THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the
nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The
eighteenth century had been, as we have seen, a time of stagnation in
tragedy and of little dramatic advance in any direction. The theatregoer of
1720 would in 1780 have found the same plays or others similar in kind;
but, had he postponed his visit yet twenty years, he would have entered a
new theatrical world of romance, musical plays, and German novelties. By
that time nearly all the factors of importance in the history of the stage
during the first half of the nineteenth century had made their appearance.
New departures in both tragedy and comedy, and a theatrically important
_tertium quid_ were all instituted. And new ideas, new themes, and new
stories witnessed the changing taste and gave promise of the enlargement of
the imaginative horizon which the new romanticism was to produce.
We have seen that, while neither realistic tragedy nor sentimental comedy
had experienced a notable development, they had been departures from
long-standing conventions. Tragedies in three acts, tragedies in prose,
tragedies on domestic themes, tragedies without princes, tragedies of the
present, all gave some encouragement for further novelty and experiment.
The several varieties of "soft tragedy and genteel comedy" departed far
enough from the standards of both species to suggest a dramatic development
that should discard the traditional limitations. This changing taste,
however, was seized by German plays and dramatized "tales of terror." The
large and varied influence of German poetry, criticism, and philosophy upon
the romantic movement in England can be noticed here only so far as it
affected the drama. The plays of Lessing and the early plays of Goethe and
Schiller made little impression on the English stage, though they exercised
an immediate influence on the reading public and on most of the young men
"standing on the forehead of the age to come." The conquest of the English
stage was made at its point of greatest vulnerability--its
sentimentality--by one who seemed the very Napoleon of the drama, Kotzebue,
the conqueror of the theatres of all western Europe. In 1798 "The Stranger"
("Menschenhass und Reue") took Drury Lane by storm, and the next year
Sheridan's "Pizarro," an adaptation of "Die Spanier in Peru," plus some
eloquence and some songs, gained a still more brilliant success and drew
even George III to the theatre. For several years Kotzebue reigned supreme;
twenty or more of his plays were translated; many were acted; "Pizarro"
alone had passed through twenty-nine editions by 1811, besides other
English and American versions of the play. Kotzebue's triumph was due in
part to his great skill in stage-craft, and in part to his adroit appeal to
the more superficial sentiments for social and political revolution that
were everywhere stirring. When it is compared with preceding sentimental
comedy, the success of "The Stranger" is easily understood. It has the
theatrical merit of arousing curiosity at the beginning and keeping it on
question until the last moment; and it deals, over-sentimentally of course,
with a social question of dramatic value and of especial piquancy at a time
when many conventions seemed tottering,--should an erring wife be taken
back again by her husband? The theme of "A Woman Killed with Kindness,"
"Jane Shore," and "The Fair Penitent" was given a new interest and a new
solution. "Pizarro," retaining much of the plot familiar in English tragedy
since the time of Dryden's "Indian Emperor," has two lovers, opponents in
war, and two heroines, one vengeful, the other angelic, but makes the real
hero the renouncing lover, who sacrifices all for the happiness of the
angel who loves not him but his friend. Under these new auspices the fair
penitent and the renunciatory hero began long careers in English drama and
fiction. But neither these nor any other of Kotzebue's plays offered any
guidance toward a serious interpretation of life or any innovations of real
consequence in the English tragic tradition.
If Kotzebue's plays offered little promise for the national drama, the
native plays which rivaled them in popularity offered less. Castles, monks,
dungeons, and so on had already become somewhat common in musical plays
and operas[45] and occasionally in tragedies, when "The Castle Spectre" of
Monk Lewis opened the flood-gates to "tales of terror" and their medieval
and supernatural paraphernalia. "The Castle Spectre," which in the season
of 1797-98 surpassed "The Stranger" and for a while held its own with
Kotzebue, represents a new reign of romance. The new queen did not come
from "perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." She belonged to the earlier
days of the romantic movement, and made her conquest at the head of
squadrons of medievalistic, terroristic, and Germanistic Goths. She is
adequately described in the prologue to the play:--
"Far from the haunts of men, of vice the foe,
The moon-struck child of genius and of woe,
Versed in each magic spell, and dear to fame,
A fair enchantress dwells, Romance her name,
She loathes the sun or blazing taper's light:
The moon-beam'd landscape and tempestuous night
Alone she loves; and oft, with glimmering lamp,
Near graves new-opened, or midst dungeons damp,
Drear forests, ruin'd aisles, and haunted towers,
Forlorn she roves, and raves away the hours!
Anon, when storms howl loud and lash the deep,
Desperate she climbs the sea-rock's beetling steep;
There wildly strikes her harp's fantastic strings,
Tells to the moon how grief her bosom wrings,
And while her strange song chaunts fictitious ills,
In wounded hearts Oblivion's balm distils."
The "drama," as it was called, is in prose, and is a medley of the various
terroristic novels, including the two most famous, "The Castle of Otranto"
and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and adding something from Schiller's
"Robbers" and from Shakespeare. There is a haunted castle, a jocose monk, a
fool, a marvelous dungeon, a fisherman's hut, a ghost, a midnight bell, and
songs and elaborate scenery. The villain, a feudal baron attended by
negroes, is finally killed by the heroine, who saves her imprisoned father
and escapes with the hero.
The signs of life that succeeded the long petrifaction of the eighteenth
century drama and the beginning of the revolutionary epoch thus resulted
only in theatrical novelties and in no serious dramatic movement. All
serious drama was, indeed, threatened by the ascendancy of the
"illegitimate" drama of music and dumb show. The causes leading to the rise
of this class and its ensuing history were in large measure connected with
the theatres themselves. Even before the new romanticism had invaded the
drama, changes in theatrical conditions of far-reaching importance were
well under way. The monopoly exercised by the Drury Lane and Covent Garden
theatres was first threatened about 1730 by the success of a few minor
theatres which gave musical, acrobatic, or dramatic entertainments. The old
theatres were successful in maintaining their monopoly in regular plays,
but the irregular houses gained permission to give performances under the
loosely defined term "burletta." A "burletta" was supposed to have a
musical accompaniment, but it proved difficult to say how little music and
how much of a drama might be included under the term. Henceforth, the
regular drama had, in addition to the rivalry of Italian and English
operas, that of musical and dramatic medleys; and the patent houses had to
face the rivalry of playhouses that infringed as far as they dared on the
legitimate drama. The patent theatres, with their vested rights in the
stock plays and their obligation to maintain Dryden, Otway, and
Shakespeare, offered no great inducements to new authors. This was
particularly true, after the rebuilding and enlargement of both theatres in
1791 and 1794, when the increased cost of bringing out a play and the
increased difficulty in acting or hearing an unfamiliar play led Kemble
practically to abandon any attempt to produce new tragedies. The minor
theatres, which were growing in importance, legally limited to the field of
musical performances, and excluded from the regular drama except by trick,
could offer little support to the serious dramatist. As a result, musical
plays, operettas, and finally a new type, the "melodrame," flourished in
the minor houses and found their way soon into the two great theatres. When
in 1808-09 these were burned, the rivalry with the minors had become acute.
The old theatres were rebuilt of so great a size that they proved
unsuitable for any spoken drama. Through their great actors, Kemble, Kean,
and later Macready, they maintained Shakespearean drama and a few of the
old stock plays; but they were forced for the rest of the time to resort to
melodrama, spectacle, or pantomime. The minors, though they now became
more daring in their invasions of legitimate drama, naturally continued the
kind of entertainments at which they had succeeded and to which they had
forced the great theatres to succumb. The long struggle for a free stage
was now nearing its end; the patent theatres were maintained with
increasing difficulty; the minors prospered. With the death of Kean in
1833, a great prop of the patent theatres fell; and though the agitation
for parliamentary reform in that year failed, and the final legislation
against theatrical monopoly was not passed until 1847, the great theatres
ceased to determine the history of the drama. Macready's two periods of
management, 1837-39 and 1841-43, were the final efforts to restore the old
regime that had maintained tragedy since the Restoration.
The "illegitimate" drama that triumphed in the theatres comprised a wide
range of entertainments, mostly farcical in their dramatic elements. Toward
the end of the eighteenth century the rage for dumb show and musical
additions invaded the regular drama. Even Kotzebue had to be decked out
with songs and choruses. Moreover, a peculiar species of the illegitimate
drama developed in the plays of Andrews, Dibdin, Reynolds, Boaden, and
Colman the younger that served as a half substitute for tragedy. This
species seems to have been mainly due to the ingenuity of George Colman.
Those of his plays verging on tragedy, of which "The Battle of Hexham"
(1789), "The Surrender of Calais" (1791), "The Mountaineers" (1793), and
"The Iron Chest" (1796) are the chief, are lively medleys of tragedy,
comedy, opera, and farce. In each a tragic story is told in blank verse,
audaciously Shakespearean, and this is mixed with broad comedy or farce in
prose. There is a bustling action with shifting scenes, much spectacle,
many songs, solos, duets, or choruses, for which a crowd of soldiers,
monks, beggars, foresters, or the like, is always within call. "The
Surrender of Calais" tells the story of Queen Philippa's mercy; "The Iron
Chest" is a dramatization of "Caleb Williams"; "The Battle of Hexham" is a
sort of musicalized chronicle history, presenting the adventures of Adeline
in search of her husband, who turns out to be a captain of a band of
robbers and the rescuer of Queen Margaret and the prince after the battle
of Hexham. "The Mountaineers," suggested by a story in "Don Quixote," finds
its land of romance in Spain, where a Christian prisoner elopes with the
daughter of his Moorish jailer, accompanied by a stage Irishman as
_gracioso_; and this group, when recaptured, are rescued by Octavian, a
half-mad tragic soliloquizer, who also recovers his long-lost love, and was
thought to be extremely impressive when impersonated by Kemble. In his use
of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of
Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable
cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a
curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the
theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the
Elizabethan drama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His
method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to
connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and
varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very
phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their
parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so
well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity
and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He
popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English
tragedy, and passed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession
of the illegitimate drama.
