"Allas! of me unto the worldës ende_Outlines of English and American Literature An Introduction to the Chief Writers of England and America, to the Books They Wrote, and to the Times in Which They Lived

Shal neyther ben ywríten nor y-songë

No good word; for these bookës wol me shende.

O, rollëd shal I ben on many a tongë!

Thurghout the world my bellë shal be rongë,

And wommen moste wol haten me of allë.

Allas, that swich a cas me sholdë fallë!

They wol seyn, in-as-much as in me is,

I have hem doon dishonour, weylawey!

Al be I not the firste that dide amis,

What helpeth that to doon my blame awey?

But since I see ther is no betre wey,

And that too late is now for me to rewé,

To Diomede, algate, I wol be trewé."

THE CANTERBURY TALES. The plan of gathering a company of people and letting

each tell his favorite story has been used by so many poets, ancient and

modern, that it is idle to seek the origin of it. Like Topsy, it wasn't

born; it just grew up. Chaucer's plan, however, is more comprehensive than

any other in that it includes all classes of society; it is also more

original in that it does not invent heroic characters but takes such men

and women as one might meet in any assembly, and shows how typical they are

of humanity in all ages. As Lowell says, Chaucer made use in his

_Canterbury Tales_ of two things that are everywhere regarded as

symbols of human life; namely, the short journey and the inn. We might add,

as an indication of Chaucer's philosophy, that his inn is a comfortable

one, and that the journey is made in pleasant company and in fair weather.

An outline of Chaucer's great work is as follows. On an evening in

springtime the poet comes to Tabard Inn, in Southwark, and finds it

filled with a merry company of men and women bent on a pilgrimage

to the shrine of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury.

After supper appears the jovial host, Harry Bailey, who finds the

company so attractive that he must join it on its pilgrimage. He

proposes that, as they shall be long on the way, they shall furnish

their own entertainment by telling stories, the best tale to be

rewarded by the best of suppers when the pilgrims return from

Canterbury. They assent joyfully, and on the morrow begin their

journey, cheered by the Knight's Tale as they ride forth under the

sunrise. The light of morning and of springtime is upon this work,

which is commonly placed at the beginning of modern English

literature.

As the journey proceeds we note two distinct parts to Chaucer's record. One

part, made up of prologues and interludes, portrays the characters and

action of the present comedy; the other part, consisting of stories,

reflects the comedies and tragedies of long ago. The one shows the

perishable side of the men and women of Chaucer's day, their habits, dress,

conversation; the other reveals an imperishable world of thought, feeling,

ideals, in which these same men and women discover their kinship to

humanity. It is possible, since some of the stories are related to each

other, that Chaucer meant to arrange the _Canterbury Tales_ in

dramatic unity, so as to make a huge comedy of human society; but the work

as it comes down to us is fragmentary, and no one has discovered the order

in which the fragments should be fitted together.

[Illustration: PILGRIMS SETTING OUT FROM THE "TABARD"]

[Sidenote: THE PROLOGUE]

The Prologue is perhaps the best single fragment of the _Canterbury

Tales_. In it Chaucer introduces us to the characters of his drama: to

the grave Knight and the gay Squire, the one a model of Chivalry at its

best, "a verray parfit gentil knight," the other a young man so full of

life and love that "he slept namore than dooth a nightingale"; to the

modest Prioress, also, with her pretty clothes, her exquisite manners, her

boarding-school accomplishments:

And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

After the scole of Stratford attë Bowë,

For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowë.

In contrast to this dainty figure is the coarse Wife of Bath, as garrulous

as the nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_. So one character stands to another

as shade to light, as they appear in a typical novel of Dickens. The

Church, the greatest factor in medieval life, is misrepresented by the

hunting Monk and the begging Friar, and is well represented by the Parson,

who practiced true religion before he preached it:

But Christës lore and his apostles twelvë

He taughte, and first he folwëd it himselvë.

Trade is represented by the Merchant, scholarship by the poor Clerk of

Oxenford, the professions by the Doctor and the Man-of-law, common folk by

the Yeoman, Frankelyn (farmer), Miller and many others of low degree.

Prominent among the latter was the Shipman:

Hardy he was, and wys to undertakë;

With many a tempest hadde his berd been shakë.

From this character, whom Stevenson might have borrowed for his _Treasure

Island_, we infer the barbarity that prevailed when commerce was new,

when the English sailor was by turns smuggler or pirate, equally ready to

sail or scuttle a ship, and to silence any tongue that might tell tales by

making its wretched owner "walk the plank." Chaucer's description of the

latter process is a masterpiece of piratical humor:

If that he faught and hadde the hyer hond,

By water he sente hem hoom to every lond.

[Sidenote: VARIETY OF TALES]

Some thirty pilgrims appear in the famous Prologue, and as each was to tell

two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two more on the return, it is

probable that Chaucer contemplated a work of more than a hundred tales.

Only four-and-twenty were completed, but these are enough to cover the

field of light literature in that day, from the romance of love to the

humorous animal fable. Between these are wonder-stories of giants and

fairies, satires on the monks, parodies on literature, and some examples of

coarse horseplay for which Chaucer offers an apology, saying that he must

let each pilgrim tell his tale in his own way.

A round dozen of these tales may still be read with pleasure; but, as a

suggestion of Chaucer's variety, we name only three: the Knight's romance

of "Palamon and Arcite," the Nun's Priest's fable of "Chanticleer," and the

Clerk's old ballad of "Patient Griselda." The last-named will be more

interesting if we remember that the subject of woman's rights had been

hurled at the heads of the pilgrims by the Wife of Bath, and that the Clerk

told his story to illustrate his different ideal of womanhood.

THE CHARM OF CHAUCER. The first of Chaucer's qualities is that he is an

excellent story-teller; which means that he has a tale to tell, a good

method of telling it, and a philosophy of life which gives us something to

think about aside from the narrative. He had a profound insight of human

nature, and in telling the simplest story was sure to slip in some nugget

of wisdom or humor: "What wol nat be mote need be left," "For three may

keep counsel if twain be away," "The lyf so short, the craft so long to

lerne," "Ful wys is he that can himselven knowe,"

The firste vertue, sone, if thou wilt lere,

Is to restreine and kepen wel thy tonge.

There are literally hundreds of such "good things" which make Chaucer a

constant delight to those who, by a very little practice, can understand

him almost as easily as Shakespeare. Moreover he was a careful artist; he

knew the principles of poetry and of story-telling, and before he wrote a

song or a tale he considered both his subject and his audience, repeating

to himself his own rule:

Ther nis no werkman, whatsoever he be,

That may bothe werkë wel and hastily:

This wol be doon at leysur, parfitly.

A second quality of Chaucer is his power of observation, a power so

extraordinary that, unlike other poets, he did not need to invent scenes or

characters but only to describe what he had seen and heard in this

wonderful world. As he makes one of his characters say:

For certeynly, he that me made

To comen hider seydë me:

I shouldë bothë hear et see

In this place wonder thingës.

In the _Canterbury Tales_ alone he employs more than a score of

characters, and hardly a romantic hero among them; rather does he delight

in plain men and women, who reveal their quality not so much in their

action as in their dress, manner, or tricks of speech. For Chaucer has the

glance of an Indian, which passes over all obvious matters to light upon

one significant detail; and that detail furnishes the name or the adjective

of the object. Sometimes his descriptions of men or nature are microscopic

in their accuracy, and again in a single line he awakens the reader's

imagination,--as when Pandarus (in _Troilus_), in order to make

himself unobtrusive in a room where he is not wanted, picks up a manuscript

and "makes a face," that is, he pretends to be absorbed in a story,

and fand his countenance

As for to loke upon an old romance.

A dozen striking examples might be given, but we shall note only one. In

the _Book of the Duchess_ the poet is in a forest, when a chase sweeps

by with whoop of huntsman and clamor of hounds. After the hunt, when the

woods are all still, comes a little lost dog:

Hit com and creep to me as lowë

Right as hit haddë me y-knowë,

Hild down his heed and jiyned his eres,

And leyde al smouthë doun his heres.

I wolde han caught hit, and anoon

Hit fleddë and was fro me goon.

[Sidenote: CHAUCER'S HUMOR]

Next to his power of description, Chaucer's best quality is his humor, a

humor which is hard to phrase, since it runs from the keenest wit to the

broadest farce, yet is always kindly and human. A mendicant friar comes in

out of the cold, glances about the snug kitchen for the best seat:

And fro the bench he droof awey the cat.

Sometimes his humor is delicate, as in touching up the foibles of the

Doctor or the Man-of-law, or in the Priest's translation of Chanticleer's

evil remark about women:

_In principio_

_Mulier est hominis confusio._

Madame, the sentence of this Latin is:

Woman is mannes joye and al his blis.

The humor broadens in the Wife of Bath, who tells how she managed several

husbands by making their lives miserable; and occasionally it grows a

little grim, as when the Maunciple tells the difference between a big and a

little rascal. The former does evil on a large scale, and,

Lo! therfor is he cleped a Capitain;

But for the outlawe hath but small meynee,

And may not doon so gret an harm as he,

Ne bring a countree to so gret mischeef,

Men clepen him an outlawe or a theef.

[Sidenote: FREEDOM FROM BIAS]

A fourth quality of Chaucer is his broad tolerance, his absolute

disinterestedness. He leaves reforms to Wyclif and Langland, and can laugh

with the Shipman who turns smuggler, or with the worldly Monk whose

"jingling" bridle keeps others as well as himself from hearing the chapel

bell. He will not even criticize the fickle Cressida for deserting Troilus,

saying that men tell tales about her, which is punishment enough for any

woman. In fine, Chaucer is content to picture a world in which the rain

falleth alike upon the just and the unjust, and in which the latter seem to

have a liberal share of the umbrellas. He enjoys it all, and describes its

inhabitants as they are, not as he thinks they ought to be. The reader may

think that this or that character deserves to come to a bad end; but not so

Chaucer, who regards them all as kindly, as impersonally as Nature herself.

So the Canterbury pilgrims are not simply fourteenth-century Englishmen;

they are human types whom Chaucer met at the Tabard Inn, and whom later

English writers discover on all of earth's highways. One appears unchanged

in Shakespeare's drama, another in a novel of Jane Austen, a third lives

over the way or down the street. From century to century they change not,

save in name or dress. The poet who described or created such enduring

characters stands among the few who are called universal writers.

* * * * *

CHAUCER'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS

Someone has compared a literary period to a wood in which a few giant oaks

lift head and shoulders above many other trees, all nourished by the same

soil and air. If we follow this figure, Langland and Wyclif are the only

growths that tower beside Chaucer, and Wyclif was a reformer who belongs to

English history rather than to literature.

LANGLAND. William Langland (_cir_. 1332--1400) is a great figure in

obscurity. We are not certain even of his name, and we must search his work

to discover that he was, probably, a poor lay-priest whose life was

governed by two motives: a passion for the poor, which led him to plead

their cause in poetry, and a longing for all knowledge:

All the sciences under sonnë, and all the sotyle craftës,

I wolde I knew and couthë, kyndely in mynë hertë.

His chief poem, _Piers Plowman_ (_cir_. 1362), is a series of

visions in which are portrayed the shams and impostures of the age and the

misery of the common people. The poem is, therefore, as the heavy shadow

which throws into relief the bright picture of the _Canterbury Tales_.

For example, while Chaucer portrays the Tabard Inn with its good cheer and

merry company, Langland goes to another inn on the next street; there he

looks with pure eyes upon sad or evil-faced men and women, drinking,

gaming, quarreling, and pictures a scene of physical and moral degradation.

One must look on both pictures to know what an English inn was like in the

fourteenth century.

Because of its crude form and dialect _Piers Plowman_ is hard to

follow; but to the few who have read it and entered into Langland's

vision--shared his passion for the poor, his hatred of shams, his belief in

the gospel of honest work, his humor and satire and philosophy--it is one

of the most powerful and original poems in English literature. [Footnote:

The working classes were beginning to assert themselves in this age, and to

proclaim "the rights of man." Witness the followers of John Ball, and his

influence over the crowd when he chanted the lines:

When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?

