1828.] Folagh vy 
THE EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA: 
No. Ill. 
Tue Waite Derit; or, VirrortA CoroMBona. 
Ir nothing else were essential to the composition of a perfect drama of 
the high tragic class, but a grand and vigorous conception of character, 
and a clear and consistent development of it; a deep knowledge of the 
secret places of the human heart, and a subtle power of drawing thence 
and displaying the passions and affections that lurk there; a dramatic 
skill capable of constructing scenes in imitation of human life, in which 
all these shall be displayed in a manner to produce upon the reader or 
spectator all the (seeming) effect of actual reality ; and, united to all 
these, an imaginative power of thought and of style capable of clothing 
them all in a poetical form, so as to lift above the level of our actual ex- 
perience the mere circumstances with which they are connected, and 
thus cause the sympathy we feel with them to fall within the limits of 
pleasure ;—if, we say, these things, and these alone, were sufficient to the 
composition of a perfect tragic drama, the one that we have chosen for 
the subject of this paper might be pointed to as one of the very finest in 
existence. But there is wanting, besides the qualities and powers above 
alluded to, that of so arranging every individual part of a composition of 
this nature, with reference to every other part respectively, and so uniting, 
and, as it were, welding together the whole, that an effect shall be pro- 
duced which never was, nor can be produced by the contemplation of any 
real set of circumstances whatever. This, we imagine, is the great secret 
of producing a perfect dramatic work of the class in question ; and the 
power which it refers to is what none—no not one—of our English 
dramatists ever did possess—or at least exercised—in a very high degree: 
Perhaps the possession of such a power in a very high degree, is incom~ 
patible with that of the other qualities before alluded to, and which our 
dramatists have possessed and exhibited more than any others that ever 
lived ; we say, the possession of it: for the evxercise of it, if possessed, 
would assuredly be compatible with the fullest possible exercise of all the 
others. We cannot pretend to determine how this may be; but thus 
much we will venture to assert, that the peculiar power in question has 
not been exercised to any thing like perfection, in any one drama that we 
possess ; and further we will state, that (with the exception of Shaks~ 
peare’s alone) it is the least evident, precisely in those dramas where all 
other dramatic powers are the most so. Finally, im connection ‘with this 
point, it may perhaps be said that this peculiar, and most rare of all 
dramatic endowments, is exhibited in Shakspeare’s plays, there precisely 
the most, where all others are the most exhibited also: for instance, in 
the Hamlet, the Othello, the Macbeth, and the Romeo and Juliet. 
' Turning at once to the, in many respects, splendid drama before us, 
we may safely state that, (still excepting the works of Shakspeare) there 
_is nothing at once more grand and vigorous in conception, and more bold, 
Spirited, and true in execution, than the chief character, Vittoria Corom- 
bona; and that out of no other character have more admirable and 
effective dramatic scenes been constructed; and further, that among 
Jemale characters, there is nothing in our language comparable with this 
one, except the Lady Macbeth: and if ¢hat is upon the whole superior to 
the Vittoria in positive and permanent dramatic effect wpon the imagina- 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. V1. No. 32. R 
