secular and religious subjects. Something of the same sort was true in the case of our Drama. Playwrights began life as journey-workmen, doing the odd jobs of a company, or serving an employer like Henslowe. In this apprenticeship they grew familiar with the technical elements of their art, and were able to employ these at a later period according to the dictates of their own peculiar taste. Thus dramatic composition in the sixteenth century was a trade, but a trade which, like that of Sculpture in Athens, of Painting in Italy, of Music in Germany, allowed men of creative genius to detach themselves from the ranks of creditable handicraftsmen. Shakspere stands, where Michelangelo and Pheidias stand, above all rivals; but he owed his dexterity to training. Had he been a solitary worker, exploring the rules and methods of dramatic art by study of classical masterpieces and reflection upon æsthetical treatises, it is inconceivable that his plays would have exhibited that facility of style and that unlimited command of theatrical resources which left his hands at liberty to mould the stuff of human nature into luminous form. Power over the machinery of art and familiarity with technical processes, which, unless completely mastered, are a hindrance to inventive genius; this is what a Shakspere, a Michelangelo, a Pheidias, must ever owe to the labours of predecessors and contemporaries.

In estimating the Drama as a whole, we are thus bound to give its just weight to unencumbered freedom of development; for this freedom formed, if not a school of playwrights, a tradition of playwriting, which was essentially natural and yet in a strict sense

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methodical. That much imperfect, crude, untutored work was due to this same freedom, may be conceded; but this drawback should not be allowed to outweigh so singular advantages. Perhaps the real artistic excellence of that dramatic literature would be made more manifest, if some impartial critic should select the best plays of the period from the rubbish, and present these in one series, to the reader. It would then be seen how admirable was the skill displayed by a large number of craftsmen, how various were their sources of inspiration, and yet how remarkable is the unity of tone pervading works so diverse.

XIX.

We are led by these observations to consider another point affecting the art of the English dramatists. During the short period in which they flourished, there prevailed in our island what may be called, for want of an exacter phrase, clairvoyance in dramatic matters. Of all the playwrights of that time, whatever were their feelings, and however they differed in degree of ability, not one but had a special tact, facility and force of touch upon the Drama. Weak, uncertain, and affected in other branches of literature, in satire, epigram, complimentary epistle, even narrative, these men showed strength, firmness, and directness when they had to write a scene. To explain this fact would be more difficult than to find parallels and illustrations from other nations and from other ages. The ancient Greeks and the Italians of the Renaissance possessed clairvoyance in the plastic arts. The present age is

clairvoyant in science and the application of science to purposes of utility. At each great epoch of the world's history the mind of man has penetrated more deeply than at others into some particular subject, has interrogated Nature in its own way, solving for one period of time intuitively and with ease problems which, before and after, it has been unable with pains to apprehend in that same manner,

In the days of our dramatic supremacy, the nature of man became in its entirety the subject of representative poetry; and the apocalypse of man was more complete than at any other moment of the world's history. Shakspere and his greater contemporaries reveal human passions, thoughts, aspirations, sentiments, and motives. of action with evidence so absolute, with so obvious an absence of any intervenient medium, that the creations even of Sophocles, of Calderon, of Corneille, when compared with these, seem to represent abstract conceptions or animated forms rather than the inner truths of life.

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In order to estimate the force of this dramatic insight, we might compare the stories on which our dramatists founded their tragedies with the tragedies themselves-Romeo and Juliet' or 'Othello' with the novels of Da Porto or Cinthio, The Duchess of Malfi' with Bandello's prose, 'Arden of Feversham' with Holinshed's Chronicle. It would then be evident that, taking the mere outline of a plot, they filled this in with human life of poignant intensity, 'piercing' (to use those words of Milton) dead things with inbreathed sense.' The tales from which the playwrights drew their tragedies, contained incident in

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plenty but feeble silhouettes of character, enough of rhetoric but no passion of poetry, enough moralising but little of world-wisdom. The dramatists knew how to use the framework, while they changed the spirit of these pieces; animating them with salient portraiture of men and women studied from the life, adorning them with unpremeditated song, and making them the lesson-books of practical philosophy.

The clairvoyance of our playwrights enabled them to understand the true nature of their art; to separate the epic, idyllic, or didactic mode of treatment from the dramatic. They felt that the essential duty of the drama is that it should not moralise, but that it should exhibit character in action. Therefore, they made action the main point; and it was their incommunicable gift, the gift of a great moment, that nothing which they touched was failing in the attribute of active energy.

Furthermore, this clairvoyance gave them insight into things beyond their own experience. Shakspere painted much that he had never seen; and it was true to nature. As the skilled anatomist will reconstruct from scattered bones an animal long since extinct, so from one trait of character he reasoned out the complex of a man or woman. He made that man or woman stand before us, not as the embodiment of one selected quality, but as a living and incalculable organism. This power, in a greater or a less degree, was shared by his contemporaries. They owed it to that intuition into human character which was the virtue of their age. Familiar with the idea of man, they never found themselves at fault when man, the subject of their art,

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appeared before them in an antiquated or a foreign mode. This explains the vivid treatment which all phases of past history received from them. The heroes of Greece and Rome, of the Bible and Norse Sagas, of Chivalrous Romance and Southern Fiction, were equally real in their eyes with men of their own age and kindred; because they neglected accidental points of difference, and understood what man has been and man must be.

Whatever material was presented to them for manipulation, the truth at which they aimed was always psychological. A Roman or an Ancient Briton, a Greek or an Italian, was for them simply a man. They cared not to take him upon any other terms. Thus they divested their art of frivolous preoccupations concerning local colour, costume, upholstery, and all the insignificances which are apt to intervene between us and the true truth of a past event. If they lack knowledge of special customs, geographical relations, or political circumstance, their judgments on the passions, aims, duties, and home-instincts of humanity are keen and searching.

XX.

This brings me not unnaturally to consider a question of great moment: What was the moral teaching of our dramatists? Speaking broadly, we may answer-unexceptionable. That is to say, their tone is manly and wholesome; the moral sense is not offended by doubtful hints, or debilitated by vice made interesting the sentimentalism of more modern fiction.