Freewill. And said he no more to thee but so?

Imagination. Yea, he pretended me much harm to do; But I told him that morning was a great mist, That what horse it was I ne wist: Also I said, that in my head I had the megrin, That made me dazzle so in mine eyen, That I might not well see. And thus he departed shortly from me.

By this time a third party has approached; for an impatient inquiry for Hick Scorner immediately brings that redoubtable gentleman upon the stage, possibly slightly the worse for liquor, seeing that his first words are those of one on a ship at sea. They may, however, indicate merely a seafaring man, for he has been a great traveller in his time, 'in France, Ireland, and in Spain, Portingal, Sevile, also in Almaine,' and many places more, even as far as 'the land of Rumbelow, three mile out of hell'. He is acquainted with the names of many vessels, of which 'the Anne of Fowey, the Star of Saltash, with the Jesus of Plymouth' are but a few. With something of a chuckle he adds that a fleet of these ships bound for Ireland with a crowded company of all the godly persons of England—'piteous people, that be of sin destroyers', 'mourners for sin, with lamentation', and 'good rich men that helpeth folk out of prison'—has been wrecked on a quicksand and the whole company drowned. Next he has an ill-sounding report of his own last voyage to give. When that is finished Imagination proposes an adjournment for pleasures more active than conversation, where purses may be had for the asking.

Every man bear his dagger naked in his hand, And if we meet a true man, make him stand, Or else that he bear a stripe; If that he struggle, and make any work, Lightly strike him to the heart, And throw him into Thames quite.

This suggestion meets with the approval of Freewill, who, however, takes the opportunity to ask after Imagination's father in such unmannerly terms as at once to rouse his friend's quick temper. In a moment a quarrel is assured, nor does Hick Scorner's attempted mediation produce any other reward than a shrewd blow on the head. At this precise instant, however, old Pity, who has remained unnoticed, and who is unwarned by the fate of Hick Scorner, pushes forward with an idea of intervention. As might have been foreseen, the three rascals promptly unite in rounding upon him. They insult him, they threaten him, they raise malicious lying charges against him, and finally they clap him in irons and leave him—Imagination being the ringleader throughout. Left alone once more Pity sings a lament over the wickedness of the times, whereof the doleful refrain is 'Worse was it never'. A ray of light in his affliction comes with the return of Contemplation and Perseverance, who, releasing him, send him off to fetch his persecutors back. Fortune is on their side, for scarcely has Pity gone when Freewill enters by himself with a wonderful account of his latest roguery—the robbing of a till—for the ears of his audience. Contemplation and Perseverance, stout enough of limb when they have a mind to use force, listen quietly to the end and then calmly inform him that he is their prisoner, a fact which no amount of blustering defiance can alter. Nevertheless, though he has thus openly confessed his own guilt, they have no wish to proceed to extremes. If only he will give up his wicked life they will be content, made happy by the knowledge of his salvation. It is a strange sort of conversion, Freewill's tongue running constantly, with an obvious relish, on the various punishments he has endured; but at length he capitulates, accepting Perseverance as his future guide, and donning the uniform of virtuous service.

Huff, huff, huff! who sent after me? I am Imagination, full of jollity. Lord, that my heart is light! When shall I perish? I trow, never.

In such a manner does the bolder sinner leap to the front. He scans the little group in search of his friend and stares wonderingly on perceiving him in his new dress. Now begins a second tussle for the winning of a soul. The fashion of it can be inferred from the following fragment.

Perseverance. Imagination, think what God did for thee; On Good Friday He hanged on a tree, And spent all His precious blood; A spear did rive His heart asunder, The gates He brake up with a clap of thunder, And Adam and Eve there delivered He.

Imagination. What devil! what is that to me? By God's fast, I was ten year in Newgate, And many more fellows with me sat, Yet he never came there to help me ne my company.

Contemplation. Yes, he holp thee, or thou haddest not been here now.

Imagination. By the mass, I cannot show you, For he and I never drank together, Yet I know many an ale stake[46].

In the end, mainly through the personal appeal of his friend, Imagination too yields and accepts the guidance of Perseverance, Freewill transferring his allegiance to Contemplation. As Hick Scorner never returns, the double conversion brings the play to a close.

Rising from the perusal of Hick Scorner we confess that we have made a new acquaintance: we have met Imagination and have not left him until we have learnt a good deal about him; how he fled from a catchpole but lost his purse in the flight, how he and Hick Scorner were shackled together in Newgate without money to pay for an upper room, how brazen-faced his lies were, how near he was to hanging, how ingenious were his excuses, and many other facts besides. We have seen him, too, as the ringleader in mischief and the arrantest rogue in the play. Freewill and Hick Scorner make less impression on us; they are more cloudy in outline, more like types. As for Pity, Contemplation and Perseverance, they are merely talking-machines. We must keep an eye on Imagination, as possessing a dramatic value likely to be needed again.

We shall have been disappointed in the plot. That part of the drama seems to be getting worse. Humankind was at least gaining fresh experience in The Castell of Perseverance; he was even besieged in a fortress and had the narrowest escape in the world from being carried off to Hell. Everyman's startling doom, his eager quest for a companion on his journey, and his zealous self-discipline keep us to the end in a state of concern for his ultimate fate. But what interest have we in Contemplation, Freewill and the rest, apart from what they say? No suggestion is thrown out at the beginning that two of the rogues are to be reclaimed: their fate concerns us not at all. The quarrel, and the ill-treatment of poor old Pity, are the merest by-play, with no importance whatsoever as a step in the evolution of a plot. Indeed it is open to question whether there is a plot. There are speeches, there is conversation, there is some scuffling, and there is a happy ending, but there is no guiding thread running through the story, no discernible objective steadily aimed at from the start. It looks as though the new interest in drawing (or seeing) a real human individual has monopolized the whole attention; that for the time being characterization has driven plot-building completely into the shade.

A curious, yet not unnatural, thing has happened. In The Castell of Perseverance Humankind was more acted upon than acting. The real force of the action lay in the antagonism between the Virtues and Vices, the Good Angel and the Bad Angel, an antagonism so inveterate that even if the temporary object of their struggle were removed, the strife would still break out again from the sheer viciousness of the Vices. This instinctive hostility between Virtues and Vices supplies the groundwork of the Interludes. They dismiss Humankind from the stage. He was always a weak, oscillating sort of creature. Sound, forceful Abstractions and Types were wanted, which could be worked up into thoroughgoing rascals or heroes, rascality having all the preference. Any underlying thread, therefore, that there may be in Hick Scorner is this rivalry and embitterment between the wicked sort and the virtuous. We shall observe that already one of the rogues is taking precedence of the others in dramatic importance, in fullness of portraiture, and, of course, in villany.

Like Will to Like—of an uncertain date prior to 1568 (when it was printed) but almost certainly a later production than many Interludes which we omit here, notably Heywood's—illustrates the development of some of these changes. In brief outline its story is as follows.

Nichol Newfangle receives a commission from Lucifer to go through the world bringing similar persons together, like to like. Accordingly he acts as arbiter between Ralph Roister and Tom Tosspot in a dispute as to which of the two is the greater knave, and, deciding that both are equal, promises them equal shares in certain property he has at disposal. Next, meeting Cuthbert Cutpurse and Pierce Pickpurse, he gives them news of a piece of land which has fallen to them by unexpected succession. He then adjourns with his friends to an alehouse, leaving the stage to Virtuous Living, who has already chidden him for his sins who now, after a long monologue or chant, is rewarded by Good Fame and Honour, the servants of God's Promise. On the departure of these Virtues, Newfangle returns, shortly followed by Ralph and Tom, penniless from a game of dice, and more than ever anxious for the property. This last proves to be no more than a beggar's bag, bottle and staff, suitable to their present condition, but so little satisfying, that Newfangle receives a terrible drubbing for his trick. Judge Severity arrives on the scene conveniently to lecture him severely and witness his second knavish device, which is no other than to hand over to the Judge the two fugitives from justice, Cutpurse and Pickpurse, for the piece of land of which he spoke is the gallows. Hankin Hangman takes possession of his victims, and the Devil, entering with a 'Ho, ho, ho!', carries Newfangle away with him on his back. Virtuous Life, Honour and Good Fame bring the play to a proper conclusion with prayers for the Queen, Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, this customary exhibition of loyalty being rounded off with a hymn.

This play, though so much later in date than Hick Scorner, shows no improvement in plot. Nor, perhaps, ought we to expect that it should. An Interlude, as its name implies, was originally only a kind of stop-gap, an entree of light entertainment between other events; and what so welcome for this purpose as the inconsequential dialogue, by-play, and mutual trickery of sundry 'lewd fellows of the baser sort'? When it extended its sphere from the castle banqueting-hall to the street or inn-yard no greater excellence was expected from it. Its brevity saved it from tediousness, and the Virtues, whom the lingering influence of religion upon the drama saved from the wreck of the Morality Plays, were given a more and more subordinate place. In this play they serve to point the moral by showing the reward that comes to righteousness in sharp contrast to the poverty and vile death that are the meed of wickedness. But it is noticeable that they are quite apart from the other group, much more so than was the case in Hick Scorner.

