THE MEDIEVAL AND THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCES
English tragedy makes its appearance at the very beginning of Elizabeth's
reign. In the Middle Ages nearly all knowledge of the drama of the Greeks
and Romans was lost, and the medieval drama developed without aid from
classical precedents or models. It resulted in various forms, of which the
miracles and the moralities were the most important, but it produced
nothing either in form or matter closely resembling classical tragedy or
comedy, and manifested no evolution toward corresponding divisions of the
drama. The Renaissance gave to the world the plays of Seneca, Plautus, and
the Athenian dramatists, and, after a time, some knowledge of the classical
theatre and dramatic art; then, through the imitation of these models and
also through the innovations and experiments which they suggested, the
influence of humanism came in conflict with that of medievalism throughout
Europe, in the drama as in other fields of literature. In England this
conflict was still active at the middle of the sixteenth century. Miracle
plays were still performed after long established fashion, and moralities
continued the most important and numerous species of drama; but in Latin
imitations of the classical drama, in the theatrical activity of the
schools and universities, and in the various developments of moralities,
interludes, school-plays, and pageants, there were signs of a breaking away
from old courses and of the adoption of new models, of the emergence of
English comedy and tragedy as definite dramatic forms. Tragedy in England
as elsewhere developed later and more slowly than comedy, but two years
after Elizabeth's accession the first English tragedy that has been
preserved was performed, and "Gorboduc" thus becomes the starting-point for
a history of English tragedy.
Modern tragedy, born in the Renaissance, the product of the germinating
conflict of medieval and humanistic ideas and models, has never altogether
lost the marks of its heritage from both lines of ancestry. Elizabethan
tragedy, in particular, reveals in every lineament, in its scenic
presentation, its methods of acting, its themes, structure, characters,
style, theory, and artistic impulses, the influences both of the long
centuries of medieval drama and also of the inspiration of the classics and
the freer opportunity for individual effort which resulted from humanism.
At the beginning we must attempt to separate and define these dominant
influences.
The contribution from the Middle Ages came largely from the religious
drama. The folk games and plays and the performances of entertainers of
various sorts contributed to the development of the drama principally on
the side of comedy, and only incidentally to tragedy. Nor need the early
centuries of the religious drama detain us. Its origin in the church
service, its early liturgical forms, its growth and service in the hands of
the church, and its gradual secularization are of importance for us only as
leading to its culmination in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; in
England notably in the great cycles of vernacular plays performed by the
guilds. It should be remembered, however, that the miracle plays never felt
the least influence from the drama of the Greeks and Romans. Knowledge of
the classic drama was long confined mainly to the plays of Terence, and
suggested even to the most learned no idea of relationship to the familiar
miracle plays; and, on the other hand, the medieval stage gave no clue to a
conception of the classical theatre. As late as Erasmus the curious notion
survived that the classic plays were read by the author or a "recitator"
from a pulpit above, while below the actors illustrated his lines by
pantomime. Almost to the middle of the fifteenth century the miracle plays
comprised all that was known of stage presentation in connection with
serious drama. They were still performed through the sixteenth century; the
boy Shakespeare may have been a spectator at a performance by the guilds;
his father and grandfather and remoter forebears had seen them or perchance
taken part in them. It was this abundant dramatic practice and ancient
dramatic tradition that gave to Elizabethan England its fondness for
play-acting, its recourse to the theatre for both amusement and
edification, and the acceptance of the drama as an important factor in its
daily life.
A glance at some of the most notable differences of the miracles from
classical plays reveals traits that remained potent in later drama. The
miracles took their material from the Bible or from some saint's life, and
their purpose was to make this material significant and impressive. They
were, in fact, essentially translations of prose narratives into dramatic
dialogue. Renaissance drama sought different material, but it found
classical authority for basing tragedies on history, and so gave support to
the medieval method of translation. In the Elizabethan period, dramatists
rarely attempted the invention of their plots, but adopted and adhered to
narrative sources. While they never suffered from the narrow
conventionality imposed upon the authors of the miracles by the authority
of the holy writ, yet something of the medieval subjection to sources was
long manifest both in form and content. It is necessary to view the dramas
of Shakespeare and all his predecessors as translations into dramatic form
of stories already told in verse or prose.
