Chapter X: SHAKESPEARE AS A COMIC DRAMATIST. Edward Dowden (4)

The decade that saw the first of Heywood's virile plays was probably that which welcomed to England the ebullient, un-English passions of a dramatic species destined to develop the native stock in a far different manner. "A new commodye in englyshe, in maner of an enterlude," ordinarily called _Calisto and Melibœa_, is the earliest romantic play of intrigue in our language. It was "caused to be printed" by that excellent promoter of the dramatic art, John Rastell, about 1530, and was written--perhaps by him--not long before. The appellation "commodye" had been used during the same decade with reference to the English translation of the _Andria_ (about 1520-29); it is here used for the first time on the title-page of an English play. And this interesting interlude may, indeed, well be called both English and comedy; for though it derives from romance sources (the Spanish dramatic composition by Fernando de Rojas, before 1500), and is affected by the Italian, it does not follow exactly the plot of its original; and though it is "reduced to the proportions of an interlude," it treats of an idea not farcical, but significant, and it develops the motives of real characters, by way of action, passion, and intrigue, to a happy conclusion within the realm of convention and common sense. It is, indeed, a comedy, perhaps our first well-rounded comedy, though in miniature. The _Secunda Pastorum_ it excels in singleness of aim; the _Pardoner and Frere_ and the _Johan_, in meaning for life. It excels all preceding interludes in the fulfilment of the purpose, now for the first time announced in English drama, "to shew and to describe as well the bewte and good propertes of women as theyr vyces and evyll condicions." For the first time since plays became secular, women are introduced, not as the objects of scurrility and ridicule, but as dramatic material of an æsthetic, moral, and intellectual value equal to that of men. What the author of _Johan_ did for the amusing and real action desirable in a comedy, the author of this play did for vital characterization and passion. Melibœa is the first heroine of our romantic comedy; she is so fair that for her lover there is "no such sovereign in heaven, though she be in earth." She is, if the play was written before the _Play of Love_, our earliest heroine "loved, not loving." She is a woman and pitiful and to be wooed; frail and repentant; but then indignant and not to be won. Calisto is, likewise, our first lover in despair. This element of woman worship--not worship of the Blessed Virgin or traditional interest in the Magdalene or any other saint--is no slight contribution to the material of comedy. The intrigue of the play,--the foils of character and action, the go-betweens, the plot within plot introduced by Celestina, her realistic account of Sempronio's character, her device of the "girdle," the mysterious agency of the dream,--no better indication of romantic tendency can be detected until we reach Redford's play of _Wit and Science_, of which presently. But first, and that we may keep in mind the parallelism of dramatic tendencies in this momentous first half of the sixteenth century, let us turn to another stream, that of the school interludes and the classical influence.

=10. The Period of Transition: School Interlude and Controversial Moral=

During the fifteenth century, and the early sixteenth, influences of importance to English comedy proceed not from the literature of Italy and Spain alone. In northern Europe additions most significant to the history of the type were making. To the crop of French _sotties_, _moralités_, and _farces_ I have already referred. The German Reuchlin in 1498 put forth a roaring Latin comedy called the _Henno_, which, in modern Terentian style, embodied the chicaneries of Pathelin. About the same time the Germans began to make the acquaintance, through translations in their own tongue, of highly flavoured Italian Latin plays like the _Poliscene_ and the _Philogenia;_ while those of them who cared not for such things were favoured with a recrudescence of the Christian Terence school. In 1507 the young humanist, Kilian Reuter, in imitation of the nun of Gandersheim, produced in Latin his pious comedy depicting the passion of St. Dorothea. In Holland, meanwhile, were springing into existence the Latin prototypes of more than one of our own didactic interludes; for in the _comedia sacra_ the attempt was made to combine the intrigue of the Italian university play with the moral of the prodigal son and the technique of the Terentian drama. The more important of these plays of the prodigal son, in respect of influence upon English comedy, are the _Asotus_ of Macropedius, written before 1529, and his _Rebelles_, 1535, the _Acolastus_ of Gnapheus, 1529, and the _Studentes_ of Stymmelius, 1549. The most dramatic of them are the second and third as mentioned. The _Acolastus_, indeed, translated into English by Palsgrave in 1540, exerted a long-enduring influence upon our drama. To the same period belong also a species of biblical comedies dealing with heroes, like the _Joseph_ of the Dutch Jesuit, Crocus, 1535, and the _Susanna_, _Judith_, _Eli_, _Ruth_, _Job_, _Solomon_, _Goliath_, etc., of Macropedius, the Swiss Sixt Birck, and others; and another kind of play that occupied itself with prototypes of the Roman Antichrist,--Haman, Judas, and the like. The former may be called the idyllic or heroic miracle, the latter the polemic. And of the latter the most influential development was the controversial interlude, _Pammachius_, written by the German Protestant Naogeorgos (Kirchmayer) and dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury. By 1545 this play, in which the Pope figures as the Antichrist, had not only been acted at Cambridge in the original, but translated into English by our own John Bale; and, as we shall presently see, it was, somewhere between 1540 and 1548, imitated by him in one of the most vigorous of our controversial dramas.[65]

