NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY

"What I would infer is this, I think, evident truth; that tragedy is so far from losing its dignity, by being accommodated to the circumstances of the generality of mankind, that it is more truly august in proportion to the extent of its influence, and the numbers that are properly affected by it. As it is more truly great to be the instrument of good to many, who stand in need of our assistance, than to a very small part of that number."[39]

Southerne, Otway, and Rowe had won great success for domestic themes, and their examples were naturally cited in the prologue which introduced "The Merchant." Comedy might also have been summoned to support. After the scourging from Collier it had joined in the general movement at the beginning of the century toward sentiment and moralizing. Sentimental comedy, seeking both pathos and a moral, may be said to begin in Englandat least as early as Colley Cibber's "Careless Husband" (1704) and Steele's "Tender Husband" (1705). Steele's "Conscious Lovers" (1722) shows the species in full development. More general but not less important encouragements for realism in tragedy came from the realistic tendencies manifest in the literature of the preceding generation, notably in the novels of Defoe, and from the moralistic tendencies everywhere manifest in both fiction and drama. Lillo was one with his time, though out with truth and art, in thinking "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy is, the more excellent that piece must be of its kind."[40]The ascendancy of the middle class in letters, their expanding social life, their attachment to a conventional morality and a utilitarian art, and their delight in sentimentality, all help to explain the appearance of "George Barnwell." Lillo was writing for a generation that had "The Fair Penitent" and was waiting for "Pamela."

Lillo's work, however, was none the less that of a pioneer. "The Fatal Curiosity" had a special influence, beginning forty years after its appearance, in the German tragedies of destiny; and "The London Merchant," soon after its publication, became of importance in both France and Germany. In France its welcome was prepared by the growth of a species of sentimental comedy paralleling the English, and it was translated in time (1748) to serve as an example and stimulant to Diderot's plays and theories. Even before the publication of his "Le FilsNaturel"[41](1757), and "Le Père de Famille"[42](1758), Lessing's "Miss Sara Sampson" (1755) had appeared directly modeled on "The London Merchant." Through Diderot and Lessing and, a little later, through German translations of Lillo's plays, domestic tragedy continued its leavening work in the German drama. By that time, sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy were returning from France and Germany to influence the English drama.

In England the direct stream of domestic tragedy never flowed high. A one-act play, "Fatal Extravagance," in prose, had appeared in 1721 under the patronage of Aaron Hill, and was revived the year before the success of "Barnwell," and later enlarged into five acts. There were a few successors—"Caelia, or the Perjured Lover" (1732), by Charles Johnson, presenting a Lovelace-like protagonist; "Love the Cause and Cure of Grief" (1743), a three-act play in prose; and Victor's adaptation of "A Woman Killed with Kindness" (1776). Far more important than any of these was Moore's "Gamester" (1753), long a stock play, and almost as influential on the continent as "Barnwell." Like "The Yorkshire Tragedy," it pictures the horrors of gaming. The gamester, his long-suffering wife, a faithful servant, a spirited girl, her lover, the intriguing villain, and his accomplicesplay a story of far more insistent dramatic power than Lillo's and of no less sentimental and moral conclusiveness. Cumberland's "Mysterious Husband" (1783) is a later and less crude representative of the same species.[43]

Lord Davenant has deceived his wife into marrying him by slandering her lover Dormer. Later he has entrapped Dormer's sister into a pretended marriage and then deserted her. She, supposing her husband dead, marries Lord Davenant's son. On their marriage day, Dormer returns; Lord Davenant is discovered and kills himself.

Though a man and not a woman is the central figure of this social entanglement, we are reminded of the Tanquerays and Ebbsmiths of a later day in its powerful and not unveracious presentation of domestic ruin.

One reason for the failure of Lillo's pioneering to arouse a larger following in tragedy was the possession which comedy had taken of both domestic sentiment and morality. The species of sentimental and tearful comedy, which had already by 1730 appeared in both England and France, soon flourished in both countries. Their vogue was diminished by the success of "She Stoops to Conquer" and "The Rivals," but there was a further development during the last thirty years of the century in the plays of Cumberland, Holcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, and others. A certain amount of low comedy was, after "The Rivals," admitted to be necessary, as Holcroft avows in the preface to "Duplicity," but in such plays ashis "Duplicity" and "Road to Ruin," or Cumberland's "The Jew" and "The Wheel of Fortune," suffering abounds, ruin is imminent, there is much weeping, and a salient moral lesson. The suffering usually is confined to loss of fortune or temptation of virtue, and the moral lesson is directed against gaming, or loose living, or marital infidelity upon the part of the husband. The intriguing villain in this kind of play sinks to insignificance, and the moving force is likely to be a humanitarian benefactor who rescues the lost fortune or saves the heroine from the hated marriage. Occasionally this type of serious comedy comes close to tragedy. In Holcroft's "Deserted Daughter" (1795), a revamping of Cumberland's "Fashionable Lover," the father has disowned his daughter by his first marriage, and, through his wicked agent, she has been sent to a house of ill-fame. Not knowing his own daughter, the father, ruined in fortune and conscience, plans to aid a friend to secure her, and himself visits her. The situation is ghastly enough, but all comes out happily. The happy ending was in fact the dram of eale that corrupted the whole substance of this sentimental comedy. The theatrical necessity of a happy ending forbade either tragedy or a serious study of life. It compelled the dramatist to devote a large part of a play to preparing for the reconciliation, to spend much time on youthful love, to maintain a lightness of tone throughout; and it destroyed the possibility of tracing out character and incident to anything like a logical conclusion. The domestic drama, devoted to a serious presentation ofsocial life, had its opportunity in the eighteenth as well as in the twentieth century. It shrank from tragedy; it advanced as far as attacking fashionable excesses, or as dramatizing moral theses, but it never got beyond the lovers who must be united and the everything that must come out well. It resigned itself to sentimentality and false conclusions, and was naturally overwhelmed by the theatrically more captivating sentimentality and falsity of Kotzebue. When "The London Merchant" and "The Gamester" encouraged the vogue of sentimental comedy, they nourished an ingrate which destroyed the legitimate brood of domestic tragedy. In the theatres men took their realism sugared by a sentimentality that sent them home contented. But Lillo's work was not unheeded by the genius who in "Tom Jones" and "Amelia" gave literary greatness to a realistic study of manners and morals. The sentimentalizing and moralizing of the middle classes, which from the time of Southerne had threatened to have their say on the stage, found their spokesman in the author of "Clarissa Harlowe."