At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a
still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the
peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment
there, the _melodrame_. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its
most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long
ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The
peculiar novelties of the _melodrame_ were the supplementing of the
dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both
dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its
songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding
musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate
held full sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and
many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or
machinery. From the start, _melodrame_ allied itself to most of the
paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon
showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned
Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in
prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for
thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels
supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with
one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several
versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first
large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a
singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange
scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and
good among the characters, lent itself readily to a dramatization that
required a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of action, music, and
machinery. Comic scenes were, of course, _de rigueur_. "The Slave," by
Morton, was one of the most enduring of the Colmanesque type. The serious
plot, which presents Gambia, the slave, as the sacrificing hero, borrows
from "The Curfew" and "Oronooko," and for its great scene improves upon the
escape over the bridge in "Pizarro."[46]
After Clifton and Zelinda (whom Gambia hopelessly
adores) escape across the hanging bridge, Gambia climbs
up the tree from which it is suspended and cuts the
rope. The pursuing villains are foiled on the brink.
"We are safe, my husband," cries Zelinda from the other
side; but her child, safely hidden by Gambia, hears her
voice, and runs from his hiding-place,--on the wrong
side of the river.
_Child._ It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!
_Zelinda._ Alas! my child!
_Somerdyke._ Her child! Then we triumph--seize him! (_A
slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of
rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues._) Move one
step further, and you will see him buried in the
waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (_Holding
him up in the act of precipitating him._)
_Zelinda._ I do submit.
_Gambia._ Never! (_Gambia, who has concealed himself in
the branches, snatches the child up into the tree._)
Father, receive your child! (_Throws the child across
the stream._) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha!
(_Curtain._)
The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species
brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending
for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than
characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor
features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show,
strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the
essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no
literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres
and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth
century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, and music did not
further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama.
There was in England no relationship between the two as between Pixerecourt
and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it
absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes,
rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to
these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is
curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of
theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.
The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of
Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its
medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments
indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression
suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in
Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the
popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of
the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and
thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth
century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public
favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the
melodrama, tragedy has tended either to assume the garb of its rivals, or
to conform its appeal to a select audience.
In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and the melodrama and the
melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy.
The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century
had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays
with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or
otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men,
Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were associated with
the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were
quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little
literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction
in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be
acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists,
while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its
reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser
poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted.
These plays fall into two main classes, those that were acted and carried
on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted.
This second class, which for the first time becomes of some importance in
the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are
tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There
are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to
its requirements, and might easily be adapted for presentation. There are
others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's
later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre.
These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that
can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various classes of closet
drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality
that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the
tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite
variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they
are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare
and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage
demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they
seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage
demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music,
spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in
terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in
the beauty of verse.
The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna
Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first
volume of her "Plays on the Passions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and
"The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on
hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series,
illustrating each of the dominant passions by a tragedy and a comedy. Her
preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who
at Alfoxden were polishing their own tragedies and planning a revolution in
poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama.
She proposed to devote a play to the illustration of a single passion, to
trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that
passion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This
absorption with a study of emotion _per se_ led to a subordination of plot
and all external incident, and--so she proposed--all poetic embellishment,
to a searching study of isolated passion. Her first volume attracted
attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without
success. She continued, however, writing and publishing, completing the
series of plays on passions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays,"
twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a
variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with
witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults,
knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon shining through vaulted windows.
Her conception of a play of passion forbids motiving of character, or
integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly
observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls.
There are many improbabilities, and the passions are exposed mainly in
soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one
wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purple patches. It rarely
if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the
plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and
much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a
bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one
being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the
admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers.
Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose
won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more
imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the
theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was
justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the
Michigan Historical Society."
Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing
tragedies of passions[47] arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like
her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's
"Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he
thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the
revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of
Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated
by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice." Coleridge's
"Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books
rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and
pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage
success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres.
The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and
seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the
inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle
were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was
Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic
modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the
villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan
revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the
main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the
interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not
contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made
veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the
beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic
passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little
philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the
"Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the
movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge
gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the
managers. But even had he made the revisions that they required, he could
hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his
melodramatic action.
Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and
offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the
exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness
of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches
something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his
obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something
of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though
feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and
Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they,
and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like
them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening
outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing.
"The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and
refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two
acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.
From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813),
literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. Godwin's plays,
"Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's
"Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted
tragedy. When Lewis tried to give his terrific vein a little dignity and
blank verse, even he failed on the stage.[48]
After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the
poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a
large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half
dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the
"Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's
plays was "Evadne," based on Shirley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted
1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any
preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements.
Fazio's wife, jealous because of his infatuation for a countess, betrays
her husband, and then for the remainder of the play is wildly remorseful.
In spite of the extreme improbability of both the persons and the language,
the story is told with dramatic directness and affords manifest
opportunities for a great actress, seized upon by Miss O'Neill and later by
Miss Cushman and, in an Italian adaptation, by Madame Ristori. A still
greater theatrical success was won by Kean in "Brutus" (1818), a pastiche
of the plays of Lee, Cumberland, and Downman composed by the American, John
Howard Payne. Sheridan Knowles's "Virginius" (1820), followed by his "Caius
Gracchus" (1823), and "William Tell" (1825), gave promise of a more
permanent revival of the poetical drama. Knowles, an actor and a practical
playwright, was also the friend and in a way the pupil of Lamb and Hazlitt,
and he gained the cooperation of a great and ambitious actor, Macready. He
united as no other writer of the generation had done, stage-craft and
poetic ideals. "Virginius," the best of his tragedies, is still
acted--excepting Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu," the only relic of early
nineteenth century tragedy. The story, with its one great acting scene, is
told after the Shakespearean model in very ornate and artificial verse. It
mingles much scoffing at the rabble with romantic appeals for liberty,
tricks Virginia out with a lover, and ends with the insanity of Virginius.
Knowles's tragedies at the time of their presentation were only moderately
successful, far less so than his absurd comedy, "The Hunchback"; and
several poetic dramas by other writers fared worse. Thomas Wade's "Woman's
Love," based on the Patient Griselda story, obtained a hearing in 1808, but
his Marlowesque "Jew of Aragon" was hooted off the stage in 1830. But
Procter's "Mirandola" was acted sixteen times in 1821, and Miss Mitford's
"Rienzi" (1828) and Byron's "Werner" (1830) gained veritable triumphs.
For about a decade longer poetic tragedy continued to contend for the
theatre. Its main hope lay in Macready, and its hey-day was during his two
periods of management of Drury Lane, 1837-39 and 1841-42. After the success
of "Werner" ("Marino Faliero" had been earlier produced in 1821),
"Sardanapalus" was brought out by Macready in 1833-34; and "The Two
Foscari" later. Knowles's "Alfred the Great" and his "Bridal," an
adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," won considerable
success; and "The Pledge," a version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," in 1831
heralded new support for romantic poetry in the drama. In the years 1836-37
Macready introduced three new writers in the "Ion" of Talfourd, "Strafford"
of Browning, and the "Duchess de la Valliere" of Bulwer-Lytton. Talfourd's
tragedies, including two, "The Athenian Captive" and "Glencoe," later acted
by Macready, are stiff and wooden, contributing little to the drama.
Bulwer-Lytton's later plays, "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) and "Richelieu"
(1839), were extremely successful and surpassed any preceding efforts of
the romanticists to adapt poetry to the stage. "Richelieu" is by no means a
great poem or free from claptrap, but it has the merit of being written to
be spoken and in having its characters designed as parts of the action. The
interest is not in the poetry--it reads much better with the omissions made
for acting--but in the development of the character of the cardinal through
the incidents. The failure of "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon" in 1843 marks
the end of Macready's management and the end of romantic tragedy on the
stage.
Many of these acted plays gained what suitability they had for the stage by
accident rather than design. Milman's "Fazio" was published several years
before it was acted, and his later tragedies were decidedly closet dramas.
Miss Mitford's "Julian" made little impression on the stage, and her other
tragedies, except "Rienzi," still less. Byron's tragedies, which succeeded
largely no doubt because of his reputation, were acted against his wish or
after his death. And the various poetic tragedies that were written at
about the same time as Byron's and Shelley's were mostly composed without
thought of stage presentation. The surpassing genius of the greater poets
has thrown into obscurity the work of these other young men, who in the
decade after Waterloo faced the world with thin volumes of verse. But there
have been few times in our literary history when the Muses have been so
alluring, and Melpomene had her share of devotees. In John Wilson's "City
of the Plague" (1816) a young naval officer wanders about plague-stricken
London, through its bacchanals and horrors, buries his mother, discovers
his betrothed, the ministering angel of the afflicted, and at last finds
rest with her in the terrible crowded churchyard. The poem is grandly
conceived and beautifully written in verse, occasionally Wordsworthian but
without affectation or over-ornament. Two other closet dramatists offer
rather less sincerity and impressiveness of conception but even more of
poetic beauty. "Joseph and his Brethren" (1823), by Charles Wells, for a
time the friend of Keats, was published when the author was twenty-three,
and fifty years later revived and rewritten because of the appreciation of
Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. Like the plays of Thomas Wade, it shows the
influence of Marlowe in verse and plan. Long drawn out and in the main
undramatic, there is imagination everywhere, especially in the remarkable
scenes that depict the passion-inflamed Phraxanor, Potiphar's wife. Of the
Elizabethans, too, was Beddoes, who studied Webster and Tourneur as well as
Shelley and Keats, and whose verse at times fairly surpasses his masters.
His "Bride's Tragedy" (1821), written when he was nineteen, is a play only
in name, but it is a poem that joins terror and fascination as scarcely
another since Webster and Ford. Here, as in his incompleted dramas and his
"Death's Jest Book," published much later, loveliness masks with madness
and death, and mockery with passion. It seems as if he were lavishing over
strange juxtapositions of beauty and decay all the sensuous fascination of
Keats and the lingering suggestiveness of Shelley's lyrics. One's
admiration for his genius is tempered only by the thought of the greater
things he might have done.
Earlier than these poems was Landor's "Count Julian" (1812), which, like
them, presents qualities suited for the closet and not for the stage. As in
some of the "Imaginary Conversations," Landor takes it for granted that his
audience understands the story and the motives of the actors as well as he
himself. The reader gradually disentangles the situations and is stirred by
the splendid poetry; but no audience could make out what it was all about.