Of the cultivation of the drama in Latin in England I have already made mention in treating of the saints' plays and the Terentian drama of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Other indications of a Latin drama occur, although infrequently. William Fitzstephen, who speaks of the _ludus_ given by Geoffrey's boys at Dunstable, tells us, also, that it was customary on feast days for masters of schools to hold festival meetings in the churches, when the pupils contested, not only in disputations, but also with Fescennine license in satirical verses touching "the faults of school-fellows or perhaps of greater people"; a practice which could only with difficulty escape development into a rude Aristophanic comedy. We have mention also of perquisites for a _comœdia_ in one of the Cambridge colleges as early as 1386, evidently of the Latin type, and of the presentation of a goodly comedy of Plautus at court in 1520. Between 1522 and 1532 the Master of St. Paul's produced a Latin school drama of _Dido_ before Wolsey, and according to Collier's supposition,[66] the same John Ritwyse was the author of the satiric interlude, in Latin and French, of Luther and his wife, which was acted for the delectation of the not yet reformed Henry and his foreign guests in 1527. Of the nature of this play, unfortunately lost, some conception may be gathered from the still surviving list of its characters (allegorical, religious, and contemporary), from the analogous _Ludus ludentem Luderum ludens_, 1530, and the somewhat more recent and most scurrilous _Monachopornomachia_, both by Germans. Before 1530 and apparently with a view to acting, the _Andria_ had been turned into English,[67] and by 1535 at least two Latin comedies of moral-mythological character had been written by Artour of Cambridge, and one, the _Piscator_, by Hoker of Oxford.[68] We have word of a dramatic pageant in English and Latin to which Udall contributed in 1532; in 1534 he issued a book of selections entitled _Flowers of Terence_. In 1540 Palsgrave had introduced the prodigal son drama from Germany; and by 1545 Bale had followed suit with a Latin play of Antichrist. During the same period Udall was producing his _plures comœdiæ_, now lost, and that other schoolmaster-dramatist, Radcliffe of Hitchin, was writing _spectacula simul jucunda et honesta_ for his boys to present,--heroic miracles of the type affected by Macropedius, and a romantic comedy of _Griselda_, probably all in Latin, but unfortunately all vanished.

The importance of the English school drama has been well presented by Professor Herford and Dr. Ward, but there is something in the name that leads the ordinary reader to underrate the _genus_. A word or so by way of classification may be of assistance. These interludes fall naturally into four kinds. Those that ridicule folly, vain pretension, and conceit, or Mirth plays,--plays after the model of Plautus, mock-heroic, or purely diverting, like the _Thersytes_. Those that are pedagogical in tendency, directed against idleness and ignorance, or Wit plays. They began with Rastell's _Four Elements_, and reached their highest mark in the _Contract between Witt and Wisdome_. Those that portray the conflict with the excesses and lusts of the flesh, or Youth plays. They consist of such productions as _Mankynd_, _Nature_, _Hyckescorner_, and reach their climax, about 1554, in the _Interlude of Youth_. The school drama includes, in the last place, a series corrective of parental indulgence and filial disobedience, aptly called Prodigal Son plays. These are patterned upon Terence, but follow the manner of Dutch school plays like the _Acolastus_ or of the still earlier French _moralités_, _Bien-Avisé et Mal-Avisé_, _L'Homme pêcheur_, and _Les Enfants de Maintenant_. They make more or less use of the scriptural motif and are sometimes tragical. In the period under consideration their best representatives are the _Nice Wanton_ and the _Disobedient Child_. From the point of view of comedy the first of these kinds, the Mirth play, occupies a place by itself; for, though it may sometimes intend to teach, it always aims at, and achieves, laughter. To the three remaining kinds, we must for convenience, join, however, another which, though not of the school species, is primarily didactic,--I mean the controversial interlude. This includes Bale's _King Johan_, Wever's _Lusty Juventus_, and the _Respublica_.

In the Mirth play, _Thersytes_, the influence of Plautus is evident,--a school play, to be sure, but written with a view to amusement or rollicking satire rather than instruction. Acted in 1537, this "enterlude" has for its hero a "ruffler forth of the Greke lande" whose "crakying" stands half-way between the classical Pyrgopolinices and Thraso and the modern Roister Doister. For all its academic flavour, the burlesque is coarse and crude, but still genuinely humorous. It deserves notice, in especial, for the variety of its contents, chivalric, romantic, popular, scriptural as well as Greek and Latin; also for its artistic exhibition of the braggart,--the leisurely proceeding of his discomfiture, the subordination of other characters to that end; and for its mastery of technical devices,--concealment, magic, the play upon the word, and that hunting of the word and letter which was so soon to drive conversation out of its wits. As an interlude of foreign origin, the _Thersytes_ has a place in the development of the comic element somewhat analogous to that of the _Calisto_ in the development of the romantic. As far as the quality of mirth is concerned it might be classed with _Roister Doister_ and _Jacke Jugeler_; but those plays are much more highly developed in form and spirit, and must be reserved for consideration with the polytypic, and early regular, comedy.

The remaining classes of interlude are manifestly didactic; those of Wit and Youth derive, however, more directly from native sources, while those of the Prodigal Son have close affiliation with the Christian Terence of the continental humanists.

