diverged into a number of national currents, unequal in impetus and
strength, and varying in accordance with their manifold surroundings.
And even of these it is only possible to survey the most productive or
important.

(a) _Italy._

The modern Italian drama.

The priority in this as in most of the other aspects of the Renaissance
belongs to Italy. In ultimate achievement the Italian drama fell short
of the fulness of the results obtained elsewhere--a surprising fact when
it is considered, not only that the Italian language had the
vantage-ground of closest relationship to the Latin, but that the genius
of the Italian people has at all times led it to love the drama. The
cause is doubtless to be sought in the lack, noticeable in Italian
national life during a long period, and more especially during the
troubled days of division and strife coinciding with the rise and
earlier promise of Italian dramatic literature, of those loftiest and
most potent impulses of popular feeling to which a national drama owes
so much of its strength. This deficiency was due partly to the
peculiarities of the Italian character, partly to the political and
ecclesiastical experiences which Italy was fated to undergo. The
Italians were alike strangers to the enthusiasm of patriotism, which was
as the breath in the nostrils of the English Elizabethan age, and to the
religious devotion which identified Spain with the spirit of the
Catholic revival. The clear-sightedness of the Italians had something to
do with this, for they were too intelligent to believe in their tyrants,
and too free from illusions to deliver up their minds to their priests.
Finally, the chilling and enervating effects of a pressure of foreign
domination, such as no Western people with a history and a civilization
like those of Italy has ever experienced, contributed to paralyse for
many generations the higher efforts of the dramatic art. No basis was
permanently found for a really national tragedy; while literary comedy,
after turning from the direct imitation of Latin models to a more
popular form, lost itself in an abandoned immorality of tone and in
reckless insolence of invective against particular classes of society.
Though its productivity long continued, the poetic drama more and more
concentrated its efforts upon subordinate or subsidiary species,
artificial in origin and decorative in purpose, and surrendered its
substance to the overpowering aids of music, d