NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY

"From among the grisly ghosts I come, from tyrants' testy train."

The fall of the Prince Cambyses, it should be added, is accidentally or providentially upon his own sword; and only the exit of Ambidexter and a few words from the three lords, who pronounce the accident a just reward from heaven and promise princely burial, are required to bring the play to a close.

In these plays we may trace the gradual emergence of tragedy in the popular drama in response to a growing knowledge of its functions and methods. It appears still mixed with farce and morality, but it has themes like those of Seneca, bloody, revolting, and sensational, and its freedom in stage presentation permits an emphasis on crime and death even greater than in the Senecan imitations. Notably, it introduces the stories of the downfall of a tyrant and the revenge of a son for a father. The structure has none of the Senecan characteristics, and consists merely in linking together, or rather in interrupting by extraneous comedy, a few scenes illustrating a story; but it is like that of the English Senecan playsin the space it gives to catastrophe. In general the plays begin conventionally with the depiction of peaceful and prosperous circumstances, and proceed at once to the disasters and deaths, with very little attention to the events or motives that lead to these results. The element of conflict is as yet hardly translated out of the abstract terms of the morality into those of actual life. The conflict of motives never leads to a dramatic crisis but keeps to the form of a medieval debate, as between Nature and Horestes, or, indeed, between the bad and good counselors in "Gorboduc." Characterization likewise depends mostly on the form of arguing abstractions, though certain types of importance later are already noticeable. The faithful friend and the aged counselor are ever at hand, and the part, if not the character, of the tragic hero is provided in Horestes and Virginius. The villain receives considerable attention. The English dramatists were puzzled to follow the classical tragedies in placing the source of evil in Fate or the decrees of the gods; and even when their stories provided them with persons sufficiently iniquitous to cause all the tragic trouble, they seem to have felt the need for a visible and special representative of the devil. Evil in "Gorboduc" may be said to arise from the counsels of the parasites as well as from the folly of the king and the envy of the princes. In "Tancred and Gismunda" it is due, after classical imitation, to the intervention of Cupid. In the popular plays the vice is borrowed from the moralities, and, in all except "Horestes," is made a mischief-maker, a sourceof evil, and the special representative of the devil. Questions in regard to the origin of the vice and his relationship to the devil of the medieval drama have not been freed from doubt by recent investigation, but it seems clear that in the early tragedies he was given some of the work later accomplished by the stage-villain and his accomplices. The part that women play in these early tragedies should also be noticed. Women and love, as Professor Creizenach has observed, receive far more attention in Renaissance tragedy than in Greek or Senecan. "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Promus and Cassandra" deal with stories of romantic love; Virginia and the queen in "Cambyses" present noteworthy though slight examples of the idealization of women so important in later drama. The purpose of all these plays, Senecan or popular, is superficially didactic, as is witnessed not only by the abundant moralizing in the Senecan imitations, but also in the popular plays by the emphasis in the closing scenes on the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. In the last act of "Appius and Virginia" the lesson of the play is written on the tomb, and in "Horestes" the conduct of the hero is discussed by Nestor and Fame and finally rewarded by Hermione, Truth, and Duty. "Cambyses" is more in line with later tragedy in presenting the protagonist as a monster and in closing promptly after his punishment by death.

The most certain accomplishment, however, in the development of the drama up to 1570 had been in the widening of its range of material. The bible narrativeand moral allegory had been superseded by classical myth and history, and these in turn were being encroached upon by the romantic fiction of the Italiannovelleand by the chronicles of English history. Italiannovellewere open to dramatists mainly through a series of collections of translations, of which "Painter's Palace of Pleasure" (1566) was the chief. The interest in English history was stimulated and fed by "The Mirror for Magistrates" and the various editions of the chronicles; Grafton, Stowe, and the third edition of Fabyan appearing in the sixties, and Holinshed in 1577; while interest in the classics was maintained by numerous translations as well as by an increasing knowledge of Latin. Translation, indeed, had brought the stories of the world to the English mart, and the dramatic industry was now eager in its demand for material.

Of the continued development of popular tragedy after 1570, and particularly of the sources drawn upon for dramatic material, we can get a few hints from the titles of non-extant plays. The incomplete Revels Accounts of performances at court preserve the names of over sixty plays acted between 1570 and 1585, and about thirty are derived from other sources. Of the court plays, none had biblical subjects; a number were moralities, a few were drawn from old romances; but the majority were from classical or Italian sources. Many of these must have contained tragic incidents,[8]though probablythey were not much more classical in form than "Appius and Virginia" or "Horestes." Only one title drawn from national history presents itself, "The King of Scots." The English chronicle play had evidently not yet made any stir at court; but many of the classical plays were drawn from Livy. Two other titles, "The Cruelty of a Stepmother" and "Murderous Michael" (Sussex's men, '78, '79), and a third of a play at Bristol in 1578, "What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man," may possibly have had for sources accounts of contemporary murders, and thus have instituted the species of domestic tragedy. A few titles, suggestive of tragedy, with accompanying comments, have been preserved by Gosson, who praises: "The Jew," "representing the greediness of worldly chusers and bloody minds of usurers," apparently a forerunner of "The Merchant of Venice"; "Ptolemy," "describing the overthrow of seditious estates and rebellious commons"; "The Blacksmith's Daughter," "contayning the treachery of the Turkes, the honourable bountye of a noble mind, and the shining of virtue in distress"; and his own play, "Catilin's Conspiracy," "showing the reward of traitors."

