MASQUE. A short play, the characters of which are mythological personages or personified abstractions, and which has numerous dances, elaborate scenery, rich dresses, fine music, is called a masque. Shakespeare introduced a masque into The Tempest, Act IV. Examples of the masque as an independent play are Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness, Shirley's Triumph of Peace, Milton's Comus. MONODRAMA, OR DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE. In this form a single character speaks and sets forth his inmost thoughts. Browning is fond of it; as in Men and Women, Dramatis Personae, The Ring and the Book. So Tennyson's Rizpah. THE THREE UNITIES. Aristotle, from an examination of the Greek dramas, laid down as the chief canon of tragedy that there should be Unity of Action. That is, the drama should contain, not all that might be said about one man, but only what is relevant to one action. He also pointed out that tragedy for the most part was limited to a revolution of the sun. Hence came the rule of the Unity of Time, that the action represented takes place in twenty-four hours. A third rule, not mentioned by Aristotle, was afterwards added-the Unity of Place, that the scene should not be changed. Most of the Elizabethan dramas are romantic, and neglect the Unities, not from mere lawlessness, but because the subjects require change of scene; the lapse of days, months, even years; and liberty to break the unity of action. This liberty is used in historical plays, and in those where independent underplots are introduced; as The Merchant of Venice. But it must not be supposed that these plays lack unity. Romantic poetry created its own drama, and acknowledges no unity save that which is equally binding on a poem or prose story-the unity of expression." Opposed to the romantic drama is the classical, of which English possesses few examples. One is Addison's Cato. We have now to notice other kinds of poetry, which either do not fall under the three main divisions, as didactic poems; or which, while falling under epic or lyric or dramatic, are capable of a different classification, as Milton's Lycidas-elegy and pastoral. CHRONICLE POEMS. In earlier times history was often written in verse, and this is the chronicle poem. The writer does not, like the historical dramatist, invent incidents or deviate from the order of time. If he did either, he would cease to be a writer of chronicles and would tend to romance or epic. The following are chronicle poems: Robert Manning of Brunne's Chronicle, John Hardyng's Chronicle, Andrew of Wyntoun's Original Chronicle of Scotland, Sir David Lyndsay's Monarchie, Warner's Albion's England, Daniel's Civil Wars between Lancaster and York, Drayton's Mortimeriados or The Barons' Wars. DIDACTIC POETRY. When we wish to treat of some subject (e.g. literary, philosophical, technical) which requires accurate statement of facts, clearness and simplicity of exposition, or logical argument, we regularly employ prose. But sometimes verse is used; and such poetry is termed didactic. It aims at giving instruction. A didactic poem may take various forms: dramatic as in Morality Plays, lyric as in certain hymns, etc. Examples are: Nosce Teipsum by Davies, Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther by Dryden, Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man by Pope, Night Thoughts by Young, The Fleece by Dyer, Truth and Hope by Cowper, The Pleasures of Hope by Campbell. SATIRIC POETRY. A writer may be full of burning indignation at men and their doings; and in holding them up to ridicule or scorn, he uses verse to heighten the effect and render the satire more agreeable. He may couch it in the form of a dream, or an allegory, or a mock epic, etc. Examples are: The Vision of Piers the Plowman, Skelton's Colin Clout, Butler's Hudibras, Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, Pope's Dunciad and Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, Dr Johnson's London and Vanity of Human Wishes, Burns's Holy Fair, Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and Vision of Judgment. PASTORAL POETRY. This is strictly a delineation of scenes and incidents of shepherd life. As literature, this kind of writing is highly idealised, and is, in most cases, completely artificial. No pastoral can be said to be a faithful transcript of what it professes to represent. Some pastorals go very far from the natural; e.g. when learned scholars are introduced masquerading as shepherds. Pastorals-also called bucolics-may be in the form of dialogues, dramas, etc., and may be satiric, elegiac, etc. Examples are: Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, Pope's Pastorals, Ambrose Philips's Pastorals, Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. Pastoral poems are sometimes termed idylls. But the word idyll is used to designate highly wrought descriptions of the domestic life of the peasantry; as Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night; and in Tennyson's Idylls of the King we have stories of the chivalry of the Round Table. DESCRIPTIVE POETRY. As the name implies, this type of poem describes places, natural phenomena, etc. Examples are: Drayton's Polyolbion, Denham's Cooper's Hill, Pope's Windsor Forest, Thomson's Seasons. ALLEGORICAL POETRY. When a poet has some instruction or reproof to convey, he may at times convey it indirectly. He tells some interesting story, the various parts of which, the persons, the incidents, represent figuratively another subject not named but intended to be understood: see p. 83. Allegory enables the writer to construct an interesting surface-story ingeniously connected with the hidden meaning; it allows him to set forth abstractions in concrete form, or to conceal satiric attacks. Allegorical poems were very popular in the Middle Ages. Examples are: The Romaunt of the Rose; Chaucer's House of Fame; The Vision of Piers the Plowman; The Flower and the Leaf; Dunbar's Golden Targe, and The Thistle and the Rose; Douglas's Palace of Honour; Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure; Spenser's Faerie Queene. BURLESQUE. Sometimes for comic effect, a mean subject is treated in a grand style, or an elevated subject is treated meanly. This is called burlesque. Chaucer's Sir Thopas is a burlesque of long-winded romances; Gay's Shepherd's Week, of pastorals; Buckingham's Rehearsal, of contemporary heroic plays. Akin to burlesque is parody, where the form and the expression of some serious poem are closely imitated in treating some trifling or mean subject, or where the general style of a writer is ludicrously imitated; as Canning's Needy Knife-Grinder in imitation of Southey's sapphics; and The Rejected Addresses in imitation of Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Johnson, etc.-prose as well as poetry. DOGGEREL. This term is used to designate the octosyllabic couplet of Butler's burlesque, Hudibras. For example, "A sect whose chief devotion lies The wrong, than others the right way." But doggerel is regularly applied to any verse of prosaic or trivial sense and ludicrous rhythm, whether intentional or unintentional; as the following. "Read all the prefaces of Dryden, "The modes of going round the world are more "Something had happened wrong about a bill And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co." B. PROSE. Several kinds of poetry have parallel forms in prose. Parts of Shakespeare's dramas are prose: whole comedies, e.g. Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and Sheridan's Rivals, are in prose. Swift's Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels are prose satires : much satire appears in Sartor Resartus (Carlyle), in Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens), and in Vanity Fair (Thackeray). Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Holy War are prose allegories. So too are the works of Swift just mentioned, and several of Addison's essays-e.g. The Vision of Mirza. Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena is a burlesque romance. FICTION. A fictitious story of common life, possessing unity of plan (ie. a plot) and usually involving the passion of love, is a novel. Examples are: Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe ; Fielding's Tom Jones; Scott's Waverley, The Fortunes of Nigel, The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermoor; Miss Austen's Emma; Lytton's Last of the Barons; George Eliot's Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss; Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Esmond; Dickens's David Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge; Meredith's Diana of the Crossways; Miss Brontë's Jane Eyre; Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho!; Henry Kingsley's Geoffrey Hamlyn. Fictitious stories involving the heroic or the supernatural are often called romances; but the terms novel and romance are not kept distinct. Examples of the supernatural romance are Clara Reeve's Old English Baron, Marryat's Phantom Ship, Mrs Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho. Some stories of common life have no unity of plan and are simply tales of adventure, as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. When such stories deal with low life-the life of rogues, for example— they are called picaresque; as Defoe's Colonel Jack, Smollett's Roderick Random. |