[22] Elizabethan has been used to designate the whole period of the drama from 1559 to 1642.
[23] For a somewhat different view of the play, emphasizing its crudity as a drama, see Mr. William Archer's "Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne," New Review, January, 1893.
[24] See Coleridge, Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, for a characteristic and valuable criticism of the play.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RESTORATION
The drama of the Restoration was separated from the earlier periods by sixteen years of closed theatres and a virtual cessation of all dramatic composition. To the drama, as to other forms of literature, the Restoration brought not only a revival but also a revolution—new fashions, new models, new foreign influence, a new age, and a changed society. No such break in theatrical conditions has occurred since then, and nothing so nearly revolutionary in the history of the drama. Since then the theatres have been always open, the dramatists always writing. Changes have been gradual, the history continuous. Due recognition must, therefore, be given to the last years before the closing of the theatres and the first years after their reopening as marking an end and a beginning. Really, however, the new was a continuation of the old; the pause was by no means a severing of traditions; and the Restoration drama inherited far more from the Elizabethan than it imported from France or originated under the inspiration of that illustrious patron of poetry, Charles II.
Signs of continued interest in the theatre had not been wanting during the Commonwealth. The theatres were reopened in 1648 but promptly suppressed and dismantled. Drolls or short farces derived from popular plays were performed here and there in London or in the country, and the continued publication of old plays revealed a considerable demand from the reading public. In 1656 Davenant obtained permission for the performance of his "Siege of Rhodes" "made a Representation by the Art of Perspective Scenes, and the story sung in Recitative Music." Thus, even before the revival of the regular drama, came its rival the opera, and the important innovation of movable scenes. Two years later Davenant produced another entertainment, and was performing regular plays before Monk had entered London. Two companies, the King's and the Duke of York's, were presently licensed; these, united from 1682 to 1695, sufficed for sixty years to supply the needs of the London public, and maintained their monopoly until well into the nineteenth century. Before 1642 the open public theatres had largely given place to the "private" theatres in inclosed rooms. These and the contemporary French theatres served as models for the Restoration buildings. The stage still protruded into the auditorium and was frequently crowded with gallants as in the Elizabethan days, but the use of scenery, a drop curtain shutting off all the stage but the proscenium, the performances by artificial light, together with the women actors, who now for the first time interpreted Shakespeare's heroines, brought the Restoration stage closer to that of our own day than to that of the preceding generation. This transformation from a half-medieval to a nearly modern stage resulted in far-reaching changes in the drama; among others, in a new importance to female parts and in alterations in structure due to the use of scenery and curtain. Few of the old actors were still alive, though enough had been gathered to make up the nucleus of the companies and to transmit the traditions of the Globe and the Blackfriars. The acting of the Restoration probably soon surpassed that of the earlier period, and the great triumphs of Betterton and Mrs. Barry set new and long influential traditions in English tragedy. The changes which most fundamentally affected the drama were those in the stage and the actors.
The influence exerted upon the drama by the new opera may also be described as largely theatrical. The opera of the Restoration is to be distinguished from the form as it has prevailed since the introduction of Italian opera into England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The term was loosely used to describe a variety of entertainments, in which the dialogue might be altogether sung, or in part spoken, and in which the dancing and decoration were regarded as not less essential than the music. Derived from France, where the opera gained great favor and attracted the services of Corneille and Quinault, the English species was closely related to two national forms of drama, the masque and the tragedy. In music, dancing, and machinery it resembled the former; in theme, plot, and persons, often the latter. A resemblance between the opera and the heroic tragedy is also observable in the prominence given by each to heroic love. Tragedies were readily transformed into operas as in the case of Lee's "Theodosius" and Tate's "Brutus of Alba," and of Fletcher's "Island Princess" and "Prophetess." Throughout the period the relations between the two remain close. They were presented in the same theatre; the same actors often played in one and sang in the other; an orchestral band was provided to play between the acts in tragedy; and tragedy availed itself of songs, scenery, and machines. Entirely apart from its place in the history of English music, English opera is of some importance in the development of tragedy, partly as a rival and partly because it promoted operatic elements in tragedy itself. Tragedy came in the Restoration period to rely more than ever before upon the externals of its stage presentation, and on elements then considered distinctively operatic,—scenery, spectacle, and music.