His other poetical tragedies, written a quarter of a century later, show no
improvement of these defects, nor do they present dramatic themes as
interesting or as powerfully conceived as those in "Count Julian."
"Otho the Great," the tragedy which Keats hoped would lift him out of the
mire,[49] was devised for Kean, and apparently accepted for Drury Lane.
Charles Brown furnished him "description of each scene entire, with the
characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with
it"; and Keats merely wrote the verse up to the fifth act, when he took the
entire management into his own hands. The result of this peculiar
collaboration was what might have been expected. The plot and
characterization follow old types; and the poetry, though not lacking in
fine passages, is inferior to nearly everything else that Keats wrote in
his _annus mirabilis_, 1819.
Scott's dramas are somewhat out of place when grouped with these other
closet tragedies, for they are varied in character, representing a number
of the proclivities that we have noticed in the romantic drama.[50] "The
House of Aspen," written in prose at about the time of "Goetz," was
intended for the stage and considered by Kemble for representation. Based
on a German tale and showing the influence of "Goetz," it offers no
important deviations from the terroristic drama. "The Doom of Devorgoil,"
designed for Terry at the Adelphi, is a melodrama with many songs and a
mixture of mimic goblins with supernatural machinery that was found to be
so objectionable as to prevent its performance. It is interesting as one of
the very few cases in which a man of literary reputation undertook to meet
the requirements of the illegitimate drama. None of the other plays, which
are in blank verse, was intended for the stage. "Macduff's Cross" is a mere
sketch in one act; "Halidon Hill" a two-act dramatization of border
warfare; "Auchindrane," in three acts, is a more fully developed tragedy.
"Halidon Hill" has a clearness and directness of characterization and a
vigor of movement which suggest that had the auspices been more favorable,
the historical drama might have had another great exponent. "Auchindrane,"
though retaining a little of the Radcliffian mystery and mystification
which Scott never quite outgrew, also tells its domestic story with a
directness and verisimilitude not usual among the romanticists. German
translation, terroristic tragedy, spectral melodrama, dramatic sketches for
the closet, and domestic tragedy are all illustrated by these six plays;
and their subjects and treatment also reflect the various attachments of
Scott's literary career. They illustrate also the inability of literary
genius to aid the theatre in this period, but they differ from most of the
literary drama in their absence of subjectivity or attachment to theory.
Byron's plays, like other poetical tragedies of the time, were written in
accord with the writer's theories and counter to the prevailing theatrical
practices; but Byron prided himself on departing from the methods of the
Elizabethans or of his fellow romanticists, and on following the guidance
of eighteenth century models. "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," and
"Sardanapalus," all written 1820-21, attempt regularity of plot and
observance of the unities, and profess Alfieri as a model. The two Venetian
plays, however, recall Otway's "Venice Preserved," and their exaggeration
of strange passions is quite in accord with the general practice of the
romanticists. The plots are improbable, though selected from history, and
aloof from general interest, for the resentment of the old doge at the
insult to his wife and the unyielding vengeance of Loredano and, indeed,
all the major passions are treated with an extravagance that becomes
melodramatic and renders the persons all but unintelligible. With
"Sardanapalus" the case is different. The dissolute, luxurious, but
nobly-aspiring hero and his better angel, Myrrha, derive from the
characters of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli a truth of passion that
animates the rapid and spectacular action. A tragedy of palace intrigue,
after the eighteenth century type, is thus reanimated by the romantic
fervor of its passion, philosophy, and poetry. Any time from "The Mourning
Bride" to "Zenobia" it might have triumphed on the stage, and so it did
triumph when finally acted; but it summoned only a tithe of Byron's power.
Quite different from any of these three plays, his "Werner" was obviously
suited to its own day. Based on one of Harriet Lee's novels, it forsakes
classical structure and exhibits all the paraphernalia and emotional
horrors of the terrific drama. It was one of the greatest stage successes
of the romantic drama, but it is no more deserving, either as a play or a
poem, than a dozen of its rivals.
Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from
fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species.
Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred"
and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the
Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that
made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic
poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned
descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of
elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to
men."[51] The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their
nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his
fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its
presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic
tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds
expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so
characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man
against society and providence make up the tragic theme. The tragedy of
individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality,
is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to
the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation
of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great
dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion.
Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet
and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly
seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of
their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an
eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to
realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.
