Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

And, when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does with disdain the foremost honors yield.”

In his next play, "All for Love," he abandoned rhyme, and never afterwards returned to it. The influence of Shakspeare becomes more and more perceptible in the later plays, particularly in "Don Sebastian," the finest of all Dryden's tragedies, produced in 1690.1 Thus the attempt to divert the taste of the play-going public from British to French and Spanish models was renounced by the projector himself, and replaced by a steady and continuous effort to raise Shakspeare to his just rank in the estimation of his countrymen. It need hardly be said that, up to the present time, the work of appreciation commenced by Dryden has gone on in an unbroken development.

[ocr errors]

Thomas Otway is the author of nine plays, of which six are tragedies and three comedies. The latter are of small account; but among the tragedies "Caius Marius," "The Orphan," and "Venice Preserved," hold—especially the last-high rank among English dramas. The generous, open character of the gallant Pierre, the treachery of Jaffier his friend, and the passionate affection of Belvidera, supply tragic elements which Otway has worked into the texture of his play with no ordinary skill. The interest of the piece turns on the concoction and discovery of a plot to overthrow the Venetian senate, a subject which was doubtless suggested by the tremendous excitement of the Popish Plot, then (1681) in the full swing of its career of imposture, panic, and judicial murder. One of the characters, Antonio, is made to say, "I'll prove there's a plot with a vengeance. ... That there is a plot, surely by this time no man that hath eyes or understanding in his head will presume to doubt." This was the sort of language continually in the mouths of the vile witnesses for the plot, and their supporters in parliament.

Poor Nat Lee, a sadly irregular liver, wrote eleven tragedies,

1 Chief plays of Dryden: The Indian Queen, Conquest of Granada, Aurungzebe, All for Love, Don Sebastian, tragedies; the Rival Ladies and the Spanish Friar, tragi-comedies; Sir Martin Marall, An Evening's Love, and Marriage à la Mode, comedies.

[ocr errors]

besides having a considerable share in two which are ascribed to Dryden, "Edipus," and "The Duke of Guise." The Rival Queens" and “ Theodosius" are considered his best pieces. Addison says of him, "There was none better turned for tragedy than our author, if, instead of favoring the impetuosity of his genius, he had restrained it, and kept it within proper bounds." Thomas Shadwell, the butt of Dryden's satire as Og in "Absalom and Achitophel," and again as MacFlecknoe, the "true blue Protestant poet," who supplanted Dryden himself as poet-laureate after the Revolution, wrote sixteen plays, of which thirteen are comedies. "The Virtuoso" and the “Lancashire Witches" long held their ground on the comic stage. Elkanah Settle, worthless (unless he is much belied) both as a man and as a poet, satirized as Doeg in "Absalom and Achitophel," wrote fifteen plays, chiefly tragedies, of which the most noted was "The Empress of Morocco." John Crowne wrote a tragedy of some mark, "Thyestes." The comedies of Mrs. Aphra Behn had a great run in their day, but are now forgotten.

In comedy, however, a new school arose, of which the tone and form may certainly be traced to the unrivalled genius of Molière. The "comedy of manners," of which Congreve, Etherege, and Wycherley were in our present period the chief representatives, exhibited, in polished and witty prose, the modes of acting, thinking, and talking prevalent in the fashionable society of the time. That society was a grossly immoral one; and the plays which reflected its image were no less so. Congreve, the most eminent writer of this school, produced only five plays, one of which, "The Mourning Bride," is a tragedy. His comedies are, "The Old Bachelor" (1693), "The Double Dealer" (1694), "Love for Love" (1695), and "The Way of the World" (1700). Congreve was the intimate friend of Dryden, who appointed him his literary executor, and in some well-known lines entreated him to be watchful over his memory:

"But you, whom every Muse and grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,

Be kind to my remains; and, oh! defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!

Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you,
And take for tribute what these lines express:
You merit more, nor could my love do less."

