The Age of Dryden Part 6

'For this glory, after I have seen The canopy of state spread wide above In the abyss of heaven, the court of stars, The blus.h.i.+ng morning, and the rising sun, What greater can I see?'

--a thought borrowed from Menander.

Continuing our survey of Dryden's plays, rather according to subject than to chronological order, we arrive at the tragi-comedy of _The Spanish Friar_ (1681), one of the most esteemed of his lighter pieces, but whose praise, we must agree with Mr. Saintsbury, has outstripped its desert. The comic portion is certainly very drastic, but it is not comedy of a high order. It exhibits a distinct declension from _Marriage a la Mode_, where the quartette of _Mitschuldiger_ are well individualized personages. The sinners in _The Spanish Friar_ are of the most ordinary type--a stage rake, a stage coquette, a stage miser, and a stage friar. Dominick is, indeed, exceedingly amusing, but is more farcical than truly comic. He is painted in broad, staring colours, without delicacy of gradation, with the same brush as the author's Morats and Almanzors, only dipped into a different paint. Like so many of Dryden's personages, he is better adapted for the stage than the closet. Every word and gesture would tell in the hands of a good actor, and in Dryden's time the stage was richer in first-cla.s.s performers than it ever was before, and probably than it has ever been since. Dryden himself, it must be recorded, attached a high value to his piece, and Dryden was an excellent critic of himself as well as of others. The merit on which he lays chief stress, however, is the ingenious blending of the tragic and comic action. 'The tragic part,' says Mr. Churton Collins, 'helps out the comic, and the comic relieves naturally and appropriately the tragic. In this work, tragi-comedy, from an artistic point of view, has achieved perhaps its highest success.' This, however, is the achievement of a playwright; in one pa.s.sage alone do we find the poet. It is the highly imaginative series of descriptions of the distant noises from the Moorish camp, boding a.s.sault to the beleaguered city, of the panic in the city itself, and of the far-off, uncertain battle:

'From the Moorish camp, an hour and more, There has been heard a distant humming noise, Like bees disturbed, and arming in their hives.'

'Never was known a night of such distraction; Noise so confused and dreadful, jostling crowds, That run, and know not whither; torches gliding, Like meteors, by each other in the streets.'

'From the Moors' camp the noise grows louder still: Rattling of armour, trumpets, drums, and atabals; And sometimes peals of shouts that rend the heavens, Like victory; then groans again, and howlings, Like those of vanquished men, but every echo Goes fainter off, and dies in distant sounds.'

The next play of Dryden's which it is necessary to notice here might have ranked among his masterpieces if it had been entirely or even princ.i.p.ally his own. It is sufficient praise for him to have followed Plautus and Moliere with no unequal steps, and while borrowing, as he could not help, the substance of his piece from them, to have enriched their groundwork with original conceptions of his own. The plot of _Amphitryon_ may be considered common property. A better subject for the comic theatre cannot be conceived than the equivocations occasioned by Jupiter's a.s.sumption of Amphitryon's appearance, doubled, and, as it were, parodied over again by the comic poet's happy thought of introducing Mercury in the disguise of Amphitryon's valet. It is surprising that the theme should not have attracted the best poets of the Athenian Middle Comedy. So far as we know, however, it was only treated by a single author, and he not one of the highest reputation, Archippus. How far Plautus translated Archippus must remain a question, but considering that the Greek play attained no especial reputation, while the Latin is one of the best we have, it is only fair to give Plautus credit for having introduced a good deal of his own. His comedy has unfortunately reached us in a mutilated condition, wanting, probably, not less than three hundred verses in the fourth act, but enough remains to show how the action was conducted. Moliere, the greatest of comic poets, could not fail to improve upon his model. The substance of the piece admitted of no material alteration, but Moliere has greatly enriched and embellished it--first by the happy idea of the prologue between Mercury and Night, for which, however, he is as much indebted to Lucian as he is to Plautus for the rest--and even more by the amusing scene between Sosia and Cleanthis. His play, unlike most of his other performances, is written in a lyrical metre, and the language is a model of elegance, harmony, and polish. Dryden, writing in prose or negligent blank verse, could not rival Moliere in this respect; but while losing nothing of the _vis comica_ of either of his predecessors, he has heightened the humour of the piece by a still further elaboration of the hints given by Moliere. He was himself well acquainted with Lucian, from whom he has borrowed several additional strokes; and he has doubled the entertainment of the situation between Sosia and Cleanthis by the creation of Phaedra, whose intrigue with Mercury makes the comedy of errors absolutely complete.

