"To ride in triumph through Persepolis"...."Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate"...."Then shall my native city, Samarcanda."
"To ride in triumph through Persepolis"....
"Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate"....
"Then shall my native city, Samarcanda."
Yet the lover of romantic poetry will find delight in the very impetuosity of the rant, the thunder of the declamation, the roll of the proper names, the color and pageantry of the descriptions, the occasional loveliness of the luxurious classicism, and yet more in the splendid surges of the verse to reveal the turmoil and anguish of passionate death. From the first moment Marlowe was an undoubted poet; and to his tremendous facility of words and rhythm he was adding, as "Edward II" reveals, a moderation of ornament, an evenness of power, and a dramatic consistency, while still retaining the potentiality of dazzling dramatic flash. He brought not only blank verse but poetry to the English drama, and the greatness of its style dates from his achievement.
We must not, however, in the poet forget the playwright, or lose sight of Marlowe's contributions to the purely theatrical side of the drama. "Tamburlaine" set a standard in stage effects as well as in poetry. Kings and sultans appear in droves, crowns are handed about like toys, treaties are torn, cities stormed, battles fought. Frequently eight or ten chieftains crowd the stage with their trains. The tents of the conqueror are pitched and changed from white to red and then to black as the beleaguered city continuesto withstand his power. An emperor and empress dash out their brains against the bars of their cages. Tamburlaine drives the bridled monarchs harnessed to his chariot. Two bodies are burnt; there are murders by the dozen; and there is a solemn funeral scene where the hearse advances in the light of a burning town. The popular stage had probably never seen such a spectacle before. In "Faustus" new and even more surprising stage effects are supplied to illustrate the wonders of magic. In "The Jew of Malta" there is a display of plots and atrocities which the plays of the next thirty years strove in vain to surpass. Apart from these spectacular elements, it is obvious that the characterization and declamation, in fact the very structure of the plays, were designed to supply full opportunity for the acting of Edward Alleyn. He was nearly seven feet tall, we are told, the greatest actor of his day, and especially skilled in majestic parts. So to him, perhaps, as well as to Marlowe's conception of tragedy, was due the one-part play, the sonorous lines, and the passionate protagonists.
Such considerations recall the double purpose, hardly separable from the drama and particularly manifest in the Elizabethan dramatists, the two desires, to please their audiences and to create literature. The spectacle, bombast, and horrors, the new and startling stories of Marlowe's plays were certainly intended to win his public, and they probably caused no twinges to his artistic conscience. On the other hand, while hardly an element of the dramas is without the influence of theatrical conditions,and while of deliberate artistic theories there is little evidence, yet the study of character, the underlying conceptions, the maturing power of structure, as well as the beauty and wisdom of separate passages, reveal a mind of intellectual and emotional profundity seeking to give noble expression to the things in life that impressed him most vividly. In the traffic of the stage the young poet found a chance to study men and their motives, to seek "the immortal flowers of poetry," and to utter something of his own experience and view of life. Into the rapid translation of stories for the stage he threw his own conception of the rewards and defeats of an overmastering passion, of the glory of struggle, and the pity and terror of failure. In the further development of the drama, his influence continued not only in his series of tragedies forming a fairly definite type, but also as that of an inspiring personality.
"Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,Had in him those brave translunary thingsThat the first poets had; his raptures wereAll air and fire, which made his verses clere;For that fine madnes still he did retaine,Which rightly should possess a poet's braine."Drayton:Epistle to Henry Reynolds.
"Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,Had in him those brave translunary thingsThat the first poets had; his raptures wereAll air and fire, which made his verses clere;For that fine madnes still he did retaine,Which rightly should possess a poet's braine."
Drayton:Epistle to Henry Reynolds.
The influence upon the drama of Marlowe's whilom friend, Thomas Kyd, was not due to his personality, concerning which recently discovered documents create no very favorable impression, or to any remarkable poetic genius, but to a single play and the type of tragedy whichit fathered. "The Spanish Tragedy,"[11]entered in the Stationers' Register, 1592, and probably acted at about the same time as "Tamburlaine," and earlier than Marlowe's other plays, was the first representative of this type of revenge tragedies, and it gained an immediate and lasting popularity, though after a time encountering the ridicule of Jonson and later dramatists. The story of revenge had already appeared in "Horestes" and in Latin plays at the universities; and theme, ghost, treatment, and structure were derived from Seneca by Kyd and adapted with great originality to the popular drama. At least, no other dramatist has as good a claim to be considered the creator of a species of tragedy that had a long series of representatives even after its culmination in Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
The main theme of the play is revenge of a father for a son, superintended by a ghost; and this theme attaches to itself other motives important both here and in their later developments. The revenge is delayed by hesitation on the part of Hieronimo, who finds his task a difficult one and requires much proof and superabundant deliberation to spur his irresolution into activity. Madnessis another accompaniment of the main theme; the second title of the 1602 quarto, "Old Hieronimo mad againe," indicating how important it was in the stage presentation. Hieronimo pretends madness, and his pretended madness often passes into real melancholy and distraction. Isabella, his wife, is driven by insanity to suicide. Intrigue used both against and by the avenger is another important element; the villain is a machinator and Hieronimo finally accomplishes his revenge by means of dissimulation and trickery. According to both Senecan and national precedents, vengeance moves in a pathway of blood; ten of thedramatis personae, innocent and guilty alike, pass to "the loathsome pool of Acheron," and the final slaughter leaves five bodies to be borne from the stage. Intrigue and slaughter characterize most of the tragedies of this period, notably "The Jew of Malta," but the ghost-directed revenge, hesitation, insanity, and the meditative soliloquies distinguished more specifically the Kydian species. In spite of the medley of intrigue and carnage, there is introduced, after Senecan fashion, much philosophizing and introspection. Meditations on fate, revenge, suicide, and similar subjects play a large part in the development of the story and are most frequently given the form of soliloquies. Hieronimo's inner struggle is revealed in lonely communings, now in defense, now in bitter condemnation of his delay.
