Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/440

Rh 420 ENGLISH LITERATURE [ELIZABETHAN. haps be named; and these are disfigured by every kind of literary fault. The 3. With regard to the stage itself, the building of the early rs fc theatre in London has been already described. But ls for many years previously temporary theatres had been made out of the court-yards, with their surrounding galleries, of London inns, e.g., the Belle Savage in Ludgate Hill, the Red Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street. It is to the second of these that Gosson alludes in his School of Abuse (1579), when he speaks of &quot; the Jew shown at the Bull, and goes on to describe it so as to make it clear that this was an old play with a plot resembling that of the Merchant of Venice, If any one desires it, he may still help his imagination to picture the scene, by going into the court-yard of one of the few old city inns still left, the &quot; Four Swans in Bishopsgate Street for instance, and imagining a stage erected at one end, the galleries crowded with aristocratic spectators, seated or standing, and the open space below filled with play-goers of the common sort, admitted at the charge of one penny, and with the canopy of heaven above their heads. Five of these theatrical inns were turned into play-houses between 1570 and 1630. The company that owned the Blackfriars Theatre erected a new one called the Globe in 159-1 on the Bank-side, a position corresponding to one on the present Thames embankment ; this, being for summer use, was not roofed in. A play-house called &quot; The Theatre &quot; was built at Shoreditch, outside the city liberties, little, if at all, after the time at which the Blackfriars house was opened, near it stood the &quot; Curtain.&quot; Other theatres, the Swan, the Hope, the Rose, &c., rapidly sprang up ; and it is estimated that not fewer than 200 licensed play -houses existed in different parts of London at the end of the reign of Elizabeth. All this time the players continued, to designate themselves, and to be, the servants either of the queen or of some nobleman ; without such protection they could not have exercised their function either safely or pro fitably. In these primitive theatres no scenery was used ; that was first introduced by Davenant after the Restoration. A curtain then, as now, met the spectator s eye on entering ; it was slowly drawn up, and he saw a stage strewn with rushes, the side walls hung with arras ; a large board with a name painted on it, &quot;Westminster,&quot; &quot;Corinth,&quot; &quot;Messina,&quot; &c., informed him where the scene of the play to be per formed was laid ; imagination did all the rest. When a battle was to be fought, &quot; two armies fly in represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field 1 &quot; l Shake- Amidst such rude surroundings, and with such imperfect speare. appliances, the mighty genius of Shakespeare was fain to live and act. It has been observed that English comedy was less advanced at the time of his coming up to London (about 1586) than the other dramatic forms; and it is in comedy accordingly that his early triumphs were won, and his extraordinary superiority to all his predecessors most signally demonstrated. Love s Labour s Lost and The Comedy of Errors were probably his first essays ; they were followed by Midsummer Night s Dream, Tivo Gentle men of Verona, &c. The versification of dramatic dialogue had been thoroughly reformed by Marlowe, whose sense of rhythm was exquisite ; English blank verse had been wrought into a fine and fitting material, ready to receive whatever impression a gifted dramatist might stamp upon it. But Marlowe was no meditative observer of human life, no accurate discerner of human motives. The language, therefore, that he puts in the mouth of his different person ages does not greatly vary ; they are all apt to take to 1 Sidney s Defence of Poesie, quoted by Charles Knight in his Kkakspere, a Biography. ranting on the least provocation. Shakespeare added to Marlowe s skill of composition a power of characterization which no dramatist, ancient or modern, ever surpassed. To this power, as its fitting accompaniment, was joined a gift of modulation, by which the language assigned to each char acter was made suitable to it and to no other, and this with a truth and naturalness which the readers and spectators of every following age have recognized. Again, turning, like Chaucer, with eager longing to the refining influences which came from the south, he adjusted and polished his dialogue with the utmost care, till to the swiftness and evenness of movement which he might have learnt from Marlowe he united much of the easy grace of Ariosto and of the sweetness of Tasso. He probably read an immense number of Italian novels, either in the original or in translations ; many of his comedies are founded upon such tales. Thus prepared, he could with safety, as in Merry Wives of Windsor, deal with home scenes, and a plot of his own invention, without running any risk of falling into the coarseness and vulgarity of Gammer Gurton, George-a-Greene, and hundreds of other pieces, written by men in whom the Teutonic affinity of the race predominated unchecked. To these qualifications Shakespeare added a sound dramatic judgment, which, as was natural, improved with years and experience, teaching him what to seek and what to shun, so as to secure that popularity which is the test of dramatic excellence. As an acting play, The Tempest, written near the end of his career, is far superior to Love s Labour s Lost. But to the last he did not attain to supreme excellence in this direction; the unity of action, necessarily sacrificed in the histories, is not always preserved in. dramas where its retention would have been easy ; nor is that sub ordination of inferior parts to the central action, which dramatists of less power have often successfully managed, always duly attended to by Shakespeare. Of neither the comedies nor the tragedies of Shakespeare can it be said that they are in a special sense &quot; dramas of character.&quot; The boasting soldier, the lying traveller, the religious hypocrite, the scheming matron, the ambitious tyrant, and many other clearly marked types, are not pourtrayed for us in the plays of Shakespeare with that sharpness of outline which they present in the works of Plautus, Moliere, and Alfieri. The cause may perhaps be sought in the absence from Shakespeare s mind of all ex aggeration, and in the fact that without some slight exaggeration these striking dramatic types which take hold on the memory and the imagination cannot, be produced. Shakespeare saw men as they are, and so described them ; and the consequence is that, although neither Macbeth nor Richard III. exhibits the stock character of the &quot; ambitious tyrant,&quot; each displays a special form of ambition, modified, as always happens in real life, by many concomitant qualities and aims, to trace the lineaments of which will reward in a high degree the pains of the literary analyst. It is this quality of essential truth of presentation which has gathered round our Shakespeare s dramas the instruc tive and beautiful criticism of a Gervinus, the interpreta tions of a Goethe, and the historic faculty of a Guizot or a Villemain. In the exhibition of tragic passions, and in the range of the appeal which they make to the moral sentiments of an audience, Shakespeare s tragedies havenever been surpassed. Considered as acting plays they are of varying excellence. In Othello and Romeo and Juliet, both founded on Italian novels, the incidents move on in a swift and well-combined sequence, which, from this point of view, leaves nothing to be desired. Hamlet, though from tradition and habit it always attracts large audiences, is better suited for the closet than the stage ; the drag of the third and fourth acts is undeniable. In none of the tragedies is there any