Tragedy Part 13

[33] _Le theatre anglais_ (1746-49) of Pierre de La Place contained in its 8 vols. synopses and partial translations of the following plays: _Oth.e.l.lo_, _3 Henry VI_, Richard III, Hamlet, _Macbeth_, _Cymbeline_, _Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens_, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, _The Maid's Tragedy_, _Catiline_, _The Fair Penitent_, _Venice Preserved_, _Aureng Zebe_, _The Mourning Bride_, _Tamerlane_, _Siege of Damascus_ (by Hughes, 1720), _Busiris_, _Love for Love_, _The Innocent Adultery_, _Cato_, _The Funeral_ (Steele, 1702). This list, in which it will be noticed tragedy greatly predominates, represents fairly the English taste of the time.

[34] Dr. Rundle, Letters, quoted by Morel, _James Thomson_, p. 82.

[35] _Gil Blas_, Book 4, "Le Mariage de vengeance."

[36] For various references to Thomson in Voltaire's Letters, see Morel, _op. cit._ pp. 192-194; and a letter on the French translation of _Tancred and Sigismunda_, p. 153.

[37] The following list includes all eighteenth century tragedies, not mentioned in the text, that achieved any considerable popularity. These all became stock plays, and most were acted in the nineteenth century. Hughes, _Siege of Damascus_(1720); Fenton, _Mariamne_(1723); Jones, _Earl of Ess.e.x_ (1753), which superseded Banks's play as a stage favorite; Brown, _Barbarossa_ (1754); Francklin, _Earl of Warwick_ (1766); Hartson, _Countess of Salisbury_ (1767); Murphy, _Zen.o.bia_ (1768), and _The Grecian Daughter_ (1772), which gave a famous part, Euphrasia, to Mrs. Siddons and later to Miss Fannie Kemble.

[38] The eighteenth century was not blind to the absurdities of its tragedies, but made fun of them without stint. The number of burlesque tragedies is large and includes: Gay's _What d'ye Call It_ (1715); Carey's _Chrononhotonthologos_ (1734); Fielding's _Tom Thumb_ (1730); Foote's _Tragedy a la Mode_ (1764); and Sheridan's _Critic_ (1779).

[39] Dedication to _The London Merchant_.

[40] Dedication to _The London Merchant_.

[41] Translated into English as _Dorval, or the Test of Virtue_(1767).

[42] Translated 1770, and as _A Family Picture_ (1781). Also, cf. General Burgoyne's _Heiress_ (1786), which borrows from _Le Pere de Famille_, and Holcroft's _Love's Frailties_ (1794), based on a German adaptation.

[43] Criticised in _The Critical Review_, lv, 151, because of its introduction of a comic character.

[44] The elder Colman was a leader in this revival. Besides the few comedies which remained on the stock list and "Philaster," which was frequently acted at this time, the following Elizabethan plays were revived in the decade 1778-88: _Bonduca_, _Bondman_, _City Madam_, _Duke of Milan_, _Knight of Malta_, _A King and No King_, _Marcella_ (based on _The Changeling_), _Maid of Honor_, _The Picture_, _The Pilgrim_, _Scornful Lady_ (altered as _The Capricious Lady_), _Triumph of Honor_, _Women Pleased_.

CHAPTER X

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The eighteenth century had been, as we have seen, a time of stagnation in tragedy and of little dramatic advance in any direction. The theatregoer of 1720 would in 1780 have found the same plays or others similar in kind; but, had he postponed his visit yet twenty years, he would have entered a new theatrical world of romance, musical plays, and German novelties. By that time nearly all the factors of importance in the history of the stage during the first half of the nineteenth century had made their appearance.

New departures in both tragedy and comedy, and a theatrically important _tertium quid_ were all inst.i.tuted. And new ideas, new themes, and new stories witnessed the changing taste and gave promise of the enlargement of the imaginative horizon which the new romanticism was to produce.

We have seen that, while neither realistic tragedy nor sentimental comedy had experienced a notable development, they had been departures from long-standing conventions. Tragedies in three acts, tragedies in prose, tragedies on domestic themes, tragedies without princes, tragedies of the present, all gave some encouragement for further novelty and experiment.

