Romantic movement: The Castle of Otranto: Strawberry Hill: super- Gray and Collins, the only constructive poets in the early Romantic LATE CAROLINE STYLE: THOMAS SOUTHERNE Birth, education, history, and character. His Fatal Marriage: founded on Afra Behn's novel, The Fair Vow- Its political character: its success due to this and good acting. Fenton's verses in its praise. Birth, education, history, and character. Tragedy of the class of Don Sebastian. Excellence of its style: well adapted to the declaiming genius of good THE FRENCH DRAMATIC STYLE: EDMUND SMITH, AMBROSE PHILIPS, JOSEPH ADDISON REVIVAL AND ADAPTATION OF OLD ENGLISH PLAYS: NICHOLAS Nicholas Rowe: his birth, education, history, and character. Transforms Massinger's Fatal Dowry into The Fair Penitent. Character of Massinger's play: inferiority of Rowe's treatment of the story: skilful adaptation to the requirements of the modern stage: scope COMBINATION OF OPERA AND COMEDY: JOHN GAY Addison's criticisms on the opera in The Spectator. Operatic adaptations of The Tempest and Midsummer-Night's Dream. "'Twas when the seas were roaring." Attempt to introduce satirical personality into comedy: Three Hours Origin of the play in Swift's hint of a Newgate Pastoral. Critical fortune of The Beggars' Opera: its unprecedented success. Causes of its popularity. POLITICS IN THE DRAMA: HENRY BROOKE Henry Brooke: his novel The Fool of Quality. Gustavus Vasa: prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain. Its political character illustrated from the prologue. Specimen of party rhetoric in the drama. Subsequent decay of all poetical motives on the English stage. Resemblance in the history of the Attic and the English poetical drama: Further points of resemblance: survival of comedy after the decay of tragedy: reproduction of old plays. Importance of the actor in the late stages of the poetical drama in Athens Study of rhythmical declamation in the English theatre of the eighteenth Colley Cibber's views on the subject. Different value of scenery in the Attic and English theatres. Comparative insignificance of scenery on the eighteenth-century stage. Appreciation of fine acting by the audience in the eighteenth century. Churchill's Rosciad: portrait of Quin. Gradual predominance of scenic illusion over acting in the English theatres. Migration of the dramatic spirit into the English novel: Henry Fielding. CHAPTER XIV SURVEY OF ENGLISH POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Taine's historic view considered. Estimate of his inductive method. Examination of the sense attached by him to the word "classic." His account of English poetic style in the eighteenth century inaccurate. His disregard of the principle of historic continuity. Gradual evolution of English modes of versification. The long history of the heroic couplet and blank verse. The civic spirit the groundwork of the classic style in English poetry. Differences in the character and history of the English and the French nations. Survival of Feudalism in England. Connection between Church and State. The classic style developed in England through the predominance of the aristocracy in the government of the country. Exhaustion of the influence of the Classical Renaissance coincident with the decadence of oligarchy and the advance of the democratic spirit. Expansion of the classical ideal during the early Romantic movement : Gray, Collins, and the Wartons. The eighteenth century in England a great constitutional and constructive age, both in politics and literature. Character of society reflected in poetry. The great men of the period worthy of comparison with those of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The way prepared both in politics and literature for the coming of the Revolutionary era. |
