Peele's "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Tragedie of Absalon," acted about 1591, has, unlike "Arden," many "filed points to make it gratious to the eare and eye." It gains a unique interest as the only extant tragedy of this period based on the biblical narrative. The bible story is treated just as a historical chronicle would have been; and the play, divided by choruses into three "discourses," offers no advance in conception, structure, or characterization on the average tragedy of the period. Yet it is the masterpiece of one of the most active among Shakespeare's predecessors and ill.u.s.trates his most distinctive contribution to the drama's development. As the author of "Alcazar,"

"Edward I," and possibly "Locrine," as well as "David and Bethsabe,"

Peele's contribution deserves some note. His dramatic career began at Oxford, where he made a version of one of the "Iphigenias" of Euripides, which was acted at Christ Church, and where he also aided in the production of Dr. Gager's Latin plays. In London he became the friend of Nash, Greene, and Marlowe, and the versatile adopter of the latest dramatic modes, whether in comedy, pastoral, history, or tragedy. In his best work, however, and especially in "David and Bethsabe," there are graces of style which justify Nash's eulogy of his friend as "primus verborum artifex." The great innovation of this early drama was, after all, in poetic style; and in furthering this Peele may claim a place only second to Marlowe. If Marlowe gave sweep and grandeur to blank verse, Peele brought a sweetness of cadence and, as Professor Ward observes, "a vivacity of fancy and a variety of imagery." As Marlowe turned everything into sonorous phrase, now bombastic, now superb, so Peele turned every thought to music and fancy, sometimes ba.n.a.l, sometimes lovely. "David and Bethsabe," with its oriental setting, though treated with careless dramatic art, proved an inspiration to the stylist. The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or situation. Absalon plays with conceits for twenty-five lines while hanging by his hair, and laments melodiously for fifteen lines more after being stabbed. But there is charm and gracefulness everywhere, in the choruses, in the defense of Hamon, and in the parables, and now and again the very allurement and luxury of words, as in the famous,

"Now comes my lover tripping like the roe And brings my longings tangled in her hair."

While this operatic verbalism with its faults and merits cannot of course be a.s.signed wholly to Peele, he seems to have been in the drama one of its earliest and most influential purveyors.

The dozen plays just noticed furnish departures from, as well as adaptations of, the Kydian and Marlowean types of tragedy, but they reveal no marked advance in conception or structure. In characterization, however, there is a development in various ways; thus, a hack play like "The True Tragedy" has considerable power in its conception of a conscience-smitten villain, in "Woodstock" there is clear individualization, and in Alice Arden and the Countess of "Edward III" female character becomes lifelike and impressive. Still more salient is the attention paid to style. The Elizabethan theatregoer was used to the spoken and not to the written word, and expected at the theatre to be delighted by verbal display. Dramatic style then had functions which have since been relegated to other arts. It was to be declamative, taking the place of oratory; descriptive, supplying in part the place of scenery; and operatic in its word-play and decorative phrasing, and in its lyric interludes and laments. Moreover, medieval tradition and Senecan models alike enforced the necessity in tragedy of a heightened style; and many dramatists doubtless agreed with Gosson in placing first among dramatic requirements "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets with metaphors, allegories." Still further, along with the excesses resultant from this delight in words, there was manifest a growing mastery of language to represent truthfully situation and character.

"Arden" gave crude expression to this reaction toward realism in style; "Woodstock" much more effectively; and colloquial directness was mingled with the artificialities of "The Spanish Tragedy" and the beauties of "Edward II." Henceforth the Elizabethan drama exhibits a conflict between dramatic suitability of language and its declamatory, operatic, or aphoristic decorativeness, promoting on the one hand a realistic presentation of life, and on the other fantastic absurdity and imaginative idealism.

The preceding discussion of Marlowe and his contemporaries must have made it apparent that Shakespeare cannot be treated as outside of the circle, although his plays have for convenience been reserved until now. The young actor and poet learned to meet successfully the demands of the stage through an apprenticeship of hack-work, collaboration, and revision, and progressed in his art by means of adaptation and imitation. He wrote in a.s.sociation and rivalry with his fellow playwrights, responding like them to theatrical fashions, and feeling like them the spur of current artistic impulses. The dramatic activity that we have been discussing bears at every point upon his early work. He shared both the limitations and the incentives, bowed to the commanding influences, and rose to the opportunities for initiative which characterize this period. His dramatic career probably began two or three years later than Marlowe's, and of the plays now to be considered several were probably not written until the years following Marlowe's death. "t.i.tus Andronicus" and the three parts of "Henry VI" belong to the early nineties and should be cla.s.sed with the tragedies of blood and the chronicle histories of those years. "King John,"

"Richard III," and "Richard II" came somewhat later and form a part of the more advanced development of chronicle history variously represented by "Edward III," "Woodstock," and Marlowe's "Edward II." "Romeo and Juliet,"

in its final form perhaps still later, is a great and original masterpiece, but one still very characteristic of the dramatic period of which it is the crown and flower.

How much of "t.i.tus Andronicus" is to be regarded as Shakespeare's remains a debated question, a recent and plausible theory being that it was his revision and combination of two old plays.[14] The play, which was coupled by Jonson with "The Spanish Tragedy" as popular twenty years after its first appearance, is mainly an imitation of Kyd, though the phrasing and rhythm frequently show an advance over that author's work. In situations and various specific pa.s.sages the imitation is p.r.o.nounced and the motives of the Kydian type are in the main repeated. The revenge of a father for his son is opposed by villanous intrigue, involves a play within the play, and leads the hero into madness. Kyd's finer conception of a tragic hero hesitating in the face of fearful responsibility is, however, lacking; the combination of the two revenge stories--Tamora for her child murdered by t.i.tus, and t.i.tus in return for the murder of his children--resembles "Locrine"; and the black Aaron is, like the negro-Moor in "Alcazar," one of the many Marlowesque villains. The play surpa.s.ses current revenge plays chiefly in its unapproached orgy of mutilation, murder, and horror.

The three parts of "Henry VI"[15] are certainly only in part Shakespeare's and represent the complex form of collaboration not infrequently found in the drama. It is likely that Marlowe and Greene were concerned in the plays, and that Shakespeare's share was mainly in revision. The three plays were at all events very popular and occupy an important place among the early chronicle histories. The contention between the houses of York and Lancaster becomes an epic theme, uniting the three parts, and affords manifold opportunity for battles, defiances, coronations, usurpations, and patriotism. The structure as well as the material is of the chronicle, without any approach to tragic unity or coherence; but the plays do in some ways invade the field of tragedy. Comedy is practically excluded except in the Cade scenes; and the last two parts, as their t.i.tles indicate, present a series of "falls of princes"--"the death of the good Duke Humphrey; And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the tragicall end of the proud cardinall of Winchester" and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt." With themes of bloodshed and battle, material at least full of tragical possibilities, and under the schooling of Marlowe, Shakespeare served his apprenticeship for historical tragedy.

In "King John" Shakespeare still followed chronicle history methods without any clear advance toward tragedy. He was engaged in rewriting the old "Troublesome Reign," and he followed its plot with great closeness, scene after scene with entrances and exits being the same in both plays. But here his indebtedness practically stops. He seems to have made out a careful scenario, following the old play with only such alterations and omissions as were necessary for the condensation of its two parts into a single play, and then to have thrown aside the old text and almost forgotten it.

His improvements consequently coincide with the developments which we have found common in the tragedies of the period in that they concern characterization and style. Faulconbridge and Constance become incomparably more vital and impressive than in the old play and win our interest away from the battles and arguments of the rapid scenes. The style, almost never reminiscent of the early play, is mainly rhetorical, though always vigorous and usually surpa.s.sing the models which it frequently recalls. It often displays the conflict between the ornamental and naturalistic tendencies; as, for example, when Arthur, facing the murderer, quibbles for ten lines over the red-hot iron which is to put out his eyes, and then, as the attendants enter, forgets his rhetoric in words whose sincerity and simplicity have touched every reader.

"Richard III" and "Richard II," though possibly earlier than "King John,"

show the imitator and adapter rather than the reviser, and represent independent efforts to give tragic unity to the material of the English chronicles. While all the tragedies and histories so far considered have long since proved unfitted for the stage, "Richard III" has maintained its first popularity and continued to attract the greatest actors and to win the liking of the patrons of the theatre of each generation. Yet, though it has for three centuries exercised a profound impression on the popular imagination, it shows in the opinion of all critics a great indebtedness to Marlowe, and is so evidently imitative of current models that critics writing from such different points of view as Mr. Fleay and James Russell Lowell have been led to doubt Shakespeare's authorship. External and internal evidence both contradict such doubts emphatically, but the close relationship of the play to "Henry VI" makes it improbable that Shakespeare turned to the theme solely of his own initiative. "Richard III" is the fourth play of a tetralogy manifestly planned before the earlier members were completed. Margaret appears in all four plays; the character of Shakespeare's Richard is distinctly outlined in Part III; and it was evidently meant to end the contention of York and Lancaster with the triumph of the Tudor dynasty, and the long series of falls of princes with the tragedy of the villanous Gloster. The chronicle of Richard's reign had indeed been given a tragic unity in the history by Sir Thomas More and in a long saga of chronicle and literature which had developed still further the conception of this masterful and dreadful villain. The suitability of this material to current forms of tragedy was obvious. Dr. Legge had found in this saga the material for a Senecan play; the unknown author of "The True Tragedy" had discovered there a ready-made tragedy of blood and revenge; and there are indications of non-extant plays on the same theme. For either Marlowe or for Shakespeare working with him on the history of the struggle between York and Lancaster, the opportunity for a tragedy with a central hero of the type of Tamburlaine, Faustus, or Barabas must have been apparent.

Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy"

supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in the play.[16] In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe, making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a chorus,--curses, laments, and exultations. Moreover, with a tact unique at that time and not displayed by him in "t.i.tus Andronicus," he perceived that the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.

An abundance of theatrical effects, already familiar on the stage, is indeed supplied. The murder of Clarence, with its prolonged dialogue between the murderers, the victims led away to execution, the orations before the battle, the funeral cortege, the battle scenes, the laments and curses, now multiplied and expanded beyond the verge of absurdity, all reflect current stage practices. The structure, still over-dependent on the chronicle sources, indulges after the current fashion in the retention and prolongation of undramatic material: such as the feeble forebodings of the citizens (ii, 3), the prolongation of Hastings's warning of death (iii, 2), and the useless soliloquy of the scrivener (iii, 6). Yet, in comparison with contemporary plays, there is great superiority both in dramatic construction and theatrical effectiveness. The main action progresses with rapidity and coherence to the moment of Richard's reversal of fortune (iv, 4), thirteen years being condensed into a few days; and the interest from this climax to the catastrophe is maintained by startling melodramatic effects. But the great dramatic merit of the play lies in the use of contrast, surprise, and particularly of dramatic irony in the separate scenes and in their masterly integration to display the character of Richard himself.

Following closely the character outlined in the chronicle, borrowing conception and treatment from Marlowe's protagonists, and mindful of the host of stage villains that had proved so popular in tragedy, Shakespeare constructed a cacodemon who remains not only a great stage figure but also alive and human in our imaginations. That he is the source of all evil in the play; that he is absurdly and impossibly diabolic; that he informs the audience of all his nefarious schemes; that he has a Machiavellian skill in intrigue; that he is in intellect and will easily the superior of all whom he encounters; that he is possessed by an egoism superhuman in its audacity; that he is an accomplished and ironical hypocrite; that he is conscienceless except when half asleep and dreaming; that from the beginning to the end he is a masterful and relentless pursuer of his ambition, uninfluenced by persons or events, alike subjects of his contempt,--all this indicates a skillful adaptation and continuation of sources and models. But Richard is more. He is dramatically immensely effective; he is always at hand at the right moment; he is never nonplussed; a murder is hardly over when he appears smiling and ironically repentant; he can ask for strawberries with murder in his heart, or play with the children or woo the woman whom he has already marked for doom.

That these theatrical fascinations were the results of a consistent conception based on a profound ethical and psychological study can hardly be maintained. It may indeed be doubted whether in this respect there is much advance over Marlowe's villains, or even those of his contemporaries, to say nothing of an approach to Macbeth and Iago. Richard is sometimes a human being, sometimes a monster, and always a stage villain. But the very fact that critics have delighted to a.n.a.lyze and moralize over his traits is proof that Shakespeare, in spite of the monstrosities of his conception, gave to its dramatic presentation not only a stage effectiveness but also plausibility.

This plausibility must be accredited largely to the vigorous colloquialism of his speeches. The play manifests the usual conflict of artificial and natural styles; the elaborate stichomythia and the wailing and cursing queens furnish examples of the common affectations of tragic style; and the rhetorical display appears not infrequently in Richard's speeches. But in the main he speaks with a naturalness and directness far greater than was usual in tragic heroes, and the natural-speaking Richard often makes plausible and convincing the theatrical and rhetorical villain. Thus, after the opening soliloquy he drops his rhetoric for the conversational tone of his conference with Clarence; and thus, the procession of ghosts remains still impressive on our stage because it is followed by a soliloquy that surpa.s.ses all except a few of Marlowe's in power and naturalness.

Throughout the play, while others declaim, wail, and curse, the most impossible figure of them all becomes the only convincing human being, very largely because of the realism of his speech.

In "Richard II," written at about the time of "Richard III," Shakespeare was also writing under the influence of Marlowe, but now in direct imitation and rivalry of "Edward II." The first part of the reign of Richard II had already received treatment in "Jack Straw" and "Woodstock,"

and the theme of a weak king forced to abdicate had been presented in "Henry VI" as well as "Edward II." Shakespeare followed, as always. .h.i.therto, his source, Holinshed, very closely, and the historical material determined the plot and characterization, but Marlowe's example led him to an interpretation of the fifteen years' history as the tragedy of the reversal of fortune of a king whose temperament made him contemptible in prosperity but pitiable in adversity. Along with the story of the rise and progress of the conflict between Richard and the barons under Bolingbroke, there runs the story of "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty," which give a new pathos to that favorite theme of medieval tragedy and Elizabethan history, the vanquishment of a prince by scornful Fortune. The struggle within Richard's own heart, even more than in the case of Edward II, absorbs the interest and points the moral, the hollowness and uncertainty of earthly grandeur.

Structurally there is no advance on "Edward II" in exposition, integration of action, or catastrophe. Adherence to the chronicle results in a long drawn out and iterative first act, a virtual repet.i.tion of Richard's struggle over the relinquishment of the crown in iii, 3, and iv, 1, and a slight and melodramatic treatment of the catastrophe. On the other hand, there are some changes from Marlowe's method of interest in connection with later tragedy. Elegiac scenes with their lamenting women, also conspicuous in "Richard III," are an addition to the historical source and an important factor in the structure; their distribution through the play indicating that they were employed to supply a relief from the scenes of much action and high tension, more suitable to tragedy than the relief of comic scenes, and also to take, as in "Richard III," the place of a chorus through their lyrical reinforcement of the tragic emotions excited by the action. Again, as the theme is Richard's reversal of fortune rather than his death, so the emotional crisis receives a structural prominence not unlike that given to Hamlet's, and the catastrophe of death is relegated to a postscript. The pa.s.sage from crisis to catastrophe is managed, as in "Hamlet," "Lear," and "Macbeth," by the introduction of incidents extraneous to the main action, here the episode of Aumerle's conspiracy.

The main departures from Marlowe, however, are to be found in those elements of dramatic composition to which in this period the genius of Shakespeare as well as the talent of his contemporaries most readily responded, the characterization and the style. Not only the king himself but many other persons in the play, and notably Bolingbroke, are presented with consistency and subtlety. The historical narrative is transformed into a gallery of full-length historical portraits that lead us to forget history and drama in our study of their personalities. The euphuistic and sentimental Richard gives a fair field for the stylist, but his example is infectious, and the Queen, Gaunt, York, Bolingbroke, the gardener, and in fact all the persons of the drama, employ word-play, periphrasis, and the various flourishes of Elizabethan rhetorical style. If one accepts the theory that tragedy is a game for rhetorical display, and further accepts the conventionalities of Elizabethan style, there must be unmeasured admiration for the extraordinary verbal skill displayed. Shakespeare employs the current artificialities of diction with abounding facility and zest, and often suits them skillfully to the delineation of character; while his constant attention to expression results in a sustained eloquence, which, if it blurs the outlines of reality, subst.i.tutes a haze of fancy, and sometimes the glory of magnificent beauty. The miserable years of Richard's downfall are forever a.s.sociated in our minds with the picturesqueness of the two entries into London and with the splendor of the apostrophe to England and the recital of Norfolk's death.

In the three chronicle histories just considered, although the historical material largely determines structure, tragic conception, and characterization, and although all these are obviously under Marlowe's influence, yet Shakespeare had reached a stage far more advanced than that of mere imitator or adapter. In "Richard III" he had added his own impress to the Marlowean type of tragedy, and in "Richard II" he had introduced innovations foreshadowing his later conceptions. As a playwright he had equaled any of his contemporaries in immediate popularity and outdone them in permanent theatrical effectiveness. He had acquired a complete mastery over the conditions and conventions of the stage, and had frequently, if not always, outdone the best of his rivals in dramatic ingenuity and power.

Like his contemporaries, however, he was hampered by theatrical conditions and intractable historical material; and his chief interest was in the opportunities furnished by the chronicles for the delineation of character and the exercise of his gift of tongues. In range and verisimilitude his characters already far surpa.s.sed Marlowe's; and as a poet, whether in lyric, descriptive, or purely dramatic pa.s.sages, whether in sustained treatment of situation or in splendid purple patches, he had shown himself the peer of his master.

In "Romeo and Juliet" the same dramatic and poetic qualities are exhibited as in the historical plays, but the happy choice of the already well-known love story led Shakespeare outside of the direct range of Marlowe's example, freed him from the limits of the historical material, and gave his genius full scope. The importance of love as a motive in the Italian drama of the Renaissance is one of the traits that distinguish it from its cla.s.sical models, and the influence of Italian drama and fiction was important in turning Elizabethan dramatists to stories of romantic pa.s.sion.

These had already been widely adopted in comedy and had formed the principle plots of "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda," as well as minor parts in other tragedies of the period. The story of Romeo and Juliet, which Brooke speaks of having seen "lately (1562) set forth on the stage with more commendation than I can look for," may have been made into an English play before Shakespeare was born.[17] It had at least been dramatized in France and Italy, where Luigi Groto's "Adriana" (1578) surpa.s.sed all contemporary plays in the number of its editions.

Brooke's poem, "Romeus and Juliet" (1562), was the main source of the play and provided a story eminently adapted to dramatic representation. The plot, with its conflict between love and hate, the brief triumph of love, the interference of feud and family authority, the separation and death of the lovers, has been repeated in its essentials in thousands of stories, and has played an enormous part in the imaginations of four centuries; but it has hardly found a more effective scenario than that which lay imbedded in Brooke's long-spun narrative. A lesser genius than Shakespeare might have discovered it, but his powers of invention and construction are amply apparent, especially up to the turning-point of the play. The brawl and the love-sick Romeo of the first scene, dramatically expository and symbolic of the whole action, the meeting of the lovers at the dance, the balcony scene, the emba.s.sy and return of the nurse, the fatal fight with Tybalt, are all executed with a wealth of incidental invention, a sureness of technic, and a rapidity and directness of dramatic movement that relied but little on Brooke's narrative or contemporary example. The second half of the play, though skillfully condensed, follows the source more closely and, perhaps for this reason, impresses the modern reader less vividly.

Shakespeare's dramatic skill is manifest in his departure from the current methods of the tragedy of blood as well as in his treatment of the narrative. What imitators of Seneca and of Kyd did with similar love stories we have seen in "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Soliman and Perseda"; and "Romeo and Juliet" had an equal chance for ghosts, villany, and physical horrors. Some traces of the prevailing fashion do survive, as in the addition to Brooke of the murder of Paris and in the attention paid to the horrors of the tomb. But many of the best scenes are of the sort that occur in romantic comedy,--the repartee of gallants, the preparations for a feast, the dance, the street affray, the meetings and partings of the lovers,--and there is no villain, no figure of Nemesis, no ghost, no warring armies, and no pomp of courts. No tragedy had yet appeared with less theatrical sensationalism, and none which maintained the interest of the spectators upon the story with comparable dramatic intensity.

The extraordinary advance over the historical plays in dramatic technic is, however, overshadowed in our appreciation of the play by the irresistible appeal made by the persons of the story. They are more closely realized for us than the friends and foes of our daily life, yet they dwell forever in the enchantment of idealized romance. To a.n.a.lyze Shakespeare's power to portray and at the same time to exalt human nature would be to unlock the very key to Shakespeare's heart; we may well be content to wonder and exclaim. Yet, we may note that, while characterization, which had been increasing in range and individualization in the historical plays, is here triumphant, the means and methods are not unlike those already noticed. The brilliant translation of prose narrative into monologue and dialogue gives us the nurse; the vivacious amplification of a type familiar in comedy--the garrulous old man--results in Capulet; and even the greatest creations naturally retain traces of contemporary influences. Mercutio is the prince of a throng of quick-witted quibblers, and Juliet is sometimes declamatory, sometimes fantastic, like Brooke's heroine. But they are Shakespeare's own, and the first representatives of two ways in which his imagination characteristically and supremely manifested itself in later plays. Mercutio is the first of those imaginative achievements that concentrate into a few lines of blank verse the complete individualization of a human being; Juliet is perhaps the first of the amazing series of idealized women. If one considers how often the young girl in love has been the theme of genius, and recalls Fielding, Scott, Browning, and Meredith, one may secure some measure of Shakespeare's achievement. When one seeks comparison with the nave and likable young animal of Brooke's doggerel, or the women of preceding drama, even the charming heroines of Greene's comedies, the art that produced Juliet must seem miraculous. The idealization of woman was, to be sure, common in Renaissance art; and the union in her of wit and beauty, power and charm, pa.s.sion and purity, innocence and wisdom, was not solely Shakespeare's conception; but the power to conceive such a being with truth and to realize her dramatically, alive, human, and consistent, was his alone.

The conception and expression of character cannot be separated; there lies in the qualities of the poetic style some explanation of the impression we receive of idealized humanity. While colloquial directness is not wanting in the play, the prevailing style has the artificialities, the lyricism, and the exuberance we have found prevailing elsewhere. It exhibits about all the faults and affectations of the dramatic poetry of the time, but these are the defects of an art that finds poetry in everything and ever lingers to enjoy the beauty of words, whether over Queen Mab, or the apothecary's shop, or Friar Laurence's herbs. It stops to display its verbal ingenuity in a pun; it delights in lyric outbursts, sestette or sonnet, morning-song or epithalamium; it riots in the refrains on "banished," becomes grotesque in the wailing quartette, and finds its supreme opportunity in the fancy and music and pa.s.sion of the lovers underneath the summer moon. It is this exuberance, this spontaneity, this carelessness of incongruity, this delight in ornamentation, this abandon to music and fancy that transfigures the Verona of brawls, dinners, nurses, and deaths, and, forever ascendant over our fancies, like Romeo's blessed moon, "tips everything with silver."

It is in part this poetic style which distinguishes the play from the later tragedies, but the difference is everywhere manifest to our impressions.

The evil and gloom and pessimism that help to make up the tragic fact in "Lear" and "Macbeth" are here scarcely felt. To joy comes sorrow, because of evil and through accident,--this is the tragic theme. In the course of its presentation one may find it suggestive of the pa.s.sing of youth to age or of pa.s.sionate love to oblivion, but surely no one comes from the poem with a dominant impression of the wickedness of family feuds, or of the inevitable brevity of romantic pa.s.sion, or of the dangers of youthful precipitousness,--rather the mind glows with the beauty and joy revealed in life.

In this impression the play has a kinship with the tragedies, even the poor and the maimed, that had preceded it. Tragedies so far have been strangely free from Christian teaching or sentiment. Compared with the medieval drama, early Elizabethan tragedy seems not only secular but pagan. This is partly because it followed its sources and treated of Romans, Moors, Scythians, and heroes of myths and legends; partly because it derived stoic and fatalistic sentiments from Seneca and other cla.s.sical writers; but it also represents an entire departure from the medieval point of view, a departure necessarily emphasized in tragedy. In the medieval drama, death had been a translation to final reward or punishment,--the portals of heaven and h.e.l.l were open on the stage. In the Renaissance conception of tragedy death was the point and pith of tragic fact. Faith, forgiveness, reliance on Providence, a.s.surance of immortality are rarely alluded to.

Chance, mysterious fate, the emissaries of the devil, the powers of evil in the mind of man are the forces to which tragedy must attend; and they lead to a death terrible and pitiful, to be met bravely and defiantly, it may be, but not peacefully and hopefully. And this emphasis of the gloom of death required an equal emphasis on the glory and beauty of life. Tragedy was the pa.s.sing into darkness from under this majestic roof fretted with golden fire, the loss of n.o.ble reason and infinite faculty; and it must needs proclaim the beauty of the world as well as the quintessence of dust.

And so, although writers of tragedy dwelt on the horrors of death and its accompaniments of blood and atrocity, and though they symbolized in their villains their sense of the reign of evil, yet, in Marlowe's treatment of an Asiatic conqueror or the ign.o.ble fascination of Edward II, or in Peele's fancy that made musical the amours of David; everywhere indeed, in the Pantheas and Persedas, the Marii and Selimi, they were presenting human life as removed from the commonplace, the sordid, the usual, and as the abode of heroisms, splendors, and aspirations. Even evil deeds and villains, even death itself sometimes partook of this glorification; and tragic theory, moral purpose, and theological dogma were alike forgotten in the fascination of human character, pa.s.sion, and achievement. This idealization of life was, as we noted at the beginning of the chapter, characteristic of the national temper and of the artistic impulses in every field of literature during its brief breathing spell between the Protestant and Puritan revolutions. Its power is curiously ill.u.s.trated in the effect of the story of Romeo and Juliet upon Brooke in the course of his by no means despicable attempt to turn it into a tragic poem. In his Address to the Reader, he dilates with medieval propriety on the moral of the poem "to raise in the reader an hatefull lothyng of so filthy beastlynes." "And to this ende (good Reader) is this tragicall matter written to describe unto thee a coople of unfortunate lovers thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the authorite and advice of parents and frendes, conferring their princ.i.p.all counsels with dronken gossyppes, and superst.i.tious friers (the naturally fitte instrumentes of unchast.i.tie)"--and so on through all their evil doings until "finallye, by all meanes of unhonest lyfe hastyng to most unhappye death." So wrote the conscious Puritan; but the story charmed the artist. It enticed his meagre art to a share in the joys of the lovers, it led him to a delight in unhonest life, it dissolved his sermon into romance and poetry, and left him enamored even of his "superst.i.tious frier."

And so the tragedy of the lovers became for Shakespeare as for Brooke and as other stories had become for Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, the spur and the means to an idealization of life. It is not in the reconciliation of the families, still less in the sense of a deserved punishment, that we find an antidote for death and evil; but in the a.s.surance that human pa.s.sion may be so lovely, human nature so full of strength and beauty. "The sun for sorrow will not show his head," says Prince Escalus at the end, but we believe with Romeo that

"Jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."

NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ward, Fleay, and Sch.e.l.ling are the best general guides for this period. The books already mentioned by Collier, Symonds, Jusserand, Cunliffe, Fischer, and Churchill bear directly on the matter of this chapter. The sources for doc.u.ments and records are the same as for chapter iii, with the important addition of _Henslowe's Diary_, vol. i, 1904, ed. by W. W. Greg. The sources for lists of plays and bibliography are the same as in chapter ii,--Greg, Fleay, Hazlitt, Sch.e.l.ling, and Bates. There is no satisfactory and comprehensive treatment of Marlowe's work; J. H. Ingram's _Christopher Marlowe and his a.s.sociates_ (1904) supplies a full bibliography. Marlowe has been well edited by Dyce and by A. H. Bullen. Dyce's editions of Greene and Peele have long been standard. Bullen has also a good edition of Peele.

The recent Clarendon Press editions of Greene, Lyly, Kyd supply careful texts and full introductions. My article, _The Relations of "Hamlet" to Contemporary Revenge Play_s (Publ. Mod. Lang. a.s.sn. 1902), has been drawn upon for the discussion of Kyd; it furnishes references to the various critical discussions of Kyd's work. Texts of the plays by minor writers are to be found in Dodsley; W. C. Hazlitt's _Shakespeare's Library_ (6 vols., 1875), containing old plays and other sources for Shakespeare's plays; Delius, _Pseudo-Shakspere'sche Dramen_ (1874); the Tauchnitz edition of _Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare_; and in the editions of several of the pseudo-Shakespearean plays by K. Warncke and L. Proescholdt, Halle. This last edition of _Arden of Feversham_ contains a valuable introduction. For direction to the bibliography of Shakespeare, see chapter v. On the Henry VI plays, Miss Jane Lee's paper, _New Shaks. Soc. Transactions_, 1875-76, still offers the most exhaustive treatment of the question of authorship.

On _t.i.tus Andronicus_, Mr. Harold DeW. Fuller's article, _Mod. Lang. Publ._ (1901), and Mr. J. M. Robertson's _Did Shakespeare write t.i.tus Andronicus?_ (1905) are among the latest discussions. My review of Mr. Robertson's book, _Journal of Eng. and Germ. Philology_ (1907), treats in detail some of the discussion of this chapter. The latest studies of the Elizabethan theatre are C. Brodmeier's _Die Shakespeare-Buhne_ (Weimar, 1904), which reduces the "alternation" theory to an absurdity, and G. F. Reynold's _Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging_ (Chicago, 1905), which disposes of Brodmeier's theories, but goes a little too far in the other direction.

See, also, Baker's _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ for a careful and detailed account of the London theatres. Miss V. C. Gildersleeve's _Governmental Regulation of the Shakespearean Drama_ (Columbia Univ.

Studies in English, in press) is an exhaustive treatment of its subject and incidentally throws light on theatrical matters. Volume iv of Courthope's _History of English Poetry_ is on the "Development and Decline of the Poetic Drama," from Marlowe to 1642. Sch.e.l.ling's _The English Chronicle Play_ (1902) is the best discussion of this species. W. Bang's series, _Materialien zur Kunde des alteren englischen Dramas_, includes reprints and studies of interest in connection with this and the three following chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] It consists of two parts published 1591, and acted, as the prologue indicates, shortly after _Tamburlaine_, perhaps in 1588. Its scenes cover about the same ground as Shakespeare's play, with the addition of a ribald account of the sack of a monastery, an explanation of the poisoning of John in his treatment of the clergy, and a scene of some power in which Philip obtains from his mother, Lady Fauconbridge, a confession that his father was Richard.

[10] _Tamburlaine_ in two parts, certainly acted as early as 1588, gained an immediate and long-continued popularity, and was followed by a number of plays, all tragedies or histories. Without reckoning the numerous plays that have been a.s.signed to Marlowe on no sufficient grounds, he collaborated on the _Tragedy of Dido_ (1594), perhaps an early work, and on the three parts of _Henry VI_; and was the author of _The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus_, printed 1604, acted 1588 (?); _The Jew of Malta_, acted about 1589, and long the most popular of Henslow's repertoire: _The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II_, printed 1594, acted about 1591; and _The Ma.s.sacre of Paris_, of an unknown date of acting.

[11] The only other play certainly by Kyd is a translation of Garnier's _Cornelia_, 1595, which was doubtless never acted. His authorship of the _First Part of Jeronimo_, 1605, is denied by recent critics, and at most the text represents a very corrupt abridgment of his work. _Soliman and Perseda_, S. R. 1592, is attributed to him solely on internal evidence, and may have been by an imitator. The non-extant _Hamlet_, alluded to by Nash in 1589, and not until twelve years later used by Shakespeare as the basis of his play, is now generally a.s.signed to Kyd.

[12] Printed 1594, "as newly set forth, overseen, and corrected by W. S.,"

sometimes a.s.signed to Peele, and in an earlier form perhaps acted about 1590.

[13] Preserved in MS. and first printed in the _Shakespeare Jahrbuch_ in 1899.

[14] Harold DeW. Fuller, _Publ. Mod. Lang. a.s.sn._ 1901.

[15] The collaborators on Part I (1623) are unknown, and Shakespeare's contribution to the present form seems likely to have been written later than the bulk of the play, a not very impressive example of chronicle history. Parts II and III (1623) exist also in the abridged and altered forms of the two quartos of 1594, _The First Part of The Contention_ and _The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York_. The problems of the relations of these two quarto plays to the folio texts are among the most puzzling encountered by Shakespearean scholars.

[16] Somewhat similar situations between Lycus and Megaera in _Hercules Furens_, Locrine and Estrile in _Locrine_, and Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in _Tamburlaine_ must have been known to Shakespeare.

[17] See H. DeW. Fuller, "Romeo and Julietta," _Modern Philology_, 1906. It seems clear, however, that Shakespeare drew directly from Brooke.