CHAPTER IV: THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, 1558-1603

The Reign of Elizabeth.--Queen Elizabeth, who ranks among the

greatest of the world's rulers, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and

his second wife Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth reigned as queen of England

from 1558 until her death in 1603. The remarkable allowances which she

made for difference of opinion showed that she felt the spirit of the

Renaissance. She loved England, and her most important acts were

guided, not by selfish personal motives, but by a strong desire to

make England a great nation.

She had a law passed restoring the supremacy of the monarch, "as well

in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things as temporal." The prayer

book of Edward VI. was again introduced and the mass was forbidden.

She was broad enough not to inquire too closely into the private

religious opinions of her subjects, so long as they went to the

established church. For each absence they were fined a shilling. Next

to churchgoing and her country, she loved and encouraged plays.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ELIZABETH'S SIGNATURE TO A LICENSE

FOR THE EARL OF LEICESTER'S COMPANY OF PLAYERS, 1574.]

For more than twenty years she was worried by fear that either France

or Spain would put her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, on the

English throne. With masterly diplomacy, Elizabeth for a long time

managed to retain the active friendship of at least one of these great

powers, in order to restrain the other from interfering. She had kept

Mary a prisoner for nineteen years, fearing to liberate her. At last

an active conspiracy was discovered to assassinate Elizabeth and put

Mary on the throne. Elizabeth accordingly had her cousin beheaded in

1587. Spain thereupon prepared her fleet, the Invincible Armada, to

attack England. When this became known, the outburst of patriotic

feeling was so intense among all classes in England that the queen did

not hesitate to put Lord Howard, a Catholic, in command of the English

fleet. The Armada was utterly defeated, and England was free to enter

on her glorious period of influencing the thought and action of the

world.

In brief, Elizabeth's reign was remarkable for the rise of the middle

classes, for the growth of manufactures, for the appearance of English

ships in almost all parts of the world, for the extension of commerce,

for greater freedom of thought and action, for what the world now

calls Elizabethan literature, and for the ascendancy of a great mental

and moral movement to which we must next call attention.

Culmination of the Renaissance and the Reformation.--We have seen

that the Renaissance began in Italy in the fourteenth century and

influenced the work of Chaucer. In the same century, Wycliffe's

influence helped the cause of the Reformation. Elizabethan England

alone had the good fortune to experience the culmination of these two

movements at one and the same time. At no other period and in no other

country have two forces, like the Renaissance and the Reformation,

combined at the height of their ascendancy to stimulate the human

mind. One result of these two mighty influences was the work of

William Shakespeare, which speaks to the ear of all time.

The Renaissance, having opened the gates of knowledge, inspired the

Elizabethans with the hope of learning every secret of nature and of

surmounting all difficulties. The Reformation gave man new freedom,

imposed on him the gravest individual responsibilities, made him

realize the importance of every act of his own will, and emphasized

afresh the idea of the stewardship of this present life, for which he

would be held accountable. In Elizabethan days, these two forces

coöperated; in the following Puritan age they were at war.

Some Characteristics of Elizabethan Life.--It became an ambition to

have as many different experiences as possible, to search for that

variety craved by youth and by a youthful age. Sir Walter Raleigh was

a courtier, a writer, a warden of the tin mines, a vice admiral, a

captain of the guard, a colonizer, a country gentleman, and a pirate.

Sir Philip Sidney, who died at the age of thirty-two, was an envoy to

a foreign court, a writer of romances, an officer in the army, a poet

and a courtier. Shakespeare left the little town where he was born, to

plunge into the more complex life of London. The poet, Edmund Spenser,

went to turbulent Ireland, where he had enough experiences to suggest

the conflicts in the _Faerie Queene_.

The greater freedom and initiative of the individual and the

remarkable extension of trade with all parts of the world naturally

led to the rise of the middle class. The nobility were no longer the

sole leaders in England's rapid progress. Many of Elizabeth's

councilors were said to have sprung from the masses, but no reign

could boast of wiser ministers. It was then customary for the various

classes to mingle much more freely than they do now. There was absence

of that overspecialization which today keeps people in such sharply

separated groups. This mingling was further aided by the tendency to

try many different pursuits and by the spirit of patriotism in the

air. All classes were interested in repelling the Spanish Armada and

in maintaining England's freedom. It was fortunate for Shakespeare

that the Elizabethan age gave him unusual opportunity to meet and to

become the spokesman of all classes of men. The audience that stood in

the pit or sat in the boxes to witness the performance of his plays,

comprised not only lords and wealthy merchants, but also weavers,

sailors, and country folk.

Initiative and Love of Action.--The Elizabethans were distinguished

for their initiative. This term implies the possession of two

qualities: (1) ingenuity or fertility in ideas, and (2) ability to

pass at once from an idea to its suggested action. Never did action

habitually follow more quickly on the heels of thought. The age loved

to translate everything into action, because the spirit of the

Renaissance demanded the exercise of youthful activity to its fullest

capacity in order that the power which the new knowledge promised

could be acquired and enjoyed before death. As the Elizabethans felt

that real life meant activity in exploring a new and interesting

world, both physical and mental, they demanded that their literature

should present this life of action. Hence, all their greatest poets,

with the exception of Spenser, were dramatists. Even Spenser's _Faerie

Queene_, with its abstractions, is a poem of action, for the virtues

fight with the vices.

ELIZABETHAN PROSE LITERATURE

Variety in the Prose.--The imaginative spirit of the Elizabethans

craved poetry, and all the greatest authors of this age, with the

exception of Francis Bacon, were poets. If, however, an Elizabethan

had been so peculiarly constituted as to wish to stock his library

with contemporary prose only, he could have secured good works in many

different fields. He could, for instance, have obtained (1) an

excellent book on education, the _Scholemaster_ of Roger Ascham

(1515-1568); (2) interesting volumes of travel, such as the

_Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation_, by

Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616); and _The Discovery of Guiana_, by Sir

Walter Raleigh (1552-1618); (3) history, in the important _Chronicles

of England, Ireland, and Scotland_ (1578), by Raphael Holinshed; the

_Chronicle (Annals of England)_ and _Survey of London_, by John Stow

(1525-1604); and the _Brittania_, by William Camden (1551-1623); (4)

biography, in the excellent translation of _Plutarch's Lives_, by Sir

Thomas North (1535-1601?); (5) criticism, in _The Apologie for

Poetrie_, by Sir Philip Sidney; (6) essays on varied subjects by

Francis Bacon; (7) works dealing with religion and faith: (_a_) John

Foxe's (1516-1587) _Book of Martyrs_, which told in simple prose

thrilling stories of martyrs and served as a textbook of the

Reformation; (_b_) Hooker's _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_, a

treatise on theology; (8) fiction,[1] in John Lyly's _Euphues_ (1579),

Robert Greene's _Pandosto_ (1588), Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcardia_

(1590), Thomas Lodge's _Rosalynde_ (1590), Nashe's _The Unfortunate

Traveler_ (1594), and Thomas Deloney's _The Gentle Craft_ (1597).[2]

Shakespeare read Holinshed, North, Greene, Sidney, and Lodge and

turned some of their suggestions into poetry, which we very much

prefer to their prose. We are nearly certain that Shakespeare studied

Lyly's _Euphues_, because we can trace the influence of that work in

his style.

It was the misfortune of Elizabethan prose to be almost completely

overshadowed by the poetry. This prose was, however, far more varied

and important than that of any preceding age. The books mentioned on

page 123 constitute only a small part of the prose of this period.

Lyly, Sidney, Hooker.--In 1579, when Shakespeare was fifteen years

old, there appeared the first part of an influential prose work, John

Lyly's (1554?-1606) _Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_, followed in 1580 by

a second part, _Euphues and his England_. Much of Lyly's subject

matter is borrowed, and his form reflects the artificial style then

popular over Europe.

Euphues, a young Athenian, goes to Naples, where he falls in love and

is jilted. This is all the action in the first part of the so-called

story. The rest is moralizing. In the second part, Euphues comes to

England with a friend, who falls in love twice, and finally marries;

but again there is more moralizing than story. Euphues returns to

Athens and retires to the mountains to muse in solitude.

In its use of a love story, _Euphues_ prefigures the modern novel. In

_Euphues_, however, the love story serves chiefly as a peg on which to

hang discussions on fickleness, youthful follies, friendship, and

divers other subjects.

