Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/105

 12 S.I. JAN. 29, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama : a Study in Stage Tradition. By Victor Oscar Freeburg. (New York, Columbia TJniversity Press ; Oxford, Clarendon Press, $1.50 net.)

PROFESSORS and teachers of literature are much more numerous in the United States than in this country, and most of them seem bound to write monographs on some subject or other. While these contributions to learning display admirable industry, they seem to us often less judicious in the themes they discuss ; or is it that the good subjects are already all used ? Certainly the drama has not till recent times been so much discussed as the field of literature ; no classic work has put Aristotle's views of tragedy out of date ; and there are distinct' chances of filling gaps. We should be glad, for instance, to see a defence of melodrama, or a monograph on the stage ghost. Of course, there may be such works in existence, but we have not seen them.

Dr. Freeburg's ' Disguise Plots ' is a typical American study, a most painstaking work, includ- ing a survey of no fewer than 425 plots. He is chiefly concerned with the Elizabethan period or with plays that can no longer be said to belong to the acted drama. We do not, however, object to this, though it is the student's habit to make too much of second-rate Elizabethan stuff. Our main regret is that the whole survey leads to no substantial conclusions concerning the art of the dramatist. Frankly, we did not expect that it would, for, as men patch grief with proverbs, dramatists have a way of patching bad plays with disguises. Disguise has a " rich theatricality," as Dr. Freeburg puts it in his somewhat elaborate style ; but it is a painfully obvious way of creating complications, and has none of the subtlety we enjoy when a character shows its changes by speech and mood. " Know'st me not by my clothes ? " Cloten asks Guiderius. who answers : No, nor thy tailor, rascal,

Who is thy grandfather : he made those clothes, Which, as it seems, make thee. All this business of " disguise," " retro-disguise," " double disguise," &c., is mostly tailoring, and here are some of the things Dr. Freeburg says about it :

" The disguise ceases to be active as soon as it is discovered."

" The denouement of a play always tests the skill of a dramatist."

" The dialogue of a disguise situation is especially capable of theatrical effectiveness. A disguised person is virtually two persons. One personality is maintained for the companions, who are deceived ; and the other personality for the spectators, who are not deceived."

" The study of the spy motive, as of all disguise, has a tendency to fix our attention on the physical, momentary, theatrical values of certain dramatic Situations. There were repetitions, variations, and conventionalizing. The little writers bor- rowed from the big, and the big from each other." These things are true, but it does not need an extensive acquaintance with the drama to dis- cover them. Where Dr. Freeburg goes deeper,

e.g., in suggesting that disguise sho Idueb "structurally basic," we cannot always follow him. His criticisms of the few examples of it in the drama of ancient Greece do not strike us as fortunate. The summary of the ' Philoctetes ' of Sophocles is inadequate, if not misleading. The ' Rhesus ' and Dolon go back to the tenth ' Iliad ' ; and we do not see any inadequacy in the element of disguise as worked out by Euripides in that masterpiece, the 'Bacchae.'

We notice that to-day the idea of a rapid change of dress concealing identity is not out of date in popular tales, even when reduced to farce, for it figures ad nauseam in the stories, now probably six hundred or so, of Nicholas Carter and similar detectives which enthral Dr. Freeburg's more unsophisticated compatriots. He is not so well up in modern dramas as in the Elizabethans ; otherwise he would have discovered a descendant of the story of Achilles among women in that delightful parody of ' The Princess ' of Tennyson,. the ' Princess Ida ' of W. S. Gilbert. Here, indeed, the disguise lasts a very short time, but it is essential to the plot. ' Measure for Measure ' is naturally displayed as a prime example of disguise neatly applied ; but it shows, too, that such neatness in itself cannot compensate for indifference to the intrinsic claims of character. A play with some of Shakespeare's greatest thought in it, it is sadly botched at the end.

Dr. Freeburg's style of writing is not attractive. Apart from words like " intrigant " and " motiva- tion," he has a way of using substantives as adjectives which reminds the present reviewer of the average City prospectus, a document which has nothing to do with literature, though it may lead to drama when the worth of its statements has been tested by a guileless public.

Cathay and the Way Thither. Vol. I. (Hakluyt

Society.)

WE reviewed at 11 S. xii. 471, vols. ii. and iii. of this welcome reissue of Sir Henry Yule's well- known work. These consisted of texts and introductions, and the present volume, which logically precedes them, gives -us Yule's pre- liminary essay on the whole subject of the intercourse between China and the Western nations in the days before the discovery of the Cape route. It was published first in 1866, and has remained for well-nigh fifty years the classical - authority for the historical geography of China and Central Asia in the Middle Ages. Hardly could higher testimony to its importance have been devised than the decision to add to it the immense amount of knowledge which has ac- cumulated since its appearance, in the form of notes and intercalations, rather than frame altogether a new account.

Dr. Cordier deserves warm congratulation upon the manner in which he has accomplished what was doubtless a peculiarly congenial task. There is hardly a topic upon which he has not extended his author's information, and this may be said with especial emphasis concerning the history and situation of the Nestorian Christians hi China, and concerning the remarks which go to elucidate the ' Supplementary Notes.' These, being extracts from sources, and many of them not easily ac- cessible, form by no means the least valuable portion of an exceedingly valuable work.