In connection with the misconception concerning the derivation of the

Vice from the domestic fool, of course incompatible with his descent

from the Deadly Sins, there lingers a report that he was ordinarily

dressed in a fool's habit. Such is the opinion of Klein[55] and Douce;

and Morley[56] writes, "The Vice, when not in disguise, wore--as

Brandt or Barclay would have thought most fitting--the dress of a

fool." The dress of some typical fool of everyday life, some social

"crank,"--yes; but not until the latter third of the sixteenth century,

when the Vice was in his dotage, did he lose himself in the habit of

the domestic fool. The Vice "shaking his wooden dagger," of whom Ben

Jonson gives us a glimpse in _The Devil is an Ass_ and _The Staple

of News_, is without doubt the domestic fool in the characteristic

long coat, or in the juggler's jerkin with false skirts. But we must

remember that Ben Jonson was writing some sixty or seventy years after

the Vice properly so called was in his prime. From 1450 to 1570 and

later, the distinctive Vice of the moralities was accoutred in the

costume of his rôle, first of a Deadly Sin or little "dylfe"; then

of some social class, trade, or type: messenger, herald, beggar,

rat-catcher, priest, pharisee, gallant, dandy, or 'cit.' Occasionally

he assumed a succession of costumes according to this dramatic

necessity. He was indeed frequently equipped, in addition, with horn

spectacles and wooden dagger, and sometimes with a burlesque of

ceremonious attire,[57] or he was furnished with squibs and other

fireworks,[58] or with hangman's rope or bridle. Professor Cushman

surmises that he was, even, sometimes made up like Punch, for instance,

in _Horestes_ and _Cambyses_. I don't know about that, but of this we

may be sure, that as a Vice he was not distinguished by the traditional

costume of the domestic fool. That character, soon to play an important

part in comedy, appropriated certain tricks and aspects of the Vice,

but the distinctive figure of the moral drama did not proceed from or

ape the domestic fool of contemporary life.

Oddly enough it has lately been asserted that this character had no

part in the 'morality' proper. An implication to the same effect is

to be found in Halliwell-Phillipps's notes to _Witt and Wisdome_ as

early as 1846, where he says that "the Vice is the buffoon of the old

moral plays which _succeeded_ the Reformation." The fact is that the

Vice takes part in all the plays under consideration, whether called

morals proper or moral interludes, from 1400 to 1578, except only

_Wisdom_ of the pre-Reformation series and the _Disobedient Child_ of

the post-Reformation. Two other of the thirty-odd morals and moral

interludes, namely, the _Pride of Life_ and _Everyman_, resort to a

substitute. They distribute the rôle among minor representatives of

the World, Flesh, and Devil, but they do not dispense with the idea of

the Vice.[59] From him proceeds most of the human interest of these

earlier comedies. Like the inclinations that he personifies, he is

first sinful, then venial, then amusing; and to his tradition the

comedy of a later age owes more than we are wont to suspect. It owes

to him the development of certain spiritual characteristics, a cynical

but rollicking superiority to sham, a freedom from the thrall of social

and religious externality, a reckless joy of living, but an aloofness,

withal, and a humour requisite to the exercise of satire. It is,

indeed, as satirist sometimes virulent, but usually jocose, that the

Vice is most to be esteemed. In so far as the genial character of the

domestic fool of Green, Lodge, or Shakespeare reflected his irony and

shrewd wit, some memory of him survived; and the clown-Vice of _Friar

Bacon_ renews a passage or two of his later career, but not every

usurper of his comic appanage, his mimicry, puns, irrelevance, and

horse-play can lay claim to be descended from the Vice.

The dramatic importance of this figure can therefore not be overrated.

He forms the _callida junctura_ between religious and secular, didactic

and artistic, ideal and tangible, in our early comedy. He found a house

of correction and he left a stage. Garcios, Pilates, Doomsday demons,

and Maks precede, or flit beside him; but he, with his ancestral Sins,

dependent Follies, and succeeding Ironies and Humours, occupies the

central and the foremost place. Even while representing the superfluity

of naughtiness with an eye to its reprobation, he is the life of the

'moral,'--its apology for artistic existence, its appeal to human

interest. But when he steals a further march and rounds up for ridicule

the very components of the allegorical drama that are most removed from

laughter, and most liable thereto,--the long-faced abstractions that

regard the comic spirit as sinful and are impervious to a joke,--he

fulfils his destiny. He is the dramatic salt and solvent of the moral

play. At first it couldn't thrive without him; at last it couldn't

thrive with him. For, what _raison d'être_ could a moral have that no

longer regarded the comic as immoral, knew a joke at sight, perhaps

adventured one on its own account? Step by step with the development of

a popular æsthetic interest in the affairs of common men the playwright

asserted his superiority to social and allegorical make-believes, and

the Vice proved his utility as a dramatic reagent. Once the Vice had

gathered all sins in himself, his career was from 'inclination' to

'humour,' from abstract to concrete, from the moral to the typical,

the one to the many, and so from the service of allegory to that of

interlude, moral and pithy, but merry, all in preparation for farce,

and social and romantic comedy.

=6. The Relation between Miracle, Moral, and Interlude=

An unfortunate misapprehension has obtained currency to the effect that

there was a deliberate transition, chronological and logical, from the

miracle cycle to the "morality," and thence to a something entirely

different, called the interlude; and it is supposed that definite

advances in the development of comedy were made _pari passu_ with this

transition. It is even said, by one of the most genial and learned of

English scholars, who of course was not intending anything by way of

scientific accuracy, at the time, that "in the progress of the drama,

Moralities followed Mysteries, and were succeeded by Interludes. When

folk tired of Religion on the Stage they took to the inculcation of

morality and prudence; and when this bored them they set up Fun."[60]

But the moral play[61] was rather a younger contemporary and complement

of the miracle than a follower, or a substitute for it. Moreover,

allegory in the acted drama commanded the attention of the public

contemporaneously with the scriptural plays of the later fourteenth

century; in literature it had occupied attention long before. People,

therefore, did not wait until they were tired of religion upon the

stage, before taking to the inculcation of morality; nor could they

have hoped to escape religion by any such substitute. Moral plays, like

plays which were originally liturgical, aimed at religious instruction.

But as the scriptural-liturgical illustrated the forms of the church

service and its narrative content, the moral illustrated the sermon and

the creed. The former dealt with history and ritual, the latter with

doctrine; the former made the religious truth concrete in scriptural

figures and events, the latter brought it home to the individual by

allegorical means. The historical course of the drama was not from the

scriptural play to the allegorical, but from the collective miracle and

collective moral, practically contemporary, to the individual miracle

and individual moral. The dramatic quality of the moral was, as we

shall presently remark, not the same as that of the miracle, but it

neither supplanted nor fully supplemented that of the miracle.

The distinction between 'morality' and 'interlude' has likewise been

unduly and illogically emphasized. The former term may properly be said

to indicate the content and aim of a drama; the latter, its garb and

occasion; but the essential characters of the moral play, the human

hero and the representatives of good and evil contending for his soul,

may be common to interlude and 'morality' alike, and both terms may

with justice refer to the same drama. After 1500 the rôle of hero is,

to be sure, sometimes filled by an historical character, or by one or

mere concrete personages representative of a type; but it must not

be supposed that the play possessing such a hero is therefore to be

called an interlude, for similar heroes are to be found in the morals

before 1500. Nor should the statement be accepted that morals are

distinguished from interludes by the presence in the former of both

Devil and Vice; for several interludes of a later date have both Devil

and Vice, while some of the earlier morals, written before 1500, have

but one or the other of these characters, or neither.[62] The attempt

to characterize the moral by its professed didactic intent, and the

interlude by the lack thereof or the profession of mirth, is equally

unavailing; for that manifest moral, the _Pride of Life_, one of the

earliest extant, makes explicit promise in its prologue "of mirth

and eke of kare" from "this our game"; while _Mankynd_, a moral of

1461 to 1485, which advertises no amusement, is as full of it as any

late interlude. On the other hand, several plays written after 1568,

calling themselves "comedies or enterludes," and promising brevity

and mirth, are tedious. But, for the advertisement, sub-title, or

specification of the play we must of course hold the publisher, and not

the author, generally responsible. The common belief that 'moralities'

were succeeded by 'interludes' is probably due in large part to the

fact that 'interlude' has been used in England at different periods

for entirely different kinds of entertainment, some of which, notably

that to which Collier in 1831 restricted the term,--the play after

the style of Heywood,--were of later production than the moral. But

other kinds of 'interlude' date back to 1300, and precede the first

mention of the moral play; while later kinds include the moral, and

finally are synonymous with any humorous and popular performance.

Collier's restriction of the term was, therefore, unfortunate. It

interpreted a _genus_ as a species; for, although the interlude was

originally any short entertainment, occupying the pauses between graver

negotiations of the palate or intellect, it had, in the course of its

history, acquired a significance almost as broad as 'drama' itself. The

interlude was of various form and content and covered many species. As

farce, the interlude anticipated moral plays; as allegorical drama,

it absorbed them; and as comedy, it is their younger contemporary.

It is not merely the play after the style of John Heywood. It is

long or short; religious, moral, pedagogic, political, or doctrinal;

scriptural, allegorical, or profane; classical or native; imaginative

or reproductive of the commonplace; stupid or humorous; satirical

or purely comic. It seems to me, therefore, unwise to perpetuate a

distinction between moral plays and interludes which was not recognized

by those who wrote and heard the plays in question.

The reduction of the number of actors, the abbreviation of the play,

the concentration of the plot, wherever these exist in the later

morals or moral interludes, are not evidence of a change of kind, but

merely of a natural evolution through a period of some two hundred

years. When ten Brink says that the interlude was the species best

adapted to further the development of dramatic art, we must understand

by interlude the individual, as opposed to the collective drama,--or

the occasional performance by professionals for the delectation, and

sometimes at the order, of private persons or parties, as opposed

to expository or perfunctory plays, plays manipulated by crafts,

or associated with times, places, and ends external to art. The

improvement in scope and elasticity which marks the individual play

is due to various causes: to patronage, which prefers amusement to

instruction, and the work of artists to that of journeymen; to the

development accordingly of a bread-and-butter profession of acting,

with its accompanying _stimuli_ of necessity and opportunity. Poetic

invention, dramatic constructiveness and style, are sometimes spurred

by hunger; they are always responsive to the appreciation of the

cultivated, and maybe to the reward.

=7. The Older Morals in their Relation to Comedy=

The remaining dramas within the compass of this survey may be

considered in the following order: first, the older morals and

moral interludes, between the years 1400 and 1520; second, various

experiments of native and foreign, classical and romantic, origin which

distinguish a period of transition extending approximately from 1520

to 1553; and, third, some nine or ten plays of prime importance which

succeed these and unite, in one way or another, qualities of structure

and aim hitherto distinctive of separate dramatic kinds. The period

during which these plays, which I shall venture to call polytypic,

were produced, roughly coincides with the years 1545 to 1566, and

among these plays are the first English comedies really worthy of the

name. We must then notice a group of rudimentary survivals, some of

which, falling between 1550 and 1570, illustrate simply an artificial

adaptation of the 'moral' species, while other few, appearing between

1553 and 1580, are a persistent flowering of the decadent stock,

fruitless in kind but genuine in comic quality. We shall finally pass

in brief review the crude romantic plays of morals or intrigue or

popular tradition written between 1570 and 1590. And if it were not for

lack of space, we should also glance at the satirical comedies which

appeared when Shakespeare was beginning and Greene was ceasing; but, so

far as possible, I must omit all subjects to which any consideration

has elsewhere been accorded in this volume.

