NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY

Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature, whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals, for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge,now became essential to tragedy; and we find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio" and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities for rhetorical fervors.

In nearly all the plays the main interest is not in plot, as in the eighteenth century, and not primarily in story, as in the Elizabethan period, but in the delineation of individual passion. "Lear," "Othello," "Hamlet," and "Macbeth" are the models; but the passions are more distempered, more isolated, more abstracted from reason or sense than in Shakespeare. As in the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the influence of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans is most unmistakable in the prominence given to insanity and villany. But this prominence is also a natural result of the romanticists' prepossession with passion. In tragedy, they felt thatsome passions must be very evil and some ruinous; hence they devoted themselves to a study of malice and madness. Their villains are more vigorous than those of the eighteenth century, but they, too, imitate Iago; and the mad scenes always recall either Lear or Ophelia. The romanticists can realize passion for the moment, or display its variable moods; but they rarely succeed in making its extended portrayal convincing. They clung to the idea that the only way to depict passion was to eliminate all else. Even in the great writers passion absorbs the interest; in the minor plays it tears itself to tatters. Tragedy after tragedy represents passions, not conflicting but alternating, until one or the other turns to madness. As Lewis's prologue declared, Romance "raves away the hours." The conception of tragedy seems to be the burning up of the soul in passion, and the poets' main concern to describe the conflagration. The romanticists needed Lyttleton's advice, to read Shakespeare, but to study Racine.

The conception of tragedy that requires the expression of passion working in individual men, and seeks in history or legend for examples of isolated effects of the great emotions, clearly involves something different from a veracious representation of life as we all see it, and something more than the confusion of passions run wild. According to contemporary philosophical criticism, as that of Schiller and Schelling, or that of Coleridge and Shelley, tragedy should take part in the search for universal truth; not universal in the eighteenth-century conceptionof typical characters and aphoristic generalizations, but universal in the sense that, in the words of Carlyle, it seeks the "interpretation of the divine idea in the world." Tragedy should investigate, as Lamb declared, "the grounds of the passion, its correspondence to a great and heroic nature," and should also seek to find in the riots of evil or the storms of passion symptoms of the struggle of Nature to rid itself of disease and fever, the presage of a higher unity for both man and the universe. Something of this is discernible in "Remorse" or elsewhere; there is a passionate demand for ethical realities in "Cain"; but the only positive presentation of an idealistic theory of tragedy is "The Cenci."

Though tragedy thus reflects the changes working in the ideas and forms of literature, these changes are, of course, more distinctly indicated elsewhere. If we had no knowledge of other literature, and only tragedy to judge from, we could not clearly discern the far-reaching changes wrought by the romantic revival. Tragedy from 1800 to 1830 could be described as marking a return to the Elizabethans and Shakespeare, an absorption in the depiction of passion, a revival of poetic imagination in expression, an appeal to terror rather than to pity, and to the strange and mysterious rather than the reasonable; but it could not be said that the summation of these changes resulted in an extensive or enduring development.

It is not easy to find a stopping-place for a history of English tragedy. In the case of the acted drama the closeof Macready's management offers a definite end, for the ensuing twenty-five years are nearly a blank as far as acted tragedy is concerned. In the case of the unacted drama, however, there is no point of marked change. The deaths of Scott and Goethe mark a stage in European literature; and the Victorian era introduces new poets and novelists, new social and political conditions, and a new foreign influence in the French romanticists. But the closet dramas after 1830 are in many ways closely related to those of the generation before. Closet tragedy in the plays of Browning, Sir Henry Taylor, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, and others, was largely the outcome of the theatrical and literary conditions which we have been tracing. Separated from the theatre, it offers, one must fear, little that is vital in the development of the drama, however impressive it may be as poetry. The appearance of new semi-dramatic species was a natural accompaniment of the continued departure of drama from the stage. Miss Mitford and Bulwer-Lytton had written "dramatic scenes." Later Landor's genius found its truest opportunity not in poetic plays, but in prose imaginary conversations, at their best splendidly dramatic. Browning turned from the theatre to dramatic lyrics, romances, and monologues. In fact, in the work of all the romantic dramatists, including Browning and Swinburne, dramatic power reveals itself in scenes and passages rather than in whole plays. Tragedy as a literary form, it may be repeated, is dependent for its life upon the theatre. Removed from the theatre, its integrity isgone, it develops strange and varied forms. Instead of tragedy, we have "My Last Duchess," "The Ring and the Book," and the Mary Stuart trilogy.

