I
In 1581 Sir Philip Sidney praised the tragedy of _Gorboduc_, which he had
seen acted by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, because it was "full of
stately speeches and well-sounding phrases." A few years later the young
poet, Christopher Marlowe, promised the audience of his initial tragedy
that they should "hear the Scythian Tamburlaine threatening the world with
high astounding terms." These two statements are indicative of the tenor of
Elizabethan plays. _Gorboduc_, to be sure, was a ponderous piece, made
according to the pseudo-classical fashion that soon went out of favor;
while _Tamburlaine the Great_ was triumphant with the drums and tramplings
of romance. The two plays were diametrically opposed in method; but they
had this in common: each was full of stately speeches and of high
astounding terms.
Nearly a century later, in 1670, John Dryden added to the second part of
his _Conquest of Granada_ an epilogue in which he criticised adversely the
dramatists of the elder age. Speaking of Ben Jonson and his contemporaries,
he said:
But were they now to write, when critics weigh
Each line, and every word, throughout a play,
None of them, no, not Jonson in his height,
Could pass without allowing grains for weight.
* * * * *
Wit's now arrived to a more high degree;
Our native language more refined and free:
Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
In conversation than those poets writ.
This criticism was characteristic of a new era that was dawning in the
English drama, during which a playwright could hope for no greater glory
than to be praised for the brilliancy of his dialogue or the smartness of
his repartee.
At the present day, if you ask the average theatre-goer about the merits of
the play that he has lately witnessed, he will praise it not for its
stately speeches nor its clever repartee, but because its presentation was
"so natural." He will tell you that _A Woman's Way_ gave an apt and
admirable reproduction of contemporary manners in New York; he will mention
the make of the automobile that went chug-chugging off the stage at the
second curtain-fall of _Man and Superman_, or he will assure you that
_Lincoln_ made him feel the very presence of the martyred President his
father actually saw.
These different classes of comments give evidence of three distinct steps
in the evolution of the English drama. During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries it was essentially a Drama of Rhetoric; throughout the eighteenth
century it was mainly a Drama of Conversation; and during the nineteenth
century it has grown to be a Drama of Illusion. During the first period it
aimed at poetic power, during the second at brilliancy of dialogue, and
during the third at naturalness of representment. Throughout the last three
centuries, the gradual perfecting of the physical conditions of the theatre
has made possible the Drama of Illusion; the conventions of the actor's art
have undergone a similar progression; and at the same time the change in
the taste of the theatre-going public has made a well-sustained illusion a
condition precedent to success upon the modern stage.