Some further information concerning the emergence of popular tragedy can be derived from the criticisms ofthe period. Gosson in his "Plays Confuted" (1582), declares:—

"For the poets drive it most commonly unto such points as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical speeches, or set their hearers agog with discourses of love; or paint a few antics to fit their own humours with scoffs and taunts or wring in a show to furnish forth the stage when it is too bare; when the matter itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out.... So," he adds, "was the history of Cæsar and Pompey and the play of the Fabii at the theatre, both amplified where the drums might walk or the pen ruffle."

A similar criticism is made by Whetstone in his dedication of "Promus and Cassandra" (1578): "The Englishman in this qualitie, is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order: he first groundes his work on impossibilities: then in three howers more likely ronnes he throwe the worlde: marryes, gets Children, makes Children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven and fetcheth Divels from Hel." Sidney in the well-known passage on the contemporary drama in his "Apologie for Poetrie" (1595, but written about 1580) amplified these same criticisms, deploring the lack of "noble moralitie," the violation of the unities, and the admixture of farce in current tragedies, and especially animadverting on the histories and the "mongrel Tragy-comedie." He asks scornfully: "And doe they not knowe, that a Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not of Historie? not bound to follow the storie, but having liberty either to faine a quite new matter, or toframe the history to the most tragicall conveniencie. Againe, many things may be told, which cannot be shewed, if they knewe the difference betwixt reporting and representing,"—and he goes on to illustrate. Evidently the medieval methods were still potent rather than those of Sidney's models, Euripides, Seneca, and "Gorboduc"; and the tragedies in the theatres followed their sources without recognition of the difference between a narrative and a dramatic structure, and with an appeal to vulgar taste by means of hideous monsters, pitched fields, scurrility, or "some extreme shew of doltishness." From these critical comments we may infer that the popular drama had before 1585 triumphed over the Senecan. The few extant tragedies before that date have shown little which was not paralleled in the contemporary drama of western Europe; but in the popularization of a professional drama that rejected Senecan technic but still delighted in the presentation of tragic fact we have the first clear differentiation of English tragedy from that of other nations. Unfortunately we have only this indirect evidence that such differentiation was well under way before Marlowe.

On the basis of such evidence, however, we may draw a few inferences in regard to the course of popular tragedy from 1570 to 1585. We may infer that Senecan imitations in the hands of amateurs did not multiply, and were not readily accepted even as object lessons by writers for the public theatres, who, whatever inspiration they may have received from amateur or academic plays, must have feltthe increasing force of the demand from the public for amusement and sensation. While undoubtedly many traces of Senecan influence continued, and while classical themes persisted, the prevalent type of drama became neither right comedy nor right tragedy but the so-called "history." Whether based on history or fiction, its main purpose was the presentation of a story, the more marvelous the better; and, even if it ended in deaths, it was likely to contain a mixture of farce, romantic love, stage spectacle, and, as time went on, a diminishing inculcation of morality. Throughout the period, popular tragedy probably remained commingled with other species of drama. As it forsook the morality, it found itself wedded with farce or spectacle; or, perhaps more extensively, with history and romantic comedy. What course the popular drama farthest removed from court or academic influence may have taken, we can only surmise, though the presentation of contemporary murders, which found favor even at court, must presumably have flourished with less cultivated audiences. And it is impossible to resist the conjecture that English history must have received crude presentation in the public theatres much earlier than we have any record of.

We may also surmise that in the quarter of a century from "Cambyses" to "Tamburlaine" there must have been some considerable development in the power to depict tragic fact, in the traditions of tragic acting, and in the cultivation of the taste of both audiences and authors for the genuinely terrible, pathetic, and heroic,but we must assume that tragedy still awaited the service of both literary and dramatic genius. The genius of Marlowe, however, had its way prepared by twenty-five years of extraordinary dramatic activity, during which the functions of comedy and tragedy had become known if not observed, comedy had attained a considerable development in Lyly and Peele, and tragedy had gained sufficient vigor to extend its themes, and to decide against a development imitative and scholarly, and in favor of one original and popular.

