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The dependence of the dramatist upon his audience may be illustrated by the history of many important plays, which, though effective in their own age, have become ineffective for later generations, solely because they were founded on certain general principles of conduct in which the world has subsequently ceased to believe.
Cornish was a capable dramatist, as well as a musician and a poet; and he, unlike the author of Everyman, wrote plays simply to amuse the court and its guests. He has even been called the founder of the secular English drama. The court of Henry VIII. became especially fond of the Interlude, which was a short play, often given in connection with a banquet or other entertainment.
Instead of acknowledging the defects of his composition, the unlucky dramatist was wroth with his public. For a while he caressed the thought of going to St. Petersburg, taking out letters of naturalization, and opening a theatre in the Russian capital with a view to establishing the pre-eminence of French literature embodied in his own writings.
The Tempest is just as true as The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Peter Pan is just as true as Ghosts. I mean merely that the people whom the dramatist has conceived must act and speak at all points consistently with the laws of their imagined existence, and that these laws must be in harmony with the laws of actual life.
The author does not obtrude it; does not play the pedant with it; does not lecture upon it; and above all does not bore with it. He only uses it; and he has been so true to his province as a dramatist and not an advocate that he never once assumes to decide upon any question of doctrine that may be involved in the assertion of it.
Schiller was not less efficiently qualified by nature for an historian than for a dramatist. He was formed to excel in all departments of literature, and the admirable lucidity of style and soundness and impartiality of judgment displayed in his historical writings will not easily be surpassed, and will always recommend them as popular expositions of the periods of which they treat.
We may now observe that, in the third place, the essential nature of the drama is affected greatly by the fact that it is destined to be set before an audience. The dramatist must appeal at once to a heterogeneous multitude of people; and the full effect of this condition will be investigated in a special chapter on The Psychology of Theatre Audiences.
Yet that Racine was a born poet appears in the music, nobility, and tenderness of his medium; he clothed his intelligible characters in magical and tragic robes; the aroma of sentiment rises like a sort of pungent incense between them and us, and no dramatist has ever had so sure a mastery over transports and tears.
His largest work was Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen, and his latest publication The Idolatress . In all his writings W. gave evidence of a powerful personality. His poems are spirited, and in some cases show considerable dramatic qualities. Dramatist, s. of above, b. in Dublin.
At that time he looked upon himself as a dramatist, and indeed still hopes to achieve as such when he shall have tired of the novel as a vehicle and shall have learned, the present object of his closest study, the technicalities of the stage a success as great as that which has attended his novels.
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