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YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH
ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR
IV
DRYDEN'S DRAMATIC THEORY
AND PRACTICE
BY ,
\
MARGARET SHERWOOD, Ph. D.
VT CRESCI T
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tºtyviliºs
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*
LAMSON, WOLFFE AND COMPANY
BoSTON, NEw York, AND LONDON
1898
i








CONTENTS.
The Man and the Age............................ º & º º ºs º ºs º º º & º º ºs tº º ºr e º 'º - sº
Dryden's Theory of the Drama................................ -
Dryden's Comedies........................ & sº as s sº sº e º sº tº º sº tº º tº º sº s = sº ºr tº º sº * * * * *
Dryden's Heroic Plays.................................................
Dryden's Tragedies........ ... ...
L48573
& & º 'º s ºr æ &
DRYDEN'S DRAMATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE.
The Man and the Age.
Few plays are more undramatic than those of
Dryden. Drama, meaning the re-creation of a
significant moment or crisis in human life, de-
mands, on the part of the dramatist, peculiar in-
sight into the entangled motives that lie at the
heart of the simplest human action, peculiar skill
in the management of the most complex of literary
forms. He must have imaginative grasp of the
entire situation, wholeness of view, immediate per-
ception of the action and interaction of character
and circumstance, of will and will. Perhaps no
other kind of art is so deep a searcher into the
heart of the artist, of what he has thought, per-
ceived, felt, or so true a measure of his power to
objectify his appreciations. He must be able, in-
as much as his work is not built up on an abstract
idea but presents an actual, concrete picture, to
create, to suggest, to make yivid the life with
which he is dealing, not simply to state, to explain.
In this art Sophocles in one age attained mastery,
Shakespeare in another. Not many names can be
included with theirs in the first rank. Dryden’s
hardly belongs in the second, so lacking is his
work in the qualities that make dramatic literature
great. Yet his plays have significance out of pro-
portion to their intrinsic worth. They represent
the work of thirty years in the life of the greatest
man of letters of the Restoration period. To un-
)
l
5
;
derstand them is to gain new insight into the
forces at work at this transition time, a time of
battle in criticism between French rules of order,
regularity, symmetry, and the apparent lawless-
ness of English practice. Dryden, through his
keenly critical intelligence, was responsive to
many influences. As critic and as dramatist he
swayed first this way and then that, and his
theatre is a kind of sounding-board, where echoes
of Aristotelian precept, of Shakespearian and
Spanish custom, and of French rule, meet and
clash. To decide, to choose, to separate the new
appreciation from the old—this was Dryden's
problem. In the conscious effort of the critic, to
; whom the creative instinct of the dramatist was
| denied, he fell, usually, between opposing aims.
From the prologue to The Maiden Queen, where
he promised
“A mingled chime
Of Jonson’s humour, with Corneille’s rhyme,” "
i
|
to the preface of Troilus and Cressida, where he
gravely discussed the question as to how far we
ought to imitate Shakespeare and Fletcher,” he
crept slowly after other men’s appreciations of
life. Strongly influenced by the taste of his con-
temporaries, yet towering head and shoulders
above them by virtue of intellect, he became a
guide in days of doubt—a leader, himself not al-
together clear of vision, of the blind.
The mass of dramatic writing produced in an-
swer to the demand of the Restoration court bears
no distinctive stamp. Nothing in the natural life
of the time gave it inner unity. No standard like
1 Works, (Scott and Saintsbury ed.) Vol. II, p. 422.
2 Works, Vol. VI, p. 259.
that of the French Academy guided its taste.
Tentative as to method, its one aim was to please.
Indecency found favor with the followers of
Charles the Second, and the Restoration drama is
indecent. French fashions appealed to the king,
and French fashions were copied in English plays.
French plays were translated and adapted. Otway
worked over Molière’s Des Fourberies de Scapin;
Shadwell, Molière's L'Avare, and Les Fáchewa;
Mrs. Behn, Molière's Malade Imaginaire, Better-
ton, George Dandin; Wycherley perverted Le
Misanthrope, and L’AEcole des Femmes. As early
as 1661 Corneille’s Le Menteur was translated for
the English stage. There is hardly a comedy of
Dryden that does not contain passages taken from
the French. To meet a demand for spectacular
effect a new species of drama was inaugurated
with Davenaut's Siege of Rhodes. Splendid set-
ting, music, stage decoration lent charm to the
theatre of Charles the Second. Divorced to a cer-
tain extent from its old simplicity, it still held to
Shakespeare and to Ben Jonson.' But Shakes-
peare was worked over to satisfy a new taste. Tate
turned King Lear into a tragi-comedy. Romeo
and Juliet was adapted by Howard and played
with a tragic denouement one day, a happy ending
the next. Of the older dramatists, Beaumont and
Fletcher were favorites, two of their plays, Dry-
den says, being given for one of Shakespeare or
of Jonson. The liking for sensational situation,
1 Between 1660-1665 Othello, Henry Fourth, Hamlet, Midsummer
Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Henry Eighth, Mac-
beth, were given. Of Jonson : . The Silent Woman, Bartholomew Fair,
The Alchemist, Volpoi.e. Of Beaumont and Fletcher : The Beggar's
Bush, The Loyal Subject, The Tamer Tamed, The Scornful Lady, The
Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Humorous Lieutenant, Rule a Wife »
and Have a Wife, were represented. Genest : Some Account of the
English Stage, pp. 32–65.
2 Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Works, Vol. XV, p. 346.
7
- i
in place of strong dramatic action, shown in the
work of these artists, was repeated and exagger-
ated in the Restoration drama. Political battles
were waged upon the stage,' vexed questions
insinuated into the plot or woven into prologue
and epilogue. The Restoration drama was a
thing of the moment, appealing to the transitory,
finding its fate in its own taste.
Dryden took up unwillingly the new fashion of
writing. His own unfitness for it he recognized.
There is a certain pathos in his confession of this,
combined with the expression of the critic’s fine
scorn for the public to which he stooped:
“I confess my chief endeavours are to delight
the age in which I live. If the humour of this be
for low comedy, small accidents, and raillery, I
will force my genius to obey it, though with more
reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not
so fitted by nature to write comedy: I want that
gaiety of humour which is required to it. My
conversation is slow and dull; my humour satur-
"nine and reserved. In short, I am none of those
who endeavour to break jests in company, or make
: repartees.” -
“Having been longer acquainted with the stage
than any poet now living, and having observed
how difficult it was to please; that the humours
of comedy were almost spent; that love and honour
(the mistaken topics of tragedy) were quite worn
out; that the theatres could not support their
charges; that the audience forsook them; that
young men without learning set up for judges,
and that they talked loudest who understood
1 Beljame: Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterie, pp.
148–16o.
V 2 Defense of Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Works, Vol. II, pp. 297–298.
--~
~
*- 8
|
the least; all these discouragements had not only
weaned me from the stage, but had also given me
a loathing of it. But enough of this: the diffi-
culties continue; they increase; and I am still con-
demned to dig in those exhausted mines.”
There is a spiritual biography in these quoted
remarks made, one near the beginning, one near
the end of the writer’s career as dramatist. It is
the biography of a man whose dominant passion
was the passion for literary success. There was
practical necessity in the case—“il fallait vivre,”
as Beljame says, in excuse for Dryden. It is true
that throughout his life he placed the loaves and
fishes of art above the art itself; it is true also that,
he was saddened by his own choice. Deeper than
the bread-winning impulse was the artist’s impulse,
the desire to produce and to please in production.
This alone persisted through change of pºlitial.)
of religious creed, of literary principle. Whether
the impulse was that of wishing to speak, or
whether it had in it the deeper motive of some-
thing to say, may be a question. Criticism is fore-
stalled by Dryden himself. “I am still drudgeing
on,” he wrote in a letter in 1698, “always a poet,
and never a good one.” *
Working thus unwillingly and with divided aim,
he achieved in the drama success out of proportion |
to his merit. His audiences were not sensitive
to lack of vitality in the plays they went to see.
Only great periods have produced great drama-
tists, and Dryden reflects his age. Operatic fea-
tures, incantation scenes, torture scenes, gorgeous
spectacular effects were offered in Dryden's plays,
-
1 Preface to Don Sebastian. Works, Vol. VII, p. 307.
2 Works, Vol. XVIII, p. 147.
}
and the one theme of Restoration drama, love, is
* ~ *->~~~~ ****
found in comedy, tragedy, heroic play. AIT this
hid, perhaps, the labored effect of conscious effort
in work where the reasoning faculty always led
and the creative impulse came halting after. Dry-
den’s mind was critical, analytic, without being
synthetic. Of imaginative insight into life and
character in its entirety he had little. Ideas, not
men, interested him; the reflective matter of life,
not life caught in the act. Of perception at first
hand there is small trace in his dramas. What-
ever insight he gained into the tragic forces of ex-
istence came to him apparently through study, the
motifs of his plays being for the most part bor-
rowed. In his political satires he could sketch
character by stating trait after trait in satirical epi-
gram. He saw in his victims aggregates of quali-
ties. Each trait he could illustrate by fitting
anecdote. It is the essay-method of dealing with
character. This same desire to make clear, to ex-
plain, to illustrate pervades Dryden’s treatment of
passion. His characters analyze their emotions.
You feel the author laboriously trying to think
the feeling out. Cleopatra says:
“My love’s a noble madness -
Which shows the cause deserved it. Moderate
SOTTOW
Fits vulgar love, and for a vulgar man:
But I have loved with such transcendent passion,
I soared, at first, quite out of reason’s view,
And now am lost above it.” -
Ilike his own Adam, who, shortly after his
creation, gravely decides, after the manner of the
2 I All for Love. Works, Vol. V, Act II, sc. I.
| 0
|
Cartesians, that he is because he thinks, Dryden |
reasons too closely to ieave an effect of reality.'
The liking for blunt, plain expression, so effec-
tive in Dryden’s satire and in his criticism, de-
stroys, in his plays, dramatic effect. Dryden can T-
state; he cannot suggest. He must Say all, repeat,
define. The fatal conclusion that, if a little is . .
good, a great deal is better, shows everywhere in 2:
Dryden’s work—in the touches of dramatic irony
in Oedipus, the blunders arising from the dis-
guise of a woman in man’s clothing in The
Rival Ladies, the mistakes of double identity in
Amphitryon. The changes made by Dryden and
Lee in The Tempest are significant. Ariel is
repeated in a companion-spirit, Caliban in a com-
panion-monster. To Miranda is given a sister who
also has never seen any man but Prospero; and a
youth named Hippolito is created, who has never
seen a woman. The hints of Miranda’s innocence,
given in bits like:
“What is't? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about!”
are elaborated as follows:
“Hip. Women, I never heard of them before.—
What are women like? \
Pros. Imagine something between young men
and angels,
Fatally beauteous, and have killing eyes.”
The method of mathematical proof, applied
to a delicately touched situation, results in ludi-
I “A Champaign Country.
Adam, as newly created, laid in a bed of moss and flowers, by a rock.
Adams: What am I, or from whence 2 For that I am.
I know, because I think.” -
State of Innocence. Works, Vol. V, Act II, sc. I.
2 The Tempest. Works, Vol. III, Act II, sc. 2.
11
i
º e - e * * * * .
Crous effect. There is truth in this criticism on A
Dryden: s
“Er siebt gewissermassen einen Gedanken so
lange durch bis auch kein noch so kleines Partikel-
chen ungesagt bleibt.”
One finds all of Dryden, both intellect and char-
acter, in his dramatic work. It is stamped every-
where by that grave, meditative genius which
finds its best expression in the eloquent and sen-
tentious line. This excellence of occasional ex-
pression brings with it its defects, and shows itself
in a something detached, fragmentary, a lack of
wholeness in thought. There is in Dryden’s life
a corresponding absence of moral architecture, of
completeness, of design. These defects are be-
trayed in Dryden’s dramatic work in a lack of dis-
tinctive view. It is this absence of personality
which gives them interest for the critic, for it is
a curious task to sift out and identify the many
| influences at work in his mind. Divided against
himself because of conflicting tastes, attempting
to satisfy a corrupt public, he has left a theory,
|-decisive for the moment, but not permanent, and
an art, tentative, uncertain, held together neither
by deep intellectual conviction nor by uncon-
scious instinct, but showing a lack of controlling
idea, a tendency to fall apart. There is often wide
divergence between Dryden’s critical theory and
his practice. There is constant effort to justify
himself in what he has done or is about to do.
If there is, on the whole, growth toward clearer
vision and broader views, there is to the end, a
lack of finality in what he says.
1 P. Holzhausen: Dryden's Heroisches Drama. Fnglische Studien,
XVI, p. 217,
12
Dryden's Theory of the Drama.
In discussion of the drama Dryden’s mind shows
to better advantage than in the creation of plays.
His Essay of Dramatic Poesy and his prefaces
make up the first extended treatment of dramatic
theory in English literature. They show on Dry-
den’s part wide reading, careful reflection. The
dialogue-form of the Essay and the fragmentary
character of the prefaces are peculiarly adapted
to his ability to see all sides of a question, that
literary fair-mindedness which was also literary
indecision. Wise, judicious, appreciative, he is
also, to a certain extent, non-committal. His
treatment of his subject is usually clear for the
time, but the thought is, in the long run, not con-
secutive. The logic is often interfered with: now
by an interested motive, a desire to prove the
English people or himself in the right; now by
Dryden’s failure to think out the psychological
problems which he touches and lets go; now by
flashes of appreciation, contradicting his theory.
Perhaps a perfect standard of criticism in liter-
ature has not yet been advanced by any thinker.
If a work of art stands as the bodying forth of an
idea, and its beauty means faithful representa-
tion of the perfectness of that, ideal criticism
would be that which kept a right balance in judg-
ment of the two factors involved, spirit and
form. The development of criticism shows, in
the tipping of the balance too far one way or the
13
other, the formation of two schools. One, made up ;
of Plato and the children of Plato—Sidney, Shel-
ley, Coleridge, Hegel, Schopenhauer, have dealt
too exclusively with the spiritual factor, not al-
ways remembering that beauty to be beauty
must become visible, must have shape and color
and form. The other, Aristotle and his followers
—Boileau, Racine, seventeenth-century France,
eighteenth-century England, have placed too much
emphasis on the outer factor, form, realizing
that regularity and symmetry are permanent
factors in beauty, perhaps forgetting that
the Outer beauty cannot exist without the
inner, that a work of art is organic, and
must have a life or spirit informing its least
details. Criticism with the larger view would en-
ter into the endeavor of the artist, who follows
after nature in creation, and, full of his idea,
selects and groups the facts of nature in order to
shape this forth, true at once to nature and to
himself; and would judge his work with reference
to the effectiveness with which he had made his
work become the speech of his idea—idea mean-
ing, not an abstract conception, but vision of hid-
den perfectness or wholeness in nature. Spirit
and form, then, would be the watchwords of this
criticism, and the purely ethical inquiry, as to
what moral teaching had been superimposed upon
the work of art, would be ruled out.
The absorbing questions in Dryden’s critical
work are questions of form. Following the lead
of France, now slowly coming under the guidance
of the Academy with its ordered laws for thought
and speech, he busied himself, as did Corneille,
with questions of rule, order, coherence in struc-
ture. Dryden’s work is an epitome of the great
14
Critical battle between classicism and romantic-
ism, between strict asthetic rule and the free-
dom, perhaps caprice, of genius, which each na-
tion of Europe has at some time fought, and which
England fought at the Restoration. -
That the purely speculative side of the problem,
the ultimate nature and essence of dramatic art,
should be subordinated, is not strange. The days
of Sidney, with his impassioned appeal for poetry
as a revelation of the divine, were passed. The
days of the philosopher-critics were not yet come.
The seventeenth-century discussion of art reflects
the same influences at work in the political and in
the philosophic thought of the time. “The phil-
osophy of this first age lived in a world where two
things seemed clear: first, that nature is full of
facts which conform fatally to exact and irreversi-
ble law; and second, that man lives best under a
strong, a benevolently despotic civil government.
* . What they bequeathed to us was a faith in
sober realities, a reverence for the dignity of the
world of law, a love of lucidity.” The gift
which the seventeenth-century philosophers be-
stowed upon the world of abstract thought,
France and her followers bestowed upon the
world of art.
Dryden’s imperfect grasp of the other side of
the critical problem, the spirit or underlying idea
of a work of art, is shown in his treatment of Aris-
totle’s dictum, that dramatic art is an imitation of
nature, and in his discussion of the ethical aim of
tragedy. A play he defines as “a just and lively
image of human nature, representing its passions
and humours, and the changes of fortune to which
r Dr. Royce : The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 28, 31.
15
it is subject, for the delight and instruction of
mankind.” Here, as throughout Dryden’s criti-
cal work, imitation of nature is taken as the basis
for all poetry, but the phrase is used in varying
senses. Sometimes it means photographic liter-
alness in the representation of mere fact. Some-
times it suggests the deeper meaning, the attempt
to objectify the inner significance of action or
event, such as is seen in the great imaginative
work of Shakespeare or of Sophocles. Passages
of the latter kind are rare. “The fancy, mem-
ory, and judgment are then extended . . . upon
the rack; all of them reaching, with their utmost
stress, at nature; a thing so almost infinite and
boundless as can never fully be comprehended, but
where the images of all things are always pres-
ent.” “We draw not after their lines (the Anci-
ents) but those of nature. . . . It will rest with
you to prove that they wrought more perfect
images of human life than we.”
Oftener, the phrase is used in the former sense,
with a purely external meaning. Moreover, na-
ture is to be imitated, not so much because one ;
sees in her something one wishes to imitate, but iſ
because she has the sanction of Aristotle: ...)
|
propositions which are laid down in my discourse
as helps to the better imitation of nature are not
mine, . . . nor were ever pretended so to be,
but derived from the authority of Aristotle and |
Horace, and from the rules and examples of
Ben Jonson and Corneille.” Those propositions
are rules for the unities of time and of place. A
1 Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Works, Vol. XV, p. 292.
2 Dedication to The Rival Ladies. Works, Vol. II, p. 132.
3 Works, Vol. XV, p. 302.
4 Def. of Essay of Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. II, p. 308.

16
belief that these rules contain the secret of true
imitation of nature is stated many times in Dry-
den’s work. Between mature and the artist some-
thing has intervened. “Thus I grant you that the
Knowledge of nature was the original rule; and
that all poets ought to study her, as well as Aris-
totle and Horace, her interpreters.” The cling-
ing to fact instead of to the significance of fact
is evident everywhere. “That play is to be
thought the nearest imitation of nature whose plot
or action is confined within that time,” that is,
twenty-four hours. Rime does not prevent im-
itation/of nature, being at least as matural as blank
verse. ( Reading, “It is true that to imitate well
is a poet’s work; but to affect the soul and excite
the passions, and, above all, to move admiration
(which is the delight of serious plays), a bare
imitation will not serve,” one would imagine
that Dryden was pleading for the artist’s selec-
tion of fact in the working out of an imaginative
conception, but the next words undeceive: “The
converse, therefore, which a poet is to imitate,
must be brightened with all the arts and orna-
ments of poesy, and must be such as, strictly con-
sidered, could never be spoken by any without
premeditation.” -
Quoting, does away, perhaps, with the necessity
of showing that Dryden did not clearly define for
himself the phrase, imitation of mature. The con-
tradiction stands confessed. If rime is defended
on the ground that imitation is not copy, copy
meaning literal reproduction of details, what can
1 Apology for Heroic Poetry. Works, Vol. V, p. 117: Def. of Essay of
Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. II, pp. 305-306.
2 Works, Vol. XV, p. 296.
3 Ib., p. 369-374.
4 Def. of Essay of Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. II, p. 295.
\
2 17
One Say of the argument in favor of the unities of
place and of time as introducing a greater degree
of probability into a play? That Dryden grasped
some notion of the difference is shown in his argu-
lment against prose, on the ground that there can
be in art too close an imitation of nature,' but
the fragment contains no development of the
idea, and is brought in because Dryden was at that
moment in need of an argument in favor of
rime. Further proof that the idea of the rela-
tion of fact to the imaginative treatment of fact
is not worked out by Dryden is given in his justifi-
cation of the character of Morose on the ground
that Jonson was once acquainted with such a
man.” Surely, if one consider the demands of
the greatest art, this is the strongest argument
against the use of such a character, inasmuch as
truth to nature in the higher sense means soften-
ing of specific peculiarity, of oddity, in order to
give the purely individual a touch of the uni-
*
versal. The same censure must fall upon the
following fragment, which, at first sight, seems a
plea for truth in art, but upon reflection betrays
the defects of modern realism, whose falsity lies
in a failure to grasp the idea that what seems for
the moment the truth may not prove the truth
in the long run: “If, with, much pains, and
some success, I have drawn a deformed piece, there
is as much of art, and as near an imitation of
nature in a lazar, as in a Venus.” The true
artist, like the true scientist, does not judge from
the single instance. T)ryden, for the most part,
uses the phrase, imitation of nature, in this lower
1 Def. of Essay of Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. II, pp. 295–296.
2 Works, Vol. XV, p. 349. -
3 Preface to Tyrannic Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 377.
18
sense of wax-work literalness in reproduction, not
in the higher one of the artist’s grouping of facts
to set forth his sense of the meaning in object or
event. If, at times, in dealing with Shakespeare,
he grasps, by momentary perception, a notion of
the “quick and lively” imitation, the more vital
idea is not followed out by his reason, and becomes
no part of his theory.
Another factor enters into Dryden’s discussion
of the spirit or idea in a work of art. This is his
view of the end and aim of tragedy. One passage
only suggests a grasp of the disinterestedness of
the greatest art in its endeavor to depict, with no
ulterior aim, life in its actual struggles. The ob-
ject of tragedy, Eugenius says in the Essay, is “to
show the various movements of a soul combating
between two different passions.” From this hint
of the possibility of grasping in actual event the
real significance, Dryden’s view narrows down to
the thought that a drama should be built on an
abstract ethical notion, events being shaped to
suit the theme. This very Eugenius censures the
ancients for showing often a prosperous wicked-
mess and an unhappy piety, instead of punishing
vice and rewarding virtue.” The question at first
took the form of an inquiry as to whether pleasure
or instruction were the chief end of drama. In
regard to comedy the answer is clear. That is
meant only to please, and has no laws for punish-
ing vice, and rewarding virtue. But in tragedy ex-
amples of punishment are made to deter men
from wrong.” T)elight is the chief, if not the only
end of poesy, he says elsewhere, at about the
1 Works, Vol. XV, p. 312.
2 lb., p. 309. . . . . .
3 Preface to An Evening's Love. Works, Vol. III, pp. 246–9.
19
same time. Instruction, if an end, is only sec-
ondary.' Pleasure is not the only end of poesy;
the precepts and examples of piety are not,to be
omitted.” But Dryden’s view narrows as he
grows older. Ten years after these earlier state-
ments we find him approving Bossu in saying that
to make a moral of your work you must lay down
for yourself what that precept of morality shall
be which you would insinuate into the people,
and frame your work accordingly. It is the
moral which directs the whole action of the
play to one center. The action is to be built upon
the moral. When the fable is designed, and not
before, the persons are to be introduced.” The
whole is summed up in a condemnation of Shakes-
peare's Troilus and Cressida on the ground that,
“Cressida is false and is not punished.” Still
later Dryden says that the pity and terror of
tragedy are only a means to bring us to virtue. To
the pity and terror of the ancients have succeeded,
as the most adequate ends of tragedy, the punish-
ment of vice and the reward of virtue." Again,
several years after, he wrote: “The learned Mr.
Rymer has well observed that in all punishments
we are to regulate ourselves by poetical justice.” "
This discussion of the aim of tragedy supple-
ments the discússion of the imitation of nature
in art. To a man who thought deeply it would
perhaps be easily apparent that the workings of
poetic justice in nature do not usually take the
form of a material reward of goodness. But Dry-
den, in this view of the necessity of fitting facts
1 Def. of Essay of Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. II, p. 295.
2 Preface to Tyrannic Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 376.
3 Preface to Troilus and Cressida. Works, Vol. VI, p. 266.
4 Heads of Answer to Mr. Rymer. Works, Vol. XV, pp. 383, 390.
5 Preface to Don Sebastian. Works, Vol. VII, p. 312,
20
to an abstract thought, has many supporters
among critics and dramatists. Few have had faith
enough to believe in the divine significance of
events as they actually are, fairly considered, with
desire to learn the truth from them, not from an
a priori notion.
Leaving psychological subtleties alone, Dryden's
criticism takes the open road of objective inquiry.
Now and then, however, suggestions occur,'
prophesying some of the inquiries of modern
criticism. Richter’s distinction between the
fancy and the imagination is hinted in Dryden’s
condemnation of farce, on the ground that it pre-
sents us with the monstrous, the chimerical, and
hence appeals to the fancy only, not to the judg-
ment." The remark is only a chance shot, form-
ing no recognized part of Dryden’s theory, which,
centering in this somewhat blurred conception of
the imitation of nature, busies itself with discus-
sion of the outward means to that end. When the
classical influence is predominant, it is taken for
granted that rules for the imitation of nature have
been settled once for all by the ancients. When
the balance sways in favor of the irregular English
art, protest is made against the rules, without a
clearing away of that fundamental assumption,
that observance of the rules of time and of place
is of vital concern in catching nature in the act.
The theory of Dryden, then, and his criticism of
the French and of the English dramatists, are
based on these two ideas, nature and the rules.
In Dryden’s first bit of dramatic criticism, the
dedication to The Rival Ladies, all the factors of
his problem are presented. He quotes Aristo-
1 Preface to An Evening's Love. Works, Vol. III, pp. 241-242.
21
tle’s principles in regard to cause and effect in
drama; pleads, in defense of rime, that it is the
fashion followed by the most polished and civil-
ized nations in Europe; and betrays his wilful
admiration for Shakespeare—an admiration shown
in varying scale throughout his career as Critic,
and serving as the best test for the degree
of insubordination of the moment against foreign
taste—Shakespeare, “who, with some errours not
to be avoided in that age, had undoubtedly a
larger soul of poesy than ever any of our nation.” "
The battle thus opened between love for the
irregular English genius and the authority of the
ancients, as adapted by the French, is fought
out in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dry-
den’s most significant piece of work in the realm
of criticism. Its important questions are: The
relative values of the ancient and the modern
drama; of the French and the English drama; the
advantages and disadvantages of rime. The
discussion is carried on by four combatants,
Crites, Eugenius, Lisideius, and Neander. It opens
with Crites' plea for the Superiority of the
ancients,” on the ground that they were better
imitators of nature than are the moderms; that
their supremacy is shown by the attempts of the
moderns to imitate them. The advantages of
their rules in regard to the unities of time, place,
and action, are set forth. That play is said to
be the nearest imitation of nature whose action
is confined within twenty-four hours.
Eugenius, who takes up arms in defense of
the French,” admits the strong influence of the
ancients, but says that Crites, in order to prove
1 Works, Vol. II, pp. I3o, 135–136.
2 Works, Vol. XV, pp. 293–301.
3 lb., pp. 301-314.
22
his point, should show that the ancients have
imitated nature better than the moderns have
done. He evades the point himself, however,
merely remarking that the ancients had no regu-,
lar division of their plays into acts, that their
plots lacked invention, that they swerved from the
rules of their own art in misrepresenting nature
to us. This last statement, coming after a dis-
cussion of the unities, evidently takes for granted i
Crites’ assumption that imitation of, nature and ||
… --~~~~"-" “-, -, … |
adherence to the rules are synonymous. Another
grave objection is urged against the plays. They
do not always reward virtue and punish vice.
Again, and here Eugenius almost touches a
broader conception of art, their range of passion isv/ -
narrow, love being left out.
The discussion shifts to the merits of French
plays. Lisideius argues," in proof of their superi-
ority, scrupulous observance of the unities, espec-
ially that of action; care in banishing unsuitable
actions from the stage; in never allowing change
of will at the end to govern the denouement; the
beauty of their rime. '.
Neander, who represents Dryden in the debate,
replies.” It is characteristic that he is not pleading
the merits of a purely abstract question, the pur-
pose of the essay being, as was confessed in the
preface, “to vindicate the honour of our English
writers from the censure of those who unjustly
prefer the French before them.” The funda-
mental assumption that obedience to the laws.
means stricter adherence to nature is not cleared
away, yet it is stated that the English excel in
1 Works, Vol. XV, pp. 316 329.
2 Ib., pp. 329-377.
3 Ib., p. 282.
“lively imitation” of nature, which more than
makes up for the French decorum. That this
lively imitation is something different from strict
adherence to the rules is implied in what Nean-
der says in his defense of English plays, though
he nowhere defines his point of view. The Supe-
f riority of the English is proved, he says, by the
A fact that the French are, afar off, imitating the
quick turns and graces of the English stage.
Since the death of Cardinal Richelieu they are
Venturing to mix their serious plays with mirth.
The poverty of French plays is compared with
the English richness of invention. In the Eng-
lish plays there is, in plot, in character-draw-
ing, in tone, a variety in unity not found in
the French. Tragi-comedy is defended on the
ground of the relief given by contrast. French
| decorum in banishing death-scenes from the
stage is commended, but their forbidding tumults
and fights is questioned, because the English like
that kind of thing. On the whole, the French,
) by too close following of the rules, have lost much
genuine beauty from their stage. The rules will
raise perfection higher where it is, but will not
create it where it is not. They are not the soul
of poesy, which is imitation of humor and of the
passions.
The praise Dryden bestows in the Essay upon
his great countrymen aids in defining his
theory. The “incomparable Shakespeare” is
eulogized: “To begin then with Shakespeare. He
was the man who of all modern, and perhaps
ancient poets, had the largest and most compre-
hensive soul. All the images of nature were still
present to him, and he drew them, not labouri-
ously, but luckily: when he describes anything,
24
you more than see it, you feel it too. Th9se
who accuse him to have wanted learning give
him the greater commendation: he was natur-
ally learned; he needed not the spectacles of
books to read nature; he looked inwards, and
found her there. . . . He is always great when
some great occasion is presented to him.”
Beaumont and Fletcher win praise for having,
with the advantage of Shakespeare's wit, great
natural gifts, improved by study; for making plots
more regular than Shakespeare's; for representing
all the passions “very lively,” especially that of
love; for their painting of wild debaucheries; for
quickness of wit in repartee. Fletcher came in
comedy nearer to perfection than Shakespeare, yet
though carelessness has many faults.” “In most
of the regular plays of Shakespeare or Fletcher
there is a more masculine fancy and greater spirit
in the writing than there is in any of the French.”
It is for very different reasons that Jonson is
eulogized. He is “the most learned and judicious
writer which any theatre ever had. . . . Some-
thing of art was wanting to the drama till he
came.” He is a careful and learned observer of
dramatic laws. The Silent Woman is analyzed
as a pattern of a perfect play. Its action takes
but three hours and a half. The plot is elaborate,
easy; the untying natural. The business of the
plot rises in every act. Plot and characters are
managed as by a skillful chess-player. But Jon-
son falls short of Beaumont and Fletcher in the
matter of wit. He is a more correct poet than
1 Works, Vol. XV, p. 344.
2 Ib , pp. 343-346.
3 Ib. p. 343.
4 Ib., p. 346.
Shakespeare. “I admire him,” Dryden says, “but
I love Shakespeare.” --
It would seem that Neander is advancing a
standard different from that of Crites and of
Lisideius, but this is apparently not the case. He
condemns the French for too close following of the
rules,” yet Jonson’s Silent Woman is praised for
being regular according to the strictest code, and
one of the last proofs of the superiority of the
English drama is stated thus: “We have many
plays of ours as regular as any of theirs.” Dry-
den’s exact meaning is hard to reach, his thesis
evidently being that the English are superior,
whatever the standard is. If the statement that
the rules are not the soul of poesy seems to imply
a broader view, that view is not worked out, and
is shortly after contradicted by the attitude of the
critic in the Defense of an Essay of Dramatic
Poesy. gº
The debate turns upon the question of rime,
already defended by Dryden in the dedication to
The Rival Ladies as being a help to the memory,
a curb to the fancy, an added grace in writing,
and as being the fashion." The defense is
strengthened here by an attempt to connect the
question with the central idea of the essay, that
art is an imitation of nature. The argument, not
a very strong one, as Dryden afterward confessed,
takes the form of a statement that it is at least
as near nature as blank verse. Only apt words
and right use of them are required to make verse
matural. Imitation is not copy, and the language
e
1 Works, Vol. XV, p. 348.
2 Ib., p. 339. * * *.
3 Ib., p. 342. sº .
4 Works, Vol. II, pp. 135-136, 138.
26
of serious plays is elevated above that of common
life. This part of the argument brings out with
peculiar distinctness two things: first, the Super-
ficial character of the idea of nature underlying
the discussion; second, Dryden’s intentional or
accidental lack of logic when he is determined to
win his point. As illustrative of the latter may be
cited his way of meeting the quotation from Aris-
totle that the proper medium for drama is the
“kind of verse” nearest prose. Dryden defends
himself in upholding rime in the face of this
by gravely proving that blank verse is not “a kind
of verse,” but only measured prose, and so fails to
meet the Aristotelian demand; then by proving
that couplet-verses may be rendered as near
prose as blank-verse itself"—a species of argu-
ment in which he would hardly find a worthy an-
tagonist. Into this discussion, too, comes jealousy
for the English cause. Rime may be French
fashion, but it was an English fashion first. Many
scenes written in rime can be shown in Shakes-
peare and in Jonson.” -
Dryden’s subsequent history as dramatic critic
is the history of his opinions in regard to these
points: rime; structure; the indefinable element
in English work that rouses admiration and
baffles analysis. The balance drifts now one way,
now another. Already in 1667 Dryden had
pleaded for Secret Love regularity according to
the strictest dramatic laws, a commendation which
he did not value, he said, because with all sym-
metry there might want spirit to set it off.” The
Essay follows, with its apparent unwillingness
1 Works, Vol. XV, pp. 364-365.
2 Ib., p. 342.
3 Preface to Secret Love. Works, Vol. II, p. 418.
27
either to hold to the rules, or to let them go. In
the Defense of the Essay Dryden, while pleading
for a certain latitude in regard to the rules, holds
them up as the chief means by which the ancients,
Jonson, and Corneille have imitated nature." He
remarks in connection with Tyrannic Love (1669)
that the unities are kept more exactly than is
requisite in a tragedy.” A little later a marked
change of attitude becomes apparent. Shakes-
peare, who, somewhat earlier, had been character-
ized thus:
“Shakespeare, who (taught by none) did first im-
part .
To Fletcher wit; to labouring Jonson art.
He, monarch-like, gave those, his subjects, law;
And is that nature which they paint and draw,”
is severely scored for his impossible plots and for
writing “meanly.” He is a very Janus of poets,
Dryden says. No sooner do you begin to admire
the one than you despise the other.” Shakes-
peare and Fletcher are condemned together for
lack of decorum. On every page you find a
solecism or a flaw in sense. Their lame plots call
for pity, made, as they are, of incoherent or
ridiculous stories. Even Jonson, though Dryden
is loath to name him, as he is a “most judicious
writer,” is found guilty of incorrectness, though
he is praised for the height and accuracy of his
judgment in ordering plots, for his choice of
characters, for maintaining what he had chosen as
his end." A certain patronizing tone creeps into
1 Works, Vol. II.
2 Preface. Works, Vol. III, p 379.
3 Prologue to The Tempest. Works, Vol. III, p. 109.
4 Defense of Epilogue. Works. Vol. IV, pp. 228–229, 236.
5 Ib. pp. 230-234, 242-243.
28
the discourse, as of one who has lately, perhaps,
been acquiring French polish. “I have always
acknowledged the wit of our predecessors with all
the veneration which becomes me; but, I am
sure, their wit was not that of gentlemen; there
was even somewhat that was ill-bred and clownish
in it, and which confessed the conversation of the
authors.”
Soon after this the pendulum swings back.
The old admiration for Shakespeare returns with
added force. It is shown first in the prologue to
Aureng-Zebe (1675). Dryden is weary of his
“long-loved mistress,” rime. Passion cannot be
bound in fetters.
“But, spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare’s sacred name:
Awed when he hears his god-like Romans rage,
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield.”
Dryden has moved from his early position in
which he said that because Shakespeare and
Fletcher had gone no farther than blank verse,
one was not to think that there the pillars of
poetry were to be erected; that, because they
excellently described passion without rime, there-
fore rime was not capable of describing it.”
The next light comes from the preface to All for
Love (1677–78). In order to imitate the “divine
Shakespeare,” Dryden says, he has freed himself
from rime." A feeling of superiority shows in his
1 Works, Vol. IV, p. 239.
2 Works, Vol. V, p 201.
3 Fssay on Heroic Plays. Works, Vol. IV, p. 18.
4 Works, Vol. V, p. 339.
29
f
attitude both toward the ancients and toward the
French. The latter are distinguished in their
plays by nicety of manners, but their good breed-
ing seldom extends to a word of sense.” “For
my own part I desire to be tried by the laws of
my own country, for it seems unjust to me that the
French should prescribe here till they have
conquered.” As for the ancients, though their
models are regular, they are too little for English
tragedy.”
The Preface to Troilus and Cressida (1679)
shows another change of base. Dryden here is
entirely in favor of the rules. The “rubbish,”
in Shakespeare, under which many excellent
thoughts lay buried, he has reduced to order.
The theory of Aristotle is expounded with appro-
val, and, in reply to the question as to how far
we ought to imitate Shakespeare and Fletcher,
Dryden says: “We ought to follow them so far
only as they have copied the excellencies of those
who invented and brought to perfection dra-
matic poetry.” T)ryden’s authorities, “to
whom,” he says, “I owe my lights,” " are not the
tragedians, but Aristotle, and his interpreters,
Horace, Longinus, Rapin, Bossu. The treatise,
with its long discussion on “manners,” is less
valuable in itself, than as a commentary on Dry-
den’s complete temporary subjection to Aristotle,
and on his attempt to reconcile modern practice
with ancient rule.
After this we have only fragments to guide us,
fragments sufficient to indicate change of faith.
**
1 Works, Vol. V, p. 329.
2 Ib., p. 331.
3 Ib., p. 339.
4 Works, V.I. VI, p. 256.
30
*
A little later Dryden is resolved to “err with hon-
est Shakespeare.” Of his tragedy, Don Sebas-
tian (1690), Dryden says that he has not exactly
kept the mechanic rules of unity. He has had
them in his eye, but has followed them at a dis-
tance.” Cleomenes (1692) finds him tempering
the wind of classic doctrine to English taste. He
has made a bold attempt to write upon a single
plot, unmixed with comedy. Yet, in order to
gratify the barbarous part of the audience, he has
given them a short rabble scene.” The old ad-
miration for Shakespeare burns up strongly again.
In a letter he accuses Mr. Rymer of blaspheming
Shakespeare, who had a genius for tragedy, and
genius alone is a greater virtue than all other qual-
ifications. All the faults of which Mr. Rymer ac-
cuses him are there. “Yet who will read Mr. Ry-
mer, or not read Shakespeare?” In the dedica-
tion of a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(1693), Dryden censures the French for following
the rules too closely.” Soon after this comes the
dedication of Dryden’s last play, Love Triumphant
(1694). He is still wavering." He has had the
mechanic rules in mind, and has kept scrupulously
that of time. Confessing to the use of double
action, he pleads the English love of variety. He
makes a bold plea for the change of will used in
producing the catastrophe. “Had it been possible
for Aristotle to have seen the Cimma, I am confi-
dent he would have altered his opinion.”
1 Wind. of The Duke of Guise. Works, Vol. VII, p. 163.
2 Works, Vol. VII, p. 313.
3 Preface to Cleomenes, Works, Vol. VIII, p 220.
4 Works, Vol. XVIII, p. 117.
5 Works, Vol. XII, p. 6o.
6 Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 375–376.
7 Ib., p. 374.
31
This closes Dryden’s long debate with himself
and with the public in regard to form in drama.
The issue was simply the question as to whether
there should be one action only; as to whether the
unities of time and of place should be observed.
The history of the critic for thirty years is the
history of his changing his mind in regard to
these points, siding now with the English against
the rules, now almost deciding with the French in
favour of them.
In estimating Dryden’s entire work as critic of
the drama one would like to conform to his stand-
ard of criticism, stated, in the Apology for Heroic
Poelry, as “a standard of judging well, the chief-
est part of which is to observe those excellenges
which should delight a reasonable reader.” Cer-
tainly his work opened a new era in English criti-
cism. “From Dryden’s first word its character
was defined, and the course of its later develop-
ment was determined.” As for his waverings in
this matter of form, one would not censure him
for changing his opinions. Flexibility, sensitive-
mess to mew ideas are the first requisites in a
critic. One asks of the critic only, that in the
process of adjustment of his individual apprecia-
tion to “the best that has been thought and said in
the world,” in forming a standard, there shall be
vita] process, growth. Dryden’s shifting of posi-
tion is by no means always progress, and the fine
independence of his, “Why should there be any
ipse dia.it in our poetry any more than there is
in our philosophy?” is contradicted by the time-
serving element in his attempt at once to adapt
i
1 Works, Vol. V, p. 112. - -
2 Laura Wylie: Evolution of English Criticism, p. 25.
3 Preface to An Evening's Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 243.
32
his views to the formula that was the literary
fashion, and to the popular taste which eschewed
the formula. It is to be regretted that the long
series of changes did not result in a more assured
view. One would have expected that thirty years
of practice in dramatic work would have led the
critic to a finer understanding of his own aims and
|purposes. In comparing him with Corneille, who
faced the same problems, one finds an interesting
parallel and contrast. Both stand at an end of
an old order, of the romantic drama; at the begin-
ning of a new. Both deal with their problems in
personal fashion, endeavoring to explain or to ex-
cuse their own dramatic practice. But Corneille,
who, early in his career, hurled defiance at the
classicists, saying that if his critics did not like
his work they were at liberty to do it better; that
they would do well to stay away from the theatre
and save their money,' bowed his head at last
under the yoke. In 1660 we find him apologizing
for his past success, and saying that one should
please only according to the rules.” Dryden never
wholly submitted to the rules, never wholly dis-
carded them. He liked having them with him in
order to have something to rebel against. One could
praise him for greater independence of thought
than Corneille shows, were it not for the fact that
to him the old saying was true, vow populi, voa dei.
JDryden’s conclusion, so far as he reached one, was
thoroughly in accord with the spirit of the Eng-
lish people, and his final rºlea is for freedom in
form, for didacticism in spirit in works of art.
For the limitation of Tryden’s theory to the
I Corneille: Epitre, La Suivante, Oeuvres, Vol. II, pp. 116-12o.
2 Corneille: Discours de l'utilite et les parties du poeme dramatique
Oeuvres, Vol. I, pp. 13–14.
3 33
purely objective side of inquiry, his age and its
manner of thinking are largely responsible. To
the critic of to-day it seems that those eager dis-
cussions of the unities missed the one vital point
in discussion of drama, which, centering in action,
and dealing with the causes and the effects of acts,
should be criticised with reference to the effective-
mess with which it represents a crisis of human
life. The tragedy of King Lear, for instance, has,
in its many-stranded story, a principle of life, giv-
ing it a subtler unity than that which can be im-
parted by obedience to French rule. That Dryden
missed, in following mere questions of structure,
the deeper conception of the organic nature of a
work of art is suggested by opinions like the fol-
lowing: wit is a propriety in words and in
thoughts, or, in other terms, thoughts and terms
elegantly adapted to their subject;' the most
poetical parts of a play are descriptions, images,
and moral sentences.” Over against this purely
external conception can be set other passages.
“Now the words are the colouring of the work,
which, in the order of nature, is last to be con-
sidered; the design, the disposition, the man-
ners, and the thoughts, are all before it: where any
of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants
or is imperfect in the imitation of human life,
which is in the very definition of a poem.” The
presence of the pervading idea in great works of
art was felt, if not reasoned out by Dryden, and he
is at his best when he is not attempting to form a
critical code. When he forgets the rules, in exam-
ining the work of his great predecessors, the spirit
I Apology for Heoric Poetry. Works, Vol. V, p. 124.
2 Pref. to Don Sebastian. Works, Vol. VII, p 308.
3 Preface to Palamon and Arcite. Works, Vol. XI, p. 216.
34
of the work he is discussing seems to descend upon
him, and he is betrayed into appreciation outside
his formula. That some saving grace of critical
penetration was denied him is suggested by his
interpretation of the meaning of Oedipus, which
is, Dryden says, that no man is happy till he
dies." But it is true that in his work with the
great dramatists of a more imaginative age than
his own, something haunts him, something inde-
finable, something that he cannot grasp and imi-
tate. He can say only: “Ours are more quick
and fuller of spirit,” with wistful uncertainty in
regard to the cause. The explanation of his
inability to find out what it was that baffled and
eluded him is best given in his own dramatic
work.
/*
1 Preface to Troilus and Cressida. Works, Vol. VI, p. 266.
2 Works, Vol. XV, p. 341.
- * *
* * - * - " -- ~~
Q_{ - *-*. . . . i/, /* ‘. .
\
. . . . .
S}{ A_6 ul-ć Q , •.C.. • *- : : *
35
Dryden's Comedies,
Dryden’s dramatic work began with comedy.
He found already in possession of the stage the
two types of comedy that have existed side by
side since the revival of drama in the early Re-
naissance, the romantic, and the critical, the for-
mer, based on pure story, the interest centering
in event and in character; the latter based on ab-
stract idea, to whose development both plot and
character bend. Pleasure is the aim of the one,
and its appeal is to the emotions. AThe aim of the
other is to correct, and its appeal is primarily to .
the intellect. That two species of art, so differ-
ent in aim, should be included under the one
name, comedy, gives cause for wonder. The in-
volved love-intrigue of Spanish comedy, the com-
plex, subtle study of human mature found in
Shakespeare’s comedies, the extreme emotional
effects in the work of Beaumont and Fletcher
seem, at first sight, to have little in common with
Molière's social criticism or with Jonson's satire. In
plot no less than in theme, the two species show
difference in type. Critical comedy is bound by
its mature to stick to a theme. Molière's plays,
forced as many of them are in the denouement,
show skill in keeping one chief personage, one
main idea, always in evidence. The close knit-
ting of plot in Jonson’s work, partly the influence
of Iatin comedy, is proverbial. Even Congreve,
though the incidents in his plot-structure may
36
halt and waver, keeps a steady line of satire
throughout his plays. Romantic comedy, on the
other hand, shows preference for intricate and in-
volved action, admitting an element of pure
chance that often brings uncertainty into the
structure. Yet, in spite of important differences,
the two kinds of comedy have much in common.
In both the strict law of cause and effect de-
manded in tragedy, admits large license, for both
are artificial, and allow, as adequate cause for the
involving of action, more improbable motives and
events than are legitimate in tragedy. Both deal
with cross-purposes, between man and man, or be-
tween man and circumstance. In the working out
of the cross-purposes, the purely accidental, and
the intention to outwit some one, are variously
blended. In both the action leads to happy end-
ing, happy, at least, for the good and the clever.
And, most important of all, both possess an ele-
ment of the comic, some effect of incongruity, in
character, or in situation, or in both. In neither
is the comic element, as in farce, an end in itself,
and as such, purely external, in the situation
only. It is a means to an end: in romantic
comedy, rousing interest and sympathy in be-
half of a love-intrigue; in the other species of
comedy, sharpening, or perhaps softening criti-
cism. The two types, whose extremes are seen
in Shakespeare’s work on the one hand, Jonson’s
on the other, shade into each other by impercept-
ible degrees, Malvolio in the romantic cqmedy,
Thoelfth Night, incurring gentle ridicule, Molière's
Misanthrope rousing sympathy as well as criticism.
Of the nature and aim of comedy both critics
and philosophers have found it hard to give a sat-
isfactory account. The attempted definitions show
37
lack of common ground for study, some touching
psychological origin only, some the ethical aim.
Aristotle’s simple statement that it is a study
of the bad, or ludicrous," is inadequate in view
of the brilliant achievement of modern comedy.
Schopenhauer’s view” that it is the expression in
art of the will to live, as tragedy, the greater form
of drama, is the expression of the will to
die; and Hegel’s definition” of it as a species
of the struggle of the individual with the
infinite, the individual failing because of lack of
Solid design in his effort, are interesting chiefly as
a proof of the fact that philosophy is only tempera-
ment in a formula. Mr. Meredith defines comedy
as criticism of the individual from the point of
view of common sense, the social sense; the comic
Spirit, according to him, being deeply responsible
for deviations from the common road.
“Men’s future upon earth does not attract it;
their honesty , and shapeliness in the present
does; and whenever they wax out of proportion,
overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical,
hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate;
whenever they are at variance with their pro-
fessions and violate the unwritten but perceptible
laws binding them in consideration one to another
g the spirit overhead will look humourously
malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed
by volleys of silvery laughter.”” * *
Coleridge, on the other hand, says that comedy
is “poetry in unlimited jest.” It is the representa-
tion on the part of the individual of the abandon-
1 Aristotle: Poetics. Trans. by S. H. Butcher. p. 19.
2 Werke, Bd. III, Kap. 37, p. 5oo.
3 Werke, Bd. X, 3, pp. 533–537.
4 Meredith: An Essay on Comedy, pp. 23–24.
38
ment of all definite aim, the removal of all
bounds. The animal is the governing power, the in-
tellectual faculties mere material." To Coleridge,
then, the comic spirit is deeply irresponsible. If
the former definition would leave out Shakes-
peare and all romantic comedy, the latter would
leave out Molière and Jonson. One can hardly
be content to say with M. Brunetière that comedy
is the drama when it is gay,” inasmuch as the
comic element in some satiric comedy, as for in-
stance in Jonson, has little gaiety in it. Comedy
must be defined, with tragedy, as presentation of
some phase of the struggle in human existence.
More often than in tragedy the struggle lies be-
tween man and man, is the game of wit versus wit,
whether the stake be riches, as in Jonson’s Vol-
pone, or the winning of a lady, as in Dryden’s An
Evening’s Love. But romantic comedy draws
constantly on the material of tragedy, the con-
flict of man with circumstances, with the nature
of things. The dramatic clash in comedy, then,
runs all the way from the plot intended to ex-
pose a plotter, such as is seen in Volpome and in
Tarluffe, through the sympathetic trickery that
ends in happiness for Beatrice and Benedict in
Much Ado Aboul Nothing, into the region where
the human schemer is absent and the trying cir-
cumstances seem the work of fate, as in the main
plot of Twelfth Night. Comedy has a broad
range of appeal, demanding, in Jonson,
a smile of scorn; in Molière, laughter al-
most touched at times, with pity; in Shakes-
peare, laughter and tears together, a sympathy
which shows that between comedy and tragedy a
\ }. S. T. Coleridge: Works, Vol. IV, pp. 23–24.
T- i.es poques du Théâtre Français, p. 37.
|
39
|
|
t
t
t
|
hard and fast line can not be drawn, that the dif-
ference is one of emphasis, not of kind.
It is small wonder that Dryden did not arrive at
profound views concerning an art so elusive. Of
criticism in regard to comedy he has left little.
For the most part he regards it with small respect,
though in one place he remarks:
“Of all dramatic writing, comic wit
As 'tis the best, so 'tis most hard to hit.” "
Very different is the estimate given later, where
he alludes to comedy with a contempt perhaps
borrowed from Aristotle.
“Neither, indeed, do I value a reputation gained
from comedy, so far as to concern myself about it.
IFor I think it, in its own nature, inferior
to all sorts of dramatic writing. Low comedy
especially requires, on the writer’s part, much of
conversation with the vulgar, and much of ill-
nature in the observation of their follies. &
I am sometimes ready to imagine that my disgust,
of low comedy proceeds not so much from my
judgment as from my temper, which is the reason
why I so seldom write it; and that, when I succeed
in it (I mean so far as to please the audience), yet
I am nothing satisfied with what I have done; but
am often vexed to hear the people laugh and clap,
as they perpetually do, where I intended them no
jest; while they let pass the better things without
taking notice of them.”
That the material of comedy is low life seems
to have been a conviction with Dryden. Comedy
consists, though of low persons, yet of natural
actions and characters." The sentiment is re-
1 Epilogue to Wild Gallant. Works, Vol. II., p. 122.
2 Preface to An Evening's Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 240,
3 Ib., p. 241.
40
peated in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy." This
bit of Aristotelian doctrine he does not trouble
himself to reconcile with the work of his con-
temporary Molière, whose footsteps he follows so
closely at times. That the method of comedy is
satire, a presentation of sharp antithesis, with
some ulterior motive—to rouse scorn, or teach a
lesson—he took for granted. Admiration is the
delight of tragedy, as satire is delight of comedy.”
“Comedy presents us with the imperfections of
human nature.” ‘’ Dryden’s only conception of
humor seems to have been the kind that excites
the laugh of scorn, not the laugh of sympathy.
Humor is the “ridiculous extravagance of conver-
sation wherin one person differs from all others,”
he says in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy." That
this conception of comedy would rule out the
greater part of his own work did not apparantly
trouble Dryden. It defines the comedy of Aristo-
phanes, Plautus, Jomson. It leaves out all
romantic comedy, Shakespeare, Calderon, Beau-
mont and Fletcher. This is only another in-
stance of Dryden’s acceptance of a traditional
classic view, as well as of the momentary character
of his convictions. He did not co-ordinate the
saying of the minute with his previous critical
judgment or with his practice.
Still more uncertain is Dryden’s decision in re-
gard to the mature of the ulterior motive in com-
edy. Some aim must underlie this sharp presenta-
tion of human folly. The comedy of satire has usu-
ally ethical motive. Dryden did not always recog-
1 Works, Vol. XV, p. 369.
2 Def. of Essay of Dram Poesy. Works, Vol. II, p. 302.
3 Pref, to An Evening's Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 241.
4 Works, Vol. XV, p. 349.
41
nize this. “The first end of comedy is delight,”
| he says. The comedian is bound by no law to
punish vice and reward virtue. In his work the
# | laws of poetic justice are less rigidly observed
than in tragedy. That Dryden’s views were blurred
may be seen by comparison of this with the dedi-
ication of Limberham, where he condones the in-
decency of the play because of its ethical intent.
“It was intended for an honest satire. º
The crime for which it suffered was that it ex-
pressed too much of the vice which it decried.”
Here, to defend himself from just criticism of the
play, he pleads a moral purpose as its motive. But
! the reader of Limberham is forced to believe that
here Dryden was true to his other theory. Surely,
“delight,” and that of the lowest possible order,
is the main motive, “instruction” only the sec-
Ond.
The critical doctrine in regard to comedy is
slight and fragmentary. Based on Aristotle, it is
not co-ordinated with Dryden’s own work, nor
with the work of Molière, who proved in the long
run perhaps the strongest influence on Dryden’s
work in this field. To formulate his views, it is
necessary to study the plays themselves, attempt-
ing to define the differences between the various
types imitated.
When the English theatres were re-opened after
the Restoration, the romantic tradition in comedy
was kept alive in the work of Shakespeare, of
Beaumont and Fletcher. To intensify this, new
influence came from Spain. Dryden was one of
the first to follow this fashion. On the other
hand, the influence of French critical comedy was
1 Pref. to An Evening's Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 249.
2 Works, Vol. VI, p. 9.
42
already at work. Dryden was not slow to adopt
this manner. That he did not as comedian define
his aim is not surprising. His work is a series
of attempts to hit public taste, taste, not as
in France, formed and definite, but craving
the sensational. That the question of form
perplexed him, whether to follow the single line
of action, or the complicated English plot, is
not strange. Dryden’s comedy never arrived at a
clear understanding of itself, either as regards
spirit or as regards form. It shows the impress of
varied influences. Its own influence is hard to
trace, though in it certain suggestions are given
afterward more fully developed in the Comedy of
Manners as represented by Wycherley and Con-
greve.
Dryden wrote, or adapted, six comedies, besides
helping in the recasting of the Tempest. It was
an age of adaptations.' Perhaps the lack of vi-
tality in the Restoration drama shows nowhere
else so clearly as in study of the sources. The
leading dramatists worked, not with story, chron-
icle, tradition, infusing life into dry material, but
with plays already done, borrowing, cutting down,
giving a happy ending to an old tragedy, or
weaving into it a love-story. Besides the so-
called pure comedies, Dryden wrote five tragi-
comedies. Statement of his sources will suggest
his manner of work.”
The Wild Gallant is an adaptation of a Span-
ish play, with traces of the influence of Molière
and of Ben Jonson. There is a resemblance, not
8 I Beljame: Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre, pp.
58–59. -
2See Carl Hartmann: , Einfluss Molière's auf Dryden's Komisch-
dramatische Dichtungen. Dryden's Prefaces and Dedications. Editors'
comments in the Scott-Saintsbury ed. 1882–1893.
43
pointed out hitherto, between Constance’s method
of supplying her lover with money,' and two
scenes in Fletcher’s “Wit without Money.” The
Rival Ladies is an adaptation of a Spanish play,
with hints of Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster.