Most of the books in the list for the last chapter are useful in connection with the matter of this. Creizenach and Ward are the chief authorities; Collier, Symonds, and Jusserand deal with the period. Spingarn, Cunliffe, and Fischer are valuable for their special fields. Texts are to be found in Manly, Dodsley, Brandl, and discussions in the latter. For the stage history of the Elizabethan drama, the works of F. G. Fleay are very valuable, though marred by much unsupported conjecture:A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559-1642, 2 vols. (1891);A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559-1642 (1890);A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare(1886). The first-named is the most reliable and useful of the three. Original documents and records are printed in part in Collier and Fleay; and in Halliwell-Phillipps'sOutlines of the Life of Shakespeare(6th ed., 1886); Malone'sVariorumed. of Shakespeare, 1821; Cunningham'sExtracts from the Annals of the Revels at Court, Shakespeare Society, 1842; Nichols'sThe Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols., 1823;Aussere Geschichte der englischen Theatertruppen, 1559-1642, by Hermann Maas (Materialien zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas, 1907); Hazlitt'sEnglish Drama and Stage(1869); Chamber'sNotes on the Revels Office(1906). The essays of Gosson, Sidney, Webbe, Puttenham, which supply most of the dramatic criticism of the period, are in Arber's Reprints; selections from these and other critical works with an introduction are collected inElizabethan Critical Essays, G. Gregory Smith (1904). J. W. Cunliffe's edition of Gascoigne'sPosies(1907) contains the plays, which he has also edited with an introduction inThe Belles-Lettres Series(1906). A study of Legge'sRichardus Tertiusis found in G. B. Churchill'sRichard III up to Shakespeare(Berlin, 1906); and an account of the Latin university plays in the article cited, by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller (Shakspere Jahrbuch, 1898). W. W. Greg'sA List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed before 1700(London Bibliographical Society) is based on the title-pages of the original copies. Fleay'sBiographical Chronicleincludes all plays known, extant or not. Greg, Fleay, and Schelling supersede Halliwell-Phillipps'sDictionary of Old English Plays(1860), and W. C. Hazlitt'sManual of Old English Plays(1892).English Drama, a Working Basis, by K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, Wellesley College (1895), is the only attempt at a directory to modern editions, and though very incomplete, is the most serviceable guide to the whole field of English drama.

FOOTNOTES:[2]Before the first act, "there came in upon the stage a king with an Imperiall Crowne upon his head ... sitting in a chariot very richely furnished, drawne in by foure kinges in their dublettes and hosen, with crownes upon their heades, representing unto us ambition," etc. And before the fifth act there is a similar exhibition of a woman in a chariot driving kings and slaves. These shows may have suggested to Marlowe the famous business of Tamburlaine and his chariot. The show before act ii introduces the paraphernalia of coffins and a grave, afterwards so frequent in popular tragedy.[3]The earlier version also survives in MS. and has been published by Professor Brandl in hisQuellen des Weltlichen Dramas. The revised version is the result of elaborate care and reflects more highly developed dramatic conditions than existed in the sixties, but in some respects it may be closer to the original performance than is the manuscript. The songs of the chorus, now four maids of Gismunda's instead of four gentlemen of Salerne, and the dumb shows must have had some equivalents in the presentation before the Queen, though both are wanting in the earlier version. The dumb shows are noteworthy because, unlike those inGorboducandJocasta, they are not allegorical, but represent important actions described or referred to in the text.[4]Geschichte des neueren Dramas, ii, 471.[5]For a list of Latin plays acted at the universities, see Fleay,Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, vol. ii, 347-366. This list must be corrected in many particulars by an article, "Die Lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth," by George B. Churchill and Wolfgang Keller,Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, xxxiv, 220-323.[6]Far more novel than any of the plays discussed in its departures from Senecan precedent, isPerfidus Hetruscus. So far as can be judged from the outline (Jahrbuch, xxxiv, 250-252), it offers no semblance of Senecan structure. There is no chorus, but there are six ghosts, a villain, two accomplices,—one a Capuchin, the other a Jesuit,—and an elaborate plot, as full of surprises as of poisonings. It seems to be a popular revenge play turned into Latin, and can hardly come within our period.[7]One play should be mentioned here as standing in some ways between the classical and popular plays.Promus and Cassandra, by George Whetstone, published 1578, cannot be placed in any of our four classes, for there is no evidence that it was ever acted. LikeTancred and Gismunda, it was based on an Italiannovella, also the source ofMeasure for Measure, and it follows Latin comedy rather than tragedy. In its division into five acts, its frequent soliloquies, its attempted observance of decorum (especially vaunted in the preface), and in its serious purpose and moral sentiments, the play shows a pedantic clinging to classicism. In the main, however, it belongs withDamon and PithiasandAppius and Virginia, and seems to have been intended for performance by children. It is a mixture of tragedy, comedy, farce, and songs; and this abundance of incongruous material seems to have led to its division into two plays, as Whetstone says, for the purpose of decorum. Here, as elsewhere in the period, the experiment of putting new material into old dramatic structures burst the bottles. Clowns, parasites, tyrants, prostitutes, hangmen, Egyptians, and girls in boys' clothing make up a pageant which is a sort of tragicomedy but which the learned author called by the more popular title, "a history."[8]Ariodante and Genevra(Orlando Furioso),Ajax and Ulysses,Agamemnon and Ulysses,Cæsar and Pompey,Cloridon and RadimantaDuke of Milan,Effigenia(Iphigenia),Four Sons of Fabius,Mutius Scævola,Quintus Fabius,Perseus and Andromeda,Sarpedon,Scipio Africanus,Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes,Telemo,Twelve Labors of Hercules. Some titles suggesting medieval romance are:Knight of the Burning Bush,Red Knight,Paris and Vienna,Solitary Knight.

[2]Before the first act, "there came in upon the stage a king with an Imperiall Crowne upon his head ... sitting in a chariot very richely furnished, drawne in by foure kinges in their dublettes and hosen, with crownes upon their heades, representing unto us ambition," etc. And before the fifth act there is a similar exhibition of a woman in a chariot driving kings and slaves. These shows may have suggested to Marlowe the famous business of Tamburlaine and his chariot. The show before act ii introduces the paraphernalia of coffins and a grave, afterwards so frequent in popular tragedy.

