Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/briefhistoryofenOOgoldrich 
 
History of 
 The English Drama. 
 
A BRIEF HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH DRAMA 
 
 From the Earliest to the Latest Times 
 
 WILLIAM ECHARD GOLDEN, A. M. 
 
 New York 
 
 WELCH, FRACKER COMPANY 
 
 1890 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1890, BY WELCH, FRACKER CO. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The treatment of a subject of such extent 
 and importance as the one I have chosen, is 
 beset with many and peculiar difficulties. 
 These, during several years' careful study, I 
 have endeavored to overcome. How success- 
 ful I have been, must be left for my readers 
 to decide. My object has been to give as 
 concise an historical and literary account of 
 the drama, its origin, development and present 
 status as may be embraced in a brief course 
 of lectures. I have necessarily consulted 
 many works of reference and taken copious 
 notes. I am also indebted for suggestions 
 to Dr. A. V. W. Jackson, of Columbia Col- 
 lege, and Professor O. B. Clark, of Indiana 
 
 University. 
 
 W. E. GOLDEN. 
 
LECTURES. 
 
 I. The Mystery, Miracle and Moral 
 
 Plays, r 9 
 
 II. The Predecessors of Shakespeare, . 34 
 
 III. Shakespeare, 74 
 
 IV. Ben Jonson and His Contemporaries in 
 
 V. From the Restoration to the Close 
 
 of the Eighteenth Century, . . .154 
 
 VI. The Nineteenth Century, .... 196 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 THE MYSTERY, MIRACLE AND MORAL PLAYS. 
 
 In the early part of this century Thomas 
 Sharp, editing a treatise on the Coventry 
 Mystery Plays, had occasion to remark, in the 
 introduction to his work, that while the his- 
 tory of the English Stage had been investi- 
 gated with a perseverance and minuteness of 
 research that scarcely left any expectation of 
 additional facts remaining undiscovered, our 
 Religious Dramas or Mysteries, the unques- 
 tionable groundwork of the Stage, had been 
 treated in a very superficial and unsatis- 
 factory manner. 
 
io The English Drama. 
 
 That Mr. Sharp was right in his statement 
 then is undoubted, but I do not believe it is so 
 applicable at present. Since his book ap- 
 peared, and doubtless partly owing to its ap- 
 pearance, a great deal of careful labor and 
 investigation has been expended on this com- 
 paratively unworked field of English litera- 
 ture. Ward has written his history ; Lucy 
 Toulman Smith has edited the York Plays. 
 
 There are three grand classes or kinds of 
 poetry : the lyric, the epic, the dramatic. 
 And of these the dramatic is the highest, for 
 it is not only a different class, but it may also 
 include either or both of the others. 
 
 Song is a primary mode of expression for 
 the emotion. Hence it is common, in one 
 form or another, in some degree of excel- 
 lence, to nearly all, if not to all, peoples. 
 
 A connected narrative exacts, however, a 
 higher order of intellect than is necessary for 
 the appreciation and understanding of a song. 
 Attention is required. The powers of com- 
 parison, of judgment, of reflection are called 
 into use. All persons are not capable of this. 
 Therefore, that which appeals to a higher 
 order of mind for comprehension must neces- 
 sarily belong to a higher class of work. 
 
 There are nations that have been capable 
 
The English Drama. n 
 
 of the production and appreciation of the 
 song and the narrative, that is to say, of 
 lyric and epic poetry ; but there are no 
 nations that have not reached a certain intel- 
 lectual development that have produced the 
 last and highest form of poetry, the dramatic. 
 I do not include in this rather sweeping asser- 
 tion the peoples who, by religious conviction, 
 not by intellectual incompetence, have been 
 restrained from production in this depart- 
 ment. 
 
 The powers of abstract thought necessary 
 for the conception, even more than the com- 
 prehension of the dramatic form, denotes a 
 certain stage of civilization that need not be 
 demanded by either the lyric or epic. ,A 
 savage can feel a song, can understand a 
 story. To comprehend a play something 
 more is necessary. 
 
 I would have it understood that I am speak- 
 ing of these poetical forms as being in their 
 simplest undeveloped state. I make no as- 
 sertions of the highly perfected productions 
 the best age of literature has produced, ex- 
 cept this, to name the primal and eternal 
 order of poetical work. 
 
 There have* been three great dramatic 
 epochs : viz., the Greek, the Spanish and the 
 
12 The English Drama. 
 
 English. It is on4y with the last of these 
 that we are concerned. 
 
 Undisputedly the modern drama, of whicl] 
 the English is a branch, sprang not from the 
 domain of literature but from religious 
 worship. 
 
 It has been claimed that the modern is an 
 offspring of the ancient drama. This is in no 
 sense the truth. There are links of connec- 
 tion between the two, but one did not origin- 
 ate in the other. Indeed, if the origin of the 
 Greek drama itself be sought for, it will be 
 found, as is that of the modern, in religious 
 worship. 
 
 Returning to the modern drama, and seek- 
 ing for the direct occasion of its ontgrowth, 
 we shall find that the best authorities are 
 agreed that the idea was first conceived, and 
 the comprehension first acquired of the play, 
 by the liturgy of the mass. " That," says 
 Ward, " is the original mystery." 
 
 The liturgy of the mass is a service, familiar 
 to all Roman Catholics, performed by an in- 
 dividual, or association of individuals, on be- 
 half of the community. This is a public per- 
 formance of a religious office of paramount 
 importance. It includes the Confession of 
 sins, the Credo, Agnus Dei, etc., etc. 
 
The English Drama. 13 
 
 If any one has ever been in a Catholic church 
 during such a service, he will readily perceive 
 that it is really a sacred performance. The 
 priests in their robes, the illusions of vest- 
 ments and ornaments, the responses of the 
 congregation, all go to imprint a dramatic 
 stamp upon the service. 
 
 It is not remarkable then that from the 
 church service should spring a means by 
 which the valgus should be instructed and 
 amused, nor that the priests should be the 
 first to produce this means. 
 
 Few in early times could read. The Bibles, 
 for a long period, were in Latin only. Books 
 were very rare, and very valuable. During 
 the middle ages, the higher aspirations, 
 emotions and ideas of the people were clus- 
 tered around the church. In their religious 
 worship alone did they find the expression 
 of their spiritual natures. In the stories of 
 the Bible, and later of the saints, therefore, 
 they felt the deepest interest. 
 
 Realizing the neccessity of satisfying in 
 some degree and in their own way this want 
 of the people, and also to oppose the plays of 
 the Gentiles and to supersede the profane 
 dancing, music, etc., at the ancient fairs, the 
 priests arranged the Scriptural stories in a 
 
14 The English Drama. 
 
 form that could at once instruct and interest 
 their flocks. 
 
 Voltaire says that Gregory Nazianzen 
 wrote in the fourth century his play of Christ's 
 Passion, and others of the same kind, in order 
 to oppose the dramatic works of the ancient 
 Greeks and Romans. There seems little rea- 
 son to doubt this. 
 
 Certain it is that Hroswitha, the Benedic- 
 tine nun of Gandersheim, wrote sacred plays 
 in the tenth century, to counteract the effect 
 of the plays of Terence. She even took her 
 antagonist's works as a model for her own. 
 
 In 1 1 19 the Mystery-play of St. Kathcftine 
 was presented at Dunstaple under the direc- 
 tion of a monk named Geoffrey. This kind 
 of production was common in London before 
 the close of the century. The plays were writ- 
 ten at first in Latin and French, and it was not 
 until the reign of Edward III. that they were 
 permanently succeeded by English versions. 
 
 Collier says that no country of Europe, 
 since the revival of letters, has been able to 
 produce any notice of theatrical perform- 
 ances of so early a date as England. And the 
 love of the drama seems ever since to have 
 been characteristic of the people of England 
 and their descendants. 
 
The English Drama. 15 
 
 The oldest form of dramatic composition 
 in our language is the Mystery Play. Con- 
 cerning these early compositions there has 
 been considerable confusion as to the differ- 
 ent classes into which they should be arranged, 
 and the proper nomenclature applicable to 
 these classes. At the time that they were 
 written and performed, no distinction was 
 made, and none was probably thought of. 
 They were all plays. Ward and other lead- 
 ing authorities have made, however, three 
 divisions of these early works, which I shall 
 accept. 
 
 The first dramatic compositions, extending 
 over some three hundred years, and after the 
 appearance of the drama in its present form, 
 we shall treat of under three heads, viz.: the 
 Mystery Plays, the Miracle Plays, the Moral 
 Plays. 
 
 The Mystery Plays deal only with Scriptu- 
 ral passages, stories from the Bible. 
 
 The Miracle Plays deal with legends con- 
 cerning saints of the church. 
 
 The Moral Plays deal with allegory. 
 
 The earliest of these three classes to appear 
 was, as I have said, the Mystery Play. Accept- 
 ing the theory that from religious worship, 
 from the liturgy immediately, the drama was 
 
1 6 The English Drama. 
 
 derived, the first subjects to be treated of we 
 would naturally look for in the Scriptures. 
 And we would find them there. 
 
 A number of isolated plays treating of some 
 one biblical story exists ; as Parfre's Candel- 
 mas-Day y which treats of the massacre of 
 the innocents, and the flight into Egypt, the 
 Conversion of Saul, and Mary Magdalene. This 
 last is the most remarkable and most elabor- 
 ate of the single plays. 
 
 Until within the last few years, in fact as 
 late as the publication of Ward's History of 
 English Dramatic Literature, it has been 
 usual to assert that there were but three con- 
 nected series of Mystery Plays. But the pub- 
 lication of a MSS. in the library of Lord Ash- 
 burnham, edited by Lucy Toulman Smith, 
 has added one more series to this list. This 
 very valuable contribution includes the York 
 Plays. 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that these plays 
 had never yet seen the light. Scholars have 
 known since Thoresby's History of Leeds was 
 published that such a collection existed ; but 
 no one before Lucy T. Smith seems to have 
 more than hastily glanced at them. 
 
 The history of the volume is curious. It 
 was the book wherein the plays, performed by 
 
The English Drama. 17 
 
 the crafts from the fourteenth to the sixteenth 
 centuries, with the sanction and authority of 
 the corporation, were " registered " by the 
 city officers and it must therefore have be- 
 longed to the corporation. It was at one 
 time in the care of the priory of Holy Trinity, 
 in Micklegate. At the time of the Reforma- 
 tion various attempts were made to amend 
 the book of plays, as is shown both by many 
 notes scattered through its leaves and by no- 
 tices in the municipal records ; but in spite of 
 these the plays ceased to be performed about 
 1580, not being able to withstand the spirit 
 of the times. What now became of the book 
 is doubtful. Until 1579 at least it remained 
 in the possession of the city. Later it is 
 known to have passed into the hands of the 
 Fairfax family. In 1695 Ralph Thoresby 
 owned it and at the sale of Thoresby 's collec- 
 tion, in 1 764, Horace Walpole bought it for jQ\ 
 is. At Walpole's sale Thomas Rodd, a book- 
 seller, gave ^220 ioj\,and sold it to Mr. Hey- 
 wood Bright, of Bristol, in 1842, for ^"235. At 
 the dispersion of this gentleman's collection, 
 in 1844, Mr. Thorp bought it for ^305 for the 
 Rev. Thomas Russell, and it was afterwards 
 sold to the late Earl of Ashburnham. 
 
 This valuable book consists of two hun- 
 
1 8 The English Drama. 
 
 dred and seventy leaves of parchment, forty- 
 eight of which are blank. It is bound in the 
 original wooden binding, once covered with 
 leather, which is now much torn and in rather 
 bad condition. The blank pages at the 
 beginning and end have been nibbled by 
 mice. Scattered through the volume are 
 frequent small alterations, or corrections. 
 
 A series of Mystery Plays, as the phrase is 
 here used, means a number of plays that, 
 taking up the Bible story with the creation or 
 before, carry it through the sacred narrative 
 and even to doomsday. Of such series 
 there are four, viz.: 
 
 i. The Chester Plays. 
 
 2. The Coventry Plays. 
 
 3. The Towneley Plays. 
 
 4. The York Plays. 
 
 These are by no means all the series that 
 were produced, but they are all that remain. 
 
 Mystery Plays are recorded to have been 
 given at Dunstaple, London, Cambridge, 
 Canterbury, Winchester, Worcester, Slea- 
 ford, Reading, Lincoln, Shrewsbury, Witney, 
 Preston, Lancaster, Kendall, Beverly, Wake- 
 field, New-Castle-on-Tyne, Leicester, Edin- 
 burgh, Heybridge, Dublin, etc., etc. Indeed, 
 they were common all over the kingdom. 
 
The English Drama. 19 
 
 It is incredible that out of all these places 
 only four should have produced a series of 
 plays. Yet it is not to be denied that the 
 celebrity of the four preserved far exceeds 
 that of those which are lost, and may in part 
 account for their preservation. 
 
 The authorship of these plays cannot, with 
 any degree of certainty, be accredited to any 
 one man in any known instance. They are 
 rather to be» taken as the work of many men 
 at many times. A play was, without doubt, 
 rewritten when emergency demanded. Or it 
 may have been separated into two or more 
 plays. On the other hand, several plays 
 were combined into one at times. The rea- 
 sons for these alterations are apparent. 
 
 Although the Mystery Plays were originally 
 written and, perhaps, represented by priests, 
 in course of time, partly on account of the 
 disapproval of the high ecclesiastical authori- 
 ties, partly on account of other difficulties, 
 the presentations passed into the hands of 
 the common people ; that is, the city guilds 
 or trades. 
 
 When the performances came to be held, 
 each guild had assigned to it, as its own play, 
 some part of the Scriptures. The guilds gave 
 their plays in succession, so that the guild 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 which had for its subject the Creation, should 
 first perform, and the guild whose subject 
 was Doomsday, should be the last to be 
 seen. By this means the whole story of the 
 Bible was narrated. 
 
 But the number of guilds was not always 
 the same. Trades arise from necessity, and 
 from lack of necessity disappear. When 
 armor ceased to be worn, armor making 
 ceased to be a trade. With the abandonment 
 of the bow and arrow went the Fletchers and 
 Bowmen. In our own time we have seen old 
 trades vanish and many new ones appear. 
 
 Now, however the number of guilds varied, 
 the story remained the same. Hence it was 
 necessary, at times, to combine, at other times 
 to separate the plays. Also it is to be noted 
 that, while it was usual for each guild to have 
 its play, yet it is quite common for several 
 guilds to unite in the presentation of a play. 
 
 The Chester Plays, twenty-five of which 
 remain, were annually performed, with some 
 interruptions, from 1268 to 1577, at Chester, 
 England. The plays, as was usual, took their 
 name from the place in which they were given. 
 The authorship has been assigned by some to 
 Ralph Higden. But this is improbable, 
 though he may have contributed towards 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 their production. They were given begin- 
 ning Whit-Monday and continuing until 
 Wednesday. Of these plays there are two 
 manuscripts in the British Museum ; the 
 earlier dated 1600 and the other 1607. The 
 plays are unequal in merit. They follow the 
 text of the Gospel very closely and contain 
 but little legendary matter. The lamenta- 
 tion of Mary, which occurs in these plays, is 
 a common subject of English verse in manu- 
 scripts of various dates. One or two short ex- 
 amples will be found in the Reliquia Antiquce. 
 Another popular character of the mediaeval 
 religious literature is Longius, the blind 
 knight, who pierced the side of the Saviour 
 with his spear, and recovered his sight by the 
 water that trickled from the wound on his 
 eye. Although containing comparatively lit- 
 tle legendary matter, as has been remarked, 
 yet, in the Chester Plays, as in the other series 
 of Mysteries, there are to be found plays that 
 are, strictly speaking, Miracles ; as " The 
 Harrowing of Hell" the eighteenth play. 
 The legend which forms the subject of this 
 play, so very popular in the middle ages, was 
 taken from the apocryphal Gospel of Nico- 
 demus. It forms a separate play in the 
 Towneley and Coventry series, though in the 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 latter it is very brief. The twenty-second 
 play, " Ezechiel" appears to be peculiar to 
 the Chester collection, and is a curious speci- 
 men of the manner in which the Gospel was 
 expounded to the vulgar. 
 
 Ludus Coventrize, the Coventry plays, 
 forty-two in all, were presented during the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at Coventry. 
 They were acted at other places also. The 
 MSS. was written at least as early as the 
 reign of Henry VII., and is now preserved in 
 the Cottonian collection of MSS. Its history 
 is wrapped in obscurity. The Coventry Mys- 
 teries were performed on the feast of Corpus 
 Christi, the favorite time for such exhibitions 
 in England. They acquired considerable 
 celebrity and attracted immense multitudes 
 to the city. Even royalty visited the town in 
 order to witness the plays. In i486 Henry 
 VII. was present at the performance on St. 
 Peter's day, and in 1492 he again attended, 
 and this time with his queen. 
 
 The Towneley Plays number thirty-two. 
 They take their name from the circumstance 
 that the MSS. in which they have been pre- 
 served formed part of the library in Towneley 
 Hall, Lancashire. Their composition is prob- 
 ably due to the Friars of Woodkirk or Nostel. 
 
The English Drama. 23 
 
 Being written in the dialect of the district in 
 which they were acted, and containing a large 
 number of Scandinavian words, they are quite 
 difficult to read. The MSS. appears to date 
 from about the reign of Henry VI. 
 
 The York Plays, as enumerated in Liber 
 diver sorum memorandum civitatem ebor tar gen- 
 tium, one of the oldest books that the city of 
 York now possesses, in 141 5 numbered fifty- 
 one. In the second list fifty-seven plays are 
 named. Lord Ashburnham's MSS. contains 
 forty-eight. These plays, on examination, 
 are found to correspond more to the first than 
 the second list. The probable date of the 
 MSS., such as that of all of the mysteries, is 
 between 1430-1440. The date of the author- 
 ship is very much earlier ; it may be a cen- 
 tury. Both internal and external evidence 
 point to this fact. Reference is made to these 
 plays in 1378, and again in 1394, as belonging 
 to the old time. The internal evidences are 
 the metre and style. There is much skill in 
 versification shown. Rhyme and alliteration 
 both are used. The language is in a stage of 
 transition. The York Plays, sometimes called 
 Corpus Christi Plays, from the time at which 
 they were given, continued to be played until 
 1568. Then the church interfered, and 
 
24 The English Drama. 
 
 although strenuous efforts were made to 
 change the opinions of the clergy, they were 
 unsuccessful, for before 1600 the performances 
 of the "York Mysteries" were" discontinued. 
 The characteristics^ these plays were : clear- 
 ness and precision in the narrative, adherence 
 to the Bible story, simplicity, directness and 
 completion of plan. They compare favorably 
 in diction and verse with the better specimens 
 of Middle English Northern poetry. The 
 York cycle forms an important contribution, 
 for it is as a whole the most complete collec- 
 tion. It is free from much of the coarse fun 
 and "groundling" incident which were intro- 
 duced into the Coventry and Towneley plays. 
 The last named are written in the same dia- 
 lect as the York cycle, and five of them are 
 the same as five of the York Plays, with cer- 
 tain passages cut out or modified. 
 
 The place of exhibition was sometimes a 
 church, sometimes the halls of corporations, 
 but most frequently the open street. The 
 street was preferred because greater multi- 
 tudes could be accommodated, and also to 
 suit the peculiar manner in which the plays 
 were represented. 
 
 The plays were divided according to the 
 trades-guilds of the city. Each play was 
 
The English Drama. 25 
 
 given by one or more corporations, which fur- 
 nished and brought forth a vehicle to be used 
 as a movable stage. These vehicles usually 
 consisted of two platforms, one above the 
 other. The one above was open and was 
 where the play was given. The lower one 
 was closed, generally with curtains, and 
 served as a dressing place for the actors. It 
 is said that this lower room was often used to 
 represent hell, and the devils always issued 
 forth or were consigned to this lower room as 
 their abode. A third platform above the 
 other two was sometimes used to represent 
 heaven. This platform, however, was not 
 common to the " English'Mysteries." Ricco- 
 bini, in his history of the French stage, says 
 that in France the theatre showed paradise, 
 heaven, hell and the earth all at once. From 
 which we infer that the triple or quadruple 
 platform was peculiar rather to the " French 
 Mysteries" than to those of England. In 
 later days we have borrowed something else 
 from the French pertaining to these early 
 plays, viz.: the appellation " Mysteries. " 
 They were not so called in England, but in 
 France the name was always given. The 
 vehicles, in both countries, upon which the 
 plays were given were movable, being either 
 
26 The English Drama. 
 
 on four or six wheels, and usually were drawn 
 by men. This moving about was accom- 
 panied with great difficulty, owing to the 
 rude construction of the vehicles. 
 
 In York the order of procedure was as fol- 
 lows : In solemn procession, one vehicle after 
 the other, first at the great gates of the 
 Priory of the Holy Trinity ; next to the Cathe- 
 dral Church of York, afterwards to the Hospi- 
 tal of St. Leonard, etc., etc. The proces- 
 sion was preceded by a vast number of 
 lighted torches, and a great multitude of 
 priests in their proper habits, followed by 
 the mayor and the citizens, with a prodigious 
 crowd of the populace attending. 
 
 Originally each vehicle was called a page- 
 ant. Afterwards the word pageant came to 
 imply the show as well as the stage. Finally 
 it was applied to the whole series of shows 
 whence the modern meaning. As used in the 
 following account of an exhibition of the Cov- 
 entry Plays the word evidently means the 
 individual plays. 
 
 " The place where they played them was in 
 every street. They began first at the Abay 
 gates, and when the first pagiante was played, 
 it was wheeled to the high cross before the 
 mayor, and soe to every street, and soe every 
 
The English Drama. 27 
 
 street had a pagiante playing before them at 
 one time, till all the pagiantes for the day ap- 
 pointed were played, and when one pagiante 
 was near ended, word was brought from street 
 to street, that soe they might come in place 
 thereof, exceeding orderlye, and all the streets 
 have their pagiantes afore them all at one time 
 playing togeather." 
 
 Some details of these performances and 
 their appurtenances will not be uninteresting. 
 
 Music was furnished by men called min- 
 strels or waits, according as to whether they 
 were employed for the pagiantes or by the 
 city. These musicians had silver badges and 
 chains provided at the expense of the city. 
 It appears that the musicians, being employed 
 chiefly in processions and other open air 
 exhibitions, used wind-instruments, such as 
 pipes, bag-pipes, trumpets, etc. 
 
 At Coventry a person ' was appointed 
 " dresser" of each pageant. In the course of 
 the performance ale was given to the players, 
 and in the Smith's pageant Pilate, being a 
 principal personage, was allowed wine. 
 
 In the list of machinery used in the Drap- 
 er's pageant there is included : 
 
 A Hell-mouth (a fire kept in it). 
 
 An Earthquake. 
 
28 The English Drama. 
 
 A Link to set the world on fire. 
 
 Puipits for the angels. 
 
 How the effects were produced is not how- 
 ever very clearly explained. 
 
 Amongst the characters of one play are 
 named "Two Worms of Conscience." 
 
 Banner bearers proclaimed the argument of 
 each pageant. Usually these men were styled 
 Vexillatores, but in Chester they were known 
 as Banes or Banns. 
 
 Besides the Corpus Christi and Whit- 
 suntide plays, there were other pageants as 
 that of Hoke-Tuesday or Hoke-Tide, and 
 also for particular occasions, as in 1416, when 
 Parliament was held in the Priory at Coven- 
 try, and again in 1455, when Queen Margaret 
 visited the city. 
 
 In the Religious Mysteries the devil was a 
 favorite and very prominent character. In the 
 Miracle and Moral plays he is likewise found. 
 In the latter he has a constant attendant 
 called Vice, who was always the buffoon of 
 the piece. The devil was usually represented 
 with a very wide mouth, staring eyes, a large 
 nose, a red beard, cloven feet, and a tail. 
 
 Judas, in accordance with the popular 
 belief, was represented always with red hair 
 and beard. 
 
The English Drama. 29 
 
 The fiends were often exhibited as carrying 
 the sins and souls of men in sacks. 
 
 Many of these plays are reported to have 
 been very indelicate. Nevertheless, they were 
 not without their use, for they both impressed 
 on the rude minds of the unlettered people 
 the chief facts of their religion and softened 
 manners, which were at that time very gross 
 and impure. " They created insensibly," says 
 Mr. Warton, "a regard for other arts than 
 those of bodily strength and savage valor." 
 
 The Passion Play of Ober Ammergau 
 enables us at the present time to understand 
 the effect produced by the Mysteries and 
 Miracles upon a mediaeval audience. 
 
 As change is the inevitable law of nature 
 in all things, its force is perceivable in the 
 drama as elsewhere. First the mere biblical 
 narrative satisfied writer and auditor, as in the 
 Mysteries. In time the legends of saints 
 were drawn upon for topics on which plays 
 might be written, and we have the Miracle 
 Plays. Next symbolical characters, which 
 had long held some part in both Mystery and 
 Miracle Plays, began to absorb the whole 
 action, and the Moral Play appeared. 
 
 The Moral Play, we have said, deals with 
 allegory. That is to say, its characters are 
 
3<d The English Drama. 
 
 symbolical, and its purpose is to teach 
 men to live better lives. Early in the 
 fifteenth century this species of the drama 
 appeared, and though the Mystery Plays con- 
 tinued to be given, their popularity waned 
 perceptibly before their younger rivals. 
 
 The transition from the Mysteries and 
 Miracles to the Moralities, was expedited by 
 their being no essential difference in the mode 
 of performance. The same vehicles, or the 
 same kind, served for the use of the last as it 
 had for that of the two preceding phases. 
 However, they came to be acted by roving 
 companies on holidays and festivals, in the 
 halls of noblemen and gentry, as well as in 
 the open squares of towns. They acquired 
 the subordinate name of Interlude from the 
 custom of presenting them in the intervals of ♦ 
 banquets or of other pastimes. 
 
 It is probable that literary allegory and the 
 popularity of the Moralities in France, gave 
 rise to the Moralities in England. But how- 
 ever successful in Gaul, they never domesti- 
 cated themselves in Britain until they came 
 to be connected with the political and relig- 
 ious questions which agitated the nation at 
 large, as they did during the Reformation of 
 Henry VIII. 
 
The English Drama. 31 
 
 The Moralities were composed during the 
 uncertain reigns of the first three Tudors. 
 Hence they reflect the conflict of opinion 
 between Protestantism and the older faith. 
 Some satirize bitterly the Protestants, some 
 the Catholics. 
 
 Two characters that were prominent in one 
 form or another in the Moral Plays were the 
 devil and his attendant, Vice. Thi° latter 
 character was not derived from the French, 
 whatever else the Moralities may owe to that 
 source, but was of native origin. There is 
 no French equivalent. Vice appears under 
 many different names, such as Shift, Ambi- 
 dexter, Sin, Fraud, Iniquity, etc. He was 
 usually dressed in a fool's habit. Later the 
 character was blended with the domestic fool, 
 and as such has survived in the regular 
 drama. With Vice the idea of comedy in 
 the English drama was first born. 
 
 A list of Moral Plays, belonging to the 
 reign of Henry VII., is interesting, if only for 
 their names, which suggest the style of piece 
 represented. 
 
 1. The Castle of Perseverance. 
 
 2. Mankind. 
 
 3. Nature. 
 
 4. The World and the Child. 
 
32 The English Drama. 
 
 5. Mind, Will and Understanding. 
 
 6. Everyman. 
 
 7. Lusty Juvenilis. 
 
 It will be well to take one of these and 
 examine the story, that we may the better 
 understand the nature of the whole class. 
 We will take " The Castle of Perseverance." 
 
 The subject of " The Castle of Persever- 
 ance " is the warfare carried on against 
 Hiimanum Genus and his companions, the 
 Seven Cardinal Virtues, by the Seven Deadly 
 Sins and their commanders, Miindus, Belial 
 and Caro. He is besieged by them in the 
 Castle of Perseverance, where Confessio has 
 bidden him take up his abode. In his old 
 age he finally gives way to the persuasions of 
 Avaritia. His soul is at last arraigned by 
 Pater sedens in judicio, but is apparently saved. 
 
 This is the type of conflict between good 
 and bad in man, as represented in the Moral 
 Plays. This class of plays survived to the 
 close of the sixteenth and even into the first 
 years of the seventeenth century. But al- 
 ready in the early period efforts had been 
 made to disengage the Moral Play from its 
 allegorical setting, and to present the pith of 
 its motives in a form of comedy v The law of 
 change was active and showed itself in an 
 
The English Drama. $$ 
 
 intermixture of abstract and real personages, 
 then of a division into acts and scenes as in 
 " The Marriage of Witte and Reason," and 
 finally the abstract was entirely dispensed 
 with, the acts and scenes entirely adopted, 
 and our Comedy proper appeared. 
 
 Stephen Hawe's " Pastime of Pleasure " 
 (temp. Henry VIII.) was the last work of the 
 old school of allegory in the pre-Elizabethan 
 literature. 
 
 Amongst the most celebrated writers of 
 Moral Plays we may name Guillaume Her- 
 man, Etienne Langton and John Skelton. 
 
34 The English Drama. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Dramatic literature is that kind of compo- 
 sition which adjusts itself to the requirements 
 of the .imitative art, acting. When the require- 
 ments of the imitative art are fully met with- 
 out detraction from the value of the composi- 
 tion, the highest object of dramatic literature 
 has been attained. But this perfect union of 
 poetry and action is not brought about in a 
 day. With the drama it required centuries. 
 Nor in the limits of this lecture do we treat 
 of the perfection afterwards attained. Here 
 it shall be our desire to observe the develop- 
 ment of the play to trace through^the several 
 stages that literary activity which was to 
 make the Shakespearean drama possible. 
 Between the liturgy and " Hamlet " lies an 
 apparently impassible gulf. It would be 
 ridiculous to suppose that the one immedi- 
 ately proceeded from the other. It is only 
 when we fill in the intervening gap with the 
 Mysteries, Miracles and Moralities, when we 
 
The English Drama. 35 
 
 remark how the religious element at first all- 
 predominant and all pervading is gradually 
 eliminated, and how worldly objects and 
 personages little by little supplant and finally 
 exclude it, that we begin to perceive the con- 
 nection. When the Mystery Play appeared, 
 the idea of religious worship pertaining to 
 the liturgy was lost. With the introduction 
 of the Miracle Play there was a slight but 
 still more perceptible deviation in proportion 
 as the events and personages ceased to be 
 scriptural and became legendary. In the com- 
 position of the Moral Plays the religious idea 
 was merged into that of the moral as sacred 
 characters were into allegorical. But from 
 the earliest times there were those who 
 endeavored to seize upon the substance of the 
 Moral Play, and dispensing with allegorical 
 accompaniments mould it into the form of 
 Comedy or Tragedy. 
 
 Midway between the Moralities and the 
 drama proper we find three works represen- 
 tative of the struggle to free the play from 
 allegory. These three compositions, Bale's 
 " King Johan," " Appius and Virginia" and 
 " Cambyses," have been appropriately styled 
 Hybrids, which name I shall adopt. Partly 
 moralities and partly tragedies, the Hybrids 
 
36 The English Drama. 
 
 are chiefly interesting as illustrations of 
 dramatic evolution. " King Johan " is deserv- 
 ing, probably, of special mention, as it is the 
 first attempt in the language to dramatize the 
 Chronicles, and might be placed with con- 
 siderable propriety at the head of a list com- 
 prising what afterwards came to be known as 
 Chronicle Plays. " Appius and Virginia" 
 treats in a very crude manner the well-known 
 story of the Roman maiden. " Cambyses," 
 the Eastern tyrant, furnishes the subject for 
 the third play. The poetry of these pieces is 
 sing-song and puerile, indicative of its 
 infancy. 
 
 Contemporaneously with the later Morali- 
 ties appeared a peculiarly English phase of 
 the drama ; the Interlude. This type, the 
 invention of John Heywood, on account of 
 its wit and humor, shines forth pleasantly 
 from all the wearisome literature of the 
 Moralities. It deserves, then, some special 
 treatment from the pen of a grateful student. 
 
