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in the tragedies of that time, we find introduced common comic characters and scenes, which, without having any connection with the tragic action, evidently owe their existence merely to the predilection of the people for comedy.

In this respect the course of the development of the English as, in fact, of the whole modern drama, shows a remarkable difference from that of the history of the Greek theatre; in the case of the latter, the development is just the reverse, tragedy arrived at maturity before comedy, or at all events, comedy did not do so before tragedy. The difference is, however, easily explained by the difference of their starting points. The worship of gods and heroes, which gave birth to the Greek drama, was a wide-branching mythology, with a great variety of material, where either the dark deeds of a struggling, mighty, and grand age of heroes, or the deep, earnest thoughts of a rising and higher mental culture were symbolically clothed in the form of history; the Deity appears everywhere in human form, merely as the ideal reflex of man. In dramatising this material, the form had of necessity to assume that of tragedy. The Christian religion and its form of worship, on the other hand, turns upon a few grand facts, the religious substance of which has so general an importance that, by embracing all men, all times and all places, it, so to say, bursts the fetters of history. The Divine in the Christian sense was connected with the Human only in the one form of the Saviour of the world; there was wanting the variety of the stages of transition, of the demi-gods and heroes, with their tragic actions and fortunes. In short the subject-matter offered by Bible History was partly too general, partly too simple, and partly contained too little of deeds and action. Accordingly, the Mysteries, which ought in a natural progressive development to have become regular tragedies, were not capable of such a development. Their province had in the first place to be abandoned, they had in fact first to gain the point of transition to the actual world of humanity, before they could become free, no longer religious, but, artistic dramas. Tragedy, therefore, could not advance in a straight line from its original starting point; it had first

to descend in a wide curve to profane history, and endeavour to connect it organically with Sacred History, before it could attain its goal, that is, to conceive universal historical events to be acts as much divine as human. In short, the Christian conception of the world and life contained, it is true, a more profound view of the tragic than the Greek, but the Christian religion did not directly supply sufficient nutritive matter for the growth of tragedy. This matter tragedy had to procure elsewhere and to assimilate it with the Christian idea of tragedy, in order that the idea might be represented in it.

Therefore, comedy not only got the start, but tragedy was also more in need of the examples and the teaching of the ancients, than her light-headed sister. Comedy could draw directly from life, and it was only in regard to form and composition that she required a good school; tragedy, on the other hand, had not merely to gather her subjects from all quarters, but she had in the first place to learn of what, in fact, the nature of tragedy consisted. Accordingly it was tragedy which first clearly and decisively exhibited the influence which the ancient drama exercised upon the development of the English theatre. And yet we should be mistaken were we to imagine that Seneca and Euripides, so to say, produced the regular English tragedy, even in the sense in which we can say that they represent the father's place in regard to the so-called classic tragedy of the French. The influence of the ancient drama in England was rather, in all cases, merely co-operative, not itself a general model, but only a single motive in the development, which as such was incapable of destroying the popular form of dramatic poetry, and of directing its course of development upon the mistaken road of a slavish imitation. The vital germ of the English drama was, and remained, the original and rapidly advancing culture of the nation. The effect of the Reformation upon this culture was like the advent of a people's coming of age. By protesting against the despotism of the papacy and its worldliness-the dead formalism and the pomp of the Catholic Church, with its justification by works-by proclaiming the freedom. of the mind, which rests upon the living faith and which is