Redford's _Wyt and Science_, composed probably between 1541 and 1547, is, in form and intent, like _Lusty Juventus_ and other survivals of the moral interlude. It differs, however, in company with the _Four Elements_ and other Wit plays, in substituting a scientific for a religious purpose; and it adds a feature not to be found in earlier kinds of moral, a chivalrous ideal of love and adventure, academic, to be sure, but unmistakable. This appears in the wooing of Lady Science by Wyt, and his encounter with the tyrant or fiend Tediousness "for my dere hartes sake to wynne my spurres;" in the hero's inconstancy, defeat, and subsequent success, and in the dramatic employment of romantic instruments and tokens, such as the magic glass and the sword of comfort; also in the love songs. All of these and similar features of which the sources are not entirely continental make for the development of a romantic and humanistic drama. It may be worth noticing, moreover, that the fiend of the play is neither Vice nor Devil. He seems to be a cross between the Devil of the miracles and a monster of native as well as scriptural ancestry (an early draft of Giant Despair), who figures in a modernization of this play, _The Marriage of Witte and Science_. In chronological sequence the next of the Wit plays is the _Contract of a Marrige betweene Wit and Wisdome_ (not _Wit and Science_, as Professor Brandl has it). This was probably written about the same time as the _Lusty Juventus_. The mention of the King's most "royal majestie" and the appearance of the Vice Idleness as a priest would point to a date earlier than 1553, while the resemblance to Redford's play, though by no means close, indicates posteriority to that much cruder production. The division into acts and scenes is, on the other hand, less elaborate than that obtaining in the latest play of this series, _The Marriage of Witte and Science_. The _Contract_ is altogether the most meritorious of those academic predecessors of the drama of the Prodigal Son which introduce the indulgent mother as a motive force. While the conception is formal and didactic, the action avails itself, like Redford's play, of the romantic element involved in the perilous adventure for love. The _Contract_, moreover, startles the sober atmosphere of the moral interlude by a rapidity of movement, a combination of plots major and minor, a diversity of subordinate characters and incidents altogether unprecedented. The racy and natural wit, the equivoque, the actual, even if vulgar, humanity of the scenes from low life, and the skill with which the Mother Bees, the Dols and Lobs, Snatches and Catches, the Constable, and the thoroughly rustic Vice with his actual resemblance to Diccon the Bedlem, are dovetailed into the action,--these properties make this a very commendable predecessor, not only of _Gammer Gurton_, but of certain plays of Dekker and Jonson where similar features obtain. With the _Contract_, the interlude of this kind attains its climax. _The Marriage of Witte and Science_, which is a revision of Redford's play of similar name, must also be mentioned here, although it is a postliminious specimen of the type. Not licensed until 1569-70, and, according to Fleay, acted as _Wit and Will_, 1567-78,[69] it adds nothing vital to the plot or characters of its model. Still, in literary and dramatic handling, it is an example of the perfection to which the moral play could come. Collier, indeed, has said that it was the first play of its kind regularly divided into acts and scenes with indication of the same: but that is not true, for the _Respublica_ of 1553 has five acts and the proper arrangement in scenes; and so have other plays of 1553 or earlier, though of different kind, like the _Jacob and Esau_.

If now we pass to the Youth plays, we shall find in the _Interlude of Youth_ (about 1554) the culmination of dramatic efforts to portray the sowing of wild oats,--efforts avowedly moral in purpose, but with a reminiscent smack of the lips and a fellow-feeling for the scapegrace. The _Interlude of Youth_ is characterized neither by the unbridled merriment of the _Miles Gloriosus_ type nor by the depth or pathos of dramas portraying solicitous parents and prodigal sons; but it paves the way for 'tragical' comedies of this latter class, and is infinitely more dramatic, because more human, than the pedagogical onslaughts upon idleness, irksomeness, ignorance, and the like of which we have just treated. It has, perhaps, not been noticed that the _Interlude of Youth_ holds about the same relation to _Hyckescorner_ in matter of motive and treatment that _Hyckescorner_ holds to the _Four Elements_ and _Mankynd_,--indeed, a closer relation, for in many details of character, device, situation, as well as by literal transference of language, it borrows from _Hyckescorner_. This as indicating the descent of the species is in itself interesting. But the present play generally improves upon all that it derives. In addition, the vivid conversation, shrewd and waggish wit, local colouring, atmosphere of taverns, dicing, cards, and worse iniquities, justify, I think, the statement that it is at once the most realistic, amusing, and graceful specimen of its kind. It is, at any rate, as artistic as a didactic interlude could permit itself to be.

One cannot consider the so-called Prodigal Son interludes, without observing that the theme itself supplies an opportunity for the enlargement of dramatic endeavour. For these productions are directed as much against parental indulgence as against filial disobedience. The "Preaty Interlude called _Nice Wanton_," printed in 1560, was written before the death of Edward VI. Though it may have derived suggestions from the _Rebelles_[70] of Macropedius, 1535, it is of its own originality and dramatic merit, in my opinion, the best of its class in English at the time of writing. While it presents a mixture of scriptural, classical, and moral elements, it is essentially a modern production. The allegorical lingers only in the character of Worldly Shame. If this be eliminated, there remains a play with realistic, romantic, and ideal qualities, an air of probability, and a plot well conceived and excellently completed. Iniquity, or Baily errand, is a concrete Vice, working by actual and possible methods. The unfortunate heroine and the well-contrasted pairs of mothers and sons are manifest not only by their deeds but by the opinions of those who know them. The plot, in other words, grows out of the characters; it is full of incident, and it falls naturally into acts, which have been elaborated in various and dramatically interesting scenes. The movements, on the one hand toward a catastrophe, on the other toward the triumph of right living, are conducted with skilful suspense, surprise, discovery, and revolution, and are well interwoven. The conversations and songs are racy or sober according to the conditions; the combination of æsthetic qualities, comic, tragic, and pathetic, is an agreeable advance upon the inartistic extremes afforded by most of the contemporary interludes of moral intent. The next of these plays, the "pretie and mery new interlude called _The Disobedient Child_, by Thomas Ingeland, late Student at Cambridge," was acted, Mr. Fleay thinks, before Elizabeth in March, 1560-61. Though it was not published till 1564, it was certainly, like the _Nice Wanton_, written before 1553. The purpose is serious and the conclusion almost tragic, but the play contributes to the comedy of domestic satire. If the main characters were but indicated by name, like those below stairs, Blanche and Long-Tongue, this picturesque and wholly dramatic interlude would have attracted more notice than has been vouchsafed it. Its literary merits, verse, poetic feeling and expression, and its natural dialogue entitle it to high consideration; its decidedly novel dramatic qualities, even though they bear a general resemblance to the _Studentes_[71] of Stymmelius, rank it with the _Nice Wanton_ as one of the most vigorous of our early representatives of the dramatic actualities of family life.

For reasons which I have already indicated, the controversial plays of the period between 1520 and 1553 may be considered here. The first of these in chronological order is Bale's _King Johan_, about 1540-47, with later insertions in the author's hand. Its relation to Lyndsay's satire of the _Thrie Estatis_ is well known; and Professor Herford[72] has indicated its indebtedness also to the _Pammachius_ and the Protestant version of the antichrist legend. It is a dramatic satire on the abuses of the church, its riches, orders, brotherhoods, confessionals, simony, free thought, mummery (judaistic and pagan), Latin ritual, hagiolatry, and papal supremacy. Few more excellent embodiments of the Vice have been preserved than the Sedycyon of this play, who in every estate of the clergy plays a part, sometimes monk, sometimes nun, or canon, or chapter-house monk, or Sir John, or the parson, or the bishop, or the friar, or the purgatory priest and every man's wife's desire:--

"Yea, to go farder, sumtyme I am a cardynall;
Yea, sumtyme a pope and than am I lord over all,
Both in hevyn and erthe and also in purgatory,
And do weare iij crownes whan I am in my glorye."

In spite of Professor Schelling's[73] recent rejection of _King Johan_ from the list of chronicle plays, I cannot but agree with Dr. Ward that this moral is of considerable importance in the history of that species. That it uses history merely as the cloak for a religio-policical allegory, and that it does not quite succeed in drawing together the points of fact and fiction in the development of action and character,--these defects do not alter its significance as the first English play to incarnate the political spirit of its age in a form imaginatively attributed to an earlier period of native history. Although it is not a comedy, it concerns us here as a drama of critical and satirical intent. It is succeeded by plays like _Lusty Juventus_ and _Respublica_, which deal more or less with political affairs, and interest us because they enliven the controversial by the introduction of the realistic and comic, and, accordingly, in an age when polemics was politics, contribute to the improvement of comedy by shaping it more or less to a medium for the dissemination of practical ideas. Moreover, though Bale had no disciples in the attempt to construct an historical protestant drama, he may be said to have prepared the way for a protestant series of another kind. This is what Professor Herford has well called the biblical _genre_ drama; it is pedagogical and controversial, and, like the _King Johan_, its representatives, also, such as the _Darius_ and _Queen Hester_, had their precursors, and probably their models, more or less distant, in the idyllic or heroic miracle of the Dutch and German humanists.

R. Wever's _Lusty Juventus_, written about 1550,[74] is of the dramatic kindred of _Mankynd_ and _Nature_. Its characters are allegorical in name but concrete in person; and one of them, Abhominable Living, passes, also, under the appellation of "litle Besse." The conversations are sprightly, and the songs show considerable lyric power. But the play is a protestant polemic, and its success must have depended to a large extent upon the bitterness of the satire against

"Holy cardinals, holy popes,
Holy vestments, holy copes,"

and various alleged hypocrisies and excesses of the Church of Rome. That this play had a long life is shown by its insertion, though under the designation of an interlude with which it had nothing in common,[75] as a play within a play in the tragedy of _Sir Thomas More_ (about 1590). The "merye Enterlude" _Respublica_, 1553, a children's Christmas play, sustains somewhat the same relation to political Catholicism as _King Johan_ to Protestantism--without the polemics of dogma. Here, as in the preceding political moral of _King Johan_, the Vice is used for a satirical purpose, and is not only the chief mischief-maker, but, also, the principal representative of the comic rôle. In this play, the Vice is so highly considered that the author, probably a priest, multiplies him by four, and, by way of foil, offsets the group with that of the four Virtues, daughters of God, whose presence in the eleventh Coventry play and in _Mankynd_ has already been noticed. I don't see how Collier can call the construction of _Respublica_ ingenious; it is childish, clumsy, and trite. The humour consists in old-fashioned disguises and _aliases_, equivoque, misunderstanding, and abuse. But the character of Avarice, who, with his money bags, anticipates the Suckdrys and Lucres of later comedy, is well conceived, the conduct natural, the language simple and colloquial. Of historical interest is the introduction of Queen Mary as Nemesis; of linguistic, the attempt to reproduce the dialect of the common people; of dramatic, the division into acts and scenes, which is to be found in but few other plays of the mid-century, such as _Roister Doister_, _King Johan_, _Jacob and Esau_, and the _Marriage of Witte and Science_.

=11. Polytypic, or Fusion, Plays=

With the plays just mentioned each of the dramatic kinds so far considered reaches its artistic limit. These kinds, however, during the decades roughly coincident with the years between 1545 and 1566, enter into combinations, by virtue of which English comedy is assisted to a still further advance. The plays that represent this stage of literary history may be called polytypic. _Roister Doister_ and _Jacke Jugeler_ subordinate the materials of academic interlude and classical farce to classical regulations. Into the _Historie of Jacob and Esau_ enter characteristics of miracle play, moral, realistic interlude, and classical comedy. _Gammer Gurton_ and _Tom Tyler_ (of about the same date) subsume, under the domestic play of low life, native elements of both farce and moral. _Misogonus_ combines elements of moral interlude and farce with qualities native and foreign, classical and romantic. These are followed by the biblical _genre_ drama of _Godly Queen Hester_, partly political and partly pedagogical in intent. In the first five of these plays the tendency to teach is reduced almost to a minimum. In the _Misogonus_ and _Hester_ it is present, but is counterbalanced by romantic or satirical considerations. When, however, we reach the _Damon and Pythias_ and _The Supposes_, the didactic has disappeared altogether in favour of the truly artistic motive. These plays at last combine the comic and serious, the real, the romantic, and the ideal. They are constructive, not primarily critical; in fact, they must be regarded as our first real comedies.

No play of this division better illustrates the impress of the classical model upon native material than _Roister Doister_. This "comedie" or "interlude" was certainly in existence by 1552; indeed, it has not yet been conclusively shown that it was not acted as early as 1534 to 1541. In the last contingency it may have anticipated the _Thersytes;_ but, according to Professor Flügel's argument,[76] it was probably not composed till after 1545. With the _Thersytes_ it has in common several points of detail, but the essential resemblance is, of course, in the Plautine personage of the braggart. Like Heywood before him, Udall aims to produce that which "is comendable for a man's recreation," but the masterpiece of Udall has the advantage of Heywood's "mery plays," in that its mirth "refuses scurilitie." In _Roister Doister_, also, more decidedly than in previous plays, the amusement proceeds not from the situation alone, but from the organism,--a plot essentially and substantially dramatic, because its characters are concrete, purposive, and interacting. But decided as was Udall's contribution to the art of comic drama, we must not credit him with producing comedy proper. The merit of _Roister Doister_ is in its comic intent, its skilful characterization and contrivance. It is a presentation of humours,--corrective indeed, but farcical. It is not significant, constructive, poetic, grounded in the heart as well as in the head. A contribution to the classical type contemporary with the preceding, but of a much more farcical and juvenile appearance, is the "new interlued" named _Jacke Jugeler_, written not later than 1562 and perhaps as early as 1553-54 (after the reëstablishment of the Mass and before the terrifying revival of the sanguinary laws against heretics). It announces itself as a school drama, and in the prologue purports to have been derived from the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus. I am inclined to think that the professed modesty of the author has led critics to undervalue the skill and fidelity of that which was not only the best "droll," but also the best dramatic satire produced in England up to date. Within a narrow compass he has developed a humorous action quite novel in English comedy, and has introduced us, not only to the first English double and one of the first English practical jokers, but, I believe, to our first victim of confused identity. The author is, of course, following his Plautus, but what could be more ludicrous than the scene in which Jenkin, uncertain and undesirous of his own acquaintance, covers himself with ignominy in the effort to discard it. We are led from interest to interest by means of anticipation, surprise, and the clever repetition of comic crises. Characters well drawn like Dame Coy and Alison, distinct like Jacke and Jenkin, suggestive of complexity like Bongrace, were not of everyday occurrence in the drama of 1553. The language, too, is idiomatic, and the wit, though vulgar, unforced. But perhaps more significant for our purpose than any other feature of the play is this, that in spite of its avowed æsthetic intent (even more outspoken than that of _Roister Doister_), it is a subtle attack upon the Roman Catholic Church. This interlude, says the maker, citing the authority of the classics, is written for the express purpose of provoking mirth, and for no other purpose: it is "not worth an oyster shell Except percase it shall fortune to make men laugh well"; but under the artifice we find a parable of the doctrinal Jacke Jugeler of the day, whose mission it was to prove that "One man may have two bodies and two faces, And that one man at one time may be in two places." I do not think that the satirical character of the play has heretofore been remarked, though the controversial allusions of the epilogue are, of course, well known. The innocence of the prologue and the profession of trifles fit for "little boys" are as shrewd an irony as the dramatic attack upon transubstantiation is a huge burlesque.

The third of these fusion dramas is _The Historie of Jacob and Esau_. Although its title may suggest the dignity of a miracle or the didacticism of a moral play, it is the reduction of the miracle to modern conditions and of the moral to concrete and actual characters. This "newe, mery, and wittie comedie, or enterlude" was licensed in 1557, but its decidedly protestant character may indicate composition before Mary's accession to the throne. Collier is quite right in calling it one of the freshest and most effective productions of the kind to which it belongs. But in classifying it with early religious plays, because the subject happens to be scriptural, he is as far astray as Professor Brandl who classes it with plays of the Prodigal Son, because the nature of the subject suggests a faint resemblance to that species. It is an attempt at comedy by way of fusion. The plot is in general scriptural, but it introduces some half-dozen invented characters. The production aims, like a moral interlude, at inculcating the doctrine of predestination; but, like a classical comedy, it is regularly divided, dramatically constructed, and equipped with tried and telling comic devices. Proceeding with extreme care for probability, with elaboration of motive, with due preparation of interest, enhancement, and suspense, it attains a climax of unusual excellence, considering the date of its composition. The discovery and _denouement_ are naturally contrived; and where the author avails himself of the staples of his trade, the asides, disguises, intrigues, eavesdropping, and the rest, he does so with the ease of the accustomed dramatist. The play, in fact, deserves as high esteem as _Roister Doister_ and _Gammer Gurton_; in originality and regularity it is their equal, in development of a vital conception their superior. The language is idiomatic--of the age and soil; or dignified, when the mood demands. It is also free from obscenity; but it lacks nothing in wit on that account, nor the situations in humour. Viewed as a whole, it is a simple and unaffected picture of English rural life--the scene with its setting as well as its figures. And these are coloured from experience, forerunners, indeed, of many in our better-known comedy: the young squire given over to the chase, horses and dogs and the horn at break of day (much to the discomfort of the slumbering environment),--the careless elder born,--victim and butt of his unnatural mother and her wily younger son; the doting father, duped; the clown; the pert and pretty maid; the aged nurse. Consider, in addition, the more subtle characteristics of the _Jacob and Esau_,--the family resemblances, the racial policy with its ripe and ruddy upper layer of morals, the romantic touch, the sometimes genuine pathos, the naïve domestic revelations, the loves in low life, the unaffected charms of dialogue and verse,--and one must acknowledge that this play, no matter what its origin and name, is at least as indicative of the maturing of English drama as either of the plays with which I have placed it in comparison.

Of these _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ was the first to gather the threads of farce, moral interlude, and classical school play into a well-sustained comedy of rustic life. Mr. Henry Bradley has ingeniously shown that in all probability it was a Christ's College play, written by William Stevenson during his fellowship of 1559 to 1560. There may, indeed, be reason for believing that it was composed as early as the author's first fellowship, 1551-54.[77] In this play the unregulated seductions of earlier days are brought under the curb of the classical manner and form: the native element already evident in _Noah's Flood_ and the _Shepherds' Plays_, the _Judicium_, the _Conversion of St. Paul_, the _Johan_, and the _Pardoner_, and about this same time in the _Contract betweene Wit and Wisdome_ (parts of which suggest forcibly the manner of this same Stevenson); the rollicking humour of the Vice turned Bedlem, the pithy and saline interchange of feminine amenities; the Atellan, sometimes even Chaucerian, laughter,--not sensual but animal; the delight in physical incongruity; the mediæval fondness for the grotesque. If the situations are farcical, they at any rate hold together; each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and each act towards the _denouement_. The characters are both typical and individual; and though the conception is of less significance than that of _Roister Doister_, the execution is an advance because it smacks less of the academic. _Gammer Gurton_ carries forward the comedy of mirth, but hardly yet into the rounded comedy of life.

Another "excellent old play," called _Tom Tyler and His Wife_,[78] deserves to be mentioned in this sequence because it combines characteristics of the farce in a peculiar fashion with reminiscences of the moral interlude. _Tom Tyler_ was written probably between 1550 and 1560, and is an admirable portrayal of matrimonial infelicities in low life, the forerunner of a series of "shrew" plays, not of the nature of the _Taming_, but of the _Tamer Tamed_. The temporary revolt of the husband, "whose cake was dough," his fleeting triumph by the ruse of the doughty Tom Taylor, and his lapse into irremediable servitude, "for wedding and hanging is destinie," these alone would make the farce worthy of honourable mention. But the dialogue and songs are themselves of snap, verve, and wit not inferior to the best of that day; and the coöperation of solemn allegorical figures, such as Destinie and Patience, in the humorous programme of Desire the Vice, side by side with the three lusty "shrowes," Typple, Sturdy, and Strife, lends to the farce a mock-moral appearance which entitles it to a place among these polytypic dramas historically unique. For it should not be regarded as an example of the moral in transition from abstract to concrete, but as a conscious and cleverly ironical presentation of a comic episode from utterly unideal life, under the form, and by the modes and machinery, of the pious allegorical drama.

For the printing of the next play in this series, the _Misogonus_, heretofore accessible only in manuscript at Chatsworth, we are indebted to Professor Brandl.[79] This interesting moral comedy was written in 1560, probably by Thomas Richardes,[80] whose name followes the prologue. Brandl points out certain resemblances to the _Acolastus_ of Gnapheus, printed 1534. The contrast of the good and wayward sons might likewise be traced to the _Studentes_ of Stymmelius[81] (1549), but the more evident sources are Terence, the biblical parable, common experience, and dramatic imagination, Professor Brandl thinks that the play is connected with _The Supposes_ or its source, but I must confess that I cannot see the remotest relation. In Mr. Fleay's opinion this is the earliest English comedy. I suppose because it not only applies a classical treatment to certain elements of romantic form,--the Italian scene and baronial life,--and of romantic content and method such as the ideal friendship, the discovery and recognition, but combines therewith a realistic portrayal of native character, and various technical qualities vital to both the serious and comic kinds of composition. If, however, the names of the principal characters had been English, the relation to the moral interlude would at once be evident. This is a Prodigal Son play of the humanist school, save that it has supplemented the general characteristics of the Christian Terence and of Plautus by episodes and minor characters from the native farce. Although it is not superior in technique to _Roister_ or _Gammer Gurton_, it is more distinctively polytypic than either. It is, also, of broader ethical significance. But this dominant didactic intent renders it less of a comedy than they, and much less than the _Jacob and Esau_--which is as good a representative of the fusion of dramatic kinds and qualities as the _Misogonus_, and a better specimen of workmanship. The simpler characters of the _Misogonus_, Codrus, poore, but "trwe and trusty"; the stammering Madge Mumbelcrust, who "coude once a said our lordyes saw--saw--sawter by rote"; and her gossip "Tib, who has tongue inough for both"; Alison, who knows "what a great thinge an oth is"; and Sir John, the priest, who knows how to use one,--these, their ways and colloquies, are of a piece with Stevenson's work and Heywood's and the world that their work represents. The conditions and conduct of the leading _dramatis personæ_ are, on the other hand, more closely akin to the Plautine and Terentian, to the school of Udall and the humanists. Cacurgus, the domestic parasite and fool, remotely connected with the Vice, but actually a counterfeit-simple and wag, is as good a Will Summer as the early comedy can boast. When Greene made his Nano, Adam, and Slipper, he had in mind a generation of such creatures. If one could eliminate the sermonizing, there would remain a plot as satisfactory in unity, in situations, recognitions, crises, and _denouement_ as any produced during the next twenty years. But, as I have said above, the moral urgency of the play injures the art. Since the Prodigal Son is reclaimed, we are, however, justified in ranking the production among early attempts at English comedy.

_Godly Queen Hester_, published 1561,[82] is exactly described as a "newe enterlude drawen out of the Holy Scripture." According to Fleay, it is the latest "scriptural morality" extant to be acted on the English stage.[83] But it is much more than a scriptural morality. Not only by its fusion of biblical characters, like Assuerus and Hester, with allegorical types, like Pride and the half-moral, half-native Vice, does the play give evidence of its polytypic nature, but by its atmosphere, which is charged with local and personal allusions and ironical references to the economic abuses of the day. In nervous energy of style and in forthright dramatic movement, the play is an improvement upon its predecessors; and as a satirical drama of political purpose, it should have had a numerous progeny. Strange to say, however, this kind of scriptural satire has had no great success in the field of English drama. Its bloom, as in Dryden's _Absalom and Achitophel_, has been in the by-paths of poetry. Of a peculiar historical importance is the character of Hardy-dardy. Mr. Fleay regards him as a domestic fool, and remarks that this interlude and the _Misogonus_ are the only two early plays in which the Vice is replaced by such a personage. But neither of these statements is correct, for Hardy-dardy and Cacurgus do not totally abandon the quality of Vice, and various other plays yet to be mentioned have characters closely resembling them. Hardy-dardy is, indeed, a professed jester dressed in a fool's coat; in his assumption of stupidity and his proffer of service to Aman, he resembles Slipper in Greene's _James the Fourth_; and in his shrewd simplicity, repartee, and indirection he anticipates some of Shakespeare's fools. But he still retains characteristics of his ancestry. He stands, in conception, half-way between the minor Vices of the play, Ambition, Adulation, and Pride, to whose jocosities and deviltries he succeeds,--for he appears only when they have departed,--and the waggish weathercocks of later interludes, Haphazard and Conditions.

I wish I could have included among the reprints of the present volume both of the plays next to be mentioned, but limitations of space and other reasons have forbidden. When Puttenham said that for comedy and interlude such doings as he had "sene of Maister Edwardes deserved the hyest price," and Turberville, that "for poet's pen and passing witte," that poet "could have no English Peere," I think that they were not greatly exaggerating. Richard Edwardes' _Damon and Pithias_, written before 1566, maybe as early as 1563-65, takes steps significant in literary history. It is not only entirely free from allegorical elements, and almost from didactic, but it is rich in qualities of the fusion drama. The subject of a classical story is handled in a genuinely romantic fashion, although no previous drama of romantic friendship had existed in England. Comic and serious strains flow side by side, occasionally mingling. A quick satire, dramatic and personal, pervades the play. The names and scenes may be Syracusan, and types from Latin comedy may walk the streets, but the life is of the higher and lower classes of England; and the creatures of literary tradition are elbowed and jostled by children of the soil. The farcical episodes may be indelicate, but they have the virility of fact. The plot as a whole is skilfully conducted; while it proceeds directly to the goal, it encompasses a wider variety of ethical interests, dramatic motives, and attractions, than that of any previous play. The relation to an interlude of which we shall presently speak, _Like wil to Like_, is beyond doubt. In both a crude psychological pairing and contrasting of characters may be observed; but in the development of the characters, _Damon and Pithias_ is decidedly superior. The author calls this "a matter mixt with myrth and care ... a tragical comedie"; but while he thus aims at a fusion of the ideal with the commonplace, he makes a close approximation, always, to probability of incident and character, and so observes the criterion which he himself enunciates:--

"In commedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch
All thynges to the quicke; and eke to frame each person so
That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know."

In its defects, such as the disregard of time and place, as in its merits, the _Damon and Pithias_ is a commendable experiment in romantic comedy--a contribution worthy of more attention than historians have ordinarily accorded it. Undoubtedly Edwardes' "much admired play" of _Palamon and Arcite_, which the queen witnessed in hall at Christ Church, Oxford, 1566 (and laughed heartily thereat, and thanked "the author for his pains"), was of the fashion and vogue of the drama which we have discussed, though it had not the abiding influence.

If it were not for the fact that _The Supposes_ (acted 1566) is a translation of Ariosto's play of the same title, I should be inclined to say that it was the first English comedy in every way worthy of the name. It certainly is, for many reasons, entitled to be called the first comedy in the English tongue. It is written, not for children, nor to educate, but for grown-ups and solely to delight. It is done into English, not for the vulgar, but for the more advanced taste of the translator's own Inn of Court; it has, therefore, qualities to captivate those who are capable of appreciating high comedy. It is composed, like its original, in straightforward, sparkling prose. It has, also, the rarest features of the fusion drama: it combines character and situation, each depending upon the other; it combines wit of intellect with humour of heart and fact, intricate and varied plot with motive and steady movement, comic but not farcical incident and language with complications surprising, serious, and only not hopelessly embarrassing. It conducts a romantic intrigue in a realistic fashion through a world of actualities. With the blood of the New Comedy, the Latin Comedy, the Renaissance in its veins, it is far ahead of its English contemporaries, if not of its time. Without historical apology or artistic concessions it would act well to-day. Both whimsical and grave, its ironies are _pro bono publico_; it is constructive as well as critical, imaginative as well as actual. Indeed, when one compares Gascoigne's work with the original and observes the just liberties that he has taken, the Englishing of sentiment as well as of phrase, one is tempted to say, with Tom Nashe, that in comedy, as in other fields, this writer first "beat a path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since his departure." He did not contrive the plot; but no dramatist before him had selected for his audience, translated, and adapted a play so amusing and varied in interest, so graceful, simple, and idiomatic in its style. It was said by R. T., in 1615, that Gascoigne was one of those who first "brake the ice for our quainter poets who now write, that they may more safely swim through the main ocean of sweet poesy"--a remark which would lose much of its force if restricted to the poet's achievements in satire alone; in the drama of the humanists he excelled his contemporaries, and in the romantic comedy of intrigue he anticipated those who, like Greene and Shakespeare,[84] adapted the Italian plot to English manners and the English taste. Nor are these the only claims of Gascoigne to consideration: _The Supposes_, as Professor Herford has justly remarked, is the most Jonsonian of English comedies before Jonson.

=12. Survivals of the Moral Interlude=

Though we must refrain from description, we cannot forbear mention of a few survivals of the moral interlude, which, though themselves rudimentary, were not without esteem even in an age when the drama, by combination and adaptation of its possibilities, was producing other results infinitely superior to the older strain. These functionless survivals of the moral were the following, all controversial: _Newe Custome_, an anti-papist play, perhaps written as early as 1550-53; _Albyon Knight_, a political fragment acted between 1560 and 1565; _Kyng Daryus_, a peculiarly insipid disputation, evidently anti-papist, printed in 1565; and _The Conflict of Conscience_, a doctrinal drama by Nathaniel Woodes, Minister in Norwich, which presents a mixture of individual and even historical characters with abstractions, stands midway between the allegorical interlude and the drama of concrete experience, displays a commendable realism in spots, and is a more virile production than the others of this group. It was not published till 1581, but was probably written soon after 1563.

Of the decadent stock of morals and interludes, there were, however, some specimens between the years 1553 and 1578 that exhibited an advance in quality, if not in kind. Three of these, _The Longer thou Livest_, _All for Money_, and _Tide Taryeth no Man_, Mr. Fleay[85] lumps together as simple instances of the survival of the older 'morality' after the introduction of tragedy and comedy on the models of Seneca and Plautus, and makes the further statement that none of them teaches us anything as to the historical development of the drama in England. With the utmost respect for the knowledge of this most helpful historian, I must say that, as a matter of judgment, none of these dramas, least of all, _Longer thou Livest_, should be classed with the moral plays of mere survival. While the authors of these and similar specimens did not produce a new kind, they did more than repeat the old. They revived and enriched the moral interlude by infusion of new strains, and so produced, by culture, a most interesting group of what may be called variations of the moral. To this class of morals belong also the _Triall of Treasure_, _Like wil to Like_, and the _Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene_. It must be said also that a few moral tragedies of the period, like R. B.'s _Apius and Virginia_ (about 1563, pr. 1575), and Preston's _King Cambises_ (S. R. 1569-70), have some claim to belong to this group, and that if there were space they should receive attention for their vital dramatic quality and their development of the character of the Vice. The Hap-hazard of the former, far from being, as Dr. Ward has said, "redundant to the action," suggests the "conspiracies" which Apius adopts, and is the heart of rascality and fun; he is consequently a Vice of the old type; but he is also the representative (in accordance with his name and express profession) of the caprice of the individual and the irony of fortune. He is the Vice, efficient for evil, but in process of evolution into the inclination or humour of a somewhat later period of dramatic history: the inclination not immoral but unmoral, the artistic impersonation of comic extravagance, in accordance with which Every Man is in his Vice, and every Vice is but a Humour. The Ambidexter of the latter tragedy plays "with both hands finely" in the main action, and at the same time serves to provoke the jocosity of those admirably concrete ruffians, Huf, Ruf, and Snuf, and of the clown of the play. The _Horestes_, written by John Pikerynge in 1567, must, although a tragedy, also be mentioned here.[86] The Vice under his dual designation of Corage and Revenge is of the weathervane variety; and in realistic and humorous qualities the play closely resembles the preceding two. They were a noble but futile effort to bottle the juices of tragedy, classical-historical at that, in the leathers of moral interlude.

=13. The Movement towards Romantic Comedy=

We may now proceed with the main current of comedy. Between 1570 and 1590 the best plays are coloured by a distinctively romantic element; and this is noticeable, not only in the productions of the greater authors, Lyly, Peele, Greene, and the like, elsewhere discussed in this volume, but in those of minor writers too frequently ignored. As I have already said, the romantic in life appears to spring from a desire to assert one's independence and realize the possibilities of the resulting freedom. "Our pent wills fret And would the world subdue." But since the conditions of life are largely opposed to the complete fulfilment of our desires, it is the privilege and function of romance, and of romantic comedy according to its kind, to idealize the stubborn facts--the "limits we did not set" in favour of our ecstatic but still human urgency. This privilege the comedy of romance exercises sometimes with an eye to nature and probability, and sometimes with some respect for imaginative possibility, but quite frequently with no other guide than mere caprice. The subjects of such comedy may be briefly summarized as passion, heroism, and wonder. Of these the first is manifest in examples of ideal friendship, its devotion and self-sacrifice; and a play of such nature we have already considered in the _Damon and Pithias_. It also yields the furnishings of love, the resulting obstacles, and the issue; and a play of this kind we have considered in _The Supposes_, which is a domestic comedy of intrigue. Of heroism the possibilities are suggested by the words travel, adventure, chivalry, war, conquest; those of wonder are as various as the chances of birth, wealth and fortune, pomp and power, myth and fable: they are fostered by that which is remote, preternatural, supernatural.