Sidney's dramatic criticism

Sir Philip Sidney's dramatic criticism

In Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry (1580/1595) we find one of the earliest surveys of English literature. Apart from the usual complaints that poetry has fallen from an earlier state of preeminence and that contemporary poets are cold and rhetorical, Sidney presents us with the "great tradition" of English poetry up to his time: among medieval poets he values Chaucer (though he mentions Troilus and Criseyde rather than The Canterbury Tales), and he shows an appreciation for medieval romances and ballads uncommon in a Humanist. Among his contemporaries he praises the Earl of Surrey, and Spenser, though he does not approve of the archaic diction of the latter.

As concerns drama, he complains that English tragedies and comedies, even the great Gorboduc, are faulty as to the classical rules of space and time: the English stage is fond of dramatising many episodes which should instead be narrated in a messenger speech, or suppressed altogether by plunging in medias res. He calls for a strict verisimilitude of the action represented on the stage, and for less reliance on the fancy of the spectator. Besides, he says, Englishmen are too fond of farce, and spoil their tragedies by turning them into tragicomedies. The aim of the stage (even in the case of comedy) for Sidney is to produce delight, rather than laughter:

"delight we scarcely do but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature." (Apology 136).

Comedy is more polished and intellectual than farce. It makes us laugh by exposing human foibles, not through mere clowning; laughter should come from its satiric aspect. Comedy imitates the common errors of life. Through it we get an experience of vice and learn the effects which are to be expected from it. It shows evil characters and doings, but that does not mean that it teaches evil; Sidney compares it to a mirror which must show truth: this means that it is a realistic genre, instead of an idealized one like tragedy and epic.

Tragedy is interpreted by Sidney in the standard fashion of his age: it shows the uncertainty of human fortune, and gives advice to kings and tyrants. To this medieval idea, he adds the Aristotelian idea that the function of tragedy is to cause pity and fear, or, as he puts it, "admiration and conmiseration." But the emphasis is on moral teaching rather than on emotional catharsis, and so the theory not quite Aristotelian. Sidney expounds the doctrine of the unities of space and time, which had been developed in the continent by Robortello, Scaliger, and Castelvetro; but he presents these rules as sensible recommendations rather than as inviolable precepts.

As to tragicomedy, it is not rejected outright; only the sudden breaches of tone which spoil the tragic effect. The test is the emotional effect, the quality of the dramatic illusion produced, not a blind submission to the rules.

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