11. THE MODERN NATIONAL DRAMA

Influence of the Renaissance.

The literary influence which finally transformed the growths noticed

above into the national dramas of the several countries of Europe, was

that of the Renaissance. Among the remains of classical antiquity which

were studied, translated and imitated, those of the drama necessarily

held a prominent place. Never altogether lost sight of, they now became

subjects of devoted research and models for more or less exact

imitation, first in Greek or Latin, then in modern tongues; and these

essentially literary endeavours came into more or less direct contact

with, and acquired more or less control over, dramatic performances and

entertainments already in existence. This process it will be most

convenient to pursue _seriatim_, in connexion with the rise and progress

of the several dramatic literatures of the West. For no sooner had the

stream of the modern drama, whose source and contributories have been

described, been brought back into the ancient bed, than its flow

diverged into a number of national currents, unequal in impetus and

strength, and varying in accordance with their manifold surroundings.

And even of these it is only possible to survey the most productive or

important.

(a) _Italy._

The modern Italian drama.

The priority in this as in most of the other aspects of the Renaissance

belongs to Italy. In ultimate achievement the Italian drama fell short

of the fulness of the results obtained elsewhere--a surprising fact when

it is considered, not only that the Italian language had the

vantage-ground of closest relationship to the Latin, but that the genius

of the Italian people has at all times led it to love the drama. The

cause is doubtless to be sought in the lack, noticeable in Italian

national life during a long period, and more especially during the

troubled days of division and strife coinciding with the rise and

earlier promise of Italian dramatic literature, of those loftiest and

most potent impulses of popular feeling to which a national drama owes

so much of its strength. This deficiency was due partly to the

peculiarities of the Italian character, partly to the political and

ecclesiastical experiences which Italy was fated to undergo. The

Italians were alike strangers to the enthusiasm of patriotism, which was

as the breath in the nostrils of the English Elizabethan age, and to the

religious devotion which identified Spain with the spirit of the

Catholic revival. The clear-sightedness of the Italians had something to

do with this, for they were too intelligent to believe in their tyrants,

and too free from illusions to deliver up their minds to their priests.

Finally, the chilling and enervating effects of a pressure of foreign

domination, such as no Western people with a history and a civilization

like those of Italy has ever experienced, contributed to paralyse for

many generations the higher efforts of the dramatic art. No basis was

permanently found for a really national tragedy; while literary comedy,

after turning from the direct imitation of Latin models to a more

popular form, lost itself in an abandoned immorality of tone and in

reckless insolence of invective against particular classes of society.

Though its productivity long continued, the poetic drama more and more

concentrated its efforts upon subordinate or subsidiary species,

artificial in origin and decorative in purpose, and surrendered its

substance to the overpowering aids of music, dancing and spectacle. Only

a single form of the Italian drama, improvised comedy, remained truly

national; and this was of its nature dissociated from higher literary

effort. The revival of Italian tragedy in later times is due partly to

the imitation of French models, partly to the endeavour of a brilliant

genius to infuse into his art the historical and political spirit.

Comedy likewise attained to new growths of considerable significance,

when it was sought to accommodate its popular forms to the

representation of real life in a wider range, and again to render it

more poetical in accordance with the tendencies of modern romanticism.

The regular Italian drama, in both its tragic and its comic branches,

began with a reproduction, in the Latin language, of classical

models--the first step, as it was to prove, towards the transformation

of the medieval into the modern drama, and the birth of modern dramatic

literature. But the process was both tentative and tedious, and must

have died away but for the pomp and circumstance with which some of the

patrons of the Renaissance at Florence, Rome and elsewhere surrounded

these manifestations of a fashionable taste, and for the patriotic

inspiration which from the first induced Italian writers to dramatize

themes of national historic interest. Greek tragedy had been long

forgotten, and one or two indications in the earlier part of the 16th

century of Italian interest in the Greek drama, chiefly due to the

printing presses, may be passed by.[13] To the later middle ages

classical tragedy meant Seneca, and even his plays remained unremembered

till the study of them was revived by the Paduan judge Lovato de' Lovati

(Lupatus, d. 1309). Of the comedies of Plautus three-fifths were not

rediscovered till 1429; and though Terence was much read in the schools,

he found no dramatic imitators, _pour le bon motif_ or otherwise, since

Hrosvitha.

Thus the first medieval follower of Seneca, Albertino Mussato

(1261-1330) may in a sense be called the father of modern dramatic

literature. Born at Padua, to which city all his services were given, he

in 1315 brought out his _Eccerinis_, a Latin tragedy very near to the

confines of epic poetry, intended to warn the Paduans against the

designs of Can Grande della Scala by the example of the tyrant Ezzelino.

Other tragedies of much the same type followed during the ensuing

century; such as L. da Fabiano's _De casu Caesenae_ (1377) a sort of

chronicle history in Latin prose on Cardinal Albornoz' capture of

Caesena.[14] Purely classical themes were treated in the _Achilleis_ of

A. de' Loschi of Vicenza (d. 1441), formerly attributed to Mussato,

several passages of which are taken verbally from Seneca; in the

celebrated _Progne_ of the Venetian Gregorio Cornaro, which is dated

1428-1429, and in later Latin productions included among the

translations and imitations of Greek and Latin tragedies and comedies by

Bishop Martirano (d. 1557), the friend of Pope Leo X.,[15] and the

efforts of Pomponius Laetus and his followers, who, with the aid of

Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1451-1521), sought to revive the ancient

theatre, with all its classical associations, at Rome.

In this general movement Latin comedy had quickly followed suit, and, as

just indicated, it is almost impossible, when we reach the height of the

Italian Renaissance under the Medici at Florence and at Rome in

particular, to review the progress of either species apart from that of

the other. If we possessed the lost _Philologia_ of Petrarch, of which,

as of a juvenile work, he declared himself ashamed, this would be the

earliest of extant humanistic comedies. As it is, this position is held

by _Paulus_, a Latin comedy of life on the classic model, by the

orthodox P. P. Vergerio (1370-1444); which was followed by many

others.[16]

Italian tragedy in the 16th century.

Early in the 16th century, tragedy began to be written in the native

tongue; but it retained from the first, and never wholly lost, the

impress of its origin. Whatever the source of its subjects--which,

though mostly of classical origin, were occasionally derived from native

romance, or even due to invention--they were all treated with a

predilection for the horrible, inspired by the example of Seneca, though

no doubt encouraged by a perennial national taste. The chorus,

stationary on the stage as in old Roman tragedy, was not reduced to a

merely occasional appearance between the acts till the beginning of the

17th century, or ousted altogether from the tragic drama till the

earlier half of the 18th. Thus the changes undergone by Italian tragedy

were for a long series of generations chiefly confined to the form of

versification and the choice of themes; nor was it, at all events till

the last century of the course which it has hitherto run, more than the

aftergrowth of an aftergrowth. The honour of having been the earliest

tragedy in Italian seems to belong to A. da Pistoia's _Pamfila_ (1499),

of which the subject was taken from Boccaccio, introduced by the ghost

of Seneca, and marred in the taking. Carretto's _Sofonisba_, which

hardly rises above the art of a chronicle history, though provided with

a chorus, followed in 1502. But the play usually associated with the

beginning of Italian tragedy--that with which "th' Italian scene first

learned to glow"--was another _Sofonisba_, acted before Leo X. in 1515,

and written in blank hendecasyllables instead of the _ottava_ and _terza

rima_ of the earlier tragedians (retaining, however, the lyric measures

of the chorus), by G. G. Trissino, who was employed as nuncio by that

pope. Other tragedies of the former half of the 16th century, largely

inspired by Trissino's example, were the _Rosmunda_ of Rucellai, a

nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1516); Martelli's _Tullia_,

Alamanni's _Antigone_ (1532); the _Canace_ of Sperone Speroni, the

envious _Mopsus_ of Tasso, who, like Guarini, took Sperone's elaborate

style for his model; the _Orazia_, the earliest dramatic treatment of

this famous subject by the notorious Aretino (1549); and the nine

tragedies of G. B. Giraldi (Cinthio) of Ferrara, among which

_L'Orbecche_ (1541) is accounted the best and the bloodiest. Cinthio,

the author of those _Hecatommithi_ to which Shakespeare was indebted for

so many of his subjects, was (supposing him to have invented these) the

first Italian who was the author of the fables of his own dramas; he

introduced some novelties into dramatic construction, separating the

prologue and probably also the epilogue from the action, and has by some

been regarded as the inventor of the pastoral drama. But his style was

arid. In the latter half of the 16th century may be mentioned the

_Didone_ and the _Marianna_ of L. Dolce, the translator of Euripides and

Seneca (1565); A. Leonico's _Il Soldato_ (1550); the _Adriana_ (acted

before 1561 or 1586) of L. Groto, which treats the story of _Romeo and

Juliet_; Tasso's _Torrismondo_ (1587); the _Tancredi_ of Asinari (1588);

and the _Merope_ of Torelli (1593), the last who employed the stationary

chorus (_coro fisso_) on the Italian stage. Leonico's _Soldato_ is

noticeable as supposed to have given rise to the _tragedia cittadina_,

or domestic tragedy, of which there are few examples in the Italian

drama, and De Velo's _Tamar_ (1586) as written in prose. Subjects of

modern historical interest were in this period treated only in isolated

instances.[17]

Italian tragedy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Maffei.

Metastasio.

Alfieri.

The tragedians of the 17th century continued to pursue the beaten track,

marked out already in the 16th by rigid prescription. In course of time,

however, they sought by the introduction of musical airs to compromise

with the danger with which their art was threatened of being (in

Voltaire's phrase) extinguished by the beautiful monster, the opera, now

rapidly gaining ground in the country of its origin. (See OPERA.) To

Count P. Bonarelli (1589-1659), the author of _Solimano_, is on the

other hand ascribed the first disuse of the chorus in Italian tragedy.

The innovation of the use of rhyme attempted in the learned

Pallavicino's _Erminigildo_ (1655), and defended by him in a discourse

prefixed to the play, was unable to achieve a permanent success in Italy

any more than in England; its chief representative was afterwards

Martelli (d. 1727), whose rhymed Alexandrian verse (_Martelliano_),

though on one occasion used in comedy by Goldoni, failed to commend

itself to the popular taste. By the end of the 17th century Italian

tragedy seemed destined to expire, and the great tragic actor Cotta had

withdrawn in disgust at the apathy of the public towards the higher

forms of the drama. The 18th century was, however, to witness a change,

the beginnings of which are attributed to the institution of the Academy

of the Arcadians at Rome (1690). The principal efforts of the new school

of writers and critics were directed to the abolition of the chorus, and

to a general increase of freedom in treatment. Before long the marquis

S. Maffei with his _Merope_ (first printed 1713) achieved one of the

most brilliant successes recorded in the history of dramatic literature.

