glish drama as it developed from the Miracle
plays. In the fifteenth century English teachers, in order to increase the
interest in Latin, began to let their boys act the plays which they had
read as literature, precisely as our colleges now present Greek or German
plays at the yearly festivals. Seneca was the favorite Latin author, and
all his tragedies were translated into English between 1559 and 1581. This
was the exact period in which the first English playwrights were shaping
their own ideas; but the severe simplicity of the classical drama seemed at
first only to hamper the exuberant English spirit. To understand this, one
has only to compare a tragedy of Seneca or of Euripides with one of
Shakespeare, and see how widely the two masters differ in methods.

In the classic play the so-called dramatic unities of time, place, and
action were strictly observed. Time and place must remain the same; the
play could represent a period of only a few hours, and whatever action was
introduced must take place at the spot where the play began. The
characters, therefore, must remain unchanged throughout; there was no
possibility of the child becoming a man, or of the man's growth with
changing circumstances. As the play was within doors, all vigorous action
was deemed out of place on the stage, and battles and important events were
simply announced by a messenger. The classic drama also drew a sharp line
between tragedy and comedy, all fun being rigorously excluded from serious
representations.

The English drama, on the other hand, strove to represent the whole sweep
of life in a single play. The scene changed rapidly; the same actors
appeared now at home, now at court, now on the battlefield; and vigorous
action filled the stage before the eyes of the spectators. The child of one
act appeared as the man of the next, and the imagination of the spectator
was called upon to bridge the gaps from place to place and from year to
year. So the dramatist had free scope to present all life in a single place
and a single hour. Moreover, since the world is always laughing and always
crying at the same moment, tragedy and comedy were presented side by side,
as they are in life itself. As Hamlet sings, after the play that amused the
court but struck the king with deadly fear:

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
So runs the world away.

Naturally, with