In the last third of the century the various social, intellectual, and imaginative changes that make up the beginnings of the Romantic movement had their effect upon tragedy, but only in a partial and secondary fashion. The drama was already losing place to the novel in popularity, and showing signs of becoming a sort of literary by-product. Successful novels were made over into plays, and the various romantic tendencies to medievalism, melancholy, supernaturalism, and naturalismfound expression in novel or verse rather than in play. The reawakening interest in the Elizabethan dramatists was represented by a revival of a number of the plays of Massinger and of Beaumont and Fletcher,[44]and imitations of Elizabethan diction became frequent. A more important departure was furnished by the so-called Terrific School of fiction. Medieval stories and scenes, and the various accessories of horror, ghosts, graveyards, dungeons, vaults, and the midnight bell had never been lacking in eighteenth century tragedy, but the novels of Walpole and his successors offered some novelties. Walpole's own unacted "Mysterious Mother" (1768), perhaps the most powerful of the Gothic tragedies, was the pioneer of the movement. Robert Jephson, whose "Braganza" (1775) was heralded as

"His; no French tragedy,—tame, polish'd, dull by rule!Vigorous he comes, and warm from Shakespeare's school,"

produced in 1781 an adaptation of Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," called "The Count of Narbonne," which, as the epilogue boasts,

"Midst the placid murmurings of LoveRolls the rough tide of Gothick force along."

His "Julia" (1787), another popular play with his usualabundance of soliloquies, tells a story of Elizabethan villany; and there were a few other Gothic attempts, as Cumberland's "Carmelite" (1784), before Lewis's "Castle Spectre" (1797) carried the town by storm. The further history of the terrific tragedies belongs to the next chapter, as does that of the German importations which culminated in the craze for Kotzebue, but it may be noted here that "Werter," acted in 1785, and "Emilia Galotti," acted in 1794, were among the earlier indications of German influence on the stage.

By 1790 the decadence of English tragedy had apparently run its course and nearly come to a full stop. The freedom and independence of Elizabethan days had degenerated by the time of Charles I into a fairly definite type. That type, maintained in the Restoration period, though with modifications and innovations, had now become conventionalized, debased, sterile. French influence had proved unprocreative. In spite of the activities of the theatres, the inspiration of Shakespeare, and the assistance of great actors and actresses, tragedy had failed to produce literature comparable to that of its rival, the novel. The drama, to be sure, had played a large part, both in tragedy and comedy, in reflecting and promoting the sentimentality and moralizing common in the literature of the century; Otway, Southerne, and Rowe had in a way fathered the sentimental novels. But in tragedy their Isabellas and Calistas had no successors to rank with Clarissa and Amelia. If tragedy through its alliance with sentiment failed of permanentadvance, it was still more unsuccessful in representing the reasonableness, typicality, and austerity which the classical conception required. It was half-hearted, turning now to Shakespeare, now to Voltaire, but never producing anything not conventionalized and dull. The escapes from its dullness remained until the very end of the century only half-opened doors. Through the door opened by "Barnwell" and "The Gamester," the drama saw only the broad path that led back to sentimentality and overlooked the straight and narrow way leading to realism and truth. Over the threshold that opened to medieval castles and chambers of horrors it was still hesitating. The divorce between literature and the stage had widened, and tragedy failed to attract genius to its rescue. Crabbe did not write a tragedy of the village, and Burns did not summon poetry and passion to the stage.

Ward'sHistory of Dramatic Literatureends with the death of Queen Anne; and there is no adequate history of the English drama for the last two centuries, and no good bibliography. Genest continues to be the main source of information. Lowe'sBibliographical Accountand the histories of the theatre noted in the last chapter are useful for the matter of the present. In addition,The History and Illustration of the London Theatres, by Chas. Dibdin, Jr. (1826); Victor'sHistory of the Theatres of London and Dublin(1761); W. C. Dalton'sHistory of the Theatres, 1771-95; andThe Dramatic Censor(1770) become available for this period. A large number of memoirs of actors also supply information in regard to the drama.An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, written by himself(1750), reviews the Restoration period as well. Others of interest are: Davies'sMemoirs ofGarrick(1780); Murphy'sLife of Garrick(1801); Boaden'sMemoirs of Mrs. Siddons(1827) andMemoirs of Kemble(1825); Cumberland'sMemoir(1806); Mudford'sCritical Examination of the Writings of Richard Cumberland, etc. (1812); Boaden'sMemoirs of Mrs. Inchbald(1833);Private Correspondence of David Garrick(1831-32); Holcroft'sMemoirs, ed. by Hazlitt (1816); Cooke'sMemoirs of Charles Macklin(2d ed., 1808).

The plays by authors of note can be found in the collected editions of their works, the more popular plays in the various collections noted in the last chapter. The majority of the tragedies, however, have never been reprinted and can be obtained only in the original editions. Dramatic criticism of the period can be studied in various essays by Addison, Steele, Gildon, Dennis, and Dr. Johnson, especially his Preface to the edition of Shakespeare and hisLives of the Poets. Lord Kames'sElements of Criticism(1762) was highly approved in its own day; and several essays on tragedy are of historical interest: William Guthrie'sEssay on Tragedy(1747); Mrs. Montagu'sEssay on the Genius and Writing of Shakespeare(1769); Edwin Taylor'sCursory Remarks on Tragedy(1774); William Cook'sElements of Dramatic Criticism(1775); and Hodson'sObservations on Tragedy, prefixed to his tragedyZoraida(1780).

Beljame'sLe Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterrebears on this as on the preceding chapter. Voltaire's influence on English tragedy has never been fully studied, but the following recent books bear on his relations with England: A. Ballantyne'sVoltaire's Visit to England(1893); J. Churton Collins'sBolingbroke, a historical study, and Voltaire in England(1886); Lounsbury'sShakespeare and Voltaire(1902), which gives much information on the drama and criticism of the period and sufficient directory to Voltaire's comment on the English drama; and Jusserand'sShakespeare en France, which is also very valuable for this period. Miss Canfield's study ofCorneille and Racine in Englandis also of marked service; and L. Morel'sJames Thomson(Paris, 1895) gives a very full study of Thomson's plays and literary relations. TheBelles-Lettres Seriescontains editions with introductions of plays of Rowe, ed. Miss Sophie Hart; and of Lillo, ed. A. W. Ward (1906). Dr. Ward's introduction is particularly valuable for its sketch of the course of domestic tragedy and sentimental comedy on the continent. From the notes in these various studies, and fromLa Littérature comparée, essai bibliographique, by Louis P. Betz, Strasbourg, 1904, direction can be had to a number of monographs dealing with special phases of the relations between the dramas of England and France, and, toward the end of the century, between England and Germany.

FOOTNOTES:[28]For comparisons of the two plays, see Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on the Drama," Cumberland'sObserver, Nos. 77, 78, 79; and Gifford's introduction to his edition of Massinger.[29]SeeCorneille and Racine in England. Dorothea Canfield. New York, 1904.[30]Its only appearance on the stage recorded by Genest was in Capell's adaptation, acted six times by Garrick in 1759.[31]Brutus(1734),Zara(1736),Alzira(1736),Mahomet(1744),Merope(1749),Orphan of China(1759),Orestes(1769),Almida(1771) (fromTancrède),Semiramis(1776). See, also, Hoole'sCyrus(1768), Cradock'sZobeide(1771), Murphy'sAlzuma(1773), and Brooke'sImposter(1778), not acted.[32]Professor Lounsbury seems mistaken in finding a "sudden cessation of interest in Voltaire" after 1750.Shakespere and Voltaire, pp. 304, 305. He neglects the later popularity ofThe Orphan of Chinaand the continued popularity of plays earlier translated.[33]Le théâtre anglais(1746-49) of Pierre de La Place contained in its 8 vols. synopses and partial translations of the following plays:Othello,3 Henry VI, Richard III, Hamlet,Macbeth,Cymbeline,Julius Cæsar,Antony and Cleopatra,Timon of Athens,Merry Wives of Windsor,The Maid's Tragedy,Catiline,The Fair Penitent,Venice Preserved,Aureng Zebe,The Mourning Bride,Tamerlane,Siege of Damascus(by Hughes, 1720),Busiris,Love for Love,The Innocent Adultery,Cato,The Funeral(Steele, 1702). This list, in which it will be noticed tragedy greatly predominates, represents fairly the English taste of the time.[34]Dr. Rundle, Letters, quoted by Morel,James Thomson, p. 82.[35]Gil Blas, Book 4, "Le Mariage de vengeance."[36]For various references to Thomson in Voltaire's Letters, see Morel,op. cit.pp. 192-194; and a letter on the French translation ofTancred and Sigismunda, p. 153.[37]The following list includes all eighteenth century tragedies, not mentioned in the text, that achieved any considerable popularity. These all became stock plays, and most were acted in the nineteenth century. Hughes,Siege of Damascus(1720); Fenton,Mariamne(1723); Jones,Earl of Essex(1753), which superseded Banks's play as a stage favorite; Brown,Barbarossa(1754); Francklin,Earl of Warwick(1766); Hartson,Countess of Salisbury(1767); Murphy,Zenobia(1768), andThe Grecian Daughter(1772), which gave a famous part, Euphrasia, to Mrs. Siddons and later to Miss Fannie Kemble.[38]The eighteenth century was not blind to the absurdities of its tragedies, but made fun of them without stint. The number of burlesque tragedies is large and includes: Gay'sWhat d'ye Call It(1715); Carey'sChrononhotonthologos(1734); Fielding'sTom Thumb(1730); Foote'sTragedy a la Mode(1764); and Sheridan'sCritic(1779).[39]Dedication toThe London Merchant.[40]Dedication toThe London Merchant.[41]Translated into English asDorval, or the Test of Virtue(1767).[42]Translated 1770, and asA Family Picture(1781). Also, cf. General Burgoyne'sHeiress(1786), which borrows fromLe Père de Famille, and Holcroft'sLove's Frailties(1794), based on a German adaptation.[43]Criticised inThe Critical Review, lv, 151, because of its introduction of a comic character.[44]The elder Colman was a leader in this revival. Besides the few comedies which remained on the stock list and "Philaster," which was frequently acted at this time, the following Elizabethan plays were revived in the decade 1778-88:Bonduca,Bondman,City Madam,Duke of Milan,Knight of Malta,A King and No King,Marcella(based onThe Changeling),Maid of Honor,The Picture,The Pilgrim,Scornful Lady(altered asThe Capricious Lady),Triumph of Honor,Women Pleased.

[28]For comparisons of the two plays, see Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on the Drama," Cumberland'sObserver, Nos. 77, 78, 79; and Gifford's introduction to his edition of Massinger.

[29]SeeCorneille and Racine in England. Dorothea Canfield. New York, 1904.

[30]Its only appearance on the stage recorded by Genest was in Capell's adaptation, acted six times by Garrick in 1759.

[31]Brutus(1734),Zara(1736),Alzira(1736),Mahomet(1744),Merope(1749),Orphan of China(1759),Orestes(1769),Almida(1771) (fromTancrède),Semiramis(1776). See, also, Hoole'sCyrus(1768), Cradock'sZobeide(1771), Murphy'sAlzuma(1773), and Brooke'sImposter(1778), not acted.