[3]The earlier version also survives in MS. and has been published by Professor Brandl in hisQuellen des Weltlichen Dramas. The revised version is the result of elaborate care and reflects more highly developed dramatic conditions than existed in the sixties, but in some respects it may be closer to the original performance than is the manuscript. The songs of the chorus, now four maids of Gismunda's instead of four gentlemen of Salerne, and the dumb shows must have had some equivalents in the presentation before the Queen, though both are wanting in the earlier version. The dumb shows are noteworthy because, unlike those inGorboducandJocasta, they are not allegorical, but represent important actions described or referred to in the text.

[4]Geschichte des neueren Dramas, ii, 471.

[5]For a list of Latin plays acted at the universities, see Fleay,Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, vol. ii, 347-366. This list must be corrected in many particulars by an article, "Die Lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth," by George B. Churchill and Wolfgang Keller,Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, xxxiv, 220-323.

[6]Far more novel than any of the plays discussed in its departures from Senecan precedent, isPerfidus Hetruscus. So far as can be judged from the outline (Jahrbuch, xxxiv, 250-252), it offers no semblance of Senecan structure. There is no chorus, but there are six ghosts, a villain, two accomplices,—one a Capuchin, the other a Jesuit,—and an elaborate plot, as full of surprises as of poisonings. It seems to be a popular revenge play turned into Latin, and can hardly come within our period.

[7]One play should be mentioned here as standing in some ways between the classical and popular plays.Promus and Cassandra, by George Whetstone, published 1578, cannot be placed in any of our four classes, for there is no evidence that it was ever acted. LikeTancred and Gismunda, it was based on an Italiannovella, also the source ofMeasure for Measure, and it follows Latin comedy rather than tragedy. In its division into five acts, its frequent soliloquies, its attempted observance of decorum (especially vaunted in the preface), and in its serious purpose and moral sentiments, the play shows a pedantic clinging to classicism. In the main, however, it belongs withDamon and PithiasandAppius and Virginia, and seems to have been intended for performance by children. It is a mixture of tragedy, comedy, farce, and songs; and this abundance of incongruous material seems to have led to its division into two plays, as Whetstone says, for the purpose of decorum. Here, as elsewhere in the period, the experiment of putting new material into old dramatic structures burst the bottles. Clowns, parasites, tyrants, prostitutes, hangmen, Egyptians, and girls in boys' clothing make up a pageant which is a sort of tragicomedy but which the learned author called by the more popular title, "a history."

[8]Ariodante and Genevra(Orlando Furioso),Ajax and Ulysses,Agamemnon and Ulysses,Cæsar and Pompey,Cloridon and RadimantaDuke of Milan,Effigenia(Iphigenia),Four Sons of Fabius,Mutius Scævola,Quintus Fabius,Perseus and Andromeda,Sarpedon,Scipio Africanus,Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes,Telemo,Twelve Labors of Hercules. Some titles suggesting medieval romance are:Knight of the Burning Bush,Red Knight,Paris and Vienna,Solitary Knight.

The growing national consciousness that reached its triumphant culmination in the defeat of Spain made itself felt in the drama, specifically in efforts to present the glories of English history, and still more potently in an awakened responsiveness to the new fields and new incentives for artistic ambition. The beginning of the greatness of the national drama is significantly coincident with the victory over the Armada. By that time the spirit of noble endeavor had found lodgment in every worthy breast. It animated Marlowe no less than Drake, and the author of the least successful chronicle play as well as admiral or counselor. The extraordinary achievements that had been contributing to the might of England as a political power were, indeed, but one expression of the freedom and eagerness of individual initiative that characterized this English Renaissance and found other expression in the activities and accomplishments of literature. In comparison with the men of preceding generations, the Elizabethan Englishman faced a world of new horizons, new ideas, boundless opportunities, and alluring rewards. Every career was open and promised an untrod pathway and unworn laurels. He might win fame as a pirate,philosopher, or poet; or in the new excitement of living he might crowd not one but many careers into the span of life. The versatility of a Raleigh only typifies the excitement and energy of deed, the lively movement of thought which quickened mind and body, and resulted, now in a voyage to Virginia, now in a conspiracy, now in a sonnet, and now in a history of the universe. And this feverishness to make trial of thronging opportunities was symptomatic not only of vigor of intellect, celerity of emotion, and independence of will, but also of an imaginative idealism that enlightened the daily living of many a sorry citizen, and was destined to live resplendent in the verses of Spenser and Shakespeare. In the stir of free ideas, the surprise of discovery, and the glow of accomplishment, life grew heroic, attainment seemed easy, and no ideals too lofty for the scaling ladders of human aspiration. Men achieved much and they dreamt of more. The apprentice went to the theatre to don Fortunatus's cap or to triumph with Tamburlaine; every one had his El Dorado distant only a short voyage; and, with the new world before them, poets and playwrights set sail in blithe confidence of splendid discovery. Never before, or perhaps since, have so many new things seemed within grasp, whether in literature or in life; never has all living so throbbed with a sense of the nearness of the unattainable, the kinship of the real and the ideal.

