Tragedy Part 7

In each play the order of incidents becomes a logical development from the characters of the actors; each deed, thought, or speech has its sequence.

There are no tricks, no surprises, no sudden conversions of character. Once admit the premises, a person of a certain temperament, facing a certain situation, and subject to a certain accident, mistake, or folly, and we cannot escape the conclusion. The dramatic necessities of character are never violated. From the clear exposition of the first scene, the progress is inevitable to the end.

The persons of the plays spring from the old stories, and by these the study of their motives is in many ways limited. It is limited again by the types and conditions of stage-land. The b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant, the hesitating avenger, the Machiavellian villain come hence. The acts which they commit, their moods, motives, their very language depend in part on the representatives of these types that had long been familiar to the audiences of the theatres. Yet the host of individual personalities are the result of a most profound and fresh observation of an almost boundless range of life. That interest in characterization which distinguishes the early drama and finds its main ill.u.s.tration in Shakespeare's own practice in the preceding decade here comes to its culmination. Not only the main actor, but the most conventional part, the most absurd business, the merest supernumerary, receives its touch of truth. And something more than truth to life or knowledge of motive is manifest. The great characters are cast in large moulds. They represent the courses of the master pa.s.sions.

Smallness of horizon, triviality of design, feebleness of mind or body are absent. Momentous crises that try men's souls are the real subjects of the tragedies. The accidents of dress, or manner, or time, or race, the incidents of action, are forgotten as revenge, jealousy, irresolution, and l.u.s.t seize their splendid prey. The greatness of human nature, the power of the human will, the responsibility of the individual remain. There is no belittling of reason even when it breaks under the crash of the storm. Iago is no mere stage villain, though he has all the characteristics of the type; nor is he merely a transcript from life, though he has all the variety and plausibility of a human being. He is the embodiment of our countless evil impulses, the incarnation of depravity. So with all the others. They are human in their truth; they are magnificent idealizations in the range and value of their manifold suggestiveness; they leave the stage to become the habitants of our imaginations, contributing to our reflections their embodiments of good and evil, folly and reason, resolution and doubt.

They speak a language all their own, though with resemblances to their kinsmen in the other Elizabethan tragedies. The blank verse, far more flexible than in the early plays, presents a triumphant union of the conflicting tendencies toward decoration and naturalness observed in the other dramatists; and it is freely mingled with hardly less masterly prose.

Marvelous in comparison with preceding verse is its extreme condensation in spite of its opulence of figures and aphorisms. Although crowded with thought and image, it is nevertheless, in its response to the varying persons and moods, superbly dramatic. A critic who is both a poet and a philosopher[21] objects to Macbeth's dagger "unmannerly breech'd with gore"

as violent and crude in comparison with the historical reminiscences with which Homer might have made Achilles describe the weapon. But recall the scene. Macbeth has murdered the grooms and rushes from the chamber to confront the fearful suspicions of Duncan's sons and friends. Surely, his false and frenzied excuses must be over-fanciful, violent, and crude.

"Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood, And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore."

Such a style, however, does not readily give up opportunities for aphorism or beauty for the sake of absolute truth to situation or character. Still less does it mimic actual speech. It does give a potency to the stories, otherwise hardly conceivable; and it adds to truth of character the allurement of music and picture, and the idealization of a magnified suggestiveness. A father has reason to curse his daughter--gesture and incoherent words might correctly represent life; a plain sentence of Ibsen's might convey the tragedy of the situation--but it is the extravagant and terrible imprecation of Lear that has for centuries made men's imaginations shudder. Style such as this the drama will never recover. We shall sooner find another Shakespeare to blend its diverse elements than a host of dramatists, like the Elizabethans, fascinated by a newly discovered world of poetry and daringly adventurous in search of melody of verse, wealth of aphorism, luxury of fantasy, and truth to character.

