THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
Shakespeare's lifetime was coincident with a period of extraordinary
activity and achievement in the drama. By the date of his birth Europe
was witnessing the passing of the religious drama that had held its
course for some five centuries, and the creation of new and mixed forms
under the incentive of classical tragedy and comedy. These new forms
were at first mainly written by scholars and performed by amateurs, but
in England, as everywhere else in western Europe, the growth of a class
of professional actors was threatening to make the drama popular,
whether it should be new or old, classical or medieval, literary or
farcical. Court, school, organizations of amateurs, and the strolling
actors were all rivals in supplying a widespread desire for dramatic
entertainment; and no boy who went to a grammar school could be ignorant
that the drama was a form of literature which gave glory to Greece and
Rome and might yet bestow its laurels on England.
When Shakespeare was twelve years old the first public playhouse was
built in London. For a time literature held aloof from this public
stage. Plays aiming at literary distinction were written for schools or
court, or for the choir boys of St. Paul's and the royal chapel, who,
however, gave plays in public as well as at court. But the professional
companies prospered in their permanent theaters, and university men with
literary ambitions were quick to turn to these theaters as offering a
means of livelihood. By the time that Shakespeare was twenty-five, Lyly,
Peele, and Greene had made comedies that were at once popular and
literary; Kyd had written a tragedy that crowded the pit; and Marlowe
had brought poetry and genius to triumph on the common stage--where they
had played no part since the death of Euripides. A native literary drama
had been created, its alliance with the public playhouses established,
and at least some of its great traditions had been begun.
The development of the Elizabethan drama for the next twenty-five years
is of exceptional interest to students of literary history, for in this
brief period, in connection with the half-dozen theaters of a growing
city and the demands of its varied population, we may trace the
beginning, growth, florescence, and decay of many kinds of plays, and of
many great careers. Actors, audiences, and dramatists all contributed to
changes in taste and practice and to a development of unexampled
rapidity and variety. In every detail of dramatic art there was change
and improvement, a constant addition of new subject-matter, a mastery of
new methods of technic, and an invention of new kinds of plays. The
popular successes of Marlowe and Kyd and the early plays of Shakespeare
himself seemed old-fashioned and crude to the taste of twenty years
after, yet the triumphs of Shakespeare's maturity failed to exhaust the
opportunities for innovation and advance. We are amazed to-day at the
mere number of plays produced, as well as by the number of dramatists
writing at the same time for this London of two hundred thousand
inhabitants. To realize how great was the dramatic activity, we must
remember further that hosts of plays have been lost, and that probably
there is no author of note whose entire work has survived. By the time,
however, that Shakespeare withdrew from London to Stratford the drama
had reached its height. The dozen years from 1600 to 1612 included not
only Shakespeare's great tragedies, but the best plays of Jonson,
Chapman, and Webster, and the entire collaboration of Beaumont and
Fletcher. The only other decades comparable with this in the history of
the drama are that which heard plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes and that other which saw the masterpieces of Racine and
Moliere.
[Page Heading: Elizabethan Drama]
The greatness of the drama, however, by no means ended with the
retirement and death of Shakespeare. Some of those who had been his
early associates continued to write for the stage, and younger men, as
Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, and Shirley, carried on the traditions of
their predecessors. If, as in other forms of literature, there was
decline and decadence during the next twenty-five years, the drama also
retained initiative, poetry, and intellectual force until the end. It
was not dead or dying when the outbreak of the Civil War cut short its
course; in fact, its plays, its traditions, even some of its theaters,
actors, and dramatists survived the suppression of twenty years and
helped to start the drama of the Restoration. Had Shakespeare lived to
the age of seventy-eight he would have seen the closing of the theaters,
and his lifetime would have covered the crowded history of the drama's
development from such semi-moralities as _Cambises_ and _The Nice
Wanton_ to the last plays of Massinger and Shirley.
