Such are his attempts in The Tempest, Midsummer
Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet."

Rowe was the author of that highly sentimental and romantic tragedy "The Fair Penitent" (1703), adapted from Massinger's "Fatal Dowry". This play was one of the most popular dramas of the eighteenth century. The “gay Lothario" acquired a proverbial reputation; the heroine Calista was a favourite character with contemporary theatrical stars; the hero and heroine were the originals of Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe"; and Johnson said of it: "There is scarcely any work of any poet at once so interesting by the fable and so delightful in the language.”

Shakespeare was abundantly criticised, adapted and "improved" by the Augustans. But he was also seen in the true, romantic light by many of "the age of the couplet". There was plenty of neglect, as indeed there is in our own days. The following complaint from Richard Wilkenson's prologue to "Vice Reclaim'd or The Passionate Mistress, A Comedy" (1703), is as true to-day as in the early days of Queen Anne's reign:

"Humour which one prevailed is laid aside,

And cant appear but by some Foreign aid:
Singing and Dancing is the only Grace,

And Shakespeare's well wrought Scenes will have no Place." As with Shakespeare, so it was with the other Elizabethan dramatists. The editions of the chief playwrights, the frequent adaptations and imitations, the number of references, all these make it impossible for us to say that the ages of Dryden and Pope were indifferent to this side of Elizabethan romance.

The Elizabethan sonnets do not contain many of the qualities of romance. Their stock conceits, their conventionality of subject and diction could not greatly appeal to any Augustan in a romantic mood. In the case of Milton's sonnets, the restraint and flawlessness makes them

rather classic than romantic. The eighteenth century as a whole did not of course neglect the sonnet, since it published at least two thousand five hundred 1). But the influence which it exerted on the rise of early modern romanticism was slight, for only thirteen poets used the form between 1660 and 1740 2). The interest in sonnets began about the latter year and became so great that the movement fully deserves to be called "the renascence of the sonnet". However, this revival played only a small part in the rise of Modern Romanticism. Several of the specimens of the Spenserian stanza and Miltonic blank verse have intrinsic as well as romantic values. In reading early eighteenth century sonnets one does not discover much that can be called genuine romantic poetry. The theme is generally treated in the manner of Milton; there is frequent invocation of persons, and a prevalent air of sobriety, even of stolidity. In Nature, however, many sonnets published after 1740 take a great interest; yet here too, there is but an echo of what had gone before in other verse-forms. Compared with the influence of "The Faerie Queene", "Paradise Lost", "Il Penseroso" and "L'Allegro", the romantic influence of the Elizabethan and Miltonic sonnets was slight. The sonnet was frequently practised as a means of escape from the couplet and as a form of Miltonic imitation. Its influence only became strong at a time when Elizabethan Romanticism had merged into romanticism of the modern type and when medieval romance as well as the new conception of Nature had contributed largely to the development of that highly specialised type, — Modern Romance.

1) See R. D. Havens, "Milton's Influence on English Poetry", p. p. 523, 685. *) See ditto, p. 488.

GENERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION 199

DRAMA: GENERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

ALLIBONE, S. A., A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, etc. 3 vol. London, 1859-71.

BEHREND, A., Nicholas Rowe als Dramatiker. Diss. Königsberg i. Pr., 1907.

BRANDL, A., Edward Young. On Original Composition. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Shakespeare-Kritik im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. (In Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. XXXIX. Jahrgang, 1903).

BÜNNING, E., Nicholas Rowe. Tamerlane, 1702. Diss. Rostock, 1908.

GENEST, J., Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830. 10 vols. Bath, 1832.

HART, S., Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore, Boston, 1917.

LOUNSBURY, T. R., Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist; with an account of his reputation at various periods. London, 1902. LOUNSBURY, T. R., The Text of Shakespeare. New York, 1906. LOWE, R. W., A Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature. London, 1888.

NICOLL, A., Dryden as an Adapter of Shakespeare. Oxford, 1921. NICHOL SMITH, D., Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare. Glasgow, 1903.

NICHOL SMITH, D., Shakespeare Criticism. Oxford, 1917.

ROSBUND, S., Dryden als Shakespeare-Bearbeiter. Diss. Halle, 1882. SCHWARZ, F. H., Nicholas Rowe's Fair Penitent. Diss. Bern, 1908. THIMM, F., Shakespeariana from 1564-1864; an account of the Shakespearian Literature of England, Germany, France, and other European countries, 1872, London.

WARD, W., A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne. London, 1875/76.

Waterhouse, O., The Development of English Sentimental Comedy in the Eighteenth Century. Anglia. Vol. XXX. Halle, 1907.

THE SONNET: SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

CROSLAND, T. W. H., The English Sonnet. London, 1917. HAVENS, R. D., The Influence of Milton on English Poetry. Chapter XIX. Harvard University Press, 1922.

200

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

HUNT, L., The Book of the Sonnet. 2 vols. London, 1867.

NOBLE, J. A., The Sonnet in England. London, 1896.

PATTISON, M., Milton's Sonnets. London, 1902.

RINAKER, C., Thomas Edward and the Sonnet Revival. Mod. Lang.

Notes, XXXIII, 4. April, 1919.

RINAKER, C., Percy as a Sonneteer. Mod. Lang. Notes, XXXV, 1. Jan. 1920.

SMART, J. S., The Sonnets of Milton, Glasgow, 1921.