The effect of Shakespeare's tragedies on spectator or reader is so complex as to defy a.n.a.lysis. Incidental wisdom, effective scene, immortal story all contribute; but the main sources of their abiding impressiveness have surely been the characterization and the poetic style. If we must continue to seek for a katharsis, do not they supply it? The great tragedies are full of disaster, wrong, and suffering. The world they reveal is not the abode of happiness, but of darkness and remorse. Though the bad are punished, the good are not rewarded. Sweetness and innocence suffer and perish along with foulness and malevolence. The n.o.blest spirits are broken; the wages of mortal effort are failure. There are many "breaches in nature for ruin's wasteful entrance." Nor does the life hereafter offer a promise of compensation. Death ends all,--that is the great catastrophe toward which human endeavor precipitates itself. This is not Shakespeare's view of life, but it is his view of the tragedy of life, and its effect upon us is gloomy, overpowering, heartrending. But everywhere this tragedy of life is revealed in verse infinitely appealing to intellectual a.n.a.lysis and to imaginative exhilaration. Everywhere there are men and women, not dead but living, representative of much that is most intensely and universally interesting in life, and the permanent guests of our reflection. The old ethical adage that it does not so much matter what men do as what they are has a particular truth when applied to the people of Shakespeare. That they do this or that, love, murder, die, is in the story; what they are remains the possession of humanity. Our horror at the successful villany of Iago finds a certain relief in the intellectual pleasure and admiration at the creator's achievement; it accomplishes a certain purification in its application to the Iago in ourselves. Still more do the persons who most excite our sympathy survive the intolerable emotions that first greet their misfortunes. When we read "Oth.e.l.lo" we feel an overwhelming pity, a fierce resentment, but we would not erase from our possession the memory of Desdemona and her Moor. The misery and wrong and death go to make up in our reflection the beings whom we love and cherish.

It is Lear's fivefold "never" that completes for us the loveliness of Cordelia.

A comparison of the tragedies with the masterpieces of other national dramas might disclose their faults but would not diminish their glories.

Faults in plenty there surely are, whether judgment be taken of cla.s.sicists or realists, or of the best standards of the Elizabethans. There are many quibbles or fantasies of diction that might be criticised, many bits of dialogue or stage spectacle that might be omitted without detracting from the total impressiveness. How many minor inconsistencies of plot or characterization might be corrected. How complicated and bewildering is "Hamlet" in comparison with the simpler harmony of "Antigone." How involved and c.u.mbrous, and how undignified in its appeal to the emotions, is much of "Antony and Cleopatra" in comparison with "Phedre." How impossible and fantastic is much of "Lear" in comparison with "Ghosts." But Shakespeare's defects and deficiencies belong to his time and to his methods. They are inseparable, indeed, from the very means on which depend his consummate results. Not in response to literary tradition, but to the public theatre; not by a refined but by a daring art; not by simplicity and unity, but by complexity and opulence of effect; not by devotion to creed or science or fact, but by the idealization and sublimation of man's emotional nature, did Shakespeare give to his dramas their imperishable wealth of life.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] George Santayana, _Reason in Art_, p. 113.

CHAPTER VII

THE LATER ELIZABETHANS[22]

Shakespeare's great tragedies did not create a new epoch in the development of the drama. In themes and general treatment they made no marked departure from the past. Their translation of story and circ.u.mstance into the conflicts and processes of character was beyond the reach of imitation, and, indeed, not likely to gain full recognition from contemporaries. They were rather the consummation of the old than the heralds of a new era, though their influence on succeeding dramatists was wide and permeating, especially as time and publication brought a growing appreciation of their greatness as literature. Meanwhile, the old types of tragedy continued their sway, sometimes little touched by Shakespeare's influence. English history plays were rare; Roman history plays frequent; Senecan closet dramas continued; the Marlowean and Kydian traditions received further development. The revenge play, in particular, continued to be one of the most conspicuous types. Further, a most important innovating force appeared just at the close of Shakespeare's tragic period in the heroic romances of Beaumont and Fletcher, which gained an immediate popularity and created new practices in both tragedy and tragicomedy.

The times were changing. The improved social status of the theatre, the support of the court, the vogue of private theatres like Blackfriars, the increasing interest in the stage on the part of the lettered and fas.h.i.+onable cla.s.ses, supplied more intelligent and critical audiences; but the increasing Puritanism separated the drama more and more from sympathy with the main public. The drama became less national, more critical, and less moral. The corrupt society of the reign of James I supplied little of that imaginative idealism which had found expression at the time of the Armada. It offered the serious drama either objects for satire and cynicism or sophisticated and courtly ideals of conduct. In consequence, a more conscious art found itself less competent than in the early drama to depict greatness of mind, and resorted to the tracing of abnormal pa.s.sion, the casuistical inquiry into moral problems, the exposure of evil, or to romance without moral intention.

Yet dramatic enterprise continued unabated. The theatre continued to attract poetic ambition. Scholars, men of letters, gentlemen of rank turned to the popular stage. There was as yet no suspicion of decadence. Rather the past seemed to offer, through a recognition of its merits and a pruning of its faults, encouragement for a greater achievement in the future. In spite of critical realization of the absurdities of the early drama, and of the necessity for a better regulated art, the integrity of the national tradition was recognized and maintained. In 1612, in a preface to his "White Devil," Webster, after explaining that he had departed from the cla.s.sical standards "willingly, and not ignorantly," proceeds to extol his contemporaries and masters:--

"Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: for mine owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and haightened stile of Maister Chapman, the labor'd and understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister Beamont & Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood; wis.h.i.+ng that what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martiall:

--non morunt haec monumenta mori."

After a time the greatness of the past masters proved rather an impediment than a stimulus. But in 1612 their work seemed to offer encouragement for even greater achievement in the immediate future.

For the historian this period offers less difficulties than the preceding ones. After 1610 comparatively few plays of importance are non-extant, and few of the extant plays are anonymous. The bulk of the important plays was produced by a few dramatists, who dominated the theatres and whose careers determined the drama's development. After examining the revenge plays which about 1612 gave a further extension to that species, and the heroic romances of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration, which were produced within a few years before that date, we may trace the succeeding developments of tragedy mainly in the work of Fletcher, Ma.s.singer, Middleton, Ford, and s.h.i.+rley.

The main line of the development of the revenge tragedy is represented by Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," the anonymous "Second Maiden's Tragedy,"

and Webster's "White Devil" and "d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi." The four plays may be said to const.i.tute a new species whose differences from the old type seem clearly unconnected with Shakespeare's "Hamlet" but directly traceable to Marston's plays, especially his "Malcontent."

Revenge is no longer the main motive but is a subsidiary element in complicated stories of revolting l.u.s.t and depravity. Tragedy has become the representation of vice and sin, with a p.r.o.neness for their foulest entanglements. In one play a brother plays the part of pandar to his sister; in another a father to his daughter; and in a third a mother to her daughter. Nor is revenge, even in its subordinate position, the simple blood-for-blood requital that it is in Kyd. It may be for various causes beside murder; it is born of malice rather than duty; it may share in the moral turpitude of the rest of the action. The ghost no longer directs the course of revenge, and may disappear entirely. In "The Revenger's Tragedy"

the skull of the betrothed, as the skeleton in "Hoffman," takes the place of the apparition; and in other plays the duties of the ghost are minimized or farmed out among various supernatural agents, two female ghosts appearing. Hesitation on the part of the avenger does not appear.

Indeed, his entire character has changed. He may be a villain, as in "Hoffman," or the villain's accomplice, or one of Marston's "malcontents,"

or a combination of these parts. The other leading elements in the Kydian type are preserved. Insanity of various forms, real and pretended, is prominent. Intrigue of a complicated kind abounds, but is often dependent, after the fas.h.i.+on of current comedy, largely on improbable disguises.

Deaths are as frequent as ever and more horrible. Much of the old stage effect reappears, as in the masques, funerals, ghosts, and exhibition of dead bodies, but there is a great increase in the number and ingenuity of melodramatic sensations. Each play is a chamber of horrors. In one, a wife dies from kissing the poisoned portrait of her husband; in another, the l.u.s.tful king sucks poison from the jaw of a skull; and in a third, from the painted lips of a corpse. Comets blaze, there are many portents, the time is ever midnight, the scene the graveyard, the air smells of corruption, skulls and corpses are the _dramatis personae_. Every means seems to be employed to make theatrically effective the horrors of death and decay. And once, at least, these means are used with tremendous power in the riot of madness, torture, and corruption that preludes the death of the d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi.

