Mable Buland
Published: 2015-06-16
Total Pages: 369
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Excerpt from The Presentation of Time in the Elizabethan Drama The Elizabethan drama gains in significance when it is looked upon from the standpoint of its evolutionary development, rather than in the light shed by three or four great names. A study of the dramatic element of time opens an avenue through which a view of the drama of this period as an organic body may be obtained, since the plays, structurally considered, present features which reflect the spirit of the Elizabethan age - reliance upon the methods inherited from the miracle plays, an indifference to the dicta derived from the Latin drama, preference for complexity in subject-matter, confusion regarding different types of plays, and neglect of precision in general. During this period, the fundamental validity of an appeal to the imagination in dramatic art was more clearly demonstrated than ever before or since. Moreover, each dramatist, in the time-schemes of his plays, reveals his skill in construction; indeed, the degree of success with which he blends the time-movements of a major and a minor plot is a subtle test of his synthetic power. In the earlier plays, the manner of handling time displays their deficiency in design, and, in the later plays, shows how artificial and strained the drama became. Shakespeare's art can be more readily understood, and more properly evaluated, when it is seen in relation to the technique of his contemporaries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.