The several varieties of "soft tragedy and genteel comedy" departed far enough from the standards of both species to suggest a dramatic development that should discard the traditional limitations. This changing taste, however, was seized by German plays and dramatized "tales of terror." The large and varied influence of German poetry, criticism, and philosophy upon the romantic movement in England can be noticed here only so far as it affected the drama. The plays of Lessing and the early plays of Goethe and Schiller made little impression on the English stage, though they exercised an immediate influence on the reading public and on most of the young men "standing on the forehead of the age to come." The conquest of the English stage was made at its point of greatest vulnerability--its sentimentality--by one who seemed the very Napoleon of the drama, Kotzebue, the conqueror of the theatres of all western Europe. In 1798 "The Stranger"

("Menschenha.s.s und Reue") took Drury Lane by storm, and the next year Sheridan's "Pizarro," an adaptation of "Die Spanier in Peru," plus some eloquence and some songs, gained a still more brilliant success and drew even George III to the theatre. For several years Kotzebue reigned supreme; twenty or more of his plays were translated; many were acted; "Pizarro"

alone had pa.s.sed through twenty-nine editions by 1811, besides other English and American versions of the play. Kotzebue's triumph was due in part to his great skill in stage-craft, and in part to his adroit appeal to the more superficial sentiments for social and political revolution that were everywhere stirring. When it is compared with preceding sentimental comedy, the success of "The Stranger" is easily understood. It has the theatrical merit of arousing curiosity at the beginning and keeping it on question until the last moment; and it deals, over-sentimentally of course, with a social question of dramatic value and of especial piquancy at a time when many conventions seemed tottering,--should an erring wife be taken back again by her husband? The theme of "A Woman Killed with Kindness,"

"Jane Sh.o.r.e," and "The Fair Penitent" was given a new interest and a new solution. "Pizarro," retaining much of the plot familiar in English tragedy since the time of Dryden's "Indian Emperor," has two lovers, opponents in war, and two heroines, one vengeful, the other angelic, but makes the real hero the renouncing lover, who sacrifices all for the happiness of the angel who loves not him but his friend. Under these new auspices the fair penitent and the renunciatory hero began long careers in English drama and fiction. But neither these nor any other of Kotzebue's plays offered any guidance toward a serious interpretation of life or any innovations of real consequence in the English tragic tradition.

If Kotzebue's plays offered little promise for the national drama, the native plays which rivaled them in popularity offered less. Castles, monks, dungeons, and so on had already become somewhat common in musical plays and operas[45] and occasionally in tragedies, when "The Castle Spectre" of Monk Lewis opened the flood-gates to "tales of terror" and their medieval and supernatural paraphernalia. "The Castle Spectre," which in the season of 1797-98 surpa.s.sed "The Stranger" and for a while held its own with Kotzebue, represents a new reign of romance. The new queen did not come from "perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." She belonged to the earlier days of the romantic movement, and made her conquest at the head of squadrons of medievalistic, terroristic, and Germanistic Goths. She is adequately described in the prologue to the play:--

"Far from the haunts of men, of vice the foe, The moon-struck child of genius and of woe, Versed in each magic spell, and dear to fame, A fair enchantress dwells, Romance her name, She loathes the sun or blazing taper's light: The moon-beam'd landscape and tempestuous night Alone she loves; and oft, with glimmering lamp, Near graves new-opened, or midst dungeons damp, Drear forests, ruin'd aisles, and haunted towers, Forlorn she roves, and raves away the hours!

Anon, when storms howl loud and lash the deep, Desperate she climbs the sea-rock's beetling steep; There wildly strikes her harp's fantastic strings, Tells to the moon how grief her bosom wrings, And while her strange song chaunts fict.i.tious ills, In wounded hearts Oblivion's balm distils."

The "drama," as it was called, is in prose, and is a medley of the various terroristic novels, including the two most famous, "The Castle of Otranto"

and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and adding something from Schiller's "Robbers" and from Shakespeare. There is a haunted castle, a jocose monk, a fool, a marvelous dungeon, a fisherman's hut, a ghost, a midnight bell, and songs and elaborate scenery. The villain, a feudal baron attended by negroes, is finally killed by the heroine, who saves her imprisoned father and escapes with the hero.