Because of their close adherence to sources and their distinctly expository
purpose, the medieval dramatists made little or no distinction between what
was suited for the stage and what was not. Their duty was primarily to
present the narrative; and, though individual initiative might add
something interesting or amusing, nothing in the Bible seemed unsuitable to
presentation on the stage, and nothing that would aid its meaning seemed
unsuitable for a drama. There was no thought of restricting a play to the
presentation of one crisis or a single action, and there was consequently
no possibility of an approach to anything like the structure of classical
tragedy. The dramatist might take advantage of the dramatic value of a
given situation like the sacrifice of Isaac, or he might make a series of
plays lead up to the great events of the redemption, but he was blind to
any opportunity to abstract from the narrative the events that dealt with
an emotional crisis and to focus them upon that as the centre of a dramatic
structure. There was no notion whatever of the difference between a
narrative fable and a dramatic fable. Dramatic unity and values in a
miracle play, on the tragic side at least, were usually the direct results
of the narrative; unity on a larger scale in the cycle was the unity of
history or of exposition, not of the drama. Such was the form which the
Elizabethan drama inherited, and to the end the form of Elizabethan tragedy
continued a development from medieval tradition and practice, not only in
its failure to adopt the unities, the chorus, and other peculiarities of
classical structure, but, more essentially, in its continued inability to
restrict the story provided by a narrative source to the limits of a
dramatic fable. Its final attainment of an organic structure, though
promoted in part by the regularizing influence of classical theory and
example, was in the main conditioned by the absence of dramaturgical
restrictions, permitting an epic variety of events, the lack of which
Aristotle had lamented in Greek tragedy, and by the consequent opportunity
for a free and characteristic development.
From the medieval drama the Elizabethans inherited not only dramatic form,
but an entire method of stage presentation different from the classical.
The typical medieval stage, whether in the form of the procession of
pageants or the inclosed place with the stations for the various actors,
had, indeed, given way to something much more like the modern platform,
even before the production of "Gorboduc"; but in most particulars, in the
importance placed upon costume, the historical anachronisms, the crudity
but frequency of spectacle, and especially in the entire liberty as to what
should be presented, medieval ideas still prevailed. In the miracle plays,
heaven, hell, God, the devil, Noah's flood, the fall of Lucifer, and the
Maries at the cross were all acted. The Elizabethan theatre showed scarcely
less temerity.
Another far-reaching inheritance from the miracle plays was derived from
their treatment of tragic themes and situations and from their pervading
seriousness of purpose. Their purpose was ethical and religious
edification; their theme the tragedy of sin; their situations were derived
from the stories of Cain, Lucifer, Judas, John the Baptist, the Slaughter
of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion. If no formal tragedy resulted, and
if in inculcating the triumph of righteousness the stories of the worthies
and the martyrdoms of the saints took rather the cast of tragicomedy, it
was nevertheless of great significance for later tragedy that, generations
before Seneca became known with his bloody stories and sententious
philosophy, the drama had been the vehicle for ethical instruction and for
the presentation of the most terrible and pitiful events. The miracle plays
had long familiarized men with tragic action, tragic conceptions in the
drama, and tragic power in the treatment of situation.
The tragic was often mingled with the comic. The dramatists mixed
edification with amusement. The restraints of the sacred narrative were
thrown aside for a moment, and in Herod, or Noah's wife, or the shepherds
awaiting the announcement of the birth of the Messiah, opportunities were
taken for the introduction of realistic portraiture of contemporary life.
Horse-play and buffoonery or racy comedy often contrasted incongruously
with events of momentous importance. This mixture of the comic and tragic
survived in the popular drama despite the opposition of the humanists. It
was indeed characteristic of medieval and Elizabethan manners and taste,
and marks another important departure from classical precedent. We to-day
are perhaps as near to the Athenians as to the Elizabethans in this
respect. At all events, for the appreciation of Elizabethan tragedy, we
sometimes need to reassert a childish and uncultivated disregard for the
rapid changes of emotional tone, a liking for tears and laughter close
together; or, perhaps there is ground for saying, we need to recognize the
validity of the medieval taste for a comic contrast and relief in tragedy,
and to accept in art the incongruities and grotesqueness of actual life.
