Category: Plays/Films/Dramas

Tragedy

There is little difficulty in selecting the plays that should be included in a history of English tragedy. Since the middle of the sixteenth century there have always been plays commonly received as tragedies, and others so closely resembling these that they require considerat...

Chapters

4. CHAPTER IV

The growing national consciousness that reached its triumphant culmination in the defeat of Spain made itself felt in the drama, specifically in efforts to present the glories o...

11. CHAPTER IX

In tragedy the division between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is less marked than that which distinguishes in general the literatures of the Restoration and the Augus...

5. CHAPTER V

After "Richard II" and "King John," Shakespeare turned aside from tragedy, and within the next half-dozen years produced his masterpieces of romantic comedy and non-tragical his...

12. CHAPTER X

The last few years of the eighteenth century and the first few of the nineteenth made up a decade full of movement and change in the drama. The eighteenth century had been, as w...

10. CHAPTER VIII

The drama of the Restoration was separated from the earlier periods by sixteen years of closed theatres and a virtual cessation of all dramatic composition. To the drama, as to...

3. CHAPTER III

In this chapter the development of tragedy is to be traced from 1562, the year of the production of "Gorboduc," to about 1587, the beginning of Marlowe's career. Our knowledge o...

2. CHAPTER II

English tragedy makes its appearance at the very beginning of Elizabeth's reign. In the Middle Ages nearly all knowledge of the drama of the Greeks and Romans was lost, and the...

13. CHAPTER XI

The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many common characteristics, they do sep...

8. CHAPTER VII

Shakespeare's great tragedies did not create a new epoch in the development of the drama. In themes and general treatment they made no marked departure from the past. Their tran...

9. Act i opens at the court of Roberto, King of Sicily,

who, after much eloquent solicitation, permits his natural brother Bertoldo to lead an expedition against Gonzaga, a knight of Malta, who is relieving Sienna, captured by Ferdin...

1. CHAPTER I

There is little difficulty in selecting the plays that should be included in a history of English tragedy. Since the middle of the sixteenth century there have always been plays...

7. CHAPTER VI

Our study has perhaps already made it evident that Shakespeare's tragedies were in many ways the product of a rapid and complex evolution. At the same time it is clear that, unt...

6. chapter i. Other recent books of special interest are: _Shakespeare_,

Walter Raleigh (1907, English Men of Letters Series); _William Shakespere_, Barrett Wendell (1894); _Shakespeare and his Predecessors_, F. S. Boas (1896). For a general surrey o...