COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT THE TUDOR DRAMA A HISTORY OF ENGLISH NATIONAL DRAMA TO THE RETIREMENT OF SHAKESPEARE BY C. F. TUCKER BROOKE, B. Litt. (Oxon.) lA'STKUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN YALE UNIVERSITY yOHMEELY SENIOR DEMY OF MAGOALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD BOSTON NEW YOKK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (jarijE Ritierjiibe ptesg Cambriboe ^7 COPYRIGHT, igll, BY C. F. TfCKER BROOKE 'all rights reserved ;CI.A297307 PREFACE The following pages have grown out of a series of lectures on "The Sources of the Elizabethan Drama," given in 1908 at Magdalen College, Oxford. To the members of that society are due the author's grateful acknowledgments for stimulus and opportunity. In the present volume very few words remain as they were first written. The scope of the book has been consider- ably broadened and its commencement pushed back beyond the reign of Elizabeth. It is believed, however, that the point of view expressed in the title of the lec- tures has been retained, and it is hoped that the origi- nal aim of tracing the genesis and development of the various types of Tudor drama will be found still to justify the method of treatment. It is probably not harti to defend the chronological limits and the title of this essay. There would seem to be a practical convenience in a treatment commencing with the earliest evidences of English national drama and closing with the highest accomplishment of that drama in the work of Shakespeare. Nor does it appear a gross exaggeration to include this entire evolution within the confines of " The Tudor Drama " ; for though most of the specimens discussed in the first two chap- ters had their original inception in the century before the Tudor era began, there can be no doubt that they still remained at the opening of our period the most characteristic expressions of English dramatic genius, iv PREFACE and that their consideration belongs justly therefore to the history of Tudor culture. The course of our study brings the orbit of English dramatic criticism to its perihelion in the examination of Shakespeare, the central sun, and those dramatic satellites who most closely share his attitude toward life and art. It would be an alluring task to trace this orbit still farther, through the clearly connected Jaco- bean, Caroline, and Restoration phases to its aphelion at the close of the Stuart epoch. But the consideration of Stuart drama in its entirety offers scope for another volume, and the temptation to stray beyond the logical line of demarcation has here been resisted, except where the individual work of Shakespeare forms for some nine years a kind of Tudor enclave in the midst of Jacobean literature. The bibliographies appended to the various chapters have been arranged with the idea of placing directly before the reader's attention all the essential literature of the subjects under discussion. Absolute technical completeness in this matter "seems beyond the range of a work which aspires to the notice of the undergrad- uate student and the general reader. However, the bibliographies have been independently compiled; and, except in the case of Shakespeare, no editions or com- mentaries have been intentionally omitted which appear to possess any present-day importance. Shakespear- ean texts and criticisms are so numerous and so abundantly catalogued already, that it has here been thought injudicious to go beyond the simple indication of the important early editions of each play. The ad- mirable and very recent Shakespeare bibliography in the fifth volume of the "Cambridge History of Eng- PREFACE V Hsh Literature" leaves little to be desired, and any re- capitulation of its results on the smaller scale suited to this book would be a useless impertinence. To my friends, Professor W. L. Phelps and Professor H.N. MacCracken of Yale University, I have the plea- sure of expressing my most hearty thanks for various helpful suggestions and for the careful reading of all my proofs at a period of the academic year when such a service entailed a real sacrifice and became a double kindness. C. F. T. B. Yale University, August, 1911. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Scriptural and Mir.4Cle Dr.\ma 1-46 English dramatic progress during the Tudor period (1485- 1603), 1. — Sources of English national drama, 'i. — "The Harrowing of Hell," 5. — Shrewsbury Fragments, ibid. — The rise of the guild plays, 6. — The various guild cycles, 7. — Manner of guild presentation, 9. — Introduction of comic matter, 14. — Developed clownage in the Wakefield cycle, 16. — The "Ludus Coventriffi," or Hegge plays, 17. — Scrip- tural dramas unconnected with the guild cycles; "Christ's Burial and Resurrection," iO ; Dublin and Brome plays of " Abraham's Sacrifice," 21; "Candlemas Day," i3. — Miracle plays proper; "Dux Moraud," 27; the Croxton Play of the Sac- rament, 29; "The Conversion of St. Paul," 31; "Mary Magda- lene," 33. — General survey of the religious drama at the open- ing of the Tudor period, 34. — The influence of this dr^ma upon the Elizabethan theatre, 35. — Bibliography, 38. CHAPTER II The Early Morality 47-68 The relation of the morality to the mystery, 47. — Pater- noster and creed plays, 48. — The connection of the morality with profane allegorical literature, 49. — "The Pride of Life," 50. — "The Castle of Perseverance," 51. — Significance of this type of play for the later drama, 53. — Circumstances of presen- tation. 55. — The morality as an art form, 59. — "Mind, Will, and Understanding " (or " Wisdom"), 61. — "Mankind, " 63. — The vulgarizing of the morality, 65. — Bibliography, 67. CHAPTER HI The Tudor Interlude 69-102 Origin and nature of the interlude. 69. — Medwall's "Na- ture," 71. — "The Nature of the Four Elements," 73. — "Wit iii CONTENTS and Science" and "Wit and Wisdom" interludes, 76. — "The World and the Child," 78. — " Ilickscorner," 80. — "The Inter- lude of Youth" and "Lusty Juventus," 81. — Political inter- ludes: Skelton's "Magnificence," 82; minor satirical interludes and dialogues, 83; "Respublica," 85. — John Bale, 80. — Lind- say's "Satire of the Three Estates," 88. — Interludes intended for amusement solely : John Hey wood, 93. — Hey wood as dra- matic artist, 96. — Bibliography, 98. CHAPTER IV The Interlude in Transition 103-146 Complex affiliations of the later interlude, 103. — "John the Evangelist," 10-4. — Interludes pointing an economic moral: "Wealth and Health," 106; "Like Will to Like," 108; "Impa- tient Poverty," 109; " Albion Knight," ibid. ; " The Trial of Trea- sure," ibid. — The tendency to diffuseness in late interludes, 1 10. — L. Wager's "Repentance of Mary Magdalene," 112. — G. WapuU, "The Tide Tarricth No Man," 113. — Metrical fea- tures of the latter play, 115. — T. Lupton, "All for Money," 117. — W. Wager, "The Longer Thou Livest the more Fool Thou Art," 119. — N. Woodes, "The Conflict of Conscience," 120. — "The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality," 122. — Interludes based on foreign models: "Nice Wanton," 121; T. Ingelend, "The Disobedient Child," 125; G. Gascoigne, "The Glass of Government," 127. — Interludes introducing real characters: John Bale's "King John," 130; "Godly Queen Hester," 131; "King Darius," 132; "Jacob and Esau," 133. — Interludes based on romantic material: "Calisto and Melibea," 133; John Phillip's "Comedy of Meek and Patient Grissell," 135. — Interludes presenting classic figures: "Thcrsites," 135; J. Pikering's "Ilorcstes" and related plays, 138. — The change from interlude to Elizabethan comedy or tragedy, I-IO. — Bib- liography, 1-12. CHAPTER V Classical Influence in Comedy 147-187 The narrow range of native English comedy, 147. — Differ- ent manifestations of Latin influence on Elizabethan comedy» 148. — Inheritances from Latin drama, 150. — Vogue of Latin comedy on the Continent and in England, 154. — Translations CONTENTS i of Terence and Plautus. 156. — "Jack Juggler," 156. — N. Udall, "Ralph Roister Doister," 158. — "Gammer Gurton's Needle," 161. — G. Gascoigne, "The Supposes," 164. — "Misogonus," 165. — "The Bugbears," 168. — "Fedele and Fortunio," 169. — John Lyiy, 169-179. His relation to classic art and to court fashion, 170. — Terentian imitation in"Mother Bombie," 172. — Artistic uncertainty in "Carapaspe," 173. — Lyly'iS six characteristic plays: courtly allegories and my- thological pastorals, 174. — Mythological pastorals by other writers: G. Peele, "The Arraignment of Paris," 180; "The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune," ibid. — Bibliography, 181. CHAPTER VI Classical Influence in Tragedy 188-229 Difference in the effect of classic influence in comedy and in tragedy, 188. — Seneca and his translators, 189. — Borrowings from Seneca, 190. — Norton and Sackville, "P'errex and Por- rex" (or "Gorboduc"), 191. — Blank verse in this play, 193. — The dumb-show, ibid. — T. Hughes, etc., "The Misfortunes of Arthur," 194. — Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh, "Jocasta," 195. — R. Wilmot, etc., "Gismond of Salerne," 196. — Later aca- demic tragedy : Lady Pembroke and her set, imitators of Gamier, 198; Fulkc Greville, 201; Sir William Alexander, ibid. — The popularizing of the Latin tragic model, 204. — Ten- tative works of the " Cambises " type, 205. — " Locrine," 207. — Thomas Kyd, "The Spanish Tragedy," 209. — Characteristics and limitations of Kyd's "tragedy of blood," 210. — "The First Part of Jeronimo," 215. — "Soliman and Perseda," ibid. — Other successors of "The Spanish Tragedy": the"Ur- Hamlct,"217; "Titus Andronicus," 218; "The Jew of Malta," "Lust's Dominion," "Alphonsus of Germany," 219 ; H. Chettle's " Hoffman," 220. — The refinement of the type in "Romeo and Juliet," 221. — Bibliography, 222, CHAPTER VII The Heroic Play 230-255 Remote origins of heroic drama in literature of ballad and romance, 230. — The attitude of Elizabethan moralists and scholars toward the species, 2.33. — "Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamides," 236. — "Common Conditions," 237. — The germs X CONTENTS of character portrayal in such works, 239. — Later efforts in the " same strain: T. Hcywood's "Four Prentices of London," etc., 241. — Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," 243. — Imitations of "Tam- burlaine": R. Greene's "Alphonsus of Arragon," "Looking Glass for London," and "Orlando Furioso," 246; "The Wars of Cyrus," 247. — Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," 249. — The dis- integration of the heroic play, 250. — Influence of the type on Marlowe's latest plays and on Shakespeare, ibid. — Biblio- graphy, 252. CHAPTER VIII Romantic Comedy and Pastoral Comedy .... 256-296 The influence of the prose romance upon the drama, 256. — Pastoral literature in Europe, 258. — Longus, "Daphnis' and Chloe"; Heliodorus, "/Ethiopica," 259. — Boccaccio's " Ameto," 260. — Montemayor's "Diana," ibid. — Characteris- tics of this type, 262. — The nature of its influence on the drama, 263. — R. Greene, "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay," 265. — "James the Fourth," 268. — Greene's method in ro- mantic comedy contrasted with Shakespeare's, 269. — Romantic comedies possibly suggested by Greene: "Fair Em," 270; A. Munday's "John a Kent and John a Cumber," 272, and "Robert Earl of Huntington," 273; "The Merry Devil of Ed- monton," 276. — Shakespeare's romantic comedy, 279. — 'truc- tural peculiarities of this type in Shakespeare's presen on, 281. — Slightness of responsibility and character develo, lent among the dramatis personae, 283. — Relation betweeo: & -ke- speare's romantic comedies and his more realistic dramas, 285. — The mingling of realism and romance, 287. — Italian pas- toral drama, 288. — Tasso's "Aminta," Guarini's "Pastor Fido," 289. — Imitation of this species by S. Daniel, 291. — J. Fletcher, "The Faithful Shepherdess," 292. — Ben Jonson, "The Sad Shepherd," ibid. — Bibliography, 292. CHAPTER IX 9 The History Play 297-351 Definition of the species, 297. — Causes of its popularity: growth of nationalism, 298; demand for dramatic material, 300. — Lost chronicle plays mentioned by Hcnslowe, 301. — Influ- ence of "Tamburlaine" upon this type, 302. — Five classes of history plays distinguished, 303. — "The Troublesome Reign of John" and Shakespeare's " King John," 304. — "The Fa- CONTENTS xi mous Victories of Henry V," 306. — "The True Tragedy of Rich- ard III," 308. — "The Battle of Alcazar" and "Selimus," 311. — Thomas Lodge, "The Wounds of Civil War," 312. —The Henry VI plays, 313. — Biographical history plays: "Stukely," "Thomas Lord Cromwell," "Sir John Oldcastle," "Sir Thomas More," 321. — Marlowe, "Edward II," 522. — Shakespeare, "Richard III," 323; "Richard II," 326. — "The Tragedy of Woodstock," 328. — "Macbeth," "Antony and Cleopatra," and " Coriolanus," 329. — "Edward III," 331. — Shakespeare, "Henry IV" and "Henry V," 332; "Julius Caesar," 336.— Plays on quasi-historical subjects : Peeie's "Edward I," etc., 338. — "Look about You," 341.— "The Blind Beggar of Bednal-Green," etc., 342. — "A Larum for London," 343. — Thomas Heywood: "Edward IV," 343; "If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody," 344. — Bibliography, 345. CHAPTER X Drama of Contemporary Incident 352-389 Relation of the contemporary murder tragedy to the rude chronicle play, 352. — Lost murder plays, 353. — "Arden of Feversham," 355. — "A Warning for Fair Women," 357. — R- Yarip-gton's "Two Tragedies in One," 362. — "A Yorkshire Trar^'dy," 364. — George Wilkins, "The Miseries of Enforced Ml st appropriate to the period of performance. — the deposition from the cross and resurrection; and the treatment emphasizes everywhere the devotional, rather than the ilramatic possibilities of the theme. No tratx^ of humor appears, nor even the slightest knowledge oi the principles of stage presentation; and the earlier part of the play, which the scribe terms as a whole a "treyte [treatise] or meditatione," Sivms to have been originally composed in narrative form. Far the most striking and poetic division of the work is its version of the " IMauctus Maria\" or lamentation I of the Virgin over the Saviour's dead body; and this passage, rmming to 180 consecutive lines, is conceived altogether in the spirit of the contemporary religious lyrics on the same subject, with one of which it even SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 21 shares its effective refrain: "Who can not wepe, com lorn at me." ^ Two unconnected plays on the st ory lay is somewhat puzzling, since, instead of being presented continuously on a single platform like others of its class, it is divided into three distinct "stations," corresponding \\ith the acts in a modern drama. The separate prologues and ei)ilogues to each station wouKl suggest some processional form of acting, and this hypothesis seems almost confirmed by the words of the Poeta at the end of the first station: — "(Tyiiiilly of tliis stiiron wo mak ii eoiu-lusyoii, bosoc'tiyiijj lliys audyotis to folow and succede witli all your dolygous this geiuTall processyon." Perhaps the fact that the speech in which these lines occur is marked as optional ("Poeta — si placet") may be taken to indicate that the play was destined for ; presentation, either continuously on a single stage, or 1 in three parts, as circumstances might require. "The Conversion of St. Paul" abounds in comic juatter, introduced into the historical plot in a fashion neither more nor less logical than that which charac- terizes the early Elizabethan writers of histories and tragedies. After the Poet's invocation and address to the audience, Saulus enters "goodly besene in the best wyse lyke an aunterous knyth [adventurous knight]," brt\ithing threats against the Christians. He secures letters from Caiaphas aiul Aniuis in view of his jour- ney to Damascus, and then the stage direction notes: "here goyth sale forth a lytyll a-syde for to make hym redy to ryde," leaving opportunity for a bout of low badinage between his servant and the hostler. The second station, in which the stage is divided between a number of localities, presents Saul's vision, conver- sion, and baptism. The third introduces, probably as SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 33 a late interfjolation, a council of devils who learn with roars and cries the desertion of theirchampion Saul, and resolve to attempt his death. The rest is dull stuff apparently uncongenial to the writer, who breaks off abruptly and sums up the conclusion in an epilogue. One of the most significant monuments of early English dramatic literature is the long, rambling, and only sporadically readable play of " Mary Magdalene," which combines in a remarkable fashion the types of mystery, miracle play, and morality. The fifty-two scenes were all presented on the same stage, portions of which seem to have been made to represent eleven different places, ranging from Hell to the court of Ca;sar and the kingdom of Marcylle.* The literary pre- tensions of all the Digby plays become particularly evident in this, the longest of the .series, which, if the last two lines of the Epilogue are to be taken seriously, must be regarded as the first closet drama in English history: — " I desyer the rerlars to be my frynd, Yff ther be ony amysse, that to amend." Notwith.standing this appeal to the reading public, which may, indeed, have been added by the .scribe who made the Digby copy, we must suppose the play in- tended for actual presentation. The first jjart of the work is predominantly of the mystery type. Tiberius Csesar, Ilerod, and Pilate are introduceTT in the popu- lar braggart role, which was by this time become the conventional stage mark of a ruler. Then Mary's his- tory is presented: her father's death; her fall, life in sin, ' A conjoetural plan of the stage used for the performanee of Mary Magdalene wUi be found in V. E. Albright's Shakgperian Stage. 34 THE TUDOR DRAMA repentance; her washing of Christ's feet in the house of Simon the Leper; the death and recall to life of her brother Lazarus; finally, her experiences on the morn- ing of the Resurrection. The second portion of the drama, which partly overlaps the first, is pure miracle play. It narrates the conversion by Mary of the heathen king and queen of Marcylle after several spectacular miracles; the subsequent pilgrimage and adventures of these energetic converts; Mary's retire- ment into the wilderness and saintly death. The pic- ture of the heroine's alienation from virtue, which is probably the most dramatic portion of the work, is an almost perfect example of the moraljty.play embedded in a foreign setting. Mary's temptation comes as the result of a conference between the great allegorical dignitaries, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, who from their retainers, the seven deadly sins, depute Lechery to decoy her into evil. Lechery entices her vic- tim into a tavern, where in an excellent scene of low realism, Mary yields to the love of the gallant Curiosity. In range and workmanship "Mary Magdalene" is probably a very fair sample of the drama at the begin- ning of the Tudor epoch. It is evident that by this time not only the frankly secular guild plays, but also the more conservative sort of drama, which in a sense con- tinued the ecclesiastical tradition and influence, had come to assert artistic independence, and even in some .cases a distinct literary consciousness. Comedy min- gles everywhere with tragedy in a league unbroken till the Restoration; while in the miracle plays the drama enters a third rich field of wonder and romance, equally remote from the serious realism of Biblical history and from the comic realism of village life, but productive SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 35 in future of some of the greatest triumphs of the mature theatre. Stagecraft and stage business have attained considerable development and established permanent conventions, both on the normal fixed and sub-divided platform, and in connection with the more gorgeous processional pageant which resulted from the exigencies of guild presentation. Most significant of all, the "Ludus Coventriai" and "Mary Magdalene" both show well-developed morality plays arising out of mysteries. The concrete figures of the primitive re- ligious drama are losing their vividness for playwright and for public, and tend either themselves to pass into, or to give place to, moral abstractions. The Herod, Pilate, and Joseph of Skelton's time and Shakespeare's were felt as types, not men, and the ascendancy of the typical in religious drama meant, of course, the tri- umph of the morality, to which it is time that we turn our attention. One last important consideration remains to be em- phasized. The mystery play, particularly as repre- sented in the great guild cycles, is the only form of English literature which passed essentially unaltered through the early sixteenth-century welter of Renais- sance and Reformation. Those drastic reformers of life and letters, Erasmus, Colet, Wyatt, Surrey, Crom- well, and the rest, scattered broadcast new influences and new ideas, but they did not disturb the tranquil conservatism of the Corpus Christi plays. In 1572, the mayor of Chester, John Hanky, "would needs have the Playes (commonly called Chester Playes) to go forward, against the wills of the Bishops of Canter- bury, York, and Chester"; and his successor. Sir John Savage, in 1575, "caused the Popish Plays of Chester 36 THE TUDOR DRAMA ti) be played the Sunday, Munday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after IMid-soninier-day. in eontenipt of an Inhibition and the Primats Letters from York, and from the Earl of Huntington." What had been good doetrineto Ranulph Tligilen in llV28had become pesti- lent iieresy in the course of two and a half centuries, but the burghers still demanded the old diversion, and they got it in the old form till a newer one was ready. We know that several of the most popular scenes in the mystery cycles had alreatly established themselves in universal favor and familiarity, when Chaucer was writing the "Canterbury Tales." In the Miller's Tale the ptH^t alludes to the horse-play between Noah and his wife: — "'Hastow nat luTil," quod Nicholas, 'also . . . ' The sorwo of N'lV with his folawshipo. Er that ho misihto J^"to his wyf to shipe ? Him hiu\ he lovor. I dar wol undortake. At thilko tymo, tlian alio hiso wethort>s blake. That she haddo had a ship hir-self allono.'" And of another of the lovers of the fair Alisoun, he says in the same tale: — "Sonitymo, to showo his lisihtnosso and maistrye. Ho ployoth Horodos on a soatTold hyo." Wliat Chaucer had setm, we cannot doubt that Shake- s[x\ire had also seen, and the antics of the unfortunate Absolon can hardly ha\e varied nuich from those of the actors, detested o( llamlet, whom Shakespeare liad seen out-IIeroding Herod on the guild pageants of Coventry and the boards of a somewhat more ad- vancinl London stage. SCRIPTURiVL AND MIRACLE DILVMA 37 We are accustomed to think of the EHzabethan drama as a great mushroom growth, evoked over-night, as it were, by special conditions due to Renaissance and Reformation and half a dozen other new impulses. And such it truly was. We shall find it enormously cosmopolitan in its origins, and in its interests ex- traordinarily contemporary, even ephemeral. This was the character of the age, and it affected other branches of literature in equal measure. But when we come to estimate the sources whence the Elizabethan drama derives the particular vigor and depth of root which it possesses above all the other literary forms of the time, who shall say just how potent was the fact that the drama alone could boast, through the guild plays, an uninterrupted descent from English literature of the Middle Ages ? These plays, orally presented throughout the country year after year, form the only real bond of sympathy between the English public of Shakespeare's youth and the great English public of Chaucer's day. Through them passed into the drama a wealth of tradition and sentiment elsewhere intercepted by changes of language, religion, and education. To the conservatism and tenacity of the guild perform- ances Elizabethan drama owes a goocl deal of the un- conquerable national quality, which enabled it to as- similate larger j)ortions of foreign matter than any other literary type of the day and yet remain the most essentially English of them all. The guild plays thus did much to save the drama from that unfortunate dis- continuity generated by the upheavals of the early six- teenth century, which in the other branches made it impossible for Spenser properly to appreciate Chaucer or for Ascham to sympathize with Malory. 38 THE TUDOR DRAMA BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL WORKS OF REFERENCE Bates, Katharine Lee : The English Religious Drama, 1893. Cambridge History of English Literature, vols, v, vi, 1910. Chambers, E. K. : The Mediceval Stage, 1903. Collier, J. P. : The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare : and Annals of the Stage to the Restora- tion, 3 vols., 2d edition, 1879. Courthope, W. J. : History of English Poetry, 1895-1905, vols, ii-iv. Creizenach, W. : Geschichte des neueren Dramas, 1893-1910 (4 vols.). Hazlitt, W. C. : The English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 154.3-1668. Illustrated by a Series of Docu- ments, Treatises, and Poems, 1869. Herford, C. H. : Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, 1886. Jusserand, J. : Le Theatre en Angleterre, Paris, 1878, new ed., 1881. : A Literary History of the English People, 3 vols., 1895-1909. French ed., 1896-1904. Kelly, "W. : Notices Illustrative of the Drama and other Popular Amusements, chiejly in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1865. Klein, J. L. : Geschichte des Dramas, 1865-76, vols, xii, xiii. Lee, Sidney : The French Renaissance in England. An Ac- count of the Literary Relations of England and France in the Sixteenth Century, 1910. Malone, "B. : An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage, and of the Economy and Usages of our Ancient Theatres. Shakespeare's Works, ed. 1790, vol. i, part 2. Enlarged version in Boswell's Malone, 1821, vol. iii, together with Farther Account by George Chalmers (pp. 410- 522). Frblss, R. : Geschichte des neueren Dramas, 3 vols., 1881-83, vols, i, ii. SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 39 Schelling, F. E. : Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642 . . . with Resume of the Earlier Drama, 2 vols., 1908. : English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare, 1910. Symonds, J. A. : Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama, 1881. Ten Brink, B. : Geschichte der englischen Litteratur, revised by A. Brandl, 1893. Translated, H. M. Kennedy, 1883. Ward, A. W. : History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, 2d ed., 3 vols., 1899. Warton, Thomas : History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century, 4 vols., 1791-81. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1871. IMPORTANT COLLECTIONS OF TEXTS FROM THE TUDOR PERIOD Amyot, T., and others : A Supplement to Dodsley^s Old English Plays, 4 vols., 1853. Brandl, A. : Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare. Ein Ergdnzungsband zu Dodsley's Old English Plays. " Quellen und Forschungen," Ixxx, 1898. Bullen, A. H. : A Collection of Old English Plays, 4 vols., 1882-85. Child, F. J. : Four Old Plays, 1848. Collier, J. P. : Five Old Plays, 1851. Reprinted, Hazlitt's Dodsley, vi. : Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature. (Dilke, C. W.) : Old English Plays, G vols., 1814-15. Digby Plays : (Contents of the Bodleian MS., " Digby 133.") Printed Th. Sharp, Abbotsford Club, 1835; F. J. Furnivall (together with a play of The Burial and Resurrection from another MS.), Neto Shakespeare Society, 1882, reprinted, E. E. T. S., 1896. Discussion: K. Schmidt, "Die Digby- Spiele " (Berlin dissertation), 1884 : concluded in Anglia, viii (1885), 371 fE. Dodsley, Robert : A Select Collection of Old Plays, 12 vols., 1744. Second ed., I. Reed, 1780. Third ed., J. P. Collier, 1825-27. Fourth ed., W. C. Hazlitt (enlarged to 15 vols.), 1874-76. The contents vary somewhat in each edition.* 40 THE TUDOR DRAMA Everyman's Library. " Everyman " with other Interludes, in- cluding Eight Miracle Plays, 1909. Everyman's Library. Minor Elizabethan Drama, ed. A. H. Thorndike, 2 vols. Farmer, J. S. : Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1907-11. (In progress.) : Early English Drama Society Publications. (A series of unauthoritative reprints.) Gayley, C. M. (general editor) : Representative English Come- dies, with Introductory Essays and Notes . . . by various writers. From the Beginnings to Shakespeare, 1903. Hawkins, Thomas :, T^he jDrigin of (he English Drama, Illus- trated in its various Species, viz. ': Mystery, Morality, Tragedy, and Comedy, by Specimens from our Earliest Writers, 3 vols., Oxford, 1773. Hemingway, S. B. : English Nativity Plays. " Yale Studies in English," xxxviii, 1909. Hurst, Robinson, & Co. (Publishers): The Old English Drama, 2 vols., 1825. (A collection of eight plays with separate im- prints.) Litterarhistorische Forschungen. Manly, J. M. : Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, 2 vols., Boston, 1897. Materialien zur Kunde des alteren englischen Dramas. General editor, W. Bang. Louvaiu, 1902, etc. Marriott, William : Collection of English Miracle Plays or Mys- teries. Basel, 1838. Neilson, W. A. : Chief Elizabethan Dramatists, 1911. Old English Drama, 3 vols., 1830. Pollard, A. W. : English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes, Specimens and Extracts. Oxford, 1890. 6th ed., revised, 1909. (Scott, Walter) : The Ancient British Drama. In Three Vol- umes. Printed for William Miller. The editor's name no- where appears. Simpson, Richard : The School of Shakspere, 2 vols, (pub- lished posthumously), 1878. Also a separate pamphlet, con- taining A Larum for London, published under the same general title, 1872. Waterhouse, O. : The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, together with the Croxton Play of the Sacrament and the Pride of Life. E. E. T. S., 1909. SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 41 In addition to the above, the following academic periodicals and publications of learned societies are particularly valuable repositories of dramatic texts : — Anglia. Englische Studien. (Herrig's) Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen. Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. (^Sh,-Jb.^ Shakespeare Society Publications (1841-53). New Shakspere Society Publications (1874-96). Malone Society Publications (1907, etc.). SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER I GENERAL DISCUSSION Beatty, Arthur : The St. George, or Mummers' Plays ; a Study in the Protology of the Drama. Wise. Acad, of Sciences, Arts, & Letters, xv, pt. 2. 1906. Bolingbroke, L. G. : " Pre-Elizabethan Plays and Players in Norfolk," Norfolk Archaeology, xi (1892), 332-351. Cook, A. S. : "A Remote Analogy to the Miracle Play," Journal of Germanic Philology, iv, 421-^51. Davidson, Charles : Studies in the EnglisK Mystery Plays. Yale diss. 1892. Ebert, A. : " Die englischen Mysterien." Jb. fur rom. u. engl. Lit., i. 1859. Gay ley, C. M. : Plays of our Forefathers, 1907. Graaf, W. van der : " Miracles & Mysteries of S. E. York- shire " (Notes concerning Patrington & Hedon), Eng. Stud., 36 (1906), 228-230. Greene, Antoinette : " An Index to the Non-Biblical Names in the English Mystery Plays," Studies in Honor of J. M. Hart, 1910, 313-350. Hohlfeld, Alexander : " Die altenglischen Eollektivmisterien unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Verhaltnisse der York- und Towneley-Spiele," Anglia, xi, 219-310. Hone, William : Ancient Mysteries described, especially the English Miracle Plays . . . London, 1823. Jusserand, J. J. : "A note on Pageants and ' Scaffolds Hye,' " Furnivall Miscellany, 1901, 183 ff. 42 THE TUDOR DRAMA Leach, A. F. : " Some English Plays and Players, 1220-1548," Furnivall Miscellany, 1901, 205 ff. Matthevrs, Brander : " The Mediseval Drama," Modern Philology, i, 71-94. 1903. Oliver, Q. : "A History of the Holy Trinity Guild at Sleaford, with an Account of its Miracle Plays, Religious Mysteries, and Shows, as practised in the 15th Century." Lincoln, 1837. Stoddard, F. H. : References for Students of Miracle Plays and Mysteries, 1887. Taylor, Q. C. : " The English Planctus Marise," Modem Philology, iv (1907), 605-637. Thien, H. : Uber die englischen Marienklagen. Kiel, 1906. Tisdel, P. M. : Comedy in the Mystery Plays of England. Har- vard thesis, 1906. ♦' The Influence of Popular Customs on the Mystery Plays," Jrl. Engl, and Germ. Phil., v, 323-340. INDIVIDUAL PLAYS, TEXTS AND COMMENTARY I. Scriptural Drama 1. SPECIMENS APPARENTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FORMATION OF THE GUILD CYCLES (a) Specitaens of English " tropes." Contained in Regu- laris Concordia Monachorum (?967; by St. Ethan- wold?). Ed. W. S. Logeman, Anglia, xiii, 426-428 : Tlie Winchester Troper, ed. W. H. Frere. Henry Brad- shaw Society, 1894. Extracts are reprinted by Manly, Specimens, i, xix-xxvi. (b) Harro'wing of Hell. Extant in three MSS. Reprinted, parallel texts (with Gospel of Nicodemus), W. H. Hulme, E. E. T. S., 1907. Other editions : E. Mall, Berlin, 1871 ; Pollard, English Miracle Plays. Discus- sion : K. Young, " The Harrowing of Hell in Liturgical Drama." Reprinted from Trans. Wis, Academy, xvi, pt. 2, 1909. (c) Shrevrsbury Fragments. Printed W. W. Skeat, Acad- emy, Jan. 11, 1890 ; Manly, Specimens, i, 1897 ; Water- bouse, Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, 1909. Discussed W. W. Skeat, Academy, Jan. 4, 1890. SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 43 (d) Cornish Drama. Norris, E. : The Ancient Cornish Drama (Cornish text of 3 mystery plays with transla- tion), Oxford, 1859, 2 vols. Discussion : Peter, T. C. : '« The Old Cornish Drama. A Lecture," 1906. Creation of the World. Cornish text and translation by Davies Gilbert, 1827. 2. GUILD PLAYS (a) Cheater Cycle. MS. of Play 24 only (prompter's copy ?) ascribed to 1475-1500. 5 complete MSS. dated from 1591 to 1607. MS. containing fragment of play 19 printed Manchester Guardian, May 19, 1883. Ed. Th. Wright for Shakespeare Society, 2 vols. 1843-47. Plays i-xiii, ed. H. Deimling, E. E. T. S., 1892 ; remainder announced for 1911-12. Plays 3, 10, and Banns ed. J. H. Markland, Roxburghe Club, 1818. Discussion: J. H. Markland, " Chester Mysteries " (dated 1818), printed in vol, iii, pp. 525-549, of Boswell-Malone Shakespeare, 1821. H. Deimling : Textgestalt und Textkritik der Chester Plays, Berlin diss., 1890. H. Ungemach : " Die Quellen der fiinf ersten Chester Plays," Miinchener Beitrdge, i, 1890. (b) True Coventry Cycle. Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, ed. H. Craig, E. E. T. S., 1902. Other editions: Shearmen-Taylors' Pageant, Th. Sharp, 1817 and 1825 ; Marriott, 1838. Manly, Specimens, 1897 ; A, W. Pollard : Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse, 1903. Weav- ers' Pageant, J. B. Gracie ? for Abbots/ord Club, 1836; F. Holthausen : " Das Spiel der Weber von Coventry, i, Text," Anglia, xxv, 209-250, 1902. Discussion: Thomas Sharp : A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently performed at Coventry, by the Trading Companies of that City, Coventry, 1825 ; C. Davidson, Mod. Lang. Notes, vii. 184 ; A. R, Hohl- feld, Mod. Lang. Notes, vii. 318. (c) Newcastle Shipwrights' Play of Noah's Ark. Edi- tions : Henry Bourne : 7'he History of Newcastle-upon- Tyne, 1736 ; John Brand : The History and Antiquities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1789 ; Th. Sliarp : Disserta- 44 THE TUDOR DRAJVIA tion, 1825 ; F. Holthausen : Goteborgs Hogskolas Ars- skrift, 1897, vol. iii ; R. Krotanek : " Noahs Arche. Ein Misterium aus Newcastle-iipou-Tyne," Anglia, xxi (1899), 165-200 (Reprint of Sharp, with parallel "re- stored " text) ; O. Waterhouse : Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, 1909. (d) Norwich Grocers' Play of Adam and Eve. Two MS. texts (1533, 15C5). Editions : Robert Fitch, Nor- folk Archceology, v, 8-31, 1859 (both texts) ; J. M. Manly, Speci7nens, i, 1897 ; O. Waterhouse, Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, 1909. Discussion : Henry Harrod, " A Few Particulars concerning Early Norwich Pageants," Norfolk- Archceology, iii (1852), 3-18. (e) Wakefield (Towneley) Cycle. MS. long in library of Towneley Hall ; now in private possession at Ewell, Surrey. Editions : — Surtees Society, 1836 ; G. England and A. W. Pollard, E. E. T. S., 1897. Play xxx, F. Douce, Roxhurghe Club, 1822. Discussion : A. Bun- zeu, Ein Beitrag ztir Kritik der Wakefelder Mysterien, 1903; F. W. Cady, "The Liturgical Basis of the Towneley Mysteries," Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc, 1909 ; M. H. iPeacock, "The Wakefield Mysteries. The place of representation," Anglia, xxiv (1901), 509 ; W. W. Skeat, " The Locality of the Towneley Plays," Athenceum, Dec. 2, 1893. A. Ebert : " Die engl. Mys- terien, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Towne- ley-Sammlung " : Jb. f rom. u. engl. Lit., i, 44, 131. H. A. Eaton : Afod. Lang. Notes, xiv, 265, " A Source for the Towneley Prima Pastorum." J. Hugienin : Mod. Lang. Notes, xiv, 255, " An Interpolation in the Towneley Abraham Play." (/) York Cycle. Lucy Toulmin Smith, The Plays per- formed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York on the Day of Corpus Christi in the 14, 15, and 16 Centuries, Oxford, 1885. Scriveners' Play of Incredulity of Thomas preserved in separate MS. belonging to York Philoso- phical Soc. Printed J. Croft, Excerpta Antiqua, 1797 ; J. P. Collier, Camden Misc. iv, 1859. Discussion : H. E. Coblentz, " A Rime-Index to the ' Parent Cycle ' of the York Mystery Plays and of a portion of the Wood- SCRIPTURAL AND MIRACLE DRAMA 45 kirk (i. e., Wakefield) Conspiracio et Capito," Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc, x (1895), 487-557 ; Craigie, W. A.: " Tije Gospel of Nicodemua and the York Mystery Plays," Furnivall Miscellany, 1901 ; O. Herrtrich, Sludien zu der York Plays, Breslau, 1886 ; F. Holt- hausen, " Beitrilge zur Erklarung und Textkritik der York Plays," Herrig's Archiv, 85 (1890), 411-428 (with " Nachtrage," Archiv, 86) ; " Zur Textkritik der York Plays," Phil. Stud. Festgabe fur E. Sievers, Halle, 1896 ; Kamann, P., " Die Quellen der York-Spiele," Anglia, x, 189-226; E. Kcilbing, "Beitrage zur Er- klarung und Textkritik der York Plays," Engl. Studien, XX (1895), 179-220 ; K. Luick : " Zur Textkritik der Spiele von York," Anglia, 22, 384. 3. 8CBIPTUBAL PLAYS APPARENTLY INDEPENDENT OP THE GUILDS (a) The so-called "Ludua Coventrlae" cycle. Edited by J. O. Halliwell, Shakespeare Society, 1841. Plays i-v. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum. — Discussion : Ernst Falke, " Die Quellen des Sogenannten Ludus Coven- triae," Leipzig, 1908 ; Max Kramer, " Sprache und Heimat des sog. Ludus Coventriae," Halle, a. S., 1892 ; E. N. S. Thonopson, " The Ludus Coventriae," Mod. Lang. Notes, xxi (1896), 18-20. (b) Christ's Burial and Resurrection. Wright, Reliquae Antiquae, ii, 124, 1843 ; Printed in Dighy Mysteries, ed. Furnivall, 1882 and 1896. (c) Abraham's Sacrifice. Brome MS. — Editions : Miss L. Toulmiu Smith, Anglia, vii (1884), 316-337, and " A Commonplace Book of the Fifteenth Century," 1886 ; Walter Rye, Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany, iii, 1887; J. M. Manly, Specimens, i, 1897; O. Waterhouse, Non- Cycle Mystery Plays, 1909. — Discussion : A. Hohlfeld, " Two Old English Mystery Plays on the Subject of Abraham's Sacrifice," Mod. Lang. Notes, v, 222-237; F. Holthausen, Anglia, xiii (1891), 361. (rf) Abraham's Sacrifice. Dublin MS. — Editions: J. P. Collier, "Five Miracle Plays," 1836(25 copies); R. Brotanek, " Abraham und Isaak. Ein ME Misteriuin t(5 VUV. n DOK niiVMA Aua oiiior Pultliucr lIiutdHohrift," Anglia, xxi (1800), lll-f>i\. - I>iu-msion : V. Pavuison, "Conoerniu^- 1mi)J- lUh Mvstory riiivs," .U.x/. l.ntttj. Ntttts, vii (tSO'J), (^) Candlemas (^ Childermas?) Day (,(>ltuighti>r of liuu>- ooiits). Pi!;l\v MS. AV/iriii/rt/ sffkinttflfi, Hawkins, vol. i, 1771^ ; Muvnolt, ISiW. II. MlUVll.K I>K.VM.i (i\ (Iniiiiii dos M. .III.." W. llousor. Aniflia, 'M {\W1). ISO «Y. (l>) Cioxtoii Play of tlio SMCXomeut. — Kiiitiong : Whitley Stokoa, I't^iitstictiimf I'hit. StH\, .\mHMuiix, 18(51; .). M. Maulv, vS'/>«\"MMf"«<<. i. 1807; O. WalorluMiso, A'<>ri-(\vW* .l/y>/frv /Vd.iy.N-, 11H>0. (r) Convri«icm of St, Putil. Pijil'v MS. Priit(f\i .w/Hi- niff."!/ ,• .1. M. Manly, Sttt^-tmats, i, 1807. ((j) Thp Conversion of Maiy Magdalene. Digby MS. l\oi>nntoil in part l\v rolhinl. .Mtracir /V(iv.<. (f) Ivivst play of K<,niff luthar! of CU'f/ltjr, \Ai\\oi.\ at tlio lliijh (.Vvss, Chostor. UVJO. Stated to liavo l»eon prt^viously shown, in lloury VU's rt>i^n. Cf. Collior, i, 111-llJV. riay on vSjuuo subjoot aotoii Ht Lincoln, l4r>iV (/■) Coinlsh Miracle Drama. ThiT l.t/f of' St. Mfriastl; /»'k;i i%>ui (\";r('.<."ti>-. Kd. with a Translation and KoU»jj by WluUey Stokes, 1872. CffAITKR H THJ-: hAHl,Y MOUAL/ry Wk have, f^tttw in Ui'; last <'h'A])br fiiut v/tion t li*; 'J'ljrJor era U;^ari, and for a Irjng tJrri'; afU^r, rnyHU;ry f>IayH, more or Icsh s^rriouHly «pi ritual in Uuu;, wi;vtt U;irig pnAwji'A [HrrirKJically at. York, Chcnit'.r, Cyoveritry, and in many rjt.hf;r lo<:alit.if;H. Then; was, t/j U; sure, alrcfi/iy a generous infunion in all the cycles of non- religious mat,t>;r, and the eonnr^.i.ion of |>reIaU; and players was growing more, and more t.hat. of the pro- verbial hen and gr^slings. Still, the break w;is not ojK^n, anfJ the sufK^rfleial hWihuca', fK;tween inyH\j(i:ry play and estafjiished religion outlived the llrrformation by wjveral (ifJtiuicH. \/BcHide the myHt<;ry there ha^J grown up, ijn-c'iv.ly whence or how no man can Hay, another form of reli- giou.H drama: the morjiJity or moral play, 'llut fiiffer- ence in the relation of the two tyjKis t^> the Church is great and -,ignifir:ant. The myHt./;ry was ba.s<;d on re- vealed religion: it hari to do with flesh and bl^Kxi char- arrUrrs of the Old and Nf;-board, I)f!Sf>itr; the veryman," for example, — the strict 48 TllK TUDOR DRAMA morality is u poor and tliin thing altogether. In its nat- ural state it was constructed from the cobwebs of the- oretical iliviuity, and it was inevitable that it should seek, even more than the sturdier mystery, to euro the anaMuia of life and character by taking to itself incn'asingly large portions of vulgar realism and bur- les(|ue. As il did so, il became both more robust and / coarser. The two or three plots that belonged to the morality r(»])(M'toire were used over and over, with a siuiiller spirit Mul bias at each renovation, till hnally their secularization was complete, and they renuvined mly as props to support a su])erstructure of un- mi\(Ml farce. The debt of the later drama to the mystery consists in tlu' cultivation of general tastes and influences, rather than the cvi)lution t>f specific models. Hut the early moralities, shapeless for the most part and arti- f' ficial as they are, begin a tradition in KiUglish comedy, i which, though it was almost buried in the accretion of new elements, was not interrupted till the time of the Con\nu)nweallh at least. Tragedy, on the other hand, was early crowded out of the morality; and the prom- ise of the mystery with its many tragic potentialities -the promise also of the first stern moralities — came to nought. TIence the deplorable weakness of the { I earliest Kll/.abcthan tragedy when compared with the ■ vital, if barbarous, comeily of the same periiul (1558- 1.58-)). The morality seems to be first mentioned under the titles of I'aternoster anil Creed plays,' and in this form ' For il sliitomont of tl\o roliitii>iislup botwtvn stioli plivya and tlie foriniil iloclrino of tlio lioads of the iiorfluTU ohurcli, s(h> K. N. S. 'flioinpson, Tlir F.iiylinlt Mora! IVaij.i, 88"i IT. THE EARLY MORALITY 49 is of most respectable antiquity, — only half a century yoiin^(;r lli;in IIk; oMcst, rccordi'd rnystorics. W<; have Wyclifs word, supporUid by several lat(;r references, for the existence of u Paternoster Play " in Englisesh tijri^<;" at York in l'i7H. We kriowf;orieerninj^ \}\('. cori- teiiLs only that it was "a J'lay s(;tting f(jrth the j^ood- ness of the Lord's Prayer — in which play all rnanncT of vie(;s and sins wen; hehl up to scorn, aufl the virtues were held up to praise." A Oeed Play, enthusiastically described as " Indus incomparabilis," is mentioned in conriarently on an ambitious scale, since it was presented pro- cessionally in eight fjag<;arits to each of wliich four or more guilds were made contributory. One pageant was assigned to each of the seven dea^llysins, the last and most ela}>oratr; to "Vicious," by whom Mr. C'harnl>crs pn^sumes frail humanity (Everyman, Mankind, (ienus Humanum) to be typifi(;d. Perhaps this spectacle was, howev(;r, as much in the natun^ of tableaux as drama; it is hard to imagine how anything very similar to a morality play could be acted on eight separate stages. I*ossIbly the first s w O H > &. « ^ THE EARLY MORALITY 55 by the direction: "let not over many stytelerys [i. e., stage-managers] be within the place," and the prohibi- tion that no men are to sit on the castle wall lest they obstruct the view of the rest, "for ther schal be the best [seat] of all." The castle itself occupies the centre of the stage. It is built upon posts or blocks in such a way that the lower part is hollow and affords room for Mankind's bed, under which, in the absence of curtains, the soul (Anima) has to lie concealed through three thousand and eight dreary lines, "tyl he schal ryse & pleye." Around the circumference of the stage, which, of course, would have spectators on all sides, are the five scaffolds or seats of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Caro, Mundus, Belyal), Covetousness, and God. The last, occupied by the " Pater sedens in throno " and the Virtues, seems to have been used only for the post- mortem part of the play, except that the Good Angel doubtless retired thither after his various ministrations to Mankind. During the whole of Mankind's life, the occupants of this scaffold would sit as impassive and ostensibly invisible spectators of all the business trans- acted on the other four scaffolds, in the castle, and the "platea," or unappropriated space between. There is every reason to believe that a continuous stage tradition subsisted and was passed on from one generation to another from the time when, in this play of "The Castle of Perseverance," it first comes defi- nitely before our eyes, till the end of the pre-Restoration epoch. It will be instructive, therefore, to look with some attention at certain features in the naanner of presentation of the work before us. Prefixed to the play, but really forming no essential part of it, is an 56 THE TUDOR DRAMA interesting prologue spoken by two vexillaiores. It is the mediaeval substitute for the modern posters which announce the coming of a theatrical troupe. After ten long stanzas, recited alternately, in which the argu- ment of the intended play is given, the second vexil- lator makes the following announcement : — "These p>arcellis in propyrtes we purpose us to playe This day seuenenyt, be-fore you in sj'th [sight]. At — on the grene, in ryall a-ray. Ye haste you thanne thedyrward, syris, hendly in hyth. All goode neyboris, ful specyaly we you pray, & loke that ye be there be-tyme, luflBy & lyth, for we schul be onward be vnderne of the day." The first vexiUaior then takes leave in the following words: — "Ye manly men of — thus Crist saue you all! he maynten youre myrthis, & kepe you fro greve, that born was of Mary mild in an ox stall. Now, mercy be all — , & wel mote ye cheve." In the passages just quoted three blanks occur. The first, in the speech of "Secundus Vexillator," must obviously have been supplied by the name of the town where the performance was to take place, while the other two require rather the name of the place of proclamation. Evidently, the rexiUafores were dis- patched a week before each exhibition through all the I hamlets in the neighborhood of the selected village to summon an audience. Except for the changes wrought by the invention of printing and the present lament- able cheapness of paper and colored ink, the advertise- ment of a circus or fair in an agricultural community is now conducted in a surprisingly similar manner. It has been noted that a very similar announcement is THE EARLY MORALITY fi7 prefixed to the so-called "Ludus Coventrise" which came to be acted, though not originally so destined, under circumstances probably identical with those we are discussing. It is of no little importance for the development of dramatic art in England that "The Castle of Perse- verance" was performed, as this prologue tells us, not like the great mystery cycles, in one particular place by resident members of various guilds, or by resident clerics, but by more or less professional actors in the/ way of business, before a number of villages in turn.1 This seems to me the beginning of theatrical companies'^ in England. The manuscript informs us that there were thirty -six "ludores," and thirty -five speaking parts can be actually counted. Under the conditions of presenta- tion it is not easy to conceive much doubling of roles; and yet, if the company was really itinerant, it would probably have to be much smaller than this to ensure a satisfactory relation between expenses and receipts. It seems most likely that the strollers comprised only a nucleus of the company and that they drafted local amateurs for the minor parts in each place in which they acted, — a practice still adhered to in certain spectacular productions which require a great number of figures. This theory receives some support from Richard Carew's account of the manner in which the Cornish mysteries were presented in the sixteenth century: "The players conne not their parts without booke, but are prompted by one called the Ordinary, who foUoweth at their back with the booke in his hand, and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud." And he adds a story of a practical joke played on the Ordinary by a volunteer actor. 58 THE TUDOR DRAMA The later moralities were usually performed by com- panies of four or five men and a boy, — the boy, of course, taking women's parts. These troupes, once formed, continued themselves in unbroken sequence till the Restoration. There seems no doubt that the strolling players of the Commonwealth who roamed from vil- lage to village with their contraband dramatic wares, after the suppression of the theatres in 1642, were the lineal descendants, and the inheritors of many a piece of traditional clownage and stage business from those who in pre-Tudor times performed "The Castle of Perseverance." The tradition thus established was one of comedy solely, as I have hinted. The tragic matter in the early moralities — the sometimes really affect- ing sense of the frailty of mortal man and the constant approach of temptation — was all gradually supplanted. The strollers followed the line of least resistance and greatest popularity, giving their rustic audiences what the latter best liked and what the actors might most readily improvise. Therefore, we find in the early days of Elizabeth a comic tradition so firmly rooted that tragedy might not stand against it. The old gags and witticisms of morality players force themselves not only into weak and colorless tragedies such as "Damon and Pythias," "Cambyses,"or " Appiusand Virginia"; they find unwelcome admittance, as it were in the teeth of Marlowe's defiance, into "Doctor Faustus" and "Tamburlaine." In the palmy days of Elizabethan drama the great companies, under the patronage of royalty or nobility, and under the direction of such men as Shakespeare, Burbage, and Alleyn, grew far beyond the slender promise of the troupes that acted "The Castle of Per- I THE EARLY MORALITY 59 severance." But the difference is one of scale rather than kind. And there existed throughout the period of the great drama and great stage-managers a humbler sort of players, itinerant for the most part, and hounded unmercifully by the law, who seem to have represented a very slight advance in dramatic art over the actors of moralities. Throughout the Eliza- bethan age, plays appear to have been published for the express use of these strolling companies, — plays de- manding simple stage properties and a modest num- ber of actors. Thus, to specify one out of innumerable instances from the earlier period, the title-page of the transitional morality of "Horestes," published 1567, suggests a division of parts by which twenty-five roles can be filled by six actors: while in the play of "Muce- dorus" a full generation later the parts are similarly ap- portioned among eight players. So, too, the ineffably silly text of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," printed in 1663, marred equally by timid excisions of passages touching on religion and by the addition of much puerile buffoonery, bears on its face the proof of hav- ing been prepared for illegitimate acting during the period of Puritan ascendancy. It is a mistake to suppose, as is often done, that the \ early morality stands on a higher plane in the matter of plot construction than the mystery. Theoretically, doubtless, it should have done so; the greater freedom of the morality from actual fact, the removal of the necessity under which the mystery stood of presenting specific Biblical incidents and characters in a particular sequence, ought perhaps to have made the plots of the moralities more flexible and various, — though the essential incompatibility in the drama of fact and fie- 60 THE TUDOR DRAMA tion is rather an assumption than a certainty. Ulti- mately, to be sure, the mystery was out-distanced, but only after the morality proper had been supplanted by the "topical" and largely comic interlude. The primitive morality of the type of "The Castle of Per- severance" and "Everyman" is characterized by no- thing more than by its lack of ingenuity in the inven- tion of plots. Only three are to be found among the extant specimens of the strict morality. They were for the greater part borrowed from the fashionable litera- ture of the previous age, and the later moralities cribbed even more unblushingly from their predeces- sors. Plot and situation were handed on from one play to another with little other adaptation than resulted from the not invariable change of name of the charac- ters and the constantly increasing demand for comedy. The three distinguishable plots have been called the Coming of Death, the Conflict of Vices and Virtues, and the Debate of the Heavenly Virtues. The second is both greatly the most popular with morality writers themselves and the only one which contributed any- thing of much consequence to later drama. ^ "The Castle of Perseverance," the most comprehen- sive morality extant, contains and blends with con- siderable skill all these three plots. In it, therefore, is to be found the entire structural stock in trade of its type. The first part of the play culminates in the con- flict of the virtues and vices for possession of Mankind and the castle in which he has taken refuge, — a plot derived, as has been pointed out, from the older secular ^ A valuable discussion of the various types of morality plots is contained in the introduction to R. L. Ramsay's edition of Skelton's Magnificence, E. E. T. S., 1908. THE EARLY MORALITY 61 allegory. The second part of the play presents the dra- matic crisis in the coming of Death, and then, as the author is unwilling to accept a tragic conclusion, he appends (from line 3030 on) the debate of the heavenly virtues over Mankind's soul, and the final triumph of the powers of compassion. The huge scope of "The Castle of Perseverance" is thus evident. The single incident of the arrival of death, derived probably from the popular mediaeval representations of the Dance of Death, forms the sub- ject of "Everyman" and of the existing portion of "The Pride of Life." The only other example of the "Debate" plot — a belated off-shoot of the dehat so common and so successfully exemplified in early French and early English secular poetry — is to be found interpolated into the " Ludus Coventriae" mys- tery cycle. The history of the morality is really the history of the conflict-plot. It was this which offered the greatest amount of human interest, the greatest op- portunity for differentiation of character, and infinitely the largest scope for comedy. All the humorous ele- ments previously pointed out in "The Castle of Perse- verance" arise directly from the conflict of vice and virtue. The late fifteenth-century Macro manuscript, in which " The Castle of Perseverance " is preserved, con- tains two other moralities. Next in age and in length to that which we have been discussing, and decidedly the least interesting of the three, is the dainty, but cer- tainly not forceful play of "Mind, Will, and Under- standing," otherwise known as "Wisdom." The plot of this work is as much distinguished by its slenderness as is that of "The Castle of Perseverance" by its full- 62 THE TUDOR DRAMA ness. The difference in content and intensity between these two pieces, separated in date of composition by possibly a generation, is most remarkable. In "Mind, Will, and Understanding" nothing whatever of any permanent consequence takes place, but the spectacu- lar effects are much the most elaborate to be found in any of the moralities. The piece is indeed more masque or ballet than drama. There are few indications of the mode of presentation; but it is noticeable that we have to do here with a stage on which the actors can appear and disappear, and that from a total of at least thirty- nine persons only six have speaking parts. These six may represent the five men and a boy of a travelling company, the ballet dancers being impressed each time from among the natives; but the character of the play does not suggest professional or even secular perform- ance. It seems to me much more likely to be a school production, where the dancers would, of course, be carefully trained scholars or choristers, and where the five chief male parts would be taken either by the mas- ters or by advanced pupils. It is to be noted that the piece is thoroughly orthodox throughout. There is a vast amount of good and somewhat tedious doctrine at the beginning and end, while the intermediate hu- morous portion, though to modern notions somewhat plain-spoken, is all put into the mouth of evil or cor- rupted characters and so accords perfectly with medi- aeval proprieties. The play is introduced by a long dialogue between Wisdom, or Christ, and the Soul. The Soul, subject to the two conflicting forces of sensuality and reason, is instructed to cleave to the latter, and for her guidance is presented with the five wits, — mutoe personoe dressed THE EARLY MORALITY 63 as virgins, and three "mights," Mind, Will, and Under- standing. The good figures go out with operatic dance and song, leaving the stage to Lucifer, who appears "in a devil's array" to exclaim "Owt harow, I rore," and inform the audience of his malign intentions. He then departs, to reappear in the dress of a gallant and seduce Mind, Will, and Understanding, who have in the meanwhile returned. The "mights," easily corrupted to their respective sins of Ambition, Lust, and Avarice, entertain each other with spicy accounts of their for- bidden pleasures, till Wisdom enters with admonitions and points out the change their defection has made in Soul, who comes forward "in the most horrybull wyse, fowlere than a fende," with six small boys in the like- ness of devils running out from her mantle. At this spectacle the "mights" repent, whereupon the devils disappear, and the piece closes with a homily. The outstanding fact in the later history of the mo- ] rality is its decadence as an exponent of serious ideals. ' Already in the third of the Macro plays, "Mankind," a work dating probably, like the manuscript which contains it, from the last quarter of the fifteenth cen- tury, we find the whole moral machinery diverted to the production of buffoonery. Both in scope and in seriousness a great falling off is evident. This play runs to barely nine hundred lines instead of the thirty -eight hundred, approximately, of the complete "Castle of Perseverance"; and the reduction in comprehensive- ness is equally radical. Like the latter drama, "Man- kind" is clearly intended for professional and nomadic performance. We can even trace roughly the tour of the company through Cambridgeshire and Norfolk by the numerous local allusions. Many changes and de- 64 THE TUDOR DRAMA velopments, however, can be noticed. The fixed out-of- I door stage of the first Macro play has been supplanted, I apparently, by the inn-yard, itself in turn the progeni- I tor of the Elizabethan popular theatre. Actors go on and off the stage in the modern manner, and the box- oflSce side of the business attains a prominence entirely novel. Half through the piece, the great master demon, Tutivillus, who has not yet appeared, is heard to shout from behind the scenes: "I com with my leggis vndur me," and the actors grasp the psychological moment of suspense to levy contribution : — "Now gostly to owur purpos, worschypfull souerence! We intende to gather mony, yf yt plese yower neclygence. For a man with a hede that is of gret omnipotens." The spectators are further assured that the great Tuti- villus "louyth no grotis [groats], nor pens or to-pens: Gyf vs rede reyallys, yf ye wyll se hys abhomynabull presens." And the collection begins "At the goodeman of this house," i. e., the inn-keeper. The change in the scene of action seems to have carried with it a change of season. The performances on the green could have occurred only in warm weather, but "Mankind" is a winter play, full of references to fires and cold. The reason for the shift is doubtless that which accounts in general for the great permanence of popular customs connected with Hallowe'en, Christmas, and other festivals of cool weather; namely, the fact that winter is in rural communities the season of leisure. It may be, too, that the strolling professionals found their poor efforts eclipsed in summer by the great spectacles of Corpus Christi and the like. THE EARLY MORALITY 65 The numerous characters of "The Castle of Perse- verance "are reduced in "Mankind" to seven, three of which seem to be boys' parts, while the four men might be decreased to three by doubling the roles of Mischief and Tutivillus. It is significant that, of these seven figures, five are purely comic: the main vices, Tutivillus and Mischief, and the smaller fry. New Guise, Nought, and Nowadays. The original conception of the moral- ity is upheld only by the generalization Mankind and the single virtue Mercy ; nor do these two remain seri- ous throughout the play. They also are pressed into service in the author's attempt to satisfy the ever- growing thirst for comic situations. We are perhaps not obliged to follow Mr. Pollard ^ in assuming that the writer has consciously burlesqued the figure of Mercy. The comedy is probably as little intentional as that oc- casioned by the impossible heroics of the good people in a schoolboy melodrama. Still the humorous effect is unquestionable, and it shows how thoroughly alien to the spirit of this type of drama had become the moral didacticism from which it sprang. "Mankind" has as nearly as possible no plot; it touches no special part of the life of man, and it illus- trates no truth of character or religion. Its comedy is perfectly devoid of intellectual interest, consisting either of physical horse-play or such plebeian obsceni- ties as only archaism can render tolerable. It doubt- less represents very adequately the range of mental activity among the fifteenth-century rustics for whom it was written. It certainly manifests a most striking and melancholy kinship to the species of wit in vogue among the same public to-day, though now fortunately 1 The Macro Plays, E. E. T. S. 66 THE TUDOR DRAMA restricted to oral circulation. After "Mankind," the type of drama composed for village presentation runs a subterranean course. Indications of its continued existence abound, but we meet with no more examples of it till the Puritan revolution, sweeping away with the theatres all the more refined drama, brings to light again the rude amusements of the yokels. , The three plays of the Macro manuscript, the earli- est complete moralities extant, probably define very comprehensively the limits of this type of drama when Henry VII ascended the English throne. It is not to be supposed that the three varieties are at all incompati- ble. There was doubtless a public for each : one class of society would continue to support the elder and stricter form after another class had demanded and received such debased modifications as " Mankind. " The famous play of " Everyman," dating from about the commence- ment of the sixteenth century, would be conclusive proof of the sustained interest in the earliest type of morality if we could establish its English origin. All indications seem, however, to pronounce in favor of the Dutoh composition of this piece, — not least perhaps the fact that "Everyman" stands quite outside the tangle of indebtedness and influence which connects nearly all the nativeEnglish moral plays, and can be proved neither to have borrowed directly from its predecessors nor to have furnished an important hint to any of its successors. During the Tudor period the morality gained a po- sition in fashionable literature, and underwent in con- sequence a special development, which dissociated it equally from the interests of religious teaching and of bourgeois amusement, and rendered it ultimately the principal source of the Elizabethan drama. THE EARLY MORALITY 67 BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL DISCUSSION Cushman, L. W. : The Devil and the Vice in English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare. Halle, 1900. Eckhcirdt, E. : Die Lustige Person im alteren englischen Drama {his 1642). Palaestra, xvii. Berlin, 1902. Thompson, E. N. S.: The English Moral Plays ; "Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences," 1910. Traver, H. : The Four Daughters of God. " Bryn Mawr College Monographs," 1907. TEXTS AND COMMENTARY The Pride of Life. MS. Dublin. Printed, J. Mills, Proceed- ings Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1891; A. Brandl, Quellen, 1898 ; F. Holthausen, Herrig's Archiv, 108 (1902), 32-59 (improved text) ; O. Waterhouse, Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, etc., E. E. T. S., 1909. Macro Plays. Preserved in " Macro " MS. Printed, F. J. Furnivall and A. W. Pollard, E. E. T. S., 1904. The Castle of Perseverance. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted in part. Pollard, Miracle Plays. Mind, Will, and Understanding ( Wisdom). Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1907. Printed separately. Abbots ford Club, 1837, W. B. D. D. Turnbull. Printed from imperfect MS. among the Digby Plays, Abbotsford Club, 1835 (50 copies), T. Sharp; F. J. Furnivall, Digby Plays, New Shakspere So- ciety, 1882 (reissued for E. E. T. S., 1896). — Disau^sion : K. Schmidt, " Die Digby-Spiele," Berlin, 1884 ; continued in Anglia, viii (1885), 371 ff. Mankind. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1907. Printed separately: J. M. Manly, Specimens, i, 1897; A. Brandl, Quellen, 1898 ; J. S. Farmer, " Lost " Tudor Plays, etc., 1907. Everyman. Translated from the Dutch Elckerlijk. Four early editions. Reprinted : T. Hawkins, Origin, i, 1773 ; K. Goedeke, 1865 ; Hazlitt's Dodsley, i, 1874 ; H. Logeman (with Dutch 68 THE TUDOR DRAMA version), 1892 ; T. Sidgwick, 1902 ; A. W. Pollard, 15th Cen- tury Prose and Verse, 1903 ; M. U. Moses, 1903 ; VV. W. Greg, Materialien, iv, 1904; J. S. Farmer, Anon. Plays (1st Series), 1905 ; Select English Classics, Oxford, 1909 ; Everyman and other Interludes, 1909. — Discussion : K. Goedeke, " Every- man, Homulus and Hekastus," Hanover, 1865 ; K. H. de Raaf, " Spyeghel der Selicheyt van Elckerlijk," 1897; H. Logeman, " Elckerlijk — Everyman, de vraag naar de prioriteit op- nieow onderzocht," 1902; J. M. Manly— F. A. Wood, "El- ckerlijc-Everyman: The Question of Priority." Mod. Phil., viii (1910), 269-302. CHAPTER III THE TUDOR INTERLUDE It is not possible to distinguish clearly between the morality and the interlude. Both titles are apphed, it would seem interchangeably, and from a very early date, to the symbolic class of drama. However, the term "interlude" came more and more to be employed during the Tudor period, as the plays grew shorter and more courtly, and as the gradual disappearance of the religious element rendered the expression "moral play ' ' increasingly a misnomer. By the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, "interlude" and "comedy" are practically the only living terms. If a distinction be- tween morality and interlude is at all to be drawn on the ground of contemporary usage, it will apply, prob- ably, rather to the mode of performance than to the subject matter. Papers in a law-suit concerning John Rastell the printer, about 1530, discriminate between "stage-plays" in summer and "interludes" in winter;^ where it is evident that the former term designates plays acted in the old morality fashion on fixed out-of- door stages, before a large public, while interludes were performed indoors, generally in private houses and before a limited circle. As might be expected, the pro- fits are mentioned as being considerably greater in the former case. We learn that the same stage costumes were employed in both instances, and it is very likely that a popular morality — if not too long or didactic — * Cf. A. W. Pollard, Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse, 316. 70 THE TUDOR DRAMA might be acted in summer in the ancient manner, and in winter might be made to do double service as inter- lude at state banquets and upon similar occasions. This difference is much the same as that which a little later existed between performances in the public theatres and quasi-private performances in the inns of court or the great palaces. The play and the actors might be the same, — many of Shakespeare's plays, for instance, were acted both publicly and privately, — but the ideal requirements differed, and tended to diverge further as time went on. It is interesting that, whereas the great drama of Shakespeare's time developed itself mainly as an answer to the demands of popular perform- ance, the Tudor interlude is directly the product of the private, indoor representations. The essential requisites of the interlude were brevity and wit. The precise original sense of the word is dis- puted, but there is no doubt that it was understood in Tudor times to mean a short play exhibited by profes- sionals at the meals of the great and on other occasions where later masques would have been fashionable.^ Normally the interlude inherited and continued the abstractions of the morality, but there was a tendency toward the introduction of concrete dramatis persona;, which in some of the later instances supplant alto- gether the older allegorical figures. No better account of the circumstances and manner of presentation of a typical interlude can be found than that contained in the fourth act of the play of "Sir Thomas More." ^ On the derivation of the word, see Chambers, Medicrval Stage, ii, 181-183. The term seems first to be used in a dramatic sense in con- nection with the fragmentary Interludium de Clerico et PueUa printed from a British Museum MS. by W. Heuser, Anglia, xxx (1907), 306 ff. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 71 The mystery play, largelj'^ in the hands of the civic middle class, was distinctly bourgeois in spirit, and the primitive morality tended strongly to plebeianism. The interlude, on the contrary, is throughout its career an essentially aristocratic species. As a result, this last type of drama responds with the greatest fidelity to all the conflicting waves of feeling raised by ebb or flow of Tudor Renaissance and Reformation, — manifesta- tions which, as we have seen, hardly affected the con- servative mystery. The interlude possessed no vis inerticB. It yielded to the slightest pressure of public opinion, and while keeping in greater or smaller degree the plot outlines inherited from the morality, devel- oped them in the spirit most popular at the moment with its enlightened and progressive public. It is obvious that the occasions which called into existence this particular modification of the allegorical drama — occasions of special revelry or rejoicing — desired no retention of the grim tone of the strict moral play. Nor would they be satisfied with the crude patchwork of didacticism and obscenity offered to rustic audiences. Very early in the Tudor period, therefore, we find the nature of the morality radically altered. The change was gradual, but it made for catholicity and variety: it substituted for the single interest in abstractions of good and evil a number of different secular interests. The first stage in the development of the interlude, manifesting itself in the reign of Henry VII contem- poraneously with the earliest indications of the Revival of Letters, consists in the mere shift of attention from moral to intellectual abstractions. The play of "Na- ture," written by Henry Medwall, chaplain to Cardinal 72 THE TUDOR DRAMA Morton, and acted before the latter some time previous to his death in 1500, is essentially a morality of the old type; but it shows variations which are significant. The fact of presentation before an audience alive to the value of time and impatient of boredom has obliged the somewhat prolix author to divide his piece summa- rily in the middle, deferring the later half to another occasion. There is no artistic reason for the break, which would seem to have been distasteful to the poet, since he closes his first instalment of fourteen hundred lines with the plaintive remark : — " And for thys seson Here we make an end. Lest we shuld offend Thys audyence, as god defend It were not to be don. Ye shall \Tiderstand neuer the lesse That there ys myche more of thys processe Wherein we shall do our besyness And our true endeuure To shew yt \'nto you after our guyse. When my lord shall so deuyse I shalbe at hys pleasure." ^ " Nature " purports to deal with man's passage through the world from infancy to old age, with his vari- ^ That Medwall was by no means unduly solicitous concerning the patience of his hearers is shown by an anecdote relating to his lost play of The Finding of Truth performed before Henry VIII some fifteen years later (at Richmond, Christmas, 1514-1515). On this occasion an extant document informs us that "Inglyshe, and the others of the Kynges pleyers, after pleyed an Interluyt, whiche was wryten by Mayster Midwell. but yt was so long ji; was not lykyd. . . . The foolys part was the best, but the kyng departyd bef or the end to hys chambre." Cf. Collier, i, 69 (ed. 1879). THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 73 ous lapses into sin and his ultimate repentance; but the theme is discussed from a purely ethical, not religious standpoint. There is no question here of God or Devil, Heaven or Hell, in the Christian sense. Rather, the supreme power — under "Th' almighty god that made eche creature" — is Nature, who begins with a long preamble describing mundane phenomena and exhort- ing Man to study " Arystotell, my phylosopher electe." As in "Mind, Will, and Understanding," man is said to be governed by the hostile forces of Reason and Sensuality; but these powers no longer appear abso- lutely good or evil, symbols of God and sin respec- tively, as in the earlier play.^ To the author of "Na- ture," Reason and Sensuality are both necessary, but the force of Reason is to be kept in the ascendancy. Man sins, not because he alienates himself from God, but because he dethrones Reason. " Nature" is an elabo- rate piece, doubtless performed by choir-boys. The first half contains ten speaking parts, the second eighteen, of which, however, those representing the seven vir- tues and the less prominent vices are very slight. The prevailing dreariness of the play is mitigated by some fairly good scenes of low comedy. In "Nature," which dates from about the middle of the reign of Henry VII, we note the substitution of semi-pagan, renaissance ethics for the religion of the morality. In a slightly later play of the same type the new influences in scholarship are reflected even more strongly. " A new interlude and a merry of the Nature of the Four Elements, declaring many proper points of philosophy natural, and of divers strange lands, and of divers strange effects and causes," was written by John » Cf. p. 62. 74 THE TUDOR DRAMA Rastell and probably published by him.^ A reference to "the noble king of late memory, The most wise prince, the seventh Herry," puts the date of composi- tion later than Henry VII 's death in 1509 ; while an- other allusion to new lands found westward "now within these twenty years " would, if taken literally, date the play before 1512. It is rather more probable, however, that the author refers to the discovery of the new lands, not by Columbus, but by Americus Ves- pucci and by Cabot, both of whose voyages, in 1497 and 1498 respectively, are elsewhere mentioned. If this be so, the end of the twenty -year period would be 1517- 1518, the years apparently immediately preceding the publication of this "new" interlude. ^ There is no religion whatever in "The Four Ele- ments," but the work contains an amount of intellec- tual edification which is stupendous. The characters are the following: A Messenger, Natura Naturata, Humanity, Studious Desire, Sensual Appetite, a Tav- erner. Experience, and Ignorance. " Also," we are told, "if ye list, ye may bring in a Disguising." At the be- ginning appears in true dissertational manner a state- ment of the cosmographical theses to be maintained; viz., "Of the situation of the four elements, that is to say, the earth, the water, the air, the fire, and of their qualities and properties, and of the generation and cor- ruption of things made of the commixtion of them. " Of certain conclusions proving that the earth must ^ The ascription of authorship depends upon John Bale. Cf. article on Rastell in D. N. B, ^ The extant edition is dated 1519 by Hazlitt {Dodsley, vol. i) on the doubtful authority of a manuscript insertion in the fragmentary British Museum copy. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 75 needs be round, and that it hangeth in the midst of the firmament, and that it is in circumference above 21,000 miles, etc." In a long prologue of nearly one hundred and fifty lines, the Messenger introduces this "little interlude, late made and prepared — Which of a few conclusions is contrived. And points of philosophy natural," deploring the poverty of learned works in the English tongue as compared with the Greek and Latin, and the tendency of ignorant writers "New books to compile and ballads to endite Some of love or other matter not worth a mite." The plot is negligible. Nature, Studious Desire, and Experience all take turns in unfolding to Humanity, with the aid of a globe, the secrets of this earth and of the visible universe. For a time the pupil plays truant, and goes off with Sensual Appetite, Ignorance, and the Taverner to feast and revel; but his enjoyment, like that of the reader, is half-hearted, and he is easily won back to the pursuit of knowledge. Some effort is made at spectacular effect in the way of comic song and dance, but this is, like the Disguising, which is to be brought in "if ye list," only a sop to the spectators, who, as the author very justly feared, might not other- wise endure his tedious instruction. That the piece was felt to trespass on the patience of its hearers is evident from the title-page, which admits that if played in full, it ' ' will contain the space of an hour and a half ; but if ye list, ye may leave out much of the sad matter, as the Messenger's part, and some of Nature's part, and 76 THE TUDOR DRAMA some of Experience's part, and yet the matter mil de- pend conveniently, and then it will not be past three quarters of an hour of length." It is evident that this Tudor audience has advanced very far beyond that which was content to witness "The Castle of Perse- verance," when it declines to put up with too much "sad" matter, and prefers not to be detained above three quarters of an hour. Several other educational interludes exist. John Redford's undated play of " Wyt and Science" relates the rather lamentable adventures of the foolish young Wit, who sets out to woo and marry his natural com- plement. Science, daughter of Reason and Experience, In his wanderings he is grievously mauled by the giant Tediousness, and gulled by Idleness and Ignorance; but he is saved at last from error, avenges himself with the aid of his servants Instruction, Diligence, and Study, upon the giant, and wins the lady Science. The con- temporary popularity of this rather dull piece is at- tested by the existence of two imitations. "The Mar- riage of Wit and Science," licensed for publication in 1569-1570, shows the taste for allegory on the wane. Wit, Will, and several of the other characters are pretty concrete personages, and the author has evidently tried hard to evolve a romantic plot out of his unadaptable material. Tediousness, in particular, is changed from a pedagogical symbol into a bogey of nursery tale pro- portions, and he here plays somewhat the role of dragon to Science's Andromeda and Wit's Perseus. The careful division of this piece into acts, and the employment of the tj'pically Elizabethan alexandrines and " f ourteeners " in place of the older irregular verse, bear out the indications of spirit and tone in showing THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 77 the play to have been written very shortly before it was published. Another interlude apparently indebted to Redford, and one of the most interesting of its class, is "The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom," written by one Francis Merbury,^ and prepared for publication in 1579,^ though probably composed somewhat earlier. This play also shows allegory largely neglected in the new interest in plot and character. There are a great num- ber of figures, but the author is careful to suggest how all the parts can be filled by six actors. With equal con- sideration he has sought to explain the weaknesses and inconsistencies in Wit's character by making him son to the ill-matched couple. Severity and Indulgence. Wit suffers in this work truly double measure for all his follies, since in addition to the giant, who is here called Irksomeness, he falls into the hands of a new and most accomplished mischief-maker in the person of "Idleness the vice." There is really little but the bare shell left of the old academic allegory. Six of the fig- ures — Catch and Snatch, Mother Bee, Lob, Doll, and Search — have no connection with the symbolical part of the story; and Idleness himseK so far belies his name that he is almost the only person in the drama who dis- plays a proper energy. The poet has managed to get into the piece enough of irrelevant farce and melo- dramatic interest to make it tolerable reading: it is * The identification of the author rests upon the concluding words of the manuscript, "Amen quoth fra Merbury." ^ The manuscript is not known to have been actually printed before 1846; but that publication was intended is clear from the general form of the MS. title-page and from the phrase "neuer before imprinted." 78 THE TUDOR DRAMA much the most engaging of the three related plays, and at the same time the least faithful example of the interlude. The changed spirit which came into fashionable drama with the Renaissance is well illustrated in "The World and the Child," printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1522. This play takes over the plot of the old morali- ties with no such conscious adaptation as is seen in those we have just been discussing, but develops it in what was for the drama an entirely new spirit. The ostensible scope of "The World and the Child" is almost as great as that of " The Castle of Perseverance," from which, directly or indirectly, it may have derived the story. It treats Man's life from childhood to old age, his progress through the successive steps of sin, his repentance, relapse, and final conversion by Conscience and Perseverance. But the old theme is elaborated with considerable novelty. The first striking feature is the tendency to condensation; only five characters appear, and man's whole career is disposed of in nine hundred and seventy-nine lines. The attitude toward life is entirely altered from that of the medisevalist authors of "The Castle of Perseverance" and "Every- man." This world is no longer a vale of sorrows. It is a place of manifold experiences, unedifying for the most part, no doubt, but full of the most unquestionable zest. Except for the last pages, where the poet reverts to the conventional conclusion, the representation is no longer didactic : it is truly dramatic. We find the teem- ing life of the city where before we met abstractions of virtue or vice. Realism has here progressed far beyond that universal peasant scurrility which plays so great a part in " Mankind." It has become definitely pictorial. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 79 Drollery has taken to itself a local habitation, and the spectator is presented for perhaps the first time in Eng- lish drama with a somewhat comprehensive view of the actual life of London streets. There is nothing new, of course, in this genre. All that we find in "The World and the Child" can be found more abundantly in " Piers the Plowman" and in Chaucer. There has even been pointed out recently a most interesting specific indebtedness of the play to an early fifteenth-century poem called "The Mirror of the Periods of Man's Life." ^ But the transference of this spirit from narra- tive to dramatic poetry is an important step. It shows the interlude awaking to a sense of the inherent inter- est of actual life, and heralds from afar a long line of realistic comedies such as "Bartholomew Fair," "The Puritan," and "The London Prodigal." There is no doubt that "The World and the Child" was written con amore. In some way the hackneyed theme is freshened for the reader, and the life of Man is given a novelty in each of its six stages of Dalliance, Wanton, Lust-and-Liking, Manhood, Shame, and Age. As examples of the new tone one might instance young Wanton's description of his own character: — " If brother or syster do me chyde, I wyll scratche and also byte; I can crye and also kyke And mocke them all be rewe. If fader or moder wyll me smyte, I wyll wrjTige with my lyppe And lyghtly from hym make a skyppe And call my dame shrewe"; * See H. N. MacCracken, "A Source of Mundus et Infans," Puhl. Mod. Lang. Assoc, xxiii (1908), 486 flf. 80 THE TUDOR DRAMA and the wonderfully infectious stanza in which Man- hood turns his back upon the straight and narrow path : — "Now I wyll folowe Folye, For Folye is my man. Ye, Folye is my felowe And hath gyuen me a name: Conscyence called me Manhode, Folye calleth me Shame." "Hickscorner," printed like "The World and the Child" by Wynkyn de Worde, but without date, be- longs to the same general type of reduced and secular- ized morality. It has been regarded as a controversial play in defence of the Roman Church, a theory which receives support from the definite references to the contemporary irreligious state of England and from the names given to the vices. ^ Its realism is of the localized London sort found in "The World and the Child," and it represents a still farther advance in structure. There are here six characters : three Naces (Hick-scorner, Imagination, and Freewill) pitted against three virtues (Pity, Contemplation, and Perseverance). The awk- ward lay-figure. Mankind, has been boldly thrown overboard, and the play moves the more lightly \Nathout him. We have thus the elements of a true dramatic conflict where the actors contend whole-heartedly by reason of some cause of opposition within themselves, and the suggestion of dogs snarling over a bone in the shape of poor mortality's soul is no longer forced upon us. * Professor Creizenach finds a noteworthy similarity, which I do not fully perceive, between Hickscorner and The Interlude of Youth. Cf. Geschichte des neueren Dramas, iii, 503, 504. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 81 All the writers of interludes based on the morality plot of the battle of vices and virtues were confronted with this problem: what to do with the central figure. Mankind, a character much too vague and comprehen- sive as he stood either to be individualized in accord- ance with the new requirements of dramatic action, or to be reduced into proportion with the smaller scope and more trivial interests of the fashionable interlude. The author of "The World and the Child" begs the question by virtually splitting Mankind into six parts and treating each separately. The author of "Hick- scorner " throws him out altogether and sacrifices with him the cohesion of the play, though the gain in vivid- ness compensates on the whole for the injury to the plot. The more popular and successful course, how- ever, was to select for treatment one particular division of Mankind's history, and to devote the attention solely to that. The division selected was naturally that of youth, which offered freest play alike to the educa- tional and to the melodramatic propensities of the time. Mankind, reduced to Youth, becomes a sufficiently tangible conception, with definite faults and follies, and yields abundant opportunity for individualization. Two well-known plays in this manner are "The Interlude of Youth" and "Lusty Juventus," both of which deal with the seduction of their hero by the temptations proper to his age and with his ultimate conversion. It is unfortunate that both these pieces, written relatively late, during the heat of the final Reformation struggle, and championing the causes of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism respectively, have too much interest in the polemics of the hour to develop fully the dramatic possibilities of their subject. 