Loud Music.—Enter Euphranea, led by Groneas and Hemophil: Prophilus, led by Christalla and Philema: Nearchus supporting Calantha, Crotolon, and Amelus.—(Music ceases).
This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade. Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed by her solemn address at the altar to the dead body of her husband.
And then, after the song, she dies.
This is the true false gallop of sentiment: any thing more artificial and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt, however, the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the author on the truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the whole scene is a forced transposition of that already alluded to in Marston’s Malcontent. Even the form of the stage directions is the same.
‘Enter Mendozo supporting the Duchess; Guerrino; the Ladies that are on the stage rise. Ferrardo ushers in the Duchess; then takes a Lady to tread a measure.
Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves.
Celso. Boy, thy master? where’s the Duke?
Page. Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless limbs; he told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for the strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I strait obeyed, nor ever saw him since; but wheresoe’er he is, he’s sad.
Aurelia. Music, sound high, as in our heart; sound high.
Malevole. The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead.
Aurelia. Music!’
The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy from this. That a woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the death of her husband whom she hates, without regard to common decency, is but too possible: that she should dance on with the same heroic perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her father, and of every one else whom she loves, from regard to common courtesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The passions may silence the voice of humanity, but it is, I think, equally against probability and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from necessity, for some great purpose, which is not the case in Ford’s play; or it must be done for the effect and eclat of the thing, which is not fortitude but affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this passage in the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can judge) in establishing the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the story of the Spartan Boy.
It may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of the period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one other) were men of classical education. They were learned men in an unlettered age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age. This circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakespear, nearly all of them, indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began to write for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to London in those days must have had a singular effect upon a young man of genius, almost like visiting Babylon or Susa, or a journey to the other world. The stage (even as it then was), after the recluseness and austerity of a college-life, must have appeared like Armida’s enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like
So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of the scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the scholar’s pride: and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng, still has left a long lingering glory behind it; and though now ‘deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue,’ lives in their eloquent page, ‘informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!’
I shall, in this Lecture, turn back to give some account of single plays, poems, etc.; the authors of which are either not known or not very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical excellence. There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, than I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim at, will be, to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it.
The Four P’s is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours’ profession, with much humour and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood, the Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry VIII., was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems to have had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his devotion to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1565. His zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have blinded his judgment, or to have prevented him from using the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have looked ‘with the malice of a friend.’ The Four P’s bears the date of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of the wit, the manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in the dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on credulity and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact, they all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes a jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the greatest lie? when the prize is adjudged to him, who says, that he had found a patient woman.[27] The common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and religious matters, are almost incredible; and the chopped logic, which was the fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of the author’s shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose them, is highly entertaining. Thus the Pardoner, scorning the Palmer’s long pilgrimages and circuitous route to Heaven, flouts him to his face, and vaunts his own superior pretensions.
The Poticary does not approve of this arrogance of the Friar, and undertakes, in mood and figure, to prove them both ‘false knaves.’ It is he, he says, who sends most souls to heaven, and who ought, therefore, to have the credit of it.
The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously—
But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts—
The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new companions, and tells them very bluntly, on their referring their dispute to him, a piece of his mind.
At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer in pins and laces undertakes to judge their merits; and they accordingly set to work like regular graduates. The Pardoner takes the lead, with an account of the virtues of his relics; and here we may find a plentiful mixture of Popish superstition and indecency. The bigotry of any age is by no means a test of its piety, or even sincerity. Men seemed to make themselves amends for the enormity of their faith by levity of feeling, as well as by laxity of principle; and in the indifference or ridicule with which they treated the wilful absurdities and extravagances to which they hood-winked their understandings, almost resembled children playing at blindman’s buff, who grope their way in the dark, and make blunders on purpose to laugh at their own idleness and folly. The sort of mummery at which Popish bigotry used to play at the time when this old comedy was written, was not quite so harmless as blind-man’s buff: what was sport to her, was death to others. She laughed at her own mockeries of common sense and true religion, and murdered while she laughed. The tragic farce was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put an end to. At present, though her eyes are blindfolded, her hands are tied fast behind her, like the false Duessa’s. The sturdy genius of modern philosophy has got her in much the same situation that Count Fathom has the old woman that he lashes before him from the robbers’ cave in the forest. In the following dialogue of this lively satire, the most sacred mysteries of the Catholic faith are mixed up with its idlest legends by old Heywood, who was a martyr to his religious zeal without the slightest sense of impropriety. The Pardoner cries out in one place (like a lusty Friar John, or a trusty Friar Onion)—
The same sort of significant irony runs through the Apothecary’s knavish enumeration of miraculous cures in his possession.
After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift’s boast with respect to the invention of irony,
can be allowed to be true only in part.
The controversy between them being undecided, the Apothecary, to clench his pretensions ‘as a liar of the first magnitude,’ by a coup-de-grace, says to the Pedlar, ‘You are an honest man,’ but this home-thrust is somehow ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and Pardoner fall to their narrative vein again; and the latter tells a story of fetching a young woman from the lower world, from which I shall only give one specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and fantastic exaggeration. By the help of a passport from Lucifer, ‘given in the furnace of our palace,’ he obtains a safe conduct from one of the subordinate imps to his master’s presence.
The piece concludes with some good wholesome advice from the Pedlar, who here, as well as in the poem of the Excursion, performs the part of Old Morality; but he does not seem, as in the latter case, to be acquainted with the ‘mighty stream of Tendency.’ He is more ‘full of wise saws than modern instances;’ as prosing, but less paradoxical!
Nothing can be clearer than this.
The Return from Parnassus was ‘first publicly acted,’ as the title-page imports, ‘by the Students in St. John’s College, in Cambridge.’ It is a very singular, a very ingenious, and as I think, a very interesting performance. It contains criticisms on contemporary authors, strictures on living manners, and the earliest denunciation (I know of) of the miseries and unprofitableness of a scholar’s life. The only part I object to in our author’s criticism is his abuse of Marston; and that, not because he says what is severe, but because he says what is not true of him. Anger may sharpen our insight into men’s defects; but nothing should make us blind to their excellences. The whole passage is, however, so curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Review lately published for the year 1755) that I cannot forbear quoting a great part of it. We find in the list of candidates for praise many a name—
there are others that have long since sunk to the bottom of the stream of time, and no Humane Society of Antiquarians and Critics is ever likely to fish them up again.
‘Read the names,’ says Judicio.
‘Ingenioso. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.
‘Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure: what’s thy judgment of Spenser?
But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud of myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with thine. Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.
Ing. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times; and that is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor domineer in a hot-house. John Davis—
Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.
Ing. A mere empirick, one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes only nature privy to what he endites: so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying, a blood whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick.
This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the piece, as it must be supposed to have been written before Shakespeare had become known as a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces Kempe the actor talking with Burbage, and saying, ‘Few (of the University) pen plays well: they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here’s our fellow Shakespear puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson too.’—There is a good deal of discontent in all this; but the author complains of want of success in a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good terms with fortune. The miseries of a poet’s life form one of the favourite topics of The Return from Parnassus, and are treated, as if by some one who had ‘felt them knowingly.’ Thus Philomusus and Studioso chaunt their griefs in concert.
‘Out of our proof we speak.’—This sorry matter-of-fact retrospect of the evils of a college-life is very different from the hypothetical aspirations after its incommunicable blessings expressed by a living writer of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does not seem to have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of classic lore, two hundred years after its vanity and vexation of spirit had been denounced in the Return from Parnassus:
Thus it is that our treasure always lies, where our knowledge does not; and fortunately enough perhaps; for the empire of imagination is wider and more prolific than that of experience.
The author of the old play, whoever he was, appears to have belonged to that class of mortals, who, as Fielding has it, feed upon their own hearts; who are egotists the wrong way, ‘made desperate by too quick a sense of constant infelicity;’ and have the same intense uneasy consciousness of their own defects that most men have self-complacency in their supposed advantages. Thus venting the dribblets of his spleen still upon himself, he prompts the Page to say, ‘A mere scholar is a creature that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, put on a pair of lined slippers, sit reuming till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings; one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a licence to spit: or if you will have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good leg, one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly, one that cannot ride a horse without spur-galling, one that cannot salute a woman, and look on her directly, one that cannot——’
If I was not afraid of being tedious, I might here give the examination of Signor Immerito, a raw ignorant clown (whose father has purchased him a living) by Sir Roderick and the Recorder, which throws considerable light on the state of wit and humour, as well as of ecclesiastical patronage in the reign of Elizabeth. It is to be recollected, that one of the titles of this play is A Scourge for Simony.
‘Rec. For as much as nature has done her part in making you a handsome likely man—in the next place some art is requisite for the perfection of nature: for the trial whereof, at the request of my worshipful friend, I will in some sort propound questions fit to be resolved by one of your profession. Say what is a person, that was never at the university?
