Shakespeare's apprenticeship was served in this period, and his early plays naturally follow the forms then current and exhibit the qualities most prominent in other dramatists. The 'Comedy of Errors' is an adaptation of Plau tus; Labour's Lost' follows Lyly; the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' recalls the senti mental comedy of Greene; 'Titus Andronicus' is a melodrama of atrocities after the fashion of Kyd; (Henry VI' is dominated by Marlowe, and III,' following the Marlowean formula, surpasses the master in the vigorous delineation of the villain protagonist and in the stage effectiveness of his part. But Shake speare soon left his fellows far behind. The (Midsummer Night's Dream' and the 'Mer chant of Venice' transcended the romantic comedies that had made them possible on the London stage, and (Romeo and Juliet' as coin pletely surpassed the prevailing tragedy of blood. By 1600 Shakespeare had created his great series of comedies and in the Falstaff plays had wrought a union of comedy and his tory such as the early chronicle plays had only dimly foreshadowed.
By 1600 new forces were manifest in the drama. A young poet, Marston, was following his successful satires by a series of plays, in part tragedies of blood on the Kydian model, and in part satirical tragicomedies, which aimed to be searching studies of evil. In 1599 Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in His Humour,' acted by Shakespeare s company, was prefaced with a declaration of war on the absurdities of chroni cle history and romantic plays, and with the promise of the creation of a comedy dealing with contemporary manners. Jonson, indeed, continued a powerful force in the drama for the next 25 years. His preaching was all directed toward the establishment of a more conscious and painstaking art, and its regularization by classical examples, while his practice resulted in a noteworthy series of satirical comedies, presenting with powerful humor and realism the follies and vices of the day. Chapman and Middleton were also writing comedies of do mestic manners, and the whole trend of the J drama from 1600 to 1608 was away from ro mance and sent.mcnt, resulting in a satirical and realistic treatment in comedy and a more search ing analysis of evil in tragedy. Under these circumstances Shakespeare's great series of tragedies was produced. This is not the place to speak of their lasting significance, but merely to note that his genius, now in the full maturity of its powers, was still engaged in transforming the prevailing types of drama. Narratives from chronicle and novella, so often the sources of formlessness of structure, resulted in the splen did dramatic concentration of and (Othello' ; the absurd tragedy of blood, popular again through the efforts of Marston and others, became with its infinite sug gestiveness of human tragedy; the grotesque ness characteristic of mediaeval as well as Elizabethan drama had its final justification in 'Lear.) By 1607-08 the success of the heroic plays of Beaumont and Fletcher had brought the roman tic and idyllic again into favor and perhaps given the suggestion for Shakespeare's return to romantic tragi-comedy in 'Cymbeline,' a 'Win ter's Tale,' and the 'Tempest.' Heroic ro mances, such as and the 'Maid's Tragedy> succeeded not only because of their poetry and their sensational contrast of senti mental love and sensual passion, but even more because of the telling theatrical effectiveness of their situations and the clever alternations of suspense and surprise with which their in genious plots were complicated. The comedy of
Beaumont and Fletcher, especially in its later development by Fletcher, like their heroic plays, had a long continued influence on the drama. Possessing ready wit, great poetic facility and an abundant invention, but without moral taste or any serious criticism of life, Fletcher marks a stage in the drama that may fairly be called decadent when we recall the sound moral sense and the artistic aspiration of the early plays. Yet the last decade of Shakespeare's life was the time of Jonson's greatest comedies, of the masterpieces of Beaumont and Fletcher, and of some of the best work of Chapman, Tour neur, Webster and Middleton.
The very existence of these masterpieces was of itself a factor in the drama's decline. Web ster, writing in 1612, made the first avowal of obligations to his great contemporaries; and henceforth the increasing recognition of the greatness of the immediate past seemed to stifle rather than to inspire innovation and experi ment. Webster himself, borrowing freely from others, carried the tragedy of blood to its final development in the powerful and gloomy 'White Devil' and of Malfi.) Middleton in collaboration with Rowley created scenes of powerful tragic interest in 'A Fair Quarrel' and the Massinger, collaborating often with Fletcher and to a considerable ex tent borrowing Fletcher's methods, produced a body of tragedy and tragi-comedy, morally di dactic, and rhetorically excellent, but in char acterization and poetry somewhat deficient. These are only a few of the writers of tragedy during the reign of James I; in the development of comedy, where less poetical excellence is de manded, the number of important contributors was much larger. Middleton's most character istic work was a group of lively comedies that exposed contemporary manners with the frank est realism. Massinger, though on the whole deficient in humor, produced in