For nearly a quarter of a century he was a sharer in this dramatic
movement, working in London as actor, manager, and playwright. While no
playwright was more desirous than he to find in the stage full
opportunity for his genius, he was as keen as any in gauging the
immediate theatrical demand and in meeting the varying conditions of a
highly competitive profession. As we have already noted, he began by
imitating those who had won success, and to the end he was adroit in
taking advantage of a new dramatic fashion or discovery. Like his
fellows, he often took his plots from novels, histories, or other
narratives; but his very choice of stories might be determined by the
theatrical taste of the moment, and in his treatment of those stories he
shows in person, situation, or scene, a consideration of current
practices, traditions, and conventions. In every field of literature, a
writer is conditioned by the work of his predecessors and
contemporaries, and this dependence on current taste is especially
important in the drama, where practice tends to fix itself in
convention, and where innovation to be successful requires cooeperation
from the actors and approval from the audience as well as genius from
the author. Though Shakespeare is for all time, he is part and parcel of
the Elizabethan drama. If his plays are Elizabethan in their defects and
limitations, such as their trivial puns and word-play, their overcrowded
imagery, their loose and broken structure, their paucity of female
roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and
mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories;
they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of their greatness, their
variety of subject, their intense interest in the portrayal of
character, the flexibility and audacity of their language, their noble
and opulent verse, the exquisite idealism of their romantic love, and
their profound analysis of the sources of human tragedy.
[Page Heading: Beginnings of the Drama]
The Elizabethan drama was a continuation of the medieval drama
transformed by the influence of classical models, especially the
comedies of Terence and Plautus and the tragedies of Seneca. In England,
by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Miracle and Mystery plays
were declining and were soon to disappear. The most common type of drama
for the next sixty years was the Morality, which symbolized life as a
conflict of vices and virtues or of the body and the soul. The drama was
rapidly changing from long out-door performances to brief plays that
could be given almost anywhere by a few actors. The term Interludes
became common for all such entertainments, and allegorical frameworks
served to contain a wide variety of matter, farce, pedagogy, politics,
religion, history, or pageant. Close imitations of the classical forms
were soon attempted by scholars and men of letters; but as the
professional actors grew in importance the development of a national
comedy and tragedy went on without much direction from critics or
theorists, but rather in response to the demands of actors and audiences
and to the initiative of authors.
The developments of comedy were numerous. Allegory gradually
disappeared, and the Morality ceased to exist as a definite type, though
its symbolization of life and its concern with conduct were handed along
to the later drama. The plays of Robert Wilson, about 1580, show an
interesting use of allegory for the purposes of social satire, and
realism and satire long continued to characterize Elizabethan comedy,
though for a time confined mostly to incidental scenes. Common and
incidental also was farce, which is found in most plays of the century
whether tragic, comic, or moral in their main purpose. Further, it was
soon discovered that the Plautian scheme of comedy was well suited to
farcical incident, as in _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ (1552).[6] The
classical models or their Italian imitations also produced other and
less domestic imitations, as in Gascoigne's translation of Ariosto's _I
Suppositi_ (pr. 1566) and Udall's _Ralph Roister Doister_ (1540); a
little later, Lyly's _Mother Bombie_, Munday's _Two Italian Gentlemen_,
and Shakespeare's _Comedy of Errors_. Indeed such adaptations continued
much later and resulted in some of the best farces, or realistic
comedies of intrigue, as Shakespeare's _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (1598),
Heywood's _Wise Woman of Hogsdon_ (1604), Jonson's _Epicene_ (1609) and
_Alchemist_ (1610).
[6] In this chapter the dates appended to the plays indicate the
conjectured year of presentation. Dates of publication are prefixed by
_pr_.
[Page Heading: Influence of Plautus]
The Plautian model, however, was far more influential than can be
indicated by these close adaptations or by any list of direct imitations
or borrowings. For the Elizabethan it offered a standard of comedy, and
its plots, persons, and devices were freely used in all kinds of plays,
romantic as well as realistic, sentimental as well as satirical or
farcical. The plots of Plautus and Terence offer a series of tricks in
which the complications are often increased by having the trickster
tricked. Certain fixed types of character play the parts of gulls or
gullers, as the old parents, the young lovers, the parasite, the
braggart soldier, and the clever slave. The intrigue is forwarded by the
use of disguise, mistaken identity, and most surprising coincidences;
and it is accomplished by dialogue, often gross and abusive, but usually
lively. This model served every nation of western Europe, reappearing
with prolonged vitality in the inventions of Lope de Vega, the "commedia
del arte" of Italy, and in the masterpieces of Moliere. Much in its
scheme that seems artificial and theatrical to-day was, we must
remember, accepted without question by Europe of the sixteenth century
as essential and desirable in comedy, especially in realistic comedy of
intrigue or manners.
