Skip to main content

Decline Of The Drama Or Elizabethan Era


"There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear"

Decline of the Drama

It was inevitable that the drama should decline after Shakespeare, for the simple reason that there was no other great enough to fill his place. Aside from this, other causes were at work, and the chief of these was at the very source of the Elizabethan dramas. It must be remembered that our first playwrights wrote to please their audiences, that the drama rose in England because of the desire of a patriotic people to see something of the stirring life of the times reflected on the stage. For there were no papers or magazines in those days, and people came to the theaters not only to be amused but to be informed. Like children, they wanted to see a story acted; and like men, they wanted to know what it meant. Shakespeare fulfilled their desire. He gave them their story, and his genius was great enough to show in every play not only their own life and passions but something of the meaning of all life, and of that eternal justice which uses the war of human passions for its own great ends. Thus good and evil mingle freely in his dramas, but the evil is never attractive, and the good triumphs as inevitably as fate. Though his language is sometimes coarse, we are to remember that it was the custom of his age to speak somewhat coarsely, and that in language, as in thought and feeling, Shakespeare is far above most of his contemporaries.

With his successors all this was changed. The audience itself had gradually changed, and in place of plain people eager for a story and for information, we see a larger and larger proportion of those who went to the play because they had nothing else to do. They wanted amusement only, and since they had blunted by idleness the desire for simple and wholesome amusement, they called for something more sensational. Shakespeare's successors catered to the depraved tastes of this new audience. They lacked not only Shakespeare's genius, but his broad charity, his moral insight into life. With the exception of Ben Jonson, they neglected the simple fact that man in his deepest nature is a moral being, and that only a play which satisfies the whole nature of man by showing the triumph of the moral law can ever wholly satisfy an audience or a people. Beaumont and Fletcher, forgetting the deep meaning of life, strove for effect by increasing the sensationalism of their plays, Webster reveled in tragedies of blood and thunder, Massinger and Ford made another step downward, producing evil and licentious scenes for their own sake, making characters and situations more immoral till, notwithstanding these dramatists' ability, the stage had become insincere, frivolous, and bad. Ben Jonson's ode, "Come Leave the Loathed Stage," is the judgment of a large and honest nature grown weary of the plays and the players of the time. We read with a sense of relief that in 1642, only twenty-six years after Shakespeare's death, both houses of Parliament voted to close the theaters as breeders of lies and immorality.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

George Chapman As Minor Poet

  Life George Chapman was born about 1559, probably in at near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England. he was died on 12 May 1634. he was an English dramatist, translator and English poet and whose translation of Homer long remained the standard English version. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been speculated to be the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's sonnets by William Minto,  and as an anticipator of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century. Education There is conjecture that he studied at Oxford but did not take a degree, though no reliable evidence affirms this. Very little is known about Chapman's early life, but Mark Eccles uncovered records that reveal much about Chapman's difficulties and expectations. Family   His father, Thomas Chapman, was a local landowner, his mother Joan was the daughter of George Nodes,   On his mother’s side, Chapman was related to Edward Grimeston, whose family served the English governme...
Post a Comment
Read more

Origin Of Drama And The Theatres And The Stages

  The Origin   The drama came from Greek word, drama meaning action or to act or to do. Drama is a literary composition, drama is the form of composition design for performance in the theatre, in which the actors take role for certain characters, perform certain action and utter certain dialogues, on the stage before audience and Story became drama. No production of drama in the old English literature( the writers, all poet usually wrote poetry). The great deeds of a people are treasured in its literature and later generations represent in play, a story put into action by living performers, who imagine themselves to be the old heroes.  In England, drama had a distinctly religious origin from the church as the part of services.  The motives of the church began to use dramatics , it was certain that the purpose was didactic, to give deep understanding about the truth of religion to the believer. The bible in latin lauguage, Common people could not understand the mea...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Non Dramatic Poets As Edmund Spenser

"It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor"  Introduction   Edmund Spenser was a 16th century English poet.  Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for notable work The Faerie Queene, which was the unfinished  epic poem, the masterpiece and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. he is recognized as one of the greatest poets in the English language.  He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent ( develop) Modern English verse. His family was not wealthy. He was poor scholar. Edmund Spenser was a man of his times and his work reflects the religious and humanistic ideals  His contributions to English literature. He was influenced by Chaucer.  Life No documentation exists to establish his exact date of birth. Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, near the tower of London, in 1552. He was an English poet. He was one of the three children of Elizabeth and John S...
Post a Comment
Read more