Excerpt from The Relation of Lord Byron to the Drama of the Romantic Period Since thou canst join the tame translating crew, And banish Avon's bard for Kotzebue. He also criticises the German taste for lawless passion which drives the feeling soul to frenzy, and sensibility with sickly mien which heaves the deep sigh and calls the starting tear. More drastic was the attack by John Styles, whose Essay on the Character and Influence of the Stage on Morals and Happiness (second edition, 1807) carries on the tradition of Tertullian and Grosseteste, Prynne and Collier. He writes (p. The recent introduction of the German drama may be considered a phoe nomenon in the world of dissipation. The writings of Con greve and Dryden are absolutely pure, when compared with the vile disgusting offspring of the profligate Kotzebue. Ih,1798 appeared The Rovers, by Frere and Canning, the anti-jacobin's famous parody of the German plays. 2 It had much to do with the swift decline of the vogue towards the end of the century. The fashion of tragedy began to change. Horrors continued to be popular, says Brandl (p. But less in the way of robbers, ghosts, and tyrants, external mis eries, crass romances, and empty tirades, than in inward commotions of the soul. There are attempts at psychological analysis. This tendency is seen in Wordsworth's Borderers (1795 Lamb's John Woodvil Scott's Sensuality and Revenge and Coleridge's Osorio. The new psychological drama is, however, best represented by the series of Plays on the Passions by Joanna Baillie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.