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the immorality of the stage began to be thought intolerable. In this respect the stage had remained stationary since the Restoration, while the morals of English society had been gradually becoming purer. This general feeling found an exponent in Jeremy Collier, a non-juring1 divine, who wrote in 1698 his "Short View of the Immortality and Profaneness of the Stage." Both Dryden and Congreve were vigorously assailed in this work on account of their dramatic misdeeds. Dryden magnanimously pleaded guilty to the main charge, in the preface to his "Fables," published in 1700, although he maintained that Collier had in many places perverted his meaning by his glosses, and was "too much given to horse-play in his raillery." "I will not say," he continues, "that the zeal of God's house has eaten him up; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility." After a time, Collier's attack produced its effect; the public taste became purer; the intellect of the country became ashamed of the stage, and turned to cultivate other branches of literature; and from that time the English drama tended downwards to that condition of feebleness and inanity which reached its maximum about a hundred years later.

Learning; Usher, Selden, Gale, &c.

The state of learning in England during this period was not so high as it has been generally esteemed.

1 That is, one who refused to take the oath of allegiance to King William.

Selden says in his "Table-Talk," "The Jesuits and the lawyers of France, and the Low Country men, have engrossed all learning: the rest of the world make nothing but homilies." He was glancing here at the eloquent divines, Andrewes, Hall, Taylor, &c. There was, indeed, abundance of illustrative, but little productive learning. The divines above mentioned, in their sermons, ransack for illustrations the whole series of the Greek and Latin authors, and show no slight acquaintance with councils and Fathers; but they use all this learning merely to serve some immediate purpose; they do not digest or analyze it with a view to obtaining from it permanent literary results. Usher, the Irishman, is the chief exception. James Usher, one of the three first matriculated students of Trinity College, Dublin,1 upon its opening in 1593, rose to be Protestant primate of Armagh; but he left Ireland in 1640, and, excusing himself on the plea of the social confusion which prevailed, never afterwards returned to it. His treatise, "De Ecclesiarum Britannicarum Primordiis," and his celebrated "Annales" (a digest of universal history from the creation to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus), are works of solid learning and research, which even yet are not superseded. Selden himself possessed a great deal of abstruse learning; probably no Englishman ever dived so deep into rabbinical literature, or was so completely at home in certain branches of antiquarian research. But he cannot be compared with the great Dutchman of the age, Hugo Grotius, whom he met in controversy, nor with the Spanish

1 Usher actively aided in the formation of the Trinity College Library; and his MSS., given after his death to the college by Charles II., form a valuable portion of its collections. See his life by Aikin.

2 Grotius wrote a book called Mare Liberum, asserting the right of free fishery in the narrow seas near the English coast; to which Selden replied by his Mare Clausum, denying that right.

Jesuit Suarez. He was narrower, more lawyer-like, and less philosophical, than either of those two great men. The names of Gale, Gataker, Potter, and Stanley are the most respectable that we can produce in the department of scholarship during the remainder of the period. Potter's "Greek Antiquities," first published in 1697, was a text-book in all British schools for nearly a century and a half, having been superseded only within these few years by the fuller and more critical treatises for which German thought and erudition have prepared the way. Of Bentley, the prince. of English scholars, we shall speak in the next chapter.

Prose Writings. — Fiction : "Pilgrim's Progress; Oratory.

In the department of prose fiction, this period, but for one remarkable work, is absolutely sterile. In the exciting times of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, men were in too earnest a mood to spend much time in the contemplation of imaginary scenes and characters. Nor, during the twenty-eight years which separated the Revolution from the Restoration, had the agitation of society subsided sufficiently to admit of the formation of a novel-reading public; by which term is meant that large class of persons, easy in their circumstances, but victims to ennui from the tranquillity and uniformity of their daily avocations, who seek in fiction the excitement which the stability of the social system has banished from their actual life. It must be remembered, also, that the drama was the surest road to popularity for an inventive genius up to the end of the century. Soon afterwards the stage fell into discredit; and the novel immediately appeared to fill the vacant place.

One exception, however, to this rule of sterility, is to be found in Bunyan's celebrated "Pilgrim's Progress.' John Bunyan, a native of Elstow, near Bedford, was

« PředchozíPokračovat »