EN GL ISH DRAMA

F EL IX E . SCHELL IN GP RO F ESSOR IN THE UN IVE R S I TY OF P ENNSYLVAN IA

MEMBER OF THE AM E R I CAN NA T I ONA L INST I TU T E OF A R TSAND LE T T E R S

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON COMPANY681 F IFTH AVEN UE

COPYR IGHT, 19 14

BY E . P. DUTTON COMPANY

PREFACE

In the following pages, an endeavour i s made to tell , inscale and with a due regard to proportion , the story of Engl ishd rama from its beginnings in the mi racl e play and morali ty tothe performance of Sheridan

’s Critic, i n the year 1 779. A con

cluding chapter presents a sketch of the course of the dramas ince that time

,i n outl in e and by way of suggest ion , and no

more. To have completed the book on the same scale wouldhave demanded another volume. But a bette r reason for thecourse here pursued i s to be found in the ci rcumstance that , bythe time of Sheridan , almost the last vestige of the originald ramatic impulse had been lost , the impulse that begot Mar

lowe and Shakespeare and carried the great traditions of thei rart over the Restoration and into the next century ; and whenthe modern revival came , insp i red by a renewed appreciat ion of

the great Elizabethans , i t was mani festly not a revival on thestage , but in a new species of l i terature , the drama of the study,as different from the original parent stock as the novel i s d i fferen t from i t or from the drama capable of successful p resentation on the stage.Engl ish drama may be l ikened to a strand in which two

threads , among many, are conspicuous : the thread which designates the actable play and the thread which designates thatqual ity to which we give the indefinable term l iterature. I nthe days of Elizabeth , these two threads were , for the mostpart, so interwoven and twisted together that they gave to thecord that strength and unity that we recognise in the greatd ramas of that t ime. So complete , we may wel l bel ieve , wasthei r adaptat ion to the i r own stage — Which , be i t remembered ,was not our stage— that , in reading them merely or seeingthem reproduced under d ifferent cond itions

,we feel that they

have inevitably lost something of thei r original charm. But

the thread of l i terature and that of actabil ity ( shal l we call i t ?)tended , from the first , to fall apart . There are plays o f Shakespeare

’s own t ime that are inconceivable acted ; there are also

PREFACE

plays of h is t ime wh ich only the cur ious student now readsand that only for d iscipl ine. The spl i t became greater andgreater as the gentleman writer turned his attention to playmaking or as the allurements or profits of the craft attractedthose whose cultivation and power of expression in words was

inferior to thei r Opportuni ties of becoming practical ly conversantwith the stage. Until

,by the beginning of the las t century

,

the two threads have been torn hopelessly apart,that of the

theatre to be represented by Knowles , Robertson or Boucicault ,the l i terary and poetic , by Byron , Shelley and Tennyson , evenmore completely in severance , by B rowning and Swinburne.There i s need for a history of this great schism ; but i t belongsnot to a book of th is s ize or plan . F or a history of the d ramain the England of the n ineteenth century must take into con

s ideration pol itical and social developments,changes of atti tude

in reader and aud itor as well as the ideals of l iterature and cos

mOpolitan influences of which the happy l i ttle world , ruled byPepe and Voltai re, could have had no premonitions.In presenting the material of this book in as orderly a suc

cession as possibl e, the weal th of the Elizabethan age has led toa treatment of the drama, there , i n i ts successive vari eties ratherthan in a strict chronological array of the authors and thei rworks. A steady progress forward is , none the less , maintained .

Whil e the stage , as well as the l i terary nature of the works con~sidered , has been constantly kept in v i ew , a history of the stageas such forms no part of the plan of th is book. That work hasbeen well done more than once. On the other hand

, the attent ion of the reader is by no means l imited to the l i terary drama,as the progress of the type could in no wise be made clear without a consciousness of the background against which the greaterfigures stand and a recogni tion of the cond i tions that make thei rwork comprehensible. In any inquiry such as this , the authoris torn between the two extremes to which the late Mr. Langonce happily al luded in a review : the danger of tell ing ove ragain what everybody knows, and the peril of cal l ing attentionto what nobody cares anything about. The progress o f scholarship should alone be a sufficien t answer to this embarrass ingd ilemma

,the logical consequence of which would be the redue

t ion of al l who write to si lence. Wi th n ew mater ial accumulating daily to modi fy what everybody knows ,

” the peril ofcall ing attention to what nobody cares to hear anything aboutsensibly d im inishes. The ordering of m inor things in a truer

PREFACE

relation is a process in which a large part of the function of thehistor ian consists

,and out o f which major results may i ssue.

Even those most stubbornly content with the present state ofpol i te l earning in EurOpe may be constrained to readj ust th isfacil e d ivision of all things ascertainable.The present writer regrets that the plan of th is ser ies does

not include e i ther as complete an apparatus of notes or suchbibl iographies as are coming— possibly somewhat pedanticallymore and more into vogue. In l ieu of the first , he wishes to

make his general acknowledgments to his predecessors of whom,

among so many, to mention a few would be invidious. An ex

ception ,however, must be made in the case of Professor C. W.

Wallace,whose indefatigable researches in the Public Records’

O ffice have been so richly and astonishingly rewarded . Thedocumentary material which Professor Wallace has publ ishedconcern ing Shakespeare, the El izabethan theatres and kindredmatters

, has been used in thi s book materially to revise manyaccepted ideas on these subj ects . The writer has not alwaysbeen abl e to accept Professor Wallace’s inferences , and submitsthat possibly he may modi fy h is views when he can speak withgreater fulness of knowledge as to the many finds of Pro

fessorWallace that stil l await publ ication . The writer acceptsthe reSpon sibilities of his own stud ies for the El izabethan age

and the Restoration period to the death of Dryden ; beyond , heconfesses frankly that he has trodden more ci rcumspectly in thepaths wh ich those have made who preceded him. As to textsand authorities , the student reader is referred to the admirablyfull and useful b ibl iographies in the successive volumes of TheCambridge History of English Literature, to the excell en t l istsof authori ties in A. H. Thorndike

’s Tragedy, 1907 , and to theb ibl

igographical Essay of the presen t wr iter

’s Elizabethan Drama,190

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTERI

I I

I I I

IV

VI

VI I

VI II

IX

XI

XII

THE DRAMA, ITS NATURE, ORIGINS AND RELATIONS

MED IE VAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND

LYLY,MARLOWE AND OTHER IMM EDIATE PREDECESSORS OF

SHAKESPEARE

SHAKESPEARE AND HIs CONTEMPORARIES IN HISTORY ANDROMANTIC COM EDY

D EKKER,HEYWOOD AND THE DRAMA OP EVERY DAY LIFE

SHAKESPEARE,WEBSTER AND THE HE IGHT OF TRAGEDY

J ONSON AND THE CLASSICAL AND SATIR ICAL REACTION

B EAUMONT AND F LETCHER, AND THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE

SH IRLEY AND THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA

DRYDEN AND THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION

STEELE,ROWE AND THE CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA

ENGL ISH DRAMA S INCE SHERIDAN

INDEX

1 03

EN GLISH DRAMA

CHAPTER I

THE DRAMA,ITS NATURE, ORIG IN S AND RELATIONS

AS this book is on e of a seri es of volumes dealing w ith the majorchannels of Engl ish l i terature , a statement o f the nature andl imitations of the subj ect here in hand can not be out of place.To the modern man a defini tion of d rama migh t seem simpleenough. A drama is “ a thing made to be acted surely thisi s suffi c ien t ; and , indeed , acting touches the v i tal poin t O f alldrama. But the Senecan tragedies O f N cron ian Rome were notthings made to be acted neither i s much of the l i teraryd rama of Victorian England , Shelley

’s Cen ci for example or

Swinburne’s splend id tri logy devoted to Mary Stuart. While

an historical inquiry into any subj ect must consider that out ofwhich i t arises, i ts Cogeners and its outcomes, this book mustbe from the nature of the case , concerned , i n the main , withthat form and variety of written speech which detail s a con

n ected story by means of dialogue and the attendant action involved in histrion ic representation. M edizeval a

’

ébat, estrif andpageant ; ballet, masque and pantomime , modern Closet play,prose conversation , poeti c fantasy or rhapsody “ wri t d ialoguewise,

” each has i ts place and partakes in its measure of dramaticqual ities ; but none is strictly drama nor need cal l for more thana subsid iary mention for the contribution of i ts tributary streamto the current o f the main dramatic channel . Again , this bookis of English drama, that is , a history O f the growth and developmen t of the drama in on e country and in one tongue.There i s an interesting chapter on Latin drama in modernwestern Europe ; and foreign influences , in ebb and flow,

havealways been especially strong in l iterature o f the d ramatic type.N ei ther the examples of the anc ients nor borrowings from the

modem s can be neglected in an inquiry such as this ; but i t isI

ENGLI SH DRAMA

easy to make too much of them. They, too , must keep the irplace for the necessary l ight which they can throw upon our

major subj ect,and they must be permitted no more . As to on e

other l imitation th is book wil l be found l ess strict , and this i sbest suggested in the rej ection of the t i tl es , a history of dramatic poetry , or a his tory of dramatic l i terature.” Thislast word popularly involves an aesthetic appraisement w ith anexclusion of the in ferior and unl iterary, a process foreign torational h istorical inqu i ry. Indubitably we care less for production s that l ive thei r br ief day and perish with the age thatbegot them than we care for those accredited works which havemade thei r authors immortal . But the history OI l i terature canno more be written in a neglect of the writings of lesser menthan we can hope to write the history of a country solely on th ebas is o f the biographies o f i ts kings and princes . There i s muchadmirable d rama that i s not poetry

,whatever definition may be

attached to that much abused word . An d there are many playsthat we read with interest for the i r place in the h istory Of l i terature which could never move that detached and extraord inaryperson

,the reader whose standard is the hypothetical absolute .

As a point of departure , Aristotle’s simri

le definition of dramaas Imitated human action as not been ettered . The l imitat ion

,

“Human ,” Is not less pertinent than the much debatedterm imitat ion.

”For, however an Aristophanes or a Rostand

may take us off to Cloudland or to B i rdland , i t is the humantraits

,even in these departures

,that make such personages as

thei rs possibl e. Man cannot escap e man even in the drama,and

i t i s the ways of our kind , so dear to us , that const itute the essent ials of dramatic subj ect matter. F rom another well knowndefinit ion we may gain another poin t of view. A drama is anepic told in lyric parts.” But here we must apprehend the com

pon en ts i f we are to be sure of the compound . w it; inlarge

,i s a narrative poem

,a sto ry of deeds

,told outwardly and

obj ectively Ey some on e who has heard them . A l rical poem

( the song element aside for the nonce ) i s the expression o f aninner o r sub

'

ective emotion by on e who as e x

p resses . rama,In common Wi t t e ep ic , Is concerned In the

tell in o f a story. But the story is n ot told obj ectively and inthe tliIrEl person , but in the very speech , action and emot ions ofthe participants

,thus involving lyrical expression . It i s Ob

v ious that we have here less a defin ition than an illustration , forthere are other elements in both ep ic and lyrical poetry which

NATURE , ORIG INS AND RELATIONS

might read ily confuse ; and , besides , the range of drama, as wehave seen

,i s broader than that of poetry , however i ts heights

may fal l short of the lo ftie r flights of the insp i red rhapsod iclyrist. I f we combine what we have thus far discussed

,we have

for a drama, a picture or representat ion of human l i fe in thatsuccess ion n d Chan e of events that we call Sto ry told by meansM e emotions in

MBut i t i s far from true that every story is d ramatic , even

though i t fulfil i n presentation the cond itions already rehearsed .

Every drama involves so the philosopher would have us knowa confl ict between what he calls the universal and the particu

lar,with the triumph in the end of on e or the o ther. In tragedy

the universal i s some law of general acceptance among men,

whether ethical and of man ’s making or founded on rel igioussan ction . The struggle is therefore o f a serious nature as i tinvolves rebell ion against F ate, against God or, at the least ,against accepted human code . Hence tra ed deal s with thedeep and turbulent passions those that lead to Viole andcr ime. In comedy, contrastedly, the un iversal i s some convenM “

t ion of men , a concatenation of ci rcumstances which commonexperi ence tel ls us are likely to lead to certain results

,and the

struggl e of the individual i s against such things , the process ofh is st ruggl e

,cl everness , ingenuity, wit against w it, II‘ which

the l ighter traits of mankind , thei r manners , foll i es , peccad i lloes ,play a d iverting part. Hence comedy leads to laughter as i rres istibly as tragedy begets tears. A53 in an u lt imate analysis

,the

philosopher once more tells us,the essential d i fference between

t ragedy and comedy l ies in the nature of the universal .To illustrate the nature of dramatic conflict

,in the fam i l iar

tragedy of M acbeth, a struggle is involved bet ween the uni

versal law expressed in the command , Thou shalt do no murder ,

” and the ind iv idual will of M acbeth . The law declaresThou shal t n ot slay thy fellow man and thrive thereafter.”

M acbeth , in hi s mad in fatuation\

to attain a crown,dares‘ to

commit murder ; bu t finds that barely to maintain his crown,

he must wade ever deeper in crime . An d i n the end,even

crime wil l not save him. M acbeth has put his will againstete rnal law

,and he goes down to destruction the consequent

v ictim of his ow n folly and wickedness . Moreover,we are

satisfied artistically as well as e thical ly with the result. O n theother hand , the con fli ct of The Taming of the Shrew l ies .be

4 ENGLI SH DRAMA

tween the wil l of Petruch io who has determ ined to tame Katharine , and the common experience of men that women of

Katharine’s temper are inconvertible into submiss ive and ami

abl e wives. Our pleasu re l ies in the process of the comedy,and

especially in the unexpectedness of the triumph of the intrep i dbridegroom. The statemen t of th e confl ic t is not always so

s imple as in these typ ical cases. The plot of most plays i s involved in minor part iculars concern ing minor personages. Totake the two Shakespearean plays j ust contrasted : in M acbeth

we have the subsid iary story of Macduff whose failure to cred i tthe depravity o f Macbeth or neglect to provide for so bloody acontingency loses him his wi fe and children under c ircumstanceso f hideously wanton cruelty. Insuffici en t enough must havebeen the v i ctory of M acduff’s sword on the usurper who diedl ike a man sword in hand. But Macdu ff i s not the hero of

M acbeth . His story is necessary, l ike that o f the un fortunateBanquo, not for i tsel f but as an essential feature of M acbeth

’sstruggle with fate. So , too, The Shrew involves a secondstory , that of Katharine’s s iste r, B ianca, and her sui tors .B ianca is the sweet average young woman , pretty, bu t wantingKatharine

’s personal ity and charm. Her story i s an excellentfo i l for that of the more forceful an d entertain ing “ shrew.

”

You can always tel l what wil l happen to B ianca ; in her nu

expectedness l ies the effective comedy o f Kate the curst.”

Dare a man defy the laws of God and make h is way bymeans of murder to a crown ? The answer is d efin itively no .Dare a man take the l i fe o f a fr iend whom he loves , bel iev ingh im to be a tyrant and that thus he i s p reserving the l iberti esof his country ? Again we answer no , although enormouslyd ifferent is the case of B rutus as contrasted with Macbeth.M ore , can we justi fy the folly of an aged king who d ividesh is kingdom among his Children befo re his d eath and d isinheri tshi s only faith ful daughter because she is not glib of tongue inthe expression of her fi l ial affection ? An d are we able to extenuate so as to forgive the violent act that caused an honourable sold i er to kill h is beloved under mistake that she was untrue, when that mistake was the result Of the most d iabolicalpract ice by means of which an honourabl e man has ever beenduped ? For neither King Lear nor for O thello can we conceive a further l i fe in this world , shriven and measurably for

getful of past sorrow. An d this l eads us to a recognition of

the eth ical qual i ty of tragedy wh ich deman ds exp iation in ful l

NATURE , ORIG INS AND RELATIONS

measure no matter what the ul t imate cause or justification of

crime. Where great tragedy has flourished in the world thisr igour of the universal law has been unrelentingly upheld ,whether we express our ideas in the rel igious symbols of

fEschylan mythology, in terms of th e God of Christian creedsor i n Ibsenesque phantoms of hered i ty and human depravi ty.Recurring to comedy, we may ask other questions than that

which concerns the temerity O f Petruchio . Can a young womanwho serves the prince whom she loves in the capaci ty and d is

guise of a page, hope to w in him by honestly acting as h ismessenger to another lady whom he affects ? Viola accom

plishes th is in Twelfth N ight; and Helena in All'

s Well that

Ends Well, contrives against lowly birth , her husband’

s vowand desert ion equally to attain her obj ect. But i n comedy,unl ike tragedy

,the outcome of the struggl e is no t always cer

tain and a triumph for the protagonist. We may query oncemore : may four young gentl emen lock themselves away fromconverse with womankind for study and hope to remain undisturbed and undistracted ? The answer of Love's Labour

’

s Lost

i s pleasantly no .” An d may a young man an d a young womandetermine each to himsel f and contrary to the time Of the h eyday oi l i fe that n ei ther will marry, and succeed in keeping thisvow ?

“N ot i f thei r own hearts with the help of knavish

friends contrive to defeat them is the answer of the M uch Ad o

About N othing . Obviously i f the universal i s only relativelysuch

,the outcome may be d ivertingly uncertain . There is as

much delight,from a comedy point of view, i n effort d iscon

certed as in effort successful , in Character disprOportion ate asp roport ionate to profession . Comedy is more variablew than

as i t i s dependent on more trans ient cofififtififis. TheO f individual effort over fortu itous C i rcumstances sti ll

defines a large class o f Comedies , but pathos , character andlaughter all are subserved equally well by the inverse method .

I t has of course not escaped the ingenious reader that theforegoing examples have been wholly Shakespearean and he w illneither forget that there are many other dramatists both beforean d after , nor that there are many other methods in the d ramati cart. N ot yet to leave Shakespeare

,there are queri es that arise

i n the solution of the d ramatic struggle in hi s plays which weshould not answer as he answered them . Are we satisfied withthe fate of Shylock or the forgiveness o f Leontes in The Winter

’

s Tale? To the query dare a man make the quest ion of

6 ENGLI SH DRAMA

h is w ife’s virtue the subj ect of a common wager and hope forreconcil iation and happiness after , we are astonished to findShakespeare answering

“ yes ” i n Cymbelin e, and the dramatist

’

s source alone wil l n ot explain this complaisance. Morecomprehensible to the contemporary mind i s the condoning of

incorrigibl e knavery which we meet in Jonson and M iddletonand which had an honest l ineal descent from Plautus and th eGreek comedians . But these matters are ephemeral and maywell be l eft to the h istor ical part of our subj ect .F or the conduct of this representat ion of man in confl ict w ith

h is envi ronment which we call drama many rules have beendevised and many precepts determined . In these matters i t isalways worth while to ascertain whether the principles of dramatic structure wh ich we find laid down so convincingly inbooks are the resul t o f an actual examination of the field o f th ed rama enti re

,even of any one group of plays

,or i f they are

based,as they o ften are

,merely on scholarly ratiocination . Aris

totle was an observer of the greatest possible acuteness ; but themere sanction of h is name has long since ceased to carry lawsto th e barbarians. Aristotl e wrote , or was rather reportedwith Greek t ragedy almost alone in View ; F reytag with theGerman masterpieces of a century ago for h is chief il lustrations.M any people wri te books on this topic who forget that thedrama has changed s ince Shakespeare , and more appear to su ffe runder the supersti t ion that there i s a superio r merit in a playwhich is structurally “ correct ” ; as i f the growing forms o f

l i terary or other organisms could be determined a priori, andthe process o f time and gen ius , which again and again justi fiesin success th e transgressions of all such laws , were n ot to b ereckoned with .

Wi th such a concept ion of the relations o f the technical i t iesof any art to the art in i ts Vi tal development

,the reader must

not be surprised to find l ittl e store set in th is book on questionsthat concern the posi tion of the Cl imax and the advantages ofpostponed catastrophe. He who wishes to know the d i ffe ren ces between action-dramas and passion-dramas

,

” the subtl ed istinctions that explain plot and counter-plot

, sub-plot and en

velop ing action , the kinds and varieties of nemesis, and the

moment of tragic suspense ,” may find all of these things set

down in the books that treat them. Obviously , a play , l ikeany other story, is governed by certain principles of Construction .

I t must begin and Close at the proper place in the narrative,

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/join

8 ENGLI SH DRAMA

l ife, why a closer causal relat ion is to be sough t in a play thanin an h istor ical occurrence. Again , ach art has i ts own con

yen tion s and may be l ikened to a foreign language W i th all itsi dioms and pecul iar characterist ics into which the story takenfrom li fe has been translated . I t i s qui te as i rrational toquarrel with conventions of dramatic stage representation as i twould be to quarrel with a Greek second aorist or w ith thedual gender in Sanskri t. Th e grammar and idiom of languages Change

,and so, too , do the grammar and id iom of the

stage. Certain th ings can be done with colour on canvas, otherthings with bronze or plaster. The highest art i s that whichspeaks idiomatically in i ts own dialect

,the art that tran sl ates ,

l i fe frankly into the terms of i ts ow n acceptance.An d now let us turn from these general it ies as to the nature

of drama to consider why the English d rama is what i t is. At

the outset i t may be affirmed that modern drama can in n o

sense be traced back to any d irect l i terary contact with anc ientd rama, Greek or Roman . O n the suppos ition that some suchtouch may once have existed , i t has been customary to ci te as examples th e Suffering Christ (Xpw rbs waoxwv) , once attributedto St. Gregory the N azianzene , who l ived in the fourth cen

tury, and the Terentian comed ies of the Abbess Hrotsw itha of

Gandersheim in Saxony. But the first, however suggestive ofan acquaintance with G reek tragedy, turns out to belong notto St. Gregory of the fourth century , but to a Byzant ine writerof th e twelfth . I t has been described as a rel igious exercisei n th e garb of Euripidean d iction and as doubtless unknown toWestern readers until the sixteenth century. The comedies ofHrotswitha, which belong to the twelfth centu ry , were anhonest attempt

,by a high-m inded and talented woman of cul

ture and rank,to apply the dialogue and si tuations of Latin

comedy to moral and rel igious teach ing. This was preciselywhat the humanists attempted on a greater scal e and moreoriginal ly two or three hundred years later ; but whether anyconnection really existed between such sporadic efforts and thefamous mention by Wi l l iam F itzstephen , in the later twel fthcentury

,of

“ miracles of saints and passion s of holy martyrsmay wel l b e doubted . These lost saints’ plays, l ike the extantdrama o f Hi larius who was supposed to have been born inEngland

,seem rather to l ink on to the sacred drama, however

i nd irectly they may have been e ffected by l i terary examples .As one of the northern , outlying provinces of the Roman em

NATURE , ORIG IN S AND RELATIONS 9

mm and as a part of that empire which reverted more com

pletely to earl ier barbarian cond itions than some of the provincescloser to Rome , we must expect to find l i ttle or no influenceof Roman conditions on anything that survived in the nature o fdrama in England . This was substanti al ly the h istory of theother countries of western Europe , however the successors ofthe scen ici and the degenerate mime of Roman origin may havebecome confused

,in the earl ier middle ages , with the tumblers,

buffoons and wandering r imesters who added thei r rude humour and revel ry to the even ruder humour of the folk. The

of es , i n contrast to the mime, was a personageof di n ity and importance , and his successor m ge

‘

ifal'

days ,thE

‘

IEIIm -Offm f

'

fl'

tain ed much of both . Both of theseold Engl ish entertainers could have included l ittle that wasdramatic among thei r songs and stately reci tals , save where thed irect touch of narrated d ialogue or mimicry in impersonationmay have added to them verve and l i fe-l ikeness. But Englishminstrelsy was soon to learn many things from the vivacioustrouveres and j ongleurs of the N orman conqueror, and amongthem were the quasi-dramatic d isputations , jeux-partis andestrifs among which The Harrow ing of Hell, an estrif on thebeauti ful legend of Christ ’s descent into hell , may be reckonedas one of the sources of the morali ty. Among the humblestrollers whose entertainment was of a lighter and more comicsort

,d ialogue was certainly early in vogue and the use of

marionettes,which i s well authenticated ,

“ impl ies no t onlyd ialogue but plot.” 1 F arce became prevalent enough on thecontinent to form a distinct and recognised species of mediaaval

drama ; but , in England , save for a single mention of otherj apis in the Tretise of miracles pleyinge and the fragment ofthe text of the l n terlud ium de Clerico et Paella, a dialoguefounded on the popular story of Dame Si riz , we have nothingto correspond to the considerable reperto ire of this kind inF rance unti l we reach the days of John Heywood . N or do

occasional indications of the performance of satirical attacks ind ramatic form give us the right to reconstruct for Englandmore than an hypothetical existence o f any such dramatic organisation s as the Enfan ts san souci or the Basoche of Paris . How fl

ever, that both such actors and such a lighter drama did existthroughout the med iaeval centuries in England is certain in1 See Secular Influen ces on the Early English Drama, by H. H.

Ch ild, Cambridge History of English Literature, v i, 25 .

I o ENGLI SH DRAMA

v i ew of what came afte r. I t is always to be remembered thatl i ttle of a l i terary character inheres in popular drama such as

this. The art of writing was an unusual accompl ishment evenamong the clergy

,and records such as these , which often called

down the cr i ticism and the enmity of the Church , were l i ttl ep reserved except where

, as in the case of the mi racle play, theyreceived the church ’s sanction .

A roo t of Engl ish drama, earl ier and deeper than long poss ible survival s from the classical ages has been uncovered in thestudy of folk-lore 2 The festivals and Observances of Pagantimes

,w itli thei r set r i tual o ften involving procession , combat ,

dance , song and disgu ise , had much in common wi th the Spi ri tthat makes for drama. F estivals such as those that survived inthe Observances of Christmas , May

-day, and harvest t ime createthe holiday mood and induce the exercise of activi ty for playwhich has in i t the elements of feigning. On the l i terary s ide,while the can tilen ae, or songs celebrat ing the deeds of theheroes of the folk , may have had in them l i ttle of the dramaticelements

,trad itional festival songs were commonly accompanied

by a burden or“ chorus and many were framed by way of

query and response amounting at t imes to set d ialogue. Inshort

,while the material connected wi th early Engl ish customs

among the folk exhib i ts no such certain steps as those whichcan be traced in early Hell en ic times , the analogue of a develOpmen t from folk-song and festival to folk-drama in bothcases involves no uncertain process of reasoning. N or isEngland without example , in mention and surv ival , pointing to what this folk-drama may have been. A gossipyattendant at court

, Robert Laneham , describes for us a performan ce of the Hock Tuesday play at Coventry in 1 5 75 , on e

o f the many entertainments in honour of Queen El izabeth’

sv isi t to the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth . This old storialshow as our in formant cal ls i t , was for pastime wont to beplayed yearly,

” and he describes the argument : how the Engl ish under Huna defeated the Danes and ri d the kingdom ofthem in the reign of Ethelred on Saint B rice

’s night , N ovember ,1002 . John Rous

,Lan eham

’

s predecessor , in a mention of theHock Tuesday play by over a hundred years , assigns the storyto a commemoration of the driving out of the Danes which preceded the accession of Edward the Confessor to the throne in

2An authoritative book on th is sub ject is th at of E. K . Chambers,Mediew al Drama

, 2 vols.,1 903 .

NATURE , ORIG INS AND RELATIONS I !

In al l l ikel ihood the origin harks back to an immemorial folk-custom in the process of which a v ictim was obtain ed for the sacri fice by simulated force , women playing animportan t part in the struggle. This last feature remainedconspicuous

,accord ing to Laneham , i n the Hock Tuesday plays .

There are many other examples of the general custom ; the performan ce which Elizabeth saw at Coventry is the only instanceof this folk-custom transformed into the d ialogue and actionof a connected play.

‘

O f the Hock Tuesday play we hear no more after Laneham ; the sword-dance remained fruitful later . Such a custommay obv iously date , among a warlike people , from exceedinglyearly

,even savage

,

‘ times . Wri ters on folk—lore associate i ts r i tual with primitive customs having to do wi th the expulsion o fDeath and Winter and the resurrection of Summer , and i t i sthe source of many an extant débat and estrif on the topic.The sword-dance soon became mimetic and certain defin itepersonages developed

,such as the fool and the “

Bessy, a mandressed in woman ’s clothes. Some have held the morris-dance

( in which appear M aid M arian and Robin Hood himsel f veryoften ) merely an o ff shoot of the sword-dance. A developmentof more in terest to us dramatically i s the mummers or St.George play which has by no means as yet disappeared frommany outlying rural parts of Eng land . Here the central ideais the kill ing o f one of th e personages and his restoration tol i fe. The Chie f character is always a saint, a k ing or a princeGeorge , there is a Spoken introduction of the Characters besidesthe dialogue , much action , dancing and often a number of subsidiary personages among whom , the hobby-hOTSe is not for

got.” I t has been justly remarked that the king and prince

George ” are Hanoverian improvements , as saint George”

must have been medimval with its suggestion of the contem

porary influences of saints’ play and miracle . The Robin Hood.

play. . is stil l another of these survivals of the customs of thefolk; but here the m od i fying contemporary influence wasmedimval

' balladry,i tsel f a l ineal descendant from early com

mun al song. The Robin Hood play is regarded a developmentof the May

-game in which the coming of spr ing is celebratedwith dance and song

,and a king and queen appointed to lead

in the revels. The pastoral form of th is play was universal inF rance, and Robin became the type-name of the shepherd lover,3 Historia Regum Angliae (prin ted pp . 1 05, 1 06.

1 2 ENGLI SH DRAMA

Mar ion that of h is m istress. In England , all th is was confusedwith the ballad sto ry of Robin Hood , Marion became MaidM arian and the pastoral features were lost i n those of freeforest l i fe and fight w ith d ishonest consti tuted author ity, represented in the Sheri ff of N ott ingham and the del ightful outlawry of Robin and his friends , F riar Tuck , Li ttl e John andthe rest. The Paston Letters disclose an interest ing mentiono f a servant with whom his master was loath to part becausehe played Robin Hood an d the Sheri ff of N ott ingham so well .4

This famil iar mention points to a popular ity of such performanecs in the fi fteenth centu ry. Moreover , a fragment of sucha play of much the date of the al lusion just mentioned is extan tand “ a merry geste o f Robin Hood , with a new play forto be played in May Games ,

” was pr inted about the year 1 56 1 .

The story of Robin Hood was later to prove dramaticallyfruit ful in many plays of the Shakespearean age , but i t may bedoubtful i f this was so much a survival of any influence fromthe old folk-plays as i t was referable to the awakened nat ionalSp i r i t that found in th is popular hero of old Engl ish balladry ,whose ancestry extended to the Teutonic god Wod in ( thoughl ittl e they knew i t ) , a personage pecul iarly typ ical of the newage. When all has been said for these influences of the immemorial ri tuals of the folk

,thei r games and fest iv it ies

,l i ttle

can be p roved excep t that such customs preserved among thepeople a temper o f mind favourabl e to the dramatic way of

p resenting things. This the mediaeval Chr istian clergy werequick to d iscern ; and the cl everness , that turned the Saturnali ainto Christmas and the pagan l icenses of May

-day into the re

joicin gs of Easter, converted the love of fiction , the impulsefor play and disguise and mumming into a potent means wherewith to spread a knowledge of b ibl e story and an acceptance ofChristian doctrine. That a learned Byzantine p riest shouldhave remembered Euripides when he wrote h is sufi ering Christand a cultivated German princess her Terence , whom she im itated crudely enough with l ike p ious intent

,seem matters in

n o wise remarkabl e. But we may feel more than assured thatthese were exceptional cases

,academic and to some extent im

pract ical . The age needed a translation of the great t ruths ofChristian ity in famil iar terms of the present , and med iaeval artaccompl ished th is in i ts own way. Th us i t developed a dramathat employed , o f what went be fore , all that was vital and4 Paston Letters, ed . Gairdner, iii, 89.

NATURE , ORIGIN S AND RELATIONS 1 3

S igni ficant,all that it could understand

,neglect ing as non

existent or declaring active war on all else.M mmedimval times was l ike one of those wonderful and in congruous cathedrals , built out of the ruins of Roman temple andDru id al tar al ike , in which angels , saints and demons combinewith the human hands that framed them , i n an ornamentationb izarre and absurd , to produce , none the less , a total result thati s sincere

,imposing and lastin Into that stately edifice let

now e er, remem er ing t at i t was ded icated singly to theservice of God.

CHAPTER I I

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND

TEE drama o f England , l ike that of all other countries o fwestern Europe, ad its ltimate ori in in the se rvices of theChurch , though other influences came in t ime to shape and deflect It from its maj or purpose, the representations o f port ionsof the scriptures for rel igious and moral edification . The beginnings of modern d rama l ie at the heart of the ri tual of theChurch . Technical ly described

,modern drama takes i ts r ise

in an an ti hon al mimet ic development of certain tropes of

the mass. rans ate h is s ign ifies that in the process o f

elaboration to which the se rv ices of the Church were submittedduring the n inth and tenth centur ies , th e Choral parts of themass were extended and supplemented by the insertion of newmelod ies to which in time n ew words were written . The inserted melod ies were called n eumae, th e words of these amplifi~

cations, troges . Some tropes i n later metrical developments

gave riSe to famous mediaeval hymns . O ther tropes , whichwere attached to alternating songs

,took a d ialo e form

,and

among them a few proved dramatically poten tiafand came int ime to be accompanied by a speci es of stage representat ion .

Such a trOpe was the Quem quaeritis, as i t is called from itsfirst two words , an amplification of the O/ffi cium or I n troit,the al ternating song

,

“ sung by the choi r at the beginn ing of themass as the celebrant approaches the al tar. In i ts earl iest ands implest form the Quem quaeritis is l i ttl e more than a paraphrase of M atthew (xxvi i i , 1 -7 ) or the corresponding passagei n M arh (xvi , 1 This trope was first written at St. Gallenabout the year 900. Transferred to the celebration of Easter,i t became at once dramatically capabl e of extension . Theearl iest scra of anything l ike an acted scene that has come downW an d , i s a bri ef transcrip t of th i s d ialogue betweenthe angel at the sepulchre of Christ and the two M aries andSalome. I t i s stil l preserved in an old manuscrip t enti tled the

x4

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1 6 ENGLI SH DRAMA

liturgical plays. With the i r formal responses and Lat intexts they were ful l of suggest ion ; but thei rs was the efficacyof the symbol. In no t rue sense do they represent histrion icallythe events of B ible story. The l i turgical plays are interestingto the h istorian o f the dram a only i n view of what in t ime wasto develop from them .

The dramatic development of the li turgy belongs especiallyto the twel fth century with hal f a century added before andafter. The dramatic motive involved in the doctrine of thereal presence , with i ts v ivid and poignant sense of the humansuff ering of Christ for mankind , was soon to l i ft the symbol ismof l i turgical ceremony into the reali sm of actual drama. Be

fore the beginn ing of the eleventh century the process of amplification had set in . The simpl e colloquy between the angel an dthe Maries at the tomb was developed at t imes to embrace thepurchase of O intments o f the sp ice merchant by one of theM aries , thei r communication of the news of the resurrection tothe apostles , a l ike v i s i t o f two o f them to the sepulchre

,and

the appari tion o f the Saviour to Mary M agdalene . Similarly,to the Pastores were added the lamentation of Rachel and the

M a trop e of different origin , wherein the three kings ofthe east are represen ted as guided by a star, set gl i ttering overthe altar, to th e cradl e that lay beneath . O ther tropes of theservice also developed , as for example , the Brgghetae, whichoriginated n ot in a chan t but in an early narrative sermonagainst the Jews. But

,for our purposes

,we need not be fur

ther concerned with these l i turgical beginn ings. This incipi en tdrama was early recognised for i ts value as Creizen ach has putit, furnishing a species of l iving p icture-book of sacred sto rywherewith to forti fy the unlearned people in thei r fai th .

”

The next step towards actual drama is Obviously the detachment o f these “ plays from thei r place in the service. Theycontinued long in thei r original positions even after they hadcome l ikewi se to be O therwise employed . But once detached ,the invention of l ike ep isodes dramati c and thei r use for d iversreligious purposes were certain to follow. We hear very earlyof plays on the l ives and miracles of saints. Such must havebeen the Play of St. Catherin e, prepared by a N orman , Godefroy of Le Mana, head-master of the monastery school at Dunstable

,dating 1 1 19, but now lost. And such are the three

d ramas of Hilarius , a pupil of Abelard on the Resurrection ofLazarus, on Dan iel and St. N icholas, 1 1 25 , stil l to be read in

MEDUEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 1 7

thei r monkish Latin and interspersed F rench wi th d irect ionsthat Show thei r adaptabil i ty to matins or vespers. These playsof Hi larius belong not to England although the ir author hasbeen thought by some to have been of Engl ish birth. Eventhe well known allusion of Wi l l iam F itzstephen , in hi s Lifeof Th omas d Bechet (C. to the representations of

miracles wrought by holy con fessors , or of the tribulations andconstancy of martyrs

,

” all enacted in London,l eave us in

doubt as to the language in which they were written and as towhether they could have been more than performances , at mostAnglo-N orman , i f not actually imported from F rance. Indeedn o such body of saints

’ plays , as is wel l known for example inF rance , exists for mediaeval England ; and we are compelled toreconstruct from rare mention and by analogy a l iterature whichWe have reason to bel ieve must once have been.

2 When weconsider how thoroughly under the domin ion o f the N ormansboth poli tical and Clerical l i fe remained from the conquest o fWill iam almost to the time of Edward I I I , how the l anguageof learning and the Church was Latin , the language of cultureand of the courts of law N orman-F rench

,and how the ver

n acular was desp ised and neglected by the governing classes , wecan hardly wonder that traces of this particular kind are sofew. But there seem , too, to have been other reasons . TheEngl ish taste appears less to have del ighted in those extensionso f Scrip ture , the Apocrypha and the legends of the saints . En g;

s for le bible story ; and while theEngl ish distinguished no more than t e i r medimval brethreni n other lands the facts of history from its fict ions

,the con

creten ess of the material of accepted bible story as comparedwith the al legory and vagueness of sacred legend may go farto account for this.In England , above all other mediaeval countries , do we

find the growth and enlargement o f the bible story,scene by

scene, carried to i ts logical conclusion , until from a scene ortwo, i l lustrative and forming a part of the service , this dramadeveloped to an enormous cycle of sacred history, beginning

2 Beside the scattered men tion s of lost p lays of St. George, St.

Lauren ce,St. Botolph , and others

, see the accoun t of Mary Magdalen

of the D igby MS below an d Creizen ach’

s men tion of the fragmen t of

a miracle p lay on Duke Moraud , belon ging to the fifteen th cen tury.

Cambridge History of English Literature, v.

1 8 ENGLI SH DRAMA

with the creat ion O f man,his fall and banishment from the

garden of Eden , and extending through the more importan tmatters of the O ld Testamen t and the l i fe of Christ in theN ew to the summoning of the quick and the dead on the dayof final judgment. This kind of drama is called the miracl eplay - sometimes l ess correctly the mystery play — an d i tflourished throughou t England from the reign of Henry I Ito that o f Elizabeth and became the parent of a large progenyo f rel igious

,moral an d allegorical p roductions which in tarn

fo rmed the soi l out o f which modern drama was later to spring.Apparently the earl iest mi racle plays to be performed in England belong to the Eastern M i dlands and to a date not far removed from 1 250. Singly or in cycle , records declare thei rexistence at scores of places, London , the great sees O f Canterbury, York and Winchester, at the universiti es , and especiallyat the larger market r town s of Kent , Essex , N orfolk and othercounties. I time a feature of

re ; and they were employed on secular occas ions tocelebrate a e , or to ign alize some memor

ngs attended this extension of

Tm,and the most notable was its secularization . F rom

representations on stationary p latforms in church , by the clergy ,at first in Latin ,

the mi racles were transferred to movabl epageants, or plat forms set on wheels , d rawn from p lace toplace wi th appropriate decorations and music, acted by tradesmen

’s guilds — sometimes by professional actors -and in the

Engl ish l anguage. There i s an in teresting Old manuscript (nowOften reproduced ) , showing the arrangement of twenty-twoplatforms in the church at Don auschin gen in the Sixteenth cen

tu ry,arranged for the performance of a d rama deal ing with

the passion . Here the pageants were o rdered to correspondwith the .n ave th e

ell was placed nearr door the sepulchre in the

sanctuary i tsel f.3 Plainly here was much to stage i n a singl ebuild ing

,however large ; and i t i s clear that the pressure of the

crowd had , much to do with taking the miracle play out of

the churches . But there were other reasons .’

Early in thehistory Of the medizeval stage cer tain pract ices arose even among

3 Th is plan is reproduced in Chambers’ Med ieeo al Stag e, I i

, 84.

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 1 9

the clergy, con fused in part with the privileges and l icenseaccorded to periods of public rejo icing and traceabl e back topagan t imes. Th e F eas t of Fools was a N ew Year ’s revelin which the minor clergy parodied the serv ice and carri ed on

loutish tricks. A s imilar revel , more common in England , wasthe mock election of a Boy B ishop . These and other l ikeabuses set the more serious clergy against stage acting

,and

the prohibi t ion of lud i theatrales b PO e Innocent I I I in 1 207 ,

m mRobert Grosteste the re forming B ishop of Lincoln , in 1 244as directed against all, dramas. This helped , too , to secularizethe rama. On the other han the insti tution of the feast ofCorpus Chr ist i by Pope Urban , i n 1 2 1 4 , gave a marked impulseto the lay performan ce of rel igious plays. F or the trade-guildsin England adopted the miracle play as a feature of the solemn

p roc ession of the triumphal Church wi th which they were ac

customed to celebrate thei r ch ie f holiday of the year. I t wasthus under the fostering hand of the lguildsl out of whosebody

,be it remembered

,civic Oflicers of the medizeval town

were recrui ted — that the-

miracle play developed into the

sumptuous and elaborate spectacl e that it became ; and i t i sowing to the pains wi thwhich , i n certain cases , the ciVIC recordswere kept and preserved that we owe our first hand knowledgeof these interesting avo

‘

cations of our mediaeval forefathers“

.

F our cycles of collective miracle plays remain extant and allhave been carefully reprinted and edi ted from the or i ginalmanuscripts and studied in themselves and in thei r relations.The earl i est manuscrip t is that of the York Plays and datesbetween 1 430 and 1440. The Town eley Plays are not muchlater

,and those of Cheste r and the Ludus Coven triae, as the

fourth is inaccurately called,fol low after in the same century,

though practically al l Show signs i n certain places of laterrevisions and the performance of some of the scenes mustdate far earl ier than the manuscripts. All of these cyclesbegin with the creation or the fall of Luci fe r and extend to theday of doom ; and all deal with comparative brevity of O ld

Testamen t subj ects to centre interest in the birth , the passionan d the resurrect ion of Christ. The Yorh Cycle was acted

yearly by the craft-guil ds of that town and is ment ioned as longin progress , as early as 1 3 78. I t consists of forty-e ight scenesor plays, each acted

“

by a separate gui ld . I t i s written in avariety of styles and stanzas and may be regarded as a compila

20 ENGLI SH DRAMA

t ion rather than the revision of a single author. The YorkCycle represents most fully the l i fe and work of Christ. TheTown eley Plays, i t i s now believed , were acted by the craftgui lds of Wékefi eld in Yorksh ire at the important fai rs hel dat Woodkirk. They consist of a composi te, made up of threegroups

,and Show relation in part to an earl ie r form of the

York Plays . But other parts of the work stand out as theanonymous composition of a singl e author whose qual ities of

humour,effective sat ire and homely real ism have earned fo r

h im the ti tl e of‘our

'

first great comic dramatist,the play

wright of Wakefield .

” The Chester Cycle was acted by craftguilds at Whitsuntide and shows close relations to the F renchM ystére d a Viel Testamen t. I t i s of somewhat unequal excellen ce and Sophisticated in i ts effort to achieve dramatic effect.Unl ike the cycles of York an d Wakefield

,i t

‘draws on thelegends of saints for material , and on the Apocrypha. Las tly,the so-cal led Ludus Cooen triae i s not real ly of Coventry at all.I t may possibly have been of N orfolk . I ts scenes fall i ntoseveral groups

,separated by conclusions and introduced and

explained by a personage, called Con templacio . O ther ah

straction s figure among i ts persons, an d i t d raws on matterwithout the bounds O f scriptural story. I t is not

—

al together clearthat the Ludus Couen triae— better cal led from a sometimeowner the Hegge Plays — was acted under clerical supervisionand i ts scenes appear to have been presented n ot on movabl epageants but in a pleyn place on scaffolds.The four cycles with the scattered scenes and parts of scenes ,

once parts of now lost cycles or existing apart , from a considerabl e body of material . N ot unl ike the mediazval ballad , wehave here less the collected work of many ind ividual writersthan the results of repeated revision and workings over of

material,success ively adapted to gradually changing condi tions .

Save for the bond that makes all before and after , the promiseand fulfilment o f the l i fe o f Christ, no unity kni ts the loosesuccession of scenes. The sanctity of thei r b ibl ical sourcesand it becoming awe for them contr ived to keep the more importan t personages — Jesus

,the M aries , Joseph , and the d isc i

ples figures of digni ty and measurably fai th ful to thei r scriptural models . N ei ther clumsiness of hand nor dramatic ineflicien cy could destroy thei r human and often pathetic appeal ;wh ile, in some of the finer scenes o f York and Town eley, we

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 2!

meet wi th homely but genuine d ramat ic qual i ty and success.As to less important matters , the authors o f the old miraclesdrew from thei r own experience and imagination , giving us,again and again , l i ttle gl impses into mediaeval Character andtouches o f the l i fe that existed about them. The most famousExample of the last is The Secon d Shepherds

’

Play of theTow n eley Cycle, i n which i s told the story of a thievish rascal ,named Mak, with his theft of a sheep from the shepherds , whoare awaiting for a sign of the coming of Christ on downs ,unmistakably of Yorkshire and amid the rigours of a Yorkshire winter. In the upshot

, Mak gets away with a sheep andconceals i t i n the cradle in his hovel , where i t is at last foundby the shepherds who toss the rogue in a blanket

,desp ite the

asseverations of Tib,his wi fe, that the sheep is really a change

ling,le ft unbeknown to her and her honest husband by fairies

who had spiri ted her own Child away. Here is a b i t o f actuall i fe

, cut free from all intent save that of d iversion. In suchscenes Engl ish comedy was born .

F rom the manuscripts o f these old cycles many interestingparticulars may be gleaned. The pageant at Chester is described as a high place made l ike a house with two rooms

,be

ing Open on the top : in the lower room they appareled anddressed themselves ; and in the higher room they played : andthey stood upon six wheels.” The decorations were of thesimplest and apparently the auditors stood on al l s ides of thewagon . However, imaginative realism was not wanting : theark in the pageant of the flood was shaped l ike a ship

,and hell

mouth with i ts flames of fire, i ts rattl ing chain s and instrumentsof torture, and the grim and hideous semblance of its dev ils ,served its purpose, as a deterrent from sin , doubtless as well asour bogey

,fear of publ ic reprobation. The actors

,though ama

teurs and trades peopl e, members O f the various crafts , receivedeach his fee for acting and other services ; and long l ists of payments remain in the records , some o f them amusing enoughto us. On e series of entries begins solemnly, Imprimis toGod , two shi ll ings,

” with later entries to Caiaphas and Pilatehis wi fe netting each four pence more. There are items forfi ve sheepskins for “

God ’s coat ,”for a l p for Herod ,

”and

for painting and repair ing the dev i l ’s head . Among paymentsfor theatrical services , on e Fawn ston is allowed four pence“for hanging Judas,

”to the same artist is pa id as much more

22 ENGLI SH DRAMA

for cocklcrow ing.

” 4 Apparently the stroll ing m instrel, famil iar and engaging figure of mediaeval revelry , took his partin l ighten ing the didactic gravity o f these serious representat ions of bible story

,for we hear of the professional Vice ( tra

dition al comedy figure , with the devil , of the miracle plays ) ,as employed for his pastime before the play and after.” Doubtless occasionally a young priest or tradesman of histrion ic aptitude developed a reputation for his acting above h is fellows.Such a one must have been the minor devi l whom Heywood ’sPardoner met in hi s infernal j ourney, one who in l i fe wasfamous for playing the devi l at Coventry .

”As to the settings

and costumes of these Old pla s, both preserved an ingenuouscomm the variegated and brill iantlycoloured garments o f the different classes of the time , lay , clerical and official , must have served admirably well. Where thesed id n ot answer , the devices were simple. The sui t o f a knight’sold armour Clad St. Paul before the miracle at Damas cus , a.bishop ’s canonicals thereafter

,a turban

,a crooked sword and

a bearded face made up for the ranting part o f Herod ; andthe nakedness o f our first paren ts i n the Garden of Eden wasclothed rather than suggested in suits O f leather or white l in en .

Devi ls were obviously clad in black ; black,” says the King

o f N avarre , in Lowe’

s Labour'

s Lost, i s the badge of hell .An d correspond ingly the saints and angels were robed in whiteand thei r wigs were flaxen . An d yet rude

,even shocking to

our more del icate sensibil i t ies, as these old dramas are in places,they are neither i rreverent nor do they confuse

, as did somelater plays

,the elemental laws of right and wrong or Sophist icate

a plain morali ty. I t i s ever to b e kept in mind that the miracleplay took i ts part along si de of the p icturesque ritual of themedimval church in convicting the wayward of a consciousnessof sin

,in bringing the guil ty to repentance and in upli fting

men to a truer appreciation of rel igion and right living. Can

we wonder that dreamers and those that see vi sions have hopedthat we might some day restore to the stage its important function as a guide in rel igion and morals ?

But, as we have seen , the miracle play was not always actedin cycles. Single plays exist which could not have formed parts

4 For these an d many other like p articulars see, Thomas Sh arp , 07:

the Pagean ts or Dramatic Mysteries an cien tly performed at Coven try,

1 825, passim.

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24 ENGLI SH DRAMA

the teach ings of the church directly to all Classes of men andwomen in the most effective an d the most interesting way, a

determination that forced the clergy to make the sermon,both

in matter and form , someth ing other than a rel igious treatise,l ed d irectly to the recogni tion of the drama as a legitimate anduse ful aid .

W a s—the

W W0 t e sou 0 man . The personages are a stract vi rtues or

m speaking in accordanm ame ;

m m lot Often O f extreme ingenuity, i s built upon thei rcontrasts and influences on human nature , with the in tent to

In a word,

"

allCTgOrydistinguishing mark of

the moral plays. These plays were no less international thanthe miracles. I t is customary specifically to refer the or igino f the moral i ty to the famous allegorical Latin poem ,

Psych omach ia,wr itten by the poetical churchman Prudentius ,

about the year 400 and devoted to a descript ion of the warfare between v i rtues and vices after the Homeric example, ash is less known poem Hamatigen ia describes the siege of man ’ssoul . But Prudentius by no means originated these s imili tudes ,however he may have amplified the v ivi d figurative language ofcertain passages o f St. Paul, Tertull ian and Cyprian. I t is,however, impossibl e to overest imate the influence of thePsych omach ia on med iaeval l i terature at large

,and therefore

Specifically on the mOr'

ality ; although we may agree , none theless

,on the intervening influences of the homiletic and l ike

writ ings in which allegor ical i llustrations abounded and wheredoubtless a larger number of suggestions for moral plays w il lbe found than have yet been acknowledged.The morali ty appears to have taken ! i ts pos i tion along side

of the older miracle plays not much before the latter part of thefourteenth century. Such a production was clearly the Playof the Pater N oster which Wycliff repo rts as

“ setting forththe goodness of our Lord ’s Prayer, in which play all man nerof vices and sins were hel d up to scorn and the v irtues wereheld up to praise.” The Play of the Creed , acted also at Yorkfrom 1 446 onward , seems to have been l ikewise a speci es ofmorali ty. Earl iest and most typical among extant moral iti esmay be named The Castle gt Perseveran ce in wh ich Humanum

G enus i s led away in yout by emptation and the Seven

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 25

Deadly Sins , but takes refuge , afte r absolut ion , in the Castl ewhere he withstands the assaul ts o f the Vices , led by the B el ial ,whil e ecclesiastical exposi tion and argument are carried on bythe Vi rtues . Led once more into sin by Avarice , Death ap

pears to cal l Man to j udgment and there ensues a further argumont between M ercy, Justice , Truth and Peace before thethrone of God

,with the resul t of Man ’s final salvation by

grace. O bviously all th is i s o f the universal stuff of the ser

mons and homil ies contemporary w ith i t. The staging of theCastle of Perseveran ce, set forth by d iagram in the old manuscripts i s exceedingly interesting.

6 The castle,appropriately

battlemented,was set in the centre of a ci rcular field surrounded

by a ditch. Beneath the castl e was a couch for Humanum Genus ;and there were five outlying pageants or scaffolds for Caro ,Mundus , Bel ial , Coveytyse ( covetousness ) and D

'eus . Apparo

ently the action took place not only on the pageants but on thefield between them. In this same manuscript are containedtwo other morali ties ; M in d , Will, an d Un derstan d ing , a production involving l ittl e mofe than the amplification in costumeof a scholastic debate , and M an hind which introduces some grossand vulgar comedy in the form of a merry devi l , named Tutivillus

,a personage well known under other names to the miracl e

plays. M an h in d i s not O therwise memorabl e.In these earl iest moral plays i t i s to be noted that the pro

tagon ist i s always an abstract ion ; he i s M ankind , the HumanRace, the Pride of L i fe ( as an old fragment i s enti tled ) , andthere is an attempt to compass the whole scope of man ’s ex

perien ce ail—cl

“

temptations in l i fe, as there had been a correspon din g effort in the miracl e plays to embrace the completerange o f sacred history, the l i fe o f Chr ist and the redemptionof the world . The most notable play of the class iwthe earl iest p rinted ed ition O f which belongs to a period between1 509 and 1 5 30. The existence of a Dutch vers ion

,in prin t

W d to a n ice question o f priori ty ; but there seemsn ow but l ittl e doubt that the English play was in writing theearl ier. In its larger relations Everyman belongs to that considerable Class of the devotional l i terature of the later middleages best represented M ublished in Engl ish by Caxton in 1491 . In i tsel f i t is an attempt to give al ively dramatic form to a parable , told in the legend of Barlaam6 Th is is reproduced in T. Sharp

’s Dissertation

,as above

, p . 23 .

26 ENGLI SH DRAMA

and Josaphat. The play detail s how Ever man , in the midstof a careless lifq fi vddem rM

—

g—d—

Ead and holloweyed messenger to p repare for a journey into a d istant landwhence there is n o return . Everyman seeks out F ellowship andKindred

,but they o ffer empty words and refuse him company.

JHis boarded Wealth revi les him for his folly in think ing thathe

,the universal servant , could n ow serve him. Good Deeds ,

alone,whom Everyman’s forgetfulness had suffered to l i e

n eglected , o ffers assistance and helps him to the aid of Knowledge. As he nears h is end , even the Senses must leave h imat last Everyman goes down into h is grave , pen itent and fullyp repared for the world to come by confession . Everyman i s abeauti ful and touching drama

,sustained by a forceable and

unctuous inculcat ion of the sp i ri t of England’s older fai th . As

seen on the stage in its recent , e ffective revivals, i t was surprising to what a degree the abstractions disappeared as such in theeffi cient concreteness of thei r representation and in the power fulenforcement of thei r underlying spiri tual truth . Great musthave been the effect of this old drama on an age in which i tSpoke d i rectly to i ts auditors in the language , the fai th , and thefeel ing of the day. In our own t ime the example of Everyman has begotten a progeny of contemporary plays , English ando ther

,and created

,even on the popular stage of England and

America,a wholesome d iversion from th e dismal problems and

trivial improbabi l it ies that for the most part rule there.Everyman ,

however,was an exceptional play

,especially in the

s ingleness o f purpose with which i t inculcated rel igious ideas .Wi th the uprise of humanism , in the latter hal f of the fifteenthcentury

,and with the fil tering into England of Protestant ideas,

the morali ty was at once seized upon to fulfil new functions ,ch i efly ethical and educational and , before long, controvers ialas well . Earlier than Everyman and certainly before 1 500,

Hen ry Medwell sought,in h is moral play called N ature, to show

how Sensual ity drives away Reason from man’s s ide ” ; but

how,in h is old age, man must return to Reason. In The

N ature of the F our Elemen ts,about 1 5 30 , John RaStell, i f he

be the author,frankly assumes the pedagogue and treats wearily

d at length of the knowledge of the day. He i s not unawareof the awaken ing of a n ew sp i ri t of inqui ry, adverting withanimation to the discovery “ within these twenty year of newlands beyond the sea. Equally close in thei r all iance to thearguments of the school s

,are the several plays that deal with

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 27

the respect ive merits o f Wit, Wisdom and Sc ience , and linkon to the wide l iterature o f the d ialogue , a favouri te form ofexpression for the d idacticism of the age. A more vital groupof pedagogical morali ties are made up of those that treat ofthe temptations o f youth , Lusty Juven tus, Hichscorn er and TheI n terlude of Youth for example. An d closely all ied to these

,

though i t marks , as has been pointed out , the beginn ing of the

breaking up of the allegorical drama , i s Skelton’

s M ‘

agn ificen ce.

This i s the only surviving play of that redoubtable old sati rist ,and i t is n ot devoid o f much plain and vigorous speak ing.

In moral plays such as these — all o f them , in point of date ,before the Reformation — we have an attempt freely to

dramat ize contemporary l i fe,however the figures represented

remain abstractions and partake,on thei r serious side at least ,

of the moralising and allegory of thei r predecessors . In moral ities of this type , too, th e comic element emerges into greaterprominence in the roistering youth ( a figure ever dear to thestage ) and the dissolute group of vices and revel lers that surround him. The names of Henry Medwell, who died in 1 500 ,

and John Skelton ( 1 460 thus stand firs t in our l ist ofknown English d ramatists . Both of these men were of the

human ist , clergy and both of them display the zeal for learning,the reforming sp iri t and the satir ical attitude toward abusesthat brand so unmistakably the Protestant controversial ists inthe drama to come.Before taking up the actual humanist d rama which l inks

on natural ly to such moral iti es as those just enumerated , wemust turn to the controversial morali ty, which came to involve not only matters of doctr ine but pol i tics as well . Theinfluence of Luther and h is quarrel with the church

,the ques

tions that d iv ided men like Cranmer and Gardiner , that keptSir Thomas More and Erasmus in the mother church and carried Hen ry and Cromwel l out of i t

,those Violent oscill ations

of op inion an d fai th that made an d unmade England , Protestant and Roman Cathol i c, backward and forward , several t imesi n a coupl e of generations these things need only to be namedto be remembered . In the midst of such conditions the d ramawas naturally resorted to, that powerful medium of publi cinstruction

,hallowed by the usages of two hundred years , and ,

the favourite form of the moment being the moral i ty, themoral i ty was at once turned to controvers ial uses. As i s alwaysthe case

,the attacking party was more v iolent and fertil e in

28 ENGLI SH DRAMA

its cho ice of weapons than its opponents ; and the Protestantplays outnumbered

,as they exceeded in v iolence, the few t e~

j oinders which their triumph suffered to remain extant. Theearl i es t play which touched the Reformation was an attack uponLuther, acted in Latin , i n 1 528, before Card inalWolsey. Thisi s no longer extant

,and i t seems not to have been speedily fol

lowed by similar productions. On Henry VIII’s break wi thRome, however, and especially when Cromwell and Cranmeradvanced the English Re formation more speedily than theKing ’s original intention had seemed to warrant , the Protestantplay suddenly arose to embitte r, i f not always to enl iven , thesp i ri t o f contention . By 1 543 so great had this abuse becomethat a royal decree was promulgated forbidding the publication

,

in songs,plays or in terludes , of any exposi tion of Holy Writ ,

Opposed to the teachings of the Church as establ ished by hismaj esty. The foremost dramatic controversial ist of the agewas the theologian John Bale , who l ived between 1 495 and1 563 , and was sometime B i shop of O ssory in I reland . Balewas a zealous and abusively outspoken champion of the n ew

faith and an irreconci labl e hater of priests and of popery. He

has left us a catalogue of twenty-two plays, almost all of them ,

from their t itles,clearly controversial in character. O f these

several,no longer extant , appear to have formed together a

Spec ies of condensed col lective miracle play in a dozen scenes ,beginning with the chi ldhood of Christ and extend ing to theResurrection . Among the exist ing plays of Bale is on e thelengthy ti tl e of which may be condensed into God

’

s Promises,a species of Prophetae; two others are modelled on scenes of theold cycles and treat of Joh n the Baptist and of the Temptationin the Wild ern ess . Of morality

‘

type are The Three Laws ofN ature and King Johan ,

as well as Bale’s translat ion , i n I 545 ,o f Kirchmayer

’

s Pammach ius. All of these plays are filled withabuse of Rome as coarse as voluble and incessant ; for Baleforgot hi s enemies nei ther in the pulp i t

,in his dramas n or in

h is prayers.King J ohan is the most important of Bale

’s plays,for wi th

i t new elements enter into the drama. Although the figureo f the king is absurdly misrepresented as a Protestant heroval iantly withstand ing the encroachments of Rome , the in forming sp i ri t o f the whole production is polemic , not poli tical , muchless h istorical . Yet among the abstract ions by which he i ssurrounded — England , Sedition , Cl ergy and the rest — King

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 29

Johan h imsel f stands forth , with Card inal Pan dolphus besidehim

,in interest at least actual historical figures . King J ohan

i s the earl iest dramatic production to d raw on the story of theEngl ish chronicles

,later to prove so fruitful in the drama.

However, King Johan was n ot the first moral i ty to cloak poli ticalallusion and sati re. As far back as 1 527 Cardinal Wolseyhad taken umbrage at a moral , entitled Lord Governan ce,

acted by students of Gray’s Inn,wherein the misgovernance

of D issipation and N egligence had l ike to have ru ined Publ icWeal.” Indeed

,only the plea that the play was twenty years

old saved the venturesome students from serious pains andpenalties. In A Satire of the Three Estates, the most elaborate moral play extant in an English tongue

,the Scottish poet ,

Sir David Lyndsay,sati rized

,with bold effectiveness and d irect

n ess,the abuses

,poli tical and clerical , of his own realm

,and

created for the nonce a reforming reaction in the heart andin the court “

of his master , King James V. A Satire of the

Three Estates was acted before the king at Linl i thgow and,

for the first time,most l ikely in 1 540. I ts stud ied elaboration

and the completeness of the allegory,i ts genuine satirical power

an d cutting effectiveness mark the play as the very crown of its

species. The morali ty could go no further and i t may be susp ected that this famous piece,

“

with i ts notorious performancebefore the notabil iti es of the realm of Scotland

,served again

and again as a model for later and lesser moral i ti es of similartype.

7 Among other later moral iti es of pol it ical intent , maybe named Respublica acted in the first year of M ary’s re ignand the only extant polemical morali ty on the Roman Cathol i cside. The two independent investigators have of late attributedthis morali ty to N icholas Udall .8 There is also the interestingfragment, Albion Kn ight, printed probably in 1 566, in whichEngland in abstraction i s represented a prey to the contend ingfactions of good and evi l.

The popularity of the m iracle play was great and i ts voguespread throughout England . A s imilar d iffusion

,as to place

,

and an even greater d iversi ty of occasion,as to presentat ion , ap

p ears to have been true of the moral i ty. M oral i ties were acted

7 See A. Bran d ], Quellen des w eltlichen Dramas in Englan d vor

Shakespeare, 1 898.

8 L. A. Magnus in h is ed . of Respuhlica, E. E . T. S., 1 905 ; an d C. W.

Wallace, The Evolution of the English Drama, 1 91 2.

30 ENGLISH DRAMA

before pr inces,Lyndsay

’

s Satire, as we have just seen , beforeK ing James, Skelton

’

s lost N igroman sir at Woodstock beforeKing Henry VII, several l ike moralities an d interludes beforehis son and successor. Bale

’

s morali t ies were variously actedin England

,at Ki lkenny in I reland , King John i n revival at

Ipswich as late as 1 56 1 ; and nei ther the univers it ies nor theI nns of Court d isda ined the dramat ic form which was characteristic of its age. In a word the morali ty was a diversional ike the favourite of the court and approved by the people .We have n ow reached a period in the his tory of our subj ectat which the true drama emerges out of these chaotic , medizeval

cond itions ; and that emergence was not single and confined toan ind iv idual species , but mul ti form ; for the roots o f the chiefSpecies of drama, late r to flourish

,s trike back deep into these

earl ier t imes and nearly every kind of play that flourished during the reign of Queen Elizabeth may be found al ready presagedin interlude or moral ity form. The l ineal descendant , so tospeak

,of the mi racle play was the bible play, a drama, as we

understand that term as to uni ty and constructiveness , foundedon bibl e story. Obv iously the intermediary between th is outcome and the cycl e of miracle plays i s the singl e scene of th islast, cut off from the sequence and developed , as i t came to bebefo re long, into a s ingle play. Such productions are the Conversion of St. Paul and the M ary M agdalen of the D igbyMa n uscript; and such other transi tion plays are some of Bale

’s ,already mentioned . I t was the finer l iterary sp iri t of the Scotchhumanis t and histor ian George Buchanan , albei t he wrote hist raged ies in Latin

,that real ised for the island of his b i rth the

possib il i t ies of a modern drama modell ed on that of the ancients.Buchanan appreciated the admirable qual i ties of bibl ical sub

jects in thei r simpl ic ity as well as themes drawn from thes tory of ancien t Greece and Rome. His classical t raged ies arel i ttl e more than Latin transcripts o f the Alcestis and the M edea

of Eurip ides ; hi s J eph tha and Baptistes are original plays thoughconstructed in obedien t observance of Euripidean rules . Thesetraged ies belong to a date close to 1 540 when Buchanan was at eache r in the college at Bordeaux , and i t adds to our interestin them to know that they were written with a plain pedagogicalintent an d acted by Buchanan ’s own students there . In a largesense Buchanan is only on e of the generation of Europeanhumanists who were busy in G ermany, F rance and I taly re

wr iting bibl ical story and dev i sing new allegories with a zealous

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32 ENGLISH DRAMA

Return ing backward to the drama of the human ists, we haveal ready noted that a favouri te subj ect for on e class of themoral ity was that which dealt with the temptations of youth .

The bibl ical prototype,to be sure , of al l o f these elaborations ,

espec ially the contrast of the ordered and the evi l l i fe of th eyoung

,i s the parabl e of the prodigal son , a common subj ect for

continental humanists . Among these plays an important on e

was Acolastus of the Dutch classical scholar ,Wi ll iam de Volder ,first acted by schoolboys at the Hague in 1 5 28 and so popularin England

,some dozen years later , that i t was made into a

text book by John Palsgrave fo r the teaching of Latin. Threemoral in terludes in Engl ish are modelled , more or less , immediately on Acolastus or on work that Acolastus insp ired .

These are The N ice Wan ton,The D isobed ien t Child and

M isogon us, ranging in point of date from the close of the

reign of Henry VI I I to within a year or so of the b irth of

Shakespeare. A more important production , from the l i terarypoint o f View, and one marking the culmination of th is schoold rama

,as i t has been called , i s The Glass of Governmen t, the

work of the notable court poet George Gascoigne , published in1 5 75 . Here the effect of the story is heightened by the con

t ras t of two pairs of brothers especially in thei r students’ l i feat a modern universi ty

,and Terentian s ituation is employed ,

after the manner of the elder humanists,to i llustrate Christian

morals. The Glass of Governmen t is a play of meri t, regular in construction

,l ight of touch on occasion and couched in

ready d ialogue , even i f the intent to teach remains ever presen t in the author ’s mind . I t would be interesting to know to

what extent some unrecorded v is i t of i ts courtier author to on e

of the Dutch schools,whil e he was a sold ie r in Holland , may

have insp i red this effort. Save for a few later universi ty playsthis was the last humanist d rama in England . The recurrenceof th e theme of the prodigal son i n subsequent comedies of

manners will claim l ater attention .

We have already met with the term interlude in the conn otation of moral interlude ; and the word was loosely employedto designate almost any form of play from very early t imes.Whether we accept the older explanation which makes the interlude a dramatic intermezzo between more serious scenes ori n tervening elsewhere between the parts of some extended en

tertainmen t, or whether we define the word with Chambers as

simply a dramati c d ialogue , i t is well to recogn ise that the in

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 3 3

terlude emphasises the element of d ivers ion for its own sakeas contrasted with the d idacti c character of all varieties of

sacred and moral plays . The history of the earli er interlude iswrapped Up with that of d isguising and mumming ; and this i nturn takes us back to the festivals of the folk. Lydgate in thefi fteenth century gave a l i terary bias to certain of the mummingsat court ; and pageantry there, following the an alogy of that longinvoked for rel igious plays

,developed qui te early into consider

able elaboration .

1 0 So far as the interlude is concerned , thereare only scant ind ications of the existence in med imval Englandof a l ight secular drama, such as we know to have flourishedin contemporary F rance. An d yet the fragments of plays onRobin Hood , dramatized from the ballads, the many mentionsof plays of St. George, which may have been only partially re

ligious, together with what we can gleam as to the repertory ofthe minstrels

,all point towards a drama of this type, largely

extemporaneous and perhaps l i ttle of i t wri tten down for preservation . Examples of the interlude in the sense o f a scene ofd iversion are to be found in the miracl e plays and moral i tiesthemselves . Such is th e scene of Mak and the Shepherds inthe Tow n eley Cycle, and such an interlude is that of Pauperbetween the first and second parts of Lyndsay’s Satire of theThree Estates in which that unhappy v i ctim of greed and imposition makes clear his wrongs in a ludicrous reci tal o f them .

But the cred i t of raising the interlude to an independent placeamong dramatic forms I can not but feel , stil l belongs to JohnHeywood , the epigrammatist , poet and privi leged wi t of thehousehold of Henry VI I I .1 1 The dialogues and interludes usu

1 0On the mumming of Lydgate, see Brotan ek, Die englischen

Maskenspiele, p . 305 , an d Ang lia m m, 3 64. Wallace fin ds the ch il

d ren of the Chapel first emp loyed“ in a p agean t an d song

”in 1 490.

Evolution of the Eng lish Drama, p . 1 3 .

1 1 In rep eating th is statemen t, I am n ot un aware of a recen t effortby my frien d , Professor Wallace, to overturn our accep ted n otion s

con cern in g the beginn in gs of th e regular d rama an d to deprive Hey

w ood of the b etter part of h is work. See h is Th e Evolution of the

English Drama, 1 91 3 , especially pp . 3 3-60. Th is attemp t involves the

raising up of William Corn ish in to wh at Mr. Wallace calls an Oc

tav ian Sh akespeare”

an d the in terp retation of th e p agean ts, d isguis

ings an d en tertainmen ts in wh ich Corn ish figured as actor,deviser

and lyrist in to successive steps of momen tous import in th e evolution

34 ENGLISH DRAMA

ally ascribed to Heywood l ie , in poin t of date , between 1 520 and1 540 and cover some l i ttle variety in subj ect. Love and Witan d Witless are l i ttle more than de’bats of which the earl ierannals of F rance and England al ike exhibi t many similar examples. In The Play of the Weather the d ialogue is extendedwith remin iscences of the methods of the moral ity into a moreoriginal production . Jupiter

,in consequence of a disagreemen t

among the gods rul ing the weather,summons be fore him peopl e

of various degrees to learn thei r wants and thereby determinethe quest ion . M erry Report , who acts as usher, i s a cleveradaptation of the Vi ce and the fun consists in the confl ic t ofwishes and arguments presented by personages such as the

Ranger, the Wind and the Water-miller and the F air Dame.But i t i s i n the other three interludes of Heywood that we findhis most characteristic contributions to the drama. A M erryPlay,

”as i t i s called

,between the Pardoner and the F rere , the

Curate and the N e ighbour Pratt sets i ts scene in a church anddevelops an amusing but exceedingly scandalous al tercation ;a second equally M erry Play

,

” vivaciously sets forth howTyb , a shrewish wi fe , and Sir Jhan , the priest , make a victimof a tim i d though by n o

‘

mean s complaisant husband and forceh im to fetch and carry ; whil e the last , the famous F our P

’

s,

ends in a match at-

lying. I n the figure,just named , and in

the Pardoner,the Palmer

,the Pedler and the Poticary of

The F our P’

s, the drafts from copy of the miracle play andthe abstractions of the morali ty are left once and for al l be~

hind us ; for whatever the suggestions o f source for these inter

of the drama. Corn ish w as master of the Ch apel from 1 509 to 1 523

and we h ave actual p roof th at he w as the author of on e p lay,” The

Triumph of Love an d Beauty, cited by Collier as far b ack as 1 83 3 .

Mr. Wallace h an d s over to Corn ish a story o f Troilus an d Pand or( lost but cited in The Household B ooks of Henry VIII , i, 1 69, n ot

however as by Corn ish ) . He h an d s over to Corn ish likew ise Heywood

’

s F our P ’

s, J ohan J ohan an d Gen tlen ess an d N obility, in on e

case bec ause Heyw ood’

s n ame is not on th e title page, in another,

question ing the con tempo rary title an d Bale’

s equally con temporary as

crip tion of th e work to Heywood . He further ass ign s the morality

of the F our Elemen ts an d Calista and Meliboea, production s amazin gly

d iverse, also to Corn ish , because, he says“no oth er d ramatist w as then

livin g who had either the op portun ity or impetus or skill to work in

the man n er 'of h is new style d rama.

”

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 3 5

ludes from F rance, Heywood sketched his figures from the Engl ish l i fe that he saw about him and found

,in fidel ity to that

l i fe and in a humorous appreciation of i ts personages , hisreal success. Hencefo rward Engl ish vernacular comedy had atleast an example

,and the step through such an interlude as the

anonymous Tom Tyler an d h is Wife, about 1 5 60, i n which ashrewish wi fe maintains her ascendency desp ite an attemptedmari tal revol t

,to Gammer Ca rton

’

s N eed le ( earl iest regularcomedy of the real istic type ) , becomes a measurable on e.

Wi th semi—moral ities l ike The D isobed ien t Child of ThomaslIn gelan d referred to Ravisius Textor , the F rench humanist ,with Henry Cheke, translating the I tal ian Bassano

’s tragedy of

F reew ill, in 1 546 , and Everyman and Acolastus touching Dutchhumanism

,i t i s clear that the forebears o f Engl ish drama were

not without many foreign examples. But there were influencesdeeper than this

,derived from the classics and breathed in with

the education of the day. Humanism was founded on a studyof the ancients and on the appl ication of that study to the probl ems educational and other of the day ; and the drama of thehumanists seized at once on the plays of Terence and Plautusespecially as its guides and examples for comedy. N ot onlywere these authors commonly read and frequently acted in theschools , but they were translated and imitated in adaptationto the condi t ion of the t ime. The interlude of Thersites, I 5 3 7 ,goes back

,with the intervention once more o f Textor , to the

M iles Gloriosus of Plautus , and Jaclz Jugg ler, 1 5 5 3 , i s s imilarlymodel led on th e Amph itruo. Even earl ier, in 1 5 30, Teren s inEnglish had appeared , though Terence was not so often imitated . Thus when N icholas Udall , sometime master of Westminster School as earl ier o f Eton , wrote and staged his Ralph

Roister B aister, he was really doing in i tsel f no novel thing,though the step that he took was momentous in the Engl ishdrama. This famous comedy tells how the boastful and thickwitted hero of the ti tle name considers i t certain , in Benedick

’

s

phrase,that he is beloved of all lad ies ,

” and how,abetted by a

rascally flatterer,M atthew Merrigreke, Ralph persists in court

ing Dame Custance against her will and proceeds through aseries of amusing rebuffs to hi s final discomfi ture. Udal l

’

s

comedy is an adaptation of the M iles Gloriosus to Engl ishmanners and conditions ; and i t is cleverly constructed and welland cleanly written . It was probably prepared for Eton boyswho acted i t between 1 5 34 and 1 54 1 , and i t thus preceded many

3 6 ENGLISH DRAMA

product ions that remained more or less aff ected by im itat ionsof the older drama.1 2

Several plays , however, may be named wh ich have been heldfor various reasons to d ispute with Ralph R oister B aister andGammer Gurton

’

s N eedle the claims of these plays to the posit ion of the first regular English comedy. M isog on us andJ acob and Esau have both been already mentioned . Asi de fromthei r affi l iations wi th the bibl ical humanist drama

,n ei ther can

be dated with certainty earl ier than Gammer Garzon'

s N eed le,1 5 5 2

-5 3 . Wi th Thersites, 1 5 3 7 , and Calisto an d M eliboea,

I 5 30, the questions that arise are of another kind . Thersitesis an exceedingly l ively l i ttl e burlesque in which is set forththe vaunts of a child ish boaster and thei r ludicrous consequencesto him

,an enormous snai l putt ing him to fl ight and to the pro

tection of his mother’s apron in on e scene. The play is an

adaptation from a Latin original by Textor , somewhat improvedand abbreviated in the p rocess. The meri t o f Thersites l ies ini ts freedom from any ulterior motive ; i t exists solely fo r thel aughter i t may raise and conceals nei ther bearings on man

’

sconduct in l i fe nor side l ights of moral suasion . But all thi swas equally true of the in terludes of Heywood ; moreover ,Thersites i s a slight aff ai r of a few scenes and , besides lackingthe structure of a complete d rama

,i s l i ttl e more than a tran sla

t ion . The interlude of Thersites stands in the same relationto Ralph Roister B olster that the i nterludes of Heywood or

Tom Tyler an d his Wife hold wi th respect to Gammer Gur

ton . Calisto an d M eliboea, on the o ther hand , i s a carefully considered play

,worked out at length and in detail ,

setting forth a romantic love story, the first important exampl e of i ts kind in the drama. A young gallant , Cal isto,has a passion for M el iboea

,a fai r lady who dislikes him .

Through the endeavours of an old crone , Celest ina, however,M el iboea is at length won to consent to lend Cal isto her girdle

figurative of a less innocent concession to recover h im froma pretended illness ; but repenting, confesses her ind iscretion toher father and i s by him forgiven . We have here the earl iestserious play to ri d i tsel f o f all egory and abstraction

,besides a

1 2 See the excellen t summary of the whole d iscussion by C. G .

Ch ild in h is ed ition of Ralph Roister B aister, 1 91 2 , pp . 3 1-42 ; I can

n ot but feel th at Hale’s d ate, 1 5 53 , accep ted by Wallace,is quite un

ten able.

MEDIZEVAL DRAMA IN ENGLAND 37

d iction and quali ty of style decidedly beyond its age. But

Calisto an d M eliboea i s even more closely a translation thanThersites, i ts original being the famous Spanish tale in d ramaticform

,Celestina, attributed to the authorship of Roj as and firs t

publ ished in 1499. Besides,the unknown English translator

in his version departs from his source to convert a tragedy, thelogical outcome o f the story, into a moral interlude , ending‘ in an “

exhortacyon to vertew .

” The claims of Calistoan d M eliboea with all i ts merits are damaged alike by thi smoral in trusion

,inev itable in i ts age and even yet the bane of

B ri tish drama, and by the ci rcumstance that the play is merelya translation .

