The character of a tragedy naturally varied with the circ.u.mstances of its presentation. A Latin play at one of the universities was much more dignified and scholarly than the performance of a few traveling actors for the delectation of a provincial audience; and a play by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple was given with an elaborateness not to be expected in those by the choir boys, which were likely to be brief and to include a good deal of singing. The extant tragedies can consequently be best cla.s.sified according to their methods of presentation. Before all audiences, it should be remembered, moralities of divers sorts were performed, but we are now concerned only with those that most closely approach tragedy. All the extant Latin plays were presented at the universities. Of English plays, "Gorboduc," "Tancred and Gismunda,"
"Jocasta," and "The Misfortunes of Arthur" were acted by gentlemen of the Inner Temple or Gray"s Inn, and are all Senecan tragedies. "Damon and Pithias" and "Appius and Virginia" were acted at court by children, and show little Senecan influence, but are medleys of tragedy, comedy, and music. No performance by an adult company of any extant tragedy is recorded, but "h.o.r.estes" and "Cambyses," both of which may have originally been intended for children, bear some evident marks of popular presentation, and both are mixtures of morality, farce, and tragedy. These plays, with the exception of "The Misfortunes of Arthur," acted in 1588 at the very end of the period, were all written and performed in the sixties.
With the addition of "Promus and Ca.s.sandra" (1578), apparently not acted, they comprise all extant plays acted before 1586-87 which can be cla.s.sed as tragedies or tragicomedies. Our knowledge of the professional drama may be supplemented from the t.i.tles of non-extant plays and from the Revels Accounts of performances at court; but it should be observed that our information in regard to the development of popular tragedy is very meagre, especially for the important period after 1570, and that the group of Senecan plays, which we are to examine first, owed their existence to no popular favor, but to amateur performances under special conditions.
"Gorboduc," or "Ferrex and Porrex," printed surrept.i.tiously in 1565 and with an authoritative text about 1570, was written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, the author of "The Complaint of Buckingham" and "The Induction" in "The Mirror for Magistrates," and afterwards Lord Buckhurst, Lord High Treasurer. It was performed before the Queen as a part of the elaborate Christmas entertainment of the Inner Temple in 1561-62. The plot is taken from a British legend that was introduced into literature by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and relates the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, the murder of the elder by the younger, the murder of the younger by his mother, the murder of both father and mother by their subjects, the slaughter of the people by the n.o.bles, and the resulting civil wars. The story, evidently chosen because of its likeness to Seneca"s "Thebais," is treated in Senecan manner, each of the first four acts being followed by a chorus of "Foure auncient and sage men of Brittaine." The murders are not enacted but are related by messengers, but the unities of time and place are violated, as Sir Philip Sidney noted with disapproval. There is little characterization, much political moralizing, which delighted Sidney, and an abundance of long declamations, about eight hundred lines, nearly half of the play, being comprised in ten speeches. The play is written in blank verse, already used in Surrey"s translation from the aeneid, and perhaps adopted in imitation of the unrhymed verse of the Italian tragedies. After the Italian fashion, each act is preceded by a dumb show, symbolizing the following action, and these dumb shows seem to have been utilized to provide the spectacle that was entirely wanting in the play proper. Supernatural visitants appear in the three furies before act iv; and before the last act the dumb show consists of a battle-scene, similar to those which later became the invariable accompaniments of the chronicle history play: "there came forth upon the stage a company of hargabusiers and of armed men all in order of battaile," who discharged their pieces and marched three times about the stage.
In spite of the close adherence to the Senecan model, there is little direct borrowing from Seneca, and medieval elements are not lacking. The debates between the good and bad counselors are very like those of the moralities, and the structure is essentially that of a chronicle of a whole story rather than that of a cla.s.sical tragedy. The first two acts are occupied by the interminable debates, and the last three by the catastrophe, or rather the succession of catastrophes, though the final scene of the fifth act is a sort of epilogue after Senecan fashion. The play has little literary value, though Marcella"s recital is not without power and the disquisitions on discord and disloyalty in the state have the merit of earnestness; but it is clearly the beginning of a new species. It abandons current dramatic forms, and endeavors to depict the fall of English princes in accordance with the models of cla.s.sical tragedy.
