The German D. is almost wholly dependent for its fame on the names of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. For while Rosenpluet, Hans Sachs; and Ayrer were original, and some of them fertile; while Gryphius, Gottsched, Gellert, and Schlegel show a decided advance in the appreciation of the laws of dramatic composition; yet from the feebleness of the writers, and from the backward state of theatrical taste in the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries, very little was done towards a clear and distinct recog nition of the excellence of dramatic literature, till the critic Lessing, in his Miss Sara Sampson, taught Germany to appreciate the productions of the romantic drama. As a critic, he blamed the French, praised Shakespeare, and professed belief in Aristotle. He held more than one dramatic heresy, and his antipathy to versification was among the number. Goethe is, without doubt, one of the greatest geniuses which the world has seen, but whether he is entitled to so high a place for his theatrical dramas remains an open question. As his aim was more emphatically the culture of his genius in its fullest form, the circumstance of his writings assuming the dramatic form is rather an accident than otherwise. From first to last he seems to have been distinctly aware of this, and in the prologue to his last, and by far his grandest production, he declares why he could not accommodate his genius to the demands of a mixed theater. Yet his Faust must ever be regarded as one of the grandest and most remarkable compositions which modern Europe has witnessed. Schiller was more expressly the dramatic poet of Ger many than Goethe. While Goethe's genius was fuller and more complete, Schiller made up for what he wanted in breadth of vision by the moral intensity of his genius. From his wild play of the Robbers, down to his last D. of Wilhelm Tell, he worked with a vehemence such as has very seldom been witnessed. But he filled Germany, and indeed all Europe, with his tragic fame, and his name is oue which " posterity will not willingly let die." Dramatic exhibitions in England, if they did not originate in the church, were never theless speedily appropriated by the clergy. Ecclesiastics were frequently the of the religious pieces, or mysteries, and they were found not seldom to be the actors. The mass of the people, no doubt, owed a good deal of grotesque amusement, and even of occasional information, to the Biblical and legendary history, which those rude attempts at the D. were fitted to convey. Those old religious plays are generally divided into two classes—miracles or miracle-plays, and moralities or morals. The former were founded on Scriptural narratives, or on the legends of the saints; the latter arose from the former, by the increased introduction of imaginary features. These pious pastimes existed long before the reformation, and were not overthrown by that great revolution in the opinions and beliefs of the country. See MIRACLE-PLAYS and MORALITIES. It was about the middle of the 16th c. that the D. extricated itself com pletely from these ancient fetters. By this time both comedy and tragedy had begun to exist in a rude reality in England. The oldest known comedy (before 1557), that of Ralph Roister Doister, was written by Nicholas. Udall, a school-master of considerable learning, probably about the middle of the 16th century. Ten years after appeared our first tragedy, known variously as Gorbudoe, or as _Fern= and Porrex,.by Mrs. Norton and lord Ruckhurst. And not only is this work the earliest tragedy in our language; it con.
tains, beside, the first application of blank verse to dramatic composition. But the play is dull, heavy, and declamatory. The D. lingered in this inc condition until very near the time of Shakespeare. Bishop Still's Gammer Gurton s eedle is no improve ment on Roister Doister. The names of Kyd, Lodge, Greene, Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Nash, etc., must pass before us almost without comment. Many of these writers are not without their merits, particularly Marlowe, whose plays of Edward IL and of Dr.
Faustus are acknowledged by Charles Lamb to contain passages that Shakespeare him self has not surpassed. Marlowe, besides. is the first author who introduced blank verse upon the public stage. But all these dramatists are obscured by their nearness to the °Teat luminary of the English drama. Shakespeare is now almost universally acknowl G edged to be the greatest dramatic genius that has ever appeared in the world. He brought the romantic D. to a perfection which it is not likely to surpass. His writings present the finest example of the depth, sublimity, refinement, and variety of which the D. is capable; and they are abundantly marked by those peculiar characteristics which sprung from the union, in the person of its author, of such wonderful powers of con ception with such familiar experience of theatrical management. Of course he despised the unities, or rather, we might say, he worked in ignorance of them, for he knew nothing of Aristotle and Boileau; and the rest of the French critics were not born when he died. Hence his D. is known in literature as " irregular;" and, we fear, human nature is likewise very irregular. The poet trusted to his own instinctive judgment, and of its exercise we have all fortunately plenty of examples. The principal of Shakespeare's •contemporaries are Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher. Like Shakespeare, Jon son wrote both tragedies and comedies. Milton speaks of " Jonson's learned sock," and thus hits off the main feature of his character as a dramatist in a phrase. Beaumont and Fletcher, who were, like many brotherly men in that age, joint-workers, haVe the honor of standing next to Shakespeare in the romantic D. of England. But, like Lope de Vega, they wrote too much for the mere success of the moment to be ranked in the foremost file of England's dramatic writers. With Massinger, Ford, and Shirley, the old English D. is closed. Dryden, the literary chief of his age, who flourished during the latter half of the 17th c., wrote some fine pieces of Frenchificd declamation. Lee, and the unfortunate Otway, bring down the D. to the beginning of the 18th cen tury. For, while Gay, Congreve, Cibber, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, all dis play considerable dramatic spirit and invention, their works are, nevertheless, morally considered, the foulest things in the language. They paint well the externals of society, and have left behind them good specimens of the "comedy of manners," as it has been called; but vice is both warp and woof of nearly everything they have produced. Addison, Johnson, Young, Thomson, etc., wrote some good poetry, but poor dramatic verse; while Lillo, Moore, Garrick the actor, Goldsmith, the COlmans, and Cumberland, nearly all took to prose instead of verse. They produced agreeable comedies, but nothing of a very marked kind in the history of the D. appears until the time of Sheridan who gave an impulse to " genteel comedy," such as has placed him ever since at the head of the writers of that species of composition. IIolcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, "Monk" Lewis, and Maturin, mostly influenced by inferior German writers, have left behind them a legacy of terror and of wonder fit to render their period marvelous, if for nothing elSe. Joanna Baillie and Sheridan Knowles remind the reader of the excellences of the old English D., and the Lady of Lyons of Bulwer Lytton is a favorite with playgoers of the present day. Byron, Coleridge, and Henry Taylor are the authors of fine meditative dramas, but they are more suitable for the closet than for the stage. Our sketch would not be complete without allusion to Talfourd, Jerrold, Shirley Brooks, Marston, ToM Taylor, Charles Reade, Robertson, Wilts, H. J. Byron, and Gilbert. , Swinburne, Tennyson, and Browning have also written works in the dramatic form.—See Ward's history of English Dramatic Literature (London, 1875).