Halleck's New English Literature Part 29

The student cannot do better than follow the advice of Dr. Johnson: "Let him who is unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators... Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the commentators."

Shakespeare's three greatest tragedies, _Hamlet, King Lear_, and _Macbeth_, should be read several times. After becoming familiar with the story, the student should next determine the general aim of the play and a.n.a.lyze the personality and philosophy of each of the leading characters.

After reading some of all cla.s.ses of Shakespeare's plays, point out his (_a_) breadth of sympathy, (_b_) humor, (_c_) moral ideals, (_d_) mastery of English and variety of style, and (_e_) universality. What idea of his personality can you form from his plays? If you have read them in sequence, point out some of the characteristics of each of his four periods. Why is Shakespeare often called a great dramatic artist?

How did his audience and manner of presentation of his plays modify his treatment of a dramatic theme?

Ben Jonson and Minor Dramatists.--The best plays of Ben Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Ma.s.singer, Webster, and Tourneur may be found in _Masterpieces of the English Drama_ edited by Sch.e.l.linq (American Book Company). Selections from all the minor dramatists mentioned may be found in Williams's _Specimens_. The teacher will need to exercise care in a.s.signing readings. Most of the minor dramatists are better suited to advanced students.

Read Jonson's _The Alchemist_ or the selection in Williams's _Specimens_. A sufficient selection from _Philaster_ may be found in Vol. II. of _The Oxford Treasury_, in Morley, and in Williams's _Specimens_.

What points of difference between Shakespeare and Jonson do you notice? What is his object in _The Alchemist_? Why is its plot called unusually fine? Wherein does Jonson show a decline in the drama?

Who were Beaumont and Fletcher? What movement in the drama do they ill.u.s.trate? What are the characteristics of some other minor dramatists? What are the chief reasons why the minor dramatists fail to equal Shakespeare? When and why did this period of the drama close?

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV:

[Footnote 1: For additional mention of Elizabethan novelists, see p.

317.]

[Footnote 2: For references to selections from all these prose writers, see p. 215.]

[Footnote 3: _Of Youth and Age_.]

[Footnote 4: Thomas Heywood's _Matin Song_.]

[Footnote 5: Suggestions for additional study of Elizabethan lyrics are given on p. 215.]

[Footnote 6: riding.]

[Footnote 7: _An Hymne in Honour of Beautie_.]

[Footnote 8: _Faerie Queene_, Book III., Canto 4.]

[Footnote 9: _Ibid_., Book I., Canto 3.]

[Footnote 10: Smith's _York Plays_.]

[Footnote 11: C.W. Wallace's _The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare_.]

[Footnote 12: Wallace, _op. cit_., p.37.]

[Footnote 13: _What We Know of the Elizabethan Stage_.]

[Footnote 14: Performances were often given at night in private theaters. From the records in a lawsuit over the second Blackfriars Theater, we learn that there were in 1608 only three private theaters in London,--Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and a St. Paul's Cathedral playhouse, in which boys acted.]

[Footnote 15: This drawing of the Swan Theater, London, was probably made near the end of the sixteenth century by van Buch.e.l.l, a Dutchman, from a description by his friend, J. de Witt. The drawing, found at the University of Utrecht, although perhaps not accurate in details, is valuable as a rough contemporary record of an impression communicated to a draftsman by one who had seen an Elizabethan play.]

[Footnote 16: The lease of the building for the first Blackfriars Theater, on Ludgate Hill, London, was taken in 1576 by Richard Farrant, master of the boys of Windsor Chapel, and canceled in 1584.

In 1595 James Burbage bought a building for the second Blackfriars Theater, near the site of the first. This was a private theater, competing with the Globe, with which Shakespeare was connected. The chief dramatists for the second Blackfriars were Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston. James I. suppressed the second Blackfriars in 1608 because its actors satirized him and the French king. A few months later, Shakespeare and his a.s.sociates a.s.sumed the management of the Blackfriars and gave performances there as well as at the Globe.

These facts explain Wallace's discovery that Shakespeare at the time of his death owned a one-seventh interest in the second Blackfriars, a theater that had formerly been a rival to the Globe.]

[Footnote 17: _Dr. Faustus_, Scene 6.]

[Footnote 18: _Tamburlaine_, Act II., Scene 7.]

[Footnote 19: _The Winter's Tale_, Act IV., Scene 4.]

[Footnote 20: Tradition says that Shakespeare occupied the desk in the farthest corner.]

[Footnote 21: Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, Grosart's edition of Greene's _Works_, Vol. XII., p. 144.]

[Footnote 22: The contract price for building the Fortune Theater was 440.]

[Footnote 23: Adapted from Furnivall.]

[Footnote 24: Entered one year before at Stationers' Hall.]

[Footnote 25: May be looked on as fairly certain.]

[Footnote 26: _Henry V_., Act II., Scene 3, line 10.]

[Footnote 27: Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_, p. 327.]

[Footnote 28: _The Tempest_, Act V., Scene 1.]

[Footnote 29: _Ibid_., Act I., Scene 2.]

[Footnote 30: For a list of books of selections from the drama, see p.

216.]

[Footnote 31: For full t.i.tles, see p. 6.]

[Footnote 32: For full t.i.tles of books of dramatic selections, see the preceding paragraph.]

CHAPTER V: THE PURITAN AGE, 1603-1660

History of the Period.--James I. (1603-1625), son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and the first of the Stuart line to reign in England, succeeded Elizabeth. His stubbornness and folly not only ended the intense patriotic feeling of the previous reign, but laid the foundation for the deadly conflict that resulted. In fifty-four years after the defeat of the Armada, England was plunged into civil war.

The guiding belief of James I. was that kings governed by divine right, that they received from the Deity a t.i.tle of which no one could lawfully deprive them, no matter how outrageously they ruled, and that they were not in any way responsible to Parliament or to the people.

In acting on this belief, he first trampled on the religious liberty of his subjects. He drove from their churches hundreds of clergymen who would not take oath that they believed that the prayer book of the Church of England agreed in every way with the _Bible_. He boasted that he would "harry out of the kingdom" those who would not conform.

During the reign of James I. and that of his son, Charles I.

(1625-1649) a worse ruler on the same lines, thousands of Englishmen came to New England to enjoy religious liberty. The Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth in 1620. The exodus was very rapid during the next twenty years, since those who insisted on worshiping G.o.d as they chose were thrown into prison and sometimes had their ears cut off and their noses mutilated. In the sixteenth century, the religious struggle was between Catholics and Protestants, but in this age both of the contestants were Protestant. The Church of England (Episcopal church) was persecuting those who would not conform to its beliefs.

Side by side with the religious strife was a struggle for const.i.tutional government, for legal taxes, for the right of freedom of speech in Parliament. James I. and Charles I. both collected illegal taxes. Finally, when Charles became involved in war with Spain, Parliament forced him in return for a grant of money to sign the _Pet.i.tion of Right_ (1628), which was in some respects a new _Magna Charta_.

Charles did not keep his promises. For eleven years he ruled in a despotic way without Parliament. In 1642 civil war broke out between the Puritans, on one side, and the king, n.o.bles, landed gentry, and adherents of the Church of England, on the other. The Puritans under the great Oliver Cromwell were victorious, and in 1649 they beheaded Charles as a "tyrant, traitor and murderer." Cromwell finally became Protector of the Commonwealth of England. The greatest Puritan writer, John Milton, not only upheld the Commonwealth with powerful argumentative prose, but also became the government's most important secretary. Though his blindness would not allow him to write after 1652, he used to translate aloud, either into Latin or the language of the foreign country, what Cromwell dictated or suggested. Milton's under-secretary, Andrew Marvel, wrote down this translation.