Sect. II.
ON THE ENGLISH DRAMA.
State of the Stage after the Restoration—Tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Southern—Comedies of Congreve and others.
Revival of the English theatre. 38. The troubles of twenty years, and much more the fanatical antipathy to stage-plays which the predominant party affected, silenced the muse of the buskin, and broke the continuity of those works of the elder dramatists, which had given a tone to public sentiment as to the drama from the middle of Elizabeth’s reign. Davenant had, by a sort of connivance, opened a small house for the representation of plays, though not avowedly so called, near the Charter House in 1656. He obtained a patent after the Restoration. By this time another generation had arisen, and the scale of taste was to be adjusted anew. The fondness for the theatre revived with increased avidity; more splendid decoration, actors probably, especially Betterton, of greater powers, and above all, the attraction of female performers, who had never been admitted on the older stage, conspired with the keen appetite that long restraint produced, and with the general gaiety, or rather dissoluteness, of manners. Yet the multitude of places for such amusement was not as great as under the first Stuarts. Two houses only were opened by royal patents, granting them an exclusive privilege, one by what was called the King’s Company, in Drury Lane, another by the Duke of York’s Company, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Betterton, who was called the English Roscius, till Garrick claimed that title, was sent to Paris by Charles II., that, taking a view of the French stage, he might better judge of what would contribute to the improvement of our own. It has been said, and probably with truth, that he introduced moveable scenes, instead of the fixed tapestry that had been hung across the stage; but this improvement he could not have borrowed from France. The king not only countenanced the theatre by his patronage, but by so much personal notice of the chief actors, and so much interest in all the affairs of the theatre as elevated their condition.
Change of public taste. 39. An actor of great talents is the best friend of the great dramatists; his own genius demands theirs for its support and display; and a fine performer would as soon waste the powers of his hand on feeble music, as a man like Betterton or Garrick represent what is insipid or in bad taste. We know that the former, and some of his contemporaries, were celebrated in the great parts of our early stage, in those of Shakspeare and Fletcher. But the change of public taste is sometimes irresistible by those who, as, in Johnson’s antithesis, they “live to please, must please to live.” Neither tragedy nor comedy was maintained at its proper level; and as the world is apt to demand novelty on the stage, the general tone of dramatic representation in this period, whatever credit it may have done to the performers, reflects little, in comparison with our golden age, upon those who wrote for them.
Its causes. 40. It is observed by Scott, that the French theatre, which was now thought to be in perfection, guided the criticism of Charles’s court, and afforded the pattern of those tragedies which continued in fashion for twenty years after the Restoration, and which were called rhyming or heroic plays. Though there is a general justice in this remark, I am not aware that the inflated tone of these plays is imitated from any French tragedy; certainly, there was a nobler model in the best works of Corneille. But Scott is more right in deriving the unnatural and pedantic dialogue which prevailed through these performances from the romances of Scudery and Calprenède. These were, about the era of the Restoration, almost as popular among the indolent gentry as in France; and it was to be expected that a style would gain ground in tragedy, which is not so widely removed from what tragedy requires, but that an ordinary audience would fail to perceive the difference. There is but a narrow line between the sublime and the tumid; the man of business or of pleasure who frequents the theatre must have accustomed himself to make such large allowances, to put himself into a slate of mind so totally different from his every-day habits, that a little extraordinary deviation from nature, far from shocking him, will rather show like a further advance towards excellence. Hotspur and Almanzor, Richard and Aurungzebe, seem cast in the same mould; beings who can never occur in the common walks of life, but whom the tragedian has, by a tacit convention with the audience, acquired a right of feigning like his ghosts and witches.
Heroic tragedies of Dryden. 41. The first tragedies of Dryden were what was called heroic, and written in rhyme; an innovation which, of course, must be ascribed to the influence of the French theatre. They have occasionally much vigour of sentiment and much beautiful poetry, with a versification sweet even to lusciousness. The “Conquest of Grenada” is, on account of its extravagance, the most celebrated of the plays; but it is inferior to the “Indian Emperor,” from which it would be easy to select passages of perfect elegance. It is singular that although the rhythm of dramatic verse is commonly permitted to be the most lax of any, Dryden has in this play availed himself of none of his wonted privileges. He regularly closes the sense with the couplet, and falls into a smoothness of cadence which, though exquisitely mellifluous, is perhaps too uniform. In the Conquest of Grenada the versification is rather more broken.
His later tragedies. 42. Dryden may probably have been fond of this species of tragedy on account of his own facility in rhyming, and his habit of condensing his sense. Rhyme, indeed, can only be rejected in our language from the tragic scene, because blank verse affords wider scope for the emotions it ought to excite; but for the tumid rhapsodies which the personages of his heroic plays utter there can be no excuse. He adhered to this tone, however, till the change in public taste, and especially the ridicule thrown on his own plays by the Rehearsal, drove him to adopt a very different, though not altogether faultless style of tragedy. His principal works of this latter class are All for Love, in 1678, the Spanish Friar, commonly referred to 1682, and Don Sebastian, in 1690. Upon these the dramatic fame of Dryden is built; while the rants of Almanzor and Maximin are never mentioned but in ridicule. The chief excellence of the first appears to consist in the beauty of the language, that of the second in the interest of the story, and that of the third in the highly finished character of Dorax. Dorax is the best of Dryden’s tragic characters, and perhaps the only one in which he has applied his great knowledge of the human mind to actual delineation. It is highly dramatic, because formed of those complex passions which may readily lead either to virtue or to vice, and which the poet can manage so as to surprise the spectator without transgressing consistency. The Zanga of Young, a part of some theatrical effect, has been compounded of this character and of that of Iago. |Don Sebastian.| But Don Sebastian is as imperfect as all plays must be in which a single personage is thrown forward in too strong relief for the rest. The language is full of that rant which characterised Dryden’s earlier tragedies, and to which a natural predilection seems, after some interval, to have brought him back. Sebastian himself may seem to have been intended as a contrast to Muley Moloch; but if the author had any rule to distinguish the blustering of the hero from that of the tyrant, he has not left the use of it in his reader’s hands. The plot of this tragedy is ill conducted, especially in the fifth act. Perhaps the delicacy of the present age may have been too fastidious in excluding altogether from the drama this class of stories; because they may often excite great interest, give scope to impassioned poetry, and are admirably calculated for the αναγνωρισις, or discovery, which is so much dwelt upon by the critics; nor can the story of Œdipus, which has furnished one of the finest and most artful tragedies ever written, be well thought an improper subject even for representation. But they require, of all others, to be dexterously managed; they may make the main distress of a tragedy, but not an episode in it. Our feelings revolt at seeing, as in Don Sebastian, an incestuous passion brought forward as the make-weight of a plot, to eke out a fifth act, and to dispose of those characters whose fortune the main story has not quite wound up.
Spanish Friar. 43. The Spanish Friar has been praised for what Johnson calls the “happy coincidence and coalition of the two plots.” It is difficult to understand what can be meant by a compliment which seems either ironical or ignorant. Nothing can be more remote from the truth. The artifice of combining two distinct stories on the stage is, we may suppose, either to interweave the incidents of one into those of the other, or at least so to connect some characters with each intrigue, as to make the spectator fancy them less distinct than they are. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice, the courtship of Bassanio and Portia is happily connected with the main plot of Antonio and Shylock by two circumstances; it is to set Bassanio forward in his suit that the fatal bond is first given; and it is by Portia’s address that its forfeiture is explained away. The same play affords an instance of another kind of underplot, that of Lorenzo and Jessica, which is more episodical, and might perhaps be removed without any material loss to the fable; though even this serves to account for, we do not say to palliate, the vindictive exasperation of the Jew. But to which of these do the comic scenes in the Spanish Friar bear most resemblance? Certainly to the latter. They consist entirely of an intrigue which Lorenzo, a young officer, carries on with a rich usurer’s wife; but there is not, even by accident, any relation between his adventures and the love and murder which go forward in the palace. The Spanish Friar, so far as it is a comedy, is reckoned the best performance of Dryden in that line. Father Dominic is very amusing, and has been copied very freely by succeeding dramatists, especially in the Duenna. But Dryden has no great abundance of wit in this or any of his comedies. His jests are practical, and he seems to have written more for the eye than the ear. It may be noted as a proof of this, that his stage directions are unusually full. In point of diction, the Spanish Friar in its tragic scenes, and All for Love, are certainly the best plays of Dryden. They are the least infected with his great fault, bombast, and should indeed be read over and over by those who would learn the true tone of English tragedy. In dignity, in animation, in striking images and figures, there are few or none that excel them; the power indeed of impressing sympathy, or commanding tears, was seldom placed by nature within the reach of Dryden.
Otway. 44. The Orphan of Otway, and his Venice Preserved, will generally be reckoned the best tragedies of this period. They have both a deep pathos, springing from the intense and unmerited distress of women; both, especially the latter, have a dramatic eloquence, rapid and flowing, with less of turgid extravagance than we find in Otway’s contemporaries, and sometimes with very graceful poetry. The story of the Orphan is domestic, and evidently borrowed from some French novel, though I do not at present remember where I have read it; it was once popular on the stage, and gave scope for good acting, but is unpleasing to the delicacy of our own age. Venice Preserved is more frequently represented than any tragedy after those of Shakspeare; the plot is highly dramatic in conception and conduct; even what seems, when we read it, a defect, the shifting of our wishes, or perhaps rather of our ill-wishes, between two parties, the senate and the conspirators, who are redeemed by no virtue, does not, as is shown by experience, interfere with the spectator’s interest. Pierre indeed is one of those villains for whom it is easy to excite the sympathy of the half-principled and the inconsiderate. But the great attraction is in the character of Belvidera; and when that part is represented by such as we remember to have seen, no tragedy is honoured by such a tribute, not of tears alone, but of more agony than many would seek to endure. The versification of Otway, like that of most in this period, runs almost to an excess into the line of eleven syllables, sometimes also into the sdrucciolo form, or twelve syllables with a dactylic close. These give a considerable animation to tragic verse.