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literary side. There is one difficulty the editor has been spared: he has not been forced to consider the advisability of omitting any play because of its immoral tendency. Of all the plays taken into consideration, but one is inclined to be laudatory of evil; and that one was not selected, for other reasons. Often these plays are extremely coarse; often they are offensive to modern taste; but they are not immoral. One or two of them operate on a sort of moral dunghill; but invariably those who choose this class of subject are moralists whose aim is to show the enormity of that which they expose to view. In the case of others, the coarseness is a mere coarseness of expression, characteristic of the time, and not calculated to injure anyone's morals, however it may offend the ear.

The Reading of Elizabethan Verse

A word may be said in regard to the reading of Elizabethan dramatic verse. It is astonishing the number of Shakespeare-lovers who destroy the music of his verse by reducing it to a dull iambic regularity. They would read

and

To be or not to be: that is the question

'Tis good. Go to the gáte: somebody knócks,

not understanding the transference of the stress from "is" to "that," from "to" to "go." or from "body" to the preceding syllable. Sometimes, in the effort to make a line strictly pentametrical, they ruin the cadence, as when they treat

Is this a dagger that I see before me?

as a regular five-foot iambic, with a stress on the word "that" for the third foot. And, if they can go thus astray with a normal and orthodox versifier like Shakespeare, what chance is there of their understanding the erratic and heretical methods of versification deliberately adopted by Middleton and Fletcher and occasionally by Webster? The verse of these men has to be very carefully studied. It is not slipshod or unmetrical or unmusical, as those who have not understood its principles have sometimes declared it to be; and indeed, without such understanding, it may well be thus regarded; but to those who have grasped the principles it is far from being careless or unmetrical, or even unmusical. These men were remarkable innovators, and they are deserving of study from the point of view of verse-technique as well as from the purely dramatic. It is certain that they cannot otherwise be measured up to their full height. Their verse is not to be judged

by Shakespearean standards any more than Shakespearean verse is to be judged by the standards of Kyd.

Characteristics of Elizabethan Drama

A few words must be said of the nature of the drama of the Elizabethan age. It is predominantly romantic in its tragedy; and no one will appreciate it fully unless he is able to regard it from the romantic viewpoint. That is where the late William Archer, great critic as he was of modern drama, failed so utterly: he wished to judge it by modern standards. It is not to be so judged: to attempt to do so is as absurd as it would be to estimate the work of Æschylus and Sophocles by the measure of conformity to the most approved methods of modern playwrights. The technique of the Elizabethan drama is very different from that of to-day; but we must accept its conventions, and not look at them askance because they do not happen to be our conventions. Ibsen and Strindberg showed that asides might be dispensed with; the Elizabethans had not discovered that truth; but anyone who scorns them therefor must set a small technical matter above the great dramatic qualities in which they were such mighty masters.

Their tragedies often repel because of their bloodiness. It is natural that they should do so. Our modern dramatists do better: they create tragedy in which no blood is shed, but in which souls are rent and tortured to the uttermost, and not even given at the finish the sweet relief of death. The Elizabethan tragedy, bloody as it was, was less cruel than the tragedy of the greatest modern masters. Its greatest and most unpardonable fault is its occasional proneness to an indulgence in physical horrors, Shakespeare, Dekker, Middleton, Marston, Tourneur, Kyd, being among the practitioners of this ignoble art; but, after all, the only real masterpieces thus defaced are "Lear" and "The Revenger's Tragedy."

The Elizabethans did not, in the present writer's opinion, shine so much in comedy as in tragedy. In the main their comedy is either romantic-the comedy of intrigue or satiric-the comedy of manners. In neither species are we often moved to real mirth. The comedies of manners are, most of them, dull; the comedies of intrigue are more interesting; but, as they base their being upon incident rather than upon character, they cannot be highly rated. The humor in Elizabethan comedy too frequently consists of crude practical joking; and the wit is generally only a cruel torturing of inoffending words, introduced not seldom at most inopportune moments, and protracted wearisomely, Shakespeare being by far the worst offender.

It may be worth while to remark that 22 of the 45 plays represented here are tragedies, including two specimens of realistic, domestic tragedy, three of historical tragedy, and two-"Faustus" and "A Woman Killed with Kindness" of tragedies without blood, most of the remainder being what we may describe as tragedies of the abattoirs. Of the fourteen comedies, five are of the romantic order, two of the fanciful; and the wit comedy, the burlesque, the comedy of manners, the comedy of character, the realistic comedy, the satire, and the didactic comedy each have a representative. Of the nine remaining plays, six are tragicomedies, one of them being distinguished from the rest by being of a satirical character, one is a lyrical drama, one is a chronicle play with a strong element of farcical comedy, and one ("A New Way to Pay Old Debts") is of that indeterminate, intermediate order that is sometimes known specifically as "drama." Had what the editor regards as the best 45 been given, there would have been representatives also of the comedy of intrigue and the serio-comedy; but, to balance that, there would have been no representatives of the wit comedy or the didactic comedy.

The Qualities of the Various Dramatists

It may be of value to the student to state in a few words the claim each of the dramatists whose work is contained here has upon our consideration. Though those idolaters of Shakespeare who believe him to have been supreme in every branch and feature of his art may enter a strenuous denial, it is yet a fact that almost every one of his great contemporaries and followers had at least some one quality in which he was pre-eminent. The greatness of Shakespeare consists in his supremacy in a combination of some of the very greatest qualities, while there are very few qualities in which he does not display excellence sufficient to enable him to make at least a bold bid for first place. In listing these dramatists here, they are taken in the probable chronological order of their engagement in dramatic writing, the date of probable entry into the field following the name, and the reasons for the date being given in the notes upon the various dramatists.

Lyly (1579) was the wittiest of all, the wit being enshrined in a rich brocade of utterly incredible dialogue.

Peele (1581), to judge him only by his best play (the only one worthy of much consideration), was really a simple-minded being, with a unique power of representing naïvely the childlike mentality of the folk-story. No one but he could have made “The Old Wives' Tale” a thing of such simple delight; all his rivals would have tried to make much more of it, and have failed.

Kyd (1582) not only had a constructive gift that put him ahead of all his immediate contemporaries, but also, if he may be credited with the whole of the earliest extant version of "The Spanish Tragedy," had as great a gift of tragic irony as any of the entire period, with the exception of the author of "The Revenger's Tragedy." Than he no one was a greater master of the technique of the theatre.

Greene (1584) had a rare faculty for the drawing of pure, sweet women. He was also one of the very finest of Elizabethan lyrists; but this quality is not displayed in his dramas.

Marlowe (1587) was preceded by Peele and Kyd in the writing of blank verse in dramatic work; but he was not merely the first of the professional playwrights to write an entire drama in such a medium; he was also the first to give it the peculiar quality that became the standard. Even more remarkable perhaps was the unparalleled scope of his imagination; and there was none of his fellows or successors who had such a faculty for the rendering of the agony of a human soul at the last gasp of despair.

Shakespeare (1588) was the supreme master in the scope of knowledge of human nature, in the sense of proportion, in sanity of imagination, in the ability to make words express whatever he might want them to express, in the compression of vast thought into little space, in depth, if not breadth, of humor, in the power to create sympathy, in the creation of individual character.

Drayton (?1589), if we may assume "The Merry Devil of Edmonton" to be his, had no inconsiderable power of comic portraiture, and a delicacy of touch in dealing with a combination of romance and realism for which no parallel is to be found among his fellows.

Chapman (1589) is the most dignified, the most ethical, the most epical, and the most didactic of all. He has occasional bursts of poetry unequalled out of Shakespeare, and in philosophy too he is Shakespeare's only rival; but his great qualities are set off by great defects. At times he displays a richly humorous faculty.

Porter (1589) is the most truly English of all the dramatists; his quality as a playwright matches his language, and his humor also is distinctively English. The proverb-monger in his only extant play is hardly to be surpassed in his extraordinary fluency.

Heywood (?1591) is another very English writer, not so much in his language as in his character and outlook. There was no other Elizabethan writer for the stage who had so fine a conception of what constituted a gentleman. One can scarcely help feeling a sympathy with Heywood and his characters, even though one is rarely greatly impressed by his workmanship and never by his genius.

Dekker (?1593) is the most lovable, the most tender, the most

sympathetic of all, presenting us with some of the truest, sweetest, and tenderest poetry, embedded in a mass of rubbish. Scarcely anyone has a more remarkable power of achieving loveliness in the simplest forms of expression, and no one else, not even Heywood, has such a faculty for the sympathetic presentation of the life of his time. When at his best, he is capable of rising to a height of sympathetic portraiture in which he is unequalled.

Jonson (?1595) stands absolutely without rival in his satiric gift. His three greatest plays are, in reality, all satires. In play-architecture too he stands alone; and his plays are more truly dramas of ideas than those of any other of the era. No one else could contrive and handle a plot so well as he; and no one else possessed so fine a gift of genuine humor or knew better how to subdue it to an underlying satiric idea. He has also given us the finest picture of Jacobean England which we

possess.

Middleton (1596) was the Hogarth of his time; but his greatness was not in realistic comedy, but in romantic tragedy. He was perhaps the most versatile of all the dramatists, and, in addition, he was the creator of a unique medium for the expression of his dramatic ideas, and had a mastery of words surpassed by Shakespeare alone. He was a fine psychologist, and a creator of tragic character second only to the author of "Othello." He knew the business of playmaking thoroughly. Marston (1599) had a remarkable gift of bitter denunciation, combined uniquely with a true appreciation of the comic side of human nature. He was capable of great work in tragedy, but was not capable of sustaining it. His dialogue is wonderfully incisive.

Webster (1602) is known principally for his melodramatic qualities; but he is much more than a melodramatist. He is one of the finest psychologists of the period, with an extraordinary gift for lighting up the dark places of the soul, a marvellous gift of expression, and a power of writing biting repartee that no other Elizabethan can equal.

Rowley (1602) is a writer of strong, vigorous, pointed prose; but his verse leaves much to be desired. By far his best work is the result of collaboration.

Fletcher (1603) is the most vivacious of all the great dramatists in the language, a scene-spinner unequalled. He has to be credited with the invention of a highly original verse-form, the aim of which is to give naturalness to dramatic dialogue that is not in the natural medium, prose. He occasionally puts forth a line more lyrical than any achieved by any of his contemporaries and rivals. His comic inventiveness is extraordinary, and he has the very keenest sense of the ludicrous.

Tourneur (1604) is not easy to deal with, because of the doubt as to his authorship of "The Revenger's Tragedy." If it be his, he must

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