[50] The translation of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ (1799), _The
House of Aspen_ (1830), _Halidon Hill_ (1822), _Macduff's Cross_ (1823),
_The Doom of Devorgoil_ (1830), _Auchindrane_ (1830).
[51] Herford, _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 227.
CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSION
The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found
their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many
common characteristics, they do separate themselves from other plays of
their periods, they are connected from one period to another in a
continuous development. English tragedies constitute a dramatic type, a
literary form. This type has, to be sure, permitted many
variations,--revenge tragedy, chronicle play, tragicomedy, domestic
tragedy, sentimental tragedy, heroic play, or the closet tragedy of the
romanticists--but every one of these species has had its connections with
others, and in every period the tragedies of varying kinds have been
related not only to one another but to those that have gone before. With
changing theatrical conditions, with new literary impulses, with new views
of the old traditions, with new influences from Spain or France or Germany,
the type has taken new characteristics or made new alliances, but has never
lost its integrity. At any time during the three centuries it would have
been possible to frame a definition of tragedy that would include over nine
tenths of the tragedies of the period, and the other tenth would offer only
definable variations. However strong the foreign influences, tragedy has
maintained the national tradition; however great the innovations, it has
never broken with the past. From Marlowe to Shelley there has been an
unbroken continuity in themes, stories, types of persons, nature of
emotional appeal, structure, and even in the blank verse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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