poet (with less success than in Latin), and one of the most
accomplished men of his time, and also one of the best known in
literary history, is omitted in the Biographie Universelle. Such
negligences must occur in a long work; but the editors are rather
too severe on a preceding collection of biography, the Dictionnaire
Historique of Chaudon and Delandine, for similar faults. Lives will
be found in this much shorter publication which have been
overlooked in their own.
[1238] The following lines are not an unfair specimen of Bonifonius:--
Nympha bellula, nympha mollicella,
Cujus in roseis latent labellis
Meæ deliciæ, meæ salutes, &c.
* * * * *
Salvete aureolæ meæ puellæ
Crines aureolique crispulique,
Salvete et mihi vos puellæ ocelli,
Ocelli improbuli protervulique;
Salvete et veneris pares papillis
Papillæ teretesque turgidæque;
Salvete æmula purpuræ labella;
Tota denique Pancharilla salve.
* * * * *
Nunc te possideo, alma Pancharilla,
Turturilla mea et columbililla.
Bonifonius has been thought worthy of several editions, and has met
with more favourable judges than myself.
|Belgic Poets.|
96. The Deliciæ Poetarum Belgarum appeared to me, on rather a cursory
inspection, inferior to the French. Secundus outshines his successors.
Those of the younger Dousa, whose premature death was lamented by all
the learned, struck me as next in merit. Dominic Baudius is harmonious
and elegant, but with little originality or vigour. These poets are
loose and negligent in versification, ending too often a pentameter with
a polysyllable, and with feeble effect; they have also little idea of
several other common rules of Latin composition.
|Scots poets; Buchanan.|
97. The Scots, in consequence of receiving, very frequently, a
continental education, cultivated Latin poetry with ardour. It was the
favourite amusement of Andrew Melville, who is sometimes a mere
scribbler, at others tolerably classical and spirited. His poem on the
Creation, in Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum, is very respectable. One by
Hercules Rollock, on the marriage of Anne of Denmark, is better, and
equal, a few names withdrawn, to any of the contemporaneous poetry of
France. The Epistolæ Heroidum of Alexander Bodius are also good. But the
most distinguished among the Latin poets of Europe in this age was
George Buchanan, of whom Joseph Scaliger and several other critics have
spoken in such unqualified terms, that they seem to place him even above
the Italians at the beginning of the sixteenth century.[1239] If such
were their meaning, I should crave the liberty of hesitating.
The best poem of Buchanan, in my judgment, is that on the Sphere, than
which few philosophical subjects could afford better opportunities for
ornamental digression. He is not, I think, in hexameters inferior to
Vida, and certainly far superior to Palearius. In this poem Buchanan
descants on the absurdity of the Pythagorean system which supposes the
motion of the earth. Many good passages occur in his elegies, though I
cannot reckon him equal in this metre to several of the Italians. His
celebrated translation of the Psalms I must also presume to think
over-praised;[1240] it is difficult perhaps to find one, except the
137th, with which he has taken particular pains, that can be called
truly elegant or classical Latin poetry. Buchanan is now and then
incorrect in the quantity of syllables, as indeed is common with his
contemporaries.
[1239] Buchananus unus est in tota Europa omnes post se relinquens
in Latina poesi. Scaligerana Prima.
Henry Stephens, says Maittaire, was the first who placed Buchanan
at the head of all the poets of his age, and all France, Italy, and
Germany, have since subscribed to the same opinion, and conferred
that title upon him. Vitæ Stephanorum, ii. 258. I must confess that
Sainte Marthe appears to me not inferior to Buchanan. The latter is
very unequal: if we frequently meet with a few lines of great
elegance, they are compensated by others of a different
description.
[1240] Baillet thinks it impossible that those who wish for what is
solid as well as what is agreeable in poetry, can prefer any other
Latin verse of Buchanan to his Psalms. Jugemens des Savans, n.
1328. But Baillet and several others exclude much poetry of
Buchanan on account of its reflecting on popery. Baillet and Blount
produce abundant testimonies to the excellence of Buchanan’s
verses. Le Clerc calls his translation of the Psalms incomparable,
Bibl. Choisie, viii. 127, and prefers it much to that by Beza,
which I am not prepared to question. He extols also all his other
poetry, except his tragedies and the poem of the Sphere, which I
have praised above the rest. So different are the humours of
critics! But as I have fairly quoted those who do not quite agree
with myself, and by both number and reputation ought to weigh more
with the reader, he has no right to complain that I mislead his
taste.
98. England was far from strong, since she is not to claim Buchanan, in
the Latin poetry of this age. A poem in ten books, De Republica
Instauranda, by Sir Thomas Chaloner, published in 1579, has not received
so much attention as it deserves, though the author is more judicious
than imaginative, and does not preserve a very good rhythm. It may be
compared with the Zodiacus Vitæ of Palingenius, rather than any other
Latin poem I recollect, to which, however, it is certainly inferior.
Some lines relating to the English constitution, which, though the title
leads us to expect more, forms only the subject of the last book, the
rest relating chiefly to private life, will serve as a specimen of
Chaloner’s powers,[1241] and also display the principles of our
government as an experienced statesman understood them. The Anglorum
Prœlia, by Ockland, which was directed by an order of the Privy
Council to be read exclusively in schools, is an hexameter poem,
versified from the chronicles, in a tame strain, not exceedingly bad,
but still farther from good. I recollect no other Latin verse of the
queen’s reign worthy of notice.
[1241]
Nempe tribus simul ordinibus jus esse sacratas
Condendi leges patrio pro more vetustas
Longo usu sic docta tulit, modus iste rogandi
Haud secus ac basis hanc nostram sic constituit rem,
Ut si inconsultis reliquis pars ulla superbo
Imperio quicquam statuat, seu tollat, ad omnes
Quod spectat, posthac quo nomine læsa vocetur
Publica res nobis, nihil amplius ipse laboro.
* * * * *
Plebs primum reges statuit; jus hoc quoque nostrûm est
Cunctorum, ut regi faveant popularia vota;
(Si quid id est, quod plebs respondet rite rogata)
Nam neque ab invitis potuit vis unica multis
Extorquere datos concordi munere fasces;
Quin populus reges in publica commoda quondam
Egregios certa sub conditione paravit,
Non reges populum; namque his antiquior ille est.
* * * * *
Nec cupiens nova jura ferat, seu condita tollat,
Non prius ordinibus regni de more vocatis,
Ut procerum populique rato stent ordine vota,
Omnibus et positum sciscat conjuncta voluntas.
De Rep. Inst. l. 10.
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.
_Italian Tragedy and Comedy--Pastoral Drama--Spanish Drama--Lope De
Vega--French Dramatists--Early English Drama--Second Æra; of Marlowe
and his Contemporaries--Shakspeare--Character of several of his Plays
written within this Period._
|Italian tragedy.|
1. Many Italian tragedies are extant, belonging to these fifty years,
though not very generally known, nor can I speak of them except through
Ginguéné and Walker, the latter of whom has given a few extracts. The
Marianna and Didone of Lodovico Dolce, the Œdipus of Anguillara, the
Merope of Torelli, the Semiramis of Manfredi, are necessarily
bounded, in the conduct of their fable, by what was received as truth.
But others, as Cinthio had done, preferred to invent their story, in
deviation from the practice of antiquity. The Hadriana of Groto, the
Acripanda of Decio da Orto, and the Torrismond of Tasso are of this
kind. In all these we find considerable beauties of language, a florid
and poetic tone, but declamatory and not well adapted to the rapidity of
action, in which we seem to perceive the germ of that change from common
speech to recitative, which, fixing the attention of the hearer on the
person of the actor rather than on his relation to the scene, destroyed
in great measure the character of dramatic representation. The Italian
tragedies are deeply imbued with horror; murder and cruelty, with all
attending circumstances of disgust, and every pollution of crime,
besides a profuse employment of spectral agency, seem the chief weapons
of the poet’s armoury to subdue the spectator. Even the gentleness of
Tasso could not resist the contagion in his Torrismond. These tragedies
still retain the chorus at the termination of every act. Of the Italian
comedies little can be added to what has been said before; no comic
writer of this period is comparable in reputation to Machiavel, Ariosto,
or even Aretin.[1242] They are rather less licentious; and in fact, the
profligacy of Italian manners began, in consequence probably of a better
example in the prelates of the church, to put on some regard for
exterior decency in the latter part of the century.
[1242] Ginguéné, vol. vi.
|Pastoral drama.|
2. These regular plays, though possibly deserving of more attention than
they have obtained, are by no means the most important portion of the
dramatic literature of Italy in this age. A very different style of
composition has, through two distinguished poets, contributed to spread
the fame of Italian poetry, and the language itself, through Europe. The
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were abundantly productive of pastoral
verse; a style pleasing to those who are not severe in admitting its
conventional fictions. The pastoral dialogue had not much difficulty in
expanding to the pastoral drama. In the Sicilian gossips of Theocritus,
and in some other ancient eclogues, new interlocutors supervene, which
is the first germ of a regular action. Pastorals of this kind had been
written, and possibly represented, in Spain, such as the Mingo Rebulgo,
in the middle of the fifteenth century.[1243] Ginguéné has traced the
progress of similar representations, becoming more and more dramatic, in
Italy.[1244] But it is admitted that the honour of giving the first
example of a true pastoral fable to the theatre was due to Agostino
Beccari of Ferrara. This piece, named Il Sagrifizio, was acted at that
court in 1554. Its priority in a line which was to become famous appears
to be its chief merit. In this, as in earlier and more simple attempts
at pastoral dialogue, the choruses were set to music.[1245]
[1243] Bouterwek’s Spanish Literature, i. 129.
[1244] vi. 327 et post.
[1245] Id. vi. 332.
|Aminta of Tasso.|
3. This pleasing, though rather effeminate, species of poetry was
carried, more than twenty years afterwards, one or two unimportant
imitations of Beccari having intervened, to a point of excellence, which
perhaps it has never surpassed, in the Aminta of Tasso. Its admirable
author was then living at the court of Ferrara, yielding up his heart to
those seductive illusions of finding happiness in the favour of the
great, and even in ambitious and ill-assorted love, which his sounder
judgment already saw through, the Aminta bearing witness to both states
of mind. In the character of Tirsi he has drawn himself, and seems once
(though with the proud consciousness of genius), to hint at that
eccentric melancholy, which soon increased so fatally for his peace.
Ne già cose scrivea degne di riso,
Se ben cose facea degne di riso.
The language of all the interlocutors in the Aminta is alike, nor is the
satyr less elegant or recondite than the learned shepherds. It is in
general too diffuse and florid, too uniform and elaborate, for passion;
especially if considered dramatically, in reference to the story and the
speakers. But it is to be read as what it is, a beautiful poem; the
delicacy and gracefulness of many passages rendering them exponents of
the hearer’s or reader’s feelings, though they may not convey much
sympathy with the proper subject. The death of Aminta, however, falsely
reported to Sylvia, leads to a truly pathetic scene. It is to be
observed that Tasso was more formed by classical poetry, and
more frequently an imitator of it, than any earlier Italian. The
beauties of the Aminta are in great measure due to Theocritus, Virgil,
Ovid, Anacreon, and Moschus.
|Pastor Fido of Guarini.|
4. The success of Tasso’s Aminta produced the Pastor Fido of Guarini,
himself long in the service of the duke of Ferrara, where he had become
acquainted with Tasso; though in consequence of some dissatisfaction at
that court, he sought the patronage of the duke of Savoy. The Pastor
Fido was first represented at Turin in 1585, but seems not to have been
printed for some years afterwards. It was received with general
applause; but the obvious resemblance to Tasso’s pastoral drama could
not fail to excite a contention between their respective advocates,
which long survived the mortal life of the two poets. Tasso, it has been
said, on reading the Pastor Fido, was content to observe that, if his
rival had not read the Aminta, he would not have excelled it. If his
modesty induced him to say no more than this, very few would be induced
to dispute his claim; the characters, the sentiments are evidently
imitated; and in one celebrated instance a whole chorus is parodied with
the preservation of every rhyme.[1246] But it is far more questionable
whether the palm of superior merit, independent of originality, should
be awarded to the later poet. More elegance and purity of taste belong
to the Aminta, more animation and variety to the Pastor Fido. The
advantage in point of morality, which some have ascribed to Tasso, is
not very perceptible; Guarini may transgress rather more in some
passages, but the tone of the Aminta, in strange opposition to the pure
and pious life of its author, breathes nothing but the avowed laxity of
an Italian court. The Pastor Fido may be considered, in a much greater
degree than the Aminta, a prototype of the Italian opera; not that it
was spoken in recitative; but the short and rapid expressions of
passion, the broken dialogue, the frequent changes of personages and
incidents, keep the effect of representation and of musical
accompaniment continually before the reader’s imagination. Any one who
glances over a few scenes of the Pastor Fido will, I think, perceive
that it is the very style which Metastasio, and inferior coadjutors of
musical expression, have rendered familiar to our ears.
