Chapter IV: The Age of Elizabeth, 1558-1603 (3)

Universality.--Shakespeare's sympathy might have been broad enough to include all the people of his own time and their peculiar interests, but might have lacked the power to project itself into the universal heart of humanity. Sometimes a writer voices the ideals and aspirations of his own day so effectively that he is called the spokesman of his age, but he makes slight appeal to future generations. Shakespeare was the spokesman of his own time, but he had the genius also to speak to all ages. He loved to present the eternal truths of the human heart and to invest them with such a touch of nature as to reveal the kinship of the entire world.

His contemporary, the dramatist, Ben Jonson, had the penetration to say of Shakespeare:--

"He was not of an age but for all time."

He meant that Shakespeare does not exhibit some popular conceit, folly, or phase of thought, which is merely the fashion of the hour and for which succeeding generations would care nothing; but that he voices those truths which appeal to the people of all ages. The grief of Lear over the dead Cordelia, the ambition of Lady Macbeth, the loves of Rosalind and Juliet, the questionings of Hamlet, interest us as much today as they did the Elizabethans. Fashions in literature may come and go, but Shakespeare's work remains.

Humor.--Shakespeare had the most comprehensive sense of humor of any of the world's great writers,--a humor that was closely related to his sympathy. It has been said that he saved his tragedies from the fatal disease of absurdity, by inoculating them with his comic virus, and that his sense of humor kept him from ever becoming shrill. This faculty enabled him to detect incongruity, to keep from overstressing a situation, to enter into the personality of others, to recover quickly from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," and in one of his last plays, _The Tempest_, to welcome the "brave young world" as if he would like to play the game of life again. It was largely because of his humor that the tragedies and pain of life did not sour and subdue Shakespeare.

He soon wearies of a vacant laugh. He has only one strictly farcical play, _The Comedy of Errors_. There are few intellects keen enough to extract all the humor from Shakespeare. For literal minds the full comprehension of even a slight display of his humor, such as the following dialogue affords, is better exercise than the solution of an algebraic problem. Dogberry, a constable in _Much Ado About Nothing_, thus instructs the Watch:--

"_Dogberry_. You shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid
any man stand in the prince's name.

"_Watch_. How if a' will not stand?

"_Dogberry_. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go, and
presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are
rid of a knave."

Of all Shakespeare's qualities, his humor is the hardest to describe because of its protean forms. Falstaff is his greatest humorous creation. So resourceful is he that even defeat enables him to rise like Antaeus after a fall. His humor is almost a philosophy of existence for those who love to use wit and ingenuity in trying to evade the laws of sober, orderly living. Perhaps it was for this very reason that Shakespeare consented to send so early to "Arthur's bosom"[26] a character who had not a little of the complexity of Hamlet.

Much of Shakespeare's humor is delicately suffused through his plays. Many of them either ripple with the laughter of his characters or are lighted with their smiles. We may pass pleasant hours in the company of his joyous creations, such as Rosalind in _As You Like It_, or Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_, or Puck as the spokesman for _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, who good naturedly exclaims:--

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

or Viola and her companions in _Twelfth Night_, or Beatrice and Benedict in _Much Ado About Nothing_, or Ariel in _The Tempest_ playing pranks on the bewildered mariners and singing of the joys of life which come as a reward for service:--

"Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

Shakespeare is also the one English author who is equally successful in depicting the highest type of both comedy and tragedy. He has the power to describe even a deathbed scene so as to invest it with both humor and pathos. Dame Quickly's lines in _Henry V_., on the death of Falstaff, show this capacity.

The next greatest English writer is lacking in this sense of humor. John Milton could write the tragedies of a _Paradise Lost_ and a _Samson Agonistes_, but he could not give us the humor of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Comedy of Errors_, or _As You Like It_. We have seen that the next greatest dramatic genius, Marlowe, has little sense of humor. Mrs. Browning correctly describes the plays of Shakespeare as filled--

"With tears and laughters for all time."

Moral Ideals.--To show the moral consequences of acts was the work which most appealed to him. Banquo voiced the comprehensiveness of moral law when he said, "In the great hand of God I stand." There is here great divergence between the views of Shakespeare and of Bacon. Dowden says:--

"While Bacon's sense of the presence of physical law in the universe
was for his time extraordinarily developed, he seems practically to
have acted upon the theory that the moral laws of the world are not
inexorable, but rather by tactics and dexterity may be cleverly
evaded. Their supremacy was acknowledged by Shakespeare in the
minutest as well as in the greatest concerns of human life."

By employing "tactics" in sending Hamlet on a voyage to England, the king hoped to avoid the consequences of his crime. Macbeth in vain tried every stratagem to "trammel up the consequence." Goneril and Regan drive their white-haired father out into the storm; but even in _King Lear_, where the forces of evil seem to run riot, let us note the result:--

"Throughout that stupendous Third Act the good are seen growing
better through suffering, and the bad worse through success. The
warm castle is a room in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary...
The only real thing in the world is the soul with its courage,
patience, devotion. And nothing outward can touch that."[27]

Shakespeare makes no pessimists. He shows how misfortune crowns life with new moral glory. We rise from the gloom of _King Lear_, feeling that we would rather be like Cordelia than like either of her sisters or any other selfish character who apparently triumphs until life's close. And yet Cordelia lost everything, her portion of her father's kingdom and her own life. When we realize that Shakespeare found one hundred and ten lines in _King Lear_ sufficient not only to confer immortality on Cordelia, but also to make us all eager to pay homage to her, in spite of the fact that the ordinary standard of the world has not ceased to declare such a life a failure, we may the better understand that his greatest power consisted in revealing the moral victories possible for this rough-hewn human life.

Shakespeare made a mistake about the seacoast of Bohemia and the location of Milan with reference to the sea, but he was always sure of the relative position of right and wrong and of the ultimate failure of evil. In his greatest plays, for instance, in _Macbeth_, he sought to impress the incalculable danger of meddling with evil, the impossibility of forecasting the tragedy that might thereby result, the certainty that retribution would follow, either here or beyond "this bank and shoal of time."

Mastery of his Mother Tongue.--His wealth of expression is another striking characteristic. In a poem on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson wrote:--

"Thou had'st small Latin and less Greek."

Shakespeare is, however, the mightiest master of the English tongue. He uses 15,000 different words, while the second greatest writer in our language employs only 7000. A great novelist like Thackeray has a vocabulary of about 5000 words, while many uneducated laborers do not use over 600 words. The combinations that Shakespeare has made with these 15,000 words are far more striking than their mere number.

Variety of Style.--The style of Milton, Addison, Dr. Johnson, and Macaulay has some definite peculiarities, which can easily be classified. Shakespeare, on the contrary, in holding the mirror up to nature, has different styles for his sailors, soldiers, courtiers, kings, and shepherds,--for Juliet, the lover; for Mistress Quickly, the alewife; for Hamlet, the philosopher; and for Bottom, the weaver. To employ so many styles requires genius of a peculiar kind. In the case of most of us, our style would soon betray our individuality. When Dr. Samuel Johnson tried to write a drama, he made all his little fishes talk like whales, as Goldsmith wittily remarked.

In the same play Shakespeare's style varies from the dainty lyric touch of Ariel's song about the cowslip's bell and the blossoming bough, to a style unsurpassed for grandeur:--

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

In the same passage his note immediately changes to the soft _vox humana_ of--

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

His Influence on Thought.--With the exception of the _Scriptures_, Shakespeare's dramas have surpassed all other works in molding modern English thought. If a person should master Shakespeare and the _Bible_, he would find most that is greatest in human thought, outside of the realm of science.

Even when we do not read him, we cannot escape the influence of others who have been swayed by him. For generations, certain modes of thought have crystallized about his phrases. We may instance such expressions as these: "Brevity is the soul of wit." "What's in a name?" "The wish was father to the thought." "The time is out of joint." "There's the rub." "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." "Comparisons are odorous." It would, perhaps, not be too much to say that the play of _Hamlet_ has affected the thought of the majority of the English-speaking race. His grip on Anglo-Saxon thought has been increasing for more than three hundred years.

Shakespeare's influence on the thought of any individual has only two circumscribing factors,--the extent of Shakespearean study and the capacity of interpreting the facts of life. No intelligent person can study Shakespeare without becoming a deeper and more varied thinker, without securing a broader comprehension of human existence,--its struggles, failures, and successes. If we have before viewed humanity through a glass darkly, Shakespeare will gradually lead us where we can see face to face the beauty and the grandeur of the mystery of existence. His most valuable influence often consists in rendering his students sympathetic and in making them feel a sense of kinship with life. Shakespeare's readers more quickly realize that human nature shows the shaping touch of divinity. They have the rare joy of discovering the world anew and of exclaiming with Miranda:--

"How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"[28]

When we have really become acquainted with Shakespeare, our lives will be less prosaic and restricted. After intimate companionship with him, there will be, in the words of Ariel, hardly any common thing in life--

"But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."[29]

BEN JONSON, 1573?-1637

Life.--About nine years after the birth of Shakespeare his greatest successor in the English drama was born in London. Jonson outlived Shakespeare twenty-one years and helped to usher in the decline of the drama.

Ben Jonson, the son of a clergyman and the stepson of a master bricklayer, received a good education at Westminster School. Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson learned much Latin and Greek. In one respect Jonson's training was unfortunate for a poet. He was taught to write prose exercises first and then to turn them into poetry. In this way he acquired the habit of trying to express unpoetical ideas in verse. Art could change the prose into metrical riming lines, but art could not breathe into them the living soul of poetry. In after times Jonson said that Shakespeare lacked art, but Jonson recognized that the author of _Hamlet_ had the magic touch of nature. Jonson's pen rarely felt her all-embracing touch.

If Jonson served an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, as his enemies afterward said, he did not continue long at such work. He crossed the Channel and enlisted for a brief time as a soldier in the Netherlands. He soon returned to London and became a writer for the theater, and thenceforth lived the life of an author and a student. He loved to study and translate the classics. In fact, what a novice might think original in Jonson's plays was often borrowed from the classics. Of his relations to the classical writers, Dryden says, "You track him everywhere in their snow." Jonson was known as the most learned poet of the age, because, if his plays demanded any special knowledge, no subject was too hard, dry, or remote from common life for him to attempt to master it. He knew the boundaries of Bohemia, and he took pleasure in saying to a friend: "Shakespeare in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near, by some hundred miles."

Jonson's personal characteristics partly explain why he placed himself in opposition to the spirit of the age. He was extremely combative. It was almost a necessity for him to quarrel with some person or with some opinion. He killed two men in duels, and he would probably have been hanged, if he had not pleaded benefit of clergy. For the greater part of his life, he was often occupied with pen and ink quarrels.

When James I. ascended the throne in 1603, Jonson soon became a royal favorite. He was often employed to write masques, a peculiar species of drama which called for magnificent scenery and dress, and gave the nobility the opportunity of acting the part of some distinguished or supernatural character. Such work brought Jonson into intimate association with the leading men of the day.

It is pleasant to think that he was a friend of Shakespeare. Jonson's pithy volume of prose, known as _Discoveries made upon Men and Matter_, contains his famous criticism on Shakespeare, noteworthy because it shows how a great contemporary regarded him, "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." Few English writers have received from a great rival author such convincing testimony in regard to lovable personality.

In 1616, the year in which Shakespeare died, Jonson was made poet laureate. When he died in 1637, he was buried in an upright position in Westminster Abbey. A plain stone with the unique inscription, "O Rare Ben Jonson," marks his grave.

Plays.--Ben Jonson's comedies are his best dramatic work. From all his plays we may select three that will best repay reading: _Volpone, The Alchemist_, and _The Silent Woman_. _Volpone_ is the story of an old, childless, Venetian nobleman whose ruling passion is avarice. Everything else in the play is made tributary to this passion. The first three lines in the first act strike the keynote of the entire play. Volpone says:--

"Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!--
Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.
Hail the world's soul and mine!"

_The Alchemist_ makes a strong presentation of certain forms of credulity in human nature and of the special tricks which the alchemists and impostors of that day adopted. One character wants to buy the secret of the helpful influence of the stars; another parts with his wealth to learn the alchemist's secret of turning everything into gold and jewels. The way in which these characters are deceived is very amusing. A study of this play adds to our knowledge of a certain phase of the times. In point of artistic construction of plot, _The Alchemist_ is nowhere excelled in the English drama; but the intrusion of Jonson's learning often makes the play tedious reading, as when he introduces the technical terms of the so-called science of alchemy to show that he has studied it thoroughly. One character speaks to the alchemist of--

"Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,"

and another asks:--

"Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine?
Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic,
Or what is homogene, or heterogene?"

Lines like the following show that Jonson's acute mind had grasped something of the principle of evolution:--

"...'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant: something went before.
There must be remote matter."

_The Silent Woman_ is in lighter vein than either of the plays just mentioned. The leading character is called Morose, and his special whim or "humor" is a horror of noise. His home is on a street "so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any of these common noises." He has mattresses on the stairs, and he dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes. For a long time Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife's tongue. Finally he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations which this turn in the action affords. Dryden preferred _The Silent Woman_ to any of the other plays.

Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.

Marks of Decline.--A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:--

"He was not for all time, but of an age."

His first play, _Every Man in his Humor_, paints, not the universal emotions of men, but some special humor. He thus defines the sense in which he uses humor:--

"As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a Humor."

Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson gives a distorted or incomplete picture of life. In _Volpone_ everything is subsidiary to the humor of avarice, which receives unnatural emphasis. In _The Alchemist_ there is little to relieve the picture of credibility and hypocrisy, while _The Silent Woman_ has for its leading character a man whose principal "humor" or aim in life is to avoid noise.

No drama which fails to paint the nobler side of womanhood can be called complete. In Jonson's plays we do not find a single woman worthy to come near the Shakespearean characters, Cordelia, Imogen, and Desdemona. His limitations are nowhere more marked than in his inability to portray a noble woman.

Another reason why he fails to present life completely is shown in these lines, in which he defines his mission:--

"My strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe
Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls
As lick up every idle vanity."

Since the world needs building up rather than tearing down, a remedy for an ailment rather than fault-finding, the greatest of men cannot be mere satirists. Shakespeare displays some fellow feeling for the object of his satire, but Jonson's satire is cold and devoid of sympathy.

Jonson deliberately took his stand in opposition to the romantic spirit of the age. Marlowe and Shakespeare had disregarded the classical unities and had developed the drama on romantic lines. Jonson resolved to follow classical traditions and to adhere to unity of time and place in the construction of his plots. The action in the play of _The Silent Woman_, for instance, occupies only twelve hours.

General Characteristics.--Jonson's plays show the touch of a conscientious artist with great intellectual ability. His vast erudition is constantly apparent. He is the satiric historian of his time, and he exhibits the follies and the humors of the age under a powerful lens. He is also the author of dainty lyrics, and forcible prose criticism.

Among the shortcomings of his plays, we may specially note lack of feeling and of universality. He fails to comprehend the nature of woman. He is not a sympathetic observer of manifold life, but presents only what is perceived through the frosted glass of intellect. His art is self-conscious. He defiantly opposed the romantic spirit of the age and weakened the drama by making it bear the burden of the classical unities.

