Even when we admire the beauty of any new passage he introduced, we are usually struck by its inappropriateness. Occasionally she relented; the tenderness of the woman prevailed over the severity of the judge. In a few instances guarded praise was given the dramatist for improvement in certain details. Still, as a general rule, the epithets most frequently employed to describe the variations made by him from his originals. were the adjectives "absurd" and "ridiculous."

The work was one of which a good deal of the contemporary periodical criticism spoke highly, especially in the Gentleman's Magazine,' where Johnson possessed influence. It enabled the reader, he was told, to make a just estimate of Shakespeare's merit, to comprehend his resources and detect his faults. Above all, it showed clearly that he did not deserve the veneration with which he had been and still continued to be regarded. The many beauties of which he had been supposed to be the originator had been restored by the authoress to those from whom they had been borrowed. The plagiarist stood exposed.1 But outside of periodical criticism, the attitude taken and the views expressed in the work met with but scant favor. It reacted, indeed, injuriously at a later period upon Mrs. Lennox's own literary undertakings. The ill-success of her play of The Sister,' which was brought out at Covent Garden in February, 1770, but withdrawn after the first night, was attributed by some to the indignation and resentment which her remarks upon Shakespeare had

1 Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxiii., June, 1753. See also vol. xxiv. pp. 233, 311.

aroused. Whether this be true or not, the publication of her work furnishes another exemplification of a melancholy fact which, the longer we live, forces itself more persistently upon our observation. There is nothing more to be deplored in the fortunes of individuals than the hard lot that befalls some in having been born at the wrong time or in the wrong country. People are constantly met with now who really belong to the tenth century, and would have made a fitting and delightful acquisition to the society of that epoch. Its prevailing ideas would have been their ideas. Its way of looking at things would have been their way. Its partialities and prejudices, its particular likes and dislikes would have been theirs also. They are simply unfortunate in having been misplaced into a wholly unsuitable time. Such was the unhappy fate of Mrs. Lennox in regard to Shakespeare. She missed her century. Had she flourished in the period immediately following the Restoration, she would have found herself in a far more congenial atmosphere. She would have been enrolled as a distinguished figure in a set which would have sympathized with her opinions and exalted her uncommon learning and critical acumen. Had she in addition become Mrs. Rymer, the conjunction of these two stars, shooting madly from their spheres in the Shakespearean firmament, would have attracted the attention of observers for all time.

CHAPTER VIII

ALTERATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

THERE is a well-known remark of Evelyn in his diary under the date of November 26, 1661. He had just attended a performance of Hamlet." "But now," was his comment, "the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his majesty's being so long abroad." These words mark the opening of the more than hundred years' war which Shakespeare was to carry on with the French theatre. At this early period the torrent of lewdness and profligacy, which Evelyn was later to deplore so frequently, had not yet burst forth with any violence. Decency was on the point of departing from the stage, but so far had not taken her flight. It was not, therefore, the spirit of the Elizabethan drama, alien as it was to that of the Restoration epoch, which was beginning to make its plays seem distasteful. It was because of their supposed deficiencies in those characteristics which constitute true art.

Of these a full account has been given in the preceding pages. We have seen that a number of rules were laid down for the conduct of the playwright, based not upon how men really thought and felt and acted, but

1 Began in printed text. If written by Evelyn at the time, he must have intended begin; if began was his word, the remark must have been a later addition to the diary.

how they ought to think and feel and act, in order to preserve poetic decorum. The stage was to anticipate Mr. Turveydrop and become a model of deportment. The vogue of these rules became increasingly prevalent after the eighteenth century had opened. The tendency constantly manifested itself then to strengthen the rigor of the laws which regulated dramatic composition. Naturally eighteenth-century plays conformed to the canons proclaimed by eighteenth-century critics. A large proportion of the tragedies of that time were absolutely faultless from the point of view of the classical school. They were what was called regular. They observed the unities. They never outraged the feelings by pandering to that depraved taste which longed for occasional flashes of enjoyment to light up the atmosphere of gloom in which they were enveloped. In many instances they carefully despatched the destined victims behind the scenes. Some of these productions were the work of able men, a very few of them of men possessed of no slight share of poetic if not of dramatic genius. Nothing, therefore, is so conspicuous about the cleverness of these playwrights as the almost invariable success with which it enabled them to fail. Stately characters were brought by them upon the scene whose speeches were often characterized by elaborate and imposing versification; but somehow they seemed to lack vitality. It was the form of tragedy they possessed without its spirit. The events were few; the words describing them were many. The best that could be said of the best of them was that they avoided gross faults. If they did not stir the

heart of the spectator, they did not excite his laughter; and in no case could fault be found with them for the violation of a single one of those rules which by the common consent of critics were deemed essential to dramatic propriety.

It was this last characteristic which constituted their great recommendation in the eyes of the followers of this school. Negative virtues were raised to the dignity of positive ones; if not so in theory, they were in fact. To be free from faults was of more account than to be possessed of merits; and instead of seeking for the latter, writers for the stage were sedulously striving to guard against the former. Nothing of permanent value is ever produced by such methods; no interest long attaches to any work of any sort thus brought into being. A brake on a wheel is often a useful article; but it overrates a great deal its own importance when it fancies itself the wheel that runs the vehicle, still more when it fancies itself the motive power that runs the wheel. It was the concentration of the care and thought of the playwrights upon the observance of these conventional rules which more than any other one thing contributed to render their productions tame and lifeless. Tragedy was the main sufferer by this practice: comedy got along better. Some of the works belonging to the former chanced occasionally to receive for a time. an artificial life from the excellence of the acting; but they were rarely heard of later, even when apparent success had crowned their original representation. This was their usual fate; it is not too much to assert that it was usually their merited fate. Even the best of them