Langland's poem, written in the midst of the labor agitation, was the first

glorification of labor to appear in English literature. Those who read it

may make an interesting comparison between "Piers Plowman" and a modern

labor poem, such as Hood's "Song of the Shirt" or Markham's "The Man with

the Hoe."]

MALORY. Judged by its influence, the greatest prose work of the fifteenth

century was the _Morte d'Arthur_ of Thomas Malory (d. 1471). Of the

English knight who compiled this work very little is known beyond this,

that he sought to preserve in literature the spirit of medieval knighthood

and religion. He tells us nothing of this purpose; but Caxton, who received

the only known copy of Malory's manuscript and published it in 1485, seems

to have reflected the author's spirit in these words:

"I according to my copy have set it in imprint, to the intent that

noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle

and virtuous deeds that some knyghts used in those days, by which

they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished

and put oft to shame and rebuke.... For herein may be seen noble

chivalry, courtesy, humanity, hardness, love, friendship,

cowardice, murder, hate, virtue and sin. Do after the good, and

leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommee."

[Illustration: A STREET IN CAERLEON ON USK

The traditional home of King Arthur]

Malory's spirit is further indicated by the fact that he passed over all

extravagant tales of foreign heroes and used only the best of the Arthurian

romances. [Footnote: For the origin of the Arthurian stories see above,

"Geoffrey and the Legends of Arthur" in Chapter II. An example of the way

these stories were enlarged is given by Lewis, _Beginnings of English

Literature_, pp 73-76, who records the story of Arthur's death as told,

first, by Geoffrey, then by Layamon, and finally by Malory, who copied the

tale from French sources. If we add Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur," we

shall have the story as told from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.]

These had been left in a chaotic state by poets, and Malory brought order

out of the chaos by omitting tedious fables and arranging his material in

something like dramatic unity under three heads: the Coming of Arthur with

its glorious promise, the Round Table, and the Search for the Holy Grail:

"And thenne the kynge and al estates wente home unto Camelot, and

soo wente to evensonge to the grete mynster, and soo after upon

that to souper; and every knyght sette in his owne place as they

were to forehand. Thenne anone they herd crakynge and cryenge of

thonder, that hem thought the place shold alle to dryve. In the

myddes of this blast entred a sonne beaume more clerer by seven

tymes than ever they sawe daye, and al they were alyghted of the

grace of the Holy Ghoost. Then beganne every knyghte to behold

other, and eyther sawe other by theire semynge fayrer than ever

they sawe afore. Not for thenne there was no knyght myghte speke

one word a grete whyle, and soo they loked every man on other, as

they had ben domb. Thenne ther entred into the halle the Holy

Graile, covered with whyte samyte, but ther was none myghte see

hit, nor who bare hit. And there was al the halle fulfylled with

good odoures, and every knyght had suche metes and drynkes as he

best loved in this world. And when the Holy Grayle had be borne

thurgh the halle, thenne the holy vessel departed sodenly, that

they wyste not where hit becam....

"'Now,' said Sir Gawayne, 'we have ben served this daye of what

metes and drynkes we thoughte on, but one thynge begyled us; we

myght not see the Holy Grayle, it was soo precyously coverd.

Therfor I wil mak here avowe, that to morne, withoute lenger

abydyng, I shall laboure in the quest of the Sancgreal; that I

shalle hold me oute a twelve moneth and a day, or more yf nede be,

and never shalle I retorne ageyne unto the courte tyl I have sene

hit more openly than hit hath ben sene here.'... Whan they of the

Table Round herde Syr Gawayne saye so, they arose up the most party

and maade suche avowes as Sire Gawayne had made."

Into this holy quest sin enters like a serpent; then in quick succession

tragedy, rebellion, the passing of Arthur, the penitence of guilty

Launcelot and Guinevere. The figures fade away at last, as Shelley says of

the figures of the Iliad, "in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow."

As the best of Malory's work is now easily accessible, we forbear further

quotation. These old Arthurian legends, the common inheritance of all

English-speaking people, should be known to every reader. As they appear in

_Morte d'Arthur_ they are notable as an example of fine old English

prose, as a reflection of the enduring ideals of chivalry, and finally as a

storehouse in which Spenser, Tennyson and many others have found material

for some of their noblest poems.

CAXTON. William Caxton (d. 1491) is famous for having brought the printing

press to England, but he has other claims to literary renown. He was editor

as well as printer; he translated more than a score of the books which came

from his press; and, finally, it was he who did more than any other man to

fix a standard of English speech.

In Caxton's day several dialects were in use, and, as we infer from one of

his prefaces, he was doubtful which was most suitable for literature or

most likely to become the common speech of England. His doubt was dissolved

by the time he had printed the _Canterbury Tales_ and the _Morte

d'Arthur_. Many other works followed in the same "King's English"; his

successor at the printing press, Wynkyn de Worde, continued in the same

line; and when, less than sixty years after the first English book was

printed, Tyndale's translation of the New Testament had found its way to

every shire in England, there was no longer room for doubt that the

East-Midland dialect had become the standard of the English nation. We have

been speaking and writing that dialect ever since.

[Illustration: THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER

Caxton's printing office From an old print]

[Sidenote: STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS]

The story of how printing came to England, not as a literary but as a

business venture, is a very interesting one. Caxton was an English merchant

who had established himself at Bruges, then one of the trading centers of

Europe. There his business prospered, and he became governor of the

_Domus Angliae_, or House of the English Guild of Merchant

Adventurers. There is romance in the very name. With moderate wealth came

leisure to Caxton, and he indulged his literary taste by writing his own

version of some popular romances concerning the siege of Troy, being

encouraged by the English princess Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, into

whose service he had entered.

Copies of his work being in demand, Caxton consulted the professional

copyists, whose beautiful work we read about in a remarkable novel called

_The Cloister and the Hearth_. Then suddenly came to Bruges the rumor

of Gutenberg's discovery of printing from movable types, and Caxton

hastened to Germany to investigate the matter, led by the desire to get

copies of his own work as cheaply as possible. The discovery fascinated

him; instead of a few copies of his manuscript he brought back to Bruges a

press, from which he issued his _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy_

(1474), which was probably the first book to appear in English print. Quick

to see the commercial advantages of the new invention, Caxton moved his

printing press to London, near Westminster Abbey, where he brought out in

1477 his _Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_, the first book

ever printed on English soil. [Footnote: Another book of Caxton's, _The

Game and Playe of the Chesse_ (1475) was long accorded this honor, but

it is fairly certain that the book on chess-playing was printed in Bruges.]

[Sidenote: THE FIRST PRINTED BOOKS]

From the very outset Caxton's venture was successful, and he was soon busy

in supplying books that were most in demand. He has been criticized for not

printing the classics and other books of the New Learning; but he evidently

knew his business and his audience, and aimed to give people what they

wanted, not what he thought they ought to have. Chaucer's _Canterbury

Tales_, Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Mandeville's _Travels_,

Æsop's _Fables_, parts of the _Æneid_, translations of French

romances, lives of the saints (The Golden Legend), cookbooks, prayer books,

books of etiquette,--the list of Caxton's eighty-odd publications becomes

significant when we remember that he printed only popular books, and that

the titles indicate the taste of the age which first looked upon the marvel

of printing.

POPULAR BALLADS. If it be asked, "What is a ballad?" any positive answer

will lead to disputation. Originally the ballad was probably a chant to

accompany a dance, and so it represents the earliest form of poetry. In

theory, as various definitions indicate, it is a short poem telling a story

of some exploit, usually of a valorous kind. In common practice, from

Chaucer to Tennyson, the ballad is almost any kind of short poem treating

of any event, grave or gay, in any descriptive or dramatic way that appeals

to the poet.

For the origin of the ballad one must search far back among the social

customs of primitive times. That the Anglo-Saxons were familiar with it

appears from the record of Tacitus, who speaks of their _carmina_ or

narrative songs; but, with the exception of "The Fight at Finnsburgh" and a

few other fragments, all these have disappeared.

During the Middle Ages ballads were constantly appearing among the common

people, [Footnote: Thus, when Sidney says, "I never heard the old song of

Percy and Douglass that I found not my heart moved more than with a

trumpet," and when Shakespeare shows Autolycus at a country fair offering

"songs for men and women of all sizes," both poets are referring to popular

ballads. Even later, as late as the American Revolution, history was first

written for the people in the form of ballads.] but they were seldom

written, and found no standing in polite literature. In the eighteenth

century, however, certain men who had grown weary of the formal poetry of

Pope and his school turned for relief to the old vigorous ballads of the

people, and rescued them from oblivion. The one book to which, more than

any other, we owe the revival of interest in balladry is _Percy's

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (1765).

[Sidenote: THE MARKS OF A BALLAD]

The best of our ballads date in their present form from the fifteenth or

sixteenth century; but the originals were much older, and had been

transmitted orally for years before they were recorded on manuscript. As we

study them we note, as their first characteristic, that they spring from

the unlettered common people, that they are by unknown authors, and that

they appear in different versions because they were changed by each

minstrel to suit his own taste or that of his audience.

A second characteristic is the objective quality of the ballad, which deals

not with a poet's thought or feeling (such subjective emotions give rise to

the lyric) but with a man or a deed. See in the ballad of "Sir Patrick

Spence" (or Spens) how the unknown author goes straight to his story:

The king sits in Dumferling towne,

Drinking the blude-red wine:

"O whar will I get guid sailor

To sail this schip of mine?"

Up and spak an eldern knicht,

Sat at the king's richt kne:

"Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor

That sails upon the se."

There is a brief pause to tell us of Sir Patrick's dismay when word comes

that the king expects him to take out a ship at a time when she should be

riding to anchor, then on goes the narrative:

"Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all,

Our guid schip sails the morne."

"O say na sae, my master deir,

For I feir a deadlie storme:

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone

Wi the auld moone in hir arme,

And I feir, I feir, my deir master,

That we will cum to harme."

At the end there is no wailing, no moral, no display of the poet's feeling,

but just a picture:

O lang, lang may the ladies stand,

Wi thair gold kems in their hair,

Waiting for thair ain deir lords,

For they'll se thame na mair.

Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,

It's fiftie fadom deip,

And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,

Wi the Scots lords at his feit.

Directness, vigor, dramatic action, an ending that appeals to the

imagination,--most of the good qualities of story-telling are found in this

old Scottish ballad. If we compare it with Longfellow's "Wreck of the

Hesperus," we may discover that the two poets, though far apart in time and

space, have followed almost identical methods.

Other good ballads, which take us out under the open sky among vigorous

men, are certain parts of "The Gest of Robin Hood," "Mary Hamilton," "The

Wife of Usher's Well," "The Wee Wee Man," "Fair Helen," "Hind Horn,"

"Bonnie George Campbell," "Johnnie O'Cockley's Well," "Catharine Jaffray"

(from which Scott borrowed his "Lochinvar"), and especially "The Nutbrown

Mayde," sweetest and most artistic of all the ballads, which gives a

popular and happy version of the tale that Chaucer told in his "Patient

Griselda."

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The period included in the Age of Chaucer and the Revival

of Learning covers two centuries, from 1350 to 1550. The chief

literary figure of the period, and one of the greatest of English

poets, is Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in the year 1400. He was

greatly influenced by French and Italian models; he wrote for the

middle and upper classes; his greatest work was _The Canterbury

Tales_.

Langland, another poet contemporary with Chaucer, is famous for his

_Piers Plowman_, a powerful poem aiming at social reform, and

vividly portraying the life of the common people. It is written in

the old Saxon manner, with accent and alliteration, and is

difficult to read in its original form.

After the death of Chaucer a century and a half passed before

another great writer appeared in England. The time was one of

general decline in literature, and the most obvious causes were:

the Wars of the Roses, which destroyed many of the patrons of

literature; the Reformation, which occupied the nation with

religious controversy; and the Renaissance or Revival of Learning,

which turned scholars to the literature of Greece and Rome rather

than to English works.

