His plays, however, were intended for the public stage, and are by no means to be classed with closet dramas like Daniel's "Philotas," the tragedies of Fulke Greville and Alexander, or the earlier translations of Kyd and the Countess of Pembroke. Jonson started with current popular forms, with "Julius Cæsar" rather than the Senecan models for a basis. His purpose was to rebuild these, not without some recognition of current dramatic method, but with his main reliance upon classical rules. His cardinal error was his acceptance of the current classical theory of tragedy, the belief that the essential difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance of the three unities and similar proprieties. As he was forced to confess, the ambitious careers of Sejanus and Catiline and the style of action demanded by the audiences of the day did not lend themselves easily to such limitations. But he persevered in his doughty fashion. If in "Sejanus" he gave up the unity of time, he maintained the unity of place; if he retained the comic scenes of the courtesan, he avoided any grotesque mixture of the comic and tragic; he omitted battles, jigs, and spectacles, and secured a coherent development of the main action. In "Catiline," which he boldly proclaimed a "dramatic poem," he adopted the Senecan technic of an introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. But though the action be one, perfect and entire, according to Jonson's understanding of those terms, he never learned Shakespeare's art of focusing events about a spiritual conflict.
Yet in characterization Jonson's interest, like that of his contemporaries, largely centres. Catiline, Cicero, Sejanus, and Tiberius are thoughtfully conceived and faithfully represented. The representation, indeed, is that of exposition, each scene illustrating and emphasizing some trait without securing much illusion of life. The style, especially in the long speeches, is too often rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic power. Yet it is masterly in its way, careful and competent to its purposes, and free from obscurity or over-richness. His plays mark another failure to turn popular tragedy back into the classical mould. They contributed, perhaps, to a greater regularity of action on the part of his contemporaries and to a more serious consideration of the functions of drama, but the scholarly student of history failed to make it live, the author of "Bartholomew Fair" did not find his best opportunity in the acceptance of classicist theory.
Chapman's tragedies attempted a field hitherto untried except in Marlowe's "Massacre," that of contemporary French history. While treating historical events with freedom of invention, he dealt with real persons and careers familiar to his audience. In the long-popular tragedy of "The Death of Bussy D'Ambois" (1607, acted 1600-1604) he turned to the court of Henry III and centred a story of treasonable ambition, conspiracy, and adultery about the interesting personality of the insolent and indomitable D'Ambois. After the fashion of Kyd and Marston, he followed "The Death" with a "Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois," which adopted the established technic of the revenge plays, with less alteration than might have been expected after Shakespeare's transformation in "Hamlet." The avenger, Clermont, is a "Senecal man," and his sententious and rhetorical philosophizing was doubtless incited by "Hamlet," though it followed a long-established precedent. The "Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron" (two parts, 1608, acted 1607) dealt with important affairs in the reign of Henry IV that were still fresh in the memory of the audience, Biron having been executed in 1602. In the original form of the play, in fact, Queen Elizabeth was represented, and the French queen boxed the ears of her husband's mistress, but the protest of the French ambassador made a revision necessary.
The new material of these plays did not lead Chapman to attempt any variations in form from the current drama, nor did it result in any advance in method; his fondness for long speeches and narrations resulting rather in a treatment more epical and less dramatic than is found in any of his contemporaries. Nor did his study of contemporary memoirs for his sources and his interest in political philosophy result in any advance in reality or vividness of characterization, though here he is often very felicitous, as in his portrait of Henry IV, and though his arrogant protagonists are interesting and original variations of the Marlowean tragic hero, not without successors in the later drama. But for Chapman, tragedy was in the main, as for the writers whom Gosson derided, an opportunity "to show the majesty of his pen in tragical speeches." The abundance, ingenuity, and beauty of his figurative language are simply amazing. Every person, deed, or sentiment calls for illustration and lets loose a flood of similes. Finished verse, a highly picturesque sense of the value of words, a remarkable union of pregnant sententiousness with vividness of description, have made his plays the delight of many a reader, though perhaps most of his admirers have experienced a fatigue that found satisfaction in Dryden's perverse criticism, "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words, repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles." For, though the thought is by no means dwarfish, the dress is often too big for it. We are wearied by the constant effort to write up to the tragic opportunity for a heightened and sententious eloquence. In this respect, Chapman's style partakes of the faults of his day. It has not the spontaneity and ease of Marlowe, Peele, and "Romeo and Juliet"; it is difficult, involved, pretentious, and self-conscious, yet its splendors remain. Its abundance of resource, its imaginative condensation, its suggestive power again and again compel comparison with Shakespeare himself.
Revenge directed by a ghost found favor with both Jonson and Chapman, but they were preceded in the use of this popular motive by John Marston. In 1598, at the age of twenty-three, he made something of a sensation by his satires and immediately proceeded to carry his censoriousness of human frailties into the drama. His earliest play, "Antonio and Mellida" (two parts, 1602, acted 1599-1600), reveals in Part I the still dominant influence of romantic comedy, despite its tragic trend; but Part II, "Antonio's Revenge," is a tragedy of the Kydian type. The play was followed by a number of comedies, all outspoken in satire of contemporary manners and in the exposure of social immorality. Several dealt with tragic material, and one, "The Malcontent," is a notable combination of a tragedy of blood and a satirical comedy. Its protagonist is of a type represented in the other comedies and not without influence on contemporary dramatists. Marston's malcontents are men of virtue and honor "who hate not man but man's lewd qualities"; in disfavor and out of joint with the world; given to melancholy and a showy pessimism that finds fitting expression only in images of filth and putrefaction. His tragedy "Sophonisba" (1606), which he seems to have deemed the most important of his plays, treats history with great freedom, and unites melodramatic horrors with his usual unflinching fondness for rankness of thought and imagery. The horrible realism of the Erichtho scenes comes in strange contrast with the songs, dances, and musical accompaniment suited to a performance by the child actors for whom all of Marston's plays were written.
"Antonio's Revenge" is the earliest representative in this period of the Kydian type of revenge tragedy. The satirical passages in "A Warning for Fair Women" indicate the popularity of ghosts and revenge, and there are many evidences of the continued vogue of "The Spanish Tragedy" from 1597 to 1602. Marston's play was evidently modeled on "The Spanish Tragedy," and probably still more directly on the Kydian "Hamlet." The story is the revenge of a son for a father murdered by a villanous duke who seeks to wed the hero's mother; the revenge is directed by the ghost of the father; the hero is driven to hesitation, irresolution, and the verge of madness; he pretends to be a fool; intrigue and trickery are indulged in by both hero and villain, and the revenge is accomplished with an abundance of bloodshed. There is a minor story of revenge, enforcing the main situation as does the Laertes story in "Hamlet" and the scene with the Senex in "The Spanish Tragedy"; and, doubtless as in the early "Hamlet," the passion of the murderer for the widow of his victim now becomes an important motive in the action. Moreover, the play abounds in psychological introspection and meditative philosophy set forth for the most part through the soliloquies of the hero.
The indebtedness to the earlier revenge plays extends to details of the stage presentation. Revenge is accomplished much as in "The Spanish Tragedy," though by means of a masque instead of a play, and without the death of the hero. From similar scenes in the old "Hamlet" were probably derived the appearance of the ghost at midnight, the cry "Antonio, revenge!" and the second appearance of the ghost to the hero and his mother. The dumb show exhibiting the wooing of Maria, the use of the churchyard, the banquets, carousals, funerals, exhibition of the dead bodies, and the oaths of the conspirators were perhaps already conventional accompaniments of a revenge play. "Antonio's Revenge," however, is not wanting in inventiveness; its abundant horrors and its melodramatically ingenious stage effects were probably recognized as an advance upon the old favorites, and they excited the emulation of succeeding dramatists.
The hero, too, is of the Kydian type. Like both Hieronimo and Hamlet, he is a scholar, interested in philosophy and also in theatrical performances. Like them he is distinguished by a tendency to reflection, and struggles in solitary meditation at each crisis in his career. Like them he is driven to the verge of madness by the pressure of his heavy responsibility and by his awakened sense of evil in the universe. Though he does not seek further proof, yet, like Hamlet after the revelations of the play, he becomes frantic and irresolute, neglects an opportunity to kill the duke, and wastes his vengeance upon an innocent child. Like Hieronimo and Hamlet, he is tricky, wild, and ranting. With all his overdrawn passion, however, his mental struggle occasionally attains intellectual depth and tragic power. As he tells us, it was "the stings of anguish," "the bruising stroke of chance" which made him run mad "as one confounded in a maze of mischief."
Several years, then, before Shakespeare's "Hamlet," we have a play dealing with the old story of a revenge of a son for a father, following closely the methods introduced by Kyd, appealing to a taste that delighted in extravagant violence and melodramatic sensationalism, but also striving to simulate profundity of thought and a passionate sense of evil. It is difficult to-day to take Marston seriously. His plays have little merit, while his bombastic sententiousness gives an air of insincerity to everything that he wrote; yet a serious purpose and a considerable influence on later drama cannot be denied to his efforts in tragedy. Like so many others, he deserves to be remembered for what he attempted rather than for what he did. Absurd though "Antonio's Revenge" be as an artistic achievement, it is historically of importance as indicating an ambitious attempt to give poetical expression to the spiritual conflict of a mind brought to face dreadful evil. The prologue that he addressed to his London audience testifies sufficiently to his serious and ambitious intentions, and to the clear separation of tragedy from other forms of drama, which he and other poets were trying to force upon the theatre.
"Therefore we proclaim,
If any spirit breathes within this round
Uncapable of weighty passion,
(As from his birth being hugged in the arms
And nuzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness,)
Who winks and shuts his apprehension up
From common sense of what men were, and are;
Who would not know what men must be: let such
Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;
We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,
Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart,
Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;
If there be any blood, whose heat is choked
And stifled with true sense of misery:
If aught of these strains fill this consort up,
They arrive most welcome."