A sympathetic examination of the older morals--those that were produced

before 1520--will reveal, even though the period is comparatively

early, a twofold character of composition. We find, on the one hand,

plays interpretative of ideals of life, constructive in character,

relying upon the fundamentally allegorical, and making principally for

a didactic end. We find, on the other hand, plays that deal with the

actual have a critical aim, reproduce appearances and manners, and tend

toward the amusing and satirical.

Of the half-dozen morals that made for the development of constructive

or interpretative comedy, one of the earliest (about 1400) and

most important was the _Castell of Perseverance_. In the quality

of its dramatic devices it sustains a close relation to the Digby

_Magdalene_,--the siege of the Castell by the Seven Deadly Sins, and

their repulse under the roses which the Virtues have discharged. It

also makes use of characters already prominent in the eleventh Coventry

play, the _Pax_ and _Misericordia_, who there, as here, intercede

for mankind. Collier calls this a well-constructed and much varied

allegory, and says with good reason that its completeness indicates

predecessors in the same kind. It is itself an early treatment of

a fruitful theme, variously handled in later plays like Marlowe's

_Doctor Faustus_, and in narratives like _The Holy War_. Though the

abstractions are not of a highly dramatic character, still one or two

of them,--for instance _Detractio_, the Vice, who is a cousin of the

Coventry Backbiter, and of _Invidia_, "who dwellyth in Abbeys ofte,"

foreshadow the comedy of manners and satire, that is to say, the comedy

of criticism. Other morals or moral interludes of the constructive

kind, which I must forbear to describe, even though they contributed

in one way or another to the improvement of dramatic consciousness

or skill, are the _Pride of Life_, of antiquity perhaps as high as

the preceding; the _Wisdom that is Christ_, 1480-1490, a comedy in

the mediæval sense, insomuch as it portrays the ultimate triumph of

a hero in his contest with temptation; _Mundus et Infans_, printed

1522, but written perhaps by the beginning of the century, which,

beside giving us a vivid satirical picture of low life, makes a twofold

contribution to the technique of comedy,--an iteration of crises in

plot, and a sequence of changes in the character of the hero; Skelton's

_Magnyfycence_, 1515-1523, significant for "vigour and vivacity of

diction," and his _Nigromansir_, written somewhat earlier, which,

though now lost, appears by Warton's account to have contributed, by

its attack upon ecclesiastical abuses, to the beginnings of satirical

comedy; the _Moralle Play of the Somonynge of Everyman_, printed before

1531, but of uncertain date of composition,--a tragedy to be sure,

but "one of the most perfect allegories ever formed." All these, even

when not purposively comic or even entertaining, assist the dramatic

presentation of an imaginative ideal; occasionally also, though less

directly, they contribute to dramatic satire and the portrayal of

manners.

Of moral plays written before 1520 that contributed to the comedy

of real life and critical intent we still have three or four.

_Mankynd_--somewhere between 1461 and 1485--is of prime importance

to the comedy of the actual, for practically its only claim to

consideration as an allegorical or didactic production is that it

maintains the plan and purpose of the moral play. Its dramatic

tendency is altogether away from the abstract. In spite of its

stereotyped Mercie and Myscheff, its minor Vices, and its Devil, it is

a somewhat coarse but amusing portrayal of the manners of contemporary

ne'er-do-weels. Attach no more meaning to the names Newgyse, Nowadays,

and Nowte than the chuckling audience did, or change them to Huntyngton

of Sanston, Thuolay of Hanston, and Pycharde of Trumpyngton, and you

perceive at once that the individuality, conversation, and behaviour

of these characters, and even of the hero, when he is not "holyer

than ever was ony of his kyn," are hardly less natural and concrete

than those of Englishmen immortalized by Heywood, Udall, and William

Stevenson. The plot, to be sure, is dramatically futile, the incidents

farcical, the merriment anything but refined; but there are few merrier

successors of the Wakefield Tutivillus than his namesake here, who,

coming "invysybull," cometh for all that "with his legges under him"

and "no lede on his helys" to inform the sanctimonious hero that "a

schorte preyere thyrlyth hewyn" and the audience that "the Devil is

dead." Like the devil-judge of the _Nigromansir_ and the devil-sailor

of the _Shipwrights' Play_, he has shaken off his biblical conventions

(if he ever had any), he associates familiarly with characters of all

kinds, and is marked by his grotesque devices as a wilful worker of

confusion, the marplot of the play. The dog-Latin of the Vice Myscheff

stands half-way between that of the Wakefield plays and that of

_Roister Doister_ and _Thersytes_; and the Sam Wellerisms of Newgyse

are a fine advance in the reproduction of the vulgar. His "Beware! quod

the goode-wyff, when sche smot of here husbondes hede," and his "Quod

the Devill to the frerys," and other gayeties perilous to quote--there

is something Rabelaisian in all this. So Nowte and Nowadays, with their

racy idioms, their variegated oaths, and "allectuose ways," are to the

manner born, neither new nor old; they are of the picaresque drama that

finds a welcome in every age and land. It is worth while to notice also

the parallelism of crudity and progress in the technical devices of the

action: on the one hand, the exchange of garments by which a change

of motive is symbolized, a ruse that only gradually yields to the

manifestation of character by means of action; and on the other hand,

the legitimate and dramatic parody of a scene in court.

The concrete element so noteworthy in Mankynd is further developed in

the "_Goodly Interlude of Nature_, compylyde by" Archbishop Morton's

chaplain, Henry Medwall, between 1486 and 1500. This author must

have possessed a remarkably vivid imagination, or have enjoyed a

closer acquaintance than might be expected of one of his cloth with

the seamy side of London; for there are few racier or more realistic

bits of description in our early literature than the account given by

Sensuality of Fleyng Kat and Margery, of the perversion of the hero

by the latter, and of her retirement when deserted to that house of

"Strayt Religyon at the Grene Freres hereby," where "all is open as

a gose eye." Though the plot is not remarkable, nor the mechanism of

it, for almost the only device availed of is that of feigned names,

still the author's insight into the conditions of low life, his common

sense, his proverbial philosophy, his humorous exhibition of the morals

of the day, and his stray and sudden shafts at the foibles of his own

religious class, would alone suffice to attract attention to this

work. And even more remarkable than this in the history of comedy is

Medwall's literary style: his versification excellent and varied, his

conversations witty, idiomatic, and facile. Indeed, he is so far beyond

the ordinary convention that he writes the first bit of prose to be

found in our drama.

Several of the characteristics of _Mankynd_ are carried forward also

in the moral "interlude," named, not for its hero Free Will, but for

its Vice, _Hyckescorner_. It appears to have been written between 1497

and 1512. The upper limit of production is fixed by the reference to

Newfoundland, and perhaps by the fact that in the same year Locher's

translation of the _Narrenschiff_ appeared; the lower limit by the

mention of the ship _Regent_, which would not probably have been

referred to as existing after 1512.[63] Indeed, the mention of the ship

_James_ may associate the lower limit with 1503, the date of the Scotch

marriage. The tendency of this moral is distinctively didactic,--to

denounce the folly that scoffs at religion,--but in quality it smacks

more of comedy than any preceding play. Its value was long ago

acknowledged by Dr. Percy. "Abating the moral and religious reflections

and the like," says he, "the piece is of a comic cast, and contains a

humorous display of some of the vices of the age. Indeed, the author

has generally shown so little attention to the allegorical that we need

only to substitute other names to his personages, and we have real

characters and living manners." The plot is insignificant, but the

situations are refreshingly humorous, and one of them, the setting of

Pity in the stocks, is new. The local references are frequent, and the

dialogue is more sprightly than even that of _Nature_. _Hyckescorner_

is in many ways the model of another important play of which we shall

soon have reason to speak, the _Interlude of Youth_.

While the plot of the _New Interlude and Mery of the Nature of the

Four Elements_, calls for no special notice, it interests us because

in purpose it is not moral, but scientific, and in conduct makes use

of comic and commonplace means not previously availed of. The humour

proceeds not simply from the jumble of oaths, nicknames, proverbs,

gibes, bad puns, transparent jokes, mimicry, Sam Wellerisms, and

_nugae canorae_ of which the talk of most Vices consists, but from

the cleverly managed verbal misunderstanding between the Vice and the

Taverner, the irrelevant question, and the humorous employment of

snatches and tags from popular songs. The introduction of a character

representing a trade, such as that of the Taverner, who enumerates

sixteen kinds of wine, and "by his face seems to love best drinking,"

is, of course, novel, but is not without precedent in the miracle

plays. This interlude was printed in 1519 by its author, John Rastell,

evidently soon after it was written.

When we consider that the _Four Elements_ was written by a friend of

Sir Thomas More, and that, like the plays of John Heywood, another of

More's friends, it depends for much of its effect upon its gibes at

womankind, we are, perhaps, assisted in realizing the extent to which

the literary taste of the day still indulged in this primitive form of

amusement, and the distance which was yet to be covered before comedy

could safely avail itself of the feminine element as it is,--witty and

practical, as well as tender,--and so prepare to fulfil its peculiar

function as the conserver of society. For, until it recognizes that

women constitute the social other-half, the comic spirit has not come

into full possession of its possibilities; it has not produced comedy,

for it has not given us a full and undistorted reflex of life. This

is a fact so rarely considered that I cannot refrain from quoting Mr.

George Meredith. "Comedy," he says, in his excellent essay on its

_Idea_--"comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for

their wit, as they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of

sound sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they

enjoy in it.... The heroines of comedy are like women of the world,

not necessarily heartless for being clear-witted: they seem so to the

sentimentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits,

and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy

is an exhibition of their battle with men, and of men with them: and

as the two, however divergent, both look on one object, namely, life,

the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them to some

resemblance. The comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to

this mutual likeness; he is for saying that, when they draw together in

social life, their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns

the similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the

nursery." Of course, if the ways of man and maid in society ever grew

to be exactly alike, comedy would die of inanition. Consequently,

though I say that comedy requires for the sexes equality of social

privilege, I do not mean identity. The _synalœpha_ of the sexes--such

as some extremists, political and pedagogical, project--would just as

surely destroy comedy as in former days the inequality of the sexes

dwarfed it. The sentimental and romantic give-and-take is as essential

to society as the intellectual, and as essential to comedy as to

society.

=8. The Dramatic Contribution of the Older Morals=

Before discussing the period of transition upon which comedy now

enters, it will be advantageous to determine, if possible, what

contributions to the methods of comedy should be credited distinctively

to this moral or moral interlude during the years that preceded the

change, that is, from 1380 to 1520. Certainly not the introduction of

the separate play, as is frequently supposed, nor the substitution of

immediate and familiar interests for those that were remote, nor of

the invented plot for the traditional, and the significant for the

spectacular. Though some of these features distinguish the evolution of

the allegorical play, one and another of them is also to be recognized

at as early a period, or earlier, in those forms of the drama, kindred

and unrelated, that I have already described,--the miracle, the saint's

play, the farce, and the secular festival play. I should say that, so

far as the materials of drama are concerned, the advances peculiar to

the allegorical play were, from the use of the scriptural _dramatis

persona_, frequently instrumental and therefore wooden, to the use

of the dynamic; and from the historical or traditional individual to

the representative of a type. These are substitutions important to

our subject, for, that the individual should come to the front is,

as ten Brink has well said, a characteristic of tragedy, whereas in

comedy it is the typical that is emphasized, to the end that in an

example which is typical the follies of the age may be liberally,

and at the same time impersonally, embodied and chastised. By virtue

of its didactic purpose and its allegorical form, moreover, the

moral play must ascribe to its _dramatis personæ_ adequate motives

of action. It therefore must and does make an attempt, even though

rude, at the preservation of psychological probability in the analysis

and development of these motives. Once the dramatic person has been

labelled with the name of a quality, not as appraised from without

and denoted by a patronymic common to dozens beside himself, but from

within and specified by his ethonymic (if I may coin the word), he is

no longer a chance acquaintance of the dramatist or the public, but the

representative of an ethical family. In the moral play the characters

stand for or against some convention,--educational, ethical, political,

religious,--that is to say, social in the broadest sense. With the

advent of such characters, therefore, the social drama receives an

impulse. Its hero serves to justify or to satirize an institution; for

that end he exists. And therefore in the handling of motives the moral

makes a genuine advance in the direction of comedy, both critical and

ideal.