The plots of Terence, notably that of the _Andria_, also gave some
encouragement to the modern fondness for adventure and sentimental love,
and some classical sanction to the abundant romantic material that was
knocking at the doors of comedy. If by romantic we mean what is strange
and removed from ordinary experience and what has the attractions of
wonder, thrill, and idealization, then for the Elizabethan the world of
romance was a wide one. It included the medieval stories of knights and
their gests, and also the fresher tales of classical mythology; the
Americas and Indies of contemporary adventure and the artificial
Arcadias of humanist imitators of Virgil and Theocritus. Ovid and
Malory, Homer and Boccaccio, Drake and Sanazzaro, were all contributors.
The union of this romance with comedy on the stage began in two ways,
and principally under the innovation of two writers, Lyly and Greene.
The taste for pageants, processions, and tableaux grew and flourished
under the patronage of the court; and music, dancing, and spectacle were
combined with dialogue in various court exhibitions and plays given by
the child actors. John Lyly, writing for these choir boys, developed
this type of entertainment into a distinct species of comedy. Of his
eight plays, written at intervals from 1580 to 1593, all but one were in
prose, and all except the Plautian _Mother Bombie_ adhere loosely to a
common formula. Classical myth or story, with pastoral elements, and
occasionally an allegory of contemporary politics, furnish the basis of
plots with similar love complications. Gods, goddesses, nymphs, fairies,
and many others add to the spectacle and mingle in the love intrigue,
and all rise to a graceful dialogue, which quickens to brisk repartee
when the pages or servants appear. The witty page supersedes the rude
buffoon of earlier plays, and everything is graceful and ingenious,
slight in serious interest, but relieved by movement and song.
[Page Heading: Lyly and Greene]
This is the form of comedy which Shakespeare adopted for _Love's
Labour's Lost_ and perfected in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_. But Lyly's
contribution should not be defined merely by this type of drama,
original as it is in its departure from medieval or classical
precedents. He showed how comedy might be a courtly and literary
entertainment and also the playground of fancy and wit.
The second development of romantic comedy came through the dramatization
of stories of love, adventure, and marvels. To such stories Robert
Greene gave a heightened charm through the idealization of his heroines.
His _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ (1590) is a magic play with an
historical setting; but the interest gathers and centers on the love
story of Margaret, the Keeper's daughter. In _James IV_ (_c._ 1591) the
pseudo-historical setting frames the stories of the noble Ida and the
wronged but faithful Dorothea. In the incidents of the plot, with its
woman disguised as a page, the faithless lover, and the final
reconciliation, and also in the sweetness, modesty, and loyalty of the
heroine, the play reminds us of Shakespeare's comedies and is indeed
very close to _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, in which he was clearly
adopting Greene's formula.
Tragedy naturally lagged somewhat behind comedy as a form of popular
entertainment. So far as we can judge from the extant plays, there was
until the appearance of Kyd and Marlowe no real union between Senecan
imitations like _Gorboduc_ (1562), _Jocasta_ (1566), and _The
Misfortunes of Arthur_ (1588), on the one hand, and popular medleys of
morality, tragedy, and farce like _Cambises_ (1565), _Horestes_ (_pr._
1567), and _Appius and Virginia_ (1563), on the other. Marlowe's
_Tamburlaine_ (1587) was an epoch-making play because it brought to the
popular drama true poetry and genuine passion; but it and its successors
also established a new type of tragedy. Marlowe made no effort to retain
the structure or themes of classical tragedy; on the contrary, he made
his plays loosely connected series of scenes dealing with the life and
death of the hero, crowded with persons and with startling action. In
this he was conforming to the method of the dramatic narratives that
pleased the theaters. But each play centers its dramatic interest on a
mighty protagonist battling with his overweening desires and their
inevitable disappointment. With the spectacle and sensation, the rant
and absurdity, there is also dramatic structure and tragic significance
in the revelation of these protagonists, their volitional struggles, and
their direful catastrophes. These plays set the key for all Elizabethan
tragedy, including Shakespeare's _Lear_, _Othello_, and _Macbeth_. They
were immediately followed by dozens of imitators. All blank verse echoed
Marlowe's mighty line, and tragedy was filled with ranting conquerors
like Tamburlaine, monstrous villains like Barabbas, and murders like
that of Edward II. Shakespeare was his pupil in the _2_ and _3 Henry
VI_, mastered his methods in _Richard III_, and still wrote in
emulation, though no longer in imitation, in _Richard II_ and _The
Merchant of Venice_.
