Art. 10.-ELIZABETHAN STAGE AND RESTORATION

DRAMA.

1. The Elizabethan Stage. By E. K. Chambers. Four vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.

2. A Life of William Shakespeare. By Joseph Quincy Adams, Professor of English in Cornell University. Constable, 1923.

3. A Sketch of Recent Shakespearean Investigation, 1893-1923. By C. H. Herford, Litt.D. Blackie, 1923. 4. A History of Restoration Drama, 1660-1700. By

Allardyce Nicoll. Cambridge University Press, 1923. ELIZABETHAN scholarship in the severer sense of the word-as distinct from the somewhat superficial Shakespeare recensions of Pope, Theobald, and Johnson-may be said to have begun about a century and a half ago, with George Steevens and Edmund Malone. Much good work was done in the 19th century, though the deplorable mania of J. P. Collier laid pitfalls for the feet of his successors. Such names as Dyce, Furnivall, Fleay, and Clark and Wright will always be mentioned with respect. Yet it is pretty safe to say that we owe as much to the intensive study of the past thirty years as to the whole preceding century. Prof. C. H. Herford's very judicious summary of 'Recent Shakespearean Investigation' forms a valuable reminder of what has been achieved on many convergent lines of inquiry. And 'Shakespearean Investigation,' though by far the most important, is only one among many departments of research. The greater part of the work of such men as Greg, Feuillerat, and Lawrence is concerned only indirectly and inferentially with Shakespeare.

A little more than thirty years ago, it began to be discerned that even the aesthetic appreciation of Elizabethan drama must largely depend on a just visualisation of the playhouses in which it lived and moved and had its being. This opinion, no doubt, is anathema to adepts of the school of Croce; but the disciples of that master, though fervent, are as yet few. His influence, at all events, has done nothing to check the tendency to which we allude. No branch of Shakespearean learning,' says Prof. Herford, has provoked Vol. 241.-No. 479.

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during this period (1893-1923) so much patient research, keen argument, and ingenious speculation as the conditions and history of the Elizabethan Stage.' It is not surprising, then, to find that, in the very full bibliography prefixed by Mr E. K. Chambers to his long lookedfor work on the Elizabethan Stage, more than half of the titles cited (some 560 in all) are those of books published within the past thirty years. It is mainly the research of that period which Mr Chambers has brought to a focus in his four massive volumes. They sum up the results of a busy and fruitful time, and sum them up, let us say at once, in an absolutely masterly fashion. No doubt, further discoveries have yet to be made, but they cannot lessen the debt which scholarship owes to Mr Chambers. It is hard to foresee a period in which this book shall be quite superseded, as Collier's 'Annals of the Stage' is superseded to-day. It may be supplemented, and even corrected, upon a hundred points; it may with very great advantage be abridged for the use of the general reader, as distinct from the specialist; but it must form the basis of all future research. Mr Chambers is not precisely a pioneer: his work is rather to organise the territory which the pioneers have conquered. But his acumen is no less remarkable than his industry. His sense of the continuity of things is always alert, and he traces the development of forms, usages, and conventions with learning as exhaustive as that which distinguished his 'Medieval Drama,' yet with a measure of sound practical sense which does not always accompany such all-embracing knowledge. It would be rash to vouch for every statement of fact which finds a place in the close-packed mosaic of his 1930 pages; but so far as we have examined them, we have come upon no trace of inaccuracy. Mr Chambers, we believe, may feel confident that whatever records leap to light, he never can be shamed.'

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The reader must, however, be warned that this is not so much a book as an encyclopædia. Charles Lamb, while delighting in much of the information it contains, would have been apt to class it among biblia a-biblia. It is a book to be referred to rather than to be read. Mr Chambers, it is true, writes with ease and accomplishment. To more than German industry he unites

very un-German clarity and amenity of style. But his one overmastering concern is to place the reader in possession of every known fact. Esthetic criticism is none of his business, and he is wonderfully successful in steering clear of it. His motto is 'Thorough,' and he acts up to it, one might almost say, relentlessly. His book, he tells us, represents the labour of ten years: had he named three times that term there would have been no ground for surprise.

