Tragedies and Dramas

“He whom they own Legitimate is here,” says Legitimate Drama on his entry to the stage in Planché's The Drama's Levée, and the self-conscious, self-assured tones are characteristic. The trouble with the legitimate drama was not that it was legitimate but that it was too conscious and proud of its legitimacy. It resembled some scions of our present-day aristocracy in that it trusted too much to its ancestry, and thought too little of individual worth and of individual effort; it resembled these, too, in forgetting that that from which it had sprung often had in origin the bar sinister. For Philip Sidney Shakespeare would have been as illegitimate as Pocock was for Talfourd or Sheil.

On the other hand, one must judge these men according to their lights and must endeavour to do justice to their attempts, misguided though many of them might be, to restore the ancient glories of the English stage. That their efforts were sincere enough, no one can deny; but sincerity does not necessarily imply artistry or even a right way of thinking. It is their own dramatic achievements and not the strength of their convictions which must be that by which they are judged.

As has been suggested above, it is virtually impossible to separate entirely the unacted from the acted drama, for most of those who penned the unacted plays originally intended them for the stage.