DRAMATIC POETRY.

The general nature of the drama is stated in § 36. Within the narrow limits of the present chapter only a few of the leading varieties of dramatic form in English literature can be indicated.

174. Historical Sketch.-The drama, as we find it fully developed in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, was the product of many literary forces, some of which had been working for several centuries. The principal of these forces were: the Church Plays; the Moralities; the Chronicle-History; the Classical or Pseudo-Classical drama; the Continental drama, chiefly the Italian and French.

Church Plays. In the later Middle Ages there was a remarkable growth of dramatic, or rather scenic, representations of events recorded in the Old and New Testaments. These representations were at first strictly religious, i. e., they were given by ecclesiastics, in the churchbuilding, and in Latin. The usual occasions were the Easter and Christmas festivals. But in time these representations became secularized: the parts were taken by laymen, the vernacular was substituted for Latin, and the representation took place in public buildings, or in the city streets and squares. More and more attention was paid to costume and stage-effect. The religious play lost much of its sacredness and became an entertaining histrionic spectacle. The comic element also crept in. Certain persons of the Old and New Testaments were frequently, if not usually, treated as mirth-provoking, e. g., Noah and his wife, and Herod the Great, the author of the massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem. Herod is usually represented as a ranting braggart; Noah's wife refuses to enter the ark until she is soundly beaten. In the Towneley collection there is introduced, just before the scene of the Annunciation

to the shepherds, a broad farce of sheep-stealing in the fourteenth century.

The exact designation of a church play founded upon the Bible is mystery.* In England there was a marked tendency to put together a number of mysteries, extending from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Such a collection was called a collective mystery. Thus we have the York, Towneley, Chester, and Coventry collections.

Not only stories from the Bible, but also the lives of the saints, were dramatized. Such a representation was called a miracle play, and was nearly always given on the calendar day of the saint. But in England the verbal distinction between mystery and miracle was not carefully observed, the mysteries being usually called miracles. Thus Longfellow has introduced in his Golden Legend a play which he calls The Nativity, a Miracle Play; it is in imitation of the medieval church plays.

The church plays, although mortally wounded by the Reformation, survived feebly through the reign of Elizabeth, dying with her. It is therefore not only possible, but quite probable, that Shakespeare attended the performance of a collective mystery like that of Coventry.

Moralities. These were dramatized allegories (see § 117). At first they were mere representations of the struggle between virtue and vice in its ordinary aspects. But in the course of the Reformation they were frequently made the vehicle of religious controversy. Occasionally a morality was thrown into the form of a short story, in which

*The better spelling would be mistery. The word is not from the Latin mysterium, Greek μvστýpιov, “secret doctrine," but from the Old French mestier, Latin ministerium, "profession, trade, handicraft." A church play was usually acted by the members of a trade-guild. Thus the play of the Deluge, in the Chester collection, was given, very appropriately, by the guild of watercarriers.

+ See A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes. Clarendon Press. 1890. (A very serviceable collection of specimens, with notes, glossary, and introduction.) K. L. Bates, The English Religious Drama. New York; Macmillan. 1893.

three or four typical characters were introduced and a striking situation humorously presented. In this form the morality is called an interlude. A well-known specimen is that called The Four P's, by John Heywood, in the reign of Queen Mary. The four P's are the Pardoner, the Palmer, the Poticary, and the Pedlar. The comic situation is that of a competition, to decide which of the four can tell the biggest lie. The chief service rendered by the Morality-Interludes to the later drama was in promoting the sense of humor and wit, and conciseness of dialogue.

Chronicle-History.-The custom of dramatizing the biblical narrative led to the custom of dramatizing the more striking events in the reign of an English sovereign. The earliest known example is Bale's play of King John. In the hands of the immediate predecessors of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare himself, the history-play became an acknowledged dramatic form.

Classical Drama.-How far the genuine Greek drama was known and understood in England in the sixteenth century, is a difficult question. It is probable that none of the great English dramatists had a clear understanding of Greek art. Their knowledge of the classical drama was confined in the main to Plautus and Terence, and to the plays which pass under the name of Seneca. From these last they borrowed at least one practical feature, viz., the arrangement of a play in five acts.

The observance of the Unities became a burning question in the latter part of the century. Certain Italian commentators upon Aristotle, misapprehending the spirit of his Poetics and knowing little of the actual practice of the Greeks, treated the practice of Seneca as an absolute canon of classical art. They laid down the rule of the three Unities of place, of time, of action. A play must not shift from place to place, but must be confined to one city. The time represented is not to exceed twenty-four hours.

The action is to be unbroken and centred around

one or two persons. This doctrine was accepted in England by certain would-be classical authorities; notably by Sir Philip Sidney, who exerted all his influence to enforce it. But the great English dramatists, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, Shakespeare, paid little heed to it. In fact, not only was such a rigid doctrine in conflict with English notions of literary freedom, but it was in conflict with dramatic precedent. For centuries the English play-goer had been accustomed to religious performances in which the time represented extended through years and even centuries. To him there was no impropriety, then, in prolonging the time and shifting the scene of a secular performance. At all events, the three unities were not adopted by the great body of English playwrights. The most notable English drama that professedly observes them is Milton's Samson Agonistes.*

Continental Drama.-The influence exerted upon the Elizabethan drama by the contemporary drama of France and Italy has not yet been studied exhaustively. So far as one may judge from present information, it seems that the influence was not very great. France and Italy, having accepted the unities which England rejected, could scarcely exert much influence upon English dramatic structure. A moderate amount of dramatic material was borrowed, and some few plays were translated. But, in the main, the English drama went its own peculiar way.

175. To understand aright the great English drama centred around Shakespeare, we must keep in mind certain general facts.

1. The age was one of abnormal mental activity. The great religious disputes, ending in the rupture with Spain and the overthrow of the Armada, had started England upon its career of maritime supremacy. Bold unscrupulous adventure was the fashion. But, running parallel

*The unities are observed in The Tempest. But the observance of them does not seem to have been Shakespeare's professed object.

with this outward enterprise, there was an equally strong current of religious and philosophic inquiry, which manifested itself later in the Puritan Rebellion. Sidney and Raleigh may serve as representatives of this special combination of outward energy and inner spiritual life.

2. The stage was the only public outlet for artistic impulses and aspirations. Other European countries were cultivating other arts. Italy, in particular, was at the height of its development in painting and sculpture. England had only its drama; the theatre was the meetingplace for those who wished to enjoy the gifts of art and for those who sought public distinction therein.

3. After centuries of change and slow growth, the language attained, in a large number of young writers, a freshness and a power of expression which have since. been rarely equalled and never surpassed. The greatest poets of our century have paid homage to Elizabethan English as a medium of poetic utterance.

It is not always possible to account for social phenomena. After all the recognizable elements have been carefully estimated, there is a residuum of mystery. Of the great English dramatists in the second half of Elizabeth's reign and throughout that of James I. we must assert this much, that they exhibit, in their conception and treatment of human character, an intuitive power which we vainly look for in any subsequent generation.

176. The chief species of drama are Tragedy and Comedy.

In Tragedy we have an action in which the leading person, hero or heroine, struggles against and finally succumbs to superior powers. The struggle must be a noble one, i. e., not for a petty object, and the disastrous ending of the hero must purify the spirit of the beholder through the emotions of sympathy and fear. The beholder must be able to sympathize with the hero, as with a being like himself, not wholly good and not wholly bad; he must

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