THE ENGLISH DRAMA.
Origin of the Drama. Miracle Plays. Moralities. First Comedy. Early
Tragedies. Christopher Marlowe. Other Dramatists. Playwrights and
Morals.
ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA.
To the Elizabethan period also belongs the glory of having produced and
fostered the English drama, itself so marked a teacher of history, not
only in plays professedly historical, but also in the delineations of
national character, the indications of national taste, and the satirical
scourgings of the follies of the day. A few observations are necessary as
to its feeble beginnings. The old Greek drama indeed existed as a model,
especially in the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes;
but until the fall of Constantinople, these were a dead letter to Western
Europe, and when the study of Greek was begun in England, they were only
open to men of the highest education and culture; whereas the drama
designed for the people was to cater in its earlier forms to the rude
tastes and love of the marvellous which are characteristic of an
unlettered people. And, besides, the Roman drama of Plautus and of Terence
was not suited to the comprehension of the multitude, in its form and its
preservation of the unities. To gratify the taste for shows and
excitement, the people already had the high ritual of the Church, but they
demanded something more: the Church itself acceded to this demand, and
dramatized Scripture at once for their amusement and instruction. Thus the
_mysteria_ or _miracle play_ originated, and served a double purpose.
"As in ancient Greece, generations before the rise of the great dramas of
Athens, itinerant companies wandered from village to village, carrying
their stage furniture in their little carts, and acted in their booths and
tents the grand stories of the mythology--so in England the mystery
players haunted the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, taprooms, or
in the farm-house kitchen, played at saints and angels, and transacted on
their petty stage the drama of the Christian faith."[29]
THE MYSTERY, OR MIRACLE PLAY.--The subjects of these dramas were taken
from such Old Testament narratives as the creation, the lives of the
patriarchs, the deluge; or from the crucifixion, and from legends of the
saints: the plays were long, sometimes occupying portions of several days
consecutively, during seasons of religious festival. They were enacted in
monasteries, cathedrals, churches, and church-yards. The _mise en scène_
was on two stages or platforms, on the upper of which were represented the
Persons of the Trinity, and on the lower the personages of earth; while a
yawning cellar, with smoke arising from an unseen fire, represented the
infernal regions. This device is similar in character to the plan of
Dante's poem--Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.
The earliest of these mysteries was performed somewhere about the year
1300, and they held sway until 1600, being, however, slowly supplanted by
the _moralities_, which we shall presently consider. Many of these
_mysteries_ still remain in English, and notices of them may be found in
_Collier's History of Dramatic Poetry_.
A miracle play was performed to celebrate the birth of Philip II. of
Spain. They are still performed in Andalusia, and one written within a few
years for such representation, was enacted at Seville, with great pomp of
scenic effect, in the Holy Week of 1870. Similar scenes are also
witnessed by curious foreigners at the present day in the Ober-Ammergau of
Bavaria. These enable the traveller of to-day to realize the former
history.
To introduce a comic element, the devil was made to appear with horns,
hoof, and tail, to figure with grotesque malignity throughout the play,
and to be reconsigned at the close to his dark abode by the divine power.
MORALITIES.--As the people became enlightened, and especially as religious
knowledge made progress, such childish shows were no longer able to
satisfy them. The drama undertook a higher task of instruction in the form
of what was called a _morality_, or _moral play_. Instead of old stories
reproduced to please the childish fancy of the ignorant, genius invented
scenes and incidents taken indeed from common life, but the characters
were impersonal; they were the ideal virtues, _morality, hope, mercy,
frugality_, and their correlative vices. The _mystery_ had endeavored to
present similitudes; the _moralities_ were of the nature of allegory, and
evinced a decided progress in popular intelligence.
These for a time divided the interest with the mysteries, but eventually
superseded them. The impersonality of the characters enabled the author to
make hits at political circumstances and existent follies with impunity,
as the multitude received advice and reproof addressed to them abstractly,
without feeling a personal sting, and the government would not condescend
to notice such abstractions. The moralities were enacted in court-yards or
palaces, the characters generally being personated by students, or
merchants from the guilds. A great improvement was also made in the length
of the play, which was usually only an hour in performance. The public
taste was so wedded to the devil of the mysteries, that he could not be
given up in the moral plays: he kept his place; but a rival buffoon
appeared in the person of _the vice_, who tried conclusions with the
archfiend in serio-comic style until the close of the performance, when
Satan always carried the vice away in triumph, as he should do.
The moralities retained their place as legitimate drama throughout the
sixteenth century, and indeed after the modern drama appeared. It is
recorded that Queen Elizabeth, in 1601, then an old woman, witnessed one
of these plays, entitled "The Contention between Liberality and
Prodigality." This was written by Lodge and Greene, two of the regular
dramatists, after Ben Jonson had written "Every Man in his Humour," and
while Shakspeare was writing Hamlet. Thus the various progressive forms of
the drama overlapped each other, the older retaining its place until the
younger gained strength to assert its rights and supersede its rival.
THE INTERLUDE.--While the moralities were slowly dying out, another form
of the drama had appeared as a connecting link between them and the
legitimate drama of Shakspeare. This was the _interlude_, a short play, in
which the _dramatis personæ_ were no longer allegorical characters, but
persons in real life, usually, however, not all bearing names even
assumed, but presented as a friar, a curate, a tapster, etc. The chief
characteristic of the interlude was, however, its satire; it was a more
outspoken reformer than the morality, scourged the evils of the age with
greater boldness, and plunged into religious controversy with the zeal of
opposing ecclesiastics. The first and principal writer of these interludes
was John Heywood, a Roman Catholic, who wrote during the reign of Henry
VIII., and, while a professed jester, was a great champion of his Church.
As in all cases of progress, literary and scientific, the lines of
demarcation cannot be very distinctly drawn, but as the morality had
superseded the mystery, and the interlude the morality, so now they were
all to give way before the regular drama. The people were becoming more
educated; the greater spread of classical knowledge had caused the
dramatists to study and assimilate the excellences of Latin and Greek
models; the power of the drama to instruct and refine, as well as to
amuse, was acknowledged, and thus its capability of improvement became
manifest. The forms it then assumed were more permanent, and indeed have
remained almost unchanged down to our own day.
What is called the _first_ comedy in the language cannot be expected to
show a very decided improvement over the last interludes or moralities,
but it bears those distinctive marks which establish its right to the
title.
THE FIRST COMEDY.--This was _Ralph Roister Doister_, which appeared in the
middle of the sixteenth century: (a printed copy of 1551 was discovered in
1818.) Its author was Nicholas Udall, the master of Eton, a clergyman, but
very severe as a pedagogue; an ultra Protestant, who is also accused of
having stolen church plate, which may perhaps mean that he took away from
the altar what he regarded as popish vessels and ornaments. He calls the
play "a comedy and interlude," but claims that it is imitated from the
Roman drama. It is regularly divided into acts and scenes, in the form of
our modern plays. The plot is simple: Ralph, a gay Lothario, courts as gay
a widow, and the by-play includes a designing servant and an intriguing
lady's-maid: these are the stock elements of a hundred comedies since.
Contemporary with this was _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, supposed to be
written, but not conclusively, by John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
about 1560. The story turns upon the loss of a steel needle--a rare
instrument in that day, as it was only introduced into England from Spain
during the age of Elizabeth. This play is a coarser piece than Ralph
Roister Doister; the buffoon raises the devil to aid him in finding the
lost needle, which is at length found, by very palpable proof, to be
sticking in the seat of Goodman Hodge's breeches.
THE FIRST TRAGEDY.--Hand in hand with these first comedies came the
earliest tragedy, _Gorboduc_, by Sackville and Norton, known under another
name as _Ferrex and Porrex_; and it is curious to observe that this came
in while the moralities still occupied the stage, and before the
interludes had disappeared, as it was played before the queen at White
Hall, in 1562. It is also to be noted that it introduced a chorus like
that of the old Greek drama. Ferrex and Porrex are the sons of King
Gorboduc: the former is killed by the latter, who in turn is slain by his
own mother. Of Gorboduc, Lamb says, "The style of this old play is stiff
and cumbersome, like the dresses of the times. There may be flesh and
blood underneath, but we cannot get at it."
With the awakened interest of the people, the drama now made steady
progress. In 1568 the tragedy of _Tancred and Gismunda_, based upon one of
the stories of Boccaccio, was enacted before Elizabeth.
A license for establishing a regular theatre was got out by Burbage in
1574. Peele and Greene wrote plays in the new manner: Marlowe, the
greatest name in the English drama, except those of Shakspeare and Ben
Jonson, gave to the world his _Tragical History of the Life and Death of
Doctor Faustus_, which many do not hesitate to compare favorably with
Goethe's great drama, and his _Rich Jew of Malta_, which contains the
portraiture of Barabas, second only to the Shylock of Shakspeare. Of
Marlowe a more special mention will be made.
PLAYWRIGHTS AND MORALS.--It was to the great advantage of the English
regular drama, that the men who wrote were almost in every case highly
educated in the classics, and thus able to avail themselves of the best
models. It is equally true that, owing to the religious condition of the
times, when Puritanism launched forth its diatribes against all
amusements, they were men in the opposition, and in most cases of
irregular lives. Men of the world, they took their characters from among
the persons with whom they associated; and so we find in their plays
traces of the history of the age, in the appropriation of classical forms,
in the references to religious and political parties, and in their
delineation of the morals, manners, and follies of the period: if the
drama of the present day owes to them its origin and nurture, it also
retains as an inheritance many of the faults and deformities from which in
a more refined period it is seeking to purge itself. It is worthy of
notice, that as the drama owes everything to popular patronage, its moral
tone reflects of necessity the moral character of the people who frequent
it, and of the age which sustains it.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.--Among those who may be regarded as the immediate
forerunners and ushers of Shakspeare, and who, although they prepared the
way for his advent, have been obscured by his greater brilliance, the one
most deserving of special mention is Marlowe.
Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury, about the year 1564. He was a
wild, irregular genius, of bad morals and loose life, but of fine
imagination and excellent powers of expression. He wrote only tragedies.
His _Tamburlaine the Great_ is based upon the history of that _Timour
Leuk_, or _Timour the Lame_, the great Oriental conqueror of the
fourteenth century:
So large of limb, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen.
The descriptions are overdrawn, and the style inflated, but the subject
partakes of the heroic, and was popular still, though nearly two
centuries had passed since the exploits of the historic hero.
_The Rich Jew of Malta_ is of value, as presenting to us Barabas the Jew
as he appeared to Christian suspicion and hatred in the fifteenth century.
As he sits in his country-house with heaps of gold before him, and
receives the visits of merchants who inform him of the safe arrival of his
ships, it is manifest that he gave Shakspeare the first ideal of his
Shylock, upon which the greater dramatist greatly improved.
_The Tragicall Life and Death of Doctor John Faustus_ certainly helped
Goethe in the conception and preparation of his modern drama, and contains
many passages of rare power. Charles Lamb says: "The growing horrors of
Faustus are awfully marked by the hours and half-hours which expire and
bring him nearer and nearer to the enactment of his dire compact. It is
indeed an agony and bloody sweat."
_Edward II._ presents in the assassination scene wonderful power and
pathos, and is regarded by Hazlitt as his best play.
Marlowe is the author of the pleasant madrigal, called by Izaak Walton
"that smooth song":
Come live with me and be my love.
The playwright, who had led a wild life, came to his end in a tavern
brawl: he had endeavored to use his dagger upon one of the waiters, who
turned it upon him, and gave him a wound in the head of which he died, in
1593.
His talents were of a higher order than those of his contemporaries; he
was next to Shakspeare in power, and was called by Phillips "a second
Shakspeare."
OTHER DRAMATIC WRITERS BEFORE SHAKSPEARE.
Thomas Lodge, 1556-1625: educated at Oxford. Wrote _The Wounds of
Civil-War_, and other tragedies. Rosalynd, a novel, from which Shakspeare
drew in his _As You Like It_. He translated _Josephus_ and _Seneca_.
Thomas Kyd, died about 1600: _The Spanish Tragedy, or, Hieronymo is Mad
Again_. This contains a few highly wrought scenes, which have been
variously attributed to Ben Jonson and to Webster.
Robert Tailor: wrote _The Hog hath Lost his Pearl_, a comedy, published in
1614. This partakes of the character of the _morality_.
John Marston: wrote _Antonio and Mellida_, 1602; _Antonio's Revenge_,
1602; _Sophonisba, a Wonder of Women_, 1606; _The Insatiate Countess_,
1603, and many other plays. Marston ranks high among the immediate
predecessors of Shakspeare, for the number, variety, and vigorous handling
of his plays.
George Peele, born about 1553: educated at Oxford. Many of his pieces are
broadly comic. The principal plays are: _The Arraignment of Paris_,
_Edward I._ and _David and Bethsabe_. The latter is overwrought and full
of sickish sentiment.
Thomas Nash, 1558-1601: a satirist and polemic, who is best known for his
controversy with Gabriel Harvey. Most of his plays were written in
conjunction with others. He was imprisoned for writing _The Isle of Dogs_,
which was played, but not published. He is very licentious in his
language.
John Lyly, born about 1553: wrote numerous smaller plays, but is chiefly
known as the author of _Euphues, Anatomy of Wit_, and _Euphues and his
England_.
Robert Greene, died 1592: educated at Cambridge. Wrote _Alphonsus, King of
Arragon_, _James IV._, _George-a-Greene_, _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_,
and other plays. After leading a profligate life, he left behind him a
pamphlet entitled, "A Groat's-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of
Repentance:" this is full of contrition, and of advice to his
fellow-actors and fellow-sinners. It is mainly remarkable for its abuse of
Shakspeare, "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers;" "Tygre's
heart wrapt in a player's hide;" "an absolute Johannes factotum, in his
own conceyt the onely _shakescene_ in the country."
Most of these dramatists wrote in copartnership with others, and many of
the plays which bear their names singly, have parts composed by
colleagues. Such was the custom of the age, and it is now very difficult
to declare the distinct authorship of many of the plays.