This play, which is devoid of any love-story, long continued to be

considered the masterpiece of Italian tragedy; Voltaire, who declared it

"worthy of the most glorious days of Athens," adapted it for the French

stage, and it inspired a celebrated production of the English drama.[18]

It was followed by a tragedy full of horrors,[19] noticeable as having

given rise to the first Italian dramatic _parody_; and by the highly

esteemed productions of Granelli (d. 1769) and his contemporary

Bettinelli. P. T. Metastasio (1698-1782), who had early begun his career

as a dramatist by a strict adherence to the precepts of Aristotle,

gained celebrity by his contributions to the operatic drama at Naples,

Venice and Vienna (where he held office as _poeta cesareo_, whose

function was to arrange the court entertainments). But his _libretti_

have a poetic value of their own;[20] and Voltaire pronounced much of

him worthy of Corneille and of Racine, when at their best. The influence

of Voltaire had now come to predominate over the Italian drama; and, in

accordance with the spirit of the times, greater freedom prevailed in

the choice of tragic themes. Thus the greatest of Italian tragic poets.

Count V. Alfieri (1749-1803), found his path prepared for him. Alfieri's

grand and impassioned treatment of his subjects caused his faultiness of

form, which he never altogether overcame, to be forgotten. His themes

were partly classical;[21] but the spirit of a love of freedom which his

creations[22] breathe was the herald of the national ideas of the

future. Spurning the usages of French tragedy, his plays, which abound

in soliloquies, owe part of their effect to an impassioned force of

declamation, part to those "points" by which Italian acting seems

pre-eminently capable of thrilling an audience. He has much besides the

subjects of two of his dramas[23] in common with Schiller, but his

amazon-muse (as Schlegel called her) was not schooled into serenity,

like the muse of the German poet. Among his numerous plays (21),

_Merope_ and _Saul_, and perhaps _Mirra_, are accounted his

masterpieces.

Tragedians since Alfieri.

The political colouring given by Alfieri to Italian tragedy reappears in

the plays of U. Foscolo and A. Manzoni, both of whom are under the

influence of the romantic school of modern literature; and to these

names must be added those of S. Pellico and G. B. Niccolini (1785-1861),

Paolo Giacometti (b. 1816) and others, whose dramas[24] treat largely

national themes familiar to all students of modern history and

literature. In their hands Italian tragedy upon the whole adhered to its

love of strong situations and passionate declamation. Since the

successful efforts of G. Modena (1804-1861) renovated the tragic stage

in Italy, the art of tragic acting long stood at a higher level in this

than in almost any other European country; in Adelaide Ristori (Marchesa

del Grillo) the tragic stage lost one of the greatest of modern

actresses; and Ernesto Rossi (1827-1896) and Tommaso Salvini long

remained rivals in the noblest forms of tragedy.

Italian comedy; popular forms.

Commedia dell' arte.

Masked comedy.

In comedy, the efforts of the scholars of the Italian Renaissance for a

time went side by side with the progress of the popular entertainments

noticed above. While the _contrasti_ of the close of the 15th and of the

16th century were disputations between pairs of abstract or allegorical

figures, in the _frottola_ human types take the place of abstractions,

and more than two characters appear. The _farsa_ (a name used of a wide

variety of entertainments) was still under medieval influences, and in

this popular form Alione of Asti (soon after 1500) was specially

productive. To these popular diversions a new literary as well as social

significance was given by the Neapolitan court-poet Sannazaro (c. 1492);

about the same time a _capitano valoroso_, Venturino of Pesara, first

brought on the modern stage the _capitano glorioso_ or _spavente_, the

military braggart, who owed his origin both to Plautus[25] and to the

Spanish officers who abounded in the Italy of those days. The popular

character-comedy, a relic of the ancient _Atellanae_, likewise took a

new lease of life--and this in a double form. The _improvised_ comedy

(_commedia a soggetto_) was now as a rule performed by professional

actors, members of a _craft_, and was thence called the _commedia dell'

arte_, which is said to have been invented by Francesco (called

Terenziano) Cherea, the favourite player of Leo X. Its scenes, still

unwritten except in skeleton (_scenario_), were connected together by

the ligatures or links (_lazzi_) of the _arlecchino_, the descendant of

the ancient Roman _sannio_ (whence our _zany_). Harlequin's summit of

glory was probably reached early in the 17th century, when he was

ennobled in the person of Cecchino by the emperor Matthias; of

Cecchino's successors, Zaccagnino and Truffaldino, we read that "they

shut the door in Italy to good harlequins." Distinct from this growth is

that of the _masked_ comedy, the action of which was chiefly carried on

by certain typical figures in masks, speaking in local dialects,[26]

but which was not improvised, and indeed from the nature of the case

hardly could have been. Its inventor was A. Beolco of Padua, who called

himself Ruzzante (joker), and is memorable under that name as the first

actor-playwright--a combination of extreme significance for the history

of the modern stage. He published six comedies in various dialects,

including the Greek of the day (1530). This was the masked comedy to

which the Italians so tenaciously clung, and in which, as all their own

and imitable by no other nation, they took so great a pride that even

Goldoni was unable to overthrow it. Improvisation and burlesque, alike

abominable to comedy proper, were inseparable from the species.

Early Italian regular comedy.

Meanwhile, the Latin imitations of Roman, varied by occasional

translations of Greek, comedies early led to the production of Italian

translations, several of which were performed at Ferrara in the last

quarter of the 15th century, whence they spread to Milan, Pavia and

other towns of the north. Contemporaneously, imitations of Latin comedy

made their appearance, for the most part in rhymed verse; most of them

applying classical treatment to subjects derived from Boccaccio's and

other _novelle_, some still mere adaptations of ancient models. In these

circumstances it is all but idle to assign the honour of having been

"the first Italian comedy"--and thus the first comedy in modern dramatic

literature--to any particular play. Boiardo's _Timone_ (before 1494),

for which this distinction was frequently claimed, is to a large extent

founded on a dialogue of Lucian's; and, since some of its personages are

abstractions, and Olympus is domesticated on an upper stage, it cannot

be regarded as more than a transition from the moralities. A. Ricci's _I

Tre Tiranni_ (before 1530) seems still to belong to the same

transitional species. Among the earlier imitators of Latin comedy in the

vernacular may be noted G. Visconti, one of the poets patronized by

Ludovico il Moro at Milan;[27] the Florentines G. B. Araldo, J. Nardi,

the historian,[28] and D. Gianotti.[29] The step--very important had it

been adopted consistently or with a view to consistency--of substituting

prose for verse as the diction of comedy, is sometimes attributed to

Ariosto; but, though his first two comedies were originally written in

prose, the experiment was not new, nor did he persist in its adoption.

Caretto's _I Sei Contenti_ dates from the end of the 15th century, and

Publio Filippo's _Formicone_, taken from Apuleius, followed quite early

in the 16th. Machiavelli, as will be seen, wrote comedies both in prose

and in verse.

But, whoever wrote the first Italian comedy, Ludovico Ariosto was the

first master of the species. All but the first two of his comedies,

belonging as they do to the field of _commedia erudita_, or scholarly

comedy, are in blank verse, to which he gave a singular mobility by the

dactylic ending of the line (_sdrucciolo_). Ariosto's models were the

masterpieces of the _palliata_, and his morals those of his age, which

emulated those of the worst days of ancient Rome or Byzantium in

looseness, and surpassed them in effrontery. He chose his subjects

accordingly; but his dramatic genius displayed itself in the effective

drawing of character,[30] and more especially in the skilful management

of complicated intrigues.[31] Such, with an additional brilliancy of wit

and lasciviousness of tone, are likewise the characteristics of

Machiavelli's famous prose comedy, the _Mandragola_ (_The Magic

Draught_);[32] and at the height of their success, of the plays of P.

Aretino,[33] especially the prose _Marescalco_ (1526-1527) whose name,

it has been said, ought to be written in asterisks. It may be added that

the plays of Ariosto and his followers were represented with magnificent

scenery and settings. Other dramatists of the 16th century were B.

Accolti, whose _Virginia_ (prob. before 1513) treats the story from

Boccaccio which reappears in _All's Well that Ends Well_; G. Cecchi, F.

d'Ambra, A. F. Grazzini, N. Secco or Secchi and L. Dolce--all writers of

romantic comedy of intrigue in verse or prose.

The pastoral drama.

During the same century the "pastoral drama" flourished in Italy. The

origin of this peculiar species--which was the bucolic idyll in a

dramatic form, and which freely lent itself to the introduction of both

mythological and allegorical elements--was purely literary, and arose

directly out of the classical studies and tastes of the Renaissance. It

was very far removed from the genuine peasant plays which flourished in

Venetia and Tuscany early in the 16th century. The earliest example of

the artificial, but in some of its productions exquisite, growth in

question was the renowned scholar A. Politian's _Orfeo_ (1472), which

begins like an idyll and ends like a tragedy. Intended to be performed

with music--for the pastoral drama is the parent of the opera--this

beautiful work tells its story simply. N. da Correggio's (1450-1508)

_Cefalo_, or _Aurora_, and others followed, before in 1554 A. Beccari

produced, as totally new of its kind, his Arcadian pastoral drama _Il

Sagrifizio_, in which the comic element predominates. But an epoch in

the history of the species is marked by the _Aminta_ of Tasso (1573), in

whose Arcadia is allegorically mirrored the Ferrara court. Adorned by

choral lyrics of great beauty, it presents an allegorical treatment of a

social and moral problem; and since the conception of the characters,

all of whom think and speak of nothing but love, is artificial, the

charm of the poem lies not in the interest of its action, but in the

passion and sweetness of its sentiment. This work was the model of many

others, and the pastoral drama reached its height of popularity in the

famous _Pastor fido_ (written before 1590) of G. B. Guarini, which,

while founded on a tragic love-story, introduces into its complicated

plot a comic element, partly with a satirical intention. It is one of

those exceptional works which, by circumstance as well as by merit, have

become the property of the world's literature at large. Thus, both in

Italian and in other literatures, the pastoral drama became a distinct

species, characterized, like the great body of modern pastoral poetry in

general, by a tendency either towards the artificial or towards the

burlesque. Its artificiality affected the entire growth of Italian

comedy, including the _commedia dell' arte_, and impressed itself in an

intensified form upon the opera. The foremost Italian masters of the

last-named species, so far as it can claim to be included in the poetic

drama, were A. Zeno (1668-1750) and P. Metastasio.

Comedy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Goldoni.

Gozzi.

The comic dramatists of the 17th century are grouped as followers of the

classical and of the romantic school, G. B. della Porta (q.v.) and G. A.

Cicognini (whom Goldoni describes as full of whining pathos and

commonplace drollery, but as still possessing a great power to interest)

being regarded as the leading representatives of the former. But neither

of these largely intermixed groups of writers could, with all its

fertility, prevail against the competition, on the one hand of the

musical drama, and on the other of the popular farcical entertainments

and those introduced in imitation of Spanish examples. Italian comedy

had fallen into decay, when its reform was undertaken by the wonderful

theatrical genius of C. Goldoni. One of the most fertile and rapid of

playwrights (of his 150 comedies 16 were written and acted in a single

year), he at the same time pursued definite aims as a dramatist.

Disgusted with the conventional buffoonery, and ashamed of the rampant

immorality of the Italian comic stage, he drew his characters from real

life, whether of his native city (Venice)[34] or of society at large,

and sought to enforce virtuous and pathetic sentiments without

neglecting the essential objects of his art. Happy and various in his

choice of themes, and dipping deep into a popular life with which he had

a genuine sympathy, he produced, besides comedies of general human

character,[35] plays on subjects drawn from literary biography[36] or

from fiction.[37] Goldoni, whose style was considered defective by the

purists whom Italy has at no time lacked, met with a severe critic and a

temporarily successful rival in Count C. Gozzi (1722-1806), who sought

to rescue the comic drama from its association with the actual life of

the middle classes, and to infuse a new spirit into the figures of the

old masked comedy by the invention of a new species. His themes were

taken from Neapolitan[38] and Oriental[39] fairy tales, to which he

accommodated some of the standing figures upon which Goldoni had made

war. This attempt at mingling fancy and humour--occasionally of a

directly satirical turn[40]--was in harmony with the tendencies of the

modern romantic school; and Gozzi's efforts, which though successful

found hardly any imitators in Italy, have a family resemblance to those

of Tieck and of some more recent writers whose art wings its flight,

through the windows, "over the hills and far away."

Comedians after Goldoni.

During the latter part of the 18th and the early years of the 19th

century comedy continued to follow the course marked out by its

acknowledged master Goldoni, under the influence of the sentimental

drama of France and other countries. Abati Andrea Villi, the marquis

Albergati Capacelli, Antonio Simone Sografi (1760-1825), Federici, and

Pietro Napoli Signorelli (1731-1815), the historian of the drama, are

mentioned among the writers of this school; to the 19th century belong

Count Giraud, Marchisio (who took his subjects especially from

commercial life), and Nota, a fertile writer, among whose plays are

three treating the lives of poets. Of still more recent date are L. B.

Bon and A. Brofferio. At the same time, the comedy of dialect to which

the example of Goldoni had given sanction in Venice, flourished there as

well as in the mutually remote spheres of Piedmont and Naples. Quite

modern developments must remain unnoticed here; but the fact cannot be

ignored that they signally illustrate the perennial vitality of the

modern drama in the home of its beginnings. A new realistic style set

fully in about the middle of the 18th century with P. Ferrari and A.

Torelli; and though an historical reaction towards classical and

medieval themes is associated with the names of P. Cossa and G. Giacosa,

modernism reasserted itself through P. Bracco and other dramatists. It

should be noted that the influence of great actors, more especially

Ermete Novelli and Eleanora Duse, must be credited with a large share of

the success with which the Italian stage has held its own even against

the foreign influences to which it gave room. And it would seem as if

even the paradoxical endeavour of the poet Gabrielle d' Annunzio to

lyricize the drama by ignoring action as its essence were a problem for

the solution of which the stage can furnish unexpected conditions of its

own. In any event, both Italian tragedy and Italian comedy have survived

periods of a seemingly hopeless decline; and the fear has vanished that

either the opera or the ballet might succeed in ousting from the

national stage the legitimate forms of the national drama.

(b) _Greece._

Modern Greek and Dalmatian drama.

The dramatic literature of the later Hellenes is a creation of the

literary movement which preceded their noble struggle for independence,

or which may be said to form part of that struggle. After beginning with

dramatic dialogues of a patriotic tendency, it took a step in advance

with the tragedies of J. R. Nerulos[41] (1778-1850), whose name belongs

to the political as well as to the literary history of his country. His

comedies--especially one directed against the excesses of

journalism[42]--largely contributed to open a literary life for the

modern Greek tongue. Among the earlier patriotic Greek dramatists of the

19th century are T. Alkaeos, J. Zampelios (whose tragic style was

influenced by that of Alfieri),[43] S. K. Karydis and A. Valaoritis. A.

Zoiros[44] is noteworthy as having introduced the use of prose into

Greek tragedy, while preserving to it that association with sentiments

and aspirations which will probably long continue to pervade the chief

productions of modern Greek literature. The love of the theatre is

ineradicable from Attic as it is from Italian soil; and the tendencies

of the young dramatic literature of Hellas which is not wholly absorbed

in the effort to keep abreast of recent modern developments, seem to

justify the hope that a worthy future awaits it.

Under Italian influence an interesting dramatic growth attained to some

vitality in the Dalmatian lands about the beginning of the 16th century,

where the religious drama, whose days were passing away in Italy, found

favour with a people with a scant popular literature of its own. At

Ragusa Italian literary influence had been spread by the followers of

Petrarch from the later years of the 15th century; here several

Servo-Croatian writers produced religious plays in the manner of the

Italian _rappresentazioni_; and a gifted poet, Martin Drzic, composed,

besides religious plays and farces, a species of pastoral which enjoyed

much favour.

(c) _Spain._

Spain is the only country of modern Europe which shares with England the

honour of having achieved, at a relatively early date, the creation of a

genuinely national form of the regular drama. So proper to Spain was the

form of the drama which she produced and perfected, that to it the term

_romantic_ has been specifically applied, though so restricted a use of

the epithet is clearly unjustifiable. The influences which from the

Romance peoples--in whom Christian and Germanic elements mingled with

the legacy of Roman law, learning and culture--spread to the Germanic

nations were represented with the most signal force and fulness in the

institutions of chivalry,--to which, in the words of Scott, "it was

peculiar to blend military valour with the strongest passions which

actuate the human mind, the feelings of devotion and those of love."

These feelings, in their combined operation upon the national character,

and in their reflection in the national literature, were not confined to

Spain; but nowhere did they so long or so late continue to animate the

moral life of a nation.

Outward causes contributed to this result. For centuries after the

crusades had become a mere memory, Spain was a battle-ground between the

Cross and the Crescent. And it was just at the time when the Renaissance

was establishing new starting-points for the literary progress of

Europe, that Christian Spain rose to the height of Catholic as well as

national self-consciousness by the expulsion of the Moors and the

conquest of the New World. From their rulers or rivals of so many

centuries the Spaniards derived that rich, if not very varied, glow of

colour which became permanently distinctive of their national life, and

more especially of its literary and artistic expressions; they also

perhaps derived from the same source a not less characteristically

refined treatment of the passion of love. The ideas of Spanish

chivalry--more especially religious devotion and a punctilious sense of

personal honour--asserted themselves (according to a process often

observable in the history of civilization) with peculiar distinctness in

literature and art, after the period of great achievements to which they

had contributed in other fields had come to an end. The ripest glories

of the Spanish drama belong to an age of national decay--mindful, it is

true, of the ideas of a greater past. The chivalrous enthusiasm

pervading so many of the masterpieces of its literature is indeed a

distinctive feature of the Spanish nation in all, even in the least

hopeful, periods of its later history; and the religious ardour breathed

by these works, though associating itself with what is called the

Catholic Reaction, is in truth only a manifestation of the spirit which

informed the noblest part of the Reformation movement itself. The

Spanish drama neither sought nor could seek to emancipate itself from

views and forms of religious life more than ever sacred to the Spanish

people since the glorious days of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is not

so much in the beginnings as in the great age of Spanish dramatic

literature that it seems most difficult to distinguish between what is

to be termed a religious and what a secular play. After Spain had thus,

the first after England among modern European countries, fully unfolded

that incomparably richest expression of national life and sentiment in

an artistic form--a truly national dramatic literature,--the terrible

decay of her greatness and prosperity gradually impaired the strength of

a brilliant but, of its nature, dependent growth. In the absence of high

original genius the Spanish dramatists began to turn to foreign models,

though little supported in such attempts by popular sympathy; and it is

only in more recent times that the Spanish drama has sought to reproduce

the ancient forms from whose masterpieces the nation had never become

estranged, while accommodating them to tastes and tendencies shared by

later Spanish literature with that of Europe at large.

Early efforts.

Gil Vicente.

The earlier dramatic efforts of Spanish literature may without

inconvenience be briefly dismissed. The reputed author of the _Coplas de

Mingo Revulgo_ (R. Cota the elder) likewise composed the first act of a

story of intrigue and character, purely dramatic but not intended for

representation. This tragic comedy of _Calisto and Meliboea_, which was

completed (in 21 acts) by 1499, afterwards became famous under the name

of _Celestina_; it was frequently imitated and translated, and was

adapted for the Spanish stage by R. de Zepeda in 1582. But the father of

the Spanish drama was J. de la Enzina, whose _representaciones_ under

the name of "eclogues" were dramatic dialogues of a religious or

pastoral character. His attempts were imitated more especially by the

Portuguese Gil Vicente, whose writings for the stage appear to be

included in the period 1502-1536, and who wrote both in Spanish and in

his native tongue. A further impulse came, as was natural, from

Spaniards resident in Italy, and especially from B. de Torres Naharro,

who in 1517 published, as the chief among the "firstlings of his genius"

(_Propaladia_), a series of eight _comedias_--a term generally applied

in Spanish literature to any kind of drama. He claimed some knowledge of

the theory of the ancient drama, divided his plays into _jornadas_[45]

(to correspond to acts), and opened them with an _introyto_ (prologue).

Very various in their subjects, and occasionally odd in form,[46] they

were gross as well as audacious in tone, and were soon prohibited by the

Inquisition. The church remained unwilling to renounce her control over

such dramatic exhibitions as she permitted, and sought to suppress the

few plays on not strictly religious subjects which appeared in the early

part of the reign of Charles I. Though the universities produced both

translations from the classical drama and modern Latin plays, these

exercised very little general effect. Juan Perez' (Petreius') posthumous

Latin comedies were mainly versions of Ariosto.[47]

Lope de Rueda and his followers.

