Chapter X: SHAKESPEARE AS A COMIC DRAMATIST. Edward Dowden (3)

To understand the relations between the Vice and the moral play one should turn, if there were opportunity, to the manifold representations of the World, the Flesh, the Devil, the Seven Deadly Sins and similar allegorical figures in mediæval literature of other kinds than the dramatic. It must suffice here, however, to consider the relation of these characters to each other in the later miracles and the earlier moral plays. In the pageants of the _Play of Paternoster_ the Seven Deadly Sins are represented. About the same time, in the Wakefield cycle, they are already written on the rolls of the Doomsday Demon, and discussed "in especiall" by Tutivillus. In the Coventry _Council of the Jews_ they are new-named by their Lord Lucifer (after the manner of the later Vice), Pride as Honesty, Wrath as Manhood, Covetousness as Wisdom, and so on. It is through the Seven Deadly Sins that the Belial of St. Paul (Digby) "raynes"; and the Saint himself[50] preaches against them in general and in several, calling them not only mortal sins, but, as if the terms were synonymous, Vices and Folly. In the _Mary Magdalene_ they are not only personified, but, further, classified as attendants upon their respective kings--Pride and Covetyse, ministers of the World; Lechery, Gluttony, and Sloth, of the Flesh; Wrath and Envy, of the Devil,--and as such they are sent into action. This distinction by classes is interesting because it shows that from a very early date the Vice was regarded as the servant, not of the Devil alone, but of the World and the Flesh as well. And it will be noticed later that, while the minor Vices of the moral interludes frequently bear the names of specific sins, the leading Vice is still likely to be called by a name which sums up all the specific sins of just one of these three satrapies of the Flesh, the World, the Devil,--Sensuality for the first, Hypocrisy or Avarice for the second, and Sedition or Riot for the third,--when he is not indicated by some synonym of Evil in general, such as Folly, Sin, Iniquity, Inclination, or Infidelity. Gradually the minor Vices pass into dramatic insignificance as compared with their principal representative, who becomes the Vice in chief. The morals before 1500 or thereabouts had one or more of the following figures: Devil, the World, the Flesh; and their representatives, the Vice and minor Vices or Deadly Sins. Of these plays--_Perseverance_, _Mankynd_, _Mary Magdalene_, _Wisdom_, _Nature_, and _Everyman_,--all but the last three display the complete aggregation: _Wisdom_ stars with only a Devil, _Nature_ lacks a Devil, and _Everyman_ lacks both Devil and principal Vice. The morals of the middle period, 1500 to 1560, generally eliminate the Devil and concentrate the sins, temptations, and mischiefs in the Vice, sometimes with, sometimes without, his foils, the minor Vices. In the _Castell of Perseverance_, about 1400, the Deadly Sins are "children of the Devil"; in _The World and Child_, about 1506, they are expressly summed up in one Vice,--Folly; in _Lusty Juventus_, _Like wil to Like_, and several other moral interludes after 1550, the Vice parades as son or grandson to the Devil; and finally, about 1578, while each of the minor Vices represents "one sin particularly," the Vice himself embodies "all sins generally."

It must be sufficiently evident by this time that the derivation of this name, in spite of a half-dozen misleading conjectures, is no other than that which is obvious. I notice, however, that Mr. Pollard regards the etymology from _vitium_ as still doubtful, "because in one of the earliest instances in which the Vice is specifically mentioned by name, he plays the part of Mery Report, who is a jester pure and simple, without any connection with any of the Deadly Sins." But the Vice or Folly had been known for two or three centuries in allegorical and satirical literature, and for a century and a half in the religious drama before 1530, and the designation had acquired a supplementary and degraded connotation when used in the _Wether_, _Jacke Jugeler_, etc., as a player's term or means of advertisement. About his function and habits, also, various misconceptions have gathered. I have, for instance, referred to Malone's statement that he was a constant attendant upon the Devil. Nothing could be more misleading. The Devil appears in at least two morals unattended by a Vice of any kind,[51] and the Vice appears in twenty-five or thirty without a Devil. They appear together in but eight[52] that I know of; and in only four[53] can the Vice be said to "attend." That he eggs the demons on to twit or torment the Devil, I cannot discover in more than two plays,--_Like wil to Like_, and _All for Money_. Since the days of Harsnet and Ben Jonson it has been reported that the Vice of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made a practice of riding to hell on the Devil's back. But I have already pointed out that he does this in only one play before 1580. The same _Like wil to Like_ is the only play in which he specifically "belabours the fiend." I know of no other in which that merriment was even likely to occur. In fact most of these attributions belong, not to the Vice of the morals and interludes, but to one of the later substitutes for him, the Vice-clown, such as Miles in _Friar Bacon_, or Iniquity in _The Devil is an Ass_.

