enters in the person of young Hilda Wangel, the younger daughter of the Dr. Wangel who had married the "Lady from the Sea." In her influence over the Master Builder we have a further presentment of the dramatist's study of hypnotism. In order to remain heroic in her eyes, he actually signs his own death-warrant, and abdicates in favour of a young man who is his superior in talent, and is destined to make him superfluous. In spite of his wife's warning he lends an ear to Hilda's challenge, and trying to repeat a grand feat of earlier years, so as to live up to her ideal of him, he mounts to the top of a tower which he had built over his house, and while placing a garland upon the pinnacle he grows dizzy and falls headlong to the ground.

What is here symbolised is the normal tragedy of the successful life. Youth, more amply equipped with energy, outstrips the old man, who, at an earlier or a later time, grows dizzy, loses his grip, and falls down. Sometimes the descent is gradual; sometimes it is a grand spectacular fall; but the mode of exit does not matter much. Your tale is told, and you fall at once into the rear.

With "Little Eyolf" and " John Gabriel Borkman" Ibsen's dramas have, so far, come to a close. These plays are now under frequent criticism in the Press, and one of our best critics points out that, by a happy chance, Borkman exactly fits our present Lyceum Company. Ibsen is now, however, seventy years of age, and may, therefore, be allowed to bring to a close his long and honourable career.

That evils can be cured by professing not to see them is an optimism against which Ibsen revolts. He believes that such views encourage vice by spreading over it a charitable mantle of darkness, under which the foulest things may be done without entailing any open penalty. He has the courage, without flinching at the ugliest truths, to record what he sees and feels without regard for any conventionalities. His dramas are nowise food for babes, but they furnish wholesome and stimulating nourishment to every mature mind. Considering the dramas of Ibsen as a whole, a candid reader cannot but admit that they display a truly imposing monument of modern thought. Under characters intensely Norwegian, and amid surroundings peculiar to a northern race, the dramatist has seized and brought before us the typical facts of human nature in general. With these heroes we have many characteristics in common; and in them the poet displays to us the passions and the infirmities of all. Though the transition from one drama to another is natural, the points of contact are many, and the moral doctrine is the same in all; though the differences of form are such that, had we not known the author, we could hardly have believed them to have come from the same brain.

As manager and writer for the stage, Ibsen traversed the whole of the theatrical schools of our time, modifying his forms

and characters in accordance with the intellectual condition of the period. Attracted at times to the styles of drama developed by his mighty predecessors in other lands, he has, by innate logical tendencies, finished by finding and employing a powerful method which is especially his own. Though above all things a poet, he was, like Wordsworth, always fond of posing as a teacher; thus of late he has turned aside from poetry and developed into profound teaching of what he believes to be important social duties. In his transitions from one kind of drama to another there has been nothing arbitrary. He began with the romantic drama, because in his youth that was the prevailing form. He turned therefrom to the philosophic drama when, after giving the rein to his imagination, a need of sober reflection had been felt. From this he has been carried on to naturalism by causes which, in all literatures, have made this form inevitable. To-day we find him in full symbolism, not through any outward impulse, but because after realism this is the only form that remains; and thus we now find him deep in the kind of drama that is best suited to his amazing genius. Though unquestionably an artist, he has, no doubt, in the solitude wherein he delights to live, less often meditated on pure questions of art than on the greater problems that relate to human destiny. And although he is now old, Ibsen's mind and soul have ever remained in perfect harmony with all the aspirations of youth. He has represented the manners and beliefs of yesterday; he now represents those of to-day; he even foresees those that are to come hereafter. He is a poet, with his eye open to the future; and he well deserves the title that has been bestowed upon, him of the most modern of all the moderns. The artistic education of Ibsen goes hand in hand with the development of the drama of our century; and in studying both we shall well observe the progressive development of the theatre of the age.

From England, Ibsen derived the first impulse that led him into the path wherein he has now become supreme; to Englishmen, along with his great predecessor, Goethe, Ibsen ascribes a character superior to what is awarded to the Germans, because, he says, we English have the courage to be what Nature has made us thus we should not, surely, be the only people in the whole world of letters among whom Ibsen's works have failed to obtain their due recognition. We ought the rather to be the readiest to welcome dramas that emanate from a man who has so abundantly shown that he possesses the indomitable energy, and the refusal to be beaten down by any difficulty or any obstacle, upon which we like to think that the great English race may fairly boast itself to be pre-eminent.

XIV.

THE RISE, DEVELOPMENT, AND PROGRESS OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA.

F all the many glories of English literature the most splendid is, beyond all question, the drama. I do not, of course, refer to the drama of to-day, but to that literary drama which has been bequeathed as a precious treasure to us and to the world by our forefathers. In this our literature stands above all literatures, ancient or modern, not excepting even the wonderful wealth of the Attic Stage. Though we owe this pre-eminence largely to Shakespere, whose supremacy remains unchallenged, yet Shakespere was but primus inter pares, the royal chief of a band whereof many a one might himself well claim high rank among the dramatists of the world. It behoves us, therefore, to give special attention to that drama which has given us so proud a pre-eminence.

The earliest dramas in our literature were devised by the clergy for the instruction of the people in matters of religion. At that time the laity, high and low alike, were so ignorant that many of the barons who won our great Charter could not write their names, and the third of our Norman kings was called Beauclerk, or the Scholar, merely because, having been. at first intended for the Church, he possessed a little learning. In such times it was thus quite natural that the clergy, who alone had any learning, should seek to strengthen their influence, and at the same time gratify, while instructing, the people, by pressing into the service of the Church so powerful a mode of religious amusement as was afforded by the drama. Accordingly, stage representations were got up with all attainable magnificence, and every possible expedient, in regard to costume and other accessories, was employed to heighten the illusions of the play. Dresses in abundance were readily supplied from the splendid robes to be found at hand in the vestry of the church. The plays were written and mainly acted at first by the monks themselves, and the church or cathedral often formed the theatre, and had the stage placed near the High Altar. Sometimes the representation took place out of doors, and now and then we read of the whole theatre being on wheels, for convenience of movement from place to place. Occasionally the stage was divided into three platforms, denoting respectively Heaven, Earth and Hell, whereon it was arranged that the dramatis persona should make their appearance in the exact place that corresponded to their several characters.

As to the people who got up these plays, it must be carefully borne in mind that they were the artists that filled the windows

of our churches with stained glass, hung the chapels with tapestry, poised aloft arches of ideal beauty, carved the statues, and gilt the shrines. They well knew what was needed to bring their pageantry into harmony with edifices that glowed with deep and solemn halo from clerestory windows, enriched with frescoes, and embellished with the many beauties of art that had been lavished on each detail of the structure by the loving prodigality of pious hands. We may be sure, therefore, that these dramas were presented with an harmonious accompaniment of magnificence and beauty.

The people were familiar with dramatic spectacles through the rites of a gorgeous and impressive ritual that was itself largely dramatic. The office of the Mass is essentially dramatic, and from very early times it became a custom to supplement the liturgy with scenic representation. Thus performers and spectators were alike prepared for the plays. The dramas thus represented were known as Miracle-Plays or Mysteries. Of the Miracle-Plays a good example is contained in Longfellow's paraphrase of the "Golden Legend," made familiar to all lovers of music by the beautiful setting that a part of it has received from Sir Arthur Sullivan. Of Mysteries we have all heard, and perhaps seen, much in relation to a solitary specimen of them which still survives in the Passion Play at Oberammergau in Bavaria. Of these two similar kinds of dramas, whose names were often confounded with each other, the Mysteries represented scenes from Scripture, the Miracle-Plays incidents and acts from the lives of the saints. In the early literature of all Catholic countries these dramas abound, and examples of the deep and abiding influence they exerted on mediaval art and poetry are to be met with everywhere. In this form Milton first cast his immortal epic, and the great poem of the Middle Ages shows by its very name, the Divine Comedy (Divina Comedia), that it is related to a theatrical performance; it is, in fact, a narrative form of those Miracle-Plays of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which were in Dante's day quite common in Florence. It is worthy of note that the invention of these plays has, by some authorities, been ascribed to an Englishman, Hilarius, who went to France to study under the celebrated Abelard, so well known from his ill-fated love of Heloise, and that from his pen we have a good example of each of the two kinds of religious drama. Throughout our country, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, Mysteries and Miracle-Plays multiplied and abounded, and they must, we cannot but feel, with people who could not read, have done much, not only to entertain, but also to enlighten and instruct them. Of these plays three cycles have come down to us, known from the places where they were performed, as the Widkirk, Chester, and Coventry plays. Their subjects were various. The Deluge, the story of Cain and Abel, the Crucifixion, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Raising of Lazarus, and the Sacrifice of

Isaac, a Mystery that contained a pathetic dialogue of great beauty between father and son. These are the subjects of a few out of the many of these plays that have been preserved for us. The characters were as varied as the subjects, and comprised not only saints, angels, and martyrs, Mary the Virgin and Mary the Magdalen, but even presented to the simple and child-like faith of the audience the persons of the Trinity. These were usually represented in an array which was then associated with ideas of the highest reverence, the ornaments and costume of a Bishop or a Pope. The patience of the audience, far transcending our own, could endure a performance that lasted over six days, to which inordinate length extended the Mystery-Play on the subject of the Creation and the Fall of Man. In order to enliven the graver scenes of such long plays, however, it was found absolutely necessary to introduce some comic elements, and these were usually furnished by the machinations and adventures of that highly humorous personage, the devil. Humorous, indeed, in literature, this awful being has continued almost down to our own day. For instance, in Burns's poems he is presented in the same light, half terrific, half farcical, in which he appears in these old Mysteries. In the famous "Address to the Deil," after reminding him of his many misdeeds, some of them highly amusing, the poet closes with this kindly humour :—

"And now, old Cloots! I ken you're thinkin',

A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',

Some luckless hour will send him linkin

In the part of the before-cited Miracle-Play which Sir Arthur Sullivan has taken for the libretto of his "Golden Legend," we see, too, what a humorous part Lucifer sometimes plays; as, for instance, when he sings to Prince Henry the praises of alcohol, or when he emphasises the fun of his situation where, in the garb of a barefooted Carmelite friar, he acts as conductor of a pious band of pilgrims across the Alps, and sets about to pen them up, like sheep, in a safe fold for the night. Thus it is that he sings of his flock :

"Of a truth, it often provokes me to laugh

To see those beggars hobble along,

Lamed and maimed, and fed upon chaff,
Chanting their wonderful piff and paff,

And to make up for not understanding the song,

Singing it fiercely, and wild, and strong!

Were it not for the mischief I make in the throng,

I should not continue the business long."