Classical dramas.

Thus the foundation of the Spanish national theatre was reserved for a

man of the people. Cervantes has vividly sketched the humble resources

which were at the command of Lope de Rueda, a mechanic of Seville, who

with his friend the bookseller Timoneda, and two brother authors and

actors in his strolling company, succeeded in bringing dramatic

entertainments out of the churches and palaces into the public places of

the towns, where they were produced on temporary scaffolds. The manager

carried about his properties in a corn-sack; and the "comedies" were

still only "dialogues, and a species of eclogues between two or three

shepherds and a shepherdess," enlivened at times by intermezzos of

favourite comic figures, such as the negress or the Biscayan, "played

with inconceivable talent and truthfulness by Lope." One of his plays at

least,[48] and one of Timoneda's,[49] seem to have been taken from an

Italian source; others mingled modern themes with classical

apparitions,[50] one of Timoneda's was (perhaps again through the

Italian) from Plautus.[51] Others of a slighter description were called

_pasos_,--a species afterwards termed _entremeses_ and resembling the

modern French _proverbes_. With these popular efforts of Lope de Rueda

and his friends a considerable dramatic activity began in the years

1560-1590 in several Spanish cities, and before the close of this period

permanent theatres began to be fitted up at Madrid. Yet Spanish dramatic

literature might still have been led to follow Italian into an imitation

of classical models. Two plays by G. Bermudez (1577), called by their

learned author "the first Spanish tragedies," treating the national

subject of Inez de Castro, but divided into five acts, composed in

various metres, and introducing a chorus; a _Dido_ (c. 1580) by C. de

Virues (who claimed to have first divided dramas into three _jornadas_);

and the tragedies of L. L. de Argensola (acted 1585, and praised in _Don

Quixote_) alike represent this tendency.

Cervantes.

Such were the alternatives which had opened for the Spanish drama, when

at last, about the same time as that of the English, its future was

determined by writers of original genius. The first of these was the

immortal Cervantes, who, however, failed to anticipate by his earlier

plays (1584-1588) the great (though to him unproductive) success of his

famous romance. In his endeavour to give a poetic character to the drama

he fell upon the expedient of introducing personified abstractions

speaking a "divine" or elevated language--a device which was for a time

favourably received. But these plays exhibit a neglect or ignorance of

the laws of dramatic construction; their action is episodical; and it is

from the realism of these episodes (especially in the _Numancia_, which

is crowded with both figures and incidents), and from the power and flow

of the declamation, that their effect must have been derived. When in

his later years (1615) Cervantes returned to dramatic composition, the

style and form of the national drama had been definitively settled by a

large number of writers, the brilliant success of whose acknowledged

chief may previously have diverted Cervantes from his labours for the

theatre. His influence upon the general progress of dramatic literature

is, however, to be sought, not only in his plays, but also in those

_novelas exemplares_--incomparable alike in their clearness and their

terseness of narrative--to which more than one drama is indebted for its

plot, and for much of its dialogue to boot.

Lope de Vega.

Lope de Vega, one of the most astonishing geniuses the world has known,

permanently established the national forms of the Spanish drama. Some of

these were in their beginnings taken over by him from ruder

predecessors; some were cultivated with equal or even superior success

by subsequent authors; but in variety, as in fertility of dramatic

production, he has no rivals. His fertility, which was such that he

wrote about 1500 plays, besides 300 dramatic works classed as _autos

sacramentales_ and _entremeses_, and a vast series of other literary

compositions, has indisputably prejudiced his reputation with those to

whom he is but a name and a number. Yet as a dramatist Lope more fully

exemplifies the capabilities of the Spanish theatre than any of his

successors, though as a poet Calderon may deserve the palm. Nor would it

be possible to imagine a truer representative of the Spain of his age

than a poet who, after suffering the hardships of poverty and exile, and

the pangs of passion, sailed against the foes of the faith in the

Invincible Armada, subsequently became a member of the Holy Inquisition

and of the order of St Francis, and after having been decorated by the

pope with the cross of Malta and a theological doctorate, honoured by

the nobility, and idolized by the nation, ended with the names of Jesus

and Mary on his lips. From the plays of such a writer we may best learn

the manners and the sentiments, the ideas of religion and honour, of the

Spain of the Philippine age, the age when she was most prominent in the

eyes of Europe and most glorious in her own. For, with all its

inventiveness and vigour, the genius of Lope primarily set itself the

task of pleasing his public,--the very spirit of whose inner as well as

outer life is accordingly mirrored in his dramatic works. In them we

have, in the words of Lope's French translator Baret, "the movement, the

clamour, the conflict of unforeseen intrigues suitable to unreflecting

spectators; perpetual flatteries addressed to an unextinguishable

national pride; the painting of passions dear to a people never tired of

admiring itself; the absolute sway of the point of honour; the

deification of revenge; the adoration of symbols; buffoonery and

burlesque, everywhere beloved of the multitude, but here never defiled

by obscenities, for this people has a sense of delicacy, and the

foundation of its character is nobility; lastly, the flow of proverbs

which at times escape from the _gracioso_" (the comic servant

domesticated in the Spanish drama by Lope)--"the commonplace literature

of those who possess no other."

Comedias de capa y espada.

Heroicas.

Comedias de santos.

Autos sacramentales.

Entremeses.

The plays of Lope, and those of the national Spanish drama in general,

are divided into classes which it is naturally not always easy, and

which there is no reason to suppose him always to have intended, to keep

distinct from one another. After in his early youth composing eclogues,

pastoral plays, and allegorical moralities in the old style, he began

his theatrical activity at Madrid about 1590, and the plays which he

thenceforth produced have been distributed under the following heads.

The _comedias_, all of which are in verse, include (1) the so-called _c.

de capa y espada_--not comedies proper, but dramas in which the

principal personages are taken from the class of society that wears

cloak and sword. Gallantry is their main theme, an interesting and

complicated, but well-constructed and perspicuous intrigue their chief

feature; and this is usually accompanied by an underplot in which the

_gracioso_ plays his part. Their titles are frequently taken from the

old proverbs or proverbial phrases of the people[52] upon the theme

suggested, by which the plays often (as G. H. Lewes admirably expresses

it) constitute a kind of gloss (_glosa_) in action. This is the

favourite species of the national Spanish theatre; and to the plots of

the plays belonging to it the drama of other nations owes a debt almost

incalculable in extent. (2) The _c. heroicas_ are distinguished by some

of their personages being of royal or very high rank, and by their

themes being often historical and largely[53] (though not

invariably[54]) taken from the national annals, or founded on

contemporary or recent events.[55] Hence they exhibit a greater gravity

of tone; but in other respects there is no difference between them and

the cloak-and-sword comedies with which they share the element of comic

underplots. Occasionally Lope condescended in the opposite direction, to

(3) plays of which the scene is laid in common life, but for which no

special name appears to have existed.[56] Meanwhile, both he and his

successors were too devoted sons of the church not to acknowledge in

some sort her claim to influence the national drama. This claim she had

never relinquished, even when she could no longer retain an absolute

control over the stage. For a time, indeed, she was able to reassert

even this; for the exhibition of all secular plays was in 1598

prohibited by the dying Philip II., and remained so for two years; and

Lope with his usual facility proceeded to supply religious plays of

various kinds. After a few dramas on scriptural subjects he turned to

the legends of the saints; and the _comedias de santos_, of which he

wrote a great number, became an accepted later Spanish variety of the

miracle-play. True, however, to the popular instincts of his genius, he

threw himself with special zeal and success into the composition of

another kind of religious plays--a development of the Corpus Christi

pageants, in honour of which all the theatres had to close their doors

for a month. These were the famous _autos sacramentales_ (i.e. solemn

"acts" or proceedings in honour of the Sacrament), which were performed

in the open air by actors who had filled the cars of the sacred

procession. Of these Lope wrote about 400. These entertainments were

arranged on a fixed scheme, comprising a prologue in dialogue between

two or more actors in character (_loa_), a farce (_entremes_), and the

_auto_ proper, an allegorical scene of religious purport, as an example

of which Ticknor cites the _Bridge of the World_,--in which the Prince

of Darkness in vain seeks to defend the bridge against the Knight of the

Cross, who finally leads the Soul of Man in triumph across it. Not all

the _entremeses_ of Lope and others were, however, composed for

insertion in these _autos_. This long-lived popular species, together

with the old kind of dramatic dialogue called _eclogues_, completes the

list of the varieties of his dramatic works.

The school of Lope.

The example of Lope was followed by a large number of writers, and Spain

thus rapidly became possessed of a dramatic literature almost

unparalleled in quantity--for in fertility also Lope was but the first

among many. Among the writers of Lope's school, his friend G. de Castro

(1569-1631) must not be passed by, for his _Cid_[57] was the basis of

Corneille's; nor J. P. de Montalban, "the first-born of Lope's genius,"

the extravagance of whose imagination, like that of Lee, culminated in

madness. Soon after him died (1639) Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, in whose

plays, as contrasted with those of Lope, has been recognized the

distinctive element of a moral purpose. To G. Tellez, called Tirso de

Molina (d. 1648), no similar praise seems due; but the frivolous gaiety

of the inventor of the complete character of Don Juan was accompanied by

ingenuity in the construction of his excellent[58] though at times

"sensational"[59] plots. F. de Rojas Zorrilla (b. 1607), who was largely

plundered by the French dramatists of the latter half of the century,

survived Molina for about a generation. In vain scholars of strictly

classical tastes protested in essays in prose and verse against the

ascendancy of the popular drama; the prohibition of Philip II. had been

recalled two years after his death and was never renewed; and the

activity of the theatre spread through the towns and villages of the

land, everywhere under the controlling influence of the school of

writers who had established so complete a harmony between the drama and

the tastes and tendencies of the people.

Calderon.

The glories of Spanish dramatic literature reached their height in P.

Calderon de la Barca, though in the history of the Spanish theatre he

holds only the second place. He elaborated some of the forms of the

national drama, but brought about no changes of moment in any of them.

