Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/648

 636 ENGLAND (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) an easy and majestic flow. "The Duke of Milan " and " The Fatal Dowry " are among the best; and of his comedies, "The Picture," "The Bondman," and "A Very Woman." His " New Way to Pay Old Debts " still keeps the stage, for which it is indebted to its effective character of Sir Giles Overreach. John Ford (died about 1640) preferred dark vices and the deepest distress for subjects. He seems to have taken pleasure in revolving the various possi- bilities and revenges of sin, and the best of his plays bears the title of " The Broken Heart." Thomas Heywood, an indefatigable and popu- lar dramatist, wrote " beautiful prose put into heroic metre." James Shirley (died in 1666) is the last of this circle of dramatists, and the least remarkable either for merits or faults. Under the commonwealth, and the ascendancy of the Puritans, the theatres were closed and the players flogged. Sir William Davenant tried to introduce a modification of the drama suited to the moral views of the time, but with only partial success. At the restoration the drama was revived under the influence of French rules and of a strong anti-Puritan re- action, with great mechanical improvements, movable decorations, music, and lights; but the larger part of the plays for 40 years are declared by Macaulay to be a disgrace to the English language and the national character. To ridicule and degrade virtue, sincerity, and prudence was the business of the stage. Blank verse was displaced by rhyme, but the tragic authors soon returned to the former, and the comic sank to familiar prose. The best trage- dies of the period are " The Orphan " and "Venice Preserved" of Thomas Otway (1651 -'85) ; and though the former displeases the delicacy of our age, the latter has been more frequently represented than any other tragedy except those of Shakespeare. The genius of the poet appears especially in pathetic delineations of passion and misery, and few heroines have been so highly honored with the tribute of tears as Belvidera in "Venice Preserved." John Dryden, who wa.s rivalled by none of his contemporaries as a satirical, didactic, and lyric poet, abused his rare gifts to attain dramatic success, the faculty for which nature had de- nied him. His "Don Sebastian," "Spanish Friar," and " All for Love " are the best of numerous tragedies and comedies, whose bom- bast and ribaldry have rendered them obso- lete, notwithstanding their surprising incidents, stately declamation, and harmonious numbers. The "Fatal Discovery" of Southerne, the " Jane Shore " of Rowe, the " Mourning Bride " of Congreve, and the "Rival Queens" of Lee may also be mentioned among successful trage- dies. The proper representatives of the comedy of this period are Wycherly, Congreve, Far- quhar, and Vanbrugh, and among their profli- gate plays the most popular were " The Plain Dealer" and "The Country Wife," "Love for Love" and "The Way of the World," "The Beaux Stratagem " and " The Trip to the Ju- bilee," and "The Provoked Husband" and "The Provoked Wife." Mrs. Aphra Behn, Thomas Shadwell, and Sir George Etherege also deserve mention among those who made the stage as immoral as their talents permitted. The "Careless Husband" and other plays of Colley Gibber, and the "Busy Body" and "Bold Stroke for a Wife" of Mrs. Centlivre, connect the period of the restoration with that of Anne. Among the non-dramatic poems of the Elizabethan age, mention should be made of the translation of Ovid and Lucan by Marlowe ; Sandys's versions of Ovid and the Psalms; Harrington's version of Ariosto, Fansh awe's of Camoens, and the more important versions of Homer by Chapman and of Tasso by Fair- fax. The literary genius of the age of Puritan ascendancy, between the Elizabethan epoch and that of the restoration, culminated in Mil- ton, who has no rivals in epic poetry but Homer, Virgil, and Dante. His career illustrates the literary character of his age. Prior to 1640 he had produced " L' Allegro," "II Penseroso," "Comus," "Lycidas," and the "Ode on the Morning of the Nativity," one of the finest in the language. During the period of civil con- flict and Cromwellian rule, from 1640 to 1660, he wrote no poetry except a few sonnets, but produced his various polemical prose treatises ; and it is remarkable that there was at that time an almost entire cessation of pure litera- ture in England. The contemporary poets, without an exception of any consequence, had their eras of activity only before the struggle and after it, or in exile or in prison during it, and the intellect of the country was occupied in producing a huge mass of controversial prose, only a very slight portion of which has taken a place in the literature. One literary man only was undisturbed and uninterested by the events of the time. While England was in political and religious confusion, Sir Thomas Browne was quietly meditating in his garden at Norwich upon sepulchral urns and the quin- cuncial lozenge. " Paradise Lost," though pub- lished after the restoration, was an early con- ception of Milton, and bears the impress of this period of fierce discussion and of moral and theological strife. Its subject, the fall of man, is perhaps without an equal in epical grandeur, and its most prominent personage, if not its hero, is the fallen archangel Satan, whose ruined splendor and power of daring and of suffering make him one of the sub- limest creations of poetry. The latest poems of Milton, " Paradise Regained " and " Samson Agonistes," are of inferior worth. Among the contemporaries of Milton were Thomas Carew, Francis Quarles, George Wither, Sir John Suckling, Robert Herrick, Richard Love- lace, Sir Richard Fanshawe, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, Henry Vaughan, Sir John Denham, Sir William Davenant, Edmund Wal- ler, and Samuel Butler. The songs and short amatory pieces of Carew were the precursors of numerous similar productions written by