Part 11 (1/2)
”Timon,” and ”t.i.tus Andronicus,” s.h.i.+rley's ”Traitor,” and Beaumont and Fletcher's ”Maid's Tragedy,” ”Valentinian,” and ”A King and No King,” ”The Loyal Subject,” and other of their tragicomedies. ”Henry VIII,” ”Rollo,”
”Bonduca,” and ”Philaster” were performed within the next few years. Of Restoration tragedies, Banks's ”Unhappy Favorite” and Lee's ”Rival Queens”
were perhaps the most popular, and other plays of Banks, Lee, Otway, Dryden, Congreve, and Southerne were acted yearly. A number of the heroic plays also still kept the stage, including Howard's ”Indian Queen,”
Dryden's ”Conquest of Granada,” ”Indian Emperor,” and ”Aureng Zebe.”
Throughout the century both the London and the provincial theatres presented each year a large number of old plays, including many of these already mentioned. The Elizabethan tragedies, except Shakespeare's, and the heroic plays gradually disappeared from the regular repertoire, but Shakespeare's tragedies steadily gained in popularity, and ”The Unhappy Favorite” (rewritten as ”The Earl of Ess.e.x”), ”The Orphan,” ”Venice Preserved,” ”Oronooko,” ”The Fatal Marriage” (altered as ”Isabella”), ”All for Love,” and ”The Mourning Bride” maintained their places into the nineteenth century. Tragedy thus had its permanent representatives in this group of stock plays, to which newcomers gained admission only by marked success on the stage.
To these stock plays no writer of the eighteenth century made more notable additions than Nicholas Rowe, the first editor of Shakespeare, whose work began the century, borrowed much from his predecessors, and yet introduced most of the changes which distinguish the eighteenth century type of tragedy from that of the Restoration or Elizabethan period. His first play was followed by four other tragedies by 1707, and, after an interval of seven years, by ”Jane Sh.o.r.e” (1714) and ”Lady Jane Grey” (1715). Of the first five, three are of little interest except as representing common variations of the prevailing type. They all relate love stories of rivalry and intrigue among heroic personages, and all observe the French proprieties in structure. ”The Ambitious Stepmother,” like so many predecessors and successors, places the scene in an oriental court; ”Ulysses” more daringly invades Homeric territory; and ”The Royal Convert”
turns to early English history, a field which literary patriotism was appropriating for tragedy.
In ”Tamerlane” (1702), love and intrigue play subordinate parts to the political and moral interest which the author endeavored to centre upon his protagonist. Tamerlane, who, we are told, was patterned on William III, is an extremely pious pagan, who overtops conquest with mercy and adorns every occasion with a moralizing discourse. Had he ever encountered his Marlowean namesake, he would have shed the pitying tear. In general, the structure is on the French plan, but the large number of characters and the considerable amount of action recall Elizabethan models. The verse, too, with its feminine endings, occasionally reminds one of Fletcher, and the figures of speech are feebly patterned on Shakespeare, while the ravings of Bajazet are worthy of Nat Lee. The play, long acted every November fifth, seems to have owed its great success to its high moral tone and its patriotic eloquence. It set the key for many similarly patriotic tunes.
”The Fair Penitent” (1703) links itself with the two later ”She-tragedies,”
to borrow a term from one of their epilogues. Its prologue proclaims an innovation from the usual tragic themes of monarchs' cares and lost royalty, because--
”We ne'er can pity what we ne'er can share
Therefore an humbler Theme our Author chose, A melancholy Tale of Private Woes.”
This was the play of which Dr. Johnson said that ”scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the fable and so delightful by the language.” The domestic theme, the female protagonist, and the insistent appeal to pity were all already familiar in the plays of Otway and Southerne. Rowe gave these a larger popularity; and from his Lothario and Calista Richardson received suggestions for Lovelace and Clarissa.
”The Fair Penitent” is also interesting as an adaptation of an Elizabethan play. Rowe borrowed the plot and some hints in the characterization from ”The Fatal Dowry” of Ma.s.singer and Field, but he refas.h.i.+oned the scenes and rewrote the verse in accord with current modes. While ”The Fatal Dowry” is by no means one of the best of Elizabethan tragedies, a comparison of it with Rowe's version of the story emphasizes the losses which tragedy was suffering as it moved farther and farther from its old traditions.[28] ”The Fair Penitent” reduces the host of _dramatis personae_ to eight, the fair penitent, her husband, his rival, his sister, and three friends or confidants, and confines the action to one place and something over twenty-four hours. Much of the action of the early play is omitted or reduced to narrative, including all the opening scenes of the funeral of the husband's father and the origin of his friends.h.i.+p with the father of the heroine. The various attempts of the faithful friend to mend matters are also restricted, and Ma.s.singer's usual trial scene omitted. The result of these structural changes is a loss of verisimilitude. The old play had something of the illusion of a true history; in ”The Fair Penitent” the action, though narrowed, is still far too much for the time supposed, and improbabilities are solved by well-worn theatrical devices. The guilt is discovered by means of a lost letter and an over-heard conversation, and throughout literary and moral proprieties lead to a reduction of action and an increase of talk. This is well ill.u.s.trated in the scenes in which the husband confronts the guilty wife. In ”The Fair Penitent,” the wife and Lothario are having a final meeting, or declamation contest, on the day after the wedding. She upbraids him and incidentally relates the story of her seduction; the husband overhears. In ”The Fatal Dowry,” the husband comes unexpectedly to the house of Aymer where the lovers have an a.s.signation. Aymer is attempting to divert him with music, when a laugh is heard within,--more music, and the lady's laugh again. The husband rushes from the stage and returns driving in the lovers. Further, the restricted action of Rowe's play causes a conventionalizing of the characters. The wife and her lover are shallow persons in Ma.s.singer's play, but they have some plausibility. In Rowe, he becomes the avenging rival; she, an impossible declaimer, now the evil woman of the heroic plays, now the lachrymose moralizer. The moralizing, emphatic in all of Rowe's plays, also adds to the general artificiality. Calista dies after most voluble repentance, and her husband matches her ”groan for groan and tear for tear.”
