Amenities of Literature Part 45

GAMMER GURTON is a representation of sordid rusticity. ROISTER DOISTER opens the moveable scenery of domestic life in the metropolis--touched with care, and warm with reality. The plot, without involution, progresses through the acts. An egotistical and affectedly amorous hair-brain, ever lamenting the dangerous beauty of his ridiculous self, fancies to marry a fair dame. He is. .h.i.t off as

So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving, I trow, never was any creature living.

He is the whetstone of a sharp parasite, whose opening monologue exhibits his full portrait--

But, know ye, that for all this merry note of mine, He might oppose me now that should ask where I dine.

He runs over a nomenclature of a most variegated acquaintance, with some fugitive strictures exquisitely personal. We find ourselves in a more advanced stage in society than we expected in the reigns of our last Henry or Edward. Such personages abounded in the twenty years of peace and luxury under James the First, when the obsequious hanger-on flourished among the town-heroes of "The Gull's Horn-book." This parasite is also one of those domestic dependents whose shrewdness and artifices supply a perpetual source of comic invention; such as those found among the Latin dramatists, whose scenes and incidents are Grecian, and from whom this "Matthew Merry-greek" by his name seems happily transplanted. This poet delights by scenes coloured with the truth of nature, and by the clear conception of his domestic personages.

There is a group of domestics--the ancient housekeeper spinning on her distaff amidst her maidens, some sowing, some knitting, all in free chat; these might have formed a study for the vivid Teniers, and even for Shakspeare in his happiest vein. They are not the domestics of Swift and of Mandeville--the spoilers of the establishment; not that they are without the common feelings of the servants' hall, for they have at heart the merry prosperity of their commonwealth. After their "drudgerie," to dissipate their "weariness" was the fundamental principle of the freedom of servitude. Their chorus is "lovingly to agree." A pleasant song, on occasion of the reception of "a new-come man" in the family, reveals the "mystery" of their ancient craft.[6]

These early dramatists describe their characters by their names; an artless mode, which, however, long continued to be the practice of our comic writers, and we may still trace it in modern comedies. Steele, in his periodical paper, "The Lover," condemned it as no better a device than of underwriting the name of an animal; it is remarkable, that in this identical paper an old bachelor is called "Wildgoose," and the presumed author of "The Lover" is Marmaduke "Myrtle." Anstey has made the most happy use of characteristic names in the "Bath Guide," which is an evidence that they may still be successfully appropriated, whenever an author's judgment equals the felicity of his invention.

Of a comedy, conjectured to have been written at the close of the reign of Henry the Eighth, we may be surprised that the language hardly retains a vestige of the rust of antiquity:--so true it is that the familiar language of the people has been preserved with rare innovations. Its Alexandrine measure properly read or chanted is a metre which runs on with facility; the versification has even happily imitated the sounds of the different instruments played on in one of the serenades; a refinement which we could not have imagined to have been within the reach of an artificer of verse in those days. All this would look suspicious, if for an instant we could imagine that this admirable drama was the contrivance of some Chatterton or Ireland. In style and versification the writer far distanced those of his contemporaries, whose affectation of phrases rendered them harsh and obscure; he has, therefore, approached us. It is remarkable also that the very measure of this ancient dramatist, though those whose ear is only used to the decasyllabic measure have called it "a long hobbling metre," has been actually chosen by a modern poet, when writing familiar dialogue with the design of reviving rhymed comedy.[7]

The fate of some books is as remarkable as the histories of some men.

This lorn and lost drama, deprived even of its t.i.tle and the printer's name, offered no clue to the discovery of the fine genius who composed it; and the possessor, who deposited it in the library of Eton College, was not at all aware of its claim to be there preserved. It was to subsequent research, after the reprint had been made, that both the writer and the celebrity of his comedy were indisputably ascertained. We owe the discovery to a comic incident in the drama: an amatory epistle prepared by a scrivener's hand, for our gay amourists then could not always compose, if they could write their billets-doux, being maliciously read to the lady, by purposely neglecting the punctuation, turned out to be a severe satire. The discomfited lover hastens to wreak his vengeance on the hapless scribe, who, however, reading it with the due punctuation, proves it to be a genuine love-letter. Wilson, in his "Art of Logic," gave this letter as an example of the use of punctuation in settling the sense; and without which, as in the present instance, we may have "a double sense and contrary meaning." He fortunately added that his example was "taken out of an interlude made by NICHOLAS UDALL."

This was the learned UDALL, the Master of Eton School; and this very comedy had been so universally admired, that "Roister-Doister" became a proverbial phrase to designate a hair-brained c.o.xcomb. We now possess two pictures of the habits, the minds, and the dialogue of the English people in rural and in city life by two contemporaries, who wanted not the art of "holding the mirror up to nature."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "A Moral and Pitiful Comedie," ent.i.tled, "All for Money," &c., by T. Lupton, 1578. In the prologue the author calls it "A Pleasant Tragedy."

[2] The lines, which are very miserable, are preserved in Dodsley's "Old Plays."

[3] Warton has a.n.a.lysed this drama in his "History of English Poetry," vol. iv. 178, 8vo. It is in the Collection of Dodsley and Hawkins.

[4] This our first tragedy, _Ferrex and Porrex_, offers a striking evidence of our literary knowledge. Dryden, alluding to it, refers to a spurious copy published under the t.i.tle of _Gorboduc_ but he could not have seen it, for he calls it _Queen Gorboduc_, whereas he is _King_; and he appears to think that it was written in _rhyme_; and notices Shakspeare as the inventor of blank verse! When Pope requested Spence to reprint _Gorboduc_, they were so little cognisant of these matters, that the spurious and defective _Gorboduc_ was printed instead of the genuine _Ferrex and Porrex_. This ignorance of our ancient writers lasted to a later period.

[5] Reprinted by the Rev. Mr. Briggs, the possessor. After a limited reprint it was republished as the first number of a cheap edition of Old English Dramas, published by T. White, 1830; a work carried on to a few volumes only. The text reads apparently very correct, and seems to have pa.s.sed under a skilful eye. I have read it with attention, because I read it with delight. [It has since been reprinted by the Shakspeare Society, carefully collated from the unique original now in Eton College Library, by Mr. Payne Collier.]

[6] This song of Domesticity, as probably it never has been noticed, I preserve in the note, that the reader may decide on the melody of such native simplicity.

This song may have been written about the close of the reign of Henry the Eighth. The short ballad metres in our ancient poems are perfectly harmonious, and the songs are racy and joyous,--

I.

A thing very fitte For them that have witte And are felowes knitte Servants in one house to bee, As fast fast for to sitte, And not oft to flitte Nor varie a whitte, But lovingly to agree.

II.

No man complainyng Nor other disdainyng For losse or for gainyng, But felowes or friends to bee, No grudge remainyng, No work refrainyng, Nor helpe restrainyng, But lovingly to agree.

III.

No man for despite By worde or by write His felowe to twite, But further in honestie; No good turns entwite Nor old sores recite, But let all goe quite, And lovingly to agree.

IV.

After drudgerie When they be werie, Then to be merie, To laugh and sing they be free With chip and cherie, High derie derie, Trill on the berie, And lovingly to agree!

[7] Hayley.

THE PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF SHAKESPEARE.

The establishment of a variety of theatres is an incident in the history of the people, as well as of the national genius. The drama at first existed, it may be said, in privacy. Royalty and n.o.bility maintained their own companies; the universities acted at their colleges, the "children" or the singing boys at the public schools, the lawyers at their halls; and some of the gentry at their seats had servants who were players. A stage for strollers would occasionally be hastily erected in the unsheltered yards of inns, and they would ramble into the country till an Act of Elizabeth in 1572 controlled these erratic bodies, cla.s.sing them with "rogues and vagabonds." Throughout the kingdom there was a growing predilection for theatrical entertainments--it was the national antic.i.p.ation of a public theatre.

If Elizabeth, a popular sovereign, in 1572 checked the strollers a.s.suming the character of players, two years afterwards, in 1574, she granted a patent to the servants of the Earl of Leicester[1] "to exercise the faculty of playing stage-plays, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure;" and she added, "within our city of London, and of any of our cities." This was a boon royally given, in which her "loving subjects" might gather from the tone of this dramatic state-paper, that the queen had resolved in council that the public should not be denied sharing in her own amus.e.m.e.nts.

The pleasures of the people were not, however, yet those of their grave seignors. The puritanic spirit of the anti-dramatists, which sometimes divided the councils of the queen, had lodged among the honest wardmotes. A protracted contest between the privy-council and the lord mayor in common council, with protests and pet.i.tions, rose up; and long it seemed hopeless to patronise the players, who were not suffered to play. The Recorder Fleetwood, of whom we have many curious police-reports in the style of a _lieutenant de police_--as the chief of his own spies, and the executioner of his own decrees--had himself a fertile dramatic invention, which was largely developed in the singular "orders of the common-council" against the alarming innovation of PUBLIC PLAYS in the boundaries of the civic jurisdiction.[2] There was not a calamity, moral and physical, which could happen to any city which the Recorder has not made concomitant with the opening of playhouses. The infection of the plague was, however, then an irrefutable argument. In this contest between the court and the city, the common-council remained dogged a.s.sertors of their privileges; they drove the players from their sacred precincts to the boundaries and to "the liberties," where, however, they hara.s.sed these children of fancy by a novel claim, that none were to be free in the "liberties" but themselves, which argument was submitted to the law officers for their decision. The privy-council once more interfered, by a declaration that the chief justices had not yet been able to determine their case, and therefore there was to be no present "intermeddling." It is evident that the government all along had resolved that the people should have a theatre. After two years of opposition to the patent granted to the players in 1574, the first playhouse was built--a timber house in the suburbs--and received the appropriate t.i.tle of "The Theatre;" and about the same time "The Curtain" rose in its vicinage, a name supposed to have been derived from that appendage to a stage; for to those who had been accustomed to the open stage of an inn-yard, the drop or "curtain" separating the actors from the audience was such a novelty, that it left its name to the house. The Blackfriars, the Round Globe, the Square Fortune--whence Edward Alleyn, by his histrionic fame, drew the wealth which endowed Dulwich College--are names almost consecrated by the eminent geniuses whose lives were connected with these theatres; and at one time it appears that seventeen playhouses had been erected; they were, however, wooden and thatched, till the Fortune was built with brick, and, in the theatrical phrase, "the heavens," that is, the open top, was tiled.

The popular fervour of the drama had now a centrical attraction; a place of social resort, with a facility of admission, was now opened;[3] and when yet there was no reading public, the theatre would be subst.i.tuted for the press; and often, wearied of the bearward and coa.r.s.er sports, they flocked to the more intellectual entertainment. The playhouse was a wider sphere for their exertions, and it opened an arduous compet.i.tion for the purveyors of these incessant novelties. The managers of theatres had now to look about for plays and playwrights. A general demand required, not only an abundant, but, unfortunately, a rapid supply. What a crisis for genius, for its development and its destruction!

This was an event in the history of our literature which has not occurred in the literary history of any other European people. It was about the middle of the reign of Elizabeth that a race of dramatic writers burst forth on the nation--writers, not easily numbered, of innumerable dramas.

Literature now opened a new avenue for a poor scholar, the first step of advancement in society from a collegiate life for those who found their future condition but ill provided for. A secretarys.h.i.+p, a chaplains.h.i.+p, or to be a gentleman's usher--in a word, an humble retainer in great families--circ.u.mscribed the ambition of the meek and the worthy; but there were others, in "their first gamesome age," whose

----doting sires, Carked and cared to have them lettered-- But their kind college from the teat did tent, And forced them walk before they weaned were.[4]

This, however, is but the style of apology which one of them gives to veil the fact that many were ejected from "the teat." Fiery emanations these, compelled to leave their cloistered solitudes, restless and reckless, they rushed to the metropolis, where this new mart of genius in the rising dramatic age was opened. Play-writing and play-acting, for they were often combined, were too magical a business to resist its delusions.

They wrote, with rare exceptions, without revision. An act or two, composed with some meditation to awaken interest--a few moveable scenes rapidly put together--and, at some fortunate moment, a burst of poetry--usually wound up in pell-mell confusion; for how could they contrive a catastrophe to the chaos? Such writers relied on the pa.s.sing curiosity which their story might raise, and more on the play of the actors, who, in the last bustling scenes, might lend an interest which the meagre dialogue of the economical poet so rarely afforded. They never wrote for posterity, and seem never to have pretended to it. They betrayed no sympathy for their progeny; the manager's stock was the foundling hospital for this spurious brood; the Muse even often sold her infant while it still lay on the breast. The huddled act of a play was despatched to the manager as the lure of a temporary loan, accompanied by a promissory note of expedition; and a.s.suredly they kept to their word if ever they concluded the work.

This facility of production may be accounted for, not only from the more obvious cause which instigated their incessant toil, but from the ready sources whence they drew their materials. They dramatised evanescent subjects, in rapid compet.i.tion, like the ballad-makers of their own day, or the novelists of ours; they caught "the Cynthia of the minute"--a domestic incident--a tragic tale engaging the public attention produced many domestic tragedies founded on actual events; they were certain of exciting the sympathies of an audience. Two remarkable ones have been ascribed to Shakespeare by skilful judges: _Arden of Feversham_, where the repentance of an adulterous wife in the agony of conscience so powerfully reminds one of the great poet, that the German, Tieck, who has recently translated it, has not hesitated to subscribe to the opinion of some of our own critics; and _The Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_, which was printed with the name of Shakespeare in his own lifetime, and has been held to be authentic; and surely _The Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_ at least possessed an equal claim with the monstrous _t.i.tus Andronicus_[5] not to be ejected from the writings of Shakespeare. It is most probable that that, among others, was among the old plays which he often took in hand; and our judicial decisions have not always found "the divinity which stirs within them." The Italian novelists, which had been recently translated in PAINTER'S "Palace of Pleasure," these dramatists ransacked for their plots; this source opened a fresh supply of invention, and a combination of natural incidents, which varies the dry matter-of-fact drawn from the "Chronicles," which in their hands too often produced mere skeletons of poetry. They borrowed from the ancients when they could. Plautus was a favourite. They wrote for a day, and did not expect to survive many.

The rapid succession of this mult.i.tude of plays is remarkable; many have wholly perished by casualties and dispersions, and some possibly may still lie unsunned in their ma.n.u.script state.[6] We have only the t.i.tles of many which were popular, while the names of some of these artificers have come down to us without any of their workmans.h.i.+p. In a private collection, Langbaine had gathered about a thousand plays, besides interludes and drolls; and yet these were but a portion of those plays, for many never pa.s.sed through the press; the list of anonymous authors is not only considerable, but some of these are not inferior in invention and style to the best.[7] We may judge of the prolific production of these authors by THOMAS HEYWOOD, a fluent and natural writer, who never allowed himself time to cross out a line, and who has casually informed us that "he had either an entire hand, or at least a main finger, in two hundred and twenty plays."

The intercourse of the proprietors or managers of the theatres and these writers has been only incidentally, and indeed accidentally, revealed to us.[8] It was justly observed by Gifford, that these dramatic poets, either from mortification or humility, abstained from dwelling, or even entering upon their personal history. Though frequent in dedications, they are seldom explicit; and even their prefaces fail to convey any information, except of their wants or their grievances, from evils which are rarely specified. The truth is, that this whole poetical race, which suddenly broke out together, a sort of wild insurrection of genius, early found that they were nothing more than the hirelings of some crafty manager, at whose beck and mercy they lived. Writing plays was soon held to be as discreditable an occupation as that of the players themselves; indeed, not seldom the poets themselves were actors--these departments were so frequently combined, that the term player is sometimes used equally for a performer on the stage, and a writer of plays.

This fraternity, children of ill-fortune and of pa.s.sion, were scarce distinguishable from each other; and if the fortunes, and the fate of some, are more known, it is but by the recklessness of their days--their criminal impetuosity. Several perished in their immaturity, torches blazing, while they were consuming themselves. The chance-record of the violent end of one; a cry of desperation still more horrible of another; the death-bed repentance of a third; the dishonourable life of dupery probably practised by a fourth;[9] are adapted to enter into moral, if not into literary history.

The Psychologist, the historian of the soul among the brotherhood of genius--for such were many among them--feels how precious are the slight memorials of n.o.ble pa.s.sions, disguised by a degraded existence.

However tortuous their lives seem, some grasped at celebrity, and some looked towards distant fame. If some have eloquently reproached themselves, there are, too, those who exulted in the consciousness of their intellectual greatness. They were of different magnitude, and in the scroll of their names some have been recognised by posterity.

An ungenial critic has morosely censured Robert Greene, who, harboured in an obscure lodging, which a poor man's charity had yielded, when lying on his death-bed, prayed for the last favour that poor man's charity could bestow on a miserable, but a conscious poet--that his coffin might be covered with bays. In the shadow of death, the poet and the romancer dwelt on the fame which he cherished as life.

Even their small theatres appeared to the poet "thronged," and the heart of the dramatist would swell at "the shouts and claps." Drayton, who, at a later day, joined in several dramas, has perpetuated this rejoicing of the poet, which he himself had experienced in that small world "the proud round" of the Globe Theatre. It is a sonnet in the collection which he has ent.i.tled "Idea," and which no successful dramatist will read without some happy emotion.

In pride of wit, when _high desire of fame Gave life and courage to my labouring pen_, And first the sound and vertue of my name Were grace and credit in the ears of men; With those the _thronged theaters_ that presse, I in _the circuit_ for the Lawrell strove, Where the _full praise_, I freely must confesse, In heate of blood and modest minde might move; _With_ SHOWTS _and_ CLAPS _at every little_ PAWSE When the _prowd_ ROUND _on everie side hath rung_.

The ample roll might not be tedious, though it were long, had we aught to record of this brotherhood of genius--but nothing we know of the much-applauded, and much-ridiculed, and most ingenious JOHN LYLY; nothing of the searching and cynical MARSTON; nothing of the inventive and flowing DEKKER; nothing of the unpremeditated strains of the fertile HEYWOOD; nor of the pathetic WEBSTER; nor of MIDDLETON, from whose "Witch" Shakespeare borrowed his incantations; nor of ROWLEY, whom Shakespeare aided; nor of the equal and grave Ma.s.sINGER; nor of the lonely and melancholy FORD.

Among these poets stood He, in whose fire the Greek of Homer burned clear in his Homeric English. Chapman often caught the ideas of Homer, and went on writing Homerically; at once the translator and the original. One may read in that "most reverend aspect" of his, the lofty spirit that told how, above all living, was to him the poet's life--when he exclaimed--