The story of “Gorboduc” is taken from the early annals of Britain and recalls the story used by Shakespeare in King Lear.  Gorboduc, king of Britain, divides his kingdom between his sons Ferrex and Porrex.  The sons quarrel, and Porrex, the younger, slays his brother, who is the queen’s favorite.  Videna, the queen, slays Porrex in revenge; the people rebel and slay Videna and Gorboduc; then the nobles kill the rebels, and in turn fall to fighting each other.  The line of Brutus being extinct with the death of Gorboduc, the country falls into anarchy, with rebels, nobles, and a Scottish invader all fighting for the right of succession.  The curtain falls upon a scene of bloodshed and utter confusion.

The artistic finish of this first tragedy is marred by the authors’ evident purpose to persuade Elizabeth to marry.  It aims to show the danger to which England is exposed by the uncertainty of succession.  Otherwise the plan of the play follows the classical rule of Seneca.  There is very little action on the stage; bloodshed and battle are announced by a messenger; and the chorus, of four old men of Britain, sums up the situation with a few moral observations at the end of each of the first four acts.

CLASSICAL INFLUENCE UPON THE DRAMA.  The revival of Latin literature had a decided influence upon the English drama as it developed from the Miracle plays.  In the fifteenth century English teachers, in order to increase the interest in Latin, began to let their boys act the plays which they had read as literature, precisely as our colleges now present Greek or German plays at the yearly festivals.  Seneca was the favorite Latin author, and all his tragedies were translated into English between 1559 and 1581.  This was the exact period in which the first English playwrights were shaping their own ideas; but the severe simplicity of the classical drama seemed at first only to hamper the exuberant English spirit.  To understand this, one has only to compare a tragedy of Seneca or of Euripides with one of Shakespeare, and see how widely the two masters differ in methods.

In the classic play the so-called dramatic unities of time, place, and action were strictly observed.  Time and place must remain the same; the play could represent a period of only a few hours, and whatever action was introduced must take place at the spot where the play began.  The characters, therefore, must remain unchanged throughout; there was no possibility of the child becoming a man, or of the man’s growth with changing circumstances.  As the play was within doors, all vigorous action was deemed out of place on the stage, and battles and important events were simply announced by a messenger.  The classic drama also drew a sharp line between tragedy and comedy, all fun being rigorously excluded from serious representations.