Instead of a plot we find an increasing admixture of buffoonery, without which no Interlude could be regarded as complete. Herein we see the influence of certain farcical entertainments brought over by the Norman jongleurs (or travelling minstrel-comedians). Just as the French fabliaux inspired Chaucer's coarser tales, so the French farce stimulated the natural inclination of the English taste to broad humour and rough-and-tumble buffoonery on the stage. Held in some restraint by the dominant religious element, it grew stronger as the latter weakened. Thus, in Like Will to Like a certain Hance enters half-intoxicated, roaring out a drinking song until the sudden collapse of his voice compels him to recite the rest in the thick stutter of a drunken man. He carries a pot of ale in his hand, from which he drinks to the health of Tom Tosspot, giving the toast with a 'Ca-ca-carouse to-to-to thee, go-go-good Tom'—which is but an indifferent hexameter. At the suggestion of Newfangle 'he danceth as evil-favoured as may be demised, and in the dancing he falleth down, and when he riseth he must groan', according to the stage-direction. When he does rise, doubtless with unlimited comicality of effort, he staggers into a chair and proceeds to snore loudly. All this is accompanied by a fitting fashion of conversation. We can only hope that the author's attempts at humour met with the applause he clearly expected. We believe they did, for he was only copying a widespread custom.

Of far more importance than Hance, however, are the two characters, the Devil and Nichol Newfangle. They invite joint treatment by their own declared relationship and by the close union which stage tradition quickly gave to them. Most of us will remember Shakespeare's song from Twelfth Night bearing on these two notorious companions, their quaint garb, and their laughter-raising antics.

I am gone, sir, And anon, sir, I'll be with you again, In a trice, Like to the old Vice, Your need to sustain; Who, with dagger of lath, In his rage and his wrath, Cries, ah, ha! to the devil: Like a mad lad, Pare thy nails, dad; Adieu, goodman devil.

Newfangle is the 'Vice' of the play; 'Nichol Newfangle, the Vice,' says the list of dramatis personae. We noticed in our consideration of Hick Scorner that one of the Vices, Imagination, was eminent for his more detailed character and readier villany. The trick has been adopted; the favourite has grown fast. He has become the Vice. Compared with him the rest of the Vices appear foolish fellows whom it is his delight to plague and lead astray. So supreme is he in wickedness that he has even been given the Devil himself as his godfather, uncle, playmate. It is his duty to keep alive the natural wickedness in man, to set snares and evil mischances before the feet of simpler folk, to teach youth to be idle and young men to be quarrelsome, to lure rogues to their ruin; but, above all, to import wit into prosy dialogues, merriment into dull situations. Such is 'the Vice'. Hear him speak for himself:

What is he calls upon me, and would seem to lack a Vice? Ere his words be half spoken, I am with him in a trice Here, there, and everywhere, as the cat is with the mice: True Vetus Iniquitas. Lack'st thou cards, friend, or dice? I will teach thee to cheat, child, to cog, lie, and swagger, And ever and anon to be drawing forth thy dagger.

(Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass.)

Then what a universal favourite, too, is the Devil, our old friend from the Miracles! 'My husband, Timothy Tattle, God rest his poor soul!' says good Gossip Tattle, 'was wont to say, there was no play without a fool and a devil in 't; he was for the devil still, God bless him! The devil for his money, would he say, I would fain see the devil.' And Gossip Mirth adds a description of the Devil as she knew him: 'As fine a gentleman of his inches as ever I saw trusted to the stage, or any where else; and loved the commonwealth as well as ever a patriot of them all; he would carry away the Vice on his back, quick to hell, in every play where he came, and reform abuses' (Ben Jonson's The Staple of News). But our present purpose is with Nichol Newfangle and his arch-prompter. Nevertheless these few general remarks will save us from the necessity of returning to the subject later. The truth of the matter is that here, in Like Will to Like, we have as full a delineation of these two popular characters as may be found in any of the Interludes. Our attention will not be misplaced if we pry a little closer into the method of presentation.

The Vice must be merry; that above all. Accordingly the stage-direction at the opening of the play reads thus, 'Here entereth Nichol Newfangle the Vice, laughing, and hath a knave of clubs in his hand which, as soon as he speaketh, he offereth unto one of the men or boys standing by.' He is apparently on familiar terms already with the 'gallery' (or, in the term of that day, 'groundlings'); as intimate as the modern clown with his stage-asides for the exclusive benefit of 'the gods'. When we read the first two lines we perceive the wit of the card trick:

Ha, ha, ha, ha! now like unto like; it will be none other: Stoop, gentle knave, and take up your brother.

We can almost hear the shout of laughter at the expense of the fellow who unwittingly took the card. The audience is with Newfangle at once. He has scored his first point and given a capital send-off to the play by this comically-conceived illustration of the meaning of its strange title. Forthwith he rattles along with a string of patter about himself, who he is, what sciences he learnt in hell before he was born, and so on, until arrested by the abrupt entrance of another person. This newcomer somersaults on to the stage and cuts divers uncouth capers exactly as our 'second clown' does at the pantomime. Newfangle stares, grimaces, and, turning again to the audience, continues:

Sancte benedicite, whom have we here Tom Tumbler, or else some dancing bear? Body of me, it were best go no near: For ought that I see, it is my godfather Lucifer, Whose prentice I have been this many a day: But no more words but mum: you shall hear what he will say.

By the time he has finished speaking the other has unrolled himself and presents a queer figure, clothed in a bearskin and bearing in large print on his chest and back the name Lucifer. He too commences with a laugh or a shout, 'Ho!'. That is the hall-mark of the Devil and the Vice, the herald's blare of trumpets, so to speak, before the speech of His High Mightiness. We have not forgotten that other cry:

Huff, huff, huff! who sent after me? I am Imagination, full of jollity.

It is the same trick; the older rascal is, bone, flesh, and blood, the very kin of Newfangle; both have the same godfather. So the dialogue opens between Old Nick and Nichol in the approved fashion:

Lucifer. Ho! mine own boy, I am glad that thou art here!

Newfangle (pointing to one standing by). He speaketh to you, sir, I pray you come near.

Lucifer. Nay, thou art even he, of whom I am well apaid.

Newfangle. Then speak aloof, for to come nigh I am afraid.

We need not trouble ourselves here with their further conversation, nor yet with Tom Collier of Croydon, who joins them in a jig and a song. He soon goes off again, followed by Lucifer, so we can turn over the pages, guided by our outline, until we are near the end.

[The DEVIL entereth.]

Lucifer. Ho, ho, ho! mine own boy, make no more delay, But leap up on my back straightway.

Newfangle. Then who shall hold my stirrup, while I go to horse?

Lucifer. Tush, for that do thou not force! Leap up, I say, leap up quickly.

Newfangle. Woh, Ball, woh! and I will come by and by. Now for a pair of spurs I would give a good groat, To try whether this jade do amble or trot. Farewell, my masters, till I come again, For now I must make a journey into Spain.

[He rideth away on the DEVIL'S back.]

The reader must use his imagination, stimulated by recollections of the Christmas pantomime, if this episode is to have its full meaning. Brief in words, it may quite easily have occupied five minutes and more in acting.

As related more or less distantly to the noisy element, the many songs in this Interlude call for notice. The practice of introducing lyrics was in vogue long before the playwrights of Shakespeare's time displayed their use so perfectly. From this point onwards the drama rings with the rough drinking songs, pious hymns, and sweet lyrics of the buffoon, the preacher, and the lover. Thus, turning haphazard to The Trial of Treasure, the Interlude immediately preceding Like Will to Like in the volume of Dodsley's Old English Plays, we find no less than eight songs. Like Will to Like has also eight. New Custom, the other Interlude in the same volume, has only two; but it may be added that, as the author of New Custom was writing with a very special and sober purpose in view, he may have felt that much singing would be inappropriate. That these lyrics went with a good swing may be judged from two of those in Like Will to Like.

(1) Tom Collier of Croydon hath sold his coals, And made his market to-day; And now he danceth with the Devil, For like will to like alway.

Wherefore let us rejoice and sing, Let us be merry and glad; Sith that the Collier and the Devil This match and dance hath made.

Now of this dance we make an end With mirth and eke with joy: The Collier and the Devil will be Much like to like alway.

(2) Troll the bowl and drink to me, and troll the bowl again, And put a brown toast in [the] pot for Philip Fleming's brain. And I shall toss it to and fro, even round about the house-a: Good hostess, now let it be so, I brink them all carouse-a.

More than once reference has been made to the lingering religious element in the Interludes. Probably 'moral element' would describe it better, though in those days religion and morality were perhaps less separable than they are to-day. In the midst of so much comical wickedness and naughty wit, with a decreasing use of the old Morality Virtues, it might be thought that this element would be crowded out. But it was not so. The downfall of the unrighteous was never allowed to pass without the voice of the preacher, frequently the reprobate himself, pointing the warning to those present. Cuthbert Cutpurse makes a 'godly end' in this fashion:

O, all youth take example by me: Flee from evil company, as from a serpent you would flee; For I to you all a mirror may be. I have been daintily and delicately bred, But nothing at all in virtuous lore: And now I am but a man dead; Hanged I must be, which grieveth me full sore. Note well the end of me therefore; And you that fathers and mothers be, Bring not up your children in too much liberty.