"Jocasta," by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, acted 1566 by the Gentlemen of Gray"s Inn, demands little attention. It is a translation in blank verse of Lodovico Dolce"s "Giocasta," itself an adaptation of the "Phoenissae" of Euripides. It thus furnishes additional evidence of the influence of Italian tragedy on English. The chorus numbers four, as in "Gorboduc," and the dumb shows, apparently of Gascoigne"s invention, are notably elaborate and spectacular.[2]
"Tancred and Gismunda," acted before the queen at the Inner Temple in 1568, under the t.i.tle "Gismond of Salerne," was written in rhymed quatrains by five gentlemen of the Temple, and afterwards revised and put into blank verse by the author of the fifth act, Robert Wilmot, and first published in 1591.[3] In both versions Cupid appears before the first and third acts as the director of the action, and Magaera comes on before the fourth act to superintend the revenge and murder. The play is based on Painter"s version of Boccaccio"s _novella_, which is followed closely, but the base-born lover becomes a count according to the prevailing theory of tragedy. The story itself has an obvious dramatic power and a certain dramatic structure which it imposes on the play. Gismunda"s pa.s.sion for the Count Palurin runs counter to her father"s wishes; at the end of the third act love is triumphant, but in the fourth is defeated, and the gruesome catastrophe follows, Tancred and Gismunda dying on the stage. This is the earliest extant English play based on an Italian _novella_, and the first tragedy to adopt a romantic love story and to make the pa.s.sion of love its central motive; and the authors accomplished their experiment with evident enthusiasm and some gracefulness and force of diction. They were, however, very conscious of their models. Seneca"s "Thyestes," and "Phaedra," itself presenting a story of pa.s.sionate love, were perhaps their chief inspirations; but Buchanan"s "Jephthes" and Beza"s "Abraham," translated into English in 1577, are mentioned in Wilmot"s dedication, and, together with other plays, supplied precedents for the treatment of the favorite tragic theme, the sacrifice of a child by a father. Moreover, Italian tragedies had, since Giraldi"s "Orbecche," been turning to romantic fiction for their subjects instead of to history and mythology; and some of these, "Orbecche" itself, and, as Professor Creizenach notes,[4] Dolce"s "Dido,"
doubtless influenced the young templars. There had, indeed, already been Italian tragedies based on Boccaccio"s _novella_, and one by Frederigo Asinari (1576) had added an Oedipean horror by making Tancred put out his eyes before killing himself, an augmentation adopted by Wilmot in his revision. The play was thus not only thoroughly Senecan, but the result of a tangle of derivative Senecan influences. The authors were probably unconscious of the incongruity so obvious to us between the cla.s.sical form and the romantic material. They were interested in their story and were eager to give it all the advantages that erudition could discover; their intentions were doubtless perfectly reflected in the praise which William Webbe gave them for a play that "all men generally desired, as a work, either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman Seneca the censurer."
"The Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes, was acted and published in 1588. The story from "The Morte D"Arthur" was suggested by its likeness to Senecan plots; and the play was an ambitious attempt to use British legend as Seneca had treated cla.s.sical myth. The strife between father and son, with its accompaniments of adultery and incest, is viewed as const.i.tuting a Nemesis for the crimes of Arthur"s father, Pendragon; and the ghost of the wronged Gorlois appears in the first scene to promise revenge, and in the final scene to triumph over its fulfillment. The author knew his models by heart, borrowed much, availed himself of all the particulars of the Senecan technic, and imitated everywhere with a good deal of spirit and success.
The play has dramatic and poetic merits beyond its predecessors, but its late date makes it of small importance in our effort to trace the beginnings of English tragedy. Acted twenty-six years after "Gorboduc," it testifies less to the progress of dramatic art than to the conventionalizing effect of Senecan models. Though perhaps the most successful of English imitations of Seneca, it marks the failure of amateur actors and courtly audiences to revive the cla.s.sical drama on the English stage. On the occasion of its performance before the Queen at Greenwich, its actors and authors may very likely have thought it full of significance for the future of the drama; but "Tamburlaine" had already been acted, and poetry had taken up its abode in the despised public theatres. The chief interest for us in "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is that it furnishes further ill.u.s.tration of the use of English history and of stories of revenge.
To understand the full importance of the attempt to domicile Seneca in England, we must turn to the universities. Two English plays, which would be of interest, have not been preserved, "Ezechias," a tragedy by Udall, acted in 1564 at Cambridge, and "Palamon and Arcyte" by Edwards, the author of "Damon and Pithias," acted 1566. These are the only English plays at all tragical that are recorded; but the practice of giving Latin plays continued and grew in popularity.[5] We hear of "Dido" and an "Ajax Flagellifer," apparently a translation of Sophocles, both in 1564, and a "Progne" in 1566. The extant Latin tragedies are of a later date. Gager"s "Meleager," "Oedipus," and "Dido," all acted in the early eighties, are modeled strictly on Seneca, the first two showing direct borrowings. In the fragment which we possess of the third, the ghost of Sichaeus appears to warn Dido, and is followed by the storm, represented, we learn, by sugar for snow, sweetmeats for hail, and rose-water for rain. Gager"s "Ulysses Redux," acted in 1591, a little beyond the limits of our period, presents a somewhat freer treatment of the Senecan form, the number of characters and of scenes being larger than in the earlier plays. Of uncertain date are a "Herodes," which takes the form of a revenge play introduced by the ghost of Mariemma, and "Solymannidae" and "Tonumbeius," which apply Senecan methods to Eastern instead of to cla.s.sical atrocities. "Roxana" (1632), acted before 1592, is a translation of "La Dalida" of Luigi Groto, and won some contemporary distinction and the praise of Dr. Johnson two centuries later. It is a revenge play with a ghost, combining Senecan gruesomeness with the motives of romantic comedy.