Even the brilliancy of his style, glittering with a constant

reproduction of the same family of tropes, and the variety of his

melodious versification, are mere intensifications of the poetic

qualities of Lope, while in their moral and religious sentiments, and

their general views of history and society, there is no difference

between the two. Like Lope, Calderon was a soldier in his youth and an

ecclesiastic in his later years; like his senior, he suited himself to

the tastes of both court and people, and applied his genius with equal

facility to the treatment of religious and of secular themes. In

fertility Calderon was inferior to Lope (for he wrote not many more than

100 plays); but he surpasses the elder poet in richness of style, and

more especially in fire of imagination. In his _autos_ (of which he is

said to have left not less than 73), Calderon probably attained to his

most distinctive excellence; some of these appear to take a wide range

of allegorical invention,[60] while they uniformly possess great beauty

of poetical detail. Other of his most famous or interesting pieces are

_comedias de santos_.[61] In his secular plays he treats as wide a

variety of subjects as Lope, but it is not a dissimilar variety; nor

would it be easy to decide whether a poet so uniformly admirable within

his limits has achieved greater success in romantic historical

tragedy,[62] in the comedy of amorous intrigue,[63] or in a dramatic

work combining fancy and artificiality in such a degree that it has been

diversely described as a romantic caprice and as a philosophical

poem.[64]

Contemporaries of Calderon.

Moreto and the comedia de figuron.

During the life of the second great master of the Spanish drama there

was little apparent abatement in the productivity of its literature;

while the _autos_ continued to flourish in Madrid and elsewhere, till in

1765 (shortly before the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain) their

public representation was prohibited by royal decree. In the world of

fashion, the opera had reached Spain already during Calderon's lifetime,

together with other French influences, and the great dramatist had

himself written one or two of his plays for performance with music. But

the regular national drama continued to command popular favour, and with

A. Moreto may be said to have actually taken a step in advance. While he

wrote in all the forms established by Lope and cultivated by Calderon,

his manner seems most nearly to approach the masterpieces of French and

later English comedy of character; he was the earliest writer of the

_comedias de figuron_, in which the most prominent personage is (in

Congreve's phrase) "a character of affectation," in other words, the

Spanish fop of real life.[65] His masterpiece, a favourite of many

stages, is one of the most graceful and pleasing of modern

comedies--simple but interesting in plot, and true to nature, with

something like Shakespearian truth.[66] Other writers trod more closely

in the footsteps of the masters without effecting any noticeable changes

in the form of the Spanish drama; even the _saynete_ (tit-bit), which

owes its name to Benavente (fl. 1645), was only a kind of _entremes_.

The Spanish drama in all its forms retained its command over the nation,

because they were alike popular in origin and character; nor is there

any other example of so complete an adaptation of a national art to the

national taste and sentiment in its ethics and aesthetics, in the nature

of the plots of the plays (whatever their origin), in the motives of

their actions, in the conduct and tone and in the very costume of their

characters.

Decay of the national Spanish drama.

The French school of the 18th century.

Other later dramatists.

National as it was, and because of this very quality, the Spanish drama

was fated to share the lot of the people it so fully represented. At the

end of the 17th century, when the Spanish throne at last became the

declared apple of discord among the governments of Europe, the Spanish

people lay, in the words of an historian of its later days, "like a

corpse, incapable of feeling its own impotence." That national art to

which it had so faithfully clung had fallen into decline and decay with

the spirit of Spain itself. By the time of the close of the great war,

the theatre had sunk into a mere amusement of the populace, which during

the greater part of the 18th century, while allowing the old masters the

measure of favour which accords with traditional esteem, continued to

uphold the representatives of the old drama in its degeneracy--authors on

the level of their audiences. But the Spanish court was now French, and

in the drama, even more than in any other form of art, France was the

arbiter of taste in Europe. With the restoration of peace accordingly

began isolated attempts to impose the French canons of dramatic theory,

and to follow the example of French dramatic practice; and in the middle

of the century these endeavours assumed more definite form. Montiano's

bloodless tragedy of _Virginia_ (1750), which was never acted, was

accompanied by a discourse endeavouring to reconcile the doctrines of the

author with the practice of the old Spanish dramatists; the play itself

was in blank verse (a metre never used by Calderon, though occasionally

by Lope), instead of the old national ballad-measures (the

romance-measure with assonance and the rhymed _redondilla_ quatrain)

preferred by the old masters among the variety of metres employed by

them. The earliest Spanish comedy in the French form (a translation only,

though written in the national metre)[67] (1751), and the first original

Spanish comedy on the same model, Nicolas Moratin's _Petimetra_

(_Petite-Maitresse_), printed in 1726 with a critical dissertation,

likewise remained unacted. In 1770, however, the same author's

_Hormesinda_, an historic drama on a national theme and in the national

metre, but adhering to the French rules, appeared on the stage; and

similar attempts followed in tragedy by the same writer and others

(including Ayala, who ventured in 1775 to compete with Cervantes on the

theme of Numantia), and in comedy by Iriarte and Jovellanos (afterwards

minister under Godoy), who produced a sentimental comedy in Diderot's

manner.[68] But these endeavours failed to effect any change in the

popular theatre, which was with more success raised from its deepest

degradation by R. de la Cruz, a fertile author of light pieces of genuine

humour, especially _saynetes_, depicting the manners of the middle and

lower classes. In literary circles Garcia de la Huerta's voluminous

collection of the old plays (1785) gave a new impulse to dramatic

productivity, and the conflict continued between representatives of the

old school, such as Luciano Francisco Comella (1716-1779) and of the new,

such as the younger Moratin, whose comedies--of which the last and most

successful[69] was in prose--raised him to the foremost position among

the dramatists of his age. In tragedy N. de Cienfuegos likewise showed

some originality. After, however, the troubles of the French domination

and the war had come to an end, the precepts and examples of the new

school failed to reassert themselves.

Already in 1815 an active critical controversy was carried on by Buhl de

Faber against the efforts of J. Faber and Alcala Galiano to uphold the

principles of classicism; and with the aid of the eminent actor Maiquez

the old romantic masterpieces were easily reinstated in the public

favour, which as a matter of fact they had never forfeited. The Spanish

dramatists of the 19th century, after passing, as in the instance of F.

Martinez de la Rosa and Breton de los Herreros, from the system of

French comedy to the manner of the national drama, appear either to have

stood under the influence of the French romantic school, or to have

returned once more to the old Spanish models. Among the former class A.

Gil y Zarate, of the latter J. Zorrilla, are mentioned as specially

prominent. The most renowned Spanish dramatist at the opening of the

20th century was the veteran politician and man of letters J. Echegaray.

Meanwhile, the old religious performances are not wholly extinct in

Spain, and the relics of the solemn pageantry with which they were

associated may long continue to survive there, as in the case of the

_pasos_, which claim to have been exhibited in Holy Week at Seville for

at least three centuries. As to the theatre itself, there can be no fear

either that the imitation of foreign examples will satisfy Spanish

dramatists--especially when, like the author of _Dona Perfecta_ (Perez

Galdos), they have excellent home material of their own for

adaptation,--or that the Spanish public itself, with fine actors and

actresses still upholding the lofty traditions of the national drama,

will remain too fatigued to consume the drama unless bit by bit--in the

shape of _zarzuelas_ and similar one-act confections. Whatever may be

the future of one of the noblest of modern dramatic literatures, it may

confidently be predicted that, so long as Spain is Spain, her theatre

will not be permanently either denationalized or degraded.

(d) _Portugal._

The Portuguese drama.

The Portuguese drama in its earlier phases, especially before in the

latter part of the 14th century the nation completely achieved its

independence, seems to have followed much the same course as the

Spanish; and the religious drama in all its prevailing forms and direct

outgrowths retained its popularity even by the side of the products of

the Renaissance. In the later period of that movement translations of

classical dramas into the vernacular were stimulated by the cosmopolitan

example of George Buchanan, who for a time held a post in the university

of Coimbra; to this class of play Teive's _Johannes_ (1553) may be

supposed to have belonged. In the next generation Antonio Ferreira[70]

and others still wrote comedies more or less on the classical model. But

the rather vague title of "the Plautus of Portugal" is accorded to an

earlier comic writer, the celebrated Gil Vicente, who died about 1536,

after, it is stated, producing forty-two plays. He was the founder of

popular Portuguese comedy, and his plays were called _autos_, or by the

common name of _praticas_.[71] Among his most gifted successors are

mentioned A. Ribeiro, called _Chiado_ (the mocking-bird), who died in

1590;[72] his brother Jeronymo, B. Dias, A. Pires, J. Pinto, H. Lopes

and others. The dramatic efforts of the illustrious poet Luis de Camoes

(Camoens) are relatively of slight importance; they consist of one of

the many modern versions of the _Amphitruo_, and of two other comedies,

of which the earlier (_Filodemo_) was acted at Goa in 1553, the subjects

having a romantic colour.[73] Of greater importance were the

contributions to dramatic literature of F. de Sa de Miranda, who, being

well acquainted with both Spanish and Italian life, sought early in his

career to domesticate the Italian comedy of intrigue on the Portuguese

stage;[74] but he failed to carry with him the public taste, which

preferred the _autos_ of Gil Vicente. The followers of Miranda were,

however, more successful than he had been himself, among them the

already-mentioned Antonio Ferreira; the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira de

Vasconcellos, which bear some resemblance to the Spanish _Celestina_,

are valuable as pictures of contemporary manners in city and court.[75]

The later Portuguese dramatic literature seems also to have passed

through phases corresponding to those of the Spanish, though with

special features of its own. In the 18th century Alcino Mycenio

(1728-1770), known as Domingos dos Reis Quito in everyday life, in which

his avocation was that of Allan Ramsay, was remarkably successful with a

series of plays,[76] including of course an _Inez de Castro_, which in a

subsequent adaptation by J. B. Gomes long held the national stage.

Another dramatist, of both merit and higher aspirations, was Lycidas

Cynthio (_alias_ Manoel de Figueiredo, 1725-1801).[77] But the romantic

movement was very late in coming to Portugal. Curiously enough, one of

its chief representatives, the viscount da Almeida Garrett, exhibited

his sympathy with French, revolutionary and anti-English ideas by a

tragedy on the subject of Cato;[78] but his later works were mainly on

national subjects.[79] The expansive tendencies of later Portuguese

dramatic literature are illustrated by the translations of A. F. de

Castilho, who even ventured upon Goethe's _Faust_ (1872). Among

19th-century dramatists are to be noted Pereira da Cunha, R. Cordeiro,

E. Biester, L. Palmeirin, and Garrett's disciple F. G. de Amorim, by

whom both political and social themes have been freely treated. The

reaction against romanticism observable in Portuguese poetic literature

can hardly fail to affect (or perhaps has already affected) the growth

of the national drama; for the receptive qualities of both are not less

striking than the productive.