As between Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton ,

priority in time belongs to the former, and only the degree ofUdall

’s debt to Plautus,which i s eas i ly exaggerated , can im

pair h is claim. Gammer Gurton’

s N eed le i s a coarse but exceedingly v igorous comedy of dai ly Engl ish v i l lage l i fe ; itsfi gures are as real as Heywood

’s , i ts structure as a completed rama away and beyond him . The comedy appears to havebeen firs t acted at Cambridge in 1 552

-53 and has been variouslyassigned as to authorship to B ishop Sti ll , Dr. John B rydges andto Wi ll iam Stevenson , the last in the early fi fties fellow of

Christ Church. The whole action turns on the loss of a needle ,conceivably a more valuable implement in that day than now ,

and the manner in which knavish D iccon of Bedlam sets thev i llage by the ears about i t. A conclusion is reached by excellen t Gammer Gurton who finds the needle at last exactlywhere she had left i t. I f freedom from dependence on foreignsources or any intention to teach , a due consideration of struc

ture and amplitude of design be taken into account , togethe rwith di rect sketching from contemporary li fe

,then Gammer

Gurton’

s N eed le i s our earliest regular English comedy. Per

haps, however, when all has been said , i t i s best to observe thatour English d rama emerged out of the didactic state of themoral ities and from the trivial i ties of the interlude all buts imultaneously in several forms. J acob an d Esau marks theway from the old sacred drama to the bible play ; The D isobed ien t Child or M isOgonus, the growth from moral ity, throughthe human ist col lege d rama to a comedy measurably free fromthe inten t to teach . In Calisto and M eliboea ( as in the earl iert ragical F reewill) romantic material of foreign origin is

broached , although the intent to po int a moral st il l rules.

3 3 ENGLISH DRAMA

Whil e in Thersites and Ralph Roister Doister the influence ofclassical comedy appears in transi tion from interlude to comedyform ; and in Tom Tyler and Gammer Gurton

’

s N eedle thesame transit ion with the real istic present in place of the bookishpast its insp iration . Lastly, to turn from comedy, King Johanequally marks the emergence o f the morali ty into a recognitionof national history as a theme for d rama, precisely as th eEurip idean tragedies of Buchanan call into requisi t ion the finestmodels of the past for tragedy.Tragedy in regular form and in Engl ish was later to emerge

from the past than comedy ; and the influence here, soon sub

sti tuted for that of Eurip ides , was Seneca, the tragic writer ofNeron ian Rome. The first regular Engl ish tragedy i s the

well known Gorboduc or F errex and Porrex,the work of

Thomas Sackvil le and Thomas N orton , students of the InnerTempl e where thei r play was acted before the queen on N ew

Year ’s day 1 562. Much in the way of l ike classical imitation shad gone before

,but these were mostly college dramas and all

were in Latin . Gorboduc tell s the story o f an unwise k ing ofEngland who

,l ike Lear

,divided his kingdom with his children

,

two sons,who fought to the death for supremacy. I t is a

stately and well constructed tragedy. To i ts d istinct ion as theearl iest tragedy in the Engl ish language of anything l ikeregular structure

, Gorboduc adds the circumstance that i t is thefirst play to be wr itten throughout in blank-verse and on e of th eearl iest to draw on English chronicle history for a subj ect . Thiswith its Senecan relat ions wi ll claim a later consideration.

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4D ENGLISH DRAMA

The Oflice of the Revels , originally perhaps no morethan a temporary appointment , had become since the daysof Sir Thomas Cawarden i n Henry VIII’s re ign , a placeo f importance

,charged with the superv is ion of the entertain

ments at court. Elizabeth further developed and enlarged itsfunctions until

,by the advent o f Shakespeare in London , the

Ofli ce consisted of a master , a clerk controller , a clerk and a

dmun d Tyln ey, 1 5 79whole important period of Eliza

bethan drama,administered this oflice to the sat isfaction of the

queen and King James after her , and with no small emolumentto himsel f. I t was this office that Lyly sought in the sevent iesand the reversion of which in the reign of King Charles , BenJonson d id not l ive to enjoy. We shall meet with its interven tion in the affai rs of the d rama more than once in thefollowing pages .We have already found N icholas Udall preparing his Ralph

Roister B aister for boys to act , and have recognised that thecustom of acting plays by the students of schools extends backto very early t imes. Wi th an increasing demand for playsat court and the exaction of a higher grade of histr ionic abil i ty,these boy troupes , trained and drilled in act ing under theferrules of thei r schoolmasters , were gradually called upon totake thei r place besi de the child ren o f the Chapel Royal astertain ers

Westminster School,and Thomas Gyles , Richard F arrant , and

R ichard Bower, masters respectively of St. Paul ’s choi r, the

Chapel Royal at Windsor and the Queen ’s Chapel , were thefi fi nprp fi ssi/ qnal mana ers and layw right‘s

hThe actual con

tribut1on s of the men j ust named to the rama are for themost part conj ectural and based on entr ies i n the records of theO ffice of the Revels and the l ike.1 Wi th Richard Edwards1 See the valuab le “ Tab le of Plays and Masques before Queen

Elizabeth ,” 1 5 58-85, by C. W. Wallace, Evolution of the Drama, pp .

1 99-209.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 41

(who died in andWi ll iam Hunn is ( active up toboth o f them successors of Bower as masters of the Queen

’

sChapel , we are on somewhat sounder ground . Damon

and P ithias by Edwards, acted at Whitehall at Christmas

, 1 564, i s extant to show that i ts author was nei ther withouttheories concerning the comedian ’s art nor devoid of i deas asto the dignity of the drama. Two years later, at Oxford , hisd ramatic version of Chaucer

’s Kn ight’

s Tale, enti tled Palaemon

and d rcyte, was acted before the queen , greatly to her maj esty’s

satis faction . But this play has been lost. Edwards has beenthought the author of othe r plays ; while the l ist ascribed toHun n is has been enlarged to formidabl e proportions , thoughreally noth ing remains to us to be referred wi th certainty to hishand .

2 Hun n is retained his posi tion up to 1 597 when he wassucceeded by N athaniel Gyles who abused the royal patent totake up children who could sing fo r the royal choir by actuallyk idnapping schoolboys and train ing them by force to act playsfor his own emolument.

M M t t hed mmaj m rfi m Eh z

abethan da 5,the studies of young genglew on

mean

—

gas and 3 3 5 ,1 n a grow ing i nggrest in tragedyim g ” M

saltsi ige a en thus iastic. cultivatioa gfé sasaa M oreover. inI taly and F rance alike, tragedy in the manner of Seneca wasthe l iterary affectation of the moment. Between 1 5 59 and 1 58 1the Ten n e Traged ies, that then went under the name of theRoman poet , were translated into Engl ish by various hands ;and the plays were acted and imitated again and again in Latindramas at

d

college. Reasons for the choice of Seneca for amodel are not farancients and the m

verse and rhetoric , equally sui ted the t ime. Besides , Seneca was

the most avai lable model ; his vehicl e was Latin , the un iversal language of scholarship , an d ne ither so remote as theGreek traged ians nor lacking in sanction as were most o f themoderns. On e of the distinctions of Gorboduc was its choice

2 For surmises on the sub j ect, see Mrs. C. M. Stopes : ShakespeareJ ahrbuch, xxvu an d elsewhere.

42 ENGLISH DRAMA

of an Engl ish myth . But this particular myth , the d issens ionsof two princes , brothers, for a k ingdom , to the dest ruct ion o fboth

, was prompted by i ts similari ty to the wel l known Greekstory of the Theban Eteocles and Polynices , also treated bySeneca. The next Senecan tragedy of note in Engl ish wasGascoigne

’s Jocasta. G ascoigne’s was also an Inns of Courtplay

,acted at Gray’s Inn before the queen in 1 566. The plot

returns to a classical subj ect and is really not much more thanan adaptation of Dolce ’s Italian tragedy, Giocasta. O f GeorgeG ascoigne

’s contribution to the school drama, The Glass of

Governmen t we have already heard . He was less a scholarthan a courtier and whi le hi s sati re

,fiction and general poetry

do n ot concern us here , he touched the drama at two otherpoin ts

,in comedy and in pageantry in which he was a prime

contriver.” In the year 1 5 76 , Queen Elizabeth went on on e

of her period ical progresses among her loving subj ects, journeying to Kenilworth Castle , the seat of the famous Earl of

Leicester,whom rumour said at the moment she was l ikely to

marry. In the splendid welcome which the earl accorded hermaj esty and which Sir Walter Scott immortal ised in Ken il

worth, Gascoigne was on e of the several poets employed to

frame speeches of welcome and allegorical scenes — one amongthem sett ing forth the advantages of matrimony on the recommen dation of Juno to the con fusion of M in erva. Whil e spacewill n ot permit here a specification of Gascoigne’s contributionswith those of his fellows to what afterwards developed into themasque

,i t may be remarked that the pageantry of the progress

is not to b e neglected i n the earl ier annals of the drama. At

court the custom of giving plays to signal ise occasions of socialimportance became before long the thing obvious and expected .

Gascoigne marks the step from sheer amateurs l ike Sackvil l e,N orton or Hughes

,to the playwright and professional deviser

of entertainments. Legge,in his Latin Richardus Tertius,

1 5 79, first employed l ater English chronicles for the subj ect o fa Senecan play ; and Peel e, in Locr in e, 1 586 ( i f i t b e his ) , an dThomas Hughes and others in thei r j oint tragedy, The M isfortun es of Arthur, 1 587 , cont inued the working of Engl ishmyth in this kind . Wi th the last two plays and others of l iketype we are on the threshold - of the new romantic d rama, forThe Span ish Tragedy was on the stage in the latter year.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 43

founded , to judge by the i r t itles , on modern history or recentoccurrence ; romant ic stories , comedies , and mere farces. Amongmany t itles the following are typical : Pompey, N arcissus ; TheKing of Scots, l ike N arcissus ascribed to Hun n is ; M urderous

M ichael, poss ibly an earl ier version o f the notable murder play,Arden of F eversham; J ack and Gill and The History of theCollier, in all l ikel ihood the extant Grim, the Collier of Graydon . Most of the types of plays just mentioned are i llustratedin extant specimens of the period . Among them may be namedGodly Queen Hester, 1 56 1 , Appius an d Virg in ia, 1 563 , KingDarius, 1 565 , Pickering

’s Orestes, 1 567 , and most popular fori ts day

,Preston ’s Cambyses. Thomas Preston was a Cambr idge

man who rose in time to the dignity o f Master of Trini ty. Hisabil it ies in disputation and cleverness in acting a part in Gager’sLatin tragedy

,D ido, on the occasion o f the queen

’s visi t to th euniversi ty in 1 566, had called him to El izabeth

’s attent ion anddoubtless for the moment determined his career. Cambyses,King of Persia, acted about 1 569, smacks of the old allegoricald rama and is not a l ittl e morally weighted ; but i ts grandilo

quen ce and bombast of tone was long appreciated , at first ser iously, later as a theme for rid icule , especially by Shakespeare. Intruth , allegory and a moral purpose , forced on the understanding

,remained general qual i ties o f this pre—Lylian drama save

for a very few exceptions. But these except ions mark the v i talstock of what was to come. In the preface to a narrative poemby Arthur B rooke

,enti tled The Trag ical History of Romeus

and J uliet, we read : I saw the same argument lately set

forth on stage with more commendation than I can look fo r.”

Thi s was two years before the birth of Shakespeare. Severalyears later, in 1 5 79, we hear of another Shakespearean sub

jcet in a play mentioned by Stephen Gosson as expressing thegreediness o f worldly choosers (Portia

’s unsuccessful sui tors ) ,and the bloody minds o f usurers (Shylock

’s implacabl e pursui tof the pound of flesh . ) 3 To turn from what is lost to whatwe have , Gascoigne

’s Supposes i s a l ively comedy constructedon a series o f suppositions supposes ” ) that turn out — l ikethe comedy of errors contrariwise. Acted in 1 566, thisis the first success ful adaptation o f an I tal ian comedy and the

3 The Cruel Debtor, 1 566, supposed formerly to b e on th is sub jectturn s out oth erw ise. See The Ma lon e Society

’

s Publications, Collec

tion s IV an d V,

”1 91 1 , pp . 3 1 3 ff.

44 ENGLISH DRAMA

earl iest example of a play written throughout in Engl ish prose.Two years l ater Gismond of Salem , from an Ital ian n ovella

of that t i tl e was staged , the work of five young gentlemen ofthe Inner Temple

,chief among them RobertWi lmot who later ,

i n 1 59 1 , rewrote and published the enti re drama as hi s own .

Tan cred an d Gismun da, as i t was called in revision , is a Senecant ragedy in manner ; but , as the earl iest Engl ish play to lay undercontribution that storehouse of I tal ian fiction , Painter

’s Palaceof Pleasure, i t partook of the n ew romantic sp i ri t which was sosoon to rule the serious dram a of the age. Gismon d i s d eclamatory but i ts tragic love story

,the clandestine meetings of

the lovers,the father ’s revenge and presentat ion of her dead

lover ’s heart to h is daughter in an urn,with her tragic death

al l th is,crude though i t be

,is in long advance of the correct

moral i ty that spoi led the sto ry of Calisto an d M eliboea. Morein touch after all with older methods is George Whetstone’sformidabl e drama in two parts

,Promos an d Cassan dra, 1 5 78.

The subj ect, referabl e to a novel of the Hecatommithi of Cin

thio,is memorable for i ts after treatment by Shakespeare in his

M easure for M easure. Whetstone was a small poet and friendof Gascoigne whose memory be celebrated in dull el egiac l ines .He i s full o f theory as to dramatic writing and says more thani s needful on the subj ect i n his dedication . However, thoughfree from the bonds of Seneca, which Wi lmot and his con frereswere certainly n ot, Whetstone has left but an awkward , grossand verbose original for the art of his great successor to fashion.Supposes, Gismon d of Saleru,

and Promos and Cassan dra

mark,i n drama

,a new impulse derived from I taly d i rect . The

immediate models and insp i ration of Lyly , however, were notthese. John Lyly was born in Kent , abou t 1 5 54 , and wastherefore of an age with Spenser. I t has recently been shownthat Lyly came of excellen t family, his grandfather being nol ess a person than the distinguished scholar and grammar ian ,

Wi ll i am Lyly ; John Lyly’

s father was Registrar o f his nativeCanterbury. Lyly received his education at Oxford

,with a

later sojourn at Cambridge, and enj oyed the patronage of Burl eigh and especially of Lord Oxford to whose serv ice he wasfor years attached . Oxford was known to h is age as a wri terof comedies n ow lost and he maintained at least on e companyof actors

,so Lyly

’

s induction as an entertainer at Court was anatural on e. I n 1 5 79 Lyly leaped to

x

in stan t l i terary repute

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 45

by the publicat ion of his famous prose romance , Euphues, the

An atomy of Wit, followed in the next year by Euphues an d his

Eng land . His plays seem to have begun with Campaspe, stagedfirst, i t has been supposed , about 1 580 at B lackfriars and , l ater ,by a combination of the Children of Pauls with those of theRoyal Chapel at court.Recent researches in form us that F arrant , master of the

ch i ldren at Windsor, obtaining a lease of certain propertiesthat had belonged to the Revels ’ Oflice i n Carwarden

’

s t ime ,converted them into a regular theatre ,

” in 1 5 76 , about thet ime at which Burbage was open ing his new Theatre in Shored i tch ; that under F arrant

’s management up to 1 5 80 , the drama,acted by the boy companies

,thrived in hi s hands

,and that he

used his theatre to train not only h is own children of Windsorfor performances before the queen

,but those of the Chapel

Royal of whom Hun n is was master, the two masters thuspooling thei r theatrical interests. The children of B lackfriars play a very important part in the early h istory of thedrama, although the increas ing vogue of the adul t companies ,as d isclosed by the records of performances at court

,created a

rivalry, happy for the development of the histrionic art. F arrant d ied towards the end of 1 880, and his widow assigned hi sl ease to H‘un n is

,who as master of the Chapel Royal was abl e

to continue the double function of hi s playhouse as a publ ictheatre and a training house for performances before the

queen . But before long trouble arose between the owner,F arrant ’s widow,

Hun n is and an associate of his in the conductof the t heatre named John N ewman . Into these details wecannot go . By a contemporary letter recently discovered andprinted

,i t appears that in the spring o f 1 583 , the Earl of

Oxford acquired the lease o f the playhouse in B lackfriars . Thisinterest, according to the same letter, the earl gave to Lylywith other houses adjacent. I t is not clear that this transferwas more than a part o f the vexatious de fence

,put up by the

widow of F arrant, to prevent the owner from re-entering thep remises. At any rate Lyly di d n ot enjoy his lease a fullyear, for the owner won his sui t . Campaspe and Sapho and

Phao were acted , accord ing to thei r ti tl e pages , by a con jun ct ion of the Chapel Children with the Paul’s Boys and paymentswere made , according to the accounts of the Audit O ffi ce , tothe Earl of Oxford his servants for “ two plays ” on N ew

46 ENGLISH DRAMA

Year ’s night and Shrove Tuesday, 1 583 But this does not“ prove ” these plays to have been Campaspe and Saph o an d

P hao, or that the Earl of Ox ford’s servants were the children

of the chapel and the boys of Paul ’s organised into one company under the leadership of Lyly.Leaving these mooted questions

,i t i s to be remarked that

Lyly was a bo n courtier and that all of 1s itera work wprompted by the momt an ca culated end of h isown advancement. He was constant y in attendance at court

I‘and became 1n due t ime on e of the queen ’s esqui res of thebody. He serv ed 1n parl iament and married well , consideringh is want of any stabl e fortune ; and he appears to have been foryears an applicant for a post in the Oflice of the Revels. Thishe was never able to procure , though i t may be doubted i f therewas a fitter man for the mastership in all England . However ,h is plays met with a dgseu ed spccess from the first fgr thei rcour mess thei r choice eu huistic rose 1ct10n and thei r n icetyof express1on ; perhaps even more for thei r“tM wn s lo matters of passing poli tical interest 1n the innercourt ci rcle which Lyly made on e of thei r features almost fromthe first. F or example, Sapho an d P hao dared allusions inal legory to the royal fl i rtation with her maj esty’s F rench su i tor ,the homely and insign ificant D ’

Alen gon ; M i das , the anc ientking at whose touch an d by whose greed all things were turnedto gold

,figured forth in a drama o f that ti tle, the master of th e

Indies and arch enemy of England , K ing Phil ip o f Spain ; andEn dimion , 1 585 , among the complications and contradictionsof recent interpretations, long supposed to refer somehow to theonly serious affai r of the heart which the V i rgin Queen seemsever to have had , ( her preference, i f not her infatuation forthe Earl of Leicester ) , must now be interpreted into the widerpol i tical s ignificance that leaves Elizabeth Cythia ( the un attainabl e moon ) , but makes Tellus ( the earth ) the captive M ary ofScots and En d im ion no less a personage than her can ny, unstable

,intri gu ing son , King J ames.

5

a mas of this type are

demandent for thei r success as much on t cwto ical lusion a dresse to e 1m1ted and un derstan din

4 On th is whole sub ject,see Wallace, as above (especially pp . 1 74

an d 224 w hose researches n ow clear up a matter lon g d oubtful.

5 See on th is top ic A . Feuillerat, J oh n Lyly, 1 91 0, pp . 14 1-1 90 wh ere

the previous theories are likew ise d iscussed .

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48 ENGLISH DRAMA

found his suggestion in some of the entertainments of Gas

coigne,or more effectively in Sir Philip Sidney

’s l i ttle pas toralinterlude

, The Lady of M ay, produced for the entertainmentof Elizabeth at Wan sted , i n 1 5 78. But i f we would understand by what steps Lyly advanced the drama we should compare this pretty trifle wi th Lyly

’

s Gallathea or such a play asEnd imion with the anonymous Rare Triumphs of Love an d

F ortun e, acted perhaps about 1 582 ,and one o f several plays in

which the earl ier abstractions,translated into the terms of

classical mythology,are represented as concerned with the doings

of mortals whose story,none the less

,const itutes the main in

terest. Whether this was suggested by the shades and furiesof Seneca and his imi tators , certain i t i s that by the t ime i treached Lyly i t was transfo rmed into a thing new and fanci ful.Lyl ave to En lish drama a sense of unit and mode of

w . He adopted Gascoigne’s innovation , t e writing

o f come y m prose,and developed a med1um of much e se

l ightness and ele a He employed dramatic d isgmse for the

“

him supp 1cd i s auditors with an 1 ea 1sed”575m thei r own court manners and d ialogue , giving tohis work an immediate effectiveness by i ts allusiveness to affairso f the moment. Lyly took hand in the M arprelate controversy,the notorious pamphlet war between the extreme Puri tans andthe upholders of the bishops and of bishops’ rights and pretensions . Asid e from a prose tract or two

, ascribed to him ,Lyly’5

work of this kind included several popular sat irical plays .6

These we may congratulate ourselves have perished ; they couldhave added nothing to his fame. Lyly survived the q ueen whoneglected h im , dying in 1 606 , late enough to see his old courtplays succeeded by wave upon wave of the new popular d ramao f his successors ; but when he d ied , at j ust the age of Shakespeare

,he could not but have known that he ‘had borne his

part in laying foundations on which were reared the successesof greater as of lesser men .

Among writers of drama for the court i n the earlye ighties

,none could be named beside Lyly ; and of those who

imitated h im on e man only rivalled him in the thing that hed i d so well

,and this only in one effort. son of

a clerk of Christ’s Hospital , was born in therefore four years the j un ior of Lyly. At Oxford young Peel e

0On the whole top ic, see Feuillerat, as above, pp . 2 1 1 ff.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 49

became interested in the drama through a kinsman , Wi l l iamGager, the author of several Latin plays. Peele himsel f t ranslated on e of the Iph igen ias of Eurip ides , whether into Latinor Engl ish is not known . Attaining his master

’s d egree in 1 597 ,Peele turned his attention as a playw right from the college tothe court and

,with Lyly in the first bloom of his repute , at

once set about to rival him. Peele’

s Arraig nmen t of Paris hasbeen dated

’

as early as 1 58 1 ; it was in print by 1 584. Borrowing the idea from a poem of Gascoigne, Peele dramatized thes tory of Paris and (E none and the discord of the goddesseswrought by the apple of Até, but diverted the award from Venusi n the end to a votress of D i ana, the gracious and royal nymph ,whose name Eliza is.” But Peele

’

s Arraig nmen t i s not merelycompliment and a following

ments have come down to us ; and soonwe find Peele transferring his talents to the popular stage,whither we shall now follow him.

I t i s impossibl e to fix a date fo r the earl iest performance ofsecular plays in London . Acting in the yards o f inns and otherpubl ic places by strol l ing players must have been old whenparl iament adopted , in 1 543 , stringent measures against com

mon players for thei r intermeddl ing in matters rel igious ; andalmost as early , the phraseology of such acts habitually classifiedplayers

,who were not specifically l icensed

,with vagabonds and

masterless men . Adult pro fessional companies o f actors,made

up of men with boys playing the female parts,date also very

early,as does the El izabethan practice of placing such com

panics under the protection of noble or royal patrons. IndeedElizabeth ’s early statute of I 5 72 , declaring all able-bodied , unemployed men ( players among them ) , not under patronage o fsome nobleman to be vagabonds , was only regulating an old andestablished usage . This practice , though later l i ttle more thana legal fict ion , was continued throughout the reign of El izabethlargely because of the hosti li ty of the London Counci l towardsall actors

.James on his accession placed the companies under

royal patronage and ended the old system "

7 On th is sub ject , see V. C. Gild ersleeve,Governmen t Regulations of

the Elizabethan Drama, 1 908, pp . 29, 30, an d elsewhere.

’

50 ENGLISH DRAMA

The h isto ry of E l izabethan theatr ical compan ies is full of

difficul ties. The evidence concern ing them is now, thanks tothe researches of Pro fesso r Wallace , abundant , though scholarswill have to be more than mortal i f they do not find themselvesat t imes at variance as to the interpretation of some of i t.Companies passed from patron to patron ; coali tions , d ivisionsand reorganisations were constantly taking place . For example ,we hear of a group o f players under the patronage of LordRobert Dudley , later the great favourite , the Earl of Leicester,not in frequently between 1 560 and I 582. This company ob

tain ed the earl iest royal patent ever granted to a company of

players,i n 1 5 74. I t acted at the Bull

,an inn—yard in B ishops

gate Street,and later at the Theatre which James Burbage

buil t,i n 1 5 76, in Shoreditch . I t appears to have been broken

up in 1 582-83 by the withdrawal from i t o f Wi lson , Tarltonand other prominen t actors. Though some of i ts somet imemembers are found sti l l under the patronage of the earl abroadin 1 585 , acting in Denmark and in Germany and , on thei r return , v i si tin g several provincial towns , among them Stratford.

3

I n London,in consequence o f th is disrupture , a new company

was formed called the Queen ’s servants who played variously atthe Bul l in B ishopsgafF

-S-t

—M ell in Gracious Street

under the leadership o f Robert Wi lson and until about 1 591 .

Thei r r ivals at that t ime were the Admiral’

s men playing at

the Cuit'

efi'

fi'

f an d the Chamberlain’

playmg at the Theatre.Burbage was not cofi M ears

,at any time with

the Queen ’s men,but succeeded in reorganising the d isrupted

company of the Earl of Leiceste r under the patronage of LordHunsdon who , as cousin of the queen , brought him a certainamount of court patronage. Wi thout here going into particulars

,by 1 585 Burbage had so improved his property in the

Theatre,desp ite the innumerable law suits in which he was

constantly involved , that he was able to make an agreementwi th h is r ival and neighbour

,Laneman ,

manager of the neighbourin g Curtain , by which the two companies pooled thei r interests and divided the profits of the two playhouses . In 1 589,

8 For the foreign visits of Elizabeth an theatrical compan ies ab road,

see E. Herz, Eng lische Schauspieler in Deutsch lan d , 1 903 ; for their

v isits to En g lish p rovin cial town s,see J . T . Murray, Eng lish Dramatic

Compan ies, 1 91 0.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE s:

on the payment of a mortgage long held against the Theatre ,Cuthi s

rt Burbage became the legal owner of the propertyalthough his father

,James Burbage , sti l l remained the leader

of the company. A year later , as a resul t of on e of thei r incessant quarrels

,the Alleyns , John and Edward , of the Cur

tain,severed thei r all iance with Burbage

,and took themselves

across the river where they joined hands with Henslowe whocontroll ed the Rose and the playhouse at N ewington Butts. Ed

ward Alleyn was n ow at the head of the Admiral’s men and we

hear of these theatres as variously occupied by them in the

ensuing years,by the Earl of Pembroke ’s players

,those of the

Earl of Sussex and by a company known as Lord Strange’s,i n

1 593-94 called Lord Derby

’s. Some of the earl i er plays of

Shakespeare were acted by these companies controlled byHenslowe and Alleyn ; i t does n ot appear that there i s anyevidence of Shakespeare

’s associat ion with Burbage before 1 594.

Lord Strange, Earl of Derby , died in Apri l of that year and ,in the reorganisat ion that followed

,several of those who had

consti tuted that company, Wi ll iam Kempe , Thomas Pope, John

‘Heming, Augustine Philips and George B ryan , combined withR ichard Burbage and Wi ll iam Shakespeare in the organisationof a new company under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon

,

Burbage’

s old patron , which , under h is name , that of his officeof Lord Chamberlain and as the King

’

s players after 1 603 , became permanently Shakespeare ’s company. As servants to theLord Chamberlain , Shakespeare and Burbage received the firstpayment for a performance at court in December of that year,1 594. They were then acting at the Cross Keys in GraciousStreet , but thei r principal houses were the Theatre and theCurtain where Romeo an d Juliet was acted in 1 598. In thisyear

,difficulties aris ing concerning the renewal of the term of

the lease o f the ground in Shored i tch on which the Theatrestood the Burbages pul led down the bui ld ing in sp i te of the

l essor s protest and t e-erected i t , with some improvements , on apiece of dumping ground , th e only si te avai lable , near to the‘Rose on the Bankside in Southwark. This piece of ground wass i tuated

,as the deeds that Professor Wallace has unearthed ,

make undeniable,

“ j ust north of Maiden Lane , on the sames id e of the street as the Rose,

” and across the street from thesi te commemorated by the present tablet. A lease for twentyon e years was granted by the owner

,Sir N icholas Brend , a

52 ENGLISH DRAMA

neighbour of Shakespeare’s in the par ish of St. Mary Alderman

bury, an d before the year

B lackfriars , whichl atter is sublet for a time. The number of sharers varied from

W u, and while the original cost of the shares was n omore than the rent o f the ground and the obl igations attend ingbuilding and management

,i n time the shares became quite

valuabl e. On the o ther hand , from Hen slowe’

s D iary, anaccount book kept by Philip Henslowe concern ing h is transactions as part owner

,financier and backer of several theatres,

the organisat ion of these appears to have been much less democrat1e.

drained , crowded and threaded with narrow streets in whichthe upper stories of the timbered houses almost met in places.There was l i ttle of the town beyond the Tower

, B ishopsgateand Temple Bar respectively

,though houses extended beyond

the several gates — B i shopsgate,l ead ing to Shoreditch , Lud

gate, Cripplegate , and the rest — ou the main roads leading out

o f the ci ty. The Thames was the main thoroughfare from on e

part of the ci ty to another as well as to Westminster. I ts swi ftand unpolluted waters flowed through man y a park and i tsbanks were embell ished with handsome houses of nobles andwealthy tradespeopl e. The river was crossed but once , by London Bridge, which united the ci ty with Southwark on theSurrey. side where was si tuated the Bankside. London was

ruled by a Lord Mayor and a counci l of Aldermen , menp rominent in the various trade-guilds of the ci ty. Wi th the

wel fare of the c ity at heart qui te as much as because some wereof Puritan lean ings

,the ci ty counci l mistrusted the theatre from

the first ; and reasons for th is mistrust were n ot far to seek.As sembl ies of unpoliced crowds led to d isorder and occasional ly

9 See especially the valuable p aper of Professor Wallace on“The

First Lon don Theatre,” Un iversity Stud ies, 1 91 3, xiii.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 53,

to riot, and in time of plague — a very real danger in the oldage

— to the spread of pesti lence . Moreover , the contents ofmany of the plays were ungodly, or at the least vain and trifl ing.Laws were therefore passed restricting theatrical performancesand closing all playhouses when the plague became prevalent ;and the erection of playhouses within the precincts of the ci tywas forb idden . However, the j urisd iction of the mayor stoppedat the several gates and at the middle point of London Bridge,and hence the evi l was only transplanted to the suburbs. Theearl iest playhouses were buil t beyond the walls ; for example , inShoreditch , B ishopsgate without , where the Theatre , first strueture of i ts kind in England , dating 1 5 76 , and the Curtain , neari t in Moorfi elds, 1 5 77 , were erected ; or across the river alongthe Bankside where , in the n ineti es , there arose the Globe, th eRose , the Hope and the Swan . There were other theatres,however, besides these and the earl ier inn-yards. Such werethe playhouse at N ewington Butts , back from the river in Southwark

,and the F ortune , a large and fine theatre , built on a n ew

plan,in 1 600 ,

by Edward Al leyn , the famous actor, son-in -lawof Henslowe , in St. G i les, Cripplegate .The public playhouses of Elizabeth ’s day undoubtedly d i f

fered M TTf-to day , but some gen

eral features may be accepted as character istic of them all .They were ordin aril ci rcular or oEta onal ln form

,and bu

about an o'

pen s ace a feature den ved from the1r p ro abl eo’

r1g1n al, the 1n n yarfl. This yard was 0 en to the sk andsuppl ied stand ing places to 111m m werecal led . I t was surrounded on three sides b al s, two or

even three, and m the owest of these were placed the mostd esirabl e seats . On the fourth side of the yard and opposi te tothe entrance door was si tuated the sta e , aoutM he audience there mights tand on three sides of i t. ThereW m

i ng the stage , supported by two pillars or p i asters Their, p rec1se posrt ion is somewhat doubtful , though it seems not unl ikely that they were placed rather close together to producethe effect o f a structure near the middle of the stage

,leavin g a

Space on ei ther side and in front for free action on the stagea round them . Certain i t i s that they were n ot placed far at thes ide to produce the effect of the modern stage , a framing for apicture. Whether a curtain was stretched between them is amoot question. If so, as seems not unreasonable, or i f hung, as

$4 ENGLISH DRAMA

some th ink, underneath a balcony further back , or elsewhere, itwas drawn , n ot dropped , for the drop-curtain came in on l afterthe Rest M ention has been ma e of

'

a a cony ; t i swas an important feaw mm i tlm d thestage

‘m s‘m mys show a constant recourse to i t. We

have thus a stage of three d ivisions, the forward stage in frontL of the curtains really a platform for cc amation ; secon l a5 5 6 or 1n n er stage , before which a curtain might

—aft—iEEd

’

be

3 .drawn and t d , a balcony or gallery best conceived as running across le diameter o f the stage — so arranged as tobe v isibl e and practicable whether the curtain divi d ing the twoparts of the stage was drawn or not. Abundance of evidencedeclares that there were ord inarily at least three stage doors onthe Elizabethan stage ; and i t i s l ikely that the two s ide doorswere obliquely placed .

N o assumption of former scholarship is more gratu itous thanthat which denies scenery to e ither the private or the publ i ctheatres of Elizabeth

’s time. Sceneryin themgdern sense was

assuredly not in use,and severa tota c anges of 1t were note

as a n ovel fj'

Fm as 1 63 61 ° but this is quite a d i ff erent thing

from a statement to the effect that scenery was unknown to theElizabethan stage.1 1 Doubtless the humbler theatres were as

bare and preposterous in thei r attempt at stage il lus ion as someprovincial houses are to-day. But from extant l ists o f properties

,and more especially from the stage directions of contem

porary editions o f our old drama,we are able to aflirm the ex

isten cé of much to help the imagination to a real isation of place.In a l is t o f Hen slowe

’

s r0perties occur such items as a rock , acage

,a wooden canopy

, a'

Tree with golden apples , and two

wit'

hm

a’

TW Of bells ;While the cloth of the sun andmoon , Belen don

’

s stable , and the ci ty of Rome ,” suggest

st ructures and painted canvases of some dimension . On theother hand

,i t seems n ot improbabl e that the El izabethans were

o ften content with suggestion on the stage wher'

é‘

We eman d

minute rea m . bed,a hanging and a chest , m which

lam hide,may have sufli ced for Imogen

’s chamber ;and Jul iet ’s tomb and the Castle of Inverness may have beenal ike simply suggested . But houses , two or three at a t ime,t rees practicabl e for cl imbing or uprooting, caves, groves , a hi ll ,to say nothing of furniture , all must have been , upon occasion ,1 ° The Royal Slave, by William Cartwrigh t.1 1 See Lee, Life of Shakespeare, p . 3 8.

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56 ENGLI SH DRAMA

Popular stagmg’

“was affected by the devices and maskings atcourt ; to affi rm anything e se 1s to eny t e most cer a fM simian i nheri tances , im itat ion. Therefore i f we know

;( as we do ) , that canvas was painted , spread on frames and

shi fted on and o ff the stage in grooved boards at court , we mayfeel sure that such things were n ot unheard of in London .

Wh i le we must be careful to remember that chronology countsfor much in an age of such rap id development , we may ci te nonethe less with confidence an allusion by on e of the characters ofJonson

, to a p iece of perspect ive,”on the stage , in 1 600

,an

allusion that would n ot have been made concern ing a novelty,unheard of until that date. So, too, Dekker

’

s off-hand remarkas to one who may stand at: the helm and steer the passage ofscenes ,

” throws light on the subj ect, though made in 1 609 andposs ibly referable

,l ike Jonson ’s allus ion , to a private theatre.1 3

O n e thing i s certain , the costuming of El izabethan plays,even

on the popular stage, 3 ten rich an en 1ve oug li ttlegoverned by that sense of fitness as to things past that d istin

guishes our efforts after we have l aboured with h istory andarchaeology. To those who know the Elizabethan drama atlarge

,the sea-coast of Bohemia, the p istol of Pericles and the

str iking clock of Brutus seem ven ial off ences. Anachronism wasa misdemeanour l ittle recognised as such ; and i t is l ikely thatJonson was the only d ramatist of the age who would havethought o f cri ticising the acting of Macbeth , Tamburlaine andCaesar al l in the contemporary doublet and hose, and with con

temporary accessories of war and court attendance. Even Sidn ey and Whetstone who recognised , in the i r earl ier time , theincongruit ies of contemporary staging, were talking of Gorboduc

and the l ike , with cl assi cal i deals in mind ; the age soon becameaccustomed to the aberrat ions of romantic art.Before we turn to the remain ing members of the group of

p laywrights known par excellence as the p redecessors of Shakespeare let us glance at the o lar drama immediately con

t emporary with the t l ier effofa’hfr '

I—"

r—‘myy. wo s a owy guresW hese are BM n and

Robert Wi lson , Tarlton was the most celebrated clown of

h is day and furn ished many anecdotes to the ru e umours of

the j est-books. He d ied in 1 588 and has been supposed the

1 3 See Cynthia’

s Revels, In duction , Gifford-Cunn ingham, J onson , 11,

210, and Dekker’s The Gulls’ Hornbook, Grosert. Dekker, ii, 248.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE S7,

author of two plays , The F amous Victories of Henry V, earl i estand rudest of the chronicle plays, and The Seven D eadly Sin s

of Lond on ,evidently a great effort involv ing a series of well

known subj ects. F rom the sketch or plot whence in formationof this latter play is derived , i t seems that the scenes in thei rgeneral conten t were merely indicated and the actual d ialoguesupplied extemporaneously. I t was this sort of thing, especiallythe extemporal clown

,such as Tarlton , that Shakespeare late r

so reprobated in Hamlet.1 4 Wi lson has been identified withthe player who introduced Greene to a dramatic career , i f weare to bel ieve the vivid account of the matter i n that romancer’sGroatsworth of Wit. Wi lson was an actor of note and leftbehind him no less than four plays, quas i-moral in character,printed in the eighties and earl ier n ineties

,most important

among them The Three Lad ies of Lon don . Another play, bysome attr ibuted to Wi lson , i s F air Em, the M iller

’

s Daugh ter

ofM an chester. Here an absurd pseudo-romance aboutW il l iamthe Conqueror ( and his quest of a wi fe in Sweden to correspondwith a p icture emblazoned on a shield ) is t ied up with theunde rplo t which gives t i tl e to the play where in

,under guise of

the a ffairs of F ai r Em and her s isters , there seem figured forth,

allegorical wise, particulars of the stage history of the day.

I t is a mistake to suppose the romantic element in l iterature\the specific introduction of any age or t ime. The art that laysstress on novelty and seeks to produce its effects by means of

strangeness belongs to al l time,though i t may not always rule ;

the variety of i ts mani festations is infin ite,Calisto and M elzboea,

Spanish in origin , Promos and Cassan dra, I tal ian , each waspossessed of this quali ty and so was F air Em, the maj or plotof which belongs to a type of story that str ikes its roots farback into the fict ion of the middle ages. The Accoun ts ofthe Revels contain several t itles that suggest mater ial of thisk ind : The I rish Kn igh t, Herpetulus, The B lue Kn ight, TheSolitary Kn igh t, The Kn igh t in the Burn ing Roch. O the rsubj ects, such as Paris an d Vien n a, are well kn own in the irp rose form ,

or, l ike Palaemon and Arcyte of Edwards , are

stories already treated by Chaucer. To dramas of thi s type wemay give the t itl e heroical romances in d ramatic form as theterm

“hero ic play

” has long s1ncc heen'W i o a more

Spec1fi c an a at ater variety of a not d issimilar spec ies. The14 111. 11. 42.

58 ENGLISH DRAMA

s tep from the moral i ty to the hero ic play, for example , is represented in The M arriage of Wit an d Scien ce, 1 569. HereWit has been metamorphosed into a knightly lover , passionatelyenamoured o f his lady, Science . Common Cond ition s, of muchthe same date

,i s a romance of the class run wild in which

a Duke of Phrygia, an Arabian knight and a F rench lady, allfigure

,turbulently in love and plotting through three continents

,

besides “ th e Isl e of Marofus.

”O f the same type are Sir

Clyomon an d Sir Clamydes, variously placed between 1 5 70 and1 584 and ascribed perhaps hastily to the authorsh ip of Peele ,and Greene ’s Orlan d o F urioso, different though i ts l i teraryorigin

, yet l i ttle less absurd in i ts romantic extravagance of persomage and plot. When we add that i t was out of such production s that th e conqueror p lay of Tamburlain e typ e wasevolved , we establ i sh still another l ine of growth from earlyt imes into the period of regular drama.We le ft George Peele

,an imitator of Lyly at court , as he

had been an imitator of Gager at Oxford . I t seems l ikely that,finding l i ttle prospect of success such as Lyly

’

s at court, Peel eturned , about 1 586, to th e popular stage to write plays aloneand wi th others for a l iving. Peel e was on e of thos e men of

Bohemian disposi tion to whom careless revel ry and unregulatedconduct are matters of second nature. He died early, in 1 597 ,i t is said worn out by his excesses. The range of his authorship must be surmised rather than determined

,and the cond i

t ions o f th e moment account for thi s state of things with Peel eas with others.once accepted ,M n emeant that the company had done with i t. TMacto r was held in l i ttle esteem ; i t was worse W 1t the profes

m m s n ot even recogn ised as existent.M ention o f the poet

,that mere contriver of the devices , would

have struck an early El izabethan,we may bel ieve

,as qui te pre

posterous ; as preposterous, indeed , as our printed mention of

the wig-maker and the stage upholsterer. Once more , the hab i tof collaboration in the writ ing of plays was general and theoutgrowth of the immediate and constant demand for n ew

plays. When a play was thus wri tten , nobody claimed i t andthe incessant revision of old plays

,revised

,as often as not, by

another hand than that o f the original author, further com

plicated the question. Peele was a playwright for seventeen or

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE S9

eighteen years and he seems not to have been a slow wr iter .Therefore when we find less than hal f a dozen plays as signedto his pen in hi s col lected works , and some of these even doubtfully, we wonder what has become of the rest of hi s work .

Besides The Arraignmen t of Paris and Sir Clyomon , which isprobably Preston ’s

,four other dramas are usually printed as

‘Peele’

s : these are The Old Wives’ Tale, a pleasing ex trava

ganza,apparently a burlesque of the heroical romances j ust

described , David and Bethsabe, a bible story revived and treatedchron icle-wise

, Edward I , a chronicle play far from con spicu

ously abl e, and The Battle of Alcazar, a conqueror drama of

the class of M arlowe ’s Tamburlain e. All these plays have beenclustered

,in poin t of date of writing

,about the year 1 5g ; and ,

whil e they are diverse enough in subj ect matter, all exhibi t themetrical facilit Hyricg] readingss, cm lessw

together with certain mannerisms of d iction agd suds:recognise as Peele

’

s. In a 1tion to this , Pee e as ong beent oug t to e on e of the several poets that appear to haveworked together on our earl i er English chronicle plays ; thoseon Henry VI ( i n thei r later revised

'

state included in ed itionsof Shakespeare ) , The Troublesome Reign of King John , theolder R ichard III An d now a share in Jack Straw, M arlowe

’sEdward II and the older King Leir i s added to his l ist , together with two more or less romantic comedies , Wily Beguiled an d The Wisd om of D octor D oddypoll, the last an imitation ,

in part at leas t, of A M idsummer-N igh t’

s Dream, and

an earl i er draft of the sati rical medley, Histriomastix.

Recent cri ti cism ,too

,has been incidentally busy with Peele ;

and three p lays o f importance in the history of tragedy are involved

, Alphon sus of Germany, Locrin e, and Titus An dron icus.

The first i s a revenge play, remarkable for the id iomatic Ger

man which i t contains ; i t was thus attributed long ago byAnthony 21 Wood , and the notion i s now revived despite longassociation with the name of Chapman. I f Locrin e is Peele’s,i t must have been early work , as it shows close touch withSeneca at court, even i f rel ieved by comic scenes in a very con

trasted vernacular manner. Most important is th e seriousascription of Titus An dron icus, so long and disturbingly ac

c ep ted as Shakespeare’s , to the part authorship of Peele. 1 5 Whi le

i t i s impossibl e in the space here at command to enter into theintricacies and nice weighing of Mr. Robertson

’s arguments , it1 5 J. M. Robertson , Did Shakespeare Write Titus Andron icus, 1 905.

'

6o ENGLISH DRAMA

must be frankly confessed that he makes out a very strongcase. Titus was first publ ished in the recently d iscovered quartoo f 1 594, and thereafter several times , never as Shakespeare

’suntil i ts inclusion i n the fol io . I t i s mentioned contemporan eously as Shakespeare

’s only by M eres,and this i s explain

abl e. Jonson refers to i t contemptuously and in connectionw ith work older than any of Shakespeare’s could possibly havebeen. Moreover, Titus was originally in the possession of atheatr ical company, the Sussex men , with which Shakespearewas never assoc iated , however i t may have been subsequentlyclaimed by reason of revision . The subj ect of Titus was old

to the stage and had been repeatedly recast . I f the TitusAndron icus that we have is the work of Shakespeare , i t mustbe dated early to account for i ts d iff erence from his later worksand its extraordinary crudity ; but plot , diction , and metre pointto a date not much before that of publicat ion ; and at that dateShakespeare was wri ting in no ‘such manner. On the otherhand

,in ternal evidence

,el ici ted by a comparison of th e plotting,

d iction, versifi cation and vocabulary of Titus, d iscloses many of

the quali ti es and mannerisms of Peel e in particular and of

G reene in lesser degree. Where fore the conclus ion that be

tween 1 590 and 1 592 ,Greene revised and expanded an older

play in which Peele had al ready a large share ” ; with“ the

al ternative possib il ity that Peele revised an old play by Greeneand Kyd .

”Be fore the reader ofMr. Robertson

’s acute brochurepooh-poohs the idea of depriving Shakespeare of the authorshipof this tragedy, let him care fully reread Titus And ron icus andask h imsel f i f i t were not a genuine service to the greatest namein Engl ish l i terature

,could we rel ieve Shakespeare of the onus

and the odium involved in the callousness to human su ff eringand the accumulation of gruesome and nauseating details thatd istinguish th is tasteless example of the horrible overdone. As

to Peele d ramatically, i t i s obvious that he tried to do everyth ing, court d rama , bibl ical play, masque, Senecan tragedy,chronicl e play

,comedy, burlesque , and what not. Possibly afte r

The Arraig nmen t of most characteristic con tribut ion ' to the d rama is to be found in the fantastic -irony of TheO ld Wives’ Tale in wh ich he daintily turns the absurd ities ofthe old historical plays and romances to rid icul e in a series ofburlesque scenes capi tally conceived and executed . Does i t seemaltogether preposterous

,considering this and the extravagant

bombast and overdone class ical allusion s of Locrin e, to bel ieve

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE

that Peele ( i f Titus Andron icus be h is) was doing much thesame for Senecan tragedy in this case ?An d now. the newly awakened popul ar stage was more and

more attracting men of education . Thomas Lod e was theson o f a Lord Mayor of London and rece1ved h1s education atOxford and Lincoln

’s Inn . Almost before he left college Lodgethrew himsel f w i th zeal into criticism and general pamphleteering

,although he published no poetry unti l 1 589. Lodge’s voy

ages by sea and adventures concern us even less than his rathervoluminous prose

,translations and poetical plun derin gs espe

c ially of the F rench lyrists. In general he gave interest for th eth ings that he used

,for Lodge had the stu ff of poetry in him.

His early l i fe in London seems to have been of much theBohemian nature of Peele

’

s and G reene’s ; but unl ike these , h is

associates , he recovered himsel f to become, i n the reign of James,a reputable h sician _a_r1d to ogtlive almost al l his_literaxy_ggntemporan es. Lodgers contact with the drama is d iffi cul t to

“

trace ; for he learl ashamed of it — perhaps not withoutm

g,reason . e know that e a a s are wim een e m t eassure hodge-podge of bibl ical story, modern farce and moralappl ication

,called A Looking Glass for Lon d on an d Englan d ,

acted in 1 589, and that his name occurs as the sole author ofThe Woun ds of Civil War

, a classical chronicle histo ry of nounusual meri t

,concern ing Marius and Sulla , publ ished in 1 594.

The rest i s surmise. I f Lodge’s renunciat ion of the stage is tobe tak en seriously, he may none the less have had a hand in theolder King John and in King Leir, in A Larum for Lon don , a

dramatization o f the all but contemporary si ege o f Antwerp ,and in the murder play

, A Warn ing for F air Women , all ofwhich has been alleged . Two comedies have also been assignedto Lodge , the enormously popular , i f trivial , M uced orus, firstpr inted in 1 598, and the older Taming of a Shrew , which weknow that Shakespeare revised to make i t The Taming of theShrew . I f i t be possibl e to reconstruct a dramatic Lodge out

shadow fi ure among the predecessors o f Shakespeare."

We proceed on fi rmer H'

Kohert Greene,notorious

for h is grud in es the fi rst unm1stakahle allu

62 ENGLISH DRAMA

sion to the great poet’s act ivi ty as a dramatist. Greene was the

son of a minis ter and born at N orwich , i n 1 558. He studiedboth at Oxford and Cambridge , , a matter that he was neve rweary of boasting. Travel abroad and an early acquaintancewith the low l i fe of London l i ttle bettered hi s d isposi t ion to

sel f—indulgence. On the contrary he fell away from his friends ,patrons and family

,and at las t deserted h is wi fe to l ive disso

lutely among his inferiors. Greene was famous in his day fo rh is pamphlets and stori es , many of them more or less autobiographical . His Groatsworth of Wit Purchased w ith a M illion of Repen tan ce, 1 592 , i s best known for the allusion to

Shakespeare ; in it Greene tel ls , too , a ci rcumstantial s tory of

h is own induct ion into the craft of playmaker by a portentouspersonage who has been identified with Robert Wi l son , mention ed above. Greene’s career was short at best. He couldhave written l ittl e before I 580 ; and was dead of his own excesses in September, 1 592. Though constantly deploring hisevi l ways and

,in moments of misfortune, sincerely repentant,

l i ttle can be said in extenuation of his l i fe which he threw awayin his folly to the unhappiness of those who loved him and tothe impoverishment of his gen ius.G reene in his work l ike Peele , was im itat ive yet l i ttl e bound.

b‘prece t or exam le. The

w

l ist 0 is p ays inc u es TherZiookzng

’

Glass for lion don , as we have seen , showing the influen ce of Wil son ; Orland o F urioso, 1 592 , an heroical d rama,a sl igh t advance on the absurd ities of Common Con d ition s ;Alphon sus of Arag on , an unsuccessful e ffort to out-bombast theTamburlain e of M arlowe ; F riar Bacon , 1 590,

a charmingcomedy of “ white magic ,

” matched against the black magicof F austus ; and The Scottish History of King James IV, 1 59 1 ,an effor t to play upon the popularity o f chron icle history in a

comedy of romantic interest. Hw _elessn es§_an d a want of-o

gon structive foreghgughgd umm cfi gstic moreor less ofthé

'

s'

é ackn owl—e

—dged m

wgrka of Greene ; and yet they w are n otw fi ~ o—n v a l

wifhb'

ut the1r merits.m _Again and again we meet in them with

i

ds-

shgdsw

dfm

po’

éfic ualit with personages,especially in comedy ,

1 at we and Breathe of

s

’

e-

iif ihifi'

t, an d a powi

éf'

fofi

g

'

iii’

éd fthlity to p icturesque or romanti cs i tuations. F riar Bacon and King James afford 118 , too, inMargaret of F ressin gfi eld , Lady Ida, and the Queen , three ofthe most genuine and charming women in the drama preced ingShakespeare ; while above all we have in Greene a fine fidel ity

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64 ENGLISH DRAMA

beth trulydeserves the dgsiggatigg popular. e

_.empha.11g y or t e many, not , as d id Jonson ej udic ious few an owever the select taste of the court mayhave determined the drama of Lyly, writing for the choi r boysof B lackfr iars , 111m Peele , Kyd and M arlowe,delivered at the Theatre, the Curtain , the G lobe and the Rose,

COM M11 Thomas K we meet w ith a man of somewhat d iff erent

type from the gentlemen and schoolmaster playwrights,from

i lli terate actors turned makers of plays,or the “ universi ty

wi ts ” as Professor Saintsbury somewhat unhapp ily dubbedPeele

,Greene , Lodge, and M arlowe, a sobriquet that appears

to stick. Kyd was born in London in 1 5 58, the son of ascrivener. He attended the M erchant Tailors’ school whileRi chard Mulcaster was master, and may have caught under thatencourager of the d rama the taste that made him a playwright.Investigation has n ot shown that Kyd was ever of e i ther universi ty ; but he knew his classics wel l , i f somewhat carelessly,and was n ot unacquainted with the three important modernLatin tongues. The career of Kyd as a dramatist probablylay between I 5 85 and 1 590 at the latest, and his authorshipand collaboration i s even less certain than that o f other members o f his group . I t must have been close to the earl ier datej ust mentioned that Kyd made his l eap to immediate fame withThe Span ish Tragedy. Thi s play shared for years with Tamburlain e the greatest populari ty of any tragedy outside o fShakespeare ; and became the parent of a considerable group of

successors,known as the traged ies of revenge . In The Span ish

Tragedy i s set forth the patheti c si tuation of a father who haslost his son by murder at the hands of assassins unknown . I nhis endeavours to learn the authors o f the crime

, Hieron imo , thefather

,totters on the verge of madness and in the end , finding

his prince the instigator and redress by ord inary form andprocess of law therefore impossibl e, he attains his revenge bymeans of a play arranged wi thin a play. The Span ish Tragedycame at a time when Gorboduc and T'

an cred an d Gismunda

represented the height of English tragic achievement. I t woul dbe too much to expect any tragedy at such a moment to havebeen unaffected by the p revalent Senecan ideals . An d Kyd

’

s

master work i s Seneca in bone and sinew, i f clothed withRenaissance romantic flesh . The Span ish Tragedy is wel l

p lanned and constructed , even in v iew o f what was to come ;

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 65

i ts figures are vital and the dramat ic moments are seized withapp reciation

'

an d e ffectively handled . Even the verse and style,

i f somewhat sti ff and inflated , mark a long stride forward . Inshort

,the popularity of thi s famous tragedy was thoroughly

wel l deserved .

I f we recur to the story of The Span ish Tragedy, for which ,by the way

,the ingenui ty of scholarship has as yet fail ed to

find a source,we are struck at once by its l ikeness to the well

known story of Hamlet. In Hamlet, to be sure , i t i s the fatherthat has proved the v ictim and the son is lef t to avenge himbut the si tuation , a secret crime, the perpetrator above the law ,

the burden on the avenger suggesting insani ty, the discovery ( inKyd

’

s play the revenge ) arranged by a play within a play : hereare striking parallels . As far back as the year 1 5 89 there areallusions to a tragedy by name Hamlet ; the play of Shakespearethat we know belongs at earl i est to the very las t years of Elizab eth ’s reign . Moreover , a German version of the d rama of

early date di ffers material ly in certain particulars , and the twoquartos of Shakespeare

’s Hamlet, with certain differences in thefol io

,disclose the l ikel ihood of a revision from an older play. We

are not l eft then wholly to a certain famous passage by N ash inh is prefatory ep istle to Greene

’s M en aphon , 1 589, in which thet i tl e Hamlet is coupled darkly with K i dde in E sop ,

”for the

inference that Kyd was the author o f this earl i er version of th emaster tragedy of Shakespeare. This revision , save for tracesin the G erman version and in the Shakespeare texts ( i f indeedthere be such i s now totally lost. But i t is o f interestto note

,look ing fo rward for a moment , that about the time that

Shakespeare was submitting the old Hamlet of Kyd to a thorough rewriting for the Chamberlain

’s men,Ben Jonson was en

gaged by Henslowe to add scenes to Th e Span ish Tragedy andfurther to develop the character of M arshal Hieron imo for theAdmiral

’s men,thei r rivals.

Two other plays that have been assigned to Kyd are lessmemorabl e. They are the F irst Part of I eron imo, printed in1 605 an d purporting to be a fore-piece to The Span ish Tragedy,and Soliman an d Perseda. Ieron imo i s probably the work of

an imitato r,anxious to profit by the populari ty of Kyd. Soli

man an d Perseda i s more l ike The Span ish Tragedy i n conductand style

,though distinctly in ferior. I t, too , util ises the sub

j cet of the more popular Tragedy, dramatizing at length the

play in the fi fth act by the means of which Hieron imo reaches

66 ENGLISH DRAMA

his revenge. Al though the ev idence on the subj ect i s slenderenough

,i t seems reasonable to regard Soliman an d Perseda as

the work of Kyd , written soon after The Span ish Tragedy andin consequence “

of the success o f that greater effort. Amongthe several other plays with which the name of Kyd has beenmore or less ingeniously associated , may be named Titus An

dron icus ( i f Shakespeare i s to gain by the loss of i t ) ; Th eTaming of a Shrew ( i f Kyd

’

s,his only essay in the realm of

comedy ) ; and Ard en of F eversham . Kyd i s l ikewise the certain author o f an abl e translation , in 1 594 , of the Corn elie of

Robert Garn ier,the contemporary F rench Senecan . This i s

dedicated to Lady Sussex, an aunt of Lady Pembroke , whopresided over a l iterary ci rcle especially interested in F renchtragedy. A more important association of Kyd

’

s was that withMarlowe. In 1 593 , Kyd was arrested on the charge of sed it ion

,being supposedly implicated in certain l ibels against

foreigners, found affixed to the wall of the Dutch churchyard .

The unfortunate dramatist was tortured without el ici ting a confession ; but , as a disputation of atheist ical contents was foundamong his papers

,he was remanded for further examination.

The documents in this case , especially the defence of Kyd , info rm us that , at on e t ime, Kyd and Marlowe occupied the samechamber where , accord ing to the affi rmation of the former , thei rpapers became mixed on the same table . We do not know theoutcome o f the matter. I t appears to have been confused withthe accusations against M arlowe. N or does Kyd

’

s own con

duct,j udged by hi s words, seem either ingenuous or fai r to hi s

associate. Doubtless through this affai r, Kyd los t’

any chancethat he may have had for advancement by his patrons. He wasdead in December 1 594, when his parents s ignificantly re

n oun ced thei r right to administer what must have been the exceedin gly slender estate of thei r deceased son .

1 6

M anila —Mad ame was born in Canterbury in March1 564 ; and was thus a month older than Shakespeare. Mar

lowe’s father was a shoemaker, his mother a clergyman’

s daugh

te r. He was about as well born as Shakespeare ; but he had th egood fortune

,l iving in a larger community , to attract attention

by his precoci ty (we may infer ) while a student at the King’s

School , Canterbury, and he was accordingly sent up to Cam

,

1 6 On th e whole top ic see F. S. Boas, The W

'

orks of Thomas Kyd ,1 901 . Th is renun ciation was d iscovered by Sch ick.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 67

bridge. There he remained until I 587 , taking h is bachelor’s

and master’s degrees in course and perhaps fal l ing into d isfavourtoward s the end . There has been much mystifi cation ,

”to call

i t no worse , as to the l i fe of M arlowe ; cri ticism n ow turns tothe agnost ic atti tude. F ranci s Kett , F ellow of Corpus Christ i

,

was convicted of holding unorthodox views as to the Trinity,

”

and later was burned at the stake for them. Kett l eft Cambridge in 1 580,

the year of Marlowe’s arrival . Whether thesetwo men met or n ot i s a matter of l i ttle importance. That animpressionable youth wi th an innate tendency to free think ing

,

should have remained uninterested and unaffected by influencesthat were notorious at his universi ty when he entered i t

,i s

s imply unthinkable , the more especially that we now know thatM arlowe’s actual deflections from orthodoxy appear to havebeen much those of Kett. The tale that M arlowe was an actoro f riotous l i fe in London who brake hi s l eg in on e lewdscene has n ow been definitely traced to the fabricat ion of thatable scholar and antiquary gone wrong, John Payne Coll ier. Asa matter of fact we know much less about M arlowe than weknow about Shakespeare ; and about Marlowe

’s l i fe,his char

acter and his authorship hover the same clouds of doubt whichhave given rise to guess-work and conj ecture in lesser mass onlybecause the world i s naturally more interested in the greaterman . M arlowe

’

s authorship as a dramatist begins with Tamburlain e, a stupendous effort to

’

treat i n two whole d ramas thesubjugating career o f Timur Kahn , the conqueror of Asia.Here, the young poet

’s choice of subj ect was as daring as hist reatment was novel an d untrammelled by previous examples

.

Moreover, he was enti rely conscious of what i t was that he wasdoing and as confident of success as his hero. Tamburlain e musthave been on the stage by 1 586 or 1 587 ; i t is a moot questionwhether i t preceded or followed The Span ish Tragedy. Eveni f M arlowe wrote later , he could have owed l i ttle to the worko f Kyd . O n the other hand, there i s none of the boisterous anddynamic romanticism that characteri ses Tamburlain e i n themodified Sen ecan ism of The Span ish Tragedy. Kyd

’

s play i sabove all things a drama ; indeed i ts merits l i e along the l ine ofaction and in the forcible stage real ism of an effective story ;Tamburlain e, on the contrary, i s essentially an epic in whichthe sheer force of poetry has triumphed over d ifficul ties top roduce , with all i ts faults , a really surprising result . I t i s imposs ibl e to make clear excep t by actual example how far the

68 ENGLISH DRAMA

by i ts tragic qual i ty and theproblem of the character of Hieron imo ; and Marlowe held h isaudience as long

,beginn ing the series of conquero r plays

Greene’ s Alph on sus of Aragon , Selimus, Peele’

s Battle of Alcazar

,and his lost Turkish M ahomet among them as Kyd

’

s

Trag edy inaugurated the tardier tragedy of revenge.The play of M arlowe next in chronological order is D octor

F austus, on the stage by the year of the Armada. I t has comedown to us unhappily in a fragmentary and imperfect text .F austus tell s the world-story of the man who, seek ing for al lknowledge

,pledged his soul to the devil , only to find the misery

of a hopeless repentance in this world and damnation in theworld to come. The motive, l ike much of the conduct of thist ragedy

,is that of the old moral i ties, witness the alternate

p romptings of the good and the bad angel and the dance of theseven deadly s ins. M ore important is the typical character ofF an stus who i s any man and every man . But F austus i s , nonethe less , an individual in whose patheti c pl ight we are inte rested for h imsel f , and the appeal of the work is primarily artistic. D octor F austus is a better play on th e stage than thecareless reader might suppose i t ; and i t i s worthy o f note thatwhat the old s to ry has gained in other hands in variety of in

eident , by the in fusion of the love story of Margaret fo r example

,i t has lost in th e singleness of purpose with which.

Marlowe concen trates attention on his unhappy protagonist.Even the wide allegorical s ignificance

,the masterly obl i teration

of time and space o f the second part of Goethe ’s F aust with thehero’s redemption

,scarcely compensate for th is loss. The tragic

and untimely death,too , of M arlowe , the daring character o f

h is genius and the stories of his doubts of God have conspi redto make th is play on e of the most interesting in our l i terature.B eside al l thi s

,i t i s unimportant what ed itions or translat ions

of the F austbuch Marlowe uti l ised in his work. His was thepoetry that fired the genius o f Goethe , who soph isticated withmodern brill iant philosophical speculation a theme which wasthe product of an age of sterner and , dare we say, of soundertheology than that o f his own .

Our interest in The J ew of Malta, 1 589-90, is of a d i fferen t

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 69

k ind and concerns Shakespeare’s relations to it. In the J ew ,

as in the figures o f Tamburlaine and Faustus, we have a creature of heroic and overweening passion ; but , i n the place of thepas sion for conquest or the passion for all-knowledge , we havesubst ituted a gigantic malevolence that degenerates from itsvery excess in to inhuman caricature. The Jew in Elizabethan ,as i n other ages

,i s a subj ect more interesting to those of the

Hebrew race than to others. Shakespeare owed something inh is Shylock to Marlowe’s Barabas who i s more nearly theconventional Jew of scandalous medimval tradition. I t i s onlyfai r to Marlowe , as to Shakespeare in thi s connection , to re

member that both simply recorded for the stage the prejudicesof an age n ot much more bound by such prejudices than theworl d of to-day

,i f somewhat more brutal in i ts avowal of them.

Barabas i s a monster , but the play in which he perpetrates h isimpossible crimes is

,as a drama, decidedly an advance on i ts

p redecessors,even i f

,as must be acknowledged , less sustained

by the buoyancy of M arlowe’s poetry. The dggmatic masteriece of Marl we , however, is his one chronicle play dward

II . Recurrence has been made in these pages more than onceto thi s species of drama, and early suggestions o f i t have beendescribed in the figure of Bal e’s King Johan , in th e subj ectmatter of Gorboduc and elsewhere. A chronicl e play is a

drama based as to source on theW M “

Britdih ,a h1story transformed into a p ay,_ and i t i s conceivabl e

m m . Edward II , which appearsto have been first acted i n 1 592 , i s by no means an early specimen oi i ts class . I n the probable collaboration with Peele

,

Greene and Lodge, we have met with such productions as JackStraw, The Troublesome Reig n of King John , The Con tention s of the_ Tw o N oble Houses of_ Lan caster an d York andThe Chron i cle History of Richard Duke of Gloucester. Allare chronicle plays , and so, too, in a sense, are the plays onmythical Brit ish h istory, Locrin e, The M isfortun es of Arthur

an d King Leir. M r, which imbues most o fthese plays, was no preserved by arlowe in his Edward II ,an d i t may be

'

su Wrote is play more for thetragic pat os which the story 0 n 1n g y an d1scrown edsovereign exhales than for any other reason . I t i s worth noting, however, that in this tragedy Marlowe raised the wholespecies of the chron icle play to a h igher artistic level andreached the crown of h is own dramat ic art. The Tragedy of

7° ENGLISH DRAMA

Queen D ido, publ ished as h is in collaborat ion w ith Nash , in1 594, is below his independent work ; and The M assacre at

Paris, acted 1 592-93 , save for the character of the Duke of

Gu ise, is dist inctly in ferio r. Hi stor ically, however , th is work i sof interest, as apparently the earl iest effort to a l the methodof the chron icl e play to the histo of a con temporar for

__g n

country ; an 1t e to 1mportan t things a ter. ar owe hasM ughr a collaborator with the others of th is group inseveral plays

, Shakespearean and other : Hen ry VI , Titusonce more and even Richard III among them .

1 7 I t seems , however

,less cons istent with h is independen t and insolent sp ir i t

thus to have submitted hi s gen ius to harness , and the degree ofsuch servi tude , i f i t were ever his, is l i kely to cont inue indeterminabl e.There remains one matter as to M arlowe .

cially after his indub itably tragic death ,”ag

c

rlggnfi h m , in the

loose language of the t ime ,“ atheist. ’

n deed Greene hadtouched him on this point in his Groatsw orth of Wit, and ,when M arlowe was ki lled

,there was out against h im a seri es

of accusations , brought by a p rofessional in former , namedBaines, in which specific charges o f this tenor were mal ic iouslyset forth. So far as we can make them

M arlowe’s d isrepute 1n these matters are sewas The assocmtion W1th Kettt or at leastCambr idge— many a man has been made or unmade by thereputation thrust upon him at college. econ d Marlowe was

the personal friend of Sir Wal ter Raleig an a choice c i rcl eof kindred sp iri ts, poets and men of science who d iscussed manyth ings w ith a greater freedom than the cautious orthodoxy of

the age was l ikely to approve. The m isfortunes and unpopu

larity o f Raleigh in the next reign caused th is l i ttl e set of in

quirers to be spoken o f as a school of athe ists but i t was th ezeal of the Jesui t, F ather Parsons, that s o dubbed them.

M arlowe was ev iden tly a man of free and unguardedimprudent and incapable of concealment. He may even haveenjoyed the intentional mystifi cation of such an un imaginativefool as the informer Baines , whose N ote Contain ing the Opinion of on e Christopher M arley concern ing hi s damnable j udgment of religion ,

” be i t remembered,i s wholly ex parte. More

1 7 See C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Authorship of the Second and

Th ird Parts of King Henry VI, New Haven , 1 91 2.

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72 ENGLISH DRAMA

and untruth ful good men who used this glaring exampl e of thefate that befalls the ungodly to point a moral and adorn atal e.The youngest o f the predecessors of Shakespeare isfl omas ,

N ash , and he was truly al though his touchwith the history of the exceed ingly sl ight.N ash was born in 1 567 and entered St. John

’s College beforeM arlowe le ft Cambridge , forming an association with thatpoet

,further proved by the jo int authorship

,at an uncertain

date , of The Tragedy of D ido. However , the talents of N ashwere of a di fferent type , as the notable series of h is satiricalp rose pamphlets

,his controversies

,the M arprelate ones and

those with Harvey , go to show . While at college , N ash wasin d ifficul ties for a satirical Latin comedy

,and h is Isle of Gulls,

in English and equally sharp of tongue we may bel ieve , kepth im a prisoner in the F l eet for months and was so successfullysuppressed that we have not a shred of i t. As a matter of

fact but on e dramatic composi tion remains from the pen of

N ash the masque-l ike comedy Summer’

s LastWill an d Testamen t

, 1 597 , acted before the queen and a late following of

Lyly’

s mythological and allegorical court'

drama of much elaboration and exceedingly l ittle plot .I f we turn back to the group of wr iters j ust d iscussed re

v iewing them as a whole, it is clear that while they form ed inno sense a coteri e

,e een r less int imately

acquainted in a small M . We

may assume that Eyly dwel t more continuously m t e precinctsof the court ; though N ash , Bohemian of the Bohemians , foughtby h is si de in the Marprelate controversy. N ash

,as we have

seen , was associated with M arlowe an d was G reene’s champion

against the attacks of Harvey. Peele, Greene , and Lodge vari

ously collaborated . Kyd , who was not a university man , ap

pears to have stood apart from the group ; and yet he wasroom-mate of M arlowe. I t i s a mistake to suppose most of

these men actors . O nly o f Peel e are we certain ; and i t i s n otimpossible that these universi ty bred men may hearti ly have d isdained “ the qual i ty,

” as the profess ion of acting was thend esignated . Indeed “ the actor-playwright originated , as wehave seen , in personages such as il l iterate Tarlton and Wilsonwith his belated moral iti es ; wherefore Greene

’s atti tude o f

resentment towards th e “ upstart crow beautified with our

feathers ,”for Shakespeare too, was an actor—playwright.

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE 7 3

The third decade of the reign of El izabeth ( 1 5 79-1 588) isthe period of L l wi th whose popularity none could vie unlessi t may have een r. Gager with h is Latin plays at Oxford or

an occasional academic success such as the comedy Pedan tius,the work o f Anthony Win gfi eld or Edward F orcett

,staged at

Cambridge in 1 58 1 . As to the popular stage , the best that i tcould boast in the early eighties was Wi lson ’s Lords and Lad ies

of Lon don,The F amous Victories of Tarlton and Peele

’s paro

d ies (may we bel ieve them Locrin e, the Senecan crazeoutdone

,and The Old Wives’ Tale, l ively take-off of the he

roical romances. But in The Span ish Tragedy, Tamburlain eand Ard en of F eversham Engl ish Tragedy Sprang to maturity.Enough has been said of the other two , the outcome respect ivelyand the protes t against Sen ecan ism ; Arden i s the most trulyindigenous of our earl ier English traged ies. Here is told withreal i stic and simpl e frankness the sto ry of a fai thless wi fe , herin fatuation for a coward beneath her and the busy plotting o fthe wretched couple to rid themselves of Arden , the unfortunatehusband who suspects thei r amour. The story , the unknownauthor found in Hol inshed and i t has been followed wi th a

fidel ity that might be call ed slavish were not the resul t so effec

t ive. An d yet the material has been well ordered and thepersonages rational ised to a degree that no other Engl ish tragedyhad reached before the year 1 590 . There is a power in theconception of the character of Al ice Arden and a dignity abouther repentance that places her among the great heroines of

El izabethan drama, and justifies a curious inqu iry into theauthorship of tragedy of such superlative meri t. Ard en hasbeen thought the work of Kyd . But surely its unvarnishedtragic actual i ty is widely in contrast with the romantic spi ri tand heightened Sen ecan ism of The Span ish Tragedy . Morestrenuous has been the advocacy of Shakespeare’s authorsh ip ,concern ing which i t i s suffici ent here to say that the art o f theauthor of Arden of F eversham i s mature in i ts ease and re

straint of style ,” i n its weight and power to sustain character

and in its grim mastery of humour and a peculiar i rony of i tsown . N one of these qual i ties were Shakespeare’s at any timebefore the year I 592 , the date of the publication of Arden ; andmoreover never is the qual ity of Shakespeare

’s art so divorcedfrom the magic touch of poetry.

The period from 1 586 to 1 593 is par excellen ce the per iodof Marlowe. There in are contained not only h is own tragic

74 ENGLI SH DRAMA

successes but those of his im itators, and the ch ron icle playd evelops by rapid strides from the stuttering attempts of Tarlton and the panoramic tri logy on Henry VI to the real isationof historical character in the older King John an d the grasp of

i nevi tabl e tragedy in Edward II . N o less important here isthe natural comedy of rural l i fe , compassed by Greene in F riarB acon and The Pin n er of Wakefi eld and his success in the moreserious romantic comedy of The Scottish History of King James

IV. N or need we recur to o ther matters already sufficientlytreated . Happy as Shakespeare was in his art and his genius,he was no less fortunate in these his “ predecessors .” I t i ssomewhat remarkable how thoroughly they prepared the groundbefore him with experiment in what he was afterwards totriumph . Lyly o ffered to Shakespeare

’s imitat ion court manners and d ialo ue

,wit and repartee , Greene the naturalness o

l

fW ash‘thr

'

fn’

om tructive tragedianm m ough b titnm ‘

irand ‘

the psyhhdloogy of revenge ; while M arlowegave the supreme example up to his t ime of tra ic force n d

the power of the magic o f poetry. And now havmg acted each

M a ch hurried from the scene ;G reene

, M arlowe and Kyd were gone respect ively in 1 592 ,

1 593 ahd 1 594 ; Peele by 1 597 . Only Lyly and Lodge wereleft to know the future of the drama the foundat ions of whichthey had helped to lay. But Lyly

’

s was a repute of the past ;Lodge was n ow interested in other matters.

CHAPTER IV

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES INHISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY

FOR the product ion of great works of art , we are told thatthe man and the moment must conspi re. The moment in the h isto ry of our drama had n ow arrived . The time of preparat ionand experiment was past. Early rival s had done thei r part inwarning and example , and now had gone the

'

1m more ci rcumspection ,

more reserve , after th e man ner of these our later daysof propriety and innuendo . But the largeness o f Shakespearel ies in his fidel i ty to the actuali t ies o f human l i fe and conductin all i ts phases ; and sweeps such as his take us both alo ft intoregions that we can see

,however they may remain unattainabl e

,

and into the depths,the petty nooks and crannies in which hi de

the l i ttleness,the baseness, and even the bestial i ty of men.

Shakespeare’

s scope is the widest among poets and the mostcompletely j ustified ; for he sees things in thei r t rue relations.There need be no l imi ts to the freedom of an art such as th is,for he i s at wi l l i deal ist , real ist , sentimental ist and Sa ti ristunerr ingly where ideal i ty‘

,real ism

,sentiment or sati re apply.

To see the world habi tually through any one of these lensesi s to be biased

,unsteady, fin d afraid . hakes eare’s i s t

age of freedom , and we may commit ourse ves unreserve y1'

nm an ds, su'

re that , wherever he may lead us , ours is everthe steadying hand of truth in a cosmos

,sane

,ordered and

eminently rational .As to the man , in a work such as this, there can assuredly be

no need for the rehearsal of an often told tale . Shakespeare’s7S

76 ENGLISH DRAMA

extract ion out of th e sturdy yeoman stock of England , neithertoo high nor yet too low , was certainly no d isadvantage to him.

N or could he have been happier than in the midland place of hisb irth

,however i t leaves the cri t ics at a nonplus to explain h is

wit as an inheritance of the leaven ing sal t of Gaul or his poetryby that magic wherein he i s easi ly first , al though he was assuredly no Celt. In his education and earl ier experiences i nl i fe

,too

,Shakespeare was fortunate. In Stratford neither men

n or ideas were crowded . There was time to th ink and t imeto dream ; but who that knows those trifles of easy allusive memory, Wi l l Squele, a Cotswol d man , and Perkes of the Hill ,

”

M arian Hacket , th e fat ale-wife o fWin cot,”or the wh isters

in B ’achet-mead,

”can suppose that i n Strat ford Shakespeare

only thought and dreamed ? A mayor ’s son might learn a l ittl eLatin and with i t anatom ize the character of a pedan t inHolofernes or Hugh Evans. A mayor

’s son ,too , as a mere

l ad,might welcome the return , at no in frequent intervals, of

player-folk from London and receive in thei r rude performancesthe powerful b ias of hi s l i fe , to be turned to an immediate andunexpected account when the necessi ty of prov id ing for wi feand child struck home to the youth of twenty.O f l ate th e painfulTifddSt‘fy

'

b“

generatrons‘

of b iographers ofShakespeare has been supplemented by a number of add itionalfacts. We learn that Shakespeare’s name appears in a coupl eof subsidy lists as a delinquent in the payment of hi s share of

certain gran ts to the queen , a matter accounted for by theentry that “ the said Wil l i am Shakespeare had removed fromB ishopsgate ( the neighbourhood of the Theatre ) to the Libertyof the Cl ink in Southwark,

” a local i ty not far from the Globe.O nce more , i n the case at law , Mountj oy vs . Bellott , the nameof Shakespeare occurs as a witness again and again . In on e

of these occurrences he is d escribed as Wi ll iam Shakespeare ofStrat ford on Avon , gent leman ,

” another is his deposition signedwith his own hand . F rom

’these documents i t further appears

that Shakespeare lgdged with Moun tjoyp the plainti ff , who was

5a wig-maker and resided at the corner of Si lver Street and

W capplegmWe have thus no ess an 1 rec local it ies of residence es

tablished for Shakespeare in London . An other case incidentallydescribes at length the details of the organisation and processo f sharing which characterised the company of players to whichShakespeare was for years attached . By means of i t we learn

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 77

that Shakespeare hel d o riginally a tenth share in the G lobetheatre which by the admission of other sharers was finallyreduced to a fourteenth

,though the process could have involved

no decrease in the value o f his share ; that he also owned aseventh interest in the private theatre i n B lackfriars ; and thatthese shares seem or iginally to have been acquired merely by anagreement to assume responsibil i ty for the rental and mainten an ce of these playhouses. In time these shares became ve ryvaluable ; b ut the statemen t of the plainti ff in this case that aninterest such as Shakespeare

’s was worth £300 i n the con

temporary value of money, and therefore £2000 or more in ou rmoney

,i s cl early an exaggeratioh intended to increase damages .

Shakespeare was well off for hi s station and for his t ime, andi t is a credi t to the d iscernment and taste of his contemporariesthat h is plays should have made Shakespeare ’s fortune . Sti llanother case

,turned up as were these t wo las t in the Records’

O ffi ce by the industry o f Professor C. W. Wallace , i s endorsedwith the remarkable caption

,Shakespeare vs. Bacon .

1 F ew

will deny,indeed, that Shakespeare has had of late years , owing

to the activi ty of certain eccentr ic and uninst ructed persons incryptograms and in digging under Engl ish rivers , an unusuallygood case against Bacon . But unhappi ly the defendant in th isJacobean law su it was not F rancis but an obscure M atthewBacon who , according to the poet s b il l of complaint

,dated

Apri l 26 , 1 6 1 5 ( j ust about a year before h is death ) , was

alleged wrongfully to have detained certain “ letters patent,

deeds,evidences

,charters

,and writings ,

” concern ing the t i tleof Shakespeare and others plaintiff s to various houses withinthe precinct of Blackfriars in the ci ty of London .