 An interlude is a dialogue, mirthful, with- 
 out intrigue, exhibiting characters not by 
 action but by contrast and arrangement, the 
 motive of which is furnished by a witty situa- 
 tion. Sometimes it partook of the character 
 of a Morality, as in " The Play of the Weather " 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 37 
 
 and " The Play of Love." As a rule, how- 
 ever, it corresponded in form to the Latin 
 Disputationes. Some few pieces, as " The 
 Four P's," constitute a separate class. This 
 phase of dramatic evolution was not destined 
 long to continue. In a few years the Inter- 
 ludes became almost as archaic as they are at 
 the present day. Other influences were to 
 produce a different type which should for- 
 ever replace the Interlude. At the time of 
 their composition no equally artistic dramatic 
 works existed. 
 
 John Ileywood, the originator of the Inter- 
 lude, was a Londoner, a graduate of Broad- 
 gate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford. 
 He was a staunch Catholic and a fierce oppo- 
 nent of the Reformed Church. During 
 Henry the Eighth's and Mary's reigns he was 
 in high favor at Court, but died in exile at 
 Mechlin in 1565. Despite his zeal and suffer- 
 ings for his faith, he was not blind to the cor- 
 ruption of the church. This he bitterly satir- 
 ized and fearlessly exposed. His literary 
 style is homely, sensible, shrewd and witty. 
 His writings belong to the first half of the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 When to Heywood's faculty of character 
 painting was added the power of construct- 
 
38 The English Drama. 
 
 ing a story, a plot, we have the essential ele- 
 ments for the production of comedy. From 
 the Moralities, through the aid of the Inter- 
 ludes and the examples furnished by the 
 Latin and Italian dramatists, comedy 
 emerged. As the story became prominent 
 and began to share the interest with the study 
 of character, Comedy differentiated into that 
 of character and that of incident, which latter 
 is the higher as well as the later develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The earliest regular comedy in the English 
 language, an honor long mistakenly attribu- 
 ted to "Gammer Gurton's Needle," is Nicho- 
 las Udall's "Ralph Roister Doister." The 
 only known early copy of this comedy is in 
 the library of Eton College, from which ^ave 
 been printed at different times of late years 
 numerous editions. The play was licensed 
 and probably first printed in 1566, but is 
 supposed to have been composed and per- 
 formed even before 1551, in which year it is 
 quoted in Wilson's "Rule of Reason." 
 
 " Ralph Roister Doister," written by a 
 scholar and schoolman, shows the influence 
 of classic models both in the construction of 
 a plot and in the handling and division of the 
 subject. In this play we leave the grotesque- 
 
The English Drama. 39 
 
 ness and allegory of the middle ages and 
 enter into the field of actual and natural life. 
 The comedy founded on Plautus' " Miles Glo- 
 riosus" has for its story the courtship and 
 rejection of a cowardly, vain-glorious brag- 
 gart, who gives his name to the piece. None 
 of the requisite components of comedy are 
 wanting, such as ridiculous and serious per- 
 sonages, amusing events, misunderstandings, 
 temporary perplexity and a final satisfactory 
 adjustment of everything. As regards the 
 general plan and spirit of the work it differs 
 little from many modern works of mediocrity, 
 and with revision might be as suitable for 
 representation. 
 
 Nicholas Udall, the author of " Ralph Roi- 
 ster Doister," born about 1505, in Hampshire, 
 was a Protestant. He was a student at 
 Oxford and afterwards headmaster at Eton 
 College and later of Westminster School. 
 He was a man of learning and gained consid- 
 erable fame by translating some of Erasmus' 
 Latin Paraphrases of the New Testament. 
 Udall died in 1556. 
 
 Some fifteen or twenty years after the pro- 
 duction of " Ralph Roister Doister," that is 
 to say, in 1566, a vastly inferior work, John 
 Still's "Gammer Gurton's Needle," was 
 
40 The English Drama. 
 
 played in Christ College, Cambridge. A 
 comedy in five acts (it might better be termed 
 an elaborated farce). It is built on the circum- 
 stance of an old woman losing her needle, 
 the whole village being thrown into confu- 
 sion in consequence, and the final discovery of 
 the missing needle in the seat of her servant's 
 trousers. Needles do not appear to have 
 been very plentiful at the time, if we may 
 judge from the disturbance caused by the 
 loss of this one. The piece is coarse and 
 vulgar, but humorous and vigorous. The 
 existence of " Ralph Roister Doister," in 
 every way a much better work, does not 
 seem to have at all affected " Gammer Gur- 
 ton's Needle." It may occasion surprise that 
 such a play should have been the composition 
 of a scholar, and furnished enjoyment to 
 other scholars, who themselves represented 
 it. But the cause for surprise is rather that 
 Udall's comedy should have been produced 
 at a time when all classes relished and de- 
 manded just such coarseness and obscenity 
 as we find in " Gammer Gurton's Needle." 
 
 John Still [b. 1543 — d. 1607-8], the author 
 of the second earliest comedy in our lan- 
 guage, son of William Still, Esq., of Grant- 
 ham, in Lincolnshire, graduated at Christ 
 
The English Drama. 41 
 
 College, Cambridge, and entering the church 
 was rapidly preferred, finally becoming 
 Bishop of Bath and Wells. At the age of 
 twenty-three Still wrote the play which com- 
 mends him to our notice. It is to be observed 
 that in later life, when Vice-Chancellor of 
 Cambridge, he was called upon to oppose the 
 performance of an English play before Queen 
 Elizabeth at the University as unbefitting its 
 learning and dignity. 
 
 There were many reasons why Comedy 
 should precede Tragedy in dramatic evolution. 
 The fun-making scenes in the Moralities were, 
 in reality, foreign matter, and could be de- 
 tached and acted alone. Comedy appeals to 
 a wider audience. Latin models can be easily 
 followed. Not so difficult of invention as 
 Tragedy, as it requires less imagination and 
 deals with more familiar objects ; a certain 
 love of jesting and buffoonery innate *in the 
 English race. All these reasons conspired to 
 produce our early Comedy before Tragedy, 
 and some of these influences are visible later 
 in the Romantic drama, and even in our plays 
 of to-day. 
 
 The solemnity of the liturgy was replaced 
 in the Mysteries and Miracles by a feeling of 
 serious sacredness. This in its turn was 
 
42 The English Drama. 
 
 supplanted by a serious moral feeling in the 
 Moralities. This recognition of the sober 
 side and responsibilities of life has always 
 permeated the drama. From the first it is 
 seen to be an essential part of a play's exist- 
 ence. As this serious element is found in a 
 greater or less degree, so do we find the 
 varieties of the drama from the Tragedy to 
 the Farce. In the latter it is barely notice- 
 able ; in the former it absorbs everything 
 else. From the Mysteries, Miracles and 
 Moralities then, aided by the Chronicle His- 
 tories, Seneca and his Italian imitators, was 
 Tragedy derived. 
 
 The history of this phase of our drama is 
 interwoven with that of an attempt to enforce 
 the rules of classical composition on the 
 dramatists of England. When the attention 
 of learned and cultured men was attracted 
 by the stage, they endeavored to impose upon 
 it the regulations then accepted throughout 
 Europe and particularly in Italy, as indicative 
 of good taste and style. At that time, the 
 sixteenth century, the Renaissance, that had 
 begun in Italy two centuries before, and had 
 enthroned that country as the intellectual 
 leader and superior, was making its influence 
 felt in England. There was soon a group of 
 
The English Drama. 43 
 
 English classical scholars as brilliant as any 
 in Europe. These scholars were profoundly 
 impressed and influenced by their Italian 
 models, and though the independent English 
 spirit became more and more manifest, they 
 have never entirely shaken off this influence. 
 Nor would that be desirable. Surrey and 
 Wyatt introduced the sonnet and blank verse 
 from Italy. Spencer's " Fairy Queen " was 
 modeled after the Italian romantic epics. 
 Translations of Italian novels flooded the 
 book-stalls, and to these do we owe some 
 of our most charming and valuable plays of 
 Shakespeare and others. It is only natural 
 that the Latin and Italian dramas should be 
 imitated by scholars. Seneca, a faulty imi- 
 tator of the Greek, was chosen as the model 
 playwright. In his plays he has replaced 
 action by rhetoric and at once perverted and 
 lowered the standard of the Greek drama, 
 which he imitated. Therefore, as a guide 
 upon whose works others should plan theirs, 
 he is pernicious and pseudo-classic. Not per- 
 ceiving this fact, his plays were translated 
 and his rules faithfully followed by learned 
 men, such as Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, 
 George Gascoigne and Samuel Daniel, who 
 endeavored to give a tendency to the Eng- 
 
44 The English Drama. 
 
 lish drama at once false and foreign. These 
 efforts had no effect upon its development, 
 however, and are only interesting as showing 
 the continuous revolt against the Romantic 
 or native English drama. The Latin trage- 
 dies, such as George Buchanan's " Jeptha " 
 and John Rightwise's " Dido," written for 
 and performed in the Universities, were 
 unqualified failures. These men, who under- 
 took to set a pattern of what they thought 
 was a purer style, did not see the mistake 
 they were making, nor, fortunately, were they 
 able to cope with the innate good taste of the 
 people. The Romantic School of dramatists, 
 who represented the popular taste and 
 demands, felt that it was action, not didactic 
 rhetoric and eloquence, that composed the 
 essence of the drama. That there must be 
 life, vigor, variety, conflicts of persons, pas- 
 sions and events, and a final climax or catas- 
 trophe, all depicted, not merely described. 
 
 " Gorboduc," the first tragedy written in 
 English, though patterned after Seneca, is 
 founded on a popular fable, showing thereby 
 the irresistible native spirit. It is praised 
 very highly by Sidney in his " Defence of 
 Poesy." " It is full," he says, "of stately 
 speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing 
 
The English Drama. 45 
 
 to the height of Seneca his style." The 
 only grave fault he finds is non-observance of 
 the unity of time. So were the greatest liter- 
 ary men of the period completely misled by 
 false classical ideas. " Gorboduc " is com- 
 posed of dissertations and monologues. All 
 the action occurs behind the scenes, and is 
 merely reported by messengers and com- 
 mented upon on the stage itself. The lan- 
 guage is not natural and spontaneous. Each 
 person delivers a set oration and then steps 
 aside for the next to do likewise. The 
 speeches of the individual characters average 
 some fifty lines. Each act is concluded with 
 a chorus spoken by "four ancient and sage 
 men of Britain," which contains some of the 
 best poetry of the play Though any amount 
 of blood is shed, not a drop flows on the 
 sta'ge. Dumb shows were given before each 
 act to reveal in metaphorical pantomime the 
 meaning of what followed. These pageants 
 served the double purpose of elucidating the 
 play and relieving the dull solemnity of the 
 performance. The play is the story of Gor- 
 boduc, King of Britain, dividing his kingdom 
 during his lifetime between his sons Ferrex 
 and Porrux. The inevitable results follow ; 
 envy, ingratitude, hatred, murder, civil con- 
 
46 The English Drama. 
 
 flict ; Gorboduc, his queen and both sons, all 
 fall victims to his mistaken policy, and are 
 slain. The chief defect in the story of the 
 play is prolonging it after the death of all the 
 principal personages, when a new set of 
 motives of necessity arise. It is the first play 
 written in blank verse. 
 
 Norton, a learned lawyer, and Sackville, a 
 learned courtier, were the authors of " Gor- 
 boduc." The first mentioned, a strict reformer 
 of the bitterest sect, was by four years his 
 collaborator's senior. Sackville, in early life 
 wild and extravagant, afterwards reformed. 
 He had a great part in the compilation of the 
 poems known as " The Mirror for Magis- 
 trates," which connect the works of Lydgate 
 and Spencer. " Gorboduc," the work of 
 these two men, was first performed at White- 
 hall, before the Queen, in 1561. 
 
 The second tragedy of the English stage is 
 "The Misfortunes of Arthur/' Thomas 
 Hughes was the author. Francis Bacon, 
 Christopher Yelveston and John Lancaster, 
 gentlemen of Gray's Inne, devised the 
 Dumb-shows. Like " Gorboduc," it was 
 written by learned men. The play is a de- 
 cided improvement upon its predecessor 
 in dramatic painting, language and spon- 
 
The English Drama. 47 
 
 taneity. The story is, however, indescrib- 
 ably loathsome. In this tragedy a character 
 is imported from Seneca destined to great 
 popularity and long life through the works 
 of Brooke, Kyd, Jonson, Shakespeare, etc., 
 viz. : The Ghost. 
 
 The pseudo-classic school was not without 
 its beneficial influence on the English drama. 
 It brought about a respect for studied 
 thought as well as the mere dramatizations 
 of a story, and compelled play-wrights to con- 
 sider whether mature reflection and dramatic 
 action might not be harmonized. Finally it 
 introduced blank verse, imperfect to be sure, 
 but still blank verse. " Gorboduc " was 
 printed at least twenty years before the pro- 
 duction of Marlowe's " Tamburlaine." 
 
 Worthy of special mention is Richard 
 Edward's " Damon and Pithias," played pos- 
 sibly in 1564-5, and printed in 1571, and Robert 
 Wilmot's " Tancred and Gismunda " (origin- 
 ally acted in 1568, published in 1592). The 
 former is Edwards' only extant play, and was 
 a most popular one. This success was partly 
 owing to the commendation of the Queen, 
 partly to the novelty of bringing stories from 
 profane history upon the stage. There is no 
 division into acts in the play, but the dialogue, 
 
48 The English Drama. 
 
 covering a period of two months, continues 
 to the end. The story is, with slight varia- 
 tions, the familiar one. The play teems with 
 proverbs. " Tancred and Gismunda " was the 
 production of five gentlemen, but was after- 
 wards so much altered by one of them, Robert 
 Wilmot, that he is usually named as the author. 
 King Tancred, actuated by excessive paternal 
 love, refuses his daughter Gismunda permis- 
 sion to marry a second time. She becomes a 
 victim of her passion. Tancred discovers her 
 lover, causes him to be slain, and his heart sent 
 in a golden goblet to Gismunda. She takes 
 poison, and dying begs to be buried with her 
 lover. Tancred, overcome with remorse and 
 sorrow, slays himself. There is lacking action 
 and skill in construction in the piece, but the 
 thought and language is often beautiful, as 
 when Tancred addresses the dead body of his 
 daughter : 
 
 " Oh, fair in life ! thrice fairer in thy death ! 
 Dear to thy father in thy life thou wert ; 
 But in thy death, dearest unto his heart ; 
 I kiss thy paled cheeks, and close thine eyes. 
 This duty once I promised to myself 
 Thou shouldst perform to me ; but, ah ! false 
 
 hope, 
 Now ruthful, wretched king, what resteth thee ? 
 
The English Drama. 49 
 
 From the " Minutes of the Revels," between 
 1568 and 1580, Mr. Collier has obtained a list of 
 fifty-two plays. None of these remain. Even 
 their authors are unknown. Written at a 
 time when only wealthy scholars could have 
 their plays published, and who did not 
 always do so, and when also a successful 
 piece was carefully kept from the printer, 
 that it might be played only by the rightful 
 owners, they were eventually forgotten and 
 perished. A brilliant success, like " Gorbo- 
 duc," was pirated and thus preserved. A few 
 were in this manner rescued. Of those that 
 perished we can safely say that they were 
 intended merely for popular amusement, and 
 that it was the people who supported them. 
 
 The play-wright began to derive material 
 from the love stories of history and mythol- 
 ogy, and' a style of play grew up full of absur- 
 dities and extravagances, careless of rules, 
 but having a variety and vigor that took 
 strong hold on popular favor. In spite of 
 scholarly and pedantic hostility this " peo- 
 ple's drama " was encouraged by court as 
 well as populace, and continued to thrive and 
 grow strong. In direct opposition to the 
 pseudo-classic type, which it was to vanquish, 
 yet it was to be greatly improved and modi- 
 
5<d The English Drama. 
 
 fied by that type. Learned dramatists were 
 won to the side of the Romantic drama and 
 became its earnest supporters. Edwards and 
 Wilmot were both scholars. It is to this period 
 that "Damon and Pithias," " Tancred and 
 Gismunda," the earliest " Romeo and Juliet," 
 and Whetstone's " Promos and Cassandra," 
 belong. But we cannot judge of the merit 
 and value of the drama of that time by the 
 few plays remaining to us ; it is rather by the 
 contemporary and often hostile criticism, of 
 which there is considerable, that it is valuable. 
 Sidney complained of the lack of art. North- 
 brooke of the immorality connected with the 
 stage. Stephen Gosson, a former dramatist 
 and actor, attacked both professions fiercely. 
 This brought out many replies. Thomas 
 Lodge, in " Plays Confuted in Five Actions," 
 shows that the play-wrights dtew their plots 
 from Italian translations, mythology, classical 
 history, Latin plays, and the romances of the 
 middle ages. Whetstone attacked the roman- 
 tic plays because of their impossibilities. He 
 says, " Then in three hours runs he through 
 the world ; marries, gets children ; makes 
 children men, men to conquer kingdoms, 
 murder monsters, and bringeth gods from 
 heaven, and fetcheth devils from hell." Sid- 
 
The English Drama. 51 
 
 ney complains, "For where the stage should 
 always represent but one place, and the 
 uttermost time presupposed in it should be, 
 both by Aristotle's precept and common rea- 
 son, but one day, there is both many days 
 and many places inartificially imagined. . . . 
 Many things may be told which can not be 
 shown." 
 
 These critics desired to separate distinctly 
 Tragedy and Comedy ; to permit no inter- 
 mingling ; to preserve the classical unities of 
 time, place and action ; to describe rather 
 than depict action. Upheld by the French 
 Academy, these principles produced the arti- 
 ficial and unnatural drama of Racine, Cor- 
 neille, etc., and it was not until the daring 
 master-genius of Victor Hugo had produced 
 his " Hernani," that they were overthrown 
 and their bad effect recognized in that 
 country. In England our Romantic drama 
 refused to obey a single one of these rules. 
 There was nothing in the shape of a story 
 that it would not utilize ; hence it has been 
 defined as "a represented story." 
 
 In 1512-13 Henry VIII. introduced into 
 England a species of the drama long popular 
 on the continent, but until then unseen in 
 Britain, the Masque. In order to treat of 
 
52 The English Drama. 
 
 this type in full we shall have to deviate for 
 a short time from the course of our subject 
 proper, and even to pass into the regions of 
 later work, disregarding chronology. 
 
 The Masque is a dramatic species midway] 
 between a pageant and a play ; a spectacle, 
 consisting of a combination of dancing and 
 music with poetry and declamation, whose j 
 chief characteristic is magnificence of pro- 
 duction. It makes but little demand for act-> 
 ing, yet a great deal for splendor and beauty. 
 The mechanic and author share the honors. 
 The actors are insignificant. Complicated 
 machines, elaborate scenic effects, music and 
 dancing are the necessities. 
 
 With the very rich the Masque became a 
 favorite amusement. It was a gorgeous 
 parade of their wealth and power ; a display 
 to produce which a whole army of mechanics 
 and performers were necessary. At one 
 Masque given in Italy one hundred and sixty 
 actors took part. The principal actors repre- 
 sented Olympian Deities and personifica- 
 tions of # the Virtues. The Masques given 
 before Lucrezia Borgia (1502) and Leonora of 
 Aragon (1474) were of a consecutive nature ; 
 that is, consisted of a series of shows rather 
 than one. In 15 13, however, at Urbino, this 
 
The English Drama. 53 
 
 processional idea was made prominent and 
 cars were introduced. A Carnival at Venice 
 is simply a phase of the Masque. A Veiled 
 Prophet's Procession, or Mardi Gras, is what 
 is left to us of this type. Essentially an 
 Italian production, it lost much in transplant- 
 ing to English soil. The artistic nature of 
 the people was not highly cultured. They 
 were defective in the fine arts, such as music, 
 architecture and painting. These hardy, 
 storm-beaten, warlike islanders had not the 
 leisure nor the surroundings to call forth the 
 obscure want of these things, Yet the Eng- 
 lish were not insensible to their beauty, only 
 incapable of producing them in their highest 
 form. Therefore foreign artists were im- 
 ported, necessarily of a second rank, else 
 they would have remained at home. Nor 
 was Elizabeth, in whose reign they became 
 popular, willing to expend lavishly her wealth 
 in the manner requisite for a Masque as pro- 
 duced in Italy ; although she was greatly 
 pleased when her nobles did so in her honor, 
 as did Leicester at Kenilworth. It was not 
 until the Stuarts reigned that this form of 
 entertainment reached its highest develop- 
 ment in England. James and Charles were 
 extremely fond of the Masque, and during 
 
54 The English Drama. 
 
 their rule their court rivaled that of the 
 Italians in the magnificence of this dramatic 
 type, and far excelled it in poetical worth. 
 To English dramatists alone belongs the 
 honor of elevating the Masque to the plane 
 of literature. From the pens of Jonson, Beau- 
 mont, Fletcher, and Milton, came Masques 
 of literary merit and powers to please in 
 reading as well as representation. Jonson 
 and Inigo Jones, the architect, fixed the type 
 for English writers to follow. Some of these 
 Masques cost ^3,000 to produce. On " The 
 Triumph of Peace," designed by Shirley and 
 Inigo Jones, and presented in 1634 at White- 
 hall, ^2,000 was expended. Often royal and 
 noble personages took part in these perform- 
 ances, as in some of Jonson's pieces we find 
 that the Queen and her ladies assumed the 
 characters. An Anti-Masque was often in- 
 troduced to lighten the entertainment with 
 fun. Deprived of their scenic and other ac- 
 companiments, the Masques call for great 
 flights of the imagination. Nevertheless, so 
 much learning and genius was expended 
 upon them, so many beauties are to be found 
 in them, that they can still be read with 
 pleasure. Jonson is at his best in his 
 Masques. 
 
The English Drama. 55 
 
 Like every other prominent feature of the 
 national life, the Masque was in time incor - 
 po rated in the dram a. We find it in Shake- 
 speare's " Tempest," and in Fletcher's " Maid's 
 Tragedy." A Mask of Madmen is introduced 
 by Webster in his tragedy, " The Duchess." 
 To be given on the stage the Masque had to 
 be much simplified and quickly disposed of. 
 Often it was inappropriately utilized, proba- 
 bly because of its powerful effect on the 
 people's imagination. The last and most 
 brilliant literary achievement in this dramatic 
 field was Milton's " Comus." It is in com- 
 position and intrinsic merit far superior to 
 everything else of its kind, having nothing in 
 common with those entertainments whose 
 chief interest centered in glittering and 
 magnificent surroundings. But the Masque 
 has disappeared, or rather degenerated, into 
 pantomimic processions. Designed for a 
 lower order of intellect, as the race progressed, 
 it resigned all literary and dramatic claims, 
 and became simply a vulgar show or parade. 
 
 We have spoken of the Hybrid Plays, 
 touched upon the Interlude, and deviated 
 somewhat to view the Masques, now we must 
 return to Comedy and Tragedy. The earliest 
 Tragedies were founded on the legendary 
 
56 The English Drama. 
 
 history of England, as "Gorboduc," "The 
 Misfortunes of Arthur," " Locrine," and 
 " King Lear." The first two we have already 
 mentioned. The stories of all are well 
 known. From dealing with legendary char- 
 acters it was but a step to treating historical 
 ones. And it is worthy of remark that in 
 English literature alone did this treatment 
 attain something approaching perfection. In 
 other languages the attempts made to drama- 
 tize their national history do not deserve 
 the name of Chronicle Plays. A Chronicle 
 Play should treat in a single action of the 
 leading events of a reign, not be a selected 
 and dramatized national episode. Our Chron- 
 icle Plays, having for their object the repre- 
 sentation of the national annals, cover nearly 
 the whole field of English history K 
 
 Bale'9 " King John," which we have already 
 mentioned, heads the list of Historical or 
 Chronicle Plays. " The Troublesome Reign 
 of King John," " The True Tragedy of 
 Richard III.," "Richard Tertius," "The 
 Famous Victories of Henry V.," " The Con- 
 tention of the Two Famous Houses of York," 
 all belong to this early and defective period. 
 Though often interesting and vigorous, they 
 are crude and rough. " Richard Tertius " is 
 
The English Drama. 57 
 
 a Latin Chronicle Play, by Dr. Legge. " Ed- 
 ward III." is of a higher order than any of 
 the preceding, and has been ascribed to 
 Shakespeare, but without sufficient authority 
 to be accepted as his. Marlowe's " Edward 
 II." was the first really excellent Chronicle. 
 Not printed until 1598, it was, however, 
 probably written in 1590. Then follow 
 Peele's " Edward I.," in 1593. Thomas Hey- 
 wood's two parts of " Edward IV." (in which 
 the story of Jane Shore forms a principal 
 element). " If You Know Not Me, You 
 Know Nobody " (a play upon the reign of 
 Mary, and the accession of Elizabeth). Row- 
 ley's "When You See Me, You Know Me" 
 (the reign of Henry VIII.). 
 
 The Chronicle plays are very unequal in 
 merit. In Shakespeare and Marlowe they 
 reach their highest perfection, and in Rowley 
 the lowest. Together with Shakespeare's and 
 subsequent Chronicles there is an almost con- 
 tinuous series of studies in English history 
 from 1 1 19 to 1588, from the accession of John 
 to the defeat of the Armada — nearly four cen- 
 turies. These plays served a noble purpose 
 in educating and enlightening the people con- 
 cerning their country's history. In " The 
 Apology for Actors," Heywood pointed out 
 
58 The English Drama. 
 
 how useful these plays were in instructing 
 the ignorant, and reminding the learned of 
 the great facts of history and morals. 
 
 Closely allied to the Historical or Chronicle 
 plays are those that are biographical, such as 
 have for their subjects popular heroes, whether 
 real or mythical. The earliest to be acted 
 was " Sir Thomas More." Then followed 
 " The Life and Death of Thomas, Lord Crom- 
 well," " Sir John Oldcastle," " Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt," " Perkin Warbeck," " The Fair Maid 
 of the West," " Capt. Thomas Stukeley," 
 " Pinner of Wakefield," etc. Some of these 
 are by unknown authors, two have been 
 wrongly attributed to Shakespeare. While 
 of inferior workmanship, yet all breathing 
 the independent, adventure-loving English 
 spirit, they were based some on real some on 
 mythical personages, and dealt partly in facts 
 and largely in legends. Three plays of this 
 class celebrated that popular highwayman, 
 Robin Hood. In all is the attempt made to 
 depict the English gentleman, bold, honor- 
 able and adventurous. It is the nation's 
 spirit working to the surface. 
 
 From the biographical to the domestic- 
 drama it was but a step. From treating of 
 the principal events in the lives of popular 
 
The English Drama. 59 
 
 heroes, to treating stirring events in contem- 
 poraneous society was the natural develop- 
 ment of play-writing. That the contempo- 
 rary events chosen should have been those of 
 a morbid and fascinating interest, as some 
 famous crime, is not to be wondered at, but 
 expected. Horrible stories of passion and 
 murder, found in Holimshed's and Stow's 
 Chronicles, were used as subjects for gloomy, 
 realistic plays, in which the minutest details 
 were adhered to and all ornament or inven- 
 tion excluded. These plays are bold studies 
 of real life, where all romance and glamour 
 is dispensed with, and where licentiousness, 
 brutality, murder and avarice are pictured as 
 they are. Yet this type seems to have been 
 very popular, despite its brutal nature. 
 
 The five tragedies representative of this 
 class given by Symonds are : "Warning for 
 Fair Women " (1599), " A Yorkshire Tragedy " 
 (1608), "Arden of Feversham " (1592), 
 "Woman Killed with Kindness " (1603), and 
 the "Witch of Edmonton " (1623). These 
 extend into a later period than I wish to 
 treat of here, which fact shows how difficult 
 it is in literature as in history to mark off 
 divisions and how inevitably these divisions 
 will overlap one another. 
 
60 The English Drama. 
 
 " Arden of Feversham " was based on "The 
 lamentable and true tragedy of Master Ar- 
 den of Feversham, in Kent, who was most 
 wickedly murdered by the means of his dis- 
 loyal and wanton wife, who, for the love she 
 bore to one Mosbie, hired two desperate ruf- 
 fians, Black Will and Shagbag, to kill him." 
 This play, and " The Yorkshire Tragedy," 
 have been assigned to Shakespeare, but while 
 authorities differ, it is safe to say the weight 
 of evidence is against this theory of their 
 authorship. 
 
 There is a purer and higher tone in " A 
 Woman Killed with Kindness," than is usually 
 found in the domestic type. Here is a real- 
 ism that elevates, a vileness that displays 
 purity, and a virtuous character revealed by 
 others' wickedness. The picturing of charac- 
 ter and passion is the great object in this as 
 in other plays of its kind. Particularly is 
 this so in the " Witch of Edmonton," the title 
 role of which has no superior of its type in 
 English literature. Little claim is made by 
 these plays to artistic value, although there is 
 often a vein of excellent poetry. 
 
 We have now reached that point in the his- 
 tory of our drama, where the expression of a 
 type or species of play was found in some 
 
The English Drama. 61 
 
 particular writer. Where the spirit of the 
 time is best studied and more clearly revealed 
 in the works of some one genius, than it would 
 be in all the contemporaneous literature. We 
 have reached the period of activity of Shake- 
 speare's immediate predecessors : Kyd, Lyly, 
 Greene, Peele, Nash, Lodge and Marlowe. 
 
 Thomas Kyd, the circumstances of whose 
 life and death are unknown, was the founder 
 of the " Tragedy of Blood." The characters of 
 this species are the noble and fearless lover, 
 the beautiful and oppressed heroine, the gener- 
 ous old man, the consummate villain, the vil- 
 lain's tools, paid assassins and a ghost. The 
 peculiarites are intolerable wrongs, unmerited 
 sufferings, secret malice. There are portraits 
 of wildest insanity, extravagant love-making, 
 fierce encounters. Kings, clowns, assassins, 
 princes, ladies, fill the scene. Blood flows 
 freely, and death reigns supreme. In the 
 " Spanish Tragedy," that much ridiculed play, 
 there are five murders, two suicides, two judi- 
 cial executions, and one death in a duel. The 
 principal character, Hieronymo, bites out his 
 tongue, throws it down, kills his foe and then 
 himself. Such is an example of the frightful 
 scenes our ancestors called Tragedy. The 
 people of that day were pleased with blood 
 
62 The English Drama. 
 
 and had nerves of iron. Their sympathies 
 were only reached by uppiling horrible events. 
 Every imaginable means was resorted to to 
 stir their sluggish blood and thrill them. 
 These tragedies have aptly been compared 
 to a fierce tempest in which everything is 
 destroyed, and peace is only reached by anni- 
 hilation. 
 
 John Lyly, M. A., member of Magdalene 
 College, who had won fame by his " Euphues " 
 in 1579, attached himself to the Court in 1580, 
 and became a dramatist. He always desired 
 the office of Master of the Revels, but never 
 obtained it. For this purpose he turned his 
 attention to writing plays which have been 
 styled Court Comedies. These plays formed 
 a new species of drama, a species which was to 
 affect all succeeding dramatic literature. This 
 type of comedy, which Lyly invented, and 
 which gives him an 'mportant place as a 
 dramatist, was extremely popular for some 
 twenty years. The distinguishing marks 
 of this " Court " or " Euphuistic " Comedy 
 are extravagant language, studied manner- 
 isms, abundant antitheses, fanciful conceits, 
 superficial allegory and repartee. Added 
 to these Lyly first introduced witty prose 
 dialogue and the custom of disguising female 
 
Tiie English Drama. 63 
 
 character in male attire in the drama. So 
 that while there is much to condemn and 
 lament, yet there is something to praise in 
 Lyly. Nor must Lyly be blamed severely 
 for adopting and nourishing this comedy of 
 affectation for he simply expressed a phase of 
 English literary life that existed in his time. 
 It was a piece of road over which the litera- 
 ture had naturally to pass. To the people of 
 that period, ignorant of science, allegory and 
 symbolism deeply appealed. The scholars in 
 their study of the ancients had not yet learned 
 to distinguish between the good and the bad 
 authors, but accepted them all. Hence in the 
 writings of the day, as in their conversation, 
 there is found a sacrificing of purity, form 
 and truth, to a straining after effect, a ten- 
 dency to allegory, and an abuse of classical 
 learning. Lyly was without doubt original 
 in his works. Nothing like his comedies had 
 ever before been seen in England. They are 
 wanting in plot, action and intrigue, are 
 merely a succession of brilliant scenes, where 
 the language is sparkling and the allegory 
 interesting,. Of his eight comedies six were 
 given before Elizabeth, and all are full of 
 extravagant and judicious praise of the 
 Queen. In " Endimion " Elizabeth is thinly 
 
64 The English Drama. 
 
 disguised as " Cynthia," in " Sapho and Phao " 
 by " Sapho " and so on. Platonic love, roman- 
 tic devotion, the nobleness of a ruler prefer- 
 ring the toils of sovereignty to the pleasures 
 of love, England's enemies, defeated and dis- 
 appointed, actuate and permeate all his 
 works. The term " Euphuism," which has 
 been applied to this style of writing, is taken 
 from the name of Lyly's novel, " Euphues," in 
 which he first popularized and propagated 
 this kind of prose literature. His lyrics, with 
 which his plays are adorned, should be men- 
 tioned for their rare beauty. Lyly's comedies, 
 though little noted to-day, mark an epoch 
 and distinguish him as a discoverer. 
 
