Elizabethan Playwrights - A Short History of the English Drama from Mediaeval Times to the Closing of the Theaters in 1642 Book

ELIZABETHAN PLAYWRIGHTS A Short History of the English Drama from MEDIAEVAL TIMES to the Closing of the Theaters in 1642 BY FELIX E. SCHELIING. CONTENTS PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION xi I THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE 1 II HUMANISM AND THE DRAMA 19 III THE COURT AND ITS ENTERTAINMENT . . . 42 IV THE PLAYHOUSE AND THE COMPANIES . . . 63 V THE NEW DRAMA OF PASSION 81 VI THE VOGUE OF HISTORY 106 VII COMEDY, DOMESTIC AND ROMANTIC .... 128 VIII TRAGEDY AT ITS HEIGHT 150 IX THE BIAS OF SATIRE 174 X THE STAGE AND ITS CRAFT 192 XI ROMANCE AND TRAGICOMEDY 212 XII THE ROYAL DIVERSION 233 XIII THE CAVALIER DRAMATISTS 252 XIV V THE DRAMA IN SUMMARY 274 BIBLIOGRAPHY 287 A LIST OF PRINCIPAL DATES 301 INDEX 317 vn PREFACE IT HAS been the present authors fortune to have dealt with the story of our older English drama, in whole or in part, more than once before most extensively in his Elizabethan Drama, 2 vols., 1908. Since that date, scholarship has added to our stores of knowledge and cleared up much that had hitherto been understood less clearly. The Cam bridge History of English Literature in the volumes which deal with the drama, the work as to the stage, especially of Reynolds, Graves, Thorndike, and Adams in America the bibliographical and other work of Pollard, Greg, Chambers, and many more in England that of Reyher and Feuillerat in particular in France all this has added to our stores, not to mention many other valuable contributions. And now, subsequent to the first draft of the present book, appears Dr. Chambers's eagerly awaited Elizabethan Stage, which cannot but be taken into serious account, alike for its learning and the weight to be attached at all times to this eminent scholars critical decisions. In any work of scholarly cast, we may decide, as some have decided, to accept nothing whatever that other scholars have done, but to go down to the bedrock of original material and demonstrate once more the justice of the acceptance of the multiplication table. The other extreme gives us a history of former critical opinion expressed with that evasive particularity which leaves things exactly where they were. There is perhaps a third course which, on the basis of a first-hand knowledge of the materials in question and with a diligent endeavor to become acquainted with other superstructures that scholarship has reared upon them, makes a selective rather than an exhaustive use of these materials, and is less emulous of singularity than of a modest effort to get at and present, as nearly as possible, the truth. This last has been the ideal in this case. It is too much to hope that any ideal can reach more than a qualified fulfillment. This book has been written mainly abroad, and the author has therefore been denied the intimacy of his own library and that of his own university. But this loss has been compensated and more by the courtesies of others in that republic of scholarship and letters that knows no aliens. My acknowledgments are due to the authorities of the British Museum and those of the London Library, particularly to Mr. C. T. Hagberg Wright, librarian of the latter, and to Mr. Gorham P. Stevens and Dr. E. D. Van Buren, the director and librarian, respectively, of the American Academy in Rome, in the congenial atmosphere of which, however distant from England and Elizabeth, many of the pages of this book were written. Nearer home, I record my appreciation of the encouragement of my friend and colleague, Professor Arthur H. Quinn who, as general editor of the series of which this book is one, procured the writing of it...Read More