” The inference as to Shakespeare is n ot unimportant

,as i t d iscloses h im

actively interested in his business and property ventures in th ec ity to the last

,and not, as has hitherto been accepted , in hi s

latter years ret ired from them as from writing for the stage.O ther new discoveries concerning Shakespeare are less important , however interesting : That he was pai d 44s ingold for the des ign of an impressa or semi-herald ic p ictorialbadge with its attendant motto for the Earl of Rutland ; that

1 See the various pub lication s of C. W. Wallace in The Lon donStandard, Oct., 1 905 ; Eng lische Stud ien , xxxvi

,1 906 ; The Times, Oct.

2 an d 4, 1 909. Harper’s Magazin e, March , 1 910 ; the Century Maga

zin e, Sept., 1 910, an d elsewhere.

78 ENGLISH DRAMA

he was regarded by a spleneti c contemporary cri t ic of theHeral ds Oflice as on e of those who outrage truth and decen cy in his endeavour to secure a coat of arms ; that h isfather

,described as a merry checked old man ,

” is reported tohave said that Wi l l was a good , honest fellow, but he darsthave cracked a j est with him at any time.

”

Conj ecture is easy where the facts are so disconnected andremote, and there are many more varieties of pen portraits ofShakespeare than there are p ictures of the day and of laterfabrication that purport to record the features of his face.Wi th the plays before us and thei r attendant poems , w ith theci rcumstances of thei r wr iting so far as we know,

thei r act ingand thei r publicat ion , al l so natural and so absolutely in ac

cord w ith the pract ises of the t ime, it i s wantonly gratuitousto find any difficulty or invent any mystery about them . As toShakespeare personally, we have a hundred contemporary test imonies and tradi tions galore that he was

“ excellen t in the

qual i ty that h e professed ,” that he was en tle thou htful and

kindl M I C,

was caoable and a lert 1n r umen t Whatmore could We wish to n ow 0 h is est imable nature , for example, than the fact that he

“ was adored on th is side of idolat ry , by a man l ike Jonson who customari ly adored

,however

he may occas ional ly have approved them , few men and poetssave himsel f. As to the plays

,j ud iciously considered and at

large,they tell us indubi tably what manner of man Shakespeare

was,however they may fai l i n those petty matters b iographical

that men , i nfinitely meaner in thei r natures, may conceal withun important cunning in the pages of the ir works. We mayassume with confidence that Shakespeare was neither anabandoned sensual i st , a sinner the loss o f whose immortal soulwas the price of hi s matchless experience in the world , nor yetan impeccable Prospero

,exerc ising his art of legerdemain with '

a condescending pi ty for that human weakness and passion inwhich he had never shared. There is n o condescens ion in

beh ind i t ,alone i s sufficient to account for the many portra i ts that ingenious mal ice and ignorant adorat ion have contrived in d istortion .

To the superficial reader who takes h is impressions from thepassage befor e him

,and then

,laying h is Shakespeare as ide,

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80 ENGLISH DRAMA

and a fine bearing must have been imperat ive in the latter part.Perhaps

, as Professor M atthews bel ieves , Shakes eare te

I'

fi e folio o f Benspeare took a part

in the Roman tragedy of Sejanus and in the comedy of EveryM an I n His Humour; but What parts i t i s impossibl e to say.

The l isting of actors came into vogue only late in Shakespeare’scareer

,hence the p auci ty of our in formation on the subj ect.

But Shakespeare’s opportunity came otherwise. In the jgcessag t

consent to the earl iest period of h is authorship must remainmatter of perenn ial debate ; for the evidence recoverable is andmust cont inue insuffici ent

,however assured we may feel of the

general preposition . I t is not enough fo r the cri tic to feel inh is inner consciousness that Shakespeare could or could n ot

possibly have wri tten th is,that or the other l ine or passage

h is doubts must be based on external evidences , however graceful a superstructure of in ference h is ingenui ty may be ablesubsequently to rear. F or exampl e

,take the whole vexed ques

t ion of the tri logy of plays on Henry VI , included by generalconsent and the sanction of the fol ios in all ed i tions o f ShakeSpeare. F or the first of these plays , no version save that o f thefolio exists ; the other two occur in a very d i fferent form as

the first and second parts of The Con ten tion between the Two

N oble Houses of York an d Lan caster, printed i n 1 594. A

comparison of th is version with that of the fol io d iscloses a l inefor l ine revision of the two Con ten tion s, a correct ion of obvi

ous mistakes and an occas ional reordering of material i n the interest of a more e ffective dramatic presentation . As to thefirst part o f Hen ry VI , there is no opportunity for such a comparison but there is a strik ing allusion by N ash to the extraord in ary success , in 1 592, of a play in which Talbot figured as

a hero in his warfare against the F rench . The scenes that concern Talbot in the first part of Hen ry VI , as we have i t , arewri tten with pecul iar an imation as compared with many otherscenes of the same play. The all but certain inference i sthat the success of this rev i sion of an earl ier and n ow lost

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 3 !

vers ion o f the play, n ow known as Shakespeare’s fi rst part of

Hen ry VI , was due to Shakespeare’

s insertion o r rewriting ofthe scenes that depict Talbot . O nce more, there remains extant an old drama in two parts cal led The Troublesome Reig n;of King John which covers very nearly the ground traversed byShakespeare

’s play on that king. Here comparison reveals ad i ff erent process . Wg eneral course of events and t e erson a es 0 t e o lay

,

an t en re as ion t e ma er ia into on e rama o a super iorun it and workmansh ip . But i t was not in the chron icle laM92?“ratw peare thus workin

gover old material.

im i ar y i t IS pro ema 1c 0 w at extent a espeare s an d

remade The Taming of a Shrew i n to The Taming of the

Shrew ; certainly the scenes between Katharine and Petruch ioare thoroughly remodelled ; while even as to Romeo an d Juliet,exis tent in two Shakespearean versions, who knows , had we thelost tragedy alluded to by B rooke as on the stage three yearsbe for e the birth of Shakespeare , that the cas e might not exhib ita paral lel in the matter of revision , to that o f King John ?

im i tat ion .

W age was r inging with the successes of Kyd and Mar

lowe,and t ragedy and chronicl e h isto ry held the vogue of the

moment.’

I f Shakespeare had any hand in Titus An dron icus,which the present wri te r would l ike to bel i eve that he had not,this must have been the t ime when writing of matter at th efurthest extremity from his own feel ings and experi ence

,he

strained his art to outdo the grewsomeness and horror of

popularised Seneca in this revolting tragedy. We are on safer

rable not only i nconcept ion but l ikewise in execution — in a certain largenessof phras e, force of passion and obj ectiveness of poetic spi ri twith Tamburlaine, F an stus and Barabas , the heroes of Mar

82 ENGLISH DRAMA

s tage, an d there could be l ittl e choice of models between the

j ejune morali ties of Wi lson , heroical absurditi es such as F airEm or even l ight, tr ivial M ueeclorus and the finished comed ieso f Lyly at court. Love

’

s Labour'

s Lost i s Shakespeare’s en

d eavour to wri te an original comedy in the manner of Lyly.

which Lyly had for the most part preserved . To mythologyShakespeare afterwards returned for atmosphere in A M id

summer N ight’

s Dream, th e latest o f h is plays to be affected byLyly

’

s art of the court. Love’

s Labour’

s Lost has the distin ct ion of being the only play o f Shakespeare ’s i n which the plothas not been traced to an extraneous source in whole or i npart. Clever and interest ing though i t is

,i ts p icture of the

conversation and manners of gentlewomen and courtiers is amateurish , however excellent a copy of l ike converse in the comedies of Lyly. I t i s perhaps worthy of note that in both Love

’

s

“

Labour'

s Lost and A M idsummer N igh t’

s Dream a play‘ i sattempted within the play by rid iculous amateurs before greatpeopl e

,and in both the conduct of the great as to these well

meant endeavours i s not above reproach on th e score of con

sideration and common civil i ty. Could Shakespeare haveknown the merci less banter that takes advantage of intrenchedposi tion ? O r di d Shakespeare laugh , as most of us are won tto laugh

,with the majori ty and feel

,even as early as Love

’

s

Labour’ s Lost, the pro fessional’s contempt for that creatu re,

most loathed o f gods and men , the would-be player .hakespeare made no second attem t at the allusive court

drama 0m m andM W Sgfi m m in Gasco igne’s

“

S ZZjom m mtrigue of Roman comedy, now attractedh is attention and The Qomed o rm was the result , a playi n which probabi l ities o mistaken g

'

dif’

f

-

ftity, as exhib ited i nh is sou rce the M en cechmi of P autus, are frankly seized an d

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 83

doubled , and all attempt at character isat ion i s as frankly andrationally sacrificed to farcical s ituation. But although ShakeSpeare employed the mistake in identity again ( in Viola and herbrother Sebastian in Twelfth N ight for example ) , The Comedyof Errors remains his only experiment , hi s on e success , in

rds worked up into acompleter real isat ion . Julia, the resourceful maiden , arrayedas a page

,seeking her lover yet womanly withal , Lucetta, the

pert waiting-woman , the contrasted two gentlemen ,”

the

fai thful and the recreant , Launce , the droll serv ing man , allare sketches subsequently developed and d ifferent iated amongthe enduring comedy folk o f Shakespeare.To return to the chron icl e play, i f Shakespeare imitated the

gai t and manner of Marlowe in R ichard III , he had that poe ta lmost equally in mind in Richard II . Edward II must havebeen Marlowe’s l atest play. I t was publ ished very shortlyafter h is death and we have no reason to doubt that i t maintain ed to the full the repute of his earl ier dramas. The themeof Edward II details the fate of an unkingly king, one whoseun fi tn ess to rul e and wanton d isregard for the obligations ofh is offi ce and his manhood convert him into a p itiable obj ect

,

dethroned,d isgraced , and at last miserably murdered . The

only other English monarch , whose career and end can be described in terms almost identical , was Richard I I , the carelessan d dishonourable son of the B lack Prince. I t seems incred ibl ethat Shakespeare should have chosen such a theme and producedh is Richard II , not long after the death of M arlowe, w ithouta full recognition of his own daring. Moreover

,whatever i ts

s imilari ty in subj ect, Richard II i s wr itten with an independenceand spiri t, new as compared with Shakespeare

’s previous effortsin the chronicl e play. Richard II is Shakespeare rival l ing Mar

lowe but free from his leading str ings and example ; for what

84 ENGLISH DRAMA

could be further removed from th e M arlowesque hero thanthe poeti c egotist and poseur

,Richard I I , consoled in the hour

of his discrowning and almost in the very moment of his takingoff by his theatrical sense o f p icturesqueness. Ri chard I I i sShakespeare

’s firstgreat stu

iyi n gha

racter ; for lohn was acopy

,an 1c ar roo ac t e im itation of an establ ished

tradition. In the tragedy o f King Richard II Shakespeareemerged absolutely from tutelage in serious drama to d isp layunmistakably that fine scrutiny into th e mainsprings of humanpassion and conduct

,ever subordinated to artistic and dramatic

l imi tations,that d ist ingu ishes h im above other poets.

I t is famil iar to students and to most general readers thatour popularly accepted chronology o f the Shakespearean playsis the resul t of a consensus of schol arly op inion and that muchof i t is founded on in ference and argument , neither l ightly tobe d isturbed nor yet to be accepted otherwise than in a spiri t o fhopeful and provisional fai th . The famous mention by F rancisM eres , in I 598, of twelve plays by nam e has been described as“our on e rock of certainty in a sea of surmise.” Yet eventhis rock is n ot absolutely secure. M eres’ book is enti tl edPallad is Tamia, or Wit’s Treasury, a comparative d iscou rseof our Engl ish poets with the Greek , Latin and I tal ian poets,

”

and his method i'equires a nice balancing of names,t itl es

,and

characteristics , in all of which he i s somewhat priggish. Moreover, Meres may not have been in fall ible. His testimony inincluding Titus An dron icus among the traged ies of ShakeSpeare has fastened that dubious clog about the poet’s neck ;and the critics are s t ill happily undecided as to what comedyM eres could have had in mind under his ti tle Love

’

s Labour’

s'Won . Was i t All

’

s Well That En ds Well or M uch Ado

A bout N othing where B eatrice and Benedick in a sense bothwin ? Was i t The Taming of the Shrew wherein the haplessKatharine is w on with labour but assuredly not with love ?O r may it have been some comedy, n ow lost save for this sol itary record of its t i tl e ? Moreover does the mention of justtwelve plays by Meres preclude the possibil i ty o f Shakespeare ’shaving written more

,unknown to thi s pragmat ic cri t ic o f I 598 ?

As to the order of th e plays of Shakespeare thus far mentioned ,l eaving the revisions of the plays on Henry VI as ide , the poetseems to have been busy w ith the three exper imental comed ies ,Love

’

s Labour’

s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and The Two

Gen tlemen of Verona, up to th e close of 1 591 , when apparently

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 85

he turned seriously to chron icle h istory, writing King J ohn ,Richard III and Richard II , perhaps in this order during 1 592

and 1 593 , and then turn ing back to comedy in The M erchan t

of Ven ice and A M idsummer N ight’

s D ream in 1 594 an d 1 595 .

Romeo and J uliet, publ ished in a form suggesting revision in1 597 , comes in somewhere here and , i n 1 597 too , Shakespearecontinues his work in the chronicle play with the first partof Hen ry IV. So much for the generally accepted order of

Shakespeare’s dramas up to the date of the l i st of Meres.An d ngw Shakespeare bloomed forth in the full strength o fhis dramatic maturityz freed once and for all from compen

EW W In some respectst ere is no completer example of Elizabethan dramatic ar tthan TheM erchan t of Ven ice, however our apprec iation may bestaled by the bas e use of this exquisite comedy in childhood foreducational purposes . Here is a j ust intermingling of

romance with the hard actual i ti es of l i fe, passion trembl ing onthe verge of tragedy and comedy charmingly triumphant afterall . To the Elizabethan , Shylock was the ogre in the fai rytal e

,a mixture of the fearful and the comically grotesque ; An ;

tonio was the Christi an gentleman who spat upon him as acreature noisome and righteously detested ; Bassanio , the gentleman adventurer

,frankly a suitor for the golden Portia

’s wealthas much as for hersel f, and unashamed . Modernity playsfrightful pranks with the artless truth of our old drama andnowhere more so than i n this play. We sigh as we th ink of

Portia,sacrificed to the fortune-hunting Bassan io and , recogn is

ing modern,perhaps Ibsenesque, examples of l ike occu rrences ,

wonder i f the coupl e could possibly have been happy after. I nAntonio , we find that hi s heartlessness in n ot claiming the Jewfrom the first as a brother i s really the cause of his all-but umdoing ; and we feel d issatisfied that the d rama should not haveended as a tragedy. But our greatest transformation is thatof Shylock in whom some unwise cri t ics have discovered theprophetic answer to current anti Semitism. Save for the unfil ial daughters of King Lear and Iago perhaps , Shakespeare hasscarcely ever drawn a persona e wholl andm ecause e is so una ecte t rue to uman nature.am t

-91m m

facture and as absurd as it is gratu itous. I t is referable , l ikeour modern shudder at the robust punishment meted out to theJew

,to our emasculated contemporary sentimental i ty that habit

86 ENGLISH DRAMA"

ually meddles w ith clumsy hand to interpose between humanacts of folly and criminal ity and thei r logical consequences.Least of all wri ters does our heln ing eLdipg'

nto is works i ide ls fine d istinctions and the meta h sicsof twenti eth century conduct. Barring some cases in whichthe conventions o f 1 t ime as the must aboutall whose ot i s mortal , Shakespeare

’s are mmm mthe conditions of the world in wh ich h e l ived , are r idiculous andmisguided .

A M idsummer N ight’

s Dream is Shakespeare’s latest returnto the manner of the old court drama. The intention of thisp lay for a erforman ce at court or as art of the entert i menton the occas ion of a n ohle marr ia e has heen thou ht suffi cientM s art icular. Whether the comedyi s to be interpreted as contain ing no more than a pass ing allusionin compl imentary terms to the Earl of Le icester ’s courtship ,some twenty years before

,of the imperial votress fancy free or

much more , now hidden from us by the lapse of t ime , must depend largely on the success of ingen ious scholarship . In thesematters i t i s as easy to treat the subj ect carelessly with preconceived ideas as to probabil it ies drawn from our own con

t emporary experiences as i t i s to car ry our own interpretat ionsof this old drama into detai ls that must remain forever beyondus. Indub itably the age was fond of enigmas, involved allus ions

,veiled compl iments to monarchy and the nobil i ty and the

l ike, and Shakespeare was not above h is t ime in these respects ,witness the al lusions to Elizabeth in this play andd irect ones in Hen ry V to the friend of h is patron Southe unfortunate Earl of Essex.

2 More interest ingShakespeare’s composi te art in this fanci ful comedydelight ful upl i ft of the fairy-lore of h is country into a da intymythology that has set the standard in this part icular for alll i terature that has followed. What for example, could ' bemore unpromising than the current superstit ions of the countrys ide as to that uncouth oaf, Lob-Lie-by-the-F ire, a lout a n dthe concept ion of louts , and the mal ic ious goblin Robin Goodfellow , fused and transformed into the l i hesome and volatilePuck, w inged servant of those del ightful l i le creatures Oberon

2A Midsummer N ight’s Dream, 11

,1 . 1 48

-1 74 ; Henry V, th e chorus

p receding Act V.

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88 ENGLI SH DRAMA

Such an Opportunity was not to be lost an d in Sir John Oldcastle, a ram bling chronicle play by M ichael Drayton and threecollaborators, the true story of O ldcastl e was set on a rivalstage and the Shakespearean personage

,F alstaff , was frankly

imitated in the character of the humorous hedge pries tSir John of Wrotham. I t was the success of F alsta ff that encouraged not only h is appearance in 2 Hen ry IV but the composi tion of Th e M erry Wives of Windsor which was wri tten ,accord ing to an old trad ition , at the request of Elizabeth whowas desirous of seeing Sir John in love.

El izabethan stage ' he is more req y men tion e in con

W an any other personage and was again an d

again imitated but never approached . The idea of a groupo f

“ i r regular humourists,

” as they have been call ed,such as

F alstaff and his rout of folly,may have been suggested by the

immed iate success of the moment,Jonson ’s comedy, Every M an

I n His Humour. Certainly Ancient Pistol , with his playhouse phrases and his Cambyses vein of rant and bombast , is apersonage s imply enough compact of “ humours

,

” and so i sNym and , to a less extent , bottle-nosed Bardolph . As to F alstaff

,the complexity of hi s personality and the triumphant

transcendency of h is wit stand out immeasurably beyond anything that Jonson , with all his power and constructive in

genuity, ever compassed . I t i s a moot question as to whetherthe F alstaff of The M erry Wives i s really the same personageas Prince Henry’s resourceful

,and incomparable companion in

arms and mischi ef ; and assu redly i t is something of a shock tofind the Hector of Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet , he whofought with fierce Percy of th e N orth for a long hour byShrewsbu ry clock — for have we n ot his word for it ?— re

duced to the adventure of the buck-basket and to pinching at thehands o f mock fai ri es to reduce his lecherous blood . Yet i tmight not b e di fficul t to show that an absolute artisti c logicrules the character of F alstaff throughout the plays in whichhe appears . Indeed nowhere is Shakespeare’s fidel i ty to humannature and to those invisible l aws that rule human nature moreconsummately exercised than here. Wi th a personal charmabsolutely i rresistible we recognise none the less in F alstaff tothe full hi s worthlessness

,his immoral ity, his ch icanery and in

curable grossness and we approve while we regret the rigourof the Prince

’s final repudiation of him , however we share

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 89

Dame Q uickly’

s p ious hOpe, expressed in her pathetic accountof his death , that

“ he is i n Arthur’s bosom.

”

That Shakespeare was led on from Richard II , his earl iestindep endent study of historical character , to the plays on HenryIV seems , considering thei r probable sequence in poin t of t ime ,al together l ikely. Pol iti c Henry Bol ingbroke offered a str ikingcontrast to R ichard ,

“ the skipping k ing ” ; and no less d istinctly is Henry represented once more in contrast with theson whom he so l i ttl e understood as the Prince is set againsth is engaging rival , Hotspur . A fine heroic sp iri t pegyadgsShakespeare’s scenes of the old chivalric war are. 00 humaneto tahe j oy i n the Earhari sm of these internecine feuds, thei rpageantry

,pomp of war and ceremony lent themselves admirably

to Shakespeare ’s artist’s sense of the p icturesque whil e the

deeper well-sp rings of thought and action which l i fe involvesoffered him his true theme to raise h is historical plays immeasurably above the contemporary craft o f most of h is com

petitors. I t i s diffi cult for the educated modern reader to do

justice to the historical personages of Shakespeare because hei s habituated to think so absolutely in thei r terms. The patheti c child figure of Prince Arthur , the monstrous R ichard I I I ,calculating Bol ingbroke , smitten with the mouldering fire of

remorse,th ick-spoken

,impetuous Hotspur, devout, heroic Henry

V these rinces o f d ha e receivedersona e the stam of Shakes care ’s royal mint once and fo r

W WElstor ma mter re an c’t e

W ow . I t is notusua to t in o a espeare as a patrioti c wri ter. Yetwhich o f our poets has devoted a third o f hi s activi ty to thecelebration o f the heroic deeds o f English men and princes ?An d which has accepted love o f country ‘

so unaffectedly, so asa thing to feel and not to p rate about as t his same gentl eElizabethan ? To the noble l ist of h is chronicl e plays Shakespeare was to add but on e more, Hen ry VIII , and that at alater t ime when the recent death of Elizabeth called the attent ion of the nation to the annals of the Tudor princes whichwere staged in play after play as we write up the career of adeceased monarch in our newspapers upon his demise. Thitherwe shall n ot follow n ow but tu rn back to some of Shakespeare’simmediate contemporaries in romantic comedy and history morep art icularly during the last dozen years of the old queen ’sreign.

9° ENGLISH DRAMA

Shakes care wrote many more chron icle plays than an one

ofW e t__em jomed

,as ot ers

M am a to place h istogy i n a seri esof vivi e 1c and dramatic scenes on th e po ular boards. Werewe looking so Wm be lfllClHl: to makeclear that this vogue of historical drama was only one manifestation of th e national consciousness which the repulse of theArmada and other Engl ish successes in arms and diplomacy hadfanned into blaze. In l i terature thi s begot

,besides these

patrioti c plays,th e ponderous prose chronicles o f Halle

,Hol in

shed and Stow,innumerabl e lesser histor ies ” and biographies,

and poems lyric,ep ic and topographical such as those of Daniel ,

Drayton, Warner and more.4 To return to the drama

,the

r ise o f the chronicl e play in th e hands of the predecessors ofShakespeare

, Greene, Peel e, M arlowe and the rest , and theplace o f earli er chronicl e h istori es such as the older King John ,

the older plays on Richard I I I and the two Con ten tion s”

which concern the Wars of the Roses and furnished Shakespeare wi th materials

,are matters al ready suffi ci ently d iscussed .

Besides these more kingly plays, there were, in the nineties,s everal b iographical chronicles

,as they may be called

,that di f

fered very l i ttl e from the ma in species in thei r conduct andsubj ect-matter. Such a play is th e anonymous Sir ThomasM ore which so prudent a cri ti c as Speddin g once thought goodenough in parts for Shakespeare

’s hand . Such , too , was TheHistory of Thomas Lord Cromwell, the capabl e M achiavel lianmin ister o f Henry VI I I and that of Captain Stukeley in whichis set forth the career of a fascinating adventurer who en

deavoured to carve out a kingdom for h imsel f and found com

fort and abetment among the enem ies of England , to d ie at lastan heroic death as the ally of Don Sebastian against the Moorsat the battle of Alcazar.An important name among the immed iate competitors of

Shakespeare i n the chronicle play is that of TM ,

long to maintain , as we shall see,fo r other dram atic work , a

h igh place in the favour of the lovers o f popular d rama. Hey

care,and one of his

The subj ect-mattern the annals of King

4 For a list of these works an d th eir relation s to the h istorical drama,see the p resen t writer

’

s The Eng lish Chron icle Play, 1 902 .

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92 ENGLISH DRAMA

every adventure,every war

,intr igue and petty consp iracy , and

added matter of thei r own from B r itish and Roman times tothe coming of the Saxons , Danes and N ormans , to say nothingmore o f later t imes. There is no Engl ish monarch from Ed

ward the Confesso r and Wi ll i am the Conqueror to Philip andMary who i s unrep resented in some on e of these plays andsome of them , as for example Richard III , enter into hal f adozen plays or more.6 When James came to the throne hemight have seen the facts of th e Gowry conspi racy , a personal adventure of h is own ,

enacted on th e stage. The agewas free spoken and

,certain matters of state , rel igion and

foreign affai rs excep ted,any man might say what he l iked .

El izabeth meddled ve ry l i ttl e with freedom in such mattersand most of the cases of royal inte rvent ion , that have comedown to us in her reign and even in the next , are referable tothe complaints lodged by an ambassador or other forei gner ofimportance. On e matter regarding a play of Shakespeare d eserves a

'word in th is connection . I t appears that in 1 599,

when the consp iracy of Essex was in process , several of his followers induced th e Chamberlain ’s men (Shakespeare

’s com

pany ) to act before them a play of King Harry the IVthand o f the killing of R ichard I I by promising the playersforty shi ll ings more than thei r ordinary for i t. Elizabethwas very much affected by th is and afte rwards told her Recordero f th e Tower, Lambarde, that by Richard she hersel f was intended and her dethronement aimed at therein f’ I t may heremarked that th e scene of R ichard

’

s deposi tion in Richard IIdoes not appear in any of th e quarto editions o f that play andthat i t was resto red to its place in the text for the first timein the fol io

,years afte r Shakespeare ’s death .

The chief contemporary r ivals of Shakespeare in the production of chron icl e plays were the playwrights employed by Phil ipHenslowe who was the hacker and explo iter of two or threetheatrical companies

,and who fortunately le ft behind him a

D iary, as i t has been cal l ed , of which we shall hear much morein the next chapter. Henslowe employed many poets an d thehabi t of collaboration was prevalent among them , somet imes asmany as four — as in the famil iar case of Old castle, tham rk

of Dra ton Chettl e Munday and Wi lson — enga in in a

3 See the tab le an d classification of these plays i n the same.

7 See N ichols,Progresses of Queen Elizabeth

,iii

, 552 .

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY

single play. It was thus that a read su 1 was to be had

M ti l and even erfun ctori y one shou d often remainfor an immediate demand ;

~

a

'

rfd‘

fhe on y wonder is that work

so V i ta an read-

sible. s to t e aut ors j ust name'

, M iEhaeIDraM

t was the friend of Jonson and Shakespeare and became,in later years

,the most popular successor o f Spenser in general

poetry. He appears to have been somewhat ashamed of hisconnection with the stage and covered up his tracks with asuccess discouraging to the modern investigator. Hen r Chettl ei s memorable , aside from one extant play, as the editor of

Greene ’s notorious Groatsworth ofWit and for his own apologyto Shakespeare in his pamphlet Kin d Heart

’

s Dream soon after.Robert Wi lson the younger is d istingu ishable from Rober t

w

Wi lson the elder , author of The Three Lords and Lad ies ofLondon ,

and of h im we know l i ttle more ; while Munda wasa well known balladist

,t ranslator and pamphleteer in adhition

to hi s contr ibution of much loose work to the d rama. Thesemen

,together with Day, Wi lkins , Hau n , Hathway and

several others,continuously appear in Hen slowe

’s D iary, al

though thei r work was by no means confined to the chronicl e

one ofthe less interesting of the group of plays which chronicl e Tudorsubj ects

, If You Know N ot M e You Kn ow N obody, 1 604.

This rambl ing production concerns the l i fe of the late Queenas did likewise Dekker

’

s strange allegor ical Whore of Babylonin which , suffice i t to say, King Henry VI I I appears as thefai ry King Oberon . O f the same date and kindred in ti tl e toHeywood ’s If You Kn ow N ot M e, is Samuel Rowley

’s WhenYou See M e You Kn ow M e, the coarse and occasionally r ibal dscenes o f which detail events in the l i fe at court of the samemon‘arch much as they might have been seen from below stai rsand traditionally reported . The relation of th is play to Shakespeare’s King Hen ry VIII ( at some t ime known to the stageas All Is True) appears in the prologue of the latter. I tsprobable later revision by F l etcher does not concern us here.St il l another chronicle play of the Tudor group is the sl ightlyearl ier Sir Thomas Wyatt, 1 602 , in which the well knowndramat ists Dekker an d Webste r collaborated to tell of th e unfortunate young conspirator who attempted to antedate theaccess ion of Q ueen El izabeth by a few months to his own

CM

94 ENGLISH DRAMA

complete undo ing. Among authors in the ki dred grou of

1a 3 on mythological B ri tish history we fin‘

d’grhoTfi ai

—s

-f hdgeW W W g

W ww m m m pfly ;an d Robert Armin , the com ic actor, author of The Valian t‘Welshman ,

1 595 , a mediocre play on Caractacus diluted withmuch invention. The B irth of M erlin and The Shoemaker a

Gen tleman ,both interesting works of Wi ll iam Rowley , later

the d istingu ished collaborator of Thomas M i ddleton , and M iddleton

’

s own M ayor of Queen borough, in which is told thesupposedly historical matters relat ing to the firs t land ing of

the Saxons on Bri tish so il , are all deserv ing the attention ofthe student of our English h istor ical drama however the ir subjects stretch out i nto the domain of sheer fict ion .

A romant ic s ir i t informs much of th is mater ial and th isis t rue l ikewise o t e k indred group that sets fo rth the adventures of Engl ishmen beyond the seas

,of notorious pirates and

o ther matters as strange as ci rcumstant ial . Thus The Travailsof Three English B rothers by Day, Rowley and Wi lkins is ahastily dramatized vers ion of the actual exper iences of theShirley brothers in I taly

,Russ ia and Pers ia

,t ransferred d irect

from a contemporary pamphlet ; and A Christian Turn ed Turkby Robert Daborn e i s even less

,and might be called a drama

t ized penny-dread ful . On the other hand,in F ortun e by Lan d

an d Sea, Heywood and Rowley appreciated the possibil ities o f acurrent story wherein a young man of broken fortune and ind isgrace , retrieves the past by a brave and happy capture of redoubtable p irates . Even more full and buoyantly smacking of

the sal t of the sea is Heywood ’s fine play in two parts, The

F air M aid of The West in which womanly faith and devotiontriumphs most unconventionally in a drama set i n Plymouth ,at the court of the Sultan of Morocco and especially on theh igh seas between . These plays come somewhat later, i n theearly days o f King James. I t was in happy

, off-hand dramassuch as these, taking up as they often d id the current top ic ofpatriotic

,curious or other interest

,that Henslowe sought to

r ival i n hi s several play-houses the learning of Jonson and thegenius of Shakespeare. The n ot infrequent success of ephem

eral drama and fict ion l ies in the very circumstance that it issuch . Which of us has not g iven the p reference to a newspaper account of a contemporary scoundrel while poetry andserious l i terature lay close at hand and postponed ? We may

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96 ENGLISH DRAMA

element of magic , although this las t led to the d ifferentiat ionof another group . They must have enjoyed an unusual vogue,wi th the ci tizens of London in particular , as the ti tl es of manynow no longer extant — D ick Wh itting ton , The Life of SirThomas Gresham w ith the F ound ing of the Royal Exchange

for example —would go to prove ; and they reached the heightof thei r absurd ity in Heywood’s F our Pren tices of Lon donwhich must have been acted n ot later than 1 594. In thisp reposterous per formance (wherein Heywood i s clearly wri tingdown to his auditors ) , we hear how the good old Earl of Bullo igne , su ffering from poverty, apprenticed his four sons tofour honourable trades in London , how they and the ir s isteras well— the last clad as the inevi table page — went forthinto th e world to carve out each his own fortune ; how eachwon a kingly crown and thei r sister a royal husband , and allwere reunited at the siege of Jerusalem . Such material begoti ts own antidote in sati re. B eaumont’s famous Kn ight of theBurn ing Pestle i s a take-off on the whole class o f heroicalromances and on Heywood ’s play in particular. I t was thework of a clever young l i terary man of whom we shal l hearconsiderably more in this volume and appears to have beensomewhat belated in point of t ime, as i t was not printed unti l1 6 1 3 . The Kn ight of the Burn ing Pestle i s an apprentice ladwho is l i terally thrust upon the stage and into the midst of thep lay by h is master and mistress to act a burlesque part in ac

compan imen t to othe r parody of the heroical drama. We aren ot surprised to learn that the ci ty that so acclaimed The F ourPren tices should n ot have appreciated the joke. The dramahas seldom been re formed by means of parody and i t was re

served to more cul tivated and courtly auditors o f the next reignto appreciate to the ful l this remarkably clever production thatresembled in Sp i ri t more than i t borrowed in kind of Cervantes’

immortal D on Quixote.

However,romantic comedy less outrageously absurd than

The F our Pren tices and i ts l ike was n ot wanting among theplaywrights contemporary with the young manhood of Shakespeare. But with them for th e most part i t is found as a component elemen t in plays made up of other material as well.Thus the charming episode of lVIargaret and Lacy in Greene

’sF riar Bacon i s subsidiary to the el ement of magic for whichthe comedy ex i sts , as the graver royal temptation of Lady Sal isbury in Edward III and the courtship of Cordelia by “

the

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 97

Gall ian Prince in King Leir, each is but an episode in achronicl e play. So, too , The Weakest Goeth to the Wall i s aromant ic comedy of I tal ian origin told history-wise and AKnack to Kn ow an Hon est Man , also of unknown authorship

,

with its duels,i ts banishments

,and tests o f loyalty in fri endsh ip

and love,comes nearer to material of Shakespeare

,n aive though

i ts Spiri t , than many a more ambitious performance.

tunatus, 1 599, in which is tol d the old tale of folk-lore of th ebeggar who offered by F ortune his choice o f wisdom

,strength

,

health , beauty, long l i fe and riches ,” chose the last and

,despi te

the addi tion of the wishing cap to his weal th,dies unhappy. All

this,w ith the continuance of the story of the sons of F ortunatus,

the whole set in an allegorical contention of V ice with Vi rtue ,is admirably poetic. N o subsequent work of Dekker

’

s i s so

completely romantic in spiri t until we reach,l ate in h is career ,

The Sun’

s Darling,

'

f‘a moral masque ,

”1 623 , in th e composi

t ions,perhaps revision , of which Dekker appears to have been

assisted by John F ord . Dekker’

s intervening work in thechronicl e play has al ready been indicated . His domestic d ramasan d his touch with Jonson fall more logically within the n extchapter. Dekker

’

s F ortun atus i s only on e of a considerabl egroup of Elizabethan romantic dramas that employ for the stagethe del ightful material o f folk an d fairy lore. To this groupbelong Greene’s F riar Bacon and even Marlowe’s F austus whichi t emulated

,as we have seen , and A M idsummer N igh t

’

s

Dream,however di fferent i ts immediate sources. A curious

old play by Anthony Munday, hal f chronicle hal f fairy tal e,but depending mainly on unexpected and almost farcical si tuat ions

,i s J ohn a Ken t an d John a Cumber, 1 595 , in which two

w izards str ive in thei r art each to outdo the other much as

F riar Bacon strove to overcome his German rival Van dermast.TheM erry Devil of Edmon ton

, 1 604 , of unknown authorsh ip ,l inks on to the F an stus story in which the supernatural accomplishes l ittl e more than the straightening out of the crookedcourse o f two interesting young lovers . As to fai ries in com

edy,however they may have obtruded before h is time in Lyly

’

s

93 ENGLISH DRAMA

Maid’

s M etamorphosis for example, or in G reene’s ScottishHistory of James IV, where we meet Oberon for the firs tt ime, subsequent to A M idsummer N ight

’

s Dream all fair ieswear the l ivery of Shakespeare.

more Lylyan and Jonsonian than Shakespearean. His twomemorabl e plays ( i f we except the del ightful Parliamen t ofB ees which is sati re in dialogue and inconceivabl e acted ) areLaw Tricks and Humour Out of B reath . But even Jonsonin a first effort, The Case is Altered , 1 598, fell momentarilyunder Shakespeare’s spell . Th is comedy Jonson never acknowledged as h is ; and , Plautine though the source of the intrigue ,Jonson never app roached nearer to romantic art than in th echaracter o f Rachel

,the fai r and v i rtuous beggar maiden of

th is play : indeed i t might almost be said that Rachel i s Jonson ’sonly v i tal female figure.Wi th the completion of the trilogy of Hen ry IV and Hen ry

V, Shakespeare returned to romantic comedy to which he ad

hered in some hal f dozen plays,from M uch Ad o About N oth

ing to M easure for M easure, which followed in quick success ion within the last hal f dozen years of Elizabeth ’s reign.

There are no more perfect comed ies of l ight and joyous typ ethan M uch Ad o As You Like I t and Twelfth N ight, all ofthem referabl e in theme as in atmosphere to the well-born ,social l i fe of I taly which was recognised , and justly , by the‘Elizabethans, as marking the very beau ideal o f modern cultivated l iv ing. The atmosphere o f youth hovers in a goldenhaze about these charming scenes and noth ing is so serious asto impair , save for momentary pathos, the joy of l i fe thatsparkl es in thei r exquisi tely conceived personages and in thedel ightful poetry that clothes them . Moreover , the romantic i

peopl e, Duke O rsino , Viola , Bened ick and Beatrice , O rlando

and his Rosal ind — only to name which is to remember fascin atin g fr iends of in t imate acquaintance — W

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zoo ENGLISH DRAMA

a ti tl e wh ich the accomplishment of Helena’s d iffi cul t task,

however dubious the method of compass ing i t, may perhapsj usti fy. The repellent grossness of detai l i n certain scenes ofM easure for M easure the poet found in his original s, Cin th io

’

s

n ovel and Whetstone’s English versions. These the fidel i ty of

h is art demanded that he retain. But the unassail able chasti tyof Isabella and the pathetic M ar iana, betrothed of Angelo

,by

means of whom the brutal original story is converted into asatis fying conclusion

,these things are due to the ingenui ty and

the finer ethical inst inct of Shakespeare . Zroilus an d Cressida

o ffers on e of the most diffi cul t uestion s w ithin t e ran g e 0 t e“ e

r—“

rr—m —r —

sh- i m r—s—wr

‘

n-mp aW W W

heroes,Ach illes

,Aj ax

, U lysses and the rest , are distorted tosomething monstrous. The story i s a romantic tale of lovers ,but thei r passion is impure and Cressida

,unl ike any other

prominent female figure of Shakespeare’s ( i f we except the in

effable daughters of Lear ) i s fickle and wanton . This playhas been called Shakespeare s drama of disenchantment and i tscomponent elements make i t doubtful whether i t really belongsto the comic or to the tragic category. Yet Troilus i s amongthe most unmistakably Shakespearean of

_the plays and abounds

i n passages of depth , wi t and wisdom ,clothed again and agai n

in gli ttering eloquence and splendid poetry. The idea thatTroilus was conceived as a Titan ic sati re on classical learningseems preposterous in Vi ew of the author ’s employment of wellknown mediaeval material ; and the alleged part of his play inthe dramatic squabbles of the moment, as we shall see, may atleast be questioned .

Leaving aside Troilus an d Cressida, i t has been said that“W W W —lbwa”

reat W W W Whereor exampl e in tragedy the play centres about a singl e personage

,Hamlet , Lear or O thello , at most about two , as about

Macbeth and his Lady or about Antony an d Cleopatra,comed

'

r st i s in a group , the gentle folk flectiime carelessly in them rden

,the involutions of the

love affai rs of O rsino , V iola and the Lady O l ivi a , or the effectsof the Duke ’s test of absence in !Measure for M easure. Yetsuch is always the strength of Shakespeare’s touch with real i tythat n ot even in the traged ies do his figures more truly l ive.Again

, Shakespeare has been p raised for h is remarkable realisation of foreign scen e and for the success with which he dep icts

HISTORY AND ROMANTIC COMEDY 1 0 1

the I tal ian and other foreigner in his national trai ts. Indeedthe first has so impressed certain of his foreign cri tics that theyhave credited him with journeys to Ven ice , to Elsinore andelsewhere

,notebook in hand

,wherein to transcribe the impres

sions o f “ local colour that be subsequently transferred to hisplays. Such i s the method of pedantry , not that of genius.Though

,after all the local colour of Shakes care has been

mu

—r

‘ r —g a a fi ate am M yra

commenrah fm w fl oymenp p fj gaterial ii ti rhiifély Ital ian or other , inWhi ch faith fulness andLan equal fidelit to the ortra ai of th

_e_ th ings aroufidh im a esp eare eads all d ramatists. As to Shakespeare ’s per

“ a “

son ages in comedy , i t seems altogether probable that they are allcontemporaneous English men and women , practis ing the graces ,the mannerisms or the absurdities that were prevalent in theEngland of his own ' day. An d i t is unlikely

,save in a few

defini te cases,such as O thello the Moor or Shylock the Jew

,

that Shakespeare thought very defini tely of those race di fferen ces and d iversi ties of national i ty to which i t is easy, after all ,

r

to attach an undue importance. Fhe foreigner as a sub ject forcomedy, i f n ot for r idicul e Shakespeare used after the mannerof the t ime. Already in Love

’

s Labour’

s Lost we meet w ithDon rma o

,the fantastical Spaniard , i n the second part of

Hen ry IV,with the Welsh , Scotch an d Ir ish captains , the ad

mirabl e F luell en first am ong them , while the broken F rench of

Henry V and the gibberish of Dr. Caius , in TheM erry Wives,may have amused a class whose l ineal descendants go numerously to the theatres of the present day to applaud sim ilar

heard in this chapter,but l ike

wise the tragedies of Romeo an d Juliet, Julius Ca sar an d

Hamlet, beyond which Shakespeare attained many varied andtragic notes , but few deeper. Chronicle hist save for the

obituary plays of a year or two am'ww'ffs-Hhfi hvith the deatho f Queen Elizabeth. Further to prcfim

fi

fh fi ffify‘fi

M , would bring us into touch with Chapman ,M arston

, M i ddleton and F letcher, each d istinct ive fo r n ew

departures in the drama, for the most part to come. Thi smuch

,however , may be said : Chapman appears to have been

n ot uninfluenced by Shakespearean comedy in The Gen tleman

1 02 ENGLISH DRAMA

Usher and M on sieur D’

Olive, ambit ious and romant ic effortsat romantic comedy of a graver type and both in print by 1 606.

Chapman ’s métier hi therto had been Terent ian comedy of ln

trigue. These later comedies are of higher type and the former

,at least

,i s by no means unworthy either of its author or

thei r exampl e. M arston , too , with all his vaunted or iginality,again and again essays the Shakespearean gait, as h is seriousand able M alcon ten t, in which the hero is affected with amelancholy not unl ike Hamlet’s , plays a riile not d iss im ilar tothe d isguised Duke of Vi enna in M easure for M easure. Theromantic note in M iddleton came later by way of h is col

laborator, Wil l iam Rowley, n ot by way of Shakespeare ; but

that of F letcher , however resonan t of Shakespeare in some ofthe earl ier plays

,soon became a note as different as i t was

insisten t and prevail ing among F l etcher ’s own compeers. Thesematters we shal l postpone for the nonce, as things of closersequence claim the next chapter.

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1 04 ENGLISH DRAMA

among many , than with that very defin ite group of Elizabethand ramas in which the real ism of every day l i fe i s the rulingSp i r i t.An d first a word as to what went before . Gammer Gurton

’

s

N eed le was only an amplification into a complete drama of th einterlude and the comedy scenes which the moral ities

,and even

the miracl e plays,had long popularised . So Gammer Gurton

became the mother of a large progeny in which types, such asthe thick-witted

,blundering husband

,the clever shrewish wi fe

none too honest , the misch ief-making D iccon of Bedlam , arerepeated again and again . F or example in Tom Tyler and h is

Wife that s tupid victim of h is wife’s neglect and unreasonabletemper regains a momentary mastery by following the adviceo f a friend and giving his spouse a sound beating ; but pi tyingher miserable condition

,he confides the source o f h is sudden

maste ry to h is immediate loss of i t and total undo ing. In sev

eral plays, LikeWill to Like, the underplot o f Edward’s Damon

an d B ithias and Grim the Collier of Croydon , a personage o fthis name figures who is as d iverting and homely as he isthoroughly English . Such plays were

,some of them

,on th e

stage be fore the birth of Shakespeare and thei r material remainedthe essential material of comedy and a part, accord ing to immemorial usage

, of many in other respects devoted to more loftysubj ects. In the group of Shakespeare ’s immed iate predecessors ,Kyd and Marlowe were always more or less lo fty and tragic ;the rest al l employed comedy scenes o f common l i fe. But chiefamong them was Greene who , had he but known i t, might haves tood foremost in his age for the s imple truth of his dramatictalent in scenes such as those that concern the love affairs ofM argaret , the fai r maid o f F ressin gfi eld , and her noble sui torsan d the del ightfully fresh render ing of a Robin Hood theme inGeorg e a

’

Green and the jolly Shoemakers of B rad ford . Shakespeare might well have had Greene for h is example , had heneeded i t, in these scenes drawn from the observation of Englishd aily l i fe ; and i t was the same thing that Shakespeare was doing( howsoever he transcended the l ighter art of Greene ) in TheM erry Wives of Win dsor and in the comedy scenes interspersedthroughout the chronicle plays. Among early plays of the typethe authorship of which remains doubtful

,is Wily B eguiled ,

certainly on the stage as early as 1 595 . There occur early typeso f several well known El izabethan personages , G ripe the usurer ,Churms the confident ial rascally lawyer, F ortun atus the bluff

THE DRAMA OF EVERY DAY LIFE 1 05

sold ier and a capi tal,loquacious nurse who seems more l ike a

possible suggestion for the immortal N urse of Juliet than anin ferior borrower of her humour.But i f we would know the l i ttl e that can be known of the

contemporaries of Shakespeare who wrote for the lesser theatresthis drama of every day l i fe , we must make the acquaintance ofPhil ip Henslowe, pawnbroker , moneyed man and explo iter o fplays and players . What we know of Henslowe depends , in th emain

, on the fortunate su rv ival of on e book , popularly known asHen slowe

’

s D iary.

1 This is really a manuscrip t book , employedby Henslowe from 1 59 1 to 1 609 in which to note al l mannerof accounts , memoranda , pr ivate and domestic , as wel l as thoseconnected wi th his various ventures of the fell ing of trees

,the

lending of money and the fitting out and performance of plays .These last entries assume di fferent forms. On e series gives usthe name of the play, the date of acting and Hen slow e

’

s sharein the takings in of that day ; another concerns advances andpayments to playwr ights and property men ; a third records d isbursemen ts by Henslowe on behal f of the several companies inwhich he was interested . Incidentally a great many signaturesof poets and others conversant with the stage are preserved ,witnessing agreements , acknowledgments of payments or promiseso f plays. F inally, outside of the D iary, but preserved with itamong the All eyn papers at Dulwich College , are certain l istsof propert ies once Hen slowe

’

s, letters and other documents, all

of interest to the h istory of the stage,concerning hal f a dozen

companies and almost as many playhouses beside the mention ofscores of plays. Henslowe was a shrewd , i ll iterate man o f business who grew rich by his foresight in build ing playhouses whereth ey were wanted and in furnishing them ,

at the leas t expenseto h imsel f , with the kind and number of plays that met with thepopular demand . An all iance by marriage with the famousactor Edward Al leyn , creator of the chie f réles of Marlowe’stragedies , gave Henslowe a stand ing in the theatrical world thatenabled him to dictate terms to the poets. Henslowe does n otappear to have been more avaricious than many of those whohave exploited the drama since his t ime and there is nothing toShow that his appreciation of the theatrical art was muchbelow theirs. Wi thout h is book we should lose a valuablechapter in the history of the popular stage.

1 See th e excellent ed ition by W. W. Greg, 1 904-08, 3

'

vols.

1 06 ENGLISH DRAMA

F rom th e D iary, then , we learn that Henslowe managed twoor three theatres simultaneously and that he employed bothactors and playwrights at h is own terms . O f the latter he hadat t imes no less than ten or a dozen on his books

,and he appears

to have averaged someth ing l ike a new play every two weeks.Al though Henslowe’s relations with h is men were close , i tcannot be shown that he was altogether unfri endly to the sh i ftless bohemian Small poets to whom he advanced money on

promises,often badly kept

, or bail ed out of that consistory ofunthri fts ,

” th e debtors’ prison . His books d isclose that he occasion ally bestowed smal l gratuities on the authors of unusuallysuccessful plays or paid for a supper at the M ermaid on somebusiness occasion . But for the most part he so contr ived to doleout payment that he kept h is peopl e securely in his grasp . Inthe palmy days of Hen slowe

’

s traffi c wi th the stage an actingplay commanded from six to eight pounds sterl ing, and this waso ften d ivided among three or four authors . In the reign of

James the price of plays rose wi th other things , and three yearsbefore

,1 6 1 3 , Robert Daborn e, a very second rate dramatist ,

rece ived twenty pounds and declared that he could have had asmuch as twenty-five. How th e playwrights of the day contrivedto l ive would remain a complete myst ery, even with Wi ll iamRowley producing fi fty-five plays in twenty years or Heywoodwith h is two hundred and twenty in twice that period , di d wenot recal l the contemporary system of patronage and the circumstance that some of the playwrights were also actors on regularwages o r sharers in the playhouses . For example

,take the case

of M ichael Drayton,next to Spenser th e most popular general

poet of his day. For a period of a l i ttl e more than three years ,Drayton gave h is attention to the writing of plays, mostly incollaboration with others in the employ of Henslowe . He wasconcerned in twenty-four plays during that per iod and collaborated wi th eight other wri ters. In his best year he rece ived fortypounds for play-writing. But Drayton had noble patrons , hadbeen a tutor and must have received some income from themany edit ions of his poems. I t is not remarkable that only on eor two of the plays

,in which he had a hand

,are extant and ca

pahl e of identification . h Ioreover, Drayton covered up the trackso f his sojourn in captivi ty

‘

to Henslowe , ashamed of that to

which his hand had been subdued . Many others were not sofortunate.In no respect

,however , is Hen slowe’s D iary more interest ing

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108 ENGLISH DRAMA

exceed ingly popular. The plot turns on a quarrel between twocurst wives and the consequen t embroilment o f thei r famil i es.The action depends as much on situation as on vivacious d ialogueand humorously drawn personages . Porter is a typical poet ofHen slow e

’

s mart. We hear of him twenty-fi ve t imes in theD iary and in connect ion with five pl ays

, all, save this on e, lost ;and we know no more. But in this , his repute in the comicd rama is suff i c iently establ ished ; for The Tw o Angry Women

i s verily full in Charles Lamb ’s phrase,

of business,humour

and merry mal ice .” Another comedy of rural English l i fe , TheM erry D evil of Edmon ton , 1 600 ,

has been doubtful ly ascribedto Drayton. Here we are introduced , at the outset somewhatseriously

,to the English F austus, Peter F abel ; but the curren t

of in terest changes to a very pretty love-tal e and a group o fhumourists Whose wanderings and mistakes through En feldChase by night parall el a similar conclud ing scene of The Two

Ang ry Women . I t i s interesting here to note a third comedyof Engl ish vi llage or country l i fe

,which ends

,as these , in a

n ight scene in a park and agrees with them in po int of date.I t i s usual to remember The M erry Wives of Win dsor, as wehave above

,for i ts connection with the chron icle plays through

F alstaff. But The M erry Wives i s conspicuous among thecomedies of Shakespeare as the only on e in which he lays hisscene frankly in England

,an experiment never repeated . Per

haps the romantic sp i ri t that achieved remoteness in time by theformer age and setting of the historical plays needed remotenessof place in comedy to preserve i t from that which was too familiar. Yet i f we are seeking Shakespeare’s contribution to thed rama of every day l i fe , we may find i t n ot alone in the vivaciousscenes and admirable personages of TheM erry Wives of Win dsor, but in the del ight ful comedy that follows F alstaff and holdsover into Hen ry V, who in h is palmy days, as Prince Hal atl east

,l ived not afar off in the atmosphere of an heroic Agin

court,but in the streets and taverns of Elizabeth ’s own Eng

land . Shakespeare has brought us up to London fromWindsorand the count ry-side. Before we sojourn there with some of

his l esser fellows,we may mention an experiment of Ben Jon

son ’s that agrees here in date and k ind . A Tale of a Tub,which may be assigned to the neighbourhood of 1 600 rather thanlater , i s a rustic comedy of English v i llage l i fe , in which , withcharacteristic accuracy

,the poet endeavours to heighten the

THE DRAMA OF EVERY DAY LIFE

effect by the use oi d ialect. This comedy of Jonson is unworthyhis genius which lay elsewhere as we shall see .I f our subj ect were El izabethan prose instead of El izabethan

drama,we should recognise i n Thomas Dekker and Thomas

Heywood the successors of Greene in that ready wri ting up o fthings o f contemporary interest

,that journal istic instinct that

turns anything into copy, which is the d ist ingu ishing characteristic of the group of writers known as the pamphleteers. I t wasprecisely these qual i ties that made Dekker and Heywood mostsuccessful in domesti c drama and enabled them to add a l i fel ikeness to the scenes o f many a d rama otherwise below the levelof some of the i r more ambi tious contemporaries . ThomasDekker was born somewhere between 1 567 and 1 5 70,

in London . The form of the name suggests a Dutch extract ion

,which

a knowledge o f that language in some of the plays and a powerof minute relation as to common things which we associate withDutch art, go far to confirm. Dekker i s firs t mentioned byHenslowe in 1 598 ; some have thought that h is career as a playwright began a few years earl ier . He continues traceable intermitten tly well into the thirties , and i t i s not certain whenhe died . Dekker was a born unthri ft , constantly the v i ctim of

poverty and often in the debtor’s j ail . He appears to haveturned his hand to many varieties of writing, following closelythe example of Greene in pamphlets real istic , moral , sat ir icalor rel igious and mending , changing , adapting and rewri tingplays

,his own and other men

’s , for Henslowe year after year.Dekker is a notorious example o f the El izabethan pract ice of

collaboration in play-writing. In one of the earl iest plays wi thwhich his name i s associated

,Patien t Grissil, 1 598, he had , as

coadjutors,Chettl e and Haughton . This comedy is a dramat ic

vers ion of the favourite med iaeval story of the much enduringw i fe

,and is memorable for several very beauti ful songs which

common assent has given to the authorsh ip of Dekker. Dekker’

s

lyrical gi ft , sl ender though its runnel of song, i s as exquisi te andtuneful as that of any poet of his time. F urther expression of

i t may be found in Old F ortun atus, al ready described in thelast chapter for its romant ic and poeti c sp iri t. The Shoemakers

’

Holiday, on the stage by 1 599, i s Dekker’

s typical contributionto domestic comedy and here we have the daily l i fe of the smalltrades-folk of London done to perfection ; thei r humours , thei r

p leasures, amb it ions and hearty good fellowship . The person

1 10 ENGLISH DRAMA

ages of this delightful comedy are as d ist inctly d rawn and d ifferen tiated as the story i s naturally unfolded . Simon Eyre, thebluff and hearty master-shoemaker , with his crew of j olly ap

p rentices about him,must have been an admirable character i n

the hands of a great comedian such as Kemp e or Armin ; andthe ci rcumstance that D ekker had his plot from a well knownnovel

,as we should call i t, o f the day, The Gen tle Craft, by

Thomas Delony, enhanced i ts populari ty. Much of the genialhumour and kindly sp iri t, Dekker had from his original . But

he l ightened all,gave a touch of the romantic to the story of

Hans ,” who became a shoemaker because of love, a touch o f

pathos to the underplot o f the fai th ful lovers, Ralph and Jane ,

and raised the whole p roduction to a higher l i terary an d art isticplane.In Patien t Grissil we have a favourabl e spec imen of on e of

the most important groups of the domest ic d rama, the sto ry of

the fai th ful wi fe. The underplot of The Shoemakers’ Holiday

has j ust been noted as concerned with a not d issimilar theme.The ideals of El izabethan days were

,o f course, not ours , and

i t was not only in Puritan c i rcles that talk was at t imes of theweaker vessel or that the dominion of man was upheld bymen and women al ike and commended. I t is a mistake to confuse the status of Elizabethan women with that which cameto obtain in the degenerate days of gallantry when the MerryMonarch thrust Engl ish manners down with English morals toa level with those of the brothel and the tavern . There is acharm about the free and natural intercourse of the young peopl ein the comedies of Shakespeare , Greene and Dekker , which welose sensibly i n the next generation when manners turned towards sophistication . There is a candour

, _a give and tt ke in

d ialogue , a recognition of woman and a del ight in her powerand charm , which comported none the less with a recogni tionthat afte r al l she is not the stronger animal. Wherefore themany dramatic pictures o f that favouri te of the day , the fai th ful ,the much enduring wi fe

,often contrasted

,not only with the

obvious fo i l of her own sex ,but with that incorrigible rascal , the

favourite of fiction and of l i fe,the prod igal son . To be sure ,

the scene o f these dramas is by no means confined to Englandnor thei r portrayal to the conditions o f any on e age. Shakespeare’s Hermione

,devoted and forgiv ing beyond the range o f

our present ideals , and his M ariana at the moated grange areboth of the type o f pati ent Gr iselda, and so, too, is innocent

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1 1 2 ENGLISH DRAMA

covenant n ot to play anywhere in publ ic about London !fortwo years ] but in my house. He i s traceable as an actor upto 1 622 and continued an active pamphleteer and playwrightunti l the closing of the theatres in 1 642 , dying some five yearsl ater. Indeed

,Heywood is by all odds the most productive of

our old dramatists , confessing in on e place in print to havinghad either an enti re hand or at least a main finger ” in twohundred and twenty plays. This would make

,

an average of

five plays a year for forty years ; and Heywood was productiveotherwise. O f his d ramas only some thirty-five have beenpreserved

,and he

,doubtless

,would have thought that number

too many ; for Heywood was modest and rated his work,hasti ly

done as i t was and for the moment,at its true value. Indeed

the l i ttl e that we can glean as to the personal character of

Heywood makes him out an estimable, scholarly but unbookishman who found in the average l ives of the people about h imabundan t material for the smiles and tears , the pathos and thetragic emotions that make up the l i fe o f prince and beggar al ike.Among the many cheap general isations of this generalising ageo f ours

,i t i s not uncommon to find remarks on what is called

the feudalism ”of Shakespeare

’s age, the emergence o f manas an individual somewhere in the later h istory of our fictionand other l ike things. A sl ight acquaintance with Heywoodand the domest ic d rama might correct much of this ; though , unhappily, anything but a superficial acquaintance with the pas ti s d isdained by these forward general is ing members o f the race.Heywood ’s most important play is A Woman Killed w ith

Kin dn ess, printed in 1 607 . In several respects this dr ama is aremarkable departure from the trad i tions o f i ts t ime. Thetheme of the major plot i s that of an ingrate friend and awi fe unchaste

,

” a Situation almost precisely paralleled i n twoother plays of Heywood , th e Jane Shore story o f Edward IVand The Eng lish Traveller. I t i s famil iar that the code of theday demanded violence at such a juncture . Heywood daredto solve the problem in a manner novel to his time , separatingthe unhappy wi fe from the husband whom she had wronged andfrom thei r children

,and suffering even the seducer to go the

v ictim of his own remorse. N ot only does the story thus riseto the dign ity and pathos of tragedy, but all is accompl ishedwithout the usual extraneous aids of bloodshed and terror . A(Woman Killed w ith Kind n ess i s constructed w ith a care an d

the plo t developed w ith a skill beyond Heywood ’s usual power.

THE DRAMA OF EVERY DAY LIFE 1 1 3

Nor d id he surpass this success in the interesting recurrence toa similar theme in The English Traveller, notwithstandingthe creation therein of the character of young Gerald ine

,de

scribed by Lamb as on e o f the truest gentlemen of Elizabethandrama. In this matter of character, as is his treatment of

incident and dialogue, Heywood is so natural , so unobtrusive ,so truly modest in his art that we cease to wonder at an effectso easily accompl ished . I t i s impossible to better the words o fLamb as to this admirabl e man and dramatist. Heywood ’sambi tion seems to have been confined to the pleasure of hearingthe players speak his l ines while he l ived. I t does n ot appearthat he contemplated the possibil i ty of being read by afterages. What a slender p ittance o f fame was motive suffici entto the production of such plays ! Posteri ty is bound totake care that a wri ter loses noth ing by such a noble modesty.” 3

To the catego ry of domestic drama belong the two sligh tly‘i

earl ier plays enti tled The Hon est Whore, the jo int work of

Dekker and M i ddleton , however thei r scene is transferred afterthe current practice of the t ime to an imaginary I taly. Thefirst of these two plays was on the stage about 1 603 , and thesecond part must have followed , as is usual in such cases , soonafte r. Here is told the story of Bellafron t , who has fal len butwho i s regenerated by a sincere love and is aided in her determination to lead an honest l i fe by her own father

,who has

repudiated her in her evi l days but now in d isguise befriendsher. There is no finer dramatic presentation of the eternalstruggl e o f woman and man than this play of forb idding title ,and i t would be d iffi cul t to find a cleaner on e or one moreethical ly sound . The old age was more outspoken than ours ,but i t was no less clear in i ts perceptions of right and wrong ;and i t may be questioned whether the gain in reticence is always a gain in true del icacy. The story of Bellafron t in bothher unreclaimed and in her reclaimed condition i s admirablytol d and the character of her father, the merry seeming Or

lando F riscobaldo ,” with his pathos and suffering at heart

,alone

is enough to keep th is fine drama un forgetable. A clever foilto the main story is that of Candido , the enduring husband andhis mischievous , teas ing wi fe , a palpabl e take-off on the populartheme of patient Griselda. Indeed

,the age was far from um

appreciative of the comic possib ili t ies of subj ects such as these.

3 Specimens of Eng lish Dramatic Poets, i, 1 30.

U 4 ENGLISH DRAMA

“Havewe not seen the repugnant d ispos it ions of man an d woman ,the theme for the struggles of N oah and his wife , about to enterthe ark

,and one of the common topics of i nterludes wh ich p re

cisian s would have us label“ made in F rance ” ? Th e shrew

is at least as old as the patient wi fe and it is n ot al together certain which Cain found for a wi fe in the land of N od. A

comedy enti tled The Taming a Shrew was on the stage as earlyas the coming o f the Armada, and it was th is old play , sti l lextant and to read

,that Shakespeare made over in combination ,

with an underplot from Gascoigne’s Supposes, as The Tamingof the Shrew, about 1 597. In both forms the play was an everpopular success and in due time was followed by a sequel , TheTamer Tamed

,th e composit ion of John F letcher , where in i s

told how Katharina dying soon , as th e reformed are apt to do,is succeeded by th e redoubtabl e M ar ia who turns the tables completely on Petruchio and solves the quest ion once and for al l ina manner the cleverness of which may be commended to heryounger mil i tant sisters .We have found gravi ty o f subj ect and a clear m oral purpose

characteristics of several of the plays al ready treated in th ischapter. A striking group of the domestic drama is the murderp lay

,al ready exempl ified above in its most success ful example,

Ard en of F eversham,in pr int by 1 592 and on the stage prob

ably before the Armada. F rom titles found among the ac

counts of the O ffi ce of the Revels , The Cruelty of a Stepmother

and M urd erous M ichael, 1 5 78 and 1 5 79, i t has been surm isedthat the murder play was of even earl ier or igin , and that perhaps the latter play was another vers ion of Arden .

4 We mayleave these earl ier plays to note , in the n ineti es, a rev ival of

interest among the playwrights of Henslowe in traged ies of th istyp e. F rom other sources we have reason to bel ieve that playsofHen slowe

’

s mention , such as B lack Bateman , Cox of Collumpton

,The Stepmother

’

s Tragedy and Page of Plymouth , were ofthe type of the domestic murder play. Chettl e , Day, Dekker ,Haughton and even Jonson are named among the authors of

them ; but all , in dramatic form ,have perished . There remain

however several tragedies besid e Ard en to make clear the continuan ce of the type. A

‘Warn ing for F air Women , 1 599,recently shown to be by Heywood

,relates the murder of on e

Master George Sanders, consented unto by his own wife ,”

4 SeeWallace’s “Tab le,” Evolution of the Drama, p . 207 .

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1 1 6 ENGLI SH DRAMA

the N orth . I t was the homel iness of the murder play , l ikeseveral of the comedies of domestic l i fe , that preserved themfrom that heightening of eff ect by means of the imaginationthat we denominate the romantic

,as i t was thei r seriousness that

kept out of them the levity o f sati re. Among the many playsthat suffered neither of these deviations may be named TheF air M aid of the Exchange, 1 602 , with i ts interesting andnovel figure

,the brave cripple of F enchurch , and F ortun e by

Land and Sea, 1 607 , the story of the v icto ry of a d isinheritedyouth over fortune and false fri ends . Heywood , with the helpof Rowley, contrived the latter charming , natural play, andwhile The F a ir M aid i s not certainly his , i t is after all muchin his manner. The Hog Hath Lost h is Pearl, The Hon est

Lawyer, and A Cure for a Cuckold , are all l ater examples ofthe recurrence of the homel ier manner or more famil iar sceneof the earl ier domestic d rama ; and all were acted within a

year or two of Shakespeare’s death . In the first a repulsive

crime is frankly told,but allowed to lead to a reconci l iat ion

where the logic of the older drama would have demandedtragedy. In A Cure recurs the theme of a demand by a

heartless lady that her lover ki ll h is best friend ( already employed in The Dutch Courtesan and The F air M aid of Bristow ) ; whilst in The Hon est Lawyer by a certain we

return to country manners in the town of Bed ford , despite arepeti tion of several wel l known comedy figures , the usurer , thej ealous husband and the faithful wife , once more among them.

The gross t itles of the first and third of the plays just mention ed

,each of them taken from the underplot , denote the

deteriorat ing taste of the hour of which we shall have more tohear in later chapters.B efore we leave the domest ic drama, with its homely Eng

l ish scene and its d irect methods,we may look forward to the fi n

est , later specimen of i ts type , A F air Quarrel by M i ddleton andWi l l iam Rowley

,printed in 1 6 1 7 . The subj ect turns on an

insult to the fai r name of h is mother , o ffered a young man ,Captain Ager , at the hands o f his own Colonel . A challenge,after the custom of the age , is the immediate and inev itableresul t. But Lady Ager, fearing fo r the l i fe of her son , who hasbut recently returned to her

,to frustrate the meeting , insinuates

that perhaps the Colonel ’s words are not mere slander. Themeeting takes place none the less ; but now the young and

THE DRAMA OF EVERY DAY LIFE 1 1 7

honourabl e Captain , feel ing that he no longer has cause for aquarrel

,refuses , to the disgust of his seconds , to fight. At last

the Colonel calls him a coward , and thanking God that hen ow has a true cause , the Captain fights and desperately woundshis antagonist. In the upshot the Colonel recovers , retracts hiscalumny and the virtuous Lady Ager is forgiven by her son forher desperate ruse to save him . A F air Quarrel is one of thegreat El izabethan plays and unequalled in the two great scenes,that of Lady Ager ’s s truggl e between her pride , her sense ofhonour and her terror l est she lose her beloved son ,

and theadmirable scene of the duel. A F air Quarrel, however , l ike A.

Woman Killed w ith Kin d n ess, mixes in the underplot more orless extraneous elements. In M iddleton and Rowley

’s play wehave mere intrigue and the play

,l ike the same two dramatist’s

master tragedy, The Changeling, becomes disappointing as a

whole. I t was in present questions such as these that theElizabethan presented the problems of his time. Dare a manfight in a quarrel in which he knows that he fights to upholda l ie ? I s there any conduct , save that of t raditional violence,j ustifiable to an honourable man who has been wronged bywi fe and friend ? And i s our charity and forgiveness never toextend to fal len womanhood in that most terrible of strugglesin this world

,the effor t to regain lost honour ? These are some

of the questions that the Elizabethan dramatic casuists put tothei r audiences

,giving them again and again

,with all thei r

d i rect speaking and occasional grossness , answers as sound , as

charitable and as satisfying as any that we, with all our re

fin emen ts, have reached in our time.Were we to continue our search for scenes of dramaticreal ism in the d rama of the age we should have to confess that,when all i s said for outlandish romance and borrowings classican d other , i t is this that remains the essential fibre of the wri tings of the age , whether we consort with Dogberry and Vergesin thei r very un Italian adventures of the watch , peer into thevery unGreek theatrical affai rs of the Athen ians , Snug theJoiner and Bottom the Weaver, or hurry Danish Ophel ia intoa grave dug with English spade and mattock. Jonson , with al lhis l earning o f the ancients

,found the warp of his drama in his

contemporaries about h im ; and the happiest scenes and personages in the plays of B eaumont and F l etcher are those , often tobe found in the invent ive underplots which they had not from

1 1 8 ENGLISH DRAMA

Spain , F rance or elsewhere , but found at hand in the Englandthat they knew so well . Wi th this acknowledged and filed as

a caveat,we need n ot fear to proceed .

There remains on e topic properly to be cons idered in th isconnection , and that is the dramas that have to do with thecontemporary bel ie fs in the supernatural , more especi ally inthe mani festations of witchcraft and demonology. F airy-loreobviously belongs elsewhere , as i t was fanci fully raised to a

poetic potency by the genius o f Shakespeare , and there is aqual i ty o f the truly imaginative about that ab id ing human fai ththat gives to those mortals who have gone before the power toreturn and revisi t the glimpses of the moon . To grasp thee ffectiveness of the old and popular superst i tions , we must conceive ourselves in a very d i fferent envi ronment from our ow n .

There was a universal bel i ef i n omens,in lucky days and in the

powers of devils and wi tches. Comets were thought to foretell disaster and wise-men and wise-women were consulted concern ing serious actions and weighty affai rs. To bleed at thenose was ominous

,a notion used eff ectively i n Heywood ’s Ed

ward IV and in The D uchess of M alfi . The elements foretold and sympathised with the doings of men. N ot only did al ioness whelp i n the streets of Rome and sheets of rain and theterrors of l ightning foretell the fal l of Caesar , but fou l weatheraccompanied the witches in M acbeth and the famil iar s tagethunder preluded many a tragic event. An excellen t story i stold

,somewhere

, of a provincial performance of Doctor F an stus

in which,when the players had come to the dance o f the Seven

Deadly S ins abou t that abandoned scholar,they looked and

behold , in the whi rl , there were e ight. N ow they knew thenumber o f thei r company

,al l were on the boards , there could

be no mistake , whereupon w ith on e accord they fel l on theirknees and prayed for forgiveness and thei r aud itors stampededterrorstricken out of the room. These bel ie fs were n ot onlythe supersti t ions of the vulgar ; the Earl o f Leicester consultedthe celebrated Dr. Dee as to an ausp icious day for the crown ingof Queen Elizabeth , and her w ise counci llor , Sir F rancis Bacon ,with all his phi losophy

,shared man y of the popular notions o f

his day. Ben Jonson,too

,who attacked alchemy

,dared not raise

h is voice against witchcraft,and Reginald Scott , who wrote a

lengthy treatise on th e abuses of witchcraft, hesi tated to denythe existence e i ther of w itches or to quest ion thei r supernaturalinterference in the affairs of men . With supersti tions such as

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1 20 ENGLISH DRAMA

age bel ieved in devils w ith so s imple a faith as did that of h isp redecessor. The satir ical attitude of both D ekker and Jonson

,

in these two devil plays, is very d ifferent from the atmospherethat pervades F austus. As we turn to witchcraft

,which was

n earer the folk , we find another atti tude. “Wi tches an d

sorcerers within these last few years ,” the p ious B ishop Jewel

solemnly adj ures Elizabeth , are marvellously increased w ithinthis your grace’s realm. These eyes have seen most evident andmani fest marks of the ir wickedness ; and he begs that th elaws , touching such malefactors , may be put in due execut ion .

”

This was in Shakespeare ’s boyhood. Shakespeare ’s own att itude may be variously interp reted by h is retai ning the burningo f Joan of Arc for a witch in h is revis ion o f the first part o fHen ry VI and his representat ion of the w izard , Bolingbroke ,and M argery Jourdain , a wi tch in the second part of the sametr ilogy

,or by his agnostic rej ect ion , with the good Duke Hum

phrey, o f the impostures of Simpcox in the same play. Muchuse of popular demonology will be found in the maunderingsof Edgar Whil e pretend ing madness in King Lear. As to thew itches in M acbeth, they tell us less of what Shakespearethought about witches than of his imaginative art that couldt rans form the obscene hags of the supersti tion of the count rys ide, with the ir mal ic ious tricks and trivial wickednesses, intosupernatural agencies tempting the man prone to evil to thev iolat ion of eternal law. Shakespeare d id for the witches inM acbeth what he had al ready done for the fai ries in A'Il/I idsummer N ight

’

s D ream, translated them from folk-lore intothe realms of poetry and the imaginat ion . The age followedhim as to the fair ies ; w itches were another matter, for whoc ould know,

after all , that it was safe to doubt these malevol entm in isters of evil ?F or a popular expos it ion of curren t bel iefs as to w itches, we

must t urn from Shakespeare to Jonson and lesser men. Jonson ’s wi tch o f Pappl ewick

,in The Sad Shepherd , adm irably

presents us th is p icture. She i s as repulsive as she is mal ignant ;she assumes the shape of various beasts and even of persons, andis hunted as a hare with a full cry of hounds. UnfortunatelyJonson ’s play

,wh ich i s a fragment , ends j ust as we are coming

to a full acquaintance “with her Spindl e , threads and images.This minute real ism Jonson gives us in h is M asque of Queen

’

s,

the ant imasque of which is sustained by a bevy of w itches,equipped w ith al l the gruesome horrors that the reading and re

THE DRAMA OF EVERY DAY LIFE 1 2 1

search of the ir learned author could lavish upon them . For

the El izabethan wi tch,outside Scott’s famous D iscovery of

'Witchcraft, there is no such authori ty as Jonson. The association of

I

M iddleton ’s d rama, The Witch , with the witches of

Macbeth has already been adverted to in this book. M iddleton’s Witch, with true Renaissance confus ion o f ideas , is firstl inked on (as i n our version ofM acbeth ) , to the classical figureof Hecate w ith whom Engl ish and Scottish witches have nothing to do

,an d then employed to elucidate the in trigue of a

romant ic tal e der ived from Belleforest. M i ddleton ’s play i sunimportant except for i ts association with the revision of

Macbeth. We may conclude th is matter with two late -playsthat involve witchcraft and hark back as well to the olderdomest ic drama. In the first , TheWitch of Edmon ton , Dekkerwas assisted by Wi ll iam Rowley and John F erd , i f indeed thelatter be not a reviser, about 1 620,

o f the other’s earl ier work .

I n the other, The Late Lan cashire Witches, printed in 1 63 3 ,

Heywood was assoc iated with Richard B rome . This latte r playi s a perfect m ine of curren t witch-lore and tells the story o f thet ransformat ion of a supposedly respectabl e housewi fe into a witchby night

,her escapades

,her inj u ry by a stroke of her husband ’s

sword whiletransformed into a cat, the discovery of her conversew ith evil , her trial and del ivery over to j ustice. The storywas based on actual an d recent happenings , so recent indeedthat i t is not impossible that th e play may in some wise haveaffected the verd ict against the unfortunate M istress Generousand her supposed con federates . In The Witch of Edmon ton

we have a drama as superior to Heywood ’s in i ts execution asi t is humane in its conception of this monster misconception of

the age. The story is that of a forced marriage and i ts consequent tragedy wh ich , it i s suggested rather than ins isted , i sdue to supernatural agency. Mother Sawyer, the witch , i srepresented as a wretched poverty-stricken old woman who isd riven by the heartless il l-treatment of her neighbours to herconverse with evil . A demon comes to her in the shape of ablack dog and surprises her in on e of her fi ts of impotent cursing. After th e usual p ledges , he becomes her famil iar.” I tis Mother _ Sawyer

’s black dog that brushes against the legs ofYoung Thorney and fawns upon him at a moment when h isinnocent young wi fe has become a burden to h im

,thereby in

stil l ing murder into his heart. But above the homely fidel i tyand truth of this latest of the domest ic murder plays , is to be

ENGLISH DRAMA

placed i ts pathos and the touch of sympathy fo r the miserableold hag whom the persecution and uncharitableness of herneighbours has d riven to extremity. This recognit ion of anultimate responsibi lity outside of the vict im of persecut ion is remarkable in View of the fact that the play contains no word of

doubt as to Mother Sawyer ’s actual possession by the powers ofevi l. This , too , was an actual event dramatized . Could werecover them we might find

,among the lost plays of Henslowe

and later,many other examples of the k ind .

Our pursu i t of the domest ic drama has carr ied us far afieldand in poin t of t ime ahead of our obj ect. But other influences came so thick and fast in the reign of King James tocon fuse the simpler elements of earl i er Elizabethan drama, thati t seems best to antic ipate in thi s respect . The close al l ianceof many plays al ready treated among romant ic comedies andchronicl e plays especially

,will n ot have escaped the observant

reader. Such a comedy for example as Heywood ’s F air M aid

of the West was as strong in its scenes of the tavern l i fe o fthe adventurers of Plymouth as in i ts scenes on the high seas orin romantic unknown Morocco. The essential ly Engl ish fibreo f our Engl ish drama can not be too strongly insisted on .

With this remembered we may leave the subj ect.

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1 24 ENGLISH DRAMA

broods hot and golden in an atmosphere suffused wi th beautyand ominous o f catastrophe and change . The beauty of Juliet,the passionate unreason of Romeo

,the wit of M ercutio , even

the grossness of the N urse, seem dilated in that surcharged ai r.I t is somewhat remarkabl e that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

should be the first Engl ish tragedy of note to celeb rate thepassion of man and woman in i ts purity. Previous heroines o fsuch romance

, Gismun da, for example , or Belimperia i n TheSpan ish Tragedy , each has loved before and her untowardfate seems n ot wholly undeserved . Romeo and Jul i et alone arethe il l-starred lovers , mere shuttles in the loom of fate leavinga flash of colour in the sombre garment o f t ime.I t was some three or fou r years after the revis ion of Romeo

and Juliet that Shakespeare recurred to tragedy in his JuliusCa sar, and here, befitting an historical theme, he returned to amodified form of the chronicl e history . In th is choice of acl ass ical subj ect for the popular stage i t i s not impossibl e thatShakespeare may have been aware of someth ing l ike a departure ;for

, common as such subj ects were at the universi ties and atcourt under humanist and Senecan example , the groundling of

the Cross Keys or the Red Bull knew l i ttl e enough of anci en th istory. Yet even before Shakespeare the experiment had beentried. The Woun ds of CivilWar

,by Thomas Lodge

,which has

to do with Marius and Sulla, and the anonymous Wars ofCyrus, both were publicly staged and date as early as most ofthe chronicl e plays on Engl ish h isto ry . Later

,in the n ineties ,

Heywood appears to have staged no l ess than five dramas deal ingin a ser ies of ep ic scenes that depicted ancient mythology , beginning with the l ives of Jupi ter and Saturn and concludingwith the destruction of Troy.” Another of Heywood ’s playstells the tragedy of Lucrece.1 So that Shakespeare couldscarcely have found an ignorant audience when he staged thel atter events in the l i fe of the greatest man of antiqui ty. Eventhe subj ect was not novel

,there are five plays about Caesar on

record before the date of Shakespeare’s , though unfortunatelyn o on e of them has survived . In Julius Caesar Shakespeare hadrecourse to Plutarch ’s Parallel Lives, his usual authority fo rancien t h istory some have thought i t h is only authori ty. But

he has used his material wi th freedom as well as d iscretion , ex

1 These six play s are The Golden Age, The Silver Ag e, The BrazenAge, two p lays on The Iron Age an d The Rape of Lucrece.