We have now to consider the two plays of Dryden's on which his fame as a dramatist princ.i.p.ally rests, and which, if in some respects less interesting than his other dramatic writings, as less intensely characteristic of the man and his age, are for that very reason better equipped for compet.i.tion for a place among the dramas of all time.

_All for Love_ (1678) is, Dryden tells us, the only play he wrote entirely to please his own taste, and composed professedly in imitation of 'the divine Shakespeare.' He did not, as in his unfortunate alteration of _Troilus and Cressida_, select a piece of Shakespeare's which, not understanding, he rashly thought himself able to improve, but, in a spirit of true reverence, set himself to copy one which he held in high esteem. It should be remembered, to the honour of Dryden's critical judgment, that the two plays of Shakespeare's most warmly commended by him, _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Richard the Second_, were generally underrated even by Shakespeare's most devoted wors.h.i.+ppers, until Coleridge taught us better. In _All for Love_ he found a subject suitable to his genius, and, in our opinion, achieved very decidedly his best play. It is, indeed, almost as good as a play on the French model can be, inferior to its prototypes only from the lack of brilliant declamation, scarcely practicable without rhyme, but more than compensating this inferiority by the greater freedom and flexibility of its blank verse. Its defects are mainly those of its species, and would be less apparent if it did not so directly court comparison with one of the greatest examples of Shakespeare's art. It would have been impossible for a greater genius than Dryden to have done justice to his theme within the confines prescribed by the cla.s.sical drama. The demeanour of Antony during the period of his downfall, as recorded by history, is below the dignity of tragedy. Some weakness may be forgiven in a hero, but the heroism of the real Antony is swallowed up in weakness. We can but pity, and pity is largely leavened with contempt.

There is but one remedy, to create a Cleopatra so wondrous and fascinating as fairly to counterbalance the empire which Antony throws away for her sake. Shakespeare's art is equal to the occasion; his Cleopatra is daemonic, and at the same time so intensely feminine that the purest and meekest of her s.e.x may see much of themselves in her. She is at once an epitome and an encyclopaedia, and the reader can hardly despise Antony for being the slave of a spell which he feels so strongly himself. Dryden's Cleopatra wants this character of universality, which, indeed, none but Shakespeare could have given, and Shakespeare himself could not have given if in bondage to the unities. She is a fine, pa.s.sionate, sensuous woman, a kind of Mary Stuart, interesting, but not to the point at which it could be felt that the world were well lost for her. The inferiority of Cleopatra reacts grievously upon Antony.

Shakespeare's Cleopatra is so grand that her lover is exalted by the admiration which, in spite of her perfidies, she manifestly feels for him. The beloved of such a woman must be heroic, an impression skilfully a.s.sisted by the effect Antony produces upon the prudent and politic Augustus. Dryden's Cleopatra can bestow no such patent of distinction.

By so much as the chief personages are inferior to their exemplars, by so much also is the puny, starved action of Dryden's tragedy, restricted to one day and seven characters, inferior to the opulence of Shakespeare's, ranging over the Roman world, crowded with personages, and gathering up every trait from Plutarch that could contribute picturesqueness to its prodigality of incident and sentiment. Nor is Dryden entirely successful in the conduct of his plot. The introduction of Octavia is a happy idea, but she appears at too late a period of Antony's history. The implication that his return to her could have availed him in so desperate an extremity is more contrary to historical truth and common reason than any of the anachronisms for which Dryden derides Elizabethan poets. The intrigue by which Dolabella is made to excite Antony's jealousy is more worthy of comedy than of heroic tragedy, besides being inconsistent with the manly character of its promoter, Ventidius. This gallant veteran is indeed a fine creation; too fine, for he sometimes seems to eclipse Antony and Cleopatra both, and a.s.sumes more prominence in the action than Shakespeare would have allowed him. Alexas is the hasty and much marred outline of a character which might have been hardly less impressive had Dryden been at the pains to work out the conception adumbrated in the first act. When all these imperfections are admitted, and they should not be pa.s.sed over in silence after Scott's ill-judged parallel of Dryden's performance with Shakespeare's, it remains true that _All for Love_ is a very fine play, energetic, pa.s.sionate, and steeped in that atmosphere of n.o.bility which half redeems the literary defects of _The Conquest of Granada_. The poetry is frequently very fine, as in Octavia's speech to Antony, remarkable as perhaps the sole instance of genuine pathos throughout the entire range of Dryden's dramatic writings:

'Look on these; Are they not yours? or stand they thus neglected As they are mine? Go to him, children, go; Kneel to him, take him by the hand, speak to him; For you may speak, and he may own you, too, Without a blush; and so he cannot all His children. Go, I say, and pull him to me, And pull him to yourselves, from that bad woman.

You, Agrippina, hang upon his arms; And you, Antonia, clasp about his waist: If he will shake you off, if he will dash you Against the pavement, you must bear it, children, For you are mine, and I was born to suffer.'

Antony's sarcasms upon Augustus reveal the ripening satirist of _Absalom and Achitophel_:

'_Ant._ Octavius is the minion of blind chance, But holds from virtue nothing.

_Vent._ Has he courage?

_Ant._ But just enough to season him from coward.

O, 'tis the coldest youth upon a charge, The most deliberate fighter! if he ventures, (As in Illyria once, they say, he did, To storm a town) 'tis when he cannot choose; When all the world have fixt their eyes upon him; And then he lives on that for seven years after; But, at a close revenge he never fails.

_Vent._ I heard you challenged him.

_Ant._ I did, Ventidius.

What think'st thou was his answer? 'Twas so tame!-- He said, he had more ways than one to die; I had not.

_Vent._ Poor!

_Ant._ He has more ways than one; But he would choose them all before that one.

_Vent._ He first would choose an ague, or a fever.

_Ant._ No; it must be an ague, not a fever; He has not warmth enough to die by that.

_Vent._ Or old age and a bed.

_Ant._ Ay, there's his choice.

He would live, like a lamp, to the last wink, And crawl upon the utmost verge of life.

O, Hercules! Why should a man like this, Who dares not trust his fate for one great action, Be all the care of heaven? Why should he lord it O'er fourscore thousand men, of whom each one Is braver than himself?

_Vent._ You conquer'd for him: Philippi knows it; there you shared with him That empire, which your sword made all your own.

_Ant._ Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, And now he mounts above me.

Good heavens, is this,--is this the man who braves me?

Who bids my age make way? drives me before him To the world's ridge, and sweeps me off like rubbish?'

_Don Sebastian_ (1690) is generally regarded as Dryden's dramatic masterpiece. It did not please upon its first appearance, owing to its excessive length. Dryden ingenuously confesses that he was obliged to sacrifice twelve hundred lines, which he restored when the play was printed. Mr. Saintsbury more than hints a preference for _All for Love_, which we entirely share. Were even the serious part of the respective dramas of equal merit, the scale would be turned in favour of _All for Love_ by the wretchedness of the comic scenes which const.i.tute so large a portion of the rival drama. They are at best indifferent farce, and cannot be even called excrescences on the main action, inasmuch as they do not grow out of it at all. In unity of action, therefore, and uniformity of literary merit, _All for Love_ excels its compet.i.tor, and its personages are more truthful and more interesting. Sebastian, though a gallant, chivalrous figure, takes no such hold on the imagination as Antony and Ventidius; and Almeyda, one of the least interesting of Dryden's heroines, is a sorry exchange for Cleopatra.