The structure is an interesting adaptation of Senecan and popular characteristics. The play does not confine itself to the last phase of an action, and it introducesvarious actions introductory or subsidiary to that of the revenge, and a mixture of comedy. Moreover, everything is represented on the stage with the freedom established in the popular drama. On the other hand, there is much exposition by means of narrative, and Revenge and the ghost of Andrea appear, after Senecan fashion, as a prologue, and after each act as a sort of vestigial chorus. While there is a surplus of violent and external action, the epic, lyric, and reflective scenes picture an inner conflict and supply both aphorisms and a searching psychology. When late in the play Hieronimo's revenge for his son is finally started, it has to contend with both his own hesitation and the intrigues of the villain. Its development, in comparison with "Hamlet," is absurdly faulty because of Kyd's failure to make clear from the start the character of the avenger; but, if it is studied as a first attempt to give structure to a complex theme, the vicissitudes of Hieronimo's irresolution and frenzy will seem carefully designed and strikingly prophetic of the course of Hamlet's struggle.
Kyd's skill in devising stage situations is shown by the dramatic value and lasting effect on the public of the scene in which Hieronimo is called from his naked bed to discover the body of his son hanging in the arbor, or of the scene in which, offering a handkerchief to the weeping Senex, he draws forth the bloody napkin which he has kept as a reminder of his son's death. The play within the play, used here as a means of revenge; the scenes in which Isabella "runs lunatick"; the lamentsand final exultation of the ghost; the exhibition of the body of Horatio after the mock play, found later imitators and became usual accessories of revenge tragedies. Indeed, minor bits of stage business, as the wearing of black, the swearing by the cross of the sword, the capture of the accomplice by the watch, the reading of a book before a soliloquy, the falling on the ground as an expression of grief, though not the inventions of Kyd, were given their later vogue partly through the popularity of this play.
Some of the types of character represented also appear again and again in later plays. Lorenzo is the villain par excellence; his accomplice is grotesque as well as evil; and Bel Imperia, both prettily sentimental and desperately revengeful, is of a type not uncommon in later tragedy. The character of Hieronimo, rudely as it is drawn, is not without subtlety of conception. This type of tragic hero, very different from Marlowe's, naturally good and noble, meditative by temperament, driven to melancholy and madness by the responsibility forced on him by crime, and at length accomplishing direful revenge through trickery and irony, is manifestly a precursor of Hamlet. Kyd's style justifies Nash's description, "whole handfulls of tragical speeches" and "a blank verse bodged up with ifs and ands." It displays the rhetorician rather than the poet and, like his conception and structure, gives evidence of an ingenious innovator adapting Seneca. It abounds in artificial balance, parallelism, antitheses, word-play, strained figures, and it harrows hell for its tragic vocabulary; but its love scenes have a verbalprettiness and its tirades and soliloquies helped to confer on subsequent tragic style sententiousness and elevation as well as rant. Far inferior to "Tamburlaine" as an artistic achievement, "The Spanish Tragedy" can no more than that play be pushed aside as a mere blood and thunder tirade. Beneath its absurdities there lies the conception of an inner struggle against overwhelming responsibility, and of the conflict of the individual against evil and fate.
From the success of such a play Kyd may very naturally have turned to the similar story of revenge embodied in Belleforest's "Historie of Hamblet." From contemporary references we infer that the old "Hamlet" was a tragedy of blood, written under Senecan influence, and containing a ghost that cried "revenge." If, as seems undoubted, it was used by Shakespeare, traces of it must be found in the German version of Hamlet, in the corrupt first quarto, and even in Shakespeare's final version; but there is as yet no agreement among scholars as to what can be attributed to Shakespeare's borrowing rather than to his invention and transformation. It seems entirely probable, however, that the early play was a companion-piece to "The Spanish Tragedy," containing the motives of revenge, hesitation, insanity, intrigue, and slaughter, with the addition of the murderer's passion for the wife of the murdered. On the now established theory that the play was by Kyd, we may infer a protagonist like Hieronimo, much meditating and soliloquizing, a dramatic structure like that of "The Spanish Tragedy," a playwithin a play, a mad Ophelia, and an intrigue culminating in slaughter. There are evidences in Marston and later contributors to the revenge type that the original "Hamlet," fully as much as "The Spanish Tragedy," served as their model; while doubtless like "The Spanish Tragedy," Kyd's "Hamlet" must have borne a much closer resemblance than even that play to Shakespeare's masterpiece.
"Soliman and Perseda," if not by Kyd, at least shows many evidences of his influence and is itself an interesting combination of the tragedy of revenge and romantic comedy. Love, Fortune, and Death make up a Kydian chorus and debate for supremacy until the close, when Death, like the Ghost, exults in an enumeration of the dead. The love story furnishes a clearly defined plot. The course of true love, despite the heroine's jealousy, an unintended murder by the hero, his banishment, the sack of Rhodes by the Turks, and the Sultan's passion for the heroine, ascends through the first four acts to the reunion and prospective happiness of the lovers. The fifth act proceeds to their separation and death through the Sultan's wickedness. Some of the incidents are those of romantic comedy, such as the use of the chain as a symbol of loyal love, its loss, the resulting jealousy, and the donning of boy's clothes by the heroine in order to receive death from the sword of the hated suitor. The fun of the piece is furnished by amiles gloriosus, Basilisco, and the extraordinary merit of his characterization furnishes the chief reason for doubting Kyd's authorship.Over lyric love, fortune, and fun, however, Death reigns supreme. This is his favorite tragedy, for eighteen persons are actually killed on the stage, and at the close not one of thedramatis personaeis left to bear off the bodies of the slain.
