Zelinda. Alas! my child!
Somerdyke. Her child! Then we triumph—seize him! (A slave seizes the child, and, running up a point of rock, hands it to Somerdyke, who continues.) Move one step further, and you will see him buried in the waters. Submit, or this instant is his last. (Holding him up in the act of precipitating him.)
Zelinda. I do submit.
Gambia. Never! (Gambia, who has concealed himself in the branches, snatches the child up into the tree.) Father, receive your child! (Throws the child across the stream.) They have him! He is safe! Ha! Ha! Ha! (Curtain.)
The term "melodrama" ceased after a time to denote the peculiar species brought from France in 1802, and came to be applied to all plays depending for effect on situation, sensation, or machinery, rather than characterization. The musical accompaniment and songs became minor features; the lively action, elaborate mechanical devices, dumb show, strong contrast of virtue and evil, and the happy ending remained the essentials. There was thus created a kind of inferior tragedy aiming at no literary excellence, which has ever since continued to fill the theatres and to satisfy the larger public. This natural reaction from eighteenth century dullness and declamation to bustle, pantomime, and music did not further, as in France, any immediate development in the literary drama. There was in England no relationship between the two as between Pixérécourt and Hugo. On the contrary, melodrama in England offered nothing new, for it absorbed about all that was old. All the well-worn situations, the escapes, rivalries, sacrifices, of the English stock plays were preserved, and to these was added whatever French melodrama offered. In this way there is curiously preserved in the cheaper theatres to-day the direct results of theatrical traditions going back before Shakespeare.
The illegitimate drama also represented the prevailing tendencies of Romanticism. Its fondness for Shakespearean and Elizabethan motives, its medievalism, its terrors, its democratic and humanitarian sentiments indicate the popularization of romantic ideas. These found expression suited to immediate public approval, not in Wordsworth but Kotzebue, not in Coleridge but Colman, not in Southey but in melodrama. And as the popularization of literature has increased, this illegitimate offspring of the drama has continued to respond to changes in public sentiment and thought by a recourse to well-worn theatrical means. During the nineteenth century, melodrama has thrust tragedy from the theatres and from public favor. Crowded out by the opera and again by the novel and now by the melodrama, tragedy has tended either to assume the garb of its rivals, or to conform its appeal to a select audience.
In the period from 1800 to 1830 the novel and the melodrama and the melodramatized novel all united to restrict the demand for pure tragedy. The breach between the theatre and literature which the eighteenth century had opened was widened. In the theatre new plays and especially new plays with tragic, romantic, or heroic plots, were adapted from Scott's novels or otherwise devised by a comparatively small group of men. These men, Reynolds, Morton, Soane, Terry, Dibdin, and others, were associated with the theatres, understood the arrangement of scenery and spectacle, were quick to foresee the taste of the audience, and pretended to little literary skill, for none was required. Their work created a new distinction in the drama, a species, melodrama, or tragedy if you please, that can be acted but cannot be read. On the other hand, the literary romanticists, while usually having no connection with the stage and despairing of its reform, by no means relinquished the field of tragedy. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Scott, Keats, and many other lesser poets wrote tragedies, and most were not unwilling to have these acted. These plays fall into two main classes, those that were acted and carried on the tradition of tragedy in the theatres, and those that were not acted. This second class, which for the first time becomes of some importance in the history of literature, has itself several divisions. There are tragedies intended for the stage but failing to get a trial there. There are others which, while not intended for the stage, conform in the main to its requirements, and might easily be adapted for presentation. There are others, like "Cain" or Wells's "Joseph and his Brethren" or Swinburne's later plays, which violate almost all the requirements of the theatre. These form another dramatic species, the opposite of melodrama, plays that can be read but cannot be acted. Some of these various classes of closet drama influenced the acted drama, others have so little dramatic quality that they are at most "dramatic poems," but all have a connection with the tradition of tragedy. Most of the literary tragedies are indeed, despite variations in degree, alike in kind. They are all written in verse; they are all romantic rather than realistic; they mostly return to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans for models; and they nearly all disregard the stage demand. Whether they loathe the stage or ask for admittance there, they seek literary rather than theatrical excellence. At the time when the stage demanded action and was superseding dialogue and speech by music, spectacle, and dumb show, the romanticists conceived of tragedy only in terms of poetry, and wrote mainly in order to clothe their tragic themes in the beauty of verse.
The most determined attempt to reform tragedy was made by Miss Joanna Baillie, who, in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," published the first volume of her "Plays on the Passions," containing "Basil," a tragedy, and "The Trial," a comedy, both on love, and "De Montfort," a tragedy on hatred, with a preface announcing her intention to continue the series, illustrating each of the dominant passions by a tragedy and a comedy. Her preface, which should have found sympathetic response in the young men who at Alfoxden were polishing their own tragedies and planning a revolution in poetry, exhibits the main fallacy of the romanticists' theory of the drama. She proposed to devote a play to the illustration of a single passion, to trace this from its beginning to the final ruin, and to recognize that passion arises from within, unprovoked by any external stimulus. This absorption with a study of emotion per se led to a subordination of plot and all external incident, and—so she proposed—all poetic embellishment, to a searching study of isolated passion. Her first volume attracted attention, and Kemble and Mrs. Siddons played "De Montfort," but without success. She continued, however, writing and publishing, completing the series of plays on passions, and as many more "miscellaneous plays," twenty-eight in all, of which fifteen were tragedies. These present a variety of themes, one being a domestic play in prose, another dealing with witchcraft, but the favorite setting is medieval with gloomy vaults, knights, monks, singing nuns, and the moon shining through vaulted windows. Her conception of a play of passion forbids motiving of character, or integration of the development of character with action. As Hazlitt acidly observed, she manipulates her actors like a girl playing with her dolls. There are many improbabilities, and the passions are exposed mainly in soliloquies. The language avoids ornamentation to a degree that makes one wonder why it is not in prose, though there are purple patches. It rarely if ever betrays any adaptability to the individual speakers. Though the plays were designed for the stage and overflow with stage-directions and much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers. Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the Michigan Historical Society."
Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing tragedies of passions[47] arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's "Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice." Coleridge's "Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres. The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the "Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the managers. But even had he made the revisions that they required, he could hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his melodramatic action.
Charles Lamb's single tragedy, "John Woodvil" (1802), was written and offered to Kemble in 1799. Southey's comment, "(it) will please you by the exquisite beauty of its poetry and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its story," comes near to being the final word. The verse catches something of Shakespeare's sweetness and artlessness as well as his obsolescent words, and the few persons and the silly story catch something of Lamb's own simplicity and charity. The play is more human, though feebler, than the contemporary plays of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Lamb imitates the Elizabethans with much more charm than they, and he utterly disdains the stage spectacle which they admit, but, like them, he seeks to explore the heart without regard to what is happening outside and discloses its secrets by means of inordinate soliloquizing. "The Wife's Trial," based on Crabbe's "Confidant," was written in 1827, and refused by Charles Kemble. This tragicomedy, as Lamb called it, in two acts, is slighter than "Woodvil" and even less adapted to the stage.