perfectly free in his handling of the story and wrote a really great play, he frankly imitated the master dramatist in style and in the study of character. Compared with Antony and Cleopatra, however, this, Dryden's best loved play, shows classical restraint. Each act is composed in a single scene, the time of action falls within a single day, and the place of action changes but once. Like the heroic plays moreover, the drama is "narrative rather than dramatic in its structure. The action, despite its confinement within a single day, is, as Aristotle would call it, 'episodic;' like that of The Conquest of Granada, it deals with successive adventures in the life of one man, not with one central crisis. Despite its faults [however], All for Love is the happiest result of the French influence on English tragedy. However conventional the emotion expressed in it may be, this tragedy remains alive to-day by virtue of its vigorous, dignified, and truly poetic style, and of sustained interest of the action." 12

The line between Dryden's second and third periods as a dramatist is not to be indicated with absolute definiteness, though All for Love is commonly regarded as marking the passing of rhymed drama. In 1678 he collaborated with Nathaniel Lee on a classical tragedy, Oedipus, and the next year he remodeled Troilus and Cressida on classical lines. To this latter production he prefixed his Preface on the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy. He cited with approval Thomas Rymer's The Tragedies of the Last Age, Consider'd and Examin'd by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the Common Sense of all Ages (1678), and de

12 Noyes, xlix. For further discussion of the play, including especially a list of passages imitated from Shakespeare, see Strunk's Introduction to All for Love and The Spanish Fryar, xliii-xlv.

nounced tragicomedy. As usual he was not very consistent, for it was not long before he himself wrote another tragicomedy, The Spanish Friar, or The Double Discovery (1681), in which he exhibits more than his usual comic force. About this time his work was very varied. He was writing operas as well as plays, was busy with his great political satires, and since 1670 he had been historiographer royal and poet laureate. When in his later years, after the accession of William of Orange, reverses came to him and he again turned to the stage, he worked only with the hope of immediate financial return. Don Sebas tian (1690) has sometimes been overpraised as a masterpiece, though the production shows general vigor and has at least one strong and animated scene (IV, 3). Love Triumphant (1693), a tragicomedy, failed to exhibit harmony of tone and was not a success.

Taine, the eminent historian of English literature, has defined Dryden as a great transitional figure whose dramatic work was after all chiefly of value in giving vigor and point to his style for his great satires. "He strayed on the boundaries of two dramas, and suited neither the half-barbarous men of art nor the well-polished men of the court." The English race, "diverging from its own age, and fettered at the outset by foreign imitation, formed its classical literature but slowly; it will only attain it after transforming its religious and political condition: the age will be that of English reason. Dryden inaugurates it by his other works, and the writers who appear in the reign of Queen Anne will give it its completion, its authority, and its splendor." All this is true; yet even in the narrower limits of the drama Dryden has to his credit distinct achievement. "Of tragedy [he] may be re

garded as the greatest writer during the Restoration period. Though still an imitator he was here working in a field far more congenial to his own talents [than comedy], and by the genuine merits of his production he exercised a strong influence on the future of tragedy in England. He first developed, to such perfection as it was capable of attaining, a new species of drama, the melodramatic heroic play. He later succeeded in uniting the French technique with the English dramatic tradition, and thus gave powerful aid in starting English tragedy in the direction that it was destined to follow for almost a century after his death, though it never again attained the height to which he raised it in his All for Love. To his achievements in both these types of tragedy he gave distinction by his supreme command of English verse. Always buoyant, varied, melodious, and vigorous, Dryden's style progresses from bombast in his earlier work to sustained dignity in his later. Those who do not know The Conquest of Granada and All for Love can not fully understand the spell that Dryden's name cast over the century that followed him." 18

53. Etherege, Wycherley, and Others. While the heroic drama was killing its victims and winning its conquests on the stage, the characteristic expression of the drama of the reign of Charles II was more and more proving to be in comedy. The comedy of humours and that of manners had indeed been known by the Elizabethans; but now developed a new species of "society comedy," largely influenced by the French but also finding some origin in Shirley. It was artificial, and, as it developed, it became increasingly corrupt in tone. At the same time, it has Noyes, lv.

18

the interest of reflecting an important period in the life of the English people, at least of the English court. Lest at any time the picture seem to be too darkly drawn, let us keep in mind that this was also the age that first read Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress and that was nourished on The Whole Duty of Man. The Puritan element was no longer ascendant; but it was still present to give solidity and poise to the national character.

The real founder of the new school of "society comedy" was Sir George Etherege (1634-1691), a man of fashion who was "knighted for marrying a fortune," and who for some years served as envoy to Ratisbon until he was deprived of his post by William III. His representative play is The Man of Mode (1676), containing the character Sir Fopling Flutter. Etherege was deficient in plot and superficial in method; at the same time his work has much graceful dialogue, and to him must be given the credit for beginning that style of writing which was soon to be so highly developed by Congreve and which was later carried to perfection by Sheridan.

Of stronger quality was William Wycherley (16401715), the son of a Shropshire gentleman of good estate. Wycherley's father, disliking the schools under the Commonwealth, sent the youth to France, where he became a Roman Catholic. On his return, however, the young man recanted, was entered at the Temple, and for some years was a part of the gay life of the town. This was the period of his comedies, Love in a Wood (1671), The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1671), The Country Wife (1673), and The Plain Dealer (1674). There can be no doubt about the fact that Wycherley exhibited power far beyond that of most comic dramatists of the Restoration.

At the same time "in his hands comedy is grasped with brutal but undeniable force, and dragged relentlessly through the mire of animalism.” 14 In his methods he debased and corrupted Molière. The Country Wife details the life of a woman who comes from the country to the fashionable world of London, without sympathy either for the degraded wife or the dishonored husband. Horner, the villain who brazenly pursues his illicit amours, is really made the hero of the play. The Country Wife is not without its vein of satire, and even more on the basis of The Plain Dealer might a case be made out for Wycherley as a moralist castigating the vices of his age. From this point of view, however, he was hardly regarded in his own day, and all the more he made himself liable for the stern rebuke he was so soon to receive.

Of similar tone, but with indebtedness more to Jonson than Molière, was Thomas Shadwell (1642 ?-1692), a Whig who succeeded Dryden as poet laureate and who for even a number of years before had been a chief object of Dryden's satire. His representative comedy is Epsom Wells (1672), a lively picture of the life of the day in which one finds not one but two deceived husbands. A score of other productions for the stage bear witness to Shadwell's industry and include also some adaptation from Shakespeare.

Other dramatists of the period generally reflected the prevailing tone, though of course with differences. Sir Samuel Tuke's Adventures of Five Hours (1663) was an adaptation from a Spanish play. Edward Ravencroft did much working over of Molière and the Elizabethans and wrote London Cuckolds (1682). John Crowne attempted

14 Nettleton, 77.