In our study of the latter part of the period we reviewed: (1) the

rise of the popular ballad, which was almost the only type of

literature known to the common people. (2) The work of Malory, who

arranged the best of the Arthurian legends in his _Morte

d'Arthur._ (3) The work of Caxton, who brought the first

printing press to London, and who was instrumental in establishing

the East-Midland dialect as the literary language of England.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections from all authors of the

period are given in Manly, English Poetry, and English Prose;

Newcomer and Andrews, Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose;

Ward, English Poets; Morris and Skeat, Specimens of Early English.

Chaucer's Prologue, Knight's Tale, and other selections in

Riverside Literature, King's Classics, and several other school

series. A good single-volume edition of Chaucer's poetry is Skeat,

The Student's Chaucer (Clarendon Press). A good, but expensive,

modernized version is Tatlock and MacKaye, Modern Reader's Chaucer

(Macmillan).

Metrical version of Piers Plowman, by Skeat, in King's Classics;

modernized prose version by Kate Warren, in Treasury of English

Literature (Dodge).

Selections from Malory's Morte d'Arthur in Athenæum Press Series

(Ginn and Company); also in Camelot Series. An elaborate edition of

Malory with introduction by Sommer and an essay by Andrew Lang (3

vols., London, 1889); another with modernized text, introduction by

Rhys, illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley (London, 1893).

The best of the old ballads are published in Pocket Classics, and

in Maynard's English Classics; a volume of ancient and modern

English ballads in Ginn and Company's Classics for Children;

Percy's Reliques, in Everyman's Library. Allingham, The Ballad

Book; Hazlitt, Popular Poetry of England; Gummere, Old English

Ballads; Gayley and Flaherty, Poetry of the People; Child, English

and Scottish Popular Poetry (5 vols.); the last-named work, edited

and abridged by Kittredge, in one volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The following works have been sifted from a much

larger number dealing with the age of Chaucer and the Revival of

Learning. More extended works, covering the entire field of English

history and literature, are listed in the General Bibliography.

_HISTORY_. Snell, the Age of Chaucer; Jusserand, Wayfaring

Life in the Fourteenth Century; Jenks, In the Days of Chaucer;

Trevelyan, In the Age of Wyclif; Coulton, Chaucer and His England;

Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century; Green, Town Life in the

Fifteenth Century; Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England;

Froissart, Chronicles; Lanier, The Boy's Froissart.

_LITERATURE_. Ward, Life of Chaucer (English Men of Letters

Series); Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (Harvard University

Press); Pollard, Chaucer Primer; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer;

Lowell's essay in My Study Windows; essay by Hazlitt, in Lectures

on the English Poets; Jusserand, Piers Plowman; Roper, Life of Sir

Thomas More.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Lytton, Last of the Barons; Yonge,

Lances of Lynwood; Scott, Marmion; Shakespeare, Richard II, Henry

IV, Richard III; Bates and Coman, English History Told by English

Poets.

CHAPTER IV

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE (1550-1620)

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea, ...

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!

Shakespeare, _King Richard II_

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. In such triumphant lines, falling from the

lips of that old imperialist John of Gaunt, did Shakespeare

reflect, not the rebellious spirit of the age of Richard II, but

the boundless enthusiasm of his own times, when the defeat of

Spain's mighty Armada had left England "in splendid isolation,"

unchallenged mistress of her own realm and of the encircling sea.

For it was in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign that England

found herself as a nation, and became conscious of her destiny as a

world empire.

There is another and darker side to the political shield, but the

student of literature is not concerned with it. We are to remember

the patriotic enthusiasm of the age, overlooking the frequent

despotism of "good Queen Bess" and entering into the spirit of

national pride and power that thrilled all classes of Englishmen

during her reign, if we are to understand the outburst of

Elizabethan literature. Nearly two centuries of trouble and danger

had passed since Chaucer died, and no national poet had appeared in

England. The Renaissance came, and the Reformation, but they

brought no great writers with them. During the first thirty years

of Elizabeth's reign not a single important literary work was

produced; then suddenly appeared the poetry of Spenser and Chapman,

the prose of Hooker, Sidney and Bacon, the dramas of Marlowe,

Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and a score of others,--all voicing the

national feeling after the defeat of the Armada, and growing silent

as soon as the enthusiasm began to wane.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. Next to the patriotic spirit of Elizabethan

literature, its most notable qualities are its youthful freshness and

vigor, its romantic spirit, its absorption in the theme of love, its

extravagance of speech, its lively sense of the wonder of heaven and earth.

The ideal beauty of Spenser's poetry, the bombast of Marlowe, the boundless

zest of Shakespeare's historical plays, the romantic love celebrated in

unnumbered lyrics,--all these speak of youth, of springtime, of the joy and

the heroic adventure of human living.

This romantic enthusiasm of Elizabethan poetry and prose may be explained

by the fact that, besides the national impulse, three other inspiring

influences were at work. The first in point of time was the rediscovery of

the classics of Greece and Rome,--beautiful old poems, which were as new to

the Elizabethans as to Keats when he wrote his immortal sonnet, beginning:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold.

The second awakening factor was the widespread interest in nature and the

physical sciences, which spurred many another Elizabethan besides Bacon to

"take all knowledge for his province." This new interest was generally

romantic rather than scientific, was more concerned with marvels, like the

philosopher's stone that would transmute all things to gold, than with the

simple facts of nature. Bacon's chemical changes, which follow the

"instincts" of metals, are almost on a par with those other changes

described in Shakespeare's song of Ariel:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

The third factor which stimulated the Elizabethan imagination was the

discovery of the world beyond the Atlantic, a world of wealth, of beauty,

of unmeasured opportunity for brave spirits, in regions long supposed to be

possessed of demons, monsters, Othello's impossible

cannibals that each other eat,

The anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

[Sidenote: THE NEW WORLD]

When Drake returned from his voyage around the world he brought to England

two things: a tale of vast regions just over the world's rim that awaited

English explorers, and a ship loaded to the hatches with gold and jewels.

That the latter treasure was little better than a pirate's booty; that it

was stolen from the Spaniards, who had taken it from poor savages at the

price of blood and torture,--all this was not mentioned. The queen and her

favorites shared the treasure with Drake's buccaneers, and the New World

seemed to them a place of barbaric splendor, where the savage's wattled hut

was roofed with silver, his garments beaded with all precious jewels. As a

popular play of the period declares:

"Why, man, all their dripping pans are pure gold! The prisoners

they take are fettered in gold; and as for rubies and diamonds,

they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'hem by the seashore to hang

on their children's coates."

Before the American settlements opened England's eyes to the stern reality

of things, it was the romance of the New World that appealed most

powerfully to the imagination, and that influenced Elizabethan literature

to an extent which we have not yet begun to measure.

FOREIGN INFLUENCE. We shall understand the imitative quality of early

Elizabethan poetry if we read it in the light of these facts: that in the

sixteenth century England was far behind other European nations in culture;

that the Renaissance had influenced Italy and Holland for a century before

it crossed the Channel; that, at a time when every Dutch peasant read his

Bible, the masses of English people remained in dense ignorance, and the

majority of the official classes were like Shakespeare's father and

daughter in that they could neither read nor write. So, when the new

national spirit began to express itself in literature, Englishmen turned to

the more cultured nations and began to imitate them in poetry, as in dress

and manners. Shakespeare gives us a hint of the matter when he makes Portia

ridicule the apishness of the English. In _The Merchant of Venice_

(Act I, scene 2) the maid Nerissa is speaking of various princely suitors

for Portia's hand. She names them over, Frenchman, Italian, Scotsman,

German; but Portia makes fun of them all. The maid tries again:

_Nerissa_. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of

England?

_Portia_. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me,

nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will

come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the

English. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse

with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his

doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany

and his behaviour every where.

When Wyatt and Surrey brought the sonnet to England, they brought also the

habit of imitating the Italian poets; and this habit influenced Spenser and

other Elizabethans even more than Chaucer had been influenced by Dante and

Petrarch. It was the fashion at that time for Italian gentlemen to write

poetry; they practiced the art as they practiced riding or fencing; and

presently scores of Englishmen followed Sidney's example in taking up this

phase of foreign education. It was also an Italian custom to publish the

works of amateur poets in the form of anthologies, and soon there appeared

in England _The Paradise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant

Inventions_ and other such collections, the best of which was

_England's Helicon_ (1600). Still another foreign fashion was that of

writing a series of sonnets to some real or imaginary mistress; and that

the fashion was followed in England is evident from Spenser's

_Amoretti_, Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_, Shakespeare's

_Sonnets_, and other less-famous effusions.

* * * * *

SPENSER AND THE LYRIC POETS

[Illustration: MICHAEL DRAYTON]

LYRICS OF LOVE. Love was the subject of a very large part of the minor

poems of the period, the monotony being relieved by an occasional ballad,

such as Drayton's "Battle of Agincourt" and his "Ode to the Virginian

Voyage," the latter being one of the first poems inspired by the New World.

Since love was still subject to literary rules, as in the metrical

romances, it is not strange that most Elizabethan lyrics seem to the modern

reader artificial. They deal largely with goddesses and airy shepherd folk;

they contain many references to classic characters and scenes, to Venus,

Olympus and the rest; they are nearly all characterized by extravagance of

language. A single selection, "Apelles' Song" by Lyly, may serve as typical

of the more fantastic love lyrics:

Cupid and my Campaspe played

At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.

He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,

His mother's doves and team of sparrows:

Loses them too; then down he throws

The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on's cheek (but none knows how);

With these the crystal of his brow,

And then the dimple of his chin.

All these did my Campaspe win.

At last he set her both his eyes;

She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

O Love, has she done this to thee?

What shall, alas! become of me?

MUSIC AND POETRY. Another reason for the outburst of lyric poetry in

Elizabethan times was that choral music began to be studied, and there was

great demand for new songs. Then appeared a theory of the close relation

between poetry and music, which was followed by the American poet Lanier

more than two centuries later. [Footnote: Much of Lanier's verse seems more

like a musical improvisation than like an ordinary poem. His theory that

music and poetry are subject to the same laws is developed in his

_Science of English Verse._ It is interesting to note that Lanier's

ancestors were musical directors at the courts of Elizabeth and of James

I.] This interesting theory is foreshadowed in several minor works of the

period; for example, in Barnfield's sonnet "To R. L.," beginning:

If music and sweet poetry agree,

As they must needs, the sister and the brother,

Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,

Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.

The stage caught up the new fashion, and hundreds of lyrics appeared in the

Elizabethan drama, such as Dekker's "Content" (from the play of _Patient

Grissell), which almost sets itself to music as we read it:

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?

O sweet content!

Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?

O punishment!

Dost laugh to see how fools are vexed

To add to golden numbers golden numbers?

O sweet content, O sweet, O sweet content!

_Work apace, apace, apace, apace!

Honest labour bears a lovely face.

Then hey noney, noney; hey noney, noney!_

Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring?

O sweet content!

Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears?

O punishment!

Then he that patiently want's burden bears

No burden bears, but is a king, a king.

O sweet content, O sweet, O sweet content!

So many lyric poets appeared during this period that we cannot here

classify them; and it would be idle to list their names. The best place to

make acquaintance with theo is not in a dry history of literature, but in

such a pleasant little book as Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_, where

their best work is accessible to every reader.

* * * * *

EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)

Spenser was the second of the great English poets, and it is but natural to

compare him with Chaucer, who was the first. In respect of time nearly two

centuries separate these elder poets; in all other respects, in aims,

ideals, methods, they are as far apart as two men of the same race can well

be.

LIFE. Very little is known of Spenser; he appears in the light,

then vanishes into the shadow, like his Arthur of _The Faery

Queen_. We see him for a moment in the midst of rebellion in

Ireland, or engaged in the scramble for preferment among the

queen's favorites; he disappears, and from his obscurity comes a

poem that is like the distant ringing of a chapel bell, faintly

heard in the clatter of the city streets. We shall try here to

understand this poet by dissolving some of the mystery that

envelops him.