The successes of Marlowe and Kyd gave tragic stories a new popularity with actors and audiences, and the stage was occupied with fiercely declaiming Asiatic conquerors, deep-dyed villains, and shrieking ghosts. Marlowe's themes, characters, and blank verse found many imitators, while Kyd's plays encouraged the presentation of stories of ghosts and revenge similar to those in Seneca and his English imitators. Direct imitations of Seneca in technic and language are also common. The abundance of bloodshed is invariable. A wide range of material was drawn upon, including Asiatic story, Italiannovelle, Plutarch, Xenophon, and the Bible, although the English chronicles remained the favorite source, and the majority have at least the semblance of a historical setting. Many have a mixture of comic material, but they show in general a preponderance of tragic events and emotions far greater than in the early popular tragedies. There seems to have been a general effort in conformity with an address to the audience placed in the second act of "The Wars of Cyrus," acted by the Children of the Revels, which announces that they have "exiled from our tragicke stage" "needlesse antickes," and promises "mournfull plaints writ sad, and tragicke tearmes." The gentle reader will not linger long over any of these plays or discover inthem signs of nascent genius, but they have a considerable interest in illustrating further the development of chronicle history toward tragedy, the influence of the Senecan tradition, and the dominating power of Marlowe's example. They also inform us of the conditions governing tragedy when Shakespeare began his career. In their many resemblances one to another we have evidence not so much of direct borrowings as of the close relations then existing among the few theatrical playwrights and companies. Any successful innovation was bound to have its immediate imitations, and on the other hand the keen rivalry for success was likely to result in innovation and novelty.
Of these plays perhaps "Locrine"[12]has the most diverse indebtedness. It presents a story of a bloody family feud, but it is also of the chronicle history order, with a mixture of battles, patriotism, and farce. It exhibits borrowings from Spenser, imitations of "Tamburlaine," Ate as a chorus, dumb shows requiring a menagerie, two ghosts, one of whom takes part in the action, and a story of double revenge. The hero is occupied with revenge number one until the fourth act, when his infidelity makes him the object of a return revenge that culminates in his death. Among the plays mainly indebted to Marlowe are: Greene's "Alphonsus of Aragon," a comedy that is almost a travesty on the first part of "Tamburlaine";"Selimus," ascribed to Greene, which also shows Senecan structure and philosophy; "The Wounds of Civil War, or the Tragedies of Marius and Sylla," the first extant play based on Plutarch; "The Wars of Cyrus," in part romantic comedy; and Peele's "Battle of Alcazar," which has a presenter, dumb shows, three ghosts, and a Moorish villain of the same class as Marlowe's Barabas and Aaron in "Titus Andronicus."
The English chronicle plays also felt Marlowe's influence, most notably in Shakespeare's early historical plays, to be considered in a moment, but also in several plays almost contemporary with "Edward II" and the first versions of "Henry VI." "The True Tragedy of Richard III" (1594), by an unknown author or authors, seems to have preceded Shakespeare's play and to have followed the third part of "Henry VI." It presents a combination of chronicle play with Marlowesque protagonist and a Kydian apparatus of revenge. The ghost of Clarence appears at the beginning crying, "Vindicta," and Truth and Poetry supply the necessary exposition. The revenge element becomes prominent toward the end of the play, when the ghosts of Richard's victims appear to him in a dream, not visible as in Shakespeare, and the remorseful villain declares that not merely his victims but all the forces of nature, sun, moon, and planets, cry revenge:—
"The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge.The silly lambs sit bleating for revenge."
"The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge.The silly lambs sit bleating for revenge."
Richard is a man of powerful will carried away by ambitionand evidently modeled on Tamburlaine; but unlike the Scythian and like Faustus, he is conscience-smitten, and his punishment comes in remorse as well as death. This conception, based on the chronicle, is treated with power, but in the main the play is a hodge-podge. More worthy examples of chronicle history are "Edward III," often ascribed to Marlowe and not unworthy of him, and the anonymous "Tragedy of Woodstock."[13]The latter shows frequent resemblances to "Edward II" and apparently preceded Shakespeare's "Richard II," leaving off at the point where that play begins. The events of half a reign are focused about the central personalities of Richard and Woodstock, a weak king beset by flatterers and an honorable and patriotic leader of the nobles. The construction is skillful in its integration of comedy with the main action and its alternation of tragic and comic, action and counsel, force and counter-force; and the characterization is remarkably well individualized. Woodstock, especially, has human appeal and is notable as a tragic hero, or at least the central figure of a history, who meets misfortune and death through no fault of his own but solely through the wickedness of others.
Holinshed's chronicle is also the source of "Arden of Feversham" (1592), sometimes ascribed on very insufficient grounds to Shakespeare, the earliest extant domestic tragedy. The play deals with a notorious murder of some forty years before, and follows the crude dramaturgyof the earliest chronicle plays. The stage presentation of notably brutal murders is common to-day and was to be expected on the Elizabethan stage, but the play seems also to represent reaction from the royalties, marvels, and unrealities of the contemporary tragedy. The epilogue, indeed, offers a defiance of romanticism and the since well-worn creed of the realist.
