657 



DRAMA ; DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 



DRAMA; DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 



653 



hundred and twenty dramas ; and to whom Charles Lanib gave the 

 title of a "prose Shakspere," saying his scenes are as natural and 

 affecting, but we miss the poet. 



We have now traced the progress of the English stage from its 

 ecclesiastical and religious origin until it became almost exclusively a 

 mirror of actual life, and attained all those dramatic and theatrical 

 forms which most prominently characterised the later and fuller 

 maturity of our elder modern drama. It was in the same year, 1583, 

 wherein Sidney wrote his ' Apology,' that Elizabeth first allowed a public 

 company to act under"her name and authority. As the dramatic writers 

 who flourished in the brief interval between this period and that of the 

 fullest development of Shakspere's genius, with one exception, did 

 nothing importantly to alter or improve dramatic art, it is needless to 

 enlarge upon their various kinds and degrees of merit which made a 

 number of them, as Dekker, Kyd, Lodge, Greene, Lyly, Peele, Nash, 

 Chettle, Munday, Wilson, Ac., highly popular and celebrated in their 

 own time. All who have acquired a permanent reputation will be 

 found under their respective names in the BIOG. Div. The single 

 exception that we are called upon to make is in favour of Christopher 

 Marlow, of whom we must observe, not only that his works exhibit 

 greater vigour both of conception and of language than belongs to any 

 of his contemporaries, but also that he was the first who established 

 the use of blank verse upon the pMic stage, in lieu of that exclusive 

 rhyming which possessed it before he wrote. 



Of SHAKSPERE it is not necessary here to speak. A full notice of 

 him is contained in the BIOG. Div., besides the numerous works en- 

 tirely devoted to him. Of his younger contemporaries and competitors 

 few have transmitted a living memorial of their works to posterity ; 

 the principal are Ben Jonson, and Massinger, who are also noticed in 

 the BIOG. Div. ; as are also Beaumont and Fletcher, who, after Shak- 

 spere, are entitled to the highest place among the romantic dramatists 

 of England. They seem indeed to have had almost every dramatic 

 quality short of that marvellously unerring instinct which Shakspere 

 possessed, and which appears to be vouchsafed to few. Webster, 

 Middleton, Marston, Massinger, Shirley, Ford, and such other of the 

 younger contemporaries of Shakspere as we have not yet mentioned, 

 have no characteristics sufficiently distinctive to admit of their being 

 particularised in this general survey, though they are likewise given in 

 the Bioo. Drv. 



Such was the general condition of the stage during the reign of 

 Charles I. down to the year 1642, when the invectives of the puritans, 

 who had long murmured against the theatre, and at last thundered 

 loudly against it, were changed into prohibitory law ; and in 1648 not 

 only to act plays, but even to witness them, was made a penal offence. 

 Nearly all the players now took arms on that side the interests of 

 which seemed identified with the existence of their own profession. 

 Many of them perished in the field ; and after the final close of the 

 war, one company of actors only was formed out of the remains of all 

 the former ones, and occasionally, with great circumspection, performed 

 at private mansions in the vicinity of London. 



Davenaut aa manager, and Betterton as actor, form a slender link of 

 connection between the old stage and that of the Restoration. 

 Charles II. being considered, in his relation to the theatre, as a sort of 

 restoring and tutelar deity, its character was now formed in absolute 

 deference to the half foreign and wholly vicious taste of himself and 

 his courtiers. Under these auspices, Davenant introduced the Italian 

 system of decoration, the costume as then understood, the opera music, 

 and the use of the orchestra in general. A still more important inno- 

 vation in theatrical arrangements was, the permanent adoption of the 

 practice, against which the puritans had directed the most violent of 

 their anti-dramatic fury, but which had long been established in Italy, 

 Spain, and France, of having the female parts personated by women 

 instead of boys. The result of this great neglect of the old dramatic 

 and theatrical system of England, and assiduous study of that of 

 France, was, for a long period, an almost entire denationalisation, both 

 in form and spirit, of the current dramatic literature. Davenant him- 

 self, who had resided very much in Paris, seems to have acquired this 

 exotic taste long before the Restoration, as it is fully exhibited, amongst 

 others of hi* productions, in bis operatic piece, ' The Siege of Rhodes,' 

 performed as early as 1656. Hence, in the theatrical restoration which 

 accompanied the political, he set himself cordially to work, by altering 

 old pieces, and writing new plays, operas, prologues, &c., to contribute 

 towards the furnishing of that new theatrical repertory which the new 

 dramatic system required. Of all his works, however, nothing has 

 escaped a merited oblivion. 



It was left for the industry and fertility of Dryden to give the new 

 theatre a thorough establishment according to the new ideas, a task 

 to which he applied himself with all possible diligence both by example 

 and precept. [DRYDEN, in Bioo. Div.] The drama hence became a 

 compound of the extreme licence of the later writers of the early 

 English school, with the conventionality of the French, but without 

 the vigour of the one or the vivacity of the other. The Duke of 

 Buckingham, who, amongst other vigorous though wayward and gene- 

 rally misapplied talents, possessed high powers of ridicule, undertook 

 to satirise these faults and absurdities of Dryden and his school, in his 

 comedy of ' The Rehearsal,' wherein, although the structure of the 

 piece itself might have been more artificial and diversified, the separate 

 parodies are very ingenious and effective. 



ARTS AND 8CI. DIV. VOL. III. 



But the best-aimed satire, though it might correct in some degree 

 could not regenerate the stage. This could have been done only 

 by the arising of some greater and more genuine dramatic genius, or at 

 least by the successful appearance of some very great actor, capable of 

 entering fully into the spirit of the elder drama. ' The Rehearsal ' 

 might indeed contribute to produce that nearer approach to nature 

 which, among the compositions of Dryden's younger contemporaries, 

 has preserved upon the stage one tragedy of Lee's and two of Otway's. 

 Shadwell's seventeen comedies, though he affected to imitate Ben 

 Jonson in exhibiting humorous and eccentric peculiarities of character, 

 are deservedly forgotten. Wycherley, so much in favour both with 

 Buckingham and King Charles, and afterwards with King James, had 

 much more genuine pretensions to the higher and more vigorous order 

 of comic power [WYCHEHLEY, in BIOG. Div.], and Congreve deserves 

 to be considered as the true father of " genteel comedy " on the Eng- 

 lish stage, and was long regarded as the great model for imitation in 

 that department. [CONGREVE, in BIOG. Div.] All these writers, how- 

 ever, are objectionable for their licentiousness, which, though the 

 representation may have been a correct picture of the manners of the 

 time, very soon banished them from general exhibition or reading. 



The continuance of this moral depravation of the drama produced 

 at length, in 1698, a severe castigation from the pen of the sturdy 

 nonjuror, Jeremy Collier, under the title of 'A short View of the 

 Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, together with the 

 Sense of Antiquity on this Argument.' In this work, its author, armed 

 with sufficient learning and sarcastic wit, attacked all the living dra- 

 matists from Dryden to D'Urfey ; and although some of them, in- 

 cluding Congreve, less candid on this occasion than Dryden himself, 

 set up a petulant and sophistical defence, yet this publication of 

 Collier's had a permanent effect on the stage as well as on the public 

 mind. This effect, however, was operated only by degrees. Vanbrugh 

 followed in the line of Congreve, and, in spite of Collier's animad- 

 versions, did so with little more regard either to morality or decorum, 

 though mingling more humour with his wit. His contemporary, 

 Farquhar, though displaying sufficient libertinism of language and 

 sentiment, did not carry them to so gross an excess. The Restoration 

 period of English theatrical history had not only brought female per- 

 formers for the first time before the public, but female dramatists 

 also. The numerous comedies of Mrs. Behu, who wrote under Charles 

 II., are remarkable only for the full share which they possess of the 

 licen' uusness of her time. But in Mrs. Centlivre, a prolific writer of 

 comedy, exactly contemporary with Farquhar, we find more genuine 

 dramatic talent, yet exhibited much more in a lively bustle of intrigue 

 than in forcible delineation of character. Just at the same period, 

 also, Steele, among the other various exertions of his pen, wrote for 

 the stage in a kindred spirit with Farquhar, but with inferior dramatic 

 skill ; and Cibber produced his best comedies, ' The Careless Husband,' 

 and ' The Nonjuror.' Fielding, the novelist, commenced his literary 

 career as a writer of comedy ; he chiefly demands notice in dramatic 

 history as one of the principal of those writers for the stage who 

 afforded Sir Robert Walpole a pretext for -obtaining the act to limit 

 the number of theatres, and subject dramatic performances to the lord 

 chamberlain's license. In a very similar predicament was Gay, after 

 the appearance, in 1727, of his ' Beggars' Opera.' Its professed object 

 was, by way of burlesque, to ridicule the Italian Opera, which had 

 been established and maintained at great expense, and was thought by 

 many to be rising in hurtful rivalry with the national drama. But 

 amidst the general satire on political and fashionable selfishness and 

 depravity which this composition implied, the persons then in power 

 took so much of it to themselves, that while ' The Beggars' Opera ' had 

 the unprecedented run of sixty-three successive nights, and transformed 

 the actress who represented the heroine into a duchess, the lord 

 chamberlain refused to license for performance a second part of it 

 entitled ' Polly.' This celebrated production, however, though still a 

 standing favourite with the public, is now chiefly remarkable in dra- 

 matic history as the prototype (unwittingly, it seems, on its author's 

 part) of a new species of dramatic composition upon the British stage, 

 since known as ' the English opera.' 



We must now revert for a moment to the history of modern English 

 tragedy. After the example of Lee and Otway, Southern and Rowo 

 endeavoured to return to a more natural tragic tone and style than 

 those which Dryden had so long practised and inculcated. Addison's 

 ' Cato," notwithstanding the great temporary celebrity and popularity 

 which party rivalry conferred upon it, merits no attention in the his- 

 tory of dramatic art, except as having been the first, and, it should 

 seem, the model, of a series of the most frigid productions in imitation 

 of the French classic school, by Young, Johnson, Thomson, Glover, &c., 

 that are to be found in our literary history. With some small poetic, 

 they have no dramatic pretensions ; yet the very excess of their for- 

 mality and frigidity perhaps contributed to that decisive reaction of 

 the public mind in favour of the elder dramatic school, which took 

 place in the middle of the last century, and which now demands our 

 attention. 



Garrick's restoration of Shakspere to his rightful supremacy over 

 the English theatre was a combination, upon a more extensive scale, 

 of the efforts in the same direction which had been made by Betterton. 

 The success of Garrick contributed much to that more general appre- 

 ciation of Shakspere which gradually went on increasing. This 