He was born in London, and spent his youth amid the political and

religious dissensions of the times of Mary and Elizabeth. For all

this turmoil Spenser had no stomach; he was a man of peace, of

books, of romantic dreams. He was of noble family, but poor; his

only talent was to write poetry, and as poetry would not buy much

bread in those days, his pride of birth was humbled in seeking the

patronage of nobles:

Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,

What hell it is in suing long to bide: ...

To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,

To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

To the liberality of a patron he owed his education at Cambridge.

It was then the heyday of Renaissance studies, and Spenser steeped

himself in Greek, Latin and Italian literatures. Everything that

was antique was then in favor at the universities; there was a

revival of interest in Old-English poetry, which accounts largely

for Spenser's use of obsolete words and his imitation of Chaucer's

spelling.

After graduation he spent some time in the north of England,

probably as a tutor, and had an unhappy love affair, which he

celebrated in his poems to Rosalind. Then he returned to London,

lived by favor in the houses of Sidney and Leicester, and through

these powerful patrons was appointed secretary to Lord Grey de

Wilton, the queen's deputy in Ireland.

[Illustration: EDMUND SPENSER]

[Sidenote: SPENSER'S EXILE]

From this time on our poet is represented as a melancholy Spenser's

"exile," but that is a poetic fiction. At that time Ireland, having

refused to follow the Reformation, was engaged in a desperate

struggle for civil and religious liberty. Every English army that

sailed to crush this rebellion was accompanied by a swarm of

parasites, each inspired by the hope of getting one of the rich

estates that were confiscated from Irish owners. Spenser seems to

have been one of these expectant adventurers who accompanied Lord

Grey in his campaign of brutality. To the horrors of that campaign

the poet was blind; [Footnote: The barbarism of Spenser's view, a

common one at that time, is reflected in his _View of the Present

State of Ireland._ Honorable warfare on land or sea was unknown

in Elizabeth's day. Scores of pirate ships of all nations were then

openly preying on commerce. Drake, Frobisher and many other

Elizabethan "heroes" were at times mere buccaneers who shared their

plunder with the queen. In putting down the Irish rebellion Lords

Grey and Essex used some of the same horrible methods employed by

the notorious Duke of Alva in the Netherlands.] his sympathies were

all for his patron Grey, who appears in The Faery Queen as Sir

Artegall, "the model of true justice."

For his services Spenser was awarded the castle of Kilcolman and

3000 acres of land, which had been taken from the Earl of Desmond.

In the same way Raleigh became an Irish landlord, with 40,000 acres

to his credit; and so these two famous Elizabethans were thrown

together in exile, as they termed it. Both longed to return to

England, to enjoy London society and the revenues of Irish land at

the same time, but unfortunately one condition of their immense

grants was that they should occupy the land and keep the rightful

owners from possessing it.

[Sidenote: WORK IN IRELAND]

In Ireland Spenser began to write his masterpiece _The Faery

Queen_. Raleigh, to whom the first three books were read, was so

impressed by the beauty of the work that he hurried the poet off to

London, and gained for him the royal favor. In the poem "Colin

Clout's Come Home Again" we may read Spenser's account of how the

court impressed him after his sojourn in Ireland.

[Illustration: RALEIGH'S BIRTHPLACE, BUDLEIGH SALTERTON.

Hayes, Devonshire]

The publication of the first parts of _The Faery Queen_ (1590)

raised Spenser to the foremost place in English letters. He was

made poet-laureate, and used every influence of patrons and of

literary success to the end that he be allowed to remain in London,

but the queen was flint-hearted, insisting that he must give up his

estate or occupy it. So he returned sorrowfully to "exile," and

wrote three more books of _The Faery Queen_. To his other

offices was added that of sheriff of County Cork, an adventurous

office for any man even in times of peace, and for a poet, in a

time of turmoil, an invitation to disaster. Presently another

rebellion broke out, Kilcolman castle was burned, and the poet's

family barely escaped with their lives. It was said by Ben Jonson

that one of Spenser's children and some parts of _The Faery

Queen_ perished in the fire, but the truth of the saying has not

been established.

Soon after this experience, which crushed the poet's spirit, he was

ordered on official business to London, and died on the journey in

1599. As he was buried beside Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey, poets

were seen casting memorial verses and the pens that had written

them into his tomb.

[Sidenote: CHARACTER]

In character Spenser was unfitted either for the intrigues among

Elizabeth's favorites or for the more desperate scenes amid which

his Lot was cast. Unlike his friend Raleigh, who was a man of

action, Spenser was essentially a dreamer, and except in Cambridge

he seems never to have felt at home. His criticism of the age as

barren and hopeless, and the melancholy of the greater part of his

work, indicate that for him, at least, the great Elizabethan times

were "out of joint." The world, which thinks of Spenser as a great

poet, has forgotten that he thought of himself as a disappointed

man.

WORKS OF SPENSER. The poems of Spenser may be conveniently grouped in three

classes. In the first are the pastorals of _The Shepherd's Calendar_,

in which he reflects some of the poetical fashions of his age. In the

second are the allegories of _The Faery Queen_, in which he pictures

the state of England as a struggle between good and evil. In the third

class are his occasional poems of friendship and love, such as the

_Amoretti_. All his works are alike musical, and all remote from

ordinary life, like the eerie music of a wind harp.

[Sidenote: SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR]

_The Shepherd's Calendar_ (1579) is famous as the poem which announced

that a successor to Chaucer had at last appeared in England. It is an

amateurish work in which Spenser tried various meters; and to analyze it is

to discover two discordant elements, which we may call fashionable poetry

and puritanic preaching. Let us understand these elements clearly, for

apart from them the _Calendar_ is a meaningless work.

It was a fashion among Italian poets to make eclogues or pastoral poems

about shepherds, their dancing, piping, love-making,--everything except a

shepherd's proper business. Spenser followed this artificial fashion in his

_Calendar_ by making twelve pastorals, one for each month of the year.

These all take the form of conversations, accompanied by music and dancing,

and the personages are Cuddie, Diggon, Hobbinoll, and other fantastic

shepherds. According to poetic custom these should sing only of love; but

in Spenser's day religious controversy was rampant, and flattery might not

be overlooked by a poet who aspired to royal favor. So while the January

pastoral tells of the unhappy love of Colin Clout (Spenser) for Rosalind,

the springtime of April calls for a song in praise of Elizabeth:

Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot

To the instrument!

They dancen deffly and singen soote,

In their merriment.

Wants not a fourth Grace to make the dance even?

Let that room to my Lady be yeven.

She shall be a Grace,

To fill the fourth place,

And reign with the rest in heaven.

In May the shepherds are rival pastors of the Reformation, who end their

sermons with an animal fable; in summer they discourse of Puritan theology;

October brings them to contemplate the trials and disappointments of a

poet, and the series ends with a parable comparing life to the four seasons

of the year.

The moralizing of _The Shepherd's Calendar_ and the uncouth spelling

which Spenser affected detract from the interest of the poem; but one who

has patience to read it finds on almost every page some fine poetic line,

and occasionally a good song, like the following (from the August pastoral)

in which two shepherds alternately supply the lines of a roundelay:

Sitting upon a hill so high,

Hey, ho, the high hill!

The while my flock did feed thereby,

The while the shepherd's self did spill,

I saw the bouncing Bellibone,

Hey, ho, Bonnibell!

Tripping over the dale alone;

She can trip it very well.

Well deckéd in a frock of gray,

Hey, ho, gray is greet!

And in a kirtle of green say;

The green is for maidens meet.

A chaplet on her head she wore,

Hey, ho, chapelet!

Of sweet violets therein was store,

She sweeter than the violet.

THE FAERY QUEEN. Let us hear one of the stories of this celebrated poem,

and after the tale is told we may discover Spenser's purpose in writing all

the others.

[Sidenote: SIR GUYON]

From the court of Gloriana, Queen of Faery, the gallant Sir Guyon

sets out on adventure bent, and with him is a holy Palmer, or

pilgrim, to protect him from the evil that lurks by every wayside.

Hardly have the two entered the first wood when they fall into the

hands of the wicked Archimago, who spends his time in devising

spells or enchantments for the purpose of leading honest folk

astray.

For all he did was to deceive good knights,

And draw them from pursuit of praise and fame.

Escaping from the snare, Guyon hears a lamentation, and turns aside

to find a beautiful woman dying beside a dead knight. Her story is,

that her man has been led astray by the Lady Acrasia, who leads

many knights to her Bower of Bliss, and there makes them forget

honor and knightly duty. Guyon vows to right this wrong, and

proceeds on the adventure.

With the Palmer and a boatman he embarks in a skiff and crosses the

Gulf of Greediness, deadly whirlpools on one side, and on the other

the Magnet Mountain with wrecks of ships strewed about its foot.

Sighting the fair Wandering Isles, he attempts to land, attracted

here by a beautiful damsel, there by a woman in distress; but the

Palmer tells him that these seeming women are evil shadows placed

there to lead men astray. Next he meets the monsters of the deep,

"sea-shouldering whales," "scolopendras," "grisly wassermans,"

"mighty monoceroses with unmeasured tails." Escaping these, he

meets a greater peril in the mermaids, who sing to him alluringly:

This is port of rest from troublous toil,

The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil.

Many other sea-dangers are passed before Guyon comes to land, where

he is immediately charged by a bellowing herd of savage beasts.

Only the power of the Palmer's holy staff saves the knight from

annihilation.

This is the last physical danger which Guyon encounters. As he goes

forward the country becomes an earthly paradise, where pleasures

call to him from every side. It is his soul, not his body, which is

now in peril. Here is the Palace of Pleasure, its wondrous gates

carved with images representing Jason's search for the Golden

Fleece. Beyond it are parks, gardens, fountains, and the beautiful

Lady Excess, who squeezes grapes into a golden cup and offers it to

Guyon as an invitation to linger. The scene grows ever more

entrancing as he rejects the cup of Excess and pushes onward:

Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound

Of all that mote delight a dainty ear,

Such as at once might not on living ground,

Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:

Right hard it was for wight which did it hear

To read what manner music that mote be;

For all that pleasing is to living ear

Was there consorted in one harmony;

Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.

Amid such allurements Guyon comes at last to where beautiful

Acrasia lives, with knights who forget their knighthood. From the

open portal comes a melody, the voice of an unseen singer lifting

up the old song of Epicurus and of Omar:

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.

The following scenes in the Bower of Bliss were plainly suggested

by the Palace of Circe, in the _Odyssey_; but where Homer is

direct, simple, forceful, Spenser revels in luxuriant details. He

charms all Guyon's senses with color, perfume, beauty, harmony;

then he remembers that he is writing a moral poem, and suddenly his

delighted knight turns reformer. He catches Acrasia in a net woven

by the Palmer, and proceeds to smash her exquisite abode with

puritanic thoroughness:

But all those pleasaunt bowers and palace brave

Guyon brake down with rigour pitilesse.

As they fare forth after the destruction, the herd of horrible

beasts is again encountered, and lo! all these creatures are men

whom Acrasia has transformed into brutal shapes. The Palmer

"strooks" them all with his holy staff, and they resume their human

semblance. Some are glad, others wroth at the change; and one named

Grylle, who had been a hog, reviles his rescuers for disturbing

him; which gives the Palmer a final chance to moralize:

Let Grylle be Grylle and have his hoggish mind;

But let us hence depart while weather serves and wind.

[Sidenote: OTHER STORIES]

Such is Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance. It is a long story,

drifting through eighty-seven stanzas, but it is only a final chapter or

canto of the second book of _The Faery Queen_. Preceding it are eleven

other cantos which serve as an introduction. So leisurely is Spenser in

telling a tale! One canto deals with the wiles of Archimago and of the

"false witch" Duessa; in another the varlet Braggadocchio steals Guyon's

horse and impersonates a knight, until he is put to shame by the fair

huntress Belphoebe, who is Queen Elizabeth in disguise. Now Elizabeth had a

hawk face which was far from comely, but behold how it appeared to a poet:

Her face so fair, as flesh it seemëd not,

But heavenly portrait of bright angel's hue,

Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot,

Through goodly mixture of complexions due;

And in her cheek the vermeil red did shew

Like roses in a bed of lilies shed,

The which ambrosial odours from them threw

And gazers' sense with double pleasure fed,

Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead.