(e) _France._

The French regular drama.

France was the only country, besides Italy, in which classical tragedy

was naturalized. In 1531 the Benedictine Barthelemy of Loches printed a

_Christus Xylonicus_; and a very notable impulse was given both to the

translation and to the imitation of ancient models by a series of

efforts made in the university of Paris and other French places of

learning. The most successful of these attempts was the _Johannes

Baptistes_ of George Buchanan, who taught in Paris for five years and at

a rather later date resided at Bordeaux, where in 1540 he composed this

celebrated tragedy (afterwards translated into four or five modern

languages), in which it is now ascertained that he had in view the trial

and condemnation of Sir Thomas More. He also wrote _Jephthah_, and

translated into Latin the _Medea_ and _Alcestis_ of Euripides. At a

rather later date the great scholar M. A. Muret (Muretus) produced his

_Julius Caesar_, a work perhaps superior in correctness to Buchanan's

tragic masterpiece, but inferior to it in likeness to life. About the

same time the enthusiasm of the Paris classicists showed itself in

several translations of Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies into French

verse.[80]

Jodelle.

Thus the beginnings of the regular drama in France, which, without

absolutely determining, potently swayed its entire course, came to

connect themselves directly with the great literary movement of the

Renaissance. Du Bellay sounded the note of attack which converted that

movement in France into an endeavour to transform the national

literature; and in Ronsard the classical school of poetry put forward

its conquering hero and sovereign lawgiver. Among the disciples who

gathered round Ronsard, and with him formed the "Pleiad" of French

literature, Etienne Jodelle, the reformer of the French theatre, soon

held a distinguished place. The stage of this period left ample room for

the enterprise of this youthful writer. The popularity of the old

entertainments had reached its height when Louis XII., in his conflict

with Pope Julius II., had not scrupled to call in the aid of Pierre

Gringoire (Gringon), and when the _Mere sotte_ had mockingly masqueraded

in the petticoats of Holy Church. In the reign of Francis I. the

Inquisition, and on occasion the king himself, had to some extent

succeeded in repressing the audacity of the actors, whose follies were

at the same time an utter abomination in the eyes of the Huguenots. For

a time the very mysteries of the Brethren of the Passion had been

prohibited; while the moralities and farces had sunk to an almost

contemptible level. Yet to this reign belong the contributions to

farce-literature of three writers so distinguished as Rabelais

(non-extant), Clement Marot and Queen Margaret of Navarre. Meanwhile

isolated translations of Italian[81] as well as classical dramas had in

literature begun the movement which Jodelle now transferred to the stage

itself. His tragedy _Cleopatre captive_ was produced there on the same

day as his comedy _L'Eugene_, in 1552, his _Didon se sacrifiant_

following in 1558. Thus at a time when a national theatre was perhaps

impossible in a country distracted by civil and religious conflicts,

whose monarchy had not yet welded together a number of provinces

attached each to its own traditions, and whose population, especially in

the capital, was enervated by frivolity or enslaved by fanaticism, was

born that long-lived artificial growth, the so-called classical tragedy

of France. For French comedy, though subjected to the same influences as

tragedy, had a national basis upon which to proceed, and its history is

partly that of a modification of old popular forms.

French tragedy in the 16th century.

The history of French tragedy begins with the _Cleopatre captive_, in

the representation of which the author, together with other members of

the "Pleiad," took part. It is a tragedy in the manner of Seneca, devoid

of action and provided with a ghost and a chorus. Though mainly written

in the five-foot Iambic couplet, it already contains passages in the

Alexandrine metre, which soon afterwards J. de La Peruse by his _Medee_

(pr. 1556) established in French tragedy, and which Jodelle employed in

his _Didon_. Numerous tragedies followed in the same style by various

authors, among whom Gabriel Bounyn produced the first French regular

tragedy on a subject neither Greek nor Roman,[82] and the brothers de la

Taille,[83] and J. Grevin,[84] distinguished themselves by their style.

In the reign of Charles IX. a vain attempt was made by Nicolas Filleul

to introduce the pastoral style of the Italians into French tragedy;[85]

and the Brotherhood of the Passion was intermingling with pastoral plays

its still continued reproductions of the old entertainments, and the

religious drama making its expiring efforts, among which T. Le Coq's

interesting mystery of _Cain_ (1580) should be noted. Beza's _Abraham

sacrifiant_ (1550), J. de Coignac's _Goliath_ (dedicated to Edward VI.),

Rivandeau's _Haman_ (1561), belong to a group of Biblical tragedies,

inspired by Calvinist influences. But these more and more approached to

the examples of the classical school, which, in spite of all

difficulties and rivalries, prevailed. Among its followers Montchretien

exhibited unusual vigour of rhetoric,[86] and in R. Garnier French

tragedy reached the greatest height in nobility and dignity of style, as

well as in the exhibition of dramatic passion, to which it attained

before Corneille. In his tragedies[87] choruses are still interspersed

among the long Alexandrine tirades of the dialogue.

Comedy under Italian influence.

During this period comedy had likewise been influenced by classical

models; but the distance was less between the national farces and

Terence, than between the mysteries and moralities, and Seneca and the

Greeks. _L'Eugene_ differs little in style from the more elaborate of

the old farces; and while it satirizes the foibles of the clergy without

any appreciable abatement of the old licence, its theme is the favourite

burden of the French comic theatre in all times--_le cocuage_. The

examples, however, which directly facilitated the productivity of the

French comic dramatists of this period, among whom Jean de la Taille was

the first to attempt a regular comedy in prose,[88] were those of the

Italian stage, which in 1576 established a permanent colony in France,

destined to survive there till the close of the 17th century, by which

time it had adopted the French language, and was ready to coalesce with

French actors, without, however, relinquishing all remembrance of its

origin. R. Belleau, a member of the "Pleiad," produced a comedy in which

the type (already approached by Jodelle) of the swaggering captain

appears,[89] J. Grevin copied Italian intrigue, characters and

manners;[90] O. de Turnebe (d. 1581) borrowed the title of one Italian

play[91] and perhaps parts of the plots of others; the Florentine F.

d'Amboise (d. 1558) produced versions of two Italian comedies;[92] and

the foremost French comic poet of the century, P. de Larivey, likewise

an Italian born (of the name of Pietro Giunto), openly professed to

imitate the poets of his native country. His plays are more or less

literal translations of L. Dolce,[93] Secchi[94] and other Italian

dramatists; and this lively and witty author, to whom Moliere owes much,

thus connects two of the most important and successful growths of the

modern comic drama.

The close conjunction between the history of a living dramatic

literature and that of the theatre can least of all be ignored in the

case of France, where the actor's art has gone through so ample an

evolution, and where the theatre has so long and continuously formed an

important part of the national life. By the middle of the 16th century

not only had theatrical representations, now quite emancipated from

clerical control, here and there already become matters of speculation

and business, but the acting profession was beginning to organize itself

as such; strolling companies of actors had become a more or less

frequent experience; and the attitude of the church and of civic

respectability were once more coming to be systematically hostile to the

stage and its representatives.

French tragedy and comedy in the 17th century before Corneille.

Before, however, either tragedy or comedy in France entered into the

period of their history when genius was to illuminate both of them with

creations of undying merit, and before the theatre had associated itself

enduringly with the artistic and literary divisions of court and society

and the people at large, the country had passed through a new phase of

the national life. When the troubles and terrors of the great civil and

religious wars of the 16th century were over at last, they were found to

have produced a reaction towards culture and refinement which spread

from certain spheres of society whose influence was for a time

prevailing. The seal had been set upon the results of the Renaissance by

Malherbe, the father of French style. The masses meanwhile continued to

solace or distract their weariness and their sufferings with the help of

the accredited ministers of that half-cynical gaiety which has always

lighted up the darkest hours of French popular life. In the troublous

days preceding Richelieu's definitive accession to power (1624), the

_tabarinades_--a kind of street dialogue recalling the earliest days of

the popular drama--had made the Pont-Neuf the favourite theatre of the

Parisian populace. Meanwhile the influence of Spain, which Henry IV. had

overcome in politics, had throughout his reign and afterwards been

predominant in other spheres, and not the least in that of literature.

The _stilo culto_, of which Gongora was the native Spanish, Marino the

Italian, and Lyly the English representative, asserted its dominion over

the favourite authors of French society; the pastoral romance of Honore

d'Urfe--the text-book of pseudo-pastoral gallantry--was the parent of

the romances of the Scuderys, de La Calprenede and Mme de La Fayette;

the Hotel de Rambouillet was in its glory; the true (not the false)

_precieuses_ sat on the heights of intellectual society; and J. L. G. de

Balzac (ridiculed in the earliest French dramatic parody)[95] and

Voiture were the dictators of its literature. Much of the French drama

of this age is of the same kind as its romance-literature, like which it

fell under the polite castigation of Boileau's satire. Heroic love

(quite a technical passion), "fertile in tender sentiments," seized hold

of the theatre as well as of the romances; and La Calprenede, G. de

Scudery[96] and his sister and others were equally fashionable in both

species. The Gascon Cyrano de Bergerac, though not altogether

insignificant as a dramatist,[97] gained his chief literary reputation

by a Rabelaisian fiction. Meanwhile, Spanish and Italian models

continued to influence both branches of the drama. Everybody knew by

heart Gongora's version of the story of "young Pyramus and his love

Thisbe," as dramatized by Th. Viaud (1590-1626); and the sentiment of

Tristan[98] (1601-1655) overpowered Herod on the stage, and drew tears

from Cardinal Richelieu in the audience. J. Mairet was noted for

superior vigour.[99] P. Du Ryer's style is described as, while otherwise

superior to that of his contemporaries, Italian in its defects. A

mixture of the forms of classical comedy with elements of Spanish and of

the Italian pastoral was attempted with great temporary success by A.

Hardy, a playwright who thanked Heaven that he knew the precepts of his

art while preferring to follow the demands of his trade. The mixture of

styles begun by him was carried on by the marquis de Racan,[100] J. de

Rotrou and others; and among these comedies of intrigue in the Spanish

manner the earliest efforts of Corneille himself[101] are to be classed.

Rotrou's noteworthier productions[102] are later in date than the event

which marks an epoch in the history of the French drama, the appearance

of Corneille's _Cid_ (1636).

Corneille.

