Sackville wrote also, in connection with Thomas Norton, the first English

tragedy, _Ferrex and Porrex_, called also _Gorboduc_, which will be

considered in the following section on the Rise of the Drama.

PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586). Sidney, the ideal gentleman, the Sir Calidore of

Spenser's "Legend of Courtesy," is vastly more interesting as a man than as

a writer, and the student is recommended to read his biography rather than

his books. His life expresses, better than any single literary work, the

two ideals of the age,--personal honor and national greatness.

As a writer he is known by three principal works, all published after his

death, showing how little importance he attached to his own writing, even

while he was encouraging Spenser. The _Arcadia_ is a pastoral romance,

interspersed with eclogues, in which shepherds and shepherdesses sing of

the delights of rural life. Though the work was taken up idly as a summer's

pastime, it became immensely popular and was imitated by a hundred poets.

The _Apologie for Poetrie_ (1595), generally called the _Defense of

Poesie_, appeared in answer to a pamphlet by Stephen Gosson called _The

School of Abuse_ (1579), in which the poetry of the age and its unbridled

pleasure were denounced with Puritan thoroughness and conviction. The

_Apologie_ is one of the first critical essays in English; and though its

style now seems labored and unnatural,--the pernicious result of Euphues

and his school,--it is still one of the best expressions of the place and

meaning of poetry in any language. _Astrophel and Stella_ is a collection

of songs and sonnets addressed to Lady Penelope Devereux, to whom Sidney

had once been betrothed. They abound in exquisite lines and passages,

containing more poetic feeling and expression than the songs of any other

minor writer of the age.

GEORGE CHAPMAN (1559?-1634). Chapman spent his long, quiet life among the

dramatists, and wrote chiefly for the stage. His plays, which were for the

most part merely poems in dialogue, fell far below the high dramatic

standard of his time and are now almost unread. His most famous work is the

metrical translation of the _Iliad_ (1611) and of the _Odyssey_ (1614).

Chapman's _Homer_, though lacking the simplicity and dignity of the

original, has a force and rapidity of movement which makes it superior in

many respects to Pope's more familiar translation. Chapman is remembered

also as the finisher of Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_, in which, apart from

the drama, the Renaissance movement is seen at perhaps its highest point in

English poetry. Out of scores of long poems of the period, _Hero and

Leander_ and the _Faery Queen_ are the only two which are even slightly

known to modern readers.

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631). Drayton is the most voluminous and, to

antiquarians at least, the most interesting of the minor poets. He is the

Layamon of the Elizabethan Age, and vastly more scholarly than his

predecessor. His chief work is _Polyolbion_, an enormous poem of many

thousand couplets, describing the towns, mountains, and rivers of Britain,

with the interesting legends connected with each. It is an extremely

valuable work and represents a lifetime of study and research. Two other

long works are the _Barons' Wars_ and the _Heroic Epistle of England;_ and

besides these were many minor poems. One of the best of these is the

"Battle of Agincourt," a ballad written in the lively meter which Tennyson

used with some variations in the "Charge of the Light Brigade," and which

shows the old English love of brave deeds and of the songs that stir a

people's heart in memory of noble ancestors.

III. THE FIRST ENGLISH DRAMATISTS

THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA. First the deed, then the story, then the play;

that seems to be the natural development of the drama in its simplest form.

The great deeds of a people are treasured in its literature, and later

generations represent in play or pantomime certain parts of the story which

appeal most powerfully to the imagination. Among primitive races the deeds

of their gods and heroes are often represented at the yearly festivals; and

among children, whose instincts are not yet blunted by artificial habits,

one sees the story that was heard at bedtime repeated next day in vigorous

action, when our boys turn scouts and our girls princesses, precisely as

our first dramatists turned to the old legends and heroes of Britain for

their first stage productions. To act a part seems as natural to humanity

as to tell a story; and originally the drama is but an old story retold to

the eye, a story put into action by living performers, who for the moment

"make believe" or imagine themselves to be the old heroes.

To illustrate the matter simply, there was a great life lived by him who

was called the Christ. Inevitably the life found its way into literature,

and we have the Gospels. Around the life and literature sprang up a great

religion. Its worship was at first simple,--the common prayer, the evening

meal together, the remembered words of the Master, and the closing hymn.

Gradually a ritual was established, which grew more elaborate and

impressive as the centuries went by. Scenes from the Master's life began to

be represented in the churches, especially at Christmas time, when the

story of Christ's birth was made more effective, to the eyes of a people

who could not read, by a babe in a manger surrounded by magi and shepherds,

with a choir of angels chanting the _Gloria in Excelsis_.[126] Other

impressive scenes from the Gospel followed; then the Old Testament was

called upon, until a complete cycle of plays from the Creation to the Final

Judgment was established, and we have the Mysteries and Miracle plays of

the Middle Ages. Out of these came directly the drama of the Elizabethan

Age.

PERIODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA

1. THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD. In Europe, as in Greece, the drama had a

distinctly religious origin.[127] The first characters were drawn from the

New Testament, and the object of the first plays was to make the church

service more impressive, or to emphasize moral lessons by showing the

reward of the good and the punishment of the evil doer. In the latter days

of the Roman Empire the Church found the stage possessed by frightful

plays, which debased the morals of a people already fallen too low. Reform

seemed impossible; the corrupt drama was driven from the stage, and plays

of every kind were forbidden. But mankind loves a spectacle, and soon the

Church itself provided a substitute for the forbidden plays in the famous

Mysteries and Miracles.

MIRACLE AND MYSTERY PLAYS. In France the name _miracle_ was given to any

play representing the lives of the saints, while the _mystère_ represented

scenes from the life of Christ or stories from the Old Testament associated

with the coming of Messiah. In England this distinction was almost unknown;

the name Miracle was used indiscriminately for all plays having their

origin in the Bible or in the lives of the saints; and the name Mystery, to

distinguish a certain class of plays, was not used until long after the

religious drama had passed away.

The earliest Miracle of which we have any record in England is the _Ludus

de Sancta Katharina_, which was performed in Dunstable about the year

1110.[128] It is not known who wrote the original play of St. Catherine,

but our first version was prepared by Geoffrey of St. Albans, a French

school-teacher of Dunstable. Whether or not the play was given in English

is not known, but it was customary in the earliest plays for the chief

actors to speak in Latin or French, to show their importance, while minor

and comic parts of the same play were given in English.

For four centuries after this first recorded play the Miracles increased

steadily in number and popularity in England. They were given first very

simply and impressively in the churches; then, as the actors increased in

number and the plays in liveliness, they overflowed to the churchyards; but

when fun and hilarity began to predominate even in the most sacred

representations, the scandalized priests forbade plays altogether on church

grounds. By the year 1300 the Miracles were out of ecclesiastical hands and

adopted eagerly by the town guilds; and in the following two centuries we

find the Church preaching against the abuse of the religious drama which it

had itself introduced, and which at first had served a purely religious

purpose.[129] But by this time the Miracles had taken strong hold upon the

English people, and they continued to be immensely popular until, in the

sixteenth century, they were replaced by the Elizabethan drama.

The early Miracle plays of England were divided into two classes: the

first, given at Christmas, included all plays connected with the birth of

Christ; the second, at Easter, included the plays relating to his death and

triumph. By the beginning of the fourteenth century all these plays were,

in various localities, united in single cycles beginning with the Creation

and ending with the Final Judgment. The complete cycle was presented every

spring, beginning on Corpus Christi day; and as the presentation of so many

plays meant a continuous outdoor festival of a week or more, this day was

looked forward to as the happiest of the whole year.

Probably every important town in England had its own cycle of plays for its

own guilds to perform, but nearly all have been lost. At the present day

only four cycles exist (except in the most fragmentary condition), and

these, though they furnish an interesting commentary on the times, add very

little to our literature. The four cycles are the Chester and York plays,

so called from the towns in which they were given; the Towneley or

Wakefield plays, named for the Towneley family, which for a long time owned

the manuscript; and the Coventry plays, which on doubtful evidence have

been associated with the Grey Friars (Franciscans) of Coventry. The Chester

cycle has 25 plays, the Wakefield 30, the Coventry 42, and the York 48. It

is impossible to fix either the date or the authorship of any of these

plays; we only know certainly that they were in great favor from the

twelfth to the sixteenth century. The York plays are generally considered

to be the best; but those of Wakefield show more humor and variety, and

better workmanship. The former cycle especially shows a certain unity

resulting from its aim to represent the whole of man's life from birth to

death. The same thing is noticeable in _Cursor Mundi_, which, with the York

and Wakefield cycles, belongs to the fourteenth century.

At first the actors as well as the authors of the Miracles were the priests

and their chosen assistants. Later, when The town guilds took up the plays

and each guild became responsible for one or more of the series, the actors

were carefully selected and trained. By four o'clock on the morning of

Corpus Christi all the players had to be in their places in the movable

theaters, which were scattered throughout the town in the squares and open

places. Each of these theaters consisted of a two-story platform, set on

wheels. The lower story was a dressing room for the actors; the upper story

was the stage proper, and was reached by a trapdoor from below. When the

play was over the platform was dragged away, and the next play in the cycle

took its place. So in a single square several plays would be presented in

rapid sequence to the same audience. Meanwhile the first play moved on to

another square, where another audience was waiting to hear it.

Though the plays were distinctly religious in character, there is hardly

one without its humorous element. In the play of Noah, for instance, Noah's

shrewish wife makes fun for the audience by wrangling with her husband. In

the Crucifixion play Herod is a prankish kind of tyrant who leaves the

stage to rant among the audience; so that to "out-herod Herod" became a

common proverb. In all the plays the devil is a favorite character and the

butt of every joke. He also leaves the stage to play pranks or frighten the

wondering children. On the side of the stage was often seen a huge dragon's

head with gaping red jaws, belching forth fire and smoke, out of which

poured a tumultuous troop of devils with clubs and pitchforks and gridirons

to punish the wicked characters and to drag them away at last, howling and

shrieking, into hell-mouth, as the dragon's head was called. So the fear of

hell was ingrained into an ignorant people for four centuries. Alternating

with these horrors were bits of rough horse-play and domestic scenes of

peace and kindliness, representing the life of the English fields and

homes. With these were songs and carols, like that of the Nativity, for

instance:

As I out rode this enderes (last) night,

Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight,

And all about their fold a star shone bright;

They sang _terli terlow_,

So merryly the shepherds their pipes can blow.

Down from heaven, from heaven so high,

Of angels there came a great companye

With mirth, and joy, and great solemnitye;

They sang _terli terlow_,

So merryly the shepherds their pipes can blow.

Such songs were taken home by the audience and sung for a season, as a

popular tune is now caught from the stage and sung on the streets; and at

times the whole audience would very likely join in the chorus.

After these plays were written according to the general outline of the

Bible stories, no change was tolerated, the audience insisting, like

children at "Punch and Judy," upon seeing the same things year after year.

No originality in plot or treatment was possible, therefore; the only

variety was in new songs and jokes, and in the pranks of the devil.

Childish as such plays seem to us, they are part of the religious

development of all uneducated people. Even now the Persian play of the

"Martyrdom of Ali" is celebrated yearly, and the famous "Passion Play," a

true Miracle, is given every ten years at Oberammergau.

2. THE MORAL PERIOD OF THE DRAMA.[130] The second or moral period of the

drama is shown by the increasing prevalence of the Morality plays. In these

the characters were allegorical personages,--Life, Death, Repentance,

Goodness, Love, Greed, and other virtues and vices. The Moralities may be

regarded, therefore, as the dramatic counterpart of the once popular

allegorical poetry exemplified by the _Romance of the Rose_. It did not

occur to our first, unknown dramatists to portray men and women as they are

until they had first made characters of abstract human qualities.

Nevertheless, the Morality marks a distinct advance over the Miracle in

that it gave free scope to the imagination for new plots and incidents. In

Spain and Portugal these plays, under the name _auto_, were wonderfully

developed by the genius of Calderon and Gil Vicente; but in England the

Morality was a dreary kind of performance, like the allegorical poetry

which preceded it.