We notice next that the author of this kind of drama finds it necessary

to devise situations for exploiting the idiosyncrasies of his principal

characters; and that, even though the characters be disguised as

abstractions, the friction of what is dynamic with what is real

results in something vivid and concrete. I do not mean to say that the

dramatist has learned how to develop character, but how to display or

manifest it. Skill in the portrayal of character in process of growth

came but slowly, and with the passage of the allegorical play into

the drama of real life. As to the portrayal of motives and emotions

in their complexity, that is an art much more refined, to which the

writers of the moral never attained, even though they enriched their

abstractions with borrowings from theologians, philosophers, and

poets, for in dealing with abstractions at all they were dealing with

life at second hand. Indeed, complex characters can hardly be found

in English drama before the various tentative dramatic species had

merged themselves in the polytypic plays with which comedy, properly

so called, made its appearance. The allegorical dramatists found

also, like the writers of the later miracle and farce, that critical

situations demanded plain language and unsophisticated manners; and if,

in these respects, the realism of the moral excels that of the earlier

miracle, it is perhaps because of the superior dynamic quality of the

moral _dramatis persona_.

Mr. Courthope and other writers on the drama have conjectured that

the improvement characteristic of the allegorical playwright was

one to which he was driven of necessity, namely, the introduction,

and consequently the invention, of a continuous plot. But there was

nothing new in the invention of plot. The novelty, if any, was in

the distinctively comic nature of the plot-movement most suitable to

the purpose of this kind of drama. In tragedy, the movement must be

economic of its ups and downs: once headed downward, it must plunge,

with but one or two vain recovers, to the abyss. In comedy, on the

other hand, though the movement is ultimately upward, the crises are

more numerous; the oftener the individual stumbles without breaking

his neck, and the more varied his discomfitures, so long as they are

temporary, the better does he enjoy his ease in the cool of the day.

Tragic effects may be intense and longer drawn out, but they must be

few; in comedy, the effects are many, sudden, fleeting, kaleidoscopic.

You can enjoy a long, delicious shudder, but not a long-spun joke, or

a joke frequently repeated, or many jokes of the same kind. Hence

the peculiar movement of the plot in comedy. Now, the novelty of

the plot in the moral play, lay in the fact that the movement was

of this oscillating, upward kind,--a kind unknown as a rule to the

miracle, whose conditions were less fluid, and to the farce, which

was too shallow and superficial. The heart of the 'moral' hero was a

battleground; as in comedy, the interest was in the vicissitudes of

the conflict and the certainty of peace. Though the purpose of the

moral play was didactic and reformatory, its doctrine was optimistic

and its end to encourage; and one of the distinctive contributions

of the moral play to the English comedy was the movement suitable to

these conditions, not the introduction of a continuous or connected

plot. When Mr. Courthope further speaks of the moral plays as if they

were the sole link of connection between the later miracle plays and

the regular drama, and implies that the "morality" was unique in its

introduction of a leading personage, who may be called the hero of the

play, he is attributing to it qualities that existed in contemporary

species of the dramatic kind. As to the statement that the moral play

arose, as if a new kind of play, from some modification of the miracle

play, on the one hand by secular and comic interests, and on the other

by allegorical motives and materials, I think that sufficient has been

elsewhere said in this article to show that secular and comic interests

existed in the miracle play without altering its essence, both before

and after the moral had come into prominence, and that allegorical

motives and materials had developed themselves into the moral pageant

and play before the miracle was visibly affected by them.

=9. The Period of Transition: Farce and Romantic Interlude=

The period of experimentation or transition, which may be said to

extend from 1520 to 1553, is characterized especially by the gradual

abandonment of allegorical machinery and abstract material. The

forward movement is, of course, primarily due to the change from the

mediæval attitude of mind to that of the renaissance, from artificial

thought whose medium, the symbol, succeeded in concealing more than

it expressed, to experience. Of the social and political conditions

which prepared the way for the transition so far as English comedy is

concerned or that shaped comedy once on its way, I cannot here speak,

but the following would appear among purely literary antecedents:

First, the French _sotties_ and _farces_, the technical and satirical

qualities of which were a stimulus to invention, not only in England,

but in Italy and Germany; second, the _disputations_ and _debats_,

veritable whetstones of wit and a polish of words _ad unguem;_ third,

the collateral development of a farce interlude in England, composed

in Latin and English, probably also in Norman French, but generally

spontaneous, and wholly unforced; fourth, the adaptation to dramatic

and satirical purposes of _contes_, _fabliaux_, _novelle_, and their

English translations and congeners,--more especially the Chaucerian

episode with its concrete characters and contemporary manners; fifth,

the movement of native romance urged during the fifteenth and earlier

sixteenth centuries by contact with Spanish and Italian ideals and

their fictions of character, adventure, and intrigue; sixth, the

discipline of Plautine and Terentian models, and of the Latin and

vernacular comedies which imitated them, as well as of the Latin school

plays which flourished in Holland and Germany during the latter half

of the fifteenth century; and seventh, the examples set by Kirchmayer

and other German controversialists in the attempted adaptation of the

moral play to historical or quasi-historical conditions with a view to

satirical ends.

The plays that call for consideration in this section and the next

may be classified roughly as farces, romantic interludes, school

interludes, and controversial morals. Each of these kinds reaches a

culmination conformable to its nature, within the limits that I have

chosen for the period; and each has its own place in the history

of comedy. For it must not be supposed that, because a pastoral

farce like the _Mak_ did not develop into independent existence, or

because moral interludes gradually exhausted their career towards

the end of the sixteenth century, such species had no influence

in maturing English comedy. The peculiar quality and charm of our

comedy is that, deriving from sources not only distinct, but remote

in literary habitat,--scriptural, allegorical, farcical, pastoral,

romantic, classical, historical, or purely native and social,--it has

not dissipated itself in a thousand streamlets, but has carried down

deposits from each tributary at its best. In _Love's Labor's Lost_,

_Two Angry Women_, _As You Like It_, _Old Wives' Tale_, _Every Man

in His Humour_, we find, as in a miner's pan, 'colours' from vastly

different soils.

Of the indebtedness of comedy to the parody of religious festivals I

have already spoken, and I have little doubt that at later periods

English comedy continued to draw devices, if not inspiration, from

performances whose occasion was a revolt against the straitness of

religion. One, at least, of the interludes of John Heywood is closely

similar to the French _Farce de Pernet_, and that such farces were, in

motive, first a gloss upon the lessons of the divine service, then a

diversion, and finally a factor in the extra-ecclesiastical Feast of

Fools, any reader of Petit de Julleville will readily concede. It is

impossible that the comic features and comic characters of the farces

acted by the _clercs de la Basoche_, such as that of the immortal

_Maître Pathelin_, should not have affected the dramatic invention

of contemporary and succeeding Englishmen, conversant as many of them

were with the literature and society of France. And a like effect

might naturally be expected to have been exercised by the _sotties_

of the contemporary _enfants sans souci_; for, through the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries, drama of that kind convulsed the sides of

merrymakers south of the Channel. Such were the occasion and motive

of farces and _sotties_. So far as they employed the plot of domestic

intrigue for their purposes of satire, I have little doubt that they

drew freely upon the Latin elegiac comedies of which I have already

spoken as the favourite dramatic species of the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries. The _Farce de Pernet_ has connection with more than one of

those imitations of Terentian intrigue. It has, also, like many of its

kind and of elegiac comedies as well, a kinship with one and another

popular tale. The church, then, seems to have furnished the opportunity

for these farces, and for some as an object of satire the motive; the

_contes_ and _fabliaux_ of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth

centuries furnished much of the material; Latin comedy, its mediæval

and renaissance successors, cannot have failed to influence the form.

It will be, of course, recalled that as early as the _Mak_ of the

Towneley plays, a farce which is not unworthy of comparison with

_Maître Pathelin_, the English _Interludium de Clerico et Puella_,

probably of the thirteenth century, also indicated an acquaintance with

the technique of the farce species. Undoubtedly such interludes were

a common feature at entertainments of various kinds, and had matured

in the ordinary course into fixed form. But they were frequently

extemporaneous, were written for fleeting occasions, and might readily

be lost. I am inclined therefore, to look upon the dramatized anecdotes

assigned to Heywood as lucky survivals of a form which, since it had

been long cultivated both in England and France, may have attained to

a degree of excellence before he took it up. The resemblance of these

farces to the French is often such that, as M. Jusserand says, one

cannot but question whether Heywood had not some of the old French

dramas of the type in his hands. Since Mr. Pollard has discussed

the question in this volume, it is unnecessary for me to pursue it

farther. In any case, it is to the honour of Heywood that he brought

to focus the characteristic qualities of the Chaucerian episode, the

farce and the dramatic debate. "This I write," says he, "not to teach,

but to touch." In his work, accordingly, we find narratives of single

and independent interest, if not exactly plot, and an adaptation of

that which is abstract to purposes of amusement. We find characters

with motive, and sometimes personality, contemporary manners, witty

dialogue, satire; and in at least the _Play of Love_, an adumbration

of the sentimental, dare we say romantic, possibilities of comedy, to

be realized when it should have thrown allegory and scholasticism

to the winds. The Laundress in the _Wether_ envisages fleetingly the

straits of life and the recompense; and in the _Play of Love_, the

personification of various phases of that passion is a kind of glass

through which we darkly divine the motives of many later comedies.

There is, however, with the single exception of the Vice's trick in

_Love_, no action which can be called dramatic in Heywood's undoubted

plays; for, as Mr. Pollard reminds us, the _Pardoner_ and _Johan_,

although they avail themselves of "business" in order to develop a

plot, have not the significance of comedy proper.

To understand the nature of the movements that follow we must recur,

though with the utmost brevity, to the history of later Latin comedy.

The comic recitals of the twelfth century and thereabout were succeeded

by the comedy of the Italian humanists, still in Latin, but dramatic

in form and apparently in intent, which, though it availed itself,

like the elegiac school, of the outworn situations and devices of

scabrous amours, contributed considerably to the enrichment of the

romantic strain by the passion with which it invested its material,

sometimes, also, to the cause of realism by its unconscious, though

often repulsive, accuracy of detail. Although Plautus is to some extent

cultivated, the Terentian model was still the favourite with youthful

imitators until study of the older poet was revived by the recovery

of the twelve lost plays and their introduction to Roman circles in

1427. The _Philologia_ of Petrarch's earlier years is accordingly

fashioned in the style of Terence, and is even reported, for it is

unfortunately lost, to have surpassed its classical forbears. Written

about 1331, it was the first product of the new dramatic school, and

was succeeded by a numerous train of ambitious effusions,--university

plays we might call most of them,--a few witty, some sentimental, many

libidinous, all very young, and still all, or nearly all, cleverly and

regularly constructed. It concerns us here but to mention the _Paulus_

of Vergerio, which Creizenach dates 1370, Aretino's _Poliscene_, about

1390, Alberti's _Philodoxeos_, 1418, Ugolino's _Philogena_, some time

before 1437, and Piccolomini's _Crisis_, 1444.[64] Of these erotic

comedies,--pornographic were perhaps a more fitting term,--the most

popular seems to have been the _Philogena_; the most eminent, according

to Creizenach (but I don't see why), the _Crisis_. The _Paulus_

pretends to aim at the improvement of youth; one might for a moment

imagine that it was intended to be a prodigal son play. But in none

of these plays is there either punishment or repentance. In fact the

unaffected verve with which they display the wantonness of life is not

the least of their contributions to comedy. The _Poliscene_ is notable

for its modernity of manners and of morals. The sole instance among

these plays, so far as I can ascertain, of noble sentiment and harmless

plot is the _Philodoxeos_. The use of abstract names for the characters

lends it, indeed, somewhat the appearance of a moral interlude.

