To
penetrate to Purcell's intention, to understand with what skill and
force the intention is carried out, a knowledge of the music alone
hardly suffices. I would not advise anything so terrible as an endeavour
to read the whole of the plays, but at least _Boadicca, The Indian
Queen, The Tempest, The Fairy Queen, Dioclesian_ and _King Arthur_ must
be read; and it is worth while making an effort especially to grasp all
the details of the masques. For themselves, few of the plays are worth
reading; and, unluckily, the best of them have the least significant
music. The others are neither serious plays nor good honest comedy; and
a malicious fate willed that the very versions for which Purcell's aid
was required were the worst of all--what little sense there was in the
bad plays was destroyed when they were made into "operas" or
"entertainments"--spectacular shows. Dryden was the best of the
playwrights he was doomed to work with, and in _King Arthur_ Dryden
forgot about the aim and purpose of high drama, and concocted a
hobgoblin pantomime interlarded with bravado concerning the greatness of
Britain and Britons. _Dioclesian_, the first of Purcell's great theatre
achievements, is even more stupid.
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