(.*'<•'•?* ^^ i(!>'i —] SHAKESPEARE STUDIES BY MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN TO COMMEMORATE THE THREE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, APRIL 23, 1616 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY MADISON 19 16 COPYRIGHT, 1916 BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 333676 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Sonnets on the Self of William Shakespeare, William Ellery Leonard - - - - 9 II. Locrine and Selimus, Frank G. Hubbard 17 P )t III. Shakespeare's Pathos, J,F. A. Pyre 36 p J* IV. The Function of the Songs in Shakespeare's Plays, John Robert Moore 78 m .V. An Elizabethan Defence of the Stage, V Karl Young 103 ^- \ ■ VI. Some Principles of Shakespeare Staging, ^ Thomas H. Dickinson 125 i^- VII. The Collaboration of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger, Louis Wann ------- 147 VIII. An Obsolete Elizabethan Mode of Rhym- ing, R.E. Neil Dodge 174 IX, Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays, --^" Arthur Beatty 201 • X. Garrick's Vagary, Lily B. Campbell 215 XI. A Dutch Analogue of Richard the Third, 0. J. Campbell, Jr, 231 • XII. Joseph Ritson and Some Eighteenth Cen- tury Editors of Shakespeare, HenryA.Birrd 253 'XIII. Charles Lamb and Shakespeare, Frederick W. Roe jfi . ,^ - - - - 276 SONNETS ON THE SELF OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE William Ellery Leonard They say that such thy selflessness in giving Selves to thy creatures and rich everydays. Thy self escapes us, whilst those selves be living, — They say, and saying do intend thy praise. Not so. Thou Life — most life, begetting life — So gav'st thy lineaments to king and clown. Thy pitch of voice, thy bent at love or strife. Thy tricks of walking, or of sitting down. That were some guest who knew thy progeny Met at the Mermaid with thy band and Ben, He'd know the corner-chair that compassed thee. And name the Shakespeare of those merry men, Even had he never seen thy pictured dust — The folio's graven brass, the Stratford bust. 9] 10 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Or turn it round : what man of wit and worth. Practiced in hearts and heads, if he should meet Some of thy offspring (known to all the earth) Unknown, unsired, upon some Noman's street. Could not contrive the lineage, could not find In tragic hero with the poet's eye, In jester with the analytic mind. Something for sure to name his father by; In lover, madman, maiden, something there Of fancy delicate, or passion free, Not even in thy next of kin, Moliere, Involved in thy inveterate irony. Proclaiming more than blazon highest hung The great progenitor from whence they sprung. SONNETS 11 Self is the origin and end of art, 'Tis but the symbol varies: each will tell His goal of mind, his plenitude of heart. What might befall him, or before befell. Some speak the naked words, *'I love, I hate;" Some as a lark surmount the setting sun; Some pour themselves in story or debate; But lyric, epic, drama, all are one. And thou art mightier, more mainfest Than all the others, having multiplied Thyself in thought, in love, in rage, in jest. In all conditions, more than all beside: And yet that more of thee is so much more. We least can measure, where we most adore. 12 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES But thy humanity is so much ours, Such of our little is in thy so-vast, That love and kinship in essential powers Give adoration a familiar cast. There is in Aeschylus too much of sky. Of doom, of thunder, god, and precipice; Too much of Hell in Dante's awful eye, Despite its visioning of Beatrice: But thou, if thou transcend us, still art here; If prophecy, an earthly prophecy; A far To-morrow, a To-day how near; Thy sole self now, but all mankind to-be. And all the best the world's best artists reach. We measure by thy stature and thy speech. SONNETS 13 Near, but not common. When the times-to-come Shall breed a race, with eye as quick and wide To see each shape and hue and trace it home, Each motion, whence engendered, how applied; A race that looks with thy inerrant ken Each object through, beyond its rags and robes, And, having worked, will go to work again. And, having probed the world, forever probes; A race with memory for all behind. With hope to all ahead; a race where each Contains his fellow, mind surrounding mind; Born to thy incommunicable speech: Then shalt thou common be, with joys and tears, — Obscured amid the sanity of peers. 14 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Musing by night on thee, this fancy came: Suppose the earth were blasted to a rind, Shent too of waters, winds, and heavenly flame, It could be clothed and peopled from thy mind: What hills and woods, and under what a sun! What streams and seas, and what a fair moon under! What prodigality of flowers begun. What winds recruited, what revived thunder! What birds would sing, and to what maiden vows; What hounds would hunt, and with what hunter's horn ; What thatched roofs, what towns, what masted prows; What merchants, rogues, and kings, and dames, re-born! An earth so furnished, filled with such an host, The gods would scarce lament the one they lost. SONNETS 15 Indeed, 'twere goodlier to deities Than earth as now; familiars would they meet On bosky islands, under moony trees. Spirits of iris wing and fairy feet; And, finding entertainment from mankind Less niggard than when now to earth they come. Finding more dancers in the May-morn wind, More singing goodmen at the harvest-home, More awe at bridal, burial, they would then Revisit oftener than now the streams And myriad villages of mortal men. And oft'ner send their services and dreams. Nor would they mourn such engin'ry of strife As now most keeps them rearward of our life. // 16 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Three centuries 'tis since Ben, thy comrade, swore Thou wert not of an age but for all time; New states have risen, old have gone before; New knowledge come, and poets with new rhyme. But thou abidest through all change the same, — Nay, not the same; such thy mysterious growth, Thy self increaseth with increasing fame. And three large centuries are increased by both. Thy heart and head have been communicated To millions, who were after blent with thee; Thy voice, in hundred languages translated. Takes on a blending with the wind and sea. Thou art so great that thou wilt not despise This book we've wrought thee under alien skies. LOGRINE AND SELIMUS Frank G. Hubbard The chronology of the English drama between 1585 and 1595 is a tangled web, which has thus far failed to yield, to any great extent, to the efforts of investigators. Many attempts have been made to determine the dates of individual plays, but generally the result reached is either too indefinite, or based upon too slight evidence, to be of much value. The importance of accurate chronology here can hardly be overestimated, for it is within the period of these ten years, 1585-1595, that the English drama passes through a development mar- velous in its rapidity. It advances from the crud- ity of The Spanish Tragedy to the strength and beauty of Greene's James IV and Marlowe's Edward II; it develops from rough, crude power to perfection of form. In the case of any one of the dramatists whom we call the predecessors of Shakespeare, there is very little external evidence for the order of his plays; generally speaking, the best that can be done is to arrange them in the order that seems to be de- manded by what we suppose to be the natural [17] S— 2. 18 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES course of development of the writer's dramatic power. And here comes in a rather disturbing element. The development of dramatic writing is proceeding so rapidly that a playwright's style and method seldom appear the same in two of his plays. One who has forced his way through the crudities of Alphonsus of Arragon finds that his ideas of Greene's dramatic style are all upset when he Te2ids Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay ; and further, when he has enjoyed the delicate beauty of James IV, he is inclined to doubt the fact of Greene's authorship. The same is true, but in a less de- gree, of the other dramatists under consideration. There seems often to be more likeness between two plays of different authors than between the individual works of either of them. Any state- ment, therefore, that a particular characteristic belongs to Greene's style, or Peele's style, or even Marlowe's style can in general hold good for only one or, at most, two plays of the author in question. We have in this period a large number of anony- mous plays, some of which (for example, Edward III) are as good as the best work of known authors, and all of which are of much interest and signifi- cance from the standpoint of dramatic history. Much has been written concerning their author- ship and relation to other plays, but with little definite result. It is my object in this paper to discuss the relation of two of these anonymous plays, Locrine and Selimus. Locrine was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1594 and published in 1595 as "Newly set forth, LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 19 overseene and corrected by W. S." This statement caused it to be attributed to Shakespeare, and it is one of the six plays added to the Third and Fourth Folios. Its theme, taken from early British legendary history, has been treated many times in English literature, most recently by Swinburne^ The play has strongly marked Senecan character- istics, including a ghost that cries "Vindicta!"; the material is cast in the form of a double revenge action. The diction is very stilted and artificial; classical references and allusions abound on every page; extravagant ranting speech is not wanting. There are some good comic scenes. It is generally agreed that the play was written some years before publication but later than The Spanish Tragedy and Tamhurlaine, Selimus was published in 1594. The first part of its very long title reads The First part of the Tragical raigne of Selimus, sometime emperour of the Turkes. It is a tragedy in the style of Tambur- laine, which it seems to imitate. The hero is am- bitious, cruel, remorseless, making his way to the throne by bloody deeds of all sorts. In the course of the play eyes are put out and hands are cut off; men are poisoned; one character is thrown from a tower upon the points of a circle of spears; strang- ling is a most commonplace way of putting an end to enemies. There are bashaws and janissaries in plenty and all the other accompaniments of a supposed Turkish court. ^ Cf. Theodor Erbe, Die Locrinesage und die Quellen des Pseudo-Shak- spearschen Locrine, Studien zur englischen Philologie, XVI. 20 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Locrine was translated by Tieck and published in his Altenglisches Theater in 1811. He regarded it as an early work of Shakespeare and called at- tention to the fact that one passage is written in the stanza form used in Venus and Adonis. In his copy of the Third Folio he left marginal notes in- dicating that passages of Locrine had been bor- rowed from Spenser's Complaints, published in 1591. Tieck's material was published by Rudolph Brotanek in 1900.^ Charles Crawford in 1901 re- discovered these borrowings from Spenser, and also called attention to the fact that there are many correspondences between Locrine and Seli- mus, and that some of these involve the passages borrowed from Spenser's Complaints.^ His infer- ence from the evidence brought forward is, that Locrine borrows from Selimus. Some years ago I studied these plays in connection with another matter, and later came to the conclusion that Selimus borrows from Locrine, just the reverse of Crawford's conclusion. Shortly after this the Jahrbuch der deutschen S hakes p ear e-Ges ells chaft, 1905, came into my hand; in this I found an article by E. Koeppel, ''Locrine'' und ''Selimus,''^ in which he reaches the conclusion that Selimus borrows from Locrine on grounds somewhat smaller than those that had led me to the same conclusion. I later communicated the results of my investiga- 1 Beiblatt zur Anglia, 11, 202 ff. 2 Notes and Queries, 9th Series, Vol. 7. Correspondences between Locrine and Selimus were noted by P. A. Daniel in the Athenaeum April 16, 1898, p. 512, but he published no material. Cf. Crawford Collectanea, I, 99-100. 3 Vol. XLI, 193-200. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 21 tion to Professor J. W. Cunliffe, who has set them forth in his chapter on Early English Tragedy in The Cambridge History of English Literature,^ Let us consider now the evidence that shows that Selimus borrows from Locrine, The first point is concerned with the comic scenes of the plays. In Locrine, Act IV, Sc. II, ^ Humber, in a starving condition, is crying out for food. This fruitless soyle, this ground, brings forth no meat. The gods, hard harted gods, yeeld me no meat. Strumbo, the chief comic character of the play, enters, and describes in a coarse, humorous way his experience with his termagant wife. He sits down to eat and is discovered by the starving Humber, who demands food. Strumbo is about to comply with his demand, when his hand is struck by the ghost of Albanact (whom Humber has slain), and the scene closes with a speech by the ghost. In Selimus, 11. 1873-1997, ^ we have a scene, in which Bullithrumble, a shepherd, enters and de- scribes in a humorous speech his experience with his shrewish wife. Enter Corcut and his page, who have been starving for two days. They persuade the shepherd to relieve their hunger. The correspondence between the two scenes was noted by Charles Crawford in Notes and Queries, 1 Vol. V, 95-98. 2 IV, II, 18-19. References are to The Shakespeare Apocrypha, edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke. Oxford, 1908. 3 References are to Grosart's edition, in The Temple Dramatists, Lon- don, 1898. 22 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 1901,^ who infers from it that Locrine copies Sell- mus. E. KoeY)ipe\, in J ahrbuch der deutschen Shake- speare-Gesellschaft, 1905, also notes this correspond- ence of scenes, but his inference is that BuUi- thrumble in Selimus is a weak copy of Strumbo in Locrine.^ He notes also that the scene in Selimus is the only bit of the comic in that play. Before seeing Koeppel's article I had arrived at the same conclusion, mainly on the ground that the comic character in Selimus appears only at this one place, whereas in Locrine Strumbo is a comic character who appears all through the earlier parts of the play, and his speech and action in the scene under consideration are consistent with his speech and action in the earlier comic scenes of the play. It is almost impossible to conceive that the author of Locrine developed the character Strumbo from the hints given in this scene of Selimus, but it is perfectly natural to infer that the author of Selimus copied a part of one of the comic scenes of Locrine that suited his dramatic purpose. But much stronger proof that Selimus borrows from Locrine can be drawn from a consideration of the material in the two plays that has been taken from Spenser's Complaints. There is much more of this material in Locrine than in Selimus, and a careful examination of the passages in ques- 1 Ninth Series, Vol. 7, p. 102 (Collectanea I, 58-9). Crawford's article, Edmund Spenser, "Locrine," and "Selimus," has been reprinted in his Col- lectanea, Vol. I pp. 47-100. My references to Crawford are to this reprint. 2 "Es kann keinem Zweifel unterliegen, dass der Pantoffelheld Bulli- thrumble eine schwachliche Kopie des mannhaften Schusters ist." Jahr- buch XLI, 196. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 23 tion reveals the fact that Selimus has nothing from the Complaints (with the possible exception of a single line^) that is not found in Locnne, al- though Selimus draws freely from The Faerie Queene, from which Locrine takes nothing. ^ But more than this. In one passage, made up mostly of lines borrowed from Spenser, the author of Locrine (if he has not taken them from Selimus) has in- serted lines of his own. The lines borrowed from Spenser are from two passages, not far apart, in the RuinesofRome(\l 150-162, 211-216). Now Selimus has eight of these Locrine lines, three of which are Spenser's and five original with Locrine (or Seli- mus). But Selimus has them in two different places far apart, (11. 419-20, 11. 2433-38), and the second passage (2433-38) is made up of one line from Spenser and five original with Locrine (or Selimus) ; in Locrine all the lines under consideration occur in one connected passage, II, iv, 1-18. To make the matter plainer I give be- low the passages from Locrine, Selimus, and Ruines of Rome.^ Hum. How bravely this yoong Brittain, Albanact, *Darteth abroad the thunderbolts of warre, *Beating downe millions with his furious moode, *And in his glorie triumphs over all, ^ As those old earth-bred brethren, which once Sel. 2432. Like as whilome the children of the earth Ruines of Rome, 155. Which whilom did those earth born brethren blinde Ruines of Rome, 140. 2 Cf. Crawford, p. 59. ' The lines of Locrine taken from Ruines of Rome are indicated by the asterisk. 24 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES *Mowing [text, mouing] the massie squadrons off [text, squadrants of] the ground: *Heaps hills on hills, to scale the starrie skie, As when Briareus, armed with an hundreth hands, Floong forth an hundreth mountains at great loue. And when the monstrous giant Monichus Hurld Mount Olimpus at great Mars his targe, And shot huge cedars at Minerua's shield. How doth he ouerlooke with hautie front My fleeting hostes, and lifts his loftie face Against vs all that now do feare his force, *Like as we see the wrathfull sea from farre, *In a great mountaine heapt, with hideous noise, ♦With thousand billows beat against the ships, ♦And tosse them in the wanes like tennis balls. Locrine, II, v, 1-18. I'd dart abroad the thunderbolts of war. And mow their heartless squadrons to the ground. Selimus, 419-20. Were they as mighty and as fell of force As those old earth-bred brethren, which once Heap'd hill on hill to scale the starry sky. When Briareus, arm'd with a hundreth hands. Flung forth a hundreth mountains at great Jove; And when the monstrous giant Monichus Hurld mount Olympus at great Mars his targe, And darted cedars at Minerva's shield. Selimus, 2431-38. Mow'd downe themselves with slaughter mercilesse Ruines of Rome, 138. Then gan that nation, th' earth's new giant brood. To dart abroad the thunder bolts of warre. And, beating downe these walls with furious mood 149-51 Like as whilome the children of the earth Heapt hils on hils, to scale the starrie skie 155-6 The furious squadrons downe to ground did fall 160 And th' heavens in glorie triumpht over all 162 Like as ye see the wrathfull sea from farre. In a great mountaine heap't with hideous noyse, LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 25 Eftsoones of thousand billowes shouldred narre 211-13 Tossing huge tempests through the troubled skie 216 If we assume that Selimus is copied by Locrine here, we are compelled to believe that the author of Locrine made up the passage in question of two passages from Selimus far apart, a passage from the Ruines of Rome not used by the author of Selimus, and inserted lines of his own. It is surely much more probable that the author of Locrine borrowed from two passages of the Ruines of Rome, inserting lines of his own, and that the author of Selimus borrowed lines from Locrine, putting them in two parts of his play. This probability becomes almost certainty when we remember that Selimus has nothing from Spenser's Complaints (with the pos- sible exception of a single line) not found in Locrine, while Locrine has much from the Complaints not found in Selimus. To put it briefly, our conclusion is, that all the borrowings from the Complaints found in Selimus come by way of Locrine. This is certainly more reasonable than Crawford's explana- tion, "The author of Locrine merely happened to discover that Selimus had obtained a small portion of its material from The Ruines of Rome, and he followed suit, but with less discretion and infinitely less ability."^ It is very strange that the author of Locrine made this discovery and failed to discover the borrowings from The Faerie Queene in Selimus, ^ Crawford, p. 57. 26 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES which are much more numerous. Locrine has nothing from The Faerie Queene.^ Additional evidence for the priority of Locrine may be found, I believe, in a case in which the author of that play has plainly borrowed from Greene's Menaphon, as he has borrowed from other prose works of Greene. The passage in Menaphon runs as follows: "As if another Alcides (the arme- strong darling of the doubled night) by wrastling with snakes," 2 etc. Locrine has (III, iv, 34) The armestrong offspring of the doubled night. Selimus has in one passage (1668-71) the epithet "armstrong" in a context, two lines of which are parallel to lines of Locrine. One of these lines in Locrine is in a context that is plainly developed from the passage taken from Menaphon. Words or phrases suggested by Greene's expression are found in, at least, two other passages of Locrine. I give below all the passages in question, using italics to bring out the parallels. The armestrong offspring of the doubled night, Stout Hercules, Alcmena's mightie sonne, That tamde the monsters of the threefold world Locrine, III, iv, 34-6. Stout Hercules, the mirrour of the world, Sonne to Alcmena and great lupiter. After so many conquests wonne in field. After so many monsters queld by force, Yeelded his valiant heart to Omphale. Locrine, IV, ProL, 3-7. 