average play of an ordinary Elizabethan play-wright, or even at one of
the lesser works of Shakespeare himself. And, if we look here, it will
become apparent that the dramatic tradition of the Elizabethan age was
an extremely faulty one. It allowed, it is true, of great richness,
great variety, and the sublimest heights of poetry; but it also allowed
of an almost incredible looseness of structure and vagueness of purpose,
of dullness, of insipidity, and of bad taste. The genius of the
Elizabethans was astonishing, but it was genius struggling with
difficulties which were well-nigh insuperable; and, as a matter of fact,
in spite of their amazing poetic and dramatic powers, their work has
vanished from the stage, and is to-day familiar to but a few of the
lovers of English literature. Shakespeare alone was not subdued to what
he worked in. His overwhelming genius harmonized and ennobled the
discordant elements of the Elizabethan tradition, and invested them not
only with immortality, but with immortality understanded of the people.
His greatest works will continue to be acted and applauded so long as
there is a theatre in England. But even Shakespeare himself was not
always successful. One has only to look at some of his secondary
plays--at _Troilus and Cressida_, for instance, or _Timon of Athens_--to
see at once how inveterate and malignant were the diseases to which the
dramatic methods of the Elizabethans were a prey. Wisdom and poetry are
intertwined with flatness and folly; splendid situations drift
purposeless to impotent conclusions; brilliant psychology alternates
with the grossest indecency and the feeblest puns. 'O matter and
impertinency mixed!' one is inclined to exclaim at such a spectacle. And
then one is blinded once more by the glamour of _Lear_ and _Othello_;
one forgets the defective system in the triumph of a few exceptions, and
all plays seem intolerable unless they were written on the principle
which produced _Pericles_ and _Titus Andronicus_ and the whole multitude
of distorted and disordered works of genius of the Elizabethan age.

Racine's principles were, in fact, the direct opposite of these.
'Comprehension' might be taken as the watchword of the Elizabethans;
Racine's was 'concentration'. His great aim was to produce, not an
extraordinary nor a complex work of art, but a flawless one; he wished
to be all matter and no impertinency. His conception of a drama was of
something swift, simple, inev