Of much greater value, however, in the history of the acted drama, and

of closer bearing upon the English comedy, were the representations

of Plautus and Terence, first in the Latin and ultimately in the

vernacular, which marked the last quarter of the fifteenth century in

the courts of northern Italy. These in turn were but stepping-stones

towards such dramatic dialogues as the _Timone_ of Bojardo, 1494, and

the still more significant experiments of Ariosto and Bibbiena--the

first romantic comedies in prose and in the native tongue. The authors

of the _Suppositi_ (acted in 1509) and the _Calandria_ (written in

1508, but not presented till six years later) derive much from Roman

sources, but in general these comedies and their like were original.

Their influence upon our own plays of romantic intrigue will presently

appear. So, likewise, will that of a Spanish work, of even earlier

date, the dramatic novel of _Calisto and Melibœa_; for this tragic

production of Cota and De Rojas is the source of our first English

romantic drama. The connection between other forms of Italian drama,

the _Commedia dell'arte_, the pastoral drama, etc., and the later stage

in western Europe has been ably discussed by Klein, Moland, Symonds,

and Ward; and to them I must refer the reader of this more summary

account.

The decade that saw the first of Heywood's virile plays was probably

that which welcomed to England the ebullient, un-English passions

of a dramatic species destined to develop the native stock in a

far different manner. "A new commodye in englyshe, in maner of an

enterlude," ordinarily called _Calisto and Melibœa_, is the earliest

romantic play of intrigue in our language. It was "caused to be

printed" by that excellent promoter of the dramatic art, John Rastell,

about 1530, and was written--perhaps by him--not long before. The

appellation "commodye" had been used during the same decade with

reference to the English translation of the _Andria_ (about 1520-29);

it is here used for the first time on the title-page of an English

play. And this interesting interlude may, indeed, well be called both

English and comedy; for though it derives from romance sources (the

Spanish dramatic composition by Fernando de Rojas, before 1500),

and is affected by the Italian, it does not follow exactly the plot

of its original; and though it is "reduced to the proportions of an

interlude," it treats of an idea not farcical, but significant, and it

develops the motives of real characters, by way of action, passion,

and intrigue, to a happy conclusion within the realm of convention and

common sense. It is, indeed, a comedy, perhaps our first well-rounded

comedy, though in miniature. The _Secunda Pastorum_ it excels in

singleness of aim; the _Pardoner and Frere_ and the _Johan_, in meaning

for life. It excels all preceding interludes in the fulfilment of

the purpose, now for the first time announced in English drama, "to

shew and to describe as well the bewte and good propertes of women

as theyr vyces and evyll condicions." For the first time since plays

became secular, women are introduced, not as the objects of scurrility

and ridicule, but as dramatic material of an æsthetic, moral, and

intellectual value equal to that of men. What the author of _Johan_

did for the amusing and real action desirable in a comedy, the author

of this play did for vital characterization and passion. Melibœa is

the first heroine of our romantic comedy; she is so fair that for

her lover there is "no such sovereign in heaven, though she be in

earth." She is, if the play was written before the _Play of Love_, our

earliest heroine "loved, not loving." She is a woman and pitiful and

to be wooed; frail and repentant; but then indignant and not to be

won. Calisto is, likewise, our first lover in despair. This element

of woman worship--not worship of the Blessed Virgin or traditional

interest in the Magdalene or any other saint--is no slight contribution

to the material of comedy. The intrigue of the play,--the foils of

character and action, the go-betweens, the plot within plot introduced

by Celestina, her realistic account of Sempronio's character, her

device of the "girdle," the mysterious agency of the dream,--no

better indication of romantic tendency can be detected until we reach

Redford's play of _Wit and Science_, of which presently. But first, and

that we may keep in mind the parallelism of dramatic tendencies in this

momentous first half of the sixteenth century, let us turn to another

stream, that of the school interludes and the classical influence.

=10. The Period of Transition: School Interlude and Controversial Moral=

During the fifteenth century, and the early sixteenth, influences of

importance to English comedy proceed not from the literature of Italy

and Spain alone. In northern Europe additions most significant to the

history of the type were making. To the crop of French _sotties_,

_moralités_, and _farces_ I have already referred. The German Reuchlin

in 1498 put forth a roaring Latin comedy called the _Henno_, which, in

modern Terentian style, embodied the chicaneries of Pathelin. About

the same time the Germans began to make the acquaintance, through

translations in their own tongue, of highly flavoured Italian Latin

plays like the _Poliscene_ and the _Philogenia;_ while those of them

who cared not for such things were favoured with a recrudescence of the

Christian Terence school. In 1507 the young humanist, Kilian Reuter,

in imitation of the nun of Gandersheim, produced in Latin his pious

comedy depicting the passion of St. Dorothea. In Holland, meanwhile,

were springing into existence the Latin prototypes of more than one of

our own didactic interludes; for in the _comedia sacra_ the attempt was

made to combine the intrigue of the Italian university play with the

moral of the prodigal son and the technique of the Terentian drama.

The more important of these plays of the prodigal son, in respect of

influence upon English comedy, are the _Asotus_ of Macropedius, written

before 1529, and his _Rebelles_, 1535, the _Acolastus_ of Gnapheus,

1529, and the _Studentes_ of Stymmelius, 1549. The most dramatic of

them are the second and third as mentioned. The _Acolastus_, indeed,

translated into English by Palsgrave in 1540, exerted a long-enduring

influence upon our drama. To the same period belong also a species of

biblical comedies dealing with heroes, like the _Joseph_ of the Dutch

Jesuit, Crocus, 1535, and the _Susanna_, _Judith_, _Eli_, _Ruth_,

_Job_, _Solomon_, _Goliath_, etc., of Macropedius, the Swiss Sixt

Birck, and others; and another kind of play that occupied itself with

prototypes of the Roman Antichrist,--Haman, Judas, and the like. The

former may be called the idyllic or heroic miracle, the latter the

polemic. And of the latter the most influential development was the

controversial interlude, _Pammachius_, written by the German Protestant

Naogeorgos (Kirchmayer) and dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

By 1545 this play, in which the Pope figures as the Antichrist, had

not only been acted at Cambridge in the original, but translated into

English by our own John Bale; and, as we shall presently see, it was,

somewhere between 1540 and 1548, imitated by him in one of the most

vigorous of our controversial dramas.[65]

Of the cultivation of the drama in Latin in England I have already

made mention in treating of the saints' plays and the Terentian

drama of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Other indications of

a Latin drama occur, although infrequently. William Fitzstephen,

who speaks of the _ludus_ given by Geoffrey's boys at Dunstable,

tells us, also, that it was customary on feast days for masters of

schools to hold festival meetings in the churches, when the pupils

contested, not only in disputations, but also with Fescennine license

in satirical verses touching "the faults of school-fellows or perhaps

of greater people"; a practice which could only with difficulty escape

development into a rude Aristophanic comedy. We have mention also

of perquisites for a _comœdia_ in one of the Cambridge colleges as

early as 1386, evidently of the Latin type, and of the presentation

of a goodly comedy of Plautus at court in 1520. Between 1522 and 1532

the Master of St. Paul's produced a Latin school drama of _Dido_

before Wolsey, and according to Collier's supposition,[66] the same

John Ritwyse was the author of the satiric interlude, in Latin and

French, of Luther and his wife, which was acted for the delectation

of the not yet reformed Henry and his foreign guests in 1527. Of

the nature of this play, unfortunately lost, some conception may be

gathered from the still surviving list of its characters (allegorical,

religious, and contemporary), from the analogous _Ludus ludentem

Luderum ludens_, 1530, and the somewhat more recent and most scurrilous

_Monachopornomachia_, both by Germans. Before 1530 and apparently with

a view to acting, the _Andria_ had been turned into English,[67] and

by 1535 at least two Latin comedies of moral-mythological character

had been written by Artour of Cambridge, and one, the _Piscator_, by

Hoker of Oxford.[68] We have word of a dramatic pageant in English and

Latin to which Udall contributed in 1532; in 1534 he issued a book

of selections entitled _Flowers of Terence_. In 1540 Palsgrave had

introduced the prodigal son drama from Germany; and by 1545 Bale had

followed suit with a Latin play of Antichrist. During the same period

Udall was producing his _plures comœdiæ_, now lost, and that other

schoolmaster-dramatist, Radcliffe of Hitchin, was writing _spectacula

simul jucunda et honesta_ for his boys to present,--heroic miracles of

the type affected by Macropedius, and a romantic comedy of _Griselda_,

probably all in Latin, but unfortunately all vanished.

The importance of the English school drama has been well presented by

Professor Herford and Dr. Ward, but there is something in the name

that leads the ordinary reader to underrate the _genus_. A word or so

by way of classification may be of assistance. These interludes fall

naturally into four kinds. Those that ridicule folly, vain pretension,

and conceit, or Mirth plays,--plays after the model of Plautus,

mock-heroic, or purely diverting, like the _Thersytes_. Those that

are pedagogical in tendency, directed against idleness and ignorance,

or Wit plays. They began with Rastell's _Four Elements_, and reached

their highest mark in the _Contract between Witt and Wisdome_. Those

that portray the conflict with the excesses and lusts of the flesh, or

Youth plays. They consist of such productions as _Mankynd_, _Nature_,

_Hyckescorner_, and reach their climax, about 1554, in the _Interlude

of Youth_. The school drama includes, in the last place, a series

corrective of parental indulgence and filial disobedience, aptly called

Prodigal Son plays. These are patterned upon Terence, but follow the

manner of Dutch school plays like the _Acolastus_ or of the still

earlier French _moralités_, _Bien-Avisé et Mal-Avisé_, _L'Homme

pêcheur_, and _Les Enfants de Maintenant_. They make more or less use

of the scriptural motif and are sometimes tragical. In the period under

consideration their best representatives are the _Nice Wanton_ and the

_Disobedient Child_. From the point of view of comedy the first of

these kinds, the Mirth play, occupies a place by itself; for, though

it may sometimes intend to teach, it always aims at, and achieves,

laughter. To the three remaining kinds, we must for convenience, join,

however, another which, though not of the school species, is primarily

didactic,--I mean the controversial interlude. This includes Bale's

_King Johan_, Wever's _Lusty Juventus_, and the _Respublica_.

In the Mirth play, _Thersytes_, the influence of Plautus is evident,--a

school play, to be sure, but written with a view to amusement or

rollicking satire rather than instruction. Acted in 1537, this

"enterlude" has for its hero a "ruffler forth of the Greke lande" whose

"crakying" stands half-way between the classical Pyrgopolinices and

Thraso and the modern Roister Doister. For all its academic flavour,

the burlesque is coarse and crude, but still genuinely humorous.

It deserves notice, in especial, for the variety of its contents,

chivalric, romantic, popular, scriptural as well as Greek and Latin;

also for its artistic exhibition of the braggart,--the leisurely

proceeding of his discomfiture, the subordination of other characters

to that end; and for its mastery of technical devices,--concealment,

magic, the play upon the word, and that hunting of the word and

letter which was so soon to drive conversation out of its wits. As

an interlude of foreign origin, the _Thersytes_ has a place in the

development of the comic element somewhat analogous to that of the

_Calisto_ in the development of the romantic. As far as the quality

of mirth is concerned it might be classed with _Roister Doister_ and

_Jacke Jugeler_; but those plays are much more highly developed in form

and spirit, and must be reserved for consideration with the polytypic,

and early regular, comedy.

The remaining classes of interlude are manifestly didactic; those of

Wit and Youth derive, however, more directly from native sources, while

those of the Prodigal Son have close affiliation with the Christian

Terence of the continental humanists.

Redford's _Wyt and Science_, composed probably between 1541 and 1547,

is, in form and intent, like _Lusty Juventus_ and other survivals of

the moral interlude. It differs, however, in company with the _Four

Elements_ and other Wit plays, in substituting a scientific for a

religious purpose; and it adds a feature not to be found in earlier

kinds of moral, a chivalrous ideal of love and adventure, academic, to

be sure, but unmistakable. This appears in the wooing of Lady Science

by Wyt, and his encounter with the tyrant or fiend Tediousness "for

my dere hartes sake to wynne my spurres;" in the hero's inconstancy,

defeat, and subsequent success, and in the dramatic employment of

romantic instruments and tokens, such as the magic glass and the

sword of comfort; also in the love songs. All of these and similar

features of which the sources are not entirely continental make for

the development of a romantic and humanistic drama. It may be worth

noticing, moreover, that the fiend of the play is neither Vice nor

Devil. He seems to be a cross between the Devil of the miracles and

a monster of native as well as scriptural ancestry (an early draft

of Giant Despair), who figures in a modernization of this play, _The

Marriage of Witte and Science_. In chronological sequence the next of

the Wit plays is the _Contract of a Marrige betweene Wit and Wisdome_

(not _Wit and Science_, as Professor Brandl has it). This was probably

written about the same time as the _Lusty Juventus_. The mention of the

King's most "royal majestie" and the appearance of the Vice Idleness as

a priest would point to a date earlier than 1553, while the resemblance

to Redford's play, though by no means close, indicates posteriority to

that much cruder production. The division into acts and scenes is, on

the other hand, less elaborate than that obtaining in the latest play

of this series, _The Marriage of Witte and Science_. The _Contract_ is

altogether the most meritorious of those academic predecessors of the

drama of the Prodigal Son which introduce the indulgent mother as a

motive force. While the conception is formal and didactic, the action

avails itself, like Redford's play, of the romantic element involved

in the perilous adventure for love. The _Contract_, moreover, startles

the sober atmosphere of the moral interlude by a rapidity of movement,

a combination of plots major and minor, a diversity of subordinate

characters and incidents altogether unprecedented. The racy and natural

wit, the equivoque, the actual, even if vulgar, humanity of the scenes

from low life, and the skill with which the Mother Bees, the Dols and

Lobs, Snatches and Catches, the Constable, and the thoroughly rustic

Vice with his actual resemblance to Diccon the Bedlem, are dovetailed

into the action,--these properties make this a very commendable

predecessor, not only of _Gammer Gurton_, but of certain plays of

Dekker and Jonson where similar features obtain. With the _Contract_,

the interlude of this kind attains its climax. _The Marriage of Witte

and Science_, which is a revision of Redford's play of similar name,

must also be mentioned here, although it is a postliminious specimen of

the type. Not licensed until 1569-70, and, according to Fleay, acted

as _Wit and Will_, 1567-78,[69] it adds nothing vital to the plot or

characters of its model. Still, in literary and dramatic handling, it

is an example of the perfection to which the moral play could come.

Collier, indeed, has said that it was the first play of its kind

regularly divided into acts and scenes with indication of the same:

but that is not true, for the _Respublica_ of 1553 has five acts and

the proper arrangement in scenes; and so have other plays of 1553 or

earlier, though of different kind, like the _Jacob and Esau_.

If now we pass to the Youth plays, we shall find in the _Interlude of

Youth_ (about 1554) the culmination of dramatic efforts to portray the

sowing of wild oats,--efforts avowedly moral in purpose, but with a

reminiscent smack of the lips and a fellow-feeling for the scapegrace.

The _Interlude of Youth_ is characterized neither by the unbridled

merriment of the _Miles Gloriosus_ type nor by the depth or pathos of

dramas portraying solicitous parents and prodigal sons; but it paves

the way for 'tragical' comedies of this latter class, and is infinitely

more dramatic, because more human, than the pedagogical onslaughts

upon idleness, irksomeness, ignorance, and the like of which we have

just treated. It has, perhaps, not been noticed that the _Interlude of

Youth_ holds about the same relation to _Hyckescorner_ in matter of

motive and treatment that _Hyckescorner_ holds to the _Four Elements_

and _Mankynd_,--indeed, a closer relation, for in many details of

character, device, situation, as well as by literal transference of

language, it borrows from _Hyckescorner_. This as indicating the

descent of the species is in itself interesting. But the present play

generally improves upon all that it derives. In addition, the vivid

conversation, shrewd and waggish wit, local colouring, atmosphere of

taverns, dicing, cards, and worse iniquities, justify, I think, the

statement that it is at once the most realistic, amusing, and graceful

specimen of its kind. It is, at any rate, as artistic as a didactic

interlude could permit itself to be.

One cannot consider the so-called Prodigal Son interludes, without

observing that the theme itself supplies an opportunity for the

enlargement of dramatic endeavour. For these productions are directed

as much against parental indulgence as against filial disobedience.

The "Preaty Interlude called _Nice Wanton_," printed in 1560, was

written before the death of Edward VI. Though it may have derived

suggestions from the _Rebelles_[70] of Macropedius, 1535, it is of its

own originality and dramatic merit, in my opinion, the best of its

class in English at the time of writing. While it presents a mixture of

scriptural, classical, and moral elements, it is essentially a modern

production. The allegorical lingers only in the character of Worldly

Shame. If this be eliminated, there remains a play with realistic,

romantic, and ideal qualities, an air of probability, and a plot well

conceived and excellently completed. Iniquity, or Baily errand, is a

concrete Vice, working by actual and possible methods. The unfortunate

heroine and the well-contrasted pairs of mothers and sons are manifest

not only by their deeds but by the opinions of those who know them.

The plot, in other words, grows out of the characters; it is full of

incident, and it falls naturally into acts, which have been elaborated

in various and dramatically interesting scenes. The movements, on the

one hand toward a catastrophe, on the other toward the triumph of right

living, are conducted with skilful suspense, surprise, discovery, and

revolution, and are well interwoven. The conversations and songs are

racy or sober according to the conditions; the combination of æsthetic

qualities, comic, tragic, and pathetic, is an agreeable advance upon

the inartistic extremes afforded by most of the contemporary interludes

of moral intent. The next of these plays, the "pretie and mery new

interlude called _The Disobedient Child_, by Thomas Ingeland, late

Student at Cambridge," was acted, Mr. Fleay thinks, before Elizabeth

in March, 1560-61. Though it was not published till 1564, it was

certainly, like the _Nice Wanton_, written before 1553. The purpose

is serious and the conclusion almost tragic, but the play contributes

to the comedy of domestic satire. If the main characters were but

indicated by name, like those below stairs, Blanche and Long-Tongue,

this picturesque and wholly dramatic interlude would have attracted

more notice than has been vouchsafed it. Its literary merits, verse,

poetic feeling and expression, and its natural dialogue entitle it to

high consideration; its decidedly novel dramatic qualities, even though

they bear a general resemblance to the _Studentes_[71] of Stymmelius,

rank it with the _Nice Wanton_ as one of the most vigorous of our early

representatives of the dramatic actualities of family life.

For reasons which I have already indicated, the controversial plays

of the period between 1520 and 1553 may be considered here. The

first of these in chronological order is Bale's _King Johan_, about

1540-47, with later insertions in the author's hand. Its relation to

Lyndsay's satire of the _Thrie Estatis_ is well known; and Professor

Herford[72] has indicated its indebtedness also to the _Pammachius_

and the Protestant version of the antichrist legend. It is a dramatic

satire on the abuses of the church, its riches, orders, brotherhoods,

confessionals, simony, free thought, mummery (judaistic and pagan),

Latin ritual, hagiolatry, and papal supremacy. Few more excellent

embodiments of the Vice have been preserved than the Sedycyon of this

play, who in every estate of the clergy plays a part, sometimes monk,

sometimes nun, or canon, or chapter-house monk, or Sir John, or the

parson, or the bishop, or the friar, or the purgatory priest and every

man's wife's desire:--

"Yea, to go farder, sumtyme I am a cardynall;

Yea, sumtyme a pope and than am I lord over all,

Both in hevyn and erthe and also in purgatory,

And do weare iij crownes whan I am in my glorye."

In spite of Professor Schelling's[73] recent rejection of _King

Johan_ from the list of chronicle plays, I cannot but agree with Dr.

Ward that this moral is of considerable importance in the history

of that species. That it uses history merely as the cloak for a

religio-policical allegory, and that it does not quite succeed in

drawing together the points of fact and fiction in the development of

action and character,--these defects do not alter its significance as

the first English play to incarnate the political spirit of its age in

a form imaginatively attributed to an earlier period of native history.

Although it is not a comedy, it concerns us here as a drama of critical

and satirical intent. It is succeeded by plays like _Lusty Juventus_

and _Respublica_, which deal more or less with political affairs, and

interest us because they enliven the controversial by the introduction

of the realistic and comic, and, accordingly, in an age when polemics

was politics, contribute to the improvement of comedy by shaping it

more or less to a medium for the dissemination of practical ideas.

Moreover, though Bale had no disciples in the attempt to construct an

historical protestant drama, he may be said to have prepared the way

for a protestant series of another kind. This is what Professor Herford

has well called the biblical _genre_ drama; it is pedagogical and

controversial, and, like the _King Johan_, its representatives, also,

such as the _Darius_ and _Queen Hester_, had their precursors, and

probably their models, more or less distant, in the idyllic or heroic

miracle of the Dutch and German humanists.

R. Wever's _Lusty Juventus_, written about 1550,[74] is of the dramatic

kindred of _Mankynd_ and _Nature_. Its characters are allegorical in

name but concrete in person; and one of them, Abhominable Living,

passes, also, under the appellation of "litle Besse." The conversations

are sprightly, and the songs show considerable lyric power. But the

play is a protestant polemic, and its success must have depended to a

large extent upon the bitterness of the satire against

"Holy cardinals, holy popes,

Holy vestments, holy copes,"

and various alleged hypocrisies and excesses of the Church of Rome.

That this play had a long life is shown by its insertion, though

under the designation of an interlude with which it had nothing in

common,[75] as a play within a play in the tragedy of _Sir Thomas

More_ (about 1590). The "merye Enterlude" _Respublica_, 1553, a

children's Christmas play, sustains somewhat the same relation to

political Catholicism as _King Johan_ to Protestantism--without the

polemics of dogma. Here, as in the preceding political moral of _King

Johan_, the Vice is used for a satirical purpose, and is not only the

chief mischief-maker, but, also, the principal representative of the

comic rôle. In this play, the Vice is so highly considered that the

author, probably a priest, multiplies him by four, and, by way of

foil, offsets the group with that of the four Virtues, daughters of

God, whose presence in the eleventh Coventry play and in _Mankynd_ has

already been noticed. I don't see how Collier can call the construction

of _Respublica_ ingenious; it is childish, clumsy, and trite. The

humour consists in old-fashioned disguises and _aliases_, equivoque,

misunderstanding, and abuse. But the character of Avarice, who, with

his money bags, anticipates the Suckdrys and Lucres of later comedy,

is well conceived, the conduct natural, the language simple and

colloquial. Of historical interest is the introduction of Queen Mary

as Nemesis; of linguistic, the attempt to reproduce the dialect of the

common people; of dramatic, the division into acts and scenes, which is

to be found in but few other plays of the mid-century, such as _Roister

Doister_, _King Johan_, _Jacob and Esau_, and the _Marriage of Witte

and Science_.

=11. Polytypic, or Fusion, Plays=

With the plays just mentioned each of the dramatic kinds so far

considered reaches its artistic limit. These kinds, however, during

the decades roughly coincident with the years between 1545 and 1566,

enter into combinations, by virtue of which English comedy is assisted

to a still further advance. The plays that represent this stage of

literary history may be called polytypic. _Roister Doister_ and _Jacke

Jugeler_ subordinate the materials of academic interlude and classical

farce to classical regulations. Into the _Historie of Jacob and Esau_

enter characteristics of miracle play, moral, realistic interlude, and

classical comedy. _Gammer Gurton_ and _Tom Tyler_ (of about the same

date) subsume, under the domestic play of low life, native elements

of both farce and moral. _Misogonus_ combines elements of moral

interlude and farce with qualities native and foreign, classical and

romantic. These are followed by the biblical _genre_ drama of _Godly

Queen Hester_, partly political and partly pedagogical in intent. In

the first five of these plays the tendency to teach is reduced almost

to a minimum. In the _Misogonus_ and _Hester_ it is present, but is

counterbalanced by romantic or satirical considerations. When, however,

we reach the _Damon and Pythias_ and _The Supposes_, the didactic has

disappeared altogether in favour of the truly artistic motive. These

plays at last combine the comic and serious, the real, the romantic,

and the ideal. They are constructive, not primarily critical; in fact,

they must be regarded as our first real comedies.

No play of this division better illustrates the impress of the

classical model upon native material than _Roister Doister_. This

"comedie" or "interlude" was certainly in existence by 1552; indeed,

it has not yet been conclusively shown that it was not acted as early

as 1534 to 1541. In the last contingency it may have anticipated the

_Thersytes;_ but, according to Professor Flügel's argument,[76] it was

probably not composed till after 1545. With the _Thersytes_ it has in

common several points of detail, but the essential resemblance is,

of course, in the Plautine personage of the braggart. Like Heywood

before him, Udall aims to produce that which "is comendable for a

man's recreation," but the masterpiece of Udall has the advantage

of Heywood's "mery plays," in that its mirth "refuses scurilitie."

In _Roister Doister_, also, more decidedly than in previous plays,

the amusement proceeds not from the situation alone, but from the

organism,--a plot essentially and substantially dramatic, because its

characters are concrete, purposive, and interacting. But decided as

was Udall's contribution to the art of comic drama, we must not credit

him with producing comedy proper. The merit of _Roister Doister_ is in

its comic intent, its skilful characterization and contrivance. It is

a presentation of humours,--corrective indeed, but farcical. It is not

significant, constructive, poetic, grounded in the heart as well as in

the head. A contribution to the classical type contemporary with the

preceding, but of a much more farcical and juvenile appearance, is the

"new interlued" named _Jacke Jugeler_, written not later than 1562 and

perhaps as early as 1553-54 (after the reëstablishment of the Mass and

before the terrifying revival of the sanguinary laws against heretics).

It announces itself as a school drama, and in the prologue purports

to have been derived from the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus. I am inclined

to think that the professed modesty of the author has led critics to

undervalue the skill and fidelity of that which was not only the best

"droll," but also the best dramatic satire produced in England up to

date. Within a narrow compass he has developed a humorous action quite

novel in English comedy, and has introduced us, not only to the first

English double and one of the first English practical jokers, but,

I believe, to our first victim of confused identity. The author is,

of course, following his Plautus, but what could be more ludicrous

than the scene in which Jenkin, uncertain and undesirous of his own

acquaintance, covers himself with ignominy in the effort to discard

it. We are led from interest to interest by means of anticipation,

surprise, and the clever repetition of comic crises. Characters well

drawn like Dame Coy and Alison, distinct like Jacke and Jenkin,

suggestive of complexity like Bongrace, were not of everyday occurrence

in the drama of 1553. The language, too, is idiomatic, and the wit,

though vulgar, unforced. But perhaps more significant for our purpose

than any other feature of the play is this, that in spite of its avowed

æsthetic intent (even more outspoken than that of _Roister Doister_),

it is a subtle attack upon the Roman Catholic Church. This interlude,

says the maker, citing the authority of the classics, is written for

the express purpose of provoking mirth, and for no other purpose: it is

"not worth an oyster shell Except percase it shall fortune to make men

laugh well"; but under the artifice we find a parable of the doctrinal

Jacke Jugeler of the day, whose mission it was to prove that "One man

may have two bodies and two faces, And that one man at one time may be

in two places." I do not think that the satirical character of the play

has heretofore been remarked, though the controversial allusions of the

epilogue are, of course, well known. The innocence of the prologue and

the profession of trifles fit for "little boys" are as shrewd an irony

as the dramatic attack upon transubstantiation is a huge burlesque.

The third of these fusion dramas is _The Historie of Jacob and Esau_.

Although its title may suggest the dignity of a miracle or the

didacticism of a moral play, it is the reduction of the miracle to

modern conditions and of the moral to concrete and actual characters.

This "newe, mery, and wittie comedie, or enterlude" was licensed in

1557, but its decidedly protestant character may indicate composition

before Mary's accession to the throne. Collier is quite right in

calling it one of the freshest and most effective productions of the

kind to which it belongs. But in classifying it with early religious

plays, because the subject happens to be scriptural, he is as far

astray as Professor Brandl who classes it with plays of the Prodigal

Son, because the nature of the subject suggests a faint resemblance

to that species. It is an attempt at comedy by way of fusion. The

plot is in general scriptural, but it introduces some half-dozen

invented characters. The production aims, like a moral interlude,

at inculcating the doctrine of predestination; but, like a classical

comedy, it is regularly divided, dramatically constructed, and equipped

with tried and telling comic devices. Proceeding with extreme care

for probability, with elaboration of motive, with due preparation of

interest, enhancement, and suspense, it attains a climax of unusual

excellence, considering the date of its composition. The discovery

and _denouement_ are naturally contrived; and where the author avails

himself of the staples of his trade, the asides, disguises, intrigues,

eavesdropping, and the rest, he does so with the ease of the accustomed

dramatist. The play, in fact, deserves as high esteem as _Roister

Doister_ and _Gammer Gurton_; in originality and regularity it is

their equal, in development of a vital conception their superior. The

language is idiomatic--of the age and soil; or dignified, when the mood

demands. It is also free from obscenity; but it lacks nothing in wit on

that account, nor the situations in humour. Viewed as a whole, it is a

simple and unaffected picture of English rural life--the scene with its

setting as well as its figures. And these are coloured from experience,

forerunners, indeed, of many in our better-known comedy: the young

squire given over to the chase, horses and dogs and the horn at break

of day (much to the discomfort of the slumbering environment),--the

careless elder born,--victim and butt of his unnatural mother and her

wily younger son; the doting father, duped; the clown; the pert and

pretty maid; the aged nurse. Consider, in addition, the more subtle

characteristics of the _Jacob and Esau_,--the family resemblances,

the racial policy with its ripe and ruddy upper layer of morals, the

romantic touch, the sometimes genuine pathos, the naïve domestic

revelations, the loves in low life, the unaffected charms of dialogue

and verse,--and one must acknowledge that this play, no matter what its

origin and name, is at least as indicative of the maturing of English

drama as either of the plays with which I have placed it in comparison.

Of these _Gammer Gurtons Nedle_ was the first to gather the threads of

farce, moral interlude, and classical school play into a well-sustained

comedy of rustic life. Mr. Henry Bradley has ingeniously shown that

in all probability it was a Christ's College play, written by William

Stevenson during his fellowship of 1559 to 1560. There may, indeed,

be reason for believing that it was composed as early as the author's

first fellowship, 1551-54.[77] In this play the unregulated seductions

of earlier days are brought under the curb of the classical manner

and form: the native element already evident in _Noah's Flood_ and

the _Shepherds' Plays_, the _Judicium_, the _Conversion of St. Paul_,

the _Johan_, and the _Pardoner_, and about this same time in the

_Contract betweene Wit and Wisdome_ (parts of which suggest forcibly

the manner of this same Stevenson); the rollicking humour of the Vice

turned Bedlem, the pithy and saline interchange of feminine amenities;

the Atellan, sometimes even Chaucerian, laughter,--not sensual but

animal; the delight in physical incongruity; the mediæval fondness

for the grotesque. If the situations are farcical, they at any rate

hold together; each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and

each act towards the _denouement_. The characters are both typical and

individual; and though the conception is of less significance than that

of _Roister Doister_, the execution is an advance because it smacks

less of the academic. _Gammer Gurton_ carries forward the comedy of

mirth, but hardly yet into the rounded comedy of life.

Another "excellent old play," called _Tom Tyler and His Wife_,[78]

deserves to be mentioned in this sequence because it combines

characteristics of the farce in a peculiar fashion with reminiscences

of the moral interlude. _Tom Tyler_ was written probably between 1550

and 1560, and is an admirable portrayal of matrimonial infelicities

in low life, the forerunner of a series of "shrew" plays, not of

the nature of the _Taming_, but of the _Tamer Tamed_. The temporary

revolt of the husband, "whose cake was dough," his fleeting triumph by

the ruse of the doughty Tom Taylor, and his lapse into irremediable

servitude, "for wedding and hanging is destinie," these alone would

make the farce worthy of honourable mention. But the dialogue and

songs are themselves of snap, verve, and wit not inferior to the best

of that day; and the coöperation of solemn allegorical figures, such

as Destinie and Patience, in the humorous programme of Desire the

Vice, side by side with the three lusty "shrowes," Typple, Sturdy, and

Strife, lends to the farce a mock-moral appearance which entitles it to

a place among these polytypic dramas historically unique. For it should

not be regarded as an example of the moral in transition from abstract

to concrete, but as a conscious and cleverly ironical presentation of

a comic episode from utterly unideal life, under the form, and by the

modes and machinery, of the pious allegorical drama.

For the printing of the next play in this series, the _Misogonus_,

heretofore accessible only in manuscript at Chatsworth, we are indebted

to Professor Brandl.[79] This interesting moral comedy was written

in 1560, probably by Thomas Richardes,[80] whose name followes the

prologue. Brandl points out certain resemblances to the _Acolastus_

of Gnapheus, printed 1534. The contrast of the good and wayward sons

might likewise be traced to the _Studentes_ of Stymmelius[81] (1549),

but the more evident sources are Terence, the biblical parable,

common experience, and dramatic imagination, Professor Brandl thinks

that the play is connected with _The Supposes_ or its source, but I

must confess that I cannot see the remotest relation. In Mr. Fleay's

opinion this is the earliest English comedy. I suppose because it not

only applies a classical treatment to certain elements of romantic

form,--the Italian scene and baronial life,--and of romantic content

and method such as the ideal friendship, the discovery and recognition,

but combines therewith a realistic portrayal of native character, and

various technical qualities vital to both the serious and comic kinds

of composition. If, however, the names of the principal characters

had been English, the relation to the moral interlude would at once

be evident. This is a Prodigal Son play of the humanist school, save

that it has supplemented the general characteristics of the Christian

Terence and of Plautus by episodes and minor characters from the native

farce. Although it is not superior in technique to _Roister_ or _Gammer

Gurton_, it is more distinctively polytypic than either. It is, also,

of broader ethical significance. But this dominant didactic intent

renders it less of a comedy than they, and much less than the _Jacob

and Esau_--which is as good a representative of the fusion of dramatic

kinds and qualities as the _Misogonus_, and a better specimen of

workmanship. The simpler characters of the _Misogonus_, Codrus, poore,

but "trwe and trusty"; the stammering Madge Mumbelcrust, who "coude

once a said our lordyes saw--saw--sawter by rote"; and her gossip "Tib,

who has tongue inough for both"; Alison, who knows "what a great thinge

an oth is"; and Sir John, the priest, who knows how to use one,--these,

their ways and colloquies, are of a piece with Stevenson's work and

Heywood's and the world that their work represents. The conditions and

conduct of the leading _dramatis personæ_ are, on the other hand, more

closely akin to the Plautine and Terentian, to the school of Udall

and the humanists. Cacurgus, the domestic parasite and fool, remotely

connected with the Vice, but actually a counterfeit-simple and wag,

is as good a Will Summer as the early comedy can boast. When Greene

made his Nano, Adam, and Slipper, he had in mind a generation of such

creatures. If one could eliminate the sermonizing, there would remain

a plot as satisfactory in unity, in situations, recognitions, crises,

and _denouement_ as any produced during the next twenty years. But, as

I have said above, the moral urgency of the play injures the art. Since

the Prodigal Son is reclaimed, we are, however, justified in ranking

the production among early attempts at English comedy.

_Godly Queen Hester_, published 1561,[82] is exactly described as a

"newe enterlude drawen out of the Holy Scripture." According to

Fleay, it is the latest "scriptural morality" extant to be acted on the

English stage.[83] But it is much more than a scriptural morality. Not

only by its fusion of biblical characters, like Assuerus and Hester,

with allegorical types, like Pride and the half-moral, half-native

Vice, does the play give evidence of its polytypic nature, but by its

atmosphere, which is charged with local and personal allusions and

ironical references to the economic abuses of the day. In nervous

energy of style and in forthright dramatic movement, the play is

an improvement upon its predecessors; and as a satirical drama of

political purpose, it should have had a numerous progeny. Strange to

say, however, this kind of scriptural satire has had no great success

in the field of English drama. Its bloom, as in Dryden's _Absalom

and Achitophel_, has been in the by-paths of poetry. Of a peculiar

historical importance is the character of Hardy-dardy. Mr. Fleay

regards him as a domestic fool, and remarks that this interlude and the

_Misogonus_ are the only two early plays in which the Vice is replaced

by such a personage. But neither of these statements is correct, for

Hardy-dardy and Cacurgus do not totally abandon the quality of Vice,

and various other plays yet to be mentioned have characters closely

resembling them. Hardy-dardy is, indeed, a professed jester dressed

in a fool's coat; in his assumption of stupidity and his proffer of

service to Aman, he resembles Slipper in Greene's _James the Fourth_;

and in his shrewd simplicity, repartee, and indirection he anticipates

some of Shakespeare's fools. But he still retains characteristics of

his ancestry. He stands, in conception, half-way between the minor

Vices of the play, Ambition, Adulation, and Pride, to whose jocosities

and deviltries he succeeds,--for he appears only when they have

departed,--and the waggish weathercocks of later interludes, Haphazard

and Conditions.

I wish I could have included among the reprints of the present volume

both of the plays next to be mentioned, but limitations of space and

other reasons have forbidden. When Puttenham said that for comedy and

interlude such doings as he had "sene of Maister Edwardes deserved

the hyest price," and Turberville, that "for poet's pen and passing

witte," that poet "could have no English Peere," I think that they

were not greatly exaggerating. Richard Edwardes' _Damon and Pithias_,

written before 1566, maybe as early as 1563-65, takes steps significant

in literary history. It is not only entirely free from allegorical

elements, and almost from didactic, but it is rich in qualities of

the fusion drama. The subject of a classical story is handled in a

genuinely romantic fashion, although no previous drama of romantic

friendship had existed in England. Comic and serious strains flow side

by side, occasionally mingling. A quick satire, dramatic and personal,

pervades the play. The names and scenes may be Syracusan, and types

from Latin comedy may walk the streets, but the life is of the higher

and lower classes of England; and the creatures of literary tradition

are elbowed and jostled by children of the soil. The farcical episodes

may be indelicate, but they have the virility of fact. The plot as a

whole is skilfully conducted; while it proceeds directly to the goal,

it encompasses a wider variety of ethical interests, dramatic motives,

and attractions, than that of any previous play. The relation to an

interlude of which we shall presently speak, _Like wil to Like_, is

beyond doubt. In both a crude psychological pairing and contrasting of

characters may be observed; but in the development of the characters,

_Damon and Pithias_ is decidedly superior. The author calls this "a

matter mixt with myrth and care ... a tragical comedie"; but while he

thus aims at a fusion of the ideal with the commonplace, he makes a

close approximation, always, to probability of incident and character,

and so observes the criterion which he himself enunciates:--

"In commedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch

All thynges to the quicke; and eke to frame each person so

That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know."

In its defects, such as the disregard of time and place, as in its

merits, the _Damon and Pithias_ is a commendable experiment in romantic

comedy--a contribution worthy of more attention than historians have

ordinarily accorded it. Undoubtedly Edwardes' "much admired play" of

_Palamon and Arcite_, which the queen witnessed in hall at Christ

Church, Oxford, 1566 (and laughed heartily thereat, and thanked "the

author for his pains"), was of the fashion and vogue of the drama which

we have discussed, though it had not the abiding influence.

If it were not for the fact that _The Supposes_ (acted 1566) is a

translation of Ariosto's play of the same title, I should be inclined

to say that it was the first English comedy in every way worthy of the

name. It certainly is, for many reasons, entitled to be called the

first comedy in the English tongue. It is written, not for children,

nor to educate, but for grown-ups and solely to delight. It is done

into English, not for the vulgar, but for the more advanced taste of

the translator's own Inn of Court; it has, therefore, qualities to

captivate those who are capable of appreciating high comedy. It is

composed, like its original, in straightforward, sparkling prose.

It has, also, the rarest features of the fusion drama: it combines

character and situation, each depending upon the other; it combines

wit of intellect with humour of heart and fact, intricate and

varied plot with motive and steady movement, comic but not farcical

incident and language with complications surprising, serious, and

only not hopelessly embarrassing. It conducts a romantic intrigue in

a realistic fashion through a world of actualities. With the blood

of the New Comedy, the Latin Comedy, the Renaissance in its veins,

it is far ahead of its English contemporaries, if not of its time.

Without historical apology or artistic concessions it would act well

to-day. Both whimsical and grave, its ironies are _pro bono publico_;

it is constructive as well as critical, imaginative as well as

actual. Indeed, when one compares Gascoigne's work with the original

and observes the just liberties that he has taken, the Englishing

of sentiment as well as of phrase, one is tempted to say, with Tom

Nashe, that in comedy, as in other fields, this writer first "beat a

path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since

his departure." He did not contrive the plot; but no dramatist before

him had selected for his audience, translated, and adapted a play so

amusing and varied in interest, so graceful, simple, and idiomatic

in its style. It was said by R. T., in 1615, that Gascoigne was one

of those who first "brake the ice for our quainter poets who now

write, that they may more safely swim through the main ocean of sweet

poesy"--a remark which would lose much of its force if restricted to

the poet's achievements in satire alone; in the drama of the humanists

he excelled his contemporaries, and in the romantic comedy of intrigue

he anticipated those who, like Greene and Shakespeare,[84] adapted the

Italian plot to English manners and the English taste. Nor are these

the only claims of Gascoigne to consideration: _The Supposes_, as

Professor Herford has justly remarked, is the most Jonsonian of English

comedies before Jonson.

=12. Survivals of the Moral Interlude=

Though we must refrain from description, we cannot forbear mention

of a few survivals of the moral interlude, which, though themselves

rudimentary, were not without esteem even in an age when the drama, by

combination and adaptation of its possibilities, was producing other

results infinitely superior to the older strain. These functionless

survivals of the moral were the following, all controversial: _Newe

Custome_, an anti-papist play, perhaps written as early as 1550-53;

_Albyon Knight_, a political fragment acted between 1560 and 1565;

_Kyng Daryus_, a peculiarly insipid disputation, evidently anti-papist,

printed in 1565; and _The Conflict of Conscience_, a doctrinal drama

by Nathaniel Woodes, Minister in Norwich, which presents a mixture of

individual and even historical characters with abstractions, stands

midway between the allegorical interlude and the drama of concrete

experience, displays a commendable realism in spots, and is a more

virile production than the others of this group. It was not published

till 1581, but was probably written soon after 1563.

Of the decadent stock of morals and interludes, there were, however,

some specimens between the years 1553 and 1578 that exhibited an

advance in quality, if not in kind. Three of these, _The Longer thou

Livest_, _All for Money_, and _Tide Taryeth no Man_, Mr. Fleay[85]

lumps together as simple instances of the survival of the older

'morality' after the introduction of tragedy and comedy on the models

of Seneca and Plautus, and makes the further statement that none of

them teaches us anything as to the historical development of the drama

in England. With the utmost respect for the knowledge of this most

helpful historian, I must say that, as a matter of judgment, none of

these dramas, least of all, _Longer thou Livest_, should be classed

with the moral plays of mere survival. While the authors of these and

similar specimens did not produce a new kind, they did more than repeat

the old. They revived and enriched the moral interlude by infusion of

new strains, and so produced, by culture, a most interesting group of

what may be called variations of the moral. To this class of morals

belong also the _Triall of Treasure_, _Like wil to Like_, and the

_Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene_. It must be said also that a

few moral tragedies of the period, like R. B.'s _Apius and Virginia_

(about 1563, pr. 1575), and Preston's _King Cambises_ (S. R. 1569-70),

have some claim to belong to this group, and that if there were space

they should receive attention for their vital dramatic quality and

their development of the character of the Vice. The Hap-hazard of

the former, far from being, as Dr. Ward has said, "redundant to the

action," suggests the "conspiracies" which Apius adopts, and is the

heart of rascality and fun; he is consequently a Vice of the old type;

but he is also the representative (in accordance with his name and

express profession) of the caprice of the individual and the irony

of fortune. He is the Vice, efficient for evil, but in process of

evolution into the inclination or humour of a somewhat later period of

dramatic history: the inclination not immoral but unmoral, the artistic

impersonation of comic extravagance, in accordance with which Every

Man is in his Vice, and every Vice is but a Humour. The Ambidexter

of the latter tragedy plays "with both hands finely" in the main

action, and at the same time serves to provoke the jocosity of those

admirably concrete ruffians, Huf, Ruf, and Snuf, and of the clown of

the play. The _Horestes_, written by John Pikerynge in 1567, must,

although a tragedy, also be mentioned here.[86] The Vice under his

dual designation of Corage and Revenge is of the weathervane variety;

and in realistic and humorous qualities the play closely resembles the

preceding two. They were a noble but futile effort to bottle the juices

of tragedy, classical-historical at that, in the leathers of moral

interlude.

=13. The Movement towards Romantic Comedy=

We may now proceed with the main current of comedy. Between 1570 and

1590 the best plays are coloured by a distinctively romantic element;

and this is noticeable, not only in the productions of the greater

authors, Lyly, Peele, Greene, and the like, elsewhere discussed in

this volume, but in those of minor writers too frequently ignored.

As I have already said, the romantic in life appears to spring from

a desire to assert one's independence and realize the possibilities

of the resulting freedom. "Our pent wills fret And would the world

subdue." But since the conditions of life are largely opposed to the

complete fulfilment of our desires, it is the privilege and function of

romance, and of romantic comedy according to its kind, to idealize the

stubborn facts--the "limits we did not set" in favour of our ecstatic

but still human urgency. This privilege the comedy of romance exercises

sometimes with an eye to nature and probability, and sometimes with

some respect for imaginative possibility, but quite frequently with

no other guide than mere caprice. The subjects of such comedy may

be briefly summarized as passion, heroism, and wonder. Of these the

first is manifest in examples of ideal friendship, its devotion and

self-sacrifice; and a play of such nature we have already considered in

the _Damon and Pithias_. It also yields the furnishings of love, the

resulting obstacles, and the issue; and a play of this kind we have

considered in _The Supposes_, which is a domestic comedy of intrigue.

Of heroism the possibilities are suggested by the words travel,

adventure, chivalry, war, conquest; those of wonder are as various

as the chances of birth, wealth and fortune, pomp and power, myth

and fable: they are fostered by that which is remote, preternatural,

supernatural.

To the romance of wonder, saints' plays, legends, and biblical stories

had purveyed from early times. From 1570 on the narrative of chivalry

and adventure, of which shadowy lineaments had already appeared in one

or two miracle plays and in the interludes of Wit and Science, began to

gather to itself kindred elements of romantic interest, and to occupy

the stage with such plays as _Common Conditions_, written perhaps

between 1572 and 1576, and _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_, written

perhaps as early,--dramas of love, fable, and adventure, absolutely

free from didactic purpose. At the same time still another variety of

romantic comedy, unhampered by the trammels of instructive intent, but

dealing essentially in domestic intrigue, kept alive the method of _The

Supposes_. This variety was represented by _The Bugbears_, between 1561

and 1584, and _The Two Italian Gentlemen_ (S. R. 1584), which, based

upon Italian models, availed themselves on the one hand of a burlesque

parody of the magical, and on the other of genuine English mirth. The

latter indeed added something of the 'humours' element soon to be

exploited by Porter, Chapman, and Jonson. Beside these dramas, there

sprang into notice a certain half-moral, half-romantic kind of play

which, availing itself of the mould of the interlude, fused therein

the materials of the chivalrous, the magical, and the passionate, and

produced certain anomalous comedies of great popularity between the

year 1580 and the end of the century. The best of these "pleasant and

stately morals" are: _The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune_, _The

Three Ladies of London_, _The Three Lordes and Three Ladies of London_.

While Collier thinks that, in point of positive dramatic interest, the

_Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune_ requires but brief notice, Dr.

Ward holds that the beginnings of romantic comedy were foreshadowed

by the play.[87] It is, in fact, both dramatically and historically,

one of the most important productions of its date. It was printed in

1589, but played, perhaps, as early as 1582. Mr. Fleay has assigned it

to Kyd, but I do not see sufficient reason for the attribution; if we

must find an author for it, Robert Wilson's claims might be urged. The

_Rare Triumphs_ affords an excellent instance of the fusion of moral

and romance. In the Induction, Love and Fortune dispute concerning

their respective influence in the affairs of mankind. By mutual

agreement the _debat_ seeks its solution in a practical demonstration

of the issues involved. And so we find our intellectual as well as

emotional interest enlisted in the chances of an Italian story of

love, adventure, and magic. Within a moral interlude of classical

and mythological origin we discover a romantic comedy. The influence

of the supernatural not merely envelops, but permeates the whole;

the Acts present the destinies of the mortals of the inner play, the

inter-acts the continued intervention of the immortals of the outer.

The spectacular effect is, moreover, heightened by the introduction

of dumb shows, after the fashion of the masque. In dramatic interest

proper few romantic fables of 1582 can compare with the inner story:

the love of Hermione for Fidelia, the duel between Hermione and

Fidelia's brother, the exile of the lover and his retirement to the

cave of his unknown father, the hermit Bomelio; Bomelio's attempt to

right matters by magic, the destruction of his necromantic books, his

madness, his recovery, and the resolution of difficulties through the

instrumentality of the heroine. Such a fable is anything but silly

and meagre, as Collier would have it, especially when we consider its

conjunction with the humorous and vivid. In the outer play the clown

is Vulcan, at whose call Jupiter mediates, "like an honest man in the

parish," between the disputatious goddesses. In the inner play Penulo

the parasite and Lentulo the clown, though neither of them a Vice,

supply the comic delectations of the rôle. The disguise of Bomelio as

physician, his dialect, his misfortune and raving, are excellently

contrived and conducted. In at least half a dozen particulars one may

detect æsthetic possibilities later to be matured in more than one

Shakespearian play: foreshadowings of plot and principal actors, as in

_The Tempest_; foreshadowings of minor characters like Dr. Caius, or

like the Francis of _1 Henry IV_. The play is, in brief, refreshing;

the humour, substantial and English; the language, conversational,

dramatic, sometimes in prose and then excellent. The versification,

however, is of that stiffer quality which warrants Mr. Fleay's

conjecture of 1582, or thereabout, as the date of composition.

The attempt to enliven the "old moral" by an infusion of passion

and intrigue, and to parade it in the trappings of romance, across

the background of contemporary English life and manners, is what

distinguishes Robert Wilson's "right excellent and famous Comœdy called

the _Three Ladies of London_," printed 1584, and its sequel, _The

Pleasant and Stately Morall of the Three Lordes and Three Ladies of

London_, registered in 1588. Of these plays, the latter trades in pomp

and chivalry; the earlier in something like the motives of romantic

interest. "The acuteness and political subtlety evinced in several

of the scenes of the _Three Ladies_" have been justly commended by

Collier, who points with careful attention also to "the severity of

the author's satirical touch, his amusing illustrations of manners,

his exposure of the tricks of foreign merchants, and the humour and

drollery which he has thrown into his principal comic personage." This

is Simplicity, the fool or clown, droll, indifferent, honest, and by

no means so simple as he appears: a descendant of the historical Will

Summer, a forerunner of the Dogberrys and Malaprops, and the elder

brother of an Honesty of another play, _A Knack to Know a Knave_,

in which the same author probably had a hand. Standing over against

three belated specimens of the Vice, Simplicity unites the shrewdness,

manners, and humour of that personage--but in superior quality--with

the prudence, the penetration, and the conception of honour peculiar to

the professional jester. He also plays a vital part in the main action,

and is worthy to be regarded as one of the best clowns, if not the

best, in the history of the moral interlude. His forthright utterances

in the _Three Ladies_ and his easy and witty prose in the sequel mark

him for a model likely to have influenced the younger dramatists of

the day. The minor plot-interest of the honest Jew, Gerontus, the

rascally Christian, Mercatore, and the Judge, is significant, not only

as the reverse of the conception dramatized in the _Jew of Malta_ and

the _Merchant of Venice_, but as, with one exception, the earliest

elaboration of the motif that was to become prominent in the drama

of the next few years. Qualities romantic and real invest the career

of the three Ladies; and the characterization of the numerous minor

personages is both subtle and suitable to their different classes and

interests.

Although the _Three Lordes and Ladies_, one of the earliest sequels in

the history of English drama, is "more of a moral" than its predecessor

and makes no improvement in plot-structure, it is of importance

fully equal. For what it lacks in passion and romance is more than

counterbalanced by technical qualities--the blank verse, the fluent

prose, the wit of Simplicity and the pages, the scenic display, the

variety of incidents, and the portrayal of manners. If we consider

the definite transition from abstractions to social and individual

traits of character in this play and the preceding,--the multi-fold

impersonation of worldly wisdom, fraud, and shoddy, one might say the

resolution of the rôle of Vice into its component specialties; the

corresponding offset of all these by ensamples of virtuous living, but

still human; and the attendant _troupe_ of more obvious 'humours,'

Simplicity and the pages, Painful Penury, Diligence, and the rest,--it

will be evident that these plays of Robert Wilson are the merging

of moral interlude in romantic and social comedy. On this account I

cannot agree with Dr. Ward,[88] who says that in construction and

conception they mark no advance whatever upon the older moralities. I

think they mark a significant advance. In them the moral has arrived at

a consciousness of the demands of art; and, attempting to fulfil its

possibilities, it acquires body, spirit, and _bouquet_, even though,

in the moment of fermentation, it bursts the bottle. Still we must

remember that we have now reached a date, 1588-90, by which much of

the best work of Lyly, Marlowe, Peele, and Greene had already been

produced, and we must, therefore, not attribute to Wilson an importance

greater than that of an industrious and inventive contemporary,

hospitable to ideas, but essentially conservative in practice. He is at

once "father of interludes," as interludes then were regarded, and an

intermediary between the interlude of moral abstractions and the comedy

of humours. He appears, also, to have played so lively a part in the

dramatic history of his day that Mr. Fleay is justified in calling this

period by his name; and, therefore, a few further words concerning him

and other plays which he seems to have written might well be said here,

but we must reserve them for another occasion.

=14. Conclusion=

With but one or two exceptions the plays which we have so far passed

in review fail in some respect or other of the plot that makes a

comedy. A plot that is argumentative, that is a ratiocination or

_exemplum_ conducted by abstractions, is not sufficient to constitute

comedy, though it may contribute to its development a unity of

interest, a spiritual sequence; nor are sporadic situations and

incidents sufficient, though humorously conceived and executed; nor

glimpses of types, characters or manners, nor hints of passion, nor

satiric speeches and dialogues, though artistically dramatized, true,

appropriate, and witty. None of these constitutes comedy. Comedy

demands action vitalized by a plot that is capable of revealing the

social significance of the individual: an action of sufficient scope

and reality to display the spirit of society in individual types and

manners, or in character and sentiment; a plot sufficiently urgent to

interest us, not only in the phenomena, in the concomitants, of every

deed, but in its motive and inherent passion. The comedy of external

life may present, by means of typical individuals and conventional

manners, a reflex of that which is actual, or a criticism of it;

and such a play will be realistic or satirical. The comedy of the

inner life, on the other hand, since it reveals the characteristics

of humanity in the heat and moment of passion, may present a vision

of the ideal made concrete; it is therefore at once interpretative,

constructive, and romantic. These two kinds of comedy are alike in that

they display the triumph of freedom when regulated by common sense, the

adjustment of the individual to society. But as they vary in function

and result, so these kinds of comedy differ in the quality of action

which each may present. The play of convention and manners can use

only the externals of action, actions that neither strike deep nor

spring from the depths, for such a play aims to reproduce appearances

or merely to re-create them--to criticise and correct rather than

construct. The play of character and passion, not the so-called

realistic, but idealistic, selects for presentation actions whose

springs are in the inner life; and that is because it would present men

and women as they should be,--individuals widening the social, pressing

toward the ideal, not by overstepping that which is conventional, but

by informing it with new meaning and pushing back its limits. Comedy,

therefore, is in the plot, and the plot must proceed from the wisdom

essential to a comic view of life: acceptance of the social environment

as it appears to be, because one believes in society as it should be.

The dramatist, his plot and his characters, are the exponents of common

sense and freedom, of the light of life as it is with the sweetness

of life as it may be. Common sense, however, may become prosaic, or

liberty licentious; and it is in preventing such extremes that wit

and humour perform their function. Neither of these can alone make a

comedy, but one of them may sometimes save it. Both should certainly

characterize it. But for the former, the drama of appearances might be

caricature, abuse, horse-play, or homily; but for the latter, romantic

comedy would be bathos. No amount of wit, however, could save a play

that did not possess a significant sequence of material and event.

Though the booths of Bartholomew Fair agitate the diaphragm, they do

not constitute comedy. Without plot the lunges of wit lack point; and

as for the plotless play of passion, it ends in Bedlam, whence all the

humour in the world cannot redeem it.

It was a step forward when allegory made way for concrete characters

and manners, and the motives born of social intercourse; a further step

when the dramatist ceased instructing and sought to amuse. But the

final step implied the still rarer ability to create something integral

and critical in one, something that should act what life means, and

so unconsciously demonstrate that it is purposive, and more hopeful

and amusing than we thought. Naturally enough, our earlier comic

plots, when they were escaping from the symbolic, lacked sometimes

in significance, and sometimes in sequence. The fables of _Roister

Doister_ and _Gammer Gurton_ mark an advance in technical construction;

but they do not escape the farcical, for their subjects are trivial.

There were likewise many experiments to be made in the materials of

intrigue and passion before _Damon and Pithias_ and _The Supposes_

could fulfil, even in part, the requirements of significant romance.

And when, at last, the play with a plot had come to its own, it was

long before it attained wisdom to suffuse the appearances of life with

their illuminating characteristic, and imagination to colour the course

of characteristic events.