DECLINE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21116, 17 March 1934, Page 15

DECLINE

I A PHASE OF EXGLISH | • DRAMA iptQUU.I TKITTIX TOR IHI TRESS.) [By K. G. C. Mc.NAB.] The degeneracy of the Elizabethan Raffia in the second and third decades Of the seventeenth century las' so rapid and violent that it is of remarkable that the dramatic \ Lpulse was worn out and the Latres closed. (Jacobean would Z a better designation than Eliza'tirfhan, for the greatest English lars were produced a.ter Euza- ( Lh's death, and her successor was i .more generous friend of the stage.) > | Shed, revenge cruelty and Sess had always been favourite i 353? of the dramatist from Mar"we and Kyd; but tneir plays and up dark and gloomy tragedies 01 chakespeare, "Macbeth," "Lear, JfflSct," and "Othello," were soon eutdonc by the representation oi Iverv describable and indescrmable Snd of atrocity. Madmen raved, barbarous murderers gloated, vujains rehearsed their plans and lustful men recounted their exploits. Let her lie ■ I Some twenty months adymg; to cm.eft , Her nose and lips; pull cut her ro.tcn , preserve her flesh like murnmia, for trophies Of my just anger. were the words of a supplanted wife, while a priest tried to draw a woman to penitence by an itemised description of Hell: j There is a place, j List, daughter! in a black and hodow j Where day is never seen; there shines no sun, _ But fiaming horror of consuming mes A lightless sulphur, chok d vim smoky fogs . , Of an infected darkness: in ..his j Dwell many thousand thousand sundry | sorts , , , ! Of never-dying deaths; there dair.ncJ souls , . ~ Rear without pity; there are gluttons fed . , With toads and adders; there is burn- , ing cil , , .. ( . t ! Poured down the arumcard s liiroaw the usurer , .Is forced to sup whole draughts of , molten gold; There is the murderer for ever stabbed. Yet can he never d:e. Men died often, but slowly, alwavs retaining breath for a curse, a dire prophecy, or an unrepentant exultation. After a wedding-feast, interrupted by a harrowing death, one of the onlookers calmly observed to a young man : The marriage seldorr.'s "cod When the bride-banquet so begins in blood. Deeds were as reckless as words. A husband incensed by his wile 3 faithlessness dragged her across the stage by the hair; death lurked not only in the usual dagger anc poisoned cup, but in apparently innocent horse-play, and in a picture hissed by a loving wife. j/r Humour Lost After the anpetito for physical horrors was sated, the spectacle of mental anguish was presented to the blase audience. A woman innocently betrayed to her overbearing and conspiring -brothers the secret that meant her undoing. A mother saw one son murder his brother and seduce his sister to adultery. She died in mad grief, even more disturbed by the same ;,on's heartless neglect and brutal insults than by the preceding shocks. Humour, however robust, disappeared. One of the few survivor.-; was a coarse young man, too stupid to understand his own discomfiture, and soon murdered by mistake. He died hiccoughing out an obscenity. It was no scruple that placed the action of these sanguinary plays in a foreign country—usually Italy. The novelists had described the Italian scene which had also been the setting of several plays of Shakespeare. Italy had become for the playgoer the home of lecherous pleasure, fierce bloodshed, stealthy assassination, and miserable death. Such horrors doubtless seemed more natural abroad. Dramatic poets forsook the fairy elements which had evidently become less popular. Imagination was no longer easily stirred, nor ordinary feelings A compassion easily aroused. Morbid and unearthly sensation and perversity forbade the portrayal of normal thought and emotion. In comedy Volpone replaced Falstaff, and an incestuous intrigue the idyll of Lorenzo and Jessica. Exhaustion and Disillusion The taste of an audience which needed a stimulus so sharp had been debased, but playwrights cannot be justly regarded as degraded panderers to degraded desires. The age that followed the excitement of Elizabethan war, exploration, and varied achievements was not unlike the post-war years of this century. Young men, sensitive and disillusioned, could not reverence their father's standards. They folt that they were a lost generation, bewildered and without ideals. Life seemed meaningless, and in perplexity they turned to cynicism, and gradually the cynical attitude became sincere hopelessness to which nothing was sacred. The theatre Was a manifestation of the mind of some of these young men. Such an interpretation is supported by the number of plays in which one character stands more c- less aloof from the action to inveigh against society, to point the horrors with a sneer, and in some cases, to act, apparently in sheer wickedness, as the evil genius of their associates. In Shakespeare, Jaques, Hamlet, 2nd Prospero supply comment on the action, but Flamineo in "The White Devil." Bosola in "The Duchess of Malfi," and Altofronto *?■ "The Malcontent" are more uefinitely figures of decadence, infecst'd in life but unmoved by J t- They were fatalists. Flamineo who, apart from his courage and his tenacity in his evil purposes, is a figure of incarnate vice, cries faced by death, "I do dare 15 'J* fate to do its worst." and the Perverted Giovanni in " Tis Pity kne's a Whore" says: . 'Tis net. I know. «y lust, but 'tis my fate that leads me on—*nd in the moment of destruction, I hold fate clasped in my fist. Marston, Webster, Ford The writers of such plays were Pitiable men, clever, reckless, hopeless, living and writing for no good purpose. Their intensity of protest j ■ttnetimes gave them a poetic power j

of exoression, especiallv xn their despairing cries, but the beamy and dignitv of Shakespearean verse is beyond them, except m rare snatches. , , Three plays* adequately represei.t Mi» decline. The first is "The Malcontent" (1604) by John Marston. ("Hamlet" appeared in IGo2.'> Coarse. vigorous language and reali-m are "not vet horrifying. Trie old pandcrcs,. Maquarclle, speak; with t-'naincie ■-.-; frankness o. i'-r -•haineful trade, and i; a sign tnr... reticence and rc-traint are not being anprecialed bv the aucnenco; but "the :n0.4 significant character is the Malcontent himself, a ban-i.-hed duke, who returns in disgui-;c to his court, and, representing the satirical author, contemptuously regards and frustrates the intention? of the knaves and sycophants who c-nfide in him. This play i:; a development of the Hamlet-motive. "The White Devil" by John Webster (1612) is constructed from the story of Vittoria Corombara, a Venetian courtesan. This is a play of alrno't unrelieved vice and Urror. Of Webster's plays Rupert Brooke said: Human beings are writhing grubs in an immenrc night. And Iho night is without stars or moon.

i Ti;e climax i'j the death-struggle | of a man on whose head a poisoned helmet had been rivetteci. In his agonv he is confronted by two friars who are actually his bitterest enemies in disguise. The last words he hears are their mocking exultations. In this play is one of the strongest characters in English drama, the mysterious courtesan. So great is her resolution that, when brought to trial for various atrocious crimes, she holds at bay her clever and unscrupulous accusers and commands all attention. Before her death she expresses in a few words the bewilderment felt by her creator. My soul, like to a ship in a black storm. Is driven I know net whither. Her wretched brother, Flamineo, is immovably, epically mercenary. Mere lust brings a duke to death, while sadistic vengeance inspires cardinal and prince. Deep in a dump John Ford alone was With folded arms and melancholy hat. j The Theatres Closed These famous words adequately describe John Ford, who would not be out of his element in modern England. He was inquisitive about human motives, and studied in "The Anatomy of Melancholy" the masses of facts there collected about sex and psychology. He was interested by everything and horrified bv nothing. The theme of '"Tis Pity She's a Whore" (16113) it incest, and Ford's treatment shows no repulsion from the character who was its chief emblem. If Ford has taken particular pains to make any character fully intelligible, it is with the incestuous lover. The audience which appreciated such a play needed indeed a strong stimulus. Even the sensational action and language of this play are not its most distressing featur. 1 . More deeply tj r.lir thy audience, and the playwright's imagination, there are several confession scenes in winch the rcaret thoughts and longings cf Giovanni arc made known. This v. as a refinement of mental excitement thru could not be surpassed. Parliament closed the theatres in IG-J2, not entirely becauje of th? | immorality of the stage. The great I period of the English drama was Jat an end. It had in CO years produced more than a thousand plays.