1 Cf. p. 20 . 2 Greene's Works, Huth Library, Vol. 6, p. 89. Arber's Reprint of Mena- phon, p. 56. Noted by Collins, The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. T p. 67, note. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 27 Now sit I like the might ie god of war re. When, armed with his coat of Adament Locrine, III., iv., 6-7. Now sit I like the arm-strong son of Jove, When, after he had all his monsters quelVd He was receiv'd in heaven 'mongst the gods, And had fair Hebe for his lovely bride. Selimus, 1668-71. The perfectly natural inference to be drawn from an examination of these passages is, I maintain, that the author of Locrine borrowed from Greene, amplified the material borrowed, and passed some of it on to Selimus. It is, I believe, absolutely un- reasonable to infer that the author of Locrine de- veloped his lines from the suggestions contained in the passage from Selimus. From the evidence that has been gathered from an examination of the parallel comic scenes of the plays, the borrowings from Spenser's Complaints, and the borrowing from Greene just considered, we may maintain that Locrine is earlier than Selimus, and that, in the case of other parallel passages, Selimus has copied Locrine. Space will not permit the exhibition of the full extent of this copying; I give a few examples for illustration; others may be found in Crawford, pp. 52-58, Koeppel, Jahrbuch, XLI, pp. 194-7, Collins The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, I, pp. 64-66. Where I may damne, condemne, and ban my fill And vtter curses to the concaue skie, Which mav infect the aiery regions. Log. hi, vi, 8-11. 28 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Now Bajazet will ban another while, And utter curses to the concave sky Which may infect the regions of the air. Sel. 1800-2. And but thou better vse thy bragging blade, Then thou doest rule thy ouerflowing toong, Superbious Brittaine, thou shalt know too soone Loc. II, iv, 23-25. But thou canst better use thy bragging blade, Than thou canst rule thy overflowing tongue. Soon shalt thou know that Selim's mightv arm Sel. 2467-69. Whose only lookes did scarre his enemies Loc. I, Prol. 17. Whose only name affrights your enemies Sel. 185. Our discussion thus far has been chiefly con- cerned with parallels between Locrine and Selimus, but we have had occasion to point out parallels between the former play and other works certainly of earlier date.^ To these may be added parallels with Greene's Anatomy of Fortune (1584), The Spanish Tragedy (1585-87?), and Tamburlaine (1587?) Parallels have also been found with other plays of uncertain date, Marlowe's Massacre at Paris and Dido, Greene's Alphonsus of Arragon, Peele's Battle of Alcazar, Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, and The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda. Can, now, these parallel passages help us in any way to determine the date of Locrine"! I believe that they can to some extent, but the result is not so deflnite as one could wish. Among the many passages borrowed from Spenser's Complaints are 1 See p. 20, p. 23. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 29 these two lines from The Ruines of Time, 11. 568-9.^ But what can long abide above this ground In state of bUs, or stedfast happinesse? In this poem^ Spenser refers by name to Wat- son's Meliboeus,^ an eclogue written on the death of Sir Francis Walsingham, who died April 6, 1590. The Complaints was entered in the Stationers' Reg- ister December 29, 1590. Hence The Ruines of Time must have been written between April 6 and December 29, 1590. Locrine, which borrows from it, cannot, then, be earlier than April 6, 1590. This point was first made, I believe, by W. S. Gaud in Modern Philology, I, p. 409. But we can go one step further. Locrine, V, iv, 242, has this line, One mischiefe followes on another's necke,^ which is parallel to a line of Tancred and Gismunda, One mischief brings another on his neck.^ The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda is founded on the old play Gismond of Salem in Love,^ which was performed in 1568. This old play was not printed, but in 1591 Robert Wilmot rewrote it in blank verse, making many changes and additions. One of the lines added is that borrowed hy Locrine, Prefixed to Wilmot's play is a commendatory 1 Locrine, I, Prol. 19-20. 2 1. 436. * Arber's Reprints, Vol, IX. * Text omits on. 5 Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, VII, p. 93. ^ Printed by Brandl in Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare, pp. 539-595. 30 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES letter from William Webbe, dated August 8, 1591.^ Locrine, then, must be later than this date. Fur- ther than this we do not seem able to go at present. We have considered above parallels between Selimus and Locrine. Crawford^ has pointed out many between Selimus and the plays of Marlowe, especially Tamburlaine; he concludes from the evidence that Selimus is an early work of Marlowe. Grosart^ has found parallels between this play and the works of Greene. I have noted some with Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, and The True Chronicle Historic of King Leir. It has been shown that Selimus like Locrine borrows from many works; the two plays seem to stand in a class by themselves in this wholesale appropriation of other men's work. May they not, then, be works of the same author? Nearly all the evidence is against such a conclusion. While the two plays have this characteristic of large handed borrowing and have many lines in common, they are so absolutely dif- ferent in every other characteristic that it is almost impossible to conceive them to be the works of one author.^ The only one, I believe, who has main- tained the theory of common authorship is J. C. Collins, who says, "I maintain then that, if the question is to be argued on such evidence as is now attainable, the presumption is in favour of 1 Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, VII, 13. 2 pp. 69-85. 3 The Temple Dramatists, Selimus, Preface, XII-XX. * Crawford, p. 66, rejects the theory of common authorship, on the ground that Locrine has nothing from The Faerie Queene, from which Selimus takes much. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 31 the author of Selimus having been the author of Locrine; the two plays must stand or fall together."^ On the evidence of borrowed passages we have been able to find out a little concerning the date of Locrine; we may now proceed to consider whether we can get any light on the question of the author- ship of these plays from the evidence of parallel passages. I have noted earlier in this paper^ the great difTiculty of determining any general char- acteristics of style for the dramatic work of any one of the predecessors of Shakespeare (Marlowe is, to a certain extent, an exception). It will, there- fore, be very difficult, if not impossible, to trace any such general characteristics of style in anony- mous plays; for example, to find traces of Greene's style in Selimus. We may, perhaps, say that the style of parts of Locrine and Selimus is like the style of Tamburlaine, but this is very different from showing that it is like the style of Marlowe. If, now, we use the evidence of parallel passages in the cases of Locrine and Selimus, we shall surely arrive at no certain results. These plays have bor- rowed so much from so many sources, that, on the evidence of parallel passages, they can be as- signed to almost any of the predecessors of Shake- speare. And this is just what has happened. Locrine has been assigned to Marlowe,^ Greene,^ ^ The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, /, 67. 2 See p. 15. 3 Steevens, Supplement to Johnson and Steevens' edition of Shake- speare's Plays, 1780, Vol. 11, pp. 189 ff. ^ Crawford, p. 85. 32 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Peele,^ and Kyd^; J. M. Robertson divides it be- tween Greene and Peele.^ Selimus has met a similar fate. Grosart^ has tried to prove it to be the work of Greene, but his conclusion has not been gener- ally accepted. Crawford, using the evidence of parallels, proves, to his own satisfaction, that it is an early work of Marlowe, his first attempt at a Tamburlaine play. No one else seems to have ac- cepted his conclusion. The method of proof from parallel passages has been used to a greater or less extent by almost all those who have discussed the very vexed question of the authorship of The First Part of the Conten- tion and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke and the relation of these plays respectively to the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI, Mar- lowe, Greene, Peele, and Shakespeare, single or mixed in various proportions, appear in the re- sults obtained by the different investigators. In considering the evidence of parallel passages the assumption is generally made that such pas- sages indicate common authorship of the plays in which they are found. I believe that our study of Locrine and Selimus shows that such passages are much more likely to show authorship by different men. For example, if we fmd a line of Tambur- laine in The First Part of the Contention, this is not so likely to be evidence that Marlowe wrote The First Part of the Contention, or part of it, as it 1 W. S. Gaud, Modern Philology, I, 409, ff. 2 Moorman, Cambridge History of English Literature, V, 268. ^ Did Shakespeare write "Titus Andronicus," p. 99. ^ Huth Library, Greene's Works. Temple Dramatists, Selimus. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 33 is to be evidence that the author of that play ap- propriated a line of Tamburlaine. Another view of the matter is disclosed when we consider passages common to several plays. Too little material of this sort has yet been collected to afford any basis for a study. A few examples may, perhaps, illustrate the manner in which ma- terial is passed from hand to hand, and changed as it goes; they may, too, be suggestive of the possi- bilities that lie in the study of a large amount of such material from a given period. When she that rules in Rhamnis golden gates I. Tamburlaine, II, iii, 635^. If she that rules faire Rhamnis golden gate Locrine, II, i, 20. Chief patroness of Rhamus' golden gate Selimus, 682. thou that rulest in Ramnis golden gate Watson, Tears of Fancie, Sonnet 42. That onely luno rules in Rhamnuse towne Dido III, ii, 830. 1 hold the Fates bound fast in yron chaines. And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel about I Tamburlaine I, ii, 369-70. I clap vp Fortune in a cage of gold To make her turn her wheele as I thinke best Alphonsus of Arragon, IV, iii, 1480-81.^ Pompey, the man that made the world to stoop. And fetter'd fortune in the chains of power. Wounds of Civil War, p. 194.3 Leades fortune tied in a chaine of gold Locrine, II, i, 15. Thou hast not Fortune tied in a chain Selimus, 2420. 1 The Works of Christopher Marlowe, edited by G. F. Tucker Brooke, Oxford, 1910. 2 Collins, The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. 3 Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, VII. S— 3. 34 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES For there [at the sword's point] sits death, there sits im- perious death, Keeping his circuit bv the slicing edge I Tamburlaine V. ii, 1892-3 Upon my sword's sharp point standeth pale Death Selimus, 665. And more: see here the dangerous trote of war, That at the point is steel'd with ghastly death Wounds of Civil War, p. 155. For Nemesis, the mistresse of reuenge, Sits arm'd at all points on our dismall blades Locrine, V, ii, 45-6. For angry Nemesis sits on my sword to be reuenged Orlando Furioso, V, ii, 1380. Or I will make him hop without a head Chronicle History of King Leir, p. 342, 1. 5^ He hops without his head and rests among his fellow rebels. True Tragedy of Richard III, p. 103, 1. 3.^ Vnlesse you headlesse mean to hoppe away James IV, II, ii, 1028. Fde reach to' th' Crowne, or make some hop headlesse First Part of the Contention (1619)^. Or ile make them hop without their crownes, that denies me True Tragedy of Richard III, p 64, 1. 6. Then let their Selim hop without the crown. Selimus, 104. Will Fortune favour me yet once again? And will she thrust the cards into my hands? Well, if I chance but once to get the deck. To deal about and shuffle as I w^ould; Let Selim never see the daylight spring. Unless I shuffle out myself a King. Selimus, 1538-43^ ^ Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. II. 2 Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. I, • Praetorius Facsimile, p. 9. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. I, p. 423, note. * Crawford, p. 91, notes the parallel between Selimus and Massacre at Paris, C. F. Tucker Brooke that between Massacre at Paris and True Tragedy. See Trans. Connecticut Acad. Arts and Sciences, 17, 168 (July, 1912). LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 35 Then Guise, Since thou hast all the Gardes within thy hands, To shuffle or cut, take this as surest thing: That right or wrong, thou deale thy selfe a King. Massacre at Paris, 11 145-8. Alasse that Warwike had no more foresight. But whilst he sought to steale the single ten. The King was finelie fingerd from the decke. True Tragedy of Richard Duke of Yorke, p. 87, 11 20-22^. An exhaustive collection and careful collation of such material would, I am confident, throw much light on the difficult problems of chronology and authorship in the history of the English drama from 1585 to 1595. ^ Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. II. SHAKESPEARE'S PATHOS J. F. A. Pyre One of the pre-requisites to a sound philosophy of Shakespeare is a correct valuation of his appeals to sympathy. A dramatist is singularly liable to "short circuits" in his lines of communication. He must reckon on a considerable factor of variability when reckoning how an audience will react to present- ments of human character, situation, and passion and to many necessarily uncommented juxtaposi- tions of the same. Doubtless there is a slighter leakage in Shakespeare than in most dramatists. He understood human nature in the audience form as in others, and he understood the dramatic strokes by which an audience is kept alive and scored upon. In this unerringness of Shakespeare liesone secret of his power and lastingness. Never- theless, that even Shakespeare was not entirely wanting in a humane capacity for making himself misunderstood, criticism bears copious witness. It is not merely that every generation starts out afresh to find phrases which content it for impres- sions that, ever afresh, "break through language and escape." The difficulty is, we cannot easily satisfy ourselves that the right impression itself has not eluded us. Thus, the chase after the [36] Shakespeare's pathos 37 Shakespearean intention has the inexhaustible zest of life itself. Three centuries have not glided by without some erosions of human sympathy. The modern reader, depending for his comprehension of the Shakespearean drama upon a printed text of dub- ious sanction, supplemented, to be sure, by some stage tradition, — but this with slight claim to authen- ticity and much of it erroneous or degraded, — finds himself at several removes from his author. Special intellectual curiosities can be distinguished with reasonable definiteness and allowed for or sympathetically entered into. A few topical hints no doubt evade us, though Shakespeare's mind was of that high order which is sensitive to the vulgarity of near allusion and seldom stoops to a mere topical hit when "some necessary business of the play" is to be considered. Changes in taste and morals are more important and more difficult to cope with; but the clash of standards can usu- ally be mitigated by a slight imaginative adjust- ment. Prince Hal's black-guardisms, practical jokes, and yearnings after "that poor creature, small beer", Falstalf's grosser peccadilloes and Sir Toby's unconscionable carousings, need not give us, precisely, Mid-Victorian qualms. Most of us will not permit anachronistic sentimentalism to betray us into maudlin sympathy with a reviled and defeated Israelite and money-lender; we will rejoice boldly in the triumph of Portia's wits and the release of the wealthy and elegant Antonio. But we enter a doubtful zone. We may experience 38 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES only the requisite ruefulness in contemplating Sir Toby's bloody coxcomb, yet feel ourselves emo- tionally insecure in the presence of Elizabethan portrayals of madmen and ghosts. Of Bassanio's borrowed plumes and his fortune-hunt over against Belmont, of Valentine's cool proposal to toss Sylvia to the precious Proteus, of Julia's complaisance toward the same being and of Hero's toward the "young cub" who has despitefully used her, of the heartless baiting of Malvolio, of Prospero's cruelty to Caliban, Hamlet's to Ophelia, of Helena's device for binding a husband and of Isabella's surrender to one, what are we to think? Or rather, what are we expected to feel? Thus we come gradually into a realm of imagi- native predilection and moral prejudice where the placement of sympathy among blended emotional values is a delicate matter. Yet in a moral world like that created by Shakespeare's art, accuracy of discernment is of the utmost importance. A slight error near the center projects us along some radial interpretation to a peripheral conclusion far wide of the mark. Now, there are, in Shakespeare, for all his variety and so-called objectivity, a good many habitual modes of feeling, and he developed a sure instinct for the dramatic means by which to reach the consciousness and take firm and last- ing hold on the sympathies of his audience. It is mainly by sensing these — his habitual modes of feeling and his habitual devices for kindling sym- pathy — that the student of Shakespeare learns to feel his way about in the plays and becomes Shakespeare's pathos 39 more and more confident as to his author's in- tention in any given case. One of these fields of Shakespeare's habit and practice it is the object of this paper to explore, not merely because the exercise is amusing in itself, but because, even when dealing with phenomena so elusive as emo- tional values and shades of artistic effect, there is an advantage to be derived from bringing to- gether, for comparison and arrangement, all the specimens of a group. Shakespeare's pathos is one of the ground tones of his passionate genius, like his humour, his pure joyousness, his serene exaltation, his voluptuous melancholy, his sense of thrilling excitement, his stirring heroic strenuosity, his sense of weirdness and mystery, his romance, his imperious tragic grandeur. Such a list of qualities is perhaps not strictly categorical. It merely enumerates some of the dominant Shakespearean moods and might be measurably condensed or enlarged, at will. It has a different basis from the scheme of the elementary passions as they are ordinarily classi- fied. Possibly no two men would exactly coincide in their analysis or their characterization of phe- nomena which are so complex and in which sub- jective elements play so large a part. At the same time, there will be a fair agreement among educated persons as to the general effect produced by an exhibition of the passions in any given case. Representations of the passions may excite in us their like, but not necessarily so; the same ele- mentary passions make very different appeals ac- 40 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES cording to the conditions under which their effects are shown. The passion of fear, so terrible in Macbeth, is ludicrous in Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is both comical and prettily pathetic in Viola, and passes into the realm of supernatural awe in the ghost scenes of Hamlet, with a varied key for each character that encounters the dreaded sight. Clear- ly the passions are only working colors of the dramatist and their emotional appeal depends upon the manner in which they are blended with one another and the objects to which they are applied. We may be amused by an exhibition of anger or roused to an emotion resembling anger by an exhibition of levity; we may be frightened or appalled by a powerful presentment of rage, or we may be kindled to indignation or scorn by a dastardly exhibition of fear. The sight of grief begets in us, not a precise imitation of the passion but a modified form of it which we call pity, and the nature and intensity of our sorrow is deter- mined by the character of our sympathy. The amenities of art require, moreover, that the emo- tions awakened by such representations shall be of such nature and intensity only as make for a generally pleasurable result, and this is effected through the capacity of the representation to awaken sentiment in us: that is, emotionally modi- fied thought or fancy whereby we are guided to a perception of the causes and relations of things, their meaning, fitness, and proportion, mingled with a sense of the adequacy or beauty of the representation. Shakespeare's pathos 41 Passion, like action, awakens emotion partly through its revelation of character, and our re- sponse is regulated by our sympathy or antipathy toward the character our conception of which it augments. We are further