Other types of the early drama are less clearly defined, but we may sum them up under a few general heads: (1) The Domestic Drama began with crude home scenes introduced into the Miracles and developed in a score of different ways, from the coarse humor of Gammer Gurton's Needle to the Comedy of Manners of Jonson and the later dramatists.

On all these points the silence of the comic dramatist is decisive evidence in his favor.

Much of the work of their contemporary dramatists is marred by such blemishes.

Other minor dramatists, like Beaumont and Fletcher show further decline, because they constructed their plays more from the outside, showed less development of character in strict accordance with moral law, and relied more for effect on sensational scenes.

The tragic dramatists of the Restoration, Dryden, Howard, Settle, Crowne, Lee, and others, composed what they called "heroic plays," such as the Indian Emperor, the Conquest of Granada, the Duke of Lerma, the Empress of Morocco, the Destruction of Jerusalem, Nero, and the Rival Queens.

On 25 November, 1786, there was produced at Drury Lane a comedy by Mrs. Hannah Cowley (1743-1809), a prolific but mediocre dramatist, entitled, A School for Greybeards; or, The Mourning Bride (4to 1786 and 1787).

I do not say that these difficulties might not have been overcome; for, in the vocabulary of the truly ingenious dramatist there is no such word as impossible.

It did not occur to our first, unknown dramatists to portray men and women as they are until they had first made characters of abstract human qualities.

I had been newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were then a first love; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge?

AU`GIER, ÉMILE, able French dramatist, produced brilliant comedies for the French stage through a period of 40 years, all distinctly on the side of virtue.

In general, his amendments of "that eminent philologist," are not more skillful than the following touch upon an eminent dramatist; and here, it is plain, he has mistaken two nouns for adjectives, and converted into bad English a beautiful passage, the sentiment of which is worthy of an author's recollection: "The evil deed or deeds that men do, lives after them; The good deed or deeds is oft interred with their bones."

Cornish was a capable dramatist, as well as a musician and a poet; and he, unlike the author of Everyman, wrote plays simply to amuse the court and its guests.

In view of this inevitable tendency, the prudent dramatist will try to keep out of his dialogue expressions that are peculiar to his own circle, and to use only what may be called everybody's English, or the language undoubtedly current throughout the whole class to which his personage belongs.

An accomplished painter may be the best teacher of painters; but an accomplished dramatist is scarcely the best guide for dramatists.

Here this rival dramatist again objects to any introduction of the lower orders on the stage, and seems averse to whatever is natural, and

Footnote 157: The reader will find wholesome criticism of these writers, and selections from their works, in Charles Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, an excellent book, which helps us to a better knowledge and appreciation of the lesser Elizabethan dramatists.

And having persuaded the reader to place himself in Shakspeare's position, we will make one more very slight request, which is, that he will occupy another chair in the same chamber and fancy that he sees the immortal dramatist begin a work,still keeping himself so far in his position that he can observe the workings of his mind as he writes.

As we have already noticed, Shakespeare was trained, like his fellow workmen, first as an actor, second as a reviser of old plays, and last as an independent dramatist.

Next to Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, the two most influential dramatists were Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625).

Shakespeare's genius would manifest itself in the superior effect with which he used knowledge acquired in this manner; but his genius would not have led him to choose the dry and affected phraseology of the law as the vehicle of his flowing thought, and to use it so much oftener than any other of the numerous dramatists of his time, to all of whom the courts were as open as to him.

When the perplexed dramatist called down curses on the man who invented fifth acts, he never thought of escaping from his tribulation by writing a play in four acts; the formal canon which made five acts indispensable to a tragedy was drawn from the practice of great dramatists, but there was no demonstration of any psychological demand on the part of the audience for precisely five acts.

It is still open to the philosophic dramatist to write a logical Pygmalion and Galatea.

I have no wish to confute it, for, in the largest interpretation, it is true; but I suggest that it is true only when attenuated almost beyond recognition, and quite beyond the point at which it can be of any practical help to the practical dramatist.

Why would Shakespeare's plays have been impossible if the evolution of the drama had stopped with Gorboduc? Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists.

Nay, even as it is, Calderon stands so indisputably at the head of all Catholic religious dramatists, among whom Dr. Newman has recently enrolled himself, that perhaps it may not be out of place to inquire for a moment into his poetical methods and aims, in order that we may then discover, if we can, how and why the disciple differs from his master.