"Gentlemen, we hope youle pardon this naked tragedy,Wherein no filed points are foisted inTo make it gratious to the eare or eye;For simple truth is gratious enough,And needes no other points of glosing stuffe."
"Gentlemen, we hope youle pardon this naked tragedy,Wherein no filed points are foisted inTo make it gratious to the eare or eye;For simple truth is gratious enough,And needes no other points of glosing stuffe."
Notwithstanding this protestation, occasional monologues reveal the common stylistic decorations. The play is tediously detailed and artlessly realistic, though it has some vigorous blank verse and several powerful scenes; the most powerful, when Michael in the middle of the night is awaiting the murderers of his master, recalling a well-known passage in "The Spanish Tragedy." But the greatest merit of the play lies in the portrait of Alice Arden, absorbed in a despicable passion, but cunning and unabashed, incomparably the most lifelike evil woman up to this time depicted in the drama.
Peele's "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedie of Absalon," acted about 1591, has, unlike "Arden," many "filed points to make it gratious to the eare and eye." It gains a unique interest as the only extant tragedy of this period based on the biblical narrative. The bible story is treated just as a historicalchronicle would have been; and the play, divided by choruses into three "discourses," offers no advance in conception, structure, or characterization on the average tragedy of the period. Yet it is the masterpiece of one of the most active among Shakespeare's predecessors and illustrates his most distinctive contribution to the drama's development. As the author of "Alcazar," "Edward I," and possibly "Locrine," as well as "David and Bethsabe," Peele's contribution deserves some note. His dramatic career began at Oxford, where he made a version of one of the "Iphigenias" of Euripides, which was acted at Christ Church, and where he also aided in the production of Dr. Gager's Latin plays. In London he became the friend of Nash, Greene, and Marlowe, and the versatile adopter of the latest dramatic modes, whether in comedy, pastoral, history, or tragedy. In his best work, however, and especially in "David and Bethsabe," there are graces of style which justify Nash's eulogy of his friend as "primus verborum artifex." The great innovation of this early drama was, after all, in poetic style; and in furthering this Peele may claim a place only second to Marlowe. If Marlowe gave sweep and grandeur to blank verse, Peele brought a sweetness of cadence and, as Professor Ward observes, "a vivacity of fancy and a variety of imagery." As Marlowe turned everything into sonorous phrase, now bombastic, now superb, so Peele turned every thought to music and fancy, sometimes banal, sometimes lovely. "David and Bethsabe," with its oriental setting, though treated with careless dramaticart, proved an inspiration to the stylist. The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or situation. Absalon plays with conceits for twenty-five lines while hanging by his hair, and laments melodiously for fifteen lines more after being stabbed. But there is charm and gracefulness everywhere, in the choruses, in the defense of Hamon, and in the parables, and now and again the very allurement and luxury of words, as in the famous,
"Now comes my lover tripping like the roeAnd brings my longings tangled in her hair."
"Now comes my lover tripping like the roeAnd brings my longings tangled in her hair."
While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course be assigned wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its earliest and most influential purveyors.
The dozen plays just noticed furnish departures from, as well as adaptations of, the Kydian and Marlowean types of tragedy, but they reveal no marked advance in conception or structure. In characterization, however, there is a development in various ways; thus, a hack play like "The True Tragedy" has considerable power in its conception of a conscience-smitten villain, in "Woodstock" there is clear individualization, and in Alice Arden and the Countess of "Edward III" female character becomes lifelike and impressive. Still more salient is the attention paid to style. The Elizabethan theatregoer was used to the spoken and not to the written word, and expected at the theatre to be delighted by verbal display.Dramatic style then had functions which have since been relegated to other arts. It was to be declamative, taking the place of oratory; descriptive, supplying in part the place of scenery; and operatic in its word-play and decorative phrasing, and in its lyric interludes and laments. Moreover, medieval tradition and Senecan models alike enforced the necessity in tragedy of a heightened style; and many dramatists doubtless agreed with Gosson in placing first among dramatic requirements "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets with metaphors, allegories." Still further, along with the excesses resultant from this delight in words, there was manifest a growing mastery of language to represent truthfully situation and character. "Arden" gave crude expression to this reaction toward realism in style; "Woodstock" much more effectively; and colloquial directness was mingled with the artificialities of "The Spanish Tragedy" and the beauties of "Edward II." Henceforth the Elizabethan drama exhibits a conflict between dramatic suitability of language and its declamatory, operatic, or aphoristic decorativeness, promoting on the one hand a realistic presentation of life, and on the other fantastic absurdity and imaginative idealism.
The preceding discussion of Marlowe and his contemporaries must have made it apparent that Shakespeare cannot be treated as outside of the circle, although his plays have for convenience been reserved until now. The young actor and poet learned to meet successfully the demands of the stage through an apprenticeship ofhack-work, collaboration, and revision, and progressed in his art by means of adaptation and imitation. He wrote in association and rivalry with his fellow playwrights, responding like them to theatrical fashions, and feeling like them the spur of current artistic impulses. The dramatic activity that we have been discussing bears at every point upon his early work. He shared both the limitations and the incentives, bowed to the commanding influences, and rose to the opportunities for initiative which characterize this period. His dramatic career probably began two or three years later than Marlowe's, and of the plays now to be considered several were probably not written until the years following Marlowe's death. "Titus Andronicus" and the three parts of "Henry VI" belong to the early nineties and should be classed with the tragedies of blood and the chronicle histories of those years. "King John," "Richard III," and "Richard II" came somewhat later and form a part of the more advanced development of chronicle history variously represented by "Edward III," "Woodstock," and Marlowe's "Edward II." "Romeo and Juliet," in its final form perhaps still later, is a great and original masterpiece, but one still very characteristic of the dramatic period of which it is the crown and flower.
