French Drama. —The early French tragic writers, from the beginning of the 16th century down to Corneille in the middle of the 17th, produced nothing but unsuccessful and somewhat barbarous imitations of the Greek tragedy. Tho first pieces of this kind represented on the French stage had prologues and cho ruses. Corneille had studied and loved the Spanish drama.; awl without intro ducing much of its varied form and inci dent, he transfused a portion of its bold ness and romantic sentiment into the French theatre, together with a power of energetic declamation peculiarly his own. Racine, on the other hand, was rt. pure admirer of antiquity; butt with a. taste and delicacy of feeling which until his time had been very rarely found to accompany knowledge. The French tragedy grew up with these two great writers as models, and Boileau as its legislator. A peculiar and rigorous system if criticism was introduced, affect ing the form and the substance of dramatic writing; and this system be came established in the minds of the French public, as the natural and not the conventional role of beauty. Tt would be impossible to enter into an examina tion of the roles of the French drama ; suffice it to say, that they banished from the tragic stage all except heroic charac ters and passion ; required perfect sim plicity of plot, uniformity of language, and, in addition, the observance of the before-mentioned technical unities of place and time. These rules have ever since been scrupulously followed, without deviation, on the regular French stage, and many of the greatest names in dra matic literahre have voluntarily subject ed themselves to their restraints. The French comedy, however, is infinitely more national and characteristic than the French tragedy ; it originated in that of Spain, and was carried at once to a high degree of perfection by Molire,—rejeet ing the extravagance of the Spanish drama, confining itself within certain de finite limits governed by analogy to those established for tragedy, and retaining satire instead of adventure as its leading principle. Since that period the French comic stage has been, beyond all contra diction, not of ly the best, but the model from which that of all other nations has been wholly derived. Of the present state of the French drama it is difficult to speak with precision; but the national or regular stage seems to be every day lcsing in popularity, while the attempts to establish a new one on what is termed in France the romantic model have hith erto met with very partial success.
Spanish commenced her literary career more independent of foreign aid than any other country. ller dramatic art appears to have originated as early as the 14th century ; which pro dared satirical pieces in dialogue, and one complete dramatic romance by an unknown author (La Celestina,) in addi tion to the mysteries and miracle plays, which were exhibited in Spain even more plentifully than elsewhere. The early Spanish comedies of the 16th century were conversations, like eclogues, be tween shepherds and shepherdesses; with occasional interludes of negroes, clowns, and lliscayans, the favorite subjects of popular jest. lint the Spanish drama owed to one greatauthor, Lope de Vega, what English drama owed to his contem porary„',.hakspeare,—a rise at a single bound froze insignificance to great richness and variety ; he created, moreover, nearly all its numerous divisions, and has left examples of each. The name comedy, in the early Spanish stage, implied no lu herons or satirical representation, hut simply a play of adventure. Comedies divinas, or spiritual comedies, were sub divided into lives of saints, and pieces. of the holy sacrament : the comedies of hu man life into heroic, answering to No tragedy of our early English dramatistN, although even less regular in form ; and comedies of domestic adventure. lIesbles these, the interludes which were played between the prologue and the piece pos sess a distinct character as literary com positions. Ahnost all pieces have one favorite invariable character, the gra eioso or buffoon. Calderon, a greater poet than Lope, and his equal in dra matic power, is the only other great name in the Spanish drama. Subsequent writers may all he classed as imitators either of their own older poets, or of the favorite dramatists of the French school.
semireligious representations out of which the English drama arose, were called Mystery and Morality. One of the latter, The New Custom, was printed as late as 1573; by which time several regular tragedies and comedies, tolerably approaching to the classical model, had appeared. But a
third species of exhibition soon took pos session of the stage, the historical drama, in which the successive events of a partie nlar reign or portion of history were rep resented on the stage ; and, together with it, arose the English tragedy and comedy. The first dramatic poets of England (those before Shakspeare) were scholars; hence they preferred the form of the ancient drama, the division into acts, Sc. But they were also writers, who strove for popularity with the general class of their countrymen ; hence, instead of imitating classical simplicity, and confining them selves to a peculiar cast of diction and sentiment removed from the ordinary course of life, they invented a species of composition which intermingled poetical with ordinary life and language. Com edy, again, became in their hands a rep resentation of adventures, differing from those of tragedy only by ending gener ally in a happy instead of an unhappy exit, and not materially either in the characters or language. Thus the dis tinctions which they established between tragedy, comedy, and tragicomedy, are little more than adventitious ; and the Shaksperian drama, properly consider ed, must he looked on as a miscellane ous compound, in which actors, language, and sentiments, of a character far re moved from those of ordinary life, alter note with those of a low and even a burlesque character. There is no trag edy in Shakspcare in which comic scenes and characters are not introduced: there is only one comedy (The Nerry Wives of Windsor) without some intermixture of sentiment approaching to tragic. It continued to be the chief national litera ture, as well as the favorite national amusement, down to the period of the civil wars, when the opinions and legis lation of the prevailing party put a stop to dramatic representations altogether. During the interval thus created the old English art was unlearned altogether, and the now drama, on the model of the French, introduced almost at once on the return of Charles II. and his courtiers from the Continent. The distinetiou be tween tragedy and comedy was then first substantially recognized : the former confined to heroic events and language, the latter to those of ordinary life. But tragedy, subjected to foreign rules, ceased entirely to flourish: and Otway, the last writer of the old English drama, who wrote partly on the ancient model, although after the Restoration, is also the last tragic poet of England who still occupies the stage ; wills the exception of Rowe, and of a few authors of that pe culiar species of composition, the domes tic tragedy, in which the distresses and melancholy events of common life are substituted for those of an heroic charac ter. Comedy, on the other hand, ob tained possession of the national taste and stage; and although the charm of poetry and romantic adventure, which had belonged to the old drama: under either name, was denied to the modern comedy, it soon attained a high degree of excellence as well as popularity. The last comedies in verse were written shortly after the Restoration; since which Dine, with the exception of a few insulated attempts to revive the oh ler form, it has been entirely framed on the French model. The main element of a modern comedy is satire ; lint it admits of a subdivision into comely of intrigue and comedy of manners,—the former be ing chiefly directed to the development of a plot, the latter to the delineation of manners; although these qualities ought, properly speaking, to be united to consti tute a good play. The most distinguished English dramatic writers in the former line are, amongst many, Con,greve, Van brugh, Farquhar, Colman, Sheridan : in the latter, the writings of Shadivell and Foote, perhaps, afford the most romarka ble instances of that less popular form of comedy which almost neglects the interest of plot, and confines itself to a satirical representation of prevailing vices and follies.
German Drama.—The modern Ger man drama is founded on the old English model; and, although the last in order of time, has risen to a high degree of ex cellence, the stage in Germany being in comparably more national and popular at the present time than in other Euro pean countries. 1Vhile France, England, and Spain have to look back two hundred years for those names which form the glory of their dramatic literature, Lea sing, Schiller, and Goethe are writers only of the past generation.