course. In some of the last of the comic writers of whom I shall have to speak, we shall recognise elements of genius unhappily associated with a tone of morality at last intolerable to the very age of which the manners find so faithful a reflexion in its comedy;—and we shall leave this branch of the drama seeking to recover itself by efforts unfortunately as mistaken in their method as they are praiseworthy in their aims. The general course of the national history in the period which I shall call that of the Later Stuart Drama will be found to exercise a very perceptible but not a commanding influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature. The party-struggles of the latter years of the reign of Charles II will be seen reflected there with all their fury and all their bitterness - but the drama will be necessarily found incapable of attesting the national recovery from the non-fulfilment of the Restoration compact. The crowned representative of the Revolution of 1688 is a great statesman, not a national hero; and the vast European struggle in which his wise policy engages the English nation only gradually comes to be regarded by the English public as a war waged for a national cause. Whatever influence the course of the struggle and its results may in the end exercise upon the national self-consciousness and the consequent national progress, the classes to which the drama addresses itself are too much accustomed to view the world of politics from the stand-point of partyfeeling to make it possible for their literature to be animated by a broadly national spirit. The uncertainty as to the consequences which would follow upon the death of Queen Anne added a special element of uneasiness to the situation. Her reign, in which Great Britain asserted herself as the foremost among the European powers, and the period of preparation and preliminary effort which preceded it, could not indeed fail to offer signs even in its literature of the gradual broadening, deepening, and strengthening of the current of national feeling and national life. But these signs are least manifest in that branch of literature which, besides addressing itself in the main to a particular class, had to so great an extent admitted the influence of foreign literary examples. The artificiality of our dramatic literature in this age precluded it from competing on equal terms with the new literary forms whose day was beginning; though comedy still retained enough contact with the life of the people to leave open the prospect of its further developement as a national literary growth. But with the death of Queen Anne, the last of our Stuart sovereigns, I shall close my survey. A review of what lies beyond-a period of our dramatic literature full of interest even when it becomes all but devoid of promise for the future-must be left to another opportunity, or to other hands. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. The length to which these Additions extend is mainly due to the publication, since parts of this work went through the press, of several plays not hitherto generally accessible. As my wish throughout this work has been to refer the reader wherever possible to books within every one's reach, I have thought it worth while to add here references to Mr. Hazlitt's new edition of Dodsley's Select Collection of Old English Plays, in those instances in which it was not previously possible to give them. VOL. I. Pages 19 and 20. In Prynne's Histrio-Mastix (p. 113) a curious passage is quoted from Honorius Augustodunensis, de Antiquo Ritu Missarum, explaining in detail the dramatic action of the Mass. Page 61, note 2. The Comedie or Enterlude, treating upon the Historie of Iacob and Esau (which has been recently printed in vol. ii. of Mr. Hazlitt's new edition of Dodsley) should not have been mentioned among the plays exhibiting a mixture of miracle and morality, there being in fact no element of the latter in it. Beyond all doubt this is, as Mr. Collier has already pointed out, one of the freshest and most effective productions of its kind. The characters are real characters; and though the author takes most delight in the comic side of the story, he has rather skilfully contrived to supply some dramatic justification of the success of Rebecca's ingenuity. The servants of the two brothers are pleasantly distinguished as a lout and a pert little page, and there is a touch of prettiness in Rebecca's little servingmaid Abra. The moral of the story is turned to account for the doctrine of predestination and election, so that no doubt can remain as to the religious creed of the author, who winds up with a brief sermon and a prayer for Church, Queen, nobility, and the Queen's subjects universal.' Pages 62-64. The World and the Child, Hycke-Scorner, and Every-man are all printed in vol. i. of Mr. Hazlitt's Dodsley. Page 65, note 1. Lusty Juventus' is used as a jocular form of address in Thomas Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (act iv). Page 77. To the generally accessible Elisabethan moralities has now been added The Contention betweene Liberalitie and Prodigalitie (printed by Mr. Hazlitt in vol. viii. of his new edition of Dodsley). This production, which in its present form was performed before the Queen in 1600 (see v. 5), may be a revision of an earlier work-in any case the style is unequal, the incidental lyrics being in general superior to the dialogue. The action, in which several concrete personages take a subsidiary part, is upon the whole brisk, showing how after Prodigality had gained possession of Master Money, son of Dame Fortune, he lost his prize by his recklessness; how Money then fell into the hands of Tenacity (i. e. Avarice, who talks the usual peasant's dialect of the stage); how Prodigality then set upon Tenacity in the high-road and robbed him of Money; and how Money was finally delivered out of the hands of his tormentors and entrusted to the care of Liberality, while Prodigality (this is the effective bit of realism in the play) was tried in due form and sentenced, but in mercy forgiven part of the penalty. This morality, besides being written (or revised) by a scholar evidently desirous of showing his scholarship, is not devoid of a rude kind of merit; but it is not a little curious to find such a relic of the early drama performed before Queen Elisabeth at a time before which Shakspere had probably produced more than half of his plays. Page 78. Tom Tiler and his wife are referred to in Fletcher's The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed (ii. 6). Page 81, note 2. The date of Jonson's Mask of Owls, at Kenelworth is not, as stated here (and by Gifford), 1626, but 1624 (as given p. 594, note). It appears from The Academy of Jan. 10, 1873, that a play by Captain Cox bearing the title of Impacient Poverty has been discovered by Mr. Halliwell. Pages 111, 112, 115. The old Appius and Virginia, Cambyses, and R. Edwards' Damon and Pithias are all printed in vol. iv. of Mr. Hazlitt's Dodsley. Page 117. Tancred and Gismunda is printed ib. vol. vii. Page 117, note 3. According to M. Karl Blind (see The Examiner, June 13, 1874), Hans Sachs' Lisabetha treats the story of Keats' poem. Page 120. T. Hughes' The Misfortunes of Arthur is printed in Mr. Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. iv. Page 139. For T. Ingelend's The Disobedient Child, see ib. vol. ii. Page 140. For R. Udall's Roister Doister, and Page 142. For Gammer Gurton's Needle, ib. vol. iv. Page 155, line 6 from top. For perpetuated read perpetrated. Pages 170, 172. The Spanish Tragedy is printed in Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. v; 'Jeronimo,' ib. vol. iv; Solyman and Perseda and Cornelia, ib. vol. v. 6 Page 177, note 3. In Middleton's A Mad World, my Masters (i. 2) Harebrain couples Hero and Leander and Venus and Adonis as 'wanton pamphlets.' Hero and Leander is also alluded to in Middleton's The Family of Love (iii. 2). Page 179. The story of Tamerlane was dramatically treated by the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara (1570-1644) in his La nueva era de Dios y Tamorlan de Persia. See Klein, x. 725, note. Page 182, line 8 from bottom. Middleton, in The Witch (iv, 2), has a passage resembling this:— 'What makes the devil so greedy of a soul, But 'cause 'has lost his own, to all joys lost.' Page 203, line 8 from bottom. For borne read born. Page 207, line 7 from bottom. Add as a note: The legend about Queen Eleanor's movements is referred to by Middleton in The Witch (i. 1) :— Amsterdam swallow thee up for a puritan, And Geneva cast thee up again! like she that sunk At Charing Cross, and rose again at Queenhithe.' Cf. also Anything for a Quiet Life (v. 3). |