French influence, on the contrary, had many representatives among the new plays. The success of "The Distrest Mother" led to a number of translations. In the first quarter of the century there were ten of Racine's plays and four of Corneille's; and of these fourteen, eight were acted, and several with success. Later on, Whitehead's "Roman Father" (1750), an adaptation of Corneille's "Horace," won a place in the stock list. But the leading factor in the French influence on English tragedy during the century was Voltaire. The long critical debate which he waged in behalf of the rules and against the barbarities of Shakespeare has its importance in English as well as French literary history. But while the English critics grew more and more eager as the century advanced to uphold the glory of Shakespeare and to denounce an atheist who denied this, or to proclaim their freedom from the narrowing rules which were French, yet the triumphs of Voltaire's plays upon the English stage continued unabated. Adaptations of no less than nine of his tragedies had appeared on the London stage before the English translation of his full works in 1779-80, and there were manifold borrowings from him in many other plays.[31] A number of the translations, Hill's "Zara" and "Merope," Miller's "Mahomet," and Murphy's "Orphan of China," made notable successes. From the production of "Brutus" to that of "Semiramis" in 1776 Voltaire may be said to have been the most popular and influential of the writers of tragedy for the English theatre.[32]
The translations of these tragedies, however, indicate the influence of English traditions. The long speeches are shortened, the dialogue is broken and enlivened, the minor proprieties disregarded, the sentiments and morals Anglicized, and some business and bloodshed introduced on the stage. In Hill's "Merope," for example, the great scene where Merope strives to kill the murderer of her long-lost son and discovers the supposed murderer to be her son himself, loses all its simplicity as well as its poetry. It is ornamented by Hill with processions, virgins in white, music, a sacrificial song, and many starts and strains. Where on the French stage Egisthe decorously withdraws behind the scenes as his mother approaches with the dagger, on the English stage everything was in full sight. If some of the other translations are less altered, the imitations and unavowed adaptations are much more so. Hoole's "Cyrus" (1768), a popular play, is obviously based on "Merope," but adds a much complicated plot, a mad woman, a love intrigue between the long-lost son and the daughter of the old tutor, and a returning husband for Mandane (Merope). The great success of Voltaire in England did not, in fact, produce any very marked change in the course of tragedy. He represents the continuance of French influence but established no departures of note from the general type established in the English theatres by 1725. Virtually no English tragedies in the eighteenth century introduced comedy; few reveled in horrors and bloodshed, the majority observed the unities, nearly all had few persons, a restricted action, and themes and situations confined to slight variations of a stereotyped love story; and nearly all had regard for poetic justice. The differences between French and English tragedy were largely those which adapters of Voltaire eliminated when they made over his plays for the London theatres and gave them a more broken dialogue and more stage action, and perhaps a mad woman or a villain. Moreover, the amelioration of the differences between the two theatres was not all on one side, as is shown by Voltaire's own imitations of Shakespeare and his introduction of ghosts and horrors, and by the growing interest in France in Shakespeare and other English dramatists.[33] Voltaire, with his ingenious plots and telling crises, was nearer than Racine to the English tradition, and he wrote at a time when the differences between the two national theatres were minimized to a degree that made intercommunication easy. His talents gave him an easy superiority over any English writer of tragedies after the classical formulas.
In the course of the century there were also a considerable number of plays that turned from French to Greek models. While these cannot be regarded as wholly representative of a reaction from a pseudo to a truer classicism, they certainly offered hardly more resemblance to Voltaire than to Shakespeare. The Greek influence was, however, variously manifested. Adaptations of Euripides were numerous, half a dozen of which were presented at the theatres. In addition, a number of original plays were written, following the Greek form. Most famous of these were two by Gray's friend Mason, "Elfrida" and "Caractacus." The latter, while stilted and academic, compares favorably in point of literary excellence with most tragedies of the century, and not altogether unworthily takes its place in a series that includes "Samson Agonistes" and "Prometheus Unbound." "Read Shakespeare," wrote Lyttleton to Aaron Hill, "but study Racine and Sophocles." But the classicists were occupied in the main with neither poet, but in discussing various minor questions of dramatic propriety: Should any violence or bloodshed be permitted? Should rhyme tags end the scenes? Should the epilogue be comic or serious? Should figures of speech be allowed? Should long speeches be shortened for presentation? Classicism in both England and France was not greatly imitative of either Sophocles or Racine, but mainly insistent on immaterialities.
If we attempt to follow the diminishing differences between English and French standards in the work of individual authors, Young's "Busiris" (1719) and "Revenge" (1721) are the most important of those tragedies in the first quarter of the century which cling to some of the characteristics of the early English drama, while his "Brothers," written at about the same time but not acted until 1753, is based upon Thomas Corneille's "Persée et Demetrius." In "Busiris" there is no villain, but tyranny, conspiracy, and a passionate revenging queen play their usual parts. There is an attempt, both in incidents and expression, at Elizabethan force and horror; the main action deals with a rape, and five of the principal persons are killed upon the stage. "The Revenge" is still more Elizabethan, being a palpable imitation of "Othello." The prologue declares that the proper field for tragedy is not villany but "the tumults of a Godlike mind," yet the villain, the Moor Zanga, is the chief character and was acted by Garrick, Kemble, and Kean. The villain's part, it is interesting to note, affords the most striking difference between this popular play and the even more popular "Zara." In both, the heroine, pure and innocent, is killed by the husband, Othello-like in both magnanimity and jealousy; but in Voltaire the jealousy is occasioned by the heroine's meetings with her brother, a captive Christian, in Young by the busy and ponderous intrigues of a Moorish Iago.
In opposition to Young, Thomson represents the vogue of classicism both in literary circles and in the theatres. His early tragedies, "Sophonisba" (1730), "Agammemnon" (1738), and "Edward and Eleonora," prohibited by the censor because of its attacks upon Walpole, won little favor except in the circle of wits who attempted to dictate the national taste in letters and among the opponents of Walpole. The first was dedicated to the Queen and the two later to the Princess of Wales, and "Tancred and Sigismunda" (1743) to Frederick, Prince of Wales, the patron of the drama and the hope of the Tories. This play, the presentation of which was fathered and superintended by Lyttleton and Pitt, achieved a large popular success; and portions of "Coriolanus," acted after the author's death in 1749, were combined with Shakespeare's tragedy in versions by Thomas Sheridan and Kemble, and supplied the latter with his greatest part. All Thomson's plays endeavor to retell stories often used in tragedy, in strict accord with the rules, with absolute propriety of diction, some reference to political events, and a due inculcation of moral sentiments. In the language of one of their admirers, they were intended to be "reasonable entertainments becoming virtue itself to behold with tears of approbation."[34] "Sophonisba" is sternly heroic in its subordination of love to patriotic hate of Rome in the character of its heroine, and sternly classic in the simplicity of its plot and the heaviness of its inflated rhetoric. "Agammemnon," also a "She-tragedy," is designed after the school of Racine rather than of Corneille; and its wavering, inconsistent Clytemnestra, who closes the play with a torrent of remorse and a faint, its Melisander saved from a desert island, and its courtly love-sick Egisthus are queer denizens of the house of Atreus. "Edward and Eleanor," telling of the queen who sucked poison from her husband's wound, and of the sultan who, suspected of the attempted murder, bore a truly miraculous antidote to the Christian camp, owes allegiance to Voltaire. Its emotional changes and elaborate intrigue bring it also more closely in accord with the prevailing English type. "Tancred and Sigismunda," based on the story as told in "Gil Blas,"[35] makes the lover a claimant to the throne and the intervention of the father due to reasons of state. The plot is developed with more skill than is usual in Thomson, and the rival lovers, the marriage in revenge, the midnight interview, the duel, and the murder of the heroine are quite in conformity to the prevailing model. "Coriolanus," the subject of many French tragedies and of Shakespearean alterations by Tate and Dennis, illustrates the inferiority of the classic scheme to the Elizabethan in the presentation of history. The action, beginning with the arrival of Coriolanus as a suppliant for Tullus's hospitality, crowds the remaining events and the changes in the two rivals within the impossible confines of the unities of time and place. Coriolanus himself exemplifies the effort toward "Nature," that is, typicality and reasonableness, in pseudo-classical characterization. He expresses the sentiments and manners approved by the eighteenth century, and, even when pride and revenge most fire his passion, is a very tame lion. The moral lessons, somewhat clouded in Shakespeare, are distinctly enunciated and finally summed up by Galesus:—
"This man was once the glory of his age,
Disinterested, just, with every virtue
Of civil life adorn'd, in arms unequall'd.
His only blot was this; that, much provok'd,
He rais'd his vengeful arm against his country," etc. (v. 4).
In Thomson's other plays the inflated declamation occasionally gives way to a bit of description that recalls "The Seasons," but in "Coriolanus" he follows the promise of the Prologue to "Tancred" with unerring fidelity:—
"Your taste rejects the glittering false sublime,
To sigh in metaphor, and die in rhyme.
High rant is tumbled from his gallery throne;
Description, dreams,—nay, similes are gone."
He was obviously seeking what he called Shakespeare's "simple, plain sublime," and his declamations occasionally reach a sententious lucidity worthy of Addison, but the pseudo-classic diction freezes every emotion with its "transports," "charms," and "nuptial loves." This is Volumnia's appeal to Coriolanus, her husband in Thomson's play:—
"Ah Coriolanus!
Is then this hand, this hand to be devoted,
The pledge of nuptial love, that has so long
Protected, bless'd, and shelter'd us with kindness,
Now lifted up against us? Yet I love it,
And, with submissive veneration, bow
Beneath th' affliction which it heaps upon us.
But O! what nobler transports would it give thee!
What joy beyond expression! couldst thou once
Surmount the furious storm of fierce revenge,
And yield ye to the charms of love and mercy.
Oh make the glorious trial!" (v. 1).