[1246] This is that beginning, O bella età dell’oro.
|Italian opera.|
5. The great invention, which though chiefly connected with the history
of music and of society, was by no means without influence upon
literature, the melodrame, usually called the Italian opera, belongs to
the very last years of this century. Italy, long conspicuous for such
musical science and skill as the Middle Ages possessed, had fallen, in
the first part of the sixteenth century, very short of some other
countries, and especially of the Netherlands, from which the courts of
Europe, and even of the Italian princes, borrowed their performers and
their instructors. A revolution in church music, which had become
particularly dry and pedantic, was brought about by the genius of
Palestrina about 1560; and the art, in all its departments, was
cultivated with an increased zeal for all the rest of the century.[1247]
In the splendour that environed the houses of Medici and Este, in the
pageants they loved to exhibit, music, carried to a higher perfection by
foreign artists, and by the natives that now came forward to emulate
them, became of indispensable importance; it had already been adapted to
dramatic representation in choruses; interludes and pieces written for
scenic display were now given with a perpetual accompaniment, partly to
the songs, partly to the dance and pantomime which intervened between
them.[1248] Finally, Ottavio Rinuccini, a poet of considerable genius,
but who is said to have known little of musical science, by meditating
on what is found in ancient writers on the accompaniment to their
dramatic dialogue, struck out the idea of recitative. This he first
tried in the pastoral of Dafne, represented privately in 1594; and its
success led him to the composition of what he entitled a tragedy for
music, on the story of Eurydice. This was represented at the festival on
the marriage of Mary of Medicis in 1600. “The most astonishing effects,”
says Ginguéné, “that the theatrical music of the greatest masters has
produced, in the perfection of the science, are not comparable to those
of this representation, which exhibited to Italy the creation of a new
art.”[1249] It is, however, a different question whether this immense
enhancement of the powers of music, and consequently of its popularity,
has been favourable to the development of poetical genius in this
species of composition; and in general it may be said that, if music
has, on some occasions, been a serviceable handmaid, and even a
judicious monitress, to poetry, she has been apt to prove but a
tyrannical mistress. In the melodrame, Corniani well observes, poetry
became her vassal, and has been ruled with a despotic sway.
[1247] Ranke, with the musical sentiment of a German, ascribes a
wonderful influence in the revival of religion after the middle of
the century to the compositions of Palestrina. Church music had
become so pedantic and technical that the council of Trent had some
doubts whether it should be retained. Pius IV. appointed a
commission to examine this question, who could arrive at no
decision. The artists said it was impossible to achieve what the
church required, a coincidence of expression between the words and
the music. Palestrina appeared at this time, and composed the mass
of Marcellus, which settled the dispute for ever. Other works by
himself and his disciples followed, which elevated sacred music to
the highest importance among the accessories of religious worship.
Die Päpste, vol. i. p. 498. But a large proportion of the
performers, I apprehend, were Germans, especially in theatrical
music.
[1248] Ginguéné, vol. vi., has traced the history of the melodrame
with much pains.
[1249] P. 474. Corniani, vii. 31, speaks highly of the poetical
abilities of Rinuccini. See also Galluzzi, Storia del Gran Ducato,
v. 547.
|The national taste revives in the Spanish drama.|
6. The struggle that seemed arduous in the earlier part of this century
between the classical and national schools of dramatic poetry in Spain,
proved of no long duration. The latter became soon decisively superior;
and before the end of the present period, that kingdom was in possession
of a peculiar and extensive literature, which has attracted the notice
of Europe, and has enriched both the French theatre and our own. The
spirit of the Spanish drama is far different from that which animated
the Italian writers; there is not much of Machiavel in their comedy, and
still less of Cinthio in their tragedy. They abandoned the Greek chorus,
which still fettered their contemporaries, and even the division into
five acts, which later poets, in other countries, have not ventured to
renounce. They gave more complication to the fable, sought more
unexpected changes of circumstance, were not solicitous in tragedy to
avoid colloquial language or familiar incidents, showed a preference to
the tragi-comic intermixture of light with serious matter, and
cultivated grace in poetical diction more than vigour. The religious
mysteries, once common in other parts of Europe, were devoutly kept up
in Spain; and under the name of Autos Sacramentales, make no
inconsiderable portion of the writings of their chief dramatists.[1250]
[1250] Bouterwek.
7. Andrès, favourable as he is to his country, is far from enthusiastic
in his praises of the Spanish theatre. Its exuberance has been its ruin;
no one, he justly remarks, can read some thousand plays in the hope of
finding a few that are tolerable. Andrès, however, is not exempt from a
strong prejudice in favour of the French stage. He admits the ease and
harmony of the Spanish versification, the purity of the style, the
abundance of the thoughts, and the ingenious complexity of the
incidents. This is peculiarly the merit of the Spanish comedy, as its
great defect, in his opinion, is the want of truth and delicacy in the
delineation of the passions, and of power to produce a vivid impression
on the reader. The best work, he concludes rather singularly, of the
comic poets of Spain has been the French theatre.[1251]
[1251] Vol. v. p. 138.
|Lope de Vega.|
|His extraordinary fertility.|
8. The most renowned of these is Lope de Vega, so many of whose dramas
appeared within the present century, that although, like Shakspeare, he
is equally to be claimed by the next, we may place his name, once for
all, in this period. Lope de Vega is called by Cervantes a prodigy of
nature; and such he may justly be reckoned; not that we can ascribe to
him a sublime genius, or a mind abounding with fine original thought,
but his fertility of invention and readiness of versifying are beyond
competition. It was said foolishly, if meant as praise, of Shakspeare,
and we may be sure untruly, that he never blotted a line. This may also
be presumed of Vega. “He required,” says Bouterwek, “no more than four
and twenty hours to write a versified drama of three acts in
redondillas, interspersed with sonnets, tercets, and octaves, and from
beginning to end abounding in intrigues, prodigies, or interesting
situations. This astonishing facility enabled him to supply the Spanish
theatre with upwards of 2000 original dramas, of which not more than 300
have been preserved by printing. In general the theatrical manager
carried away what he wrote before he had even time to revise it; and
immediately a fresh applicant would arrive to prevail on him to commence
a new piece. He sometimes wrote a play in the short space of three or
four hours.” ... “Arithmetical calculations have been employed in order
to arrive at a just estimate of Lope de Vega’s facility in poetic
composition. According to his own testimony, he wrote on an average five
sheets a day; it has therefore been computed that the number of
sheets which he composed during his life must have amounted to 133,225;
and that, allowing for the deduction of a small portion of prose, Lope
de Vega must have written upwards of 21,300,000 verses. Nature would
have overstepped her bounds and have produced the miraculous, had Lope
de Vega, along with this rapidity of invention and composition, attained
perfection in any department of literature.”[1252]
[1252] P. 361-363. Montalvan, Lope’s friend, says that he wrote 1800
plays and 400 autos. In a poem of his own, written in 1609, he
claims 483 plays, and he continued afterwards to write for the
stage. Those that remain and have been collected in twenty-five
volumes are reckoned at about 300.
|His versification.|
9. This peculiar gift of rapid composition will appear more
extraordinary when we attend to the nature of Lope’s versification, very
unlike the irregular lines of our old drama, which it is not perhaps
difficult for a practised hand to write or utter extemporaneously. “The
most singular circumstance attending his verse,” says Lord Holland, “is
the frequency and difficulty of the tasks which he imposes on himself.
At every step we meet with acrostics, echoes, and compositions of that
perverted and laborious kind, from attempting which another author would
be deterred by the trouble of the undertaking, if not by the little real
merit attending the achievement. They require no genius, but they exact
much time; which one should think that such a voluminous poet could
little afford to waste. But Lope made a parade of his power over the
vocabulary: he was not contented with displaying the various order in
which he could dispose the syllables and marshal the rhymes of his
language; but he also prided himself upon the celerity with which he
brought them to go through the most whimsical but the most difficult
evolutions. He seems to have been partial to difficulties for the
gratification of surmounting them.” This trifling ambition is usual
among second-rate poets, especially in a degraded state of public taste;
but it may be questionable, whether Lope de Vega ever performed feats
of skill more surprising in this way than some of the Italian
_improvisatori_, who have been said to carry on at the same time three
independent sonnets, uttering, in their unpremeditated strains, a line
of each in alternate succession. There is reason to believe, that their
extemporaneous poetry, is as good as anything in Lope de Vega.
|His popularity.|
10. The immense popularity of this poet, not limited, among the people
itself, to his own age, bespeaks some attention from criticism. “The
Spaniards who affect fine taste in modern times,” says Schlegel, “speak
with indifference of their old national poets; but the people retain a
lively attachment to them, and their productions are received on the
stage, at Madrid, or at Mexico, with passionate enthusiasm.” It is true
that foreign critics have not in general pronounced a very favourable
judgment of Lope de Vega. But a writer of such prodigious fecundity is
ill appreciated by single plays; the whole character of his composition
manifests that he wrote for the stage, and for the stage of his own
country, rather than for the closet of a foreigner. His writings are
divided into spiritual plays, heroic and historical comedies, most of
them taken from the annals and traditions of Spain, and lastly, comedies
of real life, or, as they were called, “of the hat and sword,” (capa y
espada) a name answering to the _comœdia togata_ of the Roman stage.
These have been somewhat better known than the rest, and have, in
several instances, found their way to our own theatre, by suggesting
plots and incidents to our older writers. The historian of Spanish
literature, to whom I am so much indebted, has given a character of
these comedies, in which the English reader will perhaps recognise much
that might be said also of Beaumont and Fletcher.
|Character of his comedies.|
11. “Lope de Vega’s comedies de Capa y Espada, or those which may
properly be denominated his dramas of intrigue, though wanting in the
delineation of character, are romantic pictures of manners, drawn from
real life. They present, in their peculiar style, no less interest with
respect to situation than his heroic comedies, and the same irregularity
in the composition of the scenes. The language, too, is alternately
elegant and vulgar, sometimes highly poetic, and sometimes, though
versified, reduced to the level of the dullest prose. Lope de Vega seems
scarcely to have bestowed a thought on maintaining probability in the
succession of the different scenes; ingenious complication is with him
the essential point in the interest of his situations. Intrigues are
twisted and entwined together, until the poet, in order to bring his
piece to a conclusion, without ceremony cuts the knots he cannot untie,
and then he usually brings as many couples together as he can by
any possible contrivance match. He has scattered through his pieces
occasional reflections and maxims of prudence; but any genuine morality,
which might be conveyed through the stage, is wanting, for its
introduction would have been inconsistent with that poetic freedom on
which the dramatic interest of the Spanish comedy is founded. His aim
was to paint what he observed, not what he would have approved, in the
manners of the fashionable world of his age; but he leaves it to the
spectator to draw his own inferences.”[1253]
[1253] Bouterwek, p. 375.
|Tragedy of Don Sancho Ortiz.|
12. An analysis of one of these comedies from real life is given by
Bouterwek, and another by Lord Holland. The very few that I have read
appear lively and diversified, not unpleasing in the perusal, but
exciting little interest and rapidly forgotten. Among the heroic pieces
of Lope de Vega a high place appears due to the Estrella de Sevilla,
published with alterations by Triquero, under the name of Don Sancho
Ortiz.[1254] It resembles the Cid in its subject. The king, Sancho the
Brave, having fallen in love with Estrella, sister of Don Bustos Tabera,
and being foiled by her virtue,[1255] and by the vigilance of her
brother, who had drawn his sword upon him, as in disguise he was
attempting to penetrate into her apartment, resolves to have him
murdered, and persuades Don Sancho Ortiz, a soldier full of courage and
loyalty, by describing the attempt made on his person, to undertake the
death of one whose name is contained in a paper he gives him. Sancho is
the accepted lover of Estrella, and is on that day to espouse her with
her brother’s consent. He reads the paper, and after a conflict which is
meant to be pathetic, but in our eyes is merely ridiculous, determines,
as might be supposed, to keep his word to his sovereign. The shortest
course is to contrive a quarrel with Bustos, which produces a duel,
wherein the latter is killed. The second act commences with a pleasing
scene of Estrella’s innocent delight in her prospect of happiness; but
the body of her brother is now brought in, and the murderer, who had
made no attempt to conceal himself, soon appears in custody. His
examination before the judges, who endeavour in vain to extort one word
from him in his defence, occupies part of the third act. The king,
anxious to save his life, but still more so to screen his own honour,
requires only a pretext to pardon the offence. But the noble Castilian
disdains to save himself by falsehood, and merely repeats that he had
not slain his friend without cause, and that the action was atrocious,
but not criminal.
Dice que fue atrocidad,
Pero que no fue delito.
[1254] In Lord Holland’s Life of Lope de Vega, a more complete analysis
than what I have offered is taken from the original play. I have
followed the _rifaccimento_ of Triquero, which is substantially the
same.
[1255] Lope de Vega has borrowed for Estrella the well-known answer of
a lady to a king of France, told with several variations of names,
and possibly true of none.
Soy (she says),
Para esposa vuestra poco,
Paro dama vuestra mucho.
13. In this embarrassment Estrella appears, demanding, not the execution
of justice on her brother’s murderer, but that he should be delivered up
to her. The king, with his usual feebleness, consents to this request,
observing that he knows by experience it is no new thing for her to be
cruel. She is, however, no sooner departed with the royal order, than
the wretched prince repents, and determines to release Sancho, making
compensation to Estrella by marrying her to a ricohombre of Castile. The
lady meantime reaches the prison, and in an interview with her
unfortunate lover, offers him his liberty, which by the king’s
concession is in her power. He is not to be outdone in generous
sentiments, and steadily declares his resolution to be executed. In the
fifth act this heroic emulation is reported by one who had overheard it
to the king. All the people of this city, he replies, are heroes, and
outstrip nature herself by the greatness of their souls. The judges now
enter, and with sorrow report their sentence that Sancho must suffer
death. But the king is at length roused, and publicly acknowledges that
the death of Bustos had been perpetrated by his command. The president
of the tribunal remarks that, as the king had given the order, there
must doubtless have been good cause. Nothing seems to remain but the
union of the lovers. Here, however, the high Castilian principle once
more displays itself. Estrella refuses to be united to one she tenderly
loves, but who has brought such a calamity into her family; and Sancho
himself, willingly releasing her engagement, admits that their marriage
under such circumstances would be a perpetual torment. The lady
therefore chooses, what is always at hand in Catholic fiction, the
dignified retirement of a nunnery, and the lover departs to dissipate
his regrets in the Moorish war.
14. Notwithstanding all in the plan and conduct of this piece, which
neither our own state of manners, nor the laws of any sound criticism
can tolerate, it is very conceivable that, to the factitious taste of a
Spanish audience in the age of Lope de Vega, it would have appeared
excellent. The character of Estrella is truly noble, and much superior
in interest to that of Chimene. Her resentment is more genuine, and free
from that hypocrisy which, at least in my judgment, renders the other
almost odious and contemptible. Instead of imploring the condemnation of
him she loves, it is as her own prisoner that she demands Sancho Ortiz,
and this for the generous purpose of setting him at liberty. But the
great superiority of the Spanish play is at the close. Chimene accepts
the hand stained with her father’s blood, while Estrella sacrifices her
own wishes to a sentiment which the manners of Spain, and we may add,
the laws of natural decency required.
|His spiritual plays.|
15. The spiritual plays of Lope de Vega abound with as many incongruous
and absurd circumstances as the mysteries of our forefathers. The
Inquisition was politic enough to tolerate, though probably the
sternness of Castilian orthodoxy could not approve, these strange
representations which, after all, had the advantage of keeping the
people in mind of the devil, and of the efficacy of holy water in
chasing him away. But the regular theatre, according to Lord Holland,
has always been forbidden in Spain by the church, nor do the kings
frequent it.
|Numancia of Cervantes.|
16. Two tragedies by Bermudez, both on the story of Ines de Castro, are
written on the ancient model, with a chorus, and much simplicity of
fable. They are, it is said, in a few scenes impressive and pathetic,
but interrupted by passages of flat and tedious monotony.[1256]
Cervantes was the author of many dramatic pieces; some of which are so
indifferent as to have been taken for intentional satires upon the bad
taste of his times, so much of it do they display. One or two, however,
of his comedies have obtained some praise from Schlegel and Bouterwek.
But his tragedy of Numancia stands apart from his other dramas, and, as
I conceive, from anything on the Spanish stage. It is probably one of
his earlier works, but was published for the first time in 1784. It is a
drama of extraordinary power, and may justify the opinion of Bouterwek
that, in different circumstances, the author of Don Quixote might have
been the Æschylus of Spain. If terror and pity are the inspiring powers
of tragedy, few have been for the time more under their influence than
Cervantes in his Numancia. The story of that devoted city, its long
resistance to Rome, its exploits of victorious heroism, that foiled
repeatedly the consular legions, are known to every one. Cervantes has
opened his tragedy at the moment when Scipio Æmilianus, enclosing the
city with a broad trench, determines to secure its reduction by famine.
The siege lasted five months, when the Numantines, exhausted by hunger,
but resolute never to yield, setting fire to a pile of their household
goods, after slaying their women and children, cast themselves into the
flame. Every circumstance that can enhance horror, the complaints of
famished children, the desperation of mothers, the sinister omens of
rejected sacrifice, the appalling incantations that reanimate a recent
corpse to disclose the secrets of its prison-house, are accumulated with
progressive force in this tremendous drama. The love-scenes of Morando
and Lira, two young persons whose marriage had been frustrated by the
public calamity, though some incline to censure them, contain nothing
beyond poetical truth, and add, in my opinion, to its pathos, while they
somewhat relieve its severity.
[1256] Bouterwek, 296.
17. Few, probably, would desire to read the Numancia a second time. But
it ought to be remembered that the historical truth of this tragedy,
though, as in the Ugolino of Dante, it augments the painfulness of the
impression, is the legitimate apology of the author. Scenes of agony,
and images of unspeakable sorrow, when idly accumulated by an inventor
at his ease, as in many of our own older tragedies, and in much of
modern fiction, give offence to a reader of just taste, from their
needlessly trespassing upon his sensibility. But in that which excites
an abhorrence of cruelty and oppression, or which, as the Numancia,
commemorates ancestral fortitude, there is a moral power, for the sake
of which the sufferings of sympathy must not be flinched from.
18. The Numancia is divided into four jornadas or acts, each containing
changes of scene, as on our own stage. The metre, by a most
extraordinary choice, is the regular octave stanza, ill-adapted as that
is to the drama, intermixed with the favourite redondilla. The diction,
though sometimes what would seem tame and diffuse to us, who are
accustomed to a bolder and more figurative strain in tragedy than the
southern nations require, rises often with the subject to nervous and
impressive poetry. There are, however, a few sacrifices to the times. In
a finely imagined prosopopœia, where Spain, crowned with towers, appears
on the scene to ask the Duero what hope there could be for Numancia, the
river-god, rising with his tributary streams around him, after bidding
her despair of the city, goes into a tedious consolation, in which the
triumphs of Charles and Philip are specifically, and with as much
tameness as adulation, brought forward as her future recompense. A much
worse passage occurs in the fourth act, where Lira, her brother lying
dead of famine, and her lover of his wounds before her, implores death
from a soldier who passes over the stage. He replies that some other
hand must perform that office; he was born only to adore her.[1257] This
frigid and absurd line, in such a play by such a poet, is an almost
incredible proof of the mischief which the Provençal writers, with their
hyperbolical gallantry, had done to European poetry. But it is just to
observe that this is the only faulty passage, and that the language of
the two lovers is simple, tender, and pathetic. The material
accompaniments of representation on the Spanish theatre seem to have
been full as defective as on our own. The Numancia is printed with stage
directions, almost sufficient to provoke a smile in the midst of its
withering horrors.
[1257]
Otra mano, otro hierro ha da acabaros,
Que yo solo naciò por adoraros.
|French theatre; Jodelle.|
19. The mysteries which had delighted the Parisians for a century and a
half were suddenly forbidden by the parliament as indecent and profane
in 1548. Four years only elapsed before they were replaced, though not
on the same stage, by a different style of representation. Whatever
obscure attempts at a regular dramatic composition may have been traced
in France at an earlier period, Jodelle was acknowledged by his
contemporaries to be the true father of their theatre. His tragedy of
Cleopatre, and his comedy of La Rencontre, were both represented for the
first time before Henry II. in 1552. Another comedy, Eugene, and a
tragedy on the story of Dido, were published about the same time.
Pasquier, who tells us this, was himself a witness of the representation
of the two former.[1258] The Cleopatre, according to Fontenelle, is very
simple, without action or stage effect, full of long speeches, and with
a chorus at the end of every act. The style is often low and ludicrous,
which did not prevent this tragedy, the first-fruits of a theatre which
was to produce Racine, from being received with vast applause. There is
in reality, amidst these raptures that frequently attend an infant
literature, something of an undefined presage of the future which should
hinder us from thinking them quite ridiculous. The comedy of Eugene is
in verse, and, in the judgment of Fontenelle, much superior to the
tragedies of Jodelle. It has more action, a dialogue better conceived,
and some traits of humour and nature. This play, however, is very
immoral and licentious; and it may be remarked that some of its satire
falls on the vices of the clergy.[1259]
[1258] Cette comedie, et la Cleopatre furent representées devant le roy
Henri à Paris en l’Hostel de Rheims, avec un grand applaudissement
de toute la compagnie: et depuis encore au college de Boncourt, ou
toutes les fenestres estoient tapissées d’une infinité de
personnages d’honneur, et la cour si pleine d’escoliers que les
portes du college en regorgeoient. Je le dis comme celuy qui y
estois present, avec le grand Tornebus en une mesme chambre. Et les
entreparleurs estoient tous hommes de nom. Car même Remy Belleau et
Jean de la Peruse jouoient les principaux roullets. Suard tells us,
that the old troop of performers, the Confrères de la Passion,
whose mysteries had been interdicted, availed themselves of an
exclusive privilege granted to them by Charles VI. in 1400, to
prevent the representation of the Cleopatre by public actors.
Jodelle was therefore forced to have it performed by his friends.
See Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 6. Fontenelle, Hist. du
Theatre François (in Œuvres de Font. edit. 1776) vol. iii. p. 52.
Beauchamps, Recherches sur les Theatres de France. Suard, Melanges
de Literature, vol. iv. p. 59. The last writer, in what he calls
Coup d’Œil sur l’Histoire de l’Ancien Theatre Français (in the same
volume) has given an amusing and instructive sketch of the French
drama down to Corneille.
[1259] Fontenelle, p. 61.
|Garnier.|
20. The Agamemnon of Toutain, published in 1557, is taken from Seneca,
and several other pieces about the same time or soon afterwards, seem
also to be translations.[1260] The Jules Cesar of Grevin was represented
in 1560.[1261] It contains a few lines that La Harpe has extracted, as
not without animation. But the first tragedian that deserves much notice
after Jodelle was Robert Garnier, whose eight tragedies were
collectively printed in 1580. They are chiefly taken from mythology or
ancient history, and are evidently framed according to a standard of
taste which has ever since prevailed on the French stage. But they
retain some characteristics of the classical drama which were soon
afterwards laid aside; the chorus is heard between every act, and a
great portion of the events is related by messengers. Garnier makes
little change in the stories he found in Seneca or Euripides; nor had
love yet been thought essential to tragedy. Though his speeches are
immeasurably long, and overladen with pompous epithets, though they have
often much the air of bad imitations of Seneca’s manner, from whom
probably, if any one should give himself the pains to make the
comparison, some would be found to have been freely translated, we must
acknowledge that in many of his couplets the reader perceives a more
genuine tone of tragedy, and the germ of that artificial style which
reached its perfection in far greater men than Garnier. In almost every
line there is some fault, either against taste or the present rules of
verse; yet there are many which a good poet would only have had to amend
and polish. The account of Polyxena’s death in La Troade is very well
translated from the Hecuba. But his best tragedy seems to be Les Juives,
which is wholly his own, and displays no inconsiderable powers of
poetical description. In this I am confirmed by Fontenelle, who says
that this tragedy has many noble and touching passages; in which he has
been aided by taking much from scripture, the natural sublimity of which
cannot fail to produce an effect.[1262] We find, however, in Les Juives
a good deal of that propensity to exhibit cruelty, by which the Italian
and English theatres were at that time distinguished. Pasquier says,
that every one gave the prize to Garnier above all who had preceded him,
and after enumerating his eight plays, expresses his opinion that they
would be admired by posterity.[1263]
[1260] Beauchamps. Suard.
[1261] Suard, p. 73. La Harpe, Cours de Literature. Grevin also wrote
comedies which were very licentious, as those of the 16th century
generally were in France and Italy, and were not in England, or, I
believe, in Spain.
[1262] P. 71. Suard who dwells much longer on Garnier than either
Fontenelle or La Harpe, observes, as I think, with justice:
Les ouvrages de Garnier meritent de faire epoque dans l’histoire du
theatre, non par la beauté de ses plans; il n’en faut chercher de
bons dans aucune des tragedies du seizième siècle; mais les
sentimens qu’il exprime sont nobles, son style a souvent de
l’elevation sans enflure et beaucoup de sensibilité sa
versification est facile et souvent harmonieuse. C’est lui qui a
fixé d’une manière invariable la succession alternative des rimes
masculines et feminines. Enfin c’est le premier des tragiques
Français dont le lecture pût être utile à ceux qui voudraient
suivre la même carriere; on a même pretendu que son Hyppolite avait
beaucoup aidé Racine dans la composition de Phêdre. Mais s’il l’a
aidé, c’est comme l’Hyppolite de Seneque, dont celui de Garnier
n’est qu’une imitation, p. 81.
[1263] Ibid.
|Comedies of Larivey.|
21. We may consider the comedies of Larivey, published in 1579, as
making a sort of epoch in the French drama. This writer, of whom little
is known, but that he was a native of Champagne, prefers a claim to be
the first who chose subjects for comedy from real life in France
(forgetting in this those of Jodelle), and the first who wrote original
dramas in prose. His comedies are six in number, to which three were
added in a subsequent edition, which is very rare.[1264] These six are
Le Laquais, La Veuve, Les Esprits, Le Morfondu, Les Jaloux, and Les
Ecoliers. Some of them are partly borrowed from Plautus and Terence; and
in general they belong to that school, presenting the usual characters
of the Roman stage, with no great attempt at originality. But the
dialogue is conducted with spirit; and in many scenes, especially in the
play called Le Laquais, which, though the most free in all respects,
appears to me the most comic and amusing, would remind any reader of the
minor pieces of Molière, being conceived, though not entirely executed,
with the same humour. All these comedies of Larivey are highly
licentious both in their incidents and language. It is supposed in the
Biographie Universelle that Molière and Regnard borrowed some ideas from
Larivey; but both the instances alleged will be found in Plautus.
[1264] The first edition itself, I conceive, is not very common; for
few writers within my knowledge have mentioned Larivey. Fontenelle,
I think, could not have read his plays, or he would have give him a
place in his brief sketch of the early French stage, as the father
of comedy in prose. La Harpe was too superficial to know anything
about him. Beauchamps, vol. ii. p. 68, acknowledges his
pretensions, and he has a niche in the Biographie Universelle.
Suard has also done him some justice.
|Theatres in Paris.|
22. No regular theatre was yet established in France. These plays of
Garnier, Larivey, and others of that class, were represented either in
colleges or in private houses. But the Confrères de la Passion, and
another company, the Enfans de Sans Souci, whom they admitted into a
participation of their privilege, used to act gross and stupid farces,
which few respectable persons witnessed. After some unsuccessful
attempts, two companies of regular actors appeared near the close of the
century; one, in 1598, having purchased the exclusive right of the
Confrères de la Passion, laid the foundations of the Comedie Française,
so celebrated and so permanent; the other, in 1600, established by its
permission a second theatre in the Marais. But the pieces they
represented were still of a very low class.[1265]
[1265] Suard.
|English stage.|
|Gammar Gurton’s Needle.|
23. England at the commencement of this period could boast of little
besides the scripture mysteries, already losing ground, but which have
been traced down to the close of the century, and the more popular moral
plays, which furnished abundant opportunities for satire on the times,
for ludicrous humour, and for attacks on the old or the new religion.
The latter, however, were kept in some restraint by the Tudor
government. These moralities gradually drew nearer to regular comedies,
and sometimes had nothing but an abstract name given to an individual,
by which they could be even apparently distinguished from such. We have
already mentioned Ralph Royster Doyster, written by Udal in the reign of
Henry VIII., as the earliest English comedy in a proper sense, so far as
our negative evidence warrants such a position. Mr. Collier has
recovered four acts of another, called Misogonus, which he refers to the
beginning of Elizabeth’s reign.[1266] It is, like the former, a picture
of London life. A more celebrated piece is Gammar Gurton’s Needle,
commonly ascribed to John. Still, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells.
No edition is known before 1575, but it seems to have been represented
in Christ’s College at Cambridge, not far from the year 1565.[1267] It
is impossible for anything to be meaner in subject and characters than
this strange farce; but the author had some vein of humour, and writing
neither for fame nor money, but to make light-hearted boys laugh, and to
laugh with them, and that with as little grossness as the story would
admit, is not to be judged with severe criticism. He comes however below
Udal, and perhaps the writer of Misogonus. The Supposes of George
Gascoyne, acted at Gray’s Inn in 1566, is but a translation in prose
from the Suppositi of Ariosto. It seems to have been published in the
same year.[1268]
[1266] Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 464.
[1267] Mr. Collier agrees with Malone in assigning this date, but it is
merely conjectural, as one rather earlier might be chosen with
equal probability. Still is said in the biographies to have been
born in 1543; but this date seems to be too low. He became
Margaret’s professor of divinity in 1570. Gammar Gurton’s Needle
must have been written while the protestant establishment, if it
existed, was very recent, for the parson is evidently a papist.
[1268] Warton, iv. 304. Collier, iii. 6. The original had been first
published in prose, 1525, and from this Gascoyne took his
translation, adopting some of the changes Ariosto had introduced
when he turned it into verse; but he has invented little of his
own. Ibid.
|Gorboduc of Sackville.|
24. But the progress of literature soon excited in one person an
emulation of the ancient drama. Sackville has the honour of having led
the way. His tragedy of Gorboduc was represented at Whitehall before
Elizabeth in 1562.[1269] It is written in what was thought the classical
style, like the Italian tragedies of the same age, but more inartificial
and unimpassioned. The speeches are long and sententious; the action,
though sufficiently full of incident, passes chiefly in narration; a
chorus, but in the same blank verse measure as the rest, divides the
acts; the unity of place seems to be preserved, but that of time is
manifestly transgressed. The story of Gorboduc, which is borrowed from
our fabulous British legends, is as full of slaughter as was then
required for dramatic purposes; but the characters are clearly drawn and
consistently sustained; the political maxims grave and profound; the
language not glowing or passionate, but vigorous; and upon the whole it
is evidently the work of a powerful mind, though in a less poetical mood
than was displayed in the Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates.
Sackville, it has been said, had the assistance of Norton in this
tragedy; but Warton has decided against this supposition from internal
evidence.[1270]
[1269] The 18th of January, 1561, to which date its representation is
referred by Mr. Collier, seems to be 1562, according to the style
of the age; and this tallies best with what is said in the edition
of 1571, that it had been played about nine years before. See
Warton, iv. 179.
[1270] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 194. Mr. Collier supports the claim
of Norton to the first three acts, which would much reduce
Sackville’s glory, ii. 481. I incline to Warton’s opinion, grounded
upon the identity of style, and the superiority of the whole
tragedy to anything we can certainly ascribe to Norton, a coadjutor
of Sternhold in the old version of the Psalms, and a contributor to
the Mirror of Magistrates.
|Preference given to the irregular form.|
25. The regular form adopted in Gorboduc, though not wholly without
imitators, seems to have had little success with the public.[1271] An
action passing visibly on the stage, instead of a frigid
narrative, a copious intermixture of comic buffoonery with the gravest
story, were requisites with which no English audience would dispense.
Thus Edwards treated the story of Damon and Pythias, which, though
according to the notions of those times, it was too bloodless to be
called a tragedy at all, belonged to the elevated class of dramatic
compositions.[1272] Several other objects were taken from ancient
history; this indeed became the usual source of the fable; but if we may
judge from those few that have survived, they were all constructed on
the model which the mysteries had accustomed our ancestors to admire.
[1271] The Jocasta of Gascoyne, translated with considerable freedom,
in adding, omitting, and transposing, from the Phœnissæ of
Euripides, was represented at Gray’s Inn in 1566. Warton, iv. 196.
Collier, iii. 7. Gascoyne had the assistance of two obscure poets
in this play.
[1272] Collier, iii. 2.
|First theatres.|
26. The office of Master of the Revels, in whose province it lay to
regulate, among other amusements of the court, the dramatic shows of
various kinds, was established in 1546. The inns of court vied with the
royal palace in these representations, and Elizabeth sometimes honoured
the former with her presence. On her visits to the universities, a play
was a constant part of the entertainment. Fifty-two names, though
nothing more, of dramas acted at court under the superintendence of the
Master of the Revels, between 1568 and 1580, are preserved.[1273] In
1574 a patent was granted to the Earl of Leicester’s servants to act
plays in any part of England, and in 1576 they erected the first public
theatre in Blackfriars. It will be understood, that the servants of the
Earl of Leicester were a company under his protection; as we apply the
word, Her Majesty’s Servants, at this day, to the performers of Drury
Lane.[1274]
[1273] Collier, i. 193, et post, iii. 24. Of these fifty-two plays
eighteen were upon classical subjects, historical or fabulous,
twenty-one taken from modern history or romance, seven may by their
titles, which is a very fallible criterion, be comedies or farces
from real life, and six may, by the same test, be moralities. It is
possible, as Mr. C. observes, that some of these plays, though no
longer extant in their integrity, may have formed the foundation of
others; and the titles of a few in the list countenance this
supposition.
[1274] See Mr. Collier’s excellent History of Dramatic Poetry to the
Time of Shakspeare, vol. i., which having superseded the earlier
works of Langbaine, Reid, and Hawkins, so far as this period is
concerned, it is superfluous to quote them.
|Plays of Whetstone and others.|
27. As we come down towards 1580, a few more plays are extant. Among
these may be mentioned the Promos and Cassandra of Whetstone, on the
subject which Shakspeare, not without some retrospect to his
predecessors, so much improved in Measure for Measure.[1275] But in
these early dramas there is hardly anything to praise; or, if they
please us at all, it is only by the broad humour of their comic scenes.
There seems little reason, therefore, for regretting the loss of so many
productions, which no one contemporary has thought worthy of
commendation. Sir Philip Sydney, writing about 1583, treats our English
stage with great disdain. His censures indeed fall chiefly on the
neglect of the classical unities, and on the intermixture of kings with
clowns.[1276] It is amusing to reflect, that this contemptuous
reprehension of the English theatre (and he had spoken in as disparaging
terms of our general poetry) came from the pen of Sydney, when
Shakspeare had just arrived at manhood. Had he not been so prematurely
cut off, what would have been the transports of that noble spirit, which
the ballad of Chevy Chase could “stir as with the sound of a trumpet,”
in reading the Faery Queen or Othello!
[1275] Promos and Cassandra is one of the Six Old Plays reprinted by
Stevens. Shakspeare found in it not only the main story of Measure
for Measure, which was far from new, and which he felicitously
altered, by preserving the chastity of Isabella, but several of the
minor circumstances and names, unless even these are to be found in
the novels, from which all the dramatists ultimately derived their
plot.
[1276] “Our tragedies and comedies, not without cause, are cried out
against, observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful
poetry;” and proceeds to ridicule their inconsistencies and
disregard to time and place. Defence of Poesy.
|Marlowe and his contemporaries.|
|Tamburlaine.|
|Blank verse of Marlowe.|
28. A better æra commenced not long after, nearly coincident with the
rapid development of genius in other departments of poetry. Several
young men of talent appeared, Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lily, Lodge, Kyd,
Nash, the precursors of Shakspeare, and real founders, as they may in
some respects be called, of the English drama. Sackville’s Gorboduc is
in blank verse, though of bad and monotonous construction; but his
followers wrote, as far as we know, either in rhyme or in prose.[1277]
In the tragedy of Tamburlaine, referred by Mr. Collier to 1586,
and the production wholly or principally, of Marlowe,[1278] a better
kind of blank verse is first employed; the lines are interwoven, the
occasional hemistich and redundant syllables break the monotony of the
measure, and give more of a colloquial spirit to the dialogue.
Tamburlaine was ridiculed on account of its inflated style. The bombast,
however, which is not so excessive as has been alleged, was thought
appropriate to such oriental tyrants. This play has more spirit and
poetry than any which, upon clear grounds, can be shown to have preceded
it. We find also more action on the stage, a shorter and more dramatic
dialogue, a more figurative style, with a far more varied and skilful
versification.[1279] If Marlowe did not re-establish blank verse, which
is difficult to prove, he gave it at least a variety of cadence, and an
easy adaptation of the rhythm to the sense, by which it instantly became
in his hands the finest instrument that the tragic poet has ever
employed for his purpose, less restricted than that of the Italians, and
falling occasionally almost into numerous prose, lines of fourteen
syllables being very common in all our old dramatists, but regular and
harmonious at other times as the most accurate ear could require.
[1277] It may be a slight exception to this that some portions of the
second part of Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra are in blank verse.
