Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/377

 Déplaisir, Espérance, of even the lyric poet Charles d'Orleans; so, too, in the chivalrous allegory of Spenser we may find these corporate modes of thought decked in feudal trappings, and meeting that individualising spirit of the Elizabethan age, which, in the drama of Marlowe and Shakspere, displaced the abstract and typical by the individual and concrete.

III. But the names of Marlowe and Shakspere suggest a third stage of the early European drama, in which we approach the analysis of personal character more closely than in the sacred or allegorical spectacle, yet not so closely as some enthusiastic worshippers of the great English dramatist would have us believe. When we find historical personages in such Miracle-plays as Robert le Diable or Guillaume du Desert side by side with allegorical personages, we may be sure that the historical drama is not so closely connected with profound analysis of individual character as has been sometimes assumed. When it is remembered that the Mysteries were primarily sacred histories (certain English Mysteries, for example, presenting a picture of the world’s progress from the Creation and anticipating its future to the Day of Judgment), the secular history and the sacred spectacle cannot be separated by a very wide gulf. Let it also be remembered that one of the marked features of the Chinese drama—in which analysis of individual character is, as already explained, peculiarly deficient—is the frequent use of historical incidents and personages. The historical drama and subtle analyses of character are, in fact, rather opposed than, as some maintain, closely connected. No doubt there are wide differences between what may be termed an antiquarian historical drama, such as modern dramatists have sometimes attempted, and "histories" in the Shaksperian sense. No doubt Shakspere, in some of