A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
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conventions, especially the unities <strong>of</strong> Action and Time, the use <strong>of</strong> the<br />
chorus to comment on the action, the avoidance <strong>of</strong> violent action and deaths<br />
on the stage, and the use <strong>of</strong> messengers to report such events. For proper<br />
dramatic action they largely substitute ranting moralizing declamation,<br />
with crudely exaggerated passion, and they exhibit a great vein <strong>of</strong><br />
melodramatic horror, for instance in the frequent use <strong>of</strong> the motive <strong>of</strong><br />
implacable revenge for murder and <strong>of</strong> a ghost who incites to it. In the<br />
early Elizabethan period, however, an age when life itself was dramatically<br />
intense and tragic, when everything classic was looked on with reverence,<br />
and when standards <strong>of</strong> taste were unformed, it was natural enough that such<br />
plays should pass for masterpieces.<br />
A direct imitation <strong>of</strong> Seneca, famous as the first tragedy in <strong>English</strong> on<br />
classical lines, was the 'Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex,' <strong>of</strong> Thomas Norton<br />
and Thomas Sackville, acted in 1562. Its story, like those <strong>of</strong> some <strong>of</strong><br />
Shakspere's plays later, goes back ultimately to the account <strong>of</strong> one <strong>of</strong> the<br />
early reigns in Ge<strong>of</strong>frey <strong>of</strong> Monmouth's '<strong>History</strong>.' 'Gorboduc' outdoes its<br />
Senecan models in tedious moralizing, and is painfully wooden in all<br />
respects; but it has real importance not only because it is the first<br />
regular <strong>English</strong> tragedy, but because it was the first play to use the<br />
iambic pentameter blank verse which Surrey had introduced to <strong>English</strong> poetry<br />
and which was destined to be the verse-form <strong>of</strong> really great <strong>English</strong><br />
tragedy. When they wrote the play Norton and Sackville were law students at<br />
the Inner Temple, and from other law students during the following years<br />
came other plays, which were generally acted at festival seasons, such, as<br />
Christmas, at the lawyers' colleges, or before the Queen, though the common<br />
people were also admitted among the audience. Unlike 'Gorboduc,' these<br />
other university plays were not only for the most part crude and coarse in<br />
the same manner as earlier <strong>English</strong> plays, but in accordance also with the<br />
native <strong>English</strong> tradition and in violent defiance <strong>of</strong> the classical principle<br />
<strong>of</strong> Unity, they generally combined tragical classical stories with realistic<br />
scenes <strong>of</strong> <strong>English</strong> comedy (somewhat later with Italian stories).<br />
Nevertheless, and this is the main thing, the more thoughtful members <strong>of</strong><br />
the Court and University circles, were now learning from the study <strong>of</strong><br />
classical plays a sense for form and the fundamental distinction between<br />
tragedy and comedy.<br />
THE CHRONICLE-HISTORY PLAY. About twenty years before the end <strong>of</strong> the<br />
century there began to appear, at first at the Court and the Universities,<br />
later on the popular stage, a form <strong>of</strong> play which was to hold, along with<br />
tragedy and comedy, an important place in the great decades that were to<br />
follow, namely the Chronicle-<strong>History</strong> Play. This form <strong>of</strong> play generally<br />
presented the chief events in the whole or a part <strong>of</strong> the reign <strong>of</strong> some<br />
<strong>English</strong> king. It was largely a product <strong>of</strong> the pride which was being<br />
awakened among the people in the greatness <strong>of</strong> England under Elizabeth, and<br />
<strong>of</strong> the consequent desire to know something <strong>of</strong> the past history <strong>of</strong> the<br />
country, and it received a great impulse from the enthusiasm aroused by the<br />
struggle with Spain and the defeat <strong>of</strong> the Armada. It was not, however,<br />
altogether a new creation, for its method was similar to that <strong>of</strong> the<br />
university plays which dealt with monarchs <strong>of</strong> classical history. It partly<br />
inherited from them the formless mixture <strong>of</strong> farcical humor with historical<br />
or supposedly historical fact which it shared with other plays <strong>of</strong> the time,<br />
and sometimes also an unusually reckless disregard <strong>of</strong> unity <strong>of</strong> action,<br />
time, and place. Since its main serious purpose, when it had one, was to<br />
convey information, the other chief dramatic principles, such as careful<br />
presentation <strong>of</strong> a few main characters and <strong>of</strong> a universally significant<br />
human struggle, were also generally disregarded. It was only in the hands<br />
<strong>of</strong> Shakspere that the species was to be moulded into true dramatic form and<br />
to attain real greatness; and after a quarter century <strong>of</strong> popularity it was