Eliza Bet An Drama

8/8/2019 Eliza Bet An Drama

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WHEN the great European movement known as the Renaissance reached England, it

found its fullest and most lasting expression in the drama. By a fortunate group of

coincidences this intellectual and artistic impulse affected the people of England at amoment when the country was undergoing a rapid and, on the whole, a peaceful

expansionwhen the national spirit soared high, and when the development of the

language and the forms of versification had reached a point which made possible themost triumphant literary achievement which that country has seen.

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THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE

Throughout the Middle Ages the English drama, like that of other European countries,was mainly religious and didactic, its chief forms being the Miracle Plays, which

presented in crude dialogue stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints, and the

Moralities, which taught lessons for the guidance of life through the means of allegoricalaction and the personification of abstract qualities. Both forms were severely limited in

their opportunities for picturing human nature and human life with breadth and variety.

With the revival of learning came naturally the study and imitation of the ancientclassical drama, and in some countries this proved the chief influence in determining the

prevalent type of drama for generations to come. But in England, though we can trace

important results of the models given by Seneca in tragedy and Plautus in comedy, themain characteristics of the drama of the Elizabethan age were of native origin, and

reflected the spirit and the interests of the Englishmen of that day.

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THE CHRONICLE HISTORY

Of the various forms which this drama took, the first to reach a culmination was the so-

called Chronicle History. This is represented in The Harvard Classics by the EdwardII 1of Marlowe, the greatest of the predecessors of Shakespeare; and Shakespeare

himself produced some ten plays belonging to the type. These dramas reflect the interest

the Elizabethans took in the heroic past of their country, and before the vogue of this

kind of play passed nearly the whole of English history for the previous three hundredyears had been presented on the stage. As a form of dramatic art the Chronicle History

had many defects and limitations. The facts of history do not always lend themselves to

effective theatrical representation, and in the attempt to combine history and drama bothfrequently suffered. But surprisingly often the playwrights found opportunity for such

studies of character as that of the King in Marlowes tragedy, for real dramatic structure

as in Shakespeares Richard III, or for the display of gorgeous rhetoric and national

exultation as in Henry V. These plays should not be judged by comparison with therealism of the modern drama. The authors sought to give the actors fine lines to deliver,

without seeking to imitate the manner of actual conversation; and if the story was

conveyed interestingly and absorbingly, no further illusion was sought. If this impliedsome loss, it also made possible much splendid poetry.

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ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDY 4
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Closely connected with the historical plays was the early development of Tragedy. But

in the search for themes, the dramatists soon broke away from fact, and the whole range

of imaginative narrative also was searched for tragic subjects. While the work of Senecaaccounts to some extent for the prevalence of such features as ghosts and the motive of

revenge, the form of Tragedy that Shakespeare developed from the experiments of men

like Marlowe and Kyd was really a new and distinct type. Such classical restrictions asthe unities of place and time, and the complete separation of comedy and tragedy, were

discarded, and there resulted a series of plays which, while often marked by lack of

restraint, of regular form, of unity of tone, yet gave a picture of human life as affected bysin and suffering which in its richness, its variety, and its imaginative exuberance has

never been equaled.

The greatest master of Tragedy was Shakespeare, and in Tragedy he reached his

greatest height. Hamlet, 2King Lear, 3 and Macbeth 4 are among his finestproductions, and they represent the noblest pitch of English genius. Of these, Hamlet

was perhaps most popular at the time of its production, and it has held its interest and

provoked discussion as perhaps no other play of any time or country has done.

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This is in part due to the splendor of its poetry, the absorbing nature of the plot, and thevividness of the drawing of characters who marvelously combine individuality with a

universal and typical quality that makes them appeal to people of all kinds and races. But

much also is due to the delineation of the hero, the subtlety of whose character and thecomplexity of whose motives constitute a perpetual challenge to our capacity for solving

mysteries. King Lear owes its appeal less to its tendency to rouse curiosity than to its

power to awe us with an overwhelming spectacle of the suffering which folly and evil

can cause and which human nature can sustain. In spite of, or perhaps because of, itsintricacy of motive and superabundance of incident, it is the most overwhelming of all in

its effect on our emotions. Compared with it, Macbeth is a simple play, but nowhere

does one find a more masterly portrayal of the moral disaster that falls upon the manwho, seeing the light, chooses the darkness.