Im. A person that was never in the university, is a living creature that can eat a tythe pig.
Rec. Very well answered: but you should have added—and must be officious to his patron. Write down that answer, to shew his learning in logic.
Sir Rad. Yea, boy, write that down: very learnedly, in good faith. I pray now let me ask you one question that I remember, whether is the masculine gender or the feminine more worthy?
Im. The feminine, Sir.
Sir Rad. The right answer, the right answer. In good faith, I have been of that mind always: write, boy, that, to shew he is a grammarian.
Rec. What university are you of?
Im. Of none.
Sir Rad. He tells truth: to tell truth is an excellent virtue: boy, make two heads, one for his learning, another for his virtues, and refer this to the head of his virtues, not of his learning. Now, Master Recorder, if it please you, I will examine him in an author, that will sound him to the depth; a book of astronomy, otherwise called an almanack.
Rec. Very good, Sir Roderick; it were to be wished there were no other book of humanity; then there would not be such busy state-prying fellows as are now a-days. Proceed, good Sir.
Sir Rad. What is the dominical letter?
Im. C, Sir, and please your worship.
Sir Rad. A very good answer, a very good answer, the very answer of the book. Write down that, and refer it to his skill in philosophy. How many days hath September?
Im. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, February hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest hath thirty and one.
Sir Rad. Very learnedly, in good faith: he hath also a smack in poetry. Write down that, boy, to shew his learning in poetry. How many miles from Waltham to London?
Im. Twelve, Sir.
Sir Rad. How many from New Market to Grantham?
Im. Ten, Sir.
Sir Rad. Write down that answer of his, to shew his learning in arithmetic.
Page. He must needs be a good arithmetician that counted [out] money so lately.
Sir Rad. When is the new moon?
Im. The last quarter, the 5th day, at two of the clock, and thirty-eight minutes in the morning.
Sir Rad. How call you him that is weather-wise?
Rec. A good astronomer.
Sir Rad. Sirrah, boy, write him down for a good astronomer. What day of the month lights the queen’s day on?
Im. The 17th of November.
Sir Rad. Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him down a good subject.
Page. Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three good wits: he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon.
Sir Rad. And these shall suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it remains to try, whether you be a man of a good utterance, that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs: let me hear your voice.
Im. If any man or woman—
Sir Rad. That’s too high.
Im. If any man or woman—
Sir Rad. That’s too low.
Im. If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse with four feet, two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three minutes in the forenoon, the fifth day—
Sir Rad. Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Master Recorder, I think he hath been examined sufficiently.
Rec. Aye, Sir Roderick, ’tis so: we have tried him very thoroughly.
Page. Aye, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, and prized them accordingly.
Sir Rad. Signior Immerito, forasmuch as we have made a double trial of thee, the one of your learning, the other of your erudition; it is expedient, also, in the next place, to give you a few exhortations, considering the greatest clerks are not the wisest men: this is therefore first to exhort you to abstain from controversies; secondly, not to gird at men of worship, such as myself, but to use yourself discreetly; thirdly, not to speak when any man or woman coughs: do so, and in so doing, I will persevere to be your worshipful friend and loving patron. Lead Immerito in to my son, and let him dispatch him, and remember my tythes to be reserved, paying twelve-pence a-year.’
Gammer Gurton’s Needle[29] is a still older and more curious relic; and is a regular comedy in five acts, built on the circumstance of an old woman having lost her needle, which throws the whole village into confusion, till it is at last providentially found sticking in an unlucky part of Hodge’s dress. This must evidently have happened at a time when the manufacturers of Sheffield and Birmingham had not reached the height of perfection which they have at present done. Suppose that there is only one sewing-needle in a parish, that the owner, a diligent notable old dame, loses it, that a mischief-making wag sets it about that another old woman has stolen this valuable instrument of household industry, that strict search is made every where in-doors for it in vain, and that then the incensed parties sally forth to scold it out in the open air, till words end in blows, and the affair is referred over to the higher authorities, and we shall have an exact idea (though perhaps not so lively a one) of what passes in this authentic document between Gammer Gurton and her Gossip Dame Chat, Dickon the Bedlam (the causer of these harms), Hodge, Gammer Gurton’s servant, Tyb her maid, Cocke, her ‘prentice boy, Doll, Scapethrift, Master Baillie his master, Doctor Rat, the Curate, and Gib the Cat, who may be fairly reckoned one of the dramatis personæ, and performs no mean part.