HORACE MANN AND ANTIOCH COLLEGE
The cataclysm of the Civil War, in which as the preceding pages show
I had been involved, had shaken me in my old moorings. I found myself
not content in a quiet parish in the Connecticut Valley, and as I
fared forth was fortunate enough to meet a leader in a remarkable
personage. Horace Mann was indeed dead, but remained, as he still
remains, a power. His brilliant gifts and self-consecration made him,
first, a great educational path-breaker. From that he passed into
politics, exhibiting in Congress abilities of the highest. Like an
inconstant lover, however, he harked back to his old attachment, and
putting aside a fine preferment, the governorship of Massachusetts, it
was said, forsook his old home for the headship of Antioch College in
south-western Ohio. I shall not dispute here whether or not he chose
wisely; much less, how far a lame outcome at Antioch was due to his
human limitations, and how far to the inevitable conditions. He was a
potent and unselfish striver for the betterment of men, and his words
and example still remain an inspiration.
My father in these years was a trustee of Antioch College, and this
brought our household into touch with the illustrious figure of whom
all men spoke. My memory holds more than a film of him, rather a vivid
picture, his stately height dominating my boyish inches, as I stood
in his presence. He was spare to the point of being gaunt, every fibre
charged with a magnetism which caused a throb in the by-stander. Over
penetrating eyes hung a beetling brow, and his aggressive, resonant
voice commanded even in slight utterances. I recall him in a public
address. The newspapers were full of the Strassburg geese, which,
nails being driven through their web feet to hold them motionless,
were fed to develop exaggerated livers,--these for the epicures of
Paris. "For health and wholesome appetite," he exclaimed, "I counsel
you to eschew _les patés de foie gras_, but climb a mountain or
swing an axe." No great sentence in an exhortation to vigorous, manful
living. But the scornful staccato with which he rolled out the French,
and the ringing voice and gesture with which he accompanied his
exhortation, stamped it indelibly. From that day to this, if I have
felt a beguilement toward the flesh-pots, I still hear the stern tones
of Horace Mann. In general his eloquence was extraordinary, and I
suppose few Americans have possessed a power more marked for cutting,
bitter speech. His invective was masterly, and too often perhaps
merciless, and it was a weapon he was not slow to wield on occasions
large and small. In Congress he lashed deservedly low-minded policies
and misguided blatherskites, but his wrathful outpourings upon pupils
for some trivial offence were sometimes over-copious. There are Boston
schoolmasters, still living perhaps, who yet feel a smart from his
scourge. His personality was so incisive that probably few were in any
close or long contact with him without a good rasping now and then. My
father was the most amiable of men, yet even he did not escape. As an
Antioch trustee he was in charge of funds which were not to be applied
unless certain conditions were satisfied. Horace Mann demanded the
money, and it was withheld on occasions and a deluge of ire was poured
upon my poor father's head. It did not cause him to falter in his
conviction of Horace Mann's greatness and goodness. Nor has this
over-ready impetuosity ever caused the world to falter in its
reverence. He came bringing not peace but a sword, in all the spheres
in which he moved, and in Horace Mann's world it was a time for the
sword. He was a path-breaker in regions obstructed by mischievous
accumulations. There was need of his virile championship, and
none will say that there was ever in him undue thought of self or
indifference to the best humanity.
My father held fast to the sharp-cornered saint and prophet,
though somewhat excoriated in the association. He held fast to his
trusteeship of Antioch; and in 1866, Horace Mann having some years
before been laid in his untimely grave, he stood in his place as
president of the college. Through the agency of my dear friends of
those years, Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Dr. Edward Everett Hale, I was
to go with him as, so to speak, his under-study, discharging the work
of English professor and sometimes the duties of preacher. I went
gladly. The spirit of the dead leader haunted pervasively the shades
where he had laboured and died. The tradition of Horace Mann
was paramount among the students, the graduates, and the whole
environment. I had felt as a boy the spell of his voice and presence
and knew no hero whom I could follow more cordially. It was a joy to
become domiciled in the house which had been built for him and where
he had breathed his last, and to labour day by day along the noble
lines which he had laid down. This was my post for six years, one of
which, however, was spent in Europe, in the hope of gaining an added
fitness for my place.
I have no mind to set down here a record of those Antioch years.
One experiment we tried in a field then very novel and looked upon
askance. To-day in our schools and universities the pageant and the
drama play a large part. Forty years ago they were unknown or in
hiding, and it may be claimed that our little fresh-water college
bore a part in initiating a development that has become memorable and
widely salutary. In 1872 I wrote out the story of our attempt for
Mr. Howells, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, a film which may
appropriately be staged among my pictures.
_The New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier; or, The Drama in Colleges_
I have been distressed, dear Fastidiosus, by your remonstrance
concerning the performance at our college at Sweetbrier of a "stage
play." You have heard the facts rightly; that it was given under
the superintendence of the English professor, the evening before
Commencement, "with many of the accessories of a theatre." You urge
that it is unprecedented to have at a dignified institution, which
aims at a high standard, under the superintendence of a professor,
such a performance; that it excites the prejudices of some people
against us; and you quote the sharp remarks of _David's Harp_,
the organ of the Dunkers. You urge that such things can be nothing
more than the play of boys and girls, and are something worse than
mere waste of time, for they set young people to thinking of the
theatre, which is irretrievably sunk and only harmful. In your
character of trustee, you are sorry it has been done, and beg that it
may not be done again.
