hing had
intervened to take it out of its course. _Gordobuc_ is severely
classical in its unities; it is of the Senecan species. Now throughout
Western Europe this was the type of the modern drama,[19] and it
dominated the more serious side of the French stage down to the time of
Victor Hugo. There can be little doubt that the English Drama would have
followed the classical models but for one thing. The flood of Italian
_novelle_ introduced into England by Painter and his school, imported a
new condition into the problem. It is essential to the Classical Drama
that the plot should be already known to the audience, that there should
be but one main action, and but one tone, tragic or comic. In Painter's
work and those of his followers, the would-be dramatists of Elizabeth's
time had offered to them a super-abundance of actions quite novel to
their audience, and alternating between grave and gay, often within the
same story.[20] The very fact of their foreignness was a further
attraction. At a time when all things were new, and intellectual
curiosity had become a passion, the opportunity of studying the varied
life of an historic country like Italy lent an additional charm to the
translated _novelle_. In an interesting essay on the "Italy of the
Elizabethan Dramatists,"[21] Vernon Lee remarks that it was the very
strangeness and horror of Italian life as compared with the dull decorum
of English households that had its attraction for the Elizabethans. She
writes as if the dramatists were themselves acquainted with the life
they depicted. As a matter of fact, not a single one of the Elizabethan
dramatists, as far as I know, was personally acquainted with Italy.[22]
This knowledge of Italian life and crime was almost entirely derived
from the works of Painter and his school. If there had been anything
corresponding to them dealing with the tragic aspects of English life,
the Elizabethan dramatists would have been equally ready to tell of
English vice and criminality. They used Holinshed and Fabyan readily
enough for their "Histories." They would have used an English Bandello
with equal readiness had he existed. But an English Bandello could not
have existed at a time when the English folk had not arrived at
self-consciousness, and had besides no regular school of tale-tellers
like the Italians. It was then only from the Italians that the
Elizabethan dramatists could have got a sufficient stock of plots to
allow for that inte