Part 8

_Recent French Drama._--The last twenty-five years of the 19th century witnessed an important change in the constructive methods, as well as in the moral tendencies, of the French playwrights. Of the two leading dramatists who reigned supreme over the _haute comédie_ in 1875, one, Émile Augier, had almost ended his career, but the other, Alexandre Dumas, was to maintain his ascendancy for many years longer. Sardou's fertility of invention, and extraordinary cleverness at manipulating a complicated intrigue, were also greatly admired, and much was expected from Edouard Pailleron's brilliant and--as it seemed--inexhaustible wit in satirizing the whims and weaknesses of high-born and highly-cultured society. Alexandre Dumas had created and still monopolized the problem play, of which _Le Demi-monde_, _Le Fils naturel_, _La Question d'argent_, _Les Idées de Madame Aubray_, _La Femme de Claude_, _Monsieur Alphonse_, _La Visite de noces_, _L'Étrangère_, _Francillon_ and _Denise_ may be mentioned as the most characteristic specimens. The problem play is the presentation of a particular case, with a view to a general conclusion on some important question of human conduct. This afforded the author, who was, in his way, a moralist and a reformer, excellent opportunities for humorous discussions and the display of that familiar eloquence which was his greatest gift and most effective faculty. Among other subjects, the social position of women had an all-powerful attraction for his mind, and many of his later plays were written with the object of placing in strong relief the remarkable inequality of the sexes, both as regards freedom of action and responsibility, in modern marriage. Like all the dramatists of his time, he adhered to Scribe's mode of play-writing--a mixture of the _drame bourgeois_, as initiated by Diderot, and the comedy of character and manners, long in vogue--from the days of Molière, Regnard, Destouches and Marivaux, down to the beginning of the 19th century. In his prefaces Dumas often undertook the defence of the system which, in his estimation, was best calculated to serve the purpose of the artist, the humorist and the moralist--a dramatist being, as he conceived, a combination of the three.

Though the majority of French playgoers continued to side with him, and to cling to the time-honoured theatrical beliefs, a few young men were beginning to murmur against the too elaborate mechanism and artificial logic. Scribe and his successors, whose plays were a combination of comedy and drama, were wont to devote the first act to a brilliant and witty presentation of personages, then to crowd the following scenes with incidents, until the action was brought to a climax about the end of the fourth act, invariably concluding, in the fifth, with an optimistic _dénouement_, just before midnight, the time appointed by police regulations for the closing of playhouses. At the same time a more serious and far-reaching criticism was levelled at the very principles on which the conception of human life was then dependent. A new philosophy, based on scientific research, had been gradually gaining ground and penetrating the French mind. A host of bold writers had been trying, with considerable firmness and continuity of purpose, to start a new kind of fiction, writing in perfect accordance with the determinist theories of Auguste Comte, Darwin and Taine. The long-disputed success of the Naturalistic School carried everything before it during the years 1875-1885, and its triumphant leaders were tempted to make the best of their advantage by annexing a new province and establishing a footing on the stage. In this they failed signally, either when they were assisted by professional dramatists or when left to their own resources. It became evident that Naturalism, to be made acceptable on the stage, would have to undergo a special process of transformation and be handled in a peculiar way. Henry Becque succeeded in embodying the new theories in two plays, which at first met with very indifferent success, but were revived at a later period, and finally obtained permanent recognition in the French theatre--even with the acquiescence of the most learned critics, when they discovered, or fancied they discovered, that Becque's comedies agreed, in the main, with Molière's conception of dramatic art. In _Les Corbeaux_ and _La Parisienne_ the plot is very simple; the episodes are incidents taken from ordinary life. No extraneous character is introduced to discuss moral and social theories, or to acquaint us with the psychology of the real _dramatis personae_, or to suggest humorous observations about the progress of the dramatic action. The characters are left to tell their own tale in their own words, which are sometimes very comical, sometimes very repulsive, but purport to be always true to nature. Human will, which was the soul and mainspring of French tragedy in the 17th century, and played such a paramount part in the _drame bourgeois_ and the _haute comédie_ of the 19th, appears in M. Becque's plays to have fallen from its former exalted position and to have ceased to be a free agent. It is a mere passive instrument to our inner desires and instincts and appetites, which, in their turn, obey natural laws. Thus, in Becque's comedies, as in the old Greek drama, destiny, not man, is the chief actor, the real but unseen protagonist.

Becque was not a prolific writer, and when he died, in 1899, it was remarked that he had spent the last ten years of his life in comparative inactivity. But during these years his young and ardent disciples had spared no effort in putting their master's theories to the test. It had occurred to a gifted and enterprising actor-manager, named André Antoine, that the time had come for trying dramatic experiments in a continued and methodical manner. For this purpose he gathered around him a number of young authors, and produced their plays before a select audience of subscribers, who had paid in advance for their season-tickets. The entertainment was a strictly private one. In this way Antoine made himself independent of the censors, and at the same time was no longer obliged to consider the requirements of the average playgoer, as is the case with ordinary managers, anxious, above all things, to secure long runs. At the Théâtre Libre the most successful play was not to be performed for more than three nights.

The reform attempted was to consist in the elimination of what was contrary to nature in Dumas's and Augier's comedies: of the _intrigue parallèle_ or underplot, of the over-numerous and improbable incidents which followed the first act and taxed the spectator's memory to the verge of fatigue; and, lastly, of the conventional _dénouement_ for which there was no justification. A true study of character was to take the place of Sardou's complicated fabrications and Dumas's problem plays. The authors would present the spectator with a fragment of life, but would force no conclusion upon him at the termination of the play. The reformation in histrionic art was to proceed apace. The actors and actresses of the preceding period had striven to give full effect to certain witty utterances of the author, or to preserve and to develop their own personal peculiarities or oddities. Antoine and his fellow-artists did their best to make the public realize, in every word and every gesture, the characteristic features and ruling passions of the men and women they were supposed to represent.

It was in the early autumn of 1887 that the Théâtre Libre opened its doors for the first time. It struggled on for eight years amidst unfailing curiosity, but not without encountering some adverse, or even derisive, criticism from a considerable portion of the public and the press. The Théâtre Libre brought under public notice such men as George Courteline and George Ancey, who gave respectively, in _Bonbouroche_ and _La Dupe_, specimens of a comic vein called the "_comique cruel_." Fabre, in _L'Argent_, approached if not surpassed his master, Henry Becque. Brieux, in _Blanchette_, gave promise of talent, which he has since in a great measure justified. In _Les Fossiles_ and _L'Envers d'une sainte_, by François de Curel, were found evidences of dramatic vigour and concentrated energy, allied with a remarkable gift for the minute analysis of feeling. Antoine's activity was not exclusively confined to the efforts of the French Naturalistic School; he included the Norwegian drama in his programme, and successively produced several of Ibsen's plays. They received a large amount of attention from the critics, the views then expressed ranging from the wildest enthusiasm to the bitterest irony. Francisque Sarcey was decidedly hostile, and Jules Lemaître, who ranked next to him in authority, ventured to suggest that Ibsen's ideas were nothing better than long-discarded social and literary paradoxes, borrowed from Pierre Leroux through George Sand, and returned to the French market as novelties. Ibsen was not understood by the French public at large, though his influence could be clearly traced on thoughtful men like Paul Hervieu and François de Curel.