 Greene, Peele, Nash and Lodge form a 
 quartette of poets of peculiar interest from 
 their associations in life, work and death. 
 They were all well born and well educated ; 
 all came from the universities and with the, 
 degree of Master of Arts. Despite their birth 
 and attainments they were excluded from 
 respectable society because of their loose lives 
 and profanity. Three of these men after 
 leading wretched, licentious lives died mis- 
 erably, barely reckoning forty years each. 
 Lodge alone extricated himself from this wild 
 life, became respectable, and reached a good 
 
The English Drain a. 65 
 
 old age, dying, as we are told, " decently of 
 the plague," in 1625. 
 
 The best known and most erratic genius of 
 this quartette, Robert Greene, was a man o 
 brilliant powers, and low passions, doomed to 
 the bitter disappointment of being far excelled 
 in his profession, and to the just punishment 
 of a miserable end to a miserable life. When 
 Greene first engaged in play-writing, rimed 
 dramas were very popular, and in this style of 
 writing he soon took a first place. He bitterly 
 opposed the introduction of blank verse, which 
 Marlowe made in " Tamburlaine," and which 
 revolutionized the stage. He quarrelled 
 with both Marlowe and Nash on this subject, 
 but being unable to oppose the popular 
 demands, was compelled to dispense with the 
 old method and adopt the new. In doing 
 this, he lost his pre-eminence, and was forced 
 into the subordinate position of an imitator. 
 But no sooner had Greene yielded to Mar- 
 lowe's ascendancy, than lie was called upon to 
 submit to a still greater conqueror, Shakes- 
 peare. He could not retreat twice grace- 
 fully, especially since the second genius was 
 neither a learned nor a travelled gentleman. 
 
 Greene could not forgive the dramatist who 
 by industry and sobriety was winning fame 
 
66 The English Drama. 
 
 and wealth, while he was ending an ill-spent 
 life in wretched poverty. In his time he had 
 been a popular author, but working not for 
 posterity but for ephemeral fame and money, 
 he received only that for which he had bar- 
 gained. On his death-bed he bitterly and 
 inexcusably attacked the stage, the actors, 
 and Shakespeare. Since the first had given 
 him his living, the second had once reckoned 
 him in their ranks, and the third only sur- 
 passed him by reason of superior excellence 
 he should not have complained. It was the 
 old story of blaming art and artists for the 
 results of individual sin. Greene's novels 
 form the better part of his works. His plays 
 lack unity of plot and character portraitures. 
 There is shown an excellent story-telling fac- 
 ulty and the power to employ at once a vari- 
 ety of motives and a simplicity of detail. 
 The main defects are an inappropriate use of 
 Latin mythology and a failure to appreciate 
 the dignity of the drama. None of Greene's 
 earlier works are extant. Of his later plays 
 the most celebrated are " Looking-Glass for 
 London" (a joint work with Lodge), "Al- 
 phonso, Prince of Aragon " and " James The 
 Fourth of Scotland." The last is probably 
 his best. 
 
The English Drama. 67 
 
 George Peele was not a prolific writer, nor 
 did he have a pronounced effect on the litera- 
 ture of his time. While he was not an origi- 
 nal thinker, yet he took high rank as a poet. 
 His descriptions are graceful, his verse is 
 sweet, and his feeling is natural and tender. 
 He might have been a greater man had not 
 the necessities of his time drawn him into an 
 extravagance and exaggeration foreign to 
 him. Even as it is, his writing shows unusual 
 dignity and repose. His best works are : 
 " The Arraignment of Paris " and " David 
 and Bethsaba." The former is a classical 
 Masque and the latter a modern Mystery 
 Play. "The Old Wives' Tales" is claimed 
 by some to be the source of Milton's " Comus." 
 His other dramatic productions do not call 
 for more special mention than to say that they 
 are dull, insipid and extravagant. 
 
 Thomas Nash was the bitterest satirist of 
 his own, if not of any age, of English litera- 
 ture. He avoided learned displays of rheto- 
 ric, drew bold caricatures, stinging epigrams 
 and invectives. His method of arguing by 
 abuse and ridicule made him the first pam- 
 phleteer, if not the first dramatist of that 
 time. " Ingenious, fluent, facetious Thomas 
 Nash," says Dekker, " from what abundant 
 
68 The English Drama. 
 
 pen flowed honey to thy friends and mortal 
 aconite to thy enemies." Nash is supposed 
 to have been a collaborator in Marlowe's 
 " Queen Dido." " Will Summer's Testa- 
 ment," is his best known play. Nash is par- 
 ticularly remembered for his staunch defense 
 of his dead friend Greene's reputation against 
 the attacks of Gabriel Harvey. 
 
 Thomas Lodge, son of a Lord Mayor, was 
 successively scholar, actor, poet, adventurer 
 and physician. In comparison to his other 
 writings his plays are insignificant. He 
 collaborated with Greene in the composi- 
 tion of " Looking-Glass of London," and 
 produced the stiff, unnatural tragedy of " The 
 Wounds of Civil War." Lodge's claims as a 
 poet must rest upon his lyrics. 
 
 Christopher Marlowe was born at Canter- 
 bury in the same year with Shakespeare, 
 1564. Although a shoemaker's son, he was 
 given the advantages of a Cambridge educa- 
 tion, probably by the assistance of some 
 wealthy gentleman, it is thought Sir Roger 
 Marwood. Of Marlowe it can be truly said 
 that he was born a poet. His first extant 
 work, a tragedy, showing the master of a new 
 style destined to revolutionize play-writing 
 and become the most perfect and attractive 
 
The English Drama. 69 
 
 type of the drama yet attained, was written 
 at the age of twenty-two. 
 
 " Tamburlaine" made Marlowe at once 
 famous and idolized. The rest of his life, 
 but six years, he spent writing plays, a pro- 
 fession then tolerably remunerative. During 
 this time he composed the second part of 
 " Tamburlaine," " Dr. Faustus," " The Massa- 
 cre at Paris," " The Jew of Malta," and 
 " Edward II.," besides some exquisite poems 
 and a part of the tragedy of " Dido." All of 
 these plays in style, vigor and imagination 
 far surpass everything that had preceded 
 them. 
 
 When we look upon the crude compositions 
 of the men who wrote before " Tambur- 
 laine " appeared, and then upon the plays 
 written after its production, we will not dis- 
 pute Marlowe's claim to the title given him 
 by his admirers of Father of English 
 Dramatic Poetry. 
 
 Before Marlowe's time, although all kinds 
 of plays had been attempted, none had been 
 brought to any degree of perfection. Indeed, 
 for this very lack of anything approaching 
 perfection, the stamp of which genius alone 
 can give, the stage was threatened with ruin. 
 Abandoned by the scholars who desired an 
 
7<d The English Drama. 
 
 imitative art, debased by the multitude that 
 wished only buffoonery and unnatural melo- 
 drama, derided by the Puritans and moralists 
 who would have no plays at all, the drama 
 trembled on the brink of ruin. From this 
 impending danger it was Marlowe that 
 rescued it, and thereby rendered an inesti- 
 mable service to English literature. Mar- 
 lowe's plays revived and purified dramatic 
 taste, and gave fresh impetus to dramatic 
 production. 
 
 Like all great workers, Marlowe made use 
 of the best of all materials that were within 
 his reach. He selected the popular Romantic 
 drama, perceiving its eminent capabilities, as 
 the type best suited for his purpose. He re- 
 jected the much-admired rime and adopted 
 blank verse, for he beheld in it the highest 
 form of poetry. To do this required con- 
 fident courage, for before he wrote, blank 
 verse, though used, had been lifeless. To 
 inspire this verse with melody and meaning, 
 and to unite it with the previously hostile 
 element, the Romantic drama, in a manner 
 at once elevating and successful, was the 
 effort of a great genius. From a chaos he 
 brought forth a drama. Nor was he ignorant 
 of the service he rendered the stage. In his 
 
The English Drama. 71 
 
 prologue to " Tamburlaine " he openly pro- 
 claimed his purpose to win the populace. 
 
 u From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, 
 And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay." 
 
 This he succeeded in doing, so much so that 
 the English drama never returned to rime 
 except in a phase of its history which is to 
 be regarded merely as a conscious aberration 
 from its national course and from which it 
 soon returned. 
 
 Marlowe was one of the few men who 
 undertook to reform and elevate the stage, 
 and who succeeded. His services are two- 
 fold, i. e. y the introduction of a living blank 
 verse and the recognition and uniting of 
 proper dramatic materials. Yet we must 
 not believe or expect that Marlowe's poetry, 
 except in isolated passages, is comparable to 
 that of Shakespeare or Milton. It is merely 
 the intervening step between crudeness and 
 perfection. Marlowe is the pioneer that 
 clears the way for his greater successors. 
 His works are as a rule monotonous and 
 grandiloquent, though his poetry is at times 
 so beautiful " that it seems often the result of 
 momentary inspiration rather than the 
 studied style of a deliberate artist." He 
 
72 The English Drama. 
 
 seems incapable of sustained eloquence. Yet 
 in a different line, in an attempt of epical and 
 erotic poetry, as in "Hero and Leander," he 
 surpasses even the " Venus and Adonis " of 
 Shakespeare in excellence. 
 
 We have not yet spoken of Marlowe's life, 
 nor will we do more than barely touch on it. 
 He was notorious for license of speech and 
 looseness of habits ; but, says Ward, indeed 
 truly, " For us, who can not penetrate through 
 the foul mists which obscured the career of 
 this fiery genius, it remains only to lament 
 the loss to our literature of the fruits of a 
 promise without parallel among our earlier — 
 indeed, with one exception, among all our 
 Elizabethan dramatists." Considering the 
 facts of Marlowe's dissipated life and early 
 death, he was only twenty-nine when mur- 
 dered in a drunken brawl, that at the age of 
 twenty-two he produced a play that revo- 
 lutionized the stage, the eminent value of the 
 plays written during his short career, and the 
 great services he rendered the English drama, 
 he is to be rated as one of the most original, 
 creative poets of the world. 
 
 Of the seven dramatists, upon whose lives 
 and works we have touched, Lyly represents 
 a peculiar and original style which has affected 
 
The English Drama. 73 
 
 in some degree all succeeding literature. 
 Kyd stands for us as the representative of the 
 Tragedy of Blood. Greene marks the advent 
 of the Romantic play. Nash the introduc- 
 tion into prose of controversy and satire. 
 Peele is an artistic poet not influencing but 
 merely complying with the demands of his 
 age. Lodge asserts the rare beauties of the 
 lyric. It was left for Marlowe, the last and 
 greatest of the seven, to select and combine 
 the beauties of- all the others with the faults 
 of some of them, to prepare the way for the 
 master mind that was to follow or as our 
 Anglo-Saxon ancestors would have said, 
 " The light that was to shine over many lands." 
 
74 The English Drama. 
 
 III. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 For the proper understanding and appre- 
 ciation of a great man I believe it is a gener- 
 ally accepted theory that we must be familiar 
 with the times in which he lived, the circum- 
 stances of his life, the people by whom he was 
 surrounded, the materials at his disposal. 
 Then in the study of a great dramatist we 
 must consider not only the immediate pro- 
 ducts of his pen, but also the causes which 
 called forth and the conditions which modi- 
 fied or affected in any vital manner his com- 
 positions. Foremost amongst this seemingly 
 extraneous matter is the theatre. Without a 
 certain knowledge of the stage and audience 
 for which Shakespeare wrote we can not be 
 said to have a thorough knowledge of Shakes- 
 peare himself. Much that is otherwise inex- 
 plicable or at least apparently superfluous 
 reveals at once its significance and importance. 
 Therefore I shall not hesitate to preface my 
 remarks on Shakespeare by a cursory exam- 
 ination of the theatre. 
 
The English Drama. 75 
 
 In the beginning, as we have seen, the 
 drama had no permanent home. There were 
 no buildings set aside for such a purpose. 
 The Mysteries were exhibited in churches or 
 on movable platforms in the streets. The 
 Moralities and Interludes were given in cor- 
 poration halls, great lord's castles, or at inn 
 yards. The first plays, such as " Gammer 
 Gurton's Needle," were produced in the uni- 
 versities. 
 
 As priests at first, and later tradesmen 
 and scholars, presented these plays, it is 
 readily seen that if there was at this period 
 no regular theatre, neither was there any 
 regular, that is, professional acting. For a 
 long time the ideas of acting and breadwin- 
 ning were not connected. However, they 
 began to be associated with the advent of the 
 interlude, and with the decline of the clown 
 and the minstrel. Companies of actors 
 sprang into existence. Some were attached 
 to great households, others roved from place 
 to place. The custom of a powerful baron 
 maintaining such a company, which called 
 itself his servants, became very popular. 
 Even the Court kept its actors, and Mary is 
 said to have spent large sums on their main- 
 tenance. 
 
76 The English Drama. 
 
 In an age without newspapers, next to 
 the pulpit, the stage, however rude, was 
 the most popular and influential educator 
 and guide. On account of this the actors 
 were at times licensed, at times restrict- 
 ed, at times prohibited in their perform- 
 ances. But despite all interferences and per- 
 secutions, supported by the people, the no- 
 bility and the Court, the stage thrived. 
 When prohibitory proclamations were Fssued 
 the representations did not cease, they simply 
 became clandestine. 
 
 Recognizing the fact that the English 
 drama was an outgrowth of the English 
 nature, and that all proclamations and laws 
 issued against it would be ineffectual to 
 suppress it, Elizabeth and her counselors 
 merely attempted to regulate the stage and 
 restrain it from excesses. Companies had 
 to be licensed or attached to some great 
 nobleman. Subjects pertaining to reiigion 
 or politics were rigorously prohibited. 
 During the time of Common Prayer and the 
 Plague plays were forbidden. Unless these 
 conditions were complied with actors were 
 considered as vagrants. 
 
 In spite of the active opposition of a certain 
 class, under the patronage of the Court, the 
 
The English Drama. 77 
 
 stage obtained a permanent footing in Lon- 
 don. A Royal Grant was conferred upon 
 the Earl of Leicester's players, who were 
 headed by James Burbage, father of the 
 celebrated Shakespearean actor, Richard 
 Burbage. 
 
 Hostility was soon rife between the stage 
 and its mother, the church. On the score of 
 ungodliness theatrical performances were ex- 
 cluded from the city by the Common Council. 
 Open warfare was at once declared between 
 Court and city. The Privy Council com- 
 manded the Lord Mayor that he should per- 
 mit six companies to play in London, M By 
 reason that they are appointed to play this 
 Christmas before her Majesty." Finally, 
 under the powerful protection of the Queen, 
 the players were installed in permanent build- 
 ings in the suburbs of London, in Shoreditch, 
 at Blackfriars, and on Bankside. 
 
 Previous to this plays had been commonly 
 acted on scaffolds, erected in the yards and 
 galleries of inns. And it was the scandals, 
 caused chiefly by the surroundings, that at- 
 tended these open-air performances which 
 the city had been attacking. 
 
 In 1576 the Lord Mayor gave, unwillingly, 
 a tacit consent to the erection of the first 
 
78 The English Drama. 
 
 theatre in England. From this year may be 
 said to date the modern English drama, for in 
 this year the drama, ceased to be nomadic. 
 The first building put up for theatrical pur- 
 poses was in Shoreditch, and was appro- 
 priately styled, the Theatre. Shortly after- 
 wards a second arose near by, which took its 
 name from the plot of ground on which it 
 stood, and was called, the Curtain. In the 
 same year arose the Blackfriar's, named from 
 its situation. This was occupied by Lord 
 Leicester's players. These theatres were 
 crude, wooden structures. 
 
 In 1593, the most famous theatre in the 
 history of the stage, as being the scene of 
 Shakespeare's exploits, the Globe, was erect- 
 ed on the Bankside by Richard Burbage, 
 leader of the Lord Chamberlaine's Men. It 
 was constructed of wood ; hexagon-shaped 
 without and round within. There were two 
 doors, one leading into the body of the 
 house, the other to the actors' dressing-room. 
 
 Excepting a thatched roof, or " heaven," 
 projecting over the stage, the building was 
 open to the sky. Railed off from the stage 
 was a largv. central place where the audience 
 stood. Around this central place were private 
 boxes for those who could pay for them. 
 
The English Drama. 79 
 
 The Globe was burned in 1613 during a per- 
 formance, probably, of Shakespeare's " Henry 
 VIII.," and in the following year was rebuilt, 
 this time with a tiled roof. Burbage's com- 
 pany played here in the summer, and at the 
 Blackfriar's in the winter. 
 
 Another famous theatre was the Fortune, 
 which was the most commodious and elegant 
 of any that had then been built in England. 
 In 1623 it was rebuilt — it is thought of brick. 
 
 The opposition to the stage manifested by 
 certain classes, and which resulted in the 
 censorship of the Master of the Revels, a 
 still prevailing custom, had, nevertheless, a 
 beneficial effect. To it we may ascribe the 
 comparative purity of moral tone contrasted 
 with the contemporaneous drama of France 
 and Italy ; also its total lack of political and 
 religious satire. Moreover, the actor became 
 more respectable and wealthy, and altogether 
 the drama and its appurtenances made rapid 
 progress. 
 
 The theatres were either private or public. 
 The first were smaller in size, roofed over and 
 frequented by a more select audience. Black- 
 friar's was a private, the Globe and the For- 
 tune public theatres. The performances were 
 given in the afternoon, beginning at three 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 o'clock and usually lasted about two hours. 
 This was in order to let the audience get 
 home before dark. When a play was going 
 to begin flags were hoisted and trumpets 
 blown. The piece of the day was generally 
 closed with an address to the sovereign. Then 
 followed a farce. Playbills were used to 
 announce the show ; those of tragedies being 
 in red letters. Entrance prices varied accord- 
 ing to the theatre, location, etc. For ordi- 
 nary shows three pennies were paid. There 
 was a two-penny gallery in the larger 
 theatres, which fee was probably additional 
 to the one for admission. On a good night 
 prices ranged from sixpence to half a crown. 
 The commonest part of the audience stood in 
 the open yard. In private theatres this yard 
 or pit was furnished with benches. Fashion- 
 ables sat on three-legged stools on the stage. 
 This was vigorously opposed in public 
 theatres, but the custom was not abandoned 
 until the time of David Garrick. Pick- 
 pockets and cut-purses were common, and are 
 repeatedly referred to in the earlier plays. 
 If one were caught he was tied to one of the 
 pillars on the stage and pelted and scoffed 
 during the performance. Attention was con- 
 centrated on the play and the actors. The 
 
The English Drama. 81 
 
 scenes and properties were left very largely 
 to the imagination of the spectators. The 
 stage was narrow, projecting into the yard 
 and surrounded by the audience. There 
 being no scenery, the poet had to fill out 
 much with description. A raised platform 
 at the back represented castle walls, bal- 
 conies, etc. Painted boards announced the 
 location cf the scene. The wardrobe was 
 rich and varied but not correct. Dramatists 
 were often actors and managers, as Shakes- 
 peare, Jonson, Hey wood, Marlowe, etc. Boys 
 acted female characters. Actresses were seen 
 but once on the stage until the Restoration, in 
 1668. The theatre libraries were very valu- 
 able and so carefully hoarded that we have 
 received many plays only through pirates. 
 Having handed a MSS. to a manager few 
 play-wrights ever thought of publishing their 
 work. 
 
 Such were the theatres and their surround- 
 ings in the Elizabethan age, the age which 
 produced the greatest poet of English litera- 
 ture, and the giant intellect of all literature, 
 Shakespeare. Baptized April 26th, 1564, his 
 birthday being probably April 23d, William 
 Shakespeare was the third child, and first son 
 of John and Mary Shakespeare. His two 
 
82 The English Drama. 
 
 elder sisters died in their infancy and before 
 his birth. Afterwards were born several 
 other children. 
 
 John Shakespeare was a glover and 
 although unable to write, was highly re- 
 spected and filled the offices of bailiff and 
 alderman of Stratford. He afterwards be- 
 came involved in pecuniary troubles and was 
 deprived of his position. He is supposed to 
 have been largely dependent upon his son 
 William in his later days. 
 
 The name ©f Shakespeare occurs for some 
 hundred years before our great dramatist 
 appeared, but there is nothing in any way 
 remarkable connected with it until then. 
 
 A grant of arms was made to John Shakes- 
 peare, William's father, but it is believed to 
 have been due to the influence of his mother's 
 family, the Ardens. This was ancient and 
 considerable, deriving its name from the for- 
 est of Arden near which it had possessions 
 and tracing its descent even into far Anglo- 
 Saxon times. 
 
 About the life of William Shakespeare him- 
 self I quote Stevens' familiar summary. "All 
 that is known with any degree of certainty 
 concerning Shakespeare is that he was born 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon, married and had 
 
The English Drama. 83 
 
 children there ; went to London, where he 
 commenced actor and wrote poems and plays; 
 returned to Stratford made his will, died and 
 was buried." 
 
 And though this summary may be some- 
 what too brief, it is, nevertheless, representa- 
 tive to us of our limited acquaintance with the 
 actual facts of our great poet's life. Very nearly 
 everything else concerning Shakespeare with 
 which we are familiar, is merely anecdote. 
 The story of his beginning his theatrical 
 career by holding gentlemen's horses before 
 the door of the theatre, and that of the deer 
 stealing, as well as several less savory ones, 
 cannot be authenticated, and must be dis- 
 missed from all serious consideration. At- 
 tempts have been made to show that Shake- 
 speare was a wool-stapler, a butcher, a 
 farmer, a school-teacher, a lawyer's appren- 
 tice, a surgeon's apprentice, and a soldier. 
 Also he has been proven (?) to have been 
 respectively a Protestant, an Atheist, and a 
 Catholic. On the questions of his religion, 
 and the manner in which his early youth was 
 passed, we must be content to remain in 
 ignorance. 
 
 It is common to regard Shakespeare as a 
 man of very little learning, and his works as 
 
84 The English Drama. 
 
 the productions of a wild, irresistible genius. 
 This idea is based partly on Jonson's well- 
 known remark of Shakespeare knowing 
 " little Latin and less Greek ; " partly to the 
 mistaken opinions so boldly asserted by the 
 commentators of succeeding ages, who were 
 so little able to understand his genius and 
 who so servilely followed the French school. 
 But the truth seems to be that Shakespeare 
 was a well educated man. The very fact of 
 his knowledge of Greek and Latin, though 
 imperfect, goes to prove that he was not the 
 illiterate savage he was long considered. 
 Besides there are few men long out of the 
 walls of their schools who retain much more 
 than a slight remembrance of the classical 
 languages. Also his acquaintance with French 
 and Italian is undisputed, and it is probable 
 that he may not have been wholly ignorant 
 of Spanish. Add to this a wide and varied 
 knowledge of men and their callings, of the 
 phenomena of nature, mythology, and history, 
 and recalling his remarkable vocabulary, a 
 proof of his extensive reading, and no sane man 
 can longer refuse to Shakespeare the claim of 
 having been well educated. Unless, indeed, 
 we are to measure a man's learning by the 
 number of years spent within the walls of a 
 
The English Drama. 85 
 
 school and the degrees conferred upon him 
 by the universities. 
 
 Certain it is that Shakespeare was married 
 before he was nineteen years old to Anne 
 Hathaway, a woman some eight years his 
 senior. Anne bore him three children : 
 Susanna, Judith and Hamnet, the last two 
 being twins. Hamnet died at the age of 
 eleven. The last descendants of Susanna and 
 Judith died before the close of the seven- 
 teenth century. So there survive no imme- 
 diate representatives of the great poet. Late 
 in 1586 Shakespeare left Stratford for Lon- 
 don, whether on account of domestic in- 
 felicity, a deer-stealing expedition, or simply 
 an attachment conceived for the stage, we are 
 not able to say. Suffice it that he went to 
 London, and in three years became a sharer 
 in the Blackfriar's Theatre. Peele at this 
 time was a member of the same company, 
 the Lord Chamberlain's Players, and as he 
 was then at the height of his fame and popu- 
 larity as a dramatist, it is probable that 
 Shakespeare's services were utilized as an 
 actor rather than a play-wright. There is 
 every reason to believe that he was a good 
 actor. His instructions to the players in 
 " Hamlet " alone stamp him as familiar with 
 
86 The English Drama. 
 
 the theory of his art. He is recorded as 
 playing the ghost in " Hamlet," and tradition 
 speaks of him as Adam in " As You Like It." 
 After Peele left the Lord Chamberlain's 
 Players, Shakespeare was called upon to show 
 his skill as a dramatist, and as his talent in 
 this line became apparent, he was left little 
 time for acting. The great popularity of his 
 plays, and his published poems " Venus and 
 Adonis " and " Lucrece," soon placed him in 
 the first rank of poets, and dramatists. By 
 his talents, and from what we can learn, his 
 sobriety and industry, Shakespeare elevated 
 a despised calling, and acquired a consider- 
 able fortune. That he counted amongst his 
 friends and patrons such gentlemen as the 
 Earl of Southampton and Pembroke, is one 
 proof of the higher tone of his life when 
 compared with his contemporaries and prede- 
 cessors. In time he was able to purchase 
 considerable property at Stratford, and retire 
 in plenty from the stage. The remainder of 
 his life was passed in producing the mature 
 works of his genius while living quietly with 
 his family at New Place in Stratford. " The 
 latter part of his life," says Rowe, " was 
 spent, as all men of good sense will wish 
 theirs may be, in ease, retirement and the 
 
The English Drama. 87 
 
 society of his friends." As to his personal 
 attractions we are told that he was a hand- 
 some, agreeable and witty gentleman. 
 
 These are the main reliable facts in the life 
 of .William Shakespeare ; actor, author, 
 manager, gentleman. And from these we 
 will learn that there is little to interfere with 
 the noblest idea we can form of his character 
 and conduct. The custom of attaching un- 
 savory anecdotes to the name of a great man 
 can not be sufficiently frowned upon. Man's 
 life is filled with enough real mistakes and 
 weaknesses, and there is no necessity to 
 accept pure tradition in order to prove him 
 human. 
 
 All attempts to classify Shakespeare's 
 works must be largely arbitrary. If an exact 
 chronological order is observed, there is no 
 great degree of certainty to reward the 
 student ; if the divisions of Comedy, History 
 and Tragedy, there is much perplexity and 
 doubt. Yet to treat our subject at all in- 
 telligently and systematically, it is necessary 
 to adopt some scheme of classification. Con- 
 tenting ourselves then with approximate 
 dates, and dispensing with absolute correct- 
 ness, we will take the year 1600 and arrange 
 Shakespeare's plays in two classes, viz.: those 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 that appeared before and those that appeared 
 after the year 1600 ; that is, the earlier and 
 the later plays. These two classes we will 
 subdivide into Comedies, Histories and 
 Tragedies. 
 
 The -tests which enable us to determine the 
 approximate date of a play are twofold, the 
 external and the internal. The first consists 
 of obtaining the latest date at which it must 
 have been in existence, by means of mention 
 in books and documents of a certain date. 
 The latter, the internal, consists in allusions 
 in the play itself ; in the style, versification 
 and mental development. What is meant by 
 the mental development is the display of 
 perception of character, depth, force, magni- 
 tude of idea, treatment of subject, etc. As 
 it would be folly to ascribe " Macbeth " to 
 his youth or the "Comedy of Errors" to 
 his maturity. The very nature of the 
 plays makes this evident to even a casual 
 reader. 
 
 Keeping our landmark, the year 1600, 
 plainly in view, we find that previous to that 
 time, or in his earlier period, Shakespeare 
 wrote nine comedies, nine histories and two 
 tragedies. In his later period we find five 
 comedies, one history and eleven, tragedies. 
 
The English Drama. 89 
 
 I. THE EARLIER PERIOD, 
 
 (a) Comedies. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost. Merry Wives of Wind- 
 Comedy of Errors. sor. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Merchant of Venice. 
 
 Verona. A Midsummer Night's 
 Taming of the Shrew. Dream. 
 
 All's Well That Ends Much Ado About 
 
 Well. Nothing. 
 
 (b) Histories. 
 
 King John. Henry V. 
 
 Richard II. Henry VI., 3 parts. 
 
 Henry IV., 2 parts. Richard III. 
 
 (c) Tragedies. 
 Titus Andronicus. Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 II. THE LATER PERIOD. 
 
 (a) , Comedies. 
 
 Twelfth Night. The Winter's Tale. 
 
 As You Like It. The Tempest. 
 
 Measure for Measure. 
 
 (0) Histories. 
 Henry VIII. 
 
90 The English Drama. 
 
 (c) Tragedies. 
 
 Julius Caesar. Antony and Cleo- 
 
 Hamlet. patra. 
 
 King Lear. Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 Othello. Macbeth. 
 
 Timon of Athens. Cymbeline. 
 
 Pericles. Coriolanus. 
 
 Shakespeare's career as a dramatist prob- 
 ably began with working over old plays. 
 Then he very likely turned his attention to 
 dramatizing popular novels and the stories of 
 the Chronicles. And it was only late in life 
 that he took the trouble to invent his own 
 plots. This may be accounted for by a num- 
 ber of reasons. Plays were demanded in 
 rapid succession. Older favorites were called 
 for, but with new embellishments. Freshness 
 of treatment rather than freshness of story 
 was expected. The popularity of the novels 
 translated from the Italian made their drama- 
 tization profitable. 
 
 Looking upon " Titus Andronicus " as an old 
 play simply retouched by Shakespeare, we 
 perceive that his first works were comedies 
 and histories, the sources of which were easily 
 obtainable from the Chronicles and Italian 
 novels, and the treatment of which by a 
 
The English Drama. 91 
 
 young poet of genius would naturally be 
 happy. Previous to 1600 he composed but 
 two tragedies proper, and only one of these, 
 " Romeo and Juliet," has been accepted as 
 entirely his own. This is the proper develop- 
 ment. Comedy calls for less skill and experi- 
 ence in both matter and manner than tragedy, 
 and serves to evolve the latent genius and 
 strengthen the poet for the severer demands 
 of the serious drama. It may be objected 
 that " John " and " Richard III." are tragedies. 
 But here much was supplied by history that 
 could have been evolved otherwise only with 
 long years of experience. And these tragic 
 attempts of his early career, though wonder- 
 ously rich in language and burning thoughts, 
 show many faults of versification and con- 
 struction not to be found in his later works. 
 Rime, from which Shakespeare did not for 
 a long time free himself, is particularly notice- 
 able all through this first period, and while 
 not inconsistent with the lighter work of 
 comedy, is at variance with, and so, as a rule, 
 offensive to, the spirit of tragedy. In Shake- 
 speare's grandest tragedies, as " Macbeth " 
 and " Antony and Cleopatra," there is almost 
 a total absence of rime, being only used 
 where it becomes at once an ornament and a 
 
92 The English Drama. 
 
 necessity. All through this first period the 
 freshness, boldness and light-heartedness of 
 youth is constantly bubbling forth. There is 
 a wild exuberance of fancy and imagination 
 which nothing can restrain. Only age is able 
 to check and hold this within its proper 
 bounds. 
 
 Gradually the play-wright acquired a firm 
 grasp on his subjects and a thorough mastery 
 of his verse. Still he is loath to part with the 
 loved excrescences of poetry, but they appear 
 less frequently. What a wonderful advance 
 in power and breadth of treatment from the 
 " Comedy of Errors " and " Love's Labour's 
 Lost " to the " Merchant of Venice " and " A 
 Midsummer Night's Dream." 
 
