BOOKS.
THE ELIZABETHANS.*
bn. NEILSON, in his preface to The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists, tells us that his "aim has been twofold : first, to present typical examples of the work of the most important
Shakespeare's contemporaries, so that, read with Shake- speare's own writings, they might afford a now of the development of the English drama through its most brilliant period; secondly, to present, as far as it was possible in one volume, the most distinguished plays of that period, regarded merely from the point of view of their intrinsic value." We do not think it proper to speak of an aim being " twofold " ; the best plays produced in the course of that • single and continuous movement which began with Lyly and ended with Shirley will represent necessarily the whole curve of that movement; nor do we think it proper to de- scribe the period as " brilliant," a term which fits rather :the qualities of Congreve, Sheridan, and Wilde; and it would surely have been easier to have written "examples from the work of Shakespeare's most important contemporaries." We cannot imagine.any excuse for neglecting the simple and natural graces • of style, but we do not wish our protest to obscure the merits • of Dr. Neilson's selection, which could scarcely be bettered. It contains examples from the work of Lyly, Peale, Greene, • Marlowe, Kyd, Chapman, Jenson, Dekker, Marston, Heywood, Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, Messinger, Ford, • and • Shirley; and the footnotes, bibliographies, and short biographical notices make it a most useful volume, both to the . average reader and to the student who wishes to gain a general idea of the Elizabethan drama apart from Shakespeare. We . -Should suggest only that room might have been found for one of Lyly's poetic plays, preferably The Woman in the Moone. As Mr. Bond has said in his edition of Lyly's works : "His lines present the same distinct and isolated character as those -of Gorboduc, the Jocasta of Gascoigne and Kinwelmareli, Hughes's Misfortunes of Arthur and even of Marlowe himself : they seldom run on, but they do exhibit something of the variety Of cadence, some of those deviations from the normal line, the credit of which is generally assigned to Marlowe, who wes-the first to adopt on principle improvements which his predecessors stumbled on occasionally by chance." This passage is quoted by M. Feuillerat in his admirable 'book on John Lyly, to which Dr. Neilson refers, and which is, indeed, indispensable to a study of the Renais- . Hance in England. M. Feuillerat says that Mr. Bond's . judgment is admirablement juste. Thus, if we leave Surrey's • verse and Gorboduc out of consideration as purely experi- :mental, the whole development of the metre lies within the compass of Dr. Neilson's volume, and we see that this de- Velopment is the direct result of the need for dramatic utterance, With Milton the situation is changed, the need for dramatic utterance is gone, while the need for a more various music is enormously increased. It is difficult to express the effect of Miltonic blank verse, with its gradually increasing volume of sound flowing beyond the limits of the line in a magnificent " periodic " music-
" Tal qual di ramo in ramo si raceoglie Per la pinata in sal lito di Chiassi "_ but at the same time something is lost, the elaborate and rhetorical structure of accumulated clauses prevents or retards the immediate impact of the poetic idea upon the mind, and the effect of poetry is very largely due to this immediate impact, continually repeated, and continually delighting us with surprise. The difficulty, which a modern writer of blank verse must attempt to solve, is that of combining to some extent the music of Miltonic blank verse, with the immediate impact, and the dramatic quality of the Elizabethan model, It is a difficulty which the Victorians shirked ; at least we cannot think that either Browning or Tennyson has solved it. Keats, that Elizabethan born out of due time, might have done so, if he had lived, after having exhausted the Miltonic influence in Hyperion. The tendency of modern poetry is to sacrifice the "unity of the line for the sake of obtaining a larger rhythm, whereas it is only by considering what variety is possible- within the limits of the line itself • Tim Chief Etisabethan Dramatists. By William Allan Neilson, Ph.D. London: Cassell and Co. [10s. 0d, not.]
that any real progress can be made ; and, as the variety of the line depends almost entirely upon the pause and stress, in order to understand these subtleties we have to consider the line in its relation to dramatic utterance. Take a line from Lyly's Woman in the Jicone: "Stay not my deoro, for in thy lookes I line."
As this line represents the general pattern followed by Lyly, and obeys the strict rule laid down by Puttenham as to the caesura falling on the fourth syllable, we may take it as a standard. J. A. Symonds in his essay on Blank Verse would refer all irregularities, whether of deficient or redundant lines, to the final test of dramatic utterance, and he applies this test to certain lines of Milton as well as to the Eliza- bethans. The line thus ceases to be composed only of accented and unaecented syllables. The normal line re- mains the standard, the measure to be filled, but it may be filled in a variety of ways by means of the stress and pause. The Elizabethans, seeing immediately that Puttenham's rule as to the caesura was incompatible with dramatic utterance, disregarded it, and broke the unity of the line, drawing the sense out from one line to another, and developing the stress which was a native feature of English verse. But, since the immediate impact is as necessary to dramatic art us to the poetic image, they did not sacrifice the lino so completely as Milton did in the creation of those long and stately evolutions of rhythmical sound. It is still the various music which the single line is capable of expressing that delights them, and it is in isolated and separate lines that they love to express a poetic idea, so that it strikes upon us with dramatic surprise. Moreover we think that it is in the structure of the individual line that the secret of the larger rhythm consists, and it is because we neglect the line that we fail of large rhythmical passages. Pope, who followed Milton closely in many ways, returns to the unity of the line. The rhymed couplet of course accentuates this feature, which, however, is present in Pope's verse quite independently of rhyme.
The Elizabethans, if we leave Shakespeare out of considera-
tion, survive among us and influence us mainly because they handled verse as a fine art, not simply as a meaus, but as an end in itself. Poetry should never be treated as though it were intended to furnish us with a commentary upon life; it is simply a representation of life ; and if we learn from it at all we learn as from an actual experience of the world. Any question as to the use of poetry, in so far as it can be answered at all, is best answered in the words of a great Elizabethan whose occasional exercises in verse do not entitle him to rank as a poet ; it is to suit the shows of things to the desires of the mind. This, however, is the object of all art. Where literature differs from the other fine arts is simply in its material, which is not inert or inarticulate as the material of other arts ; it is a material which, even before the artist touches it, is composed of ellaaa, It is when wo con- sider the Elizabethans as masters of the technique of poetry thit we praise in them their true greatness. When we con- sider them as dramatists we can only praise them with
many reservations. We should not, for instance, say of Tamburlain the Great that it suits the shows of things to the desires of the mind, and we recognize how delightfully appropriate was Shakespeare's implied comment when he places its mighty lines in the mouths of Glendower and Auncient Pistol. Faust as a play consists in a series of ridiculous episodes, only held together by the central character which is realized with consummate skill; but it contains poetry that has never been surpassed., Edward the Second is a model, Every play in Dr. Neilson's volume shows an extraordinarily close observation of humanity: each is filled to the brim with vitality and passion. But if they have the strength they have also the weakness of popular art ; there is never a sufficient economy of means, and the superfluity ends in incoherence. Every- thing is enormous, carnal, luxurious. We are wearied eventually, and take the humour of laughing at the melodrama and bathos intended to excite our terror and pity. But. at every tarn we come upon moments of pure comedy or poignant grief. Webster in The Dachau of Maft shows an individual quality of his own for which no equivalent can be found in Shakespeare, and Jenson in his realistic comedies suggests Molibre rather than Shakespeare, but all the others bring us the gift of tears and mirth.
They learned their comedies and tragedies from their own ex- perience. Marlowe met his death in a sordid brawl; Peele died at the age of thirty after a life of dissipation ; Greene at thirty- two, leaving the following letter to his deserted wife : "Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth and by my soul's rest that thou wilt see this man paid.; for if he and his wife had not euccoured me I had died in the streets." That glance back- ward upon life, and forward to the "soul's rest," needs no comment. It is too full of tears. In spite of the mud and tarnished glories, we look back upon them all echoing the words of Nash ; "If there be any sparke of Adam's paradized perfection yet emberd up in the breastes of mortall men, certainely God bath bestowed that his perfectest image on poets." Then we smile again.
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