the evidence in the case of particular plays, the intercourse adverted to is noticeable as connecting our stage and our dramatic literature in its youthful days with those of a nation akin to our own not only in blood and speech, but in the spirit of its moral and intellectual development. pursue, ternals of the stage. At the close of the period treated in this chapter, The exthe stage, whose fortunes I do not propose further to was becoming a fashionable resort of the young nobility and their associates, and more especially of those whose amusements were coloured by literary tastes and tendencies. No great significance need, perhaps, be attached to the circumstance that a high-sounding name or two are to be found in the lists of personages credited with occasional contributions to our dramatic literature 1. But the composition of its audience, which rarely fails to affect the critical reception of a play, usually exercises an anticipatory influence upon its character. In this age criticism, which in the next was in its cruder forms so deeply to vex a writer who like Ben Jonson knew his purpose-and others who may not have been equally sure of theirs-had not yet passed out of its infancy; but some tonic force must have been derived both from the opinion of the more aristocratic spectators, as they sat upon the stage attended by pages with tobacco and pipes, and even from the 'grounded judgment and grounded capacities' of the much-abused occupants of the roofless and rush-strewn pit. To describe the externals of the Elisabethan stage is no part of my task; and it must suffice to note only one or two circumstances directly bearing upon the composition of the plays exhibited upon it. In the first place, the construction and decorations of the theatre were of so extreme a simplicity that constant change of scene' neither required any effort on the part of the manager, nor interfered with the enjoyment of the spectators 3. It was effected by drawing up 1 The Earl of Oxford (1562–1604) wrote plays for his men, and is praised by Meres as one of the best for Comedy amongst us.' (Fleay, History of the Stage, p. 159.) I cannot lay my hand upon a similar tradition as to Lord Strange (Earl of Derby, 1593-4). 2 Cf. Collier, iii. 157. 3 Cf. as to the early methods of indicating locality and 'change of scene,' and down the curtain, which covered the inner portion of the stage only. In front, it was requisite that all persons, whether dead or alive, should be off the scene before it could be supposed to change; again, no character could be 'discovered' on it in the middle of an act. Hence the dramatists found it necessary, to a degree hardly appreciable by writers for the stage of later days, to make each situation complete in itself from beginning to end. On the other hand, the frequent nominal change of scene constituted no such irritating perpetual interruption to the progress of the action, as it would seem if imposed upon a modern audience1. The imaginative powers of the spectators, consistently kept on the stretch, were thus enfeebled by no adventitious aids worth mentioning. In the second place, as plays were acted in the afternoon, the performance had to be compressed into a short space of time; Shakspere speaks of the 'two hours' traffic of our stage 2,' but probably a rather more liberal measure of time may have been ordinarily R. Koppel, Scenen-Eintheilungen und Orts-Angaben in den Shakespeare'schen Dramen in Jahrbuch, &c., vol. ix. (1874). See also the reference to Haslewood's notes on the subject in the Publications of the Roxburghe Society, in the Journal of Sir Walter Scott (1890), pp. 39-40. 1 Cf. Freytag, Die Technik des Dramas, pp. 157 seqq. 2 In the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet. In Davies' sonnet In Fuscum (Ellis's Specimens, ii. 37) the man of fashion 'first doth rise at ten, and at eleven He goes to Gill's where he doth eat till one, but also, doubtless, at so leisurely a pace that the timing of his 'movements' need not be taken quite literally. -Collier, iii. 180, concludes that three o'clock was the usual hour for the commencement of a performance. It seems to have been unusual to perform more than one play in a single afternoon; but occasionally the entertainment appears to have been prolonged by a jig-a term defined by C. W. Dilke (Continuation of Dodsley, 6 vols. 1816, vi. 326), as signifying 'a dramatic performance in rime, every part of which was sung by the performers, and one which was frequently exhibited on the stage as an Afterpiece, as Farces are at present.' Cf. ante, p. 454, note, as to Tarlton's Jigge of a horse loade of fooles.-It seems to have been only on private stages that performances were by candle, or torch-light; the public theatres lay open to the weather. (Collier, iii. 141.) allowed. The fact that plays were performed at these hours The theatrical of the day is likewise significant as indicating the usual public. composition of a theatrical audience; for the busy citizens could hardly have made a practice of deserting their shops, even if they could have waived their principles. Thus the regular frequenters of the theatre could not but chiefly. belong to the idler sections of the population1. The prices of admission too seem to have been well adapted to the needs of habitual' playgoers. Finally, no respectable woman might appear at a playhouse except with her face. concealed under a mask,-a circumstance which, were it not for later experience, would help to account in return for the license that pervades so large a proportion of the Elisabethan drama. Nor will it be forgotten that women's parts were invariably acted by boys. This practice which, strange as it may seem to us, was in intention at least owing to a sense of propriety, implied at the same time a further demand upon the vigour of the imagination of the spectators 3. But these details, and others of the same kind 4, must be left to the historians of the stage. I have only borrowed from them what seemed necessary in order to illustrate the conditions under which the predecessors of Shakspere, and at the beginning of his professional career Shakspere himself, worked. It remains to attempt in conclusion to draw the sum of the literary achievements as dramatists of the writers discussed in this chapter. For the purposes of literary criticism the consideration of external conditions and circumstances of authorship is only of importance in so far as it helps to clear 1 See ib. iii. 212 seqq., On Audiences at Theatres. In private theatres plays were usually performed by candle-light, which was out of the question in public theatres, inasmuch as the latter lay partly open to the weather. Ib. pp. 140-1. 