How much of "Titus Andronicus" is to be regarded as Shakespeare's remains a debated question, a recent and plausible theory being that it was his revision and combination of two old plays.[14]The play, which wascoupled by Jonson with "The Spanish Tragedy" as popular twenty years after its first appearance, is mainly an imitation of Kyd, though the phrasing and rhythm frequently show an advance over that author's work. In situations and various specific passages the imitation is pronounced and the motives of the Kydian type are in the main repeated. The revenge of a father for his son is opposed by villanous intrigue, involves a play within the play, and leads the hero into madness. Kyd's finer conception of a tragic hero hesitating in the face of fearful responsibility is, however, lacking; the combination of the two revenge stories—Tamora for her child murdered by Titus, and Titus in return for the murder of his children—resembles "Locrine"; and the black Aaron is, like the negro-Moor in "Alcazar," one of the many Marlowesque villains. The play surpasses current revenge plays chiefly in its unapproached orgy of mutilation, murder, and horror.
The three parts of "Henry VI"[15]are certainly only in part Shakespeare's and represent the complex form of collaboration not infrequently found in the drama. It is likely that Marlowe and Greene were concerned in theplays, and that Shakespeare's share was mainly in revision. The three plays were at all events very popular and occupy an important place among the early chronicle histories. The contention between the houses of York and Lancaster becomes an epic theme, uniting the three parts, and affords manifold opportunity for battles, defiances, coronations, usurpations, and patriotism. The structure as well as the material is of the chronicle, without any approach to tragic unity or coherence; but the plays do in some ways invade the field of tragedy. Comedy is practically excluded except in the Cade scenes; and the last two parts, as their titles indicate, present a series of "falls of princes"—"the death of the good Duke Humphrey; And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the tragicall end of the proud cardinall of Winchester" and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt." With themes of bloodshed and battle, material at least full of tragical possibilities, and under the schooling of Marlowe, Shakespeare served his apprenticeship for historical tragedy.
In "King John" Shakespeare still followed chronicle history methods without any clear advance toward tragedy. He was engaged in rewriting the old "Troublesome Reign," and he followed its plot with great closeness, scene after scene with entrances and exits being the same in both plays. But here his indebtedness practically stops. He seems to have made out a careful scenario, following the old play with only such alterations and omissions aswere necessary for the condensation of its two parts into a single play, and then to have thrown aside the old text and almost forgotten it. His improvements consequently coincide with the developments which we have found common in the tragedies of the period in that they concern characterization and style. Faulconbridge and Constance become incomparably more vital and impressive than in the old play and win our interest away from the battles and arguments of the rapid scenes. The style, almost never reminiscent of the early play, is mainly rhetorical, though always vigorous and usually surpassing the models which it frequently recalls. It often displays the conflict between the ornamental and naturalistic tendencies; as, for example, when Arthur, facing the murderer, quibbles for ten lines over the red-hot iron which is to put out his eyes, and then, as the attendants enter, forgets his rhetoric in words whose sincerity and simplicity have touched every reader.
"Richard III" and "Richard II," though possibly earlier than "King John," show the imitator and adapter rather than the reviser, and represent independent efforts to give tragic unity to the material of the English chronicles. While all the tragedies and histories so far considered have long since proved unfitted for the stage, "Richard III" has maintained its first popularity and continued to attract the greatest actors and to win the liking of the patrons of the theatre of each generation. Yet, though it has for three centuries exercised a profound impression on the popular imagination, it shows in theopinion of all critics a great indebtedness to Marlowe, and is so evidently imitative of current models that critics writing from such different points of view as Mr. Fleay and James Russell Lowell have been led to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. External and internal evidence both contradict such doubts emphatically, but the close relationship of the play to "Henry VI" makes it improbable that Shakespeare turned to the theme solely of his own initiative. "Richard III" is the fourth play of a tetralogy manifestly planned before the earlier members were completed. Margaret appears in all four plays; the character of Shakespeare's Richard is distinctly outlined in Part III; and it was evidently meant to end the contention of York and Lancaster with the triumph of the Tudor dynasty, and the long series of falls of princes with the tragedy of the villanous Gloster. The chronicle of Richard's reign had indeed been given a tragic unity in the history by Sir Thomas More and in a long saga of chronicle and literature which had developed still further the conception of this masterful and dreadful villain. The suitability of this material to current forms of tragedy was obvious. Dr. Legge had found in this saga the material for a Senecan play; the unknown author of "The True Tragedy" had discovered there a ready-made tragedy of blood and revenge; and there are indications of non-extant plays on the same theme. For either Marlowe or for Shakespeare working with him on the history of the struggle between York and Lancaster, the opportunity for a tragedy with a central hero of the typeof Tamburlaine, Faustus, or Barabas must have been apparent.
Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy" supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in the play.[16]In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe, making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a chorus,—curses, laments, and exultations.Moreover, with a tact unique at that time and not displayed by him in "Titus Andronicus," he perceived that the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.
An abundance of theatrical effects, already familiar on the stage, is indeed supplied. The murder of Clarence, with its prolonged dialogue between the murderers, the victims led away to execution, the orations before the battle, the funeral cortège, the battle scenes, the laments and curses, now multiplied and expanded beyond the verge of absurdity, all reflect current stage practices. The structure, still over-dependent on the chronicle sources, indulges after the current fashion in the retention and prolongation of undramatic material: such as the feeble forebodings of the citizens (ii, 3), the prolongation of Hastings's warning of death (iii, 2), and the useless soliloquy of the scrivener (iii, 6). Yet, in comparison with contemporary plays, there is great superiority both in dramatic construction and theatrical effectiveness. The main action progresses with rapidity and coherence to the moment of Richard's reversal of fortune (iv, 4), thirteen years being condensed into a few days; and the interest from this climax to the catastrophe is maintained bystartling melodramatic effects. But the great dramatic merit of the play lies in the use of contrast, surprise, and particularly of dramatic irony in the separate scenes and in their masterly integration to display the character of Richard himself.