The authors of the Théâtre Libre were sadly wanting in tact and patience. They went at once to extremes, and, while trying to free themselves from an obsolete form of drama, fell into a state of anarchy. If a too elaborate plot is a fault, no plot at all is an absurdity. The old school had been severely taken to task for devoting the first act to the delineation of character, and the delineation of character was now found to have extended over the whole play; and worse still, most of these young men seemed to find pleasure in importing a low vocabulary on to the stage; they made it their special object to place before the spectator revolting pictures of the grossest immorality. In this they were supported by a knot of noisy and unwise admirers, whose misplaced approval largely contributed towards bringing an otherwise useful and interesting undertaking into disrepute. The result was that after the lapse of eight years the little group collected round Antoine had lost in cohesion and spirit, that it was both less hopeful and less compact than it had been at the outset of the campaign. But some authors who had kept aloof from the movement were not slow in reaping the moral and intellectual profit of these tentative experiments. Among them must be cited George de Porto-Riche, Henri Lavedan, Paul Hervieu, Maurice Donnay and Jules Lemaître. Alone among the authors of the Théâtre Libre, É. Brieux secured an assured position on the regular stage. Instead of attacking the vices and follies of his times, he has made a name by satirizing the weak points or the wrong application of certain fundamental principles by which modern institutions are supported. He mocked at universal suffrage in _L'Engrenage_, at art in _Ménages d'artistes_, at popular instruction in _Blanchette_, at charity in _Les Bienfaiteurs_, at science in _L'Évasion_, and then at law in _La Robe rouge_. Of _Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont_, one is an old maid with a strong bent towards mysticism, another is a star in the demi-monde, and the third is married. Neither religion, nor free love, nor marriage has made one of the three happy. The strange fact about Brieux is that he propounds his uncomfortable ideas with an incredible amount of dash and spirit.

All the plays written by the above-mentioned authors, and by those who follow in their steps, have been said to constitute the "new comedy." But one may question the advisability of applying the same name to literary works which present so little, if any, family likeness. It was tacitly agreed to remove the intricacies of the plot and the forced _dénouement_. But no one will trace in those plays the uniformity of moral purpose which would justify us in comprising them under the same head, as products of the same school. Then, before the Naturalistic, or half-Naturalistic, School had attained to a practical result or taken a definite shape, a wave of Romanticism swept over the French public, and in a measure brought back the old artistic and literary dogmas propounded by Victor Hugo and the generation of 1830. Signs of a revival in French dramatic poetry were not lacking. The success of _La Fille de Roland_, by the Vicomte de Bornier, was restricted to the more cultivated classes, but the vogue of Jean Richepin's _Chemineau_ was at once general and lasting. _Cyrano de Bergerac_, produced in the last days of 1897, brought a world-wide reputation to its young author, Edmond Rostand. This play combines sparkling wit and brilliancy of imagination with delightful touches of pathos and delicate tenderness. It was assumed that Rostand was endowed to an extraordinary degree both with theatrical genius and the poetic faculty. _L'Aiglon_ fell short of this too favourable judgment. It is more a dramatic poem than a real drama, and the author handles history with the same childish incompetence and inaccuracy as Hugo did in _Cromwell_, in _Ruy Blas_ and _Hernani_. The persistent approbation of the public seemed, however, to indicate a growing taste for poetry, even when unsupported by dramatic interest--a curious symptom among the least poetical of modern European races.

To sum up, the French, as regards the present condition of their drama, were confronted with two alternative movements. Naturalism, furthered by science and philosophy, was contending against traditions three centuries old, and seemed unable to crystallize into masterly works; while romantic drama, founded on vague and exploded theories, had become embodied in productions of real artistic beauty, which have been warmly welcomed by the general playgoer. It should nevertheless be noted that in _Cyrano_ and _L'Aiglon_ human will, which was the main-spring of Corneille's tragedy and Hugo's drama, tried to reassert itself, but was baffled by circumstance, and had to submit to inexorable laws. This showed that the victorious school would have to reckon with the doctrines of the defeated party, and suggested that a determinist theatre might be the ultimate outcome of a compromise. (A. FI.)

