he argued strongly for this course, that is, strongly in the sense of earnestly, not in that of effectively. In a later reprint of this work he brought forward as a sufficient proof of the desirability and possibility of its restoration the recent tragedies of Elfrida' and' Caractacus," "which," he added, "do honor to modern poetry, and are a better apology than any I could make for the ancient chorus."1 Such praise did not too much elate the author. Even upon his natural self-satisfaction the consciousness of the superiority of the elder dramatist came down with crushing force, as it has upon many far greater men. In the dedicatory poem to Hurd, with which the later editions of Caractacus' were accompanied, Mason told of the desire he had felt to bring to Britain the choral song, and to mingle Attic art with Shakespeare's fire. But the muse had rebuked his presumption. The one he might succeed in attaining; the other was beyond his reach. All that Parnassus could bestow had been exhausted There to light the flame in Shakespeare's breast. was no hope of rivalling him. One consolation indeed there was. Fire might be lacking; but art remained. It is very plain, however, from his words that it was not much of a consolation.

In the preceding pages have been given the various conventional views which have in a measure swayed at times the theatre, and affected the conduct and treatment of the works produced for it; as also by implication the estimate in which Shakespeare has been held in consequence of his ignorance or disregard of these

1 Note to line 193 of the Ars Poetica.

restrictions. There are others about which less interest and less discussion prevailed in England than in other lands. One of these is the interlocking of the scenes so that the stage shall never be left empty. This is something which Ben Jonson kept in view to a certain extent. By the French critics it came to be considered among the greatest of dramatic beauties. Special stress was laid by them upon it. It was one of the points for which Voltaire claimed superiority for the stage of his own country over that of antiquity. Still it never gained much consideration in England even when French influence was most predominant. That it was not art, but artifice, never occurred to any of its advocates. It may be called artifice of a high order, if one so chooses; but it is none the less artifice. As it was with most of the other conventions, the men who sought to secure it always ran the risk of sacrificing to its acquisition natural beauties far greater. The same thing has been true of all the rules and practices which have been described in the present chapter. It was because the English race had in Shakespeare an example of conformity to nature, to truth, and to life, that it was saved from immolating these upon the conventional altar which the classicists endeavored to set up.

CHAPTER VII

LATE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CONTROVERSIES ABOUT

SHAKESPEARE

THE gulf which separated the England of the Restoration from the England that preceded the Commonwealth was much deeper and broader than would naturally be indicated by the length of time which intervened. It was a world of different feelings and of different ideas that came in with Charles II. In politics the same formulas continued to be repeated; but the meaning they had assumed was totally unlike that which they had once conveyed. In literature new standards of criticism were set up, new modes of writing came into fashion, new species of productions attracted the popular regard. The drama was quick to respond to the change in the national feeling. As from its very nature it reflects the life of the times, it soon began to show signs of that altered moral tone which was rapidly permeating all classes of society. It is the wholesale revolution of manners, the complete reversal of the attitude previously assumed towards conduct, which is the earliest as well as the most significant characteristic that the Restoration brings to our notice.

Yet though earliest, it must not be imagined that this change took place on the spur of the moment. Men do not throw off in a day the restraints even of

hypocrisy, still less those of virtue. The current began running immediately, it is true, and it soon came to run very rapidly; but at first it moved so slowly that for the moment one might deem it was not moving at all. But when once under full headway it made the most impressive of manifestations of itself in the reckless, shameless life that was then lived, which was soon to find its fullest representation in the witty but shameless comedy that was evolved. For the comic drama of the forty years which followed the Restoration mirrors the beliefs and sentiments of its fashionable society as does no other form of its literature, and perhaps as does the literature of no other period. The rapid declension of character was at the time a matter of comment and almost of boasting. Dryden's first play, 'The Wild Gallant,' had been brought out in 1663, and had proved a failure. Considerably altered for the worse morally, it was revived with more success in 1667. In the prologue the author informed the audience that he himself had once thought his hero monstrous lewd, but since his knowledge of the town had increased, he was ashamed to find him a very civil sort of personage. Accordingly he had made him lewder. Yet he felt that he had not reached the ideal demanded. "Pray pardon him his want of wickedness," he added. Still the most repulsive impression produced by the comic drama of the age is not its licentiousness, gross as that is, but its selfishness and hardness. Its fine ladies and gentlemen lack the ordinary feelings of humanity. They have none of those redeeming traits of occasional kindliness and of generous impulse which

are frequently found in men who to a great extent spend their lives in frivolous or vicious pursuits. They are cruel, savages at heart, though dressed in the height of the mode and gilded over with a gloss of good manners. But the most curious spectacle the members of this society present, as they appear in the drama of the period, is their utter ignorance of anything in the shape of a moral code, their manifest unconsciousness of the desirability of refraining from any line of conduct that would conduce to their own pleasure or advantage, merely on the ground that it was improper or wicked. The possessor of morals they seem to have looked upon with the same inquiring gaze of wonder which fills the eye of the ordinary man when he sees some one paying enormous prices for first editions of books. Morality, in fact, was something so entirely outside of their consideration and conduct that they could hardly even comprehend the interest that others appeared to take in it. The most they could do was to recognize it as a factor which had to be reckoned with, because there were cases in which, through the agency of persons with whom they came in contact, it had an indirect connection with themselves. the eyes of such a body of men neither good behavior nor good character was a necessity. Both, in truth, were looked upon in the light of personal luxuries, indulgence in which partook somewhat of the discreditable, as being of the nature of an unmanly pandering to the prejudices of fanatics. This is the testimony of the comic drama; it is also the testimony of records of the time outside of the drama.

In