| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
10 |
ORTHOMETRY. |
||
|
together as Poetical Romances. Scott's Marmion and Lady of the Lake, Moore's Lalla Rookh, Byron's Don Juan, Coleridge's Christabel, and Tennyson's Enoch Arden are of this kind; and if we allow the burlesque element to be added, such poems as Butler's Hudibras and Burns's Tarn O'Shanter would be included.
3.—DRAMATIC POETRY.
" The very purpose of playing, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
Shakspere.
The word drama means action, and the term dramatic poetry is applied to that species of composition which is made up of dialogue, and which is, for the most part, intended to be acted. All poems, however, which are thrown into the dramatic form, are not intended, or are not suited, to dramatic representation—e.g. Bailey's Festus, Taylor's Philip Van Artevelde, Byron's Manfred, could not be so produced intact ; and many of the plays of Shakspere are more suited to study than the stage, and require grievous hacking before they can be adapted to the requirements of the stage carpenter.
For the origin of the drama we must look to ancient Greece; there, we have seen above, the germ of the theatre arose out of the national custom of singing odes in praise of gods and heroes on festive occasions, speech and action being gradually |
|||