Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/74

62 this that the dramatists now built up their art. Other and rarer virtues some of them acquired. But the general advance was from plays that asked for little more than recitation to plays that were opportunities for acting, for the vivid realising of character in action.

Inevitably we think of the drama of the past in terms of the play and the playwright; of the greater plays and playwrights moreover, for these have survival value. To speak of Othello as an opportunity for Burbage seems absurd. But we must not forget this contemporary view of it. Nor were all playwrights Shakespeares—though this is made clear enough even with the best of them by one glance at their pages, by one excursion with them upon the stage. And we can imagine the literary quality of what has not survived. But then as ever the immediate virtue in a play written for a popular theatre was that it should be effectively actable. Consider further the conditions of the inn performances; the makeshift stage, the work-a-day surroundings, the changes of the weather, the unruly audience. Something was needed with a stronger grip than had sufficed to hold the attention of a decorous assembly shut in the quiet of a hall. The Clown, in his way, provided it. There was nothing new, though, about the Clown. But emotional acting must have been a revelation. It was crude enough at first, no doubt, based at its best upon rhetoric, at its worst on ranting, taking example both from the preacher and the demagogue. But the great discovery had been made that an actor, deeply moved himself, could move and entrance the motliest audience by mere make-believe. What was Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? But he had changed colour, had tears in his eyes—and so had his hearers. Then drama ceased to be a show and became an emotional experience (and under that condition and that condition only can it be expected to flourish). It took time to develop all the possibilities of the business; and up to a point—not reached, however, till the inns had been superseded—the enlargement is truly amazing. Nor, of course, did the popular theatre scorn help from anywhere. It would take plots from Plutarch or the police news, borrow traditions, costumes, properties, boy-actors, no doubt, if it could, from Paul’s—whatever came handy. In time æsthetic principles were thrust on it. And at last it found itself roofed in and respectable, playing by candlelight to the sort of audience that would sit listening to good music between the acts. And after this happens the plays—do they not?—tend to “go soft.”