Sir Martin Mar all is a working-over of Molière's
J." Atowrdī together with Quinault’s D'Amant In-
discret. A bit is taken from Shirley’s Love in a
Maze. The serious part of Secret Love is taken
from Le Grand Cyrus of Madeline de Scudéry,
and parts of the comic portions are taken from
Molière's Sganarelle, and L’Acole des Femmes.
An Evening’s Love goes back to the Spanish of
Calderon, through Thomas Corneille’s Le Feint
Astrologue. In this play are bits from Molière’s
J2Acole des Maris, Le Dépit Amoureuw, Les Pré.
cieuses Ridicules, and Quinault’s L’Amant Indis-
cret. Marriage & la Mode has reminiscences of
Molière’s ºft. as well as of
Philaster, and The Winter’s Tale. The Assig-
nation is indebted to L’Etourdi, Limberham to
Jes Fáchewa. The Spanish Friar contains bits
taken from no fewer than five of Molière's plays.
Amphitryon is a working-over of Molière's adap-
tation of Plautus' comedy. Love Triumphant
show the influence of Mºlière’s M. de Pourceaug-
72 QC. \
The range of Dryden’s work in comedy is
broad. With the comedies must be classed the
under-plots of the tragi-comedies, the represen-
tatives of the middle drama, characterized by
mixed motifs, by temporary sadness or suffering
with happy end. In Dryden’s work the purely ro-
mantic type of drama of the Spanish order, with

1 The Wild Gallant. Works, Vol. II, Act I, sc. 2.
2 Act II, sc. 4. Act III, Sc. 1.
44
its philosophy of chance, its hap-hazard adven-
ture, its quick shifting of scene in the vagrant
plot, is represented by An Evening's Love, The
Assignation, The Rival Ladies. Another type of
romantic comedy is found in The Tempest, how
far Dryden’s we do not know. This might be
called character-comedy with romantic back-
ground, the interest centering rather in charac-
ter than in situation, unlike the Spanish comedy
where character is reduced almost to type, and the
emphasis is placed upon situation, not, as in farce,
simply upon the comic in situation, but also on
suspense arising from mock peril. In Dryden the
influence of Spanish love-intrigue lingers in
dramas that have certain features of Molière’s
comedy of social criticism, as in The Spanish
Friar, Love Triumphant, Marriage d la Mode.
The last has special interest from the marked
contrast presented by the ultra-romantic envelop-
ing action, and the satirical social comedy that
makes up the sub-plot. Of the critical comedy,
Sir Martin Mar-all, Limberham, and the under-
plots of the tragi-comedies are specimens. Am-
phitryon as in Plautus and in Molière, is farce.
The tragi-comedy, The Rival Ladies, with its
entangled action, impossible disguises, irresponsi-
ble marrying off of everybody at the end, gives
the best idea of the romantic in extreme form in
Dryden’s work. There is cause for regret in the
fact that search has failed to discover the Spanish
original. It is therefore impossible to say how
much of the ingenuity shown in devising inci-
dents in the complicated action is Dryden’s. The
play begins with a robbery in a wood, closes with
a scene upon a pirate-ship, where the rival par-
ties, each having fled to the ship for refuge, un-
45
expectedly find themselves face to face. The
knot of the whole entanglement is cut by the dis-
covery of unexpected relationship between two of
the heroes of the play. Throughout the action
two women, disguised as pages, follow and serve
one hero, with whom they are both in love. The
hero fails to recognize in one of them the mis-
tress whom he has just deserted The brother and
sister of the other page fail to recognize her in
her disguise. This hero is of the heroic Spanish
type, brave, magnanimous. At the beginning he
spares the life of a robber in the wood, to be re-
warded in Act V by a like service done him by
the robber. Complicated sensational situation is
the aim of the dramatist. See, for instance, the
Scene where the pirate compels the hero to yield
up his sword, by putting his own sword at the
heroine's breast;" or the scene where the page-
lover of the hero attempts to kill the lady he
loves, the other page-lover, jealous, but loyal,
rescues her.” This emphasis on situation is not
new in English drama. In the work of Beau-
mont and Fletcher it is strongly marked. From
whatever sources the influence reached Dryden,
it made lasting impression, and his work in
comedy, in tragedy, and in heroic drama shows a
liking for the sensational scenes of startling
emotional effect, the emotional element exist-
ing as an end, not, as in the best drama, advanc-
ing the action.
Dryden’s best piece of work in the romantic
style is An Evening’s Love." The action, suc-
1 Works, Vol. II, Act V, Sc. 3.
2 Act IV, sc. 3. gº º
For detailed examination see Dr. Philip Ott: Uber das Verhältnis
des fººtº Dryden zur gleichzeitigen französischen Kömodie,
pp. 23-33.
46
cessful love-trickery, is carried on through its
many complications with skill not found in the
original. There is unity in intricacy here not.
often found in Dryden. The work is not original
creation, but elaboration of points suggested by
the model. This play forms the best transition
to consideration of the other type of comedy in
Dryden, for hints in the dialogue between the
lovers suggest the repartee of social comedy. The
Aurelia of An Evening’s Love borrows certain
remarks from Les Précieuses Ridicules, the
touch of satire sitting rather oddly on a character
for whom the author is demanding sympathy in
her love-trials. º
It was, perhaps, partly because his early work
was based on romantic models, partly because of
a belief that his audiences preferred complicated
action, that Dryden, in his comedy and his tragi-
comedy, devised always one or more minor in-
trigues to accompany the main action, as in Sir
Martin Mar-all, Amphitryon, all the tragi-come-
dies. More than once Dryden comments on the
dislike of his countrymen for barren French plots,
on the copiousness and variety of the English
manner." Usually, as in The Assignation, Sir
Martin May-all, Marriage d la JMode, the various
lines do not stand in vital union, being rather
crocheted together than bound by the relation of
cause and effect. But romantic comedy, even in
the hands of masters, admits large license in the
following of dramatic law, and a standard of jud
ment is hard to form.
Dryden’s treatment of Amphitryon is signifi-
cant of his manner of work. Based on Molière, it
O'-
Sc
is Essay of Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. XV, pp. 332–333; Vol. VIII.
p. 370. -
|x
47
contains fragments taken from Plautus, one scene,
that of the proposed duel between Mercury and
Judge Gripus,” being adapted from Molière's, “Le
Mariage Force.” The main story is that of
Molière, with the addition of a sub-plot in the
intrigue between Mercury and Phaedra, and the
intrigue between Phaedra and Judge Gripus.
Plautus gave to Alcmena a waiting-maid. In
Molière she becomes the wife of Sosia, a comic
underplot being thus devised, forming a parallel
and contrast to the main action. Dryden, think-
ing, as he was wont to think, that of a good thing
it was not possible to have too much, made of the
woman two characters, doubling the effect of the
under-plot, giving the desired opportunity for
added indecent situation. The situations in the
original main story afford points of attachment
for scenes in the new intrigue, without affording
necessary connection. This method of doubling,
of expanding, used throughout the play, is a
favourite one with Dryden. It is interesting to see
how far a hint, taken from another dramatist, can
be elaborated by him.
That the action in Dryden’s comedies is not of
the finest dramatic quality is shown, not only in
the frequent lack of connection between the
parallel lines of story, and in the sensational
scenes, introduced at the expense of removing
genuine dramatic effect, but in the reflective tem-
dency shown everywhere. The characters weary
the reader by their long discussions, and
the action often stands still while the actors
talk.” f)ryden liked sententious remarks, anti-
1 Works, Vol. V, Act VIII, sc. I.
2 Carl Hartmann, p.
8.
3 See An Evening's fºve. Works, Vol. III, Act II, sc. 1; Act V,
sc. 1; Amphytrion. Works, Vol. VIII, Act I, sc, 1. -
T
4S
theses, reflections. In this presentation of the
abstract the human concrete often slipped through
his hands. There is truth in the following crit-
icisms:
“Er hat die Dialoge tibermässig erweitert und
die ganze Fabel entsetzlich gedehnt, besonders
einzelne Szenen mit ganz Schalen, nichtssagenden
Reden ausgestattet und eine Unmasse Seichter
Witze iiber mythologische Dinge eingeflochten.”
“Wom kiinstlerischen Standpunkte aus ist vor
allem zu beklagen dass in Dryden’s Komódie so
haiifig nichtssagende Reflexionen und erkiin-
stelte Anläufe zur Komik die Stelle des wahren
Gefiihles und natürlichen Witzes vertreten.”
To turn to the other kind of comedy, the criti-
cal, as it is represented in Dryden, one finds frag-
ments of it everywhere, less that is sustained than
in romantic comedy. The influence in this di-
rection is chiefly that of Molière. We find Dry-
den in many places borrowing a word, a phrase, a
bit of conversation. He was haunted by Molière
in his work in comedy, as he was haunted by
Shakespeare in his work in tragedy. That he was
an unwilling imitator of the French might be
inferred from his dicta concerning their art: that
their servile following of the rules banished
beauty from the stage;” that their good breeding
seldom extends to a word of sense." The second
remark, coming at the height of Dryden’s enthu-
siasm for Shakespeare, perhaps hardly marks a
settled view. In spite of Dryden’s poor opinion ,
of his models, the French influence lingers in all
his work, from Sir Martin Mar-all, which is almost
1 Karl von Reinhardstoettner: Plautus, p. 202.
2 Dr. Ott, p. 31.
3 Essay of Dram. Poesy. Works, Vol. XV, p. 339.
4 Preface to All for Love. Works, Vol. V, p. 329.
4 49
a translation of parts of the two plays from which
it is taken, to Dryden’s last tragi-comedy, Love
Triumphant. That this influence does not reach
to plot has already been shown—Molière's type,
with its clean-cut line of action along the devel-
opment of a single character, forming a marked
contrast to the involved action of Dryden’s plays.
It shows in the presentation of the comic, through
situation or through character, and must be ex-
amined with the other comic effects in Dryden.
Of these, in situation and in character, a great
variety is attempted. A favorite motif is the kind
of blunder arising from disguise, either in mas-
querade, or in the donning of man’s costume by a
woman. The purely romantic type of this, where
the lady follows her lover in disguise for the sake
of love, is found in The Rival Ladies. It is re-
peated, with comic effect, in The Môiden Queen,
where Florimel, surely in some respects an echo
of Shakespeare’s Rosalind, disguises herself as a
man in order to punish her recreant lover, Cela-
don, by becoming his rival in courting Olinda and
Sabina." The use of disguise as an occasion for
the comic has many changes rung upon it in Dry-
den. In Sir Martin Mar-all, Molière’s use of this
as a means of trickery, a vehicle to display a clever
servant’s wit, is followed. In Love Triumphant,
two rivals try to deceive the heroine, Dalinda, each
disguising himself as the lady’s deceased lover.”
The scene in which they meet before the lady’s
house is an admirable specimen of the possible
absurdities that can arise from motifs clumsily
handled. The most spirited rendering of this
disguise theme is found in Am Evening's Love,
I Works, Vol. Il, Act V, sc. I.
2 Works, Vol. VIII, Act III, sc. 3,
50
where something of the liveliness of the original
lingers. In Marriage 6 la Mode an instance oc-
curs,' rivalling in improbability that in Love Tri-
wmphant. Rhodophil, meeting at an “eating-
home,”his mistress, disguised as a boy, finds there
his wife in boy’s disguise, but does not recognize
her. Her lover comes, and the banquet goes on
without discovery of the deceit. In the use of this
comic motif Dryden has added nothing new. He
has followed Molière's manner, the Spanish man-
ner, Shakespeare’s manner. In each case the imi-
tation shows less skill than the original.
Another type of blunder is found in the farce-
effects of Amphitryon, in the bewilderment of
Amphitryon and of Sosia in presence of their
doubles. Dryden has not followed Molière slav-
ishly. Taking his cue from the French dramatist
he has expanded, developed, changed freely. Com-
pare, for instance, Molière's treatment of the scene
where Sosia rehearses with his lantern the dialogue
in which he is about to take part, and the scene
where Sosia debates with himself as to who he is,
after he has discovered his double, and has timor-
ously conceded that the other is the real Sosia,
with Dryden’s treatment of the same situation.”
In the work of the English dramatist there is not
advance, such as is seen in the transformation X.
of the Latin comedy through Molière's wit. Dry-
den takes Molière's best bits as texts and expounds
them. But further insight into the servant’s be-
wilderment, represented by the French Sosia’s,
“Mais situ l'es, dis-moi qui tu veux que je sois? "
Car encore faut-il bien que je sois quelque chose,”
1 Works, Vol. IV, Act IV, sc. 4.
2 Molière: Oeuvres, Vol. VI, Act I, scs. I and 2. Dryden: Works,
Vol. VIII, Act II, sc. 1.
5]
is not found in Dryden. He plods after his leader
With heavier step, repeating a suggested effect
until the point is lost. The method of argument
stated in, “what I tell you three times is true,” is
fatal in establishing the point of a joke.
It was in following Molière—at a distance—
that Dryden achieved his best comic effects. These
are in line of humorous conceptions of char-
acter. To Molière he was indebted for Sir Martin
Mar-all, the Lélie of L'A'tourdi, for some of the
qualities of Mrs. Saintly, of the family of Tar-
tuffe; of Warner, a descendant of Mascarille; of
Melantha and Aurelia, sisters of Des Précieuses
Ridicules. Dominic of The Spanish Friar, sug-
gests, as has already been pointed out by several
critics, Tartuffe, with something of Falstaff
added. There are varying degrees of skill in Dry-
den’s treatment of these types. For the most part
there is coarsening of the work in Dryden’s hands,
“äusserliche Anlehnung an französische Muster
und innerliche Rohheit.” Sir Martin is a rougher
character than Lélie, and is less skilfully drawn.
Warner is less adroit than Mascarille, though one
touch gives a hint of complexity not found in this
type of clever and unscrupulous French servant.
Ilove for his master makes him claim that master’s
stupidity as his own, where he tries to explain to
the offended lady how the rival has learned the
situation.* Perhaps the comic character of the
servant whose cunning over-reaches itself is better
handled in Dryden’s Benito, with his:
“Pray, sir, let me think that I am a wit, or my
heart will break,” after he has committed a
blunder, and his:
I Carl Hartmann, p. 5.
2 Works, Vol. III, Act II, sc. 2.
3 The Assignation. Works, Vol. IV, Act IV, sc. 2.
52
“Then woe, woe to poor Benito! I find my
abundance of wit has ruined me!”
Perhaps Melantha in Marriage à la Mode is
Dryden’s best comic character. While suggesting :
the femmes Savantes of Molière, she is a close copy
of none. Through the affectation of her French
vocabulary Dryden was doubtless satirizing a ten-
dency of the Restoration court. -
“Melantha. Let me die if I have not run the
risk already to speak like One of the vulgar, and
if I have one phrase left in all my store that is
not threadbare et use, and fit for nothing but to
be thrown to peasants.
Philotis. Indeed, madam, I have been very
diligent in my vocation; but you have so drained
all the French plays and romances that they are
not able to supply you with words for your daily
expense.
Mel. Drained ? What a word 's there! Epwisee,
you Sot, you. Come, produce your morning's
work.
Phil. 'Tis here, madam.
Mel. O, my Venus! fourteen or fifteen words
to serve me a whole day! Let me die, at this
rate I cannot last till night. Come, read your
words. Twenty to one, half of them will not pass
muster neither.
Phil. Sottises.
Mel. Sołłąses : bon. * * *
Phil. Foible, chagrin, grimace, embarrassée
Mel. Hold, hold; how did they begin?
1 The Assignation. Works, Vol. IV, Act III, sc. r.
|
53
Phil. They began at sottises, and ended ºn
ridicule.”
That the affectations and the wilfulness of Dry-
den’s Melantha suggested Congreve’s Millamant
has been pointed out by Mr. Saintsbury. She de-
Served longer life than most of the characters in
Dryden’s plays deserve. Into her making went
more of originality, less of imitation than is usual
in his work. Less well drawn, but in the same
line is Florimel in The Maiden Queen. The quick-
ness of her somewhat coarse wit, the cynic ob-
servation, the teasing and trickery individualize
her. Her self-possession allies her with Congreve's
famous lady of the Comedy of Manners.
“Flavia. You see Celadon loves others.
Florimel. There’s the more hope he may love
me among the rest.
Away with your old commonplace wit: I am
resolved to grow fat and look young till forty,
and them slip out of the world with the first
wrinkle, and the reputation of five and twenty.”
In all these types, the comic, consisting, in
Dominic, in incongruity between pretense and
reality, in Sir Martin Mar-all, between intention
and performance, in Melantha, between affecta-
tion and the law of common sense, is not the best
of its kind, but it is the best of Dryden.
| Of satire, regarded by Dryden for a moment, at
*|least, as the “delight” of comedy, there is little
that is sustained. Touches occur here and there.
The favorite theme of Restoration comedy,
satire on marriage, is treated in An Evening's
Love, The Maiden Queen, and in Marriage d la
1 Marriage à la Mode. Works, Vol. IV, Act III, sc, 1.
2 Works, Vol. II, Act III, sc. I.
54
Mode, whose sub-plot is Dryden’s nearest ap-
proach to the comedy of social satire. The scene
in the last-named play, where husband and wife
play the loving couple so long as they are ob-
served, desist when the spectator is gone, is quite
in line with Congreve’s social criticism in The
Way of the World.
Rhodophil kisses Doralice’s hand.
“Artemis. Why, this is love such as it should
be betwixt man and wife: such another couple
would bring marriage into fashion again. But is
it always thus betwixt you?
Rho. Always thus! this is nothing. I tell you
there is not such a pair of turtles in Sicily; there
is such an eternal cooing and kissing betwixt us
that, indeed, it is scandalous before civil com-
any. -
Dor. Well, if I had imagined I should have
been this fond fool, I would never have married
the man I loved: I married to be happy, and have
made myself miserable by over-loving.
Dor. O dear Rhodophil!
Rho. O Sweet Doralice.
(They embrace. Artemis steals away).
Rho. What, is she gone?
Dor. Yes; and without taking leave.
Rho. Then there’s enough for this time.”
In line with Congreve, too, is the scene in Mar-
Tiage d la Mode where the husband meets his mis-
tress, the lady her lover in the same spot. All
know the deceit; all try to cover it. Husband
and wife quarrel and are reconciled, covering their
mutual hypocrisy in embraces.”
1 Works, Vol. IV, Act III, sc. 1.
2 lb., Act Il I, sc, 2.
55
In The Spanish Friar the satire of the Romish
clergy is as coarse as it is cutting. This again, like
the Social satire just treated, is only a chance shot.
Here Molière's sense of wrong is assumed for the
moment. Limberham is the only play called
Satiric throughout. Dryden, in condoning its in-
decency, instances Molière. One wonders whether
it was moral or mental obtuseness that kept him
from realizing the gulf that separated him from
Molière. e
In Dryden’s comedy there is nothing to corre-
spond with Molière's fine standard of judgment,
or with Jonson’s stern and constant moral purpose.
The bulk of comic effect in Dryden is in the line
of vulgar intrigue, where, in compromising sit-
uations, some one is outwitted. Here belong the
comic effects of the Wild Gallani, Limberham, The
Spanish Friar, the sub-plot of Sir Martin May-
all, The Assignation. That Dryden in cold-
blooded fashion deliberately emphasized the inde-
cent where he found it in the plays he imitated, or
introduced it where he did not find it, can be seen
|
from the changes made in Amphitryon, Sir Mar-
tin Mar-all, An Evening's Love. Vice in Dryden is
painted to please, not to warn. That this is not
realism with honest intent to better the bad, can
be seen by the method. There is a lingering over
the indecency, calculating its effect. The old
desire for clear statement follows him. He is
not content simply to suggest. He explains, de-
velops, hammers upon his point. Compare for a
moment the comic effects arising from the dis-
guise, as boys, of Angelina and Honoria in The
Rival Ladies, with Shakespeare's treatment of the
same theme. Or study the changes made in The
Tempest. The trend of all T)ryden’s humorous
56
Work is toward the indecent. If he did not care
for it himself, he learned how to prepare it for
others. He might well blush for having been
Willing, as he phrases it, in a minute of penitence,
to please the public “at so cheap a rate.”
Dryden’s comedy shows with great clearness his
lack of point of view. Great comedy, no less than
great tragedy, requires individual apprehension of
life. There is no more subtle interpreter of man’s
spirit than his sense of the laughable. One touch
in Shakespeare of the comic that is tragic too, one
touch in Cervantes of the ironic difference be-
tween the ideal and the real, betrays the whole
man. In Shakespeare, great diversity of humorous
effects, proves on close study, a unit, variety of per-
ception of the incongruous from a steadfast point
of view. Launce, Falstaff, Touchstone, the Fool
in Lear, present only different aspects of a unique
insight into the contradictions of life. Molière's
comedies, where individuals are arraigned at the
bar of common sense, and sentenced to be laughed
at, are stamped with a definite idea of social right
and wrong. Congreve's utterly unmoral work is
held together by a peculiar appreciation of the
humorous, his sense of the absurd pretences of
the world and of society. There is nothing in
Dryden’s comedy to correspond with Molière's
keen spirit of criticism, or with Congreve's indi-
viduality of perception. Anxious to please, and
sure enough as critic to know what would please,
he copied first one dramatist, then another. He
had no sense of the comic that was all his own.
To object to the use by the dramatist of literary
material already in existence would be to condemn
the major part of our dramatic literature. A
I Works, Vol. III, p. 242.
57
*:::
great dramatist’s originality shows nowhere else
So clearly as in the way in which the dry details of
other men’s work are made to live, to reflect his
distinctive perception of men and of things. Scott
was right in Saying that originality consists in the
mode of treating a subject rather than in the sub-
ject itself. But both Scott and Saintsbury in the
defence, on these grounds, of Dryden’s borrow-
ing,' fail to see that it is just this originality
which is lacking in Dryden. The material he
uses does not bear his mark, does not grow,
through his personality, into wholeness. It is a
damaging consideration, the fact that he is at his
worst when working independently. The “out-
rageous” Limberham is the comedy which con-
tains the least borrowing. The Assignation,
which Mr. Saintsbury calls a flagrant example of
pot-boiling,” was almost entirely Dryden’s own in-
vention. When Dryden followed more or less
closely the words of some greater comedian, some-
thing of the merit of the original stayed, perforce.
Mr. Ward says that in Amphitryon” the fire of
Dryden’s genius burned up with magnificent
brightness. This is the one comedy, where, with
the possible exception of Sir Martin Mar-all, Dry-
den follows most closely his model. Wºng
among many aims, and responding to thièand that
capricious demand of the public, he has left, in the |
patchwork of his comedies, no enduring type of |
comic effect. His work is curiously ineffective,
disintegrated, a fitting monument for a man who
was content to borrow other men’s sense of fun.
1 Introd, to the Assignation. Works, Vol. IV, p. 368.
2 Ib. s
3 Ward: History of English Dramatic Literature, Vol. II, p. 525.
58
Dryden's Heroic Plays.
After his early attempts in comedy Dryden
turned to a new species of drama, the “heroic
play.” This unique kind of art was peculiarly
adapted to his genius in the slight demands i.
made upon the power of seizing the tragic mo-
ment or tragic center in a series of actions, in the
scope it afforded for the development of high-
Sounding and sententious verse. These plays are
So different in motif, language, and construction
from ordinary drama that a standard of judgment
is hard to form for them. That they represent
a hybrid kind of art is suggested by Dryden him-
self in the preface to one of them. They are epic
rather than dramatic, he says, in speaking of the
use of the Supernatural." Yet in the same preface
he congratulates himself upon keeping the unities
of time and of place in the play.” Criticism, then,
it would seem, must follow in these plays the
wavering between the epic standard, whose action
is best represented by a long line, and that of the
drama, best represented by two short lines con-
verging to a point. The epic is objective, deals
with events which are connected through the fact
that they have to do throughout with the same
persons. The drama is subjective, deals with
action and choice, and demands, in the relation
between its happenings, causality.
1 Preface to Tyrannic Love. Works, Vol. III, p. 381.
2 Ib , p. 379.
59
Dryden did not originate the heroic play. In
drama he followed always other men’s leading.
Here, Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, and Sir Wil-
liam Davenant were his guides, the former, in the
use of heroic rime; the latter, in the introduc-
tion of operatic features into plays.' . In 1664
Dryden wrote, with Sir Robert Howard, The
Indian Queen. After this he produced independ-
ently, The Indian Emperor; Tyrannic Love; The
Conquest of Granada, in two parts; Aureng-Zebe,
all written in rime, and put upon the stage with
the utmost possible spectacular effect. Other
dramatists followed—Howard, Settle, Crown, Lee.
The heroic plays have certain impôrtance from
the fact that they form a curious commentary on
Restoration taste, but they hardly form a link in
the development of English drama. They reflect
only a passing whim, and they died even before
the audiences of the court of Charles the Second
were broken up. A check to their poularity was
given by the clever satiric play called The Rehear-
sal, probably the work of the Duke of Bucking:
ham. f
In writing the heroic plays Dryden werked
more independently than in dealing with either
tragedy or comedy. There is no definite line of
borrowings to follow, as there is in tracing the
sources of his comedy. The plays are built up for
the most part on the facts and the fictions of: -
history. The Indian Queen and The Indian Em-'
peror have to do with the wars of Mexico and
Peru, and the Spanish conquests. Aureng-Zebe
was based on contemporary wars in India. For
Tyrannic Love Dryden pleads originality, the
action being founded on the legend of St. Cathar-
1 Ward: History of Eng. Dram. Lit , p. 492, p. 486. Dryden: Essay
on Heroic Plays. Works, Vol. IV, pp. 19-21.
60
ine. The Conquest of Granada, it is true, is bor-
rowed from French romance, Almahide, Le
Grand Cyrus, Ibrahim of Madeline de Scudéry.
The beroic play was intended to be of Serious
nature, like tragedy. It pictured great events,
the rise and fall of kingdoms, wars, conquests. Its
characters were kings, queens, emperors. If in its
endeavor to arouse tragic pity it confused inner
with outer greatness, and let huge affairs take the
place of true tragic issue, it did only what the
French classic drama was doing, in lesser degree,
in its attempt to hold to the Aristotelian serious-
ness in drama. -
“An heroic play,” Dryden says, in an essay on
the subject (1670), “ought to be an imitation in
little of an heroic poem; and consequently *
love and valour ought to be the subject of it.
. . . The drawing of all things,” he adds,
should be “as far above the ordinary proportion-
of the stage, as that is beyond the common words
and actions of human life s He describes heroic.
plays also as “examples of moral virtue, writ in
verse, and performed in recitative music.” Di-
dactic in aim, then, it would seem the heroic play
was to be. Just what license the “imitation in
little of an heroic poem” was to introduce into
the structure is not stated.
Close study of the plays shows that, strictly
speaking, they contain no ruling idea working its
way out through character into action. Intense
feeling, superhuman valor must be shown. Tt is
not so important by whom. There is no distinc-
tive motif in any one of them, and the theme of
one would serve equally well for any other. Con-
&
t
1 Essay on Heroic Plays, Works, Vol. IV, p. 21.
2 Ib., pp. 19-20
61
sidering the entire series from The Indian Em-
eror to Aureng-Zebe in the hope of finding growth
on the artist’s part in this matter of ground-
ing his play in an idea from which all the action
springs, one is tempted to say that if Dryden
decided that making a great many people in love
did not constitute dramatic unity in the earlier
play, making a great many people in love with
the same person certainly did so in the later one.
Of these two sentiments, love and honour, love,
is the more important...It is universal. Maximin,
tyrant of Rome; Cortez, conqueror of Mexico;
Zempoalla, Queen of Mexico, are all under its
sway, and completely at its mercy. Even spirits
are not exempt. Nakar, the spirit who tempts St.
Catharine in Tyrannic Love, is bethrothed to a
companion, Damilcar, and has a “hated rival,”
Gemory. So Ariel in The Tempest loves and is
loved.
The passion is instantaneous. Cortez, in The
Indian Emperor, marches from the shore to the
capital, enters Montezuma's court, “spies the
ladies and goes to them, entertaining Cydaria with
courtship.” Zempoalla, in The Indian Queen,
called upon to pronounce sentence upon the cap-
tive Montezuma, seen now by her for the first
time, says:
“[ill him—hold, must he die?
die;—
Whence should proceed this strange diversity
In my resolves? . . .
'Tis love, ’tis love that thus disorders me.”
In case of conflict between love and honor,
love always triumphs. Montezuma, who has con-
1 Works, Vol. II, Act I, sc. 2.
2 Works, Vol. II, Act. III, sc. 1.
why, let him
62
quered Mexico for the Inca of Peru, deserts and
goes over to the Mexican side when refused the
hand of the Inca’s daughter. Almanzor, in The
Conquest of Granada, after a first glimpse of Alma-
hide, deserts the cause he has espoused, and offers
his services to the enemy in order to win her,
giving, as excuse:
“I’m pleased and pained, since first her eyes I saw,
As I were stung with some tarantula.”
Cortez, in response to an appeal from Cydaria,
throws up a battle:
“Honour, be gone! What art thou but a breath?
I’ll live, proud of my infamy and shame,
Graced with no triumph but a lover’s name;
Men can but say, love did his reason blind,
And love's the noblest frailty of the mind.
Draw off my men; the war's already dome.” ”
There is little differentiation in the treatment
of the passion. It affects all people alike. There
is no change, no growth. In the first instant, the
white heat of climax is displayed. So with valor.
It receives many names, but it never changes its
nature. The hero is young, invincible. He de-
spises life. He despises even the gods. He turns'
the fortunes of a field of battle with a single arm.
Almanzor, threatened with death, says:
“Cut piecemeal in this cause
From every wound I should new vigour take,
And every limb should new Almanzors make.”
1 Works, Vol. IV, Part I, Act III, sc. I.
2 The Indian Emperor, Works, Vol. II, Act II, sc. 2.
3 The Conquest of Granada. Works, Vol. IV, Part II, Act V, sc. 2.
63
The hero of the heroic play has pride to match
his prowess. The emperor in Aurengzebe hears
that he has a rival, and storms:
“Did he, my slave, presume to look so high?
That crawling insect, who from mud began,
Warmed by my beams, and kindled into man?”
The same character says, on another occasion:
“Were I a god, this drunken globe should roll,
The little emmets with the human soul
Care for themselves, while at my ease I sat
And second causes did the work of fate.”
Language seems inadequate to express the quali-
ties and the diction of these heroes. Such is the
Seventeenth-century English way of meeting the
Aristotelian requirement that the hero of tragedy
must be of high rank and great importance. “Ils
portent leurs sentiments chevaleresques à leur
maximum d’intensité, et les répandent en tirades
sonores oil ils défient tout: les hommes, le ciel, le
bon sens.”
Complex influences, both as to form and to
sentiment, went into the making of the heroic
play. Some of its exaggerations suggest Mar-
lowe’s Tamburlaine. France contributed much,
through its drama and its romances, to this new
kind of art. In France, the classic drama,
touched by Spanish influence, developed, as a
favourite motif, the conflict between love and
duty. This is the theme of Corneille’s Cid, Hor-
ace, Polyeucte, Cinna. Dryden was apparently
a close student of Corneille, and in the action,
character, and sentiment of these plays can be
I Works, Vol. V, Act II, sc. 1,
2 Ib., Act II I, sc. I.
3 Beljame: Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre, p. 43.
64
traced the impulse of Dryden to exaggerate, as
dramatist, that which as critic he had perceived to
be good. The English plays are almost a carica-
ture of the French. In the latter, the high-
minded, if somewhat stilted sentiment, has a
charm. Love finds an obstacle in filial, religious, ,
or civic duty. In Corneille, duty usually con-
quers. In Dryden, emotion. ſ
Stronger than the influence of the French drama
was that of the French heroic romance, the work of
Gomberville, La Calprenède, Mlle. de Scudéry,
and others. “It is hard to do justice to the beauty
of the sentiments, the violence of the passions, the
grandeur of the events, and the marvelous success
of these redoubtable epics,” said Madame de
Sévigné. These tremendous stories of the loves
and wars of kings and princes expound a peculiar
theory of passion. M. Victor Cousin has made an
interesting study of the society which produced
these romances'. Boileau and Molière have sat-
irized it. The overstrained chivalric sentiment of
the heroic play is in part borrowed from these ro-
mances, the favourite literature of the Restoration
court. In Dryden’s hands the ethereal feeling is
coarsened. There, to quote the dedication of
Artamenes, love is “this glorious sympathy which
is between a Hero and a Heroesse.” It is philoso-
phy, expounded in long debates. Dryden said:
“I shall never subject my characters to the French
standard, whose love and honour are to be
weighed by drachms and scruples.” Dryden
does not, in his working out of his theme, make
the French story-teller’s distinction, “betwixt a
pure, refined love, and a gross, terrestrial passion;
1 La Société Française au XVII Siècle.
2 Essay on Heroic Plays. Works, Vol. IV, p. 28.
5 65
between a love by inclination, and a love by ac-
quaintance; between a love that hath Endes in it,
and a love Heroique.” In the treatment of types
of valor the change is less apparent. Scott says
that the Cyrus of the romance slays with his own
arm one hundred thousand fighting men. The
hero of the heroic play can challenge comparison.
It will easily be seen that the types of character
represented in these plays do not lend themselves
to profound dramatic treatment. The complexity
in character which gives significance to drama, in
the representation of the action and reaction of
character and circumstance, is not here. Each

person is a single trait, dominated by passion.
|Maximin is all tyrant; Aºi...ºn.
ity; Valeria is incarnate self-renunciation; Al-
; meria is personified revenge. These distinct
types love in precisely the same fashion, express
their love in the same way. There are no subtle
strokes in character-treatment. There is no
growth through choice and the consequences of
choice, as in genuine drama. The characters are
the same at the end of the play as at the begin-
ning, except for the change coming in certain cases
through sudden access of passion.
Naturally, the action is not the result of charac-
ter, is rather, a series of events planned to show at
every crisis—and the crises are many—the hero’s
extreme passion, his extreme valor. The plots
bear close resemblance to one another, both in ma-
terial and in management of the material. Huge
affairs of state are combined with the love-in-
trigues. In The Indian Queen, a kingdom, just

1 Artamenes, or the Grand Cyrus, an excellent new romance, written
by that famous wit of France, M. de Scudéry, and now Englished by F.
G. Gent. 1653. Vol. III, p. 18,
66
lost when the play opens, is re-won and lost again
before the end of Act V. The Indian Emperor
covers the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards.
The Conquest of Granada comprises all that is
suggested by the term. Aureng-Zebe surpasses the
others in having four armies in the field at once.
The noise and bluster of the plays gave fine oppor-
tunity for ridicule in The Rehearsal. Mr. Bayes,
who stands for Dryden, remarks:
“Why, I have design’d a Conquest that cannot
possibly, I gad, be acted in less than a whole
week; and I’ll speak a bold word, it shall Drum,
Trumpet, Shout and Battel, I gad, with any the
most warlike tragedy we have, either ancient or
modern.”
Perhaps the choicest bit of criticism is the part
where Amaryllis is prevented from speaking by
the battle just coming at the door.”
In all the plays, war is only a setting for love-
intrigues, and the fate of the country, as has al-
ready been suggested, is often at the mercy of a
lover’s whim. So with the fate of the plot. It
suffers all the chance of war, and, since the for-
tunes of war are in the power of a single arm, the
chance of sudden change of emotion on the part
of the hero.
Hence it is a drama of actions rather than of
action. The particular accident through which
the hero's love and valor are to be displayed does
not greatly matter. Something must happen con-
stantly. It may not be necessary in the sequence
of events. It is well if it happen quickly. When
the lines are entangled to the last degree the
climax arrives, perhaps from the outside, as in The
1 Rehearsal. Arber, p. 91.
2 Ib., pp. 120-121.
67
Indian Queen, where Amexia, the dethromed
Queen, comes in at the end to cut all knots. She
proclaims herself the mother of the conquering
Montezuma, and puts him upon the throne.' The
huge affairs succeed one another, making up an
action, great, often inconsequent, shambling.
They lack the turning-point of genuine
dramatic action. Drama means the catching and
fixing of one crisis; and action and choice, in the
struggle with circumstance, lead to a decisive mo-
ment where all wavers, before the final determin-
ing of the trend of action comes. In the heroic
plays this single crisis is not found. The aim is
to keep great happenings constantly upon the
stage, and One Crisis is hardly more important
than another. Too often the surprises of acci-
dent await us, and the dramatist relies, like the ro-
mance-writer, on the charm of the unexpected.
The reader is not satisfied “that every cause was
powerful enough to produce its effect,” as Dry-
den said must be the case in drama.
Many illustrations of the arbitrary management
of action should be given, where it seems entirely
at the mercy of the writer’s caprice. Cortez, in The
Indian Emperor, rushes, without other reason
than that of creating a sensational situation, into
the enemy’s camp, and is seized.” In the same
play, Almeria, attempting to kill Cortez, falls
violently in love with her sleeping victim and
spoils her plan of revenge." Arbitrary, too, is the
scene where the ghost of Acacis rises and points
his finger at Montezuma. Only spectacular effect
1 Works, Vol. II, Act V, sc, 1.
2 Preface to Rival Ladies. Works, Vol. II, p. 130.
3 Works, Vol. II, Act III, sc. 4.
4 Ib., Act IV, Sc. 1.
68
can be given for this personified remorse, as
Montezuma had never injured Acacis.'
Strict causal connection in conduct of events,
genuine dramatic unity these plays, then, do not
possess, unity either in the French sense, of single
action, or in the sense for which Dryden pleads
in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, various actions
woven together and making for a common end.
The Indian Emperor is made up of several loosely
connected strands. The plot of The Conquest of
Granada is a web of amazing intricacy, the main
and the minor action, and the still subordinate
plot being woven together into connection that
has no inner reason for existing. Aureng-Zebé
is said to be a unit. Here three sons rebel against
their father, the emperor. A fourth son, Aureng-
Zebe, conquers all three in his father's behalf. The
father, however, having fallen in love with:
Indamora, the betrothed of Aureng-Zebe, degrades
that hero, and advances Morat, one of the rebels.
The Emperor, Aureng-Zebe, Morat, and Arimant,
governor of Agra, are all suitors for Indamora's
hand. To complicate matters, Nourmahal,
Aureng-Zebe's step-mother, falls in love with him.