To the moralities, the second important species of drama in the later
Middle Ages, the debt of English tragedy is more explicit than to the
miracles, but not more essential. It is not more essential, because the
moralities were in a way the successors and the substitutes for the
miracles and contributed largely to the same effects. They were devoted to
a serious purpose and presented tragic situations with a free admixture of
comedy, and they continued many of the older traditions of stage
performance and undramatic form. They differed from the miracles chiefly in
that, like so much of medieval literature, they offered not a direct but a
symbolic presentation of life. Instead of the Bible narrative, they
presented the strife of vices and virtues; instead of real persons,
personified abstractions. This change from individual characters to
abstract qualities has usually been regarded as a retrogression by modern
students, who deem the study of the motives of individual men and women as
essential to the drama. But we have lately been reminded that on the stage
it makes little difference whether an actor is called William or Everyman;
and the attempt at the symbolization of life offered an opportunity for
freedom of invention and freshness of emotional effect that in the miracles
had been smothered by the stereotyped repetition of the Bible narrative.
The temptation and suffering of the good, the temporary triumph of the
evil, and the punishment that overtakes even the mighty were themes which
the miracle had confused with many others. The morality gave them dramatic
isolation and emphasis.
Moreover, in substituting for a translation of the Bible narrative the
symbolization of life as a conflict between folly and wisdom, or the vices
and virtues, or the body and the soul, the moralities gave importance to
one of the most essential elements in tragedy, that of moral strife. The
world is a battlefield, the soul is beleaguered, the play is a conflict;
and with this element of conflict there arises the opportunity for dramatic
structure. If the story is of strife, there is likely to be a moment when
the victory hangs in the balance; a reversal of fortune is implied; there
is a chance for a rise and fall, a definite beginning, middle, and end. The
moral conflict, moreover, encourages a study of human motive, of cause and
effect in human action. In some of these plays, as "The Pride of Life,"
"Everyman," "The Nice Wanton," the consequences of evil are clearly traced,
and the action is representative not only of the conflict of good and evil
in the universe, but of the battle of will in the individual. Evidently
such plays are near relations of tragedy. They at least made plain to their
successors the importance of the conflict of good and evil as a dramatic
theme. Their text, the wages of sin are death, has continued to be an
essential part of the conception of tragedy.
The moralities, however, on the whole, made little advance, either in
escape from conventionality, or in creation of structure, or in dramatic
expression of the conflicts of will. They clung in the main to the dominant
and already conventionalized allegory of the Middle Ages, the presentation
of life as a conflict of body and soul, although they made interesting
excursions into the fields of pedagogy and religious controversy. This
allegory they treated with intense didacticism, sacrificing all dramatic
interest to enforce the lesson, though in their later days the sermons were
very generously mixed with farce. Their importance and explicit
contribution to English tragedy arose from their historical position just
at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
They then served as a transition species, conforming, by a reduction in
length and in the number of actors, to the conditions of performance which
marked the change from the medieval stage to the Elizabethan theatre;
amalgamating under humanistic influence now with this type of play, now
with that; and imposing for a time their distinctive form and methods on
the emerging types of comedy and tragedy. Some of the earliest tragedies,
as we shall see, were direct developments from the moralities, and the
influence of the peculiarities of the morality was for a while definite and
considerable. But it soon disappeared under the demands of a new theatre
and the innovations of a new art.
The inheritance of tragedy from the Middle Ages includes an important
legacy from literature entirely apart from the drama. In the separation of
the medieval world from the classic, the terms tragedy and comedy ceased to
be connected with scenic presentation, and were extended to cover all forms
of narrative, whether in dialogue or not. The distinction between the two,
though varying somewhat in the different lexicographers and
encyclopedists, gradually arrived at an agreement which continued to affect
ideas throughout the Renaissance. There was some insistence on the
restrictions that tragedy dealt with history, and comedy with fiction;
tragedy with exiles, murders, important and horrible deeds, and comedy with
more domestic themes or with love and seduction. There was more general
agreement that tragedy dealt with persons of rank and importance, kings or
great leaders, and comedy with persons of low or middle rank, and that
tragedy required a more elevated and ornamented style than comedy. The most
important difference, however, was held to lie in the distinction that
comedy begins unhappily and proceeds to a happy conclusion, while tragedy
begins prosperously and ends miserably and terribly. Thus Dante's poem was
a Divine Comedy, and Chaucer in the Monk's Prologue summed up the accepted
opinion of the scholarship of his day.
"Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bokes maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly."