82 THE TUDOR DRAMA This is especially the case with the anti-popish "Ju- ventus," which devotes pages to exposing the fallacy of the doctrine of salvation by works, and to reprehend- ing the idolatrous practices of the mediaeval church. For all that, "Lusty Juventus" contains two of the finest songs to be found in the pre-Elizabethan drama, and its main comic scene was paid the compliment of plagiarism by the author of the mock interlude in "Sir Thomas More." The argumentative tone of these last two plays is shared by a considerable group of interludes belonging to the period of the Reformation, which concern them- selves rather with opinions than with morals, facts, or manners. The dramatic framework is here filled out, not with discussions of pedagogical import, or with hiunorous matter derived from the follies of common life, but with satire directed against particular theories in religion or politics. It was natural that this species of interlude should keep itself somewhat closer than the others to the form of moral allegory from which they all descended. Symbolic abstractions could here be put to use in a way hardly possible elsewhere. The first important political allegory in the form of interlude is the "Magnificence" of John Skelton. Just as we have seen the stock abstractions of the old drama shifted in plays like "The Four Elements" and "Wit and Science" from the domain of religion to that of knowledge, so here we find them introduced into the arena of state-craft. The central figure is no longer frail and sinful mankind; he is Magnificence, a worldly prince, surrounded by good and evil counsellors, drawn into extravagance and misgovernment by the advice of self-seekers, and rescued finally from the ensuing THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 83 embarrassments by his true advisers. The date of this play is about 1516, the period of Wolsey's greatest power, and there can be little doubt that its intention was to point out the danger of the latter's ambitious and wasteful policy at home and abroad, while cov- ertly championing the side of Skelton's patron, the Duke of Norfolk, and the older nobility. The charac- ters are all political types with such names as Felicity, Liberty, Measure, Counterfeit Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Cloaked Collusion, and Courtly Abusion. The work extends to more than twenty-five hundred lines, and, like the not dissimilar Scottish "Three Es- tates" of twenty years later, is too intricately con- structed to be easily summarized.^ The religious controversy of the later years of Henry VIII and the animosities incident to the reigns of Edward VI and Mary were prolific of dramas which, under cover of abstract figures, supported one or an- other of the factions in Church and State. Such was, doubtless, the lost play of Lord Governance and Lady Public-Weal, acted at Gray's Inn, Christmas, 1526- 1527, and described in considerable detail by the chron- icler. Hall. 2 Wolsey, imagining that a satire against himself was intended, imprisoned the author, John Roo, and one of the actors in the Fleet, whence they were released upon the explanation — perhaps not alto- gether true — that the play had been "compy led for the moste part ... 20 yere pa.st, and long before the Cardinall had any authoritie. " A little later in the same year (November 10, 1527) a Latin play pre- ^ See the admirable introduction to the play, by R. L. Ramsay, in the Early English Text Society edition. 2 Hall's Chronicle, ed. 1809, 719. 84 THE TUDOR DRAMA sented before the King and the French ambassa- dors introduced satirical portraits of the "errytyke Lewter" and of Luther's wife among more conven- tional figures like Religion, Ecclesia, Veritas, Heresy, False Interpretation, and Corupcyo-scryptorris (sic). A strong Protestant animus evidently inspired the lost plays of Thomas Wylley, Vicar of Yoxford, Suffolk, who in a letter addressed to Cromwell about 1535 ap- peals for support against the hostility of the conserva- tive priests of his county, and mentions four polemical dramas of his composition: "A Reverent Receyvyng of the Sacrament . . , declaryd by vi chyldren, repre- sentyng Chryst, the worde of God, Paule, Austyn, a Chylde, a Nonne called Ignorancy"; "a play agaynst the popys Counselers, Error, Colle Clogger of Con- scyens, and Increduly te " ; "A Rude Commynawlte"; and "The Woman on the Rokke, yn the fyer of fay the a fynyng, and a purgyng in the trewe purgatory." The same spirit appears in several extant works of unambitious scope. "The Booke in Meeter of Robin Conscience: against his Father Couetousnesse, his Mother Newgise, and his Sister Proud Beautye" is not a play. It is composed in rime royal stanzas of very artificial structure, and consists of three separate de- bates between Robin Conscience, apparently an apos- tle of the new religion, and each of his worldly rela- tives. A stronger controversial tone pervades two contemporary dialogues, embedded in prose polemical matter and clearly not intended for presentation. The "brefe Dialoge betwene two prestes servauntis named Watkyn and JefiFraye" makes up the principal portion of the bitterly anti-Wolseyan "Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe," printed at Strassburg in 1528; and "A THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 85 proper dyaloge betwene a Gentillman and a husband- man eche complaynynge to other their miserable calami te through the ambicion of the clergye," pub- lished in 1530 "at Marborow in the lande of Hessen," also, of course, by an English religious exile, was curi- ously supplemented by " an olde [Lollard] treatyse made aboute the tyme of kynge Rycharde the seconde." A much more genuine dramatic value attaches to the interlude of "John Bon and Mast Parson," a piece containing only about one hundred and seventy lines and introducing merely the two interlocutors named in the title. The topic of this dialogue is the theory of transubstantiation and the resultant feast of Corpus Christi, — matters which, as has been seen, had power- fully influenced the earliest forms of English drama. The author of " John Bon " has combined, not unsuc- cessfully, the dialogue form and rough wit of Hey- wood with Bale's sharpness of religious argumentation, and his work, short and unpretending though it is, is one of the most pleasing of the theological interludes of the period. A somewhat later and vastly more important exam- ple of controversial drama is the "merye enterlude en- titled Respublica, made in the yeare of our Lorde 1553, and the first yeare of the moost prosperous Reigne of our moste gracious Soueraigne Queue Marye the first." The original list of the dramatis personoB is interesting: — The Partes and Names of the Plaiers. The Prologue, a Poete. Avarice allias Policie, the vice of the plaie. Insolence, " Auihoritie, the chief gallaunt. fowre Ladies. 86 THE TUDOR DRAMA Oppression allias Reformatiim, an other gallaunt. Adnlation *' Honcstic, the third gallaunt. People, representing the poore Commontie. Respublioa. a wydowe. Misericordia Veritas lusticia Pax Nemesis, the goddes of redresse and correction, a goddesse. "Respublica" is a play political rather than secta- rian. There is interesting, though not convincing rea- son for the theory that it was written by Nicholas Udall, the author of " Ralph Roister Doister." ^ The plot concerns the sufferings of the widow Respublica, the Commonwealth of England, and her servant People at the hands of the rapacious counsellors who during the last two reigns had despoiled the Church and wasted the revenues of the Crown. At last, of course. Nemesis steps in, in the person of Queen Mary, whereupon the false stewards are revealed in their true characters and are forced to make restitution of their ill-gotten gains. The opposite side in the controversy was ardently espoused by John Bale, who spent two periods of Catholic ascendancy (1540-1547, 1553-1558) in exile by reason of his ^^olently expressed religious views; and, for doubtless the same cause, was preferred during the Protestant reign of Edward VI to the bishopric of Ossory in Ireland. In three strange "interludes," gen- erally referred to in abbre^'iated title as "God's Pro- mises," "John Baptist," and "The Temptation of our ^ See L. A. Maginis. Introduction to E. E. T. S. cxl., xii-xxii. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 87 Lord," all said to have been written in 1538, Bale has cui-iously blended the mystery and the morality form into a vehicle for the exposition of his anti-papal doc- trine. A fourth play with the same polemical bent shows considerably higher artistic development. "A Comedy concernynge thre lawes, of Nature, Moses, and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharysees, and Papystes " claims to have been composed like the rest in 1538, but references to King Edward, Queen Katherine, and "the noble lorde protectour" in the concluding stanzas show these at least to have been written after 1547, while the concluding words of the colophon, "lately imprented per Nicolaum Bambur- gensem" may indicate that the piece was published on the Continent during Bale's second exile. "The Three Laws" is perhaps the most vigorous, as it is certainly one of the most carefully composed of all the Tudor controversial interludes. Bale, who claims the distinc- tion of having first domesticated in English drama the terms "comedy" and "tragedy," is also one of the earliest writers to introduce the Latin di\asion of plays into acts; and "The Three Laws" shows perfect com- prehension of the capabilities of the five-act structure. Act I permits Deus Pater to introduce the three laws and assign to each a period of guardianship over man- kind. The next three acts present successively the sub- version of each of these laws by the embodiment of evil. Infidelity, and his satellites; while the fifth brings the denouement in the appearance of God's Vengeance, the banishment of Infidelity, and the rehabilitation of the Laws. The reference to Sodomites and Pharisees in the title is delusive. Bale's concern is exclusively with the Papists, whom he makes responsible, not only 88 THE TUDOR DRAMA for the burning of Christ's Law, but for the leprosy of the Law of Nature and the bhnding and hiniing of that of Moses as well. The six corrupting agents, "%^'ces or frutes of Infydelyte," are all exponents of Romish wickedness, and Bale is careful that their garb shall betray their character to the spectators. Idolatry is to be "decked like an old witch [/. e., a vender of relics], Sodomy like a monk of all sects, Ambition like a bishop, Covetousness like a spiritual lawyer. False Doctrine like a popish Doctor, and Hypocrisy like a Qrey Friar." Bale's most famous play, "King Johan," breathes the same spirit, but is so peculiar in form as to demand discussion in the next chapter. Meanwhile the general dramatic method and the religious tenets of the earlier plays were taken over without noticeable change by the unknown Protestant author of "New Custom," who would seem consciously to have adopted Bale as his model. Beside the work of Bale, it is proper to consider the production of another coarse, yet sturdy and strikingly indi\'idual expositor of papal corruption. Sir David Lindsay's "Satire of the Three Estates" — as nearly as possible contemporaneous in its different forms with the period of Bale's dramatic acti^'ity — is a poem which stands quite apart from the line of English stage progress by reason of its uncouth irregularity of form, and still more by its restriction to the Scots dialect and the social and political milieu of Edinburgh. Yet its imposing bulk and weight of thought, its boldness in meeting empirically the unsolved problems of his- trionic presentation, and the neatness with which it offers commentary and contrast to such works as "Magnificence," "Respublica," "The Three Laws," THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 89 and " King Johan," make it an important document in the history of even the southern British drama. "The Three Estates" appears to have been first acted before King James V of Scotland at LinUthgow, January 6, 1540. For a Uiter performance at Cupar in Fife, June 7, 1552, a number of additions and local references were introduced, and it is substantially in the form there presented that the work survives. A repetition of the play two years later (1554), on the plaj'^field at Greenside near Edinburgh, seems to have involved no important change in the text prepared for Cupar of Fife. The only complete version of the poem was printed at Edinburgh by Robert Charteris in 1602; but an important manuscript, dating from 1568, in- cludes a selection from the more comic portions, and derives special importance from the fact that, although it purports to be based on the text used at Greenside, it preserves the only extant version of the preliminary interlude which advertised the Cupar of Fife perform- ance. This "Proclamation Maid at Cowpar of Fyffe" is the precise equivalent of the introductory "banns" which had been employed a full century before to announce the prospective exhibition of "The Castle of Perseverance" and of the mystery cycle known a:: "Ludus Coventrise."^ The people of the neighbor- hood are warned of the intended arrival of the Prince and the Three Estates in "Cowpar Town," and are further informed : — " Our purpose is on the Sevint day of June, Gif weddir serve, and we haif rest and pece. We sail be sene intill our Playing place. In gude array, abowt the hour of sevin." » See pp. 19 and 55-57. 90 THE TUDOR DRAMA Let the public, therefore, get up ''right airly" and "disjune" (i. e., breakfast), and "Faill nocht to be upone the Castell-hill Besyd the place quhair we purpoiss to play," and let them be prepared both for "sad" matter and for bantering. It is necessary to turn back to "The Castle of Perse- verance" to find in English drama any parallel to the tremendous scope of this play with its two hundred solid pages of verse, its equal appeal to the whole range of contemporary society from king to peasant, and that grand mediaeval leisureliness and simplicity which give it courage to attack the entire visible fabric of life from the highest problems of morality and govern- ment to the lowest reaches of profane wit. It is no question here of the small indoor stage and a select number of courtly auditors. The theatre is the "play- field" out of doors, the spectators make up the entire population, and the actors number at least forty. The scene is imagined so broad that messengers make jour- neys and return from one side of it to the other, and a dozen localities can be represented on it concurrently. The king sits high upon his throne and sees only afar off the petitioners who would have audience with him; a small boy finds false relics in a field upon a hill and shouts to his master in the crowd below; and the stocks stand in view through the entire performance, receiv- ing now the good and now the evil characters. About this primitive stage, as around that on which "The Castle of Perseverance" was acted, stands a ditch filleji with real water, in which the Sowter's Wife can wade waist-deep, and into which the cheated Poor Man tosses the Pardoner's relics. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 91 It is interesting to contrast the structure of this Scottish work with that of the only EngHsh moral plays of the century which at all approach it in length and satiric purpose — Skelton's "Magnificence" and Bale's "Three Laws." While Skelton, by sticking dog- gedly to the thin and inadequate frame of the interlude, has made his poem, however dull and over-weighted, a regular and, technically, even a rather admirable exam- ple of morality architecture; and while Bale intro- duces from classic act and scene division the support which he needed for his ambitious satire, Lindsay ignores equally the old and the new dramatic models, and wins attention by sheer force of intellect and un- reasoned brilliance of execution. Independent farcical dialogues, or "interludes," as long and as non-moral as those of Heywood, are inserted at will in the intervals between the sections of a flagellation of ecclesiastical hypocrisy and greed more violent even than Bale's; and the long work wanders on with only a thin thread of story and with no observable law of growth. Yet "The Satire of the Three Estates" is a more read- able play than either "Magnificence" or "The Three Laws." The very frankness of its irregularity disarms criticism and piques the attention; and the photo- graphic sincerity of all its pictures, whether of clownish turbulence or aristocratic vice, largely justifies the inclusion of each and goes far to keep the varied ele- ments from clashing. Lindsay had good reason to entitle his work as he did. It is as satire rather than as drama that it gains its effects; and it traces its literary ancestry, not through the sequence of the moral plays, but by way of the satiric dialogues of Dunbar, back to the art form 92 THE TUDOR DRAMA of Langland. In many details of treatment, indeed, reminiscence of "Piers the Plowman" seems clearly evident, as in the conception of the vices, Flattery, Falsehood, and Deceit, and the portrayal of their rela- tions with the temporal and spiritual classes, and in the development of the figure of John the Common- weal. It was natural that so long a work, so little guided by rules of structure, should flag in interest toward the end. The play falls into two parts, with an intermission during which the people were to make collation. When acted at Greenside the entire per- formance extended from nine in the morning till six o'clock at night, and the Cupar proclamation, which announces the beginning for seven o'clock, suggests pointedly that the spectators "ordane us gude drink agains ellevin," when the first part should be finished. Overburdened though it is with characters and inade- quate in motivation, a very fair interest attaches nevertheless to this first part, which depicts the fall of Rex Humanitas, beguiled by evil followers, under the influence of Dame Sensuality; the advancement of dis- guised Flattery, Falsehood, and Deceit; the banish- ment of Good Counsel; and the imprisonment of Verity and Chastity, together with the final overthrow of the evil powers upon the arrival of Divine Correc- tion. The second part, however, which contains the author's boldest strokes and accounts for the name of the poem, is in all its serious portions rather narrative than dramatic, and except here and there makes flat reading. The tedious account of the proceedings of the Parliament, with the long story of the wrongs of John the Commonweal and Pauper, the exposition of the subtle shifts of the members of Spirituality, and the THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 93 final rehearsal of the fifteen Parliamentary acts form dull matter in a play; and the student who arrives ultimately at the execution of the three malefactors and the escape of Flattery finds himself seriously be- fuddled concerning all the dramatic issues. The most famous of all interlude writers is John Hey- wood (? 1497- ? 1580), who departed boldly from every tradition of subject and treatment, and produced a style of drama frankly satiric and amusing rather than didactic. Heywood's plays are literary in a sense in which few other interludes can be called so. While ab- solutely independent and original in his relation to na- tive dramatic models, Heywood is almost reactionary in his adherence to mediaeval themes, and has been shown to owe a very considerable debt to the French farce of his day.^ After discarding as uninteresting or plebeian the usual subjects of the English drama, he is forced to supply their place either from abroad or from what were in his day the only standard conventions in secular English literature, — those of Chaucer's age. The simplest of Heywood's plays is a mere debat in riming couplets, preserved in a signed manuscript of the poet, and intended, as the Epilogue indicates, for presentation before the King himself. The academic question of the relative happiness of the "Witty" and "Witless" states is argued, first by James and John, then by John and Jerome. Only at the end of eight hundred lines of clever casuistry does the poet succeed In proving the lot of King Solomon preferable to that of the court fool. Will Somer. ^ See K. Young, "The Influence of French Farce upon the Plays of John Heywood," Modern Philology, ii (1904). 94 THE TUDOR DRAMA Identical in metre ^ with "Witty and Witless" is another dialogue of greater dramatic merit, to which Hey wood has so far only a conjectural claim. " Gentle- ness and Nobility," " Adyaloge betwentheMarchaunt, the Knyght, and the plowman, dysputyng who is a verey Gentylman," seems to me in a number of details to bear the marks of Heywood's peculiar method, and it undoubtedly shows an advance upon that author's "Witty and Witless." Whereas the three disputants of the latter piece are entirely unindividualized, the three speakers in "Gentleness and Nobility" are care- fully endowed with the contrasted class characteristics upon which Hey wood relies for his main effect in nearly all his more developed dramas, and which he employs with especial cleverness in the "Play of the Weather." "Witty and Witless" is a rather dull composition, dis- playing no knowledge of the rules of stage action and indicating a positive incapacity to deal with more than two of the dramatis personoB at a time. Thus, one of the three figures is always completely neglected, while Heywood is presenting the dispute of the other two. The author of "Gentleness and Nobility," on the con- trary, has a mastery of dramatic technique, which everywhere suggests Heywood's more ambitious plays. The speakers are brought on and ofif the stage with perfect naturalness; the interplay of speech and action is that of the adept in arranging stage situation ; and the break in the middle of the piece, necessitated by the short patience of the audience, is so managed as to avoid every indication of artificiality or inco- herence. One has but to compare the deliberate skill ^ Each is written in rough riming couplets, with an epilogue in rime royal. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 95 manifested in the division of "Gentleness and No- bility" with the sheer awkward amputation of Med- wall's "Nature" in order to realize the presence of that new artistry in plot manipulation which is generally regarded as Heywood's great contribution to Eng- lish dramatic progress. Heywood's authorship of " Gentleness and Nobility " is rendered the more probable by a relationship which seems not hitherto to have been noted. Like "The Pardoner and the Friar" and "The Four P's," and unlike any other known drama of this epoch, "Gentle- ness and Nobility" is marked by a very close imitation of the work of Chaucer. The entire moral of the piece is taken from the Wife of Bath's Tale, and the specific verbal plagiarism in several passages is hardly less striking than that manifested in the two accepted works just mentioned.^ In the "Play of Love," Hey wood harks back to the old subtleties and refinements of the courts of love. The four characters are thus named: The Lover not Be- loved, The Woman Beloved not Loving, The Lover Beloved, Neither Lover nor Loved. The last figure, who is elsewhere termed the "vyse," gives the play all the little liveliness it possesses. The contents can well be imagined. They may in Heywood's time have amused an audience of fine ladies and court gallants, as they would certainly have been more likely to do two centuries earlier, but there is little reason why a stu- dent of the drama should linger over so patent an anachronism. The most carefully worked out of Heywood's plays, and the most original, is the "new and very merry in- ^ See, further, my article in Modern Language Review, 1911. 96 THE TUDOR DRAMA terlude of all manner weathers," devised, probably, in flattery of Henry VIII. ^ Instead of the three or four characters in his other works, Heywood here intro- duces ten, all of whom are on the stage simultane- ously in the concluding scene. The dramatis personce embrace Jupiter, the all-wise and affable sovereign; Merry Report, the vice, whose genially comic figure has lost all savor of the fire and brimstone originally attaching to it; and a collection from the difiPerent types of humanity; a gentleman, a merchant, a forest- ranger, a water-miller, a wind-miller, a gentlewoman, a laundress, and a boy "the least that can play." This motley assemblage is brought together by a proclama- tion of Jupiter, desirous once for all to settle mundane meteorology, that all persons interested in the weather should declare their preferences. The clash of conflict- ing interests is amusingly depicted. The gentleman thinks of his hunting, the merchant of his sailing ves- sels, the forester of his windfall perquisites, the water- miller and the wind-miller have high words over the need of rain and wind respectively. The gentlewoman, anxious for her complexion, finds herself at odds with the laundress, who clamors for hot sunshine; and the small boy comes in as emissary from his fellows to de- mand unlimited snow-balling. Jupiter reconciles the contending suitors and makes clear to the audience the supreme wisdom of his own arrangements. In the plays of "Love" and "Weather" it is possible to discern the vague influence of the morality in the "vice," who still remains, though greatly altered and humanized. In the other interludes of Heywood even ' Concerning the source, see J. Q. Adams, Mod. Lang. Notes, 1907, 262. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 97 this resemblance disappears, and the reader finds him- self conveyed back by subject-matter and spirit of treatment to Chaucer and fourteenth-century realism; while in dramatic method he is being carried forward — thanks to the poet's individual genius and to his imitation of the French — to a plane of technical skill and conscious art considerably higher than that at- tained by any of Heywood's contemporaries. In "The Pardoner and the Friar," the "Mery Play between JohanJohan the husbande,Tyb hiswyfe, and syr Jhan the preest," and the famous "Four P's," there is no- thing which suggests either the ancient morality play or the religious and social conditions of Heywood's time. Doubtless Heywood, in whom the controversial- ist seems to have been submerged in the entertainer, and whose sympathies lay certainly with the less aggressive papal party in the Reformation conflict, found it safer and pleasanter to avoid the burning questions of theological dispute, so fully treated by Bale, and to restrict himself to trite and harmless themes such as the impostures of pardoners, friars, and palmers, or the amorous lapses of the parish clergy. Page after page in these dramas is plagiarized from the " Canterbury Tales." There is nowhere a turn of thought or plot unfamiliar to readers of Boccaccio and Chaucer; but Heywood makes up for the uninventive archaism of his subject by progressiveness in presentation. In his interludes English realistic comedy attains full growth . ^ The mustard seed of buffoonery, found almost ^ The most interesting survival of the particular type of interlude evolved by Heywood in John John is probably the play of Tom Tyler and his Wife, which exists only in a "second impression," dated 1661. As the £nal prayer for the "noble Queen" shows, the work 98 THE TUDOR DRAMA by accident in the mystery and the early morality, has completely choked the more serious matter. Comedy required at this period, not stimulation, but refine- ment, — deepening and idealization. These elements were added in time, but they were not to be found in native drama, and their gradual introduction mani- fests itself in a number of hybrid productions, which begin as mere expressions of the playwright's craving for greater variety of subject, and end by bridging the chasm between the incoherent native interlude and the largely exotic and thoroughly self-conscious, but still essentially national comedy of Elizabeth's reign. BIBLIOGRAPHY I. Interlttdes reflecting the Educational Interests op THE Renaissance Medwall, H. : Nature. Undated edition (copy in British Mu- seum). Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, A. Brandl, Quellen u. Forschungen, 80, 1898 ; J. S. Farmer, " Lost " Tudor Plays, 1907. Fragment of early edition facsimiled Materialien, Bd. xii. A third fragment in Bodleian (Rawlinson, 40, 598, 12). A lost Interlude by " Mayster Midwell," " of the fyndyng of Troth " acted at Richmond, Christmas, 1514-15. Cf. Col- lier, i, 69. [" A godely interlude of Fulgeus, Cenatoure of Rome, Lucres his doughter, Gayus Flaminius and Publius Cornelius, of the Disputacyon of Noblenes," said by Halli- well-Phillipps {Outlines, 10 ed. ii, 340) to have been written must date from before the death of Elizabeth, and it is probable that it belongs to an even earlier period. Tom Tyler combines a reminis- cence of the morality convention in "Desire, the Vice" and the "sage Parsons," Destiny and Patience, with a very Heywoodian farcical plot of village types. Evidently, however, the genuine dramatic interest in this piece was subordinate to the operatic appeal of the seven long songs which the author manages to introduce within the small compass of nine hundred lines. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 99 about 1490 by Medwall and printed by Rastell. Not known to exist, unless in a fragment of two leaves (B. M., Harl. 5919, f. 20, 98), Repr. Malone Soc. " Collections," I, ii, 1909, 137-142.] Rastell, John : The Nature of the Four Elements. Facsim- ile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, J. O. Halliwell, 1847 ; Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. i, 1874 ; Julius Fisher, Marburg, 1903. Redford, John : Wit and Science. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Printed, J. O. Halliwell, Shakespeare Society, 1848 ; J. M. Manly, Specimens, i, 1897 ; J. S. Farmer, " Lost " Tudor Plays, 1907. Discussion : J. Seifert, " Wit und Science — Mo- ralitaten," Prague, 1892. Marriage of Wit and Science. Printed by Thomas Marche, n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Reprinted, Hazlitt's Dods- ley, ii, 1874. Merbury, Francis : The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom. MS. dated 1579. Facsimile, Farmer, 1909, Printed, J. O. Halli- well, Shakespeare Society, 1846. II. Interludes illustrating the Tudor Modification of THE " Full-Scope Morality " The World and the Child (Mundus et Infans). Printed, Wynkyn de Worde, 1522. Facsimile, Farmer, 1909. Reprinted, Roxhurghe Club, 1817 ; Collier, Dodsley, xii ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, i, 1874 ; Manly, Specimens, i, 1897. Discussion : H. N. Mac- Cracken, " A Source of Mundus et Infans," Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc, 23, 486-496. Hickscorner. Printed, Wynkyn de Worde, n. d. Facsimile, Farmer, 1908. 2d ed. J. Waley. Reprinted, Hawkins, i, 1773 ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, i, 1874 ; Manly, Specimens, i, 1897. Youth, Interlude of. Three early editions: — (a) Fragment of 4 leaves at Lambeth Palace (printed by W. de Worde ?) (6) "The Enterlude of Youth" (c. 1560), Wm. Copland. Copy in B. M. (c) " The uterlude of Youth " (c. 1557), J. Waley. Copy in B. M. Facsimile of (b), Farmer, 1908 ; of (a) and (c), 1909. Reprinted, Hazlitt, Dodsley, ii, 1874; W. Bang and R. B. McKerrow, Materialien, xii, 1905 ; J. S. Farmer, Six Anon. Plays (2d Series), 1906. 100 THE TUDOR DRAMA Wever, R. : Lusty Juventus. Three early editions are known : — '' (a) Printed by W. Copland. Copy in B. M. (b) " " A. Vele. Copy in the Bodleian. (c) " " J. Awdely. Copy in B. M. n. d. Facsimile of (c), Farmer, 1907. Reprinted, Hawkins, i, 1773; Hazlitt, Dodsley, ii, 1874; J. S. Farmer, Dramatic Writings of R, Wever and Th. Ingclend, 1905. III. Interludes of Political Purpose Skelton, John: Magnificence, n. d. Reprinted, J. Littledale, Roxburghe Club, 1821 ; A. Dyce, Poetical Works of Skelton, 1843, vol. i ; R. L. Ramsay, E. E. T. S., 1908 for 1906. (Lost Plays of Skelton : Nigramansir, cf. Warton, History of Eng. Poetry, ed. 1871, iii, 287 ; Interlude of Virtue, and Comedy Achademios mei^tioned in Skelton's " Garlande of Law- rell.") Lindsay, Sir David : Satire of the Three Estates. Text preserved in (a) Bannatyne MS., 1568. Selected comic portions. Ed. Hun- terian Club — (J) Printed, Robert Charteris, Edinburgh, 1602. Complete, except for Cupar of Fife " Proclamation." Reprinted in Lindsay's Works, ed. Chalmers, 1800 ; ed. D. Laing, 1879 ; ed. F. Hall, E. E. T. S., 1869. Respublica. MS. 1553. Facsimile, Farmer, 1908. Printed, J. P. Collier, Illustrations of Old English Literature, i, 1866 ; A Brandl, Quellen, 1898 ; L. A. Magnus, E. E. T. S., 1905 ; J. S. Farmer, « Lost " Tudor Plays, 1907. [To this class probably belonged the lost play by John Roo, acted at Gray's Inn, Christmas, 1527-28, which treated the separa- tion of Lord Governaunce and Lady Publike-wele by means of Dissipation and Negligence. Cf. Hall's account, quoted by Collier, vol. i, 103.] IV. Interludes of RELiGioua Controversy Bale, John : Dramatic Writings, ed. J. S. Farmer, 1907. God's Promises. Two early editions known : — (a) ed. with- out date ; (6) 1577. Facsimile of (a), J. S. Farmer, 1908. THE TUDOR INTERLUDE 101 Reprinted, Dodsley, all editions ; Everyman and other Inter- ludes, 1909. John Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness. Ed., u. d. Reprinted, Harleian Miscellany, {, 97, 1744; 2d ed., 1808, i, 101. The Temptation of Our Lord. Ed., n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Reprinted, A. B. Grosart, Misc. of Fuller's Worthies Library, i, 1870. The Three Law^s. Two early editions are known: — (a) n. d. (" per Nicolaum Bamburgeusem ") Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. (b) 1562, printed for Th. Col well, (a) Reprinted, A. SchvoeeT, Anglia,v (1882). John, King of England. MS., Chats worth. Facsimile , Mate- rialien, xxv, 1909. Printed, J. P. Collier, Camden Society, 1838 ; Manly, Specimens, i, 1897. New Custom. Ed. 1573. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Re- printed, Dodsley (Reed & Collier, vol. i; Hazlitt, vol. iii). Robin Conscience. Reprinted, W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, iii. John Bon and Mast Parson. Printed by John Day and Wm. Seres, n. d. Reprinted, J. Smeeton, W. H. Black, Percy Society, xxx, 1852. [To this class seem to have belonged also the four plays men- tioned as his own by Thomas Wylley : " A Reverent Re- ceiving of the Sacrament," " A Rude Commonalty," " The Woman on the Rock," and a play against the " Pope's Coun- sellors." Cf. Wylley's letter to Cromwell, quoted by Collier, i, 129, 130.] V. Interludes intended fob Amusement only Heywood, John : Dramatic Writings, ed. J. S. Farmer, 1905. The Play of Love. Two early editions are known : — (a) Ed. 1534. Copy in Magdalene College, Cambridge. Wm. Rastell. (h) Incomplete copy in the Bodleian. John Waley. Facsimile of {b), J. S. Farmer, 1909. (6) Reprinted, Brandl, Quellen, 1898. Discussion : W. W. Greg, Archiv, 106 (1901), 141-143. 102 THE TUDOR DRAMA Play of the Weather. Two early editions : — (a) Ed. 1533. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Wm. Rastell. (b) Ed. 1565? 'Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Anthony Kytson. Reprinted, A. Brandl, Quellen, 1898; A. W. Pollard, Representative English Comedies, 1903. Discussion : F. Holt- hausen, " Zu John Heywood's Wetterspiel," Herrig^s A rchiv, 116 (1906), pp. 103, 104 ; J. Q. Adams, "John Heywood's Play of the Weather," Mod. Lang. Notes, 22, 1907. The Pardoner and the Friar. Printed, Wm. Rastell, 1533. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Reprinted, F. J. Child, Four Old Plays, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1848 ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, i, 1874. John John the Husband, Tyb his "Wife, and Sir John the Priest. Ed. 1533-34. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Reprinted, Chiswick Press, 1819 ; Brandl, Quellen, 1898 ; A. W. Pollard, Representative English Comedies, 1903 ; J. S. Farmer, Two Tudor Shrew Plays, 1908. The Four P's. Three early editions : (a) Printed by Wm. Myddleton ; (i) Wm. Copland ; (c) John Allde, 1569. Fac- simile of (a), Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, Dodsley, all edi- tions ; W. Scott, Ancient British Drama, 1810, vol. i ; Manly, Specimens, i, 1897. ■Witty and W^itlesa. MS., signed by Heywood. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Printed, F. W. Fairholt, Percy Society, XX, 1846 (abridg. ed.). General Discussion of Heywood : Wilhelm Swoboda, " John Hey- wood als Dramatiker," Wiener Beitrdge, 1888 ; Karl Young, " Influence of French Farce upon the plays of John Heywood," Mod. Phil., ii (1904) ; W. Bang, "Acta Anglo-Lovaniensia. John Heywood und sein Kreis." Engl. Stud., 38 (1907), 234- 245. Of Gentleness and Nobility. Two parts. Printed, without date, by John Rastell. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, J. H. Burn, 1829 ; J. S. Farmer, Early English Dramatists, 1908. Tom Tyler and His Wife. "An Excellent Old Play, as It was Printed and Acted about a hundred Years ago. . . . The sec- ond Impression. London, Printed in the Year, 1661." Re- printed, F. E, Schelling, Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc, xv (1900) ; J. S. Farmer, Six Anonymous Plays (2d Series), 1906 ; Malone Society, 1910. CHAPTER IV THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION At a period roughly synchronizing with the commence- ment of Queen EUzabeth's reign (1558) and the birth of Shakespeare (1564), the native interlude began to be supplanted as the fashionable and progressive type of drama by plays of different character and for the most part of foreign origin. But the interlude was much too deep-rooted either to be discarded at once or to be easily merged in the newer forms. Plays of allegori- cal content deriving immediately from the morality remain common till the accession of James I, while in Thomas Nabbes's " Microcosmos " (1634) the species crops up again very near the end of the Caroline era. Most of these late interludes are intrinsically dull. The shift in popular dramatic interest deprived them of the opportunity for natural evolution; they merely repeat the old stock incidents and devices, and there is no longer any jauntiness in their plagiarism. The poverty in content and lack of resourcefulness natural to the entire morality species appear nowhere more glaringly than in these last survivals of the type. Such threadbare motives as the quarrels of vices and virtues or the masquerading of vice under the cloak of virtue are retained for mere convention's sake, sometimes to the positive detriment of the action and sense. How- ever uninteresting in itself, the decadent interlude is yet the necessary object of study for all who would 104 THE TUDOR DRAMA trace the rise of the popular EUzabethan drama. In it is manifested that gradual blending of moribund native convention with foreign importation and rash experiment, through which was finally consummated the art form of Shakespeare and his fellows, — a form thoroughly national, on the one hand, and in the best sense conservative, while, on the other hand, it lent itself to the freest extension of range and the freshest treatment of new themes. The systematic classification of the transitional in- terludes is a work of impossibility, for the extant speci- mens display neither continuity of type nor, very often, any trace of literary consciousness. They arose during a period which had largely given up the old canons of criticism, and had not yet attained to new ones, and they are almost exclusively the production of amateurs, — spontaneous off -shoots from the ancient dramatic stock, affected in every conceivable degree and manner by the new features which the more de- liberate dramatists were busied in grafting upon it. The lately recovered play of "John the Evangelist" is probably an early example of the transitional ten- dency in the interlude.^ Though the work belongs for- mally to the old species of moral allegory, there is no real purpose either in the symbolism or in the religious • John the Evangelist has not been satisfactorily dated. The activ- ities of the printer of the extant edition. John Waley, seem to have extended from 1546 to 1586. Eugenie's speech, "By my fayth ye shall be hanpeman of Calj's," points to a date pre\'ious to the loss of Calais in 1558. and the general style of the piece likewise indicates the reign of Mary as the latest possible period of composition. It is perhaps hazardous to accept the entry — "1 saint jon euuangeliste en trelute [? enterludc]" in the Day Book of John Dome as proving this play's existence in 1520. See Malone Soc. ed. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 105 teaching. Of the six speakers — St. John, Eugenio, Irisdision, Actio, Evil Counsel, and Idleness — only the last three are in any true sense allegorical, and their function is almost purely comic. There exists hardly a trace of plot or dramatic action. Evil Counsel and Idleness have nothing to do with any of the other char- acters. They come in like clowns in a variety show, to regale the audience with a comic dialogue and the nar- ration of various farcical experiences, and go out, not to reappear. Eugenio and Actio behave indecorously in the earlier part of the play and repent at the close of St. John's discourse, but they stand for no particular vices, and are not in any special degree antagonists of the good characters, wlio themselves are so Uttle differ- entiated as to leave room for doubt whether the author intended to represent in St. John and Irisdision two persons or one.^ In the absence of any definite knowledge concerning the sources of this drama, it is not easy to conjecture what can have suggested to the poet the names John the Evangelist, Irisdision, and Eugenio. The last is particularly striking as an apparent indication of the tendency to replace symbolic appellations by concrete names drawn from history or romance. However, Eugenio's character fails to justify the romantic pro- mise of his name. He is but a weak variation of the usual type of vicious youth, who, though able to scoff feebly at the pious Irisdision, is in the end so much dis- quieted by that sage's lurid picture of the dangers of the primrose path of dalliance as to require much 1 Cf. H. Bradley. Mod. Lang. Revieic, July, 1907; W. H. Wil- liams, " Irisdision in the Interlude of Johan the Euangelyst," Mod. Lang. Review, July, 1903. 106 THE TUDOR DRAMA encouragement from Actio before he can betake him- self with any zest to vicious courses. It is noticeable that this play, which would seem to have been composed by a mild supporter of the old religion, is as far from championing any sectarian be- lief as it is from pointing a specific moral. Whether from excess of prudence or lack of originality, the au- thor expresses his conceptions of good and evil with a tridy mediaeval vagueness. The way to the Castle of Zion passes, according to Irisdision, over the mead of meekness to the path of patience, thence to the lawn of largeness, and the lane of business; while the "via obliqua" leads to death and the lady of confusion, who is called Babylon. The description of the isle of sin is so thoroughly in the tone of Langland and the four- teenth century that it is difficult to believe the play a genuine product of the Reformation epoch: — "With bowes and trees it is meruaylously paled. There groweth the elders of enuye Staked with pryde full hye. And the breres of bnkbytyng with wrath wrethed aboute Full of sloutby busshes and lecherous thornes drye. With glotonous piwtes and couetyse rayled throughoute. And at myscheues gate many dothe in ronne." A considerable group of interludes, extending throughout the entire reign of Elizabeth, deal with problems arising out of fluctuations in fortime. Several of these, like the earlier "Magnificence" and "Respub- lica," have, besides their economic interest, a more or less distinct political bias. Such is the play of "Wealth and Health," entered on the Stationers' Register, July 19, 1557, though the concluding prayer for Queen Elizabeth shows that the extant edition cannot be THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 107 earlier than November 17, 1558. The plot narrates rambHngly and somewhat confusedly the misfortunes of Wealth, Health, and Liberty, the three glories of the English nation, at the hands of the vices, 111 Will and Shrewd Wit, who by means of "waste and war" bring them to destitution, disease, and captivity, till in the end they are relieved by Good Remedy. A seventh member of the dramatis personce is of much importance. Hans Beerpot, the drunken Fleming, though occasion- ally referred to as typifying War, is a concrete person- age who cuts a rather surprising figure among the ab- stractions of the piece. He is brought upon the stage soliciting in an impossible Dutch jargon the post of cannoneer, and is heartily reviled by all the other speakers, good and bad. Ultimately he gets his dis- missal from Good Remedy, who accuses him of spiriting away Englishmen's wealth to Flanders by means of war. "There is too many aliants in this realm," says Good Remedy pointedly, and concludes, regardless of Hans's protestations of love for the English: " Get thee hence, drunken Fleming! Thou shalt tarry no longer here." The satire of the play seems to be directed specifically against the very unpopular and expensive war in Flanders during the year previous to Mary's death (1557-1558). But back of the allegorical signifi- cance of Hans, who as Flemish War causes the dissipa- tion of English Wealth, there lies a more general satire upon the pushing and deceitful alien, — a class exces- sively hated during the entire Tudor period. In this attack there is nothing allegorical or symbolic. The swaggering foreigner who oppresses native merit was one of the commonest butts of the realistic comedy. The first two acts of "Sir Thomas More" represent the 108 THE TUDOR DRAMA rising against the Lombards on 111 May Day, and out- breaks against the Flemings themselves were certainly no less violent during Elizabeth's reign than in the time of Chaucer, when "Jakke Straw and his meynee," as that poet tells us ("Nun's Priest's Tale," 11. 575-577) "wolden any Fleming kille." That the figure of Hans was successful is shown by the reappearance of the character, supported by a duplicate, Philip Fleming, in Ulpian Fulwell's "Like Will to Like," first printed in 1568. This last produc- tion, entitled in full "Like Will to Like, Quod the Devil to the Collier," is on several accounts one of the most striking of the later interludes, and would seem to be solely responsible for several generalizations of modern writers about the type. It shows the morality stuff already half absorbed in realistic comedy, and it attests in its author both a considerable skill in the production of stage effect and a colossal effrontery in plagiarism. The sixteen characters are pretty equally divided between moral abstractions like Virtuous Life, God's Promise, and Good Fame, and low comic types such as Tom Tosspot, Ralph Roister, Pierce Pick- purse,^ and Tom Collier. The vice of this play, Nichol Newfangle, is the most imposing of his class. He rallies the audience with all the assurance of a star comedian, and patronizes Lucifer himself. He compasses a good deal of petty knavery, and suffers at least partial retribution from two of his dupes; but he manifests throughout all the aplomb of Autolycus, whom, indeed, he much resembles when he comes upon the stage with * For an explanation of the pun implied in this name, where Pierce is to be pronounced "Purse," see H. N. MacCracken, New York Nation, 86 (1908), 146. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 109 "a bag, a staff, a bottle, and two halters, going about the place, showing it unto the audience," and singing, "Trim merchandise, trim, trim; trim merchandise, trim, trim." And finally, no whit dismayed, he takes his leave of the spectators, and rides off to hell, like his imi- tator in Greene's "Friar Bacon," on the devil's back. Another play, dealing, like "Wealth and Health," with changes of fortune, is the "Newe Interlude of Impacyente Pouerte," newly imprinted in 1560 by John King, where the titular hero, entering very "im- patient" and unmannerly indeed, is reformed into Prosperity by the virtue Peace. Later, however, he is beguiled by Envy, disguised as Charity, and Misrule in the garb of Mirth, and is by them delivered over to Colhazard, the gambler, who rooks him of two thou- sand pounds. The metamorphosis back to Poverty thus easily accomplished, the hero is deserted by his de- ceivers and left to the harsh usage of a very Chaucerian Sumner, only vaguely identified with the abstraction Falsehood, from whom Peace at length delivers him. To this same dramatic class, and to the same period, belongs apparently the play of "Albion Knight," li- censed to Thomas Colwell in 1565-1566. This piece, which is known, unfortunately, only from a single fragment containing six leaves out of the earlier por- tion, dealt to an even greater extent than "Wealth and Health" with political matters. The extant lines are mainly concerned with the elaboration of a plot whereby the vices. Injury and Division, hope to sepa- rate Albion from Justice, and prevent his marriage with "fayre dame plentie," the daughter of Peace. The contemporary "Trial of Treasure," printed in 1567, is one of the most inconsequential of Tudor 110 THE TUDOR DRAMA dramas. The title has Httle appropriateness, for Treasure appears only in the last third of the work, and is never brought to actual trial. The play seems lack- ing in plot and purpose, possibly because the key to its topical or political allusions has been lost; but it con- tains some excellent snatches of song and several strik- ing situations. Such, for example, are the spirited wrestling match between Lust and Just, and the shackling of the vice. Inclination, whom the redoubt- able Just leads forward in the final scene, bridled like Tamburlaine's "pampered jades of Asia." "The most conspicuous feature of the last interludes is their pronounced tendency, when free from outside influence, to revert to the general form and tone of the early morality. As the species lost its hold upon the fashionable public, it passed naturally out of the hands of non-moral, professional entertainers like Heywood into those of unprogressive, leisurely poetasters, who appear to have belonged largely to the clerical profes- sion, and whose object was more frequently edification than amusement. Thus, the artificial conditions which produced the compression, simplicity, and wit of the interlude of Henry VIII 's reign were removed, and there resulted during the early years of Elizabeth a very marked relapse toward the tedious rambling structiu-e, multiplicity of characters, and large homi- letic infusion which belong to fifteenth-century works like "The Castle of Perseverance," "The Conversion of Mary Magdalene," "Wisdom," and "Nature." This change was, of course, an evidence of decay. The expansion of the Heywoodian norm of eight or nine hundred lines and four or five well - individualized figures into long, slow-moving works, averaging two THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 111 thousand lines and employing from fifteen to forty characters, was but a process of fatty degeneration which accompanied the loss of sinew and vitality. Four excellent examples of this last phase of the strict moral play are preserved from the first quarter of Elizabeth's reign: Lewis Wager's "Life and Repent- ance of Marie Magdalene," 1566; George Wapull's "Tide Tarrieth No Man," 1576; T. Lupton's "All for Money," 1578 ; and an undated work of the same period by W. Wager, "The Longer Thou Li vest the More Fool Thou Art." In all these compositions one misses en- tirely the dramatic skill and high evolutionary possi- bilities of the secularized, abbreviated interludes of the previous half-century, while one feels still more strongly the absence of that representative character which makes many of the most diffuse and formless fifteenth-century moralities social documents of the highest value. Thus destitute as they were both of dramatic power and of popular intellectual appeal, the stray Elizabethan remnants of the old type found themselves against a dead wall, with no possible chance of continuance or progress, while the vigorous theatri- cal current of the day was deflected by various alien influences, and passed from Heywood to Lyly, Kyd, and Marlowe by the way of certain experimental medleys which will demand discussion in the later portion of this chapter. Yet the moribund species represented by the four dramas named above does not merit the entire dis- regard which has often befallen it. Though they did nothing to advance English dramatic art, these plays reflect many characteristics of earlier practice. Fiu*- thermore, they were evidently written with great care 112 THE TUDOR DRAMA by well-educated, if untalented, authors, and they illustrate not inadequately the general level of poetic taste and metrical achievement during the rather bar- ren period between Tottel's "Miscellany" (1557) and the appearance of Spenser (1579). "A new Enterlude, neuer before this tjone imprynted, entreating of the Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene. . . . Made by the learned clarke Lewis Wager," was printed in 1566, after having been entered on the Stationers' Register during the same year. A second edition appeared in 1567. Though certainly belonging to the morality class, this play varies in a number of particulars from the ordinary type, and bears pretty clear witness to the influence of John Bale. In agreement with the usual practice of the lat- ter poet, the allegorical figures appear in connection with real Biblical incidents and with certain concrete characters. Thus, in the play before us, eleven sym- bolic actors are associated with the three historic per- sonages of Mary Magdalene, Simon the Pharisee, and Christ. Again, the vice, Infidelity, bears the same name as in Bale's "Three Laws," is similarly repre- sented as the leader of the powers of evil, and in both plays shows only the most incidental traces of comedy. The great difference between Bale and his apparent imitator lies in the much less strongly marked contro- versial tone of the latter. Wager, indeed, is known to have been, like Bale, an Anglican clergyman, — he was rector of Garlickhithe in 1560, — but his play breathes no such fiery anti-Roman polemic as the dramas of the other poet; and this moderation of theological doc- trine, while largely accounting for the flatness of " Mary Magdalene" in comparison with "The Three Laws," THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 113 points also to a later period of composition. It seems to me likely — in disagreement with the opinion of the editor of the play — that Mary Magdalene was com- posed after the heat of religious controversy had sub- sided, and not long, probably, before its publication. The piece opens with an interesting defence of acted plays and a remonstrance against the Puritan detract- ors of the histrionic "faculty." Yet everything shows how utterly impossible it must have been for such a production to gain the attention of the captious audi- ences which the earlier interludes had amused. Through a total length of more than twenty-one hundred lines the interest steadily declines. The only readable por- tion is that which depicts the perversion of Mary by the vices of Infidelit5% Pride, Cupidity, and Carnal Concupiscence; and this portion extends little beyond the first third of the play. The rest is a peculiarly tame rehandling of Scriptural narrative, with no central plot or clearness of character portrayal. Difficult to read, and nearly intolerable, one would suppose, to witness, the drama fails equally in each of the two qualities which had served to animate the earlier interludes. Though it possesses a few realistic touches, of which the best are the exclamations of Mary upon her ill- made, "bungarly" garments and her inattentive wait- ing maids, there is little conscious attempt at humor either of incident or character. Nor, on the other hand, do the vices — Infidelity and his satellites — make up for their comparative deficiency in comic interest by that close connection with contemporary evils in church and society which gives point and dra- matic effectiveness to the similar creations of Bale. "The Tide Tarrieth No Man," registered October 114 THE TUDOR DRAMA 22, 1576, and published in the same year, is thus a decade subsequent to Wager's " Mary Magdalene " in the date of its appearance; and it stands perceptibly nearer to realistic comedy. Its eighteen dramatis per- sonce are divided between allegorical abstractions and such type figures as the Tenant, the Courtier, and the Sergeant. In Greediness the Merchant the two cate- gories are united. The scene is distinctly laid in con- temporary London, and the interest of the piece is wholly economic, rather than moral, historic, or po- lemical, so that the play finds its most natural position as a continuation of the species represented by "Res- publica" and "Wealth and Health." Though only a couple of hundred lines shorter than Wager's moral- Biblical drama, and hardly less confused in plot, the present work, which the title-page states to have been "compiled by George WapuU," is a considerably more entertaining production. It has at least the merit of a single definite theme: the injury done to the commu- nity by the inhuman rapacity of the usurers and mer- chants of the day. This theme is set forth in the Pro- logue, and it is illustrated through the whole course of the drama in the misfortunes of an impoverished cour- tier, a tormented tenant, and a debtor arrested while attending a preaching at Paul's Cross. The play ends conventionally, but most unrealistically, with the in- tervention of Christianity in propria persona, sup- ported by Faithful Few, Authority, and Correction. The action is complicated by the intrusion of a plot suggestive of interludes of foreign influence like "The Disobedient Child," ^ in which are presented the con- sequences of the rash marriage of Wastefulness with 1 See p. 125 ff. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 115 the maid Wantonness. Wastefulness is soon brought to destitution; and in a scene strikingly like one of Spenser's is being tempted by Despair "in some ougly shape" to kill himself "with Cord or with knyfe," when Faithful Few rescues him and puts the mon- ster to flight by means of prayer to the Heavenly Father. 1 The vice of this play, Courage, is decidedly the most interesting in the group, and he speaks nearly one third of the lines of the drama (585 out of 1879). The entirely a-moral tone of the work is well indicated by the fact that Courage, though he has command of the Barge of Sin, and though he is finally led away to jail by Correction after much pernicious activity, does not symbolize any theological vice, and, as the author very candidly admits, may incite to good as well as evil. It is evident that the tendency of the mediaeval moralists to divide all mundane phenomena into the two rigid groups of the righteous and the unrighteous — a tendency which we have found the author of "Nature" already tacitly questioning on the very threshold of the Renaissance ^ — has in this play of Wapull entirely broken down. And it was this mediaeval root-idea of the essential hostility and incompatibility of the forces of good and evil upon which was based the entire morality convention. "The Tide Tarrieth No Man" illustrates well the metrical peculiarities of this group of late interludes, — the wreckage, as it were, of the old morality fashion. The construction of the strict pentameter line, though * Cf. Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto ix, stanzas 49-54; and Mar- lowe's Doctor Faustus, 11. 630 ff. « See p. 73. 116 THE TUDOR DRAMA known to Skelton,^ seems hardly to have been under- stood by these authors. Instead, they employ the de- praved measure into which the Chaucerian pentameter had broken during the fifteenth century, — a metre consisting most often of four stresses, with an inde- finite number of slightly accented syllables. The differ- ence between assonance and rime seems also hardly to have been appreciated; imperfect rimes abound. Otherwise, however, these plays are written with an excess of care. Wapull gives greatest prominence to the quatrain form with alternate rime, almost precisely half his play being written in that measure. Riming couplets are employed through another quarter of the work (four hundred and fifty lines), less, probably, be- cause of any lighter tone in the dialogue than from the simple desire of variety. Rime royal — the conven- tional aristocratic seven -line stanza — appears in .about two hu^idred lines of especial gravity: in the author's Prologue (1-56) ; the laments of the "Tenaunt tormented" (794-835), the impoverished courtier (1082-1116) and the arrested debtor (1393-1406) ; and in the first long speeches of Christianity and Faithful Few (1440-1488). One entire scene, that between Courage and Wilful Wanton, or Wantonness (11. 836- 967) , is written in a metrical freak, — quatrains with a single rime (aaaa, bbbb, etc.). Three song measures are used with skill : aabccb (57- 158), ababcc (291-311), and ababccdd (1337-1358). The period to which this play belongs, the earlier half of Elizabeth's reign, was essentially a lyric period, and the four songs introduced into the piece far exceed the * The best discussion of Skclton's use of metre for dramatic purposes will be found in R. L. Ramsay's edition of Magnificence. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 117 body of the text in literary merit. It is only, indeed, in such snatches of song as the following that one recog- nizes WapuU and his companions for what they were, — serious-minded litterateurs conscientiously writing up to the height of the artistic standards of their age: — "We haue great gayne, with little payne. And lightly spend it to: We doe not toyle, nor yet we moyle. As other pore folkes do. We are winners all three. And so will we bee. Where euer that we come a: Fof we know how, To bend and bow And what is to be done a. "Though Wastfulnesse and Wantonnesse, Some men haue vs two named: Yet pleasauntnesse and plyauntnesse, Our names we haue now framed, For as I one is pleasaunt, to kisse and to cully. The other is plyaunt as euer was holly. As Youth would it haue, So will we be braue." T. Lupton's "Moral and Pitiful Comedie Intituled All for Money. Plainly representing the manners of men and fashion of the world noweadays" (1578) is re- lated in its contemporary and economic interest to a number of the works hitherto discussed, and like sev- eral of them, it seems to have attempted to ensure itself against uncertainty concerning the proper dra- matic model by a mixture of characters and incidents from all the known fields. Its huge total of thirty -one dramatis personoe is made up partly from Scripture direct, as in the case of Dives, Judas, Satan; partly 118 THE TUDOR DRAMA from religious ullogory {e. g.. Godly Admonition, IVitlc, (iluttony); partly from scholastic terminology (Theology, Art, Science). Figures such as Learning with Money, Learning without Money, Money with- out Learning, Neither Money nor Learning suggest the old dcbat, which we have seen revived by Heywood in "Witty and Witless" and the "Play of Love." So- cial tyi)es are presented in Prest for Pleasure and Swift to Sin; while realistic comedy is frankly introduced in (iregory Graceless, William witli the two wives, Nichol Never out of the Law (a rich franklin). Mother Croote, and Sir Laurence Livingless, the foolish Ronumist t)arson. who decries the Rcformali«m and Ihc transla- tion of Scripture. Those who sat through the sixteen hundred lines of this play witnessed a performance in no way less comprehensive or spectacular than the modern variety entertainment. All the costmnes were striking, and some of the feats of prestidigitation veritably astounding. One scene presents with a vivid- ness not easily surpassed a pessimistic view of the con- sequences of wealth. Money enters with great boasts of his ])ower over all conditions of men, and seats him- self in state to receive the homage of his follower. Adulation. Suddenly he is overcome with sickness, and the stage direction explains, "TTere Money shal make as tlu>ugh he would vomit, and with some tine conueyance Pleasure shal appeare from beneath, and lie there apparelled." IVFoney goes out, leaving his son Pleasure to undergo the same distressing ortleal, whence arises Sin, the vice. Sin inlierits the family disease and voitiits Danmation, who is to be "finely conucyed as the other was before, who shal haue a terrible A-ysard on his face and his garment shal be THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 119 painted with flames of fire." The titular hero of the pieee, "All for Money," is a venal magistrate, who proclaims through the vice Sin, that all suitors coming in the name of Money, "Be their matter neuer so wrong, they shalbe sped ami not tarrie." The peti- tioners accordingly appear very much as in Heywood's " Play of the Weather," which most likely gave Lupton a number of hints. A feeble and entirely unsuccessful attempt at re- crudescence of the old serious spirit and broad scope of the morality manifests itself in the undated interlude of W. Wager, entitled: "The longer thou liuest the more foole thou art. A Myrrour very necessarie for youth, and specially for such as are like to come to dignitieand promotion." The plot follows the career of the fool, Moros, from the time when as a schoolboy he mocks and neglects the good Protestant admonition of his pedagogues. Discipline, Pity, and Exercitation, till he is smitten down in gray old age by God's Judgment, and carried oif "to the Deuill" by Confusion. But so ambitious a scheme was quite disproportioned to the author's powders of execution. Not only does he fail — as any writer of his generation nnist in this species have inevitably failed — of reproducing the stern Miltonic dignity of "Everyman" and "The Castle of Perseverance." lie shows himself unable to sustain even an artificial unity through the length of two thou- sand lines, and his large patchwork structure creaks and groans through every joint. The only readable fragments are a few frankly occasional and .topical in- sertions, such as Moros*s two interesting centos of odd lines from popular songs of the day, and People's quaint alphabetical list of the followers of Moros : — 120 THE TUDOR DRAMA "Syr Anthony Arrogant, Auditour, Bartilmew brybor, Bayly: Clement Catchpole, CofiFerer, Diuision, doublefaced dauie, Edmund enuiouse, chiefe of the Eawery, Fabian falshode, his head farmer, Gregory gorbely, the goutie, Gouerneth the grayne in the garner," etc.^ The time was now well past when a respectable drama could be produced by any writer who brought to his task only the heritage of mediaeval convention. The life and spirit of the hour were everywhere abroad and pushed themselves inevitably into all imagina- tive works not engendered in an absolute intellectual vacuum. Two very late interludes "The Conflict of Conscience" and "The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality" are interesting as representing in different ways a forlorn hope at retention of the moral- ity form in the face of new realistic influences which render it entirely ineffective. The first of these plays was written by "Nathaniell Woodes, Minister, in Norwich" and printed in 1581 as "An excellent newCommedie . . . Contayninge, A most lamentable example of the dolefuU desperation of a miserable world-linge termed by the name of Philo- logus, who forsooke the trueth of Gods Gospel, for feare of the losse of lyfe & worldly goods." The eighteen parts are arranged for distribution among six players, "most conuenient for such as be disposed either to shew the Comedie in priuate houses, or otherwise." This drama — which the Prologue excuses as a trifle produced, for moral edification, when the author's ^ Such fantastic alphabets were entirely conventional. Other instances occur in Thersites and R. B.'s Appiua and Virginia. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 121 mind was wearied "From reading grave and ancient works" — is plainly the creation of an amateur and a Protestant zealot. The piece is divided into six acts, presenting the career of a champion of rehgious reform, Philologus, who, denounced by Caconos, an ignorant northern priest, is brought to trial before an inquisi- torial body composed of a Cardinal, Tyranny (alias. Zeal), Avarice, and Hypocrisy. Here he stoutly vindi- cates his belief, till won over by Sensual Suggestion and the enchanted mirror in which she shows him the pleasures of this world. Turning a deaf ear to the warn- ings of his good spirit and of Conscience, the recusant enjoys for a time, with his two sons, the fruits of his compliance with Rome, but he is soon visited by Hor- ror and driven to the verge of suicide. In a long scene of twenty pages, strongly suggestive of that in which the scholars offer last comfort to Faustus, the despair- ing Philologus is reminded of the mercy of God by his friends Eusebius and Theologus; and the nuntius ap- pears in a brief epilogue, dignified by the title of Act VI, to declare that the penitent has renounced all his errors, abhorred his blasphemies, and made a godly end. The most remarkable thing about this awkward, but perfervid dramatic tract is that its ostensibly symbolic hero was an actual personality of the sixteenth cen- tury, — perhaps an Italian lawyer, Francis Spiera, who, after abjuring the tenets of Protestantism, com- mitted suicide in remorse.^ The Prologue reminds the ^ The identification of Philologus with Spiera emanates from Col- lier, who is very disingenuous in his statement that " the apostasy of Francis Spira, or Spiera, is announced as the main subject" on the title-page. The title-page, on the contrary, merely refers to an unnamed "miserable world-linge." 122 THE TUDOR DRAMA audience that the argument of the play is "a history strange and true, to many men well known," though the author has thought it meet to omit actual names. Thus we have the spectacle of Mr. Woodes building sand walls against the tide, attempting in an excess of theological ardor to transmute actual history into moral abstraction just at the time when dramatic progress was everj'where replacing the abstract by the concrete. The play has an interest, therefore, as indi- cating the final refuge of allegorical drama among the same unprogressive class of religious homilists with whom it began. "The Contention between Liberality and Prodigal- ity" is the last gasp of the Tudor morality. Published in 1605, a specific reference to February 4 of the forty- third year of Queen Elizabeth, seems to point to that date (February 4, 1601, N. S.) as the time of the royal presentation advertised on the title-page.^ As "The Conflict of Conscience" shows the allegorical drama revived by the archaic dilettantism of a preacher turned dramatist, the present play owes its partial adherence to the antiquated form to the con- fessed youthful inexperience of the writer, — probably a member of one of the inns of court or some similar play-giving institution. The plot treats the old theme of the vagaries of fortune, tracing the experiences of Money in the hands of the three rival claimants. Prodigality, Tenacity, and Liberality. However, there is no fixity of outline or purpose, and the piece is dis- tressingly hard to read, because the author is continu- * Professor Schelling {Klizahtihan Drama, ii, 554) states that the phiy was written 1565 and re\ased in 1601. This may have been the case. THE INTERLUDE m TRANSITION ns ally straying from one side to the other of the line which separates symbolism and actuality, obscuring his moral by little aimless sallies into the realm of picaresque realism. Neither as interlude nor as comedy of manners does the "Contention" merit serious con- sideration, but it possesses some good songs and serves to indicate how the well-cultivated taste for abstraction, languishing at this period from neglect, could a little later satisfy itself in the Jacobean masque. Thus the survivals of the old interlude which kept themselves closest to the early Tudor form dragged out a somewhat varied existence during the reign of Elizabeth, and perished for want of an audience. In other instances, however, the interlude, by making con- cessions to the change in taste, was able to continue its hold upon popular favor and to exert a not inconsider- able influence upon the new drama. Before the Tudor period was half over, the more progressive writers of interludes began to feel impatience at the limited pos- sibilities of their inherited material, and to look abroad for sources whence they might freshen the desiccated substance of the morality. Long before the death of Henry VIII, John Heywood had achieved an individ- ual tour de force by his bold introduction of new ele- ments from the narrative work of Chaucer and from contemporary French farce. Somewhat later, inter- ludes commence to show close kinship with the Latin drama prevalent at the time in Germany and Holland, — very largely because of the new feeling of solidarity produced among the Protestant nations of the north by the Reformation conflict. The most important Eng- lish plays of this nature are the anonymous "Nice 124 THE TUDOR DRAMA Wanton" (1560) and "The Disobedient Child" by Thomas Ingelend, both pubUshed after Ehzabeth's accession, but first composed, as there is reason to be- lieve, before the death of Edward VI in 1553. These works take up again the popular subject of perverted youth and treat it in conformity with the dramatic ver- sions of the Prodigal Son story then fashionable in the Latin plays of the Continent.^ "Nice Wanton'* ^ is one of the most successful es- says in the interlude form. Its five hundred and fifty- two lines bring it well within the small compass which the contemporary conditions of presentation rendered desirable. Its author,^ moreover, has been able to blend the serious didactic spirit and comprehensive outline of the best educational interludes, and the most eflfec- tive of the old stock types, as presented in Iniquity, the Vice, and Worldly Shame, the Nemesis, with concrete scenes and figures of Dutch realism in a composite which far exceeds the individual capabilities of either species. The "Rebelles," a comedy of the Dutch Latinist Georgius Macropedius, first published in 1535, has been claimed as a source of "Nice Wanton," and * An English version of Acolastns, the most famous of the Dutch- Latin plays on this theme, was executed by John Palsgrave, "Lon- doniensis," and published in 1540. ^ The title of this play means, of course, not "la jolie p^cheresse," as M. Jusserand translates it, but rather "the foolish spoiled child," "der alberne Zogling." ' The initials "T. R." printed at the end of the play in some mod- ern texts give no hint concerning the authorship of the play. The let- ters belong to the vignette inserted at the end of King's edition. The same vignette, with the letters, appears also at the beginning of King's edition of Impatient Poverty and is evidently an inheritance from some earlier printer with the initials T. R. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 125 some relationship, lineal or collateral, certainly appears to exist. However, a comparison of the two works brings out the essential differences more strongly than anything else, and emphasizes the real value of the ele- ments which the English dramatist derived from the morality convention. The boisterous vigor of the songs and of the dialogue of the bad children, Ismael and Dalila, with their seducer. Iniquity; the broad sweep of the play, which in its brief compass — little over half that of the "Rebelles" — embraces the beginning and the end of life; most of all, the stern spirit which insists that the wages of sin be fully paid, refusing the comic termination of Macropedius, and requiring even of the vice, in return for his assumption of concrete human personality, that he expiate his offences like his confederate by hanging: all these qualities belong to "Nice Wanton," not by foreign importation, but by inheritance from the morality; and they indicate how much true force and promise the interlude still pos- sessed when once turned into fresh and fruitful fields. "The Disobedient Child" is a production of no such excellence as "Nice Wanton," but it shows how an English playwright about the middle of the sixteenth century could borrow a foreign plot and could con- siderably broaden its scope and effectiveness by the help of the matter which he found at home. This drama touches much more lightly than " Nice Wanton " the same theme of the just punishment which may befall ill-advised and self-indulgent youth. We have here pictured, not the criminal career and end of two wholly perverted children, but the folly of a pampered son, who, despising his father's exhortation to study, and the admonition to beware of women, soon finds 126 THE TUDOR DRAMA himself trapped into marriage with a shrew, and desti- tute of the means of HveHhood. The source from which Ingelend derived the rough framework of his play is a prose dialogue of the French Latinist, Ravisius Textor (Jean Tixier de Ravisi, 1480- 1524) ; but Textor's scant two hundred and thirty-five lines of question and answer between a colorless Pater Juvenis and Uxor are expanded, in the fifteen hundred lines of the English work, into a drama of much higher intensity and literary merit than the original in any way suggested.^ Fairly mellifluous speeches in alternate rime succeed the laconic clumsiness of mediaeval prose latinity. Two songs are introduced in deference to native practice, of which the first at least possesses real beauty, and prologue and epilogue are added. The three main figures are depicted with a leisurely atten- tion to concrete detail entirely foreign to Textor's method, and they are supplemented by five new comic characters in the man cook and woman cook, the priest, the prodigal's servant, and Satan himself, — the last brought upon the stage in frank reminiscence of the English mystery, to amuse the audience with his shout, — " Ho, ho, ho, what a fellow am I ! Give room, I say, both more and less;" and to moralize the immediately foregoing picture of marital discord. The five ineffective and ill-Connected scenes of Textor are altered, multiplied, and in one ' There survives a single printed leaf out of an English interlude which appears to have followed the same dialogue of Textor with less freedom. This fragment, which antedates the publication of Ingelend's work, will be found reprinted in the Malone Society "Col- lections," I, i, 27-30 (1907). THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 127 case subdivided by Ingelend in a manner which con- spicuously emphasizes the Enghsh poet's reaUzation of the need for comic rehef and dramatic probabiUty. The classical allusions of the Latin text are, indeed, all retained by Ingelend with the scrupulous care natural in one who wished to have himself known "late stu- dent in Cambridge," but otherwise "The Disobedient Child " shows itself vividly English in tone, and original in every essential of treatment. Thus, this play illus-* trates, like the other members of its class, the two out- standing features of the mid-sixteenth-century inter- lude: the avidity, upon the one hand, with which it culled new plot-material, even in the most unpromising foreign fields; and, on the other hand, the great con- stant "Zugkraft" which caused it, automatically, as it were, to vitalize and domesticate all its borrowings. The last example of the transitional interlude based on the Prodigal Son motif of the continental Latinists is George Gascoigne's "Glass of Government," first pub- lished in 1577. This play, in which I am unable to dis- cern the merits pointed out by a recent biographer of Gascoigne,^ seems to be much the poorest of all the extant essays in its kind; and it offers rather unneces- sary proof of the inherent impossibility that English drama should derive any permanent guidance from a model so alien and inflexible as the academic Latin comedy of the German moralists. In the case of "Nice Wanton" and "The Disobedient Child" we see how English writers have struck out, in the heat of dis- covery of a new genre, dramas which owe such excel- lence as they possess to their native rather than im- ported characteristics. Gascoigne, however, who had » See F. E. Schelling, Publ. Univ. Penn., ii, 4 (1895), 47. l-^S THE TUDOR DRAMA already qualified himself for a certain curious celebrity as the translator of a Latin-Italian comedy and a Greek Italian tragedy,* has attempted in "The Glass of Gov- ernment" a mere pedestrian imitation of the then fa- miliarly known work of the school of Macropedius. Couched in imdrstinguished and tedious prose, this play follows the Terentian comic model in all matters of form, — in its neat division of act and scene, its restric- tion of the locality presented to Antwerp, and its sup- planting of stage action by the reports of messengers, as well as in its use of rudely portrayed stock types: the pedant, the parasite, the harlot, the knavish servant (Ambidexter), and dissolute sons, and in its chorus of grave bm-ghers. In the spirit of the piece Gas- coigne imitates equally unimaginatively the chill Pro- testant morality of the Dutch Terentians. Nowhere does the play reflect any truth of English character or any situation from contemporary English life. The figures are all dull and unreal, and the plot, though outwardly regular in its development, is in etfect per- fectly futile because it presents on the stage nothing of real interest or importance, but leaves all the signifi- cant events in the career of the two pairs of good and bad children to be reported at secondhand. Apart from all deficiencies of character drawing and theatrical manipulation, patent absurdity is involved in the structure of the play in that it makes the entire life story of the four young men — Phylautus, Phylo- musus, Phylosarchus. and Phylotimus — from their rudimentary education, through university experience and worldly business, to final reward or pimishment synchronize with happenings in the city of Antwerp > Sw pp. i«4, 106. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 129 which can only occupy a very few days or weeks. **The Ghiss of Government" closes an epoch. With "The Conflict of Conscience" it shares the distinc- tion of being the last purely didactic moral play, and it is interesting that its publication fell upon the very year which brought to a head the opposition between Puritan morality and dramatic literature.^ Essentially a reactionary and unreasoned production, it gives one leave to doubt whether any higher power than lucky accident had inspired Gascoigne, when, nine years before, he inaugurated a new era in English comedy by his translation of "The Supposes." The first decade of Elizabeth's reign was a period of considerable theatrical activity, which began several innovations all - important for the great drama of twenty years later. One of the most eventful of these was the reaching out of the interlude into the domain of history. Conscious of the inadequacy of allegorical puppets to satisfy the growing demand for the presen- tation of real life, and yet unable to break away en- tirely from the traditionary models, the more ambitious writers of the period ventured upon a bold mingling of extremes. To offset the vagueness of symbolic figures, they mixed with them at random actual celebrities from the familiar fields of English history. Biblical story, or classic myth. The inevitable absurdity of this melange was naturally fatal to the experimental works which inaugurated it, but the ultimate consequences were far-reaching and most salutary. In the course of a quarter century the alien elements had fused into a complex drama which joined to the morality's univer- sality of appeal the concrete human application of his- ' Cf. p. 427 f. 130 'KBE TUDOR DRAMA toric fact, and the native English theatre rested upon a firm and permanent basis. The first play to illustrate this important evolu- tionary tendency is probably Bale's "King John," which was perhaps written as early as the reign of Henry VIII, though certainly revised after the acces- sion of Elizabeth. "King John" remained in manu- script till the nineteenth century, and it is uncertain whether it was ever acted in London.^ It can,.there- fore, hardly have exerted much direct influence upon English dramatic development. Yet as an indication of general tendencies it is of the utmost interest, since it shows the interlude enriched by both of the two new elements which we have been discussing; the imitation of continental Latin drama and the insertion of well- known historic figures. The years of Bale's first exile (1540-1547) had been spent very largely in Lutheran Germany, where he found congenial company and established relations which were of some importance for his later dramatic writings. More than to any one else Bale owes to the Protestant dramatist, Thomas Kirchmayer, author of a Latin satire on the papal institution called "Pammachius" (1538), which Bale translated into English, and which was performed at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1545. ^ From "Pammachius" Bale probably derived the first suggestion for "King John," as well as the general satiric method of the play, which is considerably dif- * Sec, however, the interesting doeument printed by Collier {Eng. Dram. Poetry, ed. 1879, i, 123-125), which shows that "an en- terlude concernyng King John" was performed "at my Lorde of Canterbury's," Jan. 2, 1539. ' See C. H. Herford, Literary Relations,l29 f. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 131 ferent from that of his earHcr works; and the idea of presenting the Pope himself on the stage as the leader of the powers of evil. Because of the introduction, on the other hand, of such actual figures as King John, Cardinal Pandulphus, Stephen Langton, and Raymond of Toulouse, the drama has been sometimes noted as the earliest English history play; but such a classifica- tion is rather superficial. The real affiliation of "King John" is rather with controversial moralities of the type of "Magnificence" and ".Respublica " than with the later "history." It was written with the author's eye continually upon existing conditions in religion and politics, and King John himself is as essentially unhistoric, as far from representing an actual person- age of a bygone age, as is the "Widow England" from really typifying the nation in the thirteenth century. Langton, Pandulphus, and Raymundus are mere aliases temporarily assumed by the vices of Sedition, Private Wealth, and Dissimulation. Thus the first introduction of the concrete into the province of alle- gory makes clear the strength of the hold which the morality convention still retained upon dramatic proce- dure. Capable not only of maintaining itself, but even of generalizing the new specific importations, the sym- bolic tradition could not be totally supplanted, but was very gradually amalgamated with the newer influences. The plays of "Godly Queen Hester" and "King Darius" show English playwrights searching again in Holy Scripture, like their fourteenth-century predeces- sors, for dramatic subjects, but it is romantic interest now and not moral truth which they seek. "Queen Hester," which the title-page of the only extant edition reports to have been "newly made and imprinted this 132 THE TUDOR DRAMA pr(\scnt yore, 1561," relates \u fairly regular manner the story i>f the advancement of llamaii by Ahasnerus. the marriau'o of Esther to the King, the insolenee of llaman and his plot against the Jews, witli their reseue by Esther and the overthrow of Ilaman. Pride, Adula- tion, and AmbitioTi are introdneed to expose the fanlts of llaman, and the viee, Ilardydardy, seenres the post of fool in the honsehold of the same nnsernpnlons favorite. It is impossible to resist the sus})ieion of per- sonal satire in the delineation of llaman. The analogy between his eharaeter and Wolsey's in his rapid ad- vancement, his arrogance, and his impoverishment of the realm — so that, as Ambition remarks, "if war should chance, either with Scotland or France, this gear would not go right" — has impelled several critics to regaril the play as a companion piece to "Magnifi- cence." proihiced by a member of Skelton's party be- fore the Cardinal's death in 1530.^ Against this view weighs — thongh perhaps with no absolntely decisive force — the repeated assertion of the title-page that the work was "A newe enterlude — newly matle" in 1501, and the certainty that it finds a more natural place among the interhules of the period 155t>-15t>0 than among those of Henry VIII's early reign. "King Oarins" is spivitically described on the title- page as "A Pretie new Knterhule both pithie and pleasant — taken out of the third and forth Chapter of tlie third booke of Esdras." The date of the extant edi- tion is 1505. The title and the statement of source are both rather deceptive, for only four hundred and fifty lines out of sixteen lunuh-ed have any connect ii^n witli Darius or his court. The rest of the play is detinitely > Sec p. Si ff. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 133 localized in England and forms a perfectly independ- ent moral interlude of anti-papal tendency. The two sets of scenes and the characters belonging to each are entirely distinct. There could not be less trace of as- similation, rndeed, had the poet written the Darius scenes separately, and inserted them arbitrarily as a further ornament between the natural divisions of his otherwise complete morality. There is no evidence that this was not the case. In "Jacob and Esau," an admirable Scriptural drama of the same period (licensed 1557-155H), containing no features peculiar to the interlude, and in A. Golding's frank translation of "A Tragedie of Abrahams Sacrifice. Written in French by Theodore Beza" (composed 1575), one finds further illustration of the way in which native and foreign dramatic tendencies were at this time running separate courses, sometimes strictly parallel and dis- tinct, sometimes exerting mutual influence, but not yet mingled in a single current. There is good evidence that playwrights, even as early as the close of the first (quarter of the sixteenth cen- tury, were beginning to look for plot material, not only in the more orthodox repositories of historical and Biblical narrative, but even sometimes in the literature of romance. The bare suggestion of a romantic strain in the interlude of "Saint John the Evangelist" has been already pointed out."^ The first clear instance of the same tendency is found in the play generally known as "Calisto and Melibea," of which the source is the earlier portion of the Spanish novel-drama, "Celes- tina." It would appear that the author, or the pub- lisher, John Rastell, was in this case uneasily conscious 1 See p. 105. 134 THE TUDOR DRAMA of the unconventionally frivolous nature of the theme, for on the title-page he entirely suppresses the names of the notorious lovers, and introduces the work to the reader in the following non-committal and enigmatic language: "A new comedy e in englysh in maner of an enterlude ryght elygant & full of craft of rethoryk, wherein is shewd & dyscrybyd as well the bewte & good propertes of women as theyr vycys &euyll c5dici5s with a morall coclusion & exhortacyon to vertew." Agreeably with the promise thus implied, the conclusion of the play is utterly distorted in the interest of moral effect. The absence, however, among the dramatis personce of any allegorical figure and the entire absorption of atten- tion in the progress of a secular love intrigue distinguish the i^lay clearly from other interludes of the time, and give it a claim to rank with the structurally far better comedies of Heywood among the richest of all the plays of Henry VIII's reign in promise for the future drama. The output of the English press during the first half- century of its existence is known in considerable degree from mere fragmentary odds and ends. No dramatic loss thus involved, however, is perhaps more to be de- plored than that of the interlude dealing with the love of Publius Cornelius and the Lady Lucrece, of which only two leaves are now extant, though there seems reason to hope that the rest of the work is not irrecoverably lost.^ The surviving fragment has been ascribed to the press of John Rastell, and may thus have been asso- ciated in origin as well as in the nature of its theme with "Calisto and Melibea." ^ The extant portion is reprinted in Malone Society " Collections, " I, ii (1908), 137-142. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 135 A much more advanced work than any of the preced- ing is John Philhp's "Comedy of Meek and Patient Grissell,"in which the trials of Boccaccio's heroine are presented, not altogether unsympathetically, by means of the crude allegorical devices of the moralities. This play can be most satisfactorily studied in connection with the contemporary interludes founded on classic story. The earliest example of the introduction of classical figures into the English interlude can be very precisely dated. It occurs in the farce of "Thersites," which the fact of partial translation from a Latin dialogue of Ravisius Textor would naturally set later than the publication of the earliest edition of Textor's poem in 1530, while allusions in the Epilogue to the English play to the birth of Edward VI and the illness of Queen Jane Seymour point clearly to the middle of October (Oct. 12-24), 1537. "Thersites" is an utterly absurd performance in the roughest of doggerel rime, but its author is proved a fair scholar by his occasional variations and expansions of Textor's mythological references, while his large original infusions of local raillery and buffoonery witness a vigorous natural gift in the less polished forms of farcical merriment. As in the parallel case of "The Disobedient Child," the two hundred and fifty lines of Textor's dialogue, written this time in hexameter verse, serve only as a point of departure for the English writer, who quadruples the poem's length; adds — in bad taste, it must be con- fessed — the whole concluding episode of Telemachus; and uses the elements of Textor's drama (Thersites's colloquies with Vulcan and his mother, his combats with the "testudo" and Miles) as occasions for infinite 136 THE TUDOR DRAMA jest of local and contemporary application. Thersites drops entirely his Homeric character, ogles his audience between scenes like the native vice in "Like Will to Like," and pours out indecorous nothings to the confu- sion of individual spectators. Quite as English in tone as "The Disobedient Child," this play shows none of Ingelend's originality in plot construction or character delineation, but remains in respect of these essentials on the same plane of uncouth naivete with Textor's dialogue, and thus affiliates itself with a much less advanced species of interlude than that with which this chapter has been mainly concerned. Everything seems to indicate that "Ther- sites" was designed for presentation before a vulgar audience. Instead of the indoor stage on which scene follows scene in orderly progression, we have here to do with the old mediaeval arrangement of "platea" and individual "sedes." The second stage direction tells us: "Mulciber must have a shop made in the place [i. e., 'platea'], and Thersites cometh before it, saying aloud." This representation of a shop stood apparently on one side of the stage through the entire play, and Mulciber four times comes out at Thersites's call and reenters to execute his commissions. Another fixed seat was occupied by Thersites's mother. The stage direc- tion announces: "Then the mother goeth in the place which is prepared for her," and it is in this place, some- where on the edge of the stage and in view of the spec- tators, that Thersites seeks refuge from Miles: "Ther- sites must run away, and hide him behind his mother's back." The stage on which "Thersites " was presented thus bears more analogy to that used for "The Castle of THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 137 Perseverance " than to the curtained platform ordina- rily employed for courtly interludes; and other indica- tions likewise suggest popular performance. The en- tire lack of moral import, greater than in even the most unabashed of Heywood's interludes, is combined with several clear concessions to bourgeois taste. The mythological allusions of the Latin original, far from distasteful to any educated renaissance audience, are in part supplanted by references to the vernacular lit- erature of the humbler classes. Thus, Textor's lines, — ■ "Si montes quibus Enceladus fraterquc Ryphaeus Tentavere Jovem superis detrudere regnis, Impeterent, caderetque in te scapulosus Olympus, Pondere sub nullo rigida haec lorica fatiscat," — are familiarized as follows : — "If Malvern Hills should on thy shoulders light. They shall not hurt them, nor suppress thy might. If Bevis of Hampton, Colburn, and Guy, Will thee assay, set not by them a fly! To be brief, this habergin shall thee save." And in the subsequent pages the names of Textor's classical celebrities are often fairly pushed out of the lines to make room for the mention of heroes of another cult, beloved by the common people, but regarded by the polished classes of the day with unaffected scorn, — heroes like "King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table," " Gawain the courteous and Kay the crabbed," Sir Iscnbras, Robin Hood, Little John, and Friar Tuck. The rollicking absurdity of the nonsense verse near the end of the play, ringing the changes on the names of places situated for the most part about the upper Thames valley, would hardly have been tolerated by 138 THE TUDOR DRAMA an educated London audience.^ So, the general char- acter of the final address to the spectators, bidding them be obedient to their "rulers and parents," and possibly a note of uncertainty concerning the progress of affairs at court, suggest that this play, the first to embody the connection with ancient literature which was to become peculiarly a feature of fashionable drama, was written for a rather unfashionable public and "performed probably by schoolboys. "Thersites" seems to have been a random manifes- tation, occasioned by the example of Textor and devoid of bearing upon contemporary dramatic practice. A quarter of a century elapsed before the transitional interlude began seriously to import themes and figures from classic story; and then the plays of this type — Pikering's "Horestes," Preston's "Cambises," Ed- wards's "Damon and Pithias," and R. B.'s "Appius and Virginia " — all produced during the first ten or fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign, coincided entirely in their method, structure, and their circle of appeal with the Biblical interludes of the same date. It hap- pened that the appearance in the four interludes just named of dramatis personce from classical history or fiction occurred simultaneously with the attempt to introduce pure classical models in tragedy and comedy; and superficially it seems hard to distinguish between interludes which treat Greek or Latin subjects and classical imitations which retain certain features of ^ The places mentioned, apart from Antwerp and Tunis, are: Cumnor, Tewkesbury, Sudeley, Comerton (? Combe-Martin), Bromwicham (? Birmingham), Buckingham, Baldockbury, Tavis- tock, Oxford, Hinksey, Thrutton, Chertsey, Cotswold, Malvern, and London. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 139 the interlude. The plays of the former type will there- fore deserve slight further notice when we come in the next chapters to trace the spread of classical influence. Yet, intrinsically and historically, the differences which separate works like "Cambises" from the contem- porary "Gorboduc" are of the greatest importance. In comparison with the out-and-out provincialism of "Thersites," plays of the "Cambises" type appear rather aristocratic in tone, and they were probably all intended in the first instance for performance on the private stage normal in interlude presentation. But with the extension among the educated public of the rigid demand for that precise classic regularity of form which "Gorboduc" illustrates, plays of mixed char- acter like "Cambises" were forced more and more to make their appeal to popular and unlettered audi- ences; and in that atmosphere they tended to accentu- ate their comic and spectacular features. Thus it re- sulted that the interlude, which had begun its active existence as the dramatic medium of the most refined and progressive opinion, finally died out in these changed and degraded survivals as a cheap and shoddy vulgar substitute for the regular Latin tragedy to which the polite world had for the time turned its interest. John Pikering's "Newe Enterlude of Vice, Conteyn- inge the History of Horestes " (1567) stands probably at the highest point attained by the transitional inter- lude in the development of dramatic unity and tragic purpose. In this play, to be sure, as in " King Darius," there is a juxtaposition of serious classic story and na- tive comedy, but here it is the former constituent, the representation of Orestes's vengeance upon his mother, 140 THE TUDOR DRAMA that takes up the greater part of the drama. The humorous matter is subordinate. Furthermore, al- though the two strains are not completely fused, they are not distinct as in "King Darius." The vice, who goes by many names, is one of the principal agents in the conduct of the tragic plot. As Courage, he exhorts Orestes to undertake the war, and as Revenge, his rightful title, he stands at the avenger's elbow, and later points the moral of the piece. In this play and in its less regular companions, "Cambises" and "Ap- pius and Virginia," the interlude stands as close to tragedy as even indirect foreign stimulus could prob- ably ever bring it. The next twenty years saw in Eng- land the complete dissolution of the hereditary dra- matic form and the reincarnation of the dramatic spirit. But as the reader turns from the conscientious study of all the diverse manifestations of the early native mystery, morality, and interlude to the more familiar products of developed Elizabethan comedy or tragedy, he must be impressed by the multiplicity of the con- necting threads of influence. The restricted dramatic current, which we can follow for over two centuries in its divagations through a rather arid tract of literature, passed out into the brof^d expanse of the Elizabethan world drama by more mouths than can easily be counted. The blending of morality convention with the re- naissance cult of pagan mythology shows itself in " The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune" (1589) and in the very dull and absurd play of a well-known actor, "The Cobbler's Prophecy," by Robert Wilson (1594). "The Three Ladies of London" (1584) and "Three A TUDOK INTKRLUDE (?) IN rUOCHKSS : LOOKING TOWAUU THE aui)ip;nce From the title-page to R. W.'s " Three Lords and Tliree Ladies of London," 1500 THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 141 Lords and Three Ladies of London" (1590), written .probably by the same Robert Wilson and bearing his initials on their title-pages, show the interlude in the last phase of its drift toward city comedy. The two plays just mentioned, thongh intrinsically among the dullest of the interludes, possess a claim to notice by reason of the obvious seriousness of their literary pre- tensions. Like such earlier works as "The Tide Tar- rieth No Man" and "All for Money," they present a sincere criticism of existing conditions by means of literal dozens of figures and almost interminable lines of careful verse. The sensitiveness to changes of liter- ary fashion, indicated in the transition from the long rambling couplets of "The Three Ladies" to the blank verse of "The Three Lords and Three Ladies," has been often noted. What is perhaps less frequently felt is the intimacy with which these aj)parently lifeless pieces represent the prevailing social interests of their day. In their scourging of the current iniquities of usury and simony, and in the timely ridicule of Spanish arrogance presented in the later play, they broach sev- eral of the most vital issues in the life of the age.^ A much more human and readable play, even more complex in its affiliations, is the "Merry Knack to Know a Knave" (1594). Here the moral abstraction Honesty plays a prominent role at the court of the Saxon King Edgar, circumventing and overthrowing each of the Bailiff of Hexham's rascally sons: Courtier, Priest, Coneycatchcr, and Farmer. This medley of interlude, mythical history, and comedy of manners is further confused by the interpolation of a charming * Tom Beggar ia the earlier play may be the original of Auto- lycus. 142 THE TUDOR DRAMA romantic sub-plot dealing with the rivalry of King Edgar and his confidant Ethanwold for the hand of the Lady Alfrida. Even when the English drama was well entered upon its ultimate catholic career in the work of Shakespeare and his greatest contemporaries, concrete evidences of the force of the older fashion still persisted. Charac- teristic devices of the morality type repeat themselves in Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," in Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay; " in the general structure of Nash's only independent play, "Summer's Last Will and Testament," and the general subject of Peele's "David and Bethsabe" and Lodge and Greene's "Looking Glass for London;" most notably of all in the continued vivid allusions to Vice and Iniquity in the works of Shakespeare. BIBLIOGRAPHY I. Decadent Sxjrvivals of the Old Type John the Evangelist. Printed, J. Waley, n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1907. Reprinted, Malone Society, 1907 ; J. S. Farmer, " Lost " Tudor Plays, 1907. Discussion : H. Bradley, Mod. Lang. Review, July, 1907 ; W. H. Williams, " Irisdision in the Inter- lude of Johan the Euangelyst," Mod. Lang. Review, July, 1908. Wealth and Health (S. R., 1557). Ed. n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1907. Reprinted, Malone Society, 1907 ; J. S. Farmer, " Lost " Tudor Plays, 1907 ; F. Holthausen, Kiel, 1908. FuLWELL, Ulpian : Like Will to Like. Two early editions : — (rt) 1568. Printed by John Allde. (b) 1587. Pr. Edw. Allde. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Re- printed, Hazlitt, Dodsley, iii. Impatient Poverty. Printed, John King, 1560. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1907. Reprinted, J. S. Farmer, " Lost " Tudor Plays, 1907. THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 143 Albion Knight. Fragment in Chatsworth library. Reprinted, Shakespeare Society Papers, i, 1844 ; J. S. Farmer, Malone Society " Collections," I, iii. Trial of Treasure. Printed, Th. Purfoote, 1567. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, J. O. Halliwell, Percy Society, 28, 1850 ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, iii, 1874. Wager, Lewis : Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene. John Charlewood, 1566, 1567. Facsimile of ed. 1507, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, F. I. Carpenter, 1902. New ed. 1904. Discussion: A. Brandl, Sh. Jb. 39, 316-319 ; R. Imel- mann, Archiv, iii, 209-211. Wapull, G. : The Tide Tarrieth No Man, 1576. Reprinted, Collier, Illustrations of Pop. Lit., 1864, ii, 4 ; Ernst Riihl, Sh. /ft. 43 (1907). LuPTON, T. : All for Money, 1578. Pr. Roger Warde & Richard Mundee. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1910. Reprinted, J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Literature of the 16 and 17 Centuries illustrated, 1851 ; Ernst Vogel, Sh. Jb. 40, 1904. Wager, W. : The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art. Ed. n. d. Reprinted, A. Brandl, Sh. Jb. 36, 1900. Wager, W. : The Cruell Debtor. (A fragment consisting of a single leaf is in the British Museum.) WooDES, N. : The Conflict of Conscience, 1581. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, Roxburghe Club, 1851 (" Five Old Plays ") ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, vi. The Contention Bet-ween Liberality and Prodigality. 1602. Reprinted, Hazlitt, Dodsley, viii. II. Interludes affected by Foreign Models A. WORKS affected BY CONTEMPORARY LATIN DRAMA OF THE CONTINENT Nice "Wanton. Two early editions : — (a) Printed by John King, 1560. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. (b) Printed by John AUde, n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted: Hazlitt, Dodsley, ii, 1874 ; Manly, Specimens, i, 1897 ; J. S. Farmer, Dramatic Writings of R. Wever and Th. Ingelend (sic !), 1905. 144 THE TUDOR DRAMA Ingelend, Thomas : The Disobedient Child. Printed, Th. Colwell. n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, J. O. Halliwell, Percy Society, 23, 1848 ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, ii, 1874 ; J. S. Farmer, Dram. Writings of R. Wever and Th. Ingelend, 1905. Discussion: F. Holthausen.^ngrZ. S^wrf., 31 (1902),90ff. Prodigal Son. Fragment. Reprinted, Malone Sac. " Collec- tions," I, i, 27-30 ; ii, 106, 107. Gascoigne, G. : The Glass of Government, 1575. Reprinted, W. C. Hazlitt, Gascoigne's Poems, Roxburghe Library, 1870, ii ; Works of Gascoigne, ed. J. W. Cunliffe, vol. ii (in press). Discussion: E. Arber, " Chronicle of the Life, Works, and Times of Gascoigne," 1868 ; C. H. Herford, " Gascoigne's Glasse of Government," Engl. Stud., ix, 1886, 201-209 ; F. E. Schelling, " The Life & Writings of George Gascoigne," 1894. Bale, John : John, King of England. Cf . Bibliography to chapter iii. B. WORKS BASED ON SCRIPTrHAL STORT Godly Queen Hester. Printed, Wm. Pickering and Th. Racket, 1561. Reprinted, J. P. CoWier, Illustrations of Early Eng. Pop. Lit., pt. 7, 1863 (50 copies) ; A. B. Grosart, Alisc. of Fuller Worthies Library, vol. iv, 1873 (106 copies) ; W. W. Greg, Materialien, v, 1904 ; J. S. Farmer, Six Anonymous Plays (2d Series), 1906. Bling Darius. Two early editions : — (a) 1565. Printed, Th. Colwell. Facsimile, J. S.YaTmeT, 1909. (b) 1577. " Hugh Jackson. " J. S. " 1907. Reprinted, J. O. Halliwell-Pbillipps, 1860 ; A. Brandl, Quellen^ 1898. Jacob and Esau, 1568. Printed, Henry Bynneman, B. M. Fac- simile, Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, Hazlitt, Dodsley, ii, 1874 ; J. S. Farmer, Six Anonymous Plays (2d Series), 1906. Discussion: Mrs. C. C. Stopes, Athenceum, Apr. 28, 1900, pp. 538-540. GoLDiNG, A. : Abraham's Sacrifice. "Written in French by Theodore Beza, and translated into English by A. G. Finished at Powles Belchamp in Essex, the xj. of August, 1575." Re- printed, M. W. Wallace, 1907. C. WORKS BASED ON CLASSIC STORT Thersites. Ed. n. d., printed by John Tysdale. Facsimile, H. S. Ashbee, 1876. Reprinted, Haslewood, Two Interludes, Rox- THE INTERLUDE IN TRANSITION 145 burghe Club, 1820 ; F. J. Child, Four Old Plays, 1848 ; Haz- litt, Dodsley, i, 1874. Discussion : W. Creizenach, Lit. Central- blatt, 1899, 205 ; F. Holthausen, Engl. Stud., 31 (1902), 77. PiKERixG, John : Interlude of Vice containing the History of Horestes, 1567. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1910. Reprinted, A. Brandl, Quellen, 1898. B(o\VER8 ?), R. : Appius and Virginia, 1575. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, Hazlitt, Dodsley, iv. Preston, Thomas : Cambises, King of Persia. Two early editions : — (a) Printed by John AUde, n. d. (licensed 1569). (b) " " Edward Allde, n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1910. Reprinted, Hawkins, 1773, vol. i ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, iv, Manly, Specimens, i, 1897. Discussion : M. P. Tilley ; Sh. &. his ridi- cule of Cambises, Mod. Lang. Notes, 24 (1909), 244r-247. Edwards, Richard : Damon and Pithias. Two early editions : 1571, 1582. Facsimile of 1571, ed. J. S. Farmer, 1908. Reprinted, Dodsley, Ancient British Drama, 1810. Discussion : Durand, W. Y., Jrl. Germ. Phil., iv, 348-355 ; Mod. Lang. Notes, 23, 131. D. INTERLUDES BASED ON ROMANTIC 8TOHT Phillip, John : Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissell. Printed by Th. Colwell, n. d. Reprinted, Malone Society, 1909. Calisto and Melibea. Printed by John Rastell, n. d. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1909. Reprinted, Hazlitt, Dodsley, i, 1874 ; Malone Society^ 19. Discussion : A. S. W. Rosenbach, " The Influence of the 'Celestina' in the Early English Drama." Sh. Jh. 39 (1903), 43 ff. E. COMEDIES RETAINING NOTEWORTHY FEATURES OP THE INTERLUDE FORM Wilson, Robert : The Cobbler's Prophecy, 1594. Reprinted, W. Dibelius, Sh. Jb. 33, 1897. The Pedler's Prophecy, 1595. W(iL80N ?) R. : Three Ladies of London, 1584. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, Five Old Plays, 1851 ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, vi. Three Lords and Three Ladies of Loudon, 1590. Re- U6 THE TUDOR DlUx\L\ printed, J. P. Collier, Five Old Plays, Roxburghe Club, 1851 ; Hazlitt, Dodaleif, vi. Discussion : II. Fernow, " The Three Lords aud Three Ladies of London," Hamburg, 1885. A Merry Knack to Klnow^ a Knave, 1594. Keprinted, J. P. Collier, Fire Old Plaijs, lloxburgho Club, 1851 ; llazlitt, l\Hi.tions. there filtered in a s\d>tler strain of intluence by Avay of the classic drama of Italy, where Latin plot and precept had already been largely shifted into accord with current interests and views of life, and CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 149 lent themselves, therefore, to considerably easier ah- sori)tion. An illustration, probably not very unfair, of the tliirerence in efl'ect between classical influence when exerted inmiediately and when transmitted at second-hand by way of Italy, may be obtained by con- trasting^ Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," based directly on tlie " Mena;chmi " of Plautus and somewhat marred by sliffness, witli the j>raceful intrigue comedy in the sub-plot of "The Taminj^' of the Shrew," where the Latin influence reaches the same poet through the medium of Ariosto's "Sup|)osili." (The first, fundamental gift of I-atin drama to Eng- lish was the example of the division of plays into acts and scenes, a practice introduced by the scholarly Bale and universalized with the spread of classic imitation.'^ Inherently, no doubt, this seems a matter of small consequence. Yet no student of Ihe floundering transi- tional interludes or the vast amount of e(pially floun- dering work which succeeded them can fail to recog- nize in it precisely the kind of check indispensable at this period to the excessive Elizabethan exuberance and uncertainty. (The liabit of building i)lays ujjon a rigid five-act pattern which recpiired careful planning beforehand, and put a very strong if not invariably effectual curb on the chronic impulse to addition and divagation, was just the force that turned dramatic production into a regular channel where it might pro- gress smoothly and consecutively. Lacking this mould of form, the drama of the age might easily have proved as devoid of restraint and conscious purpose as was, for instance, the Elizabethan epic. \ Another borrowing from general classic techni(|ue, \ likewise introduced by Bale, was of very considerable | 150 THE TUDOR DRAMA consequence, though by no means so rapidly or thor- oughly assimilated as the principle of act division. Xhis was the recognition of a definite line of cleavage between comedy and tragedy. The vagueness with which the early Elizabethan dramatists, and many even of the later ones, distinguish between the uses and pur- poses of the two types is sufficiently well known. It was the natural result of the complete absorption of tragedy in comedy which characterized the later moral- ity; and the less responsible playwrights remained satisfied till nearly the end of our period with hetero- geneous medleys which they might at will term comi- cal tragedies or tragical comedies. All the features in this contamination which made for realism and legiti- mate variety persisted, and they contributed largely to the vitality of the dramatic product. But the study of ancient models confirmed in each of the progressive writers the realization, prerequisite to serious theatri- cal criticism and practice, that essentially comedy is one thing and tragedy another. The complete acqui- sition of this necessary lesson is probably best wit- nessed in the mature procedure of Shakespeare and the well-weighed theory of Ben Jonson. But through the whole evolution of dramatic method, from the groping indecision of Sackville, Edwards, and Udall to the conscious mastery of the last great Elizabethans, the fundamental conception of the peculiar nature of comedy and of tragedy is, like the terms themselves, an undisputed heritage from the Latin stage.) The introduction of classical models broadened the range of the drama as much as it developed dramatic art. From Plautus and Terence the English comic writers learned to refine their native buffoonery by the CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 151 cultivation of a more intellectual species of wit, enrich- ing the clownage of plebeian life by the addition of those laughable characters and incidents which arise amid more complex societies. Civic types came more and more to replace the old ethical abstractions and unlocalized Merry Andrews. Yet the generalizing tendency of the interlude remained happily strong enough to offset the contracted scope and inherent su- perficiality of city comedy, as it flourished in ancient Rome and later on the English Restoration stage. So well, indeed, did the native and classical elements blend that few Elizabethan comedies are notably lack- ing, either in broad human application or in realistic discrimination of the social types. On the one hand, we see the old native clown individualized and intellec- tualized in Falstaff ; on the other, we find the soulless miles gloriosus humanized in Bobadill. f Small as are the merits of the Roman comedians in point of invention and originality, their influence broadened very notably the narrow scope of the inter- lude. From Terence and Plautus Elizabethan drama- tists obtained several new types of plot which for them possessed a freshness long vanished from the few hack- neyed morality themes, and not really acquired by any of the experiments of the transitional interlude. Sev- eral of the richest veins of Tudor comedy were struck in the direct line of classic imitation, and the less patent results of the same classicizing tendency were even more intrinsically important. The assimilation of Latin plot material, by doubling at a leap the struc- tural resources of the English dramatist, made possi- ble endless permutations and combinations, and stim- ulated the development of many new sorts of intrigue 152 THE TUDOR DRAMA whicli would otherwise have remained unsought and unsuspected. In tracing, therefore, the influence of Latin comedy, the critic can ill afford to limit his consideration to such obvious derivatives as "The Comcily of Errors" and "The Alchemist." He must heed also the more delicate affinities which show the example of Plautus- Terence to have been a neces- sary preparation even for the romantic plays of "The Merchant of Venice" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." And though, during the culminating period of dra- matic progress, the years of Shakespeare's prime, the self-proclaimed classical spirit in .Tonsonian comedy stands for restraint and self-containment as against the genial but ungoverned diffusiveness of tlie more popular school, it must he remembered that both in comedy and in tragedy the sterner lessons of classic reserve were learned rather from Latin prose and verse theorists than from the actual procedure of the Roman dramatists. Indeed, it is even true that these drama- tists themselves contributed to that exuberant taste for vivid, if irrelevant, excitement and ornament which "romantic" plays like "As You Like It" and "The ^Yinter's Tale" rendereti orthodox. and "classic" plaj's like "Every Man in his Humour" attempted vainly to supplant. The opposition is less justly ascribed to a conflict of native artlessness with ancient rule than to that of two m\itually sup]ilementary attitudes toward art which coexisted in Ronuin times just as they did in Elizabethan, and which the connotation of solidarity involved in the ordinary use of the word "classic" alto- gether obscures. In fact, there is little in the comedies of Plautus and Terence or the tragedies of Seneca CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 153 which can properly be called classic in the Jonsonian sense; and we shall see that far the most certain and permanent results of the influence of these writers upon early English di'ama were, in comedy, the cultivation of a species of intrigue much more elaborate and im- probable than had before been known, and, in tragedy, the birth of melodrama. The motif of mistaken identity, which the Latin comic dramatists had so over-used, is put to equally hard though more varied service on the Elizabethan stage. InLyly's *' Mother Bombie," in "The Supposes," "The Comedy of Errors," and a dozen other plays of the late sixteenth century, it furnishes the backbone of the plot. Moreover, it was undoubtedly the force of classic pre- cedent rather than the spiritless mumming of the inter- ludes which gave rise to the extraordinary Elizabethan love of stage disguise and masquerade and continued it to the end of the Jacobean period. The intricacy of the Latin fable, resting usually upon a tissue of mutual deceit and misunderstanding, appears to have had a peculiar zest for the English comic writers after the long vain efforts of the interlude to escape from the threadbare simplicity of the morality plots. It is to be regarded as a testimony to the strength of Terentian example that, after about 1575, Elizabethan comedy tends normally toward excessive convolution of struc- ture, in the most marked contrast to the extreme tenuity of the traditionary native model. This love of a tangled skein of incident and character, even to the detriment of dramatic effectiveness, can be followed from Lyly's plays through many of Shakespeare's, and perhaps reaches its climax in the dizzying maze of de- ception, misunderstanding, and cross purpose which 154 TIjp TUDOR DRAMA bewilder the reader of "Wily Beguiled" and Chap- man's "All Fools." Of the great popularity of the Latin comedies during the sixteenth century many evidences survive, though it was not till about the middle of the century that they began obviously to influence the vernacular Eng- lish drama. Terence had, indeed, retained his hold upon the reading public throughout the dark ages, and had inspired directly a number of imitative dramas such as those of the German nun Hroswitha of Ganders- heim in the tenth century, and the productions of the great German-Latin school in the late fifteenth and six- teenth. The work of this last group, largely because of its religious and political bias, was considerably more immediate in its effect on English drama than was its Latin source, and it has been alluded to already in the connection in which it properly belongs as a variant influence in the development of the later interlude. The discovery of the twelve lost comedies of Plautus, in 1427, raised the fame of that dramatist to a full equality throughout learned Europe with the tradi- tional repute of Terence, and the subsequent influence of the two poets upon English dramatic evolution is vir- tually identical. The plays of each were read con- stantly during the entire sixteenth century in schools and colleges; and in the Latin original they were not infrequently acted, sometimes as academic exercises very much in the manner still continued in the annual performances at Westminster School, at other times with, less definitely educational intent. Several interesting allusions prove the early vogue of Plautus with the courtly English public before which the interludes were ordinarily presented, — the public. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 155 that is, whose taste was during the early Tudor period the determining factor in the evolution of dramatic types. Thus Holinshed's Chronicle bears witness to this juxtaposition of a play of Plautus, presumably acted in the original, with one of the disguisings so popular in connection with interludes. The occasion was a state entertainment of Henry VIII, in the great hall at Greenwich, May 7, 1520: "Into this chamber came the king, and the queene, with the hostages, and there was a goodlie comedie of Plautus plaied; and that doone, there entered into the chamber eight ladies in blacke veluet bordered about with gold ... & tired like the Aegyptians verie richlie." (Holinshed, ed. 1808, iii, 635, 636.) A passage in Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" (1516) is significant both for its picturing of the circumstances of Plautine theatrical presentation, and because of its plea for the absolute discrimination of comedy from tragedy: "Or els, whyles a commodye of Plautus is playinge, and the vyle bondemen skoffynge and try- felynge amonge themselfes, yf yowe shoulde sodenlye come vpon the stage in a philosophers apparrell, and reherse owte of 'Octauia' the place wherin Seneca dysputeth with Nero; had it not bene better for yowe to haue played the domme persone, then by rehersynge that, which serued nother for the tyme nor place, to haue made suche a tragycall comedye or gallymal- freye ? For by biyngynge in other stuffe that nothynge apperteyneth to the presente matter, yowe must nedys marre and peruert the play that ys in hande, thoughe the stuffe that yowe brynge be muche better." ^ ' Utopia, Robynson's translation, ed. J. H. Lupton, Oxford, 1895, 98 f. 156 THE TUDOR DRAMA Certainly Plautus receives here very left-handed praise; and it must be admitted that the constant predilection of Elizabethan drama in favor of " bryng- ynge in other stuffe that nothynge apperteyneth to the presente matter," together with the traditions of More's own participation in such amateur gallimau- freys lends point to the suspicion that his allusions to Plautus and Seneca are rather due to the desire of a neat classical illustration, than the result of observa- tion of actual performances. No English translation of Plautus is known previous to the version of the " Mensechmi " by W. W. in 1595 ; but a rendering of the " Andria " of Terence had appeared as early as 1497, and it was reprinted at least three times before the end of the year 1588 (1510, 1520? 1588), while a very special personal interest attaches to an anthology representing parts of three Terentian comedies : " Floures for Latine speakyng . . . selected and gathered oute of Terence, and the same translated into englyshe . . . compiled by Nicolas Udall." The most elementary and not improbably the earli- est experiment at introducing upon the native stage the much-admired devices of Roman comedy appears in the undated "new Enterlued for Chyldren to playe named lacke lugeler," which was licensed for pub- lication during the year beginning July 22, 1562, but was probably extant in manuscript at least a decade before. The author of this piece feels himself to be an innovator, and he states his objects frankly in a pro- logue: — " In this manner of making [i. e., in comedy] Plautus did excel Wherefore this maker delighteth passingly well To follow his arguments, and draw out the same." CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 157 And he admits with a candor which might well be imitated by more homiletic comedians the purely ludicrous intention of the play, — "not worth an oyster shell. Except percase it shall fortune to make you laugh well." The story of this farce, which does not extend be- yond the length of a single act, is derived avowedly from the first scene of the " Amphitruo," but all the de- tails of characterization and setting are as typically English as anything in the native drama. This early excursion into the foreign field illustrates well what is throughout the salient and determining feature in the progress of Tudor drama, — the essential predominance in all plays which truly represent popular interest of the domestic, national spirit over the alien influences, however numerous and freely introduced. It is only, indeed, when the student comes to weigh carefully the results of the exotic importations of the mid-century that he is likely to comprehend fully the strong and permanent hold which the mystery and morality species had acquired upon the whole English drama. It is an indubitable truth that the Elizabethan stage could not have evolved the self-conscious and varied art form which it produced without tutelage from Latin technique and the assimilation of much new material. But it is a truth yet more remarkable that none of the forces from abroad, Latin, Italian, French, German, or Spanish, was able in the case of any normal Eliz- abethan play to supplant or seriously diminish the na- tive tone of the character portrayal and atmosphere, till the Jacobean decline had well set in. The author of "Jack Juggler" has accomplished, apparently uncon- sciously and inevitably, that complete translation of 158 THE TUDOR DRAMA his remote theme into terms of contemporary life and interest, which for a modern playwright would be the hardest of all tasks. The Sosia of Plautus is reincar- nated in the page, Jenkin Careaway, as vivid a local type as the most sternly national art could produce, while the same blind force of natural selection replaces Mercury by the mischievous gamin. Jack Juggler. The other figures — Master Bongrace and his wife. Dame Coy, and the maid, Alison Trip-and-go — can hardly be said to owe even the first suggestion to Plautus's Amphitryon, Alcmene, or Bromia.^ The real English family setting, once outlined, develops itself in this sketch, as in "Ralph Roister Doister," "Gammer Gurton's Needle," and many another superficially classicizing play, — not from any special realistic talent or intention on the author's part, but by reason of the close intertwining of drama and native life, which was the supreme heritage prepared by the mys- tery, the morality, and the interlude for the Elizabethan theatre. "Ralph Roister Doister" is probably the most en- lightening illustration extant of the influence of Latin precedent upon English comic practice. The date of this piece remains in doubt, conjectures ranging over the period between 1534 and 1552, though the weight of probability seems still to incline toward the conven- tional ascription of the work to the years of Udall's mastership at Eton school (1534-1541). It is hardly an accident that the author of this " first regular English comedy " should be a writer whom we know from other 1 This play has been explained as a travesty of the Roman doc- trine of transubstantiation. See F. S. Boas in Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. v, 120. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 159 evidences to have been most actively interested both in the classical and in the native English theatre. In 1533 he was concerned in a pageant performed at Anne Boleyn's coronation; in the following year he published his Terentian translations. In 1554, a letter of Queen Mary, dated Dec. 3, praises his past diligence "in setting foorth of Dialogues and Enterludes before us for our regell disports and recreacion," and calls upon the Master of the Revels to give him free use of royal property for such performances as he "myndeth hereafter to shewe." ^ "Roister Doister" is probably, after "The Comedy of Errors," the most careful imitation of Plautine drama produced during the sixteenth century in the English vernacular ; but it cannot be regarded, like Shake- speare's youthful farce, as in any serious degree an adaptation of a particular Roman play. Udall's know- ledge of classic theory and practice, immensely broader and better-digested, of course, than that of the young Shakespeare, is everywhere corrected by his equally intimate acquaintance with native types and theatrical requirements. The professional supervisor of inter- ludes to Queen Mary's court stood in no danger, schoolmaster though he was, of producing a closet drama, or satisfying himself with a mere antiquarian revival. The reader feels himself everywhere in the world pictured by the ancient comic dramatists, — this is, indeed, the most remarkable quality in the work, — and he is reminded by incidents and figures now of the "Miles Gloriosus," now of other plays; but these ana- logies will not bear pressing. The slightest comparison shows that Roister Doister differs radically from » See Loaeley MSS., ed. A. J. Kempe, 1836. 1(50 THE TUDOR DRAMA Pyrgopolinices, both in his character and in his adven- tures; while Merry greek, though inevitably suggestive of tlie Latin ])arasite, has little actual affinity to any representative of the tyi)e. With the other characters the reminiscence of specific classic models almost en- tirely disappears, though the general flavor of classic "atmosphere" docs not. Udall has not attempted in "Roister Doister" to imitate any special Roman comedy, — not even in the free way in which Shake- speare imitates the "Mensechmi," or the autlior of "The Birth of Hercules " the " Amphitruo." ' Rather, he has evolved an entirely independent English comedy in classic style. He lias udopled consistently the ancient rules of act and scene division, and he has tried throughout to build up his play in harmony with the classical and scholarly conception of the nature of com- edy, seeking anuisement rather in the display of clever urbane wit and the baiting of fools and dupes than in farcical accident or rustic clownage. But in the work- ing out of this design, Udall shows nearly as much of the j)ractical playwright as of the theoretical innovator. His classical type-figures — the vain-glorious fool, the self-seeking busy-body, the desirable widow — absorbed from the native conventions of the interlude and from the ordinary life of the day qualities which differen- tiate them wholly from the characters of Plautus. As the dramatic crises approach, moreover, the poet yields to the savage native demand for a ruder species of excitement than mere words and irony can produce. Ignoring classic j)roprieties, he subjects his braggart Roister to the same rough handling which the braggart * See the very valuable edition of The Birth of Hercules (MS. ca. 1610) prepared by M. W. Wallace, 1903. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 161 Walkyn of the Digby play * had received, and which formed the main comic resort of many an interlude. For an illustration of the difference between the real classic drama, even in its Plautine crudity, and Udall's fortunately semi-barbarized adaptation, one has only to compare the humiliation of I*yr}^oi)olinices ("Miles (iloriosus," V, i) with that of Roister. Much injury may be done to historical perspective by emphasiziug the indubitable classic tone of "Ralph Roister Doistcr" to the entire disregard of the play's legitimate connection with earlier English drama. Udall was, in resi)ect of one side of his varied genius, a direct continuator of the work of Hey wood ; and it is the special distinction of his play, not simf)ly that it embodies the careful art form and intellectual intrigue of Latin comedy, but that it establishes them as necessary constituents of the most advan(;ed and characteristic native drama. Sev- eral of the English types represented first in this com- edy play prominent parts on the later stage, one of the most vivid being the toothless old nurse, Marjorie Mumblecrust, much given to chattering and quarrel- ling, who will not stick for a kiss with such a gay gen- tleman as Roister Doister, but comes anon at the first offer of the salutation. Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and Marlowe's "Dido" add few new touches to this figure. A very interesting contrast is afforded by the com- parison of "Roister Doister" with the comedy which it is usual to regard as its most immediate successor. " Gammer Gurton's Needle" was published in 1575 as played " not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cam- bridge," and written by a "Mr. S. Mr. of Art." The » Cf. p. ^l. 162 THE TUDOR DRAMA author has been variously identified as Dr. John Bridges, Dr. John Still, and latterly, with great show of probability, as William Stevenson.^ If the last ascrip- tion is correct, the comedy can be referred pretty cer- tainly to the year 1559-1560, under which date the college records of Christ's note the expenditure of 5s. at the acting of "Mr. Stevenson's plaie." In any case the work probably antedates July 22, 1563, when Th. Colwell, the future publisher, registered what appears to be the same play under the title of "Dyccon of Bedlam." It is a striking circumstance that, whereas the peru- sal of "Roister Doister" impresses the student above all else with a sense of that play's classical restraint and careful attention to foreign rules of structure, the reader of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" feels predomi- nantly the native, "romantic" features of the work. This difference of impression is important because it results almost wholly from a change of "atmosphere," and not from any essential variation in the dramatic method or the comic materials employed by the two authors. "Gammer Gurton's Needle" follows the Latin rules of form not a whit less closely than " Roister Doister." Both plays exemplify with equal care the well-articulated five-act division, the ancient practice of beginning a new scene with the arrival of each new figure,^ the ordinary Roman fixed locale representing a street before several houses, and the limitation of the time of action to a single day. On the other hand, it cannot be held that the figures of "Roister Doister," vaguely reminiscent as they continually are of Latin * See H. Bradley in Gayley's Repr. Engl. Comedies, 197 flF. * A few exceptions to this rule occur in both plays. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 163 comedy, are in any appreciable measure less true to the real life of London than are those of "Gammer Gur- ton" to the English village society which that comedy portrays. The difference between the plays arises from a subtler cause. It shows how the various classic im- portations, which in the earlier work betray their for- eign origin and give to "Roister Doister," in spite of its really English plot, a rather stiff and unfamiliar movement, have been so thoroughly assimilated in "Gammer Gurton" that the reader nowhere feels them to be exotics. That twenty years — probably only ten — could show so great a progress is one of the special mysteries of Elizabethan dramatic transmu- tation. "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is on every true analysis a native English play, though its author has learned abroad the whole of his technique. In deal- ing with works of this sort we have to do not with for- eign, but with naturalized influences. Several of the characters in "Gammer Gurton's Needle" deserve closer study than can be asked for many of their predecessors in English comedy. The curate. Doctor Rat, .shows one of the most popular of the old literary types, the vicious priest, in the very process of metamorphosis into his equally popular post-reformation substitute, the knavish but jovial parson, who appears, for instance, in "Misogonus," "Sir John Oldcastle," and "The Merry Devil of Edmonton." In the central figure of the piece, Diccon the Bedlam, a merry-spirited village lago, laying plot upon plot with no other purpose than the gratification of his own super-subtle imagination, English drama received the very finest comic creation which it had yet to show. 164 THE TUDOR DRAMA In 1566, the students of Gray's Inn gave a new turn to theatrical development by acting a translation of Ariosto's Italian comedy, "Gli Suppositi" (The Sub- stitutions), executed by one of their own number, George Gascoigne, and inaccurately entitled "The Supposes." Ariosto's play, first produced at Ferrara in 1509, was the direct result of a strong revival of interest in Latin drama, which since 1486 had manifested itself throughout northern Italy in most elaborate perform- ances of Plautine and Terentian comedies. The "Sup- positi" occupies much the same relation to Plautus in point of originality as does "Ralph Roister Doister." Most of the incidents and stock types are suggestive of the "Captivi" or other plays, while the actual working out of details, both of plot and character, is the author's own. But whereas the English comic tradition, upon which the writers of "Roister Doister" and "Gammer Gurton's Needle" rely for their individual touches, was hardly able to raise the product above the level of farce, Ariosto has overlaid his borrowed framework with an intricate romantic love story. The characters bear for the most part Italian names, and the scene is frankly laid in Ferrara, the city of presentation . It is true that the chief figures in this play, as in "Roister Doister," belong in general to the ancient types: the garrulous nurse, the aged lover, the parasite, the schem- ing servant, the old father. But these have become thoroughly Italianate, and they possess all the sensual vividness which made the literature of the Italian renaissance so objectionable to moralists like Ascham, and so irresistibly seductive to English lovers of romance. "The Supposes" inaugurates the taste for Italian character and plot so notably exemplified in CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 165 Shakespeare and all his great contemporaries. In many of the later instances, to be sure, this taste is inspired by mere convention and affectation, but it arose because in Gascoigne's time Italian influence was able to give the drama a romantic charm and plot interest, attain- able neither from the development of native tendencies, nor from direct imitation of the Latin masters. In "Misogonus" Italian example seems responsible for the existence of another early English comedy. This interesting work is extant in a damaged manu- script, signed on the first page: "Laurentius Bariona, Kettering, 1577." The names of Th. Richardes and Thomas Warde, of whom nothing further is definitely known, are appended to the Prologue, with precisely what significance is not clear. Recent proof amounting almost to certainty explains the Laurentius Bariona (i. e., Bar-jona) of this piece and of a " Cometographia," dated likewise at Kettering a few months later, as a punning Hebraism for Lawrence Johnson, who pro- ceeded M. A. of Christ's College, Cambridge in 1577.^ It has been customary, on the strength of a single allu- sion of no great importance, to refer the composition of "Misogonus" to the year 1560, and to regard L. Bari- ona as the mere transcriber; but we now possess evidence of at least equal weight, thanks to the acute inferences of Professor Kittredge, for believing Bariona- Johnson the original author. It is interesting to think of "Misogonus " as an aca- demic piece, produced after the lapse of fifteen years by the same Cambridge Society (Christ's) before which "Gammer Gurton's Needle" had been performed. At all events, comparison of the two plays proves a con- * See G. L. Kittredge, Journal of Germanic Philology, iii, 335. 166 THE TUDOR DRAMA siderable expansion in the range of comedy. On the one hand, " Misogonus " represents a return to the prodigal son theme common to many of the later inter- ludes, such as "Nice Wanton," "The Disobedient Child," and "The Glass of Government." Many scenes of crude realism, like that in which the improvi- dent son riots in the tavern with Sir John the Priest and the meretrix Melissa, belong to the same genre as the whole of "Gammer Gurton." But to enrich these themes, recourse has been had to Italy and romance. The nominal scene of the action is Laurentum, though in accordance with invariable Elizabethan practice characters and setting have been completely Angli- cized. None of the suggestions so far hazarded con- cerning the specific source of the Italian plot is at all convincing, but it seems safe to assume that it was not in any great degree the invention of the English author. The story is a kind of converse of the famous Griseldis legend, which Petrarch and Boccaccio made illustrious, and which Chaucer's "Clerkes Tale" introduced to a lasting English vogue. The husband of Griseldis de- prives her successively of their two infant children, whom, under pretence of causing to be slain, he sends to Bologna to be brought up by a female relative (his sis- ter in Chaucer and Petrarch), whence he later restores them unexpectedly to the patient mother. In "Mis- ogonus," it is the wife, who, upon giving birth to twin sons, despatches the elder secretly to her brother at Apollonia (or Polonia; i. e., Bologna ?). There the boy, Eugonus, grows to manhood unknown, and is at last restored near the end of the piece in order to comfort his parent and punish the insolence of his vicious younger brother (Misogonus), the prodigal of the play. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 167 "Misogonus" is a work of too mixed a nature to af- ford easy reading; but the individual scenes have con- siderable power, and the play marks a distinct step onward in dramatic progress. The realistic tavern scenes; the portrayal of the misguided "filius domesti- cus"; and the characters of Cacurgus, the intriguing "Will Summer," — half clown, half parasite, — of the various servants of Misogonus and his father, of Me- lissa, and Sir John; the good rustic figures of Codrus the farmer and his wife Alison, Isbell Busbey, and Madge Caro, belong all to the type of native farce remodelled on classical lines of which "Roister Doister" is the most correct and "Gammer Gurton's Needle" prob- ably the most successful example. The author of " Mis- ogonus" has, however, strained his play to include a third element of dramatic interest which the taste of his time was beginning to demand. Besides the realis- tic portrayal of common life which was indigenous on the English stage, and the structural method which came from Rome, he has recognized the need of a graceful human story, and he appears to have bor- rowed the main thread of his plot from Italian romance. If the reader must admit that these elements are by no means perfectly blended, it is none the less inevitable that he perceive the vigor of each and realize that each has found its place in answer to a real dramatic want. Barring individual genius and" the assimilative force of twenty years of theatrical practice, "Miso- gonus" exemplifies every element of plot and every rule of structure which goes to make up such a play as "The Taming of the Shrew." The anonymous play of "The Bugbears" shows Italian influence exerted upon the Latin-English type 168 THE TUDOR DRAMA of comedy in a manner neither so immediate as in Gas- coigne's confessed translation, nor so casual as in " Bar- iona's" grafting of a possibly non-dramatic romantic plot upon a stock of native farce. "The Bugbears" is based primarily, and in parts very closely, upon "La Spiritata" of Ant. Francesco Grazzini (d. 1583), but its dependence is by no means slavish. Besides altering the names of his characters, the author of the English play has changed the comic fable, and has enriched his work by importation both from other Italian comedies such as "Gr Ingannati " and the "Suppositi, " and also it would appear, directly from Terence's "Andria." Compared with "Misogonus," this comedy recom- mends itself by its unified and well-managed plot; compared with "The Supposes," it shows a freedom in selection and variation of borrowed material, which forbids us to regard it as a pure exotic. Historically, it is probably less important than either of these pieces. Since its main source, "La Spiritata," is supposed to have been first printed in 1561, it is unlikely that it will be able to displace "The Supposes" from its position as the first English adaptation of Italian comedy. Nor, on the other hand, does it manifest the juxtaposition of native and foreign elements, which renders "Mis- ogonus" so interesting a document in Elizabethan stage history. Intrinsically, however, "The Bugbears,'* which treats the popular Roman theme of the outwit- ting of aged greed by youthful love, is certainly one of the most successful products of Italian adaptation. Less purely imitative than "The Supposes," and less awkwardly transitional than "Misogonus," it is per- haps the first finished English comedy of its species. In its principal device of tlie mock conjurer it is the CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 169 forerunner of a whole group of Jacobean plays, SHch as "The Puritan," "The Alchemist," and "Albumazar," "Fedele and Fortunio," or as the head-title of the extant edition has it, "The pleasaunt and fine con- ceited Cornoedie of two Italian Gentlemen, with the merie deuises of Captaine Crack-stone," is a free adap- tation of "II Fedele" by Luigi Pasqualigo(1575), and was entered on the Stationers' Register, November 12, 1584. This play, which Collier ascribed to Anthony Munday * on the strength of a dedication signed "A.M.," seems to have been very commonly known in its day, and it makes fair reading still. The artificial compli- cation of love-plots, the clever trifling with the arts of incantation and the stock figures of braggart and pedant hold the interest; while the play possesses two adventitious claims to attention by reason of its em- ployment of the same trick through which Don John deceives Claudio in "Much Ado About Nothing," and by its neat illustration of the possibilities of the Eliza- bethan upper, or balcony, stage in connection with the fixed Roman street scene. John Lyly is the first dominating personality that confronts the historian of the English drama. His con- nection with the London stage, inaugurated about the year 1580, and rapidly followed by the appearance of other noteworthy figures, begins a new era, and necessi- tates on the part of the critic a new estimate of the re- lation between the individual dramatist and the dra- matic type. Hitherto, the playwrights of two centuries, figures often nameless and generally obscure, present ^ Chapman has a better claim. See Malone Soc. " Collections," I, 221 ff. 170 THE TUDOR DRAMA themselves to tlie student normally and properly as exponents of one strain or another in theatric evolu- tion. Henceforth, it is rather the play, in tlie most conspicuous and important cases, which becomes sub- sidiary to the reflection of the personality and char- acter of the poet. Thus judicial interest in the dra- matic species gives place ordinarily to appreciation of the individual dramatist. Yet it is by no means wise at this point to disregard the old threads of influence; for if it be true that they grow tangled by the caprice of personal genius, it is none the less certain that these same threads can still be traced through all the pro- cesses of the loom, and tJiat they determine by their presence or absence the color and texture of the result- ant fabric. The eight accepted plays of Lj'ly manifest no less certainly, though in far subtler fashion than the sim- pler works with which we have been dealing, the Latin influence upon English comedy. When Lj'ly wrote, the courtly drama with which he allied himself had already assimilated the technical lessons derived from the prac- tice of Plautus and Terence. Scene and act division, stock types like the parasite, the amiably knavish "boy" or servant, and the greedy parent were estab- lished institutions on the fashionable stage; and Te- rentian imitation was become conventional, if not spon- taneous. "Mother Bombie," one of the latest of Lyly's comedies {ca. 1590), is a remarkably successful adaptation of the Roman comic type to an English setting. The four old men, mutually decei\'ing and deceived; the three pairs of lovers taught by the pages to outwit their elders; and the motive of infant substitution, are all antique borrowings adjusted to CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 171 the environment of Rochester, and vitalized by a genu- inely English humor. This play depends, like its Ro- man predecessors, entirely upon the involved intrigue and the wit of the dialogue; and it indicates the establishment of a type of comedy modelled on classic lines, which, though far from being adequately expres- sive of the Elizabethan dramatic spirit, yet maintained itself to the end of the period. In the other comedies of Lyly, an entirely new re- lation to classical sources betrays itself, — a relation analogous to that manifested in the Roman trage- dies of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. English classic drama here emerges from its period of conscious pupil- ship. At this epoch the lessons derived from the Latin playwrights had been so thoroughly mastered as to ap- pear almost indigenous; and dramatists who, like Lyly, give a general adhesion to classic rules of structure, and ring the changes on such popular types as the cunning witty servant or the pompous braggart, were probablj^ no longer seriously mindful of their debt. Lyly's con- fessed obligation to Roman literature is, indeed, more a matter of content than of form. Coming up to Lon- don about 1578 with the prestige of an Oxford M. A. received some three years earlier, Lyly embarked upon a courtier's career under the influential patronage of Burghley and Burghley's son-in-law, the Earl of Ox- ford. Successively, he achieved social fame as an in- novator in the two departments of fashionable fiction and fashionable drama, distinguishing himself in both by the freshness of his method and his extraordinary tact in apprehending and fixing the momentary taste of society. In "Euphues" (1578, 1580), he gave form and an undeserved degree of permanence to the pre- 172 THE TUDOR DRAMA vailing aspiration after an elaborate artificial prose, rich in figure and conceit; and the success of euphuism furnished him with the most valuable of his resources when, soon after the appearance of his novel, he com- menced dramatist. The employment of prose in com- edy, purely casual in Gascoigne's translation of the "Suppositi," was in Lyly a deliberate effort at utilizing a special asset of the writer, — his popular euphuistic style. Lyly soon found himself in a position closely resem- bling that which John Heywood had occupied two gen- erations earlier, — commissioned, that is, to offer plays for presentation before noble audiences by the boys' companies of Paul's and the Queen's Chapel. Under these circumstances he appears to have labored for the attainment of two principal aims : novelty and ephem- eral appropriateness. As a professed scholar, catering to a public whose penchant was scholarism, it was nearly inevitable that he should turn to the classics for his inspiration. From the Latin comic poets, however, he could gain little of what he particularly sought. Plautus and Terence had been already laid under con- tribution, as we have seen. The best they had to offer in the way of form and plot had become far too familiar for the ambitious innovator, whose business it was to create a well-bred sensation. In "Mother Bombie" alone, which dates probably as late as 1589 or 1590, was Lyly content to stick to dramatic precedent and turn out a correct and not unconventional comedy after the Terentian model. His other plays are marked by a striving for the unique and graceful at whatever cost to the plot; and the qualities which he required he discovered most abundantly among the non-dramatic CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 173 classics. In ancient tradition and history, as related by writers familiar to the Elizabethans, such as Pliny, Hyginus, iElian, and, above all, Ovid, Lyly had at hand a w^lth of material, which, in addition to its unfading daintiness, its comparative novelty on the English stage and its tremendous vogue elsewhere, pos- sessed the transcendent advantage that classic my- thology was in his day the universally understood lan- guage of courtly allegory and adulation. In "Campaspe," which was probably his first play, Lyly was content with the simple dramatization of an incident in the life of Alexander the Great, derived, as Mr. Bond has shown, from a chance anecdote in Pliny's Natural History (Bk. 35, ch. x), and from Plutarch's Life of Alexander, published very shortly before in North's translation (1579).^ For the deepening of the faint picture of ancient Athens thus secured, the poet very artlessly introduces the philosopher Diogenes, dragged periodically upon the stage in his tub to insult the world-conqueror or abuse his fellow citizens. A third independent element in this technically crude piece is constituted by the three humorous servants, Granichus, Manes, and Psyllus, who are borrowed from the current Terentian comedy of the day. Fundamentally, then, the important classical influ- ence in " Campaspe" is the fruit rather of the quest for novelty than of artistic conviction. Lyly's attitude to his sources is here more nearly that of Pikering, author of the transitional medley "Horestes," than that of Udall's critical school. Keenly desirous of fresh sub- jects, but lacking any special dramatic theory, Pikering and Lyly both turned naturally to the great magnet of ^ See Lyly, ed. Bond, ii, 306 fiF. 174 THE TUDOR DRAMA renaissance study, the ancient literatures, and took thence what was their most obvious superficial need, — an interesting fable. This fable each developed some- what roughly and without great evidence of individual dramatic initiative, after the fashion of his day. The difference between the two plays is no false measure of the progress achieved by English drama under classic guidance between the years 1560 and 1580. Pikering writes in a variety of rime forms without definite act or scene division, and he depends for comic relief upon passages of rustic buffoonery derived from the morality convention. Lyly , following the fashion of the moment in the case of " Campaspe " with equal docility, divides his play into acts and scenes as a matter of course, though he shows himself ignorant of the technical ad- vantages of this structure; and for the desired comic padding of his romantic drama, he resorts as natu- rally to the popular Latin theme of servant trickery as had Pikering to the old native clownage. Instead of the rough verse of "Horestes," Lyly substitutes prose of a highly euphuistic tone; and this, the only techni- cal feature of "Campaspe" which can at all be termed original, is patently the result, not of critical dramatic theory, but of the author's successful practice in an- other branch of literature. The six plays most representative of Lyiy's indi- vidual dramatic method fall naturally into two groups. Three of them — "Sapho and Phao" (1582 ?), "Endi- mion" (1586 ?), and "Midas" (1589 ?) — derive their plots from Latin mythology, and are obviously allegori- cal in nature. The other three — " Gallathea " (1584 ?), "Love's Metamorphosis" (1588-1589), and "The Woman in the Moon" (1591?) — though full of classic CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 175 reminiscence, have in the main original pastoral plots, and if at all symbolic, are not predominantly or con- tinuously so. In these six dramas, Lyly shows a genius as fresh and at the same time as fantastic as that which he had earlier displayed in the prose innovations of "Euphues ": and he illustrates a new phase in the rela- tion between the English stage and the ancients. In a sense Lyly may be said to have entirely reversed the procedure of the early sponsors of classic influence. The mission of Udall and his fellows had been to bring the structure of English drama into conformity with Latin rule. Lyly takes upon himself the bolder task of forcing Latin story into harmony with native taste and contemporary interest; and his plays, therefore, while ■ evidencing everywhere the domestication of the formal lessons of Latin dramaturgy, show further that the period of close discipleship to Rome had passed, and \ that the English stage was now quite capable of aggres- sive assertion of its peculiar interests. The general interpretation of two of Lyly's allegori- cal comedies is hardly subject to doubt, and has not yet been questioned by any sane critic. " Sapho and Phao " is very obviously a flattering allusion to the matri- monial fiasco between Elizabeth and the Due d'Alen- gon, which, after dragging through a number of years, ended suddenly in nothing on February 6, 1582, — about a month, it seems, before the play was presented. Even more unmistakably " Midas " is a personal satire directed against the folly, rapacity, and cruelty of Philip II of Spain, and prompted by the general tri- umph over the debacle of the Armada in 1588. It is unfortunate, but not unnatural, that the under- standing of "Endimion," the most intricate and pi- 176 THE TUDOR DRAMA quant of these allegorical plays, is at present obstructed by the existence of four rival interpretations, which are mutually contradictory, and which seem to me all super-subtle. In order to walk straight through the maze of conjecture and parti-pris, which thus besets the student of this comedy, it is necessary to keep in mind the reasonable limitations and the probable pur- poses of courtly allegory, Lyly's procedure in " Sapho and Phao" and in "Midas" certainly bears out inher- ent likelihood in indicating that the deliberate symbol- ism does not extend beyond a few of the most conspic- uous figures ; and that these figures, together with the occurrences among which they move, have a courtly and personal, rather than political, significance. The poet's desire, one would imagine, must certainly have been to deal with/a{/5 accomplis in such a manner as to flatter the person of principal importance — that is, the Queen — rather than to venture upon the hazard- ous course of upholding any particular court faction in a controversy still unsettled. Altogether, it seems clear that the story of the play, instead of reflecting in detail the real incidents of contemporary history, is rather a tissue of harmlessly imaginary pictures shot through with idealized references to such actual happenings as the poet might feel to be wholly devoid of offence to his royal auditress. The natural interpretation of the comedy, and the only one so far suggested which seems to rest on sane and logical premises, is that it delicately adumbrates the relations between the Queen and Leicester, representing Elizabeth, of course, in Cynthia, the Earl in Endimion. Leicester's third wife, Lettice, Countess of Essex, seems to be portrayed in Tellus; and possibly Lyly's patron Burghley in Eumenides, the CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 177 faithful servant and adviser of Cynthia, who repri- mands the aspiring Endimion, and afterward by his generosity makes possible the latter's reconciliation with Cynthia. In the years just before and after 1579, this affair had been very acute; but in 1585-1586, when "Endimion" seems to have been written, the crisis was apparently well past. Leicester had ostensibly ab- jured his exorbitant ambition for the Queen's personal favor, Elizabeth's anger at his secret marriage had cooled, and the earl was at the moment engaged in military service in the Low Countries.^ There seems, then, good cause to regard " Endimion " as a loose, but infinitely tactful and graceful sketch of the relations of Elizabeth and Leicester previous to 1585. Leicester's presumptuous pursuit of the celestial beauty, and his juggling between Tellus and Cynthia, are punished by that mistrust on the part of the sov- ereign which actually existed strongly for several years after 1579, and to which the play repeatedly alludes. The consequences are represented in the sleep into which Endimion falls, thus losing the youthful beauty naturally belonging to him as Elizabeth's avowed lover and lying dead (i. e., disgraced at court), — till his over- weening arrogance has been chastened, when the mag- nanimity of Eumenides and the lofty compassion of Cynthia restore him to purely political and impersonal favor. Meantime, Cynthia is, of course, presented — as the Queen would demand to appear, and as Shake- speare also paints her — as continuing through the play "in maiden meditation fancy-free, " entirely una- ^ A more detailed exposition of the interpretation here indicated will be found in a paper on "The Allegory in Lyly's Endimion," Modern Language Notes, Jan., 1911. 178 THE TUDOR DRAMA ware of the overwhelming adoration which she has inspired in sublunary breasts. Beside this fanciful and allegorical matter, which owes only the vaguest debt to classic literature, Lyly interweaves in each of the three plays under discussion purely farcical Plautine scenes of dupery and servant wit, such as he had already attempted in " Campaspe " ; and he succeeds better than one would expect in blend- ing the unhke strains. In "Sapho and Phao," the underplot is slightest and least suggestive of Latin comedy. Indeed, the scenes which portray Trachinus the courtier and the scholar Pandion, with their pages, Criticus and Molus, are rather unsuccessful original efforts in the "Euphues" vein than importations from Rome. But in the other allegories the Plautine influ- ence is clear and increasingly strong. In "Endimion" it makes up about a third of the play, in "Midas" nearly a full half. It has perhaps not been sufficiently noted that Lyly was setting an example for Shake- speare in thus mingling the impalpably imaginary with the most opaque realism. The Sir Tophas - Epiton- Bagoa scenes in "Endimion" were certainly imitated in the Armado-Moth-Jaquenetta matter of "Love's Labour 's Lost," and Shakespeare's bringing together of Titania and Bottom in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" is only that young poet's direct development of Lyly's practice. Lyly's three pastoral plays differ radically among themselves, and are likely to impress the reader as cas- ual, tentative productions, defective like "Campaspe" in conscious dramatic purpose, and lacking the deft- ness of execution which the author developed in his handling of court allegory. The most attractive of CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 179 the three is the earliest, "Gallathea," with its rather pleasing picture of an imaginary pastoral Lincolnshire, tenanted by pagan deities, nymphs, and sea-monsters. The absurd plot leads to an utterly absurd conclusion, but the atmosphere of the piece is delicately alluring. The similarity of at least one of the love scenes be- tween the maidens Gallathea and Phillida, disguised as boys (IV, iv), and those between Orlando and the false Ganimede shows that this play also formed part of the dramatic equipment of Shakespeare. "Love's Metamorphosis " offers a dramatic version of the eighth book of Ovid, combined with a slight and purely fanci- ful story of nymphs and foresters. " The Woman in the Moon," the only one of Lyly's accepted plays written in verse, has no underplot, and is further remarkable as a portrayal in very large part of the frailties of women, — in noteworthy contrast to the author's usual cringing attitude to the other sex. The mock mytho- logy upon which this play depends is rather poor stuff, and the picture of the woes of the four Arcadian shep- herds and the clownish servant Gunophilus at the hands of the beautiful vixen Pandora, though animated, has none of the stately charm and delicacy of Lyly's more characteristic method. It was only in his three allegorical comedies that Lyly effected a great advance in the relation of English drama to classic literature. In the case of the pastoral plays just named, he appears to have been groping somewhat darkly in a region where other poets were already moving with considerable freedom. Masque- like productions, such as Gascoigne's show of Zabeta, prepared among the "princely pleasures" at Kenil- worth in 1575, Churchyard's "Entertainment in Suf- 180 THE TUDOR DRAMA folk and Norfolk" (1578), and Sidney's "Lady of May" of the latter year, show how blended figures from Utopian shepherd life and from orthodox or in- vented mythology were being extensively exploited on the fashionable amateur stage. Furthermore, the type of mythological pastoral, to which Shakespeare offered partial homage in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," had attained full development at a period level with Lyly's earliest dramatic efforts in the charming work of a sweeter and truer poet than Lyly, — in George Peele's "Arraignment of Paris" (1581?). This delight- ful dramatic idyl illustrates equally with the plays of Lyly the tendency of the Elizabethan stage to turn from the cold realism of the classic comedy to the more romantic narrative poets. The preponderating Latin influence upon Lyly is everywhere Ovid. In the case of Peele, it is Vergil. The shepherds of "The Arraign- ment of Paris," moreover, have names and charac- ters borrowed from Spenser's "Shepherds' Calendar" (1579), and Spenser's debt, like Peele's, goes back to the Mantuan poet, partly direct, partly through the medium of Clement Marot and the other French Ver- gilians of the "Pleiade." A yet more advanced position is held by "The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune," published in 1589, and announced as "Plaide before the Queenes most ex- cellent Maiestie." This work introduces the gods and goddesses of Greek belief merely as a kind of chorus and explanation to a pretty story of thwarted princely lovers, who wander from court to forest and back again, finally receiving their happiness by special arrangement between Jupiter, Fortune, and Venus. As regards the human figures, " The Rare Triumphs " is almost pure CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 181 romantic drama, owing its effects to the sometimes amusing, sometimes startling actions of the disguised benevolent hermit, and to the triangle of passion which evolves itself between the heroine, her lover, and her brother. Only in the figure of the mischief-making parasite, Penulo, and in the Olympian framework does there remain any trace of the classic note which had been so dominant in earlier attempts to catch the fancy of the Queen. And so one finds on retrospect that the influence of classical literature upon the English comic stage, which had begun to manifest itself slightly before the accession of Elizabeth as a mechanical agent in the establish- ment of principles of structure and the dissemination of a fashion for Plautine realism, was by 1590 showing itself mainly in works of pure fancy. The contrast is only one manifestation of the general deepening of the romantic cast of drama, which made itself everywhere felt during the great decade of Elizabethan comedy (1590-1600), — not only in the court plays we have treated, but in the more catholic "romantic comedies" of Greene and Shakespeare. Viewed in connection with the sudden revulsion to realism after 1600, this brief reign of imaginative ideality in the fin de siecle comedy becomes one of the most conspicuous and significant indications of the spirit of the epoch. BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL COMMENTARY Collins, J. C. : The Predecessors of Shakespeare in Essays and Studies, 1895. Cunliffe, J. W. : The Influence of Italian on Early Elizabethan 182 THE TUDOR DRAMA Drama, Mod. Phil., iv, 597-604, 1907. Italian Prototypes of the Masque and Dumb Show, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass., xxii (1907), 140. Gayley, C. M. : An Historical View of the Beginnings of Eng- lish Comedy, in Representative English Comedies, 1903. Graf, H. : Der Miles Gloriosus im englisclien Drama bis zur Zeit des Biirgerkrieges, Schwerin, 1891. Koeppel, E. : Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen No- velle in der englisclien Litteratur des ICten Jahrhuuderts, 1892. Reinhardstoettner, K. v. : "Plautus und Terenz und ihr Ein- Huss anf die spiiteren Litteraturen," in Plautus, 1886. Schucking, L. L. : Studien iiber die stoiHichen Beziehungen der englischen Komudie zur italienischen bis Lilly, Ilalle a. S., 1901. Smith, Wiuifred : Italian and Elizabethan Comedy, Mod. PMl.f V (1908), 555-567. TUDOR TRANSLATIONS OF PLAUTUS AND TERENCE Terence. Andria : Terens in englysh. ..." The translacyon out of Latin into englysh of the furst comedy of tyrens callyd Andria," n. d. (1520 ?) (Latin and English.) — The Jirst Co- moedie of Terence, in English. " A furtherance for the attain- ment vnto the right knowledge, & true proprietie, of the Latin Toug. . . . Carefully translated out of Latin, by Maurice Kyf- fiu," 1588. Flourea for Latine speakyng, selected and gathered out of Ter- ence, and the same translated into englyshe . . . Compiled by Nicholas Udall. 1st ed. ca. 1533. Newly corrected and im- printed, 1560. Enlarged editions, 1575, 1581. Terence in English. Fabulw comici . . . Terentii omnes Angli- cce facta' (by Richard Bernard), 1598. Five other editions be- fore 1643. Contains translations of Adelphi, Andria, Eunuchus, Heautontimoroumenos, Hecyra, Phormio. Plautus : Menaecmi. A pleasant and fine Conceited Comadie, taken out of the most excellent wittie Poet Plautus. . . . Written in English by W. IF(arner), 1595. Reprinted, J. Nichols, Six Old Plays, I, 1779 ; Ilazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, v, 1875. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 183 I. Comedies showino the Direct Influence of Plautus AND Terence Jack Juggler: " A new P^nterlude for Cliyldren to playe named lacke lugeler . . . Newly Iinprented," W. Copland, n. d. Facsimile, E. W. Ashbee, 1870, and J. W. Farmer. Re- printed, J. Haslewood, Two Interludes, 1820 ; F. J. Child, Four Old Playx, 1848; A. B. Grosart, Misc. Fuller Worthies Li- brary, vol. iv, 1873; llazlitt, Dodsley, ii, 1874 ; J. S. Farmer, Anonymous Plays, Series iii, 1906; W. II. Williams, Materi- alien (in preparation). Udall, Nicholas: Ralph Roister Doister. Licensed to Thomas Hacket, 1566/7. Copy lacking title-page, in Eton College Li- brary. Reprinted, T. Briggs, 1818 ; F. Marshall, 1821 ; T. White, Old English Drama, vol. i, 1830 ; W. D. Cooper, Shakespeare Society, 1847 (with Gorhoduc); E. Arber, English Reprints, 1809 ; llazlitt, Dndsley, iii, 1874 ; J. M. Manly, Specimens, ii, 1897; W. H. Williams and P. A. Robins, Temple Dramatists, 1901; J. S. Farmer, two uncritical reprints, 1906 and 1907; E. Fliigel, in Gayley's Representative English Comedies, 1903. Discussion : E. Fliigel, " Nicholas Udall's Dialogues and Inter- ludes," Furnivall Miscellany, xiii, pp. 81 ff, 1901; J. W. Hales, " The Date of the First English Comedy," Engl. Stud., xviii, 408-421, 1893 ; D. L. Maulsby, "The relation between Udall'a ' Roister Doister * and the Comedies of Plautus and Terence," Engl. Stud., xxxviii (1907), 251 ff; M. Walter, " P.eitrage zu Ralph Roister Doister," Engl. Stud., v (1882), 07-84 ; W. H. Williams, " Ralph Roister Doister," Engl. Stud., xxxvi (1906), 179-186. Stevenson, William ? : Gammer Gurton'a Needle. " A Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt and merie Comedie : Intytuled Gam- mer gurtons Nedle : Played on Stage, not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. Made by Mr. S. Mr. of Art," Th. Col well, 1575. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer, 1910. Re- printed 1661 ; T. Plawkins, Origin of the English Drama, 1773 ; Dodsley, all edd. ; The Ancient British Drama, 1810, vol. i ; J. M. Manly, Specimens, ii, 1897 ; II. Bradley in Representative English Comedies, 1903. J. S. Farmer, Anonymous Plays, 3d Series, 1906. Discussion: C. M. Ross, Anglia, xix (1896), 297, " The Authorship of Gammer Gurton's Needle." 184 THE TUDOR DRAIMA The Birth of Hercules. Free translation fi-om Amphitruo. MS., Brit. Mus. PrinU'd, M. VV. Wallace, 1903. Shakespeare, William : The Comedy of Errors. First printed in the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. To the same class belong also the following later plays : — Heywood, Thomas : The Captives, or the Lost Recov- ered. MS. Printed, A. H. Bullen, Old Plays, vol. iv, 1885. JoNSON, Benjamin : The Alchemist. Acted 1610, printed 1612. Included in the 1616 Jonsou Folio, and in the later col- lected editions. II. Plats showing the Influence of Italian Adaptations OF Classical Comedy Gascoigne, George : Collected Works, including The Sup- poses: " A hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie," printed for R. Smith, n. d. ; "The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire," 1575 ; " The pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne Esquyre : Newly conipyled into one Vol- ume," 1587; "The Complete Poems of George Gascoigne," 2 vols., 1869 ; J. W. Cunliffe, The Works of George Gas- coigne, vol. i, 1907. General Commentary : F. E. Schelling, " The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne," 1893 ; " Three Unique Elizabethan Dramas," Mod. Lang. Notes, May, 1892. The Supposes. Reprinted, T. Hawkins, Origin of the English Drama, vol. iii, 1773 ; J. W. Cunliffe, Belles Lettres Series, 1906 (with Joca-tta); R. W. Bond, 1911. Misogonus. MS., dated 1577, in Devonshire Collection. Printed, A. Brandl, Quellen, 1898 ; J. S. Farmer, Six Anony- mous Plays, 2d Series, 1906 ; R. W. Bond, 1911. Discu.mon : G. L. Kittredge, "The Misogonus and Laurence Johnson," Journal Germ. Phil., iii, 335-337. The Bugbears. MS. in Brit. Mus. (Lansdowne, 807). Printed, C. Grabau, Herrig's Archiv, 98, 99 (1897); R. W. Bond, 1911. The Two Italian Gentlemen. Reprinted, F. Fliigge, Herrig's Archiv, cxxiii (1909), Malone Society, 1910. The Taming of a Shrew. "A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called the Taming of a Shrew." Printed by P. Short for C. Burbie, 1594. Facsimiles by E. W. Ashbee, 1876 ; C. Prseto- rius, 1886. Reprinted 1596 ; 1607 ; T. Amyot, Shakespeare CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 185 Society^ 1844 ; W. C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, vol. vi, 1875 ; F. S. Boas, Shakespeare Classics, 1908. The Taming of the Shrew. First printed in the 1623 Shake- speare Folio. Piiblislied separately, " A wittie and pleasant comedie called The Taming of the Shrew . . ." W. S. for John Smethwicke, 1631. Discussion: E. H. Schomberg, "The Taming of the Shrew. Eine Studie zu Shaksperes Kunst," Studien zur engl. Philologie, xx, 1904 ; A. H. Tolraan, " Shake- speare's Part in the Taming of the Shrew," Puhl. Mod. Lang. Ass., V, 1890; "The Origin of Induction to Taming of the Shrew," Shakespeare Society Papers, vol. ii. in. Plays showing Characteristic National Adaptations OF THE Principles op Classic Comedy Lyly, John : Collected editions of his plays : E. Blount, " Sixe Court Comedies. Often Presented and Acted before Queene Elizabeth, by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell, and the Children of Paules. Written By . . . lohn Lilly, Master of Arts," 1632 (includes Endimion, Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, Galalhea, Mydas, Mother Bomhie) ; F. W. Fairholt, Dra- matic Works, 2 vols., 1858; R. W. Bond, "The Complete Works of John Lyly," 3 vols., 1902. General Criticism: W. Bang and H. de Vocht, " John Lyly und Erasmus," in Englische Studien, xxxvi, 1906, 386-389 ; Bond, R. W., "John Lyly: Novelist and Dramatist," Quarterly Review, Jan., 1896; Bond, " Lyly's Doubtful Poems," Athenceum, May 9, 1903 ; A. Feuillerat, " John Lyly. Contribution a I'histoire de la renaissance en Angleterre," 1910 ; J. Goodlet, " Shak- spere's Debt to John Lilly," Engl. Stud., v (1882), 350-363; W. W. Greg, "On the Authorship of the Songs in Lyly's Plays," Mod. Lang. Review, i (1905), 43-52 ; C. C. Hense, "John Lilly und Shakespeare," Sh. Jh. vii, 238 ff, viii, 224-279 (1872-73) ; J. D. Wilson, " John Lyly," Harness Prize Essay, 1905; K. Steinhauser, "John Lyly als Dramatiker," Halle, 1884. Individual Plays of Lyly : — Campaspe. Three early editions are known : — (a) " Campaspe. Played beefore the Queenes Maiestie on new- yeares day at night, by her Maiesties Children, and the Children of Paules." Th. Cadman, 1584. 