And yet, at first, he devoted himself to the drama; he wrote
twenty-seven pieces, and signed an agreement with the actors of the
King's Theatre to supply them with three every year. The theatre,
forbidden under the Commonwealth, had just reopened with extraordinary
magnificence and success. The rich scenes made movable, the women's
parts no longer played by boys, but by women, the novel and splendid
wax-lights, the machinery, the recent popularity of actors who had
become heroes of fashion, the scandalous importance of the actresses,
who were mistresses of the aristocracy and of the king, the example of
the court and the imitation of France, drew spectators in crowds. The
thirst for pleasure, long repressed, knew no bounds. Men indemnified
themselves for the long abstinence imposed by fanatical Puritans; eyes
and ears, disgusted with gloomy faces, nasal pronunciation, official
ejaculations on sin and damnation, satiated themselves with sweet
singing, sparkling dress, the seduction of voluptuous dances. They
wished to enjoy life, and that in a new fashion; for a new world, that
of the courtiers and the idle, had been formed. The abolition of feudal
tenures, the vast increase of commerce and wealth, the concourse of
landed proprietors, who let their lands and came to London to enjoy the
pleasures of the town and to court the favors of the king, had installed
on the summit of society, in England as well as in France, rank,
authority, the manners and tastes of the world of fashion, of the idle,
the drawing-room frequenters, lovers of pleasure, conversation, wit, and
polish, occupied with the piece in vogue, less to amuse themselves than
to criticise it. Thus was Dryden's drama built up; the poet, greedy of
glory and pressed for money, found here both money and glory, and was
half an innovator, with a large reinforcement of theories and prefaces,
diverging from the old English drama, approaching the new French
tragedy, attempting a compromise between classical eloquence and
romantic truth, accommodating himself as well as he could to the new
public, which paid and applauded him.
"The language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and
refined above the last.... Let us consider in what the refinement of a
language principally consists; that is, 'either in rejecting such old
words, or phrases, which are ill-sounding or improper; or in admitting
new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant.' ...
Let any man who understands English, read diligently the works of
Shakspeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake, that he will find in
every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in
sense.... Many of (their plots) were made of some ridiculous, incoherent
story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I
suppose I need not name 'Pericles Prince of Tyre,' nor the historical
plays of Shakspeare; besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,
Love's Labour Lost, Measure for Measure,' which were either grounded on
impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither
caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.... I could
easily demonstrate, that our admired Fletcher neither understood correct
plotting, nor that which they call the decorum of the stage.... The
reader will see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy,
to save himself.... And for his shepherd he falls twice into the former
indecency of wounding women."[380]
Fletcher nowhere permits kings to retain a dignity suited to kings.
Moreover, the action of these authors' plays is always barbarous. They
introduce battles on the stage; they transport the scene in a moment to
a distance of twenty years or five hundred leagues, and a score of times
consecutively in one act; they jumble together three or four different
actions, especially in the historical dramas. But they sin most in
style. Dryden says of Shakespeare: "Many of his words, and more of his
phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some
are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered
with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is
obscure."[381] Ben Jonson himself often has bad plots, redundancies,
barbarisms: "Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation,
was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it."[382] All, in short,
descend to quibbles, low and common expressions: "In the age wherein
those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours.... Besides
the want of education and learning, they wanted the benefit of
converse.... Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each
other; and, though they allow Cob and Tibb to speak properly, yet they
are not much pleased with their tankard, or with their rags."[383] For
these gentlemen we must now write, and especially for "reasonable men";
for it is not enough to have wit or to love tragedy, in order to be a
good critic: we must possess sound knowledge and a lofty reason, know
Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and pronounce judgment according to their
rules.[384] These rules, based upon observation and logic, prescribe
unity of action; that this action should have a beginning, middle, and
end; that its parts should proceed naturally one from the other; that it
should excite terror and pity, so as to instruct and improve us; that
the characters should be distinct, harmonious, conformable with
tradition or the design of the poet. Such, says Dryden, will be the new
tragedy, closely allied, it seems, to the French, especially as he
quotes Bossu and Rapin, as if he took them for instructors.