MINOR DRAMATISTS

Beaumont and Fletcher.--Next to Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, the two most influential dramatists were Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). They are usually mentioned together because they collaborated in writing plays. Fletcher had the great advantage of working with Shakespeare in producing _Henry VIII_. Beaumont died nine years before Fletcher, and it is doubtful whether he collaborated with Fletcher in more than fifteen of the fifty plays published under their joint names.

Two of their greatest plays, _Philaster_ and _The Maid's Tragedy_, are probably their joint production. _The Faithful Shepherdess_ and _Bonduca_ are among the best of about eighteen plays supposed to have been written by Fletcher alone. After Beaumont's death, Fletcher sometimes collaborated with other dramatists.

Almost all the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher plays are well constructed. These dramatists also have, in common with the majority of their associates, the ability to produce occasional passages of exquisite poetry. A character in _Philaster_ speaks of death in lines that suggest _Hamlet_:--

"'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep,
A quiet resting from all jealousy;
A thing we all pursue; I know besides
It is but giving over of a game
That must be lost."

Beaumont and Fletcher's work is noteworthy for its pictures of contemporary life and manners, for wealth of incident, rapidity of movement, and variety of characters.

Not long after the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a change in the taste of the patrons of the theater. Shakespeare declined in popularity. The playwrights tried to solve the problem of interesting audiences that wished only to be entertained. This attempt led to a change in dramatic methods.

Changed Moral Ideals.--Under Elizabeth's successors the Puritan spirit increased and the most religious part of the community seldom attended the theater. The later dramatists pay little attention to the moral development of character and its self-revelation through action. They often merely describe character and paint it from the outside. We have seen that Shakespeare's great plays are almost a demonstration in moral geometry, but Beaumont and Fletcher are not much concerned over the moral consequences of an action. The gravest charge against them is that they "unknit the sequence of moral cause and effect." After reading such plays, we do not rise with the feeling that there is a divinity that shapes our ends.

Coleridge says, "Shakespeare never renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher." Much of the work of their contemporary dramatists is marred by such blemishes. Unpleasant as are numbers of these plays, they are less insidious than many which have appeared on the stage in modern times.

Love of Surprises.--The dramatists racked their inventive powers to introduce surprises to interest the audience. Here was a marked departure from Shakespeare's later method. He plans _Macbeth_ so as to have his audience forecast the logical result. Consequences of the most tremendous import, beside which Beaumont and Fletcher's surprises seem trivial, follow naturally from Macbeth's actions. In his greatest plays, Shakespeare, unlike the later dramatists, never relies on illogical surprises to sustain the interest. The witch queen in one of the plays of Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) suddenly exclaims:--

"...fetch three ounces of the red-haired girl
I kill'd last midnight."

Shakespeare's witches suggest only enough of the weird and the horrible to transfix the attention and make the beholder realize the force of the temptation that assails Macbeth. Charles Lamb truly observes that Middleton's witches "can harm the body," but Shakespeare's "have power over the soul."

Middleton could, however, write a passage like the following, which probably suggested to Milton one of the finest lines in _Lycidas_:--

"Upon those lips, the sweet fresh buds of youth,
The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl
Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn
Upon a bashful rose."

Large Number of Playwrights.--Beaumont and Fletcher were only two of a large number of dramatists who were born in the age of Elizabeth, and who, with few exceptions, lived into the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Their work was the result of earlier Elizabethan impulses, and it is rightly considered a part of the great dramatic movement of the Elizabethan age. The popularity of the drama continued to attract many authors who in a different age might have produced other forms of literature.

George Chapman (1559?-1634), who is best known for his fine translation of Homer's _Iliad_, turned dramatist in middle life, but found it difficult to enter into the feelings of characters unlike himself. His best two plays, _Bussy D'Ambois_ and _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_, are tragedies founded on French history. Thomas Middleton, gifted in dramatic technique and dialogue and noted for his comedy of domestic manners, was the author of _Michaelmas Term_, _A Trick to Catch the Old One_, _The Changeling_ (in collaboration with William Rowley, 1585?-1640?). John Marston (1576?-1634) wrote _Antonio and Mellida_, a blood and thunder tragedy, and collaborated with Jonson and Chapman to produce _Eastward Hoe_, an excellent comic picture of contemporary life. _The Shoemaker's Holiday_ of Thomas Dekker (1570?-1640) is also a good comedy of London life and manners. Philip Massinger (1584-1640), a later collaborator with Fletcher, wrote _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, a play very popular in after times. Thomas Heywood (1572?-1650), one of the most prolific dramatists, claimed to have had "either an entire hand or at the least a main finger," in two hundred and twenty plays. His best work is _A Woman Killed with Kindness_, a domestic drama that appealed to the middle classes.

A Tragic Group.--Three dramatists: John Webster (1602-1624), Cyril Tourneur (1575?-1626), and John Ford (1586-1640?), had a love for the most somber tragedy. In tragic power, Webster approaches nearest to Shakespeare. Webster's greatest play, _The Duchess of Malfi_ (acted in 1616), and _The White Devil_, which ranks second, show the working of a master hand, but Webster's genius comes to a focus only in depicting the horrible. He loves such gloomy metaphors as the following:--

"You speak as if a man
Should know what fowl is _coffined_ in a baked meat
Afore you cut it open."

Tourneur's _The Atheist's Tragedy_ is in Webster's vein, but far inferior to _The Duchess of Malfi_.

Ford's _The Broken Heart_ is a strong, but unpleasant, tragedy. He is so fascinated with the horrible that he introduces it even when it is not the logical outcome of a situation. His best but least characteristic play is _Perkin Warbeck_, which is worthy of ranking second only to Shakespeare's historical plays.

End of the Elizabethan Drama.--James Shirley (1596-1666), "the last of the Elizabethans," endeavored to the best of his ability to continue the work of the earlier dramatists. _The Traitor_ and _The Cardinal_ are two of the best of his many productions. He was hard at work writing new plays in 1642, when the Puritans closed the theaters. He was thus forced to abandon the profession that he enjoyed and compelled to teach in order to earn a livelihood.

The drama has never since regained its Elizabethan ascendancy. The coarse plays of the Restoration (1660) flourished for a while, but the treatment of the later drama forms but a minor part of the history of the best English literature. Few plays produced during the next two hundred years are much read or acted to-day. _She Stoops to Conquer_ (1773), by Oliver Goldsmith, and _The Rivals_ (1775) and _The School for Scandal_ (1777), by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are the chief exceptions before 1890.

SUMMARY

The Elizabethan age was a period of expansion in knowledge, commerce, religious freedom, and human opportunities. The defeat of the Armada freed England from fear of Spanish domination and made her mistress of the sea.

England was vivified by the combined influence of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Knowledge was expanding in every direction and promising to crown human effort with universal mastery. The greater feeling of individuality was partly due to the Reformation, which emphasized the direct responsibility of each individual for all acts affecting the welfare of his soul.

Elizabethans were noted for their resourcefulness, their initiative, their craving for new experiences, and their desire to realize the utmost out of life. As they cared little for ideas that could not be translated into action, they were particularly interested in the drama.

Although the prose covers a wide field, it is far inferior to the poetry. Lyly's _Euphues_ suffers from overwrought conceits and forced antitheses, but it influenced writers to pay more attention to the manner in which thought was expressed. The flowery prose of Sidney's _Arcadia_ presents a pastoral world of romance. His _Apologie for Poetrie_ is a meritorious piece of early criticism. While Hooker indicates advance in solidity of matter and dignity of style, yet a comparison of his heavy religious prose with the prayer of the king in _Hamlet_ or with Portia's words about mercy in _The Merchant of Venice_ will show the vast superiority of the poetry in dealing with spiritual ideas. Bacon's _Essays_, celebrated for pithy condensation of striking thoughts, is the only prose work that has stood the test of time well enough to claim many readers to-day.

Poetry, both lyric and dramatic, is the crowning glory of the Elizabethan age. The lyric verse is remarkable for its wide range and for beauty of form and sentiment. The lyrics include love sonnets, pastorals, and miscellaneous verse. Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ and the songs in his dramas are the best in this field, but many poets wrote exquisite artistic lyrics.

Edmund Spenser is the only great poet who was not also a dramatist. His _Faerie Queene_ fashions an ideal world dominated by a love of beauty and high endeavor.

The greatest literary successes of the age were won in writing plays for the stage. In England the drama had for centuries slowly developed through Miracle plays, Moralities, and Interludes to the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. These three are the greatest Elizabethan dramatists, but they are only the central figures of a group.

The English drama in the hands of Sackville imitated Seneca and followed the rules of the classic stage. Marlowe and Shakespeare threw off the restraints of the classical unities; and the romantic drama, rejoicing in its freedom, speedily told the story of all life.

The innyards were used for the public presentation of plays before the erection of theaters in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The theaters were a great educational force in Shakespeare's time. They not only furnished amusement, but they also took the place of periodicals, lectures, and books. The actors, coming into close contact with their audience and unable to rely on elaborate scenery as an offset to poor acting, were equal to the task of so presenting Shakespeare's great plays as to make them popular.

Shakespeare's plays, the greatest ever written, reveal wonderful sympathy, universality, humor, delineation of character, high moral ideals, mastery of expression, and strength, beauty, and variety of poetic form.

Great as is Ben Jonson, he hampered himself by observing the classical unities and by stressing accidental qualities. He lacks Shakespeare's universality, broad sympathy, and emotional appeal.

Other minor dramatists, like Beaumont and Fletcher show further decline, because they constructed their plays more from the outside, showed less development of character in strict accordance with moral law, and relied more for effect on sensational scenes. The drama has never since taken up the wand that dropped from Shakespeare's hands.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

In addition to the chapters on the time in the histories of Gardiner, Green, Lingard, Walker, and Traill, see Stephenson's _The Elizabethan People_, Creighton's _Queen Elizabeth_, Wilson's _Life in Shakespeare's England_, Stephenson's _Shakespeare's London_, Warner's _English History in Shakespeare's plays_.