[32]Professor Lounsbury seems mistaken in finding a "sudden cessation of interest in Voltaire" after 1750.Shakespere and Voltaire, pp. 304, 305. He neglects the later popularity ofThe Orphan of Chinaand the continued popularity of plays earlier translated.

[33]Le théâtre anglais(1746-49) of Pierre de La Place contained in its 8 vols. synopses and partial translations of the following plays:Othello,3 Henry VI, Richard III, Hamlet,Macbeth,Cymbeline,Julius Cæsar,Antony and Cleopatra,Timon of Athens,Merry Wives of Windsor,The Maid's Tragedy,Catiline,The Fair Penitent,Venice Preserved,Aureng Zebe,The Mourning Bride,Tamerlane,Siege of Damascus(by Hughes, 1720),Busiris,Love for Love,The Innocent Adultery,Cato,The Funeral(Steele, 1702). This list, in which it will be noticed tragedy greatly predominates, represents fairly the English taste of the time.

[34]Dr. Rundle, Letters, quoted by Morel,James Thomson, p. 82.

[35]Gil Blas, Book 4, "Le Mariage de vengeance."

[36]For various references to Thomson in Voltaire's Letters, see Morel,op. cit.pp. 192-194; and a letter on the French translation ofTancred and Sigismunda, p. 153.

[37]The following list includes all eighteenth century tragedies, not mentioned in the text, that achieved any considerable popularity. These all became stock plays, and most were acted in the nineteenth century. Hughes,Siege of Damascus(1720); Fenton,Mariamne(1723); Jones,Earl of Essex(1753), which superseded Banks's play as a stage favorite; Brown,Barbarossa(1754); Francklin,Earl of Warwick(1766); Hartson,Countess of Salisbury(1767); Murphy,Zenobia(1768), andThe Grecian Daughter(1772), which gave a famous part, Euphrasia, to Mrs. Siddons and later to Miss Fannie Kemble.

[38]The eighteenth century was not blind to the absurdities of its tragedies, but made fun of them without stint. The number of burlesque tragedies is large and includes: Gay'sWhat d'ye Call It(1715); Carey'sChrononhotonthologos(1734); Fielding'sTom Thumb(1730); Foote'sTragedy a la Mode(1764); and Sheridan'sCritic(1779).

[39]Dedication toThe London Merchant.

[40]Dedication toThe London Merchant.

[41]Translated into English asDorval, or the Test of Virtue(1767).

[42]Translated 1770, and asA Family Picture(1781). Also, cf. General Burgoyne'sHeiress(1786), which borrows fromLe Père de Famille, and Holcroft'sLove's Frailties(1794), based on a German adaptation.

[43]Criticised inThe Critical Review, lv, 151, because of its introduction of a comic character.

[44]The elder Colman was a leader in this revival. Besides the few comedies which remained on the stock list and "Philaster," which was frequently acted at this time, the following Elizabethan plays were revived in the decade 1778-88:Bonduca,Bondman,City Madam,Duke of Milan,Knight of Malta,A King and No King,Marcella(based onThe Changeling),Maid of Honor,The Picture,The Pilgrim,Scornful Lady(altered asThe Capricious Lady),Triumph of Honor,Women Pleased.

The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The eighteenth century had been, as we have seen, a time of stagnation in tragedy and of little dramatic advance in any direction. The theatregoer of 1720 would in 1780 have found the same plays or others similar in kind; but, had he postponed his visit yet twenty years, he would have entered a new theatrical world of romance, musical plays, and German novelties. By that time nearly all the factors of importance in the history of the stage during the first half of the nineteenth century had made their appearance. New departures in both tragedy and comedy, and a theatrically importanttertium quidwere all instituted. And new ideas, new themes, and new stories witnessed the changing taste and gave promise of the enlargement of the imaginative horizon which the new romanticism was to produce.

We have seen that, while neither realistic tragedy nor sentimental comedy had experienced a notable development, they had been departures from long-standing conventions. Tragedies in three acts, tragedies in prose,tragedies on domestic themes, tragedies without princes, tragedies of the present, all gave some encouragement for further novelty and experiment. The several varieties of "soft tragedy and genteel comedy" departed far enough from the standards of both species to suggest a dramatic development that should discard the traditional limitations. This changing taste, however, was seized by German plays and dramatized "tales of terror." The large and varied influence of German poetry, criticism, and philosophy upon the romantic movement in England can be noticed here only so far as it affected the drama. The plays of Lessing and the early plays of Goethe and Schiller made little impression on the English stage, though they exercised an immediate influence on the reading public and on most of the young men "standing on the forehead of the age to come." The conquest of the English stage was made at its point of greatest vulnerability—its sentimentality—by one who seemed the very Napoleon of the drama, Kotzebue, the conqueror of the theatres of all western Europe. In 1798 "The Stranger" ("Menschenhass und Reue") took Drury Lane by storm, and the next year Sheridan's "Pizarro," an adaptation of "Die Spanier in Peru," plus some eloquence and some songs, gained a still more brilliant success and drew even George III to the theatre. For several years Kotzebue reigned supreme; twenty or more of his plays were translated; many were acted; "Pizarro" alone had passed through twenty-nine editions by 1811, besides other English and American versionsof the play. Kotzebue's triumph was due in part to his great skill in stage-craft, and in part to his adroit appeal to the more superficial sentiments for social and political revolution that were everywhere stirring. When it is compared with preceding sentimental comedy, the success of "The Stranger" is easily understood. It has the theatrical merit of arousing curiosity at the beginning and keeping it on question until the last moment; and it deals, over-sentimentally of course, with a social question of dramatic value and of especial piquancy at a time when many conventions seemed tottering,—should an erring wife be taken back again by her husband? The theme of "A Woman Killed with Kindness," "Jane Shore," and "The Fair Penitent" was given a new interest and a new solution. "Pizarro," retaining much of the plot familiar in English tragedy since the time of Dryden's "Indian Emperor," has two lovers, opponents in war, and two heroines, one vengeful, the other angelic, but makes the real hero the renouncing lover, who sacrifices all for the happiness of the angel who loves not him but his friend. Under these new auspices the fair penitent and the renunciatory hero began long careers in English drama and fiction. But neither these nor any other of Kotzebue's plays offered any guidance toward a serious interpretation of life or any innovations of real consequence in the English tragic tradition.

If Kotzebue's plays offered little promise for the national drama, the native plays which rivaled them in popularity offered less. Castles, monks, dungeons, andso on had already become somewhat common in musical plays and operas[45]and occasionally in tragedies, when "The Castle Spectre" of Monk Lewis opened the flood-gates to "tales of terror" and their medieval and supernatural paraphernalia. "The Castle Spectre," which in the season of 1797-98 surpassed "The Stranger" and for a while held its own with Kotzebue, represents a new reign of romance. The new queen did not come from "perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." She belonged to the earlier days of the romantic movement, and made her conquest at the head of squadrons of medievalistic, terroristic, and Germanistic Goths. She is adequately described in the prologue to the play:—

"Far from the haunts of men, of vice the foe,The moon-struck child of genius and of woe,Versed in each magic spell, and dear to fame,A fair enchantress dwells, Romance her name,She loathes the sun or blazing taper's light:The moon-beam'd landscape and tempestuous nightAlone she loves; and oft, with glimmering lamp,Near graves new-opened, or midst dungeons damp,Drear forests, ruin'd aisles, and haunted towers,Forlorn she roves, and raves away the hours!Anon, when storms howl loud and lash the deep,Desperate she climbs the sea-rock's beetling steep;There wildly strikes her harp's fantastic strings,Tells to the moon how grief her bosom wrings,And while her strange song chaunts fictitious ills,In wounded hearts Oblivion's balm distils."

The "drama," as it was called, is in prose, and is a medley of the various terroristic novels, including thetwo most famous, "The Castle of Otranto" and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and adding something from Schiller's "Robbers" and from Shakespeare. There is a haunted castle, a jocose monk, a fool, a marvelous dungeon, a fisherman's hut, a ghost, a midnight bell, and songs and elaborate scenery. The villain, a feudal baron attended by negroes, is finally killed by the heroine, who saves her imprisoned father and escapes with the hero.

The signs of life that succeeded the long petrifaction of the eighteenth century drama and the beginning of the revolutionary epoch thus resulted only in theatrical novelties and in no serious dramatic movement. All serious drama was, indeed, threatened by the ascendancy of the "illegitimate" drama of music and dumb show. The causes leading to the rise of this class and its ensuing history were in large measure connected with the theatres themselves. Even before the new romanticism had invaded the drama, changes in theatrical conditions of far-reaching importance were well under way. The monopoly exercised by the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres was first threatened about 1730 by the success of a few minor theatres which gave musical, acrobatic, or dramatic entertainments. The old theatres were successful in maintaining their monopoly in regular plays, but the irregular houses gained permission to give performances under the loosely defined term "burletta." A "burletta" was supposed to have a musical accompaniment, but it proved difficult to say how littlemusic and how much of a drama might be included under the term. Henceforth, the regular drama had, in addition to the rivalry of Italian and English operas, that of musical and dramatic medleys; and the patent houses had to face the rivalry of playhouses that infringed as far as they dared on the legitimate drama. The patent theatres, with their vested rights in the stock plays and their obligation to maintain Dryden, Otway, and Shakespeare, offered no great inducements to new authors. This was particularly true, after the rebuilding and enlargement of both theatres in 1791 and 1794, when the increased cost of bringing out a play and the increased difficulty in acting or hearing an unfamiliar play led Kemble practically to abandon any attempt to produce new tragedies. The minor theatres, which were growing in importance, legally limited to the field of musical performances, and excluded from the regular drama except by trick, could offer little support to the serious dramatist. As a result, musical plays, operettas, and finally a new type, the "melodrame," flourished in the minor houses and found their way soon into the two great theatres. When in 1808-09 these were burned, the rivalry with the minors had become acute. The old theatres were rebuilt of so great a size that they proved unsuitable for any spoken drama. Through their great actors, Kemble, Kean, and later Macready, they maintained Shakespearean drama and a few of the old stock plays; but they were forced for the rest of the time to resort to melodrama, spectacle, or pantomime. Theminors, though they now became more daring in their invasions of legitimate drama, naturally continued the kind of entertainments at which they had succeeded and to which they had forced the great theatres to succumb. The long struggle for a free stage was now nearing its end; the patent theatres were maintained with increasing difficulty; the minors prospered. With the death of Kean in 1833, a great prop of the patent theatres fell; and though the agitation for parliamentary reform in that year failed, and the final legislation against theatrical monopoly was not passed until 1847, the great theatres ceased to determine the history of the drama. Macready's two periods of management, 1837-39 and 1841-43, were the final efforts to restore the old régime that had maintained tragedy since the Restoration.

The "illegitimate" drama that triumphed in the theatres comprised a wide range of entertainments, mostly farcical in their dramatic elements. Toward the end of the eighteenth century the rage for dumb show and musical additions invaded the regular drama. Even Kotzebue had to be decked out with songs and choruses. Moreover, a peculiar species of the illegitimate drama developed in the plays of Andrews, Dibdin, Reynolds, Boaden, and Colman the younger that served as a half substitute for tragedy. This species seems to have been mainly due to the ingenuity of George Colman. Those of his plays verging on tragedy, of which "The Battle of Hexham" (1789), "The Surrender of Calais" (1791), "The Mountaineers" (1793), and "The Iron Chest"(1796) are the chief, are lively medleys of tragedy, comedy, opera, and farce. In each a tragic story is told in blank verse, audaciously Shakespearean, and this is mixed with broad comedy or farce in prose. There is a bustling action with shifting scenes, much spectacle, many songs, solos, duets, or choruses, for which a crowd of soldiers, monks, beggars, foresters, or the like, is always within call. "The Surrender of Calais" tells the story of Queen Philippa's mercy; "The Iron Chest" is a dramatization of "Caleb Williams"; "The Battle of Hexham" is a sort of musicalized chronicle history, presenting the adventures of Adeline in search of her husband, who turns out to be a captain of a band of robbers and the rescuer of Queen Margaret and the prince after the battle of Hexham. "The Mountaineers," suggested by a story in "Don Quixote," finds its land of romance in Spain, where a Christian prisoner elopes with the daughter of his Moorish jailer, accompanied by a stage Irishman asgracioso; and this group, when recaptured, are rescued by Octavian, a half-mad tragic soliloquizer, who also recovers his long-lost love, and was thought to be extremely impressive when impersonated by Kemble. In his use of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the Elizabethandrama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English tragedy, and passed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession of the illegitimate drama.

At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment there, themélodrame. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The peculiar novelties of themélodramewere the supplementing of the dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate heldfull sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or machinery. From the start,mélodrameallied itself to most of the paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and good among the characters, lent itself readily to a dramatization that required a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of action, music, and machinery. Comic scenes were, of course,de rigueur. "The Slave," by Morton, was one of the most enduring of the Colmanesque type. The serious plot, which presents Gambia, the slave, as the sacrificing hero, borrows from "The Curfew" and "Oronooko," and for its great scene improves upon the escape over the bridge in "Pizarro."[46]

After Clifton and Zelinda (whom Gambia hopelessly adores) escape across the hanging bridge, Gambia climbs up the tree from which it is suspended and cuts the rope. The pursuing villains are foiled on the brink. "We are safe, my husband," cries Zelinda from the other side; but her child, safely hidden by Gambia, hears her voice, and runs from his hiding-place,—on the wrong side of the river.Child.It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!Zelinda.Alas! my child!Somerdyke.Her child! Then we triumph—seize him! (A slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues.) Move one step further, and you will see him buried in the waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (Holding him up in the act of precipitating him.)Zelinda.I do submit.Gambia.Never! (Gambia, who has concealed himself in the branches, snatches the child up into the tree.) Father, receive your child! (Throws the child across the stream.) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha! (Curtain.)

Child.It was my mother's voice! Mother! mother!

Zelinda.Alas! my child!

Somerdyke.Her child! Then we triumph—seize him! (A slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues.) Move one step further, and you will see him buried in the waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (Holding him up in the act of precipitating him.)

Zelinda.I do submit.

Gambia.Never! (Gambia, who has concealed himself in the branches, snatches the child up into the tree.) Father, receive your child! (Throws the child across the stream.) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha! (Curtain.)

The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show, strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, andmusic did not further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama. There was in England no relationship between the two as between Pixérécourt and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes, rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.

The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the melodrama, tragedy has tended either to assume the garb of its rivals, or to conform its appeal to a select audience.

In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and themelodrama and the melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy. The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men, Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were associated with the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists, while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted. These plays fall into two main classes, those that were acted and carried on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted. This second class, which for the first time becomes of some importance in the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to its requirements, and might easily be adaptedfor presentation. There are others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre. These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various classes of closet drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music, spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in the beauty of verse.

The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first volume of her "Plays on the Passions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and "The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series, illustrating each of the dominant passions by a tragedy and a comedy.Her preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who at Alfoxden were polishing their own tragedies and planning a revolution in poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama. She proposed to devote a play to the illustration of a single passion, to trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that passion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This absorption with a study of emotionper seled to a subordination of plot and all external incident, and—so she proposed—all poetic embellishment, to a searching study of isolated passion. Her first volume attracted attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without success. She continued, however, writing and publishing, completing the series of plays on passions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays," twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults, knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon shining through vaulted windows. Her conception of a play of passion forbids motiving of character, or integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls. There are many improbabilities, and the passions are exposed mainly in soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purplepatches. It rarely if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers. Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the Michigan Historical Society."

Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing tragedies of passions[47]arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's "Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice."Coleridge's "Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres. The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the "Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the managers. But even hadhe made the revisions that they required, he could hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his melodramatic action.

Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they, and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing. "The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.

From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813), literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. Godwin's plays, "Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's "Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted tragedy. When Lewis tried to givehis terrific vein a little dignity and blank verse, even he failed on the stage.[48]

After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the "Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's plays was "Evadne," based on Shirley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted 1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements. Fazio's wife, jealous because of his infatuation for a countess, betrays her husband, and then for the remainder of the play is wildly remorseful. In spite of the extreme improbability of both the persons and the language, the story is told with dramatic directness and affords manifest opportunities for a great actress, seized upon by Miss O'Neill and later by Miss Cushman and, in an Italian adaptation, by Madame Ristori. A still greater theatrical success was won by Kean in "Brutus" (1818), a pastiche of the plays of Lee, Cumberland, and Downman composed by the American, John Howard Payne. Sheridan Knowles's "Virginius" (1820), followed by his "Caius Gracchus" (1823), and "William Tell" (1825), gave promise of amore permanent revival of the poetical drama. Knowles, an actor and a practical playwright, was also the friend and in a way the pupil of Lamb and Hazlitt, and he gained the coöperation of a great and ambitious actor, Macready. He united as no other writer of the generation had done, stage-craft and poetic ideals. "Virginius," the best of his tragedies, is still acted—excepting Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu," the only relic of early nineteenth century tragedy. The story, with its one great acting scene, is told after the Shakespearean model in very ornate and artificial verse. It mingles much scoffing at the rabble with romantic appeals for liberty, tricks Virginia out with a lover, and ends with the insanity of Virginius. Knowles's tragedies at the time of their presentation were only moderately successful, far less so than his absurd comedy, "The Hunchback"; and several poetic dramas by other writers fared worse. Thomas Wade's "Woman's Love," based on the Patient Griselda story, obtained a hearing in 1808, but his Marlowesque "Jew of Aragon" was hooted off the stage in 1830. But Procter's "Mirandola" was acted sixteen times in 1821, and Miss Mitford's "Rienzi" (1828) and Byron's "Werner" (1830) gained veritable triumphs.