The episode of the crowning of Virtuous Life owes its existence to this same element of moral teaching. Take up what Interlude we will, the preacher is always to be found uttering his short sermon on the folly of sin. Our merry friend, the Vice, usually gets caught in his own toils at last; even if he is spared this defeat, he must ultimately be borne off by the Devil.

But there are lessons to be learnt other than the elementary one that virtue is a wiser guide than vice: many an Interlude was written to castigate a particular form of laxity or drive home a needed reform, in those years when the Stage was the Cinderella of the Church; one at least, The Four Elements, was written to disseminate schoolroom learning in an attractive manner. Nice Wanton (about 1560) traces the downward career of two spoilt children, paints the remorse of their mother, and sums up its message at the end thus:

Therefore exhort I all parents to be diligent In bringing up their children; aye, to be circumspect. Lest they fall to evil, be not negligent But chastise them before they be sore infect.

The Disobedient Child (printed 1560), of which the title is a sufficient clue to its purpose, permits a boy to refuse to go to school, and, as a young man, to flout his father's advice in regard to matrimony, only to bring him to the bottom rung of miserable drudgery and servitude under a scolding wife. Of some interest is the lad's report of a schoolboy's life, voicing, as it possibly does, a needed criticism of the excessive severity of sixteenth-century pedagogues. Speaking of the boys he says:

For as the bruit goeth by many a one, Their tender bodies both night and day Are whipped and scourged and beat like a stone, That from top to toe the skin is away.

A slightly fuller outline of The Marriage of Wit and Science (1570 approx.) will show how pleasantly, yet pointedly, the younger generation of that day was taught the necessity of sustained industry if scholarship was to be acquired. It has been suggested, with good reason, that the play was written by a schoolmaster for his pupils' performance. The superior plot-structure, and the rare adoption of subdivision into acts and scenes, indicate an author of some classical knowledge.

Wit, a promising youth, son of Nature, decides to marry Science, the daughter of Reason and Experience. Nature approves of his intention, but warns him that 'travail and time' are the only two by whose help he can win the maid. For his servant and companion, however, she gives him Will, a lively boy, full of sprightly fire. Science is now approached. But it appears that only he who shall slay the giant, Tediousness, may be her husband. To this trial Wit volunteers. He is advised first to undergo long years of training under Instruction, Study, and Diligence; but, soon tiring of them, he rashly goes to the fight, trusting that his own strength, backed by the courage of Will and the half-hearted support of Diligence, will prove sufficient. Too self-confident, he is overthrown and his companions are put to flight. Will soon returns with Recreation, by whose skill Wit is restored to vigour and better resolution. Nevertheless, directly afterwards, he accepts the gentle ministrations of the false jade, Idleness, who sings him to sleep and then transforms him into the appearance of Ignorance. In this plight he is found by his lady-love and her parents, who do not at first recognize him. Shame is called in to doctor him. On his recovery he returns very repentantly to the tuition of his three teachers, until, by their help and Will's, he is able to slay the giant. As his reward he marries Science.

As one of several good things in this pleasant Interlude may be quoted Will's speech on life before and after marriage, from the point of view of a favoured servant:

I am not disposed as yet to be tame, And therefore I am loth to be under a dame. Now you are a bachelor, a man may soon win you, Methinks there is some good fellowship in you; We may laugh and be merry at board and at bed, You are not so testy as those that be wed. Mild in behaviour and loth to fall out, You may run, you may ride and rove round about, With wealth at your will and all thing at ease, Free, frank and lusty, easy to please. But when you be clogged and tied by the toe So fast that you shall not have pow'r to let go, You will tell me another lesson soon after, And cry peccavi too, except your luck be the better. Then farewell good fellowship! then come at a call! Then wait at an inch, you idle knaves all! Then sparing and pinching, and nothing of gift, No talk with our master, but all for his thrift. Solemn and sour, and angry as a wasp, All things must be kept under lock and hasp; All that which will make me to fare full ill. All your care shall be to hamper poor Will.

The liberty and, we may infer, good hearing extended to these unblushingly didactic Interludes attracted into authorship writers with purposes more aggressive and debatable than those pertaining to wise conduct. Zealous reformers, earnest proselytizers, fierce dogmatists turned to the drama as a medium through which they might effectively reach the ears and hearts of the people. Kirchmayer's Pammachius, translated into English by Bale (author of King John), contained an attack on the Pope as Antichrist. In 1527 the boys of St. Paul's acted a play (now unknown) in which Luther figured ignominiously. Here then were Roman Catholics and Protestants extending their furious battleground to the stage. This style of thing came to such a pitch that it was actually judged necessary to forbid it by law. Similar plays, however, still continued to be produced; and even King Edward VI is credited with the authorship of a strongly Protestant comedy entitled De Meretrice Babylonica.

A very fair example of these political and controversial Interludes is New Custom, printed in 1573, and possibly written only a year or two before that date. Here, for instance, are a few of the players' names and descriptions as given at the beginning: Perverse Doctrine, an old Popish Priest; Ignorance, another, but elder; New Custom, a Minister; Light of the Gospel, a Minister; Hypocrisy, an old Woman. Then, as to the matter, here is an extract from Perverse Doctrine's opening speech, the writer's intention being to expose the speaker to the derision of his enlightened hearers.

What! young men to be meddlers in divinity? it is a goodly sight! Yet therein now almost is every boy's delight; No book now in their hands, but all scripture, scripture, Either the whole Bible or the New Testament, you may be sure. The New Testament for them! and then too for Coll, my dog. This is the old proverb—to cast pearls to an hog. Give them that which is meet for them, a racket and a ball, Or some other trifle to busy their heads withal, Playing at quoits or nine-holes, or shooting at butts: There let them be, a God's name.

Or here again is a bold declaration from New Custom, the Reformation minister:

I said that the mass, and such trumpery as that, Popery, purgatory, pardons, were flat Against God's word and primitive constitution, Crept in through covetousness and superstition Of late years, through blindness, and men of no knowledge, Even such as have been in every age.

It is with some surprise certainly that we find King John of England glorified, for purposes of Protestant propaganda, as a sincere and godly 'protestant'. So it is, however. In his play, King John (about 1548), Bishop Bale depicts that monarch as an inspired hater of papistical tyranny and an ardent lover of his country, in whose cause he suffered death by poisoning at the hands of a monk. Stephen Langton, the Pope and Cardinal Pandulph figure as Sedition, Usurped Power and Private Wealth. A summary of the play, provided by an Interpreter, supplies us with the following explanation of John's quarrel with Rome.

This noble King John, as a faithful Moses, Withstood proud Pharaoh for his poor Israel, Minding to bring it out of the land of darkness; But the Egyptians did against him so rebel, That his poor people did still in the desert dwell, Till that duke Joshua, which was our late King Henry, Closely brought us into the land of milk and honey. As a strong David, at the voice of verity, Great Goliah, the pope, he struck down with his sling, Restoring again to a Christian liberty His land and people, like a most victorious king; To his first beauty intending the Church to bring From ceremonies dead to the living word of the Lord. This the second act will plenteously record.

As put into the mouth of the king himself, these other lines are hard to beat for deliberate partisan misrepresentation. The king feels himself about to die.

I have sore hungered and thirsted righteousness For the office sake that God hath me appointed, But now I perceive that sin and wickedness In this wretched world, like as Christ prophesied, Have the overhand: in me it is verified. Pray for me, good people, I beseech you heartily, That the Lord above on my poor soul have mercy. Farewell noblemen, with the clergy spiritual, Farewell men of law, with the whole commonalty. Your disobedience I do forgive you all, And desire God to pardon your iniquity. Farewell, sweet England, now last of all to thee: I am right sorry I could do for thee no more. Farewell once again, yea, farewell for evermore.

Prompted by a different motive, yet not far removed in actual effect from the politico-religious class of play represented by New Custom, are the early Interludes of John Heywood. It is quite impossible to read such a play as The Pardoner and the Friar and believe that its author wrote under any such earnest and sober inspiration as did the author of New Custom. His intention was frankly to amuse, and to paint life as he saw it without the intrusion of unreal personages of highly virtuous but dull ideas. Yet he swung the lash of satire as cuttingly and as merrily about the flanks of ecclesiastical superstition as ever did the creator of Perverse Doctrine.[47]

The simplest plot sufficed Heywood, and the minimum of characters. The Pardoner and the Friar (possibly as early as 1520) demands only four persons, while the plot may be summed up in a few sentences, thus: A Pardoner and a Friar, from closely adjoining platforms, are endeavouring to address the same crowd, the one to sell relics, the other to beg money for his order. By a sort of stichomythic alternation each for a time is supposed to carry on his speech regardless of the other, so that to follow either connectedly the alternate lines must be read in sequence. But every now and then they break off for abuse, and finally they fight. A Parson and neighbour Prat interfere to convey them to jail for the disturbance, but are themselves badly mauled. Then the Pardoner and the Friar go off amicably together. There is no allegory, no moral; merely satire on the fraudulent and hypocritical practices of pardoners and friars, together with some horseplay to raise a louder laugh. The fashion of that satire may be judged from the following exchange of home truths by the rival orators.