These criteria for tragedy were fixed in the consciousness of the sixteenth
century; and, though gradually correlated and amalgamated with criticism
based on the newly found "Poetics," they continued to influence the theory
and practice of the drama. Fitting these definitions and greatly increasing
their importance and vogue, collections of tragedies attained wide
popularity during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
Boccaccio's "De Casibus Illustrium Virorum et Feminarum," Chaucer's "Monk's
Tale," and Lydgate's "Falls of Princes" are examples, and, far the most
influential on English tragedy, "The Mirror for Magistrates." This
collection, first printed in 1559 and later frequently re-edited and
enlarged, suggested many themes for the historical drama. Elizabethan
playwrights seeking for tragic stories turned naturally to this most famous
collection of "tragedies" in the medieval sense. Consequently, the very
idea of tragedy continued to carry the connotation of a sudden reversal of
fortune, the fall of princes. Tragedy, indeed, has always remained very
largely devoted to themes "de casibus illustrium virorum et feminarum."
Turning now from the influence of medievalism to that of humanism, we may
remember that in the drama even more than elsewhere humanism denotes a
revolution in the spirit of the age, an emancipation of the individual mind
from the fetters that had bound intellect and imagination through the
Middle Ages. But we must deal first with one of the factors in
accomplishing this emancipation, the reawakened knowledge of classical
literature. There was some slight acquaintance with the Attic drama from
the time that Greek was first taught at Oxford; the doughty Roger Ascham
learned from his master Sir John Cheke to prefer Euripides to Seneca; and
at the time when the study of Sophocles and Euripides was occupying the
Italian dramatists, there must have been some similar response in England.
Specific instances of this, however, are few and uncertain. The Greek
dramatists seem to have exercised no appreciable direct influence on
English tragedy of the sixteenth century; nor can their influence at any
time during the seventeenth be said to have been considerable. For England,
even more exclusively than for the Continent, the classical influence on
the origin and early development of tragedy was confined to the ten plays
which Renaissance scholarship attributed to the philosopher Seneca.
Seneca's plays, probably not intended for stage presentation, were literary
exercises following the models of Greek tragedy and more especially of
Euripides. By the humanist, after he had acquired some slight knowledge of
the classical theatre, they were naturally accepted as plays actually
performed, and their artificial and elaborate diction, which is their most
conscious departure from Attic standards, was eagerly appraised as a merit.
Their themes, with the exception of that of the pseudo-Senecan "Octavia,"
are borrowed from Greek mythology, with a strong preference for the most
sensational and bloody stories of adultery, incest, the murder of parents
by their children or of children by their parents. Whatever the revolting
and bloody details, crime and its retribution make up the burden of each
story. The plays present only the last phase of an action, and consequently
open with lengthy exposition of preceding events. Much happens behind the
scenes, little on the stage; there are many narrative and lyrical scenes,
comparatively few dramatic. In comparison with the Athenian tragedies, they
seem like prolonged rhetorical discussions of the familiar legends. Their
structure involves a division into five acts, which had probably been
earlier adopted in Latin tragedy and is noted in the "Ars Poetica," and the
exclusion of the chorus from any participation in the action. It appears
usually after each of the first four acts and indulges in philosophical
reflections, hymns in praise of some deity, or lamentations. In each play a
chief person or hero can be distinguished in conflict with one or more
chief opponents; and each of the leading persons is accompanied by an
adviser or confidant, usually a faithful friend for a hero and a nurse for
the heroine. In addition to mortals, supernatural visitants, furies, gods,
and especially ghosts, have a prominence that stirred Elizabethans to
imitation. Though the presentation of character is not humanly vital, the
long speeches and soliloquies display an elaborate analysis of moods of
passion, with an absence of Athenian religion, a pagan cosmopolitanism, and
an almost modern introspection. The style and philosophy were the chief
recommendation of the plays to the Renaissance taste. Artificial, with
constant use of antithesis, stichomythia, and hyperbole, oratorical,
sonorous, bombastic, and thickly sprinkled with aphorisms and sentiments,
the style seemed to the humanists to reach the height of tragic elevation
and philosophic sententiousness.
The reasons for the almost exclusive adoption of Seneca as a model seem to
have been not only the comparative ignorance of Greek, but also the
preference of Renaissance taste for the qualities just enumerated.
Moreover, these lifeless and undramatic mixtures of rhetorical verbiage,
melodramatic situations, and endless declamations had the advantage of
being easy to imitate. In their encouragement to imitation and their
absorption of interest away from the models of Greek tragedy, there was a
danger of humanistic endeavor resulting in mere copying, a danger not
altogether escaped in Italy and France, but happily averted in England.