To enliven the audience the devil of the Miracle plays was introduced; and

another lively personage called the Vice was the predecessor of our modern

clown and jester. His business was to torment the "virtues" by mischievous

pranks, and especially to make the devil's life a burden by beating him

with a bladder or a wooden sword at every opportunity. The Morality

generally ended in the triumph of virtue, the devil leaping into hell-mouth

with Vice on his back.

The best known of the Moralities is "Everyman," which has recently been

revived in England and America. The subject of the play is the summoning of

every man by Death; and the moral is that nothing can take away the terror

of the inevitable summons but an honest life and the comforts of religion.

In its dramatic unity it suggests the pure Greek drama; there is no change

of time or scene, and the stage is never empty from the beginning to the

end of the performance. Other well-known Moralities are the "Pride of

Life," "Hyckescorner," and "Castell of Perseverance." In the latter, man is

represented as shut up in a castle garrisoned by the virtues and besieged

by the vices.

Like the Miracle plays, most of the old Moralities are of unknown date and

origin. Of the known authors of Moralities, two of the best are John

Skelton, who wrote "Magnificence," and probably also "The Necromancer"; and

Sir David Lindsay (1490-1555), "the poet of the Scotch Reformation," whose

religious business it was to make rulers uncomfortable by telling them

unpleasant truths in the form of poetry. With these men a new element

enters into the Moralities. They satirize or denounce abuses of Church and

State, and introduce living personages thinly disguised as allegories; so

that the stage first becomes a power in shaping events and correcting

abuses.

THE INTERLUDES. It is impossible to draw any accurate line of distinction

between the Moralities and Interludes. In general we may think of the

latter as dramatic scenes, sometimes given by themselves (usually with

music and singing) at banquets and entertainments where a little fun was

wanted; and again slipped into a Miracle play to enliven the audience after

a solemn scene. Thus on the margin of a page of one of the old Chester

plays we read, "The boye and pigge when the kinges are gone." Certainly

this was no part of the original scene between Herod and the three kings.

So also the quarrel between Noah and his wife is probably a late addition

to an old play. The Interludes originated, undoubtedly, in a sense of

humor; and to John Heywood (1497?-1580?), a favorite retainer and jester at

the court of Mary, is due the credit for raising the Interlude to the

distinct dramatic form known as comedy.

Heywood's Interludes were written between 1520 and 1540. His most famous is

"The Four P's," a contest of wit between a "Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pedlar

and a Poticary." The characters here strongly suggest those of

Chaucer.[131] Another interesting Interlude is called "The Play of the

Weather." In this Jupiter and the gods assemble to listen to complaints

about the weather and to reform abuses. Naturally everybody wants his own

kind of weather. The climax is reached by a boy who announces that a boy's

pleasure consists in two things, catching birds and throwing snowballs, and

begs for the weather to be such that he can always do both. Jupiter decides

that he will do just as he pleases about the weather, and everybody goes

home satisfied.

All these early plays were written, for the most part, in a mingling of

prose and wretched doggerel, and add nothing to our literature. Their great

work was to train actors, to keep alive the dramatic spirit, and to prepare

the way for the true drama.

3. THE ARTISTIC PERIOD OF THE DRAMA. The artistic is the final stage in the

development of the English drama. It differs radically from the other two

in that its chief purpose is not to point a moral but to represent human

life as it is. The artistic drama may have purpose, no less than the

Miracle play, but the motive is always subordinate to the chief end of

representing life itself.

The first true play in English, with a regular plot, divided into acts and

scenes, is probably the comedy, "Ralph Royster Doyster." It was written by

Nicholas Udall, master of Eton, and later of Westminster school, and was

first acted by his schoolboys some time before 1556. The story is that of a

conceited fop in love with a widow, who is already engaged to another man.

The play is an adaptation of the _Miles Gloriosus_, a classic comedy by

Plautus, and the English characters are more or less artificial; but as

furnishing a model of a clear plot and natural dialogue, the influence of

this first comedy, with its mixture of classic and English elements, can

hardly be overestimated.

The next play, "Gammer Gurton's Needle" _(cir_. 1562), is a domestic

comedy, a true bit of English realism, representing the life of the peasant

class.

Gammer Gurton is patching the leather breeches of her man Hodge, when Gib,

the cat, gets into the milk pan. While Gammer chases the cat the family

needle is lost, a veritable calamity in those days. The whole household is

turned upside down, and the neighbors are dragged into the affair. Various

comical situations are brought about by Diccon, a thieving vagabond, who

tells Gammer that her neighbor, Dame Chatte, has taken her needle, and who

then hurries to tell Dame Chatte that she is accused by Gammer of stealing

a favorite rooster. Naturally there is a terrible row when the two irate

old women meet and misunderstand each other. Diccon also drags Doctor Rat,

the curate, into the quarrel by telling him that, if he will but creep into

Dame Chatte's cottage by a hidden way, he will find her using the stolen

needle. Then Diccon secretly warns Dame Chatte that Gammer Gurton's man

Hodge is coming to steal her chickens; and the old woman hides in the dark

passage and cudgels the curate soundly with the door bar. All the parties

are finally brought before the justice, when Hodge suddenly and painfully

finds the lost needle--which is all the while stuck in his leather

breeches--and the scene ends uproariously for both audience and actors.

This first wholly English comedy is full of fun and coarse humor, and is

wonderfully true to the life it represents. It was long attributed to John

Still, afterwards bishop of Bath; but the authorship is now definitely

assigned to William Stevenson.[132] Our earliest edition of the play was

printed in 1575; but a similar play called "Dyccon of Bedlam" was licensed

in 1552, twelve years before Shakespeare's birth.

To show the spirit and the metrical form of the play we give a fragment of

the boy's description of the dullard Hodge trying to light a fire on the

hearth from the cat's eyes, and another fragment of the old drinking song

at the beginning of the second act.

At last in a dark corner two sparkes he thought he sees

Which were, indede, nought els but Gyb our cat's two eyes.

"Puffe!" quod Hodge, thinking therby to have fyre without doubt;

With that Gyb shut her two eyes, and so the fyre was out.

And by-and-by them opened, even as they were before;

With that the sparkes appeared, even as they had done of yore.

And, even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did thincke,

Gyb, as she felt the blast, strayght-way began to wyncke,

Tyll Hodge fell of swering, as came best to his turne,

The fier was sure bewicht, and therfore wold not burne.

At last Gyb up the stayers, among the old postes and pinnes,

And Hodge he hied him after till broke were both his shinnes,

Cursynge and swering othes, were never of his makyng,

That Gyb wold fyre the house if that shee were not taken.

_Fyrste a Songe:_

_Backe and syde, go bare, go bare;

Booth foote and hande, go colde;

But, bellye, God sende thee good ale ynoughe,

Whether it be newe or olde_!

I can not eate but lytle meate,

My stomacke is not good;

But sure I thinke that I can dryncke

With him that weares a hood.

Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care,

I am nothinge a-colde,

I stuffe my skyn so full within

Of ioly good ale and olde.

_Backe and syde, go bare_, etc.

Our first tragedy, "Gorboduc," was written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas

Norton, and was acted in 1562, only two years before the birth of

Shakespeare. It is remarkable not only as our first tragedy, but as the

first play to be written in blank verse, the latter being most significant,

since it started the drama into the style of verse best suited to the

genius of English playwrights.

The story of "Gorboduc" is taken from the early annals of Britain and

recalls the story used by Shakespeare in _King Lear_. Gorboduc, king of

Britain, divides his kingdom between his sons Ferrex and Porrex. The sons

quarrel, and Porrex, the younger, slays his brother, who is the queen's

favorite. Videna, the queen, slays Porrex in revenge; the people rebel and

slay Videna and Gorboduc; then the nobles kill the rebels, and in turn fall

to fighting each other. The line of Brutus being extinct with the death of

Gorboduc, the country falls into anarchy, with rebels, nobles, and a

Scottish invader all fighting for the right of succession. The curtain

falls upon a scene of bloodshed and utter confusion.

The artistic finish of this first tragedy is marred by the authors' evident

purpose to persuade Elizabeth to marry. It aims to show the danger to which

England is exposed by the uncertainty of succession. Otherwise the plan of

the play follows the classical rule of Seneca. There is very little action

on the stage; bloodshed and battle are announced by a messenger; and the

chorus, of four old men of Britain, sums up the situation with a few moral

observations at the end of each of the first four acts.

CLASSICAL INFLUENCE UPON THE DRAMA. The revival of Latin literature had a

decided influence upon the English drama as it developed from the Miracle

plays. In the fifteenth century English teachers, in order to increase the

interest in Latin, began to let their boys act the plays which they had

read as literature, precisely as our colleges now present Greek or German

plays at the yearly festivals. Seneca was the favorite Latin author, and

all his tragedies were translated into English between 1559 and 1581. This

was the exact period in which the first English playwrights were shaping

their own ideas; but the severe simplicity of the classical drama seemed at

first only to hamper the exuberant English spirit. To understand this, one

has only to compare a tragedy of Seneca or of Euripides with one of

Shakespeare, and see how widely the two masters differ in methods.

In the classic play the so-called dramatic unities of time, place, and

action were strictly observed. Time and place must remain the same; the

play could represent a period of only a few hours, and whatever action was

introduced must take place at the spot where the play began. The

characters, therefore, must remain unchanged throughout; there was no

possibility of the child becoming a man, or of the man's growth with

changing circumstances. As the play was within doors, all vigorous action

was deemed out of place on the stage, and battles and important events were

simply announced by a messenger. The classic drama also drew a sharp line

between tragedy and comedy, all fun being rigorously excluded from serious

representations.

The English drama, on the other hand, strove to represent the whole sweep

of life in a single play. The scene changed rapidly; the same actors

appeared now at home, now at court, now on the battlefield; and vigorous

action filled the stage before the eyes of the spectators. The child of one

act appeared as the man of the next, and the imagination of the spectator

was called upon to bridge the gaps from place to place and from year to

year. So the dramatist had free scope to present all life in a single place

and a single hour. Moreover, since the world is always laughing and always

crying at the same moment, tragedy and comedy were presented side by side,

as they are in life itself. As Hamlet sings, after the play that amused the

court but struck the king with deadly fear:

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep:

So runs the world away.

Naturally, with these two ideals struggling to master the English drama,

two schools of writers arose. The University Two Schools Wits, as men of

learning were called, generally of Drama upheld the classical ideal, and

ridiculed the crude-ness of the new English plays. Sackville and Norton

were of this class, and "Gorboduc" was classic in its construction. In the

"Defense of Poesie" Sidney upholds the classics and ridicules the too

ambitious scope of the English drama. Against these were the popular

playwrights, Lyly, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, and many others, who recognized

the English love of action and disregarded the dramatic unities in their

endeavor to present life as it is. In the end the native drama prevailed,

aided by the popular taste which had been trained by four centuries of

Miracles. Our first plays, especially of the romantic type, were extremely

crude and often led to ridiculously extravagant scenes; and here is where

the classic drama exercised an immense influence for good, by insisting

upon beauty of form and definiteness of structure at a time when the

tendency was to satisfy a taste for stage spectacles without regard to

either.

In the year 1574 a royal permit to Lord Leicester's actors allowed them "to

give plays anywhere throughout our realm of England," and this must be

regarded as the beginning of the regular drama. Two years later the first

playhouse, known as "The Theater," was built for these actors by James

Burbage in Finsbury Fields, just north of London. It was in this theater

that Shakespeare probably found employment when he first came to the city.

The success of this venture was immediate, and the next thirty years saw a

score of theatrical companies, at least seven regular theaters, and a dozen

or more inn yards permanently fitted for the giving of plays,--all

established in the city and its immediate suburbs. The growth seems all the

more remarkable when we remember that the London of those days would now be

considered a small city, having (in 1600) only about a hundred thousand

inhabitants.

A Dutch traveler, Johannes de Witt, who visited London in 1596, has given

us the only contemporary drawing we possess of the interior of one of these

theaters. They were built of stone and wood, round or octagonal in shape,

and without a roof, being simply an inclosed courtyard. At one side was the

stage, and before it on the bare ground, or pit, stood that large part of

the audience who could afford to pay only an admission fee. The players and

these groundlings were exposed to the weather; those that paid for seats

were in galleries sheltered by a narrow porch-roof projecting inwards from

the encircling walls; while the young nobles and gallants, who came to be

seen and who could afford the extra fee, took seats on the stage itself,

and smoked and chaffed the actors and threw nuts at the groundlings.[133]

The whole idea of these first theaters, according to De Witt, was like that

of the Roman amphitheater; and the resemblance was heightened by the fact

that, when no play was on the boards, the stage might be taken away and the

pit given over to bull and bear baiting.

In all these theaters, probably, the stage consisted of a bare platform,

with a curtain or "traverse" across the middle, separating the front from

the rear stage. On the latter unexpected scenes or characters were

"discovered" by simply drawing the curtain aside. At first little or no

scenery was used, a gilded sign being the only announcement of a change of

scene; and this very lack of scenery led to better acting, since the actors

must be realistic enough to make the audience forget its shabby

surroundings.[134] By Shakespeare's day, however, painted scenery had

appeared, first at university plays, and then in the regular theaters.[135]

In all our first plays female parts were taken by boy actors, who evidently

were more distressing than the crude scenery, for contemporary literature

has many satirical references to their acting,[136] and even the tolerant

Shakespeare writes:

Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.

However that may be, the stage was deemed unfit for women, and actresses

were unknown in England until after the Restoration.

SHAKESPEARE'S PREDECESSORS IN THE DRAMA. The English drama as it developed

from the Miracle plays has an interesting history. It began with

schoolmasters, like Udall, who translated and adapted Latin plays for their

boys to act, and who were naturally governed by classic ideals. It was

continued by the choir masters of St. Paul and the Royal and the Queen's

Chapel, whose companies of choir-boy actors were famous in London and

rivaled the players of the regular theaters.[137] These choir masters were

our first stage managers. They began with masques and interludes and the

dramatic presentation of classic myths modeled after the Italians; but some

of them, like Richard Edwards (choir master of the Queen's Chapel in 1561),

soon added farces from English country life and dramatized some of

Chaucer's stories. Finally, the regular playwrights, Kyd, Nash, Lyly,

Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, brought the English drama to the point where

Shakespeare began to experiment upon it.

Each of these playwrights added or emphasized some essential element in the

drama, which appeared later in the work of Shakespeare. Thus John Lyly

(1554?-1606), who is now known chiefly as having developed the pernicious

literary style called euphuism,[138] is one of the most influential of the

early dramatists. His court comedies are remarkable for their witty

dialogue and for being our first plays to aim definitely at unity and

artistic finish. Thomas Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_ (_c._ 1585) first gives us

the drama, or rather the melodrama, of passion, copied by Marlowe and

Shakespeare. This was the most popular of the early Elizabethan plays; it

was revised again and again, and Ben Jonson is said to have written one

version and to have acted the chief part of Hieronimo.[139] And Robert

Greene (1558?-1592) plays the chief part in the early development of

romantic comedy, and gives us some excellent scenes of English country life

in plays like _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_.

Even a brief glance at the life and work of these first playwrights shows

three noteworthy things which have a bearing on Shakespeare's career: (1)

These men were usually actors as well as dramatists. They knew the stage

and the audience, and in writing their plays they remembered not only the

actor's part but also the audience's love for stories and brave spectacles.

"Will it act well, and will it please our audience," were the questions of

chief concern to our early dramatists. (2) Their training began as actors;

then they revised old plays, and finally became independent writers. In

this their work shows an exact parallel with that of Shakespeare. (3) They

often worked together, probably as Shakespeare worked with Marlowe and

Fletcher, either in revising old plays or in creating new ones. They had a

common store of material from which they derived their stories and

characters, hence their frequent repetition of names; and they often

produced two or more plays on the same subject. Much of Shakespeare's work

depends, as we shall see, on previous plays; and even his _Hamlet_ uses the

material of an earlier play of the same name, probably by Kyd, which was

well known to the London stage in 1589, some twelve years before

Shakespeare's great work was written.

All these things are significant, if we are to understand the Elizabethan

drama and the man who brought it to perfection. Shakespeare was not simply

a great genius; he was also a great worker, and he developed in exactly the

same way as did all his fellow craftsmen. And, contrary to the prevalent

opinion, the Elizabethan drama is not a Minerva-like creation, springing

full grown from the head of one man; it is rather an orderly though rapid

development, in which many men bore a part. All our early dramatists are

worthy of study for the part they played in the development of the drama;

but we can here consider only one, the most typical of all, whose best work

is often ranked with that of Shakespeare.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593)

Marlowe is one of the most suggestive figures of the English Renaissance,

and the greatest of Shakespeare's predecessors. The glory of the

Elizabethan drama dates from his _Tamburlaine_ (1587), wherein the whole

restless temper of the age finds expression:

Nature, that framed us of four elements

Warring within our breasts for regiment,

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:

Our souls--whose faculties can comprehend

The wondrous architecture of the world,

And measure every wandering planet's course,

Still climbing after knowledge infinite,

And always moving as the restless spheres--

Will us to wear ourselves and never rest.

_Tamburlaine_, Pt. I, II, vii.

Life. Marlowe was born in Canterbury, only a few months before Shakespeare.

He was the son of a poor shoemaker, but through the kindness of a patron

was educated at the town grammar school and then at Cambridge. When he came

to London (_c._ 1584), his soul was surging with the ideals of the

Renaissance, which later found expression in Faustus, the scholar longing

for unlimited knowledge and for power to grasp the universe. Unfortunately,

Marlowe had also the unbridled passions which mark the early, or Pagan

Renaissance, as Taine calls it, and the conceit of a young man just

entering the realms of knowledge. He became an actor and lived in a

low-tavern atmosphere of excess and wretchedness. In 1587, when but

twenty-three years old, he produced _Tamburlaine_, which brought him

instant recognition. Thereafter, notwithstanding his wretched life, he

holds steadily to a high literary purpose. Though all his plays abound in

violence, no doubt reflecting many of the violent scenes in which he lived,

he develops his "mighty line" and depicts great scenes in magnificent

bursts of poetry, such as the stage had never heard before. In five years,

while Shakespeare was serving his apprenticeship, Marlowe produced all his

great work. Then he was stabbed in a drunken brawl and died wretchedly, as

he had lived. The Epilogue of _Faustus_ might be written across his

tombstone:

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learnéd man.

MARLOWE'S WORKS. In addition to the poem "Hero and Leander," to which we

have referred,[140] Marlowe is famous for four dramas, now known as the

Marlowesque or one-man type of tragedy, each revolving about one central

personality who is consumed by the lust of power. The first of these is

_Tamburlaine_, the story of Timur the Tartar. Timur begins as a shepherd

chief, who first rebels and then triumphs over the Persian king.

Intoxicated by his success, Timur rushes like a tempest over the whole

East. Seated on his chariot drawn by captive kings, with a caged emperor

before him, he boasts of his power which overrides all things. Then,

afflicted with disease, he raves against the gods and would overthrow them

as he has overthrown earthly rulers. _Tamburlaine_ is an epic rather than a

drama; but one can understand its instant success with a people only half

civilized, fond of military glory, and the instant adoption of its "mighty

line" as the instrument of all dramatic expression.

_Faustus_, the second play, is one of the best of Marlowe's works.[141] The

story is that of a scholar who longs for infinite knowledge, and who turns

from Theology, Philosophy, Medicine, and Law, the four sciences of the

time, to the study of magic, much as a child might turn from jewels to

tinsel and colored paper. In order to learn magic he sells himself to the

devil, on condition that he shall have twenty-four years of absolute power

and knowledge. The play is the story of those twenty-four years. Like

_Tamburlaine_, it is lacking in dramatic construction,[142] but has an

unusual number of passages of rare poetic beauty. Milton's Satan suggests

strongly that the author of _Paradise Lost_ had access to _Faustus_ and

used it, as he may also have used _Tamburlaine_, for the magnificent

panorama displayed by Satan in _Paradise Regained_. For instance, more than

fifty years before Milton's hero says, "Which way I turn is hell, myself am

hell," Marlowe had written:

_Faust_. How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

_Mephisto_. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

* * * * *

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place; for where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be.

Marlowe's third play is _The Jew of Malta_, a study of the lust for wealth,

which centers about Barabas, a terrible old money lender, strongly

suggestive of Shylock in _The Merchant of Venice_. The first part of the

play is well constructed, showing a decided advance, but the last part is

an accumulation of melodramatic horrors. Barabas is checked in his

murderous career by falling into a boiling caldron which he had prepared

for another, and dies blaspheming, his only regret being that he has not

done more evil in his life.

Marlowe's last play is _Edward II_, a tragic study of a king's weakness and

misery. In point of style and dramatic construction, it is by far the best

of Marlowe's plays, and is a worthy predecessor of Shakespeare's historical

drama.

Marlowe is the only dramatist of the time who is ever compared with

Shakespeare.[143] When we remember that he died at twenty-nine, probably

before Shakespeare had produced a single great play, we must wonder what he

might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here

and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the

stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty; but in

dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in

delineation of woman's character, in the delicate fancy which presents an

Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth,--in a word, in all that makes a dramatic

genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlowe simply prepared the way for the

master who was to follow.

VARIETY OF THE EARLY DRAMA. The thirty years between our first regular

English plays and Shakespeare's first comedy[144] witnessed a development

of the drama which astonishes us both by its rapidity and variety. We shall

better appreciate Shakespeare's work if we glance for a moment at the plays

that preceded him, and note how he covers the whole field and writes almost

every form and variety of the drama known to his age.

First in importance, or at least in popular interest, are the new Chronicle

plays, founded upon historical events and characters. They show the strong

national spirit of the Elizabethan Age, and their popularity was due

largely to the fact that audiences came to the theaters partly to gratify

their awakened national spirit and to get their first knowledge of national

history. Some of the Moralities, like Bayle's _King Johan_ (1538), are

crude Chronicle plays, and the early Robin Hood plays and the first

tragedy, _Gorboduc_, show the same awakened popular interest in English

history. During the reign of Elizabeth the popular Chronicle plays

increased till we have the record of over two hundred and twenty, half of

which are still extant, dealing with almost every important character, real

or legendary, in English history. Of Shakespeare's thirty-seven dramas, ten

are true Chronicle plays of English kings; three are from the legendary

annals of Britain; and three more are from the history of other nations.

Other types of the early drama are less clearly defined, but we may sum

them up under a few general heads: (1) The Domestic Drama began with crude

home scenes introduced into the Miracles and developed in a score of

different ways, from the coarse humor of _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ to the

Comedy of Manners of Jonson and the later dramatists. Shakespeare's _Taming

of the Shrew_ and _Merry Wives of Windsor_ belong to this class. (2) The

so-called Court Comedy is the opposite of the former in that it represented

a different kind of life and was intended for a different audience. It was

marked by elaborate dialogue, by jests, retorts, and endless plays on

words, rather than by action. It was made popular by Lyly's success, and

was imitated in Shakespeare's first or "Lylian" comedies, such as _Love's

Labour's Lost_, and the complicated _Two Gentlemen of Verona_. (3) Romantic

Comedy and Romantic Tragedy suggest the most artistic and finished types of

the drama, which were experimented upon by Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, and

were brought to perfection in _The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet_,

and _The Tempest_. (4) In addition to the above types were several

others,--the Classical Plays, modeled upon Seneca and favored by cultivated

audiences; the Melodrama, favorite of the groundlings, which depended not

on plot or characters but upon a variety of striking scenes and incidents;

and the Tragedy of Blood, always more or less melodramatic, like Kyd's

_Spanish Tragedy_, which grew more blood-and-thundery in Marlowe and

reached a climax of horrors in Shakespeare's _Titus Andronicus_. It is

noteworthy that _Hamlet, Lear_, and _Macbeth_ all belong to this class, but

the developed genius of the author raised them to a height such as the

Tragedy of Blood had never known before.

These varied types are quite enough to show with what doubtful and unguided

experiments our first dramatists were engaged, like men first setting out

in rafts and dugouts on an unknown sea. They are the more interesting when

we remember that Shakespeare tried them all; that he is the only dramatist

whose plays cover the whole range of the drama from its beginning to its

decline. From the stage spectacle he developed the drama of human life; and

instead of the doggerel and bombast of our first plays he gives us the

poetry of _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Midsummer Night's Dream_. In a word,

Shakespeare brought order out of dramatic chaos. In a few short years he

raised the drama from a blundering experiment to a perfection of form and

expression which has never since been rivaled.

IV. SHAKESPEARE

One who reads a few of Shakespeare's great plays and then the meager story

of his life is generally filled with a vague wonder. Here is an unknown

country boy, poor and poorly educated according to the standards of his

age, who arrives at the great city of London and goes to work at odd jobs

in a theater. In a year or two he is associated with scholars and

dramatists, the masters of their age, writing plays of kings and clowns, of

gentlemen and heroes and noble women, all of whose lives he seems to know

by intimate association. In a few years more he leads all that brilliant

group of poets and dramatists who have given undying glory to the Age of

Elizabeth. Play after play runs from his pen, mighty dramas of human life

and character following one another so rapidly that good work seems

impossible; yet they stand the test of time, and their poetry is still

unrivaled in any language. For all this great work the author apparently

cares little, since he makes no attempt to collect or preserve his

writings. A thousand scholars have ever since been busy collecting,

identifying, classifying the works which this magnificent workman tossed

aside so carelessly when he abandoned the drama and retired to his native

village. He has a marvelously imaginative and creative mind; but he invents

few, if any, new plots or stories. He simply takes an old play or an old

poem, makes it over quickly, and lo! this old familiar material glows with

the deepest thoughts and the tenderest feelings that ennoble our humanity;

and each new generation of men finds it more wonderful than the last. How

did he do it? That is still an unanswered question and the source of our

wonder.

There are, in general, two theories to account for Shakespeare. The

romantic school of writers have always held that in him "all came from

within"; that his genius was his sufficient guide; and that to the

overmastering power of his genius alone we owe all his great works.

Practical, unimaginative men, on the other hand, assert that in Shakespeare

"all came from without," and that we must study his environment rather than

his genius, if we are to understand him. He lived in a play-loving age; he

studied the crowds, gave them what they wanted, and simply reflected their

own thoughts and feelings. In reflecting the English crowd about him he

unconsciously reflected all crowds, which are alike in all ages; hence his

continued popularity. And in being guided by public sentiment he was not

singular, but followed the plain path that every good dramatist has always

followed to success.

Probably the truth of the matter is to be found somewhere between these two

extremes. Of his great genius there can be no question; but there are other

things to consider. As we have already noticed, Shakespeare was trained,

like his fellow workmen, first as an actor, second as a reviser of old

plays, and last as an independent dramatist. He worked with other

playwrights and learned their secret. Like them, he studied and followed

the public taste, and his work indicates at least three stages, from his

first somewhat crude experiments to his finished masterpieces. So it would

seem that in Shakespeare we have the result of hard work and of orderly

human development, quite as much as of transcendent genius.

LIFE (1564-1616). Two outward influences were powerful in developing the

genius of Shakespeare,--the little village of Stratford, center of the most

beautiful and romantic district in rural England, and the great city of

London, the center of the world's political activity. In one he learned to

know the natural man in his natural environment; in the other, the social,

the artificial man in the most unnatural of surroundings.

From the register of the little parish church at Stratford-on-Avon we learn

that William Shakespeare was baptized there on the twenty-sixth of April,

1564 (old style). As it was customary to baptize children on the third day

after birth, the twenty-third of April (May 3, according to our present

calendar) is generally accepted as the poet's birthday.

His father, John Shakespeare, was a farmer's son from the neighboring

village of Snitterfield, who came to Stratford about 1551, and began to

prosper as a trader in corn, meat, leather, and other agricultural

products. His mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer,

descended from an old Warwickshire family of mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman

blood. In 1559 this married couple sold a piece of land, and the document

is signed, "The marke + of John Shacksper. The marke + of Mary Shacksper";

and from this it has been generally inferred that, like the vast majority

of their countrymen, neither of the poet's parents could read or write.

This was probably true of his mother; but the evidence from Stratford

documents now indicates that his father could write, and that he also

audited the town accounts; though in attesting documents he sometimes made

a mark, leaving his name to be filled in by the one who drew up the

document.

Of Shakespeare's education we know little, except that for a few years he

probably attended the endowed grammar school at Stratford, where he picked

up the "small Latin and less Greek" to which his learned friend Ben Jonson

refers. His real teachers, meanwhile, were the men and women and the

natural influences which surrounded him. Stratford is a charming little

village in beautiful Warwickshire, and near at hand were the Forest of

Arden, the old castles of Warwick and Kenilworth, and the old Roman camps

and military roads, to appeal powerfully to the boy's lively imagination.

Every phase of the natural beauty of this exquisite region is reflected in

Shakespeare's poetry; just as his characters reflect the nobility and the

littleness, the gossip, vices, emotions, prejudices, and traditions of the

people about him.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,

The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,

With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;

Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,

Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste

Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,

Told of a many thousand warlike French

That were embattailed and ranked in Kent.[145]

Such passages suggest not only genius but also a keen, sympathetic

observer, whose eyes see every significant detail. So with the nurse in

_Romeo and Juliet_, whose endless gossip and vulgarity cannot quite hide a

kind heart. She is simply the reflection of some forgotten nurse with whom

Shakespeare had talked by the wayside.

Not only the gossip but also the dreams, the unconscious poetry that sleeps

in the heart of the common people, appeal tremendously to Shakespeare's

imagination and are reflected in his greatest plays. Othello tries to tell

a curt soldier's story of his love; but the account is like a bit of

Mandeville's famous travels, teeming with the fancies that filled men's

heads when the great round world was first brought to their attention by

daring explorers. Here is a bit of folklore, touched by Shakespeare's

exquisite fancy, which shows what one boy listened to before the fire at

Halloween:

She comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,

The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

The traces of the smallest spider's web,

The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,

Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,

Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,

* * * * *

Her chariot is an empty hazel nut

Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,

Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;

* * * * *

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream.[146]

So with Shakespeare's education at the hands of Nature, which came from

keeping his heart as well as his eyes wide open to the beauty of the world.

He speaks of a horse, and we know the fine points of a thoroughbred; he

mentions the duke's hounds, and we hear them clamoring on a fox trail,

their voices matched like bells in the frosty air; he stops for an instant

in the sweep of a tragedy to note a flower, a star, a moonlit bank, a

hilltop touched by the sunrise, and instantly we know what our own hearts

felt but could not quite express when we saw the same thing. Because he

notes and remembers every significant thing in the changing panorama of

earth and sky, no other writer has ever approached him in the perfect

natural setting of his characters.

When Shakespeare was about fourteen years old his father lost his little

property and fell into debt, and the boy probably left school to help

support the family of younger children. What occupation he followed for the

next eight years is a matter of conjecture. From evidence found in his

plays, it is alleged with some show of authority that he was a country

schoolmaster and a lawyer's clerk, the character of Holofernes, in _Love's

Labour's Lost_, being the warrant for one, and Shakespeare's knowledge of

law terms for the other. But if we take such evidence, then Shakespeare

must have been a botanist, because of his knowledge of wild flowers; a

sailor, because he knows the ropes; a courtier, because of his

extraordinary facility in quips and compliments and courtly language; a

clown, because none other is so dull and foolish; a king, because Richard

and Henry are true to life; a woman, because he has sounded the depths of a

woman's feelings; and surely a Roman, because in _Coriolanus_ and _Julius

Cæsar_ he has shown us the Roman spirit better than have the Roman writers

themselves. He was everything, in his imagination, and it is impossible

from a study of his scenes and characters to form a definite opinion as to

his early occupation.

In 1582 Shakespeare was married to Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a peasant

family of Shottery, who was eight years older than her boy husband. From

numerous sarcastic references to marriage made by the characters in his

plays, and from the fact that he soon left his wife and family and went to

London, it is generally alleged that the marriage was a hasty and unhappy

one; but here again the evidence is entirely untrustworthy. In many

Miracles as well as in later plays it was customary to depict the seamy

side of domestic life for the amusement of the crowd; and Shakespeare may

have followed the public taste in this as he did in other things. The

references to love and home and quiet joys in Shakespeare's plays are

enough, if we take such evidence, to establish firmly the opposite

supposition, that his love was a very happy one. And the fact that, after

his enormous success in London, he retired to Stratford to live quietly

with his wife and daughters, tends to the same conclusion.

About the year 1587 Shakespeare left his family and went to London and

joined himself to Burbage's company of players. A persistent tradition says

that he had incurred the anger of Sir Thomas Lucy, first by poaching deer

in that nobleman's park, and then, when haled before a magistrate, by

writing a scurrilous ballad about Sir Thomas, which so aroused the old

gentleman's ire that Shakespeare was obliged to flee the country. An old

record[147] says that the poet "was much given to all unluckiness in

stealing venison and rabbits," the unluckiness probably consisting in

getting caught himself, and not in any lack of luck in catching the

rabbits. The ridicule heaped upon the Lucy family in _Henry IV_ and the

_Merry Wives of Windsor_ gives some weight to this tradition. Nicholas

Rowe, who published the first life of Shakespeare,[148] is the authority

for this story; but there is some reason to doubt whether, at the time when

Shakespeare is said to have poached in the deer park of Sir Thomas Lucy at

Charlescote, there were any deer or park at the place referred to. The

subject is worthy of some scant attention, if only to show how worthless is

the attempt to construct out of rumor the story of a great life which,

fortunately perhaps, had no contemporary biographer.

Of his life in London from 1587 to 1611, the period of his greatest

literary activity, we know nothing definitely. We can judge only from his

plays, and from these it is evident that he entered into the stirring life

of England's capital with the same perfect sympathy and understanding that

marked him among the plain people of his native Warwickshire. The first

authentic reference to him is in 1592, when Greene's[149] bitter attack

appeared, showing plainly that Shakespeare had in five years assumed an

important position among playwrights. Then appeared the apology of the

publishers of Greene's pamphlet, with their tribute to the poet's sterling

character, and occasional literary references which show that he was known

among his fellows as "the gentle Shakespeare." Ben Jonson says of him: "I

loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as

any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature." To judge from

only three of his earliest plays[150] it would seem reasonably evident that

in the first five years of his London life he had gained entrance to the

society of gentlemen and scholars, had caught their characteristic

mannerisms and expressions, and so was ready by knowledge and observation

as well as by genius to weave into his dramas the whole stirring life of

the English people. The plays themselves, with the testimony of

contemporaries and his business success, are strong evidence against the

tradition that his life in London was wild and dissolute, like that of the

typical actor and playwright of his time.

Shakespeare's first work may well have been that of a general helper, an

odd-job man, about the theater; but he soon became an actor, and the

records of the old London theaters show that in the next ten years he

gained a prominent place, though there is little reason to believe that he

was counted among the "stars." Within two years he was at work on plays,

and his course here was exactly like that of other playwrights of his time.

He worked with other men, and he revised old plays before writing his own,

and so gained a practical knowledge of his art. _Henry VI _(_c_. 1590-1591)

is an example of this tinkering work, in which, however, his native power

is unmistakably manifest. The three parts of _Henry VI_ (and _Richard III_,

which belongs with them) are a succession of scenes from English Chronicle

history strung together very loosely; and only in the last is there any

definite attempt at unity. That he soon fell under Marlowe's influence is

evident from the atrocities and bombast of _Titus Andronicus_ and _Richard

III_. The former may have been written by both playwrights in

collaboration, or may be one of Marlowe's horrors left unfinished by his

early death and brought to an end by Shakespeare. He soon broke away from

this apprentice work, and then appeared in rapid succession _Love's

Labour's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona_, the first

English Chronicle plays,[151] _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Romeo and

Juliet_. This order is more or less conjectural; but the wide variety of

these plays, as well as their unevenness and frequent crudities, marks the

first or experimental stage of Shakespeare's work. It is as if the author

were trying his power, or more likely trying the temper of his audience.

For it must be remembered that to please his audience was probably the

ruling motive of Shakespeare, as of the other early dramatists, during the

most vigorous and prolific period of his career.

Shakespeare's poems, rather than his dramatic work, mark the beginning of

his success. "Venus and Adonis" became immensely popular in London, and its

dedication to the Earl of Southampton brought, according to tradition, a

substantial money gift, which may have laid the foundation for

Shakespeare's business success. He appears to have shrewdly invested his

money, and soon became part owner of the Globe and Blackfriars theaters, in

which his plays were presented by his own companies. His success and

popularity grew amazingly. Within a decade of his unnoticed arrival in

London he was one of the most famous actors and literary men in England.

Following his experimental work there came a succession of wonderful

plays,--_Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Julius Cæsar,

Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra_. The great

tragedies of this period are associated with a period of gloom and sorrow

in the poet's life; but of its cause we have no knowledge. It may have been

this unknown sorrow which turned his thoughts back to Stratford and caused,

apparently, a dissatisfaction with his work and profession; but the latter

is generally attributed to other causes. Actors and playwrights were in his

day generally looked upon with suspicion or contempt; and Shakespeare, even

in the midst of success, seems to have looked forward to the time when he

could retire to Stratford to live the life of a farmer and country

gentleman. His own and his father's families were first released from debt;

then, in 1597, he bought New Place, the finest house in Stratford, and soon

added a tract of farming land to complete his estate. His profession may

have prevented his acquiring the title of "gentleman," or he may have only

followed a custom of the time[152] when he applied for and obtained a coat

of arms for his father, and so indirectly secured the title by inheritance.

His home visits grew more and more frequent till, about the year 1611, he

left London and retired permanently to Stratford.

Though still in the prime of life, Shakespeare soon abandoned his dramatic

work for the comfortable life of a country gentleman. Of his later plays,

_Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale_, and _Pericles_ show a decided

falling off from his previous work, and indicate another period of

experimentation; this time not to test his own powers but to catch the

fickle humor of the public. As is usually the case with a theater-going

people, they soon turned from serious drama to sentimental or more

questionable spectacles; and with Fletcher, who worked with Shakespeare and

succeeded him as the first playwright of London, the decline of the drama

had already begun. In 1609, however, occurred an event which gave

Shakespeare his chance for a farewell to the public. An English ship

disappeared, and all on board were given up for lost. A year later the

sailors returned home, and their arrival created intense excitement. They

had been wrecked on the unknown Bermudas, and had lived there for ten

months, terrified by mysterious noises which they thought came from spirits

and devils. Five different accounts of this fascinating shipwreck were

published, and the Bermudas became known as the "Ile of Divels."

Shakespeare took this story--which caused as much popular interest as that

later shipwreck which gave us _Robinson Crusoe_--and wove it into _The

Tempest_. In the same year (1611) he probably sold his interest in the

Globe and Blackfriars theaters, and his dramatic work was ended. A few

plays were probably left unfinished[153] and were turned over to Fletcher

and other dramatists.

That Shakespeare thought little of his success and had no idea that his

dramas were the greatest that the world ever produced seems evident from

the fact that he made no attempt to collect or publish his works, or even

to save his manuscripts, which were carelessly left to stage managers of

the theaters, and so found their way ultimately to the ragman. After a few

years of quiet life, of which we have less record than of hundreds of

simple country gentlemen of the time, Shakespeare died on the probable

anniversary of his birth, April 23, 1616. He was given a tomb in the

chancel of the parish church, not because of his preëminence in literature,

but because of his interest in the affairs of a country village. And in the

sad irony of fate, the broad stone that covered his tomb--now an object of

veneration to the thousands that yearly visit the little church--was

inscribed as follows:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare

To dig the dust enclosed heare;

Bleste be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he that moves my bones.

This wretched doggerel, over the world's greatest poet, was intended, no

doubt, as a warning to some stupid sexton, lest he should empty the grave

and give the honored place to some amiable gentleman who had given more

tithes to the parish.

WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. At the time of Shakespeare's death twenty-one plays

existed in manuscripts in the various theaters. A few others had already

been printed in quarto form, and the latter are the only publications that

could possibly have met with the poet's own approval. More probably they

were taken down in shorthand by some listener at the play and then

"pirated" by some publisher for his own profit. The first printed

collection of his plays, now called the First Folio (1623), was made by two

actors, Heming and Condell, who asserted that they had access to the papers

of the poet and had made a perfect edition, "in order to keep the memory of

so worthy a friend and fellow alive." This contains thirty-six of the

thirty-seven plays generally attributed to Shakespeare, _Pericles_ being

omitted. This celebrated First Folio was printed from playhouse manuscripts

and from printed quartos containing many notes and changes by individual

actors and stage managers. Moreover, it was full of typographical errors,

though the editors alleged great care and accuracy; and so, though it is

the only authoritative edition we have, it is of little value in

determining the dates, or the classification of the plays as they existed

in Shakespeare's mind.

Notwithstanding this uncertainty, a careful reading of the plays and poems

leaves us with an impression of four different periods of work, probably

corresponding with the growth and experience of the poet's life. These are:

(1) a period of early experimentation. It is marked by youthfulness and

exuberance of imagination, by extravagance of language, and by the frequent

use of rimed couplets with his blank verse. The period dates from his

arrival in London to 1595. Typical works of this first period are his early

poems, _Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona_, and _Richard III_.

(2) A period of rapid growth and development, from 1595 to 1600. Such plays

as _The Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It_, and

_Henry IV_, all written in this period, show more careful and artistic

work, better plots, and a marked increase in knowledge of human nature. (3)

A period of gloom and depression, from 1600 to 1607, which marks the full

maturity of his powers. What caused this evident sadness is unknown; but it

is generally attributed to some personal experience, coupled with the

political misfortunes of his friends, Essex and Southampton. The _Sonnets_

with their note of personal disappointment, _Twelfth Night_, which is

Shakespeare's "farewell to mirth," and his great tragedies, _Hamlet, Lear,

Macbeth, Othello_, and _Julius Cæsar_, belong to this period. (4) A period

of restored serenity, of calm after storm, which marked the last years of

the poet's literary work. _The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_ are the

best of his later plays; but they all show a falling off from his previous

work, and indicate a second period of experimentation with the taste of a

fickle public.

To read in succession four plays, taking a typical work from each of the

above periods, is one of the very best ways of getting quickly at the real

life and mind of Shakespeare. Following is a complete list with the

approximate dates of his works, classified according to the above four

periods.

First Period, Early Experiment. _Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece_, 1594;

_Titus Andronicus, Henry VI_ (three parts), 1590-1591; _Love's Labour's

Lost_, 1590; _Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona_, 1591-1592;

_Richard-III_, 1593; _Richard II, King John_, 1594-1595.

Second Period, Development. _Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream_,

1595; _Merchant of Venice, Henry IV_ (first part), 1596; _Henry IV_ (second

part), _Merry Wives of Windsor_, 1597; _Much Ado About Nothing_, 1598; _As

You Like It, Henry V_, 1599.

Third Period, Maturity and Gloom. _Sonnets_ (1600-?), _Twelfth Night_,

1600; _Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cæsar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida_,

1601-1602; _All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure_, 1603;

_Othello_, 1604; _King Lear_, 1605; _Macbeth_, 1606; _Antony and Cleopatra,

Timon of Athens_, 1607.

Fourth Period, Late Experiment. _Coriolanus, Pericles_, 1608; _Cymbeline_,

1609; _Winter's Tale_, 1610-1611; _The Tempest_, 1611; _Henry VIII_

(unfinished).

CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO SOURCE. In history, legend, and story,

Shakespeare found the material for nearly all his dramas; and so they are

often divided into three classes, called historical plays, like _Richard

III_ and _Henry V;_ legendary or partly historical plays, like _Macbeth,

King Lear_, and _Julius Cæsar;_ and fictional plays, like _Romeo and

Juliet_ and _The Merchant of Venice_. Shakespeare invented few, if any, of

the plots or stories upon which his dramas are founded, but borrowed them

freely, after the custom of his age, wherever he found them. For his

legendary and historical material he depended, largely on _Holinshed's

Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, and on North's translation

of Plutarch's famous _Lives_.

A full half of his plays are fictional, and in these he used the most

popular romances of the day, seeming to depend most on the Italian

story-tellers. Only two or three of his plots, as in _Love's Labour's Lost_

and _Merry Wives of Windsor_, are said to be original, and even these are

doubtful. Occasionally Shakespeare made over an older play, as in _Henry

VI, Comedy of Errors_, and _Hamlet;_ and in one instance at least he seized

upon an incident of shipwreck in which London was greatly interested, and

made out of it the original and fascinating play of _The Tempest_, in much

the same spirit which leads our modern playwrights when they dramatize a

popular novel or a war story to catch the public fancy.

CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO DRAMATIC TYPE. Shakespeare's dramas are usually

divided into three classes, called tragedies, comedies, and historical

plays. Strictly speaking the drama has but two divisions, tragedy and

comedy, in which are included the many subordinate forms of tragi-comedy,

melodrama, lyric drama (opera), farce, etc. A tragedy is a drama in which

the principal characters are involved in desperate circumstances or led by

overwhelming passions. It is invariably serious and dignified. The movement

is always stately, but grows more and more rapid as it approaches the

climax; and the end is always calamitous, resulting in death or dire

misfortune to the principals. As Chaucer's monk says, before he begins to

"biwayle in maner of tragedie":

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie

Of him that stood in great prosperitee,

And is y-fallen out of heigh degree

Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.

A comedy, on the other hand, is a drama in which the characters are placed

in more or less humorous situations. The movement is light and often

mirthful, and the play ends in general good will and happiness. The

historical drama aims to present some historical age or character, and may

be either a comedy or a tragedy. The following list includes the best of

Shakespeare's plays in each of the three classes; but the order indicates

merely the author's personal opinion of the relative merits of the plays in

each class. Thus _Merchant of Venice_ would be the first of the comedies

for the beginner to read, and _Julius Cæsar_ is an excellent introduction

to the historical plays and the tragedies.

Comedies. _Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It,

Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Twelfth Night_.

Tragedies. _Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello_.

Historical Plays. _Julius Cæsar, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V,

Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra_.

DOUBTFUL PLAYS. It is reasonably certain that some of the plays generally

attributed to Shakespeare are partly the work of other dramatists. The

first of these doubtful plays, often called the Pre-Shakespearian Group,

are _Titus Andronicus_ and the first part of _Henry VI_. Shakespeare

probably worked with Marlowe in the two last parts of _Henry VI_ and in

_Richard III_. The three plays, _Taming of the Shrew, Timon_, and

_Pericles_ are only partly Shakespeare's work, but the other authors are

unknown. _Henry VIII_ is the work of Fletcher and Shakespeare, opinion

being divided as to whether Shakespeare helped Fletcher, or whether it was

an unfinished work of Shakespeare which was put into Fletcher's hands for

completion. _Two Noble Kinsmen_ is a play not ordinarily found in editions

of Shakespeare, but it is often placed among his doubtful works. The

greater part of the play is undoubtedly by Fletcher. _Edward III_ is one of

several crude plays published at first anonymously and later attributed to

Shakespeare by publishers who desired to sell their wares. It contains a

few passages that strongly suggest Shakespeare; but the external evidence

is all against his authorship.

SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. It is generally asserted that, if Shakespeare had

written no plays, his poems alone would have given him a commanding place

in the Elizabethan Age. Nevertheless, in the various histories of our

literature there is apparent a desire to praise and pass over all but the

_Sonnets_ as rapidly as possible; and the reason may be stated frankly. His

two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece," contain much

poetic fancy; but it must be said of both that the subjects are unpleasant,

and that they are dragged out to unnecessary length in order to show the

play of youthful imagination. They were extremely popular in Shakespeare's

day, but in comparison with his great dramatic works these poems are now of

minor importance.

Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, one hundred and fifty-four in number, are the only

direct expression of the poet's own feelings that we possess; for his plays

are the most impersonal in all literature. They were published together in

1609; but if they had any unity in Shakespeare's mind, their plan and

purpose are hard to discover. By some critics they are regarded as mere

literary exercises; by others as the expression of some personal grief

during the third period of the poet's literary career. Still others, taking

a hint from the sonnet beginning "Two loves I have, of comfort and

despair," divide them all into two classes, addressed to a man who was

Shakespeare's friend, and to a woman who disdained his love. The reader may

well avoid such classifications and read a few sonnets, like the twenty-

ninth, for instance, and let them speak their own message. A few are

trivial and artificial enough, suggesting the elaborate exercises of a

piano player; but the majority are remarkable for their subtle thought and

exquisite expression. Here and there is one, like that beginning

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

which will haunt the reader long afterwards, like the remembrance of an old

German melody.

SHAKESPEARE'S PLACE AND INFLUENCE. Shakespeare holds, by general

acclamation, the foremost place in the world's literature, and his

overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to criticise or even to praise

him. Two poets only, Homer and Dante, have been named with him; but each of

these wrote within narrow limits, while Shakespeare's genius included all

the world of nature and of men. In a word, he is the universal poet. To

study nature in his works is like exploring a new and beautiful country; to

study man in his works is like going into a great city, viewing the motley

crowd as one views a great masquerade in which past and present mingle

freely and familiarly, as if the dead were all living again. And the

marvelous thing, in this masquerade of all sorts and conditions of men, is

that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every face, lets us see the man as he

is in his own soul, and shows us in each one some germ of good, some "soul

of goodness" even in things evil. For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain

note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your own. Good always

overcomes evil in the long run; and love, faith, work, and duty are the

four elements that in all ages make the world right. To criticise or praise

the genius that creates these men and women is to criticise or praise

humanity itself.

Of his influence in literature it is equally difficult to speak. Goethe

expresses the common literary judgment when he says, "I do not remember

that any book or person or event in my life ever made so great an

impression upon me as the plays of Shakespeare." His influence upon our own

language and thought is beyond calculation. Shakespeare and the King James

Bible are the two great conservators of the English speech; and one who

habitually reads them finds himself possessed of a style and vocabulary

that are beyond criticism. Even those who read no Shakespeare are still

unconsciously guided by him, for his thought and expression have so

pervaded our life and literature that it is impossible, so long as one

speaks the English language, to escape his influence.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, "This was a man!"

V. SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS IN THE DRAMA

DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. It was inevitable that the drama should decline after

Shakespeare, for the simple reason that there was no other great enough to

fill his place. Aside from this, other causes were at work, and the chief

of these was at the very source of the Elizabethan dramas. It must be

remembered that our first playwrights wrote to please their audiences; that

the drama rose in England because of the desire of a patriotic people to

see something of the stirring life of the times reflected on the stage. For

there were no papers or magazines in those days, and people came to the

theaters not only to be amused but to be informed. Like children, they

wanted to see a story acted; and like men, they wanted to know what it

meant. Shakespeare fulfilled their desire. He gave them their story, and

his genius was great enough to show in every play not only their own life

and passions but something of the meaning of all life, and of that eternal

justice which uses the war of human passions for its own great ends. Thus

good and evil mingle freely in his dramas; but the evil is never

attractive, and the good triumphs as inevitably as fate. Though his

language is sometimes coarse, we are to remember that it was the custom of

his age to speak somewhat coarsely, and that in language, as in thought and

feeling, Shakespeare is far above most of his contemporaries.

With his successors all this was changed. The audience itself had gradually

changed, and in place of plain people eager for a story and for

information, we see a larger and larger proportion of those who went to the

play because they had nothing else to do. They wanted amusement only, and

since they had blunted by idleness the desire for simple and wholesome

amusement, they called for something more sensational. Shakespeare's

successors catered to the depraved tastes of this new audience. They lacked

not only Shakespeare's genius, but his broad charity, his moral insight

into life. With the exception of Ben Jonson, they neglected the simple fact

that man in his deepest nature is a moral being, and that only a play which

satisfies the whole nature of man by showing the triumph of the moral law

can ever wholly satisfy an audience or a people. Beaumont and Fletcher,

forgetting the deep meaning of life, strove for effect by increasing the

sensationalism of their plays; Webster reveled in tragedies of blood and

thunder; Massinger and Ford made another step downward, producing evil and

licentious scenes for their own sake, making characters and situations more

immoral till, notwithstanding these dramatists' ability, the stage had

become insincere, frivolous, and bad. Ben Jonson's ode, "Come Leave the

Loathed Stage," is the judgment of a large and honest nature grown weary of

the plays and the players of the time. We read with a sense of relief that

in 1642, only twenty-six years after Shakespeare's death, both houses of

Parliament voted to close the theaters as breeders of lies and immorality.

BEN JONSON (1573?-1637)

Personally Jonson is the most commanding literary figure among the

Elizabethans. For twenty-five years he was the literary dictator of London,

the chief of all the wits that gathered nightly at the old Devil Tavern.

With his great learning, his ability, and his commanding position as poet

laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries and the

romantic tendency of the age. For two things he fought bravely,--to restore

the classic form of the drama, and to keep the stage from its downward

course. Apparently he failed; the romantic school fixed its hold more

strongly than ever; the stage went swiftly to an end as sad as that of the

early dramatists. Nevertheless his influence lived and grew more powerful

till, aided largely by French influence, it resulted in the so-called

classicism of the eighteenth century.

LIFE. Jonson was born at Westminster about the year 1573. His father, an

educated gentleman, had his property confiscated and was himself thrown

into prison by Queen Mary; so we infer the family was of some prominence.

From his mother he received certain strong characteristics, and by a single

short reference in Jonson's works we are led to see the kind of woman she

was. It is while Jonson is telling Drummond of the occasion when he was

thrown into prison, because some passages in the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_

gave offense to King James, and he was in danger of a horrible death, after

having his ears and nose cut off. He tells us how, after his pardon, he was

banqueting with his friends, when his "old mother" came in and showed a

paper full of "lusty strong poison," which she intended to mix with his

drink just before the execution. And to show that she "was no churl," she

intended first to drink of the poison herself. The incident is all the more

suggestive from the fact that Chapman and Marston, one his friend and the

other his enemy, were first cast into prison as the authors of _Eastward

Ho!_ and rough Ben Jonson at once declared that he too had had a small hand

in the writing and went to join them in prison.

Jonson's father came out of prison, having given up his estate, and became

a minister. He died just before the son's birth, and two years later the

mother married a bricklayer of London. The boy was sent to a private

school, and later made his own way to Westminster School, where the

submaster, Camden, struck by the boy's ability, taught and largely

supported him. For a short time he may have studied at the university in

Cambridge; but his stepfather soon set him to learning the bricklayer's

trade. He ran away from this, and went with the English army to fight

Spaniards in the Low Countries. His best known exploit there was to fight a

duel between the lines with one of the enemy's soldiers, while both armies

looked on. Jonson killed his man, and took his arms, and made his way back

to his own lines in a way to delight the old Norman troubadours. He soon

returned to England, and married precipitately when only nineteen or twenty

years old. Five years later we find him employed, like Shakespeare, as

actor and reviser of old plays in the theater. Thereafter his life is a

varied and stormy one. He killed an actor in a duel, and only escaped

hanging by pleading "benefit of clergy";[154] but he lost all his poor

goods and was branded for life on his left thumb. In his first great play,

_Every Man in His Humour_ (1598), Shakespeare acted one of the parts; and

that may have been the beginning of their long friendship. Other plays

followed rapidly. Upon the accession of James, Jonson's masques won him

royal favor, and he was made poet laureate. He now became undoubted leader

of the literary men of his time, though his rough honesty and his hatred of

the literary tendencies of the age made him quarrel with nearly all of

them. In 1616, soon after Shakespeare's retirement, he stopped writing for

the stage and gave himself up to study and serious work. In 1618 he

traveled on foot to Scotland, where he visited Drummond, from whom we have

the scant records of his varied life. His impressions of this journey,

called _Foot Pilgrimage_, were lost in a fire before publication.

Thereafter he produced less, and his work declined in vigor; but spite of

growing poverty and infirmity we notice in his later work, especially in

the unfinished _Sad Shepherd_, a certain mellowness and tender human

sympathy which were lacking in his earlier productions. He died poverty

stricken in 1637. Unlike Shakespeare's, his death was mourned as a national

calamity, and he was buried with all honor in Westminster Abbey. On his

grave was laid a marble slab, on which the words "O rare Ben Jonson" were

his sufficient epitaph.

WORKS OF BEN JONSON. Jonson's work is in strong contrast with that of

Shakespeare and of the later Elizabethan dramatists. Alone he fought

against the romantic tendency of the age, and to restore the classic

standards. Thus the whole action of his drama usually covers only a few

hours, or a single day. He never takes liberties with historical facts, as

Shakespeare does, but is accurate to the smallest detail. His dramas abound

in classical learning, are carefully and logically constructed, and comedy

and tragedy are kept apart, instead of crowding each other as they do in

Shakespeare and in life. In one respect his comedies are worthy of careful

reading,--they are intensely realistic, presenting men and women of the

time exactly as they were. From a few of Jonson's scenes we can

understand--better than from all the plays of Shakespeare--how men talked

and acted during the Age of Elizabeth.

Jonson's first comedy, _Every Man in His Humour_, is a key to all his

dramas. The word "humour" in his age stood for some characteristic whim or

quality of society. Jonson gives to his leading character some prominent

humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the most characteristic

feature of a face, and so holds it before our attention that all other

qualities are lost sight of; which is the method that Dickens used later in

many of his novels. _Every Man in His Humour_ was the first of three

satires. Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city. The

second, _Cynthia's Revels_, satirizes the humors of the court; while the

third, _The Poetaster_, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries,

was leveled at the false standards of the poets of the age.

The three best known of Jonson's comedies are _Volpone, or the Fox, The

Alchemist_, and _Epicoene, or the Silent Woman. Volpone_ is a keen and

merciless analysis of a man governed by an overwhelming love of money for

its own sake. The first words in the first scene are a key to the whole

comedy:

_(Volpone)_

Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!

Open the shrine that I may see my saint.

(_Mosca withdraws a curtain and discovers piles of

gold, plate, jewels, etc._)

Hail the world's soul, and mine!

Volpone's method of increasing his wealth is to play upon the avarice of

men. He pretends to be at the point of death, and his "suitors," who know

his love of gain and that he has no heirs, endeavor hypocritically to

sweeten his last moments by giving him rich presents, so that he will leave

them all his wealth. The intrigues of these suitors furnish the story of

the play, and show to what infamous depths avarice will lead a man.

_The Alchemist_ is a study of quackery on one side and of gullibility on

the other, founded on the mediæval idea of the philosopher's stone,[155]

and applies as well to the patent medicines and get-rich-quick schemes of

our day as to the peculiar forms of quackery with which Jonson was more

familiar. In plot and artistic construction _The Alchemist_ is an almost

perfect specimen of the best English drama. It has some remarkably good

passages, and is the most readable of Jonson's plays.

_Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_, is a prose comedy exceedingly well

constructed, full of life, abounding in fun and unexpected situations. Here

is a brief outline from which the reader may see of what materials Jonson

made up his comedies.

The chief character is Morose, a rich old codger whose humor is a horror of

noise. He lives in a street so narrow that it will admit no carriages; he

pads the doors; plugs the keyhole; puts mattresses on the stairs. He

dismisses a servant who wears squeaky boots; makes all the rest go about in

thick stockings; and they must answer him by signs, since he cannot bear to

hear anybody but himself talk. He disinherits his poor nephew Eugenie, and,

to make sure that the latter will not get any money out of him, resolves to

marry. His confidant in this delicate matter is Cutbeard the barber, who,

unlike his kind, never speaks unless spoken to, and does not even knick his

scissors as he works. Cutbeard (who is secretly in league with the nephew)

tells him of Epicoene, a rare, silent woman, and Morose is so delighted

with her silence that he resolves to marry her on the spot. Cutbeard

produces a parson with a bad cold, who can speak only in a whisper, to

marry them; and when the parson coughs after the ceremony Morose demands

back five shillings of the fee. To save it the parson coughs more, and is

hurriedly bundled out of the house. The silent woman finds her voice

immediately after the marriage, begins to talk loudly and to make reforms

in the household, driving Morose to distraction. A noisy dinner party from

a neighboring house, with drums and trumpets and a quarreling man and wife,

is skillfully guided in at this moment to celebrate the wedding. Morose

flees for his life, and is found perched like a monkey on a crossbeam in

the attic, with all his nightcaps tied over his ears. He seeks a divorce,

but is driven frantic by the loud arguments of a lawyer and a divine, who

are no other than Cutbeard and a sea captain disguised. When Morose is past

all hope the nephew offers to release him from his wife and her noisy

friends if he will allow him five hundred pounds a year. Morose offers him

anything, everything, to escape his torment, and signs a deed to that

effect. Then comes the surprise of the play when Eugenie whips the wig from

Epicoene and shows a boy in disguise.

It will be seen that the _Silent Woman_, with its rapid action and its

unexpected situations, offers an excellent opportunity for the actors; but

the reading of the play, as of most of Jonson's comedies, is marred by low

intrigues showing a sad state of morals among the upper classes.

Besides these, and many other less known comedies, Jonson wrote two great

tragedies, _Sejanus_ (1603) and _Catiline_ (1611), upon severe classical

lines. After ceasing his work for the stage, Jonson wrote many masques in

honor of James I and of Queen Anne, to be played amid elaborate scenery by

the gentlemen of the court. The best of these are "The Satyr," "The

Penates," "Masque of Blackness," "Masque of Beauty," "Hue and Cry after

Cupid," and "The Masque of Queens." In all his plays Jonson showed a strong

lyric gift, and some of his little poems and songs, like "The Triumph of

Charis," "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and "To the Memory of my

Beloved Mother," are now better known than his great dramatic works. A

single volume of prose, called _Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and

Matter_, is an interesting collection of short essays which are more like

Bacon's than any other work of the age.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. The work of these two men is so closely interwoven

that, though Fletcher outlived Beaumont by nine years and the latter had no

hand in some forty of the plays that bear their joint names, we still class

them together, and only scholars attempt to separate their works so as to

give each writer his due share. Unlike most of the Elizabethan dramatists,

they both came from noble and cultured families and were university

trained. Their work, in strong contrast with Jonson's, is intensely

romantic, and in it all, however coarse or brutal the scene, there is

still, as Emerson pointed out, the subtle "recognition of gentility."

Beaumont (1584-1616) was the brother of Sir John Beaumont of

Leicestershire. From Oxford he came to London to study law, but soon gave

it up to write for the stage. Fletcher (1579-1625) was the son of the

bishop of London, and shows in all his work the influence of his high

social position and of his Cambridge education. The two dramatists met at

the Mermaid tavern under Ben Jonson's leadership and soon became

inseparable friends, living and working together. Tradition has it that

Beaumont supplied the judgment and the solid work of the play, while

Fletcher furnished the high-colored sentiment and the lyric poetry, without

which an Elizabethan play would have been incomplete. Of their joint plays,

the two best known are _Philaster_, whose old theme, like that of

_Cymbeline_ and _Griselda_, is the jealousy of a lover and the faithfulness

of a girl, and _The Maid's Tragedy_. Concerning Fletcher's work the most

interesting literary question is how much did he write of Shakespeare's

_Henry VIII_, and how much did Shakespeare help him in _The Two Noble

Kinsmen_.

JOHN WEBSTER. Of Webster's personal history we know nothing except that he

was well known as a dramatist under James I. His extraordinary powers of

expression rank him with Shakespeare; but his talent seems to have been

largely devoted to the blood-and-thunder play begun by Marlowe. His two

best known plays are _The White Devil_ (pub. 1612) and _The Duchess of

Malfi_ (pub. 1623). The latter, spite of its horrors, ranks him as one of

the greatest masters of English tragedy. It must be remembered that he

sought in this play to reproduce the Italian life of the sixteenth century,

and for this no imaginary horrors are needed. The history of any Italian

court or city in this period furnishes more vice and violence and dishonor

than even the gloomy imagination of Webster could conceive. All the

so-called blood tragedies of the Elizabethan period, from Thomas Kyd's

_Spanish Tragedy_ down, however much they may condemn the brutal taste of

the English audiences, are still only so many search lights thrown upon a

history of horrible darkness.

THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570?-1627). Middleton is best known by two great plays,

_The Changeling_[156] and _Women Beware Women_. In poetry and diction they

are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare's plays; otherwise, in

their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense

and are repulsive to the modern reader. Two earlier plays, _A Trick to

catch the Old One_, his best comedy, and _A Fair Quarrel_, his earliest

tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable,

because they seem to express Middleton's own idea of the drama rather than

that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his later age.

THOMAS HEYWOOD (1580?-1650?). Heywood's life, of which we know little in

detail, covers the whole period of the Elizabethan drama. To the glory of

that drama he contributed, according to his own statement, the greater

part, at least, of nearly two hundred and twenty plays. It was an enormous

amount of work; but he seems to have been animated by the modern literary

spirit of following the best market and striking while the financial iron

is hot. Naturally good work was impossible, even to genius, under such

circumstances, and few of his plays are now known. The two best, if the

reader would obtain his own idea of Heywood's undoubted ability, are _A

Woman killed with Kindness_, a pathetic story of domestic life, and _The

Fair Maid of the West_, a melodrama with plenty of fighting of the popular

kind.

THOMAS DEKKER (1570-?). Dekker is in pleasing contrast with most of the

dramatists of the time. All we know of him must be inferred from his works,

which show a happy and sunny nature, pleasant and good to meet. The reader

will find the best expression of Dekker's personality and erratic genius in

_The Shoemakers' Holiday_, a humorous study of plain working people, and

_Old Fortunatus_, a fairy drama of the wishing hat and no end of money.

Whether intended for children or not, it had the effect of charming the

elders far more than the young people, and the play became immensely

popular.

MASSINGER, FORD, SHIRLEY. These three men mark the end of the Elizabethan

drama. Their work, done largely while the struggle was on between the

actors and the corrupt court, on one side, and the Puritans on the other,

shows a deliberate turning away not only from Puritan standards but from

the high ideals of their own art to pander to the corrupt taste of the

upper classes.

Philip Massinger (1584-1640) was a dramatic poet of great natural ability;

but his plots and situations are usually so strained and artificial that

the modern reader finds no interest in them. In his best comedy, _A New Way

to Pay Old Debts_, he achieved great popularity and gave us one figure, Sir

Giles Overreach, which is one of the typical characters of the English

stage. His best plays are _The Great Duke of Florence, The Virgin Martyr_,

and _The Maid of Honour_.

John Ford (1586-1642?) and James Shirley (1596-1666) have left us little of

permanent literary value, and their works are read only by those who wish

to understand the whole rise and fall of the drama. An occasional scene in

Ford's plays is as strong as anything that the Elizabethan Age produced;

but as a whole the plays are unnatural and tiresome. Probably his best play

is _The Broken Heart_ (1633). Shirley was given to imitation of his

predecessors, and his very imitation is characteristic of an age which had

lost its inspiration. A single play, _Hyde Park_, with its frivolous,

realistic dialogue, is sometimes read for its reflection of the fashionable

gossipy talk of the day. Long before Shirley's death the actors said,

"Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone." Parliament voted to close the

theaters, thereby saving the drama from a more inglorious death by

dissipation.[157]

VI. THE PROSE WRITERS

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

In Bacon we see one of those complex and contradictory natures which are

the despair of the biographer. If the writer be an admirer of Bacon, he

finds too much that he must excuse or pass over in silence; and if he takes

his stand on the law to condemn the avarice and dishonesty of his subject,

he finds enough moral courage and nobility to make him question the justice

of his own judgment. On the one hand is rugged Ben Jonson's tribute to his

power and ability, and on the other Hallam's summary that he was "a man

who, being intrusted with the highest gifts of Heaven, habitually abused

them for the poorest purposes of earth--hired them out for guineas,

places, and titles in the service of injustice, covetousness, and

oppression."

Laying aside the opinions of others, and relying only upon the facts of

Bacon's life, we find on the one side the politician, cold, calculating,

selfish, and on the other the literary and scientific man with an

impressive devotion to truth for its own great sake; here a man using

questionable means to advance his own interests, and there a man seeking

with zeal and endless labor to penetrate the secret ways of Nature, with no

other object than to advance the interests of his fellow-men. So, in our

ignorance of the secret motives and springs of the man's life, judgment is

necessarily suspended. Bacon was apparently one of those double natures

that only God is competent to judge, because of the strange mixture of

intellectual strength and moral weakness that is in them.

LIFE. Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and

of the learned Ann Cook, sister-in-law to Lord Burleigh, greatest of the

queen's statesmen. From these connections, as well as from native gifts, he

was attracted to the court, and as a child was called by Elizabeth her

"Little Lord Keeper." At twelve he went to Cambridge, but left the

university after two years, declaring the whole plan of education to be

radically wrong, and the system of Aristotle, which was the basis of all

philosophy in those days, to be a childish delusion, since in the course of

centuries it had "produced no fruit, but only a jungle of dry and useless

branches." Strange, even for a sophomore of fourteen, thus to condemn the

whole system of the universities; but such was the boy, and the system!

Next year, in order to continue his education, he accompanied the English

ambassador to France, where he is said to have busied himself chiefly with

the practical studies of statistics and diplomacy.

Two years later he was recalled to London by the death of his father.

Without money, and naturally with expensive tastes, he applied to his Uncle

Burleigh for a lucrative position. It was in this application that he used

the expression, so characteristic of the Elizabethan Age, that he "had

taken all knowledge for his province." Burleigh, who misjudged him as a

dreamer and self-seeker, not only refused to help him at the court but

successfully opposed his advancement by Elizabeth. Bacon then took up the

study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1582. That he had not lost his

philosophy in the mazes of the law is shown by his tract, written about

this time, "On the Greatest Birth of Time," which was a plea for his

inductive system of philosophy, reasoning from many facts to one law,

rather than from an assumed law to particular facts, which was the

deductive method that had been in use for centuries. In his famous plea for

progress Bacon demanded three things: the free investigation of nature, the

discovery of facts instead of theories, and the verification of results by

experiment rather than by argument. In our day these are the A, B, C of

science, but in Bacon's time they seemed revolutionary.

As a lawyer he became immediately successful; his knowledge and power of

pleading became widely known, and it was almost at the beginning of his

career that Jonson wrote, "The fear of every one that heard him speak was

that he should make an end." The publication of his _Essays_ added greatly

to his fame; but Bacon was not content. His head was buzzing with huge

schemes,--the pacification of unhappy Ireland, the simplification of

English law, the reform of the church, the study of nature, the

establishment of a new philosophy. Meanwhile, sad to say, he played the

game of politics for his personal advantage. He devoted himself to Essex,

the young and dangerous favorite of the queen, won his friendship, and then

used him skillfully to better his own position. When the earl was tried for

treason it was partly, at least, through Bacon's efforts that he was

convicted and beheaded; and though Bacon claims to have been actuated by a

high sense of justice, we are not convinced that he understood either

justice or friendship in appearing as queen's counsel against the man who

had befriended him. His coldbloodedness and lack of moral sensitiveness

appear even in his essays on "Love" and "Friendship." Indeed, we can

understand his life only upon the theory that his intellectuality left him

cold and dead to the higher sentiments of our humanity.

During Elizabeth's reign Bacon had sought repeatedly for high office, but

had been blocked by Burleigh and perhaps also by the queen's own shrewdness

in judging men. With the advent of James I (1603) Bacon devoted himself to

the new ruler and rose rapidly in favor. He was knighted, and soon

afterwards attained another object of his ambition in marrying a rich wife.

The appearance of his great work, the _Advancement of Learning_, in 1605,

was largely the result of the mental stimulus produced by his change in

fortune. In 1613 he was made attorney-general, and speedily made enemies by

using the office to increase his personal ends. He justified himself in his

course by his devotion to the king's cause, and by the belief that the

higher his position and the more ample his means the more he could do for

science. It was in this year that Bacon wrote his series of _State Papers_,

which show a marvelous grasp of the political tendencies of his age. Had

his advice been followed, it would have certainly averted the struggle

between king and parliament that followed speedily. In 1617 he was

appointed to his father's office, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and the next

year to the high office of Lord Chancellor. With this office he received

the title of Baron Verulam, and later of Viscount St. Alban, which he

affixed with some vanity to his literary work. Two years later appeared his

greatest work, the _Novum Organum_, called after Aristotle's famous

_Organon_.

Bacon did not long enjoy his political honors. The storm which had been

long gathering against James's government broke suddenly upon Bacon's head.

When Parliament assembled in 1621 it vented its distrust of James and his

favorite Villiers by striking unexpectedly at their chief adviser. Bacon

was sternly accused of accepting bribes, and the evidence was so great that

he confessed that there was much political corruption abroad in the land,

that he was personally guilty of some of it, and he threw himself upon the

mercy of his judges. Parliament at that time was in no mood for mercy.

Bacon was deprived of his office and was sentenced to pay the enormous fine

of 40,000 pounds, to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and

thereafter to be banished forever from Parliament and court. Though the

imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was largely remitted,

Bacon's hopes and schemes for political honors were ended; and it is at

this point of appalling adversity that the nobility in the man's nature

asserts itself strongly. If the reader be interested to apply a great man's

philosophy to his own life, he will find the essay, "Of Great Place," most

interesting in this connection.

Bacon now withdrew permanently from public life, and devoted his splendid

ability to literary and scientific work. He completed the _Essays_,

experimented largely, wrote history, scientific articles, and one

scientific novel, and made additions to his _Instauratio Magna_, the great

philosophical work which was never finished. In the spring of 1626, while

driving in a snowstorm, it occurred to him that snow might be used as a

preservative instead of salt. True to his own method of arriving at truth,

he stopped at the first house, bought a fowl, and proceeded to test his

theory. The experiment chilled him, and he died soon after from the effects

of his exposure. As Macaulay wrote, "the great apostle of experimental

philosophy was destined to be its martyr."

WORKS OF BACON. Bacon's philosophic works, _The Advancement of Learning_

and the _Novum Organum_, will be best understood in connection with the

_Instauratio Magna_, or _The Great Institution of True Philosophy_, of

which they were parts. The _Instauratio_ was never completed, but the very

idea of the work was magnificent,--to sweep away the involved philosophy of

the schoolmen and the educational systems of the universities, and to

substitute a single great work which should be a complete education, "a

rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and for the relief of man's

estate." The object of this education was to bring practical results to all

the people, instead of a little selfish culture and much useless

speculation, which, he conceived, were the only products of the

universities.

THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA. This was the most ambitious, though it is not the

best known, of Bacon's works. For the insight it gives us into the author's

mind, we note here a brief outline of his subject. It was divided into six

parts, as follows:

1. _Partitiones Scientiarum_. This was to be a classification and summary

of all human knowledge. Philosophy and all speculation must be cast out and

the natural sciences established as the basis of all education. The only

part completed was _The Advancement of Learning_, which served as an

introduction.

2. _Novum Organum_, or the "new instrument," that is, the use of reason and

experiment instead of the old Aristotelian logic. To find truth one must do

two things: (_a_) get rid of all prejudices or idols, as Bacon called them.

These "idols" are four: "idols of the tribe," that is, prejudices due to

common methods of thought among all races; "idols of the cave or den," that

is, personal peculiarities and prejudices; "idols of the market place," due

to errors of language; and "idols of the theater," which are the unreliable

traditions of men. (_b_) After discarding the above "idols" we must

interrogate nature; must collect facts by means of numerous experiments,

arrange them in order, and then determine the law that underlies them.

It will be seen at a glance that the above is the most important of Bacon's

works. The _Organum_ was to be in several books, only two of which he

completed, and these he wrote and rewrote twelve times until they satisfied

him.

3. _Historic Naturalis et Experimentalis_, the study of all the phenomena

of nature. Of four parts of this work which he completed, one of them at

least, the _Sylva Sylvarum_, is decidedly at variance with his own idea of

fact and experiment. It abounds in fanciful explanations, more worthy of

the poetic than of the scientific mind. Nature is seen to be full of

desires and instincts; the air "thirsts" for light and fragrance; bodies

rise or sink because they have an "appetite" for height or depth; the

qualities of bodies are the result of an "essence," so that when we

discover the essences of gold and silver and diamonds it will be a simple

matter to create as much of them as we may need.

4. _Scala Intellectus_, or "Ladder of the Mind," is the rational

application of the _Organum_ to all problems. By it the mind should ascend

step by step from particular facts and instances to general laws and

abstract principles.

5. _Prodromi_, "Prophecies or Anticipations," is a list of discoveries that

men shall make when they have applied Bacon's methods of study and

experimentation.

6. _Philosophia Secunda_, which was to be a record of practical results of

the new philosophy when the succeeding ages should have applied it

faithfully.

It is impossible to regard even the outline of such a vast work without an

involuntary thrill of admiration for the bold and original mind which

conceived it. "We may," said Bacon, "make no despicable beginnings. The

destinies of the human race must complete the work ... for upon this will

depend not only a speculative good but all the fortunes of mankind and all

their power." There is the unconscious expression of one of the great minds

of the world. Bacon was like one of the architects of the Middle Ages, who

drew his plans for a mighty cathedral, perfect in every detail from the

deep foundation stone to the cross on the highest spire, and who gave over

his plans to the builders, knowing that, in his own lifetime, only one tiny

chapel would be completed; but knowing also that the very beauty of his

plans would appeal to others, and that succeeding ages would finish the

work which he dared to begin.

THE ESSAYS. Bacon's famous _Essays_ is the one work which will interest all

students of our literature. His _Instauratio_ was in Latin, written mostly

by paid helpers from short English abstracts. He regarded Latin as the only

language worthy of a great work; but the world neglected his Latin to seize

upon his English,--marvelous English, terse, pithy, packed with thought, in

an age that used endless circumlocutions. The first ten essays, published

in 1597, were brief notebook jottings of Bacon's observations. Their

success astonished the author, but not till fifteen years later were they

republished and enlarged. Their charm grew upon Bacon himself, and during

his retirement he gave more thought to the wonderful language which he had

at first despised as much as Aristotle's philosophy. In 1612 appeared a

second edition containing thirty-eight essays, and in 1625, the year before

his death, he republished the _Essays_ in their present form, polishing and

enlarging the original ten to fifty-eight, covering a wide variety of

subjects suggested by the life of men around him.

Concerning the best of these essays there are as many opinions as there are

readers, and what one gets out of them depends largely upon his own thought

and intelligence. In this respect they are like that Nature to which Bacon

directed men's thoughts. The whole volume may be read through in an

evening; but after one has read them a dozen times he still finds as many

places to pause and reflect as at the first reading. If one must choose out

of such a storehouse, we would suggest "Studies," "Goodness," "Riches,"

"Atheism," "Unity in Religion," "Adversity," "Friendship," and "Great

Place" as an introduction to Bacon's worldly-wise philosophy.

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. Other works of Bacon are interesting as a revelation

of the Elizabethan mind, rather than because of any literary value. _The

New Atlantis_ is a kind of scientific novel describing another Utopia as

seen by Bacon. The inhabitants of Atlantis have banished Philosophy and

applied Bacon's method of investigating Nature, using the results to better

their own condition. They have a wonderful civilization, in which many of

our later discoveries--academies of the sciences, observatories, balloons,

submarines, the modification of species, and several others--were

foreshadowed with a strange mixture of cold reason and poetic intuition.

_De Sapientia Veterum_ is a fanciful attempt to show the deep meaning

underlying ancient myths,--a meaning which would have astonished the myth

makers themselves. The _History of Henry VII_ is a calm, dispassionate, and

remarkably accurate history, which makes us regret that Bacon did not do

more historical work. Besides these are metrical versions of certain

Psalms--which are valuable, in view of the controversy anent Shakespeare's

plays, for showing Bacon's utter inability to write poetry--and a large

number of letters and state papers showing the range and power of his

intellect.

BACON'S PLACE AND WORK. Although Bacon was for the greater part of his life

a busy man of affairs, one cannot read his work without becoming conscious

of two things,--a perennial freshness, which the world insists upon in all

literature that is to endure, and an intellectual power which marks him as

one of the great minds of the world.

Of late the general tendency is to give less and less prominence to his

work in science and philosophy; but criticism of his _Instauratio_, in view

of his lofty aim, is of small consequence. It is true that his "science"

to-day seems woefully inadequate; true also that, though he sought to

discover truth, he thought perhaps to monopolize it, and so looked with the

same suspicion upon Copernicus as upon the philosophers. The practical man

who despises philosophy has simply misunderstood the thing he despises. In

being practical and experimental in a romantic age he was not unique, as is

often alleged, but only expressed the tendency of the English mind in all

ages. Three centuries earlier the monk Roger Bacon did more practical

experimenting than the Elizabethan sage; and the latter's famous "idols"

are strongly suggestive of the former's "Four Sources of Human Ignorance."

Although Bacon did not make any of the scientific discoveries at which he

aimed, yet the whole spirit of his work, especially of _the Organum_, has

strongly influenced science in the direction of accurate observation and of

carefully testing every theory by practical experiment. "He that regardeth

the clouds shall not sow," said a wise writer of old; and Bacon turned

men's thoughts from the heavens above, with which they had been too busy,

to the earth beneath, which they had too much neglected. In an age when men

were busy with romance and philosophy, he insisted that the first object of

education is to make a man familiar with his natural environment; from

books he turned to men, from theory to fact, from philosophy to nature,--

and that is perhaps his greatest contribution to life and literature. Like

Moses upon Pisgah, he stood high enough above his fellows to look out over

a promised land, which his people would inherit, but into which he himself

might never enter.

RICHARD HOOKER (1554?-1600) In strong contrast with Bacon is Richard

Hooker, one of the greatest prose writers of the Elizabethan Age. One must

read the story of his life, an obscure and lowly life animated by a great

spirit, as told by Izaak Walton, to appreciate the full force of this

contrast. Bacon took all knowledge for his province, but mastered no single

part of it. Hooker, taking a single theme, the law and practice of the

English Church, so handled it that no scholar even of the present day would

dream of superseding it or of building upon any other foundation than that

which Hooker laid down. His one great work is _The Laws of Ecclesiastical

Polity_,[158] a theological and argumentative book; but, entirely apart

from its subject, it will be read wherever men desire to hear the power and

stateliness of the English language. Here is a single sentence, remarkable

not only for its perfect form but also for its expression of the reverence

for law which lies at the heart of Anglo-Saxon civilization:

Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of

God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do

her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not

exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what

condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with

uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

SIDNEY AND RALEIGH. Among the prose writers of this wonderful literary age

there are many others that deserve passing notice, though they fall far

below the standard of Bacon and Hooker. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), who

has already been considered as a poet, is quite as well known by his prose

works, _Arcadia_, a pastoral romance, and the _Defense of Poesie_, one of

our earliest literary essays. Sidney, whom the poet Shelley has eulogized,

represents the whole romantic tendency of his age; while Sir Walter Raleigh

(1552?-1618) represents its adventurous spirit and activity. The life of

Raleigh is an almost incomprehensible mixture of the poet, scholar, and

adventurer; now helping the Huguenots or the struggling Dutch in Europe,

and now leading an expedition into the unmapped wilds of the New World;

busy here with court intrigues, and there with piratical attempts to

capture the gold-laden Spanish galleons; one moment sailing the high seas

in utter freedom, and the next writing history and poetry to solace his

imprisonment. Such a life in itself is a volume far more interesting than

anything that he wrote. He is the restless spirit of the Elizabethan Age

personified.

Raleigh's chief prose works are the _Discoverie of Guiana_, a work which

would certainly have been interesting enough had he told simply what he

saw, but which was filled with colonization schemes and visions of an El

Dorado to fill the eyes and ears of the credulous; and the _History of the

World_, written to occupy his prison hours. The history is a wholly

untrustworthy account of events from creation to the downfall of the

Macedonian Empire. It is interesting chiefly for its style, which is simple

and dignified, and for the flashes of wit and poetry that break into the

fantastic combination of miracles, traditions, hearsay, and state records

which he called history. In the conclusion is the famous apostrophe to

Death, which suggests what Raleigh might have done had he lived less

strenuously and written more carefully.

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise thou hast

persuaded; what none hath dared thou hast done; and whom all the world hath

flattered thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast

drawn together all the star-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty,

and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words,

_Hic jacet_!

JOHN FOXE (1516-1587). Foxe will be remembered always for his famous _Book

of Martyrs_, a book that our elders gave to us on Sundays when we were

young, thinking it good discipline for us to afflict our souls when we

wanted to be roaming the sunlit fields, or when in our enforced idleness we

would, if our own taste in the matter had been consulted, have made good

shift to be quiet and happy with _Robinson Crusoe_. So we have a gloomy

memory of Foxe, and something of a grievance, which prevent a just

appreciation of his worth.