A general view of his history shows, then, that the Vice is neither an ethical nor dramatic derivative of the Devil; nor is he a pendant to that personage, as foil or ironical decoy, or even antagonist. The Devil of the early drama is a mythical character, a fallen archangel, the anthropomorphic Adversary. The Vice, on the other hand, is allegorical,--typical of the moral frailty of mankind. Proceeding from the concept of the Deadly Sins, ultimately focussing them, he dramatizes the evil that springs from within. Though at first directed by God's Adversary, who assails man with temptations from without, the Vice is the younger contemporary of the Devil rather than his agent. As he acquires personality, he assumes characteristics and functions unknown to the Adversary, scriptural or dramatic. The functions were gradually assimilated with those of mischief-maker, jester, and counterfeit-crank; the characteristics, more and more affected by the Fool-literature of Wireker, Lydgate, Brandt and Barclay, Skelton, and the rest (which included vice in Folly, and by the Fool connoted vicious characters in all variety), were insensibly identified with social rather than abstract ethical qualities, and so came to be distributed as tendencies or "humours" among the persons of the drama,--who themselves are no longer allegorical, but representative of the concrete individuals of everyday life. Though the conduct of the interlude Vice may be anything but dignified, his function was, accordingly, at first serious. It was only gradually, and as the conflict between good and evil was supplanted by less didactic materials,--in other words, as the moral became more of a play,--that the Vice grew to be farcical, a mischief-maker, and ultimately jester. So long as he acts the seducer in disguise, and the marplot, he remains dramatically supreme. When he, however, assumes the rôle of parasite, counterfeit-crank, or simple, he enhances the variety of his fascination at the expense of his distinctive quality; and when he once has identified himself with the Will Summer, the actor, wag, or buffoon by profession, he plays below the function and level of his pristine quality. The Vice proper should, therefore, not be confounded with the Shakespearean fool, nor with the country clown. The country clown or booby he in reality never is; indeed, in some earlier manifestations[54] the clown exists contemporaneously with the Vice, and is his natural though not always complaisant quarry. Though the Vice, however, did not turn clown, the clown imperceptibly usurped qualities of the vanishing Vice.

In connection with the misconception concerning the derivation of the Vice from the domestic fool, of course incompatible with his descent from the Deadly Sins, there lingers a report that he was ordinarily dressed in a fool's habit. Such is the opinion of Klein[55] and Douce; and Morley[56] writes, "The Vice, when not in disguise, wore--as Brandt or Barclay would have thought most fitting--the dress of a fool." The dress of some typical fool of everyday life, some social "crank,"--yes; but not until the latter third of the sixteenth century, when the Vice was in his dotage, did he lose himself in the habit of the domestic fool. The Vice "shaking his wooden dagger," of whom Ben Jonson gives us a glimpse in _The Devil is an Ass_ and _The Staple of News_, is without doubt the domestic fool in the characteristic long coat, or in the juggler's jerkin with false skirts. But we must remember that Ben Jonson was writing some sixty or seventy years after the Vice properly so called was in his prime. From 1450 to 1570 and later, the distinctive Vice of the moralities was accoutred in the costume of his rôle, first of a Deadly Sin or little "dylfe"; then of some social class, trade, or type: messenger, herald, beggar, rat-catcher, priest, pharisee, gallant, dandy, or 'cit.' Occasionally he assumed a succession of costumes according to this dramatic necessity. He was indeed frequently equipped, in addition, with horn spectacles and wooden dagger, and sometimes with a burlesque of ceremonious attire,[57] or he was furnished with squibs and other fireworks,[58] or with hangman's rope or bridle. Professor Cushman surmises that he was, even, sometimes made up like Punch, for instance, in _Horestes_ and _Cambyses_. I don't know about that, but of this we may be sure, that as a Vice he was not distinguished by the traditional costume of the domestic fool. That character, soon to play an important part in comedy, appropriated certain tricks and aspects of the Vice, but the distinctive figure of the moral drama did not proceed from or ape the domestic fool of contemporary life.

Oddly enough it has lately been asserted that this character had no part in the 'morality' proper. An implication to the same effect is to be found in Halliwell-Phillipps's notes to _Witt and Wisdome_ as early as 1846, where he says that "the Vice is the buffoon of the old moral plays which _succeeded_ the Reformation." The fact is that the Vice takes part in all the plays under consideration, whether called morals proper or moral interludes, from 1400 to 1578, except only _Wisdom_ of the pre-Reformation series and the _Disobedient Child_ of the post-Reformation. Two other of the thirty-odd morals and moral interludes, namely, the _Pride of Life_ and _Everyman_, resort to a substitute. They distribute the rôle among minor representatives of the World, Flesh, and Devil, but they do not dispense with the idea of the Vice.[59] From him proceeds most of the human interest of these earlier comedies. Like the inclinations that he personifies, he is first sinful, then venial, then amusing; and to his tradition the comedy of a later age owes more than we are wont to suspect. It owes to him the development of certain spiritual characteristics, a cynical but rollicking superiority to sham, a freedom from the thrall of social and religious externality, a reckless joy of living, but an aloofness, withal, and a humour requisite to the exercise of satire. It is, indeed, as satirist sometimes virulent, but usually jocose, that the Vice is most to be esteemed. In so far as the genial character of the domestic fool of Green, Lodge, or Shakespeare reflected his irony and shrewd wit, some memory of him survived; and the clown-Vice of _Friar Bacon_ renews a passage or two of his later career, but not every usurper of his comic appanage, his mimicry, puns, irrelevance, and horse-play can lay claim to be descended from the Vice.

