Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/451

431 ENGLISH.] DRAMA 431 general laws of this progress accord with those of the natural advance of creative genius ; artificiality gives way to freedom, and freedom in its turn submits to a greater degree of regularity and care. In versification as in diction the earliest and the latest period of Shakespeare s dramatic writing are snore easily recognizable than what lies between and may be called the normal period, the plays belonging to which in form most resemble one another, and are least affected by distinguishable peculiarities snch as the rhymes and intentionally euphuistic colouring of style which char acterize the earliest, or the feminine endings of the lines and the more condensed manner of expression common to the latest plays. But such distinctions apart, there can be on doubt but that in verse and in prose alike, Shakespeare s style, so far as it admitted of reproduction, is itself to be regarded as the norm of that of the Elizabethan drama, that in it the prose form of English comedy possesses its first accepted model, and that in it the chosen metre of the English versified drama established itself as irremovable unless at the risk of an unnatural experiment. Buence It may seem paradoxical to assert that it is by their con- l s struction that Shakespeare s plays exerted the most palpable influence upon the English drama, as well as upon the modern drama of the Germanic nations in general, and upon such forms of the Ilomance drama as have been in more re cent times based upon it. For it was not in construction that his greatest strength lay, or that the individuality of his genius could raise him above the conditions under which he worked in common with his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. Yet the fact that he reconciled these con ditions with creations of matchless strength and of un equalled fidelity to the demands of nature and art, estab lished them as the conditions of what a popular (and consequently often abused) term has instinctively come to designate as the Shakespearian drama. The great and irresistible demand on the part of Shakespeare s public was for incident a demand which of itself necessitated a method of construction different from that of the Greek drama, or of those modelled more or less closely upon it. To no other reason is to be ascribed the circumstance that Shakespeare so constantly combined two actions in the course of a single play, not merely supplementing the one by means of the other as a bye or under-plot. In no respect is the progress of his technical skill as a dramatist more apparent, an assertion which a comparison of plays clearly ascribable to successive periods of his life would satisfactorily establish. s charac- Should it, however, be sought to express in one word the s. greatest debt of the drama to Shakespeare, this word must be the same as that which expresses his supreme gift as a dramatist. It is in characterization in the drawing of characters ranging through almost every type of humanity which furnishes a fit subject for the tragic or the comic art that he remains absolutely unapproached ; and it was in this direction that he pointed the way which the English drama could not henceforth desert without becoming untrue to itself, It may have been a mere error of judgment which afterwards held him to have been surpassed by others in particular fields of characterization (which, for sooth, regarded him as supremely excellent in male but not in female characters). But it was a sure sign of decay when our writers began to shrink from following him in the endeavour to make the drama a mirror of humanity, and when, in self-condemned arrogance, they thrust un reality back upon a stage which he had animated with the warm breath of life, where Juliet had blossomed like a flower of spring, and where Othello s noble nature had suffered and sinned, By the numerous body of poets who, contemporary with Shakespeare or in the next generation, cultivated the wide field of the national drama, every form commending itself to the tastes and sympathies of the national genius was essayed. None were neglected except those from which the spirit of English literature had been estranged by the Reformation, and those which had from the first been artificial importations of the Renaissance. The mystery could not here, as in Spain, produce such an aftergrowth as the auto, and the confines of the religious drama were only now and then tentatively touched. 1 The direct imitations of the classical drama were few and feeble ; Chapman, while affecting some of its usages, made no serious attempt to reproduce its essentials ; experiments like W. Alexander s (afterwards Earl of Stirling) Monarchicke Tragedies- (1603- 1605) are the mere isolated efforts of a student, like Milton s Samson Agonistes at a later date (1677). At the opposite end of the dramatic scale, the light gaiety of the Italian and French force could not establish itself on the English popular stage without more solid adjuncts ; the English man s festive digestion is robust, and he likes his amuse ments substantial. In the pastoral drama and the mask, however, many of our dramatists found special opportunities for the exercise of their lyrical gifts and of their inventive powers. The former could never become other than an exotic, so long as it retained the artificial character of its origin. Shakespeare had accordingly only blended elements derived from it into the action of his romantic comedies. In more or less isolated works Jonsou, Fletcher, Daniel, Randolph, and others sought to rival Tasso and Guarini, Jorison 3 coming nearest to nationalizing an essentially foreign growth by the fresh simplicity of his treatment, Fletcher 4 bearing away the palm for beauty of poetic execution. The mask was a more elastic kind of com position, mixing in varying proportions its constituent elements of declamation and dialogue, music and dancing, decoration and scenery. In its least elaborate literary form which, of course, externally was the most elaborate it closely approached the pageant ; in other instances the distinctness of its characters or the fullness of the action introduced into its scheme, brought it nearer to the regular drama. A frequent ornament of Queen Elizabeth s pro gresses, it was Cultivated with increased assiduity in the reign of James I., and in that of his successor outshone, by the favour it enjoyed with court and nobility, the attractions of the regular drama itself. Most of the later Elizabethan dramatists contributed to this species, upon which Shake speare only incidentally in the course of his dramas ex pended the resources of his fancy ; but by far the most successful writer of masks was Ben Jonson, of whose numerous compositions of this kind many hold a permanent place in our poetic literature, and &quot; next &quot; whom, in his own judgment, &quot; only Fletcher and Chapman could write a mask.&quot; From a poetic point of view, however, they were at least rivalled by Dekker and Ford ; in productivity and favour T. Campion (d. 1623) seems for a time to have excelled. Inasmuch, however, as the history of the mask in England is to a great extent that of &quot; painting and carpentry &quot; and of Inigo Jones, it need not here be further pursued. The Microcosmus of T. Nables (printed 1637), which is very like a morality, seems to have been the first mask brought upon the public stage. It was the perform ance of a mask by Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies at Whitehall which had some years previously (1632) been thought to have supplied to the invective of Histrio ilastix against the stage the occasion for disloyal innuendo ; and it was for the performance of a mask in a great nobleman s castle that a very different Puritan had not long afterwards 1 Massinger, The Virgin Martyr; Shirley, St Patrick for Ireland 3 The Sad Shepherd. * Tlie Faithful Shepherdess. Forms the lat Eliza bethan druinu. The pa toral drama. The m
 * Darius; Croesus; Julius Cccsar; The Alexandrccan Tragedy.