Yet it differs from it, and Dryden enumerates all that an English pit
can blame on the French stage. He says:
"The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not
of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is
imitation of humour and passions.... He who will look upon their plays
which have been written till these last ten years, or thereabouts, will
find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst
them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except
the 'Liar'? and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it came
upon the English stage, though well translated,... the most favourable
to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben
Jonson's.... Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read,...
their speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to
be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced,
to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the 'Cinna' and the
'Pompey'; they are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses
of reasons of state; and 'Polieucte,' in matters of religion is as
solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since that time it is grown
into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our
parsons.... I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French;
for as we who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our
plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make
themselves more serious."[385]
As for the tumults and combats which the French relegate behind the
scenes, "nature has so formed our countrymen to fierceness,... they will
scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to be taken from
them."[386] Thus the French, by fettering themselves with these
scruples,[387] and confining themselves in their unities and their
rules, have removed action from their stage, and brought themselves down
to unbearable monotony and dryness. They lack originality, naturalness,
variety, fulness.
"... Contented to be thinly regular:...
Their tongue, enfeebled, is refined too much,
And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch.
Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey,
More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay."[388]
Let them laugh as much as they like at Fletcher and Shakespeare; there
is in them "a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing
than there is in any of the French."
Though exaggerated, this criticism is good; and because it is good, I
mistrust the works which the writer is to produce. It is dangerous for
an artist to be excellent in theory; the creative spirit is hardly
consonant with the criticising spirit: he who, quietly seated on the
shore, discusses and compares, is hardly capable of plunging straight
and boldly into the stormy sea of invention. Moreover, Dryden holds
himself too evenly poised betwixt the moods; original artists love
exclusively and unjustly a certain idea and a certain world; the rest
disappears from their eyes; confined to one region of art, they deny or
scorn the other; it is because they are limited that they are strong. We
see beforehand that Dryden, pushed one way by his English mind, will be
drawn another way by his French rules; that he will alternately venture
and partly restrain himself; that he will attain mediocrity; that is,
platitude; that his faults will be incongruities; that is, absurdities.
All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
from without: it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
from elsewhere; it constitutes an inviolable whole; it is an animated
existence, which lives on its own blood, and which languishes or dies if
deprived of some of its blood and supplied from the veins of another.
Shakespeare's imagination cannot be guided by Racine's reason, nor
Racine's reason be exalted by Shakespeare's imagination; each is good in
itself, and excludes its rival; to unite them would be to produce a
bastard, a weakling, and a monster. Disorder, violent and sudden action,
harsh words, horror, depth, truth, exact imitation of reality, and the
lawless outbursts of mad passions--these features of Shakespeare become
each other. Order, measure, eloquence, aristocratic refinement, worldly
urbanity, exquisite painting of delicacy and virtue, all Racine's
features suit each other. It would destroy the one to attenuate, the
other to inflame him. Their whole being and beauty consist in the
agreement of their parts: to mar this agreement would be to abolish
their being and their beauty. In order to produce, we must invent a
personal and harmonious conception: we must not mingle two strange and
opposite ones. Dryden has left undone what he should have done, and has
done what he should not have done.
He had, moreover, the worst of audiences, debauched and frivolous, void
of individual taste, floundering amid confused recollections of the
national literature and deformed imitations of foreign literature,
expecting nothing from the stage but the pleasure of the senses or the
gratification of curiosity. In reality, the drama, like every work of
art, only gives life and truth to a profound ideal of man and of
existence; there is a hidden philosophy under its circumvolutions and
violences, and the public ought to be capable of comprehending it, as
the poet is of conceiving it. The audience must have reflected or felt
with energy or refinement, in order to take in energetic or refined
thoughts; Hamlet and Iphigénie will never move a vulgar roisterer or a
lover of money. The character who weeps on the stage only rehearses our
own tears; our interest is but sympathy; and the drama is like an
external conscience, which shows us what we are, what we love, what we
have felt. What could the drama teach to gamesters like St. Albans,
drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old boys like
Charles II? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable even
of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarians in their
sports, obscene in words, void of honor, humanity, politeness, who made
the court a house of ill-fame! The splendid decorations, change of
scenes, the patter of long verse and forced sentiments, the observance
of a few rules imported from Paris--such was the natural food of their
vanity and folly, and such the theatre of the English Restoration.