Muley Moloch and Benducar are wholly stagey. Nothing, then, remains but Dorax, and his capabilities are chiefly evinced in one great scene. Even this is in some respects inartificially conducted. The spectator is insufficiently prepared for it. The special ground of Dorax's resentment comes upon us as a surprise; and his repentance is too hasty and sudden.

A similar defect may be alleged against the whole of the tragic action.

The centre of interest is gradually s.h.i.+fted, not intentionally, but from the author's omission to foreshadow the events to come after the fas.h.i.+on of a masterpiece he must have studied, the _Oedipus Tyrannus_. At first all our interest is enlisted for Sebastian's life, and it is with a sort of puzzlement that we feel ourselves at last listening to a story of incest. Muley Moloch and Benducar have disappeared, and their place is occupied by a new character, Alvarez. In every respect, therefore, regarded as a work of art, _Don Sebastian_ fails to sustain comparison with _All for Love_, and there is no countervailing superiority in the diction, whose general n.o.bility and spirit occasionally swell into bombast. The worst fault remains to be told: Dorax's ludicrous escape from death by reason of being poisoned by two enemies at once. If either the Emperor or the Mufti would have let him alone he would never have lived to be reconciled to Sebastian, but the fiery drug of the one is neutralized by the icy bane of the other, and _vice versa_. Dryden thinks it sufficient excuse that a similar incident is vouched for by Ausonius, but really there is nothing so farcical in the _Rehearsal_. On the whole, we cannot but consider _Don Sebastian_ a very imperfect play, redeemed from mediocrity by the general vigour and animation of the diction, and the loftiness of soul which seldom forsakes Dryden, except when he wilfully panders to the popular taste.

But little s.p.a.ce can here be devoted to Dryden's other plays. Some are not worth criticism. _The Mock Astrologer_, largely borrowed from French and Spanish sources, contains some of his best lyrics. Many parts of _Cleomenes_ are very n.o.ble, but it is somewhat heavy as a whole. _King Arthur_, a musical and spectacular drama, is an excellent specimen of its cla.s.s. Dryden's portion of _Oedipus_, written in conjunction with Lee, shows how finely he, like his model Lucan, could deal with the supernatural. This is by no means the case with his _State of Innocence and Fall of Man_, which is, nevertheless, one of his pieces most worthy of perusal. It measures the prodigious fall from the age of Cromwell to the age of Charles; while Dryden yet displays such fine poetical gifts as to command respect amid all the absurdities of his unintentional burlesque of Milton.

Dryden undeniably took up the profession of playwright without an effectual call. He became a dramatist, as clever men in our day become journalists, discerning in the stage the shortest literary cut to fame and fortune. He can hardly be said to have possessed any strictly dramatic gift in any exceptional degree, but he had enough of all to make a tolerable figure on the stage, and was besides a great poet and an admirable critic. His poetry redeems the defects of his serious plays, if we except such a mere _piece de circonstance_ as _Amboyna_.