The dramatic importance of this figure can therefore not be overrated. He forms the _callida junctura_ between religious and secular, didactic and artistic, ideal and tangible, in our early comedy. He found a house of correction and he left a stage. Garcios, Pilates, Doomsday demons, and Maks precede, or flit beside him; but he, with his ancestral Sins, dependent Follies, and succeeding Ironies and Humours, occupies the central and the foremost place. Even while representing the superfluity of naughtiness with an eye to its reprobation, he is the life of the 'moral,'--its apology for artistic existence, its appeal to human interest. But when he steals a further march and rounds up for ridicule the very components of the allegorical drama that are most removed from laughter, and most liable thereto,--the long-faced abstractions that regard the comic spirit as sinful and are impervious to a joke,--he fulfils his destiny. He is the dramatic salt and solvent of the moral play. At first it couldn't thrive without him; at last it couldn't thrive with him. For, what _raison d'être_ could a moral have that no longer regarded the comic as immoral, knew a joke at sight, perhaps adventured one on its own account? Step by step with the development of a popular æsthetic interest in the affairs of common men the playwright asserted his superiority to social and allegorical make-believes, and the Vice proved his utility as a dramatic reagent. Once the Vice had gathered all sins in himself, his career was from 'inclination' to 'humour,' from abstract to concrete, from the moral to the typical, the one to the many, and so from the service of allegory to that of interlude, moral and pithy, but merry, all in preparation for farce, and social and romantic comedy.

=6. The Relation between Miracle, Moral, and Interlude=

An unfortunate misapprehension has obtained currency to the effect that there was a deliberate transition, chronological and logical, from the miracle cycle to the "morality," and thence to a something entirely different, called the interlude; and it is supposed that definite advances in the development of comedy were made _pari passu_ with this transition. It is even said, by one of the most genial and learned of English scholars, who of course was not intending anything by way of scientific accuracy, at the time, that "in the progress of the drama, Moralities followed Mysteries, and were succeeded by Interludes. When folk tired of Religion on the Stage they took to the inculcation of morality and prudence; and when this bored them they set up Fun."[60] But the moral play[61] was rather a younger contemporary and complement of the miracle than a follower, or a substitute for it. Moreover, allegory in the acted drama commanded the attention of the public contemporaneously with the scriptural plays of the later fourteenth century; in literature it had occupied attention long before. People, therefore, did not wait until they were tired of religion upon the stage, before taking to the inculcation of morality; nor could they have hoped to escape religion by any such substitute. Moral plays, like plays which were originally liturgical, aimed at religious instruction. But as the scriptural-liturgical illustrated the forms of the church service and its narrative content, the moral illustrated the sermon and the creed. The former dealt with history and ritual, the latter with doctrine; the former made the religious truth concrete in scriptural figures and events, the latter brought it home to the individual by allegorical means. The historical course of the drama was not from the scriptural play to the allegorical, but from the collective miracle and collective moral, practically contemporary, to the individual miracle and individual moral. The dramatic quality of the moral was, as we shall presently remark, not the same as that of the miracle, but it neither supplanted nor fully supplemented that of the miracle.

The distinction between 'morality' and 'interlude' has likewise been unduly and illogically emphasized. The former term may properly be said to indicate the content and aim of a drama; the latter, its garb and occasion; but the essential characters of the moral play, the human hero and the representatives of good and evil contending for his soul, may be common to interlude and 'morality' alike, and both terms may with justice refer to the same drama. After 1500 the rôle of hero is, to be sure, sometimes filled by an historical character, or by one or mere concrete personages representative of a type; but it must not be supposed that the play possessing such a hero is therefore to be called an interlude, for similar heroes are to be found in the morals before 1500. Nor should the statement be accepted that morals are distinguished from interludes by the presence in the former of both Devil and Vice; for several interludes of a later date have both Devil and Vice, while some of the earlier morals, written before 1500, have but one or the other of these characters, or neither.[62] The attempt to characterize the moral by its professed didactic intent, and the interlude by the lack thereof or the profession of mirth, is equally unavailing; for that manifest moral, the _Pride of Life_, one of the earliest extant, makes explicit promise in its prologue "of mirth and eke of kare" from "this our game"; while _Mankynd_, a moral of 1461 to 1485, which advertises no amusement, is as full of it as any late interlude. On the other hand, several plays written after 1568, calling themselves "comedies or enterludes," and promising brevity and mirth, are tedious. But, for the advertisement, sub-title, or specification of the play we must of course hold the publisher, and not the author, generally responsible. The common belief that 'moralities' were succeeded by 'interludes' is probably due in large part to the fact that 'interlude' has been used in England at different periods for entirely different kinds of entertainment, some of which, notably that to which Collier in 1831 restricted the term,--the play after the style of Heywood,--were of later production than the moral. But other kinds of 'interlude' date back to 1300, and precede the first mention of the moral play; while later kinds include the moral, and finally are synonymous with any humorous and popular performance. Collier's restriction of the term was, therefore, unfortunate. It interpreted a _genus_ as a species; for, although the interlude was originally any short entertainment, occupying the pauses between graver negotiations of the palate or intellect, it had, in the course of its history, acquired a significance almost as broad as 'drama' itself. The interlude was of various form and content and covered many species. As farce, the interlude anticipated moral plays; as allegorical drama, it absorbed them; and as comedy, it is their younger contemporary. It is not merely the play after the style of John Heywood. It is long or short; religious, moral, pedagogic, political, or doctrinal; scriptural, allegorical, or profane; classical or native; imaginative or reproductive of the commonplace; stupid or humorous; satirical or purely comic. It seems to me, therefore, unwise to perpetuate a distinction between moral plays and interludes which was not recognized by those who wrote and heard the plays in question.

The reduction of the number of actors, the abbreviation of the play, the concentration of the plot, wherever these exist in the later morals or moral interludes, are not evidence of a change of kind, but merely of a natural evolution through a period of some two hundred years. When ten Brink says that the interlude was the species best adapted to further the development of dramatic art, we must understand by interlude the individual, as opposed to the collective drama,--or the occasional performance by professionals for the delectation, and sometimes at the order, of private persons or parties, as opposed to expository or perfunctory plays, plays manipulated by crafts, or associated with times, places, and ends external to art. The improvement in scope and elasticity which marks the individual play is due to various causes: to patronage, which prefers amusement to instruction, and the work of artists to that of journeymen; to the development accordingly of a bread-and-butter profession of acting, with its accompanying _stimuli_ of necessity and opportunity. Poetic invention, dramatic constructiveness and style, are sometimes spurred by hunger; they are always responsive to the appreciation of the cultivated, and maybe to the reward.

=7. The Older Morals in their Relation to Comedy=

The remaining dramas within the compass of this survey may be considered in the following order: first, the older morals and moral interludes, between the years 1400 and 1520; second, various experiments of native and foreign, classical and romantic, origin which distinguish a period of transition extending approximately from 1520 to 1553; and, third, some nine or ten plays of prime importance which succeed these and unite, in one way or another, qualities of structure and aim hitherto distinctive of separate dramatic kinds. The period during which these plays, which I shall venture to call polytypic, were produced, roughly coincides with the years 1545 to 1566, and among these plays are the first English comedies really worthy of the name. We must then notice a group of rudimentary survivals, some of which, falling between 1550 and 1570, illustrate simply an artificial adaptation of the 'moral' species, while other few, appearing between 1553 and 1580, are a persistent flowering of the decadent stock, fruitless in kind but genuine in comic quality. We shall finally pass in brief review the crude romantic plays of morals or intrigue or popular tradition written between 1570 and 1590. And if it were not for lack of space, we should also glance at the satirical comedies which appeared when Shakespeare was beginning and Greene was ceasing; but, so far as possible, I must omit all subjects to which any consideration has elsewhere been accorded in this volume.

A sympathetic examination of the older morals--those that were produced before 1520--will reveal, even though the period is comparatively early, a twofold character of composition. We find, on the one hand, plays interpretative of ideals of life, constructive in character, relying upon the fundamentally allegorical, and making principally for a didactic end. We find, on the other hand, plays that deal with the actual have a critical aim, reproduce appearances and manners, and tend toward the amusing and satirical.

Of the half-dozen morals that made for the development of constructive or interpretative comedy, one of the earliest (about 1400) and most important was the _Castell of Perseverance_. In the quality of its dramatic devices it sustains a close relation to the Digby _Magdalene_,--the siege of the Castell by the Seven Deadly Sins, and their repulse under the roses which the Virtues have discharged. It also makes use of characters already prominent in the eleventh Coventry play, the _Pax_ and _Misericordia_, who there, as here, intercede for mankind. Collier calls this a well-constructed and much varied allegory, and says with good reason that its completeness indicates predecessors in the same kind. It is itself an early treatment of a fruitful theme, variously handled in later plays like Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, and in narratives like _The Holy War_. Though the abstractions are not of a highly dramatic character, still one or two of them,--for instance _Detractio_, the Vice, who is a cousin of the Coventry Backbiter, and of _Invidia_, "who dwellyth in Abbeys ofte," foreshadow the comedy of manners and satire, that is to say, the comedy of criticism. Other morals or moral interludes of the constructive kind, which I must forbear to describe, even though they contributed in one way or another to the improvement of dramatic consciousness or skill, are the _Pride of Life_, of antiquity perhaps as high as the preceding; the _Wisdom that is Christ_, 1480-1490, a comedy in the mediæval sense, insomuch as it portrays the ultimate triumph of a hero in his contest with temptation; _Mundus et Infans_, printed 1522, but written perhaps by the beginning of the century, which, beside giving us a vivid satirical picture of low life, makes a twofold contribution to the technique of comedy,--an iteration of crises in plot, and a sequence of changes in the character of the hero; Skelton's _Magnyfycence_, 1515-1523, significant for "vigour and vivacity of diction," and his _Nigromansir_, written somewhat earlier, which, though now lost, appears by Warton's account to have contributed, by its attack upon ecclesiastical abuses, to the beginnings of satirical comedy; the _Moralle Play of the Somonynge of Everyman_, printed before 1531, but of uncertain date of composition,--a tragedy to be sure, but "one of the most perfect allegories ever formed." All these, even when not purposively comic or even entertaining, assist the dramatic presentation of an imaginative ideal; occasionally also, though less directly, they contribute to dramatic satire and the portrayal of manners.

Of moral plays written before 1520 that contributed to the comedy of real life and critical intent we still have three or four. _Mankynd_--somewhere between 1461 and 1485--is of prime importance to the comedy of the actual, for practically its only claim to consideration as an allegorical or didactic production is that it maintains the plan and purpose of the moral play. Its dramatic tendency is altogether away from the abstract. In spite of its stereotyped Mercie and Myscheff, its minor Vices, and its Devil, it is a somewhat coarse but amusing portrayal of the manners of contemporary ne'er-do-weels. Attach no more meaning to the names Newgyse, Nowadays, and Nowte than the chuckling audience did, or change them to Huntyngton of Sanston, Thuolay of Hanston, and Pycharde of Trumpyngton, and you perceive at once that the individuality, conversation, and behaviour of these characters, and even of the hero, when he is not "holyer than ever was ony of his kyn," are hardly less natural and concrete than those of Englishmen immortalized by Heywood, Udall, and William Stevenson. The plot, to be sure, is dramatically futile, the incidents farcical, the merriment anything but refined; but there are few merrier successors of the Wakefield Tutivillus than his namesake here, who, coming "invysybull," cometh for all that "with his legges under him" and "no lede on his helys" to inform the sanctimonious hero that "a schorte preyere thyrlyth hewyn" and the audience that "the Devil is dead." Like the devil-judge of the _Nigromansir_ and the devil-sailor of the _Shipwrights' Play_, he has shaken off his biblical conventions (if he ever had any), he associates familiarly with characters of all kinds, and is marked by his grotesque devices as a wilful worker of confusion, the marplot of the play. The dog-Latin of the Vice Myscheff stands half-way between that of the Wakefield plays and that of _Roister Doister_ and _Thersytes_; and the Sam Wellerisms of Newgyse are a fine advance in the reproduction of the vulgar. His "Beware! quod the goode-wyff, when sche smot of here husbondes hede," and his "Quod the Devill to the frerys," and other gayeties perilous to quote--there is something Rabelaisian in all this. So Nowte and Nowadays, with their racy idioms, their variegated oaths, and "allectuose ways," are to the manner born, neither new nor old; they are of the picaresque drama that finds a welcome in every age and land. It is worth while to notice also the parallelism of crudity and progress in the technical devices of the action: on the one hand, the exchange of garments by which a change of motive is symbolized, a ruse that only gradually yields to the manifestation of character by means of action; and on the other hand, the legitimate and dramatic parody of a scene in court.

The concrete element so noteworthy in Mankynd is further developed in the "_Goodly Interlude of Nature_, compylyde by" Archbishop Morton's chaplain, Henry Medwall, between 1486 and 1500. This author must have possessed a remarkably vivid imagination, or have enjoyed a closer acquaintance than might be expected of one of his cloth with the seamy side of London; for there are few racier or more realistic bits of description in our early literature than the account given by Sensuality of Fleyng Kat and Margery, of the perversion of the hero by the latter, and of her retirement when deserted to that house of "Strayt Religyon at the Grene Freres hereby," where "all is open as a gose eye." Though the plot is not remarkable, nor the mechanism of it, for almost the only device availed of is that of feigned names, still the author's insight into the conditions of low life, his common sense, his proverbial philosophy, his humorous exhibition of the morals of the day, and his stray and sudden shafts at the foibles of his own religious class, would alone suffice to attract attention to this work. And even more remarkable than this in the history of comedy is Medwall's literary style: his versification excellent and varied, his conversations witty, idiomatic, and facile. Indeed, he is so far beyond the ordinary convention that he writes the first bit of prose to be found in our drama.

Several of the characteristics of _Mankynd_ are carried forward also in the moral "interlude," named, not for its hero Free Will, but for its Vice, _Hyckescorner_. It appears to have been written between 1497 and 1512. The upper limit of production is fixed by the reference to Newfoundland, and perhaps by the fact that in the same year Locher's translation of the _Narrenschiff_ appeared; the lower limit by the mention of the ship _Regent_, which would not probably have been referred to as existing after 1512.[63] Indeed, the mention of the ship _James_ may associate the lower limit with 1503, the date of the Scotch marriage. The tendency of this moral is distinctively didactic,--to denounce the folly that scoffs at religion,--but in quality it smacks more of comedy than any preceding play. Its value was long ago acknowledged by Dr. Percy. "Abating the moral and religious reflections and the like," says he, "the piece is of a comic cast, and contains a humorous display of some of the vices of the age. Indeed, the author has generally shown so little attention to the allegorical that we need only to substitute other names to his personages, and we have real characters and living manners." The plot is insignificant, but the situations are refreshingly humorous, and one of them, the setting of Pity in the stocks, is new. The local references are frequent, and the dialogue is more sprightly than even that of _Nature_. _Hyckescorner_ is in many ways the model of another important play of which we shall soon have reason to speak, the _Interlude of Youth_.

While the plot of the _New Interlude and Mery of the Nature of the Four Elements_, calls for no special notice, it interests us because in purpose it is not moral, but scientific, and in conduct makes use of comic and commonplace means not previously availed of. The humour proceeds not simply from the jumble of oaths, nicknames, proverbs, gibes, bad puns, transparent jokes, mimicry, Sam Wellerisms, and _nugae canorae_ of which the talk of most Vices consists, but from the cleverly managed verbal misunderstanding between the Vice and the Taverner, the irrelevant question, and the humorous employment of snatches and tags from popular songs. The introduction of a character representing a trade, such as that of the Taverner, who enumerates sixteen kinds of wine, and "by his face seems to love best drinking," is, of course, novel, but is not without precedent in the miracle plays. This interlude was printed in 1519 by its author, John Rastell, evidently soon after it was written.

When we consider that the _Four Elements_ was written by a friend of Sir Thomas More, and that, like the plays of John Heywood, another of More's friends, it depends for much of its effect upon its gibes at womankind, we are, perhaps, assisted in realizing the extent to which the literary taste of the day still indulged in this primitive form of amusement, and the distance which was yet to be covered before comedy could safely avail itself of the feminine element as it is,--witty and practical, as well as tender,--and so prepare to fulfil its peculiar function as the conserver of society. For, until it recognizes that women constitute the social other-half, the comic spirit has not come into full possession of its possibilities; it has not produced comedy, for it has not given us a full and undistorted reflex of life. This is a fact so rarely considered that I cannot refrain from quoting Mr. George Meredith. "Comedy," he says, in his excellent essay on its _Idea_--"comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it.... The heroines of comedy are like women of the world, not necessarily heartless for being clear-witted: they seem so to the sentimentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition of their battle with men, and of men with them: and as the two, however divergent, both look on one object, namely, life, the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. The comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness; he is for saying that, when they draw together in social life, their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the nursery." Of course, if the ways of man and maid in society ever grew to be exactly alike, comedy would die of inanition. Consequently, though I say that comedy requires for the sexes equality of social privilege, I do not mean identity. The _synalœpha_ of the sexes--such as some extremists, political and pedagogical, project--would just as surely destroy comedy as in former days the inequality of the sexes dwarfed it. The sentimental and romantic give-and-take is as essential to society as the intellectual, and as essential to comedy as to society.

=8. The Dramatic Contribution of the Older Morals=

Before discussing the period of transition upon which comedy now enters, it will be advantageous to determine, if possible, what contributions to the methods of comedy should be credited distinctively to this moral or moral interlude during the years that preceded the change, that is, from 1380 to 1520. Certainly not the introduction of the separate play, as is frequently supposed, nor the substitution of immediate and familiar interests for those that were remote, nor of the invented plot for the traditional, and the significant for the spectacular. Though some of these features distinguish the evolution of the allegorical play, one and another of them is also to be recognized at as early a period, or earlier, in those forms of the drama, kindred and unrelated, that I have already described,--the miracle, the saint's play, the farce, and the secular festival play. I should say that, so far as the materials of drama are concerned, the advances peculiar to the allegorical play were, from the use of the scriptural _dramatis persona_, frequently instrumental and therefore wooden, to the use of the dynamic; and from the historical or traditional individual to the representative of a type. These are substitutions important to our subject, for, that the individual should come to the front is, as ten Brink has well said, a characteristic of tragedy, whereas in comedy it is the typical that is emphasized, to the end that in an example which is typical the follies of the age may be liberally, and at the same time impersonally, embodied and chastised. By virtue of its didactic purpose and its allegorical form, moreover, the moral play must ascribe to its _dramatis personæ_ adequate motives of action. It therefore must and does make an attempt, even though rude, at the preservation of psychological probability in the analysis and development of these motives. Once the dramatic person has been labelled with the name of a quality, not as appraised from without and denoted by a patronymic common to dozens beside himself, but from within and specified by his ethonymic (if I may coin the word), he is no longer a chance acquaintance of the dramatist or the public, but the representative of an ethical family. In the moral play the characters stand for or against some convention,--educational, ethical, political, religious,--that is to say, social in the broadest sense. With the advent of such characters, therefore, the social drama receives an impulse. Its hero serves to justify or to satirize an institution; for that end he exists. And therefore in the handling of motives the moral makes a genuine advance in the direction of comedy, both critical and ideal.

We notice next that the author of this kind of drama finds it necessary to devise situations for exploiting the idiosyncrasies of his principal characters; and that, even though the characters be disguised as abstractions, the friction of what is dynamic with what is real results in something vivid and concrete. I do not mean to say that the dramatist has learned how to develop character, but how to display or manifest it. Skill in the portrayal of character in process of growth came but slowly, and with the passage of the allegorical play into the drama of real life. As to the portrayal of motives and emotions in their complexity, that is an art much more refined, to which the writers of the moral never attained, even though they enriched their abstractions with borrowings from theologians, philosophers, and poets, for in dealing with abstractions at all they were dealing with life at second hand. Indeed, complex characters can hardly be found in English drama before the various tentative dramatic species had merged themselves in the polytypic plays with which comedy, properly so called, made its appearance. The allegorical dramatists found also, like the writers of the later miracle and farce, that critical situations demanded plain language and unsophisticated manners; and if, in these respects, the realism of the moral excels that of the earlier miracle, it is perhaps because of the superior dynamic quality of the moral _dramatis persona_.

Mr. Courthope and other writers on the drama have conjectured that the improvement characteristic of the allegorical playwright was one to which he was driven of necessity, namely, the introduction, and consequently the invention, of a continuous plot. But there was nothing new in the invention of plot. The novelty, if any, was in the distinctively comic nature of the plot-movement most suitable to the purpose of this kind of drama. In tragedy, the movement must be economic of its ups and downs: once headed downward, it must plunge, with but one or two vain recovers, to the abyss. In comedy, on the other hand, though the movement is ultimately upward, the crises are more numerous; the oftener the individual stumbles without breaking his neck, and the more varied his discomfitures, so long as they are temporary, the better does he enjoy his ease in the cool of the day. Tragic effects may be intense and longer drawn out, but they must be few; in comedy, the effects are many, sudden, fleeting, kaleidoscopic. You can enjoy a long, delicious shudder, but not a long-spun joke, or a joke frequently repeated, or many jokes of the same kind. Hence the peculiar movement of the plot in comedy. Now, the novelty of the plot in the moral play, lay in the fact that the movement was of this oscillating, upward kind,--a kind unknown as a rule to the miracle, whose conditions were less fluid, and to the farce, which was too shallow and superficial. The heart of the 'moral' hero was a battleground; as in comedy, the interest was in the vicissitudes of the conflict and the certainty of peace. Though the purpose of the moral play was didactic and reformatory, its doctrine was optimistic and its end to encourage; and one of the distinctive contributions of the moral play to the English comedy was the movement suitable to these conditions, not the introduction of a continuous or connected plot. When Mr. Courthope further speaks of the moral plays as if they were the sole link of connection between the later miracle plays and the regular drama, and implies that the "morality" was unique in its introduction of a leading personage, who may be called the hero of the play, he is attributing to it qualities that existed in contemporary species of the dramatic kind. As to the statement that the moral play arose, as if a new kind of play, from some modification of the miracle play, on the one hand by secular and comic interests, and on the other by allegorical motives and materials, I think that sufficient has been elsewhere said in this article to show that secular and comic interests existed in the miracle play without altering its essence, both before and after the moral had come into prominence, and that allegorical motives and materials had developed themselves into the moral pageant and play before the miracle was visibly affected by them.

=9. The Period of Transition: Farce and Romantic Interlude=

The period of experimentation or transition, which may be said to extend from 1520 to 1553, is characterized especially by the gradual abandonment of allegorical machinery and abstract material. The forward movement is, of course, primarily due to the change from the mediæval attitude of mind to that of the renaissance, from artificial thought whose medium, the symbol, succeeded in concealing more than it expressed, to experience. Of the social and political conditions which prepared the way for the transition so far as English comedy is concerned or that shaped comedy once on its way, I cannot here speak, but the following would appear among purely literary antecedents: First, the French _sotties_ and _farces_, the technical and satirical qualities of which were a stimulus to invention, not only in England, but in Italy and Germany; second, the _disputations_ and _debats_, veritable whetstones of wit and a polish of words _ad unguem;_ third, the collateral development of a farce interlude in England, composed in Latin and English, probably also in Norman French, but generally spontaneous, and wholly unforced; fourth, the adaptation to dramatic and satirical purposes of _contes_, _fabliaux_, _novelle_, and their English translations and congeners,--more especially the Chaucerian episode with its concrete characters and contemporary manners; fifth, the movement of native romance urged during the fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries by contact with Spanish and Italian ideals and their fictions of character, adventure, and intrigue; sixth, the discipline of Plautine and Terentian models, and of the Latin and vernacular comedies which imitated them, as well as of the Latin school plays which flourished in Holland and Germany during the latter half of the fifteenth century; and seventh, the examples set by Kirchmayer and other German controversialists in the attempted adaptation of the moral play to historical or quasi-historical conditions with a view to satirical ends.

The plays that call for consideration in this section and the next may be classified roughly as farces, romantic interludes, school interludes, and controversial morals. Each of these kinds reaches a culmination conformable to its nature, within the limits that I have chosen for the period; and each has its own place in the history of comedy. For it must not be supposed that, because a pastoral farce like the _Mak_ did not develop into independent existence, or because moral interludes gradually exhausted their career towards the end of the sixteenth century, such species had no influence in maturing English comedy. The peculiar quality and charm of our comedy is that, deriving from sources not only distinct, but remote in literary habitat,--scriptural, allegorical, farcical, pastoral, romantic, classical, historical, or purely native and social,--it has not dissipated itself in a thousand streamlets, but has carried down deposits from each tributary at its best. In _Love's Labor's Lost_, _Two Angry Women_, _As You Like It_, _Old Wives' Tale_, _Every Man in His Humour_, we find, as in a miner's pan, 'colours' from vastly different soils.

Of the indebtedness of comedy to the parody of religious festivals I have already spoken, and I have little doubt that at later periods English comedy continued to draw devices, if not inspiration, from performances whose occasion was a revolt against the straitness of religion. One, at least, of the interludes of John Heywood is closely similar to the French _Farce de Pernet_, and that such farces were, in motive, first a gloss upon the lessons of the divine service, then a diversion, and finally a factor in the extra-ecclesiastical Feast of Fools, any reader of Petit de Julleville will readily concede. It is impossible that the comic features and comic characters of the farces acted by the _clercs de la Basoche_, such as that of the immortal _Maître Pathelin_, should not have affected the dramatic invention of contemporary and succeeding Englishmen, conversant as many of them were with the literature and society of France. And a like effect might naturally be expected to have been exercised by the _sotties_ of the contemporary _enfants sans souci_; for, through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, drama of that kind convulsed the sides of merrymakers south of the Channel. Such were the occasion and motive of farces and _sotties_. So far as they employed the plot of domestic intrigue for their purposes of satire, I have little doubt that they drew freely upon the Latin elegiac comedies of which I have already spoken as the favourite dramatic species of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The _Farce de Pernet_ has connection with more than one of those imitations of Terentian intrigue. It has, also, like many of its kind and of elegiac comedies as well, a kinship with one and another popular tale. The church, then, seems to have furnished the opportunity for these farces, and for some as an object of satire the motive; the _contes_ and _fabliaux_ of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries furnished much of the material; Latin comedy, its mediæval and renaissance successors, cannot have failed to influence the form.

It will be, of course, recalled that as early as the _Mak_ of the Towneley plays, a farce which is not unworthy of comparison with _Maître Pathelin_, the English _Interludium de Clerico et Puella_, probably of the thirteenth century, also indicated an acquaintance with the technique of the farce species. Undoubtedly such interludes were a common feature at entertainments of various kinds, and had matured in the ordinary course into fixed form. But they were frequently extemporaneous, were written for fleeting occasions, and might readily be lost. I am inclined therefore, to look upon the dramatized anecdotes assigned to Heywood as lucky survivals of a form which, since it had been long cultivated both in England and France, may have attained to a degree of excellence before he took it up. The resemblance of these farces to the French is often such that, as M. Jusserand says, one cannot but question whether Heywood had not some of the old French dramas of the type in his hands. Since Mr. Pollard has discussed the question in this volume, it is unnecessary for me to pursue it farther. In any case, it is to the honour of Heywood that he brought to focus the characteristic qualities of the Chaucerian episode, the farce and the dramatic debate. "This I write," says he, "not to teach, but to touch." In his work, accordingly, we find narratives of single and independent interest, if not exactly plot, and an adaptation of that which is abstract to purposes of amusement. We find characters with motive, and sometimes personality, contemporary manners, witty dialogue, satire; and in at least the _Play of Love_, an adumbration of the sentimental, dare we say romantic, possibilities of comedy, to be realized when it should have thrown allegory and scholasticism to the winds. The Laundress in the _Wether_ envisages fleetingly the straits of life and the recompense; and in the _Play of Love_, the personification of various phases of that passion is a kind of glass through which we darkly divine the motives of many later comedies. There is, however, with the single exception of the Vice's trick in _Love_, no action which can be called dramatic in Heywood's undoubted plays; for, as Mr. Pollard reminds us, the _Pardoner_ and _Johan_, although they avail themselves of "business" in order to develop a plot, have not the significance of comedy proper.

To understand the nature of the movements that follow we must recur, though with the utmost brevity, to the history of later Latin comedy. The comic recitals of the twelfth century and thereabout were succeeded by the comedy of the Italian humanists, still in Latin, but dramatic in form and apparently in intent, which, though it availed itself, like the elegiac school, of the outworn situations and devices of scabrous amours, contributed considerably to the enrichment of the romantic strain by the passion with which it invested its material, sometimes, also, to the cause of realism by its unconscious, though often repulsive, accuracy of detail. Although Plautus is to some extent cultivated, the Terentian model was still the favourite with youthful imitators until study of the older poet was revived by the recovery of the twelve lost plays and their introduction to Roman circles in 1427. The _Philologia_ of Petrarch's earlier years is accordingly fashioned in the style of Terence, and is even reported, for it is unfortunately lost, to have surpassed its classical forbears. Written about 1331, it was the first product of the new dramatic school, and was succeeded by a numerous train of ambitious effusions,--university plays we might call most of them,--a few witty, some sentimental, many libidinous, all very young, and still all, or nearly all, cleverly and regularly constructed. It concerns us here but to mention the _Paulus_ of Vergerio, which Creizenach dates 1370, Aretino's _Poliscene_, about 1390, Alberti's _Philodoxeos_, 1418, Ugolino's _Philogena_, some time before 1437, and Piccolomini's _Crisis_, 1444.[64] Of these erotic comedies,--pornographic were perhaps a more fitting term,--the most popular seems to have been the _Philogena_; the most eminent, according to Creizenach (but I don't see why), the _Crisis_. The _Paulus_ pretends to aim at the improvement of youth; one might for a moment imagine that it was intended to be a prodigal son play. But in none of these plays is there either punishment or repentance. In fact the unaffected verve with which they display the wantonness of life is not the least of their contributions to comedy. The _Poliscene_ is notable for its modernity of manners and of morals. The sole instance among these plays, so far as I can ascertain, of noble sentiment and harmless plot is the _Philodoxeos_. The use of abstract names for the characters lends it, indeed, somewhat the appearance of a moral interlude.

Of much greater value, however, in the history of the acted drama, and of closer bearing upon the English comedy, were the representations of Plautus and Terence, first in the Latin and ultimately in the vernacular, which marked the last quarter of the fifteenth century in the courts of northern Italy. These in turn were but stepping-stones towards such dramatic dialogues as the _Timone_ of Bojardo, 1494, and the still more significant experiments of Ariosto and Bibbiena--the first romantic comedies in prose and in the native tongue. The authors of the _Suppositi_ (acted in 1509) and the _Calandria_ (written in 1508, but not presented till six years later) derive much from Roman sources, but in general these comedies and their like were original. Their influence upon our own plays of romantic intrigue will presently appear. So, likewise, will that of a Spanish work, of even earlier date, the dramatic novel of _Calisto and Melibœa_; for this tragic production of Cota and De Rojas is the source of our first English romantic drama. The connection between other forms of Italian drama, the _Commedia dell'arte_, the pastoral drama, etc., and the later stage in western Europe has been ably discussed by Klein, Moland, Symonds, and Ward; and to them I must refer the reader of this more summary account.