Shelley's "Cenci" in a different way mirrors this eternal defeat that human
struggle after justice must encounter. Deeply impressed by the current
tradition about Beatrice Cenci, he made this story of incest and parricide
the expression of his view of life and history as a conflict between
tyranny and downtrodden innocence. Nowhere else in Shelley, not even in
"Prometheus Unbound," does this world drama come out of the clouds and
reveal itself with such clarity and power. There is passion in the persons,
climax in the situations, and directness in the language such as the
romantic drama had rarely shown. The philosophical conception and the
tangle of human motives do not indeed quite harmonize. Beatrice's lie and
her unworthy seeking after life are bits of the story which interfere with
our acceptance of Beatrice the martyr, flaws that Browning would not have
admitted. On the other hand, Shelley's philosophy overrides the story, as
may be seen by a comparison of the tragedy with one of the earliest to show
dawning romanticism. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother," which at this time
Byron was praising as "the last tragedy," treats a more horrible story of
incest with the interest mainly in the plot, holding in suspense the
fearful solution until the end; "The Cenci" begins with the act of incest,
and then tries to carry our interest solely to the two characters, one the
embodiment of all inherited evil, the other, a pure and beautiful spirit
striving madly and in vain to free herself from wrong that is might. The
conquest of the stage, the writing of dramatic blank verse, and the
endowment of this story of crime with representational truth were tasks too
large to be accomplished in a single play; but, though faulty in the
details of dramatic art, "The Cenci" is, for a first tragedy, without an
equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry. The poet who
shrank from comedy as from a wicked thing and who thought a story of incest
possible in a London theatre, had much to learn before he could master the
stage. But "The Cenci" reveals the maturing Shelley, who was opening his
mind to new impressions, admiring "Cain" and "Don Juan," profiting from
AEschylus and Calderon as well as Shakespeare, and who was seeing his
allegories clothed in human form, and no longer only in images of mist and
flame. As one reads one wonders,--had the play not been the last as well
as his first tragedy? had it come at the beginning instead of nearly at the
close of the romantic movement?
In "Prometheus Unbound" there is even greater achievement in the
presentation of this world conflict; and there Cain triumphs and Beatrice
is purified. But the achievement is lyrical rather than dramatic, and has
no proper place in the history of tragedy.
In all these tragedies, whether acted or not, and whether works of genius
or not, certain resemblances have been noted. They exhibit most of the
elements that characterize the romantic movement as it stirred English
poetry from the "Lyrical Ballads" to the first publications of Tennyson and
Browning. Without realism in plot or language, and dealing always with what
is unusual, improbable, and removed from the present, they made little
effort to catch the interest of the average audience or to excite an
interest common to ordinary experience. Their reaction against the
frivolity of contemporary melodrama was as decided as their reaction
against eighteenth century conventionality; but both impulses led to
poetry, passion, and Shakespeare, but not to drama. They did not succeed in
working out cause and effect of character through incident; when they
desired to gain stage effectiveness, they merely borrowed from current
melodrama or from the Elizabethans.
Elizabethan influence is usually apparent in the choice of themes, in the
devising of plot and situations, and particularly in the figurative and
ornate phrasing. The revival of some Elizabethan plays on the stage, the
vulgarization in the illegitimate drama of many of their incidents, and the
general interest among readers at this time in the Elizabethan drama, all
encouraged a fondness for madness, incest, battles, villany, and
unrestrained passion of various kinds. In phrasing, the Elizabethan
influence appears in all degrees; in the sympathetic emulation of Keats, in
the amazing reproductions of Beddoes, or in the starched artificiality of
the poetic embellishments of Milman, Knowles, or Procter. In general the
style is redundant and florid. In such plays as were adapted for the stage,
it will almost always be found that the mere curtailing of the figures,
soliloquies, and episodes causes a marked improvement in the dramatic
quality of the dialogue. Byron and Shelley both attempted to free their
dramatic blank verse from conceits and artificialities, and to give it
directness and lack of ornamentation corresponding to natural speech. In
consequence, Byron's blank verse often makes a slovenly approach to prose,
and Shelley's loses something of the beauty of his non-dramatic
masterpieces; but on the whole, "Sardanapalus" and still more "Cain" and
"The Cenci" show their greatness in this as in other respects, in the
dramatic quality of their verse.
Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror.
The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral
melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like
Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is something of this in
Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one
of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a
tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species.
After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still
found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate
villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing
influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising
the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which
furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have
been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the
devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy
perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's
"Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least
encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of
passion.
Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley
novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences
of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the
interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature,
whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals,
for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The
treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss
Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge, now became essential to tragedy; and we
find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of
the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which
he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems
to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on
the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio"
and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly
for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius
Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of
these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic
emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but
they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities
for rhetorical fervors.
In nearly all the plays the main interest is not in plot, as in the
eighteenth century, and not primarily in story, as in the Elizabethan
period, but in the delineation of individual passion. "Lear," "Othello,"
"Hamlet," and "Macbeth" are the models; but the passions are more
distempered, more isolated, more abstracted from reason or sense than in
Shakespeare. As in the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the
influence of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans is most unmistakable in the
prominence given to insanity and villany. But this prominence is also a
natural result of the romanticists' prepossession with passion. In tragedy,
they felt that some passions must be very evil and some ruinous; hence
they devoted themselves to a study of malice and madness. Their villains
are more vigorous than those of the eighteenth century, but they, too,
imitate Iago; and the mad scenes always recall either Lear or Ophelia. The
romanticists can realize passion for the moment, or display its variable
moods; but they rarely succeed in making its extended portrayal convincing.
