It may here be noticed that the fortunes of the Irish theatre in general followed those of the English, of which of course it was merely a branch. Of native dramatic compositions in earlier times not a trace remains in Ireland; and the drama was introduced into that country as an English exotic—apparently already in The Irish stage.the reign of Henry VIII., and more largely in that of Elizabeth. The first theatre in Dublin was built in 1635; but in 1641 it was closed, and even after the Restoration the Irish stage continued in a precarious condition till near the end of the century. About that time an extraordinarily strong taste for the theatre took possession of Irish society, and during the greater part of the 18th century the Dublin stage rivalled the English in the brilliancy of its stars. Betterton’s rival, R. Wilks, Garrick’s predecessor in the homage paid to Shakespeare, Macklin, and his competitor for favour, the “silver-tongued” Barry, were alike products of the Irish stage, as were Mrs Woffington and other well-known actresses. Nor should it be forgotten that three of the foremost English writers of comedy in its later days, Congreve, Farquhar and Sheridan, were Irish, the first by education, and the latter two by birth also.
Already in the period preceding the outbreak of the Civil War the English drama had perceptibly sunk from the height to which it had been raised by the great Elizabethans. When it had once more recovered possession of that arena with which no living drama can dispense, it would have been futile to The later
Stuart drama.demand that the dramatists should return altogether into the ancient paths, unaffected by the influences, native or foreign, in operation around them. But there was no reason why the new drama should not, like the Elizabethan, have been true in spirit to the higher purposes of the dramatic art, to the nobler tendencies of the national life, and to the demands of moral law. Because the later Stuart drama as a whole proved untrue to these, and, while following its own courses, never more than partially returned from the aberrations to which it condemned itself, its history is that of a decay which the indisputable brilliancy, borrowed or original, of many of its productions is incapable of concealing.
Owing in part to the influence of the French theatre, which by this time had taken the place of the Spanish as the ruling drama of Europe, the separation between tragedy and comedy is clearly marked in post-Restoration plays. Comic scenes are still occasionally introduced into tragedies by some dramatists who Tragedy.adhered more closely to the Elizabethan models (such as Otway and Crowne), but the practice fell into disuse; while the endeavour to elevate comedy by pathetic scenes and motives is one of the characteristic marks of the beginning of another period in English dramatic literature. The successive phases through which English tragedy passed in the later Stuart times cannot be always kept distinct from one another; and the guidance offered by the theories put forth by some of the dramatists in support of their practice is often delusive. Following the example of Corneille, Dryden and his contemporaries and successors were fond of proclaiming their adherence to this or that principle of dramatic construction or form, and of upholding, with much show of dialectical acumen, maxims derived by them from French or other sources, or elaborated with modifications and variations of their own, but usually amounting to little more than what Scott calls “certain romantic whimsical imitations of the dramatic art.” Students of the drama will find much entertainment and much instruction in these prefaces, apologies, dialogues and treatises. They will acknowledge that Dryden’s incomparable vigour does not desert him either in the exposing or in the upholding of fallacies, while le bon sens, which he hardly ever fails to exhibit, and which is a more eclectic gift than common-sense, serves as a sure guide to the best intelligence of his age. Even Rymer,[1] usually regarded as having touched the nadir of dramatic criticism, will be found to be not wholly without grains of salt. But Restoration tragedy itself must not be studied by the light of Restoration criticism. So long as any dramatic power remained in the tragic poets—and it is absent from none of the chief among them from Dryden to Rowe—the struggle between fashion (disguised as theory) and instinct (tending in the direction of the Elizabethan traditions) could never wholly determine itself in favour of the former.
Lord Orrery, in deference, as he declares, to the expressed tastes of his sovereign King Charles II. himself, was the first to set up the standard of heroic plays.[2] This new species of tragedy (for such it professed to be) commended itself by its novel choice of themes, to a large extent supplied by recent French romance—the romans de longue haleine of the Scudérys and their contemporaries—and by French plays treating similar themes. It likewise borrowed from France that garb of rhyme which the English drama had so long abandoned, and which now reappeared in the heroic couplet. But the themes which to readers of novels might seem of their nature inexhaustible could not long suffice to satisfy the more capricious appetite of theatrical audiences; and the form, in the application which it was more or less sought to enforce for it, was doomed to remain an exotic. In conjunction with his brother-in-law Sir R. Howard,[3] and afterwards more confidently by himself,[4] Dryden threw the incomparable vigour and brilliancy of his genius into the scale, which soon rose to the full height of fashionable popularity. At first he claimed for English tragedy the right to combine her native inheritance of freedom with these valuable foreign acquisitions.[5] Nor was he dismayed by the ridicule which the celebrated burlesque (by the duke of Buckingham and others) of The Rehearsal (1671) cast upon heroic plays, without discriminating between them and such other materials for ridicule as the contemporary drama supplied to its facetious authors, but returned[6] to the defence of a species which he was himself in the end to abandon.[7] The desire for change proved stronger than the love of consistency—which in Dryden was never more than theoretical. After summoning tragedy to rival the freedom (without disdaining the machinery) of opera—with whose birth its own revival was as a matter of fact simultaneous—he came to recognize in characterization the truest secret of the master-spirit of the Elizabethan drama,[8] and after audaciously, but in one instance not altogether unhappily, essaying to rival Shakespeare on his own ground,[9] produced under the influence of the same views at least one work of striking merit.[10] But he was already growing weary of the stage itself as well as of the rhymed heroic drama; and, though he put an end to the species to which he had given temporary vitality, he failed effectively to point the way to a more legitimate development of English tragedy. Among the other tragic poets of this period, N. Lee, in the outward form of his dramas, accommodated his practice to that of Dryden, with whom he occasionally co-operated as a dramatist, and like whom he allowed political partisanship to intrude upon the stage.[11] His rhetorical genius was not devoid of genuine energy, nor is he to be regarded as a mere imitator. T. Otway, the most gifted tragic poet of the younger generation contemporary with Dryden, inherited something of the spirit of the Elizabethan drama; he possessed a real gift of tragic pathos and melting tenderness; but his genius had a worse alloy than stageyness, and, though he was often happy in his novel choice of themes, his most successful efforts fail to satisfy tests supplementary to that of the stage.[12] Among dramatists who contributed to the vogue of the “heroic” play may be mentioned J. Bankes, J. Weston, C. Hopkins, E. Cooke, R. Gould, S. Pordage, T. Rymer and Elkanah Settle. The productivity of J. Crowne (d. c. 1703)[13] covers part of the earlier period as well as of the later, to which properly belong T. Southerne, a writer gifted with much
- ↑ A Short View of Tragedy (1693).
- ↑ The Black Prince; Tryphon; Herod the Great; Altemira.
- ↑ The Indian Queen.
- ↑ The Indian Emperor; Tyrannic Love; The Conquest of Granada.
- ↑ Essay of Dramatic Poesy.
- ↑ Essay of Heroic Plays.
- ↑ A direct satirical invective against rhymed tragedy of the “heroic” type is to be found in Arrowsmith’s comedy Reformation (1673).
- ↑ The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy.
- ↑ All for Love (Antony and Cleopatra).
- ↑ Don Sebastian.
- ↑ The Rival Queens; Lucius Junius Brutus; The Massacre of Paris.
- ↑ Don Carlos; The Orphan; Venice Preserved.
- ↑ Oroonoko; The Fatal Marriage.