When, on the other hand, the characteristics of these unpromising models
are considered in comparison with the conventionality of the miracles and
moralities, they clearly offered much provocative of literary endeavor and
the development of the _genre_ of tragedy. Through them secular stories,
real persons, and dramatic plots took the place of the allegories and the
abstractions. While they encouraged the selection of such stories as
resembled the sensational myths favored by Seneca, they opened the door to
history, romance, and the whole world of classical fable. Though their
particular structure proved in the end impossible on the English stage,
they enforced the division into acts already familiarized in comedy, and
suggested the possibility of a dramatic fable in distinction from the
miracles' adherence to a narrative one. Again, their presentation of
character brought new persons, new motives, and new methods, calling
attention to drama not as an exposition of events or as an allegory of
life, but as a field for the study of human emotion. Their brilliant if
bombastic rhetoric aroused enthusiasm for the drama as literature and
poetry; and their reflective and aphoristic style encouraged an effort to
elevate tragedy above its too familiar converse with comedy into the realm
of austere philosophy. These influences, however, were general. Every
particular of Seneca's plays had its sixteenth century imitators.
The first signs of an intelligent interest in these plays appeared almost
simultaneously at the very beginning of the fourteenth century in the
commentary of the English Dominican, Nicholas Treveth, and in the study of
the circle gathered about Lovato di Lovati at Padua. One of this school,
Albertino Mussato, about 1314, wrote his "Eccerinis" on the fate of the
Paduan tyrant, Ezzelino, of the preceding century. This first of the Latin
tragedies of modern times aroused the admiration of scholars, and was
followed by many other neo-Latin imitations of Seneca. These, while keeping
to the Senecan form, often went beyond the stories of classical mythology
and chose their subjects from the Bible or from ancient or modern history.
Meanwhile neo-Latin comedy had had a beginning and was largely stimulated
by the discovery, in 1427, of twelve hitherto unknown comedies of Plautus.
All these neo-Latin plays were read and not acted; and the actual acting,
either of the classical plays or their humanistic imitations, was not
established until the close of the fifteenth century.
The knowledge of the classical drama spread after a time across the Alps,
and Terentian comedy in particular exercised a wide influence upon the
drama. Of especial interest in relation to tragedy is the new school of
neo-Latin comedy which arose about 1530 in Holland and spread over Germany
and into France. It applied Terentian style and structure to many of the
stories in the Old Testament and to the parable of the prodigal son. To its
original purpose of substituting for Terentian immorality themes edifying
for youth, it soon added a Protestant tone, and in Kirchmayer's
"Pammachius" (1538) entered the field of violent religious controversy. As
the number of these plays rapidly increased, there resulted a
secularization of treatment and the admission of Senecan as well as
Terentian influence. The stories of Judith, Susannah, Goliath, and others
gave opportunities for recourse to Senecan imitation; and in the "Jephthes"
and "Baptistes," which about 1540 George Buchanan wrote at Bordeaux for his
students to act, we have the first tragedies north of the Alps written in
distinctly classical form,--a form, it should be said, derived from his
study and translation of Euripides as well as from Seneca.
Seneca's preeminence as a model for tragedy, however, was in general not
contested, but rather increased by the growing knowledge of Euripides and
Sophocles. By the end of the fifteenth century there had been many
translations of his plays in Italy; they were studied in the schools, and
some had been given stage presentation. But the idea of a vernacular
tragedy on the Senecan model was not put into effect until Trissino's
"Sophonisba," written in 1515. This was followed by others, until by the
time of "Gorboduc" Senecan tragedy in Italian was an established form, and
Jodelle's "Cleopatre Captive" (1552) had marked the beginning of the
Senecan _genre_ in France. The Italian tragedy had also introduced some
departures, in the choice of romantic material and in the innovation of
"tragicomedy," which supplied the Senecan model with a happy ending. But
all these writers of tragedy worked with a common purpose, to revive
Senecan drama in their own day, and their plays adapted their themes and
methods to the Senecan model with the faithfulness of disciples. These
Senecan imitations, it should be noted, were designed for special
performances under academic or courtly auspices, and not for the popular
theatre.