I beg you to listen to a patient stating of the case. It is not
without precedent. When you were at Worms, in Germany, do you remember
in the Luther Memorial the superb figure of Reuchlin, on one of the
outer corners? One or two of the statues may be somewhat grander, but
no other seemed to me so handsome, as it stood colossal on its pillar,
the scholar's gown falling from the stately shoulders, and the face so
fine there in the bronze, under the abundant hair and cap. Reuchlin
is said to be the proper founder of the German drama. Before his time
there had been, to be sure, some performing of miracle-plays, and
perhaps things of a different sort. The German literary historians,
however, make it an era when Reuchlin came as professor to Heidelberg,
and, in 1497, set up a stage, with students for actors, at the house
of Johann, Kämmerer von Dalberg. He wrote his plays in Latin. If you
wish, I can send you their titles. Each act, probably, was prefaced by
a synopsis in German, and soon translations came into vogue, and were
performed as well. On that little strip of level which the crags and
the Neckar make so narrow, collected then, as now, a fair concourse of
bounding youth. One can easily fancy how, when the prototypes of
the trim Burschen of to-day stepped out in their representation, the
applause sounded across to the vineyards about the Heiligenberg and
Hirschgasse, and how now and then a knight and a dame from the court
of the Kurfürst came down the Schlossberg to see it all. What Reuchlin
began, came by no means to a speedy end. In the Jesuit seminaries in
Germany, in Italy too, and elsewhere, as the Reformation came on, I
find the boys were acting plays. This feature in the school was
held out as an attraction to win students; and in Prague the Fathers
themselves wrote dramas to satirise the Protestants, introducing
Luther as the comic figure. But what occurred in the Protestant world
was more noteworthy. As the choral singing of the schoolboys affected
in an important way the development of music, so the school-plays had
much to do with the development of the drama. Read Gervinus to see how
for a century or two it was the schools and universities that remained
true to a tolerably high standard, while in the world at large all
nobler ideals were under eclipse. It was jocund Luther himself who
took it under his especial sanction, as he did the fiddle and the
dance, in his sweet large-heartedness finding Scriptural precedents
for it, and encouraging the youths who came trooping to Wittenberg to
relieve their wrestling with Aristotle and the dreary controversy with
an occasional play. Melancthon, too, gave the practice encouragement,
until not only Wittenberg, but the schools of Saxony in general, and
Thuringia, whose hills were in sight, surpassed all the countries of
Germany in their attention to plays. In Leipsic, Erfurt, and Magdeburg
comedies were regularly represented before the schoolmasters. But
it was at the University of Strassburg, even at the time when the
unsmiling Calvin was seeking asylum there, that the dramatic life of
the German seminaries found a splendid culmination. Yearly, in the
academic theatre, took place a series of representations, by students,
of marvellous pomp and elaboration. The school and college plays were
of various characters. Sometimes they were from Terence, Plautus, or
Aristophanes; sometimes modifications of the ancient mysteries, meant
to enforce the Evangelical theology; sometimes comedies full of the
contemporary life. There are several men that have earned mention in
the history of German literature by writing plays for students.
The representations became a principal means for celebrating great
occasions. If special honour was to be done to a festival, or a
princely visit was expected, the market-place, the Rathhaus, or the
church was prepared, and it was the professor's or the schoolmaster's
duty to direct the boys in their performance of a play. We get
glimpses, in the chronicles, of the circumstances under which the
representations took place. The magistrates, even the courts, lent
brilliant dresses. One old writer laments that the ignorant people
have so little sense for arts of this kind. "Often tumult and mocking
are heard, for it is the greatest joy to the rabble if the spectators
fall down through broken benches." The old three-storied stage of the
mysteries was often retained, with heaven above, earth in the middle
space, and hell below; where, according to the stage direction of
the _Golden Legend_, "the devils walked about and made a great
noise." Lazarus is described as represented in the sixteenth century
before a hôtel, before which sat the rich man carousing, while
Abraham, in a parson's coat, looked out of an upper window. This
rudeness, however, belongs rather to the _Volks-comödie_ than the
_Schul-comödie_, whose adjuncts were generally far more rational,
and sometimes even brilliant, as in the Strassburg representations.
It was only in the seminaries that art was preserved from utter
decay. One may trace the _Schul-comödie_ until far down in the
eighteenth century, and in the last mention of it I find appears an
interesting figure. In 1780, at the military school in Stuttgart the
birthday of the Duke of Würtemberg was celebrated by a performance
of Goethe's _Clavigo_. The leading part was taken by a youth
of twenty-one, with high cheek-bones, a broad, low, Greek brow
above straight eyebrows, a prominent nose, and lips nervous with an
extraordinary energy. The German narrator says he played the part
"abominably, shrieking, roaring, unmannerly to a laughable degree." It
was the young Schiller, wild as a pythoness upon her tripod, with the
_Robbers_, which became famous in the following year.
But I do not mean, Fastidiosus, to cite only German precedents, nor to
uphold the college drama with the names of Reuchlin, Melancthon, and
Luther alone, majestic though they are. In the University of Paris
the custom of acting plays was one of high antiquity. In 1392 the
schoolboys of Angiers performed _Robin and Marian_, "as was their
annual custom"; and in 1477 the scholars of Pontoise represented "a
certain moralitie or farce, as is their custom." In 1558 the comedies
of Jacques Grévin were acted at the College of Beauvais at Paris; but
it is in the next century that we come upon the most interesting
case. In the days of Louis XIV. the girls' school at St. Cyr, of which
Madame de Maintenon was patroness, was, in one way and another, the
object of much public attention. Mademoiselle de Caylus, niece of
Madame de Maintenon, who became famous among the women of charming wit
and grace who distinguished the time, was a pupil at St. Cyr, and in
her memoirs gives a pleasant sketch of her school life. With the rest,
"Madame de Brinon," she says,
first superior of St. Cyr, loved verse and the drama;
and in default of the pieces of Corneille and Racine,
which she did not dare to have represented, she
composed plays herself. It is to her, and her taste
for the stage, that the world owes _Esther_ and
_Athalie_, which Racine wrote for the girls of St.
Cyr. Madame de Maintenon wished to see one of
Madame de Brinon's pieces. She found it such as
it was, that is to say, so bad that she begged to
have no more such played, and that instead some
beautiful piece of Corneille or Racine should be
selected, choosing such as contained least about
love. These young girls, therefore, undertook the
rendering of _Cinna_, quite passably for children who
had been trained for the stage only by an old nun.
