653 



DRAMA; DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 



DRAMA; DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 



654 



himself something of the light wit and invention which characterise 

 them. In his ' Albaneserin,' a tragedy in which he endeavoured to 

 work out a plot based on the Greek doctrine of destiny, he has violated 

 all probability and consistency of character in working it out, but it 

 became very popular on the public stage. F. Halm (the pseudonym of 

 Baron E. F. J. Munch-Bellinghausen) was of the romantic school, but 

 his ' Griselda," and ' Imelda Lambertazzi,' were not very successful ; 

 nor were his translations or adaptations from the Spanish drama. 

 T. A. Korner, about 1811, wrote a number of dramatic pieces; the 

 most noticeable were ' Zriny,' founded on the events in the life of the 

 hereof Hungary; and 'Rosamunda,' wife of Alboin the king of the 

 Lombards ; which showed considerable promise, though combined with 

 marks of immaturity and carelessness. Gutzkow's ' Richard Savage ' 

 is a tragedy of the domestic order ; it has good passages, but little of 

 dr 'untie characterisation. His comedies were better, and his ' Zopf 

 und Schwert,' and the ' Urbild des Tartufte,' were deservedly popular. 

 It is remarkable that Tieck, in the work above quoted, written about 

 1818, mentions no modern dramatist with anything more than faint 

 praise. Grillparzer, in his ' Ahnfrau,' and a few other pieces, has 

 displayed a high poetic talent, with considerable dramatic power, but 

 rather in situations than hi delineation of character, though this is not 

 altogether wanting. Except by Grillparzer, whom the Germans them- 

 selves reckon as their best dramatist since Schiller, the German tragic 

 muse has produced nothing worthy of especial notice. Of the German 

 opera this is hardly the place to speak, though in this they have 

 excelled, as the names of Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr, and Meyerbeer, 

 who are noticed in the BIOG. Div., are sufficient evidence. 



Emjlish Drama. The period in which we find the earliest traces of 

 the general introduction of dramatic exhibitions by the clergy through- 

 out the spiritual empire of Rome, being that in which, under the 

 regime of the Norman conquest, the old French language and litera- 

 ture had full predominance in England, and a very large proportion of 

 its clergy were of Gallic extraction, French was necessarily the original 

 language of our religious drama : and the first pieces that it possessed 

 were either borrowed directly from continental writers, or were com- 

 posed by the Anglo-Norman clerks in the Gallic idiom. None of the 

 dramatic manuscripts in that language, which must have been used in 

 England for two or three centuries after the conquest, have descended 

 to ua ; but in addition to the most sufficient historical evidence of the 

 fact, some of the miracle plays that remain hi English contain the 

 plainest internal evidence of their having been closely translated from 

 a French original It was not until the 36th of Edward III. that the 

 pleadings in any of the courts of law were allowed to be made in 

 English. At the commencement of Edward's reign (as observed by 

 Tyrwhitt in the essay on the language and versification of Chaucer, 

 prefixed to his edition of the 'Canterbury Tales') the French and 

 English languages subsisted together throughout the kingdom; the 

 higher orders, both clergy and laity, speaking almost universally 

 French ; wliile the lower retained the use of their native tongue, but 

 also frequently added to it some knowledge of the other. Ralph 

 u himself, the reputed author of the Chester miracle-plays as 

 they now appear in English, bears a remarkable testimony (in his 

 ' FulycTonicoii,' b. i., c. lix.) to the manner .in which the English lan- 

 guage was impaired by the children in general being still obliged at 

 school to construe their lessons, Ac. in French, by the children of the 

 gentry being taught to speak French from their cradle, and by the 

 anxiety of the commoners to talk French that they might be the more 

 highly thought of. 



We find religious dramas to have been regularly established per- 

 formances hi London as early as 1180. William Fitzstephen, in the 

 introduction to his Life of his friend and patron, archbishop Becket, 

 written between 11 76 and 1182, tells us that London, in lieu of the 

 theatrical spectacles and stage plays of the Romans, to which he had 

 just before alluded, had then a holier description of j>lays, in the 

 representations of the miracles worked by holy confessors, or of the 

 Bufferings wherein the martyrs had displayed their constancy. How- 

 ever, from Mathew Paris (' Vita; Abbatum') and from Bukciu (' Hi.s- 

 toria Universitatis Parisiensis ') we learn that the miracle-play of ' St. 

 Kathcrine' had been exhibited at Dunstable before the year 1119. 

 According to the latter authority this play of ' St. Katherine' was not 

 then by any means a novelty ; and from a passage in the ' Annales 

 Burtonenses,' or ' Annals of Burton Abbey,' we may infer that in the 

 middle of the 13th century itinerant actors were well known *in 

 England. 