All or nearly all of the active characters are black with sin. The extraordinary exploitation of villany in Elizabethan tragedy here reaches its culmination. The arch-villain as ruthlessly devoted to crime as Hoffman, the accomplice a.s.siduous in revolting baseness, the villain touched by remorse, the malcontent reviling human life,--all these appear--sometimes all combined in one person--and play their parts along with unshrinking prost.i.tutes and l.u.s.tful monarchs. The study of villany, however, has gained intensity and plausibility over the earlier plays. If none of the villains take to themselves much individuality, most of them have moments of dramatic impressiveness, and they are intended to be realistic. They are drawn with an acc.u.mulation of detail, a fondness for probing into depravity, with a sense of the dramatic value of devilry, and with a bitterness and cynicism that often seem sincere and searching. It is this cynicism which gives character to the reflective elements of these plays. The Kydian soliloquy on fate has given way to the prevailing satirical and bitter tone that finds its favorite themes in the sensuality of women and the hypocrisy and greed of courts, and its favorite means of expression in the connotation of the obscene and b.e.s.t.i.a.l.

The qualities attributed to these four plays recall "Hoffman" and "The Atheist's Tragedy," and still more Marston's plays, and the satirical comedy of the preceding decade as well as the tragedy. Though the four plays are thus cla.s.sed together, their differences are marked. "The Second Maiden's Tragedy" manifests more than the others the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher. Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," far superior to his earlier "Atheist's Tragedy," surpa.s.ses Marston and reveals brilliant dramatic talent. Full of thrills and unspeakable juxtapositions, it is governed by a sheer delight in horror and unrelieved by any moral standard. Webster, on the contrary, made his horrors impressive in both poetry and moral.

Dependent at every step on the work of predecessors, he succeeded as did no other poet except Shakespeare in transforming the revenge play into a work of art and truth. Chapman was, perhaps, his chief model, but the processes of his transforming art, though not its results, bear resemblances to Shakespeare's. He was possessed by an interest in the effects of crime upon character, and had the power to realize these momentarily with amazing truth. Hence his great portraits of Vittoria, the Cardinal, and the d.u.c.h.ess, and the ingeniously and vividly though not very consistently drawn figure of Bosola. As Shakespeare in "Macbeth" and "Lear," fascinated by the wickedness of the world, reveled in images of blackness, corruption, and despair, so Webster, more laboriously and inquisitively, was ever seeking fantastic expression for the old truth that all is vanity. In his masterpiece, "The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi," and in a lesser degree in "The White Devil," his recognition of moral values again recalls Shakespeare. We are moved by the pitifulness of the suffering as well as by the horror of the evil. There is no confusion of good and bad; and if the prevailing view of life is cynical, it is not unrelieved by respect for fort.i.tude and conscience. The tragedy of revenge reached a new alt.i.tude in this play, which, though poorly constructed, tells a story of criminal and horrible revenge with a vivid delineation of character, a pervading moral sense, and with flashes of speech that attain both poetic and dramatic sublimity.[23]

The collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher was finished by the time that Webster published his acknowledgment of their masters.h.i.+p. Gentlemen by birth and breeding, they began writing for the stage apparently as pupils of Jonson, entered into collaboration by 1607, and in the next five years, by the time that Beaumont was twenty-seven and Fletcher thirty-three, produced some ten plays that gained them a popularity surpa.s.sing that of Shakespeare's later years, and extending well through the Restoration. So far as tragedy is concerned, the main result of their collaboration was the formation of a new species of heroic romances, some tragedies and some tragicomedies. Six plays serve to define the type, though other plays of the collaboration have resemblances to it and, after Beaumont's retirement, the type was continued in the work of Fletcher and others. These six plays, "Four Plays in One," "Thierry and Theodoret," "Cupid's Revenge,"

"Philaster," "A King and No King," and "The Maid's Tragedy," probably owe more to Beaumont than to Fletcher. "The Maid's Tragedy" and the two tragicomedies, "Philaster" and "A King and No King," are the masterpieces, but the six plays resemble one another so closely that one a.n.a.lysis will answer for all.