THE HEIGHT OF TRAGEDY 1 25.

pand ing here the barest h int,as in the well-known orat ions of

B rutus and Antony , and elsewhere inventively shaping h isstory. . The character of B rutus especial ly develops under thedramatist’s hand in d ign i ty and power

,while Caesar , his fo il and

victim,correspond ingly su ffers . The striking detai l that makes

the con spi rators pause,thei r dreadful deed accompl ished , to

“ bathe !thei r ] hands in Caesar’s blood is Shakespeare’s and

referable to an old English custom in hunting the stag , and sois the touching incident of the sleepy page Lucius and his lute.The classical atmosphere of his source and his story appear tohave given to this play a certain regulari ty of structure an d

conduct as compared with the freer Specimens of contemporaryromantic art : Shakespeare , in a word , i s scarcely so restrainedelsewhere . But Julius Caesar presents none of the fam il i armechanical features of contemporary Senecan practice, remaining equally free from Senecan rant and moral ising commonplace .We may postpone to consideration in another pl ace the

several l ike plays - of closer Senecan affil iation that succeededKyd

’

s translation o f Garn i er’s Corn elia,

towards the end of thereign. I t may be well

,however

,to anticipate somewhat our

treatment o f Jonson to consider here,for the sake of contrast,

his two notabl e tragedies o f classical subj ect . I t does not seemal together unlikely that Jonson ’s Sejanus, h is F all, first actedin 1 603 , Was written in protest against what so excellent aclassical scholar could not but have considered the careless , sl ipshod romantic manner of depicting ancient l i fe upon the popularstage. Jonson was one of the few men of his day likely tohave been seriously affected by the h istorical anachronisms inwhich the plays o f the t ime abounded . He knew and remembered , even i f Shakespeare did not , that the conspi rators in theorchard o f B rutus were exceedingly unl ikely to be d isturbed bythe striking o f a clock

,a device not invented until centuri es

after,and that the wily effect o f a pistol in the hands o f

Demetrius Poliorcetes, in one of the plays o f F letcher , wouldbe to create laughter in the knowing aud i tor . We have on e

l i ttl e scrap of Jonsonian cri ticism as to Julius Caesar. In i t heobj ects not to the conduct o f the play but to the word ing of apassage which does not correspond to the wording of thatpassage as we have it.2 The specific quest ion need not detainus here. N or need we stop longer than to notice that the allu2As to both these matters see, J onson , ed . G ifi ord-Cunn ingham,

1 87 5, i, 272 ; iii, 398.

1 26 ENGLISH DRAMA

s ion in the prefatory matter of Sejanus (as publ ished ) to a

s econd pen , as present in the earl ier un published vers ion of

that tragedy,has been thought by some to refer to Shakespeare.

Sejan us was acted by the company to which Shakespeare belonged and soon after Julius Caesar

,i n al l p robabil i ty. More

over Shakespeare was an actor in Sejan us, as we know fromthe published l ist of actors in the Jonson fol ios. I t i s not impossible that the r ivalry between these two exponents of con

trasted romantic and classical ideals may h ave worked am i cablytogether i n an endeavour to reach a solution or a compromise ,and i t was honourabl e in Jonson when he came to publ i shh is play to have rather chosen ,

”as he expressed i t in the

pre face,to put weaker and no doubt less pleasing !numbers ]

of m ine own,than to defraud so happy a genius of his r ight by

my loathed usurpations.”

Sejan us is a master study in dramat ic form of the early daysof the empire, following , i n the presentation of that enigmaticpersonage

,T iberius , and h is pampered favouri te, Sej anus, the

sto ry as presented in Tacitus and Suetonius. Jonson has succeeded here, as no less in Catilin e, i n transferring to his pages aremarkably effect ive p icture o f ancient Rome in which not onlythe h istorians but the ancient poets and sati r ists have aided i nmany a stroke inappreci abl e excep t to the classi cally trainedreader.3 When Jonson came to publ ish Sejan us, he c ited l ineand chapter in the footnotes , after the exasperating manner ofscholars

,to avouch hi s learning. The work has not been a

success on the stage ; Jonson’s habi tual atti tude of arrogan t con

tempt for th e multitude had something to do with this . N ow

his cri tics and rivals took up this d isplay of scholarship , M arstonespecially

,i n the p reface to his Sophon isba declaring : Know,

that I have not laboured in this poem to t ie mysel f to relateanything as an h istori an , but to enlarge everything as a poet .To transcribe authors

,quote authorities and translate Latin

p rose o rations into Engl ish blank-verse, hath , i n this subj ect ,been the least aim of my stud ies .” The taunt i s unmistakable ,coming as i t d id

,immediately after the performance of Sejan us .

As to M arston ’s contribution to thi s rivalry in the representat ion of ancient l i fe i n tragic form ,

indubitably he enlarged moreth ings as a poet than he followed as an historian . Taking h is

3 “An An ach ron ism ascribed to Jon son,

” W. B. McDan iel in Mod

ern Language N otes, xxviii,'

1 58, 1 59.

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1 28 ENGLISH DRAMA

must have been acted in the very las t year of El izabeth ’s reignbut the topic , as a theme for drama , was already well known atleast some dozen years before and we have al ready heard of theassociation of a lost tragedy on the story wi th the name of

Thomas Kyd . The posi tion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the

greatest of world traged ies , in breadth of i ts artisti c s ignificanceunapproached and alone

,causes any d iscussion of i ts posi tion

among the minor productions of i ts age to seem an impertinence .Yet, historical ly considered , Hamlet is accountable l ike otherp lays and susceptible of classification with others of its kind inthat orderly sequence which governs the productions of geniuswith no less certain laws than lesser things in other realms ofhuman activi ty and thought. Thus considered

, Hamlet i s oneof a series o f dramas , the works of several authors, which extended from 1 599 onward for a number of years and is knownunder the specific ti tle

,the tragedy of revenge. The earl iest

authentic examples o f this class of plays are Kyd’

s lost Hamlet

an d hi s Span ish Trag edy, on the boards , as we have seen , a

year or two before the Armada. Which preceded the other i t isimpossibl e to say ; but the l ikeness of the two stories is strik in g.

'

A secret cr ime, a perpetrator above the law ,the burden on th e

avenger suggesting at leas t the unseating of his reason , th ed i scovery (01 avenging ) o f the crime brought about by a playwithin a play — all these things are not only common to

both stories,but they remained

,however modified and variously

emphasised,recurrent notes in the enti re series. The revival o f

the speci es seems referabl e to John M arston who placed on th estage , i n 1 599, a continuous drama in two parts enti tled An ton io

and M ellida and An ton io s Revenge. The first is a d rama ofI tal ian court intrigue

,unconnected w ith the ser ies except for

the Hamlet-l ike melancholy with which the hero , Antonio , i sendowed. His revenge , i n the second play, is foi' h is father

’smurder and consequent upon a v is i t of his father’s ghost whodiscovers to Antonio “ the deep damnation of his taking-off .”

Moreover , the revenge is finally compassed by the agency of amasque. M arston

,who was born in 1 5 76 , was a young law

student and partly I tal ian in his blood ; moreover , he was something of a coxcomb in l iterature. In the previous year he hadgained a sudden repute by a series of satires which were asstrident and impudent as youth , cleverness and inexperience couldmake them . There is much noise

,effort and talent in these

THE HEIGHT OF TRAGEDY 1 29

plays,w ith thei r blood , terror , yet genuine imaginat ive force

in places. Evidently M arston was striving hard after originali ty and in An ton io

’

s Revenge he succeeded in outdoing the horrors of h is original . I t is not unti l 1 602 that we have actual ev idence of the revival of Kyd

’

s old Span ish Tragedy, though certain parallels between that play as revised and An ton io

’

s Revenge

point to an earl ier date .‘ In 1 60 1 , at any rate , Ben Jonson waspaid for certain additions to Kyd

’

s old tragedy and thoseadd it ions — some six in number — are easily traceable in the

printed ed itions o f the play that have come down to us . Jonson ’s addi tions involve an in crease in the meditative speculat ion and in the irony of the part of Hieron imo , the father who ,in The Span ish Tragedy, i s the avenger ; and they involve l ikewise a v ivid dramatic presentation.

I t was in 1 603 that the earlier quarto of Shakespeare’sHamlet

was publ ished . I t had been registered in July 1 602. Thetext o f this quarto is imperfect and only about hal f as long asthe text of the second quarto of 1 604 and the sl ightly d i fferenttext o f the fol io. On th is , as on al l other subj ects Shakespearean ,

the cri tics have fallen apart. But when we recall thatthe second quarto declares in i ts t i tl e that the play has beenenlarged to almost as much again as i t was and that i t i snewly imprinted according to the true and perfect copy ,

”

i t is not unreasonable to harbour serious doubts as to theauthentici ty of the earl ier version , i f indeed i t may not be a fai rsurm ise that i t contains material which may once have formed a

p art of Kyd’

s lost Hamlet.5 Into the intricacies of this quest ion i t i s impossible to enter in a work of our present l imi tat ions .Suflice i t to remark on the interesting correspondence in point o ftime between Marston ’s An

'

ton io’

s Revenge, acted by the Paul’s

boys at their singing school l ate in 1 599, Kyd’

s Span ish Tragedy,revived by the Admiral ’s men at the F ortune with new additions by Jonson in 1 600 and 1 60 1

,and Kyd

’

s Tragedy ofHamlet, revised and subsequently wholly rewritten by ShakeSpeare in 1 602 and 1 603 , and acted by the Chamberlain

’s menat th e G lobe. I t was out of the heat o f such contemporaryr ival ry that the Trag edy of Hamlet as we have i t was evolved

4 See especially An ton io and Mellida,v . 1 an d The Span ish Tragedy,

I II. x iii. 72. Also cf . Boas, Kyd , p . 66.

l5 See on the general top ic, C. M. Lew is,The Genesis of Hamlet,

1 907 .

1 30 ENGLISH DRAMA

and the struggle was between the veri tabl e dramatic Titans ofthe age.A larger number of questions have arisen out O f the read

ing and pondering Of Hamlet than out of any other play ; andthe mass of commentary goes on increasing. Wi th a l ivelysense that these words must add

,however inappreciably, to the

heap,i t seems none the l ess necessary to proceed whether we

shall ever reach anyth ing like a consensus of Opinion as to th epsychology or anything else concerning this most absorbinglyinteresting figure of fict ion . An d here i s an essential first poin t.Hamlet i s a creature Of the poet’s imagination , a figment of thedramatist ’s creation

,not an historical personage. The language

which H'amlet speaks i s that of the art which created h im ; n otthat of the human material which forms the subj ect of thealien ist’s or the criminologist

’s researches. However true thedramatist’s touch with nature , ar t i s not nature nor is natureart . Another essential to keep in mind is the absolute i rrel evancy o f the extra-Shakespearean Hamlet , whether the mons ter O f Saxo—Grammaticus as set forth in Belleforest’s Hystorieof Hamblet

,the distorted shadow Of the German early version ,

Der B estrafte B rudermord , or the Senecan avenger as we havesome right to conclude Kyd

’

s Prince of D enmark ” to havebeen .

6 Shakespeare’s Hamlet , reduced to the simplest terms ,is a man who has seen a ghost and Shakespeare’s interestas a dramatist — and psychologist i f you will — centresabout the question : how would a man behave who hadreally seen a ghost ? that is, how would a rational , honourable

,capable man behave ? and that in Shakespeare

’s t ime,not in Ours. When , moreover, the supernatural message en

tailed upon him a responsibi l i ty that al tered the whole aspect andtenor of his l i fe. The story of Hamlet is not the story of amadman ; Shakespeare was too good an artist for that. An d Ido n ot think that the play was written ei ther to depict the man

of thought infirm of action,or the man of action con fronted w i th

a question that requi red and received no thought , as some haveactually argued of contrari ety. Hamlet i s the story of a mani n a state of nerves

,a man in whom an unexpected contact with

the invis ible after-world has created a tensi ty O f emotion that

6 Cf . the w ord s of Lodge in IVits Misery, 1 596 :“Th e ghost wh ich

cried so miserab ly at the theatre like an oyster-w ife,‘Hamlet re

ven ge!

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I'

32‘ ENGLISH DRAMA

i n its mastery of ingenious horror. To compare these lur id p ictures of the depth of human depravi ty and ravening passion withShakespeare is as unjust as i t is inevitable. We may neglectChettle and remain consolable that time has left only ThelTragedy of Ho/fman of the fi fty plays in which he had at leasta finger. Wi th Chapman and Tourneur we are in the p resenceof stronger men , for nei ther thei r art, thei r poetry, n or the irpower to real ise thei r terrible scenes is for a moment to be den ied .

The Revenger’

s Tragedy of the latter w ith Webster’s Wh iteDevil, of which more below, stand almost alone among El izabethan romantic tragedies in the supremacy of thei r d ramaticreal isat ion o f the wickedness and debauchery that character isedthe I taly of the Rena issance.Kindred in scene and general source to these traged ies of re

venge is Othello which disputes with M acbeth a place immed iately following Hamlet, about 1 604. The transformationwh ich Shakespeare has wrought in the sord id , dismal and prot racted novel o f Cin th io , from which the tale is ul timately der ived

,should alone be sufl'icien t to re fute the statement

,some

t imes made, that the great poet was not a creative gen ius of thefirst order. I t might almost be said that the beauti ful name ,Desdemona , was the only poetical thing to be found in the oldstory ; everyth ing else the l ight-headedness o f Cassio , the d igmi ty and nobl e su ffering of O thello

,the subtle mal ignity of

Iago— all are the inventions of the dramatist , to say noth ingof the conduct o f a plot as cleverly kni t as i t is naturally unfolded . Othello is the arch-tragedy of j ealous passion , the moreterrible

‘

in that th e Moor is not by nature suspicious n or proneto evil imagin ings . I ago i s th e arch-villain o f all l i terature , forhis v il lainy i s wanton and gratuitous and his victim the man whohas loved and trusted h im . I t i s impossible to regard Iago’sfoul suggestions i n this respect Otherwise than as the baselessfabrications of a mal ignant m ind ; just as any m itigation of the“ sooty bosom ” Of the Moor in the interests Of modern raceprej ud ice destroys the veri table cause out of which the tragedyO f thi s amazing marriage was inevitably to spring. How everp it i ful the catastrophe , Shakespeare never sinks to the despairingpessimism of our modern concept ion of human tragedy thatleaves man

,innocent or guil ty, the sport of an impersonal fate

in which a hideous apathy has usurped the place of the comprehen sible Greek envy of the gods. Desdemona

,lovely and inno~

cent, even in thought, of Iago’

s dev i l ish insinuation , had been

THE HEIGHT OF TRAGEDY 1 33

none the less an unduti ful daughter, bringing her father’s wh ite

head l iterally in sorrow to the grave , and O thello, for h isc redulousness as well as want of fai th , might se rve for argument in this regard to one less subtle than a casuist. In a word

,

the catastrophe of O thello and Desdemona is not unjustifiabl ein an orderly world such as most men persist to bel ieve in , no rcould anything save d isaster be pred icted for so ill-sorted

,so

has ty and so i ll-advised a union . Indeed , whatever the n icetiesof our distinctions between aesthet ic and eth ical values in the

realms of art,i t is the i r co incidence after all that marks the

supreme artistic creations of man .

There is a passage in M acbeth that has caused some to sup

pose'

that i t followed hard upon Hamlet.7 Whatever the fact ,i n the matter of text no two works could be in greater contrast.N ot only have we for M acbeth no quarto , only the fol io , butthe text seems muti lated and interpolated in parts with al ienmaterial

,some of which

,especially the speeches of Hecate an d

the attending dialogue , have been found in a play of M iddletonalready adverted to call ed The Witch . N ot unl ikely the vers ion that we have is on e that suffered later revision. Th iswould account for th e fact that M acbeth is one of the shortestof the tragedies , besides explain ing certain inconsistencies in theconduct o f the story. In M acbeth Shakespeare returned , as iswell known

,to Holin shed ’s Chron icles for his mater ials , using

them,however fai th fully to the bare fact , with that imaginative

freedom that transformed the vulgar , meddlesome witches of

Scottish folk-lore into a supernatural embodiment of humantemptation to evi l with its attendant , supernatural terrors.Whatever the explanat ion , nothing could be in greater contrastthan the le isurely development of s ituation in character inHamlet and thi s swi ft, lucid and vigorous story of the degenc rat ion of a loyal thane into a cruel and in fatuated tyrant, tenfold more interesting for the intrep id , devoted and equally infatu ated figure of Lady M acbeth , whose ambition was the frui tof her love for her husband , not, l ike Macbeth

’s , the spur of

Vulgar , personal aggrand isement.C lose to M acbeth

, perhaps even before it , came King Lear.

I ear l ike Macbeth follows the old chronicles , but with fargreater freedom and w ith the almost certain intervention of ano lder drama known as The History of King Leir. This was

7 See Macbeth , i. 7 . 1 0-1 2.

1 34' ENGLISH DRAMA

acted,according to Henslowe, in I 594, registered in that year

and prin ted,so far as we know , for the first t ime in 1 605 .

Th is publ icat ion of an old play wi th the false statement,“ as

i t was lately acted ,” marks a clear attempt on the part of a.

p iratical publ isher to palm off a spurious product ion as Shakespeare’s

,a misrepresentation which was responded to in um

equivocal terms on the ti tl e page of the quarto of 1 608. M r.

’William Shakespeare h is True Chron icle History of the Lifeand Death of King Lear. Shakespearean innovations on the

sources are the conversion of th e drama into a tragedy, the

banishment and d isguise o f Kent , the creat ion of the fool andthe addition of the underplot of Gloucester and his two sonsder ived from an episode in Sir Phil ip Sidney’s Arcad ia. But

l i ttl e does this tell of the transformation of a pleasing and patheti c comedy o f no very serious import into th is stupendous andtorrential tragedy of the i rrational , imperious Lear , the strident,un fi lial daughters and thei r sweet-voiced , womanly sister , Cordel ia

,th e fai th ful Kent and the sad-eyed clown — all etched

into the picture on the background of an elemental war of nature with the mordant acid of t ragic gen ius . In Macbeth andKing Lear, as in the lesser traged ies o f Coriolan us and Timon

of Athen s, there is a higher unity of passion that preserves eachdrama in its own essential key. As M acbeth is th e tragedy of

murderous royal ambition an d Lear the cataclysm that followson human folly

,however regal its masquerade and pathetic its

consequences,so Timon is th e tragedy of misanthropy and

Coriolan us that of arrogant , sel f-willed pr ide. I t i s not th el east of the mer its of Shakespeare that in no one of these caseshas th e attribute obscured the individual i ty o f the hero . Theminor posi tion of these two latter plays is referable to otherreasons. Timan

' is of uncertain date and there is noth ing toshow that i t was ever acted dur ing Shakespeare’s l i fetime.Moreover , th e text is unequal and i t has been doubted i f i t iswhol ly h is. Coriolan us

, on th e othe r hand , is certainly Shakespeare’s an d the latest of the traged ies , in al l l ikel ihood , as tocomposit ion ; but i t , too , was badly pr inted and external evidence as to its composit ion and acting is al together want ing.Yet Coriolanus in its major portrai ture of the egot ist ic , sel fw il led hero

,the patrician Roman matron , Volumn ia, h is mother,

and admirabl e,garrulous old Men en ius, is not unworthy of i ts

p lace bes id e the other Roman plays of Shakespeare. I t may bedoubted i f the sp ir it of old Rome is better preserved in e ither of

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1 36 ENGLI SH DRAMA

inconce ivable i t would be to form so lofty a structure on meresensual ity and moral degeneracy.

Shakespeare’s chronological range in tragedy extends from the

year I 590 at earl iest , when The Span ish Tragedy and Ard en

of F eversham were n ew to the stage , to 1 609, before theFletcherian dramatic compromise , known as tragicomedy

,had

come into populari ty. Shakespeare ’s competi tors in tragedyduring this period were many and d iscrimination as to thei ract ivi ties i s not always easy. There were , first o f all , Kyd andM arlowe, already sufficiently treated , whose plays maintainedthei r hold upon the stage for a generation desp ite the deathso f both in the early nineties. In these years tragedies derivedfrom Engl ish history Edward II , R ichard III , Edward IVappear to have held the popular voice against romantic tragedy,to be followed by a temporary interest in top ics derived fromRoman history. This we have already found exempl ified inseveral fine dramas by Shakespeare an d others , especially Jonson who endeavoured to comprom ise between the extravaganceand inconsistency o f romanti c art and a slavish following , on

the other hand, of Senecan traditions. Another

,perhaps more

immediate,outgrowth of the chronicle play is the extension of

i ts method to subj ects derived from foreign modern history.So far as we know,

M arlowe’s Massacre at Paris, I 593 , wasthe first important drama of th is part icular spec ies , and i t wasM arlowe’s example that turned the attention of George Chapman to the tragi c possib il it ies o f contemporary F rench historyin the plays o f the brothers D ’

Ambois, the Duke of Byron an d

Chabot. About Chapman and his comedies of manners weshall hear more below ; we have met him already as a writerof ser ious romantic comedies not unaffected by the contemporaryexampl e o f Shakespeare. We have found , too , The Revenge ofB ussy B

'

Ambois in i ts place among the tragedies of revenge .The in forming sp iri t of this play, as of Bussy B

’

Ambois, i tsp redecessor in the series of Chapman’s F rench tragedies , i sromantic. Bussy i s an upstart courti er and bravo raised by thewhim of Monsieur, brother to the king, to a favour and ac

cep tan ce at court that gives ful l vent to Bussy’s intolerabl e

egotism. In the end he falls traitorously, i f moral ly justlyenough

,by the hand that rai sed him. But no mere reci tal such

as th is could make cl ear the m ingled excellencies and defects o fChapman ’s remarkabl e work. Chapman , as became the translato r o f Homer in a romant ic age, has the grand hero ic manner.

THE HEIGHT OF TRAGEDY 1 37

In his d ict ion the rhetorical tone , which he caught from thep revail ing Senecan influence of his t ime , i s o ften raised to ahigher power by his sheer poetry. As we read Bussy B

’

Ambois

we are struck again and again with Chapman ’s wisdom,his

mastery of the phrase , his imaginative eloquence ; as we laydown the play we wonder that a course so devious and apparen tly without design could have compassed a dramatic eff ectso complete and lasting. N or would an estimate i nvolvingsome such ideas be less applicabl e to Chapman ’s other h istoricalt ragedies . The two plays on Charles , Duke of Byron , appear tohave been acted soon after The Revenge of Bussy about 1 608.

“

In all , the atmosphere of pol itical intrigue in an elegant but corrupt court i s preserved with excellent fidel i ty, and the personages of contemporary neighbouring F rance are represented so

faithfully, at t imes so scandalously , that we hear of a remonstrance from the F rench ambassador at London and o f thearrest of several of the actors concerned . Chapman later protested v i gorously against the rul ing of Sir George Buc whoexcised certain passages of Byron when l icense to print wasrequested . Indeed one of these plays remains to us in i ts mutilated condi tion , a proof o f the effective censorship which KingJames exacted where pol itical allusion was concerned . Thefi fth of Chapman

’s historical tragedies is Chabot, Admiral of'F ran ce. I n the version that remains to us this fine tragedywas rev ised by the sk il ful d ramatic hand of Shirley, at somet ime in the early s ixteen thirti es. The theme is both novel andinteresting ; i t concerns an honourable and upright servant ofh is king who dies broken-hearted because of his soverei gn ’s susp icion and mistrust , the resul t o f the machinations of his enem ies.Whi le less imaginative and uncontroll ed than Chapman ’s earl ierwork in this kind

, Shi rley has made out o f Chapman’s material

by far the best drama of the series . I t seems unwise to includeei ther Revenge for Hon our or Alphon sus of Germany amongthe works of Chapman . The former is a tragedy of Turkishcourt l i fe and the work of Hen ry Glap thorn e ; the latter a playnot impossibly of the revenge seri es , but al ike indeterminable asto date and authorship . I t has attracted the attention o f Ger

man scholars from its German story and the ci rcumstan ce that ini t i s to be found considerable quotation in the language of thefatherland .

Other employment o f F rench h isto ry came later , save , perhaps

,for the rough and ready product o f the playhouse, The

1 38 ENGLISH DRAMA

N oble Span ish Sold ier by Dekker and Samuel Rowley, from itss imilar subj ect in parts and from the nature of i ts allusions tothe court of K ing Henry IV probably of a date not far fromthat of Chapman ’5 two plays on Byron . Wi ser than heir predecessor, the join t authors of The N oble Span ish Solaher evadedthe pains and penal ties o f contemporary allusion by transforming the scene of thei r d rama to Spain and mak ing a tragedy outof events that had not reached , in thei r real i ty in Henry

’s court ,so serious a termination . N ot dissimilar was the device afterwards pursued by F l etcher and Massinger in Thierry an d

Theodoret, 1 6 1 7 , n ot improbably a revis ion of an early play of

o ther authorsh ip , known in 1 597 under the ti tle“

B ran howlte,”

Hen slowe’

s approximation to Brun halt. Here , once more , i thas been thought that contemporary happenings in the neighbouring court of F rance were staged under the d isguise of asto ry of M erovingian times . The play i tsel f is powerful andforb idding

,and a favourable specimen of the F letcherian art of

dramatic contras t. Scarcely l ess forcible i s The B loody B rotheror R ollo Duhe or N orman dy, variously dated between 1 606

and 1 624 and the work of several hands , F l etcher , Wi ll iamRowley and Jonson supposedly among them . But no suchduke apparently d isgraces the annals of historical N ormandy.But F rance was not the only modern country to lend h istor ic

material to El izabethan dramatic treatment on'the stage. The

diversi ty o f tragic scene,as o f comic , was to a large degree acc i

dental,the subj ect-matter o f our old plays commonly group ing

for other reasons than these. Thus the tragedy of revenge givesus I tal ian Antonio

, F rench D’

Ambois, German Hoffman andDanish Hamlet ; and i t began in a Spanish Hieron imo. Be

s ides the famous play of Kyd , Greene’s Alphon sus of Aragon

and Peele’s Battle of Alcazar touch on material more or l essh istorically Spanish

,to say nothing of The Span ish lll oor

’

s

Tragedy, re ferred to the authorship of Dekker , Haughton andDay in 1 600 , and perhaps Lust

’

s D omin ion , printed as Mar

lowe ’s i n 1 65 7 . This play is certainly not Marlowe’s ; i t i s a

shameless following of Titus An dron icus especi al ly in the figuresof the lascivious queen ( the alternate t i tle ) and of Eleazerthe Moor who at once recal l Tamora the Goth ic queen of

Titus and Aaron , her paramour . Towards the end of thereign of King James , Spanish subj ects , for pol i tical and otherreasons

,came into great request. To these we shall return ;

for th e p resen t i t is enough to note that in the year 1 6 19, Wil

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140 ENGLISH DRAMA

With our return to I taly we have returned to romant ictragedy. The years 1 609 to 1 6 1 2 gave to the stage four greatd ramas in which woman is represented in the deadly perversionthat brings destruction to man . The first of these in point oft ime is F letcher ’s powerful TheM aid

’

s Trag edy which from itsrelat ions to h is tragicomedies i s best treated below ; the latestwas The I n satiate Coun tess, printed as M arston

’s,in 1 6 1 2 , and

perhaps not wholly his. The subj ect,“ the di fference betwixt

the love of courtesan and a wi fe,” Marston had already treated

with effect m his comedy, The Du ch Courtesan . Both playsbelong, i n a sense , to the domestic drama , and the tragedy, i ni ts terribl e p icture of the career of a veri table queen of wantons,however i t horri fy

,for i ts subj ect cannot but be commended

for i ts vigorous art. M iddleton ’s Women B eware Women ,

acted about 1 6 1 2 , is ne ither less forbidding in subj ect nor inferior in dramatic power. This tragedy tel ls the story of arecen t I talian scandal , that concerning F rancesco de

’ M edic iand h is abandoned mistress , B i anca Capel lo. In h is underplo tM i ddleton touches the foul topic of incest, maintaining here , asin his comedies, his repute as the most veri table real ist of hisage. The fourth of these tragedies of misguided and pervertedwomanhood is Webster ’s The Wh ite D evil, the d ramatizationof a recent cause celebre, the outcome of another scandal inI tal ian high l i fe.Of John Webster very l ittle is kn own save that he was

born free of the M erchant Tailors’ Company and was a fellow-worker with Dekker, M id dleton and M arston. Hisearl i est work , n ow no longer extant , belongs to the very lastyears of Elizabeth

’s reign . Thereafter he was concerned insomething less than a score of plays and pageants , comprisingh istorical drama such as Sir Thomas Wyatt, comedies of manners and intrigue l ike Westward Ho and N orthward Ho, andclass ical tragedy represented in Appius an d Virg in ia. O f theseveral comedies doubtfully attributed to Webster at least inpart

,i t i s unnecessary to speak here. Webster i s remembered in

the history of Engl ish l iterature for on e thing and that 13 forhis extraord inary power in romantic tragedy, alike i n the creat ion of character and m the ski l ful handling of material ; andhis two masterp ieces are The Wh ite D evil and The Duchess

of M alfi , both acted before 1 6 1 2. In the first we have thesto ry of the in fatuation of the Duke of Brach iano for thebeaut iful Vi ttoria Corombona, his murder of her husband and

THE HEIGHT OF TRAGEDY 14:

h is own w ife at the inst igation of Vi ttor ia , the ir subsequent tr ial ,fl i ght and marriage with the vengeance of the brother of thelate Duchess on the guilty pa ir. The radiant beauty of Vi ttoriapervades the play and , conscious though we are at al l times ofher abandonment to passion and her calculating cunning whenbrought to her defence

,we too feel the fascination that per

verted her j udges and the spectators at her trial . Scarcelyless effective are the figures o f the profl igate Brachian o, ofF lamin eo

,the cyn ical pander to his own sister’s shame

,and the

d istracted mother of these extraordinary and brill iant creaturesof vice. The Duchess of M alfi , which is usually regarded asthe later play, preserves the same atmosphere of intrigue andcounter intrigue in the ducal courts of I taly and portrays

,i n

the Arragon ian brothers and in thei r creature Bosola,three

of the most consummate portraits within the range of our

d rama. Bosola the intell i gencer,depraved , discontented , ab

solutely clear-sighted as to his w icked acts and thei r con se

quen ces, unvisi ted by compunction in h i s cruelty yet smittenw ith remorse in disappo in tment of his reward , such a v i l lainis worthy to stand beside Iago himsel f. Above all in herbeauty and pathetic fate, stands the Duchess of Malfi

,v ictim

of unparalleled indign ities , los ing all , husband , children , l i feitsel f , yet v icto r over the machinations of her wicked brothersagainst her in her equally unparalleled fortitude . In depict ingthe ingenious horrors with which the hal f-crazed F erdinandtortures h is unhappy s ister of Malfi in the vain endeavour to”break her unconquerable sp iri t , Webster proclaims himsel f ourmaster poet in the domain of the terrible.

”

Sustained as is al lby a competent d iction

,a power over language and illuminated

by single l ines of flashing genius , Webster takes h is place forthese two traged ies as second only to the master poet h imsel f .We have seen how popular romantic tragedy was affected

from the first by the example of Seneca, the cult of whosetragedies

,beginning at court with the reign of the queen , was

extended to the playhouses of the ci ty by such men as Peel eand Kyd. But Kyd was author not only of The Span ishTragedy, which was Seneca popularised fo r the vulgar , butalso of a translat ion o f Robert Garnier ’s Cornelie which , thoughunsuccessful on the stage, led to a series o f academic dramasimitative of the Roman traged1an i n a new solution , th is t imeF rench . Recent invest igation into the sources of Elizabethanl i terature tend to show that the age was affected by the l i tera

142 ENGLISH DRAMA

ture of F rance far more an d much more d irectly than hashi therto been accepted. The Elizabethan lyr ic turns out, forexample, to be extensively imitative of that contemporary inF rance and many a story, formerly imagined to have come toEngland di rectly from I taly or Spain , has been shown to havearrived by way of the same intermediary.” F rench Seneca, aswe may call thi s small group of tragedies

,centres about the

Countess of Pembroke and her immediate c ircle. As early as

I 590 the Countess hersel f had translated Garn ier’s An ton ie,

preserving the lofty tone, the frigid i ty and stately ai r of heror iginal ; and Kyd

’

s Corn elia, as well as his proj ected tran slation of another tragedy of Garn ier, his Porcie, which was notcompleted

,both are referable to this impetus. The rest of the

group include several original tragedies by Daniel , Brandonand Sir F ulke Greville , all of them fall ing, in point of dateo f composition , within the last ten or twelve years of El izabeth

’sreign. A l i ttl e later, Sir Wi l l i am Alexander , afterwards Earlof St i rl ing , brings up the rear with h is M anarchic Tragedies,1 603 to 1 607 , whether as an actual intimate of this noble l i terary ci rcl e or as an imitator of its achievements may be left in

question .

By far th e most important person in th is group was S amuelDaniel

,to be recorded recogni tion in any history of the l i tera

ture of the t ime for many est imable qualities as a man and apoet. Daniel was the son o f a musician and born in I 562.

His education he had at Oxford , beginning his career as a poetas early as 1 584 with his graceful Italian te sonnets to Delia,the first series to fbllow in the wake o f Sidney’s famous Astro

phel an d Stella. Whi le chronicle plays were holding the stage,Dani el wrote his narrative poem , TheHistory of the Civil IVar

,

which enjoyed l ike other productions of i ts class , Warner’s

Albion’

s Eng lan d , and Drayton’

s The Baron’

s War, for example

, a greater populari ty in i ts day than i ts merits n ow appearto warrant. I t was later

,i n the rei gn of King James , that

Daniel gained further l i terary laurels for h is masques an d pastoral dramas. An d i t was then that Jonson ’s enmity overtookhim. I n the interim came his two contributions to “

F renchSeneca,

”Cleopatra, I 594 , and Ph ilotas, 1 600. There is elo

quen ce, choice dict ion and much poetical sp i ri t in both these

9 See especially Sir Sidney Lee, The F ren ch Renaissan ce in Eng

land , 1 91 0.

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1 44 ENGLISH DRAMA

rAlahanz is laid in the k ingdom of O rmus , M ustapha isdrawn from the h istory of the O ttomans, not impossibly fromKnollys’ Gen eral History of the Turks a new book at theaccession of King James. Both are stor ies o f palace intrigue ,of malevolen t ambi tion , nobl e fortitude and suffering undercruel i nfl iction . Moreover , both are exceed ingly original i nconduct , in concept ion of personage though almost parallel inplo t. But fo r none of these things were these tragedies written .

Grevill e declares for us his intention , i n them as in his poet icalTreatises ” on government , ambition and other l ike themes ,to be to trace out the h ighways of ambitious govern ours , andto show in the p ractice , that the more audaci ty, advantage andgood success such sovere igns have, the more they hasten to thei rown desolation and ruin.

” These tragedies d iffer from all th ed ramas of thei r age in exist ing for a Speculative , not an artisticor merely moral

,purpose. Grevill e is not alone in abstract

moral ising, Daniel d id that in this group of plays before h imand Sti rl ing especially after ; nor is Grevi ll e alone i n writingfor a purpose ulterior to the artistic on e, that was commonenough. G revi ll e i s conspicuous in the purely intellectual processes of his art and in the extraordinary logic of his Stoicism

, which causes h im to regard all human activi ty, whetherv i rtuous or depraved

,as variet ies of folly ; the only true W isdom

is pati ence. I t was this,w ith some misapprehension as to the

dramatic purpose of certain utterances that led to the notionthat G reville was irreligious. His traged ies are the most trulyphi losophical of their time, for they exist for their speculativ ethought and thus presage such modern productions as Goethe

’

sF aust and B rowning

’s Sordello. The amazing thing aboutthem is that the circumstance that thei r personages stand out

with a v ividness and an ind ividual ity l i ttle to be expected inwork of such a design , and that passage after passage i s sustain ed by sheer poetry. Wi th Sti rl ing’s fou r M an arch ic Traged ies, Darius, Croesus, Caesar and The Alexan drean Tragedy,variously publ ished between 1 603 and 1 607 , and outlying production s such as The Tragedy of M ariam by Lady El izabethCarew and Cyn thiaf

'

s Revenge by on e John Stephen , these two

l atter printed in 1 6 1 3 , the tal e of F rench Seneca comes to anen d . Sti rl ing’s dramas are not without a certain historicalvalue ; Stephen

’s,i n i ts obscuri ty

,allegory and bombast , may be

p ronounced the most intolerable o f El izabethan plays . We mayadd that i t seems unl ikely that any of these d ramas were wr itten

THE HEIGHT OF TRAGEDY 1 45

for act ing e ither pr ivately or at court. All observe a more orl ess minute attention to the technical processes of the drama ofGarnier, the brothers La Taille , and G révin and rhyme, in couplets or al ternately employed , abounds in the dialogue. I t maybe doubted i f this series of exotic imitations had any e ffec twhatever on the popular stage , unless i t may have been to callattention to classical subj ects ; and of these on the popular stageenough has been said .

Our tale of Elizabethan tragedy at i ts he ight is told ; butthere are some things that we may gather up by way of summary. O f the fifty or more tragedies which have been mentioned in th is chapter, i t i s somewhat surpris ing to find nearlyhal f referabl e to ancien t sto ry

,however a proport ion of those on

the popular stage were romantically conceived and presented .

The place which Kyd and M arlowe take as theme-givers toEngl ish tragedy is notabl e. The former ’s Span ish Tragedy an d

Hamlet led to the line o f the traged ies o f revenge , an dTam'

burlain e started the war drama or conqueror play and , throughG reene’s Selimas and the l ike, the group of plays on easternsubj ects. To the El izabethan the annals o f the Turk were ofa very l ive interest , for i t was only the Battl e of Lepanto in1 5 7 1 , that put a stop to O ttoman aggression in Europe. Hencepopular d ramas l ike Peele’s lost Turkish M ahomet

,scraps

o f which are quoted with Tamburlain e by Ancient Pistol ; andhence rude melodramas such as M ulleasses the Turh, 1 607 , byon e John M ason , and the lurid Turkish traged ies of ThomasGo ff e. To return to the influences on tragedy , i t can hardlyhave been merely an accident that Kyd

’

s Corn elia in 1 592 andM arlowe’s D ido, i n the next year , should have been followedon Hen slow e

’

s stage by a Ce sar and Pompey and asecond part of Ce sar ; while Marlowe’s insp i rat ion of

the F rench histories of Chapman appears as certain as in ference from historical material can ever be. Tragedy on classicalsubj ects i s as old as the drama. Such plays existed at the universities, as we have seen , and as Bower

’s Appius an d Virg in ia,I 563 , and Geddes

’

Ce sar, in I 582 , with many other examples ,attest. The new in fusion of Sen ecan ism from F rance we havesufficiently examined . I ts courtier cult ivators were oblivious ofthe popular drama ; though i t i s not so certain that the playwr ights o f the London theatres may not have turned to topicsderived from ancient history partly because of these l iteraryefforts at court. Certainly when Shakespeare tried his hand at

1 45 ENGLISH DRAMA

J ulius Ce sar, Hen slowe’

s poets,in this case described as Mun

day, Drayton , Webster and the rest ,

” responded almost immediately with Ce sar

’

s'

F all; and Jonson , Heywood and Mar

ston put forth,soon after , each his r ival tragedy in this kind ,

Chapman following a l i ttl e later with his Ce sar an d Pompey,a production not worthy his great name. The rivalry went on ,rising to i ts he ight in An tony an d Cleopatra, and closing inCoriolan us, 1 608, and in Jonson

’s Catilin e, 1 6 1 1 . Of th etragedy of revenge no more need be said . Shakespeare ’s Learand M acbeth hark back to earl ier t imes , for each is , i n a sense ,a glorified chronicle play. Romeo and Juliet and O thello belong to the general class of romantic tragedy founded on I tal ianstory and differ from thei r kind mainly in the ind ividual ism ofthei r art

,what genius has wrought above the i r species. Save

for Chapman ’s defin ite group of h istorical d ramas touchingF rench history

,only on e remaining group stands notably forth

among the various themes of the tragedies o f the days of James ;and this i s the terribl e seri es which details the l i fe o f the nobl eharlot

,beginning with Titus and Lust

’

s Domin ion , which hasbeen attributed to M arlowe , and including The Wh ite D evil

of Webster , M i ddleton’s Women B eware Women and Mar

ston’

s I n satiate Coun tess. An atmosphere more or less h istorical dominates some of the remaining dramas , The N oble

Span ish Sold ier and All’

s Lost by Lust—for example ; others rise ,l ike The Duchess of M alfi , in thei r artisti c isolation above thec i rcumstantial i ty of fact. To the writ ing of these tragediesduring a period of some twenty years was brought the geniusand the talents of a score of writers at court, in the un ivers itiesand especially on the publ i c stage. An d thei r theories o ftragedy were no less diverse than the ir stations in l i fe , thei rlearn ing and thei r opportunities. Assuredly the d isparity between the learned Dr. Gw in n e of Oxford

,ransacking Tacitus ,

Sueton ius and D io Cassius accurately to write his Lati nN ero and Samuel Rowley , dramatizing a contemporary scandalof the F rench court , disguised as a Spanish story,

” i s as greatas that between Webster , i ntent on a faith ful and arti sti cpicturing of the deeper passions that an imate and ruin mankind ,and Grevi ll e, oblivious to all save a vivid il lustration of h is

theory of speculative stoicism . An d the variety of th is dramais equally great , ranging from the rhetorical fr igid i ty of Danielto Jonson ’s vigorous historical portraiture

,and from the sign ifi

cant poetry of Chapman and Shakespeare’s masterful grasp

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CHAPTER VII

JONSON AND THE CLASSICAL AND SATIRICALREACTION

WE know more about Ben Jonson than about any other l i teraryman of his age ; and barring Shakespeare , Jonson is by far themost s ign ificant l iterary figure of his t ime. A posthumous son ,

born in Westminster, some nine years after Shakespeare , Jonsonsurv ived to long outlive h i s friend and carry the authority of

h is name and the sanction of his dramatic practices into the reignof King Charles. Jonson d ied in 1 63 7 , long the v ict im of i l lh ealth and a certain amount of neglect at court. We haven ow to chronicle h is palmier days . Jonson “ was brought uppoorly

,

” his mother having remarried and beneath her,a brick

layer ; calumny even whispered that Jonson had at some timeexercised h is step-father

’s trade. But the antiquary Camden ,then an usher at Westminster School , befriended Jonson and herece ived his schooling there

,though unable afterwards to pro

ceed to ei ther universi ty. D egrees he had later from bothby thei r favour n ot his study,

” and i t i s in terestin g‘to th ink

of the academic world of those times so honouring a purelyl i terary man . Jonson married quite as imprudently as ShakeSpeare and when almost as young. Thereafte r he went abroadan d trailed a pike ” in F landers , on on e occasion , as he del ighted to tell

,singling out a champion from among the enemy,

call ing him forth,and kil ling him in sight of both armies.

He returned from F landers penniless , and had recourse, l ikemany another

,to Hen slowe

’

s mart in the drama. This musth ave been about 1 595 or a year later. At any rate Hen slow e

’

s

entr ies show,as to Jonson

,at first cal led famil iarly “

Ben

j amin , the usual course of apprenticeship , the revision andrefashion ing of old plays when revived

,collaboration with others

and general services about the playhouse . There are contradictory tradit ions as to Jonson as an acto r. We have no l istin which hi s name so figures

,as we have in the case of Shake

speare. He was taxed by his enemies with having once played1 48

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 149

the part o f Hieron imo i n The Span ish Tragedy ; but i t is unl ikely that he ever made much of a success. He was a rawboned lad and later became corpulent

,and he descr ibes h imsel f

in later l i fe as possessed of“ a mountain belly and a rocky

face.” By 1 598 Jonson had begun , however , to receiverecognition

,for he is mentioned in that year by the pragmatic

M eres as on e of our best in tragedy.” The earl iest work ofJonson has perished . Henslowe named however three tragedies

,

Page of Plymouth , a murder play, King Robert II of Scotlan dand Richard Crookback, these latter clearly contributions tothe current chronicle plays. Only a sketch of the last remains ;the others were written in col laboration ; all of them fall late rthan the mention of Meres. Jonson was sensi tive about theseexperiments o f his nonage and appears to have succeeded incovering up his earl ier footsteps towards success. Only TheCase is Altered , a comedy of romantic type, n ot unaffected byShakespeare, remains of these early e fforts, an d of this Jonsonn ever acknowledged his authorship .

In the autumn of 1 598 Jonson’s pugnacity o f d ispos it ion re

sulted in a duel i n Hogsdon F i elds in which he again kil led h isman

,a fellow player and by all accounts someth ing of a bravo,

n amed Gabriel Spencer. The prevalence of duell ing in El izabethan England needs no comment for h im who knows Elizabethan plays. But i t was on e thing for noblemen and gentlemenso to de fend thei r honour and settle thei r d i fferences ; i t was animpertinent assumption of gentil i ty on the part of a commonplayer. Accord ingly Jonson was tried at Old Bailey , convictedand sent to prison

,and such possessions as he had “ were for

fei ted .

” Indeed,Jonson only escaped the gallows by pleading

the benefit of clergy and was branded on the thumb with a T,

for Tyburn,to commemorate that escape. While in prison

Jonson became a Roman Catholic , a form of rel igion that heafterwards abjured to return to the faith o f England . On hisrelease

,which seems to have been speedy enough , Jonson offered

h is services to the Chamberlain ’s men , in which companyShakespeare was now a leading shareholder . An d here fall sthe pleasing story first related , i t is bel ieved , by Bettertonthat Jonson , departing with the manuscript of Every Juan inhis Humour, refused by the reader , was recal led by Shakespearewho himsel f read his play and reversed the decis ion of the com~

pany. Whatever the truth of th is tradi tion , Jonson’s comedy

was accepted an d acted within the year , I 598, Shakespeare tak

1 50 ENGLISH DRAMA

ing on e of the parts. Every Man in h is Humour made thereputation of Jonson . This first success is commonly reckonedan epoch-mak ing play , for in i t the poet set forth in p ract icecertain very definite theories concerning Engl ish comedy whichwere his. Jonson was an obse rver of the l i fe about him as

well as a student of the past . He desired to compass a satiricalp icture of contemporary li fe presented vivi dly and amusingly

,

and to do this with a becoming regard for th e practice of comedyas exempl ified in the best classical models. The plot of EveryMan in his Humour i s exceed ingly simple : an intercepted letterreveals to a father that his supposedly stud ious son is reallysomewhat of a gallant ; the father follows the son to the ci tyand thei r adventures wi th the personages they meet

,together

with those o f thei r knavish servant , Brainworm, who follows

both on his own account, form the fabric o f the plot. Thenovelty of th e comedy l i es in the conception of the personages,each governed by some sal i ent trai t or character isti c. B rainworm with his passion for gull ing everybody,

” gulled in theend himsel f , Bobadil, eager to appear the supreme duell istthough , unfortunately for h is ambi tion , at heart a coward ;Knowell

,Downright

,thei r very names , as o ften in Jonson , be

t ray them . N ow,to this kind of thing , Jonson gave — or at

least gave popular currency to — the term a “ humour,

” defining it as a rul ing trait or b ias of character such as determinesthe customary atti tude and hab itual conduct of the personagepossessing i t. He especially reprobated the abuse of the wordto s ign i fy some trivial pecul iar i ty or mannerism of costume orSpeech

,a s ign ificance to which the term was subsequently some

t imes degraded .A satirical representat ion of l i fe on the stage was of course

no n ew th ing. The elder drama was ful l of i t , though neversystemized as here . But this simpl ification of complex humannature to a leading typical trai t was only a part o f the poet ’smore general theory. Jonson was a classicist , that is , one whobel ieves not only in the sanction and preceden t of the ancientsi n l iterature and art

,but one who bel i eves in the restrain t and

respect for precedent which a study of former art should insp ire.Jonson obj ected especially to the extravagance and un profes

sion al sp i ri t of Renaissance poetry and drama. He bel ievedthat there was a professional and responsibl e way of doing all

these th ings and that exampl e for much of i t can be found inthe practices of ancient Greek and Roman authors. What

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x52 ENGLISH DRAMA

Jonson was always sure of himsel f ; and , however generous tohis intimates

,he was arrogantly contemptuous of the great mul

titude amongst whom he included all whom he had not personally chosen to be of the number of h is friends. As he lookedabout him

,towards the end of the year 1 598, flushed with

success,three persons especially attracted his sati r ical attentions

and for reasons not al together accidental . There was JohnM arston , two years h is junior, recently from Oxford , author ofseveral plays , i n h is n ew book , The Scourge of Villainy proclaiming himsel f a sati rist

,and quite as opin ionated and sel f

sat isfied as Jonson h imsel f. Secondly , there Was SamuelDaniel

,of whom we have also heard , the accepted entertainer

of the court , I tal ianate, fashionable and effeminate — or atleas t so Jonson thought h im — turning sonnets in the mannerof Petrarch whom Jonson desp ised , and writing drama in themanner o f Garn ier whom Jonson did not understand , on easyterms, moreover , with great peopl e, and these as yet Jonson d idn ot know. Lastly, there was Anthony Mund ay, pageant masterto the ci ty

,translator o f romances

,and collaborator with any

body in anything theatrical or other. These men in particularJonson attacked in the three dramat ic sat ires which form hiscontributions to what Dekker called the poetomachia

” andl ater cri tics have dubbed the war of th e theatres.” I t is interestin g to note as to Jonson’s personal ambi tions respectingtwo of these men

,that he became in later years chronologer

of the ci ty o f London , a better post than that of pageant-poet,and that he also became poet laureate and the accepted enterrainer of the court in a larger sense than Daniel had ever conceived the latter.Jonson’s three famous dramatic satires are Every Man Out

of h is Humour, acted by the Chamberlain’s men in 1 599, Cyn

th id s Revels, or the F oun tain of Self-Love, and The Poetaster,

or h is Arraig nmen t, following in the two successive years , andacted , not by the Chamberlain

’s men,but by the ch ildren of the

royal chapel : the change of company i s significant. Howeverthe Opin ions of individual investigators may diverge , all mustagree that in these plays Jonson satirized several of his fellowpoets in terms as unmistakable as they are vigorous , thoughthe three d ramas may be d ifferentiated as devoted more or lessostensibly to an attack respectively upon the foll ies of cit izenl i fe

, of the court and of the poets. The causes , origin and thedetails o f the conduct of this “ war must remain obscure

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 1 53

from th e nature of th ings , although much has been done toelucidate the subj ect.2 We may feel reasonably sure that Jonson and Marston were the principals and that Dekker was late rcall ed in as a mercenary , so to speak , contributing onlySatiromastix to the fray. Accord ing to Jonson , the whole thingbegan outside the drama in certain satirical allusions of M ar

ston’

s to Jonson in the former’s Scourge of Villainy ; andMarston ’s dramatic contributions to the quarrel have beenfound in Histriomastix, 1 599, an all egorical d rama of hetero

gen eous contents which he made over, in a romantic comedyof intrigue called J ack Drum

'

s’

En tertainmen t,1 600 , which

M arston never acknowledged , and in parts of An ton io an d

M ellida which falls l ikewise within these years. On the otherhand

,there are epi grams of Jonson , var iously charging on e

playwright”

( supposed to mean M arston ) with cowardice,scurril i ty and plagiarism. Jonson told D rummond that “ hehad many quarrel s wi th M arston !and that he ] beat

‘

h im andtook his p istol from him . But, when all i s sai d , we must nottake these

,valorous dramat ic combatants too ser iously. Two

or three years later found Marston and Jonson in amicabl ecollaboration with Chapman in an excellent comedy, Eastward

Ho, and in 1 604, M arston printed h is M alcon ten t with a ded icat ion to B enjamin Jonson , that most grave and gracefulpoet

,h is Very candid and beloved friend .

”

To return to the dramatic sati res , Jonson’s method —is s imple

and d irect. The story in these three plays counts for very l ittl e,

al though the successive ep isodes are made sufficiently interesting to hold the reader’s attention and

,we may surmise

,far more

certainly that o f the auditor,when the matter was fresh . I t

i s in his matchless pow er of sati ri c characterisation and in theb ri ll ian t

,humorous

,allusive dialogue with which all i s clothed ,

that Jonson shines above all h is competitors and justifies hi st itle, the Engl ish Aristophanes. We can understand the contemporary success o f these plays in the hands of the competentfellows of Shakespeare and in those of th e clever lads that actedthem ; we can understand

,too

,how th e town must have ac

claimed the“ war ” and went about from playhouse to play

house to hear how Marston would take off Jonson or“ what

2The best accoun t of the wh ole matter is that of J . H. Penn iman inthe In troduction to h is ed ition of Poetaster an d Satiromastix, Belles

Lettres Series, Boston , 1 91 3 .

1 54 ENGLISH DRAMA

Jonson could say now ? We can l ikew ise comprehend how ,

towards the end,the town wearied of Jonson ’s arrogance and

sel f-r ighteousness — witness the almost incredible portrai t of

himsel f which he draws in Asper-M acilente in Every M an out

of h is Humour — how even the very wealth of his eloquencewas his undo ing

,and the palm of v icto ry was awarded , by his

capricious hearers, to Dekker for h is Satiromastix, a warmed

over performance,in ferior to the least o f Jonson ’s .

Into the part iculars of th e war ” and especially into thequagmi re of personal identification there is happily no need forus to trespass . In The Poetaster, Jonson l ampooned the inferior poets o f th e day whose petulant styles ,

” he declares,had

“ provoked ” him for years on the stage.” The parable isthat of the vi rtuous Horace and his friend Vi rgil at Rome, withthei r incomparable talents and impeccable perfections in theh igh light of contrast wi th the envy , stupid i ty and spleen of thepoetasters

,thei r natural enemies. In a cl imax more d ivert ing

than elegant,M arston-Crisp inus is represented as cured of his

tumorous heats of calumny against Horace by certain p illsof the whitest kind of hellebore ” which

,acting after thei r

kind,relieve him with some struggling of his affected vocabu

l ary and work an absolute cure. Dekker worked up the replyof his Satiromastix by a parody of Jonson ’s subj ect, unit ing i tsRoman scene very in artifi cially with a Species of chron icl e playof the t ime o f Wi ll iam Rufus which he appears to have had byh im. The grossness of his workmanship in th is case i s bestd iscerned in his degradation of Jonson ’s braggart Tucca into ascurrilous bravo . Many interesting surmises have been in

dulged i n as to Shakespeare’s probable atti tude among these

broils ; and some have surmised that he is intended in Vi rgil ,the presiding judge of Jonson ’s cou rt of the poets. O thershave given this place of honour to Jonson ’s known friend andlover,

”Chapman . There is a famous al lus ion to the “ war

in an academic play called The Return from Parnassus, actedat Cambridge in 1 602 in which occurs th is much-quoted passage :Why here

’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them al l down ; aye ,and Ben Jonson too . 0 that Ben Jonson i s a pestilen t fellow !he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellowShakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray hiscred it.” An d the question arises was Shakespeare’s “ purge aplay ? and i f so

,what play ? Some have thought i t en igmatic

Troilus an d Cressida, the sign ificance , we must fear, to be dis

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1 56 ENGLISH DRAMA

not qu ite so sure about h is status on a second tr ip,in 1 601 . At

any rate, in May 1 603 l etters patent were i ssued wherein i tappears that the Lord Chamberlain ’s company had n ow becomethe King’s servants and three names head the l ist of actors ,

Lawrence F letcher, Wi l l iam Shakespeare and Richard Burbage.3 By th is thri fty p iece of forethought Shakespeare and hisfellows preserved thei r p restige in the new reign. Under suchcondi tions i t is not surpris ing that Jonson l ikew ise should havebest irred himsel f. We do n ot know the means by which hereceived an introduction to King James

,but we find Jonson in

rivalry wi th Daniel in the entertainments of welcome tenderedto the new sovereign on his royal progress from Scotland to assume h is English crown ; and he was also the author , witho thers, of entertainments celebrating the king’s entry intoLondon. This was a turn ing poin t in Jonson ’s career. Hisactivi ties were henceforth divided between

"

the court and thetheatre ; to the former with the author let us first turn .

The entertainments of royal ty smacked of the d ramatic fromt ime immemorial . We have heard o f the d ialogue form givento speeches of royal welcome by Lydgate in the fifteenth cen

tury and of the development of the dramatic elemen t in thehands o f Heywood into the interlude , forerunner of domesticfarce and comedy. I t i s out of an even earl ier form of entertainmen t that the masque , properly so called , arose, and thiswas the d isguising or mumming, a usual pastime very early atcourt and referable

, if we are to seek deep enough in the past ,to some of the most primitive of the customs of th e folk. Itmight be easier

,as well as more logical

,to trace out the growth

o f such an entertainer of royal ty as Cornish in Henry VIII’Scourt

,for example

,from the occasional minstrel

,whose songs ,

mimicry and inventive pageantry amused Henry’s mediaeval predecessors, than to fi n d i n his devices of masking, Speech andcostume any close relation to true drama. I t was to supervisethese things and the dialogues and interludes that grew withthem that the office of the revels was raised from an occasionalfunction in t imes o f fest ival into a permanent organisation whichp rovided not only for the entertainment of the sovereign in hi scourt and on p rogress

,but which came in time to super intend

the drama at large. The records , moreover, go to Show that

3 The text of th is in teresting documen t h as often been prin ted , see

Hazlitt, English Drama, 3 8-40.

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 1 57

masquin ggmumming and disguisings in all the ir varieties were ascommon among the people in med ie val t imes as at court . Indeed , it i s only the place and circumstance of thei r performance,thei r greater elaboration and their occas ional r ise into the cate

gories of drama and poetry that account for our knowing so

much ab out the entertainments at court.In number

,variety

,elaboration and poetic beauty the masques

o f Jonson su rpass those of all others , and but for him the speciesneed hardly be chronicled at the hands of the historian of Engl ish d rama. By the t ime that Jonson came to write them , thenature of court entertainments had been fairly well determined ,though few

,except Gascoigne, Sidney , Campion and Daniel

had done anything memorable in this lesser form of the drama.A masque, to be technical , i s on e o f several species of quasidramatic p roductions o f which an entertainment ,

” in i ts strictElizabethan sense

,and a barr iers are two others. The

nucleus of an entertainment ” i s a Speech of welcome ; thenucleus of a barriers i s a mock tournament. The masqueexists only because of a dance, as a setting , or frame , so tospeak

,for what we should designate a bal l. These terms were

used with p recision by Jonson and most o f his contemporaries.All involve more or l ess the dramatic elements of person ifi cat ion

,costume

,d ialogue, music and scen ic setting , al though the

masque alone of the three ( save for on e or two of Jonson’s efforts ) became d ramatically eff ect ive. But the masque needs acloser defi n it ion than this ; for however i t be made up of a combination in variable proportions of Speech , dance and song, itsessential feature is a group of dancers , eight, twelve or sixteen ,called the masquers . These neither speak n or sing, but makean imposing show “ by thei r fine presence , thei r gorgeous costumes and art istic posing, grouping and evolutions.

” 4 Theselast

,which always involve dancing , are premeditated and re

hearsed,and they are known as the entry ,

” the “ mean andthe “

going out. The unpremeditated dances,j oined in by

the auditors as well as the masquers , are known as the revelsand include galliards , corantos and lavoltas , the popular danceso f the day. The masquers were always gentlemen , and oftenladies of the court ; both were usually of high rank . There isno record that Queen El izabeth , though proud of her dancing

,

ever took a part personally in any such entertainment. And

4 Evan s,The Eng lish Masque, 1 897 , p . xxx iv.

1 53 ENGLISH DRAMA

indeed these techn ical n icet ies in the masque came to theirmaturity l ate in her reign. But her father, Henry, had beena confirmed masquer in the mummings of his t ime , and El izabeth

’

s successor,Queen Anne of Denmark , the wi fe of King

James,del ighted in masques

,taking part hersel f with a bevy

o f her court ladies or wi tnessing the stately dancing and noblebearing o f her sons

,Prince Henry and Pr ince Charl es, in the

parts which they also took at t imes.The pageant ry and sumptuous costum ing of the masque is

as old as the middle ages. The dances , save fo r greater in

genuity and inventiveness, were not much changed . An obvi

ous symbolism ,too , was n o n ew thing. The developments

which mark the Jacobean masque are i ts superio r Scenic represen tation ,

a matter referable to the talents of the K ing’s architect, In igo Jones, who had been abroad an d profi ted no l ittleby his sojourn and study in I taly ; and i ts enhanced poetic andd ramatic quali ti es in which Jonson led all h is fellows .When Jonson turned his attention to the wri t ing of masques,

at the beginn ing of King James’s reign , he found the generalform well establ ished in such productions as The M asque ofProteus by the lyrist F ranci s Dav ison and Campion , the musician

,1 595 . In Daniel ’s Vision of the Tw elve Goddesses,

1 604, the firs t masque of the n ew reign , we have the symbolism- so characteristic of those entertainments— for example, atemple o f Peace

,erected on the four firm pillars signi fying the

V i rtues that support the globe of earth ; we have l ikewise the classical allusion and allego ry in the famil i ar figures of goddessesand vi rtues Juno in a sky colour mantl e figured with

p eacock’s feathers, Sibyl la,

” decked as a nun in black uponwhite, together with song and fitt ing verse. Jonson observedthat what was wanted was the infusion of l i fe and dramaticsp i ri t into th is sort of thing, and to this task he devoted hisattention

,devising for th is purpose especial ly the antimasque by

means of which he was able to maintain the element of humourand comic rel i ef and to add the p rofessional entertainer to themasquers

,though keeping the two careful ly apart . This raised

the artistic standard of the masque without d isturbing the formal parts and gave the poet endless Opportunity to exercise h isingenious learning as well as h is admi rable poetic taste.The masques o f Jonson range from his M asque of Blackn ess

at the opening of 1 605 to Chlorid ia i n F ebruary , 1 63 1 . Allwere presented at court

,generally before the k ing, w ith careful

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1 60 ENGLISH DRAMA

ships mov ing on the sea) , of gold and silver framings for th escene

,artificial fountains and mov ing l ights, the last so devised

as to mask the changes of scene. N or i s Daniel ’s poetry um

worthy of these gorgeous settings which , rising in expense to£ 1 600,

surpassed all that had gone be fore.Into the inventive intricacies of Jonson ’s masques it is im

poss ible to go at any l ength in a book of this s ize . I n LoveF reed from Ignoran ce, for example , Cupid , bound and besetby fools and foll ies

,i s rescued by the Muses . Oberon the

F airy Prin ce is preceded by a lively antimasque , conducted byseveral satyrs ; and in Love Restored , the antimasque becomesa p iece of real istic farce in which Robin Goodfellow satiricallyt ells o f the difliculties to be encountered by a plain man in hi sendeavours to gain access to a masque. I t was the custom to

publish the more important royal masques individually and soonafter the event. Wi th a zest i n which his own taste coincidedwith that of h is sovereign

,Jonson was wont , i n these publ ica

t ions not only to describe the action as well as print the text,but to d iscourse, most learnedly and with exact re ferences, conc ern ing his cl assical sources and authoriti es . Indeed never hasthere been so complete a union of poetry and curious learningin on e man as in Jonson

,though i t i s always to be recall ed that

i t was Jonson ’s pedantry and h is coarser humour for Jonsoni s a very Rabelais at t imes in this respect — rather than hi spoetry that received the sanct ion and admiration of his gross andlearned royal master.I t was in 1 6 1 3 , on the occas ion of the marr iage of the Pr in

cess Elizabeth to the Palsgrave , that the Jacobean masquereached i ts height . Jonson , for some reason unknown , did notwri te a masque to celebrate this event ; but Campion , Chapmanand Beaumont vied , each with the other , in three of the mostelaborate productions of this kind of which we have any record .Campion

’

s was called The Lord’

s M asque. For it Jones dev ised four changes of scene, and it contained two antimasques ,together with novel musical effects worthy of the excellentqual i ty of i ts poetry. Chapman ’s is a portentous effort. I twas presented by the gentlemen of the M i ddle Temple andLincoln

’s Inn and,accord ing to Chapman ’s own indignant con

fession ,was n ot a success , although preceded by a procession in

which hundreds of peopl e took part. The Inner Temple andGray’s Inn followed

,the next day

,w ith Beaumont’s masque

wh ich was borne from Winchester House by water in a gal lan t

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 1 61

flot illa,as thei r r ivals in the study of the law had come by

land . This masque had to be postponed by reason of the faggedcondition of the court after several days of revelry ; but i t wasfinally given with success . B eaumont wrote his masque as amember of the Inner Temple , not as a hired poet ; and it was“ financed

,as we might put i t

,by Sir F rancis Bacon , then

sol ici tor general,for the honour of Gray

’s Inn where he hadhis legal education . Bacon

’

s interes t in court entertainmen tswas of long stand ing and is declared , besides this , i n the dev is ing of dumb shows for a Senecan tragedy as far back as 1 587 ,in the writ ing of

“ speeches for the Gesta Grayorum of 1 595 ,and in the furnishing out of The M asque of F lowers, i n1 6 1 4 , at a cost o f £2000 . The d ramatic activi ty of Bacon l ieswholly within the precincts o f Gray

’s Inn . His essay OfM asques and Triumphs should be carefully read by those whowould know at first hand the great man ’s opinions of thesetoyes , and hi s wise and worldly observations on thei r practicalutil i ty in that great game for worldly advancement that heplayed all his l i fe

,only to lose h is stakes in the end .

Wi th the new year, 1 6 1 5 , Jonson was once more established ,the chie f writer of masques for the court, and from M ercury

Vin d icated from the Alchemists to The F ortun ate Isles, writtento celebrate the betrothal of Prince Charles to Henri etta Maria ,Twelfth N ight

,1 624, and the last of Jonson

’s masques in there ign of King James

,no important celebration occurred at

court wi thout the poet’s helping hand . In two or three of

these productions , Jonson made so much o f the antimasque thatthe masque i tsel f practically d isappears. The Masque ofChristmas, for example , i s pure drol lery ; in it figure suchpersonages as Carol

, Wassel , M i nced-p ie and Venus , describedas a deaf tire-woman while The M asque of Gipsies, whichhugely del ighted the king and was twice repeated at his re

ques t, i s mere whimsical i ty and horseplay, however clever , wheni t is not worse. In this period , too, Jonson fell out with his oldfriend and coadjutor, In igo Jones , declaring to D rummond that“ when he wanted to express the greates t villain in the world

,

he would cal l h im an Inigo .” We do not know the reasonsfor this quarrel or i ts patch ing up and subsequent outbreaks .I t was certainly regrettable ; and towards the end , Jones appears to have used his influence at court against Jonson whenthe old poet was sorely in need of subsistence. On e masque ,n ot Jonson ’s, deserves ment ion in this place for its poet ic beauty

1 62 ENGLI SHDRAMA

and a certain cogency of subj ect-matter , too rare in these occasion al poems. This is Ulysses an d Circe, the work of Wi ll iamB rowne of Tavisto

.

ck,the Spenserian pastoral ist and lyrist.

This , too , was a masque of the Inner Temple , of which B rownewas a member

,and i t was acted by the templars in 1 6 1 5 .

In leaving the Jacobean masque,we must keep in mind its

occasional character and the temporary conditions to which i twas fitted . Wi th the l ight and colour o f performance , augustcourt setting and cogent contemporary allusions

,all gone an d

lost to us, we can only wonder that so much of l i terary interestshould survive. We find throughout , a persistence of allegorywhich admonishes us o f the continu i ty of Engl ish dramatictaste from the morali ty of medie val days. The allegory of themasque, however , i s always artistic , even in Jonson i t i s rarelyt inged with the d idactic ; and , outside of Chapman

’s on e effortand some minor exceptions

,i t was s imple and comprehens ible

withou t e ffort or study. Another characteristic of the Jacobeanmasque is i ts p ro fuse employment and continued adhesion toclassical allusions and personages

, for the most part obvious tothe cultivated man

,however a sealed book to the unlettered .

We might readily, i n this , overestimate the cul ture prevalent inthe court of King James

,di d we not remember that all edu

cation came,in those days

,by way of the classics and recall

that the use of such imagery and example was a settled mann erism of the t ime. Lastly, i t i s not to be deni ed that theelaborate sett ing and mise en scen e o f the masque much aff ectedthe contemporary drama. The plays from 1 608 or 1 6 10 on

are full o f “ masques ” : the “ antic dance of twelve satyrs ”

in The Win ter’s Tale, the betrothal masque with i ts classicalgoddesses i n The Tempest, besides the antimasque in the sameplay of

“ s trange shapes ,”to mention n o others . The Two

N oble Kin smen appears to have borrowed the idea of Beaumont ’s ant imasque in his M asque of 1 6 1 3 , includ ing th etaborer , the bav ian and five wenches with thei r morris dance.F ar more important was the effect of the masque on the staging of popular plays , although o f this we have less evidence thanwe should l ike and the most notable effects come later.Leaving the masque of King Charles’s time to the future andgoing back to the regular drama

,in the year 1 605 , Jonson re

turned to the writing of comedy with his new court prestigeabou t h im. To this he was not improbably drawn by the

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I1 64 ENGLISH DRAMA

repute,though several o f h is plays have been dated earl ier.“

The most striking event in the d ramatist’s l i fe was the performance of his notorious pol i tical satire , The Game at Chess,i n 1 624, some three years before his death . Prince Charleshad just returned with Buck ingham from a fru itless errandto Spain in search of a w i fe, and Spanish pr ide , delay an d

subterfuge had at last forced even King James to recede fromhis darl ing p roj ect

,an all iance with Spain . At this moment ,

M iddleton placed hi s sati re on the stage i n which , under thed isguise of a game between the white Engl ish chessmen and theblack Spaniards

,not only were ambassadors an d dignitari es of

the church figured forth,but the royalty of both countries .

Such an indiscretion Was not to go unnoticed . On complaintof the Spanish ambassador the play was

“ s tayed the actorssummoned before the privy counci l and severally reprimanded.

M i ddl eton himself only escaped arrest‘

by contriving “ not tobe found .

” I t has been doubted i f the English court was reallyas displeased as appears by the records . But we return to theearl ie r and more d istinctive work o f M i ddleton . His comediesof manners range from Michaelmas Term in 1 604 to N o Witn o Help like a Woman

’

s, 1 6 1 3 , and exactly correspond withJonson ’s period of renewed activity i n comedy. The featuresof the M iddleton ian comedy of London manners— besides thetwo j ust mentioned

, A Trick to Catch the Old On e, A M ad

World My M asters, Your F ive Gallan ts, A Chaste lll aid

in Cheapside for example are remarkably constant. Certainfi gures recur with a regulari ty as certain as thei r vari ety i s unexpected . The d issolute hei r , going the pace , excel lent at heartbut guil ty of much that needs forgiveness , the hard , niggardlyusurer , tricky , vicious and generally overrea

'ched,the raw col

lege lad who knows l i t tle o f books an d far less of the world , theclever, intri gu ing Abigai l , none too virtuous hersel f an d servinga merry open-hearted heroine none too vi rtuous ei ther thesew ith the desp icable husband dupe and a variety of se rv ing menmake up the d ramatis persone of M iddleton ian comedy. Whenwe add that al l i s done with ease and a certain competent grace ,without the least assumption of superiori ty over the aud itorand with a complete absorption of the personal ity of the author6 Blurt Master Constable, for example, 1 60 1 or 1 602 ; an d The Old

Law in a supposed earlier version even 1 599.

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 1 65

in h is work,we can comprehend M iddleton ’s easy success in

his time.Obviously Jonson’s comed ies are made of sterner stuff . He

returned to the popular stage , save for Sejan us , in EastwardHo i n which he accepted the collaboration of M arston andChapman . The t itl e of this comedy is referable to that of apredecessor

, Westward Ho, the work of Dekker and Webster,1 603 ; and i t was fol lowed by N orthward Ho

, by the sameauthors

,a year or two after the play in which Jonson was con

cerned . The first two comedies were named from the famil iarcries of the wherrymen on the Thames as they plied eastwardto London bridge or westward to the pol i ter precincts ofWestm inster. The two plays o f Dekker and Webster are of

the most pronounced M iddleton ian type , quite outdoing lVI iddleton

,i t i s fai r to state , at his worst and mak ing perilous the gl ib

assertions of the historians of the d rama concerning the deterioration of Carolan morals from those of the elder age. East

ward Ho i s a very diff erent production , and curiously enough ,although the work o f the three most strenuous playw rightsof the age, really easier in manner and more perspicuous i nplot than the unaided work of any one of them. Eastward

Ho tells the universal story of the contrasted careers of the industrious and the idl e apprentice with the amusing group of

peopl e about them that assist more particularly in the downward progress of Quicksi lver

,the idler. The personages of this

delectable old comedy stand out with admirable distinctness : thehonest gol dsmith , Touchstone , his silly wi fe and sill ier daughter,the latter with her head full of romances , the contrasted

’prent ice lads

,the good boy ti resomely estimable in h is bourgeois vir

tues , Sir Petronel F lash with his imaginary castl e, Seagull wi thh is tal es of far away Vi r gini a, all i s easily and wel l done , withjust enough of the moralist

’

s consciousness to give the play auniversal appl ication . A somewhat pointed allusion to the

ubiquity of the Scotch; who had followed thei r king, a needyhorde clamorous for place , caused the arrest and imprisonmentfor a time of both Jonson and Chapman . Marston , real ly theoffender, escaped . This al lusion , though later expunged , as!

sured the populari ty of the comedy on the stage and causedl ikewise the publ ication of three issues o f Eastward Ho inthe year 1 605 .

Jonson ’s next comedy in point of date was Volpon e or the

1 66 ENGLISH DRAMA

'

F ox, acted in 1 606. Volpon e o ff ers a fitt ing trans it ion from thepersonal sat i re of The Poetaster to the more gen ial humour ofThe Silen t Woman and The Alchemist. N ot that there i sanything genial m Volpon e but that there the sat ire i s generalised into a consummate study 1n Villainy. In po int of fact thisstory of the wicked Venetian grandee , undone by his own

subtlety and chicanery , i s pervaded by a spiri t of absolute mistrust of mankind and there is scarcely a virtuous personagein i t. Jonson’s philosophy of l i fe, i t would seem , was of an

extreme simplici ty,and presentable in the form of a dilemm a .

There are two k inds of men in the world for Jonson,the

knaves and the fools,those that prey and those that are preyed

upon. The fools are commonly laughable but contemptiblethe knaves deserve the righteous man ’s castigation , though o ftentruly admirabl e in thei r wi t and forgivabl e for their cleverness .Who would be a fool especially in a world of knaves ? As toVolpon e, i t i s truly a question (as in Shakespeare

’s Troilus and

Cressida, i f for a somewhat d i fferent reason ) whether we havehere a comedy or not. The punishment which i s j ustly enoughmeted out to Volpone and his scoundrelly creature Mosca,seems l ess dependent on thei r crimes among rascals nearly as

bad as themselves than upon the accident o f their d ivis ion andwant of a dominating cleverness . N one the less , for i ts wel lkni t and original plot , i ts vigorous characterisation , an imated conduct and brill ian t d ialogue, Volpon e must b e es

teemed on e of the best of Jonson ’s plays. In the t i tan icfarce Epicoen e or The Silen t Woman

,1 609, and in The

Alchemist, acted in the next year, Jonson reached the heigh t ofhis original i ty and ingen iousness o f plot and broadened into agenial i ty and capacity for mere fun that is nearer his earl iestdramatic success. I t would be impossible to conceive of comedyinterest more happi ly sustained than in the successive surprisesof these admirable comedies , and we learn without surprisethat they captured the stage and held i t

,with Volpon e and

Every M an in h is Humour, for four generations. I t is characteristic of Jonson ian comedy that

,with all i ts meri ts and

ingenui ty,i t i s usually so constructed that the enti re group of

personages is set in motion by one dynam ic character. I t i sBrainworm

’

s knowledge of the plans of his masters , father andson , and his knavery that runs Every M an in his Humour ; i tis Delphine

,playing upon his uncle ’s hatred of noise in The

Silen t Woman,that evokes that extraordinary personage, Ep i

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1 68 ENGLISH DRAMA

and they extend from the trivial Blind B eggar of Alexandria,1 596 , with i ts preposterous disguises and confusion betweentrickery and felony

,to All F ools, 1 599, esteemed by no less

an authority than Swinburne one of the best comedies in thelanguage. Chapman ’s source here is patently the Heauton ti

morumen os of Terence , and he has worked up an intrigue andcounter-in trigue in which his ingenuity is only equalled by hiswi t and original i ty. Considering that All F ools i s free fromthe sl ightest susp ic ion of any Jonsonian intention to preach

,we

may affi rm that i t i s the best example of an English comedyconceived and carried out on the l ines of Roman comedy.Whi le l ess success ful AHumorous Day

’

s M irth, and more especially, The Wid ow s Tears, are equally divertin g. In thelatter i s dramatized w ith much gus to the scandalous story of

the Ephesian Matron , who was won , i n’

an incredibly shortt ime and li terally on her husband ’s tomb

,from the abandon

ment of bereaved widowhood to a del ighted acceptance of theblandishments of a new wooer. This is only an extreme example of Chapman

’s habitual atti tude of contempt towardswoman which has been thought referable to personal experience,but wh ich more probably he caught

,l ike Jonson in lesser degree,

from the preval ent atmosphere of Latin l i terature .F rom what has j ust been written i t is clear that Chapman

’sidea of comedy, even more strictly than Jonson

’s , was that ofPlautus and Terence. Each of Chapman

’s comedies is im

pelled by the impetus of one dynamic personage — Tharsalio,the i rresistible wooer in The Widow ’

s Tears, R inaldo , therogu ish mischief-maker in All F ools — and i t is h is business , asi t has been witti ly said

,to set all -the rest by the ears.” The

intricacy of Chapman ’s intrigue is often bewildering , althoughthe action is not always wel l sustained . The personages, too ,while l ively and entertain ing enough in the dialogue

,are l ittl e

d istinguished and scarcely on e of them is ind ividually memorable . Obviously Chapman wrote h is comedies for a l ivel ihood ,and he seems to have fared none too well with them. To histragedies we have seen that he brought a more strenuous effort.His ambi t ion was to become famous as Georg ius Chapman us

Homeri M etaphrastes .

” That fame he achieved and deserved ,but he is not to be forgotten in the d istinguished l ist of playwrights who added excellent comedies to thei r more s eriousd ramatic work.