The signs of life that succeeded the long petrifaction of the eighteenth century drama and the beginning of the revolutionary epoch thus resulted only in theatrical novelties and in no serious dramatic movement. All serious drama was, indeed, threatened by the ascendancy of the "illegitimate" drama of music and dumb show. The causes leading to the rise of this cla.s.s and its ensuing history were in large measure connected with the theatres themselves. Even before the new romanticism had invaded the drama, changes in theatrical conditions of far-reaching importance were well under way. The monopoly exercised by the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres was first threatened about 1730 by the success of a few minor theatres which gave musical, acrobatic, or dramatic entertainments. The old theatres were successful in maintaining their monopoly in regular plays, but the irregular houses gained permission to give performances under the loosely defined term "burletta." A "burletta" was supposed to have a musical accompaniment, but it proved difficult to say how little music and how much of a drama might be included under the term. Henceforth, the regular drama had, in addition to the rivalry of Italian and English operas, that of musical and dramatic medleys; and the patent houses had to face the rivalry of playhouses that infringed as far as they dared on the legitimate drama. The patent theatres, with their vested rights in the stock plays and their obligation to maintain Dryden, Otway, and Shakespeare, offered no great inducements to new authors. This was particularly true, after the rebuilding and enlargement of both theatres in 1791 and 1794, when the increased cost of bringing out a play and the increased difficulty in acting or hearing an unfamiliar play led Kemble practically to abandon any attempt to produce new tragedies. The minor theatres, which were growing in importance, legally limited to the field of musical performances, and excluded from the regular drama except by trick, could offer little support to the serious dramatist. As a result, musical plays, operettas, and finally a new type, the "melodrame," flourished in the minor houses and found their way soon into the two great theatres. When in 1808-09 these were burned, the rivalry with the minors had become acute.

The old theatres were rebuilt of so great a size that they proved unsuitable for any spoken drama. Through their great actors, Kemble, Kean, and later Macready, they maintained Shakespearean drama and a few of the old stock plays; but they were forced for the rest of the time to resort to melodrama, spectacle, or pantomime. The minors, though they now became more daring in their invasions of legitimate drama, naturally continued the kind of entertainments at which they had succeeded and to which they had forced the great theatres to succ.u.mb. The long struggle for a free stage was now nearing its end; the patent theatres were maintained with increasing difficulty; the minors prospered. With the death of Kean in 1833, a great prop of the patent theatres fell; and though the agitation for parliamentary reform in that year failed, and the final legislation against theatrical monopoly was not pa.s.sed until 1847, the great theatres ceased to determine the history of the drama. Macready's two periods of management, 1837-39 and 1841-43, were the final efforts to restore the old regime that had maintained tragedy since the Restoration.

The "illegitimate" drama that triumphed in the theatres comprised a wide range of entertainments, mostly farcical in their dramatic elements. Toward the end of the eighteenth century the rage for dumb show and musical additions invaded the regular drama. Even Kotzebue had to be decked out with songs and choruses. Moreover, a peculiar species of the illegitimate drama developed in the plays of Andrews, Dibdin, Reynolds, Boaden, and Colman the younger that served as a half subst.i.tute for tragedy. This species seems to have been mainly due to the ingenuity of George Colman.

Those of his plays verging on tragedy, of which "The Battle of Hexham"

(1789), "The Surrender of Calais" (1791), "The Mountaineers" (1793), and "The Iron Chest" (1796) are the chief, are lively medleys of tragedy, comedy, opera, and farce. In each a tragic story is told in blank verse, audaciously Shakespearean, and this is mixed with broad comedy or farce in prose. There is a bustling action with s.h.i.+fting scenes, much spectacle, many songs, solos, duets, or choruses, for which a crowd of soldiers, monks, beggars, foresters, or the like, is always within call. "The Surrender of Calais" tells the story of Queen Philippa's mercy; "The Iron Chest" is a dramatization of "Caleb Williams"; "The Battle of Hexham" is a sort of musicalized chronicle history, presenting the adventures of Adeline in search of her husband, who turns out to be a captain of a band of robbers and the rescuer of Queen Margaret and the prince after the battle of Hexham. "The Mountaineers," suggested by a story in "Don Quixote," finds its land of romance in Spain, where a Christian prisoner elopes with the daughter of his Moorish jailer, accompanied by a stage Irishman as _gracioso_; and this group, when recaptured, are rescued by Octavian, a half-mad tragic soliloquizer, who also recovers his long-lost love, and was thought to be extremely impressive when impersonated by Kemble. In his use of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the Elizabethan drama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English tragedy, and pa.s.sed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession of the illegitimate drama.