[Page Heading: Marlowe and Kyd]
Within a few months of _Tamburlaine_, appeared a play of almost equal
influence on subsequent drama, Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_. Kyd was a
student of Seneca, a translator of Garnier's _Cornelia_, a Senecan
imitation; and he adapted some elements of classical tragedy to the
English stage. The ten plays ascribed to Seneca were the accepted models
of tragedy in the Renaissance. Their presentation of the more horrible
stories of Greek tragedy, their rhetorical and aphoristic style, their
moralizing and their psychology, were all greatly admired. They were
believed by the Elizabethans to have been acted, and their murders and
violence seemed to warrant such action on the modern stage; though the
Elizabethans found less adaptable their use of the chorus, the
restriction of the number of persons speaking, their long monologues,
and the limitation of the action to the last phase of a story. Kyd
modeled his rhetoric on Seneca and retained a vestige of the chorus,
long soliloquies, and some other traits of Senecan structure; but his
main borrowing was the essential story of a crime and its punishment. He
thus brought to the Elizabethan stage the classical theme of
retribution. In his _Spanish Tragedy_, a murder is avenged under the
direction of a ghost, by a hesitating and soliloquizing protagonist, who
is driven through doubt and speculation almost to madness, and then to
craft, with which he outwits the wily villain and brings all the leading
_dramatis personae_ to a final slaughter.
Blood revenge was established as the favorite motive of tragedy; the
conflict of craft between protagonist and villain made up the action,
and the speculations of the avenger gave a chance for wisdom and
eloquence. One other play, probably by Kyd, the lost _Hamlet_, also
presented these features and later formed the basis for Shakespeare's
tragedy. Other plays, as _Soliman and Perseda_, _The True Tragedy of
Richard III_, and _Locrine_ immediately adopted Kyd's theme and technic;
indeed the stage for half a dozen years abounded in avenging heroes,
diabolical villains, shrieking ghosts, and long soliloquies on fate,
death, retribution, and kindred themes. _Titus Andronicus_ is quite in
the Kydian vein. Many plays combined the salient traits of Marlowe and
Kyd, and henceforth no one wrote tragedy without paying homage to their
inventions.
[Page Heading: English History Plays]
We have now noticed the most important developments in comedy and
tragedy made by the time that Shakespeare began writing for the
theaters; and he made quick use of the progress accomplished by Plautian
and Lylyan comedy, by Greene's romances, and by the tragedies of Kyd and
Marlowe. There were other plays not easily classified under these names
and of less service to Shakespeare. But to the critical playgoer of 1590
few plays would have seemed either 'right comedies' or 'right
tragedies.' The majority were mere dramatizations of story without close
construction or selection of material, seeking merely varied and
abundant action. They drew their material from all kinds of narrative
sources, Italian _novelle_, current pamphlets, Latin historians, or
English chronicles; and, whether historical or fictitious, were usually
known as Histories, _i.e._, stories.
The patriotic interest in English history fostered the presentation of
its scenes upon the stage. The chronicles of Halle and Holinshed
furnished abundant material; and embassies, processions, and pitched
battles filled the stage with movement. Historical plays might, indeed,
draw from classical history or from current foreign history, but from
1590 to 1603 a very large number of plays give scenic representation to
the reigns of English kings.
Some of these form a distinct class, since, however mixed with comic
matter, they imitate Kyd or Marlowe and recast the chronicle of a reign
to fit the accepted subjects of tragedy, the downfall of a prince, the
revenge for a crime, the overthrow of a tyrant, or the retribution
brought upon a conspirator or usurper. Conceived under Marlowe's
influence, and perhaps owing something to his hand, is the tetralogy
that includes the three parts of _Henry VI_ and _Richard III_.
Those history plays, however, that do not follow the formulas for
tragedy, are a heterogeneous group not easily classified. They usually
keep to the loose chronicle method that presented a series of scenes
without much regard to unity or coherence. Farce, comedy, magic,
spectacle, heroics, and everything that might have happened was
permissible in these plays, and perhaps the only thing indispensable was
a pitched field with opposing armies. Biographical, comic, popular,
patriotic, or what not, these plays brought a variety of scenes to the
theaters, but offered only a loose and flexible form rather than any
dramatic direction or model to the creator of Falstaff.