More famous than any of these in its own day was "Richardus Tertius," a tragedy in three parts, each part acted on a separate night in 1579 at St.
John"s, Cambridge, the work of Thomas Legge, Master of Caius and afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the university. Legge seems to have felt the incongruity between the material of the chronicles, which he followed closely, and a strict Senecan form, and to have striven to overcome this by the mechanical expedient of prolonging the action over three plays. But the problem of presenting on the stage the events of a whole reign could not be solved in the terms of the Senecan formula. Legge copied the Senecan rhetoric, interpreted historical events and persons under the guidance of the formula, and retained much of its technic, the narration of deaths instead of their presentation, counsel scenes between hero and advisers, frequent use of the nuntius, and a vestige of a chorus. But the play departs as widely as popular dramas from the unities of time and place, contains many scenes with more than three speakers, is full of dramatic action, and presents processions, pageants, and battle scenes after the fashion of later chronicle plays in the public theatres. Its influence on popular drama may well have been considerable; though, on the other hand, its adherence to sources and its looseness of structure may have been reflections from the public stage. Whether the first chronicle play or not, it is the earliest extant play to indicate the result of the inevitable conflict between a narrow and stereotyped dramatic form and the wide range of material which the chronicles afforded.[6]
In these university Latin plays there is evident a development similar to that traced in the English Senecan drama. Biblical themes disappear; close imitations of Seneca on cla.s.sical themes give way to freer treatment of romantic or historical material. Revenge and the ghost are ever prominent; and English history introduces a host of events, varied, incongruous, panoramic, and bursting the bounds of the traditional structure. Nash, Marlowe, and others of the later dramatists were university men, and saw some of these plays performed, and perhaps took part in them. Their scenic spectacle, choices of themes, handling of situation, and general effect must have had an appreciable influence upon the subsequent course of the drama. To the various influences which we have denominated humanistic, and especially to the derivative influences reinforcing that of Seneca, we must add this of the Latin plays at Oxford and Cambridge. Latin tragedies continued to be acted at the universities for many years, but their influence on the popular drama can have been potent only during its formative period.
When we turn from these academic and amateur productions to the more popular performances,[7] we have to deal with a very different cla.s.s of plays. The four to be considered were all written by men of scholarly training, and all deal with cla.s.sical themes, but the Senecan influence is slight and mainly discernible in the figurative and hyperbolic diction and the fondness for sententious maxims. None of the four are divided into acts; none have choruses or other characteristic marks of Senecan structure; all present action to the exclusion of reflection, and all are in rhymed verse, the favorite metre, at least in the serious portions, being doggerel. All admit comic and farcical scenes, and three are in a large measure moralities. In the tragic portions all admit violence and murders of all kinds on the stage; there is a beheading, a hanging, and, in the case of "Cambyses," a flaying, accomplished, the stage direction rea.s.sures us, "with a false skin."
"Damon and Pithias" (1571), by Richard Edwards, was acted by the Children of the Chapel at court in 1563-64, and, judging from the t.i.tle-page, probably also in public. The prologue, which contains a discussion of "decorum," explains that the term "tragicall comedy" is used because the story is a matter "mixed up with mirth and care." The serious portion of the play presents the tyrant Dionysius as well as the two faithful friends, and shows evidence of a study of Seneca; but it is intermixed with comedy, where the influence of Plautus is noticeable, and indeed with scenes of broadest farce. Carisophus, the parasite, is hardly distinguishable from the vice of the moralities, and is not only clown and mischief-maker, but the villain, whose infamy brings about the tragic entanglements. The play contains a number of songs, and this mixture of tragedy, farce, and musical comedy seems typical of the children"s plays of this period.
"Appius and Virginia" (S. R. 1567-68), by an unknown R. B., was also evidently acted by one of the children"s companies, perhaps, as Mr. Fleay plausibly conjectures, by the boys of the Westminster school. It is much shorter than "Damon and Pithias," but, like that play, is styled a tragical comedy, is written in rhymed verse, mostly doggerel, and contains farcical scenes and many songs. The vice Haphazard is a clown and mischief-maker; and, in addition, a number of personified abstractions, Conscience, Justice, Comfort, Doctrina, etc., indicate the close relation of the play to the moralities. The main plot, however, is tragic and has no integral connection with the comic scenes. It begins with the domestic happiness of the family of Virginius, and proceeds promptly to the action. Virginia is beheaded, and the head is afterwards exhibited; Appius Claudius and Haphazard are executed out of the sight of the audience; and in the closing scene the tomb of Virginia is shown upon the stage, Memory inscribes her renown, while Justice, Reward, Doctrine, and Fame apparently join in a song "around about the tomb in honor of her name."
"h.o.r.estes" (1567) by John Pickering was probably the "Orestes" acted at court 1567-68. It also seems to have been performed by children, but was very likely given public presentation by various companies. The t.i.tle runs significantly, "A New Interlude of Vice, conteyninge the Historye of h.o.r.estes," etc. The vice, indeed, is hardly absent from the stage, and offers much that is new in his species. He is a clown, but apparently this is only a disguise, for he appears to h.o.r.estes as a messenger from the G.o.ds, urging him to revenge; later as Courage he is h.o.r.estes" faithful friend and supporter, then as Revenge he attends to the execution of Clytemnestra, and finally he appears as a beggar thrust out of court, since Revenge could not agree with the Amity dwelling there, and takes the opportunity to read a long lecture to women. The diversity of elements confused in this personage is typical of the play. It is in a large measure a morality; Nature appears to h.o.r.estes to dissuade him from including his mother in his vengeance, Fame appears as a judge and exempts him from guilt, and other abstractions are numerous and voluble. There are also a number of songs, Egisthus and Clytemnestra having just finished a love song when the messenger announces the avenger"s approach. There are many scenes of sheer farce, where the humor lies wholly in fisticuffs and beatings; and the spectacular element suggests the later historical plays. h.o.r.estes is accompanied by an army which marches with drums about the stage and fights two pitched battles, one with the host of Egisthus and the other for the possession of the city. "Make your lively battel and let it be long,"
says the stage direction. Still further, the cla.s.sical elements are curiously confused. Although there are a number of quotations from Ovid and frequent citations of other cla.s.sical worthies, there is no mention of Seneca, though the plot of "a revenge for a father" here makes its first appearance in the English drama, and the authors appear to have been entirely ignorant of the Greek tragedies. The ultimate source is the sixth book of Dictys Cretensis. The author follows closely one of the popular versions of the Troy legend, retains the anachronisms of the romantic version, and imposes on that the structure of the morality, the vice taking the place of the oracle of Apollo, and abstractions mingling with the knights and dukes of the Trojan war. The play is thus interesting as marking another step in the translation of the morality into the "history"
type of tragedy. The closing scenes, in particular, ill.u.s.trate the adherence to sources with morality embellishments. The play by no means ends with the murders. h.o.r.estes is approved by Fame, accused by Menelaus, who arrives, defended by Nestor, who throws down his glove as a gage, then reconciled to Menelaus, married to Hermione, crowned by Duty and Truth, and applauded and advised by Commons and n.o.belles.
"Cambyses" (S. R. 1569-70) was written by Thomas Preston, afterwards Master of Trinity Hall, and acted some time in the sixties. Perhaps originally intended for a school performance, it was later evidently acted in public, and seems more suited than even "Appius and Virginia" or "h.o.r.estes" to a performance by an ordinary professional adult company. The t.i.tle-page sets forth the plot with a terse emphasis of its various elements: "A Lamentable Tragedie mixed full of pleasant mirth containing the Life of Cambises King of Persia from the beginning of his kingdome unto his Death, his one good deede of execution, after that, many wicked deedes and tyrannous murders committed by and through him, and last of all, his odious death by G.o.ds Justice appointed." Like "h.o.r.estes," this is a combination of morality and history, and the chronicle or epical method is enforced by the fact that we have the whole story of "the life and death," as later t.i.tles ran, of a monarch. The chronicle structure is mixed full of pleasant mirth and pays a certain regard to climax. Cambyses begins by executing an unjust judge, and proceeds to murder the child of his minister, then his brother, then his bride, and finally himself. The comic scenes have a link of connection with the tragic ones in Ambidexter, the vice and accomplice of the villanous tyrant. Seneca is appealed to as an authority in the prologue, but there is little trace of his influence, unless it is found in the central figure of the wicked tyrant and his gory career, or in the highfalutin of Cambyses"
vein. The extraordinary list of _dramatis personae_ indicates sufficiently the hodge-podge of the action and the prominence of the morality influence.
The deaths are managed by Cruelty or Murder; Commons Cry, Commons Complaint, Small n.o.bility, and Proof appeal against tyranny; the marriage feast is arranged by Preparation; the comic scenes are shared by Huf, Ruf, Snuf, Hob, and Lob; Venus and Cupid manage the love affairs; and Shame appears as a sort of tentative ghost:
"From among the grisly ghosts I come, from tyrants" testy train."
