Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/73

Rh flourished in despite of civic regulation and æsthetic rule, under conditions which would be our despair to-day (unless we too should happily develop a high artistic resistance to respond to them), its achievement leaping in a half-century from Gorboduc to King Lear. Such a creature is unlikely to have behaved itself with any consistent regard for the interests and habits of the historian.

This is not to say that the work Dr. Chambers has done so supremely is unnecessary. It is, of course, the only sure foundation upon which we may build a knowledge of what the Elizabethan theatre in being really was. But, the foundation laid, we must, I suggest, for the next stage in the business, cut loose from the scientific method and attune ourselves imaginatively to those most unscientific persons—the Elizabethan playwright and actor. At least, it is by leaving both their vagaries and their virtues out of account as it seems to me, that in these two chapters Dr. Chambers is led, and leads us, somewhat astray.

We find, for instance, on the first page of chapter xx.:

Surely this is a false start. Material may be lacking for a study of the staging in the inns. Nevertheless, here it was that the vitality which carried Elizabethan drama to its heights was generated, not at Court, in the Universities or at Paul’s. What was done in the inns, then, must be far more significant, will have had a far stronger influence, than any tradition which may have been carried across from the semi-scholastic, semi-clerical, more ceremonial stage. Dr. Chambers says nothing which need discountenance this. But it is evident, I think, that for a view—so to speak—of the Theatre, the Globe and the Swan he takes his own stand, almost instinctively, with Lyly in the Chapel. He tries to explain in the light of experience there things which, for all apparent likeness, had undergone by, say, 1600 an almost essential change. What was this change? To try to cover it—inadequately therefore—in a phrase: on the inn stages emotional acting began to come by its own. This, I suggest, was the making of the drama’s popularity; it was upon