required by the Gospel itself, by its independence of all merely external, temporal and finite ordinances, and by thus asserting its internal infinity, the Reformation itself appears but as the first and most important sign of the awakened self-consciousness of the Christian nations. The period of the epic clinging to the Past and its tradition, and the lyric dreams of an ideal system of Church and State and of an ideal Future for its realization-in like manner, the epic striving after an heroic activity of the individual, the epic life of chivalry with its battles and wanderings, and, in contrast to it, the lyric delight in fixed seclusion, small pleasant circles and communities-these two tendencies which characterise the Middle Ages, had ceased to exert any influence. The age had of itself become dramatic. The transition to it is revealed to us in the flourishing condition of the plastic arts, which supported the first beginnings of dramatic art, and which on its part arose out of that love of sight-seeing, and that longing to have that which moved the inmost soul presented to them in a living form. The drama is the poetry of the Present, where Past and Future meet; it is the image of history, in so far as the latter continually proceeds as much from the Past, that is, from the firm substance of what has Become to Be-the Existing-as from the freely flowing spontaneity of the dramatic characters with their plans which extend into futurity; it is the reflex of the mind in this its own growth, in its own ever freely flowing, living Present, which shows it the forms of poetry, in their true and legitimate character; for this very reason it is the poetic expression of the self-consciousness of the mind, which knows that its ethical and intellectual development is the aim of life, its history, the history of the world.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST REGULAR TRAGEDY.

THE course of the development of the English drama, down to the point when it began to form itself according to this general conception of dramatic poetry, is distinguished above all others by the fact that, with great precision, it adopted only so much of what was foreign as it required for its own development, and that it knew how to assimilate to itself the matter thus adopted, as rapidly as it did thoroughly. Hence it only proved an advantage to the drama that, from the sixteenth century, the influence of ancient art and literature continued to increase, not merely in poetry, but in the whole culture of the nation. It became the custom to exercise the students of schools and universities in free translations from the ancient dramatists. Soon, also, together with the translation, plays written by the students themselves, partly in Latin, partly in English, but worked out according to the ancient models, were acted in the lecture and assembly halls. These performances, in which the young men took uncommon pleasure, gradually became open to the public; from the universities the exhibitions passed over into the schools of the lawyers, into the courts of law and into town halls, and upon festive occasions or upon a visit from the Queen, they were the most popular entertainments. Between the years 1559-1566, Jaspar Heywood and some others, as already said, published seven tragedies of Seneca, with additions in the English translation, every act according to the old custom being preceded by a Dumb Show; in 1566, The Phonicians' of Euripides, under the title of Jocaste,' was performed from a remodelling by Gascoigne, Yelverton and Kinwelmarsh; and it was probably about the same time when Jack Juggler' was brought upon the stage, that the Andria' of Terence was translated into English

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and performed in public.* The advantage which must by this means have accrued to dramatic art is self-evident. The want of regular dramatic form, of artistic composition, of the correct estimation of tragedy, and of refinement and grace in comedy, was just the chief defect in those attempts of a regular drama which had arisen out of the Moral Plays and Interludes. In this respect the more modern art--and moreover not merely poetry, not merely tragedy but comedy also-might, like painting and sculpture, learn an endless amount, and has learnt much from the ancients. The secret of form, however, is the last and the highest aim in every kind of artistic work. I believe, therefore, that the period, in which, under the influence of the ancients, the English drama commenced to develop the artistic form-an advance which, in its first beginnings, coincides with the transformation of Moralities and Interludes into tragedies and comedies-must, be termed the commencement of a new period in the history of the English stage. This third or-if Heywood's Interludes are regarded as marking an epoch-fourth period includes the origin of the Shakspearian drama, and is the time of its highest perfection. In what manner it gradually approached this highest point, has therefore now to be explained more in detail.

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In the first place, it is a matter of course that this beginning of an artistic construction of the drama was nothing but a beginning, I have already pointed this out as.regards comedy. In plays like 'Ralph Royster Doyster,' Jack Juggler,' Misogonus,' and Gammer Gurton's Needle,' the action is still devoid of anything like an organic centre; it consists merely of a series of comic scenes, which turn upon the unravelling of a simple and in itself an unimportant plot; even the external arrangement of the scenes and the external course of the action is not always to the point: occasionally it is obscure, heavy, and

*Collier, ii. 363, iii. 13 f.

In the year 1520, Henry VIII., on the occasion of a court festival. ordered a comedy of Plautus to be performed, probably in Latin (Collier, i. 88). This was the first gentle appeal of the antique drama at the door of the English theatre, but more especially of the Court Theatre.

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