The fall of the Prince Cambyses, it should be added, is accidentally or providentially upon his own sword; and only the exit of Ambidexter and a few words from the three lords, who p.r.o.nounce the accident a just reward from heaven and promise princely burial, are required to bring the play to a close.
In these plays we may trace the gradual emergence of tragedy in the popular drama in response to a growing knowledge of its functions and methods. It appears still mixed with farce and morality, but it has themes like those of Seneca, b.l.o.o.d.y, revolting, and sensational, and its freedom in stage presentation permits an emphasis on crime and death even greater than in the Senecan imitations. Notably, it introduces the stories of the downfall of a tyrant and the revenge of a son for a father. The structure has none of the Senecan characteristics, and consists merely in linking together, or rather in interrupting by extraneous comedy, a few scenes ill.u.s.trating a story; but it is like that of the English Senecan plays in the s.p.a.ce it gives to catastrophe. In general the plays begin conventionally with the depiction of peaceful and prosperous circ.u.mstances, and proceed at once to the disasters and deaths, with very little attention to the events or motives that lead to these results. The element of conflict is as yet hardly translated out of the abstract terms of the morality into those of actual life. The conflict of motives never leads to a dramatic crisis but keeps to the form of a medieval debate, as between Nature and h.o.r.estes, or, indeed, between the bad and good counselors in "Gorboduc." Characterization likewise depends mostly on the form of arguing abstractions, though certain types of importance later are already noticeable. The faithful friend and the aged counselor are ever at hand, and the part, if not the character, of the tragic hero is provided in h.o.r.estes and Virginius. The villain receives considerable attention. The English dramatists were puzzled to follow the cla.s.sical tragedies in placing the source of evil in Fate or the decrees of the G.o.ds; and even when their stories provided them with persons sufficiently iniquitous to cause all the tragic trouble, they seem to have felt the need for a visible and special representative of the devil. Evil in "Gorboduc" may be said to arise from the counsels of the parasites as well as from the folly of the king and the envy of the princes. In "Tancred and Gismunda" it is due, after cla.s.sical imitation, to the intervention of Cupid. In the popular plays the vice is borrowed from the moralities, and, in all except "h.o.r.estes," is made a mischief-maker, a source of evil, and the special representative of the devil. Questions in regard to the origin of the vice and his relationship to the devil of the medieval drama have not been freed from doubt by recent investigation, but it seems clear that in the early tragedies he was given some of the work later accomplished by the stage-villain and his accomplices. The part that women play in these early tragedies should also be noticed. Women and love, as Professor Creizenach has observed, receive far more attention in Renaissance tragedy than in Greek or Senecan. "Tancred and Gismunda" and "Promus and Ca.s.sandra"
deal with stories of romantic love; Virginia and the queen in "Cambyses"
present noteworthy though slight examples of the idealization of women so important in later drama. The purpose of all these plays, Senecan or popular, is superficially didactic, as is witnessed not only by the abundant moralizing in the Senecan imitations, but also in the popular plays by the emphasis in the closing scenes on the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. In the last act of "Appius and Virginia" the lesson of the play is written on the tomb, and in "h.o.r.estes" the conduct of the hero is discussed by Nestor and Fame and finally rewarded by Hermione, Truth, and Duty. "Cambyses" is more in line with later tragedy in presenting the protagonist as a monster and in closing promptly after his punishment by death.
The most certain accomplishment, however, in the development of the drama up to 1570 had been in the widening of its range of material. The bible narrative and moral allegory had been superseded by cla.s.sical myth and history, and these in turn were being encroached upon by the romantic fiction of the Italian _novelle_ and by the chronicles of English history.
Italian _novelle_ were open to dramatists mainly through a series of collections of translations, of which "Painter"s Palace of Pleasure" (1566) was the chief. The interest in English history was stimulated and fed by "The Mirror for Magistrates" and the various editions of the chronicles; Grafton, Stowe, and the third edition of Fabyan appearing in the sixties, and Holinshed in 1577; while interest in the cla.s.sics was maintained by numerous translations as well as by an increasing knowledge of Latin.
Translation, indeed, had brought the stories of the world to the English mart, and the dramatic industry was now eager in its demand for material.
Of the continued development of popular tragedy after 1570, and particularly of the sources drawn upon for dramatic material, we can get a few hints from the t.i.tles of non-extant plays. The incomplete Revels Accounts of performances at court preserve the names of over sixty plays acted between 1570 and 1585, and about thirty are derived from other sources. Of the court plays, none had biblical subjects; a number were moralities, a few were drawn from old romances; but the majority were from cla.s.sical or Italian sources. Many of these must have contained tragic incidents,[8] though probably they were not much more cla.s.sical in form than "Appius and Virginia" or "h.o.r.estes." Only one t.i.tle drawn from national history presents itself, "The King of Scots." The English chronicle play had evidently not yet made any stir at court; but many of the cla.s.sical plays were drawn from Livy. Two other t.i.tles, "The Cruelty of a Stepmother" and "Murderous Michael" (Suss.e.x"s men, "78, "79), and a third of a play at Bristol in 1578, "What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man,"
may possibly have had for sources accounts of contemporary murders, and thus have inst.i.tuted the species of domestic tragedy. A few t.i.tles, suggestive of tragedy, with accompanying comments, have been preserved by Gosson, who praises: "The Jew," "representing the greediness of worldly chusers and b.l.o.o.d.y minds of usurers," apparently a forerunner of "The Merchant of Venice"; "Ptolemy," "describing the overthrow of seditious estates and rebellious commons"; "The Blacksmith"s Daughter," "contayning the treachery of the Turkes, the honourable bountye of a n.o.ble mind, and the shining of virtue in distress"; and his own play, "Catilin"s Conspiracy," "showing the reward of traitors."
Some further information concerning the emergence of popular tragedy can be derived from the criticisms of the period. Gosson in his "Plays Confuted"
(1582), declares:--
"For the poets drive it most commonly unto such points as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical speeches, or set their hearers agog with discourses of love; or paint a few antics to fit their own humours with scoffs and taunts or wring in a show to furnish forth the stage when it is too bare; when the matter itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out.... So," he adds, "was the history of Caesar and Pompey and the play of the Fabii at the theatre, both amplified where the drums might walk or the pen ruffle."
A similar criticism is made by Whetstone in his dedication of "Promus and Ca.s.sandra" (1578): "The Englishman in this qualitie, is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order: he first groundes his work on impossibilities: then in three howers more likely ronnes he throwe the worlde: marryes, gets Children, makes Children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth G.o.ds from Heaven and fetcheth Divels from Hel." Sidney in the well-known pa.s.sage on the contemporary drama in his "Apologie for Poetrie" (1595, but written about 1580) amplified these same criticisms, deploring the lack of "n.o.ble moralitie,"
the violation of the unities, and the admixture of farce in current tragedies, and especially animadverting on the histories and the "mongrel Tragy-comedie." He asks scornfully: "And doe they not knowe, that a Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not of Historie? not bound to follow the storie, but having liberty either to faine a quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragicall conveniencie. Againe, many things may be told, which cannot be shewed, if they knewe the difference betwixt reporting and representing,"--and he goes on to ill.u.s.trate.
Evidently the medieval methods were still potent rather than those of Sidney"s models, Euripides, Seneca, and "Gorboduc"; and the tragedies in the theatres followed their sources without recognition of the difference between a narrative and a dramatic structure, and with an appeal to vulgar taste by means of hideous monsters, pitched fields, scurrility, or "some extreme shew of doltishness." From these critical comments we may infer that the popular drama had before 1585 triumphed over the Senecan. The few extant tragedies before that date have shown little which was not paralleled in the contemporary drama of western Europe; but in the popularization of a professional drama that rejected Senecan technic but still delighted in the presentation of tragic fact we have the first clear differentiation of English tragedy from that of other nations.
Unfortunately we have only this indirect evidence that such differentiation was well under way before Marlowe.
On the basis of such evidence, however, we may draw a few inferences in regard to the course of popular tragedy from 1570 to 1585. We may infer that Senecan imitations in the hands of amateurs did not multiply, and were not readily accepted even as object lessons by writers for the public theatres, who, whatever inspiration they may have received from amateur or academic plays, must have felt the increasing force of the demand from the public for amus.e.m.e.nt and sensation. While undoubtedly many traces of Senecan influence continued, and while cla.s.sical themes persisted, the prevalent type of drama became neither right comedy nor right tragedy but the so-called "history." Whether based on history or fiction, its main purpose was the presentation of a story, the more marvelous the better; and, even if it ended in deaths, it was likely to contain a mixture of farce, romantic love, stage spectacle, and, as time went on, a diminishing inculcation of morality. Throughout the period, popular tragedy probably remained commingled with other species of drama. As it forsook the morality, it found itself wedded with farce or spectacle; or, perhaps more extensively, with history and romantic comedy. What course the popular drama farthest removed from court or academic influence may have taken, we can only surmise, though the presentation of contemporary murders, which found favor even at court, must presumably have flourished with less cultivated audiences. And it is impossible to resist the conjecture that English history must have received crude presentation in the public theatres much earlier than we have any record of.
We may also surmise that in the quarter of a century from "Cambyses" to "Tamburlaine" there must have been some considerable development in the power to depict tragic fact, in the traditions of tragic acting, and in the cultivation of the taste of both audiences and authors for the genuinely terrible, pathetic, and heroic, but we must a.s.sume that tragedy still awaited the service of both literary and dramatic genius. The genius of Marlowe, however, had its way prepared by twenty-five years of extraordinary dramatic activity, during which the functions of comedy and tragedy had become known if not observed, comedy had attained a considerable development in Lyly and Peele, and tragedy had gained sufficient vigor to extend its themes, and to decide against a development imitative and scholarly, and in favor of one original and popular.
NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
Most of the books in the list for the last chapter are useful in connection with the matter of this. Creizenach and Ward are the chief authorities; Collier, Symonds, and Jusserand deal with the period. Spingarn, Cunliffe, and Fischer are valuable for their special fields. Texts are to be found in Manly, Dodsley, Brandl, and discussions in the latter. For the stage history of the Elizabethan drama, the works of F. G. Fleay are very valuable, though marred by much unsupported conjecture: _A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, 1559-1642, 2 vols. (1891); _A Chronicle History of the London Stage_, 1559-1642 (1890); _A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare_ (1886). The first-named is the most reliable and useful of the three. Original doc.u.ments and records are printed in part in Collier and Fleay; and in Halliwell-Phillipps"s _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_ (6th ed., 1886); Malone"s _Variorum_ ed. of Shakespeare, 1821; Cunningham"s _Extracts from the Annals of the Revels at Court_, Shakespeare Society, 1842; Nichols"s _The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth_, 3 vols., 1823; _Aussere Geschichte der englischen Theatertruppen_, 1559-1642, by Hermann Maas (Materialien zur Kunde des alteren Englischen Dramas, 1907); Hazlitt"s _English Drama and Stage_ (1869); Chamber"s _Notes on the Revels Office_ (1906). The essays of Gosson, Sidney, Webbe, Puttenham, which supply most of the dramatic criticism of the period, are in Arber"s Reprints; selections from these and other critical works with an introduction are collected in _Elizabethan Critical Essays_, G. Gregory Smith (1904). J. W. Cunliffe"s edition of Gascoigne"s _Posies_ (1907) contains the plays, which he has also edited with an introduction in _The Belles-Lettres Series_ (1906). A study of Legge"s _Richardus Tertius_ is found in G. B. Churchill"s _Richard III up to Shakespeare_ (Berlin, 1906); and an account of the Latin university plays in the article cited, by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller (_Shakspere Jahrbuch_, 1898). W. W. Greg"s _A List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed before 1700_ (London Bibliographical Society) is based on the t.i.tle-pages of the original copies. Fleay"s _Biographical Chronicle_ includes all plays known, extant or not. Greg, Fleay, and Sch.e.l.ling supersede Halliwell-Phillipps"s _Dictionary of Old English Plays_ (1860), and W. C. Hazlitt"s _Manual of Old English Plays_ (1892). _English Drama, a Working Basis_, by K. L. Bates and L. B. G.o.dfrey, Wellesley College (1895), is the only attempt at a directory to modern editions, and though very incomplete, is the most serviceable guide to the whole field of English drama.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Before the first act, "there came in upon the stage a king with an Imperiall Crowne upon his head ... sitting in a chariot very richely furnished, drawne in by foure kinges in their dublettes and hosen, with crownes upon their heades, representing unto us ambition," etc. And before the fifth act there is a similar exhibition of a woman in a chariot driving kings and slaves. These shows may have suggested to Marlowe the famous business of Tamburlaine and his chariot. The show before act ii introduces the paraphernalia of coffins and a grave, afterwards so frequent in popular tragedy.
[3] The earlier version also survives in MS. and has been published by Professor Brandl in his _Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas_. The revised version is the result of elaborate care and reflects more highly developed dramatic conditions than existed in the sixties, but in some respects it may be closer to the original performance than is the ma.n.u.script. The songs of the chorus, now four maids of Gismunda"s instead of four gentlemen of Salerne, and the dumb shows must have had some equivalents in the presentation before the Queen, though both are wanting in the earlier version. The dumb shows are noteworthy because, unlike those in _Gorboduc_ and _Jocasta_, they are not allegorical, but represent important actions described or referred to in the text.
[4] _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_, ii, 471.
[5] For a list of Latin plays acted at the universities, see Fleay, _Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, vol. ii, 347-366. This list must be corrected in many particulars by an article, "Die Lateinischen Universitats-Dramen in der Zeit der Konigin Elisabeth," by George B. Churchill and Wolfgang Keller, _Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, x.x.xiv, 220-323.
[6] Far more novel than any of the plays discussed in its departures from Senecan precedent, is _Perfidus Hetruscus_. So far as can be judged from the outline (_Jahrbuch_, x.x.xiv, 250-252), it offers no semblance of Senecan structure. There is no chorus, but there are six ghosts, a villain, two accomplices,--one a Capuchin, the other a Jesuit,--and an elaborate plot, as full of surprises as of poisonings. It seems to be a popular revenge play turned into Latin, and can hardly come within our period.
[7] One play should be mentioned here as standing in some ways between the cla.s.sical and popular plays. _Promus and Ca.s.sandra_, by George Whetstone, published 1578, cannot be placed in any of our four cla.s.ses, for there is no evidence that it was ever acted. Like _Tancred and Gismunda_, it was based on an Italian _novella_, also the source of _Measure for Measure_, and it follows Latin comedy rather than tragedy. In its division into five acts, its frequent soliloquies, its attempted observance of decorum (especially vaunted in the preface), and in its serious purpose and moral sentiments, the play shows a pedantic clinging to cla.s.sicism. In the main, however, it belongs with _Damon and Pithias_ and _Appius and Virginia_, and seems to have been intended for performance by children. It is a mixture of tragedy, comedy, farce, and songs; and this abundance of incongruous material seems to have led to its division into two plays, as Whetstone says, for the purpose of decorum. Here, as elsewhere in the period, the experiment of putting new material into old dramatic structures burst the bottles. Clowns, parasites, tyrants, prost.i.tutes, hangmen, Egyptians, and girls in boys" clothing make up a pageant which is a sort of tragicomedy but which the learned author called by the more popular t.i.tle, "a history."
[8] _Ariodante and Genevra_ (_Orlando Furioso_), _Ajax and Ulysses_, _Agamemnon and Ulysses_, _Caesar and Pompey_, _Cloridon and Radimanta_ _Duke of Milan_, _Effigenia_ (_Iphigenia_), _Four Sons of Fabius_, _Mutius Scaevola_, _Quintus Fabius_, _Perseus and Andromeda_, _Sarpedon_, _Scipio Africa.n.u.s_, _Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes_, _Telemo_, _Twelve Labors of Hercules_. Some t.i.tles suggesting medieval romance are: _Knight of the Burning Bush_, _Red Knight_, _Paris and Vienna_, _Solitary Knight_.
CHAPTER IV
MARLOWE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
The growing national consciousness that reached its triumphant culmination in the defeat of Spain made itself felt in the drama, specifically in efforts to present the glories of English history, and still more potently in an awakened responsiveness to the new fields and new incentives for artistic ambition. The beginning of the greatness of the national drama is significantly coincident with the victory over the Armada. By that time the spirit of n.o.ble endeavor had found lodgment in every worthy breast. It animated Marlowe no less than Drake, and the author of the least successful chronicle play as well as admiral or counselor. The extraordinary achievements that had been contributing to the might of England as a political power were, indeed, but one expression of the freedom and eagerness of individual initiative that characterized this English Renaissance and found other expression in the activities and accomplishments of literature. In comparison with the men of preceding generations, the Elizabethan Englishman faced a world of new horizons, new ideas, boundless opportunities, and alluring rewards. Every career was open and promised an untrod pathway and unworn laurels. He might win fame as a pirate, philosopher, or poet; or in the new excitement of living he might crowd not one but many careers into the span of life. The versatility of a Raleigh only typifies the excitement and energy of deed, the lively movement of thought which quickened mind and body, and resulted, now in a voyage to Virginia, now in a conspiracy, now in a sonnet, and now in a history of the universe. And this feverishness to make trial of thronging opportunities was symptomatic not only of vigor of intellect, celerity of emotion, and independence of will, but also of an imaginative idealism that enlightened the daily living of many a sorry citizen, and was destined to live resplendent in the verses of Spenser and Shakespeare. In the stir of free ideas, the surprise of discovery, and the glow of accomplishment, life grew heroic, attainment seemed easy, and no ideals too lofty for the scaling ladders of human aspiration. Men achieved much and they dreamt of more. The apprentice went to the theatre to don Fortunatus"s cap or to triumph with Tamburlaine; every one had his El Dorado distant only a short voyage; and, with the new world before them, poets and playwrights set sail in blithe confidence of splendid discovery. Never before, or perhaps since, have so many new things seemed within grasp, whether in literature or in life; never has all living so throbbed with a sense of the nearness of the unattainable, the kinship of the real and the ideal.
In non-dramatic literature the incentives of the cla.s.sics and of the Italians from Petrarch to Ta.s.so had led on from translations and imitations to experiments and inventions. In the dozen years before the Armada, lyric poetry, criticism, and prose fiction had felt the stir of successful English innovation, and the time was almost ripe for the vast projects of Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon. In comedy the development had been earlier and more rapid than in tragedy, and had already in Peele and Lyly reached the stage of dexterous expression and varied innovation. Whether presenting a story of cla.s.sical mythology or of medieval romance, whether farcical, Plautian, pastoral, sentimental, satirical, or spectacular, comedy was by the time of Marlowe ready with its examples to offer instruction to any writer attempting tragic themes. Tragedy could hardly remain longer in the stage of translation, imitation, and feeble experiment which we have been considering.