F rom an hi stor ical po int of View,Chapman

’s scholar’s use o f

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 1 69

Roman comedy popularised on the contemporary stage , maybe regarded as the cl imax of a long preparation in which w e

begin wi th the humanists and schoolmasters , imitators of th eRoman poets , and meet with Gascoigne

’s Supposes, derivedthrough an I tal ian intermediary , and Shakespeare

’s Comedy ofErrors by the way. At the univers ities Plautine comedy con

tinued in high repute, sometimes di rect in its derivation , somet imes im itated from Ital ian imitators. N one of these manyplays are important to a history of the popular drama , however interesting many of them are in themselves . Typical examples are Pedan tius ( variously ascribed to Anthony Wingfi eld or to Edward F orcett ) 1 58 1 , and the clever tri logy o fParnassus plays , 1 601 -02 , from which we have alreadyquoted . Both were of Cambr idge. Another sti ll l ate r Cambridge comedy was Ign oramus, by George Ruggle , acted in1 6 1 5 and immensely to the del ight o f King James who revelledin its witty speech and coarseness. This production is imitatedfrom an I tal ian play of Batista della Porta entitled La Trappolaria which in turn owes no l ittl e to the Pseud olus of Plautus.This was a famil iar derivation and sets one to wondering i f ,after all

,some of the intricate intrigue and the narrow range

of the personages o f Chapman’s comedies may not be found

,

l ike so much else , i n the enormous unread minor dramati cl i terature of the I tal ian Renaissance period . As to Jonson , wefind an interesting parall el in the h ints derived from G iordanoBruno’s I l Can delaio which he worked up into the fabric of

The Alchemist. His later use o f Machiavel l i ’s story o f Belfagor i s l ess in accordance with his usual method . Jonsonprided himsel f on his original i ty. O rd inarily it was h is widereading in the class ics that suppl ied him with the suggestionsout of which he developed his original plots , although his position on the subj ect i s c lear from his own Words where he declares thaf he regards the power to convert the substance andriches of another poet to his own use as an endowment onlysecond to natural w it .” 8

Chapman , Jonson and M iddleton were the ch ief contributors ,in the order mentioned , to the new comedy of

'

man n ers,the

range of which was from the lower toned domestic comedy tothe heightened caricature of the comedy of humours. But

8 See h is Timber or D iscoveries, 1 642, on this sub ject an d h is th eoriesof composition .

1 70 ENGLISH DRAMA

they were by no means alone. Chapman’s closest imitator wasWi ll i am Percy who left beh ind him hal f a dozen amateurishcomedies

,dating about 1 60 1 . O nly two of them have seen

p rin t,and only on e apparently was ever acted . A better comedy

of much the same date is the anonymous Sir Giles Goosecap inwhich a story suggestive o f that of Troilus an d Cressida i s enl ivened with a group of i rregular humourists

,more in the man~

n er of Jonson than in that of Chapman . The borrowings oft i tl e which Jonson ’s use of the word “ humour ” begot

,we

have already noted . Jonson ’s most success ful immediate d isc iple, until we come to the days o f Brome , was N athaniel F i el dwho had been among the several lads k i dnapped by Gyles

,and

pressed into the pro fession of acting by an abuse of the queen ’sl icense to take up Singing boys for the royal chapel of whichGyles was then master. Jonson taught the young actor Latinan d how to make plays , and F i eld became notable as a player,especially

,at first

,in women

’

s parts , and later as a d ramatistas well . The best work of F ield is contained in kVoman is a

Weathercock and Amen d s for Lad ies, both on the stage by thedate of the death o f Shakespeare. The following of M i ddleton was even more general . Resembling hi s method in comedythough preceding him in point of t ime

,i s Haughton’s l ively

Eng lishmen for my M on ey,1 598, in which the foreigner is

sati rized in a manner much to the taste of the groundlings .The F air M aid of the Exchange, 1 602 ,

an excellent play,is

more l ike Heywood in its touch of pathos and serious in tent.Wi th Edward Sharpham

’

s F leir and Cupid’

s Wh irlig ig , 1 606

and 1 607 , we are in the i rresponsible atmosphere of the sat iricalcomedy of manners once more

,impertinent and shameless rather

than clever ; while in Lodowick Barrey’

s Ram Alley or M erry

Tricks, publ ished two years later , we have a v igorous and wellwri tten comedy of low London

,however broad of Speech , that

equals M iddleton almost at h is best and preserves , take i t al li n all

,a wholesomer tone than i s usually h is. This play en

j oyed great popularity, and so did Joshua Cooke’s Tu Quoqueknown as Green e

’

s Tu Quoque from the cl ever h it that thecomedian , Thomas Greene , made in the réle of Bubble , ahumorous serving man. Another well-known actor in comedy,Robert Armin , i s the author of Two M aids of M oreclack

(M orlake) , printed , in 1 609, a Similarly merry production ,full of disgu ise

,bustle and merry intrigue.

We have deferred John M arston ’s comedies o f manners to

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1 72 ENGLISH DRAMA

with the romant ic trend of the age and created a react ionagainst i t. To this we have added an account o f the Jacobeanmasque

,Jonson ’s other d istinctive contribution to the d rama in

the reign of King James. To the comedies of Jonson , Chapman an d M iddleton were added those of M arston , n otw ith

standing a certain incurabl e romanticism that is his, because h issati re

,hi s pose and his sel f-consciousness

,all are reactionary.

The collaborators in Eastward H0 were men of a morescholarly type than any of the popular d ramatists who hadpreceded them

,and they appl ied thei r scholarship in a manner

unparal leled to their wri ting. All of them had theories aboutpoetry and the stage ; all , too, were incl ined to take a more orless sati rical v i ew of l i fe and to affect a greater or less indepen den ce of present cond it ions an d popular demands . This i swhy even the success of Jonson was uncertain , now carryingcourt and city away

,together with h is adored jud ic ious few ,

by sheer force of genius , at other times provoking retal iationfrom rivals not his equals , which brought , not to him ,

but tothem the palm

, or gaining only that cool success of esteemwhich is more chi ll ing to the ardency of genius than opposi t ion .

Were we looking for a generic phrase by which to designatethese three wri ters col lectively i t might be d ifficul t to find on e

more appropriate than the school of conscious effort. For notonly had all three decided theories as to how to wri te a play, asati re or a masque

,but they seem to have tri ed hard

,each in

h is way,to carry them out, to b e original in story , though t,

personage and phrase ; and they agreed l ikewise in a certaind isdain of efforts elsewhere which they esteemed not so strenu

ous,so consisten t or so in accord with p recedent and experience

as thei r own . Jonson ’s penchant for the uni t ies,which he was ,

for the most part, too sensible to abuse ( although there are

two t ri als of the same culpri ts for th e same offence in on e dayin Volpon e) , Chapman

’s l imitation of comedy to a logical develOpmen t of Plautine character and si tuation , these are il lustration s in point ; and so in lesser degree is Marston

’s t ransfer to h is plays of whole ep isodes of classical origin , such as thewooing of the Ephesian widow from Petronius Arbiter .N e ither M arston n or Chapman take any rank of importance inthe masque

,each p roducing but on e, neither o f them remark

able. This was Jonson’s undisputed field which he owed, as

much as h is success on th e popular stage,to h is industry, hi s

ingenu ity and hi s adaptat ion to h is purposes of his wide classi

CLASSICAL AND SATIRICAL REACTION 1 73

cal read ing. M arston ’s dramatic career was short ; no play o fhis dates late r than 1 6 1 3 . We do n ot know when Marstontook holy orders . He was presented with the l iving of ChristChurch in Hampshire in 1 6 1 6 , which he resigned in 1 63 1 ,dying three years late r in London. Chapman long su rvivedhis dramatic career which closed

,so far as we know,

aboutthe time o f the death o f Shakespeare. Chapman is d imly traceable

,however

, in an alleged col laboration with Shirley in theearly thirties . He died also in 1 634. Jonson survived h isfellows

,leav ing behind him the double achievement of a repute

unparalleled as a writer o f masques for the entertainment ofroyalty and a name in the popular drama, second alone to that o fShakespeare.

CHAPTER VI I I

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER,AND THE ROMANTIC

CONTINUANCE

IN the year 1 647 , when England was in the throes of c ivilwar and Charl es had al ready surrendered to the v ictoriousParl iament , a handsome fol io came from the press enti tl edComed ies and Traged ies written by F rancis Beaumont andJohn F letcher

,gentlemen .

” This edi t ion was appropriatelyed ited by James Shirley, t il l recently, when th e theatres wereclosed

,the successor to thei r populari ty ; and i t contained th i rty

four plays,as the t i tl e added

,never be fore printed .

”A sec

on d fol io edition of 1 679 reprinted the first with the addi tionof all the plays which had been previously printed in separatequarto form under the name of ei ther author. This raised thenumber to fi fty ; and since that t ime some hal f-dozen dramashave been added to the l i st . The assembl ing of plays i n col

lective ed itions was, up to the t ime of the death of Shakespeare,a thing practically unknown . The posthumous collection of

an author ’s works,such as the Caxton Chaucer for example or

more recently the fol io of Spen ser, 1 608, even , was rare ; although men l ike Daniel , and Drayton , espgcially, were alwayst inkering with thei r poetry in new collections and revis ionswhich thei r populari ty in thei r t ime seems to have demanded.I t was in the very year of Shakespeare’s death , 1 6 1 6 , that BenJonson collected and publ ished his own works

,the plays an d

all which he had wri tten up to that time ; a second volumefollowed only several years after h is death , i n 1 640

-42 . A

s trong piece o f evidence as to Shakespeare ’s contemporary pOpularity i s to be found in the speedy collection of his plays in thefol io of 1 623 , only seven years after h is death , together withthe demand for a second ed ition of th is large and expensivebook within n ine years o f the first. A second complete edit ion of Jonson with all h i s repute , was n ot i ssued until j ustfi fty years after the firs t. As to the other El izabethans , savefor the publication by a belated enthus iast of Six Court Come

I 74

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I 76 ENGLISH DRAMA

in TheWoman Hater, acted in Beaumont was certainlyless dependent on the theatre than F letcher. His personal ityand posi tion in l i fe gained for h im the respect and esteem of

his contemporari es,even Jonson deferring to his j udgment in

a manner remarkabl e considering Jonson ’s intractable temperand the d ispari ty of Beaumont ’s age. Beaumont ev identlyshared Jonson ’s independent atti tude and contempt for the opinion of the vulgar , as he appears to have shared somewhat h istheories as to dramau Another assoc iat ion of Beaumont’s , thatwith Sir F rancis Bacon , has already been considered. Beaumont married a lady o f some fortune

,but survived only three

years , dying in M arch 1 6 1 6, a month before Shakespeare .B eaumont appears to have been l ittl e sol ici tous of the fame ofauthorsh ip . He apparently sanct ioned the use of his name onthe title of his masque only. But there is abundant proof inh is own writings and in those of his contemporar ies that hewas an intimate associ ate of the d ramat ists and men of letterso f his t ime

,appreciating to the full the things we have seen

done at the M ermaid ,” al though he l ived n ot to the days o f

the Sun and the Tr iple Tun ” n or to subscr ibe to Jonson’

slater leges convivales.

With ten years of authorsh ip at best and w ith a major ityof the plays , included in the Beaumon t and F letcher fol io , actedfor the fi rst time certainly after h is death

,i t is obvious that

Beaumont could have had no very large share in the volume.

Even contemporaries to its publication protested against theassignment to h im of so important a place , Sir Aston Cockayneespecially informing us that these dramas were substantially th e“ sole issues of sweet F l etcher’s b rain and incidentally thatMassinger had been a collaborator in some of them. Modernscholarship has been busy w i th this interesting question and substan tial results have been reached , however minor points andindividual plays may sti ll remain matters o f debate. I t is notnecessary in a work of th is scope to set forth the methods ofthis inquiry into the problem of d ivided authorship . Sufficei t to say that after a due cons ideration of external ev idence ,date of performance, der ivation of plot, contemporary al

lusion and the l ike , the question resolves itsel f into a d iscriminat ion of th e qual i ties of style , characteristics o f versifi cat ion

,concept ion of personage and general att i tude discern ibl e

i n contrasted work of the two authors. Starting from a playavowedly that of F letcher and of Beaumont respect ively un

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE 1 77

a ided— the former’s F aithful Shepherdess, for example, th elatter’s Woman Hater— these are the main points of d istin ct ion that have been formulated. Beaumont’s i s clearly the moreconservative nature, and the more ready to act in conformitywith l iterary and dramatic usages then in vogue. This i t i s thatcauses him to adhere to the stronger

,more Strictly decasyllab ic

versifi cation of his master Jonson while phrasing with freedoman d using run-on lines after the manner of his immediate t ime.To Beaumont has been assigned a more ser ious atti tude towardsl i fe than is customarily F letcher’s

,together with the h igher

moral sense which arms his sati re with the sanction,i f n ot

quite of the moralist , at least with that of the thoughtful man .

F or Beaumont has been cla imed , too, the more del icate sentiment , a higher order of humour , truer pathos and the greater

p ower in tragedy. F letcher, on the other hand , i s more invent ive i n his art and more eclect ic in his practice. He placed before him the ideal of a drama that Should be at once novel andentertain ing , and he was intent on th is n ot on theories o f thepedan t or the moral ist. He found in contras t of character andp icturesqueness of S i tuation effective steps towards the realisa

t ion of this ideal , an d in his loosely kni t verse an admirablyrap id

,colloquial

,plastic and musical substi tute al ike for prose

an d for the older more formal blank verse . The l ithe , suppleb lank-verse of F letcher is h is most distinct ive note .” In ith e read ily admits additional syllables, especially at the end of

the l ine,giving it what is technically cal led a hendecasyllabic

character ; but to preserve the sense o f rhythm , the pause iscommonly marked at the conclusion of each l ine , far more sothan in the current pract ice of the moment

,the later verse of

Shakespeare for example. Indubi tably F l etcher’s nature,l ike

h is verse and sometimes rambl ing and repeti tious style , i s l ighterthan that of Beaumont . F letcher has been designated ready

,

clever,offhand , hurr ied and careless . He was all these things

sometimes. But he was l ikewise invent ive, ingenious , poeticaland possessed of n o small insight into human character and emot ion .

The resul ts of . modern inqu iry into the relative parts,con

t ributed by B eaumont and F letcher , respectively and jointly, tothe mass of some fi fty-two plays that bear thei r names , may besummed up as follows : Beaumont wrote on e of these playsalone

, F letcher almost as certainly some fi fteen independently.The ir collaborat ion seems certain in eight or nine

,whil e some

1 78 ENGLISH DRAMA

thing over a score,formerly thought thei r j oint work

,are now

regarded as F letcher’s in co-Operation wi th some other author,and in five or six more , apparently neither F l etcher nor Beaumont had any appreciabl e share. To these is to b e addedHen ry VIII in which the hand of F l etcher as well as ShakeSpeare ’s is now universally acknowledged , A Very Woman ,

formerly considered M assinger’s but in which F letcher oncemore had his share

,and the fine tragedy of Barn evelt, pr inted

only in our l ate times, by the same two authors. I n collaboration with Massinger , F l etcher thus appears i n sixteen plays ,about twice as many as those in which Beaumont worked withhim . Elsewhere F letcher co-Operated with Jonson

,F i eld ,

Tourneur , Wi ll iam Rowley and even w ith Daborn e, if Henslowe is to be trusted .

1

Wi thout further distinct ions we may n ow turn to the F letcherian drama to examine wherein i t marks a development out

of what had gone be fore. Beaumont began,as we have seen

,

under the aegis of Jonson as the humours of The Woman

Hater and the sati re o f The Kn ig h t of the B urn ing Pestle,which i s largely i f not wholly his , suflicien tly go to show. Thislast , a del ightful dramatic sat ire , i t will be remembered , containsa burlesque of the popular dramat ic romance o f impossible adventure in which the hero is always a citizen of London and thecivic v i rtues are extoll ed . I t i s n ot surpris ing that B eaumont ’sp icture was too true to be pleasing to audi tors who loved thetossing of the pikes in The F our Pren tices and The Adventures of D ick Witting ton actually dramatized in a play nowlost. I t used to b e thought that Beaumont’s Kn ight belongedwholly to the order de la M ancha. But the resemblances between his play and D on Quixote are superficial and have beenpursued too far. I f B eaumont began thus in humours andburlesque , i t

,

i s equally clear that F l etcher’s first example wasthe M iddleton ian comedy of manners. The diffi cul ties in thechronology of the Beaumont-F l etcher plays are far greater thanthose which concern Shakespeare’s ; and the subj ect i s compl icatedby the incessant revision to which popular plays

,l ike the ma

jority of thei rs , were subj ect , so that first performance becomesat t imes a matter qui te i rrecoverable. N one the less we recog

1 For th is appraisemen t I am in deb ted to the excellent chapter on

B eaumon t an d Fletcher by G. C. Macaulay, in the Cambridge Historyof Eng lish Literature, v i, 1 1 5 , 1 1 6.

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1 80 ENGLI SH DRAMA

is need of this first ess’

en tial‘

of l iterary, as of all other, art.

The realism of F letcher is no smal l part of his dramatic effect iven ess and h is comic personages deserve more recogni tion thanthey have commonly received . Returning to the comedies o fmanners o f foreign scene , first among them may be named TheWoman

’

s Prize or the Tamer Tamed w hich some critics are

i ncl ined to place very early ( in 1 604) because of i ts relation toThe Taming of the Shrew . Here we meet once more themerry, resourceful heroine, in this case Maria , successor to themiserably tamed Katharine , and the V indicator o f her sex. Th iscomedy i s as inventive and original as i t i s amus ing and

,as we

have i t,i s not the work of a beginner in play wri ting. To te

turn to our scale o f comedy, in“

the unpleasing but able play,The Captain ,

1 6 1 3 , as i n the three admirable later comed ies ,The Little F ren ch Lawyer, The Wild Goose Chase, and Rulea Wife and Have a Wife, which range about 1 620 , we meetw ith l ively

,diverting and em inently successful specimens of the

l ighter comedy o f manners in F l etcher’

s best vein. In TheHon est M an

’

s F ortun e, 1 6 1 3 , The Eld er Brother, and TheN oble Gen tleman ,

the two latter revised after F letcher ’s d eath ,the tone i s graver and the an imating motive more romantic.N othing

,for example , could be in better comic spi ri t than the

l ittl e F rench lawyer ,” transformed into a fi re-eater by the acci

dent of success in a duel into which he had been l iteral lypressed ,

” but cured at last by being mischievously left withh is opponen t on a raw morning n ot only without weapons bu twithout doublets. A clever and invent ive variation , too, onthe old motive of the shrew , is the main story of Rule a Wifeand Have a Wife i n wh ich a weal thy lady , seeking a com

plaisan t husband,meets her master ; and — according to an ob

solete doctrine which few dare n ow even covertly to holdw i th man ’s mastery comes contentment, happiness and love.But th e d istinctive dramatic ach ievement for which Beaumon t

and F l etcher stand memorable in the annals of l i terature i sromantic tragicomedy. O bviously a drama which , in on e andthe same plot

,is both comedy and tragedy i s an impossibil i ty

because a contrad iction in terms. Even the yoking together ofboth in two separate plots is apt to be incongruous and inart ist ic unless th e comedy is employed in a place of subsidiaryimportance and merely for rel i ef. A tragicomedy is a dramawhich deals with ser ious emotions such as might well l ead totragedy— but in such a manner as to conclude happily and to

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANGE 1 81

the sat is faction of the aud ito r. F letcher was by no means theinventor of tragicomedy which had existed long before his t ime.Shakespeare

’s M erchan t of Ven ice i s an excellent famil iar example of the general meaning of the term . In the trial scenetragedy and comedy hang in the balance. An heroic resolution on the part of Shylock to risk his l i fe for his revenge

,and

the scene had turned tragic. To the Jew,however

,the man

of trade and barter , this species of heroism was impossible ; andhe forfei ted not only h is revenge

,but his fai th and hal f his for

tune,to become the butt and the laughing-stock of his enemies

and so the play ends , a comedy. But when we speak of thet ragicomedy of Beaumont and F letcher, we speak of somethingdefini te and distinctive. I f we look back to the varieties o fromantic d rama already described

,the heroical plays that trace

back to medie val romance , the conqueror series their near kin ,the historical and biographical dramas and the tragedies of intrigue and revenge, we find them animated

,each in its kind ,

by certain very definite characteristics. They were , for example

,for the most part unoriginal i n subj ect

,adhering

,as a

rule,to the course of human experience and to a more or less

accepted code of conduct . They adopted I taly as the acceptedlocal i ty of romance while

,none the less

,affecting a certain

verisimil i tude to thei r own contemporary manners ; and , whil eas fond of rank an d as deferential to i t as Englishmen bothbefore and after

, t he characters were not arranged dramaticallyto conform to the rules of precedence. Once more , we find thecomedies and traged ies o f strictly Elizabethan times commonlyconstructed about some central idea , the infatuation of Antonyfor Cleopatra, the consequences of the senile folly of Lear

,the

revenge of Hieron imo ,the subj ection of Bened ick and Beatrice

to love. Variety of personage and si tuation is characteristic ofthis drama

,and it tends very li ttle to repetition and to the per

petuation o f types . The later romantic drama, especially in thetragicomedy set by B eaumont and F letcher as an example ,stands greatly in contrast with al l this. O r iginali ty o f plot init often runs to ingenui ty, even to improbabi l i ty. The place ofaction is t ied to no scene n or age

,but is o ften laid in some no

man ’s land,governed by hero ic princes , possessed of exceptional

virtues or deformed by extraord inary v ices , troubled with um

h istorical usurpations , intrigues and rebell ions and ruled by conven tional and courtly manners unlike the actual cond itions ofany t ime. For uni ty of plot and construction, accord ing to

1 82 ENGLISH DRAMA

some rul ing idea,i s substi tuted mult ipl ici ty of interest , contrast

and surprise ; and the personages fal l into well determined andconventionalized types which

,repeated in a never-ending variety

of sameness , draw further and further from nature in the handsof playwrights less clever than those who first broached them.

The actual collaboration of B eaumont and F letcher belongsto the year 1 608 and some three or four years thereafter at themost. Whatever the two poets’ earl ier separate affi l iat ions(with the boys

’ companies i t has been thought ) , we find themuni ted in the composi tion o f Ph ilaster which was acted at theG lobe by h is maj esty

’s servants at some t ime not long priorto 1 6 10. In Ph ilaster or Love Lies a-B leed ing we meet oncemore with an epoch-making drama ; for in this j ustly famoustragicomedy combine all the qual ities of the Species to set astandard from which this type of play was l i ttl e to vary untili t decl ined into i ts logical successor

,the Restoration heroic

drama . The story of Ph ilaster i s bu il t on cont rast. Ph ilaster,the young prince of M essina, has been set aside by a usurpingking who seeks to perpetuate his rule by the marriage of hisdaughter

,the peerless princess, Arethusa, to Pharamond , Pr ince

o f Spain . The princess has thus two su itors , Ph ilaster whomshe loves , noble, melancholy and interesting, and Pharamond ,whom she detests

,who turns out cowardly , immoral and ignoble.

The lovers employ, for messages between them , a devoted page,Bellario

,who is real ly the maiden , Euphrasia , hopelessly in love

wi th Philaster and so d isguised to be near him ,he unknowing .

The requited love of Arethusa thus fal ls into contrast with thehopeless and unrequited love of Euphras ia ; and these two va

rieties of virtuous affect ion again are contrasted with sensuallove in the intrigue of Pharamond with a mal icious courtwanton

,M egra . Philaster, al though a noble lover , i s h igh

strung,quick to suspect even those h e loves and ready to

avenge h is honour ; so when Megra ins inuates evil th ings ofBellario

’

s service to his mistress Arethusa, Philaster for a time

believes her,repud iates Arethusa and in a frenzy wounds h is

innocent page . In the upshot, Philaster, Arethusa and Bellario

are freed from prison , in to which the k ing had thrown them,

by a timely popular upris ing,and from doubt and scandal by

the d isclosure of Bellario’

s actual sex. I t will be observedthat we have here a comedy of sentimental interest thrust intothe midst of elements

,heroic and potentially tragic. The con

trast of personages , the complexity of the act ion and its rap id ity,

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1 84 ENGLISH DRAMA

traits. An d for th e love-lorn maiden , we have substitutedSpacon ia, a young woman of capacity and address , sister of theresourceful maidens of F letcherian comedy. In dwel l ing on

the undoubted types into which the personages of these abl edramatists do fall , i t is important to mark, too , the extraordinary cleverness with which they avoi d mere repeti tions. Tojudge them by thei r unsuccessful imi tators would be eminentlyunfair. On the other hand , i t i s not to be den ied that , however accurate the observation of Dryden that F l etcher moretruly represented the manners of gentlemen on the stage thanShakespeare , there is a certain unknitting of the moral fibreeven in these earl iest of the tragicomedies . The readiness ofPh ilaster to bel ieve the reported unfaithfulness o f his peerlessprincess and his cowardly pink ing of poor l i ttle Bellario withhis sword

,the “ loyalty ” of Evadne

’

s husband , Amintor, thatunnerved hi s hand to avenge the greatest wrong that man can

do to man , because the wrongdoer was his sovereign , the s truggle of Arbaces and Penthea, in King an d N 0 King , against amutual passion which both bel i eve to be incestuous though thei rbel ie f turns out an error — all these things are il lustrations i npoin t and explainable to a large degree by the struggle fornovelty , surprise and e ffect which Beaumont and F letcher inaugurated i n the drama of the t ime of King James .We have already learned how the lord Chamberlain’s com

pany o f players by a j ud ic ious all iance wi th on e LaurenceF letcher

,who had afli liation s with the then Scottish king, con

trived to pass in to the immed iate patronage of King James evenbefore he reached London . Thenceforward this company wasknown as the King’s company and the other theatrical t roupessoon followed this l ead to the royal patronage

,the Earl of

Pembroke ’s,later Worcester ’s , becoming the Queen’s , the Ad

miral’

s Pr ince Henry ’s , while the Children of the Royal Chapelwere n ow known as the Queen ’s Revels. Paul ’s boy con

tinued to be so designated until 1 607 , when we lose sight ofthem and a new company appears known as the King’s Revels .The boy compan ies , so long successful , seem to have been finallysuppressed about 1 607 , and they were succeeded by two companics of men , the Duke of York

’s players and the Lady Elizabeth ’s . A year after Prince Henry died , i n 1 6 14, his companybecame that of the Palsgrave

,who was already betrothed to the

’

Princess Elizabeth,and the company

,formerly called the Duke

of York’s,became that of Pr ince Charles. These five com

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE 1 85

pan ics un ited under the royal patronage long held pract ically amonopoly of the London stage. As to thei r theatres

,the Kin g’s

men continued acting at the Globe , except for the interruptionof the fire in 1 6 1 3 , unti l the clos ing of the theatres by Parl iamen t in 1 642. The Queen ’s men were at the Rose, l ate r atthe new Red Bull in St. John Street, Clerkenwell ; PrinceHenry’s occup ied the F ortune. In 1 609 the K ing

’s playersbegan to act l ikewise at B lackfriars which had been leas ed by‘

Burbage to the children o f the Chapel from 1 596 to 1 608.

The Globe excepted , the playhouses o f the Bankside seem n ot

to have thrived far into the reign of King James al though ap

paren tly Henslowe attempted a revival there by erect ing , in1 6 1 3 , on the si te of the old bear garden , a theatre which hecalled the Hope. This was opened in that year with Jonson ’sBartholomew F air and N o Wit N o Help like a Woman

’

s byM iddleton and Rowley , but we hear no more of i t afterHen slowe

’

s death in 1 6 1 6 , and the primacy remained thereafterind isputably with the King’s company ocupying i ts two playhouses the Globe and B lackfriars .The last group of Shakespeare

’s plays are commonly denomin ated the romances .” They include Pericles, the rambl ingstage version of a romantic tale

,ultimately referable to the

Greek romance of the sixth century called Apollon ius of TyreCymbelin e, the interweaving of an Ital ian story from the D e

cameron w ith a bi t o f ancient B ritish history derived fromHolinshed ; The Win ter

’

s Tale, the dramatizing of a popularnovel ” of G reene , Pan dosto ; and The Tempest, the glorifi cat ion by a poet’s fancy of hints contained in a coupl e of prosaicpamphlets concerning far off and vexed Bermoothes, otherwise the Bermuda Islands . It i s only necessary to note th e extraordin ary variety of the derivation of these four plays toapp rec iate thei r d iversity o f origin . Thei r d iversi ty of treatment is in some respects almost as great. They range , i n pointof probable date o f act ing , between 1 608 and 1 6 1 2 at latest,and they d iffer materially in tone and manner from Shakespeare’s own comedies and tragedies that p receded them. Wi thPericles in al l l ikel ihood Shakespeare had only a l ittl e to do ;and yet some of the scenes , notably that in which Mar in a findsher father

,are i n hi s most beauti ful and e ffect ive manner. The

other three plays are not only wholly Shakespeare’s , but in some

respects they offer us qual ities o f a rari ty and an exquisi te poeti cfancy not matchable elsewhere even in his works. In Imogen ,

1 86 ENGLISH DRAMA

for example, we have the qu intessence of that deep d iscernmentand appreciation of true womanhood in which Shakespeare hasno second . In the imaginative conception of Ariel we have themischievous and fanci fu l Puck, of the earth del ightfully earthy,t ranslated l i terally to the skies to breathe to us invis ible in softand musical zephyrs . In the story of Hermione and her nobl ereconcilement to her husband , Leontes , contri te , i t i s true , forhis terrible crime of doubt , but according to our human standards un forgivable , we have a larger chari ty and bounty in forgiveness than most of us can rise to comprehend . An d i n al lwe meet with that famil iar

,competent technique

,ranging from

these greater things — ii even they be greater to the turn ingof a per fect lyric or the conception of that in imitable vagabond , An tolycus. I confess that I lose patience with the scholarship whose scrutiny and second sight can discover a fall ing-off inShakespeare’s art in these beauti ful dramas of his later maturity. Must we have always the blare of the trumpets of warand terrors followed by the solemn pomp of tragedy ? An d i sthere no t ime of the year for comedy except the merry springt ime with i ts frol ics and i ts foll ies ? I t is true that each of thesep lays of Shakespeare ends in reconc il iation and that three out

o f the four deal w ith passions and emotions as serious as thosewhich are wont to animate tragedy. These plays are tragicomed ies ia that sense, and by stric t defini t ion . I t i s also tru ethat on e or perhaps even two of them may have fol lowedP hilaster on the stage and that Shakespeare , al ive as he was toal l that was about him

,must have appreciated the talent

,the

o riginal ity and success of this excel lent performance. But togroup Shakespeare’s “ romances ” in any sense or in any wisewith the tragicomedies of Beaumont and F letcher — ShakeSpeare’s

“romances with thei r sense of nature and out of

doors,and thei r personages as freely conceived and naturally

d i fferentiated as men and women are in the world , withF letcher’s court ladies and gentlemen , laced and starched , governed by the conventions of the romantic novel ists , sentimental ,heroic

,to the lover of real i ty, be i t con fessed , with al l thei r

poetry,o ften frankly absurd — i s to befog the understand ing

and to lead those whom such scholarsh ip affects to guide hopelessly awry .

After the per iod of F letcher’s collaboration w ith Beaumontsome have recogn ised a short period of similar co-operation on

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1 88 ENGLI SH DRAMA

Spain , up to h is time l i ttle broached for Engl ish drama.2 Thus ,'The Chan ces, The Queen of Corin th , The F air M aid of theI n n and The Lovers

’ Pilgrimage, which l ie scattered overF letcher ’s career as a dramatist, are derived from the famousN ovelas Exemplares of Cervantes , while The Custom of theCoun try comes from another o f the romances of the same greatSpaniard . O ther Spanish authors upon whom F letcher leviedwith his collaborator M assinger for thei r t ragicomedies , areLOpe d e Vega for The P ilgrim, Juan de F lores for Women

Pleased , Gonzalo de Cespedes for The M aid in the M ill andLeonardo d e Argen zola, perhaps , for The Island Prin cess.

Spanish,too, are tin derplots, ep isodes and personages in Rule a

Wife an d Have a Wife, The Little F ren ch Lawyer, TheD ouble M arriage, The Prophetess and some others . I t is of

in terest to note that in the l is t of some eighteen plays of

F letcher which have been referred to Spanish origin , i f we omitLove

'

s Cure, about F letcher’s actual authorship of wh ich there

are genuine doubts ,3 not on e i s derived from a Spanish play , butall come from Spanish prose fiction . Secondly there is not oneOf these Spanish stori es that had not been transl ated , byF letcher’s t ime , ei ther into F rench or into Engl ish ; so that theassumption that F letcher was acquainted with the Cast il i antongue i s as hazardous as the ass ignment to Shakespeare of afamil iar knowledge of I tal ian . I t i s noteworthy that most ofthese tragicomedies of Spanish source fal l within the per iodwhen M assinger was in col laboration with F letcher . Mas

s inger ’s own unaided work d iscloses a s imilar reference to Spain ,one work

, The Ren egad o, l icensed in 1 642 , the year beforeF letcher ’s death , tracing back d irectly to a comedy of Cervantes ;whilst another

, A Very Woman ,ten years later

,has recourse

once more to the popular N avelas Exemplares. In v iew , however

, of the similari ty i n sp i ri t between the earl ier tragicomed iesof Beaumont and F letcher and the comedias d e capa y espada,

contemporary with them in Spain , i t would be claiming toomuch for Mas singer to attribute to him the introduct ion of

Spanish influences into the d rama of England .

This ferti le source once Opened , other d ramatists soon availedthemselves of i t. Al lusion has already been made to Wi ll iam

Z On th is top ic see the present writer more at length in The Cam

bridge History of Eng lish Literature, viii, ch ap ter v.

3 See Elizabethan Drama, ii, pp . 2 1 4, 2 1 5 .

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE 1 89

Rowley’s powerful tragedy All’

s Lost by Lust, 1 6 19, which isfounded on an old Spanish historical ballad . Among the bestof tragicomed ies i s The Span ish Gipsy, 1 623 , the work of

Middleton an d Rowley , which tells the romantic tal e o f thegipsy maid , Pretiosa, and in the combination of this with an

other story of Cervantes ach ieved a lasting dramatic success .The early twenti es witnessed a momentary interest in the stage

gipsy. Besides this tragicomedy, a band of gipsies figure inM iddleton ’s excellen t comedy, M ore D issemblers besides

Women, 1 622. Possibly Jonson ’s masque, The Gipsies M eta

morph osed , 1 62 1 , a great success at court , which delighted theking, i s responsible for this feature of both plays .As to the plays of Spanish origin by F letcher named above,The Chan ces, 1 6 1 5 , and The P ilg rim, 1 62 1 , are charmingspecimens of the romantic species to which they belong. Theformer deals with the chances or accidents that befel l two

young students , unexpectedly become the protectors of a ladyand her child The Pilgrim detai ls the adventures of a lover ,returned

,as a beggar

,to his native place to claim the lady of

his love. In The Chan ces the “ humours ” of M istress Gill ian

,the landlady

,Engl ish add itions to the comedy element , had

much to do with preserving the play in popular esteem on thestage. An other exceedingly popular play of F letcher ’s

,which

also held the stage l ike these long after the Restoration,was

The Span ish Curate, acted first about 1 622 . Here the poettreated h is source with great freedom , the l ighter scenes beingwholly his own . But F letcher was by no means tied to any on esource for material for his ready, inventive gen ius to workupon. In B eggars

'

Bush , 1 622 , the scene i s F landers and thehumours of a group of professional vagrants — not unl ike thegipsies o f the moment ’s populari ty — work into a romantictheme of disguises, fugitives, merchant adventurers and the l ike.This play has been thought in theme suggestive o f The M er

chan t of Ven ice, as The Sea Voyage, also 1 622 ,has been con

sidered not unreminiscent o f The Tempest. But such “sim

ilarities with the many more that scrutin ising scholarsh ip hasgathered give modern cri tics far more concern than the easygoing subj ects of King James ever took even so much as torecognise them . In on e or two tragicomedies that date somewhat earl ie r than these we have F l etcher’s confirmed manner.The Kn ight of M alta represents F letcher

’s ideal , for example,of kn ighthood in a somewhat intr icate plot based on a more

1 90 ENGLISH DRAMA

than usually complete real isat ion of the method of contrast.‘

The gradual degeneracy of Moun tferrat, by means of pass ion .

from a brave and honourabl e knight to recreancy, shame an d

degradation from his order is finely conceived and powerfullywri tten . The contrasted triumph of his foil , the worthy kn ightM i randa

,i n h is struggl e between an earthly and impure love

and fidel ity to the ideals of his order is more Open to crit icism.

In th is interesting tragicomedy we have on e of the earl iestappearances in Engl ish d rama of the heroic theme , soon to becontorted into a hundred new and ingen ious changes

,the strug

gle between love and honour. The Loyal Subj ect is o f muchthe same date ( about Here F letcher takes up anothertheme soon to rise to an interest more than histrionic

,the test of

l oyalty under extraord inary and wanton royal infl ic tion . Thisi s a favourite F letcherian s ituation

,recurring in i ts more natural

t ragic form in Amintor’s pl ight in The M aid’

s Tragedy andin the relations of Aécius to his emperor Valentin ian in thetragedy of that t itle. In The Loyal Subj ect, the loyal ty of anhonourabl e old sold ier is put to tests as absurd and extreme inthei r kind as those to which patient Griselda was subj ectedby her curious husband . Both plays exhibi t typ ical exampleso f another favouri te s ituation of the age

,the eternal test of

woman ’s chasti ty. In The Kn ight of J 'Aalta, M i randa, th eideal kn ight vowed to a holy l i fe

,tempts by way of trial th e

v i rtuous wi fe of h is fr iend in a scene which no pure-mindedman could have conceived much less have enacted . In TheLoyal Subj ect, a daughter of that impossible hero , sent on theroyal mandate, an innocent to the court , proves more than amatch for the d issolute duke whom she captures for a husband wi th unmaidenly effrontery before he has t ime to proposehimsel f her lover. It is refreshing to turn from F le tcher’st reatment of thi s latter subj ect to Heywood ’s The Royal Kingand Loyal Subj ect which deals with precisely the sam e story ,derived by both from a novel O f Bandello , told in Painter

’sPalace of Pleasure. Heywood transfers the scene to an indeterminate period oi Engl ish history. Bandello ’s scene wasPersia ; F l etcher had made i t Muscovy , which might be anywhere. N 0 better example in contrast between the methods ofearl ier d rama and those which F letcher brought in coul d beconceived than that exhibi ted in these two plays , and this de4 The powerful first and secon d acts of th is p lay h ave been thought

not to be Fletcher’s.

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1 92 ENGLISH DRAMA

l i terature, on the other hand , can confuse the Engl ish love of

free rural l i fe,embod ied in the national myth of Robin Hood,

with anything so stil ted , art ificial and exotic as the pastoral ;and there fore the classification of such plays as A M idsummerN igh t

’

s D ream and As You Like I t with pastorals, save forsome del ight ful and del icate rai llery in the latter

,is pecul iarly

wide of the mark. I t i s in Samuel Daniel ’s Queen ’

s Arcad ia,1 605 , that we meet w i th the first authentic spec imen of the

pastoral drama in England , according to the practice and example of the great I tal i an pastoralists , Tasso , San n azaro andGuarin i . An d i t was this very pretty

,correct and poetical

endeavour to imitate the bes t I tal ian manner i n this kind no

doubt that suggested to F l etcher his attempt to popular ise thepastoral on the public stage. I t i s fai r to Daniel to state thathis play is both original and inventive ; i t i s even furnished withsatirical comedy scenes for rel i e f in which the famous descanton tobacco and i ts attendant evi ls was n icely fitted to meet theapproval of the royal author of A Coun terblast to Tobacco.

F l etcher’s one pastoral d rama is The F aithful Shepherdess,acted in 1 608 and printed in the next year with a confession of

its failure on the stage. In this con fession F l etcher gives ush is theory as to the pastoral in which he adopts

,almost as

rigidly as Daniel,the rules o f I tal i an sanction , attributing the

popular failure o f h is play to a vulgar misapprehension of i tsmeaning. The F aithful Shepherdess, as we now read it , is ful lof poetry, beauty of sentiment and charm of person and si tuat ion and we are not su rprised to hear that i t gained nq in con

siderable populari ty,especial ly at court in later perfo rmances.

The story is strictly of the approved pastoral type and the authorhas carried out in i t even more completely than usual his favourite method of contrast, running a whole gamut , so to speak , onthe scal e of the passion of love from ideal constancy to a deadlover down to mere wantonness. Indeed

,ingen ious scholarsh ip

has d iscovered a complete allegory of love in this play of whichthe author was doubtless qui te unaware. M i l ton d iscoveredmore than thi s in The F aithful Shepherdess . He found therebeauti ful poet ry and a dainty sense for nature which he d isdained not to make the model for some of his own most beaut i ful poetry. The poet and the cri tic hunts

,each afte r h is

kind . N o further attempt appears to have been made by th egreater men to popularise the pastoral d rama

,although Shake

speare, in 1 6 1 1 , uti l ised the pastoral in some of the most charm

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE 1 93

ing scenes of The Win ter’s Tale, glor i fying his mater ial in thep rocess and ignoring

,i f h e were ever cognisant, o f the I tal ians

and all their regulations. A neglected , but very pretty, pastoral o f popular type is Robert Daborn e

’

s The Poor M an'

s

Comfort, staged by one of Hen slowe’

s companies in 1 6 1 3 .

Daborn e was on e of the latest of Hen slowe’

s hack-poets an dsome o f h is letters remaining exhibi t a hand-to-mouth existencethat reminds us of the career of Dekker. Like Marston , Da

borne sought refuge from the stage in the church. He was theauthor of several other plays . A novel departure of h is meritorious pastoral l ies in th e ci rcumstance that h is folk are reallyshepherds and do not turn out in the end to be princes in d isguise.Daniel tried his hand once more at pastoral drama in a lesselaborate and more masque-l ike e ffort. This was his Hymen

’

s

Triumph acted at court in 1 6 14 ; and this was only one of

several similar adaptations of the pastoral to royal entertainment,

such as Scyros by Samuel Brooke , acted before Prince Charles atCambridge in the p revious year and Sicelides by Phineas F letcher,first cousin o f the dramatist , acted before the king at the sameuniversi ty in 1 6 1 5 . Sicelides i s described as a piscatory,

” thatis a pastoral in which fisher folk take the place of shepherds.The type i s classically authentic. Phineas F letcher ’s play isn ever dram atic ; but i t is well written and possessed of a genn in e love of nature that cannot but hold the attent ion of a

reader who loves poetry.When Jonson died a fragment was found among his papersand publ ished in the fol io o f 1 642 as The Sad Shepherd . I t i sa charming

,fresh and effective pi ece of writing and represents

the poet in ful l vigour . Moreover , the play is a bol d attemptto combine pastoral figures and pastoral t rad itions with theEnglish story of Rob in Hood and with Engl ish witch-lore. I ti s regrettable that Jonson never finished The Sad Shepherd .

Various op inions have been held as to th e probable date of thisfragment and the occas ion of i ts writing. Some have thoughti t a last spring bloss

’

om from a withered tree.” O thers wouldplace the poem here , a year or so be fore Shakespeare

’s death ,and make i t synchronize with this early period of the vogue o fthe pastoral drama at court . Jonson

’

s avowed rivalry withDaniel who had just produced Hymen

’

s Triumph , which was

a success , the character of Jonson’s fragment , so d ifferent from

”

his later dramatic fall ings-off,” and the opportun ity to con

found a foe i n theory and pract ice as wel l — al l these th ings

1 94 ENGLISH DRAMA

point to the earl ier as the more probable date for the composit ion of The Sad Shepherd . Why the play was never finishednor staged

,we do not know . The stil l hi gher popularity of

pastoral drama in the rei gn of King Charles, we must deferto i ts p roper place .There remain of F letcher the tragedies , and of these the most

celebrated,The Maid

’

s Tragedy, has already been d iscussedbecause of its close affi l iation to the tragicomedies of the Philaster group . The tragedies , some eight in number, range fromCupid

’

s Revenge, about 1 608, to The F alse On e, in the form in

which we have i t, 1 620. In subj ect , they exhib i t a greater

range even than the tragicomedies which are at least four foldthei r number ; though the F letcherian romant ic atmosphereenvelops them all . I n two

,the scene is F rance. Th ierry and

Theodoret, a forceable i f forb idd ing play, i s founded ostens iblyon M erov ingian chron icles , but seems written more particularlyto stage under th is cloak certain contemporary scandals in thecourt of F rance. The B loody Brother or Rollo Duke of N or

man dy, in which F letcher is only on e of several authors , has notbeen traced

,in its powerful subj ect of internec ine fratric idal

struggle , to a source ei ther F rench or other. But for the

inexorabl e rigour of chronology , however , from the resemblanceof the stories , a certain k ind of scholarship would surely longsince have d iscovered a German influence on F l etcherexerted through Schil ler ’s D ie B raut von M essina. F our of

F letcher ’s tragedies have a more or less remote touch with theclassics. These are Cupid

’

s Revenge, the scene o f which i sLycia

,though the source is partly Si dney’s Arcad ia ; B onduca

which combines the story of the B ri tish queen , Boadicea, withthat of the Welsh hero , Caractacus ; Valen tin ian , the expansionof an anecdote told by Procopius of that emperor ; and TheF alse O n e

, which deals with the intri gue of Cleopatra andJul ius Czesar. This last shows F letcher and his coadjuto rM assinger , excel lent classical scholars and capabl e of deal ingwith the i r h istor ical material in a manner that would have beenno d iscred i t to Jonson himsel f. Valen tin ian is a typical example of the transformation of unimportant material by a re

habil i tat ion o f famil iar personages into a someth ing dramaticallysuccessful . The emperor is the lust ful tyrant , Lucina thestead fast wi fe , Aecius the bluff and loyal sold i er, whilst Max imus repeats though i t may have preceded ) the theme o f thedegeneracy of a nobl e nature wh ich we have noted in Mount

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!96 ENGLISH DRAMA

vel t, was executed in May 1 6 19. Three months later therei s mention o f F l etcher’s play, which was prohibi ted by the B ishopof London , though later acted . Barn evelt was n ot printed inquarto or i n ei ther of the fol ios of Beaumont and F letcher. I tremained in manuscrip t unti l i ts d iscovery and print ing byMr. Bullen in the year 1 883 .

The close personal friendship of F letcher and Mass ingerand the latter ’s succession to Beaumont’s place as the chie f ofthose who co-operated with the popular d ramatist is avouchediby contemporary testimony and confirmed by the discriminationsof modern scholarship . Phil ip M assinger was of about Beaumont’s age ; he was born at Salisbury , late in 1 584, and theson o f a gentleman in the service o f Henry the second Earl ofPembroke. I t has been supposed that the younger M assingerserved as a page in the household of the Pembroke family

,whose

patronage at a later t ime he certainly enjoyed . Young Mas

singer was entered at St. Alban Hall , Oxford , i n 1 602 ; but

l e ft the un iversi ty without a degree. The details of his beginn ings as a playwright are as l i ttl e known as those of h isassociates. We have evidence , however , that h is was the hardschool of Henslowe and that F iel d and Daborn e were h is immediate fellows in adversi ty. I t was with the former that hewrote The F atal D owery, a tragedy of great power and excell ence

,and the insp i ration ( unacknowledged by N icholas Rowe ,

the author, long after ) of The F air Pen iten t, a drama of

extraordinary vogue in i ts day. The appearance o f lVIassin ger’

s

name with Dekker’

s in The Virg in M artyr, l icensed in 1 620

and reckoned among the earl iest o f his plays , and with hI iddleton ’s and Rowley’s i n The Old Law doubtless marks his rev i sion o f the older original work o f these playwrights. Mas

singer’s association with F l etcher begins about 1 6 1 3 , and heindub itably revised some of the latter

’s work after F l etcher ’sdeath. To that work we need not here recu r. M assinger surv ived until 1 640 and was buried , according to the epi taph byCockayne , in the same grave with F letcher. Some o f the earl ierwork of Massinger was written fo r the Queen ’s company ; afte rF l etcher’s death , he wrote wholly for the King

’s men .

I t can not be affi rmed that Massinger , in h is - unaided efforts ,added any n ew form or unusual variety of treatment to therep ertory of the Jacobean stage. An d yet there are dist inctivequali ties that d i fferentiate M ass inger and give h im his place inthe august brotherhood of England

’

s great dramat ic age. Mas

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE 1 97

s inger ’s work is of two kinds, the comedy of manners , repre

sented in three or more plays , an able combination of the easymethod of lVI iddleton and F letcher with the stricter moralattitude of Jonson , and secondly, his tragicomedies and tragedies,all o f them in the approved F letcherian mode , wherein , however,Massinger at t imes almost equals his master. Let us considerfirst the comedies in which although he shared less than in thetragicomedies with his more famous coadj utor, he has left behind him none the l ess two admirable specimens of the dramao f Engl ish contemporary manners. These are The CityMadam

,acted perhaps as early as 1 6 19, and A N ew Way to

Pay Old Debts which must have been wri tten close to the endof the reign of K ing James . The City M adam echoes someof the motives of Eastward Ho i n the idle and vicious ap

p rentices and the ci tizen ’s wife and her fool ish daughters withthei r rid iculous pride and affectation. But Massin ger givesh is comedy a more serious turn in the figure of Luke F rugal

,

a sometime prodigal,reduced to affected penitence and the ac

cep tan ce of his brother’

s chari ty ; but , when opportunity arises ,on h is supposed inheritance of his brother

’s wealth,revealed a

monster of selfishness and avarice, assenting to a propos itionto transport his brother ’s wi fe and daughters to Vi rginia anda l i fe o f slavery to be ri d of thei r importunate claims upon him.

A N ew Way to Pay O ld D ebts i s M assinger ’s best known play ;and here again we recognise how close a student the poet wasof the drama that had gone before him : the s i tuation of Wel lborn and the behaviour of his credi tors i s much that ofWitgood ,in similar case , in M iddleton

’s Trick to Catch the Old On e,

to pursue resemblances no further . But here , too , M assingerhas given to h is drama an original b ias in the powerful figureof avaricious and unprincipled Sir G i les Overreach who , in theexorbitance of his Vi llainy and i ts fitting retribution in madness , touches the borders of tragedy. Both of these comediesof M assinger long held the stage

,however al tered in form .

A N ew Way to Pay Old D ebts i s even n ow occasionally acted ,and always wi th success desp i te the somewhat artificial andobv ious nature of some of the minor personages. Wel l writtenan d capably plotted as are both of these excellen t plays

,i t must

b e confessed that Massinger i s l ess successful in l ighter comedythan where some serious motive animates h is muse to a rhetori

cal fervour. In A N ew Way to Pay Old D ebts, we leave thec ity with its bourgeois manners and p ersonages for rather better

1 98 ENGLISH DRAMA

soc iety,though the elevation o f the comedy of Engl ish manners

from tradesfolk to gentlefolk belongs specifically not to Mas

s inger but to Shirley. M assinger was less success ful in comedythe scene of which is laid i n foreign parts. The Parliamen t ofLove, 1 624, i s a disappointing performance in which a corrup ttext and the opportunities of a promising subj ect thrown awayconspi re to produce an effect qui te disheartening. M assingercould make nothing of the imaginative conception of the troubadours

,a court for the sage determination of causes in love

,ex

cept a seri es of conventional intrigues and a seasoning o f conven tion al humour. The Guardian ,

1 63 3 , i s Spanish in character

,i f not in scene or in known source ; i t i s a comedy as

coarse as i t i s able . Such work o ffers the greatest contrastwith the ai r of refinement which pervades Massinger’s moreromantic d ramas to which we n ow turn , and seems more aconcession to the taste of the age than the expression of th epoet’s own personal ity.

In The B on dman , TheM aid of Hon our and The Ren egado,all on the stage before the death of F letcher, Massinger workedindependently and e ffectively in the received conventions of

contemporary tragicomedy. The B on dman i s based on theclassical story o f Timoleon ’s del iverance of ancien t Syracusefrom the Carthagen ian invas ion ; but the story i s translated , i ntrue F letcherian manner

,into a romantic tale o f vengeance

d iverted by love. The Ren egad o, as we have seen , i s an independent Engl ish version o f on e of the comedies of Cervantes ;The M aid of Hon our was long and deservedly on e of the

most popular of M assinger’s tragicomedies , and in i t, whateveri ts undiscovered source

,we have Massinger’s d istinctive way of

looking at l i fe. Bertholdo, a noble knight of M al ta, owes h isdel iverance from captivi ty to the Lady Camiola, but is re fusedby her as a su itor because o f h is vows. She accepts , however ,his t roth-pl ight , after the manner of the time , as a test of hisgrati tude. But Bertholdo fal ls a v ictim to his love for theDuchess of Sienna and wooes her for his w i fe

,thus prov ing

false al ike to Camiola and his kn ightly order. Denounced byCamiola, the recreant is also repud iated by the duchess , and bidd ing Bertholdo return to h is order

, Camiola hersel f takes theveil . This end ing

,the natu re of the story of The Ren egado,

in which a benefi cen t Jesui t priest i s the motive power,together

w ith the sem i-rel igious character of The Virg in M artyr, haveled to surmis e that M assinger had become a Roman Cathol ic.

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zoo ENGLISH DRAMA

praise th ei r own creations. The theme is of or iginal interestand must have been wri tten con amore. I t tells how the in fatn ation of the Empress Domitia placed Paris , on e of the desp isedp rofession of players , on a level , for the moment , with the masterof the world and how the man in him rose to the heroic occas ion . The conduct and wri ting of this tragedy dese rve al l thepraises that they have rece ived . The Emperor of the East i sl ess important.B elieve as You L ist claims a separate paragraph . Th is able ,and in places truly patheti c, tragedy relates the story of

Antiochus , K ing of Upper Asi a, supposedly left for dead on hisfield of defeat by the Romans , but really come to l i fe and seeking for a recognition of his royal claim. But Rome outfacesh im everywhere and terrifi es even those who bel ieve in hisi denti ty into silence or repud iation ; so that in the end the unhappy king i s sent a slave to the Roman galleys. This is real lythe story of on e of th e pretenders to the long vacant throne o fDon Sebastian and the play was so set at first . But Herbert ,Maste r of the Revels, obj ecting to the sto ry because i t d idcontain dangerous matter , as the deposing of Sebast ian , Kingo f Portugal , by Phil ip , there being a peace sworn betw ix t the'king of England and Spain ,

” Massinger rewrote h is play, i ronically apologising in the p rologue which Herbert probably d idn ot see for his want of “ a knowledge of cosmographie, if

h e should seem to come too near a l ate sad example.” Asto this play, a further analogy has been pointed out by Gard iner ,the historian

,between the Roman treatment o f Antiochus an d

the attitude of King Charles , at th is t ime, towards his un fortunate brother-in -law ,

th e Elector Palatine and ti tular Kingo f Bohemia. Indeed Gardiner goes much further to find in asuccession o f M assinger’s plays from The B on dman to TheGreat Duke of F loren ce and TheM aid of Hon our, a representation of current poli tical events coloured in the interests of hispatrons the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, under a th indramat ic d isguise.5

We have thus in lVIassinger, when all has been said , a successor to Jonson an d M i ddleton in comedy and a continuer ofthe art and practice o f F l etcher in abl e and important traged iesan d tragicomedies. IVIassin ger confirmed the taste of the t ime

5 Political Elemen ts in Massinger, New Shakespeare Society’s Trans

actions, 1 876.

THE ROMANTIC CONTINUANCE 20:

in this last Spec ies of drama and , whil e he not in frequentlyequalled F letcher in o riginal ity o f theme and in consummated ramatic craftsmanship

, Massinger commonly falls belowF letcher in his conception of character and in his substi tut ionof a rhetorical styl e for the poetry which F letcher had eve rready on occasion . Effectively eloquent as Massinger o ften is ,we feel in much of his work the same hurry and carelessnessthat we feel at times in F letcher’s , and we do not feel the samesustaining cl everness

,skil l under difficulty and ease. When

Massinger flags, he does not so readily recover h imsel f. F inally,Massinger ’s verse Shows a further disintegration . M assingerwrites evenly enough ; he i s less free in the l icense of the re

dun dan t syll abl e than F l etcher, or even than Shakespeare inthe latter ’s latest manner ; but he often expands h is words inv iolence to common hurried utterance and he abuses the l icenseso f run-on -l ines

,the weak end ing and the pause within the l ine.

In a word,the end of such blank-verse as Massinger’s , at hi s

worst,i s prose.

But Massinger was only the most important of th e followersof F letcher. Even in his l i fetime there were minor imitatorso f his types

,his Spanish sources , his method of contrast , even

of his darting hendecasyllab ic verse , though never has

its l i the activity, when at i ts best , been equalled. Among traged ies in the manner of F letcher

,there i s the forceable anonymous

Secon d M aiden’

s Tragedy endorsed with this ti tle by Sir GeorgeBuc , M aster of the Revels , who l icensed i t in 1 6 1 1 . This dramasmacks n ot a l i ttle

,in i ts pursui t o f a devoted maiden by a

“ tyrant ” and its gratu itous horrors, of the old t ragedy of re

venge ; and much the same is true o f the n ot d issimilar storydetailed by Robert Davenport in his tragedy of King John an d

Matilda,1 624, however its harrowing scenes refer back to th e

old chronicle play, The Death of R obert Earl of Hun ting ton .

Both belong to the specific group of The M aid’

s Tragedy,

the S ituation of woman a prey to the passions o f man,the

S i tuation of M easure for M easure, o f M assinger’s D uke of

M ilan and of Shirley’s Traitor. The B loody Ban quet, byT. 1 620

,marks a Similar reversion to the theme of the wan

ton queen , the topic of F l etcher’s Th ierry an d Theod oret as of

the earl ier Titus Andron icus and M arston ’s I n satiate Coun tess,to name no o thers . Turning to tragicomedy

,we find i t com

mon ly mixing its high themes — as already in F letcher — withl ighter comedy. This mixture of elements is characterist ic

, for

202 ENGLISH DRAMA

example,of the several women ’s plays , as they have been

c alled that cluster abdut 1 620. These include,besides

F letcher ’s own Sea Voyage (wherein a commonwealth of womensuffic ient to themselves const i tutes a feature ) , and Women

Pleased , the able anonymous play on the same Spanish storyas the latter

, Sw etn am theWoman Hater Arraig n ed by Women ,

a cumbrous t itl e referable to a pass ing misogynist pamphletattacked in the underplot. O f a like character , though moreserious , i s Dekker

’

s fine play , Match M e in Lon don and hisWon der of a Kingdom, while The Spanish Gipsy, alreadynoticed

,by Rowley and M i ddleton , and the Sl ightly earl ier

Cure for a Cuckold by Rowley and Webster d isclose in variousdegrees a more or less happy combination of the drama whichapproaches the tragic w ith pure comedy. These tragicomediesbelong in the early twenties and to them may be added TheHeir by Thomas !May which , however repe ti t ious of old

material,is wel l written and not without genuine meri t.

As to lesser comedy with in the reign of King James , it , too ,had l earned

’ much of F letcher, and that despite the continuedforce of the earl ie r example of Jonson . O f the older an dgreater men in comedy

,we have heard in a previous ch apter.

Suffice i t here to recal l that not only were some of them sti llact ive but that continued rev ival s of the plays of the formerreign served to leaven the rap idly increasing outpu t of newplays. Heywood ’s important contributions to the domesticdrama

, The Captives and The English Traveller, fall , the on ej ust before the conclus ion of the reign , the other not far after.An d Wi ll iam Rowley’s pleasing and vivacious comedy, TheN ew Won der or a Woman N ever Vexed , however a reversionto the method of earl ier London comedy

,l ikewise fal l s late.

Lastly, there i s Robert Davenport of whom we only know thathe flourished ,

” as the phrase goes,in the year 1 624. To this

year or earl ier have been referred h is two comedies , The CityN ightcap and A N ew Trick to Cheat the Devil, the latterespeci ally a clever if somewhat extravagant play of the samegeneral type. B rome, most important of the immediate d iscipleso f Jonson

, Mayne , Marmion , Cockayne and the rest come later.F or th e nonce be i t repeated in conclusion that the per iod from1 6 1 2 to 1 625 was as pre-em inently the per iod of F letcher as thatwh ich p receded i t had been Jonson’s ; for in it , above the manyother things wh ich we have found , the dom inant note was the

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CHAPTER IX

SHIRLEY AND THE LAST or THE OLD DRAMA

WHEN King James d ied , in 1 625 , few of the great men whohad made his reign memorable i n the drama survived him.

B eaumont and Shakespeare had reti red long since, dying, asd id the old manager and exploiter of plays

,Phil ip Henslowe ,

in 1 6 1 6 , and neither Chapman nor Marston wrote certainlythereafter. Alleyn

,the famous acto r, had retired in 1 604, and

Burbage,active to the last , died in 1 6 1 9,

to be succeeded in themore important Shakespearean réles by John Lowin and JosephTaylor. F letcher

’

s work came to i ts end wi th the re ign andM iddleton ’s two years after. O f the older greater men , onlyJonson , Heywood and Dekker su rv ived , the l as t somewhat umcertainly in work with other men and in the making over andprint ing of earl ier plays. Heywood ’s l ate dramatic work , too ,i s much of i t uncertain and in large part lost . He was too oldto learn the new tricks , however he essayed them in such tragicomed ies as The Royal King and Loyal Servan t or i n his otherdrama of heroic contest

,the interesting Challenge for B eauty,

an El izabethan effort to appreci ate Cavali er ideals. As to Jonson , by this time the best of his work was behind him , althoughthe old tree put forth annually i ts blossoms of inventive poetryfor the pleasu re of the court. Latterly Jonson was less appreciated as younger pens and keener courti ers competed for hisplace. To the honour of King Charles , be i t remembered thathe was kind to hi s father’s old poet. In the very year of theking ’s accession Jonson had returned to the stage after havingwritten no drama S ince Bartholomew F air, six years before.But these later efforts

, The Staple of N ews, The N ew I n n ,

The M ag n etic Lady and The Tale of a Tub, acted between1 625 and 1 63 4, while full of strong, sati ri cal an d humorouswri ting, mark a hardening in the poet

’s touch,a reversion to

allegory and caricature,disclosing at t imes a bitterness

,referable

to the poet ’s s truggle with poverty,fail ing physical v igour and

the approach of old age. Jonson went down contemning an d

204

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 205

desp is ing the opinion of th e vulgar to the end ; but he was beloved by many

,even among the younger generation

,for the

talents that had made him great and for his honest worth , andackn owledged , at his death , to have been the one, sole leaderand arbiter o f the poetry and the drama of his t ime.At the beginn ing of the reign M assinger was still th e most

conspicuous figure in the drama. Intrenched in hi s recent partn ership with F letcher and strong in the acceptance which his independent work had received , he confirmed the popularity o ftragicomedy

,contributing likewise

,as we have seen i n the last

chapter,both comedy and tragedy to the stage for a decade or

more. But i n these years begins, l ikewise, the work of Shirleyand F ord , strong rivals for the popular favour, and Brome andDavenant fol low soon after.As to the general condit ions of th e stage , King Charles , on

his succession,continued to extend the royal patronage to the

theatrical companies that h is father had created . N ot only di dthe new king take over h is father ’s players

,bu t he added hi s

own, the Prince

’s men,to them , thus confirming the leadership

of the K ing’s players. The Lady Elizabeth’s men became n owthe Queen ’s ; and , i n 1 63 2 , the players , known in the formerreign as the Palsgrave’s

,found a patron in the in fant Prince

Charles. One other company received royal recognition as theK in g’s Revels ; but the Queen

’s Revel s d isappears in this reign ,although a fi fth company

,without a name or a patron , con

tinued to act at the Bull and the F ortune. Besides these two

lesser older theatres,the new Cockpi t, sometimes known as the

t n ix,housed Queen Henrietta’s players and there was an

o ther n ew playhouse in Sal isbury Court which was variouslyoccupied . The K ing’s men sti ll acted habitually at thei r old

‘

houses,the B lackfriars and the Globe , and an attempt , in 1 63 7 ,

to revive a boys’ company of players enjoyed only a short l ivedsuccess. A feature of thi s t ime i s the widening breach betweenthe court and the Puritan city i n respect to the regulation of thestage ; a struggle that was to end at last in th e closing of al lthe London theatres by the act o f Parl iamen t and in the discontinuance , for the time, of al l acting of plays.James Shirley was born i n London in 1 596 and educated at

both universi ties. Of hi s family and extraction l i ttl e is known ;but an air of refinement an d ‘

reserve seems to have been his , andhe enjoyed a wide and general esteem among his contemporar ies. Sh irley took orders about the year 1 620, rece iv ing a

206 ENGLISH DRAMA

charge at S t. Albans ; but on becoming a convert to the Churcho f Rome , he gave up his pulp i t and , i n 1 623 , took the masterSh ip of St. Albans G rammar School , giv ing this up in turn andcoming to London and play making two years later. The

p eriod of Shirley’s dramatic authorship thus corresponds almos t

p recisely with the actual reign of King Charles ; for i t was onlythe closing of the theatres that S i lenced the poet. Shirley suc

ceeded easily in h is new craft and , without affect ing the waysof flattery

,soon acquired many friends and patrons , among

them most conspicuous the k ing h imsel f and h is amiable queen ,Henrietta Mari a. To the latter Shirley was deeply attached .

Through another of his patrons, the Earl of Ki ldare , Shirleywas induced to go to Dubl in

,wh ither he carr ied the reperto ry

and tradi tions of the London stage. Thither he returned morethan once in the th irties, never losing, however, h is touch w iththe King

’s players for whom he was the chie f poet in theselater years. In 1 640 Sh i rley returned permanently to London ,but his career as a d ramatist was cut Short, two years later,by the peremptory order of Parl iament closing the theatres.With the outbreak of the C ommonweal th wars

, Shirley followed his patron , the Earl oi N ewcastl e, taking what part wedo not know. He was soon back in London , however, strivingfor a l ivel ihood with his pen. To the year 1 646, belongsSh irley’s publicat ion of his volume of miscellaneous verse ; tothe next

,his preface To the Reader ,

” prefixed to the firstfol io of the plays of Beaumont and F letcher. Soon after,Shirley was forced back into his old pro fession of schoolmasterand to that unhappy recourse of h is kind , the wri ting of schoolbooks. Teaching

,the printing of plays, hi therto unpublished ,

and hack work in translation from the classics for men l ikeO gilby, who never acknowledged Shirley

’s help,make up the

d rudgery of the poet’s later years which were p rolonged to thet ime of the great fire , in 1 666, when , according to Wood , ouronly authori ty for the l i fe of Shirley

,he was driven with his

wi fe from thei r home in Wh itefriars by the flames and beingin a manner overcome w ith aff rightments

,d isconsolations an d

other m iseries occasioned by that fire and thei r losses ,” d ied

soon after, both“ with in the compass of a natural day.” Sh ir

ley was buried in the churchyard of St. Giles-in -the-F ields.During the period of hi s activity as a playwright , Sh irley

wrote nearly forty pl ays and , ow ing to his personal care of hi swork, a larger proportion of them rema in extant than of almost

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208 ENGLISH DRAMA

gions o f Hyde Park. The heroine, Carol , is an excellent ex

ample of the witty, free Spoken but virtuous lady of fashion ;and the conduct of F airfi eld ’s courtship of her, a match of witsi n which the end is a drawn game , reminds one of many l ike

'

s i tuations to come in the dram as of the next age when Shirleywas

‘

forgotten . The Ball, in turn , called attention , by way of

defence , to the new fashionabl e assembl i es for publ i c dancing.It seems that these meetings had been cri ticised on the score o f

amorals and surmised , by scandal-mongers , to be a cloak for vice.In th is play, however, Herbert , the Mas ter of the Revels , tells

'

us that - the re were d ivers personated so naturally,both of.

lords “

and others of the court, that I took i t ill and would haveforbidden the play bu t that B eeston , !the manager ] , promisedmany th ings

,which I found faul t withal , should be left out .

Clearly Shirley had indeed le ft his books ; but he learned hislesson like a sensible man and did not, in this wise , o ffend again .

Hyde Park and The Ball were both on the stage by 1 632 .

When the latter comedy was printed , seven years later , the ti tl econveyed the words , written by George Chapman and JamesShirley. N ow Chapman was at this time seventy-three yearsof age

,in poverty and long a stranger to the stage

,whil e Shi r

ley was at the height o f h is success at court and in the ci ty.

There i s n ot a word i n The Ball to suggest Chapman , as thecomedy is dependent on the pass ing fashion of the moment in akind of soci ety that must have been totally unknown to the oldtranslator of Homer. The only other alleged example o f thisstrange collaboration i s the tragedy

, Chabot Admiral of F ran ce,printed in the same year. Either these ascriptions are Sheererror or possibly — as seems less unlikely in the latter caseShirley was will ing generously to befriend his older, unsuccessful contemporary in an allowance to him of a larger Share inwork revised than the facts of his borrowing perhaps actuallywarranted .

Most consp icuous by way of scandal is Shirley’s n ext comedy,The Gamester

,acted i n 1 63 3 and a notable success not only

on i ts first performance but in repeated revivals. The Game

ster i s the grossest o f Shirley’

s plays ; in fact no other play of

h is approaches i t in this respect ; and i t is no excuse that whatseems to the aud i to r dur ing the action a highly “ obj ectionablecompl icat ion turns out in the end to be no more than a harmless stratagem.

” Moreover , the plot of this p lay was sug

gested and i ts conduct and writ ing praised by the v i rtuous King

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA

Charles. In consequence, Kingsley gibbeted The Gamester,in his Plays an d Puritan s, and Gardiner , the historian , has takenthis drama as a typical example of the immoral i ty of the Carolans tage. Wi thout endeavouring to condone the lapses of Shirley,the vigour of the characterisation and the capable managementof the plo t i s not for a moment to be questioned . The matterat large is not to be argued here, but in j ust ice i t may be urgedthat i t i s eminently unfai r to j udge an age , or even an author,by a Singl e work. There are as bad plays , ethically considered ,as The Gamester

,both before i t and after , and Shirley is fu ll

elsewhere of poetry and elevated thought. It is not the range ofv ibration that determines the tone

,however violence may

,for

the moment , destroy all beauty of sound. There is a d iffe rencebetween the improprieti es of Shakespeare and the improprieti eso f Shirley, and yet both are d ramatic and n ot necessarily referabl e to any defect in the author ; and i t is almost as unfair toj udge Shirley — and King Charles for that matter — in thiswise as i t would be to anathematise Shakespeare as some indeed have done for the discourse of M istress Overdone withher tapster

,Pompey.

Intermittent with h is other work Shirley cont inued to furn ishthe Stage with v ivacious an d eminently successful comedies ofmanners throughout the thirties. The Example and The Ladyof Pleasure o ffer part icularly happy i llustrations of the poet

’sn ice observation of contemporary manners

,his inventive faci l i ty

,

ease of execution and adaptabil ity to whatever might be thetask in hand . I n The Example recurs, in effective form ,

‘

Shi rley ’s favouri te d ram ati c si tuation , the conversion of a libertineto v i rtue in the pursui t of pleasure by the steadfas tness or cleverness of his intended victim ; and The Lady of Pleasure repeatswi th sufli cien t variation the same theme. Indub i tably Shirleyused the material of his observation among the people of fashionand r ank to association with whom his acceptance at court gavehim admittance. An d he wri tes always more in the sp i ri t ofa sympathetic part icipant in the ir li fe than as an observerarmed with the weapons of sat ire. An d yet while Shirley ’scomedy figures are measurably t rue to the l i fe about him

,they

fall,altogether naturally, into the grooves o f type , al ready so

well defined by M iddleton an d F letcher. The fool ish youth ,the humorous suitors , the sundry kinds of gulls , SirWi ll i amScen tlove, Alexander Kickshaw, Lord Rainbow — their veryn ames betray them — all are the descendants of M i ddleton ;

2 10 ENGLISH DRAMA

whilst F letcherian are Sh irley’s many del ightful , v ivac ious andresourceful maidens

,be Viol etta, Carol or Celestina her name.

Wi th all his changes, tu rns an d i ngenuities wrought upon theseolder types , new dressed to move in high cross l ights, Sh irley

’

s

most successful and serious variation is that of the p rofligate re

claimed to whom he gives in Lord F itzavarice of The Exampleand in the Lord unnamed of The Lady of Pleasure, a realworth

,digni ty and contri tion . Above all the women of Shi r

ley’s comedy Stand for the compan ion figures , M i stress Peregrin e an d Celestina, for example , in thei r combination of a competent knowledge of the world with a womanly sweetness and asteadfastness in v i rtue n ot to be moved even where the hearthas been touched .But Shirley

’

S facile pen was by no means confined to comedy.I f we turn to his romant ic dramas , we find them embrac ing aw ide range of subj ects in which l i ght comedy such as TheHumorous Courtier and pure extravaganza, l ike The B ird inthe Cage, hold one extreme and pseudo-history, l ike The Politician , or traged ies , l ike The Traitor, hold the o ther. Theromantic plays scatter over the poet ’s career , ushered in w ithThe M aid

’

s Revenge, in 1 626 , and closing with The Sisters,l icensed i n Apri l 1 642. The Court Secret was apparentlywri tten too late to escape the order which closed the theatres ,though i t was acted after the Restoration . In observ i ng thelater products o f our English romantic d rama , while plays indubitably tragic or wholly comic on the other hand continue tob e wri tten

,there is a tendency towards the b reaking down of

these formal d istinctions . This tendency, the averted catastrophe of tragicomedy fostered , with i ts incessant demand forthe happy ending

, so that even in dramas ostens ibly tragic , theconclusion becomes often less an expiation and triumph of fatethan a meting out of rewards to the innocent and punishmentsto the guil ty. In Shi rl ey

’s Politician , described , for example,as a tragedy

,al l th e conspi rators and wicked figures of the cast

su ff er death and all the v i rtuous,save one , are preserved for

future happiness . Such a play may be described as only hal f atragedy ; because the ti lt ing of intri gue and counter-in tri gue hasbeen substi tuted for a moral struggle . Moreover, i t is just th ist il tin g of intrigue and counter-intrigue that is the soul of comedyand tragicomedy. So that while we recognise in d ramas suchas The Card inal or The Maid

’

s Revenge that Shirley is accep tin g the meaning of tragedy in its normal sense, and whil e

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2 1 2 ENGLISH DRAMA

arch-schemer,Lorenzo , of th is play , in h is wresting of the v irtues

as well as the v ices of those about h im to work his ends, amountsto gen ius. I t i s l i ttle to the purpose to Show that the real Lorenzino de’ M edic i was a man very d iff erent from the figure represented by Shirley. The logic of th e d rama is n ot the logi cof l i fe, and Shirley treated the material of h isto ry, precisely.as he treated the mater ial of fict ion , with the inventive freedomof absolute ownership . Barn evelt is almost the l ast play of theold age that seems actuated by anything l ike an historical conscience such as chained Shakespeare to the details of Holinshedor sen t Jonson to a scholar ’s study of Tac itus and other Roman'

historians. Return ing to Shirley’s tragedies , The Card inal isgenerally recognised as the poet

’s best play of th e type , al thoughthe relations of the ch ie f characters remind the reader , who hasan eye for resemblances , of The Duchess of M alfi . The plo tturns on a struggle between the Duchess Rosaura , young, beauti ful and wealthy

,and the pol i t ic Cardinal ( not otherwise

named ) who has gained the consent of the King that the ladyshall marry the Cardinal

’

s nephew, Columbo , the royal favouri te. But th e duchess contrives to obtain a release of h is claimto her hand from Columbo and gains the K ing

’s consent to hermarriage with Alvarez , th e man of her choice , the Cardinal apparen tly accepting the decision and consenting to be present atthe wedding as a Sign of reconcil iation. In a scene, in comparably wel l wr itten and prepared by a prelude of comedy, the newlymarried bridegroom

,i n the height of the nupti al revels

,is lai d

dead,assassinated

, at the feet of h is bride ; and the rema inderof th e play i s concerned with a leisurely but masterful unravell ing of this extraordinary situation . A serious blot on th ist ragedy is the scene where in the Cardinal , unabl e to satiate h isrevenge on the hapless duchess , now distraught and del ivered

’

into his 'hands as a ward,attempts her d ishonour. This S itua

tion is the more amazing from the pen of a Roman ist ; but i t i ss trictly in accord wi th the taste of the age for a strong d iet and

,

i n this instance , leads to an ingenious catastrophe involving thedeaths not only of the protagonists but of the val iant Hernandowho has slain Columbo as the champion o f the duchess and n ow

interposes to save her honour but not her l i fe. The Card in alis the last tragedy that was attempted along the trodden pathof romantic drama. In tragedy

,at least

, Shi rley remained tothe end singularly free of the influence o f F letcher. He marks ,in a sense, a return to the more d irect, the less hero ic and less

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 21 3

inflated character of earl ier tragedy. For, however intr icate theintrigue

, Shirley’s plot is commonly Single and the episodes of

comic rel ief are not allowed to usurp an immoderate share of

the interest. His personages,too , are clearly defined and d is

tin guished , and neither in conduct , thought nor d iction i s thereambiguity

, d ifliculty or dramatic delay. More poetical on occas ion than Massinger , Shirley never falls into the latter

’s rhetoricand preoccupation wi th a moral problem . In a word , Shirleywrote frankly for h is age and his product was acceptable for itsease

,finish

,inventiveness and sufficiency. He was less in the

trend of his time than several of his infer iors . That is why heso l i ttl e affected h is contemporaries and why the next age

speed ily forgot h im to take up w ith modified F letcherianromance and brutal ised Jonson.

There remains on e thing more of Sh irley, and that is h is partin the elaborate entertainments at court which continued intothe re ign of King Charles. I t was in 1 634, the very year ofJonson ’s last efforts and the acting of Camus, that Shirley

’smagn ificent Triumph of Peace was presented at court with unexampled cost and sumptuousness by the united endeavours ofthe four Inns o f Court. Thi s occas ion was heightened by therecent trial and condemnation o f Prynne

,sometime a student of

Lincoln’

s Inn, for his i ll-timed and outrageous attack upon the

Stage enti tled Histriomastix ; and his fellow lawyers took th ismeans of disavowing his Puritan ic principles . Wi l l iam Prynnewas an Oxford man

,as well as he was portentously learned ;

he had already written several pamphlets express ing h is abhorrence of certain practices , rel igious and social , of which he happened to d isapprove

,among which the picturesqueness of i ts

t i tl e has given The Un lovelin ess of Lovelocks, a conspicuousrepute. In Histriomastix,

Prynne not only attacked , in themost intemperate language

,the stage (with which he was much

less minutely acquain ted than with the Chr ist ian F athers ) , buthe scored especially the disguise of either sex in the habi t of theo ther and anathematised the appearance of women on the stagei n terms brutally coarse an d abus ive. In th is last he wasvoicing a common prej udice of his t ime ; for as yet women asactors were unknown to the Engl ish publ ic stage, and theactresses of a F rench troupe, in 1 629, had been booted from theLondon boards. Unhappily fo r Prynne, however, the queenhad recently displayed an unusual interest 1n theatricals ; andhad actually taken a part

,at a private performance at court,

2 14 ENGLISH DRAMA

in The Shepherd’

s Pastoral by Wal ter Montague— for the

b enefit of her Engl ish it was sai d just abou t the t ime of theappearance of Pryn n e

’

s book. I t is doubtful i f Prynne reallyintended this personal application ; but an enemy was foundof course to make it at once . The penalt ies inflicted on the umfortunate pamphleteer on his condemnation a heavy fine , theloss of h is university degrees and the cl ipp ing of his ears in thep illory— were as brutal as they were excessive. Shirley’s ironical dedication of The B ird in a Cage has already been mention ed. The Triumph of Peace is a monster masque al ike forS ize and incongruity. -There are eight an timasques in rapidsuccession , of abstract ions, birds , th ieves, huntsmen , proj ectorsan d beggars , and the scenes varied from a knight t il t ing at aw indmill to a Sinking moon in an open landscape. The personsengaged could have numbered no less than a hundred ; the scenewas furn ished by the indefatigable Inigo Jones , the music bythe celebrated composer, Wi ll iam Lawes , and the cost wasenormous. In less than a week the court matched th is performance w ith Ccelum B ritan n icum, contrived by the poet, ThomasC arew ,

with the same able assistance and exhib iting eightchanges of Scene with as many antimasques. Carew

’

s masqueis poet ic in the lyrical parts , but it lacks the dramat ic touchwhich Shi rley seems abl e to have infused even into the inchoatematerial of The Triumph of Peace.

