Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/454

434 DRAMA [ENGLISH, of the age, intensified the Puritan opposition to all and any stage plays. A patient endeavour to reform instead of suppressing the drama was not to be looked for from such adversaries, should they ever possess the means of carrying out their views ; and so soon as Puritanism should victoriously assert itself in the state, the stage was doomed. Among the attacks directed against it in its careless heyday of prosperity Prynne s Ilistno Maatix (1632), while it involved its author in shamefully cruel persecution, did not remain wholly without effect upon the tone of the dramatic literature of the subsequent period ; but the quarrel between Puritanism and the theatre was too old and too deep to end in any but one way, so soon as the latter was deprived of its protectors. The Civil War began in August 1642 ; and early in the following month was published the Ordinance of the Lords and Commons, which, after a brief and solemn preamble, commanded that while these sad causes and set-times of humiliation do continue, public stage plays shall cease and be forborne." Many actors and playwrights followed the fortunes of the royal cause in the field ; some may have gone into a more or less voluntary exile; upon those who lingered on in the familiar haunts the hand of power lay heavy ; and though there seems reason to believe that dramatic entertainments of one kind or another continued to be occasionally presented, stringent ordinances gave summary powers to magistrates against any players found engaged in such proceedings (1647), and bade them treat all stage- players as rogues, and pull down all stage galleries, seats, and boxes (1648). A few dramatic works were published in this period ; while at fairs about the country were acted farces called " drolls/ consisting of the most vulgar scenes to be found in popular plays. Thus, the life of the drama was not absolutely extinguished ; and its darkest day proved briefer than perhaps either its friends or its foes could have supposed. Revival of Already " in Oliver s time " private performances took she drama, place from time to time at noblemen s houses and (though not undisturbed) in the old haunt of the drama, the Red Bull. In 1656 the ingenuity of Sir William Davenant (1606-1669), whose name, though not otherwise eminent in our dramatic literature, is memorable as connecting together two distinct periods in it, ventured on a bolder step in the production of a quasi-dramatic entertainment " of declamation and music ; " and in the following year he brought out with scenery and music a piece which was afterwards in an enlarged form acted and printed as the first part of his opera, The Siege of Rhodes. This entertainment he afterwards removed from the private house where it had been produced to the Cockpit, where he soon ventured upon the performance of regular plays written by himself. Thus, under the cover of two sister arts, whose aid was in the sequel to prove by no means altogether beneficial to its progress, the English drama had boldly anticipated the Restoration, and was no longer hid ing its head when that much desired event was actually brought about. Soon after Charles II. s entry into London, two theatrical companies are known to have been acting in the capital. For these companies patents were soon granted, under the names of " the Duke (of York) s" and "the King s Servants," to Davenant and one of the brothers Killigrew respectively, the former from 1662 acting at Lincoln s Inn Fields, then at Dorset Garden in Salisbury Court, the latter from 1663 at the Theatre Royal near Drury Lane. These companies were united from 1682, a royal licence being granted in 1695 to a rival company which performed in Lincoln s Inn Fields, and which migrated to Covent Garden in 1733. Meanwhile Vanbrugh had in 1705 built the theatre in the Haymarket ; and a theatre in Goodman s Fields afterwards rendered famous by the first appearance of Garrick led a fitful existence from 1729 to 1733. The Act of 1737 deprived the Crown of the power of licensing any more theatres ; so that the history of the English stage for a long period was confined to a limited area. The rule which prevailed after the Restoration, that neither of the rival companies should ever attempt a play produced by the other, operated beneficially both upon the activity of dramatic authorship and upon the progress of the art of acting, which was not exposed to the full effects of that deplorable spirit of personal rivalry which leads actors, in order to outshine their fellows, to attempt parts for which they often have no special qualification. There can be little doubt that the actor s art has rarely flourished more in England than iu the days of T. Betterton (1635-1710) and his con temporaries, among whose names those of Hart, Mohun, Kynaston, Nokes, Mrs Barry, Mrs Betterton, Mrs Bracegirdle, and Mrs Eleanor Gwynne have, together with many others, survived in various connections among the memories of the Restoration age. No higher praise has ever been given to an actor than that which Addison bestowed upon Betterton, in describing his performance of Othello as a proof that Shakespeare could not have written the most striking passages of the character other wise than he has done. 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 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. 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 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, be true in spirit to the higher purposes of the dramatic art, to the nobler tendencies of the national life, and to the eternal demands of moral law. Because the later Stuart drama was as a whole untrue to these, and, while following its own courses, never more than partially returned from the aberrations to which it con demned 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 our post-Restoration plays. Comic scenes are still occasionally introduced into tragedies by some of our dramatists who 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 char acteristic marks of the beginning of another period in our 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 arid his contemporaries The I stasre The I Stuai dram.

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