Tragedy Part 9

Tragedy throughout this development remained popular. Less than the ballad but more than any other form of literature prior to the pamphlet, novel, and newspaper, the drama was the result of popular taste, thought, and desire. Tragedy early shook off the bonds of cla.s.sical tradition, and it never ceased to aim first at pleasing the audiences. Shakespeare as well as Dekker or s.h.i.+rley was their servant. Even in the later days when increasing Puritanism alienated a large portion of the public from the theatres, literary standards failed to overthrow the sovereignty of the people, though, as the dramatists paid allegiance to a restricted and less representative audience, the drama waned. Without a guiding criticism, without any reliance on authority or tradition, appealing first to the public theatre and only secondly to court or culture or posterity, tragedy at its best was not distinguished by impeccability of literary art. It lacked simplicity of theme and precision of treatment; it was fantastic in design and language. It lacked refinement; it was vulgar in diction and scene; it was revolting in its horrors and bloodshed. It lacked reserve and definiteness of literary purpose; it was sensational, incongruous, or nave in its address to the intelligence. But from the same conditions that gave rise to its faults and excesses came its excellences. A delight in verbal felicity, a welcome for diverse excitement, and a craving for story on the part of the public made possible the wealth of incident and character, the varied emotional appeal, and the fervid poetry of Elizabethan tragedy. It was free to avail itself of every resource of poet or playwright in order to present human pa.s.sion of all kinds, human individuals of many varieties.

Its virtues as well as its faults are summed up in Shakespeare. After his death it developed in dramatic dexterity rather than in the comprehensiveness of its mirror of life. Yet, without Shakespeare, the fabrics of its vision comprise

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself."

Even without him, the legacy of Elizabethan tragedy is an unfaded pageant of the greatness and the pain, the pa.s.sion and the poetry of our little life.

NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ward, Fleay, Sch.e.l.ling, and the bibliographies in the Shakespeare _Jahrbuch_ continue to be the best guides. Dyce's admirable edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (11 vols., 1843-46) has long been the standard, but two new complete editions of their works are now in progress, one under the general editors.h.i.+p of A. H. Bullen (London, 1904-), the other edited by A.

Glover and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905-). The discussion in this chapter is in part based on my _Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_ (1901) and my edition of _The Maid's Tragedy_ and _Philaster_ in the _Belles-Lettres Series_ (Boston, 1906). I must refer to the latter for a full bibliography of both texts and critical works. Miss Hatcher's _John Fletcher_ (Chicago, 1905) should be added. Webster has been well edited by Dyce and Hazlitt; and his two princ.i.p.al tragedies by M. W. Sampson in the _Belles-Lettres Series_, with full bibliography. E. E. Stoll's monograph, _John Webster_, referred to in chapter v, has been drawn upon in the discussion in this chapter. Tourneur has been edited by J. Churton Collins (1878); Middleton by A. H. Bullen; Ma.s.singer very poorly by Gifford (2d ed., 1815); Ford by Gifford (1827, revised by Dyce, 1869); and s.h.i.+rley by Dyce (1833). Editions of selections from all these dramatists will also be found in the _Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists_, with introductions of varying value. Bibliographical references to all dramatists of this period will be found in Ward and Sch.e.l.ling, and in general more comprehensive discussion of their plays than are to be found elsewhere. Of especial value in the study of sources are E. Koeppel's two volumes, _Quellen Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's und Beaumont und Fletcher's_ (1895) and _Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Ma.s.singer's und John Ford's_ (1897).

Among the critical appreciations of the dramatists of this and the preceding chapters are: Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, Hazlitt's _Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_, Jeffrey's _Essay on Ford_, Lowell's _Old English Dramatists_, G. C. Macaulay's _Francis Beaumont_ (1883), Swinburne's _Ben Jonson_ (1889), and his essays on other dramatists.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Elizabethan has been used to designate the whole period of the drama from 1559 to 1642.

[23] For a somewhat different view of the play, emphasizing its crudity as a drama, see Mr. William Archer's "Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne," _New Review_, January, 1893.

