Free English Literature Dissertations - In Addition To The Physical Innovations Borrowed From The European Theatre
In addition to the physical innovations borrowed from the European theatre, English dramatists sought in some measure to emulate the continental neo-classicists, who had harked back to the so-called dramatic unities of Horace and Aristotle. French dramatists such as Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine had borrowed plots from classical drama and emphasised vraisemblance (verisimilitude), simplicity of action and elegance of language. John Dryden, in An Essay of Dramatick Poesy (1668) declares his desire to emulate
the French [who] contrive their plots more regularly, observe the laws of comedy and decorum of the stagewith more exactness than the English.
(in Scott vol. XVII p.44)
Dryden’s desire to import ‘decorum’ and the perceived dramatic ‘laws’ into native English drama is a keystone of many Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Dryden’s own Troilus and Cressida (1679), which he adapted from Shakespeare’s notoriously problematic play. In his preface he declares an intention to have the plot ‘new modell’d’ in order to ‘remove that heap of rubbish under which many excellent thoughts lay buried’ (in Scott vol. XIII p.226). Shakespeare’s own play has a potential for great theatrical effect precisely because it does not obey the ‘decorum of the stage’, but constantly wrong-foots its audience. To Dryden, in The Defence of the Epilogue (1672), however, all that was apparent was the ‘incoherent story’ (in Scott vol. XI p.206) of Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare does follow comedic law when it suits, but the power of his play lies in leaving questions unanswered and its refusal to adhere to generic conventions. Dryden’s version, attempts to place a coherent plot onto an account of events with no fixed beginning or end, creating a less complex, idealised hero and heroine in a definite genre: ‘affective tragedy’. Thomas Rymer, who coined the term ‘poetic justice’ in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered (1678), had found Shakespeare’s morality, lack of overt didacticism, and indifference to poetic justice unsatisfactory and it is entirely credible that, following the upheaval of the Civil War and Interregnum, an ordered, idealised reality and poetic justice should be sought. Indeed, Dryden’s issue with Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida arises from the fact that
the chief persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive; Cressida is false, and not punished
(in Scott vol. XIII p.226).
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