By 1790 the decadence of English tragedy had apparently run its course and nearly come to a full stop. The freedom and independence of Elizabethan days had degenerated by the time of Charles I into a fairly definite type. That type, maintained in the Restoration period, though with modifications and innovations, had now become conventionalized, debased, sterile. French influence had proved unprocreative. In spite of the activities of the theatres, the inspiration of Shakespeare, and the assistance of great actors and actresses, tragedy had failed to produce literature comparable to that of its rival, the novel. The drama, to be sure, had played a large part, both in tragedy and comedy, in reflecting and promoting the sentimentality and moralizing common in the literature of the century; Otway, Southerne, and Rowe had in a way fathered the sentimental novels. But in tragedy their Isabellas and Calistas had no successors to rank with Clarissa and Amelia. If tragedy through its alliance with sentiment failed of permanent advance, it was still more unsuccessful in representing the reasonableness, typicality, and austerity which the classical conception required. It was half-hearted, turning now to Shakespeare, now to Voltaire, but never producing anything not conventionalized and dull. The escapes from its dullness remained until the very end of the century only half-opened doors. Through the door opened by "Barnwell" and "The Gamester," the drama saw only the broad path that led back to sentimentality and overlooked the straight and narrow way leading to realism and truth. Over the threshold that opened to medieval castles and chambers of horrors it was still hesitating. The divorce between literature and the stage had widened, and tragedy failed to attract genius to its rescue. Crabbe did not write a tragedy of the village, and Burns did not summon poetry and passion to the stage. NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY