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1. George Chapman (1559-1634):

Chapman, known for his translation of Homer, had enough of classical learning, but he did not have the classical spirit. He lacked the good sense and reason of the humanists. He has left behind him a number of tragedies on subjects taken from contemporary French history, and a number of comedies based on English life. However, his plays are now little read; as dramatist he does not have any high merit.

His best known tragedy is Bossy D’ Amboise, a revenge tragedy with a French theme. Both the character and events of the play are historical. But they lack life and reality. The play degenerates into melodrama.

2. Ben Jonson (1573-1633):

Ben Jonson, a classicist, was a disciple of the ancients, one who resolutely tried to reform the English stage. In some sense Ben Jonson is more original than Shakespeare. While Shakespeare accepted with a smile the shortcomings of his stage, Ben Jonson raised his voice against them and tried to reform the English stage on the model of the ancients. He is a voluminous writer and has written numerous comedies, historical tragedies, and court-masques.

He was profoundly learned and had studied not only the prominent writers of the past but also the mediocre and the little-known ones. He had also studied closely and patiently contemporary life and society, and we find the evidence of his wide learning scattered all over his works.

(a) His Comedies:

His early comedies Everyman in His Humor (1598) and Every Man Out of His Humour, Cynthia’s Revels (1601), and The Poetasters (1602) are immature as far as their plot-construction is concerned. Each one of his characters is the representative of some “humour”.

The scene of Jonson’s comedies is real, familiar London, rather than romantic Venice or the forest of Arden or the shores of Illyria. The purpose of the writer is to satirize the follies and foibles, the weaknesses and vices, of contemporary society, and his satire is generally coarse and brutal.

His later and mature comedies Vulpine, the Fox (1605), Epicene, or the Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and The Bartholomew Fair, are among the most remarkable works of the English Renaissance. These comedies show types of human folly and weakness, but they are also powerfully constructed.

Jonson was a moralist. His aim is ferocious satire, to “strip naked the ragged follies of the time,” and “to whip them with a whip of steel”, and such corrective and satiric aims exclude laughter. There is little laughter in his comedies in contrast with Shakespeare in whose comedies there is laughter, more laughter and nothing but laughter.

However, his Epicene, or the Silent Woman is an exception. It is a delightful farce; its chief aim being to produce loud laughter. Bartholomew Fair is a satire on Puritans and “Jonson certainly wrote nothing more entertaining than this play.”

(b) His Tragedies:

Sejanus (1603) and Catalina (1611) are the two great tragedies of Jonson. They are steeped in the dramatist’s learning. Inspired by the success of Shakespeare’s Julius Cease, Jonson, too, goes to Roman history but chooses his subject from a little-known period.

He is learned and accurate throughout, there are no such anachronisms or historical blunders as spoil the historical plays of Shakespeare, but he fails to make his characters live. He is correct and learned, full of vigorous and exact touches, but he fails to infuse life into the dry bones of history as Shakespeare does, both in his Roman and English history plays.

(c) His Masques:

That Ben Jonson was a great poet is made clear by the numerous Masques which he wrote for the Court of King James I. The best of these masques are: (I) The Satyr, (II) Masque of Beauty, (III) The Masque of Queens, and (IV) Cupid. The masques are remarkable for their pageantry and spectacle, for their mingling of allegory, mythology and fairy tale, and for the exquisite lyrics and songs that abound in them.

3. John Marston (1575-1634):

John Marston, besides being a dramatist, was also a satirist and published his Scourge of Villainy in 1598. His dramas, both tragedies and comedies, are also marked by ferocious satire. The best of his tragedies are (1) Antonio’s Revenge, and (2) Antonio and Melinda. Both these tragedies are the direct descendants of the Spanish Tragedy.

They are in the Seneca tradition, and are characterized by coarseness, brutality and violence. They reveal the cynicism, and pessimism of the dramatist. They lack originality and are frankly imitative. There is greater coarseness in him than in any other writer.