(f) _English Drama._

Among the nations of Germanic descent the English alone succeeded, mainly through the influence of the Renaissance movement, in transforming the later growths of the medieval drama into the beginnings of a great and enduring national dramatic literature, second neither in volume nor in splendour to any other in the records of the world. And, although in England, as elsewhere, the preparatory process had been continuing for some generations, its consummation coincided with one of the greatest epochs of English national history, and indeed forms one of the chief glories of that epoch itself; so that, in thinking or speaking of the Elizabethan age and the Elizabethan drama, the one can scarcely be thought or spoken of without the other.

Beginnings of the regular drama.

It is of course conceivable that the regular drama, or drama proper, might in England have been called into life without the direct influence of classical examples. Already in the reign of Edward VI. the spirit of the Reformation had (with the aid of a newly awakened desire for the study of history, which was no doubt largely due to Italian examples) quickened the relatively inanimate species of the morality into the beginning of a new development.[155] But though the _Kyng Johan_ of Bale (much as this author abhorred the chronicles as written by ecclesiastics) came very near to the chronicle histories, there is no proof whatever that the work, long hidden away for very good reasons, actually served as a transition to the new species; and Bale's production was entirely unknown to the particular chronicle history which treated the same subject. Before the earliest example of this transitional species was produced, English tragedy had directly connected its beginnings with classical models.

Imitation of classical examples.

Much in the same way, nothing could have been more natural and in accordance with the previous sluggish evolution of the English drama than that a gradual transition, however complete in the end, should have been effected from the moralities to comedy. It was not, however, John Heywood himself who was to accomplish any such transition; possibly, he was himself the author of the morality _Genus humanum_ performed at the coronation feast of Queen Mary, whose council speedily forbade the performance of interludes without the queen's licence. Nor are we able to conjecture the nature of the pieces bearing this name composed by Richard Farrant, afterwards the master of the Children of St George's at Windsor, or of William Hunnis, master under Queen Elizabeth of the Children of the Chapel Royal. But the process of transition is visible in productions, also called interludes, but charged with serious purpose, such as T. Ingeland's noteworthy _Disobedient Child_ (before 1560), and plays in which the element of abstractions is perceptibly yielding to that of real personages, or in which the characters are for the most part historical or the main element in the action belongs to the sphere of romantic narrative.[156] The demonstration would, however, be alien to the purpose of indicating the main conditions of the growth of the English drama. The immediate origin of the earliest extant English comedy must, like that of the first English tragedy, be sought, not in the development of any popular literary or theatrical antecedents, but in the imitation, more or less direct, of classical models. This cardinal fact, unmistakable though it is, has frequently been ignored or obscured by writers intent upon investigating the _origines_ of our drama, and to this day remains without adequate acknowledgment in most of the literary histories accessible to the great body of students.

It is true that in tracing the entrance of the drama into the national literature there is no reason for seeking to distinguish very narrowly between the several tributaries to the main stream which fertilized this as well as other fields under Renaissance culture. The universities then still remained, and for a time became more prominently than ever, the leading agents of education in all its existent stages; and it is a patent fact that no influence could have been so strong upon the Elizabethan dramatists as that to which they had been subjected during the university life through which the large majority of them had passed. The corporate life of the universities, and the enthusiasms (habitually unanimous) of their undergraduates and younger graduates, communicated this influence, as it were automatically, to the students, and to the learned societies themselves, of the Inns of Court. In the Tudor, as afterwards in the early Stuart, times, these Inns were at once the seminaries of loyalty, and the obvious resort for the supply of young men of spirit desirous of honouring a learned court by contributing to its choicer amusements. Thus, whether we trace them in the universities, in the "bowers" or halls of the lawyers, or in the palaces of the sovereign, the beginnings of the English academical drama, which in later Elizabethan and Jacobean literature cannot claim to be more than a subordinate species of the national drama, in an earlier period served as the actual link between classical tragedy and comedy and the surviving native growths, and supplied the actual impulse towards the beginnings of English tragedy and comedy.

The earlier academical drama.