excited by passion on account of its bearing, through character, on fate; we feel in it an immediate or a potential force which may influence the fate, either of the char- acter in whom it is exhibited or of other characters in whose fate we are interested. Such, in part, is our state of mind while witnessing the intem- perate outbursts of Lear in his first scene,' the overwrought transports of Othello when reunited with his wife in Cyprus, the first ecstasies of Romeo and Juliet, the abnormal melancholy of Hamlet, or Lady Macbeth's devouring ambition. In one respect, all these violent moods thrill us to admira- tion, exalting our sense of the powers of the human soul; but, also, they alarm us; they are ''too like the lightning"; we feel them to be charged with fatal potentialities. Action in turn excites us, not only because of its immediate occasion for the expression of human nature, that is, for demon- strations of passion and revelations of character, but, likewise, because of "some consequence yet hanging in the stars" which may produce joy or suffering in the actor himself or in the persons acted upon. We respond to representations of passion, therefore, first, as excitants, through sug- gestion and sympathy, of similar, but agreeable, activities in ourselves; second, as revelations of character; third, as consequences of previous ac- 42 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES tion or as sources of further trains of action which may, in turn, produce further consequences, to- gether with new^ manifestations of passion and new revelations of character. In a work of representa- tive art, in drama especially, all these dynamic elements are ultimately resolved into a static condition of feeling in which we receive, not the impact of the final scene alone, but in which the imagination turns backward upon its series of experiences and the whole related scheme of pas- sion, character, act, and consequence, streams through us like the related notes of a musical chord, leaving us, thoughtful, hushed, impressed, appalled, warmed, delighted, touched, refreshed, envigorated, exalted, or in some similarly stilled and passive mood of unified but unvolitional ex- citement, according to the nature and intensity of the representation. The "pathetic" mood, then, is one of the general modes of feeling, or complex states of emotion awakened by representative art, and "pathos" is a quality of the representation by which this effect is produced. The attempt to set metes and bounds to a field of emotion where all terms are variable and many of them imply the others may seem a foolhardy undertaking; and yet some fur- ther discrimination seems necessary. The most obvious process of pathos is the awakening of sympathy for suffering or misfortune, the emotion which we call pity. But pity itself is a consti- tuent of numerous moods not all of which possess the quality of pathos. In popular usage there is Shakespeare's pathos 43 a tendency to attend exclusively to the pitiful element in pathos so that almost any misfortune which awakens emotion will be referred to as "pathetic", especially if the sense of it be shar- pened by some irony of circumstance or associa- tion. This is plainly undiscriminating. The ef- fect of pathos is most frequently obtained through an appeal to the sense of misfortune combined with a further stirring of tender sentiment through the coincident revelation of some gracious or ad- mirable trait in the object of compassion. By these means there is produced a commingling of warm and sympathetic emotions which is extremely pleasurable, is allied to the passive side of our natures and is the effect of what we call ''pathos". The quality of a pathos depends upon the pro- portions in which are mingled the elements of pity, on the one hand, and of other tender emotions such as affection, gratitude, admiration, or joy, on the other. An example of the interoperation of pity, admiration, and affection, is well delineated in Othello's analysis of the witchcraft by which he won Desdemona, ending She loved me for the dangers I had passed And I loved her that she did pity them. And yet, despite the touching elements in it, Othello's story of his wooing is not pathetic, for we have yet to reckon with his dignity of manner which carries the entire recital out of the domain of pathos and this, it should be noted, is in accord with Othello's main purpose as an orator, which 44 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES is, not to touch merely, but to convince. On the other hand, in some cases of true pathos, the ele- ment of compassion is so slight that the emotion appears to depend upon a response to beauty or admirableness , alone, — or even to joy itself. Ruskin somewhere describes a natural landscape as possessing "pathetic beauty." It is doubtful, however, if beauty or joy are ever truly pathetic save through some (however delicate) arriere pensee of their transiency, helplessness, insecurity, or the like; as of "beauty whose action is no stronger than a flower", and "joy whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu". Pathos may arise from a sense of contrast between present joy and fore^ gone hardship, suffering, or peril. In these last cases, of course, th^ emotion of pity is deflected from the present, to a past, or an imagined con- dition, and the two emotions, of joy in the present happiness, and of pity for the contrasted condition, coalesce to produce a pathetic mood in which a feeling akin to gratitude is predominant. The converse of this situation is too commonplace to require analysis. All of these conditions of sentiment, it will be readily seen, if they become habitual or consti- tutional, or if they be too little relieved by the brighter emotions, will be depressed to the mood which we call melancholy. Pathos and melan- choly are adjacent, therefore, but not identical. They may even coalesce; but they are, in most cases, easily distinguishable. There is a rich vein of melancholy in Shakespeare; but his pathos is Shakespeare's pathos 45 not, usually, an outgrowth of his melancholy; rather is his melancholy a deepening of his pathos. Shakespeare's pathos,^ and it may be added his melancholy also, lies quite close to his humour; and the reason for this is manifest when we en- quire into the nature of both. Since his pathos consists largely in a conflict of agreeable and pain- ful emotions, a slight change in texture may readily give us, instead of a pathos enlivened by humour, a humour sweetened with pathos. One further important distinction remains to be made; but, as it has been often discussed elsewhere, it may be briefly disposed of here. This is the distinction between the pathetic and the sublime. Shakespearean commeatators not infrequently re- fer to the pathos of his great tragic scenes, and although this is not necessarily wrong, it can easily be misleading. Of course, no one with an eye to their total effect would think of applying the term, "pathetic" to the finales of Lear, Othello^ Hamlet, or, indeed, of any of the tragedies. The fact is, that Shakespeare never, whether in comedy or tragedy, ends in the pathetic key, — a point to which I shall return later. That there is an admixture of compassion in these great scenes is true; but the passions with which it is commingled are so agitating, the action so frantic, the conse- quences so prodigious, that pity is smothered up in dismay. At the very end, to be sure, the winds fall and cease, and the waves break back on them- selves in a mighty subsidence; but it is the calm of a supreme exaltation. We ourselves, like the 46 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES hero at his last breath, seem, to be snatched up out of the storm and the struggle which roll harm- lessly backward below us, and the emotion we feel, — if emotion that mood can be called which consists in a momentary superiority to all finite agitation, — is "that emotion of detachment and liberation in which the sublime really consists".^ The emotion of the sublime is like that of pathos in that in both cases we are totally passive; but in the one case, our passivity is that of a breathless, almost benumbing contraction, as if for a sudden spring; the passivity of the pathetic mood is re- laxed, unnerved, deep breathing, as of the languor which precedes contraction. In the one we are close to the infinite; in the other, we feel our kinship with mortality, deliciously, warm, in every cell. Thus far we have been concerned, for the most part, with the general nature of pathos as a quality of dramatic representation. I turn now to a brief consideration of the particular aspects of human life with which the Shakespearean pathos is most frequently associated. It would be tedious to catalogue methodically all of the "seven ages of man", with their varieties and activities, that appear in the theater of Shakespeare; it will be helpful to collect into somewhat orderly form such few of life's phenomena as have especial significance from our point of view, and so regard them. i^The stage of human life to which Shakespeare most consistently attaches a pathetic significance 1 Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, p. 239. Shakespeare's pathos 47 is, of course, childhood and early youth. The young princes in Richard III, Arthur in King John, Falstaff s page in Henry IV and Henry V, the boy, Lucius, in Julius Caesar, in Macbeth, the son of Macduff, and the youth, Fleance, over whose unconscious head a royal destiny "broods like the day", with whose escape begins the fatal ravelling of Macbeth's ill-wrought ambition, young Marcius in Coriolanus, Mamillius in The Winter's Tale, and Imogen's brothers, the stolen princes of Cymbeline, are all introduced or developed in some degree for pathetic enhancement of the scene, though in varying degrees connected with its motivation. Of the same character are the earlier and fainter sketches of *'young Talbot", "pretty Rutland", "young Henry, Earl of Richmond" in the Henry VI plays, and y(5ung Lucius in Titus Andronicus. All of these, it will be noticed, are boys and nearly all are ^instruments of comedy as well as pathos, having about them a pretty pertness which is one of the attractive and amusing, and of the annoying, traits of forward childhood. How well Shakespeare understood the principle that life is not exclusively a serio-solemn business and that those who lay hold of our affections do so, in part, by amusing our lighter fancy, not by eternally edifying, these childhood sketches clearly demonstrate. Childhood, by its innocence and helplessness, its perilous buddings of untimely spring, its physical sweetness, its playfulness of spirit, and its invitation to the mind to look toward the coming years, — childhood, when it meets with 48 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES misfortune, suffering, or dissolution, is of the very essence of pathos. To the examples already enum- erated some would doubtless add the Fool in King Lear, as being a child in heart, at least, if notin years. And, finally, Shakespeare's awakenedness to the sympathetic promptings of tender years is shown by his exclusion from Othello of any refer- ence to the child of lago which plays so striking a part in Ginthio's story, and by the almost hectic charm of seeming youthfulness with which he invested Romeo, his prince of lovers, and Hamlet, his most beloved of princes. Towards old age, which, in an opposite way to childhood, walks near the gates of life, Shakespeare is less uniformly tender. He is no less disposed to laugh than weep over the fatuity of years that bring the philosophizing mind, but no true grasp of life. One thinks of Polonius, Falstaff, and Shallow and of such doddering old lords as Mon- tague and Capulet, and as Leonato and his brother Antonio in Much Ado. It may be surprising to find Falstaff in this list; but I suppose, notwith- standing his creator's and our delight in him, Fal- staff, as a philosopher, stands confuted; his duel with time is a drawn battle, won by the latter through sheer waiting. There are numerous ex- amples of solitary and garrulous age in the plays totally unconnected with their motivation, but introduced for picturesque or choric effect, — de- tached and wandering fragments of humanity that drift across the scene and shake their feeble heads. At least two old men, Duncan in Macbeth and Shakespeare's pathos - 49 Adam in As You Like It, seem to have been specifi- cally drawn for pathetic contrast. There are touches of the same quality in Titus Andronicus, a first sketch of Lear, and in Gymbeline. In the historical plays, the subject matter, since times succeed to times, naturally led to numerous por- traits of men past their powers: ''Old John of Gaunt" and York in Richard II, Gloucester in Henry VI, and, for the women, the Duchess of York in Richard III and the Duchess of Gloucester in Richard II are early examples of old age full of sorrows and bitter memories. But none of these are precisely pathetic; they are too much in mono- tone, and they appear more or less at random in the scheme of emotional values. The character of Henry IV is more fully wrought and the failure of life in him is consistently drawn out to a specifi- cally pathetic result. The dramatist's growing deftness in the handling of pathos is particularly shown in the king's occasional flashes of his old ''efficiency". It remained for Shakespeare, in midst of other woe, to bring home, once and su- premely, the pathos of age, in Lear. When enumerating the sketches of youth in the plays, I silently reserved for separate mention Shakespeare's heroines, so many of whom seem just emerging from girlhood, and so many of whom, by the way, give us enchanting glimpses of boy- ishness through the chiaroscuro of their own im- personations. More and more, as he went for- ward, Shakespeare seems to have been taught to find in the women of his stories the staple source S-4. 50 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES of his pathos. Shakespeare's heroines are not with- out initiative and courage; indeed, in many cases, these are among their most distinctive traits. But therein lies, it may be said, much of their appealing quality. It is by chance of these neces- sities, in contrast to the conventional helplessness of their position and the passive bent of their natures, that they make their exceptional claims on our admiration and our sympathy. Heroism is inspiring in Shakespeare's men; it is touching in his women. Their own gayety under hard conditions makes us no less disposed to give them our hearts. And it is curious, when one comes to look into it from this point of view, how large a proportion of his heroines Shakespeare has placed at some especial disadvantage in their coping with the world and the decision vital to women. Almost every one of them is motherless, and somehow we receive the intangible impression that most of them have long been so. Juliet alone has the full complement of parents and both of these are represented as intemperate and unsympathetic. Portia and Viola are orphans, the first with a legacy of wealth encumbered wdth a crotchety restriction, the second, separated by shipwreck from her brother and penniless on a strange coast. Helena in All's Wellis newly orphaned, brotherless and in poverty. Isabella is a nun, with an erring brother. Perdita and Marina are castaways and grow to maturity among strangers. Rosalind follows a banished father into forest exile. Imo- gen has a cruel and wicked step-mother. Jessica, Shakespeare's pathos 51 Hero, Ophelia, Desdemona, and Cordelia are all estranged in some manner from their far from fault- less fathers. Only Miranda in the critical moment of life has the guidance of a wise and sympathetic parent. That, in a majority of cases, the special conditions surrounding the Shakespearean heroine exist for romantic as much as for pathetic toning and for the purpose of placing the heroine in situa- tions favorable to dramatic entanglement, need hardly be said. Nevertheless, these conditions are favorable to pathetic effect in proportion to the naturalism of the treatment, so that, in most of the dramas of Shakespeare's maturity, even when the interest is lodged primarily among the male characters, the heroine will be found to be central to his main scenes of pathos. Since the natural affections are the chief sources of pathetic emotion, there is a sacrifice of materials involved in the motherless condition of the Shakes- pearean heroine. Considering the exhaustiveness with which, generally speaking, Shakespeare cov- ered the range of human relations, he must be ad- mitted to have used but sparingly the motive of mother and child. Fatherhood appears in full gamut, but motherhood, especially in the relation- ship of mother and daughter, is almost, though by no means quite, absent. Possibly acting condi- tions were partially responsible for the omission, though this explanation would seem to be con- founded by the examples which the plays afford. Here again, as in the case of old age, the early histories are prolific of random examples: Margaret 52 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES in Henry VI, the women of Richard III, the Duch- ess of York in Richard II, Constance in King John, are emphatic, though not essentially pathetic, portrayals of sorrowing motherhood. It is not until the very latest plays, if we except the Count- ess in AWs Well, and Mistress Page in the Merry Wives, both of whom are somewhat brusquely motherly, that we encounter any adequate inter- pretations of motherhood; for Hamlet's mother will hardly be accounted an exception and Lady Mac- beth's allusions to her children are not reassuring. But Hermione touches us notably, as Volumnia almost entirely, through the quality of her mother- hood, and the effect, in both cases, is that of a noble pathos. Katherine's last scene in Henry VIII contains some touching references to her children; but this is probably in Fletcher's part of the play. The insistence of the plays upon the relation of father and daughter has been indicated. Of the other natural bonds I will not pursue all the in- stances, for they are of the fullness of Shakespeare. The bond of father and son, of brother and sister, of husband and wife, of the lover and the beloved, of kin and country, of friendship and old acquaint- ance, in all degrees between men and between women, the affiliations of master and man, of mistress and maid, of liege lord and loving sub- ject, these natural and domestic bonds of human society furnish the bases of affections and of en- dearing expressions, in act or word, of loyalty, admiration, sacrifice, gratitude, and forgiveness, Shakespeare's pathos 53 through which the personages of Shakespeare's scene, caught in a quivering but gentle net of hours, make their appeals to our tender sympathies, loosen and set free the flow of our sweetest emo- tions. Since in the least restless moments of life the motions of the heart are most clearly and humanly felt. While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy We see into the life of things, Shakespeare skillfully associates his pathos with the leisurely pursuits and the most sensitive opera- tions of the mind: such occupations as reading, listening to music, meditation, friendly converse; such intuitive operations as are involved in shy and random reminiscence, recapitulation, or com- parison, or in half-conscious or vaguely relevant planning, premonition and presentiment. These moods fall in moments of reunion or leave-taking, of happiness after sorrow or safety after peril, of momentary release from labor or pain, in the lulls of grief or conflict, which, in tragedy, are but the suspensive pause before the blow, a momentary hush of the unexpended storm **from whose^solid atmosphere, black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst" in the final cataclysm. For the accentuation of these moods, Shakes- peare frequently employs certain incidental acces- sories upon which he securely relies for the pathetic modulation of the scene. One of these accessories, 54 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES already hinted at, is music, not extraneous, usu- ally, but motived by the action and an organic part of it. The boy, Lucius, touches the lute while Brutus watches in his tent on the eve of Philippi; Ophelia^s mad snatches, Desdemona's "Willow" song, the music which the Doctor prescribes for the awakening of Lear, Fidele's dirge in Cymbeline, and numerous minor instances are to the same purpose. Flowers, also, are accessories of pathetic suggestion. Nothing in the mad scenes of Ophelia, when portrayed on the stage, is more conducive to tears than her business with the flowers: Thought and affliction, passion, hefl itself She turns to favour and to prettiness. Other flower passages in the plays have been fre- quently commented on, because of their exquisite poetry. Such are Perdita's "I would I had some flowers o' the spring", etc., and Arviragus's less famous or at least less frequently quoted, but hardly less beautiful With fairest flowers Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azured harebell, like thy veins, no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweet'ned not thy breath. Those who have lingered over the quieter scenes of Shakespeare must have been often aware of still another aspect of life which drew from him some of his wooinsest and most lovable touches — I mean his references to, and his portrayals of, Shakespeare's pathos 55 sleep. Two qualities of this phase of our natural being seem to have especially impressed Shakes- peare — its pathos and its mystery. Both tones are congenial to the subdued movement of his scenes of suspense and preparation, and it is sel- dom that either is quite absent when sleep is thought of. The mystical bond between man and the secret workings of the invisible universe that clips him round, as shown in the restorative virtue of sleep, but also in "the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose," the involuntary and apparently lawless, but often startlingly signifi- cant operations of the mind off guard, its recapitu- lation in dreams of the waking past, its random foreshadowings of things to come, made this do- main of experience peculiarly attractive to him as a dramatic agency. Sleep is the surprisal of the essential, the very man. It strips from the recital of his acts and the confession and analysis of his psychic life, the artificiality of studied narra- tive or of self-conscious soliloquy, and it surrounds its revelations with an aura of wonder which allies them to the supernatural. It raises them to a higher power of emotional idealization which in- tensifies their livingness just as art, just as Shakes- peare's representation itself, is more real than actuality. Again, sleep is one of the natural goods of life, beautiful in itself, like flowers, like the songs of birds. It is the touchstone of health; as the man sleepeth, so is he. Where virtue is, it is more virtuous, and where beauty is, more beautiful. 