names. But the myth suggested by his title does not take shape as plot. Indeed, there is hardly any action, none that is dramatically determining. The persons are on the stage to talk, the main persons in orations, the Latin-comedy servants in repartee. Endymion’s dream is presented by a dumb show in Act II, and recounted in Act IV. The close is flatly by Cynthia’s fiat. The allegory, clearer of course to the audience than to us, seems to be both personification of qualities and suggestion of actual persons, as in Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_. In both aspects it now makes a dull play duller.

Peele’s _Old Wives’ Tale_ is as random as its title, adding rustics to classics and allegory to folklore. Not a story play, it is a collection of little shows, each rather for itself than for any sequence. The folklore material and the rustics are interesting; the play is not. That anything so shapeless could have gained the stage in 1590 is sufficient evidence of Elizabethan willingness to experiment. Within five years Shakspere found the dramatic solution of myth and pastoral, folklore and rustics, for court show in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Forthwith Lyly’s pedantic encomium and clumsy dumb show, Peele’s jolly rustics and half-fairies, become as antiquated as the many Elizabethan gropings through the moralities and pastoral. The court show has arrived at fairyland. For this is all faery: the ancient heroic world from Boccaccio and Chaucer, and the sprites with classical names. The classical story of Pyramus and Thisbe is transmitted by rustics; and Bottom himself is translated. Through all hovers the authentic elfin minister Puck.

_Midsummer Night’s Dream_ is a complete fusion, not only of style as Tasso’s _Aminta_, but also in dramatic movement. As Theseus, Puck, and Bottom, the lovers and yokels, are all conformed to the same world, so they all interact in a single sequence toward a uniting issue. Even the place is single. Such slight shifts as there may have been in the Elizabethan theater are negligible; for of all its many presentations the most convincing have stayed on a lawn before a green thicket. _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ is a one-act play, Greek dramaturgy beyond Garnier’s or Tasso’s. But instead of saying that Shakspere conformed to the dramatic unities, we should rather say that he learned the dramatic importance of holding fairyland together. Sixteenth-century stage experience, then, as well as classical theory and imitation, opened the great drama of the seventeenth century. The experience of court shows with the feebleness of allegory, the escape of pastoral, the vitality of rustic realism, opened the way for both romantic and realistic comedy. The experience of the “histories” opened a new appeal in tragedy. For Corneille, as well as Shakspere, was a man of the stage.