Following closely the character outlined in the chronicle, borrowing conception and treatment from Marlowe's protagonists, and mindful of the host of stage villains that had proved so popular in tragedy, Shakespeare constructed a cacodemon who remains not only a great stage figure but also alive and human in our imaginations. That he is the source of all evil in the play; that he is absurdly and impossibly diabolic; that he informs the audience of all his nefarious schemes; that he has a Machiavellian skill in intrigue; that he is in intellect and will easily the superior of all whom he encounters; that he is possessed by an egoism superhuman in its audacity; that he is an accomplished and ironical hypocrite; that he is conscienceless except when half asleep and dreaming; that from the beginning to the end he is a masterful and relentless pursuer of his ambition, uninfluenced by persons or events, alike subjects of his contempt,—all this indicates a skillful adaptation and continuation of sources and models. But Richard is more. He is dramatically immensely effective; he is always at hand at the right moment; he is never nonplussed; a murder is hardly over when he appears smiling and ironically repentant; he can ask for strawberries with murder in his heart, or play with the children or woo the woman whom he hasalready marked for doom. That these theatrical fascinations were the results of a consistent conception based on a profound ethical and psychological study can hardly be maintained. It may indeed be doubted whether in this respect there is much advance over Marlowe's villains, or even those of his contemporaries, to say nothing of an approach to Macbeth and Iago. Richard is sometimes a human being, sometimes a monster, and always a stage villain. But the very fact that critics have delighted to analyze and moralize over his traits is proof that Shakespeare, in spite of the monstrosities of his conception, gave to its dramatic presentation not only a stage effectiveness but also plausibility.
This plausibility must be accredited largely to the vigorous colloquialism of his speeches. The play manifests the usual conflict of artificial and natural styles; the elaborate stichomythia and the wailing and cursing queens furnish examples of the common affectations of tragic style; and the rhetorical display appears not infrequently in Richard's speeches. But in the main he speaks with a naturalness and directness far greater than was usual in tragic heroes, and the natural-speaking Richard often makes plausible and convincing the theatrical and rhetorical villain. Thus, after the opening soliloquy he drops his rhetoric for the conversational tone of his conference with Clarence; and thus, the procession of ghosts remains still impressive on our stage because it is followed by a soliloquy that surpasses all except a few of Marlowe's in power and naturalness.Throughout the play, while others declaim, wail, and curse, the most impossible figure of them all becomes the only convincing human being, very largely because of the realism of his speech.
In "Richard II," written at about the time of "Richard III," Shakespeare was also writing under the influence of Marlowe, but now in direct imitation and rivalry of "Edward II." The first part of the reign of Richard II had already received treatment in "Jack Straw" and "Woodstock," and the theme of a weak king forced to abdicate had been presented in "Henry VI" as well as "Edward II." Shakespeare followed, as always hitherto, his source, Holinshed, very closely, and the historical material determined the plot and characterization, but Marlowe's example led him to an interpretation of the fifteen years' history as the tragedy of the reversal of fortune of a king whose temperament made him contemptible in prosperity but pitiable in adversity. Along with the story of the rise and progress of the conflict between Richard and the barons under Bolingbroke, there runs the story of "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty," which give a new pathos to that favorite theme of medieval tragedy and Elizabethan history, the vanquishment of a prince by scornful Fortune. The struggle within Richard's own heart, even more than in the case of Edward II, absorbs the interest and points the moral, the hollowness and uncertainty of earthly grandeur.
Structurally there is no advance on "Edward II" in exposition, integration of action, or catastrophe. Adherenceto the chronicle results in a long drawn out and iterative first act, a virtual repetition of Richard's struggle over the relinquishment of the crown in iii, 3, and iv, 1, and a slight and melodramatic treatment of the catastrophe. On the other hand, there are some changes from Marlowe's method of interest in connection with later tragedy. Elegiac scenes with their lamenting women, also conspicuous in "Richard III," are an addition to the historical source and an important factor in the structure; their distribution through the play indicating that they were employed to supply a relief from the scenes of much action and high tension, more suitable to tragedy than the relief of comic scenes, and also to take, as in "Richard III," the place of a chorus through their lyrical reinforcement of the tragic emotions excited by the action. Again, as the theme is Richard's reversal of fortune rather than his death, so the emotional crisis receives a structural prominence not unlike that given to Hamlet's, and the catastrophe of death is relegated to a postscript. The passage from crisis to catastrophe is managed, as in "Hamlet," "Lear," and "Macbeth," by the introduction of incidents extraneous to the main action, here the episode of Aumerle's conspiracy.