The best of his comedies are (a) The Malcontent (1601), and (b) The Dutch Courtesan

They are ill-constructed, coarse and licentious. The dramatist’s genius is revealed only in particular passages and scenes.

Marston collaborated with Jonson and Chapman in the writing of the play Eastward Ho (1605) which is among the best of the Renaissance comedies. The play is known (I) for its vigor, (II) for its realism, (III) for its light-heartedness, and (IV) for its decency. The life the goldsmiths of the day and their apprentices has been realistically delineated.

The action moves on merrily without any structural or moral obstacles. It is the story of a good apprentice who marries his master’s daughter. The play is good reading even today. It is realism with a moralizing touch.

4. Thomas Dekker (1570-1641):

Dekker was optimistic and gay. His cheerfulness and gaiety is surprising, if we take into account the general decadence and gloom of the period. The best known plays of Dekker are: (1) The Shoe-maker’s Holiday (1599) which gives us realistic pictures of the followers of the craft and has been directly inspired by Delaney’s The Gentle Craft. (2) The Honest Whore (1604) gives us a glimpse of the underworld of London and records the trials and experiences of a whore or prostitute who is determined to lead an honest life. It might be called a domestic drama as far as the main plot is concerned.

While he has merits of a high order, he cannot be ranked with the greatest. His plays are ill- constructed and marred by much coarseness and licentiousness.

5. Thomas Heywood (1575-1650):

Thomas Heywood a prolific dramatist cared more for quantity than quality. He himself claimed to have written more than 200 plays, only a few of which have come down to us.

He is the most important exponent of the domestic drama, a form of drama which deals with infidelity committed within the family circle, as a result of which family ties are broken and tragedy takes place. Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) is the masterpiece of this type of drama.

Another of his important plays is The Four ‘Prentices of London.’ The play flatters the citizens of London. Its theme is the Quixotic exploits of four youths who go out in the manner of knights of chivalry and have glorious exploits and do heroic deeds in remote countries.

6. Thomas Middleton (1570-1627):

Middleton depicts, like Thomas Heywood, the life of London citizens, but instead of flattering them, he ridicules their follies and weaknesses.

His pictures are marked by his cynicism and have licentious implications, but are not as brutally obscene as the dramas of Heywood. His light farcical comedies like A Mad World, My Masters and a Chaste Maid in Cheapside are remarkable for their vivacity and close acquaintance with London life and justify Logouts’ remark that Middleton is, “the most modern of the humorists of the Renaissance.” Women Beware Women is the best of his tragedies.

The scene is laid in Italy and deals with the life of a famous Italian courtesan. Middleton is to-day remembered mainly for his The Witch which has striking resemblances with Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Another of the plays which was immensely popular at the time is A Game of Chess; it is a curious political allegory directed against Spain. The Changeling, another of his masterpieces, is a powerful play and it would have ranked with the tragedies of Shakespeare, had it not been disfigured by a coarse and worthless secondary plot.

Middleton is one of the most original of the dramatists of his time and his greatest skill lies in making even improbable situations convincing and real. He is a satirist who exposes evil and vice. His dramas have a moral tendency, for in them vice never remains unpunished.

7. Cyril Tourneur (1575-1625):

These are two of the early 17th century dramatists who put new life into melodrama at a time when Shakespeare was abandoning tragedy to write his Last Plays or Dramatic Romances.

Tourneur’s masterpieces are:

1. The Revenge’s Tragedy (1607)

2. The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611)

Both the tragedies are set in Italy, in a coarse and brutal world of crime and vice, from which there is no escape and which knows no pity. The theme is revenge and punishment, and the action moves swiftly, clearly and with intensity. They are revenge tragedies in the tradition of The Spanish Tragedy.

8. John Webster (1575-1624):

John Webster, one of the greatest figures in post- Shakespearean drama, is one of those dramatists whose plays are of interest even to-day. His two masterpiece are:

1. The White Devil (1611)

2. The Duchess of Mali (1614)

The White Devil is one of a series of studies of famous Italian courtesans which had been

Appearing during the previous few years.