It is this separation from the theatre that seems to have been the main cause for the failure of the romantic movement in tragedy. We may, to be sure, find other causes in plenty. The genius of its great poets was lyrical rather than dramatic. Lyrical and narrative poetry and, above all, the novel absorbed both public interest and imaginative genius. Again, there was no free play for a revolution in tragedy, because there had been no tyranny. Classicism had never dominated the drama as in other European nations. In English tragedy of the eighteenth century, blank verse, however tainted by affectation, had kept the Elizabethan fondness for figure; structure, though following after French models, had maintained the traditions of English freedom; the subjects had kept open a wide range and had not neglected the medieval field; and sentiment, if not passion, had reigned. While the German and French romanticists found in Shakespeare an incentive to something new, the English romanticists could only elevate to omnipotence one who had long been the idol of the theatres. He was for them no innovator, but rather the unrecognized tyrant who held them back from real innovation. As Beddoes recognized in theory though not in practice, "the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold tramping fellow,—no reviver, even however good."

But if we still ask why Coleridge or Beddoes shouldnot have written tragedy as well as Schiller or Victor Hugo, why the tragedy of passion, revolt, and idealism, applied to history or legend, did not flourish in the time of the French Revolution and Napoleon, of Kemble and Kean, of Byron and Browning, the best answer must be found in the fact that theatrical conditions offered no encouragement to tragic drama, but almost forbade a serious attempt to learn the ways of the theatre or to deal in its debased wares.

If theatrical conditions had been favorable, if the union of Macready and Browning could have continued, one fancies that the romantic drama might yet have succeeded. The chronicle of English tragedy finds its climax in the first act, with Shakespeare as its protagonist; henceforth, directed by his ghost, its action goes haltingly, vainly awaiting another climax and another protagonist. In Browning, it was, perhaps, nearer than ever before to finding both. Since the Restoration, no poet had come to the theatre so gifted with dramatic genius, no poet so concerned with the study of the vicissitudes of human motive, so alive to the dramatic values of crucial moments, so curious as to the meaning of passion and pain, suffering and evil, in the drama of life. "Strafford" and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" have the weaknesses of youth and experiment, but they are the plays of a pioneer who is not content with returning to the Elizabethans or the Greeks, but is seeking to convey through his stories and persons the truth that is in him. The study of Strafford is almost the first independent and acute study of anEnglishman of history in all the historical tragedies since "Henry V"; "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon" one of the few plays to realize individual passions since Otway. And the dramatic defects—the failure to meet his audience half-way, the awkwardness and garrulity of expression, the lack of repression in form, while defects that continue in Browning's later poetry—are the very faults for which a severe apprenticeship to the theatre might have been the best discipline. An apprenticeship such as Shakespeare served might have turned Browning's monologues and lyrics into dramas; but the age was incapable of furnishing such a training, and the fiasco with Macready was the end of the period and the defeat of the poetical drama.

What comes after in the nineteenth century may best be left to the future historian, who will be able to interpret its plays in the light of a succeeding development. The plays of Tennyson, reverting again to Shakespeare, and the poems of Swinburne may, after all, be the forerunners of a new revival of poetical tragedy. Or the great development in technic that has proceeded, first under the guidance of the French dramatists, and then of Ibsen, and the serious essays of dramatists of the passing generation may be the pioneers of a national drama of first-rate importance in the generation to come. Certainly Ibsen, with his revolution in both the content and the form of the tragic drama, has been the great force in later nineteenth century tragedy. His work as it affects England and America, however neglected, postponed, ormodified, must be the text of a succeeding chapter on English tragedy, which cannot yet be written.