The main departures from Marlowe, however, are to be found in those elements of dramatic composition to which in this period the genius of Shakespeare as well as the talent of his contemporaries most readily responded, the characterization and the style. Not only the king himself but many other persons in the play, and notablyBolingbroke, are presented with consistency and subtlety. The historical narrative is transformed into a gallery of full-length historical portraits that lead us to forget history and drama in our study of their personalities. The euphuistic and sentimental Richard gives a fair field for the stylist, but his example is infectious, and the Queen, Gaunt, York, Bolingbroke, the gardener, and in fact all the persons of the drama, employ word-play, periphrasis, and the various flourishes of Elizabethan rhetorical style. If one accepts the theory that tragedy is a game for rhetorical display, and further accepts the conventionalities of Elizabethan style, there must be unmeasured admiration for the extraordinary verbal skill displayed. Shakespeare employs the current artificialities of diction with abounding facility and zest, and often suits them skillfully to the delineation of character; while his constant attention to expression results in a sustained eloquence, which, if it blurs the outlines of reality, substitutes a haze of fancy, and sometimes the glory of magnificent beauty. The miserable years of Richard's downfall are forever associated in our minds with the picturesqueness of the two entries into London and with the splendor of the apostrophe to England and the recital of Norfolk's death.
In the three chronicle histories just considered, although the historical material largely determines structure, tragic conception, and characterization, and although all these are obviously under Marlowe's influence, yet Shakespeare had reached a stage far more advanced than that of mere imitator or adapter. In "Richard III" he had added hisown impress to the Marlowean type of tragedy, and in "Richard II" he had introduced innovations foreshadowing his later conceptions. As a playwright he had equaled any of his contemporaries in immediate popularity and outdone them in permanent theatrical effectiveness. He had acquired a complete mastery over the conditions and conventions of the stage, and had frequently, if not always, outdone the best of his rivals in dramatic ingenuity and power. Like his contemporaries, however, he was hampered by theatrical conditions and intractable historical material; and his chief interest was in the opportunities furnished by the chronicles for the delineation of character and the exercise of his gift of tongues. In range and verisimilitude his characters already far surpassed Marlowe's; and as a poet, whether in lyric, descriptive, or purely dramatic passages, whether in sustained treatment of situation or in splendid purple patches, he had shown himself the peer of his master.
In "Romeo and Juliet" the same dramatic and poetic qualities are exhibited as in the historical plays, but the happy choice of the already well-known love story led Shakespeare outside of the direct range of Marlowe's example, freed him from the limits of the historical material, and gave his genius full scope. The importance of love as a motive in the Italian drama of the Renaissance is one of the traits that distinguish it from its classical models, and the influence of Italian drama and fiction was important in turning Elizabethan dramatists to stories of romantic passion. These had already been widelyadopted in comedy and had formed the principle plots of "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda," as well as minor parts in other tragedies of the period. The story of Romeo and Juliet, which Brooke speaks of having seen "lately (1562) set forth on the stage with more commendation than I can look for," may have been made into an English play before Shakespeare was born.[17]It had at least been dramatized in France and Italy, where Luigi Groto's "Adriana" (1578) surpassed all contemporary plays in the number of its editions.
Brooke's poem, "Romeus and Juliet" (1562), was the main source of the play and provided a story eminently adapted to dramatic representation. The plot, with its conflict between love and hate, the brief triumph of love, the interference of feud and family authority, the separation and death of the lovers, has been repeated in its essentials in thousands of stories, and has played an enormous part in the imaginations of four centuries; but it has hardly found a more effective scenario than that which lay imbedded in Brooke's long-spun narrative. A lesser genius than Shakespeare might have discovered it, but his powers of invention and construction are amply apparent, especially up to the turning-point of the play. The brawl and the love-sick Romeo of the first scene, dramatically expository and symbolic of the whole action, the meeting of the lovers at the dance, the balcony scene, the embassy and return of the nurse, the fatal fight withTybalt, are all executed with a wealth of incidental invention, a sureness of technic, and a rapidity and directness of dramatic movement that relied but little on Brooke's narrative or contemporary example. The second half of the play, though skillfully condensed, follows the source more closely and, perhaps for this reason, impresses the modern reader less vividly. Shakespeare's dramatic skill is manifest in his departure from the current methods of the tragedy of blood as well as in his treatment of the narrative. What imitators of Seneca and of Kyd did with similar love stories we have seen in "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda"; and "Romeo and Juliet" had an equal chance for ghosts, villany, and physical horrors. Some traces of the prevailing fashion do survive, as in the addition to Brooke of the murder of Paris and in the attention paid to the horrors of the tomb. But many of the best scenes are of the sort that occur in romantic comedy,—the repartee of gallants, the preparations for a feast, the dance, the street affray, the meetings and partings of the lovers,—and there is no villain, no figure of Nemesis, no ghost, no warring armies, and no pomp of courts. No tragedy had yet appeared with less theatrical sensationalism, and none which maintained the interest of the spectators upon the story with comparable dramatic intensity.
The extraordinary advance over the historical plays in dramatic technic is, however, overshadowed in our appreciation of the play by the irresistible appeal made by the persons of the story. They are more closelyrealized for us than the friends and foes of our daily life, yet they dwell forever in the enchantment of idealized romance. To analyze Shakespeare's power to portray and at the same time to exalt human nature would be to unlock the very key to Shakespeare's heart; we may well be content to wonder and exclaim. Yet, we may note that, while characterization, which had been increasing in range and individualization in the historical plays, is here triumphant, the means and methods are not unlike those already noticed. The brilliant translation of prose narrative into monologue and dialogue gives us the nurse; the vivacious amplification of a type familiar in comedy—the garrulous old man—results in Capulet; and even the greatest creations naturally retain traces of contemporary influences. Mercutio is the prince of a throng of quick-witted quibblers, and Juliet is sometimes declamatory, sometimes fantastic, like Brooke's heroine. But they are Shakespeare's own, and the first representatives of two ways in which his imagination characteristically and supremely manifested itself in later plays. Mercutio is the first of those imaginative achievements that concentrate into a few lines of blank verse the complete individualization of a human being; Juliet is perhaps the first of the amazing series of idealized women. If one considers how often the young girl in love has been the theme of genius, and recalls Fielding, Scott, Browning, and Meredith, one may secure some measure of Shakespeare's achievement. When one seeks comparison with the naïve and likable young animal of Brooke's doggerel, or thewomen of preceding drama, even the charming heroines of Greene's comedies, the art that produced Juliet must seem miraculous. The idealization of woman was, to be sure, common in Renaissance art; and the union in her of wit and beauty, power and charm, passion and purity, innocence and wisdom, was not solely Shakespeare's conception; but the power to conceive such a being with truth and to realize her dramatically, alive, human, and consistent, was his alone.