If the Elizabethan play is confused, long spun out, and not especially edifying, it is yet occasionally intense in its emotional effect and maintains some verisimilitude of life and character. Rowe's artificially ingenious and morally mellifluous play, if edifying, is never thrilling.
Its conventional persons and scenes do not depict life by action; they declaim sentimentally a story that ends in a sermon. In its conventionalization and moralization Rowe ill.u.s.trates the main tendencies of the drama, tendencies derived largely from the French, but it must not be thought that either his play or the majority in the century altogether forsake English models for French. Rowe's declamations and laments, immeasurably inferior in all respects, differ essentially from Racine's in that they fail to disclose psychological moments and emotional crises. They also differ from Racine in their retention of spectacle, incident, and business in accord with English tradition. Like other of his contemporaries and successors, Rowe was p.r.o.ne to copy the Elizabethans at their worst. The most Elizabethan thing in his play, though not found in ”The Fatal Dowry,”
is the setting for the long famous fifth act. ”The Scene is a Room hung with Black; on one side, Lothario's body on a Bier; on the other, a Table with a Scull and other Bones, a Book, and a Lamp on it. Calista is discovered on a Couch in Black, her Hair hanging loose and disordered: After Musick and a Song, she rises and comes forward”--and begins her midnight soliloquy. Perhaps, as Dr. Ward surmises, this business went far to give the act its great effectiveness.
Of the two later ”She-tragedies,” ”Lady Jane Grey” presents the usual love intrigue (fomented here by the discarded rival), the female protagonist, and much Protestant and Whig patriotism, but nothing not paralleled in Rowe's other plays. ”Jane Sh.o.r.e” (1714), one of the most popular plays of the century, represents another treatment of ”the fair penitent,” this time not only in a story used in the Elizabethan drama, but in a style avowedly in imitation of Shakespeare's.
Gloster, who is closely modeled on Shakespeare's Richard III, plays an important part, usually in consultation with his two confidants, Catesby and Radcliffe. Hastings, suspected by Gloster of loyalty to the child prince, becomes enamored of Jane Sh.o.r.e, the former mistress of Edward IV. She, now dedicated to penitence, resists his persuasions, in which she is encouraged by Dumont (her husband in disguise) and his confidant Bellmour. When Hastings resorts to force, Dumont comes to the rescue and disarms him. Alicia, deserted by Hastings, is the jealous and vengeful woman, well known in tragedy; and she denounces Hastings and Jane Sh.o.r.e in a letter which she subst.i.tutes for the pet.i.tion for the release of Dumont, imprisoned through Hastings, that Jane Sh.o.r.e presents to Gloster. Gloster, upon testing Hastings and Jane Sh.o.r.e, is met by frank protestations from both of their loyalty to the prince. Hastings is condemned to death, but has time for a final interview with Alicia, and the exchange of mutual upbraidings, confessions, and forgiveness. Jane Sh.o.r.e is condemned to public penance.
She has a parting interview with Alicia, who has gone mad, and then encounters Dumont, who, after a long discussion with his confidant, has decided to reveal himself and forgive his wife. She dies and he is led away to prison.
”Let those who view this sad Example, know What Fate attends the broken Marriage Vow; And teach their Children in succeeding Times, No common Vengeance waits upon their Crimes, When such severe Repentance could not save From Want, from Shame, and an untimely Grave.”
The play is undoubtedly Rowe's masterpiece, the closing scenes having a natural pathos that he rarely attains elsewhere. The only Shakespearean imitation now discernible is in the character of Gloster, though Rowe may have endeavored in his female characters to supply the naturalness and greatness of emotions which he recognized as characteristic of Shakespeare's men, but curiously thought lacking in his women. Here and elsewhere in language and metaphors Rowe reverts at times to the Elizabethans, as also in the admission of much action and spectacle, in pale horrors, and in the plots of his two best known plays. In the general conception and structure of his plays he follows Otway. Taken as a whole, however, his plays, without comedy, with much heroic love, with few persons, and a restricted action, come nearer to French models than those of any preceding writer of large reputation. Sentimentalized, moralized, conventionalized as the plays are, Rowe may be said to have made a novel departure in tragedy, though one accomplished a century before by Heywood's ”A Woman Killed with Kindness.” Penitence is the sole theme of his two famous plays, and the moral lesson is constantly enforced. The protagonist is a repentant sinner for whom we feel pity because of her punishment, which we nevertheless regard as just.