Lyly aimed to produce artistic prose, which would render his meaning

clear and impressive. To achieve this object, he made such excessive

use of contrast, balanced words and phrases, and far-fetched

comparisons, that his style seems highly artificial and affected. This

quotation is typical:--

"Achilles spear could as well heal as hurt, the scorpion though he

sting, yet he stints the pain, through the herb _Nerius_ poison the

sheep, yet is a remedy to man against poison... There is great

difference between the standing puddle and the running stream, yet

both water: great odds between the adamant and the pomice, yet both

stones, a great distinction to be put between _vitrum_ and the

crystal, yet both glass: great contrariety between Lais and

Lucretia, yet both women."

Although this selection shows unnatural or strained antithesis, there

is also evident a commendable desire to vary the diction and to avoid

the repetition of the same word. To find four different terms for

nearly the same idea "difference," "odds," "distinction," and

"contrariety," involves considerable painstaking. While it is true

that the term "euphuism" has come to be applied to any stilted,

antithetical style that pays more attention to the manner of

expressing a thought than to its worth, we should remember that

English prose style has advanced because some writers, like Lyly,

emphasized the importance of artistic form. Shakespeare occasionally

employs euphuistic contrast in an effective way. The sententious

Polonius says in _Hamlet_:--

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."

[Illustration: PHILIPPE SIDNEY. _After the miniature by Isaac

Oliver, Windsor Castle._]

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote for his sister, the Countess of

Pembroke, a pastoral romance, entitled _Arcadia_ (published in 1590).

Unlike Lyly, Sidney did not aim at precision, emphatic contrast, and

balance. For its effectiveness, the _Arcadia_ relies on poetic

language and conceptions. The characters in the romance live and love

in a Utopian Arcadia, where "the morning did strow Roses and Violets

in the heavenly floor against the coming of the Sun," and where the

shepherd boy pipes "as though he should never be old."

Passages like the following show Sidney's poetic style and as much

exuberant fancy as if they had been written by a Celt:--

"Her breath is more sweet than a gentle southwest wind, which

comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the

extreme heat of summer and yet is nothing compared to the

honey-flowing speech that breath doth carry."

The _Arcadia_ furnished Shakespeare's _King Lear_ with the auxiliary

plot of Gloucester and his two sons and inspired Thomas Lodge to write

his novel _Rosalynde_, which in turn suggested Shakespeare's _As You

Like It_.

To Sidney belongs the credit of having written the first meritorious

essay on criticism in the English language, _The Apologie for

Poetrie_. This defends the poetic art, and shows how necessary such

exercise of the imagination is to take us away from the cold, hard

facts of life.

Richard Hooker's (1554?-1600) _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_

shows a third aim in Elizabethan prose,--to express carefully reasoned

investigation and conclusion in English that is as thoroughly

elaborated and qualified as the thought. Lyly's striking contrasts and

Sidney's flowery prose do not appeal to Hooker, who uses Latin

inversions and parenthetical qualifications, and adds clause after

clause whenever he thinks it necessary to amplify the thought or to

guard against misunderstanding. Hooker's prose is as carefully wrought

as Lyly's and far more rhythmical. Both were experimenting with

English prose in different fields, serving to teach succeeding writers

what to imitate and to avoid.

Unlike _Euphues_ and the _Arcadia_, _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical

Polity_ is more valuable for its thought than for its form of

expression. This work, which is still studied as an authority, is an

exposition of divine law in its relations to both the world and the

church. Hooker was personally a compound of sweetness and light, and

his philosophy is marked by sweet reasonableness. He was a clergyman

of the Church of England, but he shows a spirit of toleration toward

other churches. He had much of the modern idea of growth in both

government and religion, and he "accepts no system of government

either in church or state as unalterable."

FRANCIS BACON, 1561-1626

[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON. _From the painting by Van Somer,

National Portrait Gallery._]

Life.--A study of Bacon takes us beyond the limits of the reign of

Elizabeth, but not beyond the continued influences of that reign.

Francis Bacon, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great

Seal under Elizabeth, was born in London and grew up under the

influences of the court. In order to understand some of Bacon's

actions in later life, we must remember the influences that helped to

fashion him in his boyhood days. Those with whom he early associated

and who unconsciously molded him were not very scrupulous about the

way in which they secured the favor of the court or the means which

they took to outstrip an adversary. They also encouraged in him a

taste for expensive luxuries. These unfortunate influences were

intensified when, at the age of sixteen, he went with the English

ambassador to Paris, and remained there for two and a half years,

studying statecraft and diplomacy.

When Bacon was nineteen, his father died. The son, being without

money, returned from Paris and appealed to his uncle, Lord Burleigh,

one of Elizabeth's ministers, for some lucrative position at the

court. In a letter to his uncle, Bacon says: "I confess I have as vast

contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all

knowledge to be my province." This statement shows the Elizabethan

desire to master the entire world of the New Learning. Instead of

helping his nephew, however, Lord Burleigh seems to have done all in

his power to thwart him. Bacon thereupon studied law and was admitted

to the bar in 1582.

Bacon entered Parliament in 1584 and distinguished himself as a

speaker. Ben Jonson, the dramatist, says of him "There happened in my

time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man

ever spoke more neatly, more presly, more weightily, or suffered less

emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. His hearers could not

cough or look aside from him without loss. The fear of every man that

heard him was lest he should make an end." This speaking was valuable

training for Bacon in writing the pithy sentences of his _Essays_. A

man who uses the long, involved sentences of Hooker can never become a

speaker to whom people will listen. The habit of directness and

simplicity, which Bacon formed in his speaking, remained with him

through Life.

Among the many charges against Bacon's personal code of ethics, two

stand out conspicuously. The Earl of Essex, who had given Bacon an

estate then worth £1800, was influential in having him appointed to

the staff of counselors to Queen Elizabeth. When Essex was accused of

treason, Bacon kept the queen's friendship by repudiating him and

taking an active part in the prosecution that led to the earl's

execution. After James I. had made Bacon Lord High Chancellor of

England, he was accused of receiving bribes as a judge. He replied

that he had accepted only the customary presents given to judges and

that these made no difference in his decisions. He was tried, found

guilty, fined £40,000, and sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower

during the king's pleasure. After a few days, however, the king

released him, forgave the fine, and gave him an annual pension of

£1200.

The question whether he wrote Shakespeare's plays needs almost as much

discussion on the moral as on the intellectual side. James Spedding,

after studying Bacon's life and works for thirty years, said: "I see

no reason to suppose that Shakespeare did not write the plays. But if

somebody else did, then I think I am in a position to say that it was

not Lord Bacon."

After his release, Bacon passed the remaining five years of his life

in retirement,--studying and writing. His interest in observing

natural objects and experimenting with them was the cause of his

death. He was riding in a snowstorm when it occurred to him to test

snow as a preservative agent. He stopped at a house, procured a fowl,

and stuffed it with snow. He caught cold during this experiment and,

being improperly cared for, soon died.

The Essays.--The first ten of his _Essays_, his most popular work,

appeared in the year 1597. At the time of his death, he had increased

them to fifty-eight. They deal with a with range of subjects, from

_Studies_ and _Nobility_, On the one hand, to _Marriage and Single

Life_ and _Gardens_ on the other. The great critic Hallam say: "It

would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite

letters, were he unacquainted with the _Essays_ of Bacon. It is,

indeed, little worth while to read this or any other book for

reputation's, sake; but very few in our language so well repay the

pains, or afford more nourishment to the thoughts."

[Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF BACON'S ESSAYS, 1597.]

The following sentence from the essay _Of Studies_ will show some of

the characteristics of his way of presenting thought:--

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing

an exact man: and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need

have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present

wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to

know that he doth not."

We may notice here (1) clearness, (2) conciseness, (3) breadth of

thought and observation.

A shrewd Scotchman says: "It may be said that to men wishing to rise

in the world by politic management of their fellowmen, Bacon's

_Essays_ are the best handbook hitherto published." In justification

of this criticism, we need only quote from the essay _Of

Negotiating_:--

"It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter... Letters

are good, when a man would draw an answer by letter back again, or

when it may serve, for a man's justification, afterwards to produce

his own letter, or where it may he danger to be interrupted or heard

by pieces. To deal in person is good, when a man's face breedeth

regard, as commonly with inferiors, or in tender cases, where a

man's eye upon the countenance of him with whom he speaketh may give

him a direction how far to go, and generally, where a man will

reserve to himself liberty either to disavow or to expound."

Scientific and Miscellaneous Works.--_The Advancement of Learning_

is another of Bacon's great works. The title aptly expresses the

purpose of the took. He insists on the necessity of close observation

of nature and of making experiments with various forms of matter. He

decries the habit of spinning things out of one's inner consciousness,

without patiently studying the outside world to see whether the facts

justify the conclusions. In other words, he insists on induction.