56 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The relation to sleep therefore becomes an index of character and of psychic constitution and a means of portraying them. Such intimate revela- tions are pathetic; their very intimacy tends toward pathos. There is something magical in the mere sight of a sleeper; the sheer passivity, the immo- bility, the innocence, the helplessness, even of the strong, even of the wicked, come home to us, with- out comment, directly; the sleeper is made one with nature. And sleep has another direct effect on the imagination to which Shakespeare, like other poets, was keenly alive: it is the portrait and prognostic of the sleep that ends all. Death itself, except in association with childhood, he almost never rendered pathetically; but, in sleep, **death's counterfeit", and in the preparations for it, he seemed to find exactly that fanciful and ten- der symbol of the dread finality which harmonized with his pathos. The plays are full of these sleep scenes, some- times merely described or hinted, sometimes actu- ally represented; usually bound up with the motiva- tion of character and action, but seldom without some direct suggestive value as spectacle and sym- bol. Such is Tyrrel's picture of the sleeping princes (Richard III, IV, iii.) girdling one another Within their alabaster innocent arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other: We smothered The most replenished sweet work of nature That from the prime creation e'er she framed. Shakespeare's pathos 57 There is pathos, not quite lost in voluptuousness, in the picture of the sleeping Lucrece, with Tar- quin's ruffian face thrust toward her through the parted curtain: Showing life's triumph in the map of death And death's dim look in life's mortality: Each in her sleep themselves so beautify As if between them twain there were no strife, But that life liv'd in death, and death in life. The same group reappeared, refined and chastened, some fifteen years later in the exquisite chamber scene of Cymbeline, where Imogen, fallen asleep over her book, is displayed to the prying eyes of lachimo. 'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus; the flame of the taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see the enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows, white and azure lac'd With blue of heaven's own tint — On her left breast A mole cinque spotted, like the crimson drops r the bottom of a cowslip. Place beside this the coda of the great Boar's Head scene (i Henry IV, il, iv), the picture of Falstaff "fast asleep behind the arras and snorting like a horse". "Hark, how hard he fetches breath! Search his pockets". This is coming close to the gray, old sinner. His very pockets yield up their secrets. No fear of waking; the trump of doom is a mere fifth in his harmony. The sheriff and his rout have departed; England is arming; and there he lies, in a colossal slumber, the gift we may pre- 58 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES sume of much sack, over-taxed nature, and a con- science as easy ''an it had been any christom child". ''There let him sleep till day". And so we slip out and leave him. The man who will fmd pathos in this, you may say, will fmd pathos in anything. Well, perhaps it is not pathos precisely; but it is the very life, and pathos will come of it. A little later (2 Henry IV, III, i), we are in the palace of Westminster, and the king enters in his night- gown; he is ill, and old before his time, shaken with cares, and the fault he made in compassing the crown lies heavy on his soul; he dispatches a messenger to "call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick", and then comes the famous "expostula- tion": How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! sleep! gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge .... It is a pathetic prelude to the painful crown scene of the ensuing act, the beginning of the end of high- mettled Bolingbroke. Similar reflections upon sleep supply the basis of the only pathetic passage in the life of the new king, the stout-hearted Henry V. After wandering about the sleeping camp and conversing with such of his soldiers as are awake on the night before Agincourt, Henry gives way in solitude to inward thought; his courage quails an instant before the responsibility Shakespeare's pathos 59 which his men have laid upon him for the mor- row's business, and it is here that he touches his high point in poetry: I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball, The farced title running fore the king. The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world. Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave Who with a body filled and vacant mind Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread. Next moment, it is to the ''God of battles" that he prays, to "steel his soldiers' hearts"; but it is here that he feels the mystery of life. It would require a separate paper to trace out all the instances where Shakespeare has made sleep the monitor of one's sense of life, has used its sug- gestion for stilling in us, — as in the personages of his scene, — the hurly of the restless, active busi- ness of waking existence, so that we feel earth breathe, and hear "time flowing in the night", and "all the rivers running to the sea". Perhaps nothing in Macbeth is so piteous as the violation done to nature with respect to sleep, "the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care". For "Macbeth does murder sleep", his own above all. The theme recurs again and again, culminating in a set scene, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth. This scene, however, pitiful as it is, is too terrible for pathos, and probably should not be regarded as the specifically pathetic move- 60 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES ment of the play. Like Richard's terrible visit- ings on the last night of his life it is allied to the supernatural in effect and is a part of the last movement, the catastrophe. But in several of the tragedies this theme is attached to the set scene of pathos. Brutus leans over the sleeping boy and, with words of unaccus- tomed lightness and tender fancy, takes the lute from his hands, before settling himself to his book. Desdemona lets down her hair while she sings, remembering her childhood, chats sleepily, rubs her eyes, and prepares for her last rest. Lear awakens from a restoring slumber, shattered but sane, to find Cordelia standing over him with heart too near breaking to dream the word, for- giveness. The feigned death of Juliet had similar potentialities, but they are not, I think, realized; there is too little quietness; the villainous nurse breaks in; horror and confusion unroll; there is no pause over the pathetic beauty of the picture, as in these incomparable scenes. The lovely trance of Imogen, with the dwelling lyricism of her syl- van obsequies, is more like; but after all, more pretty than moving. It is in the awakening of Lear that we have Shakespeare's supreme pathos, too beautiful to bear, — almost. When, now, with a rather definite idea of the quality of Shakespeare's pathos and a conscious knowledge of the means by which he habitually produced this effect, we examine the plays as a whole, we are immediately aware of a method in the disposition of his pathetic scenes. And if, in Shakespeare's pathos 61 addition, we look at the plays with some attention to the probable order of their composition, we are further impressed by a development in this, as in other aspects of his art, which throws additional light upon his artistic intention. Not only is there an increasing command of the elements of pathos, a surer and finer touch in details; there is increasing sureness of method in his massing of them into set scenes of pathetic climax and in his emphasis of these scenes as a definite movement in the scheme of emotional values, with a sense of their due place and proportion in the total effect of the piece. As I have already noticed, in passing, Shake- speare never ends a piece in the pathetic key. This distinction of the Shakespearean drama may be well elucidated by a comparison of any of the mature tragedies with such a play as Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness. Here Heywood represents with much dramatic force and natural- ness a story of domestic infidelity. The wife, Mistress Frankford, is punished by her husband merely through exile from him and from their children. The concluding scene in which the re- pentant wife, now on her death-bed, beseeches and receives, among weeping relatives, her husband's heart-felt forgiveness, is treated with sincere and tender feeling and no little poetic beauty. We are deeply touched. But one sees, at once, that Shakespeare would never make such a scene the last movement of a tragic piece. He would not leave us thus emotionally unbraced. Life, in 62 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Shakespeare, is something more heroic than this. His scheme would call for another act in which there should befall the hero some fierce calamity, much or little deserved, but tremendously en- dured. This scene of touching beauty, though it would have no less value in and for itself, would have a still greater value as an emotional prepara- tion for the grand catharsis of the fmale. What we have in Shakespeare's scenes of pathos, then, is a deliberate modulation of key, somewhat analogous to the modulation of key that has been frequently noticed in his scenes of so-called "comic relief"; so that we might equally speak, if anyone likes the phrase, of his scenes of "pathetic relief". Only these scenes have, in his developed style of dramatic representation, a use beyond that of mere emotional "relief"; they have, in the tragedies especially, as already implied, a perfectly definite position just before the point where w^e strike into the last movement which works up to the fmale, serving on the one hand to prepare us for the catastrophe by dimly fore-shadowing it, and, on the other, to increase the force of its appeal by purifying our emotions and intensifying our sym- pathy for the chief sufferers. It remains to dis- cover as well as may be, wdth the means at our disposal, the steps by which Shakespeare became master of this procedure. For, as I suggested a moment since, it is not to be supposed that Shakespeare came full-fledged to an appreciation of these values in dramatic representation. He found pathetic values in life Shakespeare's pathos 63 and story, just as he found comic and tragic values in them, and his massing and arrangement of these values for purposes of dramatic effect varied with his dramatic purpose and improved with exper- ience. His earliest tragedies make little appli- cation of the principle which has just been ex- pounded. The extent of his responsibility for the Andronicus is so problematical that it would be unwise to base any conclusions upon this play. Suffice it to say that, though full of the crude ma- terials of pathos, this play shows no real command of pathetic appeal and, partly for this reason per- haps, its abundant horrors fail of a genuinely tragic effect. Can one, without opening oneself to a charge of vandalism, suggest that anything might be differ- ent in so superb a success and so just a favorite as Romeo and Juliet? Certain it is that the pathetic and the tragic appeals in this play are more mingled, less distinguishable from each other than in the great central tragedies. Up to and includ- ing the parting of Romeo and Juliet, barring some juvenilities of style, the play proceeds in his best manner; the death of Mercutio is consummately managed; the tragic movement begins to disengage itself from its comic support and reaches forward right Shakespeareanly to the parting. So far so good. The fourth act is occupied exclusively with Juliet; but the difficulties which beset her afford no pause for reflection; no opportunity, there- fore, for the pathos of her situation to sink in upon us. The objurgations of her parents, the 64 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES importunities of Paris, the sensual cacklings of the Nurse, give her no peace and us no repose; even her interviews with the Friar are occupied with practical planning. She swallows the potion in a furore of grisly foreboding. The curtains re- open and show her lying upon her couch, appar- ently asleep. But the hubbub begins again. The fussy cachinnations of the Nurse, her salacious references to Paris, are followed by the bowlings of Juliet's parents, and culminate in the arrival of Paris and the wedding music. Such spiritual beauty as the Friar might be expected to impart to the scene is more than neutralized by the dis- ingenuousness of his position; his consolations are as hollow as the sorrow to which he ministers. There is no denying that the representation of all this empty raving, particularly the Nurse's absurd reverberation of the ranting parents and Gapulet's ridiculous banality: Uncomfortable time, why camst thou now To murder, murder our solemnity? displays a power of sardonic realism which cannot be overestimated; but I cannot resist a feeling that, at a later period, Shakespeare would have ordered things somewhat differently at this stage of the tragedy. I feel that, in some beauteous pause at this moment of the action, he would have found means to convey to us the tender significance of the story which, as things stand, is produced in the long and somewhat tedious coda to the catastrophe. Shakespeare's pathos 65 The earlier histories are virtually tragedies, in the general sense that they deal with violent and calamitous events. In the Henry VI plays there is no law but lawlessness; if any unity prevails it is perhaps a sense of an inexorable march of events in which one unholy ambition puts up its head only to be hewed down by another which soon suffers the same fate. There are some ran- dom strokes of pathos, such as the scenes of Talbot and his son in the fourth act of Part One, which are supposed, from a contemporary allusion, to have been ''embalmed with the tears of ten thou- sand spectators". A broader pathos is evidently aimed at in the figure of the sentimental and in- effectual king, who steals out of battle to sit upon a hillock and yearn for the shepherd's life; whose misapplied piety is the very source of the wounds that afflict his bleeding country and his own soul. This conception is one feature of the plays in which competent critics discern the presence of Shake- speare; its effect, however, is but feebly achieved; for the most part, terror reigns. It is toward the end of the third piece that the diffused anarchy of the series begins to gather to a head in the arch-anarch whose remorseless climb to the throne through the blood of his nearest relatives, with his ultimate destruction and the dawning of better times, provides the theme of Richard III, The impressiveness of Richard's cruelty is set off by a pathetic treatment of his victims. Clarence relates his fearful dream and then falls asleep, just before the entrance of the murderers in the S-5. 66 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES first act. The pathetic treatment of the innocent princes I have already described. But Anne is not so presented as to command our respect; while the railings and lamentations of the women in the fourth act are treated with grandiosity, not with pathos; the recapitulation of Richard's crimes through the apparition of his victims in his own and Richmond's dreams is stagey and, again, aims at the sublime rather than the pathetic. The tent scene which precedes the dream has a few intimate touches which anticipate the manner of the tent scene in Julius Caesar; but of course it is only a qualified sympathy that can be aroused for Richard. Horror and admiration toward Rich- ard, rather than pity for his victims, sets the key throughout. In King John the theme of pitiful childhood, introduced in the preceding play, is more broadly developed. The fourth act concerns itself almost entirely with the fate of Arthur. The character of the unhappy princeling has many winning nuances and the famous Hubert scene, a penetrat- ing pathos. Constance, on the other hand, rails and laments somewhat after the fashion of Rich- ard's upbraiders, and is, on the whole, ineffective. Arthur is not so associated with the king in our minds as to give the pathos of his fate a sufficiently poignant bearing on the tragedy of the latter; the Bastard further complicates our sympathies; and the play produces, at best, but a mixed effect. Richard II, in my opinion, shows evidences of an effort on the dramatist's part to remedy this defect Shakespeare's pathos 67 of the preceding play. The recent tendency is to despise the character of Richard rather more, I think, than Shakespeare intended, and possibly, also, to value more highly than he meant the qualities of Richard's successful adversary, the '^efficient" and politic Bolingbroke. I am con- fident that he intended the great deposition scene which occupies most of the fourth act to produce a genuinely pathetic effect. If he fails it is be- cause the means which he employed to regain our sympathy for '^Richard, that sweet lovely rose," are insufficient to cope with the contempt pre- viously aroused through his pitiless unbaring of the mixed sentimentalism and heartlessness of Rich- ard's character. I wonder, by the way, whether anyone has thought to mention the connection, implicit but not stated, between Richard's un- usual physical beauty and the frailties of his char- acter. It is profoundly done, and I do not re- member to have seen it touched upon. The matter which is vital to this discussion, however, is not the loss of our sympathies, but the means by which they are sought to be regained. The appeal to our physical senses, just alluded to, is one. Richard's charm of fancy is another. The partial failure in this respect is not due en- tirely, I believe, to a fault of intention, but to a faulty exuberance in Shakespeare's own manner at this period of which abundant examples can be found in the speech of other characters in the same play and in other nearly contemporary plays, notably Romeo and Juliet. To the same end, 68 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Shakespeare took a considerable liberty with his- torical fact in developing Richard's child wife into the "weeping queen" of this play, obviously for the specific purpose of elaborating the pathos of Richard's history. The deposition scene is immediately preceded by that ^'beautiful islet of repose", as Coleridge called it, the garden scene in which the queen overhears the Gardener and his servant gossiping of Richard's overthrow while they mend the shrubs. The writing is not Shake- speare's best, but a glance at it will reveal that timing, tone, and accessories foretell his later way of doing the thing. Here and in the parting with Richard which immediately follows the de- position, the fictitious queen bears herself with the sweetness and propriety due to pathos, and very unlike the women of the preceding histories; and some of Richard's loveliest, most dignified and — though a little marred by self-pity — least affected words are spoken to her: Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, To make my end too sudden: learn, good soul, To think our former state a happy dream; From which awak'd, the truth of what we are Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet. To grim Necessity, and he and I Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France And cloister thee in some religious house: Our holy lives must win a new world's crown Which our profane hours here have stricken down. His next lines have even greater simplicity and spiritual beauty, reminding us of Lear to Cordelia under somewhat similar circumstances. One more Shakespeare's pathos 69 attempt to rally our hearts to Richard is made when the groom of the stables visits him, just before his death, to talk of ''roan Barbary". However these things "be overdone or come tardy off", one sees that the method pursued is that of Shakespeare. During the four or five years following Richard II, if the now accepted chronology of the plays be correct, a large share of Shakespeare's energy went into the creation of comedy and a large ele- ment of comedy invades the remaining histories. Yet, notwithstanding Falstaff and his comic re- tinue, the main upshot of these plays is not comic, nor is it precisely tragic; it is heroic. Each of the plays of the Henry V trilogy ends in some species of triumph. The "Shakespeare's ideal king" business has undoubtedly been greatly over- done with respect to Henry V; but the fact remains that he is the only one of England's "royal kings" who, in Shakespeare's portrayal, bears the brunt of the heroic life unbroken. It is in showing us the wrecks that strew the path of this royal progress that pathos finds employment, usually in an admixture with comedy. In the first piece it is Hotspur for whom our sympathy is built up through close revelations of his absurd but lovable nature, especially in the two scenes with his wife. Lady Percy's 'Tn faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry", when he refuses to divulge the secret of his disquiet, and her "Wouldst thou have thy head broken?" when his wagging tongue insists on inter- rupting the music, are taking reminders of this 70 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES side of our acquaintance with Hotspur. In the end he is *'food for — " "For worms brave Percy", and the other Harry gently lays his colours over the mangled face. But a moment later this senseless clay is the victim of Falstaff's gross buffoonery, — a giant irony, too strong for some weak stomachs. *'Did these bones cost no more the breeding, than to play at loggats with 'em?" The pathos of the next piece centers in the king and culminates in the bedsid^e scene of the fourth act, in which his weary heart receives its mortal shock. The dramatist's care to preserve the pathetic value here is shown by the nice management through which the actual death of the king is made to take place off the stage. At the end of the piece King Henry V, crowned, crosses the stage in all the panoply of costly state. This is one of the places in Shakespeare where criticism has often gone astray and where over-perception of a small point may easily lead us so; where perception of his main dramatic intention is all-important. Falstaff is there to greet the new king. He hails him: ''My king! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!" Then come Henry's apparently heartless words of rejection, containing not one hint of tenderness or regret for their nights and suppers of the gods. To the stinging reproaches of the king, Falstaff offers no interruption or reply; but after the king's exit, he has this line: "Justice Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound". Professor Moulton appears to see in this brief speech only another re- bound of Falstaff's irrepressible waggery. "The Shakespeare's pathos 71 meeting has come, and the blow has fallen; we turn to hear the first words of a crushed man: and what we hear is one more flash of the old humour". Surely, this is only one side of the matter and not, perhaps, the most important one. The subse- quent history of Falstaff shows he was hard hit; but (So tight he kept his lips compressed, Scarce any blood came through) You looked twice ere you saw his breast Was all but shot in two. This second look, Professor Bradley has taken, and he has given us the result of his observations in the fine lecture on The Rejection of Falstaff. And yet I am not quite satisfied. Professor Brad- ley is prone to admit that Shakespeare has made a mistake; that he has let Falstaff run away with him. I cannot think so. It is neither FalstafT's humour nor his pathos, nor is it Henry's hardness of heart which impresses me; it is the stern heroism of the moment. Harry the Fifth is crowned and what does it mean? Why, from one point of view, that his old friend Falstaff cannot or will not pay his debts. It is comic or pathetic, as you will; but what are comedy and pathos to the relentless soul whose powers are knit up for achievement? At last, England has such a king. How squalid, for the moment, seems Falstaff with his crew in the little street; the great wit and the gay heart are silenced ; stern j ustice speaks ; it is the heroic life ; The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl sweep on and leave him blinking. 72 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The last play of the trilogy is all triumph. No, not quite all; Shakespeare did not altogether for- get "plump Jack", though, so far as we have any evidence, Henry did; in the midst of other busi- ness, he found time to lift the curtain for one final glimpse of the banished humorist. "Lift the curtain" is a vile phrase, for that is precisely what the dramatist did not do, but veiled the scene behind Mistress Quickly's magic huddle of words. It is the chief stroke of pathos in the play and, as everyone knows, one of the great achievements of Shakespeare's art. No words can do it justice; and I will not try. The play proceeds with the triumphs of Henry, in statecraft, in war, in gambols with his men, in councils with his generals. He is the sufficient king. Finally, we are permitted to be present at a royal wooing. The situation is a droll one, in a way. Katherine is, of course, a prize of war; softness, under the circumstances, would be an offense. Katherine's sparring is a credit to her race and to her sex. And Henry carries it off well, with engaging liveliness and soundness of heart. It is, none the less, a diplo- matic wooing, and when he takes his largess of her lips, it is in full presence and "the kettle drum and trumpet bray out the triumph of his pledge". Le Roi boit. It is the heroic life. So ends the historic series. In Richard II, Shakespeare had been compelled to go out of his way to secure the feminine accessory to his pathetic design. He was content, in the Henry plays, to rest his pathos largely upon mas- Shakespeare's pathos 73 culine interests. In so doing he acquired, no doubt, the full compass in the presentation of male char- acter and the ease and strength in guiding the sweep and manipulating the irony of large and stern events which we feel so powerfully in the main movements of the tragedies. It was his practice in romantic comedy that taught him the softness and refinement in feminine portraiture and the noble handling of the private emotions which stood him so well in hand in the keying of his scenes of pathos. The comedies are love stories and the elaboration of them led to more delicate realiza- tions of feminine deportment and to an inter- twining and contrasting of masculine and feminine interests. Few of the tragedies are love stories, but he continues in them to attach the fate of a heroine to the fate of the hero; the two fall together. Timon is the on.y exception, and its theme is one whose swift malice allows pathos no quarter. But Timon is un-Shakespearean; he alone dies like a dog; all the others die like men, — or devils. Again, as most of the histories represent the triumphs of men, so most of the comedies repre- sent the triumphs of women. This is perhaps too whimsical; but at least Shakespeare seldom or never ends in a minor key. If he seems to do so, it is because of some lapse of sympathy between him and us. And after the earliest comedies, he is seldom contented with a mere intellectual dis- entanglement for the conclusion of a piece. His conception of the last stage of a comedy was of a revel elaborated into a full movement, a thing of 74 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES joy, of sheer delight. This conception first finds adequate expression in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, which ends, first, seemingly, with the broad burlesque of the mechanics. Which when I saw rehears'd, I must confess Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears The passion of loud laughter never shed, and finally, in unparalleled contrast, with the fairies, singing and dancing trippingly and scattering through the hushed, moonlit house to bless the bridal beds. Need one mention the drench of love-making, music, and tipsy moonlight in foun- tained gardens, with which the last act of the Merchant dawns, the tinkling merriment of the ring-play, the nuptial tone of its close. "There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark" cries envious Jacques at the opening of another of these hymeneal finales. This world of beauty and radiant delight could not be half so precious, note, after two hours of mere fun. It is the dark menace escaped some few moments back, the sentience of life's capacity for pain, the knowledge of some nobleness lately revealed and underlying it all, that carries us so full-heartedly into this revel of pure joy, this glow of nuptial rosiness. Shakespeare's scheme of com- edy involves the subjecting of his heroine to some sharp trial which calls on her inmost qualities for its endurance or solution, and in the process of it awakens our sympathy and our admiration. Two ends are achieved: we are touched, and she wins her title to her lover. Shakespeare's pathos 75 The deepening of his pathos at this point is a marked characteristic of Shakespeare's progress in comic writing. The earlier comedies either make little attempt at pathos or are unsuccessful in achieving it. Portia's encounter with Shylock is the first set scene of importance which has this character; she touches us by her capacity and her eloquence, and the saving, not of Antonio merely, but of her own happiness from the peril that threatens it. The accusation of Hero in Much Ado is not her trial alone; it is the trial of Beatrice, in whom we are far more genuinely interested. When her loyalty to her cousin comes out arrayed in a fiery but half-humorous indignation so char- acteristic of her, the revealing moment has been met and we join Benedick in falling head over heels in love with her. So, when Rosalind swoons at the recital of Oliver and the sight of the blood- stained handkerchief, we are reassured of the deeper sentiency which underlies her sentimental persiflage; henceforth, she may "commend her counterfeiting to him" as much as she likes, we know better. In short, we are ready to conduct her to the altar. But let me not imitate those insatiate authors who pick every bone and leave their readers to feast on the grinning remnants. What I hope I have shown is: that in all the best and most char- acteristic of Shakespeare's mature plays we may be conscious of a masterly manipulation of key with a view to totality of effect, and that in this emotional scheme the effect of pathos has a dis- 76 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES tinct place; that it is usually most broadly de- veloped in the fourth act, where the effect of pathos, aside from its value in and for itself, serves as a preparation and relief for the major movement of the finale, whether that major movement be one of delight, as in comedy, of heroic triumph, as in some of the histories, or of ineffable grandeur, as in the great tragedies. I have further suggested, though I have not sought to develop this point fully, that, in the writing of his comedies and histories, Shakespeare gradually acquired both the mastery of the elements of pathos and the knowl- edge of its most effective position in the dramatic scheme which he applied in all his later tragedies. If anyone should be reluctant to accept these conclusions as impairing some dearer conception of ^'Fancy's child, warbling his native woodnotes wild", I recommend to him Polixenes' consola- tion to Perdita, when, in a charming revelation of youthfulness, she expresses disdain for the carnations and streak'd gillyvors, because she has heard it said that, in their breeding, the skill of man has meddled with "great creating nature": this is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature. Because Shakespeare's pathos occupies, in a sense, a subordinate place in his scheme of dramatic representation, and perhaps of life, it is not there- fore of subordinate importance. When we com- pare the comedies of Shakespeare with those of SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 77 Jonson, or of other powerful comic writers of his time, we find them by nothing more distinguished than by their warm and intimate appeals to our gentler affections, which, more than anything else, give them their immortal aspect of life and friend- liness. Others approach Shakespeare in shrewd- ness of observation and analysis, and, barring this one quality, in wisdom; but no one is so intimate and kindly. The same, to some degree, may be said of his tragedy. The finest parts of Webster approach the great scenes of Shakespeare in awful- ness and grandiosity, but lack their depth; they want his masterful kindness, which, in the midst of the most bewildering agitation, adds a sweet- ness to sorrow, adds, in short, the indescribable Shakespearean touch. Whether this be true or not, there is little question that this element in Shakespeare has much to do with the breadth of his appeal. Many escape his humour, and some his sublimity; there are few who do not yield their worship to his divine tenderness. THE FUNCTION OF THE SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS John Robert Moore. Queen. What imports this song? Ophelia. Say you? Nay, pray you, mark. HAMLET, IV, v,27-8. It has long been customary for enthusiastic critics to speak of the Elizabethan dramas as "a nest of singing birds," and of the songs as ''exqui- site nosegays" of "charming lyrics," which we might fancy to be "the echo of a bird's voice in spring." Upon examination of the plays before 1590, we discover little reason for this adulation. Broadly speaking, there was on the Elizabethan stage no dramatic song before Shakespeare. The plays of Kyd and Marlowe (save for a stage direction in the doubtful Dido, Queen of Carthage, and a scrap of mock-liturgical chanting in Doctor Faustus) are without songs. Lodge and Greene, exquisite lyrists in their novels, have left nothing of the sort in their plays, if we except the curious Looking Glass for London and England, which has been ascribed to them jointly. The lyrics formerly attrib- uted to Lyly have, in recent years, been assigned with something like finality to a later century and [78] SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE* 79 a later hand.^ The songs of Peele — aside from his most famous one, which occurs in a non- dramatic poem — are found chiefly in the pastoral play, The Arraignment of Paris, and are mostly pastoral poems, echo-songs of love-lorn shepherds, essentially undramatic in character. Peele's only tragedy, like the tragedies of his contemporaries, is entirely bare of songs. True, the song, as a comic device upon the stage, is of great antiquity: The origin of song and comedy is in the English drama refer^ able to much the same conditions, chief among them a desire to amuse. If we turn back as far as the moralities and interludes we shall fmd the few snatches of song, there indicated, commonly put into the mouth of the roisterer, the vice, or the devil; though godly songs are not altogether wanting. 2 Whether in the court and academic plays or in the popular performances, and whether sung by the children of the chapel or by the clown of the innyard, the incidental lyric was looked upon as something external to the course of the action. It was considered separable from its context, to be printed in the appendix or indicated only by a stage direction, to be used in different plays at the capricious will of a popular singer or between acts at the demand of pit or gallery, or to be ex- temporized on the stage by any half-illiterate Tarleton to cap the rhymes of a bantering specta- tor. The commonest types were prosaic bits of Puritanic moralizing (before the players were ^ Greg, The Authorship of the Songs in Lyly's Plays, Modern Language Review, I, No. I; and Feuillerat, John Lyly, p. 403f., note 1. 2 Schelling, English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, p. 201. 80 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES banished from Puritanic London), drinking catch- es, and songs by the clown. Between the acts dancing and singing, or both combined, were introduced. After the play the clown came to the front and gave a jig, generally to his own accompaniment upon pipe or tabor. Sometimes he had an accompaniment played for him, in which case he generally sang as he danced.^ At its best, the song on the popular stage was a thing for diversion, a part of the "inexplicable dumb-shows and noise." Noise and clamour were the regular accompaniments of all forms of entertainment. Though some writers object to the ill- manners and filth of play-houses, all assume noise to be quite in place. All the stage-manager had to do was to provide plenty of it. In Greene's "Alphonsus of Arragon" there are twenty- five separate directions for the sounding of drums and trumpets, besides some half-dozen marching entries of soldiery, of course accompanied by military music. ^ So much for buffoonery and incidental music. We may go a step farther, and say that until 1600 there was (outside Shakespeare) little or no func- tional use of the song, in the plays that have come down to us. Nash's Summer' s Last Will and Testa- ment is a drama only by courtesy, and the earlier plays of Jonson and Marston are without songs; Chapman was never a successful lyrist, and Flet- cher, Middleton, and Dekker had yet to achieve note in writing for the stage. But in this last decade of the century, Shakespeare employed lyrics with uniform success in all of his plays except The Comedy of Errors, certain of the histories ( Henry VI, King John, Richard II, and Richard III), ^ Elson, Shakespeare in Music, p. 319. * Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age, p. 202. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 81 and the doubtful tragedy Titus Andronicus, Fur- thermore, all of the later plays contain songs, aside from three which deal with remote periods of ancient history (Timon of Athens, Pericles, and Corio- lanus).^ The practice of his predecessors and contem- poraries, such as it was, may have prompted his use of the dramatic lyric; the ever-increasing popu- larity of the song-books and of the art of singing assured him of an appreciative audience, if not actually one which demanded singing as a prime feature of the performance; but it was Shake- speare's unique achievement to employ the inter- spersed lyrics, hitherto superfluous or altogether irrelevant in Elizabethan drama, to advance the action, localize or enrich the scene, or depict a character, and at times to express the emotion of the noblest tragic moments. We have seen that Shakespeare inherited the tradition of songs by the clown, the vice, or the devil. It was expected that madmen would sing on the stage, and that the fool would cap Tom o' Bedlam's verse (King Lear, III, vi, 27ff.), all to the infinite delight of the groundlings; that fairies and witches would converse in a peculiar strain, half-incantation, half-song; and that other songs would be introduced at the will of playwright, manager, or singer, upon the one condition that ^ Henry VIII contains the song "Orpheus with his lyre"; but that is excluded from this discussion as the work, presumably, of Fletcher, since it occurs in a scene which is usually conceded to him. S-6. 82 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES there be an abundance of noise. Shakespeare ac- cepted the legacy of tradition, but developed the fool's bauble of song into a magician's wand. In the large, there are in Shakespeare no songs devoid of dramatic function. Where the scene itself is of trivial consequence, the song serves to enliven the conversational by-play, as when the clown toys with Malvolio in the dungeon {Twelfth Night, IV, ii, 78fT.) : Clown. (Singing.) "Hey, Robin, jolly Robin,*;. Tell me how thy lady doe's. ' Malvolio. Fool! Clo. "My lady is unkind, perdy." Mai. Fool! Clo. "Alas, why is she so?" Mai Fool, I say! Clo. "She loves another"— Who calls, ha? It is used by the nimble Moth to twit ttfp heavy Don Armado with his love (Love's Labor's Lost, I, ii, 104ff.): * If she be made of white and red, \ Her faults will ne'er be known, '** For blushing cheeks by faults are bred And fears by pale white shown. At times it assumes the form of flyting or of cap- ping rhymes, as in Jacques' perversion of Amiens' song {As You Like It, II, v, 52ff.), and in the wit- combat between Rosalind and Boyet {Love's La- bour's Lost, IV, i, 127ff.); Ros. Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it. Thou canst not hit it, my good man. (Exit (Ros.) Boyet. An I cannot, cannot, cannot. An I cannot, another can. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 83 The comment of Costard, which follows, is suffi- ciently explanatory: By my troth, most pleasant. How both did fit it! At times the dramatist uses the song in by-play to secure the most humorous scenes, amusing not for buffoonery but for revelation of human nature. The cowardly Pistol sings (or recites songs) of the peril of war {Henry V, III, ii); the boisterous Bottom sings in the forest to show his skulking comrades that he is unafraid (A Midsummer NighVs Dream, III, i, 128ff.). Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, half dead with fear as he awaits his opponent at the duelling place, sings to keep up his courage, and gets Marlowe confused with the Psalter (The Merry Wives of Windsor, III, i, llff.): Evans. Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am, and trempling of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How melan- cholies I am! .... Pless my soul! (Sings.) "To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals; There will we make our peds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies. To shallow" — Mercy on me! I have a great dispositions to cry. (Sings.) "Melodious birds sing madrigals" — "When as I sat in Pabylon" — "And a thousand vagram posies. "To shallow," etc. (Re-enter Simple.) Sim. Yonder he is coming; this way, Sir Hugh. Evans. He's welcome. (Sings.) "To shallow rivers, to whose falls" — Heaven prosper the right! What weapons has he? 84 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Indeed, to an Elizabethan audience there was something exceedingly droll about the singing of any Welshman. Peele used the device in his dis- jointed Edward I; and Shakespeare takes it up with real effectiveness in Henry IV (Part I, III, i, 233ff.), where an amusing passage, vividly por- traying Hotspur in an idle hour, fills up an other- wise tedious interval: (The music plays. Hotspur. Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh; And 'tis no marvel he is so humorous. By'r lady, he is a good musician. Lady Percy. Then should you be nothing but musical, for you are altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh. Hot. I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish. (Here the lady sings a Welsh song. Hot. Come, Kate, I'll have your song too. Lady P. Not mine, in good sooth. Hot. Not yours, in good sooth! Heart, you swear like a comfit-maker's wife .... Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave "in sooth," And such protest of pepper-gingerbread, To velvet guards and Sunday-citizens. Gome, sing. Lady P. I will not sing. Hot. 'Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast teacher. An the indentures be drawn, I'll away within these two hours; and so, come in when ye will. (Exit. It will be observed that we have as yet met with no songs by the clown. The clown songs usually serve for special purposes, and at times express the most serious thoughts. Shakespeare's clown was a good musician who sang for all occasions,^ and we shall be obliged to consider his songs in SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 85 the order of their respective functions. A similar transformation may be seen in the traditional drinking-song, represented in Anthony and Cleo- patra, Henry IV (Part //), Othello, and Twelfth Night. Only the drinking-songs of Falstaff and Sir Toby are free from the powerful overtones of dramatic significance with which Shakespeare charged his music; the other Bacchic passages are prophetic of impending disaster. Even the scene ij in Twelfth Night (II, iii, 36ff.) serves for character- ization more than for convivial humor. There is something pathetically human about the gross old knight and his withered dupe, sitting in the drunken gravity of midnight to hear the clown sing of the fresh love of youth: Clown. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life? Sir Toby. A love-song, a love-song. Sir Andrew. Ay, ay. I care not for good life. Clo. (Sings.) mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear, your true love's coming, In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure. Sir And. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. Sir To. A contagious breath. Sir And. Very sweet and contagious, i' faith. Sir To. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? Shall we do that? Sir And. An you love me, let's do't. I am dog at a catch. The song is used once as an epilogue (Twelfth Night, V, i, 398ff.), when Feste, most lyrical of 86 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES clowns, is given a chance to commend himself by his voice as well as his legs; and it serves numerous times to bring a character on or off the stage. Rosalind escapes from her word-combat with Boyet in the song quoted previously; the two witch songs in Macbeth (III, v, and IV, ii) — not the familiar chanted speeches — are solely for the purpose of facilitating exits; and Autolycus and Ariel, most musical and most unlike of Shakespeare's singers, come and go in song. At times the singing exit marks the close of a dialogue or scene, as when Feste echoes the interludes {Twelfth Night, IV, ii, 130ff.): I am gone, sir, And anon, sir, I'll be with you again, In a trice. Like to the old Vice, etc. At times the singing exit marks the conclusion of a change in one of the characters, as when Caliban has fallen completely under the influence of drink and the wiles of man (The Tempest, II, ii, 182ff.) : Caliban. {Sings drunkenly.) Farewell, master; farewell, farewell! Trinculo. A howling monster; a drunken monster! Cal. No more dams I'll make for fish; Nor fetch in firing At requiring; Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish. 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master, get a new man. Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom! Siephano. brave monster! Lead the way. {Exeunt. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 87 A surprisingly large number of the songs serve for what might be called pagan ritual, a fact which is especially conspicuous because Christian ritual is absent. This class may be said to include the two witch songs in Macbeth, and the fairy and mock-fairy songs in A Midsummer NighVs Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest; but it is represented more accurately by the songs which occur in special ceremonies, as in Much Ado About Nothing (V, iii). As You Like It (V, iv), and Cymbeline (IV, ii), and The Tempest (IV, i). That fairies and witches should sing was a convention sufficiently established; but the frequent occur- rence of masque or other musical ceremonial in the middle and later plays is less easily explained. No doubt it is due, in part, to the taste of the masque-loving age, and (especially if The Tempest was written or revised for court performance) to the passion which King James and his queen enter- tained for musical pageantry. These passages must have been effective on the stage, however excrescent they may seem to a modern reader,^ as in Much Ado (V, iii, entire scene), where Don Pedro and Claudio, with attendants, enter the church at night, bearing torches, to honor the memory of Hero, whom they consider slain by slander. An epitaph is hung on the tomb, and this song is sung: Pardon, goddess of the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; ^ The song which follows is not without dramatic function, however, since it is part of the friar's plan for arousing remorse in Claudio (IV, i, 213). 88 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily. Graves, yawn and yield your dead, Till death be uttered, Heavily, heavily. This leads us to the consideration of songs for descriptive effect and atmosphere. The duet be- tween Spring and Winter in Love's Labour's Lost (V, ii) needs no quoting. The lark song in Cym- beline (II, iii) ushers in the full beauty of dawn, strangely contrasted with the scene just preceding. As Dr. Furness remarks, it comes "laden with heaven's pure, refreshing breath after the stifling presence of lachimo in Imogen's chamber." Per- haps the most notable examples of this device are the songs in As You Like It (II, v and vii; IV, ii; and V, iii). Here we feel no lack of painted scenery. The sylvan surroundings of the exiled courtier, the character of his comrades, and the misfortunes of his noble patron are condensed into such lines as these (II, vii, 174ff.): Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen. Because thou art not seen. Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly. Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. With great frequency songs are employed chiefly for characterization. Pandarus betrays himself SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 89 by his mock-song of love {Troilus and Cressida, III, i), and Mercutio draws fire from the old nurse by his insinuating snatches {Romeo and Juliety II, iv). On the other hand. Benedick ridicules not love itself, but his own power of song, while he is awaiting Beatrice (Much Ado, V, ii, 26ff.): (Sings.) The god of love, That sits above, And knows me, and knows me, How pitiful I deserve, — 1 mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turn'd over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme. I have tried. I can find out no rhyme to "lady" but "baby," an innocent rhyme; for "scorn," "horn," a hard rhyme; "school," "fool," a babbling rhyme; very omi- nous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms. The melancholy Duke Orsino moves to melan- choly music. At the opening of the play he is listening to a mournful air, and in the next act he calls for a despairing song of love (Twelfth Night, II, iv, 52ff.): Come away, come away, death. And in sad cypress let me be laid. Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, etc. The songs in As You Like It, as we have sug- gested, serve for characterization as well as de- scription. The cynical strain in Jacques is nowhere better shown than in his parody of Amiens' song of sylvan contentment (II, v, 52ff.): 90 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES If it do come to pass That any man turn ass, Leaving his wealth and ease A stubborn will to please, Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame! Here shall he see Gross fools as he, An if he will come to me. Not infrequently the revelation of character is of this sort: the speaker shows his own nature by his comment on the song of another. Honest Benedick is frank to admit his ignorance of music {Much Ado, II, iii, 60ff.): Bene. Now, divine air! now is his soul ravish'd! Is it not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all's done. Cloten is bewrayed by his speech when he x^ova- ments on the fresh lyric of love at morning, which he has caused to be sung by Imogen's apartments, in the effort to win her from her absent lord (Cym- heline, II, iii, 12ff.) : Cloten. I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate. Enter Musicians. Song. Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings. And Phoebus gins arise His steeds to w^ater at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With every thing that pretty is. My lady sweet, arise. Arise, arise. {Clo.) So, get you gone. If this penetrate, I will consider your music the better; if it do not, it is a vice in her ears, which horse-hairs and calves'-guts, nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 91 This is the language of the stable after the song of the lark — violent contrast, but surely vivid char- acterization. We are not surprised, shortly after, when the speaker plans a terrible revenge upon Imogen. The grief for the supposed death of Juliet is brought out by Peter's unsuccessful appeal to the musicians to play something to cheer him (Romeo and Juliet, IV, v, 102ff.). Othello will not hear the musicians whom Gassio has brought to his house (Othello, III, i). In similar fashion, but far more effectively, the gentler side of Brutus' nature, which distinguishes the patriot from his heartless confederate, is developed in his comment on a blank song, just before the ghost appears in the tent (Julius Caesar, IV, iii, 255ff .) : Brutus. Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful. Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes a while. And touch thy instrument a strain or two? Lucius. Ay, my lord, an 't please you. Brutus. It does, my boy. I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. (Music, and a song. Brutus. This is a sleepy tune. murderous slumber, Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy. That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good-night; I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee. If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument. I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good-night. The ballad snatches in the mouth of Ophelia, weirdly contrasting with the secluded innocence of her life, indicate clearly the joint causes of her derangement. The objectionable ballads, doubt- 92 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES less childhood recollections of a nurse's songs, are discordant echoes of Hamlet's defection. The clown's blundering version of "The Aged Lover Renounceth Love" shows his illiteracy, besides acting as a melancholy reminder of the unfortu- nate lovers, as a barrel-organ plays old tunes that call up painful memories. The character of Ste- phano is outlined by his songs the moment he comes upon the stage {The Tempest, II, ii). His degrading influence upon Caliban is foreshad- owed; it is only a step before the poor creature reels off the stage to attempt a murder, singing of new-found freedom. The character of Ariel is re- vealed to us almost entirely through song. He is a Greek messenger, telling us of feats which he performs offstage; but he does not lift a hand in our presence, except to attire Prospero (V, i), and even that is done to music. Much the same is true of Autolycus; in two successive scenes he gives us no less than seven different songs or frag- ments, highly characteristic of his joyous roguery, which raises his whole-hearted rascality so far above the common level that it partakes of the out-door freshness of innocence {The Winter's Tale, IV, iii, 132ff.): Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a; A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad heart tires in a mile-a. When the songs were already familiar to the audience, they must have served for a naturalistic SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 93 and humanizing effect. The insane daughter of a Danish courtier seems cold and distant; but a young girl singing ballads and babbling the folk- lore of flowers must have been very comprehensi- ble to an Elizabethan audience. A similar effect must have been secured by the clown's song in Hamlet, Sir Hugh's version of ''The Passionate Shepherd" in The Merry Wives, and^all the frag- ments of balladry that appear in the plays. At times the song expresses, directly or indi- rectly, the judgment of characters or audience, or any pertinent truth. The pretended fairies in The Merry Wives censure the licentious Falstaff (V, v); and the Fool's songs, uttered when prose counsel would not have been tolerated, are the first emphatic hint of the king's real condition {King Lear, I, iv). Even more effective is the broken passage of folk-song put in the mouth of the pretended madman, when Lear's estate has reached its lowest, and he is forced to enter a hovel for shelter from the storm (III, iv, 187ff.) : Child Rowland to the dark tower came; His word was still," etc. There is reason to suppose that the groundlings were amused by the incoherent utterances of Edgar. If there is more in it than entertainment, the credit is Shakespeare's. The song is frequently used to incite characters to or against action. Bassanio's choice of the leaden casket is directed by the song of Fancy i 94 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES {The Merchant of Venice, III, ii), as is indicated by his soliloquy, beginning (73fT.) : So may the outward shows be least themselves; The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. lago sings two songs to incite Gassio to become drunk before the brawl with Roderigo. lago re- mains sober throughout {Othello, II, iii, 6611.)' Cassio. 'Fore God, they have given me a rouse already. Moniano. Good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as I am a soldier. lago. Some wine, ho! {Sings.) "And let me the canakin clink, clink; And let me the canakin clink. A soldier's a man; 0, man's life's but a span; Why, then, let a soldier drink." Some wine, boys! Cas. 'Fore God, an excellent song. Let's have no more of this; let's to our affairs. — God forgive us our sins! — Gentlemen, let's look to our business. Do not think, gentlemen, that I am drunk. This is my ancient; this is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not drunk now; I can stand well enough, and I speak well enough. And so he staggers off to his ruinous meeting with Roderigo. Tw6 snatches are sung by Pettuchio, as part of his system for breaking his wife's tem- per {The Taming of the Shrew, IV, i). Titania.is put to sleep and aw^akened by singing {A Mid- summer Nighfs Dream, II, i; III, i), though the latter is the accidental result of Bottom's song to show his courage. Still, it serves as an effective introduction of the metamorphosed weaver to the enamored queen. Ariel's invisible music lulls the shipwrecked courtiers to sleep, and permits the ^ SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 95 conspiracy of Antonio and Sebastian to develop; his song in Gonzalo's ear arouses the old man in time to save the king {The Tempest, II, i). Indeed, ■, as we have said, Ariel's invisible power is made i manifest^o us through song alone. When the j drunken conspirators come to seek the life of ! Prospero, they attempt to sing (III, ii, 133fT.): \ Caliban. That's not the tune. (Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe. Stephano. What is this same? Trinculo. This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of Nobody. Cal. Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That,* if I then had wak'd after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming. The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again. Ste. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing. Cal. When Prospero is destroy'd. Ste. That shall be by and by. I remember the story. Trin. The sound is going away. Let's follow it, and after do our work. So they are led into a filthy pool. Ariel draws¥ Ferdinand from the coast to Miranda's presence^ by singing "Come unto these yellow sands"; and he persuades the prince of his father's death, thus recalling his grief and preparing him for a new and unreserved aifection (I, ii, 396ff.): Ariel's Song. Full fathom five thy father lies; 96 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: .... .... ^p Ferdinand. This ditty does remember my drown'd father. He does hear me; And that he does I weep. Myself am Naples, Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld The King my father wreck'd. Miranda, Alack, for mercy! Prospero. At the first sight They have chang'd eyes. Delicate Ariel, I'll set thee free for this. At times the song is used to heighten the emo- tion of a special situation, as well as to incite 'to action, as in Ophelia's ravings (Hamlet, IV, *v, 1641T.): "They bore him barefac'd on the bier; Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; And on his grave rains many a tear," — Fare you well, my dove ! Laertes. Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus. Ophelia. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for thoughts. (Sings.) • "And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead; Go to thy death-bed; He never will come again." Laertes, Do you see this, you gods? And when Claudius suggests that Laertes kill SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 97 Hamlet, by fair fight or by poison, the young man is ready for either means of revenge. At times the song serves for heightened emotion, without incitement to action. The songs of Edgar before the hovel serve this purpose {King Lear, III, iv, 187ff.). The serenade to Silvia is over- heard by Julia, disguised in boy's clothing, and it gives her intense pain; for it is the token of her lover's falsehood, the libation which fickle Proteus is pouring on a new shrine (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV, ii, 30ff.) : Host. Come, we'll have you merry. I'll bring you where you shall hear music and see the gentleman that you ask'd for. Julia. But shall I hear him speak? Host. Ay, that you shall. Jul. That will be music. {Music plays.) Host. Hark, hark! Jul. Is he among these? Host. Ay; but, peace! let's hear 'em. Song. Who is Silvia? What is she. That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be. Host. How now! are you sadder than you were before? How do you, man? The music likes you not. Jul. You mistake; the musician likes me not. Host. ^ Why, my pretty youth? Jul. He plays false, father. Host. How? Out of tune on the strings? Jul. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very heart- strings. Host. Hark, what a fme change is in the music! Jul. Ay, that change is the spite. Host. You would have them always play but one thing? Jul. I would always have one play but one thing. S— 7. 98 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The disconsolate grief of the deserted Mariana finds utterance in the song a boy sings for her at the moated grange {Measure for Measure, IV, i, Iff.): Take, 0, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn; But my kisses bring again, bring again; Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, seal'd in vain. Of a similar kind is the dirge for Imogen in the forest. After hastening to meet Posthumus and finding that he has ordered her death, after being pursued by Cloten and drugged into insensibility by the cordial which the queen has sent her for poison, she lies as if dead. The poignancy of the situation is intensified by the fact that the singers are disguised princes, her brothers, ignorant of her birth and theirs, and their supposed father is a banished nobleman (Cymbeline, IV, ii, 258ff .) : Fear no more the heat o' the sun. Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done. Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must. As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Fear no more the frown o' the great; Thou art past the tyrant's stroke. Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak. Fear not slander, censure rash; Thou hast fmish'd joy and moan. Not only is the song used to heighten the scene in which it occurs, but it may at the same time SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 99 foreshadow what is to come. The clown's song in Airs Well that Ends Well (I, iii, 741!.) possibly serves for this purpose; for Helena is the one good woman in ten. A clearer example, where frailty of the opposite sex is charged, is found in Much Ado About Nothing, where the song serves to foreshadow the jealousy of Glaudio (II, iii, 64ff .) : Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go. And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny nonny. Benedick. ... I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it. Don Pedro. Yea, marry; dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee, get us some excellent music; for to-morrow night we would have it at the Lady Hero's chamber-window. In Anthony and Cleopatra (II, vii, 120ff.), the drinking song is rendered, with joined hands and drunken good fellowship, shortly before the final quarrel of the triumvirs. The forced air of con- viviality but thinly covers the increasing animosity; the host of the evening is tempted to slay his guests and make himself lord of Rome, and the man who places the singers hand in hand for the song is no other than Enobarbus, who later deserts Anthony at his greatest need. Perhaps the most familiar example of this lyric foreboding is the song of Desdemona {Othello, IV, iii, 41fT.): 100 SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE Desdemona. (Singing.) "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree. Sing all a green willow; Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow. The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her moans; Sing willow, willow, willow; Her salt tears fell from her, and soft'ned the stones; Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve," — Nay, that's not the next. — Hark! who is 't that knocks? Emilia. It's the wind. Des. (Singing.) "I call'd my love false love; but what said he then? Sing willow, willow, willow. If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men." — So, get you gone; good-night. Mine eyes do itch; Doth that bode weeping? This song is beautifully echoed in the dying words of Emilia, which confirm Othello's resolution to slay himself (V, ii, 246ff.): Emilia. What did thy song bode, lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan. And die in music. (Singing.) "Willow, willow, willow!" — Moor, she was chaste; she lov'd thee, cruel Moor; So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true; So speaking as I think, alas, I die. Equally effective dramatically, though far less not- able as poetry, are the songs of Master Silence which foreshadow the disgrace of Falstaff (Henry IV, Part II, V, iii, 18ff.; v, 51ff.): Silence. (Singing.) "Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer, And praise God for the merry year, When flesh is cheap and females dear. And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily. And ever among so merrily." DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 101 Falstaff. There's a merry heart! Good Master Silence, I'll give you a health for that anon. What, is the old king dead? Pistol. As nail in door. The things I speak are just. FaL Away, Bardolph! saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine. . . . Garry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow, — be what thou wilt; I am Fortune's steward — get on my boots. We'll ride all night. King. I know thee not, old man; fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man. So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But, being awak'd, I do despise my dream. We have seen that Shakespeare was virtually the first Elizabethan dramatist to make systematic employment of the song for dramatic purposes; that he used either blank, fragmentary, or com- plete songs in all of the plays but nine, of which several are, at least in part, by other hands; that his songs are inseparable from the context, and that even the few blank ones are closely imbedded in the conversation, if not indeed the action, of the scene; and that they serve not for the gross humor of boisterous clownage or of raving mad- ness, but for the subtle and delightful portrayal of human nature, the enrichment of scene or atmo- sphere, the expression of thought or mood inappro- priate for the speeches, the motivation of action, the heightening of emotional effect, and the fore- shadowing of what is to come. In at least one case the song projects our imaginations not merely into the next scene or act, but beyond the end 102 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES of the play into the future which is yet unrevealed. Ariel, never actually free during the action of The Tempest, on account of the exigencies of the situation, is allowed, after Prospero has again promised him freedom, to give us a glimpse of his fairy life in the years that are to come (V, i, 88ff .) : Where the bee sucks, there suck I. In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On a bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." \ AN ELIZABETHAN DEFENCE OF THE STAGE Karl Young Nothing in the annals of Elizabethan literature is more familiar than the special Puritan attack^ upon the stage that wore on through a decade or two after the erection of The Theatre and The Curtain in the Liberties of London in 1576-77. The pamphlet invectives of Northbrooke, Gosson, and Stubbes are, indeed, greatly to be cherished, not only as capital illustrations of the perennial spirit of Puritanism, but also as invaluable com- munications concerning the type of audience and the sort of dramatic material with which Shake- speare and his early competitors were concerned. It is too often assumed, however, that the attack was directed indiscriminately against the whole dramatic species, and that for the Puritan the phrase '*vain plays and interludes" was all-inclu- sive. The corrective for such a view of the matter may be illustrated from the famous Treatise of Northbrooke himself, for he can describe at least one kind of play in which there is no guile: I thinke it is lawefuU for a schoolmaster to practise his schol- lers to playe comedies, obseruing these and the Uke cautions: first, that those comedies which they shall play be not mixt with [103 1 104 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES anye ribaudrie and filthie termes and wordes (which corrupt good manners). Secondly, that it be for learning and vtterance sake, in Latine, and very seldome in Englishe. Thirdly, that they vse not to play commonly and often, but verye rare and seldome. Fourthlye, that they be not pranked and decked vp in gorgious and sumptious apparell in their play. Fiftly, that it be not made a common exercise, publickly, for profit and gaine of money, but for learning and exercise sake. And lastly, that their comedies be not mixte with vaine and wanton toyes of loue. These being obserued, I iudge it toUerable for schollers.^ From such an utterance it appears that North- brooke's mind was at rest in regard to the Latin drama of the schools and universities; and it would seem natural for the earnest controversialist to assume that the plays produced in the halls of Oxford and Cambridge should be pure in purpose and effect, and that at the University, at least, one need stir no quarrel over the immorality of the drama. Such an assumption, however, was not justified by fact; for the universities not only joined hands with London Puritans in condemning the public performances of ''common players"; they also developed a substantial private contro- versy over plays written and performed within their own walls "for learning and vtterance sake, in Latine." Of this controversy the most conspicuous evi- dence is from Oxford, and the narrative begins with the performance of three Latin plays of Wil- liam Gager in the hall of Christ Church at Shrove- tide, 1592: on Sunday, February 5, Ulysses Redux; on Monday, February 6, Riuales; on Tues- day, February 7, an adaptation of Seneca's Hip- * Publications of the Shakespeare Society, London, 1843, p. 104. DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 105 polytus. To witness these performances, Dr. Thomas Thornton, a friend and colleague of Gager, had twice invited the learned Dr. John Rainolds, of Queen's College. Irritated by the repeated in- vitation. Dr. Rainolds sent to Dr. Thornton, on Monday, February 6, a letter in which he set forth his reasons for declining. Without showing this letter to Gager, Thornton merely informed him later that Rainolds had civilly declined on the ground that it was not his habit to attend plays. At the close of the third play, on Tuesday, Feb- ruary 7, Gager brought upon the stage the comic figure of Momus, who not only passed severe strictures upon Gager's three plays, but also took an extreme position in opposition to acting and plays in general. This dramatic device included an Epilogus Responsivus, in which the objections of Momus were deftly met and held up for ridicule. Although the "devyse of Momus" had been "con- ceyved and penned longe before" Rainolds wrote to Thornton, had been shown to the latter **a monthe before," and had been intended merely as "a iest to serve a turn,"^ the similarity between the main arguments advanced in Rainolds' letter and certain objections ridiculously uttered by Momus gave offence to the learned scholar of Queen's College, induced between Rainolds and Gager a correspondence of which the earlier part has been lost, and inspired a sermon by an unknown young fellow of Queen's College upon the text in ^ The quotations in this sentence are from Gager's unpublished letter to Rainolds preserved in Corpus Ghristi College Ms., 352, p. 42. 106 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Deuteronomy xxii, 5, which forbids men to assume the apparel of women. It was probably these un- friendly outbursts that prompted Gager to publish, in May, 1592, the text of Ulysses Redux, including Momus and an enlarged version of the Epilogus Responsivus, and to send a presentation copy to Rainolds. In acknowledgment of his gift Gager received a long letter, dated July 10, 1592, in which Rainolds reaffirmed and amplified the ob- jections to plays previously advanced in his letter to Thornton and echoed, — derisively, as it had seemed, — from the lips of Momus. To this com- munication Gager replied, on July 31, in a long and notable letter, in which Rainolds' censorious argu- ments were met point by point with ample scholar- ship and good temper. Although Gager concluded his letter by expressing the hope that his corres- pondent would thenceforth confine the controversy to *'pryvatt conference," and would desist from "furder replye in wrytinge,"^ Rainolds returned to the attack, on May 30, 1593, with a letter of por- tentous bulk and truculence. This document con- sists essentially in a minute dissection of Gager's letter, rather than in substantial additions to the matter of the argument. To this violent utterance Gager offered no reply, and with it the direct con- troversy between the two men ceased. ^ 1 Corpus Christi College MS. 352, p. 65. 2 An admirable account of this controversy is given by F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age, Oxford, 1914, pp. 229-251. The highly technical continuation of it by Rainolds and Albericus Gentilis is recounted by Boas, pp. 244-248. DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 107 From this outline it appears that the chief docu- ments in the debate are the following: (1) Rainolds' letter to Thornton, dated February 6, 1592; (2) Gager's device of Momus, acted on February 7, 1592; (3) Rainolds' letter to Gager, dated July 10, 1592; (4) Gager's letter to Rainolds, dated July 31, 1592; (5) Rainolds' second letter to Gager, dated May 30, 1593. Of these writings three have been published. As we have observed above, the text of Gager's Momus appeared among the appendices of his Ulysses Redux, published at Oxford in May, 1592. The two letters addressed by Rainolds to Gager occupy the greater part of a little volume bearing the courageous title, Th' overthrow \ of Stage-Playes, \ By the way of controversie betwixt \ D. Gager andD. Rainoldes, wherein all the reasons \ that can be made for them are notably refuted; tK ob- \ jec- tions aunswered, and the case so cleared and re- \ solved, as that the iudg ement of any man, that \ is not froward and perverse, may \ easelie be satisfied. \ Wherein is manifestly proved, that it is not only vnlaw- \ full to bee an Actor, but a beholder \ of those vanities, \ Wherevnto are added also and annexed in th' end certeine latine I Letters betwixt the sayed Maister Rainoldes, and D. \ Gentiles, Reader of the CivillLaw in Oxford, | concer- ning the same matter. \ 1599. In 1600 the sheets of this volume were reissued, with a fresh title-page 108 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE that names Middleburgh as the place of publi- cation; and in 1629 a new edition appeared from the press of Oxford University Strangely enough, the first and fourth docu- ments in the controversy have never been printed. This neglect can scarcely be due to a lack of in- herent importance; for in his letter of February 6 to Thornton, Rainolds carefully defines his posi- tion, and either outlines or mentions the issues that form the frame-work of the subsequent dis- pute; and Gager's letter of July 31 to Rainolds constitutes the one explicit and substantial reply to Rainolds' attack. With inevitable interest, then, one turns to these letters themselves. Rain- olds writes as follows:^ Syr because your curteous inviting of me yesterdaye againe to your plaies dothe she we you were not satisfied w/th my answer and reason therof before geven, why I might not be at them: I have thought good by writinge to open that vnto yow which, if tyme had served to vtter them by word of mouthe, I doute not but yow would haue rested satisfied therwzth: fTor both I perceaued by that your selfe spake of men in wemens raiment, that some of your players were so to be attired: & that you acknow^ledged, that, if this were unlaw^full, I might iustlie be vnwilling to approve it by my presence. Now for myne owne parte in deed I am perswaded that it is vnlawfull because the scripture saythe a woman shall not weare that whiche pertaineth ^ Corpus Christi College MS. 352, pp. 11-14. The letter is headed as follows: A Letter of Dr J. Rainolds to Dr W"^ Gager (LL.D.) shewing his reasons why he did not accept his invitation to see his play acted. 1^^ Reason taken from the unlawfulness of wearing a habitt proper to a different sex. 2^^ because acted on {/< Lords day, S^y from y^ doubts of his own mind. Another hand has, very properly, deleted the words Dr. W"^ Gager (LL.D.) and has substituted the following: an unknown friend forson Tho. Thornton, vid. Ath. Oxon. 1st i;ol. pages 409 & 754 & Di" Rainold' answ^ to Dr Gager in his Ovthrow of Stage plays p. 1 & lb. p. 49. The same letter, with trifling va- riants, is found in Bodleian MS. Tanner 77, fol. 35r-36v. where it bears the following heading: A letter of D. Rainolds to D. Thornton who requested him to see a stage playe. In my text from C.C.C. MS. 352 I omit Rainolds' marginal references to his authorities. SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 109 to a man, nether shall a man put on womans raiment: for all that do so ar abhomination to the lord thy god: ffor this being spoken generally of all, and haueing no exception of plaies in the scripture (for ought that I knowe) must be taken generallie, as ment of them also : according to the rule obserued in humaine lawes, but reaching to divine by equall force of reason; that we may not distinguishe wher the lawe distinguisheth not and things being generallie set downe without distinction ar to be likwyse taken: Else as the sluggard saithe w/th himself, a title sleepe, a title slumber, a title folding of the hands, against the generall prohibition and restraint of slouthfullnes : so against the generall prohibition of idolatrie may the papist saye, a title worshipping of images: of adulterie, the whoremonger, a title single fornication of theft, the covetous wretch, a little simonie, briberie, userie. Nether am I moved by this reason onelie to think that as no breache of these co/77manndements is lawfull, so nether of the other, no not in plaies and spectacles, but also by the iudgment of such christian writers, as I dare not dissent from, vnlesse I se them cleerlie convinced of error by the word: Caluin as sounde and learned an interpreter of the scriptures as anie synce the apostles times in my opinion after he had shewed the daunger of vnmodest wanto/ines and wickednesse for which' the Lord forbideth men and wemen to chaunge rai- ment: for most true {saith he) is that profane poets saying: Quern prestare potest mulier galeata pudorem, In which, word sith Juvenal condemneth Romane wemen who wzth helmet on did learne to playe theire warlike parts in games like fensers; and Caluin saith that Moses controlleth in both sexes the proportion of that which Juvenal doth in one: it followeth that Caluin thought men to be forbidden by the lawe of God, to weare a ffrench hoode or other habiliments of wemen, yea though in plaies and enterludes. Hyperius whose writings ar iustlie commended, as most sound and leared too, in a treatise pur- poselie made against abuses [p. 12] of these shroft-tide daliances, saith the same directlie, affirming that mens wering of wemens raiment in such sort is plainlie pronounced abhominable by that lawe as a greater sine then commonlie is thought: In like sort doth Cyprian urge it against a stage-plaier, saying that by the lawe men ar forbidden to put on a womens garment: and such as do it are iudged accursed. In lyke sorte Tertullian not vpon occasion of anie one stage player, making a trade of it but generallie touching stage-playes. And Chrysostom en- treating of the manifold staines wherwzth the ar blemished, and rekenninge there amongst satanicall, diuelish apparrell doth 110 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE touch With this sharpe and peremtorie censure men wearing wemens attire, as appeareth by the words following compared with tliat other wher he noteth of the lawe condemning this offence in men: Ffinallie the byshops to the number of aboue two himdred & twenty assembled in the Emperors palace at Constantinople, the sixt generall counsell not thinkinge it enougli to forbid this abuse receaued then in playes and pag- eants, did decree farder {which argueth how grevous a crime they demede it) that whafsoeuer man did put on wemens raiment y if he were of the clergie, he should be degraded: if of the laitie excommunicated. Now whatsoeuer weight this iudgment of the church shall haue in youre eyes, or whatsoeuer iudgment youre self haue of the text of scripture which I reste on: yow se that I, thinking the thinge to be vnlawfull, shall sinne (yf I approved it) at least, in doinge of that which is not of faith if not in hauinge fellowship with the vnfruitfull workes of darknes, and this for that one circumstance which your self mentioned, and toucheth (it may be) all youre plaies. Or, if it do not, yet there ar so manie circumstances beside, some wherof do touch all cheiflie beinge set forth, with such preparation, and charge, as youres ar, that although my self perhaps might behold them w/thout takinge harme, yet should I feare the daunger, which by my example might be bred to others if I were present at them. The qualitie and importance of these sundrie circum- stances, some in the matter, some in the forme, some otherwise often hurtfuU, as lamentable experience by effects and con- sequences hath shewed in too manie, what players what be- holders: nether doth want of laysure permit me now to open, nor is it needfull to yow, who knowe what hath beene written herof by godlie fathers not onelie those I named but also Lactantius Basill Epiphanius, Am.brose Austin, others: for though it be true that some of their speaches reprove the Gentiles stage-plaies, and note some fawts also that oures ar free frome peradventure : yet manie [p. 13] of their reasons doe touch oizres as neearlie, as may be proved as soundlie as the former of wemens raiment, nether ar reiected more iustlie by stage patrones, then scriptures and fathers reproving Idole worship ar cast of by Bellarmin, as checkinge Jewish or heathen- ish idoles not CathoUke images of the Papists. Howbeit were it onelie some of the fathers iudgment grounded (as I thinke) vpon scripture: you see againe the bond of dutie in me to refraine from that which in my conscience God condemneth; Cheiflie it beinge condemned by godlie lawes of Emperours too, at least in us, and by cannons of councells yea by the canon DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 111 lawe in corrupter times, and Popish counsels of late yeares, yea seing {which is more) the verie light of reason hath taught whole common weales of heathens some to counte the actors thereof infamous persons, some to reiecte the plaies themselves: as Philosophers also and politit[i]ans haue done. That I should be affraide least St. Paules reprofe in a like matter. Doth not nature it self teach yow: wold make me to blush, if I should giue countenaunce to that which naturall men by the instincte of common humanitie and care of vertue haue blamed as vnfit for honest civil states. To conclud, howsoeuer these reasons and persuasions all might be repliede to, yet the daye is suche, as the profaninge of it being most offensiue in the eyes of the faithfull who call for the sanctifieinge of the Sabbat, would force me to request yow to haue me excused. The rather for that Theodosius and Valentinian with other Christian Emperours who tolerated stage-plaies, yet ordained by lawe that the should not be vsed in anie case on sundaye The Lords day as after the scripture phrase they terme it. Wherin how much ther is to be consydered by vs we shall perceaue the. better, if we marke that god would not haue the worke of his owne sanctuarie to let or interrupt the Sabbat dales rest as Tremellius, & Junius well obserue; much lesse such worke, as this, which of all likly- hoode the necessarye dressing vp of youre stage & players dothe require this daye. [p. 14] Thus haue I beene bould for the care I haue of approvinge, if not my iudgment, myne action at least vnto yow, whome for manie causes I reverence & love, to seeke to satisfie yow, least yow should misdeme me to trans- gresse the precept. Be not thou Just over much, while I studie only to obserue the other Be not thou wicked over much. Which praying yow to interpret and take all in the best part as I doute not but yow will, I commend yow to the gracious blessinge of the highest, who gaue vs eyes to see what is acceptable in his sight, and willing harts to do it. Queenes college Febn 6. 1591. The main positions taken by Rainolds appear to be the following: 1. The wearing of women's apparel by men is condemned by Scripture, by Christian writers, and by Church councils. 2. The acting of plays entails an undue waste of time and money. 112 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 3. Plays have a vicious moral effect upon actors and audience. 4. Actors were considered "infamous persons'* even by the civil law of "whole common weales of heathens." 5. The performance of plays on the Sabbath is a profanation of the day. These fundamental contentions, supported with amplitude and erudition in Rainolds' two letters to Gager, subsequently printed and reprinted, are aptly met in the substantial manuscript letter of Gager with which we are now concerned. Unhap- pily the length of this humane document precludes the full printing of it on the present occasion. An adequate conception of its tone and content, how- ever, may be formed from illustrative passages.^ Following the order of the strictures in Rainolds' letter to Thornton, we observe, in the first place, that Gager was well aware of the scriptural tra- dition condemning men's wearing the apparel of women, and that he was provided with a broad interpretation of the crucial passage in Deuterono- my, xxii, 5: Wherfor my twoe examples, beinge taken as thay ought to be, and in that vnderstandinge, that I applyed them for, this consequution rightely followethe, Non ergo iuueni est grande simpliciter nefas, Mollem puellam induere. which proposition I assuminge to be trwe (as I thinke it is most trwe) I strayte fell to the expowndinge of the place in Deute. thus; Non ergo vestis fxminea iuueni est scelus, Sed praua mens, libido, malitia. ^ These passages are here printed, so far as I know, for the first time. Other and less extensive extracts are given by Mr. F. S. Boas in The Fort- nightly Review, August, 1907, pp. 311-319, and in his University Drama in the Tudor Age, pp. 233 ff. DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 113 ac dolus. Nee habitus vllus, sed animus turpem faeit. that, is that the only puttinge on of weeme[n]s rayment, is not wicked, but the lewde ende to deceyve, the rather therby, and the more safely to be in the cumpanye of weemen, to bringe some bad purpose abowte; or of an effemynate mynd, to suffer his heare to growe longe; or to fryzell it, or in speeche, colour, gate, gesture, and behaviour to become womanishe; or ordynaryly so to con- verse amonge men and weemen, agaynst the course of all naturall and cyvill regarde, is an abomynation to the Lorde. other doe expownde the place, thus; that a man shall not putt on the ornamentes of a woman; nor a woman the armour of a man; and that this lawe was opposed agaynst the superstition of the Gentylls, amonge whome in the sacrifices of Venus, men clad them selves like weemen, with distafT and spindell, and suche like; and weemen in the sacrifices of Mars, putt them selves in armour, and therfor Abomynation in the Scriptures, say thay, is com/77only taken for idolatrye, or for somethinge belonginge to idolatrye. all the devynes that ever I talked with of this matter, aflirme the trwe meaninge of that place, to be contayned in thes senses rehearsed, wherfor though I grant, that, as you prove, (admyttinge that in case of necessytye a man may clad hym selfe in a woma[n]s habitt) he may not therfor doe ill in iest, and in a meryment. [c. c. c. ms. 352, p. 52.] He stoutly maintains, moreover, that the evils attributed to the practice have no relevance to his own dramatic productions: Yet I answere, that we not offendinge agaynst the trwe vnder- standinge of the Text, because we doe not so of any ill intent, or any suche mynd, or that any suche effecte hathe followed in vs therof, or may in deede be sayde at all to weare weeme[n]s apparell, because wearinge implyes a custome, and a com/zion vse of so doeinge, wheras we doe it for an howre or twoe, or three, to represent an others person, by one that is openly knowne to be as he is in deede; it is not ill in vs to doe so, thoughe it be but in myrthe, and to delyte: and therfor all that parte of your discourse, wherin you inforce by many authorytyes, that there must be a distinction in apparell twixt men and weemen, pertaynethe not to me: for how coulde I thinke other- wise? for this my verse. Nee habitus vllus, sed animus turpem facit, was not to fetche abowte any hidden conclusion, or to delyver a rule that it is no dishonesty for a man in all places to S-8. 114 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES weare whatsoever apparell he will, if his mynd be chast, as you say; but served as a parte of that interpretation of the place, wherof I spake before, [c. c. c. ms. 352. p. 52.] Gager proceeds further in contending that the impersonation of women by the Christ Church actors was not such as to encourage licentiousness: Seeinge therfor that, as I take it, it is not proved vngodly for a boy or a yuthe, to putt on womanly rayment in owre case, it followethe that it is not the lesse vnlawfuU for suche a one also to imitate womanly speeche, and behaviour, howe hardly so ever you thinke good to terme it. neyther dothe my glosse vpon the Texte allowe the contrary, as you wryte. for thes verses of myne, Distinda sexum forma distinctum decet, Virile non estfseminx mores sequi, etc. are also parte of my exposition of the Texte which is in controversye, and carrye no other sense then I have spoken of before, for thoughe different behavioure becummethe difTerent sexes, and it beseemethe not men to followe weemens manners, in the com/non course of lyfe, to the pervertinge of [p. 55] the lawe of nature, honesty, and cumlynes, or for any evill purpose; yet a boy, by way of representation only, may not indecently imytate maydenly, or womanly demeannre. Ffor as for all that tracte of your discourse, concerninge the danger of wanton dansinge, of kissinge bewtifuU boyes, of amatorye embracinges, and efTectuall expressinge of love panges, whereby bothe the spectators in behowldinge, and the actors in the meditation of suche thinges, are corrupted, all which you prove by sondry examples and authorytyes; it is more learnedly, and eloquently handled, then iustly applyed agaynst vs. it is easy for you, or any man of learninge to wryte or speake copiously, and truly agaynst the bad effecLes of Stage playes, in generall; but in owre cause, it is rather to be con- sidered, how trwly, and charitably suche thinges may be applyed agaynst vs, then howe eloquently thay may be enforced. * * * We hartely pray you. Sir, to make a greate difference betweene vs, and Nero with his Sporus, or Heliogabalus with hym selfe, or the Cananytes, Jwes, Corinthians, or them that cause their pages to weare longe heare like weemen, or Critobulus, kissinge the fayre sonne of Alcibiades, or any suche doggs. we hartely abhorr them; and if I coulde suspecte any suche thinge to growe by owre Playes, I woulde be the first that should hate them, and detest my selfe, for gyvinge suche occasion, you say owte of DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 115 Quintilian, nimium est quod intelligitur; and I may say, nimium est quod dicitur. we thanke God owre youthe doe not practyse suche thinges, thay thinke not of them, thay knowe them not. neyther can any man lyvinge, the rather for owre Playes, charge any one of vs with the leste suspition, of any suche abomynation. I have byn often moved by owre Playes to laughter, and som- tyme to teares; but I can not accuse eyther my selfe, or any other of any suche beastly thought, styrred vp by them, and ther for we should most vncharytably be wronged, if owre puttinge on of womanly rayment, or imytatinge of suche gesture, should eyther directly or indirectly be referred to the commandement. Thou shake not commit adulterye. and yet if owre Eurymachus had kissed owre Melantho, thoughe Socrates had stood by, (and I would Socrates had stood by) he would perhapps have sayde he had done amysse, but not so danger- ously as Critobulus did, because he might evydently perceyve, that no suche poyson of incontinencye could be instilled therby. As for the danger to the spectators in heeringe and seeinge thinges lyvely expressed, and to the actors in the ernest medita- tion and studye to represent them; I grant that bad effectes doe fall owte in thos Playes, agaynst the which suche arguments are iustly to be amplyfyde; but there is no suche myscheefe to be feared to enswe of owres, wherin for owre penninge, we are base and meane as you see; and specialy for womanly behaviour, we weare so careles, that when one of owre actors should have made a Conge like a woman, he made a legg like a man. in sum/Ti; owre spectators could not gretely charge owre actors with any such diligence in medytation and care to im- prynt any passions; and so neyther of them coulde receyve any hurt therby. [c. c. c. MS. 352. pp. 54-55, 56.] One welcomes the genial observation concerning the Christ Church student who, when he "should have made a Conge like a woman, he made a legg like a man"; for it is pleasant to infer that, unlike his opponent, Gager did not allow the earnestness of the occasion to annul his humor. In advancing to the second main charge, — of wasted time and money, — Gager is amply armed. For justifying both relaxation in general 116 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES and dancing in particular, he finds support not only in manifest common sense, but also in the sturdy Gouernour of Sir Thomas Elyot: In your answere to my defence of owre not mysspendinge tyme aboute Playes, I must needes saye, you spare vs not a whitt. if you had but sayde that owre playes, are toyes, unnecessarye, vayne, or suchelike;ithad byn no more perhapps then in strictnes, trwe. because Unum modo necessarium; and he that had tryde all thinges, of his owne wise experience pronouncethe, Vanitas vanitatum., & omnia vanitas, yea evne learninge, and wisdome, and all thinges ells, excepte the feare of God, which endurethe for ever, and I have harde a godly, and a learned preacher, whome you knowe, in the pulpitt affirme, that owre declamations, oppositions, suppositions, and suche scholasticall exercises, are no better then vayne thinges. but to compare owre Playes, to y* wickednes ofafoole committed in pastyme, to a madd mann's castings of fyrebrandes, arrowes, and mortall thinges, as you doe before; or to the hauntinge of a dycinge house, or taverne, or stwes, as in this place; or to a schollers playinge at stooleball amonge wenches, at mumchance, at Mawe with idell lost companions, at Trunkes in Guilehalls, dansinge abowte Maypoles, riflinge in alehouses, carrowsinge in taverns, stealinge of deere, or robbinge of orchardes, as afterwarde; I say to compare owre Playes to no better then thes thinges, it ex- ceedethe the cumpasse of any tolerable resemblance. * * * Ffmally, bothe you, and I agree, that relaxation from studyes is necessary in a good scholler, bothe for bodye, and mynde. and yet did I not conclude, as you make me, that therfor all recreations are honest, for I never thought any suche thinge. but as my simple assertion, that there is a needfull tyme for sportes, dothe not therfor prove the lawfuUnes of owre Playes, which before I presumed to be lawfull; so your incomparable, and harde comparisons, doe lesse argue their vnlawfullnes. and heere amonge other vnfitt recreations, besyde Playes, you use many wordes agaynst dansinge, thoughe it be but as it weare by the waye. all which place dothe touche vs no neerer, then I have shewed before, for myn owne parte, I never dansed, nor ever coulde, and yet I can not denye, but I love to see honest dansinge. to omytt Homer's iudgment therof, an excellent observer of decorum in all thinges; that learned Knight Sir Thomas Eliote, amonge other thinges that he wrytethe in a booke of his, which I have scene, in the prayse of dansinge, I remember, comparethe the man treadinge the measures, to DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 117 [p. 61] Fortitude, and the woman on his hande, to Temperance. [C. C>C. MS. 352, pp. 58, 60-61.] Gager's discussion of expense and of the claim of the poor includes interesting disclosures in regard to the infrequency and modest scale of the Christ Church performances: Say you, Nero peraduenture was eyther less able, or less willinge, to helpe the poore, by reason offyve or size thousande powndes spent for a Plaudite. what Nero's ryotts weare that way, I can not iustly accownte; likely it is, thay weare very excessyve, that he would gyve so muche mony, as you speake of, to Captaynes of bandes, only to crye, excellent, excellent; besyde the rest of his charge, in settinge his Playes owte. there is no proportion, I knowe, between Nero's abylytye, and owres. but if Nero [p. 62] cowlde have as well spared suche huge summs of mony, which he spent that way often, as owre House, with the cum- panye in it, and belonginge to it (thanked be God) can, ons in many yeers, thirtye powndes; Nero showlde have byn wronged greatly beinge an Emperour to have byn noted of wastfullnes, and if ever he had any suche good mynde, he mought never the lesse have releeved the poore. And therfore, ad quid ista perditio est, Here? Mala, Mome, vox est; servethe a turne well inoughe agaynst Momus. for thoughe I knowe there is an infmyte difference, betweene owres, and the action agaynst the which it was hypocrytically first vsed; yet I thinke it may also be applyed, agaynst eyther the nigardise, or the hypocrisye of any Momus, that shall condemne all expence, as cast awaye, that is somtyme, moderattly bestowed vpon honest sportes and pastymes, and not vpon the poore. A man may feast, and yet remember the affliction of Josephe toe. and monye may be spent on Playes, evne thirtye powndes, and yett the poore releeved, and no man the lesse liberall for them, or the more, if they had not byn at all. for thoughe no cost can be so well bestowed, as that was vpon owre Savioure; yet if followeth not, that therfor no cost is at any tyme to be imployed vpon lawfuU recreations, suche as owre Playes weare, whatsoever is rather obiected, then proved, to the contrarye. [c. c. c. ms. 352, pp. 61-62.J With the next consideration, — the alleged dele- terious effect of plays upon the morals of actors 118 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES and audience, — we arrive at the very heart of the controversy. For his defence Gager depends not only upon the plain case of his own performances, but also upon the lofty tradition of ancient tragedy : In Riuales, what Cato might not be delyted to see the fonde behaviour of cuntrye wooinge, expressed by cyvill men, or the vanytye of a bragginge soldier? by the spectacle of the drunken mariners, if there were any drunkard there, why might he not the rather detest drunkennes, by seeinge the deformytye of drunken actions represented? possible it was not, that any man should be provoked to dronkennes therby. the Lacede- monians are co/nmended for causinge their slaves, beinge drunke in deed, to be brought before their children, that thay seeinge the beastly vsage of suche men, myght the more lothe that vyce; but we muche better expressinge the same intent, not with drunken, but with sober men, counterfettinge suche vnseemly manners, are the lesse therfor to be reprehended. In Hippolytus, what younge man did not wisshe hym selfe to be as chast as Hippolytus, if he weare not so allreadye? whoe did not detest the love of Phxdra'l whoe did not approve the grave counsayle of the Nurse to her in secrett? or whoe coulde be the worse for her wooinge Hippolytus, in so generall termes? the drifte wherof, if it had byn to procure an honest honorable marriage, as it was covertly to allure hym to inceste, he might very well have listned to it. whoe wisshethe not that Theseus had not byn so credulus? whoe was not sorrye for the crwell deathe of Hippolytus'^. thes and suche [p. 58] like, weare the passions that weare, or might be moved, in owre Playes, withow^te hurte, at the leste, to any man. as in other Tragedy es; whoe dothe not hate the furye of Medea, the revenge of Atreus, the treason of Clytemnestra and jEgistus, and the crueltye of A^ero? con- trarye wise, whoe dothe not pittye the rage, and the deathe of Hercules, the calamytye of Hecuba and her children, the in- fortunate valure of Oedipus, the murder of Agamemnon, the bannishment of Octauia, and suche like? and yet no man is to be reproched, for eyther affection. Wherfor as the younge men of owre house, are suche in deede, as I commended them for; so for me, or for any thinge donne on the Stage, by the grace of God thay may so remayne and continwe, and I hope shall ever be so reputed, [c. c. c. ms. 352. pp. 57-58.] DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 119 The fourth consideration, — the status of actors under Roman civil law, — involves nice questions of fact and of logic that can be set forth only inadequately in brief extracts. Gager maintains, in the first place, that actors were never accounted indiscriminately infamous: Ffor first I denye, that the Romans ever iudged, omnes scenicos, infames. because Playes weare somtyme, as in a com/77on plauge, instituted ad placandos Deos, and weare provided by greate Officers, of the com/77on treasure; and so thay are referred ad religionem, et deuotionem. somtyme thay weare sett owt at the pryvat cost of them that stood to the peeple for great Offices, or generally for the honor and sollace of the cytye; and so thay are referred to magnificence, for magnificentia is a goodly vertue, [p. 47] et versatur circa sumptus amplos, non turpes aut infames, because it is a vertwe; but circa quxcunque in Rem publicam honestx laudis studio conferuntur; amonge the which Aristotle reckonethe, Ludos splendide facere. neyther is it to be thought, that Msopus and Roscius, beinge bothe men of that fame, favor, wealthe, and entyre famyliarytye with the best, and wisest in theire tymes, weare reputed as infamous persons, what should I speake of so many Circi, Theatra, Amphitheatra, buylded by the greatest and bravest Romans, with so huge charge and sumptuousnes? which thoughe thay weare wonte vpon fowle abuses, or some other occasion, as you write, overthrowne by the Romans them selves, yet evne thos playes, for which thay weare abolished, weare ex eo genere, of whom thay might have sayde (as C Tacitus dothe of Astrologers) quod in ciuitate nostra et vetabitur semper, et retinebitur. howsoever, I can- not thinke, that eyther thay woulde have suffered suche thinges to be donne at all, if thay had iudged them ill; or to be performed by infamous personns, beinge matters of that state and magnificience, and, as thay thought, of that devotion, and necessytye. it weare not harde for me to heape vp many thinges to this purpose, but my desyre is no furder to approve theire iudgment heerin, then servethe for the necessarye defence of owre selves, and owre Ooinges. [C. C. C. MS. 352, pp. 46-47.] Gager contends, moreover, for a distinction first, between histriones, — those '^common players" who 120 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES act professionally for money (quxstus causa), — and amateurs like the Christ Church students, who play without compensation (sine qudestu); and secondly, between the dissolute amateurs of antiquity and the virtuous gentle folk of the Oxford colleges: Ffirst therfor wheras you denye me that the Praetor dothe not distinguisshe, as I doe, be[t]weene thos that doe prodire in scenam quaestus causa, and not quxstus causa, but rather in expresse wordes saythe the contrarye, qui in scenam prodierit infamis est; it is very trwe, and I knwe that very well before, but because Vlpian ad edictum Prsetoris, dothe so expownde the Praetor, as it weare ex xquitate Pretoria and ex rexponsis pru- dentum Pegasi et Nerux filij I thought it was as good lawe, and better verse, to saye, Famosus ergo est quisquis in scenam. exiji? Praetor negabit; seeinge the meaninge of the Prxtor, and so the Praetor hym selfe, is taken to denye it; as to saye Vlpianus, or Pegasus