The early deaths of Greene and Marlowe and the retirement of Lyly left
Shakespeare the heir of their inventions. Though his plays were at first
imitative, he soon surpassed his predecessors in gift of expression, in
depiction of character, and in deftness of dramatic technic. The years
from 1593 to near the turn of the century are particularly lacking in
records of plays or theaters; but it seems clear that the main
developments of the drama were in romantic comedy and chronicle history;
and it is also clear that Shakespeare was the unquestioned leader in
both of these forms.
[Page Heading: Shakespeare's Leadership]
In comparison with his associates, he was now the master, relying on his
own experience rather than on their innovations. Neither the crude but
popular _Mucedorus_ (1595) nor Dekker's poetical extravagance, _Old
Fortunatus_ (1596), could contribute to his development of romantic
comedy; and domestic comedy could not instruct the inventor of Launce
and Launcelot. Incidental relationships may indeed be noted. _As You
Like It_, for example, dramatizes a pastoral novel with the addition of
scenes that recall Robin Hood's forest life, and may owe something to
the suggestion of two Robin Hood plays by Chettle and Munday, _The
Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon_ (1598). But, on the
whole, the indebtedness was on the other side, and imitations indicate
that men of Shakespeare's day realized that romantic comedy and history
could not be carried farther.
In fact, a certain reaction set in against these forms of drama. Near
the close of the century new tendencies became manifest. Comedy tended
to become more realistic and satiric. Chapman, Marston, Middleton, and
Jonson, all began writing romantic comedy, but changed shortly to
realistic. Jonson, in his _Every Man in His Humour_ (1598), announced
his opposition to the lawless drama which had preceded--whether
romantic comedy or chronicle history--and proposed the creation of a new
satirical comedy of manners. He was moved partly by a desire to break
from past methods in order to bring comedy closer to classical example,
and partly by a desire for realism, a faithful presentation, analysis,
and criticism of current manners. The growth of London and the increase
in luxury and immorality seem to have encouraged such a movement, and
for the decade after 1598 there were many comedies of London life,
mostly satiric, and nearly all realistic. Many varieties are to be
found, from gross representation of the seamy side of city life to
serious discussion of social questions, and from sympathetic picturing
of certain trades to satiric exposure of the evils of society.
Jonson's emulation of Aristophanes led him into arrogant personal satire
in the _Poetaster_ (1601), and there ensued the so-called war of the
theaters, in which Marston, Dekker, and, according to report,
Shakespeare were Jonson's opponents. If Shakespeare, indeed, had a share
in this war, he showed only slight interest in the prevailing comedy.
_Measure for Measure_ uses the device of a spying duke employed in
Marston's _Malcontent_, and discusses sexual relationships somewhat in
the tone of the time, while the scenes dealing with houses of ill fame
are not unlike similar scenes in the contemporary plays of Middleton,
Webster, and others. _Troilus and Cressida_, also, show more of a
satiric temper than is usual in Shakespeare. But neither of these plays
partakes to any extent of the prevailing satire on contemporary London.
Wide as was the range of Shakespeare's genius, it seems to have avoided
the field of satire.
[Page Heading: Realistic Comedy]
A review of the drama must, however, at least remark the importance of
this development of realistic comedy which flourished in the decade
after 1598 and continued to the end. Jonson's comedy of 'humors'
includes _Volpone_ (1605), which overstepped the bounds of comedy in its
denunciation of evil, the _Alchemist_ (1611), perhaps the best English
play on the Latin model, and _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), most original
and English of them all. Dekker's fine drama of middle class life, _The
Honest Whore_ (1604), and Heywood's masterpiece, _A Woman Killed with
Kindness_ (1603), a play suggesting both the sentimental comedy of the
eighteenth century and the problem play of to-day, also belong to this
very remarkable era of domestic themes and serious realism.
If Shakespeare did not turn to satire or realism or current social
problems, he did turn away from chronicle history plays and romantic
comedies. As we saw in the last chapter, for a period of eight or nine
years, from _Julius Caesar_ to _Antony and Cleopatra_, he gave his best
efforts of his maturity to tragedy. The day for mere imitation of
Seneca, Kyd, or Marlowe, was past; and scholars like Jonson and Chapman
as well as Shakespeare sought in the tragedy of the public theater, an
opportunity for wisdom and poetry and a criticism of life.
