SYMPHONY AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ETHICS BY HAROLD BAYLEY LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL LTD. II Henrietta Street, Covent Garden INTRODUCTION Mr. William Watson has well said, Your Marlowe's page I close, my Shakespeare's ope; And vast curves of the gradual violin ! The methods of criticism have been so specialised and detached, that it seems to have been unnoticed that the Elizabethan Dramatists constitute an Orchestra playing a great Symphony. The roulades and cadenzas of John Lyly, the blare of Christopher Marlowe, the long slow slope of Shakespeare's violin, the sadder sweep of Massinger's viola, the flutings of John Fletcher and Thomas Heywood, the harshness of Ford's bassoon, the heroic fanfares of Michael Drayton, and the gloom of John Webster's double-bass, all blend into an amazing Harmony. In current estimation this movement has no ethical significance. "There is, perhaps," says Professor Dowden, "no body of literature which has less of an expressed tendency for the intellect than the drama of the age of Elizabeth; it is for the most part absolutely devoid of a conpurpose." scious Shakespere, His Mind and Art, p. 9. The facts now brought together into focus, prove however, that, far from being the planless and sporadic efforts of uncultivated Genius, the Elizabethan Drama was a movement freighted with the deliberate and conscious purpose of attuning the human mind to greater possibilities. With some it is a tenet that in the golden epoch of Elizabeth Poesy was an indigenous weed, and sweetness and light were widely disseminated. To expose this fallacy and to point the exceptional beauty of the dramatic Harmony I shall be constrained to emphasise the elsewhere prevailing Discord. In justice to the dramatists I must contrast the grace of their chivalry with the coarseness of contemporary manners; the serenity of their Religion with the harshness of current Theology; the richness of their Philosophy with the barren jangle of the Schools. At times composers inadvertently repeat stray phrases from the music of other men; occasionally they deliberately and dishonestly do so. But that a group of exalted Artists should consciously, or coincidently, produce entire Symphonies uniform with each other, not merely in leading movements, but identically phrase for phrase and bar for bar, even to faulty progression and false relation, such a paradox seemingly exceeds all reason. Through a garner of short extracts, most of them intrinsically beautiful, I shall lead the reader to the certainty that the Elizabethan Drama is a Symphony, so complex that existing writing systems were inefficient for its expression; so daring and original that the composers were driven to invent and employ a new notation. |