PREFACE

This book attempts to trace the course of English tragedy from its beginnings to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to indicate the part which it has played in the history both of the theatre and of literature. All tragedies of the sixteenth century are noticed, because of their historical interest and their close relationship to Shakespeare, but after 1600 only representative plays have been considered. The aim of this series has been kept in view, and the discussion, whether of individual plays or of dramatic conditions, has been determined by their importance in the study of a literary type. Tragedy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has attracted very little critical attention, and in those fields the book is something of a pioneer. The Elizabethan drama, on the contrary, has been the subject of a vast amount of antiquarian, biographical, and literary research, without which such a treatment as I have attempted would be almost impossible. In order, however, to keep the main purpose in view, it has been necessary to omit nearly all notice of the processes of

research or the debates of criticism, and to give only what seem to me the results. To indicate at every point my reliance on my own investigations or my indebtedness to the researches of others would, indeed, necessitate doubling the size of the book. Its readers will not require an apology for its brevity, but I regret that I can[Pg vi] offer only this inadequate acknowledgment of the great assistance I have received not merely from the studies mentioned in the Bibliographical Notes, but also from many others that have directly or indirectly contributed to my discussion.

I am indebted to Dr. Ernest Bernbaum, who very kindly read chapters viii and ix, and made a number of suggestions. I have also the pleasure of expressing my great obligations to Professors Brander Matthews, Jefferson B. Fletcher, and William A. Neilson, who have read both the manuscript and the proof-sheets and given me the generous benefit of their most helpful criticism.

A. H. T. New York, March, 1908.

[Pg vii]

CHAPTER I

DEFINITIONS

There is little difficulty in selecting the plays that should be included in a history of English tragedy. Since the middle of the sixteenth century there have always been plays commonly received as tragedies, and others so closely resembling these that they require consideration in any comprehensive study. How far these plays present the common characteristics of a type, how far they constitute a clearly defined form of the drama, and how far they may be connected from one period to another in a continuous development—are questions better answered at the book's end than at its beginning. Some questions of the definition of tragedy, however, may well be preliminary to a study of its history. The very term "English tragedy" involves two precarious abstractions. It separates tragedy from the drama of which it is a part, and it separates English tragedies from those of other languages to which they are related in character and origin. In attempting a definition, we may question the reality of these abstract separations by which our later discussions are to be conveniently limited;

for a definition can be attained only through the distinction of tragedy[Pg 2] from other forms of the drama, and through a consideration of the varying conceptions of tragedy in different periods and nations.

We may begin very empirically with an element common to all tragedies and roughly distinguishing them from other forms of drama; noticed, indeed, in all theoretical definitions, though its importance is often blurred and it receives only scant attention from Aristotle. He refers to the third part of the plot as "the tragic incident, a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like." If his meaning of "a destructive or painful action" is extended to include mental as well as physical suffering, we have a definition of an indispensable element in tragedy and a conspicuous distinction from comedy.

This definition has had ample recognition in practice and in popular opinion, as in the sixteenth-century idea of a tragedy as a play involving deaths, and in the present common conception of tragedy as requiring an unhappy ending. These uncritical opinions, however, introduce amendments that are not quite corollaries. The happy ending has never been completely excluded. Aristotle, while pronouncing in favor of the unhappy ending as best suited to producing tragic effect, recognized the possibility and popularity of a conclusion that limited punishment to the vicious. In modern times the salvation of the virtuous in tragedy has had warm defenders, including Racine and Dr. Johnson; and the essentiality of either an unhappy ending or of deaths[Pg 3] has been generally denied. Evidently either is a natural but not inevitable accompaniment of suffering and disaster. A tragedy may permit of relief or even recovery for the good, or it may minimize the external and physical elements of suffering; but its action must be largely unhappy though its end is not, and destructive even if it

does not lead to deaths.

Our working definition, however, does not attempt to indicate the qualities necessary to excellence in tragedy or to particularize in respect to the treatment of the action. It offers no distinction, where recent critics have been careful to make one, between tragedy and what we to-day call melodrama.[1] The relation between the two is similar to that between comedy and farce. Melodrama is more sensational, less serious; it attains its effects by spectacles, machines, externals, while tragedy deals with character and motive; it reaches its conclusions through accidents and surprises, while tragedy seeks to show the cause of every effect. But the distinction is general and relative rather than specific and absolute. The use of witches to foretell actions and characters would of itself be a melodramatic device, and so it is in Middleton's "Witch," but not in "Macbeth." Congreve's "Mourning Bride" is a melodrama, judged by our standards at present, but for many years it was considered one of the great tragedies in the language. A stage presentation, in fact, almost

presupposes external, spectacular, and sensational[Pg 4] effects, which must vary according to the theatrical conditions and the taste of the day, as well as in response to the artistic purpose and treatment. The distinction between melodrama and tragedy, in short, is hardly more than between bad tragedy and good, or between a lower and a higher type. So far as a separation of the two has been made, it has been the result of centuries of experience. It cannot readily be fixed by rule or definition; it requires historical treatment.

Our definition, again, affords a rough rather than an exact separation from comedy. The two species cannot, indeed, be absolutely distinguished. In the theatre to-day there are many plays which one hesitates to classify as either tragedy or comedy. And there have always been, even in the Greek theatre, classes of plays recognized as neither the one nor the other. Again, a play presenting various persons and incidents is necessarily complex in material and emotional effect, and may mingle suffering and ruin with happiness and success, so that whether its main effect is tragic or comic may depend on its point of view or its general tone. The divisions of tragedy and comedy are neither mutually exclusive, nor are they together inclusive of all drama. Theoretically, there is perhaps ground for doubting whether other divisions might not be established more essential and more comprehensive. Comedy in particular comprises plays differing so widely in every respect that almost no common characteristics can be found. Yet

tragedy and comedy have long been, and still are,[Pg 5] accepted as the main divisions of the drama. The very names of the other forms, "tragicomedy," "Schauspiel" "emotional drama," "social drama," "drame," or merely "play," by their lack of distinctiveness, testify to the significance of the division of dramatic action and effects into the two classes, tragic and comic. From merely a theoretical point of view, indeed, we may recognize that a dramatic action, through its brevity and its stage presentation, if for no other reasons, has a suitability for these effects not possessed by other forms of literature. But the importance and definition of the two forms, and especially that of tragedy, depend less on theory than on historical origins and development.

If we attempt to fortify our working definition so that it may more effectively separate tragedy on the one hand from melodrama and on the other from comedy and the more or less neutral species, we are driven to consider the numerous and shifting conceptions that have marked the progress of the classical tradition in modern Europe. Although some approach to the tragic may have been manifest from the beginnings of the drama in the mimetic ceremonies of primitive culture, our present distinction between tragedy and comedy traces back to Athens, where tragedy as a form of literature had its first great development and where it received its first critical definition. Nothing closely corresponding to the two forms, as there developed and defined, is to be found in the dramas of China, India, or medieval Europe. Tragedy is an inheritance from Greece and Rome, not received[Pg 6] by Western Europe until the Renaissance. There was, to be sure, much that was tragical in the widespread religious drama of the Middle Ages; and there were a number of plays that in content and effect

might claim a place with later tragedies; but it was not until the revival of the classics that the revelation of a highly developed form of drama led to the creation of a distinct species called tragedy, in the vernacular literatures of Spain, Italy, France, and England.

The classical tradition in the beginning was affected by the mistaken theories of medieval encyclopedists and by humanistic misinterpretations of the classics. In every nation it came into conflict with the traditions of the medieval drama, and underwent great modifications; in England an amalgamation of the two traditions resulting in a tragedy widely different from either. During four centuries the changing theatrical conditions, the changing social conditions, the diversity of national peculiarities, have resulted in ideas of tragedy at variance with one another and with the classics. Shakespeare's conception of tragedy was very different from Aristotle's, and very different from Brunetière's or Ibsen's. Indeed, the conceptions formed by various of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Sidney, Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, and Fletcher, so far as we can determine, have pronounced differences though they have common resemblances. It would require a larger book than the present one to consider adequately the differences and agreements merely of critical theory and dogma in modern

Europe. Yet the[Pg 7] literary tradition, in spite of all these changes and variations, has remained continuous. Whether fixed in the form of rules, or discernible only in the general resemblances of current practices, or represented by the great models of Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Racine, it has influenced every playwright. He has striven to write more or less in accord with some critical theory, in imitation of some author, or in conformity to some fashion; or he has written in opposition to theory, example, or fashion.