I take one of Dryden's tragedies, very celebrated in time past,
"Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr";--a fine title, and fit to make a
stir. The royal martyr is St. Catharine, a princess of royal blood as it
appears, who is brought before the tyrant Maximin. She confesses her
faith, and a pagan philosopher, Apollonius, is set loose against her, to
refute her. Maximin says:
"War is my province!--Priest, why stand you mute?
You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute."
Thus encouraged, the priest argues; but St. Catharine replies in the
following words:
"... Reason with your fond religion fights,
For many gods are many infinites;
This to the first philosophers was known,
Who, under various names, ador'd but one."[389]
Apollonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are
great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician
immediately replies:
"Then let the whole dispute concluded be
Betwixt these rules, and Christianity."[390]
Being nonplussed, Apollonius is converted on the spot, insults the
prince, who, finding St. Catharine very beautiful, becomes suddenly
enamored, and makes jokes:
"Absent, I may her martyrdom decree,
But one look more will make that martyr me."[391]
In this dilemma he sends Placidius, "a great officer," to St. Catharine;
the great officer quotes and praises the gods of Epicurus; forthwith the
lady propounds the doctrine of final causes, which upsets that of atoms.
Maximin comes himself, and says:
"Since you neglect to answer my desires,
Know, princess, you shall burn in other fires."[392]
Thereupon she beards and defies him, calls him a slave, and walks off.
Touched by these delicate manners, he wishes to marry her lawfully, and
to repudiate his wife. Still, to omit no expedient, he employs a
magician, who utters invocations (on the stage), summons the infernal
spirits, and brings up a troop of spirits; these dance and sing
voluptuous songs about the bed of St. Catharine. Her guardian-angel
comes and drives them away. As a last resource, Maximin has a wheel
brought on the stage, on which to expose St. Catharine and her mother.
Whilst the executioners are going to strip the saint, a modest angel
descends in the nick of time, and breaks the wheel; after which the
ladies are carried off, and their throats are cut behind the wings. Add
to these pretty inventions a twofold intrigue, the love of Maximin's
daughter, Valeria, for Porphyrius, captain of the Prætorian bands, and
that of Porphyrius for Berenice, Maximin's wife; then a sudden
catastrophe, three deaths, and the triumph of the good people, who get
married and interchange polite phrases. Such is this tragedy, which is
called French-like; and most of the others are like it. In "Secret
Love," in "Marriage à la Mode," in "Aureng-Zebe," in the "Indian
Emperor," and especially in the "Conquest of Granada," everything is
extravagant. People cut one another to pieces, take towns, stab each
other, shout lustily. These dramas have just the truth and naturalness
of the libretto of an opera. Incantations abound; a spirit appears in
the "Indian Emperor," and declares that the Indian gods "are driven to
exile from their native lands." Ballets are also there; Vasquez and
Pizarro, seated in "a pleasant grotto," watch like conquerors the dances
of the Indian girls, who gambol voluptuously about them. Scenes worthy
of Lulli[393] are not wanting; Almeria, like Armide, comes to slay
Cortez in his sleep, and suddenly falls in love with him. Yet the
libretti of the opera have no incongruities; they avoid all which might
shock the imagination or the eyes; they are written for men of taste,
who shun ugliness and heaviness of any sort. Would you believe it? In
the "Indian Emperor," Montezuma is tortured on the stage, and to cap
all, a priest tries to convert him in the mean while.[394] I recognize
in this frightful pedantry the handsome cavaliers of the time, logicians
and hangmen, who fed on controversy, and for the sake of amusement went
to look at the tortures of the Puritans. I recognize behind these heaps
of improbabilities and adventures the puerile and worn-out courtiers,
who, sodden with wine, were past seeing incongruities, and whose nerves
were only stirred by startling surprises and barbarous events.
