1828.] [ 135 ] 



THE EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA : 

 No. I. 



The Revengers Tragedy. 



PERHAPS too much has been written in general terms on the character 

 of the old English dramatists respectively, and too little on that of the 

 various dramas which they produced. We have been told of each of 

 the writers in question, that he is this, and that, and the other a variety 

 of attributes being collected together and heaped upon him, many of 

 which are incompatible with each other instead of being presented with 

 a full and fair examination of the most complete and characteristic of 

 their separate dramas letting the work so examined speak in a great 

 measure for itself. In short, we have been called upon to look too much 

 into the supposed minds of old dramatists through their works, instead of 

 fixing our attention and confining our examination to the works them- 

 selves ; and have been too much accustomed to build up ingenious theo- 

 ries and fallacious generalizations, without an adequate foundation for 

 them to rest on leaving unformed those individual estimates for which 

 we in fact have the most ample and tangible materials in our hands. 



It will be the object of these papers to avoid this mischievous error, by 

 confining themselves to an examination of individual plays, with an almost 

 exclusive view to their own respective qualities, and not looking at any 

 one through the medium of any other, or of any thing else whatever 

 not even the mind of its author. And, perhaps, it will be found, that, 

 from this method, the reader will, in the end, gain not only a more 

 positive and distinctive, but a more comprehensive notion of the authors 

 whose works will be treated of (much more of those works themselves), 

 than he would by any general estimates that can be made of them, how- 

 ever ingenious, elaborate, or profound. At any rate, he will gain, by this 

 method, a more clear and characteristic notion of each drama examined, 

 than he could by any other method of examination whatever ; to say 

 nothing of there being many of the old dramas that are absolutely unique 

 in their way, and that therefore cannot be brought within the pale of 

 any general classification that has ever been made of them, or that ever 

 can be made. 



In order that we ourselves may not be tempted to set foot in the 

 flowery paths that we are deprecating, let us, without farther preface, 

 address ourselves to the immediate subject with which we have chosen 

 to commence our series of papers on the ( ' Early English Drama." 



We are inclined to believe that the Revenger s Tragedy, and its author, 

 Cyril Tourneur, are scarcely known by name, to a great majority even of 

 those persons who make up that vast abstraction, " the Reading Public," 

 of the present day ; and yet, we will venture to say, that Shakspeare 

 himself has produced no single work which is more strongly calculated 

 to impress the general reader w r ith lofty notions of tragic power, no less 

 in regard to the construction of plot and incident, than the conception of 

 character, and its development in poetical language. And in regard to 

 moral effect, we know of nothing in the whole circle of the modern lan- 

 guages which surpasses this extraordinary work. There is a unity of 

 purpose in it, which, after it has acted upon the reader for a short time, 

 becomes truly appalling, and which, at the close of the work, leaves him 

 with an accumulated weight pressing upon his spirits and his heart, 