But a greater than either of these availed h imself of the

pOpular masque form in this very year, in the entertainment ,presented at Ludlow Castle before the Earl of Br idgewater ,Lord President of Wales, and known now as Camus. M il tonhad already essayed the masque, if so Sl ight a performance asArcades can be so denominated , and he was to return to thedrama in its most ser ious form in the tragedy of Samson'Ag on istes. I t was the fr iendsh ip of Lawes that procured forM i l ton th is Opportunity for the display of his lyr ical talent.Camus, however it express a coherent Si tuat ion in a well sustain ed allegory , is not really a drama, though i t cannot be saidthat i t falls below contemporary masques even in this particular. How much it r ises in its elevat ion of thought, ex

quisite express ion and lyrical music above al l contemporar ies al lknow who know and love our Engl ish poetry. M i l ton’s Camush istorically groups w ith a number of private masques in whichseveral of the minor poets of the t ime of Charles , such as N abbes,Cockayne and others

,were variously concerned. None of them

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2 1 6 ENGLISH DRAMA

next year , disclose in the ir t itles th e name of Dekker with thatof F ord

,the former adding Wi ll iam Rowley’s as well. The

Witch of Edmon ton i s an effective and pathetic domest ict ragedy and as such has already received our notice ; The Sun

’

s

Darling i s a beauti fu l masque-l ike comedy which , first acted atcourt in 1 623 , enjoyed a continued populari ty. It seems notunl ikely that F ord , in these cases , was the reviser of Dekker

’

s

earl i er work. In Perkin Warbeck, which relates the story o fthat pretender to the Engl ish crown and his overthrow

,F ord

attempted to revive the chronicle play, a type of drama longs ince extinct ; and in The Queen or the Excellen cy of h er Sex,

3 t ragicomedy of considerable worth which recent scholarshiphas assigned to the authorship o f F ord , we have another excursus , this time into Spanish h istorical drama.1 AS to Per~‘

kin Warbeck, which is an exceedingly interesting tragedy , i t maybe fancied , however, that F ord wrote far more for the problemin identity involved than for any historical import. AS to theplays of F ord in general , i t has been well said that they fallnaturally into two groups : those in which he took hold o f

h is subj ect,and those in wh ich his subj ect took hold of him .

” 2

In the first group fall the two historical plays just ment ionedand the two comedies F an cies Chaste an d N able, acted about1 63 5 , and The Lady s Trial, 1 63 8 ; to the second belong theromantic dramas in which F ord may be said to have contributedas eff ect ively and originally to the variety of Engl ish drama as hecertainly contributed to i ts decadence . F ord is as far as autho rcan be from that quick grasp and real isation o f the trifl ing oc

curren ces and incongrui ties of every day l i fe that go so far tomake up the equipment of the success ful writer of comedy ;wherefore when he descends to trifleS, he is veri tably trivial andwhen he forces h is wit, he is coarse to the verge of indecency andbeyond . The subj ect of F an '

cies Chaste and N oble is con temp tibl e

,and i t i s no excuse for the author that when we have been

misled into fancies by the suggestions of his plot by no meansto be characterised by e ither o f the adj ect ives of his t i tle

,we

are laughed at for our anxieties in a dénouement which is meas

1 See th e edition of th is p lay by ‘V. Bang, Materialien zur Kun de,

x iii, 1 906.

2 See th e excellen t paper by S. P. Sherman on Ford ’s Con tribution

to th e Decaden ce of th e Drama,” ibid .

, Vol. xx iii, 1 908, to wh ich th is

p aragraph is in debted .

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 2 1 7

urably harmless . Th'

e Lady’

s Trial is a bette r and a cleanerplay ; though , with all i ts intrigue , i t too suffers from what hasbeen justly called a certain futil ity of plot.The four dramas which were thoroughly congen ial with

F ord ’s Sp ir i t are The Lovers’ M elan choly, Love’

s Sacrifi ce,The Broken Heart and ’Tis P ity She

’

s a Whore. In all theatmosphere is wholly romantic

,even effeminately so ; for the in

terest is absorbingly that of the psychology of sex. The Lovers’

Melan choly, unl ike the other three , raises no problem and ends ,after the manner o f tragicomedy

,happily ; i n the others we meet

with a momentous change in the dramatist’s point of v i ew, achange both from the acceptance of the code of th ings as theyare an d from the ideal ist ’s contentment w ith the beauti ful andunreal creat ions o f his own imagination , to a recognition of theessential confl ict that must always ex is t between the ideals o fmen and thei r realisation in a world of fact. Thus

,The B roken

Heart gives us the problem of a w i fe , marr ied against her will ,yet loving another ; Love

’

s Sacrifi ce, that of a passion whichSprings up after marriage, w ith the struggle against it ;'

Tis P ity i s the awful sto ry of a brother’s and sister’s incestuous

in fatuation . An d F ord represents these things , not as temptat ions to evil about the resistance to which there can be no possibl emoral quest ion among good men

,but in the l ight o f a struggle

towards a larger freedom and a higher moral i ty. Ford is lessa sensualist and a voluptuary than a moral casuist ; the intellectuality of his conceptions is at least as vivid as his revel inthe beauty of sound

,the lovel iness of woman and the surging

of passionate impulse. In the confl ict between the conventionalactual and his romantic ideals

,his drama became more a drama

of revolution than merely of decadence,although he represents

to us , in the end , a world in which the accepted laws of men aregone to naught or

,what is worse converted into the bonds

of an intolerabl e tyranny. The pathos of the si tuation of

Penthea in The B roken Heart moves the roman ti c readerhapless Penthea who regards her married l i fe a l i fe of Shame ,although her virtu e is proof even against the passionate pleadings of her lover. So , too , the romantic reader is carried awayon the ris ing tide of that surpris ing scene in the same tragedy inwhich the Princess Calantha

,tall , passionless and fai r , apprised

in successive cl imaxes of the starvation of poor Penthea , th eatrocious murder of her betrothed and the death-of her father thatmakes her queen of Sparta, s teels her heart against all , sustains

ENGLISH DRAMA

the royal courtesy to her attending guests , arranges her father’

s

obsequ ies,the punishment o f her lover ’s murderer and the suc

cession to the crown,and then fall s dead , l i terally of a broken

heart. On the other hand , to the wholly reasonable man — be

he the redoubtable Prynne or the cri tic Hazl i tt — all th is ismawkish and

,where not impious

,perilously savour ing of non

sense. Such questions as these of F ord were unknown to thecomprehensive morali ty of Shakespeare , undream ed by the surefooted and j ud ic ious Jonson. Now , the problem story and thedrama that questions al l th ings human and divine is only too famil iar to us with our Tolstoi , Ibsen , Hauptmann , Maeterl inckand Shaw. Underlying both Love

’

s Sacrifi ce and’Tis P ity i s

that dangerous principl e of the romantic revolt , a faith in the d ivine guidance of pass ion , i n the supreme and irresistib le authori tyof human impulse, a principle

—

which , put in to practice in a worka—day world , i s subversive o f all establ ished order and destructive,i n the end

,of the very i deals i t adores . I t i s not enough to note

in F ord original ity o f plot , a power to conceive his people in themani festation of thei r passions , a charm and beauty of dict ion ,and that tru e spi ri t of poetry that fashions words in the glowof an actual emotion . I t i s not even enough to adm i t in h imthat s trange casu istry which , wean ing the mind persuasively froma contemplation of the rule to the admission of the exception ,forces home the incons istenc ies of our human codes or moral sand conduct. In F ord the modern way o f looking at the worldbegins and his original i ty in th is attitude i s diflicult for us toapprec iate for the reason that we are so accustomed to h is pointo f v i ew. F ord appl ied to the drama and to the part icular probl ems that interested h im the same questioning spir i t that insp iredthe Parliament of Charles to h is overthrow, lFord is n ot onlythe poet that marks on e of the most striking of the symptomsthat characterised the old drama in its d ecadence, he is evenmore notably the harb inger of new th ings to come in a changingage.Shirley bulks large in the h istory of Engl ish drama for th e

considerabl e amount of his ach ievement and its un i form attainmen t of the standard of excellence which the poet h imsel f setfor his work. F ord stands out above his fellows for the s inceri tyand intensi ty of his art and for h is departures from the precedents and current methods of his t ime. Leav ing these

, the perS istent d ramatic influences throughout the reign of King Charlesremained Jonson and F letcher, and the name of thei r followers

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220 ENGLI SH DRAMA

Mayne. Marmion was the spendthr i ft son of a country gentleman and the friend of rio tous Sir John Suckl ing ; Cartwrighthad university affi l i ation and became a preacher of repute for hiseloquence ; both died prematurely. Mayne rose later to highd igni ty in the church , and Cockayne was a gentleman of wealth ,a spendthri ft

,much travell ed abroad . Glap thorn e and N abbes

were men of lesser posi tion and of thei r l ives less is known . But

all wrote comedies in the recognised Jonson ian manner and mostof them had known the great man in his l i terary presencechamber

,the Apollo room o f the Devil Tavern and were proud

to be numbered among the sons of Ben .

”For example , the

Jonson ian butt,a “ proj ector,

”our modern Sharper , figures

p rominently in Marmion’s Holland’

s Leaguer and in Cartwright’s only comedy of manners , The Ord in ary. lVIayn e

’

s

City M atch repeats th e famil iar device o f a merchant’s pretended j ourney abroad to test the character and conduct of hisfamily and reverts to a motive of The Silen t Woman for theconclus ion . Whi le Glap thorn e

’

sHollan d er, Wit in a Con stable

and Davenpor t’s A N ew Trick to Cheat the D evil take us backto the low l i fe of th e c ity with M iddl eton rather than Jonsonfor a guide ; and Cockayne , more ambitious than some of hi sfel lows

,in The Obstinate Lady, repeats Si tuations of Mass inger

and Shi rley. O f the minor wri ters o f comedy in th is t imeThomas N abbes furn ishes by far the most original and favourable example. N abbes was aWorcester man

,apparently in the

services of a nobleman of that neighbourhood . His comedi es ofLondon manners

,all acted in the thirti es , are Coven t Garden ,

Totten ham Court, and The B ride. The last i s on e of the bestcomedies of i ts t ime and , tu rn ing upon the famil iar subj ect , anelopement, i s al ike a fresh , cleanly and natural story well told .N abbes deserves the praise that he has received for h is modestwell-conducted girl s and his vi rtuous and refined young men .

”

H‘is freedom from obscur ity and grossness , which are the darl ingSins of this group of plays, is alike remarkable and refresh ing.But the dramat ic influence of Jonson was not confined to the

scholars and gentlemen . Richard B rome was a son of Ben

i n a somewhat d i fferent sense from that applying to Cartwrighto r Randolph . Brome had been for years Jonson ’s body-servantand remained such to Jonson’s death . The old dramatist , whosememory B rome ever a fter revered , had nothing to leave hisfaith ful servant , so he imparted to h im some of the crumbs ofh is learn ing and

, as he had done before in the case of the boy

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 22:

actor,Nat F ield , taught Brome to make plays. Brome is the

author of upwards of a Score of dramas , comedies of manners ,and romantic tragicomedies after the custom of the age. Thefirst are wel l constructed and il lustrate contemporary manners

,

chiefly in low l i fe, not without Spi ri t and success ; but they re

peat w ith wearisome rei teration M iddleton ’s category of gulls,usurers and Spendthri fts

,ci ty wives and ci ty husbands and in

repeti tion the l ines have become coarser, l ike the situations, andthe humour at times fall s into horse play and worse. B romeenjoyed much populari ty in his day not only for his comediesof which A M ad Couple Well M atched , The An tipodes andA J ovial Crew are among the best , but l ikewise for his romanticdramas such as The Lovesick Court an d Queen an d Can cubin e

wherein he is p roclaimed a limb of F letcher.” B rome ’s worki s character ised by inventiveness and a pract ical knowledge of

the work in gs of the stage,there i s a certain rough honesty about

him,and hi s anxiety n ot to intrude and eagerness to keep ”

no more than “ the weakest branch o ’ the stage alive is att imes ludicrous . I t i s astonish ing that a man consciouslypossessed of so l i ttle poetry could have succeeded as well . Inhis comedy The N orthern Lass, B rome achieved his best effort.Therein a country girl becomes honestly in fatuated with agentleman who has offered himsel f to her as a fit husband hal f i n

j est. She follows him to London to find him on the eve of

marriage wi th a widow , and , in the midst of a series of intrigues ,exceedingly well managed

,stands forth a natural and pathetic

figure, absolutely clear-sighted and absolutely honest.The influence of Jonson and F letcher has been much insisted

on in these pages,but n ot beyond the warrant of the actual facts ;

for however the greater men triumphed in thei r individual i ty,the

lesser n ot only began but continued,with a few excep tions , under

thei r Spell . Both of these great men had employed classic storyin the drama, i t wil l be remembered , Jonson rigorously and witha sense of the d ifferences of ancient manners from those o f hisown day

,F letcher always more or l ess romantically. I t was

drama of the type of Valen tin ian or M assinger ’s Roman Actor

that presented to the subj ects of King Charles the ir p icture ofancient Rome ; and such p ictures Shade off in to the no man

’s landof happy romance so that we cease to remember that Shirley’sC oron ation lays the scene in Epire or The B roken Heart i nSparta. Thomas May is ch iefly remembered as the historian o fthe Long Parl iam ent and as a translator o f Vi rgi l and Lucan .

222 ENGLISH DRAMA

He was a man of distinction in h is day and , on his death , in1 650,

was buried with honours i n Westminste r Abbey. In theh istory of the drama

,May is interesting for his effort to follow

in the wake of Jonson in wr iting dramas on classical subj ectswith a due consideration of the ancien t authorities and of theideals o f ancien t tragedy. F our plays are t he resul t, writtenand some of them acted , none too successfully, between 1 626

and 1 63 1 they are by ti tle Cleopatra, Julia Ag rippina, An tigon e

and Julius Cmsar. The last remains in manuscr ipt. Pass ingCleopatra,

which i s a stronger play than Daniel’s on the sametop ic

,but which dare not o f course try conclusions with Shake

Speare or Dryden,we find in Agrippin a a genuinely effect ive

t ragedy,swi ft

,clear and eloquen t in parts. An tigon e i s scarcely

in fer ior,however the prevai l ing romant ic ism succeeded

,with

echoes of Macbeth and the witches and the death of Jul i et inher tomb , in seducing this devotee of the classics from the str icterpaths of hi s kind . May’s traged ies are well planned an d wellwritten

,and in an age less given over to the drama of intrigue

and surcharged Si tuation,might have enj oyed a success more

commensurate with thei r worth.

The few other plays of the period that drew on class ical subj ects e ither take us back to the universi ti es , where Seneca in thed ilution o f three generations stil l flourished

,or over absolutely

to the delocal ised tragicomedy that was leading on to the hero icplay. Among dramas o f the general kind and worthy a ment ion i s the meritorious Han n ibal an d Scipio of N abbes, whichtransforms the v ictor of Lake Trasimene , however , into theinfatuated lover of an unknown capt ive at Canum, Hem ing

’

s

The Jew’

s Tragedy, on the overthrow of Jerusal em by Titus ,and M essalin a by N athaniel Richards, an abl e and in terest ingtragedy , as effect ive as drama can be without the l i ft of poetry.Wi l l iam Heming deserves a passing ment ion as the son of JohnHeming

,Shakespeare’s fellow actor and Sharer in the Globe and

B lackfriars theatres . We know l ittl e of him save that he was

the author of an other tragedy, The F atal Con tract and that ,

a fter he had proved his father’s wil l in 1 630 ,

he proceeded to r idh imsel f of h is inheritance in Short order. Richards was a moredecorous person , a Devon man of good family, educated at Cambridge and latterly of the church . M essalina i s h is only play.Wi th Wi l l iam Cartwright , already ment ioned for comedy,

we go wholly over to the univers ity and to tragicomedy. Cartwright was identified all his l i fe wi th Oxford and noted for his

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224 ENGLISH DRAMA

n ot content h imsel f w ith a graver subj ect . And yet weknow, by the t i tle of on e of the quartos, that this same Hamlet

had been acted at both un 1versities , and Volpan e as wellthough this was l ater. Whether such performances wrought inpart the change or not , by the t ime that Charles came to h isthrone, we find n o such d ivergence between the drama of theLondon theatres and that of Oxford and Cambridge. Thepopular stage had suffered a mod ification that made i t al ike theh ei r of M arlowe and Shakespeare and of Lyly and Daniel , andthe scholars now strove with the courtiers and with lesser menin supplying the boards of the London playhouses as well as thehal ls of thei r colleges at home.When al l has been said , however, it must be con fessed that the

universi t ies only produced one dramatic poet o f note . This wasThomas Randolph , 3. Westminster lad who was first of TrinityCollege Cambridge and became later a master of arts of Oxfordas well . Randolph was descr ibed in his time as a bril l ian tscholar, possessed of a bod ily and mental vigour that l iterallyexhausted itsel f in excess ive effort. He d ied in 1 63 5 at the earlyage of thi rty, leaving beh ind h im , besides a Latin comedy

( though of his authorship of Corn elianum D olum doubt hasbeen expressed ) , three Engl ish plays and a version of the Plutusof Aristophanes as clever as i t i s ungovernably free. To theseworks may be added a couple of witty monologues, Aristippus

and The Con ceited Pedlar. I t was for the royal vis i t to Cambridge in 1 632 that Randolph prepared The Jealous Lovers, acomedy which enjoyed great success al though wri tten strictly onthe accepted academic l ines of Plautine intrigue. In TheM uses

’

Looking Glass, which appears to have been acted in London ,Randolph conceived an original theme pecul iarly adapted to h isl i ght sati rical genius. The scene is a playhouse into which twoPuri tans

,B ird , a featherman , and M is tress F lowerdew ,

a p inwoman

,have intruded to sell thei r wares. They are detained

by Roscius the actor, to witness several scenes in which humanv i ces or humours are cleverly represented in pai rs , each the extreme of the o ther , according to the Aristotel ian doctr ine ; and ,in the end

,the drama concludes with the glorification of golden

Med iocri ty, the mother of vi rtues . Thus coldly describedRandolph

’s play seems l i ttle more than a revers ion to the methodof the old morali ties , conducted after the manner of the Jonsonian humour. TheM uses

’

Looking Glass i s in real ity much more,however, in its or iginal ity, i ts wi t and really clever character

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 225

isation w ith in the accepted l imits of abstract ion . Among collegeplays by Randolph ’s immediate contemporaries may be mentionedThe R ival F rien ds by Peter Hausted ,

“cri ed down at Camb ridge in 1 63 1 , by boys

,faction and confident ignorance,

” i fthe author is to be trusted . There is also Abraham Cowley’samus ing Latin comedy N aufrag ium Joculare

,founded on a

boisterous episode of Plautus,al ready employed by Heywood in

the underplot of his Eng lish Traveller. Cowley’s sat i rical Engl ish comedy , The Guard ian ,

1 64 1 , was too impartial to the unworthy Caval i er , as to the hypocrit1cal Puri tan , for success at amoment when men were tak ing S ides for the impend ing struggleof the C ivi l War, although i t met with a better reception whenreacted after the Restoration as Cutter of Coleman Street. TheF laating Islan d by Wi ll iam Strode , orator of the univers i ty of

Oxford and later canon of Christ Church,was on e of the many

answers to Prynne. Strode’s play is a weighty allegory of thepassions in which is mirrored the complacency of the Caval ier andhis contempt for th e mal ignant whose right even to be heardis denied and whose courage in arms w as yet to be tested .

To return to Randolph , by far his most finished play isAmyn tas or the Impossible D owry, on e of the most poet icand success ful o f English ventures into that exotic form , thepastoral d rama. In thus recurring to the pastoral in the year1 63 5 , Randolph was in the height of contemporary dramaticfashion , as a considerable succession o f dramas by minor authorsgo to attest. Thomas Goffe , Ralph Kn evet, John Tatham ,

Joseph Rutter,Wal ter Montague , are the names of some of these

pastoral writers ; and the d iversi ty of thei r extraction goes somewhat to Show the range of this kind of play . Goffe , author ofThe Careless Shepherd ess, began with lurid tragedies on theO ttoman Turk when a boy at Oxford . Kn evet was tutor orchaplain in the Paston family in N orfolk and his Rhadon and

I ris i s an allegory of the relations and properties of variousplants and flowers

,

” by no means badly planned and wri tten evenal though the allegory is beyond us. Tatham fol lowed h i iddleton and Hey wood as “ laureate of the lord mayors’ shows andwrote other plays after the Restoration . His Love Crow n s the'En d

, 1 63 2 , is fi ttingly described as an early blossom of a subsequent harvest which was n ot contemptible . Rutter was amember of Jonson’s latest c ircle of wits and poets , and hisShepherds

’ Holiday was not only acted successfully before theking an d at the Cockp i t but was praised by the old laureate.

226 ENGLISH DRAMA

F inally Montague was a favouri te attendan t on Queen Henr ietta M aria and the author of the ted ious Shepherds

’

Parad ise in which the queen acted and which , as we have heard ,Prynne was alleged to have animadverted upon so outrageouslyin his Histriomastix. Better works than any o f these are Cowl ey’s Love

’

s R idd le, which that extraord inar ily precocious poetwrote when less than eighteen years of age and st il l a scholarat Westminster School , and Hen ry Glapthorn e

’

s Argulus an d

Parthen ia, derived from the Arcad ia an d consp icuous among

p as toral dramas for a t ragic conclus ion. Pastoral drama, whenall has been said , remained an exotic in England desp i te thegrace of Dan iel

,the dramatic art of F letcher and the ingenui ty

an d l i terary capabil i ty of Randolph , for his Amyn tas can

h ardly be overpraised for its poetical qual i ti es, i ts clever conductof plo t and its wit , grace and pathos. The age of Charles appears to have derived a real pleasure in following the viciss i tudesof the del i cate amorous throes an d anxieti es of Daphnis andAmoretta

,a matter wrapped up in a more g eneral tendency of

the age,i ts del ight in the n ew heroical romance. For Daniel

and even F letcher , the home of the lares and pen ates of thepastoral was I taly and its prophets were Tasso

, San nazaro an d

Guarin i. By the t ime that Randolph and his confreres had cometo wr i te

,these lares and pen ates had migrated to F rance and

M lle. de Scudery and Mons. D’

Urfé had succeeded to the officeof h igh priest and priestess. But to this we must soon returnin an other connection .

Ben Jonson died in 1 63 7 ; in the next year Wi ll iam Davenant succeeded to the laureatesh ip . Davenant , who became SirWi ll iam , was the son of an Oxford inn-keeper who rose to bemayor of h is town . Young Davenant was born in 1 606 an d

Shakespeare stood sponsor for him at baptism. Early in l i fe heentered the serv ice of Lord B rooke, better known in l iteraryannals as F ulke G reville, the friend of S ir Ph il ip Sidney and

author, as we have already seen , of two remarkable Senecantraged ies. I t is questionable i f Davenant was in any wise moredrawn to l i terature by associat ion with h is lordship than by arecollection of the example of Shakespeare. I t is not to be question ed that Davenant ’s first model was the F l etcher o f Thierryand Thead oret and The Bloody Brother, for to p recisely the

same catego ry of the sem i-historical tragedy of blood belong hisAlbavin e, King of Lombards, 1 626, and The Cruel Brother, ofthe next year. In this latter play we have a s ignal premon it ion

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228 ENGLISH DRAMA

the hero ic wh ich the S i tuation suggests . To the same year belongs Davenant ’s most success ful masque

, The Temple of Love.

Here the poet seems to have endeavoured to bring back themasque to its former reasonable status and redeem it from theextravagance and excess which i t had reached earl ier in th eyear in Shirley’s monster Triumph of Peace. Th e subj ect o fDavenant

’

s masque touches on the aff ectation of the moment,

Platonic love, and tells how D ivine Poesie has obscured fromthe unworthy the temple of chaste love to re-establ ish i t , in al lits pristine glory, by means of the influence of In damora

’

s ( thequeen ’s ) beauty. This was a very appropriate compliment ,for Henrietta lVIaria

,whose del icate romantic temper had been

nurtured in the salon of the M arquise de Rambouillet , was thetrue l eader in her husband ’s court o f the new F rench preciosity

,

on e of the refinements o f which was the cul t of Platon ic love.The vogue of the new preciosity in England was extraordi

nary and its influence on socie ty, manners and l i terature exceedin gly great. The salon s of l i terary ladies such as those of theDuchess of N ewcastle and the Countess of Carl isle were conducted in accordance with its laws ; the letters of Sir John Suckl ing to the lady whom he addressed as Aglaura were chargedwith i t as were the lyrics of Waller to his Saccharissa. In thed rama

,although F rench precios ity continued into the next age

as on e of the characteristics of the heroic play , the feature of i t ,know as Platon ic love, rece ived but a short Shri ft. AS earlyas 1 629, Jonson had described a true Platonique ” in that“ most Socratic lady, Lady F rampul ( in The N ew I n n ) ,whose “ humour ” i t i s to regard nothing a fel ici ty

,but to

have a multitude of se rvants Platon i c lovers ) and be calledmistress by them .

”An d James Howell expresses the Engl ish

attitude towards the whole matter,i n a lette r which coincides

with the date of Davenant’s masque , in the words , this loveSets the wits of the town on work.

”An example o f this i s the

curious anonymous dramati c sati re, Lady Alimony, which has

much to tell o f “ Platonic con fi den ts and “ cashiered con

sorts an other is Davenan t’s own Platon ic Lovers which followed hard upon his masque. In this contrast of a pai r of

lovers,who love Platon ically and d iscourse soul fully against

frui tion of love in marriage,” with a wholesome couple who

frankly court that they may marry, Davenant , though arguingthe case i ngen iously enough , l eaves us in no doubt as to h is ownatti tude on the subj ect. I t was upon these general achievements

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 229

in the drama that Davenant rece ived the laureatesh ip ; and justly ,when everything has been considered . The rest o f his workp rior to the Restoration is less important save for the thoroughlyheroic drama

, The F air F avourite, 1 63 8, which likewise contains much dignified and elevated d iscourse on the casuistry of'hero ic love . The other pre-Restoration dramas of Davenantinclude The Unfortun ate Lovers, a tragedy purely of the old

type of F letcher an d The D istresses ( later called The Span ishLovers ) , which is l i ttl e more than the translation o f a typicalSpan ish drama of cloak and sword . Davenant ’s three or fouro ther masques

,Prin ce D

’

Amour, Britan n ia Triumphan s andSalmacida Spolia (with perhaps Lumen alia ) by no means equalThe Temple of Love, but are meritorious efforts to follow inthe wake o f the previous great laureate without a t i the of hislyrical gi ft or his inexhaustible inventiveness. Davenant i sless easi ly disposed of than he who has read only about h immight suppose. Truly poetical he i s not, although he comesnear to the Simulation of poetry at t imes ; eloquent and no meanmaster of the devices of rhetoric , he i s o ften . His dramaticaptitude is n ot to be quest ioned and h is practical conversancywi th the stage makes every one o f hi s plays thoroughly practicable. Davenant was Engl ish to the core and remained suchdespite his F ren ch ifi ed name and certain experiences later inF rance. But there was a streak of the impracticable and ro

mantic in him o f which his rhyming ep ic , Gon d ibert, a poem ofgenuine worth

,however fanci ful

,i s a patent example , and i t

was this that made him the chief condui t by which the hero icp lay was carri ed over

, as we shall see, into a new age.But Davenant was by no means the only condui t. In the

now forgotten tragicomedies of Lodowick Carlell and those ofThomas Ki ll igrew we have equally certain forerunners of thehero ic play of O rrery and Dryden. Both men belonged tothe intimate circle of the court and both reached success in thei rwork because i t fell in with the contemporary taste , i n fashionable c i rcles

,for the intricate adventures

,elevated sentiment and

conventionally heroic virtues and passions that made for thevogue , each in i ts degree , o f the Spanish romantic drama andthe F rench heroic romances. Carlell

,who came of the border

stock of the Carlyles of Bryde Ki rk, rose through various preferments to be on e of the royal keepers of the great forest atR i chmond ; he d ied in 1 675 . The six or seven tragicomedies ofCarlell begin Wi th The D eserving F avourite the plot of which

2 30 ENGLISH DRAMA

is l i fted from a contemporary Span ish novel , in 1 629, and con

clude with The F ool would be F avourite, 1 638, the intricacyand artifi ciality of which alone Should be suffi cient to establi shits original ity. Carlell revel s in the heroic dilemma , th e struggl ebetween love and duty

,

“ love without the possibil ity of satisfact ion ( del ight of the Platoniques the duel of devotedfriends on a punctil io of honour and the l ike. In Arviragus

and Ph ilicia he lays h is scen e in ancient Bri tain and runs throughthe gamut of F letcherian fi gures

— the tyrant king,

“ hero icp rince

,fai thful friend , sage counsello r, imperious princess , and

the steadfast maiden,masquerad ing as a page , al l are there . But

his S i tuations are turned to the hero ic p itch and his ingenuities o fplo t carry us off into a world equally well described in ThePassion ate Lovers as Burgony.

”Carlell marks more than a

degeneracy in design,personage and Situation . His medium o f

expression is a loose mixture of blank-verse and prose,which

flows easily enough,but is too fibreless for good verse and too

rhythmic for success ful prose. N or i s K i ll igrew substantiallyd i fferent in kind . K i ll igrew was reared as a page in the courtof King Charles I and continued a favourite companion of

Prince Charles. He wrote h is earl ier plays while abroad , between 1 63 5 and 1 640 , and l ived to be a theatrical figure of notein the next age . His tragicomed ies are ful l o f act ion , adven

ture and melodrama. In Claracilla the princess o f‘

that nam eis rescued from a usurper by h er lover and his friends ; in ThePrison er, an heroi c pi rate holds princes for ransom and kidnaps thei r women folk

,and much of the story takes p lace at

sea. In The Prin cess, one o f the p ersonages is known asVirgilius , son to Jul ius Cmsar, and the plot of another play ,Cicilia an d Clorin da, i s confessedly derived from Le Gran d

Cyrus, i tsel f enough to explain all th is heroicalh

in sp iration .

Ki l l igrew wrote with fluency, n ot to say volub il i ty , but h is workin th is kind , l ike that of Carlell, is without d ist inct ion . Hisone pre-Restoration comedy, The Parson

’

s Wedd ing , acted - in

1 640 ,marks the lowest d egradation of the old stage i n the un

blush ing effrontery of i ts s i tuations and in i ts unparall eledribaldry. Two brothers of Thomas Ki l l igrew ,

Henry and SirWi ll iam ,

contributed several plays to the degenerate tragicomedyof adventure in which the family seem to have been especiallypract ised

, but. ne ither Palan tius an d Eudora, Silind ra, Pandora,Ormasdes, nor The Siege of

‘Urbin are in any w ise memorable

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232 ENGLISH DRAMA

of l iterature st ill busied themselves with the drama. F ranc isQuarles

,for example , the serious i f fantast ic rel igious poet , l eft

behind him a comedy of no great meri t ent itled The Virgi nWidow ; and Wi ll iam Habington , author of Castara, a tragedy,The Queen of Aragon , staged at court and at B lackfriars , weare told

,at great expense . O f the unfortunate Richard Love

lace,exquisi te lyrist of constancy

,the ti tles only and a few scraps

of two lost plays remain . The consci entious student will findseveral ti tles o f plays of these closing years to add to his l ist

,

i f he wil l search the later volumes of Dodsley’

s col lection .

Among them and elsewhere he will find a late recurrence toSeneca in the v i r il e tragedy, Imperiale, by Ralph F reeman , anda repeti tion of the story of Plan gus from the Arcad ia, alreadyused by F letcher, in An dramana, the M erchan t

’

s Wife. TheRebellion o f Thomas Rawlins is replete with band i ts, disguis es ,rescues and visions

,and N abbes’ Unfortun ateM other, refused

by the actors ,” has also been placarded by a modern edi tor as a

p lay that hardly allow s i tsel f to be read .

I n these very last years , on e writer of plays stands out aboveh is fellows , howsoever he wrote in the p revail ing modes ; and ,strange to say, that wri ter was Sir John Suckl ing, the lyricalpoet

,spendthri ft and trifler. But Suckling, who was fortune

’sdarl ing as to weal th , personal endowment and stat ion in l i fe,had enjoyed excellent training at Oxford and , above all th e restof his contemporaries , knew ,

admired and honoured the poet ryof Shakespeare. Suckl ing left three plays . Aglaura was stagedby the author in 1 63 7 with the same prod igal i ty that he bestowed two years later on the equipment of a company of horsefor his king. Aglaura i s a somewhat gloomy drama possessedo f the pseudo-historical atmosphere of i ts kind and full of thePlatonics of the passing moment. Wi th a flippan cy al together character istic

, Suckl ing wrote an alternative final act sothat the play might be acted a tragedy or a comedy. TheGoblin s i s a sprightly comedy of intrigue involv ing a couple ofvery hackneyed si tuations

,two noble houses at feud and a

pr ince’s rel inquishment of a maid whom he loves to a more fi tt ing suitor oi her own choice. B ren n aralt i s Suckl ing’s bestand most ambitious effort and interesting for its Byronic herowho is doubtless a proj ect ion of the poet h imsel f when h e wasn ot in his habi tual ly flippan t an d cynical pose. Suckl ing, however

,is not a d ramatist , with all his wit , h is mastery of style ,

his poetry ( i n wh ich he towers over the playwrights in th is

THE LAST OF THE OLD DRAMA 2 3 3

last decade ) , and h is occasional we ight o f thought . The bestthing in B ren n oralt i s a certain fine hero ic note that tel ls usthat even in this sybarite and trifler there was a spir it withinthat might have risen to better things than atonement for amisspent l i fe in suicide.The Puri tan had been at variance w ith the drama from the

very earl ies t t imes , and by no means without reason ; for theabuses of the stage have been many and only too glaring in all

ages. The hosti l i ty of the ci ty was now grown into a moreserious matter

,the hosti l i ty of Parl iament , and the intent to

regulate the per formance of plays and the bu ild ing of playhousesbecame mani fes t early in the reign . In the very year of theking’s accession , the acting of plays on Sunday was again forhidden and a peti tion for the build ing of an amphitheatre inLi ncoln ’s Inn F i elds fai led , in the next year , when i t was discovered that it was intended to house players . The notoriousN athaniel Gyles , who , as M aster of the royal chapel

, had

t raffi cked for a generation in boy actors , was forb idden anylonger to take up boys

,on plea of the royal service , to make

players of them ; and , in 1 63 1 , the B i shop of London was petition ed by the inhabi tants of Black friars for the removal of thetheatre from among them because i t interfered with traffic

,trade

and the worship of God . The friends of the d rama at courthad thei r hands full in th is phase of Puritan aggress ion andthe b itterness of the prosecution of Prynne marks the height ofthe Caval ier counter action . In 1 63 6 and 1 63 7 , the plaguekep t the playhouses closed for a month ; and Collier i s the question able authority for an order issued to suppress the players asearly as 1 640. F inal ly

,i n September 1 642 , came the ordinance

of lords and commons putting a stop to the performance of allp lays because of the outbreak o f the war . The Puri tan sup

press ion of the drama was an actual on e, and most of the playerssought service in the camp of the king. In 1 647 , in consequence of certain attempts on the part of the actors to resumeact ing

,the war being now over

,all players were declared com

mon rogues within the meaning of the old Statutes , thei r playhouses were dismantled and even attendance at a play became aStatutory offence.

CHAPTER X

DRYDEN AND THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION

THE ord inance of 1 642 had closed the theatres and brought toan untimely end the bri ll ian t drama that had flourished w ithsuch luxuriance during three generations . In the civi l war , the‘

p layers followed the k ing almost to a man , though there are

in d ications that some of them sought a l ivel ihood in the continuan ce of the practice of the i r pro fession abroad . Wi th theconclusion o f thewar, some of the players attempted enterta inments of various kinds , only to be met with more drastic regulat ions by thei r t riumphan t Puritan enemi es . Thus F letcher

’sKing an d N o King ( a somewhat suggestive t itle in wasannounced at Sal isbury Court , only to be stopped by the Sher iffs ;i n the next year

,the provisions of earli er acts hav ing expired ,

th e players p romptly opened to large aud iences at the F ortune,the Red Bul l and the Cockp i t , again to be d ispersed , in the lasti nstance

,by a party of Sold iers. Angered by these efforts on the

part of the actors, Parl iament passed the ord inance of F eb ruary1 648, authorising the destruction of all playhouses and the compulsion of all actors

, on pain of flogging and imprisonment, toenter into a recognisance “ never to act or play any plays ori n terludes any more.” Even with this , there seems to havebeen some connivance at per formances during the Commonwealth ; those in lesser authori ty could , on occasion , be reachedso as to wink at plays n ot too openly acted . An d private performan ces could

, of course , not be control led. In later Commonw ealth t imes the laws were less stringently enforced .

C romwell h imsel f was no such enemy of the drama as the Parliamen t which had preceded him in power, though he, too, continued to invoke the law on occasion .

During the ban upon the drama, var ious dev ices were employed to evade the letter of the law. Among them, by far themost successful was the d roll ” or “ drol l humour , whichwas commonly a single scene or S ituation , humorous or other,

2 34

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236 ENGLISH DRAMA

t ion , the second in a l ighter vein , th e whole interspersed w ithgood music by musicians of repute. I t was really a feeler to

test how far he might venture,and was sufficiently well re

ceived to encourage him to the preparation of the famous Siegeof Rhodes, made by the art of prospective in scenes and theStory sung in reci tative music.” In hi s address To the reader

,

”

Davenant carefully explains that the story as representedis heroical

,and

,I hope, intell igibly conveyed to advance

the characters o f v i rtue in the Shapes of valour and conjugallove.” This was a Sop to the Puritan Cerberus who had sti l lpower to bi te. Much was made , too, of the Scenic , musical andOperatic features to obscure as far as possible the ci rcumstancethat The Sieg e was in any wise a play. An d i ndeed the production , save for i ts change of scene , variety of costume and general characterisation

,can claim very li ttl e d ramatic merit.

Acted in August 1 656, The Siege of Rhodes was an immediatesuccess ; and , the wedge n ow entered , Davenant opened the

Cockpi t in 1 658, producing there two Similar operas,

” as hecal led them

,on the h istor ical top ics

,The Cruelty of the Span

iards in Peru and The History of Sir F ran cis D rake. The“ historical ” matter and “ improving ” purpose of these performan ces were nicely calculated to d isarm Puritan suspicionand an intended inquiry into thei r nature was frustrated by therap id movement o f events. The Sieg e of Rhodes, i t may heremarked , i s nei ther the first English opera

,the earl iest Engl ish

p lay to employ actresses on the stage , nor the earl iest play inEngland to make a change of scene . All these things have beenerroneously stated about i t. O nly the author ’s own misuse o fthe term could have caused i t to be designated an opera ; thewomen who appeared in i t were chosen for thei r voices , not forthei r act ing

,and at least on e of them ,

the well known M rs.

Coleman , had already appeared in Davenant’s previous enter

tainmen t. AS to scenery,we have already heard of eight

changes of scene in Cartwright’s Royal Slave acted at Oxfordin the year 1 63 6.

This is not the place in which to detail the events that led tothe Restoration of King Charl es I I . Soon after the arrival ofGeneral Monck in London , F ebruary 1 660,

John Rhodes , formerly a wardrobe keeper in the King’s company

,received per

mission to open a playhouse in Charing Cross , and other companics soon followed at the Red Bull and Sal isbury Court. I nAugust Thomas K i ll igrew and Sir Wi l l iam Davenant secured

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 237

a royal patent empowering them to erect two companies ofplayers. And n ow Sir Henry Herbert , the long quiescentMaster of the Revels , intervened to assert the authority whichhe had held over from the previous reign . Out of the d isputes ,divisions

,combinations and compromises that followed there

emerged two recogn ised companies,the King’s

,presided over by

Ki ll igrew ,and the Duke of York’s company, headed by Daven

ant. F rom 1 66 1 on , the latter company acted at the playhouse inLincoln ’s Inn F i elds , Portugal Row ,

until transferred,i n 1 67 1 ,

three years after Davenant ’s death , to thei r new and handsometheatre in Sal isbury Court , F l ee t Street , on a si te known asDorset Garden . The King’s players occupied the TheatreRoyal in D rury Lane ( although the house was n ot yet so call ed )from 1 663 . Thus fostered by the royal patronage

,staged by

those p ractically acquainted with the demands of the theatre andacted by d istinguished actors

,Thomas Betterton foremost among

them,the stage entered

,histrionically at least

,on on e of i ts most

brill iant periods. To this the innovation , which rapidly becamethe rul e

,that women ’s parts Should be acted by women , con

t ributed n ot a l i ttle . F or whatever the consequences from thepoint of View of society and morals , the superiority o f the newactresses — many of them l ike Mrs. Barry and Mrs. B racegirdl e superior artists as well as beauti ful women — over thesqueaking boys o f the previous age was paten t.After the Restoration

,Davenant , immersed in management ,

took no such posi tion as an original dramatist as had been h isin the previous rei gn . A second part o f The Siege of Rhodes,acted and printed with the first par t in 1 662

,i s in ferio r l ike

most s equels . The Siege and The D istresses ( doubtless th esame with The Span ish Lovers ) are capabl e romantic comedieswhich the author carried ove r from earl ier times . In ThePlayhouse to be Let

,Davenant util ised the material of his two

h istorical entertainments of the time of Cromwell , already mention ed

,to concoct a diversifi ed performance , devoid of the Sl ight

est pretens ions to uni ty . Some topical sati re on the untowardtheatrical condi tions during the recent suppression of the drama ,may have carried i t off. An d in The M an

’

s the M aster wehave a coupl e of the comedies of Scarron , rather cleverly com~

b in ed . The rest of Davenan t’s work after the Restorat ion i s

made up of adaptations,chiefly of Shakespeare , in which he set

a v ic ious example,the continuance of which has gone on to our

present day. Thus, Davenan t’s History, M urders, Life and

2 38 ENGLISH DRAMA

Death of M acbeth was acted in 1 666, d rest in all i ts fi nery,as new clothes

,n ew scenes , machines , as flyin gs for the witches ,

with all the s inging and dancing in i t being in the natureof an opera.” 1 An d Davenant’s and Dryden

’s adaptation of

The Tempest which duplicates th e rOles of F erdinand andM i randa on contrasted islands and gives Caliban a sister , wasstaged with unexampled effects in the next year. Both enj oyedan extraordinary success. Kill igrew, who had become groomof the king’s bedchamber an d later Chamberlain to the queen ,contented h imsel f , so far as his own works were concerned

,with

the revival of hi s Parson’

s Wedd ing against which , when i t wasscandalously acted only by women

,even the easy-going Pepys

exclaims .

The repertory of th e earl i er years of th e Restorat ion wasmade up largely of revivals of the older drama

,F letcher lead

ing in popularity,with Shakespeare a close second . Afte r

Davenant ’s example, i t b ecam e the custom to alter the olderplays on these revival s

,a thing which indeed had long before

been done,but never so brazenly avowed . There was scarcely

a playwright,from D ryden and Betterton to Van brugh and

F arquhar who d id not takq vpart i n this merry game of pillagingand “ improving the works of thei r predecessors. Earl iest inpo in t of time , were several p ieces of dram ati c j ou rnal ism , sat iriz in g the Puritans and thei r discomfi ture, such as The Rumpor the M irror of the Late Times by Tatham , Sir RobertHoward ’s Committee

,Crow n e

’

s City Politics and Lacy’s Old

Troupe; and here belongs Cowley’s revival of an older comedy

under the ti tl e of Cutter of Coleman Street. The comedies ofseveral “ gentlemen of qual i ty

,

” too,were staged in the Sixt ies ,

one of Sir Robert Stapyl ton , on e of Roger Boyle , Earl o f O rrery ,and a very few of the man y penned by the Duke of N ewcastle andthe innumerabl e more by his l i terary Duchess .2 N one of theseproductions are memorable. Indeed

,unti l D ryden came , i n the

d rama,to his own

,but on e playwright stands out with any d is

tin ctn ess. This was John Wi lson , born at Plymouth and alawyer by profess ion , who became later secretary to the Duke of

1 Dow nes,Roscius Ang licanas, p . 3 3 .

2 The Stepmother by Stapylton , 1 664 ; Mr. An thony, probab ly Or

rery’s ; Th e Humorous Lovers and The Triumphan t Wid ow of New

castle w ere b oth acted b efore 1 67 3 . The work of the Duch ess is ear

lier as an ed ition of tw e nty-one of her p lays was prin ted in 1 662.

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240 ENGLISH DRAMA

an opportun ity of another kind ; and , afte r on e or two falsestarts

,he reached a qualified success in The Rival Lad ies, 1 664.

Into the details of the interest ing l iterary career of Dryden atl arge

,his successes as a panegyrist, sati rist, translator , cri tic and

general poet,i t is impossible to enter here. His controversy with

Sir Robert Howard as to the use of rhyme in the drama belongsto the years immediately following his first dramatic recogn i

t ion ; and here he was interrupted by the intervention of theplague and the consequent closing of the theatres for a time.In 1 667 Dryden renewed h is d ramatic efforts w ith Secret Love,

the highly success ful play in which the acting of N ell Gwynreached the heart o f her suscept ible royal lover and the associ at ion of Dryden with Davenan t and the Duke’s theatre fol lowedand

,later

,a more permanent agreement with the King’s players

on Dryden ’s part to supply that company with three plays ayear. F or this Dryden was to rece ive a Share in the profits ofthe company ; and this he d id receive , notwithstanding that hen ever contributed more than on e play within a s ingl e year.Later

,difficulties arising

,Dryden trans ferred h is services back

to the r ival house. In 1 670, he succeeded Davenant as poetlaureate. This put Dtryden , on its face, in a sol id financial pos it ion ; but so i rregularly paid were al l the offices o f the crown ,in the impecunious court of Charles, that Dryden , no less thanpreced ing dramatists

,was compelled to write for h is bread. I t

was thi s necessi ty that pal l iates, i f i t cannot excuse, the poet’s

complacency in wri ting so loosely in comedy that even that looseage at times decried him ; and i t was this doubtless, too , thatcaused him to attempt to catch the popular taste in a grossmisrepresentat ion of the Dutch in their alleged cruelties to Engl i sh merchants

,i n Amboyn

'

a, and to perpetrate the bi tter attack

upon the Roman clergy, in the t ime of the excitement o f thePopish plot

,that the character of the Spanish friar, in the play

of that t itl e, conveys.Between 1 668 and 1 681 no less than fourteen plays of var ious

k inds came from the p roduct ive pen of Dryden , who , be i t remembered

,was wri ting much besides. Comedy , tragicomedy,

the n ew heroic play, the new hybrid , opera, tragedy in the oldenmanner, t ragedy in the n ew manner of Corneille , all these thingswere attempted and — everything considered — surprisinglywell accomplished by this extraord inary

,industrious

,adaptable

and bri ll ian t gen ius. Dryden,with al l h is t riumphs

,was not

altogether a dramatist by nature. He recogn ised h is own com

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 24!

parative failure in comedy, and in those fine, frank , luc id intervals that recur in his critical wri tings , ackii owledged h is ownl imi tations. Hewrote incessantly, both in season and out.Hence there is

,in h is d ramatic writings , an extraord inary in

equali ty that ranges from the eloquent hyperbole of the heroicplays and from tragedies in which he followed with honestfreedom and individuali ty the footsteps of Shakespeare andC orneille, down to the garbling Spol iat ion o f Troilus an d Cres

sida, the tagging of Parad ise Lost into a rhymed opera, andthe perpetration of the d isgust ing dramatic sati re called Limberham.

The most recent author ity on D ryden has given us so excellent a classification of the plays of the poet that we can not dobetter than follow it.s F irst , the comedies , some S ix in number

,range from The Wild Gallan t, a failure in 1 663 , to

Amph itryan ,a deserved success, in 1 690. O f the others, The

Assig n ation and M arriage ci la M ode are al together negligible ,and Limberham,

already adverted to, while better planned andwritten than almost any of the group , i s of an intolerable grossness. Sir M artin Mar-all

,which dates 1 667 , enj oyed a long

continued populari ty in the author ’s l i fe-t ime and,we may agree,

i s the most uni formly amusing of D ryden ’s comi c plays ,” not

w ithstand ing that he is all eged in i t merely to have correctedprevious work by the Duke of N ewcastle on the bas i s of a com

b ination of two comedies respectively of Moliere and Quinaul t.Amph itryon i s an exceed ingly d iverting comedy on the old s toryof Jupi ter’s v is i t to Alcmena which Plautus h imsel f doubtlessborrowed from an earl ier Greek comic poet and Mol iere triedhis hand at as well. The comic si tuation o f the two Sosi as , i twil l b e recal led

,i s that of the two Dromios

,prolonged and

ampl ified . I t can n ot be den ied that Dryden has bettered hisGreek an d F rench models

,for h is work i s far more than an

adaptation o f ei ther. Dryden ’s comedy, l ike everything else thathe attempted

,i s admirably wri tten ; his touch on occaS1on i s

l ight,his wit abundant. Wh at he lacks is the moisture of hu

mour. While he i s clever enough in construction and uni formlyhappy in his d ialogue , his abil ity to portray and d i fferentiatecharacter falls short of that of many lesser playwrights. F ew

better i llustrations of this could be found than Domenic , the

3 Sir Augustus Ward in The Cambridge History of English Literature

,viii

, pp . 1 5-3 3 .

242 ENGLISH DRAMA

famous and popular personage who gives t itle to The Span ishF riar, which is more a comedy than a serious drama from his

p rominence in i t. A momentary comparison of Dryden ’s friarw ith F alstaff d iscloses the di fference. Both are gross , fat ,essent ial ly di shonest and knavish ; yet, from thei r humorou sappeal , intended to b e attract ive rather than repel lent. We

condone the l ies and transgress ions of F alstaff, open and palpahle though they are

,because of his in imi table wit and charm.

In contrast , we may wel l bel ieve that the success of Domenicdepended largely on the actor and that even Anthony Leigh

,

who,Cibber tel ls us

,was so famed for the part , must have

struggled against the unsympathetic dep ravity of th is would-begenial l iar and disgrace to h is order.A second group of Dryden

’

s dramas are th e tragicomedies inthe old sense . The earliest is The Rival Lad ies, of Spanisho rigin or example at least. In this

,his second dramatic venture ,

two scenes are wri tten in rhym e by way of experiment. Thein artifi ciality in the dev ice of two ladies, each in the disgu ise ofa page for love of the same man

,l eads to some pretty compl ica

t ions,but is proo f of the d ramatist’s immaturi ty ; the inroads of

robbers,n icely timed to the action

,suggest an acquaintance with

some of Ki l l i grew’s tragicomedies or thei r sources. This sur

mise becomes a certainty in the case of Secret Love or th’

e

M aiden Queen , already ment ioned , which i s founded , as to th eserious parts

,on the famous romance of the day

,Le Grand

Cyrus. The light comedy part of F lorimel seems Wr i tten forthe pert talents of M i stress Gwyn ; and , i ndeed , Dryden 18 neverbette r in comedy than in the vivacious fencing of gallantry,which , however much he may have learned of the past, set a;

model for many a scene to come.4 O f The Span ish F riarenough has been said . The remaining tragicomedy i s Love

Triumphan t, the poet’s latest work for the stage, acted in 1 694

and a failure. The best that can be said fo r i t is that Drydenseems in this instance

, as in some others , to have been workingagainst the grain

,for not only is the action “ forced and un

natural ,” but even his habitual command of verse fail s h im at

t imes.

4 ~Cf . especially the mock articles of agreemen t betw een Florizel andCeladon w ith the similar scene of Congreve

’s Way of the World be

tween Millamon t an d M irabell.

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242 ENGLISH DRAMA

famous and popular personage who gives t itle to The Span ishF riar, which is more a comedy than a serious drama from his

p rominence in i t. A momentary comparison of Dryden ’s friarw ith F alstaff d iscloses the di ff erence. Both are gross , fat ,essent ially di shonest and knav ish ; yet, from thei r humorousappeal , intended to be attractive rather than repel lent. We

condone the l i es and transgress ions of F alstaff, open and palpable though they are, because of his inimitable wit and charm .

In contrast , we may wel l bel ieve that the success of Domenicdepended largely on the acto r and that even Anthony Leigh

,

who, Cibber tel ls us, was so famed for the part , must havestruggled against the unsympatheti c dep ravi ty of th is would-begenial l iar and disgrace to h is order.A second group of Dryden

’

s dramas are the tragicomedies inthe old sense. The earl ies t i s The Rival Lad ies, of Spanisho rigin or example at least. In th is

,his second dramatic venture ,

two Scenes are written in rhyme by way of experimen t. Thein artifi ciality 1n the device of two ladies, each m the disgu ise ofa page for love of the same man

,l eads to some pretty compl ica

t ions,but 15 proo f o f the dramatist

’

S immaturi ty ; the inroads o frobbers

,n icely t imed to the action

,suggest an acquaintance with

some of Ki ll igrew’s tragicomed ies or thei r sources. This surmise becomes a certainty in the case of Secret Love or the

Maiden Queen , already ment ioned , which i s founded , as to th eserious parts

,on the famous romance of th e day, Le Grand

Cyrus. The l ight comedy part of F lorimel seems written forthe pert talents of M i stress Gwyn ; an d , i ndeed , Dryden 15 neverbette r in comedy than in the vivacious fencing of gallantry ,which

,however much he may have learned of the past , set a;

model for many a scene to come.4 O f The Span ish F riarenough has been said . The rema1n 1n g t ragicomedy is LoveTriumphan t, the poet

’s latest work for the stage , acted in 1 694‘

and a failure. The best that can be said fo r i t is that Drydenseems in this instance

, as in some others, to have been work in gagainst the grain

,for not only is the act ion “ forced and un

natural ,” but even his hab itual command of verse fail s h im at

t imes.

4‘Cf . especially th e mock articles of agreemen t b etween Florizel and

Celadon w ith the s imilar scen e of Congreve’s Way of the World be

tween M illamon t an d M irabell.

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 243

In the heroic play, using that term in its str ictest acceptat ion ,we have the most characteristic group of the d ramas of Dryden.

There are two ways in which to view the heroic play. O n e,

which i t i s not to be denied certain of the utterances of the poeth imsel f go far to warrant

,makes the term equivalent practically

to a drama wri tten in rhyming couplets .5 I f we look somewhat more closely into the matter

,we see at once that there is

something more in the heroic play than this . I t was no lessa person than Davenant who first employed the term , heroique

play,” to designate not only his Siege of Rh odes (which he cal ls

elsewhere an opera ) but l ikewise his blank-verse tragicomedy,Love and Hon our

,as we have already seen . That play

,i f we

look back to i ts paterni ty,marks only a Step from such dramas

o f F letcher as The Kn ig ht of M alta or The Loyal Subj ect,i n which heightened si tuation and personages conceived in thed ilation of heroic pass ion hold contest i n generosi ty, magn an imity, faithfulness to plighted word and other of the largerv i rtues. The heroic

,indeed , i s an element of incessant recur

rence in the drama as in other art. I t crops out in Alphonsusof Aragon who levies tribute on three continents

,i n Tambur~

laine who conquers the world , in Bussy D’

Ambois whoseproud heart will yield to no man . This is the hero superhuman ,the hero of the old exorbitant romantic drama of action and maybe classified as an excess of the hero pas sionate which is exemplifi ed in Lear , O thello or Macbeth . N ow the heroic Spiri tin the newer drama

,beginning wi th F letcher , i s of a totally

d iff erent type ; i t expresses i tsel f p rimarily nei ther in action norin passion

,but in heightened sentiment. Substi tuted for event

and character,we have analysis of conduct ; i n place o f the

hyperbol e o f poetry, we have , too often , merely the fl ights of

rhetoric. Exaggeration here leads , as I have wri tten elsewhere

,n ot to the d ilation of the supernatural , but to the

humanly extraordinary and amazing. The hero superhumanand the hero passionate have been displaced by the hero supersensi tive

,by ‘the paragon of virtue and the pattern of noble

conduct.’ The themes of the heroic drama are ‘honour wonby valour ,

’ and ‘valour inspi red by love.’ I ts rivalries arerivalries in nobil i ty o f soul ; i ts combats , less those o f the sword

5 See L. N . Ch ase, Th e Eng lish Heroic Play, 1 903 , pp . 3 an d the list

o f rhyming p lays in wh ich even comed ies are in cluded .

244 ENGLISH DRAMA

than those of fort itude, loyalty, and the sacr ifice to honour andplighted word .

” 6

The personages of the heroic play are of exalted rank,its

scene l i es in some outland ish country — M exico , China, Tartary, Persia —or on e i ndeterminate geographical ly at least.I ts background i s on e of war , conspiracy and court intrigue.N ow all th is is F letcher ; and equally F letcherian i s the ac

cep ted method of the hero ic play, that of a heightened contrast.Some have found a greater Simpl ici ty of plot characteristic of

the heroic play,a quali ty in which i ts greatest exemplar

, TheConquest of Gran ada, i s far from conspicuous. But Simplici tyof plot was one o f Shi rl ey

’s contr ibutions to the tragicomedy of

his t ime ; a characteristic which was by no means followed bythe degenerate imi tators of the hero ic in F letcher , to wit , Carlell, K i ll igrew and thei r l ike. As to the sources of the heroi cplay in Spanish fict ion and drama and

,more immediately

,in the

F rench romances , F letcher had already broached the first, Mas

S inger the second , and F letcher , stil l again , with Ki ll igrew andCarlell after him the l ast. So that , when everything has beensaid

,all that the authors of the n ew heroic play accompl ished

by way of actual novelty was to exaggerate what had alreadybeen exaggerated

,to heighten stil l more and make more florid

an already exalted d ict ion , and to substitute for the suppl eblank-verse of F letcher or the hybrid prose-verse of Carlell,the regular tread of th e rhymed couplet.A nice question here arises : who first wrote rhyming plays ?In the old age , the group of dramatic wri ters that imi tatedF rench tragedy in the manner of Seneca employed rhyme andmany a poetic p lay of the same earl ier t ime had done likewise.So a rhyming play was really no new thing. I t was the rhyming heroic play that was the innovation , the form clearly suggested by the pract ice of F rench tragedy— and the questionwho first wrote in thi s part icular manner in England l ies between Davenant , Sir Robert Howard , Roger Boyle Earl ofO rrery, and Dryden . We may rule out Davenant , as his Siegeof Rhodes i s heroic but not str ictly a play ; th e claim of Howardis wrapped up with that o f Dryden . The order of the earl iestgroup of rhyming hero ic plays i s The I nd ian Q ueen by Howardand Dryden , acted in January 1 664 ; Hen ry V by O rrery, in

6 Elizabethan Drama, 1 908, 11, 349, where the tap ic is d iscussed moreat large.

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246 ENGLISH DRAMA

Rhodes and The Rival Ladies ) from 1 664 to 1 680, w i th a fewSporadic examples later. I f we throw out of count the com

edies and other non-hero ic p ieces , the actual number of playswhich fulfil the stric t cond itions of the rhyming heroic play isreduced to someth ing n ot much more than hal f this number.On the other hand , i f we classi fy by spiri t , not by form alone ,we can readily double the first l ist with in the period in the nowforgotten works o f Lee, Crown e, Settl e , Banks , Durfey andlesser men . Even O tway began in rhyming plays of the heroictype. But when al l i s said , Dryden not only set the fashion ofthe heroic play ; he was alone truly eminent in it ;

'

for he aloneof all these writers had the force, the eloquence and the sustaining poet ry to carry th is enormous weight of magnificence

,noise,

bustle,sentiment and exaggeration . To take an example , in the

two parts of The Conquest of Granada,acted in 1 670 ,

Drydeni s equally independent of the trammels of fact and of the dullsequence of historical events. His hero , Almanzor

,supposed a

M ahometan pr ince, is in real i ty the son of the Christian Dukeof Arcos, and he c arri es out to the full the new hero ic ideal .He is, to use Dryden

’s own words, of an excessive and over

boil ing courage a character of eccentr ic vi rtue I des ign in him a roughness of character almost approach ing to arrogan ce, but those errors are incident only to great sp i ri ts ; !forh is

,too

, ] is a frank openness of nature, an easiness to forgiveh is conquered enemies and to protect them in distress ; and , aboveall

,an inviol able fai th in h is affections.” Alman zor

’s actions

are in keeping with these traits . He takes the weaker S ide,always and without question . He changes sides whenever h ethinks h imsel f personally i ll-treated , and he brings unfail ingvictory to the party whose cause he espouses. He l iberates hisp r isoners hab itually without a ransom and obeys w ith absolutel i teralness whatever he bel i eves to be the w ishes of h is beloved .

Almahide, h is incomparable lady, is no less noble in her unassai lable fidel i ty an d unexceptionabl e propriety of conduct. I t isn ot unt i l we are far advanced into the second part , that the heroi s permitted so much as‘ to kiss her hand . To give even in outl ine the ins and outs of the action o f The Con quest of Granada

would take four or five pages of prin t in th is s ize. F actions ,d issensions

,sall ies

,sk irmishes , d iscover ies, and execut ions de

layed,mutin ies

,ordeals of battle , the v is itations of ghosts and ,

ever and anon,sighs and flames from the three or four pairs

of lovers whose protestations of fidel i ty or Struggles of gen

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 247

erosity play an incessant obl igato to the trumpets o f war theseare some of the contents of this play. The drama is obviouslywritten for its great scenes ; and the love-making, renunciat ions,and pleadings , the lofty decis ions as to conduct and the eloquen tbombast , all go to make a bewildering succession of brill iant andrapid scenes

,under the Spell o f which , even in our own age

beguiled as we are by the banal i ties of grand opera — we mightwell fall the v ictim. I t i s much easier to laugh at the absurdities of the heroic play, read in cold print , than to appreciatewhat must have been the charm of i ts novel ty and the loftynature o f the ideals which i t upheld in an age that needed moralideals to sustain i t beyond any Engl ish time that we know . Aswe read these heroic dramas of Dryden , we fall insensibly intothe swing of his swi ft , agile succession o f thought , sustained on

a current of enthusiasm for these outlandish creatures of h isimagination and though we find them again and again grotesque

,

judged by any standards that are ours,we can n ot wholly decry

an art that was after all Sincere in i ts way and eminently suc

cessin l in the thing that i t set out to do .

Wi th the success of The Con quest of Granada, imitation set

in . In the next year,1 67 1 , Elkana Settle , a clever and pre

sumptuous young man of three and twenty, produced his Em

press of M orocca with rival magnificence and , by means o f theinfluence of Rochester, the enemy of Dryden , the play was twicepresented at court and was repeated by B etterton with Signalapproval on the popular stage. A few years later

, Settle followed this up with his I brah im the I llustrious Bassa ( directfrom Calprenede) , which enjoyed almost as enthusi astic a re

cep tion . But thrust in this manner into Dryden’

s gl i tteringheroic car

,Settl e ’s fall was Speedy. His petty pol itics and

changes of party, with the absence o f anything l ike poetic spi ri tor the upl i ft even o f rhetoric in his work , soon reduced him toa more fitting Sphere , that of poet of the ci ty

’s pageantry. N onethe l ess his act ivi ty in wri ting for the stage continued in theproduction of nearly a score o f plays ; although the name of

Settle i s n ow remembered solely for Dryden ’s contemptuousportrai t of him as Doeg in the second part of Absalom an d

Ach itophel. An abler rival of Dryden , also brought forwardby Rochester, was John Crown e

,who began l iterary work in

1 665 , with a prose romance , and some five or six years thereafterresorted to the stage . In his eight serious plays

,written between

1 67 1 and 1 692, Crown e is eclectic enough in h is pract ice but

248 ENGLISH DRAMA

imitative throughout of the pass ing fashions of his t ime. Thus,

h is Charles VIII of F ran ce, acted in 1 672 , i s , l ike O rrery’s

Hen ry V,history transformed into heroic rhyming drama

, con

cocted with a love sto ry which is wholly fict it ious ; and hisDestruction of Jerusalem,

1 677 , is Sheer imitat ion of The Con

quest of Gran ada,even to being wri tten in two parts. This

second play of Crow n e’

s enjoyed a success on the stage incred ible to us as we read its commonplace and unilluminatedl ines ; and we real ise how much these dramatic Spectacles depended

,then as n ow , on thei r gorgeousness of costume , novelty

of scenery, ingeniousness of effect and the excitemen t of thingsseen in crowds in the bewilderment of dazzling l ight. Crown e

gave up rhyme when Dryden d id so , writing his most vigorousan d original trag edy, The Ambitious Statesman , 1 679, i n blankverse on the l ines o f Marlowe and The Span ish Tragedy butemulating the extravagance rather than the meri ts of thoseancien t plays . Again following Dryden , he reverted to classicalsubj ects in Thyestes, a tragedy of revolting horror

,in Darius,

Regulus and Caligula, reducing all the heroes of antiqui ty , afterthe accepted manner of his time, to conventional gentlemenwholly preoccupied with the passion of love. Crow n e

’

s fivecomedies were acted between 1 675 and 1 694. They enjoyeda greater reputation than we feel i t possible to al low them n ow .

The best o f them, Sir Courtly N ice long held the stage. But

Crown e’

s most interesting production is h is court masque,

”

Calisto which Rochester’s influence engaged h im to p repare in

1 675 , l ess to advance Crown e than to humil iate the laureateD ryden . Calisto i s a well-written effort to revive a lost form ,

but i t is scarcely poet ical . Crow n e was an estimable man andhe enj oyed the good will of King Charles. F ortunate he wasn ot and he drops out of Sigh t in the n ineties .O n e other writer of heroi c plays, from a certain Sp ir it and

fi re that was in him as well as from his collaboration withD ryden

,deserves more than a passing mention . This is N a

than iel Lee. Lee was the son of a min ister who had contr ivedto deserve wel l as a Presybterian in Cromwell

’s day and better,

as a divine o f the Church of England , later on . After leav ingCambridge, the younger -Lee l ed a d issolute l i fe , while enjoyingthe unstabl e patronage of Buckingham and Rochester ; and , afterfailure as an actor , despite extraord inary powers of elocution ,became on e of the most popular dramatists of his day. Lee

rej oiced in amb itious subj ects an d in Splendour of the settings

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250 ENGLISH DRAMA

work of the d issolute and witty Duke of Buckingham , ass istedby several others , Cl i fford , Sprat and Butler ( author of Hudi

bras ) , i t is said , among them . The play d iscloses nei ther unityof authorsh ip nor unity of plan , and i t was in process of mak

ing,i t is reported

,as far back as 1 663 , when Davenant was to

have been the hero. Then Sir Robert Howard was to havetaken Davenant

’s place ; but performance , for which the playwas ready in 1 665 , fail ing because of the plague , the drama wasagain rewri tten and the n ew poet laureate made the butt o fattack. The Rehearsal i s after all no very venomous matter ;the authors were content merely to laugh at the absurdities o fthe heroic Sp iri t at large

,the want of serious plotting or motive

in plays o f the type and the bombast and h igh-flown languagein which much of them was written . The effort was an immediate success

,both on the stage and in the many printed ed i

t ions that were called for ; and D ryden recognised , with hisusual good sense

,that the case was hopelessly against h im and

made no reply. Indeed the n icknam e Bayes clung to him everafter

,and i t is not impossible that The Rehearsal may have

h astened Dryden’s repudiation of rhyme for dramatic writ ing

and his return to blank-verse, although this came later . To say,however

,that The Rehearsal killed the hero ic play, i s to say far

too much ; for the speci es continued in h igh repute for at l easta decade after , animating , even later , the works of lesser or oldfashioned men . A more certain influence of Buckingham ’s burlesque i s i ts exampl e for a l ine of l ike dramas among whichSheridan

’s Critic alone rivalled i t in success. As to Dryden,

two other dramas of his belong to the category of the rhymingh eroic play , Tyran n ic Love, which immed iately preceded TheCon quest of Gran ada, and Aureng -Zebe, with which his heroics eries concludes

,not staged until 1 676 . Both plays are abso

lutely within the type, although Tyran n ic Love treats a subj ectsomewhat more actually historic than usual among productionsof i ts class , the subj ect of Maximin

’s persecution of the Christ ians and the martyrdom of Saint Catherine. The tragedy of

Aureng-Zebe only falls Short o f The Con quest of Granada be

cause it l ess extravagantly exhibi ts the characteristics of i ts class.The personage who gives his name to the play is described as thelast descendant of Timur Kahn , and he was actually al ive at thet ime of Dryden ’s play ; but , as Ward well observes , his namecan scarcely have come home more closely to Engl ishmen atlarge than that of M ithridates ,

” and the play is wholly con

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 251

ven tional in its Sett ing and given over to the factions , bustl e,warfare and love—making of its k ind . In Aureng -Zebe, the ploti s clearer

,the action less confused , the poetry , which is abundan t ,

more restrained,for in i t , as both the preface and the prologu e

attest,Dryden was wearying of restrictions of rhyme an d

recognis ing more and more how in ferior was al l h is art o fstrenuous endeavour to the Simple touch of Shakespeare and h isheal thier age.8

O r Dryden ’s degradat ion of his dramat ic art to pander topol itical prejud ice and of his makings over of the work ofgreater men

,enough has been said . His Duke of Guise, written

in col laboration with Lee,i s an example o f both these things .

The tragedy of md ipus, written with the same collaborator, i sa nobler play. Albion an d Alban ias, 1 685 , and King Arthur,1 69 1 , are what D ryden called

“ Operas , though the first i srather an elaborate poli tical allegory in the manner of a masqueand the second was suspected of conceal ing a Similar secondmeaning. These productions are Sustained throughout by Dry

den ’s poet ry, which was equal apparently to any task put uponi t, and they are better understood i f we remember the D rydenof Absalom an d Achitophel. O f the fame and the enemieswhich th is great sat i re brought , al l know who read . In theearly eighti es , Dryden held much of the l i terary dictatorshipwhich had once been Jonson ’s

,and he was greatly in request

for his admirable prologues and ep ilogues in which especially heexcelled. On the death o f Ki ng Charles , James , his successor,continued the royal bounty to D ryden ; but that bounty was , asi t had always been , precarious . At this time the poet avowedhimsel f a Roman Catholic , for which change of faith , he wasroundly abused by his enemies . I t will be remembered that twofamous argumentative poems of Dryden ’s d isclose first why hewas of the faith o f England and then how he found a deeperreligious contentment in the faith of Rome .9 I t is n ot necessaryto explain D ryden ’s conduct in this respect as a d iscred i t to h isconvictions

,although his flattery of great ones and his de

pendency on the royal favour make the suggestion that hi schange of fai th was unworthy

,not a thing wholly incredible.

3 See especially the ep ilogue to The Conquest of Gran ada ,beg in n in g

w ith the word s : Sp ite of all h is p ride, a secret Sh ame invades h isbreast at Sh akespeare

’s sacred n ame.

9 Relig io Laici, 1 682 ; The Hin d and the Pan ther, 1 687 .

252 ENGLISH DRAMA

Wi th the Revolut ion of 1 688, Dryden lost all h is offices andhad the mortifi cation of seeing his rival and in ferior, ThomasShadwell , succeed him in the laureateship . M is fortune andi ll health assailed h im

,but his mental powers remained um

fail ing and he continued his l iterary labours , translating an d

publ ishing to the end,howsoever hi s last play, Love Triumphan t,

had failed on the stage in 1 694. Dryden d ied in May 1 700.

There remain three traged ies , All for Love, 1 678, D on Se

bastian , 1 690,and Cleomen es, 1 692. Dryden was never better

than when following with independence a great example. Thiswas what he did in the first of these plays , and his example , onhis own confession , was Shakespeare

’s An ton y an d Cleopatra.

By.this t ime

, Dryden’s taste and sound understanding had re

volted against the rhyming hero ics which he had essayed withsuch success ; and acknowledging, as we have seen , the superiori ty o f an age less pol ished , more unskilled

” than his own, h e

returned to blank-verse and a Simpler and nobler dramatic art.Judged by abstract standards

, All for Love is Dryden’s finestp lay ; for while he uses therein the subj ect of Shakespeare

’sgreater tragedy, the conduct of the story, the conceptions of

the great personages involved and the poeti c veh icle by wh ichal l i s conveyed are wholly Dryden ’s own . I t i s not to be deniedthat All for Love, estimated merely as a play , i s of a superiorconstruct ion

,condensi ty and rapid ity as contrasted with An tony

and Cleopatra. An d however we may prefer the larger andgrander conception of the characters o f these old-world loversby the elder poet

,Dryden assuredly carried ouf, in h is more

l imited but intense realisation of thei r story, the thought conveyed in the t i tl e of his play, All for Love

,or the World Well

Last. By some D on Sebastian has been given an even higherp lace , no less an authority than SirWalter Scott declaring that,Shakespeare laid aside

,i t will perhaps be diflicult to point out

a play containing more an imatory incident, impassioned language ,an d beauti ful descript ion.” An d , i ndeed , the much famed sceneof reconcil iation between Don Sebastian and Dorax can n ot

be matched in our Engl ish drama for i ts exquisi te portrayal ofthe highest real isation of the chivalric and generous heroic ideal .Las tly, i n Cleomen es the Spartan Hera, i n which he had someh elp from Southern e

,Dryden once more ach ieved Splendid work

on t he l ines of a definite model , in this case contemporaryF rench classical tragedy. A resemblance in s ituat ion and pathoshas been d iscovered between Cleomen es and h is son , in the ir

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254 ENGLISH DRAMA

On the tragic stage but on e contemporary of Dryden sur

passed him , and th is was Thomas O tway. Born in 1 652 , theson of a clergyman in poor estate, the poet was educated atWinchester and at Oxford which he left without a degree. To

failure at the universi ty he soon added failure as an actor ;and an unhappy and unrequited passion for the celebrated ac

t ress,M rs. Barry, almost completed h is undoing. O tway was

on e of the many poets who langu ished in the fi tful patronageof Rochester ; although to that nobleman the poet owed hisearl iest encouragement and h is opportunity. The firs t plays ofO tway, Alcibiades and D on Carlos, were offered to the stagein 1 675 and 1 676 , when the heroic play was stil l at i ts height ,and both are written in the accepted heroic couplets. Dan

Carlos i s a tragedy o f much promise and , with Betterton in thetitl e rOle, was an extraord inary success. Two adaptations followed

,Titus an d B eren ice, from Racine, and The Cheats of

Scapin ,from Mol iere , the latter hold ing the stage for genera‘

tions. The comedy, F riendsh ip in F ashion , acted in 1 678, was

hearti ly applauded in its t ime ; but i t adds nothing in its flippant indecency to the author’s reputation , nor can anything besaid for O tway

’

s flagran t plagiar ism of the greater hal f of h isCaius M arius from Romeo and Juliet.

Putting aside two mil itary comedies , in wh ich the authord rew upon h is own experiences in Holland

,there remain The

Orphan and Ven ice Preserved , the tragedies which raise thename of O tway to a place notabl e among the few of his age.The former , first acted in 1 680, details the tragical consequencesthat followed the impersonation of a bridegroom by another onthe wedding night

,a subj ect in which the strong tas te of O t

way ’s age found a pathos o f which our horror at the S ituationalmost total ly depr ives us . However this harrowing theme hadal ready been employed and whatever the dramatist’s debt tothe novel entitled Eng lish Adven tures, the intensity andpoignancy of the emotions which O tway raised in th is playwere quite n ew to the Stage o f his period. I t i s reported thatM rs. Barry, who created the rOle of Monimia , the injuredheroine “ invariably burst into genuine tears in the course of

the performance, and the tragedy long cont inued , l ike Ven iceP reserved , which followed i t in 1 684, on e of the great stockp ieces , certain o f appreciation and applause. The latter tragedyis a free dramat ic vers ion of an obscure ep isode in the late his

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 255

tory of Ven ice , and O tway had i t from an Engl ish translationof the F rench of the Abbé Saint-Real , a writer already employedby him for the source of D on Carlos . I t is not unl ikely thatO tway was will ing to have his drama recognised , in i ts p ictureof Venice, weak and demoralised by the social and pol i t icalcorruption of i ts own senators , as symbol ic , at least , o f Englandin a similar cond ition during the recent great consp iracy knownas the Popish Plot. In this i t was , l ike many a play of i ts time ,“ a Tory document against the Whigs.” But with all th is ,including the vilifi cation of that much abused statesman

,th e

Earl of Shaftesbury, in the v il e Antonio , we need not concernourselves. Ven ice Preserved has l ived for Something very di fferen t. For in i t O tway has created two novel an d truly tragical figures

,the nobi l ity and pathos of which i t would be d iffi cul t

elsewhere to equal : J affeir whom poverty and outrageous treatment have driven from despair into conspiracy, distracted between fidel ity to his fri end and fellow-consp irator an d hi sdevotion to an incomparable wi fe ; and Belvidera, the wi fe , who ,though repud iated by her father for her marriage and devotedlyattached to her husband , none the less sacrifices husband andsel f to save the State. N othing coul d be finer than the tenderness and pathos of the scenes between this devoted pai r in thistragedy

,nor anything more complete than the catastrophe in

which the innately nobl e,though weak and unstable

, J affeir,perfi diously de frauded of a promised amnesty for h imself andhis friend

,kills both to cheat a felon ’s death on the scaffold .

Constructive excell ence,a clear and easy flowing diction and a

p oet’s command of imagery , as well as the technical it ies of an

adm irably smooth yet varied blank-verse, these things are O tway’s . But above them all i s his power to portray in his person ages the tenderness of those who love and the throes andanguish which the virtuous and innocent suffer among the tragi cv icissitudes and tossings o f l i fe. O tway

’

s instrument containsnot too many notes ; but i ts few are of a surpassing and poignantsadness and sweetness . To those who can See in the fog andcontagion o f l i fe somewhat more than the d istortion and ruin of

things,i t may be possible to think of O tway as the one true

lover of h is fai thless time , pouring out his own suffering heartin works of art to make immortal the woman whom he adored .

To those , on the other ban d , who are content that fog shall befog and contagion contagion

,the unhappy poet seems no more

256 ENGLISH DRAMA

than on e of the many men of tal ent whom association with thecorrupt Rochester and a misplaced in fatuation for a cleve r

, butheartless and mercenary wanton , ruined body and soul .Save for a few minor plays of the pol i tical reaction

, Wi lson’s

honourabl e following of Jonson,and D ryden ’s coritribution s

to the l ighter muse, trifl ing 1n comparison with his serious plays ,the comedy of the Restorat ion remains for our consideration .

Among older plays revived after the return of the king, thecomedies of F letcher and o f Jonson , with a smaller number ofShakespeare ’s, stil l held the stage , and Davenant and Kill igrewnaturally staged work of thei r ow n and of their friends , theHowards

, Stapylton , O rrery and others. But foreign influencesmade themselves mani fest almost at once , i n comedy as in tragedy ; indeed i t i s better to recognise , i n these influences , thecontinuance of what had gone before than to explain the n ewage

,as was formerly done

,as a more or less complete repudia

t ion of England ’s own past. The important rOle which F l etcherplayed in Opening the coffers of Spanish l i terature to the Engl ish d rama has al ready been set forth , and i t is suffi cien t fo rour purposes here to remember that h is subj ects of the kindwere d rawn

, SO far as we n ow know,wholly from Spanish

fiction,and that i t i s no t necessary to in fer on h is part — or

on that of Massinger or Rowley, for that matter — e ither anacquaintance with the Spanish language or any knowledge of

the Span ish stage. Even with Shirley , plays of whom havebeen confidently ascribed to sources in the dramas of Lope d eVega and Tirso d e Molina, we are not on sure ground as to

the precise nature and extent of these borrowings. In the las ttwo volumes o f Dodsley

’

s Old Plays, several dramas , Spanishin scene

,are to be found ; most o f them date before the Restora

t ion .

1 0 I t i s l ikely that Sir Richard F an shawe’

s translat ion of

a coupl e of the plays o f Anton io de M endoza never reached thestage ; but in Sir Samuel Tuke

’s Adven tures of F ive Hours,

1 662 , and the Earl of B ristol’s Elvira, printed five years late r,

we have certain examples of the adaptation of Spanish d ramasto the Engl ish stage . The Spanish camedia d e capa y espada

has been alluded to in these pages more than once. The recip efor i ts mak ing is Simple : two ladies, a gallant and his friend ,1 0These are The Rebellion , by Thomas Raw lin s ; The Marriage

Night, by Hen ry Viscoun t Falklan d , an d The Parson ’

s Wedding , by

Thomas K illigrew.

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258 ENGLISH DRAMA

I tal ian Opera into F rance as far back as 1 645 and the subse

quent transference of F rench opera to England are interest ingsubj ects in themselves into which we can not here digress . I th as been pertinently said , in view of all these all eged foreigninfluences

,that the manner in which instrumental interludes

an d dances and songs and passages Of reci tat ive were introducedin to masques suggested the methods upon which composersmight attempt incidental music to plays and Operas.” 1 1 An d

indeed, M atthew Locke, whose music to Shadwell

’

s Psyche i ssometimes spoken of as the first attempt at Engl ish Opera

,had

written musi c for Shirley’

s masque—l ike , Cupid an d Death , as

far back as 1 65 3 , and portions of the vocal poets for The Siegeof Rhodes, as well as for the far later revival O f The Tempest

with the Davenant-Dryden “ amendments.” Wi th p recedentssuch as these, i t became the custom to make much of the incidental music on revivals of Ol d plays w ith new splendours

,an d

the names of Locke and Purcel l , especially, attach to many arevival and to almost as many n ew performances . Purcel l ’sD ido an d E n eas, presented in 1 680, has the d istinction of beingthe fi rst exampl e in England of a story told in continuousdramatic music. As such i t perhaps deserves to the ful l thet i tl e o f the earl i est Engl ish Opera

,although i t would be difficul t

to determine what degree o f reci tative or spoken dialogue in aproduct ion O f th is kind should bestow or deny to i t the coveteddesignation . The music of Purcel l ’s D ido an d E n eas has beenh ighly p raised : the l ibretto was by N ahum Tate , later to become poet laureate. The performance was a private on e andinteresting only h istori cally. When D ryden turned to the writing Of opera

,

” in Alhian an d Alhan ius, he employed Grabu,

a foreign composer,to prepare the music ; but , on his second

venture, King Arthur, he returned to Purcell who had al ready

wri tten music for Aureng-Zehe and other plays . King Arthur,

l ike i ts p redecessor,i s l ess an Opera than “ a play cop iously sup

pl ied with incidental music.” Indeed , when we examine thematter o f Opera in England before the coming of Handel , wefind i t , save for a few imported F rench performances , a vanishing quantity. Pepys uses the expression , to the Opera ,

” habi tual ly to denote a vis i t to the Duke ’s theatre in Lincoln ’s InnF i elds where he saw , under this designation , Hamlet, Twelfth

1 1 See Sir C . H. H. Perry, “Music of the Seven teen th Cen tury,Oxford History of Music, iii, 288.

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 259

N ight, Davenant’s Love and Hon our, and Glap thorn e

’s comedy,

Wit in a Con stable, with a score of other plays . The wordwas doubtless employed by more careful speakers than Pepys tosigni fy any play in which considerable attention was paid to themusic and setting.Turning back to comedy, the earl iest notable figure is that

o f Sir George Etherege who was born of good family in 1 634.

I t i s doubtful i f Etherege was of ei ther university , but he mayhave been at on e of the Inns o f Court. Possessed in all l ikel ih ood of some fortune, Etherege l ived much abroad until theRestoration

,and his easy knowledge Of the F rench language and

o f F rench manners make i t likely that he had spent much timein Paris. His work as a dramatist began with The Com icalRevenge, or Love in a Tub, acted in 1 664 , the serious scenesof which are wri tten in rhyme. This comedy was an immediatesuccess and She Would If She Could and The M an of M od e

( both wri tten in prose ) , fol lowed at long intervals after , thelast i n 1 676 . Both maintained and enhanced the author ’srepute for an easy abil i ty to stage , with absolute freedom andabandon

,the profligate manners o f the fashionable society of

his day. F or,with his success , Etherege had joined the rout

of Rochester, on more equal terms , however , than his lordship’s

creature poets,as a d isgraceful broi l at Epson and the dramatist’s

“ p rotection of M rs. Barry after Rochester’s death , both goto show. After marrying a fortune , Etherege went abroad andserved as Engl ish resident , finally for several years at Ratisbonin Germany , where he appears to have l ived riotously , neglecting his duties and finally losing his l i fe

,at Paris , i n 1 691 ( i t i s

supposed ) , in an accident that could hardly have befal len asober man. I t i s a sord id story ; yet this may be said for th ecomedy of Etherege , that i t owed nothing to books or precedents .F ashionable

,i ndolent

,witty

,charming and utterly p rofligate,

Etherege knew at first hand the bril l iant , shameless , deadlyl i fe in which he was al ike a part icipant and a victim ; and hisconscienceless art enjoyed the populari ty that an actual rescrip to f the time always deserves and usually Obtains . Hi storicallyEtherege as sumes importance when we consider that he determined a whole species of comedy which persistently held thestage

,through Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh down to

very late times,increasingly more d ivergent from actual l i fe.

Etherege copied the l i fe he knew,his successors copied Etherege .

N earest to Etherege in point of time and l i terary manner i s

260 ENGLISH DRAMA

'

Sir Charles Sedley, second in notor iety for h is w it and his pro fligacy only to Rochester whom he resembles , too, i n an ad

m i rable sense for the graces o f prose style and for no in con siderable lyrical gi ft. Attention has lately been call ed , with much

j ustice, to the fact that these gentlemen roisterers of the courtof King Charles were too flagran tly - industrious in the pursuitof pleasure ,

” too determined , in Opposi tion to the gloom o fdetested Puritanism

,to be happy at all events, to make us alto

gether certain that they were not frequently bored in the midstof thei r revelry and with all thei r dangerous hazards.1 2 Sedleyl ived

,l ike some others , to become a grave , i f none too stable,

politician . His plays reflect the influences of the moment ; TheM ulberry Garden (borrowed in idea partly from Moliere ) , isprecisely of the type of Etherege

’

s Comical Revenge, even to

the wri ting of the ser ious scenes in rhyme ; h is An tony and

Cleopatra,a feeble tragedy, is wholly in rhyme , because Dryden

was so writing and on a class ical subj ect fo r no better reason .

'

B ellamira, 1 687 , is Sedley’s best play, for in i t , however he

drew on the Eun u'chus O f Terence for h is plot, he presents al ively and real isti c p icture of th e reckless l i fe that he knewso well . In wri ting O f Restoration comedy

,i t i s impossibl e

to avoi d harp ing on the extraordinary license of speech an d

conduct which the stage accepted as a matte r o f course. Wi ththe taste an d exampl e of the king, the w its and the laureatebefore them , the minor writers of comedy suppl ied what waswanting in cleverness with the extravagance Of l icense

,while

apprOp r1at1n g from the past with consci ences absolutely at ease.John Lacy, who d ied as early as 1 68 1 , presumed upon hi spopulari ty as an actor to turn playwright in some hal f dozeneff orts in which he laid Violen t hands on Mol iere , Shakespeareand l esser men

,making coarser whatever he touched . Edward

Ravenscroft was busy warming over the dramatic v ictuals ofother men for twenty years. His plays are described , byD ibden , as a seri es o f the fts from beginn ing to end .

” Hismost popular comedy, Lond on Cuckolds, first acted in 1 682 ,

was repeated on the lord mayor’s day for nearly a hundred yearsfor its vulgar , humorous and scurrilous sati re on the ci ty.Raven scroft

’

s one gi ft seems to have been that of boisterousfarce

,a gi f t, by the way, that has carr ied off man y a med iocre

1 2 See Mr. C . Wh ib ley, in The Cambridge History of Eng lish Literature, viii, 1 98 if .

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262 ENGLISH DRAMA

suffered perhaps more than he deserves. O f an age w ith Mrs.

B ehn and Wycherley, K ingWi ll i am’s laureate received his edu

cation at Cambridge which , however, he soon qui tted for theM i ddl e Temple. In his first endeavours he enjoyed the en

couragemen t of Dryden who wrote a prologue to The TrueWidow as late as 1 679. In h is day, indeed , Shadwell was arespectable figure, neither tampering with Shakespearean amendments nor with borrowings from F rance to a greater degreethan h is theatrical brethren , but holding at least one constantmodel before h im for imi tation an d adoration . I t i s in thepreface to his very first play, The Sullen Lovers, that Shadwel ldeclares : I have endeavoured to represent vari ety of humours

which was the pract ice o f Ben Jonson , whom I thinkal l dram atic poets ought to imitate

,though none are l ike to come

near, he being the only person that appears to me to have madeperfect representations of human li fe .” Shadwell endeavouredwi th honest industry

,i f not with any great il lumination , to

follow fai th fully in those i l lustr ious footsteps. In plays such as

The Humorists, Epson Wells, The Virtuoso, and in the laterB ury F air, The Scourers and The Squire of Alsatia ( esteemedhis ablest comedy ) , Shadwell fol lowed his model at a distance,o ften not greater than that of Cartwrigh t or Brome , adaptingh is work to the humours of his own London

,with the parade

of an occasional moral and a more frequent descent to a coarseness and ribaldry below the level of Bartholomew F air. Shadwell was a strong Protestant and a valiantWhig, both of whichare abundantly proved in h is outrageous attack upon “ thePap ists in the scandalous character o f Tegue O

’

Divelly, theI r ish pr iest of The Lan cashire Witches. The play came j ustat th e t ime of the exci tement consequent upon the lying revelat ions of Titus O ates , and undeniably had more to do w ithShadwell

’

s supplanting of D ryden in the laureateship than hadh is poetry. Shadwell is not to be den ied a certain power indramatic invention , a broad rough humour in real ising

“ thefops and knaves which he thought were the fittest charactersfor comedy,

” and an honest sense of right which was bl ind ,however

,to generosi ty and deli cacy al ike. I t is probable that

h is v igorous pictures Of th e low humours of the London o f hisday are at least as true to the l i fe which they dep ict as th et

s

ed iously reiterated gallant ries of the school of Etherege and

edley.The long cont inuance of the act ivity of Shadwell , who d ied in

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 263

1 692 , e ight years before D ryden , has carr ied us fo rward . Wi thWill iam Wycherley, who was born the same year with Shadwell , we return once more to the earl ier days Of King Charles.Wycherley was educated first in F rance

,at Queen ’s College ;

Oxford , and later at the Inner Temple. His position in l i fegave him access to that “ best society in which the king andRocheste r were pattern and example . The comedies ofWycher

l ey followed close on the earl iest e fforts of Etherege and Sedley,to whose school he unquestionably belongs

,and they were

written within the short period of five years from the success ofLove in a Wood

, in 1 67 1 (which attracted to the author thesomewhat questionable attentions of the Duchess of Cleveland ) ,to The Plain D ealer

,stag ed in 1 674 Between these came the

o ther two, The Gen tleman Dan cing Master and The Coun tryWife. In comparison with Etherege ,Wycherley’s comedies areo f stronger fibre and better constructed ; they are not nearly so

wel l wri tten . There is a vigour,however , a strength amount

ing at t imes almost to brutal ity aboutWycherley that d ifferentiates his young gentlemen of the town

,

” his coxcombs and matchmakers — to call his women no worse — from the superficialquali ties of his predecessors . Wycherley was as frank a plagiaryas any of his contemporaries , taking his Dan cing Master fromCalderon who in turn had found i t in the bulging d ramaticgranaries of Lope de Vega ; while his Coun try Wife, one of thecoarsest comedies in the Engl ish language , derives its plot fromtwo popular comedies of lVIoliere. The Plain Dealer i sWycherley ’s most celebrated play, and , however i t may havebeen suggested by certain scenes and personages of Le M is

an thrope, was certainly made over by the Engl ish dramatist intosometh ing new and distinctive. Manly, a sea captain , i s on ewhose natural honesty and frankness revolts at the hypocrisyand the faithlessness of the world . Instead of driving h imfrom contact with his fellowmen

,this creates in him such an

infatuation for plain speak ing and di rect conduct, that thesev irtues become vices and the means of bl ind ing him to the actualnature of the men and women about h im. His mistress provesuntrue

,his bosom friend , false and an ingrate , and he is only

saved from complete misanthropy by the faith fulness o f th ewoman who

,unknown to him

,dearly loves him and serves him as

a servant. In the gravi ty of M anly’s d isillusion and in theextraordinary and brutal demands upon F i del ia’s devotion intowhich her master ’s eagerness for revenge betrays him, this

264 ENGLISH DRAMA

comedy rises almost into tragedy. A divert ing underplot iswholly of Wycherley ’s invention . The Plain Dealer i s ad

mirably planned and managed , the characters are roughly butclearly sketched and the d ialogue , as usual with Wycherley , i swrit ten in prose, un adorn edg, forceable and natural . The thingwhich raises Wycherley above his class , strange as i t may ap

pear,i s a certain moral earnestness which , desp i te the fact that

there is scarcely a single truly v irtuous person in all his d rama,

causes the care ful reader to d iscern in al l this brutality and

p lain speaking not a l i ttle of the gravi ty O f true sati re. AfterThe Plain Dealer, Wycherley ceased to write, although he l ivedthrough various v ic i ss i tudes , an elderly man about town , n owsomewhat out of the mode, to receive a pens ion at the hands ofKing James and to form , i n the reign of Queen Anne, a l i teraryfriendship with the precocious young poet , Pope .The vogue and populari ty of the

'

stage during the per iod ofDryden ’s l i terary act ivi ty r ivalled the busiest days of El izabethan or earl ier Jacobean days. N ever before had plays beenso in request , so elaborately staged or acted by so many talentedand capable players. As we read the theatr ical annals of thet ime : how Mrs. Hughes ensnared Prince Rupert and N ellGwyn the king ; how the Earl o f Oxford betrayed the v i rtuousMrs. Davenport by a mock marriage ; of Mountfort d ishonestlyslain and of Goodman only too j ustly tried for a murder , wewonder that the drama could exist as an art in the midst of surroundings so foul and abandoned . But there is another s ide.B etterton made his début in Hamlet in 1 66 1 , Mrs. Sanderson ,soon to become Mrs. Betterton , playing the part of Ophelia.F i fty years later, th is great actor took l eave of the stage , i tsacknowledged leader

,for a l i fetime , despite al l temporary rival

ri es,and h is wi fe was st i l l by h is side. Betterton was a man o f

sober,honest and industrious l i fe , untouched by the vices of his

age and equally the friend of Dryden the greatest poet , andTil lotson the greatest preacher of the day. His range o f characters was enormous and his industry was only exceeded by hismany gi fts

,and his success by his integri ty and kindliness. I t

was sheer enthusiasm for the art of acting that took Rochesterfrom the‘ court and his d issolute pleasures to d ril l the tardym ind and unskilled gai t o f Mrs. Barry into the most consummateof actresses ; and , however that lady may have repaid his lordship’s condescens ions , Mrs. Bracegirdle, her successor on th estage

,l ived in excellent private repute and was noted for her

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266 ENGLISH DRAMA

al ike ; there was M rs. P ix (Mary Grifli th ) , her fr iend who.innocent o f theory or practice in verse, none the less pennedtraged ies

,succeeding measureably i n the l ighter mode . And

there was the disreputabl e M rs. Manley , soci ety novel ist andscandal-monger

,whose adventurous biography with i ts pol i tical

controll ing wires i s more interesting to read than her hal f dozenforgotten plays. M rs. Cen tlivre, the ablest of them all , beganher work as a playw r ight later. The age was not unconsciousof the innovation of women in authorship as a coarse but amusing comedy entitled The F emale Wits at Rehearsal, acted in1 697 , goes to show. Lastly , the scholars and crit ics wereequally addicted to the universal habit . Lord Lansdowne

,the

patron of Pope , put fo rth the last fl icker of the heroic play inh isHeroic Love

,1 698, which is written in blank Verse and deals

with the love affa irs of Ach ill es. He also imitated Congreveat a long interval in comedy. While the notorious cri tic , JohnDennis, fellow of Rymer

‘

and G i ldon both of whom “ wroteplays

,

” not only rewrote Shakespeare as he ought to have beenwri tten but laid fu tile m ines to success on the stage by way of

Euripides and Tasso , to find a modicum of recognition when bem ixed the concoction with party pol i t ics and abuse.In Wi ll iam Congreve the artificial comedy of manners

reaches i ts height. Born near Leeds , in 1 670 ,the son of an

oflicer whose professional duties carried him to I reland , Congreve attended the Ki lkenny school where he had Swift for aschoolmate. On coming to London , his indol ence un fi ttin g h imfor the l aw, Congreve ventured into l i terature wi th a novelentitled I n cog n ita, of no great merit or promise. His earl iestplay is The O ld Bachelor; i t was acted with success in January1 693 and declared by Dryden the best first play that he hadever seen . The intricacy of the plot of The D ouble Dealer

caused i t to be not so wel l received ; but the performance of i t,in N ovember of the same year, drew from D ryden an en thusi

astic acclamation O f the young dramatist as his poetic hei r andsuccessor with an exaggerated comparison of his talents to thoseof Shakespeare. In 1 695 , upon the secess ion of the older actors,headed by Betterton , from the patentee managers of DruryLane

,th e open ing of h is new theatre in L incoln ’s Inn F ields

was signalized by the per formance o f Congreve ’s Love for Lovewhich achieved an instantaneous and brill iant success. In con

sequence , the author received a share in the house on prom iseto wri te for i t one new play each year. This success brought

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION 267

Congreve, also , at the hands of Montagu , l ater Lord Hal i fax ,an oflice as “ commissioner of hackney coaches,

” the first of ahappy series of l ike sinecures with which Congreve’s pol i t icalfri ends contrived to make easy h is way of l i fe

,whether Tory

ruled or Whig. In 1 697 , the poet’s one venture into tragedy ,

The M ourn ing B ride,now remembered only for Dr. Johnson ’s

eulogy, ran for thirteen days , an unusual time for the period ,and saved the company from ruin ; and with The Way of theWorld

, which was coolly received in 1 700,the author gave up

v

zritin g for the stage although he l ived nearly th irty years therea ter.Congreve has been variously estimated both as a man and an

author. The man has been well descr ibed as “ a gentleman of

quali ty by nature ” ; for his was ever the grand manner , theaccepted course o f conduct

,the fitting word in that l ight

,witty ,

r isqué skirmish of repartee that went by the name of pol iteconversation . Congreve had too much wit to be a fop and toomuch good sense to throw away his l i fe in d issolute l iving. He

was much petted in good society and h is plays were en thusi

as tically lauded and extolled . He took all naturally and gracefully

,and was n ot too much spoiled . Indeed he professed

( perhaps n ot without affectation ) l i ttl e more than a languidinterest in the writing of plays , explain ing that his first comedywas written to amuse h imsel f in a slow recovery from a fi tof s icknes s ,

” and declaring that success on the stage for hisfamous The Way of the World was almost beyond his expectat ion . When Voltaire called on him he insisted on receivingthe visi t as the civil ity of one gentleman to another , not as themeeting of two men of letters. N one the less , Dryden , Swift ,Addison , Steele , Gay and Pope, with many higher in station andless in prominence

,valued his friendship and enjoyed i t ; while

the fascinating Mrs. Bracegirdle , who created the lead ing femal eparts in al l his plays

,and Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough ,

daughter o f the great duke, were alike devoted to him andbeneficiaries

,according to station

,under h is will .

The comedies of Congreve are of a l iterary excellence thatovertops n ot only the comedies of thei r own age but that quali tyin all his imitators . There is no parallel in Engl ish to thed irectness

,incisiveness

,brill iancy and ease of his stage dialogue .

An d his personages , however they belong to the accepted cate

gories of fops , gallants and ladies O f fashion and intrigue , areconceived and executed with an air and d istinction that raises

268 ENGLISH DRAMA

them as much above thei r fel lows of Etherege , Wycherley or

Vanbrugh as Congreve h imsel f excelled in the company he so

loved . The plots of Congreve have been cri tic ised as al ike insuflicien t and difli cult to follow. But Congreve was l i ttle concerned with story, however he prided himsel f on the construet ion Of The D ouble D ealer, i f what he had provided was threadenough on which to string the gli tter ing beads of his epigramand repartee . I t has been intimated above that the artificialcomedy became less and . less a transcript of l i fe as successiveplaywrights accepted i ts conventions instead of observing afreshthe l i fe about them. Congreve

’s first comedy was written before he knew anything of actual fashionable l i fe ; and his lastrepeated as cynically, i f more elaborately , precisely the samesorts Of personages, the same intrigues and situations. Thesecomedies exhibi ted a total absence of any standard Of recti tudeor honou r in any sense whatever of that misused word . Mr.

Archer has well call ed Congreve’s art a p icture of society Ob

served from a standard of complete moral indifference ,” and as

such,it can in no sense be considered true sati re. Whatever

of social amel ioration may have taken place between the earlydays of King Charles and the decade in which Congreve wrote ,we may not unjustly conceive o f that dramatist as a perverse orrather inverted ideal ist i n the kind of l i fe that he chose to dee

p ict , who magnifies al ike the gallantry ,” the wi t , the heart

lessness and the abandon of speech and conduct in this foul andgli ttering Utopia of h is. There never were people quite so fasc in atingly and brill iantly witty as M i rabel and gorgeous, petul ant M i stress M illamon t, these princes of the realms of th earti ficial comedy, nor beings quite so unutterably frivolous inthei r coxcombry as B risk

,Tattle or Witwood . And only the

actual annals of the reign of King Charles can convince us thatthere were ever men and women as heartlessly wicked and de

p raved as Maskwell, Fain all, Mrs. F rai l and Lady Touchwood.Judged by any standards appl icabl e to actual l i fe th is entireRestorat ion comedy is hopelessly immoral an d corrupt.Whether we are able to achieve the detachment that may en

able us to accep t it for i ts artisti c and l i terary qual ities ( so faras i t really possesses them ) or anathematise i t uncond itionallyw ith honest Jeremy Coll ier must depend l ess on our morals thanon our

"

atti tude of mind .

I t was in 1 698 that the famous attack of Coll ier , A ShortlView of the Immorality and Profanen ess of the English Stage,

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CHAPTER XI

STEELE,ROWE AND THE CLOSE OF THELITERARY DRAMA

THAT two such minor names as these should head a chapter inthe history O f our English drama

,followmg the illustrious suc

cession that went before , may well give the thought ful readerpause. Yet the great Augustan age , so famous for i ts wi t andits sati re, so satisfied that in i t poetry and pol i te l earning hadreached a perfection beyond which i t was impossibl e to conceiveof a furth er advance, has no weightier names in comedy andt ragedy to Offer ; and in the following re igns of the Georges ,Goldsmith and Sheridan , the two that surpass them ,

stand historically more or less isolated and , in thei r talents , absolutelyalone. I t i s true that the p lays o f older t ime sti ll held the

stage,those of Congreve , Wycherley, Vanb rugh , O tway and

D ryden ; while the pre-Restoration d rama was now representedalmost wholly by Shakespeare , l argely in

'

bastard vers ions in themaking of which noblemen and wits complacently vied with theplaywrights . Poetry d ied out of th e drama with O tway andDryden , save for a splutter ing in Lee and a fl icker in Southernethe last gl int is gone with Rowe. Li terature and power overthe phrase drops from Congreve to Steele , to be lost in excellen tC ibber and his l ike, save for th e sati rical snap of F i eld ing, thel ight of Goldsmith and the flash Of Sheridan .

Dryden di ed in and Congreve ceased to write for thestage ; yet neither of these events nor the controversy that Coll i er had j ust raised in any wise mater ial ly altered the trend of

the drama. An examination of the li sts of first performancesand rev ivals , kept by G enest , that careful enthusiast for our Old

d rama, discloses The Rival Queen s of Lee alone among theheroic plays in the frequency with which i t was revived in thenew century ; although Dryden

’s I n d ian Emperor and Aureng

Zebe were Occasionally acted , and The Rehearsal was repeatedagain and again , always with applause an d appreci ation .

Clearly the heroic play was dead . O f Dryden ’s other dramat ic270

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 27 !

works , few of the comedies were revived , unless we except'

Amphitryon and The Span ish F riar, which latter had caughtthe popular fancy, we may well bel ieve, as much for i ts l ibel onthe hated Papist ” clergy as for the humours of the incorrigible personage who gives the play i ts name. O the rwise

,i t

was to All for Love and Don Sebastian that the publ ic awardedthe palm among Dryden ’s plays , however (Ed ipus , Troilus and'

Cleomen es were less frequently acted . As to Congreve,not

only d id he maintain h is original popularity,be increased h i s

hold ; The D ouble Dealer and The Way of the lVorld , botho f them qual ified successes at first

,were n ow fully accepted and

The M ourn ing Bride was O ften reacted as well . Among thecomedies o f other writers , Wycherley

’s Plain D ealer, Shadwel l ’s Squire of Alsatia or Etherege

’

s She Would if She Couldappear to have led all others in populari ty . Whilst amongser ious plays, outside of Shakespeare, The Orphan of O twayan d his Ven ice Preserved had no rivals. As we look back

,save

for TheM ourn ing B ride wh ich was carried by Congreve’s contemporary populari ty in comedy , th is l ist is by no means a d isc red i t to the taste of the t ime , although i t shows in the comediesn o revuls ion against the careless immoral ity O f speech and conductwhich had become an accepted convention of the stage. Omittingany enumeration of less frequent revival s such as O tway

’

s Cheats

of Scapin , Southern e’

s F atalM arriage, or Crown e’

s Sir CourtlyN ice, i t i s of in terest to note how well the Older d ramatists heldthei r own , though for the most part altered more or l ess toaccord with prevalent taste. O f M ountfort’s addition o f thehumours of Harlequin and Scaramouch to lVIarlowe

’

s D octor'

Faustus we have already heard ; i t was a deserved failure.More commonly these amended dramas o f the older age weresuccessful . As early as 1 668, Davenant altered The Two

N oble Kin smen in to The Rivals, Buckingham , i f the cr iticsare to be bel ieved

,took in hand The Chan ces to better i t on th e

score o f del icacy, while Settl e d id Philaster, Powell , B on

duca ( bestowing four days on i t ) , and Vanbrugh , The Pilgrim.

O ther plays of F letcher appear to have been acted substantiallyas at first presented . O n e of the most popular o f these was thel ively comedy, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, not amendedbefore Garrick, and The M aid

’

s Tragedy, desp ite the fifth actof Wal ler that transforms the story into a comedy, was acted ,accord ing to Southern e, i n al l its r igour and before KingCharles. The most successful making over of a play of

272 ENGLISH DRAMA

F letcher’

s is Farquhar’

s In con stan t, l i fted bodily, however improved for acting, from The Wild Goose Chase. Am ong otherold plays ,

” the popularity of which is attested,were Mas

s inger ’s N ew Way to Pay Old D ebts, B rome’s Jovial Crew ,

Webster ’s Appius an d Virg in ia, which Betterton worked overand called The Roman F ather, and Chapman

’s Bussy D’

Ambois,considerably damaged by D’

Urfey. F urther into these revivalswe need n ot here inqui re.I t was Shakespeare who was always the first quarry

,and of

some of these depredations upon him we have al ready heard .

The subj ect, however, is of such interest , both in itsel f and forthe l ight that i t throws on the taste of the age , that a briefconsideration of the nature and extent of some of thesechanges cannot here be out o f place. During the fi fty yearsfollowing the Restoration n o less than twenty-six rewri tings,alterations and makings over of dramas of Shakespeare weremade an d the large maj or ity of them acted . This l ist d isclosessome twen ty d i fferent plays , the work of sixteen authors includ ing three laureates

,the actors Betterton

, Lacy and C ibber ,scholarly authors and cri tics such as Theobald

,Dennis and

G i ldon , and hack wri ters l ike D’

Urfey, Ravenscro ft and Duffet . 1 Several reasons have been assi gned for thi s p il lage of

Shakespeare and undoubtedly pressure for new material was themost important. I t was this that must have actuated Davenanti n h is Law Again st Lovers

,1 662 , the result of a union of the

stories and much of the texts o f M easure for M easure andM uch Ado About N othing , in which the Claudio-Hero plo tdrops out and the character of M ariana as well , and the playends with Angelo ’s espousal of Isabella at the command of the

duke. Pressure o f time and utter carelessness as to the resul talone could explain O tway

’

s grotesque thrust o f Caius M ariusinto the rOle of Romeo with Sulla in that of County Paris . Eagerness for novel ty and pruriency

,to the charge of which the whole

age is Open,account for the o ff ensiv e additions made to the

del ightful and poetic conception of The Tempest , by whichAr iel and Cal iban each is p rovided with a s ister and a

youth who has never seen a woman is added to match M i randaan d her s ister Dorinda.

”So pleas ing was th is subj ect that

1 See on the whole top ic, G. R. Loun sbury, Shakespeare as a Dra

matic Artist, 1 901 , p . 302. To the twen ty-six here men tion ed may be

added nearly doub le th at number up to th e en d of the eigh teen th cen

tury.

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274 ENGLISH DRAMA

O n the other han d , the audi tors of The Old Bachelor of Congreve rece ived with enthusi asm the stal e and impossible dénouement of the marriage of the wrong woman in a mask , applauding to the echo , Davi es tell s us, as each of the four beauti fulwomen who acted in the play unmasked and d isclosed her ident ity. I t was not only The Rival Queen s that drew crowdedhouses ; but Mrs. Barry and M rs. Boutel , known rivals in thei rart as i n thei r beauty for the favour of the town , and theaccident

,

” whereby,on on e occas ion , the dagger o f Roxana

reached the bosom of Statira with more effect than the authorhad demanded , effaced , as i t surpassed in fidel ity to nature

,al l

the eloquent bombast of Lee’s inflated rhetoric. In such an

atmosphere i t was essential that the poets should str ive to enliventhe Older plays by an in fusion into them of this popular el ement.Hence i t i s that Crown e worked into his alterations of Hen ry

VI a good deal of love making in which Warwick the kingmaker

,Edward Plantagene t, his future queen Lady Gray an d

a new character Lady Eleanor Butler al l have a share. Hen ceShadwell gave to Timon o f Athens a daughter , d ivi ded between the attentions o f Alcibiades and those Of a wealth iersui tor, whilst O rrery, in an heroic play on Henry V, which hasthe meri t at least o f not having been stolen from Shakespeare

,

raised the love affai rs of Catharine of F rance, Owen Tudor an dthe v ictor of Agincourt to an interest above that of the mere conquest oi kingdoms.The want of taste, of any sense of fitness , l et alone poet ry,

is suffici ently il lustrated i n the examples above ; but , from an

o ther poin t of View ,something may be said for these changes as

,

to a certain degree,adjustments to the newer conditions O f the

stage. To anticipate sl ightly, when C ibber brought out his vers ion of R ichard III i n 1 700,

showing a d iffi dence in o fferingi t very d ifferent from the sel f-satisfi ed confidence of some of

h is predecessors , his effort was d irected especially to an adaptat ion O f the old chron icle play to the condi tions of the stage o fhis t ime. Considered i n the abstract , the ep ic success ion ofscenes

,with thei r incessant change of place, thei r intermittent

action and long conversations while the action hal ts, al l of thesecharacter ist ics o f th e chronicl e play as a speci es

,are want ing in

that concentration,concreteness and uni ty that was becoming

more and more the recognised ideal of d ramatic construct ion.Whil e Shakespeare ’s Richard III , from the uni ty which the

grim protagonist gives to the play,is less open to this cr itic ism

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 275

than some other plays o f its species , it i s not to be questionedthat i ts technique belongs to an earlier age than that of C ibber.Wi th his pract ical experience of the theatre , Cibber d iscoveredthis and attempted by omiss ion , condensation and readjustmentto render the tragedy more actable on hi s stage. In this hesucceeded measurably although at the cost of much of the poetryand fitness of personage and episode all of which Shakespeare hadso subtly wrought into on e that no hand save h is own daretouch them. Unhappily too , C ibber , doubting his own powers

( as well he might ) , to mould together the d issevered parts , interpolated bi ts derived from other plays of Shakespeare , thusd ecorating with flowers

,hopelessly withered from their context

,

the havoc he had made. I have dwelt upon this the mostfavourable O f these al terations of Shakespeare — one that hasheld the stage almost to the p resent day — in order that wemight comprehend the natu re of the gyves w h ich time had putupon the old free drama. The change was a momentous one ;from a great popular utterance

,claiming for i ts const ituency the

whole Engl ish people,safe in a broad appeal to love of country ,

the sp i ri t of fai r play, domesti c v i rtue and capable , from itshold upon the emotions

,of almost any fl ight into the realms of

poetry and the imagination,Engl ish drama had shrunk into a

thing of precedent and convention , governed by the laws of theancien ts

,as they weremisunderstood and supposed to be prae

tised in the drama of a foreign country , or guided by the di ssolute taste of a court, which had long since gone its way to dissolution

,leaving only i ts heartlessness , i ts godlessness and

l ibertin ism to be mimicked by those who came after. The sp irito f Shakespeare

’s drama was that Of the people ; the spi ri t O fDryden ’s drama that o f the court ; for fai th in man we havecynical laughter and mistrust in goodness

,for patriotism , as

demonstrated in the old chron icle play, we have party pol i ticswith which not only comedy but serious drama is permeated ,at times to i ts utter undoing. In our current criticism of thed ramatic and l i terary technique of other times than our own ,

we are apt to judge too singly by our ow n standards. Themodel of old was to fil l three hours’ t ime with a varied entertainmen t

,and fulness of i l lustration , even i f some of i t were

i rrelevant,was on e of the conditions in which that particular

form of art flourished . The drama of the seventeenth centurywas far from realising the modern ideal by which “ the dramatist seizes upon a crisis in the l ives of his characters , states its

276 ENGLISH DRAMA

cond it ions and follows its evolut ions to an end , regard ing everything else a surplusage. Yet in C ibber, as earl ier in Congreve,we recognise an ideal above the pract ice of the t ime and in thecas e of Richard III a struggle toward the real isat ion of thati deal .Wi th the heroic play dead and the artificial comedy of manners at i ts n e plus ultra, we may well inquire what i t was thatheld over into the new century. We have first the continuanceof this comedy in the hands o f Vanbrugh, F arquhar and C ibber,with a suggestion of a reformation of i ts immorali ty, i f not i tsfrivol i ty, by the last, an attempt more seriously made a l ittlelater by Steele. An d we have, i n serious drama, a revulsionfrom the extravagances and unreal i t ies of the heroic play andi ts l ike which begot an increasing interest in subj ects historicaland in those which

,l ike O tway

’

s two most famous plays an dsome of Southern e

’

s,gave Opportunity for a d isplay of the ten

derer domestic emotions. I f we excep t the classical frigid i ties ofdramas l ike Addison ’s Cato, the trend of both comedy andtragedy in the reign of Queen Anne was clearly towards thesentimental

,and in Steel e and Rowe , as we shall see , the trans

formation i s already assured,if not complete . This topic for

the moment we must defer to turn back to the three notablefollowers of Congreve , who began to write in the rei gn O fKing Wi ll i am and almost as early as he, but who carried the ir.labours over into the next age .Sir John Vanb rugh was o f F lemish descent on his father’s

si de and well connected in England on his mother ’s . He was

born in 1 664, in London , and appears to have entered the army ,being known in his earl ier days as Captain Vanbrugh . We

h ave a gl impse of him in Paris i n 1 692 , imprisoned in theBastil e under susp icion of being a spy. He i s sai d to haveemployed h is enforced leisure there in medi tat ing the scenes ofa comedy. He was soon l iberated and we hear no more of himuntil he emerges as an author i n 1 696 . In 1 682 the two companics

,originally const ituted , it will be remembered , as the

K ing’s and the Duke O f York’s , uni ted ; and there succeeded a

period Of prosperi ty for al l concerned . But disputes arising between the patentees and the actors , Betterton , as we have al readyseen

,seceded

,in 1 695 , and started h i s rival company in Lincoln

’sInn F ields with the success of Congreve’s Love for Love. Thisb rought about evil days for the Royal company at Drury Lane

,

the actors’ wages were reduced and the need of a r ival success

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278 ENGLISH DRAMA

in Yorksh ire suggests that he must have begun the pract ice ofthat profession far earl ier. Among the many houses that hedesigned , the most famous is B lenheim which brough t him endless trouble and the last ing enmity of the Duchess O f M arlborough . In 1 703 , Vanbrugh was created Clarenceux Kingat Arms , against the protest of the col lege and desp ite the factsthat he knew nothing of heraldry and had Openly rid iculed that'

grave sci ence in on e of his comedies . He held h is post n otwithstanding and accep tably fulfilled i ts duties . A few yearslate r Vanbrugh became Controller of the Royal Works , whichpost he held until h is death in 1 726. In 1 705 he designed an ew theatre in the Haymarket and w i th Congreve who , reallygave very l i ttle assistance

,undertook the management of i t.

But what with the rural surroundings and the serious acoust i cdefects o f the bu ild ing , the venture proved a complete failureand Vanbrugh withdrew from h is undertaking in a year ’s t ime ,a heavy loser . To return to h is comedies , in the same fru itfulyear

,1 697 , Vanb rugh brought out The Provohed Wife at the

theatre in Lincoln ’s Inn F ields . Wi th Betterton,Mrs. Barry

and Mrs. B racegi rdle i n the cast , the play was a complete succ ess. Superio r in construction , The Provoked Wife sustainedthe author’s repute

,although i t lapses into the utter moral

callousness and flippan cy of i ts school,wi thout even a sugges

t ion of a ser ious motive to sustain i t . This was on e of the

plays justly singled out by Coll ier for attack , a subj ect to whichwe need not return . Vanb rugh ’s part in the repl ies to Colli erwas clever

,as might be expected , though he was as bl ind as h i s

fellows to the real i ty of the issue involved . In 1 700, he t ewrote The Pilgrim Of F letcher in prose for the benefit of'Dryden who contributed the prologue and epi logue, his lastwork fo r the stage . This performance is otherwise memorabl eas that in which the famous actress , Anne O ldfield , whosetalents F arquhar had d iscovered in the previous year, made herdébut. O f Vanbrugh

’s translations , chiefly from Moliére, th eon ly on e that d eserved success , though i t d id not at on ce attaini t,was The Confederacy, derived d irectly from d

’

An cou_rt

’

s

comedy Les B ourgeoises a la M ode. I t‘

was acted in 1 705 andw i th i t Vanbrugh ’s labours as a dramatist conclude.Almost precisely correspondent in point of t ime with thecomed ies o f Vanbrugh were those of F arquhar who resembledh is competi tor further in being l ikewise in the mil itary serv ice .George Farquhar was born in Londonderry in 1 678, the son

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 279

of an Irish clergyman , who could do l ittl e more for h is sonthan offer him a good education . This he pursued for a t imeat Trin ity College , Dubl in , only too soon to fall a vict im , l ikeLee and O tway before him , to the fascinations of the stage.N otwithstanding a prepossessing personality, Farquhar doesnot appear to have succeeded as an actor at the Smock Al leyTheatre in Dubl in where he made his first appearance asO thello ; and the accidental wounding of a fellow actor in on e

of Dryden ’s plays brought h im to the determination to abandonthe stage. At this juncture his friend , the actor Wi lks, late rto become famous

,induced F arquhar to follow him to London

and , encouraged by him he O ffered Rich , the manager of DruryLane, his first comedy , Love in a B ottle, which was acted , latein 1 698, and favourably received . Through the good offi ces ofO rrery

,i t is said

,the young dramatis t received a lieutenancy,

but save for a brief absence in Holland , which may have beenwith his regiment

,and a recruiting trip to Shrewsbury, F ar

quhar’

s sold iering interfered very l i ttl e with h is play writing.In 1 700, the acting of Wi lks in the part of Sir H‘arry Wildairin Farquhar

’

s second play, The Con stan t Couple, so took thetown that the success was followed up by a sequel in which that“son of chaos

,

” as the character has been well called,gives h is

n ame to the play. The I n con stan t, an able adaptation of TheWild Goose Chase Of F letcher , was not received with the

favour which i ts merits demanded , n or di d a better fate attendThe Tw in R ivals acted in the same year. The RecruitingOffi cer, on the other hand

,based on the author ’s actual experi

en ces, however fanci fully enlarged , enjoyed an extraord inarysuccess in i ts performance in 1 706 , and long continued a favouri te stock p iece. F arquhar was possessed Of the gay, i rresponsiblenature that i s habitual ly associated with the Celt. N O successcould rel i eve him of his incurable impecuniosi ty

,no failure en

tirely dash his buoyant sp ir its . Wi th nei ther fortune n or posit ion to back him , he l ived the gay l i fe of his t ime and , desp itethe successes o f h is comedies

,fel l heavi ly into debt. Two

anecdotes are related concern ing the later years of his l i fe.The first tell s how a lady, almost as needy as h imsel f, fell sodesperately in love with him , that she represented hersel f to thecredulous poet as a wealthy heiress thereby to just i fy thei rotherwise imprudent marriage which actually took place ; theo ther, how on the advice Of the Duke of O rmond , F arquharsold h is comm iss ion to pay h is debts,

“h is grace p romising,

28° ENGLISH DRAMA

should th is course be adopted , to give F arquhar a captaincy inh is own regiment , a p romise that his grace forgot. Farquhar

d ied i n poverty when less than thirty years Old , a month afterthe triumphant success of his B eaux

'

Stratagem, l eaving a touching letter to his friend Wi lks beseeching him to care for histwo fatherless daughters.In on e of the ablest estimates we have of F arquhar as a

d ramatist , we are pertinently reminded of his youth and hisp romise ; how the latest o f the group — Vanbrugh , Congreve ,C ibber and Steele — to wr i te , he was the earl iest to di e, andhow ,

there fore,the nature O f his s ins against deco rum was

somewhat di fferent from thei rs, Wycherley’s or Dryden ’s . We

are further reminded , and the case well made out, that F ar

quhar, save for h is first imi tative work,was real ly less coarse ,

and,what is more important , less morally callous , than h is

school and assured that he was actually p rogressing towardsa sane and humane form of comedy when the pen fel l from h is;

hand .” 3 To some this may seem an endeavour to d istinguishbetween a dose of po ison that has been quite suffici ent to k i l lthe man and on e that he might have taken , powerful enoughto kill at least two. But Mr. Archer is within the truth whenh e states that F arquhar , i n his last three comedies , gives ageneral preponderance to kindness over cruelty and good overevil

,which reverses the order of things prevail ing in his con

temporaries ,” and that Farquhar may fairly share with Steele

the credi t O f having set earnestly about the venti lat ion of Engl ish comedy. Possibly , in th is necessary open ing of the wind ows and getting out Of doors

,the most sal ient change is that

which takes us,in these comedies

,out O f the narrow confines

of the social l i fe of a coteri e wherein the conventions of etiquettehave been substi tuted for the l aws of nature, into a somewhatwider sphere of action , on e at least in which the world O ffash ion and frivol i ty i s vi ewed from without. The RecruitingOffi cer carries the scene to Shrewsbury and subst itutes a novelgroup of characters , country justices and country clowns , thep rey of the humorous wiles and devious subterfuges of threerecruiting captains

,actual folk in a larger contemporary l i fe

than that of the fops and gallants of Covent Garden ; whilethe scene of The B eaux

’

Stratag‘

em i s Lichfi eld , wherein a sim

3 See William Archer, In troduction to George F arquhar, Mermaid

Series,”

1 903 .

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282 ENGLISH DRAMA

of h is career as an actor and manager. I t included upwards ofthi rty plays

,comedies of manners and intrigue

,pastorals

,a farce,

a masque,t ragedies

,al terations and adaptations of Shakespeare ,

F l etcher,Dryden , Moliere , Corneille and even of h is minor

contemporaries. There were many failures among them,but

l ikewise a number of successes such as She Would aiid SheWould N ot, an excellent comedy of manners , and The Careless Husban d , a really bri ll i ant comedy of intrigue. N ei thero riginality, l i terary quali ty, elevation of sentimen t nor anythingin the least degree smacking of poetry can be claimed for Cibber.But he could construct a play and people i t with acceptable andentertain ing personages. His work for the stage discloses acertain amel ioration in decency and morals

,as the years go by ,

i n which be reflected the progress of his age ; to speak of themoralised comed ies o f C ibber ” seems an overstatement. HisApOZOgy in troduces us to a man of singularly good sense andmodesty who appears to have rated his associates fai rly and tohave laboured under no false misappraisement of himsel f. I twas the i rony of fate that thrust Colley C ibber in to the laureateship thereby mak ing him the butt of the rid icule O f stronger menthan himsel f ; but assuredly the wit of Pope has seldom beenso perversely misled by his spleen as when he makes th is shrewdand capable business man , this adaptable dramatist and cleveractor the hero Of The Dun ciad .

O nly on e other dramatist who carr ied over the manner ofthe previous age

”

need here concern us ; and that is Mrs. SusannaCen tlivre whose earli est play corresponds in point of date withthe year o f the death of Dryden . Be fore her marriage to Centl ivre

,chief cook in the royal household O f Queen Anne and

K ing George I , she signed herself variously F reeman an d Caroll .Mrs. Cen tlivre was of humble origin and began l i fe in a company of stroll ing players in the provinces but later establ isheda permanent posi tion in London . Her e ighteen plays werewri tten between 1 700 and 1 72 1 , two years preced ing her death ,and there i s scarcely on e of them that is not possessed of meri tfor the stage. Her comed ies , which form the bulk of her work ,are al ike l ively and ingen ious. Her greates t

'

success was thecreat ion of a new comedy figure in Marplot in The Busy-B ody,1 709. Don F el ix in The Won der or a Woman Keeps a

Secret, 1 7 1 4 , i s hardly less amusing and original , however d i fferen t in kind . Mrs. Cen tlivre is bright rather than witty,fluen t and easy in dialogue and absolutely of the school o f Con

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 283

greve and Vanbrugh whom she equals in the ingenuity and inthe want of the sl ightest sympathy with the moral ideals whichwere beginning to make thei r way towards real isation duringthe period of her writings. Several of her comedies , however,long held the stage to be revived by Garrick and even later .Into the interest ing details of the l i fe of Sir Richard Steele , i t

i s impossible here to enter . Playwriting to him was n ot muchmore than an episode of his youth , though on e of importance tothe histo ry of the drama al ike from the consciousness of his artand from his recogn ition of what be conceived to be the moralobl igations of the stage. L ike F arquhar, Steel e was of I ri shbi rth

,born in Dubl in in 1 672 and some six years the former

’ssenior ; l ike F arquhar , too , Steele began l i fe as a sold ier andsaw as l ittle service . But Steele was of better stat ion in l i feand a kind uncle , who was secretary to the Duke of O rmond ,was abl e to give his nephew the advantages o f an education firstat the Charterhouse , where began h is friendship with Addison ,and later at Oxford . The associations of Steele’s youth stoodhim in good stead later

,for his frank and engaging personal ity

made him many friends. A certain dual ism rather than cal li t inconsistency — in the temperament of Steel e d isclosed i tsel fearly. His l i fe as a young Oflicer and ris ing wit , only too proneto convivial i ty,

“ exposed him, as he expressed it , to muchi rregulari ty ,

” and among other escapades , he fought h is manl ike any other gallant of his t ime , only to be afflicted — veryunl ike that personage — with serious after-thoughts on

“ thebarbarous custom of duelling.” The Christian Hero, 1 70 1 ,honestly avowed with hi s name on the ti tle page , was a strangebook fo r a scapegrace young captain to write ; and , losing casteamong his fellow ofli cers of the regiment because of i t , withcharacterist ic volati l i ty, Steel e wrote his first comedy, TheF un eral, to make weight against this p rejudice . But TheF un eral or Grief d la M ode i s no swing back into comedy afterthe manner of Congreve and Vanbrugh. Steele had alreadydeclared himsel f “

so far as I durst fo r witty men , agreat admirer of Jeremy Coll ier and acknowledged with candour the need of a reform of the stage. I t was certainly a departure from custom for the author to hOpe i n h is prefacethat his subj ect might prove acceptable to all lovers o f mankind , and i t was almost equally without immediate precedentthat he should have invented his plot enti re. On i ts performance, at Drury Lane late in 1 70 1 , The F un eral was received

284 ENGLISH DRAMA

with more than expected success , i ts t imely sat ire on the follyof current fashionable vanities in grie f , i ts several natural andamiabl e personages and its sprightly d ialogue car rying off theutter improbab il i ty o f the plot and such enormit ies as a youngman

,estranged from his father , vis i t ing the home in which his

father ’s dead body l ies , to carry on the l ively courtship of on e

o f his wards . The Lying Lover, Steele

’s next comedy actedin 1 703 , owes considerable to Le M eteur of Corneille , but theserious twist to the plot in the last act, by which the carelessOxford lad , come up to town to play the gallant , is turned fromhis fol l ies while in p rison , supposedly for the kil l ing of a man

i n duel,reads much like a page from Steele ’s own l i fe. This

comedy was wri tten with the avowed purpose of banish ing outof conversation al l entertainment which does not proceed froms implicity o f mind , good nature , friendship and honour.

” Theauthor acknowledges in i t an honest ambition to attempt acomedy which might be no improper entertainment in a Christ i an commonwealth . F our acts of The Lying Lover are excellen t ; the hero , Bookw it, with his imaginat ive l ies , has a gaycharm which accounts for the havoc that he temporarily worksin the hearts o f the lad ies whose posi tion of i ron ical fri endshipand concealed rival ry i s well sustained . But the fi fth act fallsi nto “ a moral homily ,

” and the attempted picture of youngBookw it

’

s despai r in N ewgate i s as much above Steele’s power

as a dramatist as the sentimental ending i s peri lously near top riggishness. The Lying Lover ran but six nights . The Tend er Husban d acted i n 1 705 is a much better play, though i t hadhardly a better fate . In point of fact i ts comparative failuremay be attributed , not this time , to a sermonizing fifth act , butto the un ion o f two plots

,the on e ( derived from Mol iere ) as

excell en t i n i ts farcical capabil it ies as the other (which waso riginal ) i s unwholesome and unnatural .Wi th The Ten d er Husband , Steele ceased , for many years ,

to write for the stage , al though h is associ ation with the theatrecontinued close as cri tic

,patron of the players and sharer in the

business,i f n ot i n the actual management of Drury Lane. Into

the vicissitudes of these theatrical matters we cannot venturehere nor can we trace , even in outl ine , the active l i fe of Steel eas a pol itician , essayist and ,

party pamphleteer. Steele was always a careless financi er ; and his extravagance , generosi ty andsanguine m iscalculations as to h is business undertak ings and thereturns o f h is various offices kept him in continual t rouble

,not

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286 ENGLISH DRAMA

talk as to the correct s ize and colour of orchids. Even thematter of the intrus ion —if i t b e such — of sentiment intoplaces which we think otherwise better occupied

,may be ac

knowledged to b e largely a quest ion of where to draw the l ine.Eighteenth century sentiment seems to us at t imes mawkish ;will anyth ing much better be

’

said some day of our own ? Asto Steele , with a fine d iscernment and power of drawing character and abil i ty to wri te l ively, natural and d iverting d ialogue,with a charming command of humour and pathos at need

,he

fai ls as a write r of comedies because of di ffuseness , because of

an inabil i ty to concentrate and to construct with the p recis ionthat several playwrights, otherwise his in feriors , possessed . Un

consciously or not , Steele sought expression in the essay andl e ft the inimitable figures o f Sir Roger de Coverley,Wi l l Honeycomb and Captain Sentry to a larger aud ience than Sabel , Bookwit or Bevi l could ever reach . I t is interesting to know thatGoldsmith borrowed his Tony Lumpkin from Steele

’s Humphrey Gubbin , and that Sheridan had his Lydia Languish fromB iddy Tipkin ; that Steele had his part in the patern ity of F i elding’s ol d f ashioned Squire Western as in his “ perfect man

Squire Alworthy. Even Sir Charles Grand ison is only Ri chardson ’s elaborate glor ification of Steele’s v i rtuous , priggish , imposs ibl e paragon

,young Bevi l . In a word , Steel e was the

earl iest l i terary man to express the new sentimental ideal ofmanhood which

,whatever i ts shortcomings , set a contras t be

tween the weakness and brutal i ty of the fl esh and decent ,honest clean l iving, and recognised a respectable , i f somewhatconventional

,standard of moral conduct , governed by kindness

and humanity,while seeing the worl d none the ‘less truly as i t

was. This was a great step in advance o f the conventional immoral i ty Of the previous age, with its cynical denial of anystandard . Unhappily, however, thi s was precisely the stepwhich the d rama could n ot stand ; for the substitution of th esentimental ideal carri ed with i t the reference of conduct , character and situation to the standard of morals in place of thestandard of art istic truth and fitness . We may acknowledgeTh e Lying Lover, then , as the first unmistakable exampl e of

the sentimental comedy and the as yet healthy parent of a longand increasing sickly progeny.To appreciate to the ful l the nature and extent of the decl ine

in the Engl ish d rama,not from the pinnacles o f Shakespeare ,

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 287

but from the lesser heights of Heywood , Massinger and Dryden ,we n eed to consider

,not the in ferior products of this later age

or those,which fai ling to fall i n with the taste of the time

( l ike Steele’s ) enjoyed only a qual ified acceptance , but the

dramas that were acclaimed and approved,plays which

,l ike the

traged ies of Southern e and Rowe , were hailed with enthusiasmand maintained thei r place on the stage for generations. Inthe case of Rowe i t happens that such a comparison is easy asthree of his most popular works , Tamerlan e, The F air Pen iten t and Jan e Shore, are on themes already treated byElizabethan dramatists and two at least are independent wri tings over or translations , so to speak , into the terms of Augustanideals of the drama. N i cholas Rowe was two years Steele’sand Addison ’s junior and , though educated for the law , developed early an unusually deep interest in the drama as d istin guished from the stage. An indefatigable reader and ap

p reciator of old poetry, Rowe is now best remembered as theearliest edi tor of Shakespeare , the first to attempt to compilea biography of that great poet from the fading tradit ions andperishing memorials accessible at the t ime . But Rowe , withall his appreciation of the past , was absolutely a man of hisown age. He was born two generations too soon to feel thes l ightest sti rring in him of the return ing spring of the romanticrevival and even Shakespeare editorship was to darken to thedays of Pope before the dawn . Rowe is the author of e ightd ramas

, on e of them a comedy,altogether trivial . The rest,

which are more or less tragic , range from The Ambitious Stepmother in 1 700 to Jan e Shore, fifteen years later ; and they eu

j oyed,for thei r clearly defined and well conducted , i f artificial ,

plots,thei r easy florid and declamatory blank verse and thei r

consistent expression of accepted conventional emotion , altogether the greatest populari ty of thei r time . In Tamerlan e,acted in 1 702 , Rowe has reduced the ti tanic and barbarousconqueror of Asia to an enl ightened modern potentate , intendedto figure forth and compl iment his maj esty , Wi l l iam I II , drawing in contras t the weak and passionate Bajazet, to typi fy cor

respon dingly Wi ll iam’s enemy

,Louis XIV. These pol itical

s imili tudes , so fatal to l iterary longevi ty, assured to the p iece acontemporary success and brought fame to the author. I t i sbut fai r to say that Rowe owes nothing to Marlowe , althoughthe two dramas might be instruct ively contrasted by one who

288 ENGLISH DRAMA

would know to the full the extravagance of authentic poetryo’

erleap in g i tsel f and the atrophy of even the simil i tude of thatd ivine art.In the following year, Rowe achieved a lasting success in

The F a ir Pen iten t, which , l ike i ts even more successful suc

cessor,Jan e Shore, 1 7 1 4, held the stage in almost unchallenged

acceptance for more than three generations. As we read theseOld plays

,acknowledging thei r merits in clari ty, directness,

sentimental,perhaps even to thei r aud i tors emotional

,interest,

we cannot but wonder how thei r poverty of thought,thei r

obvious rhetoric,want of poetry and characterisat ion could have

satisfied those who had seen Shakespeare , acted by B etterton ,Booth and Garrick. A comparison of The F air Pen iten t, withits source

, M assinger’s splendid

,vivi d F atal D ow ry

—a comparison by the way made as long ago as the t ime of R ichardCumberland — discloses on the part o f Rowe much the sameattitude of min d and the same narrow intent to uni fy and sim

p lify at any cost that we have al ready found characterist ic o fC ibber

’

s alterations o f R ichard III ; and even a greater callousn ess to the touches o f l i fe, those flashes o f poetry and realisa

t ions of character that give real i ty to the Old play. Massingerhad given to Charlois , the wronged husband , a personal i ty anda dignity in h is manly grie f that the body of his noble fathermust l i e unburied for want of money to satis fy h is cred i tors .He had given to him ,

in pleading h is cause , a pathetic eloquencethat moves the reader as i t moved the j udges in the play and ,thus prepared , we proceed to the story of his wrongs. All thisRowe reduces to a cold recital , l eaving us without a grain of

sympathy for h is Al tamont , the corresponding figure. Again ,M assinger had given to his heroine Beaumelle

,a levi ty of n a

ture that accounts fo r he r infideli ty an d , in the end , an awakening that causes her , i n her contri tion , to real ise the nobili ty o fthe husband whom she had abused . Rowe’s correspond ingfigure , Calista , is the v i ct im of her own animal passion , marriesher husband because she must and is sorrowful and pathet icthat her w ickedness has been d iscovered and that conventiondemands her su icide . The play is miscall ed

,for n ot for a min

ute is Cal ista truly penitent. Rowe destroyed the humani ty ofevery figure that be touched , conventional ising the fri end ,Romont-Horatio and los ing all the noble d istraction of thefather. In a word the l iving drama becomes under the handof i ts renovator, a succession of sent imental scenes in which the

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29° ENGLISH DRAMA

Add ison in contemporary letters and soc iety. The last number of The Spectator had appeared in December 1 7 1 2 and Addison was seeking for new fields of l i terary effort , when his friendsp revailed upon him to complete a tragedy on the subj ect of Catoat U tica, the first four acts o f which he had written nearly tenyears before. There i s no reason to doubt that Addison

’s ser ious misgivings as to the production of his tragedy were sincere.I t had not been original ly written to be acted and Addison wastoo judicious a cri t ic not to recognise i ts shortcomings. But thesubj ect at the moment was peculiarly fitting ; the Tories hadj ust come back to power with the conclusion of the Treaty of

.U trecht ,'

the Whigs fel t that the treaty was the loss of all thatthe v ictories of M arlborough had gained for England . Cato

was the last of the Romans , as conservative as the veries t ofTories ; but he was also the defeated , the heroically unsuccessful upholder of the greatness o f Rome ; and the

‘vVh igs were

quite as certainly defeated and,i n thei r own opinion , the up

holders of the glo ry of England . In consequence , on the staging of Cato, in 1 7 1 3 , the house was packed by the adherentsof both part ies

,each as determined as the other to read the

drama into an allegory favourable to i ts own deserv ings, an d'Addison enj oyed a dramatic success i n London , and later atOxford , abov e that o f any dramatist of his t ime. Like everything of Addison ’s , Cato is full o f nobl e sentiments , beauti fullyw r i tten and with a complete real isation of that regularity thatthe age united so to praise. Wi th this , all commendation ends.The plot i s barren

,i l l conducted and full of absurd i ties , the

characters fr igid , l i feless and mere mouthpieces for fine declamat ions . Considering the humanity of The Spectator, and withevery allowance for Steel e’s part in i t and influence on his

friend , the coldness of Addison’s tragedy is surpris ing and th e

d ignity o f Cato added to the d ignity and sel fconsciousness ofAddison produced a resul t which even the author

’s own complacent age found it d ifli cult wholly to accep t. Cato was vastlyadmired and theoretically approved

,but i t was also severely

cri ticised,most incis ively and wi ttily by Dennis , for the iri

relevancy of i ts love scenes and for i ts slavish adherence to the

un ities ; and after a few revivals , i t ceased to hold the stage.Cato has

'

been called “ the grave of Engl ish tragedy ” ; perhaps i t is better denominated that tragedy’s sculptured tomb , noteven inhabited by that much abused victim of a thousand crimes.An d i t was what Vol tai re del ightedly designated i ts reasonable

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 29!

ness that kil led English t ragedy in Cato. I t is poss ible, if one

so wills i t , to view the enti re history of Engl ish d rama (or alll i terature and art for that matter ) as on e continued struggl ebetween the sanction of precedent and the spi ri t of freedom . Inwide considerations such as these many cant words have beeninvented and i t i s difli cult to avoi d them and their misleadingconnotations . I t is possibly not too much an exaggerat ion tosay that the l iteral reading of a d isciple ’s report of the Opin ionsand theories of a certain Greek philosopher , with l i ttle referenceto h is l arger system

,l ed two modern l i teratures astray in thei r

conception and practice o f tragedy and shackled the development and freedom of at least two others . Cato demonstratedto the world how a classical drama might be written ; andi t demonstrated

,l ikewise , what an undesi rable thing i t was to

do. N one the less,in the years that followed Addison and

Rowe, En gl ish tragedy became more and more a conventionalfollowing of what had gone before ; and the strongest influenceupon i t , because the nearest , was that of F rance . In the handsof genius and with vastly contrasted antecedents

,the classical

ideal had reached there the grace , the d ignity , the purity o f diet ion and elevation of t hought that distinguishes the works ofRacine and Corneill e. The story of classical drama in England is very d i fferent ; for such way as i t made at times i n theearly Sen ecan s, in Jonson and his followers , was always bymain force against the grain of English gen ius. In Englandthose bugaboos

,the unities

,had frightened many a play out of

its senses and into absurdi ty, however rational the underlyingp rinciples which the age devoutly bel ieved made for the realisat ion of all the dramatic vi rtues. Again and again among thecommendations bestowed by the cri tics on Shakespeare

,we read

how his i rregularities were thrown into the balance againsth im.

' F rom Jonson and Dryden to Pope and Dr. Johnson ,though the degree o f accusation may vary

,i ts maj or count is

always the same. N ow in the very tr iumph of the classicalideal , as the e ighteenth century conceived i t in England , layon e of the elements of i ts undoing, and that was this same sentimen tality that insisted , for example , on love-making in thesenate chamber at U t ica at the very extremity of Cato ’s resistance to Rome. The age that preferred O tway

’

s Monimia and'Rowe’s Cal ista

,as tragic heroines , to Lady Macbeth, let us

say, or even to D ryden’s Cleopatra, was scarcely stern enough

to uphold the rigours of Attic tragedy ‘elsewhere than in aca

292 ENGLISH DRAMA

demic d iscuss ion ; and hence the general breakdown in Engl isht ragedy o f that theoretical aloofness and decorum on whichF rench classical tragedy prided i tsel f so highly.In the forgotten plays of Ambrose Philips , John Hughes ,

Charles Johnson , Elijah F enton and their lesser kind , in those ofEdward Young

,famil iar author of N igh t Th oughts , and James

Thomson,ever memorable for The Season s, Engl ish tragedy

d ragged i ts weary length , rattl ing its F rench fetters and bespeaking tears as wel l as admiration for a form more or lessavowedly class ic. N one of the three d ramas of Young

,from

Busiris in 1 7 19 to The Brothers m 1 75 3 , was successful , savein attracting the satir ical rid icule of F ield ing

’

s burlesque TomThumb ; and the five “ tremendous tragedies of Thomson

(most of them acted between 1 730 and desp ite thefri endship and the acting of Quin and Garrick , achieved only atemporary success. Thomson ’s Soph on isba i s at best a poorfollowing o f O tway

,his Edward an d Elean ora, based on an

apocryphal anecdote concerning King Edward I , achieved theextraord inary distinction of being praised by John Wesley ; inh is Coriolan us, Thomson disdained to borrow from Shakespeare , but wrote the drama over anew and at much greaterl ength

,mak ing Volumnia , th e wi fe of Coriolanus , and now no

longer s ilent,l ike Vi rgil ia , and , expunging both the person and

the humour of excel len t Men en ius Agrippa from a drama on so

serious a subject as the history of Rome. N o contrast couldbette r make clear the nature of the d i fference between the ideal sof the stage in Shakespeare

’s t ime and those of Thomson’s thana comparison of the scene, in the Coriolan us of each , in whichthat conquero r is won to spare his native ci ty by the i ntercess iono f his wi fe and mother ; and few could make clearer thedeclamation

,mannerism and conventionality of si tuation and

personage into which the drama o f the whole age had fallen .

In these dramatic productions o f d ist ingu ished poets we recogs

n ise the commencement of that break between the play as a pros

duction for the stage and the dramatic form as an attractivemould for the exp ression of poetic thought and l i terary ideals.This created an ever widening breach between dramatic l i terature and the stage and contributed to the further atrophy ofthe drama ; so that through the time of C ibber , throughout thato f Garr ick and beyond , the period becomes more and more theage of the actor as d istingu ished from that of the d ramatist.But there was much to intervene before we reach this later

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294 ENGLISH DRAMA

later, a scandalous comedy by the same col laborators failed so

signally that Pope was glad to d isavow any part in i t. N or didGay fare any better in 1 724 with a tragedy.Wi th The B eggar

’

s Opera, however , Gay’s reputation and

fo rtune was made.‘

I t ran , according to Pope , sixty-three nights ,an unprecedented run in those days

,and for a time l iterally

d rove I tal ian op era, against which its burlesque was levelled ,o ff the stage. The Beggar

’

s D pera belongs to a spec ies knownas ballad-opera and may claim a descent , more or less d i rect, fromthe English masque through the heroic opera

,

” as productionsl ike D ryden ’s Tempest and Davenant

’s M acbeth have beensomewhat loosely called . Gay

’s work is actually a prose farcein three acts

,in terspersed with some seventy l i ttl e songs ly

r ics ( alas for the abuse of we should n ow call themi n the cant of the musical drama. The music was taken frompopular ai rs Of the day and arranged so as l i ttl e to impede theaction such as i t i s. The p lo t , so far as there is any

,i s well

described in the term a N ewgate pastoral.” Indeed the verybareness o f the fabl e the si tuation of Captain Macheath ,the handsome dashing highwayman , betrayed to a merited hanging by the consp i racy of a turnkey and a receiver of stolen goods ,but beloved by the daughter of each— i s a mere take-off, in i tslowness of subj ect, of the high dramatic alt itudes of currentopera and tragedy. An d the whimsical conclusion that restoresthe captain

,against al l logic, to h is two sorrowing w ives is a

further thrust at current operatic absurd ity. The B eggar s

Opera is intrinsically a trifle , and more d istinguished by itsinconsequence and good humoii r than by its wit or any seriouseffort at sati re ; but i t accompl ished with a laugh what twentyyears of rival endeavour could not do , the d iscouragement o fthe bombas t and absurdity of many of i ts serious performances .Gay followed up his success immediately by a second part , calledPolly, which , al though n ot allowed to be acted for personalreasons , brought him in , on publ ication , a handsome sum to

add to the fortune that The B eggar’

s Opera had made him .

Later, we find Gay supplying an Engl ish l ibretto for Handel.His other d ramatic ventures are negl igible.Let us return to th e sentimental drama to which the ad

van cin g century brought a n ew development in the form ofa revival of the once popular Elizabethan bourgeois tragedy.I n June 1 73 1 , The Lond on M erchan t or theHistory of George

Barnwell was acted at Drury Lane, the author, George Li llo.

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 295

This tragedy was a departure in several part iculars from thevogue of the t ime. I t was founded avowedly on fact, thehomely fact of every day l i fe ; and while the author d id not goto the length of representing the l i fe o f h i s own time , the vei lof the story o f an Elizabethan apprentice on his road to ruinwas transparent enough fo r al l to descry the contemporaneousmoral appl ication . The form , too , was an innovation , forBarnwell i s written in the homel iest and baldest prose, however i t falls at times into a certain l ilt of rhythm in passages o femotional excitement , l ike the well known cases in D ickens.Prose for tragedy

,i f n ot quite unknown before , was at least

l ike Lil lo ’s descent into the affai rs of tradesmen — a daringflaunt in the regal countenance O f tragic decorum. Althoughacted in vacation

,Barnwell scored an immed iate success , run

n ing for twenty consecutive n ights to crowded houses and gaining

,in its repeated revivals

,altogether the greatest success of

any piece of i ts age. More,th is bald and homespun dramatic

version of an old ballad — for it is no more — void of th el east trace of poetry and without a single l iterary grace to recommend i t , gained a reputation and exerted an influence on l i terature

,especially abroad

,which is simply amazing. The d irce

t ion that L i llo gave to the drama involved a deeper respect forrel igion and morals and a more rigorous regard as to conduct ,especially in the relat ions o f the sexes. This is equally the b iasof Richardson’s novels and of the moral ised p ictor ial sati reof Hogarth : and both , be i t remembered , came after . Moreover the success o f Li llo’s play

,on the stage, made i t the pattern

n ot only of imitation in England , but pract ically founded aschool of domest ic tragedy in F rance and in Germany as well .This latter

,an interesting subject in itsel f, cannot be pursued

in this place. Sufli ce i t to recall,in th e on e country , D i derot ,

whose transformation of the comed ie larmoyan te into his owntraged ie d omestique et bourg eoise was effected by the di rectinfluence of a F rench translation of Barnw ell upon him , andLess ing , in the other , who translated D iderot in the first instance and imitated Li llo in his tragedy

, M iss Sara Sampson !

To return to Barnw ell, as a work o f d ramatic art , no one

could rate i t intrinsically highly ; however, Li llo is to be commended for his d i rectness

,his freedom from redundancy

,his

steady movement forward , to the gallows that takes his un4 Ou th is whole sub ject see the excellen t edition of Barnwell and

The Fatal Curiosity by A. W. Ward,1 906.

296 ENGLISH DRAMA

h appy and repentant hero to h is doom in the end . I t is onething to consider this s imple old tragedy from our modern poin tof vi ew an d label i t execrable stuff i t is another to try tounderstand its populari ty and influence. L il lo

, of whom l ittlepersonally is known

,was , i t appears , of F lemish extraction and

carried on the trade of j eweller in London . He w as , on h isown con fession

,a d issenter , and exhib its in his work the close

knowledge of the bibl e, the strong rel igious convictions and theacute moral sense that was characteristic of the Protestantnoncon formists of his t ime . His success with Barnw ell, whichwas great pecuniarily, led him to the writing of other tragediesof which The F atal Curiosity i s al ike the best known and themost powerful . Here , once more we have a murder play andon e ci rcumstantially told as an actual occurrence in the oldpamphlet form from which the story was derived . Here , too ,Li l lo l eft his sto ry in the Jacobean per iod in which his sourcehad placed i t ; but he sought to d ign i fy the theme by writ ing inverse and heightening his language , in neither of which can hebe said to be successful. The F atal Curiosity tells of the returno f a son in disguise after long absence, and of h is murder byhis ow n parents whom continued want and misery had dr ivento the verge of madness. I t is a terrible l i ttl e play

,compress

ing,as i t does , the subj ect into three short acts ; and , we may

agree, that the manner in whi ch this hor rible deed i s made toappear the inevi table consequence of fate rather than the re

sul t o f character , declares its psychology to be transnormal . Ina word

,L il lo’s F atal Curiosity is the logical application of sen

timen tality to the/

murder play. I t may be added that thist ragedy, too, has an interesting foreign h istory, especially in itsinfluence on minor G erman romantic d rama. In two othertragedies, The Christian Hero and Elmerich, both readabl eand interesting , L i l lo holds up his ideal of the just p rince andthe righteous man . The Christian hero is the famous Albanianprince , George Castriota ; Elmerich i s a supposedly historicall eaf out of theannals of Hungary. Save for the prevalence ofstrong moral ideas in them an d a somewhat abortive attempt togive to thei r hal ting blank verse a rather greater elevation of

language than the prose of Barnwell, they are n ot d istinct ive.Lastly, Lil lo left behind h im an unacted rewriting of Arden

of F eversham which may show the source of his inspi rat ion forB arnwell or be‘no more than a subsequent discovery of this earl ier work of kindred sp iri t.

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298 ENGLISH DRAMA

pressed against that insolent F rench panegyrist who first den iesShakespeare almost every dramatic excell ence , and then , in hisn ext play

,p il fers from him almost every capital scene ? ” But

by no means were al l the traged ies , that cluster about the middl eof the century, mere imitations of contemporary F rench plays.O nly a few months before the per formance in 1 749, of Hi l l

’sM erope, on e of the last of his t ranslat ions of Voltai re , Garrickhad placed Dr. Johnson ’s portentous tragedy, M ahomet an d

I ren e, on the stage and by sheer force of his personal influenceand good wil l to an old friend compelled i t to run nine nightsthat the needy scholar might put the products of three author’sn ights in his pocket . I ren e, as i t was called on publication

,i s

as heavy and essential ly undramat ic as its famous author himsel f. There is something del iciously ludicrous in the O ttomanconquero r of Constantinople grandi loquently praising the B ri tish constitution in the year 1 45 3 , and courting his fair Greekcaptive in the ponderous eloquence that rolled its ben efi cen tthunder at the Turk’s Head and the M i tre.Dr. Johnson ’s tragedy

,a model of correctness and weighted

w ith perfect ions,was never acted again. Very much in con

t rast was the fate o f John Home ’s D ouglas, a prime favourit eon i ts first appearance in Ed inburgh in 1 756 , at Covent Gardenin the next year and , on repeated revivals , thereafter up to thedays of Kean and M rs. Siddons . Home was a Scottish clergyman and the scandal of on e of his cloth having writtena play caused his resignation from the pulp it . Douglas i sbased on on e of the old ballads o f h is country and written ,as it was , somewhat apart from the influences that convemt ionalize al l l iterary efforts in th e hands of lesser menwho live at the centre of cul ture

,is sustained by a genuine

s inceri ty,simplici ty and pathos that fully account for i ts

populari ty. The story, that of the restorat ion to h is motherof a long lost son who is slain almost in the moment of theirrecogni tion

,comported well with the sorrows and distresses of

which the stage was so fond ; but is conspicuous in substitut ingmotherly affection for the mawkish love making that intrudesso commonly into contemporary comedy and tragedy al ike . Dr.

Johnson,who could not but feel somewhat piqued at the success

of Douglas, with its in artifi cial plotting and inadequacy as tol iterary qual ity

,consol ed himsel f in declaring ,

“ There is not ,sir, a good l ine in D ouglas .

”

Iren e is stuffed w ith good l ines,and yet Iren e is no play.

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 299

I t was well before th is period of the controversy with Voltai re that burlesque had begun to shower the arrows o f itsr id icul e upon the unoriginali ty, the grandiloquence and desperate prosaic level of Engl ish tragedy. Henry F ielding, th efamous novel ist

,began his long li te rary career with the penning

of a couple of comedies in the manner of Congreve , the first ofwhich was ecl ipsed on its performance

,in 1 728, by the popular

i ty of The B eggar’

s Opera. Thereafter F ield ing wrote sometwenty or more other p ieces , comedies , short farces or burlesques ; and in 1 742 , gave up the stage for the law and the writing of fiction . Scarcely on e of F ield ing

’s dramatic ventures iswanting in interes t

,though all were written carelessly and

under pressure of the moment. The two or three adaptationsfrom h f oliere succeeded best in thei r day and on e of them , TheM iser, long held the stage. The earl ier comedies are as coarseas we might expect comed ies written by the author o f TomJon es to be , however he made the characteristic plea that i nso writing he intended “ to make v i ce detestable. F i eld ing’sreal d ramatic successes were his mock-heroic burlesques forwhich his vigorous satir ical pen found ample scope. In TheAuthor

’

s F arce he attacked opera , the vacui ty of the drama andthe wretchedness of G rub Street backs, of which fratern ity hewas perilously near being a member at the moment . Coven t

Gard en i s an onslaught on the sentimental drama , especially asrepresented in TheD istressed M other, a popular play of Phil ips ;and in Pasquin , as in The Historical Reg ister, another farce,F i eld ing lampooned the Cibbers

,father and son , against whom

he disclosed a continual enmity. The best o f these short p iecesi s Tom Thumb the Great, a burlesque of the whole romantic ,sentimental and bombastic drama from D ryden

,Lee and O tway

to Dennis, whose crit icism receives many a del ightful thrust ,and Thomson against whose Busiris the sat irist appears to havehad an especial grudge. I t is F i eld ing’s cue not only to turn theentire species to ridicul e in his absurd and plotless extravaganzaof the l i ttle hero , Tom Thumb , at the court of King Arthur,bu t to parody l ines , passages and simil itudes from the traged iesthat are h is quarry, i n the manner of The Rehearsal, but farmore extravagantly. While much of this banter must be los tto us

,desp ite the author’s d iverting parallels and references ,

enough remains to declare how justified was the attack , and welearn with interest that Tom Thumb long held the stage , surpass ing alike i ts predecessors and the several followings in i ts

soo ENGLISH DRAMA

k ind that i ts wit and its success inspi red . F ield ing’s earl iestsuccessors in burlesque

,were Hen ry Carey , author of Chra

n on hoton thologos, and Samuel F oote , an actor , notorious fo rh is powers of mimicry , who , after evad ing the law ingen iouslyfor years

,at length succeeded in obtaining a l icense for his l i ttle

theatre i n the Haymarket , where the l ighter muse long maintain ed hersel f , in comedy and farce , against the tears an d d ign ities that ruled at the other houses .To recapitulate in even the brie fest outl ine the intricate story

o f David Garrick’

s l eadership of the English stage during aperiod of more than forty years , can form no part o f the sub

j ect of this book. He was unequalled as an actor, successfulin steering for the most part a steady course in the troubledwaters of theatrical management , and an able gu ide of thetaste o f the time

,somewhat , though not so much as has been

supposed,to the appreciation of a wholesomer dramatic d iet .

Ga_rrick’

s Gal l ic temper combined wi t, vivaci ty and versati l itywith prudence and

,his enemies said

,a certain n iggardl iness.