Tin: oldest extant specimen of a miracle-play in English is among 

 the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum : it probably formed one of 

 a aeries, and is certainly as ancient as the earlier part of the reign of 

 Edward III. ; it is founded on the Kith chapter of the apocryphal 

 gosixil of ' Nicodemus,' and relates to the descent of Christ into hell, 

 to liberate from thence Adam, Eve, John the Baptist, and the prophets. 

 i this and a few other single pieces, and a set of three plays 

 founded on that part of the ' Acts of the Apostles ' which relates to the 

 i lion of St. Paul, there exist in this country three series of 

 miracle-pUvi winch go through the principal incidents of the Old and 

 New Testaments. These are : 1. The Towneley collection, supposed 

 to have belonged to Widkirk Abbey, the MS. of which appears to 

 have been written about the reign of Henry VI. 2. A volume called 

 the ' Ludus Coventrize,' consisting of plays said to have been repre- 



sented at Coventry at the festival of Corpus Christi, the MS. of 

 which is at least as old as the reign of Henry VII. 3. The Chester 

 Whitsun plays, of which there are two MSS. in the British Museum, 

 one dated in 1600, the other in 1607. Several specimens of Cornish 

 miracle-plays are extant, which differ from the English in no material 

 characteristic but that of language. 



There is abundant evidence that the Romish ecclesiastics, in their 

 first introduction of this kind of representations, especially that part 

 of them relating to the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, had 

 the perfectly serious intention of strengthening the faith of the 

 multitude in the fundamental doctrines of their church ; and it seems 

 the less extraordinary that they should have resorted to this expedient, 

 when we reflect that before the invention of printing, books had no 

 existence for the people at large. But it is no less certain that the 

 repetition of these exhibitions rapidly worked upon the popular mind 

 an effect which it is likely, the priestly dramatists themselves had not 

 contemplated in the first instance : it developed the universally latent 

 passion in the breast of social man for spectacle in general, and for 

 dramatic spectacle especially, fur its own sab. Here, again, was the 

 strongest encouragement of all for the clergy to persevere in their dra- 

 matic efforts. Finding the lively pleasure which the people took in 

 this mode of receiving religious instruction, they were tempted to 

 add, according to their barbarous ability, embellishment after embel- 

 lishment to the simple copies which they had originally presented of 

 the most remarkable passages of Scripture story, until the profane 

 exhibition itself, "the miracles/ay," and not the sacred subject of it, 

 became the sole object of interest to the people who composed the 

 audience at these representations, as, also, it became the primary 

 object of the greater part of the ecclesiastics who took part in getting 

 them up. These two facts are shown with the utmost clearness by 

 the collective testimony of all the contemporary writers who have 

 thrown a general light upon the manners of the later middle ages. 



The dialogue in these productions was, for the most part, extremely 

 rude and inartificial ; and as to plot, they cannot properly be said to 

 have had any. It is not until the middle of the 16th century that we 

 arrive at a scriptural play having anything approaching to a regular 

 constructed dramatic action. In this respect the series of plays which 

 we have been considering should rather be described as a series of 

 shows or pageants exhibited in succession, but without any artificial 

 connection. Each of these detached divisions of the representation 

 wa.s indeed commonly called a " pageant ;" and each succeeding play 

 or pageant of the series was supported by a new set of performers. 

 Thus, to get up one of these extensive sets of plays, it was necessary 

 to provide and to prepare a large number of actors ; and here we see 

 one manifest reason why this longer class of performance was almost 

 wholly confined, in England as well as on the continent, to the larger 

 cities. 



The seasons for exhibiting the grand scriptural plays were chiefly 

 the Christmas and Whitsun holidays. The getting up and acting of 

 these hi the great cities early devolved upon the trading companies, 

 each guild undertaking a portion of the performance and sustaining a 

 share of the expense. The authentic information regarding the exhi- 

 bition of the Corpus Christ! plays at Coventry extends from the year 

 1416 to 1591, during the whole of which period there is no indication 

 that the clergy hi any way co-operated. The Chester records likewise 

 establish that the whole management of these representations there 

 was in the hands of laymen. From Stow's ' Chronicle ' we learn that 

 hi London this class of performances was undertaken by the parish 

 clerks (who were incorporated by Henry III.) as early as 1409 ; and it 

 is remarkable that no instance is to be found of the trading companies 

 of London having been, at any date, so engaged. The pieces were acted 

 on temporary erections of timber, called scaffolds or stages ; and it 

 appears that in some instances they were placed upon wheels, in order 

 that they might be removed from one part to another of a large town, 

 and so the plays might be repeated successively in various quarters. 

 Some of the Chester pieces required the employment of two, and even 

 of three scaffolds, besides other contrivances : the street also must 

 have been used, as several of the characters enter and go out on 

 horseback. The same remark is applicable both to the Widkirk and 

 the Coventry plays. In the latter indeed " the place " and " the mid 

 place " are mentioned as the scene of part of the action ; and it is 

 evident from some of the stage directions, that two, three, and 

 even four scaffolds, were erected round a centre, the performers pro- 

 ceoding, as occasion required, from one stage to another across " the mid 

 place." It may be observed, too, that in one of the Widkirk plays 

 Cain is exhibited at plough with a team of horses ; and that hi another 

 it is absolutely necessary that something like the interior of a cottage 

 should be represented, with a peasant's wife ill bed, who pretends to 

 have been jusrt delivered of a child, which lies beside her in a 

 cradle. 



Miracle plays were acted very constantly at Chester until 1577, at 

 Coventry until 1591, at York until late in the 16th century, at New- 

 castle until 1598, at Lancaster, Preston, and last of all at Keiulal, in 

 the beginning of the reign of James I. Although, in the beginning, 

 these plays only dramatised certain scriptural events by the characters 

 historically concerned, yet abstract impersonations found their way 

 into them by degrees. This was perhaps done to introduce some 

 variety into the constant repetition of the same seta of dramatie persona:. 