This play is said never to have been represented. Collier, iii. 64.
[1278] Nash has been thought the author of Tamburlaine by Malone, and
his inflated style, in pieces known to be his, may give some
countenance to this hypothesis. It is mentioned, however, as
“Marlowe’s Tamburlaine” in the contemporary diary of Henslow, a
manager or proprietor of a theatre, which is preserved at Dulwich
College. Marlowe and Nash are allowed to have written “Dido Queen
of Carthage” in conjunction. Mr. Collier has produced a body of
evidence to show that Tamburlaine was written, at least
principally, by the former, which leaves no room, as it seems, for
further doubt, vol. iii. p. 113.
[1279] Shakspeare having turned into ridicule a passage or two in
Tamburlaine, the critics have concluded it to be a model of bad
tragedy. Mr. Collier, iii. 115-126, has elaborately vindicated its
dramatic merits, though sufficiently aware of its faults.
|Marlowe’s Jew of Malta,|
|and Faustus.|
29. The savage character of Tamburlaine, and the want of all interest as
to every other, render this tragedy a failure in comparison with those
which speedily followed from the pen of Christopher Marlowe. The first
two acts of the Jew of Malta are more vigorously conceived, both as to
character and circumstance, than any other Elizabethan play, except
those of Shakspeare; and perhaps we may think that Barabas, though not
the prototype of Shylock, a praise of which he is unworthy, may have
suggested some few ideas to the inventor. But the latter acts, as is
usual with our old dramatists, are a tissue of uninteresting crimes and
slaughter.[1280] Faustus is better known; it contains nothing, perhaps,
so dramatic as the first part of the Jew of Malta; yet the occasional
glimpses of repentance and struggles of alarmed conscience in the chief
character are finely brought in. It is full of poetical beauties; but an
intermixture of buffoonery weakens the effect, and leaves it on the
whole rather a sketch by a great genius than a finished performance.
There is an awful melancholy about Marlowe’s Mephistopheles, perhaps
more impressive than the malignant mirth of that fiend in the renowned
work of Goethe. But the fair form of Margaret is wanting; and Marlowe
has hardly earned the credit of having breathed a few casual
inspirations into a greater mind than his own.[1281]
[1280] “Blood,” says a late witty writer, “is made as light of in
some of these old dramas as _money_ in a modern sentimental comedy;
and as _this_ is given away till it reminds us that it is nothing
but counters, so _that_ is spilt till it affects us no more than
its representative, the paint of the property-man in the theatre.”
Lamb’s specimens of Early Dramatic Poets, i. 19.
[1281] The German story of Faust is said to have been published for the
first time in 1587. It was rapidly translated into most languages
of Europe. We need hardly name the absurd supposition, that Faust,
the great printer, was intended.
|His Edward II.|
|Plays whence Henry Vl. was taken.|
30. Marlowe’s Life of Edward II. which was entered on the books of the
Stationers’ Company in 1593, has been deemed by some the earliest
specimen of the historical play founded upon English chronicles. Whether
this be true or not, and probably it is not, it is certainly by far the
best after those of Shakspeare.[1282] And it seems probable that the old
plays of the Contention of Lancaster and York, and the True Tragedy of
Richard Duke of York, which Shakspeare remodelled in the second and
third parts of Henry VI., were in great part by Marlowe, though Greene
seems to put in for some share in their composition.[1283] These plays
claim certainly a very low rank among those of Shakspeare: his
original portion is not inconsiderable; but it is fair to observe, that
some of the passages most popular, such as the death of Cardinal
Beaufort, and the last speech of the Duke of York, are not by his hand.
[1282] Collier observes that, “the character of Richard II. in
Shakspeare seems modelled in no slight degree upon that of
Edward II.” But I am reluctant to admit that Shakspeare modelled
his _characters_ by those of others; and it is natural to ask
whether there were not an extraordinary likeness in the
dispositions as well as fortunes of the two kings.
[1283] These old plays were reprinted by Stevens in 1766. Malone, on a
laborious comparison of them with the second and third parts of
Henry VI., has ascertained that 1771 lines in the latter plays were
taken from the former unaltered, 2373 altered by Shakspeare, while
1899 were altogether his own. It remains to inquire, who are to
claim the credit of these other plays, so great a portion of which
has passed with the world for the genuine work of Shakspeare. The
solution seems to be given, as well as we can expect, in a passage
often quoted from Robert Greene’s Groat’sworth of Wit, published
not long before his death in September 1592. “Yes,” says he,
addressing himself to some one who has been conjectured to be
Peele, but more probably Marlowe, “trust them (the players) not,
for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that,
with his tyger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, supposes he is
as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and
being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the
only _Shakescene_ in a country.” An allusion is here manifest to
the “tyger’s heart, wrapt in a woman’s hide,” which Shakspeare
borrowed from the old play. The Contention of the Houses, and which
is here introduced to hint the particular subject of plagiarism
that prompts the complaint of Greene. The bitterness he displays
must lead us to suspect that he had been one himself of those who
were thus preyed upon. But the greater part of the plays in
question is in the judgment, I conceive, of all competent critics,
far above the powers either of Greene or Peele, and exhibits a much
greater share of the spirited versification, called by Jonson the
“mighty line,” of Christopher Marlowe. Malone, upon second
thoughts, gave both these plays to Marlowe, having, in his
dissertation on the three parts of Henry VI., assigned one to
Greene, the other to Peele. None of the three parts have any
resemblance to the manner of Peele.
|Peele.|
31. No one could think of disputing the superiority of Marlowe, to all
his contemporaries of this early school of the English drama. He was
killed in a tavern fray in 1593. There is more room for difference of
tastes as to the second place. Mr. Campbell has bestowed high praises
upon Peele. “His David and Bethsabe is the earliest fountain of pathos
and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich
and his feeling tender: and his conceptions of dramatic character have
no inconsiderable mixture of solid veracity [sic] and ideal beauty.
There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in
our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare.”[1284] I must concur with Mr.
Collier in thinking these compliments excessive. Peele has some command
of imagery, but in every other quality it seems to me that he has scarce
any claim to honour; and I doubt if there are three lines together in
any of his plays that could be mistaken for Shakspeare’s. His Edward I.
is a gross tissue of absurdity, with some facility of language, but
nothing truly good. It has also the fault of grossly violating historic
truth, in hideous misrepresentation of the virtuous Eleanor of Castile;
probably from the base motive of rendering the Spanish nation odious to
the vulgar. This play, which is founded on a ballad equally false, is
referred to the year 1593. The versification of Peele is much inferior
to that of Marlowe; and though sometimes poetical he seems rarely
dramatic.
[1284] Specimens of English Poetry, i. 140. Hawkins says of three lines
in Peele’s David and Bethsabe, that they contain a metaphor worthy
of Æschylus:--
At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt;
And his fair spouse with bright and fiery wings
Sit ever burning on his hateful bones.
It may be rather Æschylean, yet I cannot much admire it. Peele
seldom attempts such flights. “His genius was not boldly original;
but he had an elegance of fancy, a gracefulness of expression, and
a melody of versification which, in the earlier part of his career,
was scarcely approached.” Collier, iii. 191.
|Greene.|
32. A third writer for the stage in this period is Robert Greene, whose
“Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay” may probably be placed about the year
1590. This comedy, though savouring a little of the old school, contains
easy and spirited versification, superior to Peele, and though not so
energetic as that of Marlowe, reminding us perhaps more frequently of
Shakspeare.[1285] Greene succeeds pretty well in that florid and gay
style, a little redundant in images, which Shakspeare frequently gives
to his princes and courtiers, and which renders some unimpassioned
scenes in the historic plays effective and brilliant. There is great
talent shown, though upon a very strange canvas, in Greene’s
“Looking-glass for London and England.” His angry allusion to
Shakspeare’s plagiarism is best explained by supposing that he was
himself concerned in the two old plays which have been converted into
the second and third parts of Henry VI.[1286] In default of a more
probable claimant, I have sometimes been inclined to assign the first
part of Henry VI. to Greene. But those who are far more conversant with
the style of our dramatists do not suggest this; and we are evidently
ignorant of many names, which might have ranked not discreditably by the
side of these tragedians. The first part, however, of Henry VI. is, in
some passages, not unworthy of Shakspeare’s earlier days, nor, in my
judgment, unlike his style; nor in fact do I know any one of his
contemporaries who could have written the scene in the Temple Garden.
The light touches of his pencil have ever been still more inimitable, if
possible, than its more elaborate strokes.[1287]
[1285] “Green in facility of expression and in the flow of his blank
verse is not to be placed below his contemporary Peele. His usual
fault, more discoverable in his plays than in his poems, is an
absence of simplicity; but his pedantic classical references,
frequently without either taste or discretion, he had in common
with the other scribbling scholars of the time. It was Shakspeare’s
good fortune to be in a great degree without the knowledge, and
therefore, if on no other account, without the defect.” Collier,
iii. 153. Tieck gives him credit for “a happy talent, a clear
spirit, and a lively imagination, which characterise all his
writings.” Collier iii. 148.
[1286] Mr. Collier says, iii. 146, Greene may possibly have had a hand
in the True History of Richard Duke of York. But why possibly? when
he claims it, if not in express words, yet so as to leave no doubt
of his meaning. See the note in p. 377.
In a poem written on Greene in 1594, are these lines:--
Green is the pleasing object of an eye;
Greene pleased the eyes of all that looked upon him:
Green is the ground of every painter’s die;
Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him:
Nay more, the men that so eclipsed his fame,
Purloined his plumes, can they deny the same?
This seems an allusion to Greene’s own metaphor, and must be taken
for a covert attack on Shakspeare, who had by this time pretty well
eclipsed the fame of Greene.
[1287] “These three gifted men (Peele, Greene, and Marlowe), says their
late editor, Mr. Dyce (Peele’s Works, preface xxxv.), though they
often present to us pictures that in design and colouring outrage
the truth of nature, are the earliest of our tragic writers who
exhibit any just delineation of the workings of passion; and their
language, though now swelling into bombast, and now sinking into
meanness, is generally rich with poetry, while their versification,
though somewhat monotonous, is almost always flowing and
harmonious. They as much excel their immediate predecessors as they
are themselves excelled by Shakspeare.” Not quite as much.
|Other writers of this age.|
|Heywood’s Woman killed with Kindness.|
33. We can hardly afford time to dwell on several other writers anterior
to Shakspeare. Kyd, whom Mr. Collier places, as a writer of blank verse,
next to Marlowe,[1288] Lodge,[1289] Lily, Nash, Hughes, and a few more,
have all some degree of merit. Nor do the anonymous tragedies, some of
which were formerly ascribed to Shakspeare, and which even Schlegel,
with less acuteness of criticism than is usual with him, has deemed
genuine, always want a forcible delineation of passion, and a vigorous
strain of verse, though not kept up for many lines. Among these are
specimens of the domestic species of tragic drama, drawn probably from
real occurrences, such as Arden of Feversham and the Yorkshire Tragedy,
the former of which, especially, has very considerable merit. Its
author, I believe has not been conjectured; but it may be referred to
the last decade of the century.[1290] Another play of the same kind, A
Woman killed with Kindness, bears the date of 1600, and is the earliest
production of a fertile dramatist, Thomas Heywood. The language is not
much raised above that of comedy, but we can hardly rank a tale of
guilt, sorrow, and death, in that dramatic category. It may be read with
interest and approbation at this day, being quite free from extravagance
either in manner or language, the besetting sin of our earlier
dramatists, and equally so from buffoonery. The subject resembles that
of Kotzebue’s drama, the Stranger, but is managed with a nobler
tone of morality. It is true that Mrs. Frankfort’s immediate surrender
to her seducer, like that of Beaumelé in the Fatal Dowry, makes her
contemptible; but this, though it might possibly have originated in the
necessity created by the narrow limits of theatrical time, has the good
effect of preventing that sympathy with her guilt, which is reserved for
her penitence.
[1288] Collier, iii. 207. Kyd is author of Jeronymo, and of the
“Spanish Tragedy,” a continuation of the same story. Shakspeare has
selected some of their absurdities for ridicule, and has left an
abundant harvest for the reader. Parts of the Spanish Tragedy, Mr.
C. thinks, “are in the highest degree pathetic and interesting.”
This perhaps may be admitted, but Kyd is not, upon the whole, a
pleasing dramatist.
[1289] Lodge, one of the best poets of the age, was concerned, jointly
with Greene, in the Looking Glass for London. In this strange
performance the prophet Hosea is brought to Nineveh, and the
dramatis personæ, as far as they are serious, belong to that city:
but all the farcical part relates to London. Of Lodge Mr. C. says,
that he is “second to Kyd in vigour and boldness of conception, but
as a drawer of character, so essential a part of dramatic poetry,
he unquestionably has the advantage,” iii. 214.
