have a claim to any refinement upon those
old miracle-plays. They have gained in facility and wit; they have lost
in poetry. They have lost pathos too, and have gathered grossness. In
the comedies which soon appear, there is far more of fun than of art;
and although the historical play had existed for some time, and the
streams of learning from the inns of court had flowed in to swell that
of the drama, it is not before the appearance of Shakspere that we find
any _whole_ of artistic or poetic value. And this brings us to another
branch of the subject, of which it seems to us that the importance has
never been duly acknowledged. We refer to the use, if not invention, of
_blank verse_ in England, and its application to the purposes of the
drama. It seems to us that in any contemplation of Shakspere and his
times, the consideration of these points ought not to be omitted.
We have in the present day one grand master of blank verse, the Poet
Laureate. But where would he have been if Milton had not gone before
him; or if the verse amidst which he works like an informing spirit had
not existed at all? No doubt he might have invented it himself; but how
different would the result have been from the verse which he will now
leave behind him to lie side by side for comparison with that of the
master of the epic! All thanks then to Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey!
who, if, dying on the scaffold at the early age of thirty, he has left
no poetry in itself of much value, yet so wrote that he refined the
poetic usages of the language, and, above all, was the first who ever
made blank verse in English.
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