P. Corneille is justly revered as the first, and in some respects the

unequalled, great master of French tragedy, whatever may have been

unsound in his theories, or defective in his practice. The attempts of

his predecessors had been without life, because they lacked really

tragic characters and the play of really tragic passions; while their

style had been either pedantically imitative or a medley of plagiarisms.

He conquered tragedy at once for the national theatre and for the

national literature--and this, not by a long tentative process of

production, but by a few masterpieces, which may be held to be

comprehended within the ten years 1636 to 1646; for in his many later

tragedies he never again proved fully equal to himself. The French

tragedy, of which the great age begins with the _Cid_, _Horace_,

_Cinna_, _Polyeucte_ and _Rodogune_, was not, whatever it professed to

be, a copy of the classical tragedy of Greeks or Romans, or an imitation

of the Italian imitations of these; nor, though in his later tragedies

Corneille depended less and less upon characters, and more and more,

after the fashion of the Spaniards, upon situations, and even upon

spectacle, were the forms of the Spanish drama able to assert their

dominion over the French tragic stage. The mould of French tragedy was

cast by Corneille; but the creative power of his genius was unable to

fill it with more than a few examples. His range of passions and

characters was limited; he preferred, he said, the reproach of having

made his women too heroic to that of having made his men effeminate. His

actions inclined too much to the exhibition of conflicts political

rather than broadly ethical in their significance. The defects of his

style are of less moment; but in this, as in other respects, he was,

with all his strength and brilliancy, not one of those rarest of artists

who are at the same time the example and the despair of their

successors. The _examens_ which he printed of all his plays up to 1660

show how much self-criticism (though it may not always be as in this

case conscious) contributes to the true fertility of genius.

In comedy also Corneille begins the first great original epoch of French

dramatic literature; for it was to him that Moliere owed the inspiration

of the tone and style which he made those of the higher forms of French

comedy. But _Le Menteur_ (the parent, with its sequel, of a numerous

dramatic progeny[103]) was itself derived from a Spanish original,[104]

which it did not (as was the case with the _Cid_) transform into

something new. French tragi-comedy Corneille can hardly be said to have

invented;[105] and of the mongrel growths of sentimental comedy and of

domestic drama or _drame_, he rather suggested than exemplified the

conditions.

Racine.

The tragic art of Racine supplements rather than surpasses that of his

older contemporary. His works reflect the serene and settled formality

of an age in which the sun of monarchy shone with an effulgence no

clouds seemed capable of obscuring, and in which the life of a nation

seemed reducible to the surroundings of a court. The tone of the poetic

literature of such an age is not necessarily unreal, because the range

of its ideas is limited, and because its forms seem to exist by an

immutable authority. That Racine should permanently hold the position

which belongs to him in French dramatic literature is due to the fact

that to him it was given to present these forms--the forms approved by

his age--in what may reasonably be called perfection; and, from the

point of view of workmanship, Sophocles could not have achieved more.

What his plays contain is another question. They suit themselves so well

to the successive phases in the life of Louis XIV., that Madame de

Sevigne described Racine as having in his later years loved God as he

had formerly loved his mistresses; and this sally at all events

indicates the range of passions which inspired his tragic muse. His

heroes are all of one type--that of a gracious gloriousness; his

heroines vary in their fortunes, but they are all the "trophies of

love,"[106] with the exception of the scriptural figures, which stand

apart from the rest.[107] T. Corneille, Campistron, Joseph Duche

(1668-1704), Antoin de Lafosse (c. 1653-1708) and Quinault were mere

followers of one or both of the great masters of tragedy, though the

last named achieved a reputation of his own in the bastard species of

the opera.

Characteristics of French classical tragedy.

The type of French tragedy thus established, like everything else which

formed part of the "age of Louis XIV.," proclaimed itself as the

definitively settled model of its kind, and was accepted as such by a

submissive world. Proud of its self-imposed fetters, French tragedy

dictatorially denied the liberty of which it had deprived itself to the

art of which it claimed to furnish the highest examples. Yet, though

calling itself classical, it had not caught the essential spirit of the

tragedy of the Greeks. The elevation of tone which characterizes the

serious drama of the age of Louis XIV. is a true elevation, but its

heights do not lose themselves in a sphere peopled by the myths of a

national religion, still less in the region of great thoughts which ask

Heaven to stoop to the aspirations and the failures of man. The

personages of this drama are conventional like its themes, but the

convention is with itself only; Orestes and Iphigenia have not brought

with them the cries of the stern goddesses and the flame on the altar of

Artemis; their passions like their speech are cadenced by a modern

measure. In construction, the simplicity and regularity of the ancient

models are stereotyped into a rigid etiquette by the exigencies of the

court-theatre, which is but an apartment of the palace. The unities of

time and place, with the Greeks mere rules of convenience, French

tragedy imposes upon itself as a permanent yoke. The Euripidean prologue

is judiciously exchanged for the exposition of the first act, and the

lyrical element essential to Greek tragedy is easily suppressed in its

would-be copy; lyrical passages still occur in some of Corneille's early

masterpieces,[108] but the chorus is consistently banished, to reappear

only in Racine's latest works[109] as a scholastic experiment

appropriate to a conventual atmosphere. Its uses for explanation and

comment are served by the expedient, which in its turn becomes

conventional, of the conversations with _confidants_ and _confidantes_,

which more than sufficiently supply the foil of general sentiments. The

epical element is allowed full play in narrative passages, more

especially in those which relate parts of the catastrophe,[110] and,

while preserving the stage intact from realisms, suit themselves to the

generally rhetorical character of this species of the tragic drama. This

character impressed itself more and more upon the tragic art of a

rhetorical nation in an age when the loftiest themes were in the pulpit

receiving the most artistic oratorical treatment, and developed in the

style of French classical tragedy the qualities which cause it to become

something between prose and poetry--or to appear (in the phrase of a

French critic) like prose in full dress. The force of this description

is borne out by the fact that the distinction between the versification

of French tragedy and that of French comedy seems at times

imperceptible.

Voltaire.

The universal genius of Voltaire found it necessary to shine in all

branches of literature, and in tragedy to surpass predecessors whom his

own authority declared to have surpassed the efforts of the Attic muse.

He succeeded in impressing the world with the belief that his

innovations had imparted a fresh vitality to French tragedy; in truth,

however, they represent no essential advance in art, but rather

augmented the rhetorical tendency which paralyses true dramatic life.

Such life as his plays possess lies in their political and social

sentiments, their invective against tyranny,[111] and their exposure of

fanaticism.[112] In other respects his versatility was barren of

enduring results. He might take his themes from French history,[113] or

from Chinese,[114] or Egyptian,[115] or Syrian,[116] from the days of

the Epigoni[117] or from those of the Crusades;[118] he might appreciate

Shakespeare, with a more or less partial comprehension of his strength,

and condescendingly borrow from and improve the barbarian.[119] But he

added nothing to French tragedy where it was weakest--in character; and

where it was strongest--in diction--he never equalled Corneille in fire

or Racine in refinement. While the criticism to which French tragedy in

this age at last began to be subjected has left unimpaired the real

titles to immortality of its great masters, the French theatre itself

has all but buried in respectful oblivion the dramatic works bearing the

name of Voltaire--a name persistently belittled, but second to none in

the history of modern progress and of modern civilization.

French classical tragedy in its decline.

As it is of relatively little interest to note the ramifications of an

art in its decline, the contrasts need not be pursued among the

contemporaries of Voltaire, between his imitator Bernard Joseph Saurin

(1706-1781), Saurin's royalist rival de Belloy, Racine's imitator

Lagrange-Chancel and Voltaire's own would-be rival, the "terrible"

Crebillon the elder, who professed to vindicate to French tragedy,

already mistress of the heavens through Corneille, and of the earth

through Racine, Pluto's supplementary realm, but who, though thus

essaying to carry tragedy lower, failed to carry it farther. In the

latter part of the 18th century French classical tragedy as a literary

growth was dying a slow death, however numerous might be the leaves

which sprouted from the decaying tree. Its form had been permanently

fixed; and even Shakespeare, as manipulated by Ducis[120]--an author

whose tastes were better than his times--failed to bring about a change.

"It is a Moor, not a Frenchman, who has written this play," cried a

spectator of Ducis' _Othello_ (1791); but Talma's conviction was almost

as strong as his capacity was great for convincing his public; and he

certainly did much to prepare the influence which Shakespeare was

gradually to assert over the French drama, and which was aided by

translations, more especially that of Pierre Letourneur (1736-1788),

which had attracted the sympathy of Diderot and the execrations of the

aged Voltaire.[121] Meanwhile, the command which classical French

tragedy continued to assert over the stage was due in part, no doubt, to

the love of Roman drapery--not always abundant, but always in the grand

style--which characterized the Revolution, and which was by the

Revolution handed down to the Empire. It was likewise, and more

signally, due to the great actors who freed the tragic stage from much

of its artificiality and animated it by their genius. No great artist

has ever more generously estimated the labours of a predecessor than

Talma judged those of Le Kain; but it was Talma himself whose genius was

pre-eminently fitted to reproduce the great figures of antiquity in the

mimic world, which, like the world outside, both required and possessed

its Caesar. He, like Rachel after him, reconciled French classical

tragedy with nature; and it is upon the art of great original actors

such as these that the theatrical future of this form of the drama in

France depends. Mere whims of fashion--even when inspired by political

feeling--will not waft back to it a real popularity; nor will occasional

literary aftergrowths, however meritorious, such as the admirable

_Lucrece_ of F. Ponsard and the attempts of even more recent writers,

suffice to re-establish a living union between it and the progress of

the national literature.

Comedy.

Moliere.

