the influence of Mysteries and Moralities.[1] Individualism is indeed the dominant note in Shakspere's drama, but it maintains its profound interest because of the multitude of voices above which it is clearly heard; the secret of the master lies not in his having "incarnated feudalism in literature" (as Walt Whitman says), not in his having championed the cause of the nobles (as Rümelin tells us), but in his combining, as Æschylus and Sophocles before him had combined, the conflicting spirits of corporate and individual life now walking side by side through the streets of Elizabethan London. Here, for a time at least, was no place for classical and Italian restrictions; the remonstrances of Sidney (Defence of Poesie), against "our tragedies and comedies observing rules neither of honest civilitie nor of skilful poetrie," knew not that a more vigorous life than even that of Periclean Athens was producing for itself its own dramatic principles.
But if Elizabethan London did not supply an audience sufficiently polite and erudite to appreciate the classical and Italian restrictions, the courtly centralism of Paris, opposed to strong emotions as breaches of etiquette, easily submitted its theatre to classical imitation. In 1552, only five years after the Parliament of Paris had suppressed the Fraternity of the Passion, Jodelle, father of the regular French drama, exhibited his tragedy of Cléopatre before Henry II. The play is simple, devoid of action and stage effect, full of long speeches, with a chorus at the end of every act; but, as if anticipating the future destroyer of national drama in France, the troop of performers, whose Mysteries had been so lately interdicted, "availed themselves of an exclusive privilege
- ↑ Milton's original plan of Paradise Lost as an allegorical drama, with abstract personages and a chorus, would have curiously blended the manner of the Mysteries with classical form. Even in Samson Agonistes, as is well known, we have a double allegory.
