CHAPTER IV.

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.

WE have seen how the old Miracle-plays gradually gave way to Moral-plays; first borrowing some of their materials, then thrown into the back-ground, and finally quite displaced, by what they had borrowed. Yet both these forms of the Drama were radically different from Comedy and Tragedy, in the proper sense of these terms: there was very little of character or of human blood in them; and even that little was not there by any natural right; being forced in by external causes, and not a free or native outgrowth from the genius or principle of the thing. The first, in their proper idea and original plan, were but a mechanical collocation of the events of Scripture and old legend, carried on by a sort of personal representatives; the historical forms being everything, individual traits nothing, in the exhibition: the second, a mere procession of abstract ideas rudely and inartificially personified, with something of fantastical drapery thrown around them. So that both alike stood apart from the vitalities of nature and the abiding interests of thought, being indeed

quite innocent of the knowledge of them: both were the legitimate product of a people among whom the principles of a most generous culture had been planted, but had not yet fructified; who had the powers of the highest art rather lying on the surface of their mind than rooted in its substance; a treasure of grace and truth adopted, but Lot incorporated.

Of course it was impossible that such things, themselves the offspring of darkness, should stand the light. None but children in mind—in the dim twilight "how easy is a bush supposed a bear" — could mistake them for truth, or keep up any real sympathy with such unvital motions. Precluded from the endless variety of individual nature and characteristic speciality, they could not but run into great sameness and monotony: it was at the best little more than a repetition of one fundamental air under certain arbitrary variations. As the matter shown was always much the same, the interest had to depend chiefly on the manner of showing it: so that the natural result was either a cumbrous and clumsy excess of manner, or else a stupefying tediousness of effect; unless, indeed, it drew beyond itself, and in doing this it could not but create a taste that would sooner or later force its entire withdrawal from the scene.

Accordingly, Moral-plays, at a comparatively early period in their course, began, as we have seen, to deviate into veins of matter foreign to their original

design; points of native humour and wit, lines of personal interest were taken in to diversify and relieve the allegorical sameness; these grew more and more into the main texture of the workmanship: so that the older occupant may, in some sort, be said to have begotten the new species by which itself was in due time superseded. As the new elements gained strength and grew firm, much of the old treasure proved to be mere refuse and dross; as such it was discarded: nevertheless, whatsoever of sterling wealth had been accumulated, was sucked in, retained, and carried up into the supervening growth.

So that the allegorical drama had great influence, no doubt, in determining the scope and quality of the proper drama of comedy and tragedy; since, by its long discipline of the popular mind in abstract ideas, it did much, very much, towards forming that public taste which required the drama to rise above a mere geography of facts into the empyrean of truth; and under the instruction of which Shakespeare learned to make his persons embodiments of general nature as well as of individual character. For the excellences of the Shakespearian drama. were probably owing as much to the mental preparation of the time as to the powers of the individual man: he was in demand before he came, and it was that pre-existing demand that taught and enabled him to do what he did. In short, as it was the strength of his genius that lifted him to the top of