There are a dozen more stanzas devoted to her voice, her eyes, her hair,

her more than mortal beauty. Other cantos of the same book are devoted to

Guyon's temptations; to his victories over Furor and Mammon; to his rescue

of the Lady Alma, besieged by a horde of villains in her fair Castle of

Temperance. In this castle was an aged man, blind but forever doting over

old records; and this gives Spenser the inspiration for another long canto

devoted to the ancient kings of Britain. So all is fish that comes to this

poet's net; but as one who is angling for trout is vexed by the nibbling of

chubs, the reader grows weary of Spenser's story before his story really

begins.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST BOOK]

Other books of _The Faery Queen_ are so similar in character to the

one just described that a canto from any one of them may be placed without

change in any other. In the first book, for example, the Redcross Knight

(Holiness) fares forth accompanied by the Lady Una (Religion). Straightway

they meet the enchanter Archimago, who separates them by fraud and magic.

The Redcross Knight, led to believe that his Una is false, comes, after

many adventures, to Queen Lucifera in the House of Pride; meanwhile Una

wanders alone amidst perils, and by her beauty subdues the lion and the

satyrs of the wood. The rest of the book recounts their adventures with

paynims, giants and monsters, with Error, Avarice, Falsehood and other

allegorical figures.

It is impossible to outline such a poem, for the simple reason that it has

no outlines. It is a phantasmagoria of beautiful and grotesque shapes, of

romance, morality and magic. Reading it is like watching cloud masses,

aloft and remote, in which the imagination pictures men, monsters,

landscapes, which change as we view them without cause or consequence.

Though _The Faery Queen_ is overfilled with adventure, it has no

action, as we ordinarily understand the term. Its continual motion is

without force or direction, like the vague motions of a dream.

[Sidenote: PLAN OF THE FAERY QUEEN]

What, then, was Spenser's object in writing _The Faery Queen_? His

professed object was to use poetry in the service of morality by portraying

the political and religious affairs of England as emblematic of a worldwide

conflict between good and evil. According to his philosophy (which, he

tells us, he borrowed from Aristotle) there were twelve chief virtues, and

he planned twelve books to celebrate them. [Footnote: Only six of these

books are extant, treating of the Redcross Knight or Holiness, Sir Guyon or

Temperance, Britomartis or Chastity, Cambel and Triamond or Friendship, Sir

Artegall or Justice, and Sir Calidore or Courtesy. The rest of the

allegory, if written, may have been destroyed in the fire of Kilcolman.] In

each book a knight or a lady representing a single virtue goes forth into

the world to conquer evil. In all the books Arthur, or Magnificence (the

sum of all virtue), is apt to appear in any crisis; Lady Una represents

religion; Archimago is another name for heresy, and Duessa for falsehood;

and in order to give point to Spenser's allegory the courtiers and

statesmen of the age are all flattered as glorious virtues or condemned as

ugly vices.

[Sidenote: THE ALLEGORY]

Those who are fond of puzzles may delight in giving names and dates to

these allegorical personages, in recognizing Elizabeth in Belphoebe or

Britomart or Marcella, Sidney in the Redcross Knight, Leicester in Arthur,

Raleigh in Timias, Mary Stuart in Duessa, and so on through the list of

characters good or evil. The beginner will wisely ignore all such

interpretation, and for two reasons: first, because Spenser's allegories

are too shadowy to be taken seriously; and second, because as a chronicler

of the times he is outrageously partisan and untrustworthy. In short, to

search for any reality in _The Faery Queen_ is to spoil the poem as a

work of the imagination. "If you do not meddle with the allegory," said

Hazlitt, "the allegory will not meddle with you."

MINOR POEMS. The minor poems of Spenser are more interesting, because more

human, than the famous work which we have just considered. Prominent among

these poems are the _Amoretti_, a collection of sonnets written in

honor of the Irish girl Elizabeth, who became the poet's wife. They are

artificial, to be sure, but no more so than other love poems of the period.

In connection with a few of these sonnets may be read Spenser's four

"Hymns" (in honor of Love, Beauty, Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty) and

especially his "Epithalamium," a marriage hymn which Brooke calls, with

pardonable enthusiasm, "the most glorious love song in the English

language."

A CRITICISM OF SPENSER. In reading _The Faery Queen_ one must note the

contrast between Spenser's matter and his manner. His matter is: religion,

chivalry, mythology, Italian romance, Arthurian legends, the struggles of

Spain and England on the Continent, the Reformation, the turmoil of

political parties, the appeal of the New World,--a summary of all stirring

matters that interested his own tumultuous age. His manner is the reverse

of what one might expect under the circumstances. He writes no stirring

epic of victory or defeat, and never a downright word of a downright man,

but a dreamy, shadowy narrative as soothing as the abode of Morpheus:

And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling downe,

And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne

Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.

No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes,

As still are wont t' annoy the wallëd towne,

Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes

Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemyes.

Such stanzas (and they abound in every book of _The Faery Queen_) are

poems in themselves; but unfortunately they distract attention from the

story, which soon loses all progression and becomes as the rocking of an

idle boat on the swell of a placid sea. The invention of this melodious

stanza, ever since called "Spenserian," was in itself a notable achievement

which influenced all subsequent English poetry. [Footnote: The Spenserian

was an improvement on the _ottava-rima_, or eight-line stanza, of the

Italians. It has been used by Burns in "The Cotter's Saturday Night," by

Shelley in "The Revolt of Islam," by Byron in "Childe Harold," by Keats in

"The Eve of St. Agnes," and by many other poets.]

[Sidenote: SPENSER'S FAULTS]

As Spenser's faults cannot be ignored, let us be rid of them as quickly as

possible. We record, then: the unreality of his great work; its lack of

human interest, which causes most of us to drop the poem after a single

canto; its affected antique spelling; its use of _fone_ (foes),

_dan_ (master), _teene_ (trouble), _swink_ (labor), and of

many more obsolete words; its frequent torturing of the king's English to

make a rime; its utter lack of humor, appearing in such absurd lines as,

Astond he stood, and up his hair did hove.

[Sidenote: MORAL IDEAL]

Such defects are more than offset by Spenser's poetic virtues. We note,

first, the moral purpose which allies him with the medieval poets in aim,

but not in method. By most medieval romancers virtue was regarded as a

means to an end, as in the _Morte d' Arthur_, where a knight made a

vow of purity in order to obtain a sight of the Holy Grail. With Spenser

virtue is not a means but an end, beautiful and desirable for its own sake;

while sin is so pictured that men avoid it because of its intrinsic

ugliness. This is the moral secret of _The Faery Queen_, in which

virtues are personified as noble knights or winsome women, while the vices

appear in the repulsive guise of hags, monsters and "loathy beasts."

[Sidenote: SENSE OF BEAUTY]

Spenser's sense of ideal beauty or, as Lanier expressed it, "the beauty of

holiness and the holiness of beauty," is perhaps his greatest poetic

quality. He is the poet-painter of the Renaissance; he fills his pages with

descriptions of airy loveliness, as Italian artists covered the high

ceilings of Venice with the reflected splendor of earth and heaven.

Moreover, his sense of beauty found expression in such harmonious lines

that one critic describes him as having set beautiful figures moving to

exquisite music.

In consequence of this beauty and melody, Spenser has been the inspiration

of nearly all later English singers. Milton was one of the first to call

him master, and then in a long succession such diverse poets as Dryden,

Burns, Wordsworth, Scott, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Tennyson and Swinburne.

The poet of "Faery" has influenced all these and more so deeply that he has

won the distinctive title of "the poets' poet."

* * * * *

THE DRAMATISTS

"Few events in our literary history are so startling as this sudden rise of

the Elizabethan drama," says Green in his _History of the English

People_, and his judgment is echoed by other writers who speak of the

"marvelous efflorescence" of the English drama as a matter beyond

explanation. Startling it may be, with its frank expression of a nation's

life, the glory and the shame of it; but there is nothing sudden or

inexplicable about it, as we may see by reviewing the history of

playwriting in England.

THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA. In its simplicity the drama is a familiar story retold

to the eye by actors who "make believe" that they are the heroes of the

action. In this elemental form the play is almost as old as humanity.

Indeed, it seems to be a natural impulse of children to act a story which

has given them pleasure; of primitive men also, who from time immemorial

have kept alive the memory of tribal heroes by representing their deeds in

play or pantomime. Thus, certain parts of _Hiawatha_ are survivals of

dramatic myths that were once acted at the spring assembly of the Algonquin

Indians. An interesting fact concerning these primitive dramas, whether in

India or Greece or Persia, is that they were invariably associated with

some religious belief or festival.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST MIRACLES]

A later example of this is found in the Church, which at an early age began

to make its holy-day services more impressive by means of Miracle plays and

Mysteries. [Footnote: In France any play representing the life of a saint

was called _miracle_, and a play dealing with the life of Christ was

called _mystère_. In England no such distinction was made, the name

"Miracle" being given to any drama dealing with Bible history or with the

lives of the saints.] At Christmas time, for example, the beautiful story

of Bethlehem would be made more vivid by placing in a corner of the parish

church an image of a babe in a manger, with shepherds and the Magi at hand,

and the choir in white garments chanting the _Gloria in excelsis_.

Other festivals were celebrated in a similar way until a cycle of simple

dramas had been prepared, clustering around four cardinal points of

Christian teaching; namely, Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Doomsday or

the Last Judgment.

[Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE MIRACLES]

At first such plays were given in the church, and were deeply religious in

spirit. They made a profound impression in England especially, where people

flocked in such numbers to see them that presently they overflowed to the

churchyard, and from there to the city squares or the town common. Once

outside the church, they were taken up by the guilds or trades-unions, in

whose hands they lost much of their religious character. Actors were

trained for the stage rather than for the church, and to please the crowds

elements of comedy and buffoonery were introduced, [Footnote: In the

"Shepherd's Play" or "Play of the Nativity," for example, the adoration of

the Magi is interrupted by Mak, who steals a sheep and carries it to his

wife. She hides the carcass in a cradle, and sings a lullaby to it while

the indignant shepherds are searching the house.] until the sacred drama

degenerated into a farce. Here and there, however, a true Miracle survived

and kept its character unspotted even to our own day, as in the famous

Passion Play at Oberammergau.

[Sidenote: CYCLES OF PLAYS]

When and how these plays came to England is unknown. By the year 1300 they

were extremely popular, and continued so until they were replaced by the

Elizabethan drama. Most of the important towns of England had each its own

cycle of plays [Footnote: At present only four good cycles of Miracles are

known to exist; namely, the Chester, York, Townley (or Wakefield) and

Coventry plays. The number of plays varies, from twenty-five in the Chester

to forty-eight in the York cycle.] which were given once a year, the

performance lasting from three to eight days in a prolonged festival. Every

guild responsible for a play had its own stage, which was set on wheels and

drawn about the town to appointed open places, where a crowd was waiting

for it. When it passed on, to repeat the play to a different audience,

another stage took its place. The play of "Creation" would be succeeded by

the "Temptation of Adam and Eve," and so on until the whole cycle of

Miracles from "Creation" to "Doomsday" had been performed. It was the play

not the audience that moved, and in this trundling about of the stage van

we are reminded of Thespis, the alleged founder of Greek tragedy, who went

about with his cart and his play from one festival to another.

[Sidenote: MORALITIES]

Two other dramatic types, the Morality and the Interlude, probably grew out

of the religious drama. In one of the old Miracles we find two characters

named Truth and Righteousness, who are severe in their denunciation of

Adam, while Mercy and Peace plead for his life. Other virtues appear in

other Miracles, then Death and the Seven Deadly Sins, until we have a play

in which all the characters are personified virtues or vices. Such a play

was called a Morality, and it aimed to teach right conduct, as the Miracles

had at first aimed to teach right doctrine.

[Sidenote: INTERLUDES]

The Interlude was at first a crude sketch, a kind of ancient side show,

introduced into the Miracle plays after the latter had been taken up by the

guilds. A boy with a trained pig, a quarrel between husband and wife,--any

farce was welcome so long as it amused the crowd or enlivened the Miracle.

In time, however, the writing of Interludes became a profession; they

improved rapidly in character, were separated from the Miracles, and were

performed at entertainments or "revels" by trade guilds, by choir boys and

by companies of strolling actors or "minstrels." At the close of such

entertainments the minstrels would add a prayer for the king (an

inheritance from the religious drama), and this impressive English custom

still survives in the singing of "God Save the King" at the end of a public

assembly.

THE SECULAR DRAMA. When the Normans came to England they brought with them

a love of pageants, or spectacles, that was destined to have an important

influence on the drama. These pageants, representing scenes from history or

mythology (such as the bout between Richard and Saladin, or the combat

between St. George and the Dragon), were staged to celebrate feasts, royal

weddings, treaties or any other event that seemed of special importance.

From Norman times they increased steadily in favor until Elizabeth began

her "progresses" through England, when every castle or town must prepare a

play or pageant to entertain the royal visitor.

[Sidenote: THE MASQUE]

From simple pantomime the pageant developed into a masque; that is, a

dramatic entertainment accompanied by poetry and music. Hundreds of such

masques were written and acted before Shakespeare's day; the taste for them

survived long after the Elizabethan drama had decayed; and a few of them,

such as _The Sad Shepherd_ of Ben Jonson and the _Comus_ of

Milton, may still be read with pleasure.

[Sidenote: POPULAR COMEDY]

While the nobles were thus occupied with pageants and masques, the common

people were developing a crude drama in which comedy predominated. Such

were the Christmas plays or "mummings," introducing the characters of Merry

Andrew and Old King Cole, which began in England before the Conquest, and

which survived in country places down to our own times. [Footnote: In

Hardy's novel _The Return of the Native_ may be found a description of

these mummings (from "mum," a mask) in the nineteenth century. In Scott's

novel _The Abbot_ we have a glimpse of other mummings, such as were

given to celebrate feast days of the Church.] More widespread than the

mummings were crude spectacles prepared in celebration of secular

holidays,--the May Day plays, for example, which represented the adventures

of Robin Hood and his merry men. To these popular comedies the Church

contributed liberally, though unwillingly; its holy days became holidays to

the crowd, and its solemn fasts were given over to merriment, to the

_festa fatuorum_, or play of fools, in which such characters as Boy

Bishop, Lord of Misrule and various clowns or jesters made a scandalous

caricature of things ecclesiastical. Such plays, prepared largely by clerks

and choir boys, were repeatedly denounced by priest or bishop, but they

increased rapidly from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: SPREAD OF THE DRAMA]

By the latter date England seemed in danger of going spectacle-mad; and we

may understand the symptoms if we remember that the play was then almost

the only form of popular amusement; that it took the place of the modern

newspaper, novel, political election and ball game, all combined. The trade

guilds, having trained actors for the springtime Miracles, continued to

give other plays throughout the year. The servants of a nobleman, having

given a pageant to welcome the queen, went out through the country in

search of money or adventure, and presented the same spectacle wherever

they could find an audience. When the Renaissance came, reviving interest

in the classics, Latin plays were taken up eagerly and presented in

modified form by every important school or university in England. In this

way our first regular comedy, _Ralph Royster Doyster_ (written by

Nicholas Udall, Master of Eton, and acted by his schoolboys _cir_.

1552), was adapted from an old Latin comedy, the _Miles Gloriosus_ of

Plautus.

[Sidenote: BOY ACTORS]

The awakened interest in music had also its influences on the English

drama. The choir boys of a church were frequently called upon to furnish

music at a play, and from this it was but a step to furnish both the play

and the music. So great was the demand to hear these boys that certain

choir masters (those of St. Paul's and the Chapel Royal) obtained the right

to take any poor boy with a good voice and train him, ostensibly for the

service of the Church, but in reality to make a profitable actor out of

him. This dangerous practice was stimulated by the fact that the feminine

parts in all plays had to be taken by boys, the stage being then deemed an

unfit place for a woman. And it certainly was. If a boy "took to his

lines," his services were sold from one company to another, much as the

popular ball player is now sold, but with this difference, that the poor

boy had no voice or profit in the transaction. Some of these lads were

cruelly treated; all were in danger of moral degradation. The abuse was

finally suppressed by Parliament, but not until the choir-boy players were

rivals of the regular companies, in which Shakespeare and Ben Jonson played

their parts.

CLASSICAL AND ENGLISH DRAMA. At the time of Shakespeare's birth two types

of plays were represented in England. The classic drama, modeled upon Greek

or Roman plays, was constructed according to the dramatic "unities," which

Aristotle foreshadowed in his _Treatise on Poetry_. According to this

authority, every play must be concerned with a "single, important and

complete event"; in other words, it must have "unity of action." A second

rule, relating to "unity of time," required that the events represented in

a play must all occur within a single day. A third provided that the action

should take place in the same locality, and this was known as the "unity of

place." [Footnote: The Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca (d. 65 A.D.)

is supposed to have established this rule. The influence of Aristotle on

the "unities" is a matter of dispute.] Other rules of classic drama

required that tragedy and comedy should not occur in the same play, and

that battles, murders and all such violent affairs should never be

represented on the stage but be announced at the proper time by a

messenger.

[Sidenote: THE NATIVE DRAMA]

The native plays ignored these classic unities. The public demanded

chronicle plays, for example, in which the action must cover years of time,

and jump from court to battlefield in following the hero. Tragedy and

comedy, instead of being separated, were represented as meeting at every

crossroad or entering the church door side by side. So the most solemn

Miracles were scandalized by humorous Interludes, and into the most tragic

of Shakespeare's scenes entered the fool and the jester. A Greek playwright

might object to brutalizing scenes before a cultured audience, but the

crowds who came to an Elizabethan play were of a temper to enjoy a Mohawk

scalp dance. They were accustomed to violent scenes and sensations; they

had witnessed the rack and gibbet in constant operation; they were familiar

with the sight of human heads decorating the posts of London Bridge or

carried about on the pikes of soldiers. After witnessing such horrors free

of cost, they would follow their queen and pay their money to see a chained

bear torn to pieces by ferocious bulldogs. Then they would go to a play,

and throw stones or dead cats at the actors if their tastes were not

gratified.

To please such crowds no stage action could possibly be too rough; hence

the riotousness of the early theaters, which for safety were placed outside

the city limits; hence also the blood and thunder of Shakespeare's

_Adronicus_ and the atrocities represented in the plays of Kyd and

Marlowe.

[Sidenote: THE TWO SCHOOLS]

Following such different ideals, two schools of playwrights appeared in

England. One school, the University Wits, to whom we owe our first real

tragedy, _Gorboduc_, [Footnote: This play, called also _Ferrex and

Porrex_, was written by Sackville and Norton, and played in 1562, only

two years before Shakespeare's birth. It related how Gorboduc divided his

British kingdom between his two sons, who quarreled and threw the whole

country into rebellion--a story much like that used by Shakespeare in

_King Lear_. The violent parts of this first tragedy were not

represented on the stage but were announced by a messenger. At the end of

each act a "chorus" summed up the situation, as in classic tragedy.

_Gorboduc_ differed from all earlier plays in that it was divided into

acts and scenes, and was written in blank verse. It is generally regarded

as the first in time of the Elizabethan dramas. A few comedies divided into

acts and scenes were written before _Gorboduc_, but not in the blank

verse with which we associate an Elizabethan play.] aimed to make the

English drama like that of Greece and Rome. The other, or native, school

aimed at a play which should represent life, or please the crowd, without

regard to any rules ancient or modern. The best Elizabethan drama was a

combination of classic and native elements, with the latter predominating.

SHAKESPEARE'S PREDECESSORS. In a general way, all unknown men who for three

centuries had been producing miracle plays, moralities, interludes, masques

and pageants were Shakespeare's predecessors; but we refer here to a small

group of playwrights who rapidly developed what is now called the

Elizabethan drama. The time was the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

By that time England was as excited over the stage as a modern community

over the "movies." Plays were given on every important occasion by choir

boys, by noblemen's servants, by court players governed by the Master of

Revels, by grammar schools and universities, by trade guilds in every shire

of England. Actors were everywhere in training, and audiences gathered as

to a bull-baiting whenever a new spectacle was presented. Then came the

awakening of the national consciousness, the sense of English pride and

power after the defeat of the Armada, and this new national spirit found

expression in hundreds of chronicle plays representing the past glories of

Britain. [Footnote: Over two hundred chronicle plays, representing almost

every important character in English history, appeared within a few years.

Shakespeare wrote thirteen plays founded on English history, and three on

the history of other countries.]

It was at this "psychological moment," when English patriotism was aroused

and London was as the heart of England, that a group of young

actors--Greene, Lyly, Peele, Dekker, Nash, Kyd, Marlowe, and others of less

degree--seized upon the crude popular drama, enlarged it to meet the needs

of the time, and within a single generation made it such a brilliant

reflection of national thought and feeling as no other age has thus far

produced.

MARLOWE. The best of these early playwrights, each of whom contributed some

element of value, was Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), who is sometimes

called the father of the Elizabethan drama. He appeared in London sometime

before 1587, when his first drama _Tamburlaine_ took the city by

storm. The prologue of this drama is at once a criticism and a promise:

From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,

We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world with high-astounding terms,

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

The "jigging" refers to the doggerel verse of the earlier drama, and

"clownage" to the crude horseplay intended to amuse the crowd. For the

doggerel is substituted blank verse, "Marlowe's mighty line" as it has ever

since been called, since he was the first to use it with power; and for the

"clownage" he promises a play of human interest revolving around a man

whose sole ambition is for world power,--such ambition as stirred the

English nation when it called halt to the encroachments of Spain, and

announced that henceforth it must be reckoned with in the councils of the

Continent. Though _Tamburlaine_ is largely rant and bombast, there is

something in it which fascinates us like the sight of a wild bull on a

rampage; for such was Timur, the hero of the first play to which we

confidently give the name Elizabethan. In the latter part of the play the

action grows more intense; there is a sense of tragedy, of impending doom,

in the vain attempt of the hero to oppose fate. He can conquer a world but

not his own griefs; he ends his triumphant career with a pathetic admission

of failure: "And Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God, must die."

[Sidenote: MARLOWE'S DRAMAS]

The succeeding plays of Marlowe are all built on the same model; that is,

they are one-man plays, and the man is dominated by a passion for power.

_Doctor Faustus_, the most poetical of Marlowe's works, is a play

representing a scholar who hungers for more knowledge, especially the

knowledge of magic. In order to obtain it he makes a bargain with the

devil, selling his soul for twenty-four years of unlimited power and

pleasure. [Footnote: The story is the same as that of Goethe's

_Faust_. It was a favorite story, or rather collection of stories, of

the Middle Ages, and was first printed as the _History of Johann

Faust_ in Frankfort, in 1587. Marlowe's play was written, probably, in

the same year.] _The Jew of Malta_ deals with the lust for such power

as wealth gives, and the hero is the money-lender Barabas, a monster of

avarice and hate, who probably suggested to Shakespeare the character of

Shylock in _The Merchant of Venice_. The last play written by Marlowe

was _Edward II_, which dealt with a man who might have been powerful,

since he was a king, but who furnished a terrible example of weakness and

petty tyranny that ended miserably in a dungeon.

After writing these four plays with their extraordinary promise, Marlowe,

who led a wretched life, was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The splendid work

which he only began (for he died under thirty years of age) was immediately

taken up by the greatest of all dramatists, Shakespeare.

* * * * *

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

"The name of Shakespeare is the greatest in all literature. No man

ever came near to him in the creative power of the mind; no man

ever had such strength and such variety of imagination." (Hallam)

"Shakespeare's mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do

not see." (Emerson)

"I do not believe that any book or person or event in my life ever

made so great an impression on me as the plays of Shakespeare. They

appear to be the work of some heavenly genius." (Goethe)

Shakespeare's name has become a signal for enthusiasm. The tributes quoted

above are doubtless extravagant, but they were written by men of mark in

three different countries, and they serve to indicate the tremendous

impression which Shakespeare has left upon the world. He wrote in his day

some thirty-seven plays and a few poems; since then as many hundred volumes

have been written in praise of his accomplishment. He died three centuries

ago, without caring enough for his own work to print it. At the present

time unnumbered critics, historians, scholars, are still explaining the

mind and the art displayed in that same neglected work. Most of these

eulogists begin or end their volumes with the remark that Shakespeare is so

great as to be above praise or criticism. As Taine writes, before plunging

into his own analysis, "Lofty words, eulogies are all used in vain;

Shakespeare needs not praise but comprehension merely."

LIFE. It is probably because so very little is known about

Shakespeare that so many bulky biographies have been written of

him. Not a solitary letter of his is known to exist; not a play

comes down to us as he wrote it. A few documents written by other

men, and sometimes ending in a sprawling signature by Shakespeare,

which looks as if made by a hand accustomed to almost any labor

except that of the pen,--these are all we have to build upon. One

record, in dribbling Latin, relates to the christening of

"Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere"; a second, unreliable as a

village gossip, tells an anecdote of the same person's boyhood; a

third refers to Shakespeare as "one of his Majesty's poor players";

a fourth records the burial of the poet's son Hamnet; a fifth

speaks of "Willi. Shakspere, gentleman"; a sixth is a bit of

wretched doggerel inscribed on the poet's tombstone; a seventh

tells us that in 1622, only six years after the poet's death, the

public had so little regard for his art that the council of his

native Stratford bribed his old company of players to go away from

the town without giving a performance.

It is from such dry and doubtful records that we must construct a

biography, supplementing the meager facts by liberal use of our

imagination.

[Sidenote: EARLY DAYS]

In the beautiful Warwickshire village of Stratford our poet was

born, probably in the month of April, in 1564. His mother, Mary

Arden, was a farmer's daughter; his father was a butcher and small

tradesman, who at one time held the office of high bailiff of the

village. There was a small grammar school in Stratford, and

Shakespeare may have attended it for a few years. When he was about

fourteen years old his father, who was often in lawsuits, was

imprisoned for debt, and the boy probably left school and went to

work. At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a peasant's daughter

eight years older than himself; at twenty-three, with his father

still in debt and his own family of three children to provide for,

Shakespeare took the footpath that led to the world beyond his

native village. [Footnote: Such is the prevalent opinion of

Shakespeare's early days; but we are dealing here with surmises,

not with established facts. There are scholars who allege that

Shakespeare's poverty is a myth; that his father was prosperous to

the end of his days; that he probably took the full course in Latin

and Greek at the Stratford school. Almost everything connected with

the poet's youth is still a matter of dispute.]

[Sidenote: IN LONDON]

From Stratford he went to London, from solitude to crowds, from

beautiful rural scenes to dirty streets, from natural country

people to seekers after the bubble of fame or fortune. Why he went

is largely a matter of speculation. That he was looking for work;

that he followed a company of actors, as a boy follows a circus;

that he was driven out of Stratford after poaching on the game

preserves of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he ridiculed in the plays of

_Henry VI_ and _Merry Wives_,--these and other theories

are still debated. The most probable explanation of his departure

is that the stage lured him away, as the printing press called the

young Franklin from whatever else he undertook; for he seems to

have headed straight for the theater, and to have found his place

not by chance or calculation but by unerring instinct. England was

then, as we have noted, in danger of going stage mad, and

Shakespeare appeared to put method into the madness.

[Sidenote: ACTOR AND PLAYWRIGHT]

Beginning, undoubtedly, as an actor of small parts, he soon learned

the tricks of the stage and the humors of his audience. His first

dramatic work was to revise old plays, giving them some new twist

or setting to please the fickle public. Then he worked with other

playwrights, with Lyly and Peele perhaps, and the horrors of his

_Titus Andronicus_ are sufficient evidence of his

collaboration with Marlowe. Finally he walked alone, having learned

his steps, and _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Midsummer Nights

Dream_ announced that a great poet and dramatist had suddenly

appeared in England.

[Illustration: THE LIBRARY, STRATFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL ATTENDED BY

SHAKESPEARE]

[Sidenote: PERIOD OF GLOOM]

This experimental period of Shakespeare's life in London was

apparently a time of health, of joyousness, of enthusiasm which

comes with the successful use of one's powers. It was followed by a

period of gloom and sorrow, to which something of bitterness was

added. What occasioned the change is again a matter of speculation.

The first conjecture is that Shakespeare was a man to whom the low

ideals of the Elizabethan stage were intolerable, and this opinion

is strengthened after reading certain of Shakespeare's sonnets,

which reflect a loathing for the theaters and the mannerless crowds

that filled them. Another conjectural cause of his gloom was the

fate of certain noblemen with whom he was apparently on terms of

friendship, to whom he dedicated his poems, and from whom he

received substantial gifts of money. Of these powerful friends, the

Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason, Pembroke was banished, and

Southampton had gone to that grave of so many high hopes, the Tower

of London. Shakespeare may have shared the sorrow of these men, as

once he had shared their joy, and there are critics who assume that

he was personally implicated in the crazy attempt of Essex at

rebellion.

Whatever the cause of his grief, Shakespeare shows in his works

that he no longer looks on the world with the clear eyes of youth.

The great tragedies of this period, _Lear_, _Macbeth_,

_Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Cæsar_, all portray man not

as a being of purpose and high destiny, but as the sport of chance,

the helpless victim who cries out, as in _Henry IV_, for a

sight of the Book of Fate, wherein is shown

how chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue,

Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.

[Sidenote: RETURN TO STRATFORD]

For such a terrible mood London offered no remedy. For a time

Shakespeare seems to have gloried in the city; then he wearied of

it, grew disgusted with the stage, and finally, after some

twenty-four years (_cir_. 1587-1611), sold his interest in the

theaters, shook the dust of London from his feet, and followed his

heart back to Stratford. There he adopted the ways of a country

gentleman, and there peace and serenity returned to him. He wrote

comparatively little after his retirement; but the few plays of

this last period, such as _Cymbeline_, _Winter's Tale_

and _The Tempest_, are the mellowest of all his works.

[Sidenote: SHAKESPEARE THE MAN]

After a brief period of leisure, Shakespeare died at his prime in

1616, and was buried in the parish church of Stratford. Of his

great works, now the admiration of the world, he thought so little

that he never collected or printed them. From these works many

attempts are made to determine the poet's character, beliefs,

philosophy,--a difficult matter, since the works portray many types

of character and philosophy equally well. The testimony of a few

contemporaries is more to the point, and from these we hear that

our poet was "very good company," "of such civil demeanor," "of

such happy industry," "of such excellent fancy and brave notions,"

that he won in a somewhat brutal age the characteristic title of

"the gentle Shakespeare."

THE DRAMAS OF SHAKESPEARE. In Shakespeare's day playwrights were producing

various types of drama: the chronicle play, representing the glories of

English history; the domestic drama, portraying homely scenes and common

people; the court comedy (called also Lylian comedy, after the dramatist

who developed it), abounding in wit and repartee for the delight of the

upper classes; the melodrama, made up of sensational elements thrown

together without much plot; the tragedy of blood, centering in one

character who struggles amidst woes and horrors; romantic comedy and

romantic tragedy, in which men and women were more or less idealized, and

in which the elements of love, poetry, romance, youthful imagination and

enthusiasm predominated.

[Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE]

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare essayed all these types--the

chronicle play in _Henry IV_, the domestic drama in _Merry

Wives_, the court comedy in _Loves Labor's Lost_, the melodrama in

_Richard III_, the tragedy of blood in _King Lear_, romantic

tragedy in _Romeo and Juliet_, romantic comedy in _As You Like

It_--and that in each he showed such a mastery as to raise him far above

all his contemporaries.

[Sidenote: EARLY DRAMAS]

In his experimental period of work (_cir_. 1590-1595) Shakespeare

began by revising old plays in conjunction with other actors. _Henry

VI_ is supposed to be an example of such tinkering work. The first part

of this play (performed by Shakespeare's company in 1592) was in all

probability an older work made over by Shakespeare and some unknown

dramatist. From the fact that Joan of Arc appears in the play in two

entirely different characters, and is even made to do battle at Rouen

several years after her death, it is almost certain that _Henry VI_ in

its present form was composed at different times and by different authors.

[Illustration: THE MAIN ROOM, ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE]

_Love's Labor's Lost_ is an example of the poet's first independent

work. In this play such characters as Holofernes the schoolmaster, Costard

the clown and Adriano the fantastic Spaniard are all plainly of the "stock"

variety; various rimes and meters are used experimentally; blank verse is

not mastered; and some of the songs, such as "On a Day," are more or less

artificial. Other plays of this early experimental period are _Two

Gentlemen of Verona_ and _Richard III_, the latter of which shows

the influence and, possibly, the collaboration of Marlowe.

[Sidenote: SECOND PERIOD]

In the second period (_cir_. 1595-1600) Shakespeare constructed his

plots with better skill, showed a greater mastery of blank verse, created

some original characters, and especially did he give free rein to his

romantic imagination. All doubt and experiment vanished in the confident

enthusiasm of this period, as if Shakespeare felt within himself the coming

of the sunrise in _Romeo and Juliet_:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Though some of his later plays are more carefully finished, in none of them

are we so completely under the sway of poetry and romance as in these early

works, written when Shakespeare first felt the thrill of mastery in his

art.

In _Midsummer Nights Dream_, for example, the practical affairs of

life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with

us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when

the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into the

light of common day; and then comes Theseus with his dogs to drive not the

foxes but the fairies out of the landscape. As Chesterton points out, this

masterful man, who has seen no fairies, proceeds to arrange matters in a

practical way, with a wedding, a feast and a pantomime, as if these were

the chief things of life. So, he thinks, the drama is ended; but after he

and his noisy followers have departed to slumber, lo! enter once more Puck,

Oberon, Titania and the whole train of fairies, to repeople the ancient

world and dance to the music of Mendelssohn:

Hand in hand, with fairy grace,

While we sing, and bless this place.

So in _The Merchant of Venice_ with its tragic figure of Shylock, who

is hurried off the stage to make place for a final scene of love, moonlight

and music; so in every other play of this period, the poetic dream of life

triumphs over its practical realities.

[Sidenote: THIRD PERIOD]

During the third period, of maturity of power (_cir._ 1600-1610),

Shakespeare was overshadowed by some personal grief or disappointment. He

wrote his "farewell to mirth" in _Twelfth Night_, and seems to have

reflected his own perturbed state in the lines which he attributes to

Achilles in _Troilus and Cressida_:

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd,

And I myself see not the bottom of it.

His great tragedies belong to this period, tragedies which reveal increased

dramatic power in Shakespeare, but also his loss of hope, his horrible

conviction that man is not a free being but a puppet blown about by every

wind of fate or circumstance. In _Hamlet_ great purposes wait upon a

feeble will, and the strongest purpose may be either wrecked or consummated

by a trifle. The whole conception of humanity in this play suggests a

clock, of which, if but one small wheel is touched, all the rest are thrown

into confusion. In _Macbeth_ a man of courage and vaulting ambition

turns coward or traitor at the appearance of a ghost, at the gibber of

witches, at the whisper of conscience, at the taunts of his wife. In

_King Lear_ a monarch of high disposition drags himself and others

down to destruction, not at the stern command of fate, but at the mere

suggestion of foolishness. In _Othello_ love, faith, duty, the

fidelity of a brave man, the loyalty of a pure woman,--all are blasted,

wrecked, dishonored by a mere breath of suspicion blown by a villain.

[Sidenote: LAST DRAMAS]

In his final period, of leisurely experiment (_cir._ 1610-1616),

Shakespeare seems to have recovered in Stratford the cheerfulness that he

had lost in London. He did little work during this period, but that little

is of rare charm and sweetness. He no longer portrayed human life as a

comedy of errors or a tragedy of weakness but as a glowing romance, as if

the mellow autumn of his own life had tinged all the world with its own

golden hues. With the exception of _As You Like It_ (written in the

second period), in which brotherhood is pictured as the end of life, and

love as its unfailing guide, it is doubtful if any of the earlier plays

leaves such a wholesome impression as _The Winter's Tale_ or _The

Tempest_, which were probably the last of the poet's works.

Following is a list of Shakespeare's thirty-four plays (or thirty-seven,

counting the different parts of _Henry IV_ and _Henry VI_)

arranged according to the periods in which they were probably written. The

dates are approximate, not exact, and the chronological order is open to

question:

FIRST PERIOD, EARLY EXPERIMENT (1590-1595). _Titus Andronicus_,

_Henry VI_, _Love's Labor's Lost_, _Comedy of Errors_,

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _Richard III_, _Richard II_,

_King John._

SECOND PERIOD, DEVELOPMENT (1595-1600). _Romeo and Juliet_,

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Henry IV_,

_Henry V_, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About

Nothing_, _As You Like It._

THIRD PERIOD, MATURITY AND TROUBLE (1600-1610). _Twelfth Night_,

_Taming of the Shrew_, _Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Troilus

and Cressida_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Measure for

Measure_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Antony

and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens._

FOURTH PERIOD, LATER EXPERIMENT (1610-1616). _Coriolanus_,

_Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, _The

Tempest_, _Henry VIII_ (left unfinished, completed probably by

Fletcher).

[Sidenote: TRAGEDY AND COMEDY]

The most convenient arrangement of these plays appears in the First Folio

(1623) [Footnote: This was the first edition of Shakespeare's plays. It was

prepared seven years after the poet's death by two of his fellow actors,

Heminge and Condell. It contained all the plays now attributed to

Shakespeare with the exception of _Pericles_.] where they are grouped

in three classes called tragedies, comedies and historical plays. The

tragedy is a drama in which the characters are the victims of unhappy

passions, or are involved in desperate circumstances. The style is grave

and dignified, the movement stately; the ending is disastrous to

individuals, but illustrates the triumph of a moral principle. These rules

of true tragedy are repeatedly set aside by Shakespeare, who introduces

elements of buffoonery, and who contrives an ending that may stand for the

triumph of a principle but that is quite likely to be the result of

accident or madness. His best tragedies are _Macbeth_, _Romeo and

Juliet_, _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Othello_.

Comedy is a type of drama in which the elements of fun and humor

predominate. The style is gay; the action abounds in unexpected incidents;

the ending brings ridicule or punishment to the villains in the plot, and

satisfaction to all worthy characters. Among the best of Shakespeare's

comedies, in which he is apt to introduce serious or tragic elements, are

_As You Like It_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Midsummer Night's

Dream_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_.

[Illustration: CAWDOR CASTLE, SCOTLAND, ASSOCIATED WITH MACBETH]

Strictly speaking there are only two dramatic types, all others, such as

farce, melodrama, tragi-comedy, lyric drama, or opera, and chronicle play,

being modifications of comedy or tragedy. The historical play, to which

Elizabethans were devoted, aimed to present great scenes or characters from

a past age, and were generally made up of both tragic and comic elements.

The best of Shakespeare's historical plays are _Julius Cæsar_,

_Henry IV_, _Henry V_, _Richard III_ and _Coriolanus_.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

There is no better way to feel the power of Shakespeare than to read in

succession three different types of plays, such as the comedy of _As You

Like It_, the tragedy of _Macbeth_ and the historical play of

_Julius Cæsar_. Another excellent trio is _The Merchant of

Venice_, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Henry IV_; and the reading of

these typical plays might well be concluded with _The Tempest_, which

was probably Shakespeare's last word to his Elizabethan audience.

THE QUALITY OF SHAKESPEARE. As the thousand details of a Gothic cathedral

receive character and meaning from its towering spire, so all the works of

Shakespeare are dominated by his imagination. That imagination of his was

both sympathetic and creative. It was sympathetic in that it understood

without conscious effort all kinds of men, from clowns to kings, and all

human emotions that lie between the extremes of joy and sorrow; it was

creative in that, from any given emotion or motive, it could form a human

character who should be completely governed by that motive. Ambition in

Macbeth, pride in Coriolanus, wit in Mercutio, broad humor in Falstaff,

indecision in Hamlet, pure fancy in Ariel, brutality in Richard, a

passionate love in Juliet, a merry love in Rosalind, an ideal love in

Perdita,--such characters reveal Shakespeare's power to create living men

and women from a single motive or emotion.

Or take a single play, _Othello_, and disregarding all minor

characters, fix attention on the pure devotion of Desdemona, the jealousy

of Othello, the villainy of Iago. The genius that in a single hour can make

us understand these contrasting characters as if we had met them in the

flesh, and make our hearts ache as we enter into their joy, their anguish,

their dishonor, is beyond all ordinary standards of measurement. And

_Othello_ must be multiplied many times before we reach the limit of

Shakespeare's creative imagination. He is like the genii of the _Arabian

Nights_, who produce new marvels while we wonder at the old.

Such an overpowering imagination must have created wildly, fancifully, had

it not been guided by other qualities: by an observation almost as keen as

that of Chaucer, and by the saving grace of humor. We need only mention the

latter qualities, for if the reader will examine any great play of

Shakespeare, he will surely find them in evidence: the observation keeping

the characters of the poet's imagination true to the world of men and

women, and the humor preventing some scene of terror or despair from

overwhelming us by its terrible reality.

[Sidenote: HIS FAULTS]

In view of these and other qualities it has become almost a fashion to

speak of the "perfection" of Shakespeare's art; but in truth no word could

be more out of place in such a connection. As Ben Jonson wrote in his

_Timber_:

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to

Shakespeare that in his writing, whatever he penned, he never

blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a

thousand.'"

Even in his best work Shakespeare has more faults than any other poet of

England. He is in turn careless, extravagant, profuse, tedious,

sensational; his wit grows stale or coarse; his patriotism turns to

bombast; he mars even such pathetic scenes as the burial of Ophelia by

buffoonery and brawling; and all to please a public that was given to

bull-baiting.

These certainly are imperfections; yet the astonishing thing is that they

pass almost unnoticed in Shakespeare. He reflected his age, the evil and

the good of it, just as it appeared to him; and the splendor of his

representation is such that even his faults have their proper place, like

shadows in a sunlit landscape.

[Sidenote: HIS VIEW OF LIFE]

Of Shakespeare's philosophy we may say that it reflected equally well the

views of his hearers and of the hundred characters whom he created for

their pleasure. Of his personal views it is impossible to say more than

this, with truth: that he seems to have been in full sympathy with the

older writers whose stories he used as the sources of his drama. [Footnote:

The chief sources of Shakespeare's plays are: (1) Older plays, from which

he made half of his dramas, such as _Richard III_, _Hamlet_,

_King John_. (2) Holinshed's _Chronicles_, from which he obtained

material for his English historical plays. (3) Plutarch's _Lives_,

translated by North, which furnished him material for _Caesar_,

_Coriolanus_, _Antony and Cleopatra_. (4) French, Italian and

Spanish romances, in translations, from which he obtained the stories of

_The Merchant of Venice_, _Othello_, _Twelfth Night_ and

_As You Like It_.] Now these stories commonly reflected three things

besides the main narrative: a problem, its solution, and the consequent

moral or lesson. The problem was a form of evil; its solution depended on

goodness in some form; the moral was that goodness triumphs finally and

inevitably over evil.

Many such stories were cherished by the Elizabethans, the old tale of

"Gammelyn" for example (from which came _As You Like It_); and just as

in our own day popular novels are dramatized, so three centuries ago

audiences demanded to see familiar stories in vigorous action. That is why

Shakespeare held to the old tales, and pleased his audience, instead of

inventing new plots. But however much he changed the characters or the

action of the story, he remained always true to the old moral:

That goodness is the rule of life,

And its glory and its triumph.

Shakespeare's women are his finest characters, and he often portrays the

love of a noble woman as triumphing over the sin or weakness of men. He has

little regard for abnormal or degenerate types, such as appear in the later

Elizabethan drama; he prefers vigorous men and pure women, precisely as the

old story-tellers did; and if Richard or some other villain overruns his

stage for an hour, such men are finally overwhelmed by the very evil which

they had planned for others. If they drag the innocent down to a common

destruction, these pure characters never seem to us to perish; they live

forever in our thought as the true emblems of humanity.

[Sidenote: MORAL EMPHASIS]

It was Charles Lamb who referred to a copy of Shakespeare's plays as "this

manly book." The expression is a good one, and epitomizes the judgment of a

world which has found that, though Shakespeare introduces evil or vulgar

elements into his plays, his emphasis is always upon the right man and the

right action. This may seem a trite thing to say in praise of a great

genius; but when you reflect that Shakespeare is read throughout the

civilized world, the simple fact that the splendor of his poetry is

balanced by the rightness of his message becomes significant and

impressive. It speaks not only for Shakespeare but for the moral quality of

the multitudes who acknowledge his mastery. Wherever his plays are read, on

land or sea, in the crowded cities of men or the far silent places of the

earth, there the solitary man finds himself face to face with the

unchanging ideals of his race, with honor, duty, courtesy, and the moral

imperative,

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

* * * * *

THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE

The drama began to decline during Shakespeare's lifetime. Even before his

retirement to Stratford other popular dramatists appeared who catered to a

vulgar taste by introducing more sensational elements into the stage

spectacle. In consequence the drama degenerated so rapidly that in 1642,

only twenty-six years after the master dramatist had passed away,

Parliament closed the theaters as evil and degrading places. This closing

is charged to the zeal of the Puritans, who were rapidly rising into power,

and the charge is probably well founded. So also was the Puritan zeal. One

who was compelled to read the plays of the period, to say nothing of

witnessing them, must thank these stern old Roundheads for their insistence

on public decency and morality. In the drama of all ages there seems to be

a terrible fatality which turns the stage first to levity, then to

wickedness, and which sooner or later calls for reformation.

[Illustration: FRANCIS BEAUMONT]

Among those who played their parts in the rise and fall of the drama, the

chief names are Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, Webster, Heywood,

Dekker, Massinger, Ford and Shirley. Concerning the work of these

dramatists there is wide diversity of opinion. Lamb regards them, Beaumont

and Fletcher especially, as "an inferior sort of Sidneys and Shakespeares."

Landor writes of them poetically:

They stood around

The throne of Shakespeare, sturdy but unclean.

Lowell finds some small things to praise in a large collection of their

plays. Hazlitt regards them as "a race of giants, a common and noble brood,

of whom Shakespeare was simply the tallest." Dyce, who had an extraordinary

knowledge of all these dramatists, regards such praise as absurd, saying

that "Shakespeare is not only immeasurably superior to the dramatists of

his time, but is utterly unlike them in almost every respect."

[Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER

From the engraving by Philip Oudinet published 1811]

We shall not attempt to decide where such doctors disagree. It may not be

amiss, however, to record this personal opinion: that these playwrights

added little to the drama and still less to literature, and that it is

hardly worth while to search out their good passages amid a welter of

repulsive details. If they are to be read at all, the student will find

enough of their work for comparison with the Shakespearean drama in a book

of selections, such as Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poetry_

or Thayer's _The Best Elizabethan Plays_.

BEN JONSON (1573?-1637). The greatest figure among these dramatists was

Jonson,--"O rare Ben Jonson" as his epitaph describes him, "O rough Ben

Jonson" as he was known to the playwrights with whom he waged literary

warfare. His first notable play, _Every Man in His Humour_, satirizing

the fads or humors of London, was acted by Shakespeare's company, and

Shakespeare played one of the parts. Then Jonson fell out with his fellow

actors, and wrote _The Poetaster_ (acted by a rival company) to

ridicule them and their work. Shakespeare was silent, but the cudgels were

taken up by Marston and Dekker, the latter of whom wrote, among other and

better plays, _Satiromastix_, which was played by Shakespeare's

company as a counter attack on Jonson.

[Illustration: BEN JONSON]

Outlines of English and American Literature An Introduction to the Chief Writers of England and America, to the Books They Wrote, and to the Times in Which They Lived · 第 9 / 16 章