ENGLISH DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE
The history of the drama includes two periods of supreme achievement,
that of fifth-century Greece and that of Elizabethan England. Between
these peaks lies a broad valley, the bottom of which is formed by the
centuries from the fifth to the ninth after Christ. From its
culmination in the tragedies of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and
in the comedies of Aristophanes, the classic drama declined through the
brilliantly realistic comedies of Menander to the coldly rhetorical
tragedies of the Roman Seneca. The decay of culture, the barbarian
invasions, and the attacks of the Christian Church caused a yet greater
decadence, a fall so complete that, although the old traditions were
kept alive for some time at the Byzantine court, the drama, as a
literary form, had practically disappeared from western Europe before
the middle of the sixth century. For this reason the modern drama is
commonly regarded as a new birth, as an independent creation entirely
distinct from the art which had preceded it. A new birth and an
independent growth there certainly was, but it must not be forgotten
that the love of the dramatic did not disappear with the literary
drama, that the entertainment of mediaeval {21} minstrels were not
without dramatic elements, that dialogues continued to be written if
not acted, and that the classical drama of Rome, eagerly studied by the
enthusiasts of the Renaissance, had no slight influence upon the course
which the modern drama took. If we make these qualifications, we may
fairly say that the old drama died and that a new drama was born.
+The Beginnings of Modern Drama+.--When we search for the origin of the
modern drama, we find it, strangely enough, in the very institution
which had done so much to suppress it as an invention of the devil; for
it made its first appearance in the services of the Church. From a
very early period, the worship of the Church had possessed a certain
dramatic character. The service of the Mass recalled and represented
by symbols, which became more and more definite and elaborate, the
great sacrifice of Christ. And this tendency manifested itself in
other ways, such as the letting fall, on Good Friday, of the veil which
had concealed the sanctuary since the first Sunday in Lent, thus
recalling the veil of the Jewish temple rent in twain at the death of
Christ. But all this was rather the soil in which the drama could grow
than the beginning itself. The latter came in the ninth century, when
an addition was made to the Mass which was slight in itself, but which
was to have momentous consequences. Among the words fitted to certain
newly introduced melodies were those of which the following is a
translation:--
"Whom seek ye, O Christians, in the sepulcher?
Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, O ye dwellers in Heaven.
He is not here; he is risen as he foretold.
Go and carry the tidings that he is risen from the sepulcher."
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At first these words were sung responsively by the choir, but before
the end of the tenth century they were put into the mouths of monks or
clergy representing the Maries and the angel. By this time the
dialogue had been removed to the first services of Easter morning, and
had been connected with the ceremonies of the Easter sepulcher. In
many churches it was then customary on Good Friday to carry a crucifix
to a representation of a sepulcher which had previously been prepared
somewhere in the church, whence the crucifix was secretly removed
before Easter morning. Then, at the first Easter service, the empty
sepulcher was solemnly visited, and this dialogue was sung.[1] The
participants wore ecclesiastical vestments, and the acting was of the
simplest character, but the amount of dialogue increased as time went
on, and new bits of action were added; so that before the end of the
twelfth century some churches presented what may fairly be called a
short one-act play. Meanwhile, around the services of Good Friday and
the Christmas season, other dramatic ceremonies and short dialogues had
been growing up, which gave rise to tiny plays dealing with the birth
of Christ, the visits of the shepherds and the Wise Men, and the Old
Testament prophecies of {23} Christ's coming. Although the elaboration
of individual plays continued, the evolution of the drama as part of
the Church's liturgy was practically complete by the middle of the
thirteenth century.
+The Earlier Miracle Plays+.--The next hundred years brought a number
of important changes: the gradual substitution of English for Latin,
the removal from the church to the churchyard or market-place, and the
welding together of the single plays into great groups or cycles. The
removal from the church was made possible by the growth of the plays in
length and dramatic interest, which rendered them independent of the
rest of the service; and it was made inevitable by the enormous
popularity of the plays and by the more elaborate staging which the
developed plays required. The formation of more or less unified cycles
was the result of a natural tendency to supply the missing links
between the plays already in existence, and to write new plays
describing the events which led up to those already treated. Just as
Wagner in our day after writing his drama on _The Death of Siegfried_
felt himself compelled to write other plays dealing with his hero's
birth and the events which led to this birth, so the unknown authors of
the great English cycles were led to write play after play until they
had covered the significant events of Biblical history from the
creation of the world to the Last Judgment. This joining together of
isolated plays necessitated taking them away from the particular
festivals with which they had originally been connected and presenting
them all together on a single day, or, in the case of the longer
cycles, on successive days. After 1264, {24} when the festival of
Corpus Christi was established in honor of the sacrament of Holy
Communion, this day was the favorite time of presentation. Coming as
it did in early summer on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, it was
well suited for out-of-door performances, besides being a festival
which the Church especially delighted to honor.
+The Great English Cycles+.--Of the great cycles of miracle plays, only
four have come down to us: those given at York and at Chester, that in
the Towneley collection (probably given at or near Wakefield), and the
cycle called the Ludus Coventriae or Hegge plays, of which the place of
presentation is uncertain. The surviving fragments of lost cycles,
however, taken together with the records of performances, show that
religious plays were given with more or less regularity in at least one
hundred and twenty-five places in England. The cycle which has been
most completely preserved is that of York, forty-eight plays of which
still exist. It originally included fifty-seven plays, while the
number of Biblical incidents known to have been treated in plays
belonging to one cycle or another includes twenty-one based on the Old
Testament or on legends, and sixty-eight based on the New Testament.
Even while the religious plays were still a part of the Church
services, they contained humorous elements, such as the realistically
comic figure of the merchant who sold spices and ointment to the Maries
on their way to the tomb of Christ. In the later plays these
interpolations developed into scenes of roaring farce. When Herod
learned of the escape of the Wise Men, he would rage violently about
the stage and even among {25} the spectators. Noah's wife, in the
Chester play of _The Deluge_, refuses point-blank to go into the Ark,
and has to be put in by main force. The _Second Shepherds' Play_ of
the Towneley cycle contains an episode of sheep stealing which is a
complete and perfect little farce. Nor were the scenes of pathos less
effective. The scene in the Brome play of _Abraham and Isaac_ where
the little lad pleads for his life has not lost its pathetic appeal
with the passage of centuries. While many of the miracle plays seem to
us stiff and perfunctory, the best of them possess literary merit of a
very high order.
As the development of the plays called for an increasing number of
actors, the clergy had to call upon the laity for help, so that the
acting fell more and more into the hands of the latter, until finally
the whole work of presenting the plays was taken over, in most cases,
by the guilds, organizations of the various trades which corresponded
roughly to our modern trades unions. Each guild had its own play of
which it bore the expense and for which it furnished the actors. Thus
the shipwrights would present _The Building of the Ark_, the
goldsmiths, _The Adoration of the Wise Men_. Sometimes the plays would
be presented on a number of tiny stages or scaffolds grouped in a
rectangle or a circle; more often they were acted on floats, called
pageants, which were dragged through the streets and stopped for
performances at several of the larger squares. These pageants were
usually of two stories, the lower used for a dressing-room, the upper
for a stage. The localities represented were indicated in various
ways--Heaven, for instance, by a beautiful {26} pavilion; Hell, by the
mouth of a huge dragon. The costumes of the actors were often
elaborate and costly, and there was some attempt at imitating reality,
such as putting the devils into costumes of yellow and black, which
typified the flames and darkness of Hell.
Fairly complete cycles were in existence as early as 1300; they reached
the height of their perfection and popularity in the later fourteenth
and in the fifteenth centuries; and they began to decline in the
sixteenth century. After 1550 the performances became more and more
irregular, until, at the accession of King James I, they had
practically ceased.
+The Moralities+.--Of somewhat later origin than the miracle plays, but
existing contemporaneously with them, were the moralities. In a
twelfth-century miracle play characters had been introduced which were
not the figures of Biblical story, but personified abstractions, such
as Hypocrisy, Heresy, Pity. By the end of the fourteenth century there
had come into existence plays of which all the characters were of this
type. These, however, were probably not direct descendants of the
miracles; but rather the application of the newly learned dramatic
methods to another sort of subject matter, the allegory, a literary
type much used by poets and preachers of the time. Such plays were
called 'moral plays' or 'moralities.' Unlike the miracle plays, these
remained independent of each other, and showed no tendency to grow
together into cycles. The most beautiful of them, written at the end
of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, is that
called _The Summoning of Everyman_. It represents a typical man
compelled to enter upon the long, {27} inevitable journey of death.
Kindred and Wealth abandon him, but long-neglected Good-deeds, revived
by Knowledge, comes to his aid. At the edge of the grave Everyman is
deserted by Beauty, Strength, and the Five Senses, while Good-deeds
alone goes with him to the end. Moralities of this type aimed at the
cultivation of virtue in the spectators, just as the miracle plays had
aimed at the strengthening of their faith. Another type of morality
dealt with controversial questions. In one of these, _King Johan_,
written about 1538, historical personages are put side by side with the
allegorical abstractions, thus foreshadowing the later historical
plays, such as Shakespeare's _King John_. Another comparatively late
type of morality sought to teach an ethical lesson by showing the
effect of vice and virtue upon the lives of men and women. _Nice
Wanton_ (c. 1550), for instance, represents the consequence of good and
evil living, not only by the use of such allegorical characters as
Iniquity and Worldly Shame, but also by means of the human beings,
Barnabas and Ishmael and their sister Dalila. Thus, although the more
abstract moralities persisted until late in the sixteenth century,
these other types at the same time helped lead the way to the drama
which depicts actual life.
+The Interlude+.--Both miracle play and morality were written with a
definite purpose, the teaching of a lesson, religious, moral, or
political; the interlude, on the other hand, was a short play intended
simply to interest or to amuse. The original meaning of the word
"interlude" is a matter of controversy. It may have meant a short play
introduced between other {28} things, such as the courses of a banquet,
or it may have meant simply a dialogue. Be that as it may, the
interlude seems to have had its origin in the dramatic character of
minstrel entertainments and in the dramatic character of popular games,
such as those, especially beloved of our English ancestors, which
celebrated the memory of Robin Hood and his fellow-outlaws of Sherwood
forest. The miracle plays set the example of dramatic composition, an
example soon followed in the interlude, which put into dramatic forms
that became more and more elaborate popular stories and episodes, both
serious and comic. Although there had been comic episodes in miracle
plays and moralities, it was as interludes that the amusing skit and
the tiny farce achieved an independent existence. The first real
interlude which has come down to us is that called _De Clerico et
Puella_, _Of the Cleric and the Maiden_, which was written not later
than the early fourteenth century. This is little more than a dialogue
depicting the attempted seduction of a maiden by a wanton cleric. The
only other surviving fourteenth-century interlude, that of _Dux
Maraud_, is, on the other hand, the dramatization of a tragic tale of
incest and murder. This is, however, somewhat exceptional, and may
perhaps be regarded as belonging rather to a type of miracle play not
common in England, in which the intervention of some heavenly power
affects the lives of men. At any rate, it is probable that the
interlude was not often so serious an affair, and it developed rapidly
in a way that gave us, in the sixteenth century, the interludes of John
Heywood (1497-1577), which are really short farces, {29} and no bad
ones at that. By reason of its character and the small number of
actors which it required, the interlude was usually given by
professional entertainers, who were either kept by persons of high
rank, or traveled from town to town. We find, therefore, in the acting
of interludes the conditions which gave rise to modern comedy and to
the modern traveling company.
+Classical Influences+.--In the preceding paragraphs we have considered
the early modern drama as an independent growth, but the influence of
the classical drama, particularly the Latin tragedies of Seneca and the
Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence, showed itself in the later
moralities and interludes, and was to appear again and again in the
later course of English drama. That great revival of interest in
classical learning which gave the Renaissance its name, was a mighty
force in the current of English thought throughout the sixteenth
century. The old Latin tragedies and comedies were revived and were
produced in the original and in translation at schools and colleges.
It was an easy step from this to the writing of English comedies after
Latin models. The earliest of such attempts which we know is the
comedy of _Ralph Roister Doister_, written by Nicholas Udall for Eton
boys at some time between 1534 and 1541. This, commonly called the
first English comedy, is little more than a clever adaptation of
Plautus to English manners and customs; but a comedy written soon
after, _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, is really an Interlude cast in the
Plautean mold. The first English tragedy, _Gorboduc_, closely
imitative of Seneca, but on {30} a mythical British subject and written
in English blank verse, did not appear until 1562, nearly a quarter of
a century later. Seneca's tragedies had little action, slight
characterization, and many extremely long speeches, which often
display, however, much brilliant rhetoric. _Gorboduc_ has all these
qualities except the brilliance. The history, the third of the types
into which the editors of the First Folio were to divide Shakespeare's
plays, was also affected by Senecan influence. We have already seen
how the historical figure of King John appeared in a morality, one
which shows little trace of classical tradition; and the history, with
its general formlessness and its mixture of the comic with the serious,
remained a peculiarly English product. Nevertheless, in the second
half of the sixteenth century, subjects from English history were
treated after the manner of Latin tragedy, and the long, rhetorical
speeches of the later historical plays are more suggestive of Seneca
than are most Elizabethan tragedies.
The classical type of drama, with its strict observance of the three
unities,[2] was not congenial to the {31} English temperament. Its
fetters were soon thrown off, and, with the notable exception of Ben
Jonson (1573-1637), few Elizabethan playwrights conformed to its rules.
Its influence, however, was not confined to its imitators. From the
classical drama the Elizabethans gained a sense for form and for the
value of dramatic technique, which did much to make the Elizabethan
drama what it was.
+Three Predecessors of Shakespeare+.--The development of the English
drama from the first attempts at comedy, tragedy, and history was
extremely rapid. When Shakespeare came to London, he found there
dramatists who were far on the road toward mastery of dramatic form,
and who were putting into that form both great poetry and a profound
knowledge of human nature. A complete list of these dramatists would
include a number of names which have a permanent place in the history
of English literature, such as those of Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nash,
George Peele, and Robert Greene. Among these names three deserve
especial prominence, not only because of the great achievements of
these men, but because of their influence on Shakespeare. These men
were Marlowe, Kyd, and Lyly.
It was Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) who first gave to English blank
verse those qualities which make it an extraordinarily perfect medium
of expression. Before him, blank verse had no advantages to offer in
compensation for the abandonment of rime. It was stiff, monotonous,
and cold. Marlowe began to vary the position of the pauses within the
line, and to do away with the pause at the end of some lines by {32}
placing the breaks in thought elsewhere. Thus he gave to his verse
ease, flexibility, and movement, and he put into it the warmth and
vividness of his own personality. Upon such verse as this Shakespeare
could hardly improve. But this by no means sums up his debt to
Marlowe. His characterization of Richard III, for instance, was
distinctly affected by that of Marlowe's hero Tamburlaine, a character
to which the poet had given a passionate life and an energy that made
him more than human. In other ways less easy to define, Shakespeare
must have been stimulated by Marlowe's fire. The latter's greatest
tragedies, _Tamburlaine_, _Dr. Faustus_, and _Edward II_, contain
poetry so beautiful, feeling so intense, and a promise of future
achievement so remarkable, that his early death may fairly be said to
have deprived English literature of a genius worthy of comparison with
that of Shakespeare himself.
Although Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) was far from the equal of Marlowe, he
was a playwright of real ability and one whose tragedies were unusually
popular. Influenced greatly by Seneca, he brought to its climax the
'tragedy of blood'--a type of drama in which ungovernable passions of
lust and revenge lead to atrocious crimes and end in gruesome and
appalling murders. His famous _Spanish Tragedy_ was the forerunner of
many similar plays, of which _Titus Andronicus_ was one. He probably
wrote the original play of _Hamlet_, which was elevated by Shakespeare
out of its atmosphere of blood and horror into the highest realms of
thought and poetry.
John Lyly (c. 1554-1606) was a master in an {33} entirely different
field, that of highly artificial comedy. He brought court comedy to a
hitherto unattained perfection of form and style, and in his best work,
_Endymion_, he displayed a lovely delicacy of thought and expression
which has kept his reputation secure. He is best known, however, for
his prose romance, _Euphues_, which gave its name to the style of which
it was the climax. Euphuism is a manner of writing marked by elaborate
antithesis and alliteration, and ornamented by fantastic similes drawn
from a mass of legendary lore concerning plants and animals.[3] This
style, which nowadays seems labored and inartistic, was excessively
admired by the Elizabethans. Shakespeare imitated it to some extent in
_Love's Labour's Lost_, and parodied it in Falstaff's speech to Prince
Hal, _I Henry IV_, II, iv. Several of Shakespeare's earlier comedies
show Lyly's influence for good and ill--ill, in that it made for
artificiality and strained conceits; good, in that it made for
perfection of dramatic form and refinement of expression.
+The Masque+.--Somewhat apart from the main current of dramatic
evolution is the development of the masque, which became extremely
popular in the reign of James I. The English masque was an
entertainment, dramatic in character, made up of songs, dialogue, and
dances. It originated in masked balls given by the nobility or at
court. To John Lydgate, working about 1430, is probably due the credit
for introducing into such {34} disguisings a literary element, while
the later course of the masque owes much to Italy. In the developed
masque there were two classes of participants: noble amateurs, who wore
elaborate costumes and danced either among themselves or with the
spectators; and professional entertainers, who spoke and sang. The
later masques had elaborate scenery and costumes, with just as much
plot as would serve to string together the lyrics and dances.
Sometimes an anti-masque of grotesque figures was introduced to serve
as contrast to the beautiful figures of the masque. The masques were
produced with the utmost lavishness, the most extravagant one of which
we know costing over L20,000. Some of them, such as those written by
Ben Jonson, contain charming poetry; but their chief interest to the
student of Shakespeare lies in the fact that their great popularity
caused Shakespeare to introduce short masques into some of his plays,
notably _Henry VIII_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_. In
similar allegorical dances often given between the acts of Italian
plays, has been sought the origin of the 'dumb-show,' which was
occasionally introduced into English tragedies, and which appears in
the Mouse-Trap given in _Hamlet_.
The most useful general histories of this period are: F. E. Schelling,
_Elizabethan Drama_ (Houghton Mifflin, 1908); E. K. Chambers, _The
Mediaeval Stage_ (Oxford, 1903); and Creizenach, _Geschichte des
neueren Dramas_ (Halle, 1893-1909, and not yet complete). Some of the
best Miracles, Moralities, and Interludes are easily accessible in
_Everyman with other Interludes_ (Everyman's Library) and J. M. Manly's
_Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_ (Ginn & Co., 1897).
[1] An extract from the Concordia Regularis, a tenth-century appendix
to the monastic "rule" of St. Benedict, describes this ceremony.
"While the third respond is chanted, let the remaining three follow
[one of the brethren, vested in an alb, had before this quietly taken
his place at the sepulcher], and let them all, vested in copes, and
bearing in their hands thuribles with incense, and stepping delicately,
as those who seek something, approach the sepulcher. These things are
done in imitation of the angel sitting in the monument, and the women
with spices coming to anoint the body of Jesus."
[2] The three unities of action, place, and time are usually believed
to have been formulated by Aristotle, who is supposed to have said that
a tragedy should have but a single plot and that the action should be
confined to a single day and a single place. As a matter of fact,
Aristotle is responsible for only the first of these, and this he
presented as an observation on the actual condition which prevailed in
Greek tragedy rather than as a dramatic principle for all time. The
other principles, which were later deduced from the general practice of
the Greeks,--a practice arising from the manner in which their plays
were staged,--were, together with the first, elevated by the Romans to
the dignity of fixed dramatic laws.
[3] The following quotation from Euphues (ed. Bond, i, 289) illustrates
this style: "Hee that seeketh ye depth of knowledge is as it were in a
Laborinth, in which the farther he goeth, the farther he is from the
end: or like the bird in the limebush which the more she striveth to
get out, ye faster she sticketh in." With this cf. _Hamlet_, III, iii,
69; _I Henry IV_, II, iv, 441.
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