186 THE TUDOR DRAMA (b) *' A moste excellent Coiuedie of Alexander, Cauipaspe, and Diogenes. Played before the Qiieenes Maiestie on twelfe day at night . . ." Th. Cadman, loS-i. (Said to be identical with former in text.) (c) "Campaspe. Played beefore the Queenes maiestie on twelfe day at night . . ." William Broome, 1591. Reprinted, Dodsley, Reed's and Collier's editions, 1780, 1825; The Ancient British Drama, vol. i, 1810 : J. M. Manly, Speci- mens, ii, 1897; G. P. Baker in Representative English Comedies, 1903. Duicussion : E. Koeppel, " Zu Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe," Herrig's Archiv, ex (1903); A. B. Prowse, "Na- ture Notes on Campaspe," /I carff my, 1880; 11. Sprenger, " Zu John Lilly's Campaspe," EnghStud., xvi (1892), 156. Sapho and Phao. " Played beefore the Queenes Maiestie on Shrouetewsday, by her Maiesties Children, and the Boyes of Paules." Th. Cadman, 1584. Another edition, William Broome, 1591. Discussion : V. J. Tcggart, Poet-lore, viii, 29-33. Endimion, The Man in the Moone. " Playd before the Queenes Maiestie at Greenewich on Candlemas day at night, by the Chyldren of Paules." Printed by I. Charlewood for the widow Broome, 1591. Reprinted, G. P. Baker, 1894. Dis- cussion : N. J. Halpin, " Oberon's Vision in Midsummer- Night's Dream, Illustrated by a Comparison with Lylie's Endymion," Shakespeare Society, 1843; P. W. Long, "The Purport of Lyly's Endymion," Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass., xxiv (1909); C. F. T. Brooke, "The Allegory in Lyly's Endimion," Mod. Lang, Notes, Jan., 1910 ; D. J. Mackenzie, Byways Among Books, " An Elizabethan f^ndymion," 1900. Gallathea. " As it was playde before the Queenes Maiestie at Greene-wiche, on Newyeeres day at Night. By the Chyldren of Paules." lohn Charlewoode for the Widdow Broome, 1592. Midas. " Plaied before the Queenes Maiestie upon Twelfe day at night. By the Children of Paules," 1592. Mother Bombie. " As it was sundrie times plaied by the Chil- dren of Powles." Cuthbert Burby, 1594. Another edition, 1598^ The Woman in the Moon. " As it was presented before her Ilighnesse. By lohn Lyllie maister of Artes," 1597. Love's Metamorphosis. " A Wittie and Courtly Pastorall. Written by Mr. lohn Lyllie. First playd by the Children of Paules, and now by the Children of the Chappell," 1601. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN COMEDY 187 Peele, George : The Arraignment of Paris. " A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Maiestie, by the Children of her Chappell." H. Marsh, 1584. Reprinted separately, O. Srneaton, Temple Dramatists, 1905 ; Malone Soc, 1910. The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. " Plaide before the Queenes most excellent Maiestie: wherein are many fine Conceites with great delight," 1589. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, " Five Old Plays," Roxburghe Club, 1851; Hazlitt, Dodsley, vi, 1874. The Maid's Metamorphosis. " As it hath bene sundry times Acted by the Children of Powles," IGOO. Reprinted, A. H. Bullen, Old Plays, vol. i, Tudor Reprints and Parallel Texts, 1908; R. W. Bond, Lyly's Works, iii. Gascoigne, Gkorge : Masque of Zabeta. " Princely Pleasures at the Court at Kenclworth," 1575. Ilazlitt's ed., ii, 108-123. Sidney, Sir Philip: The Lady of May. " Entertainment of her Majesty at Wanstead," 1578. Gray's ed., 18G0, 265 ff. Churchyard, T. : The Queen's Entertainment in Suffolk and Norfolk. Reprinted, J. Nichols, *' Progresses ... of Queen Elizabeth." Chapman, George : All Fools, 1605. Discussion: E. Koeppel, " Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman'.s, Ph. Massinger's, und John Ford's," 1897. E. Woodbridge, " An unnoted Source of Chapman's All Fools," Jrl. Germ. PhU., i, 338-341. See bibliography to eh. xi. CHAPTER VI CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY ' In certain points of outward form — notably in the matter of act and scene division, and in the nowhere dominant tendency toward unity of time and place — Roman comedy and tragedy exerted upon the English drama a practically identical influence. Imitations of Seneca's tragedies followed very close upon the intro- duction of PlaUtine comedy, and in the case of such tragi-comical medleys as "Damon and Pithias" it is hardly practicable to determine the exact provenance of the classical elements. One of the results of Latin study was, however, a growing appreciation of the dif- ference between comedy and tragedy, and a considera- tion of the Elizabethan plays moulded on Roman pre- cedent shows that Senecan tragedy exercised over the drama a force not altogether analogous to that of the Latin comic writers. This diversity of effect is ac- counted for not by any great disparity in power be- tween the comedy and the tragedy of Rome, but by the very striking difference in the degree in which the native English stage was adapted to the development of comic and tragic themes. The interlude had evolved entirely in the direction of comedy, and hence had kept alive popular interest in. this form of drama alone. The earliest imitations of Plautus and Terence found a general public not only prepared to appreciate them, but positively eager for improvement and novelty in this line. From the very CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 189 first, therefore, classical English comedy had a popular tone. Such early aca'demic efiForts even as "Roister Doister" and "Gammer Gurton's Needle" — the one destined almost certainly for presentation as a school exercise, the other for performance at a Cambridge college — have a perfectly general appeal, and show a large if not predominating infusion of native humorous material. The domestication and nationalizing of Latin comic influence was thus immediate because of the vigor and assimilative force of native English comedy. The first imitators of Latin tragedy, on the other hand, appealed to no established taste and satisfied no conscious popular want. Thirty years of Elizabeth's reign, indeed, passed before any widespread public in- terest in genuine tragedy manifested itself. Appealing only to limited circles of scholarly amateurs and af- fected by no home-born conventions or precedents, the English followers of Seneca remained considerably nearer to their original than the adapters of Latin comedy; and they started a fashion of academic trag- edy which maintained itself in successive phases through the entire reign of Elizabeth, wholly independ- ent of the popular stage and usually in opposition to it. The ultimate model of classic tragedy was furnished for the Elizabethans by the ten plays ascribed to the philosopher Seneca. Of these dramas, widely studied in renaissance Europe, at least six had appeared in English translation between the years 1559 and 1566;* and in 1581 the different versions were collected into a single volume by Thomas Newton, with the addition of the omitted "Thebais," "Hippolytus," and "Her- 1 A translation of a seventh play, Octavia, was printed about the same time, without date. 190 THE TUDOR DRAMA cules (Etieus." ^ As in the case of comedy, Latin trag- edy exorcised an indirect control over English drama through the moans of Italian imitation; and during the last two decades of the Tudor period a third wave of influence reached the country in the efforts of the Coun- tess of Pembroke's coterie to domesticate tlie work of the French Senecan school. Contact witli Greek trag- edy is evident only in Lady Lumloy's dilettante ren- dering of "Iphigenia at Aulis," preserved in a single private manuscript; and very indirectly in the "Jo- casta," translated by Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh from Dolco's Italian play, which is itself a variation at second hand of Euripides. Elizabethan tragedy borrowed from Seneca and long retained the ghost, the chorus, and tlie predilection for gruesome plots involving hereditary sin or unnatural crime. The great and lasting contribution was, of course, blank verso, — a happy accident first hit upon by Surrey as a substitute for Vergilian hexameter, and confirmed by the authors of "Gorboduc" as the repre- sentative of the Senecan senarius. For this all impor- tant innovation Latin tragedy can claim only indirect credit. Yet without the example it afforded it might have been long before English playwrights discarded the undramatic stanzaic verse and the slovenly alexan- drines or " fourteeners " of the day. Other features of Seneca's style — his tendency to extended self-analy- sis and reflection, his love of sententious epigram and the cut and thrust of sticho-mythic dialogue — were ^ The translation of the Thebah, which is fragmentary, was made by Newton, the editor of the collection. The versions of the other two plays, by John Studley, were probably contemporary with Studley s renderings of Agamemnon and Mcdca, printed in 1566. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 191 carefully transplanted into English tragedy, where they did much to create a sense of form and to raise the drama to the dignity of a conscious literary product, a dignity to which it originally made no claim and which it was long in winning. Pure Senecan tragedy was always in the nature of an academic exercise, occupying a middle ground be- tween the popular theatre and the collegiate patronage of untranslated Latin drama. The first extant example of the type, and therefore the earliest strict tragedy in the English vernacular, is "Ferrex and Porrex," or "The Tragedie of Gorboduc," as the first, unauthor- ized, edition of the play less aptly terms it. Concerning the external history of this work a considerable amount of information is preserved by the various title-pages and prefaces. It was written — the first three acts by Thomas Norton, the rest by Thomas Sackville, later Earl of Dorset — for performance before Queen Eliza- beth at Whitehall on January 18, 1561-1562. In 1565, an imperfect and pirated edition was brought out surrep- titiously, and some five years later the authors saw fit to publish the true version. As an equivalent of the horrors of Greek mythology, the writers of "Ferrex and Porrex" and several other Senecan tragedies chose gruesome passages from the mythical history of Britain. These stories of the leg- \ endary descendants of Brute, derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Britonum," became one of the most fruitful sources of Elizabethan dramatic plot, fur- nishing forth at least ten extant plays, of which two are the acknowledged and two others the reputed per- formances of Shakespeare.* The later workers in this ' Viz., King Lear, Cymheline, Locrine, The Birth of Merlin. \ 192 THE TUDOR DRAMA field were attracted to it mainly by the idyllic charm of the Arthurian atmosphere and the romantic excite- ment of the incidents; but the inaugurators of the Sene- can method turned thither undoubtedly in search of the ghastly horror which the Roman dramatist had found and exploited in Greek legend, and they did not scruple to distort Geoffrey's narrative in order to bring into bold relief the favorite Latin themes of ancestral impiety and avenging fate. The authors of "Ferrex and Porrex" wrote with a purpose. It was their design to present before the young queen, who had sat only four years upon her throne, a lurid picture of the terrors attendant upon an unsettled succession. The disastrous folly of the old king Gorboduc, who Lear-like transmits and divides his trust of sovereignty before death has relieved him of it; the discord, and the unnatural fate that befalls each of the jointly ruling sons, Ferrex and Porrex, and the black consequences of the original fault in extirpation of the sinning family and ruin of the kingdom consti- tute a theme suggestive at once of the Greek story of the war of the sons of Oedipus and the destruction of Thebes. Except only in disregarding the unities of time and place, the treatment follows step by step the practice of Seneca and the rules of Horace till the close of the fourth act, where, the tragedy having properly concluded in the death of all the main figures, the author (Sackville) permits himself a dramatically su- pererogatory excursus upon the sufferings of an ungov- erned state. It is doubtless true, as Professor Manly remarks, that the play really exists for the sake of this excrescent fifth act and the numerous homiletic pas- sages in the earlier part, all designed to make clear to ROXANA TRACL«DIA '■■ iiuct/t. r.L^ ii iidntta ah' .tttTilJI'C \ Ciujictmc V-^- ^v¥ xi^ ^^4-^^^-'^--'^ 1^ s,.-^ V" TITLE-PAGE OF WILLIAM ALABASTER'S LATIN TRAGEDY OF "ROXANA," 1632 Giving a picture of an academic stage, with actors and audience CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 193 the royal auditress her duty of preserving the throne by immediate marriage from the danger of conflicting claimants. The blank verse of "Ferrex and Porrex," that as- cribed to Norton hardly less than the more famous verse of Sackville, is remarkably regular and eupho- nious. From this accurate, if somewhat too sedate, metre to that of Marlowe is certainly a long step, but it is only one; and it can hardly be said that the quar- ter century which intervened between this play and "Tamburlaine" produced any very material advance in point of versification. The peculiar characteristics of the drama and the way in which it measured up to sixteenth-century critical standards are both indicated very fairly in Sidney's famous appreciation:^ "It is full of stately speeches and well sounding Phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtayne the very end of Poesie." "Ferrex and Porrex" domesticated in English Sene- can tragedy a characteristic which, though possessing no counterpart in the classical drama, became as not- able a feature of the type as the ghost or the chorus. This was the dumb-show, which preceded each act even as the chorus followed it, — the one symbolizing pictorially the events to ensue, the other pointing the moral and reporting briefly such circumstances as could not conveniently be staged. The dumb-show is the only significant element which early Senecan drama derived from native convention : it seems to have been in the main a heritage taken over by this new aristo- cratic species from the older court and collegiate per- * Apologie for Poetrie, ed. Shuckburgh, 51, 5S2. 194 THE TUDOR DRAMA formances, and it is properly an evidence of the select and undemocratic nature of the plays in which it appears.^ Throughout the Tudor period fashionable celebra- tions at Christmas and upon other gala occasions had been accompanied by elaborate muramings and ta- bleaux, under the direction of a Lord of Misrule. The records of the Revels Office bear witness to the costly nature of such entertainments, even during the reign of the earlier monarchs, and the surpassing extrava- gance of the Jacobean masques is well known. The in- troduction of the ornamental dumb-show before the various acts of the courtly Senecan tragedy was prob- ably in some measure the result of an attempt to com- bine with genuine dramatic interest the scenic display possessed by these rival attractions of fashionable merry-making. The Senecan ideal of tragedy held the scholarly stage virtually unchanged for nearly a generation. In the crucial year of Elizabeth's reign, 1587, eight gentlemen of Gray's Inn, of whom Thomas Hughes was the chief and Francis Bacon the most famous, pre- sented before the Queen at Greenwich a play generally referred to as "The Misfortunes of Arthur." This work represents no change of structure or theorj'^ from the drama of Norton and Sackville, which the Queen had witnessed six - and - twenty years before. In the later play, as in the earlier, we have the disregard of vmities coupled with the careful observance of classic rule * For a discussion of the subsidiary Italian influence upon the development of the dumb-show, see J. W. Cunliffe, " Italian Pro- totypes of the Masque and Dumb Show," Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xxii (1907). CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 195 in all other respects. Indeed, Hughes far exceeds his predecessors in servile imitation. The poetry of Sack- ville and Norton is original, though their method and to some extent their ideas are borrowed; but Professor Cunliffe prints twenty-five solid pages of parallel pas- sages, wherein Hughes has cribbed the very words of Seneca.^ The Senecan chorus, messengers, and tricks of style remain, and "The Misfortunes of Arthur" agrees with "Gorboduc" in far outgoing Seneca in the observance of Horace's caution against the stage pre- sentation of gruesome incident ("De Arte Poetica," 185-187). No sort of action occurs in view of the spec- tators, though the reports of chorus and nuntius reek with blood and horror. The dumb-shows in this play are of unparalleled complexity, and their designing ap)- pears to have absorbed the entire energies of three of the joint authors. The most remarkable thing about the altogether puerile and insipid piece is the distortion to which the great Arthurian story has been subjected in the effort to make it conform exactly to the Senecan model. The ghost of Gorlois prologizes like Seneca's ghost of Tantalus ("Thyestes"), and the whole ro- mance of the house of Uther, as well as all the heroism of Arthur's character, is flattened and dissipated by being dragged into agreement with the history of the house of Atreus, and treated as a vulgar narrative of transmitted sin. In addition to their constant discipleship to Seneca, the devotees of scholarly tragedy studied with some effect the practice of the Italian renaissance theatre. The ruling influence in Italian tragedy, as in English, ' See J. W. Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. 196 THE TUDOR DRAMA was Seneca, but a connection with Euripides existed in a work already mentioned, — Lodo\aco Dolce's free translation, through the medium of a Latin version, of the "Phoenissse" (1559). Dolce's play was entitled "Giocasta," and as "Jocasta" was translated into English by JGeorge Gascoigne and Francis Kinwel- mersh for presentation at Gray's Inn in 1566. The drama claims to be a rendering of the original Greek, "translated and digested into Acte"; but it follows Dolce throughout with the hap-hazard fidelity usual to sixteenth-century translations, only inserting before each act the dumb-shows which the English fashion of the time demanded, and appending an "Epilogus" by the same Christopher Yelverton who twenty years later took a hand in arranging the dumb-shows of " The Misfortunes of Arthur." The honors of courtly tragic innovation are equally divided between the two legal societies of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple. To the credit of the former be- long among extant plays the Italianate work we have just been discussing and "The Misfortunes of Arthur," while for the Inner Temple the scale is precisely bal- anced by "Ferrex and Porrex" and the slightly later " Gismond of Salerne in Love," acted before the Queen in 1568. This last play dramatizes a well-known Italian story in accordance with the rules of Senecan tragedy. Like all the other existing specimens of the tj^se, it is the result of collaboration, five writers being in some way concerned in the performance. The most striking feature of "Gismond of Salerne" is the tendency to disregard the rule against the ocular presentation of horror and bloodshed, — a rule which Seneca had him- self several times broken, but which the cultivators of CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 197 English classic tragedy ordinarily observed very punc- tiliously. The heroine here dies in the sight of the audi- ence, and the hero's heart is brought bleeding upon the stage, ^yllen Robert Wilmot, one of the original au- thors, came to revise the play for publication in 1591, it was entirely natural that he should considerably intensify these features, which the success of Kyd's tragedy and Marlowe's had then made the passion of the hour. By one of the striking ironies of literary history, the same year (1587) which presented before Queen Eliza- beth in "The Misfortunes of Arthur" the most inept probably of all the Senecan imitations, brought before the general London populace two plays that wrecked forever the prospects of English classical tragedy: Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" and Kyd's "Spanish Trag- edy." The latter play is, however, itself in large mea- sure the result of the working of Latin example, and its origin and influence will require discussion in this chapter. But the academic Senecan tragedy, though perma- nently severed by the developments of Kyd and Mar- lowe from the possibility of general influence on healthy dramatic evolution, persisted under altered conditions for twenty years longer in a curious group of eleven plays, all written probably in consequence of the im- pulse of a society whose president was the eccentric Lady Mary Sidney,^ Countess of Pembroke. Exclu- siveness was before all things the character of this ^ It is a convention of long standing to refer to the lady by this name, which emphasizes her connection with her brother. Sir Philip. Technically, of course, her surname after 1377 was Herbert, by reason of her marriage to the Earl of Pembroke. 198 THE TUDOR DRAMA circle, and its productions, though conducing in no respect to cathoHc or permanent results, form one of the most interesting backwaters which issue from the main dramatic current and finally disappear in the sandy waste of affectation. For a time there was about these literary exquisites a certain vigor and consider- able poetic freshness. The earlier patrons of classical tragedy had modelled their works either directly upon the plays of Seneca or upon Italian imitations. The Countess of Pembroke and her followers took as their pattern the French Senecan dramatist, Robert Gamier (1534-1590), whose eight plays (" Porcie," 1568 ; " Hippoly te," 1573 ; " Cor- n61ie," 1574; "Marc-Antoine," 1578; "La Troade," 1578; "Antigone," 1579; "Les Juives," 1580; and "Bradamante," 1580) had already been repeatedly published both singly and in collected editions. The English school began unostentatiously with simple translation of the admired works. Lady Pembroke in- augurating the movement with her version of "An- tonie," executed in 1590 and published two years later. In 1594 Thomas Kyd produced a rendering of the "Cornelie," which he inscribed to the Countess of Sussex with the promise, presumably never fulfilled, of an immediate translation of another of Garnier's Roman tragedies, the "Portie." The differences between the tragedies of Seneca and the Franco -Latin plays which at this period were attracting the fastidious notice of the English blue- stockings are rather striking. Gamier, like most of the French classicists, made a point of outdoing his masters in all that pertained to correctness. The melodramatic sensationalism of the Latin poet — the feature which CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 199 made him in a sense the father of EngHsh tragedy — is carefully pruned from the plays of Gamier. The ghost is banished as ill-bred; stage action, so far as it existed, carefully replaced by seemly moralizing and tedious narrative. The part of the chorus is increased and the lyric effect in every way intensified. Dramatic conflict and spectacular interest are refined away, and the plays affect the reader solely as collections of graceful elegiacs. A few lines from Cleopatra's speech at the opening of the fifth act of the "Antonie," which gives everywhere a very close rendering of Gamier 's French, will indicate the characteristic features of sentiment and expression: — " Chop. O cruell Fortune, o accursed lott ! O plaguy loue! o most detested brand! O wretched ioyes! o beauties miserable! O deadlie state! o deadly roialtie! O hatefull life! o Queene most lamentable! O Antonie by my fault buriable! O hellish worke of heau'n! alas! the wrath Of all the Gods at once on vs is falne !" The "Cornelie," which Kyd took upon himself to translate, is probably of all Garnier's plays the most deficient in dramatic incident. The entire interest is retrospective. Throughout the five acts Cornelia la- ments the death of her husband and her father, or bandies rhetoric with her consolers. Caesar and Mark Antony, Cassius and Brutus, are introduced in couples to give the work historical body, but there is no shred of plot. The number of characters on the stage in addi- tion to the chorus never exceeds two and is more fre- quently limited to one. The entire value of the piece is measured by the neat finish of the dialogue and the 200 THE TUDOR DILVMA rhythmic beauty of the choral songs. There are few circumstances more striking when considered as curi- osities of hterature, or when seriously examined, more illustrative of the wavering dramatic ideals of the period, tlian the fact that the author who in 1587 had achieved the tremendous popular success of "The Spanish Tragedy" should seven years later have pro- duced the version of the "Cornelia." The two v/orks are antipodal, and the existence of the earlier rendered the production of the other a mockery and labor lost. But the writer was far from realizing this, and the con- temporary status of the drama was such that he could slight, to all appearances, the great popular work and find cause of pride and profit in his humble adherence to an aristocratic whimsy. Instances like this sound a warning against depreciation of the academic drama. It is very likely that the subterranean influence of this superficially trivial and detached species was much more potent than now appears. In the same year in which Kyd's "Cornelia" ap- peared, Samuel Daniel, the greatest of the regular sup- porters of the school of Gamier, produced in the "Tragedy of Cleopatra" the finest play of this type. "Cleopatra" is not a rendering from the French, but a continuation in Garnier's style of the "Antonie," which Daniel's patroness had recently translated. In 1598 an additional link in the chain of Antony and Cleopatra dramas was forged by Samuel Brandon, an obscure member of the same coterie; and in 1605 Daniel published a second classical tragedy, drawn from Plutarch's Life of Alexander and entitled "Philotas." An interesting evitlence of the parallel development of academic tragedy in court and college circles is CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 201 afforded by Daniel's kindly allusion to a play on the same subject as his own by his "deare friend D. Late- ware," which had been "presented in St. Johns Col- ledge in Oxford, where as I after heard, it was worthily and with great applause performed." Another member of the Sidney circle, Fulke Gre- ville. Lord Brooke, created a slight diversion in "Ala- ham " and " Mustapha," plays rigidly classical in form, but original in content, the subject being in the one ca.se the author's invention and in the other an adap- tation of oriental history. With this group of classical tragedies, all the fruit of the scholarly enthusiasm of a well-known social set, and all very probably composed during the last thirteen years of Elizabeth's reign, .should be considered four other plays written a couple of years later by the Scot- tish knight Sir William Alexander, afterward Earl of Stirling. Alexander's "Darius" (1603), "Croesus" (1604), "The Alexandra-an" (1605), and "Julius Caesar" (1607) were in the last year collected under the title of "Monarchicke Tragedies." Classical after the special manner of the French Senecans in the employ- ment of metre, chorus, and mes.senger, and frankly in- capable of public representation, these plays are prob- ably an echo from the northern half of Britain of the strain of aristocratic closet tragedy which Lady Pem- broke had introduced and Daniel established at the southern court. In the style of subjects treated a notable difference exists between the productions of the Franco-Latin school and the earlier imitative works of Sackville, Gascoigne, and Hughes. The taste for melodramatic horror is replaced by that interest in the romance of 202 THE TUDOR DRAMA history which is in general one of the most striking literary characteristics of the age. On this one side the affected work of the disciples of Garnier voices the same taste which attracted to classic themes the two greatest dramatists of the time, Shakespeare and Jon- son. Of the eleven plays just mentioned, all except Greville's two original tragedies are based on ancient history and have for their acknowledged purpose the portrayal of actual figures and situations. Five deal with the great epoch of the Roman civil wars and present the mighty protagonists in that struggle : Julius Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra. Three others concern the life of Alexander the Great. The cult of grisly an- cient myth, exploited by Seneca and his earlier English followers, is supplanted by the cult of Plutarch, every- where the strongest classical force in later Elizabethan drama. Thus, while adhering with all tenacity to the strictest Latin rules of structure, the academic tragedy had come to range itself in the choice of subject matter side by side with the popular drama. The inevitable contrast was forever fatal to the weaker type. Daniel's "Cleopatra," a poetic but essentially unactable pre- cursor of Shakespeare in the dramatization of Plu- tarch's "Antonius," suffered an eclipse which, though natural, was blacker and more permanent than the lyric merits of this very graceful piece deserved. Alex- ander's "Tragedy of Julius Csesar," with its prologue spoken by Juno, its chorus after each act, and its sub- stitution of the garrulous nuntius in lieu of stage action, fell still-born upon a world which for some seven years had been applauding a very different "Caesar." The close of Elizabeth's reign coincides roughly with the extinction of the academic type of classic English CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 203 tragedy. By this time the genuinely useful features of the Senecan method had long been accepted by writers for the popular stage and assimilated into an organism possessed of capabilities far beyond the range of the strict Senecans. From the end of the sixteenth cen- tury, classic influence in tragedy ceases to mean Seneca or the Horatian rules, and comes to mean Plutarch, — especially Plutarch's Lives in North's translation. The important "Latin" plays of James's reign, if one may call them so even loosely, are the two of Ben Jonson and the three of Shakespeare. Jonson has a scholar's respect for the old laws of dramatic form, but in prac- tice he treats them with the independence of the crea- tive artist. In "Catiline's Conspiracy," he infuses a flavor of Seneca by admitting Sylla's ghost and the chorus; but in this play no less than in "Sejanus," the one great object and effect is not antiquarian correct- ness, but the convincing presentation of character in action. Shakespeare, entirely regardless of classic rule or precedent, romanticizes ancient history as he had already romanticized the English Chronicles. Thus far we have traced the course of Latin influence as it was exerted through the entire reign of Elizabeth upon a series of courtly and scholarly tragedies frankly artificial and remote from the line of popular develop- ment. The continued aloofness of these plays from general dramatic progress and their strict retention of the features of their Senecan model were conditioned, as has been said,* upon the failure during the first twenty-five or thirty years of Elizabeth's reign of any true feeling for tragedy in the competing native drama. Yet at the close of the period indicated, between the years 1585 and 1590, there rose into sudden preemi- 204 THE TUDOR DRAMA nence several species of popular national tragedy, which more than any other single force created the "Eliza- bethan" dramatic outburst, and made tragedy during the next monumental quarter century the most vari- ous, powerful, and expressive of all stage forms. It will be the function of the remainder of this chapter and of that which follows to discuss the occasion and nature of this emergence of popular tragedy, — the most event- ful movement, probably, in the history of English literature. Of the several causes prerequisite to the growth of English national tragedy, the most indispensable was the example of the Latin tragic model. This model never received from popular playwrights the unreason- ing allegiance offered by the purely academic poets, but as the imitations of the latter and the general study of Seneca and Horace brought it into gradual famili- arity during the tragic period of incubation (1560-1585) it exerted a strong influence both in moulding form and in shaping public taste. The denial to the English popu- lace at the time of Elizabeth's accession of a proper feeling for tragedy does not, of course, infer absence of interest in the dramatization of serious stories. On the contrary, we have pointed out in the transitional inter- ludes of that period the constant search for new plot material, usually in the provinces of sober history and fable. However, the one desire of the public to which this species of drama catered wlis realistic excite- ment, and there was as yet no conception that such a demand could be satisfied by the steady development of a tragic theme to a tragic conclusion. Pure Sene- can tragedy, illustrated somewhat fitfully among the CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 205 learned classes by plays like "Ferrex and Porrex," "Gismond of Salern," and "The Misfortunes of Ar- thur," was necessarily caviare to the general, lack- ing as it did the fundamental desideratum of stage action. No appreciation of the laws of dramatic tech- nique or of the difference between comedy and tragedy appears in the contemporary productions of the popu- lar stage. Such are "King Darius" (1565), R. B.'s "Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia" (1563?), J, Pikering's "Interlude of Vice Concerning Horestes" (1567), John Phillip's "Commodye of pacient and meeke Grissill" (1565?), T.Preston's "Lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth, conteyning the life of CambisesKingof Percia" (1569-1570); and the med- ley which Elizabeth's Master of the Chapel Children produced in accordance with the public taste, "Damon and Pithias." Most of these plays have been discussed in connection with the transitional interlude, and it is to that type that they all really belong. They make no division into acts or scenes, no attempt at consecutive plot development, and show no knowledge of the rules of modern dramatic art. The authors of these pieces were concerned, not to supplant the old moral drama, but merely to endue that outworn species with an ad- ventitious appeal by the addition of classic or romantic story. In complete opposition to the practice of the imitators of Seneca, the bloodiest incidents in the nar- ratives treated are selected for spectacular and some- times unimaginable staging. Virginius is instructed by a stage direction to tie a handkerchief about his daugh- ter's eyes and then strike off her head, which he imme- diately carries to Appius. Sisamnes is flayed on the stage "with a false skin," and in the same play ("Cam- *ii 206 THE TUDOR DRAMA bises") Smirdis is provided with "a little bladder of vinegar," which when pricked at his murder may seem to exude blood. ^ These luridly sensational scenes, however, seldom form the pith of the plays in which they occur. Very often they are no more than excrescent ornaments. Whatever genuine dramatic material there may be is taken in nearly every instance from the old comic con- vention of the interlude; and the entire failure of all tlie plays of the " Cambises " type is the inevitable result of the effort at fusing elements essentially discordant. The nearest approach to tragedy is found perhaps in the play w^iich in title and subject matter promises least: Phillip's "Comedy of Patient Grissell." But here as elsewhere, though the title-roles are given to serious or even tragic figures, it is the native buffoonery of the interlude that holds the centre of the stage. The real hero, before whom the awkward lay-figures of king and tyrant seem colorless, is everywhere the vice: Haphazard in "Appius and Virginia," Ambidexter in "Cambises," Politic Persuasion in "Patient Grissell." In the most advanced play of the cla^s, "Damon and Pithias," — a work which on several sides shows kinship with the contemporary comedies, — the humorous ele- ment is of two kinds. Native clownage is represented by Grim the Collier and the two pages of Lylian type. Jack and Will : while in Carisophus, the parasite, is in- troduced a serio-comic figure from classical drama. The attempt made half-heartedlj' by the authors of these plays to graft a plot of classic gravity upon the amorphous stock of the native interlude was naturally • Cf. similar device in the Canterbury play of Th. a Rccketl, Repts. Royal Comm. Hist. MSS. 9 1, 148 f, cited by Creizonach, iii. 496. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 207 an artistic failure. Yet the works appealed notwith- standing to the broad public before which they were mostly performed, and they did much to foster a gen- uine, if for the present unreasoning, taste for tragic situation, intermingled with farce and romance. The " Cambises " vein persisted, and furnished Shakespeare with matter for unconscious imitation as well as laugh- ter. True English tragedy arose from a compromise between native and classic influences, and it arose largely in answer to the popular demand created by plays of the "Cambises" type; but it was not discov- ered in the path which those dramas blazed. Success- ful tragedy, when it came, resulted, not from the effort to pack a sensational story upon the slender and ill- articulated frame of the interlude, but from the thor- ough adaptation of the more resourceful Latin model to national uses and traditions. Transitional inter- ludes like "Cambises" prepared the public between 1560 and 1580 to appreciate the stage presentation of grave worldly issues, and national tragedy emerged when plays of the general Senecan mould began to be adapted to suit the expectations of the democratic public thus created. One of the first popular English tragedies may well be "Locrine," though the revised version in which the play is preserved can hardly antedate 1591.^ This drama, the obvious work of a scholar, is formed upon the general lines of the academic Senecan tragedy, but it is developed in harmony with the tastes of a demo- cratic rather than a learned audience. The theme, like * Because of certain clear borrowings from Spenser's Complaints, published 1591. But the extant edition (1595) distinctly states the play to be "Newly set foorth, overseene and corrected." 208 THE TUDOR DRAMA those of "Ferrex and Porrex" and "The Misfortunes of Arthur," is drawn from the mythical history of Britain, — a theme abounding in horror and bloodshed. Instead of the single ghost of "Thyestes," we have here two; and the favorite motives of Seneca — battle, murder, suicide, adultery, and domestic strife — are all repeated with the most lurid heightening. With the classicizing subject there goes no trace of the classical restraint : the utmost reaches of torment and atrocity are brought before the eyes of the spectators and exag- ~ gerated with every device of lyric declamation. The act and scene division of classic art is accompanied by a violation of the unities hardly less flagrant than that which Sidney fancifully portrays in his picture of the crudities of contemporary drama.' The action ranges wildly over the whole of Britain, and covers a full gen- eration. From the courtly tragedies, the author of "Locrine" has inherited the dumb-show, while in con- formity with the practice of popular drama he has introduced extended comic scenes, partly altogether anachronistic, partly cohering by only the slightest thread wnth the rest of the story. "Locrine" is neither an admirable nor even a reputable tragedy, but it shows more promise than any other which has been hitherto considered. It combines in its loose and tangled structure all the salient features of the native and the imported methods. It displaj'^s a healthy desire to present life frankly and freely, without exclusion either of comic or tragic incident, and in the way most impressive to the general spectator. It gives evidence of the availability of the materials of tragedy and indi- cates the existence of an untrained taste for tragic * Apologie for Poetrie, 52. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 209 entertainment. To make of it a tragedy in the true sense there was lacking only the selective and refining power of individual genius. This genius appeared in Thomas Kyd, by all odds the greatest benefactor of Senecan tragedy in England. Kyd found tragic drama an undomesticated stray, on the one hand barely keeping up a precarious existence in the fashionable shows produced at court and college; on the other hand waging a blind and losing battle on the popular stage against the vigorous comic tradition of the time. Since the first production of "The Spanish Tragedy," about 1587, the English equivalent of Sene- can melodrama has never lost its hold on vulgar au- diences. This play is in many ways a much truer rep- resentative of Seneca than confessed imitations like "Ferrex and Porrex." Kyd's dramatic eye seized at once the strong point of the Senecan type, — its power ' of arousing horror and excitement. By abandoning al- together the conventional practice of indicating action : at second hand through the mouths of messengers, and by supplanting the archaic mythological plot, which Norton and Hughes had endeavored vainly to resus- citate, by a modern theme of love and political in- trigue, Kyd was enabled to approach the nearer to the actual spirit of Latin tragedy. The chorus, the ghost, and the spectacular peculiarities of Senecan plot re- main; but they are vitalized by Kyd's manipulations till they reveal dramatic powers far beyond the vision of antiquarian reactionaries like Hughes, — far even beyond what Seneca himself perceived. The progeny of "The Spanish Tragedy" is infinite. "The Jew of Malta," "Titus Andronicus," and "Hamlet "are all, on one side, at least, its direct descendants; and what 210 THE TUDOR DRAMA each of these owes to Kyd's play is precisely what the hitter had derived from the judicious imitation of Seneca. The "Tragedy of Blood," thus inaugurated by Kyd, depends for success upon the presentation of sensa- tional action in the development of a more or less consecutive plot. To this sensational interest — the characteristic feature of melodrama — all ethical and psychological aims are subordinated. The promise made by Revenge at the beginning of " The Spanish Tragedy " to the ghost of Andrea, — "Thou shall see the author of thy death, Don Balthazar, the Prince of Portingale, Depriu'd of life by Bel-imperia," — is recalled to the memory of the spectators at the end of each act; and it is the prosecution of this action, together with the parallel vengeance of Hieronimo for Horatio's murder, that furnishes the play with purpose and continuous interest through its four otherwise wandering acts. JMoral import is entirely without the scope of this type of drama; there is no thought of picturing the avengers as more amiable or more noble- minded than their victims. The tone of the play is frankly that of the vendetta, and the author accepts savage conditions as he finds them without essaying any interpretation of life's problems. Nor does "The Spanish Tragedy" seriously attempt the portrayal of individual character. With two excep- tions, the delineation of tlie figures is not only crude, but obviously careless and perfunctory, — the work of a man absorbed entirely in action and devoid of sym- pathy with the actors. Two characters in the play CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 211 have, however, received Kyd's attention and possess distinctive traits, because in each case their portrayal offered opportunity for melodramatic effect. The treat- ment of Hieronimo's madness, glaringly unnatural as it is, made excellent stage business, and impressed itself ineradicably upon the contemporary public, furnishing the sub-title of the play in later printed editions,^ and the subject of the extensive interpolations ascribed to the pen of Jonson. The exploitation of insanity be- came, indeed, one of the marked features of Kydian tragedy, even outvaluing as a theatrical asset the in- herited Senecan ghost. In his portrayal of Lorenzo, Kyd manifests again an apparent interest in character, founded not upon psy- chological discernment, but upon his recognition of the spectacular possibilities of the type. Lorenzo is the first of a long line of Machiavellian villains, whose pop- ularity with a sensation-loving public was in no degree impaired by the palpable improbabilities and limita- tions in their presentment. He is the original progeni- tor of the villain of modern melodrama. In contrast with the great tragic heroes of Shakespeare, the species lost prestige; but when first introduced upon the stage, there was a zest hitherto inspired by no dramatic figure about this ardent devotee of policy who could "smile and smile and be a villain," — who, utterly soulless and heartless, could composedly intrigue out of his way the innocent obstacles to his ends, and, if necessary, could meet his own fate with a like egotistical composure. This is, of course, a low ideal of tragic character, born of the primitive philosophy that makes sang-froid and * In the 1615 (seventh) and subsequent editions, the title runs, "The Spanish Tragedie: Or, Uieronimo is mad againe." 212 THE TUDOR DRAMA remorseless efficiency the justification of all guile; but its rich potentialities for thrilling action gave it on the untutored tragic stage an irresistible vogue. Its influ- ence was strong enough to cause Marlowe, who knew well a higher form of tragedy, to sacrifice the great psychological and poetic opportunity of his "Jew of Malta"; and in the figure of Young Mortimer it again introduced a coarse thread into the delicate character- ization of the same author's " Edward II." It was one of the determining factors that moulded the youthful work of Shakespeare, inspiring his Aaron in "Titus Andronicus," his Richard III, and Margaret of Anjou, and coloring deeply his whole idea of tragic character, till Marlowe's example and the experience of life taught him a purer art. Traces of the same conception of the hero- villain show themselves in "Hamlet," probably as a heritage from Kyd rather than from Shakespeare; and the type continues unchanged in the main char- acters of Chettle's "Hoffman," of Barnes's "Devil's Charter," of "Lust's Dominion," and "Alphonsus of Germany." Lorenzo indicates his character and that of the spe- cies to which he belongs in the words of his soliloquy concerning his servant-accomplices, Pedringano and Serberine (III, iii, 111-119): — "As for my selfe, I know my secret fault. And so doe they; but I have dealt for them. They that for coine their soules endangered, To saue my life, for coyne shall venture theirs: And better its that base companions dye. Then by their life to hazard our good haps. Nor shall they Hue, for me to feare their faith: lie trust my selfe, my selfe shall be my friend; For dye they shall, slaues are ordeined to no other end." CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 213 The source of this crude conception of life and char- acter, which Kyd made one of the assets of cheap trag- edy, is to be found in the contemporary attitude toward the works of MachiaveUi, one of the most talked of writers of the age, and a particularly well-known figure on the stage. ^ It has been shown that the tenets of the Italian policist were most familiar in the exaggerated form in which they were represented by a French op- ponent. Innocent Gentillet. Gentillet's work, which by attacking the Satanic shrewdness and egotism of MachiaveUi 's doctrine, gave an enormous notoriety to the philosophy of the latter, was translated by Simon Patericke as early as 1577, and several times published under the title: "A discourse upon the Meanes of Well Governing and Maintaining in good Peace, a King- dom, or other Principality — Against Nicholas Machi- avell the Florentine." A passage from Patericke's Epistle Dedicatory will indicate the conception of Machiavellianism which this work disseminated : " For then Sathan being a disguised person amongst the French, in the likenesse of a merry ieaster [i. e., Rabe- lais] acted a Comoedie, but shortly ensued a wofull Tragedie. When our countriemens minds were sick, and corrupted with these pestilent diseases, and that discipline waxed stale; then came forth the books of Machiavell, a most pernicious writer, which began not in secret and stealing manner (as did those former vices) but by open meanes, and as it were a continuall assault, utterly destroyed, not this or that vertue, but even all vertues at once: Insomuch as it tooke Faith from the princes; authoritie and maiestie from lawes; * See the valuable dissertation of Edward Meyer, "MachiaveUi and the Elizabethan Drama," Liiterarhistorische Forschungen, I. 214 THE TUDOR DRAMA libertie from the people, and peace and concord from all persons." The frank diabolism here attributed to the Florentine provided Kyd with an effective ready- made character for his intriguing prince, Lorenzo; and, in consequence of Kyd's successful employment, cre- ated a permanent stage type which long retained its popularity in the face of all efforts at psychological truth. "The Spanish Tragedy" virtually created a great deal of Elizabethan stage business. Depending alto- gether upon spectacular effect, in entire indifference to moral purpose and truth of characterization, Kyd raised tragedy at a single bound to a position decid- edly higher in vulgar favor than that occupied by the previously dominant comedy. " The Spanish Tragedy '* received and merited more both of popularity and of derision than any other play, probably, which the six- teenth century produced; and it was everywhere imi- tated. Besides his clever adaptation of Senecan con- vention to the taste of his time, and his creation of the stock types already referred to, Kyd inaugurated in this play a greater variety of plot devices which per- sisted in the later drama than can easily be enumer- ated. The idyllic garden scene between Horatio and Bel-Imperia, setting off the tragedy that environs it; the play within the play of the last act; the employ- ment of the dumb-show, no longer as a mere prelude, but as an integral part of the drama; ^ the dialogue of Andrea and Revenge, encompassing and interpreting the entire course of events; the carefully articulated sub-plot of Serberine and Pedringano, filling out and relieving with its grim humor the bleak horror of the 1 Cf. Ill, XV. iS ff and MacU-tk, IV, i. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 215 main tragedy : each of these elements — the result of Kyd's quick sense of striking effect — passed into the common stock of the theatre, and repeated itself in numerous variations in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The enormous success of "The Spanish Tragedy" inspired two other plays, which courted popularity by a treatment of the same themes. "The First Part of Jeronimo, With the Warre of Portugall, and the life and death of Don Andrjea" (1605) is a crude sketch of the antecedent history of the Spanish and Portuguese courts. The general appearance of plagiarism about this piece and the many contradictions in the presenta- tion of the main figures of the two plays show "Jeron- imo" to be almost certainly the effort of a theatrical hack to deck himself in borrowed glory. "The Tragedy of Solyman and Perseda" (1592.?), though published anonymously, and lacking decisive evidence of authorship, is now more generally accepted as Kyd's. It is an amplification into a five-act tragedy of the same story ^ which had previously furnished the material for Hieronimo's interpolated play; and it possesses considerable interest as showing how the in- novations of "The Spanish Tragedy" fared in later practice. "Soliman and Perseda" is a work of greater polish and much less originality than the earlier play, but it shows the same general characteristics. It is not at all surprising that Kyd should have exhausted his imagination in the prodigality of intrigue and inci- dent which mark his first play. The later effort has ^ This story seems to have reached Kyd in Henry Wotton's Courtly Controversij of Cupid's Caufels (1578), a collection of five tales translated from the French of Jacques Yver. 216 THE TUDOR DRAMA little of the uncouth energy of hmgiiage and action which made "The Spanish Tragedy" ridiculous to critics, but enormously influential. None of the serious characters in "Solinian and Perseda" possesses the in- terest which attaches to Ilicronimo and Lorenzo; yet the later play is obviously better balanced and ma- turer. Equally witJi the other it depends for its appeal upon the portrayal of physical action of a bloody and surprising nature; and its plot, though neatly worked out, is even more entirely a narrative of consecutive events, closely following its novelistic source, and lack- ing the unity which the figures of Andrea and Revenge give to "The Spanish Tragedy." The main superiority of " Solinian and Perseda " lies in the comic ^<<^Bes, where tlie humors of Piston and Basilisco, though quite con- ventional, arc well handled; and in an increased sanity throughout. By most rules, "Solinian and Perseda" should be a better play than its predecessor; but, in fact, it has hardly a tithe of the interest of "The Span- ish Tragedy," citlier for the critic or the reader. It is an instructive failure, marking clearly the superficial- ity and insipidity which were inherent in the melo- drama, but which the very fault of "The Spanish Tragedy" — its violent excess -^ served largely to disguise. Along the path which Kyd had outlined, no true advance in tragedj^ was possible. His first play, struck out wildly in the flush of invention, remained the best of its type; and in spite of its immense vogue and the enormous gain in dramatic technique which it accomplished, it proved to its closest imitators a very misleading guide. The reason for this is simple. Kyd brought within the range of tragedy all the forces by which an audi- CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 217 ence might be moved, except only the portrayal of hu- man character. That lie entirely ignored. In conse- quence, the plays of Kyd's type betray their lack of this fundamental requisite of all healthy drama only the more clearly in proportion as they grow saner in other respects. The tragic form which Kyd, with gen- ius almost creative, had evolved from the Senecan tra- dition was for the present little more than an empty shell. In the case of "The Spanish Tragedy," the author tempered the barren coldness of his imaginary world by the artificial heat of lurid incident; but the human warmth which he did not find in Seneca he was not able to impart. It was only after Marlowe had breathed into tragedy the vital si)irit of psychological truth that the English theatre was prepared to develop effectively the technical form which Kyd had invented. The most immediate inheritors of the wealth of Senecan melodrama brouglit into currency by "The Spanish Tragedy" were the "Ur-IIamlet" and "Titus Andronicus," plays which abundantly shared with the older work both in the plaudits of the groundlings and in the derision of more refined tastes. The early "Ham- let" — unfortunately no longer extant in its original form — seems to have been written by Kyd himself about 1589. Even in the two greatly humanized and intellectualized versions of Shakespeare the parallelism with "The Spanish Tragedy" is continually forced upon the reader in the typically Kydian theme of all engulfing revenge, and in the s[)ectacular use of the ghost, the play within the play, and the manifold vari- ations of heroic insanity. Here also, as in "The Span- ish Tragedy" and nearly all the plays of its class, the mark of Seneca's over-reflective style stands conspicu- 218 THE TUDOR DILV^IA oils in the penchant for extended soliloquy and self- analysis. "Titus Andronicus" is another drama in which tlie morbid craze for vengeance is traced through an orgy of undiscrimiuating slaughter. First printed in 1504, tlie tragedy is stilted to have been played sundry times by the companies of the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Derby (later the Lord Chamberlain's), and the Earl of Sussex. This advertisement links "Titus An- dronicus" with the second and tliird parts of "Henry M," which were likewise acted both by tlie Earl of Pembroke's Men and by those of the Strange-Derby- Chamberlain Company.^ Thus, it seems hkely that Shakespeare began his career as a tragic writer in "Titus Andronicus" precisely in the manner in which he began his concern with tlie history play : as the re- viser, that is, for his company's use of a striking but inartistic drama that had already- attained notoriety upon a different stage. Tlie peculiar strength and weakness of Senecan melodrama are well illustrated, perhaps, by the coin- cidence that four of the most conspicuous examples of the type, all belonging to the period 1590-1603, found their way into print only a generation or more after composition. That they should have remained extant for so long in tlieatrical archives, and at the end of that period have been still found worthy of revision and publication, shows tlie permanent hold which tliey 1 The 1595 edition of The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, the earliest version of Henry VI. Pt. Ill, declares that play to have been ncteil by Lord Pembroke's Men, and the close connection of the True Tragedi/ with the earlier Fir.^t Part of the Contention makes it certain that the two dramas belonged to the same company. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 219 had upon vulgar fancy. On the other hand, the pub- hshers' previous neglect of plays so certainly notori- ous on the stage may not unjustly be ascribed to their obvious lack of psychological truth and literary polish. Of these four melodramas, "The Jew of Malta," Marlowe's only accepted production in the species, was written about 1590, and acted with extraordinary suc- cess by Henslowe's Company between 1592 and 1596. Though licensed for publication in 1594, no edition is known prior to 1633, when the tragedy was printed after having been revived both at the Cockpit Theatre and at Court. "Lust's Dominion, or The Lascivious Queen," was first published in 1657 as "A Tragedie Written by Christopher Marlowe, Gent." In its lurid picture of vice in high places, and in the portraiture of its hero-villain Eleazar, the Machiavellian Moor, this play is a companion-piece to "Titus Andronicus," by which it was probably suggested. The ascription to Marlowe seems to be unsupported by any evidence, and probably originated with the untrustworthy pub- lisher of the 1657 edition, Francis Kirkman. Collier identified "Lust's Dominion" with "The Spanish Moor's Tragedy" by Dekker, Haughton, and Day, mentioned in Henslowe's Diary for January, 1600, but it seems probable that the former piece took its first form a decade earlier. The very interesting melodrama " Alphonsus of Ger- many," published 1654, appears, like the plays just mentioned, to date from a period little subsequent to 1590. Throughout this drama Machiavellianism is rampant in the schemes and character of the titular hero; and the old theme of revenge for a father presents itself anew in Alphonsus's dupe and fool, Alexander de •^^0 THE TUDOR DRAMA Cyprus, together with many subordinate horrors and uxuch carefully coustructed machinery of plot and sub- plot. Chettle's "Hoffman," mentioned by Henslowe in IG02, is tlie fourth of these wild stage plays, which were destined to wait long for publication. It exists only in a text printed in 1681. Togetlier with Marston's con- temporary "History of Antonio and Mellida," in two parts, and tlie Shakespearean "Hamlet," it makes up a group illustrative of tlie vogue of the Senecan revenge play at the very close of the Tudor period. "Hamlet" is the link which binds this series to the earlier group of plays immediately inspired by "The Spanish Trag- edy." "Hamlet" is, furthermore, the only connecting medium between this entire brutal species and the per- manent interests of art and humanity. Senecan melodrama did not end with the reign of ElizabetJi. Perhaps it has never met a complete check. But in the plays which follow "Hamlet," the signifi- cance of the classic conntx'tion disappears, and a dififer- ent moral tone is perceiveil. Traces of the old spirit remain in "The Devil's Charter" by Barnabe Barnes (1()07), a fetid story of Bi^rgian crime and trickery, which hardly justifies the suggestion of supernatural agencies conveyed in the title; and in Chapman's "Re- venge of Bussy D'Ambois" (1010). In general, how- ever, the transition from what is, at worst, the honest bestiality of "The Spanisli Tragedy" and "Titus An- dronicus" to the insidious pessimism of Jacobean revenge plays like "The Revenger's Trageily " of Tour- neur (1007) arises from an opposition in taste that is fundamental and irreconcilable. ,^ Even the Elizabethan popular expressions of tlie CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TILVGEDY 221 Seneca n influence, though exhahng a far less poisonous atmosphere than the terrible nuirder tragedies of >Yeb- ster and Tourneur, make woefully unexhilarating read- ing. They leave the student parched for a breath of imaginative sympathy or ideal nobility. Only in a single i)lay from the Senecan tradition does one find that flavor of romance and human sweetness which raises melodrama above sordidness. Naturally enough, it is in the tragedy of Shakespeare that stands inter- mediate in date between his slight retouching of the ghastly "Titus Andronicus" and his masterly trans- formation of the almost equally ghastly old "Hamlet" into an imaginati\e tragedy of quite different charac- ter. In the impression which it leaves upon the reader "Romeo and Juliet" is far removed from any of the plays we have discussed, but fimdamentally it belongs to the progeny of Senecan tragedy. The root idea of family feud, hardly less bitter than in the "Thebais" or "Titus Andronicus" ; tlie violent nature of the ac- tion and tremendous efi'usiou of blood, involving not only the immediate protagonists, but also such guiltless non-partisans as Mercutio and the County Paris, re- late the play organically to the "Spanish Tragedy" class. And the same relationship appears in the han- dling of the plot : in the elevation of passion above char- acter, and in the neglect of reason and ordered argu- ment in the pursuit of lyric declamation. Of course, tlie pure beauty of the main story, beside which even the love scenes between Horatio and Bel-Imperia seem gross and shallow, oavcs nothing to Seneca. So, it is an original reform of Shakespeare to contradict the dia- bolism toward which the species often tended, and out of evil still to find means of good, showing how the 222 THE TUDOR DRAMA "star-crossed lovers ... Do with their death bury their parents' strife," and how the final result of all the tem- pest of passion is the reestablishment of amity and order. It is by reading "Romeo and Juliet" that one takes most pleasing leave of the classic-born tragedy of blood. This play shows little, to be sure, of the Mar- lovian soul-study which was already broadening and ennobling tragedy. Yet it is pervaded by a spirit equally rare, and it suggests that the key to the portal which leads from melodrama to true human tragedy lay perhaps not solely in the hands of Marlowe. BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL DISCUSSION Churchill, G. B. and Keller, W. : " Die lateinischen Univer- sitiits-Dranien Eiiglands iu der Zeit der Ktinigin Elizabeth," Sh. Jh. xxxiv (1898). Cunliffe, J. W. : '♦ The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy," London, 1893. " Italian Prototypes of the Masque and Dumb Show," Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass., xxii (1907), 140-156. Fischer, R. : " Zur Kuustentwicklung der englischen Tragodie von ihreu ersteu Anfiingen bis zu Shakespeare," Strassburg, 1893. Moorman, F. W. : " The Pre-Shakespearean Ghost," 3fod. Lang. Review, i (1906). Thorn dike, A. H. : " Tragedy," Types of English Literature Series, 1908. " The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass., xvii (1902), 125-220. INDIVIDUAL TEXTS I. Elizabethan Translations of Classic Tragedy Seneca : His Tenne Tragedies, translated into Englysh, 1581. (By various hands ; edited by Thomas Newton.) i?e- CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 223 printed, Spenser Society, vols, xliii, xliv, 1847. Discussion : E. M. Spearing, " The Elizabethan ' Tenne Tragedies of Seneca,' " Mod. Lang. Review, iv (1909), 437-461. Individual editions. Seven of the translations included above were published separately, viz. : Troas (1559), Thyestes (1560), and Hercules Furens (1561) by Jasper Heywood ; Oedipus (1563) by Alexander Nevyle ; Agamemnon (1566) and Medea (1566) by John Studley ; Octavia (n. d.) by T. N(uce). The three other plays, first included in the 1581 edition, are : Hippolytus and Hercules (Etceus by John Studley and Thebais by Thomas Newton. The translation of a choral passage in Hercules (Etceus by Queen Elizabeth is extant in MS., and was printed in Anglia, xiv (1892), 346-352. Euripides : Iphigenia at Auiis. MS. translation by Lady Lumley in Brit. Mus. Printed G. Becker, Sh. Jb. xlvi (1910) ; Malone Society. [Gascoigne's and Kinwelniersh's Jocasta, though claiming to be a translation from the Greek of Euripides (Phcenissce}, does not really merit inclusion under this head. See below, p. 224 f .] II. Academic and Amateur Tragedies showing Senecan Influence a. academic tragedies directly influenced by SENECA Norton, Thomas, and Sackville, Thomas. Ferrex and Porrex. The text survives in two forms: — (a) Pirated edition : " The tragedie of Gorboduc, whereof three Actes were wrytten by Thomas Nortone, and the two laste by Thomas Sackvyle. Sette forthe as the same was shewed before the Queues most excellent Maiestie, in her highnes Court of Whitehall, the .xviij. day of January, Anno Domini 1561 (1562). By the Gentleman of Thynner Temple in London." 1565. Re- printed, 1590, as appendix to Lydgate's " Serpent of Deuision. Wherein is conteined the true History or Mappe of Romes ouerthrowe." (6) " The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex, set forth \0o) and Catiline his Conspiracy (1611). Jonsou's plays, however, are not properly academio or amateur.] III. Popular Tragedies influenced by Classic Precedent Locrine. " Newly set foorth, ouerseene and corrected, By W. S." 1595. Reprinted 1734 (two issues); Malone Societi/, 1908. (For editions of this play in the third and fourth Shakespeare Fo« lios and in later collections of accepted or supposititious worKS of Shakespeare, see lite Shakespeare Apocrypha, 1908, 442, 443.) KvD, Thomas. Works, ed. F. S. Boas, 1901. General Discussion: CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 227 J. Le Gay Brercton, " Notes on the Text of Kydd," Engl. Stud., xxxvii (1907), 87-90; C. Crawford, " A Concordance of the Works of Kyd," Materialien, xv, 190G; K. Markscheflel, "Thomas Kyd's Traffiidien," 1885; G. Sarrazin, "Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis," 1892; J.Scliick, "Thomas Kyd's Todes- jahr," Sh. Jb. xxxv (1899), 277-280 ; O. Michael, " Der Stil in Thomas Kyd's Originaldramen," 1905. The Spanish Tragedy. Earliest edition extant undated: " Newly corrected, and amended of such grosse faults as passed in the first impression." Reprinted 1594. Ten other editions previous to the end of 1G.33 are known. (See Greg's List.) Reprinted, Dodsley, all edd.; T. Hawkins, " Origin of the English Drama," ii, 1773 ; Ancient British Drama, i, 1810 ; J. M. Manly, Specimem, ii, 1897; J. Schick, Temple Dramatists, 1898; Litterarhistorische Forschungen, xix (1901). Discussion: W. Bang, "Kyd's Si)anish Tragedy," Emjl. Stud., xxviii, 229-234; G. O. Fleischer, " liemerkung en iiber Kyds Spanish Tragedy," 189G ; J. A. Worj), " Die Fabel der Spanish Tragedy," Sh. Jh. xxix, xxx (1894) ; R. Schonwerth, " Die niederUlndischen . . . liearbeitungen von Th. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy," Lit. Forschungen, xxvi, 1903. Soliman and Perseda. Three issues of 1599 and an un- dated ed. known. Reprinted, Th. Hawkins, Origin of the English Drama, ii, 1773; Hazlitt, Dodsley, v. Disaission: E. Koeppel, " Beitriige zur geschichte des elizabethanischen dramas," Engl. Stud., xvi (1892); G. Sarrazin, "Der ver- fasser von Soliman and Perseda," Engl. Stud., xt (1891), 250-2G3. [The lost Ur-Hamlet of ca. 1589 was probably written by Kyd. Cf . J. Allen, " The Lost Hamlet of Kyd," Westminster Review, 1908 ; J. Corbin, "The German Hamlet and Earlier English Versions," Harvard Studies, v, 189G ; W. Creizenach, Mod. Phil., ii (1905); W. Creizenach, " Die vorshakespeare'sche Hamlettragiklie," SA. Jb. xlii (1900); J. W. Cunliffe, " Nash and the Earlier Hamlet," Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. (190G); A. S. Jack, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass., xx (1905); M. W. MacCallum, " The Authorship of the Early Hamlet," Furnivall Miscellany, 1901 (xxxi, p. 282 ff); K. Meier, Dresdner Anzeiger, Mar., 1904 ; G. Sarrazin, " Die Entstehung der Hamlet-Tragiidie," Anglia, xii, xiii (1890, 1891); C. M. Lewis, "The Genesis of Hamlet," 1907.] 228 TIIE TUDOR DRAMA The First Part of Jeronlmo. •' With tlio W.irros of Por- tiigall, and (ho life and douth of Don AndraNi," 11)05. lie- printed, Dodslcy, all cdd. ; Ancient ]>ritish Drama, i, 1810. J^iscussion: J. E. Routh, Mod. Lang. Notes, xx (11H)5). (This play has been asoribod, doubtless incorrectly, to Kyd.) Maulowk, CuuiSToriiKK: The Jew of Malta, 1G33. lieprinted in all editions of Marlowe, in Heed's and Collier's Dodsley, vol. viii ; W. Oxberry, 1818 ; A. AVao-ner, 1889. Titus Aiidronicus. Written, probably, by an unidentiBed author, and retouched by Shakespenre. Printed 1594, ICOO (Faosiniile E. W. Ashbee, 18(U>, C. rrnotorins, 188(5), IGll (Kaosiniile E. W. Ashbee, 18G7). Reprinted Shakespeare Folio, 1(V_*3 and later editions. Lust's Domiuioii, " Or, The Lascivious Queen. A Tragedie. Written by Cliristopher Marlowe, Gent.," 1G57. Reprinted Robinson's edition of Marlowe, iii, 1820. Alphonsiis, Emperor of Germany. " By George Chapman Gent.," 1(>54. Ueprinted, K. Elze, 1807; T. M. Tarrott, «' The Tragedies of George Chapman," 1910. Makston, tloHN : Antonio and Mellida. Two parts : " The History of Antonio and Mellida. The first part," " Antonios Reuenge. The second part." Both printed 1002. Reprinted in Marston's I'ragedies and Ct)»JC(f /< .<, W,\3 (two issues) ; H'orA's, ed. llalliwoU, 1850 ; ed. A. R. Grosart, 1879 ; A. H. Bullen, 1887. Chkttlk, Henry : Tragedy of Hoffman, " Or A Reuenge for a Father," 1031. Reprinted, II. B. L(oonard), 1852 ; R. Ackermann, 1S94. Discttssion : N. Delius, "Chettle's lIoiYman und Shakspere's Hamlet," Sh. Jh. ix (1874), 100-194. Barnks, Barnake : The Devil's Charter, " A Tragaedie Contoiuing the Life and Poath of Pope Alexander the sixt. As it was plaid before tlio Kings ^laiestie, Vpon Candlemasse night last : by his Maiesties Seruants," 1007. Reprinted, R. B. McKerrow, Jifaterialien, vi, 1904. Discus.fion : A. E. H. Swaen and G. B. IMoore Smith, '* Notes ou the Devil's Charter," ^rod. Lam]. Review, i (1900), 122 flP. ToruNKUR, Cyril : The Atheist's Tragedy, " Or The honest Man's Heuenge," 1011, 1012. The Revenger's Tragedy, 1007, 1008. Both reprinted in Tourneur's iri)/A>', ed. .1. C. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE IN TRAGEDY 229 Collins, 1878 ; Mermaid edition of Webster and Tourneur, J. A. Symorids, 1888. Chai'MAN, Gkokge : Biissy D'Ambois, 1C07. Five other issues before the end of JCoT. The Revengeof Buasy D'Ambois, IGl.'}. Both reprinted in editions of Chapman's W(jrks ; W. L. Phelps, Mermaid ed. ; T. M. Tarrott, Tragedies of Chapman, 1910. CHAPTER VII THE HEROIC PLAY It is necessary to look far into the past in order to trace the uHimate source of the dramatic current which during the last fifteen years of EHzabeth's reign blended with the influences already considered, and preserved tragedy from barren sensationalism by teaching it the value of the individual personality. Coeval with the beginnings and earliest development of tJie regular stage under religious auspices, there had existed an entirely popular species of quasi-dramatic entertainment, much less definite in form and less rich in evolutionary possibilities, but even more firmly in- grained in tlie life of the nation, and deep rooted in hoariest antiquity. This incipient communal drama foimd expression through such questionable media as the village dance, the choral song, and the ballad, but retained its dramatic germ tenaciously from the pagan sword dance to the latest degenerate survivals in seventeentli and eighteenth century hamlets. ^lost commonly it dealt with the celebration of heroic qual- ities and lauded individual prowess, sometimes that of mythical warrior -deities, sometimes of historical or semi-historical characters like Percy and Douglas, Robin Hood or Sir Gawain. The fifteenth century, the period of the highest development and broadest diffusion of tlie religious drama, evolved concurrently, as its other most char- acteristic literary product, the great volume of ballad THE HEROIC PLAY 231 poetry, which treated, for the most part, the popular figures of legend or romance in a form always verging upon the dramatic. Certain extant fragments of the time even show the particular ballad hero, Robin Hood, to have been the subject of real plays which depicted his character and feats in a manner identical at all points with that of the ballads.^ All this literature implies the existence among the common people of England at the beginning of the Tudor period of a strong interest in the crudest form of character por- trayal; that is, in the delineation of a well-known figure in the performance of deeds too simple and familiar to distract the attention by reason of either novelty or intricate plot manipulation. This interest contin- ued unabated among the vulgar, in spite of the gibes and attacks of more progressive critics, till after the reign of James I; and its vitality is attested, not only by the numerous hostile allusions, but by the stupen- dous output of low-priced chapbooks and ballads recording the adventures of popular figures like Guy of Warwick, Valentine and Orson, and the Arthurian heroes. The general craving thus indicated was mainly satisfied during the ascendancy of the religious play and the interlude by means of verse and prose narra- tive rather than the drama; but it was largely a dra- matic instinct, and in the end it affected the stage both for good and ill. Undoubtedly, it was this taste, implanted in the body of the people, which kept alive the desire for serious popular drama during the long ^ Two such works are reprinted in Manly' s Specimens of the Pre- Shaksperean Drama, vol. i, 279 £f, and in the Malone Society "Collections," part ii (1908). 117 ff. 232 THE TUDOR DRAMA reign of almost unmixed farce, and it was the same taste which refused to be satisfied with the imported Senecan tragedy of plot intrigue alone, and restricted Senecan imitation for some thirty years to the learned amateur stage. On the one hand, this state of literary interest did much to raise Elizabethan drama supe- rior to the petty cult of novelty and to give it one of its clearest lines of contact with Athenian tragedy in its sane presentation of great characters and events, untrammelled by the shame of plagiarism or triteness. The same influence operated disadvantageously, how- ever, in encouraging a very cavalier attitude among the popular dramatists towards the virtues of unity and formal regularity in plot construction. It gave an epic tinge to much of the drama of the day, impelling the writers to cut their material lineally rather than transversely, and thus substitute for the full and bal- anced treatment of the story's climax a rambling epi- sodic chronicle of incidents. It tended normally to promote the glorification of the central figure and the neglect of all others. The general appetite for narratives of popular heroes, to which the ballads of the fifteenth century largely ministered, was further fed at the close of that period by adapting to the vulgar taste the romance of chivalry, once an essentially aristocratic species of literature, now fallen somewhat into disrepute. The great period of chivalrous romance came to a long deferred end with Malory, who summed up in prose what had centuries before been written in verse and said what should perhaps have been the last word upon the Arthurian story. The success of the "Morte d' Arthur," however, called forth numerous imitations. THE HEROIC PLAY 233 and gave renewed life among the populace to a liter- ary genre which as a courtly type had long arrived at senility. Among the host of works thus recalled into vogue, two deserve particular notice: "Huon of Bor- deaux," rendered from the French by Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart, during the reign of Henry VIII, and the enormously famous "Amadis of Gaul," of which one Elizabethan version is the work of the dramatist Anthony Munday.^ This kind of fiction maintained itself by no fresh- ness or skill in narrative, but merely by the portrayal in crude outline of some stupendous central figure. In the appreciation of critics whose taste was being chastened alike by the ideals of classical restraint and by Puritan morality, such vulgar stories steadily lost caste, till they came to be regarded as emblematic of all that was low and inartistic in literature. ^ Yet we have overwhelming evidence, not only for the undi- minishing appeal of this style of narrative with the rude public to which it mainly catered, but also for the important fact that the rough dramatizations of such hero-stories formed during two thirds of Eliza- beth's reign the chief source of popular serious drama. In a well-known passage of his "Schoolmaster," Roger Ascham records his hostility to the type of fiction represented by the "Morte d' Arthur" and the ballads as well as to the newer vogue of the Italian novel. The judgment of Gosson and Meres, both I ^ An earlier translation by T. Paynell had appeared in 1567. ^ Note, for example, Ben Jonson's hit at "The Knight of the Sun" in Cynthia's Revels (III, iii), and at the "Arcadia" in Bartholomew Fair (IV, ii) and Every Man Out of his Humor (II. i). 234 THE TUDOR DRAMA classicists and Puritans, is to the same effect, and bears the same witness to the strength of the repro- bated fashion. Writing in 1579, Gosson declares: "I may boldly say it because I have seen it, that 'The Palace of Pleasure,' 'The Golden Ass,' 'The Ethio- pian History,' 'Amadis of France,' and 'The Round Table ' . . . have been thoroughly raked to furnish the playhouses in London." And Francis Meres, with equal emphasis on the moral side of the question, gives a catalogue of titles of the offending literature comparing interestingly with the great collection of similar works which the bourgeois Captain Cox of Coventry is known to have made. Meres writes in a section of his " Palladia Tamia"(1598) dealing with the "Reading of bookes": "As the Lord de la Nonne in the sixe discourse of his politike and military discourses censureth of the bookes of 'Amadis de Gaule,' wh. he saith are no lesse hurt- full to youth then the workes of Michiauell to age : so these bookes are accordingly to be censured of, whose names follow: 'Beuis of Hampton,' 'Guy of War- wicke,' 'Arthur of the Round Table,' *Huon of Bor- deaux, ' ' Oliuer of the Castle,' ' The Foure Sonnes of Aymon,' ' Gargantua,' ' Gireleon,' ' The Honour of Chiu- alrie,' 'Primaleon of Greece,' 'Palmerin de Oliua,* 'The 7. Champions,' 'The Myrror of Knighthood,' 'Blanch- erdine,' 'Meruin' [Merhn ?], ' How^leglasse ' [TillEulen- spiegel], the stories of 'Palladyne' and 'Palmendos,' 'The Blacke Knight,' 'The Maiden Knight,' 'The History of Cselestina,' ' The Castle of Fame,' 'Gallian of France,' 'Ornatus and Artesia,' etc." In his list of sources of contemporary popular drama quoted above, Gosson adds to the typical cycles of the THE HEROIC PLAY 235 Round Table and Amadis and the not altogether dis- similar sentimental romance of the late Greek Helio- dorus the collections of stories, often unedifying, in Apuleius's "Golden Ass," and Painter's "Palace of Pleasure." It was works like the first three of these which lent to Elizabethan drama many of the features to be considered in this chapter. The great bulk of English popular drama, prior to 1587, which was not farce, seems to have belonged to this pseudo-chivalrous convention; and the playwrights dealt the more freely with their material by reason of the decadence of the heroic romance as an art form. It would, of course, be absurd to suppose that the drama could learn any truth of human character from the ridiculous figures that strut through the vulgarized romances of the day. Yet this weak and dying species left to the plays formed out of it certain conventional types of personality, infinitely rude and coarse, which were freely incor- porated and gave the resultant dramas their chief interest. They were little more than lay figures; but they held the eyes of the audiences, carried on the action, and declaimed the tremendous speeches, giv- ing dramatists and people their first glimpse of tragic character, and creating the conditions which later made it possible for Marlowe to replace them by figures of flesh and blood. " Tamburlaine " is the clas- sic instance of chivalrous romance turned drama, or rather "Tamburlaine" would be if we could detach its constituent machinery from the web of lyric passion in which the poet has enshrouded it. What Seneca was to Kyd, the heritage of romantic legend may be said to have been to Marlowe; and it chanced by the bless- ing of fate that each of these masters forged simul- 236 THE TUDOR DRAMA taneously from his little-promising material one of the two indispensables of tragedy : plot and character. The vast niajoritj^ of the plays roughly manufac- tured out of tales of knightly adventure during the jSrst thirty years of Elizabeth's reign have certainly perished. Frankly artless as they were in form and ephemeral in purpose, it is surprising that any should liave found their way into jirint, and the few that do survive doubtless owe that distinction to a degree of sophistication imusual to the general type. The fairest example of the species is a work entitled "The Historic of the two valiant Knights, Syr Clyo- mon Knight of the Golden Sheeld, sonne to the King of Dcnmarke: And Clamydes the wliite Knight, sonne to the King of Suavia." This anonymous production, published in 1599, but probably a score of years older, was formerly ascribed very unreasonably to George Peele, and has been lately attributed on purely specu- lative grounds to Thomas Preston, the author of " Cam- bises," ' Here, through the tetlious length of one hundred and forty pages of hobbling rime, are presented, with the intricate formlessness characteristic of the later prose romance, the adventures of the two titular heroes in pursuit of love and honor. Their wanderings bear them tlirough a strange world, ruled in chief by no less a nu^narch than King Alexander the Great, — a world which includes besides mnnerous widely distant realms an Isle of Strange Marshes and a Forest of Strange Marvels. In addition to the more usual actors of heroic romance, the reader meets a flying serpent that feeds on ladies fair; a crafty enchanter, Brian Sans- > See G. L. Kittrodj^^. "Notes on Elizabethan Plays," Journal qf Germanic Philology, ii, 7 ff. THE HEROIC PLAY 237 foy, who imprisons good knights in his tower and seeks by true fairy-tale methods to beguile Sir Clamy- des of his love; and an oppressed princess wandering in page's attire. Only in the vice, Subtle Shift, who plays the part of squire to each of the knights in turn; in the humorous dialect of the old countryman, Corin; and perhaps in the descent of Providence in propria persona to prevent the heroine's suicide, is there any touch of ordinary dramatic convention. Analogous in content and structure is another play of approximately the same date {ca. 1576): "An Ex- cellent and Pleasant Comedie, termed after the name of the Vice, Common Conditions, drawne out of the most famous historic of Galiarbus Duke of Arabia, and of the good and eeuill successe of him and his two chil- dren, Sedmond his sun and Clarisia his daughter." The general form and predominant seven-foot couplet of "Clyomon and Clamides" appear equally in "Com- mon Conditions," which, however, surpasses the other drama in its employment of conventional comic ma- terial, and shows in general a somewhat less total ignorance of the laws of theatrical composition. The adventures of the hero and heroine, seeking their exiled father through the wide world, are complicated by the persecutions of a marauding band of tinkers on land and a pirate crew by sea; but most of all by the petty knaveries of their page. Common Conditions, who creates much of the action by extricating the main characters from certain difficulties to plunge them mischievously into others. Like the usual vice of the interlude, and like his less developed counter- part. Subtle Shift in "Clyomon and Clamides," Com- mon Conditions makes use of an alian, calling himself / 288 THE TUDOR DRAMA upon occasion Master Affection; and when convicted of tills deceit, he explains with some glibness that Affection is his "sure name," but Conditions his "kir- sonname." Abundant love interest is presented in the style popular with the readers of chivalrous romance. The heroine, married after a courtship more sensa- tional than convincing, to the knight Lamphedon, suffers exile, captivity at the hands of pirates, separa- tion from her husband, and a long sojourn in a foreign land, where as the Lady Metrsea she withstands hap- pily the embarrassment of courtship by her own bro- ther, likewise disguised, and by the lord of the coun- try. Meantime, Lamphedon, roaming over the world in search of the lost Clarisia, vanquishes pirate crews single-handed, and subdues in battle a notable im- prisoner of ladies, Cardolus, the lord of Marofus Isle. The wearisome complexity of "Clyomon and Clam- ides" and "Common Conditions" does much to ob- scure the crude character interest which appears in the early Robin Hood fragments, and which practi- cally alone kept alive this kind of drama. Like the debased romances which inspired them, these plays sacrifice to the illegitimate ambition of heaping up surprises and sensations the one great merit of their type, — the power to paint in rough but striking out- line a few elemental passions and experiences. The average early Elizabethan heroic play can hardly have possessed the confusing intricacy of character and situation found in the two overlabored specimens which the printers not unnaturally chose for publica- tion. Yet even in these examples it is clear that the a ^ interest of spectators depended upon character rather ' than plot; that is, amid all the profusion of incident Tv»^ THE HEROIC PLAY 239 the attention was not fixed on the answer to a problem of intrigue, but followed in dull wonder each of the main figures as each passed through a series of discon- nected adventures. In the way of real character these works had nat- urally little, if anything, to offer; and they must of necessity be supplanted as soon as mature tragedy began to hold up a mirror to actual life. Through a time of perilous uncertainty, however, they performed for the English theatre two great services, in maintain- ing serious story on a popular stage otherwise given over to farce, and in fixing the attention upon the individual dramatic personage. It is important to observe that in the plays under discussion comedy by no means chokes interest in the serious plot as it does in contemporary works of another style, like "Cara- bises" and "Damon and Pithias." In bustle and hu- man appeal the figures of knights and ladies more than equal those of vice or clown, and the latter character, a survival from the interlude convention, is no longer an independent attraction, but takes an active part in tJie elaboration of the general plot. In such plays we find serious English drama making its first stand during the Tudor period against the otherwise over- whelming vogue of farce and buffoonery. So, again, though the early chivalrous drama could not make its figures humanly convincing or psycho- logically true, it could make them interesting to the vulgar playgoer; and that was probably the most in- dispensable need of the moment. It kept the eyes of the spectators constantly fixed upon its rude men of straw, and these were in good time replaced by living figures. In this life-giving metamorphosis Marlowe ^UO THE TUDOR DRAMA was tlie cliief enj^iiieHT; hut before it couUl occur there was reciuirctl a now anil saner view t)l' th-aniatic art. The ail Vance in structure, which eviilcnces the birth of tlie new art. came out of Seneca, when Seneca had at last been brouj;lit into harmony with tlic spirit of tlie a^e. Yet without the succession of crude lieroic plays, it is doubtful whetlier Thomas Kyd would have found a public for his thaunialurgic "Spanish Tras^- edy." Anil if the public had not been there craving a drama that sliould deal witli emotions deeper than the horse-play and nnniuncry of the interlude, it is well- nigh certain that Kyd would never have condescended to nationalize classic art. Instead of "The Spanish Tragedy" and "Solinian and IVrseda," he might well have produced a mere series of "Cornelias." At tJie same time, probably in tlie very year (1587), in which Kyd settled the place of classic influence in tJie development of English trageily, Marlowe took up the play of chivalry. He idealized it in "Tambur- laine." and gave it a poetic intensity so far in excess of anything it had previously known, that the contrast kilknl then and forever the original species. "Ilens- lowe's Diary," indeed, gives evidence of the attempt of that illiterate manager to entertain his audiences dm-ing the decade beginning I5[)'i with plays presum- ably after the archaic pattern; plays presenting such heroes as lluon of Bordeaux, (iodfrcy of Houlogne, Chinon of England, King Arthur, Valentine and Orson, Randal, Earl of (^hester, and the four sons of Aymon.' The total ilisappearance of all these works argues sufficiently the eontetnpt they rtveived from a public that had outgrown them. The few surviving ' Sii> Uiiiitlouxs Diary, od. W. W. Gn^g. THE HEROIC J'J.y\Y 241 chivalrous plays of this period, which are not obvious derivatives from Marlowe, seem to have been writt<;n mostly for dislinotly i)lel)eian audi(;nces, and in every case tliey bl(!nd the }i(!roic strain with material of anot}ier kind. Weak m(!dl(;ys like "(jeorge-a-Greene," "Muoedorus," and "Fair Km" illustrate the last state of the undeveloped heroic f)lay.' Tliomas I ley wood's "Four J*rentices of London," whicli tlie aj)oIo^etic preface to tlie edition of 101.5 asserts to liave been in fasliion "some fifteen or sixteen years a^f)," can certainly liave laid <-Iairn at tlie period indiftated to only a very vulvar and inartistic public. Jn(;n'e(;tual imitation of "Tarnburlaine" is af)i)arent in the valiant quarrelsomeness and Thrasonical mil- itary ardor of the lieroes, of whom no fewer than six comi)ete for tlie sf)ec;tator's main attention. Jiut tlie utter formlcssn(!ss of tlie j)iccc, wliich shows not even the most ^limmcrin^ realization of the jiossibilities of scene division or the need of f)lot cjoherence, — to- gether with tlu; rank absurdity of the fable, — i)roves that it belongs in spirit to the i)re-" Tarnburlaine" epoch. The sr)ecial appeal to the London ai)prentices, support(;d by the most ridiculous distortion of tlie story, adds concrete evidence for the natural assump- tion that this play, like the lost dramas of Ilenslowe's Com[)any, was consciously produc(^d in a ch(;ap and obsolete style for Llie satisfaction of the most vulgar taste. The attitude of progressive and educated opinion ' In fjirh of Ihi'tic. ]>\:iyH IIk; hcroicul clement appears to form the >,'rf)iin(lwork of the i)lot; but in eaefi rase tfii.s fundamental material is nef^lccted or distortcfl in the develo|)ment of th<; kind of interest proper to tlie more fashionable romantic comedy. 