would require a larger book than the present one to consider adequately the differences and agreements merely of critical theory and dogma in modern Europe. Yet the literary tradition, in spite of all these changes and variations, has remained continuous. Whether fixed in the form of rules, or discernible only in the general resemblances of current practices, or represented by the great models of Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Racine, it has influenced every playwright. He has striven to write more or less in accord with some critical theory, in imitation of some author, or in conformity to some fashion; or he has written in opposition to theory, example, or fashion.

It is the purpose of this book to trace the course of this tradition in the English drama, to appraise the inheritance of each age from the preceding ages, its borrowings from other national inheritances, and the profit and loss due to its own invention or industry. All that may be attempted here by way of preliminary definition is a glance at the main European course of the classical tradition to see what have been from time to time considered the essentials of tragedy and to ask how far there has been any agreement in regard to these essentials.

The basis for much of modern theorizing has been Aristotle's tentative yet searching analysis of Athenian tragedy. Many of the peculiarities of Athenian tragedy—its structure without acts but with a chorus, its limitation of three actors on the stage at once, its narrow range of mythological subjects—are evidently not essential to securing tragic effect. Even the unities, whether as observed in the Greek theatre or as defined by French and Italian critics, may, after generations of debate, be safely relegated as nonessential. Omitting, then, what no one would now insist upon as requisite, we may derive from the "Poetics" something like the following:—

Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune, involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression.

Much more than this has been derived from Aristotle by modern theorists, but this much of the classical conception has generally survived in modern tragedy. If the meaning of "a single and complete action" be stretched a little, this definition includes the plays of Shakespeare as well as those of Racine, and nearly all tragedies from the Renaissance to the present.

In one important respect, however, this definition falls short of describing Greek tragedy, and is still more inadequate for modern. Aristotle emphasized the action above the characterization, and devoted much attention to the requirements of the plot. He did not, moreover, recognize the importance of the element of conflict, whether between man and circumstance, or between men, or within the mind of man. The Greek tragedies themselves had not failed to exhibit such conflicts; the medieval drama, notably in the moralities, emphasized moral conflict; and Renaissance tragedy, wherever it showed any independence, particularly in England and Shakespeare, took for its theme the conflict of human will with other forces. The importance of this modification of the Aristotelian view received only slow critical recognition. But it was everywhere exemplified in practice, in French classical drama as well as in Shakespeare, in plays imitating the Greeks as well as in plays revolting from their models. After a time this modification of the classical tradition came to have a distinct place in literary theory. Hegel gave it philosophical elaboration, and, in the romantic movement, when dramatists in different languages turned to Shakespeare for a model, they naturally assumed what may be called the Shakespearean definition. This important amendment to the tragic tradition may be briefly stated:—

The action of a tragedy should represent a conflict of wills, or of will with circumstance, or will with itself, and should therefore be based on the characters of the persons involved. A typical tragedy is concerned with a great personality engaged in a struggle that ends disastrously.

In the Aristotelian tradition thus amended by the Shakespearean or modern conception we have a definition of tragedy that, in spite of differences of theorists and variations in practice, is extraordinarily comprehensive. This will appear if we consider briefly the separate elements of the definition. First: Though the range of emotions has been greatly widened in modern tragedy in comparison with classical, and though the importance given to love and the admission of comedy and even farce have complicated emotional effect in a way that Sophocles could hardly have conceived, yet "pity and fear" still serve as well as any other terms to describe the emotional appeal peculiar to tragedy. The word [Greek: phobos], however, hardly indicates the emotions of admiration, awe, hate, horror, terror, despair, and dismay, which belong to tragedy, and modern tragedy has appealed more largely than classical to pity and sympathy. Second: The reversal of fortune has been usually found in tragedy, though in the sense of a fall of the mighty, long the favorite theme, it cannot be regarded as the essential kernel of a tragic action. Third: Though the action of modern tragedies has usually been less simple than that of the Greeks, and though double plots and many complications have been common, yet, after the Elizabethans and the Romanticists, the tendency to-day seems to be toward a return to the simplicity that Aristotle had in mind. Only in rare instances, as in "The Doll's House," has a dramatist ventured to leave the action in a state that might be called incomplete. Fourth: Though themes have changed and widened in range, still the great majority have been confined to extraordinary events and illustrious persons. Renaissance and pseudo-classical theorists interpreted Aristotle to limit the persons of tragedy to princes or men of the highest rank; and tragedy, even in England, long adhered to this superficial restriction. But already in the sixteenth century there were authors who wrote tragedies of ordinary men and contemporary events; and realism has broken away from the literary tradition in every generation since. Fifth: Tragedy has generally been reserved for poetry, and often for poetry of the most embellished kind; but here again realism has resorted to a bare style, and, particularly in the last century, to prose.

On examination, then, the particulars of the classical tradition have shown extraordinary powers of survival, but not one of them has gone without protest and violation. The thousands of tragedies written during four centuries have all had marked resemblances, and all important developments have preserved relationships to the classical species; yet it is impossible to insist on any one quality of that species as essential, without encountering examples of great tragedies that lack it. The close relationships among these many plays forbid the separation of a few, distinguished by certain qualities, to be named as tragedies, and the rest as something else; and the great variations forbid the confident selection of any qualities as essential in the future development of tragedy. The modern amendments, though represented by nearly universal practice, have not saved the classical tradition, and are themselves coming under question. The plays of Ibsen, which seem to have instituted the most important development in tragedy for two centuries, return to something of the simplicity of action required by Aristotle, and present the struggle of individual wills as did Shakespeare, but are in prose and deal with contemporary bourgeois