The theatre they
favoured was scarcely the theatre that had flourished in England
before the Civil War. Dryden reminds the spectators, in one of his
prologues--
You now have habits, dances, scenes, and rhymes,
High language often, ay, and sense sometimes.
There was an end of dramatic poetry, as it was understood under
Elizabeth. Blank verse had expired or swooned away, never again to be
wholly reanimated. Fantastic tragedies in rhyme, after the French
pattern, became the vogue; and absolute translations from the French
and Spanish for the first time occupied the English stage. Shakespeare
and his colleagues had converted existing materials to dramatic uses,
but not as did the playwrights of the Restoration. In the Epilogue to
the comedy of "An Evening's Love; or, The Mock Astrologer," borrowed
from "Le Feint Astrologue" of the younger Corneille, Dryden, the
adapter of the play, makes jesting defence of the system of
adaptation. The critics are described as conferring together in the
pit on the subject of the performance:
They kept a fearful stir
In whispering that he stole the Astrologer:
And said, betwixt a French and English plot,
He eased his half-tired muse on pace and trot.
Pages:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33