Beaumont and Fletcher did not, like most of their predecessors, turn to English or Roman history for their plots, and they preserved but few traces of the Marlowean tragedy with its central protagonist and dominating pa.s.sion, or of the revenge type in any of its amplifications. Their plots, largely of their own invention, are highly ingenious and complicated. They deal with heroic actions in imaginary foreign realms. The conquests, usurpations, and pa.s.sions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, but there are no battles or armies, and the action is usually confined to the rooms of the palace or a neighboring forest. Usually contrasting a story of gross sensual pa.s.sion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of incidents, and aim at a constant but varied excitement. Love of one sort or another, honor also of many kinds, and friends.h.i.+p, which is somewhat more steadfast, are ever in conflict. We are given seats in an anteroom of the palace, and at once the flow of events engrosses us,--conspiracies, imprisonments, insurrections, wars, adultery, seduction, murder, the talk of courtiers, gossip of women, banquets of the monarch, and the laments of the love-lorn. Or, after a tumultuous hour, we may retire to the adjoining forest, where the lovers wander to forget their misfortunes, and by its fountains weave their laments into lyrical garlands. A few hours, and kingdoms have trembled in the balance; the heroine has been proved guilty and innocent again; and the lover has been ecstatic, frantic, jealous, cowardly, implacable, and forgiving, and finally wins or dies with his honor secure.

The tragedies differ from those preceding in structure as well as in material. Their main purpose is theatrical effectiveness; their means of securing it the constant use of surprise. Beaumont and Fletcher did not follow their narrative sources closely; they invented their own stories or used old ones as the frame for their favorite situations and characters.

The tragic, idyllic, and sensational matter is skillfully constructed into a number of theatrically telling situations which lead by a series of suspenses and surprises to very effective climaxes or catastrophes. All signs of the epic methods of construction found in the early drama have disappeared, and the interest in the action is maintained at fever heat. In "The Maid's Tragedy," the climax of the play comes at the end of the fourth act with the murder of the king by his mistress, Evadne, the wife of Amintor. But in the fifth act the main action absorbs the sub-plot and continues its course of thrills and surprises until the very end. In "A King and No King," the love of Arbaces for his supposed sister furnishes many entanglements, and it is not until the end of Act V that we know that the princess is not his sister, and the tragedy of incest is resolved into romance. There is no inevitableness in the action of these plays. Usually, until the last moment there is a chance for either a happy or an unhappy ending, and in every case the _denouement_ or catastrophe is elaborately planned and complicated.

From the nature of their material and treatment there is little difference between the tragedies and tragicomedies. Tragicomedy as a species had up to this time hardly been recognized in the English drama, although there are sporadic instances of the use of the term and although romantic comedy usually offered tragic elements. Fletcher's definition (borrowed from Guarini) in the preface to "The Faithful Shepherdess," may be taken as sufficiently distinguis.h.i.+ng the form from other species,--"A tragicomedy is not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a G.o.d is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy." The example of Beaumont and Fletcher, moreover, gave popularity and importance to this cla.s.s of plays. Borrowing motives familiar in romantic narrative and the preceding drama, they yet created a departure from preceding romantic comedy, both in the constant emphasis which they place upon the contrast between the tragic and idyllic elements of their plots and in the especial attention they pay to surprising and complicated _denouements_. They aim not merely at a mixture of the sentimental and tragic but at involving every one in a tangle of disastrous complications, resolved only by a series of final surprises. Although only two of the six romances are tragicomedies, the imitators of Beaumont and Fletcher most frequently adopted the form, realizing apparently the theatrical value of keeping the spectators thrilled and excited until the end and then relieving their sympathetic suspense by a happy solution.