Friar. What, should ye give ought to parting pardoners?—

Pardoner. What, should ye spend on these flattering liars,—

Friar. What, should ye give ought to these bold beggars?—

Pardoner. As be these babbling monks and these friars,—

Friar. Let them hardly labour for their living;—

Pardoner. Which do nought daily but babble and lie—

Friar. It much hurteth them good men's giving,—

Pardoner. And tell you fables dear enough at a fly,—

Friar. For that maketh them idle and slothful to wark,—

Pardoner. As doth this babbling friar here to-day?—

Friar. That for none other thing they will cark.—

Pardoner. Drive him hence, therefore, in the twenty-devil way!—

The Four P.P. (? 1540), similarly, requires no more than a palmer, a pardoner, a 'pothecary and a pedlar, and for plot only a single conversation, devoid even of the rough play which usually enlivened discussions on the stage. In the debate arises a contest as to who can tell the biggest lie—won by the palmer's statement that he has never seen a woman out of patience—and that is the sole dramatic element. Nevertheless, by sheer wit interest is maintained to the end, every one smiling over the rival claims of such veteran humbugs as the old-time pardoner and apothecary; scant reverence does 'Pothecary vouchsafe to Pardoner's potent relics, his 'of All Hallows the blessed jaw-bone', his 'great toe of the Trinity', his 'buttock-bone of Pentecost', and the rest. One of the raciest passages occurs in the Pardoner's relation of the wonders he has performed in the execution of his office. Amongst other deeds of note is the bringing back of a certain woman from hell to earth. For this purpose the Pardoner visited the lower regions in person—so he says—and brought her out in triumph with the full and joyful consent of Lucifer.

[The PARDONER has entered hell and secured a guide.]

Pardoner. This devil and I walked arm in arm So far, till he had brought me thither, Where all the devils of hell together Stood in array in such apparel As for that day there meetly fell. Their horns well-gilt, their claws full clean, Their tails well-kempt, and, as I ween, With sothery[48] butter their bodies anointed; I never saw devils so well appointed. The master-devil sat in his jacket, And all the souls were playing at racket. None other rackets they had in hand, Save every soul a good firebrand, Wherewith they played so prettily That Lucifer laughed merrily, And all the residue of the fiends Did laugh thereat full well like friends.

[He interviews LUCIFER and asks if he may take away MARGERY CORSON.]

Now, by our honour, said Lucifer, No devil in hell shall withhold her; And if thou wouldest have twenty mo, Wert not for justice, they should go. For all we devils within this den Have more to-do with two women Than with all the charge we have beside; Wherefore, if thou our friend will be tried, Apply thy pardons to women so That unto us there come no mo.

Johan Johan, or, at greater length, The Merry Play between Johan Johan the Husband, Tyb his Wife, and Sir Jhon the Priest (printed 1533), contains only the three characters mentioned, but possesses a theme more nearly deserving the name of plot than do the other two, namely, the contriving and carrying out of a plan by Tyb for exposing her boastful husband's real and absolute subjection to her rule. Yet, even so, it is extremely simple. Johan Johan is first heard alone, declaring how he will beat his wife for not being at home. The tuggings of fear and valour in his heart, however, give his monologue an argumentative form, in which first one motive and then the other gains the upper hand, very similar to the conflict between Launcelot Gobbo's conscience and the Devil. He closes in favour of the beating and then—Tyb comes home. Oh the difference! Johan Johan suspects his wife of undue friendliness with Sir Jhon the Priest, but he dare not say so. Tyb guesses his doubts, and in her turn suspects that he is inclined to rebel. So she makes the yoke heavier. Johan Johan has to invite Sir Jhon to eat a most desirable pie with them; but throughout the meal, with jealousy at his heart and the still greater pangs of unsatisfied hunger a little lower, he is kept busy by his wife, trying to mend a leaky bucket with wax. Surely never did a scene contain more 'asides' than are uttered and explained away by the crushed husband! Finally overtaxed endurance asserts itself, and wife and priest are driven out of doors; but the play closes with a very pronounced note of uncertainty from the victor as to what new game the vanquished may shortly be at if he be not there to see.

The all-important feature to be noticed in Heywood's work is that here we have the drama escaping from its alliance with religion into the region of pure comedy. Here is no well planned moral, no sententious mouthpiece of abstract excellence, no ruin of sinners and crowning of saints. Here, too, is no Vice, no Devil, although they are the chief media for comedy in other Interludes, nor is there any buffoonery; even of its near cousins, scuffling and fighting, only one of the three plays has more than a trace. Hence the earlier remark, that Heywood was before his time. It is not devils in bearskins and wooden-sworded vices that create true comedy; they belong to the realm of farce. Yet they continued to flourish long after Heywood had set another example, and with them the cuffing of ears and drunken gambolling which we may see, in the works of other men, trying to rescue prosy scenes from dullness. In Johan Johan is simple comedy, the comedy of laughter-raising dialogue and 'asides'. We do not say it is perfect comedy, far from it; but it is comedy cleared of its former alloys. It is the comedy which Shakespeare refined for his own use in Twelfth Night and elsewhere.

[Footnote 34: Translation by W.C. Robinson, Ph.D. (Bohn's Standard Library).]

[Footnote 35: aright.]

[Footnote 36: world's.]

[Footnote 37: company.]

[Footnote 38: wealth.]

[Footnote 39: know.]

[Footnote 40: know not.]

[Footnote 41: solace.]

[Footnote 42: stealing.]

[Footnote 43: lying.]

[Footnote 44: fright.]

[Footnote 45: glad.]

[Footnote 46: alehouse sign.]

[Footnote 47: The reader is warned against chronological confusion. In order to follow out the various dramatic contributions of the Interludes one must sometimes pass over plays at one point to return to them at another. Care has been taken to place approximate dates against the plays, and these should be duly regarded. The treatment of so early an Interlude writer as Heywood (his three best known productions may be dated between 1520 and 1540) thus late is justified by the fact that he is in some ways 'before his time', notably in his rejection of the Morality abstractions.]

[Footnote 48: sweet.]



CHAPTER IV

RISE OF COMEDY AND TRAGEDY

No great discernment is required to see that, after the appearance of Johan Johan, all that was needed for the complete development of comedy was the invention of a well-contrived plot. For reasons already indicated, Interludes were naturally deficient in this respect. Nor were the Moralities and Bible Miracles much better: their length and comprehensive themes were against them. There were the Saint Plays, of which some still lingered upon the stage; these offered greater possibilities. But here, again, originality was limited; the denouement was more or less a foregone conclusion. Clearly, one of two things was wanted: either a man of genius to perceive the need and to supply it, or the study of new models outside the field of English drama. The man of genius was not then forthcoming, but by good fortune the models were stumbled upon.

We say stumbled upon, because the absence of tentative predecessors and of anything approaching an eager band of successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, Celestine. True, the play is dull enough. But if dramatists had been awake to their defects, the value of the new importation from a foreign literature would have been noticed. The years passed, however, without producing imitators, until some time in the years between 1544 and 1551 a Latin scholar, reading the plays of Plautus, decided to write a comedy like them. Latin Comedies, both in the original tongue and in translation, had appeared in England in previous years, but only as strayed foreigners. Nicholas Udall, the head master of Eton School, proposed a very different thing, namely, an English comedy which should rival in technique the comedies of the Latins. The result was Ralph Roister Doister. He called it an Interlude. Posterity has given it the title of 'the first regular English comedy'.

Divided into five acts, with subordinate scenes, this play develops its story with deliberate calculated steps. Acts I and II are occupied by Ralph's vain attempts to soften the heart of Dame Christian Custance by gifts and messages. In Act III come complications, double-dealings. Matthew Merrygreek plays Ralph false, tortures his love, misreads—by the simple trick of mispunctuation—his letter to the Dame, and thus, under a mask of friendship, sets him further than ever from success. Still deeper complexities appear with Act IV, for now arrives, with greetings from Gawin Goodluck, long betrothed to Dame Custance, a certain sea-captain, who, misled by Ralph's confident assurance, misunderstands the relations between the Dame and him, suspects disloyalty, and changes from friendliness to cold aloofness. This, by vexing the lady, brings disaster upon Ralph, whose bold attempt, on the suggestion of Merrygreek, to carry his love off by force is repulsed by that Dame's Amazonian band of maid-servants with scuttles and brooms. In this extraordinary conflict Ralph is horribly belaboured by the malicious Matthew under pretence of blows aimed at Dame Custance. Act V, however, brings Goodluck himself and explanations. That worthy man finds his lady true, friendship is established all round, and Ralph and Merrygreek join the happy couple in a closing feast.

