CRITICISM OF ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DRAMA

Abstract

While criticism of Shakespeare has reached a virtual saturation point, that of his contemporaries is in its infancy. The nineteenth century produced little other than the effusions of Swinburne and the introductions to the Mermaid editions 0 The best-known book about our plays written in the first quarter of this century is probably William Archer's The Old Drama and the New, actually a negation of criticism, since its only conclusion seems to have been that the plays with which we are concerned are all worthless® In., the last thirty years it is difficult to find more than a handful of really important critical studies« Of those which address themselves to larger segments of the field, we can mention Una Ellis-Fermor 1 s Jacobean Drama as the most important and influential work on the later plays, and Muriel Bradbrook's Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy as an important study of one genre j her most recent book on the comedies, unfortunately, does not come up to the same standard» Madeleine Doran' s Endeavors of Art, probably the most learned book in our field, is full of üñf orna tio n and rich critical insight^ although it suffers from its attempt to find historical norms»