Externally, these many strands have connection.
Internal unity there is none, the number of
strands of tension resulting in dissipation of in-
terest.
Dryden shows in these plays a liking for two
kinds of scene that form an odd contrast: striking
sensational situation, where dramatic power for
the whole of the action is sacrificed for the effect
of the moment; and debating scenes, where love,
or religion, or some other abstract theme is dis-
1 Works, Vol. II, Act II, sc, 1.
69
~,
cussed. These are unlike in effect, but perhaps
not unlike in origin—the work of a logician, who,
in the latter, reasons because he likes to reason;
in the former, tried to produce from a certain
emotional antithesis a certain emotional effect.
To the first class belongs the scene in The Indian
Queen, where Traxalla, villain of the play, leads
Orazia to the prison where her lover," Montezuma,
is confined, and offers to spare that lover’s life if
he may have the lady’s hand as a reward. The
situation is not sufficiently serious. A second
lady, Zempoalla, who loves Montezuma without
hope, enters, and sets a dagger to Orazia’s bosom,
Saying:
“The wounds thou giv'st I’ll copy on her
breast.”
Another scene of like character occurs in The
Indian Emperor. Almería, standing over Cortez
with a dagger in her hand, threatens to kill him
if he does not love her forthwith. He tries to
appease her by kissing her hand. At this moment,
Cydaria, his beloved, enters. Almeria tries to
wound Cydaria, but is prevented by Cortez.” The
sub-plot of The Conquest of Granada is full of
these situations. Bemzayda, ordered by her father
to kill the captive Ozmyn, member of an opposite
faction, and slayer of her brother, looks upon him,
loves him, gives him his sword.” Again, Ozmyn
and Benzayda having fled to escape the wrath of
their parents, Ozmyn saves the life of Benzayda’s
father, only to find that the enemy who is pursu-
ing her father is his own parent." For thrilling
1 Works, Vol. II, Act IV, sc. I.
2 Works, Vol. II, Act IV, sc. 4.
3 Works, Vol. IV, Pt. I, Act IV, sc. 2.
4 [b., Pt. II, Act II, sc. I.
70
Scenes like this, Dryden is willing to sacrifice
much. The situation sometimes has no place in
the necessary sequence of events, but is only a
cul de Sac, leading nowhere.
Quite as numerous as these sensational situa-
tions are the debating scenes. Perhaps the most
interesting of these is the scene where Montezuma
and the Indian Priest, as they are being tortured
on the rack, discuss with a Christian priest the
relative merits of their two religions.' Boabdelin,
King of Granada, discourses with great wisdom
on the causes of the rise and fall of kingdoms, this
while the Alhambra, whither he has retreated, is
stormed and taken.” It is with reference to
scenes like these that Mr. Bayes, in The Reheasal
says:
“Now here she must make a simile.
Mr. Smith. What's the necessity of that, Mr.
Bayes?
Mr. Bayes. Because she’s surpris’d. That’s
a general Rule: you must ever make a simile when
you are surpris’d; ’tis the new way of writing.”
Perhaps the criticism of the action in these
heroic dramas could not be summed up more con-
cisely than is dome in the epilogue of The Re-
hearsal:
“The play is at an end, but where’s the Plot?
That circumstance our Poet Bayes forgot,
And we can boast, though 'tis a plotting age,
No place is freer from it than the stage.”
If the heroic drama lacked dramatic action of
high quality, it possessed features that had per-
1 Works, Vol. II, Act V, sc. 2,
2 Works, Vol. IV, Pt. II, Act I, sc. 2.
3 The Rehearsal. Arber, p. 57.
4 Ib., p. 136.
71
haps greater attractions for the audiences it drew.
The plays were elaborately set." There were bat-
tle scenes, torture scenes, incantation Scenes.
There was ballet. Lyric and musical inter-plays
made it half operatic in character. Ghosts gave
it charm. Besides all these features, there were
prologue and epilogue, for instance, the prologue
to the Conquest of Granada, spoken by Mrs. Ellen
Gwynn, wearing her famous broad-brimmed hat
and waist-belt.” In the epilogue to Tyrannic
Love, Mrs. Ellen, after dying, as Valeria, the
death of a martyr for love, rose, stopped with an
oath the actor carrying her away, and said:
“I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye:
I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet ladies, be not frighted: I’ll be civil.
I’m what I was, a little harmless devil.” "
One play, Tyrannic Love, perhaps deserves
closer examination, partly because it contradicts,
to a certain degree, some of the general criticisms
already made, partly because it has special signifi-
cance in having a certain resemblance to a play
of Corneille. That Dryden’s play was suggested
by the Polyeucte of Corneille is asserted by Herr
Holzhausen in his exhaustive article on the heroic
plays."
The action in Tyrannic Love, as in the other
heroic plays, is complicated. Its main line is the
sudden passion of Maximin, Tyrant of Rome, for
St. Catharine, Princess of Alexandria. Connected
stories are: the love of Porphyrius, Captain of the
1 Holzhausen: Dryden's Heroisches Drama, Eng. Stud. XIII, p. 418.
2 Works, Vol. IV, p. 32.
3 Works, Vol. III, p. 467.
4 Eng. Stud. XIII, p. 431.
7
2
Praetorian bands, for the wife of Maximin,
Berenice; the unreturned love of Valeria, Max-
imin’s daughter, for Porphyrius; the unreturned
love of Placidius, “a great officer,” for Valeria.
The situation is rendered more intense by the Em-
peror's determination to have Valeria marry
Porphyrius, and to make the latter his successor,
for he loves Porphyrius as a son. -
The situation is opened in Act I by the re-
turn of Porphyrius in triumph from Egypt, with
the Alexandrian princess in his train, Maximin
in his delight orders Placidius to give up com-
mand of the Praetonian band to Porphyrius, and
thus incurs Placidius’ hate. The old love-intrigue
between Berenice and Porphyrius is renewed, and
the hopeless love of Valeria for Porphyrius is
made known. Not until Act II, when Maximin
sees St. Catharine, are all the forces of the tragedy
set in motion. From that interview all are at
work: Maximin’s determination to marry or kill
St. Catharine; Porphyrius’ determination to die
with or for Berenice; Valeria’s determination to
die for Porphyrius; Placidius’ determination to
win Valeria. To follow these lines in detail would
be tedious. Suffice it to say that in Act II the
story of Berenice and Porphyrius is carried on, and
the situation is made embarrassing by the Emper-
or’s announcement of his purpose to make Por-
phyrius his son-in-law and his heir. In this act
comes the meeting between St. Catharine and the
Emperor. Debating in her tent she has converted
fifty learned philosophers. The last and greatest,
Apollonius, she converts in the Emperor's pres-
ence. Apollonius is ordered away to death by the
angry Emperor, but for the Emperor mischief has
been done. He says:
“'Tis just: this Christian sorceress shall die.
Would I had never proved her sorcery!
Not that her charming tongue this change has
bred;
I fear ’tis something that her eyes have said.
I love, and am ashamed it should be seen.”
He orders her away.
“Absent, I may her martyrdom decree;
But one more look will make that martyr me.”
Later he expresses his feelings as follows:
“This iron heart, which no impression took
From Wars, melts down, and runs, if she but
look.”
The next act gives the temptation of St. Cathar-
ine. She refuses bribes, the crown of Egypt, the
crown on Berenice’s head. In this matter Pla-
cidius has become the Emperor's tool, Submitting
to the office for the purpose of furthering his in-
terests with Valeria. Maximin, wrought to fren-
zy, confesses his state of mind to Porphyrius, and
begs Porphyrius to urge Berenice to sue for a di-
vorce—a situation of Dryden’s favorite kind.
The suggestion is made by Porphyrius, but the
Empress will not listen. In this act, Valeria’s
story reaches its climax, in a scene where she con-
fesses to Porphyrius her passion for him, only to
be met by the statement that he loves another.
Act IV opens in an “Indian cave,” unlocated,
where Placidius is consulting a conjurer in the in-
terests of Maximin. The incantation scene, the
descent of the evil spirits to tempt St. Catharine,
the intervention of her guardian angel with a flam-
ing sword, all suggest startling spectacular effect.
There are several situations here. In one, Por-
1 Works, Vol. III, Act II, sc. 3.
2 Works, Ib., Act III, sc, 1.
74
phyrius confesses to the Emperor that he has re-
fused Valeria’s love, but he is interrupted by
Valeria, who, in order to protect Porphyrius from
her father’s wrath, insists that it was she who
made the refusal. In another, while St. Cathar-
ine is pleading with the Emperor for Berenice, the
Empress comes in and confesses that she has been
converted by St. Catharine to Christianity. The
tyrant orders her away to death. Porphyrius res-
cues her, only to be in turn arrested and sent away
prisoner, guarded by Placidius.
In the last act the plot thickens. The rejected
lover, Placidius, grants Valeria an interview with
Porphyrius, then offers to save Porphyrius’ life if
Valeria will marry him, the jailor. This she con-
sents to do. A still more intense scene follows.
Felicia, the mother of St. Catharine, has arrived.
The Emperor decrees that she shall perish, if St.
Catharine will not be his wife. Catharine stands
firm. A torture-wheel is displayed to suggest the
coming torment. Just at the right minute St.
Catharine’s guardian angel descends and breaks
the wheel. St. Catharine and her mother are sent
away to death. But the tribune who comes to
announce to Maximim that his orders have been
obeyed meets a sad fate. Maximin, beside himself
with rage, says:
“And dost thou think
This lame account fit for a love-sick king?
Go, from the other world a better bring.”
[Kills him, sets his foot on him, and speaks on].
Here again “the scene opens,” showing Bere-
nice on the scaffold, Porphyrius standing in dis-
guise among the guards. Suddenly Porphyrius
draws and “makes at’ the Emperor. Berenice, to
save her cruel husband, gives him warning by a
75
cry. The conversation that follows between
Porphyrius and the dying Berenice moves even
the Emperor's heart.
“Ber. If I die first, I will
Stop short of heaven and wait you in a cloud,
For fear we lose each other in the crowd.
#: :: ::: >k §: >; :}; >}:
'Tis want of knowledge, not of love, I fear,
Lest we mistake, when bodies are not there.
O, as a mark, that I could wear a scroll,
With this inscription,--Berenice's soul’ſ”
As Porphyrius and Berenice are being carried
away, Valeria comes in. She pleads for them.
Denied her petition, she stabs herself. It is
Placidius who wrests the dagger from her. Max-
imin, desperate because baffled on every side, cries
Out:
“What had the gods to do with me or mine?
Did I molest your heaven? *
Why should you then make Maximin your foe
Who paid you tribute, which he need not do?
Your altars I with smoke of gums did crown
For which you leaned your hungry nostrils down,
-k * •k -3% -X. * º: •k
And you for this these plagues on me have sent!
But by the gods (by Maximin I meant)
Henceforth I, and my world
Hostility with you and yours, declare.
Look to it, gods; for you the aggressors are.
Reep you your rain and Sunshine in your skies,
And I’ll keep back my flame and sacrifice.
Your trade of heaven shall soon be at a stand,
And all your goods lie dead upon your hand.”
Here Placidius stabs him, in revenge for that old
injury in act one, and for Valeria’s death. The
I Yºrks Vol. III, Act V, sc. I.
2 Ib. X,
76
Emperor stabs Placidius, “and sits down on him.”
A centurion enters crying that the soldiers, headed
by Porphyrius, are in revolt.
“Maasimin. Now I am down; the gods have
watched their time.
You think
To save your credit, feeble deities!
But I will give myself the strength to rise.”
[He tries to rise, cannot, sits down again upon Pla-
cidius.]
It wonnot be—
My body has not power my mind to bear.
*
:: ::
My coward body does my will control;
Farewell, thou base deserter of my soul!
I’ll shake this carcase off, and be obeyed;
Rise, an imperial ghost, without its aid.
Bring me Porphyrius and my Empress dead:
I would brave heaven, in my each hand a head.”
[He stabs Placidius again].
Plac. Oh, I am gone!
Maa. And after thee I go,
Revenging still, and following ev’n to the other
world my blow;
And showing back this earth on which I sit,
I’ll mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit.” "
He dies. Porphyrius and Berenice enter in
triumph, and “trumpets sound a bloodless vic-
tory.”
All this would seem to indicate that Dryden
lacked that saving sense of humor perhaps
necessary in the making of a great tragedian. The
1 Works, Vol. III, Act V, sc. 1,
77
heroic motif certainly makes of Maximin a stage-
tyrant unparalleled except in Marlowe. In the
line of tragic effect he rouses more terror than
pity, and his taking off is what Thackeray calls
“monstricide.” In St. Catharine the heroic motif
is more fortunate, and the scene in which she
clings to her cause, at the expense of her own and
of her mother’s life, is a strange combination of
the sublime and the ridiculous. Only one touch
of nature is found in the entire drama—Felicia's
description of her feeling for her child, coming
in in the mother’s plea for her life.' Herr Holz-
hausen suggests that the theme of the play is the
triumph of Christianity over heathendom. But
this would leave out Valeria’s story, that of Pla-
cidius, and that of Porphyrius, except for the
fact of his connection with Berenice. Nothing
except the idea in the title can cover all the
action, tyrannic love. As in the other heroic plays,
each important character, except St. Catharine, is
represented as the helpless victim of passion. Her
resistance, and her death for honor brings some-
thing of dramatic struggle into the drama and
make it superior in this to the other heroic plays.
Then, too, the fate of Maximin, death coming
from the hand of a man he had injured, has in
it something of the tragic recoil of a man’s acts
upon himself.
Yet the action is difficult to analyze. The
catastrophe is easy to locate. Not so the turning-
point. If the turn in the main story comes with
| St. Catharine’s refusal of bribes, the turn in
Berenice's story in her refusal of a divorce, the
turn in Valeria’s story in her confession of hope-
less love, it would seem that each story takes its
IWorks, Vol. III, Act V, sc. 1.
78
own way, that there is no focus toward which all
these lines converge. Such proves to be the case.
Main-plot and sub-plot are for the most part
parallel lines of passion, with a common catas-
trophe. Hints of causal connection are given, as, `
for instance, in the fact that Berenice’s conversion
leads to Porphyrius’ condemnation, that to
Valeria’s death. But for the most part the cause
and effect of true drama are wanting. Character
alone persists. As in Shakespeare’s Richard Third,
successive actions, illustrating the same character-
istic, are ranged in order to the tragic close.
The grounds for attributing this play to a Sug-
gestion taken from Corneille’s Polyeucte are very
slight. That Dryden knew the French play is
proved by a remark in the Essay of Dramatic
Poesy, where he says that it is “as solemn as the
long stops upon our organs.” But aside from the
fact that both are tragedies of Christian martyr-
dom there is no resemblance. A young Christian
in Armenia, just married to Pauline, daughter of
Felix, the governor of that country, commits a
daring deed. He throws down in a Roman tem-
ple the image of the deity. On this central action
all hangs. The emotional complications are many.
Pauline, his wife, who pleads for his life, who, in
the end embraces Christianity and begs to die with
him, in reality loves Severus, a noble Roman, fa-
vourite of the Emperor Decius. For duty Pauline
had married Polyeucte. For duty she now scorns
Severus, and, when Polyeucte, about to die, begs
her to wed Severus after his death, she refuses in
Scorn. Felix, who secretly longs to spare Poly-
eucte, for duty condemns him. Severus, longing
to find Pauline free, is distressed when he discov-
1 Works, Vol. XV, p. 334.
79
ers that Polyeucte’s martyrdom has made her so.
The play both in sentiment and in construction
forms a fine contrast to Dryden’s heroic work.
In the construction one finds the tragic centre,
the tragic point. The fate of all the people con-
cermed centres in Polyeucte’s act. The stoic reso-
lution of Pauline and of Polyeucte, the fine sense
of duty in Felix, the reserve of Severus, show an
exaggeration of the heroic in life, a scorn of mere
human feeling, which represents something real
in seventeenth-century life in France. The imi-
tation in Dryden’s hands is only imitation.
But criticism of Dryden’s heroic plays is almost
too easy. In strict sense they are not drama.
They lack insight into the tragic forces that bring
struggle into life. Without motif to bind the ac-
clever dramatic structure that one finds in French
plays. To excuse the sensationalism found in
language, theme, and structure on the ground
that it appealed to the taste of the age, is not to
absolve the critic and the thinker who knew better
than his age what was excellent in art. It is but
fair to say that he afterward repented. “I re-
member some verses of my own Maximin and Al-
manzor,” he says, “which cry vengeance upon me
for their extravagance, and which I wish heartily
in the same fire with Statius and Chapman.”
But the style of writing left lasting traces on Dry-
den’s work, and not even the skill which practice
in heroic rime brought into his verse-making can
atone for the influence of the heroic plays on the
later dramatic work, shown in the tendency to
substitute the exciting situation for true dramatiº
growth.
1 Dedication of the Spanish Friar. Works, Vol. VI, p. 406.
--
80
Dryden's Tragedies
The final measure of Dryden’s power as dra-
matist comes with his treatment of tragedy. To
him as to Aristotle, and to Corneille, this was the
great and important kind of dramatic art, and
I)ryden’s literary criticism centers in discussion
of tragedy. Apart from the emphasis which he
placed upon it, tragedy must necessarily mean the
ultimate test of a dramatist’s insight into human
life, as well as of his ability to express this in art.
In this section of Dryden’s work, then, one finds
a culmination of those problems concerning the
nature of his inspiration, and his skill in the mat-
ter of form.
To define once for all the essence of the tragic
is perhaps to call for more experience, more obser-
vation than one can attain this side of the end of
life. It is granted that tragedy involves struggle
when the soul of man and some power outside that
soul are involved. Sometimes, as in Oedipus, the
emphasis is placed on that outside power. Some-
times, as in Hamlet, on the subjective factor, the
soul. As to the nature of this struggle, theorists
disagree. Certain phases of the many-sided suf-
fering of existence have been seized and stamped
as covering the whole. To Hegel, tragedy is
temporary misunderstanding between the finite
and the infinite, the individual finding himself, be-
cause of blindness, at cross-purposes with a great
ame order in things. Out of the clash of wills is
worked a final harmony." To Schopenhauer,
I Werke, Ba. X, 3, pp. 526-533.
6 SI
tragedy is the expression on the part of the indi-
vidual of resignation Qfxile will to live. In it is
voiced the º: pain of life. Through
the final resignation º ſman escapes the
scornful mastery of chance, and attains freedom.'
The one view implies an optimism, a belief in a
measured and coherent scheme of things; the other
a perception only of chaos, of lack of design.
Neither view fully explains all of the world’s great
tragedies—Oedipus, Hamlel, Lear, Macbeth. An-
other fragmentary but interesting conception is
advanced by Mr. Dowden. Tragedy, he says, ex-
presses the disproportion between the finite and
the infinite, between the world and the soul of
man. Desire reaches (out. Conditions of time
and space baffle it.” £f this definition covers
Faust and IIamlet, it leaves out Oedipus. Includ-
ing the tragedy of baffled will, it has no place for
the tragedy of fate. Possibly the critics are rash
in attempting to include under one formula that
which the great dramatists have left unsaid.
