Thomson's plays were not esteemed even by his master Voltaire as contributing greatly to that perfection of art possibly attainable by a "due mixture of the French taste and English energy." For, though "wisely intricated and elegantly writ," Voltaire found him, like Addison, lacking in warmth, an "iced genius."[36] Frigid to his contemporaries, the tragedies were long since decently interred. They constitute, nevertheless, the most considerable attempt made by any author of the eighteenth century to conserve the classic theory of tragedy, and they recall nearly every variety of pseudo-classic endeavor. Of classicism it might be said, as of Thomson, that it attempted classic and early English history, that it found in partisan patriotism its favorite theme for rhetoric, that its French rules and taste usually pleased readers better than spectators, but that when it took one of Shakespeare's tragedies as the basis for an infusion of classical theory, or when it was tempered with a love story and a lively action, it triumphed in the theatre.
Thomson's friends, Mallet and the versatile and indefatigable Aaron Hill, joined him in his efforts to redeem the tragic muse. Hill's efforts, if no more successful than Thomson's and much less consistent, are at least more amusing. His general theory seems to have been not unlike that which actually controlled theatrical practice; he purposed a combination of French rules with romantic incident, theatrical bustle, and his own inimitable style. His "Fatal Vision, or Fall of Siam" (1716), he boasted, had "a deeper and more surprising plot than any play which has been published, that I know of, in the English tongue; and yet is written in strict observance of the dramatic rules" and affords "room for topical reflections, large description, love, war, show, and passion," and also "a very high regard to decoration." The play is noticeable for its tangle of trite dramatic motives.
The emperor's vision is of a son who shall kill him and usurp the throne. The two elder sons are in love with the Princess of Siam. Sworn by her to kill their father, and condemned by him for a murder they did not commit, they die fighting in his behalf. The third son kills the emperor, marries the princess, and ascends the throne. In his rapid advance he is aided by the banished empress, who has returned to court and attained high power, disguised as the favorite eunuch.
Hill adapted three of Voltaire's plays, "Zara," "Alzira," and "Merope." To the first he wrote some comic choruses intended to be sung between the acts, and to the third he prefixed his revised and final opinion of Voltaire and French tragedy:—
"Our unpolished English stage (as he assumes the liberty of calling it) has entertained a nobler taste of dignify'd simplicity, than to deprive dramatic poetry of all that animates its passions; in pursuit of a cold, starv'd, tame abstinence, which, from an affectation to shun figure, sinks to flatness: an elaborate escape from energy into a groveling, wearisome, bald, barren, unalarming chilness of expression, that emasculates the mind, instead of moving it."
"Athelwold" (1731), a revision of his early "Elfrid," is colorlessly conventional; "The Roman Revenge" (1753) is an alteration of "Julius Cæsar"; "The Insolvent" (1758) is a rewriting of "The Fatal Dowry," making the heroine an innocent object of jealousy. Most Aaronic of all is "Henry V" (1723). Here he gives up French unities and technic, and introduces many characters, shifting scenes, a bit of comedy, and the "genius of England," who sings a song. His greatest addition to Shakespeare is his Harriet, who starts out like one of the evil queens in the heroic tragedies. When abandoned by Henry, she is still jealous and revengeful; next she appears disguised as a page in the French camp, and, Viola-like, relates a story of a love-lorn sister; then recaptured by Henry, she storms and melts; but the Jane Shore mood is transient, and, like a tragedy queen again, she stabs herself. A man who could write a comic duet for Voltaire's "Zaïre" and could supply Prince Hal with a paramour whose grandmothers were Viola and the Indian Queen, ought not to be wholly forgotten.
Hill's career may remind us both of the din of the critics over Voltaire and Shakespeare, and also of the virtual compromise and amalgamation that had taken place on the stage between French and English traditions. English tragedy, after a long national development, had become materially modified by French influence and had assumed a fixed and restricted form. This type, recognizable early in the century, continues to prevail nearly to the end. The century had little power of innovation, little that can be called a development in the history of tragedy. The pendulum swings now toward French, now toward Elizabethan models, but its oscillations are slight and regulated. The plays thus far considered offer unimportant variations from the type, and plays after the middle of the century vary still less. Home's famous "Douglas" (1757), that thrilled every heart and in the opinion of the judicious redeemed the stage anew from barbarism, fails now to distinguish itself from its fellows, unless by its touches of melancholy, medievalism, and nature, that hint of romanticism. Here, as so often, a much suffering woman is beset by villany and jealousy. Home's other tragedies and those of Glover, Hoole, Brown, Murphy, and Cumberland offer even less of novelty, except that toward the end of the century refinement in sentiments and morals becomes increasingly attenuated. Miss Hannah More best represents this feminization of the type. Her "Percy" (1777), a very successful play, is devoted to the sentiment:—
"Will it content me that her person's pure?
No, if her alien heart doats on another,
She is unchaste."
"The Fatal Falsehood" (1779) presents in a domestic guise the usual plot of rivals in love and an intriguing villain, with the addition of a love-sick lady who runs mad. "The curtain falls to soft music." The century has one marked innovation in the realistic plays of Lillo and Moore, and after 1780 there are signs of the romanticism stirring elsewhere in literature; but in the main the new tragedies are hopelessly commonplace representatives of an extremely conventionalized form.
Yet tragedy was by no means neglected in literature or on the stage. Several hundred tragedies were published during the century and many of them went through several editions. Three or four were brought out every year in the theatres, and many of these maintained themselves for a time as stock plays. Most men of letters essayed tragedy,—Addison, Johnson, Young, Thomson, Gay, the laureates Cibber, Rowe, Whitehead, Pye, and a host of minor celebrities. Besides the tragedies acted, there were almost as many not acted but printed. Closet dramas, common in the Elizabethan period, grew more numerous after the Restoration. Whether the writer scorned or was scorned by the manager, an appeal to the reading public was always easy and apparently sometimes profitable. Tragedies were bought and read; a popular play might start with an edition of five thousand and run through a number of editions. Even after the novel had supplanted the drama among readers, there was no diminution of printed plays. The non-acted plays, however, offer nothing of importance for the history of the drama. The majority are unactable; others follow the usual formulas; a few Greek plays, alterations of Shakespeare, and sacred dramas have some interest as curiosities. The increase in the number of these plays does indicate a growing separation between the drama and the theatre. Plays were no longer written by a set of dramatists who made a profession; they were written by any one who had literary pretensions. Only a few new plays were required; the supply greatly exceeded the demand. The theatrical monopoly maintained by the two patented theatres offered no great encouragement to dramatists, and the number who wrote without any acquaintance or knowledge of the stage increased. Literary fame rather than success in the theatre was perhaps the greater incentive in the case of tragedy. Whatever the incentive, individual ambition resulted in no individuality of expression. The popular ballad of tradition is scarcely less expressive of personality than the average eighteenth century tragedy. Even the plays of temporary importance have no flavor of their own.[37]