DRAMA.

At the beginning of the Victorian period, the English stage was still contentedly supporting the traditions of two preceding centuries. The objects and methods of both actors and plays were practically the same as they had been at the Restoration. In both, the rhetorical style prevailed. The two Patent theaters created by Charles II. still had the sole privilege of playing the legitimate drama, and Macready was striving to perpetuate the histrionic tradition which went back through Edmund Kean and John Kemble, to Garrick and to Betterton. The plays themselves still kept, with slight modifications, notably in the direction of morality, to the Restoration models, of comedy which derived from Molière with a slight infusion of Jonson; and of tragedy which was either Elizabethan simple or Elizabethan Restorationized. Since Goldsmith and Sheridan, literature had showed a widening separation from the stage which almost to their time had been its chief mouthpiece. This had been mainly brought about by the great extension of journalism and, later, by the signal success of the novel in the hands of Scott. These two forms of literary endeavor were offering larger and securer returns than playmaking, and thus naturally drew away from the theater men of mark and left only the adapters and the hacks. Such was the position at the outset of Victoria's reign. Dramatic history during her reign is, until the very latter end of it, one rather of movements than of men. The changes which were to take place during her Occupation were brought about by social, economic, and physical, as well as literary forces; for more than any other artistic activity, the stage is responsive to the conditions under which it exists. These changes embraced the decay of the old traditions, the even wider separation of the stage from literature, the birth of a new drama followed by a partial return of literature to the stage, and finally the growth of a serious conception of the drama as a criticism of life, a conception already achieved by other European nations.

London, during the first 40 years of the century, had more than doubled its population, and, as a result, the Patent theaters were on all sides encroached upon by minor theaters which, in spite of their legal disabilities, proved formidable rivals. When the Act of 1843 abolished the privilege of the Patent theaters, an era of more active competition began. This competition naturally relied upon display as its best means of advertisement; and the invention of gas and lime-light about the same period-inventions of great significance to the stage-confirmed the universal tendency toward the spectacular treatment of plays. Inevitably there set in the decline of the rhetorical drama, the appeal of which, on a poorly-lighted stage, was primarily to the ear and not to the eye. Meanwhile another cause was contributing not only to destroy the rhetorical tradition but to widen the gap between literary men and the theater. What small demand there was for original work would doubtless have in time recalled writers from the novel and the newspaper, but unfortunately the demand, just beginning to be felt in the early Victorian period, was checkmated by an outside influence. The Romantic revival in France had suddenly broken

away from the frigid classicism, so unattractive to English audiences, and Hugo had ushered in a kind of play which the English found more to their taste. These new plays proved easily imitable and adaptable in London, but the habit of importation did not become wholesale until the advent of Scribe. Scribe perfected the mechanics of story-telling in dramatic form, and in so doing largely deleted everything else from a play-witty dialogue, atmosphere, locality, and characterization. Thus his plays, being simply stories, could be given anywhere with equal effect, and as London managers could get them for nothing, his output and that of his school became an inexhaustible store-house for adaptation.

The result upon the home product was twofold. It reduced to a minimum the meager band of English writers, and those that remained no longer even attempted to represent English life and thought. Instead, they provided for the public an impossible mélange of French ideas and emotions served up in British dishes. In the second place, the adaptation and imitation of Scribe's methods proved the finishing blow to the moribund rhetorical conception of comedy by bringing in a French realism of mounting and stage-setting. When a stage room had three sides, a ceiling, and real doors, many conventions of action and dialogue, unnoticed when an interior consisted only of wings and a back-drop with painted chairs, became ridiculous and unendurable. Thus gradually a new ideal was developed, by which the play was forced to move a little nearer to the life now in a material way presented with considerable reality. Internally, however, the plays remained as artificial as they had been before, their characters puppets impelled by theatrical and absurd sentiments and exhibiting the crudest of psychologies. The main dramatists of the period which this development closes, were Bulwer, Tom Taylor and Charles Reade, and Dion Boucicault. Bulwer, under the influence of the Romantic revival in France. produced 'The Lady of Lyons' and 'Richelieu,' and his comedy Money' shared the distinction of being the last representation of rhetorical comedy with Boucicault's 'London Assurance' and 'Old Heads and Young Hearts,' with Taylor and Reade's 'Masks and Faces,' and with Taylor's 'Still Waters Run Deep.' Boucicault, the arch-adapter and plagiarist of the period, had the good fortune to hit upon a type of his own in his series of very successful Irish plays, but they are no nearer real studies of life than the others of the period. The predominance of Scribe and his school had paralyzed native authorship.

Into this lifeless world came T. W. Robertson a dramatist whose pleasant work has no great intrinsic value, although he possessed a strain of original genius-to create a new form of drama. It ignored not only the old rhetorical tradition but the new French-English mongrel species. It was merely the comedy of manners clothed in natural speech and realistic setting, but it seemed absolutely original and spontaneous. It viewed the commonplace social relations from the outside, with a naïveté and humor which disguised to an unsophisticated public the insipidity of its characters and the shallowness of their sentiments. Though he brought new life to the drama, fortunately his school, represented by H. J. Byron and Albery,

did not long survive him, else the stage would have found itself in almost as lifeless a way as when he rescued it and with an artificiality different from, yet as great as, that against which he effectively protested.

Though W. S. Gilbert could not be called a follower of Robertson, he made the same protest against the fustian of the stage, and carried on the verbal flippancy which had vied with sentimentality in the latter's plays. So thoroughly original was he that only the adjective Gilbertian can cover the precise blend of wit, delicate fancy, satire, and extravaganza, which achieved some brilliant successes on the legitimate stage and which finally secured the aid of musical accompaniment in a long series of comic operas that stand, like their author, in a class apart.

In spite of Robertson and Gilbert, however, the theater lapsed again into a period of adaptation from France. But there, meanwhile, had sprung up a larger type of social drama than that of Scribe, a type of which 'Diplomacy' is an illustration,-and imitation of this wider species was less deadening than the former had been. When, however, international copy-. right was at last secured and French works could no longer be adapted for nothing, the effect of fair play for the English dramatist was seen almost immediately. A group of young writers arose who, beginning as imitators, were soon applying French methods to original and native purposes. Of this group, Mr. A. W. Pinero and Mr. H. A. Jones were pre-eminent. They sought their material at home and, observing carefully, reproduced sincerely. Another decade had to pass in experiment before these men really undertook a drama which evinced anything like a serious psychology and a vital relationship with life. Not until 1890 did they dispense with elementary love-idylls and the kind of story which had been up to that time inevitable to every play, or set out definitely for a more thoughtful and virile drama covering the field of social intercourse. Following their lead, Oscar Wilde and Mr. Bernard Shaw developed the social comedy into a more serious content. Wilde's pyrotechnic brilliance of dialogue and inverted epigram concealed at first his genuine dramatic quality and adroit constructiveness as a playwright. Mr. Shaw took up the stage as a lively form of presenting himself and his social propaganda, but, though his brilliant plays hardly succeed as drama, there can be no question of their success with the public and as literature. These men with Mr. Pinero and Mr. Jones have once more elevated the English drama not only to the level of continental drama but of the literature of their own land.

The poetic drama during the reign is represented by Westland Marston, Talfourd, Browning, and Tennyson. The formal dramas of the first two are long forgotten. Masterly as are some of Browning's plays, they seem remote from the purpose of the stage, and when some of them got there it was discovered that they could be only recited, not acted: at any rate, they can be successful, if at all, only in the manner of the rhetorical tradition for which they were conceived. Tennyson's plays, although loosely constructed in the loosest of Elizabethan formulas,-the chronicle history.— have been acted with considerable success. This

was due, no doubt, to the circumstances of their production, for his fine verse lacks vigor and he has not seized upon the essential moments of his stories, the crucial parts of most of his dramas taking place behind the scenes. In 'Queen Mary' and 'Harold,' however, he presented genuine dramatic material. If the taste for the poetic play can be revived in the future, it must be as drama first and poetry afterward, and drama conceived in a modern rather than Shakesperian type. ALGERNON TASSIN,

Lecturer in English, Columbia University.

Vicuna, Pedro Felix, Chilian journalist: b. Santiago, Chile, 1806; d. there 1874. He was well educated, and entered journalism at an early age, becoming at 21 one of the founders and editor-in-chief of the Valparaiso 'El Mercurio.' He was subsequently connected editorially with 'El Telégrafo' (1827); 'El Elector' (1841;) 'El Republicano' (1845); 'La Reforma' (1847); and other leading periodicals, and in 1865 was elected to the national senate, where he introduced the law abolishing imprisonment for debt. He wrote: 'Unico asilo de las Repúblicas Hispano-Americanas' (1837); 'Porvenir del Hombre' (1858); and 'La Hacienda Pública' (1864).

Vicuna-Mackenna, mäk-kä'nä, Benjamin, Chilian historian: b. Santiago, Chile, 25 Aug. 1831; d. Santa Rosa del Colmo, Chile, 25 Jan. 1886. He was educated at the University of Chile, and early engaged in researches in national history. For his activity in the revolution of 1851-2 he was imprisoned and condemned to death, but escaped to this country and then went to Europe. In 1856 he returned, and was admitted to the bar, but political dishis return in the last named year he became turbances caused his exile in 1859-63. Upon editor of the Valparaiso 'Mercurio,' in 1864 was elected a deputy, and in 1865-6 was special envoy to Peru and to the United States. He was senator in 1871-6, and in 1875 he was a candidate for the presidency. His works include: 'El Sitio de Chilian en 1813' (1849); Administración de Montt (5 vols., 1862-3); 'Revoloción del Perú (1861); 'Historia de la 'Historia de Valparaiso' (2 vols., 1868); 'His(1881); 'Al Galope' (1885); etc. toria de las Campañas de Arica y Tacna'

Vidaurri, vē-thowr'rē, Santiago, Mexican soldier: b. Nuevo Leon, Mexico, about 1803; d. City of Mexico 8 July 1867. He came of a wealthy family of Indian extraction, was well educated, admitted to the bar in 1826, and entered political life. He was engaged in several civil wars, rose to the rank of colonel, and in 1852 was elected governor of Nuevo Leon. He assisted in the overthrow of Santa Anna in 1854-5, though refusing to act in conjunction with Alvarez, and was an unsuccessful candidate against the latter for the presidency in 1855. He assumed a species of dictatorship over the states of northern Mexico, forcibly annexed Coahuila, and was long suspected of a design to establish a separate republic. He withheld recognition of Comonfort as successor of Alvarez until 1856, but was then forced to grant it in order to retain his control of the states Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. He at first participated in resistance to the French inter

vention in 1862-4; later became an officer in the cabinet of Maximilian. He resigned in 1867, but after the fall of the City of Mexico he was captured and shot as a traitor.

Vid'in, Bulgaria. See WIDDIN.

Vidocq, vě-dok, Eugène François, French adventurer and detective: b. Arras, France, 23 July 1775; d. 10 May 1857. He was apprenticed to his father, a baker, at 13, and after constant pilfering robbed the shop of 2,000 francs and fled to Ostend. He soon lost his money, and after living a life of vagabondage entered the French army, from which he deserted to the Austrians, but later returned to the French army. His career as a soldier was one of miserable intrigue and disgraceful adventure and he was finally implicated in a forgery for which he was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. He escaped and after further discreditable escapades settled in Paris, where he gained employment on the secret police force. His wide knowledge of the criminal classes enabled him to render efficient service, and in 1812 he was made chief of the brigade de sureté. His activity in the service cleared Paris of great numbers of the criminals with which it was infested, but in 1827 he was removed from office. His subsequent career was one of obscurity and failure, though he apparently endeavored to live an honest life, and he died in wretched poverty. His Mémoires' (1828) are not regarded as authentic.

Viele, vele, Egbert Ludovickus, American soldier: b. Waterford, N. Y., 17 June 1825; d. New York 22 April 1902. He was graduated from West Point in 1847, engaged in the Mexican War in 1847-8, and in the Indian warfare of 1848-52. He resigned from the army in 1853 with rank as lieutenant and in 1854-6 was chief engineer of the State of New Jersey. He was chief engineer of Central Park, New York, in 1856-7, and later of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. At the outbreak of the Civil War he entered the army and was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers. He was second in command of

the land forces at Port Royal, and held chief command at Fort Pulaski, Ga., planned and conducted the march to Norfolk, Va., and participated in the capture of that city. He was military governor of Norfolk in 1862-3. He afterward continued the practice of his profession in New York, was appointed park commissioner in 1883, and president of the board of commissioners in 1884. He served in Congress in 1885-7. He wrote: 'Handbook of Active Service (1861); Topographical Atlas of the City of New York' (1865); etc.

Viele, Herman Knickerbocker, American novelist, son of E. L. Viele (q.v.): b. New York 31 Jan. 1855. He studied engineering with his father and practised as a civil engineer for some time in Washington, D. C. He has published The Inn of the Silver Moon' (1900); The Last of the Knickerbockers' (1901); Myra of the Pines' (1902).

Vien, vē-on, Joseph Marie, French painter: b. Montpellier 18 June 1716; d. Paris 27 March 1809. He was a pupil of Natoire, went to Rome 1744 and returned to open a school of painting in Paris (1750). In 1775 he was director of the Academy at Rome but returned to Paris. Napoleon I. made him senator and ennobled him. His chief works are: (Saints

Germain and Vincent'; 'Daedalus and Icarus'; and Cupids at Play' (all in the Louvre). His principal claim to importance lies in the fact that he was the teacher of David.

Vienna, vi-ĕn'a (German, WIEN, vēn), Austria-Hungary, the capital of the empire, on the right bank of the Danube and on the Donaukanal, a narrow arm of the river, into which fall several small streams, 380 miles south by southeast of Berlin, and 650 miles east by south of Paris. It stands in a plain with the conspicuous Wiener Wald Mountain boundaries at 10 or 12 miles distance on all sides. Most of the city rises from the right bank of the Donau kanal, on a considerable acclivity. The older portion was separated from the newer by a wall and ditch, forming what is called the "Lines," but this has largely given place to an encircling street or boulevard. The nucleus of the city, the Innere Stadt, forms a small part of the whole inside the Lines. It was formerly surrounded by a rampart, fosse, and glacis, but these were leveled in 1860 and the space occupied by the Ringstrasse, a handsome boulevard averaging 55 yards broad, forming one of the finest thoroughfares in Europe. The inner or old town is still the court and fashionable quarter of the city, and contains some of the finest mansions of the nobility. The streets here are often narrow and crooked; but on the whole Vienna is a handsome well-built town, with fine squares, and straight and spacious streets well kept. The houses are frequently built four or five stories high, and occupied in flats with common stairs. The chief public park is the Prater, on the island between the Donaukanal and the river itself, about four miles long and two broad, beautifully laid out, planted, and decorated, and regarded as the finest public park in Europe.

fine public buildings are the imperial palace or Among the more important of the numerous Hofburg, on the southwest of the inner town, a conglomeration of parts of various dates, with a fine new façade constructed in 1890-3; the fine grounds, in the suburb of Hietzing; the palimperial summer residence, Schönbrunn, with perial palace, modern and handsome, as ace of the Archduke Albert adjoining the im

are

those of the Archdukes Victor and William.

The palace of the Prince of Liechtenstein, those of Duke Philip Alexander of Würtemberg, others of the nobility are Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and also noticeable. Specially must be mentioned the Parlamentspalast, in which the legislature met for the first time in November, 1883; the magnificent Gothic Rathhaus (1872-83), the courts of justice, the twin museums of art and of natural history, the mint, the imperial and civil arsenals, the barracks, the exchange, and the national bank. The university was founded in 1237, and reorganized by Maria Theresa. It occupies a fine new building, and has over 350 professors and instructors, and an attendance of about 6,000. There is in immediate connection with it an admirable botanic garden and several valuable collections. The Josephinum, an academy for army surgeons, has an extensive series of anatomical preparations in wax. The Polytechnic Institute instructs about 900 pupils in engi neering and other practical arts. The Semina rium, a Roman Catholic institute, is devoted to the special training of priests; there are also