In non-dramatic literature the incentives of the classics and of the Italians from Petrarch to Tasso had led on from translations and imitations to experiments and inventions.In the dozen years before the Armada, lyric poetry, criticism, and prose fiction had felt the stir of successful English innovation, and the time was almost ripe for the vast projects of Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon. In comedy the development had been earlier and more rapid than in tragedy, and had already in Peele and Lyly reached the stage of dexterous expression and varied innovation. Whether presenting a story of classical mythology or of medieval romance, whether farcical, Plautian, pastoral, sentimental, satirical, or spectacular, comedy was by the time of Marlowe ready with its examples to offer instruction to any writer attempting tragic themes. Tragedy could hardly remain longer in the stage of translation, imitation, and feeble experiment which we have been considering.

Still further, a stimulus for tragedy was exercised by the daily events of that active era. These stirred men's imagination and ambition, and must almost inevitably have directed artistic impulse toward the heroic, the passionate, and the terrible. The abundance of bloodshed in Elizabethan tragedy may find some interpretation in the fact that Ben Jonson killed his man in a duel and that Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The time was one of bloodshed, violence, quick and brutal passion; a time in which the torture of a Gloster or the revenge of a Shylock was far closer to life, to the life at least of poets and dramatists, than such stories are to-day. Drake in his cabin drinking and praying with the unmoved lieutenant whom he was to hang the next day is a bit of factthat rivals in horror the devilries of a Barabas. Even if Seneca's example had not already approved themes of adultery, murder, blood-vengeance, the atrocities of tyranny, and the deadly strife of father and son, such themes must have stirred men's minds in the days of the Massacre of St. Bartholemew and the career of Mary Stuart. If tradition had not already selected the falls of princes as the especial field for tragedy, the history of monarchical Europe in the sixteenth century must have given such stories a power of appeal hardly to be appreciated now. In that strenuous generation the dramatist must have found artistic impulses from bloody and gruesome deeds, and no less from daring ambition, heroic struggle, and indomitable greatness of mind.

The summons, however, which the tragic muse heeded came directly from the public theatres and the professional actors. The university men who at this time were writing for the theatre under the lash and loans of a slave-driving theatrical manager may have been tempted to forget that their sordid and Bohemian existence offered a means for triumphant artistic expression. The London theatres were now well established, patronized by the courtiers, and secured in prosperity by the motley audiences that crowded their performances. They had become important centres in the social life of the time, comparable to the newspaper offices of a twentieth-century city in their close touch with the daily life about them; and in their task of affording amusement and information fulfilling in part the functions of periodicalsand novels as well as of the drama at present. The stage, without scenery, was still in a transition state between the medieval and modern, and, to our view, almost unrealizably crude. Places were sometimes indicated by signs; properties, beds, tables, or trees were brought on or off as occasion required; or, a heavier property, like a cave, might remain whether the scene was in cave-land or a counting-room. There was no drop curtain; actors went off, others came on, and the place changed from a seacoast to the palace; or, the actors merely moved across the platform, and it transpired that they had passed from "a fair and pleasant green" to a room in the house of Faustus. At the close of a tragedy all the survivors might be needed to bear off the bodies of the dead. A balcony in the rear of the stage stood in stead of a castle wall or the deck of a ship, while a curtained space below might represent an inner room or a dungeon vault. A curtain extending across the stage seems at times to have been used in managing a change of scene. Spectacular elements were not lacking: fireworks, ascents and descents of gods, armies, coronations, and battles delighted the eye. On costume, anachronistic but elaborate, the manager lavished his money and ingenuity. Cleopatra tightly laced, Tamburlaine in scarlet copper breeches are recorded facts, but Venuses, Apollos, mermaids, devils, satyrs, and nymphs leave something for fancy to conceive, as does the "gown to go invisible in" which perhaps shielded Ariel or Puck. Of the acting we have little information. Female parts were played byboys; clowns with their jigs were great favorites, but a considerable skill in acting must be supposed,—less subtle, less occupied with stage business than to-day, more declamatory possibly, and more attentive to the spoken word. Any superiority in the appreciation possessed by the audiences over those of to-day must be attributed not to their superior intelligence, but to their long training in listening to plays. They probably differed from uneducated audiences in the cheaper theatres of to-day chiefly, if at all, in spontaneity of emotions, a desire for emotional incongruity, and a cultivated delight in verbal fireworks or felicities. It is certain that in the time of Marlowe they were gaping for sensation and joyed in a comedy of beatings, a tragedy of murders, and a mixture of jigging and villany. For such audiences, for such a stage, under stress of immediate demand requiring hasty and collaborative work, Marlowe and his contemporaries wrote. They were hack writers, and so viewed by the literati of their day. Every one of them, Shakespeare included, had in the first place to satisfy the demands of the public theatres. This needs to be remembered no less than the fact that the plays of nearly all, of the meanest hack as well as Shakespeare, seem to have felt the stir and thrill of the effort to express thought in enduring words.

In the course of the six or seven years ending with Marlowe's death in 1593, tragedy experienced a rapid and multiform development. The various influences already noticed in the last chapter as at work were developedby the ingenuity and innovation of a dozen writers, and translated into the expression of individual genius by Marlowe and Shakespeare. No theory of tragedy ruled the theatres; no school of dramatists adopted any code of principles; the plays which we class as tragedies were mostly known as histories and were written in violence to the accepted literary conception. Nevertheless, tragedy was establishing itself as a popular species of drama, was separating its themes and their treatment clearly from those of comedy, and was defining the course which it was to follow until the Puritan revolution.

The impossibility of determining a precise chronology of the stage history of the period renders the exact appraisal of indebtedness, or the tracing of any certain evolution, very insecure. The changes in the companies in 1594 and the consequent publication of a large number of plays in the same year enable us to fix on a number of tragedies acted before Marlowe's death, and we may safely add a few others as not later than 1595. Among these extant tragedies and in the names of those that have not survived there are representatives of various types,—biblical plays, tragedies dealing with romantic love, domestic tragedies telling stories of contemporary crimes. In any one of these plays, indeed, various types may be combined; the writers were concerned with telling stories, not withl'évolution des genres. But the most salient and pervasive forces working in tragedy may be roughly denominated as (1) the chroniclehistory play, (2) the revenge type of tragedy, (3) the type of tragedy created by Marlowe. To these should perhaps be added romantic comedy with its idealized love story and its element of averted tragedy. But the first three types, though overlapping and not distinct, were of marked importance in the history of tragedy and need especial consideration in connection with the most important dramatists of this period, Peele, Kyd, Marlowe, and Shakespeare.

The chronicle history play may claim attention first, not because it was demonstrably earlier in appearance than the others, but because it engaged the efforts of nearly every dramatic writer of the period, and because in its disregard of foreign influence or parallel in its methods and structure, and in its devotion to the demands of the London theatres, it is most typical of the drama of the period. The prime essential of a play was that it should tell a story. A playwright took his material fromnovella, poem, or chronicle, and strove to translate it into an interesting and varied series of scenes. In the chronicles he found material peculiarly suited to such translation. Everything was there,—battles, coronations, counsels, conspiracies, amours, speeches, characterization, and sentiments. No enlargement was necessary as in the case of anovella, no considerations of consistency of characterization, few incidents in addition to those in the highway or the byways of the narrative, and only a minimum of invention. The interest of a distinct plot was superseded by that of historical persons, events,and spectacles, and these compelled only such unity as might be secured by taking the reign of one monarch as the basis of a play, or sometimes of several plays. The presentation of history involved a large number of persons on the stage, many changes of place, a long stretch of time, and an incongruity of matter, all this loosely organized into scenes themselves often long and varied and admitting some change of place and lapse of time within their bounds. Though the scene, rather than the act, was the unit in popular drama, it had almost no structural value. A play was really a continuous performance, the actors coming and going, a battle intervening, and now and then a withdrawal of all the actors and the appearance of a new group presaging a marked change of place or the beginning of an entirely different action. In the arrangement of scenes, however, some attention to parallel, contrast, and climax soon became manifest; and some integration of the confused material from the chronicles, particularly in the separation from scenes abounding in action of those purely narrative or expository and those purely lyrical, chiefly lamentations. In spite of such beginnings of system, the early chronicle plays, "The Famous Victories of Henry V," "Jack Straw," "Leir," "Edward I," and "The Troublesome Reign" are less coherent in structure, more incongruous in material, and less regardful of any clear fable, tragic or comic, than are other contemporary plays.

To determine criteria to define these plays and their successors as a class is by no means easy. They wereusually based on the chronicles, but the method of composition just described was applied to legend or poem with similar results, and there were also plays based on chronicles of contemporary events. They had for their main purpose the presentation of history, but this was shared by plays on French and Roman as well as English history, and there were historical plays that had no marks of the chronicle method of structure. The English chronicle plays usually show a pronounced patriotic temper, but this is often subsidiary and neglected in the desire for farce or sensation. The spectacular features are a characteristic element, a battle-scene being perhaps the most indispensable element or ingredient of a chronicle play, but this again fails to supply even more than a superficial criterion. In the popularity of the presentations of historical facts, all kinds of stories were worked over into a likeness to "true chronicle history," and the genuine historical, legendary, and biographical plays are hardly distinguishable from the pretenders. An illuminating illustration of the characteristics of the national drama about 1590 can be found in a comparison of two dramatic versions of a romance in Cinthio's "Hecatommithi," one by Cinthio himself, the other by Robert Greene. The Italian play is a tragicomedy in strict Senecan form, in which Arrenopia (Greene's Dorothea) appears as a declamatory queen confiding her troubles to the attendant nurse. Greene took the romantic comedy, added some pseudo-historical events, patriotic sentiments, and a pitched field for the finale, and called the whole"The Scottish Historie of James IV, slaine at Flodden." For our purpose the chronicle plays are to be regarded less as a distinct type than as representing a set of practices in vogue at this period and widely influential on the drama's development. They possessed the following characteristics and imposed some or all of them on very different forms of drama: subjects drawn from English history, the presentation of historical and political events, an incongruous mixture of material, a narrative structure almost as unorganized as the chronicles themselves, patriotic sentiments, and the stage pageantry of court and camp.

From their earliest appearance, however, the chronicle plays offered opportunities for developments later consummated by Shakespeare. Comic scenes were freely interspersed to enliven the tedium of royal declamations, and in these lay the possibility of the combination of history and comedy in the Falstaff plays. On the other hand, the history of a doleful fall of a prince or the retribution visited on some tyrant gave the plays a tragic tone and opened the way for "Macbeth" and "Lear." "The Troublesome Reign of King John,"[9]the basis of Shakespeare's play, is the best example of an earlychronicle play presenting undeveloped possibilities for tragedy. It is written partly in blank verse, partly in rhyme, and partly in prose. It does not follow the chronicles with any fidelity, but twists history, adds fiction, and proclaims throughout a vigorous protestant patriotism. Battles, embassies, farce, orations, death, and much else mingle together, each scene being treated like another and no discernible method being followed in their arrangement or proportion, except that of a loose adherence to the scheme of "a life and death." The first part closes with John crowned and assured of the miscarriage of his intended murder of Arthur; in the second part, as the address to the reader declares,

"First scenes shows Arthur's death in infancie,And last concludes John's fatall tragedie."