[24] See Coleridge, _Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher_, for a characteristic and valuable criticism of the play.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RESTORATION

The drama of the Restoration was separated from the earlier periods by sixteen years of closed theatres and a virtual cessation of all dramatic composition. To the drama, as to other forms of literature, the Restoration brought not only a revival but also a revolution--new fas.h.i.+ons, new models, new foreign influence, a new age, and a changed society. No such break in theatrical conditions has occurred since then, and nothing so nearly revolutionary in the history of the drama. Since then the theatres have been always open, the dramatists always writing. Changes have been gradual, the history continuous. Due recognition must, therefore, be given to the last years before the closing of the theatres and the first years after their reopening as marking an end and a beginning. Really, however, the new was a continuation of the old; the pause was by no means a severing of traditions; and the Restoration drama inherited far more from the Elizabethan than it imported from France or originated under the inspiration of that ill.u.s.trious patron of poetry, Charles II.

Signs of continued interest in the theatre had not been wanting during the Commonwealth. The theatres were reopened in 1648 but promptly suppressed and dismantled. Drolls or short farces derived from popular plays were performed here and there in London or in the country, and the continued publication of old plays revealed a considerable demand from the reading public. In 1656 Davenant obtained permission for the performance of his "Siege of Rhodes" "made a Representation by the Art of Perspective Scenes, and the story sung in Recitative Music." Thus, even before the revival of the regular drama, came its rival the opera, and the important innovation of movable scenes. Two years later Davenant produced another entertainment, and was performing regular plays before Monk had entered London. Two companies, the King's and the Duke of York's, were presently licensed; these, united from 1682 to 1695, sufficed for sixty years to supply the needs of the London public, and maintained their monopoly until well into the nineteenth century. Before 1642 the open public theatres had largely given place to the "private" theatres in inclosed rooms. These and the contemporary French theatres served as models for the Restoration buildings. The stage still protruded into the auditorium and was frequently crowded with gallants as in the Elizabethan days, but the use of scenery, a drop curtain shutting off all the stage but the proscenium, the performances by artificial light, together with the women actors, who now for the first time interpreted Shakespeare's heroines, brought the Restoration stage closer to that of our own day than to that of the preceding generation. This transformation from a half-medieval to a nearly modern stage resulted in far-reaching changes in the drama; among others, in a new importance to female parts and in alterations in structure due to the use of scenery and curtain. Few of the old actors were still alive, though enough had been gathered to make up the nucleus of the companies and to transmit the traditions of the Globe and the Blackfriars. The acting of the Restoration probably soon surpa.s.sed that of the earlier period, and the great triumphs of Betterton and Mrs. Barry set new and long influential traditions in English tragedy. The changes which most fundamentally affected the drama were those in the stage and the actors.

The influence exerted upon the drama by the new opera may also be described as largely theatrical. The opera of the Restoration is to be distinguished from the form as it has prevailed since the introduction of Italian opera into England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The term was loosely used to describe a variety of entertainments, in which the dialogue might be altogether sung, or in part spoken, and in which the dancing and decoration were regarded as not less essential than the music. Derived from France, where the opera gained great favor and attracted the services of Corneille and Quinault, the English species was closely related to two national forms of drama, the masque and the tragedy. In music, dancing, and machinery it resembled the former; in theme, plot, and persons, often the latter. A resemblance between the opera and the heroic tragedy is also observable in the prominence given by each to heroic love. Tragedies were readily transformed into operas as in the case of Lee's "Theodosius" and Tate's "Brutus of Alba," and of Fletcher's "Island Princess" and "Prophetess." Throughout the period the relations between the two remain close. They were presented in the same theatre; the same actors often played in one and sang in the other; an orchestral band was provided to play between the acts in tragedy; and tragedy availed itself of songs, scenery, and machines. Entirely apart from its place in the history of English music, English opera is of some importance in the development of tragedy, partly as a rival and partly because it promoted operatic elements in tragedy itself. Tragedy came in the Restoration period to rely more than ever before upon the externals of its stage presentation, and on elements then considered distinctively operatic,--scenery, spectacle, and music.

From changes in theatrical conditions, friends of the drama doubtless found hope for its higher development; but the main source of promise seemed to lie in the patronage of the court. The court of Charles II indeed exerted a greater influence on the drama than any court since or, perhaps, before, but the influence was mainly toward social and political immorality.

Patronage rather than public support was relied upon by both dramatists and actors. In consequence, the theatres became servile purveyors to the amus.e.m.e.nt and taste of the king and his favorites, and blindly partisan adherents of the royal politics. The failure to represent the nation and the consequent loss both in range of artistic impulse and in soundness of moral standards that had characterized the drama in the reigns of the two earlier Stuarts were now greatly intensified. In tragedy, grossness of language and manners had less opportunity than in comedy, but political subserviency had freer play. Political allegory combined with tragedy in plays contemptible as specimens of either species. This unworthy partisans.h.i.+p and this catering to a society mean and corrupt necessarily maimed that branch of the drama supposed to devote itself to heroic and lofty themes.

