_A Looking-Glass for London and England_ shows less bondage to

_Tamburlaine_, but falls into a worse error by a recurrence to the

deliberate didacticism of the old Moralities. The lessons for London,

drawn from the sins of Nineveh, are formally and piously announced by

the prophets Oseas and Jonas after the exposure of each offence. Devoid

of any proper plot, the play merely brings together various incidents to

exhibit such social evils as usury, legal corruption, filial

ingratitude, friction between master and servant. Intermingled, with

only the slightest connexion, are the widely different stories of King

Rasni's amours, of the thirsty career of a drunken blacksmith, and of

the prophet Jonah--his disobedience, strange sea-journey, mission in

Nineveh and subsequent ill-temper being set forth in full. Vainglorious

Rasni talks like Alphonsus, and his ladies are even less charming than

Iphigena. Ramilia boasts as outrageously as her brother, and is only

prevented by sudden death from an incestuous union with him; Alvida,

after poisoning her first husband to secure Rasni, shamelessly attempts

to woo the King of Cilicia. Quite the most successful character, perhaps

the most amusing of all Greene's clowns, is Adam, the blacksmith. His

loyal defence of his trade against derogatory aspersions, his rare

drunkenness, his detection and beating of the practical joker who comes

disguised as a devil to carry him off like a Vice on his back, his

tactful replenishings of his cup at the king's table, and his

dissemblings to avoid being discovered in possession of food during the

fast are most entertaining. Poor fellow, he ends on the gallows, but

goes to his death with a stout heart and a full stomach. No better

example is needed of the prose which Greene puts into the mouths of his

low characters than that which Adam uses. The following incident occurs

during the fast proclaimed by Rasni after Jonah's denunciations:

_Adam_ (_alone_). Well, Goodman Jonas, I would you had never come

from Jewry to this country; you have made me look like a lean rib

of roast beef, or like the picture of Lent painted upon a

red-herring-cob. Alas, masters, we are commanded by the

proclamation to fast and pray! By my faith, I could prettily so-so

away with praying; but for fasting, why, 'tis so contrary to my

nature that I had rather suffer a short hanging than a long

fasting. Mark me, the words be these, 'Thou shalt take no manner of

food for so many days'. I had as lief he should have said, 'Thou

shalt hang thyself for so many days'. And yet, in faith, I need not

find fault with the proclamation, for I have a buttery and a pantry

and a kitchen about me; for proof, _ecce signum_! This right slop

(_leg of his garments_) is my pantry--behold a manchet [_Draws it

out_]; this place is my kitchen, for, lo, a piece of beef [_Draws

it out_]: O, let me repeat that sweet word again! for, lo, a piece

of beef! This is my buttery; for see, see, my friends, to my great

joy, a bottle of beer [_Draws it out_]. Thus, alas, I make shift to

wear out this fasting; I drive away the time. But there go

searchers about to seek if any man breaks the king's command. O,

here they be; in with your victuals, Adam. [_Puts them back into

his slops. Enter two_ Searchers.]

_First Searcher._ How duly the men of Nineveh keep the

proclamation! how are they armed to repentance! We have searched

through the whole city, and have not as yet found one that breaks

the fast.

_Second Searcher._ The sign of the more grace.--But stay! here sits

one, methinks, at his prayers; let us see who it is.

_First S._ 'Tis Adam, the smith's man.--How now, Adam!

_Adam._ Trouble me not; 'Thou shalt take no manner of food, but

fast and pray.'

_First S._ How devoutly he sits at his orisons! But stay, methinks

I feel a smell of some meat or bread about him.

_Second S._ So thinks me too.--You, sirrah, what victuals have you

about you?

_Adam._ Victuals! O horrible blasphemy! Hinder me not of my prayer,

nor drive me not into a choler. Victuals! why, heardest thou not

the sentence, 'Thou shalt take no food, but fast and pray'?

_Second S._ Truth, so it should be; but methinks I smell meat about

thee.

_Adam._ About me, my friends! these words are actions in the case.

About me! No, no! hang those gluttons that cannot fast and pray.

_First S._ Well, for all your words, we must search you.

_Adam._ Search me! Take heed what you do: my hose are my castles;

'tis burglary if you break ope a slop; no officer must lift up an

iron hatch; take heed, my slops are iron. [_They search_ Adam.]

_Second S._ O villain!--See how he hath gotten victuals, bread,

beef, and beer, where the king commanded upon pain of death none

should eat for so many days!

_Orlando Furioso_, a dramatized version of an incident in Ariosto's

poem, need not delay us long. It is the story of Orlando's madness (due

to jealousy) and the sufferings of innocent, patient Angelica. In this

heroine we have the first of several pictures from the author's hand of

a gentle, constant, ill-used maiden, but she is very little seen. Most

of the play is taken up with warfare, secret enmities, and Orlando's

madness. The evil genius, Sacripant, may be the first, as Iago is the

greatest, of that school of villains whose treachery finds expression in

the deliberate undermining of true love by forged proofs of infidelity.

There is less rodomontade than in the previous plays, but again we have

to record an absence of humour. In the following lines Orlando is

meditating on his love:

Fair queen of love, thou mistress of delight,

Thou gladsome lamp that wait'st on Phoebe's train,

Spreading thy kindness through the jarring orbs

That, in their union, praise thy lasting powers;

Thou that hast stay'd the fiery Phlegon's course,

And mad'st the coachman of the glorious wain

To droop, in view of Daphne's excellence;

Fair pride of morn, sweet beauty of the even,

Look on Orlando languishing in love.

Sweet solitary groves, whereas the Nymphs

With pleasance laugh to see the Satyrs play,

Witness Orlando's faith unto his love.

Tread she these lawnds, kind Flora, boast thy pride:

Seek she for shade, spread, cedars, for her sake:

Fair Flora, make her couch amidst thy flowers:

Sweet crystal springs,

Wash ye with roses when she longs to drink.

Ah, thought, my heaven! ah, heaven, that knows my thought!

Smile, joy in her that my content hath wrought.

Hitherto Greene had yielded to the popular demand for plays of the

_Tamburlaine_ class, full of oriental colour and martial sound, with

titanic heroes and a generous supply of kings, queens, and great

captains: no less than twenty crowned heads compete for places on the

list of dramatis personae in his first three plays. The character of

Angelica, however, and stray touches of pastoralism in the last play,

hint at an impending change. The author's mind, tired of subservience,

was beginning to trace out for itself new paths, leading him from camps

to the fresh countryside. To the end Greene retained his kings, possibly

for their spectacular effect. But he abandoned warfare as a theme.

_Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ was written under the new inspiration. We

have already referred to the motley nature of this drama. No other of

the writer's plays exhibits so many and such rapid changes of scene,

some situations actually demanding the presentation of two scenes at the

same time. In spite of this the different sections of the story remain

tolerably clear as we proceed, and the interest never flags for longer

than the brief minutes when prosy Oxford dons talk learnedly. Four

groups of characters attract attention in turn; the young noblemen and

Margaret, the three kings and the Spanish princess, the country yokels

and squires, and the magicians. By careful interweaving all four groups

are related to one another and none but the Margaret plot is permitted

to develop any complexity. In this way something like unity is attained.

The play begins with Prince Edward in love with the country girl,

Margaret of Fressingfield. He, Earl Lacy, and others have taken

refreshment at her father's farm after a hunt, and the prince has fallen

a captive to her beauty and simplicity. It is decided that a double

attack must be made upon her heart, Prince Edward invoking the magic aid

of Bacon, while Lacy stays behind to woo her on his behalf. Lacy's part

is not easy. Disguised as a farmer he meets Margaret at a village fair

and does his best to plead for 'the courtier all in green', only to be

himself pierced by the arrow that struck his prince. When, therefore,

Prince Edward arrives at the friar's cell and peers into his marvellous

crystal, he sees Lacy and Margaret exchanging declarations of love,

with Friar Bungay standing by ready to wed them. The power of Friar

Bacon prevents the ceremony by whisking his cowled brother away, and the

furious prince hurries back to Fressingfield. He is resolved to slay

Lacy; nor does that remorseful earl ask for other treatment; Margaret,

however, offers so brave and noble a defence of her lover, taking all

blame upon herself and avowing that his death will be instantly followed

by her own, that at length more generous impulses rise in the royal

breast, and instead of death a blessing is bestowed. Together the prince

and the earl repair to Oxford to meet the King, the Emperor of Germany,

the King of Castile, and the latter's daughter, Elinor, who is to be

Prince Edward's wife. In their absence other admirers appear upon the

scene, a squire and a farmer being rivals for Margaret's hand.

Quarrelling over the matter, they put it to the test of a duel and kill

each other. By an unhappy coincidence their absent sons are looking into

Bacon's magic crystal at that very time, and, seeing the fatal

consequences of the conflict, turn their weapons hastily against each

other, with the result that their fathers' fate becomes theirs. Margaret

remains loyal to Lacy, but mischief prompts the latter to send her one

hundred pounds and a letter of dismissal on the plea of a wealthier

match being necessary for him. Unhappy Margaret, rejecting the money,

prepares to enter a convent. Fortunately Lacy himself comes down to set

matters in order for their marriage before she has taken the vows, and

though his second wooing is done in a very peremptory, cavalier fashion,

she returns to his arms. Their wedding is celebrated on the same day as

that of Prince Edward and Elinor of Castile.--Independent of this

romance, but linked to it through the person of Prince Edward, are the

visit of the kings to Oxford, the wonder-workings of Friar Bacon, and

the mischievous fooling of such light-headed persons as the king's

jester, Ralph Simnell, and the friar's servant, Miles. Friar Bacon's

power is exercised in the spiriting hither and thither of desirable and

undesirable folk, the most notable victim being a much vaunted and

self-confident German magician who has been brought over by the emperor

to outshine his English rivals. There is some fun when Miles is set to

watch for the first utterance of the mysterious brazen head, and,

delaying to wake his master, lets the supreme moment pass unused. The

curses which this mistake calls upon him from Friar Bacon bring about

his ultimate removal to hell on a devil's back.

Here then is a slight but charming story of romance, supported through

the length of a whole play by all the adventitious aids which Greene can

command. One of the minor characters, Ralph Simnell, invites passing

notice as the rough sketch of a type which Shakespeare afterwards

perfected, the Court Fool: his jesting questions and answers may be

compared with those of Feste in _Twelfth Night_. Disguised as the

prince, to conceal the identity of the real prince at Oxford, he is

served by the merry nobles and proves himself humorously unprincely. But

that which has given most fame to the author is the love-plot. The

Fressingfield scenes bring upon the stage a direct picture of simple

country life--of a dairy-maid among her cheeses, butter and cream, and

of a country fair with farm-lads eager to buy fairings for their

lassies. Unfortunately, under the influence of the fashionable

affectation, Margaret is unusually learned in Greek mythology, citing

Jove, Danaë, Phoebus, Latona and Mercury within the compass of a bare

five lines. The indebtedness of Greene to Lyly's _Campaspe_ for the idea

of a simple love romance as plot has been acknowledged. In the use of

pastoralism, too, he borrowed a hint, perhaps, from Peele. Yet, when

both debts have been allowed, the reader of Greene's comedy is still

left with the conviction that his author had the secret of it all in

himself. He had a hint from others, but he needed no more.

Our quotations illustrate the story of Margaret.

(1)

[_Enter_ PRINCE EDWARD _malcontented, with_ LACY, WARREN, _&c._]

_Lacy._ Why looks my lord like to a troubled sky

When heaven's bright shine is shadow'd with a fog?

Alate we ran the deer, and through the lawnds

Stripp'd with our nags the lofty frolic bucks

That scudded 'fore the teasers like the wind:

Ne'er was the deer of merry Fressingfield

So lustily pull'd down by jolly mates,

Nor shar'd the farmers such fat venison,

So frankly dealt, this hundred years before;

Nor have

I seen my lord more frolic in the chase,--

And now chang'd to a melancholy dump.

_Warren._ After the prince got to the Keeper's lodge,

And had been jocund in the house awhile,

Tossing off ale and milk in country cans,

Whether it was the country's sweet content,

Or else the bonny damsel fill'd us drink

That seem'd so stately in her stammel red,

Or that a qualm did cross his stomach then,

But straight he fell into his passions.

. . . . . .

_P. Edward._ Tell me, Ned Lacy, didst thou mark the maid,

How lovely in her country-weeds she look'd?

A bonnier wench all Suffolk cannot yield:

All Suffolk! nay, all England holds none such....

Whenas she swept like Venus through the house,

And in her shape fast folded up my thoughts,

Into the milk-house went I with the maid,

And there amongst the cream-bowls she did shine

As Pallas 'mongst her princely huswifery:

She turn'd her smock over her lily arms

And div'd them into milk to run her cheese;

But whiter than the milk her crystal skin,

Checkéd with lines of azure, made her blush

That art or nature durst bring for compare.

(2)

[Prince Edward _stands with his poniard in his hand_: LACY _and_

MARGARET.]

_Margaret._ 'Twas I, my lord, not Lacy stept awry:

For oft he su'd and courted for yourself,

And still woo'd for the courtier all in green;

But I, whom fancy made but over-fond,

Pleaded myself with looks as if I lov'd;

I fed mine eye with gazing on his face,

And still bewitch'd lov'd Lacy with my looks;

My heart with sighs, mine eyes pleaded with tears,

My face held pity and content at once,

And more I could not cipher-out by signs

But that I lov'd Lord Lacy with my heart....

What hopes the prince to gain by Lacy's death?

_P. Edward._ To end the loves 'twixt him and Margaret.

_Margaret._ Why, thinks King Henry's son that Margaret's love

Hangs in th'uncertain balance of proud time?

That death shall make a discord of our thoughts?

No, stab the earl, and, 'fore the morning sun

Shall vaunt him thrice over the lofty east,

Margaret will meet her Lacy in the heavens.

_James the Fourth_ is not, as the title seems to indicate, a chronicle

history play. It is the story of that king's love for Ida, the daughter

of the Countess of Arran, and of the consequent unhappiness of his young

queen, Dorothea. Technically it is Greene's most perfect play, being

carefully divided into acts and scenes, and containing a plot ample

enough to dispense with much of that extraneous matter which obscured

his former plays. An amusing stratum of comic by-play underlies the main

story without interfering with it. Nevertheless the central details are

unattractive, presenting intrigue rather than romance, so that the

effect is less pleasing than that of the previous comedy.