The rival influences under which classical tragedy has after a long

struggle virtually become a thing of the past in French literature are

also to be traced in the history of French comedy, which under the

co-operation of other influences produced a wide variety of growths. The

germs of most of these--though not of all--are to be found in the works

of the most versatile, the most sure-footed, and, in some respects, the

most consummate master of the comic drama whom the world has

known--Moliere. What Moliere found in existence was a comedy of

intrigue, derived from Spanish or Italian examples, and the elements of

a comedy of character, in French and more especially in Italian farce

and ballet-pantomime. Corneille's _Menteur_ had pointed the way to a

fuller combination of character with intrigue, and in this direction

Moliere's genius exercised the height of its creative powers. After

beginning with farces, he produced in the earliest of his plays (from

1652), of which more than fragments remain, comedies of intrigue which

are at the same time marvellously lively pictures of manners, and then

proceeded, with the _Ecole des maris_ (1661), to begin a long series of

masterpieces of comedy of character. Yet even these, the chief of which

are altogether unrivalled in dramatic literature, do not exhaust the

variety of his productions. To define the range of his art is as

difficult as to express in words the essence of his genius. For though

he has been copied ever since he wrote, neither his spirit nor his

manner has descended in full to any of his copyists, whole schools of

whom have missed elements of both. A Moliere can only be judged in his

relations to the history of comedy at large. He was indeed the inheritor

of many forms and styles--remaining a stranger to those of Old Attic

comedy only, rooted as it was in the political life of a free imperial

city; though even the rich extravagances of Aristophanes' burlesque was

not left wholly unreproduced by him. Moliere is both a satirist and a

humorist; he displays at times the sentiments of a loyal courtier, at

others that gay spirit of opposition which is all but indispensable to a

popular French wit. His comedies offer elaborate and subtle--even

tender--pictures of human character in its eternal types, lively

sketches of social follies and literary extravagances, and broad appeals

to the ordinary sources of vulgar merriment. Light and perspicuous in

construction, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the

penetrating force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun.

Faithful to the canons of artistic taste, and under the sure guidance of

true natural humour, his style suits itself to every species attempted

by him. His morality is the reverse of rigid, but its aberrations are

not those of prurience, nor its laws those of pretence; and, wholly free

as he was from the didactic aim which is foreign to all true dramatic

representation, the services rendered by him to his art are not the less

services rendered to society, concerning which the laughter of genuine

comedy tells the truth. He raised the comedy of character out of the

lower sphere of caricature, and in his greatest creations subordinated

to the highest ends of all dramatic composition the plots he so

skilfully built, and the pictures of the manners he so faithfully

reproduced.

Moliere's contemporaries and successors.

Even among the French comic dramatists of this age there must have been

many who "were not aware" that Moliere was its greatest poet. For though

he had made the true path luminous to them, their efforts were still

often of a tentative kind, and one was reviving _Pathelin_ while another

was translating the _Andria_. A more unique attempt was made in one of

the very few really modern versions of an Aristophanic comedy, which

deserves to be called an original copy--the _Plaideurs_ of Racine. The

tragic poets Quinault and Campistron likewise wrote comedies, one[122]

or more of which furnished materials to contemporary English

dramatists, as did one of the felicitous plays in which Boursault

introduced Mercury and Aesop into the theatrical _salon_.[123] Antoine

Montfleury (1640-1685), Baron and Dancourt, who were actors like

Moliere, likewise wrote comedies. But if the mantle of Moliere can be

said to have fallen upon any of his contemporaries or successors, this

honour must be ascribed to J. F. Regnard, who imitated the great master

in both themes and characters,[124] while the skilfulness of his plots,

and his gaiety of the treatment even of subjects tempting into the

by-path of sentimental comedy,[125] entitle him to be regarded as a

comic poet of original genius. With him C. R. Dufresny occasionally

collaborated.

In the next generation (that of Voltaire) comedy gradually--but only

gradually--surrendered for a time the very essence of its vitality to

the seductions of a hybrid species, which disguised its identity under

more than a single name. A. R. le Sage, who as a comic dramatist at

first followed successfully in the footsteps of Moliere, proved himself

on the stage as well as in picturesque fiction a keen observer and

inimitable satirist of human life.[126] The light texture of the playful

and elegant art of J. B. L. Gresset was shown on the stage in a

character comedy of merit;[127] and in a comedy which reveals something

of his pointed wit, A. Piron produced something like a new type of

enduring ridiculousness.[128] P. C. de Marivaux, the French _Spectator_,

is usually supposed to have formed the connecting link between the "old"

French comedy and the "new" and bastard variety. Yet, though his minute

analysis of the tender passion excited the scorn of Voltaire, it should

not be overlooked that in _marivaudage_ proper the wit holds the balance

to the sentiment, and that in some of this frequently misjudged writer's

earlier and most delightful plays the elegance and gaiety of diction are

as irresistible as the pathetic sentiment, which is in fact rather an

ingredient in his comedy than the pervading characteristic of it.[129]

Some of the comedies of P. H. Destouches no doubt have a serious basis,

and in his later plays he comes near to a kind of drama in which the

comic purpose has been virtually submerged.[130] The writer who is

actually to be credited with the transition to sentimental comedy, and

who was fully conscious of the change which he was helping to effect,

was Nivelle de La Chaussee, in whose hands French comedy became a

champion of the sanctity of marriage, and reproduced the sentiments--in

one instance even the characters--of Richardson.[131] To his play _La

Fausse Antipathie_ the author supplied a _critique_, amounting to an

apology for the new species of which it was designed as an example.

The new species known as _comedie larmoyante_ was now fairly in the

ascendant; and it would be easy to show how even Voltaire, who had

deprecated the innovation, had to yield to a power greater than his own,

and introduced the sentimental element into some of his comedies.[132]

The further step, by which _comedie larmoyante_ was transformed into

_tragedie bourgeoise_, from which the comic element was to all intents

and purposes extruded, was taken by a great French writer, D. Diderot;

to whose influence it was largely due that the species which had

attained to this consummation for more than a generation ruled supreme

in the dramatic literature of Europe. But the final impulse, as Diderot

himself virtually acknowledged in the _entretiens_ subjoined by him to

his _Fils naturel_ (1757), had been given by a far humbler citizen of

the world of letters, the author of _The London Merchant_. Diderot's own

plays were a literary rather than a theatrical success. _Le Fils naturel

ou les epreuves de la vertu_ was not publicly performed till 1771, and

then only in deference to the determination of a single actor of the

Francais (Mole); nor was the performance of it repeated. Diderot's

second play, _Le Pere de famille_, printed in 1758 with a _Discours sur

la poesie dramatique_, went through a few public performances in 1761;

and a later revival was unsuccessful. But "at a distance," as was well

said, the effect of Diderot's endeavours, the earlier in particular, was

extremely great, and Lessing, though very critical as to particular

points, greatly helped to spread it. Diderot had for the first time

consciously sought to proclaim the theatre an agency of social reform,

and to entrust to it as its task the propagation of the gospel of

philanthropy. Though the execution of his dramatic works fell far short

of his aims; though Madame de Stael was not far wrong in denouncing them

as exhibiting not nature itself, but "the affectation of nature," yet

they contained, in a measure almost unequalled in the history of the

modern drama, the fermenting element which never seems to subside. Their

author announced them as examples of a third dramatic form--the _genre

serieux_--which he declared to be the consummation of the dramatic art.

Making war upon the frigid artificiality of classical tragedy, he

banished verse from the new species. The effect of these plays was

intended to spring from their truth to nature--a truth such as no

spectator could mistake, and which should bring home its moral teachings

to the business as well as the bosoms of all. The theatre was to become

a real and realistic school of the principles of society and of the

conduct of life--it was, in other words, to usurp functions with which

it has no concern, and to essay the direct reformation of mankind. The

idea was neither new nor just; but its speciousness will probably

continue to commend it to many enthusiastic minds, whensoever and in

whatsoever shape it is revived.

The comedy of the Revolution and the first empire.

Vaudevilles, etc.

From this point the history of the French drama becomes that of a

conflict between an enfeebled artistic school and a tendency which is

hardly to be dignified by the name of a school at all. Among the

successful dramatists following on Diderot may be mentioned the critical

and versatile J. F. Marmontel, and more especially M. J. Sedaine, who

though chiefly working for the opera, produced two comedies of

acknowledged merit.[133] P. A. C. de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), who for

his early sentimental plays,[134] in which he imitated Diderot, invented

the appellation _drame_--so convenient in its vagueness that it became

the accepted name of the hybrid species to which they belonged--in two

works of a very different kind, the famous _Barbier de Seville_ and the

still more famous _Mariage de Figaro_, boldly carried comedy back into

its old Spanish atmosphere of intrigue; but, while surpassing all his

predecessors in the skill with which he constructed his frivolous plots,

he drew his characters with a lightness and sureness of touch peculiar

to himself, animated his dialogue with an unparalleled brilliancy of

wit, and seasoned action as well as dialogue with a political and social

meaning, which caused his epigrams to become proverbs, and which marks

his _Figaro_ as a herald of the Revolution. Such plays as these were ill

suited to the rule of the despot whose vigilance could not overlook

their significance. The comedy of the empire is, in the hands of Collin

d'Harleville, Louis Picard (1769-1828), A. Duval, Etienne and others,

mainly a harmless comedy of manners; nor was the attempted innovation of

N. Lemercier--who was fain to invent a new species, that of historical

comedy--more than a flattering self-delusion. The theatre had its share

in all the movements and changes which ensued in France; though the most

important revolution which the drama itself was to undergo was not one

of wholly native origin. Those branches of the drama which belong

specifically to the history of the opera, or which associate themselves

with it, are here passed by. Among them was the _vaudeville_ (from Val

de Vire in Calvados), which began as an interspersion of pantomime with

the airs of popular songs, and which, after the Italian masks had been

removed from it, was cultivated by Ponsard and Marmontel, while Sedaine

wrote a didactic poem on the subject (1756). Sedaine was the father of

the _opera-comique_ proper;[135] Marmontel,[136] as well as

Rousseau,[137] likewise composed _operettes_--a smaller sort of opera,

at first of the pastoral variety; and these flexible species easily

entered into combination. The melodrama proper, of which the invention

is also attributed to Rousseau,[138] in its latter development became

merely a drama accentuated by music, though usually in little need of

any accentuation.

The stage.

Transition to the romantic school.

The chief home of the regular drama, however, demanded efforts of

another kind. At the Theatre Francais, or Comedie Francaise, whose

history as that of a single company of actors had begun in 1680, the

party-strife of the times made itself audible; and the most prominent

tragic poet of the Revolution, M. J. de Chenier, a disciple of Voltaire

in dramatic poetry as well as in political philosophy, wrote for the

national stage the historical drama--with a political moral[139]--in

which in the memorable year 1789 the actor Talma achieved his first

complete triumph. But the victorious Revolution proclaimed among other

liberties that of the theatres in Paris, of which soon not less than 50

were open. In 1807 the empire restricted the number to 9, and reinstated

the Theatre Francais in sole possession (or nearly such) of the right of

performing the classic drama. No writer of note was, however, tempted or

inspired by the rewards and other encouragements offered by Napoleon to

produce such a classic tragedy as the emperor would have willingly

stamped from out of the earth. The tragedies of C. Delavigne represent

the transition from the expiring efforts of the classical to the

ambitious beginnings of the romantic school of the French drama.