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DRAMATIC LITERATURE.* 



IT might be an interesting question at the present day as it cer- 

 tainly will be a course of speculation to future ages why it is that, 

 during the last century, this country has not producd such dramas as 

 might naturally have been expected to succeed the glorious exemplars 

 of the Elizabethean era ? We are, at the same time, far from sup- 

 posing that the genius requisite to the consummation of such triumph 

 is at any time plenteous as blackberries ; still less are we to be sup- 

 posed to infer that the same progression was naturally to be looked 

 for that we find in all the departments of physical science or of hu- 

 man ingenuity. We cannot respond to the wonder announced by a 

 friend of ours, to whom we lent a volume of Beaumont and Fletcher, 

 who, on returning it, could not by any means make out how it was 

 that, seeing we had made so many and such wonderful advances in 

 the mechanical arts, we were not equally progressive in the structure 

 of plays ; the modern performances being in his humble opinion 

 (but he spoke under correction) no better than those of Shakspeare, 

 if, indeed, they might even be considered superior to those of the au- 

 thors, to whom we had been the means of introducing him. There 

 was an unconscious good taste in this, and a heartfelt response 

 to the power wielded by these great men ; which, at the same time 

 that it taught the great truth propounded, and perpetually and prac- 

 tically enforced by Shakspeare, that 



"One truth of nature makes the whole world kin,'' 



might have been borne in mind by a dramatist as an evidence that his 

 sole sphere and it is a wide one is the human heart. 



From the time of Marlowe, Peele, and Green to that of Shirley, 

 we had a constant succession of wonderful and glorious plays, to 

 which all Europe put together can supply or oppose no parallel. 

 They were not only pregnant with the highest poetical genius, but 

 instinct also with dramatic vitality. Comparatively speaking, few of 

 these now retain possession of the stage ; but te this effect defective 

 comes by cause." The taste has changed ; we are perhaps, in some 

 respects, over scrupulous, but these factitious and conventional preju- 

 dices laid aside, and there are few if any of these productions that 

 would not profoundly excite the sympathies, and lay hold upon with 

 no feeble grasp the feelings of a modern audience. In a word, they 

 were written in a right spirit, by men whose genius led them to a 

 preference of this highest walk of literary ambition. 



Nor is the succeeding age to be despised, comprising as it does the 

 names of Dryden, Lee, Otway, and Southern ; but, at length, in an 

 evil hour, French models took precedence of English examples;, 

 and the classical school, as it was strangely miscalled, daubed over 

 with French polish, usurped possession of the stage, until it was 



* " Queen Anne Boleyn ; an Historical Tragedy, in Five Acts. By George 

 Lewis Smyth." London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1834. 