Shakespeare waited and listened, perceiving per-
haps more broadly and more deeply than any one
else the inner and the outward causes of suffering

in life, and, with a fine reserve, withholding judg-
ment, as if impatient of easy solutions, as if un-
willing to say the last word before he knew the
last fact. He showed throughout a peculiar,
individual sense of the tragic, held one stead-
fast line of inquiry. It is because of his power
to seize the tragic dilemma in existence, feel his
way to the heart of actual tragedy, actual joy, that
his work has lived, surviving even the attempts of
I Werke, Bd. III, Kap. 37, pp. 494 500.
2 Shakespeare's Mind and Art, pp. 351–352.
gº 82
such German critics as Ulrici and Gervinus, to re-
duce it to mere abstract idea or notion. -
In judging a tragedian one does not wish to
square his work with any one formula that states
the nature and essence of the tragic. One wishes
to discover his appreciation, find what phases of
suffering have been most real to him. The depth
of his penetration, of his experience will be the
measure of validity in his work, for the most
deeply personal, in the best sense, is the most uni-
versal. His work should represent what he has
found out. In proportion to the worth of this in-
dividual result will be its poetic truth, its poetic
seriousness, and its appeal. To one tragedian, as
to Sophocles, the ultimate tragedy lies in the
struggle with dimly understood fate. To another,
as to Marlowe, it lies in baffled desire. Shakes-
peare, expressing in Lear, Antony, Macbeth, his
sense of the manifold ironies of life, is reverent
enough to stop short of explanation. Dryden’s
view of the tragic must be gathered, if possible,
from his work.
As to the other question, that of form, the great
critical battles fought about the technique of
tragedy have left many questions undecided.
Meanwhile, the problem concerning the single
action, and the unities of time and of place.
have been pushed into the background. They
are, it would seem, desirable in so far as
they increase the vividness of presentation
of a moment of human struggle, with its
causes, its effects—no farther. The one vital re-
quirement, and this is not an outer thing, imposed
by a school of criticism, but an inner necessity, is
that tragedy shall have unity of action, re resent
some Some Grisis-im-tite-have TTS-threads Bound


together in one knot. A mark of greatness in
tragedy, as shown by the great tragedies already
cited, is extreme simplicity. Hamlet, Macbeth,
Oedipus, seize the one issue, derive their effect
from the weight of the one problem, not from the
number of complications involved. Further, the
very conditions of growth in any human affair,
require that the action shall rise to a turning-
point, waver, return to a catastrophe. For this
requirement there is more than arbitrary reason.
In the clash between will and circumstance, be-
tween will and will, between will and itself, there
is a moment, more important than the others,
when all trembles in the balance, whem the scale
must tip one way or the other. The crisis or turn-
ing-point, then, represents the moment of quaver-
ing before the possible changes to the inevitable.
A struggle then, one, entire; growth toward de-
cision; and the revelation of the consequences
of that decision, all ending in a final catastrophe,
| these are the requirements of great tragedy.
Dryden wrote seven tragedics, aided in two of
them, Oedipus and The Duke of Guise, by Lee;
in Cleomenes by Southerne. Three of the seven
are adaptations: All for Love of Shakespeare's
Anlony and Cleopalra; Oedipus of the Oedipus of
Sophocles; Troilus and Cressida of Shakespeare's
play. The rest are original. The Duke of Guise
is founded on French political events; Don Sebas-
ſian on a story of Portuguese wars; Cleomenes
on Plutarch’s life of Cleomenes; Amboyna on
stories of Dutch atrocities. In the work in tragedy
is seen the most interesting phase of the working
of T)ryden’s mind over his critical problem. The
first tragedy, All for Love, finds him reducing
Shakespeare's romantic drama to rule; the next,
84
weaving a love-story into the Oedipus, and mak-
ing of that model of classic simplicity in structure
a complicated modern plot. These plays, with
Don Sebastian, his greatest piece of original work,
will best repay investigation.
All for Love is the high-water mark of Dry-
den's dramatic work. The attempt to make
Shakespeare's play conform to the unities takes
us to the very center of the great critical battle of
the day; shows, too, in peculiar fashion, what was
vital, what was less necessary in the neo-classic
principles advanced by France. Not only in re-
gard to structure is the play significant. Its theme
is the favorite theme of Restoration drama, love.
In working over Shakespeare, Dryden measures
himself by the greater dramatist, and his adapta-
tion of Antony and Cleopatra is full of significant
touches concerning himself and the age in which
he wrote.
All for Love obeys the unities. The action, ,
extending in Shakespeare’s play over ten years,
is limited here to one day, and begins just before
the final conflict with Caesar. The scene is con-
fined to Alexandria, license, not strictly accord-
ing with French practice, being allowed in per-
mitting a change from the Temple of Isis to
Cleopatra’s palace. Shakespeare’s play hurries
one from Asia to Africa, from Italy to the sea,
with a rapidity that leaves one breathless. In
All for Love, two-thirds of the characters of the
earlier play are eliminated, leaving only the chief
personages concerned in the story of Antony's
passion, omitting his friends and /foes of the
Roman wars. Combined with the cutting away
of superfluous material comes a weaving into the
main line of the story complicating threads in-
i
S5
tended to deepen the tragic effect. Octavia is
brought with her little daughters to plead her
cause in Egypt. AJolabella, in Shakespeare's play
& -----"
amº-
the friend of Caesar, is made in All for Love a
friend of Antony. Dolabella’s passion for Cleo-
patra, warring against his love for his friend, be-
comes a complicating force in the later play.
These changes in the structure of the play ap-
pear at first sight most judicious. Out of irregu-
larity that is confusing Dryden’s play emerges,
it would seem, into perfect clearness, its main
points emphasized, its tragic situations deepened.
The political discussions at Rome, the war-pomp
at Misenum and in Syria, the predictions of the
soothsayer, and the remarks of the clown are all
swept away, to leave the way clear for working
out the main effect. The introduction of An-
i tony’s little daughters, the struggle in Dolabella
between friendship and love, the addition of a
restraining force in the aged Ventidius show skill
ii in contriving. Certainly this is the triumph of
iſ Dryden’s critical appreciations. sº
| Yet something is left to be desired. The vital-
i
%
ity of Shakespeare's play is missing in Dryden’s.

Looking for the cause, one finds that the struggl
of passion with circumstance and with itself...is.
-nót here. The key to the earlier play is given in
the clash between Antony's,
“IJet Rome in Tiber melt! and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space,”’
and Cleopatra’s regretful remark:
“A Roman thought hath struck him.” *
Dryden’s Antony has no Roman thoughts. Thé
struggle is already over. He is absorbed in melan-
1 Antony and Cleopatra. Act I, sc. 1.

86
choly regrets over all that has been lost. He is
past fighting, and bends first to one influence, then
to another. At the end of Act I he yields to .
Ventidius' plea to abandon Cleopatra. At the end
of Act II Cleopatra wins him back again. At the
end of Act III Octavia and the children bring him
back to the Roman side. The rest of the action
is taken up with his jealousy of Dolabella. The
world is already lost for Dryden’s Antony at the
beginning of the play; the tragic crisis is past.
Shakespeare’s play is a tragedy of struggle,
choice, fall. The crucial moment comes in Act
III, and struggle ends through the acceptance of
cowardice in that flight at Actium. The account
of that turning-point comes in Antony’s words af-
ter the event. How could it have come otherwise?
How could it have come better?
“Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon it.
It is ashamed to bear me. Friends, come hither:
I am so lated in the world that I
Have lost my way forever.”
His words to Cleopatra, after his reproaches,
bring out again in connection with the speech just
quoted, the tragic clash, and mark the beginning
of the downward movement.
“Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates
All that is won and lost.”
The corresponding moment is hard to fix in .
Eryden. Is it, the scene at the end of Act II, the
succumbing to Cleopatra? Or that in Act IV
where Ventidius tries to rouse Antony's jealousy
of Dolabella? The question leads to uncertainty
in regard to the motif of Dryden’s play. In
1 Act III, sc. 9.
2 Ib.
S7
Shakespeare we have the struggle of passion versus
honor. In Dryden we have the moment after
the struggle is over, cowardice is accepted, and
the emotion presented is a gliding over from a
sense of shame to a sense of jealousy. The action
is blurred. Mixed motifs make the crisis uncertain.
Mechanic craftsmanship cannot give unity to that
which is not a unit in the mind of its creator, and
Dryden’s tragedy lacks the one necessary point.
Shakespeare's tragedy sins against the unities of
time and place, sins, too, against the necessary laws
of coherence, order, design. It admits unneces-
sary episodes. It is done with an air of careless-
ness. Yet it bears the marks of great tragedy in
the greatness and the simplicity of its issue. Per-
l|
haps this is the best illustration of Shakespeare's
power of making his way through manifold con-
fusing perceptions and seizing the one vital point.
In Dryden's play this power eiº cutting to the
quick is not shown. The play, oùtwardly regular,
outwardly unified, lacks centre.
Iſere, as elsewhere in Dryden, the heart of the
tragedy is found in circumstances, rather than in
inner conditions, is sensational, rather than dra-
matic. To bring Octavia and Cleopatra together,'
to introduce the wife and the children in the scene
where Antony is won over,” to send Dolabella to
Cleopatra as messenger of the news concerning
Antony's resolution to leave her,” to have Venti-
dius bring Octavia to watch Cleopatra and Dola-
bella as they talk, and interpret their conversation
as love-making," was to contrive most compli-
cated situation. But multiplying the strands of
1 Works, Vol. V, Act III, sc. 1.
b
2 Ib.
3 Ib., Act IV, sc. I.
4 Ib.
88
tension at the moment does not mean heighten-
ing real dramatic effect, which lies in following
out the inevitable consequences of act and choice.
Massinger's complication, in The Duke of Milam,
of the tragic situation in Olhello, the changes made
by Jean François Ducis in Hamlet, do not mean
corresponding increase of power. In the Anti-
gone, in Job, in Faust, the situation is simple even
to baldness, as regards mere fact, and any one of
them could be put to shame by a single plot of
Mrs. Radcliffe or of Dumas, if entanglement of
circumstance were the secret of dramatic force.
In Dryden’s adding to the startling in situation in
his dramas, the complexity of the issue is taken
from the inner nature of the characters and placed
in circumstances. In true drama, the clash is in
the soul, or between the soul and some power
outside. Here, the subjective factors of the
struggle are redficed to a minimum. Antony
is a true Restoration hero, all lover. So
with Cleopatra. Shakespeare’s heroine, with her
charm, her fine sarcasm, her “infinite variety” is
reduced to the Restoration type, with only one
characteristic. The touch of nobility in Shakes-
peare's Cleopatra, and her intellectual grasp of the
situation, are absent. Dryden’s Cleopatra could
not say
“My desolation does begin to make
A lyetter life.” *
In Dryden, the object is to display the extreme
of passion in both characters, and there is lack
of complexity, of change, of growth. The same
melancholy beauty found in Antony's speeches in
the first act, expressive of feeling touched with
regret, is shown in Cleopatra’s remarks:
1 Antony and Cleopatra Act V, sc. 2.
2
S9 A
*
K * Zºº -ºr w º
‘I love you more, even now you are unkind,
Than when you loved me most.”
:: :: :: ::: :}; ::: :: :};
“And thus one minute's feigning has destroyed
My whole life’s truth.” "
But it is a lyric rather than a dramatic beauty,
the expressing of one long moment of pure emo-
tion, with no counter-check, no struggle.
It is precisely in this purely dramatic power of
seizing the one issue, of presenting it with all its
inner complications, that Shakespeare, with his
grave faults in structure, surpasses other drama-
tists. His work has come to mean the catching
the true mixture in life, grief qualified by mirth,
mirth by grief, greatness dashed with its de-
fects, meanness touched with greatness. When
he fails in this, in creating either situation or
character, as, for instance, in Othello, where vil-
lainy, in Iago, is reduced to type—“the less .
Shakespeare he.” Dryden’s play fails in great
dramatic simplicity of situation, in dramatic com-
plexity of character and of motive. It wins praise
for its regularity, for its obedience to all the rules
—except the most important one. This most im-
portant is the only one that Shakespeare's play
obeys, but that obedience means much saving
grace in behalf of much absurdity in structure.
One misses in Dryden the wavering, the struggle,
as one misses, at that most solemn moment of
tragic effect, the Clown, with the “pretty worm of .
Nilus,” whose “biting is immortal.”
It is interesting to note that blank verse is
used throughout the play, instead of rime, for
which Dryden had contended so eagerly. Already
in the prologue to Aurenſ-Zebe Dryden had ex-
I Works, Vol. V, Act IV, sc. 1.
90
pressed his weariness of rime, and that play has
many broken lines, interrupting the Smooth flow
of Dryden’s verse. As early as in The Rival Ladies
Dryden had tried his power in blank verse.
Amboyna is a peculiar mixture of prose and “bas-
tard blank verse.” From the publication of All for
Love he shows preference for this form in his
serious work. Love Triumphant, the last play,
finds him using the heroic rime and blank verse
together. The tendency in the earlier work had
been, to use prose, in the comic work, heroic
rime in serious or pathetic parts. Couplets
usually close the acts, often the scenes of the
comedies. Rimed verses are found, then, in 'all)
the dramas; prose in all except All for Love.
Here begins his first extended use of the blank
verse form, a use less free than Shakespeare’s,
influenced throughout by the practice in heroic
rime. “Seit.dem ist sein Streben darauf gerichtet
die Charakteristik Shakespeare’s und die Theorien
des französischen Pseudoklassicismus mit ein-
anden zu Vereinigen.”’’ Dryden’s power in the
use of this form, as well as the occasional beauty
of thought and expression in his work, can be seen
in the following bits from All for Love:
“Aleasas. O that I less could fear to lose this
being, &
Which, like a snowball in my coward hand,
The more 'tis grasped, the faster melts away.”
::: :: :}; $ / . :: >}s :: ::
Antony. I will not fight; there's no more work
.*/
for war. -
The business of my angry hours is done.
1 Otto Speerschneider: Metrische Untersuchungen über den
heroischen vers in John Dryden’s Dramen, p. 6.
2 Works, Vol. V, Act V, sc, 1.
01
My eyes
Are open to her falsehood: my whole life
Has been a golden dream of love and friendship;
But, now I wake, I’m like a merchant, roused
From soft repose, to see his vessel sinking
And all his wealth cast over. Ungrateful woman!
Who followed me, but as the swallow, summer,
Hatching her young ones in my kindly beams,
Singing her flatteries to my morning wake:
But, now my winter comes, she spreads her
Wings,
And seeks the spring of Caesar.
My queen is dead.
I was but great for her; my power, my empire,
Were but my merchandise to buy her love;
And conquered kings, my factors. Now she's
dead,
Let Caesar take the world,—
An empty circle, since the jewel’s gone
Which made it worth my strife.
I’m weary of my part.
My torch is out; and the world stands before me
Ilike a black desert at the approach of might:
I’ll lay me down and stray no farther on.
>}; :}; >k :k :k sk >; :k
[Ventidius dies].
Antony. Farewell! Ever my leader, even in
death!
My queen and thou have got the start of me,
And I’m the lag of honour. Gone so soon?
Is death no more? he used him carelessly
With a familiar kindness: ere he knocked
Ran to the door and took him in his arms
92
As who should say, You’re welcome at all hours,
A friend need give no warning. Books had
spoiled him;
For all the learned are cowards by profession.
'Tis not worth - -
My further thought; for death, for aught I know,
Is but to think no more.”
All for Love, was followed the next year by
Oedipus, modernized by the addition of a romantic
love-story as sub-plot. For the plan, Dryden is
responsible. “I writ the first and third acts of
Oedipus,” he wrote afterward, “and drew the
scenery of the whole play.” As to the use made
of the work of his predecessors Dryden makes ac-
knowledgment in his preface.” Sophocles has
been followed as closely as possible. Corneille has
given no hint, except that there must be an epi-
sode. From Seneca, nothing was taken except an
account of the raising of Laius' ghost. The com-
plication of the plot marks the Swinging back of
the pendulum in Dryden’s standards of criticism,
but the old hesitancy follows the choice. “Cus-
tom likewise has obtained that we must form an
under-plot of second persons, which must be de-
pending on the first. . . . Perhaps, after all, if
We could think so, the ancient method, as it is the
easiest, is also the most natural and the best.”
To the dramatis personae of Sophocles' play
Dryden added, Adrastus, Prince of Argos, pris-
oner of war; Alcander, Diocles, Pyracumon, lords
of Creon’s faction, for Creon is plotting to usurp
the throne; Haemon, captain of the guard; Dy-
mas, messenger from Delphos; the ghost of Laius;
1 Works, Vol. V, Act V, sc. I.
2 Vind. of The Duke of Guise. Works, Vol. VII, p. 203.
3 Works, Vol. VI, pp. 131-133.
4 Ib., p. 133.
03
Manto, daughter of Tiresias, and Eurydice, daugh-
ter of Jocasta.
The main action is left substantially the same
as in Sophocles' play. A messenger from DelphOS
tells the Theban people that their present dis-
tresses shall end when the death of King Laius
has been avenged. Oedipus, hearing now for the
first time the story of that death, curses the mur-
derer, only to find out, through Jocasta, the mes-
senger from Corinth, and the Theban shepherd,
that he is the murderer. The seer, Tiresias,
does not in his first interview denounce Oedipus
as the murderer, as in Sophocles. That accusa-
tion comes after an incantation scene where the
ghost of Laius rises and calls Oedipus his mur-
derer. As in Sophocles, Jocasta tells Oedipus
how her child, because of the prophecy that
he should kill his father Laius, was exposed
on a mountain; how Laius had been killed
at the meeting of three roads. Oedipus tells the
prophecy concerning himself, that he should marry
his own mother, after killing his father. The
messenger from Corinth informs Oedipus that his
supposed father, Polybus, was not his father,
Merope was not his mother. And the Theban
shepherd, sole survivor of the tumult at Laius'
death, makes the chain of evidence complete by
confessing that he had given Laius’ child to the
Corinthian, and shows that Oedipus has fulfilled
the prophecy. The end of the tragedy in Dry-
den’s hands differs from the original. Jocasta,
before her suicide, kills her children. Oedipus,
after putting out his eyes, ends his life by hurling
himself from a window.
The underplot added by Dryden involves both
love and politics. Creon, villain of the play, as-
94
pires to the hand of his niece, Eurydice. Adras-
tus, the captive prince, is the accepted lover of the
lady. The underplot, connected with the main
plot in some of its principal scenes, has no vital
union with it, as would be inevitable from the fact
that the action of the Oedipus is the unfolding of
the past, the revelation, in one moment, of the
consequences of deeds long done. The sub-plot
affords the kind of sensational situation that Dry-
den affects. In Act I, scene 1, Creon is
found attempting to win the people away from
Oedipus, attempting, too, to win Eurydice.
Oedipus, coming home with the prisoner Adrastus,
sets the captive free, telling him to carry on his
suit to Eurydice. Creon is still further inflamed.
Still more startling is the scene,' where, after
the seer Tiresias announces that Laius’ murderer
is the first of Laius' blood, Creon, for revenge, says
that this is Eurydice, and is attacked by Adrastus,
who is told that he was probably the robber who
killed Laius. Progressive, in the same kind of
sensationalism, is the interview between Eury-
dice, Creon, and Adrastus, where Adrastus, in or-
der to shield Eurydice, confesses himself the mur-
derer of Laius. A fight follows.” The end of the
story justifies the promise of the beginning.