"The Troublesome Reign" indicates what little advance had been made toward tragedy when Marlowe's first play appeared. The prologue to that play was a declaration of reform and innovation.

"From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,Where you shall hear the Scythian TamburlaineThreatening the world with high astounding terms,And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword."

The doggerel rhyme favored in the popular drama was to give place to blank verse, and the jigging clowns to heroic themes and "high astounding terms." Marlowecame to the theatre,[10]fresh from the university, his fancy aflame with the beauty of Latin verse and story, his mind storming with the problems and ambitions of adolescent genius. He threw aside Senecan traditions and devoted himself to meeting the demands of the professional stage. When a few years later he died, English tragedy had been created anew largely through his achievement.

His independence and initiative are shown in his choice of subjects. Although in "Dido" he took a standard theme of humanistic tragedy, and in the Henry VI plays and "Edward II" followed the prevailing taste for English history, and in "The Massacre of Paris" another fashion for the dramatization of current atrocities; yet in "Tamburlaine" he chose the story of a world conqueror, in "Faustus" a legend that had just entered print in the German "Volksbuch" of 1587, and in "The Jew of Malta" he worked over unknown sources into a tragedy of revenge with evident freedom of invention. All three stories present notable contributions to tragicthemes, and the last two disregard both the fashion for historical subjects and the requirement that tragedy deal only with princes. These new and varied themes gave a chance for a considerable revolution in the content of tragedy. Revenge, murders, battles, intrigue, physical horrors are still prominent; but the Senecan round of incest and adultery disappears, and the "Mirror for Magistrates" no longer represents the epitome of tragic action. Marlowe's choice and treatment of plots seem, indeed, dictated by a new conception of tragedy, as dealing not merely with a life and death, or a bloody crime, or a reversal of fortune, but with the heroic struggle of a great personality, doomed to inevitable defeat. "Tamburlaine" is scarcely a tragedy at all, but rather a chronicle of the hero's greatness; but in "Faustus" and "The Jew" heroes with ambitions boundless and passionate like Tamburlaine's are overwhelmed in the end by the inexorable destiny of human weakness. In "Edward II," where the hero is less dominant over the action, the study of historical facts results in a more restrained, more human presentation of the same theme, a ruling passion drawing the protagonist to pitiful defeat.

In the structure of his plots Marlowe forsook the Senecan models and began with the methods of the chronicle play. "Tamburlaine" is a chronicle history, presenting the story of the events of a life and ending with death. Originally the play contained comic scenes, omitted in the published form and evidently of no value in structureor conception. Without these there is enough of a medley, though the amazing succession of conquests, defiances, murders, harangues, battles, funerals, wooings, and horrors is arranged with considerable skill. There is manifest regard for contrast in the alternating exhibitions of Tamburlaine's power and his enemies' weakness; his love for Zenocrate, an addition to the source, is integrated with the main story of conquest; and in Part I the climactical arrangement is emphasized by the division into acts. Each act comprises an important stage in Tamburlaine's career, act v presenting the culmination in the suicide of the Turkish emperor and empress, the conquest of Arabia, Zenocrate's former betrothed, and the submission of her conquered father to her marriage with Tamburlaine. Part II, the prologue implies, was an afterthought due to the popularity of Part I. The climax is carried on somewhat loosely up to the harnessing of the jades of Asia; but the reversal of fortune, though developed in the death of Zenocrate, the unworthiness of the eldest son, and the approach of death to Tamburlaine, is not given effective emphasis. Tamburlaine's death is merely the end of the play, not a tragic catastrophe. Epical and crude though their structure is, the two plays possess a firmer organization and a greater unity than any preceding popular tragedy. Everything centres in the protagonist; he keeps the middle of the stage; his towering passion and incessant declamation fix one's attention; episodes like the deaths of the Turks or of Olympia hardly divert the mind from his titanic personality.

A similar unity governs the structure of "Faustus" and "The Jew." In each there are many actions, some comic, instead of one serious action, and the history of a lifetime instead of a great emotional crisis; but in each the dominant figure and the course of his controlling passion impose a certain unity of structure. Both begin with soliloquies, revealing the protagonists at the height of fortune and about to face crises in their careers; and it is significant of the increased importance given to inner conflict that reflective soliloquies, neglected in "Tamburlaine," play a considerable part, especially in "Faustus." In both plays there is also advance in the clear conception of catastrophe, which now controls the structure. In "The Jew" his thwarted lust for gold drives him through a series of villanous triumphs over difficulties until he is melodramatically hoist with his own petard. In "Faustus" the choice of the devilish magic leads through apparent success, past opportunities for repentance, to final remorse and damnation. In both plays, the domination of the protagonist by a passion, its conflicting joys and sorrows, and its final failure become points for emphasis. The history of a life thus becomes organized into a tragedy.