Genest'sAccount of the English Stagestops at 1830. A continuation of this work down to the present time is much to be desired. There is no thorough history or bibliography of the drama of this period. In addition to the histories of the theatre already mentioned, W. C. Oulton'sHistory of the Theatres of London, 1795-1817, may be consulted. Memoirs of the Kembles are useful for this period, and also Macready'sReminiscences, ed. Sir F. Pollock (1875), Moore'sLife of Sheridan(1825), Molloy'sLife of Edmund Kean(1888), William Archer's admirable life of Macready (Eminent Actors Series), are all valuable.Random Recollectionsby Colman the younger, and memoirs of Kelly, O'Keefe, and Reynolds supply information in regard to the theatre and illegitimate drama. John Cumberland's collections,British Theatre(41 vols., 1829) and theMinor Theatre(15 vols.), are printed from acting copies, and the second comprises many illegitimate plays.

Dramatic criticism of the period includes Coleridge (see criticism of Maturin'sBertraminBiographia Literaria), Hazlitt,A View of the English Stage(1818); Leigh Hunt,Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres(1807) (selections from same, ed. W. Archer and R. W. Lowe, 1894); Lamb (seeLamb's Dramatic Essays, ed. Brander Matthews, 1893). See, also, R. H. Horne'sNew Spirit of the Age(1844), containing criticism of Knowles, Macready, Bulwer-Lytton, and Browning.

The dramatic work of the chief poets has been studied in connection with their other poetry by many editors and critics, but rarely in its relation to the drama of the period. Professor Beers's two volumes,English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century(1899), andEnglish Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century(1901), deal with the German influence; C. H. Herford has an excellent though brief account of the drama of the period in hisAge of Wordsworth; Watson Nicholson'sThe Struggle for a Free Stage in London(1906) is full and valuable. Ernest Bates's monograph onThe Cenci(1908) discusses that tragedy and its relations to contemporary drama.

FOOTNOTES:[45]SeeThe Haunted Tower, an opera (1789), acted eighty times in two seasons.[46]Its borrowings are noted by Genest, viii, 603. The scene is quoted in Archer'sLife of Macready(Eminent Actors Series), p. 40.[47]The Fall of Robespierre(1794), by Southey and Coleridge, and Southey'sWat Tyler(1817), written in 1794, hardly require even mention as tragedies.[48]In this and the two following paragraphs the bracketed dates are those of the first performances in London. Some of the plays were first acted elsewhere.[49]"I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." Letter to his sister, December, 1819.[50]The translation of Goethe'sGoetz von Berlichingen(1799),The House of Aspen(1830),Halidon Hill(1822),Macduff's Cross(1823),The Doom of Devorgoil(1830),Auchindrane(1830).[51]Herford,Age of Wordsworth, p. 227.

[45]SeeThe Haunted Tower, an opera (1789), acted eighty times in two seasons.

[46]Its borrowings are noted by Genest, viii, 603. The scene is quoted in Archer'sLife of Macready(Eminent Actors Series), p. 40.

[47]The Fall of Robespierre(1794), by Southey and Coleridge, and Southey'sWat Tyler(1817), written in 1794, hardly require even mention as tragedies.

[48]In this and the two following paragraphs the bracketed dates are those of the first performances in London. Some of the plays were first acted elsewhere.

[49]"I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." Letter to his sister, December, 1819.

[50]The translation of Goethe'sGoetz von Berlichingen(1799),The House of Aspen(1830),Halidon Hill(1822),Macduff's Cross(1823),The Doom of Devorgoil(1830),Auchindrane(1830).

[51]Herford,Age of Wordsworth, p. 227.

The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many common characteristics, they do separate themselves from other plays of their periods, they are connected from one period to another in a continuous development. English tragedies constitute a dramatic type, a literary form. This type has, to be sure, permitted many variations,—revenge tragedy, chronicle play, tragicomedy, domestic tragedy, sentimental tragedy, heroic play, or the closet tragedy of the romanticists—but every one of these species has had its connections with others, and in every period the tragedies of varying kinds have been related not only to one another but to those that have gone before. With changing theatrical conditions, with new literary impulses, with new views of the old traditions, with new influences from Spain or France or Germany, the type has taken new characteristics or made new alliances, but has never lost its integrity. At any time during the three centuries it would have been possible to frame a definition of tragedy that would include over nine tenths of the tragedies of the period, and the other tenth would offer only definablevariations. However strong the foreign influences, tragedy has maintained the national tradition; however great the innovations, it has never broken with the past. From Marlowe to Shelley there has been an unbroken continuity in themes, stories, types of persons, nature of emotional appeal, structure, and even in the blank verse.