The _dramatis personae_ of the six plays belong to the impossible and romantic situations rather than to life, and are usually of certain types,--the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt outspoken soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden disguised as a page in order that she may serve the hero; an evil woman defiant in her crimes; and the poltroon, usually a comic personage. With the addition of a king, some gentlemen and ladies of the court, and a few persons from the lower ranks, the cast is complete. The various persons introduce one another in long descriptions; and, after the introductory speech, the character remains fixed, except as the s.h.i.+fting situations demand some unexpected revolution. There is no shading or subtlety in the characterization, little discrimination or individuality in the different representatives of the favorite types, who, however, are by no means wanting in originality. They do not reveal the depths or complexities of human nature, but they exhibit fresh and ingenious variations of the old types, audacious humor and abundant spirit, and the power of their creators to rise to a situation and to express dramatic emotion. Thus, their type of evil woman acquires tremendous force in the scenes where Evadne plays her part; and their heroines suffer, serve, weep, love, forgive, and die, in lines that somehow preserve the grace of simplicity, though they wear all the jewels of allusion and imagery that the authors possess. Moreover, their men and women talk like real persons. Dryden declared that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better than Shakespeare, a distinction that in some respects is clear to-day. The men of preceding tragedies had spoken a language elevated and removed from ordinary discourse, but in Beaumont and Fletcher the romantic scenes and impossible changes of character are made plausible by an absence of archaism and a directness and lucidity of speech.

In the main, what reality the characters retain in our memories is due to the power of the verse to reflect clearly the emotions of the moment. There is a notable absence of the merely sonorous, the turgid declamation, the mouthing of strange words, and an absence of over-crowding thought or fancy. Beaumont and Fletcher had no desire to make their style sententious, weighty, and philosophical. They knew what they wanted to say, and they said it clearly and rapidly. They had room for ornament and rhetorical device, but none for eccentricity or obscurity. Another remark of Dryden's, that they perfected the English language, deserves consideration as the view of a century later, and can be appreciated even now. The characteristics of their style, so far as it can be considered as a common property, seem due to an effort to make dialogue correspond as nearly as possible to natural speech. This is particularly true of Fletcher, who is the more revolutionary of the two and the more persistent in his mannerisms. His structure is loose and conversational, and his blank verse overruns the borders of the rigid pentameter and approaches the irregularity of prose. Numerous added syllables and a large percentage of feminine endings further mark his departures from past models, and, combined with his end-stopped lines, give his verse a peculiar monotony.

Both writers rise now and then to an intensely imaginative phrase or a beautifully wrought description. The verse of neither is suggestive of the intricacies of human feeling or the splendor of human intellect, but the verse of both, of Fletcher preeminently, reveals a fertility of imagination and an extraordinary mobility of words.

These merits of style gave Beaumont and Fletcher their seventeenth century reputation and have continued to attract readers in the generations since.

Ethical objections to their plays drove them from the stage in spite of their theatrical effectiveness. They wrote with little ethical intention.

Unlike some of their contemporaries, they did not seek to discover the abodes of sin and to chastise the monster, nor did they study human nature in the light of moral law. They dealt with themes that would please their audience and would offer a sufficient range of emotions for the exhibition of their poetic powers. Without imaginations that touched spiritual heights or penetrated to the real significance of moral conflict, they entered unhesitatingly upon the task of holding up a mirror to a society loose in manners and unprincipled in morals. They were not so much guilty of intentional immorality as impotent to produce moral effect. If their imaginations kept too frequent company with the gross and the unhealthy, they also sought at times the sweeter and n.o.bler aspects of life. What won for their ethics high laudation from their contemporaries was their rhetorical and dramatic exaltation of ideals of magnanimity and dreams of idyllic love and devoted friends.h.i.+p.

Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their dalliance with the artificial and abnormal aspects of pa.s.sion, and their disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or comprehensive or n.o.ble reflection of life.

Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen," and possibly on a lost play, "Cardenio." The partners.h.i.+p resulted in no distinct departures from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre, composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with Ma.s.singer, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of the time until his death in 1625.