Bacon was not the father of the inductive principle, as is sometimes

wrongly stated; for prehistoric man was compelled to make inductions

before he could advance one step from barbarism. The trouble was that

this method was not rigorously applied. It was currently believed that

our valuable garden toad is venomous and that frogs are bred from

slime. For his knowledge of bees, Lyly consulted classical authors in

preference to watching the insects. Bacon's writings exerted a

powerful influence in the direction of exact inductive method.

Bacon had so little faith in the enduring qualities of the English

language, that he wrote the most of his philosophical works in Latin.

He planned a Latin work in six parts, to cover the whole field of the

philosophy of natural science. The most famous of the parts completed

is the _Novum Organum_, which deals with certain methods for searching

after definite truth, and shows how to avoid some ever present

tendencies toward error.

Bacon wrote an excellent _History of the Reign of Henry VII_., which

is standard to this day. He is also the author of _The New Atlantis_,

which may be termed a Baconian Utopia, or study of an ideal

commonwealth.

General Characteristics.--In Bacon's sentences we may often find

remarkable condensation of thought in few words. A modern essayist has

taken seven pages to express, or rather to obscure, the ideas in these

three lines from Bacon:--

"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little,

repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period,

but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."[3]

His works abound in illustrations, analogies, and striking imagery;

but unlike the great Elizabethan poets, he appeals more to cold

intellect than to the feelings. We are often pleased with his

intellectual ingenuity, for instance, in likening the Schoolmen to

spiders, spinning such stuff as webs are made of "out of no great

quantity of matter."

He resembles the Elizabethans in preferring magnificent to commonplace

images. It has been often noticed that if he essays to write of

buildings in general, he prefers to describe palaces. His knowledge of

the intellectual side of human nature is especially remarkable, but,

unlike Shakespeare, Bacon never drops his plummet into the emotional

depths of the soul.

THE NON-DRAMATIC POETRY--LYRICAL VERSE

A Medium of Artistic Expression.--No age has surpassed the

Elizabethan in lyrical poems, those "short swallow flights of song,"

as Tennyson defines them. The English Renaissance, unlike the Italian,

did not achieve great success in painting. The Englishman embodied in

poetry his artistic expression of the beautiful. Many lyrics are

merely examples of word painting. The Elizabethan poet often began his

career by trying to show his skill with the ingenious and musical

arrangement of words, where an Italian would have used color and

drawing on an actual canvas.

We have seen that in the reign of Henry VIII. Wyatt and Surrey

introduced into England from Italy the type of lyrical verse known as

the sonnet. This is the most artificial of lyrics, because its rules

prescribe a length of exactly fourteen lines and a definite internal

structure.

The sonnet was especially popular with Elizabethan poets. In the last

ten years of the sixteenth century, more than two thousand sonnets

were written. Even Shakespeare served a poetic apprenticeship by

writing many sonnets as well as semi-lyrical poems, like _Venus and

Adonis_.

We should, however, remember that the sonnet is only one type of the

varied lyric expression of the age. Many Elizabethan song books show

that lyrics were set to music and used on the most varied occasions.

There were songs for weddings, funerals, dances, banquets,--songs for

the tinkers, the barbers, and other workmen. If modern readers chance

to pick up an Elizabethan novel, like Thomas Lodge's _Rosalynde_

(1590), they are surprised to find that prose will not suffice for the

lover, who must "evaporate" into song like this:--

"Love in my bosom like a bee,

Doth suck his sweet.

Now with his wings he plays with me,

Now with his feet."

There are large numbers of Elizabethan lyrics apparently as

spontaneous and unfettered as the song of the lark. The seeming

artlessness of much of this verse should not blind us to the fact that

an unusual number of poets had really studied the art of song.

Love Lyrics.--The subject of the Elizabethan sonnets is usually

love. Sir Philip Sidney wrote many love sonnets, the best of which is

the one beginning:--

"With how sad steps. O Moon, thou climb'st the Skies!"

Edmund Spencer composed fifty-eight sonnets in one year to chronicle

his varied emotions as a lover. We may find among Shakespeare's 154

sonnets some of the greatest love lyrics in the language, such, for

instance, as CXVI., containing the lines:--

"Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds";

or, as XVIII.:--

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease bath all too short a date.

* * * * *

But thy eternal summer shall not fade."

Sonnets came to be used in much the same way as a modern love letter

or valentine. In the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, sonnets were

even called "merchantable ware." Michael Drayton (1563-1631), a

prolific poet, author of the _Ballad of Agincourt_, one of England's

greatest war songs, tells how he was employed by a lover to write a

sonnet which won the lady. Drayton's best sonnet is, _Since there's no

help, come let us kiss and part_.

Outside of the sonnets, we shall find love lyrics in great variety.

One of the most popular of Elizabethan songs is Ben Jonson's:--

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine."

The Elizabethans were called a "nest of singing birds" because such

songs as the following are not unusual in the work of their minor

writers:--

"Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft

To give my love good morrow!

Winds from the wind to please her mind,

Notes from the lark I'll borrow."[4]

Pastoral Lyrics.--In Shakespeare's early youth it was the fashion to

write lyrics about the delights of rustic life with sheep and

shepherds. The Italians, freshly interesting in Vergil's _Georgics_

and _Bucolics_, had taught the English how to write pastoral verse.

The entire joyous world had become a Utopian sheep pasture, in which

shepherds piped and fell in love with glorified sheperdesses. A great

poet named one of his productions, _Shepherd's Calendar_ and Sir

Philip Sidney wrote in poetic prose the pastoral romance _Arcadia_.

Christopher Marlowe's _The Passionate Shepherd to his Love_ is a

typical poetic expression of the fancied delight in pastoral life:--

"...we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals."

Miscellaneous Lyrics.--As the Elizabethan age progressed, the

subject matter of the lyrics became broader. Verse showing consummate

mastery of turns expressed the most varied emotions. Some of the

greatest lyrics of the period are the songs interspersed in the plays

of the dramatists, from Lyly to Beaumont and Fletcher. The plays of

Shakespeare, the greatest and most varied of Elizabethan lyrical

poets, especially abound in such songs. Two of the best of these occur

in his _Cymbeline_. One is the song--

"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,"

and the other is the dirge beginning:--

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun."

Ariel's songs in _The Tempest_ fascinate with the witchery of

untrammeled existence. Two lines of a song from _Twelfth Night_ give

an attractive presentation of the Renaissance philosophy of the

present as opposed to an elusive future:--

"What is love? 'tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter."

[Illustration: JOHN DONNE. _From the painting ascribed to Cornelius

Jansen, South Kensington Museum._]

Two of the later Elizabethan poets, Ben Jonson and John Donne

(1573-1631), specially impress us by their efforts to secure ingenious

effects in verse. Ben Jonson often shows this tendency, as in trying

to give a poetic definition of a kiss as something--

"So sugar'd, so melting, so soft, so delicious,"

and in showing so much ingenuity of expression in the cramping limits

of an epitaph:--

"Underneath this stone doth lie

As much beauty as could die,

Which in life did harbor give

To more virtue than doth live."

The poet most famous for a display of extreme ingenuity in verse is

John Donne, a traveler, courtier, and finally dean of St. Paul's

Cathedral, who possessed, to quote his own phrase, an "hydroptic

immoderate desire of human learning." He paid less attention to

artistic form than the earlier Elizabethans, showed more cynicism,

chose the abstract rather than the concrete, and preferred involved

metaphysical thought to simple sensuous images. He made few references

to nature and few allusions to the characters of classical mythology,

but searched for obscure likenesses between things, and for conceits

or far-fetched comparisons. In his poem, _A Funeral Elegy_, he shows

these qualities in characterizing a fair young lady as:--

"One whose clear body was so pure and thin,

Because it need disguise no thought within;

'Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll,

Or exhalation breathed out from her soul."

The idea in Shakespeare's simpler expression, "the heavenly rhetoric

of thine eye," was expanded by Donne into:--

"Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes upon one double string."

Donne does not always show so much fine-spun ingenuity, but this was

the quality most imitated by a group of his successors. His claim to

distinction rests on the originality and ingenuity of his verse, and

perhaps still more on his influence over succeeding poets.[5]

EDMUND SPENSER, 1552-1599

[Illustration: EDMUND SPENSER._From a painting in Duplin Castle_.]

Life and Minor Poems.--For one hundred and fifty-two years after

Chaucer's death, in 1400, England had no great poet until Edmund

Spenser was born in London in 1552. Spenser, who became the greatest

non-dramatic poet of the Elizabethan age, was twelve years older than

Shakespeare.

His parents were poor, but fortunately in Elizabethan times, as well

as in our own days, there were generous men who found their chief

pleasure in aiding others. Such a man assisted Spenser in going to

Cambridge. Spenser's benefactor was sufficiently wise not to give the

student enough to dwarf the growth of self-reliance. We know that

Spenser was a sizar at Cambridge, that is, one of those students who,

to quote Macaulay, "had to perform some menial services. They swept

the court; they carried up the dinner to the fellows' table, and

changed the plate and poured out the ale of the rulers of society." We

know further that Spenser was handicapped by ill health during a part

of his course, for we find records of allowances paid "Spenser

_aegrotanti_."

After leaving Cambridge Spenser went to the north of England, probably

in the capacity of tutor. While there, he fell in love with a young

woman whom he calls Rosalind. This event colored his after life.

Although she refused him, she had penetration enough to see in what

his greatness consisted, and her opinion spurred him to develop his

abilities as a poet. He was about twenty-five years old when he fell

in love with Rosalind; and he remained single until he was forty-two,

when he married an Irish maiden named Elizabeth. In honor of that

event, he composed the _Epithalamion_, the noblest marriage song in

any literature. So strong are early impressions that even in its lines

he seems to be thinking of Rosalind and fancying that she is his

bride.

After returning from the north, he spent some time with Sir Philip

Sidney, who helped fashion Spenser's ideals of a chivalrous gentleman.

Sidney's influence is seen in Spenser's greatest work, the _Faerie

Queene_. Sir Walter Raleigh was another friend who left his imprint on

Spenser.

In 1579, Spenser published the _Shepherd's Calendar_. This is a

pastoral poem, consisting of twelve different parts, one part being

assigned to each of the twelve months. Although inferior to the

_Faerie Queene_, the _Shepherd's Calendar_ remains one of the greatest

pastoral poems in the English language.

In 1580 he was appointed secretary to Lord Gray, Lord Lieutenant of

Ireland. In one capacity or another, in the service of the crown,

Spenser passed in Ireland almost the entire remaining eighteen years

of his life. In 1591 he received in the south of Ireland a grant of

three thousand acres, a part of the confiscated estate of an Irish

earl. Sir Walter Raleigh was also given forty-two thousand acres near

Spenser. Ireland was then in a state of continuous turmoil. In such a

country Spenser lived and wrote his _Faerie Queene_. Of course, this

environment powerfully affected the character of that poem. It has

been said that to read a contemporary's account of "Raleigh's

adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single

combats, his escapes at fords and woods, is like reading bits of the

_Faerie Queene_ in prose."

In 1598 the Irish, infuriated by the invasion of their country and the

seizure of their lands, set fire to Spenser's castle. He and his

family barely escaped with their lives. He crossed to England and died

the next year, according to some accounts, in want. He was buried, at

the expense of Lord Essex, in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer.

The Faerie Queene.--In 1590 Spenser published the first three books

of the _Faerie Queene_. The original plan was to have the poem contain

twelve books, like Vergil's _AEneid_, but only six were published. If

more were written, they have been lost.

The poem is an allegory with the avowed moral purpose of fashioning "a

gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline." Spenser

says: "I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was King, the

image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall

vertues, as Aristotle hath devised." Twelve Knights personifying

twelve Virtues were to fight with their opposing Vices, and the twelve

books were to tell the story of the conflict. The Knights set out from

the court of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, in search of their enemies,

and meet with divers adventures and enchantments.

The hero of the tale is Arthur, who has figured so much in English

song and legend. Spenser makes him typical of all the Virtues taken

together. The first book, which is really a complete poem by itself,

and which is generally admitted to be the finest, contains an account

of the adventures of the Red Cross Knight who represents Holiness.

Other books tell of the warfare of the Knights who typify Temperance,

Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy.

The poem begins thus:--

"A gentle Knight was pricking[6] on the plaine,

Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,

Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,

The cruell markes of many' a bloody fielde;

Yet armes till that time did he never wield.

* * * * *

"And on his brest a bloodie Crosse he bore,

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore.

* * * * *

"Upon a great adventure he was bond.

That greatest Gloriana to him gave,

That greatest glorious Queene of Faerie lond."

The entire poem really typifies the aspirations of the human soul for

something nobler and better than can be gained without effort. In

Spenser's imaginative mind, these aspirations became real persons who

set out to win laurels in a fairyland, lighted with the soft light of

the moon, and presided over by the good genius that loves to uplift

struggling and weary souls.

The allegory certainly becomes confused. A critic well says: "We can

hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to lose." We are not

called on to understand the intricacies of the allegory, but to read

between the lines, catch the noble moral lesson, and drink to our fill

at the fountain of beauty and melody.

Spenser a Subjective Poet.--The subjective cast of Spenser's mind

next demands attention. We feel that his is an ideal world, one that

does not exist outside of the imagination. In order to understand the

difference between subjective and objective, let us compare Chaucer

with Spenser. No one can really be said to study literature without

constantly bringing in the principle of comparison. We must notice the

likeness and the difference between literary productions, or the faint

impression which they make upon our minds will soon pass away.

Chaucer is objective; that is, he identifies himself with things that

could have a real existence in the outside world. We find ourselves

looking at the shiny bald head of Chaucer's Monk, at the lean horse

and threadbare clothes of the Student of Oxford, at the brown

complexion of the Shipman, at the enormous hat and large figure of the

Wife of Bath, at the red face of the Summoner, at the hair of the

Pardoner "yelow as wex." These are not mere figments of the

imagination. We feel that they are either realities or that they could

have existed.

While the adventures in the Irish wars undoubtedly gave the original

suggestions for many of the contests between good and evil in the

_Faerie Queene_, Spenser intentionally idealized these knightly

struggles to uphold the right and placed them in fairyland. This great

poem is the work of a mind that loved to elaborate purely subjective

images. The pictures were not painted from gazing at the outside

world. We feel that they are mostly creations of the imagination, and

that few of them could exist in a real world. There is no bower in the

bottom of the sea, "built of hollow billowes heaped hye," and no lion

ever follows a lost maiden to protect her. We feel that the principal

part of Shakespeare's world could have existed in reality as well as

in imagination. Spenser was never able to reach this highest type of

art.

The world, however, needs poets to create images of a higher type of

beauty than this life can offer. These images react on our material

lives and cast them in a nobler mold. Spenser's belief that the

subjective has power to fashion the objective is expressed in two of

the finest lines that he ever wrote:--

"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;

For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."[7]

Chief Characteristics of Spenser's Poetry.--We can say of Spencer's

verse that it stands in the front rank for (1) melody, (2) love of the

beautiful, and (3) nobility of the ideals presented. His poetry also

(4) shows a preference for the subjective world, (5) exerts a

remarkable influence over other poets, and (6) displays a peculiar

liking for obsolete forms of expression.

Spencer's melody is noteworthy. If we read aloud correctly such lines

as these, we can scarcely fail to be impressed with their harmonious

flow:--

"A teme of Dolphins raunged in aray

Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent:

They were all taught by Triton to obay

To the long raynes at her commaundement:

As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went.

* * * * *

"Upon great Neptune's necke they softly swim,

And to her watry chamber swiftly carry him.

Deepe in the bottome of the sea her bowre

Is built of hollow billowes heaped hye."[8]

The following lines will show Spenser's love for beauty, and at the

same time indicate the nobility of some of his ideal characters. He is

describing Lady Una, the fair representative of true religion, who has

lost through enchantment her Guardian Knight, and who is wandering

disconsolate in the forest:--

"...Her angel's face,

As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,

And made a sunshine in the shady place;

Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace.

"It fortuned out of the thickest wood

A ramping Lyon rushed suddeinly,

Hunting full greedy after salvage blood.

Soone as the royall virgin he did spy,

With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,

To have att once devoured her tender corse;

But to the pray when as he drew more ny,

His bloody rage aswaged with remorse,

And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.

"In stead thereof he kist her wearie feet,

And lickt her lilly hands with fawning tong,

As he her wronged innocence did weet.

O, how can beautie maister the most strong,

And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!"[9]

The power of beauty has seldom been more vividly described. As we read

the succeeding stanzas and see the lion following her, like a faithful

dog, to shield her from harm, we feel the power of both beauty and

goodness and realize that with Spenser these terms are

interchangeable, Each one of the preceding selections shows his

preference for the subjective and the ideal to the actual.

Spenser searched for old and obsolete words. He used "eyne" for

"eyes," "fone" for "foes," "shend" for "shame." He did not hesitate to

coin words when he needed them, like "mercify" and "fortunize." He

even wrote "wawes" in place of "waves" because he wished it to rime

with "jaws." In spite of these peculiarities, Spenser is not hard

reading after the first appearance of strangeness has worn away.

A critic rightly says that Spenser repels none but the anti-poetical.

His influence upon other poets has been far-reaching. Milton, Dryden,

Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley show traces of his influence.

Spenser has been called the poet's poet, because the more poetical one

is, the more one will enjoy him.

THE ENGLISH DRAMA

The Early Religious Drama.--It is necessary to remember at the

outset that the purpose of the religious drama was not to amuse, but

to give a vivid presentation of scriptural truth. On the other hand,

the primary aim of the later dramatist has usually been to entertain,

or, in Shakespeare's exact words, "to please." Shakespeare was,

however, fortunate in having an audience that was pleased to be

instructed, as well as entertained.

Before the sixteenth century, England had a religious drama that made

a profound impression on life and thought. The old religious plays

helped to educate the public, the playwrights, and the actors for the

later drama.

Any one may to-day form some idea of the rise of the religious drama,

by attending the service of the Catholic church on Christmas or Easter

Sunday. In many Catholic churches there may still be seen at Christmas

time a representation of the manger at Bethlehem. Sometimes the

figures of the infant Savior, of Joseph and Mary, of the wise men, of

the sheep and cattle, are very lifelike.

The events clustering about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection

furnished the most striking material for the early religious drama.

Our earliest dramatic writers drew their inspiration from the _New

Testament_.

Miracle and Mystery Plays.--A Miracle play is the dramatic

representation of the life of a saint and of the miracles connected

with him. A Mystery play deals with gospel events which are concerned

with any phase of the life of Christ, or with any Biblical event that

remotely foreshadows Christ or indicates the necessity of a Redeemer.

In England there were few, if any, pure Miracle plays, but the term

"Miracle" is applied indiscriminately to both Miracles and Mysteries.

The first Miracle play in England was acted probably not far from

1100. In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries these

plays had become so popular that they were produced in nearly every

part of England. Shakespeare felt their influence. He must have had

frequent opportunities in his boyhood to witness their production.

They were seldom performed in England after 1600, although visitors to

Germany have, every ten years, the opportunity of seeing a modern

production of a Mystery in the _Passion Play_ at Oberammergau.

The Subjects.--Four great cycles of Miracle plays have been

preserved: the York, Chester, and Coventry plays, so called because

they were performed in those places, and the Towneley plays, which

take their name from Towneley Hall in Lancashire, where the manuscript

was kept for some time. It is probable that almost every town of

importance had its own collection of plays.

[Illustration: MIRACLE PLAY AT COVENTRY. _From an old print_]

The York cycle contains forty-eight plays. A cycle or circle of plays

means a list forming a complete circle from Creation until Doomsday.

The York collection begins with Creation and the fall of Lucifer and

the bad angels from Heaven,--a theme which was later to inspire the

pen of one of England's greatest poets. The tragedies of Eden and the

Flood, scenes from the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, the manger

at Bethlehem, the slaughter of the Innocents, the Temptation, the

resurrection of Lazarus, the Last Supper, the Trial, the Crucifixion,

and the Easter triumph are a few of the Miracle plays that were acted

in the city of York.

The Actors and Manner of Presentation.--At first the actors were

priests who presented the plays either in the church or in its

immediate vicinity on sacred ground. After a while the plays became so

popular that the laity presented them. When they were at the height of

their popularity, that is, during the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries, the actors were selected with great care from the members

of the various trades guilds. Each guild undertook the entire

responsibility for the presentation of some one play, and endeavored

to surpass all the other guilds.

[Illustration: HELL MOUTH._From a Columbia University Model_.]

Considerable humor was displayed in the allotment of various plays.

The tanners presented the fall of Lucifer and the bad angels into the

infernal regions; the ship carpenters, the play of Noah and the

building of the ark; the bakers, the Last Supper; the butchers, the

Crucifixion. In their prime, the Miracle plays were acted on wooden

platforms mounted on wheels. There were two distinct stories in these

movable stages, a lower one in which the actors dressed, and an upper

one in which they played. The entrance to the lower story, known as

Hell Mouth, consisted of a terrible pair of dragonlike jaws, painted

red. From these jaws issued smoke, flame, and horrible outcries. From

the entrance leaped red-coated devils to tempt the Savior, the saints,

and men. Into it the devils would disappear with some wicked soul.

They would torture it and make it roar with pain, as the smoke poured

faster from the red jaws.

In York on Corpus Christi Day, which usually fell in the first week in

June, the actors were ordered to be in their places on these movable

theaters at half past three in the morning. Certain stations had been

selected throughout the city, where each pageant should stop and, in

the proper order, present its own play. In this way the enormous

crowds that visited York to see these performances were more evenly

scattered throughout the city.

The actors did not always remain on the stage. Herod, for example, in

his magnificent robes used to ride on horseback among the people,

boast of his prowess, and overdo everything. Shakespeare, who was

evidently familiar with the character, speaks of out-Heroding Herod.

The Devil also frequently jumped from the stage and availed himself of

his license to play pranks among the audience.

Much of the acting was undoubtedly excellent. In 1476 the council at

York ordained that four of the best players in the city should examine

with regard to fitness all who wished to take part in the plays. So

many were desirous of acting that it was much trouble to get rid of

incompetents. The ordinance ran: "All such as they shall find

sufficient in person and cunning, to the honor of the City and worship

of the said Crafts, for to admit and able; and all other insufficient

persons, either in cunning, voice, or person, to discharge, ammove and

avoid." A critic says that this ordinance is "one of the steps on

which the greatness of the Elizabethan stage was built, and through

which its actors grew up."[10]

Introduction of the Comic Element in the Miracle Plays.--While the

old drama generally confined itself to religious subjects, the comic

element occasionally crept in, made its power felt, and disclosed a

new path for future playwrights. In the _Play of Noah's Flood_, when

the time for the flood has come, Noah's wife refuses to enter the ark

and a domestic quarrel ensues. Finally her children pull and shove her

into the ark. When she is safe on board, Noah bids her welcome. His

enraged wife deals him resounding blows until he calls to her to stop,

because his back is nearly broken.

The _Play of the Shepherds_ includes a genuine comedy, the first

comedy worthy of the name to appear in England. While watching their

flocks on Christmas Eve, the shepherds are joined by Mak, a neighbor

whose reputation for honesty is not good. Before they go to sleep,

they make him lie down within their circle; but he rises when he hears

them begin to snore, steals a sheep, and hastens home. His wife is

alarmed, because in that day the theft of a sheep was punishable by

death. She finally concludes that the best plan will be to wrap the

animal in swaddling clothes and put it in the cradle. If the shepherds

come to search the house, she will pretend that she has a child; and,

if they approach the cradle, she will caution them against touching it

for fear of waking the child and causing him to fill the house with

his cries. She speedily hurries Mak away to resume his slumbers among

the shepherds. When they wake, they miss the sheep, suspect Mak, and

go to search his house. His wife allows them to look around

thoroughly, but she keeps them away from the cradle. They leave,

rather ashamed of their suspicion. As they are going out of the door,

a thought strikes one of them whereby they can make partial amends.

Deciding to give the child sixpence, he returns, lifts up the covering

of the cradle, and discovers the sheep. Mak and his wife both declare

that an elf has changed their child into a sheep. The shepherds

threaten to have the pair hanged. They seize Mak, throw him on a

canvas, and toss him into the air until they are exhausted. They then

lie down to rest and are roused with the song of an angel from

Bethlehem.

To produce this comedy required genuine inventive imagination; for

there is nothing faintly resembling this incident in the sacred

narrative. These early exercises of the imagination in our drama may

resemble the tattering footsteps of a child; but they were necessary

antecedents to the strength, beauty, and divinity of movement in

Elizabethan times.

[Illustration: FOOL'S HEAD. State properties of the Vice and Fool.]

The Morality.--The next step in the development of the drama is

known as the Morality play. This personified abstractions. Characters

like Charity, Hope, Faith, Truth, Covetousness, Falsehood, Abominable

Living, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil,--in short, all the

Virtues and the Vices,--came on the stage in the guise of persons, and

played the drama of life.

Critics do not agree about the precise way in which the Morality is

related to the Miracle play. It is certain that the Miracle play had

already introduced some abstractions.

In one very important respect, the Morality marks an advance, by

giving more scope to the imagination. The Miracle plays had their

general treatment absolutely predetermined by the Scriptural version

of the action or by the legends of the lives of saints, although

diverting incidents could be introduced, as we have seen. In the

Morality, the events could take any turn which the author chose to

give.

[Illustration: AIR-BAG FLAPPER. Stage properties of the Vice and

Fool.]

In spite of this advantage, the Morality is in general a synonym for

what is uninteresting. The characters born of abstractions are too

often bloodless, like their parents. The Morality under a changed name

was current a few years ago in the average Sunday-school book.

Incompetent writers of fiction today often adopt the Morality

principle in making their characters unnaturally good or bad, mere

puppets who do not develop along the line of their own emotional

prompting, but are moved by machinery in the author's hands.

[Illustration: LATH DAGGER. Stage properties of the Vice and Fool.]

A new character, the Vice, was added as an adjunct to the Devil, to

increase the interest of the audience in the Morality play. The Vice

represented the leading spirit of evil in any particular play,

sometimes Fraud, Covetousness, Pride, Iniquity, or Hypocrisy. It was

the business of the Vice to annoy the Virtues and to be constantly

playing pranks. The Vice was the predecessor of the clown and the fool

upon the stage. The Vice also amused the audience by tormenting the

Devil, belaboring him with a sword of lath, sticking thorns into him,

and making him roar with pain. Sometimes the Devil would be kicked

down Hell Mouth by the offended Virtues; but he would soon reappear

with saucily curled tail, and at the end of the play he would delight

the spectators by plunging into Hell Mouth with the Vice on his back.

[Illustration: FOOL OF THE OLD PLAY.]

Court Plays.--In the first part of the sixteenth century, the court

and the nobility especially encouraged the production of plays whose

main object was to entertain. The influence of the court in shaping

the drama became much more powerful than that of the church. Wallace

says of the new materials which his researches have disclosed in the

twentieth century:--

"They throw into the lime-light a brilliant development of this new

drama through the Chapel Royal, a development that took place

primarily under the direction of the great musicians who served as

masters of the children of the Chapel and as court entertainers, the

first true poets-laureate, through the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward

VI., Mary, and Elizabeth."[11]

In 1509 Henry VIII. appointed William Cornish (died 1523) to be Master

of the Children of the Chapel Royal. This court institution with its

choral body of men and boys not only ministered "by song to the

spiritual well-being of the sovereign and his household," but also

gave them "temporal" enjoyment in dances, pageants, and plays. We must

not forget, however, that the Chapel Royal was originally, as its name

implies, a religious body. Cornish was a capable dramatist, as well as

a musician and a poet; and he, unlike the author of _Everyman_, wrote

plays simply to amuse the court and its guests. He has even been

called the founder of the secular English drama.[12]

The court of Henry VIII. became especially fond of the Interlude,

which was a short play, often given in connection with a banquet or

other entertainment. Any dramatic incident, such as the refusal of

Noah's wife to enter the ark, or Mak's thievery in _The Play of the

Shepherds_, might serve as an Interlude. Cornish and John Heywood

(1497?--1580?), a court dramatist of much versatility, incorporated in

the Interlude many of the elements of the five-act drama. _The Four

P's_, the most famous Interlude, shows a contest between a Pardoner,

Palmer, Pedlar, and Poticary, to determine who could tell the greatest

lie. Wallace thinks that the best Interludes, such as _The Four P's_

and _The Pardoner and the Frere_, were written by Cornish, although

they are usually ascribed to Heywood.

Cornish had unusual ability as a deviser of masques and plays. One of

his interludes for children has allegorical characters that remotely

suggest some that appear in the modern _Bluebird_, by Maeterlinck.

Cornish had Wind appear "in blue with drops of silver"; Rain, "in

black with silver honeysuckles"; Winter, "in russet with flakes of

silver snow"; Summer, "in green with gold stars"; and Spring, "in

green with gold primroses." In 1522 Cornish wrote and presented before

Henry VIII. and his guest, the Roman emperor, a political play,

especially planned to indicate the attitude of the English monarch

toward Spain and France. Under court influences, the drama enlarged

its scope and was no longer chiefly the vehicle for religious

instruction.

Early Comedies.--Two early comedies, divided, after the classical

fashion, into acts and scenes, show close approximation to the modern

form of English plays.

_Ralph Royster Doyster_ was written not far from the middle of the

sixteenth century by Nicholas Udall (1505-1556), sometime master of

Eton College and, later, court poet under Queen Mary. This play,

founded on a comedy of Plautus, shows the classical influence which

was so powerful in England at this time. Ralph, the hero, is a

conceited simpleton. He falls in love with a widow who has already

promised her hand to a man infinitely Ralph's superior. Ralph,

however, unable to understand why she should not want him, persists in

his wooing. She makes him the butt of her jokes, and he finds himself

in ridiculous positions. The comedy amuses us in this way until her

lover returns and marries her. The characters of the play, which is

written in rime, are of the English middle class.

_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, the work of William Stevenson, a

little-known pre-Shakespearean writer, was acted at Christ's College,

Cambridge, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. This

play borrows hardly anything from the classical stage. Most of the

characters of _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ are from the lowest English

working classes, and its language, unlike that of _Ralph Royster

Doyster_, which has little to offend, is very coarse.

Gorboduc and the Dramatic Unities.--The tragedy of _Gorboduc_, the

first regular English tragedy written in blank verse, was acted in

1561, three years before the birth of Shakespeare. This play is in

part the work of Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), a poet and diplomat,

the author of two powerful somber poems, the _Induction_ and

_Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham_. In spite of their heavy

narrative form, these poems are in places even more dramatic than the

dull tragedy of Gorboduc, which was fashioned after the classical

rules of Seneca and the Greeks. _Gorboduc_ requires little action on

the stage. There is considerable bloodshed in the play; but the

spectators are informed of the carnage by a messenger, as they are not

permitted to witness a bloody contest on the stage.

[Illustration: THOMAS SACKVILLE.]

If Gorboduc had been taken for a model, the English drama could never

have attained Shakespearean greatness. Our drama would then have been

crippled by following the classical rules, which prescribed unity of

place and time in the plot and the action. The ancients held that a

play should not represent actions which would, in actual life, require

much more than twenty-four hours for their performance. If one of the

characters was a boy, he had to be represented as a boy throughout the

play. The next act could not introduce him as one who had grown to

manhood in the interval. The classical rules further required that the

action should be performed in one place, or near it. Anything that

happened at a great distance had to be related by a messenger, and not

acted on the stage.

Had these rules been followed, the English drama could never have

painted the growth and development of character, which is not the work

of a day. The genius of Marlowe and Shakespeare taught them to

disregard these dramatic unities. In _As You Like It_, the action is

now at the court, and now in the far-off Forest of Arden. Shakespeare

knew that the imagination could traverse the distance. At the

beginning of the play Oliver is an unnatural, brutal brother; but

events change him, so that in the fourth act, when he is asked if he

is the man who tried to kill his brother, Oliver replies:--

"'Twas I; but 'tis not I."

THE PRESENTATION OF ELIZABETHAN PLAYS

[Illustration: THEATER IN INN YARD. _From Columbia University

model._]

The Elizabethan Theater.--Before considering the work of the

Elizabethan dramatists, we should know something of the conditions

which they had to meet in order to produce plays for the contemporary

stage. The courtyard of London inns often served as a playhouse before

sufficient regular theaters were built. The stage was in one end of

the yard, and the unused ground space in front served as the pit. Two

or three tiers of galleries or balconies around the yard afforded

additional space for both actors and spectators. These inn yards

furnished many suggestions which were incorporated in the early

theaters.

The first building in England for the public presentation of plays was

known as The Theater. It was built in London in 1576. In 1598

Shakespeare and his associates, failing to secure a lease of the

ground on which this building stood, pulled it down, carried the

materials across the river, and erected the famous Globe Theater on

the Bankside, as the street running along the south side of the Thames

was called. In late years a careful study of the specifications (1599)

for building the Fortune Theater (see Frontispiece) has thrown much

light on the Globe, which is unusually important from its association

with Shakespeare. Although the Fortune was square, while the Globe was

octagonal, the Fortune was in many essentials modeled after the Globe.

A part of the specifications of the Fortune read as follows:--

"...the frame of the saide howse to be sett square and to conteine

fowerscore foote of lawful assize everye waie square, without, and

fiftie five foote of like assize square, everye waie within ... and

the saide frame to conteine three stories in heigth ... [the] stadge

shall conteine in length fortie and three foote of lawfull assize,

and in breadth to extende to the middle of the yarde of the said

howse: the same stadge to be paled in belowe with goode stronge and

sufficyent new oken boardes... And the said stadge to be in all

other proportions contryved and fashioned like unto the stadge

of the wide Playhowse called the Globe."

[Illustration: RECONSTRUCTED GLOBE THEATER, "SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND,"

EARL'S COURT, LONDON, 1912. _From an original drawing._]

The first part of the twentieth century has made a detailed study of

the stage on which the Great Elizabethan plays were acted. G.F.

Reynolds says:--

"Most students agree that the 'typical' Elizabethan stage consisted

of a platform, uncurtained in front, open as well at the sides,

carpeted, it is generally said, with rushes, and surrounded with a

railing, a space behind this platform closed by a sliding curtain,

and a balcony with its own curtains and entrances. There were also a

space below the stage reached by trap doors, a dressing room behind

the stage, machinery by which characters ascended to and descended

from some place above, and in some theaters at least, a 'heavens,'

or roof over part or all of the stage."[13]

Possibly no single stage had every feature mentioned in the above

description, which gives, however, a good general idea of a typical

stage of the time. We must remember that no one has the right to

assert that different Elizabethan stages did not differ in details. We

are not sure that every stage was so planned as to be divided into two

parts by a sliding curtain. The drawing of the Swan Theater shows no

place for such a curtain, although it is possible that the draftsman

forgot to include it. The specifications of the stage of the Fortune

Theater make no mention of a railing.

The Play and the Audience.--It is impossible to criticize

Elizabethan plays properly from the point of view of the

twentieth-century stage. Many modern criticisms are shown to be

without reason when we understand the wishes of the audience and the

manner of presenting the plays. The conditions of the entry or the

reëntry of a player might explain some of those lengthy monologues

that seem so inartistic to modern dramatists. The Elizabethan theaters

and the tastes of their patrons had certain important characteristics

of their own.

I. In the public theaters,[14] the play began in the early afternoon,

usually between two and three o'clock, and lasted for about two hours.

The audience was an alert one, neither jaded by a long day's business

nor rendered impatient by waiting for the adjustment of scenery. The

Elizabethans constituted a vigorous audience, eager to meet the

dramatist and actors more than half way in interpreting what was

presented.

II. In the case of such public theaters as the Globe and the Fortune,

even their roofed parts, which extended around the pit and back of the

stage and which contained the galleries and the boxes, were all

exposed to the open air on the inner side. The pit, which was

immediately in front of the stage, had the sky for a roof and the

ground for a floor. The frequenters of the pit, who often jostled each

other for standing room, were sometimes called the "groundlings."

Occasionally a severe rain would drive them out of the theater to seek

shelter. Those who attended the Elizabethan public theater were in no

danger of being made drowsy or sick by its bad air.

[Illustration: THE BANKSIDE AND ITS THEATERS

1. The Swan Theater. 3. The Hope Theater. 5. Old St. Paul's.

2. The Bear Gardens. 4. The Globe Theater. 6. The Temple.]

III. The audiences did not attend merely for relaxation or amusement.

They often came for information and education, and they were probably

glad to learn about alchemy from one of Ben Jonson's plays. The

audience doubtless welcomed long monologues if they were well

delivered and presented ideas of worth. The theater took the place of

lectures, newspapers, magazines, and, to a certain extent, of books.

We know that in 1608 the Blackfriars Theater acted the part of a

newspaper in presenting a scandal about the French king and that at

another time it gave some humorous information concerning the English

monarch's newly discovered silver mine in Scotland.

IV. The Elizabethans loved good poetry for its imaginative appeal.

Shakespeare was a poet before he was a dramatist. Beautiful poetry

presenting high ideals must have met with vigorous appreciation, or

Shakespeare could not have continued to produce such great work.

V. The Elizabethans also demanded story and incident. Modern critics

have often noticed that the characterization in Shakespeare's fourth

acts, _e.g._, in _Macbeth_, does not equal that in the preceding part

of the play; but the fourth act of _Macbeth_ interested the

Elizabethans because there was progress in the complicated story. To

modern theatergoers this fourth act seems to drag because they have

acquired through novel reading a liking for analysis and dissection.

Shakespeare succeeded in interesting the Elizabethans by embodying in

story and incident his portrayal of character. Because of admiration

for the revelation of character in his greatest plays, modern readers

forget their moving incidents,--for instance, the almost

blood-curdling appearances of a ghost, the actions of a crazed woman,

the killing of an eavesdropper on the stage, two men fighting at an

open grave, the skull and bones of a human being dug from a grave in

full view of the audience, the fighting to the death on the stage,

which is ghastly with corpses at the close. When we add to this the

roar of cannon whenever the king drinks, as well as when there is some

more noteworthy action, and remember that the very last words of

_Hamlet_ are: "Go, bid the soldiers shoot," we shall realize that

there was not much danger of going to sleep even during a performance

of _Hamlet_.

Scenery.--The conditions under which early Elizabethan plays were

sometimes produced are thus described by Sir Philip Sidney:--

"You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and

so many other under-kingdoms, that the player when he comes in, must

ever begin with telling you where he is, or else the tale will not

be conceived. Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather

flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and

by we hear news of a shipwreck in the same place, then we are to

blame if we accept it not for a rock."

[Illustration: CONTEMPORARY DRAWING OF INTERIOR OF AN ELIZABETHAN

THEATER[15].]

Those who remember this well-known quotation too often forget that

Sidney wrote before Shakespeare's plays were produced. We do not know

whether Sidney was describing a private or a public stage, but the

private theaters had the greater amount of scenery.

Modern research has shown that the manner of presenting plays did not

remain stationary while the drama was rapidly evolving. Before

Shakespeare died, there were such stage properties as beds, tables,

chairs, dishes, fetters, shop wares, and perhaps also some artificial

trees, mossy banks, and rocks. A theatrical manager in an inventory of

stage properties (1598) mentions "the sittie of Rome," which was

perhaps a cloth so painted as to present a perspective of the city. He

also speaks of a "cloth of the Sone and Mone." The use of such painted

cloths was an important step toward modern scenery. We may, however,

conclude that the scenery of any Elizabethan theater would have seemed

scant to one accustomed to the detailed setting of the modern stage.

The comparatively little scenery in Elizabethan theaters imposed

strenuous imaginative exercise on the spectators. This effort was

fortunate for all concerned--for the dramatist and for the actor, but

especially for the spectator, who became accustomed to give an

imaginative interpretation and setting to a play that would mean

little to a modern theatergoer.

Actors.--Those who have seen some of the recent performances of

plays under Elizabethan conditions, on a stage modeled after that of

Shakespeare's time have been surprised at the increase of the actors'

power. The stage projects far enough into the pit to bring the actors

close to the audience. Their appeal thus becomes far more personal,

direct, and forceful. The spectator more easily identifies himself

with them and almost feels as if he were a part of the play. This has

been the experience of those who have seen the old-time reproduction

of plays as different as _The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The

Merchant of Venice_, and _Much Ado About Nothing_. In the case of _The

Tempest_, a very interesting act was presented when all the scenery

consisted of a board on which was painted "Prospero Isle."

In Shakespeare's times, the plays were probably well acted. While the

fame of Elizabethan actors like Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage has

come down to modern times, the success of plays did not depend on

single stars. Shakespeare is said to have played in minor rôles. The

audience discouraged bad acting. The occupants of the pit would throw

apples or worse missiles at an unsatisfactory player, and sometimes

the disgusted spectators would suddenly leap on the stage and chase an

incompetent actor off the boards.

Prior to the Restoration in 1660, the women's parts were taken by

boys. While this must have hampered the presentation of characters

like Lady Macbeth, it is now known to have been less of a handicap

than was formerly thought. The twentieth century has seen feminine

parts so well played by carefully trained boys that the most astute

women spectators never detected the deception. Boys, especially those

of the Chapel Royal, had for a long time acted masculine, as well as

feminine, parts. As late as the beginning of the seventeenth century,

the choir boys were presenting some of the great Elizabethan plays in

a private theater connected with St. Paul's Cathedral. Rosencrantz in

the second act of _Hamlet_ bears witness to the popularity of these

boy actors, when he calls them "little eyases, that cry on the top of

question and are most tyrannically clapped for it." Ben Jonson's

touching lyrical epitaph on a boy actor, Salathiel Pavy, who had for

"three fill'd zodiacs" been "the stage's jewel," shows how highly the

Elizabethans sometimes regarded boy actors. The regular theaters found

the companies of boys such strong rivals that, in 1609, Shakespeare

and other theatrical managers used modern business methods to suppress

competition and agreed to pay the master of the boys of St. Paul's

enough to cause him to withdraw them permanently from competing with

the other theaters.

PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMATISTS

The "University Wits" and Thomas Kyd.--Five authors, John Lyly,

George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Nashe, all

graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, were sufficiently versatile to be

called "university wits." Amid various other activities, all of them

were impelled by the spirit of the age to write plays. These

intellectual aristocrats hurled the keen shafts of their wit at those

dramatists, who, without a university education, were arrogant enough

to think that they could write plays. Because Shakespeare had never

attended a university, Greene called him "an upstart Crow beautified

with our feathers."

On New Year's, 1584, John Lyly, the author of _Euphues_, presented

in the first Blackfriars Theater[16] his prose comedy, entitled

_Campaspe_. This play relates the love story of Alexander the Great's

fair Theban captive, Campaspe. The twenty-eight characters necessary

to produce this play were obtained from the boys of the Chapel Royal

and St. Paul's Cathedral. Two months later Lyly's _Sapho and Phao_ was

given in the same theater with a cast of seventeen boys. It should be

remembered that these plays, so important in the evolution of the

drama, were acted by boys under royal patronage. _Campaspe_ is little

more than a series of episodes, divided into acts and scenes, but,

unlike _Gorboduc, Campaspe_ has many of the characteristics of an

interesting modern play.

Lyly wrote eight comedies, all but one in prose. In the history of the

drama, he is important for (1) finished style, (2) good dialogue, (3)

considerable invention in the way he secured interest, by using

classical matter in combination with contemporary life, (4) subtle

comedy, and (5) influence on Shakespeare. It is doubtful whether

Shakespeare could have produced such good early comedies, if he had

not received suggestions from Lyly's work in this field.

The chapel boys also presented at Blackfriars in the same year George

Peele's (1558-1597) _The Arraignment of Paris_, a pastoral drama in

riming verse. In Juno's promise to Paris, Peele shows how the

possibilities of the New World affected his imagination:--

"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."

While _The Arraignment of Paris_ and his two other plays, _David and

Bathsabe_ and _The Old Wives' Tale_, are not good specimens of

dramatic construction, the beauty of some of Peele's verse could

hardly have failed to impress both Marlowe and Shakespeare with the

poetic possibilities of the drama. Peele writes without effort--

"Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make,"

and has David build--

"...a kingly bower,

Seated in hearing of a hundred streams."

Robert Greene (1560-1592) showed much skill in (1) the construction

of plots, (2) the revelation of simple and genuine human feeling, and

(3) the weaving of an interesting story into a play. His best drama is

the poetic comedy _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_. In this play, he

made the love story the central point of interest.

Thomas Lodge (1558-1625), author of the story _Rosalynde_, which

Shakespeare used to such good advantage, wrote in collaboration with

Greene, _A Looking Glass for London and England_, and an independent

play, _The Wounds of Civil War_. Thomas Nashe (1567-1601), best

known for his picaresque novel, _The Unfortunate Traveler_, wrote a

play, _Summer's Last Will and Testament_, but he and Lodge had little

dramatic ability.

Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), although lacking a university education,

succeeded in writing, about 1586, the most popular early Elizabethan

play, _The Spanish Tragedy_, a blank verse drama, in which blood flows

profusely. Although this play is not free from classical influences,

yet its excellence of construction, effective dramatic situations,

vigor of movement, and romantic spirit helped to prepare the way for

the tragedies of Marlowe and Shakespeare.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-1593

Life.--The year 1564 saw the birth of the two greatest geniuses in

the English drama, Marlowe and Shakespeare. Marlowe, the son of a

shoemaker, was born at Canterbury, and educated at Cambridge. When he

was graduated, the dramatic profession was the only one that gave full

scope to genius like his. He became both playwriter and actor. All his

extant work was written in about six years. When he was only

twenty-nine he was fatally stabbed in a tavern quarrel. Shakespeare

had at that age not produced his greatest plays. Marlowe unwittingly

wrote his own epitaph in that of Dr. Faustus:--

"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough."

[Illustration: MARLOWE'S MEMORIAL STATUE AT CANTERBURY.]

Works.--Marlowe's great tragedies are four in number _Timberline,

Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward, II._. No careful student of

English literature can afford to be unacquainted with any of them.

Shakespeare's work appears less miraculous when we know that a

predecessor at the age of twenty-four had written plays like

_Timberline_ and _Dr. Faustus_.

_Timberline_ shows the supreme ambition for conquest, for controlling

the world with physical force. It is such a play as might have been

suggested to an Elizabethan by watching Napoleon's career. _Dr.

Faustus_, on the other hand, shows the desire for knowledge that would

give universal power, a desire born of the Renaissance. _The Jew of

Malta_ is the incarnation of the passion for the world's wealth, a

passion that towers above common greed only by the magnificence of its

immensity. In that play we see that Marlowe--

"Without control can pick his riches up,

And in his house heap pearl like pebble stones,

* * * * *

Infinite riches in a little room."

_Edward II._ gives a pathetic picture of one of the weakest of kings.

This shows more evenness and regularity of construction than any of

Marlowe's other plays; but it is the one least characteristic of him.

The others manifest more intensity of imagination, more of the spirit

of the age.

_Dr. Faustus_ shows Marlowe's peculiar genius at its best. The legend

on which the play is based came from Germany, but Marlowe breathed his

own imaginative spirit into the tragedy. Faustus is wearied with the

barren philosophy of the past. He is impatient to secure at once the

benefits of the New Learning, which seems to him to have all the

powers of magic. If he can immediately enjoy the fruits of such

knowledge, he says:--

"Had I as many souls as there be stars,

I'd give them all."

In order to acquire this knowledge and the resulting power for

twenty-four years, he sells his soul to Mephistopheles. Faustus then

proceeds to enjoy all that the new order of things promised. He

commands Homer to come from the realm of shades to sing his entrancing

songs. He summons Helen to appear before him in the morning of her

beauty. The apostrophe to her shows the vividness and exuberance of

his imagination:--

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

* * * * *

Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."

Marlowe left a fragment of a lyrical poem, entitled _Hero and

Leander_, which is one of the finest productions of its kind in the

language. Shakespeare accorded him the unusual honor of quoting from

this poem.

In What Sense is Marlowe a Founder of the English Drama?--His

success with blank verse showed Shakespeare that this was the proper

versification for the drama. Before Marlowe, rime or prose had been

chiefly employed in writing plays. Sackville had used blank verse in

_Gorboduc_, but his verse and Marlowe's are as unlike as the movements

of the ox and the flight of the swallow. The sentences of _Gorboduc_

generally end with the line, and the accents usually fall in the same

place. Marlowe's blank verse shows great variety, and the major pause

frequently does not come at the end of the line.

Marlowe cast the dramatic unities to the wind. The action in _Dr.

Faustus_ occupies twenty-four years, and the scene changes from

country to country. He knew that he was speaking to a people whose

imaginations could accompany him and interpret what he uttered. The

other dramatists followed him in placing imaginative interpretation

above measurements by the foot rule of the intellect. Symonds says of

him: "It was he who irrevocably decided the destinies of the romantic

drama; and the whole subsequent evolution of that species, including

Shakespeare's work, can be regarded as the expansion, rectification,

and artistic ennoblement of the type fixed by Marlowe's epoch-making

tragedies. In very little more than fifty years from the publication

of _Tamburlaine_, our drama had run its course of unparalleled energy

and splendor."

_General Characteristics_.--As we sum up Marlowe's general qualities,

it is well to note that they exhibit in a striking way the

characteristics of the time. In the morning of that youthful age the

superlative was possible. _Tamburlaine_, _The Jew of Malta_, and _Dr.

Faustus_ show in the superlative degree the love of conquest, of

wealth, and of knowledge. Everything that Marlowe wrote is stamped

with a love of beauty and of the impossible.

Tamburlaine speaks like one of the young Elizabethans--

"That in conceit bear empires on our spears,

Affecting thoughts co-equal with the clouds."

Marlowe voices the new sense of worth of enfranchised man:--

"Thinkest thou heaven glorious thing?

I tell thee, 'tis not half so fair as thou,

Or any man that breathes on earth.

* * * * *

'Twas made for man, therefore is man more excellent."[17]

Marlowe's faults are the faults of youth and of his time. Exaggeration

and lack of restraint are shown in almost all his work. In

_Tamburlaine_, written when he was twenty-two, he is often bombastic.

He has hardly any sense of humor. He does not draw fine distinctions

between his characters.

On the other hand, using the words of Tamburlaine, we may say of all

his dramatic contemporaries, excepting Shakespeare--

"If all the heavenly quintessence they still

From their immortal flowers of poesy,"

were gathered into one vial, it could not surpass the odor from

patches of flowers in Marlowe's garden.