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is almost absent in the great epic, is conspicuous; (4) the metre is less stately, and the style more easy and familiar. The Romance is a product of the age of chivalry. Spenser's Faery Queene is an example. Modern Romances are Scott's Marmion and The Lady of the Lake.

3. The Tale is a still humbler form of narrative poetry; it tells a complete story, with love or humor predominant. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn furnish some examples. Poe's Raven, Byron's Corsair, Burns's Tam o'Shanter, and Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Dora are tales.

4. The Ballad is generally shorter and is always less discursive than the tale; it tells its story rapidly and simply. Ballads were originally folk-songs; like the oldest epics, they grew up among the people, and their authors are commonly unknown. Chevy Chase, Sir Patrick Spens, the Robin Hood ballads, and the Battle of Maldon are examples. Later poets made ballads: Campbell's Battle of the Baltic is a martial ballad; Whittier's Maud Muller, a love ballad; Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, a superstitious ballad; Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome are historical ballads.

5. The Pastoral is a slightly narrative poem depicting rural life, with a large element of description, but with little action. Keats's Endymion, Goldsmith's Deserted Village, and Thomson's Seasons are examples.

6. The Idyll. This word means "a little picture." It has been used in two senses: (1) a short narrative poem giving little pictures of simple country life, quiet, homely scenes, and appealing to gentle emotions. In

this sense, it is but another name for the short Pastoral. Examples are Longfellow's Evangeline, Whittier's SnowBound, and Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. (2) A short narrative poem giving pictures of a more highly spectacular life, involving scenes of action, and appealing to strong emotions. Such are Tennyson's Idylls of the King and some of Browning's poems.

Dramatic Poetry.

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166. The drama, like the epic, deals with the past, but the drama represents the past in the present. exhibits a story by means of characters speaking and acting in a series of situations so contrived as to develop a plot, and show a single controlling purpose. This subordination of all actions to the controlling purpose of a play is known as unity of action. The drama, when enacted on the stage, employs scenery and costume to produce the impression of reality. The drama is "imitated human action," but it does not imitate a series of human actions exactly as they occur in actual life; it selects typical actions and arranges these with a single purpose, as they might occur. The drama is divided into "acts," usually five in number, the earlier acts exhibiting the causes, starting conflicting lines of action, entangling and developing these to a climax or height of interest which is usually reached in the fourth act, the last act exhibiting the consequences of the action, the dénouement. The whole play thus makes a complete story.

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1. Tragedy (1) deals with solemn themes showing a mortal will at odds with fate; (2) produces, in the

mind of the spectator, pity and terror and awe, driving out trivial and unworthy thoughts; (3) leads through a complicated plot to a catastrophe, the final overthrow of the mortal who has been either criminal in his motive (Macbeth) or mistaken in his motive (Othello); and (4) this catastrophe is foreshadowed, is felt to be coming, and when it does come is felt to be inevitable, beyond human power to prevent. Tragedy prefers verse; its language is nobler than that of daily life, so that we are not reminded of common concerns even by the words used, but live for the time in a higher and nobler world, the world of the imagination. Julius Caesar,

Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, are examples. Such a play as the Merchant of Venice, in which both tragedy and comedy are present in a subdued form, is classified as Reconciling Drama.

2. Comedy (1) deals with lighter themes, with the follies, accidents, or humors of life; (2) produces no terror or pity, but produces amusement or mirth; (3) ends not with a catastrophe, but brings the story to a conclusion naturally desired, all ending as we would have it; (4) does not foreshadow the end, as tragedy does, but frequently surprises us happily. Comedy is nearer to daily life, does not employ verse so often as tragedy does, inclines to prose, and employs less noble language. In Comedy Proper, such as Shakespeare's As You Like It and Twelfth Night, Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, and Sheridan's Rivals, the amusement may arise both from the characters and from the plot or from either alone. Comedy Proper does not result in continued peals of uproarious laughter. In

the Farce we have a short comedy that does so result. The Farce is "broad" in its effects, and consists of highly ridiculous situations and greatly exaggerated characters. Melodrama introduces music, is partly spoken and partly sung; in modern melodrama the scenes are highly romantic and sensational. The Mask was a kind of pastoral drama of simple plot, rural, romantic scenes, and masked characters (shepherds and shepherdesses mainly), with some supernatural personages. Originally it was largely song and dance by masked characters. Milton's Comus, the greatest English Mask, showed to what perfection the Mask might be developed, and what a lofty moral tone might be given to it. The Opera is properly a kind of comedy in which the actors sing their parts, the words having less importance than the music, and the whole being of little literary value. But in Grand Opera we have the best music joined to high and serious themes of legendary or romantic character, and sometimes the best poetry.

Lyric Poetry.

167. The Lyric is a poem which voices the personal feeling, sentiment, or passion of the poet himself. The word "lyric" shows that such poetry was originally sung to the accompaniment of the lyric or harp. Many lyrics are still set to music, though not primarily written to be sung. (1) The lyric has to do with the inner feelings of the poet, not (like the epic) with outward events, and hence it is said to be subjective. (2) The best lyrics are sincere and imaginative. (3) Lyric Poetry expresses itself in many different forms of verse and

metre, and does not have a preferred form, as the Great Epic and the Drama have. Lyric Poetry may be classified as follows:

1. The Song. This is usually short, simple in measure, and divided into stanzas each complete in itself but related to the sentiment of the whole. Sacred songs include hymns, psalms, choruses, and anthems. Secular songs may be patriotic, comic, moral, political, or sentimental, may treat of war, love, or death. The song is the simple, natural expression of the poet's immediate feeling.

2. The Ode. This is the expression of intense feeling, feeling which has become enthusiasm in the poet. The Ode has a more elaborate structure and scheme of verse than the song. It is not intended to be sung. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, Dryden's Ode to St. Cecilia, Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality, Sir William Jones's What Constitutes a State? are examples.

3. The Elegy. -This expresses grief mingled with reflection; regret for the dead is its usual theme, or plaintive reflection on mortality. Gray's Elegy, Milton's Lycidas, Hood's Bridge of Sighs, Shelley's Adonais, Tennyson's In Memoriam, are examples. Whittier's Ichabod laments Webster's fall, his death to a high ideal.

4. The Sonnet. - This is a short poem in fixed form, limited to fourteen lines, and generally with a prescribed arrangement of rhymes. It usually deals with a single phase of feeling, but is sometimes less specific, and may be devoted to description. Milton, Wordsworth, Keats,, Shakespeare, furnish examples.

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