Rowe's plays, tame as they are, seem to have been too exciting and too rude for the coterie of wits who set the standards of criticism; and before the appearance of ”Jane Sh.o.r.e” an effort was made under the direction of Addison toward still greater refinement and closer accord with French rules. Smith's ”Phaedra and Hippolitus” (1706), an adaptation of Racine, failed on the stage in spite of Addison's approval, but it was later often revived, and it prepared the way for the great success of Ambrose Philips's ”Distrest Mother” (1712), a translation of the ”Andromaque.” This success, promoted by the zealous support of Mr. Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverley, was due in large measure to the story, sentimental and moral in accord with the taste of the day.[29] In these respects ”The Distrest Mother” had the advantage of ”Phaedra,” though both ill.u.s.trate the tendency, growing since Lee and Otway, of making the heroine the protagonist. At all events, the success of Philips's translation was not only great for the moment, but long continued. It remained a popular stock play through the century, gave a favorite part to Mrs. Siddons, and introduced Macready to a London audience.
In the flush of Philips's first success, Addison was emboldened to present his long withheld ”Cato” upon the stage. The political circ.u.mstances made the first night one of the most memorable in the history of the theatre, and gave the play what was then the enormous initial run of a month.
Voltaire praised; and, with the exception of the doughty Dennis, English critics seemed agreed that here at last was an English tragedy in full accord with cla.s.sical precedents and the rules of reason. The play continued a favorite on the stage into the nineteenth century, and even after the retirement of Kemble, who found in Cato one of his great parts.
It would be vain to search for dramatic merits to account for this great success. The play combines love intrigues, as absurd as those usual in contemporary plays, with lucid declamation and aphoristic moralizing.
Aphorism and declamation have, indeed, rarely been absent from the tragedy of any period or nation, but they were especially delightful to the taste of the Augustan era. Addison was only continuing the success of Rowe's ”Tamerlane,” reducing its rant to a more reasonable pattern. The reforming cla.s.sicists, like the theatre-pleasing Rowe, hit on the two themes which pleased the public, the distressed female and the patriotic moralizer.
The success of ”The Distrest Mother” and ”Cato” was the beginning of the long triumph of French influence over English tragedy, yet the victory was never more than half won. There was no capitulation, and the battle continued through the century both among the critics and on the stage.
Rowe's plays maintained at least a feeble English tradition, and Shakespeare's won increasing admiration. If critical opinion was for a time warm in support of French cla.s.sicism, the theatre still clung to Elizabethan practices. Later, when imitations of the French models had established themselves in some degree upon the stage, criticism turned to condemnation of the unities and renewed its laudations of Shakespeare. The lines of battle were often obscured. Between Rowe's refinements of Elizabethan plays and Addison's imitation of the French there is little difference; and later, in spite of the din of critical essays and prefaces, the representatives of ”Shakespeare's school” and of ”correct taste” have a great similarity.
The Elizabethan tradition was directly represented by Elizabethan imitations and revivals, by many new plays that reverted in one way or another to the early methods, by the conservatism of actors and playgoers, and by the tragedies of Shakespeare. As Shakespeare grew in the appreciation of readers and critics, there was a tendency toward the restoration of a real Shakespearean text to the stage. There were, to be sure, innumerable new alterations and adaptations, but these were mostly of little importance on the stage. They dealt with the minor plays, as ”Cymbeline,” ”Coriola.n.u.s,” or ”Timon;” or they were the essays of admiring amateurs with a bent for restringing the rough diamonds of the original, or of playwrights trying to meet the theatrical demands of the moment.
Cibber's ”Richard III” and Tate's ”Lear” held the stage well into the next century, but ”Julius Caesar,” ”Hamlet” (except for Garrick's alteration, 1772-80), and ”Oth.e.l.lo” admitted no alterations. After 1744 Shakespeare's ”Macbeth” took the place of Davenant's, and ”Romeo and Juliet” of Otway's ”Caius Marius.” ”Coriola.n.u.s,” variously revised, altered, and finally combined with Thomson's play of the same name, was toward the end of the century given a great vogue by Kemble; and, indeed, the only one of the tragedies neglected during the century was ”Antony and Cleopatra.”[30]
Dryden's ”All for Love” had usurped its place. As the critical tone toward Shakespeare grew more admiring and less tainted by condescension, so the att.i.tude of actors and audiences grew in heartiness of appreciation. The revival of the romantic comedies marked an important change of taste, though not calling for more than mention here. Year after year his comedies, histories, and tragedies were acted oftener and to larger audiences, and gave opportunity for the best efforts of a long series of great actors and actresses. Garrick's revivals and triumphs were followed by those of Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Now one play became a favorite, now another, under the influence of a great impersonation; but few were neglected, and over the theatre Shakespeare's domination was unquestioned.
Except for Shakespeare the direct influence of the Elizabethans was small.