[989] "To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities," prefixed to
Greene's _Menaphon_, a well-known passage. Little, if anything, can
be made of Meres when (Haslewood, II., 153) he couples Peele now with
Ariosto, now, as tragical poet, with Apollodorus Tarsensis. He does
not name Peele among the writers of comedy. Later, in _Have with You
to Saffron Walden_ (Grosart, III. 196), Nashe, with no mention of
Peele, concedes to Greene mastery, above all the craft, in "plotting of
plaies." This dramatic art of words, by the way, must not be confused
with Euphuistic feats. Greene, Nashe, even Harvey, turned with Sidney
against mere "playing with words and idle similies," and Peele is
anything but a follower of Guevara.
[990] _Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele, Gentleman, sometimes
a Student in Oxford Wherein is shewed the course of his life, how he
lived: a man very well knowne in the Citie of London and elsewhere...._
There was an edition in 1607, hardly ten years after Peele's death.
[991] _The Looking Glasse for London and England_ has some boisterous
comedy, but no humour. In _George-a-Greene_, good play that it is, the
ballad material is taken quite seriously. In _Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay_ there is exquisite idyllic work, a dash of passable, though
quite traditional, comedy, but no trace of the peculiar element,
presently to be described as the dominant note of treatment in _The Old
Wives' Tale_.
[992] _Fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 109 f. So in his _Geburt der
Tragödie_, p. 89, speaking of the prologue as used by Euripides,
which told in advance the action of the play, Nietzsche asserts that
the Athenians were less interested in the plot than in the pathos of
situations and the rhetoric of the players.
[993] "The romantic play, the English Farsa, may be called in a great
measure his discovery." _Shakespeare's Predecessors_, p. 580.
[994] "A matter in which he certainly anticipated Marlowe," _Biog.
Chron._ II. 151.
[995] Ed. Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 52.
[996] Peele is not of the extreme group whose feats in diction remind
one of what Dr. Johnson said about the metaphysical poets, that "their
wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before."
[997] Gosson, in a well-known passage, puts brave language first among
dramatic attractions: "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with
metaphors, allegories...."
[998] Lämmerhirt counts nearly 84 per cent of the verses in the
_Arraignment of Paris_ as rhymed; _David and Bethsabe_ has less than 7
per cent, and _The Battle of Alcazar_ barely 3 per cent.
[999] The diction of _The Old Wives' Tale_ differs from Lyly's comic
prose much as Nashe's style in his pamphlets differs from the periods
of Lyly's _Euphues_.
[1000] Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Roxburgh Library, 1869, p. 145.
[1001] See the song in _Appius_, "Hope so and hap so."--In _Misogonus_,
the Vice appears as a domestic fool.
[1002] Compare the French and broken English in _Three Lords and Three
Ladies of London_, the dialect of Boban the Scot in Greene's _James
IV._, and the inevitable Welshman.
[1003] _Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel_, Wien and Leipzig, 1896.
[1004] "A new _motiv_," says Schwab. Fleay (work quoted, I. 266) thinks
_The Old Wives' Tale_ fairly parodies the induction in _James IV._
[1005] See a similar bit of horse-play in _Wily Beguiled_.
[1006] The delicate irony of later triflings with romance--as in
Wieland's _Oberon_--is, of course, quite out of the question.
[1007] See _English Fairy Tales_, J. Jacobs, edition of 1898, pp. 243,
245. A monograph could be written on the folk-lore of this play, where,
it is to be conjectured, Peele has followed no single tale, but has
combined parts of separate stories, and flung in bits of rhyme and
fragments of superstition, as fancy bade him.
[1008] _English Fairy Tales_, p. 104. This theme of the _Thankful
Dead_ is extremely common. It is found in an old English romance, _Sir
Amadace_, and has been treated by Max Hippe, in Herrig's _Archiv_, Vol.
LXXXI, p. 141.
[1009] Jacobs, _English Fairy Tales_, Notes, p. 252. See also Frazer's
_Golden Bough_.
[1010] _Annals of Stage_, etc., III. 197.
[1011] _Eng. Dram. Lit._ I. 372.
[1012] _Shakespeare's Predecessors_, p. 563 ff. Mr. Jacobs thinks that
both poets went to folk-lore for their materials. _Childe Rowland_ is
the probable source.
[1013] It is entered on the Stationers' Registers to Raphe Hancock,
April 16, 1595, _the owlde wifes tale_. Cf. "an olde wives tale,"
Greene, _Groatsw._ (Grosart XII. 119).--Gen. Ed.
[1014] _G. P. Untersuchungen_, etc., Rostock, 1862, pp. 62 ff.
[1015] _Biogr. Mem. of the late Jos. Warton, DD._, London, 1806, p. 398.
[1016] _Metrische Untersuchungen zu George Peele_, in the _Archiv fur
das Studium d. neueren Spracben_, etc. (1890), LXXXV. 279.
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