They then played _Andromaque_; and, whether it was
that the actresses were better chosen, or gained in
grace through experience, it was only too well
represented for Madame de Maintenon, causing her to
fear that this amusement would fill them with sentiments
the reverse of those which she wished to inspire.
However, as she was persuaded that amusements
of this sort were good for youth, she wrote
to Racine, begging him to compose for her, in his
moments of leisure, some sort of moral or historic
poem, from which love should be entirely banished,
and in which he need not believe that his reputation
was concerned, since it would remain buried at St.
Cyr. The letter threw Racine into great agitation.
He wished to please Madame de Maintenon. To
refuse was impossible for a courtier, and the
commission was delicate for a man who, like him, had
a great reputation to sustain. At last he found in
the subject of Esther all that was necessary to
please the Court.
So far Mademoiselle de Caylus. A French historian of literature draws
a pleasing picture of the old Racine superintending the preparation of
_Esther_,
giving advice full of sense and taste on the manner
of reciting his verses, never breaking their harmony
by a vulgar diction, nor hurting the sense by a wrong
emphasis. What a charm must the verses where
Esther recounts the history of her triumph over her
rivals have had in the mouth of Mademoiselle de
Veillanne, the prettiest and most graceful of the
pupils of St. Cyr! How grand he must have been,
when, with that noble figure which Louis XIV. admired,
he taught Mademoiselle de Glapion, whose
voice went to the heart, to declaim the beautiful
verses of the part of Mordecai!
The genius of Racine glows finely in _Esther._ In the choruses,
the inspirations of the Hebrew prophets, framed as it were in a Greek
mould, give impressive relief to the dialogue, as in Sophocles and
Aeschylus. It was played several times, and no favour was more envied
at the Court than an invitation to the representations. The literature
of the time has many allusions to them. The splendid world, in all its
lace and powder, crowded to the quiet convent. The great soldiers,
the wits, the beautiful women were all there. The king and Madame de
Maintenon sat in stiff dignity in the foreground. The appliances were
worthy of the magnificent Court. In Oriental attire of silk sweeping
to their feet, set off with pearl and gold, the loveliest girls of
France declaimed and sang the sonorous verse. It is really one of the
most innocent and charming pictures that has come down to us of this
age, when so much was hollow, pompous, and cruel.
Hamlet says to Polonius, "My lord, you played once in the university,
you say." To which Polonius replies, "That I did, my lord, and was
accounted a good actor. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed in the
Capitol." Do not suppose, Fastidiosus, that the playing of Polonius
was any such light affair as you and I used to be concerned in up in
the fourth story of "Stoughton," when we were members of the Hasty
Pudding. In the Middle Ages, in convents and churches, flourished the
mysteries; but, says Warton, in the _History of English Poetry_,
as learning increased, the practice of acting plays went over to the
schools and universities. Before the sixteenth century we may find
traces of dramatic vitality among the great English seminaries; but if
the supposition of Huber, in his account of English universities,
is correct, the real founder of the college drama in England was a
character no less dignified than its founder in Germany. Erasmus,
as he sits enthroned in a scholar's chair in the market-place at
Rotterdam, the buildings about leaning on their insecure foundations
out of the perpendicular, and the market-women, with their apple-bloom
complexions, crowding around him, shows a somewhat withered face
and figure, less genial than the handsome Heidelberg professor as he
stands at Worms. But it was Erasmus, probably, who, among many other
things he did while in England, lent an important impulse to the
acting of plays by students. He, no doubt, was no further interested
than to have masterpieces of Greek and Latin drama represented, that
the students might have exercise in those languages; but before the
reign of Henry VIII. was finished, the practice was becoming pursued
for other ends, and growing in importance. _Gammer Gurton's
Needle_, long supposed to be the first English comedy, was first
acted by students at Cambridge. That our more rollicking boys had
their counterparts then, we may know from its rousing drinking-song,
which the fellows rang out at the opening of the second act, way back
there in 1551. The chorus is not yet forgotten:
"Backe and side go bare, go bare,
Booth foot and hand go colde;
But, belly, God send thee good ale inoughe,
Whether it be new or olde!"