For models, Shakespeare did not need to go back farther than his own
_Romeo and Juliet_ and _Richard II_, nor to imitate any other than
himself. Yet his great plays may have seemed to his contemporaries to
adopt rather than to depart from current dramatic practices. They belong
to the Elizabethan 'tragedy of blood'; against a background of courts
and battles they present the downfall of princes; they rest on
improbable stories that end in fearful slaughter; they invariably set
forth great crimes, compact of murder, lust, villainous intrigue, and
ferocious cruelty. Some of them follow Kyd in recounting a story of
blood vengeance presided over by ghosts, or discover the retribution due
for crime in physical torments. Nearly all follow Marlowe in centering
the tragic interest in the fate of a supernormal protagonist who is
swayed by an overpowering emotion, and in elevating these human desires
and passions into tremendous forces that work their waste of devastation
and ruin on character and life.
[Page Heading: Tragedy]
The contemporary tragedy is brought closest to Shakespeare in the
relations of the revenge plays to _Hamlet_. The type, introduced by Kyd
in _The Spanish Tragedy_ and the original _Hamlet_, underwent a special
development in Marston's _Antonio's Revenge_ (1598) and several other
plays appearing from 1598 to 1603, that dealt with the blood vengeance
of a son for a father. At the same time Shakespeare turned to the
remaking of the old _Hamlet_ and to a new treatment of the old theme,
yet retained many of the old accessories. Marston reproduces the
essential story of blood vengeance, presided over by a ghost, crossed by
both lust and sentimental love, commented on by long soliloquies, and
accompanied by pretended madness. Chettle, in _Hoffman_, amplifies the
horrors and villainy and brings the story of the mad girl into closer
juncture with the main plot than is the case in _Hamlet_. Tourneur,
writing independently of Shakespeare, introduces, among all sorts of
horrors, a Christian ghost who forbids blood vengeance and commands
submission to Providence. Ben Jonson, in his additions to the old
_Spanish Tragedy_, gives fine imaginative interpretation of the wavering
moods of meditation, irony, and frenzy with which Kyd had dealt only
crudely. The later development of this type proceeded without much
regard to Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, but rather in the direction started by
Marston's tragedies and his influential tragi-comedy, _The Malcontent_.
While _Hamlet_ may be described as centering attention on a meditative
and high-minded avenger, Tourneur, Webster, Middleton, and later
dramatists found greater interest in the study of villainy and intrigue.
Revenge is born of depravity rather than duty, and given a setting of
physical horrors and unnatural lust. Tourneur's _Revenger's Tragedy_
(1606) and Webster's _White Devil_ (1610) and _Duchess of Malfi_ (1611)
represent the culmination of this play of revenge, lust, and horror, and
supply a sort of standard for tragedy until the Civil War. Webster, it
must be added, was hardly less interested than Shakespeare in character
and motive, though he chose to study these in a chamber of horrors.
Shakespeare's Roman tragedies also suggest comparison with contemporary
plays, those either on Roman or on contemporary foreign history.
Tragedies dealing with Roman history had preceded _Julius Caesar_, but
that play doubtless stimulated Jonson's _Sejanus_ (1603) and _Catiline_
(1611). Both these plays attempted an approach to classical structure
and a thorough study and digest of classical history. This effort to
make tragedy a serious and authoritative interpretation of history was
also shared by Chapman in his plays dealing with contemporary French
history, _1_ and _2 Bussy D'Ambois_ (1601-1607) and _1_ and _2 Biron_
(1608). While Jonson strove to free his style from the abundance of
conceits, figures, and passages of description that had characterized
earlier drama, Chapman used every chance to crowd his verse with
far-stretched figure and weighty apothegm. At its worst it is peculiarly
representative of Elizabethan confusion and bombast; at its best it is
closest of all in its resemblance to Shakespeare's. Like Jonson and
Chapman, Shakespeare sought historical backgrounds for his characters
and found a fascination in the interpretation of the motives of the
great protagonists of the world of antiquity. It is worthy of note,
however, that he seems to have taken no interest in another class of
subjects much favored by his contemporaries. Contemporary crimes
treated with an excess of realism and didactic conclusions are common in
drama from _Arden of Feversham_ (1590) on, and engaged the services of
Jonson, Webster, Ford, Dekker, and others.