The best of them have very bad faults, but even the worst are impressed with the stamp of genius. It is only in comedy that his failure is sometimes utter and irretrievable; yet a perception of the humorous cannot be denied to the author of _Amphitryon_. But we nowhere find evidence of any supreme dramatic faculty, anything that would have constrained him to write plays if plays had not happened to be in fas.h.i.+on. As he was not born a dramatic poet he had to be made one, and he became one mainly in virtue of his eminent critical endowment. His prefaces are a most interesting study. They exhibit the steady advance of a slow, strong, sure mind from rudimentary conceptions to as just views of the requisites of dramatic poetry as could well be attained in an age enc.u.mbered with venerable fallacies. Dryden's manly sense, homely sagacity, and piercing shrewdness, break through many trammels, as when, in the preface to _All for Love_, he vindicates his breach of the conventions of the French stage. In that to _Troilus and Cressida_ he compares Shakespeare with Fletcher, and p.r.o.nounces decidedly in favour of the former, a preference far from universal in his day. The preface to _The Spanish Friar_ is the most remarkable of any, and shows how much he had learned and unlearned. We shall, nevertheless, find his special glory in his character as the most truly representative dramatist of his time. Otway might have been an Elizabethan, Dryden never could. If we seek for the dramatic author to whom he is on the whole nearest of kin, we may perhaps find him in Byron. Byron had no more genuine dramatic vocation than Dryden had, but, like Dryden, produced memorable works by force and flexibility of genius. From the theatrical point of view Dryden's plays are greatly superior to Byron's; if the latter's rank higher as literature the main cause is the existence of more favourable conditions. Dryden's worst faults would have been impossible in the nineteenth century; and his treatment of the supernatural, his frequent visitations of speculation, and the lofty tone of his heroic pa.s.sages, prove that he could have drawn a Manfred, a Cain, or a Myrrha, if he had lived like Byron in a renovated age.

CHAPTER V.

DRAMATIC POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS.

After Dryden, the metrical dramatists of the Restoration, as of other epochs, may be accurately divided into two cla.s.ses, the poets and the playwrights. As was to be expected in an age when even genuine poetry drooped earthward, and prose seldom kindled into poetry, the latter cla.s.s was largely in the majority. Only three dramatists can justly challenge the t.i.tle of poet--Dryden, Otway, and Lee. In Dryden a mighty fire, half choked with its own fuel, struggles gallantly against extinction, and eventually evolves nearly as much flame as smoke. In Otway a pure and delicate flame hovers fitfully over a mora.s.s; in Lee the smothered fire breaks out, as Pope said of Lucan and Statius, 'in sudden, brief, and interrupted flashes.' Dryden was incomparably the most vigorous of the three, but Otway was the only born dramatist, and the little of genuine dramatic excellence that he has wrought claims a higher place than the more dazzling productions of his contemporary.

[Sidenote: Otway (1651-1685).]

Thomas Otway, son of the vicar of Woolbeding, was born at Trotton, near Midhurst, in Suss.e.x, March 3rd, 1651. He was educated at Winchester and Christchurch, but (perhaps driven by necessity, for he says in the dedication to _Venice Preserved_, 'A steady faith, and loyalty to my prince was all the inheritance my father left me') forsook the latter ere his academical course was half completed to try his fortune as a performer on the stage, where he entirely failed. His first play, _Alcibiades_ (1675), a poor piece, served to introduce him to Rochester and other patrons; and in the following year _Don Carlos_, founded upon the novel by Saint Real, obtained, partly by the support of Rochester, with whom Otway soon quarrelled, a striking success, and is said to have produced more than any previous play. Two translations from the French followed; next (1678) came the unsuccessful comedy of _Friends.h.i.+p in Fas.h.i.+on_, and in 1680 _Caius Marius_, an audacious plagiarism from _Romeo and Juliet_. In the interim Otway had made trial of a military career, but the regiment in which he had obtained a commission was speedily disbanded, his pay was withheld, and he had to support himself by plundering Shakespeare. In the same year in which he had stooped so low he proved his superiority to all contemporary dramatists by his tragedy of _The Orphan_, in which he first displayed the pathos by which he has merited the character of the English Euripides. Johnson remarks that Otway 'conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by consulting nature in his own breast;' and it is known that he experienced the pangs of a seven years' unrequited pa.s.sion for the beautiful actress, Mrs.