In England during the first half of the sixteenth century there was a
repetition of the inter-influence between the still flourishing forms of
medieval drama and the new classical models which we have noted on the
Continent. The early Renaissance in the reign of Henry VIII awakened an
interest in Seneca; and the fragment of an English play introducing Lucrece
has suggested to Mr. Chambers the possibility of an essay at Senecan
tragedy thirty years before "Gorboduc." The main force of the humanistic
influence seems, however, to have been in the direction of comedy. The
drama was no longer confined to popular open-air presentations, but found a
place at court, in the halls of noblemen, and especially at the schools
and universities, where the comedies of Plautus and Terence and imitations
both in Latin and English were frequently acted. The influence of the
classical plays themselves and of the neo-Latin school and the
controversial dramas of the Continent upon English moralities and
interludes was extensive and distinct. This led to a multiplication and
confusion of dramatic types out of which comedy emerged in such plays as
"Gammer Gurton's Needle" and "Ralph Roister Doister." In Latin, but not in
English, we can trace a similar movement toward tragedy. We hear of a
"Dido" written by Ritwyse, master of St. Paul's, and performed by his
pupils some time in the decade preceding 1532. "Absalon," written by Thomas
Watson probably in the following decade, was highly praised by Roger
Ascham, and, if it be identical with the play now in manuscript in the
British Museum, is an example of biblical drama along Senecan lines. A
non-extant "Jephthes" by Christopherson (1546), the "Archipropheta," with a
romantic love episode and a clown, written by Grimald and acted at Oxford
in 1547, and his "Christus Redivivus" published in 1543 as a "comoedia
tragica," all belong to the same mixed species. A representative of the
controversial drama appears in John Foxe's "Christus Triumphans" about
1550, which drew much from the famous "Pammachius," already translated by
Bale and acted at Oxford to the great scandal of Gardiner. Of plays in the
vernacular we hear of a few called tragedies, but the term was used without
any exactness, and no extant play has any just claim to the title. Ten
tragedies and comedies are attributed by Bale to Ralph Radcliffe, a
pedagogue, who in 1538 opened a theatre in his schoolhouse and gave plays
before the 'plebs.' Some of these were certainly in Latin, but some may
have been in English, and the titles are interesting as emphasizing again
the prevailing humanistic influences. Of the tragedies, two, "The Burning
of Sodom" and "The Delivery of Susannah," are on biblical themes evidently
chosen for the purpose of edification; the third, "The Condemnation of John
Huss," suggests the controversial type. Of the comedies, four have biblical
themes, while three, "Patient Griselda," "Meliboeus," and "Titus and
Gisippus," indicate the growing search for secular and even romantic
themes. In this confusion of many species of drama, created by a mixture of
medieval and humanistic influences, there is at least no clear evidence of
any English tragedy on Senecan lines before "Gorboduc." Of the development
of the moralities toward tragedy, of which signs are not lacking, we get
the clearest examples in plays a little later, which will be treated in the
next chapter.
Special notice, however, must here be paid to one morality and the dramatic
activity of its author. John Bale, born 1495, a converted Carmelite who
became bishop under Edward VI and an exile during the reign of Mary, and
who died not long after the accession of Elizabeth, was one of the most
vigorous of Protestant controversialists and apparently the leader of what
may be called the Protestant drama. His forty-six plays "in idiomate
materno" seem to have been intended for presentation, and, while exhibiting
classical influence, doubtless in the main followed medieval models. Of the
five extant, written presumably about 1538, three, "God's Promises," "John
the Baptist," and "The Temptation of our Lord," are miracle plays; one,
"The Three Laws," is a morality. The fifth, "King John," inspired in its
satirical and Protestant elements by "Pammachius" and perhaps also by
Lindsay's "Three Estates," is the first example of a morality showing an
approach to the later historical drama. It is in form a controversial
morality, divided into two long parts or acts, but it follows roughly a
chronological outline, and among its abstractions presents the king himself
as the champion of Protestantism against the pope and Pandulph. Although
the direct influence of the play on later drama cannot be traced, it is a
notable advance, of which there were perhaps other examples, toward the
treatment of English history and of individual persons rather than
abstractions in the popular drama.
The humanistic activities of the sixty years before "Gorboduc" thus
resulted in a breaking away of allegiance to medieval models and the
introduction of new types, rather than in any direct contribution to the
form or matter of tragedy. The vernacular play approaching nearest to the
field of tragedy is still a controversial morality exhibiting all the
traits of medieval drama, and in its innovations pointing not toward
classical models, but rather to a new extension of the morality toward the
presentation of national history and real persons. During this time,
however, the influence of Seneca's plays had been constantly extending and
had been augmented by that of the imitations in Latin, French, and Italian.
The interest of Seneca in the universities seems to have increased during
the reigns of Edward and Mary and to have supplanted in a measure that in
Latin comedy. In 1559 the appearance of the first English translation, that
of the "Troades" by Jasper Heywood, opened the way to a wider interest and
to the possibility of domiciling the Senecan drama on the English stage. By
1561 translations of four other plays had been published; and, before the
collected edition of 1581, all of the ten had appeared and attained a
greater popularity with the reading public than they have ever since
experienced.
