Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/85

Rh the man to do what Shakespeare effected for the romantic, or Corneille for the classical, drama.

Vondel formed his dramatic style slowly, and it was not until 1635 that he selected tragedy as the principal vehicle for the expression of his sentiments, religious and political. His earliest play, Het Pascha ofte de Verlossinge Israels uit Egypten (published 1612), produced by the Brabantian Chamber, where Biblical plays were still in vogue, has the naïve structure and dramatic weakness of the Chamber plays; but the death of the first-born is well described, and the style and versification show already the hand of a poet. Hierusalem Verwoest (1620), with which Vondel made his début at Coster's Academy, is not stronger dramatically, but the language is purer, and the choruses have the fire and pulse of his best poetry. Neither of these plays, however, was later included by Vondel among his works. They were "'prentice" pieces, written before he had made acquaintance with the classics. The first fruit of his self-imposed study of Latin was a translation, made in collaboration with Hooft and Laurens Reael, of the Troades of Seneca, which Grotius had entitled the "Queen of tragedies." This was followed in 1625 by his first important tragedy, the Palamedes,—of whose political significance we have spoken already,—a play thoroughly Senecan in structure, spirit, and machinery.

For seven years after the appearance of the Palamedes Vondel was better known as a poet than a dramatist. Like Milton, he hesitated as he became