In "Edward II," Marlowe's masterpiece in structure as in other respects, there is an absence of comedy, for which he seems to have had no aptitude, and adherence to the chronicles is governed by his maturing sense of the structural principles which should proportion the tragic story. Twenty years of confusion are condensed into fiveacts which attain dramatic organization not only under the direction of the central personality and the inevitable catastrophe, but also from the skillful handling of the counter-force. The play begins with a salient manifestation in the recall of Gaveston of the passion which is to be the king's downfall. The hazardous combination of the two similar careers of Gaveston and Spenser is adroitly managed; it develops the central theme of Edward's weakness and brings into active conflict the counter-force of the barons under the leadership of Mortimer. The alternating triumph and discomfiture of the king in his struggle with the barons leads to the climax of their humiliation at the end of act iii; and thus the turning-point of the action is given an emphasis not found in earlier plays. Henceforth the counter-force is in the ascendant, and the catastrophe is realized with a tremendous power that justifies Lamb's extravagance: "the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern with which I am acquainted." The play, to be sure, has many faults of structure. It is the product of an immature period of the drama and of crude theatrical conditions; but it indicates clearly how Marlowe was developing tragic movement out of the confused narratives of the chronicles, and was giving to a presentation of diverse and crowded actions principles not altogether unlike those that Aristotle had found in the Attic drama.

It should be added that the manifest excellences of the dramatic treatment lie less in the structure of any oneplay as a whole than in the handling of the separate scenes. These have, of course, the peculiarities of the popular stage and the chronicle plays. Events are sometimes reported by an intercalary narrative like scene ii, act i, of "Edward II," which consists of four lines by Gaveston, announcing that the nobles have gone to Lambeth, and four words of reply by Kent. Soliloquies are often used to explain action or character. In the task of translating incident into dramatic situation, however, Marlowe had the advantages of centuries of dramatic practice and the traditions of tragic acting, and his genius often worked with facility and power. These qualities are most manifest in the death scenes. Olympia, Bajazeth, Zabina, Zenocrate, all die with at least stage effectiveness; and in the deaths of Faustus and Edward, Marlowe's dramatic power reached its highest mark. Death, synonymous with tragic catastrophe, was revealed to future dramatists as something more than physical horror or the end of existence. Death became the loss of active and glorious living, the negation of individual power, the expiring struggle of the drama of life, its last defiance and its most irresistible appeal to pity and terror.

Characterization, like conception and structure, in Marlowe's tragedy is largely an affair of the protagonist. Minor figures are for the most part mere sketches without any sustained and consistent delineation. Only in "Edward II" does the antagonist receive much attention, and only in that play is the character of the tragic herofree from lapses into caricature and absurdity. The protagonists, as in many tragedies before and since, are evil men intent on evil deeds. They appeal to our sympathy only in misfortune and disaster; in more fortunate circumstances they run counter to moral laws and excite a mixture of admiration, horror, and even contempt. Tamburlaine the atheist and Faust the dealer in magic invited a greater condemnation in every Christian then than now. Barabas is conceived, under the inspiration of Machiavelli and perhaps also of stage practice, as an intriguing villain with all the accompaniments ever since familiar in drama and fiction. He is the source of all evil and utterly without conscience; he avows his villany to the audience and he works by crafty intrigue with the aid of an equally conscienceless accomplice. Edward II, on the other hand, is of the type of tyrants, weak, vacillating, and self-indulgent, and he offers the difficult dramatic problem of a protagonist who is sometimes contemptible and must sometimes be heroic and pitiful. Marlowe's conception of a tragic hero, however, transcended any outlines furnished by his sources or any stage types such as villain and tyrant. He conceived his heroes first of all as men capable of great passions, consumed by their desires, abandoned to the pursuit of their lusts, whether they led to glory, butchery, loss of kingdom, or eternal damnation. This intensity of emotion gives them an elevation and a heroic interest that outlasts contemptibility or pathos. Nor are they without representational value. They linger in the mind as men, absurd, exaggerated,monstrous at times, but appealingly human in moments when their passion rings true, and impressively typical of the eternal struggle of passion and desire against the fixed limits of human attainment. It is in the realization of their emotions that the plays secure their great impressiveness. Tragedy has become not the presentation of history, myth, or events of any sort, but the presentation of the passionate struggle and pitiful defeat of an extraordinary human being.

Genuine human passion and a vital conception of life's tragedy found expression in verse, sometimes inspired, sometimes absurd, but always spontaneous and unfaltering. Blank verse, borrowed from Italy and adopted in English Senecan plays, now became a new instrument, and its preëminent adaptability for tragic poetry henceforth long remained unquestioned. If it has had many greater masters since, it had none comparable before, and, in spite of stiffness, monotony, and great unevenness, it rises now and again to remarkable technical excellence. It issui generis, without known models, though it gathers to itself many of the prevailing characteristics of Renaissance poetry. It has plenty of Senecan hyperbole, but curiously little of Senecan antithesis or aphorism; it abounds in rant and bombast; it is over-adorned with classical allusion; it delights in ornament and sonority; and in the main it is declamatory and lyrical rather than dramatically suited to character and situation. Again, it is mannered and often monotonous, especially in "Tamburlaine," where the repetition ofnames and the recurrence of polysyllabic words at the ends of lines give the familiar swing:—

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