Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SHAKESPEARE AND THE ROMANTIC DRAMA, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MACBETH The easiest method of getting a precise notion of what is meant by the Romantic drama (of which the Shakespearian drama is the most splendid and impressive example) is to interpret it negatively. The Romantic drama is the type of drama that declines to be "cribbed, cabined, and confined " by the rules and restrictions which, under the influence of the scholars of the Rennaissance, came to be regarded as inviolable canons of classical art. In the Romantic drama no " unity" is considered indispensable for the general coherence of impression which dramatic like every other art requires, save and except the unity of human interest which a series of events acquires from the relations of all the events, in the way of cause and effect, to the life of a single human being, or closely connected group of human beings. If we may call this " unity of action," then the principle of the Romantic drama is that " unity of action " is the one unity needful; all other unities—unity of time, unity of place, unity of tone of sentiment, whether tragic or comic, unity of aesthetic level in the verbal instrument of expression, whether prose or verse—are all non- essential, and may be broken or kept according to convenience. These unities were maintained—not exactly and universally, but in the main—spontaneously and as a matter of course, by the great Greek tragedians: and they were imposed asrules resting on indubitable aesthetic principles as the "So- called classical drama of France: but the Romantic drama holds it always lawful to violate them, though it may not always be expedient. Unity of time and place are undoubtedly helpful in impressing the imagination of the audience with the inner unity of the action represented: but...