Decadence is more manifest in the restriction and conventionalizing of the material of tragedy. The love for the impossible, the craving for stupendous emotions and supernormal passions had given place to theatrical court intrigues. The daring attempts of Marlowe and Shakespeare to depict the great round of the emotions had given way to a continual harping on illicit love. Dramatists were no longer striving to give beautiful expression to the terrible, heroic, or pitiable in story, but seeking to construct acting plays out of stock situations and stock characters. There was a lack of fresh impulse. French romance and Spanish drama seem to have encouraged no marked innovations, and French classicism was only just making itself heard at the closing of the theatres. A man of original genius like Ford staggered under the recognition of the greatness of earlier achievement and turned to the abnormalities and excesses of passion for his themes. Shirley, more typical of the period, devoted talents of a high order to repeating familiar models.
Yet there was progress as well as stagnation. Dramatists had shaken off the medieval adherence to sources and learned to invent, though their invention unhappily followed current theatrical fashions rather than fresh creative impulses. The art of making plays had advanced, not as Shakespeare had pointed the way, by making construction dependent upon character, but as Beaumont and Fletcher had fashioned, by making character subordinate to a varied and rapid action. There is more complication, more coherence in plot, more ingenuity in situation, and a far greater use of surprise than in the early plays, but no great gain in consistent motivation. Yet many of the early absurdities have disappeared; and in discovering what is to be acted and what not, in the quick excitement of the spectator's interest, and in the careful integration of the various lines of action, the dramaturgy is, in comparison with the period before Shakespeare, noticeably modern.
The differences which distinguish the different periods do not conceal the essential unity of the entire development from 1562 to 1642. The changes that take place in the prevailing types are of degree and not of kind. Nearly all the tragedies might be called tragedies of blood, for nearly all deal with crime and bloodshed. A narrower division like that of the tragedy of revenge keeps its integrity from Kyd onward, the hesitation motive finding transformation in "Hamlet," the union of revenge, intrigue, and madness finding a different development in Webster and others, and remaining until the end the most prevalent type of tragedy. A majority of Elizabethan plays are romantic rather than classical or realistic, though the romance is of many kinds and drawn from many widely different sources, as Boccaccio, D'Urfé, or Lope de Vega. For a time it is mainly confined to romantic comedy, but it soon enters into tragedy and tragicomedy. In tragedy it plays a fitful part, but in tragicomedy it conquers the theatres. The course of tragedy from its inception in an amalgamation of medieval and classical elements, through its establishment by Marlowe, its development of types and methods, the transformation of these by Shakespeare into a dramatic form that changed and enlarged the meaning of tragedy for the centuries since then, the further development of types and methods under the innovations of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the splendid contribution that tragedy still received from Webster, Middleton, Ford, and Massinger,—all this was comprised within a single century; all that was most significant, within a single lifetime.
Tragedy throughout this development remained popular. Less than the ballad but more than any other form of literature prior to the pamphlet, novel, and newspaper, the drama was the result of popular taste, thought, and desire. Tragedy early shook off the bonds of classical tradition, and it never ceased to aim first at pleasing the audiences. Shakespeare as well as Dekker or Shirley was their servant. Even in the later days when increasing Puritanism alienated a large portion of the public from the theatres, literary standards failed to overthrow the sovereignty of the people, though, as the dramatists paid allegiance to a restricted and less representative audience, the drama waned. Without a guiding criticism, without any reliance on authority or tradition, appealing first to the public theatre and only secondly to court or culture or posterity, tragedy at its best was not distinguished by impeccability of literary art. It lacked simplicity of theme and precision of treatment; it was fantastic in design and language. It lacked refinement; it was vulgar in diction and scene; it was revolting in its horrors and bloodshed. It lacked reserve and definiteness of literary purpose; it was sensational, incongruous, or naïve in its address to the intelligence. But from the same conditions that gave rise to its faults and excesses came its excellences. A delight in verbal felicity, a welcome for diverse excitement, and a craving for story on the part of the public made possible the wealth of incident and character, the varied emotional appeal, and the fervid poetry of Elizabethan tragedy. It was free to avail itself of every resource of poet or playwright in order to present human passion of all kinds, human individuals of many varieties. Its virtues as well as its faults are summed up in Shakespeare. After his death it developed in dramatic dexterity rather than in the comprehensiveness of its mirror of life. Yet, without Shakespeare, the fabrics of its vision comprise
"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself."
Even without him, the legacy of Elizabethan tragedy is an unfaded pageant of the greatness and the pain, the passion and the poetry of our little life.
NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ward, Fleay, Schelling, and the bibliographies in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch continue to be the best guides. Dyce's admirable edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (11 vols., 1843-46) has long been the standard, but two new complete editions of their works are now in progress, one under the general editorship of A. H. Bullen (London, 1904-), the other edited by A. Glover and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905-). The discussion in this chapter is in part based on my Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare (1901) and my edition of The Maid's Tragedy and Philaster in the Belles-Lettres Series (Boston, 1906). I must refer to the latter for a full bibliography of both texts and critical works. Miss Hatcher's John Fletcher (Chicago, 1905) should be added. Webster has been well edited by Dyce and Hazlitt; and his two principal tragedies by M. W. Sampson in the Belles-Lettres Series, with full bibliography. E. E. Stoll's monograph, John Webster, referred to in chapter v, has been drawn upon in the discussion in this chapter. Tourneur has been edited by J. Churton Collins (1878); Middleton by A. H. Bullen; Massinger very poorly by Gifford (2d ed., 1815); Ford by Gifford (1827, revised by Dyce, 1869); and Shirley by Dyce (1833). Editions of selections from all these dramatists will also be found in the Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists, with introductions of varying value. Bibliographical references to all dramatists of this period will be found in Ward and Schelling, and in general more comprehensive discussion of their plays than are to be found elsewhere. Of especial value in the study of sources are E. Koeppel's two volumes, Quellen Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's und Beaumont und Fletcher's (1895) and Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Massinger's und John Ford's (1897).
Among the critical appreciations of the dramatists of this and the preceding chapters are: Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, Hazlitt's Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, Jeffrey's Essay on Ford, Lowell's Old English Dramatists, G. C. Macaulay's Francis Beaumont (1883), Swinburne's Ben Jonson (1889), and his essays on other dramatists.