[1290] The murder of Arden of Feversham occurred under Edward VI., but
the play was published in 1592. The impression made by the story
must have been deep to produce a tragedy so long afterwards. It is
said by Mr. Collier, that Professor Tieck has inclined to think
Arden of Feversham a genuine work of Shakspeare. I cannot but
venture to suspect that, if this distinguished critic were a
native, he would discern such differences of style, as render this
hypothesis improbable. The speeches in Arden of Feversham have
spirit and feeling, but there is none of that wit, that fertility
of analogical imagery, which the worst plays of Shakspeare display.
The language is also more plain and perspicuous than we ever find
in him, especially on a subject so full of passion. Mr. Collier
discerns the hand of Shakspeare in the Yorkshire Tragedy, and
thinks that “there are some speeches which could scarcely have
proceeded from any other pen,” Collier, iii. 51. It was printed
with his name in 1608; but this, which would be thought good
evidence in most cases, must not be held sufficient. It is
impossible to explain the grounds of internal persuasion in these
nice questions of æsthetic criticism, but I cannot perceive the
hand of Shakspeare in any of the anonymous tragedies.
|William Shakspeare.|
34. Of William Shakspeare,[1291] whom, through the mouths of those whom
he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we
seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we
scarcely know anything. We see him, so far as we do see him, not in
himself, but in a reflex image from the objectivity in which he was
manifested; he is Falstaff, and Mercutio, and Malvolio, and Jaques, and
Portia, and Imogen, and Lear, and Othello; but to us he is scarcely a
determined person, a substantial reality of past time, the man
Shakspeare. The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more than
names. If we are not yet come to question his unity, as we do that of
“the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” an improvement in critical
acuteness doubtless reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel
the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was
afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his
native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear, as we
can give a distinct historic personality to Homer. All that insatiable
curiosity and unwearied diligence have hitherto detected about
Shakspeare serves rather to disappoint and perplex us, than to furnish
the slightest illustration of his character. It is not the register of
his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthography of his name
that we seek. No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation,
no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary can be
produced.
[1291] Though I shall not innovate in a work of this kind, not
particularly relating to Shakspeare, I must observe, that Sir
Frederic Madden has offered very specious reasons (in the
Archæologia, vol. xxvi.), for believing that the poet and his
family spelt their name _Shakspere_, and that there are, at
least, no exceptions in his own autographs, as has commonly been
supposed. A copy of Florio’s translation of Montaigne, a book which
he had certainly read (see Malone’s note on Tempest, act ii. scene
1), has been lately discovered with the name _W. Shakspere_
clearly written in it, and there seems no reason to doubt that it
is a genuine signature. This book has, very properly, been placed
in the British Museum, among the choice κειμηλια [keimêlia] of that
repository.
|His first writings for the stage.|
35. It is generally supposed that he settled in London about 1587, being
then twenty-three years old. For some time afterwards we cannot trace
him distinctly. Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, he describes in his
dedication to Lord Southampton, as “the first heir of his invention.” It
is however certain that it must have been written some years before,
unless we take these words in a peculiar sense, for Greene, in his
Groat’sworth of Wit, 1592, alludes, as we have seen, to Shakspeare as
already known among dramatic authors. It appears by this passage, that
he had converted the two plays on the wars of York and Lancaster into
what we read as the second and third parts of Henry VI. What share he
may have had in similar repairs of the many plays then represented,
cannot be determined. It is generally believed that he had much to do
with the tragedy of Pericles, which is now printed among his works, and
which external testimony, though we should not rely too much on that as
to Shakspeare, has assigned to him; but the play is full of evident
marks of an inferior hand.[1292] Its date is unknown; Drake supposes it
to have been his earliest work, rather from its inferiority than on any
other ground. Titus Andronicus is now by common consent denied
to be, in any sense, a production of Shakspeare; very few passages, I
should think not one, resemble his manner.[1293]
[1292] Malone, in a dissertation on the tragedy of Pericles, maintained
that it was altogether an early work of Shakspeare. Stevens
contended that it was a production of some older poet, improved by
him; and Malone had the candour to own that he had been wrong. The
opinion of Stevens is now general. Drake gives the last three acts,
and part of the former, to Shakspeare; but I can hardly think his
share is by any means so large.
[1293] Notwithstanding this internal evidence, Meres, so early as 1598,
enumerates Titus Andronicus among the plays of Shakspeare, and
mentions no other but what is genuine. Drake, ii. 287. But, in
criticism of all kinds, we must acquire a dogged habit of resisting
testimony, when _res ipsa per se vociferatur_ to the contrary.
|Comedy of Errors.|
36. The Comedy of Errors may be presumed by an allusion it contains to
have been written before the submission of Paris to Henry IV. in 1594,
which nearly put an end to the civil war.[1294] It is founded on a very
popular subject. This furnishes two extant comedies of Plautus, a
translation from one of which, the Menœchmi, was represented in Italy
earlier than any other play. It had been already, as Mr. Collier thinks,
brought upon the stage in England; and another play, later than the
Comedy of Errors, has been reprinted by Stevens. Shakspeare himself was
so well pleased with the idea that he has returned to it in Twelfth
Night. Notwithstanding the opportunity which these mistakes of identity
furnish for ludicrous situations and for carrying on a complex plot,
they are not very well adapted to dramatic effect, not only from the
manifest difficulty of finding performers quite alike, but because, were
this overcome, the audience must be in as great embarrassment as the
represented characters themselves. In the Comedy of Errors there are
only a few passages of a poetical vein, yet such perhaps as no other
living dramatist could have written; but the story is well invented and
well managed; the confusion of persons does not cease to amuse; the
dialogue is easy and gay beyond what had been hitherto heard on the
stage; there is little buffoonery in the wit, and no absurdity in the
circumstances.
[1294] Act iii. scene 2. Some have judged the play from this passage
to be as early as 1591, but on precarious grounds.
|Two Gentlemen of Verona.|
37. The Two Gentlemen of Verona ranks above the Comedy of Errors, though
still in the third class of Shakspeare’s plays. It was probably the
first English comedy in which characters are drawn from social life, at
once ideal and true; the cavaliers of Verona and their lady-loves are
graceful personages, with no transgression of the probabilities of
nature; but they are not exactly the real men and women of the same rank
in England. The imagination of Shakspeare must have been guided by some
familiarity with romances before it struck out this play. It contains
some very poetical lines. Though these two plays could not give the
slightest suspicion of the depth of thought which Lear and Macbeth were
to display, it was already evident that the names of Greene, and even
Marlowe, would be eclipsed without any necessity for purloining their
plumes.
|Love’s Labour Lost.|
|Taming of the Shrew.|
38. Love’s Labour Lost is generally placed, I believe, at the bottom of
the list. There is indeed little interest in the fable, if we can say
that there is any fable at all; but there are beautiful coruscations of
fancy, more original conception of character than in the Comedy of
Errors, more lively humour than in the Gentlemen of Verona, more
symptoms of Shakspeare’s future powers as a comic writer than in either.
Much that is here but imperfectly developed came forth again in his
later plays, especially in As you Like it, and Much Ado about Nothing.
The Taming of the Shrew is the only play, except Henry VI., in which
Shakspeare has been very largely a borrower. The best parts are
certainly his, but it must be confessed, that several passages, for
which we give him credit, and which are very amusing, belong to his
unknown predecessor. The original play, reprinted by Stevens, was
published in 1594.[1295] I do not find so much genius in the Taming of
the Shrew as in Love’s Labour Lost; but, as an entire play, it is much
more complete.
[1295] Mr. Collier thinks that Shakspeare had nothing to do with any
of the scenes where Katherine and Petruchio are not introduced. The
underplot resembles, he says, the style of Haughton, author of a
comedy called Englishmen for my Money, iii. 78.
|Midsummer Night’s Dream.|
39. The beautiful play of Midsummer Night’s Dream is placed by Malone as
early as 1592; its superiority to those we have already mentioned
affords some presumption that it was written after them. But it
evidently belongs to the earlier period of Shakspeare’s genius; poetical
as we account it, more than dramatic, yet rather so, because the
indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry in this play overpowers
our senses till we can hardly observe anything else, than from any
deficiency of dramatic excellence. For in reality the structure of the
fable, consisting as it does of three if not four actions, very distinct
in their subjects and personages, yet wrought into each other without
effort or confusion, displays the skill, or rather instinctive felicity
of Shakspeare, as much as in any play he has written. No preceding
dramatist had attempted to fabricate a complex plot, for low comic
scenes, interspersed with a serious action upon which they have no
influence, do not merit notice. The Menœchmi of Plautus had been
imitated by others as well as by Shakspeare; but we speak here of
original invention.
|Its machinery.|
40. The Midsummer Night’s Dream is, I believe, altogether original in
one of the most beautiful conceptions that ever visited the mind of a
poet, the fairy machinery. A few before him had dealt in a vulgar and
clumsy manner with popular superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent,
invisible population of the air and earth, long since established in the
creed of childhood, and of those simple as children, had never for a
moment been blended with “human mortals” among the personages of the
drama. Lily’s Maid’s Metamorphosis is probably later than this play of
Shakspeare, and was not published till 1600.[1296] It is unnecessary to
observe that the fairies of Spenser, as he has dealt with them, are
wholly of a different race.
[1296] Collier, iii. 185. Lily had, however, brought fairies, without
making them speak, into some of his earlier plays. Ibid.
|Its language.|
41. The language of Midsummer Night’s Dream is equally novel with the
machinery. It sparkles in perpetual brightness with all the hues of the
rainbow; yet there is nothing overcharged or affectedly ornamented.
Perhaps no play of Shakspeare has fewer blemishes, or is from beginning
to end in so perfect keeping; none in which so few lines could be
erased, or so few expressions blamed. His own peculiar idiom, the dress
of his mind, which began to be discernible in the Two Gentlemen of
Verona, is more frequently manifested in the present play. The
expression is seldom obscure, but it is never in poetry, and hardly in
prose, the expression of other dramatists, and far less of the people.
And here, without reviving the debated question of Shakspeare’s
learning, I must venture to think, that he possessed rather more
acquaintance with the Latin language than many believe. The phrases,
unintelligible and improper, except in the sense of their primitive
roots, which occur so copiously in his plays, seem to be unaccountable
on the supposition of absolute ignorance. In the Midsummer Night’s
Dream, these are much less frequent than in his later dramas. But here
we find several instances. Thus, “things base and vile, holding no
_quantity_,” for value; rivers, that “have overborn their
_continents_,” the _continente ripa_ of Horace; “_compact_ of
imagination;” “something of great _constancy_,” for consistency; “sweet
Pyramus _translated_ there;” “the law of Athens, which by no means we
may _extenuate_.” I have considerable doubts whether any of these
expressions would be found in the contemporary prose of Elizabeth’s
reign, which was less overrun by pedantry than that of her successor;
but, could authority be produced for Latinisms so forced, it is still
not very likely that one, who did not understand their proper meaning,
would have introduced them into poetry. It would be a weak answer that
we do not detect in Shakspeare any imitations of the Latin poets. His
knowledge of the language may have been chiefly derived, like that of
schoolboys, from the dictionary, and insufficient for the thorough
appreciation of their beauties. But, if we should believe him well
acquainted with Virgil or Ovid, it would be by no means surprising that
his learning does not display itself in imitation. Shakspeare seems now
and then to have a tinge on his imagination from former passages; but he
never designedly imitates, though, as we have seen, he has sometimes
adopted. The streams of invention flowed too fast from his own mind to
leave him time to accommodate the words of a foreign language to our
own. He knew that to create would be easier, and pleasanter, and
better.[1297]
[1297] The celebrated essay by Farmer on the learning of Shakspeare,
put an end to such notions as we find in Warburton and many of the
older commentators, that he had imitated Sophocles, and I know not
how many Greek authors. Those indeed who agree with what I have
said in a former chapter as to the state of learning under
Elizabeth, will not think it probable that Shakspeare could have
acquired any knowledge of Greek. It was not a part of such
education as he received. The case of Latin is different: we know
that he was at a grammar school, and could hardly have spent two or
three years there without bringing away a certain portion of the
language.
|Romeo and Juliet.|
42. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is referred by Malone to the year
1596. Were I to judge by internal evidence, I should be inclined to date
this play before the Midsummer Night’s Dream; the great frequency of
rhymes, the comparative absence of Latinisms, the want of that
thoughtful philosophy, which, when it had once germinated in
Shakspeare’s mind, never ceased to display itself, and several of the
faults that juvenility may best explain and excuse, would justify this
inference.
|Its plot.|
43. In one of the Italian novels to which Shakspeare had frequently
recourse for his fable, he had the good fortune to meet with this simple
and pathetic subject. What he found he has arranged with great skill.
The incidents in Romeo and Juliet are rapid, various, unintermitting in
interest, sufficiently probable, and tending to the catastrophe. The
most regular dramatist has hardly excelled one writing for an infant and
barbarian stage. It is certain that the observation of the unity of
time, which we find in this tragedy, unfashionable as the name of unity
has become in our criticism, gives an intenseness of interest to the
story, which is often diluted and dispersed in a dramatic history. No
play of Shakspeare is more frequently represented, or honoured with more
tears.
|Its beauties and blemishes.|
44. If from this praise of the fable we pass to other considerations, it
will be more necessary to modify our eulogies. It has been said above of
the Midsummer Night’s Dream, that none of Shakspeare’s plays have fewer
blemishes. We can by no means repeat this commendation of Romeo and
Juliet. It may be said rather that few, if any, are more open to
reasonable censure; and we are almost equally struck by its excellencies
and its defects.
45. Madame de Stael has truly remarked, that in Romeo and Juliet we
have, more than in any other tragedy, the mere passion of love; love, in
all its vernal promise, full of hope and innocence, ardent beyond all
restraint of reason, but tender as it is warm. The contrast between this
impetuosity of delirious joy, in which the youthful lovers are first
displayed, and the horrors of the last scene, throws a charm of deep
melancholy over the whole. Once alone each of them, in these earlier
moments, is touched by a presaging fear; it passes quickly away from
them, but is not lost on the reader. To him there is a sound of despair
in the wild effusions of their hope, and the madness of grief is mingled
with the intoxication of their joy. And hence it is that, notwithstanding
its many blemishes, we all read and witness this tragedy with delight.
It is a symbolic mirror of the fearful realities of life, where “the
course of true love,” has so often “not run smooth,” and moments of as
fond illusion as beguiled the lovers of Verona have been exchanged,
perhaps as rapidly, not indeed for the dagger and the bowl, but for the
many-headed sorrows and sufferings of humanity.
|The characters.|
46. The character of Romeo is one of excessive tenderness. His first
passion for Rosaline, which no vulgar poet would have brought forward,
serves to display a constitutional susceptibility. There is indeed so
much of this in his deportment and language, that we might be in some
danger of mistaking it for effeminacy, if the loss of his friend had not
aroused his courage. It seems to have been necessary to keep down a
little the other characters, that they might not overpower the principal
one; and though we can by no means agree with Dryden, that if Shakspeare
had not killed Mercutio, Mercutio would have killed him, there might
have been some danger of his killing Romeo. His brilliant vivacity shows
the softness of the other a little to a disadvantage. Juliet is a child,
whose intoxication in loving and being loved whirls away the little
reason she may have possessed. It is however impossible, in my opinion,
to place her among the great female characters of Shakspeare’s creation.
|The language.|
47. Of the language of this tragedy what shall we say? It contains
passages that every one remembers, that are among the nobler efforts of
Shakspeare’s poetry, and many short and beautiful touches of his
proverbial sweetness. Yet, on the other hand, the faults are in
prodigious number. The conceits, the phrases that jar on the mind’s ear,
if I may use such an expression, and interfere with the very emotion the
poet would excite, occur at least in the first three acts without
intermission. It seems to have formed part of his conception of this
youthful and ardent pair, that they should talk irrationally. The
extravagance of their fancy, however, not only forgets reason, but
wastes itself in frigid metaphors and incongruous conceptions; the tone
of Romeo is that of the most bombastic commonplace of gallantry, and the
young lady differs only in being one degree more mad. The voice of
virgin love has been counterfeited by the authors of many fictions: I
know none who have thought the style of Juliet would represent it. Nor
is this confined to the happier moments of their intercourse. False
thoughts and misplaced phrases deform the whole of the third act. It may
be added that, if not dramatic propriety, at least the interest of the
character, is affected by some of Juliet’s allusions. She seems indeed
to have profited by the lessons and language of her venerable
guardian; and those who adopt the edifying principle of deducing a moral
from all they read, may suppose that Shakspeare intended covertly to
warn parents against the contaminating influence of such domestics.
These censures apply chiefly to the first three acts; as the shadows
deepen over the scene, the language assumes a tone more proportionate to
the interest; many speeches are exquisitely beautiful; yet the tendency
to quibbles is never wholly eradicated.
|Second period of Shakspeare.|
48. The plays we have hitherto mentioned, to which one or two more might
be added, belong to the earlier class, or, as we might say, to his first
manner. In the second period of his dramatic life, we should place his
historical plays, and such others as were written before the end of the
century or perhaps before the death of Elizabeth. The Merchant of
Venice, As You Like It, and Much Ado about Nothing, are among these. The
versification in these is more studied, the pauses more artificially
disposed, the rhymes, though not quite abandoned, become less frequent,
the language is more vigorous and elevated, the principal characters are
more strongly marked, more distinctly conceived, and framed on a deeper
insight into mankind. Nothing in the earlier plays can be compared, in
this respect, with the two Richards, or Shylock, or Falstaff, or
Hotspur.
|The historical plays.|
49. Many attempts had been made to dramatise the English chronicles, but
with the single exception of Marlowe’s Edward II., so unsuccessfully,
that Shakspeare may be considered as almost an original occupant of the
field. He followed historical truth with considerable exactness; and, in
some of his plays, as in that of Richard II., and generally in Richard
III. and Henry VIII., admitted no imaginary personages, nor any scenes
of amusement. The historical plays have had a great effect on
Shakspeare’s popularity. They have identified him with English feelings
in English hearts, and are very frequently read more in childhood, and
consequently better remembered than some of his superior dramas. And
these dramatic chronicles borrowed surprising liveliness and probability
from the national character and form of government. A prince, and a
courtier, and a slave are the stuff on which the historic dramatist
would have to work in some countries; but every class of freemen, in the
just subordination, without which neither human society, nor the stage,
which should be its mirror, can be more than a chaos of huddled units,
lay open to the selection of Shakspeare. What he invented is as truly
English, as truly historical, in the large sense of moral history, as
what he read.
|Merchant of Venice.|
50. The Merchant of Venice is generally esteemed the best of
Shakspeare’s comedies. This excellent play is referred to the year
1597.[1298] In the management of the plot, which is sufficiently complex
without the slightest confusion or incoherence, I do not conceive that
it has been surpassed in the annals of any theatre. Yet there are those
who still affect to speak of Shakspeare as a barbarian; and others who,
giving what they think due credit to his genius, deny him all judgment
and dramatic taste. A comparison of his works with those of his
contemporaries, and it is surely to them that we should look, will prove
that his judgment is by no means the least of his rare qualities. This
is not so remarkable in the mere construction of his fable, though the
present comedy is absolutely perfect in that point of view, and several
others are excellently managed, as in the general keeping of the
characters, and the choice of incidents. If Shakspeare is sometimes
extravagant, the Marstons and Middletons are seldom otherwise. The
variety of characters in the Merchant of Venice, and the powerful
delineation of those upon whom the interest chiefly depends, the
effectiveness of many scenes in representation, the copiousness of the
wit, and the beauty of the language, it would be superfluous to extol;
nor is it our office to repeat a tale so often told as the praise of
Shakspeare. In the language there is the commencement of a metaphysical
obscurity which soon became characteristic; but it is perhaps less
observable than in any later play.
[1298] Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, or Wit’s Treasury, 1598, has a
passage of some value in determining the age of Shakspeare’s plays,
both by what it contains, and by what it omits. “As Plautus and
Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the
Latins, so Shakspeare among the English is the most excellent in
both kinds for the stage; for comedy witness his Gentlemen of
Verona, his Errors, his Love’s Labour Lost, his Love’s Labour Won
[the original appellation of All’s Well that Ends Well], his
Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy
his Richard II., his Richard III., Henry IV., King John, _Titus
Andronicus_, and his Romeo and Juliet.” Drake, ii. 287.
|As You Like It.|
51. The sweet and sportive temper of Shakspeare, though it never
deserted him, gave way to advancing years, and to the mastering force of
serious thought. What he read we know but very imperfectly; yet, in the
last years of this century, when five and thirty summers had ripened his
genius, it seems that he must have transfused much of the wisdom of past
ages into his own all-combining mind. In several of the historical
plays, in the Merchant of Venice, and especially in As You Like It, the
philosophic eye, turned inward on the mysteries of human nature, is more
and more characteristic; and we might apply to the last comedy the bold
figure that Coleridge has less appropriately employed as to the early
poems, that “the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as
in a war embrace.” In no other play, at least, do we find the bright
imagination and fascinating grace of Shakspeare’s youth so mingled with
the thoughtfulness of his maturer age. This play is referred with
reasonable probability to the year 1600. Few comedies of Shakspeare are
more generally pleasing, and its manifold improbabilities do not much
affect us in perusal. The brave injured Orlando, the sprightly but
modest Rosalind, the faithful Adam, the reflecting Jaques, the serene
and magnanimous Duke, interest us by turns, though the play is not so
well managed as to condense our sympathy, and direct it to the
conclusion.
|Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour.|
52. The comic scenes of Shakspeare had generally been drawn from novels,
and laid in foreign lands. But several of our earliest plays, as has
been partly seen, delineate the prevailing manners of English life. None
had acquired a reputation which endured beyond their own time till Ben
Jonson in 1596 produced, at the age of twenty-two, his first comedy,
Every Man in His Humour; an extraordinary monument of early genius, in
what is seldom the possession of youth, a clear and unerring description
of human character, various, and not extravagant beyond the necessities
of the stage. He had learned the principles of comedy no doubt, from
Plautus and Terence; for they were not to be derived from the moderns at
home or abroad; but he could not draw from them the application of
living passions and manners; and it would be no less unfair, as Gifford
has justly observed, to make Bobadil a copy of Thraso, than to deny the
dramatic originality of Kitely.
53. Every Man in his Humour is perhaps the earliest of European domestic
comedies that deserves to be remembered; for the Mandragola of Machiavel
shrinks to a mere farce in comparison.[1299] A much greater master of
comic powers than Jonson was indeed his contemporary, and, as he perhaps
fancied, his rival; but for some reason, Shakspeare had never yet drawn
his story from the domestic life of his countrymen. Jonson avoided the
common defect of the Italian and Spanish theatre, the sacrifice of all
other dramatic objects to one only, a rapid and amusing succession of
incidents; his plot is slight and of no great complexity; but his
excellence is to be found in the variety of his characters, and in their
individuality very clearly defined with little extravagance.
[1299] This would not have been approved by a modern literary
historian. Quelle etait, avant que Molière parût et même de son
temps, la comedie moderne comparable à la Calandria, à la
Mandragore, aux meilleures pieces de l’Arioste, à celles de
l’Aretin, du Cecchi, du Lasca, du Bentivoglio, de Francesco
d’Ambra, et de tant d’Autres? Ginguéné, vi. 316. This comes of
deciding before we know anything of the facts. Ginguéné might
possibly be able to read English, but certainly had no sort of
acquaintance with the English theatre. I should have no hesitation
in replying that we could produce at least forty comedies, before
the age of Molière, superior to the best of those he has mentioned,
and perhaps three times that number as good as the worst.
CHAPTER XVI.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
SECT. I.
_Style of best Italian Writers--Those of France--England._
|Italian writers.|
|Casa.|
|Tasso.|
1. I am not aware that we can make any great distinction in the
character of the Italian writers of this and the preceding period,
though they are more numerous in the present. Some of these have been
already mentioned on account of their subjects. In point of style, to
which we now chiefly confine ourselves, Casa is esteemed among the
best.[1300] The Galateo is certainly diffuse, but not so languid as some
contemporary works; nor do we find in it, I think, so many of
the inversions which are common blemishes in the writings of this age.
The prose of Tasso is placed by Corniani almost on a level with his
poetry for beauty of diction. “We find in it,” he says, “dignity,
rhythm, elegance, and purity without affectation, and perspicuity
without vulgarity. He is never trifling or verbose, like his
contemporaries of that century; but endeavours to fill every part of his
discourses with meaning.”[1301] These praises may be just, but there is
a tediousness in the moral essays of Tasso, which, like most other
productions of that class, assert what the reader has never seen denied,
and distinguish what he is in no danger of confounding.
[1300] Corniani, v. 174. Parini called the Galateo, Capo d’opera di
nostra lingua.
[1301] Corniani, vi. 240.
|Firenzuola. Character of Italian prose.|
2. Few Italian writers, it is said by the editors of the voluminous
Milan collection, have united equally with Firenzuola the most simple
naïveté to a delicate sweetness, that diffuses itself over the heart of
the reader. His dialogue on the Beauty of Women is reckoned one of the
best of his works. It is diffuse, but seems to deserve the praise
bestowed upon its language. His translation of the Golden Ass of
Apuleius is read with more pleasure than the original. The usual style
of Italian prose in this, accounted by some its best age, is elaborate,
ornate, yet not to excess, with a rhythmical structure apparently much
studied, very rhetorical and for the most part trivial, as we should now
think, in its matter. The style of Machiavel, to which, perhaps the
reader’s attention was not sufficiently called while we were concerned
with his political philosophy, is eminent for simplicity, strength, and
clearness. It would not be too much to place him at the head of the
prose writers of Italy. But very few had the good taste to emulate so
admirable a model. “They were apt to presume,” says Corniani, “that the
spirit of good waiting consisted in the artificial employment of
rhetorical figures. They hoped to fertilize the soil barren of argument
by such resources. They believed that they should become eloquent by
accumulating words upon words, and phrases upon phrases, hunting on
every side for metaphors, and exaggerating the most trifling theme by
frigid hyperboles.”[1302]
[1302] Corniani, vi. 52.
|Italian letter-writers.|
3. A treatise on Painting, by Raffaelle Borghino, published in 1584,
called Il Riposo, is highly praised for its style by the Milan editors;
but it is difficult for a foreigner to judge so correctly of these
delicacies of language, as he may of the general merits of composition.
They took infinite pains with their letters, great numbers of which have
been collected. Those of Annibal Caro are among the best known;[1303]
but Pietro Aretino, Paolo Manuzio, and Bonfadio are also celebrated for
their style. The appearance of labour and affectation is still less
pleasing in epistolary correspondence than in writings more evidently
designed for the public eye; and there will be found abundance of it in
these Italian writers, especially in addressing their superiors. Cicero
was a model perpetually before their eyes, and whose faults they did not
perceive. Yet perhaps the Italian writings of this period, with their
flowing grace, are more agreeable than the sententious antitheses of the
Spaniards. Both are artificial, but the efforts of the one are bestowed
on diction and cadence, those of the other display a constant strain to
be emphatic and profound. What Cicero was to Italy, Seneca became to
Spain.
[1303] It is of no relevancy to the history of literature, but in one
of Caro’s letters to Bernardo Tasso about 1544, he censures the
innovation of using the third person in addressing a correspondent.
Tutto questo secolo (dice Monsignor de la Casa) è adulatore; ognuno
che scrive dà de le signorie; ognuno, a chi si scrive, le vuole; e
non pure i grandi, ma i mezzani e i plebei quasi aspirano a questi
gran nomi, e si tengono anco per affronto, se non gli hanno, e
d’errore son notati quelli, che non gli danno. Cosa, che a me pare
stranissima e stomachosa, che habbiamo a parlar con uno, come se
fosse un altro, e tutta via in astratto, quasi con la idea di
colui, con chi si parla, non con la persona sua propria. Pure
l’abuso è gia fatto, ed è generale, &c., lib. i. p. 122. (edit.
1581.) I have found the third person used as early as a letter of
Paolo Manuzio to Castlevetro in 1543; but where there was any
intimacy with an equal rank, it is not much employed; nor is it
always found in that age in letters to men of very high rank from
their inferiors.
|Davanzati’s Tacitus.|
4. An exception to the general character of diffuseness is found in the
well-known translation of Tacitus by Davanzati. This, it has often been
said, he has accomplished in fewer words than the original. No one, as
in the story of the fish, which was said to weigh less in water than out
of it, inquires into the truth of what is confidently said, even where
it is obviously impossible. But whoever knows the Latin and Italian
languages must know that a translation of Tacitus into Italian cannot be
made in fewer words. It will be found, as might be expected, that
Davanzati has succeeded by leaving out as much as was required to
compensate the difference that articles and auxiliary verbs made against
him. His translation is also censured by Corniani,[1304] as full of
obsolete terms and Florentine vulgarisms.
[1304] vi. 58.
|Jordano Bruno.|
5. We can place under no better head than the present, much of that
lighter literature which, without taking the form of romance, endeavours
to amuse the reader by fanciful invention and gay remark. The Italians
have much of this; but it is beyond our province to enumerate
productions of no great merit or renown. Jordano Bruno’s celebrated
Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante is one of this class. Another of Bruno’s
light pieces is entitled, La Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, con l’Aggiunta
del’Asino Cillenico. This has more profaneness in it than the Spaccio
della Bestia. The latter, as is well known, was dedicated to Sir Philip
Sydney; as was also another little piece, Gli Eroici Furori. In this he
has a sonnet addressed to the English ladies: “Dell’Inghilterra o Vaghe
Ninfe e Belle;” but ending, of course, with a compliment, somewhat at
the expense of these beauties, to “l’unica Diana Qual’è trà voi quel,
che tra gl’astri il sole.” It had been well for Bruno if he had kept
himself under the protection of Diana. The “chaste beams of that watery
moon” were less scorching than the fires of the Inquisition.
|French writers. Amyot.|
6. The French generally date the beginning of an easy and natural style
in their own language from the publication of James Amyot’s translation
of Plutarch in 1559. Some earlier writers, however, have been mentioned
in another place, and perhaps some might have been added. The French
style of the sixteenth century is for the most part diffuse, endless in
its periods, and consequently negligent of grammar; but it was even then
lively and unaffected, especially in narration, the memoirs of that age
being still read with pleasure. Amyot, according to some, knew Greek but
indifferently, and was perhaps on that account a better model of his own
language; but if he did not always render the meaning of Plutarch, he
has made Plutarch’s reputation, and that, in some measure, of those who
have taken Plutarch for their guide. It is well known how popular, more
perhaps than any other ancient, this historian and moralist has been in
France; but it is through Amyot that he has been read. The style of his
translator, abounding with the native idiom, and yet enriching the
language, not at that time quite copious enough for its high vocation in
literature, with many words which usage and authority have recognised,
has always been regarded with admiration, and by some, in the prevalence
of a less natural taste, with regret. It is in French prose what that of
Marot is in poetry, and suggests, not an uncultivated simplicity, but
the natural grace of a young person, secure of appearing to advantage,
but not at bottom indifferent to doing so. This naïveté, a word which,
as we have neither naturalised nor translated it, I must adopt, has ever
since been the charm of good writing in France. It is, above all, the
characteristic of one who may justly be called the disciple of Amyot,
and who extols him above all other writers in the language--Montaigne.
The fascination of Montaigne’s manner is acknowledged by all who read
him; and with a worse style, or one less individually adapted to his
character, he would never have been the favourite of the world.[1305]
[1305] See the articles on Amyot in Baillet, iv. 428, Bayle, La Harpe.
Biogr. Universelle. Préface aux Œuvres de Pascal, par Neufchateau.
|Montaigne; Du Vair.|
7. In the essays of Montaigne a few passages occur of striking, though
simple eloquence. But it must be admitted that the familiar idiomatic
tone of Amyot was better fitted to please than to awe, to soothe the
mind than to excite it, to charm away the cares of the moment than to
impart a durable emotion. It was also so remote from the grand style
which the writings of Cicero and the precepts of rhetoric had taught the
learned world to admire, that we cannot wonder to find some who sought
to model their French by a different standard. The only one of these, so
far as I am aware, that falls within the sixteenth century is Du Vair, a
man not less distinguished in public life than in literature, having
twice held the great seals of France under Louis XIII. “He composed,”
says a modern writer, “many works, in which he endeavoured to be
eloquent; but he fell into the error, at that time so common, of too
much wishing to Latinise our mother tongue. He has been charged with
fabricating words, such as sponsion, cogitation, contumélie, dilucidite,
contemnement, &c.”[1306] Notwithstanding these instances of bad
taste which, when collected, seem more monstrous than as they are
dispersed in his writings, Du Vair is not devoid of a flowing eloquence,
which, whether perfectly congenial to the spirit of the language or not,
has never wanted its imitators and admirers, and those very successful
and brilliant, in French literature.[1307] It was of course the manner
of the bar and of the pulpit after the pulpit laid aside its buffoonery,
far more than that of Amyot and Montaigne.
[1306] Neufchateau, in Préface à Pascal, p. 181. Bouterwek, v. 326,
praises Du Vair, but he does not seem a favourite with his
compatriot critics.
[1307] Du Vair’s Essay de la Constance et Consolations ès Malheurs
Publiques, of which the first edition is in 1594, furnishes some
eloquent declamation in a style unlike that of Amyot. Repassez en
votre memorie l’histoire de toute l’antiquité; et quand vous
trouverez un magistrat qui aura eu grand credit envers un peuple,
ou auprès d’un prince, et qui se sera voulu comporter
vertueusement, dites hardiment; Je gage que cestui-ci a été banni,
que cestui-ci a été tué, qui cestui-ci a été empoisonné. A Athènes,
Aristidès, Themistoclès, et Phocion; à Rome infinis desquels je
laisse les noms pour n’emplir le papier, me contentant de Camille,
Scipion, et Ciceron pour l’antiquité, de Papinien pour les temps
des empereurs Romains, et de Boece sous les Gots. Mais pourquoi le
prenons nous si haut. Qui avons nous vu de notre siècle tenir les
sceaux de France, qui n’ait été mis en cette charge, pour en être
dejetté avec contumelie? Celui qui auroit vu M. le Chancelier
Olivier, ou M. le Chancelier de l’Hospital, partir de la cour pour
se retirer en leurs maisons, n’auroit jamais envié de tels
honneurs, ni de tels charges. Imaginez vous ces braves et
venerables vieillards, esquels reluisoient toutes sortes de vertus,
et esquels entre une infinité de grandes parties vous n’cussiez sçu
que choisir, remplis d’erudition, consommez ès affaires, amateurs,
de leur patrie, vraiment dignes de telles charges, si le siècle
eust été digne d’eux. Apres avoir longuement et fidèlement servis
la patrie, on leur dresse des querelles d’Allemans, et de fausses
accusations pour les bannir des affaires, on plutot pour en priver
les affaires; comme un navire agité de la conduite de si sages et
experts pilotes, afin de le faire plus aisément briser, p. 76
(edit. 1604.)
|Satire Menippée.|
8. It is not in my power to communicate much information as to the minor
literature of France. One book may be named as being familiarly known,
the Satire Menippée. The first edition bears the date of 1593, but is
said not to have appeared till 1594, containing some allusions to events
of that year. It is a ridicule on the proceedings of the League, who
were then masters of Paris, and has commonly been ascribed to Leroy,
canon of Rouen, though Passerat, Pithou, Rapin, and others, are said to
have had some share in it. This book is historically curious, but I do
not perceive that it displays any remarkable degree of humour or
invention. The truth appears so much throughout, that it cannot be
ranked among works of fiction.[1308]
[1308] Biog. Univ. Vigneul-Marville, i. 197.
|English writers.|
|Ascham.|
9. In the scanty and obscure productions of the English press under
Edward and Mary, or in the early years of Elizabeth, we should search, I
conceive, in vain for any elegance or eloquence in writing. Yet there is
an increasing expertness and fluency, and the language insensibly
rejecting obsolete forms, the manner of our writers is less uncouth, and
their sense more pointed and perspicuous than before. Wilson’s Art of
Rhetorique is at least a proof that some knew the merits of a good
style, if they did not yet bring their rules to bear on their own
language. In Wilson’s own manner there is nothing remarkable. The first
book which can be worth naming at all is Ascham’s Schoolmaster,
published in 1570, and probably written some years before. Ascham is
plain and strong in his style, but without grace or warmth; his
sentences have no harmony of structure. He stands, however, as far as I
have seen, above all other writers in the first half of the queen’s
reign. The best of these, like Reginald Scott, express their meaning
well, but with no attempt at a rhythmical structure or figurative
language; they are not bad writers, because their solid sense is aptly
conveyed to the mind; but they are not good, because they have little
selection of words, and give no pleasure by means of Style. Puttenham is
perhaps the first who wrote a well-measured prose; in his Art of English
Poesie, published in 1586, he is elaborate, studious of elevated and
chosen expression, and rather diffuse, in the manner of the Italians of
the sixteenth century, who affected that fulness of style, and whom he
probably meant to imitate. But in these later years of the queen, when
almost every one was eager to be distinguished for sharp wit or ready
learning, the want of good models of writing in our own language gave
rise to some perversion of the public taste. Thoughts and words began to
be valued, not as they were just and natural, but as they were removed
from common apprehension, and most exclusively the original property of
those who employed them. This in poetry showed itself in affected
conceits and in prose led to the pedantry of recondite mythological
allusion, and of a Latinised phraseology.
|Euphues of Lilly.|