The first English tragedy was not a modification of current forms, but a
direct imitation of Seneca. The production of "Gorboduc," however, only
marked another stage in that conflict between medievalism and humanism
which we have been tracing. In the next chapter we shall consider the
conflict between Senecan imitations and popular tragedies that still kept
to the morality form, a conflict that resulted in the discarding of both
Senecan and morality incumbrances and the attainment in Marlowe and his
followers of a form of tragedy very different from either, though
inheriting bountifully from both.
One source of classical influence other than Seneca's plays and their
imitations was of enough importance to require special mention, that of
Aristotle's "Poetics." First printed in 1508, it reinforced the dogmas
derived from the "Ars Poetica," and became the basis of a rapidly
increasing amount of dramatic criticism. This criticism, mostly Italian,
interpreted Aristotle by means of the Senecan tragedies and so reinforced
their influence; but it was also greatly modified by the medieval ideas of
tragedy which we have already noticed. The resultant theory of tragedy,
with special regard to its misinterpretations of Aristotle, may be briefly
summarized. His dictum that tragedy is the imitation of a serious action
was interpreted to mean an action illustrious because the actors are
persons of the highest rank, thus adopting the medieval restriction of
tragedy to princes. There was less agreement in the restriction of tragedy
to history rather than fiction; and over the question of the propriety of a
happy ending there was considerable debate. Tragi-comedies were written and
defended, but critics in general recognized tragedy as restricted to an
unhappy ending, which was universally interpreted to mean deaths. In regard
to the function of tragedy there was great difference of opinion over the
meaning of [Greek: katharsis], the weight of opinion inclining to emphasize
the ethical aim of tragedy, that is, the reward of virtue and punishment of
vice and the inculcation of morality by means of frequent precepts. From
Aristotle's discussion of character there was derived the curious idea of
"decorum," so important in later theories of the drama, that every
character should represent a class and should always have the same
characteristics,--the kings all acting after one prescribed fashion, the
soldiers after another, the old men after another, and so on. From
Aristotle's mention of the restriction of time to one revolution of the sun
came the unities of time and place, confining the action to one city and
twenty-four hours, which were soon made predominant over the third unity of
action. These distinctions became fixed in Italian criticism and were given
their first full expression in English in Sidney's "Apology for Poetry,"
written about 1580; but before that they were more or less comprehended by
most English students of Seneca. Although even a scholar in 1561 would have
been unable to define the unities or decorum, he would have had some
confused notion of them. The scope and function of tragedy were by that
time assuming in the general literary consciousness a definition approved
by both medieval and classical theory and later formulated by Puttenham:
"Tragedy deals with doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted princes, for
the purpose of reminding men of the mutability of fortune and of God's just
punishment of a vicious life."
Such definition of medieval and classical influences as we have been
attempting necessitates a somewhat unreal separation of the two forces.
Evidently, in the mind of any playwright, the two combined in a confusion
of impulses, of the sources of many of which he must have been unaware.
Absolute restriction to the old tradition or to the new inspiration is
hardly to be expected in any English dramatist attempting tragedy in the
neighborhood of 1562. Such an author would have open for his choice a
wealth of stories, classical, medieval, or Italian, as yet untouched by
drama; and, though he might choose a story whose events paralleled some
Senecan plot, he would be likely to adhere closely to his narrative source
after the medieval fashion. Even if he strove loyally after the Senecan
form, his knowledge would be hardly sufficient to prevent departures from
strict classical standards. Seneca does not always clearly observe the
unities or remove violent action from the stage, and his Elizabethan
follower would naturally err on the side in accord with popular dramatic
tradition. Of the chorus, reduced in importance by Seneca, he would find it
difficult to make much use. On the other hand, the adapter of the morality
structure to tragic purpose would perhaps fail to derive anything from
Seneca except his bombast and sensationalism. For whatever audience the
dramatist was writing, he would have many spectators demanding the fun,
horse-play, and crude horror of medieval tradition, while his own literary
aspirations might lead him to prefer lofty declamation and aphoristic
phrasing. But, whether his knowledge was large or small, he was likely to
combine in his conception of tragedy, as did Puttenham, both the Christian
idea of evil, thwarting good and meeting punishment, and the Senecan idea
of a crime followed by retribution or revenge. And, whether he catered to
popular taste or to literary ambition, he must have contemplated the
presentation of a reversal of fortune, persons of royal or distinguished
rank, and a catastrophe involving deaths.