This bald outline perhaps makes sufficiently clear the great advance in plot structure. Within the play, however, are many other good things. The character of Ralph Roister Doister, 'a vain-glorious, cowardly blockhead', as the list of dramatis personae has it, is thoroughly well done: his heavy love-sighs, his confident elation, his distrust, his gullibility, his ups and downs and contradictions, are all in the best comic vein. Only second in fullness of portraiture, and truer to Nature, is Dame Custance, who—if we exclude Melibaea as not native to English shores—may be said to bring into English secular drama honourable womanhood. Her amused indifference at first, her sharp reproof of her maids who have allowed themselves to act as Ralph's messengers, her gathering vexation at Ralph's tiresome wooing, her genuine alarm when she sees that his boastful words are accepted by the sea-captain as truth—these are sentiments and emotions copied from a healthy and worthy model. Matthew Merrygreek, an unmistakable 'Vice' ever at Ralph's elbow, is of all Vices the shrewdest striker of laughter out of a block of stupidity: it is from his ingenious brain that almost every absurd scene is evolved for the ridiculing of Ralph. Thoroughly human, and quite assertive, are the lower characters, the maid-servants and men-servants, Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, Truepenny, Dobinet Doughty and the rest. Need it be added that the battle in Act IV is pure fooling? or that jolly songs enliven the scenes with their rousing choruses (e.g. 'I mun be married a Sunday')? Ralph Roister Doister is an English comedy with English notions of the best way of amusing English folk of the sixteenth century. With all its improvements it has no suggestion of the alien about it, as has the classically-flavoured Thersites (also based, like Udall's play, on Plautus's Miles Gloriosus), or Calisto and Melibaea with its un-English names. Perhaps that is why it had to wait fifteen years for a successor. Quite possibly its spectators regarded it as merely a better Interlude than usual, without recognizing the precise qualities which made it different from Johan Johan.

Two quotations will be sufficient to illustrate the opposing characters.

(1)

Merrygreek (alone). But now of Roister Doister somewhat to express, That ye may esteem him after his worthiness, In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout, Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout. All the day long is he facing and craking[49] Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making; But when Roister Doister is put to his proof, To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof. If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye, Up is he to the hard ears in love by and by: And in all the hot haste must she be his wife, Else farewell his good days, and farewell his life!

(2)

[TRISTRAM TRUSTY, a good friend and counsellor to DAME CUSTANCE, is consulted by her on the matter of the sea-captain's (SURESBY'S) misunderstanding of her attitude towards RALPH ROISTER DOISTER.]

T. Trusty. Nay, weep not, woman, but tell me what your cause is. As concerning my friend is anything amiss?

C. Custance. No, not on my part; but here was Sim. Suresby—

T. Trusty. He was with me, and told me so.

C. Custance. And he stood by While Ralph Roister Doister, with help of Merrygreek, For promise of marriage did unto me seek.

T. Trusty. And had ye made any promise before them twain?

C. Custance. No, I had rather be torn in pieces and slain. No man hath my faith and troth but Gawin Goodluck, And that before Suresby did I say, and there stuck; But of certain letters there were such words spoken—

T. Trusty. He told me that too.

C. Custance. And of a ring and token, That Suresby, I spied, did more than half suspect That I my faith to Gawin Goodluck did reject.

T. Trusty. But was there no such matter, Dame Custance, indeed?

C. Custance. If ever my head thought it, God send me ill speed! Wherefore I beseech you with me to be a witness That in all my life I never intended thing less. And what a brainsick fool Ralph Roister Doister is Yourself knows well enough.

T. Trusty. Ye say full true, i-wis.

In 1566 was acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, 'A Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt, and merie Comedie, intytuled Gammer Gurton's Needle.' The authorship is uncertain, recent investigation having exalted a certain Stevenson into rivalry with the Bishop Still to whom former scholars were content to assign it. Possibly as the result of a perusal of Plautus, possibly under the influence of the last play—for in subject matter it is even more perfectly English than Ralph Roister Doister—this comedy is also built on a well-arranged plan, the plot developing regularly through five acts with subsidiary scenes. Let us glance through it.

Gammer Gurton and her goodman Hodge lose their one and only needle, an article not easily renewed, nor easily done without, seeing that Hodge's garments stand in need of instant repair. Gib, the cat, is strongly suspected of having swallowed it. Into this confusion steps Diccon, a bedlam beggar, whose quick eye promptly detects opportunities for mischief. After scaring Hodge with offers of magic art, he goes to Dame Chat, an honest but somewhat jealous neighbour, unaware of what has happened, with a tale that Gammer Gurton accuses her of stealing her best cock. To Gammer Gurton he announces that he has seen Dame Chat pick up the needle and make off with it. Between the two dames ensues a meeting, the nature of which may be guessed, the whole trouble lying in the fact that neither thinks it necessary to name the article under dispute. No wonder that discussion under the disadvantage of so great a misunderstanding ends in violence. Doctor Rat, the curate, is now called in; but again Diccon is equal to the occasion. Having warned Dame Chat that Hodge, to balance the matter of the cock, is about to creep in through a breach in the wall and kill her chickens, he persuades Doctor Rat that if he will creep through this same opening he will see the needle lying on Dame Chat's table. The consequences for the curate are severe. Master Bailey's assistance is next requisitioned, and him friend Diccon cannot overreach. The whole truth coming out, Diccon is required to kneel and apologize. In doing so he gives Hodge a slap which elicits from that worthy a yell of pain. But it is a wholesome pang, for it finds the needle no further away than in the seat of Hodge's breeches.

If we compare this play with Ralph Roister Doister three ideas will occur: first, that we have made no advance; second, that, in giving the preference to rough country folk, the author has deliberately abandoned the higher standard of refinement in language and action set in Udall's major scenes; third, that whereas the earlier work bases its comedy on character, educing the amusing scenes from the clash of vanity, constancy and mischief, the later play relies for its comic effects on situations brought about by mischief alone. These are three rather heavy counts against the younger rival. But in the other scale may be placed a very fair claim to greater naturalness. Taking the scenes and characters in turn, mischief-maker, churchman and all, there is none so open to the charge of being impossible, and therefore farcical, as the battle between the forces of Ralph and Dame Custance, or the incredibly self-deceived Ralph himself. In accompanying Ralph through his adventures we seem to be moving through a fantastic world in which Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio might feel at home; but with Dame Chat, Gammer Gurton and Hodge we feel the solid earth beneath our feet and around us the strong air which nourished the peasantry and yeomen of Tudor England.

The first extract is a verse from this comedy's one and famous song; the second is taken from Act I, Scene 4.

(1)

I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good; But sure I think that I can drink With him that wears a hood. Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old. Back and side go bare, go bare, Both foot and hand go cold: But belly, God send thee good ale enough, Whether it be new or old.

(2)

[HODGE hears of the loss of the needle on his return home from the fields.]

Hodge. Your nee'le lost? it is pity you should lack care and endless sorrow. Gog's death, how shall my breeches be sewed? Shall I go thus to-morrow?

Gammer. Ah, Hodge, Hodge, if that ich could find my nee'le, by the reed, Ch'ould sew thy breeches, ich promise thee, with full good double thread, And set a patch on either knee should last this moneths twain. Now God and good Saint Sithe, I pray to send it home again.

Hodge. Whereto served your hands and eyes, but this your nee'le to keep? What devil had you else to do? ye keep, ich wot, no sheep. Cham[50] fain abroad to dig and delve, in water, mire and clay, Sossing and possing in the dirt still from day to day. A hundred things that be abroad cham set to see them well: And four of you sit idle at home and cannot keep a nee'le!

Gammer. My nee'le, alas, ich lost it, Hodge, what time ich me up hasted To save milk set up for thee, which Gib our cat hath wasted.

Hodge. The devil he burst both Gib and Tib, with all the rest; Cham always sure of the worst end, whoever have the best. Where ha' you been fidging abroad, since you your nee'le lost?

Gammer. Within the house, and at the door, sitting by this same post; Where I was looking a long hour, before these folks came here. But, wellaway! all was in vain; my nee'le is never the near.

Hodge. Set me a candle, let me seek, and grope wherever it be. Gog's heart, ye be foolish (ich think), you know it not when you it see.

Gammer. Come hither, Cock: what, Cock, I say!

Cock. How, Gammer?

Gammer. Go, hie thee soon, and grope behind the old brass pan, Which thing when thou hast done, There shalt thou find an old shoe, wherein, if thou look well, Thou shalt find lying an inch of white tallow candle: Light it, and bring it tite away.

Cock. That shall be done anon.

Gammer. Nay, tarry, Hodge, till thou hast light, and then we'll seek each one.

Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle mark the end of the Interlude stage and the commencement of Comedy proper. Leaving the latter at this point for the present, we shall return in the next chapter to study its fortunes at the hands of Lyly.

* * * * *

Morality Plays, though theoretically quite as suitable for tragic effect as for comic, since the former only required that Mankind should sometimes fail to reach heaven, seem nevertheless to have developed mainly the lighter side, setting the hero right at the finish and in the meantime discovering, to the relief of otherwise bored spectators, that wickedness, in some unexplained way, was funny. As long as propriety forbade that good should be overcome by evil it is hard to see how tragedy could appear. Had Humankind, in The Castell of Perseverance, been fought for in vain by the Virtues, or had Everyman found no companion to go with him and intercede for him, there had been tragedy indeed. But religious optimism was against any conclusion so discouraging to repentance. The lingering Miracles, it is true, still presented the sublimest of all tragedies in the Fall of Man and the apparent triumph of the Pharisees over Jesus. Between them, however, and the kind of drama that succeeded the Moralities, too great a gulf was fixed. Contemporaries of those original spirits, Heywood and Udall, could hardly revert for inspiration to the discredited performances of villages and of a few provincial towns. Tragedy had to wait until there was matured and made popular an Interlude from which the conflict of Virtues and Vices, with the orthodox triumph of the former, had been purged away, leaving to the author complete liberty alike in character and action. When that came, Tragedy returned to the stage, a stranger with strange stories to tell. Persia and Ancient Rome sent their tyrants and their heroines to contest for public favour with home-born knaves and fools. Nor were the newcomers above borrowing the services of those same knaves and fools. The Vice was given a place, low clownish fellows were admitted to relieve the harrowed feelings, and our old acquaintance, Herod, was summoned from the Miracles to lend his aid.