The influences making most for innovation in the poetry and art of the drama came from France, partly owing to the instigation of the court. The character of this French influence, like its sources, differed from time to time, but from 1660 until after the death of Voltaire it was continuous and powerful. In tragedy, shortly after the Restoration, the heroic romances of Calprenede, Scudery, and others, and the French plays which they had fostered, were the sources and models of much in the English heroic plays.

There was constant borrowing and adapting from French romances and tragedies, as from French comedies. The "Cid" had been translated and acted in the reign of Charles I; several other of Corneille's plays were translated before 1670, his subjects and style were often imitated, and toward the end of the century the influence of Racine was marked upon English drama. The French influence on tragedy, however, was less a matter of models than of rules and theory. The English dramatists never in this period got very close to Corneille or Racine, but they were greatly impressed by French criticism and precept. In an age of reason and modernity, English tragedy, like other forms of literature, found its reaction from the crudities of an earlier age and its reform of the excesses of an untrained art in the pseudo-cla.s.sicism of France.

An effort was made, which proved far more portentous than preceding ones, to wrest tragedy back into conformity with the supposed rules of Aristotle.

The conflict between English and French models, between Shakespeare and Corneille, between romantic license and cla.s.sical proprieties had begun, a conflict to be continued in criticism as well as practice for over a century. Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" introduces us at once to the questions at issue and the state of the debate. The main questions were: first, the unities, recognized in French drama as necessities and supposedly derived from Aristotle; second, the mixture of tragedy and comedy, or, more especially, the introduction of low comedy into tragedy; and third, the use of rhyme as in French tragedy or of blank verse as in English, prose by general consent being restricted to comedy. In these the English tradition was directly opposed by French practice and theory, and in many minor matters as well: in the _liaison_ of scenes, favored, as was the unity of place, by the use of scenery; in certain proprieties in the conduct of kings and of subjects to kings; in the restriction of tragedy to historical, cla.s.sical, or at least heroical persons and themes; and, notably, in the avoidance of violence and bloodshed in the action. Dryden's discussion reveals French practice and cla.s.sical practice, not clearly differentiated, set up against the English tradition, and recognizes much in the former that seems reasonable and authoritative. But, on the other hand, it insists on the excellence and impressiveness of the English achievement. Such was the state of opinion shortly after the Restoration, and such, with varying emphasis and refinement, remained the consensus of opinion of dramatists and critics for a century. The laws of the pseudo-cla.s.sicists were held to be measurably good, but Shakespeare without those laws had been undeniably great.

Throughout the Restoration the main influence on the theatre was that of the earlier English drama. When the theatres were opened the old plays were acted. Literally hundreds were revived, many of which long held the stage.

After a time changes in taste and theatrical conditions led to revisions and alterations; but the alterations of Shakespeare and others not only ill.u.s.trate this perversion of taste, but also testify to the continuance of the English tradition. Not merely revisions and adaptations, but the whole drama bears witness to its descent. The characteristics of the tragedy of 1630 are those of the tragedy of 1670. The influence of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances and of the tragedy of revenge are hardly less marked after 1660 than before. The comic scenes, blank verse, complicated plots, physical horrors, and supernatural agents, the mixture of idealization and realism that characterize Elizabethan tragedy, persist throughout the Restoration period.

The conflict between the contending theories of tragedy may be studied in criticism. Dryden's various essays recur again and again to the main issues of the war, and define with changing emphasis his attempted reconciliation of the two opposites. Rymer came forward as a thoroughgoing exponent of cla.s.sicism, and at the beginning of the next century Dennis, Gildon, and Addison carried on the discussion. The conflict is also represented in the work of nearly every dramatist. There are tragedies in blank verse and tragedies in rhyme, tragicomedies, tragedies with comic scenes, tragedies without deaths and with happy endings, tragedies translated from the French, others based on Greek originals, and still others in their medleys of farce, horror, and rant as Elizabethan as "The Jew of Malta" itself.