I t was perhaps less this last ( for there are many stori es to d isprove it ) than a certain want of moral courage that caused himto temporise and compromise so commonly in his deal ings withthe d rama of h is t ime. Garrick is o ften extolled as the restorerof Shakespeare to the stage. As a matter of fact there neverwas a time from Elizabeth ’s day to Garrick

’

s own ( to say nothing o f what came after ) , when Shakespeare had n ot held theEngl ish stage

,his rOles the ambi tion of the greatest actors

,his

plays , when honestly and adequately given , the del ight not onlyo f the cul tivated and judicious but of the masses who caredfor the stage. In another sense , the restoration of Shakespearehas been claimed for Garrick and be rather boasted at timeso f his return to the original texts . But his famous Richard IIIwas Cibber’s version ; and he never dared to act King Learsave with Tate’s unhappy happy end ing ; whil e his d ramaticworks ” ( collected after his death , i t is fai r to add ) , d isclosein The Fp iries, Catherin e and Petruchio and F lorizel and Perd ita, t itles which are scarcely more varied from the originaldesignations of plays of Shakespeare’s than the texts themselvesare al tered . In the matter of the fitting of dramas for revivalon a later stage under new conditions

,i t i s easy to fall into a

cond i tion of unwarranted conservatism . Indubitably so plastica th ing as a drama should be adaptable ,to the immediate purpose which it serves. An d in v i ew of the incessan t revi ew, re

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302 ENGLISH DRAMA

Chaussée , as he had borrowed from Pamela and Clarissa cer

tain ly appear to bear this out. But whether the author beMurphy, Colman , Mackli n or even Garrick himsel f ( as in TheClan destin e M arriage which he wrote with Colman ) , thi scomedy was ever moral ised in its genteel commonplace and becoming sentiment unti l all humour and merriment had beendr iven to such re fuge , as we have seen , i n farce and burlesque.As early as 1 759, i n his Enquiry in to the Presen t State of PoliteLearn ing , Goldsm ith had defended the exaggerations of follyand the absurdi ties o f the vulgar in comedy against those who“proscribed the comic or sat irical muse from every walk buth igh l i fe.” He especially obj ected to the current word lowas used thus to restrict th e legitimate functions of comedy, ashe late r deplored the c ircumstance that humour seemed to bedeparting from the stage ; witti ly defining sentimental comedyas

“ a kind o f mulish production wi th all the defects o f i tsopposi te parents

,and marked with steri l ity,

” he argues thati f we are permitted to make comedy weep , we have an equalr ight to make tragedy laugh , and to set down in blank-versethe j ests and repartees of all the attendants in a funeral process ion .

” 5 I t was with a full consciousness o f j ust what hewas doing

,that G oldsmith sought a more legitimate way

,than

that o f burlesque,of restoring English comedy to i ts power over

laughter. The Good N atured M an was o ffered Garrick atDrury Lane early in 1 767 ; but Garrick hesi tated , mistrustfulof the innovation l ike the safe man that he appears always tohave been ; and , after a quarrel over the matter , Goldsmith

’scomedy w as brought out a year later by Colman at Covent Gar

den . This,Garrick resented , placing in del iberate competi tion ,

Hugh Kelly’s F alse Delicacy, a piece of the washiest sen timental i ty which scored a Signal success while that o f The Good'N atured M an , which fol lowed a few days after, was morethan qual ified . Indeed Garrick

’

s mistrust of so bold a returnto the comedy of h umours by a contemporary was warranted inthe proof. The capital scene , in which Honeywood dresses upthe bail iffs in pieces o f his own wardrobe to masquerade as hisfriends , was voted

“low by Goldsmith

’s genteel auditors andwithdrawn ; and the poet had the mortifi cation to learn thatthe contemptible Kelly had made nearly four times as muchout of his r ival comedy.

5 (Yvoted by A . Dob son in h is ed . of Goldsmith,1 905, p . x iv from

the Westminster Magazine, December, 1 772.

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 303

'

The Good N atured llIan , however loose and faulty in con

s truction,was a better comedy than the English stage had seen

s ince F arquhar . The figures, such as Honeywood with his easynature and wil l ingness to serve everybody , Croaker , worryingout his troubles before they occur and then taking them amicably,and Lofty wi th h is oflicious importance and insinuating men daci ty

,are excell ent “ humorous figures in the old sense of the

word , and yet so original ly and happily drawn as to producea higher sense of real i ty than is common in thei r kind . Thereis, too , a genial ity, as Opposed to mere gaiety, and a naturalness in the personages

,their conduct and thei r admirably wri tten

parts that could have carried the town in almost any ageexcept that of the dominion of sensibil i ty and feel ing. The t imewas not yet r ipe ; and i t was nearly five years later that SheStoops to Con quer reversed this verdict and carried the townby sheer force of genius . Between Goldsmith

’s two comedies ,a second play o f Kelly’s — qui te as good (or, for that matter ,quite as bad ) as the fi rst met with an accidental failure ; andThe West I n d ian by Richard Cumberland and among thebest o f its species

,gained another triumph for the sentimental

school. Whether i t was the success or the failure of his rivalsthat encouraged him , Goldsmith set to work , late in 1 77 1 , on

his second comedy,o ffering it to Colman early in the next year.

I t i s a commentary on managerial d iscernment that,after

nearly a year , all that the author could get from Colman wasthe return of his manuscrip t

,scribbled over with criticisms an d

suggestions . At last with the bullying intervention of Dr.

Johnson,Colman was brought to start the still nameless play

in rehearsal ; but his indi fference communicated itsel f to theactors

,some of whom even threw up thei r parts ; and it was not

unti l March 1 773 that She Stoops to Con quer was performedwith a success al ike complete , brill iant and lasting. Scatteredwere now the host of genteel comedy and the breath of freshai r was let into the playhouse. Wi th the memory of the del ight ful , l iving personages o f this celebrated comedy and itsspontaneous humour, a part of our l i terary b irthright, i ts laughable si tuations

,engaging style and perfect acting qual ity

,we

cannot but deplore that a period should so soon have been set

to the d ramatic activi ty o f Goldsmith . His comedy was likea tonic to the stage , and the stage needed many another l iked raught . But Goldsmith no longer stood alone . Just beforethe performance of She Stoops to Con quer, Foote had p ro

304 ENGLISH DRAMA

duced , at his l ittle theatre in the Haymarket , what he calleda primitive puppet show,

” burlesquing the sentimental dramaand called Th e Handsome Housemaid or Piety in Patten s.Herein i s set forth , i n evident parody of such stories as Richardson

’

s Pamela, how a maiden of low degree“ by the mere

e ffect of morali ty and v irtue , raised hersel f to ri ches andhonour and the aud itors are assured that they will not discover in the work “ much wi t or humour ” as “ his brotherwriters had all agreed that i t was h ighly unpopular and beneath the dign ity of a mixed assembly to show any signs of j oyful satisfaction .

” We may bel i eve the report that,preced ing

'

Goldsmith ’s comedy by a month or more, this burlesque of

F oote’s helped to prepare the way for She Stoops to Con querwith a publ ic , weary of the insip id moral ity lcng preached fromth e stage.Everyth ing about Richard Br insley Sheridan reads l ike a

romance , and much has been perverted by those who sparenei ther fact nor character in the p rocess. In contrast with thesocial and pol i tica l eminence attained in a l i fe crowded withtr iumphs yet checkered with v ic issi tudes , the ‘story of his comed ies seems li ttl e more than an episode of his boyhood ; yet Sheridan , the author of The Rivals and The School for Scan dal, isknown to thousands to whom his famous parliamentary career,h is celebrated eloquence and even the numberless stories o f h iswi t and engaging personali ty are the shadow of a recol lect ion .

Born in Dublin , his father a clever actor , manager and elocu

tion ist, h is mother a playwright and novel ist , what better paren tage could b e demanded for the wri ter of comedy ? Add tothi s a sanguine temper that courted adventure , an address andread iness that made every event an experience and an easy powerof express ion that rose , on occas ion , to brill iancy and the equipment of the dramatist is complete. Sheridan ’s youth was spentin Bath

,then at i ts height as the cap ital of pleasure , and h is

comedies , whil e not actually autobiographical , are coloured toa degree with the remin iscence of personal incidents the like o fwhich he knew in the mids t of what has been happily calledthe sham chival ry and the sham romance of which he madesuch immortal fun .

” He had carri ed out , when less thantwenty years of age an elopement with the beauti ful El izabethLinley, who became h is wi fe , precisely such as Lyd ia Languishhad dreamed

'

for hersel f and her B everly.” He had foughttwo duels, when less than two and twenty, only a l ittle more

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306 ENGLISH DRAMA

that a share in Drury Lane was a share in a monopoly and therefore as good a security as freehold land on which any bankerwould advance money ; and , secondly, that by the help of othersand the mortgaged condition o f the second moiety ( not Garrick’s ) , which was acquired a year or two after , the transactionwas completed with very l i ttl e passing of actual money.

“ I tappears ,

” says Professor M atthews , who first cleared up thematter

,that Sheridan invested only in cash when he

bought on e seventh of Drury Lane Theatre , in 1 776 , and thathe rece ived this back when he became possessed of on e hal f ofDrury Lane Theatre , in 1 778, then valued !enti re ] at £90,

As to Garrick’

s consent , he was ready and anxiousto ret ire ; Sheridan was the firs t dramatist of h is age

,however

young and inexperienced , and of a dauntless courage and buoyant hope fulness. Garrick

,l ike hal f the people of Sher idan ’s

t ime,yielded to h is inevi table

,personal charm .

After a revival o f The R ivals and an adaptation of Van

brugh ’s Relapse, the new manager staged , i n May 1 777 , andwith the greatest care ever bestowed upon a cast (we are tol d ) ,his imperishable School for Scan dal. I ts success was absoluteand to this the sympathy, suggestion and actual training o fGarrick contributed in no small degree. The source of thissecond great comedy of Sheridan is referable, l ike the first

, to

a vivi d recollect ion of certain o f the author’s own personal ex

perien ces. On his return to Bath , while he was recoveringfrom the wounds o f h is second encounter, Sheridan was muchexercised at the outrageous reports and scandals ci rculatedabout his private adventures and sketched out the plot of acomedy to be cal led The Slan derers . This be subsequentlyunited with another rough draught concern ing the domesticd iff erences o f the Teazl e ’s and in this un ion The School forScan dal was wrought . But the essential contrast of the comedy— the contrast of Tom Jones and B ilfi l - may have had anorigin even more intimate ; for Charles Surface , however fai thful to a long dramatic ancestry, by way of Congreve and Van

brugh,i s possessed

,with all his carelessness and inconsequence,

o f an essential soundness of heart and a personal charm thatwas recogn isably the author’s

,while Sheridan ’s elder brother ,

Charles F rancis , is described as“ a plodd ing selfish man , who

never ran avo idable risks, who was an un fi lial son and an un

affectionate brother,” in a word , potentially at least , a very

‘

e See Brander Matthew s, Sheridan

’

s Comed ies, 1 885 , p . 3 1 .

CLOSE OF THE LITERARY DRAMA 307

Joseph Surface . This celebrated comedy is avowedly a pictureof l i fe observed from a satirical point of view. In such a picture

,even of the fr ivolous society of Bath , no man looks for

the accuracy of the chronicler , any more than for his dulness ;although it may be questioned i f even the satire of Sheridancould seriously misrepresent the actual malevolence of mendac ious gossip or the extravagant lengths Of fashionable folly. As

already suggested,the dramatis t owed much to a long tradition

,

but The School for Scan dal did n ot follow The hVay of theWorld by nearly three generations for nothing.

Congreve’s brill iant soulless d ramatic art , as we have seen ,fail s to be truly satir ical for the want of any real moral standard by which to measure the conduct of his personages. Poss ibly only the mal icious though who of us i s free from malice ?— can enjoy to the ful l so complete an exposure o f the detestable social world in which his comedies had thei r roots andtheir be ing : at least i t is difli cult for the man not of his timeto reach the moral detachment necessary to an appraisement ofthe comed ies of Congreve solely for thei r l iterary worth . Be

tween Congreve and Sheridan , the sentimental comedy had interven ed which , with all i ts plati tudinous over-emphasis of themoral aspects in l i fe

,had at least establ ished a standard of con

duct and with i t a fulcrum for the lever of satire . N 0 on e canmistake ei ther of Sheridan’s great comedies for a lecture onmorals ; for, without further stricture on this score , the scapegrace is forgiven as he has been time out o f mind in comedyand in l i fe — and we are taught that verily does a good heartcover a multitude of foll ies. But i f these comedies are not thepurest morals un defi led by wit , neither do they hold up to

our admirat ion a mode of l i fe at which good men revol t or, onthe o ther hand substitute for a hearty laugh at the fool ishnessof mankind a mawkish sentimental ising over the d istresses of virtue. In a word i t is the wholesomeness o f Sheridan ’s humourthat has given h is comedies thei r place with Goldsmith ’s ; andthe popularity of both authors is an evidence of a healthydramatic taste. Sheridan ’s last original d rama was The Criticperformed in 1 779, the year of Garrick

’

s death . The sentimental drama

,scotched by Goldsmith , w as sti ll l iving on to the

even ing of i ts day, more particularly in the dramas of R ichardCumberland , an abler man than either Murphy or Colman ,active in public affai rs , in many kinds of letters and the authorof more than fi fty plays

,n ow totally forgotten. hIoved by

308 ENGLISH DRAMA

the welcome always accorded to The Rehearsal on revival,

Sheridan conceived the idea of bringing this famous burlesqueof the drama up to date and in the upshot wrote a mock playthat surpas sed his example . The Critic, l ike The Rehearsal,represents a play within a play ; and from that famous pieceSheridan derived , too , th e clever artifice by which an author ismade to witness a performance of h is ow n play and commen tupon i t to his friends . F rom Tom Thumb, Sheridan borrowedthe idea of a parody on a supposed tragedy of English b isto rical subj ect , here the Spanish Armada. But Sheridan betteredall his models and devised

,in the person of Sir F retful Plagiary,

a personal l ampoon which surpassed the poet Bay’

es , al ike as i trepresented Dryden and as afterwards adapted to the lesserl aureate

,C ibber.

“There is perhaps no other example , says

M r. Gosse ,“of the absolute destruction of a reputation by

r idicule so complete as that of Cumberland by the p icture of

Sir F retful Plagiary.

”

An d now triumphant in comedy and sat ire, Sher idan turnedfrom the stage to the almost equally theatrical fiel d of pol i tics.His achievements and vicissi tudes there and his long strugglefrom the zenith of success as a playwright and manager to allbut complete financial ruin , do not concern our story. InSheridan the Old drama that took its original impulse fromM arlowe and Shakespeare expires. There is noth ing that hasfol lowed in i ts kind

,whether comedy or t ragedy

,that is no t

contained wel l within the ample superfi cies of the great dramat hat was . Time had gone on and even the gen ius of Goldsmith and Sher idan could n ot restore the past. Li terature andthe stage were thenceforth to b e al l bu t completely separated aspoetry had long been banished the drama ; and thei r rev1val

was to come independently and apart. Between The Ring and

the B ooh or Swinburne’s trilogy of M ary Stuart and a tragedy

of Shakespeare there i s as great a d i fference as between eitherand Clarissa Harlowe; and the accident that some o f our poetsh ave wri tten for the stage , l ike artists seeking experiments in anal ien material

,does not accoun t for the fact that , in the Eng

l ish language at least,our playwrights — dare we say even

until recently ? - have n ot been our poets .

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3 10 ENGLISH DRAMA

towards the stage , and the drawing o ff of the best l i terary andpoetic talent to the safer returns of the novel or the amplerpoetic possibil i t ies of the closet play.

1

Among the writers of comedy who imm ediately followed“

Goldsmith , O’

Keeffe, M ackl in , Reynolds and the younger Colman are perhaps the leas t forgotten. The first has the gaietyand natural flow of humour that has made his countrymen timeout of mind the world

’

s j esters . Mackl in , notable as an actor,wrote a remarkable satiri c comedy in his old age

, The M an ofThe World , although o f an older school and really prior toSheridan . I n F rederic Reynolds we have a typical prol ificmaker of plays to order, without the technical skil l of a Scribeor even a Tom Taylor ; while in Colman ( famous in his dayl ike Reynolds ) as an improvisator , the representation of characterwas often reduced to an incessant repeti t ion of some oddity or

peculiari ty of speech and manner that his auditors found excruciatin gly comical whil e h is sentiment is described by LeighHunt as mouthed ” and “ overdone ” “ i n the manner of aman who is tel l ing a l ie .” To these may be added M rs. Inchbald

,Thomas Morton and Holcroft whose on e great theatrical

feat was the capture of Le M arriage de F igaro by Beaumarchais by memory an d conveyance of it across the channeland into Engl ish in h is F ollies of the Day. Holcroft

’

s mostpopular play

,The R oaa

’to Ruin , holds the provincial stage even

to-day. St i ll obstinate in the ways of the older comedy of manners as exhibi ted i n The Clan destin eM arriag e, which he wrotei n collaboration with Garrick

,was the elder Colman who died

in 1 794 to be succeeded by the v ivacious son whom we havejust mentioned . Among the sentimental ists , Kelly dying in1 777 , Cumberland

“ the Terence of England , the mender of

hearts , as Goldsmith cal led him , continued his tearful waydesp ite the sat irical sl ings of Sheridan , a busy playwright , essayist and writer of general l i terature, confidently as sured of hi sown endur ing fame whatever might be true of his contemporar ies. I t has been pointed out that in Hannah More, the

femin ization of tragedy, begun in O tway and Southern e, continued i n the she-traged ies ,

”of Rowe , as he h imsel f dubbed

them,to reach in Hil l

,Murphy and Cumberland i ts culmina

t ion . Her Percy, 1 77 7 , was a very successful play, and her

1 On the later drama see the excellen t ch ap ter ( ix ) by T. Seccombe

in The Age of J ohnson , 1 900, pp . 1 99 if .

ENGLISH DRAMA SINCE SHERIDAN 3 1 !

F atal F alsehood ,a drama of domestic sentiment , only less so.

N otwithstand ing the attacks of She Stoops to Conquer and TheR ivals on the strongholds of sentiment , l i ttl e more was actuallyaccomplished than the readmission into serious drama of a certain quantum of low comedy. This , Holcro ft justifies , forexamplé, in the preface to his popular d rama , Duplicity, thoughhere , as in others of his and in Cumberland

’s J ew and Wheelof F ortun e, the v irtuous steadfastly su ffer and the heavensthreaten to fall

,tears furrow the countenance of comedy and

the cause of moral i ty is vindicated and upheld . In short theaud itor of the late eighteenth century had long lost the robustness of consti tut ion necessary to the endurance of the rigoursof tragedy ; and , while st il l will ing to be harrowed and thrill edby si tuations , at which good taste in any age must revolt , deman ded that he be sent home satisfied that no real harm hadbeen done to any human creatu re , that morals had been up

held,the wicked reformed ( rather than punished ) and the good

substantially rewarded for being good .

I f i t could be in any wise necessary to appreciate to the ful lth e insignificance of the bulk of the e ighteenth drama , we needbut compare i t with the giant stature that the novel had reachedin Richardson , F i eld ing, Smollett , and Sterne , to be succeededin F anny Burney, M rs. Radcl i ffe and the following roman ti

cists,in Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen , to look no further

forward . The drama was the last form of l i terature to feelthe quickening approach of the romantic return of the year.When at last the stage d id awaken to the fact that the worldwas changed about i t

,i t was influenced only by the coarser

an d more obvious elements in the renascence of wonder ,” the

del icate and poetical finding a more congenial place almost anywhere else. I f we look for “ t races and “ premonitions ,there is a touch of fatal ism and an appreciation for n aturalscene in D ouglas which , with its indeterminate mediaeval sett ing , der ived from the ballad of Childe M aurice, dimly foreshadows the romantic manner. As much cannot be said forHannah M ore’s Percy, desp ite a similar origin . To the elderColman has been ascribed a part in the reawakening interest inElizabethan drama

,witnessed in the rev ival of plays of F l etcher

and Massinger as wel l as in a certain effort to imitate El izabethan methods and d ict ion . And before long the mediaevalism of the new contemporary fict ion

,its Gothic horrors , super

natural ism and feel ing for nature as accompanying and aff ect ing

ENGLISH DRAMA

in its var ious aspects the affairs of men , begins to show its parall els on the stage. Walpole h imsel f wrote an unacted playThe Mysterious M other

, in 1 768, which is not an unworthycompanion o f The Castle of O tran to, i tsel f adapted for thestage and acted in 1 78 1 , as The Coun t of N arbon n e. O therGothic traged ies are Robert J ephson

’

s Bragan za,1 7 75 , which

boasts itsel f , i n the prologue, as“ warm from Shakespeare’s

school ,” his J ulia, 1 787 , a very popular play, the scene of which

is Elizabethan England , an d Cumberland ’s Carmelite, 1 784 ;and all preceded the German romantic influence. To thesepremonitions of romanticism may justly be added an effort tocomprehend the older age of d ramatic greatness and deprecatethe use of i ts stately marbl e structures to build temporaryd ramati c hovels , noticeabl e more particularly in a gradual returnto the acting o f Shakespeare’s plays in a state approximatelythat in which he left them

,and even more in the honourable

succession of edi tors of the great poet , each more circumspectthan the last in taking l iberties with the text. N one the l ess ,i t remains a commentary on the stage of the time and the wantof taste and discernment in the publ ic , that i t took the insighto f an eminent actor , who had learned i ts insipi d l ines, and anexhaustive scholarly enqui ry by an equally eminent Shakespearean to expose the impudent association of Shakespeare

’sname by I reland with his worthless anci en t B ri tish tragedyof Vortigern . Wel l has the h isto ry of the drama in the age ofWordsworth been summed up as “ the impact of successivewaves of romantic method and motif upon the sol id intrenchments of theatrical tradition ; with the result, that while thegrosser and baser elements found ready entrance

,the finer an d

more poet ic were stubbornly beaten back , and only towards theclose of the period began to fil trate perceptibly through .

” 2

We found Engl ish d rama when at its lowest ebb as l i teraturemos t widely aff ecting the stages of F rance and Germany throughthe homely domes tic tragedy of Barnwell. Similarly now

,i t

was not the great romantic d ramatists of Germany, Goethe,Sch iller onLessing, whose poetry and ideal i ty w as to reach andinfluence the Engl ish stage, but the more obvious , cl ever andadaptable theatrical quali t i es of the romantic dramas o f Kotzebue. Wi ll iam Taylor of N orwich and Sir Walter Scotttranslated Goethe and Lessing, reaching those who read poetry

2 C. H. Herford , The Age of Wordsworth, 1 897, p . 1 35 .

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3 14 ENGLISH DRAMA

Inchbald puts i t, in her prefatory remarks to Thompson’stranslation , allowing his p ity to deviate into vice by restoring th is woman to her former rank in li fe under the roo f of herinjured husband .

” The age must have revelled in the tears,

generosi t ies and struggles for command over feel ing of thestranger and his Adelaide , i n the fi nal part ing, converted intoreconcil iation by the timely thrusting in of the long motherlessch ildren and the rest of the lachrymose claptrap that appearsto do the business with impressionabl e humanity when bette r

stuff fails. Kotzebue is l argely the old sentimental d rama ina new roman ti c masque. P izarro, we might almos t call aresusci tat ion of the old heroic drama in its repeti tions o f ther ival lovers and the rival ladies in the atmosphere of a far awayand del ightfully unknown Peru ; while in the matter of strainedemotion

,even the hero of honour, distracted and d istorted , i s

surpassed in “ the renunciatory lover ,” as he has been called

,

who sacrifices all for the happiness of the angel who loves noth imsel f but his friend .

” 3 There are always those who mistakeacute cynicism as to present cond itions for the revelat ion of an ew gospel . A translation of Kotzebue’s N egerslelaven was

ded icated to W ilberforce , s trange irony as to an author , whosel i fe was that of a poli tical reactionary and whose death came tohim in the guise of an enthusiast’s stroke for l iberty. N eitherart istical ly nor for any ser ious read ing of l i fe , could Kotzebuebe taken into accofi

’

n t. N or c ould more b e looked for fromLewis ( also on e .of h is translators ) , whose notorious novel ,TheM on h with its d iablerie and rococo romant icism is of muchthe stuff of his plays , Castle Spectre, his Ad elg itha and Ven on iwhich came and went with the German rev ival . G rotesquecaricatures o f the imitators of Goethe’s Goetz von Berlich ingen

as these product ions of Monk Lewis are,they l ink on to

the l i terary translations of that famous romantic play by Taylo rand Scott , whil e the latter

’s t ragedy, The House of Aspen ,

actually taken up ,” we are i nformed by Lockhart ,

“ and pu tin rehearsal for the stage,

” discloses the wider relations o f thisspecies o f the drama to the romantic fict ion and balladry that,beginn ing in M rs. Radcl iff and B i shop Percy’s revival of old

ballad ry,rose to The M in strelsy of the Scottish B order and

the Waverley N ovels . The influence o f Schiller was less efficient

,however one of h is gigant ic figures of romance cast its

3 A. H. Thorn dike, Tragedy, p . 328.

ENGLISH DRAMA SINCE SHERIDAN 3 1 5

shadow far before to modi fy in Maturin’

s Bertram, 1 8 16 , one

of the latest outcomes of the Gothic school .The larger issues of the romantic revival can l i ttl e concern

so brie f a sketch as this of the form of l i terature that was leastradically affected by i t. Not only was Scott carried by the

eddy of the moment in to the wri ting o f a tragedy under Germaninspiration ; the same was true of Wordsworth and Coler idge ,The B orderers of the on e, Osorio of the other

,respectively

o ffered to the managers o f Covent Garden and Drury Lane,were refused by both in 1 798. An d

, indeed , nei ther could beconceived of as success ful on the stage , however the latter , t e

v ised as Remorse, met with a qualified acceptan ce when acted .

Both young authors were directly affected by the romanticsp iri t of contemporary German li terature ; but Sch iller, notKotzebue, stood f or that insp iration ; however conscious Coler idge might be of the apparatus of the school o f terror orWordsworth of Godwin ’s principles of Political Justice, neither wasunmindful o f the deeper and more powerful traditions of Shakespeare and the English past. Moreover, incident , even characteri tsel f

,was not that in which they were primarily interested ; it

was rather the power of passion to reveal the depths of humannature that was their quest ; and for the expression of this theyfound solution not in drama but in the lyric, raised to new andmore s ignificant uses in Lyrical Ballads.This idea of making the drama the means of a del ineation of

the stronger assions of the mind was followed out with extraordinary d iligence an d completeness by Joanna Baill i e in herPlays of the Passion s that range, some twenty-eight in number,from 1 798 to 1 8 1 2 . H'

er notion was to illustrate i n each playa dominant human passion

,traced from its beginning to its end

in ruin or satisfaction . To this she concentrated attention on theo rigin of that passion within , not as stimulated by external c i rcumstan ce or happen ing ; and subordinated all incident , development of character

,even poetry and i ts embell ishments , to a

rigorous search for pas sion in i ts isolation . Her med ium is verse ;on e i s surprised , with her theory, why not prose. She presentsin these dramas , a variety of subj ects , domestic and historical,and is far from unaffected by the outward implements o fromance

,knights

,vaulted Gothic chambers , music by n ight,

moonlight and witchcraft. M iss Bailli e wrote ostentatiouslyfor the stage , as her many elaborate stage d irections go to show ,

yet her works are ful l of improbabil it ies and her ignorance of

3 1 6 ENGLISH DRAMA

any real stagecraft is patent. Several of these dramas wereacted in London and Ed inburgh and on e of her tragedies , De

M outfort, held the stage for a short time. Her comedies ,which professed to substi tute character for incident and intri gue,had even less chance for success on the stage. The extravagantpraise that Joanna Baill i e’s work rece ived at the hands of themost j ud ic ious of her contemporaries , Scott , Campbel l and Byronamong them ,

must continue a matter of surprise to any who may'have attempted the read ing of her dull , prol ix and un illu

min ated scenes . But after all , she was merely t ry ing to do forthe d rama what Wordsworth , after a generation of abuse

,ac

complished for lyrical poetry, return i t to the language of everyday l i fe and

,i n the fervour of an actual representation of a

s ingl e passion,raise the product into the region of poetry. Un

h appily M iss Baill i e was devoid of genius and her age appreciated her sinceri ty, her moral i ty and clearly defined pu rposean d humanitarian spi ri t as we , at th is d istance, can not.To return to the popular stage , of the effect of the monopoly

of the two l icensed theatres on the nature o f the drama we haveal ready heard in these pages. This restriction , however brokenthrough at t imes, discouraged , as we have seen , original dramaof serious intent and encouraged , in the illegal houses , not onlyevas ions of the law but the upgrowth of innumerable dramatichybrids the opera

,operetta, farce , pantomime , burlesque, bur

letta,melodrama at last all ofwhich conspi red to lower the tone

of the stage and to substitute mere diversion and the charms ofnovelty and surprise for the legitimate pleasure of t ru e drama.The enlargement of the l icensed houses, i n 1 79 1 and 1 794,and again , on the ir burn ing and rebuild ing , in 1 808 and 1 809 ,brought , besides, another disadvantage. N ot only were newproductions discouraged but the old must be n ow more thanever adapted to aud itoriums in which the spoken word was lost:in the large d imensions of the house ; and the legitimate d rama,as well as the illegitimate , was bolstered perforce by spectacles ,machines and great effects , with songs , choruses and other musical add i tions. In this d ilation and ampl ification of the d rama ,so to call i t , Colman the younger was a leader, as clever as hewas unabashed and daring. In the process he achieved a n ew

and preposterous species of dramatic entertainment made up of

tragedy , comedy, opera and farce : the tragedy is blank-verse ofa Shakespearean sound , whatever i ts sense , the rest concocted offarce in prose, dance and song , effect of l ight, scene, concourse

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3 1 8 ENGLISH DRAMA

melodrama is an honest 1f a gross , art and better on that scorethan the frank immoral ity of our older comedy or the pervertedoutlook of the drama of sentiment. But what of any truedrama in such an age ? crowded by melodrama

,farce

,sentiment

and nonsense , by the opera for lovers o f music , by the novelamong readers for story, by poetry for lovers o f beauty. I t isn o wonder that the stage languished of a wasting il lness fromwhich recovery was more than doubtful and that the best intellects, after a failure or two should have turned to fields notso hopelessly barren .

But i t is not to be supposed that the young and ardent poetswho were carried away on the waves of the new romantic poetrywere conten t to leave the stage to melodrama and i ts l ike.F rom Southey’s somewhat abortive attempt to dramat ize a re

cent event in The F all of Robespierre, 1 794, into the reign of

Queen Victoria, there is scarcely a name of poetical or otherl iterary prominence to which there is not attached some effort inthe drama. Scott contented himsel f after the rej ect ion of TheHouse of Aspen with an occasional dramatic sketch such asM acdufi

’

s Cross or Holidon Hill, suggesting unreal ised possib ilities in the direct ion of romantic histo rical d rama. Godwint ransferred less of the revolutionary ideas of his novels thanmigh t have been expected to a couple of dramas ; An ton io andF aulkn er, which fai led as signally as Charles Lamb

’s J ohn‘Woodvil, born as it was of enthusiasm for Elizabethan poetryand a following o f Joanna Bailli e’s i dea of an expos i tion of th epassions from within and mainly by sol iloquy. A happier stageimitation o f the old d ramatic writers ” was Tob in ’s Curfewwhich enjoyed a run of twenty

'

nights , in 1 807 , and is as farfrom poetry as Lamb was remote from drama. To the year1 8 12 ,

belongs Landor’8 first and best tragedy,Coun t Julian , in

which his success in portraying the character of the protagon isti s proport ionate to hi s revelat ions of the poet ’s sel f. Here, in .

the tri logy of th e story of G iovanna of N aples, and The Siege ofAn cona ( all of which followed in publ icat ion long after 1n theforti es ) , Landor maintains that l iterary isolat ion that is alwaysh is : these tragedies are splendid l iterary works , but thei r relat ion to the stage is scarcely greater than that o f The ImaginaryConversation s.

,Wi th Col eridge’s revis ion of h is Osorio and o ffer of i t tothe stage under the ti tl e Remorse, in 1 8 1 7 , the poets begin an ew and determ ined effort to recover the stage for poetic and

ENGLISH DRAMA S INCE SHERIDAN 3 1 9

romantic tragedy. Coler idge owed the acceptance of Remorse

to the good graces of Byron ; and the novel beauty of i ts d ictionand a certain fervour sustained i t for twenty n ights and extorted from so tried a theatrical cri tic as Genest the words atolerable tragedy.” I t must have struck the average aud itor ofthe day with d isappointment

,rather than with any sense of

novelty,that Coleridge’s avenger seeks not blood , but contri

t ion,in the brother who has done him wrong ; and all the in

t rigue, rebell ion , the necromancy and madness of this beautifully wri tten tragedy could l i ttl e sustain a plot in which alli s d isclosed in the first two acts. Before the performance ofRemorse, Coleridge had offered D ru ry Lane h is Zapolya, a

Christmas Tale, avowed an humble imitation of TheWin ter’sTale of Shakespeare ,

” but despi te a romantic plot and an elaborate effor t at action , var iety and stage e ffect , the play was re

fused . Remorse,reached a third edi tion in the year of i ts per

forman ce and was revived once in 1 81 7 , and wi th th is endsColeridge’s associat ion with the theatre. An d now parallel withs tage successes of Sheridan Kn owles and Sheil’s Elizabethanadaptations

, Byron , Shelley, M i lman and Procter and evenKeats, turned thei r attention to the drama.Byron ’s actual preoccupation with the drama is concentrated

almost within the l imi ts of the single year 1 82 1 , although earlyin 1 8 1 6 , while a member of the subcommittee of management atDrury Lane, he cas t a German tale into dramatic form ,

i nWern er

, with the purpose of representation on the stage.Wern er was rewritten in 1 822, after the experience that hisother plays brought h im ; and , acted ( first in N ew York in1 826 and at Drury Lan e in was one of the stage successes of i ts time. lll anfred ,

begun later in 1 8 1 6 , i s a very d i fferen t production. Whether the poignant regret for the in evitable past that characterises this tragedy comes of a terrible pagein the autobiography of the poet or not

,thi s extraordinary dra

matic poem owes its ind irect insp iration to Goethe ’s F aust whichLewis had read and translated to Byron , _

howsoever i t i s l ikewise a lyrical expression of the poet ’s sel f , e xal ted and abasedbefore the grandeur of Alpine scenery. ‘In M arin a F aliero,begun almost immediately after M anfred , Byron made a seriouseffort to transplant to the stage the poetry of rebell ion thatwas h is . But d istract ions inte rvened and other work and i twas n ot until 1 820 that be resumed the task . Wi th a subj ectd eal ing with an historical consp iracy, not unlike Ven ice Pre

32° ENGLISH DRAMA

served , on e, moreover, in wh ich an histor ic parall el is d iscernible to the mischief now afoot which he hoped might sendthe barbarians of all nations back to thei r own dens , the author,with characterist ic inconsistency, announces h is determination toescape the reproach of the English theatrical compositions ”

by preserving a nearer approach to unity in substi tuting theregulari ty o f F rench and Italian

,models for the barbariti es of

the El izabethan dramatists and thei r successors.” 4 Againsthis wil l and almost against his l egal action , Marin a F aliero

was acted at Drury Lane early in 1 82 1 ; and , although re

peated seven times , was coldly received , as the author had pred icted . Genest echoed the popular impression that desp it ethe beauty and spiri t of !Byron

’s ] d ialogue and the j ust del ineation of his characters too much is said , and too li ttleis done .” But of the play, Goethe wrote :

“We forget thatLord Byron or an Engl ishman wrote it. The personages speakqui te for themselves and thei r own condition , w ithout havingany of the subj ective feel ings, thoughts and opinions of the poet.An d indeed , i t may be admitted that in this tragedy, more thanany other

,Byron achieved the detachment and obj ectivi ty es

sen tial to dramatic success. But Byron had passed for himsel f“ a sel fdenying ordinance to dramatize , l ike the Greeksstr iking passages of history,

” and Sardan apalus and The Tw o

‘F oscari, following close upon M arin a F aliero, were acted byM acready after Byron’s death and both achieved all the successthat a great name and splend id powers sustaining noble theories ,counter to contemporary practice , could give them . The Two

Pascari i s another Venetian play, of much the general natureof M arin o F aliero. Both plots are romantical ly improbable,however faithfully founded on the authori t ies that the poetconsulted ; for the probabil i t ies of l i fe and the probabil i ties ofthe stage are two th ings ; and this the romantic poets rarelydiscovered . Sardanapalus is d ifferent ; for in the Assyrianvoluptuary

,suddenly trans formed to a figure of chivalric glory,

in his remorse ful recogni t ion o f the sanctity of wedlock,” his

easy, d issolute nature , even in his sly sarcasm of temper, we haveone of those interest ing and incessantly recurrent proj ectionsof the author’s sel f into h is work. Sardanapalus i s thus transformed from its species

,an eighteenth century tragedy of palace

intrigue, into a romantic and poet ic expression of the poet’

s

4 Byron , ed . Coleridge, 1 901 , iv, 327.

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322 ENGLISH DRAMA

of the unconquerable individual will against the tyranny o f const ituted authority. The range , when al l has been said , of thepoet ic gen ius of such men as Byron and Shel ley , was infinitelybeyond the hackneyed conventionali ties of the Georgian stage ,i f such gen ius does not actually transcend the conce ivabl el imi tations of acted drama in the abstract. An d yet the rebelphilosophy

,the cry for enfranchisement , pol itical , social and

artistic,the clari ty of vision , the power to compel words and

to wing them with the sp i ri t of poetry, all of which belonged tothese d iv in e and great souled singers of the poetry of revol t ,in some other age and with fewer l i terary and other d istraet ions

,might have crystal lised thei r work in imperishable dramatic

form. Byron and Shelley both d ied be fore the t ime of fulfi lmen t. We feel , especially as to Shelley, of whose development almost anyth ing might have been predicted

,that

,once

more,i n his death

,the drama suffered an i rreparable loss.

As to the lesser men , thei r contemporaries in the l iterary drama ,even Keats , whose exquis i te poetry i s so essentially lyrical anddescr iptive , was emulous of the wri ting of a few fine plays ,and actually submitted hi s O tho the Great ( the p lot of whichhad been mapped out for him by another hand , he furnishingonly the language and imagery ) , to both the l icensed theatres.The tragedy got no further than a p romised rehearsal . A betterfate awai ted M i lman ’s F az io, an attempt

,

” says the author ,at rev iving the old nat ional d rama with greater s impl ic ity of

plo t,

” and though by a young clergyman , written with somev i ew to the stage . After on e or two unauthorised performanecs elsewhere , F azio gained a metropol i tan success in 1 8 1 8

and cont inued in favour,with all i ts florid eighteenth century

d iction, for th e poss ibil i t ies of i ts ch ie f woman

’s part. N oneof the other somewhat more Byronic plays of this notabl e scholarand historian are memorable. A few years later , M iss M i tford ,the popular novel i st , gained recogni tion as a tragic write r forthe stage in three or four productions , Julian , F oscari (writtenshe declared before Byron

’s ) , and , most success ful of all , Rien ziacted for more than a month in 1 828. Her friend , too, ThomasN oon Talfourd , the biographer o f Lamb , a lead ing cri tic of

his day and later a j udge , ach ieved a somewhat unexpected success i n hi s classical tragedy I on ,

which he was unable to equali n several late r efforts. Procter ( the Barry Cornwal l of songand l iterary fri endship ) , furnished the stage two or th reed ramas

,accepted

‘

i n thei r day,most important among them,

ENGLISH DRAMA SINCE SHERIDAN 323

iran dola, acted as far back as 1 82 1 ; and nearly twenty yearser Leigh Hunt, who belongs in the impetus of his prose andy alike to this earl ier period , staged with deserved recogn i

his poetical drama The Legen d of F loren ce. Most of

n tic drama that immediately follows his t ime fell underof Byron. But there was a Wordsworth ian poeticmore calm

,more med itative and , i t may be added ,

from the bustle of l i fe and the..stage. As to

str ictly of the study , to mention only two of

Sir Aubrey de Vere’s Julian the Apostate,

822 , and his Duke of M ercia, of the next year, were separatedoth in time and degree of excellence from his M ary Tudor,847 , which some have placed in comparison with Tennyson

’sdrama on the same histori c subj ect ; and Sir Henry Taylor ,desp ite h is I saac Comn en us, 1 827 , praised by Southey, and latert raged ies and comedies as well , remains memorable for his muchlauded Ph ilip van Artevelde which absorbed , as i t exhausted ,his thoughtful

,lucid and essentially undramatic genius.

Mr. Archer, i n an excellent chapter on the drama during thereign o f Queen Victoria , has told of the continued struggle ofthe minor houses against the intrenched patent theatres andhow theatrical free trade was at last establ ished to the benefitof all by the act of 1 843 . He has told there , also how the ageof the Kemble’s, coming to its close , was succeeded by that ofMacready, a stern but consci entious helmsman of the d ramaticbark in waters commonly stormy, and , what was far more , thefriend and encourager

, so far as he was able, of l i terary andpoetic endeavour for the stage. As to th e state of dramaticl iterature the cri t ic d raws a picture

,d iscouraging enough ,

the ghost of the romantic drama stalked the stage ,” he tells

us,“ decked out i n threadbare frippery and gibbering blank

verse. N 0 one had yet reflected that, though Shakespeare mightbe for all t ime, h is forms and methods were evolved to sui t theneeds o f an age quite d i fferent from ours .” Showing howShakespeare was misinterpreted and misunderstood , he con

cludes“ laboured rhetoric

,whether ser ious or comic, was held

to be the only ‘legitimate form of dramatic utterance . Thiswas l iterature — all else was mere d rama and farce.” 6 Thelead ing dramatist, at the accession of Queen Vi ctoria , wasSheridan Know les , an I rishman , a Sheridan on hi s mother ’s

0The Reig n of Victoria, 1 887 , edited by T. H.

lV'ilard , 1 1, 565 .

324 ENGLISH DRAMA

side , an actor s ince 1 809, a playwright with a dozen years’ex

p erien ce behind him — what more could be wanted for dramatic success ? Knowles was the author between 1 8 1 5 and1 843 of sixteen plays , beginn ing wi th the traged ies , CaiusGracchus and Virg in ias, 1 820, so famous for their vigorousdeclamatory possibil i t ies in thei r day

,and continu ing to name

only a few — through William Tell, 1 825 , and the historicalplays , The Hun chback, 1 832 , most popular o f all , and com

ed ies such as The Love Chase and Old M aids, both acted forthe first time after the accession o f the queen . The ideal o fKnowles was the revival of romantic d rama : th is appears to bethe ideal of most d ramatists in most ages. On on e side Knowleswas well equ ipped . He was possessed of a sk i l ful stagecraft ,alike in the construction and conduct of plot . B eyond this,Knowles is almost the least o f the romantici sts. N ot only doeshe fai l i n that touchstone o f the romantic art , an abil i ty to turna lyric

,but h is imagination is commonplace , he is uninventive,

his d ialogue, while at times sprightly, seldom rises abovemediocrity and his blank-verse , which he uses almost to the exelusion of prose, i s st i ff with d igni ty or slovenly with carelessness . M r. Archer wickedly calls Knowles the Shakespeare of

1 83 7 possibly Bulwer Lytton was its F letcher. Lytton beganin the manner of Byron ; his early novels have been declared tooclose in this following to have sui ted the taste of the rising gencration . After a prel iminary fai lure in the drama

,Lytton

l eaped to immediate reputation in The Lady of Lyon s, 1 83 8,which with his Richelieu, o f the same year, have continued tokeep the stage to the present t ime . I f Knowles was commonplace he was at least safe : Lytton

’

s plays — these and the two

or three others that he wrote before 1 85 1 — appear to themodern reader

,false i n sentiment and fals e in taste . They

have the gl itter and attract ion to the eye of tinsel and i ts re

pulsiven ess to the touch and understanding. The plot o f TheLady of Lyon s contemplated in quiet is absurd ; i ts hero , ClaudeMeln otte, i s quite piti fully unheroic , and there is not the ghostof the art of historical portrai ture in Richel ieu . Yet the th ingsact ; Lytton , too , had the precious secret o f stagecraft whichverily does cover a multi tude of sins . Amongst other names ,M r. Archer gives us G . W. Lovell , Gerald Griffin , and Westland M arston

,reminding us o f the success of Talford

’

s I an

and the failure of Robert B rowning’s Strafford , just before thebeginning of the re ign

,and granting to Le igh Hunt’s success,

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326 ENGLI SH DRAMA

Dream and The F aithful Shepherdess ; Wade and Wells fal ltogether in thei r d isc ipleship to M arlowe

,however immediately

both were influenced lyrically by Keats. Wade’s two dramasare Woman

’

s Love and The J ew of Arrag on , the l atter afailure , we are told , because i t dared to champ ion the Jew muchas Shakespeare’s M erchan t of Ven ice has been contorted intodoing in our ow n day. Wells i s pract ically the author of but:onework , Joseph an d h is Brethren ,

first published as :early as 1 823 ,and absolutely unnoticed at the time ; but final ly revised

,nearly

fi fty years later,owing to the praise of Rossetti and Swinburne.

Joseph and h is Brethren i s a fine dramat ic poem wri t di alogue wise ” ; it was never intended for the stage . N or can

more be said , from this point o f V iew,for the two extraordinary

dramas of Beddoes , The B ride’

s Tragedy,

’ publ ished in 1 822 ,when the author was a student at Oxford

,and D eath

'

s Jest

Booh, complete four years later, but not printed until after th eauthor’s death in 1 85 1 . Beddoes was a physician who passedthe greater part of his l i fe in Germany and Switzerland . Thei nfluences upon h is work are , for the Elizabethans , Marloweand more part icularlyWebster , but both acting on the GermanG othic romance

,derived less through its Engl ish imitations,

than d irect. Beddoes was possessed of an extraordinary imagin ation and w ealth of phrase and imagery , a spi ri t of daringand metaphysical brooding , all of which recalls the spacious olddays o f Englan d ’s dramatic glory. But neither he

,n orWells,

n or Darley could have been,but for the more immediate in

fluences,the speculat ive lyricism of Shelley, and the gorgeous

descrip tive sensuousness of Keats.Lastly of th is group , Richard Hengist Hom e is the author of

three tragedies Cosmo d e’

M edici, The Death of M arlowe andGreg ory VII . All partake

,in notable degree

,of the Eliza

bethan spi ri t,especially the play on M arlowe which has a fire,

d i rectness and intensity that the subj ect and example should insp ire. Horne’s are the least inconceivabl e of the group on thestage ; but his dramas never reached i t . Pseudo-Shakespearean

,

” I do not l ike to cal l these s incere and strong spiri tedpoets who found in the insp i ration of a great age of the pastan impetus for expression which thei r own time could not givethem . But there is no better summary of the futil i ty of all

such art than i s to be found in the often quoted words of Bed~

does h imsel f : “ These rean imat ions are vampire-cold . Such

ghosts as Marlowe , Webster, etc., are better d ramatists, better

Wilfredintoluthorofb“All851823,”All,nearly

"dbWinburne."3 Writdra.

imitations,rm llll'

rrrordaringsoariousold

norWells,radiatelnhcgorgeous

beauthorof

ialswrand

ENGLISH DRAMA SINCE SHERIDAN 327

octs , I dare say, than any contemporary of ours , but they arehosts— the worm is in thei r pages , and we want to see

at our great-grandsi res d id not know. Wi th th efor all the antiquities of the drama

,I stil l

better beget than revive , attempt to give theof th is age an id iosyncrasy and spiri t of i ts own

,and

“i only raise a ghost to gaze on,not to l ive with.

” 7

B rowning ’s Strafford was actually per formed a few weeks before the accession o f Queen Victoria. The suggestion that thepoet write for the stage came from Macready, who had everan ambition to unite l i terature once more to the drama ; thegreat actor even proposed the subj ect. But the play ran onlyfive nights. F or some eight years B rowning continued largelypreoccupied with the drama , Pippa Passes, King Victor and

King Charles, The Return of the Druses, The B lot on the’

Scutcheon , Colombe'

s B irthday, Luria and A Soul’

s Tragedyfollowing in almost an annual succession . A B lot on the’

Scutcheon was also insp ired by Macready, but when i t cameto the stage , in 1 843 , he took no r61e in i t ; and , the play beingunderacted ,

” had only a short ’ run. Colombe’

s B irthday was

printed first and acted some nine years after ; Pippa Passes wasn ot staged until much later and then not professionally. Theseeight years o f dramatic experim entation produced by far thebulkiest singl e part o f B rowning’s work , a part, too , in whichthe powerful

,original

,eloquent and manly poet has left u s

some of the most beauti ful and character istic work . I t isnotable

,however

,that this work rises in poetic value in pro

portion as it departs from the conventions of accepted stagecraft

,that the ser ies

,instead of exhibiting a rise in this respect ,

remains,from first to last , the individual expression of a powe r

ful intel lect forc ing its art into an al ien mould . However , byn o means were all these works intended for the stage ; but thed istinction between those that were so intended and those thatwere n ot is unessential . Wi thout renewing here a d iscussionthat has been worn threadbare , i t may be noted that in h isdramas the two card inal l imitations of this great poet are h isinabil i ty to escape from his own personality and , what may becalled

,the static quality o f his art , as contrasted with that

dynam ic impulse which keeps th ings mov ing in drama that has

7 Quoted by Mr. E. Gosse, The Poetical Worbs of Beddoes, Introduction

,i, p . xxiv.

328 ENGLISH DRAMA

been successful ly wri tten for th e stage. I t is a commonplacethat all the d ramatic figures of B rowning reason and argueand how much they reason and argue ! - with the intellectualbril l i ancy and address o f thei r creator. I f this is an overstatement of the truth , i t must at least be admitted that he is l ikelyto take one central figure and v iew the rest of h is dramatisp ersonae from this acquired subj ective pos it ion . There is l i ttleagil i ty in B rowning

,to pu t h imsel f dramatically in any other

man ’s place , i s to him next to an impossibil i ty ; and while wefeel

,how carefully he has studied his characters that we may

superficially distingu ish them , the d is tinctions are not rad icaland leave in us an impression that h is shadows are too heavilyweighted with their emotions , or perhaps more accurately, withtheir mental processes about thei r emotions. As to the wanto f dynamic impulse, not only are the plots of B rowning farfrom well chosen or wrought out ; they are sluggish and i f theymove at all

,uncertain and discontinuous in the i r movement.

B rowning has achieved some great s i tuations, most notableamong them , the famous scene between O ttima and Sebald inP ippa Passes ; but it is wholly stati c and affected altogetherfrom without ; i t i s in the nature of drama , i t i s not truly dramatic, for the extraneous influence is accidental , not essentiallyw ith in

,as are the promptings of the witches in M acbeth, a

parallel often suggested. I t is because of this immanence of

sel f and immobili ty that B rowning is not a d ramat ist , desp itethe supremacy of his poetry , his nobl e ethics and his compell ingforce of thought . B rowning must have recognised h is l imi tat ions

,for whil e that su rpris ing power of his to give vital ity to

a si tuation by an analysis of i ts componen t elements , deliveredin flashes of insight , continues to animate h is poetry to the end ;he ceased wri ting dramas as such in 1 846. Shall we say, tofind a larger utterance in a poem such as The Ring an d the

B ook? O r may we doubt whether this marvellous abil ity tofocus the mental act ivi ty

, so to speak,on the poet ic analys is of

a si tuat ion , viewed successively from hal f a dozen points , mayn ot mean the ind ividual i ty of a remarkable genius of a veryexceptional kind , rather than mark any permanent step in anevolution away from the simpler, l ess perplexing art that is content with the interplay of inc ident and character i llum inated bythe l ight of poetry and unclogged w ith ratioc ination.

B rowning tried the d rama early in h is career ; Tennysonwa ited until he had reached ful l recogn it ion in h is art, when

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3 30 ENGLISH DRAMA

rkn ew so well and champ ioned so enthus iast ically, that begotthe greater number of hi s nine memorable and beauti ful poemsin dramatic form . Especially is this true of his earl iest playRosamund an d the Queen M other, 1 860, and h is last , Rosa

mund , Queen of the Lombards, 1 899, as of his version of theMarino F aliero story, already treated by Byron , and of thegreat tri logy of Mary Stuart, the enormous length and elaboration of which n ot only effectively defeats any possibil i ty of

stage representation but of a complete reading by any but themost val iant reader. Another influence in greater purity thanever before s ince M i l ton , has begotten in our age s everal exquisite im i tations of Att ic t ragedy, among which Swinburne ’sbeauti ful Atalan ta in Calydon i s the most deservedly famous andhis Erech theus and M atthew Arnold ’s Emped ocles on E tn a,

which p receded them both , are the most important. But n ot

only are these productions Greek with a d i fference quite asgreat, each in i ts kind , as was ever that di fference in Keats , butall are essentially lyrical and in thei r thought expressive of th elast great age that was but yesterday ours. There is no moresalvation for the drama in infusing modern ideas into the mythsof fEschylus and Sophocles , marble pure and marble cold ,

‘ thanthere is for our rel igion in altars erected to the D iana o f theEp hesians. N or along the Tennyson ian line of the followingof the great example of Shakespeare can dramatic rehabi l itationeve r come. There wil l b e no rej uvenation un ti l we can escapefrom that great shadow and see anew the face o f the sun .

As to Victorian writers for the stage , until we turn the n ewl eaf of the present , into which we shal l not look , the pervers ityof some malignant , or at least some misch ievous , goddess , incharge of meting out the endowments of dramatic gen ius, ap

pears to have pursued them . To T. W. Robertson , author o fSociety, Caste, Ours and other successes of monosyllab ic ti tle inthe s ixties and seventies , this fi tful dei ty granted the actor

’sminute knowledge of the stage, a fresh humour and naturalnessand a pervasive genial i ty that went far to account for his contemporary vogue ; bu t she denied h im original i ty, any genuinepower to construct a plot or the least vestige of l i terary qual ityor d istinction in what he wrote. On Tom Taylor, on the otherh and , remembered by the playgoers of a generation be fore th elast for The F aol

’

s Revenge, The Ticket of Leave M an andOur A merican Cousin — the j ealous goddess bestowed a cul

tivated taste and no mean constructive abil ity, but she gave him

ENGLISH DRAMA SINCE SHERIDAN 33!

only a commonplace imaginat ion with which to employ thesehapp ier endowments. Sti ll again , Charle s Reade , the novel ist ,was an earnest

,eager i f d ifficult man , full of confidence i n him

sel f and possessed of a hectoring and controversial style. Hisbest play is M asks and F aces, the stage version of his laters tory, Peg Wo/fi ng ton , an interesting comedy of intr igue , poss essed of genuine wit and t rue feel ing ; and his version of Zola

’sL

’

Assommoir,Drin k i s a d rama of brutal real ity and violence

to move , disclosing, 1n its fidel i ty to the actual , the novel ist’s

equally fatal l imitation as a playwright,while the improbabil i

t ies of which he is readily convicted elsewhere , d isplay a con

flicting, i f equally dangerous l imitation . Lastly,there is D ion

Boucicaul t, the adaptive M r. Boucicault , as F i tzgerald calledh im , who appropriated to his immediate dramatic uses whateverl ight articl e he migh t find

,F rench or other

,floating on th e

broad surface of the d rama of the past or the present. Bouc icault i s responsible for two well-known dramas of the supernatural , ghost plays,

” they are perhaps better cal led Rip van'Win kle ( that has made more than one actor’s reputat ion ) , andThe Corsican Brothers, by no means dead yet in the purl ieusof the theatrical world . But his great forte lay in the I rishplay, The Colleen Baw n , The Shaughraun , O

'

Dowd , careless ,patriotic , unprincipled and impossibl e caricatures o f his nat ive count ry— or of any other country or society of men , forthat matter— which somehow long continued to carry thei rloose jo ints through five acts of humorous improbabil ity to thedel ight of thei r auditors . In the make-up of this last dramatist ,our capricious goddess had forgotten not only l iterature , butresponsible deal ing with the wares that he handled .

N or can much more be said for the names which Mr. Archer ,that tried and outspoken critic of our late V ictorian stage , choseto distinguish as “ dramatists o f to-day,

” in the year 1 882 , five

years later picking out the following from among them : W. G .

Wi lls, W. S. G i lbert , A. W. Pinero J . Albery, S. Grundy ,\H. A. Jones , G . R. Sims and H. Merwale— the order is hI r.

Archer’s. Wi th as great a del ight as any of his contemporariesin G ilbert’s humour of topsy-turvydom , and with respect for thefertil i ty

,thoughtfulness

,industry and substantial success of

all who , working in the drama , are sti ll wi th us, i t can not be

said that in any of these names , or perhaps in those of our

present moment , even the keen , the trenchant, the irrepressible

,the del ightfully unexpected Mr. Shaw - is to be found

3 32 ENGLISH DRAMA

that great regenerator of the stage who is to unite oncemore, in a dramatic p icture of l i fe, the qual i ty of l i terature, whether poetic, satirical or real istic, with the histrion ic art. One name that arose i n the d rama of the

n inet ies , only too soon to be tragically ecl ipsed,seems to

s tand out in this respect above others. The name is that ofOscar Wi lde ; his comed ies Lady Win demere

’

s F an , A Woman

of N o Importan ce and The Importan ce of B eing Ern est. F or

the serious minded , who are unable to j udge any work of art oni ts meri ts as such

,but must always challenge the right of man

to exist except as a machine for the solving of problems , therighting of wrongs , the active pursu it of all evi ls and anomal iesto thei r utter undoing , there is nothing to say for these in comparable trifles. I t takes an extraordinary amount and quali tyof thought to perpetrate triv i al i ti es such as these ; and there i smore beneath than appears in this dazzl ing swords’ play of

w i t,this amazing ingenuity and endless resource. Moreover,

here the l iterary quali ty, at least, is in no question , however wemay pause at the want of any underlying ethical soundness

,that

greates t of th e essential s to great d rama. I t is such gl impses asthis of the promised land that forbid us to despair of drama inthe English tongue for the future ; such glimpses , too , as we aren ow gett ing of an indigenous drama, n ot nurtured to meet thecravings of a metropol i tan audience, bu t arising out of localcondi tions

,whether I rish , English or other , i n which human

nature is less sophist icated and abraided by the attri tion of

modern l i fe. Least of all can we believe that the revolutioneffected in our manner of taking our serious theatrical amusements by the art , however great , of men of foreign birth andalien modes o f thought, can ever restore to us the drama as agreat national utterance.

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334 INDEX

Buckingham , second Duke of,248 , 250, 27 1

Bullen , Mr. A. H., 95 , 196

Buon on cici , 293Burbage, Cuth b ert , 5 1

James. 45 . so. 5 1Richard . 5 1 . 79. 1 07. 1 56.

204Burleigh , Lord , 44Barn ey , Fan n y , 3 1 1Butler, Samuel, 250Byron , Lord , vi, 3 1 6, 3 19-325 ,3 30

Calderon , 263Calpren éde , 245 , 247Camden , William , 1 48

Campb ell, Th omas , 3 16

Camp ion , Th omas , 1 57—160Carew, Lady Elizabeth , 144

Thomas , 2 14Carey ,

Hen ry , 300Carlell, Lodowick , 229—2 3 1 , 244,

257Carlisle , Coun tess of , 228Cartwrigh t , William, 2 19, 220,

222, 262

Cawarden , SirThomas , 40, 45Caxton , William , 2 5 , 1 74Cen tlivre, Susan n a ,

Cervan tes, 96 , 1 88,1 89, 198,

99Cespedes , de , 1 88Chamb erlain e, Rob ert, 23 1Chamb ers, M i

‘. E . K . , 1 5 , 1 8, 32

Chapman , George, 59, 1 01 , 1 02 ,1 3 1 , 1 3 2. 1 3 6 , 1 3 7. I 4S: 1 46 ,1 5 1 9 1 5 7 ) 1 65 )

Charles I . , 40,‘

1 5 8 , 1 6 1 , 1 62,1 64» I 9S. I 94. 200. 204. 205 .209, 2 1 3

—2 1 5 , 2 1 8 , 2 19, 22 1 ,

II . 205 , 230,23 9, 240, 248, 25 1 , 260, 268,2 17

Chaucer, Geoflrey, 1 87Cheke, Hen ry , 3 5Chettle, Hen ry , 79, 91—93 , 1 09,

Daborne, Robert, 94, 106 , 1 78,

Dan iel, Samuel, 90, 142

—144,146. 1 52. 1 554 60

. 192. I93 ,

Cibb er, Colley, 242, 249, 270,2 72 , 274

—277 , 280—282 , 285 ,

Theoph ilus, 299Cin thio , 44 , 1 00 , 1 32

Clayton , Th omas , 289Clevelan d , Duchess of, 263Cliff ord , Martin

, 250Clin ch , Lawren ce , 3 05Cockayn e, Sir Aston , 1 75 , 1 76,

Cockburne, Ca th erine Trotter,

Coleman , Mrs . , 236

Coleridge,Mr. E . , 3 2 1

Samuel Taylor, 3 1 5 , 3 1 8,

Collier, Jeremy, 233 , 268, 270,

J . P . , 6 7Colman , George, th e elder, 302,3 03 . 3 07. 3 1 0o 3 1 1

George , the younger, 3 10Congreve, William , 259, 2652 7 1 , 274, 276

-278, 2 80—282,297 9 298 9 3 06 9 307

Cooke , Joshua , 1 70Corn eille , 23 1 , 23 7 , 240, 241 ,

Corni sh ,William, 1 56 , and see3 3 ,34

Cowley, Ab raham, 2 19, 225 , 226,23 8

Cox , Rob ert , 23 5Cradock , Joseph , 301Cranmer, Th omas, 27 , 28Creizen ach , ProfessorW. , 1 6Cromwell, Oliver, 234, 239, 248

Thomas , Earl of Essex, 28Crown e, John , 23 8 , 246

—248,

Cumberlan d , R1chard , 288, 303 ,807. 308 : 3 19

-3 12

Cyprian ,24

INDEX

Darley, George, 3 25 , 3 26Daven an t , SirWilliam ,

205 , 207 ,2 1 5 , 220, 226—229, 23 5

-240,243 , 2447 2509 256

—25 8 : 2 7 1 !

Daven port , Elizab eth , 264—Rob ert, 201 , 202 , 2 19

Davies, Th omas,274

Davison , Fran cis , 1 58Day, John , 93 , 94, 98, 1 14, 1 3 8 ,

Dee , Dr. Joh n ,1 1 8

Dekker,Thomas, 56 , 93 , 97 , 1 07 ,

1 09, 1 1 0,1 13

—1 1 5 , 1 19—1 2 1 ,

1 3 8. 1 40, 1 52 , 1 53 . 1 63 . 1 65 ,

Deloney, Thomas, 1 1 0

Denham , Sir John , 2 19Den n is

,Joh n

,266

,2 72 , 290, 299

Derb y, Lord , 5 1Devon sh ire, Coun tess of, 2 1 5

Earl of,2 1 5

Dib den , Charles, 260Dicken s , Charles, 295Diderot , 295Dio Cassius, 146Dod sley, Robert, 232, 256Dolce

, 42

Doran,Joh n ,

265Drayton ,

Michael,87 , 88 , 90, 92 ,

Drummon d , William , 1 53Dryden , Elizab eth Howard , 239

Joh n , vii , 1 3 5 , 1 5 1 , 1 84,222

. 227. 229, 234. 23 8—254.

260—26 7 , 269, 270, 27 1 , 275 ,278

—282 3 2 87 : 291 ; 293 9 294 ;

Dufl et, Thomas , 272 , 273Dun comb e, William ,

297 , 301

D’

Urfé , Hon oré , 226 , 265D

'Urfey,

Thomas, 246 , 265 , 272

Edgar, Kin g, 1 5Edward I I I .

, 1 7Edwards, Richard , 40, 4 1 , 57 ,r

1 04Elderton ,William , 40

Eli zab eth , Queen , 1 0, 1 1 , 1 8, 30,

i 335

39. 40. 42 . 46. 48. 49. 54. 63 .

Queen of B ohemia,1 39, 1 60,

Erasmus , 27Essex, Fran ces Howard , Coun~tess of

, 1 59Robert Devereux

,second

Earl of, 86 , 92 , 143 , 1 56Rob ert Devereux, thi rd

Earl of , 1 59Thomas

,Earl of

,see Crom

WellEtherege, Sir George, 259, 260,

Euripides , 1 2 , 30, 3 8 , 48, 266Eusd en , Lauren ce, 2 8 1Evelyn , Joh n , 269

Fan shawe,R ichard , 2 56

Farquhar, George, 23 8 , 269, 272 ,276 , 278

—280,283 , 303

Farran t,Richard , 40, 45

Fen ton ,Elijah ,

292

Field , Nathan iel, 1 70, 196 , 22 12 73Field ing, Hen ry , 270, 28 1 , 286 ,

Fitzgerald , P . H. , 3 3 1

F itzstephen ,William , 8 , 1 7Fletcher, Joh n , 93 , 101 , 102 , 1 14,1 1 7 . 1 25 , 1 27 , 1 74

“

1 84, 1 86—192 , 195

—198 , 200

202 , 205—207 , 209, 2 1 2 , 2 1 8,

21 9, 22 1 , 226 , 227 , 229, 23 2 ,

256 . 27 1 , 272 , 278 , 279, 282,

Lauren ce, 1 55 , 1 84— Ph in eas

,193 , 194

Richard , 1 75Flores

,d e, 1 88

Foote, Samuel, 297 , 300, 303 ,304Forcett, Edward , 73 , 1 69Ford , Joh n , 97, 1 1 5 , 12 1 , 205 ,2 1 5

—2 1 8

Foxe, John , 3 1

3 36 INDEX

Frederick , Elector Palatine, 1 39,1 60, 205Freeman , Ralph , 232Freytag, G. 6

Fum ess,H. H. , 1 3 5

Gager, William , 43 , 49, 58, 73Gard in er, Steph en , 27

S. R . , 200 ,209

Garn ier, 66 , 1 25 , 141 , 142 , 145 ,

Garrick , David , 265 , 27 1 , 273 ,283 , 288

, 300—302 ,

3 1 0. 3 25Gascoign e, George, 3 2 , 42 , 43 ,48

Geddes , R ichard ,145

Genest, Joh n ,270, 3 20

Geoffrey of Monmouth , 91George I . ,

265 , 282

I II ., 309

IV. , 3 6 1

Gi fford , William , 3 25Gilb ert

,William Schwen ck , 3 3 1

Gildon , Charles , 266 , 272Glap th orn e, Hen ry, 1 3 7 , 2 19,

Godfrey of Le Mana,1 6

Godwin ,William , 3 1 5 , 3 1 7 , 3 1 8Goethe, 68 , 144, 3 1 2 , 3 14, 3 20,

3 2 1

Gofi e, Thomas, 145 , 147 , 2 19,225

Gold smith , Oliver, 270, 286 ,287. 297. 301

—304. 307

-3 10

Goodman, Cardell, 264

Gosse, Mr. E ., 3 08

Gosson,Stephen , 43

Gough , John , 23 1

Grabu , 258

Greene,Rob ert, 3 1 , 57 , 58 , 60

65 1 6 8—70’ 72 1 74, 791 90 ) 93 ,

Greville, Fulke, 142-144, 146,

Grev in , 1145Grifi n , Gerald , 3 24Grimald , Nichola s , 3 1

Grosart, Dr. Alexander, 63

Grosteste, Robert, 19Grun dy , Mr. S . , 3 3 1

Guarin i , 192 , 226Gwinn e, Matthew,

1 27Gwyn ,

Nell, 22 7 , 240,

264Gyles , Nathan iel, 4 1 1 70, 233

Thomas, 40

H

Hab ington , Willia 2 1 2

Halifax , Lord , 267

m, 9. 32

Halle,Edward , 90

Handel,258 , 293 , 294

Harrison , William , 289Harvey , Gab riel, 7 1 , 72Hathway , Richard , 93Hauptman n

,2 1 8

Hausted ,Peter, 225

Hazlitt, William ,

2 1 8 , 325Heming , John , 5 1 , 222

William , 222

Hen rietta Maria , Queen , 16 1 ,

Hen ry H.,1 8

VII ., 30

IV ., of Fran ce, 1 38

” VIII ,27 , 28 ) 3 20 3 3 1 409

Prin ce (Stuart) , 1 58, 1 85Hen slowe, Philip, 5 1

—54, 6 5 ,

92—95 9 1 14 ; 1 1 5 : 1 22 ,

1 34. 1 3 8. 1 39. 145. 148. 1 49.1 63 . 1 67. 1 78. 1 85 . 193 . 196.

Herb ert, Sir Hen ry, 200, 208,23 7Heywood , J Ohn o 91

Thomas. 90. 9 1 . 93 . 94.96.103 , 107 , 1 09, 1 1 1- 1 1 3 , 1 1 6 ,1 1 8 , 1 22 , 1 24, 1 27 , 1 46 , 1 56 ,1 63 , 1 70, 190, 191 , 202 , 204,

Hilarius , 8 , 1 6 , 1 7Hill. Aaron . 293 . 297. 298. 301 .3 10

Hogarth ,William , 295

Holcroft , Thomas , 3 10, 3 1 1 , 3 1 7Holin sh ed , Ralph , 87 , 90, 1 3 3 ,

Home, John ,298, 309

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3 3 8 INDEX

Lessing, 295 , 3 1 2Lewi s, Matthew Gregory , 3 1 3 ,

Lillo , George, 294- 296Lin ley , Elizab eth , 304Locke, Joh n , 265

Matthew, 258

Lockhart , Joh n Gib son , 3 14Lodge, Th omas

, 3 1 , 6 1 , 64, 69,

72) 74. 94. 1 24Louis XIV. , 287Lovelace, R ichard , 2 19, 232

Lovell, George William , 3 24Lowes, SirWilliam, 23 1 , 257Lowin ,

John,204

Lucan , 22 1

Luth er, 27 , 28Lycophoron , 7 1

Lydgate, Joh n , 3 3 , 1 56

Lyly.John . 3 9.40.44.46—49. 56.

5 8 : 640 6 8 1 72fi

74o 82 : 83 : 95 .

William, 44

Lyn d say, SirDavid ,29, 30, 3 3

Lytton , Edward George EarleLytton

, Bulwer 3 24, 3 25

Mach iavelli , 1 19, 1 69, 239Machin

,Lewis , 95

Macklin, Charles , 302 , 3 1 0

Macready, William Charles,3 20,

Maeterlin ck ,

Man ley,Mary de la Riviera, 266 ,297Markham , Gervase, 95Marlb orough , Duke of , 290

Hen rietta,Duchess of , 267

Sarah , Duche ss of, 278Marlowe, Ch ristopher, v , 3 9, 52 ,59, 62 , 64, 66

—75 , 79, 8 1

—83 ,

90. 10 1.104. 105 . 1 1 5 .

1 3 6 . 1 39. 145 . 1 46 . 1 75 . 2 19.

Marmion , Shakerley, 202 , 2 19Marston ,

Joh n , 101 , 102 , 1 1 1 ,

1 26—1 29, 140, 1 46 , 1 52 , 1 53 ,1 59. 1 65 . I 7 I 193 . 201 204.2077John Westland , 324

Nab bes, Thomas, 2 14, 2 19, 220,222

Marvell, An drew, 239Mary Stuart, Queen , 46Mary Tudor, Queen ,

29Mason , Joh n , 145 , 147Massinger, Philip , 1 3 8, 1 75 , 1 76 ,1 78, 1 88

,194

—201 , 205 , 2 1 3 ,220, 22 1 , 244, 256 , 26 1 , 272 ,

Matthews, Professor B . , 80, 306Maturin , Charles Robert, 3 1 5May, Thomas , 202 , 2 19, 222Mayn e, Jasper, 202 , 2 19, 220Medwell, Hen ry, 26 , 27Men doza , 256Meredi th , George, 99Meres, Fran ci s, 60, 7 1 , 84, 85 ,

I49Merivale, H. C . , 3 3 1

Middleton , Thomas, 6 , 94, 101 ,

102,1 1 3 , 1 1 6 , 1 1 7 , 1 2 1 , 1 39,

140. 1 46 . 1 63—1 65. 1 69

—1 72.1 79. 1 85. 1 89. 195 . 197. 299 .202

,204, 207, 209, 220, 22 1 ,

Miller,James , 297

Milman , Hen ry Hart, 3 1 9, 3 22Milton . John .

192 .2 14.239.253 .

Mitford ,Mary Russell, 322Moliere, 241 , 254, 257, 260, 263 ,

Molin a , 2 1 1 , 256

M on ck , Gen eral, 23 6Mon tague,Walter, 2 14, 225 , 226

‘Montgomery, Earl of, 200‘Moore

,Edward , 297

More, Han n ah , 3 10, 3 1 1Sir Thomas

, 27Morton , Thomas

, 3 10

Moun tfort, William, 264, 265 ,27 1

Moun tjoy , Ch ristopher, 76Mulcaster, R ichard , 64Mun day , An thony, 91-93 , 97 ,

Murphy, Arthur, 297 , 301 , 302 ,

3 07. 3 10

.o 971

3011302!

INDEX

hess of, 2 19, 228,23 8

Duke of , 206 , 2 19, 23 8, 241Newman , Joh n , 45Norton ,

Thomas , 3 8, 42

Oates , Titus, 262Ogilb y , Joh n ,

206

O’

Keefi'

e,John

, 3 1 0

Oldfield , An n e, 278 , 285Ormon d , Duke of, 279, 283Orrery, Earl of

,2 19, 229, 23 8 ,

244. 245 . 248. 256. 25 7. 265 .

Otway , Th omas,246 , 254, 255 ,

257 , 270—2 72 . 276 . 279, 28 1 ,

289. 291 . 292 . 299. 3 10

Oxford ,Edward de Vere, seven

teen th Earl of , 44, 46Aub rey de Vere, twen tieth

Earl of, 264

Pain ter,Thomas

, 44, 1 2 1 0

Palsgrave, Joh n , 3 27 9

Pausan ias , 223Peele, George, 3 1 , 42 , 48 , 49,5 8—62 . 64. 6 8. 69. 72. 73 . 90.

1 3 8. l 45 . 191

Pemb roke, Coun tess of, 66 , 142 ,I 43Hen ry, secon d Earl of , 1 96WilliamHerbert

,third Earl

of , 5 1 , 1 84, 200

Pepys , Samuel, 23 8, 258, 259,

Percy , Thomas, B ishop , 3 14William

, 1 70Petrarch

, 1 52

Petron iusArb iter, 1 72Philip I I . of Spain

, 46

Philips , Amb rose, 292 , 299Augustin e, 5 1Kath erine, 257

Pickerin g , Joh n , 43Pinero , Si r A. W. , 3 3 1

Pix , Mary Grifi ith , 266Plan ch é , James Robin son , 325

Quarles , Fran cis , 232Quin ,

James,292

Quin ault, 241

T.W. , v i , 309, 3 30

Rochester, Earl of , 247 , 248, 254

Rojas . 3 7Rossetti , Dan te Gab riel, 326

Plautus.6. 3 5 . 3 7. 82. 83 . 1 68

Plumtre, An n , 3 1 3

Plutarch ,1 24, 1 3 5

Pop e, Alexan der, v i, 1 5 1 , 264

266 , 26 7 , 282 , 287 , 2 89, 291

Thomas , 5 1Porta

, della , 1 69Porter, Hen ry ,

1 07 , 1 08

Powell, George, 2 7 1Preston , Thomas , 43 , 59Procop ius , 194Procter, B ryan Waller

, 3 19, 3 2

Pruden tius , 24Pryn n e, William ,

2 1 1,2 1 3 , 2 1 8

Purcell,Hen ry ,

258

Rabelais,1 60

Racin e, 2 54, 257 , 291

Rad clif , Ralph , 3 1

Rad cliffe, Ann e, 3 1 1 , 3 14Raleigh , SirWalter, 70,

256

Ramb ouillet , Marquise de, 228Ran dolph ,

Thomas,220, 224

—22

Rastell, Joh n ,26

Raven scroft, Edward , 260, 272Rawlin s , Thomas , 232Reade, Charles , 3 3 1Reyn old s , Frederic , 3 10Rhodes , Joh n , 23 6

Rich , Ch ristopher, 293John .

293Richard s, N athan iel, 222

Richard son , Samuel, 286 , 295

Robertson , Mr. J . M., 59, 60

63

340 INDEX

Rostan d , E . , 2

Rous , John , 1 0

Rousseau, 3 1 3Rowe, N icholas, 196 , 270,287

Rowley, Samuel, 93 , 1 3 8,

146

William, 94, 1 02 , 1 06 ,1 1 5

—1 1 7 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 8 , 1 3 9,1 78 1 1 85 , 1 899 1 95 1 196 12 1 6

Ruggle, George, 1 69, 223Rupert , Prin ce, 264Rutlan d , Earl of, 7 7Rutter, Joseph , 225 , 257Rymer, Thomas, 266

Sackville, Thomas , 3 8, 42St. Ben ed ic t, 1 5St. Gre

fiory Nazian zen , 8

St Pau 24Sain t-Rea l, Ab b é , 255Sain tsbury , Professor G . , 64Sallust, 1 27Sampson ,William , 1 1 5San nazaro , 192 , 226

Scarron , 23 7Schi ller, 1 94, 3 1 2 , 3 14, 3 1 5Scott , Regin ald , 1 1 8 , 1 2 1

Sir Walter, 42 , 252 , 3 12 ,

3 14Scrib e, 3 10Scudery , Georges de, 245

Mille de, 2 19, 226 , 245Sedley , Sir Charles , 260, 263Seneca . 3 8. 4 1 . 42. 44. 48. 59.

Settle, Elkan a , 246 , 247 , 27 1

Shadwell, Thomas, 252 , 257 ,

Shaftsbury, Earl of , 255Shakespeare, -William , v , V i i , 5 ,6 . 3 1 . 3 2 . 39. 40. 43 . 48. 5 1 .

52 7 5 5 1 57 , 59- 66

1 69, 72-78 ,

80—10 1 , 1 03—105 , 1 07 , 108 ,

1 1 0, 1 14, 1 1 5 , 1 1 8—1 20, 1 231 3 6 . 1 3 8. 145

- 148. 1 5 1 . 1 541 56. 1 66 . 1 69. 1 7 1 . 1 73

- 1 79.1 8 1

,1 85

—1 88 , 192 , 193 , 200,

201 , 204, 209, 2 12 , 2 1 8 , 2 19,

222—224, 232 , 23 7 , 23 8, 25 1 ,252 , 256 , 260

,266

,2 70—2 75 ,

282 , 286—289, 291 , 297 , 298,300. 301 . 3 08. 3 1 2. 3 1 5 . 3 20.

Sharpham, Edward , 1 70Shaw,

Mr. G . B . ,2 1 8

, 3 1 3 , 3 3 1Sheil

, Richard Lalor, 3 19, 3 25Shelley , Percy Bysshe, v i , 1 , 99,

Sheridan , Charles Fran cis, 307Richard Brin sley ,v ,

250, 270,286

. 304-3 1 0. 3 1 3

Shi rley , James , 1 3 7 , 1 7 1 , 1 731 75 , 198, 20 1

, 205—2 1 5 , 220

,

Siddon s , Sarah ,249, 298

Sidn ey , Sir Ph ilip , 48 , 5 5 , 56 ,99. 1 3 4. 1 42. 1 43 . I S7. 191 .

Sims,G . R . , 3 3 1

Skelton , John , 27 , 30Smith , Wen tworth , 1 39Smollett

, Tob ias , 297 , 3 1 1Sophocles , 3 30Southampton

,Earl of , 79, 86

Southern e, Thomas, 252 , 265 ,270. 27 1 . 2 76. 2 77 » 287. 289.3 1 0

Southey , Rob ert, 3 1 8, 3 23Spedd ing, J ames , 90Spen cer

,Gab riel, 149

Spen ser, Edmun d , 47 , 93 , 106 ,

Spra t , Thomas, 250Stapylton , Sir Rob ert

,23 8 , 256

1

Steele, Sir R ichard , 26 7 , 270,276 , 280, 28 1

,283

—287, 290,297

Stephen s, John , 144Sterne

, Lauren ce, 3 1 1Steven son , William, 3 7Still, Joh n , 3 7Stirling , Earl of, seeAlexan derStow, Joh n , 90

Strange, Lord , 5 1Strode, William , 225Suckling, Sir John ,

2 19, 220, 228 ,23 2

Sueton ius , 1 26 , 146Sussex, Earl of, 5 1

Lady, 66

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