The academical drama of the early years of Elizabeth's reign and of the preceding part of the Tudor period--including the school-drama in the narrower sense of the term and other performances of academical origin--consisted, apart from actual reproductions of classical plays in original Latin or in Latin versions of the Greek, in adaptations of Latin originals, or of Latin or English plays directly modelled on classical examples. A notable series of plays of this kind was performed in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, from the first year of Edward VI. onward, when N. Grimald's _Archipropheta_, treating in classic form the story of St John the Baptist, but introducing the Vice and comic scenes, was brought out.[157] Others were J. Calfhill's _Progne_ and R. Edwardes' _Palaemon and Arcyte_ (both 1566), and, from about 1580 onwards, a succession of Latin plays by William Gager, beginning with the tragedy _Meleager_, and including, with other tragedies,[158] a comedy _Rivales_. Yet another comedy, acted at Christ Church, and extolled in 1591 by Harington for "harmless mirth," was the _Bellum grammaticale_, or Civil War between Nouns and Verbs, which may have been a revision of a comedy written by Bale's friend, R. Radcliff, in 1538, but of which in any case the ultimate origin was a celebrated Italian allegorical treatise.[159] In Cambridge, as is not surprising, the

## activity of the early academical friends and favourers of the drama was

even more marked. At St John's College, where Bishop Watson's Latin tragedy called _Absolom_ was produced within the years 1534 and 1544, plays were, according to Ascham, repeatedly performed about the middle of the century; at Christ's a controversial drama in the Lutheran interest called _Pammachius_, of which Gardiner complained to the privy council, and which seems afterwards to have been translated by Bale, was acted in 1544; and at Trinity there was a long series of performances which began with Christopherson's _Jephtha_ about 1546, and consisted

## partly of reproductions of classical works,[160] partly of plays and

"shows" unnamed; while on one occasion at all events, in 1559, "two English plays" were produced. In 1560 was acted, doubtless in the original Latin, and not in Palsgrave's English translation (1540) for schoolboys, the celebrated "comedy" of _Acolastus_, by W. Gnaphaeus, on the story of the Prodigal Son. The long series of Trinity plays interspersed with occasional plays at King's (where Udall's _Ezechias_ was produced in English in 1564), at St John's (where T. Legge's _Richardus III._ was first acted in 1573), and, as will be seen below, at Christ's, continued, with few noticeable breaks, up to the time when the Elizabethan drama was in full activity.[161] Among the "academical" plays not traceable to any particular university source may be mentioned, as acted at court so early as the end of 1565 or the beginning of 1566, the Latin _Sapientia Solomonis_, which generally follows the biblical narrative, but introduces a comic element in the sayings of the popular Marcolph, who here appears as a court fool.

Influence of Seneca.

It was under the direct influence of the Renaissance, viewed primarily, in England as elsewhere, as a revival of classical studies, and in connexion with the growing taste in university and cognate circles of society, and at a court which prided itself on its love and patronage of learning, that English tragedy and comedy took their actual beginnings. Those of comedy, as it would seem, preceded those of tragedy by a few years. Already in Queen Mary's reign, translation was found the readiest form of expression offering itself to literary scholarship; and Italian examples helped to commend Seneca, the most modern of the ancient tragedians, and the imitator of the most human among the masters of Attic tragedy, as a favourite subject for such exercises. In the very year of Elizabeth's accession--seven years after Jodelle had brought out the earliest French tragedy--a group of English university scholars began to put forth a series of translations of the ten tragedies of Seneca, which one of them, T. Newton, in 1581 collected into a single volume. The earliest of these versions was that of the _Troades_ (1559) by Jasper Heywood, a son of the author of the _Interludes_. He also published the _Thyestes_ (1560) and the _Hercules Furens_ (1561); the names of his fellow-translators were A. Neville, T. Nuce, J. Studley and the T. Newton aforesaid. These translations, which occasionally include original interpolations ("additions," a term which was to become a technical one in English dramaturgy), are in no instance in blank verse, the favourite metre of the dialogue being the couplets of fourteen-syllable lines best known through Chapman's _Homer_.

Earliest English tragedies.