242 THE TUDOR DRAMA toward the old play of chivalrous romance during the last ten years of the sixteenth century is expressed in the exquisite satire of the type in Peele's "Old Wives' Tale"; while in Beaumont's later "Knight of tlie Burning Pestle" (IGOJ) ?) — supposed to be directed in particular against "The Four Prentices of London" — the ridicule is yet sharper, and the restriction of the offending si)ccies to the bourgeois public is clearly emphasized. The Induction to Beaumont's play con- tains a very complete list of tlie favorite dramatic entertainments of the contemporary London rabble. In "The Four Prentices of London" there remains hardly any tiling of the stress upon the individual figure which gave the heroic drama its original significance. Still less of the old character appears in two other late members of the species which owe nothing to the ex- ample of Marlowe. One of these plays, first printed from a British Museum manuscript in 1884 by Mr. Bullen, under the title of "The Distracted Emperor" deals in excessively sensational fashion with a morbid perversion of the story of Charlemagne, Orlando, and Ganelon. The other — entitled "The History of the Trial of Chivalry," and published in 1605 as lately acted by tlie Earl of Derby's Company — is an elabo- rate composite of knightly and romantic adventure constructed about an apocryplial theme of rivalry be- tween Lewis King of France and the King of Navarre. In such works heroic drama reaches an ebb as low as that to which heroic romance had been brought in its most decadent popularized representations. The in- dividual figure loses every charm, and the consequent impoverishment in human interest is meanly compen- sated by the multiplication of unimpressive stock THE HEROIC PLAY 243 characters and the interpolation of extraneous plot devices.^ Christopher Marlowe brought to the composition of "Tamburlaine" (1587-1588) the full classical training of a Cambridge Master of Arts, and not improbably also the experience derived from the previous dramatiza- tion of the Latin story of Dido. This preparation lent to his essay at chivalrous drama a certain invaluable sense of form, which shows itself, for example, in the poet's ordering his material in acts and scenes; and a Vergilian delicacy of finish which made the blank verse of "Tamburlaine" illumine the dark ways of dramatic style with veritable light from above. In the essentials, however, of plot and character, Marlowe followed na- tive usage alone. Of tragedy in the proper sense the heroic drama had no idea; nor did either part of "Tam- burlaine" show any clear conception of that wise economy of tragic material which rejects all irrelevant horrors and so manages the rest as to heighten the climactic interest of the close. There is here no cul- mination of suspense as the play approaches the inevi- table solution of a great central problem. Rather, we follow the progress of the mighty conqueror through a succession of breathless glories, till arbitrarily the ex- citement drops, and the play ends on the lowered key of peaceful marriage or triumphant death. Like the compilers of the romances of "Amadis" and "Sir Huon," Marlowe starts with the purpose of ^ Plays of this type doubtless stimulated the taste for purposeless martial scenes like those in All 'a Well that Ends Well. A good illus- tration is The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, which, though not a heroic play, resembles The Trial of Chivalry in its presentation of fictitious French history. 244 THE TUDOR DRAMA displaying the grandeur of his hero through a sequence of independent adventures; and having commenced near tlie point of incredibility, flags his invention in the effort to cap each past marvel by the next. The violent crudities of botli parts of "Tamburlaine," in speech and action, arise not so nuich from inlierent want of taste, as from the desperate need of maintaining the naturally lessening interest of the piece. The enforced self-murder of Agidas; the vulgarity of the word combat between Zenocrate and Zabina; and the shocking bar- barity of the scenes which depict the imprisomnent of Bajazet and his contributory kings, and the cold- blooded slaughter of the virgins of Damascus, tlie gov- ernor of Babylon, and Tamburlaine's own son are all blemishes produced by the attempt to make effective on the stage an essentially narrative presentation of the trium{)hant warrior. In the general atmosphere of tJie scenes, tlie ronu\ntic jncture of the relations be- tween Tamburlaine and Zenocrate, and the conception of tJie various subsidiary kings and go\ernors, Mar- lowe follows the conventional usage of chivalrous ro- mance; and in making the great central figure common to all such literature at the same time the exponent of his own personal rage for ideal grandeur, he created the first great psychological character in English tragedy and exorcised a fervent living spirit to inform tlie pro- mising dramatic frame which the English Senecans had devised. Tragic drama in England was consummated in tJie blending of classical and native influences, in the union of form and spirit. It is probably no chance phe- nomenon that " Hamlet," the most typical of English tragedies, is the one in which we can see most clearly how the rich plot outline of the " tragedy of blood " has THE HEROIC PLAY 245 [ been overlaid and spiritualized by that deep study of a human soul first attempted in the plays of Marlowe. In the study of the two parts of "Tamburlaine," the critic's interest in actual achievement transcends for the first time that suggested by evolutionary poten- tialities. Crude as these plays are on the side of form, they yet embody certain stable peculiarities in their relation to life and art which we are accustomed to re- gard as special characteristics of the best Elizabethan drama. They mark the approach to the great dramatic watershed which separates early Elizabethan crudity from Jacobean and Caroline sterility. To be sure, the individual heights stand far above them in the master- pieces of Shakespeare and Jonson, but the continued rise of the general dramatic level can no longer be safely presupposed. The wide-spread imitation of the "Tamburlaine" plays was inevitable. They implanted the great de- sideratum of theatrical success — striking psycliologic effect — in a type of literature long beloved not only on the popular stage, but also in the narrative fiction of the time. That nearly all these imitations proved total failures was perfectly natural. "Tamburlaine" was even less susceptible of uninspired copying than "The Spanish Tragedy"; to an even greater extent were its excesses of speech and action part of its very nature. The bombast and violence of Marlowe's play were transmuted into legitimate dramatic material by the fervency with which the poet expressed his own high aspiring soul in the terms of world-conquest and war- hke ruthlessness. Reproduced by any less translunary pen, these extravagances showed themselves for the intrinsic rubbish that they were; pruned away, they left 246 THE TUDOR DILUIA not even the plot outline upon which the pedestrian imitators of Kyd were able to rest their helplessness. In the "Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, King of Arragon," Robert Greene, one of the most active pro- moters of dramatic innovation, has attempted with disastrous result to emulate the success of "Tambur- laine." Diction, character, and incident are reproduced brazenly in a medley of the most perfect insipidity. Apparently conscious of his inability to hold the atten- tion by the mere slavish following of Marlowe's exam- ple, Greene has added several extraneous adornments which bring out the more glaringly the hea\'y lifeless- ness of his play. In accordance with an undramatic convention fashionable at the time and exemplified in "Soliman and Perseda," the deeds of Alphonsus are framed within an elaborate mythological masque of ^'enus and the Muses. Many speeches are deprived of force by studied imitations of the Euphuistic style, — such as allusions to the curious herb which enables the severed snake to join together its "battered corpse"; to the Asbeston stone, "Which, if it once be heat in flames of fire, Denieth to becommen colde againe"; and to the fabled Echinus; while the wife and daughter of the Tiu"kish Emperor are frankly presented as war- ring Amazons. The listlessness of the portrayal of Alphonsus's continual victories is relieved, in a manner eagerly followed by later writers of dull plays, by inter- polated exhibitions of magic. Medea conjures up Cal- chas, dressed surprisingly "in a white surphse and a Cardinals Myter," at the court of Amurack; and Mahomet prophesies through a brazen head to tlie Turkish princes. In the next two plays of Greene — "The Look- THE HEROIC PLAY 247 ing Glass for London," written in conjunction with Thomas Lodge, and "Orlando Furioso" — the influ- ence of " Tamburlaine " is likewise conspicuoas. The ranting blasphemy of Rasni, King of Nineveh, and the magniloquent speeches of Orlando, with the picture of the servile bands of kings that attend on each, are clearly copied from Marlowe; but neither the intro- duction of spectacular stage business and a number of tolerable comic scenes in the former play, nor the bor- rowing of the Kydian theme of heroic insanity in the latter saves them from the inevitable failure incident to the disparity between the grandeur of the stolen shreds and patches of language and the psychological poverty of the speakers. Greene had a great work to do in English comedy; but his attempts at straining the delicate pastoral note with which nature had alone en- dowed him into a semblance of Marlowe's passionate soul-expression served only to show how unique was at this time the tragical gift of the latter poet. One of the most readable of the humbler imitations of "Tamburlaine" is an anonymous play acted by the Children of the Queen's Chapel and preserved in a very carelessly printed edition, dated 1594. This work, en- titled "The Warres of Cyrus King of Persia against Antiochus King of Assyria, with the Tragicall ende of Panthaea," derives its plot from the "Cyropaedia" of Xenophon, of which a complete translation had ap- peared as early as 1567. The Mario vian influence is everywhere evident: in the versification; in the general treatment of the grandiose theme of conflicting Asiatic empires, each with its host of tributary kings and chieftains; and in the high romantic development given to the interests both of love and war. It would seem 248 THE TUDOR DRiVMA that reminiscence of the second part of "Tambur- laine " was particularly strong in the mind of the author. The treatment of tlie Panthaia - Araspas - Abradatas love episode — the only one of the several independ- ent stories which reaches a dramatic conclusion — is pretty clearly indebted to the Olympia-Theridamas scenes in "Tamburlaine II." Moreover, in the man- agement of the figure of Cyrus, the titular hero, the play shows a decided change from the procedure of the first part of "Tamburlaine" aud the immediate imita- tions of that work. The latter plays concentrate atten- tion wholly upon the chief personage, whose rise they portray from humble beginnings to the attainment of unexampled magnificence. Cyrus, however, in the drama under discussion, occupies a position much more like that of Tamburlaine in Marlowe's second play. He is the undisputed conqueror, who has reached tlie zenith of his glory, and who reigns secure through tlie entire progress of the action. Consequently, the dra- matic interest, instead of following the single career of the ruling genius of the world portrayed, divides itself among the different minor figures upon which the hero's brilliance has cast reflected splendor. In tlie second part of "Tamburlaine," to be sure, though many scenes deal with the independent adventures of Sigismond and Orcanes, Callepine, Theridamas and Techelles, tlie personality of Tamburlaine himself is always kept clearly in view, and the apparently scat- tered threads of narrative all lead up to the final glorifi- cation of the world-conqueror in the last act. The au- thor of "The Warres of Cyrus" has been able to endow his hero with no such all-pervasive significance, and his play consequently lacks unity of impression as well THE HEROIC PLAY 249 as unity of structure. The very exaltation of Cyrus's character to a height of vague nobihty where he shows himself superior to the human i)assions of love, hatred, envy, and ahnost even of ambition, makes this figure necessarily pale and bloodless. Indeed, he finds a truer counterpart in the amiably insipid hero of Rowe's "Tamerlane" than in the infinitely more sympathetic, though faultier Tamburlaine of Marlowe. In "Doctor Faustus" Marlowe first took up a strictly tragic theme. The main idea is again that of infinite aspiration expressed in a single colossal figure. In the case of tliis play, however, the hero's ambition to sway "All things that moue betweene the quiet poles" takes a direction which, instead of leading him through a succession of individual triumphs, brings him immediately into conflict with the fundamental moral laws, and broaches an issue soluble only in the terrific final scene. In this play, the special feature of the heroic drama, the treatment of a central hero who dares and does to the uttermost, has attained its great- est imagir^able development. It testifies strongly to the inherent appeal of this conception that " Doctor Faustus," though grossly violating the rules of dramatic structure and greatly qualifying its effectiveness by the interpolation of comic scenes of unutterable bathos, was yet on the Elizabethan stage, and remains, even when presented on that of to-day, one of the most suc- cessful tragedies which the age produced. The opportunity for the pure heroic play, in which the entire interest was focused upon a single figure, was naturally limited, and grew more so with the development of critical taste and the emergence of rival themes. Relatively few characters possessed of 250 THE TUDOR DRAMA sufficient vividness and novelty to hold the undivided attention through a performance could be imagined; and the successful presentation of such a character required very unusual poetic power. To Marlowe's great portraits of Tamburlaine and Faustus should be added Shakespeare's treatment of Richard III, a surprisingly liunum {)rescntment of the Machiavel- lian type; as well as the apotheosis of the hero-king in "Henry V," and probably the less happy efforts of Chapman in tlie Biron and Bussy d'Ambois plays. The final triumph of the species is the figure of Hamlet, where we find a close study of a complex individual superimposed upon a preexistent melodramatic plot. It was in its disintegration that the heroic drama exerted its widest influence. Only by distributing the psychological interest among a number of figures was it possible either to secure an approximation to real conditions of life or to make use of the infinite permu- tations of mood due to the interaction of the various figures upon one another. Only by such procedure, moreover, was it practicable to reconcile interest in character with interest in plot. The execution of these final perfections was the main contribution of Shake- speare's tragic practice. It was he who extended charac- ter interest and psychological truth from the protago- nists of the drama to its meanest subordinates; and it was he, equally, who, while normally resting the chief attention ■uj)on individual character, yet made the pre- sentment of character advance by means of the fullest stage action and the most careful evolution of a dra- matic plot. Marlowe's last great tragedies, "The Jew of Malta" and "Edward II," show important variations from the THE HEROIC PLAY 251 type of heroic drama. In tlie former play, excessive engrossment with melodramatic plot effect, due prob- ably to the example of Kyd, causes the tota^ distortion of the main figure. It may even be questioned whetlier the vivid portrayal of Barabas in the first acts is not rather an unconscious reminiscence of the poet's earlier manner than a part of his serious aim. "Edward II" displays an evident desire to escape from the one-man type of drama; and this escape is effected — rather curiously and somewhat to the detriment of the piece — not by the juxtaposition of several figures of equiv- alent drainatic weight, but by giving predominating importance to each of three or four during various por- tions of the play. Gaveston, Edward and Young Mor- timer never become parties in an equal tragic conflict, but each in turn assumes the centre of the stage and absorbs the attention of the spectators almost as com- pletely during his period of ascendancy as Tamburlaine and Faustus had done before. "The Jew of Malta" and "Edward II" show, therefore, that Marlowe's practical experience w^as teaching him the necessity of presenting plot as well as character, and that he did not hesitate in pursuit of the former interest to make very heavy sacrifices in poetic and psychological effect. Shakespeare's "Richard II" is an obvious deriva- tive from "Edward II," and represents an advance chiefly in the answer which it gives to the problem merely evaded in the other play. Here, for perhaps the first time, plot interest and character interest are com- bined by the treatment of a conflict arising from the opposition of contrasted mental types. The impracti- cal and unreliable, though emotionally rich, nature of Richard is set forth with the broad full delineation 252 THE TUDOR DRAMA accorded to Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Faustus and to Shakespeare's earlier figure of Richard III; but by outlining against this poetic hero the complementary personality of the political hero, Bolingbroke, and by attributing the misfortunes of Richard to his lack of qualities possessed by his successful rival, the author at once motivates the action of the piece, and brings his careful portrayal of each of the main figures into direct relation both with the incidents of the plot and with a definite theory of life. The device thus inaugu- rated of evolving plot out of the conflict of antagonistic types of character became the means by which Shake- speare attained some of his greatest triumphs . The con- trast between Brutus and Cassius, Antony and Octa- vius, Othello and lago, gave him opportunity not only for the most brilliant revelations of character, but also for the most thrilling scenes of intrigue and action. Thus the heroic play, having inculcated the study of the human personality, gave place to the more accurate reflection of life which it had made possible. In the time of Shakespeare's maturity the only plays of heroic type really holding the public ear were, with a few excep- tions, the chronicle histories, which detailed in loosely cohering scenes the most notable events in the lives of familiar national characters. These plays, constituting, with the other histories, a class apart, owed their tem- porary vogue to special conditions and require separate discussion. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Simple Dramatizations of Heroic Stort (a) Early Robin Hood Plays. Robin Hood and the Sheriff" of Noltingham. MS. fragment, ca. 1485. Printed THE HEROIC PLAY 253 J. M. G., Notes and Queries, Oct. 27, 1855 ; F. J. Child, Ballads, iii, 90 ; J. M. Manly, Specimens, i, 1897; Ma- lone Society "Collections," i, 2, 1908. A Play of Robin Hood for May-Games. Two early editions printed, with- out date by W. Copland and E. White respectively. (The work is made up of two separate plays : Robin Hood and the Friar, and Robin Hood and the Potter.) Reprinted, Child, Manly, and Malone Society, as above. (V) Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes. " As it hath been sundry times Acted by her Maiesties Players," 1599. Reprinted, A. Dyce, Works of George Peele, vol. iii, 1839. Discussion : L. Kellner, Engl. Stud., xiii (1889), 187-229 (a valuable article, disproving Peele's author- ship) ; R. Fischer, " Zur Frage nach der Authorsehaft Ton C. & C," E7igl. Stud., xiv (1890), 344-365 ; G. L. Kittredge, " Notes on Elizabethan Plays," Jrl. Germ. Phil., ii, 7 ff. (c) Common Conditions. Printed for J. Hunter, n. d. Re- printed, A. Brandl, Quellen, 1898 ; J. S. Farmer, Anon, Plays (4th Series), 1908. B. Decadent Heroic Plat3 George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield. See bibliogra- phy on p. 293. Mucedorus. " A Most pleasant Comedie of Musedorus the kings Sonne of Valentia and Amadine the kings daughter of Arragon," 1598. Reprinted 1606. " Amplified with new addi- tions, as it was acted before the Kings Maiestie," 1610. At least thirteen later seventeenth-century editions are known. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, 1824 ; N. Delius, 1874 ; Hazlitt's Dodsley, vii ; Warnke and Proescholdt, 1878 ; C. F. T. Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha, 1908. For discussion, see Bibliography to Shakespeare Apocrypha. Fair Em. See bibliography on p. 293. Heywood, Thomas : The Four Prentices of London. "With the Conquest of Jerusalem, 1615. Second edition, 1632. Reprinted, Ancient British Drama, 1810, vol. iii ; Reed's and Collier's Dodsley. The Trial of Chivalry. " With the life and death of Caualiero Dicke Bowyer. As it hath bin lately acted by the right Hon- 254 THE TUDOR DRAMA Durable the Earle of Darby liis servants," 1605. Reprinted, A. II. Bullen, Old English Plai/s, iii, 1884. The Distracted Emperor. Treserved in Brit. Mus. MS. Printed, A. II. Bullen, Old English Plays, iii, 1884. C. Travesties of Heroic Drama Peele, George : The Old Wives' Tale. " Played by the Queeues Maiesties players. Written by G. P.," 1595. Reprinted in editions of Peele's Works, A. Dyce, 1828, 18G1, 1879 ; A. H. Bullen, 1888. Separately reprinted, F. B. Gum mere in Representative English Comedies, 1003 ; Malone Society, 1907 ; A. H. Thorndike, Minor Elizabethan Drama, ii {Everyman's Library); acting version, F. W. Cady, 1911. Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John : The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1613. Reprinted (two editions) 1635, Included in the second (1679) Beaumont and Fletcher folio, and in later collected editions ; JMermaid edition, vol. i; H. S. Murch, Yale Studies, 1908. D. Heroic Drama under the Influence of Marlowe Marlowe, Christopher : works ed. Robinson, 1826; A. Dyce, 1850, 1858; Cunningham, 1870; A. II. Bullen, 1885; C. F. T. Brooke, 1910. Inedited reprints published by Newnes, 1905 ; Everytnan's Library, 1909. The " best plays " ed. H. El- lis, Mermaid series. General discussion: J. Le Gay Brereton, three papers on Marlowe in " Elizabethan Drama. Notes and Studies," 1909 ; E. Faligan, " De Marlovianis Fabulis," 1887; J. H. Ingram, " Chistopher Marlowe and his Associates," 1904 ; J. Schipper, " De Versu Marlovii," 1867 ; G. C. Moore Smith, •' Marlowe at Cambridge," Mod. Lang. Review, iv (1909). Tamburlaine, Two Parts. Both printed 1590 and 1592. The two parts reprinted with separate title-pages dated 1605 and 1606 respectively. Included in all collected editions and sep- arately edited by A. Wagner, 1885. Discussion : C. H. Iler- ford and A. Wagner, " The Sources of Marlowe's Tambur- laine," Academy, xxiv, 265, 260 (Oct. 20, 1883) ; C. F. T. Brooke, " Marlowe's Tamburlaine," Mod. Lang. Notes, March, 1910. Doctor Faustus. Printed 1604, as acted by the Earl of Not- THE HEROIC PLAY 255 tingham's (Lord Admiral's) servants. Reprinted 1609, 1611. Enlarged version printed 1616, 1619, 1620, 1624, 1631. A third, greatly perverted, text was printed 1663. Separately printed, C. W. Dilke, Old English Plays, i, 1814; W. Wagner, 1877 ; A. W. Ward, Old English Drama (with Friar Bacon and Friar fiungay), 1878, etc. ; H. Breymann, 1889 ; I. GoUancz, Temple Dramatists, 1897. Discussion : H. Logeman, " Faustus Notes," 1898 ; R. K. Root, " Two Notes on Marlowe's Doctor Faustus," Engl, Stud., 1910, 144-149. (Also pp. 117-134 of the same volume.) The Jew of Malta. See bibliography on p. 228. Edward II. See bibliography on p. 348. The Wars of Cyrus King of Persia. " Played by the children of her Maiesties Chappell," 1594. Reprinted, W. Keller, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxxvii (1901). Greene, Robert: Alphonsus, King of Arragon, 1599. Re- printed in collected editions of Greene. See bibliography, p. 293. Orlando Furioso. " The Historic of Orlando Furioso One of the twelve Pieres of France," 1594, 1599. Lodge, Thomas, and Greene, Robert : A Looking Glass for London and England, 1594. Reprinted 1598, 1602, 1617. CHAPTER VIII ROMANTIC COMEDY AND JASTORAL COMEDY The Puritan assailants of the drama quoted in the last chapter ^ confuse three distinct species of literature in their mention of the ungodly materials employed by the early playwrights. The heroic legend, against which they inveigh in greatest detail, was either of native origin, or had been long naturalized and adopted into general currency. We have seen how it contributed indispensable elements to the evolution of tragedy. The other works were all exotics, — members of two great types of fiction, each of which was only just establish- ing its position in English favor when the drama ap- proached maturity. The debt of the Elizabethan theatre to the prose romance is well known to all who read handbooks on Shakespeare. The names of the novels on which were based the plays of "As You Like It," "Twelfth Night," "The Winter's Tale," "Measure for Measure," "Othello," and many others, are sufficiently familiar; while contemporary collections of stories, like Painter's "Palace of Pleasure" and its rival, "The Petite Palace of Pettie His Pleasure," have in late years beeri re- printed, and enjoy at least a scholarly public. Such books as Greene's "Pandosto," Lodge's "Rosalinde," and Sidney's "Arcadia" have even, it may be hoped, passed beyond the stage of purely critical interest, and make a modest appeal upon their merits. Works of this 1 See pp. 233, 234. ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 257 kind were produced during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign in ever increasing number, occasionally by writers like Lodge and Greene and Sidney as original literature under foreign stimulus; more often by the easy means of translation. A radical difference appears between the two species of imported fiction which thus simultaneously con- tested the popular favor. The one was represented by the realistic novel, Italian for the most part in charac- ter and in origin. The tales of Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, and their imitators were the main source of English compilations like that of Painter, and served throughout the entire period as an inexhaustible trea- sury of plot and a rough pattern for realistic delineation. But this influence, though copiously exerted both in comedy and tragedy, was not deep or significant. The greatest dramatists always modified the crude effects of Italian realism by large imaginative infusions; and Shakespeare, who was an incessant borrower of its plot outlines, never failed to reject its philosophy of life. "Twelfth Night" is a superb example of the poet's skill in harmonizing a coarse intrigue plot with the delicate romantic atmosphere which he derived from the other type of exotic story. The second influence was that of the pastoral ro- mance, introduced chiefly from Italy and Spain, pro- ductive first of a rich prose literature and then of the peculiar species of "romantic comedy," which flour- ished with the most buoyant life for a dozen or fifteen years and disappeared, never again to encounter the conditions necessary to its revival. This comedy, of which Shakespeare is the unrivalled master, always be-, trayed clearly its non-dramatic origin. Assuming upon 258 THE TUDOR DRAMA its transference to the stage rather the mere setting than the substance of theatrical art, it continued to base its appeal upon the kind of interest excited pecul- iarly by narrative fiction. Fundamentally, it depends always for the attainment of its effects upon the han- dling of "atmosphere" and romantic accident rather than psychological interpretation or dramatic intrigue. The fact is worthy of the most careful attention that such an ephemeral type, which obviously only clings to the skirts of true drama, and with which so keen and delicate a critic as Hazlitt frankly shows his lack of sympathy,^ should be the main instrument of many of Shakespeare's noblest comic achievements. "■ The story of pastoral influence on European litera- ture goes back to the very beginning of the renaissance movement. The eclogues of Vergil, to a smaller extent those of Theocritus, and even more perhaps the modern Vergilian imitations of the Italian Mantuanus (Bat- tista Spagnuoli, d. 1516), introduced writers of the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries to a species of fiction which afforded a very welcome relief both from the blood-curdling narratives of heroic romance and from the sordid realism of the popular novel. The strict pas- toral seems seldom to have appealed to the more gen- eral and unfashionable public : it was essentially too re- mote from the real activities and interests of men, and often too lacking in excitement. By the academic circles of the Continent, however, this genre was taken up with an enthusiasm which it is nowadays far beyond our power to comprehend. The accident of the Vergilian connection and the opportunity furnished by the pas- toral of interweaving constant allusions to Ovidian ^ See Hazlitt, English Comic Writers, Lecture II. ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 259 mythology and the Golden Age tradition doubtless gave this particular art-form a factitious attraction for the classic zealots of the Revival of Letters. It is not necessary to deal here specifically with the pastoral eclogues in verse. The diffusion of this type through- out Europe is well enough indicated by the Latin works of Mantuanus, the court pastorals of the French writer, Clement Marot, and by the " Shepherd's Calen- dar" of their imitator Spenser. As a source of the Elizabethan drama, the pastoral element requires consideration under two aspects : as it appears in the prose pastoral romance, and as we find it already in dramatic shape in the plays of the school of Tasso. The first important pastoral romance is of the most respectable antiquity, and takes us back far beyond the period indicated for the general prevalence of the type. It is the "Daphnis and Chloe" of the Alexan- drian Greek poet, Longus, and belongs to the fifth cen- tury A. D. The story, which is a kind of foreshadowing of "Paul and Virginia," deals with the companionship and love of shepherd and shepherdess from their earli- est childhood. About the hero and heroine are assem- bled the usual other characters of the later pastoral convention: the wise old shepherds; the wncked herds- man, in subsequent treatments frequently presented as a Satyr, who attempts to destroy the happiness of the lovers; pirates and similar intruders from the outside world, who are brought into the story for the purpose of abducting or otherwise afflicting the main characters. A contemporary work even more romantic in tone, and likewise written in decadent Greek, is the "^Ethiopian History" of Heliodorus, treating the impossible adven- tures and mutual love of two embodiments of all the 260 THE TUDOR DRAMA proprieties — Theagenes and Charicleia — who, after beingcapturedby the usual piratical crew and enduring numberless accidents and escapes, are in tlie end dis- covered and made happy by their true parents just in time to prevent them from perishing as sacrifices to tlie patron deity of their country, Daphnis and Chloe and tlie " -(Ethiopica " were both rendered into French before 1550 by Jacques Amyot, subsequently the translator of Plutarch. During the reign of Elizabeth there ap- peared an English version of Longus's pastoral by An- gel Day (1587), while Heliodorus was very splendidly translated by Thomas Underdowne. These Greek ro- mances, however, should not be regarded as having set tlie pastoral fashion. They were rather recalled into vogue by the existence of works in the same style which had arisen independently. The modern pastoral convention is said to begin wdth the "Anieto" of Boccaccio, a work centring about the lamentations of seven nymphs, who relate the stories of their unhappy love to a model listener — the shep- herd Anieto. At the end of each tale metrical eclogues are inserted, and we tlius find the blending of prose fiction and lyric so usual in the pastoral romances of tlie Elizabethans. Another famous Italian work is the "Arcadia" of Sannazzaro, first published in 1502. Though hardly a true pastoral on any analysis, it gave to Sidney's book a good deal more tlian its mere name, and did as much, doubtless, as any single production of the time to originate interest in the type. Much the most important of the developed pastoral romances is the "Diana" of tlie Spaniard Jorge de Montemayor,* a book which had an enormous vogue, , ' Montemayor was by birth a Portuguese, but wrote Castilian. ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 20 1 and settled for a considerable period the structure and subject matter of the type. An P^nglish translation of the "Diana," by Bartholomew Yong, was published in 1598, but had been executed, the preface tells us, many years before. The work is a complex tissue of narratives of misfortune in love, related successively by various shepherds and nymphs. It is best known to the Shakespeare student from the circumstances that the tale of the Shepherdess P^clismena appears to liave suggested the story of Proteus and Julia in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and that the Shepherd Mon- tano may have suggested the name of a charaf;ter in "Othello" and another in the older version of " Ham- let." Yet the book is by no means uninteresting in itself, and its interspersed songs possess very consider- able merit in Yong's translation. It is worth noting, as an indication of the novel's popularity, that the com- piler of the anthology, "England's Helicon," quotes Yong's versions of Montemayor more frequently, I think, than he cites any of the native English poets. The limited plot material and monotonous atmos- phere of tPie pastoral convention were in themselves unsuited to that indefinite expansion to which all popu- lar renaissance themes were likely to be subjected. Such works de longue haleine as the "Diana" could be spun out of the thin web of pastoral incident only by the extensive interjiolation of conventional material from the heroic romance. A tendency to the introduc- tion of adventuroas incident is observable in "Daphnis and Chloe," and, in much higher degree, in the "^thi- opica" of Heliodorus. The Spanish school of Monte- mayor, from which Sidney inherited, pushed to the final limit the ridiculous combination of nymphs and 262 THE TUDOR DRAMA shepherds from the pastoral world with knights, mon- sters, and sorcerers out of the old romances. The conse- quences of this melange can be traced not only in such narrative works as the "Arcadia" and the "Faerie Queene," but also in the variegated effects of humble plays like "Mucedorus," and in the universal fond- ness among more meritorious dramas for the insertion of sylvan or pastoral scenes within the articulations of a serious plot. The more legitimately pastoral sections of the "Diana" exemplify pretty well the entire range, in point of machinery, atmosphere, and incident, of the pastoral novels of Greene and Lodge; and it was by means of such works as the "Menaphon" and "Rosa- linde" of these writers that pastoral influence most seriously impressed the English drama. The effect of the Italian pastoral play appears to have been later in date, and certainly it produced less general results. Neither in the romances of Montemayor and Sidney, nor in the simpler novels of the type, is the pastoral convention treated with seriousness or consistency. To a smaller extent even than in the Italian play is the life of the imaginary shepherd society described for any in- trinsic interest of its own. Montemayor uses the pas- toral setting, as Mr. Stanley Weyman uses the setting of French history, merely to furnish an environment sufficiently vague and remote from real life for the free movement of stories of knightly love and adventure. The same thing is true in the main of the novels of Greene and Lodge. The success of these works was not conditioned upon the portrayal of manners or types of character such as might be imagined to exist among Arcadian shepherds; it resulted rather from the curi- ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 263 osity to know how the tangled mesh of incident was to be untwisted in the end, and from the presentation of a thoroughly fanciful world whose attractiveness con- sisted in its entire freedom from reaUstic trammels. The prose pastorals in England and elsewhere would thus appear nearly destitute of dramatic possibilities. That they should, notwithstanding, have exercised so appreciable an influence as they did upon comedy seems at first almost paradoxical; yet the phenomenon is at once explained when one comes to examine the particular plays produced under the tutelage of such works. It is not definitely pastoral dramas, like "The _Sad Shepherd" and ^The Faithful Shepherdess" that show the influence of Mojitjmay or 's school. It is rather tEeunique and exquisitely beautiful art-form which we call, 'par excellence. Romantic Comedy, work like the sylvan parts of Greene's "James IV" and "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" and Shakespeare's "x\s You Like It" and "Twelfth Night." t Robert Greene may be safely reckoned as the founder of this type of drama; and there can be no doubt that what Greene put into romantic comedy was precisely what he had learned as a writer of pastoral romances. In the typical plays of Greene and in the related com- edies of Shakespeare's middle and latest periods, the interest excited by the presentation of a dramatic con- flict is reduced or evanescent. Comparatively speaking, there is little psychological development. Many of the characters are quite shadowy; none — considering the known powers of the writer — is possessed of the high- est degree of dramatic intensity. These plays depend for their great attractiveness upon just the elements which one finds in novels like "Menaphon" and "Pan- S64 THE TUDOR DRAMA dosto," — upon an imaginary "atmosphere," half pas- toral, half that of fairyland, and upon the series of absorbing adventures which befall the actors without their very serious responsibility. Thus, the primary influence of the great pastoral literature of the Renaissance upon the Elizabethan theatre had for its chief result the domestication within the drama of essentially non-dramatic narrative ideals derived from the contaminated pastoral novels of the day. One reason for this is, naturally, the enormous current demand for all sorts of theatrical entertainment, the inability to supply this demand from the slender resources of existing comedy and tragedy, and the con- sequent attraction upon the stage of literary matter which properly belonged outside the walls of the thea- tre, and which in all other epochs has found narrative expression. Greene, an ardent seeker after popularity, already famous as the author of pastoral novels, saw his opportunity. By dressing his essentially fictional themes in rough dramatic guise, he instituted a new species of comedy, which from first to last comprised stories of love and sylvan adventure rather than plays dealing with human character and conflict.^ It is not easy to criticise this type. Its successful exemplifica- tion, as well as its very existence, was the result of its falling upon an age which qualified the eager search into the truth of actuality by a peculiarly large admix- ture of romantic nonsense, and read a mystic philosophy into the trite impossibilities of the nursery tale. The ^ The relations between Greene's early pastoral novels and his romantic comedies is thus precisely analogous to that which exists between Lyly's Ewphues and the latter writer's courtly comedies in euphuistic prose. See p. 171 ff. ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 265 mouth of the judicial theorist is stopped by the fact that the greatest artist of the day moulded in this form the brightest and most universally loved plays of his maturity and by the further marvel that he chose the same fragile and even trivial vehicle for the last deep fraught expression of his ripened age. Pastoral drama of a kind had been freely produced during the decade immediately previous to Greene's first concern with the type. But all these works, ini- tiated perhaps by Peele's graceful "Arraignment of Paris "and continued in the sylvan comedies of Lyly, are expressions of courtly scholarship, compacted of mythological anecdote with varied reminiscences of the classical eclogue. They show no demonstrable trace of that influence of the pastoral romance which was the determining factor in romantic comedy. Greene's first venture in the new style, "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay," is a medley illustrating to a degree unusual even in the plays of this imitative writer the desire to profit by all the current recommendations to popularity. It cannot be doubted that the comedy owes its original conception to the vogue of Marlowe's "Faustus," just as Greene's "Alphonsus" had earlier been prompted by the success of "Tamburlaine." In the interval which had elapsed since the production of the earlier work, Greene had measured the range of his dramatic powers. By selecting a supernatural theme inherently much lighter than the dark story of Faust, and by restricting himself to the presentation of the most innocent feats of white magic, Greene introduced upon the stage a type of beneficent, romantic conjurer which long enjoyed an unusual vogue. The main appeal of this most popular play lay, however, less in the do- 266 THE TUDOR DRAMA ings of its two titular heroes than in the conventional romantic portrayal of the love of Edward and the Lord Lacy. Here, in the intercourse of prince and peer with the humble pastoral nymph among the cream-pots of the dairy and the booths of the rustic fair, or in the avenues of the King's forest, Greene found a thoroughly congenial subject, in the elaboration of which he has blended the gracefully unreal atmosphere of the fa- miliar pastoral novel with certain touches of truer feel- ing and closer observation. In accordance with a taste which Greene perhaps began, the vagueness of the Utopian setting of this play has been relieved, without being brought at all closer to the truth of nature, by the introduction of fanciful portraits of real persons. Henry III and his heir, the three visiting sovereigns of Germany, Castile, and Saxony, and the prominent nobles of the time are pictured in consciously unhistoric lights; while Eleanor — the reward bestowed by poetic justice upon the prince in return for his magnanimous surrender of Margaret — is idealized with an indiffer- ence to actual fact probably no less complete than that which permitted Peele in his "Edward I" to paint the same reputable queen as a monster of infidelity. It is generally agreed that the chief merit of Greene's romantic plays, "Friar Bacon" and "James IV," apart from the creation of their fresh atmosphere, lies in the character of his heroines, Margaret, Dorothea, and Ida; and that these figures, together with the idyl- lic environment they carry with them, are a direct im- portation from Greene's pastoral novels. The type of woman so presented, always essentially the same, and sprung originally, it seems, from the poet's most inti- mate personal experience, remained an established ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 267 figure in romantic comedy, and gave the species its distinctive tone. It was doubtless Greene's initiative which placed the action of Shakespeare's similar plays in a woman's world, remote always from realistic so- phistication, — a world of sentiment rather than rea- son, in which Rosalind, Viola, Imogen and Perdita tend to outvalue their masculine associates. A capital fault in Greene's dramatic method was al- ways the attempt to crowd into each individual play the entire stock of incidents and plot devices at his com- mand. This tendency doubtless accounts for the dog- in-the-manger attitude toward other dramatists mani- fested in Greene's famous "Groatsworth of Wit." It explains also the mingling in his own plays of tawdry imitations from all the earlier styles with many hasty and superficial sketches of original motifs, ineffective in Greene's presentment, but requiring only the care- ful development of Shakespeare and other plagiarists of genius to become extraordinarily fruitful. "Friar Bacon" contains much which can only be understood either as a deliberate bait for vulgar popularity or an archaic survival from outworn styles. A spurious affinity to the mythological court comedy of Peele and Lyly is suggested by interlarding the speech of the peasant maid of Fressingfield with allusions to Phoebus and Semele, Paris, iEnon, and the vale of Troy. Much of the magical business, such as the spiriting of the Hostess of Henley and Friar Bungay through the air, and the conjuring rigid of swords and tongues, is little more than a copy from some of the most prosaic scenes of "Faustus"; while the final identification of the clown. Miles, with the old vice, and his dispatch to hell on the devil's back are still franker retrogressions to the low »08 THE TllDOU DIUMA •til loNt^l of the iiiltMliulf. All this extramxnis ami ill- tli^vstoil limit t>r, (oi,'rllior\\itli tho imforlunato allompt to aiKl llu* s|»tH'ious atlrai-lii>n ivf i'hi\»nu-Io liistory ti> a \voik o[ pmv iiuagiuutiou, confuses the issues of tlie play, ami iliNerls iittonlion from the strain i>f faiu'iful iiloalism Nvluih it dorives from tho pasti>ral ri>mam-e ami to whiih it owes its particular charm. By isolat- ing anil ilcvt^lopiiii;' this sptnial fcjilmv. Sliakt\Npoaix» brought into strong relief the merits appreliciulcil only suheouseiously by tlie readers of Greene. "The Scottish History of James IV." probably (iixvnc's latest i>lay, marks a i't)nsiilerable atlvance in style, but hanlly sliows any iinpwvement in its treat- ment of ilramatii* plot ami ch.aracler. The artificial mythological vcrbiiigc. a iu>tablc mannerism of the earlier plays, has been almost entirely supplantetl; but the author continues to ilcpciul for the sui'cess of llie (•omctly rather upon the inclusii>u of a givat variety of possible souix'es of inteivst than upon the harmonimis evolution i>f a singU^ theme. The main subjtH-t is ile- rivcil.with very substantial alteratii>ns. from an Italian novel i>f Cintliio ("lltvatommilhi." ^il iKhjuIc. 1). Vet the real merit of the ilrama i-ousists in the iilyllie story which evi»lves abi»ul the two heroines. lu>th em- boiliments of tl»e unworldly type, who li\c titul love, ivsist temptation, ov wamler In vlisguise thri>ugh a syl- van land of rt>inancc wholly tint ipodal ti> the world i»f chicanery and politics tenanttnl by tJie insurrectionary Sct^ttish luvrs, the classiial ])arasite. Ateukin. and the symlu>Iic!il Lawyer. Mcrch.aut. ami Divine of Ait \ . scene 4. The title of the piece and the thin political scenes, lacking equally in verity and verisimilitude, are tlishoncsl appeals to the temporary taste ft>r history IK )M AN TIC AND rASTOItAI. COMKDY m) pl/iyn. TlMy iiml.r «»iily IIk* ;ili)/lil|i*x lovo U(lvuri)l lien iiikI Mti. Oim «*xcn'M<'fiil cIciiM'iil ill IIiih iiuuWtiy tloMvvvt'M NoriKv wli/il. iiiorr Hy Mi|ml IkI ir roiiMiilcnilioii. In /i^/n'riiM-nl wil ii llir juiM-l i('«- (»!' Ky«l, (ir<'<'iM' Iihh m«'I, liis piny wil liiii n «lniiimli<' Iriiiiicwork, coimiHliii^ prin«*i|»iilly of Ilir (liiilo^nc of Olicroii, Kiii^ <>f l''iiii'i<*H iiiid llir iiii'uin llirnpjr Scol. lioliiiii, (i li/j;iirc p«Tlmp« ,iiijrf/«'Mlc(| Ijn- roiniiiil ic illusion ri'(|ni- H\\r to liic iippi'criiil iiMi ol IIm- niiiin plol.. Vil iIm- nlcu tliiil pi'onipl«-(| l!i<- jiixliipoMilion ol tli<- rairy I'.iiif^^ ihkI IIm- ,soiiif(| woililliiip; wji'i II l)oM oiM\ wliifli Sliiil'.*- Mpriir*' l)orrowf(| willi nolulilc nih'J'umm ill IIk' imo^I v'pe of drama its distinctive charm in the true Elizabethan examples had small place in the intellectual endowment of the Stuart playwrights. One may well feel it ground for congratulation that the limits of this work remove the necessity of tracing the line of anticlimax through the various paltry plagiarisms from Sidney's "Arcadia" and Greene's "Menaphon," which commenced with Day's "Isle of Gulls" (1605) and ended with the flotsam and jetsam published after the Restoration or left to moulder in manuscript.^ The Italian pastoral drama of such writers as Tasso and Gunrini was, during the strict Elizabethan period, far less important as a dramatic source than the prose romance. The Italian dramatic pastoral is variously 1 An oxcvUent discussion of this subject will be found in W. W. Grcg"s Pastoral Poclry and Pastoral Drama. ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 289 reckoned to date from the appearance of the "Favola d'Orfco" of Agnolo PoHziano, acted at the Mantuan court in 1471, and from Agostino Beccari's stricter representative of the type in "II Sacrifizio," first pro- duced at Ferrara in 1554. The full possibilities of the species were manifested in the "Aminta," written in 1572-1573 byTorquatoTasso, then twenty -eight years of age, and printed in 1581. An English translation by Abraham Fraunce was published in "The Countess of Pembroke's Ivy-Church" a decade later (1591). The chief rival of Tasso in this branch of art was a fellow courtier, Battista Guarini, whose "Pastor Fido" ap- peared in 1590, having been completed and probably acted in 1585. In 1591, this play and the "Aminta" were both published in the original Italian by John Wolfe for the benefit of London readers, and in 1602 an English version of the former was dedicated by an unknown translator to Sir Edward Dymock. The "Pastor Fido" is a much longer, more com- plex, and even more artificial production than Tasso's "Aminta"; and it must be regarded as considerably inferior to the latter, though its elaborate development of the machinery of mistaken identity, mysterious prophecy, and laws and counter-laws against lovers made it for later writers a sort of compendium and model of pastoral intrigue. The execution of the "Aminta" is simple and beautiful. There is little true dramatic action, and the characters are conceived in the silly and prurient tone of the Latin "golden age" tradition. However, Tasso's piece is saved from coarse- ness by its grace and from mawkishness by the presence of a true and delicate sense of humor. The fiinal chorus of the play, which I quote in Leigh Hunt's admirable 290 THE TUDOR DRAMA translation, repeats with almost the gracious irony of Chaucer himself the touch by which that master of raillery tempers the excess of sentiment in his "Clerk's Tale": — " I know not whether all the bitter toil, With which this lover to his purpose kept. And served, and loved, and sighed, and wept. Can give a perfect taste To any sweet soever at the last: But if indeed the joy Come dearer from annoy, I ask not, Love, for my delight To reach that beatific height: Let others have that perfect cup: Me let my mistress gather up To the heart where I would cling. After short petitioning." ^ It may possibly be debated whether the earliest English examples of pastoral comedy, plays of Latin influence hke "Gallathea" and "The Arraignment of Paris," owe a subsidiary debt to Tasso. In any case they cannot owe a great deal. The general introduc- tion of the Italian pastoral play — always a courtly type — was due to the same group of literary exquisites who attempted the establishment of another aristo- cratic species in their imitations of Garnier's tragedy. The translation of the " Aminta" in a volume inscribed to the Countess of Pembroke has been mentioned, and the first original English experiments in the same genre were the work of the most gifted of Lady Pembroke's followers, Samuel Daniel. All of these comedies fall without the limits of Elizabeth's reign, and few of them deserve on their own account more than passing * Amynias, A Tale oj the Woods, trans. Leigh Hunt. ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 291 notice. Daniel's first effort in the pastoral style was published in 1606 with the title: "The Queenes Arcadia, A Pastorall Trage-comedie presented to her Maiestie and her Ladies, by the Vniuersitie of Oxford in Christs Church, in August last, 1605." The play deals in a somewhat original, if cumbrous, way with the disorder produced in an Arcadian shepherd community by the wiles of two types of worldly corruption, Colax and Techne. With the usual pastoral machinery is coni- bined some not quite contemptible Jonsonian comedy, notably in the speeches of Dr. Alcon, the Quacksalver, who addresses the shepherdess Daphne in the following travesty of medical and alchemistic language : — " Welcome, faire nimph, come let me try your pulse. I cannot blame you t' hold your selfe not well. Something amiss, quoth you, here 's all amiss, Th' whole Fabrick of your selfe distempered is, The Systole, and Dyastole of your pulse. Do shew your passions most hystericall. It seemes you haue not very careful bene T' observe the prophilactick regiment Of your own body, so that we must now Descend vnto the Therapeutical That so we may preuent the syndrome Of symtomes, and may afterwards apply Some analepticall Elexipharmacum, That may be proper for your maladie." Daniel's second and last effort in emulation of the Italian pastoral play is "Hymen's Triumph," acted at court in lOl^, and published in the following year. This work, considerably simpler and more original than the former, brings us well into the middle of the Jacobean period and directs the attention to the more independ- ent shepherd plays of this epoch. Of the last, only 292 THE TUDOR DRAMA two justify mention here as obvious survivals of an earlier spirit. In "The Faithful Shepherdess" (1609), Fletcher has reproduced the thin and bloodless pasto- ral world of Guarini with a freshness which gives the play much of the delicacy, though nothing of the sweet charm, of the Elizabethan romantic comedies. In his beautiful fragment of "The Sad Shepherd "Ben Jon- son has proposed with a Titanic daring, which piques the curiosity and again suggests the warmer earlier era, to blend the abstract types of Italian pastoralism with the red-blood figures of Robin Hood romance. Jonson's torso, however, is more in the nature of an untried enterprise than a dramatic achievement; and it must always, perhaps, have shown more kinship with the masque than with convincing human drama. "The Faithful Shepherdess," for all its beauty, was a noto- rious failure; and lacking warmth of feeling as it does, would be so on any stage. The other plays of the same type, not infrequent in the first two Stuart reigns, are one and all devoid of dramatic life. They are the hard and cold crystallizations from a gradually petrifying drama of that fervent ideality which informed all the most characteristic Elizabethan works, and produced, not merely the distinctively romantic comedies, but also the charming shepherd scenes scattered like oases in the midst of plays otherwise filled with the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds. BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL DISCUSSION Greg, "W. W., Pastoral Poetr;/ and Pastoral Drama. A Liter- art/ Inquiry with special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 293 in England, 1906. Elaborated from " The Pastoral Drama on the Elizabethan Stage," Cornhill Magazine, 1899. Koeppel, E., Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Novelle in , der englischen Litteratur des 16 Jahrhunderts, Quellen und Forschungen, Ixx, 1892. ' Laidler, Josephine, " A History of Pastoral Drama in England • until 1700," Engl. Stud., xxxv (1905), 193-259. _ Smith, Homer, " Pastoral Influence in the English Drama," Puhl. Mod. Lang. Assoc, 1897. Thorn^ike, A. H., "The Pastoral Element in the English - Drama before 1605," Mod. Lang. Notes, xiv (1900). INDIVroUAL TEXTS Greene, Egbert : Dramatic Works, edited by A. Dyce, 1831, 1861, 1879 ; A. B. Grosart, 1881-86 ; J. C. Collins, 1905; T. H. Dickinson, Mermaid edition, 1909. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. " As it was plaid by her Maiesties seruants. Made by Robert Greene Maister of Arts," 1594. Other editions 1599 ?, 1630, 1655. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, Dodsley, yin, 1825; A. W. Ward, Old English Drama (with Doctor Faustus), 1878, etc.; C. M. Gayley, Rep- resentative English Comedies, 1903. The Scottish History of James the Fourth, slain at Flodden. ♦' Written by Robert Greene, Maister of Arts," 1598. Reprinted, J. M. Manly, Specimens, ii, 1897. Discus- sion: W. Creizenach, " Zu Greene's James the Fourth," An- glia, viii (1885), 419. (Spurious) George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, 1590. Reprinted, Reed's and Collier's Dodsley; Ancient British Drama, i, 1810. Discussion : O. Mertins, " Robert Greene und ' the play of George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield,' " 1885 ; R. Sachs, " George Green, the Pinner of Wakefield," Sh. Jb., xxvii (1892), 192 ff. Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester. "With the loue of William the Conqueror. As it was sundrie times publiquely acted ... by the right honourable the Lord Strange his seruaunts." Ed. n. d. Reprinted 1631. Later edi- tions : W. R. Chetwood, Select Collection of Old Plays, 1750 ; H. Tyrrell, 1851 ; N. Delius, 1874 ; R. Simpson, School of Shakspere, ii, 1878; C. Warnko and L. Proescholdt, 1883; 294 THE TUDOR DRAMA A. F. Ilopkinson, 1895 ; C. F. T. Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha, 1908. For discussion, see bibliography to The Shakespeare Apocrypha. MuNDAY, Anthony : John a Kent and John a Cumber. Pre- served in manuscript signed by Munday and dated " Decem- bris, 1595." Printed, J. P. Collier, Shakespeare Society, 1851. The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, "After- ward called Robin Hood of nierrie Sherwodde with his loue to chaste Matilda, the Lord Fitzwaters daughter afterwardes his faire Maide Marian. Acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants," 1001. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, 1828. The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington ..." with the lamentable Tragedie of chaste Matilda, his faire maide Marian, poysoned at Dunmowe by King lohn." Acted by the Admiral's Servants, 1601. Both these plays are re- printed in J. P. Collier's Five Old Plays, 1833, and thence in Hazlitt's Dodsley, viii, 1874. Henry Chettle was respon- sible for a revision of the earlier drama, and was part author of the later. Discussion : A. Ruckdeschel, Die Quel- ten des Dramas " The Downfall and the Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington," Erlangen," 1897 ; A. H. Thorndike, " The Relation of As You Like It to the Robin Hood Plays," Jrl. Germ. Phil, iv (1902), 59-69. The Merry Devil of Edmonton. "As it hath beene sundry times Acted by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe, on the banke-side," 1608. Other editions 1612, 1617, 1626, 1631, 1655. Reprinted, Dodsley, all edd.; Ancient British Drama, 1810; H. Tyrrell, 1851; K. Warnke and L. Proescholdt, 1884; A. F. Hopkinson, 1891; H. "Walker, Temple Dramatists, 1897; C. F. T. Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha, 1908. For discus- sion, see bibliography to The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Dekker, Thomas : Old Fortunatus, 1600. The Shoemaker's Holiday, 1600. For bibliography of these plays, see p. 350. The Thracian Wonder. First printed by Francis Kirkman in a volume entitled Two New Playes, 1661, and there stated to be " Written by John Webster and William Rowley." Reprinted, Works of John Webster, A. Dyce iv, 1830 ; W. Hazlitt, iv, 1897. Discussion: J. Q. Adams, Jr., Mod. Phil., ui (1906); ROMANTIC AND PASTORAL COMEDY 295 J. Le Gay Brereton, Engl. Stud., xxxvii (1907) ; Mod. Lang. Review, ii (1906), reprinted in " Elizabethan Drama. Notes and Studies," 1909. The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600. Another edition, 1618. Reprinted, W. Hazlitt, Dramatic Works of John Web- ster, vol. iv, 1897. Shakespeare, William : The Two Gentlemen of Verona. First printed in the 1023 Folio. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 1600 (printed for Thomas Fisher). Reprinted for James Roberts (in 1619?) with the fraudulent date, 1600. The Merchant of Venice. " J. R. for Thomas Heyes," 1600. Reprinted (in 1619?), J. Roberts, with fraudulent date, 1600. As You Like It. First printed in the 1623 Folio. Twelth Night. « •« " " " " Cymbeline. " " «' " " " The Winter's Tale. " " " " " " The Tempest. " " " " " " Pericles, Prince of Tyre, " With the true Relation of the whole Historie, aduentures, and fortunes of the said Prince ... As it hath been diners and sundry times acted by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe on the Banck-side. By William Shakespeare," 1609 (two issues), 1611, 1619, 1630 (two issues), 1635. Reprinted, with six uncanonical plays in certain copies of the third Shakespeare Folio, dated 1664, and in the Fourth Folio, 1685. PASTORAL PLAYS AFTER THE ITALIAN MODEL A. Translations op Italian Pastoral Drama Tasso,Torquato : Aminta. Translated by Abraham Fraunce in The Countess of Pembroke's Ivychurch, 1591. Another Trans- lation by John Reynolds, 1628. GuARiNi, Battista : II Pastor Pido : « OrThe faithfull Shep- heard. Translated out of Italian into English," 1602. The identity of the translator is uncertain. B. Original Dramas in Similar Vein Daniel, Samuel (For a list of Daniel's collected works, see p. 225 f) : The Queene's Arcadia. " A Pastorall Trage- 296 THE TUDOR DRAMA comedie presented to her Maiestie (King James's queen) and her Ladies, by the Vniuersitie of Oxford in Christs Church, In August last. 1605." Printed 1606. Reprinted in Daniel's " Certaiue Small Workes," 1607, and in later editions of his works. Hymen's Triumph. " A Pastorall Tragicomsedie. Presented at the Queenes Court," 1615. Reprinted in " The Whole Workes of Samuel Daniel," 1623 and later editions. Fletcher, John : The Faithful Shepherdess. Ed. n. d. (ca. 1610). Reprinted 1629, 1634, 1656, 1665. Included in the Sec- ond Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, 1679, and later editions. JoNSON, Benjamin : The Sad Shepherd, " Or, A Tale of Robin Hood." Edition, dated 1641, included in the Second Jonson Folio, 1640. CHAPTER IX THE HISTORY PLAT Certain peculiar conditions of popular taste and the- atrical expediency during the last dozen years of the sixteenth century resulted in the evolution by the side of the two regular branches of dramatic poetry of a third species, recognized in the tripartite division on the title-page of the 1623 Shakespeare, "Mr, William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies," and always since respected in the criticism of the drama of this period. The term "history play" is difficult of precise theoretic limitation; and, in practice, the differ- entiation of the strict members of this new type from those plays on historical subjects which follow the more conservative rules of comedy or tragedy is a task ap- proaching impossibility. Works such as the two parts of "Henry IV" and the "Henry V" of Shakespeare prove sufficiently the right of the history play to con- sideration as an independent literary form. Yet it is quite impossible to exclude from such consideration other plays which accord wholly, like "Richard III," or almost wholly, like "Richard II," with the strictest rules of tragedy; while any ambitious discussion of the genre, unless based on sane definitions, is in danger of losing itself hopelessly in the attempt to follow such quasi-historical will-o'-the-wisps as "George a Greene" and "James IV." The collective treatment of all Eliza- bethan plays which happen to present historical figures may perhaps have a curious interest, but is hardly more 298 THE TUDOR DRAMA susceptible of critical justification or more explanatory of actual facts than wouKl ho a groupiiii^ based on the locality of the play's action or the nationality of its hero. Any adequate understanding of the class of history plays seems to require the clear recognition of two pre- liminary facts: first, that many of the finest historical dramas may possess either not at all or only in small degree the irregularities of structure and tone which mark the class as a whole for separate discussion; and, second, that these special Elizabethan irregularities may manifest themselves in the treatment of foreign as well as native history. There are, for example, a number of points of view from which Marlowe's "Tambur- lainc" and "Massacre at Paris" illustrate better than tlie same poet's "Edward II " what is really significant in the Elizabethan interpretation and dramatic pre- sentation of history. The especial vogue of the history play during the last years of Elizabeth has been referred in the first sen- tence above to two causes: an unusual public interest in the matters treated in such plays; and 'particular stage conditions which toward the close of the century greatly stinnilated the demand for dramas constructed on the loose and facile pattern usual to this type. Two of the most potent factors in the Elizabethan literary revival were the high development of national con- sciousness and the correlative growth of interest in for- eign political history. Concurrently, there evolved during the course of the century a patriotic feeling of national solidarity and a lively realization of that outer world in which England as a world power must play her part. Thus, as we trace the steady rise of English national TIIE niSTORY PLAY 299 consciousness, wc can trace also the increase in the value set upon foreign travel and the mastery of foreign tongiies, and the growing skill in observing and sketch- ing the predominant traits of other peoples.^ The l^ib- liographical evidence for this double trend of popular interest lies in the fact that such books as the Chroni- cles of Ilolinshed, Hall, and Stow, Lord Berners's trans- lation of Froissart, the versified biographies of "The Mirror for Magistrates,", and North's translation of Plutarch's Lives rank among the costliest, most elabo- rate, and most broadly disseminated productions of the Tudor press. Subjects like the progress of the Ottoman Empire, the careers of the great Tartar con- querors, Tamerlane and Genghiz Khan, and the recent history of France and Italy were treated in such an infinity of versions that it is frequently a matter of the greatest difficulty to ascertain the particular source to which the Elizabethan poet resorted. Furthermore, the registers of the Stationers' Company and the cata- logues of old libraries teem with the titles of prose tracts and ballad broadsides issued incessantly for the pur- pose of keeping the masses of the people aw /ai7 with the latest political developments and accidents of Europe. The deep excitement and triumphant exhilaration of the Armada year (1588) brought into a definite stream these eddying currents of national and cosmopolitan feeling, and had the effect of endowing the actualities of historic incident and character — particularly when they had an English application — with an attractive * For illustrations of the interest felt in the oomparison of na- tional peeuliarities, see Thomas Lord Cromwell, III, iii, 68-85; Hey- wood's // You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, part ii (ed. 1851, 126); Merchant of Venice, I, ii. 300 THE TUDOR DRAMA power which for some years made the vulgar public eagerly willing to condone any artistic irregularity in the mode of their presentment. It chanced that the period of greatest general interest in the narratives of history coincided with an era of extreme difficulty for playwrights and theatre man- agers. The sudden increase in the number of theatres between 1590 and 1600/ and the necessity of satisfy- ing a practically unlimited public from the resources of an art which had only just adapted itself to local conditions, produced an abnormal demand for new plays which continually threatened to outrun the possi- ble supply.' The diary of Philip Henslowe, manager of a theatrical company which acted usually in competi- tion with that of Shakespeare, shows how the dramatic shortage, incident largely to the very brief runs of the day, was awkwardly met by the employment of a num- ber of literary hacks upon the hasty completion of a single play. Under such unpromising conditions, to which the better managed company of Shakespeare and Burbage seems comparatively seldom to have had recourse, little could be hoped in the way either of structural homogeneity or imaginative content. It was necessary to select a theme which possessed an inherent popular interest and which would admit of piecemeal treatment. The dramatization of history was generally found the readiest and most acceptable field for such rapid improvisation. The great majority of recorded ^ The Rose Theatre is first mentioned as in use in 1592, though it may have been constructed as early as 1587. (Cf . W. W. Greg, Ilens- loipes Diary, ii, 44 ff.) The Swan and Blackfriars were occupied about 1596. The Globe was built in 1599, the Fortune in 1600; and a private theatre, like that at Blackfriars, was opened by a boys' company at St. Paul's in 1599. THE HISTORY PLAY 301 history plays, extant and lost, were produced for per- formance by the companies of Henslowe; and of the entire number preserved relatively few, except those of Marlowe and of the mature Shakespeare, escape en- tirely the faults incident to divided authorship and ill-digested plot. At least twenty of the plays on English and French history known to have been acted by Henslowe's com- panies have perished or exist only as incorporated in later works; and there seems little reason to doubt that they were justly abandoned to oblivion. The species as a whole was a plebeian growth, fostered by unpolished and irregular stage conditions, bound to few if any of the rules of art, and often seeking applause solely by motley spectacular effect. Plays like "The Wars of Henry I," "Pierce of Exton," "The Funeral of Richard Coiur de Lion," the two parts each of "Earl Godwin" and "Sir John Oldcastle," and the three parts of "The Civil Wars of France," all compiled, as "Henslowe's Diary " shows, during the years 1598 and 1599, by the united labor of from two to five of his regular hench- men,^ were clearly little more than hasty dishonest efforts to stay temporarily the popular dramatic appe- tite. It is probable that fate has done ample justice to the species in preserving a single example out of the number cited.^ But the widespread serious interest in the march of history, which Henslowe thus exploited for the sake of varied and sensational entertainment, responded to more reverent treatment and bore far riper fruit. "Tamburlaine" is, more than any other drama, the 1 /. e., Chettle, Dekker, Wilson, Drayton, Munday, and Ilathway. » Namely, The First Part of Sir John Oldeastle, published in ICOO. 302 THE TUDOR DRAMA source and original of the Elizabethan history play. Earlier English works can hardly be said to exert any permanent influence upon the type or to come within its limits. Bale's "King John" is a controversial mo- rality, reinforced by historical application; "Ferrex and Porrex," "The Misfortunes of Arthur," and "Lo- crine " are all excluded, not because they present myth- ical events, — for such discrimination is quite alien to the Elizabethan conception of history and to the pro- cedure of Holinshed and the authors of the "Mirror for Magistrates," — but because their treatment is a mere reflection of classic practice in the Roman tragedy or fabula prcetexta. Marlowe's imaginative handling of his historical sources in the first part of " Tamburlaine " and the picture which the entire work paints of warlike ambi- tion and royal magnificence, did much to fix the tone of the species, and proved the direct inspiration of sev- eral of the most notable examples. The addition of the second part to this play doubtless suggested the all but universal practice of extending the short stage life of any popular dramatization of history by easily concocted continuations bearing the same name but often mani- festing little real affinity. One of the earliest of the extant plays on English history, "The Troublesome Reign of John King of England," printed in 1591 as acted by the Queen's Players, refers pointedly in its prologue to Marlowe's tragedy: — " You that with friendly grace of smoothed brow Hauc ontcrtaind the Scythian Tamburiaine, And given applause vnto an Infidel: Vouchsafe to welcome (with like curtesie); A warlike Christian aud your Countreyman. " THE HISTORY PLAY 303 The contrast thus challenged is, however, only super- ficial, and results to the crushing disadvantage of the later work. The two parts of "King John" imitate the two parts of "Tamburlaine" merely in so far as they present a series of battles, conspiracies, and es- capes ranging over a number of years. The infinite diversity of the late sixteenth-century his- tory plays can best be rendered capable of orderly treat- ment by distributing the extant specimens among five fairly distinct, though not mutually exclusive, classes : First. Plays of mixed type, relatively early for the most part, and generally characterized by artistic un- certainty. Second. Biographical dramas: collections of ill- unified scenes presenting various incidents in the life of some famous character. Third. Histories of tragic type : plays which demand no exemption from the conservative dramatic rules, but produce the effect of regular tragedy by means not strikingly irregular. Fourth. Plays 'par excellence of national feeling or national philosophy, where the normal interest in dramatis persona; is more or less absorbed either in the expression of patriotic sentiment or in the interpreta- tion of problems of government and statecraft. It is this class which gives to the Elizabethan history play its individuality as a dramatic species. Fifth. Romanticized treatments of history, in which the admixture of fact possesses no real significance and deserves no special attention. To the first of these groups belong apparently nearly all of the lost plays mentioned by Ilenslowe, except those which are referable to the biographical class. The 304 THE TUDOR DRAMA same group includes also most of what seem to be the earliest extant attempts at dramatizing history subse- quent to "Tamburlaine": " The Troublesome Reign of John," already mentioned; "The Famous Victories of Henry V "; "The Life and Death of Jack Straw"; "The True Tragedy of Richard III"; Lodge's "Wounds of Civil War"; Marlowe's "Massacre at Paris"; the Henry VI plays; and perhaps also Peele's "Battle of Alcazar." Common features of these dramas are the ab- sence of a central theme, the rough presentation of the conspicuous events of many years(without any effort to inform them with continuous purpose or historic per- spective, and the infusion of extraneous comic matter ranging from the elaborate buffoonery of "The Famous Victories" to the grisly jokes over the dead Admiral's body and the morbid double meanings of the soldier's soliloquy before killing Mugeroun.^ The mingling of comic burlesque with the serious business of tragedy was a special vice of the time, which Shakespeare's practice only later transmuted into a virtue; and the excision by the printer of "Tamburlaine" of the un- worthy farcical passages "of some vaine conceited fon- dlings greatly gaped at what time they were shewed \T)on the stage" has not wholly freed even that work from indecorous mirth. The plays on King John and Henry V have a particular interest as the sources in large measure of dramas by Shakespeare. It is in the latter poet's con- cern with history plays as collaborator, reviser, and innovator that the student of Shakespeare finds the clearest indications of the lines along which his early dramatic training proceeded. Shakespeare's "King 1 Massacre at Paris. U. 487 ff, 812 ff. THE HISTORY PLAY 305 John" occupies a middle position in date and in poetic independence between the Henry VI plays and those that treat Henry IV and Henry V. From "The Troublesome Reign of John," written for the most part in very tolerable blank verse, Shakespeare derived the entire subject matter for his dramatization of the same reign, the two parts of the original work being so con- densed that the end of Part I coincides with the close of Act IV, scene 2 of the later play. In marked con- trast with his more diflSdent handling of the Henry VI dramas, Shakespeare here retains practically nothing of the language of his source. He manifests a mature appreciation of character, moreover, in the skill with which he vivifies the only remarkable figure in the old play, that of the Bastard Philip, and heightens into personages of the first dramatic importance the com- monplace original conceptions of Arthur, Constance, John, and Hubert. Everywhere, however, the struc- ture of the old play is visible behind the new work. All Shakespeare's dramatis personoe are taken from the "Troublesome Reign," with the single exception of Lady Falconbridge's servant, James Gurney, who speaks precisely four words of the first scene. Apart from the improvements already noted, Shake- speare's changes are relatively slight and not inevitably happy. He retains the absurd identification of the Vis- count of Limoges with the Archduke of Austria, but so reduces the part of that actor that his previous concern in the death of Richard I, his possession of the "lion's hide," and Philip's consequent hostility are barely in- telligible. The desire for compression is further respon- sible for the practical sacrifice of the most striking scene of the old play — that in which Philip confronts 306 THE TUDOR DRAMA his mother — and for the omission of the comic por- tions depicting the vices of monasticism. The same cause and the clearer reaHzation of John's wily, cow- ardly, and selfish nature account for the absence of the scenes in which the earlier poet, following independ- ently the line of Bale's "King John," portrays the king as the heroic but defeated champion of English liberty against an encroaching papistry. What Shakespeare's play gains by this last change in the convincing pre- sentation of John's character it loses to a large extent by leaving his murder at the hands of the monks of Swinstead unmotivated and only casually portrayed. Upon the whole, Shakespeare's "King John" be- longs, like the other play, to the experimental period of historic drama. It portrays a succession of political events by means of scenes still inconsecutive and often incongruous, substituting matches of declamatory brag- gadocio for the realistic presentation of battle, and ex- plaining policies of state as the mere accidents of in- dividual whim. The touch of genius is present in the language, in the delineation of the main characters, and in several fine emotional scenes; but the work lacks the realization of the dignity of history and the com- prehensive unity of structure which mark the great and permanently successful history plays. "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth: Con- taining the Honorable Battle of Agincourt" is a drama of considerably less merit than "The Troublesome Reign of John," and it may perhaps be ascribed to an earlier date. The only extant sixteenth-century edi- tion, published in 1598,^ gives a text concerning much ^ The play wjis licensed for publication in 1594, and may have been printed in that year. A later edition appeared iu 1G17. THE HISTORY PLAY 307 of which it is difficult to decide whether prose has been misprinted as verse or whether verse has been alto- gether corrupted into prose. The earlier scenes deal mainly with the thieving exploits and humors of the young prince with his followers, Ned and Tom, and Falstaff's pale progenitor. Sir John Oldcastle or "Jockey," furnishing thus the bare suggestion for such parts of the Henry IV plays as do not concern the rising of the Percies. The later portion of the "Famous Victories" stands in a similar relation to "Henry V," portraying the consequences of the dauphin's gift of tennis balls through the battle of Agincourt to the wooing and betrothal of Katharine of France. The play has been attributed on conjectural evidence to the authorship of the famous comedian Richard Tarle- ton, who died in 1588; and it was undoubtedly com- posed with particular attention to the interests of a comic actor. The humor, however, though quite dis- proportioned in quantity to the serious historical mat- ter, is generally of a poor sort and often degenerates into mere horse-play. The most striking scene of the "Famous Victories" — that which dramatizes Holinshed's account of the meeting between the turbulent prince and the chief justice — furnished Shakespeare merely with a couple of suggestions for the second part of "Henry IV"; but elsewhere the relationship is more essential, and con- stitutes the only serious claim of the old play upon the reader's patience. A complete object lesson in the development of the "history" from its rudiments to maturity is furnished by a comparison of the tangled, ineffective plot of the "Famous Victories" with the three plays which at the height of his perfection iu this 308 THE TUDOR DRAMA style Shakespeare constructed out of the same material. With the leisurely assurance of conscious art, the later poet devotes an entire trilogy to the development of the theme, so falteringly outlined by his predecessor, of the prince's relation to his youthful companions, his father, and his country. The puerile comic efforts of the "Victories" are sorted, selected, raised to the highest poetic and imaginative power, and then woven into the patriotic political fabric, till the complemen- tary strains of realistic humor and historic ideality stand out as two in one like the mind and soul respec- tively of the living drama. The motley farcical scraps, with which the "Famous Victories" is largely pieced together, produced, when expanded and interpreted by Shakespeare, not only the group of robbery scenes in the first part of "Henry IV," but the impressment scenes in the second part as well, and the first sugges- tion for Pistol's experiences in the wars.^ "The True Tragedy of Richard the Third " was first published in 1594, as acted by the Queen's Players, the same company by which "The Troublesome Reign of John" and "The Famous Victories of Henry V" are known to have been performed. No direct con- nection can be established between this blundering effort of antiquated dramaturgy and Shakespeare's "Richard III"; nor does there seem plausible reason for supposing that the "True Tragedy" was intended in any way as a continuation of the Henry VI plays. Composed in a rude mixture of prose, riming hep- * The scenes depicting Falstaff's levying of soldiers are, of course, elaborated by Shakespeare with much pc-rsonal reminiscence, but the first suggestion doubtless came from the impressment of John Cob- bler and Derrick, in the old play. THE HISTORY PLAY 309 tameters of the transitional pattern, and rough blank verse, the work shows everywhere in the development of its plot as well a backwardness which would natu- rally relegate it to the pre-"Tamburlaine" era, though the allusions to the Armada and to other political events make it certain that in point of actual date it follows that play. An opening Latin couplet in which the ghost of Clarence denounces blood and vengeance after the old Senecan manner, is followed by an induc- tion in which Truth and Poetry announce the subject and explain the state of affairs. The presentation of history is of the roughest description. Individualiza- tion of character is almost wholly lacking, and criti- cal purpose appears neither in the selection nor in the handling of events. Even the magnificent oppor- tunity of the battle of Bosworth is largely frittered away, and Richard dies somewhat tamely after fifteen lines of dull soliloquy in prose. Comic relief in the proper sense does not exist, though something of the sort has been clumsily attempted by the interpolation of scenes depicting the sufferings of Mistress Shore and the moralizing of Richard's page, — scenes alto- gether out of keeping with the rest of the drama. The following lines from a speech of Richard illustrate the Senecan method of the author and exemplify his high- est achievement in blank verse, while they suggest at once a contrast with Shakespeare's development of the same idea which measures well the difference between the two writers: — " The hell of life that hangs vpon the Crowne, The daily cares, the nightly dreames. The wretched crewes, the treason of the foe. And horror of my bloodie practice past, 810 THE TT^DOR DRAMA Strikes such a torror to my woumloil conscience, • That sKvp I, wako 1, or \vhatstK*uor I do, Mivthinkcs their gho;usts oonu-s traping for rouenge, \Vhom 1 haue slaine in reaching for a Crowne. Chvrence complaiucs, and crielh for reuenge. My nephues bloods, Reuenge, reuenge, doth crie. ' The headlesse Pet^res ct>me preasing for reuenge. And eucry one cries, let the tyrant die. The Sunnc by day shines hololy for rinienge. The Moone by night colipselli for reuenge. The stars an- turned to Comets for reuenge. The Planets chaunge their cimrses for nnienge. The binis sing not, but sorrow for reuenge. The silly lambes sits bleating for reuenge. The scrooking Rauen sits croking for reuenge. Whole herds of bejxiits comes bclloNving for reuenge- And all, yea all the world I thinke. Cries for reuenge, and nothing but reuenge. But to ct^nclude, I haue deserued reuenge." Resemblances of style between this passage and "Locrine" have been adduced as evidence of the com- mon authorship of. the two plays: and though the particular contention remains entirel.v unestablished, there seems no doubt that "The True Tragedy of Richard III" belongs in spirit to the i>eriod of critical imcertainty and formlessness which "Locrine" illus- trates. To nmch the same type of early chronicle play be- long a mnnber of contemporary dramatizations of recent foixMgn history, most of which contain clear evidence of the inlhience of "Tamburlaine." Several of them, indeed, trt\it incidents in the Turkish history which Marlowe's play first popularized on the stage. Among such dramas nnist be mentioned: Peele's "Battle of Alcazar " (1594) ; the biographicd treatmeut • THE niSTORY PLAY 311 of the same subject, likewise performed by the Lord Admiral's Men, and published in 1()05 as "The Famous History of the life and death of Captain Thomas Stukely"; also "The Tragical Reign of Selimus, some- time Emperor of the Turks" (1594), perhaps written by Robert Greene; ' and two plays by Marlowe, — the hasty "Massacre at Paris" and the very imaginative treatment of Turkish relations with Malta and Cyprus in "The Jewof i\[alta." "The Battle of Alcazar" and "Selimus" are formed on much the same early pattern as "The True Tragedy of Richard III," though both possess higher poetic value; and "Selimus" is connected with "Locrine" by a similarity which only the closest imitation or partial community of authorship will explain.