At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment there, the _melodrame_. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The peculiar novelties of the _melodrame_ were the supplementing of the dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate held full sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or machinery. From the start, _melodrame_ allied itself to most of the paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and good among the characters, lent itself readily to a dramatization that required a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of action, music, and machinery. Comic scenes were, of course, _de rigueur_. "The Slave," by Morton, was one of the most enduring of the Colmanesque type. The serious plot, which presents Gambia, the slave, as the sacrificing hero, borrows from "The Curfew" and "Oronooko," and for its great scene improves upon the escape over the bridge in "Pizarro."[46]

After Clifton and Zelinda (whom Gambia hopelessly adores) escape across the hanging bridge, Gambia climbs up the tree from which it is suspended and cuts the rope. The pursuing villains are foiled on the brink.

"We are safe, my husband," cries Zelinda from the other side; but her child, safely hidden by Gambia, hears her voice, and runs from his hiding-place,--on the wrong side of the river.

_Child._ It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!

_Zelinda._ Alas! my child!

_Somerd.y.k.e._ Her child! Then we triumph--seize him! (_A slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of rock, hands it to Somerd.y.k.e, who continues._) Move one step further, and you will see him buried in the waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (_Holding him up in the act of precipitating him._)

_Zelinda._ I do submit.

_Gambia._ Never! (_Gambia, who has concealed himself in the branches, s.n.a.t.c.hes the child up into the tree._) Father, receive your child! (_Throws the child across the stream._) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha!

(_Curtain._)

The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show, strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, and music did not further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama.

There was in England no relations.h.i.+p between the two as between Pixerecourt and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes, rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.

The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the melodrama, tragedy has tended either to a.s.sume the garb of its rivals, or to conform its appeal to a select audience.

In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and the melodrama and the melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy.

The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men, Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were a.s.sociated with the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists, while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted.

These plays fall into two main cla.s.ses, those that were acted and carried on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted.

This second cla.s.s, which for the first time becomes of some importance in the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to its requirements, and might easily be adapted for presentation. There are others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre.

These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various cla.s.ses of closet drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music, spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in the beauty of verse.

The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first volume of her "Plays on the Pa.s.sions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and "The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series, ill.u.s.trating each of the dominant pa.s.sions by a tragedy and a comedy. Her preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who at Alfoxden were polis.h.i.+ng their own tragedies and planning a revolution in poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama.

She proposed to devote a play to the ill.u.s.tration of a single pa.s.sion, to trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that pa.s.sion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This absorption with a study of emotion _per se_ led to a subordination of plot and all external incident, and--so she proposed--all poetic embellishment, to a searching study of isolated pa.s.sion. Her first volume attracted attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without success. She continued, however, writing and publis.h.i.+ng, completing the series of plays on pa.s.sions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays,"

twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults, knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon s.h.i.+ning through vaulted windows.

Her conception of a play of pa.s.sion forbids motiving of character, or integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls.

There are many improbabilities, and the pa.s.sions are exposed mainly in soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purple patches. It rarely if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers.

Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose won a popular appreciation for their a.n.a.lyses of pa.s.sion, denied to more imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was justly gratified by receiving a diploma "const.i.tuting her a member of the Michigan Historical Society."

Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing tragedies of pa.s.sions[47] arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's "Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated by the abhorrent principles of G.o.dwin's "Political Justice." Coleridge's "Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres.

The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic pa.s.sion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the "Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the managers. But even had he made the revisions that they required, he could hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his melodramatic action.

Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they, and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing.

"The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.

From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813), literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. G.o.dwin's plays, "Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's "Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted tragedy. When Lewis tried to give his terrific vein a little dignity and blank verse, even he failed on the stage.[48]

After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the "Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's plays was "Evadne," based on s.h.i.+rley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted 1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements.