From changes in theatrical conditions, friends of the drama doubtless found hope for its higher development; but the main source of promise seemed to lie in the patronage of the court. The court of Charles II indeed exerted a greater influence on the drama than any court since or, perhaps, before, but the influence was mainly toward social and political immorality. Patronage rather than public support was relied upon by both dramatists and actors. In consequence, the theatres became servile purveyors to the amusement and taste of the king and his favorites, and blindly partisan adherents of the royal politics. The failure to represent the nation and the consequent loss both in range of artistic impulse and in soundness of moral standards that had characterized the drama in the reigns of the two earlier Stuarts were now greatly intensified. In tragedy, grossness of language and manners had less opportunity than in comedy, but political subserviency had freer play. Political allegory combined with tragedy in plays contemptible as specimens of either species. This unworthy partisanship and this catering to a society mean and corrupt necessarily maimed that branch of the drama supposed to devote itself to heroic and lofty themes.
The influences making most for innovation in the poetry and art of the drama came from France, partly owing to the instigation of the court. The character of this French influence, like its sources, differed from time to time, but from 1660 until after the death of Voltaire it was continuous and powerful. In tragedy, shortly after the Restoration, the heroic romances of Calprenède, Scudéry, and others, and the French plays which they had fostered, were the sources and models of much in the English heroic plays. There was constant borrowing and adapting from French romances and tragedies, as from French comedies. The "Cid" had been translated and acted in the reign of Charles I; several other of Corneille's plays were translated before 1670, his subjects and style were often imitated, and toward the end of the century the influence of Racine was marked upon English drama. The French influence on tragedy, however, was less a matter of models than of rules and theory. The English dramatists never in this period got very close to Corneille or Racine, but they were greatly impressed by French criticism and precept. In an age of reason and modernity, English tragedy, like other forms of literature, found its reaction from the crudities of an earlier age and its reform of the excesses of an untrained art in the pseudo-classicism of France.
An effort was made, which proved far more portentous than preceding ones, to wrest tragedy back into conformity with the supposed rules of Aristotle. The conflict between English and French models, between Shakespeare and Corneille, between romantic license and classical proprieties had begun, a conflict to be continued in criticism as well as practice for over a century. Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" introduces us at once to the questions at issue and the state of the debate. The main questions were: first, the unities, recognized in French drama as necessities and supposedly derived from Aristotle; second, the mixture of tragedy and comedy, or, more especially, the introduction of low comedy into tragedy; and third, the use of rhyme as in French tragedy or of blank verse as in English, prose by general consent being restricted to comedy. In these the English tradition was directly opposed by French practice and theory, and in many minor matters as well: in the liaison of scenes, favored, as was the unity of place, by the use of scenery; in certain proprieties in the conduct of kings and of subjects to kings; in the restriction of tragedy to historical, classical, or at least heroical persons and themes; and, notably, in the avoidance of violence and bloodshed in the action. Dryden's discussion reveals French practice and classical practice, not clearly differentiated, set up against the English tradition, and recognizes much in the former that seems reasonable and authoritative. But, on the other hand, it insists on the excellence and impressiveness of the English achievement. Such was the state of opinion shortly after the Restoration, and such, with varying emphasis and refinement, remained the consensus of opinion of dramatists and critics for a century. The laws of the pseudo-classicists were held to be measurably good, but Shakespeare without those laws had been undeniably great.
Throughout the Restoration the main influence on the theatre was that of the earlier English drama. When the theatres were opened the old plays were acted. Literally hundreds were revived, many of which long held the stage. After a time changes in taste and theatrical conditions led to revisions and alterations; but the alterations of Shakespeare and others not only illustrate this perversion of taste, but also testify to the continuance of the English tradition. Not merely revisions and adaptations, but the whole drama bears witness to its descent. The characteristics of the tragedy of 1630 are those of the tragedy of 1670. The influence of the Beaumont-Fletcher romances and of the tragedy of revenge are hardly less marked after 1660 than before. The comic scenes, blank verse, complicated plots, physical horrors, and supernatural agents, the mixture of idealization and realism that characterize Elizabethan tragedy, persist throughout the Restoration period.
The conflict between the contending theories of tragedy may be studied in criticism. Dryden's various essays recur again and again to the main issues of the war, and define with changing emphasis his attempted reconciliation of the two opposites. Rymer came forward as a thoroughgoing exponent of classicism, and at the beginning of the next century Dennis, Gildon, and Addison carried on the discussion. The conflict is also represented in the work of nearly every dramatist. There are tragedies in blank verse and tragedies in rhyme, tragicomedies, tragedies with comic scenes, tragedies without deaths and with happy endings, tragedies translated from the French, others based on Greek originals, and still others in their medleys of farce, horror, and rant as Elizabethan as "The Jew of Malta" itself. Many of these varieties are represented in the work of a single writer, as Crowne, or Lee, or Otway. The career of Dryden sums up and reflects nearly all the changes in opinion or practice. His plays, and with them the whole course of tragedy from 1660 to 1700, fall roughly into certain divisions. For a few years after the Restoration, ending at about the time of the "Essay," is the period of the dominance of the earlier drama, a period of which Davenant is the leading figure. About 1664 began the heroic tragedies in rhyme which for a time carried all before them. In a dozen years, however, the fashion wore out, and Dryden's "All for Love" in 1678 marked the abandonment of rhyme and led the return to Shakespeare. From 1678 on, the course of tragedy again takes to varied streams. To this period belong the most notable alterations of Shakespeare, the most permanent of Restoration tragedies in the plays of Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and also the growth of French methods and of the influence of Racine, culminating in the pseudo-classical triumph at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
At the opening of the theatres, tragedy and tragicomedy took up their courses about where they had left off. The plays of Davenant, the main connecting link between the two periods, might be treated in connection with either, without seeming in the least out of place. Tragicomedy of the type current in the thirties continued in the sixties; tragedy oscillated between honor and horror, fine writing and perverted lust, as in Massinger, Shirley, and Glapthorne. Spanish stories, long influential in the drama, promised for a time to prove still more important. Dryden's first two plays, "The Wild Gallant" (1663)[25] and "The Rival Ladies" (1664), were based, like many other contemporary plays, on Spanish originals; but the second introduced rhyme and some of the elements of the plots of the heroic plays. It was, however, the Elizabethan plays that the audiences went to see, and that the dramatists had constantly before them. The plays of the Marlowean period were regarded as out of date, and very few were revived, practically none of the tragedies except the early ones of Shakespeare. Of the later Elizabethans, Beaumont and Fletcher were the most popular, for a time surpassing Shakespeare. Over thirty of their plays were revived, and many of these were constantly acted. Of tragedies and tragicomedies, "The Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster," "Bonduca," "A King and No King," "Valentinian," and "Rollo" held the stage till the end of the century, the first three much longer. Jonson's tragedies, as well as his comedies, were revived; and Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," Webster's "White Devil," Chapman's "Bussy D'Ambois," Shirley's "Cardinal" and "Traitor" were among the plays that carried on the traditions of the tragedy of blood. Shakespeare's comedies fell into disfavor, but his tragedies were popular from the start. This was due in part to the genius of Betterton, who found his best opportunities in depicting their protagonists, in part to their merits as stage plays for both actors and audiences; but, whatever the causes of their success, they soon exercised a large and increasing influence upon the theory and practice of tragedy.
The Elizabethan plays, however, had almost from the first to encounter a rivalry with a new fashion. Davenant, their reviver, was also the first with the new. His "Siege of Rhodes" (1656), with its scenery, machines, music, rhyme, and heroics, may be said to inaugurate both the opera and the heroic play. Howard's "Indian Queen" (1664), in which Dryden had a hand, was followed by Dryden's "Indian Emperor" (1665), in rhyme and displaying the full-fledged heroic formula. The love-complications of its plot are of a kind constantly reappearing not only in the heroic plays but in later tragedy as well.
Montezeuma and Cortez are the historical heroes; Almeria, daughter of the Indian Queen, is the vengeful passionate heroine; Cydaria, daughter of Montezeuma, is the angelic heroine. Montezeuma's sons, Odmar and Guyomar, Almeria's sister, Alibech, and her brother, Orbellan, all in love with some one, add to the criss-crossing of affections. Almeria is loved by Montezeuma, but loves Cortez, who does not love her. Cydaria is loved by Cortez and also by Orbellan. The two heroines, as well as the two heroes, are thus rivals, and the vengeful one directs the intrigue. The brothers Odmar and Guyomar, to say nothing of a Spanish captain, both love Alibech, and provide the usual story of fraternal rivalry. After duels, captures, imprisonments, conflicts of honor, renunciations, and jealousies, finally the vengeful heroine succumbs. One of the brothers is preserved for Alibech; Cortez weds the angelic heroine; the rest, including six of the leading actors and several supernumeraries, are killed or commit suicide.
Dryden's dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery gives some support to the latter's claim to have been the introducer of the rhymed heroic species, though his first play acted was probably "Henry V," in 1664. Whoever the originators, their example was soon followed by Crowne, Lee, Settle, Otway, and most of the dramatists of the day; and for fifteen years or so English efforts in tragedy were confined to the heroic model.
The use of the heroic couplet was its distinguishing mark; of course, an imitation of French practice. The plots, too, were direct borrowings, or close imitations, of contemporary French romances or dramas. Moreover, the themes and their treatment, the conception of honor, the importance given to love, and the pseudo-history, all followed French ideas. The unities were attended to, if not strictly observed; incidents, persons, and scenes greatly reduced in number in comparison with Elizabethan practice; and fixed rules of propriety in characterization and language observed, all in French fashion.