Creon, sent to command the guard in the tumult
that has arisen among the people, congratulates
himself that now all is within his hands. Eury-
dice shall die or be his bride. In the fight that
follows he finds Adrastus begging Eurydice to
flee with him. Creon, unable to shake her pur-
pose to follow Adrastus, kills her, Adrastus kills
Creon, the soldiers kill Adrastus.
* Works, Vol. VI, Act II, sc. 1.
2 Ib., Act III, sc. I.
95
The lack of necessary connection between these
plots needs no comment. Act III contains the
turning-point in the main action, the mention,
in Jocasta’s part, in her attempt to comfort Oedi-
pus, of the three roads whose junction was the
scene of Laius' death. This rouses Oedipus’ sus-
picion, and leads to the train of questions disclos-
ing the whole story. Act III contains, too, the
turning-point in the sub-plot in the interview
between Eurydice, Adrastus, and Creon, but the
two turning-points are unrelated. So, in the gen-
eral blood-shedding of the catastrophe, there is
no union between the two, except in the fact that
all the chief characters share the common fate of
death.
An attempt to embellish the great masterpiece
of ancient tragedy is shown, not only in the love-
story, but in the spectacular effect of the incanta-
tion scene in Act III, where the ghost appears
in his chariot; in the “Prodigies” of Act II, where
crowned figures appear in the sky, “with the
names of Oedipus and Jocasta written above in
great characters of gold;” in the sensationalism of
the blood-shedding scenes. To plead as excuse for
the incantation scene the example of Seneca is but
to say that Dryden followed a bad master. Not
only in the new features is the desire to make the
matter attractive shown. The touches of pathetic
irony in Sophocles suffer expansion at the hands
of Dryden, who is impelled by the old instinct to
better the good by making more of it. Diocles',
“IHe much resembles
Her former husband, too,”
Oedipus,’
“No pious son e'er loved his mother more
1 Works, Vol. VI, Act I, sc, 1.
2 Ib.
96
Than I my dear Jocasta,” and
“I dreamt, Jocasta, that thou wert my mother,”
show Dryden’s desire to amplify, to ornament, his
inability to stop with suggestion.
Comment on the changes described is hardly
necessary after description. The Oedipus in Dry-
den’s hands is vulgarized by the emphasis on the
sensational in scene-structure, by the Ormamenta-
tion. The simplicity of the play is forfeited, and
its tremendous tragic effect is dissipated. Here
again multiplication of strands is mistaken for
gravity of tragic effect, and the mind betrayed in
the working out of the scheme stamps itself as
distinctly of inferior order.
To turn from the adaptations of other men's
work, we touch the play called by certain critics
Dryden’s great tragedy. It is all his own work.
“As for the story, or plot, of the tragedy,” Dry-
den said, “I take it up where the history has laid
it down.” *
Don Sebastian is a romantic drama, rivalling the
heroic plays. It concerns the fortunes of Don
Sebastian, King of Portugal, prisoner of war at
the court of Muley-Moluch, usurper of the throne
of Barbary, and of Almeyda, sister of Mahomet,
the vanquished king. The attempt of Muley-
Zeydan, the Emperor's brother, to win the throne
from him; the scheme of Benducar, his accom-
plice, to dethrone Muley-Zeydan and marry
Almeyda; the story of Dorax, governor of Al-
cazar, once Don Sebastian’s bosom friend, now
his enemy, make up a web of amazing intricacy.
In addition to all this a comic underplot is intro-
duced, involving the fortunes of Antonio, a young
1 Works, Vol. VI, Act II, sc. 1.
2 Preface to Don Sebastian. Works, Vol. VII, p. 309.
7 97
Portuguese, prisoner of war, sold as a slave. The
key to the situation is briefly this: Sebastian and
Almeyda, hurried into speedy marriage because
of the Emperor's falling in love with the lady, dis-
cover that they are brother and sister and separate
forever.
This play, produced at the height of Dryden’s
power, is a final test of what he could do when
working independently. Old influences linger.
Traces of the heroic drama are found in the
diction, in the sentiment, in the structure. One
character, Dorax, conceived in the heroic style,
surpasses Dryden’s other work in being torn by
conflicting motives. His swaying between the old
love and the present hate for his friend, and his
final generosity, mark dramatic struggle, dramatic
growth exceedingly rare in Dryden. But the rea-
sons for calling this great tragedy are not ap-
parent. In the intricacy of the action, the one
tragic issue is obscured. In the planning of
scenes to bring out the utmost possible strain in
the outside situation, dramatic reality is lost in a
striving for effect. The play has all the marks
already noted as the evidence of inferior work in
drama: lack of distinction of the one chief mo-
ment; multiplication of tragic motives; sacrifice
of progress in action for momentary sensational
effect. Graver than the defects pointed out in
the plays where Dryden, following great masters,
was guarded from certain faults, is the denoue-
ment. This has no inevitable connection with
the action of the tragedy. The play is developed
on the lines of romantic love-complications, and
is stopped short by the sudden introduction of the
motif of Oedipus. The end is end, but it is
not result, and cause and effect make way for the
98
startling, the unexpected. To the desire to rouse
suspense is due that absurd device in which one
of the conspirators gives Dorax poison, his accom-
plice, not knowing that the dose had been admin-
istered, gives him another. The two doses coun-
teract each other, and Dorax is spared, at the ex-
pense of the introduction of the unintentionally
ludicrous into the tragic solemnity.' Dryden was
sensitive in regard to this point. To those who
called this incident unnatural he said: “[Let
Ausonius, his famous epigram, answer that.” "
This is only one instance of the emphasis on the
thrilling in incident which takes the place of true
tragic issue in the drama.
The lack º: centre, of point, in this as
in the other plays, leads to the question: had Dry-
den insight that was all his own into any plase
of the tragic dilemma of existence, power to seize
a moment of struggle, and present it, with its
causes, its effects?. The question involves a con-
sideration of the themes\fall his tragedies, of the \
power shown in them of rousing the “sympathy
and awe.” of true tragic effect.
In every one of Dryden’s tragedies and tragi-
comedies love is the motif. In The Rival Ladies,
Marriage d la Mode, the treatment is that of ro
mantic love, baffled by obstacles. The dramas
are full of situations, of incident. In Don Sebas-
tian, Oedipus, Love Triumphant, the tragic situa-
tion is that of love made wrong through relation-
ship. The predominence of this theme doubtless
marks concession to public taste, and represents
an answer to a demand from without, rather than
inner necessity on the part of the author to ex-
press peculiar insight into the emotional dilemmas
1 Works, Vol. VII, Act III, sc. 1.
2 Ib., p. 314. &
99
he chooses for treatment. Searching through his
dramas one fails to find distinctive treatment of
this passion. It is everywhere the hopeless, ex-
treme kind depicted in the heroic plays. The em-
phasis on the external one finds throughout. The
various modifications of the motif of Oedipus are,
to say the least, unfortunate. In The Spanish
Friar the underlying idea of the play affords a sit-
uation that in the hands of a greater dramatist
might have been powerful. Queen Leonora loves
Torrismond, a young general, hates Bertrand, her
suitor, prince of the blood. To ruin Bertrand in
the eyes of the people she lets him put to death
the dethroned king, only to find that that king is
Torrismond’s father, whose throne her father had
usurped. Here again Dryden thought out better
tragedy than he could write. The workings in
mind and heart of his characters do not rise to the
height of the occasion planned for them, and
pathos is lost in sensationalism. In Secret Love
there is a pathos in the renunciation on the part
of the queen of the man she loves. The touch is
unlike that in Dryden’s other work. Reading in
Le Grand Cyrus the story from which the play is
drawn, one discovers the spirit of the original lin-
gering in the drama, giving it its air of high-
minded sentiment. Of the tragedies, All for Love
gives the most genuine tragic effect. But here
Dryden had Shakespeare, and the changes in the
play mean subtraction, not addition. From Am-
tony and Cleopatra he took much away. Of tragic
power he added nothing. The effect is that of
hopeless and helpless passion, caught in its min-
utes of impotence, not, as in Shakespeare, caught
in its minutes of struggle. As was said in regard
to the comedies, Dryden is at his best when follow- \
100
ing a model, at his worst when working alone. Am-
boyma is a crying example of what he can do when
left to his own devices. He seems to have nothing
distinctive of his own to say. Passion with ex-
treme interest or suspense attaching to the cir-
cumstances under which it is displayed—that rep-
resents the endeavor in tragedy and tragi-comedy
of Dryden from The Rival Ladies to Love Tri-
wmphant. Compare, in the former, the treatment
of the ladies who serve their lover in disguise,
with the treatment of the page Bellario in Philas-
ter. Here is mothing to rouse the over-pitiful
sympathy that follows Bellario. The adventure is
the centre of interest. And certainly, in consid-
ering Love Triumphant, one realizes that ingenu-
ity could go no further in planning the sensational
in situation to set forth the one theme of all Dry-
den’s tragedy, passion. “Sympathy and awe.” are
lost in wonder as to what will happen next.
M. Brunetière, in writing of Corneille, says that
his dramatic work made a new epoch in French
drama.
“Ce qu'il y a de nouveau daus le Cid, c'est que,
pour la première fois . . . les causes de l'action
et l'action même y sont transportées du dehors au
dedans; et le drame, par conséquent, s'y déroule
dans l’intérieur ou dans l’âme des personnages.”"
The praise of Corneille needs to be taken
with modifications. Even here, the great outside
event is sometimes substituted for great tragic
issue. But statements of this kind are always
relative. In comparison with Shakespeare, the
criticism of the great Frenchman is hardly true.
In comparison with Dryden it holds good. For
1 Les Époques du Théâtre Français, p. 16.
I ()]
of him, the reverse of the statement could be given
as judgment. On Dryden must fall the censure
of placing emphasis on accident, putting action
into the region of the external, undoing in the
first drama in England that tried to conform to
the so-called rules of great tragedy, that which
the apparently lawless romantic drama had done
before him.' That Dryden’s whole view of this
|art was Superficial is proved, not only by his man-
'agement of drama, but by his remarks. In the
Essay on Salire he says that Aristotle's opinion
that tragedy is the most perfect work of poetry is
due to the fact that this is the most united, the
lmost severely confined within the rules of action,
time, and place. Its beauties and perfections are
, but mechanical." For a man to have struggled
'thirty years with the drama, holding this view, is
a spectacle surpassing in tragic effect anything
that Dryden achieved in º
To attempt to define Dryden’s position as trage-
dian is to confess that he has none. Dryden was
primarily a critic. The true creative impulse was
lacking in the work he tried to do, and his career
as dramatist is the history of his literary apprecia-
tions, baffled constantly by the bad taste of the
public he was trying to please. Method alone
would not suffice to give enduring stamp to the
literature he attempted to mould, and in method
Dryden wavered, speaking to the end with uncer-
tain voice. As for the matter of his plays, his
view is wanting. To test him by Sophocles and
by Shakespeare is perhaps hardly fair, yet he ven-
tured to lay hands on both and perhaps has chal-
lenged comparison. There is in him no trace of
1 Works, Vol. XIII, pp. 36–37.
102
the profound thought of Sophocles, shown in that
sense of wonder in all his work concerning the
relation of the will of man to the will of the gods,
There is in him no trace of a greatness like
Shakespeare's—the seeing all of life and the with-
holding judgment. Lacking the distinctive point
of view, personality, an individual way of looking
at things, Dryden lacks, necessarily, development,
growth. Shakespeare won his way through imita-
tion into freedom, and his history as dramatist is
the history of growing skill in the matter of form,
of more subtle insight. The development of his
peculiar genius is shown in the closer and closer
blending of the tragic and the comic, whose be-
ginning is given in Launce in Two Gentlemen of
Verona, whose climax, in the Fool in Lear, is
perhaps the best exponent of the Shakespearian
point of view. Of Dryden it must be said that
either he did not study life in its actual workings,
or, looking at it, failed to make his own any aspect
which could endure in literature. He took his
pleasure in the detached, the fragmentary, and
his work lacks wholeness. The principle of
growth is not in it. It lacks the inner, organiſ
unity of Shakespeare, and, for the mºst part, th;
outer, mechanical unity of the French rules. Dry-
den is not to be censured for mistakes, for con-
stant experimenting, for using the work of other
men, but for failing, in all this, to reach expres-
sion, to become more and more completely him-
self. There is in his work no growth through
partial acceptance of other men's views into fuller
understanding of his own. He adds tragic motif
to tragic motif, comic to comic, but the insight
horrowed from a “printed book,” does not avail.
His plays have not that sincerity which results
103
from the artist’s constant endeavor to catch and
fix his peculiar sense of things. No one could
characterize the defect better than Dryden has
characterized it in speaking of some one else. “It
is not reading, it is not imitation of an author,
which can produce this fineness; it must be in-
born; it must proceed from a genius, and particu-
lar way of thinking, which is not to be taught;
and therefore not to be imitated by him who has
it not from nature.” Dryden’s dramatic work is
imitation, not organic creation. It lacks vital
centre, and it has not endured.
1 Essay on Satire. Works, Vol. XIII, pp. 97-98.
| ()4
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|NDEX TO PROPER
Aristophanes, 41.
Aristotle, 14, 16, 17, 21. 27, 30, 31,
38, 42, 61, 64, 81, Ioz.
Beaumont and Fletcher, 6, 25, 28,
- 29, 30, 41, 42, 44, 46, Ior.
Behn, 7.
Beljame, 9.
Betterton, 7.
Boileau, 14, 65.
Bossu, 20, 30.
Boyle, 60.
Brunetière, 39, IoI.
Buckingham, Duke of.-Rehear-
sal, 60, 67, 71.
Calderon, 41, 44.
Cervantes, 57.
Chapman, 80.
Coleridge, 14, 38, 39.
Congreve, 36, 57.-The Way of the
World, 54, 55.
Corneille, 14, 16, 28, 33, 65, 81, 93,
IoI. —Cid,64.—Cinna, 31,
64. — Horace, 64. — Le
Feint Astrologue, 44.—
Le Menteur, 7. — Poly-
eucte, 64, 72, 79, 80.
Cousin, 65.
Crown, 60.
Davenant, 60.—Siege of Rhodes, 7.
Dowden, 82.
Dryden.—All for Love, Io, 29, 84–
94, Ioo.—Amboyna, 84,
91, IoI.—Amphitryon, 11,
44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 58.-
Apology for Heroic Po-
etry, 32. — Assignation,
44, 45, 47, 58.-Aureng-
Zebe, 29, 60, 62, 64, 67,
NAMES,
69, go.—Cleomenes, 31,
84. — Conquest of Gra-
nada, 6o 61, 63, 67,
69, 70, 72. — Defense of
Essay of Dramatic Po-
etry, 26, 28.—Don Se-
bastian, 31, 84, 97-99.
Duke of Guise, 84.—Fs.
say of Dramatic Poesy,
13, 19, 22–26, 69, 79.—
Essay on Satire, Ioz.--
Evening's Love, 39, 44–
47, 50, 54, 56.- Indian
Emperor, 6o, 92, 67–70.
—Indian Queen, 60, 62,
66, 68, 7o.—Limberham,
42, 45, 56, 58.—Love Tri-
umphant, 31, 44, 45, 5o,
51, 91, 99, IoI.—Maiden
Queen, 6, 50, 54.—Mar-
riage à la Mode, 44, 45,
47, 5 I, 53, 54, 55, 99,-
Oedipus, II, 84, 93-10o.
— Ovid's Metamorpho-
ses, trans., 31 — Rival
Ladies, II, 26, 44, 45, 5o,
56, 91, 99, IoI.—Secret
Love, 27, 44, Ioo.—Sir
Martin Mar-all, 44, 45,
47, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58.
—Spanish Friar, 44, 45,
56, 1oo.—State of Inno-
cence, 11.—Tempest, Ir,
28, 43, 45.-Troilus and
Cressida, 6, 30,—Tyran-
nic Love, 28, 60, 62, 72-
79. — Wild Gallant, 43,
56.
109
Goethe.—Faust, 82, 89.
Gomberville, 65.
Hegel, 14, 38, 81.
Holzhauzen, 12, 72.
Horace, 16, 17, 30,
Howard, 7.—The Indian Queen,
6o.
Job, 89.
Jonson, 7, 16, 27, 28, 36, 37, 39, 41,
43, 56.—Morose, 18.-Silent
Woman, 25, 26.-Volpone,
39.
La Calprenède, 65.
Lee, 11, 60, 84. – Oedipus, 84. –
Duke of Guise, 84.
Longinus, 30.
Marlowe, 83.--Tamburlaine, 64.
Massinger.—Duke of Milan, 89.
Meredith, 38.
Molière, 36, 39, 42, 43, 49, 51, 52,
56, 57, 65.—Le Bourgeois
Gentilhomme,44—L'Éto-
urdi, 44, 52. – George
Dandin, 7.-L'Avare, 7.
—L'École des Femmes,
7, 44.—L'École des Maris,
44. — Le Dépit Amour-
eux, 44. — Le Mariage
Forcé, 47, 48. — Le Mis-
anthrope, 7, 37. – Les
Fächeux, 7, 44. Les Four-
beries de Scapin, 7.-Les
Précieuses Ridicules, 44,
45, 52.-LeMalade Imagi-
naire, 7. — M. de Pour-
ceaugnac,44.—Sganarelle,
44.—Tartuffe, 39.
Otway, 7.
Plato, 14.
Plautus, 41, 44, 45, 48.
Plutarch.—Cleomenes, 84.
Quinault.—L'Amant Indiscret, 44.
Racine, 14.
Rapin, 30.
Richter, 21.
Rymer, 20, 31.
Saintsbury, 54, 58.
Schopenhauer, 14, 38, 82.
Scott, 58, 66.
Scudéry, Mlle. de, 65.-Almahide,
61. — Ibrahim, 61. – Le
Grand Cyrus, 44.
Seneca, 93.
Settle, 6o.
Sévigné, Mde, de, 65,
Shadwell, 7.
Shakespeare, 5–7, 16, 22, 24, 26-30,
36, 41, 49, 51, 56, ro2,
Io3. — Antony and
Cleopatra, 83-90, Ioo.
—As You Like It, 5o.
—Hamlet, 81, 82, 84.
—Lear, 7, 34, 57, 82,
83, IoS.–Macbeth, 82–
84.—Much Ado About
Nothing,39.--Othello,
89, 9o.—Richard III,
79.-Romeo and Juli-
et, 7.--Tempest, 11,
56.--Troilus and Cres-
sida, 20, 84.—Twelfth
Night, 37, 39.-Two
Gentlemen of Verona,
Iog.— Winter's Tale,
44.
Shelley, 14.
Shirley.—Love in a Maze, 44.
Sidney, 14.
Sophocles, 5, 16, 83, 93, Io2, Io9.—
Antigone,89.—Cedipus,
35, 81–85, 94, 96, 97.
Southerne.—Cleomenes, 84.
Statius, 8o.
Tate, 7.
Ward, 58.
Wycherley, 7.
110.