Tragedy Part 10

Crowne's "Thyestes" is the only attempt besides Dryden's "Orestes" to adapt a cla.s.sical 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-cla.s.sic 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," "Coriola.n.u.s," and "Cymbeline," and thereby greatly extended the knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare; and, second, that they left "Hamlet" and "Oth.e.l.lo" 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 outcla.s.sed 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 Ma.s.sacre 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, l.u.s.t, 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 l.u.s.t, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 l.u.s.tful 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sion 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, "encompa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 n.o.ble 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 l.u.s.tful 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 "t.i.tus and Berenice," a free and sympathetic translation of Racine's "Berenice" that was surpa.s.sed in the favor of the theatre by Crowne's treatment of the same subject.

After several comedies he followed the fas.h.i.+on 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 cla.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 subst.i.tutes 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, n.o.bles, kings, nor ill.u.s.trious 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-cla.s.s 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 Ess.e.x). These plays are interesting as an ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.sociated, and his tragedies follow Dryden's later work in maintaining the Elizabethan traditions of blank verse, comedy, double plots, s.h.i.+fting 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 a.s.sistants 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. Cla.s.sical 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 s.h.i.+pwreck. 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 a.s.sumes the costume of the mute in order to make sure of the execution. Meanwhile the king, learning of Zara's pa.s.sion for Osmyn, determines to have him killed and then a.s.sume 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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. n.o.ble 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, pa.s.sion, 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 n.o.ble 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 Anglica.n.u.s_ (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. G.o.dfrey, _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. a.s.sn. 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. a.s.sn. 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, a.s.sisting 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 censors.h.i.+p 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," "Oth.e.l.lo,"

"Julius Caesar," and alterations of "Macbeth," "Lear," "Richard III,"