- "The Battle of Alcazar" lacks the comic element usual to the class and copiously present in "Selimus." In the devices of the Presenter, the dumb-shows, and "three ghosts crying 'vindicta,'" the former play follows the most primitive models of its kind; while the peculiar tone of its lyric verse, which gives it its chief poetic value and renders Peele's authorship to my mind nearly indisputable, deprives it almost wholly of his- toric verisimilitude. "The Battle of Alcazar" and many other plays of its decade, though really called forth by the success of "Tamburlaine," failed entirely ' Greene's authorship of Selimus is still very doubtful. The main cvidcnee in its favor is the quotation of several extracts from the play over R. Greene's name in Eiiglaiufs Parnassus (1600). See Hugo Gilbert's valuable dissertation, Robert Greene's Selimus, Kiel, 1899; and on the other side the introductions to the editions of Greene by J. C. Collins and T. H. Dickinson. - The former alternative is much the more likely. It seems clear that Locrine is the earlier of the two plays. 812 THE TUDOR DRAMA ♦ to utilize the new dramatic discoveries in plot and character and harked back to older methods. Yet Peele's figure of the villain Moor, Muly Mahamet, is undoubtedly an awkward essay in Marlowe's early manner; while the particular scene — the most notable in the play — in which that character appears "with lion's flesh upon his sword," and rings the changes on the theme, "Feed then and faint not, fair Calipolis," is the closest parody, as Shakespeare recognized, of the "Tamburlaine" heroics.^ Thomas Lodge's "Wounds of Civil War, Lively set forth in the True Tragedies of Marius and Sylla" was acted by the Lord Admiral's Company at a period not definitely determined, and was published in the same year with "The Battle of Alcazar" and "Selimus" (1594). Lodge's play is interesting as offering prob- ably the earliest example of the use of Plutarchan material on the English stage; but it does not anywhere exhibit the slightest recognition of the rare tragic opportunity which later writers were to find in the Lives. In "The Wounds of Civil War," a large quan- tity of careful and not unmelodious blank verse is rendered totally ineffective by formlessness of plot and psychological poverty. Bloodshed and violent declamation abound, of course; but there appears no trace of fundamental unity or artistic premeditation in the handling either of action or of character. Equally devoid of historic sense and structural ability are Marlowe's synopsis of French history during the seventeen years immediately past (1572-1589) in "The ^ See Pistol's ra-snngs in 2 Henry IV, II, iv. Cf . also Tucca in Dek- ker's Satiromastix, ed. 1873, I, 230, "Feede and be fat, my faire Calipolis." THE HISTORY PLAY 313 Massacre at Paris" and the same poet's disjointed treatment of events largely mythical or distorted in "The Jew of Malta." Far the most important of the early unmethodized history plays are, on many accounts, the dramas which deal with the reign of King Henry VI. In these plays, which happen to illustrate Shakespeare's earliest con- nection with the species, there appears the first faint conception of a great continuous purpose and a uni- versal lesson behind the blind accidents and spectacu- lar horrors of history. The three parts form in their revised state a single drama, proceeding coherently from the exposition of the discord and incapacity of Henry VI 's early reign to the final bloody death with which that Weak sovereign pays the penalty of his incompetence. The trilogy must be viewed as a whole to perceive the central principle that glimmeringly informs it; but when so viewed that principle becomes evident beneath the vast tangle of miscellaneous scenes. It is the doctrine — inherent in Elizabethan patriotism, and far more strongly enunciated in the Richard II-Bolingbroke plays, in "Julius Csesar," and even in Marlowe's " Edward II " — of the essential inconvertibility of the politic and moral virtues, and the futility of attempting to pay off the great debt which the governor owes the governed with the small coin of personal piety or occasional generosity. "King Henry VI, Part I," first printed in the 1623 Shakespeare, was acted with great success by Lord Strange 's company, sixteen performances being re- corded by Henslowe for the period extending from March 3, 1592, to January 31 of the following year. The company was that of Shakespeare, with which 314 THE TUDOR DRAMA Henslowe had at this time a transient connection; and the play acted was probably the extant amphfication by Shakespeare of an earher version. Since the origi- nal text has not been preserved, it is impossible to gauge precisely the extent of the reviser's alterations; but it is conventional to consider the scene in the Temple Gardens (II, iv), those presenting Talbot's death (IV, ii-vii), and the interview beween Suffolk and Margaret in V, iii, as largely Shakespeare's inde- pendent invention; while the general polish and homo- geneity of style suggest the conscientious line by line correction which can be proved for the second and third parts of the play. In its general scope the first part of "Henry VI'* belongs to the most artless form of history play. Events covering a period of thirty-one years are pre- sented without regard for details of fact or chrono- logical sequence. Dramatic unity is defeated by the over-ambitious attempt to develop side by side the three separate themes of the wars in France, the con- troversy between the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Winchester, and the quarrel of York and Somerset, besides certain purely imaginary romantic episodes like that of Talbot and the Countess of Auvergne. Both in the first and the second part of the play the reader is embarrassed by the difficulty of reconciling his sympathy with the good Duke Hum- phrey with that aroused for the ambitious York, who, though antagonistic, like Gloucester, to the Beauforts (Winchester and Somerset), yet for his own purposes cooperates partly with Gloucester's enemies, and thus gives a puzzling triangular effect to the action of both plays. Yet efforts at unifying the dramatic threads THE HISTORY PLAY 315 are not absent from the first part, as in the imputa- tion of responsibility for Talbot's miscarriage to the mutual recriminations of York and Somerset; while Nash's specific tribute in "Pierce Penniless" (1592) and the immediate flood of imitative dramas show how the play evoked a loftier patriotism and a more seri- ous interest in history than had previously existed. The second and third parts of "Henry VI" are pre- served in three separate versions. The earliest edi- tions of these two plays appeared in 1594 and 1595 respectively, with the following titles: "The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey: And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of lacke Cade: And the Duke of Yorkes first claim Vnto the Crowne — 1594"; and "The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sun- drie times acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants — 1595." Both plays were reprinted without noteworthy change in 1600. In 1619, a second, slightly altered, text appeared, the two parts being combined in a single quarto entitled "The Whole Contention betweene the Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. With the Tragicall ends of the good Duke Humfrcy, Richard Duke of Yorke, and King Henrie the sixt. Diuided into two Parts: And newly corrected and enlarged. Written by William Shakespeare, Gent." Finally, the 1623 Shakespeare Folio printed a very largely amplified and carefully 316 THE TUDOR DRAMA revised text, bringing all the tlirtv Henry VI plays for the first time into direct connection, and designat- ing those we are specially considering as the second and third parts in the trilogy. The Relation of these ditferent texts and the pK>cise authorship of each form the subject of the most ob- scure problem in the textual criticism of Shakespeare. Thert^ seems no doubt, however, that the second and third parts of "Henry VI," like the first part, are not original creations, but revisions by Shakespeare during liis dramatic novitiate of plays already extant; and there is decisive evidence to show that Christopher Marlowe was the partial author, at least, of the earlier versions. Fiirthermore, the testimony of style and structure goes far to prove that Shakespeare's final text of the plays, as published by his editors in 16'23, antedates 1594;* and therefore that the perfect version was in existence, and had presumably been acted, before the appearance of the earliest edition of the imperfect "First Part of the Contention" and "True Tragedy" (lo04, loOo). Now, all the circumstances surrounding the publication of the various imperfect texts of the two plays in 159-1. 1595, 1600, and 1019 indicate that thoy wcr^ surreptitious undertakings brought out without sanction of the author and with- out the moans of access to the corrected copy. The latter wouKl be jealously guanled by the theatrical company to which it belonged, and some stray copy of the earlier, antiquated text must have formed the basis of all the versions previous to 16^3. The 1019 * The natiin^ of Cmx-no's allusion in the Groatstrorth of Wit is such as to make it probablo that Shakespojvre's revision anteilated Greene's death iu Si^ptember, loOi. THE HISTORY PLAY 317 text, which first makes claim of Shakespearean author- ship, stands intermediate in some respects between tliat of 1594-1595 and tlie final version. Though cer- tainly founded ir. the main tipon the same orij^inal as the former, it contains a few indej)endent details and a few others which conform in part to the corrected acting version. The second and third parts of "Henry VI" form in a peculiar degree a single play. Neither part is dra- matically suflieient in itself; and it seems clear that each was composed with the other part distinctly in view, and by the same authors. There is no reason to sui)pose that Shakespeare — who carefully revised all the verse, expanded or recast many of the finest speeches, trans[)osed and perhaps even added a few scenes in minor key — altered materially the general structure of the plays, or even effected any such radi- cal change in character as he did, for example, in his trealment of the old play of "King John." Both i)arts reflect the early naive conception of history play, lack- ing all appreciation of dramatic climax and possessing only such general unity as was naturally inherent in their subject matter. The interest of the second part revolves about two centres, Duke Humphrey and York; that of the third follows York as far as the end of the first act, and then divides itself between Ed- ward, Richard, and Warwick. Both plays introduce artlessly a good deal of extraneous material, for no higher pin'])ose, apparently, than the simple ambition to present the audience with every scrap of material which the chronicles afford. Such, for instance, are the passages dealing with the conjuring and punish- ment of the Duchess of Gloucester and the episodes of 818 THE TUDOR DRAMA Simpcox and Horner in Part II, and the scene between King Henry and the Keepers in Part III. The highest dramatic merit of these plays consists in the characterization of Richard, Duke of York; and this figure, which belongs clearly to the earliest ver- sion of the work, is incontrovertibly the production of Marlowe. York's character is a repetition, somewhat more sympathetically and amply portrayed, of that of Guise in "The Massacre at Paris," with all Guise's Machiavellian cunning and lofty resolution and with something more of the graceful charm which marks Tamburlainc. This picture Shakespeare altered in no essential, though he expanded many of Marlowe's speeches in such a manner that a comparison of the earliest and latest texts makes it possible to trace with considerable exactitude the reverent yet independent touch with which the later writer filled in the lines of the earlier. With Guise's long soliloquy near the beginning of the "Massacre" should be compared the first soliloquy of York (^ Henry VI, I, i, 21-1 ff), which I quote from the text of 1594: — " Anioy and Maine, both giuen vnto the French, Cold newes for me, for I had hope of France, Euen as I haue of fertill England, A day will come when Yorke shall claime his owne. And therefore I will take the Neuels parts. And make a show of loue to proud Duke Humphrey: And when I spie aduantage, claime the Crovvne, For thats the golden marke I secke to hit; Nor shall proud Lancaster vsurpe my right. Nor hold the scepter in his childish fist. Nor vveare the Diademe vpon his head. Whose church-like humours fits not for a CrovNTie: Then Yorke be still a while till time do scrue. THE HISTORY PLAY 319 Watch thou, and wake when others be asleepe,^ To prie into the secrets of the state. Till Henry surfeiting in ioyes of loue. With his new bride, and Englands dear bought queene. And Humphrey with the Peeres be fulne at iarres, Then will I raise aloft the milke-white Rose, With whose sweete smell the aire shall be perfumde. And in my Standard beare the Armes of Yorke, To grafBe with the House of Lancaster : And force perforce, ile make him yeeld the Crovvne, ' Whose bookish rule hath puld faire England dovvne." Throughout, York's character and language show strongly the impress of Marlowe's handling, and his two great penultimate speeches in the first act of the Third Part (I, iv, 111-149, 152-168) prove themselves in sentiment, verse-flow, and verbal reminiscence un- mistakable productions of that poet. I quote again the version of the earliest text, that of the 1595 octavo, with which the very slightly altered readings of the final edition can profitably be compared : — " She wolfe of France, but worse than Wolues of France, Whose tongue more poison'd [poisons] than the Adders tooth How ill beseeming is it in thy sexe. To triumph like an Amazonian trull Vpon his woes, whom Fortune captiuates ? But that thy face is visardlike, vnchanging. Made impudent by vse of euill deeds: I would assaie, proud Queene to make thee blush. • . . . . • •_..•'•■* Thou art as opposite to euerie good, As the Antipodes are vnto vs, Or as the south to the Septentrion. Oh Tygers hart wrapt in a womans hide ! How couldst thou draine the life bloud of the childe. To bid the father wipe his eies withall. And yet be scene to beare a womaus face ? 320 THE TUDOR DRAAL\ Women are milde, pittifuU, and Bexible, Thou indurate, sterne, rough, rcraorcelcsse. Bids thou mo rage ? why now thou hast thy v^^ll. WouUist hauc me weepo ? why so thou hast thy wish. For raging windes blowes vp a storme of teares. And when the rage ahiies the raine begins. These teares are my sweet Ruthinds obsequies. And euerie drop bogs vengeance as it fals. On thee fell Clifford, and the[ol false French woman. That face of his the hungrie Cannibals Could not haue tucht, would not haue staind with blood. But you are more inhumane, more inexorable, ten times more then Tygers of Arcadia [Ilyrcania]. See ruthlosso Quoene a haplesse fathers teares. This cloth thou dipts in bloud of my sweet boy. And loe with teares I wash the bloud awaie. Keepe thou the napkin and go boast of that, And if thou tell the hoauie storie well, Vpon my soule the hearers will shoed teares, I, euen my foes will sheod fast falling teares. And saie alas, it was a pitteous deed. Here, take the crowne, and with the crowne my curse. And in thy need such comfort come to thee. As now I reape at thy two cruoU hands. Hard-harted Clifford, take me from the world. My soule to heauen, my bloud vpon your heads. North. Had he bin slaughterman of all my kin, 1 could not chuso but weepe with him to see. How inlie anger gripes his hart." Not merely in the portrayal of the most conspicuous figure, but through the entire handling of these plays, the main finger is that of Marlowe, and the finest pas- sages tend rather to glorious declamation than the serious presentation of facts. Typically Marlovian are Suffolk's passionate outburst to the Queen upon his banishment (J Ilcnry VI, III, ii,308ff),the Queen's THE HISTORY PLAY 321 denunciation of King Henry's weakness (3 Henry VI, I, i, 231 fif), and the dying speeches of Warwick (ibid., V, ii). Out of such material so respectfully treated by the reviser it was impossible to achieve dramatic unity or accuracy of impression; and the Henry VI plays remained after Shakespeare's elabo- ration substantially what they had been before, — rather examples of the utmost poetic capability of the old chaotic "history" than precursors of the new type which Shakespeare was to develop. The bio^jiphical play, the second form in which crude interest in the dramatization of history showed itself, requires little discussion. Extant specimens of the type are: "The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukely " (1605), previously mentioned; "The True Chronicle History of the whole Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell" (1602); "The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle" (1600); ^ and the manuscript play of "Sir Thomas More." But there can be no question that the great majority of such works, copiously suggested by titles preserved in "Henslowe's Diary," perished after they had served the temporary need which produced them. It has been hinted already that the biographical history inherited from the old heroic drama, and continued the tradi- tion established by that type.^ As higher requirements of plot and character began to drive from the stage the rambling presentation of the adventures of mythi- cal heroes like Sir Clyomon and Huon of Bordeaux, it was found possible still to hold the public ear by treating the lives of real personages in much the same disjointed manner. The very play of "Tamburlaine," * No second part seems to have been published. * See p. 252. 322 THE TUDOR DRAMA"^ for example, which on the one hand marks the devel- opment of the naive chivalrous play into a character drama so much higher in tone as to belong to an essen- tially different and incompatible species, testifies on the other hand to the general interest in historic per- sonality which gave temporary acceptance to even the most banal and formless presentations. It is doubtless no accident that Henslowe's entries indi- cate an abandonment of plays like "Huon of Bor- deaux" (1593), "Godfrey of Bulloigne" (1594), and "Chinon of England" (1596), and an increase in such titles as "Tamar Cam" (1592), "Buckingham" (1593), "Stukely" (1596), " Hardicanute " (1597), "Oldcastle" (1599), "Owen Tudor" (1600), and "Biron" (1602). Of the four extant biographical plays mentioned above, two, "Oldcastle" and "More," are clearly the result of divided authorship. None possesses in any degree unity of conception or treatment; and all depend self- confessedly upon the attractive power of the individ- ual careers presented to compensate for many defi- ciencies of execution. Of the detached scenes which compose all these works, the most successful, and the most significant historically, are probably those in "Oldcastle," dealing with the conspiracy of Cambridge, Scroope, and Grey, and the admirable portrayal of the 111 May Day riot in "Sir Thomas More," a passage which it may perhaps not be over-credulous to regard as partially the work of Shakespeare's early hand. I The earliest English play to treat the material of history with conscious reverence for the established V rules of dramatic composition is Marlowe's "Edward II." ^ In this work, which introduced, if it did not ^^ 1 It may be that this distinction should be shared by Marlowe's THE HISTORY PLAY 323 create, the third type of history drama, considerations of temporary popular appeal are for the first time sub- ordinated to the austerer principles of permanent art. The forethought with which Marlowe selected, altered, and condensed the chronicle narratives, till he formed from their various blurred outlines the single consist- ent picture he desired, was a new thing in dramatized history, and it gives to his play, when contrasted with the motley unreasoned patchwork that surrounded it, the lucidity and restraint of a classic. It may be that a certain inconsequence in the presentation of character conflict, and /a tendency to juggle with the springs of emotion, which alwi\ys disqualifies Marlowe for the judicial impartiality of Shakespeare, cause "Edward 11" to fall somewhat short of the highest form of tragedy, — the tragedy of characterization. Yet it is one of the purest instances of the tragedy of circumstance, and it raised the history play to the dig- nity of permanent literature, inaugurating a new spe- cies and creating a public for the great histories of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's first independent history plays, "Richard III" and "Richard II," are composed in marked imitation of the work of Marlowe. "Richard III," written in all probabihty about 1593, within a year or two of the production of "Edward II," reverts to the earlier structural model of "Tamburlaine" and "Faustus," concentrating attention upon a single imposing figure and rioting in crude melodramatic Dido, Queen of Carthage, in which Thomas Nash had some vague con- cern. The subject of Dido, however, is far less seriously historic than that of Edward II; and much obscurity exists in regard to the precise date and origin of the former play. 8^4 THE TIDOR DRAMA offoot. In certain details, iniltvd. snch as the emphasis hiid upon the power of the eurse/ the insistence on the signitieancv of drt^auis,- and the demoniac figure of Margaix^t, who follows like an avenging genius the just calamities of the House of York, the play shows itself influencvd by the earlier spirit of Senecan trag- eil>'. lUit. with all its glaring innnaturity, "Richard III" exhibits, both in the conception of its hero and in the general conduct of its plot, a fuller tragic pro- mise tlian "Edward 11" had attained. The rvnigh out- line of Richard's character — his Machiavellian self- isluiess and frank confession of villainy — is, of course, the same as that of Marlowe's Guise, Barabas. and Mortimer; but this outline is tilled in with the human- izing ^KTception of the highest genius. In his masterly assumption of guilelossness and simple dealing,^ his attempt at explaining his villainy to himself, liis im- mense delight in his mischievous mental power,^ and the imperturbable i^aruj-froid with which he turns against their authors the curses of Margart^t and the suspicions of the Woodvilles, Richard presents a character altogether ditfertnit from that he bears in the Henry VI plays and suggestive at every point of Shakespeare's grt^ttest triumph in the portrayal of evil genius, — the character of lago in "Othello." In one respect, indeed, the less mature treatment of Richan.1 is given a turn which invests that figure with the human probability and pathos somewhat lacking in the super-normal lago. It is the delicate touch 1 Cf. 1. iii. Ill ff; IV. iv: V. i. » I. iv, 9 tT; III. ii. 10 tf ; V. Hi. 118 ff. » E. g.. I. iii. 47 tT. II. i. 60 ff; II. ii, 158; III, iv. 53-55. * I. ii. ^5>S ff: IV. iv. 431. THE HISTORY PLAY 325 which shows the hcM-o's loss ;iL Iho crisis of Lhc phiy of his previously invincible self-confidence, as he feels in confusion, thougli still und.'iunlcd, the aj)proach of inevitjihlo doom. The irritable uncertainty of his commands to Catesby when he hears of Richmond's arrival (IV, iv, 410 ff), his sudden susi)iciousness of fate and friends (IV, iv, 509 if; V, iii, 2, 8, 72-74), and the horror and magnificent recovery of the dream scene humanize the figure of Richard and accom- plish that tragic pity which Marlowe wins for his Edward by the less dramatic recourse to pure emo- tiotialism. In structure, also, "Richard III" satisfies the re- quirements of high tragedy more fully than the riper and richer play of Marlowe. Though the former drama contains but one great protagonist, the battle which he wages against the overwhelming consequences of curse, projjhccy, and accumulated crime is so vividly depicted that there is nowhere a trace of incoherence or the least slackening of suspense. "Richard III" is the final achievement in the single-character drama, and it has continued, from the time of Burbage to the present, one of the most fruitful opportunities for the great tragic actor. Its success where other plays of the kind failed of permanent effectiveness results from its conception of the genius of history as an inexorable fate against which the hero maintains a mortal and hopeless combat. "Ricliard III" nuist be studied in the closest connection with the Henry VI plays. The latter end with the picture of the complete triumj)!! of the House of York and the prostration of injured Lancaster. "Richard III" has for its great theme the exposition of the punishment of the offenders at each 326 THE TUDOR DRAMA other's hands, and the estabhshment of predestined right in the fulfilment of Henry's prophecy concerning Richmond's reign {3 Henry VI, IV, vi, 68 ff) and the union of the roses. In spirit and purpose this play is probably the closest parallel in English literature to the tragedy of ^Eschj^lus. "King Richard II," composed probably a year later than "Richard III," differs very greatly from that play, and though it marks an advance in dramatic capability, must be reckoned individually a less power- ful tragedy. "Richard III" ends a tetralogy dealing with selfish ambition and civil strife; "Richard II" begins another series of four plays in which Shake- speare treats primarily questions of good government and national patriotism. The latter work was most unmistakably suggested by "Edward II," although perhaps not properly an imitation; and the decision concerning the respective merits of the two plays is a matter of some delicacy. "Edward II" is far more mature, and, on the whole, doubtless a finer drama. Much of "Richard II" is lacking in vigor. The two challenge scenes (I, i; IV, i, 1-106) and that which deals with the interrupted tournament (I, iii) read almost like flashy imitations of Sir Walter Scott: they have no dignity and they do not discriminate char- acter.- The introduction of Aumerle's conspiracy is an otiose offence against the laws of tragic compres- sion, and some of Richard's long speeches exceed in vapidity what the spectator will patiently endure from even a confessedly weak hero. These are the defects of youth, embarrassed in the handling of a new style, and they find no parallel in the careful restraint of "Edward II." The special merit of Shakespeare's THE HISTORY PLAY 327 play consists, as has been pointed out/ in the substi- tution of a single well-defined conflict between the king and Bolingbroke instead of the constantly changing bickerings of "Edward II," and in the clear demon- stration of the poet's theory of royal responsibility. These features both make for structural unity and argue the existence of tragic capacity considerably in excess of the actual performance of the play. The most interesting thing about "Richard II" is the character of Richard. The poetic irresolution and tendency to masquerade like a player king in his royal dignity were not peculiarities of the true Richard as Holinshed portrays him; and the stress upon these qualities so far obscures the tyranny, improvidence, and violence of the historical personage that the wild energy of the death scene appears positively out of keeping. Of all Shakespeare's monarchs, Richard II is the only one whose kingship seems painted and artificial. From the first scene he speaks and thinks less like the born sovereign than the enthroned yar- venu, making garish show of the supremacy which he should take for granted; and it sometimes looks almost as if Shakespeare were unjustly travestying Marlowe's treatment of the weak but always royal Edward. The truth probably is that both Richard and Bolingbroke are rather sketches of the two mental types which Shakespeare recognized within himself than serious portraits of historic figures. If we except Hamlet, as we should do, Richard is Shakespeare's last example, not wholly unfavorable, of that type of intellectual trifler who loses sight of truth and justice in the cult of felicitous novelty; and his 1 See p. 251. 328 THE TUDOR DRAMA " Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise. Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical," have an identical nature and origin with those which the young Shakespeare was continually renouncing through the mouth of Biron and others, and continu- ally yielding to again. It is this turn of mind, strik- ingly illustrated in the ridiculous conceits of the abdi- cation scene and the king's last soliloquy, to which the poet unhistorically ascribes Richard's fall; while in the successful Bolingbroke he emphasizes the corre- sponding virtues of prompt practical decision and free- dom from whimsicality. The story of Shakespeare's life may perhaps testify to the ultimate preponderance of the latter attitude, and his work, I believe, shows his final leaning toward the type of Bolingbroke.^ A roughly contemporary example of tragedy con- structed from historical material is preserved in an untitled British Museum manuscript, which has been twice printed and which is often referred to as "The Tragedy of Woodstock." This play deals with the reign of Richard II, and offers an interesting contrast to Shakespeare's treatment of the same theme. The principal figure is the king's uncle, Thomas of Wood- stock, Duke of Gloucester; and the tragedy ends with the circumstances immediately consequent upon the murder of that personage in 1397, — precisely the point at which Shakespeare's play begins. The events of fifteen years are boldly and skillfully shifted with a view to the dramatic presentation of the struggle which the humorous and patriotic old hero wages ^ See, however, in opposition to this view the admirably ex- pressed argument of W. B. Yeats in Ideas of Good and Evil, 152 ff. THE HISTORY PLAY 329 against the rash extravagance of the king and the destructive rapacity of his favorites. The picture of Richard's wild, improvident self-indulgence is very- much truer to the real character than is that of the poetic royal dilettante whom Shakespeare paints. Moreover, the unknown author of this play has strongly portrayed in the elevation of Tresillian, Bushy, Bagot, and Greene, in the crushing tyranny of the blank char- ters, the farming out of England, and the murder of Gloucester, real causes of the king's overthrow which it has pleased Shakespeare in his largely imaginary treatment to pass lightly over. The parallels between "Woodstock" and the plays of "Edward II" and "2 Henry VI," which Keller citeSj^seem to me to have very little pertinence; but it cannot well be doubted that the former work was influenced by Marlowe's example in its handling of the relation between Richard and his sycophants, the death of Woodstock, and the controversy between the peers and king. The author of "Woodstock" seems, however, to have been a practiced and independent dramatist. His skill in the use of prose and of humor- ous relief contrasts strikingly with the notable absence of both these elements in "Edward II" and "Richard II"; while his hero, Woodstock, though he never speaks more than passable verse, is in the convincing- ness and comprehensiveness of his character a more promising tragic figure, probably, than either Mar- lowe's Edward or Shakespeare's Richard. Three plays of Shakespeare's full power complete the roll of Elizabethan historical tragedies. " Macbeth," * See the preface to his edition of the play in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. xxxv (1899). 330 THE TUDOR DRAMA' "Antony and Cleopatra," and " Coriolanus," all pro- duced within comparatively narrow limits of time (1606 ?-1610),are closely bound together by peculiari- ties of structure and by certain internal reminiscences.^ In each the historical material furnished by Holinshed and Plutarch respectively has been shaped into a mar- vellous presentation of the ruin of a great and noble na- ture by a single besetting and ultimately overwhelm- ing weakness; namely, ambition, unworthy love, and insolent self-assertion. Each of these plays exemplifies tragedy in its purest and highest form, and the tragic effect depends in each case upon the wise interpreta- tion of actual character and historic fact. In "Mac- beth," Shakespeare has applied the narrative of Holin- shed to the inculcation, in saner and more sympathetic manner, of the same moral of avenging guilt which he had before read in the history of Richard III. In the stories of Antony and Coriolanus, he found his own doctrine of the normal balance of the world, and the necessary punishment of what is eccentric and exor- bitant, already nobly stated by Plutarch; and he has been content in these perfect tragedies to follow his historic source with a closeness with which he has fol- lowed no other. To the fourth species of history play belong those dramas w^iich, while not subject to the rules of ordi- nary tragedy or comedy, yet rise above the level of art- less improvisation, and owe their inspiration to a more vital cause than purely melodramatic effectiveness or mere ephemeral appeal. In such plays there is always perceptible behind the individual human actors a back- 1 Note, for example, the allusions to Plutarch's Life of Antonius in Macbcffi, III, i, 5i-57 and V, viii, 1, 2. THE HISTORY PLAY 331 ground which presents a philosophic interpretation of history or a general picture of some great epoch. Any technical analysis of these plays will find most of the examples lacking in unity and in dramatic intensity. But when they are interpreted as delineations of His- tory itself rather than historic individuals, the reader has no difficulty in explaining the singleness of aim and eflPect which he really feels, but which he can hardly account for by any of the regular canons of dramatic art. Perhaps the earliest representative of the type under discussion is the anonymous "Reign of King Edward the Third," published in 1596 and acted probably sev- eral years before. Here the strong current of national feeling, produced by the general agitation which cul- minated in the defeat of the Armada, and found expres- sion in the patriotic outbursts of "Locrine" (IV, i, 28- 43), of Falconbridge in the King John plays, and of John of Gaunt in "Richard II," becomes the main dra- matic force in the work. The plot, derived principally from Holinshed's Chronicles of England and Scotland, is totally lacking in dramatic coherence. The introduc- tion of the scenes dealing with the Countess of Salis- bury is capable of satisfactory explanation only when we realize the universal popular worship of Edward III as the particular embodiment of England's glory, and the half-pagan reverence which would follow breath- lessly the career of the divinity in peace as well as war. The military scenes themselves are quite disjointed in respect of any progressive delineation of character or the untying of any specific dramatic knot. The real subject of the play is not Edward himself or his valiant son, but the national prestige in its steady progress 332 THE TUDOR DRAMA from Crecy to Poitiers and from Poitiers to the con- quest of Calais.^ So, the great dramatic moments, which thrill the blood and give essential unity to the work, are not revelations of individual personality, but high expressions of patriotic ardor, such as Edward's summons to his warriors after his recovery from his " follies seege against a faithful louer " (II, ii, 201 ff) ; the knighting and arming of ^ the Black Prince for the wars (III, iii, 172 ff); the magnificent tableau that brings in the prince to his father triumphant after Crecy (III, v, 60 S) ; and the effective revulsion of the last scene, which, straight on the news of disaster, gives assurance of un- imagined victory and lowers the curtain on the picture of exultant England. During the last three or four years of the sixteenth century, the type of drama rather adumbrated than ex- empHfied in "Edward III" was developed by Shake- speare into a distinct species and illustrated by four plays composed in close succession: the two parts of "Henry IV," "Henry V," and "Julius Caesar." The Henry IV and Henry V plays form a closely con- nected series presenting a well-matured theory of royal responsibility and governmental ethics by means of their picture of the character evolution of a great na- tional leader. It is the figure of the prince, as heir ap- parent, and as king, that gives unity and purpose to the trilogy — less, indeed, as the conventional dramatic hero who shapes the action, than as the ideal hypothet- ical type by which Shakespeare illustrates his phi- losophy of statecraft and kingship. ^ The sequence of these events as given in the play varies from that of history. The battle of Crecy really occurred in 13-16, the sur- render of Calais in 1347, the battle of Poitiers not till 1356. THE HISTORY PLAY 333 It can scarcely be doubted that the play of "Henry V," regularly announced in the Epilogue to "Henry IV, Part II," was definitely under contemplation when the first part of "Henry IV" was conceived. Indeed, an unnecessary allusion in the last act of " Richard II " (V, iii, 1-22) to the young prince's "dissolute and desperate " character, through which Bolingbroke dis- cerns "some sparks of better hope, which elder years May happily bring forth," makes it probable that the poet was already considering the dramatic portrayal of this figure. It may very reasonably be questioned, however, whether, when Shakespeare undertook, about 1596 or 1597, to follow up his study, in Richard II and Bolingbroke, of two imperfect and antagonistic mo- narchic types by a delineation of his ideal prince, he had any idea of devoting more than a single play to that prince's preparation for sovereignty and another to his triumphant reign. The second part of "Henry IV," like the second part of "Tamburlaine," seems to be an originally unpremeditated addition, occasioned by the enormous effectiveness of the by -figure of Falstaff. Xhis genial character must have expanded in its devel- opment far beyond the limits at first intended for it, and thus necessitated the splitting of the political matter of Henry IV's reign, in itself hardly sufficient for a single drama, into two plays. The result is that the serious historical theme, which certainly repre- sents the poet's primary conception, is continually being threatened with eclipse by the anachronistic comic scenes of sixteenth - century merriment and topical allusion. It is even true that the portrayal of the prince's preparation for government, besides being thus thrust into the background, is actually obscured 334 THE TUDOR DRAMA by the division. The first play ends abruptly in order to leave scope for the second; yet much of the second part is notwithstanding a mere variation of material already used in the first; and the effect of the two parts when taken together is less that of steady dramatic progress than of march and counter-march. The great scenes, for example, which depict Falstaff's arrest at the suit of Dame Quickly and his impressment of soldiers in Gloucestershire (Part II, II, i; III, ii) are brilliant amplifications of suggestions more hastily and prodigally thrown out in the first part (III, iii, 60-101; IV, ii). Naturally, the tendency to repetition is yet more striking in the historical scenes, where actual scantiness of material could less readily be eked out by imagination. Virtually everything necessary to fit the Henry IV plays for their original purpose as preliminary to a drama on the reign of Henry V is accomplished in the first part. The triumph of the prince's nobler aspirations over the attractions of dis- solute company, his reconciliation with his father, and the supreme vindication of his heroic valor in the over- throw of Hotspur are here complete. The play needs only scenes indicating the King's death and the final dismissal of Falstaff to stand forth as we may suspect it was first designed, perfect in itself and a full induc- tion to the treatment of the hero's triumphant reign. As it is, however, the demand for more Falstaff scenes brings the prince back among his old irresistible but unedifying companions with a sudden revulsion which, after the exalted strain on which the first part ends, makes his character appear a little weak. Again he loses his father's confidence, and has this time to regain it by means of declamation rather than action. Mean- THE HISTORY PLAY 335 time, the memory of the laurels won from Hotspur at Shrewsbury — an episode intended surely as the pre- lude which should usher in the wars of France and introduce the conqueror of Agincourt — grows dim through long unmartial acts where the prince appears but seldom, and the reader's attention follows the chicaneries of Northumberland and Prince John or the equally irrelevant knaveries of Falstaff . There will hardly be found a critic to wish for one play of "Henry IV" instead of two. Falstaff is assur- edly as great a favorite with the universal modern public as he seems to have been with Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. But it is necessary to consider the degree in which this most tremendous of comic figures probably affected Shakespeare's treatment of history, in order to gauge the intention of the political scenes in "Henry IV" and to understand the reason in part also for his abrupt cutting off in the pure history play of "Henry V." Had Falstaff been dealt with as sum- marily as Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet," the trilogy we are considering would have lost immeasurably in human interest, but surely it would have gained in homogeneity. As matters stand, the student of the individual plays is almost certain, in reading either of the first two, to be diverted from the state of Plan- tagenet England to Shakespeare's Gloucestershire and the streets of contemporary London. Yet when the entire series is viewed comprehensively, as it should be, it is not difficult to see the lesson which the poet read behind the progress of events, and which he has here intended to enforce. The moral of the three Henry V plays is that which Shakespeare has strongly expressed elsewhere: the responsibility of the ruler 336 THE TUDOR DRAMA both to his subjects and to higher power. This feeling inspires everywhere Shakespeare's repugnance to any- thing amateurish in government, whether expressed in the mob-rule of Jack Cade and the Roman rabble or in the anointed incapacity of Richard 11. But though he shows clearly that Richard II deserved to fall, he emphasizes no less strongly, in the prophecies of the Bishop of Carlisle and Richard himself, and ia. the continual misery of the crowned Bolingbroke, that an equal scourge afHicts him who by any indirection seizes the royal burden with him who seeks to escape it. "Henry IV" paints the gradual development in the young prince of the ideals of kingly service, capacity, justice, and patriotic fervor which Shakespeare de- manded of the monarch; and "Henry V" is a triumph- ant finale, to be considered, not separately, but in closest connection with the study in character building which it immediately followed and completed. As "Richard II" and "Henry IV" both demonstrate the punish- ment of those who trifle with royalty, so this play pic- tures the enormous possibilities of personal glory and national service within the reach of that ruler who performs unshrinkingly and thoroughly the full duties of justly assumed dominion. The earliest production of "Henry V" can be as- signed to the summer of 1599 by reason of the allusion in the Prologue before the fifth act to the Earl of Essex's absence in Ireland (Apr. 15 - Sept. 28, 1599) ; and all evidence so far discovered tends to limit the date of "Julius Caesar" to the same year or that which fol- lowed. The latter play is Shakespeare's consummate attempt at presenting under dramatic form a phi- losophy of history; just as "Macbeth," "Antony and THE HISTORY PLAY 337 Cleopatra," and "Coriolanus" remain his most per- fect examples of pure historical tragedy. The remote- ness of the material treated gives to all these dramas a universal application hardly obtainable in the por- trayal of the more immediate past. The main subject of "Julius Caesar" is not a single figure, whether Csesar himself or Brutus. It is rather the vindication in the rotten commonwealth of Rome of the constant force of that political Nemesis whose operation in the course of English history Shakespeare had already shown. The play's claim to unity lies in the singleness of pur- pose with which it enunciates the moral, already exemplified in the career of Bolingbroke, that every effort to achieve law and order by lawless means must end in futility and sorrow. Csesar, the egoist, and the idealist Brutus perish alike by reason of their rash attack upon the sacred power of authorized govern- ment, which in Shakespeare's teaching revenges every atterript at tyrannical or anarchic interference. The grim pathos and irony of this play, one of Shakespeare's greatest and most thoughtful works, lies mainly in the swift inevitable precision with which Brutus after the murder of Csesar finds himself threatened by the same ideals of governmental order he has so irrespon- sibly tried to champion. The demagogic Antony and the Roman mob are blind instruments by which a high power pursues Brutus, exactly as through him it had punished Csesar. Thus, the closing acts of the play have for their main function the development of Brutus 's desperate realization that in him and his selfish companions are reproduced all the evils for which Csesar fell.^ The ghost that harries Brutus is, 1 Cf. Julius Casar, IV, iii, 18 ff. 338 THE TUDOR DRAMA of course, in no sense the spirit of one unjustly slain, seeking vengeance upon the guilty murderer. Such a conception would totally degrade the character of the hero, and negative that of Caesar, whom Shakespeare clearly follows Plutarch in holding worthy of death. Rather, the ghost is to be regarded as the embodi- ment of outraged authority; and Philippi is the scene not of personal revenge, but of the triumph of that supernal law of ordered government which chastises even in morally innocent and noble offenders every movement subversive of the balance of cosmic serenity. In the play which most immediately followed "Julius Caesar," in "Hamlet," Shakespeare left the realm of serious history. Here, however, he treated in a mythi- cal subject, and upon dramatic lines already laid down, a not dissimilar problem concerning the violent putting right of a world which has grown out of joint. Many of the hesitations and difficulties of the Prince of Denmark have their origin in the conception of political and personal responsibility which Shakespeare has enunciated in the parallel case of Brutus. An enormous number of plays on quasi-historical subjects, often bearing the names of actual personages, are in reality mere compilations of traditional or in- vented romance. Such, for example, are the anony- mous "George a Greene" and "Fair Em," Greene's "James IV," and Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday." Another instance, ostensibly less irregular, is Peele's "Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First " (1593), a long work distinguished by some fine bursts of un- dramatic poetry, but absurd in structure and in con- tent. Several of the most extraordinary violations of history and possibility in this play appear to have been THE HISTORY PLAY 339 taken from a ballad called "A Warning Piece to Eng- land against Pride and Wickedness," in which Ed- ward's queen, Eleanor of Castile, is held up to con- temporary prejudice as a pattern of Spanish sin and vindictiveness.^ Other marvellous episodes are wanton inventions of the poet, and the play lacks little of being, like "James IV," a complete excursus into the province of fiction. The most popular subjects with the fabricators of pseudo-historical drama appear to have been the tales of pre-Conquest Britain and the much -storied age of Richard I and Robin Hood. The heterogeneous "Knack to Know a Knave" touches lightly upon the legends of King Edgar and Bishop Dunstan. In the anonymous "Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters" and in Shakespeare's "Cymbe- line," an admixture of spurious history gives weight and coherence to the romantic scenes upon which both plays mainly depend for their very different degrees of success. Shakespeare's "Eang Lear" changes the tone of its borrowed material from comedy to tragedy and from romance to realism, without making the his- toric element in any way more accurate or important. "Nobody and Somebody," an undated play, belonging probably to the beginning of the seventeenth century, blends a realistic comic plot of contemporary interest with "the true Chronicle Historic of Elydure, who was fortunately three several times crowned King of Eng- land." So, Middleton^ "Mayor of Queenborough " 1 It may be that the ballad follows the play instead of preceding it. However, the question of priority is not of essential consequence, since both works obviously express a perfectly general attitude of the literature of the day. 340 THE TUDOR DRAMA and the pseudo-Shakespearean "Birth of Merlin" use the shadowy tissue of pre-Arthurian legend as a back- ground for the scenes of intrigue comedy in which the age of James found its highest amusement. Similar in spirit to the last - ngentioned plays, and probably roughly contemporary with them, is R. A(rmin?)'s "Valiant Welshman" (1615), which likewise adorns the highly colored picture of its hero, Caractacus (Caradoc), with the varied attractions of magical superstition, realistic burlesque, and lurid melodrama. A different treatment of early English history, shortly subsequent to the Conquest, is found in Dek- ker's interesting " Satiromastix " (1602). Here the author, after having apparently designed an imagina- tive tragedy on the subject of William Rufus and Sir Walter TjTrel, was led by the exigencies of the "War of the Theatres" to give the main story a hasty comic termination, and to interweave a satirical underplot dealing nominally with the Augustan Age at Rome, and really w4th the no less incongruous literary dis- putes of the passing moment. Despite the bizarre mingling of three distant ages thus effected, and the total sacrifice of plot unity, "Satiromastix" is still a readable play with genuine comic interest. The one important tragic scene ^ which the drama contains in its present form is also worthy both of Dekker's high reputation for pathos and of the place which Charles Lamb gave it in his "Specimens of the English Dra- matic Poets." English history during the reigns of the Angevin kings had formed the subject, as we have seen, of three chronicle plays of the earliest type in the two parts of 1 Ed. Scherer. 11. 2081 ff. THE HISTORY PLAY 341 the "Troublesome Reign of John" and in Shake- speare's "King John." The same epoch is portrayed, though with much less emphasis upon historic fact, in the two plays of "Robert, Earl of Huntington," of which the earlier certainly belongs rather to romantic comedy than to the historical drama. The interesting comedy of "Look About You" (1600), treating the later years of Henry II, is clearly illustrative of the history play in the stage of disinte- gration which we are considering. The choice of title in this work, as well as in "Nobody and Somebody," shows how the pure historical theme was losing at- tractiveness on the stage of 1600; and the mixed plot testifies alike to an unwillingness to stake the interest of the piece upon the frank presentation of chronicle material. "Look About You" is a lively play, with a superabundance of clever and exciting scenes, hinging usually upon one or another of a great variety of dis- guise motives. It is, however, far too confused in struc- ture and too irresponsible in purpose to merit the title of a good play on any just analysis. It possesses sev- eral points of contact with other plays dealing with the same early Plantagenet period. In its portrait of the page, "Robin Hood, Earl of Huntington," it serves as a prelude to the Huntington dramas of Mun- day and Chettle; while its treatment of the initial stages in the love affair between Prince Richard and Lady Falconbridge brings it into a like relation to the King John plays. The main significance of "Look About You," as regards the history of the chronicle play, lies, however, in the author's evident recogni- tion of the inadequacy of all these historical subjects to hold the attention of his audience, unless supported 342 THE TUDOR DRAMA by the extraneous farce and sensationalism which he weaves around the figures of Skink and Gloucester. "The BHnd Beggar of Bednal Green," by Day and Chettle, is a thoroughly entertaining play, which makes very much the same kind of appeal as "Look About You," and stands in the same general relation to the facts of history. These two comedies occupy an intermediate position between the two dramatic classes into which the chronicle play broke, as the type lost its original freshness. In the plays of the first class, illustrated by "James IV" and "George a Greene," the historical matter is essentially unreal and uncon- vincing. In certain other decadent history plays, how- ever, the authors have found it possible to transfer the chief interest from the great political events and per- sonages to more romantic elements, without abso- lutely falsifying the history of the period in which they set their plots. It is entirely as imaginary comedies that "Look About You" and "The Blind Beggar" make their appeal. Yet the picture of the troubles between Henry II and his rebellious sons in the one play, and the picture of the French wars of Henry VI and the rivalry between Duke Humphrey and Car- dinal Beaufort in the other, are, on the whole, not falsely painted. Better examples of this type of play, which subordi- nates history, without entirely distorting it, are Sam- uel Rowley's "When You See INIe, You Know Me, Or the famous Chronicle History of King Henry the Eight" and Dekker's "Whore of Babylon." Rowley gives a vivid sketch of informal life at Henry's court by means of scenes which in themselves are for the most part trivial or even imaginary. Dekker, as his THE HISTORY PLAY 343 apocalyptic title indicates, satirizes the Roman Church, by presenting the chief occurrences of Eliza- beth's reign in allegorical drapery. Toward the close of the sixteenth century, Shake- speare's Company staged an occurrence in the foreign history of the previous generation in "A Lamm for London, or the Siege of Antwerp." The portrayal of the scenes attending the capture of Antwerp by the Spanish (1576) is reminiscent of the first part of Mar- lowe's "Massacre at Paris," with which this play even shares one phrase.^ But the main attention of the author of the "Larum" is fixed less upon history itself than upon two extraneous concerns. With the homi- letic intention suggested by the first title, facts are garbled in order to present the Antwerp disaster as a retribution for civic short-sightedness; and a large fictional interest is added in the portrayal of the "ventrous actes and valorous deeds of the lame sol- dier," — a popular type of the day represented not dissimilarly in the Cavalicro Dick Bowyer of "The Trial of Chivalry" and in Ralph in "The Shoemaker's Holiday." Probably the fairest instances of the late history play in its shift toward imaginary comedy are the four dramas of Thomas Heywood which deal with the reigns of Edward IV and Elizabeth respectively. Hey- wood — a prose Shakespeare, as Lamb called him — has the point of view of the novelist rather than the playwright, and in his treatment of history he antici- pates strikingly the method of the modem historical 1 Merely the cry of the Second Spaniard, "Tue tue, tue! " (ed. Simpson, p. 64). Cf. Massacre at Paris, 1. 340. The use of French in the former case is striking. 814 THE TUDOR DRAMA romancer. In the two Edward IV plays, the great per- sonages and the important national events of the reign are pushed far into the background, where they serve to set off the presentation of minor figures and of inci- dents mainly apocryphal. Thus, the important subjects of the work are the adventures of the miller of Tam- worth, of INIistress Shore and her abused husband, — all excellently depicted ; the trifling episode of Falcon- bridge's siege of London, and the almost purely ima- ginary French campaign. The complete absorption of history in fiction is interestingly apparent when we compare these plays, admirable in their way, with Shakespeare's handling of the same period in "3 Henry VI" and "Richard III." To enroll the former works among serious history plays would be as great an im- pertinence as to catalogue "A Tale of Two Cities" among the histories of the French Revolution. The two curious plays dealing with Queen Eliza- beth, to which Heywood gives the boastful title, "If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody," have abso- lutely no connection in subject or manner. The first part takes up 'J'udor history just where another form- less work of the time, the "Sir Thomas Wyat" of Dekker and Webster, drops it. Heywood records the troubles of the Princess Elizabeth during the reign of her sister Mary very much in the same spirit in which Scott deals with the troubles of Amy Robsart. The long second part of "If You Know Not Me" is in no proper sense historic. It resembles the same author's " Four Prentices of London " in being a very far-fetched tribute to the London bourgeoisie; and its loose plot centres about the typical embodiment of citizen thrift. Sir Thomas Gresham, and his Royal Exchange. The THE HISTORY PLAY 345 addition in the last few pages of a jaded account of the defeat of the Armada is obvious clap-trap. After 1600, the vogue of the real history play de- clined rapidly. Nearly the whole compass of English history, mythical and real, and all the more effective foreign themes had been brought uj)on the stage, and the public appetite was glutted. Henceforth the his- toric title practically vanishes, and the chronicles are searched only for purely romantic matter. The latest examples of the true English history play are probably the incongruous "Life of Henry the Eighth," com- posed about 1613^ by Fletcher in conjunction with Shakespeare, and John Ford's historical tragedy of "Perkin Warbeck."2 BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL DISCUSSION Schelling, P. E., The English Chronicle Play. A Study in the Popular Historical Literature environing Shakespeare, 1902. INDIVIDUAL TEXTS A. Experimental Chronicle Plays op Mixed Type 1. PLAYS dealing WITH FOREIGN HISTORY Marlowe, Christopher : Tamburlaine, Parts I and II. See bibliography, p. 254. The Massacre at Paris. " With the Death of Guise." Un- dated octavo, " E. A. for Edward White." ^ The accuracy of this date has been ineffectively disputed. See K. Elze, Sk. Jb., ix (1874), 55-86, who argues in favor of 1603. * From the foreign field it is possible to add the anonymous tragedy of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, ascribed in part to Fletcher, and Chapman's Wars of Pompey and Cassar (1031), and Tragedy of Chabot (1639). Si6 THE TUDOR DRAMA The Jew of Malta. See bibliography, p. 228. LoiH^K, Thomas* : The "Wounds of Civil War. "Liuelyset forth in the true Tragedies of Maxiiis ami Scilla," loiU. Re- jtnnlgd, \y. C. Hazlitt, Dcnislfi/, vii. Discitssion : R. Carl, " Uber Thomas Lodge's Leben und Werke," Anglia, x (18S8), 235-288. (Sep:vr.-\tely printed as Halle diss., 1887.) Peklk, Gkoko.k : The Battle of Alcazar. " fought iu Barbarie, botweene Sebastian king of rortugall, and Abdelmeloc king of Maroeco. With the death of Captaine Stukeley," loM. lifprinted, Dyee, Peele's Works. Grkknk, Rohkkt ? : The First Part of the Tragical Reign of Selinius, •• sometime Kmperoiir of the Turkos, and grand- father to him that now raigaeth," ir)lVi. Re-issued 1G38, "Written T. (i." Keprinied, A. B. Grosart, Greene's Works, vol. xiv. Separately reprinted, A. B. Grosart, Tftnple Drama- tists, 1898. Discussion : C. Crawfortl, " Spenser, Locrine, and Se- limus," J' A'o/f.< and Queries, \i\ (ISXU); reprinted, Ci>llectanea, First Series (11XX>\ 47-100 ; 1\ A. Daniel, Athettceum 3G77, Apr. 16, 1808 ; II. Gilbert, A'. Greene's Selimus, Kiel, 1S99. i. ri„\YS DE.\L1NG WITH EMU.1SH HISTOKY The Troublesome Reign of John King of England. Two parts, ir>01. tether editions : llUl, •' Written by W. Sh.," and 1022, "Written by W. Shakespeare." Reprinted, W. C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Librarij, vol. v, 187o. Discussion: G. C. Moore Smith, " Shakespeare's King John and the Trouble- some Reign," Fumivall Miscellani/ (1001), 3i>o ff. Shakkspkake, "William : King John. First printed in the 1623 Folio. The Life and Death of Jack Straw, " A notable Rebell in England: Who was kild in Smithtield by the LonI Maior of London," loOo. Heprinted, W. C. Ha/litt, DiMisIei/, v. The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, 15iH. Reprinteti, B. Field, ^'/lettre's Libniru. v. lS7o. Discussion: G. B. Churchill, "Richard III bis Shakespeare." Pahrstni, x (liXX^V The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. " containing the Honourable Battell of Agin-court," lolV>. Facsimile, 1887. Reprinted, W. C. Hazlitt, Shales}>eare's Library/, v, 1875. 1 Henry VI. First printed in the Shakespeare Folio, 1023. THE HISTORY PLAY 847 2 Henry VI. Extant in three versions. (a) " The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two fa- mous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey," 1594. Reprinted (two irapVessions ?), 1600. Modern editions : J. O. Halliwell, Shakespeare Society, 1843; W. C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, v, 1875. Facsimile, C. Pn-etorins, 1889. (b) Slightly altered version (with Part III) in "The Whole Contention botweone the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke." Undated, but sliown by continuous pagi- nation to be contemporary with the 1619 edition of Per- icles. Facsimiles, 1886. (c) Expanded and improved text in the Shakespeare Folio, 1623. 3 Henry VI. Extant in three versions. (fl) " The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt . . . acted by the Right Honourable the P^arl of Pembrooke his seruauts," 1595. Facsiviile, 1891. Reprinted 1600. Modern edi- tions; see C Henry VI (a). (b) Slightly altered version in " The Whole Contention " (1619). See J Henry VI (h). (c) Expanded and improved text in the Shakespeare Folio, 1623. Discussion : E. Maloue, " Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI," Boswell's Malone, xviii, 1821; R. Grant White, "Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth," Shakespeare, vol. vii, 1859; Miss Jane Lee, Trans. New Sh. Soc, 1875-76, 219-312. B. Biographical Chronicle Plats Sir John Oldcastle. " The first part of the true and honour- able historic of the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham," 1600. Reprinted, C. F. T. Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha ; P. Simpson, Malone Society. Another version, " Written by William Shakespeare." Dated 1600. but printed, probably, in 1619. Reprinted, J. R. Macarthur, 1907. For other editions, see bibliography in The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Dis- cussion : R. S. Forsythe, " Certain Sources of Sir John Old- castle," Mod. Lang. Notes, xxvi (1911), 104-107. Thomas Lord Cromwell. " The True Chronicle Historic of 348 THE TUDOR DRAMA the whole life and death of Thomas Lord Cromwell. . . . Written by W. S." Reprinted 1613, and in the third and fourth Shakespeare Folios, 1664 and 1685. For modern edi- tions, see bibliography in The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Stukeley: "The Famous Historye of the life and death of Captaine Thomas Stukeley. With liis marriage to Alderman Curteis Daughter, and valiant ending of his life at the Battaile of Alcazar," 1605. Reprinted, R. Simpson, The School of Shakspere, vol. i, 1878. Sir Thomas More. MS. in British Museum, Harleian 7368. Facsimile, J. S. Farmer. Printed, A. Dyce, Shakespeare Society, 1844; A. F. Hopkinson, 1902 ; C. F. T. Brooke, The Shake- speare Apocrypha. Discussion : R. Simpson, " Are there any extant MSS. in Shakespeare's Handwriting ? " ^ Notes and Queries, viii (1871), 1 ff ; J. Spedding, " Shakespeare's Hand- writing," 4 Notes and Queries, x (1872), 227 ; J. Spedding, iZe- views and Discussions, 1879, " On a Question concerning a Supposed Specimen of Shakespeare's Handwriting." C. Historical Tragedies Marlowe, Christopher : Edward II, 1594. Probably first printed in 1593. Reprinted 1598, 1612, 1622. For later edi- tions, see list in Oxford edition of Marlowe, 1910, p. 312. Marlowe and Nash : The Tragedy of Dido Queen of Car- thage. " Written by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nash," 1594. Reprinted, Hurst, Robinson and Co., The Old English Drama, 1825; all editions of Marlowe; editions of Nash by Grosart (1885) and R. B. McKerrow, vol. ii, 1904. Shakespeare, William: The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, 1597. Reprinted 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612, 1622, 1629, 1634. Altered version in the Shakespeare Folio, 1623. Dis- cussion: J. Spedding, " On the Corrected Edition of Richard III," Transactions Neio Shakspere Society, 1875-76, 1-75. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, 1597. Reprinted 1598. Later editions, adding the abdication scene, 1608 (two issues), 1615, 1634. Corrected version in the Shakespeare Folio, 1623. Macbeth. First printed in the 1623 Folio. Antony and Cleopatra. First printed in the 1623 Folio. Coriolanus. First printed in the 1623 Folio. THE HISTORY PLAY 349 The Tragedy of Woodstock. MS. in British Museum (Eger- ton 1954). Printed, J. O, Halliwell, 1870 (11 copies); W. Keller, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxxv (1899), 3-121. JoNSON, Benjamin : Sejanus his Fall, 1605. Reprinted in the first Jonscn Folio, 1616. Catiline his Conspiracy, 1611. Reprinted in 1616 Folio. Chapman, George: The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Biron, Marshal of France. Two Parts. 1608. Re- printed 1625. Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt. MS. in British Museum (Add. 18653). Printed, A. H. Bullen. Old Plays, ii, 1883. The Tragedy of Nero. " Newly Written," 1624. Reprinted, A. H. Bullen, Old Plays, i, 1882 ; Mermaid series, 1888. Ford, John : The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck, 1634. Reprinted, Ford's Works, Mermaid edition. (For several other possible members of this class, see bibliogra- phy to chapter vi, p. 228 f .) D. History Plays of Philosophic Import The Reign of King Edward the Third, 1596 ; reprinted 1599. For later editions and criticism, see The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. Part I, 1598. Other editions 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, 1622, 1632, 1639 ; Shakespeare Folio, 1623. The Second Part of Henry the Fotirth, " continuing to his death and coronation of Henrie the flft," 1600 (two issues). The Chronicle History of Henry the Fifth. " With his bat- tell fought at Agin Court in France," 1600. Reprinted 1602, 1608. More accurate, fuller text in Shakespeare Folio, 1623. Julius Caesar. First printed in the 1623 Folio. E. Romanticized History Plays I. plays in which the historical element is imaginary OR insignificant Peele, George : Edward the First. " With his returne from the holy land. Also the life of Lleuellen, rebell in Wales. Lastly, the sinking of Qneene Elinor," 1593. Reprinted in Dyce's editions of Peele. See bibliography, p. 254. 350 THE TUDOR DRAMA A Knack to Know a Knave, 1594. Cf. p. 146. Greene, Robert : The Scottish History of James the Fourth, 1598. Cf. p. 293. George a Greene, the Pinner of "Wakefield, 1599. Cf. p. 293. The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters, 1594. Another edition, 1605. Reprinted, W. C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library ; Sidney Lee, Shakespeare Clas- sics, 1909. Shakespeare, William : King Lear, 1609. Another edition bearing same date, but probably printed in 1619. Altered text in 1623 Folio. Cymbeline. First printed in the 1623 Folio. Dekker, Thomas: Old Fortunatus, 1600. Ed. H. Scherer, Munchener Beitrdge, xxi (1901). The Shoemaker's Holiday, " Or, The Gentle Craft. With the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London," 1600. Other editions, 1610, 1618, 1624, 1631, 1657. Satiromastiz, " Or the untrussing of the Humorous Poet," 1602. See bibliography on p. 388. Nobody and Somebody. " With the true Chronicle Historie of Elydure, who was fortunately three seuerall times crowned King of England," n. d. Reprinted, Glasgow, 1877 (50 copies) ; R. Simpson, The School of Shakspere, vol. i, 1878. The Valiant Welshman, " Or The True Chronicle History of the life and valiant deedes of Caradoc the Great, King of Cambria, now called Wales," 1615. Another edition, 1663. " Written by R. A. Gent." MiDDLETON, Thomas : The Mayor of Queenborough, 1651. Reprinted in the Mermaid and other editions of Middleton. Rowley, William (and Shakespeare ?) : The Birth of Mer- lin: Or, the Child hath found his Father. " Written by William Shakespear and William Rowley," 1662. See bibli- ography in The Shakespeare Apocrypha. II. PLAYS in which GENUINE HISTORIC INTEREST IS BLENDED WITH INTERESTS OF OTHER KINDS Look About You, 1600, Reprinted, W. C. Hazlitt, Dodsley, vii. Heywood, Thomas : King Edward the Fourth. Two Parts, THE HISTORY PLAY 351 1600. Other editions, 1605, 1613, 1619, 1626. Reprinted, B. Field, Shakespeare Society, 1842. If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, « Or, The troubles of Queene Elizabeth." Part 1. 1605. Other edi- tions, 1606, 1608, 1610, 1613, 1623, 1632, 1639. Part II. " With the building of the Royal Exchange : And the famous Victorie of Queene Elizabeth, in the Yeare 1588," 1606. Other editions, 1609, 1623 ?, 1632. Reprinted (both parts), J. P. Collier, Shakespeare Society, 1851. A Larum for London ; or the Siege of Antwerp, 1602. Reprinted, R. Simpson, The School of Shakspere, No. 1, 1872. Rowley, Samuel : "When You See Me, You Know Me, " Or the famous Chronicle Historic of king Henry the eight," 1605. Other editions, 1613, 1621, 1632. Reprinted, K. Elze, 1874. Dekker, Thomas, and Webster, John: The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat. " With the Coronation of Queen Mary, and the coming in of King Philip," 1607. Another edition, 1612. Reprinted, editions of Dekker (1873) and Web- ster (1830, 1857, 1877). Discussion: F. E. Pierce, "The Col- laboration of Webster and Dekker," Yale Studies in English, 1909. Dekker, Thomas: The "Whore of Babylon, 1607. Day, John: The Blind Beggar of Bednal -Green, "with The merry humor of Tom Strowd the Norfolk Yeoman," 1659. Reprinted, A. H. BuUen, The Works of John Day, 1881, vol. ii. CHAPTER X DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT The abnormal conditions, sketched at the beginning of the last chapter, which fostered the sudden vogue, about 1590, of the rude history play, stimulated the growth of another tjT)e of drama similarly possessed of ephemeral attractiveness, and equally capable of hasty collaborative production. During the sixteen years between 1592, when "Arden of Feversham" was published, and 1608, when "A Yorkshire Tragedy" first appeared in print, at least nine dramas are re- corded, which derive their subject from contemporary murders; and this number can easily be raised to a dozen by the inclusion of several problematical mem- bers of the species. The reasons for this prolific exemplification, during the last years of the sixteenth century and the first years of the seventeenth, of a peculiar dramatic genre hardly to be found before or after are the same for the murder plays as for the cruder efforts in the staging of history. The former type, like the other, could be produced with great speed, and demanded in general little originality of conception or treatment. They were furthermore recommended by the powerful box- office consideration that the gruesome matter they handled maintained a peculiarly strong hold upon the minds of the Elizabethan public. How strong this hold was no one will require to be told who has glanced over the entries for the period in the Stationers' Register, DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 353 or is conversant with any branch of the current Utera- ture of the time. Ballad broadsides, chronicles, and homilies all testify to an unusually "lively interest in murders and scaffold eloquence. A very good instance of this trend of the sensational journalism of the day is Anthony Munday's "View of Sundry Examples. Reporting many straunge murthers, sundry persons periured, Signes and tokens of Gods anger towards us — And all memorable murthers since the murther of Maister Saunders by George Browne to this present and bloody murther of Abell Bourne, Hosyer, who dwelled in Newgate Market, 1580." ^ The Chronicles of Holinshed and Stow, the great historical reposi- tories of the epoch, are full of tales of recent homicide, reported with the most serious care; and it is only natural that the dramatic tyros, who searched their pages for material, did not discriminate more closely than the authors themselves between true history and vulgar horror. Of the known murder plays — merely a small frac- tion, probably, of the total output of the period — a number survive only in the mention of "Henslowe's Diary." Such are " Page of Plymouth " by Jonson and Dekker, acted in 1599; "Cox of Collumpton," by Day and Haughton, 1599; two parts of "The Black Dog of Newgate," by Day, Smith, Hathway, and an- other poet, 1602-1603; probably also the two parts of "Black Bateman of the North," 1598, in which Chet- tle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson were all concerned. The precise subject of the last work is not certain, but ' This curious treatise was reprinted by J. P. Collier as an appen- dix to his edition of Munday's John a Kent and John a Cumber, Shakespeare Society, 1851. 854 THE TUDOR DRAMA the others all dealt with notorious crimes of the day; and they show Henslowc at his usual practice of era- ploying a number of low-salaried hacks in the rapid preparation of theatrical "shockers." In the case of "The Black Dog of Newgate," it would seem that the manager did not even know the name of one of the authors, whom he refers to four times as " the other poet," — apparently somebody called in at a pinch to help Day, Smith, and Ilathway. "Page of Plymouth," which Henslowc mentions in August, 1509, is interesting because it gives us a glimpse of Ben Jonson within two years after his first appearance among dramatic writers. The entry reads : "Lent vnto wm Borne alles birde the 10 of aguste 1594 to Lend vnto bengemyne Johnsone & thomas deckers in earneste of ther boock well they [are] a writtenge called pagge of p[le]motli the some — xxxxs." Eight pounds was the entire amount paid for the work, that being, on Ilcnslowe's niggardly scale, the full aver- age price of a drama. The theme is a revolting story of wifely infidelity and assassination, very similar to those treated in " Arden of Feversham" and "A Warn- ing for Fair Women." ^ The Black Dog of Newgate was a widely infamous character, one Luke Hutton, — son, it has been said, or cousin, of the Archbishop of York. Executed in 1598 for repeated highway robberies and for other crimes, he impressed himself upon the public mind by his "Lamentation," of which a very doubtful version is preserved among the Roxhurghe Ballads; (vol. ii, ff * A ballad and a prose tract dealing with the Plymouth murder have survived. See an article on "The Story of Page of Plymouth " in The Shakespeare Society's Papers, vol. ii, 18-45. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 355 318, 319): "Luke Huttons Lamentation, which he wrote the day before his Death, being condemned to be hang'd at York, for his robberies and trespasses committed thereabouts. To the Tune of wandering and wavering." ^ Four typical murder plays remain intact: "Arden of Feversham" and "A Warning for Fair Women," powerful anonymous dramas both of which have been ascribed to Shakespeare, though in the latter case upon entirely negligible grounds; "A Yorkshire Tragedy," of which the earliest edition bears on its title-page the bold assertion, "Written by W. Shakespeare"; and the very curious work called "Two Tragedies in One," which claims for its author an elusive Robert Yaring- ton. The earliest of these plays is "Arden of Feversham," the greatest tragedy of the group, which was licensed April 3, 1592, and printed in the same year with an amply descriptive title-page: "The Lamentable and ^ The ballad commences: — * " I am a poor Prisoner condemned to die ah wo is me, wo is me, for my great folly. Fast fettered in Irons in place where I lye be warned young wantons, hemp pasaeth green holly. My parents were of good degree By whom I would not ruled Im; Lord Jeaus receive me, with mercy relieve me. Receive, O sweet Saviour, my Spirit unto thee." There are twenty-two such stanzas, and two pictures in the original broadside in the British Museum. See also the "woeful Ballad made by Mr. George Mannynton an houre before he suffered at Cambridge-castell," entered on the Stationers' Register, Nov. 7, 1576, and parodied in the "Repentance" of Quicksilver in "East- ward Iloe." 866 THE TUDOR DRAMA True Tragedie of M. Arden of Feversham in Kent. W\\o was most wickcdlyo inurdrrod, by the meancs of his disloyall and Nvaulou wyfo, ^Yho for the lone she bare to one Mosbie, hyrcd two desperat ruffins Bhick- will and Shakbajj;, to kill hinu Wherin is shewed the great niallice and diseinmlation of a wicked woninian, the vnsatiable desire of filthie hist and the shaniefuU end of all nuirderers." The crime portrayed occurred in 1551, more than a generation before the play can have been composed, but all the circumstances were still fresh in the pei>ple's memory. Ilolinshed, whoso narrative the tlramatist follows, pauses in his Chron- icle to devote six great folio pages, double columnetl and closely printed, to the atrocity. The plot of the play does not unfold itself according to dramatic rules; j'et it holds the attention notwithstanding. The first four acts are taken up with successive attempts upon the life of the unsuspecting Arden, who escapes always by some unlooked for accident, till finally stabbed in his own house at the beginning of Act V. The rest of the last ai't pictures the discovery and condemnation of the nuirderers. l^pon this luipromising framework, the author of "Arden of Feversham" has built up a tragedy of coarse but mighty passion, which several distinguisheil critics have believed Shakespearean, but which there is better reason now for supposing to be the latest and finest work of Kyd.' The play con- tains several splendid declamatory speeches, three or fo\ir fine scenes of ilialoguc and action, and a rude colossal figure in Arden's wife, which, though some- times unpardonably vulgar and altogether without the ^ Stv Charlos Oawfonl. Shaki-.tpron' Jahrhuch. xxxix (1903), liSa. Ropriuteil. Collirtatifa, 1st Series (IDtK)). 101 ff. DRAMA OF CONTEMPOIIARY INCIDENT 357 touch f>f romant if pathos inherent in the evil charac- ters of great ideal poets, yet shows itself the work of a vigorous hand. The second of the extant murder tragedies was printed in 1509 as lately aeted by the Lord Charnljer- lain's (Shakespeare 'sj Company, and with the follow- ing title: "A Warning for Faire Women, containing The most Tragicall and Lamentable Murther of Mas- ter George Sand(,Ts, of London, Marchant, nigh Shoot- ers Hill; consented vnto by his owne wife, acted by M. Browne, Mistris Drewry and Trusty Roger, agents therin: with their seuerall ends." The murder of George Sanders took place in 1573, and in the same year there appeared a circumstantial account of the whole matter in a pamphlet of some twenty pages, followed by Stow and Ilolinshed as well as by the author of the play.^ Another mention of the crime occurs in Munday's " View of Sundry Examples," from which an illustrative quotation may be pardoned, be- cause, to my mind, it indicates how murder stories established themselves in the imagination of the peofjle and gained a permanent foothold in literature. The * The pamphlet ia reprinted in Simpson's School of Shakspere, vol. ii. Th'Tc can l>e no doubt that the play is baaed directly upon the pamphlet, and not upon the ehrcjnieh^s. Note, for example, the following parallel. After the arrest of the per.s<^jn3 suspected of complicity in Sanders's dfjalh, Mi.strcs.s Drury tells Mistress Sanders, according to the pamphlet, "that . . . she was fully determined not to dissemble any longer, nor to hazarde hir owne soule eternally for the safetie of another bodies temporal! life." The author of the play merely versifies, and writes (II. 1.571-1573): — "Should I, to purchase safety for another. Or lengthen out another's temporall life. Hazard mine owne soule everlastingly ?" 358 THE TUDOR DRAMA original pamphlet and the chronicles give merely the facts as they occurred, plus a certain amount of moral- izing. Munday hardly cites any facts at all, — appar- ently the story was already well known, — but he uses the circumstance of Browne's crime and punishment as a point of departure for a vast quantity of euphu- istic fine writing. The murder, that is to say, had risen out of the plane of current journalism into that of belles-lettres. Munday writes: — "Not long since, one George Browne, a man of stat- ure goodly and excellent, if lyfe and deedes thereto had beene equivalent; but as the auncient adage is, goodly is he that goodly dooth, and comely is he that behaveth himself comely, so may it be witnessed in this man, who more respected a vaine pride and prodi- gall pleasure, which remayned in his person, then com- mendation and good report that foUoweth a godly and vertuous life. But nowe a dayes cverie courageous cutter, euerie Sim Swashbuckler, and everie desperate Dick, that can stand to his tackling lustely, and be- have him selfe so quarrelously that he is ashamed of all good and honest company, he is a gallant fellowe, a goodly man of his handes, and one, I promise you, that as soone comes to Tyburne as euer a one of them all. . . . But he [Browne] a wretch, more desirous of his death then wylling his welfare, more mindfull of raur- ther then savegard of his soule, so bent to blindnesse, that he expected not the light, strooke the stroke that returned his shame, dyd the deede that drove him to destiny, and fulfilled the fact, that in the end he found folly. O, minde most monstrous! O, heart most hard! O, intent so yrksome! whome neyther preferment might perswade, rytches move to regard, affection DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 359 cause to respect, former freendship force to fancie, nor no vertue of the minde seeme too satisfie. Where was the bonds of loyaltie ? where was the regard of hon- estie ? Where was the feare of the Almightie ? where was the care of Christianitie ? or where was the hope of eternall fehcitie ? and last, where was thy duty to God, thy Prince, and countrey ? " The most striking difference between "Arden of Feversham" and the "Warning for Fair Women" lies in the greater comprehensiveness of tlie latter play. "Arden" begins abruptly with the immediate prepara- tion for the catastrophe, and nothing is treated in de- tail except the repeated attempts upon the hero's life and his accidental escapes. The other drama presents the whole story from the first meeting of Browne and Mistress Sanders through the formation and execu- tion of the plot to the final, disco very, trial, and con- demnation of all the guilty parties. The finest por- tions of "A Warning for Fair Women" are those which depict the remorse of the culprits after the murder has been committed. Browne's sudden terror as he hears the dying words of Sanders is well portrayed; and the most impressive scene of the play is certainly that in which Browne comes red-handed to meet his accom- plice, the dead man's wife. The bold interposition of Sanders's young son and his childish games in the midst of the bitter recriminations of the murderers shows a keen sense of the dramatic and no small know- ledge of human nature. The author of "A Warning for Fair Women," like the author of "Arden of Feversham," saw clearly the great fault of this kind of drama, — the small oppor- tunity, namely, in such chronicles of particular inci- ;?G0 THE TUDOR DRAMA dents for the representation of broader and more uni- versal feelings. • The last lines of the '*^Yarning" voice an appeal to the audience to " lU-aro with tliis truo ami hoini'-hDrno Tragedy, Yeeliling so slondor jirjiiiinont iiml scope To build II nmttor of iinportiiiuv on. And in such forme, as, happly, you oxi)0(.'tod. What now hath fail'd lo-morruw you shall see Perform'd by History or Comedy." "Arden of Feversham" ends in the same strain: — " Contlonion. wo hope youle pardon this naked Tragedy, ^Vherin no tileil points art" foisted iu To make it gratious to the oare or eye; For simple truth is gratious enough, And needes no other points of glosing stufife." There is more in this than the usual mock-modesty of the epilogue. The effort to visualize the sordid de- tails of oouteniporary crime must of necessity clip the wings of Tragedy. "Arden" and the "Warning for Fair Women" are faithful dramatizations of specific atrocities, never rising for more than a few sptHvhes into the rarefied universal atmosphere which surrounds the whole of Shakespeare's murder plays, "INlacbeth" and "Othello"; and this fact is perhaps the one abso- lute, incontrovertible proof that Shakespeare can have had no important part in the composition of either. In these two plays, however, the inevitable faults of their class are palliated by the truth and brilliance of individual scenes. 1 The prefatory dialogue in the Warning for Fair Women and tlie epistle prefixed to George NVhetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1578) are probably the most important pieees of dramatic criticism to be found iu any English stage play previous to IGIK). DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 301 The composition of murder tragedies appears to have been very largely instrumental in teaching the Elizabethan playwrights the dramatic capabilities of the life about theui. IJoth the works I have discussed abound in topical allusions giving to many of their scenes a delightful savor of sixteenth-century Eng- land, and bearing witness at the same time to the rise of that trend of realistic self-absorj>tion which reached a head about 1010, and which makes many of the Jacobean j>lays starve the romantic reader to glut the antiquary. In one of the dramas before us we see Arden and his friend Franklin go off to take a turn or two in Paul's before supping at the eighteen-penny ordinary. We see the stalls before the church and the apprentices in charge, and learn of the "ould filching" which is likely to occur "when the presse comes foorth of Paules." ' We hear of Gadshill robberies and devices for cutting purses; and before the play ends we find ourselves intimately acquainted with the manner of life of the cut-throats. Black Will and Shakebag. The domestic economy of Arden's household in town and country is very fully pictured; and this is one of the few plays in which gentlemen exchange convincingly the small gossip of the week or trivial dinner invita- tions. In "A Warning for Fair Women," the Queen's court at Greenwich is repeatedly mentioned, and one scene offers a charming glimpse of the courtiers drink- ing in the buttery, where ale is disper^sed as bounty to all cromers. The dark side of the life of the day is por- trayed with equal sincerity by the peasant. Old John, when he discovers Sanders's body: "What an age live we in ! when men have no mercy of men more than of * Cf. Arden of Fevemham, 11, ii, 53, 64. so-? THE Tunou drama tloj^gos. bloiuHcr than boasts! This is the deed of some swnjx^oriui::. swearing, drunken, tlesperate Dieke. CnW \\c thorn Cahhaloors ? masse, they he C\innihalles, that have the stabbe rtNidyer in their handes than a penny in their pnrse. Sliames death be their share." The eurioHs work eahed *"lVo LanientabU^ Trage- dies," or "Two Tragedies in One," was pubhshed in 1601 with the name of Robert Yarington on the title- page. As the heading imphes, this proihietion con- sists of two separate pUits not in any way connected, except that a scene of the one alternates ordinarily with a scene of the other. The more poetical division of the work concerns an Italian version of the Habes in tlie Wood story, and has Ihhmi conjecturally re- gardcil as standing in son\e relation ti> (Miettle's non- extant "Orphans' Tragcily." for which Tlenslowe made several payments in 1,')!