2 See ib. iii. 146 seqq., Price of Admission to Theatres. 3 Freytag, u. s., p. 159. In the Induction to The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, when the 'boys' come forward among the players, Skelton exclaims: 'What! our maid Marian, leaping like a lad!' Julia's pretty pretence of having been made to play the woman's part' in the 'pageants of delight' at Pentecost will be remembered (Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. sc. 4). See Collier's section, Properties, Apparel, and Furniture, iii. 158 seqq. The measure sors. Lyly. the ground. Only in what holds its place after this process has been completed may we find the creations, not of time and place, but of original genius,-the true parent of what is immortal in the works of literary and all other art. By no means the whole of the dramatic works of of original Shakspere's predecessors will bear a scrutiny of this descripgenius in tion. Lyly, unless a charming lyrical gift be taken into Shakspere's predecesaccount, has been aptly described as 'a bel esprit, but no poet1.' Wit and ingenuity he possessed in abundance; of learning he had acquired a fair share; but even the most characteristic features of the mannerism which made his prose-romance fashionable and which he could not bring himself to exclude from the dialogue of his dramas, were due to an invention not his own. The dexterity with which he trod the 'lavoltas high and swift corantos' of his peculiar style excited the admiration of his age and provoked imitative efforts on the part of some of his contemporaries, but his services to the national drama, as a branch of poetic literature, were limited to the domestication of prose-dialogue on the stage. He has no claim to be regarded as occupying such a position towards the great Elisabethan dramatists, as e.g. Wieland (to whose literary endowment his own bears a certain resemblance) holds towards the great classics of modern German poetic literature. In his treatment of his dramatic themes his innate love of artificiality, coupled with considerations foreign to artistic purpose, led him into an aberration from the true principles of dramatic composition. He ciphered personal allegories with so consummate a skill on the background of classical or pseudo-classical mythology, that a supreme enjoyment of his plays must be reserved. for the detectives of literary criticism. Where their learning has succeeded in finding something like a key, there are no secrets of genius for it to unlock. In this direction Lyly doubtless taught something to the masque-writers of his own 1 See Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art (English Translation), p. 36. Exception may, however, be taken to the antithetical oracle which follows, 'that while Tieck is right in maintaining that the commentators of Shakspeare have much to learn from Lyly, the assertion of Schlegel is equally true, that Shakspeare himself can have learned little or nothing from him.' age as well as of subsequent generations; but nothing that really profited it to the legitimate drama. His influence is traceable in most of his contemporaries, and even in Shakspere himself; but, with the exception noted above, it affected only transitory elements in their creations. Happily, the conditions of the poetic art are such that influences of this kind vanish from sight, as our attention fixes itself upon more vital and more significant characteristics. dramatic writers. It was not by exaggerating in the direction of artificiality English the traditions of our earlier drama that the predecessors literature of Shakspere began to make the dramatic branch of our before these literature the greatest glory of its growth. They found a drama which, even where popular sources had contributed to its origin, was artificial by reason of its imitation of a limited class of models, and which at the same time was still crude and inadequate in its form. Tragedy had in choice of subjects and in method of construction attached itself to the footsteps of Seneca and his Italian followers; it was essentially epical in its treatment, the lyrical elements remaining organically unconnected with the epical; it occupied itself, so to speak, with the statement of an action rather than with its development out of the characters of the agents. Such was the essential nature of most of the tragedies described in my second chapter, from Gorboduc to Tancred and Gismund, from Promos and Cassandra to The Misfortunes of Arthur. The hopeful beginnings of the historical drama on national subjects, the Chronicle Histories, or as they were frequently called, the True Tragedies1, had from the nature of the case even more distinctly exhibited the same characteristics. On the other hand, their comparative warmth and energy of manner had given them an advantage over plays dissociated in subject from the national consciousness, and moving in the less congenial spheres of Classical history and legend, or of foreign romance. Comedy was still hovering between the imitation of a late Classical type, the reproduction of 'Italian devises,' the use of the old mythological and revived pastoral machinery, and the 1 Cf. Fleay, History of the Stage, p. 75. |