Perhaps if Beaumont had lived, the two might have advanced to maturer and worthier achievement, but Fletcher's work alone rather displays the superficialities and artificialities of the collaboration. His amazing cleverness appears in every scene, but he evidently wrote more and more for immediate success, and relied more and more on his readinesss of wit and invention to take the place of earnest and serious purpose. The long series of plays in which he had at least a considerable share, range in kind from comedies of manners to tragedies of blood and revenge, but practically all may be described as romantic drama, having, that is, strange improbable events, foreign and remote scenes, variety and surprise in action, and love as the central motive. His sense of dramatic value in theme or incident was constantly alert, and in Spanish stories, especially the "Novellas Exemplares" of Cervantes, he found mazes of complicated action which exactly suited his fancy, and which he managed with adroit dramaturgy. The Spanish influence is more noticeable in the comedies than in the more serious plays; but, whatever the theme or the source, Fletcher added bustle and excitement. The distinctions between tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and romantic comedy often become barely discernible. The material and treatment are similar. Tragic situations occur in comedies as well as tragedies, and in either case, though finely conceived and admirably expressed, are yet always directed by the desire for surprise and thrills. The tragicomedies conform most closely to the conventionalities and repet.i.tions of the heroic romances, though they exhibit abundant originality of invention. Through their example, romantic and melodramatic tragicomedy became perhaps the most popular and characteristic dramatic species of the reign of Charles I, and a direct progenitor of the heroic plays of the Restoration.

In his tragedies Fletcher's prost.i.tution to theatrical effectiveness admits a recognition of the literary tradition. At least, the two which are the result of his unaided efforts are composed with more care and with more evidence of artistic responsibility than his other dramas. In "Valentinian"[24] he turned from his usual sources and themes to those long approved in pure tragedy, and found in Roman history a story of revenge and l.u.s.t. Though treating the material with great freedom, he unfortunately followed his source in continuing the action beyond the murder of Valentinian through the counter revenge on Maximus. The first two acts, that tell of the attempted seduction of Lucina and her final ruin, are among the best sustained tragic developments in Fletcher, and, in comparison with many similar scenes in contemporary drama, testify to his remarkable poetic gifts. But the later scheming and the overthrow of her husband involve a conversion of character and a descent into absurd improbability. In "Bonduca," Fletcher's invention moved unhampered.

Historical sources are used merely as hints and incentives. The stories of Bonduca and Caratach are combined; and the interest in their tragic fates diversified by the stories of Bonduca's daughters and their Roman lovers, by the episode of the n.o.ble Poenius, by the pathos of the child Hengo, and also by some gross and brutal comedy. All these interests are skillfully interwoven and focused upon the great central scene of the battle. There is stirring presentation of camp life, and throughout the action moves with abounding spirit. The play is not tragedy at all if one judges it strictly by Aristotle's precepts or by Shakespeare's example, or even in comparison with the emotional tension of "The Maid's Tragedy." But it is an admirable example of the blending of the romantic, historical, heroic, pathetic, comic, and tragic, full of human nature as well as incident, conspicuous for poetic expression as well as theatrical ingenuity, one of the masterpieces of the romantic drama.

The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Ma.s.singer or others offer few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all melodramas in which Ma.s.singer's moral earnestness and rhetorical seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever stage-craft, n.o.ble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmans.h.i.+p are indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt"

carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of the readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and Ma.s.singer's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and almost at their very best.

The most striking ill.u.s.tration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its prost.i.tution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The b.l.o.o.d.y Brother; or Rollo, Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Ma.s.singer and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes of tragedy, the story of family feud and a b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant. In comparison, however, with any preceding dramas of this cla.s.s, whether in early imitations of Seneca or later treatments of l.u.s.t and revenge, the play shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of talent. When the height of tragic pa.s.sion is required he rises to it, or very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her father's life, a scene which Dyce p.r.o.nounced the most real in its pa.s.sionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine pa.s.sion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play.

Edith, whose father has been killed by the b.l.o.o.d.y and l.u.s.tful Rollo, is planning to murder him. She has pretended to yield to his solicitations, and has arranged a secret meeting with him at her house. Enter Edith, splendidly dressed--a banquet prepared. She kneels and prays to her father's soul that she may forget all pity and kill the tyrant--

"His heaven forgot, and all his l.u.s.ts upon him."

Then, as her boy sings the lovely song, perhaps Shakespeare's,

"Take, oh take those lips away That so sweetly were forsworn--"