>5). Tiic other part, which more ilirtvlly concerns the present siibjiH't, dramatizes the nmnler. in .\iig\ist, 1;>1U. of Robert RiHvh, a lA>mU>n merchant, and his apprentice, Thomas Winchester, by an avaricious neighbor named Merrey. It is usual to conuiH't this pt>rtion of the work in some sort with an anonymous " Hiwhes Tragedy," licei\sed for acting in .Tamuiry, lUOO, and with the "tragcily of ISlerie" mentioned by llenslowe about the same time as by Day ami llaughton. Of Robert Yarington, tiic proclaimed author, notliing whatever is known. As preserveil. this motley play is far the worst of the extant nnirder trageilies. and it constitutes a glaring example of the disaster which follows the elTort to lUvk out coarse realistic n\aterial in a style of false and pretentious retinemenl. In agrtHMuent with the more DRAMA OF (X)NTEMr()RARY INCIDENT 8(53 modcrntc prnctico of "A Wariiiiij^f lor Fair Woukmi," the "writer imbeds his doiihle |)h)t in n eoinj)lex nlle- gorical fninunvork afler tlie aichaic maimer of Kyd's "Solimaii and l*erse(hi," thus addiii^^ a third iiicoii- gruous element to his i)iece in a series of dichulic dia- logues between Homicide, Avarice, and Truth. Yar- ingtt)n's style tends everywhere toward ridiculous inflation; and it would perhaps not be easy to find a ha])])ier instance of misapplied and self-convicted })omposily than the words with which a niMghbor greets the recovery of the head and legs of the dismembered Beech : — " Tlicy lire tlic mime; alas, wlial, is Im'coiho Of the roinuiiuitT of lliis vvn-lclicd man ? " With this afTectation in language is strongly con- trasted the excessive crudity of the play in all matters of dramatic arrangement. Several of the stage direc- tions are of high value in marking the limits of nalfvet6 tolerated in i^li/abclhan realistic presentation. Thus, we read: "Then Merry nnist j)asse to Beeches shopj)e, who must sit in his shop and Winchester his boy stand by"; and later, "Then being in the upi)er Rome [room] Merry strikes hini in the head (ifteene times." In this scene, the sj)ectator is rcnpiired to conceive Merry lirst as in his own shoj). He nuist then imagine him going to visit his neighbor IJeecli, entering the hitter's shoj), bringing him back to his own house, taking him indoors and uj) to his garret, and beating his brains out, coram populo, with fifteen blows of a hammer. The last great crime of Shak(\si)eare's age which received theatrical attention, and the most widi^ly bruited, probably, of all, occurred in 1()()5. It is thu.s described in Slow's Chronicle: "Walter Callvcrly 3Gt THE TUDOR DRAMA of Calverly in Yorkshire Esquier, murdred 2 of his young children, stabbed his wife into the bodie with full purpose to have nuirdred her, and instantly went from his house to have slaine his youngest child at nurse, but was prevented. For which fact at his triall in Yorke hee stood mute and was judged to be prest to death, according to which judgment he was executed at the castell of Yorke the 5th of August [1605]." llpon this ghastly atfair were founded two plays; "A Yorkshire Tragedy," published in 1608, and George AVilkins's ** Miseries of Enforced Marriage," which appeared in the previous year "as it is now playd by his Majesties Servants." The latter drama possesses an accidental interest as the only play known to have been written independently by the obscure person who, according to the usually received opinion,^ collaborated with Shakespeare in "Peri- cles." Though printed a year earlier than the "York- shire Tragedy," the other play was almost certainly composed later. The title-page of the first quarto tells us that the "Miseries" was even then (1607) being performed by the King's Men; and the imaginative liberties taken with the course of events and with the characters would indicate that the period of writing stood removed a couple of years from the bleak reality. "A Yorkshire Tragedy," on the other hand, bears every mark of hasty and nearly contemporaneous work. The author of the latter play would appear not to have known the names of the figures, and to have been ' See, however, D. L. Thomas's argument against Wilkins's authorship of Pericles, Engl. Stud., 39 (1908). ^10-^39, where inter- esting evidence is offered in favor of ascribing the play to Shake- speare and Thomas Hcywood. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 365 acquainted with only the bare outline of the catas- trophe, while standinf^ far too near the facts to venture upon any such artistic elaboration as we find in the "Miseries." "^lie brief "Yorkshire Tragedy" is occu- pied almost solely with the murders themselves and their punishment, adding but casual glimpses of the Husband's first love affair, his family connection, and London prodigality. It is just these last points that the "Miseries of Enforced Marriage" dwells upon; and when taken together the two plays give a fairly com- prehensive view of the situation. Everything about the "Yorkshire Tragedy" points to the same hasty assortment of miscellaneous and ill- digested material which Yarington's "Two Tragedies in One" exemplifies. The first page of the original edition is headed: "All's One, or. One of the Foure Plaies in One, called A York-shire Tragedy, as it was Plaid by the Kings Maiesties Plaiers." The most rea- sonable inference from this passage is that three inde- pendent or vaguely connected sets of additions had been employed in order to fill out to the compass re- quired for stage purposes the brief impromptu treat- ment of the murder, which, as preserved, extends to something less than the average length of two acts. When it came, three years later, to printing, the ex- traneous matter was omitted. It is worth noting that the company which in 1607 was actually performing "The Miseries of Enforced Marriage" is the same which had performed the "Yorkshire Tragedy," — presumably in 1605, when interest in the Calverley murders was strongest. It is, therefore, very probable that the play of Wilkins represents a thorough literary adaptation of the original "Four Plays in One," de- 866 THE Tl^DOR DILVMA signed to secure ooiitiniied currency for the work after the temporary a]>peal due to sensational curiosity had subsided. Wilkins may have retained in altered form some of the earlier matter in the "Four Plays"; but as he discarded the tragic conclusion, the original treatment of the murders would seem to have l>een left intact, to hnd separate publication just after the appearance of the improved text. In versification, in character delineation, and in the general absence of human sympathy. "A Yorkshire Trageily " is a work of the low dramatic level which the occasion and purpose of its composition would lead one to expect. The impudent claim of Shakespearean authorship must, along with several other instances of premeditated fraud, be laid heavily to the charge of its ill-reputed publisher. Thomas Pavier. Yet the play does contain three or four passages of prose strik- ingly superior to all the rest, and characterizetl by an imcauny play of fancy which recall the porter scene in "Macbeth" and the morbid brilliance of the sup- posedly Jonsonian additions to "The Spanish Trag- edy." These few speeches are perhaps not glaringly unworthy of Shakcspeiire, nor very different from what he might have written, had he stood by with the proverbial pcnful of ink. and chosen to give a mo- ment's attention to the miserable piece of sloppy sensationalism which his company were demeaning themselves to perform. To accept this possibility is merely to reduce the charge against Pavier from un- complicated mendacity to equivocation. Technically consiilercd, "The Miseries of Enforced Marriage" hardly belongs to the group of contempo- rary nuuder plays. AVilkins has altered the names of DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 367 his characters, added many imaginary figures, and has substituted a happy conclusion for the revolting butchery of reality, by causing his intending murderer to repent at the latest possible moment. The connec- tion of this tragi-comedy with the Calverley affair, first pointed out by Mr, P. A. Daniel in 1879,^ is, how- ever, indisputable; and the play affords an excellent instance of the tendency, everywhere manifesting itself at the beginning of the seventeenth century, to pass from the rude dramatization of specific contemporary events to the imaginative portrayal of general real- istic conditions. Here one can see the writer actually in process of bridging the gap between unpolished works of concrete incident, like "Arden of Fever- sham," and those great critical analyses of current manners of which Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair" is possibly the most masterly example. The considera- tion of "The Miseries of Enforced Marriage" belong.s, therefore, hardly less to the next chapter than to the present. Quite mediocre in the essentials of plot and poetic finish, this piece yields to few Jacobean plays in the life-likeness of its characters. Nearly all the dra- matis persona; come direct from the streets and tav- erns of contemporary London, and the comedy of the time pos.sesses few more successful type-portraits than those of the shrewd and honest old family servant Butler, and the gentleman-gamester Ilford. Thomas Heywood's "Woman Killed with Kind- ness," written in 1G03, illustrates in a different manner the tendency to employ material proper to the murder play for the purposes of more catholic art. Uf> to the middle of Act IV, the relations between Frankford, 1 Athenoeum, Oct. 4, \o. 2710. 868 THE TUDOR DILVMA INIistress Frankford, and Wendoll nin parallel to the state of all'airs in "Arden of Feversliam" and "A Warning for Fair Women." The admirable picture, moreover, of the management of INIaster Frankford's household repeats the most characteristic merit of the latter plays. But Ileywood had too much both of the moralist and the artist to give his drama the hideous termination ^vhich the earlier poets had taken over from the history' of crime. The situation, which in the muriler plays led to the cold-blooded assassination of the injured husband, is made by Heywood to result in the exposure and remorseful anguish of the evil- doers. The portrayal of i\[istress Frankford's feelings and fate from the time of her wearied acquiescence in the sin which she has come to loath (IV, iii, ad fin.) is a triumph of imaginative art. Yet the imagination of the poet clearly takes its flight from the basis of realistic sympathy which the murder plays had created. How nuich Ileywood owes in this i)art of the play to his humbler predecessors in the same theme becomes evi- dent when we contrast the scenes dealing with Mis- tress Frankford with the shallow and insincere under- plot of Acton and INIountford. "The Miseries of Enforced Marriage" and "A Woman Killed with Kindness" thus make it clear that the class of murder tragedies, however transitory in itself, yet left the English theatre a legacy, both in comedy and in tragedy, which was permanent. The glaring atrocities, which first drew the eyes of the ruder playwrights to the life about them, soon lost their zest; but in the meantime their study had enriched the drama with several new trends of sympathy and observation. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 3G9 It is by no means to be supposed that the murder plays constitute the sole evidence of the tendency of the Elizabethan popular sta^e, about the close of the century, to treat matters of local and current rather than universal application. The plays we have dis- cussed make up the most readily distinguished and probably the best preserved group of dramas based on contemporary incident; but any comparison of the- atrical and social history between 1580 and 1610 shows the drama of the age permeated everywhere by tangled threads of topical allusion, now unfortunately only partially and doubtfully explainable. It is, indeed, unsafe and uncritical to regard every average play of the epoch as a definite historical document, and to seek, as many have sought, to trace each one back to some particular occurrence of the time.^ Yet no stu- dent can afford to overlook the logical connection be- tween the ephemeral interests of the Elizabethan pub- lic and the work of those playwrights whose function it was to be the public's entertainers in ordinary. From the time of "Gorboduc" and "Gammer Gur- ton's Needle" onward, the evolution of the drama was very largely a matter of the origin, development, and absorfjtion of theatrical fashions, each closely interpretative of some phase of the general popular life. "Gorboduc" itself is an "occasional" play, com- posed in view of a particular political situation, and intended to stimulate the Queen to speedy care of the royal succession. So, the court comedies of Lyly are nearly all in some degree parables of fashionable history, and depend for their elucida- ^ The most notable exponents of this dangerous tendency in criti- cism are Richard Simpson and the late Mr. Fleay. 870 THE TUDOR DRAMA tion upoti the proper understanding of momentary conditions. I'nder normal oiremnstances. it is trne. particularly on the public stage, the plays possessing tiie elements of permanent success were those in which local apjH\^l was almost entirely obliterated in a higher and more catholic view of art. Yet even in these works the pul- sation of current thought and gossip can often be felt; and any great public excitement was likely in this age to obtain inunciliate and undisguised expression ou the popular stage. Besides the constant tendency of the theatres to keep pace with the vulgar curiosity con- cerning spectacular crime and the great tlare of na- tional ardor which the Armada year produeeil, two great controversies of the day extendtxi themselves to the drama and became important factors in the- atrical history. The one was the famous Martin Mivrprelate dispute of loSS-loOO; the other the "*^Yar of the Theatres," which culminated about the year IGOO. None of the dramatic texts called forth by the Mivr- prelate agitation have sun'ived. The prx^bability is that they were all coarse impn^mptus which trusted for their etfei't rather to farcical action juid clownish caricature than to any regularly developed plot. As might naturally Iv assumed, it appears to have Ihhmi exclusively the anti-Martinist, Episcopal party, which handleil this un-Puritanical weapon of stage satire. The controversy itself broke out in loSS, but the first suggestion of its transference to the theatres txvurs in Nashe's "Countercuff Given to Martin Junior" (August. l')SO\ where allusion is made to "The Anato- mic latelie taken of him, the blood and the humors that DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 371 were taken from him, by launcing and worming him at London vpon the common stage." ^ In regard to the mode of treatment, we have only a few hints of burlesque scenes, such as one in which " Vetus Comoedia" brought in the lady Divinity with her face scratched and her stomach nauseated by the lawless attacks of Martin.^ The controversial im- portance attached to these works is indicated by the apparent necessity of legal interference,^ and by Lyly's fervent ejaculation in the anti-Martinist tract, " Pap with a Hatchet " : " Would those Comedies might be allowed to be plaid that are pend, and then I am sure he [Martin] would be decyphered, and so perhaps discouraged."^ The militant tendencies of the English stage be- tween 1588 and 1591 were not exclusively employed in religious or political controversy. That personal satire was also rampant appears from a famous sen- tence in Greene's preface to "Perimedes the Black- smith" (1588): "I keepe my old course, to palter vp some thing in Prose, vsing mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although latelye two Gentlemen Poets made two madmen of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers; and had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall bus- kins." And then, after several ill-natured innuendoes against Marlowe and another poet, Greene returns to 1 Cf. Nashe's Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, i, 59. * Pasquil's Return, Nashe, ed. McKerrow, i, 92. » See Collier, ed. 1879, i, 264, for the text of the Lord Mayor's letter of November, 1589, relative to the suppression of all plays in the city by reason of the "mislike" of the Master of the Revels. * Cf. Lyly's Works, ed. Bond, iii, 408. 372 THE TUDOR DRAMA his special cause of anger: "If I speake darkely, Gen- tlemen, and offend with this digression, I craue par- don, in that I but answere in print what they haue offered on the Stage." ^ The so-called "War of the Theatres," or "Poeto- machia," as Dekker terms it, arose just ten years later than the Marprelate discussion. This second con- troversy has left far more important dramatic evi- dences than the other, though it is probable that it bulked much the smaller in the eyes of the contem- porary public. The limits of this theatrical war, which involved Ben Jonson and certain rival poets by him denominated "Poetasters," have been unjustifi- ably extended by Fleay and his followers. All state- ments about the affair need careful weighing. The permanently important results of the war were the production in very close succession, about the middle of the year 1601, of two great plays: Jonson's "Poetaster" and Dekker's "Satiromastix." These comedies were acted in confessed rivalry by rival com- panies, — Jonson's by the Children of her Majesty's Chapel, by whom his previous play of "Cynthia's Revels" had been presented; Dekker's by Shake- speare's company and by the Children of Paul's. In each case the sole or main object was personal satire. "The Poetaster" closes with a distinct expression of Jonson's determination not to proceed in the con- troversy;^ and there is in fact no reason to believe that 1 Greene's Works, ed. Grosart, vii, 7, 8. 2 See the Apologetical Dialogue spoken "only once" as an epi- logue on the first production of the play {Mermaid ed., 375 S). This dialogue was omitted from the 1602 edition because of legal restraint, but was restored in the 1C16 Folio. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 373 the quarrel was continued after 1601, otherwise than in a few vague allusions. The earlier history of the dispute is not so clear. Yet it seems possible to reach the truth in all essen- tials, if we are wilUng to abandon pure speculation and accept at their face value the statements of the two main combatants, both of whom appear to be per- fectly sincere. Jonson asserts, in the Apologetical Dialogue aflSxed to "The Poetaster," that his oppo- nents had provoked him for three years "with their petulant styles On every stage," till "at last unwilling. But weary, I confess, of so much trouble," he resolved to "try if shame could win upon 'hem." He thus sug- gests that "The Poetaster" was his first, as well as his last, effort at satire against individuals. Dekker, on the other hand, says, in the Preface to "Satiromastix," that Jonson, or Horace, "question- less made himself believe that his Burgonian wit might desperately challenge all comers, and that none durst take up the foils against him"; and he adds that if "an Inquisition should be taken touching this lamen- table merry murdering of Innocent Poetry," the verdict "would be found on the Poetasters' side Sedefendendo" though, as he admits, "Notwithstanding, the Doctors think otherwise." It is easy to reconcile the two statements. Jonson was doubtless quite justified in stating " The Poetaster " to be his first overt attack upon his fellow dramatists. With the exception of the skit on Anthony Munday as Antonio Balladino in the first scene of "The Case is Altered" — an incidental bit of ridicule apparently unconnected with the question in hand — I do not believe that any of Jonson's comedies previous to S7t THE TITDOR DRA^IA "The Poetaster" contained satirical matter which a contemporary aiuiienoe would have applied to any active dramatist of the day. The attempt to explain various figures in "Every Man in his Humor." "Every Man out of his Humor," and "Cynthia's Revels" iis distinct travesties of Daniel, Munday, Marston. Dekker, and other poets, though very variously maintained, leads only to con- flicting results, and seems to me inlierently uncritical. Jonson's satire is direct and bold. In \'iew of the ex- quisite cleverness and clearness of his caricatures of Munday in "The Case is Altereil" and of Marston and Dekker in "The Poetaster," it is inconceivable that he coidd be guilty of the vague and pointless gibes which Fleay ivud Peuuimau attempt to tiud in the three other plays. Moreover, each of these three plays just alluded to has a purpose entirely distinct from the ridicule of individuals; and the various characters introduceil are all delineated in accordance with this general purpose. "Every Man in his Humor." a comedy of light in- trigue and social types, requires its "town gull," Mas- ter Matthew, for the sake of atmosphere, just as it requires Captain Bobadill. the "Paul's Man"; and no trait in either figure can justly be credited to any other source than the artistic denuinds of the imaginary plot.^ "Every Man out of his Humor" has. of course, a definitely satiric aim, but the mark of Jonson's ridi- * Thoiv iipjvars to lie no support for the idea of Flo.iy and Ponnl- man that the p^K-t Daniel is satirize*.! as Master Matthew and Fas- tidious Brisk in Jonson's Erery Man phiys and as Emulo in PiitiaU GriggtH. For a diseussion of the latter work (by Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton) and its slight jHVJsible connection with the theatrical war, see the next chapter, p. 409 f. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 375 cule is here never the single individual. Rather, the spectators are promised in the Prologue " a mirror. Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomized in every nerve and sinew." J This promise is faitlil'ully k(!pt. By means of such varied ty{)e figures as Sordido, Fungoso, Deliro, Carlo Buffone, and P^astidious Brisk, Jonson holds up to reprehension the follies of all contemporary life, whether in country, city, or court. That he should have been willing, in the midst of so gigantic a task, to divert his attention and that of his audience to the gibbeting of the frailties of a series of small [)oets of his time is not j)robable, and is nowhere really sug- gested by the text.^ "Cynthia's Revels" has a narrower scope than "Every Man out of his Humor" in as much as it restricts its satire practically to courtly tyj)es alone. Thus, general embodiments of fashionable absurdity in the earlier play, like Saviolina, Fastidious, and Sir Puntarvolo, become the progenitors of a great number of more subtly differentiated figures in the later work. In these narrow subdivisions of the genus "courtier," * The only serious indication of personal satire in Every Man out of his Humor is found in the circumstance that Clove, a minor fig- ure in III, i, employs for comic effect a number of turgid Marstonian words. There is no doubt that Jonson had Marston's stylistic excesses in mind when he wrote the passage; but the theory that Clove is on that account to be regarded as a personal caricature of Marston is quite untenable. The very same passage also puts into Clove's mouth a parody of two high-sounding lines of Julius Casar (III, ii, 110, 111); whence we should have to assume a second personal identification between Clove and Shakespeare. 376 THE TUDOR DRAMA with which " Cynthia's Revels " mainly concerns itself, individual traits and failings naturally play a some- what larger part, and Jonson doubtless relies rather more than in "Every Man out of his Humor" upon his observation of actual persons. It may be barely possible, for instance, that he gives to Hedon and Anaides unfavorable peculiarities which he had noted among his fellow poets. But he is far likelier to have foimd the prototypes of these figures in the aristo- cratic circle to which they both belong. The circum- stances of composition of "Cynthia's Revels" seem in themselves to negative the idea that the play is in any sense the outgrowth of a literary quarrel. Jonson's purpose, frankly expressed, is the Lylian one of securing court patronage for himself by means of a Lylian alle- gory in eulogy of Elizabeth. Such a drama, written of the court and for the court, and with the object of portraying the unapproachable merits of the author, would surely be no fit place for expatiating on plebeian professional squabbles or indulging in undignified bickerings with two poets admittedly Jonson's inferiors in the judgment of the time.^ ' I am not forgetful of the arguments of Fleay and Penniman in favor of an intricate satirical allegory in Cynthia's Rnrh. Even saner critics like Small accept on the whole the identification of Hedon and Anaides with Crispinus and Demetrius in The Podaster, and hence with Marston and Dekker respectively. The only solid reason, however, for this is the fact that Dekker makes Horace (Jonson) repeat in Satiroinasiix, with reference to Crispinus and Demetrius, words which Criticus had used of Hedon and Anaides in Cynthia's Rarls : — " \NTiy should I care what euery Dor doth buz In credulous ears ? It is a crowne to me; That the best iudgemeuts can report me wrong'd. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 377 I believe, therefore, that Jonson did not openly express himself against his dramatic rivals before the appearance of "The Poetaster." Yet in another way he had undoubtedly caused irritation general enough to justify Dekker's plea of self-defence on the poetas- ters' side. In each of the trio of satirical comedies which begins with "Every Man out of his Humor," Jonson presents himself, in the persons of Asper, Criti- cus (Crites),^ and Horace respectively, as an insuflFer- I think but what they are, and am not moou'd: The one a light voluptuous Reueler, The other, a strange arrogating puffe. Both impudent, and arrogant enough." {Satiromastix, ed. Scherer, 11. 416-418, 420-423. Cf. Cynthia s Revels, 1602 version, ed. Bang, 11. 1360-1362, 1376-1379.) From the comment of Asinius (1. 424), "S'lid, do not Criticus Reuel in these lynes ?" it seems clear that Dekker's purpose in quot- ing the passage is merely to ridicule the pompous egoism of Criti- cus-Horace-Jonson, and not at all to suggest the identity of the two pairs of characters about whom the words are spoken. In fact, Hedon and Anaides do not resemble Marston and Dekker either as the latter actually were, or as Jonson caricatured them in The Poetaster. The former are extravagant and feeble-minded gallants of the court, whose offence against Criticus consists not in literary rivalry, but in the spreading of calumnious reports. Only prepos- session in favor of a theory could well suggest a connection between these symbolic representatives of fashionable dissipation (Hedon = Self-indulgence; Anaides =; Shamelessness) and the beggarly hacks, Crispinus and Demetrius, of The Poetaster. That Dekker himself did not expect the identiBcation to be pressed is obvious from the contradiction between the quoted description of .\naides, "a strange arrogating puffe," and Horace's sketch of Demetrius only eight lines above as " the slightest cob-web-lawne peece of a Poet " {Satiro- mastix. 1. 415). ^ The representative of Jonson in Cynthia's Revels is called Criti- 378 THE TUDOR DRAMA able pattern of j)erfection. Though he seems in the two earhcr plays of the group to be hunting larger game than Marston and Dekkcr, and to be contrast- ing his virtues with the defects of a much broader world than that of the current stage; yet there can be no doubt that his general arrogance had made him from the first a butt for the resentful sarcasm of several writers to whom Jonson could honestly claim to have given little direct offence.^ Jonson's excuse for "The Poetaster" was that he had been provoked on every stage for three years; i. e., from about 1508. It is regularly accepted that the original })rovocation came from John Marston, and it is usual to exj)lain as referring to this circumstance Jonson's later statement to Drummond of Hawthorn- den that he had beaten Marston and taken his pistol from him, because the latter had represented him on the stage. In the search for a work which might thus have incensed Jonson, two plays of doubtful Mars Ionian authorship have been found. "Ilistriomastix," a dull allegorical drama, which Marston probably re- vised about 1598, certainly involves a satire, as yet insufficiently explained, in connection with the public stage of the time. This play is, furthermore, given the ominous distinction of special mention by name in the cus in the first edition of thf play (1602) and in the allusions of Satiromastix. In the Jonson Folio of 1C16, and consequently in most subsequent editions, the name is altered to Crites. * This seems to be the fair interpretation of the dialogue be- tween Horace, Crispinus, and Demetrius in Saiiromantix (11. 436 ff), though Dekker naturally overstresses the insincerity anil malice of Horace. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 379 sarcastic passage in "Every Man out of his Humor" most fre(juently quoted in relation to this subject.' It is easy to make out a resemblance between Jonson and the revised (Marstonian ?) figure of Chrysoganus in "Ilistriomastix"; but Chrysoganus is presented in what seems to tlie modern reader a favorable light. On the whole, one can hardly believe that Jonson was greatly angered by this portrait. It may, however, have led to a coolness between the two poets, and can quite reasonably have served Jonson as an ui)per limit when he came later to make a mental list of the stage attacks u[)on himself. A clearer case of spite on Marston's part is perhaps to be observed in "Jack Drum's liintertainment," printed in 1(501, and acted l)y the Children of Paul's, who later performed "Satiromastix." In the absence of definite proof of Marston's authorship of "Jack Drum," and in the failure of all unquestionable allu- sions to Jonson, the bearing of the play uj)on the quarrel is likely to remain matter of conjecture. It is certain, however, that the author goes out of his way to introduce into his main comedy of Pasquil and Katherine a laughable treatment of the deserved humiliation which befalls Brabant Senior, a pom])ous egoist of Jonsonian stamp.^ Though the matter is hardly susceptible of proof, it is not at all improbable ' Sec the speech of Clove near the middle of III, i (Mermaid cd., 178). * Fleay's identification of Jonson with the vicious Frenchman, John fo de King, in which he is followed, as usual, by Penniman, has nothing to recommend it. As regards the only situation in which any parallel has been suspectcfl, John fo de King is rcpnjsented not in a satirical light, but as having much the best of the affair. 3S0 THE TUDOR DRAMA that this comedy precipitated both the violent cam- paign of satire which filled the year 1001, and also the personal chastisement with which Jousou \"isited Marstou. The often ill-advised attempt to trace the workings of personal malice in this quarrel has in many Ciises caused too little attention to be given to another aspect of the controversy; namely, that which pre- sents it as the outgrowth of corporate jealousy be- tween two competing theatres. "The Poetaster," as well as "Cynthia's Revels" and "The Case Is Al- tered," was presented by the Children of her Majesty's Chapel, to whom Jonson had transferred his ser^^ces from the Lord Chamberlain's Company after the pro- duction of "Every Man out of his Humor." "Satiro- mastix" was acte<.l by the Chamberlain's Company (Shakespeare's) and also by the Children of Paul's, who seem at this period to have had some atfiliatiou with the Chamberlain's Men. "Jack Drum's Enter- tainment" and probably "Ilistriomastix" were also performed by the Children of Paul's, like Marston's authentic early play of "Antonio and Mellida." Both "Satiromastix" and "The Poetaster" contain sarciistic allusions to the rival place of entertaimnent. The former play gibes twice at the Chapel Children's locale, the Blackfriars Theatre; and "The Pivtaster," performe*.! in the latter place, reciprt.x\\tes by satirizing Histrio's theatre (The GloW) on the other side of "T\-ber" (/. c, on the Pankside. opposite the city), where, instead of "Humors, Revels, and Satires," Tucea will tind in the plays Jis much ribaldry a^ he can desire, and where, Histrio assures him, "all the sinners i' the suburbs come and applaud our action daily." DRAMA OF CONTEMPOItVRY INCIDENT 381 We do not know the cause of Jonson's alienation from the Chamberlain's Company about the begin- ning of 1600; but the change seems to have been accompanied with ill-feeling. It is noticeable that the direct attack upon Jonson began, according to all indications, at just this period; and it is certain that "The Poetaster" does not merely ridicule in Deme- trius (Dekker) and Crispinus (Marston) single writers in the employ of the possibly allied companies of the Globe and Paul's. In Histrio and in a number of ran- dom allusions the play attacks the Chamberlain's Company as a whole. The fact of definite hostility between the Globe Company and that of the Chapel Children is further proved by the famous allusions in the second act of "Hamlet."^ Rosencrantz's description of the "aery of children" certainly refers to the Children of the Chapel, and forms a natural retort to Jonson's ridicule of the Chamberlain's Company in "The Poetaster." According to Rosencrantz, these children, given, as Tucca expresses it, to "nothing but Humors, Revels, and Satires, that gird and fart at the time," are "little eyases, that cry out on the top of question [deal with matters of the most absolutely contemporary inter- est?] and are most tyrannically clapped for 't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages [so berate the adult companies ?] that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills [Jonsonian ridicule], and dare scarce come thither." There is no question, then, that sharp rivalry ex- isted in 1601 between the professional actors of the Globe and Fortune (Henslowe's theatre) and the boy 1 Scene 2, 11. 336 ff. 382 THE TUDOR DRAMA players of the Blaekfriars private theatre, who acted under the special patronage of the queen, and who, as all the allusions show, were certainly attracting to their expensive i)erforniances a specially large pro- j)ortion of the fashionable public. I do not believe, however, that sufficient evidence exists for Professor ^Vallace's assumption that the popularity of IMack- friars was seriously endangering the prosperity of the Globe. ^ Coniniercially speaking, plays like "Cynthia's Revels" and "The Poet;ister" can hardly have been very formidable rivals to such notable successes as "Henry V," "Julius Ciesar," and "Ilaudet," even when we make the greatest possible allowance for the current topical interest of the former. The Black- friars Theatre also was relatively small, and appears to have been open only one night in the week.* Shakespeare's allusions to the success of the children, furlhcrmore, to their carrying away "Hercules and his load too," as well as to the "throwing about of brains" in the theatrical war and the nation's desire that the poet and the player should go " to cutfs in the ques- tion," are far from showing any sense of personal de- feat or bitterness. On the contrary, these allusions are the good-natured tribute of the assured master to amateur cleverness. Appearing in a play acted a few months probably after "Satiromastix," they indicate how serene Shakespeare had been left by the the- atrical dispute and all the personalities involved in it. Both in the first quarto (1008) and in the final » Cf. C. W. W:ill;uv. The Children of the Chapel ai Blackfriara, 1597-1003. (.'haptiTs xiii ami xiv. ' See the aoooimt in tho Duko of Stettin's diary (September, 1604), quoted by Wallace, op. cit., p. 106. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 383 (Folio) version of "Hamlet," the company of adult players is represented as travelling to Elsinore be- cause the fantastic humors of the children have cap- tured the metropolis. This circumstance, indispen- sable to the plot of the drama, has, of course, in itself no necessary topical significance whatever. Yet it seems likely on other grounds that an actual tour of Shakespeare's company toward the end of 1601 is alluded to; and the fact of this journey makes it possible, I think, to bring the play of "Hamlet" into connection with the only piece of real evidence con- cerning the "War of the Theatres" hitherto unmen- tioned. It is probable that "The Poetaster," "Satiromas- tix," and "Hamlet" were all first produced in 1601, and in the order named. ^ Still later doubtless in the same year, during the Christmas season, the students of St. John's College, Cambridge, performed the sec- ond part of "The Return from Parnassus," the last member of a curious trilogy, partly realistic and partly allegorical in nature. In Act IV, scene 3, occurs one of the most important of all the contemporary allu- ' It must be confessed that the precise date of Hamlet, whether 1601 or 1602, is still somewhat doubtful. However, the entry of the play on the Stationers' Register, July 26, 1602, "as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his scrvantes" suggests that the first London run of the play was then over. Printers who could publish an edition of a play still current on the boards seldom failed to advertise that fact. Cf . title-page to Wilkins's Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1607), "As it is now playd by his Maiesties Seruants." I believe that the first acting of Hamlet can safely be pushed back to the autumn of 1601. It should be noted that the allusion to Christmas (L i, 158-165), sometimes taken as dating the play, has in both the quartos very much the appearance of a later interpolation. 384 THE TUDOR DRAMA sions to Shakespeare. The words are placed in the mouth of the famous actor, WilHam Kemp: "Why here 's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down — ay, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pesti- lent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." This is the last significant reference to the War of the Theatres, and it has been variously explained. "Troi- lus and Cressida," as an obscure satirical comedy of the same approximate period, has been most fre- quently selected for the "purge" with which Shake- speare answered Jonson's "Poetaster." Upon sober consideration, however, it is hardly possible to find, either in the figure of Ajax or elsewhere in the play, any reliable indication of anti-Jonsonian purpose. Still less likely, I think, are the other alternatives : that Shakespeare wrote a lost play against Jonson; and that the author of the "Return from Parnassus," who shows a very glib knowledge of contemporary litera- ture, ascribed to Shakespeare the " Satiromastix " of Dekker. I do not know that the reference to the purge in this Cambridge play has been definitely associated hitherto with the fact that "Hamlet" was acted, as the title- page of the first quarto (1603) tells us, not only in London, but "also in the two Universities of Cam- bridge and Oxford, and elsewhere." ^ This announce- 1 Professor E. B. Reed ("The College Element in Hamlet,*' Mod. Phil., vi. 1909) connects the two plays, assigning the priority to the Cambridge piece. Professor Boas {Cambridge Hi.story, VI, ch. xii) partially accepting Reed's theory, suggests Christmas, 1602 (N. S.), rather than 1601 as the date of the second part of The Return from DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 385 ment, together, with the mention in the text itself of the travelhng of the players, seems to point to a tour of the Globe Company before the end of 1601. Now the allusion to the "Purge" in the "Return from Parnassus" is of such a nature as to make it almost certain that the audience fully understood the refer- ence. I believe that the passage was intended to recall some clearly expressed rebuke of Jonson in the text of "Hamlet" as recently acted in Cambridge. To be sure, as the latter play is preserved, it contains no dis- tinct anti-Jonsonian stroke; but that fact is easily explained. It should be remembered that the earliest (1603) version of "Hamlet" contains only an exces- sively abbreviated mention of the theatrical war; while the later quartos of 1604, etc., though certainly based on the true complete copy, purposely omit the twenty most significant lines concerning the "little eyases." The reason for the non-appearance of these lines in all editions except the 1623 Folio, is obviously the same as that which prevented Jonson from pub- lishing his Apologetical Dialogue to "The Poetaster" in the 1602 edition of that play; namely, the "Re- straint by Authority " of which Jonson expressly com- plains. When the collective editions of Jonson and Shake- speare were issued, in 1616 and 1623 respectively, there was no longer any necessity of suppressing general allusions to the long-past quarrel of the theatres. But there did exist the 'strongest reason why Shakespeare's editors should not have cared to give wanton offence to the most influential poet of the day, the generous Parnassus. On this last assumption the earlier date of Hamlet would be certain. 386 THE TUDOR DRAMA supporter of their enterprise, by restoring excised and forgotten bits of personal ridicule. I believe, there- fore, that the purge which made Jonson bewray his credit, the blow with which Shakespeare closed the War of the Theatres, was to be found in "Hamlet" as that play was presented in Cambridge, London, and elsewhere, in 1601-1602. I believe that it lay in the power of Shakespeare's literary executors, Heming and Condell, to preserve this passage, as they preserved the general quizzing of the little eyases, in their authori- tative edition of the play. There can be no doubt, how- ever, that in leaving to oblivion such a piece of transi- tory satire, which, even though not very unfriendly, may have been very humiliating to Jonson, the editors would have been faithfully observing the wish of the dead poet and the obvious proprieties of the situation. In view of the magnijBcent eulogy which Jonson was even at the moment contributing to their edition, the raking up of animosities of twenty years' standing would have been nothing short of unpardonable. BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL CRITICISM A. THE MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY Arber, HdvraTd : "Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marpre- late Controversy," 1880, 1895. Maskell, Williain : A History of the Martin Marprelate Con- troversy in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1845. McKerro-w, R. B. : " The Martin Marprelate Controversy," Nashe's Works, vol. v, pp. 34 3. Thompson, E. N. S. : " The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage," Yale Studies, xx, 1903. DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 387 Pierce, W. : Historical Introduction to the Marprelate Tracts, 1909. "Wilson, J. D. : " The Marprelate Controversy," Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. iii, ch. xvii, pp. 425-452. B. THE WAR OF THE THEATHES Penniman, J. H. : The War of the Theatres, 1897. Small, R. A. : The Stage-Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters, 1899. Wallace, C. W. : The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597-1603.1908. Chapters xiii and xiv. [See also H. C. Hart, " Harvey, Marston, and Ben Jonson," Notes and Queries, Se- ries ix, vol. xi, pp. 201, 281, 343, 501. Continued in vol. xii, pp. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482 (1903).] TEXT AND COMMENTARY I. Plats representing Contemporart Murders Arden of Feversham, 1592. Reprinted 1599, 1633. For list of later editions and commentary, see The Shakespeare Apocrypha. The play has recently been reprinted in "Everyman's Library" (Pre-Shakespearean Tragedies) . A Warning for Fair 'Women. " Acted by the right Honor- able, the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruantes," 1599. Reprinted R. Simpson, The School of Shakspere, vol. ii, 1878. Yarington, Robert : Two Lamentable Tragedies. " The one, of the murther of Maister Beech a Chaundler in Thames- streete, and his boye, done by Thomas Merry," 1601. Re- printed, A. H. Bullen, Old Plays, iv, 1885. Discussion : R. A. Law, " Yarington's ' Two Lamentable Tragedies,' " Modern Language Review, v (1910), 167-177. A Yorkshire Tragedy. " Acted by his Maiesties Players at the Globe. Written by W. Shakspeare," 1608. Reprinted 1619, and in the third and fourth Shakespeare Folios (1664, 1685). For later editions and commentary, see The Shake- speare Apocrypha. II. Plats indirectlt influenced bt Contemporart Murders WiLKiNS, George r The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. . " As it is now playd by his Maiesties Seruants, 1607. Other 386 THE TUDOR DRAMA editions, 1611, 1629, 1637. Reprinted, Dodsley, all editions ; Ancient British Drama, vol. ii, 1810. Heywood, Thomas : A Woman Killed with Kindness, 1607. Another edition, 1617. Reprinted, Reed's and Collier's Dodsley ; Ancient British Drama, ii, 1810 ; Hey wood's Works, Mermaid edition, etc. III. Plats relatinq to the Wab op the Theatkes Dekker, Thomas : Satiromastix. " Or The vntrussing of the Humorous Poet. As it hath bin presented publikely, by the Right Honorable, the Lord Cbamberlaine his Seruants ; and priuately, by the Children of Paules," 1602. Reprinted: T. Hawkins, Origin of the English Drama, vol. iii, 1773 ; Works of Dekker, ed. Pearson, 1873 ; H. Scherer, Materialien, xx, 1907. Edition by J. H. Penuiman announced in Belles Lettres series (with Poetaster). JONSON, Ben : Poetaster. " Or The Arraignment : As it hath beene sundry times priuately acted in the Blacke Friers, by the children of her Maiesties Chappell," 1602. Reprinted iu 1616 and later editions of Jonson's works. (For bibliography to The Case is Altered, Every Man Out of his Humor, and Cynthia's Revels, which have only an indirect connec- tion with the controversy, see p. 416 ff.) Marston, John ? : Histriomastiz. " Or, the Player whipt," 1610. Reprinted, R. Simpson, School of Shakspere, vol. ii, 1878. (Marston's conjectural share in this play cannot extend beyond the mere revision of a work by another hand.) Jack Drum's Entertainment. " Or The Comedie Of Pasquill and Katherine. As it hath bene sundry times plaide by the Children of Powles," 1601. (Marston's authorship doubtful.) Reprinted, R. Simpson, School of Shakspere, vol. ii. "What You "Will, 1607. (Connection with the controversy vague.) Reprinted in Marston's Works, ed. Halliwell, 1856 : ed. A. H. Bullen, 1887. Shakespeare, William : Troilus and Cressida, 1609 (two issues). (Connection with the controversy doubtful.) Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. " As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Ilighnesse seruants in the Cittie of London : as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where," 1603. (Abbreviated and corrupted version.) An- DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY INCIDENT 389 other edition, " Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie," 1G04. Reprinted 1G05, IGll, 1G37, etc. The Return from Parnassus. " Or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted by the Students in Saint Johns Colledge in Cambridge," 1606. For further bibliography, see next chapter, ' p. 420. CHAPTER XI REALISTIC COMEDY The last chapter in the history of the true Ehza- bethan drama is that which describes the acceptance into the highest theatrical favor of plays occupied primarily with the treatment of contemporary man- ners and vices. The sudden overwhelming popularity after 1600 of that comedy of class types and distinc- tively local application, which Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humor" (1598) perhaps inaugurated, is eloquent of changed conditions both on the stage and in the life of London. It indicates, on the one hand, the disappearance of the catholic largeness of view which generally universalizes and idealizes Eliza- bethan plays; and it bears witness to the breaking up of the national unity of the earlier simpler age into the strongly marked social and factional groups of Stuart England. Properly considered, the stage of Elizabeth's reign was far more realistic — more adequately expressive of national life and character — than any which suc- ceeded it; but, like all agents of legitimate realism, it reflected rather the fundamental moral and intellectual content than the material superficialities of the epoch. The growing consciousness of personal peculiarities of manner, and the tendency of the drama to devote its highest talent and most careful art to the treatment of the commonplace's of everyday existence were neces- sarily consequent upon a diminution in the earlier emo- REALISTIC COMEDY 391 tional and imaginative ardor. It is in literature as in life : minute interest in external details and in whimsi- calities of speech or fashion seldom coexists with the intensest moral zeal or mental aspiration. Not only is seventeenth-century drama less exalted in tone than that which we may properly call Eliza- bethan; it is also far less universal in its scope. One of the most potent literary influences in the age of Elizabeth was the essential unity of taste, produced by the sudden development of national feeling which, in spite of the superficial lines of cleavage, made prince and peasant really one in sentiment, character, and manner, and gave to the society of the time much of the nawete and simple directness of primitive com- munities. This feature of the age is everywhere re- flected in the drama. The academic imitations of foreign aristocratic species never achieved real suc- cess, even with the higher classes, till they had been so modified as to appeal to the tastes of the general public.^ During the heyday of English drama, the twenty years following 1590, plays were incessantly being transported from the popular stage to the royal court, and back again; and those which most gained the applause of the rabble in the pit were nearly al- ways the favorites also of the learned and noble con- noisseurs. Social distinctions were felt by the Elizabethans as political barriers, indispensable to good government and therefore rigidly to be maintained; but there is no 1 The sole exception to this statement is to be found in the earlier comedies of Lyly; and these plays owed their hold upon fashionable audiences less to purely dramatic features than to their connection with courtly gossip. 392 THE TUDOR DRAMA evidence that the age connected differences of char- acter in any clear way with differences of station or employment. The social democracy of the time is constantly exemplified, to a degree often perplexing to the modern reader, in the dramas of Shakespeare and his contemporaries: in the motley society of the Henry IV plays and "The Merchant of Venice"; in the frank independence of the gardener in "Richard II," the ^ave-digger in "Hamlet," the sergeant in "Mac- beth"; and in the freedom everywhere accorded to the clown. The nobleman, the shepherd, and the merchant might meet on terms of at least temporary equality, not only on the stage, but in actual life as well; and the extreme haziness of the lines which mark the various gradations in dignity between the Dean of St. Paul's, Sir Thomas Gresham the merchant prince, Hobson the haberdasher, and John Goodfellow the pedlar in Heywood's play ^ is no very inaccurate picture of ex- isting conditions. For the Elizabethans, consequently, tragic and comic effect were both absolute. They resulted, from the character of the individual, and had nothing to do with the rank to which he belonged or the measure in which he followed the rules of estab- lished fashion. Even the most topical dramas of this period are in no sense limited to a special class. The authors of the murder plays found equal material for tragedy in the fate of the humble shop-keeper Beech, the city merchant Sanders, and the country gentle- men Arden and Calverley. Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, how- ever, there began to appear a change in the structure of society which became a characteristic feature of ^ // You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part II. REALISTIC COMEDY 393 Jacobean life, and served to distinguish the entire Stuart drama from that of the Tudors. About 1600, as the all-absorbing excitement of the Spanish wars gave place to the general conviction of national secu- rity, and the flux of political and social adjustment consequent upon the Renaissance came to a stable equilibrium, the lines between the different ranks of the people grew hard and rigid; and the world of fashion evolved a code of manners complex and arti- ficial to a degree previously unknown. The opposition between the court and city circles and between town and country habits was sharply, even bitterly, accen- tuated; and the stage, which had interpreted life in terms of universal significance, became the mirror of local prejudice and the scourge of social folly. Thus it happened that the Elizabethan drama, which in its power of expressing general communal feeling is con- tinually reminiscent of the great national tragedy of Athens, was succeeded by a type of comedy suggestive rather of the narrow urban Ufe portrayed by the Roman dramatists. It is therefore no accident that the first years of the seventeenth century witnessed a sudden burst of direct Plautine and Terentian imi- tation more striking even than that caused by the original introduction of those authors to English play- wrights. The stifling atmosphere of over-ripe civiliza- tion pictured by the Latin plagiarists of the decadent Greek comedians — in which wit consists in the por- trayal of clever knavery and the ridicule of the mala- droit and unfashionable — was largely unintelligible to Udall. But by the time of James's accession, Lon- don manners had become far more intricate and self- conscious; and the greatest comic artists of that era, 394 THE TUDOR DRAMA Ben Jonson, Chapman, and Middlcton, often follow close in the path of Terence, producing thus a drama which is less truly a continuation of the Elizabethan method than a foreshadowing of Restoration tenden- cies. In tragedy also the ^change in the times made itself felt: for example, in the cult of unnatural horror, in the removal of the plot from the realm of ordinary human sympathy and acquaintance, and in the grow- ing inclination to represent the main figures as con- ventional dignitaries in conventional romantic cities. But in tragedy, the practice of Shakespeare main- tained the old standards till after the Jacobean age was well inaugurated; whereas, in comedy, we can detect even before the death of Elizabeth the begin- nings of the distinctively Stuart method. The great exponent of the genuine Elizabethan atti- tude toward realistic comedy is Shakespeare, who portrays with unsurpassed truth the characters and incidents of average contemporary life, but always for the purpose of relieving and interpreting a higher ideal theme. For this poet and for the age whose spirit he voiced, the world of commonplace actuality was never dissociated from the world of lofty achievement and romantic beauty. Though, like his princely hero, he does not fail to "remember the poor creature, small beer," ^ Ufe and humanity are for him invariably pos- sessed of a nobler meaning than can be discerned by the self-deluded realist, lago, or many soullessly objective authors of Jacobean comedy. Thus, Shakespeare's plays always infer, behind the material phenomena of existence, — the suckling of fools and chronicling of 1 S Uenry IV, II, ii, 10. REALISTIC COMEDY 395 small beer, — moral and imaginative issues which de- termine the dramatic standards of value and inspire the answer to every problem presented. In Shakespeare's earliest indei)endent play, "Love's Labor 's Lost," he draws very largely upon the absurd- ities of the life about him, mimicking familiar coun- try types in Costard, Dull, Holofernes, and Sir Na- thaniel, while in Armado and the various lords and ladies he ridicules the passing whims of courtly society. So in "Much Ado About Nothing," the comedy which shows most kinship with "Love's Labor's Lost," * the plebeian buffoonery of Dogberry and Verges is like- wise accompanied by the attempt to imitate in the dialogue of Beatrice and Benedick the wit and badi- nage of contemporary high life. In both these plays, however, the realism is a matter of mood and charac- ter rather than of microscopic external detail; and in both it is subordinated to a romantic intrigue plot. Shakespeare's mature treatment carries the humors and incidents of ordinary life even farther into the sphere of universal truth. In his greatest plays the realistic and fanciful elements are perfectly blended and mutually complementary. No longer products of antipodal regions of thought or opposite points of view, they become in his philosophy the warp and woof from whose intertwining threads the fabric of true life must in every age be woven. Thus he cuts realistic drama adrift from the limitations of space and time, and uses the mass of observation concerning the 1 There appears to be much better cause than it is now usual to allow for identifying Much Ado in an earlier form with the Love's Labor Won of Meres and regarding it as a twin drama to Love 9 Labor 's Lost. 396 THE TUDOR DRxVMA superficialities of character and action, which he had culled in London and Stratford, to picture forth as occasion might demand either the Roman mobs of "Caesar" and "Coriolanus," the rude mechanicals of Thesean Athens, the merry rogue of sea-girt Bohemia, or the Trinculo and Stephano of his enchanted island. This procedure is entirely expressive of the general Elizabethan spirit in its just indifference to petty anachronism and its great power of conceiving and vitalizing distant scenes. Artistically, also, it is wise and right. The high romantic passions can be analyzed and presented in many media; but the humbler, ephemeral details, which make up so much of life and so little of history, can ordinarily be realized only in one's immediate environment. Shakespeare's intro- duction into the midst of plays pitched among remote or fanciful surroundings of scenes in minor key, which reflect the monotone of existence in sixteenth-century England, is therefore no real breach of unity or con- sistency. On the contrary, it shows the dramatist's recognition of the great principle that life, at all times and under all conditions, is a coat of many colors never adequately represented by the few bright patches of which alone romance takes cognizance. And those precise readers offended by the sweaty nightcaps of the Roman rabble or the English ballad-mongering of the Bohemian Autolycus make thoughtless outcry against casual inconsistencies inherent in the full deep grasp of society as a whole which gives to the plays in question the truest realism in their eternal faith- fulness to human nature. This fundamental belief in the immutable com- plexity of life makes Shakespeare insist, on the one REALISTIC COMEDY 897 hand, that cobblers and weavers must have had their place in the commonwealth of Caesar or of Theseus, and that they must have reasoned and acted then much as in his own time. On the other hand, it causes him to give also to his individual comic figures a deep humanity which renders them more than the mere product of transitory conditions. Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch, Malvolio, Autolycus and the rest speak the intellectual language and exemplify the vices and prejudices of that particular London envirdnment whose contact had taught Shakespeare to conceive them, and in terms of which alone he could convinc- ingly depict their characters. Yet, like their creator, they are not of an age, but for all time. What the poet had learned, item by item, from personal experience of the world through which he walked, concerning the less acute issues of life, he gives forth in his humorous figures so digested and explained that it finds equal currency in bygone Britain and in visionary Illyria. And the reason for this is Shakespeare's abiding faith that in any society worth portraying, anywhere ex- istent, the eccentric force of heroic and romantic aspi- ration must inevitably be held in balance by the sane power of that humorous or "realistic" tendency, which sees things as they are and does not look beyond actual conditions. For Shakespeare, therefore, realism is no mere by-product of his own generation, self-con- cerned and self-destructive, but an everlasting con- servative force which keeps the world sweet and habit- able. Falstaff and Mercutio are expressions of the vis inertioe of civilization, which maintains the equili- brium of society against its revolutionary Hotspurs and Romeos. Thus Falstaff finds his logical unques- 898 THE TUDOR DRAMA tionable place in the world, whether we choose to think of him as Oldcastle, the companion of Henry V's youth, or as Fastolfe, the cowardly knight of Talbot's wars a generation later, or, disregarding history alto- gether, simply as the fat boon companion of Shake- speare's own day. In all that really matters his figure possesses as much truth in the earliest of these environ- ments as in the latest; and the critic has little more reason to object to the employment of the street and taveril sights of 1600 for the purpose of" realizing the character of a fifteenth-century epicure, than he would have for forbidding Csesar, Hector, and Hamlet to speak English. Thus, the trend of Shakespeare's dramatic practice set increasingly, as his genius developed, toward the utilization of what was accidental and ephemeral in the world around him for the demonstration of uni- versal truth. More and more clearly he seems to have perceived that realism is as little as romance itself the necessary adjunct of a particular time and place; and his greatest realistic play, "King Lear," is a tragedy located, perhaps intentionally, at the farthest distance from the contemporary world. "Lear " is throughout a delineation, not of history or of heroic tragedy, but of the more domestic aspects in the relation of man to man, which each writer can understand only from sympathetic observation of the life before his window and which few have ever been able to reproduce save by means of the closest transcription. In Shakespeare's treatment, King Lear and his daughters lose the vague royal dignity which the earlier anonymous play on the same subject allows them, and become practically bourgeois types; while the kingdom of Britain could REALISTIC COMEDY 399 be replaced without dramatic loss by a farm. "Mac- beth" and "Othello," typical expressions of heroic tragedy, deal with the fate of supernormal figures, nature's aristocrats, overwhelmed by the most tre- mendous catastrophes: but "King Lear" is a parable of common life possible only for one whose eyes had been long fixed on the low average of human society, and designed to portray the hideous consequences attendant upon the ignoble faults of vulgar self-will and petty ingratitude. Lear, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia are all fundamentally creatures of the hard actual world; and their egotisms and bickering belong to the same type and have obviously the same source in contemporary observation as dozens of the cynical or satirical scenes in the city comedies of Jonson and Chapman. The unlovely aspects of human society when centred in self and unenlightened by the spark of romantic endeavor, furnished the ordinary seven- teenth-century playwright with matter for merriment, or at best for satire; but Shakespeare has here shaped it into tragedy too deep for tears. The realism of "King Lear" is the proper pendant to the idealism of "The Tempest." Both plays show the poet's sharp experience of the corroding mean- nesses of life and both testify to his triumph over their discouraging influence. The author's transference of his story, in "Lear," to the broad stage of myth and fiction enables him to give universal application to his picture of the unloveliness of that dwarfed and dis- torted human nature in which the theatre of his time was coming more and more to find material for careless laughter. The same transfer allows him scope for showing, as no writer has ever shown, before or since. 400 THE TUDOR DRAMA the high beneficent purpose behind this bleak world of envy and self-interest. With a freedom hardly conceivable in any reproduction of temporal and local conditions, he here demonstrates the refinement of the originally faulty or unripened characters of Lear and Cordeha on the rack of partly seK-imposed suffer- ing into the noblest, tenderest, and most perfect types of mortal being. Only in a single play of his maturity — probably of his entire career — does Shakespeare give any indica- tion of following the bent of the time in concentrating attention upon the humorous detail of life without reference to its proper function as the interpreter and corrective of more idealistic tendencies. "The Merry Wives of Windsor" stands out conspicuous in the list of Shakespeare's works as the only play which the poet localizes in the England of his own age, even as it is the only one in which interest in ludicrous situation finally predominates over the graver ends of charac- terization and philosophy of life. It is, indeed, far from being a narrowly realistic comedy after the model of the popular "comedy of manners." The humor of Fal- staff and the merry wives is, upon the whole, clean and hearty; the slight underplot of Anne Page and Fenton adds a welcome dash of romance; and the fairy ma- chinery of the last act is pretty obviously introduced for the purpose of freshening the close atmosphere of scheming and deceit. Yet the play undoubtedly indi- cates a departure in the direction of that species of comedy which arises by the evaporation out of life of its grosser details, and which, in the face of Shake- speare's general protest, was growing more and more fashionable. REALISTIC COMEDY 401 There is every reason for accepting the essential truth of the story, reported by Dennis and Rowe/ that the "Merry Wives" was composed in haste to the special order of Queen EUzabeth, who demanded to see Falstaff in love. The standard of taste which would prompt such a desire was easily intelligible to Shake- speare, and within certain limitations he seems not to have been above gratifying it.^ The suspicion lies very strong that in this comedy the character of Falstaff has suffered foul play with the entire privity of the author. One may borrow the words spoken of Oldcastle in the Epilogue to "Henry IV" (Part II) and say that Fal- staff "died a martyr" in "Henry V," "and this is not the man." We have seen how the irresistible figure of the true Falstaff — the incomparable expression of supreme intellect focussed upon the physical details of life — swelled out the Henry IV plays beyond their normal size, and came near to swamping entirely their serious!^ purpose. It would seem likely that Shake- speare has taken the opportunity in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" of effectually cutting the throat of this lovable but ungovernable giant by an intentional travesty of his character, which pleased without in- flaming the vulgar appetite of the public. Thus, the play would remain an historical document measuring very accurately both the strength of the general de- mand, about 1599, for realistic comedy and also the attitude of Shakespeare toward the type. * See N. Smith, Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, 1903, 5 and 304. * The most notable examples of Shakespeare's occasional willing- ness to sacrifice art in the interest of popular appeal are probably the unnatural situations presented in the closing acts of the Two Gentlemen of Vcwna and Measure for Measure. 402 THE TUDOR DRAMA The evolution of realistic comedy as a distinct dra- matic species was the result of a tendency to isolate and catalogue the peculiarities of the various classes of contemporary society. The developed comedy of this sort gained its ends almost solely by caricature of types rather than by individual portraiture; but dur- ing the last five or six years of Elizabeth's reign the species took its rise from a very miscellaneous set of performances. Undoubtedly, Ben Jonson is in the highest degree responsible for this comedy, as regards both the struc- tural form which it took and the critical principles upon which it was based. Quite simultaneously with Jonson's earliest comedies appeared, however, several by George Chapman, which exemplify in less positive and influential form many of the same general ten- dencies. Chapman agreed with Jonson in being both a scholar and a frequent imitator of the classics. The plays of these writers gave the situations and the stock characters of Plautus and Terence remarkable fre- quence on the early seventeenth-century stage, im- buing realistic comedy with a certain Latin coloring which is distinguishable not merely in actual imita- tions like "All Fools" and "The Alchemist," but even also in such essentially original works as "Eastward Hoe" and "Bartholomew Fair." The first comedies of Chapman and Jonson contain only incidental suggestions of the realistic method. Chapman's "Blind Beggar of Alexandria," which may have been composed as early as 1596, is in point of structure a monstrous absurdity. A sensational tragic theme, dealing with the ingenious villainies of a shep- herd's son in fourfold disguise, is suddenly brought REALISTIC COMEDY 403 to an entirely unsatisfactory comic conclusion. The main story is as far removed from actual fact as it is from the requirements of art ; yet the treatment of the three bourgeois sisters in their quest and experience of matrimony brings into the play a fitful glimpse of London realism, and suggests many more developed portraits of the same type. Two early plays of Ben Jonson illustrate the forma- tive stage in that poet's comic method. "The Case Is Altered" is in the main an attractive piece of roman- tic apprentice work, based upon the old motive of infant confusion, which was early introduced from Latin and Italian drama. ^ The most individual part of the play, however, and the only part which has significance in the light of Jonson's later career, is that dealing with the subsidiary humors of Juniper the cobbler, Peter Onion, and their companions. "A Tale of a Tub " is a far more Jonsonian work than "The Case Is Altered." It concerns itself exclu- sively with contemporary London types, most of which are presented with real wit and appreciation. Limiting its action strictly to the compass of a single day and to the immediate suburbs of London, the play develops rather amusingly a thin story of mutual deceit and misunderstanding. The date of this piece is somewhat uncertain. It was not printed till three years after Jonson's death, ^ but it seems to have been composed in its earliest form before the end of the sixteenth cen- • The original source of this theme was doubtless the Captivi of Plautus, which was directly imitated in The Case Is Altered. The same motive had been employed with variations in The Bugbears, Misogonus, and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall. ^ In the 1640 Folio edition of his works. 404 THE TUDOR DRiVMA tury. Immaturity appears in the attempt to offer a mere series of comic situations in place of an ordered plot, and in the failure to endow the figures with any really representative value. In these respects "A Tale of a Tub," like Porter's overrated "Two Angry Women of Abingdon" (1599) of the same approxi- mate date, bears less relationship to the realistic com- edy of Jonson's maturity than to unreasoned earlier efforts at plebeian farce such as "Gammer Gurton's Needle" and "Misogonus." For a number of years there existed a parallel and a rather close connection between the dramatic careers of Chapman and Jonson. Both appear first as hack writers for Henslowe's company, and it is difficult to distinguish between their early theories of comedy. Professor Parrott has remarked ^ that Jonson con- structed his "Case Is Altered" out of the "Captivi" and "Aulularia" of Plautus in the very same year in which Chapman was similarly fusing the plots of two Terentian plays - in "All Fools." The idea of imita- tion in the ordinary sense is here precluded by the radical difference between the plays in question. It is wortli noting that "All Fools" would make no very surprising figure in the gallery of Jonsonian realism, — beside "Every Man in his Humor" and "Epiccene," for example. Conversely, "The Case Is Altered," which is strikingly opposed to Jonson's other work and was never openly avowed by that poet, shows considerable resemblance to several of Chapman's medleys of buffoonery and Latinized romance, such as "May Day" and "Monsieur D'Olive." ^ Chapman's All Fools and Gentleman Usher, Belles-Leltres ed., p. xxxvi. * Viz., Fleautonliinontmenos aud Adetphi. REALISTIC COMEDY 405 So, with reference to Jonson's peculiar speciality, the evolution of the "comedy of humors," Chapman appears concurrently in the field. It is hardly possi- ble to decide whether the honor of prior exemplification of this type should rest with "Every Man in his Hu- mor" or with the "Humorous Day's Mirth" of the other writer. The question is not one which can affect our ultimate judgment concerning the relative position of the two poets concerned. Chapman's "Humorous Day's Mirth," mentioned by Henslowe in May, 1597, as the "Comedy of Humors," is a piece of no distinc- tion and of no perceptible influence in its own day; while Jonson's much better thought out and better constructed comedy created a new epoch in drama- turgy. It is by no means improbable that Jonson and Chapman worked side by side, with considerable ex- change of ideas, from the time of their emergence as dramatic writers in the pay of Henslowe till after their formal collaboration in "Eastward Hoe" (1605). Be- ing both poets of a scholarly and reflective tempera- ment, they appear to have striven equally for the introduction upon the English stage of classic plot material and for the application to contemporary society of the neat if soulless scale of stock types upon which the Latin and Italian comedies were based. There is no indication, however, that Chapman ever attained to a permanent theory of comic comj)osition or evolved any consistent method. Romance, which is often colorless, and blunt realism, which is not always humorously effective, huddle each other in his latest plays no less than in the earliest. Indeed, "All Fools," which in its original form would appear to have been one of the first of Chapman's comedies. UH5 TlIF TT'DOR DRAMA remains on tho whole tho niost satisfactory in plot manipulation and in eomvption, Thns C^hapman sooms to have lent to tho progress of realist io eonnnly little n\on.^ than tho original half- blind inipnlso Nvhioh helpeii to stivrt it on its way. In the shapinji of its oonrso ho t^x^k small part; and the main intor«.\st of his soYot\ or eight * independent oomo- dios for tho student of dramatic evolution rests not iu any coustvutivo advance which they made towanl the filial ilitforentiation of a ciMUtHly of Knglish ty^xvs. It lies rather, as rn>fessor Tara^tt has ajiain suggest oti,^ in the fact that his nnprv>grt\«;sive series of plays, half- n>mantic and half-n\distic, form a conmx'ting nuxlium lH^twt.HMi tho frank heten^geneily of nnuh nndovolo^Hxl Elizalx^than drama and tho brilliant, but quite uuhfe- like and insimvro blending of various interests in Fletcher's tragi-conuxly. lien .lonson cn\ittHl n\distic conuniy as a distinct type with establishtxl laws and a clear-cut field oi action. "Every Man in his llmnor" translate into terms of ».\>ntemporary life a numlvr of tho most sue- ivssful cluvracters of Plautine drama: the m »/<•,< j//oriWi*s in Hobailill. the intriguing slave in l^rainworm, tho riotous son and sovort^ father in tho KnowoUs. To these art^ addtxl similar sttx'k hgun^s in tho town and coun- try gidl. tho merry magistrate, jealous huslvvnd, and "downrigiit " country squirw "Every Man in his Humor" was perhaps the most sensational st«ge suc- * E*uftu\ird Uof, in which Chapiuaii wjvs tudt\l by Jonsotx and Marsliut. is not inchuUxl iu tt»is Ttvkouin^j;. Tho iloul^tful pitxv is iS«> GiUs CiWtxwtp l^UHH>\ vxuuvrniivs; which, stv T. M. Parrv^tt, ^ * .1// /\h>/,« (IH(/ Ot-HtUman Vskcr. Bfih.s~Lfttrrssom of the spring. Conforms his outwivrvl habit to his mind. Ixx^k how yon one-oy\l waggoner of heaven Hath, by his horses' fiery-wingeil ho^^fs. Burst ope the mehuieholy jail of night ; And with his gilt beams' eunning alohym>' Turn'd all these clouds to gv^ld, who, with the winds Upon their misty shoulders, bring in day. Then sully not this morning with foul kK>ks. But teach your ji.xnmd spirits to ply the chase. For hunting is a sport for emperors." Nor can there easily' be foimd a more pleasing instance * See Umsiowt's Diary, ed. Greg, vcJ. ii. i06, i07. REALISTIC COMEDY 409 of the ultra-romantic treatment of humble life than in Janiculo's speech to his sou: ' — " Come, sit by me. While I work to get bread. And Grissil spin us yarn to clothe our backs, Thou shall read ilocLrinc to us for the soul. Then, what shall wo thnv want ? nolhiuf,', my son; For when wc ccaso from work, even in that while. My song shall charm grief's ears, and care beguile." So the clownish servant, Babulo, who waits upon Janicultt's family with a tenderness thinly disfj;uised under witty impudence, is an essentially romantic creation, owing little to' contemporary observation, and quite unfettered to any particular time or place. He belongs to the kindred of Touchstone, and has no connection with the Brainworms of the realistic school. With this story of Griseldis, which forms in itself a perfect romantic comedy, has been combined an ut- terly different realistic plot centring about the Welsh widow Gwenthyan. The idea of relieving the exces- sive self-abasement of Grissell by the companion pic- ture of a termagant wife is one which Chaucer would have approved; and the joining of the themes is rather skilfully effected. Nothing, however, has been done to conceal the entire dissimilarity of the two strains involved. Gwenthyan and her two suitors. Sir Owen ap Meredith and Emulo, are clearly realistic types after the new manner of Jonson. It seems impossible to doubt that Emulo is a conscious echo of Fastidious Brisk in "Every Man out of his Humor." Indeed, Emulo's fantastic account of his bloodless duel with Sir Owen 2 follows so close upon Jonson's description ■ » Collier's edition, 1811, p. 11. « Ibid., pp. 40-42. ,' 410 THE TUDOR DRAMA of the engagement between Brisk and Luculento ("Every Man out of his Humor," IV, iv), that it may fairly be held to pass the limits of justifiable imitation. This bit of plagiarism, together with a mischievous allusion to the fact that the illiterate Emulo can "never be saved by his book," ^ may well have irri- tated Jonson and caused Dekker to be joined with Marston in the next year's satire of the "Poetaster" (1601). That Dekker was indeed mainly responsible for this sub-plot in the new realistic style of Jonson is pretty evident from the recurrence of the identical theme and figures in the Mistress Miniver and Sir Rees ap Vaughan episode of his " Satiromastix " (1601). Jonsonian influence appears to have introduced a streak of realistic satire into a number of other mot- ley plays produced during the last five years of Eliza- beth's reign. The manuscript comedy of "Timon," first printed by Dyce in 1842, unites with a light- hearted treatment of the story of the Athenian mis- anthrope a Latinizing farce of stock types, among which occur such familiar figures as the covetous father and clownish son, the vain foolish lover, mis- chievous page, and wanton nurse. The source of this play, the circumstances of presentation, and its rela- tion to Shakespeare's tragedy on the same subject are all matters of dispute. In the light of recent in- vestigation, it seems probable that the play before us * An allusion to pardon "by benefit of clergy," to which Jonson had owed his life in 1598. Compare the reference to "some that have been saved by their neck- verse" in connection with Horace (Jonson) in Satiromastix (Scherer's ed., I. 384). REALISTIC COMEDY 411 — in spite of an air of academic exclusiveness which is carried even to the length of quoting Greek in the original — was known to Shakespeare, and that it supplied him with important elements in his tragedy which he could have procured from no other known source. The unknown author of "Timon," while standing creditor to Shakespeare, may have been debtor to Ben Jonson, for a remarkably close parallel has been lately pointed out between his sketches of Gelasimus and Pseudocheus and those of Amorphus and Asotus in "Cynthia's Revels." ^ In the "Parnassus" plays — likewise academic productions of about the same date (1598-1601) — we can trace the gradual influence, if not of Jonson's personal example, certainly of the type of local comedy based on classic models, which Jonson individualized and established on the English stage. In the first play of the group, "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," which was acted at St. John's College, Cambridge, about Christmas, 1597, we have a mere allegory of the vari- ous tasks and employments of college life, with no further attempt at comic effect than can be made out of local references to Hobson the carrier and "my hoste Johns of the Crowne." The two parts of "The Return from Parnassus," which complete the trilogy, (1600, 1601 ?) are conspicuous, on the other hand, for the increasing degree in which they subordinate the original allegorical motive to the delineation of real- ^ See C. R. Baskervill, English Elements in Jonson's Early Comedy, 268-272, and H. C. Hart, Jonson's Works, I, xliv. It should be said that the general character of the parallel passages seems' to suggest a common source rather than deliberate imitation on the part of either English poet. 412 THE TUDOR DRAMA istic types. The first part of the "Return" contains a convincing scene between the Cambridge Draper, Tailor, and Inn-keeper, who meet to complain of stu- dents' bad debts. Gullio in the same play repeats the comedy of Master Matthew in "Every Man in his Humor," with his inanity, his absurd poetic ambition and his pilfered tags of verse; while a life-like passage describing Ingenioso's visit to his Patron handles with admirable fidelity a situation otherwise treated but hardly improved in "The Puritan." In the second part of the "Return," the symbolical story of Ingenioso, Judicio, Studioso, Academico, etc., is so complicated by realistic additions of every kind as to be almost entirely unintelligible. It is every- where obvious that the interest of the author has been distracted from the general allegorical framework of the piece to the series of ironic studies of contemporary manners which he has embroidered upon it; and the unique value of this curious play results from the can- dor with which it devotes itself to the delineation and criticism of present conditions in a very great num- ber of the avenues of life. The recently recovered play of "Club Law," as- signed by its editor to a date (1599-1600) about level with that of the second member of the "Parnassus" group, illustrates with equal vividness the satirical propensities of the Cambridge undergraduate stage. It is not possible, however, to bring "Club Law" into any such direct relationship with the drama at large as the last two Parnassus plays everywhere exhibit. "Club Law" owes its pecuUar interest to its frankly occasional nature. Instead of treating general types of character, it aims its satire at unpopular individuals REALISTIC COMEDY 413 among the Cambridge townsmen; and it thus has its raison d'etre, not in the philosophic analysis of existing society, which was becoming more and more the theme of professional London comedy, but in the mere grati- fication of academic pique. Two other plays, which belong presumably to the very last years of Elizabeth, mark the transition to realistic comedy. Both are shown by the large number of extant editions to have been among the most popu- lar performances of the time with the reading public. One of these plays, "Wily Beguiled," was first printed in 1606, the year in which the second part of "The Return from Parnassus" appeared, and, like the other piece, was acted probably several years earlier. That "Wily Beguiled" was originally an academic play is almost certain, in spite of its broad general vogue later, from the glee with which the triumph of the poor scholar over his worldly rivals is depicted, and from the excessive afiFectation of much of the verse. Col- lege dilettantism may be responsible for the presence of two good songs as well as for the large number of instances of verbal plagiarism and the incongruous introduction of Sylvanus, Nymphs, and Satyrs. The chief interest of the play consists, however, in the realistic scenes which deal with Gripe, Churms, Plod- All, and Will Cricket. As regards these scenes, "Wily Beguiled" occupies an important halfway position between Lyly's Latinized comedy of "Mother Bom- bie," which our play much resembles in plot, and the mature Stuart plays of English real life. "A Pleasant conceited Comedie, Wherein is shewed how a Man may Choose a good Wife from a Bad" has been ascribed on insubstantial grounds to Thomas 414 THE TUDOR DRAMA Heywood.^ This play, like "Wily Beguiled," is distin- guished bj'- its unblushing plagiarism; and the most memorable thing about it is perhaps the travesty of the potion story in "Romeo and Juliet." The figures in the comedy, though all nominally English and con- temporary, are depicted either vaguely or with undue exaggeration; nor is the plot construction sufficiently good to reflect credit upon the dramatic taste of the seventeenth century, which required seven editions within thirty-three years. The play's hold on the public doubtless lay in the absurdities of the clownish school-master, Sir Aminadab, and in the sentimental presentation of the trials of the patient wife, — a theme apparently popular at this time and similarly treated in "The London Prodigal." With the curious symmetry which not infrequently characterizes literary movements, it happened that the efflorescence of Stuart realism in comedy coincided precisely with the beginning of James I's reign. The plays just considered, belonging to the last five years of the Tudor period, are all experimental in character; and, with the exception of "Every Man in his Hu- mor," they all contain nearly or quite as much of the Elizabethan as of the later spirit. Even in Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humor" and " Cynthia's Rev- els" (1601), we have elaborate preliminary studies in type portraiture rather than finished dramas in the new style. The four or five years immediately subsequent to James I's accession in ICO.S are remarkable for an ex- traordinary outburst of realistic comedy. To the years 1603-1608 belong "The London Prodigal" and "The • See Fleay, Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, i, iHO f. REALISTIC COMEDY 415 Puritan" (1607), "Eastward Hoe" by Jonson, Chap- man, and Marston, the "Westward Hoe" and "North- ward Hoe" of Dekker and Webster, and Jonson's "Volpone." The same years saw the production also of five admirable comedies by Middleton, who ranks with Jonson as the finest exponent of Stuart realism: "Michaelmas Term" (1607), "A Trick to Catch the Old One" (1608), "The Family of Love" (1608), "Your Five Gallants" (registered, March, 1608), and "A Mad World, My Masters." No true parallel to any of these plays can be found among the productions of the real Elizabethans. Yet these form the most distinct and vigorous class of drama produced by the younger poets in the eight or nine years (1603-1611/12) during which Shakespeare was triumphantly maintaining the old catholic art upon the Globe stage in the face of a general yielding else- where to more temporary interests. With the single exception of "Volpone," the principal scene of these plays is always London. Without any exception, the group is characterized by a restriction of view to the most tangible and superficial phenomena of worldly ex- perience. Just in proportion as Jonson and his fellows acquired their consummate mastery in interpreting the actual impressions of eye and ear, they lost touch with the inner voice of ideal fancy. Thus, the imagina- tion, divorced from reason and observation, was left to find expression in works of dishonest sentiment and morbid horror. 4ia THE TUDOR DRAMii BIBLIOGRAPHY A. PLATS PARTIALLY REALISTIC HAVING A FOREIGN SETTTNG (SHAKESPEAREAN PLAYS OMITTEd) Chapman, George. Dramatic Works, 1873, 3 vols. ; ed. R, H, Shepherd, 1874, 1889. General discussion : E. Koeppel, " Quel- len-Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Mas- singer's uud John Ford's," 1897 ; A. L. Stiefel, " George Chap- man und das italienische Drama," Sh. Jb., 35 (1899), 180- 213. The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, " most pleasantly dis- coursing his variable humours in disguised shapes," 1598. A Humorous Day's Mirth, 1599. All Fools, 1605. Reprinted in Reed's and Collier's Dodsley ; Ancient British Drama, ii, 1810 ; W. L. Phelps, Chapman, Mermaid series; T. M. Parrott, Belles Lettres series, 1907. Discussion : M. Stier, " Chapman's All Fools mit Beriick- sichtigung seiner Quellen," Halle, 1904 ; E. Woodbridge, " An Unnoted Source of Chapman's All Fools," Jrl. Germ. Phil., i, 338-341. Monsieur D'Olive, 1606. Reprinted, C. W. Dilke, Old Eng- lish Plays, 1814. The Gentleman Usher, 1606. Reprinted, T. M. Parrott, Belles Lettres series, 1907. May-Day, 1611. Reprinted, C. W. Dilke, Old English Plays. The Widow's Tears, 1612. Reprinted in Dodsley, all edd. except Hazlitt. Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton : Patient Grissill, 1603. Reprinted, J. P. Collier, Shakespeare Society, 1841 ; A. B. Gro- sart, Dekker's " Non-Dramatic Works " {sic) in Huih Library, V, 1886. Jonson, Ben. (For collected works, etc., see p. 418.) Every Man in his Humor. Original version, with Italian characters, 1601. Reprinted, C. Grabau, Sh. Jb., 38 (1902) ; W. W. Greg, Materialien, x, 1905 ; F. E. Schelling, Every- man, Jonson, i. Discussion : A. Buff, " The Quarto Edition of Ben Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour,' " Engl. Stud., i (1877), 181 £E ; B. Nicholson, "On the Dates of the Two REALISTIC COMEDY 417 Versions of ' Every Man in his Humour,' " Antiquary, vi (1882), 15-19, 106-110. See also p. 418. The Case Is Altered, 1609 (two issues). Discussion : W. Sperrhake, '' Ben Jonson's ' The Case is Altered ' uud seine Quellen," Halle, 1905. Poetaster, " Or The Arraignment," 1602. Reprinted, H. S. Mallory, Yo.le Studies, xxvii, 1905. Volpone, or The Fox. First printed in 1616 Jonson Folio. Reprinted, Mermaid Jonson, vol. iii ; H. B. Wilkius, 1905. Discussion: L. H. Holt, "Notes on Jonson's 'Volpone,'" Mod. Lang. Notes, xx (1905), 63 ; F. Holthausen, " Die Quelle von Ben Jonson's • Volpone,' " yln^Zm, xii (1889), 519-525. MiDDLETON, Thomas. (For collected editions, etc., see p. 419.) Blurt Master - Constable, " Or The Spaniards Night- walke," 1602. Reprinted, W. R. Chetwood, 1750. Every Woman in her Humor, 1609. Reprinted, A. H. BuUen, Old Plays, iv, 1885. Timon. MS. Printed, A. Dyce, Shakespeare Society, 1842 ; W. C. Hazlitt, " Shakespeare's Library," vi, 1875. Discussion: W. H. demons, Princeton Univ. Bulletin, 1904 ; J. Q. Adams, •' The Timon Plays," Jrl. Eng. and Germ. Phil., ix (1910), 506 ff : E. H. AVright, " The Authorship of Timon of Athens," 1910. B. PLATS OF CONTEMPOBAET ENGLISH LIFE Chapman, Jonson, and Marston : Eastward Hoe, 1605 (two editions). Reprinted in Dodsley, all edd. except Hazlitt ; An- cient British Drama, ii, 1810 ; Marston's Works, ed. Halliwell (1856) and Bullen (1887) ; Works of Chapman, ed. R. H. Shep- herd, 1874, 1889 ; F. E. Schelling, Belles Lettres series, 1904. Discussion: C. Edmonds, "The Original of the Hero in the Comedy of ' Eastward Hoe,' " Athenaeum, Oct. 13, 1883, p. 463 f ; H. D. Curtis, " The Source of the Petronel- Winifred Plot in 'Eastward Hoe,'" Mod. Phil., v (1907), 105-108. Dekker, Thomas, and Webster, John : Westward Hoe, 1607. Reprinted, A. Dyce, " Works of John Webster," iii, 1830. Northward Hoe, 1607. Reprinted ibid. Discussion : E. E. StoU, "John Webster," 1905; F. E. Pierce, "The Collab- oration of Webster and Dekker," Yale Studies, xxxvii, 1909. 418 THE TUDOR DRAMA JONSON, Ben. Works, 1616 (Foliocontaining the following nine plays : " Every Man iu his Humor," " Every Man out of his Humor," "Cynthia's Revels," "Poetaster," " Sejanus," "The Fox," "The Silent Woman," "The Alchemist," "Catiline "). Reprinted, first 552 pages, W. Bang, Materialien, vii ; remain- der in press. Second edition adding a supplementary volume, containing "Bartholomew Fair," "The Devil is an Ass," " The Staple of News," " The Magnetic Lady," " A Tale of a Tub," "The Sad Shepherd," "Mortimer," 1640 (two issues). Third edition, 1692, adding "The New Inn." Important moiiern editions : P. Whalley, 1756 ; W. Gifford, 1S16 (new ed. 1879) ; F. Cunningham, 1875 ; H. C. Hart, 1906 ; F. E. Schelling, Everyman's Library. A critical edition by P. Simp- son is in preparation. General discussion : P. Aronstein, " Ben Jonson," Literarhistorische Forschungen, xxxiv, 1906 ; C. R. Baskervill, "English Elements in Jonson's Early Comedy," 1911; M. Castelain, "Ben Jonson: I'Homme et I'CEuvre," 1907 ; H. Hoffschulte, " Uber Ben Jonson's iiltere Lustspiele," 1891; F. E. Schelling, " Ben Jonson and the Classical School," Publ. Mixi. Lang. Assoc., xiii (1898), 221 ff ; A. C. Swinburne, "A Study of Ben Jonson," 1889 ; E. Woodbridge, "Studies in Jonson's Comedy," Yale Studies, v, 1898. A Tale of a Tub. First printed in vol. ii of the second Folio, 1640. Every Man in his Humor. (Revised version with English characters.) First printed in 1616 Folio. Reprinted, J. Bell, British Theatre, 1776, etc. ; MoS3. The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia's Revels, 1601. Reprinted, Mermaid Jonson, ii; A. C. Judsou, Yale Studies (in preparation). The Alchemist, 1612. (Stationer's Register, Oct. 3, 1610.) Reprinted 1709, 1732. 1740; Bell's British Theatre, 1777, etc. ; Modern British Drama, 1811 ; AV. R. Thayer, Best REALISTIC COMEDY 419 Elizabethan Plays, 1892 ; B. Nicholson, Mermaid Jonson, iii ; C. M. Hathaway, Yale Studies, xvii, 1903 ; H. C. Hart, 1903; F. E. Schelling, Belles Lettres series, 1904. Dis- cussion: F. E. Schelling, Mod. Lang. Notes, xxvi (1911), C2, 63. EpiccBne, or The Silent Woman. "Acted in the yeere ' 1009." Registered Sept. 20, IGIO. Earliest known edition iu 1G16 Folio. Reprinted under the second title, 1G20. Afod- ern editions : B. Nicholson, Mermaid Jonson, iii ; A. Henry, Yale Studies, xxxi, 1906. Bartholomew Fair. " Acted in the Years 1614." First known edition, with separate title-page dated 1631, included in second volume of Jonson's Works, 1640. Reprinted, Mermaid Jonson, ii ; C. S. Aldeu, Yale Studies, xxv, 1904. The Devil is an Asa. "Acted in the yeare 1616." First known edition, with separate title-page dated 1631, included in the second volume of Jonson's Works, 1640. Reprinted, W. S. Johnson, Yale Studies, xxix, 1905. Discussion : E. HoU- stein, "Das Verhaltnis von Ben Jonson's 'The Devil is an Ass,' und John Wilson's 'Belphegor' zu Machiavelli's ' Novelle von Belfagor,' " 1901. The Staple of News. " Acted in the yeare 1625." Regis- tered 1626. First known edition, with separate title-page dated 1631, included in second volume of Jonson's Works, 1640. Reprinted De Winter, Yale Studies, xxviii, 1905. The New Inn, 1631. Acted 1629. Reprinted third Jonson Folio, 1692. New ed., G. B. Tennant, Yale Studies, xxxiv, 1908. The Magnetic Lady. First printed in the second Jonson Folio, 1640. Licensed, Oct., 1632. MrDDLETON, Thomas. Works ed. A. Dyce, 1840 ; Ed. A. H. Bullen, 1885-86. Michaelmas Term, 1607. A Trick to Catch the Old One. " Presented before his Ma- iestie on New yeares night last," 1008 (two issues). Re- printed 1616. Ed. A. C. Swinburne, Mermaid Middleton, vol. i. The Family of Love, 1608. A Mad "World, My Masters, 1608. Reprinted, "Ancient British Drama," 1810. 420 THE TUDOR DRAMA Your Five Gallants. Two editions without date. Registered March 22, 1G07. Porter, Hknry : The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, 1599 (two editions). Reprinted, A. Dyce, Percy Society, v, 1841 ; Hazlitt's Doihley, vii, 187-i ; Mermaid series, " Nero, etc." 1888; C. M. Gay ley, Representative English Comedies, 1903. Authors Unknown : Parnaasua Plays. " The Pilgrimage to Parnassus" and the First Part of "The Return from Parnas- sus," printed from a Bodleian MS. hy W. D. Macray, 1886. The Second Part of " The Return from Parnassus, Or The Scourge of Simony," printed 1006 (two editions). Also a va- riant MS. copy among llalliwell-Phillips's papers. Reprinted, T. Hawkins, Origin of the English Drama, iii, 1773 ; Ancient British Drama, i, 1810 ; Hazlitt's Dodsley, ix, 1874 ; E. Arber, 1879 ; W. D. Macray (critical ed.), 1886 ; O. Smeaton, Tem- ple Dramatists, 1905. Discussion : B. Corney, " The Return from Parnassus : its authorship," Notes and Queries, Series iii, ix, 387; J. W. Hales, "Three Elizabethan Comedies," Mac- millan's Magazine, 1887 ; W. Luhr, " Die Drei Cambridger Spiele vom Parnass," 1900. Club Law. MS. in St. John's Coll., Cambridge. Printed, G. C. ]\loore Smith, 1907. A Pleasant Conceited Comedy "Wherein is Shewed How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, 1002. Other editions, 1005, 1608, 1014, 1021, 1030, 1034. Reprinted, " The Old English Drama," Hurst, Robinson & Co., with sep- arate title-page dated 1824 ; Hazlitt, Dodsley, ix, 1874. Dis- cussion : C. R. Baskervill, "Source and Analogues of How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad," Publ, Mod. Lang. Assoc, xxiv (1909). The London Prodigal, 1005. "By William Shakespeare" {sic). Reprinted in the third and fourth Shakespeare Folios (1004, 1085). For further bibliography, see The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Sir Giles Goosecap, Knight, 1606. Reprinted, A. H. Bullen, Old English Plays, iii, 1884 ; W. Bang and R. Brotanek, Ma- terialien, xxvi, 1909. Discussion : T. M. Parrott, " The Author- ship of Sir Gyles (looseeappe," Mod. Phil., iv (1906). (Assigns Tery substantial reasons for attributing the play to Chap- man.) REALISTIC COMEDY 421 Wily Beguiled, 1G06. Later editions, 1623, 1630, 1635, 1638, and one other. Reprinted, T. Hawkins, Origin, iii, 1773 ; Ilaz- litt, Dodsley, ix. The Puritan, or The Widow of Watling-Street, 1607. " Written by W. S." Reprinted in the third and fourth Shake- speare Folios (1064, 1685). For further bibliography, see The Shakespeare Apocrypha. CHAPTER XII THK NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DR-VMA TiiK moix^ important devioos of stjwciiig and of histri- onio praotitv which ac\HMnpaniod the development of the Tiidor drama np to the date of Ehziilx'th's a(.x\\«?- sion have Ihhmi disousstxl in the earher chapters of this luH^k. It remains neeessjiry — Ix^foa^ attempting to sketch in some sort the general spirit of the later drama of our jvriod — to mention briefly the external changes and innovations to which the theatrt^ managers re- sortixl during the last thirty or forty years of the sixteenth tvntury in their breathless effort to keep pacv with the unparalleU\l gRiwth in the ix>pularity and cv^mplexity of their \vart\s. We have sixMi that a distinction was clearly reivg- ni/.cni as earl\- as I08O IvlwiXMi the indix^r and out- dt.H>r iH^rformaniv of plays/ and that the interlude of this jH^riod develojHxl with esjxvial roganl to the neetls of indoor. scn\i-private and aristix^ratic presentation. \Vhcn Elizalvth came to the thrvnie, in 15»)S, tlve case wjis mueli the same. There still eo-oxisteil opon-ivir plays for the general public at\d indixir ivrformamvs for the elite. The conditions of private staging had gn>wn far more elalxirate, however, in the interval. The /tVM/<-. for which any gei\tleman's house stXMUs prtniouslN- to have Ixvu sutlicient, was now generally •tixtxi in one of the royal palatvs of Whitehall or Gretni- wich, in the grvwt dining halls of the Oxford and Cam- > tkx p. 69 £. THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 423 bridge colh^gcs or the London Inns ol' (\)urt, or occa- sionally at the n^sidencc of some great noble. The ac(;ounts of the Revels Office bear clear witness to the constantly incr(»asing gorgeousness and exJ)ensiven(^ss of such entertainments.' Kach decade saw enormously amplified the requisition of money and properties to adorn the stage or dress the performers, and the waste- ful tendency exhausted itself finally only in the wild crushing extravagance of the Jacobean masque. The luMghtened re])ute of i)rivate tluvitricals is likewise indicated by the rise of comi)anies of amateur per- formers by the side of the old i)rofessional bands. Such seem to have been ordinarily the actors in the collegiate plays, and so the various children's com- panies of choir-boys should doubtless be considered during all the first part of tiie reign. Through the entire quarter century following the Queen's acces- sion all that was most significant or i)rogressive in Knglish drama expressed itself in these private and occasional performances. Practically every imf)ortant play of this time — "Ferrex and Porrex," "Roister Doister," "Gammer Gurton's Needle," "The Sup- po.ses" and "Jocasta," "(Jismond of Salerne," "The Misfortunes of Arthur," "The Arraignment of Paris," and the early comedies of Lyly — appeared to meet the growing needs and as|)irations of the indoor stage. The i)0[)ular, outdoor theatre, on the other hand, remained for many years after Elizabeth's accession on tlie same low level of development which we have foimd illustrated a full century l)efore in the mi.ic en schne of the vulgarized morality, "Mankind." The * Cf. A. J. Kerapc, Lonelcy MSS., and A. Feuillerat, Rcveb' Accounts, passim. 424 THE TUDOR DRAMA professional actors, all the most reputable of whom reserved their best efforts for private exhibition in the presence of noble or royal patrons, were indeed con- tent to increase their profits by such performances before the rabble as could be arranged without special preparation or outlay. But nearly twenty years of the Queen's reign passed before the appearance of any disposition to consider the particular requirements and opportunities of the popular stage. In the mean time, the public was offered casual amusement in the open- air theatres which chance had provided, and which we have found the rustic mountebanks of "Mankind" already employing, — namely, in the uncovered court- yards of the inns. The assemblages here collected were regaled either with the rudest effusions of traditional clownage and melodrama, or else with the leavings of the more cultured audiences, — plays intended dis- tinctly for private presentation, which the actors hap- pened to have already in their repertoire or which they desired to rehearse in view of some contemplated private performance. Thus it happens that, while the fashionable private drama is found making continu- ous and serious, if not always successful, effort at artistic improvement, the career of the popular stage remains till about 1585 a practical blank; and the na- tional drama bursts forth into immediate and unher- alded bloom only when the great events of the last years of the eighties had caused a fusion between the interests of the public and private stages. The reason for the earlier backwardness of the drama of the people is very largely sociological, an outgrowth of the peculiar status of the actor. The relation of the Tudor government, uninfluenced by Puritanical bias. YARD OF THE FOUR SWANS INN, BISHOPSGATE Illustrating the usual scene of popular dramatic performances before 1575 THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 425 toward professional entertainers is well indicated by the phraseology of a letter from the Lord Mayor of London to the Lord Chancellor/ in which the writer reminds his lordship " that the players of playes which are vsed at the Theatre and other such places and tumblers and such like, are a very superfluous sort of men, and of suche facultie as the lawes haue dis- alowed." The disallowance of the laws during the earlier part of the reign arose, thus, not from moral considerations, but from the " super fluousness" of the class of actors; i. e., their lack of social responsibility, and the difficulty of fitting them closely into that care- ful gradation of rank and mutual dependence which Tudor policy regarded as the only safeguard against riot and sedition. It was this feeling which prompted the statutes of 14 and 39 Elizabeth (1571, 1596), re- quiring "all Fencers, Bearewardes, comon Players of Enterludes and Minstrelles wandring abroade " on j5ain of prosecution as vagabonds, to secure the pat- ronage of some member of the nobility and thus sub- ject themselves to more or less effectual control.^ In their legal consequences these laws were, indeed, of far less importance than it has been usual to believe them. They merely sought to universalize a connec- tion which had been very frequent since before the be- ginning of the Tudor period, and it is unreasonable to infer that they entirely succeeded in their purpose. On the contrary, the very reenactment of the statute in more stringent form would rather indicate, like the ^ Dated April 12, 1580. Reprinted in "The Remembrancia," Malone Society " Collections," i, 46. ^ For the text of these statutes, see W. C. Uazlitt, The English Drama and Stage, 18C9, 21-23, 37 f. 426 THE TUDOR DRAMA repeated prohibition of plays by the mediaeval church, that the abuse continued. Outside the policed dis- tricts of London, if not within them, it is probable that unlicensed actors, as well as "sturdy beggars" and vagabonds of other kinds maintained among the lower classes their illegal traffic. In its bearing upon the history of the stage, the atti- tude of the government was, however, decidedly im- portant. On the one hand, by discrediting all players not directly connected with the nobility, it necessarily limited the activities of the boycotted class to crude and surreptitious performance, and so made the evo- lution of a serious popular drama from this source im- possible. On the other hand, these laws, together with the increasing opposition of the London corporation, greatly enhanced the value to the privileged companies of their relation to their noble patrons, and for a very considerable period caused them to regard the satis- faction of popular audiences as a matter altogether subsidiary to their continuance in favor and reputa- tion before the courtly circle, for whose applause, moreover, they were obliged to compete keenly with the entirely private bands of amateurs. That the bond between the patron and the public entertainers under his protection was throughout Elizabeth's reign, and particularly during the first thirty years of it, something considerably stronger than the legal fiction which it has been called ^ is indi- cated by several kinds of evidence: for example, by the intimate connection of the various Lords Cham- berlain with their respective companies; ^ and by * See F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, i, 143. * See E. K. Chambers, "The Elizabethan Lords Chamberlain," Malone Society "Collections," i, 31 ff. THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 427 Leicester's recommendation to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord President of the North, of his "servauntes — plaiers of interludes," for whom he requests, in Jllne, 1559, liberty of performing in Yorkshire, "being honest men, and suche as shall plaie none other mat- ters (I trust) but tollerable and convenient, whereof some of them have bene herde here (i. e., at West- minster) alreadie before diverse of my Lordis." ^ A like intimate relation is suggested by Leicester's per- sonal accompaniment of his players to Germany in 1585, and by the very frank and spirited letter written by Leicester's brother, the Earl of Warwick (July 23, 1582) to the Lord Mayor in behalf of his "servant," John David, a professional master of defence, alleged to have been discriminated against in his purpose of giving a public exhibition at the Bull in Bishopsgate.^ The earliest indication of a tendency on the part of the professional actors to put the public performance of plays on a commercial basis, and thus to distinguish their popular exhibitions from the unorganized and casual shows of the tumblers, bearwards, fencers, and minstrels with whom it was usual to class them, appears about 1575 in the erection of the first build- ings designed particularly for dramatic entertainment. A sermon preached at Paul's Cross by one Thomas White, December 9, 1576, denounces the "sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly," and the distinctive names of the original playhouses, The Theatre and The Curtain, are mentioned both by John Northbrook in his Trea- ^ Quoted by Collier, Introduction to Northbrook's Treatise;, Shakespeare Society, 1843, p. vii. * Cf. Remembrancia, 55-58. 428 THE TUDOR DRAMA tise against "Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine playes, or En- terluds, with other idle pastimes," licensed in 1577, and 'in a sermon delivered by John Stockwood in 1578.1 The construction of these edifices, built in close proximity in Shoreditch, just outside the sphere of influence of the hostile London Council, marks an advance in the development of the popular theatre which is more striking on the economic than on the architectural side. The lines followed by the builders were substantially those of the old inn-yard, with its interior balconies, unfloored pavement, and open roof; and only little effort was made, so far as we can as- certain, to emulate the greater sumptuousness and convenience of the indoor private theatre. Thus, the ancient tradition of outdoor representation, the arrangements for placing the various classes of the audience, and all the characteristic devices of stage practice, remained practically unaltered. The build- ing of the Theatre and Curtain is mainly significant, because it proves the great growth in public interest in drama, which the literature of the time everywhere attests, and because it shows on the part of the actors a correspondingly increased attention to the popular exercise of their profession. Henceforth, the per- formance of plays before the multitude was a business prosecuted, not carelessly and at hap-hazard, but as a permanent career and at the expense of considerable outlay by astute men of affairs like James Burbage, leader of Leicester's company and builder of the * See Collier's Introduction to Northbrook's Treatise, and E. N. S. Thompson, Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage, 1903, 103 £. THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 429 Theatre. Under these conditions, it was not long before the profits incident to the public staging of plays became so large as to raise to notable affluence a great number of stockholder-actors like Shakespeare, Alleyn, and the younger Burbage, and even to attract the cupidity of speculators originally unconnected with the profession. The best instance of the latter class is, of course, the illiterate but shrewd Philip Henslowe, builder of the third public theatre, the Rose,^ and long the most energetic rival of Shakespeare in practical matters. It is not to be supposed that the newer theatres entirely supplanted the inn-yard as the scene of popu- lar dramatic performance at any time during the life of Elizabeth. It was the Cross Keys Inn in Grace- church Street which in 1589 harbored Lord Strange's Men and thus inaugurated the career, as it would seem, of the greatest of all the London companies, — that of Shakespeare.^ Such inns continued till after the accession of James I to furnish the regular acting place for smaller companies, and even occasionally to accommodate the greatest and most flourishing, when such accidents as fire, plague, or civic opposition de- prived them of more ambitious stages. And, though the regular theatres developed enormously in seating capacity and magnificence after 1590, receiving in some cases gorgeous interior adornment, it was prob- ably long before they produced any essential innova- tion in method or capability of stage presentation. The practical superiority of Shakespeare's Globe over ^ The date at which the Rose was 6rst opened as a theatre ranges between 1587 and 1592. Cf. W. W. Greg, Henslowe' s Diary, ii, 44. » Ihid'., 72, 73. 430 THE TUDOR DRAMA the contemporary inn-yard we may assume to have been less a matter of dramatic effectiveness than of size and regular business control. Nor did the rise of separate theatres succeed in entirely distinguishing play-acting from the other forms of popular entertainment with which it had formerly been associated. Lord Strange's company appears to have had its humble origin in a band of bey tumblers first mentioned as performing at court in 1580.^ The usual end of declining theatres was em- ployment as the scene for fencing and acrobatic exhi- bitions; and the prudent Henslowe constructed a building, as late as 1613, which could be used at will for bear-baiting or acting, and which, after having seen the original production of "Bartholomew Fair," was soon given over entirely to the more vulgar amuse- ment, ^ The details of Elizabethan staging are largely ob- scure, and probably not wholly susceptible of explana- tion; but the main principles and the general effects produced are now hardly doubtful. It is likely that the crudities and inconsistencies of presentation have been considerably over-emphasized. Certainly, a good deal of progress in practical stagecraft was made dur- ing the last decades of the century, and the absurd- ities ridiculed by Sidney in 1580 cannot be safely predicated of the theatre of 1600. The stage itself seems to have been of generous size both in the inn- yard and in the regular playhouse. In Henslowe's Fortune — perhaps the largest of the Elizabethan buildings — 43 feet by 40, out of a total ground area ^ Henslowe s Diary, ii, 71. 2 The "Hope" Theatre. See Greg, loc. cit., 66-68.' THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 431 of 80 feet square, were set apart for the stage and "tiring-house." ^ Three divisions of the stage must be recognized : an outer and an inner (or a forward and rear) portion, which might be separated by a curtain, and a balcony raised above the inner stage. ^ The precise position and number of curtains, and the arrangement of the doors leading from the tiring-house behind the stage, are questions in dispute, and perhaps differed in the vari- ous theatres. The main use of the balcony was to in- dicate distance between the speakers. It might repre- sent the walls of a besieged city, a lady's chamber, or the scaffolding of Barabas's caldron. A great deal of the confusion prevalent in regard to the mise en scene of Elizabethan plays is probably due to the failure to discriminate between the practice of the popular theatres and that observed in private per- formances. In the latter case the stage was ordinarily a temporary platform erected at the end of the hall used for the presentation, and necessarily removed, of course when the hall was restored to its normal func- tion.^ Thus, till the influence of popular procedure * On the shape of the Elizabethan stage, see my article in the New York Nation, Dec., 1910. ^ Probably the best discussion of Elizabethan staging is con- tained in V. E. Albright's Shaksperian Stage, 1909, which supplies also a criticism of the rival dissertations of C. Brodmeier (1904); G. F. Reynolds, 1905; and R. Wegener, 1907. A general survey of the subject and an excellent bibliography will be found in the Cam- bridge History of Eng. Lit., vi, ch. x. 3 In illustration of the flimsy nature of the stage architecture in private performances, see the account of the fatal accident which occurred when Edwards's lost Palemon and Arcite was acted before Queen Elizabeth in Christ Church hall, Oxford (1566). Nicholls, Progresses of Elizabeth, 1823, 210-213. 432 THE TUDOR DRAMA and the growing tendency to prodigality in indoor theatricals began to prepare the way for the extrava- gance of Inigo Jones and tlie other great Stuart archi- tects of the private stage, the court and college dramas seem to have been produced upon a slight elevated flooring concealed by a single curtain or by none. We find, therefore, that the interludes, the early imitations of Latin drama, and the court comedies of Lyly — all intended for indoor performance — either make no effort at visualizing scene, or adhere to the constant Roman i)racticc of a street before several houses, or else resort to such childish devices for indicating change of place as the pushing of Diogenes's tub on and off the stage in full view of the spectators. These im])crfections of the private theatre should not be permitted to obscure one's realization that, by the last decade of the century, the public stage had comparatively satisfactory means of suggesting change of localily, and even of creating dramatic illusion, in the permanent threefold division mentioned above. An invariable i)ractice cannot safely be assumed, but it is highly probable that verisimilitude was obtained to a large degree by a somewhat regular alternation be- tween scenes acted on the outer portion only of the lower stage and scenes in which the inner portion also was exposed. The balcony above could be separately screened when not required, and it might be uised in connection with cither the outer or the entire lower stage. The inner stage seems often to have been rather elaborately tlecoratcd and to have contained a consiilcrablc amount of furniture. The outer divi- sion, on the other hand, we may imagine to have been totally, or almost totally, bare, and it was probably Tni.i;-rA(iK ov n. kiciiauhs's "TUAUKDY OK MESSALLINA," 1G40 Acted by the Coinpsiny of his Majesty's Revels. With sketch of stage and actors THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 433 used for indefinitely located scenes requiring space for relatively few actors. All Elizabethan dramas abound in brief scenes of monologue or casual conversation, in which the chorus, hero or villain, a couple of court gentlemen, or a knot of clowns occupy the attention of the audience in the intervals between weightier scenes involving a great number of figures and demanding clear localization. In many of these cases, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the slighter passage was particularly devised for the purpose of beguiling the time, while behind the drawn intermediate curtain, the rear stage was being decorated.^ By some such method as this, we may be sure, changes of place were marked without that tedious period of blank expect- ancy between the scenes which no Elizabethan audi- ence would ever have endured, and which becomes possible even in the modern theatre only when the number of changes is greatly reduced. It is certain that the Elizabethan popular theatre made use of numerous stage properties and attempted, according to its standards, a considerably more real- istic imitation of life than seems often to be imagined. Frank anachronism, of course, must be conceded, both in the dress of the actors and in scenic decoration. Apart, however, from this failure to distinguish be- tween the fashions of the ages, the dramatists and managers were undoubtedly fully aware of the pic- torial limitations of their staging, and eager to heighten the illusion of the spectators. Though the bulk of the expense of setting out a play went in purchase of cos- ^ Cf. The Puritan, III, Hi, iv. See also A. H. Tolman, "Alter- nation in the Staging of Shakespeare's Plays," Mod. Phil., vi (1909), 517 ff. 434 THE TUDOR DRAMA tumes for the performers, Henslowe's lists of expendi- tures are in themselves sufficient evidence of the atten- tion paid to scenic furnishings; and everything we know of the procedure of the day emphasizes the fal- lacy of assuming for the theatre of Shakespeare's time a smaller regard for pictorial effect than can be clearly proved for the performances of the mystery cycles two centuries before. Practicable furniture of many kinds — trees that could be climbed or lopped off, hedges and arrases that would really conceal — did undoubtedly exist, and could certainly be replaced by other fittings when change of scene rendered them glaringly out of keeping. Of scenery in the modern sense there can hardly be a question; but painted cloths may have been used somewhat ambitiously to suggest buildings, or even landscape, — particularly perhaps in connection with the upper balcony stage. The boards hung up to pro- claim the scene of action, and occasionally the title of the play as well, were merely the equivalent of the modern theatre programme, and cannot be regarded as in any sense a substitute or alternative for visual scenery. Altogether, the numerous plays printed directly from the prompter's copies used in the theatres, and such documents as "Henslowe's Diary" and the re- cords of eye-witnesses of performances bear out inher- ent probability in showing the stage of 1600 to have been unusually plastic and inventive in its solution of the external problems of presentation, and not indif- ferent — as it has sometimes been held — but sensitive in the highest degree to the real capabilities of stage business and scenic effect. ;-'\ THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 435 The external development of the EHzabethan the- atre, with which we have just been concerned, was influenced at several points by the course of critical opinion regarding the drama. We have seen how the governmental regulation of player companies, by checking the free evolution of a vulgar democratic stage, kept the popular drama for a time in subjection to the interests of private aristocratic performance, but ended by enriching the former with the heritage of experiment and innovation which the learned writers for the private stage had accumulated. Thus the pub- lic theatre of 1590 acquired a breadth of scope and a universal adaptability impossible to a purely indige- nous plebeian growth. In addition to this influence of practical policy, two great waves of formal contro- versy, which came to a head during the reign of Eliza- beth, left their mark upon the drama as upon other species of literature. The first of these forces was the all-embracing tide of Puritan philosophy, which, beginning in a more or less academic and impartial query concerning the justification of ornamental art in general, directed its arraignment not only against the stage, but against practically all poetry and fiction, music, and dancing. This attitude of mind, voiced in its mildest aspect by Ascham, repeats itself in slightly more specialized form in the works of Northbrook and Gosson, — the earli- est important antagonists of the theatre, — and finds a response equally catholic and far-reaching in Sid- ney's noble "Apologie for Poetrie." However, in the heat of the quarrel thus punctiliously opened, atten- tion concentrated itself more and more upon the most concrete object of dispute: the contemporary stage. 436 THE TUDOR DRAMA The growing force of anti-dramatic prejudice, strong enough from the start to prevent the erection of the- atres within the Umits of London municipal control and very seriously to hamper even irregular inn-yard performances in the same district, succeeded during the Stuart period in depriving the drama first of its chief right to live, and then, for a space, of all open existence.^ The other great critical dispute, only less universal in its issues than that occasioned by the rise of the Puritan attitude, likewise affected the drama at first merely as one of the branches of creative poetry. This controversy, taking its origin from the Renaissance, as the other arose from the Reformation, sought a final permanent settlement for all questions of literary standard and artistic form. The proposition debated was in effect this : Granted once that imaginative litera- ture had a moral claim to existence, should it find its expression in the ev.er changing patterns evolved from time to time by contemporary taste, or could it dis- cover in classic usage stylistic and structural models of universal application ? In a conflict waged thus over the whole field of poetic practice, it is hardly surpris- ing that the opposing lines became sometimes curi- ously confused. Thus, Spenser and Campion — two of the most graceful expositors of the romantic capa- bilities of English verse, and both special masters of rhythmic effect — became conspicuous assailants of the " barbarousness " of rime, and defenders of the ungainly and rasping imitations of classic metre. On * It should be remembered, however, that surreptitious dramatic performances were never absolutely abolished during the era of Puritan control. THE NATURE OF ELIZABETIUN DRAMA 437 the other side, Daniel, the most distinguished stickler for chissic regularity in the drama, delivered the final decisive blow in defence of the general romantic con- tention in his eloquent and unanswerable "Defence of Rime." As far as the theatre was concerned, this dispute tended to resolve itself into an opposition, probably not clearly recognized at first, between the private stage, strongly inclined to classic uniformity and regu- larity, and the popular drama, which grew increasingly romantic and irregular as it grew more independent. The issue of the controversy can be traced through the previous chapters in the gradual decline of the drama of Latin imitation and the development of the various national, "romantic" types. The period at which the result was decided appears from the fact that Sir Philip Sidney, writing his "Apology for Poetry" about 1580, pronounces strongly — and con- sidering the state of the English theatre at the time, undoubtedly justly — in favor of plays built on classic lines. Ten years later, however, the romantic popular type had so completely outstripped competition that adherence to classic rule continues to show itself only in dramatic freaks and "sports,'Mike the effusions of the Countess of Pembroke's school, or in unsuccessful efforts at compromise between the two methods such as Jonson's Roman tragedies. Thus the purely literary controversy between classi- cism and romanticism settled itself within the limits of time to which our study has been restricted with as much finality as such critical uncertainties can ever reach. The other broader issue, involved in the Puri- tan hostility to the stage, was protracted far into the 438 THE TUDOR DRAMA Stuart period, and any proper understanding of its vital consequences requires a careful review of the general progress of pre-Restoration drama in England. Such a review will perhaps make clear also the essential nature of the Elizabethan drama and the fundamental differences which distinguish it from that of the suc- ceeding age. The late Mr. J. A. Symonds has written a well- known essay ^ "On the Drama of Elizabeth and James considered as the main product of the Renaissance in England." The dependence of the Elizabethan drama on the Renaissance is, of course, a commonplace every- where acknowledged and so oft reiterated that it has almost ceased to appear a commonplace, and has come to be accepted as an article of unreasoning faith. To recognize the connection, however, is to do little more than admit that a great imaginative upheaval has produced great imaginative results. We are little nearer than before to the answer to the question of real importance; namely, just what these results were, and exactly in what manner they were displaj^ed. That strange literary product, the drama of the Tudor and Jacobean age, can best be likened, perhaps, by a rather homely comparison, to the seed-pod of some leguminous plant. Starting from the slender promise of the stem, it grows with a fecundity be- yond explanation, through imperfect or stunted pro- ducts to the large girth and richness of the centre. Then, as if the life-giving power were gradually with- drawn, it becomes ever narrower and more restricted, till it ends in sheer abortion. Those who attempt the ^ Printed as General Introduction to the Mermaid edition of Marlowe. THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 439 study of such an organism from a cross section through the middle — as is commonly the method in litera- ture — are confounded by the number, the variety, and the mutual unlikeness of the cells. It is better that one endeavor first to discover the few genital ele- ments whose presence creates all the diverse mani- festations of maturity, and whose absence transforms maturity into decay. That some such causes exist for the brilliant bloom of Elizabethan drama and its subsequent degenera- tion admits of no doubt. The accident of individual genius by no means accounts sufficiently for the phe- nomena. But we shall probably never be able to lay these causes completely bare, and to estimate the pre- cise importance of each. There appear, however, two considerations, which, if they did not completely con- trol the progress of pre-Restoration drama, are at least closely correlated with its rise, flourishing, and decline. They are: first, the relation of the drama at different stages to religious feeling; and, second, its relation to the personal life and the political views of its age. From the time of the English Renaissance — about the time, let us say, of Skelton's "Magnificence" — to the period of Elizabeth's accession, the drama had been gradually working itself away from the religious tendencies of medisevalism and in the direction of vulgar comedy. The movement was quite natural, and its first beginnings long antedate the period I have mentioned. It was not carried out, however, entirely without a check, because the English Reformation and the theological disputes it engendered gave to religion for a time a particular dramatic interest. Thus, 440 THE TUDOR DRAMA we find a kind of recrudescence of the clerical element in the work of the Protestant zealot, Bishop Bale, and the authors of "New Custom" and "King Darius," and in the strongly anti-reformatory play of "Respub- lica." These controversial pieces, however, stand by themselves, and perhaps had but little influence on general taste and procedure. By the time the real Elizabethan drama was inaugurated in the earliest works of Peele, Kyd, and Marlowe, the stage had com- pletely enfranchised itself from definitely ecclesiastical tendencies. In general, the drama would appear to have main- tained a position of neutrality on the subject of reli- gion, though certainly not without occasional lapses into polemics, from about 1585 till the death of Elizabeth. The greatest and sanest work of this period stands free, as it ought to do, both of religious coloring and of theological dispute. But already a strong reflex movement had begun. No sooner had the theatre emancipated itself from vassalage to the ancient, church than it was threatened with total annihilation by the newborn forces of Puritanism. The Puritan attack had begun, as has been seen, very early in Eliza- beth's reign, and it manifested itself in at least two ways: in constant opposition to theatres and things theatrical on the part of the representatives of middle- class respectability; and in formal public denuncia- tions like Northbrook's Treatise and Stephen Gos- son's "School of Abuse," published as early as 1577 and 1579 respectively. Of such pamphlets there was indeed no end; they increased in virulence and in number as the century declined and the next century began. Among the host may be mentioned Thomas THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 441 Beard's "Theatre of God's Judgments," 1598, which after passing through several editions, was recast by another hand and brought out under a title savoring no less than the first of sulphur and brimstone, "The Theatre of God's Judgments" being heightened into "The Thunderbolt of God's Wrath." Another ex- pression of the same attitude is William Vaughan's "Golden Grove," first printed in 1600 and reedited in 1608. The sixty-sixth chapter of the second edition of this work proposes the question, "Whether Stage playes ought to be suffred in a Common- wealth," and pi-oceeds to answer it most emphatically in the nega- tive. For a time, as we have said, the greater Elizabethan dramatists held their course, unaffected by the Puri- tan onslaughts; biit this could not long continue to be the case. Players and playwrights, having had the position of pariahs forced upon them, gradually ac- commodated their lives and writings to the character. Offences originally casual became conscious and dis- proportioned. What had been no more than the necessary dark shading in the picture of actual life was dwelt upon till the whole effect grew morbid and ugly. There can be no doubt that the blame for this rests rather with Puritanism than with the drama. It was quite impossible for the latter long to ignore the hue and cry that was raised against it, and submission to Puritan dictation meant nothing short of absolute extinction. There was no choice but avowed hostility. The gauntlet so often thrown down by the opposite party must at length be taken up, though by that act the drama sealed its doom. Henceforth, its two chief elements of greatness were vanished. From being the 442 THE TUDOR DRAMA voice of a great nation undivided, it must descend to the place of mouthpiece to a particular faction; and with its representative character it lost also its im- partiality of vision. It could no longer depict life as life really was: the poison spot of anti-Puritan bitter- ness soon spread so as to infect the whole body and sour its whole judgment of men and manners. The year in which Elizabeth died — 1603 — is in a number of ways a convenient landmark in the progress of dramatic history. It is about this time that the drama begins to grow conscious of the break with the forces of religion and morality. Already in Shake- speare's later work there are uneasy allusions to Brownists and Precisians. In plays like "Eastward Hoe" (1605), "The Puritan" (1607), and "Bartholo- mew Fair" (1614), the antagonism is acknowledged, but it is not yet too bitter to furnish matter for jest. Ridicule, however, even in the skilful hands of Ben Jonson and Marston, collapsed like a wall of sand before the advancing tide of Puritanism. The genera- tion which began with the production of "Measure for Measure" and "Eastward Hoe" saw the drama slowly driven from its position. Little by little, the ground of sober reason and reality crumbled under its feet, till it slipped almost unawares into the bog of motive- less ribaldry. During the last phase — to speak roughly, during the Caroline epoch — English drama is no longer what it had successively been, either the coadjutor, or the compeer, or the jealous rival, or the desperate assailant of Religion. It has forfeited all claim to consideration as a moral and ethical force, has accepted the brand of vagabondage, and is con- tent to make its appeal to moral outcasts. THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 443 It was for this reason that Stuart drama faded and decayed, rather than from any of the more usual causes of literary decline. The interesting and on many accounts marvellously attractive work of that period — the work of Fletcher and Middleton, Massinger and Shirley — displays assuredly no lack of imagina- tive brilliance or poetic beauty. In richness of color- ing and skill of plot construction it rivals the highest achievement of the true Elizabethans. The form is there in almost undiminished splendor; it is the healthy spirit, the sane and comprehensive grasp of life, which is missing. Something of this sort is what Professor Dowden means by the following paragraph from his book, "Puritan and Anglican": ^ — "The chief glory of Elizabethan literature was the drama, with the deepest passion and the most heroic actions of humanity for its theme. It had its basis in what is most real in the life of man, and what is real was interpreted into the highest meanings by imagina- tion. During the latter years of the reign of James I and during the reign of Charles the drama lost touch with reality; it was cut off from its true basis of supply. It advanced with a showy gallantry, but its strength and solidity of movement were gone. It relied too often, as with Massinger and Fletcher, on overstrained, fantastic motives. It deserted the substantial ground of national history. It endeavoured to excite a jaded imagination with extravagances of romantic passion or even of unnatural lust. It sought for curiosities of prettiness in sentiment and imagery. It supported its decline by splendors appealing to the senses; vast sums 1 Pages 2, 3. 444 THE TUDOR DRAMA of money were expended upon the masque. It grew shallow in true passion and meditative wisdom. It grew rhetorical; its moralities are often those of eloquent periods. And if at times less rudely gross th^n the earlier drama, it was infected ^with a subtler and a baser spirit of evil." The words quoted, like much of what has just been said in discussing the attitude of the drama toward moral tendencies, have an application which extends far beyond the limits of religion or of ethics. During the age of which we are treating, dramatic literature and established religion were infinitely more than the narrowly defined and essentially unrelated phenomena they are at present. Each had potentially, at least, if not in actuality, a scope so enormous as to include within itself the entire social, political, and intellectual import of the national life: and that would probably be no very distorted conception of history which should regard the Elizabethan impulse toward dra- matic self-expression and the great Puritan movement as the protagonists in a struggle, where the prize of victory was nothing less than the power of shaping the ideals and interests of the English people. The discussion, therefore, of the gradual overthrow of the Elizabethan drama as an ethical force links itself naturally with what I have referred to as the second great cause of the drama's decline: its gradual divorce from the serious concerns of contemporary life. The gain of Puritanism was here also the loss of the drama; and the latter was deprived of its very blood and brawn when the spirit of the age came to be expressed no longer through it, but through the lit- erary work of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Milton, THE NATURE OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 445 and the political personalities of Hampden, Selden, and Cromwell. During the interval between 1603 and 1642 the drama underwent a sort of desiccation; it lost its sap and freshness. The milk of human kindness and catholic sympathy, which keeps the work of Eliza- beth's reign sweet in spite of all its outspoken coarse- ness, was soured first into cynicism and at length com- pletely evaporated, leaving nothing behind but a dried and hollow shell. The first stage of the change is found in the plays of Webster, Tourneur, and Ford. Here is as yet no coldness or lack of vitality, surely; but the warmth is that of fever rather than health. The connection with genuine English life and feeling has been broken, once for all. Neither in the individual characters nor in the general spirit which informs such plays as "Vittoria Corombona," "The Revenger's Tragedy," and "The Broken Heart," is there much suggestion of the real seventeenth-century England. Throughout, one finds the stale and acrid flavor of decadent Italianism, consciously imported and mor- bidly emphasized. In its general tendencies, indeed, and in its fundamental character, this school of drama is no longer English; it is "Italianate" in the full de- rogatory sense in which Roger Ascham employs the term,^ and to a much more harmful degree than any literary force of Aschara's day could possibly have been. The fierce flame of unnatural passion which lends heat and brilliance to the plays of Webster and Ford was necessarily short-lived: it was but the last wild 1 See The Scholemaster, ed. Arber, English Reprints, 1870, 77- 81. 446 THE TUDOR DRAIVIA guttering that preceded extinction, and it consumed in its sudden blaze the final remnants of dramatic fuel. By its ignoring of the ordinary human interests, Ja- cobean tragedy had already squandered the principal resource upon which its continuance depended. After Ford, there was no psychological abnormity, no im- aginable depth of misery or excess of half-crazed pas- sion, which could stimulate any longer dramatic atten- tion. We have the inevitable result in much of the work of Glapthorne and Shirley. The drama is but a polished crust, void of psychical interest and philo- sophic import. It has but two dimensions: there is no depth to it. If we attempt to probe the hearts of the characters, to search beneath the cut and thrust of the dialogue and the orderly procession of incident for the organic life that inspires the whole, we find little but dead dust and putrefaction. The main cause, therefore, why the English drama of the reigns of James I and Charles I steadily de- clined, and finally came near to death, is not to be dis- covered in the hostility of the law-makers or the dis- turbances of civil war, though these forces, naturally, contributed in some measure. The main reason is the fact that the Stuart drama came by successive stages, the first of which dates from very early in the reign of James, to represent almost the complete negation of those qualities of nationalism and responsiveness to the waves of popular feeling, which gave the drama of Elizabeth its exuberant vigor and its wonderful com- plexity. INDEX INDEX (Individual plays are entered separately according to their titles, rather than under the names of authors. Wherever the authorship is deter- mined, the writer's name follows the title of the play. Numerals printed in italic refer to bibliographical sections of the book; those printed in fuU- faced type indicate formal discussions of the subject indexed.) "ABR.iHAM's S.^cp.iFiCE," play of, in Brome MS. Ste "Brome"; in Dub- lin MS. See "Dublin"; translated from French by A. Golding, 133, 144- "Acolastus," 124, note. Adams, J. Q., 96, note; i02. S94, 417. iElian, 173. .(Eschylus, 326. ".iEthiopica" (.Ethiopian History), by Heliodorus, 259 /., 261. "Alaham" (Fulke Greville), 201, £26. "Albion Knight." 109, 143. Albright, V. E., 33, note; 431, note 2. " Albumazar" (T. Tomkis), 169. "Alchemist, The" (Ben. Jonson), 152, 169, 1S4, 402, 418 /. Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stir- ling, 201, 202, eS6. "Alexandrsean, The" (Sir William Alexander), 201. Alleyn, E., 58, 429. "All Fools" (G. Chapman), 154, 1S7, 402, 404/., .^/e. "All for Money" (T. Lupton), 111. 117-119, 141, 143. "All's Well that Ends Well" (Shake- speare), 243, note; 2S1 /. "Alphonsus of Arragon" (R. Greene), 246. S35. 265. "Alphonsus of Germany," 212, 219/., 238. Alsfeld. passion play of. 18. " Amadis of Gaul." 233, 234, 243. "Ameto" (G. Boccaccio), 260. "Aminta" (T. Tasso), 289/., 395. "Amphitruo" (Plautus). relation of. to "Jack Juggler," 157/.; relation of, to "The Birth of Hercules," 160. Amyot, Jacques. 260. "Andria" (Terence). 168, t8S. V Antonio and Mellida," Ufo parts (J. Marston), 220, S28, 380. "Antonius" (Countess of Pembroke, from Garnier). 198/.. 200, ^^25. "Antony and Cleopatra" (Shake- speare), 330, 336 /, 348. "Appius and Virginia" (R. B.), 58, 120, note; 138, 140. 145, 205. 206. Arber. Edward. 386. "Arcadia" (Sannazzaro). 260. "Arcadia" (Sir P. Sidney), 256, 260. 262, 280. 288. "Arden of Feversham." 352, 354, 335-357, 359-361. 368, 387. Ariosto, L. See "Suppositi." Armada. The. 175, 345. "Arraignment of Paris, The" (G. Peele), 180, 187, 265, 290, 423. Arthur. See "King Arthur." Ascension Day. dramatic services on, 3. Ascham, Roger. 37. 164. 233, 435, 445. "As You Like It" (Shakespeare), 152, 179, 256, 263, 269, 270. 274, 279, 280, 283, 284, 287, 2S8, 295. "Aulularia" (Plautus), 404. Autolycus. 108. 396 /. Bacon. Francis. 194. Bale, John, 74. note; 85. 86-88, 91, 100, 112; German connections, 130; 149, 440. Ballad, The, 230. 231. See also "Rox- burghe." Bandello, M., 257. Bariona, L. (Lawrence Johnson?), 165, 168. "Barnavelt, Sir John van Olden," (J. Fletcher?), 345, note; 349. Barnes, Barnabe. See "Devil's Char- ter." "Bartholomew Fair" (B. Jonson), 79, 367, 402, 407, 419, 430, 442. Baskervill, C. R., 411. note; 418, 4S0. 450 INDEX "Battle of Alcazar, The" (G. Peele), 304, 310, 311 /., 346. Beard, Thomas, 441. Beatty, Arthur, 4, note; 41- Beccari, A., 289. "Beech's Tragedy," 362. Berners, Lord, translator. See "Huon of Bordeaux" and "Froissart." Beverley (in Yorkshire), lost plays acted at, 7, 12, 49. Beza, Theodore, 133, I44. "Biron," two parts (G. Chapman), 250, 322, 349. ."Birth of Hercules, The" (adapted from the " Amphitruo" of Flautus), 160, 184. "Birth of Merlin, The," 191, note; 340, 360. "Black Bateman of the North" (lost play), 353. "Black Dog of Newgate, The" (lost play), 353, 354/. Blackfriars Theatre. 300, note; 380, 382. "Blind Beggar of Alexandria, The" (G. Chapman), 402/., 416. " Blind Beggar of Bednal-Green, The " (Chettle and Day), 3«, 351. "Blurt Master Constable" (T. Mid- dleton), 417. Boas, F. S., 158, note; 384, note. Bobadill, 151. Boccaccio, G., 135, 166, 257, 260. Bolingbroke, L. T., 7, note; 4I. Bond, R. W., 173, 184, 185. Borne, William (or Birde), 354. Boy Bishop, The, 4. Bradley, Henry, 105, note; I4S, 162, note; 183. Brandon, Samuel. See "Octavia." Brereton, J. LeG., 254, 296. "Broken Heart, The" (J. Ford), 445. Brome; play of "Abraham's Sacrifice," preserved at, 21-23, 45. Brooke, Lord. See Greville. Brooke, C. F. T., 95, note; 177, note; 253, 254, 431, note. "Buckingham" (lost play), 322. "Bugbears, The," 168 /., 184, 403, note. Bullen, A. H., 184, 242. 254. Burbage, James (the elder), 428. Burbage, Richard (the younger). 58, 300, 429. Burghley (or Burleigh), Lord, 171,176. "Burial and Resurrection," plays of, 20, 21, 45. Bussy d'Ambois, two parts (G. Chap- man), 220, 229, 250. Cady. F. W.. 6. note; 44. "Csesar, Julius" (Sir William Alexan- der), 201, 202, 226. "Csesar, Julius" (Shakespeare). 202, 313. 332. 336-338, 349, 375, note; 382. 396. "Caesar and Pompey " (G. Chapman). See "Pompey and Csesar." "Calisto and Melibea," 133/.. 14s. "Cambises. King of Persia" (T. Preston). 58. 138. 139, 140, 146, 205, 206, 207, 239. "Campaspe" (J. Lyly), 173 /., 178, 185/., 279. Campion, Thomas, 436. "Candlemas Day" (Digby play so called), 23-25, 46. See also "Dig- by." "Captives, The" (T. Heywood), I84. "Captivi" (Plautus), 164, 403, note; 404. "Ca.se is Altered, The" (B. Jonson), 373, 374, 380, 403, 404, 417. "Castle of Perseverance, The," 17, 50, 51-61, 65, 67, 76, 78, 89, 90. 110, 119, 136/. "Catiline his Conspiracy" (B. Jon- son), 226, 349. "Celestina," 133, 145. "Chabot, Tragedy of " (Chapman and Shirley), 345, note. Chambers, E. K., 8, note; 38, 49, 147, note; 426, note 2. Chapman, George, 187, 220, 228, 394, 399, 402, 404-406, 416. Charlemagne. See "Distracted Em- peror." Chaucer, Geoffrey, 2, 24, 36, 37, 50, 79; connection between, and John Heywood, 93; 95, 96, 97; 108, 123, 166, 290, 409. Chester, plays performed at, 8, 15; relationship with Brome play of " Abraham's Sacrifice," 22; 35, 36, 43; lost play of King Robert of Sicily played at, 46. Chettle, Henry, 212, 220, 228, 275, 301, note; 353, 362, 374, note; 408. "Chinon of England" (lost play), 322. Christmas, dramatic services at, 3. "Christ's Burial and Resurrection." See "Burial." Churchyard, Thomas, 179, 180, 187. Cinthio, G., 257, 268. INDEX 451 "Cleopatra" (S. Daniel), 200, 202, 225 f. ""Club Law," 413/., 420. "Clyomon and Clamides," 336/, 26S. "Cobbler's Prophecy. The" (R. Wil- son), 140, 145. Collier, J. P., 38 /., 121, note; 130, note; 219, 353, note; 371, note. Collins, J. Churton, 271. "Comedy of Errors, The" (Shake- speare), 149, 152, 153, 159. "Comedy of Humors, The" (G. Chapman), 405., "Common Conditions," 237/., S6S. "Concordia Regularis," 3, 42. Condell, Henry, 386. " Conflict of Conscience " (N.Woodes) , 52, note; 120-122, 129, 143. Congreve, William, 282. "Contention between Liberality and Prodigality," 120, 122/., 143. "Coriolanus" (Shakespeare), 330, 337, 348, 396. "Cornelia" (T. Kyd), 198, 199 /., 225, 240. Cornish plays: mystery plays, 17, I .*5/.,54. 57;"LifeofSt. Meriasek." 31, note; 46. Corpus Christi, establishment of fes- tival, 6, 29, 85. Coventry, plays acted at, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 43. .See also "Ludus Coventrise." Cox, Captain, of Coventry, 234. ."Cox of Collumpton" (lost play by Day and Haughton), 353. Crawford, Charles, 356, note. Creed plays, 48 /. Creizenach, W., 38, 80, note; 206, note. "Croesus" (Sir William Alexander), 201, 226. Cromwell, Oliver, 445. "Cromwell, Thomas Lord," 299, note; 321, 347 f. Cromwell, Thomas, 35. Croxton play. See "Sacrament, Play of." Cunliffe, J. W., 144, 181 /., I84, 194, note; 195, 222, 224 f- "Cursor Mundi," 2. Curtain Theatre, 427, 428. "Cymbeline" (Shakespeare), 191, note; 279, 282, 285, 339, 350. "Cynthia's Revels" (B. Jonson), 372, 374, 375/., 377, 378, note; 380, 382, 411, 414, 418. Cyrus. See "Wars of Cyrus." "Damon and Pithias" (R. Edwards), 68, 138, 14B, 188, 205, 206, 239. Dance, village, 4, 230; morris, 4; dance of death, 61. Daniel, P. A., 367. Daniel, Samuel, 200, 201, 202, 226 f 290/., 374, 437. "Daphnis and Chloe" (Longus), 259 260, 261. "Darius" (Sir William Alexander). 201. "Darius." See "King Darius." "David and Bethsabe" (G. Peele). 142. Day, Angel, 260. Day, John, 288, 353, 354, 362. "Death of Robert. Earl of Hunting- ton" (Munday and Chettle), 273- 276, 294, 341. "Debate of the Body and Soul" 50. Dekker, Thomas, 301, note; 340, 353 354, 372, 373, 374, 376, 377, 378, 384, 388, 408, 410, 415, 417. Dennis, John, 401. "De-vil is an Ass, The" (B, Jonson) 419. "Devil's Charter, The" (B. Barnes). 212, 220, 228. "Diana Enamorada" (J. de Monte- mayor), 260/., 262. "Dido, Queen of Carthage" (Mar- lowe and Nash), 161, 243, 322, note; 348. Digby: plays in Digby MS. (Bod- leian), 23 #., SS. (See aZso " Can- dlemas Day," "Mary Magda- lene, Conversion of," and "Saint Paul.") "Disobedient Child, The" (T. Inge- leod). 114, 124, 125-127, 135, 136. 144, 166. "Distracted Emperor, The" (or "Charlemagne"), 242, 254. "Doctor Faustus" (Marlowe), 52, 58, 59, 142, 249 /., 252, 264, 265, 267. 323. Dodsley, Robert, "Collection of Old Plays" originally published by, 25, 39. Dolce, Lodovico, 190, 196. Donne, John, 280, 444. Dowden, Edward, 282, note; 443 /. "Downfall of Robert, Earl of Hun- tington.'The" (A. Munday), 273 /., 275, 294, 341. Drayton, Michael, 353. 453 INDEX Dnimmond, William, of Flawthorn- I den, 378. Dublin; play of " Abraham's Sacri- fice " preserved at, 21-23, 45 /. Dunib-sihow, origin of the, 193 /. Dunbar, William, !)1. "Dux Moraud," 27-29, ^6, 51. Dyce, A., 410. "Earl Godwin" (lost plays), 301. Easter plays, 2, /. "Eastward Hoe" (Chapman, Jonson, and Marston), 355, note; 402, 405, 406, note;415, 4/7, 442. "Edward I" (G. Peele), 266, S38 /., Si9 "Edward II" (Marlowe), 212, 250/., 298, 313, S22/., 32i, 325. 326, 327, 329, 5i8. "Edward III." 331/., 3J,9. "Edward IV," two parts (T. Hey- wood), 343/, S50. Edwards, Richard, 150, 431, note. "Elidure." See "Nobody and Some- body." Elizabeth, Queen: state of the drama at her death, 1; her relations with the Duo d'Alencon and Leicester allegorized, 175 ff.; "Ferrex and Porrex" presented before, 191 /.; attitude of her government toward common players, 425 /. Elizabethan drama; connection with earlier drama, 37; contrasted with the drama which followed, 279 /., 390/, 438 /T. "Endimion" (J. Lyly). 174, 175-178, 1S6. "England's Helicon," 261. "Epicoene" (B. Jonson), 404, J^19^ Eton School, 158. "Euphues" (J. Lyly), 171. 175, 178, 204, note. Euphuistio style imi- tated by Greene, 246. Euripides, 190, 223. "Everyman," 1, 53, 60, 61, 66. 67 f., 78, 119. "Every Man in his Humor" (B. Jon- son), 152, 374, 390, 404, 405, 406/, 412, 414, 416 f.. 418. "Every Man out of his Humor" (B. Jonson), 374, 375, 376. 377, 379, 380, 409/, 414, 4/S. "Every Woman in her Humor," 417. ■ "Fair Em." 241, 270-272, 276. S93 /., 338. "Faerio Queene, The" (Spenser), U5, note; 262, 280. "Faithful Shepherdess, The" (J. Fletcher), 263, 292, S96. Falstaff, 151, .397/ "Family of Love, The" (T. Middle- ton), 41,5, 419. "Famous Victories of Henry V, The." See "Henry V." " Farewell to Folly" (R. Greene), 27.0, note. "Faustus." See "Doctor Faustus." Feast of the Ass, The, 4. "Fedole and Fortunio," 169, 184. (Also called "Two Italian Gentle- men.") "Ferrex and Porrex" (Sackville and Norton), 139, 190, 191-194, 196, 205, 208, 209, e23 /., 302, 369, 423. (Also called "Gorboduc") Fitch, R., 9, note. Fleay, F. G., 369, note; 372, 374. 376, note; 379, note. Fletcher, John, 406, 443. Ford, John, 445, 446. Fortune Theatre, 300, note; 381, 430/ "Fountain of ' Self-Love, The" (B. Jonson). See "Cynthia's Revels." "Four Elements, Nature of the" (J. Rastell), 73-76, 82, 99. "Four P's. The" (J. Heywood). 97, lOS. " Four Plays in One." See "Yorkshire Tragedy." "Four Prentices of London, The" (T. Heywood), 241/, S53, 344. Fraunce, Abraham, 289, ^95. "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" (R. Greene), 142, 263, 265-268, 271. 272, 273, 276, 279. S93. Froissart. translated by Lord Berners. 299. Fulwell, Ulpian. See "Like Will to Like." "Funeral of Richard Cceur de Lion, The" (lost play), 275,301. "Gallathea" (J. Lyly), 174. 179, 186. 290. "Gammer Gurton's Needle" (W. Stevenson?). 158. 161-164. 166, 167. 183. 189. 369, 404, 423. Gamier, Robert, 198/, 200, 290. Gascoigne, George, 127, 144. 172, 179, 184. 187. 190, 196, 201, SS4 f- Gayley, C. M.. 40, 41, ISS. Gentillet, Innocent, 213. INDEX 453 "Gentleman and Husbandman, Dia- logue between the," 85. "Gentleman Usher, The" (G. Chap- man), 416. "Gentleness and Nobility" (J. Hey- wood?), 94/., 102. Geoffrey, Abbot of St. Albans, 26. Geofifrey of Monmouth, 191 /. "George a Greene," 241, 293, 297, 338, 342. "Gesta Romanorum," 2. "Gismond of Salerne" (R. Wilmot, etc.), 196/., 205, .2.^5, 423. Glapthorne, Henry, 446. "Glass of Government, The" (G. Gaacoigne), 127-129, 144. 166. Globe Theatre, 380, 381, 382. 415, 429. "Godfrey of Boulogne" (lost play), 322. "Godly Queen Hester," 131/.. H4. "God's Promises" (J. Bale), 86 /., 100. "Golden Legend. The" (J. de Vora- gine), 2. Golding, Arthur, 133, 144. Goldsmith, Oliver, 282. "Goosecap. Sir Giles" (G. Chap- man?), 406, note; 420. "Gorboduc." See "Ferrex and Por- rex." Gosson. Stephen, 233, 234, 435, 440. Gower, John. 2. Gray's Inn. 194. 196. Grazzini, A. F., 168. Greene, Robert, 181, 246/, 256. 257, 262. 263-270. 272. 278, 279, e93, 311,316, note; 371. Greg, W. W., 270, note; 288, note; 292. Greville, Fulke (Lord Brooke), 201, 226. Griseldis, 166, 408, 409. "Grissell, Comedy of Meek and Pa- tient" (John Phillip), 135, 145, 205, 206. "Grissell, Patient" (Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton). See "Patient Grissell." "Groatsworth of Wit" (R. Greene), 267, 316, note. I Guarini, Battista. 288. Guilds: ri.se of trade, Q ff.; innovations in acting due to guild performance, i 9/..' maintenance of guild plays. 11; j connection of guild plays with later i drama. 13/ ' Hall, or Halle. Edward. 299. "Hamlet" (Shakespeare). 1, 36. 209, 212. 220. 244. 250. 286, 327, 338, 381-386. SSS/. 392. "Hamlet." the early play (by T. Kyd?). 217. 221. 227, 261. Hampden. John, 445. "Hardicanute" (lost play), 322. Harrod, H., 9, note. "Harrowing of Hell, The." 5. 42. Hath way, R., 353, 354. Haughton, W., 353, 362, 374, note; 408. Hazlitt, William, 258. Hazlitt, W. C, 38, 39, 74, note. Hegge plays. See "Ludus Coven- trise." Heliodorus. See ".lEthiopica." Hemings, John, 386. Hemingway. S. B., 8, note; 15. note; 40. "Henry I, Wars of" (lost play), 301. "Henry IV," Part I (Shakespeare), 297. 307. 30S. 332. 333-336. 349, 392. "Henry IV," Part II (Shakespeare), 297, 307, 308, 312, note; 332, 333- 336, 349, 401. "Henry V, Famous Victories of," 304, 306-308, 346. "Henry V" (Shakespeare). 250. 297. 307. 332. 333. 335/, 349. 382, 401. "Henry VI," Part I (revised byShake- speare). 304. 313-315. 346. "Henry VI." Part II (Marlowe and Shakespeare). 218. 316-321. 324. 329. 347. "Henry VI." Part III (Marlowe and Shakespeare), 218, 308. 316-321. 324, 326. 344. 5.^7. Henry VII: state of drama at his ac- ces.sion. 1 ; the morality at his acces- sion. 66; development of the inter- lude in his reign, 71; allusion to his death in " Nature of the Four Ele- ments," 74. "Henry VIII" (Shakespeare and Fletcher), 345 and note. Henslowe, Philip, 14, 219, 240, 241, 270, note; 273, 275, 300, 301, 303, 321, 322, 353, 354, 362, 381, 404, 405, 429, 430, 434. Herbert, George, 444. Herford, C. H., 38, 130, note: 144- "Hester." See "Godly Queen Hes- ter." Heuser, W., 27, note; 46, 70, note. 454 INDEX y Heywood, John. 85, 93-97, 101 /., no, 111, 123, 134, 148, 161, 172. Heywood, Thomas, ISJ,, 299, note; 343-315, 364, note; 367, 368,355, 414. "Hickacorner," 80/., 55. . Higden, Ranulph: hia conjectural authorship of the Chester myste- ries, 8, 36. Hilariua, 27. "Histriomastix" (revised by John Marston?), 378/., 380, 38S. "Hoffman" (H. Chettle), 212, 220, 275. Holinshed, Raphael, 155, 299, 302, 307, 330, 331, 353, 357. Horace, 192, 195, 203, 204. "Horestes" (J. Pikering), 59, 138, 139/., 145, 173, 174,205. "How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad," 413/, /,50. Hroswitha of Gandersheim, 154. Hughes, Thomas, 194, 195, 201, 20y. "Humorous Day's Mirth, A" (G. Chapman), 405, ^16. Hunt, Leigh, 289 /. " Huntington, Robert, Earl of." See "Downfall" and "Death." "Huon of Bordeaux" translated by Lord Earners, 233; lost play, 322. Hutton, Luke, 354 /. Hyginus, 173. "Hymen's Triumph" (S. Daniel), 291. 296. "If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody," two parts (T. Heywood), 299, note; 344/., 350 f., 392, note. "Impatient Poverty," 109, 124, note 3; l't3. "Ingannati," 168. Ingelend, Thomas. See "Disobedi- ent Child." Inner Temple, The, 196. Inn-yard, performance of plays in, 64, 424, 428. Interlude: distinguished from moral- ity, 69 /., requisites of, 70; aristo- cratic character, 71. "Iphigenia at Aulis " (Euripides), translated by Lady Lumley. 190, 223. "Isle of Gulls, The" (J. Day), 288. "Jack Drum's Entertainment" (J. Marston?). 379/, 3S8. "Jack Juggler," 156-158, ISS. "Jack Straw, Life and Death of," 304, 346. "Jacob and Esau." 133, 144- "James IV" (R. Greene), 263, 266, 268-370. 273. 293, 297. 338, 339, 342. " Jeronimo, First Part of," 215, S27 f. "Jew of Malta" (Marlowe), 209, 212. 219, ^^5, 250/, 311, 313. "Jocasta" (translated by Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh), 190, 196, 223, 224 f., 423. "John a Kent and .John a Cumber" (A. Munday), 373/, 294, 353, note. "John Baptist" (J. Bale), 87, 100. "John Bon," 85, 101. "John John the Husband, Tib the Wife, etc." (J. Heywood). 97. 102. "John, King of England" (J. Bale), 88, 89, 101, 130/, 144, 302. "John, King of England, Trouble- some Reign of," two parts, 302 /.. 304. 305, 306, 308, 331, 341, 346. (For Shakespeare's play, see "King John.") "John the Evangelist," 104-106, 133, 142. Jones, Inigo, 432. Jonson, Ben., 53. 150, 171. 184, 202, 203. 211, 233, note; 245, 280. 292. 353 /, 372, 373-378, 379, 380, 381, 384, 385, 386, 388, 390, 394, 39e; his comedies discussed, 402-408; 409 /. 410, 411, 415, 418 /. 437, 442. "Julius Csesar." See "Casar." Jusserand, J. J., 41, 124, note. Kemp, William, 384. King Arthur, 137. "King Darius," 131. 132/.. 139. 140, 144, 148, 205, 440. "King John" (Shakespeare), 304-306, 331, 341, 346. (For other plays on this subject, see " John. King of Eng- land.") "King Lear" (Shakespeare), 191, note; 192. 286. 339, 3.50, 398-400. "King Leir and his Three Daughters," 339, 350. Kinwelmersh, Fjancis, 190, 196, 224 /■ Kirchmayer. Thomas (Naogeorgius), 130. Kirkman, Francis, 219. Kittredge, G. L., 165, IS4. "Knack to Know a Knave. A." 141, 146, 339. INDEX 455 "Knight of the Burning Pestle, The" (Beaumont and Fletcher), 242, 25 Jt. Kyd, Thomas. Ill, 197, 198, 209- 217, 226 S., 235, 240, 251, 269, 356, 363, 440. "Lady of May, The" (Sir P. Sidney), 180, 1S7. Lamb, Charles, 340, 343. Langland, William, 92, 106. See "Piers the Plowman." "Larum for London, A" (or "The Siege of Antwerp"), 343, 35t. Lateware, D., 201. Lear (Leir). iSee "King Lear (Leir)." Leicester, Earl of, represented in "Endimion," 176 /.; interest in actors, 426 /. "Liberality and Prodigality." See "Contention between Liberality and Prodigality." Lewis, C. M., 227. "Like Will to Like, etc." (Ulpian Ful- well), 108/., 136. lJ!t2. Lincoln: mystery plays at, 7, 8; mira- cle play, 46; paternoster play, 49. Lindsay, Sir David, 88 ff., 100. Liturgical plays. 5. 6. "Locrine," 191, note; 207-209, S26, 302, 310, 311, 331. Lodge, Thomas, 247, 256, 257, 262, 312. London corporation, hostility to plays, 426. "London Prodigal, The," 79, 414, J,02. "Longer Thou Li vest, the More Fool Thou Art" (W. Wager), 111, 119/., 1J,3. Longua. Sec "Daphnis and Chloe." "Look About You," 341. 350. "Looking Glass for London and Eng- land, A " (Lodge and Greene), 142, 246/, S55. "Lord Governance and Lady Public- Weal" (lost play by John Roo). 83, 100. Lord of Misrule. 4, 194. "Love, Play of" (J. Heywood), 95, 96, 101. "Love and Fortune, The Rare Tri- umphs of," 140, 180/, 187. "Love's Labor's Lost "(Shakespeare), 178, 395. "Love's Labor Won" (unidentified play by Shakespeare), 395, note. "Love's Metamorphosis" (J. Lyly), 174, 179, 186. Lucrece: fragmentary interlude deal- ing with Publius Cornelius and a lady Lucrece, 134. "Ludus Coventrise" (so called), 17- 20. 35. J,5, 57, 61. 89. "Ludus de Sancta Katarina" (lost play), 26. Lumley, Lady, 190, 223. Lupton, T. Sec "All for Money." "Lust's Dominion," 212, 219, 228. "Lusty Juventus" (R. Wever), 81/., 99. Luther, Martin, satirized in lost Latin play, 83 / Lyly, John, 111, 153, 169-179, 185, 264, note; 265, 267, 369, 371, 391, note; 413, 423, 432. "Macbeth" (Shakespeare), 214, note; 286, 329, 330, 336, S^S, 360, 366, 392, 399. MacCracken, H. N., 79, note; 108, note. Machiavelli, N., 213 /. Macro plays, 51, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67. See also "Castle of Perseverance," "Mind, Will, and Understanding," and "Mankind." Macropedius, Georgiu.i, 124. 125, 128. "Mad World, My Masters, A" (T. Middleton), 415, 419. "Magnetic Lady, The" (B. Jonson), 419. "Magnificence" (J. Skelton), 60, note; 82/., 91, 100, 106, 116, note; 131, 132, 439. " Maid's Metamorphosis, The," 187. Malory, Sir Thomas, 37, 232. " Mankind," 63-66. 67, 78, 423, 424. Manly, J. M., 40. 192. 231, note. Mantuanus (Battista Spagnuoli), 258, 259. Marlowe, Christopher, 111, 193, 197, 212, 217. 222, 228. 235, 239 /, 241, 243-246, 254, 278. 298, 301, 302. 304, 312, 316-323, 324, 325, 327. 329, 345, 348, 371, 440. Marot, Clement, 180, 259. Marprelate. See "Martin Marpre- late." "Marriage of Wit and Science," 76/.. 99. (See also John Redford's " Wit and Science.") "Marriage of Wit and Wisdom" (F. Merbury), 77/., 55. 456 INDEX Marston, John, 220, 228, 374, 376, note; 376, note; 378-380, 381, 388, 410, 442. Martin Marprelate, 370/., 372. "Mary Magdalene, Conversion of" (Digby MS.), 33-35, 46, 54, 110. "Mary Magdalene, Life and Repent- ance of" (W. Wager), 111, 113 /., 143. "Massacre at Paris" (Marlowe), 298, 304, 311, 312 /., 318, 343, 345. Massinger, Philip, 443. Matthew Paris, 26. "May Day" (G. Chapman), 404, 416. "Mayor of Queenborough, The" (T. Middleton), 339, 350. "Measure for Measure" (Shake- speare), 256, 281, 284, 401, note; 442. Medwall, Henry, 72, note; 98. See also under "Nature." "Mensechmi" (Plautus), 156, 160, 183. "Menaphon" (R. Greene), 262, 263, 288. Merbury, Francis, 77, 99. "Merchant of Venice, The" (Shake- speare), 152, 279, 281, 295, 290, note; 392. Meres, Francis, 233, 234, 272, 395. "Merry Devil of Edmonton, The," 163, 276-279, 294. "Merry Wives of Windsor, The" (Shakespeare) , 400 /. "Michaelmas Term" (T. Middleton), 415, 419. "Microcosmos" (T. Nabbes), 103. "Midas" (J. Lyly), 174, 175, 176, 1S6. Middleton, Thomas, 280, 394, 415, 419/., 443. "Midsummer Night's Dream, A" (Shakespeare), 152, 178, 180, 188, 269, 270, 279, 280, 282, 283, 287, 295. "Miles Gloriosus" (Plautus), 159, 161. Milton, John, 444. Mimes, 4, 147. "Mind, Will and Understanding" (or "Wisdom"), 61-63, 67, 73, 110. Miracle plays, 26, 47. "Mirror for Magistrates" (various authors), 299, 302. "Mirror of the Periods of Man's Life," 79. ."Miseries of Enforced Marriage, The" (G. Wilkins), 364 /., 366 /., 368, 383, note; 387 /. "Misfortunes of Arthur, The" (T. Hughes, etc.), 194-106, 197, 205, 208, 224. 302, 423. "Misogonus" (L. Johnson?), 163, 165-167, 168, 184, 403, note; 404. "Monarchic Tragedies" (Sir William Alexander), 201, 226. "Monsieur D'Olive" (G. Chapman), 404, 416. Montemayor, Jorge de, 260, 261, 262, 263. Morality, or Moral Play: species anti- cipated in certain mysteries, 19; de- fined, 47 /.; earliest mention, 48 /.; source of the type, 49 /.; relation to interlude, 69; plebeian tendencies, 71. "More, Sir Thpmas," 70, 321, 322. 348. More, Sir Thomas, 155. Morton, Cardinal, 71. "Mother Bombie" (J. Lyly), 153, 170/., 172, 188, 413. "MucedoruB," 59, 241, 253, 262. "Much Ado about Nothing" (Shake- speare), 169, 281, 395. Munday, Anthony, 169, 233, 272-276, 294, 301, note; 353, 357, 373, 374. "Mundus et Infans." See "World and the Child, The." "Mustapha" (F. Greville), 201, 226. Mystery: connection with guilds, 6/.; extant specimens, 7-9; origin of the term, 25; distinguished from mo- rality, 47/.; bourgeois tendencies of, 71. Nabbes, Thomas, 103. Nash, or Nashe, Thomas, 142, 146, 315, 370, 371. "Nature" (H. Medwall), 71-73, 9S, 110, 115. " Nero, Tragedy of," 349. Newcastle plays, 7, 9, 11, 12, 16, 43 f. "New Custom," 88, 101, 440. "New Inn, The" (B. Jonson), 419. Newton, Thomas, 189, 190, note; 222/. " Nice Wanton," 124/., 127, 143, 148, 166. " Nobody and Somebody," 339, 350. "Norfolk Archaeology": cited, 7, note; 9, note; 10, note; 12, note. North, Sir Thomas, 299. Northampton; possible connection of, INDEX 457 with the "Ludus Coventriae," 19; with the "Dublin" play of " Abra- ham's Sacrifice," 21. Northbrook, John, 427 /., 435, 440. "Northward Hoe" (Dekker and Web- ster), 415, 417. Norton, Thomas, 191, 193. 194, 195, 209. Norwich plays, 7, 9, 11, 12, 19, U- "Octavia, Virtuous" (S. Brandon), 200, 226. CEdipus, 192. "Oldcastle, Sir John, First Part of" (M. Drayton, etc.), 163, 301, 321, 322, 347. "Old Fortunatus" (T. Dekker). 277, S50. rOld Wives' Tale, The" (G. Peele), I 242. 254, 279. * Orlando Furioso" (R. Greene). 247, 255. "Orphans' Tragedy" (lost play by H. Chettle) , 362. "Othello" (Shakespeare), 252, 256, 261, 286, 324, 360, 399. Ovid: influence on Lyly, 173; 180. "Owen Tudor" (lost play), 322. "Owl and the Nightingale, The," 50. "Page of Plymouth" (lost play by Jonson and Dekker), 353. 354. Pageant, 10, 11; Rogers's description of, 12/. "Palace of Pleasure" (W. Painter), 235, 256, 257. "Palemon and Arcite" (lost»play by R. Edwards), 431. "Pammachius"(T. Kirchmayer), 130. "Pandosto" (R. Greene), 256, 263 /. "Pardoner and the Friar, The" (J. Hey wood), 97, 102. Parnassus plays. See "Pilgrimage to Parnassus" and "Return from Parnassus." Parrott. T. M., 404, 406. 416. Pasqualigo, Luigi, 169. " Pastor Fido, 11" (B. Guarini), 289, 295. Patericke, or Patrick, Simon. 213. Paternoster plays, 48 /. "Patient Grissell" (Dekker. Chettle, and Haughton), 374, note; 408^10, 416. (For another play on this sub- ject, see "Grissell.") Pavier, Thomas, 366. Peele, George, 180, 187, 236, 265. 266, 267, 279, 312, 440. Pembroke. Countess of (Lady Mary Sidney). 190. 197. 198. 201. 225, 290. 437. Penniman, J. H., 374. 376, note; 379, note; 387 f. "Pericles" (G. Wilkins? and Shake- speare), 279, 282, 295, 364. "Perkin Warbeck " (J. Ford), 345, 349. Petrarch, F., 166. Pettie, George, " Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure," 256. Phelps. W. L.. 4I6. Philip II of Spain, satirized in Lyly's "Midas," 175. Phillip, John. See "Grissell." "Philotas" (S. Daniel), 200/., 226. "Pierce of Exton" (lost play), 301. Pierce, F. E., 417. "Pierce Penniless" (T. Nash), 315. "Piers the Plowman" (W. Langland), 53, 79, 92. Pikering, John. See "Horestes." "Pilgrimage to Parnassus," 411, 4^0. "Pinner of Wakefield, The." See "George a Green." Planctus Marias, in play of "Burial and Resurrection," 20. Plautus: imitation of, 148 #., 156 #.; influence of, on early English com- edy, 150-154, 155; translation of, 156, 182; 170. 172. 188. 402. 403, note; 404. Pliny, 173. Plutarch, 173, 200, 203, 269. 299, 312, 330, 338. "Poetaster, or the Arraignment" (B. Jonson), 372, 373, 374, 376, note; 377, 378. 380. 381. 382. 383. 384, 385, SSS, 407, 41T- Poliziano, Agnolo, 289. Pollard, A. W., 40, 65, 67. "Pompey and Csesar, Wars of" (G. Chapman). 345. note. Preston, Thomas. 236. See aUo under "Cambises." "Prick of Conscience" (Richard RoUe). 2. "Pride of Life." 60/.. 54. 61, 67. Prodigal Son story, a theme for inter- ludes, 124 ff., 144- " Promos and Cassandra, " two parts, (G. Whetstone), 360, note. Prudentius, 50. Publius Cornelius. See "Lucrece." 458 INDEX "Puritan, The," 79, 169, 412, 415, 431, 433. note; 442. "Queen's Arcadia, The" (S. Daniel), 291, 293 /. Rabelais, 213. "Ralph Roister Doister" (N. Udall), 86, 158-161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 183, 184, 423. Ramsay, R. L., 60, note; 83, note; 100, 116, note. " Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, The." See under "Love." Rastell, John, 69; authorship of "The Nature of the Four Elements," 74; publisher of "Gentleness and No- bility," 103, and "Caliato and Meli- bea," 133, 145; 134. "Rebelles" (G. Macropedius), 124. Redford, John, 76, 77, 99. Reed, E. B., 384, note. Religion, relation of, to dramatic pro- gress, 2, 439 ff. "Respublica," 85/., 89, 100, 106, 114, 131, 148, 440. "Return from Parnassus, The," two parts, 383-385, 3S9, (2d part only); 411 /., 413,4^0. Revels Office, 194. "Revenger's Tragedy, The" (C. Tourneur), 220, S.28, 445. "Richard I." See "Funeral of Rich- ard Coeur de Lion." "Richard II" (Shakespeare), 251 /., 297, 313, 323, 336-338, 329, 331, 333, 336, 34s, 392. "Richard II." See "Woodstock, Tragedy of." "Richard III" (Shakespeare), 212, 250, 252, 297, 308, 323-326, 330, 344, 346, 34s. "Richard III, True Tragedy of," 304, 308-310, 311, 346. "Robin Conscience," 84, 101. Robin Hood, 137, 230 /., 238, 252 /.. 273/., 292, 341. Rogers, Archdeacon, his account of the Chester plays, 12 /. "Roister Doister." See "Ralph Roister Doister." "Romance of the Rose, The" (G. de Lorris and J. de Meung), 50, 51. "Romeo and Juliet" (Shakespeare), 161, 221/., 335, 414. Roo, John, S3, 100. "Rosalinde" (T. Lodge), 256, 262. Rose Theatre, 300, note; 429. Rowe, Nicholas, 249, 401. Roxburghe Ballads, 354 /. Sackville, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, 150, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 201. See "Ferrex and Porrex." Sacrament, Play of the. 29-31, 46. " Sad Shepherd, The" (B. Jonson), 263, 292, 296. St. George plays, 4, 31, note; 41- St. Katherine. See "Ludus de Sancta Katarina." "St. Paul, Conversion of" (Dibgy MS.), 31-33, 46. Sannazzaro, J., 260. ' "Sapho and Phao" (J. Lyly), 174, 175, 176, 178, 186. "Satiromastix" (T. Dekker), 312, note; 340, 372, 373, 376, note; 378, note; 379, 380, 383, 384, 3SS, 410. Schelling, F. E., 39, 122, note; 184, 225, 345. ' Scott, Sir Walter, 40, 326. "Sejanus" (B. Jonson), 1, 203, 226, 349. Selden, John, 445. "Selimus," 311, 346. Seneca, 148, 152, 155; influence of, upon English drama, 188 ff.; trans- lation of, 189 /.; features of the style of. 190 /.,• 195, 196, 198. 203, 204, 205, 208, 210, 217, 221, 222 /., 235, 324. Shakespeare, William: 36, 58, 104; the vice and iniquity in, 142; 150, 152, 153, 159, 165, 171, 177, 179. 180, 181, 202, 203, 211, 212, 215, 218, 221, 245; contribution of, to the structure of tragedy, 250; 252, 257, 258, 261, 267, 269 /., 272, 276, 277, 278; romantic comedy of, 279- 288; 297, 300, 301, 312; 322; devel- opment of the history play by, 323- 328, 329, 330, 332-338; 355, 360, 363, 364, 366, 380, 382, 383, 384. 392; attitude of, toward realism, 394-401; 410, 411, 415, 429; allu- sions of, to Puritanism, 442. Sharp, Thomas, 12. 43. "Shepherd's Calendar, The" (E. Spenser), 180, 259, 280. Sheridan, R. B., 282. Shirley, James, 280, 443, 446. "Shoemaker's Holiday, The " (T. Dekker), 277, 338,^43. 350. INDEX 459 Shoreditch, location of theatres in, 428. Shrewsbury fragments, 5, /., IfZ. Sidney, Lady Mary. See Pembroke, Countess of. Sidney, Sir Philip, 180, 187, 193, 208, 256, 257, 261, 262, 430, 435, 437. "Siege of Antwerp, The." See "Larum for London." "Silent Woman, The" (B. Jonson). See "Epicoene." Simpson, Richard, 357, note; 369, note. Skelton, John, WO, 116, 273, 439. See also "Magnificence." Small, R. A., 376, note; 387. Smith, Wentworth, 353. 354. "Soliman and Pereeda" (T. Kyd?), 215 /., 227, 240, 246, 363. Somer, Will. See "Summer." "Spanish Moor's Tragedy, The " (un- identified play by Dekker, Haugh- ton, and Day), 219. See "Lust's Dominion." "Spanish Tragedy, The" (T. Kyd), 197, 200, 209-315, 216, 217. 221, 227, 240, 245, 366. Spenser, Edmund, 37, 50, 112, 115, 207, note; 259, 436. "Spiritata, La" (Grazzini), 168. "Staple of News, The" (B. Jonson), Stevenson, William, 162, 18S. Stirling, Earl of. See Alexander, Sir William. Stockwood, John, sermon by, 428. Stow, John, 299, 353, 357, 363. Strange, Lord; the company of, 218, 270, note; 429/. Stubbes, Philip. "Anatomic of Abuses," 4, note. Stukely, 311, 321, 322, SUS. Summer, Will, 93, 167. " Summer's Last Will and Testa- ment" (T. Nash), 142, H6. "Supposes, The" (G. Gascoigne), 129, 153, 164/., 168, ISIt, 423. "Suppositi" (L. Ariosto), 149, 164, 168, 172. Surrey, Henry, Earl of, 190. Swan Theatre, 300, note; sketch of in- terior, frontispiece. Symonds, J. A., 39, 438. "Tale of a Tub, A" (B. Jonson), 403 /., 418. "Tamar Cam" (lost play), 322. "Tamburlaine," two parts (Marlowe), 58, 193, 197, 235, 240, 241, 343-246, 249, 250, 252, 254, 265, 280, 298, 301 /., 303, 304, 309, 310, 311, 312, 318, 321, 323, 333. "Tamerlane" (N. Rowe), 249. "Taming of a Shrew, The," 184. "Taming of the Shrew, The " (Shake- speare), 149, 167, 185, 281. "Tancred and Gismunda" (R. Wil- mot, etc.). See "Gismond of Sa- lerne." Tasso, Torquato, 259, 288, 289, 290. "Tempest, The" (Shakespeare), 279, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 295, 399. "Temptation of our Lord, The" (J. Bale), 87, 100. Tennyson, Alfred, 274. Terence: Dutch imitators of, 128; 148; influence of, on early English com- edy, 150-154; translations of, 156, 182; 168, 170, 172, 188, 394, 402, 404. Textor, Ravisius (Tixier de Ravisi), 126, 135-138. Theatre, The (the playhouse so called), 427, 428, 429. "Thersites," 120, note; 135-138, 139, 144 f. Thomas, D. L., 364, note. Thompson, E. N. S., 48, note; 53, note; 67, 386. Thorndike, A. H., 274, note; 222, 293, 294. "Thracian Wonder, The," 294. "Three Estates, Satire of the" (Sir David Lindsay), 83, 88-93, 100. "Three Ladies of London, The" (R. W.), 140/., 14s. "Three Laws, The" (J. Bale), 87, 89, 91, 101, 112. "Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, The" (R. W.), 141, 145 f. "Thyestes" (Seneca), 195, 208, 223. "Tide Tarrieth No Man, The" (G. Wapull), 111, 113-117, 141, 143. "Timon" (anonymous comedy), 410 /., 417. "Timon of Athens" (partially by " Shakespeare), 410. "Titus Andronicus" (revised by Shakespeare), 209, 212. 217. 218, 219, 220, 221, 228. "Tom Tyler and his Wife," 97. note, 102. "Tottel's Miscellany," 112. Tourneur, Cyril, 220, 228, 445. 460 INDEX Towneley plavs. See "Wakefield." " Trial of Chivalry, The, " 343/., 353 /., 343. "Trial of Treasure, The," 109/., 143. "Trick to Catch the Old One, A" (T. Middleton), 415, 419. "Troilus and Cressida" (Shake- speare), 384, 388. Trope, 3, 4^- "Troublesome Reign of John, King of England." See "John." "Twelfth Night" (Shakespeare), 256, 257, 263. 270, 279, 280, 284, 387, /., S96. "Two Angry Women of Abingdon" (H. Porter), 404, 4^0. "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (Shake- speare), 261, 279, 280, 282, 283, 287, 295, 401, note. "Two Italian Gentlemen." See "Fedele and Fortunio." "Two Lamentable Tragedies." See "Two Tragedies in One." "Two Noble Kinsmen" (Fletcher and Shakespeare?), 281. "Two Tragedies in One" (R. Yaring- ton), 355, 363/., 365, 3S7. Udall, Nicholas, 27, 86, 150; transla- tion of Terence by, 156, 182; char- acteristics of, as a dramatist, 159 /. ; 175, 183, 393. Undcrdowne, Thomas, 260. "Ur-Hamlet, The." See "Hamlet." "Utopia" (Sir Thomas More) , 155. "Valiant Welshman, The" (R. A.), 340, 350. Vaughan, Henry, 444. Vaughan, William, 441. Vergil, ISO, 258. "View of Sundry Examples, A" (A. Munday), 353, 357 /. "Vittoria Corombona," or "The White Devil" (J. Webster), 445. "Volpone" (B. Jonson), 415, 417. Wager, Lewis. See "Mary Magda- lene, Life and Repentance of." Wager, W., "Cruel Debtor," 143. See also "Longer Thou Livest, etc." Wakefield plays, 7, 8, 16 /., 44, 147. Also called "Towneley plays." Wallace, C. W., 382, SS7. Wallace, M. W., 160, note. Wapull, George. See "Tide Tarrieth No Man." War of the Theatres, The, 370, 372- 386, 387, 389 /., 407. "Warning for Fair Women, A," 354, 355, 357-362, 363, 368, 387. "Wars of Cyrus, The," 247-249, Z6B. "Watkyn and JefiFraye, Brief Dia- logue between two Priests' Ser- vants named," 84. "Weakest Goeth to the Wall, The," 243, note; 295, 403, note. "Wealth and Health," 106-108, 114, 142. "Weather, Play of the" (J. Hey- wood), 94, 95/., iO/. Webster, John, 221, 415, 417, 445. Westminster School, 154. "Westward Hoe" (Dekker and Web- ster), 415, 417. "What You Will" (J. Marston), 388. "What You Will" (Shakespeare). See "Twelfth Night." "When You See Me, You Know Me" (S. Rowley), 342, 351. Whetstone, George, 360, note. White, Thomas, sermon by, 427. "White Devil, The" (J. Webster). See "Vittoria Corombona." "Whore of Babylon, The" (T. Dek- ker), 343/., 35/ . "Widow's Tears, The" (G. Chap- man), 416. Wilkins, George, 364, 365, 366, 387 f. Williams, W. H., 105, note; 142. Wilmot, Robert. See "Giamond of Salerne." Wilson, Robert (the elder), 140, 14Gf. Wilson, Robert (the younger), 353. "Wily Beguiled," 154, 413, 414, 4^1- "Winter's Tale, The" (Shakespeare), 152, 256, 270, 279, 280, 284, 285, 286, 295. "Wisdom." See "Mind, Will, and Understanding." "Wit and Science" (J. Redford), 76, 82, 99. "Witty and Witless" (J. Heywood), 93, 94, 102. Wolsey, Cardinal, satirized in inter- ludes, 83, 84 /. "Woman in the Moon, The" (J. Lyly), 174, 179, ISG. "Woman Killed with Kindness, A" (T. Heywood), 367/., 388. Woodes, Nathaniel. See "Conflict of Conscience, The." "Woodstock. Tragedy of," 338/, 349. INDEX 461 "World and the Child, The." 78-80, 99. Wotton, Henry, 215, note. "Wounds of Civil War, The" (T. Lodge), 304, 312. SJ,6. "Wyat, Sir Thomas" (Dekker and Webster), 344, 351. Wyclif, John, 49. Wylley, Thomas, lost Protestant dramas by. 84, 101. Wynkyn de Worde, 78, 80. Yarington, Robert. 355, 362, 363, 365. 387. Yeats, W. B., 328, note. Yelverton, Christopher, 196. Yong, or Young, Bartholomew, 261. York, mystery plays at. 7. 8. 12. 15, 44 /.; paternoster and creed plays at, 49. "Yorkshire Tragedy, A," 352, 355, 363-366, 387. Young, K., 4.2. 93, note; 102. "Your Five Gallants" (T. Middle- ton). 415, 420. "Youth, Interlude of," 80, note; 81/., 99. Yver, Jacques, 215, note. " Zabeta, Masque of" (G. Gascoigne), 179, 187. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A