THE EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA UP TO SHAKESPEARE.
The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare. By Charles William Wallace. (Berlin : Georg Reimer.)—The investi- gation of the early history of the English drama has by no means been accomplished. Dr. Wallace, whose Shakespearean discoveries excited such interest lately, is especially diligent in the search for new records, which must be the basis of any increase in our knowledge of the progress of dramatic evolu- tion. This new volume (which is published by the German Shakespeare-Gesellschaft) is primarily a history of the "children companies" and their successors down to the year 1597. It also gives an incidental account of the first Blackfriars Theatre, which is to be distinguished from Shakespeare's theatre of the same name. The Chapel Royal and its children were apparently first used for dramatic purposes some time in the latter half of the fifteenth century; and from this date onward Dr. Wallace traces the development of the drama under the auspices of the various Masters of the Chapel. The Blackfriars Theatre was founded as a private theatre in connexion with one of the "children companies" in 1576, and for the next twelve years played a more important part in dramatic evolution than the contemporary public theatres. The main inference which Dr. Wallace deduces from the great mass of new material which he now prints for the first time is that the direct ancestor of the Elizabethan drama was the court theatre. Instead of tracing comedy in the orthodox way through Heywood to the Moralities, he maintains that it originated in the experiments of William Cornish, one of the earliest Masters of the Chapel. While it is permissible to doubt whether Dr. Wallace succeeds in establishing this hypothesis, all students of the early drama will feel grateful to him for his careful presentation of a quantity of fresh and interesting material.
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