They clung to the idea that the only way to depict passion was to eliminate
all else. Even in the great writers passion absorbs the interest; in the
minor plays it tears itself to tatters. Tragedy after tragedy represents
passions, not conflicting but alternating, until one or the other turns to
madness. As Lewis's prologue declared, Romance "raves away the hours." The
conception of tragedy seems to be the burning up of the soul in passion,
and the poets' main concern to describe the conflagration. The romanticists
needed Lyttleton's advice, to read Shakespeare, but to study Racine.
The conception of tragedy that requires the expression of passion working
in individual men, and seeks in history or legend for examples of isolated
effects of the great emotions, clearly involves something different from a
veracious representation of life as we all see it, and something more than
the confusion of passions run wild. According to contemporary philosophical
criticism, as that of Schiller and Schelling, or that of Coleridge and
Shelley, tragedy should take part in the search for universal truth; not
universal in the eighteenth-century conception of typical characters and
aphoristic generalizations, but universal in the sense that, in the words
of Carlyle, it seeks the "interpretation of the divine idea in the world."
Tragedy should investigate, as Lamb declared, "the grounds of the passion,
its correspondence to a great and heroic nature," and should also seek to
find in the riots of evil or the storms of passion symptoms of the struggle
of Nature to rid itself of disease and fever, the presage of a higher unity
for both man and the universe. Something of this is discernible in
"Remorse" or elsewhere; there is a passionate demand for ethical realities
in "Cain"; but the only positive presentation of an idealistic theory of
tragedy is "The Cenci."
Though tragedy thus reflects the changes working in the ideas and forms of
literature, these changes are, of course, more distinctly indicated
elsewhere. If we had no knowledge of other literature, and only tragedy to
judge from, we could not clearly discern the far-reaching changes wrought
by the romantic revival. Tragedy from 1800 to 1830 could be described as
marking a return to the Elizabethans and Shakespeare, an absorption in the
depiction of passion, a revival of poetic imagination in expression, an
appeal to terror rather than to pity, and to the strange and mysterious
rather than the reasonable; but it could not be said that the summation of
these changes resulted in an extensive or enduring development.
It is not easy to find a stopping-place for a history of English tragedy.
In the case of the acted drama the close of Macready's management offers a
definite end, for the ensuing twenty-five years are nearly a blank as far
as acted tragedy is concerned. In the case of the unacted drama, however,
there is no point of marked change. The deaths of Scott and Goethe mark a
stage in European literature; and the Victorian era introduces new poets
and novelists, new social and political conditions, and a new foreign
influence in the French romanticists. But the closet dramas after 1830 are
in many ways closely related to those of the generation before. Closet
tragedy in the plays of Browning, Sir Henry Taylor, Matthew Arnold,
Swinburne, and others, was largely the outcome of the theatrical and
literary conditions which we have been tracing. Separated from the theatre,
it offers, one must fear, little that is vital in the development of the
drama, however impressive it may be as poetry. The appearance of new
semi-dramatic species was a natural accompaniment of the continued
departure of drama from the stage. Miss Mitford and Bulwer-Lytton had
written "dramatic scenes." Later Landor's genius found its truest
opportunity not in poetic plays, but in prose imaginary conversations, at
their best splendidly dramatic. Browning turned from the theatre to
dramatic lyrics, romances, and monologues. In fact, in the work of all the
romantic dramatists, including Browning and Swinburne, dramatic power
reveals itself in scenes and passages rather than in whole plays. Tragedy
as a literary form, it may be repeated, is dependent for its life upon the
theatre. Removed from the theatre, its integrity is gone, it develops
strange and varied forms. Instead of tragedy, we have "My Last Duchess,"
"The Ring and the Book," and the Mary Stuart trilogy.
It is this separation from the theatre that seems to have been the main
cause for the failure of the romantic movement in tragedy. We may, to be
sure, find other causes in plenty. The genius of its great poets was
lyrical rather than dramatic. Lyrical and narrative poetry and, above all,
the novel absorbed both public interest and imaginative genius. Again,
there was no free play for a revolution in tragedy, because there had been
no tyranny. Classicism had never dominated the drama as in other European
nations. In English tragedy of the eighteenth century, blank verse, however
tainted by affectation, had kept the Elizabethan fondness for figure;
structure, though following after French models, had maintained the
traditions of English freedom; the subjects had kept open a wide range and
had not neglected the medieval field; and sentiment, if not passion, had
reigned. While the German and French romanticists found in Shakespeare an
incentive to something new, the English romanticists could only elevate to
omnipotence one who had long been the idol of the theatres. He was for them
no innovator, but rather the unrecognized tyrant who held them back from
real innovation. As Beddoes recognized in theory though not in practice,
"the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold tramping fellow,--no
reviver, even however good."
But if we still ask why Coleridge or Beddoes should not have written
tragedy as well as Schiller or Victor Hugo, why the tragedy of passion,
revolt, and idealism, applied to history or legend, did not flourish in the
time of the French Revolution and Napoleon, of Kemble and Kean, of Byron
and Browning, the best answer must be found in the fact that theatrical
conditions offered no encouragement to tragic drama, but almost forbade a
serious attempt to learn the ways of the theatre or to deal in its debased
wares.