So marked is the integrity and continuity of the type that tragedy lends itself, better perhaps than most other forms, to the biological analogy. The processes which we have been tracing are evolutionary. Whether we consider the main type or its varying forms, we are reminded constantly of the laws governing the origin and development of natural species. The history of the Elizabethan drama in particular affords an example of the origin, development, culmination, and degeneration of a literary species, which might be analyzed closely as Brunetière has analyzed French tragedy of the seventeenth century. Created from a cross-fertilization of Seneca on the medieval drama, it appears in dubious forms of morality and chronicle, springs into full integrity in Marlowe, reaches its culmination in Shakespeare, and degenerates under the changed environment of the social and theatrical conditions that followed the death of Elizabeth. But the analogy is not less applicable to the whole history of tragedy. The slow development of variations and new species under changing environment is found in every period, as in the formation and growth of the revenge play or in the development of the sentimental tragedy of the eighteenth century. The quick formation of speciesby mutation also has its parallels, as in the sudden appearance of Marlowe or of the heroic tragedy bred from the Beaumont-Fletcher play and French romance. In the persistence of the stage villain through all forms and periods, we might even discover one of Mendel's unit characters. The reversion to an earlier form appears in the return of Lee or of the Romanticists to the Elizabethans. And the tendency of individual plays to regress to the main type has been a constant and on the whole perhaps the most potent force of the development.

We may find the nature of the literary species determined by constant principles corresponding to environment and heredity in the evolution of natural species. Environment as a factor in literature has long been recognized by criticism, and has been apparent in every play that we have examined. Each period has been distinguished by theatrical, social, and literary conditions peculiar to itself and constituting the change-producing environment of the drama. Tragedy has at every stage responded to these changing conditions. And the law of heredity is also paralleled. No play has been without its inheritance. The most original, as Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Otway's "Orphan," Lillo's "Barnwell," and Shelley's "Cenci," have shown their indebtedness no less clearly, if less slavishly, than the more commonplace individuals. The classical tradition transformed the English breed as the Arabian stock has the racing-horse; the French influence changed the very anatomy of the species. Our study must surely have called attention tothe extraordinary force that imitation has exercised in the creation of tragedy. It seems, indeed, the generating power. Men are forever imitating, but they cannot imitate without change. In these changes, the variations due to environment—personal, theatrical, literary, social—arise the individual peculiarities, the beginnings of new species, the element of growth. The great mass of tragedies, however, differentiate themselves only feebly or slightly from the type. They are imitations that preserve all the essential characteristics of their originals. Some ideas, some plays, some traditions, have an astonishing fecundity; other stocks, procreative for a while, soon turn barren. But, destroy the faculty of imitation, and the generation of literary forms would seem wellnigh impossible.

Thus far, perhaps, the biological analogy may be pressed, if we remember that it is only an analogy. The evolution of a wagon or a battleship might offer an equally suggestive and an equally unsafe comparison. No one should be deceived by the analogy into thinking that what we call environment and heredity in literary species correspond in fact with their namesakes in the physical world. One play does not create another. It, along with countless other things, suggests ideas and impressions which are made into a play by the author. Each tragedy is the child of a mind, whose creative processes have little real resemblance to physical generation. To call the influence of "Hamlet" heredity, and the influence of the author's newspaper reading, or of his family, or hispolitical beliefs, environment, is merely to assign arbitrary names. Again, art, unlike nature, is careless of the type and careful of the individual. A single play may live longer and have greater generating power than a whole species. "Othello" during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has, perhaps, had more influence upon English tragedy than all non-Shakespearean tragedies together. Sophocles is still germinating. It is as if we now had the venerable chief of the mastodons, surviving many of the species he had originated, and still creating his offspring to confuse the evolutions of the many other species he had already aided in forming. In literature we are attempting to trace the development of species, of which individuals live forever; to discriminate the agents in a complex creative process which we do not at all understand; to call one play the child of another when it is more truly the kaleidoscopic aggregate of much reading, much observation, much experience shaken into a new form by the author's creative imagination.

Literary criticism may borrow from the natural sciences the evolutionary conception and some of its accompaniments; in particular, the demarcation of literary forms by the persistence of certain characteristics through changing conditions of nation or period, and the recognition of imitation as an important element in the creative process. It would seem, however, that further progress in the classification and explanation of literary phenomena is not to be gained by searching for additional analogies, but in the study and analysis of the phenomena themselvesin the effort to discover the principles and laws of the mental processes peculiar to literature.

