"Now comes my lover tripping like the roe
And brings my longings tangled in her hair."
While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course be assigned wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its earliest and most influential purveyors.
The dozen plays just noticed furnish departures from, as well as adaptations of, the Kydian and Marlowean types of tragedy, but they reveal no marked advance in conception or structure. In characterization, however, there is a development in various ways; thus, a hack play like "The True Tragedy" has considerable power in its conception of a conscience-smitten villain, in "Woodstock" there is clear individualization, and in Alice Arden and the Countess of "Edward III" female character becomes lifelike and impressive. Still more salient is the attention paid to style. The Elizabethan theatregoer was used to the spoken and not to the written word, and expected at the theatre to be delighted by verbal display. Dramatic style then had functions which have since been relegated to other arts. It was to be declamative, taking the place of oratory; descriptive, supplying in part the place of scenery; and operatic in its word-play and decorative phrasing, and in its lyric interludes and laments. Moreover, medieval tradition and Senecan models alike enforced the necessity in tragedy of a heightened style; and many dramatists doubtless agreed with Gosson in placing first among dramatic requirements "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets with metaphors, allegories." Still further, along with the excesses resultant from this delight in words, there was manifest a growing mastery of language to represent truthfully situation and character. "Arden" gave crude expression to this reaction toward realism in style; "Woodstock" much more effectively; and colloquial directness was mingled with the artificialities of "The Spanish Tragedy" and the beauties of "Edward II." Henceforth the Elizabethan drama exhibits a conflict between dramatic suitability of language and its declamatory, operatic, or aphoristic decorativeness, promoting on the one hand a realistic presentation of life, and on the other fantastic absurdity and imaginative idealism.
The preceding discussion of Marlowe and his contemporaries must have made it apparent that Shakespeare cannot be treated as outside of the circle, although his plays have for convenience been reserved until now. The young actor and poet learned to meet successfully the demands of the stage through an apprenticeship of hack-work, collaboration, and revision, and progressed in his art by means of adaptation and imitation. He wrote in association and rivalry with his fellow playwrights, responding like them to theatrical fashions, and feeling like them the spur of current artistic impulses. The dramatic activity that we have been discussing bears at every point upon his early work. He shared both the limitations and the incentives, bowed to the commanding influences, and rose to the opportunities for initiative which characterize this period. His dramatic career probably began two or three years later than Marlowe's, and of the plays now to be considered several were probably not written until the years following Marlowe's death. "Titus Andronicus" and the three parts of "Henry VI" belong to the early nineties and should be classed with the tragedies of blood and the chronicle histories of those years. "King John," "Richard III," and "Richard II" came somewhat later and form a part of the more advanced development of chronicle history variously represented by "Edward III," "Woodstock," and Marlowe's "Edward II." "Romeo and Juliet," in its final form perhaps still later, is a great and original masterpiece, but one still very characteristic of the dramatic period of which it is the crown and flower.
How much of "Titus Andronicus" is to be regarded as Shakespeare's remains a debated question, a recent and plausible theory being that it was his revision and combination of two old plays.[14] The play, which was coupled by Jonson with "The Spanish Tragedy" as popular twenty years after its first appearance, is mainly an imitation of Kyd, though the phrasing and rhythm frequently show an advance over that author's work. In situations and various specific passages the imitation is pronounced and the motives of the Kydian type are in the main repeated. The revenge of a father for his son is opposed by villanous intrigue, involves a play within the play, and leads the hero into madness. Kyd's finer conception of a tragic hero hesitating in the face of fearful responsibility is, however, lacking; the combination of the two revenge stories—Tamora for her child murdered by Titus, and Titus in return for the murder of his children—resembles "Locrine"; and the black Aaron is, like the negro-Moor in "Alcazar," one of the many Marlowesque villains. The play surpasses current revenge plays chiefly in its unapproached orgy of mutilation, murder, and horror.
The three parts of "Henry VI"[15] are certainly only in part Shakespeare's and represent the complex form of collaboration not infrequently found in the drama. It is likely that Marlowe and Greene were concerned in the plays, and that Shakespeare's share was mainly in revision. The three plays were at all events very popular and occupy an important place among the early chronicle histories. The contention between the houses of York and Lancaster becomes an epic theme, uniting the three parts, and affords manifold opportunity for battles, defiances, coronations, usurpations, and patriotism. The structure as well as the material is of the chronicle, without any approach to tragic unity or coherence; but the plays do in some ways invade the field of tragedy. Comedy is practically excluded except in the Cade scenes; and the last two parts, as their titles indicate, present a series of "falls of princes"—"the death of the good Duke Humphrey; And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the tragicall end of the proud cardinall of Winchester" and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt." With themes of bloodshed and battle, material at least full of tragical possibilities, and under the schooling of Marlowe, Shakespeare served his apprenticeship for historical tragedy.
In "King John" Shakespeare still followed chronicle history methods without any clear advance toward tragedy. He was engaged in rewriting the old "Troublesome Reign," and he followed its plot with great closeness, scene after scene with entrances and exits being the same in both plays. But here his indebtedness practically stops. He seems to have made out a careful scenario, following the old play with only such alterations and omissions as were necessary for the condensation of its two parts into a single play, and then to have thrown aside the old text and almost forgotten it. His improvements consequently coincide with the developments which we have found common in the tragedies of the period in that they concern characterization and style. Faulconbridge and Constance become incomparably more vital and impressive than in the old play and win our interest away from the battles and arguments of the rapid scenes. The style, almost never reminiscent of the early play, is mainly rhetorical, though always vigorous and usually surpassing the models which it frequently recalls. It often displays the conflict between the ornamental and naturalistic tendencies; as, for example, when Arthur, facing the murderer, quibbles for ten lines over the red-hot iron which is to put out his eyes, and then, as the attendants enter, forgets his rhetoric in words whose sincerity and simplicity have touched every reader.
"Richard III" and "Richard II," though possibly earlier than "King John," show the imitator and adapter rather than the reviser, and represent independent efforts to give tragic unity to the material of the English chronicles. While all the tragedies and histories so far considered have long since proved unfitted for the stage, "Richard III" has maintained its first popularity and continued to attract the greatest actors and to win the liking of the patrons of the theatre of each generation. Yet, though it has for three centuries exercised a profound impression on the popular imagination, it shows in the opinion of all critics a great indebtedness to Marlowe, and is so evidently imitative of current models that critics writing from such different points of view as Mr. Fleay and James Russell Lowell have been led to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. External and internal evidence both contradict such doubts emphatically, but the close relationship of the play to "Henry VI" makes it improbable that Shakespeare turned to the theme solely of his own initiative. "Richard III" is the fourth play of a tetralogy manifestly planned before the earlier members were completed. Margaret appears in all four plays; the character of Shakespeare's Richard is distinctly outlined in Part III; and it was evidently meant to end the contention of York and Lancaster with the triumph of the Tudor dynasty, and the long series of falls of princes with the tragedy of the villanous Gloster. The chronicle of Richard's reign had indeed been given a tragic unity in the history by Sir Thomas More and in a long saga of chronicle and literature which had developed still further the conception of this masterful and dreadful villain. The suitability of this material to current forms of tragedy was obvious. Dr. Legge had found in this saga the material for a Senecan play; the unknown author of "The True Tragedy" had discovered there a ready-made tragedy of blood and revenge; and there are indications of non-extant plays on the same theme. For either Marlowe or for Shakespeare working with him on the history of the struggle between York and Lancaster, the opportunity for a tragedy with a central hero of the type of Tamburlaine, Faustus, or Barabas must have been apparent.
Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy" supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in the play.[16] In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe, making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a chorus,—curses, laments, and exultations. Moreover, with a tact unique at that time and not displayed by him in "Titus Andronicus," he perceived that the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.
An abundance of theatrical effects, already familiar on the stage, is indeed supplied. The murder of Clarence, with its prolonged dialogue between the murderers, the victims led away to execution, the orations before the battle, the funeral cortège, the battle scenes, the laments and curses, now multiplied and expanded beyond the verge of absurdity, all reflect current stage practices. The structure, still over-dependent on the chronicle sources, indulges after the current fashion in the retention and prolongation of undramatic material: such as the feeble forebodings of the citizens (ii, 3), the prolongation of Hastings's warning of death (iii, 2), and the useless soliloquy of the scrivener (iii, 6). Yet, in comparison with contemporary plays, there is great superiority both in dramatic construction and theatrical effectiveness. The main action progresses with rapidity and coherence to the moment of Richard's reversal of fortune (iv, 4), thirteen years being condensed into a few days; and the interest from this climax to the catastrophe is maintained by startling melodramatic effects. But the great dramatic merit of the play lies in the use of contrast, surprise, and particularly of dramatic irony in the separate scenes and in their masterly integration to display the character of Richard himself.