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The scenario or skeleton is so manifestly the natural ground-work of a dramatic performance that the playwrights of the Italian commedia dell' arte wrote nothing more than a scheme of scenes, and left the actors to do the rest. The same practice prevailed in early Elizabethan days, as one or two MS. "Plats," designed to be hung up in the wings, are extant to testify.
We are, however, much better instructed in regard to the Church of the fourth and early fifth centuries, because the century following the Council of Nicæa was, in the history of church literature, what the Elizabethan era was in that of England.
The word "classic" acquired an entirely different meaning in the period we are studying; and we shall better understand this by reference to the preceding ages. The Elizabethan writers were led by patriotism, by enthusiasm, and, in general, by romantic emotions.
It is almost impossible, I should think, for a young man and a young woman to be friends and nothing more, and I confess that my sympathy with him in his admiration of the Elizabethan poets, and my gratitude to him for my recovery passed into affection. I am sure also that he felt affection for me. He became confidential, and told me all his history and troubles.
First in importance, or at least in popular interest, are the new Chronicle plays, founded upon historical events and characters. They show the strong national spirit of the Elizabethan Age, and their popularity was due largely to the fact that audiences came to the theaters partly to gratify their awakened national spirit and to get their first knowledge of national history.
Miss Barrett, never quite recovered from a riding accident in early girlhood, and stricken down for long in both soul and body by the shock of her brother's death by drowning, lay from day to day and month to month, in an upper room of her father's house in Wimpole Street, occupied, upon her sofa, with her books and papers her Greek dramatists and her Elizabethan poets shut out from the world, with windows for ever closed, and with only an occasional female visitor, to gossip of the social and literary life of London.
Contemporaneous with Shakespeare, or coming after him, were Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Ford, and Shirley; these Elizabethan dramatists took their subjects from the stories and legends of all countries and ages or else they depicted the national life.
Four servants preceded him in liveries, emblazoned with his arms, and carried his hat, cushion, and parasols. He was also attended by a secretary in a mantle of violet silk, a train-bearer in a gown of violet woollen stuff, and a gentleman in waiting, wearing an Elizabethan style of costume, and bearing the /berretta/ with gloved hands.
An occasional scene in Ford's plays is as strong as anything that the Elizabethan Age produced; but as a whole the plays are unnatural and tiresome. Probably his best play is The Broken Heart . Shirley was given to imitation of his predecessors, and his very imitation is characteristic of an age which had lost its inspiration.
In 1893 E.J. Payne brought out a much handier edition of the Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America which gives the very parts of Hakluyt we want for our present purpose, and gives them with a running accompaniment of pithy introductions and apposite footnotes.
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