Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror.
The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral
melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like
Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is something of this in
Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one
of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a
tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species.
After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still
found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate
villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing
influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising
the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which
furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have
been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the
devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy
perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's
"Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least
encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of
passion.
Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley
novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences
of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the
interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature,
whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals,
for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The
treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss
Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge, now became essential to tragedy; and we
find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of
the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which
he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems
to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on
the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio"
and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly
for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius
Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of
these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic
emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but
they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities
for rhetorical fervors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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