[Page Heading: Beaumont and Fletcher]
About 1607 a new departure appeared in the work of the dramatic
collaborators, Beaumont and Fletcher. After some experiments, they won,
in their tragi-comedies, _Philaster_ (1608) and _A King and No King_
(1610), and their tragedy, _The Maid's Tragedy_ (1609), great theatrical
successes, and in these and similar plays established a new kind of
dramatic romance. The realistic comedies of Jonson and Middleton, which,
along with the great tragedies of Shakespeare, crowd the stage history
of the preceding ten years, had offered nothing similar to these
romances which joined tragic and idyllic material in scenes of brilliant
theatrical effectiveness, abounding in transitions from suspense to
surprise, and culminating in telling denouements. This new realm of
romance is an artificial one, contrasting pure love with horrid
entanglements of lust, and ever bringing love in conflict with duty,
friendship, or the code of honor. In its intriguing courts, or in nearby
forests where the idyls are placed, love of one kind or another is the
ruling and vehement passion, riding high-handed over tottering thrones,
rebellious subjects, usurping tyrants, and checked, if checked at all,
only by the unexampled force of honor. Romance, in short, depends on
situation, on the artificial but skilful juxtaposition of emotions and
persons, and on the new technic that sacrifices consistency of
characterization for surprise. Characterization tends to become typical,
and motives tend to be based on fixed conventions, such as the code of
honor might dictate to a seventeenth-century gentleman; but the lack of
individuality in character is counterbalanced by the vividness with
which the lovers, tyrants, faithful friends, evil women, and sentimental
heroines are presented, and by the fluent and lucid style which varies
to any emotional requirement and rises to the demands of the most
sensational situations.
_Cymbeline_ in its plot bears some close resemblances to _Philaster_,
and it seems likely that Shakespeare was adopting the methods and
materials of the new romance. At all events, he turned from tragedy to
romance, and in _Cymbeline_ and the far more original and successful
_Winter's Tale_ and _Tempest_ produced tragi-comedies that, like
Beaumont and Fletcher's, rely on a contrast of tragic and idyllic and on
surprising plots and idealized heroines. After Beaumont's retirement in
1611 or 1612, it seems probable that Fletcher and Shakespeare
collaborated together on _Henry VIII_ and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.
There is ample evidence that the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher won a
great popular renown, surpassing for a time those of Shakespeare and all
others. Beaumont did not live long after he ceased to write for the
stage, dying at thirty, in the same year as Shakespeare. Jonson had
given up dramatic writing for the time, and Fletcher was left the chief
writer for Shakespeare's old company and the undoubted leader of the
theater. Including the plays written in collaboration with Beaumont,
Shakespeare, and later with Massinger, he left some sixty dramas of many
kinds, varying from farcical comedy of manners to the most extreme
tragedy. The comedies of manners present the affairs of women, and spice
their lively conversation and surprising situations with a wit that
often reminds one of the Restoration; indeed they carry the development
of comedy nearly to the point where Wycherley and Congreve began. The
tragi-comedies, which display the qualities already noted as belonging
to the romances, have the technical advantage that the disentanglement
of their rapid plots and sub-plots is left hanging in the balance until
the very end. The happy ending to tragic entanglements won a favor it
has never lost on the English stage, and tragi-comedy of the Fletcherian
type continued the most popular form of the drama until Dryden.
[Page Heading: Tragi-Comedy]
It is unnecessary here to dwell long over the drama after Shakespeare's
death. Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, and Webster wrote from time to time, and
Middleton devoted his versatile talent to whatever kind of play was in
vogue, now rather to Websterian tragedy and Fletcherian tragi-comedy
than to realistic comedy. Yet, in collaboration with Rowley, he produced
the powerful tragedy, _The Changeling_, and the much-admired
tragi-comedy, _A Fair Quarrel_. After Fletcher's death in 1625,
Massinger took his place as leader of the stage, and his work, with that
of Ford and Shirley, carry on the great traditions of the drama to the
very end. A host of minor writers, as Brome, D'Avenant, Suckling,
Cartwright, offer little that is new; but no survey of the drama,
however brief, can neglect to mention the skilful exposition, admirable
psychology, and sound structural principles that characterized the best
of Massinger's many plays, the unique and amazing dramatic genius shown
in Ford's masterpieces, _The Broken Heart_ and _'Tis Pity She's a
Whore_, and the ingenuity in plot, adroitness in characterization, and
genuine poetic gifts of Shirley.
Comedies from 1616 to 1642 reveal two chief influences; they are
realistic and satiric, following Jonson, or they are light-hearted,
lively combinations of manners and intrigue, after Fletcher. In the
former class are Massinger's two great comedies, _The City Madam_ and _A
New Way to Pay Old Debts_. To the latter class belong most of the
comedies of Shirley. Tragi-comedies follow Fletcher with the variations
due to the authors' ingenuity, and include perhaps the most attractive
plays of Massinger and Shirley. Tragedies usually mingle lust, devilish
intrigue, physical horror, after the fashion of Webster and Tourneur,
but now often with romantic variation on the theme of love, and a
technic of suspense and surprise similar to Beaumont and Fletcher. These
are the main tendencies in the last twenty years of the drama, and
characterize in the large the work of the greater men as well as of the
less. Shakespeare's influence is widespread, but appears incidentally in
particular scene, situation, character, or phrase, rather than as
affecting the main course and fashions of the drama. After the
publication of his plays in 1623, this incidental influence increased,
and is distinctly noticeable in the plays of Ford and Shirley.
[Page Heading: Pastoral and Masque]
A glance must suffice for two dramatic forms that had only slight
connection with the public theaters, the Pastoral Play and the Court
Masque. Pastoral elements are found in many early entertainments and in
the plays of Lyly and Peele. Later, in imitation of Guarini's _Il Pastor
Fido_, attempts were made to inaugurate a pastoral drama, presenting a
full-fledged dramatic exposition of the golden age. Daniel's _Queen's
Arcadia_ (1605) and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_ (1609) had many
later followers, but the form won no permanent hold on the popular
taste. Traces of its influence, however, may often be seen, as in
Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, or Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_.
The masque, originally only a masquerade, soon acquired some dramatic
accompaniment, and in the court of James I developed into an elaborate
form of entertainment. The masked dance of the ladies and gentlemen of
the court was merely the focus for dialogue, elaborate setting,
spectacle, music, and grotesque dances by professionals. These shows,
costing vast sums for staging, costumes, and music, depended for their
success mainly on the architect Inigo Jones, but in some degree also on
Ben Jonson, who was the creator of the Court Masque as a literary form.
Such expensive spectacles were far beyond the reach of the public
theater, but provoked considerable imitation, as in Shakespeare's
_Tempest_, or several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. Later Milton
immortalized the form in _Comus_.
The most hasty review of the Elizabethan drama must suggest how
constantly Shakespeare responded to its prevailing conditions. There
are, of course, great variations in the signs which different plays
offer of contemporary influence and peculiarity. So it is with most of
his fellow dramatists. _Lear_ and _Othello_ were perhaps written within
the same year, yet _Othello_, in its unity, its technical excellence,
and its depiction of character, is the most modern of the tragedies,
while _Lear_, with its impossible story, its horrors, its treatment of
madness, its likeness to the chronicle plays, its prolonged passage from
crisis to catastrophe, in its very conception, is the most Elizabethan,
though perhaps the most impressive of the tragedies. _Twelfth Night_ is
suited to any stage, but _Troilus and Cressida_ and _Pericles_ are
hardly conceivable except on the Elizabethan. Despite such variations,
however, Shakespeare's relations to the contemporary drama were
manifestly constant and immediate. If it was rarely a question with him
what the ancients had written, it was always a question what was being
acted and what was successful at the moment. His own growth in dramatic
power goes step by step with the rapid and varied development of the
drama, and the measure for comparison must be, not by decades, but by
years or months.
[Page Heading: Shakespeare and His Contemporaries]
A study of the Elizabethan drama may help to excuse some of the faults
and limitations of Shakespeare, but it also enforces his merits. Both
faults and merits are often to be understood in the efforts of lesser
men to do what he did. We admire his triumphs the more as we consider
their failures. Yet they often had admirable success, and their triumphs
as well as his are due in part to the dramatic conditions which gave the
freest opportunity for individual initiative in language, verse, story,
and construction. Noble bursts of poetry, richness and variety of life,
an intense interest in human nature, comic or tragic--these are the
great merits of that drama. That in a superlative degree they are also
the characteristics of Shakespeare is not due solely to his exceptional
genius, but to the fact that his genius worked in a favorable
environment.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL SHAKESPEREAN STAGE
From Albright's _Shaksperian Stage_]