From Miss Baillie's "De Montfort" (1800) to Coleridge's "Remorse" (1813), literary tragedy made no impression on the theatre. Godwin's plays, "Antonio" (1800) and "Faulkner" (1807), failed flatly, and Tobin's "Curfew," a medley of Elizabethan motives, was the most successful acted tragedy. When Lewis tried to give his terrific vein a little dignity and blank verse, even he failed on the stage.[48]
After "Remorse" the theatre half opened its doors to literature and the poets rallied to the support of tragedy. Maturin's "Bertram" (1816) had a large success, though his other plays failed. In the next few years a half dozen wordy tragedies by Sheil were acted. Kean revived versions of the "Jew of Malta" and "The Fatal Dowry," and the most successful of Sheil's plays was "Evadne," based on Shirley's "Traitor." Milman's "Fazio," acted 1818, though not intended for the stage, came nearer perhaps than any preceding tragedy of the romanticists to meeting theatrical requirements. Fazio's wife, jealous because of his infatuation for a countess, betrays her husband, and then for the remainder of the play is wildly remorseful. In spite of the extreme improbability of both the persons and the language, the story is told with dramatic directness and affords manifest opportunities for a great actress, seized upon by Miss O'Neill and later by Miss Cushman and, in an Italian adaptation, by Madame Ristori. A still greater theatrical success was won by Kean in "Brutus" (1818), a pastiche of the plays of Lee, Cumberland, and Downman composed by the American, John Howard Payne. Sheridan Knowles's "Virginius" (1820), followed by his "Caius Gracchus" (1823), and "William Tell" (1825), gave promise of a more permanent revival of the poetical drama. Knowles, an actor and a practical playwright, was also the friend and in a way the pupil of Lamb and Hazlitt, and he gained the coöperation of a great and ambitious actor, Macready. He united as no other writer of the generation had done, stage-craft and poetic ideals. "Virginius," the best of his tragedies, is still acted—excepting Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu," the only relic of early nineteenth century tragedy. The story, with its one great acting scene, is told after the Shakespearean model in very ornate and artificial verse. It mingles much scoffing at the rabble with romantic appeals for liberty, tricks Virginia out with a lover, and ends with the insanity of Virginius. Knowles's tragedies at the time of their presentation were only moderately successful, far less so than his absurd comedy, "The Hunchback"; and several poetic dramas by other writers fared worse. Thomas Wade's "Woman's Love," based on the Patient Griselda story, obtained a hearing in 1808, but his Marlowesque "Jew of Aragon" was hooted off the stage in 1830. But Procter's "Mirandola" was acted sixteen times in 1821, and Miss Mitford's "Rienzi" (1828) and Byron's "Werner" (1830) gained veritable triumphs.
For about a decade longer poetic tragedy continued to contend for the theatre. Its main hope lay in Macready, and its hey-day was during his two periods of management of Drury Lane, 1837-39 and 1841-42. After the success of "Werner" ("Marino Faliero" had been earlier produced in 1821), "Sardanapalus" was brought out by Macready in 1833-34; and "The Two Foscari" later. Knowles's "Alfred the Great" and his "Bridal," an adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy," won considerable success; and "The Pledge," a version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," in 1831 heralded new support for romantic poetry in the drama. In the years 1836-37 Macready introduced three new writers in the "Ion" of Talfourd, "Strafford" of Browning, and the "Duchess de la Vallière" of Bulwer-Lytton. Talfourd's tragedies, including two, "The Athenian Captive" and "Glencoe," later acted by Macready, are stiff and wooden, contributing little to the drama. Bulwer-Lytton's later plays, "The Lady of Lyons" (1838) and "Richelieu" (1839), were extremely successful and surpassed any preceding efforts of the romanticists to adapt poetry to the stage. "Richelieu" is by no means a great poem or free from claptrap, but it has the merit of being written to be spoken and in having its characters designed as parts of the action. The interest is not in the poetry—it reads much better with the omissions made for acting—but in the development of the character of the cardinal through the incidents. The failure of "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon" in 1843 marks the end of Macready's management and the end of romantic tragedy on the stage.
Many of these acted plays gained what suitability they had for the stage by accident rather than design. Milman's "Fazio" was published several years before it was acted, and his later tragedies were decidedly closet dramas. Miss Mitford's "Julian" made little impression on the stage, and her other tragedies, except "Rienzi," still less. Byron's tragedies, which succeeded largely no doubt because of his reputation, were acted against his wish or after his death. And the various poetic tragedies that were written at about the same time as Byron's and Shelley's were mostly composed without thought of stage presentation. The surpassing genius of the greater poets has thrown into obscurity the work of these other young men, who in the decade after Waterloo faced the world with thin volumes of verse. But there have been few times in our literary history when the Muses have been so alluring, and Melpomene had her share of devotees. In John Wilson's "City of the Plague" (1816) a young naval officer wanders about plague-stricken London, through its bacchanals and horrors, buries his mother, discovers his betrothed, the ministering angel of the afflicted, and at last finds rest with her in the terrible crowded churchyard. The poem is grandly conceived and beautifully written in verse, occasionally Wordsworthian but without affectation or over-ornament. Two other closet dramatists offer rather less sincerity and impressiveness of conception but even more of poetic beauty. "Joseph and his Brethren" (1823), by Charles Wells, for a time the friend of Keats, was published when the author was twenty-three, and fifty years later revived and rewritten because of the appreciation of Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. Like the plays of Thomas Wade, it shows the influence of Marlowe in verse and plan. Long drawn out and in the main undramatic, there is imagination everywhere, especially in the remarkable scenes that depict the passion-inflamed Phraxanor, Potiphar's wife. Of the Elizabethans, too, was Beddoes, who studied Webster and Tourneur as well as Shelley and Keats, and whose verse at times fairly surpasses his masters. His "Bride's Tragedy" (1821), written when he was nineteen, is a play only in name, but it is a poem that joins terror and fascination as scarcely another since Webster and Ford. Here, as in his incompleted dramas and his "Death's Jest Book," published much later, loveliness masks with madness and death, and mockery with passion. It seems as if he were lavishing over strange juxtapositions of beauty and decay all the sensuous fascination of Keats and the lingering suggestiveness of Shelley's lyrics. One's admiration for his genius is tempered only by the thought of the greater things he might have done.
Earlier than these poems was Landor's "Count Julian" (1812), which, like them, presents qualities suited for the closet and not for the stage. As in some of the "Imaginary Conversations," Landor takes it for granted that his audience understands the story and the motives of the actors as well as he himself. The reader gradually disentangles the situations and is stirred by the splendid poetry; but no audience could make out what it was all about. His other poetical tragedies, written a quarter of a century later, show no improvement of these defects, nor do they present dramatic themes as interesting or as powerfully conceived as those in "Count Julian."
"Otho the Great," the tragedy which Keats hoped would lift him out of the mire,[49] was devised for Kean, and apparently accepted for Drury Lane. Charles Brown furnished him "description of each scene entire, with the characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with it"; and Keats merely wrote the verse up to the fifth act, when he took the entire management into his own hands. The result of this peculiar collaboration was what might have been expected. The plot and characterization follow old types; and the poetry, though not lacking in fine passages, is inferior to nearly everything else that Keats wrote in his annus mirabilis, 1819.
Scott's dramas are somewhat out of place when grouped with these other closet tragedies, for they are varied in character, representing a number of the proclivities that we have noticed in the romantic drama.[50] "The House of Aspen," written in prose at about the time of "Goetz," was intended for the stage and considered by Kemble for representation. Based on a German tale and showing the influence of "Goetz," it offers no important deviations from the terroristic drama. "The Doom of Devorgoil," designed for Terry at the Adelphi, is a melodrama with many songs and a mixture of mimic goblins with supernatural machinery that was found to be so objectionable as to prevent its performance. It is interesting as one of the very few cases in which a man of literary reputation undertook to meet the requirements of the illegitimate drama. None of the other plays, which are in blank verse, was intended for the stage. "Macduff's Cross" is a mere sketch in one act; "Halidon Hill" a two-act dramatization of border warfare; "Auchindrane," in three acts, is a more fully developed tragedy. "Halidon Hill" has a clearness and directness of characterization and a vigor of movement which suggest that had the auspices been more favorable, the historical drama might have had another great exponent. "Auchindrane," though retaining a little of the Radcliffian mystery and mystification which Scott never quite outgrew, also tells its domestic story with a directness and verisimilitude not usual among the romanticists. German translation, terroristic tragedy, spectral melodrama, dramatic sketches for the closet, and domestic tragedy are all illustrated by these six plays; and their subjects and treatment also reflect the various attachments of Scott's literary career. They illustrate also the inability of literary genius to aid the theatre in this period, but they differ from most of the literary drama in their absence of subjectivity or attachment to theory.
Byron's plays, like other poetical tragedies of the time, were written in accord with the writer's theories and counter to the prevailing theatrical practices; but Byron prided himself on departing from the methods of the Elizabethans or of his fellow romanticists, and on following the guidance of eighteenth century models. "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," and "Sardanapalus," all written 1820-21, attempt regularity of plot and observance of the unities, and profess Alfieri as a model. The two Venetian plays, however, recall Otway's "Venice Preserved," and their exaggeration of strange passions is quite in accord with the general practice of the romanticists. The plots are improbable, though selected from history, and aloof from general interest, for the resentment of the old doge at the insult to his wife and the unyielding vengeance of Loredano and, indeed, all the major passions are treated with an extravagance that becomes melodramatic and renders the persons all but unintelligible. With "Sardanapalus" the case is different. The dissolute, luxurious, but nobly-aspiring hero and his better angel, Myrrha, derive from the characters of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli a truth of passion that animates the rapid and spectacular action. A tragedy of palace intrigue, after the eighteenth century type, is thus reanimated by the romantic fervor of its passion, philosophy, and poetry. Any time from "The Mourning Bride" to "Zenobia" it might have triumphed on the stage, and so it did triumph when finally acted; but it summoned only a tithe of Byron's power. Quite different from any of these three plays, his "Werner" was obviously suited to its own day. Based on one of Harriet Lee's novels, it forsakes classical structure and exhibits all the paraphernalia and emotional horrors of the terrific drama. It was one of the greatest stage successes of the romantic drama, but it is no more deserving, either as a play or a poem, than a dozen of its rivals.
Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species. Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred" and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to men."[51] The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man against society and providence make up the tragic theme. The tragedy of individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality, is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion. Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.
Shelley's "Cenci" in a different way mirrors this eternal defeat that human struggle after justice must encounter. Deeply impressed by the current tradition about Beatrice Cenci, he made this story of incest and parricide the expression of his view of life and history as a conflict between tyranny and downtrodden innocence. Nowhere else in Shelley, not even in "Prometheus Unbound," does this world drama come out of the clouds and reveal itself with such clarity and power. There is passion in the persons, climax in the situations, and directness in the language such as the romantic drama had rarely shown. The philosophical conception and the tangle of human motives do not indeed quite harmonize. Beatrice's lie and her unworthy seeking after life are bits of the story which interfere with our acceptance of Beatrice the martyr, flaws that Browning would not have admitted. On the other hand, Shelley's philosophy overrides the story, as may be seen by a comparison of the tragedy with one of the earliest to show dawning romanticism. Walpole's "Mysterious Mother," which at this time Byron was praising as "the last tragedy," treats a more horrible story of incest with the interest mainly in the plot, holding in suspense the fearful solution until the end; "The Cenci" begins with the act of incest, and then tries to carry our interest solely to the two characters, one the embodiment of all inherited evil, the other, a pure and beautiful spirit striving madly and in vain to free herself from wrong that is might. The conquest of the stage, the writing of dramatic blank verse, and the endowment of this story of crime with representational truth were tasks too large to be accomplished in a single play; but, though faulty in the details of dramatic art, "The Cenci" is, for a first tragedy, without an equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry. The poet who shrank from comedy as from a wicked thing and who thought a story of incest possible in a London theatre, had much to learn before he could master the stage. But "The Cenci" reveals the maturing Shelley, who was opening his mind to new impressions, admiring "Cain" and "Don Juan," profiting from Æschylus and Calderon as well as Shakespeare, and who was seeing his allegories clothed in human form, and no longer only in images of mist and flame. As one reads one wonders,—had the play not been the last as well as his first tragedy? had it come at the beginning instead of nearly at the close of the romantic movement?