For the most part, probably, the performances were of a more dignified
character than this. Among the statutes of Trinity College, Cambridge,
1546, there is one entitled _de praefectu ludorum qui imperator
dicitur_, under whose direction and authority Latin comedies are
to be exhibited in the hall at Christmas. This "imperator" must be a
master of arts, and the society was to be governed by a set of laws
framed in Latin verse. The authority of this potentate lasted from
Christmas to Candlemas, during which time six spectacles were to be
represented. Dr. John Dee, a prodigy of that century, who might have
been illustrious like Bacon almost, but who wasted his later years
in astrological dreams, in his younger life, while Greek lecturer
at Cambridge, superintended in the refectory of the college the
representation of the [Greek: _Eirhênê_]; of Aristophanes, with
no mean stage adjuncts, if we may trust his own account. He speaks
particularly of the performance of a "Scarabeus, his flying up to
Jupiter's palace with a man and his basket of victuals on his back;
whereat was great wondering and many vain reports spread abroad of the
means how that was effected." The great Roger Ascham, too, has left
an indirect testimony to the splendour with which the Cambridge
performances at this time were attended. In a journey on the
Continent, wishing to express in the highest terms his sense of the
beauty of Antwerp, he can say nothing stronger than that it as far
surpasses other cities as the refectory of St. John's College at
Cambridge, when adorned for the Christmas plays, surpasses its
ordinary appearance. On these occasions, the most dignified personages
of the University were invited, and at length, as was the German
fashion, the representation of plays was adopted as part of the
entertainment of visitors. In 1564, Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge,
and the picture transmitted to us of the festivities is full of
brilliant lights. With the rest, five doctors of the University
selected from all the colleges the youths of best appearance and
address, who acted before the queen a series of plays of varied
character, sometimes grave, sometimes gay, in part of classic, in
part of contemporary authorship. The theatre for the time was no other
place than the beautiful King's College chapel, across the entire
width of which the stage was built. For light, the yeomen of the royal
guard, their fine figures in brilliant uniform, stood in line from end
to end of the chapel, each holding a torch. It was a superb scene, no
doubt; the torches throwing their wavering glare against the tracery
and the low, pointed arch of window and portal, so beautiful in this
chapel, in the ruins of Kenilworth, or wherever it appears; the
great space filled with the splendour that Roger Ascham thought so
wonderful; and, among the glitter, the troop of handsome youths doing
their best to please the sovereign. Froude gives a story from De
Silva, the Spanish ambassador, which reflects so well the character
of the time, and shows up boyish human nature with such amusing
faithfulness, that I cannot omit it. When all was over, the students
would not let well enough alone, but begged the tired queen to see one
more play of their own devising, which they felt sure would give her
special pleasure. The queen, however, departed, going ten miles on
her journey to the seat of one of her nobility. The persistent boys
followed her, and she granted them permission to perform before her
in the evening. What should the unconscionable dogs do but drag in
the bitter trouble of the time, and heedlessly trample on the queen's
prejudices. The actors entered dressed like the bishops of Queen Mary,
who were then in prison. Bonner carried a lamb, at which he rolled his
eyes and gnashed his teeth. A dog brought up the rear, carrying the
Host in his mouth. What further was to follow no one can say. The
queen, who was never more than half a Protestant, and clung to the
mass all the more devoutly because she was obliged to resign so much,
filled the air with her indignation. She swore good round oaths, we
may be sure, and left the room in a rage. The lights were put out, and
the students made off in the dark as they could.
The history of the drama at Oxford has episodes of equal interest. The
visitor who goes through the lovely Christ Church meadows to the Isis
to see the boats, returning, will be sure to visit the refectory
of Christ Church. The room is very fine in its proportions and
decoration, and hung with the portraits of the multitude of brilliant
men who in their young days were Christ Church men. During all the
centuries that the rich dark stain has been gathering upon the carved
oak in the ceiling and wainscot, it has been the scene of banquets and
pageants without number, at which the most illustrious characters
of English history have figured. I doubt, however, if any of its
associations are finer than those connected with the student plays
that have been performed here. Passing over occasions of this kind
of less interest of which I find mention, in 1566 Elizabeth visited
Oxford, to do honour to whom in this great hall of Christ Church
plays were given. Oxford was determined not to be outdone by what had
happened at Cambridge two years before. From the accounts, the delight
of the hearty queen must have been intense; and as she was never
afraid to testify most frankly her genuine feelings, we may be sure
the Oxford authorities and their pupils must have presented their
entertainments with extraordinary pomp. The plays, as at Cambridge,
were of various character, but the one that gave especial pleasure was
an English piece having the same subject as the _Knighte's Tale
of Chaucer_, and called _Palamon and Arcite_. It would be
pleasant to know that the poet followed as far as possible the words
of Chaucer. There is a fine incident narrated connected with the
performance. In the scene of the chase, when
"Theseus, with alle joye and blys,
With his Ypolite, the faire queene,
And Emelye, clothed al in greene,
On hontyng be they riden ryally,"
a "cry of hounds" was counterfeited under the windows in the
quadrangle. The students present thought it was a real chase, and
were seized with a sudden transport to join the hunters. At this, the
delighted queen, sitting in stiff ruff and farthingale among her maids
of honour, burst out above all the tumult with "Oh, excellent! These
boys, in very truth, are ready to leap out of the windows to follow
the hounds!" When the play was over, the queen called up the poet,
who was present, and the actors, and loaded them with thanks and
compliments.
When, forty years after, in 1605, the dull James came to Oxford, the
poor boys had a harder time. A thing very noteworthy happened when
the king entered the city in his progress from Woodstock. If Warton's
notion is correct, scarcely the iron cross in the pavement that marks
the spot where the bishops were burned, or the solemn chamber in which
they were tried, yea, scarcely Guy Fawkes's lantern, which they show
you at the Bodleian, or the Brazen Nose itself, are memorials as
interesting as the archway leading into the quadrangle of St. John's
College, under whose carving, quaint and graceful, one now gets the
lovely glimpse into the green and bloom of the gardens at the back. At
this gate, three youths dressed like witches met the king, declaring
they were the same that once met Macbeth and Banquo, prophesying a
kingdom to one and to the other a generation of monarchs, that they
now appeared to show the confirmation of the prediction. Warton's
conjecture is that Shakespeare heard of this, or perhaps was himself
in the crowd that watched the boys as they came whirling out in their
weird dance, and that then and there was conceived what was to become
so mighty a product of the human brain,--Macbeth.
King James, however, received it all coldly. The University, kindled
by the traditions of Elizabeth's visit, did its best. Leland gives a
glimpse of the stage arrangements in Christ Church Hall. Towards the
end "was a scene like a wall, painted and adorned by stately pillars,
which pillars would turn about, by reason whereof, with the help of
other painted cloths, their stage did vary three times." But the
king liked the scholastic hair-splitting with which he was elsewhere
entertained better than the plays. In Christ Church Hall he yawned
and even went to sleep, saying it was all mere childish amusement. In
fact, the poor boys had to put up with even a worse rebuff; the
king spoke many words of dislike, and when, in one of the plays, a
pastoral, certain characters came in somewhat scantily attired, the
queen and maids of honour took great offence, in which the king, who
was not ordinarily over-delicate, concurred.
The practice of acting plays prevailed in the schools as well. The
visitor to Windsor will remember in what peace, as seen from the great
tower, beyond the smooth, dark Thames, the buildings of Eton lie
among the trees. Crossing into the old town and entering the school
precincts, where the stone stairways are worn by so many generations
of young feet, and where on the play-ground the old elms shadow turf
where so many soldiers and statesmen have been trained to struggle in
larger fields, there is nothing after all finer than the great hall.
In every age since the wars of the Roses, it has buzzed with the
boisterous life of the privileged boys of England, who have come
up afterward by the hundred to be historic men. There are still the
fireplaces with the monogram of Henry VI., the old stained glass,
the superb wood carving, the dais at the end. If there were no other
memory connected with the magnificent hall, it would be enough that
here, about 1550, was performed by the Eton boys, _Ralph Roister
Bolster_, the first proper English comedy, written by Nicholas
Udal, then head-master, for the Christmas holidays. He had the name
of being a stern master, because old Tusser has left it on record that
Udal whipped him,--
"for fault but small,
or none at all."
But the student of our old literature, reading the jolly play, will
feel that, though he could handle the birch upon occasion, there was
in him a fine genial vein. This was the first English comedy. The
first English tragedy, too, _Gorboduc_, was acted first by
students,--this time students of law of the Inner Temple,--and the
place of performance was close at hand to what one still goes to see
in the black centre of the heart of London, those blossoming gardens
of the Temple, verdant to-day as when the red-cross knights walked in
them, or the fateful red and white roses were plucked there, or the
voices of the young declaimers were heard from them, rolling out the
turgid lines of Sackville's piece, the somewhat unpromising day-spring
which a glorious sun-burst was to succeed. From Lincoln's Inn, in
1613, when the Princess Elizabeth married the elector-palatine and
went off to Heidelberg Castle, the students came to the palace with a
piece written by Chapman, and the performance cost a thousand pounds.
A famed contemporary of Udal was Richard Mulcaster, head-master of St.
Paul's school, and afterward of Merchant Taylors', concerning whom we
have, from delightful old Fuller, this quaint and naive description:
In a morning he would exactly and plainly construe
and parse the lesson to his scholars, which
done, he slept his hour (custom made him critical
to proportion it) in his desk in the school; but woe
be to the scholar that slept the while. Awaking, he
heard them accurately; and Atropos might be persuaded
to pity as soon as he to pardon where he
found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers
prevailed with him just as much as the requests of
indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating
his severity on their offending children.
The name of this Rhadamanthus of the birch occurs twice in entries of
Elizabeth's paymaster, as receiving money for plays acted before
her; and a certain proficiency as actors possessed by students of
St. John's College at Oxford is ascribed to training given by old
Mulcaster at the Merchant Taylors' school.
But no one of the great English public schools has enjoyed so long
a fame in this regard as Westminster. According to Staunton, in his
_Great schools of England_, Elizabeth desired to have plays acted
by the boys, "Quo juventus turn actioni tum pronunciationi decenti
melius se assuescat," that the youth might be better trained in proper
bearing and pronunciation. The noted Bishop Atterbury wrote to a
friend, Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester, concerning a performance here
of Trelawney's son: "I had written to your lordship again on Saturday,
but that I spent the evening in seeing _Phormio_ acted in the
college chamber, where, in good truth, my lord, Mr. Trelawney played
Antipho extremely well, and some parts he performed admirably."
In 1695, Dryden's play of Cleomens was acted. Archbishop Markham,
head-master one hundred years ago, gave a set of scenes designed by
Garrick. In our own day, Dr. Williamson, head-master in 1828, drew
attention in a pamphlet to the proper costuming of the performers; and
when, in 1847, there was a talk of abolishing the plays, a memorial
signed by six hundred old "Westminsters" was sent in, stating it
as their "firm and deliberate belief, founded on experience and
reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster play cannot fail to
prove prejudicial to the interests and prosperity of the school." At
the present time the best plays of Plautus and Terence are performed
at Christmas in the school dormitory.
It all became excessive, and in Cromwell's time, with the accession
of the Puritans to power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of the
old English life from whose abuse had grown riot, it was purged away.
Ben Jonson, in _The Staple of Newes_, puts into the mouth of a
sour character a complaint which no doubt was becoming common in that
day, and was probably well enough justified.
"They make all their schollers play-boyes! Is't
not a fine sight to see all our children made
enterluders? Doe we pay our money for this? Wee
send them to learne their grammar and their Terence
and they learne their play-bookes. Well they talk
we shall have no more parliaments, God blesse us!
But an we have, I hope Zeale-of-the-land Buzzy,
and my gossip Rabby Trouble-Truth, will start up
and see we have painfull good ministers to keepe
schoole, and catechise our youth; and not teach 'em
to speake plays and act fables of false newes."
Studying this rather unexplored subject, one gets many a glimpse of
famous characters in interesting relations. Erasmus says that Sir
Thomas More, "adolescens, comoediolas et scripsit et egit," and while
a page with Archbishop Moreton, as plays were going on in the palace
during the Christmas holidays, he would often, showing his schoolboy
accomplishment, step on the stage without previous notice, and
exhibit a part of his own which gave more satisfaction than the whole
performance besides.
In Leland's report of the theatricals where King James behaved so
ungraciously, "the machinery of the plays," he says, "was chiefly
conducted by Mr. Jones, who undertook to furnish them with rare
devices, but performed very little to what was expected." This is
believed to have been Inigo Jones, who soon was to gain great fame as
manager of the Court masques. The entertainment was probably ingenious
and splendid enough, but every one took his cue from the king's
pettishness, and poor "Mr. Jones" had to bear his share of the
ill-humour.
In 1629 a Latin play was performed at Cambridge before the French
ambassador. Among the student spectators sat a youth of twenty, with
long locks parted in the middle falling upon his doublet, and the
brow and eyes of the god Apollo, who curled his lip in scorn,
and signalised himself by his stormy discontent. Here is his
own description of his conduct: "I was a spectator; they thought
themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made sport,
and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and to make up the
Atticism, they were out and I hissed." It was the young Milton, in the
year in which he wrote the _Hymn on the Nativity._
Do I need to cite other precedents for the procedure at the
Sweetbrier? I grant you it cannot be done from the practice of
American colleges. The strictest form of Puritanism stamped itself too
powerfully upon our New England institutions at their foundation, and
has affected too deeply the newer seminaries elsewhere in the country,
to make it possible that the drama should be anything but an outlaw
here. Nevertheless, at Harvard, Yale, and probably every considerable
college of the country, the drama has for a long time led a
clandestine life in secret student societies, persecuted or at best
ignored by the college government,--an unwholesome weed that deserved
no tending, if it was not to be at once uprooted.
I do not advocate, Fastidiosus, a return to the ancient state of
things, which I doubt not was connected with many evils; but is there
not reason to think a partial revival of the old customs would be
worth while? It was not for mirth merely that the old professors and
teachers countenanced the drama. To the editors of _David's Harp_
I have sent this passage from Milton, noblest among the Puritans,
and have besought them to lay it before their consistory: "Whether
eloquent and graceful incitements, instructing and bettering the
nation at all opportunities, not only in pulpits, but after another
persuasive method, in theatres, porches, or whatever place or way, may
not win upon the people to receive both recreation and instruction,
let them in authority consult." The German schoolmasters and
professors superintended their boys in the representation of
religious plays to instruct them in the theology which they thought
all-important; in the performance of Aristophanes and Lucian, Plautus
and Terence, mainly in the hope of improving them in Greek and Latin:
and when the plays were in the vernacular, it was often to train their
taste, manners, and elocution. Erasmus and the Oxford and Cambridge
authorities certainly had the same ideas as the Continental scholars.
So the English schoolmasters in general, who also managed in the plays
to give useful hints in all ways. For instance, Nicholas Udal, in
the ingenious letter in _Ralph Roister Doister_, which is either
loving or insulting according to the position of a few commas or
periods, must have meant to enforce the doctrine of Chaucer's couplet:
"He that pointeth ill,
A good sentence may oft spill."
Madame de Maintenon was persuaded that amusements of this sort have
a value, "imparting grace, teaching a polite pronunciation, and
cultivating the memory"; and Racine commends the management of St.
Cyr, where "the hours of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by
making the pupils recite the finest passages of the best poets." Here
is the dramatic instinct, almost universal among young people,
and which has almost no chance to exercise itself, except in the
performance of the farces to which we are treated in "private
theatricals." Can it not be put to a better use? It would be a
cumbrous matter to represent or listen to the _Aulularia_, or the
_Miles Gloriosus_, or the [Greek: Eirhênê], in which Dr. Dee and
his Scarabeus figured so successfully. The world is turned away from
that[1]; but here is the magnificent wealth of our own old dramatic
literature, in which is contained the richest poetry of our
language. It was never intended to be read, but to be heard in living
presentment. For the most part it lies almost unknown, except in the
case of Shakespeare, and him the world knows far too little. Who does
not feel what a treasure in the memory are passages of fine poetry
committed early in life?
[Footnote 1: The developments of the last forty years show this
judgment to be erroneous.]
Who can doubt the value to the bearing, the fine address, the literary
culture of a youth of either sex that might come from the careful
study and the attempt to render adequately a fine conception of some
golden writer of our golden age, earnestly made, if only partially
successful?
I say only partially successful, but can you doubt the capacity of our
young people to render in a creditable way the conceptions of a
great poet? Let us look at the precedents again. When Mademoiselle
de Caylus, in her account of St. Cyr, speaks of the representation of
_Andromaque_, she writes, "It was only too well done." And prim
Madame de Maintenon wrote to Racine: "Our young girls have played it
so well they shall play it no more"; begging him to write some moral
or historic poem. Hence came the beautiful masterpiece _Esther_,
to which the young ladies seem to have done the fullest justice, for
listen to the testimony. The brilliant Madame de Lafayette wrote:
"There was no one, great or small, that did not want to go, and this
mere drama of a convent became the most serious affair of the court."
That the admiration was not merely feigned because it was the fashion,
here is the testimony of a woman of the finest taste, Madame de
Sévigné, given in her intimate letters to her daughter, who, in these
confidences, spared no one who deserved criticism:
The king and all the Court are charmed with
_Esther_. The prince has wept over it. I cannot tell
you how delightful the piece is. There is so perfect
a relation between the music, the verses, the songs,
and the personages, that one seeks nothing more.
The airs set to the words have a beauty which cannot
be borne without tears, and according to one's
taste is the measure of approbation given to the
piece. The king addressed me and said, "Madame,
I am sure you have been pleased." I, without being
astonished, answered, "Sire, I am charmed. What
I feel is beyond words." The king said to me,
"Racine has much genius." I said to him, "Sire,
he has much, but in truth these young girls have
much too; they enter into the subject as if they
had done nothing else." "Ah! as to that," said he,
"it is true." And then his Majesty went away and
left me the object of envy.
Racine himself says in the Preface to _Esther_:
The young ladies have declaimed and sung this
work with so much modesty and piety, it has not
been possible to keep it shut up in the secrecy of
the institution; so that a diversion of young people
has become a subject of interest for all the Court;
and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the _Athalie_,
"la chef d'oeuvre de la poésie française," in the judgment of the
French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in
1556, in Christ Church Hall, _Palamon and Arcite_ was finished,
outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared
"that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right
martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus
clad in armour." To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of
fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment
was still higher. It was a present of eight guineas,--for the
penurious sovereign, perhaps, the most emphatic expression of approval
possible.
Shall I admit for a moment that our American young folks have less
grace and sensibility than the French girls, and the Oxford youths who
pleased Elizabeth? Your face now, Fastidiosus, wears a frown like
that of Rhadamanthus; but I remember our Hasty-Pudding days, when you
played the part of a queen, and behaved in your disguise like Thor,
in the old saga, when he went to Riesenheim in the garb of Freya, and
honest giants, like Thrym, were frightened back the whole width of the
hall. Well, I do not censure it, and I do not believe you recall it
with a sigh; and the reminiscence emboldens me to ask you whether it
would not be still better if our dear Harvard, say (the steam of the
pudding infects me through twenty years), among the many new wrinkles
she in her old age so appropriately contracts, should devote an
evening of Commencement-time to a performance, by the students,
under the sanction and direction of professors, of some fine old
masterpiece?
At our little Sweetbrier we have young men and young women together,
as at Oberlin, Antioch, and Massachusetts normal schools. I have no
doubt our Hermione, when we gave the _Winter's Tale_, had all the
charm of Mademoiselle de Veillanne, who played Esther at St. Cyr. I
have no doubt our Portia, in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the
trial scene, her fine stature and figure robed in the doctor's long
silk gown, which fell to her feet, and her abundant hair gathered out
of sight into an ample velvet cap, so that she looked like a most wise
and fair young judge, recited
"The quality of mercy is not strained,"
in a voice as thrilling as that in which Mademoiselle de Glapion gave
the part of Mordecai. I am sure Queen Elizabeth would think our young
cavaliers, well-knit and brown from the baseball-field, "right martial
knights, having swart and manly countenances." If she could have seen
our Antoninus, when we gave the act from Massinger's most sweet and
tender tragedy of the _Virgin Martyr_, or the noble Caesar, in
our selections from Beaumont and Fletcher's _False One_, she
would have been as ready with the guineas as she was in the case of
the son of the dean of Christ Church.
Our play at the last Commencement was _Much Ado about Nothing_.
It was selected six months before, and studied with the material
in mind, the students in the literature class, available for the
different parts. What is there, thought I, in Beatrice--sprightliness
covering intense womanly feeling--that our vivacious, healthful Ruth
Brown cannot master; and what in Benedick, her masculine counterpart,
beyond the power of Moore to conceive and render? It is chiefly
girlish beauty and simple sweetness that Hero requires, so she
shall be Edith Grey. Claudio, Leonato, Don John, Pedro,--we have
clean-limbed, presentable fellows that will look and speak them all
well; and as for lumbering Dogberry, Abbot, with his fine sense of the
ludicrous, will carry it out in the best manner. A dash of the pencil
here and there through the lines where Shakespeare was suiting his own
time, and not the world as it was to be after three hundred refining
years, and the marking out of a few scenes that could be spared from
the action, and the play was ready; trimmed a little, but with not
a whit taken from its sparkle or pathos, and all its lovelier poetry
untouched.
Then came long weeks of drill. In the passage,
"O my lord,
When you went onward to this ended action,
I looked upon her with a soldier's eye," etc.,
Claudio caught the fervour and softness at last, and seemed (it
would have pleased Queen Bess better than Madame de Main tenon) like
Palamon, in love indeed. Ursula and Hero rose easily to the delicate
poetry of the passages that begin,
"The pleasantest angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,"
and
"Look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs."
Pedro got to perfection his turn and gesture in
"The wolves have preyed; and look, the gentle day,
Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray."
With the rough comedy of Dogberry and the watchmen, that foils so well
the sad tragedy of poor Hero's heart-breaking, and contrasts in
its blunders with the diamond-cut-diamond dialogue of Benedick and
Beatrice, there was less difficulty. From first to last, it was
engrossing labour, as hard for the trainer as the trained, yet still
delightful work; for what is a conscientious manager, but an artist
striving to perfect a beautiful dramatic picture? The different
personages are the pieces for his mosaic, who, in emphasis, tone,
gesture, by-play, must be carved and filed until there are no flaws
in the joining, and the shading is perfect. But all was ready at last,
from the roar of Dogberry at the speech of Conrade,
"Away! you're an ass! you're an ass!"
to the scarcely articulate agony of Hero when she sinks to the earth
at her lover's sudden accusation,
"O Heavens! how am I beset!
What kind of catechising call you this?"
I fancy you ask, rather sneeringly, as to our scenery and stage
adjuncts. Once, in the great court theatre at Munich, I saw Wagner's
_Rheingold._ The king was present, and all was done for splendour
that could be done in that centre of art. When the curtain rose, the
whole great river Rhine seemed to be flowing before you across the
stage, into the side of whose flood you looked as one looks through
the glass side of an aquarium. At the bottom were rocks in picturesque
piles; and, looking up through the tide to the top, as a diver might,
the spectator saw the surface of the river, with the current rippling
forward upon it, and the sunlight just touching the waves. Through the
flood swam the daughters of the Rhine, sweeping fair arms backward
as they floated, their drapery trailing heavy behind them, darting
straight as arrows, or winding sinuously, from bottom to top, from
side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei. The scene changed, and
it was the depths of the earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes. And a
third time, after a change, you saw from mountain-tops the city which
the giants had built in the heavens for the gods,--a glittering dome
or pinnacle now and then breaking the line of white palaces, now and
then a superb cloud floating before it, until, at last, a mist seemed
to rise from valleys below, wrapping it little by little, till all
became invisible in soft gradations of vapoury gloom. I shall never
again see anything like that, where an art-loving court subsidises
heavily scene-painter and machinist; but for all that, is it wise
to have only sneers for what can be brought to pass with more modest
means? Our hall at Sweetbrier is as large as the Christ Church
refectory, and handsomely proportioned and decorated. A wide stage
runs across the end. We found some ample curtains of crimson, set off
with a heavy yellow silken border of quite rich material, which had
been used to drape a window that had disappeared in the course of
repairs. This, stretched from side to side, made a wall of brilliant
colour against the gray tint of the room; and possibly Roger Ascham,
seeing our audience-room before and after the hanging of it, might
have had a thought of Antwerp. The stage is the one thing in the world
privileged to deceive. The most devoted reader of Ruskin can tolerate
shams here. The costumes were devised with constant reference to
Charles Knight, and, to the eye, were of the gayest silk, satin, and
velvet. There was, moreover, a profusion of jewels, which, for all
one could see, sparkled with all the lustre of the great Florentine
diamond, as you see it suspended above the imperial crowns in the
Austrian Schatz-Kammer at Vienna. The contrasts of tint were well
attended to. Pedro was in white and gold, Claudio in blue and silver,
Leonato in red; while our handsome Benedick, a youth of dark Italian
favour, in doublet of orange, a broad black velvet sash, and scarlet
cloak, shone like a bird of paradise.
There was a garden-scene, in the foreground of which, where the
eyes of the spectators were near enough to discriminate, were rustic
baskets with geraniums, fuchsias, and cactuses, to give a southern
air. In the middle distance, armfuls of honeysuckle in full bloom
were brought in and twined about white pilasters. There was an arbour
overhung with heavy masses of the trumpet-creeper. A tall column or
two surmounted with graceful garden-vases were covered about with
raspberry-vines, the stems of brilliant scarlet showing among the
green. A thick clump of dogwood, whose large white blossoms could
easily pass for magnolias, gave background. The green was lit with
showy colour of every sort,--handfuls of nasturtiums, now and then a
peony, larkspurs for blue, patches of poppies, and in the garden-vases
high on the pillars (the imposition!) clusters of pink hollyhocks
which were meant to pass for oleander-blossoms, and did, still, wet
with the drops of the afternoon shower, which had not dried away when
all was in place. When it comes to rain and dewdrops, dear Dr. Holmes,
a "fresh-water college" has an advantage. First, it was given under
gas; then, the hall being darkened, a magnesium-light gave a moon-like
radiance, in which the dew on the buds glistened, and the mignonette
seemed to exhale a double perfume, and a dreamy melody of Mendelssohn
sung by two sweet girl-voices floated out about the "pleached bower,"
like a song of nightingales. Then toward the end came the scene of the
chapel and Hero's tomb. No lovelier form was ever sculptured than that
of the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, as she lies in the mausoleum
at Charlottenburg, carved by Rauch, asleep on the tomb in white
purity. To the eye, our Hero's tomb was just such a block of spotless
marble seen against a background of black, with just such a fair
figure recumbent upon it, whose palms and lids and draping the chisel
of an artist seemed to have folded and closed and hung,--all idealised
again by the magic of the magnesium-light. As the crimson curtain was
drawn apart, an organ sounded, and a far-away choir sent into the hush
the _Ave Verum_ of Mozart, low-breathed and solemn.
It was not Munich, Fastidiosus. They were American young men and young
women, with no resources but those of a rural college, and such as
their own taste and the woods and gardens could furnish; but the young
men were shapely and intelligent, and the young women had grace and
brightness; their hearts were in it, and in the result surely there
was a measure of "sweetness and light" for them and those who beheld.
You fear it may beget in young minds a taste for the theatre, now
hopelessly given over in great part to abominations. Why not a
taste that will lift them above the abominations? Old Joachim Greff,
schoolmaster at Dessau in 1545, who has a place in the history of
German poetry, has left it on record that he trained his scholars to
render noble dramas in the conscientious hope "that a little spark of
art might be kept alive in the schools under the ashes of barbarism."
"And this little spark," says Gervinus, "did these bold men, indeed,
through two hundred years, keep honestly until it could again break
out into flame." Instead of fearing the evil result, rather would I
welcome a revival of what Warton calls "this very liberal exercise."
Were Joachim Greffs masters in our high schools and in the English
chairs in our colleges, we might now and then catch a glimpse of
precious things at present hidden away in never-opened store-houses,
and see something done toward the development of a taste that should
drive out the _opera-bouffe_.
Here, at the end, Fastidiosus, is what I now shape in mind. Hippolyte
Taine, in one of his rich descriptions, thus pictures the performance
of a masque:
The _élite_ of the kingdom is there upon the stage,
the ladies of the court, the great lords, the queen,
in all the splendour of their rank and their pride, in
diamonds, earnest to display their luxury so that all
the brilliant features of the nation's life are concentrated
in the price they give, like gems in a casket.
What adornment! What profusion of magnificence!
What variety! What metamorphoses! Gold sparkles,
jewels emit light, the purple draping imprisons
within its rich folds the radiance of the lustres.
The light is reflected from shining silk. Threads
of pearl are spread in rows upon brocades sewed
with thread of silver. Golden embroideries intertwine
in capricious arabesques, costumes, jewels,
appointments so extraordinarily rich that the stage
seems a mine of glory.
The fashionable world of our time has little taste for such pleasures.
This old splendour we cannot produce; but the words which the
magnificent lords and ladies spoke to one another as they blazed,
were those that make up the Poetry of Fletcher's _Faithful
Shepherdess_, Ben Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_, and, finest of
all, the _Comus_ of Milton. They are the most matchless frames of
language in which sweet thoughts and fancies were ever set. After
all, before this higher beauty, royal pomp even seems only a coarse
excrescence, and all would be better if the accessories of the
rendering were very simple. Already in my mind is the grove for
_Comus_ designed; the mass of green which shall stand in the
centre, the blasted trunk that shall rise for contrast to one side,
and the vine that shall half conceal the splintered summit, the banks
of wild-flowers that shall be transferred, the light the laboratory
shall yield us to make all seem as if seen through enchanter's
incense. I have in mind the sweet-voiced girl who shall be the lost
lady and sing the invocation to Sabrina; the swart youth who shall be
the magician and say the lines,
"At every fall, smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled";
and the golden-haired maid who shall glide in and out in silvery
attire, as the attendant spirit. Come, Fastidiosus,--I shall invite
too the editors of _David's Harp_,--and you shall all own the
truth of Milton's own words, "that sanctity and virtue and truth
herself may in this wise be elegantly dressed," when the attendant
spirit recites:
"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin low doth bend;
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue; she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."