If theatrical conditions had been favorable, if the union of Macready and
Browning could have continued, one fancies that the romantic drama might
yet have succeeded. The chronicle of English tragedy finds its climax in
the first act, with Shakespeare as its protagonist; henceforth, directed by
his ghost, its action goes haltingly, vainly awaiting another climax and
another protagonist. In Browning, it was, perhaps, nearer than ever before
to finding both. Since the Restoration, no poet had come to the theatre so
gifted with dramatic genius, no poet so concerned with the study of the
vicissitudes of human motive, so alive to the dramatic values of crucial
moments, so curious as to the meaning of passion and pain, suffering and
evil, in the drama of life. "Strafford" and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" have
the weaknesses of youth and experiment, but they are the plays of a pioneer
who is not content with returning to the Elizabethans or the Greeks, but is
seeking to convey through his stories and persons the truth that is in him.
The study of Strafford is almost the first independent and acute study of
an Englishman of history in all the historical tragedies since "Henry V";
"A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" one of the few plays to realize individual
passions since Otway. And the dramatic defects--the failure to meet his
audience half-way, the awkwardness and garrulity of expression, the lack of
repression in form, while defects that continue in Browning's later
poetry--are the very faults for which a severe apprenticeship to the
theatre might have been the best discipline. An apprenticeship such as
Shakespeare served might have turned Browning's monologues and lyrics into
dramas; but the age was incapable of furnishing such a training, and the
fiasco with Macready was the end of the period and the defeat of the
poetical drama.
What comes after in the nineteenth century may best be left to the future
historian, who will be able to interpret its plays in the light of a
succeeding development. The plays of Tennyson, reverting again to
Shakespeare, and the poems of Swinburne may, after all, be the forerunners
of a new revival of poetical tragedy. Or the great development in technic
that has proceeded, first under the guidance of the French dramatists, and
then of Ibsen, and the serious essays of dramatists of the passing
generation may be the pioneers of a national drama of first-rate importance
in the generation to come. Certainly Ibsen, with his revolution in both the
content and the form of the tragic drama, has been the great force in later
nineteenth century tragedy. His work as it affects England and America,
however neglected, postponed, or modified, must be the text of a
succeeding chapter on English tragedy, which cannot yet be written.
NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
Genest's _Account of the English Stage_ stops at 1830. A continuation of
this work down to the present time is much to be desired. There is no
thorough history or bibliography of the drama of this period. In addition
to the histories of the theatre already mentioned, W. C. Oulton's _History
of the Theatres of London_, 1795-1817, may be consulted. Memoirs of the
Kembles are useful for this period, and also Macready's _Reminiscences_,
ed. Sir F. Pollock (1875), Moore's _Life of Sheridan_ (1825), Molloy's
_Life of Edmund Kean_ (1888), William Archer's admirable life of Macready
(_Eminent Actors Series_), are all valuable. _Random Recollections_ by
Colman the younger, and memoirs of Kelly, O'Keefe, and Reynolds supply
information in regard to the theatre and illegitimate drama. John
Cumberland's collections, _British Theatre_ (41 vols., 1829) and the _Minor
Theatre_ (15 vols.), are printed from acting copies, and the second
comprises many illegitimate plays.
Dramatic criticism of the period includes Coleridge (see criticism of
Maturin's _Bertram_ in _Biographia Literaria_), Hazlitt, _A View of the
English Stage_ (1818); Leigh Hunt, _Critical Essays on the Performers of
the London Theatres_ (1807) (selections from same, ed. W. Archer and R. W.
Lowe, 1894); Lamb (see _Lamb's Dramatic Essays_, ed. Brander Matthews,
1893). See, also, R. H. Horne's _New Spirit of the Age_ (1844), containing
criticism of Knowles, Macready, Bulwer-Lytton, and Browning.
The dramatic work of the chief poets has been studied in connection with
their other poetry by many editors and critics, but rarely in its relation
to the drama of the period. Professor Beers's two volumes, _English
Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_ (1899), and _English Romanticism in
the Nineteenth Century_ (1901), deal with the German influence; C. H.
Herford has an excellent though brief account of the drama of the period in
his _Age of Wordsworth_; Watson Nicholson's _The Struggle for a Free Stage
in London_ (1906) is full and valuable. Ernest Bates's monograph on _The
Cenci_ (1908) discusses that tragedy and its relations to contemporary
drama.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] See _The Haunted Tower_, an opera (1789), acted eighty times in two
seasons.
[46] Its borrowings are noted by Genest, viii, 603. The scene is quoted in
Archer's _Life of Macready_ (Eminent Actors Series), p. 40.
[47] _The Fall of Robespierre_ (1794), by Southey and Coleridge, and
Southey's _Wat Tyler_ (1817), written in 1794, hardly require even mention
as tragedies.
[48] In this and the two following paragraphs the bracketed dates are those
of the first performances in London. Some of the plays were first acted
elsewhere.
[49] "I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising
against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a
weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." Letter to
his sister, December, 1819.
[50] The translation of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ (1799), _The
House of Aspen_ (1830), _Halidon Hill_ (1822), _Macduff's Cross_ (1823),
_The Doom of Devorgoil_ (1830), _Auchindrane_ (1830).
[51] Herford, _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 227.