Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/458

438 438 DRAMA [ENGLISH. afterwards to suggest to him the theme of the first of the novels which have made his name immortal, accordingly ventured in two extravaganzas 1 (so we should call them in these days) upon a larger admixture of political with - literary and other satire. A third attempt 2 (which never reached the stage) furnished the offended minister, Sir Robert Walpole, with the desired occasion for placing a curb upon the licence of the theatre, such as had already been advocated by a representative of its old civic adversaries. The famous Act of 1737 asserted no new principle, but converted into legal power the customary authority hither exercised by the Lord Chamberlain (to whom it had descended from the Master of the llevels). The regular censorship which this Act established has not appreciably affected the literary progress of the English drama, and the objections which have been raised against it seem on candid consideration untenable. The liberty of the stage is a question differing in its conditions from tnat of the liberty of speech in general, or even from that of the liberty of the press ; and occasional lapses of official judgment weigh lightly in the balance against the obvious advantages of a system which in a free country needs only the vigilance of public opinion to prevent its abuse. The policy of the restraint which the Act of 1737 put upon the number of playhouses is a different, but has long become an obsolete, question. Brought back into its accustomed grooves, English comec iy seemed inclined to leave to farce the domain of healthy ridicule, and to coalesce with domestic tragedy in the attempt to make the stage a vehicle of home-spun didactic morality. Farce had now become a genuine English species, and has as such retained its vitality through all the subsequent fortunes of the stage ; it was actively cultivated by Garrick as both actor and author, &quot;but the very best farce of this age is ascribed to clerical authorship. 3 S. Foote (1720-1761), whose comedies 4 and farces are distinguished both by wit and by variety of char acters (though it was an absurd misapplication of a great name to call him the English Aristophanes), introduced into comic acting the abuse of personal mimicry, for the exhibition of which he ingeniously invented a scries of entertainments, the parents of a long progeny of imitations. Meanwhile the domestic drama of the sentimental kind had achieved its greatest success in The Gamester of E. Moore (d. 1757) ; and sentimental comedy courted sympathetic applause in the works of A. Murphy (1727-1801), the single comedy of W. Wkitehead 5 (1714-1785), and the earliest of H. Kelly 6 (1714-1785). It cannot be said that this species was extinguished, as it is sometimes assumed to have been, by O. Goldsmith (1728-1774); but his admirable character-comedy of The Good-Nalured Man, and his delightfully brisk and fresh She Stoops to Conquer, after startling critical propriety from its self-conceit, taught comedy no longer to fear being true to herself. The most successful effurts of the elder G. Colman (1733-1794) 7 had in them something of the spirit of genuine comedy, besides a finish which, however playwrights may shut their eyes to the fact, is one of the qualities which ensure a long life to a play. And in the masterpieces of E. B. Sheridan (c. 1752-1 81 G) some of the happiest features of the comedy of Congreve were revived, together with its too uniform brilliancy of dialogue, but without its indecency of tone. The varnish of the age is indeed upon the style, and the hollowness of its morality in much of the sentiment (even where that 1 Pusquin; The Historical Register for 1736. 2 The Golden Rump. 3 Townlcy, IHyh Life JJelow Stairs (1759). 4 The Minor; Taste; The A uthor, &c. The School for Lovers. c False Delicacy. 7 The Jealous Wife; The Clandestine Marrucj-:. sentiment is meant for the audience) of The Rirals and The. School for /Scandal; but in tact of construction, iu distinctness of characters, and in pungency of social satire, they are to be ranked among the glories of English comedy. Something in Sheridan s style, but quite without his brilliancy, is the most successful play s of the unfor tunate General Burgoyne (d. 1792). E. Cumberland (1732-1811), who too consciously endeavoured to excel both in sentimental morality and in comic characterization, in which he was devoid of depth, closes the list of authors of higher pretensions who wrote for the theatre. Like him, Mrs Cuwley 9 ( - Anna Matilda&quot;) (1743-1809), T.^Holcroft 10 (1744-1809), and G. Colman the younger H (17G2-1S3G), all writers of popular comedies, as well as the prolific J. O Keefe (174G-1833), who contributed to nearly every species of the comic drama, survived into our century. To an earlier date belong the favourite burlesques of O Keefe s countryman K. O Hara 1 - (d. 1782), good examples of a species the further history of which may be left aside. In the hands of at least one living writer, J. II. Planche, it has proved capable of satisfying a more refined taste than his successors have habitually consulted. The decline of dramatic composition of the higher class, perceptible in the history of the English theatre about the beginning of the 19th century, is attributed by Scott to the wearing out of the French model that had been so long wrought upon ; while, as he points out, the new impulse which w r as sought in the dramatic literature of Germany was derived from some of its worst, instead of from its noblest, productions from Kotzebue rather than from Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. But the change which was coming over English literature was in truth of a wider and deeper nature than it was possible for even one of its chief representatives to perceive. As that literature freed itself from the fetters so long worn by it as indispensable ornaments, and threw aside the veil which had so long obscured both the full glory of its past and the lofty capabilities of its future, it could not resort except tenta tively to a form which like the dramatic is bound by a hun dred bonds to the life of the age itself. Soon, the poems with which Scott and Byron, and the unrivalled prose fictions with which Scott both satisfied and stimulated the imaginative demands of the public, diverted the attention of tho culti vated classes from dramatic literature, which was unable to escape, with the light foot of verse or prose fiction, into &quot; the lie w, the romantic land.&quot; New themes, new ideas, new forms occupied a new generation of writers and readers ; nor did the drama readily lend itself as a vessel into which to pour so many fermenting elements. In Byron (1788-1824) the impressions produced upon a mind not less open to impulses from without than sub jective in its way of recasting them, called forth a series of dramatic attempts betraying a more or less wilful ignorance of the demands of dramatic compositions ; his beautiful Manfred, partly suggested by Goethe s Faust, and his power ful Cain, have but the form of plays ; his tragedies on Italian historical subjects show some resemblance in their political rhetoric to the contemporary works of Alfieri ; his Werner is a hastily-dramatized sensation novel. To Coleridge (1772-1834), who gave to English literature a fine though inaccurate translation of Schiller s Wallenstein, the same poet s Robbers (to which Wordsworth s only dramatic attempt, the Borderers, is likewise in debted) had probably suggested the subject of his tragedy of Osorio, afterwards acted under the title of Remorse. Far 8 The Heiress. 9 Thellellcs Stratagem; A Jiuld Stroke for a Husband, &c. 10 The Road to Ruin, &e. u John Lull; The Ileir at Law, fee, 12 Midas; The Golden Pippin. The English drama o the 19th century.