During the reign of Charles I the drama offered little that remains notable, outside of the continued work of the older writers and the plays of Ford and Shirley. Ford, a poet of original and -lofty genius, ranks with the great dramatists in the intensity of his tragic crises, but he sought themes and motives, abnormal and decadent. The great dramatists of the preceding generation stimulated Shirley, who was their last worthy follower and who often recalls but never quite equals their best work. Of comic dramatists Brome, of "the tribe of Ben," and Davenant, who belongs to the Restoration, are possibly the most noteworthy. But the great majority of the many plays pro duced were mediocre. The drama no longer represented the nation; nor in the approach of the civil conflict could it longer command the interest and energy of great intellects or imaginations. It had little virility left when the Puntans closed the theatres in 1642.
Within a few years Chapman, Dekker and Jonson, the last surviving dramatists of Eliza beth's time, had died. Their lives had spanned the entire course of the drama's development, its rapid rise and its splendid culmination as well as its decline. The 30 years from Mar
lowe's first play to the death of Shakespeare include, in fact, all that is great in this amaz ingly rapid development. Incomparable as this period is because it contains the career of Shakespeare, it is hardly less astonishing be cause of the variety and range of the work of his fellows. Lacking, as even Shakespeare's plays lack, in the symmetry and unity of the Athenian drama; faulty, as his plays are often faulty, in the over-exuberance of language and the violence and extravagance of scenes; suf fering, as his genius suffered, from the crudity of a bare stage and an immature dramaturgy; these Elizabethan plays, taken as a whole, reveal in however inferior measure, his great excel lences, the untrammeled play of wit, sentiment, fun and fancy; a splendid energy of diction and of dramatic treatment; a searching revela tion of human character, and an abounding grace and power of poetic expression. See