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Though first, Shakespeare was by no means alone in the production of great tragedy.

Contemporary with him or immediately following came Jonson, Marston, Middleton,

Massinger, Ford, Shirley, and others, all producing brilliant work; but the man who mostnearly approached him in tragic intensity was John Webster. The Duchess of Malfi 5 is

a favorable example of his ability to inspire terror and pity; and though his range is not

comparable to that of Shakespeare, he is unsurpassed in his power of coining a phrasewhich casts a lurid light into the recesses of the human heart in moments of supreme

passion.

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ELIZABETHAN COMEDY

In the field of comedy, Shakespeares supremacy is hardly less assured. From the nature

of this kind of drama, we do not expect in it the depth of penetration into human motive

or the call upon our profounder sympathies that we find in Tragedy; and the conventionalhappy ending of Comedy makes difficult the degree of truth to life that one expects in

serious plays. Yet the comedies of Shakespeare are far from superficial. Those written in

the middle of his career, such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night, not only display

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with great skill many sides of human nature, but with indescribable lightness and grace

introduce us to charming creations, speaking lines rich in poetry and sparkling with wit,

and bring before our imaginations whole series of delightful scenes. TheTempest6 does more than this. While it gives us again much of the charm of the earlier

comedies, it is laden with the mellow wisdom of its authors riper years.

The Alchemist,7 representing the work of Ben Jonson, belongs to a type whichShakespeare hardly touchedthe Realistic Comedy. It is a vivid satire on the forms oftrickery prevailing in London about 1600alchemy, astrology, and the like. The plot is

constructed with the care and skill for which its author is famous; and though its main

purpose is the exposure of fraud, and much of its interest lies in its picture of the time,yet, in the speeches of Sir Epicure Mammon, for instance, it contains some splendid

poetry. Dekkers The Shoemakers Holiday 8in a much gayer mood, shows us another

side of London life, that of the respectable tradesfolk. Something of what Jonson andDekker do for the city, Massinger does for country life in his best known play, A New

Way to Pay Old Debts, 9one of the few Elizabethan dramas outside of Shakespeare

which have held the stage down to our own time. Massingers characters, like Jonsons,

are apt to be more typical embodiments of tendencies, less individuals whom one comesto know, than Shakespeares; yet this play retains its interest and power of rousing

emotion as well as its moral significance. The Philaster10 of Beaumont and Fletcher

belongs to the same type of romantic drama as The Tempestthe type of play whichbelongs to Comedy by virtue of its happy ending, but contains incidents and passages in

an all but tragic tone. Less convincing in characterization than Shakespeare, Beaumont

and Fletcher yet amaze us by the brilliant effectiveness of individual scenes, and sprinkletheir pages with speeches of poetry of great charm.

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The dramas of the Elizabethan period printed in The Harvard Classics serve to give a

taste of the quality of this literature at its highest, but cannot, of course, show the

surprising amount of it, or indicate the extreme literary-historical interest of its rise anddevelopment. Seldom in the history of the world has the spirit of a period found so

adequate an expression in literature as the Elizabethan spirit did in the drama; seldom can

we see so completely manifested the growth, maturity, and decline of a literary form. Butbeyond these historical considerations, we are drawn to the reading of Shakespeare and

his contemporaries by the attraction of their profound and sympathetic knowledge of

mankind and its possibilities for suffering and joy, for sin and nobility, by theentertainment afforded by their dramatic skill in the presentation of their stories, and by

the superb poetry that they lavished so profusely on their lines.

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Eliza Bet An Drama