We may put the case, then, without further reliance on the evolution of physical species. For three hundred years Englishmen have been writing tragedies, all much alike, all related in origin, nature, and purpose. In our study of their relationships, the influences governing their creation have been grouped in two main classes: first, that of the theatre itself, and second, that which has been called the literary tradition. In the theatre has been included the influence of actors and audience and all pertaining to the theatrical presentation. Changes in the mere stage and its appurtenances have been factors determining the very nature of tragedy. The scenery and women actors of the Restoration compelled important modifications in the drama; the large theatres of Kemble's day drove tragedy from the stage and encouraged a pantomime hybrid. The influence of theatrical fashions and traditions, always in part changing and transitory, has been felt in every variation, advance, or retrogression of the acted drama. Yet it is the influence of the theatre that has maintained the integrity of form and has thus been the main force in preserving the species. The literary tradition, even more complex in its elements than that of the theatre, altering and cumulative, composed of classical or French as well as English masterpieces, drawn from the novel or other forms as well as the drama, affected by all social movements, passing through such transformations as those of the classical and the romanticperiods, has nevertheless, on the whole, conserved the form and content of tragedy. During the periods that we have examined, blank verse, illustrious persons, the pomp of courts, the great passions of revenge, ambition, jealousy, lust, love, and hate, hideous crimes, and the conflict of potent wills have been the usual accompaniments of the actions of suffering and ruin. There has been only occasional departure from the Shakespearean conception of tragedy as representation of great personalities engaged in disastrous conflict. Shakespeare, in fact, at least since Dryden's "All for Love," has been a constant and often the dominating element in this complex and variable literary tradition. The two classes of influence, theatrical and literary, have thus proved both variable and conserving. The theatre, while crying for novelty, holds tenaciously to its traditions. Literature, while enforcing rules, precedents, prejudices, while clinging to its models and demanding imitation, yet incites to rivalry and originality, to new endeavor, variation, and excellence.

These two main classes of influence have rarely if ever run parallel. At times the theatre has attracted literature, as in the Elizabethan era, at times it has repelled literature, as in the early nineteenth century. Usually, what the stage of the day desires and what the literature of the past encourages have been quite different and often irreconcilable. In our study we have consequently had to keep in mind not only two main lines of influence, but two points of view and two standards of judgment. It is the purpose of dramatic art to bring about their reconciliation,to harmonize the technic of the theatre, the necessities of the drama, and the standards of literary excellence. Our history records no attainment of such an ideal; rather the two antinomies seem farther from final unity in the time of Byron than in that of Shakespeare. Yet, through the discarding of temporary fashions, the growing knowledge of structure, and the multiplication of theatrical means, the material and experience necessary for further progress have at least been accumulating. Perhaps a survey of the drama of the last century on the continent would result in a more sanguine view of the development of the principles of dramatic art freed from the temporalities of theatrical fashion. There is probability in Professor Brander Matthews's suggestion that in our growing cosmopolitanism national divergencies in content will exist with a growing agreement in form. We may hope that this will be merely an agreement in making quick trial of new ideas, from whatever theatre derived, and that the principles of art established will not, as so often in the past, prove pedantic and hampering. This much seems fairly certain,—literary genius and theatrical experience must unite in order to produce great tragedy. From the theatre the writer must learn dramatic art, the first rule of which is to win his audience; from literature he must learn the elements that will give his work lasting value. Only after an experience with the theatre can he venture on innovations likely to be permanent. Only if he have literary genius will he depart in triumph from literary traditions. The double masterycomes to one only rarely, and then only after a double service.