It is the purpose of this book to trace the course of this tradition in the English drama, to appraise the inheritance of each age from the preceding ages, its borrowings from other national inheritances, and the profit and loss due to its own invention or industry. All that may be attempted here by way of preliminary definition is a glance at the main European course of the classical tradition to see what have been from time to time considered the essentials of tragedy and to ask how far there has been any agreement in regard to these essentials.

The basis for much of modern theorizing has been Aristotle's tentative yet searching analysis of Athenian tragedy. Many of the peculiarities of Athenian tragedy—its structure without acts but with a chorus, its limitation of three actors on the stage at once, its narrow range of mythological subjects—are evidently not essential to securing tragic effect. Even the unities, whether as observed in the Greek theatre or as defined by French and Italian critics, may, after generations of debate, be safely relegated as nonessential. Omitting, then, what[Pg 8] no one would now insist upon as requisite, we may derive from the "Poetics" something like the following:—

Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune, involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression.

Much more than this has been derived from Aristotle by modern theorists, but this much of the classical conception has generally survived in modern tragedy. If the meaning of "a single and complete action" be stretched a little, this definition includes the plays of Shakespeare as well as those of Racine, and nearly all tragedies from the Renaissance to the present.

In one important respect, however, this definition falls short of describing Greek tragedy, and is still more inadequate for modern. Aristotle emphasized the action above the characterization, and devoted much attention to the requirements of the plot. He did not, moreover, recognize the importance of the element of conflict, whether between man and circumstance, or between men, or within the mind of man. The Greek tragedies themselves had not failed to exhibit such conflicts; the medieval drama, notably in the moralities, emphasized moral conflict; and Renaissance tragedy, wherever it showed any independence, particularly in England and Shakespeare, took for its theme the conflict of human will with other forces. The importance of this modification of the[Pg 9] Aristotelian view received only slow critical recognition. But it was everywhere exemplified in practice, in French classical drama as well as in Shakespeare, in plays imitating the Greeks as well as in plays revolting from their models. After a time this modification of the classical tradition came to have a distinct

place in literary theory. Hegel gave it philosophical elaboration, and, in the romantic movement, when dramatists in different languages turned to Shakespeare for a model, they naturally assumed what may be called the Shakespearean definition. This important amendment to the tragic tradition may be briefly stated:—

The action of a tragedy should represent a conflict of wills, or of will with circumstance, or will with itself, and should therefore be based on the characters of the persons involved. A typical tragedy is concerned with a great personality engaged in a struggle that ends disastrously.

In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive. This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet "pity and fear"[Pg 10] still serve as well as any other terms to describe the emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however, hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror, despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as

the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been[Pg 11]

reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the last century, to prose.

On examination, then, the particulars of the classical tradition have shown extraordinary powers of survival, but not one of them has gone without protest and violation. The thousands of tragedies written during four centuries have all had marked resemblances, and all important developments have preserved relationships to the classical species; yet it is impossible to insist on any one quality of that species as essential, without encountering examples of great tragedies that lack it. The close relationships among these many plays forbid the separation of a few, distinguished by certain qualities, to be named as tragedies, and the rest as something else; and the great variations forbid the confident selection of any qualities as essential in the future development of tragedy. The modern amendments, though represented by nearly universal practice, have not saved the classical tradition, and are themselves coming under question. The plays of Ibsen, which seem to have instituted the most important development in tragedy for two centuries, return to something of

the simplicity of action required by Aristotle, and present the struggle of individual wills as did Shakespeare, but are in prose and deal with contemporary bourgeois life,—a combination of relationships to the tradition wholly new. While idealization in some degree must be exercised in tragedy as in all forms of literature, it is impossible, in the light of realistic plays, to maintain[Pg 12] that tragic effects can be secured only through the stories of exceptional persons. Tragic greatness, in the sense demanded by the theorists, is, indeed, scarcely more manifest in the persons of "Romeo and Juliet" than in those of "Hedda Gabler." While conflict of some kind is essential to a dramatic action, yet it may evidently be minimized without destroying the artistic impressiveness of suffering and disaster. Even the requirement that tragedy deal with the characters of individual men is being questioned. It is conceivable that plays in the future may, like Hauptmann's "The Weavers," turn from the emotions of the individual to those of a class, or may find their

destructive and painful actions in the oppression, disaster, or mere unrest of the mass.