Many of these varieties are represented in the work of a single writer, as Crowne, or Lee, or Otway. The career of Dryden sums up and reflects nearly all the changes in opinion or practice. His plays, and with them the whole course of tragedy from 1660 to 1700, fall roughly into certain divisions.

For a few years after the Restoration, ending at about the time of the "Essay," is the period of the dominance of the earlier drama, a period of which Davenant is the leading figure. About 1664 began the heroic tragedies in rhyme which for a time carried all before them. In a dozen years, however, the fas.h.i.+on wore out, and Dryden's "All for Love" in 1678 marked the abandonment of rhyme and led the return to Shakespeare. From 1678 on, the course of tragedy again takes to varied streams. To this period belong the most notable alterations of Shakespeare, the most permanent of Restoration tragedies in the plays of Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and also the growth of French methods and of the influence of Racine, culminating in the pseudo-cla.s.sical triumph at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

At the opening of the theatres, tragedy and tragicomedy took up their courses about where they had left off. The plays of Davenant, the main connecting link between the two periods, might be treated in connection with either, without seeming in the least out of place. Tragicomedy of the type current in the thirties continued in the sixties; tragedy oscillated between honor and horror, fine writing and perverted l.u.s.t, as in Ma.s.singer, s.h.i.+rley, and Glapthorne. Spanish stories, long influential in the drama, promised for a time to prove still more important. Dryden's first two plays, "The Wild Gallant" (1663)[25] and "The Rival Ladies" (1664), were based, like many other contemporary plays, on Spanish originals; but the second introduced rhyme and some of the elements of the plots of the heroic plays. It was, however, the Elizabethan plays that the audiences went to see, and that the dramatists had constantly before them. The plays of the Marlowean period were regarded as out of date, and very few were revived, practically none of the tragedies except the early ones of Shakespeare. Of the later Elizabethans, Beaumont and Fletcher were the most popular, for a time surpa.s.sing Shakespeare. Over thirty of their plays were revived, and many of these were constantly acted. Of tragedies and tragicomedies, "The Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster," "Bonduca," "A King and No King,"

"Valentinian," and "Rollo" held the stage till the end of the century, the first three much longer. Jonson's tragedies, as well as his comedies, were revived; and Ma.s.singer's "Virgin Martyr," Webster's "White Devil,"

Chapman's "Bussy D'Ambois," s.h.i.+rley's "Cardinal" and "Traitor" were among the plays that carried on the traditions of the tragedy of blood.

Shakespeare's comedies fell into disfavor, but his tragedies were popular from the start. This was due in part to the genius of Betterton, who found his best opportunities in depicting their protagonists, in part to their merits as stage plays for both actors and audiences; but, whatever the causes of their success, they soon exercised a large and increasing influence upon the theory and practice of tragedy.

The Elizabethan plays, however, had almost from the first to encounter a rivalry with a new fas.h.i.+on. Davenant, their reviver, was also the first with the new. His "Siege of Rhodes" (1656), with its scenery, machines, music, rhyme, and heroics, may be said to inaugurate both the opera and the heroic play. Howard's "Indian Queen" (1664), in which Dryden had a hand, was followed by Dryden's "Indian Emperor" (1665), in rhyme and displaying the full-fledged heroic formula. The love-complications of its plot are of a kind constantly reappearing not only in the heroic plays but in later tragedy as well.

Montezeuma and Cortez are the historical heroes; Almeria, daughter of the Indian Queen, is the vengeful pa.s.sionate heroine; Cydaria, daughter of Montezeuma, is the angelic heroine. Montezeuma's sons, Odmar and Guyomar, Almeria's sister, Alibech, and her brother, Orbellan, all in love with some one, add to the criss-crossing of affections. Almeria is loved by Montezeuma, but loves Cortez, who does not love her.

Cydaria is loved by Cortez and also by Orbellan. The two heroines, as well as the two heroes, are thus rivals, and the vengeful one directs the intrigue. The brothers Odmar and Guyomar, to say nothing of a Spanish captain, both love Alibech, and provide the usual story of fraternal rivalry. After duels, captures, imprisonments, conflicts of honor, renunciations, and jealousies, finally the vengeful heroine succ.u.mbs. One of the brothers is preserved for Alibech; Cortez weds the angelic heroine; the rest, including six of the leading actors and several supernumeraries, are killed or commit suicide.

Dryden's dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery gives some support to the latter's claim to have been the introducer of the rhymed heroic species, though his first play acted was probably "Henry V," in 1664. Whoever the originators, their example was soon followed by Crowne, Lee, Settle, Otway, and most of the dramatists of the day; and for fifteen years or so English efforts in tragedy were confined to the heroic model.

The use of the heroic couplet was its distinguis.h.i.+ng mark; of course, an imitation of French practice. The plots, too, were direct borrowings, or close imitations, of contemporary French romances or dramas. Moreover, the themes and their treatment, the conception of honor, the importance given to love, and the pseudo-history, all followed French ideas. The unities were attended to, if not strictly observed; incidents, persons, and scenes greatly reduced in number in comparison with Elizabethan practice; and fixed rules of propriety in characterization and language observed, all in French fas.h.i.+on.

The English plays, however, formed a type unknown in France or anywhere else on sea or land. The plots of all the "Sieges," "Rivals," and "Conquests" are mainly concerned with love, which inspires heroic sentiment and valor, encounters much jealousy and intrigue, runs counter to friends.h.i.+p and honor, and works its sorrows and joys among persons ill.u.s.trious in history. In the end, the hero, a man of prodigious valor and most exemplary honor, weds the heroine, who is equally skilled in the artificial code of honor, while the deaths of the ambitious villain and the evil princess, in love with the hero and seeking revenge on the heroine, provide a tragic catastrophe. The persons are usually historical, English, Cla.s.sical, or Eastern, and a little historical fact was intended to give a kind of grandeur to the story. The Alexanders and Montezumas, however, have manners and sentiments drawn partly from the courts of Louis and Charles and partly from the world of romance. The curious conception of honor as superhuman valor and magnanimity combined with formal propriety leads to impossibilities like those in a child's book of wonders. Duels and rescues take the place of pitched fields; the valorous champion puts to rout an army, exchanges compliments and courtesies with the grace of a fas.h.i.+on-plate, boasts and rants in Cambyses' vein, and is near to expire in an ecstasy of declamation when the heroine extends her hand for him to kiss. The two rival lovers and the two rival ladies generally play their game of jealousy, ambition, and wounded honor during a conquest or a siege; but world and empire count for naught. _Amor vincit omnia._

A mere summary of their leading traits may suggest, what a careful examination of the various representatives of the cla.s.s will confirm, that the heroic plays were by no means a fresh importation from France, but rather a result of tendencies distinctly manifest in the English drama, at least since the Beaumont-Fletcher romances.[26] The _genre_ of heroic romances begun by Beaumont and Fletcher, continued in tragedy and especially in tragicomedy by Fletcher, Ma.s.singer, and s.h.i.+rley, here takes a further but not very diverse development under the spell of French romance and drama. The conflicts of honor, the rivalries in love, the few types of character constantly recurring, the extraordinary surprises and discoveries, the women, sentimental and sensational, offered nothing new in English drama. The avoidance of bloodshed, the observance of poetic justice, the exaltation of love as the whole theme, the preference for the sensational and astounding rather than the natural or inevitable, have all been found distinguis.h.i.+ng drama since Fletcher. On the other hand, the hateful intrigue and abnormal l.u.s.t, the horrors and gloom of Webster and Ford found little place in the heroic plays. One survival from the revenge plays, however, took on new life. Ghosts became as numerous and voluble as in the days of Kyd. But in the main the heroic plays represent the continuance of the heroic romance and tragicomedy corrected in accord with French standards of dramatic art and French conceptions of gallantry and heroism.

It is in this aspect that they are of the most interest in the history of English tragedy. They are not a freak variation but a species lineally related to those which precede and follow. They carry the restriction and conventionalization of the material of tragedy much farther than did the plays of s.h.i.+rley and his contemporaries; and, somewhat before Racine, they confine the main course of tragedy to sentimental love. Though their main innovation, the employment of rhyme, did not prevail, and though their changes in technic were rejected by many later Restoration dramatists, yet they were a powerful force in habituating the theatre to the structure and methods of French tragedy and in promoting the triumph of these methods in the next century. They also mark a further change in the conception of the field and functions of tragedy. The result of developments from tragicomedy rather than from tragedy, they exhibit a blending of the two forms and a redivision along new lines. Before the Restoration, nearly all tragedies had presented a mixture of comedy or of farce. Tragicomedy had been distinguished from tragedy not by the presence of comedy but by the fact that its leading persons were brought near to death yet saved for a happy ending. Moreover, tragicomedies as a cla.s.s developed along the lines of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances. The heroic plays inherited the traits of this cla.s.s and also to some extent the happy endings. In some, as Orrery's "Henry V," there is no suffering and everything turns out well; in others, as Orrery's later plays, there is bloodshed enough; but in nearly all death is visited only on the evil; the heroic are married. All plays with heroic themes, however, were called tragedies. There was no hint of heroic comedy as in France. The distinction between tragedy and comedy, which the Restoration drama drew much more closely than the Elizabethan, came to depend less on the presence of deaths or of an unhappy ending, and more on the nature of the material and form. After the decline of the heroic plays, tragedy returned, as we shall see, to bloodshed, deaths, and horrors, but meantime the heroic plays had emphasized as essential certain elements that long continued their ascendency in both critical and popular views of tragedy. Henceforth every one a.s.sociated with tragedy heroic actions, ill.u.s.trious persons, verse, whether rhymed or blank, a love story, and an inflated diction. The curious heroic rant, indeed, supplied a vocabulary and a manner that lasted long after the jingle of the rhyming couplets had been abandoned. Its "furies," "vows," "chains," "transports," "ecstasies,"

and "Etnas burning within the breast" remained the language of despairing innocence and palpitating pa.s.sion. Tragic became almost synonymous with artificial and inflated.

A worthier achievement must also be credited to the heroic plays. The s.p.a.cious realms of romance which the Elizabethans had loved were closing their gates to the imagination of the later seventeenth century. Even Shakespeare's isles of the blest that so delighted Elizabeth and James were strangely inaccessible to Restoration fancy, which took pleasure in only the "Merry Wives of Windsor" among his comedies. The narrowing of romance had been manifest in the drama since 1600, and it was a theatrical and artificial domain of thrills, sentiments, and honor that the Restoration received for its heritage. Poor enough as is this kingdom, absurd its inhabitants, it is still the land of the wonderful and impossible, and its monarchs now and then remind us of Tamburlaine and Hotspur. At the time of Wycherley's comedies and Rochester's patronage of literature, men and women sighed and thrilled with Alb.u.mazor, dreamed of love, and fancied themselves kings and queens in China and Peru. When Romance was banished from other forms of literature,--unless in pastoral or opera,--tragedy still remained dedicated to the banished G.o.ddess, and in its precincts scanty flames still burned on the altars of heroism, enthusiasm, romantic aspiration, and extravagant love.

The rise and wane of the heroic plays is sufficiently ill.u.s.trated in the career of their chief exponent. After his "Indian Emperor" (1665), Dryden turned in "Secret Love" (1667) to tragicomedy with a mixture of verse, rhyme, and prose and a mixture of heroic and lively comedy. After various comedies and the adaptation of "The Tempest," "Tyrannic Love" (1669) and "The Conquest of Granada" (1669) accomplished the full triumph of rhymed verse and "the grand scale." At times Dryden's rapidity and vigor almost justify the rhymed couplets and redeem the absurdities of the conventions.

It was in the Epilogue to "The Conquest" that he attacked the Elizabethans, vaunting the superiority of an age when

"Our ladies and our men now speak more wit In conversation, than those poets writ."

In 1671 came the burlesque "Rehearsal," which, if its attack did not centre on heroic plays, made Dryden and the popular "Conquest of Granada" the b.u.t.ts of its most telling fun. Then followed Dryden's "Essay of Heroic Plays," two comedies, his inexcusable tragedy of "Amboyna" (written in a month to support the war with the Dutch, yet, in conformity to the fas.h.i.+on, tracing the Dutch atrocities to a heroic love), and the opera based on Milton's "Paradise Lost." In 1675 came "Aureng Zebe," the last of his heroic plays, without supernatural machinery, and somewhat tamed in style.

The vogue of the heroic play was about over. In 1678 came Rymer's attempt at a model heroic tragedy and his "Tragedies of the Last Age," a severe attack upon the Elizabethan drama from the point of view of extreme pseudo-cla.s.sicism. But in the same year was acted Dryden's "All for Love,"

in blank verse, with a preface extolling Shakespeare, rejecting the models of the ancients as "too little for English tragedy," discarding "the nicety of manners of the French," yet claiming credit for an observance of the unities. This was the one play in which, as he declared, Dryden followed his own bent unheedful of stage fas.h.i.+ons, and it seems to have set the fas.h.i.+on and led the way back to blank verse and to Shakespeare. Rhymed plays continued to appear occasionally, but blank verse was henceforth recognized as the proper medium for tragedy.

Even Dryden's praise of Shakespeare is modified by his respect for French rules, and by the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare's genius lacked the improvements readily secured by an application of the accepted formulas of art. That a certain improvement is accomplished cannot be denied. The incoherent profusion of scenes, the host of distracting incidents are reduced to order, the unities of time and place give a directness and rapidity to the action that "Antony and Cleopatra" greatly lacks. In characterization and poetry Dryden's play is, to be sure, not comparable with Shakespeare's, but in both respects it far surpa.s.ses the numerous other English dramas on the subject. This is faint praise. By following Shakespeare without imitating him, and by adapting a play to the stage requirements of the day without bowing to the absurdities of the heroic models, Dryden succeeded in producing a great and original poetical drama.

Not in response to mere theatrical fas.h.i.+on or to French taste or theory, but in response to the inspiration of Shakespeare came the finest product of Restoration tragedy.

In this same year as "All for Love" appeared "Oedipus," written in collaboration with Lee, in which the authors brought to their cla.s.sical model the methods of the Elizabethans. Eurydice and Adrastus furnish the necessary love story, and Creon becomes the hateful rival and intriguing villain. The declamation sometimes shows Dryden at his best, the bombast and horrors are in Lee's worst vein. In the next year appeared Dryden's improvement of "Troilus and Cressida" with his careful essay on "The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," in which he criticises after the fas.h.i.+on set by Rymer the errors of Shakespeare and Fletcher, insists on the necessity of unity, order, and greatness in action, and praises the excellence of Fletcher and especially of Shakespeare in character and pa.s.sion. Nowhere else, perhaps, has Dryden expressed so discriminatingly and so finally his own views and, on the whole, the views of his age, on tragedy. Shakespeare's greatness is recognized as preeminent in the presentation of character and pa.s.sion; his faults in coherence and unity of structure and his archaism in manners and proprieties are admitted.

From this time on Dryden's contributions to the drama were less frequent.

In "The Spanish Fryar" (1681), he added the best Restoration example of tragicomedy, availing himself of Fletcher's example, a double plot, and a happy ending. "The Duke of Guise" (1682), a political allegory, written in collaboration with Lee, deserves little consideration as satire or drama.

After two operas and an absence of several years from the stage, came "Don Sebastian" (1690), which Sir Walter Scott thought the best of his tragedies. It is heroic in its pairs of lovers and tangle of love and jealousy, and in the exploits, boasts, and love-making of the hero; French in its general structure; Elizabethan in its mixture of comedy, its use of horror and incest, and its imitation of Shakespeare. It recalls the tragedies before 1642, with their heroic love after the style of Beaumont and Fletcher, their horrors and incest following the Websterian school, and their emulation of famous pa.s.sages in Shakespeare. "Cleomenes" (1692), which repeats the Potiphar's wife story, is still more Elizabethan, and "Love Triumphant," a tragicomedy (1693), deals with an incestuous pa.s.sion proved innocent at last, a motive very popular since "A King and No King."

Dryden never gave the theatre a whole-hearted service. Responding readily to its conditions, he wrote with facility and vigor comedies, tragedies, operas, and political allegories of the kind that changing fas.h.i.+on or patrons demanded. When, after a long slavery, he had acquired mastery of his art and confidence to lead rather than to follow, circ.u.mstances arose to call him away from the theatre. We may wish that he had earlier and oftener tried to do his best, as in "All for Love," "The Spanish Friar,"

and "Don Sebastian"; but his genius was not essentially dramatic, and we may not regret the time taken from the theatre for the Satires and Fables.

His greatness can be best seen by comparison with the work of his contemporaries. Whatever he tried, he did on the whole better than they, and in comprehensiveness and adaptability as well as in sheer poetic faculty he was their master.

Up to "Aureng Zebe" Dryden's tragedies reflected the prevailing fas.h.i.+on; his "All for Love" marked a turning-point in the course of tragedy; and his criticism reviewed, summed up, and discriminated the current views of Shakespeare and the French. His later work was less representative of the general course of the drama, yet the various species exhibited in his work recur in that of his contemporaries, and the partial return to Elizabethan methods that marks his latest plays is perhaps the leading characteristic of the last twenty years of the century.