It is, after all, the main contribution of humanism that through the study
of the classics there had come new impetus and authority for individual
effort. Art was to be based on classic precedents, but it was forbidden by
the spirit of the new age to remain after medieval fashion satisfied with
repetitions and translations. For the dramatist there were not only new
models, but a circulation of ideas, free opportunity, and the incentive of
fame. For him, too, there was a public long habituated to the drama and now
well tutored in novelties and variations of the old forms, a public that no
longer expected a conventionalized stage, but was possessed of what the
apostle Paul deemed the chief characteristic of the classical spirit, the
desire to hear some new thing.
NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
The authorities on their respective subjects are: W. Creizenach,
_Geschichte des neuren Dramas_, Halle, 1893-1903 (3 vols. and index,
extending to 1570, have appeared); A. W. Ward, _A History of English
Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne_, 1899, new and revised
edition, 3 vols.; E. K. Chambers, _The Mediaeval Stage_, Oxford, 1903. These
all cover the matter of the present chapter and contain bibliographies.
Ward gives full bibliographical notes to editions and monographs;
Creizenach's index is substantially complete for all European plays;
Chambers's Appendix X contains references to editions and descriptions of
all English plays up to Elizabeth's accession. Klein, _Geschichte des
Dramas_, 13 vols., 1865-76, and Collier, _History of English Dramatic
Poetry_, new edition, 1879, are both somewhat out of date, though the
latter contains much useful material. R. Proeloss, _Geschichte des neueren
Dramas_ (1881-83), and K. Mantzius, _The History of Theatric Art_, 3 vols.
(1904), are slighter. The only rapid and readable survey of European drama
is by Brander Matthews, _The Development of the Drama_ (1906). For France,
the authority for medieval drama is L. Petit de Julleville, _Histoire du
Theatre en France au Moyen Age_, 1880-86, 4 vols.; for Germany, R. Froning,
_Das Drama des Mittelalters_, 1891; for Italy, A. Ancona, _Origini del
Teatro italiano_, 1891, 2d edition. J. J. Jusserand, _Le Theatre en
Angleterre_ (1881, 2d ed.); J. A. Symonds, _Shakespeare's Predecessors in
the English Drama_ (1884); G. Gregory Smith, _The Transition Period_ (1900,
in _Periods of European Literature_); Gayley, _Plays of Our Forefathers_
(1907), are of value. Dealing more specifically with matters discussed in
this chapter are the volumes of Cloetta and Spingarn cited in the last
chapter, C. H. Herford's _The Literary Relations of England and Germany in
the Sixteenth Century_, Cambridge, 1886, J. W. Cunliffe's _The Influence of
Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_, Manchester, 1893, and R. Fischer's _Zur
Kunstentwickelung der Englischen Tragoedie von ihren ersten Anfangen bis zu
Shakespeare_, 1893. The Elizabethan translations of Seneca have been
reprinted by the Spenser Society (1887). Within the last few years three
new translations have appeared: by Watson Bradshaw, in prose (1902); by
Miss E. A. Harris, in verse, two tragedies 1899, the remaining eight 1904;
by F. J. Miller, in verse, with introduction on Seneca's Influence on
English Drama by J. M. Manly (Chicago, 1907). Text and discussions of plays
are presented by A. W. Pollard, _English Miracle Plays_, Oxford, 4th ed.,
1904; A. Brandl, _Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England_, 1898; J. M.
Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_, 1897 (2 vols., the third
to contain notes and discussion). Dodsley's _Old Plays_, ed. W. C. Hazlitt,
15 vols., 1874-76, also contains texts. The matter of this and subsequent
chapters also receives treatment in the general histories of literature. J.
J. Jusserand, _Literary History of the English People_, 2 vols., 1895-, is
especially valuable in its account of the drama. The new _Cambridge History
of English Literature_ (now in progress) will contain valuable monographs
on the matter of this and subsequent chapters. _The Dictionary of National
Biography_ is, of course, most valuable for individual writers. F. E.
Schelling's _Elizabethan Drama_, 1558-1642, which appears as this volume is
passing the press, is a general history of the drama of the period stated,
with special reference to the development of dramatic species. It contains
an extremely useful Bibliographical Essay and "A List of Plays" written,
acted, or published in England, 1558-1642.