For about a decade longer poetic tragedy continued to contend for the theatre. Its main hope lay in Macready, and its hey-day was during his two periods of management of Drury Lane, 1837-39 and 1841-42. After the success of "Werner" ("Marino Faliero" had been earlier produced in 1821), "Sardanapalus" was brought out byMacready in 1833-34; and "The Two Foscari" later. Knowles's "Alfred the Great" and his "Bridal," an adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," won considerable success; and "The Pledge," a version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," in 1831 heralded new support for romantic poetry in the drama. In the years 1836-37 Macready introduced three new writers in the "Ion" of Talfourd, "Strafford" of Browning, and the "Duchess de la Vallière" of Bulwer-Lytton. Talfourd's tragedies, including two, "The Athenian Captive" and "Glencoe," later acted by Macready, are stiff and wooden, contributing little to the drama. Bulwer-Lytton's later plays, "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) and "Richelieu" (1839), were extremely successful and surpassed any preceding efforts of the romanticists to adapt poetry to the stage. "Richelieu" is by no means a great poem or free from claptrap, but it has the merit of being written to be spoken and in having its characters designed as parts of the action. The interest is not in the poetry—it reads much better with the omissions made for acting—but in the development of the character of the cardinal through the incidents. The failure of "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon" in 1843 marks the end of Macready's management and the end of romantic tragedy on the stage.

Many of these acted plays gained what suitability they had for the stage by accident rather than design. Milman's "Fazio" was published several years before it was acted, and his later tragedies were decidedly closetdramas. Miss Mitford's "Julian" made little impression on the stage, and her other tragedies, except "Rienzi," still less. Byron's tragedies, which succeeded largely no doubt because of his reputation, were acted against his wish or after his death. And the various poetic tragedies that were written at about the same time as Byron's and Shelley's were mostly composed without thought of stage presentation. The surpassing genius of the greater poets has thrown into obscurity the work of these other young men, who in the decade after Waterloo faced the world with thin volumes of verse. But there have been few times in our literary history when the Muses have been so alluring, and Melpomene had her share of devotees. In John Wilson's "City of the Plague" (1816) a young naval officer wanders about plague-stricken London, through its bacchanals and horrors, buries his mother, discovers his betrothed, the ministering angel of the afflicted, and at last finds rest with her in the terrible crowded churchyard. The poem is grandly conceived and beautifully written in verse, occasionally Wordsworthian but without affectation or over-ornament. Two other closet dramatists offer rather less sincerity and impressiveness of conception but even more of poetic beauty. "Joseph and his Brethren" (1823), by Charles Wells, for a time the friend of Keats, was published when the author was twenty-three, and fifty years later revived and rewritten because of the appreciation of Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. Like the plays of Thomas Wade, it shows the influence of Marlowe inverse and plan. Long drawn out and in the main undramatic, there is imagination everywhere, especially in the remarkable scenes that depict the passion-inflamed Phraxanor, Potiphar's wife. Of the Elizabethans, too, was Beddoes, who studied Webster and Tourneur as well as Shelley and Keats, and whose verse at times fairly surpasses his masters. His "Bride's Tragedy" (1821), written when he was nineteen, is a play only in name, but it is a poem that joins terror and fascination as scarcely another since Webster and Ford. Here, as in his incompleted dramas and his "Death's Jest Book," published much later, loveliness masks with madness and death, and mockery with passion. It seems as if he were lavishing over strange juxtapositions of beauty and decay all the sensuous fascination of Keats and the lingering suggestiveness of Shelley's lyrics. One's admiration for his genius is tempered only by the thought of the greater things he might have done.

Earlier than these poems was Landor's "Count Julian" (1812), which, like them, presents qualities suited for the closet and not for the stage. As in some of the "Imaginary Conversations," Landor takes it for granted that his audience understands the story and the motives of the actors as well as he himself. The reader gradually disentangles the situations and is stirred by the splendid poetry; but no audience could make out what it was all about. His other poetical tragedies, written a quarter of a century later, show no improvement of these defects, nor do they present dramatic themes asinteresting or as powerfully conceived as those in "Count Julian."

"Otho the Great," the tragedy which Keats hoped would lift him out of the mire,[49]was devised for Kean, and apparently accepted for Drury Lane. Charles Brown furnished him "description of each scene entire, with the characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with it"; and Keats merely wrote the verse up to the fifth act, when he took the entire management into his own hands. The result of this peculiar collaboration was what might have been expected. The plot and characterization follow old types; and the poetry, though not lacking in fine passages, is inferior to nearly everything else that Keats wrote in hisannus mirabilis, 1819.

Scott's dramas are somewhat out of place when grouped with these other closet tragedies, for they are varied in character, representing a number of the proclivities that we have noticed in the romantic drama.[50]"The House of Aspen," written in prose at about the time of "Goetz," was intended for the stage and considered by Kemble for representation. Based on a German tale and showing the influence of "Goetz," itoffers no important deviations from the terroristic drama. "The Doom of Devorgoil," designed for Terry at the Adelphi, is a melodrama with many songs and a mixture of mimic goblins with supernatural machinery that was found to be so objectionable as to prevent its performance. It is interesting as one of the very few cases in which a man of literary reputation undertook to meet the requirements of the illegitimate drama. None of the other plays, which are in blank verse, was intended for the stage. "Macduff's Cross" is a mere sketch in one act; "Halidon Hill" a two-act dramatization of border warfare; "Auchindrane," in three acts, is a more fully developed tragedy. "Halidon Hill" has a clearness and directness of characterization and a vigor of movement which suggest that had the auspices been more favorable, the historical drama might have had another great exponent. "Auchindrane," though retaining a little of the Radcliffian mystery and mystification which Scott never quite outgrew, also tells its domestic story with a directness and verisimilitude not usual among the romanticists. German translation, terroristic tragedy, spectral melodrama, dramatic sketches for the closet, and domestic tragedy are all illustrated by these six plays; and their subjects and treatment also reflect the various attachments of Scott's literary career. They illustrate also the inability of literary genius to aid the theatre in this period, but they differ from most of the literary drama in their absence of subjectivity or attachment to theory.