The conception and expression of character cannot be separated; there lies in the qualities of the poetic style some explanation of the impression we receive of idealized humanity. While colloquial directness is not wanting in the play, the prevailing style has the artificialities, the lyricism, and the exuberance we have found prevailing elsewhere. It exhibits about all the faults and affectations of the dramatic poetry of the time, but these are the defects of an art that finds poetry in everything and ever lingers to enjoy the beauty of words, whether over Queen Mab, or the apothecary's shop, or Friar Laurence's herbs. It stops to display its verbal ingenuity in a pun; it delights in lyric outbursts, sestette or sonnet, morning-song or epithalamium; it riots in the refrains on "banished," becomes grotesque in the wailing quartette, and finds its supreme opportunity in the fancy and music and passion of the lovers underneath the summer moon. It is this exuberance, this spontaneity, this carelessness of incongruity, this delight in ornamentation, this abandon to music and fancy that transfigures theVerona of brawls, dinners, nurses, and deaths, and, forever ascendant over our fancies, like Romeo's blessed moon, "tips everything with silver."
It is in part this poetic style which distinguishes the play from the later tragedies, but the difference is everywhere manifest to our impressions. The evil and gloom and pessimism that help to make up the tragic fact in "Lear" and "Macbeth" are here scarcely felt. To joy comes sorrow, because of evil and through accident,—this is the tragic theme. In the course of its presentation one may find it suggestive of the passing of youth to age or of passionate love to oblivion, but surely no one comes from the poem with a dominant impression of the wickedness of family feuds, or of the inevitable brevity of romantic passion, or of the dangers of youthful precipitousness,—rather the mind glows with the beauty and joy revealed in life.
In this impression the play has a kinship with the tragedies, even the poor and the maimed, that had preceded it. Tragedies so far have been strangely free from Christian teaching or sentiment. Compared with the medieval drama, early Elizabethan tragedy seems not only secular but pagan. This is partly because it followed its sources and treated of Romans, Moors, Scythians, and heroes of myths and legends; partly because it derived stoic and fatalistic sentiments from Seneca and other classical writers; but it also represents an entire departure from the medieval point of view, a departure necessarily emphasized in tragedy. In the medieval drama, deathhad been a translation to final reward or punishment,—the portals of heaven and hell were open on the stage. In the Renaissance conception of tragedy death was the point and pith of tragic fact. Faith, forgiveness, reliance on Providence, assurance of immortality are rarely alluded to. Chance, mysterious fate, the emissaries of the devil, the powers of evil in the mind of man are the forces to which tragedy must attend; and they lead to a death terrible and pitiful, to be met bravely and defiantly, it may be, but not peacefully and hopefully. And this emphasis of the gloom of death required an equal emphasis on the glory and beauty of life. Tragedy was the passing into darkness from under this majestic roof fretted with golden fire, the loss of noble reason and infinite faculty; and it must needs proclaim the beauty of the world as well as the quintessence of dust.
And so, although writers of tragedy dwelt on the horrors of death and its accompaniments of blood and atrocity, and though they symbolized in their villains their sense of the reign of evil, yet, in Marlowe's treatment of an Asiatic conqueror or the ignoble fascination of Edward II, or in Peele's fancy that made musical the amours of David; everywhere indeed, in the Pantheas and Persedas, the Marii and Selimi, they were presenting human life as removed from the commonplace, the sordid, the usual, and as the abode of heroisms, splendors, and aspirations. Even evil deeds and villains, even death itself sometimes partook of this glorification; and tragic theory, moral purpose, and theological dogma were alikeforgotten in the fascination of human character, passion, and achievement. This idealization of life was, as we noted at the beginning of the chapter, characteristic of the national temper and of the artistic impulses in every field of literature during its brief breathing spell between the Protestant and Puritan revolutions. Its power is curiously illustrated in the effect of the story of Romeo and Juliet upon Brooke in the course of his by no means despicable attempt to turn it into a tragic poem. In his Address to the Reader, he dilates with medieval propriety on the moral of the poem "to raise in the reader an hatefull lothyng of so filthy beastlynes." "And to this ende (good Reader) is this tragicall matter written to describe unto thee a coople of unfortunate lovers thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the authorite and advice of parents and frendes, conferring their principall counsels with dronken gossyppes, and superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instrumentes of unchastitie)"—and so on through all their evil doings until "finallye, by all meanes of unhonest lyfe hastyng to most unhappye death." So wrote the conscious Puritan; but the story charmed the artist. It enticed his meagre art to a share in the joys of the lovers, it led him to a delight in unhonest life, it dissolved his sermon into romance and poetry, and left him enamored even of his "superstitious frier."
And so the tragedy of the lovers became for Shakespeare as for Brooke and as other stories had become for Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, the spur and the means toan idealization of life. It is not in the reconciliation of the families, still less in the sense of a deserved punishment, that we find an antidote for death and evil; but in the assurance that human passion may be so lovely, human nature so full of strength and beauty. "The sun for sorrow will not show his head," says Prince Escalus at the end, but we believe with Romeo that