catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the
views of the Elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing not only
the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it
was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the
rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great
persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in the
literature of the world. But, for good or evil, these methods have
become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along
totally different lines. It is playing the part, more and more
consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the
crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is
narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come
more and more completely into play. Thus, from the point of view of
form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of Racine rather than
that of Shakespeare that has survived. Plays of the type of _Macbeth_
have been superseded by plays of the type of _Britannicus_.
_Britannicus_, no less than _Macbeth_, is the tragedy of a criminal; but
it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the
fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the
precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is
taken, and the criminal is made. The method of _Macbeth_ has been, as it
were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of _Britannicus_
still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more rigorously
and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his
attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of
importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the
English reader--the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the
absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action--was no more
than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and
for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction.