DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLISH DRAMA.* MERE are critics who still repeat
with an air of happy certitude the. old, false equation, Morality Play + Senecan Tragedy-r---Elizabethan Drama. Even such long and general equations as Nature+Percy Ballads-I-Elizabethan Poetry French Revolution—Romantic Revival are inaccurate; what stimulative force they once held has wasted out of them. A captious philosopher may still object to all definition and deny the relevance of illustration. Allow him. his Pyrrhonism, and let him keep silence. Most men will desire a less barren mode of thought : since no one thing can ever be completely described in terms of others, and since, indeed, the -mind of man is sa persuasible, so ready to leap gaps in reasoning, that no inch by inch directions are needed; it is enough for most purposes if a generalization covers a major or some important part of the subject, and if, in the pragmatic phrase, it works. When we would trace the influ- ences which determine the literature of a period, though we may recognize that exposition can do no more than overlap, can never include or coincide,- by taking a survey from points which give the widest view of our terrain and by marking down what in any direction we see, we shall enable those who • (1) The Beginnings of the--English Secular anti Bomantic nranut By Arthur W. Reed. - (2) Ii jden as an Adapter of Shakespeare. By Allardyce Nicoll. The Shakeepeare Association. London: Humphrey Milford. Ps. net each.]
are in sympathy with us to piece our observations into a serviceable whole and to re-create in part the atmosphere and " abrupt self " of the time. It should be obvious that Elizabethan drama has more in common with Elizabethan narrative, or, for that matter, with Elizabethan homily, than with any more formal analogue, any puppet-show tir miracle play of another age. The mould has an importance, but the material has more. We shall best understand a literature by examining the conditions of intellectual activity under which it was produced ; and in especial • we must look to those individually remarkable men who originated or nourished the habits of mind of their contemporaries and successors.
In studying the progeniture of English romantic drama,1 Mr. Reed uses this method of approach. He has not far to seek, of course, for the formative intellectual condition ; clearly it is the renaissance, " the spirit of liberation, romance, and variety " ; - only one problem is left—why did the re- naissance come to fruition so late in drama ? In searching for the man, Mr. Reed has found a solution to this problem, too. Here is the chain of evidence. Among Tudor dramatists three of the most notable were Henry Medwall, John Rastell, and John Heywood. Now, this Medwall was chaplain to Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and was a member of his household. So, for a time, was Sir Thomas More. When plays were performed in Morton's house, as we learn from William Roper, Sir Thomas More would " sodenly sometymes slip in among the players, and never studyinge for the matter, make a parte of his own there presently among them, which made the lookers on more sport than all the players beside." John Rastell married More's sister, Elizabeth ; his son William, More's nephew, is well known as a publisher of plays and the editor of More's English works ; his daughter Joaii, More's niece, married the last and greatest of the three • dramatists, John Heywood. Heywood was a disciple of More ; it was More who introduced him to Court ; they were the closest friends, we are told, fanziliarissimi. From this evidence we can deduce that, as in so many other arts and sciences, so, too, in English drama, the liberal temper, the fresh, vigorous learning, and the amiable spirit of Sir Thomas More have left their mark and influence. Mr. Reed would go further. In the list given by Pitseus of More's works is a volume of Conmedim Juveniles. He argues upon slight grounds that among these comedies may be two extant plays of disputed authorship usually ascribed to Heywood, The Pardoner and the Friar, and Johan and Tib. To disagree with him in this, an inessential to the main thesis, will not affect our gratitude to him for showing to whom our early drama owes most.
But the solution of the problem ? The divorce of Henry VIII. It was this question that severed the friend- ship of John Rastell and Sir Thomas More. For his adhesion to the old order More was executed in 1535: Rastell, for his part, proved too zealous a reformer ; he urged that tithes should be abolished and the clergy work for their living, was thrown into prison, and there died. It was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the distractions of a religious feud were ended, and the development of drama could reach its highest point.
In another pamphlet for the Shakespeare Association2 Mr. Nicoll considers some few, and catalogues all, of the Restora- tion redactions of Shakespeare's plays. The attitude in which one age regards another, one writer another, illuminates them both. Coleridge, in quoting Herbert's surest poem, omits the concluding and most forcible stanza :— "Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives ; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives."
Mr. de la Mare, reviewing Mr. Hardy's poems, quotes passages that might have come from his own. Where Shakespeare's Macbeth says
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand ? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red,"
Davenant makes him say— "Can the Sea afford
Water enough to wash away the Stains ? No, they would rather add a Tincture to The sea, and turn the Green into a Red."
It is folly to count adaptations of Shakespeare a blasphemy- or enormity,- though certainly it is ridiculous to see Shadwell giving his revision of Timon of Athens the title Timon of Athens, the Man Hater, Made into a Play. For all their faults the Restoration dramatists—and in particular Dryden —made a careful study of their art ; in stage-effectiveness and coherence of plot they had advanced beyond the Elizabethans. We can observe from their adaptations, among their vanities, their tawdriness and mock-classicism, their heroic posturings and overt libertinism, the exercise of genuine critical faculties and examples of quite judicious alteration. But more than this. The State of Innocence is no travesty of Paradise Lost, but an excellent original poem in nervous and flexible verse. All for Love has more sustained poetry than any acting play later than Beaumont and Fletcher. Even in Dryden's other adaptations, The Tempest and Troilus and Cressida, we may look for and find Dryden himself. No work could be much better justified.
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