Byron's plays, like other poetical tragedies of the time,were written in accord with the writer's theories and counter to the prevailing theatrical practices; but Byron prided himself on departing from the methods of the Elizabethans or of his fellow romanticists, and on following the guidance of eighteenth century models. "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," and "Sardanapalus," all written 1820-21, attempt regularity of plot and observance of the unities, and profess Alfieri as a model. The two Venetian plays, however, recall Otway's "Venice Preserved," and their exaggeration of strange passions is quite in accord with the general practice of the romanticists. The plots are improbable, though selected from history, and aloof from general interest, for the resentment of the old doge at the insult to his wife and the unyielding vengeance of Loredano and, indeed, all the major passions are treated with an extravagance that becomes melodramatic and renders the persons all but unintelligible. With "Sardanapalus" the case is different. The dissolute, luxurious, but nobly-aspiring hero and his better angel, Myrrha, derive from the characters of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli a truth of passion that animates the rapid and spectacular action. A tragedy of palace intrigue, after the eighteenth century type, is thus reanimated by the romantic fervor of its passion, philosophy, and poetry. Any time from "The Mourning Bride" to "Zenobia" it might have triumphed on the stage, and so it did triumph when finally acted; but it summoned only a tithe of Byron's power. Quite different from any of these three plays, his "Werner" was obviouslysuited to its own day. Based on one of Harriet Lee's novels, it forsakes classical structure and exhibits all the paraphernalia and emotional horrors of the terrific drama. It was one of the greatest stage successes of the romantic drama, but it is no more deserving, either as a play or a poem, than a dozen of its rivals.

Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species. Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred" and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to men."[51]The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man against society and providence makeup the tragic theme. The tragedy of individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality, is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion. Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.

Shelley's "Cenci" in a different way mirrors this eternal defeat that human struggle after justice must encounter. Deeply impressed by the current tradition about Beatrice Cenci, he made this story of incest and parricide the expression of his view of life and history as a conflict between tyranny and downtrodden innocence. Nowhere else in Shelley, not even in "Prometheus Unbound," does this world drama come out of the clouds and reveal itself with such clarity and power. There is passion in the persons, climax in the situations, and directness in the language such as the romantic drama had rarely shown. The philosophical conception and the tangle of human motives do not indeed quite harmonize. Beatrice's lie and her unworthy seeking afterlife are bits of the story which interfere with our acceptance of Beatrice the martyr, flaws that Browning would not have admitted. On the other hand, Shelley's philosophy overrides the story, as may be seen by a comparison of the tragedy with one of the earliest to show dawning romanticism. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother," which at this time Byron was praising as "the last tragedy," treats a more horrible story of incest with the interest mainly in the plot, holding in suspense the fearful solution until the end; "The Cenci" begins with the act of incest, and then tries to carry our interest solely to the two characters, one the embodiment of all inherited evil, the other, a pure and beautiful spirit striving madly and in vain to free herself from wrong that is might. The conquest of the stage, the writing of dramatic blank verse, and the endowment of this story of crime with representational truth were tasks too large to be accomplished in a single play; but, though faulty in the details of dramatic art, "The Cenci" is, for a first tragedy, without an equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry. The poet who shrank from comedy as from a wicked thing and who thought a story of incest possible in a London theatre, had much to learn before he could master the stage. But "The Cenci" reveals the maturing Shelley, who was opening his mind to new impressions, admiring "Cain" and "Don Juan," profiting from Æschylus and Calderon as well as Shakespeare, and who was seeing his allegories clothed in human form, and no longer only in images of mist and flame. As onereads one wonders,—had the play not been the last as well as his first tragedy? had it come at the beginning instead of nearly at the close of the romantic movement?

In "Prometheus Unbound" there is even greater achievement in the presentation of this world conflict; and there Cain triumphs and Beatrice is purified. But the achievement is lyrical rather than dramatic, and has no proper place in the history of tragedy.

In all these tragedies, whether acted or not, and whether works of genius or not, certain resemblances have been noted. They exhibit most of the elements that characterize the romantic movement as it stirred English poetry from the "Lyrical Ballads" to the first publications of Tennyson and Browning. Without realism in plot or language, and dealing always with what is unusual, improbable, and removed from the present, they made little effort to catch the interest of the average audience or to excite an interest common to ordinary experience. Their reaction against the frivolity of contemporary melodrama was as decided as their reaction against eighteenth century conventionality; but both impulses led to poetry, passion, and Shakespeare, but not to drama. They did not succeed in working out cause and effect of character through incident; when they desired to gain stage effectiveness, they merely borrowed from current melodrama or from the Elizabethans.

Elizabethan influence is usually apparent in the choice of themes, in the devising of plot and situations, and particularly in the figurative and ornate phrasing. Therevival of some Elizabethan plays on the stage, the vulgarization in the illegitimate drama of many of their incidents, and the general interest among readers at this time in the Elizabethan drama, all encouraged a fondness for madness, incest, battles, villany, and unrestrained passion of various kinds. In phrasing, the Elizabethan influence appears in all degrees; in the sympathetic emulation of Keats, in the amazing reproductions of Beddoes, or in the starched artificiality of the poetic embellishments of Milman, Knowles, or Procter. In general the style is redundant and florid. In such plays as were adapted for the stage, it will almost always be found that the mere curtailing of the figures, soliloquies, and episodes causes a marked improvement in the dramatic quality of the dialogue. Byron and Shelley both attempted to free their dramatic blank verse from conceits and artificialities, and to give it directness and lack of ornamentation corresponding to natural speech. In consequence, Byron's blank verse often makes a slovenly approach to prose, and Shelley's loses something of the beauty of his non-dramatic masterpieces; but on the whole, "Sardanapalus" and still more "Cain" and "The Cenci" show their greatness in this as in other respects, in the dramatic quality of their verse.

Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror. The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is somethingof this in Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species. After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's "Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of passion.

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