Let us go still further. Dryden would set up on his stage the beauties
of French tragedy, and in the first place its nobility of sentiment. Is
it enough to copy, as he does, phrases of chivalry? He would need a
whole world, for a whole world is necessary to form noble souls. Virtue,
in the French tragic poets, is based on reason, religion, education,
philosophy. Their characters have that uprightness of mind, that
clearness of logic, that lofty judgment, which plant in a man settled
maxims and self-government. We perceive in their company the doctrines
of Bossuet and Descartes; with them, reflection aids conscience; the
habits of society add tact and finesse. The avoidance of violent actions
and physical horrors, the proportion and order of the fable, the art of
disguising or shunning coarse or low persons, the continuous perfection
of the most measured and noble style, everything contributes to raise
the stage to a sublime region, and we believe in higher souls by seeing
them in a purer air. Can we believe in them in Dryden? Frightful or
infamous characters every instant drag us down by their coarse
expressions in their own mire. Maximin, having stabbed Placidius, sits
on his body, stabs him twice more, and says to the guards:
"Bring me Porphyrius and my empress dead:--
I would brave heaven, in my each hand a head."[395]
Nourmahal, repulsed by her husband's son, insists four times, using such
indecent and pedantic words as the following:
"And why this niceness to that pleasure shown,
Where nature sums up all her joys in one....
Promiscuous love is nature's general law;
For whosoever the first lovers were,
Brother and sister made the second pair,
And doubled by their love their piety....
You must be mine, that you may learn to live."[396]
Illusion vanishes at once; instead of being in a room with noble
characters, we meet with a mad prostitute and a drunken savage. When we
lift the masks the others are little better. Almeria, to whom a crown is
offered, says insolently:
"I take this garland, not as given by you,
But as my merit, and my beauty's due."[397]
Indamora, to whom an old courtier makes love, settles him with the
boastfulness of an upstart and the coarseness of a kitchen-maid:
"Were I no queen, did you my beauty weigh,
My youth in bloom, your age in its decay."[398]
None of these heroines know how to conduct themselves; they look on
impertinence as dignity, sensuality as tenderness; they have the
recklessness of the courtesan, the jealousies of the grisette, the
pettiness of a chapman's wife, the billingsgate of a fish-woman. The
heroes are the most unpleasant of swash-bucklers. Leonidas, first
recognized as hereditary prince, then suddenly forsaken, consoles
himself with this modest reflection:
"'Tis true I am alone.
So was the godhead, ere he made the world,
And better served himself than served by nature.
... I have scene enough within
To exercise my virtue."[399]
Shall I speak of that great trumpet-blower Almanzor, painted, as Dryden
confesses, after Artaban,[400] a redresser of wrongs, a
battalion-smiter, a destroyer of kingdoms?[401] We find nothing but
overcharged sentiments, sudden devotedness, exaggerated generosities,
high-sounding bathos of a clumsy chivalry; at bottom the characters are
clods and barbarians, who have tried to deck themselves in French honor
and fashionable politeness. And such, in fact, was the English court: it
imitated that of Louis XIV as a sign-painter imitates an artist. It had
neither taste nor refinement, and wished to appear as if it possessed
them. Panders and licentious women, ruffianly or butchering courtiers,
who went to see Harrison drawn, or to mutilate Coventry, maids of honor
who have awkward accidents at a ball, or sell to the planters the
convicts presented to them, a palace full of baying dogs and bawling
gamesters, a king who would bandy obscenities in public with his
half-naked mistresses[402]--such was the illustrious society; from
French modes they took but dress, from French noble sentiments but
high-sounding words.