It must also be said that Mr Chambers's method of arrangement involves a great deal of-probably inevitable-re-treading of the same ground. His first volume is devoted to the influence of the Court upon the drama, and its championship of the players against the hostility of the City authorities. He traces from a very early period-even from the Conquest-the evolution of those royal officials who in time became responsible for purveying and controlling the diversions of successive monarchs. He writes a full history of the Office of the Revels; surveys the development of pageantry; devotes two chapters to the Masque; and finally arrives at the Court play, properly so called. Proceeding to the struggle between Humanism and Puritanism, he shows how Humanism, potently aided by the sheer love of amusement and spectacle which prevailed in aristocratic circles, kept the drama alive at a time when bourgeois respectability might otherwise have stamped it out. That respectability had a strong case Mr Chambers does not deny. It was not only religious narrowness, but a reasonable care for decency, good manners, and public health, that led the City fathers to look askance at the disreputable crowds who resorted to inn-yard plays and to the earliest playhouses outside the gates. The Privy Council, indeed, in its conflict with the City authorities, had on its side a sound instinct rather than a strong case. Those who denounce (whether justly or unjustly) the autocratic Court censorship of plays ought in fairness to remember that it is a survival from a time when the drama owed its very existence to the protection of an autocratic Court. There actually came a point, in 1597, when it seemed that the Court and the City had joined forces for the complete suppression of the theatre. Orders were issued by the Privy Council that owners of playhouses within a three-mile

radius of the City should be required to pluck downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same that they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use.' Had this order been enforced, the Elizabethan drama would have been killed in the cradle, and we should probably have possessed, of all Shakespeare's plays, only ‘Richard II,' ‘Richard III,' and a very 'bad' quarto of Romeo and Juliet.' The disaster was perhaps averted by a mere chance the substitution of one nobleman for another as Lord Chamberlain.

A full discussion of the actor's status and of his economics brings Mr Chambers's first volume to a close. In his second volume he comes more minutely to grips with his subject, sets forth all that is known about eleven boy companies and twenty-four adult companies, and then gives an alphabetical Who's Who' of the players of the period. The playhouses next engage his attention, and he narrates in detail the fortunes of sixteen public and two private theatres. The structure of theatres is discussed at the end of Volume II, and Volume III opens with 150 pages devoted to the staging of plays. Court productions are rightly and necessarily distinguished from 'common' productions; but it is not quite clear why Mr Chambers should give separate chapters to 16thcentury and to 17th-century staging, since he has to confess over and over again that there is little evidence that the new theatres built about 1600 differed in any essential respect from their predecessors. The printing of plays is dealt with in an interesting chapter; and the last 300 pages of the volume are given up to an extremely full and valuable dictionary of playwrights. It is to be regretted, however, that Mr Chambers stops so resolutely at his limit of 1616. He might, at least, have mentioned the titles of later works by those playwrights whose activity extended beyond that date. The fourth volume is occupied almost entirely by no fewer than thirteen appendices, wherein Mr Chambers has notably lightened the labours of all future workers in the field. This sectional arrangement has, as above noted, led to a great deal of repetition. There are probably few facts of any importance that do not appear three or four times in as many different contexts-a strong argument in favour of

the 'Short History,' perhaps in the form of Annals, which it is to be hoped that Mr Chambers may one day give us.

In the greater part of his work, Mr Chambers is almost exclusively occupied with the amassing and marshalling of facts; but in his chapters on the structure of theatres and the staging of plays he is concerned with the interpretation of evidence. In these chapters there is room for more than mere industry and scholarly method. The wariest of students is bound to indulge in a certain measure of conjecture, and to show some imaginative grasp of his subject. For that very reason these chapters are the most important in the book; and it is here that criticism will lie in wait for Mr Chambers.

That his work represents a substantial advance, no one will deny; that it achieves any approach to finality, few will contend. He has done an immense service in bringing together almost all the available evidence, especially that of the stage-directions. He has not only brought it together, but he has presented it chronologically and acutely criticised it, thereby earning the gratitude of all future investigators. But if it be asked whether he has carried us appreciably nearer to a definite and convincing visualisation of the typical Elizabethan stage, the answer must probably be in the negative. He leaves most points of controversy as doubtful as he found them. It is quite possible, indeed, that certainty on these points may never be attained; but a student who should combine Mr Chambers's learning with a clearer sense of the optic of the theatre and the fundamentals of stage-effect, might quite well establish for some of his views such an overwhelming probability as to place them practically beyond dispute.

In all discussions of Elizabethan stage-arrangements, it is necessary to determine at the outset how far the famous De Witt drawing of the interior of the Swan Theatre can be accepted as an authority. Where other evidence confirms it-with regard, for instance, to the three galleries, and the pent-house roof, supported by pillars, over the stage-we have no difficulty in believing it to be, in the main, right, though even here large allowance has to be made for obviously helpless draughtmanship. Mr Chambers's criticism of the design is at some points very acute. But he is not sufficiently