In the hour of the Scottish monarch's union with Dorothea, daughter of

the English king, his wandering eyes fall upon and become enamoured of

Ida, who is standing by amongst the ladies of the court. With

dissembling lips he bids farewell to his new father-in-law; then, alone,

soliloquizes on his own wretchedness. Ateukin, a poor, unscrupulous and

ambitious courtier, overhears him and offers his services, which are

accepted. Ateukin, accordingly, makes overtures to Ida, but without

success. Returning, he persuades the king to sanction the murder of his

queen, to be accomplished by the French hireling, Jaques. By accident

the warrant for her death comes into the possession of a friend of hers,

who prevails upon her to flee into hiding, disguised as a man and

accompanied by her dwarf. They are followed, however, by Jaques, who,

after stabbing her, returns to announce the news to Ateukin. The latter

informs the king and at once sets out to secure Ida's acceptance of her

royal suitor, only to find her already married to a worthy knight,

Eustace. Aware of the consequences to himself of failure he flees the

country. Meanwhile Queen Dorothea, who was not mortally wounded, is

successfully tended in a hospitable castle, her disguise remaining

undiscovered. This produces a temporary difficulty, the lady of the

castle falling in love with her knightly patient; but that trouble is

soon removed, without leaving any harm behind. The King of England

invades Scotland on behalf of his ill-used daughter; a reward is offered

for her recovery; and on the eve of battle she appears as a peacemaker.

Happiness crowns the story.

The interest and value of the play lies in the two characters, Ida and

Dorothea. In the outline given above small space is assigned to the

former because her part is almost entirely confined to minor scenes in

which she and her mother talk together over their fancy-work, and

Eustace pays successful court for her hand. But by her purity and

maidenly reserve she merits our attention. It is a pity that her virtue

makes her rather dull and prosaic. Dorothea's adventures in disguise

show Greene profiting perhaps by the example of Peele, although the loss

of so many contemporary plays warns us against naming models too

definitely. The popularity of disguised girls in later drama and their

appearance in the works of Peele, Lyly and Greene, point to their having

been early accepted as favourites whenever an author sought for an easy

addition to the entanglement of his plot. Faithful love in the face of

desertion and cruelty is the dominant note in Dorothea's character as it

was in that of Angelica.--Slipper and Nano, two dwarf brothers, engaged

as attendants respectively on Ateukin and Queen Dorothea, provide most

of the humour. More worthy of note are Oberon, King of the Fairies, and

Bohan, the embittered Scotch recluse, who together provide an Induction

to the play. We are reminded of the Induction to _The Taming of the

Shrew_. Ben Jonson also makes use of this device. In this particular

Induction the story of James the Fourth is supposed to be played before

Oberon to illustrate the reason of Bohan's disgust with the world; but

these two persons recur several times to round off the acts with fairy

dances and dumb shows, which have no reference to the main play. In

Greene's verse we discover a half-hearted return to rhyme, passages in

it, and even odd couplets, being interspersed plentifully through his

blank verse.

To make amends for our slight notice of Ida in the outline of the play

we select our illustration from a scene in that lady's home.

[_The_ COUNTESS OF ARRAN _and_ IDA _discovered in their porch,

sitting at work._]

_Countess._ Fair Ida, might you choose the greatest good,

Midst all the world in blessings that abound,

Wherein, my daughter, should your liking be?

_Ida._ Not in delights, or pomp, or majesty.

_Countess._ And why?

_Ida._ Since these are means to draw the mind

From perfect good, and make true judgment blind.

_Countess._ Might you have wealth and Fortune's richest store?

_Ida._ Yet would I, might I choose, be honest-poor:

For she that sits at Fortune's feet a-low

Is sure she shall not taste a further woe,

But those that prank on top of Fortune's ball

Still fear a change, and, fearing, catch a fall.

_Countess._ Tut, foolish maid, each one contemneth need.

_Ida._ Good reason why, they know not good indeed.

_Countess._ Many, marry, then, on whom distress doth lour.

_Ida._ Yes, they that virtue deem an honest dower.

Madam, by right this world I may compare

Unto my work, wherein with heedful care

The heavenly workman plants with curious hand,

As I with needle draw each thing on land,

Even as he list: some men like to the rose

Are fashion'd fresh; some in their stalks do close,

And, born, do sudden die; some are but weeds,

And yet from them a secret good proceeds:

I with my needle, if I please, may blot

The fairest rose within my cambric plot;

God with a beck can change each worldly thing,

The poor to rich, the beggar to the king.

What, then, hath man wherein he well may boast,

Since by a beck he lives, a lour is lost?

_Countess._ Peace, Ida, here are strangers near at hand.

When Greene surrendered the attractions of sanguinary warfare and the

panoplied splendour of conquerors to treat of the pursuit of love in

peace he descended from the exclusive ranks of high-born lords and

ladies to the company of simple working folk, presenting a farmer's

daughter, winsome, loving and virtuous, and worthy to become the wife of

an earl. This aspect of the Fressingfield romance must have had a

special appeal for those of his audiences who stood outside the pale of

wealth and aristocracy. An earlier bid for their applause has been seen

in the figure of the blacksmith, Adam, whose sturdy defence of his trade

was referred to when we discussed _A Looking-Glass for London and

England_. If Greene wrote _George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield_,

and there is a strong probability that he did, he carried forward the

glorification of the lower classes, in this play, to its furthest point.

It is a hearty yeoman play; the time represented, the reign of one of

the Edwards. The plot revolves about the rebellion of an Earl of Kendal.

The principal figure is just such a stout typical hero of a countryside

as Robin Hood himself, but more law-abiding. His rough honest loyalty is

up in arms at once on the least disrespect to the crown. When Sir

Nicholas Mannering, on behalf of the rebel Earl of Kendal, insolently

demands a contribution of provisions from Wakefield, George tears up his

commission and makes him swallow the three seals. By craft--being

disguised as a hermit-seer--he takes prisoner Kendal and another

nobleman, and so single-handed crushes the rebellion. About the same

time the ally of Kendal, James of Scotland, is captured by another

country hero, Musgrove, a veteran of great renown but no less in age

than 'five score and three'. Thus the yeomen prove their superiority

over traitor nobles. But George has other affairs to manage. Fair

Bettris, who runs away from a disagreeable father to join him, suddenly

refuses to marry him without her father's consent, not easily obtainable

in the circumstances. However a trick overcomes that difficulty too in

the end. Meanwhile the fame of the lass excites the rival jealousy of

Maid Marian, who insists on Robin Hood's challenging George's supremacy.

In three single fights Robin's two comrades, Scarlet and Much, are

overthrown and Robin himself is driven to call a halt: his identity

being discovered, George treats him with great honour. In accordance

with former practices kings are brought upon the scene. The King of

Scotland, as we have seen, is captured by Musgrove. King Edward of

England and his nobles, in disguise, visit Yorkshire to see the

redoubtable George who has crushed the king's rebels. An ancient custom

of 'vailing (_trailing_) the staff' through Bradford, or, as an

alternative, fighting the shoemakers of that town, produces a laughable

episode. The king at first 'vails' at discretion, but is compelled by

George and Robin to adopt a bolder attitude; George then beats all the

shoemakers, who, at the finish, however, recognizing him, award him a

hearty welcome. All are brought to their knees at the revelation of the

king's identity, but Edward is merry over the affair, offering to dub

George a knight. This distinction the latter begs to be allowed to

refuse, saying,

--Let me live and die a yeoman still;

So was my father, so must live his son.

For 'tis more credit to men of base degree

To do great deeds, than men of dignity.

Closing the play the king pays high honour to the worshipful guild of

shoemakers.

And for the ancient custom of _Vail staff_,

Keep it still, claim privilege from me:

If any ask a reason why or how,

Say, English Edward vail'd his staff to you.

An amount of careless irregularity unusual with Greene is displayed in

the verse, pointing to hasty production. But the whole play is humorous,

vigorous and healthy. George's man, Jenkin, a dull-witted, faint-hearted

fellow, is the clown. There is an abundance of incident, though not the

complexity of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_. We have noticed the

historical atmosphere repeated from that play and from _James the

Fourth_. With regard to the love-plot, Bettris has only a small part,

but in her preference for George above a nobleman who comes wooing her,

and in her simple rank, she is quite like Margaret. Thus, when her

titled admirer offers himself, she sings,

I care not for earl, nor yet for knight,

Nor baron that is so bold;

For George-a-Greene, the merry Pinner,

He hath my heart in hold.

We select our main extract from the scene in which George, the loyal

yeoman, defies Sir Nicholas Mannering, the traitorous noble, and flouts

his commission. Those present include the local Justice and an assembly

of the citizens. George has just pushed his way to the front.

_Mannering (to Justice)_. See you these seals? before you pass

the town

I will have all things my lord doth want,

In spite of you.

_George._ Proud dapper Jack, vail bonnet to the bench

That represents the person of the king,

Or, sirrah, I'll lay thy head before thy feet.

_Mannering._ Why, who art thou?

_George._ Why, I am George-a-Greene,

True liegeman to my king,

Who scorns that men of such esteem as these

Should brook the braves of any traitorous squire.

You of the bench, and you, my fellow-friends,

Neighbours, we subjects all unto the king,

We are English born, and therefore Edward's friends,

Vow'd unto him even in our mothers' womb,

Our minds to God, our hearts unto our king;

Our wealth, our homage, and our carcasses

Be all King Edward's. Then, sirrah, we

Have nothing left for traitors but our swords,

Whetted to bathe them in your bloods, and die

'Gainst you, before we send you any victuals.

_George-a-Greene_ brings us to the end of Greene's dramatic work. The

qualities of that work have been pointed out as they occurred, but it

may be as well to recapitulate them in a final paragraph. Foremost of

all will stand the crowded medley of his plots, filling the stage with

an amount of incident and action which is in striking contrast to Lyly's

conversations and monologues. The public appetite for complex plots was

stimulated, but unfortunately very little progress was made in the art

of orderly dramatic arrangement and evolution. Indeed, this feature of

Greene's plays may be thought to have been almost as much a loss as a

gain to drama. Its popularity licensed an indifference on the part of

lesser authors to clarity and restraint, and encouraged the development

of those dual plots which are to be found, connected by the flimsiest

bonds, in the works of such men as Dekker and Heywood. To the same

influence may be traced Shakespeare's frequent but skilful use of

subordinate plots. For the second quality of Greene's work we name the

charm and purity of his romantic conceptions. The fresh air of his

pastoralism, the virtue, constancy and patience of his heroines, entitle

him to an honourable position among the writers who have reached success

by this path. Thirdly, but of equal importance, is his sympathetic

presentment of men and women of the middle and lower classes; he was

here an innovator, and some of our most pathetic dramas may be traced

ultimately to his example. His admirable 'low comedy' scenes, on the

other hand, though they prove their author to have been gifted with

considerable humour, merely continued the practice of Lyly, as his rant

and noisy warfare echoed the thunder of Marlowe. The general soundness,

even occasional excellence, of his verse and prose must be allowed to be

largely his own.

* * * * *

George Peele has left behind him a name associated with sweetness of

versification and graceful pastoralism. When, however, we try to recall

other features of his work, the men and women of his creation, or scenes

from his plots, we find our memory strangely indistinct. It is not easy

at first to see why; but probably the cause is in his lack of strong

individuality. He had not the gift of his greater contemporaries of

throwing vitality into his work. When they took up an old story they

entered into possession of it, creating fresh scenes and introducing new

and effective actors; above all, in their most successful productions,

they grasped the necessity of having one or more clearly defined

figures, which, by their strongly human appeal, or their exaggerated

traits, should grip the attention of the spectators with unforgettable

force. Marlowe was the supreme master of this art; Diogenes, Sir Tophas,

Margaret of Fressingfield, Queen Dorothea, and others are examples of

what Lyly and Greene could do. The same vitality is visible in their

best known plots and scenes. Apelles loved Campaspe long ago in the

pages of history, and was forgotten there; Lyly made him woo and win her

again, and now their home is for ever between the covers of his little

volume. Greene tells the story of Earl Lacy's love for Margaret, and the

details of that delightfully human romance return to us whenever his

name is mentioned. But what characters or scenes spring up to proclaim

Peele's authorship? He dramatized the narrative of Absalom's rebellion,

and, as soon as the end of the play is reached, the theme, with the

possible exception of the first scene, slips back, in our minds, into

its old biblical setting; it belongs to the writer of _The Book of

Samuel_, not to Peele. He wrote a Marlowesque play, similar to Greene's

_Alphonsus, King of Arragon_, but failed to create out of his several

leaders a single dominant figure to compare with Alphonsus. The same

might be said of his _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ and his _Edward the

First_; and his _Old Wives' Tale_ is a by-word for confusion. Only in

the sub-plot of _The Arraignment of Paris_ does he present a character

that may be said to owe its permanence in English literature to him. The

first love of Paris is there told so prettily, with so pathetic a

presentation of the heart-broken Oenone, that at once the deserted

maiden won a place in English hearts and minds; Tennyson's poem is an

exquisite wreath laid at the foot of the monument raised by Peele to her

memory. On the other hand, the main plot, retelling the old legend of

the Apple of Discord, is painted in the same neutral tints as coloured

his other plays. Such slight distinction as it may have it draws from

association with a matter of extraneous interest, the conversion of the

action into an elaborate compliment to Queen Elizabeth; the goddesses,

and Paris in his relation to them, gain nothing at his hands, while

Hobbinol, Diggon and Thenot are the dullest of shepherds. Unapt for

witty or clownish dialogue, Peele rarely attempts, as Lyly and Greene

did, to give fresh piquancy to an old story by the addition of

subordinate humorous episodes; when he does, as in _Edward the First_,

the result can hardly be termed a success.

Peele's eminence as a dramatist, then, must be sought for in the two

features of his work mentioned in our opening sentence, namely,

sweetness of versification and graceful pastoralism. Of these the latter

is found only in a single play, _The Arraignment of Paris_, and is one

of the few products of the author's originality. Lyly was possibly

indebted to it for the background and minor figures of certain scenes in

_Gallathea_, and Greene may have owed something to its influence.