LITERARY

General and Non-Dramatic

_The Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vols. IV., V., and VI.

Courthope's _A History of English Poetry_, Vol. II.

Schelling's _English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare_.

Seecombe and Allen's _The Age of Shakespeare_, 2 vols.

Saintsbury's _A History of Elizabethan Literature_.

_Dictionary of National Biography_ for lives of Lyly, Sidney, Hooker.

Bacon, Spenser, and the minor dramatists.

Walton's _Life of Hooker_.

Church's _Life of Bacon_. (E.M.L.)

Church's _Life of Spenser_. (E.M.L.)

Mackail's _The Springs of Helicon_ (Spenser).

Dowden's _Transcripts and Studies_ (Spenser).

Lowell's _Among My Books_ (Spenser).

Erskine's _The Elizabethan Lyric_.

The Drama[30]

Schelling's _Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642_, 2 vols. Ward's _A History of English Dramatic Literature_, 3 vols.

Brooke's _The Tudor Drama_.

Chambers's _The Mediaeval Stage_.

Allbright's _The Shakespearean Stage_.

Lawrence's _Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies_.

Smith's _York Plays_ (Clarendon Press).

Symonds's _Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama_.

Bates's _The English Religious Drama_.

Manly's _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_.

Wallace's _The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare_.

Ingram's _Christopher Marlowe and his Associates_.

Dowden's _Transcripts and Studies_ (Marlowe).

Symonds's _Ben Jonson_.

Swinburne's _A Study of Ben Jonson_.

Shakespeare

Lee's _A Life of William Shakespeare_.

Furnivall and Munro's _Shakespeare: Life and Work_.

Harris's _The Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life Story_.

Halliwell-Phillipps's _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_.

Raleigh's _Shakespeare_.(E.M.L.)

Baker's _The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_.

MacCracken, Pierce, and Durham's _An Introduction to Shakespeare_.

Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_ (excellent).

Bradley's _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_.

Dowden's _Shakespeare, His Mind and Art_.

Coleridge's _Lectures on Shakespeare_ (pp. 21-58 of Beers's _Selections from the Prose writings of Coleridge_).

Lowell's _Shakespeare Once More_, in _Among My Books_.

Wallace's _Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars_.

_How Shakespeare's Senses were Trained_, Chap. X. in Halleck's _Education of the Central Nervous System_.

Rolfe's _Shakespeare the Boy_.

Boswell-Stone's _Shakespeare's Holinshed_.

Brooke's _Shakespeare's Plutarch_, 2 vols.

Madden's _The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare and of Elizabethan Sport_.

Winter's _Shakespeare on the Stage_.

SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Elizabethan Prose.--Good selections from Ascham, Hakluyt, Raleigh, Holinshed, Stow, Camden, North, Sidney, Foxe, Hooker, Lyly, Greene, Lodge, and Nashe are given in Craik, I.[31] Chambers, I. and Manly, II. also give a number of selections. Deloney's _The Gentle Craft_ may be found in the Clarendon Press edition of his _Works_. For Bacon, see Craik, II.

These selections will give the student a broader grasp of the Elizabethan age. The style and subject matter of Lyly's _Euphues_, Sidney's _Arcadia_, Hooker's _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_, and Bacon's _Essays_ should be specially noted. Which one of these authors exerted the strongest influence on his own age? Which one makes the strongest appeal to modern times? In what respects does the style of any Elizabethan prose writer show an improvement over that of Mandeville and Malory?

Lyrics.--For specimens of love sonnets, read Nos. 18, 33, 73, 104, 111, and 116 of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_. Compare them with any of Sidney's Spenser's sonnets. Other love lyrics which should be read are Spenser's _Prothalamion_, Lodge's _Love in My Bosom Like a Bee_ and Ben Jonson's _To Celia_. Among pastoral lyrics, read from Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_ for August, 1579, Perigo and Willie's duet, beginning:--

"It fell upon a holy eve,"

and Marlowe's _The Passionate Shepherd to His Love_. The best pastoral lyrics from the modern point of view are Shakespeare's two songs: "Under the Greenwood Tree" (_As you like it_) and "When Icicles Hang by the Wall" (_Love's Labor's Lost_). The best miscellaneous lyrics are the songs in Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_, _The Tempest_, and _As You Like It_. Drayton's _Ballad of Agincourt_ and _Sonnet 61_ are his best lyrical verse. Read Ben Jonson's _An Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy_ and, from his Pindaric Ode, the stanza beginning:--

"It is not growing like a tree."

From John Donne, read either _The Funeral_, _The Canonization_, or _The Dream_.

Good selections from all varieties of Elizabethan lyrics may be found in Bronson, II., Ward. I., _Oxford, Century_, Manly, I. Nearly all the lyrics referred to in this list, including the best songs from the dramatists, are given in Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_ (327 pp., 75 cents). This work, together with Erskine's _The Elizabethan Lyric_ and Reed's _English Lyrical Poetry from its Origins to the Present Time_, will serve for a more exhaustive study of this fascinating subject.

From your reading, select from each class the lyric that pleases you most, and give reasons for your choice. Which lyric seems the most spontaneous? the most artistic? the most inspired? the most modern? the most quaint? the most and the least instinct with feeling?

Edmund Spenser.--The _Faerie Queene_, Book I., Canto I., should be read. Maynard's _English Classic Series_, No. 27 (12 cents) contains the first two cantos and the _Prothalamion_. Kitchin's edition of Book I. (Clarendon Press. 60 cents) is an excellent volume. The Globe edition furnishes a good complete text of Spenser's work. Ample selections are given in Bronson, II., Ward, I., and briefer ones in Manly, I., and _Century_.

THE DRAMA

The Best Volumes of Selections.--The least expensive volume to cover nearly the entire field with brief selections is Vol. II. of _The Oxford Treasury of English Literature_, entitled _Growth of the Drama_ (Clarendon Press, 412 pp., 90 cents). Pollard's _English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes_ (Clarendon Press, 250 pp., $1.90) is the best single volume of selections from this branch of the drama. _Everyman and Other Miracle Plays_ (Everyman's Library, 35 cents) is a good inexpensive volume. Manly's' _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_ (three volumes, $1.25 each) covers this field more fully. Morley's _English Plays_ (published as Vol. III. of Cassell's _Library of English Literature_, at eleven and one half shillings) contains good selections from nearly all the plays mentioned below, except those by Shakespeare and Jonson. Williams's _Specimens of the Elizabethan Drama, from Lyly to Shirley_, 1580-1642 (Clarendon Press, 576 pp., $1.90) is excellent for a comprehensive survey of the field covered. Lamb's _Specimens of English Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare_ (Bohn's Library, 552 pp.) contains a large number of good selections.

Miracle Plays.--Read the Chester Play of _Noah's Flood_, Pollard,[32] 8-20, and the Towneley _Play of the Shepherds_, Pollard, 31-43; Manly's _Specimens_, I, 94-119; Morley's _English Plays_, 12-18. These two plays best show the germs of English comedy.

Moralities.--The best _Morality_ is that known as _Everyman_, Pollard, 76-96; also in _Everyman's Library_. If _Everyman_ is not accessible, _Hycke-Scorner_ may be substituted, Morley; 12-18; Manly's _Specimens_, I., 386-420.

Court Plays, Early Comedies, and Gorboduc.--The best _Interlude_ is _The Four P's_. Adequate selections are given in Morley, 18-20, and in Symonds's Shakespeare's _Predecessors in the English Drama_, 188-201. Pollard and Manly give several good selections from other _Interludes_.

_Ralph Royster Doyster_ may be found in Arber's _Reprints_; in Morley's _English Plays_, pp. 22-46; in Manly's _Specimens_, II., 5-92; in _Oxford Treasury_, II., 161-174, and in _Temple Dramatists_ (35 cents).

_Gorboduc_ is given in _Oxford Treasury_, II. pp., 40-54 (selections); Morley's _English Plays_, pp. 51-64; and, under the title of _Ferrex and Porrex_, in Dodsley's _Old Plays_.

What were some of the purposes for which _Interludes_ were written? How did they aid in the development of the drama?

In what different forms are _The Four-P's, Ralph Royster Doyster_, and _Gorboduc_ written? Why would Shakespeare's plays have been impossible if the evolution of the drama had stopped with _Gorboduc_?

Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists.--Selections from Lyly, Peele, Green, Lodge, Nashe, and Kyd may be found in Williams's _Specimens_. Morley and _Oxford Treasury_ also contain a number of selections. Peele's _The Arraignment of Paris_ and Kyd's _The Spanish Tragedy_ are in _Temple Dramatists_. Greene's best plays are in _Mermaid Series_.

What are the merits of Lyly's dialogue and comedy? What might Shakespeare have learned from Lyly, Peele, Greene, and Kyd? In what different form did these dramatists write? What progress do they show?

Marlowe.--Read _Dr. Faustus_, in _Masterpieces of the English Drama_ (American Book Company) or in _Everyman's Library_. This play may also be found in Morley's _English Plays_, pp. 116-128, or in Morley's _Universal Library_. Selections from various plays of Marlowe may be found in _Oxford Treasury_, 61-85, 330-356; and in Williams's _Specimens_, 25-34.

Does _Dr. Faustus_ observe the classical unities? In what way does it show the spirit of the Elizabethan age? Was the poetic form of the play the regular vehicle of dramatic expression? In what does the greatness of the play consist? What are its defects? Why do young people sometimes think Marlowe the greatest of _all_ the Elizabethan dramatists?

Shakespeare.--The student should read in sequence one or more of the plays in each of Shakespeare's four periods of development (pp. 185, 188), such as _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _Romeo and Juliet_, for the first period; _As You Like It_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, for the second; _Hamlet_ and _King Lear_ or _Macbeth_ or _Julius Caesar_, for the third; and _The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_, for the fourth.

Among the many good annotated editions of separate plays are the Clarke and Wright, Rolfe, Hudson, Arden, Temple, and Tudor editions. Furness's _Variorum Shakespeare_ is the best for exhaustive study. The best portable single volume edition is Craig's _Oxford Shakespeare_, India paper, 1350 pages.

The student cannot do better than follow the advice of Dr. Johnson: "Let him who is unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators... Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the commentators."

Shakespeare's three greatest tragedies, _Hamlet, King Lear_, and _Macbeth_, should be read several times. After becoming familiar with the story, the student should next determine the general aim of the play and analyze the personality and philosophy of each of the leading characters.

After reading some of all classes of Shakespeare's plays, point out his (_a_) breadth of sympathy, (_b_) humor, (_c_) moral ideals, (_d_) mastery of English and variety of style, and (_e_) universality. What idea of his personality can you form from his plays? If you have read them in sequence, point out some of the characteristics of each of his four periods. Why is Shakespeare often called a great dramatic artist? How did his audience and manner of presentation of his plays modify his treatment of a dramatic theme?

Ben Jonson and Minor Dramatists.--The best plays of Ben Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Massinger, Webster, and Tourneur may be found in _Masterpieces of the English Drama_ edited by Schellinq (American Book Company). Selections from all the minor dramatists mentioned may be found in Williams's _Specimens_. The teacher will need to exercise care in assigning readings. Most of the minor dramatists are better suited to advanced students.

Read Jonson's _The Alchemist_ or the selection in Williams's _Specimens_. A sufficient selection from _Philaster_ may be found in Vol. II. of _The Oxford Treasury_, in Morley, and in Williams's _Specimens_.

What points of difference between Shakespeare and Jonson do you notice? What is his object in _The Alchemist_? Why is its plot called unusually fine? Wherein does Jonson show a decline in the drama?

Who were Beaumont and Fletcher? What movement in the drama do they illustrate? What are the characteristics of some other minor dramatists? What are the chief reasons why the minor dramatists fail to equal Shakespeare? When and why did this period of the drama close?

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV:

[Footnote 1: For additional mention of Elizabethan novelists, see p. 317.]

[Footnote 2: For references to selections from all these prose writers, see p. 215.]

[Footnote 3: _Of Youth and Age_.]

[Footnote 4: Thomas Heywood's _Matin Song_.]

[Footnote 5: Suggestions for additional study of Elizabethan lyrics are given on p. 215.]

[Footnote 6: riding.]

[Footnote 7: _An Hymne in Honour of Beautie_.]

[Footnote 8: _Faerie Queene_, Book III., Canto 4.]

[Footnote 9: _Ibid_., Book I., Canto 3.]

[Footnote 10: Smith's _York Plays_.]

[Footnote 11: C.W. Wallace's _The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare_.]

[Footnote 12: Wallace, _op. cit_., p.37.]

[Footnote 13: _What We Know of the Elizabethan Stage_.]

[Footnote 14: Performances were often given at night in private theaters. From the records in a lawsuit over the second Blackfriars Theater, we learn that there were in 1608 only three private theaters in London,--Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and a St. Paul's Cathedral playhouse, in which boys acted.]

[Footnote 15: This drawing of the Swan Theater, London, was probably made near the end of the sixteenth century by van Buchell, a Dutchman, from a description by his friend, J. de Witt. The drawing, found at the University of Utrecht, although perhaps not accurate in details, is valuable as a rough contemporary record of an impression communicated to a draftsman by one who had seen an Elizabethan play.]

[Footnote 16: The lease of the building for the first Blackfriars Theater, on Ludgate Hill, London, was taken in 1576 by Richard Farrant, master of the boys of Windsor Chapel, and canceled in 1584. In 1595 James Burbage bought a building for the second Blackfriars Theater, near the site of the first. This was a private theater, competing with the Globe, with which Shakespeare was connected. The chief dramatists for the second Blackfriars were Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston. James I. suppressed the second Blackfriars in 1608 because its actors satirized him and the French king. A few months later, Shakespeare and his associates assumed the management of the Blackfriars and gave performances there as well as at the Globe.

These facts explain Wallace's discovery that Shakespeare at the time of his death owned a one-seventh interest in the second Blackfriars, a theater that had formerly been a rival to the Globe.]

[Footnote 17: _Dr. Faustus_, Scene 6.]

[Footnote 18: _Tamburlaine_, Act II., Scene 7.]

[Footnote 19: _The Winter's Tale_, Act IV., Scene 4.]

[Footnote 20: Tradition says that Shakespeare occupied the desk in the farthest corner.]

[Footnote 21: Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, Grosart's edition of Greene's _Works_, Vol. XII., p. 144.]

[Footnote 22: The contract price for building the Fortune Theater was £440.]

[Footnote 23: Adapted from Furnivall.]

[Footnote 24: Entered one year before at Stationers' Hall.]

[Footnote 25: May be looked on as fairly certain.]

[Footnote 26: _Henry V_., Act II., Scene 3, line 10.]

[Footnote 27: Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_, p. 327.]

[Footnote 28: _The Tempest_, Act V., Scene 1.]

[Footnote 29: _Ibid_., Act I., Scene 2.]

[Footnote 30: For a list of books of selections from the drama, see p. 216.]

[Footnote 31: For full titles, see p. 6.]

[Footnote 32: For full titles of books of dramatic selections, see the preceding paragraph.]