The relationships of tragedy, however, are not confined to the theatre or to literature. That tragedy, like other forms of literature, is an imitation of life, is a platitude whose meaning sometimes fails to impress us. But its truth has a witness in every writer of tragedy. However insignificant or thoughtless, he has been trying to put into his play something of life as he knows it, trying to find some relationships in the world of fact that will carry meaning and interest to his fellows. Whether he has been writing mainly to meet the desires of actors and audience, or has been voyaging alone toward some discovery of beauty and grandeur of human passion, whether he has been building his house of intrigue according to well-conned rules of dramatic structure, or has been copying some tangle of fact, he has been studying the ways and means of human actions. Trivially or greatly, as the case may be, he has been seeking to interpret life. Classicist, romanticist, and realist have been by different processes seeking the same end, the discovery of meaning in the facts of existence. They have all viewed the Art that they have so differently formulated, as a means of approach to Nature, the deity whom they all profess. Neither high seriousness, nor sublime theme, nor a complete philosophy is a necessary accompaniment of Matthew Arnold's definition. Whether the poet write of "the tangles of Neæra's hair" or of that disobedience that first "brought death into the world," he is attemptinga criticism of life. This definition does not state the primary aim of literature, for it must first of all interest us, or its sole function, for it seeks beauty as well as truth and cannot always unite them; but it does indicate the most permanent and vitalizing element in the creation of literature, the most organic relationship that connects its many manifestations.

The greatness of tragedy depends upon its allegiance to this meaning of literature. The dramatic form gives opportunity for a close approach to the semblance of actuality. The very subjects of tragedy, suffering and disaster, discourage the seeking of mere amusement or a contentment with mere beauty of expression. They require, if not high seriousness or a teleology, at least a concern with the most interesting, inescapable, and dreadful of human facts. This baleful portion of human existence is the field of tragedy's research, where it may find grandeur and violence, malevolence and magnanimity, optimism or pessimism, harmony or anarchy, but where it can only with difficulty escape a serious attempt at the study of character and deed. No other literary form has so nobly responded to this great mission as that adopted by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Calderon, Corneille, and Ibsen. It has constrained drama and literature to their duty of research, interpretation, discovery in the almost impenetrable maze of human fact, by the very nature of its chosen field, by the preëminence of its great examples, and even by the continued endeavor of its humblest servants. As one reads through theseforgotten tragedies, as when one scans closely any large field of human effort, the main impression is one of futility. Beauty is not attained, life is not revealed, everything is imitative, feeble, and absurd. Yet, even among those hundreds of eighteenth century tragedies, with their rhyming tags that neatly sum up their authors' generalizations on life, one may find reason for sympathy and interest. They record what had meaning for their day, the heroisms, sentiments, and morals that somehow stirred men's hearts and elevated their resolves. They represent some degree of temporary success in giving relations and significance to their world. The lastingly significant representation of life is found not in the many but in the few, but the mediocrities and the failures continue the effort and maintain the form that make possible the few masterpieces. The very greatest set no impassable bound, for the ever-widening expanse of tragic fact continually invites new explorers. Progress can come not by resting admiringly on the greatness of the past, but only through a free opportunity for new pioneers and discoverers. Were the achievement of English tragedy far less than it has been, the very expenditure of effort should give it some interest for study. Its history, however, includes in Shakespeare's tragedies a few of the unapproached achievements of the human mind, many other plays that for a while greatly interested and persuaded men, not a few that still have searching meaning for us, and hundreds more that have maintained an unselfish, a social, a moral inquiry into life, and that,while perishing themselves, have aided others to live. In such a history, even he who runs may read a record of human endeavor not alien to his interest.

Tragedy takes an abiding place among the great courses of continuous human activity dedicated to an inquiry into the meanings of life. Its imaginative and intellectual study of suffering and ruin must continue, however its form may alter, if the theatre is to be a social force of importance, if literature is to offer an intelligent, serious, and comprehensive view of life, if the two are to unite in something better than a trivial and selfish entertainment. Its methods may not commend themselves in an age of physical and mechanical sciences, its aim may not commend itself at a time when splendid discoveries in the physical world blur the importance of an interpretation of moral and social relations. But tragedy has survived many ages and creeds, and seems likely to survive as long as men try to understand other men, to sympathize with their troubles, and to relate these somehow to their own beliefs and ideals. In the future as in the past, when a nation or community is at a period of culminating advance, when society is most mindful of its greatness and its obligations, tragedy should find its most helpful encouragement and its greatest opportunity.

The Index contains the titles of works, the names of authors, and the names of a few actors referred to in the text or footnotes. The Bibliographical Notes are not indexed. Alterations of plays are not indexed separately unless they have separate titles. References of importance are indicated by heavy-faced figures.

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