Barry. In 1681 he produced _The Soldier's Fortune_, a comedy chiefly interesting for its allusions to his own military experiences. According to Downes, its success was extraordinary, and brought both profit and reputation to the theatre. If it brought any of the former to the author, this must have been soon exhausted, since in the dedication to _Venice Preserved_ (1682) he speaks of himself as only rescued from the direst want by the generosity of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth. For this great play, as well as for _The Orphan_, he is said to have received a hundred pounds. _The Atheist_, a second part of _The Soldier's Fortune_ (1684), was probably unproductive; and in April, 1685, Otway died on Tower Hill, undoubtedly in distress, although, of the two accounts of his death, that which ascribes it to a fever caught in pursuing an a.s.sa.s.sin, is better authenticated than the more usual one which represents him as choked by a loaf which he was devouring in a state of ravenous hunger. Such a story, nevertheless, could not have obtained credit if his circ.u.mstances had not been known to have been desperate.

It is not likely that he had much conduct or economy in his affairs, or was endowed in any degree with the severer virtues. The tone of his letters to Mrs. Barry, however, and the constancy of his seven years'

affection for her, seem to indicate a natural refinement of feeling, and if there is truth in the dictum,

'He best can paint them, who can feel them most,'

the creator of Monimia and Belvidera must have been endowed with a heart tender in no common degree. 'He was,' we are told, 'of middle size, inclinable to corpulency, had thoughtful, yet lively, and as it were speaking eyes.'

Otway's reputation rests entirely on his two great performances, _The Orphan_ and _Venice Preserved_. His other plays deserve no special notice, although _Don Carlos_, which is said to have for many years attracted larger audiences than either of his masterpieces, might have been a good play if it had not been written in rhyme. The action is highly dramatic, and the characters, though artless, are not ineffective; but the pathos in which the poet excelled is continually disturbed by the bombastic couplets, ever trembling on the brink of the ridiculous. The remorse of Philip after the murder of his wife and son is as grotesque an instance of the forcible feeble as could easily be found, and is a melancholy instance indeed of the declension of the English drama, when contrasted with the demeanour of Oth.e.l.lo in similar circ.u.mstances. Otway, however, was yet to show that his faults were rather his age's than his own. The fas.h.i.+on of rhyme must have had much to do with the bombast of _Don Carlos_, for in _The Orphan_, his next effort in serious tragedy, there is hardly any rant, even when the situation might have seemed to have excused the exaggerated expression of emotion. The central incident of this admirable tragedy--the deception of a maiden beloved by two brothers, through the personation of the favoured one by his rival--seems now to be held to exclude it from the stage. The objection would probably prove to be imaginary, for the play was performed as late as 1819, when no less an actress than Miss O'Neill represented Monimia, and the diction is in general of quite exemplary propriety for a play of the period. Its princ.i.p.al defect as a work of art is that the pathos springs almost solely from the situation, and that the personages have hardly any hold upon our sympathies except as sufferers from an unhappy fatality. So powerful is the situation, nevertheless, that the sorrows of Castalio and Monimia can never fail to move; the poet's language, too, is at its best, simpler and more remote from extravagance than even in _Venice Preserved_. The description of the old hag is justly celebrated:

'I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself; Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red; Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed withered, And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging, Which served to keep her carcase from the cold; So there was nothing of a piece about her; Her lower weeds were all o'er coa.r.s.ely patched With different coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow, And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.'

There are also delightful touches of poetry:

'Oh, thou art tender all: Gentle and kind as sympathizing nature!

When a sad story has been told, I've seen Thy little b.r.e.a.s.t.s, with soft compa.s.sion swelled, Shove up and down and heave like dying birds.'

The opening speech of act iv., sc. 2, also reveals a feeling for nature unusual in Restoration poetry, and may be taken to symbolize Otway's regrets for the country. The items of the description are in no way conventional, and would not have occurred to one without experience of rural life: