Tragedy has ever been held to be more elevated than comedy and more
worthy; and comedy has continually accepted the conditions appropriate
to tragedy. Since the dignity of tragedy demanded a division into five
acts, comedy was also subjected to the same rule; and this was done in
spite of the fact that the plays of Plautus and Terence (composed long
before Horace codified his advice to intending poets) were not divided
into acts, if we may judge by the earliest of the surviving manuscripts.
So it is that we find the scholarly authors of the two earliest of
English comedies, 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,'
knowing what was expected of them, and giving the five-act form to both
of these amusing plays. But these two comedies, almost contemporary as
they are with the academic and undramatic tragedy of 'Gorboduc,' are far
superior to it in adaptability for actual performance. They are not
intended only to be recited; they can be acted easily and profitably. As
we analyze them we see that the structural complexity may be derived
from the comic dramas of Plautus and Terence, but that the inner spirit
is that of the English folk-theater, of the robust medieval
farce-writers, of the unknown humorist who has left us the laughable and
veracious scene of Mak and the Shepherds.
Scholars as they were, the authors of these two comedies did not scorn
the primitive plays of the plain people of their own time. They did not
despise the unpretending folk-drama which was then pleasing the
populace; in fact, they took stock of it, and found their profit in so
doing. They saw that to be raised up to the level of literature it
needed only to be chastened and stiffened. They accepted the living
tradition of play-making as it came down to them, and in accord with
this tradition they wrought their humorous fantasies, adding the higher
polish and the more adroit plot which they had learned to appreciate in
the Latin comic dramatists. They accepted the native play, bare as it
was, and they enriched it by bestowing on it as much as it could carry
of the finer art of the Romans. Thus it is that the authors of 'Ralph
Roister Doister' and of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' may have pointed out
the path of progress to the author of the 'Comedy of Errors,' whereas
the authors of 'Gorboduc,' contemptuously rejecting the folk-theater of
their own day, and idly copying the classicist imitations of the
Italians, thereby relinquished whatever direct influence they might have
had upon the growth of tragedy in England.
Both 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' were probably
written for performance by college boys, and they have not a little of
the brisk heartiness and of the broad horse-play to which we are
accustomed in the college pieces of to-day. It was for performance at
court that Lyly wrote the most of his plays, which lack the vivacity and
the liveliness distinguishing the two college comic dramas, but which
yet reveal a far better understanding of the drama than was possessed by
the authors of 'Gorboduc.' Lyly again is careful to divide his plays
into five acts. But his contemporaries Greene and Peele, writing solely
for the professional playhouses, were bound by none of the rules which
might be expected in college or at court. Whatever their own scholarly
equipment, when they wrote for the professional players, they followed
unhesitatingly the traditions of the contemporary theater. As
playwrights they were the direct heirs of the anonymous and ignorant
devisers of the medieval drama. They had a story to set on the stage;
they chose a succession of more or less effective episodes, and they
carelessly cast these into dialog, with little thought of form or of
construction. Never do their plays contain matter enough for five full
acts; and we may be certain that no such framework was ever in the mind
of either of these dramatic poets. In the original editions of their
pieces we find no separation into acts and scenes; and if this needless
and misleading subdivision is found in later editions it is the doing of
misguided editors.
In what is accepted as the earliest edition of Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy,'
the most widely popular of all the pre-Shaksperian plays, the text is
actually divided into four acts. But this division is not structural; it
is almost accidental, as tho it was an afterthought, inserted at the
last moment into the copy intended for the printer, and never in the
mind of the playwright himself when he was preparing the prompt-book for
the actors; and Shakspere, who followed Kyd in more ways than one,
apparently followed him in this also. In the folio edition of his plays,
published after his death, a division into five acts has been made; but
the task has not been accomplished any too skilfully--for example, the
second act of 'King John' has but eighty lines, and here the division is
into four acts only. The suggestion has been proffered that it was,
perhaps, left to the printers to do, the influence of Ben Jonson having
been powerful enough to establish the theory that a self-respecting
dramatist would never fail to cast his tragedies in the five-act form.
It is to be noted also that no division into acts is to be found in the
quarto editions published in Shakspere's lifetime; and this is very
significant since these quartos seem to have been piratical copies from
shorthand notes taken surreptitiously in the theater, thus recording the
actual conditions of performance.
It may be doubted whether Shakspere conceived his plays in accordance
with any such subdivisions. Some of them, the 'Comedy of Errors' for
one, which can be acted in the space of an hour and a quarter, are far
too slight for so huge a framework. On the other hand, the several
appearances of Chorus punctuate 'Henry V' into five divisions,
apparently an intentional conformity to the Horatian rule. Of course,
there were generally several intermissions in the Elizabethan
performance of a play, altho the resulting divisions were not
necessarily five; and it is noteworthy that Shakspere makes Jaques
declare that man's life had seven acts.