 In the second period we are at once struck 
 by the preponderance of tragedy. We have 
 but one history, Henry VIII., and this by its 
 treatment shows the poet to have grown 
 rather weary of working over the English 
 Chronicles. There is a decided tendency in 
 it for the imagination to leave the region of 
 the actual. And in the comedies likewise the 
 sombre or the fantastical strive for place. 
 u Twelfth Night " and " As You Like It," suc- 
 ceeding closely the " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream," are permeated with the same idyllic 
 
The English Drama. 93 
 
 character which was to reach its height in 
 the "Tempest." In both is perceivable also 
 the serious phase which becomes so compre- 
 hensive in " Measure for Measure " and " The 
 Winter's Tale " as almost to remove them from 
 the field of comedy. Shakespeare found now 
 the proper scope for his developed powers to 
 be afforded best by tragedy. Here he could 
 depict heroic characters, gigantic sins and 
 crimes and inmeasurable suffering. The le- 
 gends and histories of the world were called 
 upon to furnish him with themes upon which 
 he should pour forth his majestic imagery 
 and poetry. Roman history gave rise to 
 what Ulrici has called the Roman cycle, viz.: 
 " Coriolanus," "Julius Caesar," " Antony and 
 Cleopatra" and " Timon of Athens." "Per- 
 icles " and " Troilus and Cressida " came from 
 the east. " Hamlet " and "Macbeth" from 
 the north. " Othello " from the south. 
 " Lear " and " Cymbeline " were indigenous. 
 And of these nine are masterpieces of drama- 
 tic poetry. 
 
 In his comedies and tragedies Shake- 
 speare's genius was ever on the ascending 
 scale. The last were his greatest. In the 
 historical plays, however, the height of this 
 style is reached in Henry V. The remaining 
 
94 Tie English Drama. 
 
 plays are inferior to that in merit. And this 
 may be traced to a very apparent cause. 
 Ulrici has pointed out that each play was 
 given a central, life-bestowing idea ; that in 
 the working out of this there must be an in- 
 crease in interest and in action, until the 
 climax, the catastrophe is reached, after 
 which there is necessarily a decrease of in- 
 terest, and the chief object is to dispose of 
 affairs as rapidly and consistently as possible. 
 Now in the ten historical plays, while each is 
 complete in itself, yet they are all related to 
 one another, and go to make, up a grand 
 whole. That is, each has its own individual 
 permeating idea, but subservient to one 
 grand idea, which runs through them all, 
 connecting them as by a thread. Accepting 
 then the theory that these ten histories are 
 to be considered respectively as so many acts 
 of one great play, the central idea running 
 through them must ever increase in interest 
 and importance, until the climax is reached, 
 after which we hasten towards our conclusion. 
 This drama, whose central idea is the usurpa- 
 tion of the throne by the house of Lancaster, 
 has for its prologue " King John," and for its 
 epilogue " Henry VIII." The pinnacle of 
 fame for his house was reached in the glorious 
 
The English Drama. 95 
 
 reign of Henry V. From this all that fol- 
 lowed was a rapid descent. A like effort has 
 been ifiade to discover a connection between 
 the four tragedies, " Coriolanus," " Julius 
 Caesar," " Antony and Cleopatra," and 
 " Timon of Athens," and a very ingenious 
 result has been obtained. Ulrici states 
 these plays to form a cycle, whose ob- 
 ject is the representation of the rise and fall 
 of the Roman sovereignty. * " Coriolanus " 
 depicts the struggle between patricians and 
 plebeians. " Julius Caesar," the destruction 
 of the republic. "Antony and Cleopatra," 
 the victory of the empire. " Timon of 
 Athens," the corruption, which in its turn is 
 to destroy that empire. 
 
 Commentators on Shakespeare have so 
 diligently and perseveringly hunted out and 
 dug up every probable and possible bit of 
 material or matter which might have con- 
 tributed to a portion of his works, or from 
 which he may have drawn an inspiration ; 
 they have pointed out so much in his plays 
 that he did not write that one is apt to pause 
 and wonder what he did write, and whether 
 this Shakespeare was the wonderful man we 
 have been taught to believe him, and wherein 
 lies the great service he has rendered English 
 
g6 The English Drama. 
 
 literature, and why he should be considered 
 the poet preeminent, if he is a vulgar plagiarist, 
 who has given to the world nothing new, but 
 has merely arranged his plays from matter 
 that in one form or another was already in 
 existence. Then must we, if possible, com- 
 pare the sources with the plays themselves, 
 and forgetting the critic and the commen- 
 tator, try for ourselves to discover the essen- 
 tial difference. It will not be difficult. It 
 lies in the difference between loose piles of 
 brick and mortar and the palace, between the 
 crude paints when in the pots and when on 
 the canvas. The intellect of the architect, 
 the hand of the artist. That is the differ- 
 ence. We are not indebted to Shakespeare 
 for the brick and mortar, the paint and 
 canvas he has used, but for the house he has 
 built, the picture he has painted. He has 
 breathed life into the otherwise well-nigh 
 inanimate objects. When we begin to appre- 
 ciate the spirit of his compositions, we under- 
 stand wherein consists his greatness. True, 
 a Juliet, a Rosalind, a Cleopatra existed in 
 literature before Shakespeare wrote, but 
 what lifeless creatures they are beside his 
 immortal trio. A revengeful Jew, a melan- 
 choly Dane, a bJindly fond father and king 
 
The English Drama. 97 
 
 were to be found in literature, but no such 
 Shylock, nor Hamlet, nor Lear. Holinshed, 
 Stowe and Halle's Chronicles, Plutarch's 
 Lives, Boccaccio's Decameron, Italian novels, 
 English^ plays furnished Shakespeare only 
 with skeletons which he did not hesitate to 
 make use of, and clothe with flesh and blood. 
 
 In his comedies what infinite charm of 
 poetry and poetic feeling ! What delicate 
 touches and what beautiful imagery ! What 
 sustained humor and exquisite lyrics ! What 
 sympathy with and understanding of charac- 
 ter ! And lastly what comprehensive treat- 
 ment of the whole ! 
 
 Ulrici makes two general groups of come- 
 dies under the heads of fancy and intrigue, 
 according as the one or-the other predom- 
 inates. The comedies of fancy he places 
 without the range of possibility although with 
 its every seeming. And here he would range 
 " Midsummer Night's Dream " with its fairies, 
 " The Tempest " with its magic, " As You 
 Like It," with its idyllic and impossible for- 
 est of Arden, " Twelfth Night," with its fantas- 
 tic events. The second class, the comedy of 
 intrigue, includes " Love's Labour's Lost" 
 with its conflict of inclination and duties, 
 "Comedy of Errors" with its bewildering 
 
98 The English Drama. 
 
 pairs of twins, " The Winter's Tale," " Meas- 
 ure for Measure " and " Merchant of Venice " 
 where life, honor and happiness are at stake. 
 
 In the comedies there is always depicted 
 the struggle of the real and the apparent, 
 with the final victory of the former. In 
 " Love's Labour's Lost " it is the conflict be- 
 tween real and apparent inclinations, and it 
 is only when the king cmd his lords prove 
 false to their vows and true to their affections 
 that the play ends. No close is possible to 
 the " Comedy of Errors " till the twins are 
 brought face to face and their actual identity 
 established. Katherine and Petruchio, Bea- 
 trice and Benedict,Violaand Orsino,Hermione 
 and Perdita, Rosalind and Celia must dis- 
 pense with their masks and become their 
 genuine selves ere the final curtain may drop. 
 
 Likewise S'hakespeare is fono. of contrast- 
 ing characters. Opposite the shrew he places 
 the master. The faithful wife and the false 
 husband are confronted ; the virtuous maid 
 and the licentious suitor. But the most beau- 
 tiful contrast Ulrici has shown to be in " The 
 Merchant of Venice," which he says represents 
 human life as a great law-suit, with Shylock 
 impersonating revenge, and Portia mercy, 
 with the ultimate triumph of the latter. 
 
The English Drama. 99 
 
 "... none of us 
 Should see salvation ; we do pray for mercy. 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render, 
 The deeds of mercy — " 
 
 This contains the thought, the purpose of 
 the whole play. 
 
 In this phase of the drama Shakespeare 
 delights in making a woman the principal 
 character, and what charming types does he 
 present us ! The spoilt but magnificent 
 Katherine ; the loving and devoted Helena ; 
 the wise and womanly Portia ; the brilliant 
 and sarcastic yet tender-hearted Beatrice ; 
 the gentle but charming Viola ; that person- 
 ification of caprice and mischief, Rosalind ; 
 the faithful arid suffering Hermione ; the 
 noble and chaste Isabella. Nor are these 
 women simply types of an age. They are 
 types of womankind for all ages. Shakes- 
 peare perceived that woman with her natural 
 tendency to intrigue, her capriciousness, rash- 
 ness and inconsistency is especially suited to 
 be the central figure about which a comedy 
 may be composed. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the character of 
 the clown, the court-fool, occurring so often 
 in the comedies, is found in but one tragedy, 
 King Lear, and here it is of great artistic 
 
ioo The English Drama. 
 
 value. This judicious use of a popular 
 role is another proof of the master's skill and 
 the fact that he worked by design and not, as 
 some would have us believe by inspiration 
 and chance. 
 
 In our admiration we must not be blind to 
 defects, however. Even Shakespeare is not 
 faultless, or rather the materials he used are 
 not always perfect. We can not close our 
 eyes to the disagreeable stories of " All's Well 
 that Ends Well " and " Measure for Measure." 
 
 Nor can we feel satisfied with the termina- 
 tion of the latter piece. Poetical, if not 
 worldly, justice calls for a tragic end, or at 
 least a severe punishment for Angelo. The 
 separation of " The Winter's Tale " into two 
 such distinct parts is undoubtedly a defect. 
 So great a one in fact that in recent years but 
 one great actress has deemed it suitable for 
 the stage and successfully produced it. " The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor " shows haste in 
 construction and the treatment of Sir John 
 Falstaff is widely at variance with the same 
 character, as it occurs in Henry IV. 
 
 Of Shakespeare's maturest efforts, of his 
 great tragedies, what can I say, what can any- 
 one say, what is there left to be said ? Is it 
 not enough to remark that since he dealt with 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 the subjects, so enticing and full of interest 
 to the dramatist, of the eleven tragedies of his 
 second period but few have ever been handled 
 by English play-wrights. 
 
 As women were the principal figures of his 
 comedies, so are men of his tragedies. Their 
 superior strength, greater opportunities, 
 higher development, wider ambition, more 
 brutal courage, made them naturally fitter 
 objects for such a purpose. The deeply 
 philosophical Hamlet, whose reason, not his 
 irresolution, makes for him a hell of earth. 
 Lear, the fond father, stubborn and blind he 
 lives, blind and heart-broken he dies. Roble 
 Othello, " whose hand, like the base Indian, 
 threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe." 
 Ambitious, bloody and conscience-stricken 
 Macbeth, whose punishment while living 
 leaves to that which may be hereafter but 
 few horrors. Arrogant, haughty, heroic 
 Coriolanus, that would not yield to the de- 
 mands or prayers of a people, yet submitted 
 to the voice of a woman. Antony, who sold 
 the world for his mistress. Faithful Troilus, 
 imperial Caesar, subtle Cassius, noble Brutus. 
 What a galaxy of giants ! What a collection 
 of heroes ! 
 
 But though the interest is centered in man, 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 Shakespeare did not neglect the serious op- 
 portunities of woman, but has complemented 
 his tragic picture of man with one of woman, 
 which, if not equally great, fails, because of 
 her nature, not because of the artist. Beside 
 Hamlet we find the unfortunate Ophelia. 
 By Lear is the beautiful Cordelia. Othello 
 has his Desdemona, lovely in her innocence 
 and sorrow. Cymbeline gives us Imogen. 
 Coriolanus, Volumnia, the Roman matron. 
 By Troilus is placed the false Cressida ; by 
 Macbeth the majestic, star-aspiring, yet 
 affectionate, Lady Macbeth. By Antony's 
 side that "most wonderful, most incompre- 
 hensible, most fascinating woman that ever 
 existed in life or literature, Cleopatra. As 
 she was, so Shakespeare paints her, or else 
 she never was. 
 
 It has been objected to " Julius Caesar " that 
 the play falls with Caesar's death into two 
 parts, in the first of which we follow the for- 
 tunes of one hero, and in the latter of another. 
 But this is, I think, quite erroneous. The 
 hero of the play is not Caesar, but Brutus, and 
 it is his fortunes and his sufferings and his 
 fall in which the interest is centered and upon 
 which the drama is founded. Complaint has 
 been made to Hamlet's so-called irresolution, 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 103 
 
 but this is removed when we recognize the 
 fact that it is not cowardly hesitancy, but 
 philosophical weighing of right and wrong 
 that restrains Hamlet from action, and it is 
 only in momentary passion that he can possi- 
 bly commit such a crime as murder. I have 
 little liking for either " Timon of Athens," or 
 " Pericles," and am quite willing to believe 
 the critics, who state that Shakespeare's 
 authorship is here doubtful, and is at best 
 confined to certain passages. 
 
 In answer to the charge of immorality some- 
 times brought against our author, let us read 
 what Coleridge says : " Shakespeare may 
 sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that 
 he is always moral and modest. Alas ! in 
 our day decency of manners is preserved 
 at the expense of morality of heart, and 
 delicacies for vice allowed, while grossness 
 against it is hypocritically, or at least 
 morbidly, condemned." And this is the 
 judgment of a man whose understanding of 
 Shakespeare is unquestioned. Schlegel, the 
 eminent German critic, says : " The objection 
 that Shakespeare wounds our feelings by the 
 open display of the most disgusting moral 
 odiousness, unmercifully harrows up the 
 mind, and tortures even our eyes by the 
 
104 The English Drama. 
 
 exhibition of the most insupportable and 
 hateful spectacles, is one of great and grave 
 importance. He has, in fact, never varnished 
 over wild and blood-thirsty passions with a 
 pleasing exterior — never clothed crime and 
 want of principle with a false show of great- 
 ness of soul ; and in that respect he is in 
 every way deserving of praise. The reading, 
 and still more the sight of some of his pieces, 
 is not advisable to weak nerves any more Irian 
 was the 'Eumenides,' of Aeschylus; but is 
 the poet who can only reach an important 
 object by a bold and hazardous daring to be 
 checked by consideration for such persons ? 
 If effeminacy is to serve as a general stan- 
 dard of what tragical composition may prop- 
 erly exhibit to human nature, we shall be 
 forced to set very narrow limits, indeed, to 
 art, and the hope of anything like powerful 
 effect must at once and forever be renounced." 
 When we consider the plain speech customary 
 in his age, and when we behold in the works 
 of his contemporaries, predecessors and suc- 
 cessors, a manner of language and thought 
 unutterably vicious, we will no longer censure 
 him on the moral score, but rather wonder at 
 the purity and cleanness of such works as are 
 beyond doubt his. 
 
The English Drama. 105 
 
 On the significance of the titles given his 
 plays much might be said. His histories 
 bear most properly the names of the different 
 reigns about which they treat. What images 
 are conjured up by the appellations Richard 
 II. and III., John, Henry IV. and VIII., and 
 how consistent are these images with the 
 plays for which the titles stand ! Notice the 
 brevity of the titles of the tragedies. Simply 
 a name or at most two. But by these names 
 are summoned up a whole world of thoughts 
 and feelings, deep, grand and terrible. Turn 
 to the comedies, and, on the contrary, what 
 long and fantastical headings ?— " As You 
 Like It," " Twelfth Night, or What You 
 Will," " A Midsummer Night's Dream," " The 
 Tempest." Do not these names form indices 
 to all that follows ? Are we not sufficiently 
 prepared for intrigues, storms and mistakes 
 when we read the titles, " Merry Wives of 
 Windsor," " Taming of the Shrew," and 
 " Comedy of Errors ? " Even here as else- 
 where nothing is left to chance, and all is 
 imbued with significance. 
 
 A list of the plays which have at one time 
 or another been ascribed to Shakespeare, but 
 all of which we can very safely refuse to 
 acknowledge as genuine, may be interesting : 
 
106 The English Drama. 
 
 "Thomas, Lord Cromwell," "Sir John Old- 
 castle," " The Yorkshire Tragedy," " Lo- 
 crine," " The London Prodigal," " The Puri- 
 tan," "The Two Noble Kinsmen," "The 
 Birth of Merlin," "The Merry Devil of 
 Edmonton," " Edward III.," " Mucedorus," 
 "Arden of Feversham," "Alarum for Lon- 
 don," "Fair Em," "The Arraignment of 
 Paris," " The Double Falsehood," Dekker's 
 " Satiro-Mastix," " Wily Beguiled," " The 
 Tragical and Lamentable Murder of Master 
 George Saunders," Ford's " Lover's Melan- 
 choly," and Greene's " George-a-Greene, 
 Pinner of Wakefield." 
 
 During his life Shakespeare's plays were 
 remarkably popular, and enabled him to re- 
 tire in comfort before old age overtook him. 
 Yet his great genius was really recognized 
 by only a few patrons and some of his literary 
 contemporaries, chiefly dramatists. Of his 
 thirty-seven plays* only eighteen were pub- 
 lished before his death, the first collection 
 seven years afterwards in 1623. 
 
 With the growth of Puritanism Shakes- 
 peare's fame waned, and with the Revolution 
 all representations ceased. However, Shakes- 
 peare was not forgotten, as he still continued 
 to reign in the hearts of the people supreme, 
 
The English Drama. 107 
 
 The Restoration revivified the well-nigh 
 lifeless drama, and the stage again became an 
 important factor in the life of the people. The 
 strong characters in Shakespeare's plays made 
 them attractive to ambitious actors, and once 
 more they were performed. 
 
 But unfortunately, the false taste acquired 
 from the French, caused them to be looked 
 upon as remarkable, but exceedingly faulty, 
 productions, and managers, actors and authors 
 did not hesitate to adapt, re-arrange, improve 
 and generally mutilate them. Dryden, D'Ave- 
 nant, Granville, D'Urfey, Lacy, etc., were 
 foremost in this ghoulish work. We find 
 even the titles changed. " Cymbeline " be- 
 comes " The Injured Princess, or The Fatal 
 Wager " ; " Antony and Cleopatra," " All 
 for Love " ; " The Merry Wives of Windsor," 
 " The Comical Gallant, or The Amours of Sir 
 John Falstaff." But the most remarkable 
 transformation was when John Lacy dubbed 
 " Taming of the Shrew," " Sauny the Scot," 
 and changed Grumio into a Scotchman, and 
 the verse of the play into prose. 
 
 Sometimes changes were made more intel- 
 ligently, and with more show of reason, as when 
 Colley Cibben altered "Richard III." to suit 
 the requirements of the remodeled stage. Gen- 
 
108 The English Drama. 
 
 erally only the most effective passages were 
 left untouched, but the editors did not hesi- 
 tate to expunge what they deemed Shakes- 
 peare's harshnesses and excrescences. Power- 
 ful scenes were toned down and diluted. Ten- 
 derness was intensified and additional gross- 
 ness bestowed upon the comic characters. 
 
 After the Stuarts were expelled, the king and 
 people withdrew their favor from the exces- 
 sively licentious drama, and foreign plays 
 and models came into vogue. The Italian 
 Opera was introduced. Corneille, Racine 
 and Moliere were translated and imitated. 
 Addison's " Cato " appeared. 
 
 But in all merely imitative literary periods 
 attention and study is directed to former 
 achievements, and that is what occurred in 
 William's reign. Nicholas Rowe, and then 
 Pope, edited Shakespeare's plays, and a fresh 
 impetus w^s given to his popularity. Gradu- 
 ally actors, managers and learned men, came 
 to understand the. greatness and worth of our 
 dramatist. Editions rapidly followed one 
 another. The attention of other nations was 
 attracted to the works of a man whom they 
 deemed a kind of savage genius. 
 
 But the greatest impulse to an apprecia- 
 tion of Shakespeare was given by an actor, 
 
The English Drama. 109 
 
 David Garrick. During his management of 
 Drury Lane (1747-1776) he produced in the 
 original texts twenty-four of Shakespeare's 
 works, and appeared himself in seventeen 
 different Shakespearean characters. Although 
 he is not free from the charge of mutilating 
 the plays in some degree, yet Garrick per- 
 formed an invaluable benefit to the drama 
 and to literature in reviving the original 
 works, and in spreading broadcast a profound 
 admiration and respect for our greatest dra- 
 matist and poet. 
 
 However, it was not until the early part 
 of this century that Shakespeare came to be 
 regarded in his true light, from a literary 
 point of view. Before Coleridge English 
 writers generally had criticized unmercifully 
 the construction, the non-observance of uni- 
 ties, the moral tone, the verbiage and the 
 grossness to be found in Shakespeare's works. 
 
 But Coleridge in England, Hugo in France, 
 Lessing, Schlegel, Tieck and Ulrici in Ger- 
 many, soon proved that Shakespeare had 
 been entirely misunderstood and that he is* 
 guilty of few, if any, of the sins accounted to 
 him. Since then all study of our author has 
 been accompanied by veneration, and instead 
 of willfully mutilating and mercilessly criti- 
 
no -The English Drama. 
 
 cizing, editors now labor to restore and 
 elucidate his texts. 
 
 His works in part or in whole have been 
 translated into Italian, Portugese, Danish, 
 Swedish, Dutch, Frisian, Bohemian, Hungar- 
 ian, Wallachian, "Moslem Greek," Polish, 
 Russian and Bengalee. Truly, Shakespeare 
 is not the mouth-piece of simply one people, 
 but of the whole civilized world, 
 
The English Drama. in 
 
 IV. 
 
 JONSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 
 
 The Elizabethan drama is the phenomenon 
 of English and the marvel of every other lit- 
 erature. It is seldom in the history of literary 
 activity that so much finds expression in so 
 short a time. The half century which the 
 years 1590 and 1640 includes, is the period 
 which embraces the greatest names and marks 
 the greatest epoch of the English drama. It 
 is the period which produced more than forty 
 poets, ten of whom are of superior rank and 
 one the most admirable, possibly, that the 
 world has ever known. It was a time when- 
 men felt deeply, believed blindly, loved pas- 
 sionately and expressed themselves boldly. 
 Nothing was too sacred or profane, too deli- 
 cate or too coarse, too tender or too brutal 
 for these Titans of the theatre to depict. 
 Man they dissected and mercilessly revealed 
 his passions, emotions, sentiments, actions as 
 they found them, good or bad ; oftener good 
 and bad, for they did not hesitate to represent 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 the real man, that mixture of nobility and 
 baseness, strength and weakness. Of their 
 works it has been said that, " The plays of 
 the least known writers of that time are more . 
 remarkable than the most celebrated of all 
 the succeeding times." And while this is an 
 extreme view, and one that I do not think we 
 should wholly concur in, it is to a certain 
 extent true. The Elizabethan poets produced 
 hundreds of pieces, fifty at least of which we 
 may rank as masterpieces. There was no 
 province of history or imagination that their 
 genius did not compass and, freed from 
 restraint, there was little that they did not 
 attempt. Tragedy, comedy, romantic and 
 domestic drama, chronicle histories, all filled 
 with truthful and living portraits and details, 
 reflecting the mind and manners of their age 
 and nation. In this literature we find much 
 that is gross and repulsive, much that to us 
 seems shockingly immoral, much that indi- 
 cates the decline of the drama. But the whole 
 period is marked by vigor, genius and a gen- 
 uine moral purpose. Wrong is invariably 
 punished. If vice is depicted, it is to disgust, 
 not to inflame. The fundamental idea is 
 unobjectionable, however worthy of condem- 
 nation we may find the execution. 
 
The English Drama. 113 
 
 Of the master poet, Shakespeare, we have 
 already spoken. We have now to deal with 
 his contemporaries and immediate successors. 
 Many of these whose names and works are 
 obscured by the greater lights of their time 
 we will barely mention. Our space is too 
 limited to do otherwise. The more important 
 writers, embracing some dozen names, we 
 must more closely observe. One man, by his 
 talents, industry and the judgment of 
 posterity, has been placed above the rest. 
 
 Benjamin, or, as he preferred to be called, 
 Ben Jonson, was born in 1573, a month after 
 his father's decease. His mother subse- 
 quently re-married. Her second husband was 
 a bricklayer, and, despite tradition, there is 
 no reason to believe was otherwise than kind 
 to Jonson. The family was poor, and lived 
 in London, near Charing Cross. Jonson 
 attended in his childhood a private school in 
 the neighborhood. Afterwards he was sent 
 to Westminster school, a friend, the famous 
 antiquary Camden, sustaining the expense. 
 For this Camden was repaid by Jonson's life- 
 long gratitude. From Westminster it is said 
 that our poet went to St. John's College, 
 Cambridge, but there is no authority which 
 substantiates the statement. Later in life 
 
H4 The English Drama. 
 
 both universities conferred upon him the 
 degree of Master of Arts, which he modestly 
 says was done "by their favor, not my 
 studies." This, however, is not the case, for 
 although his studies may not have been con- 
 ducted at or under the guidance of the 
 universities, still the unusual amount and 
 quality of learning he acquired fully entitled 
 him to the honors given. His natural taste 
 for study, fortified by Camden's good school- 
 ing, enabled him to accomplish avast amount 
 of literary research and labor. 
 
 When Jonson returned from school to Lon- 
 don, he was for a short time employed in his 
 stepfather's trade of bricklaying. This be- 
 ing distasteful to him, he entered the army, 
 and served in a campaign in the Low Coun- 
 tries. He seems to have remained abroad 
 only a short time. Soon after his return he 
 married, and began to write for the stage. 
 His wife, he told Drummond, was " a shrew, 
 but honest." For five years they lived apart. 
 They had several children, the eldest of whom 
 died in 1603, in his eighth year. 
 
 Like most of the great dramatists of his 
 time, much that we have concerning Jonson's 
 life is untrustworthy, particularly that which 
 refers to the period before 1597. In that 
 
The English Drama. 115 
 
 year he is recorded as being a member of 
 Henslowe's company. Acting and play-writ- 
 ing appears to have been uphill work for him 
 at first. In 1598, if not before, " Every Man in 
 His Humour," perhaps Jonson's best comedy, 
 was produced, and his success assured. His 
 unfortunate duel with Gabriel Spenser, in 
 1598, in which he killed Spenser, interrupted 
 for a time his brilliant career. Jonson was 
 thrown into prison, and while there became a 
 Roman Catholic, which he remained for twelve 
 years. At the expiration of this time he 
 underwent a second conversion. 
 
 No charges of insincerity or weakness 
 should be brought against Jonson in conse- 
 quences of his changes of faith, for they were 
 undoubtedly the result of conviction. Rather 
 by his courage to follow his belief does he 
 deserve our admiration, and the right to the 
 title he was so proud of — an honest man. 
 
 From his imprisonment in consequence of 
 the duel with Spenser, he was released in a 
 few months. Afterward he must have experi- 
 enced sore poverty, as but little money, less 
 than ^200 in all, was brought him by his 
 plays. But with the advent of the Stuarts, 
 Jonson's fortunes were bettered. " The 
 Masque," a species of literature in which he 
 
n6 The English Drama. 
 
 has been surpassed by but one author, gave a 
 new direction to his talents. They intro- 
 duced him to royal favor and crowned him 
 with success. His collaborator in this do- 
 main was the celebrated Inigo Jones, a man 
 with whom he afterwards quarreled. 
 
 In 1616 a pension of one hundred marks was 
 conferred upon him, which Charles I. later 
 made as many pounds. Every first day of 
 the new year the Earl of Pembroke, a famous 
 patron of letters, sent Jonson JQ20 with which 
 to buy books. With another patron, Esme 
 Stuart, Lord d'Aubigny, he dwelt five years. 
 In 1613 he went to France as governor of one 
 of the sons of Sir Walter Raleigh, then a state- 
 prisoner in the Tower. During his sojourn 
 in Paris he made the acquaintance of Cardi- 
 nal de Perron and took occasion in his usual 
 frank manner to inform the Cardinal concern- 
 ing that gentleman's translation of Virgil, 
 that " they were naught." In 1618-19 he made 
 a journey to Scotland and spent some time 
 with the poet Drummond, who has left some 
 very interesting " Conversations " with Jon- 
 son. 
 
 Our poet was fond of wine, tobacco 
 and good company. His nature was com- 
 bative. This finally got him into trouble 
 
The English Drama. 117 
 
 with Dekker and Marston, both of whom had 
 been his collaborators at an earlier date. 
 They believed Jonson to have satirized them 
 and they assailed him. He hotly responded. 
 " The Poetaster " from Jonson, the " Satiro- 
 mastix " of Dekker, are the chief monu- 
 ments of this dispute. Reaching a climax in 
 the " Satiromastix," it ceased for some years. 
 
 In 1625 Jonson again began to write for the 
 stage, but with only mediocre success. His 
 imprudent life brought in time debt and dis- 
 ease to trouble him. His later plays, several 
 of which were written on a sick bed, show 
 plainly his waning powers as a dramatist. 
 An unfinished pastoral drama, "The Sad 
 Shepherd," proves, however, that his poetic 
 faculty was unimpaired to the last. He died 
 August 6th, 1635. 
 
 The greater part of Jonson's life was spent 
 in poverty, and like many other great men 
 when wealth came, he knew not how to pre- 
 serve it. His jovial life at the Mermaid Inn, 
 and later at the Devil Tavern, is well known. 
 His chief characteristics were combativeness, 
 frankness and self-consciousness. He was 
 entirely aware of his own worth. Though he 
 wrote for, he despised the stage. It is to be 
 feared, however, that his scorn was born of 
 
n8 The English Drama. 
 
 his failures to please. He was never a great 
 favorite as a dramatist, though some of his 
 plays met with considerable success. He 
 presumed too much in his faith in his own 
 intelligence, and the public's depraved taste 
 and ignorance. Nevertheless, he was a poet 
 of great moral courage and intellectual 
 power. He cared little for the approbation 
 of the general public, but was most anxious 
 for that of the judicious. He had warm 
 friends and bitter enemies. His quarrels with 
 his literary associates were manifold. In his 
 old age he was regarded justly as the chief of 
 the literary world, and his death was sincerely 
 lamented by his friends. Jonson was pos- 
 sessed of a great memory and remarkable 
 learning. His works are easily classified as 
 tragedies, comedies and masques ; all of 
 which show laborious and conscientious 
 research, great vigor, wonderful skill in con- 
 struction and characterization, but are defi- 
 cient in soul — that attractive but indefinable 
 something we most long for in poetry. It is 
 said that Jonson wrote all his verses first in 
 prose. 
 
 Neither of his historical tragedies, " Se- 
 janus " and " Catiline," achieved great suc- 
 cess. They are too ponderous, too much 
 
The English Drama. 119 
 
 taken up with accuracy of det lis and too 
 little given to spontaneity. We find an abun- 
 dance of classical knowledge, but not that 
 delicate perception of character of which 
 Shakespeare was the master. Jonson either 
 under or overdraws his portraits. He has left 
 but two tragedies, though a third, " The Fall 
 of Mortimer," was sketched. 
 
 From the long list of Jonson's comedies we 
 will select his most characteristic and cele- 
 brated ones : " Every Man in His Humour," 
 " The Poetaster," " Epicoene," " Volpone, the 
 Fox." The first named made his reputation 
 as a dramatist. The two last firmly main- 
 tained it. The second is his famous satirical 
 contribution to his dispute with Marston and 
 Dekker. 
 
 '■ Every Man in His Humour" is a play in 
 Jonson's happiest vein, with a slight plot, 
 characters marked and real, the central idea 
 of which is that every human fault is curable 
 by excess. It is a comedy of character, and 
 much superior, though not so elaborate as its 
 companion piece, "Every Man Out of His 
 Humour." It was produced at least by 1598. 
 
 "Volpone, the Fox," printed in 1607, is a 
 moral satire. It is one of Jonson's most 
 powerful and successful efforts. The picture 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 of the depravity of his age is no doubt a faith- 
 ful, though revolting one, and while one per- 
 ceives the bitter attack made by the dramatist 
 upon immorality and the commendable pur- 
 pose that inspired the composition, yet, he 
 can not look with pleasure upon its scenes. 
 Nevertheless, it is an admirable achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 " Epicoene, or The Silent Woman," has 
 been called Jonson's most entertaining 
 comedy. One might not improperly speak 
 of it as a farce. An old misanthrope, who 
 hates noise, marries what he believes to be a 
 silent woman, but who, immediately after 
 the ceremony, proves to be a talkative crea- 
 ture, ultimately turning out to be a boy. The 
 fun is brisk, situations effective, and the 
 interest grows with each succeeding act, the 
 climax being reached towards the close of 
 the last. Jonson was not less scrupulous in 
 his observance of the unities of time and 
 action here than elsewhere. 
 
 Jonson's comedies were imitative of the 
 Latin models, " Terence " and " Plautus ; " 
 satirical in tone, and written for the purpose 
 of representing and correcting follies and 
 vices. In the " Alchemist " he attacks a 
 whilom pest of society, and did no little good 
 
The English Drama, 121 
 
 towards ridding the world of it. " Bartholo- 
 mew Fair " assails the Puritans, and is a 
 perfect dictionary of slang. " Volpone " 
 belabors contemporary vice. And so on. 
 Unfortunately Jonson's characters are at 
 times too grotesque, and too laboriously 
 constructed. The author burdens himself 
 with science and theories, and allows his 
 critical sense to mar his artistic feeling. His 
 later works, " The New Inn " (1629) and 
 " The Magnetic Lady" (1632), show the 
 decadence of his powers, and were not 
 successful. " The Tale of a Tub " (1633) met 
 with a somewhat better fate. 
 
 As a writer of masques no one has been so 
 successful or so prolific as Ben Jonson. 
 Accurate learning, great inventive power, 
 and considerable originality are the requisites 
 for an author of masques. All of these 
 qualities Jonson possessed in a large degree. 
 As regards acquired powers, scholarship, 
 he was infinitely better equipped than any 
 other Elizabethan writer. His experience and 
 knowledge of man and life was wide and 
 varied. His idea of his task was noble. His 
 chief merit, conception and reproduction of 
 character. Add to this the fact that character, 
 not action, is the essential thing in a masque, 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 and we understand why Jonson excells in 
 this particular field. The masques of " Black- 
 ness," " The Satyr " and " The Penates " are 
 three of great beauty, chosen at random 
 where all are excellent. The first-named had 
 the honor of being impersonated by the 
 Queen and her ladies at Whitehall, on 
 Twelfth Night, 1605. 
 
 The Pastoral Play, of which dramatic species 
 Jonson has left us one exquisite, though un- 
 finished example, " The Sad Shepherd," is 
 the bucolic idyl in a dramatic form. This 
 admits of the introduction of both mytho- 
 logical and allegorical elements. It flourished 
 in Italy towards the close of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, when Poliziano's " Orfeo " appeared. 
 The artificial character of the Pastoral, per- 
 mitting the display of classical learning and 
 scope for the imagination and compliment, 
 thinly veiled by allegory, commended it for 
 imitation to our Elizabethan poets, and its 
 influence is perceptible throughout the drama, 
 particularly in comedy. The chief objection 
 to the Pastoral Play is its hovering between 
 artificiality and burlesque. The entire con- 
 ception of such a combination of rustic sim- 
 plicity and poetical manners is foreign to the 
 modern mind. Of the Elizabethan produc- 
 
The English Drama. 123 
 
 tions in this domain Fletcher's " Faithful 
 Shepherdess " is the most noteworthy. 
 
 George Chapman (1557 or 9-1634) is a 
 worthy representative of a certain class of 
 writers whose inventive powers are good, but 
 who are too much given to narration, to 
 rhetoric and to verbiage. The greatest 
 strength of this class of writers consists in 
 individual passages which are often of great 
 beauty. Chapman's best works are those 
 written in conjunction with other authors, as 
 was then the custom. He did not produce a 
 single striking female character. Like Jon- 
 son, his learning is constantly appearing. 
 " The Blind Beggar of Alexandria," " Caesar 
 and Pompey," " Byron's Conspiracy," " Bussy 
 D'Ambois," and "The Revenge of Bussy 
 D'Ambois," are some of his works. Marston 
 and Jonson assisted him in the composition 
 of " Eastward Ho," that endeavor which 
 imprisoned its authors and for a time 
 threatened their destruction ; and Shirley 
 was a collaborator in the production of 
 " Chabot, Admiral of France." Chapman 
 was a learned and traveled gentleman, of 
 excellent character, and enjoyed the friend- 
 ship of all his contemporaries. He held a 
 high position as a dramatist and writer of 
 
124 The English Drama. 
 
 masques, but is even better known as a trans- 
 lator of Homer. He died when nearly 
 eighty years old. 
 
 Thomas Dekker is probably more famous 
 as the man who led the attack against Jonson, 
 in that celebrated quarrel which produced 
 " The Poetaster," and " The Satiromastix/' 
 than as an author of special merit. Yet he 
 occupies a conspicuous place as a comic 
 dramatist. Possessed of humor, pathos, 
 poetical ability, yet lacking in that vigorous 
 imagination, progressive spirit arpl high 
 moral sense which enable a writer to in- 
 fluence his age. He collaborated so much 
 that his own work is with difficulty recog- 
 nized. Middleton, Chettle, Haughton, Web- 
 ster, Massinger, Ford, Day, etc., are writers 
 who assisted in his compositions. Dekker 
 was born in London, and there he lived, 
 worked and died. He was a prolific and 
 hasty writer, often gross. None of his plays 
 are of a high order, nor have any claim to 
 great artistic excellence. A list of the plays 
 in which he was concerned would include 
 " The Shoemaker's Holiday," " Old Fortu- 
 natus," " Satiromastix," " Patient Grissil," 
 " The Roaring Girl," " The Witch of Edmon- 
 ton," etc. 
 
The Englisfi Drama. 125 
 
 Of John Marston's, personal life little is 
 known. It was his play " Antonio and Mel- 
 lida " which Jonson ridiculed in " The Poetas- 
 ter." Marston achieved only partial success 
 in his more ambitious works, as his tragedies. 
 In a less pretentious vein as in " Eastward 
 Ho " he is more fortunate. He was talented, 
 possessed some humor, pathos and poetic 
 ability, but his individual works often betray 
 a false tone. 
 
 Thomas Middleton (1570-1627), like Dek- 
 ker, had no hesitancy in collaborating with 
 his fellow dramatists. He produced works in 
 conjunction with Rowley, Henslowe, Dekker, 
 etc. He was a university man. As an author 
 he was easy, fluent, free from bombast, pro- 
 lific, a faithful reflector of the common, never 
 the exceptional, traits of the people of his 
 time. Of these, and for these, he wrote, his 
 plays being singularly uninteresting to a 
 modern reader. He is inferior in brilliancy 
 and depth of feeling to his contemporaries, 
 but free from the exaggeration to which many 
 of them are so prone. There is a pleasing 
 rapidity of action in his plays, which usually 
 contain two plots drawn in the customary in- 
 delicate manner. In 1624 his best known 
 work, a comedy, " The Game of Chess," was 
 
126 The English Drama. 
 
 produced, and after a successful run of nine 
 days was prohibited by command of the King. 
 The Spanish Ambassador was offended at the 
 representation of his sovereign on the stage, 
 particularly the manner of representation, for 
 the English people were not at this time 
 friendly to Spain, and the English dramatist 
 had not been uninfluenced in his play by this 
 fact. There was a law by which the represent- 
 ing of a modern Christian king on the stage 
 was forbidden, so the obnoxious play was 
 prohibited. Middleton and the players es- 
 caped punishment, however, owing to the 
 public sentiment being so much in concur- 
 rence with that of his play. 
 
 Thomas Heywood (1570 circ-1650) is the 
 typical play-wright, but not a great poet. 
 His plays were written to be acted, rather 
 than read, and embrace every species. Tieck 
 styles him " the model of a light and rapid 
 talent." He is said to have been the author 
 of or collaborator in over two hundred plays, 
 besides many other works, as romances, 
 pageants, and translations. He is not a writer 
 of the first rank, despite his astonishing 
 productivity. He shows considerable pathos, 
 some humor, and great skill in constructing 
 situations and startling climaxes. It was this 
 
The English Drama. 127 
 
 last quality that made his plays successful. 
 His best plays are " A Woman Killed with 
 Kindness " and " The Fair Maid of the West." 
 
 Amongst thirty authors noted by Henslowe 
 as receiving pay for plays between the years 
 1598-1601, we notice the names of Samuel 
 Rowley and William Rowley, who were 
 collaborators with many prominent Eliza- 
 bethan dramatists. Also Wentworth Smith, 
 "A man fortunate in his initials"; George 
 Wilkins, Richard Hathaway, and other 
 lesser lights. 
 
 A number of anonymous plays belonging 
 to this period must not escape mention. Their 
 merit, however, is not great. " The Life and 
 Death of Jack Straw," " A Knave to Knowe a 
 Knave," and " Looke About You," are three 
 worthiest of notice. 
 
 Despite the popularity and greatness of the 
 drama of the Elizabethan Theatre, there still 
 existed a set of writers hostile to the English 
 dramatic development, and who opposed it, 
 in a feeble manner, by plays written with a 
 totally different purpose. Samuel Daniel 
 and William Alexander, Earl of Sterling, 
 were chief amongst these. Daniel, by his 
 prose and sonnets, shows himself to have 
 been a writer of merit, but he was a pseudo* 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 classicist, and did not possess much dramatic 
 power. " Philotas," " Cleopatra " and "The 
 Queen's Arcadia/' are some of Daniel's plays. 
 Sterling was inferior to and even more 
 foreign than Daniel in his compositions. 
 
 Also many plays continued for some time 
 to be written for the Court, houses of nobility 
 and the Universities. But these finally disap- 
 peared before the steady growth of the 
 popular theatre. 
 
 Among Shakespeare's contemporaries there 
 are but three whose popularity rivaled his in 
 his own time, or to whom fame has assigned 
 places near him in later days : Jonson, Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher. It is even probable that 
 the last-named authors were more admired in 
 the Elizabethan, and undoubtedly they were 
 in the Restoration period, than the master 
 poet. During the commonwealth it was their 
 plays, or scenes from their plays that were 
 given at fairs, in halls, taverns and on mounte- 
 bank's stages. Some players were giving sur- 
 reptitiously a tragedy of Fletcher's at the 
 Cock-pit shortly before the execution of 
 Charles I., when the performance was inter- 
 rupted and the players arrested for breach o 
 the peace. But with the progress of thoiiph* 
 and culture, Beaumont and Fletcher's fan < 
 
The English Drama. 129 
 
 declined. Gradually they came to be classed 
 as inferior to Shakespeare, and before the 
 eighteenth century had closed they were 
 being laid aside because of the impurity and 
 grossness of which in their own time they had 
 deemed themselves the reformers. As criti- 
 cism became broader and higher, their plays 
 were found lacking in what Schlegel calls 
 " high seriousness," and we would denomi- 
 nate as true artistic feeling. To-day there is 
 not a single work of these famous authors on 
 the boards. Indeed, despite the fact of their 
 past glory and their unquestioned merit, a 
 revival of their fame has been long delayed 
 and scarcely in keeping with their deserts. 
 
 Although the collaboration of dramatists is 
 one of the most ordinary phenomena, especi- 
 ally of the Elizabethan period, there is no 
 instance so famous in the history of literature 
 as that of Beaumont and Fletcher. As a rule, 
 where two or more authors are concerned in 
 the production of the same work, there is a 
 consciousness, often manifest evidence of 
 piece-meal efforts. This is remarkable by its 
 absence in the plays of our twin poets. So 
 much so that it is with extreme difficulty that 
 scholars have attempted to separate their 
 work, and often the task has been given up as 
 
130 The English Drama. 
 
 hopeless. The two men were joined by many 
 circumstances ; gentle birth, university educa- 
 tion, nearness of age, similarity of thought 
 and taste, affected by the same literary influ- 
 ences, the originality of neither so great as to 
 brook no interference. The chief differences 
 were merely external ones. Fletcher being 
 urged ever to greater activity by his poverty, 
 Beaumont never experiencing that unpleasant 
 stimulus. So that while choice was for Beau- 
 mont the only incentive to write, Fletcher 
 was urged, no doubt, as strenuously by neces- 
 sity. Yet, there was never a greater har- 
 mony of thought between two men. In the 
 selection and treatment of a subject there 
 does not seem to have been a difference, and 
 it is not strange, therefore, that they should 
 come to be regarded as one author. It is 
 remarkable that when working alone Fletcher 
 shows no peculiarities not to be found in his 
 joint compositions. He seems neither to 
 have been impeded nor assisted, as regards 
 meritorious work, by the collaboration of 
 Beaumont. 
 
 John Fletcher was several years older 
 than his co-laborer. He was the younger son 
 of a large family. His father had held suc- 
 cessively the positions of President of Bene't 
 
The English Drama. 131 
 
 (now Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge ; 
 minister of Rye, in Sussex, where John was 
 born, December, 1579 ; Dean of Peterborough, 
 in which capacity he attended Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, in Fotheringay Castle, and en- 
 deavored to persuade her to recant the 
 Catholic faith ; Bishop of Bristol and Bishop 
 of London. While holding the last-named 
 position he died, leaving a large family and a 
 heavy debt. 
 
 Of John Fletcher's early life little has been 
 ascertained. Being a younger son his pros- 
 pects could not have been bright, and at his 
 father's death his inheritance was probably 
 confined to an equal half of the Bishop's 
 library. This was an undoubted recognition 
 of the literary tastes Fletcher had early dis- 
 played, and which he inherited, as his father, 
 uncle and cousins, Phineas and Giles, were all 
 men of letters. The two last particularly 
 having won honorable places for themselves 
 in English literature. In 1591, and again in 
 1593, we have evidence showing him to have 
 been at Bene't College, Cambridge. From 
 that time, until we find him connected with 
 the London stage, nothing is known of his 
 proceedings. His first plays, written in con- 
 junction with Beaumont, were not successful. 
 
132 The English Drama. 
 
 " Philaster," produced in 1608-9, was > how- 
 ever, and from that time neither Beaumont 
 nor Fletcher had just cause to complain of 
 the lack of popular approval. After Beau- 
 mont's death, in 1616, Fletcher continued to 
 write for the stage, often associating himself 
 with other dramatists, as Massinger, William 
 Rowley and others. He was admired and 
 beloved by his fellows, and is said to have 
 ended his days without an enemy. He was 
 witty, modest, disliked flattery, but honestly 
 loved well-earned applause. He was a gen- 
 tleman by birth, breeding and conduct. He 
 died August, 1625, a victim of the plague, 
 and was buried at St. Saviours, Southwark, 
 where, unfortunately, no trace has been left 
 of his grave. 
 
 Francis Beaumont was born at Grace- 
 Dieu, in Leicestershire, the home of his ances- 
 tors. His family was ancient and his father 
 was a Justice of the Common Pleas. His 
 elder brother, John, also won some reputation 
 as a poet. Francis, after a short residence at 
 Broadgates Hall, Oxford, entered the Inner 
 Temple in 1600, with which society he pre- 
 served his connections, though he soon turned 
 his attentions from law to literature. He be- 
 came acquainted with Ben Jonson, and their 
 
The English Drama. t 133 
 
 friendship was life-long. A stronger intimacy- 
 was presently formed, however, with John 
 Fletcher, with whom his name will be forever 
 linked. Beaumont does not seem to have 
 written anything alone, save a few poems, 
 which are not remarkable, except as proofs of 
 his having continued a member of the society 
 into which he was born. Brought into con- 
 tact with the stage by Jonson and Fletcher, he 
 must have imbibed a warm love for it, as 
 there can be no other reason for the habits of 
 life ascribed by tradition to Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, as the former inherited a part of his 
 elder brother's property in 1606, and was 
 never in want. In 1613 he married a lady of 
 birth and fortune, Ursula Isley, which event 
 must have changed his mode of life, and inter- 
 fered somewhat with his relations to Fletcher. 
 Nevertheless they continued to collaborate 
 until Beaumont's death in 1616, which event 
 was sincerely mourned by many contempora- 
 ries. As an author Beaumont is rated as in- 
 ferior to Fletcher in genius, as he certainly 
 was in productivity. For a long time the two 
 men when at work on a play, are said to have 
 been associated in the most intimate personal 
 intercourse. They lived together not far 
 from the play-house, and had everything 
 
134 The English Drama. 
 
 in common, "even the same clothes and 
 cloakes.." 
 
 Fletcher's plays fall naturally into three 
 classes, (i) those written in conjunction with 
 Beaumont ; (2) those written alone ; (3) those 
 written with the assistance of other drama- 
 tists. 
 
 The first joint works of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, " The Woman Hater " and " Thierry 
 and Theodoret," were failures, as we have 
 before remarked. In 1608, however, " Phil- 
 aster " was produced, which was exceedingly 
 popular. This play may be taken as repre- 
 sentative of the colabor of our two poets. 
 " Philaster " contains much pathos and 
 beauty of language, characters and situations. 
 There is a suggestion of " Hamlet " in the 
 hero at first, and a striking resemblance to 
 Shakespeare's Viola in " Euphrasia-Bellario," 
 though the latter is not so happy in her 
 ultimate fate as the heroine of " Twelfth 
 Night." There is some exquisite poetry in 
 this piece, which might be called a tragi- 
 comedy. Among other successful efforts may 
 be named the mock-heroic drama, ' : The 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle " ; the vigorous 
 and interesting " Knight of Malta," and that 
 source of much dispute as to merit, " The 
 
The English Drama. 135 
 
 Maid's Tragedy." The last-named was 
 prohibited under Charles II., but re-written 
 by Sheridan Knowles, was acted, as late as 
 1837, by the tragedian Macready. It contains 
 two central figures, Evadne, a terrible char- 
 acter, and Melanthius, a noble one. Never- 
 theless, the play is loathsome to modern 
 tastes. 
 
 Of the plays assigned to Fletcher alone, 
 his pastoral drama, " The Faithful Shep- 
 herdess " (1610), and the comedy " The 
 Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed " 
 (1625), deserve special mention. The former 
 on account of its being the highest achieve- 
 ment in the pastoral drama in our literature. 
 Notwithstanding the high estimation in which 
 it is held, criticism does not deem it to have 
 escaped the usual dangers attendant on this 
 species, sameness and artificiality. The 
 beauties are those of detail and diction. 
 " The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed," 
 is to be remarked as an attempt in a direction 
 seldom ventured by a play-wright. Fletcher's 
 object was to use, and, if possible, surpass 
 the success of Shakespeare's " Taming of the 
 Shrew," by writing a companion piece, or 
 epilogue, to that famous comedy. His effort 
 was, for the time being, successful. Indeed, 
 
136 The English Drama. 
 
 it is reported that Shakespeare's play on being 
 given at Court was " likt," but Fletcher's, 
 given five days afterwards, was " very well 
 likt." Undoubtedly it is a clever comedy, 
 though far inferior to its predecessor. 
 
 Amongst the group of plays, assigned as 
 the result of the co-labor of Fletcher and 
 contemporaries other than Beaumont, are 
 " The Two Noble Kinsmen," a portion of 
 which has been attributed by some critics to 
 Shakespeare ; " Love's Pilgrimage," a joint 
 work with Shirley ; " The Queen of Corinth," 
 in which Massinger's hand is traced, and 
 " The Bloody Brother," the joint author of 
 which is unknown. In this last-named play 
 there are passages and whole scenes of a 
 most beautiful and highly developed style, 
 but, unfortunately, a large part is inartistic, 
 and the working out of the plot unsatis- 
 factory. There is a noticeable and lamentable - 
 unevenness in this tragedy, whose opening is 
 so promising and the close of which is so 
 disappointing. The character of the mother, 
 from the commanding position she at first 
 assumes, sinks into insignificance as the play 
 progresses. 
 
 The chief facts to be noted in a study of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, some of which they 
 
The English Drama. 137 
 
 have in common with other Elizabethan 
 dramatists, are : 
 
 (1) Their remarkable productivity. Their 
 works comprise fifty-two plays. 
 
 (2) The advantages they derived from their 
 birth, breeding, education, friends, and the 
 time at which they lived. 
 
 (3) The unusually wide range of subjects 
 handled, which undoubtedly was the result 
 of their education that had familiarized them 
 with history, philosophy, classic and modern 
 literature. 
 
 (4) Their exceeding popularity, which was 
 in part due to intrinsic merit, in part to the 
 fact that they adapted themselves to the 
 tastes and tendencies of their age, unfor- 
 tunately not a great one. James I. did not 
 inspire the chivalric loyalty and noble senti- 
 ments which Elizabeth had done. What was 
 impulsively consecrated to her was granted 
 indifferently, and as a matter of course, to 
 him. The poets, particularly Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, everywhere express an unshaken 
 faith in " the divine right of kings." 
 
 (5) Great moral defects and grossness, a 
 most lamentable stain on their poetic renown, 
 are visible in nearly all, if not all, their works. 
 They seem to have no conception of feminine 
 
138 The English Drama. 
 
 purity. This immorality is the more griev- 
 ous, since Beaumont and Fletcher were un- 
 conscious of it and believed themselves to be 
 reformers. It is a manifest sign of the 
 depravity of the times. 
 
 (6) As regards their literary qualities we 
 find their construction to be light, at times 
 skillful ; clever in adapting ; happy in their 
 characterization within certain limits ; ex- 
 celling in the brilliancy and fluency of their 
 poetry and in their pathos ; as a rule free 
 from bombast ; lacking in tragic and moral 
 elevation ; sometimes extravagant in their 
 conceptions. Fletcher was the superior artist 
 in versification, his peculiarity being sweet- 
 ness rather than firmness. 
 
 (7) That their plays are wonderfully bril- 
 liant and theatrical, but superficial, un- 
 natural, corrupt and unsatisfactory. 
 
 We have now to speak of a genius of sur- 
 passing and original, though not versatile 
 powers, John Webster. Little has been as- 
 certained of his life, nor is it known when he 
 died. He began his career as a dramatist in 
 1601, when Henslowe mentions a play by 
 Webster, entitled " The Gwisse." He seems 
 to have co-operated with Dekker, Marston, 
 Ford, Rowley, etc., with all of whom he 
 
The English Drama. 139 
 
 appears to have been on the best of terms. 
 It is to be regretted that so few of the plays 
 of which he was the sole author have been 
 preserved. " The Duchess of Malfi," a su- 
 perb, though terrible tragedy, is generally 
 conceded to be his masterpiece. Other 
 notable plays in which Webster was con- 
 cerned are " Vittoria Corombona, or, The 
 White Devil," and " Appius and Virginia." 
 
 The characteristics of this remarkable, 
 genius are : 
 
 (1) His apparent disposition and extraor- 
 dinary ability to accumulate murders, suicides 
 and executions, thus showing a love for the 
 horrible. 
 
 (2) His elaborate investigation of the ter- 
 rible side of human nature, and of bloody 
 deeds. 
 
 (3) Possessed of fine poetic feeling, and 
 capable of forming strong situations, but 
 lacking a high moral purpose and ability to 
 construct. 
 
 (4) His characters are possible, but ab- 
 normal. 
 
 Taiue says, " Webster is a sombre man 
 whose thoughts seem incessantly to be haunt- 
 ing tombs and charnel houses. . . No one has 
 equaled him in creating desperate characters, 
 
140 The English Drama. 
 
 utter wretches, bitter misanthropes, in black- 
 ening and blaspheming human life, in depict- 
 ing the shameless depravity and refined fero- 
 city of Italian manners." 
 
 There are few names in our dramatic liter- 
 ature that are entitled to, or that receive more 
 respect, than that of Philip Massinger, one of 
 the secondary stars of the later Elizabethan 
 drama. He was born at Salisbury in 1584, 
 and was the son of a gentleman attached to 
 the service of the Earl of Pembroke, for 
 whose family he ever entertained the warm- 
 est gratitude. He was university bred, a 
 Roman Catholic of unusual religious piety, 
 moderate and, liberal in political views and a 
 man of considerable reading. He was often 
 in the extremest poverty during his London 
 career, and was twice obliged to appeal for 
 monetary aid. A number of Massinger's 
 plays fell victim to " Warburton's Cook," 
 that is, Somerest Herald's cook, who used his 
 collection of MSS. as coverings for her pastry. 
 Still a considerable portion of Massinger's 
 works have been saved, carefully edited, and 
 exhaustively criticised. " The Virgin Martyr " 
 (a joint work), " The Duke of Milan," " The 
 Picture," " The City Madam," " The Bond- 
 man " (one of Massinger's best and most pop- 
 
The English Drama. 141 
 
 ular efforts), " The Roman Actor " (a meri- 
 torious drama and its author's favorite), and 
 " The New Way to Pay Old Debts," are his 
 most celebrated plays. The last-named is 
 acknowledged, I believe, by all critics to be 
 his master-piece ; certainly it has been the 
 most popular and enduring. 
 
 This unvarying success has been attributed, 
 doubtless with considerable truth, to the 
 remarkable central character, Sir Giles Over- 
 reach, and the strong didactic element 
 clothed in striking rhetoric. Yet, despite this 
 effective combination of attractive theatrical 
 elements, the moral tone and noble purpose 
 of the play should have given it success, and 
 certainly do give it a high place in the dra- 
 matic literature of the day. The play is 
 original in construction, and in the central 
 figure, while the others are of sufficient dig- 
 nity and individuality to deserve praise. Sir 
 Giles Overreach is a picture of incarnate 
 evil. His nature is revealed by effective and 
 contrasting situations. He is depicted with 
 unusual dramatic force, and his punishment 
 is commensurate with his guilt. It is the 
 portrait of a grasping, grinding, ambitious, 
 moneyed man of the world. Massinger 
 delights in depicting the conflict between 
 
142 The English Drama. 
 
 right and wrong, lust and chastity ; the forti- 
 tude bestowed by conviction and conscience ; 
 the self-punishment of crime ; woman's pure 
 self-sacrifice ; the nobility of self-control. 
 Yet, notwithstanding his eloquent and pleas- 
 ing verse, his skill in the choice and execution 
 of his work, he has many faults. Ward says, 
 his characters seem labeled, and there is no 
 mistaking them as dramatis personce, though 
 we have some difficulty in understanding 
 them as human beings. Nevertheless, Mas- 
 singer's plays form an honorable monument 
 to an honorable dramatist. 
 
 Nathaniel Field (1590-1640) was a com- 
 panion of Massinger's in his poverty. He 
 was a good actor, and as a dramatist shows a 
 curious combination of skill and recklessness, 
 which fact his checquered career may explain. 
 " A Woman is a Weather-cock," and "Amends 
 for Ladies," are his two extant plays. 
 
 John Ford (i586-i64ocirc.) was the second 
 son of a Devonshire gentleman of position. 
 Ford's first appearance as an author was made 
 in 1616 with the elegiac poem, " Fame's Memo- 
 rial." Shortly afterwards he commenced his 
 career as a dramatist, and during it enjoyed 
 the patronage of several men of rank and 
 wealth. The earliest of his published plays 
 
The English Drama. 143 
 
 was "The Lover's Melancholy" (1629). Of 
 his other works, "The Witch of Edmonton," 
 in which Dekker and William Rowley were 
 also concerned, we have before mentioned ; 
 " The Broken Heart " and " Perkin War- 
 beck " deserve notice. The last-named is a 
 chronicle history of great merit, and is one of 
 the few that bear comparison with the Shakes- 
 peare series. Ford occupies an entirely dis- 
 tinct place amongst our dramatists. He is 
 strangely devoid of humor. Gifford speaks 
 of his comedians in one play as a " despic- 
 able set of buffoons." They are invariably 
 gross, brutal and contemptible. An excep- 
 tion should be made for the single character 
 of John-a-Water, the truism-loving Mayor 
 of Cork, in "Perkin Warbeck." Ford's re- 
 deeming qualities are his admirable verse, 
 sweet, fluent and strong ; his lyrical gifts ; his 
 unsurpassed tenderness ; his magical changes 
 from raging passion to delicate touches of 
 thrilling sweetness ; his ability to portray the 
 depths of passion, sorrow and despair. But 
 once again we are called upon to regret that 
 such admirable powers should have been 
 expended upon such disgusting materials. 
 His plots and characters are revolting. It 
 was such writers as Ford that by their 
 
144 The English Dra7tia. 
 
 very genius hastened the decay of the 
 drama. 
 
 James Shirley (1596-1666) was a Londoner, 
 and best known, perhaps, as the victim of 
 Dryden's satire. He was a university man, 
 and was intended for the ministry, but 
 abandoned it on becoming a Catholic convert. 
 Enjoyed the patronage of Charles I. and 
 members of the nobility. The Revolution 
 closed his dramatic career, and threw him 
 for a time on the bounty of friends. He 
 became a teacher, and finally died, in 1666, 
 from exposure, in consequence of the Great 
 Fire of London, which drove him from the 
 city. Shirley has left us a larger number of 
 plays than any other dramatist of this time, 
 save Shakespeare, thirty-three in all, the 
 greater part of which are romantic comedies. 
 " The Traitor," " The Wedding," " The Young 
 Admiral," and " The Royal Master," are some 
 of his best-known plays. Shirley's charac- 
 teristics as an author are : 
 
 (1) Fertility and originality. 
 
 (2) The condensation of his comedy interest 
 into a single scene, which enabled it to be 
 given separately, if desired, as a droll or 
 farce. 
 
 (3) Ability to suit the tastes of his audience. 
 
 / 
 / I. 
 
The English Drama. 145 
 
 t 
 
 (4) His serious work superior to his lighter 
 efforts. 
 
 (5) Numerous passages of poetic and 
 picturesque beauty. 
 
 (6) Grossness of his works, yet an honest, 
 moral purpose present. Vice never repre- 
 sented as enjoying an easy victory. 
 
 The minor dramatists of this period who 
 contributed, each after his kind, to the 
 dramatic literature, are not particularly note- 
 worthy, and it will be sufficient, in considera- 
 tion of our limited space, to enumerate them : 
 Richard Brome, Thomas Randolph, William 
 Cartwright, Jasper Mayne, Thomas May, 
 Sir John Suckling, Shakerly Marmion, 
 Sir John Denham, William Habington, 
 Henry Glapthorne, Robert Tailor, Lodo- 
 wick Barry*, Robert Davenport, Lewis 
 Machin, Thomas Rawlins, Nathaniel Rich- 
 ards, Richard Lovelace, George Ruggle, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 One more illustrious name remains to be 
 mentioned. John Milton was a man whose 
 contributions to the drama were limited to 
 three works, and one of these finds its sole 
 home in the library. Nevertheless, by the 
 greatness of these productions, aside from 
 what he has in other fields of letters accom- 
 
146 The English Drama. 
 
 plished, he has enriched considerably the 
 English literature, and also won for himself 
 a worthy place amongst dramatists. It is 
 not necessary to relate the life and deeds of 
 this great epic poet. His energy, profound 
 scholarship, honorable career, are too well 
 known to demand more than mention here. 
 In 1634 he produced the masques, " The 
 Arcades " and " Comus," the latter of which 
 stands unapproached in this realm of letters. 
 It was at once the climax and the termina- 
 tion of the masque. Nothing worthy of the 
 name ever followed it. 
 
 Milton was never connected directly with 
 the drama of his day. He was a Puritan, 
 and, though a liberal one, yet his life and 
 manner of thought made such a connection 
 impossible. Nevertheless, he is said to have 
 made one hundred and two schemes of 
 dramatic subjects on classic models ; sixty 
 on scriptural topics, thirty-three on British 
 history and five on Scottish history. He 
 has left but one play, however, "Samson 
 Agonistes " (1677). 
 
 This chronologically belongs to the time of 
 the Restoration, but its spirit is Elizabethan. 
 Both " Comus" and " Samson " reflect the 
 moral indignation with which the represen- 
 
The English Drama, 147 
 
 tative of Puritanism regarded the social 
 degradation. " Samson Agonistes " was never 
 intended for the stage. There is no division 
 into acts and scenes, and the catastrophe is 
 announced by a messenger. A chorus is 
 made use of. It is needless to speak of the 
 great beauty of the poetry. 
 
 In the brief summary we have made we 
 have glanced, we had not time for more, at 
 the lives, works and literary peculiarities of 
 the men whose names fill the brightest period 
 of our literature, the Elizabethan. But a 
 treatise on any age that looks only upon the 
 great individuals who are its exponents must 
 naturally be deficient. There is another 
 view, a general one, which remains to be 
 taken before our work approaches comple- 
 tion. In Shakespeare we have beheld the 
 flower of this remarkable age. In his con- 
 temporaries and successors we perceive the 
 seeds and observe the growth of the weed, 
 corruption, that foretells decline. But we 
 must not suppose a wide or stated interval to 
 exist between the two. The flower and weed 
 grew side by side. As the promising work 
 of Greene, Peele and Marlowe was contem- 
 poraneous with Shakespeare's early en- 
 deavors, so was the hot-house plant of Beau- 
 
148 The English Drama. 
 
 mont and Fletcher's genius with his latei 
 ones. Undoubtedly both Shakespeare and 
 Jonson exerted a wide influence on their fel- 
 lows, but their successors were not as they 
 master-dramatists, and imitative seldom 
 reaches the height attained by original* 
 genius. With the growth of Puritanism the 
 popularity of the theatre naturally waned. 
 Supported by the Royalists alone its fortunes 
 fluctuated with those of its patrons, and its 
 manners reflected the manners of its patrons. 
 The early Elizabethan drama mirrors the 
 vigor, chivalry and manliness of the Eliza- 
 bethan court. The later period, belonging 
 ft© the reigns of James I. and Charles I. as 
 . J faithfully represent the effeminacy, immor- 
 | ality and corruption of those monarchs' 
 I reigns. The national life had ceased to be 
 great and offered no such powerful stimulus 
 to great efforts as did Elizabeth's England. 
 The stirring continental events, politics and 
 religion, were forbidden subjects to the dra- 
 matist. Deprived of his choicest materials 
 and compelled to appeal to but half the pub- 
 lic, it is not to be wondered at that the ideas 
 and sentiments of the" play-wright became 
 warped and corrupted ; that he should ac- 
 cept and promulgate the doctrine of " divine 
 
The English Drama. 149 
 
 right of kings," that he should look leniently 
 on the faults of his patrons and become in- 
 fused with their loose morality. Exclusive 
 ness, extravagance, coarseness, love of drink- 
 ing, gaming and dress, were Royalistic 
 characteristics of that time. These, as a re- 
 sult, permeate the drama. The luxuries and 
 refinements of life grew more numerous. 
 Fierceness abated and outward manners 
 visibly improved, but secret vice and super- 
 stition prevailed to an astonishing extent. 
 
 The stage came to be restricted in various 
 ways. Besides political and religious allu- 
 sions being prohibited, the " jesting and pro- 
 fane " use of sacred names was forbidden ; no 
 modern Christian king was permitted to be 
 represented. Members of the nobility might 
 no longer authorize plays in any part of the 
 kingdom, nor companies remain more than 
 fourteen days in any one place, excepting 
 London. It is needless to say that most, if not 
 all, of these restrictions, were repeatedly disre- 
 garded and the infringements were not always 
 punished. 
 
 The hostility of the Puritans to the theatre 
 was intense. Many of their objections were 
 well founded, but ignorant of the fact that 
 the English nature demands the existence of 
 
150 The English Drama. 
 
 the drama, they desired not to reform and put 
 to its best uses the stage, but to annihilate it. 
 As long as the Court and nobility upheld it, 
 this could not be done, but the desire found 
 its expression in a strong anti-theatrical liter- 
 ature. 
 
 In 1625 " A Short Treatise of Stage Playes " 
 was presented to the first Parliament of 
 Charles I., requesting the closing of the 
 theatres. Nothing was done, however, save 
 to forbid Sunday performances. In 1632 
 Puritan enmity issued its most famous literary 
 effort against the stage. " Histriomastix, the 
 Players Scourge or Actors Tragedic," by 
 William Prynne. This was the result of 
 seven years' labor, and shows remarkable 
 learning and enthusiasm. It is a book of 
 more than a thousand closely printed pages, 
 and attacks the stage at every point. Prynne 
 condemns the theatre, the drama, the audi- 
 ences, the players and especially assails a 
 company in which women had for the first 
 time taken part. Shortly before the appear- 
 ance of the " Histriomastix " the Queen and 
 her ladies had enacted a pastoral drama at 
 Whitehall, and as the Court often com- 
 posed the audience before which a favorite 
 play was given, Prynne's attack involved 
 
The English Drama. 151 
 
 the honor of the royal family as well as the 
 drama. 
 
 The unfortunate author was summoned 
 before the High Commission Court and Star 
 Chamber. His book was condemned to be 
 burnt and he to be expelled from the Bar and 
 his Inn, to stand in the pillory, to lose both 
 ears, to pay a fine of ^5000 to the King, and 
 to be perpetually imprisoned. 
 
 Prynne's punishment we cannot but regard 
 as tyranical, and serving only to make him a 
 martyr in the eyes of the Puritans. His book 
 really had a good effect on the drama, as it 
 served to check its excesses. In 1639-40 the 
 serious political condition darkened the 
 dramatic world as well. In 1641 the plague 
 broke out, and temporarily closed the 
 theatres. Christmas, 1641, saw but one play 
 given at Court, and neither the King nor 
 Oueen was present at that. The Master of 
 the Revels closes his register in June, 1642, 
 with the entry of a play entitled " The Irish 
 Rebellion," and " here," he adds, "ended my 
 allowance of plays, for the war began in 
 August, 1642." On the 2d of September 
 the ordinance of the Lords and Commons 
 commanded " that while these sad causes and 
 set times of humiliation do continue, public 
 
152 The English Drama, 
 
 stage plays shall cease? and be forborne." 
 The theatres remained closed till the Restora- 
 tion. 
 
 And so ends the halt century contain- 
 ing the richest literary products and the 
 most marvellous assemblyt of genius of our 
 language. Few fields were left unexplored ; 
 few types untried. Yet after Shakespeare's 
 works nearly all is retrogressive. Jonson and 
 Ford failed to reach the highest level in 
 tragedy. Heywood does not uphold the 
 Chronicle History. The numerous writers of 
 tragi-comedy, that is the romantic tragedy, 
 did not in that they lose sight of the highest 
 moral ideals, attain the lasting success which 
 they might have done. 
 
 The comedy alone progresses— progresses, 
 but not improves. Throughout the works of 
 Marston, Webster, Fletcher, Ford, Shirley 
 and others, there is a sameness that makes 
 these writers, despite their genius, wearisome 
 to the ordinary reader. However various the 
 themes and different the personality of the 
 authors, this impression is not to be escaped. 
 This is, no doubt, produced by the uniform 
 lack of moderation displayed. All passions 
 and emotions are depicted in excess, and the 
 result on the reader is to produce indifference 
 
The English Drama. 153 
 
 and fatigue. Yet we cannot disregard the 
 sudden and delicate^ touches of Ford and 
 Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher's pathos, 
 Massinger's dignified sentiment and Shirley's 
 poetical illustration, which lighten the other- 
 wise monotonous li erary vein. 
 
 It is in the verse that we find the most pro- 
 nounced individuality of the prominent writers 
 in the first part of this period. In the latter 
 part this is less noticeable, for the lesser poets 
 became careless and characterless in their 
 writing as they were in their lives. Their 
 prose also deserves mention as standing so 
 entirely separate from the political, religious 
 and oratorical prose of the time. This was 
 due, of course, to obvious reasons. The stage 
 had to do with conversation not disserta- 
 tions. One thing more must not be forgotten, 
 the inter -dependence of the Elizabethan 
 poets. Not alone, but as influencing and 
 being influenced by one another, must they 
 be studied for an impartial judgment of then 
 achievements and worth. 
 
154 The English Drama. 
 
 V. 
 
 FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE CLOSE OF THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (1660-1800). 
 
 Although the theatres in England were 
 closed by act of Parliament in August, 1642, 
 and had fallen into disrepute and met with 
 neglect before this, such was the vitality of 
 the drama that it never wholly ceased to be 
 represented, but in one form or another 
 bridged over the period of the Protectorate 
 and survived all opposition. In defiance of 
 ordinances, performances were given clandes- 
 tinely, particularly at the homes of the royal- 
 ist nobility, and sometimes they were given 
 openly, when they were suppressed by the 
 means of the soldiery. 
 
 Though plays were forbidden to be per- 
 formed, there was no law to prevent their 
 being published. In consequence of this not 
 only were the plays of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists printed and widely read, but like- 
 wise works of contemporaneous writers, such 
 as Francis Quarles, Sir Aston Cokain, Sir 
 
The English Drama. 155 
 
 William Davenant, William Chamberlayne, 
 and Thomas Killigrew, were scattered 
 throughout royalistic -England. Naturally 
 politics and religion became topics for discus- 
 sion with an invariable hostility to Puritan- 
 ism and the Commonwealth. 
 
 It was at this time that an actor, by name 
 Robert Cox, in his ingenious attempts to 
 defeat the object of the law, and to maintain 
 himself by means of his old calling, evolved 
 what were then termed drolls, and which later 
 came to be called farces. They were dia- 
 logues and comic scenes taken from well- 
 known plays. Passing under another name, 
 these fragments were usually permitted to be 
 given without molestation or interference. 
 
 The drama fostered in this its darkest hour 
 in England by the infrequent performances 
 of drolls, by sub rosa entertainments, by its 
 literature and by a strong friendly feeling in 
 the large royalistic population, found a cham- 
 pion in Sir William Davenant (1605-1668). 
 This irrepressible nobleman and play-wright 
 forms the connecting link between the Eliza- 
 bethan and the Restoration drama. Belong- 
 ing, as he does, to the reigns of three of the 
 Stuarts, he was poet-laureate under Charles 
 I., without originality or great genius, but 
 
156 The English Drama. 
 
 indomitable and energetic, he may be said to 
 be a fit exponent of the play of his day, which 
 was kept alive only by the energy and perse- 
 verance of such men as himself. In 1656 
 Davenant, by a clever application, backed by 
 an equally clever argument, was granted the 
 privilege of giving an entertainment, to con- 
 sist of declamation and music, " after the 
 manner of the ancients," at Rutland House, in 
 Aldersgate Street. The opera, " The Siege of 
 Rhodes," described by Davenant as "a 
 Representation by the Art of Prospective in 
 Scenes, and the story sung," followed shortly 
 the first entertainment. Then came the 
 operas, " The History of Sir Francis Drake" 
 and "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru." 
 Lastly Davenant ventured boldly to produce 
 regular plays, and he was not interfered with. 
 Thus painting and music befriended and 
 restored the drama, only afterwards, however, 
 to assail and weaken it. For the way was 
 opened for that formidable rival of the play, 
 the opera, and accessories were introduced, 
 which contributed largely to its degeneracy, 
 music and scenery. 
 
 The return of Charles II. to his throne in 
 1660 was the signal for the re-opening of the 
 theatres, although several had anticipated 
 
The English Drama. 157 
 
 that event and were already in existence on 
 his arrival. Two leading companies were 
 soon in receipt of royal patents. The first 
 was called " The Duke of York's Servants," 
 and was under the management of Davenant ; 
 the second was " The King's Servants," com- 
 monly called the " Old Actors," and was 
 headed by Killigrew, a name long and honor- 
 ably connected with the stage. Davenant's 
 theatre was at Lincoln's Inn Fields after 1662, 
 Killigrew's from 1663 near Drury Lane, and 
 was named the Theatre Royal. With the 
 Restoration the stage entered upon a career 
 of renewed popularity and unprecedented 
 favor. The theatres were improved and 
 women instead of boys assumed without 
 resistance the female parts. Actors and 
 dramatists were eagerly sought out and lion- 
 ized by the Court and society. Nell Gwynn 
 and the tragedian Bctterton were favorites at 
 that time. 
 
 But though stamped with the favor of king 
 and people, surrounded and equipped as it 
 had never been before, its actors courted and 
 its writers lauded, yet the drama degenerated. 
 In the fifty years succeeding the Restoration 
 we have but two tragedians worthy of being 
 ranked even with the secondary lights of the 
 
158 The English Drama. 
 
 Elizabethan period, Dryden and Otway. The 
 literary sins of the former, and the short 
 life of the latter, have left us unfortunately 
 but little even here to be admired and per- 
 petuated. Bare as were the Stuart reigns of 
 glorious deeds, unfortunate as their arms had 
 been in the field, clouded by disgrace as they 
 so frequently were, it is not strange that 
 tragedy should decline in merit and favor 
 amongst their play-writers. Having been 
 exiled and deprived of national existence for 
 a period, and during that time becoming in- 
 fected with the gayety and brilliancy of 
 France, the English Court, on its reassem- 
 bling, wished to contemplate an amusing and 
 flattering: reflection rather than a sombre, in- 
 structive and perhaps detracting one. Too 
 long depressed and corrupted by foreign 
 influences, the Court encouraged in life and 
 on the stage a frivolity, superficiality, gayety, 
 lewdness and freedom from all restraint, that 
 has made the time and literature of Charles 
 II. England's disgrace. But it must be re- 
 membered in dwelling upon this period that 
 these words of reproach concern only the 
 Court and the theatre, and do not apply to 
 the great mass of the people who looked with 
 indignation upon the existing corruption in 
 
The English Drama. 159 
 
 metropolitan circles, and whom the stage 
 either misrepresents or does not represent 
 at all. 
 
 The result of the depraved taste of its 
 patrons on the drama was to make it equally 
 depraved, and to bring forth a coterie of 
 dramatists who, for brilliancy of dialogue, 
 for wit, humor and construction, have rarely, 
 and for obscenity and immorality, certainly 
 never been equaled. With these men virtue 
 is but a name, which serves as a cloak to hide 
 the most revolting sins. Vice exists only in 
 those who are discovered. Nothing is repre- 
 hensible save exposure. Stupidit y, not 
 wirk edness, is condemned. Marriage is not 
 a sacred rite but a convenience, and an inevit- 
 able forerunner of crime. 
 
 This state of things could not, of course, 
 exist long. Being contrary to the English 
 nature it must perish. A reaction was in- 
 evitable. A reaction that would temporarily 
 paralyze while purifying the drama. With 
 the accession of William and Mary in 1688, 
 this reaction began. The Court frowned 
 upon the indecencies of the theatre. In 1704 
 Anne issued a royal order against its impro- 
 prieties. A national war broke down the 
 distinctions betwe^Tr^oy alist and Puritan, 
 
i6o The English Drama. 
 
 an d the_j &age c eased to re flec t one phase of 
 life alone. Finally, with Addison's " Cato," 
 in 17 13, and Steele's comedies, a crusade was 
 made against the imperfections, real and 
 imagined, of the stage. 
 
 With the very best of intentions these writers 
 brought about the most disastrous results. For 
 nearly a hundred years after the production of 
 " Cato " no really great tragedy was written. 
 The attempt to introduce pseudo-classicism 
 failed, but this imitation of foreign models, 
 stamped with the approval of the day, 
 diverted serious drama from its natural 
 course. The immediate result was thg.lran.s».., 
 lation and a daptation of the French, and a n 
 inferior^jmjta tion of an inferior school . 
 This did not satisfy, and finally we evolve 
 the domestic tragedy, the sentimental drama, 
 which has all the desired morality of tone, 
 and more than enough of morality of dia- 
 logue. Comedy in the Restoration lost its 
 vigor and poetry, with Steele its viciousness 
 and superficial brilliancy. Very little being 
 left, a leavening of sentiment was introduced 
 to make it acceptable. Both the serious and 
 comic d r a ma san k_into ._ meiliocrlty^ajailiM^ 
 tation of French and Spanish models. Little 
 of real value was written. 
 
The English Drama. 161 
 
 Into this field of sloth and unworthiness 
 David Garrick came, who, by his genius and 
 industry, was first to shame, then rouse his 
 countrymen. His unceasing efforts in reviv- 
 ing the Elizabethan and Restoration drama- 
 tists, revealed to his age what had been done 
 in the drama in the past, and, by his innumer- 
 able bright farces, and the comedies of the 
 elder Colman and himself, showed what might 
 be done in the future. Quickly follow the 
 works of Sheridan, Goldsmith, the younger 
 Colman, O'Keefe, etc., and the comedy of the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century may 
 justly be said to rival that of the Restoration 
 in brilliancy, and excel it in purity and tone. 
 
 I do not think this period has ever received 
 its just meed of praise. A period that has pro- 
 duced such sterling works as " The Rivals," 
 " School for Scandal," " Heir at Law," " She 
 Stoops to Conquer," " Wild Oats," is worthy 
 of more attention than it has received. 
 
 The domestic drama likewise has advanced, 
 and though still full of imperfections, has 
 developed into the poetic and interesting, if 
 unnatural, melodrama, such as " The Iron 
 Chest." Tragedy has contributed u Douglas," 
 " The Roman Father," " Virginia," etc., none, 
 however, of great merit. 
 
1 62 The English Drama. 
 
 At the close of the eighteenth century we 
 find the stage in possession of a brilliant 
 comedy, an entertaining melodrama, a medi- 
 ocre tragedy, an amusing farce, and an infant 
 and popular opera. 
 
 Having rapidly glanced at the progress of 
 the English drama during the one hundred 
 and forty years which this lecture covers, we 
 must now turn our attention to the steps by 
 which this progress was made. We have 
 already stated that Davenant's musical pieces, 
 or operas, as " The Siege of Rhodes," had 
 opened the way for the return of the drama 
 proper ; that the drama of this epoch, taking 
 its initiative from the Court which supported 
 it, was not a national development, but a 
 product of the combined influence of the 
 classic, the French, the Italian and the Spanish 
 play, reflecting brilliantly in its tragedy an 
 unreal existence, and in its comedy the 
 depraved Court of the second Charles ; that 
 the. popularity of the stage and its occu- 
 pants were equaled only by their immor- 
 ality. 
 
 Although we have assigned already reasons 
 for the condition of the Restoration drama, 
 yet we have not accounted for the inferior 
 English product based on such French 
 
The English Drama.. 163 
 
 classics as Moliere and Racine. It is remark- 
 able that a series of French writers, possessing 
 so many excellencies, should, by their 
 influence, produce a series of English writers 
 possessing so many faults. To be sure the 
 French models chosen in tragedy, Corneille 
 and Racine, were pseudo - classicists and 
 exponents of an unnatural school, and in so 
 far their direct effect was injurious. But 
 these writers were in perfect sympathy with 
 their national spirit and time, and possess 
 many excellencies. It is unfortunate that the 
 English failed to perceive this important 
 lesson of sympathy with one's people and age, 
 and neglecting the good points, should have 
 copied only the meretricious. The spirit of 
 French tragedy is entirely foreign to the 
 English nature, and neither that nor its sound 
 morality was caught by the British writer. 
 To Racine and Corneille English tragedy 
 became indebted for its form and verse, for 
 the substitution of rime for blank verse ; but 
 its spirit was derived from the wildly impro- 
 bable French romances of Mile, de Scudery, 
 etc., which are filled with astonishing heroic 
 deeds, melodious names, ravishing descrip- 
 tions, undying love ; heroes like Artamanes, 
 who alone slay one hundred thousand men ; 
 
164 The English Drama. 
 
 heroines who suffer unspeakable sorrows ; 
 villains of incomparable wickedness. 
 
 Moliere, the model taken for comedy, 
 must not be held accountable for the sins of 
 his British, imitators. He was apparently 
 entirely above and beyond the comprehen- 
 sion of his island neighbors. Fortunately for 
 comedy, it was deemed unsuitable for rime, 
 and passed almost wholly into prose. Even 
 in tragedy the innovation or rather revival 
 (for it had previously existed) of rime being 
 artificial, could not live long. Dryden's 
 whim gave it a passing success, as his sup- 
 port did the " heroic " tragedy, both of which 
 were doomed when his approbation should 
 be withdrawn. 
 
 The Italian influence is confined chiefly to 
 the introduction of the opera and of music as 
 an accessory to the play. Shakespeare's and 
 Fletcher's plays become adorned with mu- 
 sical accompaniments. Dryden, Gay and later 
 Sheridan produced operas. Finally the bal- 
 let was introduced. All of these novelties, 
 however good in themselves, were evil in their 
 effects, in so far as they individually and col- 
 lectively detracted from the demands on the 
 literary element in the play. Yet to the 
 credit of the English people be it said that 
 
The English Drama. 165 
 
 even in that age of false and perverted taste 
 a sufficient admiration for the Elizabethan 
 dramas existed to warrant their production, 
 though unfortunately adapted, re-arranged 
 and generally tortured. 
 
 The attempt to re-establish the use of 
 rime in English tragedy was first made by 
 Robert Boyle, Earl of Orrery ( -1679). ^ e 
 was the originator of that dramatic type of 
 doubtful value, the " heroic " drama. The 
 first of these remarkable productions was his 
 " Black Prince," which was acted in 1667. 
 This was followed by a number of others, all 
 equally uninteresting, unnatural and unreal. 
 They are to be noted only for the consistency 
 with which the " heroic " couplet is used. 
 
 The champion of the "heroic " drama, how- 
 ever, the man whose genius alone made it 
 popular and whose example gave it whatever 
 lease of life it had, was that inconsistent liter- 
 ary dictator of his age, John Dryden (1631- 
 1700). This intellectual giant, whose ener- 
 gies were so misdirected, whose self-conceit 
 was so vast, whose opportunities for good 
 were so great, and whose attainments in this 
 direction were so insignificant, was the cen- 
 tral figure of the Restoration literature. One 
 ♦of the greatest masters of style and verse in 
 
1 66 The English Drama. 
 
 our language, the greatest poet of his time, 
 undoubtedly he was the man and the only 
 man who might have turned the current of 
 corruption into purer channels and have re- 
 vived the Elizabethan spirit of the drama. 
 But the man was not so great as the poet, and 
 Dryden espoused the cause of that vitiated 
 taste which sought entertainment in the 
 " heroic " drama and the licentious comedy. 
 Although thoroughly disliking the latter 
 dramatic type r and believing himself unsuited 
 for its requirements, yet,, freed as he was here 
 from false notions of verse (comedy was now 
 written in prose) some of his most brilliant 
 achievements were in this field. 
 
 Dryden was a well-known writer and a mem- 
 ber of tke Royal Society before he became 
 associated with the stage. Necessity first in- 
 duced him to seek this means of earning a live- 
 lihood. His earliest works were not success- 
 ful. In conjunction with his brother-in-law, Sir 
 Robert Howard, he produced u The Indian 
 Queen," in 1664, which met with considerable 
 favor. In the following year, 1665, Dryden's 
 tragedy, " The Indian Emperor, or The Con- 
 quest of Mexico by the Spaniards," was re- 
 ceived with enthusiastic applause. Both of 
 these plays were specimens of the " heroic"' 
 
The English Drama. 167 
 
 drama. Love and honor were the all absorb- 
 ing subjects. The riming couplet was used 
 throughout and at once attained popularity. 
 Dryden entered immediately the front rank 
 of contemporary dramatists, and in his own 
 estimation, of all dramatists. 
 
 In 1667 or 68 Dryden published his "Essay 
 of Dramatic Poesy." This excellent treatise 
 contains many truths and a large number of 
 sophisms. Dryden recognizes the exalted 
 position of the English stage, refutes many 
 erroneous accusations made against it, and 
 perceives many of the merits in Shakespeare 
 and Fletcher. But by this article he also en- 
 deavors to justify the substitution of rime for 
 blank verse. His defence of rime may be 
 rejected unhesitatingly. Indeed in later years 
 he did not scruple when weary of rime to 
 discard it and to return to blank verse. 
 
 About 1679 ne published a second essay 
 on the subject, entitled " Grounds of Criti- 
 cism in Tragedy," in which his views are 
 seen to be greatly altered, and by which 
 he dooms the "heroic" tragedy. He per- 
 ceives the errors of extravagance and over- 
 elaboration, and begins to desire those 
 powers of compactness and characterization 
 so admirably displayed by Shakespeare, It 
 
1 68 The English Drama. 
 
 is unfortunate that his admiration of the 
 great poet should have led him to mutilate 
 his works. His adaptation of " The Tern- , 
 pest," for which Davenant is partly responsi- 
 ble, was an early attempt, it is true. But 
 " Troilus and Cressida, or Truth Found 
 Too Late," and "All for Love, or The 
 World Well Lost" (Shakespeare's "Antony 
 and Cleopatra "), were later works. The last- 
 named is not unworthy of pfaise, as it con- 
 tains many beautiful passages and shows 
 what Dryden's genius, rightly directed, might 
 have accomplished. In his declining years 
 the poet acknowledges his mistake and his 
 sin against literature in a pathetic " Ode to 
 Mrs. Anne Killigrew " (1686). 
 
 His best known plays that have not been 
 mentioned already, are " Secret Love, or The 
 Maiden Queen " (1667), "Tyrranic Love, or 
 The Royal Martyr" (1669), "Almanzor and 
 Almahide, or The Conquest of Granada by 
 the Spaniards" (1670), "Don Sebastian" 
 (1690), " King Arthur" (1691), "The Spanish 
 Friar " (1681), " Sir Martin Mar-All " (1667), 
 iC riarriage-a-la-Mode " (1673), etc., etc. 
 
 Besides Dryden, the drama of the Restora- 
 tion, that is to say, the drama which extends 
 iron 1660 to the production of Addison's 
 
The English Drama. 169 
 
 " Cato " in 17 13, boasts the names of such 
 writers of tragedy as Elkanah Settle, John 
 Crowne, Nathaniel Lee, Thomas Otway, 
 Thomas Southerne, George Granville, 
 LoRrr L^nsdowne, and Nicholas Rowe ; and 
 of such writers of comedy as Sir George 
 Etherege, Sir George Sedley, John Lacy, 
 Mrs. Aphro Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Man- 
 ley, Thomas D'Urfey, Thomas Shadwell, 
 William Wycherly, Sir John Vanburgh, 
 George Farquhar, William Congreve and 
 Colley Cibber. By this somewhat arbitrary 
 division into writers of tragedies and writers 
 of comedy, it is not intended to imply that 
 the dramatists whose names have been placed 
 in the one list never wrote anything outside 
 of the class in which they occur. But it is 
 intended to show in what class their best 
 work, and the greater part of it, has been 
 done ; the work by which they earned their 
 fame and which entitles them to remembrance. 
 John Crowne ( -1703 circ.) was a dra- 
 matist who knew what pleased his audience 
 and gave it to them. As a result he was a 
 popular but not an excellent author. He 
 wrote both in rime and blank verse, though 
 he handled the latter better. His successful 
 compositions include both tragedies and 
 
170 The English Drama. 
 
 comedies. Possessed of considerable skill 
 and fluency, he lacks refinement and accuracy. 
 His tragedies include " The Destruction of 
 Jerusalem," " Thyestes " and " Regulus." 
 Amongst his comedies may be noted " Sir 
 Courtley Nice," " City Politicks " and " Mar- 
 ried Beau." 
 
 Nathaniel Lee (1650-1690), a successful 
 writer of this period, was a man of consider- 
 able power, impetuous, ambitious, passionate ; 
 so miserably excitable of temperament that 
 in 1684 he was for some time insane, and in 
 1690 met his death — it is said in a drunken 
 fit. He composed in rime and belonged to 
 Dryden's "heroic" school until 1677, when 
 he began to use blank verse. His plays, of 
 which the best known are " The Rival 
 Queens " (1677), and " The Massacre of Paris " 
 (1690), are extravagant and bombastic. 
 
 Thomas Otway (1651-1685) is a lamentable 
 instance of a man possessed of great genius, 
 but whose brilliant faculties have been 
 blunted and prematurely destroyed by weak- 
 ness and immorality ; a man whose grave 
 was dug early by despair and debauchery. 
 It is true that he was unfortunate. He had 
 been well educated, but was left penniless. 
 It was his misfortune to love without recipn> 
 
The English Drama. 171 
 
 cation. He was at times favored, at times 
 rebuffed by noble patrons. His life was one 
 of recklessness and wretchedness. His work 
 reflects this. Sometimes it is coarse and 
 repellent, oftener inexpressibly tender and 
 beautiful. He excels in his love scenes. 
 Notwithstanding all his faults he has written 
 probably the finest tragedy in the Restoration 
 drama, " Venice Preserved." The subject of 
 this play, a conspiracy to overthrew the 
 Venetian oligarchic despotism, is admirably 
 chosen, being both interesting and dramatic. 
 The characters of Belvidera, the heroine 
 who induces her husband to betray the con- 
 spiracy, Jaffier, the traitor, and Pierre, the 
 patriot, are excellently drawn, and have 
 served to maintain the popularity of the 
 piece even into recent times. Other of 
 Otway's plays are " Don Carlos," " The 
 Orphan," " Caius Marius " (a willful plagiar- 
 ism), " The Atheist," etc. His comedies are 
 wretched compositions. 
 
 Thomas Southerne (1660-1746) w r as a 
 prominent and respected author of his time. 
 " Oroonoko " (1696), " The Fatal Marriage" 
 (1694), and " The Loyal Brother " are amongst 
 his contributions to the drama. 
 
 George Granville, Lord Lansdowne 
 
172 The English Drama. 
 
 (1667-1733), is chiefly interesting in that his 
 work, " Heroic Love," may be said to connect 
 the Restoration and " Augustan " period. 
 Of no particular merit as an author. 
 
 Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718) was in his 
 time dramatist, poet-laureate and editor of 
 Shakespeare's plays. His fame rests chiefly 
 upon this last undertaking. Notwithstand- 
 ing his admiration of Shakespeare and his 
 desire to follow in his foot-steps, Rowe 
 showed himself unable to appreciate his 
 master when he said that Shakespeare excelled 
 in male characters only. As a dramatist 
 Rowe was gifted with refinement, power and 
 considerable skill in portraying character 
 and in devising situations. He was lacking, 
 however, in poetic passion and elevation. 
 "Jane Shore" (1714), "Lady Jane Grey 
 (1715), and " The Royal Convert " (1707), are 
 his most notable works, the first of which is 
 still occasionally acted. 
 
 Sir George Etherege (1636-1694 circ), 
 the first in point of time on our list of comic 
 dramatists, contributed three plays to the 
 stage of the later Stuarts, " The Comical 
 Revenge, or Love in a Tub," " She Would if 
 She Could," and " The Man of Mode, or Sir 
 Topling Flutter. Where there is so little to 
 
The English Drama. 173 
 
 commend it is just as well to be silent, a 
 remark which is equally applicable to the 
 productions of Sir George Sedley and 
 Thomas D'Urfey, a plagiarist of the deepest 
 die. 
 
 John Lacy (died 1681) was one of those 
 actors who fought under the Stuart banner 
 during the Revolution, and who in 1660 
 returned with Charles to re-pursue his former 
 avocation of player, to which was subse- 
 quently added that of play-wright. Though 
 coarse, there is much brightness and skill 
 shown in his comedies, the best of which is 
 " The Old Troop." It is to this actor-author 
 that we owe that marvelous adaptation of 
 Shakespeare's " Taming of the Shrew," 
 " Sauny the Scot." 
 
 Mrs. Aphro Behn, (the divine Astraea) 
 Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Centlivre, form a trio 
 of female dramatists whose plays were many 
 and revolting. In the mass of disreputable 
 matter which these women wrote, but two 
 comedies (both Mrs. Centlivre's) deserve any 
 praise. " The Busy Body," and " The Won- 
 der a Woman Keeps a Secret." The former 
 contains the excellent character of Marplot, 
 and the latter that of Don Felix. 
 
 Thomas Shadwell (1640-1692), poet- 
 
174 The English Drama. 
 
 laureate and royal historiographer to Wil- 
 liam and Mary, was a writer who, though 
 coarse, was evidently an opponent of social 
 wrongs. He admired Ben Jonson and sought 
 to imitate him. In his life and temperament 
 he resembled his master, though falling short 
 in merit. A list of his plays includes " The 
 Sullen Lovers, or The Impertinents," " The 
 Virtuoso," " Epsom Wells," " The Lancashire 
 Witches." Shadwell is one of the first writers 
 to introduce the character of an Irishman 
 into comedy. 
 
 Despite the ascendency the " heroic " 
 drama had attained under Dryden, there 
 were many who were not blind to its defects 
 and lamented its influence. Accordingly, to 
 counteract the effect of this pernicious type, 
 and to purify the public taste, the riming 
 tragedies were attacked by that most power- 
 ful of weapons,' ridicule. In 167 1 appeared 
 the famous burlesque-comedy, " The Re- 
 hearsal," written by George Villiers, Duke of 
 Buckingham, and others. This play was the 
 result of much and prolonged labor, which 
 was rewarded by unprecedented success. 
 Twenty-one editions were published, and 
 many imitations of it have appeared in sub- 
 sequent years, the most noteworthy being 
 
The English Drama. 175 
 
 Sheridan's "Critic." Its effect on the 
 " heroic " type must have been considerable, 
 though so long as Dryden wrote not even 
 ridicule could destroy its popularity. Yet 
 without the check imposed by " The Re- 
 hearsal," it is difficult to say to what extremes 
 the " heroic " drama might not have gone. 
 
 We now approach that quartette of come- 
 dians whose brilliancy and immorality have 
 attracted the admiration and disgust of all 
 succeeding generations. Wycherly (who in 
 point of time preceded the others, and might 
 rather be said to be a contemporary of Dry- 
 den), Congreve, Vanburgh and Farquhar. 
 The first, whose broad and pointed wit was 
 once so popular, but is to us so unnatural, 
 was the model for the three younger men. 
 They were more gifted, more decent and 
 more refined than Wycherly, though equally 
 as corrupt. Of the four, Congreve haS been 
 given the first place by reason of his surpas- 
 sing brilliancy of dialogue, wit and humor. 
 After a long interval this school was to re- 
 appear in a purified but equally meritorious 
 form in Sheridan and Colman, in whom it 
 was to reach its climax and culmination. 
 
 William Wycherly (1640-1715), a vicious 
 but remarkably powerful comic dramatist, is 
 
176 The English Drama. 
 
 in his dramas and his life a fit exponent of 
 the corrupt and superficial Court of Charles 
 II. In his plays we meet with strong 
 characters, acting and speaking naturally — 
 we might almost say too much so. His satire 
 is keen and his wit cynical and merciless. 
 He uncloaks vice, it is true, but less with a 
 purpose of rendering punishment than of 
 furnishing amusement. " Love in a Wood " 
 (1672), " The Dancing Master (1673), "The 
 Country Wife" (1675), an d "The Plain 
 Dealer" (1677), are his best known works. 
 " The Country Wife," as Wycherly wrote it, 
 is an appalling and. vicious picture of a certain 
 phase of Restoration life. Remodeled by 
 Garrick, as " The Country Girl," in which 
 the spirit and cynicism is preserved, while 
 much that is offensive has been eliminated, it 
 has been successfully revived at various times. 
 The favor with which it has met being largely 
 due to the character of Peggy, a hoyden, 
 which, in the hands of a clever actress, may 
 be made a delightful role. The character 
 won fame at different times and in different 
 land* for two charming actresses, Mrs. Jordan 
 and Ada Rehan. " The Plain Dealer " is an 
 English version of Moliere's " Misanthrope." 
 Wycherley's play is far inferior to the French 
 
The English Drama. 177 
 
 model, and his hero, " Manly," is an example 
 ot now little Moliere was understood by his 
 would-be British followers. Although a dis- 
 gusting, it is undoubtedly a powerful play. 
 tk The Dancing Master," composed on a 
 Spanish model, is exceedingly clever and 
 interesting. 
 
 William Congreve (1 670-1 729) was the 
 brightest luminary of the later Restoration 
 drama. Dryden, in his old age, perceiving 
 the merit of the young author, gladly yielded 
 his exalted position to the only man whom he 
 deemed worthy to be his successor. It was 
 perhaps unfortunate that Congreve's genius 
 was so universally recognized in his own day. 
 Had it been otherwise he might have been 
 spurred on to greater endeavors. 
 
 As it was he has left but five works, one of 
 which, " The Mourning Bride " (1697), is a 
 tragedy. His first production, " The Old 
 Bachelor " (1693), an excellent though not 
 a strikingly original work, met with unstinted 
 applause. " The Double Dealer," produced 
 the same year, is a comedy of the first rank, 
 and won enthusiastic praise from its author's 
 contemporaries. Two unusually strong char- 
 acters found in this piece are Maskwell and 
 Lady Touchwood. " Love for Love " 
 
178 The English Drama. 
 
 appeared in 1695, "The Way of the World " 
 in 1700. The latter, though of great excel- 
 lence, failed in representation. After this Con- 
 greve abandoned play-writing. His single 
 tragedy, " The Mourning Bride " (1697) 
 reveals the one-sidedness of Congreve's art. 
 He was not a tragedian. He was also 
 the author of a masque, " The Judgement 
 of Paris, " and of an opera, " Semele, " 
 neither of much importance. 
 
 His dramatic achievements, though bring- 
 ing him great fame, were not the source of the 
 same pride to Congreve that they would have 
 been to another man. He preferred the title 
 of an English gentleman to that of a dramatist. 
 Nevertheless it is as dramatist that he will 
 be remembered longest. In the brilliancy, 
 grace and ease of his dialogue he excelled all 
 contemporaries and most predecessors. He 
 was one of the wittiest of Englishmen and 
 his plays are amongst the wittiest in the 
 drama. His characters and plots are vigor- 
 ously and skillfully handled. But unfortun- 
 ately Congreve's merits as a writer are only 
 superficial ones. The spirit of his works, as 
 well as their language, is frivolous and 
 immoral. 
 
 Sir John Vanburgh (1666 circ-1726), as 
 
The English Drama. 179 
 
 well as being one of the leading dramatists 
 was also one of the most eminent architects 
 of his day. His comedies are vivacious, 
 fluent, well-constructed and sparkling. One 
 of his characters is strikingly original and life- 
 like, Lord Foppington in " The Relapse, or 
 Virtue in Danger." This play, produced in 
 1697, was Vanburgh's first and best work. 
 " The Provoked Wife," " The Confederacy," 
 " The Mistake," " The False Friend," and an 
 unfinished play, which Cibber afterwards 
 completed and presented in 1728 under the 
 title of " The Provoked Husband," (Vanbrugh 
 had named it " A Trip to London "), all show 
 their author in a highly brilliant but immoral 
 light. 
 
 George Farquhar (1678-1707) was one of 
 the first of the distinguished Irishmen who 
 have written for the stage, a list of whose 
 names includes Sheridan, Goldsmith, Bouci- 
 cault, etc., etc. Possessed of those qualities 
 which were shared in general by his contem- 
 poraries, brilliancy, vivacity, humor, accur- 
 acy in description of a certain kind of man- 
 ners, coarseness and invention, Farquhar also 
 revealed more freshness and originality than 
 did his colleagues. His characters and situa- 
 tions are often dubious, but his treatment of 
 
180 The English Drama. 
 
 them is vigorous and interesting. His mas- 
 terpiece is " The Bea Q tratagem " (1707), 
 which has ever been a vorite on the stage, 
 and wjiich contains one of Garrick's best 
 roles, Archer. "The Recruiting Officer " is 
 another highly succe^of. jtfort. " The Incon- 
 stant " (1703), suggested oy Fletcher's " Wild 
 Goose Chase," is likewis . very meritorious 
 work. His first play, " -ove in a Bottle," 
 was given to the publu which received it 
 with approbation, in 1698. 
 
 Colley Cibber (1671-1757) was an actor, 
 author and manager. . He was a great favorite 
 as an actor, particularly in the role of fops, 
 and was seen on the stage as late as 1745, 
 although he retired in 1732. In 1730 he was 
 appointed poet laureate. As ; author he 
 endeavored, though not alwa} lccessfully, 
 to reform the comedy of his /. " Love's 
 Last Shift," suggested by Vanbrugh's " The 
 Relapse," " Woman's Wit," " The (vareless 
 Husband," The Lady's Last Stake," and " She 
 Would and She Would Not," are commend- 
 able efforts. The last-named is still occasion- 
 ally given, and constitutes one of the bills in 
 Mr. Augustin Daly's extensive repertoire. 
 
 We have now reached an important epoch 
 in the history of the drama. From the earliest 
 
The English Drama. 181 
 
 times we have watched it acquire growth, 
 vigor, form, symn- y. The inner ethical 
 beauties and the ward charms of verse 
 and dialogue have been .elaborated. In 
 Shakespeare we ha^e beheld the apex of 
 dramatic perfectk u In his immediate suc- 
 cessors, the Elizabethan dramatists, we have 
 noticed the decl'., „of ethical perception, in 
 symmetry and gr< *iually in vigor and verse. 
 Then came the C yil War, a period barely 
 bridged by the supporters of the drama. 
 With the accession of Charles the drama 
 sprang once more into life, but though not 
 wanting in talented authors to support it, it 
 was so hampered, restrained and corrupted 
 by false notions of life, manners and poetry 
 that all gQftd qualities, save brilliancy and 
 fluency, wc 'iscarded, and its baser qualities, 
 its imperft ins were glaringly exhibited. 
 The drama without a moral purpose can not 
 exist 1 mg. When play-writing sinks to the 
 level it did inthe Restoration authors, it must 
 either be annihilated or purified. The most 
 forcible and almost irrefutable attack the 
 stage ever received was made at this period 
 (1698) by the famous Jeremy Collier, in his 
 book, " A Short View of the Immorality and 
 Profaneness of the English Stage." Dryden, 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 Congreve and Vanbrugh all attempted to 
 refute, but really maintained Collier's asser- 
 tions. The effect made by this book was 
 extensive and visible. It became popular to 
 save the sinners in the fifth act. Colly Cibber 
 made earnest efforts for improvements. But 
 the reformation, and well-nigh the annihila- 
 tion, of the drama was brought about by 
 those masters of style, and eminently well- 
 intentioned men, Addison and Steele. It is 
 unquestionably to these authors that we 
 owe the purification of the stage. It is 
 unfortunate that we must ascribe also to one 
 of them the death, or at least the prolonged 
 sleep, of English tragedy. Comedy, being a 
 description of manners and characters, is 
 more tenacious of life than her serious sister, 
 and will always have a past, a present and a 
 future. Tragedy, like a camelia, is a flower 
 demanding certain conditions of growth, 
 deprived of which it withers and perishes. 
 
 It is seldom that it is granted to a man to 
 achieve lasting fame by a single work. Yet 
 upon Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was be- 
 stowed this favor. " Cato," a tragedy on clas- 
 sical models, or what Addison took to be clas- 
 sical models, was the work that established its 
 author's fame as a dramatist, and marks an 
 
The English Drama. 183 
 
 epoch in dramatic history. Built on the 
 plan it is, the play is unnatural in action, not 
 happy in its characterization and contains a 
 number of intrusive episodes. Its dialogue, 
 though often stilted, is chaste and sometimes 
 effective. Its extraordinary success was due 
 entirely to the time in which it was produced, 
 when hostile politicians eagerly sought and 
 approved what they chose to consider as in 
 accordance and praise of their deeds and 
 views. " Cato " was not intended for the 
 stage, and was not produced until 1713, many 
 years after it was first written. The injury it 
 did to tragedy was not in the adoption of a 
 purer tone, but in the discarding of the 
 natural demands and form of English drama, 
 and the apparently successful introduction 
 of rules foreign to its existence. 
 
 Sir Richard Steele (1671-1729) seconded 
 Addison in his endeavor to correct the 
 manners and morals of that period, and to- 
 gether they may be said to have in a large 
 measure succeeded. Certain it is that licen- 
 tiousness and indecency were henceforth 
 banished from the stage. Steele exercised 
 his talents to popularizing virtue and to 
 rendering profanity and immorality abhor- 
 rent: But lacking Shakespearean vigor and 
 
184 The English Dra?na. 
 
 the Restoration brilliancy, and discarding 
 its broad wit and coarse intrigue, Steele 
 was obliged to call into use sentiment 
 to make his plays acceptable. This was the 
 origin of the " sentimental " comedy, which, 
 with the " sentimental " drama, both in- 
 ferior dramatic types, held the stage for 
 many years. Steele's best plays are " The 
 Funeral or Grief a la Mode " (1702) (an excel- 
 lent work), "The Lying Lover" (the first in- 
 stance of " sentimental " comedy proper), 
 " The Tender Husband (1705), and "The 
 Conscious Lovers " (1722). 
 
 The Restoration drama may be said to 
 cease with the death of Anne, though it had 
 practically disappeared with the advent of 
 Steele and Addison some years before. A 
 few plays belonging to the old school 
 appeared afterwards, Cibber's version of Van- 
 brugh's "A Provoked Husband," in 1729, 
 being the last of these. With this solitary 
 exception we may say that from 17 14 to the 
 production of the elder Colman's "Jealous 
 Wife," in 1761, or for a period of nearly fifty 
 years, no genuinely meritorious comedy was 
 produced. As regards original productions, 
 the stage was given up to mediocre trage- 
 dies, which were soon forgotten, opera, 
 
The English Drama. 185 
 
 domestic tragedy, or melodrama, sentimental 
 comedy and farce. 
 
 The tragedies of this period do not call for 
 notice. 
 
 The operas in that they were so unusually 
 popular, especially one of them, must not be 
 passed by. Ever since Davenant's " Siege of 
 Rhodes," produced during the Common- 
 wealth, this style of performance had been 
 growing in favor. Music had been written to 
 many plays ; dances and songs had been 
 introduced. Italian opera in one form or 
 another had become an institution. In 1727 
 Gay's famous " Beggar's Opera " appeared. 
 Its success was so great that it was given in 
 London for sixty-three consecutive nights, a 
 run then unprecedented, and met with equal 
 applause in the provinces. For the time 
 being Italian opera was driven from London. 
 Such was the rage his work created that 
 ladies carried about fans with the songs 
 written on them, the leading singer married 
 a duke, and John Gay, dying in 1732, was 
 buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Amongst the farce writers of this period, a 
 class in which we find the names of Garrick 
 and Fielding, must be mentioned one of the 
 most remarkable figures in the history of the 
 
1 86 The English Drama. 
 
 drama, Samuel Foote : a university man, a 
 law student, a man who squandered three 
 fortunes, an actor, an author of some twenty- 
 five elongated farces, a manager, who for ten 
 years successfully kept his theatre, the Hay- 
 market, open without license. His most 
 popular pieces were " The Diversions of a 
 Morning," his initial effort, " The Auction of 
 Pictures," " The Mirror," in which the Meth- 
 odists are satirized, " The Bankrupt," which 
 attacks the newspapers, "The Liar," etc. 
 He died in 1777. 
 
 Henry Fielding (1707-1754) wrote some 
 twenty pieces, of which the best known are 
 " The Wedding Day " and " Tom Thumb." 
 
 David Garrick (1716-1779) is one of the 
 most illustrious names in the annals of the 
 stage or the history of the drama. It will 
 pass without question, I take it, that Garrick 
 was one of the greatest actors the English 
 stage has ever seen. His achievements in 
 this line are too well known for mention here. 
 The actor who was equally great as tragedian 
 or comedian, will not soon be forgotten. 
 What he did for the drama as an author was 
 probably not considerable, although he wrote 
 some of the best farces of his century, and 
 assisted in the composition of one of the best 
 
The English Dra??ia. 187 
 
 comedies of his time. It is, however, by his 
 untiring and successful efforts to re-instate 
 the Elizabethan drama, and especially Shake- 
 speare, in the possession of the stage, and the 
 favor of the critics and people, that he has 
 won for himself unending praise. 
 
 Garrick perceived the low ebb to which 
 the drama had sunk. He perceived the neg- 
 lect for the masters, and the vitiated taste of 
 the people, who could applaud such works as 
 " The Beggar's Opera," and " George Barn- 
 well." Early inspired with a love for the 
 theatre and what was best in it, he was re- 
 pelled by the roaring cant that passed for 
 tragedy, the whining grief, the unreal terror 
 and love-making then common to the stage. 
 In 1740 the young ambitious Garrick deter- 
 mined to revive Shakespeare and reform the 
 theatre. He made his first appearance as an 
 actor under the name of Lyddal at Ipswich, 
 assuming the character of " Aboan " in South- 
 erne's " Oroonoko." He was so favorably re- 
 ceived that he shortly risked a London debut 
 as Richard III. This took place at Good- 
 man's Fields, and was a tremendous success. 
 Garrick's salary at this time was ^5 a week. 
 From this time on his success was assured. 
 In 1747 Garrick became manager of the 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 Drury Lane Theatre, which position he re- 
 tained until 1776. During his management 
 he produced in the orignal texts twenty-four 
 of Shakespeare's works. 
 
 He revived a number of the Restoration 
 plays, after having made suitable alterations 
 and eliminations. Amongst these plays may 
 be narried " The Rehearsal," " Country Wife," 
 (called by Garrick " The Country Girl,") 
 " The Mistake," " The Wonder," " Mourning 
 Bride," " Venice Preserved," etc. Of the 
 Elizabethans, Shakespeare, Jonson and 
 Fletcher were the favored authors. He pro- 
 duced of the contemporaneous drama Dr. 
 Johnson's " Irene," which failed as a stage rep- 
 resentation; Younge's tragedies, " The Broth- 
 ers " (1719), and " The Revenge" (1721), 
 (neither of much lasting merit, though suffi- 
 ciently successful to yieJd Younge a profit of 
 ^1,000, which he gave to the missionaries): 
 Edward Moore's " Gamester " (1753) ; Glover'^ 
 "Boadicea"; Whitehead's tragedies, "The 
 Roman Father" (1750) and " Creusa " (1754); 
 both highly praised in their day ; Dr. Smol- 
 lett's " Reprisal," a farce ; Home's " Doug- 
 las"; Crisp's " Virginia"; Colman's "Polly 
 Honeycombe " and " The Jealous Wife," etc., 
 also his own numerous farces and his joint 
 
The English Drama. 189 
 
 comedy with Colman, " The Clandestine Mar- 
 riage." 
 
 For twenty-nine years his theatre was 
 the home of all that was worthiest in the 
 native English Drama. He revived the best 
 of former ages, and encouraged the best of 
 his own. He was not always wise in his 
 handling of Shakespeare's works, as we view 
 them to-day, but he was " wise in his genera- 
 tion." In 1769 he arranged a Shakespeare 
 Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon, and after- 
 wards represented it at Drury Lane for 
 ninety-two successive nights. 
 
 A list of his own works would include 
 " The Clandestine Marriage," " Bon Ton," 
 " The Irish Widow," " Lilliput," " Lethe," 
 " Farmer's Return from London," " The 
 Guardian," etc., etc. 
 
 He retired from management in 1776 ; made 
 his final appearance as " Don Felix," in Mrs. 
 Centlivre's " The Wonder," June 10th, 1776; 
 died January 20th, 1779, and was buried in 
 Westminster Abbey. David Garrick, a good 
 husband, a polished gentleman, a great actor, 
 he was the ornament of his age, and the re- 
 former of the stage and dramatic literature. 
 He found the theatre at its lowest ebb and he 
 resigned it elevated and re- invigorated into 
 
190 The English Drama. 
 
 the hands of a series of brilliant writers. 
 Garrick wished to make the theatre a place 
 of learning and culture. So far did he suc- 
 ceed that it has been said there were in his 
 day four estates, the King, Lords, Commons 
 and the Drury Lane Theatre. 
 
 A name intimately associated with David 
 Garrick's is that of George Colman, the 
 elder (1 732-1794). A writer of considerable 
 merit of farces and comedies, such as " Polly 
 Honeycombe " (1760), " The Jealous Wife" 
 (1761), and "The Clandestine Marriage" 
 (1766). Colman was also, for some time, 
 joint manager of Convent Garden, and for 
 many years manager of the Haymarket 
 Theatre. While at Convent Garden, Colman 
 produced plays by Isaac Bickerstaafe, Arthur 
 Murphy, Mrs. Inchbald, etc., and during his 
 managerial career Goldsmith's " She Stoops 
 to Conquer," O'Keefe's works and those of 
 his son. His own plays were strong in char- 
 acter, and were aimed at fashionable follies. 
 
 The dramatists of the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century are obscured by the 
 radiance emanating from one great name, a 
 name that belongs alike to a statesman, an 
 orator and a dramatist, Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan. Richard Brinsley (1751-1816) 
 
The English Drama. 191 
 
 was the son of an Irish actor, Thomas Sheri- 
 dan, and a famous novelist, Frances Sheridan. 
 He was born in Dublin, and was well 
 educated. Early in life he eloped with, 
 secretly married, and fought two duels for a 
 beautiful singer, by name Linley. 
 
 On the 17th of January, 1775, his comedy, 
 " The Rivals," was produced at Convent Gar- 
 den. Owing to the bad rendering of Sir 
 Lucius O'Trigger by the actor who assumed 
 that part, the play failed on the first night ; 
 but a change being made in the cast, the 
 comedy became the great favorite it has re- 
 mained ever since. 
 
 In conjunction with his father-in-law and 
 Dr. Ford, Sheridan bought Garrick's interest 
 in Drury Lane in the year 1776. 
 
 In 1777 appeared " The School for Scandal," 
 which has been termed the best comedy in 
 the English language. " The Critic " was 
 brought out in 1779. His last work, largely 
 a translation from Kotzebue, was " Pizarro " 
 
 (i779)- 
 
 Sheridan was at different times a member of 
 Parliament, an under-secretary of state and 
 secretary of treasury. It was Sheridan that 
 conducted the attack in the celebrated 
 Warren-Hastings trial. Famous as an orator 
 
192 The English Drama. 
 
 and writer, reckless in his manner of life, 
 ruined by the burning of Drury Lane, he died 
 in poverty and distress in 1816, and was buried 
 in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Besides the plays already mentioned, Sheri- 
 dan was the author of a popular farce, " St. 
 Patrick's Day," and an opera (music by 
 Linley, Sheridan's father-in-law), " The Du- 
 enna," both produced in 1775. " The Duenna " 
 combines the merits of legitimate comedy 
 with the attractions of poetry and song, and 
 was so successful as to be given seventy-five 
 times at Convent Garden during the season. 
 
 It is remarkable that many of our best come- 
 dies have been written by very young men. 
 All of Congreve's plays were written before 
 he was twenty-five. Farquhar died at the 
 age of twenty-nine. Vanbrugh was only 
 a youth when he planned " The Relapse." 
 Sheridan wrote " The Rivals" at the age of 
 twenty-four, and " The School for Scandal " 
 at twenty-six. 
 
 However, the latter play had been long 
 contemplated, and was altered and re- 
 written a number of times previous to its 
 production, the part of Sir Peter Teasle 
 having been a rather late addition. The 
 principal merit of the play lies neither in the 
 
The English Drama. 193 
 
 rather slender plot nor in any sympathy we 
 have for the characters, but rather in the 
 strikingly natural situations, the skillful hand- 
 ling of the piece, the constantly brilliant wit, 
 the animation, the sense of the ridiculous and 
 the finish given to the whole. The comedy is 
 a triumph of art, and its merit is only exceeded 
 by its popularity. It has been translated into 
 most of the languages of Europe. 
 
 "The Critic," still occasionally given, is an 
 excellent farce, written on the model of Vil- 
 lier's famous " Rehearsal." 
 
 Thompson's successful translation frorn the 
 German of "The Stranger," in 1798, induced 
 Sheridan to a like attempt. In 1779, there- 
 fore, " Pizarro " (from Kotzebue's play) was 
 brought out at Drury Lane. The heroic in- 
 terest of the story, and the splendor of the 
 production, made it popular, but, as a literary 
 achievement, it detracted rather than added 
 to Sheridan's fame. 
 
 The ill-treatment which Oliver Gold- 
 smith (1728-1774) received at the hands of 
 London managers undoubtedly dampened 
 the ardor of one of the drama's most gifted 
 votaries. Garrick looked coldly on his first 
 play, " The Good-Natured Man," and " She 
 Stoops to Conquer " met with but little favor 
 
194 The English Drama. 
 
 at he hands of the elder Colman, who pro- 
 duced it only under protest, March 15th, 
 1773. In consequence of the reception ac- 
 corded him by critics and managers, Gold- 
 smith gave up writing for the stage. He was 
 born in 1728, of Irish parents, in straightened 
 circumstances, and was educated at Trinity 
 College, Dublin. He led an adventurer's life 
 in England and on the continent ; acquired 
 fame as poet and dramatist, and died in 1774. 
 He was buried in the yard of Temple Church, 
 but has a monument in Westminster Abbey. 
 George Colman, the younger (1762-1836) 
 belongs equally to the latter half of the 
 eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. He may justly be considered as the 
 connecting link between these two periods, 
 but as his best works were written before 
 1800, and as his memory is so intimately con- 
 nected with that of Garrick, Sheridan, etc., 
 we will speak of him here. Both the elder 
 and younger Colman were actors, managers 
 and authors, the son excelling his father, 
 however, in the last named capacity. The 
 younger Colman's first play, " The Female 
 Dramatist (1782), a farce, was a failure. His 
 second, " Two to One " (1784), a comedy, was 
 more succesful. " Inkle and Yarico " (1787), 
 
The English Drama. 195 
 
 "Way and Means" (1788), "The Iron Chest " 
 (1796), a poetic melodrama; "The Heir-at- 
 Law " (1797), " The Poor Gentleman " (1800), 
 and "John Bull" (1802), were all excellent 
 productions, and became established favorites, 
 though one of them, " The Iron Chest," was 
 not favorably received on its first perform- 
 ance. Colman's best work was undoubtedly 
 his comedy, " The Heir-at-Law," which may 
 be ranked amongst the finest of its kind in 
 our dramatic literature. It still holds the 
 stage, and its popularity continues undimin- 
 ished. This is largely due to the highly 
 amusing and original character of the learned 
 tutor, Dr. Pangloss. About 1798 Colman 
 became interested in spectacular pieces and 
 pantomine, and before 1800 had produced 
 " Blue ' Beard," "Children in the Wood," 
 "Obi," etc. 
 
 O'Keefe's " Wild Oats," Morton's " Speed 
 the Plow," *and Cumberland's " The West 
 Indian," all meritorious comedies, belong to 
 the close of the eighteenth century. 
 
V 
 
 196 The JEtiglish Drama. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 It is with extreme diffidence that I ap- 
 proach the concluding chapter of my work. 
 To deal with affairs of the remote past is 
 usually a safe undertaking. For here time 
 has furnished landmarks to guide and records 
 to confirm the student in his assertions. 
 But the nearer he approaches the present, 
 the more unstable does he find his supports 
 and the fewer his authorities. Till at last 
 he is forced boldly to draw his own 
 conclusions from given facts, and look to the 
 world for that approval or rejection of his 
 statements, which he can find nowhere else. 
 It is unfortunately true that it is well-nigh 
 impossible to view the present with an im- 
 partial eye, and the historian of his own time 
 is invariably unjust to some one. It is only 
 after a certain time has elapsed, when our 
 sympathies have ceased to be so warm that 
 they blind our judgment, that we can com- 
 ment with fairness. It is this predicament in 
 
The English Drain a. 197 
 
 which I find myself. Though much that I 
 have to treat of is sufficiently remote to be 
 handled safely, yet in attempting to bring my 
 subject down to the present there is a great 
 deal of which I must speak, whose treatment 
 by me may be censured. I trust, however, 
 that my zeal and my desire to be just may 
 steer me safely past the rocks which beset the 
 pilot in comparatively unexplored seas. 
 
 We have said the year 1800 found the stage 
 in possession of a brilliant comedy, a medi- 
 ocre tragedy, a picturesque melodrama, and 
 an infant opera. Original comedy after 
 Tobin's " Honeymoon," and one or two final 
 productions of Colman's gave way to the 
 farces of Poole and Planche for some twenty 
 years. Then appeared the greatest dramatist 
 of his age, James Sheridan Knowles, who 
 enriched comedy and tragedy alike, and 
 whose works, though considered a trifle old- 
 fashioned and theatrical to-day, nevertheless 
 continue to hold the stage and the public 
 heart. Knowles returned boldly to blank 
 verse in his comedies, and was eminently 
 successful in a rather hazardous undertaking. 
 For verse had long been confined to serious 
 and prose assigned to lighter efforts. Nor 
 was he less successful in tragedy. Being an 
 
198 The English Drama. 
 
 actor, his works were better plays than those 
 of his immediate predecessors in this field, 
 Joanna Baillie, Walter Savage Landor and 
 Henry Hart Milman. Nor did his works 
 suffer by comparison with such contempo- 
 raries as Byron, De Vere and Lytton, though 
 he can not be said to have equaled in poetic 
 merit at least Browning. Indeed the drama 
 may be said to have experienced a compara- 
 tively brilliant florescence during the thirty 
 years included between 1820 and 1850. 
 
 The nineteenth century's first score of years 
 had been, in a dramatic way, uneventful, 
 broken only here and there by an entertaining 
 comedy, or a passable tragedy, the greater 
 number of plays given being, however, farces 
 by Poole or Planche, or revivals of former 
 successes. This was due, no doubt, largely 
 to the wars in which Great Britain was 
 engaged with France and America. With 
 peace sprang up a coterie of vigorous and 
 gifted play-wrights. This second dramatic 
 period beheld the production of such come- 
 dies as " The Hunchback," " Love," " The 
 Love Chase," u London Assurance," and such 
 tragedies as " Virginius," " Richelieu," " Ri- 
 enzi," " Damon and Pythias," " Werner," and 
 •' Blot in the 'Scutcheon." By the side of the 
 
The English Drama. 199 
 
 more pronounced dramatic types, and between 
 them, appeared the domestic, the " Robert- 
 son," comedy, or what might be called, for so 
 it in time has come to be, the comedy-drama. 
 With the retirement of Knowles, and the 
 death of several of his distinguished contem- 
 poraries, dramatic'poetry perceptibly waned. 
 Comedy returned once more to prose, and 
 tragedy, save as a literary exotic, ceased to 
 exist. From time to time some great poet 
 writes a tragedy — for the library. It seldom 
 reaches the stage. Tennyson's attempts have 
 not been successful. Browning, belonging to 
 an earlier period, was, even in his own time, 
 only partially so. To-day the tragedy of the 
 past engrosses the stage — and yet not wholly 
 so. An American poet has arisen who has 
 already enriched our stage with two excellent 
 works, " Pendragon " and "Ganelon." Let 
 us hope that Mr. Younge's efforts are only a 
 promise of what is to come. 
 
 1850-1890 represents a period of great pro- 
 ductivity, if not of surpassing merit. Scott, 
 Dickens, Twain and other successful novelists 
 have had their works contorted in ruthless 
 dramatizations. The French, German and 
 lately the Scandinavian drama has been trans- 
 lated and adapted. Brougham's burlesques 
 
\e English Drama. 
 
 and Gilbert's poetic fantasies have appeared. 
 Comic opera has sprung into wonderful pop- 
 ularity. For a time French sensationalism held 
 the boards. This gave way to the combined 
 forces of the English melodrama, the German 
 farce and the American comedy-drama in its 
 various forms. Prior to 1850 America could 
 lay little claim to an indigenous drama. 
 Whatever was meritorious was imported, and 
 the theatre was provincial. Brougham's 
 " Pocahontas," in 185-, was the signal for the 
 awakening of a native drama. Gradually the 
 development has gone on, until to-day 
 America boasts a host of vigorous and 
 ambitious play-wrights. We point with pride 
 to the names of Howard, Mackaye, Young, 
 Campbell, and count amongst the best produc- 
 tions, " The Danites," "My Partner," " The 
 Banker's Daughter," "The Henrietta," "She- 
 nandoah," " Ganelon," " The Wife " and 
 " The Senator." To-day America not merely 
 imports, but exchanges dramatic commodi- 
 ties. 
 
 The century was ushered in, as we have 
 mentioned before, by Colman's "The Poor 
 Gentleman," presently followed by " John 
 Bull," both excellent comedies. 
 
 In 1804 that unfortunate dramatist, John 
 
The English Drama. 201 
 
 Tobin (1770- 1804), who had spent the best 
 part of his life writing plays, only to have them 
 rejected, died. Shortly afterwards his comedy, 
 "The Honeymoon," was produced, with what 
 favor is well known. The play is by no means 
 a perfect one, showing, indeed, a lamentable 
 lack of originality, but its popularity has 
 been ever considerable. There is an undeni- 
 able air of imitation to a half dozen standard 
 plays, but the imitations are so cleverly 
 executed that the whole may well be said to 
 constitute a new work. 
 