Certainly neither dramatist ever equalled its delicate descriptions of

passive Nature.[56] The preponderance of mythology, however, the dearth

of real human beings, the unnaturalness permitted to invade nature--so

that even the flowers are grouped, as in an absurd parterre, to

represent the forms of goddesses--make Peele's pastoralism, despite the

undeniable charm of many passages, inferior to Greene's representation

of English country life.

Turning next to his verse, we recognize that it is here above all that

his excellence is to be found. Nevertheless a word of caution is needed.

So many of his readers have been charmed by his verse that it seems

almost a pity to remind them that he wrote more than two plays, and

that the same brain that composed the favourite passages in _David and

Bethsabe_ also produced quantities of very indifferent poetry in other

dramas. _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ is written in tedious

alliterative heptameters. From _Edward the First_ the most ardent

admirer of Peele would be puzzled to find half a dozen speeches meriting

quotation. The verse of _The Battle of Alcazar_ is in all points similar

to that of Greene's Marlowesque plays, imitating and falling short of

the same model. In fact Peele's reputation as a versifier rests almost

entirely on the contents of those two plays which most students of his

work read, _The Arraignment of Paris_ and _David and Bethsabe_. Of the

first it may be said boldly, without fear of contradiction, that,

considered metrically, the verse is unsuited to ordinary drama. The

arbitrary and constantly changing use of heroic couplet, blank verse

(pentameters), rhyming heptameters, alternate heptameters and hexameters

rhyming together, and the swift transition from one form to another in

the same speech, possibly help towards the lyrical effect aimed at; the

nature of the plot licenses a deviation from the ordinary dramatic

rules; but such metric irresponsibility would be out of place in any

ordinary play. There is a rare daintiness in some of the lines; they are

truly poetic; but we must remember that goddesses and the legendary

dwellers about Mount Ida may be permitted to speak in a language which

would be condemned as an affectation among folk of commoner clay.

Setting these objections aside--though they are important, as

demonstrating the limited amount of Peele's widely praised dramatic

verse--we may offer one general criticism of the verse of both plays.

The best lines and passages charm us by their exquisite finish, their

seductive rhythm and imagery, not by their thought. Sometimes the warm

glow of his patriotism, which was his most sincere emotion, inspired

verses that move us; noble lines will be found in _Edward the First_ and

_The Battle of Alcazar_, as well as in the better known conclusion to

_The Arraignment of Paris_. But we may look in vain through his dramas

for lines like those quoted on an earlier page from _Friar Bacon and

Friar Bungay_ (beginning, 'Why, thinks King Henry's son'), or these,

placed in the mouth of Queen Dorothea, repudiating the idea of revenge:

As if they kill not me, who with him fight!

As if his breast be touch'd, I am not wounded!

As if he wail'd, my joys were not confounded!

We are one heart, though rent by hate in twain;

One soul, one essence doth our weal contain:

What, then, can conquer him, that kills not me?[57]

For the sake of comparison with these two passages let us quote the

famous piece from _David and Bethsabe_.

Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,

And brings my longings tangled in her hair.

To joy[58] her love I'll build a kingly bower,

Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,

That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,

Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests

In oblique turnings, wind their nimble waves

About the circles of her curious walks;

And with their murmur summon easeful sleep

To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.

This has the charms of melody and graceful fancy; it is of the poetry of

Tennyson's _Lotos Eaters_ without the message. The others have the

energy of thought, of passion; they do not soothe the ear as do Peele's

verses, but they strike the deeper chords of the human heart. None of

the three passages should be taken as fairly representing its author's

normal style, but the contrast illustrates the essential nature of the

difference between the work of Peele and Greene.

The reader who agrees with what has been said above will be prepared to

acknowledge that Peele must stand below Greene, at least, in the ranks

of dramatists. Strength and individuality are the life-blood of

successful drama, and these he lacked. Yet he merits the fame awarded to

his group. He was a poet; the refinement, the music, the gentler

attributes of his best verse were a valuable contribution to the drama;

his sweetness joined hands with Marlowe's energy in helping to drive

from the stage, as impossible, the rude irregular lines that had

previously satisfied audiences.

It has been claimed that he was also, to some extent, an artist in

plot-structure. The mingle-mangle of scarcely connected incidents which

did duty with Greene for a plot, the irrepressible by-play with which

Lyly loved to interrupt his main story, were rejected by him. _Edward

the First_ is an exception; in his best plays he achieved a certain

dignified directness and simplicity. But he was as incapable as Greene

of concentration upon one point, or of working up the interest to an

impending catastrophe. He was content with chronological order for his

guide; his directness is the directness of the Chronicle History. _The

Battle of Alcazar_ and _David and Bethsabe_ follow this method as

completely as his avowedly chronicle play, _Edward the First_. It is a

strange thing how plot-structure fell into abeyance in comedy after its

long and strenuous evolution through the Interludes to _Ralph Roister

Doister_ and _Gammer Gurton's Needle_. We must confess, however

reluctantly, that those early plays set an example in unity and

concentration of interest that was never surpassed by any of the

comedies of the University Wits. Lyly may be said to have come nearest

to it, though, handicapped by a passing affectation, he could never

excite the same degree of interest. Greene's plots lack unity, and

Peele's emphasis. We have to wait for Shakespeare before we can see

comedy raised above the architectural standard set by Nicholas Udall.

The list of Peele's plays, in approximate order of time, is as follows:

_The Arraignment of Paris_ (1584), _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_

(printed 1599), _Edward the First_ (printed 1593), _The Battle of

Alcazar_ (printed 1594), _The Old Wive's Tale_ (printed 1595), _David

and Bethsabe_ (printed 1599).

_The Arraignment of Paris_ sets forth, in five acts, the old Greek tale

of Paris, the three goddesses, and the golden apple. Juno, Pallas and

Venus graciously condescend to visit the vales of Ida, and are loyally

welcomed by the minor deities of the earth, Flora especially making it

her care that all the countryside shall wear its brightest colours.

During their brief stay, Juno finds the golden apple, inscribed with

_Detur pulcherrimae_. After some dispute Paris is called upon to give

judgment, and awards the prize to Venus. There the Greek tale ends. But

Peele adds an ingenious sequel. Juno and Pallas, indignant at the slight

put upon them, appeal against this decision to a council of the gods.

This brings quite a crowd of deities upon the stage, unable to devise a

solution to such a knotty problem of wounded pride. Paris is summoned

before this high court, but clears himself from the charge of unjust

partiality. Finally it is agreed that the arbitrament of Diana shall be

invited and accepted as conclusive. She, by a delicate compromise,

satisfies the jealous susceptibilities of the three goddesses by

preferring above them a nymph, Eliza, whose charms surpass their

totalled attributes of wealth, wisdom, and beauty. The story is

provided with two under-plots, presenting opposite aspects of rejected

love. In the one, Colin dies for love of disdainful Thestylis, who in

her turn dotes despairingly upon an ugly churl. In the other, Oenone

holds and loses the affections of Paris, stolen from her by the beauty

of Venus; this is the most delicate portion of the whole play. Pretty

songs are imbedded in the scenes--_Cupid's Curse_ is a famous one--and

many lines of captivating fancy will be found by an appreciative reader.

On a well-furnished stage the valley of Mount Ida, where Pan, Flora and

others of Nature's guardians direct her wild fruitfulness, where

shepherds converse in groups or alone sing their grief to the skies, and

Paris and Oenone, seated beneath a tree, renew their mutual pledges,

must have looked very delightful. One cannot help thinking, however,

that the gods and goddesses, probably magnificently arrayed and carrying

splendour wherever they went, seriously detracted from the appearance of

free Nature. Nevertheless, by the poet and the stage-manager they were,

doubtless, prized equally with the rural background and the shepherds,

perhaps even more than they. To them is given pre-eminence in the play.

Indeed, what particularly impresses any one who remembers the stage as

he reads, is the watchful provision for spectacular effect in every

scene. It is this, combined with the author's choice of subject and

characters, which has led to the comparison of this comedy with a

Masque. The resemblance, too manifest to be overlooked, gives an

additional interest to a play which thus is seen to hold something like

an intermediary position between drama proper and that other, infinitely

more ornate, form of court entertainment. Viewing it in this light, we

are no longer surprised to read, in a stage direction at the close,

that Diana 'delivers the ball of gold to the Queen's own hand'. After

all, the play, like a Masque, is little more than an exaggerated and

richly designed compliment, the most beautiful of its kind. In selecting

suitable extracts one is drawn from scene to scene, uncertain which

deserves preference. The two offered here illustrate respectively the

tuneful variety of Peele's verse and the delicate embroidery of Diana's

famous decision.

(1)

[JUNO _bribes_ PARIS _to award her the apple._]

_Juno._ And for thy meed, sith I am queen of riches,

Shepherd, I will reward thee with great monarchies,

Empires, and kingdoms, heaps of massy gold,

Sceptres and diadems curious to behold,

Rich robes, of sumptuous workmanship and cost,

And thousand things whereof I make no boast:

The mould whereon thou treadest shall be of Tagus' sands,

And Xanthus shall run liquid gold for thee to wash thy hands;

And if thou like to tend thy flock, and not from them to fly,

Their fleeces shall be curlèd gold to please their master's eye;

And last, to set thy heart on fire, give this one fruit to me,

And, shepherd, lo, this tree of gold will I bestow on thee!

[JUNO'S _Show. A Tree of Gold rises, laden with diadems and crowns

of gold._]

The ground whereon it grows, the grass, the root of gold,

The body and the bark of gold, all glistering to behold,

The leaves of burnish'd gold, the fruits that thereon grow

Are diadems set with pearl in gold, in gorgeous glistering show;

And if this tree of gold in lieu may not suffice,

Require a grove of golden trees, so Juno bear the prize.

(2)

[DIANA _describes the island kingdom of the nymph_ ELIZA, _a figure

of the_ QUEEN.]

There wons[59] within these pleasant shady woods,

Where neither storm nor sun's distemperature

Have power to hurt by cruel heat or cold,

Under the climate of the milder heaven;

Where seldom lights Jove's angry thunderbolt,

For favour of that sovereign earthly peer;

Where whistling winds make music 'mong the trees;--

Far from disturbance of our country gods,

Amidst the cypress-springs, a gracious nymph,

That honours Dian for her chastity,

And likes the labours well of Phoebe's groves.

The place Elyzium hight[60], and of the place

Her name that governs there Eliza is;

A kingdom that may well compare with mine,

An ancient seat of kings, a second Troy,

Y-compass'd round with a commodious sea.

_Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ merits a passing notice if only because

it contains the earliest known example of a girl disguised as a page,

the Princess Neronis waiting upon her lover in that office. As has been

pointed out, however, in the discussion of _Gallathea_, Peele makes no

really dramatic use of the novel situation. If the dramatist had been

content with one knight instead of two, or had even vouchsafed the aid

of acts and scenes, his readers would have been able to follow the

succession of events much more clearly than is now possible: as it is,

between Clyomon and Clamydes, the Golden Shield and the Silver Shield,

there is constant confusion. But Peele was not born for chivalrous

romance. A writer who could allow one of his heroes to begin his career

by a piece of schoolboy trickery followed by headlong flight to escape

detection, and could make the sea-sickness of his other hero the cause

of his introduction to the lady of his heart, had not the true spirit of

romance in him. We meet our old acquaintances, the thinly disguised Vice

and the rude clown of uncouth dialect, under the names of Subtle Shift

and Corin; abstractions also reappear in Rumour and Providence. The

crudity of the verse will be sufficiently illustrated in the first line:

As to the weary wandering wights whom waltering waves environ.

_The Famous Chronicle History of King Edward the First_ is almost as

complete a medley as the most tangled play of Greene's. Peele's lack of

power to concentrate interest makes itself lamentably felt throughout.

We are conscious, as we read, that King Edward, or Longshanks, as he is

always named, is intended to impress us with his sterling English

qualities. He overcomes all difficulties, and if we could only unravel

his thread from the skein of characters, we should acknowledge him to be

a worthy monarch, brave, loving, wise, just and firm. One or two scenes,

we feel, are inserted deliberately for the sake of heightening his

character, notably that in which he elects to face single-handed a man

whom he supposes to be the redoubtable Robin Hood and who proves to be

no less than Llewellyn, Prince of Wales. Unfortunately these excellent

intentions are not seconded by the rest of the play. Some of the scenes

in which Edward takes part are not at all calculated to increase his

dignity; in the last of all, for instance, it is hardly an English act

on his part to conceal his identity in a monk's cowl and spy upon the

secrets of his queen's dying confession. That, however, may have been

pardoned by an Elizabethan audience; any trick may have been thought

good enough which exposed Spanish villany. A more serious defect is the

undue prominence given to Llewellyn and to Queen Elinor. This is not

accidental, for the full title of the play states that it is to include

'also the life of Llevellen rebell in Wales; lastly, the sinking of

Queene Elinor, who sunck at Charingcrosse, and rose againe at

Potters-hith, now named Queenehith'. Peele chose three distinct points

of interest because he knew no better. It seemed to him, just as it did

to Greene, that by so doing he would treble the interest of the play as

a whole; both were a long way from comprehending the wisdom underlying

the dramatic law of Unity of Action.

If not famous, Peele's Chronicle History has become, in a small way,

infamous, by reason of the representation it gives of the queen's

character. A Spaniard, she figures as a monster of cruelty, pride and

vanity, capable of wishes and deeds which we have no desire to remember.

At this distance of time, however, righteous indignation at the

injustice done to a fair name is perhaps uncalled for. The play is only

read by the curious student, and it is quite apparent, as others have

pointed out, that the attack is directed more against the Spanish nation

than against an individual. We may still regret the injustice, but we

know better than to wonder at any misconception sixteenth-century

Englishmen may have formed of their hated foe.

As a specimen of Peele's rarely exercised broad humour the knavery of

the Welsh Friar, Hugh ap David, should be noticed; his trick for winning

a hundred marks from 'sweet St. Francis' receiver' is, perhaps, the best

part of it. More worthy of remembrance is Joan, admirably chosen, for

her innocence and gentleness, to stand in contrast to Queen Elinor; the

story of her happy love and most unhappy death adds a touch of genuine

pathos to the gruesome shadows of tragedy which darken the final pages.

Much in her portrait, as in the prose scenes concerned with the Welsh

Friar, may have been inspired by the success of Greene, whose influence

is marked throughout the play.

For our illustrations we quote Gloucester's lament over his young

wife--the closing speech of the play--, and one of several allusions to

the English nation which testify to the poet's sincere and warm

patriotism.

(1)

_Gloucester._ Now, Joan of Acon, let me mourn thy fall.

Sole, here alone, now sit thee down and sigh,

Sigh, hapless Gloucester, for thy sudden loss:

Pale death, alas, hath banish'd all thy pride,

Thy wedlock-vows! How oft have I beheld

Thy eyes, thy looks, thy lips, and every part,

How nature strove in them to show her art,

In shine, in shape, in colour and compare!

But now hath death, the enemy of love,

Stain'd and deform'd the shine, the shape, the red,

With pale and dimness, and my love is dead.

Ah, dead, my love! vile wretch, why am I living?

So willeth fate, and I must be contented:

All pomp in time must fade, and grow to nothing.

Wept I like Niobe, yet it profits nothing.

Then cease, my sighs, since I may not regain her;

And woe to wretched death that thus hath slain her!

(2)

_Joan._ Madam, if Joan thy daughter may advise,

Let not your honour make your manners change.

The people of this land are men of war,

The women courteous, mild, and debonair,

Laying their lives at princes' feet

That govern with familiar majesty.

But if their sovereigns once gin swell with pride,

Disdaining commons' love, which is the strength

And sureness of the richest commonwealth,

That prince were better live a private life

Than rule with tyranny and discontent.

If Peele wrote _The Battle of Alcazar_, which seems probable, he

benefited by the mistakes of the previous play. It is a martial tragedy,

imitating the verse and style of Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ or Greene's

_Alphonsus, King of Arragon_. Acts and scenes delimit the stages of the

course of events, the distraction of humorous prose scenes is banished,

independent plots are forbidden their old parallel existence, everything

moves steadily towards the tragic conclusion. Lest there should still

arise uncertainty as to the drift of the various incidents as they

occur, a 'Presenter' is at hand to serve as prologue to each act and

explain, not merely what must be understood as having happened off the

stage in the intervals, but what is about to take place on the stage,

and the purpose that lies behind it. The verse is regular and often

vigorous, though the vigour sometimes appears forced, and the constant

stream of end-stopt lines becomes monotonous. Murders that cannot find

room elsewhere are perpetrated in dumb-show, ghosts within the wings cry

out _Vindicta!_, and the leading characters suffer the usual inflatus of

windy rant to make their dimensions more kingly. Still the play fails to

achieve the right effect. There is no dominant hero, the central figure,

if such there is, being the villain, Muly Mahamet the Moor. But his is

not the career, nor his the character, at all likely to win either the

sympathy or the interest of an English audience. Defeated, exiled, twice

seen in desperate flight, treacherous, and incapable of anything but

amazing speeches, he thoroughly deserves the ignominious fate reserved

for him. Of the three other claimants to pre-eminence, Sebastian lends

his aid to the base Moor and is defeated and slain; Stukeley, the

Englishman, is a traitor to his country, and is murdered on the

battlefield in cold blood by his comrades; while Abdelmelec, who is

alone successful in war, does not appear in more than five of the

thirteen scenes, and is killed in the last battle. In action, too, there

is a divided interest. The first act is entirely devoted to the campaign

which places Abdelmelec on the throne of the usurping Moor; not until

the fourth scene of the second act does King Sebastian of Portugal come

upon the stage; only from that point onward are we concerned with his

unsuccessful attempt--in which he is assisted by Stukeley--to restore

the crown of Morocco to Muly Mahamet. Once more we have to lament that

absence of unity and grip, though under improved conditions, which we

noticed in Peele's former plays.

Captain Stukeley was a more interesting character off the stage than on;

the details of his life may be found in Fuller, or in Dyce's prefatory

note to the play in his edition of Peele's works. The surprising thing

is that he was not hissed from the boards by indignant patriots. But his

exploits, and his thoroughly English pride, seem to have awakened the

sympathies of his countrymen, for his memory was cherished as that of a

popular hero. His traitorous intention to conquer Ireland for the Pope,

however, receives noble reproof from Peele in the mouths of Don Diego

Lopez and King Sebastian. The latter's speech well deserves perusal. But

we have quoted sufficiently already from Peele's patriotic eloquence.

The extravagant language of the Moor has been made immortal by

Shakespeare: a line from one of his extraordinary speeches to his wife,

Calipolis, in exile, is adapted by Pistol to his own rhetorical use

(_Second Part of Henry the Fourth_, II. iv). To show the

inconsistencies over which rant unblushingly careers, we give two

consecutive speeches by this terrible fellow.

[THE MOOR'S SON _has just given a highly coloured description of

the enemy's forces._]

_The Moor._ Away, and let me hear no more of this.

Why, boy,

Are we successor to the great Abdelmunen,

Descended from th' Arabian Muly Xarif,

And shall we be afraid of Bassas and of bugs,[61]

Raw-head and Bloody-bone?

Boy, seest here this scimitar by my side?

Sith they begin to bathe in blood,

Blood be the theme whereon our time shall tread:

Such slaughter with my weapon shall I make

As through the stream and bloody channels deep

Our Moors shall sail in ships and pinnaces

From Tangier-shore unto the gates of Fess.

_The Moor's Son._ And of those slaughter'd bodies shall thy son

A hugy tower erect like Nimrod's frame,

To threaten those unjust and partial gods

That to Abdallas' lawful seed deny

A long, a happy, and triumphant reign.

[_At this point a_ MESSENGER _enters, reports general disaster, and

urges flight._]

_The Moor._ Villain, what dreadful sound of death and flight

Is this wherewith thou dost afflict our ears?

But if there be no safety to abide

The favour, fortune and success of war,

Away in haste! Roll on, my chariot-wheels,

Restless till I be safely set in shade

Of some unhaunted place, some blasted grove

Of deadly yew or dismal cypress-tree,

Far from the light or comfort of the sun,

There to curse heaven and he that heaves me hence;

To sick as Envy at Cecropia's gate,

And pine with thought and terror of mishaps.

Away!

_The Old Wive's Tale_ is much shorter than Peele's other plays and is

written mainly in prose, without any division into acts. It appears to

have been an experiment in broad comedy to the exclusion of all things

serious, for wherever a graver tone threatens to direct the action some

absurd character or incident is hastily introduced to save the

situation. Regarded as such, it cannot be said to be either successful

or wholly unsuccessful. The opening scene is certainly one of the most

racy and homely Inductions to be found in dramatic literature, while one

or two of the other scenes, though they make poor reading, are

calculated to rouse laughter when acted; the lower characters, at least,

display plenty of animation, and the creation of that fantastic person

of royal pedigree, Huanebango--'Polimackeroeplacidus my grandfather, my

father Pergopolineo, my mother Dionora de Sardinia, famously

descended'--with his effort to 'lisp in numbers' of classical

accentuation--'Philida, phileridos, pamphilida, florida,

flortos'--reveals humour of a finer edge than the mere laughter-raising

kind. Against this moderate praise, however, must be set some blame. It

has been said before that the play is a by-word for confusion. An

extraordinary recklessness rules the introduction of characters,

participation in one scene being, apparently, sufficient justification

for the inclusion of a fresh character at any stage of the play. As

vital an error is the neglect to excite our pity for Delia, round whom

the whole story revolves; she is represented as thoroughly happy with

her captor and so utterly forgetful of her brothers that she is content

to ill-treat them at the will of Sacrapant. True, we are told that magic

has wrought the change in her. But a skilful dramatist would have left

her some unconquered emotions of reluctance or distress to quicken our

sympathy.

The story is this. Three lads, Antic, Frolic and Fantastic, having lost

their way, are given shelter by a countryman, Clunch--a smith, by the

way, like our old friend, Adam--whose goodwife, Madge, entertains two of

them with a tale while the other sleeps with her husband. She begins

correctly enough with a 'Once upon a time', but soon lands herself in

difficulties amongst the various facts that require preliminary

explanation before the story can be properly launched. At the right

moment the people referred to themselves appear and the story passes

from narration to action. We learn from two brothers that they are

seeking their sister, Delia, who has been carried off by a wicked

magician, Sacrapant--not to be confused with Greene's Sacripant. This

same sorcerer has also separated a loving couple; by his art the lady,

Venelia, has gone mad, and the youth, Erestus, is converted into an old

man by day and a bear by night. The aged-looking Erestus is regarded

throughout the countryside as a soothsayer. His neighbour, Lampriscus,

cursed by two daughters, one of whom is frightfully ugly while the other

is a virago, consults him about their marriages. By his advice they take

their pitchers to a magic well, where, by a coincidence, each finds a

husband. She of the hideous face easily satisfies Huanebango, while the

vile-tempered maiden as readily contents the heart of Corebus, for

Sacrapant has previously hurled blindness upon the former, and upon the

latter deafness, because they dared to enter his realms in search of

Delia. Meanwhile the brothers continue their quest and eventually come

upon Sacrapant and their sister making merry together at a feast. At

once the lady is sent indoors, thunder and lightning herald disaster,

and Sacrapant's magic takes them captive. Subsequently they are set to a

task, with Delia standing over to speed their labours with a sharpened

goad. It now becomes known that Sacrapant's power depends on the

continued existence of a light enclosed within a glass vessel and buried

in the earth. Delia has a lover, Eumenides. Acting on a generous

impulse, this youth pays for the burial of one, Jack, whose friends are

too poor to find the sexton's fees. Jack's ghost, in no more horrible

form than that of an honest boy, forthwith repays the kindness by

appointing himself Eumenides' guide, leading him to Sacrapant's castle,

and obligingly slaying the magician at the critical moment by a touch of

his ghostly hand. The buried light is dug up, Venelia, qualified by her

madness to fulfil the conditions imposed by an old prophecy, breaks the

glass and blows out the flame, and instantly all Sacrapant's wickedness

is nullified. Venelia and Erestus are re-united, Delia is restored to

her brothers and lover; we are not told of the shocks that must have

come to Huanebango and Corebus when they suddenly became conscious of

their respective wives' most prominent qualities. Into the midst of the

rejoicing comes a demand from Jack's ghost for the fulfilment of

Eumenides' compact that he should have half of whatever was won.

Resolute to keep faith, Eumenides prepares to cut his lady in twain,

when the ghost, satisfied with his honesty, restrains his arm. Thus the

play ends happily.

We have given the story in full on account of its association, in the

minds of some critics, with the plot of _Comus_. Because Milton, in

another work, has shown himself acquainted with Peele's writings, they

feel encouraged to see in the Ghost of Jack, Sacrapant, and Delia the

prototypes of the Attendant Spirit, Comus, and the Lady. One may

suppose that the same foundation of resemblance establishes Peele as

also the inspirer of the first book of _The Faerie Queene_ through his

_Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_, with its knight and lady and dragon and

magician, Sansfoy. Professor Mason, on the other hand, prefers to regard

as mere coincidences those points which are common to both. By the

outline given, the reader who has not Peele's comedy at hand will be

assisted in making his own choice between the two opinions.

_David and Bethsabe_ presents the two stories of David's love for

Bathsheba and of the revolt of Absalom, as found in the Second Book of

Samuel (Chapters xi-xix). The succession of events is carefully

observed, each least pleasant detail jealously retained, and in some

places even the language closely imitated. Except in the old Bible

plays, one does not often meet with such rigorous adherence to the

original in the transference of facts from a narrative to a drama. To

this adherence are due certain features which any one not fresh from

reading the account in Samuel might easily attribute to the dramatist's

skill--the differentiation of the characters, the varying moods of joy,

sorrow, indignation, hope and despair, besides the unusual vigour of

some of the scenes. Dramatic art, however, is frequently as severely

tested in an author's selection of a subject as in his invention of one.

From this test Peele's talent would have emerged triumphantly had he

only possessed the ability to construct a plot; for there is an

abundance of the right dramatic material in his subject, and in his best

moments he displays wonderful mastery in the moulding of hard facts to

his use. Nothing could be more perfectly done than the sublimation of

the contents of three plain verses (Chapter xi. 2-4) to the delicate

poetry of his famous opening scene. Unfortunately the method adopted is

that of the chronicle history-plays or of the nearly forgotten

Miracles, to which class of drama _David and Bethsabe_, as a late

survival, may be said to belong. It has other marks of retrogression to

methods already old-fashioned in the year 1598, such as the introduction

(twice) of a Chorus, and the absence of any division into acts,

notwithstanding Peele's effective adoption of them in his previous

tragedy. There is also, despite the occasional vigour shown in the

portrayal of David, Absalom and Joab, the familiar weakness in

concentration, the old lack of a dominant figure. We cannot help feeling

that the author lost a great opportunity in not recognizing more fully

the tragic potentialities of such a character as the rebel prince. And

yet the play holds, and will continue to hold, a worthy place in

Elizabethan drama on account of its poetry. The special qualities of

Peele's poetic gift have been discussed in our consideration of his work

as a whole. All that need be added here in praise is that had he written

nothing else but _David and Bethsabe_ and _The Arraignment of Paris_ he

might have challenged the right of precedence as a poet with Marlowe.

But between those two plays what an amount of inferior workmanship lies!

Having already quoted an example of his verse in tender mood, we offer a

favourable specimen of his more impassioned style:

_David._ What seems them best, then, that will David do.

But now, my lords and captains, hear his voice

That never yet pierc'd piteous heaven in vain;

Then let it not slip lightly through your ears;--

For my sake spare the young man, Absalon.

Joab, thyself didst once use friendly words

To reconcile my heart incens'd to him;

If, then, thy love be to thy kinsman sound,

And thou wilt prove a perfect Israelite,

Friend him with deeds, and touch no hair of him,--

Not that fair hair with which the wanton winds

Delight to play, and love to make it curl;

Wherein the nightingales would build their nests,

And make sweet bowers in every golden tress

To sing their lover every night asleep;--

O, spoil not, Joab, Jove's[62] fair ornaments,

Which he hath sent to solace David's soul!

The best, ye see, my lords, are swift to sin;

To sin our feet are wash'd with milk of roes

And dried again with coals of lightning.

O Lord, thou see'st the proudest sin's poor slave,

And with his bridle pull'st him to the grave!

For my sake, then, spare lovely Absalon.

* * * * *

Thomas Nash assisted Marlowe in _The Tragedy of Dido_, but _Summer's

Last Will and Testament_ (1592) is the only example of his independent

dramatic work preserved for us. ''Tis no play neither, but a show', says

one of its characters in describing it; and the same person, continuing,

supplies this brief summary to its contents: 'Forsooth, because the

plague reigns in most places in this latter end of summer, Summer must

come in sick; he must call his officers to account, yield his throne to

Autumn, make Winter his executor, with tittle-tattle Tom-boy.' The

officers thus called to account are Ver, Solstitium, Sol, Orion, Harvest

and Bacchus. Each enters in appropriate guise, with a train of

attendants singing or dancing. Thus we have such stage-directions as,

'Enter Ver, with his train, overlaid with suits of green moss,

representing short grass, singing': 'Enter Harvest, with a scythe on his

neck, and all his reapers with sickles, and a great black bowl with a

posset in it, borne before him: they come in singing': 'Enter Bacchus,

riding upon an ass trapped in ivy, himself dressed in vine leaves, and

a garland of grapes on his head; his companions having all jacks in

their hands, and ivy garlands on their heads; they come singing.'

Several of the songs have the true ring of country choruses; probably

they were such, borrowed quite frankly by the dramatist, who would

expect his audience to be familiar with them and even possibly to join

in the singing. Such a one is this harvesting song--

Merry, merry, merry; cheery, cheery, cheery;

Trowl the black bowl to me;

Hey derry, derry, with a poup and a lerry,

I'll trowl it again to thee.

Hooky, hooky, we have shorn,

And we have bound,

And we have brought Harvest

Home to town.

Others again are more restrained, though almost all have a certain

charming artlessness about them. A verse may be quoted from the Spring

Song.

The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And hear we aye birds tune this merry lay,

Cuckow, jug, jug, pu-we, to-wit, to-whoo.

Regarded as a show, then, the performance is deserving of all praise,

its fresh pastoralism confirming the hold upon the stage of unaffected

country scenes. It must have followed not long after Greene's _Friar

Bacon and Friar Bungay_. It makes no claim to belong to regular drama,

so that we need waste no words in uninvited criticism of its weakness in

plot, action and character. Approving mention must be made of Will

Summer--no relation to Summer, the season of the year, who is referred

to in the title--Henry the Eighth's Court Jester, who plays the part of

'presenter' and general critic, standing apart from the main action but

thrusting in his remarks as the spirit moves him. He is responsible for

the description of the performance as a show. His purpose is fully

declared at the start, when he announces that he will 'sit as a chorus

and flout the actors and him (_the author_) at the end of every scene'.

Forthwith he proceeds to offer advice to the actors about their

behaviour: 'And this I bar, over and besides, that none of you stroke

your beards to make action, play with your cod-piece points, or stand

fumbling on your buttons, when you know not how to bestow your fingers.

Serve God, and act cleanly.' Always his honesty exceeds his

consideration for the feelings of others. Three clowns and three maids

have barely ended their rustic jig when he calls out, 'Beshrew my heart,

of a number of ill legs I never saw worse dancers. How bless'd are you

that the wenches of the parish do not see you!' And his yawn carries a

world of disgust with it as he murmurs, over one of Summer's lectures,

'I promise you truly I was almost asleep; I thought I had been at a

sermon.' Historically he is interesting as being another example of the

attempts made at this time, as in _James the Fourth_ and _The Old Wives'

Tale_, to provide a means of entertainment, more popular than formal

prologues, epilogues or choruses, to fill up unavoidable pauses between

scenes.

Far more than most plays _Summer's Last Will and Testament_ contains

references to contemporary events,--the recent plague, drought, flood,

and short harvests are all mentioned. Satire, too, enlivens some of the

longest speeches; for the writer was primarily and by profession a

satirist. Although the finer graces of poetry are not his, his verse

indicates the gradual advance that was being made to greater ease and

freedom; his lines are not weighted with sounding words, nor is the

'privilege of metre' restricted to the expression of beautiful, wise or

emotional thought, as was commonly the case elsewhere. The country

freshness of his lyrics has been already praised. Altogether, despite

the slight amount of his work in drama, Nash is not a dramatist to be

dismissed with a mere expression of indifference or contempt. Several

things in it make _Summer's Last Will and Testament_ a production worth

remembering. The following extract illustrates the qualities of Nash's

blank verse.

_Orion._ Yet in a jest (since thou rail'st so 'gainst dogs)

I'll speak a word or two in their defence.

That creature's best that comes most near to men;

That dogs of all come nearest, thus I prove.

First, they excell us in all outward sense,

Which no one of experience will deny;

They hear, they smell, they see better than we.

To come to speech, they have it questionless,

Although we understand them not so well:

They bark as good old Saxon as may be,

And that in more variety than we,

For they have one voice when they are in chase,

Another when they wrangle for their meat,

Another when we beat them out of doors....

That dogs physicians are, thus I infer;

They are ne'er sick but they know their disease

And find out means to ease them of their grief.

Special good surgeons to cure dangerous wounds:

For, stricken with a stake into the flesh

This policy they use to get it out;

They trail one of their feet upon the ground,

And gnaw the flesh about where the wound is,

Till it be clean drawn out; and then, because

Ulcers and sores kept foul are hardly cur'd,

They lick and purify it with their tongue,

And well observe Hippocrates' old rule,

The only medicine for the foot is rest,--

For if they have the least hurt in their feet

They bear them up and look they be not stirr'd.

When humours rise, they eat a sovereign herb,

Whereby what cloys their stomachs they cast up;

And as some writers of experience tell,

They were the first invented vomiting.

Sham'st thou not, Autumn, unadvisedly

To slander such rare creatures as they be?

[Footnote 53: In _Damon and Pythias_, see p. 117 above.]

[Footnote 54: ready.]

[Footnote 55: resent.]

[Footnote 56: See Flora's second speech, Act 1, Sc. 1.]

[Footnote 57: _James the Fourth._]

[Footnote 58: enjoy.]

[Footnote 59: dwells.]

[Footnote 60: is called.]

[Footnote 61: bugbears.]

[Footnote 62: Jehovah's.]

CHAPTER VI

TRAGEDY: LODGE, KYD, MARLOWE, _ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM_.

Great as was the advance made by Lyly and Greene in Comedy, the advance

made by Kyd and Marlowe in Tragedy was greater. Indeed it may almost be

said that they created Tragedy as we know it. We have only to recall the

dull speeches of _Gorboduc_, the severe formality of _The Misfortunes of

Arthur_, to recognize the change that had to take place before the level

of such a tragedy as _Romeo and Juliet_ could be reached. Yet between

the two last-mentioned tragedies, if 1591 be accepted as the date of

Shakespeare's play, there lies a period of but four years. The nature of

the change was foreshadowed by the tragi-comedy, _Damon and Pythias_. In

an earlier chapter we dealt with the divergence of that play from the

English Senecan school of tragedy. This divergence, accepted as right,

set Tragedy on its feet. Great things, however, still remained to be

done.

The supreme quality of Tragedy is in its power to raise feelings of

intense emotion, of horror or grief, or of both. Failing in this, it

fails altogether. To this end Seneca introduced his Ghost, and his

disciples filled their speeches with passionate outcry and lurid

pictures of horrible events unfit to be presented in actuality.

_Gorboduc_ rained death upon a whole nation, _Tancred and Gismunda_

invoked every awful epithet and gruesome description of dungeon and

murder, for the same purpose. But the purpose remained unfulfilled--at

least, for an English audience nurtured on more vigorous diet than mere

words. The ear cannot comprehend horror in its fullness as can the eye.

Even the author of _Tancred and Gismunda_ was conscious of this, for at

the end he placed the deaths of both father and daughter, with horrible

accompaniments, upon the stage. He gave his audience what it wanted. Nor

were the English people slow to demand the same from others. We shall

find, in fact, that tragedy continued to borrow the exaggerated violence

of the Senecan school, even when it was most emphatically rejecting its

dramatic principles. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that

the work of Kyd and Marlowe was merely to substitute actions for

descriptions, and sights for sounds. The difference between classic and

romantic tragedy is not so simple. We shall understand their task more

readily if we pause to consider what are the chief elements of

Shakespearian tragedy.

Approximately they may be stated thus: an overwhelming catastrophe,

clearly drawn characters which appeal to our sympathy or hate,

impressive scenes, and a strong, eventful plot. Of these the first had

never been lost since Sackville and Norton. The second had been

attempted in _The Misfortunes of Arthur_, not without a measure of

success. But both called for improvement, the former particularly having

struck too tremendous a pitch. The third and fourth elements were almost

unknown, thanks to the exclusion of all action from the stage; and

finally, no appeal could be wholly successful which wearied the audience

with so stiff and monotonous a diction. Verse, plot, scenes, characters,

catastrophe--these are the features which we must watch if we would know

what Kyd and Marlowe did for tragedy.

Before we turn to their plays, however, there is one other of the

University Wits whose chief dramatic work is tragic and who must

therefore be included in this chapter. Since his tragedy stands, in its

inferiority, quite apart from the tragedies of the other two, we shall

dispose of it first.

* * * * *

Apart from his undefined share in _A Looking-Glass for London and

England_, all that we have of Thomas Lodge's dramatic work is _The

Wounds of Civil War_, or, as its other title ran, _The Most Lamentable

and True Tragedies of Marius and Sylla_ (about 1588). The author went to

Plutarch for his facts and characters, and shows, in his treatment of

the subject, that he caught at least a measure of inspiration from that

famous biographer's vivid portraits. Marius and Sylla are clearly,

though not impartially, discriminated, the former appearing as the

dauntless veteran, ready to die sooner than acknowledge himself too old

for command, the latter figuring as the man of resistless force and

intense pride. Partiality is seen in the allocation of most of the

insolence and cruelty to Sylla, while our sympathy is constantly being

evoked on the side of Marius. It is Sylla who first draws his sword

against the peace of the state; it is Marius who magnanimously sends

Sylla's wife and daughter to him unharmed. Moreover, wooden as they

sometimes are, these great antagonists and their fellow-senators show

the right Roman nature at need. Marius sleeping quietly under the menace

of death; his heroic son, with his little band of soldiers, committing

suicide rather than surrender at Praeneste; Octavius scorning to imitate

the vacillation and cowardice of his colleagues; Sylla plunging back

alone into battle, that his example may reanimate the courage of his

fleeing army: these are scenes that recall the best traditions of Rome.

They are taken from Plutarch, it is true; but they are presented

sympathetically and with stimulating effect. Thus, though the order of

events has necessarily to be mainly historical, each is intimately

related to the central clash of ambitions, with the result that

singleness of interest is never lost until the death of Marius. In

carrying history down to Sylla's abdication and death, the author

betrays that ignorance of dramatic unity common to most of his

contemporaries.

The play is divided into five acts, but though there are obviously more

than that number of scenes, the subdivisions are not formally

distinguished. By the stiff, rhetorical style of its verse we seem to be

taken back to the days of _Gorboduc_ rather than to the year of

Marlowe's _Edward the Second_. Save in two quite uncalled-for humorous

episodes, the language used maintains a monotonous level of stateliness

or emotion. The plot is eminently suited for indignant and defiant

speeches, but Lodge's poetic inspiration has not the wings to bear him

much above the 'middle flight'. The following passage fairly illustrates

his style.

[CORNELIA _and_ FULVIA, _expecting close imprisonment, if not

death, are set at liberty._]

_Marius._ Virtue, sweet ladies, is of more regard

In Marius' mind, where honour is enthron'd,

Than Rome or rule of Roman empery.

[_Here he puts chains about their necks._]

The bands, that should combine your snow-white wrists,

Are these which shall adorn your milk-white necks.

The private cells, where you shall end your lives,

Is Italy, is Europe--nay, the world.

Th' Euxinian Sea, the fierce Sicilian Gulf,

The river Ganges and Hydaspes' stream

Shall level lie, and smooth as crystal ice,

While Fulvia and Cornelia pass thereon.

The soldiers, that should guard you to your deaths,

Shall be five thousand gallant youths of Rome,

In purple robes cross-barr'd with pales of gold,

Mounted on warlike coursers for the field,

Fet[63] from the mountain-tops of Corsica,

Or bred in hills of bright Sardinia,

Who shall conduct and bring you to your lord.

Ay, unto Sylla, ladies, shall you go,

And tell him Marius holds within his hands

Honour for ladies, for ladies rich reward;

But as for Sylla and for his compeers,

Who dare 'gainst Marius vaunt their golden crests,

Tell him for them old Marius holds revenge,

And in his hands both triumphs life and death.

* * * * *

Only two plays, _The Spanish Tragedy_ (before 1588) and _Cornelia_

(printed 1594), are definitely known to have been written by Thomas Kyd.

There are two others, however, which are commonly attributed to him,

_Jeronimo_ and _Soliman and Perseda_. _The Spanish Tragedy_ continues

the story of _Jeronimo_ with so much care in the perpetuation of each

character--Villuppo and Pedringano are examples--that it is natural to

suppose them both by the same author; in which case 1587 may be guessed

as the date of the latter. Different but strong internal evidence points

to Kyd's authorship of _Soliman and Perseda_. It has many features

corresponding to those found in _The Spanish Tragedy_. The Chorus of

Love, Fortune and Death, in its attitude to the play, closely resembles

that of the Ghost and Revenge. Most of the characters come to a violent

end, and in each play the list of deaths is carefully enumerated by the

triumphant spirit, Death or the Ghost. Then there are similarities of

lines and phrases and remarkable identity in certain tricks of style,

notably in the love of repetition and in a peculiar form of reasoning

after the fashion of a sorites.--Curiously enough, these same tricks are

found, in equally emphatic form, in _Locrine_, an anonymous play of

somewhat later date.--We may compare, for example, the two following

extracts:

(1)

_Erastus._ No, no; my hope full long ago was lost,

And Rhodes itself is lost, or else destroy'd:

If not destroy'd, yet bound and captivate;

If captivate, then forc'd from holy faith;

If forc'd from faith, for ever miserable:

For what is misery but want of God?

And God is lost if faith be overthrown.

(_Soliman and Perseda_, Act IV.)

(2)

_Balthazar._ First, in his hand he brandished a sword,

And with that sword he fiercely waged war,

And in that war he gave me dangerous wounds,

And by those wounds he forced me to yield,

And by my yielding I became his slave.

(_The Spanish Tragedy_, Act II.)

Finally, the play acted at the close of _The Spanish Tragedy_ comprises

the main characters and general drift (with marked differences) of the

plot of _Soliman and Perseda_. This, in itself no proof of authorship,

provides us with a clue to date. It is not likely that the author

deliberately altered the plot of a well-known play. Yet we know from Ben

Jonson that Kyd's tragedies were very popular. We shall be more safe in

concluding that the wide popularity of that scene in _The Spanish

Tragedy_ led him to extend the minor play to the proportions of a

complete drama, making such changes as would then be most suitable to a

larger groundwork. This view is supported by the decreased use of

rhyme, intermingled with the blank verse, in _Soliman and Perseda_. The

play, then, may be approximately dated 1588-90.

It would be as well to dismiss _Cornelia_ at once. Wholly Senecan and

dull, it is merely a translation of a French play of the same name by

Garnier. As such it has no interest for us here.

_Jeronimo_ derives its name from one of the principal characters, but it

is really the tragedy of Andrea. This nobleman's appointment as

ambassador from Spain to Portugal arouses the jealous enmity of the Duke

of Castile's son, Lorenzo: it is also the means of his introduction to

the man who is to bring about his death at the end, Prince Balthezar of

Portugal. The catastrophe, therefore, may be said to start from that

point. Lorenzo's intrigues begin at once. Casting around for some one

apt for villainous deeds, he bethinks him of Lazarotto,

A melancholy, discontented courtier,

Whose famished jaws look like the chap of death;

Upon whose eyebrows hangs damnation;

Whose hands are washed in rape and murders bold.

Him he suborns to murder Andrea on his return. At the same time he

schemes a secret stab at the love that exists between his own sister,

Bell'-Imperia, and Andrea. To this end he arranges that a rival lover,

Alcario, shall have access to her in the disguise of the absent

nobleman, and in order to avert her suspicions he has it noised about

the Court that Andrea is about to return. Fortunately it is just here

that his plans conflict. Lazarotto, hearing the false rumour, loiters

about in expectation of seeing Andrea, and, perceiving the disguised

Alcario exchanging affectionate greetings with Bell'-Imperia, has no

doubt of his man. Alcario falls. But Lorenzo is on the spot to cover up

his traces. Promising Lazarotto a certain pardon, he leads the

unsuspecting villain into foolhardy lies until sentence of instant

execution is passed, when a check upon his further speech is immediately

applied and his tongue silenced for ever. Meanwhile, Andrea has been

carrying a bold front in Portugal, passing swiftly from the tactful

speech of diplomacy to the fierce language of defiance. Herein he

arouses the hot spirit of Balthezar. Word leaps to word, challenge to

challenge. Each recognizes the honour and valiancy of the other, and it

is arranged that they shall seek each other out in battle, to settle

their rivalry by single combat. Andrea returns to Spain. War follows.

Twice Andrea and Balthezar meet. On the first occasion Andrea is saved

only by the intervention of a gallant youth, his devoted friend,

Horatio. On the second occasion he overthrows his opponent but, in the

moment of victory, is slain by the pikes of Portuguese soldiery. Horatio

arrives on the scene in time to witness Balthezar's exultation over the

corpse. Taking the combat upon himself he forces the prince to the

ground, but is robbed of the full glory of such a capture by the

baseness of Lorenzo, who darts in and himself receives Balthezar's

surrendered sword. Victory ultimately rests with the Spaniards. Andrea's

body is buried with full military honours, his Ghost personally

attending, with Revenge, to indicate to Horatio, by gestures, his

sensibility of his friend's kindness. The epilogue is spoken by

Horatio's father, Jeronimo, even as the opening lines of the play are

concerned with his promotion to the high office of marshal.

The weak point of the play lies in the second half of the plot; Andrea's

death, lamentable as a catastrophe, achieves nothing, except, perhaps,

the satisfaction of a hidden destiny. Those purposes which openly aim at

his death are left incomplete. Lorenzo's deep schemes, from which much

is expected, come to nothing; his revenge is certainly not glutted.

Balthezar seeks to gain honour in victory, but is robbed of it by

Horatio and his own soldiers. Then, too, the interest excited by

Lorenzo's hatred leads us into something like a blind alley; Andrea

escapes and the whole scene is transferred to the battle-field.

Nevertheless, the play offers compensations. It provides one or two

striking scenes, possibly the best being that in which we watch, in

suspense, the mutual destruction of Lorenzo's plans. The verse, again,

has many fine lines and vigorous passages. On the whole it is perhaps

less studied, more natural and animated than Kyd's later verse. Rhyme is

used freely, yet without forcing itself upon our notice with leaden

pauses. From among many quotable passages the following may be selected

for their energy.

(1)

[_The Portuguese Court._ ANDREA _and_ BALTHEZAR _exchange

defiance._]

_Andrea._ Prince Balthezar, shall's meet?

_Balthezar._ Meet, Don Andrea? yes, in the battle's bowels;

Here is my gage, a never-failing pawn;

'Twill keep his day, his hour, nay minute, 'twill.

_Andrea._ Then thine and this, possess one quality.

_Balthezar._ O, let them kiss!

Did I not understand thee noble, valiant,

And worthy my sword's society with thee,

For all Spain's wealth I'd not grasp hands.

Meet Don Andrea? I tell thee, noble spirit,

I'd wade up to the knees in blood, I'd make

A bridge of Spanish carcases, to single thee

Out of the gasping army.

_Andrea._ Woot thou, prince?

Why, even for that I love [thee].

_Balthezar._ Tut, love me, man, when we have drunk

Hot blood together; wounds will tie

An everlasting settled amity,

And so shall thine.

(2)

[_On the battle-field_ ANDREA _searches for_ BALTHEZAR.]

_Andrea._ --Prince Balthezar!

Portugal's valiant heir!

The glory of our foe, the heart of courage,

The very soul of true nobility,

I call thee by thy right name: answer me!

Go, captain, pass the left wing squadron; hie:

Mingle yourself again amidst the army;

Pray, sweat to find him out.-- [_Exit_ Captain.]

This place I'll keep.

Now wounds are wide, and blood is very deep;

'Tis now about the heavy tread of battle;

Soldiers drop down as thick as if death mowed them;

As scythe-men trim the long-haired ruffian fields,

So fast they fall, so fast to fate life yields.

_Jeronimo_ has given us a really notable villain. From the first this

character gains and holds our attention by the intellectuality of his

wickedness. He is no common stabber, nor the kind of wretch who murders

for amusement. Jealousy, the darkest and most potent of motives, lies

behind his hate. He would have Andrea dead. But his position as the Duke

of Castile's son forbids the notion of staining his own hands in blood.

A hired creature must be his tool, whose secrecy may be secured either

by bribery or death, preferably by death. A double plot, too, must be

laid, so that, if one part fails, the other may bring success. So we

watch the net being spread around the feet of the unwary victim, and

hold our breath as the critical moment approaches when a chance

recognition will decide everything. Undoubtedly the author has achieved

a genuine triumph in all this. Some of us may see the germ of his

villain in Edwards's Carisophus; there is the same element of craft and

double-dealing, of laying unseen snares for the innocent. But it is no

more than the germ. The advance beyond the earlier sketch is immense.

Lazarotto, the perfect instrument for crime, has not Lorenzo's position,

wealth or motive; nevertheless a family likeness exists between the two.

Lazarotto's cynicism is of an intellectual order, as is his ready lying

to avert suspicion from his master. Perhaps the most shuddering moment

of the play is when he leans carelessly against the wall, waiting for

his victim, 'like a court-hound that licks fat trenchers clean.' We fear

and loathe him for the callous brutality of that simile and for that

careless posture. Yet even he cannot fathom the blackness of Lorenzo's

soul, and falls a prey to a greater treachery than his own. This cunning

removal of a lesser villain by a greater is repeated in _The Spanish

Tragedy_ and is closely imitated by Marston in _Antonio's Revenge_ (or

_The Second Part of Antonio and Mellida_). Lorenzo and Lazarotto

together are the first of a famous line of stage-villains. Amongst their

celebrated descendants may be named Tourneur's D'Amville and Borachio,

Webster's Ferdinand and Bosola, and the already referred-to Piero and

Strotzo of Marston.

All the other characters, except one, reproduce familiar types of brave

soldiers and proud monarchs. Jeronimo himself, however, stands apart.

Though completely overshadowed in our memory by his terrible development

in the next play, he has here a certain independent interest on account

of age and humour. True, he announces that he is just fifty, which is no

great age. But he is old, as Lear is old; he is called the father of his

kingdom. Vague, fleeting yet recurrent is the resemblance between him

and Polonius. Tradition bids us regard Polonius as an intentionally

humorous creation. Jeronimo's humour is of the same family. We feel sure

that this newly appointed Marshal of Spain pottered about the Court,

wagging his beard sagaciously over the unwisdom of youth, his mind full

of responsibility, his heart of courage, but his tongue letting fall,

every now and then, simple half-foolish sayings which betrayed the

approach of dotage. He is very short, and exhibits a childish vanity in

constantly referring to his shortness. 'As short my body, short shall be

my stay.' 'My mind's a giant, though my bulk be small.' By such quaint

speeches does he excite our smiles. And yet, by a very human touch, he

is represented as furiously resenting any slighting allusion, by any one

else, to his stature. In the _pourparlers_ before battle Prince

Balthezar grows impertinent. But we will quote the lines, and so take

leave of Jeronimo.

[_The Portuguese have already made a demonstration, with drums and

colours._]

_Jeronimo._ What, are you braving us before we come!

We'll be as shrill as you. Strike 'larum, drum!

[_They sound a flourish on both sides._]

_Balthezar._ Thou inch of Spain!

Thou man, from thy hose downward scarce so much!

Thou very little longer than thy beard!

Speak not such big words; they'll throw thee down,

Little Jeronimo! words greater than thyself!

It must not [be].

_Jeronimo._ And thou long thing of Portugal, why not?

Thou, that art full as tall

As an English gallows, upper beam and all;

Devourer of apparel, thou huge swallower,

My hose will scarce make thee a standing collar.

What! have I almost quited you?

_Andrea._ Have done, impatient marshal.

_The Spanish Tragedy_ continues the story of _Jeronimo_. Balthazar (the

spelling has changed) is brought back to Spain, the joint captive of

Horatio and Lorenzo: to the former, however, is allotted the ransom,

while to the latter falls the privilege of guarding the prisoner in

honourable captivity. The Portuguese prince now falls in love with

Bell'-Imperia, and has her brother's full consent to the match. But that

lady has already transferred her affections to young Horatio. Lorenzo

encourages Balthazar to solve the difficulty by the young man's death.

While Bell'-Imperia and Horatio are making love together by night in a

garden-bower, Lorenzo, Balthazar and two servants (Serberine and

Pedringano) surprise them and hang Horatio to a tree beside the

entrance. They then decamp with the lady, whom they forthwith shut up

closely in her room at home. Old Hieronimo (formerly Jeronimo), alarmed

by the outcry, rushes into the garden, closely followed by his wife

Isabella. The body is instantly cut down, but life is extinct.--The rest

of the play, from the beginning of the third act, is concerned with

Hieronimo's revenge. It is a terrible story. His first information as to

the names of the murderers reaches him in a message, written in blood,

from Bell'-Imperia. This, however, he fears as a trap, and attempts to

corroborate it from the girl's own lips. Unfortunately he only succeeds

in awakening the suspicions of Lorenzo, who, to make the secret surer,

bribes Pedringano to murder Serberine, at the same time arranging for

watchmen to arrest Pedringano. Balthazar is drawn into the matter that

he may press forward the execution of Serberine's murderer, while

Lorenzo poses to the wretch as his friend with promises of pardon.

Pedringano consequently is beguiled to death. Lorenzo is now at ease,

and enlarges his sister's liberty. The suggestion of a political

marriage between her and Balthazar is warmly supported by the king.

Alone among the courtiers Hieronimo is plunged in unabated grief,

uncertain where to seek revenge. By good fortune Pedringano, before his

trial, wrote a confession, which the hangman finds and delivers to the

Marshal. This corroborates the statement of Bell'-Imperia. Yet it brings

small comfort, as it seems impossible to strike so high as at Lorenzo

and Balthazar. In his despair Hieronimo contemplates suicide, until he

remembers that the act would leave the murderers unpunished. He cries

aloud before the king for justice, digs frantically into the earth with

his dagger in mad excess of misery, then hurries away without telling

his wrong. He haunts his garden at night-time; and in the silence of

that darkness at last hits upon a scheme: under the appearance of

quietness and simplicity he will return to Lorenzo's society, awaiting

his time to strike. As if to soothe him with the thought that his griefs

are shared by others, chance brings before him one, Bazulto, an old man

also bereaved of his son by murder. The reminder, however, is too sharp:

Hieronimo becomes temporarily mad, mistaking Bazulto for Horatio and

uttering pathetic laments over the change that has passed over his

youthful beauty.

Sweet boy, how art thou chang'd in death's black shade!

Had Proserpine no pity on thy youth,

But suffer'd thy fair crimson-colour'd spring

With withered winter to be blasted thus?

Horatio, thou art older than thy father.

When the fit passes, he and Bazulto go off together, one in their

misery. But the guileful scheme is not forgotten. Some one has observed

the strained relations between the Marshal and Lorenzo: Lorenzo's father

insists on a reconciliation, and Hieronimo cordially agrees. Even when

the final ratification is given to Bell'-Imperia's marriage with

Balthazar, Hieronimo is all smiles and acquiescence. He is willing to

heighten the festivities with a play. Lorenzo, Balthazar, Bell'-Imperia

and himself are to be the actors, though two of them demur at first at

the choice of a tragedy. Still Lorenzo suspects no harm, for he is not

present at the interview between the girl and the old man, in which she

denounces his apparently weakening thirst for revenge, only to learn the

secret of that gentle exterior. Unhappily, the delay of justice has

preyed too grievously upon the mind of Isabella. There have been moments

when she ran frantic. In a final throe of madness, having hacked down

the fatal tree, she thrusts the knife into her own breast. The great day

comes, and before the Viceroy of Portugal (father of Balthazar), the

Spanish king, the Duke of Castile, and their train, Hieronimo's tragedy

is acted. Real daggers, however, have been substituted for wooden ones.

As the play proceeds, Bell'-Imperia kills Balthazar and herself, while

Hieronimo slays Lorenzo. The only one left alive, Hieronimo, now

explains the terrible realism behind all this seeming. Castile and the

Viceroy learn that their children are dead, two of them killed to

revenge the murder of Horatio. The drawing aside of the curtain at the

back of the stage reveals that youth's corpse, avenged at last. Horrible

scenes follow, Hieronimo being prevented from hanging himself as he

intended. But, desperate, he bites out his tongue, stabs the Duke of

Castile, and succeeds in killing himself. The Ghost of Andrea and

Revenge, who opened the play and served as chorus to three previous

acts, now close the play in triumph.

We may omit from our consideration the additions to the original

supplied by Ben Jonson or some other dramatist of genius. These include

the famous 'Painter' episode, part of the scene where Hieronimo finds

his son's body hanging to a tree, his wonderful discourse to the 'two

Portingals' on the nature of a son, and a section of the last scene. The

strange hand is easily recognizable in the rugged irregularity and

forcefulness of the lines. Attributable to it is the major portion of

Hieronimo's madness, which accordingly occupies but a small space in our

outline of the play. Structurally, the plot gains nothing by the

additions; indeed, the 'Painter' episode duplicates and thereby weakens

the effect of the conversation between Hieronimo and Bazulto.

Nevertheless we will venture to quote a few lines from the speech to the

Portingals, inasmuch as they aptly describe the underlying principle of

the tragedy:

Well, heaven is heaven still!

And there is Nemesis and furies,

And things call'd whips;

And they sometimes do meet with murderers:

They do not always escape, that's some comfort.

Ay, ay, ay, and then time steals on, and steals, and steals,

Till violence leaps forth, like thunder, wrapp'd

In a ball of fire,

And so doth bring confusion to them all.

From the hour of Horatio's dastardly murder we wait for Nemesis to fall

upon the murderers. We see Lorenzo fortifying himself against detection;

we watch, while 'time steals on, and steals, and steals'; Isabella,

tired of waiting, kills herself; Hieronimo himself threatens to fail us,

so terrible are his sufferings; the crime seems forgotten by those who

committed it; its reward is about to drop into Balthazar's hands; and

then, at last, 'violence leaps forth, like thunder, ... and so doth

bring confusion to them all'.

When we remember the date, as early as, or earlier than, Marlowe's

_Doctor Faustus_, we may be excused if we call _The Spanish Tragedy_ a

triumph of dramatic genius. Fully to appreciate its greatness we have

only to compare the plot with that of any preceding tragedy, or of any

play by Lyly, Greene, or Peele. In none of them shall we find anything

approaching the masterful grip upon its spectators, the appeal to their

sympathies, the alternation of fear and hope, the skilful subordination

of many incidents to one purpose, the absolute rightness yet horror of

the conclusion (the inset play), of Kyd's tragedy. It will repay us to

examine some of the details of its workmanship.

The crisis begins, for the first time, to gravitate towards the centre

of the play. In Classical Drama tragedies open with the crisis. English

tragedies of the Senecan type tend to adopt the same practice:

_Gorboduc_ begins with Videna's report of the proposal to divide the

kingdom; _The Misfortunes of Arthur_ begins with the king's return,

referred to as imminent. Even the first scene of _Doctor Faustus_

presents Faustus rejecting divinity for magic, while Mephistophilis

enters in the third scene. By delaying the crisis, however, two great

advantages are secured: the necessity of the catastrophe is more fully

recognized by the spectators; and their capacity for emotion is not

strained to the point of weariness before the last great scene is

reached. Yet the sense of tragedy must not be entirely absent from the

first part; otherwise the gravity of the crisis will come with too great

a shock. Kyd's purpose in introducing the Villuppo incident is here

discovered. He uses it with much skill as a counterbalance to the aspect

of the main plot. Thus, immediately after the apparent satisfaction of

the rival claims of Horatio and Lorenzo, he places the unsuspected

treachery of Villuppo to Alexandro, as if to warn us not to judge

merely from the surface: but when the wickedness of Lorenzo attains its

blackest moment in the murder of Horatio, he supplies a ray of hope by

the presentment of Villuppo's punishment, to let us know that justice

still reigns in the world. Further, the intense (though needless) grief

of the Viceroy over the supposed death of his son prepares us for the

agony of Hieronimo, while the narrow escape of the innocent Alexandro

excites our repugnance for hasty revenge and makes us sympathetically

tolerant of Hieronimo's equally extreme caution in ascertaining that

Lorenzo really is the murderer. We could wish, perhaps, that Kyd had

found material for these two scenes in the Spanish Court: the transition

to the Portuguese palace is a far and sudden flight. But his recognition

of the artistic need of such scenes is notable and sound.

It is worth while to observe the close interweaving, the subtle irony

and contrasts, the perfect harmony of the details. We must review them

quite briefly. To illustrate the first, Pedringano's letter is not the

'wonderful discovery' that usually saves lost situations in weak novels:

it has been referred to by him as already written before the Page takes

Lorenzo's message, and its incriminating contents have been clearly

indicated; nothing, moreover, could be more in order than that it should

be found on him by the hangman and delivered to the judge who passed

sentence. Or again, the success of Hieronimo's masque in the first act

supplies the reason for Balthazar's request for a play at his wedding;

that last tragedy is not suggested fortuitously to accommodate some

previous scheme of Hieronimo's. The powerful nature of the meeting

between Hieronimo and Bazulto was recognized by that other writer who

added the 'Painter' episode in close imitation of it. But almost as

bitter in its irony is the position of Hieronimo as judge, executing

justice upon Serberine's murderer while his own son's murderers go scot

free. Grimly ironical, too, is Castile's satisfaction in the

reconciliation of Lorenzo and the Marshal, and grimmer and more ironical

still the request for the fatal play by Lorenzo and Balthazar

themselves, who of all men should most have shrunk from it. The most

critical element in the general harmony of the play is the character of

Bell'-Imperia. Kyd's women are his weak point, and this heroine is no

brilliant exception. We certainly do not fall in love with her. But his

sense of what is needed for the right tragic effect carries him through

successfully in essential matters. Were Bell'-Imperia weak, irresolute,

had she the feeble constancy of Massinger's or Heywood's famous

heroines, there would be a wrecking flaw in the accumulated, resistless

demand for revenge. As it is, her love for Horatio is passionate (though

lacking delicacy), her responses to Balthazar's advances are cold, and

her reproachful words to Hieronimo, for his delay in striking, proclaim

her entirely at one with him in his final action. The part played by

Isabella is also subordinated to the total effect. It may be questioned

whether her madness does not weaken by exaggeration the impression made

by Hieronimo's frenzy; but it must be remembered that her part was

provided before the additional mad scenes, the work of the later hand,

were included in the play. Kyd deliberately chose that her madness

should precede and prepare us for the madness of Hieronimo, and it must

be admitted that the interpolator's departure from this order has little

to be said in its favour. As the weaker character, Isabella should be

the first to collapse. Her frantic death, just before the 'play',

emphasizes the imperative necessity that the long postponement of

justice should be ended at last. With never failing watchfulness of his

audience Kyd softens the tension directly afterwards with a few light

touches on the staging and disguises required for the forthcoming

performance. Lastly, the choice of a court tragedy as the instrument of

Hieronimo's revenge is admirable alike for its naturalness and for

dramatic effect as a flashlight re-illumination of Lorenzo's and

Balthazar's crime in all its horror, in the very hour of their

punishment. Lorenzo, under the figure of Erastus, is forced to occupy

the position once held by Horatio; Hieronimo, for the time being,

becomes a second Lorenzo, abettor to the treacherous guest; thus Lorenzo

falls by the same fate that he visited upon Horatio. Balthazar plays his

own part under a new name; he is still the stranger basely seeking the

love given to another; but this time he meets the reward due to

treachery, slain by the hand of Bell'-Imperia.--The death of Hieronimo,

badly mismanaged, is the only real blot upon the artistry of the play.

It must be passed over with a sigh of regret, in the same way as we

accept, as inexplicable, the 'Out, vile jelly!' of _King Lear_. To seize

upon it as typical of the nature of the tragedy would be very unfair.

Hieronimo is the great character of the play. Most of the others are

mere continuations, serviceable enough but without improvement, of those

in _Jeronimo_, Pedringano being a second edition of Lazarotto. But from

the outline sufficient may be gathered to make unnecessary a long

analysis of the author's new and greatest creation. We see in it

originality of conception; we are touched by its intense humanness and

by its inherent simplicity; but we are startled by its change, its

growth, under the influence of circumstances, to a certain subtle

complexity. All are great qualities, but the last is the greatest.

Growth, the reaction of events upon character--not the easily portrayed

action of character upon events--are the marks by which we recognize the

work of the master-artists in characterization. We can guess at the

tragic intensity of human sorrow from the difference between the

simple-minded little Marshal who acts as Master of the Revels in

arranging a 'show' and illustrates his reason for preferring Horatio's

claim to be Balthazar's captor by quaint parallels from some old fable,

and the arch-deceiver who can converse easily with the Duke of Castile

as he fixes up the curtain that is to conceal Horatio's corpse and be

the background to the murder of the duke's only son and daughter.

Hieronimo's smallest claim to greatness, yet a considerable one, is the

fact that he revealed to playwrights the strength and horror of madness

on the stage. Of the extent to which Shakespeare made use of this

character and certain scenes a reminder may be added. In _Hamlet_ is

found madness, assumed simplicity, delay in action, the invisible

influence of the supernatural, and sacrifice of the avenger's life in

the attainment of revenge, besides the ordinarily remembered adoption of

an inset play. _King Lear_, in the scene between the king and Edgar on

the heath, echoes the scene between Hieronimo and Bazulto.

Humour is absent from the play, unless we extend the courtesy of that

name to the grim hoax (explained to us by a chuckling page, who

thoroughly enjoys his part in it) practised by Lorenzo upon Pedringano,

and the consequently mocking spirit of jest which pervades the hall of

judgment during the misguided wretch's trial. The pert confidence of the

prisoner, at the foot of the gallows, in the saving contents of a

certain box, which the audience knows to be empty, is dramatic irony in

its bitterest form.

Hard words have been written about the horrible scenes in the play, as

though it were a huddled-up bundle of bloodshed and ghosts. Such a

conception is far from the truth. Horror is an element in almost all

powerful tragedies; it is hardly to be separated from any unexpected or

violent death. We reject it as monstrous only when its cause is the

product of a vile and unnatural motive, or of a motive criminally

insufficient to explain the impulse. What is repulsive in _Arden of

Feversham_, and in such recognized 'Tragedies of Blood' as have

Tourneur, Marston and Webster for their authors, is the utter

callousness of the murderers, and their base aims, or disgusting lack of

any reasonable excuse for their crimes. When D'Amville pushes his

brother over the edge of the quarry, or Antonio stabs the child Julio,

or Bosola heaps torments upon the Duchess of Malfi, we turn away with

loathing because the deed is either cruelly undeserved or utterly

unwarranted by the gain expected from it. Alice Arden's murder of her

husband is mainly detestable because her ulterior motive is detestable.

Again, the ghosts which Marston and Chapman give us are absurd creatures

of 'too, too solid flesh', who will sit on the bed to talk comfortably

to one, draw the curtains when one wishes to sleep, or play the scout

and call out in warning whenever danger threatens. Kyd does not serve up

crime and the supernatural world thus. He shows us terrible things, it

is true. But the causes are to be found deep down in the primary

impulses of man, in jealousy, in fear, in despair, in blood-revenge.

These impulses are not vile; our moral code does not cry out against

them as it does against lust, greed, and motiveless cruelty. When we

rise from the play it is not with a sense that we have moved amongst

base creatures. Lorenzo repels us; but it is Hieronimo who dominates the

stage, filling us with pity for his wrongs and weakness. The

supernatural remains outside nature, crude, as all stage

representations of it must be, but unobtrusive (and, in the prologue,

at least, thoroughly dignified), serving a useful purpose in keeping

before us the imminence of Nemesis biding its appointed hour. It is not

easy to suggest how better an insistence upon this lofty _motif_ could

have been maintained.

If we now revert to our former statement of the essential elements of a

successful tragedy we find that each has been included and lifted to a

high level in Kyd's masterpiece. The catastrophe is not only

overwhelming but greatly just. The figure of Hieronimo has set a new

standard in characterization. Scene after scene stamps itself on our

memory. And the procrastinating evolution of the plot keeps us in fear,

in hope, in uncertainty to the last. If this estimate of the greatness

of the play seems exaggerated, we may fairly ask what other tragedy,

before its date, combines all four qualities in the same degree of

excellence. _Doctor Faustus_ and _The Jew of Malta_ contain far more

wonderful verse, and the former holds within it grander material for

tragedy, but as an example of tragic craftmanship _The Spanish Tragedy_

is inferior to neither. It can be shown that both suffer very seriously

from the neglect of one or more of the four essentials which we have

named.

It is only fair to the reader to add that entirely opposite views to

those set forth above have been expressed by other writers. Perhaps the

most slashing criticism of the play is that by Mr. Courthope.[64]

It remains to illustrate Kyd's verse. In _The Spanish Tragedy_ it still

clings to the occasional use of rhyme, as in _Jeronimo_. Moreover it is

becoming, if anything, more restrained, less spontaneously natural. The

weight of tragedy seems to oppress the poetic inspiration, so that it

rarely ventures outside the limits of melancholy dignity or regulated

passion. Kyd's formalism is, unfortunately for him, magnified by its

contrast with the superb freedom of the interpolated passages. If we

resolutely shut our eyes to these patches of fierce irregularity, we

shall be better able to criticize the author's own work by the standard

of his contemporaries. The uncertainty of priority in time encourages a

comparison between Kyd and Marlowe. It is fairly clear that the former

was not much influenced by the latter, or he would have caught the taint

of rant and bombast which infected Greene and Peele. If, then, Kyd's

blank verse is an original development of the verse of _Gorboduc_ and

other Senecan plays, and if he is the author of _Jeronimo_--the verse of

which, as may have been seen from the quotations offered, is very much

freer than that of _The Spanish Tragedy_--he must share some of the

honour accorded to Marlowe as the father of dramatic blank verse. The

two men are not on the same level as poets. Marlowe's muse soars

repeatedly to heights which Kyd's can only reach at rare moments.

Nevertheless, a comparison of Kyd's better passages with those of

Sackville and Hughes will demonstrate how much blank verse might have

owed to his creative spirit had not Marlowe arisen at the same time to

eclipse him by his greater genius. Isolated extracts offer a poor

criterion, but the following--to be read in conjunction with those

selected from _Jeronimo_ and _Soliman and Perseda_--will help the reader

to form at least an idea of Kyd's originality and ability:

(1)

[ISABELLA _rejects all medicine for her grief._]

_Isabella._ So that you say this herb will purge the eye,

And this the head. Ah, but none of them will purge the heart!

No, there's no medicine left for my disease,

Nor any physic to recure the dead. [_She runs lunatic._

Horatio! O, where's Horatio?

_Maid._ Good madam, affright not thus yourself

With outrage for your son Horatio;

He sleeps in quiet in the Elysian fields.

_Isabella._ Why, did I not give you gowns and goodly things?

Bought you a whistle and a whipstalk[65] too,

To be revenged on their villanies?

_Maid._ Madam, these humours do torment my soul.

_Isabella._ My soul, poor soul; thou talk'st of things--

Thou know'st not what: my soul hath silver wings,

That mount me up unto the highest heavens:

To heaven! ay, there sits my Horatio,

Back'd with a troop of fiery cherubims,

Dancing about his newly-healed wounds,

Singing sweet hymns, and chanting heavenly notes,

Rare harmony to greet his innocence,

That died, ay, died a mirror in our days.

But say, where shall I find the men, the murderers,

That slew Horatio? Whither shall I run

To find them out that murdered my son? [_Exeunt._

(2)

[HIERONIMO, _recovering his mental balance, perceives that_ BAZULTO

_is not his son._]

Ay, now I know thee, now thou nam'st thy son:

Thou art the lively image of my grief;

Within thy face my sorrows I may see:

Thy eyes are gumm'd with tears, thy cheeks are wan,

Thy forehead troubled, and thy muttering lips

Murmur sad words abruptly broken off;

By force of windy sighs thy spirit breathes;

And all this sorrow riseth for thy son.

And selfsame sorrow feel I for my son.

Come in, old man, thou shalt to Isabel;

Lean on my arm; I thee, thou me, shalt stay;

And thou and I, and she, will sing a song,

Three parts in one, but all of discords fram'd.--

Talk not of chords, but let us now be gone,

For with a cord Horatio was slain.

_Soliman and Perseda_ invites little further attention than that which

one scene and one character alone demand. Its sharp descent from the

tremendous force of _The Spanish Tragedy_ is, however, slightly redeemed

by the poetic warmth of its love passages. Love is the motive of the

plot. Apart from that it sins unforgivably against probability, good

taste, reason, and justice. Its reckless distribution of death is such

that every one of the fourteen named characters come to a violent end,

besides numerous nameless wretches referred to generically as witnesses

or executioners. Nor is any attempt made to show just cause for their

destruction. We could almost deny that the author of the previous

tragedy had any hand in this play, did we not know, on the authority of

his own signature, that the same author thought it worth his labour to

translate _Cornélie_ for the English stage. The fact was that dramatists

had not yet the courage always to place their own artistic inclinations

above the need of gratifying an unformed public taste, so that the same

man may be found composing plays of widely differing natures for,

presumably, different audiences.

The single character deserving mention is the boastful knight,

Basilisco, whose incredible vaunts and invariable preference for the

very freest of blank verse, in a play almost entirely exempt from

either, read like an intentional burlesque of _Tamburlaine_. If so, and

the suggestion is not ill-founded or improbable, it may be interpreted

as an emphatic rejection of the influence of Marlowe and as a claim, on

Kyd's part, to sole credit for his own form of tragedy and blank verse.

The only scene of conspicuous merit is that in which the Turkish

Emperor, Soliman, attempts to kill his fair captive, Perseda, for

rejecting his love, but is overcome by her beauty. It is quite short,

but is handled with power and embellished with touches of delicate

poetry. The best of it may be quoted here, together with a specimen of

the Basilisco burlesque.

(1)

[SOLIMAN'S BASHAW _brings to him the two fairest captives from

Rhodes._]

_Soliman._ This present pleaseth more than all the rest;

And, were their garments turn'd from black to white,

I should have deem'd them Juno's goodly swans,

Or Venus' milkwhite doves, so mild they are,

And so adorn'd with beauty's miracle.

Here, Brusor, this kind turtle shall be thine;

Take her, and use her at thy pleasure.

But this kind turtle is for Soliman,

That her captivity may turn to bliss.

Fair looks, resembling Phoebus' radiant beams;

Smooth forehead, like the table of high Jove;

Small pencill'd eyebrows, like two glorious rainbows;

Quick lamplike eyes, like heav'n's two brightest orbs;

Lips of pure coral, breathing ambrosy;

Cheeks, where the rose and lily are in combat;

Neck whiter than the snowy Apennines:

A sweeter creature nature never made;

Love never tainted Soliman till now.

. . . . . . . . .

[PERSEDA, _however, will not yield to his amorous proposals._]

_Soliman._ Then kneel thee down,

And at my hands receive the stroke of death,

Doom'd to thyself by thine own wilfulness.

_Perseda._ Strike, strike; thy words pierce deeper than thy blows.

_Soliman._ Brusor, hide her; for her looks withhold me.

[_Then_ BRUSOR _hides her with a veil._]

O Brusor, thou hast not hid her lips;

For there sits Venus with Cupid on her knee,

And all the graces smiling round about her,

So craving pardon, that I cannot strike.

_Brusor._ Her face is cover'd over quite, my lord.

_Soliman._ Why, so. O Brusor, seest thou not

Her milkwhite neck, that alabaster tower?

'Twill break the edge of my keen scimitar,

And pieces, flying back, will wound myself.

_Brusor._ Now she is all covered, my lord.

_Soliman._ Why, now at last she dies.

_Perseda._ O Christ, receive my soul!

_Soliman._ Hark, Brusor; she calls on Christ:

I will not send her to him. Her words are music,

The selfsame music that in ancient days

Brought Alexander from war to banqueting,

And made him fall from skirmishing to kissing.

No, my dear love would not let me kill thee,

Though majesty would turn desire to wrath:

There lies my sword, humbled at thy feet;

And I myself, that govern many kings,

Entreat a pardon for my rash misdeed.

(2)

[BASILISCO _is asked to declare his country and past

achievements._]

_Basilisco_. Sooth to say, the earth is my country,

As the air to the fowl or the marine moisture

To the red-gill'd fish. I repute myself no coward,

For humility shall mount; I keep no table

To character my fore passed conflicts.

As I remember, there happened a sore drought

In some part of Belgia, that the juicy grass

Was sear'd with the Sun-God's element.

I held it policy to put the men-children

Of that climate to the sword,

That the mother's tears might relieve the parched earth:

The men died, the women wept, and the grass grew;

Else had my Friesland horse perished,

Whose loss would have more grieved me

Than the ruin of that whole country.

* * * * *

Christopher Marlowe, the greatest of all the University Wits, has been

reserved to the last because in his work we rise nearest to the

excellence of Shakespearian drama. By the inexhaustible force of his

poetic genius he created literature for all time. We read the plays of

his contemporaries chiefly for their antiquarian interest; we are

pleased to discover in them the first beginnings of many features

popular in later productions; one or two appeal to us by their own

beauty or strength, but the majority are remembered only for their

relationship to greater plays. This is not so with Marlowe's works.

Having once been so fortunate as to have had our attention directed to

them, we return again and again for the sheer joy of reading his

glorious outbursts of poetry, of being thrilled with the intensity of

his greater scenes.

Marlowe placed upon the stage men who live intensely, terrible men, for

the most part, endued with surpassing power for good or evil. Around

them he grouped hostile, enchaining circumstances, which they confront

fearlessly and, for a time perhaps, master, until the hour comes when

they can no longer conquer. Their lips he touched with a live coal from

the altar of his muse, so that their words fire the heart with their

flaming zeal or sear it with their despair. In the dramas of Peele we

lamented the weakness of his characters, his inability to provide a

dominant central figure for his action; we also saw how something of the

same weakness softened his verse almost to effeminacy. Greene drew the

outline of his characters more strongly. But Marlowe alone possessed

the power, in its fullest degree, of projecting himself into his chief

character, of filling it with his own driving force, his own boundless

imagination, his own consuming passion and profound capacity for gloomy

emotion. Each of his first three plays--counting the two parts of

_Tamburlaine_ as one play--is wholly given up to the presentment of one

man; his tongue speaks on nearly every page, his purpose is the

mainspring of almost every action; by mere bulk he fills our mental view

as we read, and by the fervour, the poetry of his language, he burns the

impression of himself upon our memory. It is not by what they do that we

remember Marlowe's heroes or villains. Their deeds probably fade into

indistinctness. Few of us quite remember what were Tamburlaine's

conquests, or Faustus's wonder-workings, or Barabas's crimes. But we

know that if we would recall a mighty conqueror our recollections will

revive the image of the Scythian shepherd; if we would picture a soul

delivered over to the torments of the lost there will rush back upon us

that terrible outcry of Faustus when the fatal hour is come; if we would

imagine the feelings of one for whom wealth is the joy, the meaning, the

whole of life, we shall recite one of the speeches of Barabas.

Marlowe masters us by his poetry, and is lifted by it above his fellows,

reaching to the pedestal on which Shakespeare stands alone. It is an

astonishing thing to pass from the dramas which occupied our attention

in the previous chapter to one of Marlowe's, and then realize that his

were written first. Whereas before it was a matter of difficulty to find

passages beautiful enough to quote, it now becomes a problem to select

the best. It has been said, indeed, that he is too poetical for a

dramatist, but a very little consideration of the plays of Shakespeare

will tell us how much the greatest dramatic productions owe to poetry.

When, therefore, we say that Marlowe's greatness as a dramatist depends

on his poetry, that outside his poetry his best known work reveals

almost every kind of weakness, we have not denied his claim to be the

greatest of Shakespeare's predecessors. Into indifferent material poetry

can breathe that quickening flame without which the most dramatic

situations fail to satisfy. Marlowe had a supreme gift for creating

moments, sometimes extended to whole scenes; he had to learn, from

repeated failures, the art of creating plays.

Essentially a man of tragic temperament, if we may venture to peer

through the printed page to the author, Marlowe lacked the sense of

humour. This has been cast up against him as a serious weakness; but it

is possible that just here lies the strength of his contribution to

drama. His work in literature was to set a standard in the portrayal of

deep emotions, and it may have been as well that the first models

(_Doctor Faustus_ excepted) should not be weakened by apparent

inconsistencies.

The list of Marlowe's dramas is as follows: The First and Second Parts

of _Tamburlaine_ (possibly before 1587), _Doctor Faustus_ (1588), _The

Jew of Malta_ (? 1588-90), _The Massacre at Paris_ (about 1590), _Edward

the Second_ (about 1590), _Dido, Queen of Carthage_ (printed 1549).

Fortunately for the reader, he can now obtain a volume containing all

these plays in one of the cheap modern editions of the English classics.

There will, therefore, be no attempt here to provide the details of

plots with which every student of drama is doubtless well acquainted. A

limited number of quotations, however, are supplied for the pleasure of

the reader.

The First and Second Parts of _Tamburlaine the Great_ may be discussed

together, although they did not appear together, the second owing its

existence to the immediate success of the first. Nevertheless there is

such unbroken continuity in their representation of the career of the

hero, and their style is so uniform, that it will be more convenient to

refer to them conjointly under the one title. Reference has already been

made to this famous production in the early portion of our discussion of

Greene's work. The reader will recall what was said there of its

contents, its popularity and influence, and of the meaning of the term

Marlowesque, an adjective referring more directly to _Tamburlaine_ than

to any other of Marlowe's plays. It is in this play that our ears are

dinned almost beyond sufferance by the poet's 'high astounding terms',

that the hero most nearly 'with his uplifted forehead strikes the sky':

incredible victories are won, the vilest cruelties practised; vast

empires are shaken to their foundations, kings are overthrown and new

ones crowned as easily as the wish is expressed; everywhere pride calls

unto pride with the noise of its boastings. There is no plot, unless we

give that name to a succession of battles, pageants and camp scenes.

There is not the least attempt at characterization: in their glorious

moments Bajazeth, the Soldan of Egypt, Orcanes are indistinguishable

from the Scythian shepherd himself. The popularity of _Tamburlaine_ was

not won by fine touches, but by spectacular magnificence, by the pomp

and excitement of war, and by the thrills of responsive pride and

boastfulness awakened in the hearers by the convincing magniloquence of

the speeches. This was possibly the first appearance upon the public

stage of matured drama as opposed to the moralities and interludes.

Udall and Still wrote for school and college audiences; Sackville,

Edwards, Hughes and their compeers presented their plays at court; so

did Lyly; and it was there that _The Arraignment of Paris_ was acted.

But Marlowe, like Kyd, laid his work before a larger, more

unsophisticated audience, unrolling before its astonished gaze the full

sweep of a five act play, crowded with warriors, headlong in its changes

of fortune, and irresistible in its 'drum and trumpet' appeal to man's

fighting instincts. From men of humble birth, in that age of adventure

and romance, the victorious career of the Scythian shepherd won instant

applause; with him they too seemed to rise; they shared in his glory,

exulted with him in the chariot drawn by kings, forgave his savage

massacres, and echoed his vaunts.