Yet even so—and probably because it was so—Tragedy was ill at ease. She had called in low comedy and rant to please the foolish, only to find herself infected and degraded by their company. Moreover, the bustle of incident, the abrupt changes from grave to gay and to grave again, jangled her sad majestic harmonies with shrill interrupting discords. It had not been so in Greece. It had not been so even in Italy, where Roman Seneca, fearing the least decline to a lower plane of dignity and impressiveness, had disciplined tragedy by an imposition of artificial but not unskilful restraints. In place of the strong unbroken sweep of a resistless current, which characterized the evolution of an Aeschylean drama, he had insisted on an orderly division of a plot into acts and scenes, as though one should break up the sheer plunge of a single waterfall into a well-balanced group of cascades. Yet he was wise in his generation, securing by this means a carefully proportioned development which, in the absence of that genius which inspired the Greek dramatists, might otherwise have been lost. Once strong and free in the plays of Aeschylus and his compeers, hampered and constantly under guidance but still dignified and noble in the Senecan drama, Tragedy now found herself debased and almost caricatured in the English Interlude stage. Fortunately the danger was seen in time. English writers, face to face with self-conscious tragedy, realized that here at least was more than unaided native art could compass. Despairing of success if they persisted in the old methods, they fell back awkwardly upon classical imitation and, by assiduous study tempered by a wise criticism, achieved success.

Only two plays with any claim to the designation of tragedies have survived to us from the Interludes, neither of them of much interest. Cambyses (1561), by Thomas Preston, has all the qualities of an imperfect Interlude. There are the base fellows and the clowns, Huff, Ruff, Snuff, Hob and Lob; the abstractions, Diligence, Shame, Common's Complaint, Small Hability, and the like; the Vice, Ambidexter, who enters 'with an old capcase on his head, an old pail about his hips for harness, a scummer and a potlid by his side, and a rake on his shoulder'; and the same scuffling and horseplay when the comic element is uppermost. Incident follows incident as rapidly and with as trifling motives as before. In the course of a short play we see Cambyses, king of Persia, set off for his conquests in Egypt; return; execute Sisamnes, his unjust deputy; prove a far worse ruler himself; shoot through the heart the young son of Praxaspes, to prove to that too-frank counsellor that he is not as drunk as was supposed; murder his own brother, Smirdis, on the lying report of Ambidexter; marry, contrary to the law of the Church and her own wish, a lovely lady, his cousin, and then have her executed for reproaching him with the death of his brother; and finally die, accidentally pierced by his own sword when mounting a horse. All these horrors, except the death of the lady, take place on the stage. Thus we have such stage-directions as, 'Smite him in the neck with a sword to signify his death', 'Flay him with a false skin', 'A little bladder of vinegar pricked', 'Enter the King without a gown, a sword thrust up into his side, bleeding.' Of real tragedy there is little, the hustle of crime upon crime obliterating the impression which any one singly might produce. Yet even in this crude orgy of bloodshed the melancholy voice of unaffected pathos can be heard mourning the loss of dear ones. It speaks in the farewells of Sisamnes and his son Otian, and of Praxaspes (the honest minister) and his little boy; throughout the whole incident of the gentle lady whose fate melts even the Vice to tears; and in the outburst of a mother's grief over her child's corpse. We quote the last.

O blissful babe, O joy of womb, heart's comfort and delight, For counsel given unto the king, is this thy just requite? O heavy day and doleful time, these mourning tunes to make! With blubb'red eyes into my arms from earth I will thee take, And wrap thee in my apron white: but O my heavy heart! The spiteful pangs that it sustains would make it in two to part, The death of this my son to see: O heavy mother now, That from thy sweet and sug'red joy to sorrow so shouldst bow! What grief in womb did I retain before I did thee see; Yet at the last, when smart was gone, what joy wert thou to me! How tender was I of thy food, for to preserve thy state! How stilled I thy tender heart at times early and late! With velvet paps I gave thee suck, with issue from my breast, And danced thee upon my knee to bring thee unto rest. Is this the joy of thee I reap? O king of tiger's brood, O tiger's whelp, hadst thou the heart to see this child's heart-blood? Nature enforceth me, alas, in this wise to deplore, To wring my hands, O wel-away, that I should see this hour. Thy mother yet will kiss thy lips, silk-soft and pleasant white, With wringing hands lamenting for to see thee in this plight. My lording dear, let us go home, our mourning to augment.

The second play, Appius and Virginia (1563), by R.B. (not further identified), is, in some respects, weaker; though, by avoiding the crowded plot which spoilt Cambyses, it attains more nearly to tragedy. The low characters, Mansipulus and Mansipula, the Vice (Haphazard), and the abstractions, Conscience, Comfort and their brethren, reappear with as little success. But the singleness of the theme helps towards that elevation of the main figures and intensifying of the catastrophe which tragic emotion demands. Unfortunately, from the start the author seems to have been obsessed with the notion that the familiar rant of Herod was peculiarly suited to his subject. In such a notion there lay, of course, the half-truth that lofty thoughts and impassioned speech are more befitting the sombre muse than the foolish chatter of clowns. But, except where his own deliberately introduced mirth-makers are speaking, he will have nothing but pompous rhetoric from the lips of his characters. His prologue begins his speech with the sounding line:

Who doth desire the trump of fame to sound unto the skies—

Virginius's wife makes her debut upon the stage with this encouraging remark to her companion:

The pert and prickly prime of youth ought chastisement to have, But thou, dear daughter, needest not, thyself doth show thee grave.

To which Virginia most becomingly answers:

Refell your mind of mournful plaints, dear mother, rest your mind.

After this every one feels that the wicked judge, Appius, has done no more than his duty when he exclaims, at his entrance:

The furrowed face of fortune's force my pinching pain doth move.

Virginius slays his daughter on the stage and serves her head up in a charger before Appius, who promptly bursts into a cataclysm of C's ('O curst and cruel cankered churl, O carl unnatural'); but there is not a suggestion of the pathos noticed in Cambyses. Instead there is in one place a sort of frantic agitation, which the author doubtless thought was the pure voice of tragic sorrow. It is in the terrible moment when, after the heroic strain of the sacrifice is over, Virginius realizes the meaning of what he has done. Presumably wild with grief, he raves in language so startlingly akin to the ludicrous despairs of Pyramus and Thisbe that the modern reader, acquainted with the latter, is almost jarred into laughter.

O cruel hands, O bloody knife, O man, what hast thou done? Thy daughter dear and only heir her vital end hath won. Come, fatal blade, make like despatch: come, Atropos: come, aid! Strike home, thou careless arm, with speed; of death be not afraid.

Of such eloquence we might truly say with Theseus, 'This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.'

In 1562 Tragedy, as we have said, took refuge in an imitation of the Senecan stage: translations of Seneca's tragedies had begun to appear in 1559. The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc, as it was originally and is now most commonly named, marks a new departure for English drama. To understand this we ought perhaps to say something about the essential features of a Greek tragedy (Seneca's own model), and make a note of any special Senecan additions. What strikes one most in reading a play of Aeschylus is the prominence given to a composite and almost colourless character known as the Chorus (for though it consists of a body of persons, it speaks, for the most part, as one), the absence of any effective action from the stage, the limited number of actors, and the tendency of any speaker to expand his remarks into a set speech of considerable length. This tendency, especially noticeable in the Chorus, whose speeches commonly take the form of chants, encouraged the faculty of generalizing philosophically, so that one is constantly treated to general reflections expressive rather of broad wisdom and piety than of feelings directly and dramatically aroused; much also is made of retrospection and relation, whether the topic is ancient history, the events of a recent voyage, or a barely completed crime. The sage backward glance of the Chorus is quick to discover in present ruin a punishment for past crime; so that the plot becomes in a manner a picture of the resistless laws of moral justice. Speeches, a moralizing Chorus, actions not performed but reported in detail, a sense of divine retribution for sin, these are perhaps the qualities which, apart from the poetry itself, we recall most readily as typical of a Greek tragedy. These Seneca modified by the introduction of acts and scenes, a subordination of the Chorus, and an exaggerated predilection for long sententious speeches; he also added a new stage character known as the Ghost. Seneca's elevation, to the dogmatic position of laws, of the unities of Time, Place and Action, rules by no means invariable among his older and greater masters, has been the subject of much debate, but, on the whole, the verdict has been hostile. According to these unities, the time represented in the play should not greatly exceed the time occupied in acting it, the scene of the action should not vary, and the plot should be concerned only with one event. This last law was generally accepted, by Elizabethans, in Tragedy at least. The other two, though much insisted on by English theorists, such as Sir Philip Sidney, met with so much neglect in practice that we need devote no space to the discussion of them.

Having thus hastily summarized the larger superficial characteristics of classical drama, we may return to Gorboduc and inquire which of these were adopted in it and with what modifications. We find it divided into five acts and nine scenes. A Chorus, though it takes no other part, sings its moralizing lyrics at the end of each act except the last. Speeches of inordinate length are made—three consecutive speeches in Act I, Scene 2, occupy two hundred and sixty lines—the subject-matter being commonly argumentative. Only through the reports of messengers and eye-witnesses do we learn of the cold-blooded murder and many violent deaths that take place. Everywhere hurried action and unreasoning instinct give place to deliberation and debate. Between this play and its predecessors no change can be more sweeping or more abrupt. In an instant, as it were, we pass from the unpolished Cambyses, savage and reeking with blood, to the equally violent events of Gorboduc, cold beneath a formal restraint which, regulating their setting in the general framework, robs them of more than half their force. Had this severe discipline of the emotions been accepted as for ever binding upon the tragic stage Elizabethan drama would have been forgotten. The truth is that the germ of dissension was sown in Gorboduc itself. Conscious that the banishment of action from the stage, while natural enough in Greece, must meet with an overwhelming resistance from the popular custom in England, the authors, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, invented a compromise. Before each act they provided a symbolical Dumb Show which, by its external position, infringed no classical law, yet satisfied the demand of an English audience for real deeds and melodramatic spectacles. It was an ingenious idea, the effect of which was to keep intact the close link between stage and action until the native genius should be strong enough to cast aside its swaddling clothes and follow its own bent without hurt. As illustrating this innovation—the reader will not have forgotten that both Dumb Show and Chorus are to be found in Pericles—we may quote the directions for the Dumb Show before the second act.

First, the music of cornets began to play, during which came in upon the stage a king accompanied with a number of his nobility and gentlemen. And after he had placed himself in a chair of estate prepared for him, there came and kneeled before him a grave and aged gentleman, and offered up unto him a cup of wine in a glass, which the king refused. After him comes a brave and lusty young gentleman, and presents the king with a cup of gold filled with poison, which the king accepted, and drinking the same, immediately fell down dead upon the stage, and so was carried thence away by his lords and gentlemen, and then the music ceased. Hereby was signified, that as glass by nature holdeth no poison, but is clear and may easily be seen through, ne boweth by any art; so a faithful counsellor holdeth no treason, but is plain and open, ne yieldeth to any indiscreet affection, but giveth wholesome counsel, which the ill advised prince refuseth. The delightful gold filled with poison betokeneth flattery, which under fair seeming of pleasant words beareth deadly poison, which destroyeth the prince that receiveth it. As befel in the two brethren, Ferrex and Porrex, who, refusing the wholesome advice of grave counsellors, credited these young parasites, and brought to themselves death and destruction thereby.

But it is time to set forth the plot in more detail. The importance of Gorboduc as an example of English 'classical' tragedy prompts us to follow it through, scene by scene.

Act I, Scene 1.—Queen Videna discovers to her favourite and elder son, Ferrex, the king's intention, grievous in her eyes, of dividing his kingdom equally between his two sons. Scene 2.—King Gorboduc submits his plan to the consideration of his three counsellors, whose wise and lengthy reasonings he listens to but elects to disregard.

Act II, Scene 1.—The division having been carried out, Ferrex, in his part of the kingdom, is prompted by evil counsel to suspect aggressive rivalry from his brother, and decides to collect forces for his own defence. Scene 2.—Ferrex's misguided precautions having been maliciously represented to Porrex as directed against his power, that prince resolves upon an immediate invasion of his brother's realm.

Act III.—The news of these counter-moves and of the imminent probability of bloodshed is reported to the king. To restore the courage of the despairing Gorboduc is now the labour of his counsellors, but the later announcement of the death of Ferrex casts him lower than before. At this point the Chorus, recalling the murder of a cousin in an earlier generation of the royal race, points, in true Aeschylean fashion, to the hatred of an unsated revenge behind this latest blow:

Thus fatal plagues pursue the guilty race, Whose murderous hand, imbru'd with guiltless blood, Asks vengeance still before the heaven's face, With endless mischiefs on the cursed brood.

Act IV, Scene 1.—Videna alone, in words of passionate vehemence, laments that she has lived so long to see the death of Ferrex, renounces his brother as no child of hers, and concludes with a threat of vengeance. Scene 2.—Bowed down with remorse, Porrex makes his defence before the king, pleading the latter's own act, in dividing the kingdom, as the initial cause of the ensuing disaster. Before he has been long gone from his father's presence, Marcella, a lady-in-waiting, rushes into the room, in wild disorder and grief, to report his murder at his mother's hand. In anguished words she tells how, stabbed by Videna in his sleep, he started up and, spying the queen by his side, called to her for help, not crediting that she, his mother, could be his murderess. Again, in tones of solemn warning, the Chorus reminds the audience that

Blood asketh blood, and death must death requite: Jove, by his just and everlasting doom, Justly hath ever so requited it.

Act V, Scene 1.—This warning is proved true by a report of the death of the king and queen at the hands of their subjects in revolt against the blood-stained House. Certain of the nobles, gathered together, resolve upon an alliance for the purpose of restoring a strong government. The Duke of Albany, however, thinks to snatch power to himself from this opportunity. Scene 2.—Report is made of the suppression of the rebellion, but this news is immediately followed by a report of Albany's attempted usurpation of the throne. Coalition for his defeat is agreed upon, and the play ends with the mournful soliloquy of that aged counsellor who first opposed the division of the throne and now sees, as the consequence of that fatal act, his country, torn to pieces by civil strife, left an easy prize for an ambitious conqueror.

Hereto it comes when kings will not consent To grave advice, but follow wilful will. This is the end, when in fond princes' hearts Flattery prevails, and sage rede[51] hath no place: These are the plagues, when murder is the mean To make new heirs unto the royal crown.... And this doth grow, when lo, unto the prince, Whom death or sudden hap of life bereaves, No certain heir remains, such certain heir, As not all only is the rightful heir, But to the realm is so made known to be; And troth thereby vested in subjects' hearts, To owe faith there where right is known to rest.

This last quotation, interesting in itself as containing a recommendation to Queen Elizabeth to marry, or at least name her successor, will also serve as a specimen of the new verse, Blank Verse, which here, for the first time, finds its way into English drama. Meeting with small favour from writers skilful in the stringing together of rhymes, it suffered comparative neglect for some years until Marlowe taught its capacities to his own and future ages. With Sackville's stiff lines before us we shall be better able to appreciate the later playwright's genius. But we shall also be reminded that the credit of introducing blank verse must lie with the older man.

The chief question of all remains to be asked. Does Gorboduc, with all its borrowed devices, and because of them, rise to a higher level of tragedy than Cambyses and Appius and Virginia? To answer this question we must examine the effect of those devices, and understand what is precisely meant by the term tragedy. Let it be first understood that the arrangement of acts and scenes is comparatively unimportant in this connexion, though most helpful in giving clearness to the action. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (in the earlier edition) dispenses with it; so does Milton's Samson Agonistes; and we have just seen that the great Greek dramatists knew nothing of it. What is important is the exclusion of that comic element which, in some form or another, had hitherto found a place in almost every English play; the removal of all action from the stage—for the Dumb Shows stand apart from the play—; and the substitution of stately speeches for natural conversation and dialogue. Of all three the purpose is the same, namely, to impress the audience with a sense of greater dignity and awe than would be imparted by a more familiar style. The long speeches give importance to the decisions, and compel a belief that momentous events are about to happen or have happened. In harmony with this effect is the absence of all comic relief—although Shakespeare was to prove later that this has a useful place in tragedy. A smile, a jest would be sacrilege in the prevailing gloom. Two effects alone are aimed at; an impression of loftiness in the theme, and a profound melancholy. Not warm gushing tears. Those are the outcome of a personal sorrow, small and ignoble beside an abstract grief at 'the falls of princes', 'the tumbling down of crowns', 'the ruin of proud realms'. What does the reader or spectator know of Ferrex that he should mingle his cries with Videna's lamentations? The account of Porrex appealing, with childlike faith in his mother, to the very woman who has murdered him, may, for the moment, bring tears to the eyes. But it is an accidental touch. The tragedy lies not there but in the great fact that with him dies the last heir to the throne, the last hope of avoiding the miseries of a disputed succession; and that in her revengeful fury the queen, as a woman, has committed the blackest of all crimes, a mother's slaughter of her child. We are not asked to weep but to gasp at the horror of it. It is in order to protect the loftier, broader aspects of the catastrophe from the influence of the particular that action is excluded. This cautions us against confusing tragedy and pathos. To perceive the difference is to recognize that English Tragedy really begins with Gorboduc. Until its advent the stress laid on the pathetic partially obscured the tragic. This may be seen at once in the Miracles, though a little thought will reveal the intensely tragic nature of the complete Miracle Play. In Cambyses we find the same obscuration: there is tragedy in the sudden ending of those young lives, but the pathos of the mother's anguish and the sweet girl's pleadings prevent us from thinking of it. Appius and Virginia maintains a much truer tragic detachment, the effect being heightened by its opening picture of virtuous happiness destined to abrupt and tyrannous ruin. But it expresses itself so ill, shatters our hearing so unmercifully with its alliterative mouthing, and hurls us down so steeply with its low comedy, that we refuse to give its characters the grandeur or excellence claimed for them by the author. Gorboduc alone presents tragedy unspoiled by extraneous additions. In its triple catastrophe of princes, crown and realm we perceive the awful figure of the Tragic Muse and shrink back in reverent fear of what more may lie hid from us in the folds of her black robe. Darker, much darker and more terrible things have come since from that gloomy spirit. What has been written here should not be misinterpreted as an exaggerated appreciation of Gorboduc. We wish only to insist that this play did give to English drama for the first time (if we exclude translations) an example, however weak in execution, of pure tragedy; and was able to do so largely, if not entirely, by reason of its reversion to classical principles and devices.

We have insisted on the difference between Tragedy and Pathos, and criticized the weakening effect of the latter upon the former. To escape the penalty that awaits general criticism we may add here that Tragedy is never greater than when her handmaid is ready to do her modest service. Sophocles puts into the mouth of Oedipus, at the moment of his departure into blind and desolate exile, tender injunctions regarding the care of his young daughters:

But my poor maidens, hapless and forlorn, Who never had a meal apart from mine, But ever shared my table, yea, for them Take heedful care; and grant me, though but once, Yea, I beseech thee, with these hands to feel, Thou noble heart! the forms I love so well, And weep with them our common misery. Oh, if my arms were round them, I might seem To have them as of old when I could see.[52]

Shakespeare, too, knew well how to kindle the soft radiance which, fading again, makes the ensuing darkness darker still. Ophelia, the sleeping Duncan, Cordelia rise to our minds. Nor need we quote the famous words of Webster's Ferdinand. It is enough that the greatest scene in Gorboduc is precisely that scene where pathos softens by a momentary dimness of vision our horror at a mother's crime.

The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587), by Thomas Hughes, though twenty-five years later, may be placed next to Gorboduc in our discussion of the rise of tragedy. It will serve as an illustration of the kind of tragedy that was being evolved from Senecan models by plodding uninspired Englishmen before Marlowe flung his flaming torch amongst them. To understand the story a slight introduction is necessary. Igerna, the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, was loved by King Uther, who foully slew her husband and so won her for himself. As a result of this union were born Arthur and Anne, who, in their youth, perpetuated the inherited taint of sin by becoming the parents of a boy, Mordred. Afterwards Arthur married Guenevera, and some years later went to France on a long campaign of conquest. In his absence Mordred gained the love of Guenevera. The play begins with the contemplated return of Arthur, glorious from victory, the object being to concentrate attention upon the swift fall from glory and power to ruin and death. Guenevera, having learnt to hate her husband, debates in her mind his death or hers, finally deciding, however, to become a nun. Her interview with Mordred ends in his resolving to resist Arthur's landing. Unsuccessful in this attempt, and defeated in battle, he spurns all thought of submission, challenging his father to a second conflict, in Cornwall. Arthur, feeling that his sins have found him out, would gladly make peace; but, stung by Mordred's defiance, he follows him into Cornwall. There both armies are destroyed and Mordred is slain, though in his death he mortally wounds his father. After the battle his body is brought before Arthur, in whom the sight awakens yet more fiercely the pangs of remorse. The play closes immediately before Arthur's own mysterious departure.

Here is all the material for a great tragedy. The point for beginning the story is well chosen, though in obvious imitation of Agamemnon. Attention is concentrated on the catastrophe, no alien element being admitted to detract from the melancholy effect. It is sought to intensify the gloom by recourse to Seneca's stage Ghost; thus, the departed spirit of the wronged Gorlois opens the play with horrid imprecations of evil upon the house of Uther, and, at the close, exults in the fullness of his revenge. From his mouth, as well as from the lips of Arthur, and again from the Chorus (which closes the acts, as in Gorboduc) we learn the great purpose beneath this overwhelming ruin of a king and kingdom—to show that the day and the hour do come, however long deferred, when

Wrong hath his wreak, and guilt his guerdon bears.

As before, all action is rigorously excluded from the stage, to be reported, at great length and with tremendous striving after vividness and effect, by one who was present. Dumb Shows before each act continue the attempt to balance matters spectacularly. Clearly the only hope of dramatic advance for disciples of the Senecan school lay in improved dialogue. This was possible in four directions, namely, in more stirring topics, in more personal feeling, in shorter speeches, and in a change in the style of language and verse. Unfortunately for Thomas Hughes, it is just here that he fails, and fails lamentably. What is more, he fails because of his methods. The dominant desire of the English 'classical' school was to be impressive. Hence the adoption by Hughes of a ghostly introduction and conclusion. His conversations, therefore, must reflect the same idea. He saw, indeed, that long speeches, except at rare intervals, were tedious, and reduced his to reasonable proportions, even making extensive use—as, we shall see, the author of Damon and Pythias did before him—of the Greek device of stichomythia. He was most anxious, also, to provide stirring topics for his characters to speak on, the queen's uncertainty between crime and religion in the second scene being a notable example. But of necessity the distance of time and space imposed by his methods between an event and the reporting of it gives a measure of detachment to its discussion. In the matter of personal feeling, too, he was hampered by this same unavoidable detachment, and by the need of being impressive; for he and his friends seem to have been convinced that the wider and less particular the subject the greater would be the hearer's awe. We need only compare Arthur's speech over Mordred's body with the lamentation of the mother in Cambyses to perceive how the new methods compel the king to hasten from the thought of the 'hapless boy' to a consideration of their joint fate as 'a mirror to the world'. Because, in Cambyses, we know so little more of the boy and his mother than her grief, his murder fails as tragedy; but had Arthur indulged a little in such grief as her's, how much more moving would have been the tragedy of The Misfortunes of Arthur! But this was not the way of the Senecan school. Everywhere we find the same preference, as in Gorboduc, for broad argument and easily detachable expressions of philosophic wisdom. What shall be said of the style of language and verse? This much in praise, that Blank Verse is retained. But—and the thoughtful reader will discern that the same fatal influence is at work here as elsewhere—Hughes relapses, deliberately, into the artificial speech of Appius and Virginia. Alliteration charms him with its too artful aid. Nowhere has R.B. such rant as falls from the pen of Hughes. In the last battle between Arthur and Mordred 'boist'rous bangs with thumping thwacks fall thick', while the younger leader rages over the field 'all fury-like, frounc'd up with frantic frets'. Guenevera revives her declining wrath with this invocation of supernatural aid:

Come, spiteful fiends, come, heaps of furies fell, Not one by one, but all at once! my breast Raves not enough: it likes me to be fill'd With greater monsters yet. My heart doth throb, My liver boils: somewhat my mind portends, Uncertain what; but whatsoever, it's huge.

A fairer example, however, of Hughes's style may be taken from Cador's speech urging Arthur to adopt severe measures against Mordred (Act III, Scene 1):

No worse a vice than lenity in kings; Remiss indulgence soon undoes a realm. He teacheth how to sin that winks at sins, And bids offend that suffereth an offence. The only hope of leave increaseth crimes, And he that pardoneth one, embold'neth all To break the laws. Each patience fostereth wrong. But vice severely punish'd faints at foot, And creeps no further off than where it falls. One sour example will prevent more vice Than all the best persuasions in the world. Rough rigour looks out right, and still prevails: Smooth mildness looks too many ways to thrive. Wherefore, since Mordred's crimes have wrong'd the laws In so extreme a sort, as is too strange, Let right and justice rule with rigour's aid, And work his wrack at length, although too late; That damning laws, so damned by the laws, He may receive his deep deserved doom. So let it fare with all that dare the like: Let sword, let fire, let torments be their end. Severity upholds both realm and rule.

One feature remains to be spoken of, a feature which redeems the play from an otherwise deserved obscurity. We refer to the author's creation of characters fit for tragedy. Sackville's royalties are dull folk, great only by rank. Arthur and Mordred are men of a grander breed, men worthy to rise to heights and win the attention of the world by their fall. Nor does the author forget the artistic strength achieved by contrast. Arthur is depicted as a veteran warrior, contented with his conquests, and anxious to establish peace within his kingdom. He is remorseful, too, for past sins, and is ready to make amends by yielding up to Mordred the coveted throne—until that prince's insolence makes compromise impossible. Mordred, on the other hand, stands before us as the young, ambitious, dauntless aspirant to power, scorning cautious fears, flinging back every overture for peace, reaching forward to the goal of his hate even across the confines of life. At the risk of quoting too much we append (with the omission of two interruptions) Mordred's speech in favour of resisting his father:

He falleth well, that falling fells his foe. Small manhood were to turn my back to chance. I bear no breast so unprepar'd for harms. Even that I hold the kingliest point of all, To brook afflictions well: and by how much The more his state and tottering empire sags, To fix so much the faster foot on ground. No fear but doth forejudge, and many fall Into their fate, whiles they do fear their fate. Where courage quails, the fear exceeds the harm: Yea, worse than war itself is fear of war.