OUTLINE HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRAMA (PART III) – RESTORATION TO VICTORIAN

 Restoration Theatre

 

    After being restored as the monarch of England, one of the first things that Charles II, the son of the executed erstwhile king Charles I, did was to lift the ban placed on theatres by the parliamentarians. It is however noteworthy that when the theatres reopened, they were not the same as earlier. To begin with, theatres in England during the restoration became the exclusive property of the upper class, with little or no commoners attending the performances. The upshot was that the concept of a public theatre was no longer in place, with theatres becoming exclusively private affairs meant for a select few. Another significant change that took place with regard to the theatre was that women who thus far prohibited from acting on the stage, were now permitted to do so. Consequently, all the female roles that were hitherto played by young boys disguised as women, were now taken up by actual women. Over and beyond these two changes, from an aesthetic point of view, a drastic shift occurred that had a telling bearing on how the plays were conceived. The classical trend in literature that was dominant at the time in France, now became the dominant strain in English literature too. Consequently, the plays that were produced during the restoration were composed with strictly the classical rules of composition in view. The principle catalyst for this change is essentially twofold. The first is that romanticism, which had been the dominant trend during the Renaissance, like any trend that had remained in vogue for such a tellingly long time, exhausted its fascination by the time Restoration occurred in England. The second is the point that Charles II who spent his time of exile in France, imbibed the classical taste that reigned as the predominant strain in the literature of that country during his stay, and when he was reinstated as the monarch of England, brought it over with him. As the royal court in England represented the literary hub at the time, this naturally meant that the preferred taste of the king became that of the courtiers, and subsequently the writers in the country, who were to a large extent dependent on royal patronage for their sustenance.

 

Restoration Plays

 

    Tragicomedy went out of favor during the restoration as the classical norms of dramatic composition strictly forbid the intermingling of genres. There was thus only two types of plays prevalent at the time, of which the initial half of the period was dominated by the so called restoration tragedy or heroic play. Propounded by John Dryden, who was also its most noteworthy exponent, heroic play represented an improvisation that was essentially meant to gage how the typical features of an epic or heroic poem would hold up when adapted for the stage. Hence the name heroic play. The ultimate objective of Dryden was to come up with the greatest type of play ever produced, just like epic was the greatest type of poetry ever written. All the representative traits that we generally associate with an epic thus, constitute the basic characteristics of a heroic play. For instance, its theme was a heroic subject, such as the founding of a nation or the conquest of a civilization, its characters were grand personages, such as kings, queens, warlords and others of the like, and its style was self-consciously ornate, the medium preferred by Dryden being rhymed couplets. Beside these features, the performance of the actual play involved a lavish setting and a glamorous cast, which were meant to impart a grand impression to the audience. After 1680 when Dryden by and large stopped writing for the stage, the genre lost its charm, and since then no serious attempts had ever been made to revive it on the modern stage. The second half of the restoration was dominated by the so called restoration comedy or comedy of manners, which were more characteristic of the times, and have continued to remain enduringly popular. These plays that essentially aimed at depicting the licentious lives of the restoration upper class, were typically set in posh locations, involved characters that were chiefly drawn from the landed gentry, and contained many amorous intrigues. The most redeeming feature of the play however is found in the conversations between characters that often took the form of a witty exchange of dialogues called repartee, which represented a sort of verbal fencing contest in which the interlocutors constantly strove to outwit each other. Another telling feature of the comedy of manners is the portrayal of female roles. Women in these comedies were essentially depicted as empowered and emancipated individuals, who could hold their own against men, both in terms of their capacity for wit and promiscuity. The chief source of humour in these plays were offered by the fops or the dandies, who tried to imitate the genuinely sophisticated upper class individuals in the plot, and cut a ridiculous figure trying to do so. It is however noteworthy that by the culmination of the 17^th century, public sentiment against the comedy of manners turned hostile, as they came to be increasingly identified as vulgar. This inevitably resulted in them losing their favour, which drew to a close the great era of restoration drama. Some of the chief playwrights who excelled in writing comedy of manners include, George Etherege, George Farquhar, William Wycherley, John Vanbrugh and probably the most important of the lot, William Congreve.

 

Augustan Theatre

 

    The English theatre during the initial decades of the 18^th century was for the most part dominated by the so called sentimental comedy, which rose in conscious reaction against the perceived vulgarities in the comedy of manners. The problem however was that in seeking to cleanse English drama, the sentimental comedy took the marker to the other extreme, transforming the theatre effectively into a temple, the stage into a pulpit, and the actual play into a sermon. Packed with tear jerking melodramatic scenes, sentimental comedy vehemently strove to uphold the ideal of poetic justice, professing the inculcation of moral values as the sole and ultimate goal. The end result was that it killed the very spirit of comedy, by precluding all and any type of humour that might elicit laughter. In fact, if at all these plays were categorized as comedy, it was purely because poetic justice always prevailed at the end, with the good characters getting their due rewards. Two most noteworthy playwrights of sentimental comedy in English are Colley Cibber and Richard Steele. The popularity of sentimental comedy that probably lasted until roughly the midway point of the century, was brought to a close with the emergence of antisentimental comedy. As the very name posits, antisentimental comedy rose with the deliberate objective of reacting against the sentimental comedy, specifically the complete exclusion of humour in it. In this effort, it is interesting to note that antisentimental comedy took their inspiration from the comedy of manners, which the sentimental comedy consciously opposed. Antisentimental comedy in fact could be rightfully described as a refined version of comedy of manners, in that excluding the aspect of licentiousness, every other characteristic found in it is basically modelled on the latter. As far as antisentimental comedy is concerned, two dramatists are of particular importance. These are Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan. It is noteworthy that sentimental comedy like heroic play, though well received at the time, after going out of favour has not been revived. Antisentimental comedy on the other hand like the comedy of manners, have remained enduringly famous to this very day.

Romantic Theatre

 

    Unlike in any of the previous epochs, drama took a significant backseat to all other forms of literature during the romantic revival. The fact that no playwright of any noteworthy repute really emerged at the time bears ample testimony to the point. Perhaps if there is indeed one name to reckon with in the domain of playwriting in the romantic age, then it is probably that of Percy Shelley, whose achievements as a dramatist is also none too impressive. After all, two of the three plays he authored were closet dramas not meant to be theatrically performed, and the one that he actually did mean to be staged, was never performed owing to its subject being too offensive for public viewing. In fact, it must be pointed out that after the antisentimental comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan, English drama went into a lean phase for almost the next century and half, during which time though many playwrights did come up with new plays, failed to leave behind any memorable mark.

 

Victorian Theatre

 

    After the antisentimental comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan, we find that English drama came into its own once again only during the 1890s with the ad vent of Oscar Wilde to the stage. Even here it must be pointed out that the first two plays of Wilde which were tragedies, did very little to revive interest in drama in England. It was the four comedies that ensued, on which Wilde’s reputation as a playwright wholly rests, that ignited the resurgence. Wilde’s comic plays labelled society comedy are consciously modelled on the comedy of manners, a point underscored by the fact that both are very alike in character. For instance, like the latter, it is noteworthy that Wilde’s society comedies too invariably dealt with the lives of the upper class, critically drawing attention to their Bohemian lifestyle and hypocrisy. It is also notable that many of the characteristics exemplified in Wilde’s comic plays such as witty dialogues, intrigues, and proactive female characters, are all essentially begotten from the comedies of restoration times. However, just when it looked like great things are all set to materialize for Wilde, his wild way of living caught up with the man, and his playwrighting career was cut short abruptly with the notorious trial that destroyed his reputation. However, the revival initiated by Wilde did not luckily cease  with the curtain call on his career, thanks chiefly to the emergence of another playwright at the time, who is widely regarded by many as perhaps the second most important in the annals of English drama after Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw.

 

Bernard Shaw

 

    Bernard Shaw had a much longer and more prolific career on the English stage than even the bard. It is however noteworthy that his initial reputation there was not made as a dramatist, but as a theatre critic. This stint as a critic nonetheless proved extremely crucial in that it imparted to Shaw a much needed sense of intellectual orientation that he subsequently became famous for. Of particular significance in this regard is the special interest that he exhibited towards the plays of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, which exercised a profound and enduring impact on his sensibility as a dramatist. This is evidenced by the point that Shaw’s plays like those of Ibsen’s, invariably dealt with social issues in the context of a typical middle class setting, which has earned them the nickname of problem plays. It is however noteworthy that in dealing with social problems, Shaw self-consciously avoided being an idealist, never compromising on his realist stance. For instance, rather than attacking the actual institution of war, which he knows full well could never be done away with, he censures as the real issue the jingoistic rhetoric surrounding war that characterizes it as a noble endeavor. Similarly in dealing with the social problem of prostitution, he does not present it as an outcome of any moral depravity on the part of men and women but as essentially caused by poverty. The realism that Shaw held so dear as a dramatist is thus grounded on an enlightened sense of rationality, which took a very pragmatic view of things. The point is unlike Oscar Wilde, who was a proponent of the aesthetic movement, and therefore subscribed to the notion that art has an innate value of its own, Shaw as an artist believed in the utilitarian theory that regarded the worth of art in terms of its capacity for advancing life. The end result is that in writing for the stage, Shaw was not so much moved by what people did, but instead was only interested in what those actions signified. Shaw’s plays thus represent in essence an intellectual debate, in which characters do not carry any significance as individuals, but do so only as epitomes of a concept. What happens typically in a play by Shaw is that the entire cast of characters would be essentially conceived in terms of two groups, each typifying one of the opposing ideas, much like the concept of ‘agon’ in Greek comedy. This is precisely where Shaw is different from Shakespeare. As a pioneer of what critics have dubbed the drama of ideas, plays by Shaw exemplify period pieces, dealing with themes relevant to the contemporary context, while that of the latter which typify plays concerning human nature, are universal in scope, dealing with issues that transcend time and space. It must however be specified here that the disparity should not be construed hierarchically, as meaning one is superior or inferior than the other, but merely for what it is worth, as a marker that brands the two playwrights as distinct from each other.