It is based on the life of the celebrated Italian courtesan, Vitoria.

On the other hand, The Duchess of Mali, Webster’s masterpiece, is a more closely knit play, but its appeal is the same.

It is a powerful play, but it must be called a melodrama, and not a high tragedy, because Webster substitutes for psychology, “a search for pathos inherent in situations and even in material effects.”

Webster was a painstaking artist who tried to write pure tragedy of the classical type but could create only a masterpiece of melodrama. He stands for them, “triumph of melodrama raised to the level of true poetry. “According to for Evans his play suffers from a number of coincidences, improbabilities, and forced effects, “and then, weaknesses and excesses of dramatic structure”, are quite apparent.

“The moral world of Webster is different from that of Shakespeare” and Love is the sole theme of the tragedy, and evil, though punished in the end, is present everywhere, throughout the action.

9. John Fletcher (1579-1625) and Francis Beaumont:

The names of these two dramatists are associated together. Though they also worked separately, yet produced some of their finest plays in collaboration. Their masterpieces are:

a. Faithful Shepherdess – a pastoral play full of charming passages and showing the lyrical talents of the poets.

b. The Scornful Lady – an excellent domestic comedy.

c. The Knight of the Burning Pestle- one of the most amusing and nimble paradise of the chivalrous romance of knight-erranty, the craze for which was widespread in the London middle-class at the time.

d. The Maid’s Tragedy and a King and No King – A King and No King is a tragi-comedy. The scene is laid in a far off country. The play represents incestuous love and hovers on the brinks of tragedy. However, the end is happy for the lovers are discovered to be no brother and sister and are happily married in the end.

The plot is closely knit and well-constructed and the scenic and dramatic qualities of the work are surprising. The language is harmonious and the working is graceful.

10. Philip Massinger (1584-1639):

Messenger was a prolific writer who has a number of plays to his credit. The best of them are:

a. A New Way to Pay Old Debts – one of his most charming and successful comedies. It is a realistic comedy of the Jonson type.

b. The Roman Actor-a tragedy full of violence tumult and crime.

c. The Maid of Honour-the most classical of his plays, one in which a simple plot is smoothly unfolded and one which has unity of action and regular construction. But the characters and situation are stereotyped and artificial. There is imitation and no invention.

Philip Massinger’s work combines within itself the qualities both of Fletcher and Jonson.

11. John Ford (1586-1639):

Ford had a melancholy and morbid temperament, and gloom, tragedy and bloodshed had a strange fascination for him. Gloom, unrelieved even by a single ray of light, is his chief characteristic.

A sense of fatality hangs over his tragedies; tragedy seems to be pre-destined, and in this respect he shows his affinity with the Greeks. Ford’s masterpiece is It is Pity. ‘She is a Whore’ is incest.

It is the story of the love of a brother for his sister and its tragic consequences. “Not only does Ford show incestuous, sinful love, he even glorifies it and romanticizes it.” When the sister refuses herself to her brother, he kills her and re-appears with her heart on the point of his dagger, “so that the morbid and the melodramatic are combined.”

12. James Shirley (1596-1666):

According to Charles Lamb, Shirley is, “the last of a great race.”

His best tragedies are: (1) The Traitor, and (2) The Cardinal-his masterpiece. The first tragedy is a close imitation of Tourneur’s The Revenge’s Tragedy, and the second is based on Webster’s Duchess of Mali. Both are tragedies of bloodshed and horror.

His best comedies are:

(1) The Welding. (2) The Changes, (3) The Lady of Pleasure -his masterpiece. It fore shadows Restoration Comedy of Manners.

His comedies show greater originality than his tragedies, for they paint society, its manners and fashion, its literary crazes, and all these had changed with years. In spite of its inferior wit and vigor, the Lady of Pleasure foreshadows Sheridan’s School for Scandal.

Shirley also wrote a number of tragic – comedies towards the end of his career in which he exploited Spanish themes. The influence of Spain was growing, and Shirley freely exploits it in his romantic comedy, The Imposture.