 Joanna Baillie, Walter Savage Landor, 
 and Henry Hart Milman are the names 
 which represent whatever of merit was 
 t achieved in the field of tragedy during the 
 first twenty years of this century. None of 
 them experienced great success in the repre- 
 sentation of their works, though Milman's 
 " Fazio " was favorably received at Convent 
 Garden in 1815, and several of Miss Baillie's 
 plays were produced and approved before 
 critical. audiences. Landor's " Count Julian " 
 (1812), while a magnificent poem, is deficient 
 in ease and continuity, and quite unfit for 
 presentation. Miss Baillie wrote a series of 
 plays illustrative of the passions, as " De 
 Montfort," a tragedy on Hatred, and " Basil," 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 a tragedy on Love. Her object, undoubtedly 
 a highly moral one, was to picture the begin- 
 nings, progress and results of a passion. 
 Even with John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in 
 the leading roles her plays did not become 
 popular, showing the great disadvantage a 
 writer, however gifted, labors under when 
 not acquainted with the requirements of the 
 stage: 
 
 John Poole (1786-1872), and James Robin- 
 son Planche (1 796-1880), are the two names 
 most intimately acquainted with the farce 
 and light comedy of the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century. The best known works of 
 the former are his " Hamlet Travestie " (1810), 
 "Paul Pry," a farce, (1825), and " Patrician 
 and Parvenu," a comedy (1835). Poole 
 lived to an advanced age, dying almost for- 
 gotten. Planche composed more than two 
 hundred pieces for the stage of the lightest 
 possible description. In 1818 his burlesque 
 " Amorosa, or King of Little Britian," was 
 produced successfully at Drury Lane. In 
 1828 appeared his fifty-fifth and best play, 
 " Charles XII." In addition to his dramatic 
 efforts he has published fairy tales, romances, 
 and a history of British costumes (1834). 
 
 We have said that amongst the dramatists 
 
The English Drama. 203 
 
 of the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 Sheridan shone forth resplendently ; that by 
 his brilliancy he obscured the merits of his 
 fellows. In a somewhat less degree the same 
 statement is applicable in his time, the first 
 half of the nineteenth century, to James 
 Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862). Certain it 
 is that in the sustaining of dramatic interest 
 and poetic value, and at the same time in ob- 
 taining popular approval, he excels his con- 
 temporaries, however he may fall below them 
 at any particular point. 
 
 Knowles was, born in Cork, Ireland. He 
 was the son of James Knowles, who was the 
 nephew of Thomas Sheridan, therefore a 
 cousin of Richard Brinsley Sher ; dan. James 
 Knowles was an elocution teacher and an 
 author of a Pronouncing English Dictionary. 
 His son at the age of twelve wrote plays for 
 the amusement of his companions and him- 
 self. At twenty-two young Knowles became 
 an actor. At thirty-one he produced Caius 
 Gracchus" (1815), a tragedy, in Belfast, Ire- 
 land. In 1820, with Macready in the title 
 role, " Virginius " was brought out at Con- 
 vent Garden, and James Sheridan Knowles 
 became one of the leading play-wrights in 
 England. In the following twenty years he 
 
204 The English Drama. 
 
 produced at one or another of the leading 
 London theatres the historical play, " Alfred 
 the Great " (1831), the tragedy " John of Pro- 
 cida " (1840), and the comedies, under which 
 head we group all his other works : " William 
 Tell" (1825), "The Hunchback" (1833), 
 " The Wife" (1833), "The Beggar of Bethnal 
 Green" (1834), "The Daughter" (1836), 
 "The Love Chase" (1837), "Love" (1837), 
 "Woman's Wit" (1838), "The Maid of 
 Mariendorpt" (1838), "Old Maids" (1841), 
 "The Rose of Aragon " (1842), and "The 
 Secretary " (184-). 
 
 His plays had the advantage of such inter- 
 preters as Macready, Charles Kean and Ellen 
 Tree. In " The Hunchback " and " The Wife " 
 he assumed the leading roles, playing Master 
 Walter in the former, and Julian St. Pierre 
 in the latter. 
 
 He made a successful tour of the United 
 States before abandoning the stage, which he 
 did in 1845. He became a Baptist minister 
 and novelist. Several sermons attest the first 
 fact and two novels, " George Lovel " and 
 " Henry Fortescue," the latter. In 1849 he 
 was granted a pension of ^200, which pro- 
 tected his old age from want. 
 
 Knowles excels undoubtedly in his love 
 
The English Drama. 205 
 
 scenes. He has an infinite amount of tender- 
 ness, a high conception of the marriage rela- 
 tion, a noble morality, considerable humor and 
 no small fund of pathos. He is in sympathy 
 with the human heart and its emotions, and 
 consequently will receive popular approval 
 always. His poetry is smooth, elegant, and 
 often beautiful. His verse is somewhat mono- 
 tonous, though always pleasing. He is at times 
 too wordy. His knowledge of stage-effect is 
 constantly visible, in fact in places uncom- 
 fortably so, for it has caused a theatrical 
 coloring that is not at all times pleasant. 
 
 I have before had occasion to speak of a 
 man raised to celebrity in dramatic literature 
 by a single play. Somewhat more than a 
 century after Addison's " Cato," appeared 
 John Banim's (1 798-1842) tragedy of " Damon 
 and Pythias." The play, with Macready and 
 Kemble in the leading roles, met with the 
 warmest enthusiasm. It rewarded its young 
 Irish author (Banim was only in his twenty- 
 fourth year) with fame, which he unfortun- 
 ately did nothing more to deserve He died 
 in poverty, a government pension being his 
 chief support in his last years. 
 
 To that class of writers whose works belong 
 wholly to the library, we must assign Sir 
 
2o6 • The English Drama. 
 
 Aubrey De Vere (1788-1846), the Irish poet. 
 His works contain three poetical historical 
 dramas, "Julian, the Apostate " (1822), " The 
 Duke of Mercia " (1823), and " Mary Tudor" 
 (1844). They are of no particular merit. 
 
 Mary Russell Mitford (1786-1855) is an 
 authoress of several excellent plays, one at 
 least of sufficient merit to commend it to a 
 tragedian of our own day. Her blank-verse 
 dramas include " Julian " (1823), " Foscari " 
 (1826), " Rienzi " (1828), " Charles I.," and a 
 number of others. " Rienzi," a powerful if 
 somewhat gloomy tragedy, is the best and 
 most popular of her works. 
 
 That erratic poet, George Gordon, Lord 
 Byron (1 788-1824), has left several dramas, 
 three of which are tragedies, and one he 
 called a mystery play. " The Two Foscari," 
 an historical tragedy (1821), was intended not 
 to be acted, but to be read. Like " Sarda- 
 napalus," " The Two Foscari " is a success 
 neither as a poem nor as a play ; being too 
 heavy and dull for the- one, and too verbose 
 and ill-constructed for the other. His plays 
 are too solemn and lacking in action to be 
 favorites on the stage. They were most 
 severely criticized on their appearance. 
 " Werner " (1822) alone proved successful in 
 
Hie English Drama. 207 
 
 representation. And this play Lord Byron, 
 having abandoned the classical unities, stated 
 expressly was not suited or prepared for the 
 stage. " Cain," except in topic, has little 
 resemblance to the old Mystery Plays. " The 
 Deformed Transformed M (1821) is a feeble 
 variation of the old Faustus legend. " Wer- 
 ner " was successfully revived by Henry 
 Irving in recent years. 
 
 Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857) was 
 successively sailor, printer, author and mana- 
 ger. His first comedy, " More Frightened 
 than Hurt," was written at the age of fifteen. 
 It remained unread in the desk of a London 
 manager for two years, when it was perused 
 and produced successfully at Sadler's Wells, 
 in 1821. " Black-Eyed Susan," a nautical 
 play, brought out in 1829, at the Surrey 
 Theatre, ran for over three hundred nights, 
 although its author received but seventy 
 pounds foi* it. Amongst his other plays may 
 be mentioned " The Devil's Ducat," " The 
 Rent Day," " Nell Gwynne " and " Beau 
 Nash." In 1841 Jerrold became a contributor 
 to Punch, where his " Caudle Lectures " 
 brought him considerable fame. 
 
 Edward Bulwer Lytton (1805-1873). Lord 
 Lytton, best known as a novelist, made his 
 
2o8 The EnglL, Drama. 
 
 first attempt at drarm ic writing in 1836, 
 when he produced " T e Duchess de Val- 
 liere," which failed. His subsequent plays, 
 "The Lady of Lyons," "Richelieu" and 
 " Money," were highly < accessful, and are 
 still frequently g ; ven b) our actors of the 
 "legitimate." Though the blank verse of 
 "The Lady of Lyons" ard "Richelieu" is 
 somewhat florid, the charac rs and situations 
 are strong and dramatic, and, in the hands of 
 talented actors, extremely ef ective. 
 
 Special mention should be made of a 
 manager whose enterprise was so p-reat that 
 instead of yielding his theatre V 
 of foreign plays, or adaptation 
 novels, encouraged and fost< > 
 
 effort by producing annually 
 Benjamin Webster, himself an 
 some merit, became manager t A ay- 
 
 market Theatre in 1837. He b;ou.,nt out 
 at great expense the plays of Bulwer, 
 Knowles, Jerrold, and others, and dra- 
 matic literature owes not a little to his liberal 
 management. At his theatre, Macready, 
 Wallack, Farren, Miss Faucit and other 
 famous actors appeared. 
 
 Our century has beheld a single Elizabethan 
 dramatic poet, and it has not proved itself 
 
The Eh ish Drama. 209 
 
 worthy of him. R* ^ert Browning (1812- 
 1889) possessed all c the genius and more of 
 the refinement necessary to place his name 
 amongst our great ^dramatists of the Shake- 
 spearean era. H& lacke<jl, unfortunately, 
 their practical kno ;ledge cjf the stage. Also 
 it is to be regretteu that in the age in which 
 he wrote the theatre was sought less for in- 
 struction than ..itertainment, and poetic 
 plays to be attractive had also to be theatri- 
 cal. His psychological studies, however they 
 might be appreciated to-day, were entirely 
 unsuited for his, audiences of forty years ago. 
 F k poets have reasoned so well in 
 
 uch tenderness, such a delicate 
 an nght and wrong, 
 
 in 182 in the 'Scutcheon " (1843) we 
 
 a perfect drama ; all the fire and 
 gci. Elizabethan, softened and refined, 
 
 howeve. ; uy our nineteenth century philoso- 
 phy. Tpe y,ery youthful age of the heroine 
 Mildred, is a defect, undoubtedly, but such a 
 defect as a greater poet than Browning is guilty 
 of. This but serves, however, to display more 
 fully the other beauties of the piece. There 
 is nothing of its kind more lovely than Mer- 
 ton's serenade. " The Blot in the 'Scutcheon " 
 was produced in 1843 at Drury Lane, Lon- 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 don ; afterwards played with some success in 
 the United States by Lawrence Barrett. 
 
 Of Browning's plays, "Pauline" and "Pa- 
 racelsus " were published before 1837, in which 
 year his tragedy " Stafford " failed in repre- 
 sentation. " Pippa Passes" appeared in 
 1841 ; "King Victor and King Charles" 
 (1842); "The Return of the Druses" and 
 "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" (1843) J "Colom- 
 be's Birthday (1844); " Luria " and "A 
 Soul's Tragedy" (1845). 
 
 John Baldwin Buckstone (1802-1879) was 
 a well-known actor and dramatist both in 
 England and America. His plays, .mostly 
 comedies and farces, number more 'than two 
 hundred, many of which are still great favor- 
 ites. The most famous are " Married Life," 
 " Single Life," " Rough Diamond," " Good 
 for Nothing," " Flowers of the Forest," 
 " Irish Lion " and " Jack Sheppherd." 
 
 John Brougham (1810-1880) adds one more 
 name to the list of clever Irish play-wrights. 
 Brougham was intended for the medical pro- 
 fession, but became an actor, first in London, 
 afterwards in America. During his career he 
 managed a theatre in Boston and two in New 
 York ; the Bowery (1856-7), and Brougham's 
 Lyceum, afterwards Wallacks (1850-2). 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 The latter he built, but surrendered the 
 management of after two seasons. He was 
 the author of various comedies, dramas and 
 extravaganzas, the most celebrated of which 
 are " Pocahontas," " Romance and Reality," 
 " My Cousin German," " Dombey and Son " 
 (dramatization), and " Bleak House " (drama- 
 tization.) He also published books of stories 
 under the titles of " A Basket of Chips," and 
 " The Bunsby Papers." 
 
 Dion Boucicault (1822- ) was born in 
 Dublin, where his father, a French refugee, 
 was a merchant. Upon being sent to London 
 to be educated as a civil engineer, he became 
 instead a dramatist and actor. In 1841 his 
 first and probably his best comedy, " London 
 Assurance," was produced successfully at 
 Convent Garden, London. He devoted him- 
 self to literature and the stage, and has 
 written, during his long and prosperous 
 career, upward of one hundred pieces. The 
 plots of Boucicault's plays are seldom 
 original. His excellence as a dramatist 
 consists rather in action and dialogue, which 
 is always clever and often novel. His melo- 
 dramas and his Irish characters are a vast 
 improvement on their predecessors in these 
 fields. In fact, Boucicault has elevated them 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 by introducing a life, interest and naturalness 
 they did not possess before. His construc- 
 tive power and knowledge of stage effect is of 
 the best. A list of Dion Boucicault's popular 
 pieces will include " The Corsican Brothers," 
 " The Willow Copse," " Jessie Brown," Col- 
 leen Bawn," " Arrah-na-Pogue," " The Long 
 Strike," " Hunted Down," " Rip Van Winkle," 
 " Peep O'Day," " The Shaugran," " Led 
 Astray " and " The Jilt." As an actor Bouci- 
 cault's fame rests chiefly on the portrayal of 
 eccentric and Irish characters. He has 
 written, besides his plays, many newspaper 
 articles on dramatic subjects. It is largely 
 due to his influence that dramatists are to-day 
 properly remunerated, which they were not 
 at the beginning of this century. 
 
 A prolific and popular play-wright, one who, 
 in his day, ranked amongst the best, was 
 Tom Taylor (1817-1880). As a student at col- 
 lege he distinguished himself by carrying off 
 gold medals, prizes and the highest honors, 
 and he became a fellow of Cambridge. After 
 leaving his Alma Mater, he was for two years 
 Professor of English Literature at University 
 College, London. He studied law, con- 
 tributed to the papers, and before 1850 
 became a noted author. Like some others of 
 
The English Drama. 213 
 
 his contemporaries he excelled in the number 
 rather than the originality of his works, 
 having produced, alone or in conjunction with 
 others, more than one hundred pieces. His 
 greatest desire in constructing a play, was 
 that it should act well. In this he was 
 usually successful, his knowledge of the stage 
 and its demands being of great service to 
 him. His language, though never surpris- 
 ingly brilliant, is effective. His characters 
 are natural and consistent. His blank verse 
 historical dramas, as " 'Twixt Axe and 
 Crown "(1870), are not so successful as his 
 other works. " The Ticket of Leave Man," a 
 version of " Le Retour de Melun " ; " Lady 
 Clancarty " (1874), an original play; " The 
 Fool's Revenge," from Victor Hugo's " Le 
 Roi s'amuse " (same subject as Verdi's " Rigo- 
 letto ") ; " Our American Cousin," a play with 
 a peculiar history (a minor part was raised to 
 such prominence by a clever actor as to for- 
 ever overshadow all the rest) ; " Still Waters 
 Run Deep," "The Overland Route," "An 
 Unequal Match," are amongst Taylor's best 
 known dramas. 
 
 Thomas William Robertson (1829-187 i) 
 has giver his name to what is known as tin 
 " Robertson " comedy, as being its most 
 
214 The English Drama. 
 
 fitting exponent, and, indeed to a degree, its 
 originator. His works are serious comedies, 
 or what we to-day call comedy-dramas; 
 plays in which the light and shade is equally 
 mingled, where the affairs treated of are of 
 everyday occurrence, the people such as we 
 see around us, and the conclusion usually a 
 happy one, the idea of the whole being to 
 impress some moral lesson or discuss some 
 social question. Robertson was for a time an 
 actor in his father's company, a travelling 
 one. In 185 1 his first piece, " A Night's Ad- 
 venture," was produced. In i860 Robertson 
 settled in London, and wrote his series of 
 dramas to which he owes his fame : " David 
 Garrick," " Society," " Ours," " Caste," 
 " Play," " School," " M. P." and " War." 
 
 Of those play-wrights who have been in- 
 fluenced by the Robertson comedies, H. J. 
 Byron and A. W. Pinero are the most con- 
 spicuous. Byron was more inclined to farcial 
 elements thai> Robertson, and made his most 
 lasting success with " Our Boys" (1878). 
 Pinero has shown a more serious tendency, and 
 his plays are superior to those of his master, 
 revealing a strength in which Robertson is 
 lacking. Pinero's chief merit, the proper 
 harmony between action and dialogue, has 
 
The English Drama. 215 
 
 been taught him, no doubt, as an actor. 
 " The Money Spinner," " Sweet Lavender " 
 and " The Weaker Sex," are the works by 
 which he has acquired his enviable reputa- 
 tion. 
 
 From the early part of the century the 
 meretricious habit of supplying the deficiency 
 of dramatic material by dramatizing cele- 
 brated novels, had been growing in popu- 
 larity, until it threatened to put a stop to all 
 original effort. The works of Scott, Dickens, 
 Lytton, Mrs. Henry Wood and others were 
 hacked, twisted and mutilated for stage pur- 
 poses. This lamentable practice has pre- 
 vailed even to our day. It is rare that a 
 novel, however dramatic, contains more than 
 an idea for a good play, and the book invari- 
 ably suffers by the dramatization, while the 
 stage seldom gains anything by the transac- 
 tion. However, the celebrity of a widely- 
 read novel conduces largely to increase the 
 receipts of a play taken from it, and managers 
 of the last fifty years have often found it 
 profitable to produce such plays. Amongst 
 those novelists whose pens as well as books 
 have contributed to the stage, are Charles 
 Reade and Wilkie Collins. The works of 
 both may be termed sensational, yet, un- 
 
216 The English Drama. 
 
 doubtedly containing many excellencies. 
 Reade and Taylor's joint work, " Masks and 
 Faces" (1854), and Reade's dramatization of 
 Zola's u L'Assommoir," which he called 
 "Drink" (1879), are his chief claims to re- 
 membrance. Wilkie Collins's plays were 
 all taken from his famous novels. Though 
 severely criticized, they attained considerable 
 popularity and contain much good material. 
 •' The New Magdalen," •' Man and Wife " and 
 " The Woman in White," are his best known 
 works. 
 
 Dramatic poetry, whose chief aim is literary, 
 and which has rarely succeeded in representa- 
 tion, has never been without its supporters 
 throughout the century. Joanna Baillie, 
 Landor, Milman, De Vere, Byron, Brown- 
 ing, Swinburne, Tennyson, form a chain of 
 names extending over a period of ninety 
 years from 1800 to 1890. Some of them never 
 produced, though they published their works, 
 and none of them achieved any considerable 
 popularity as dramatists. 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837- ) 
 presents the to-day rather unusual spectacle 
 of an English poet modeling his efforts on the 
 Greeks ; and what is still more unusual, suc- 
 cessfully. Swinburne is a poet, in speaking 
 
The English Drama. 217 
 
 of whom a commentator is obliged to judge 
 for himself, so diverse are the opinions of 
 critics. His admirers being excessive in their 
 praise, and his enemies in their detraction ; 
 making the one appear adulation and the 
 other abuse. In 1865 Swinburne achieved 
 fame by the publishing of his classical tragedy 
 " Atalanta in Calydon," a unique and admi- 
 rable effort. In 1876 " Erechtheus," a second 
 classical drama, appeared. The dramatic 
 trilogy in which the Queen of Scots is con- 
 demned by the poet, " Chastelard " (1865), 
 "Bothwell" (1874), and "Mary Stuart" 
 (1881), is particularly interesting. " Marino 
 Faliero "(1885), is perhaps superior to Byron's 
 tragedy on the same subject. " The Queen 
 Mother," " Rosamond," appeared in i860. 
 " Locrine " in 1887. 
 
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809- ), com- 
 pletes the above list of dramatic poets. He 
 is the representative of the poetry of his age, 
 the Victorian. No one of this century has 
 equaled him in popularity and prosperity in 
 his own province. It is unnecessary to speak 
 of the manifold beauties of his verse since 
 they are known so well throughout the Eng- 
 lish-reading world. It is sufficient for our 
 purpose here to say that his best efforts are 
 
218 The English Drama. 
 
 not his plays, though they have not detracted 
 from his reputation. They comprise " Queen 
 Mary" (1875), "Harold" (1877), " The Fal- 
 con " (1879), " The Cup " (1881), " The Prom- 
 ise of May " (1882), " Becket " (1884). 
 
 The most brilliant satirist and humorist of 
 the century is unquestionably William 
 Schwenk Gilbert (1836- ). Notwith- 
 standing that he was educated for a barrister 
 and admitted to the bar, he devoted himself 
 to literature, later especially to play-writing. 
 His fairy comedies " The Palace of Truth " 
 (1870), "Pygmalion and Galathea " (1871), 
 " The Wicked World " (1873), and " Broken 
 Hearts" (1876), met with unusual and de- 
 served success. One of his cleverest works 
 is a burlesque comedy, "Engaged" (1877), 
 which is as scintillating with wit as it is 
 pointed in satire. In 1878 appeared " Ne'er 
 do Well," a farce. Subsequently Mr. Gilbert 
 has applied his energies to supplying the 
 librettos for that very popular series of 
 comic operas, " Pinafore," " The Pirates of 
 Penzance," " Patience," H Iolanthe," " Mika- 
 do," "Yeoman of the Guard," "The Gon- 
 doliers," etc. In November, 1883, Miss Mary 
 Anderson produced at the Lyceum Theatre, 
 London, the play upon which Mr. Gilbert's 
 
The English Drama. 219 
 
 claim to excellence will probably be judged, 
 "Comedy and Tragedy." This remarkable 
 little drama comprehends in one act all the 
 various shades of comedy and tragedy, and 
 is highly effective, from both a literary and 
 dramatic point of view. Although open to 
 criticism on historical grounds, it is neverthe- 
 less one of the most important contributions 
 of the decade. "Comedy and Tragedy" is 
 its author's chief serious attempt. His first 
 work was " Dulcimara " (1866). 
 
 We have spoken already of the fashion that 
 grew up of transforming the novel into the 
 play, and of the impediment it became to 
 original effort. But this was not the only 
 discouragement the young dramatist of that 
 time, i860 to 1880, encountered in London. 
 Not only did the manager find it safer and 
 more profitable to produce a version of some 
 popular novel than an untried play, but like- 
 wise was it discovered what a profitable in- 
 vestment an adapted or translated Parisian 
 success was. Although the custom of pro- 
 ducing such plays was an ancient one, it had 
 never been so remunerative. The result was 
 that for a score of years foreign plays held 
 the stage of the best London theatres, just as 
 they did so long the New York theatres. It 
 
220 The English £>ra??ia. 
 
 was held to be folly to risk money on the 
 production of a native play, whose attractive 
 power was uncertain, when favorite conti- 
 nental plays might be obtained, whose popu- 
 larity was in a measure secured. During 
 this period were introduced in England, 
 chiefly by adaptations, in America by trans- 
 lations, the works of Dumas, Scribe, D'En- 
 nerry, Sardou, etc. The most famous of 
 these plays being " Adrienne L'Ecouvre," 
 " Camille," " The Two Orphans," " A Scrap 
 of Paper," " Diplomacy," " Fedora." 
 
 The eagerness with which the public 
 accepted these Gallic productions drew atten- 
 tion to the advantages and embellishments of 
 the French drama, and to the opportunities 
 France and her people offer for dramatic study. 
 English writers began to choose French sub- 
 jects and French scenes and characters. The 
 most excellent of these compositions, in fact 
 one of the best plays of the age, is Merivale 
 and Grove's " Forget-Me-Not," produced 
 August 21st, 1879, at the Lyceum Theatre, 
 London, by Miss Genevieve Ward. The 
 Saturday Review, of August the 13th, 1879, 
 has this to say of the above-mentioned play : 
 
 " ' Forget-Me-Not ' has, in a marked degree, 
 the combined strength and brightness which 
 
The English Drama. 221 
 
 belongs to the best examples of the contem- 
 porary French drama, and it has the advan- 
 tage of not turning on conjugal infidelity. 
 The leading idea of the piece is entirely new ; 
 the construction is good, and the dialogue is 
 pointed, brilliant and natural." 
 
 Like all successful efforts, it has had a host 
 of inferior imitators. 
 
 Another dramatic sensation, and, in a way, 
 an important event, was the appearance about 
 this time of " The Danites," by Joaquin Miller. 
 A well-written, genuine American play was a 
 most agreeable novelty. A number of plays, 
 extravagant in characters and absurd or 
 improbable in theme, such as " The Gilded 
 Age" and "The Mighty Dollar," had served 
 as vehicles for the peculiar talents of some 
 celebrated actor, but had never deserved the 
 name of American Plays. "The Danites" 
 supplied this deficiency. It is a melodrama, 
 full of attractive freshness and novelty, telling 
 a story of human interest, and picturing 
 naturally a life peculiar to our pioneer civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 What has been said in this lecture will 
 apply, in a general way, to the American as 
 well as the English theatre. America, prior 
 to 1850, had no drama ; and with the spirit 
 
The English Drama. 
 
 and dash characteristic of the land, has 
 endeavored to accomplish in forty years what 
 has taken England three centuries. So well 
 has she succeeded, that, though we have no 
 great dramatic poets as yet, we have attempted, 
 with moderate success, the various phases of 
 the play, and are to-day sending our dramas 
 to London, and having them translated into 
 foreign languages. A short sketch of our 
 leading New York stock theatres will gi,ve the 
 best possible idea of what has been done for 
 the drama in this country. 
 
 In 1852 Brougham's Lyceum passed into 
 the hands of James Wallack, and became 
 known as Wallack's Lyceum. In time a new 
 house was built, and the name Wallack's alone 
 was retained. Under the management of 
 James Wallack, and afterwards of his son 
 Lester, Wallack's Theatre was the standard 
 for all that was best in the dramatic line in 
 the United States. Particularly were the old 
 comedy productions famous. Unfortunately 
 the theatre did not keep apace with the times, 
 and in the eighties began to lose its position. 
 The cause was undoubtedly its persistent 
 loyalty to England, to which country it 
 looked almost exclusively for its plays, many 
 of which, when produced, were neither men- 
 
The English Drama. 223 
 
 torious nor popular. In 1889 the company 
 ceased to exist, and the theatre, which was at 
 that time its home, became a " combination " 
 house. 
 
 For many years Augustin Daly has been a 
 prominent manager of New York at different 
 theatres. His early management was marked 
 by the production of translations from the 
 French, such as " Frou-Frou," and some Eng- 
 lish and American plays. For about eleven 
 years Mr. Daly has occupied the pretty little 
 theatre on Broadway and Thirtieth Street, 
 known as Daly's, which he has made the 
 home of the leading comedy company of the 
 country. His productions have consisted of 
 adaptations from the best French and Ger- 
 man farce comedies, and in revivals of 
 the comedies of Shakespeare and the 
 Restoration dramatists. His most successful 
 revivals have been " The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor," " The Taming of the Shrew," 
 " The Midsummer Night's Dream," " As You 
 Like It," " The Country Girl," " The Incon- 
 stant," and " She Would and She Would 
 Not." 
 
 Mr. A. M. Palmer, whose name is so inti- 
 mately connected with the Union Square 
 Theatre of the past, and the Madison Square 
 
224 The English Drama. 
 
 Theatre of the present, has the reputation of 
 having produced fewer failures than any man- 
 ager in America. The. Union Square, under 
 Mr. Palmer's management saw the successful 
 production of M. Feuillet's " Tentation," and 
 " Un-Roman Parisien "; D'Ennerry's "The 
 Two Orphans " ; Bronson Howard's " Ban- 
 ker's Daughter"; Bartley Campbell's "My 
 Partner" ; Sardou's "Andrea" and "Daniel 
 Rochat " ; Belot and Nus' " Miss Multon " 
 and "The Danicheffs," "The Celebrated 
 Case," " Rose Michel," etc., etc. The Madi- 
 son Square Theatre, under its first manage- 
 ment, was given up exclusively to the pro- 
 duction of plays by American dramatists. 
 Here appeared Steele Mackaye's " Hazel 
 Kirke"; Mrs. Burnett and W. H. Gillette's 
 " Esmeralda " ; and Bronson Howard's 
 "Young Mrs. Winthrop." Under Mr. 
 Palmer's management we have seen the 
 English successes " Jim, The Penman," 
 " Captain Swift " and " Aunt Jack " ; also the 
 native plays " Sealed Instructions " and 
 " Elaine." 
 
 The Lyceum Theatre has continued the 
 policy inaugurated by the Madison Square. 
 Here have been presented Howard's " One of 
 Our Girls " ; De Mille and Belasco's " The 
 
The English Drama. 225 
 
 Wife" and " The Charity Bali" ; and Belas- 
 co's " Lord Chumley." 
 
 To-day the metropolitan theatres of Eng- 
 land and America present a singularly cosmo- 
 politan appearance. But not only may the 
 drama in its various phases of nationality be 
 observed in the same evening, but also in the 
 different stages of its development. English, 
 American, French, German, Italian ; even 
 Chinese plays have been given almost 
 simultaneously. To-night (March, 1890), may 
 be seen in the city of New York Shake- 
 spearean tragedy, Shakespearean comedy, 
 farce-comedy, French melodrama, American 
 comedy-drama, an American farce, an Ameri- 
 can comedy, two American rural plays, an 
 American military drama, German grand 
 opera, German comic opera, German comedy, 
 German tragedy, American melodrama, one 
 of Sheridan's comedies, an English comic 
 opera, an English melodrama and an Eng- 
 lish comedy-drama. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
226 The English JJra;, 
 
 REFERENCES. 
 
 i. Sharpe's " Coventry Mysteries." 
 
 2. "The York Plays," Lucy Toulman Smith. 
 
 3. Ward's "History of English Dramatic 
 
 Literature." 
 
 4. Collier's "Annals of the Stage." 
 
 5. Dodsley's Old Plays. 
 
 6. Doran's "Annals of the Stage." 
 
 7. " Shakespeare's Predecessors in the Eng- 
 
 lish Drama," John Addington Sym- 
 onds. 
 
 8. " Shakespeare's Complete Works," G. L. 
 
 Duyckinck. 
 
 9. Augustus Wilhelm Schlegel's " Dramatic 
 
 Art and Literature." 
 
 10. H. A. Taine's " History of English Liter- 
 
 ature." 
 
 11. S. T. Coleridge's " Notes and Lectures 
 
 on Shakespeare." 
 
 12. H. Ulrici's " Shakespeare's Dramatic Art." 
 
 13. The Works of Jonson, Beaumont and 
 
 Fletcher, Ford, Webster, Marston, 
 Dekker, Massinger, Middleton, Hey- 
 wood, Shirley, etc., etc. 
 
The English Drama. 22J 
 
 14. " Life of David Garrick." 
 
 15. " Memoirs of the Coleman Family," R. B. 
 
 Peake. 
 
 16. " Life of Sheridan," Thos. Moore. 
 
 17. Mrs. Inchbold's "British Theatre." 
 
 18. The Works of Congreve, Wycherly, Far- 
 
 quhar, Vanbrugh, Centlivre, Etherege, 
 Otway, Davenant, Lillo, Foote, O'- 
 Keefe, Cumberland, Colman, Gold- 
 smith, Sheridan, Knowles, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 19. The Works of Baillie, Milman, Mitford, 
 
 Byron, DeVere, Browning, Swinburne, 
 Tennyson, Knowles, Boucicault, Meri- 
 vale, Howard, etc., etc. 
 
 20. " The Saturday Review," London (1869- 
 
 1889). 
 
 21. " The New York Clipper." 
 
 22. "The Theatres." 
 
© 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 RECDCD 
 
 nov so mt 
 
 REC'D 
 
 IK i bd 
 
 J U N 1Q !, 6/| D 
 
 M/W3l' G 4-9PM 
 
 
 H5 
 
 ^4 -'66 -9 AM 
 
 CD" 
 
 3 PM 
 
IB JVbVj 
 
 H31YQI 
 
 908 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY