LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH (continued 3)

LECTURE IV ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER.

Beaumont and Fletcher, with all their prodigious merits, appear to me the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakespear. They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed themselves too often of common-place extravagances and theatrical trick. Men at first produce effect by studying nature, and afterwards they look at nature only to produce effect. It is the same in the history of other arts, and of other periods of literature. With respect to most of the writers of this age, their subject was their master. Shakespear was alone, as I have said before, master of his subject; but Beaumont and Fletcher were the first who made a play-thing of it, or a convenient vehicle for the display of their own powers. The example of preceding or contemporary writers had given them facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of production, and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of the public for novelty and extraordinary effect. There wants something of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do not wait nature’s time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at 249last: they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that the impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, beauty dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers in the honey-moon. In the economy of nature’s gifts, they ‘misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods amiss.’ Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike their roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the flowers!

It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descriptive poets of the first order; every page of their writings is a florilegium: they are dramatic poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, variety, vivacity, and effect; there is hardly a passion, character, or situation, which they have not touched in their devious range, and whatever they touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking feature; they are masters of style and versification in almost every variety of melting modulation or sounding pomp, of which they are capable: in comic wit and spirit, they are scarcely surpassed by any writers of any age. There they are in their element, ‘like eagles newly baited’; but I speak rather of their serious poetry;—and this, I apprehend, with all its richness, sweetness, loftiness, and grace, wants something—stimulates more than it gratifies, and leaves the mind in a certain sense exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too ostentatious and indiscriminate display of power. Every thing seems in a state of fermentation and effervescence, and not to have settled and found its centre in their minds. The ornaments, through neglect or abundance, do not always appear sufficiently appropriate: there is evidently a rich wardrobe of words and images, to set off any sentiments that occur, but not equal felicity in the choice of the sentiments to be expressed; the characters in general do not take a substantial form, or excite a growing interest, or leave a permanent impression; the passion does not accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances, and habit, but wastes itself in the first ebullitions of surprise and novelty.

Besides these more critical objections, there is a too frequent mixture of voluptuous softness or effeminacy of character with horror in the subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly think it wantonness) of moral constitution struggling with wilful and violent situations, like the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame that dazzles 250and consumes it. In the hey-day of their youthful ardour, and the intoxication of their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight in tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation over it; and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes into forbidden grounds, to see how they will shoot up and vegetate into luxuriance, to catch the eye of fancy. They are not safe teachers of morality: they tamper with it, like an experiment tried in corpore vili; and seem to regard the decomposition of the common affections, and the dissolution of the strict bonds of society, as an agreeable study and a careless pastime. The tone of Shakespear’s writings is manly and bracing; theirs is at once insipid and meretricious, in the comparison. Shakespear never disturbs the grounds of moral principle; but leaves his characters (after doing them heaped justice on all sides) to be judged of by our common sense and natural feeling. Beaumont and Fletcher constantly bring in equivocal sentiments and characters, as if to set them up to be debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished over with the colours of poetical ingenuity. Or Shakespear may be said to ‘cast the diseases of the mind, only to restore it to a sound and pristine health’: the dramatic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are, to all appearance, tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and laxity of principle. I do not say that this was the character of the men; but it strikes me as the character of their minds. The two things are very distinct. The greatest purists (hypocrisy apart) are often free-livers; and some of the most unguarded professors of a general license of behaviour, have been the last persons to take the benefit of their own doctrine, from which they reap nothing, but the obloquy and the pleasure of startling their ‘wonder-wounded’ hearers. There is a division of labour, even in vice. Some persons addict themselves to the speculation only, others to the practice. The peccant humours of the body or the mind break out in different ways. One man sows his wild oats in his neighbour’s field: another on Mount Parnassus; from whence, borne on the breath of fame, they may hope to spread and fructify to distant times and regions. Of the latter class were our poets, who, I believe, led unexceptionable lives, and only indulged their imaginations in occasional unwarrantable liberties with the Muses. What makes them more inexcusable, and confirms this charge against them, is, that they are always abusing ‘wanton poets,’ as if willing to shift suspicion from themselves.

Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid the foundation of the artificial diction and tinselled pomp of the next generation of poets, by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by translating the commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor and passion. It is this misplaced and inordinate craving after striking 251effect and continual excitement that had at one time rendered our poetry the most vapid of all things, by not leaving the moulds of poetic diction to be filled up by the overflowings of nature and passion, but by swelling out ordinary and unmeaning topics to certain preconceived and indispensable standards of poetical elevation and grandeur.—I shall endeavour to confirm this praise, mixed with unwilling blame, by remarking on a few of their principal tragedies. If I have done them injustice, the resplendent passages I have to quote will set every thing to rights.

The Maid’s Tragedy is one of the poorest. The nature of the distress is of the most disagreeable and repulsive kind; and not the less so, because it is entirely improbable and uncalled-for. There is no sort of reason, or no sufficient reason to the reader’s mind, why the king should marry off his mistress to one of his courtiers, why he should pitch upon the worthiest for this purpose, why he should, by such a choice, break off Amintor’s match with the sister of another principal support of his throne (whose death is the consequence), why he should insist on the inviolable fidelity of his former mistress to him after she is married, and why her husband should thus inevitably be made acquainted with his dishonour, and roused to madness and revenge, except the mere love of mischief, and gratuitous delight in torturing the feelings of others, and tempting one’s own fate. The character of Evadne, however, her naked, unblushing impudence, the mixture of folly with vice, her utter insensibility to any motive but her own pride and inclination, her heroic superiority to any signs of shame or scruples of conscience from a recollection of what is due to herself or others, are well described; and the lady is true to herself in her repentance, which is owing to nothing but the accidental impulse and whim of the moment. The deliberate voluntary disregard of all moral ties and all pretence to virtue, in the structure of the fable, is nearly unaccountable. Amintor (who is meant to be the hero of the piece) is a feeble, irresolute character: his slavish, recanting loyalty to his prince, who has betrayed and dishonoured him, is of a piece with the tyranny and insolence of which he is made the sport; and even his tardy revenge is snatched from his hands, and he kills his former betrothed and beloved mistress, instead of executing vengeance on the man who has destroyed his peace of mind and unsettled her intellects. The king, however, meets his fate from the penitent fury of Evadne; and on this account, the Maid’s Tragedy was forbidden to be acted in the reign of Charles II. as countenancing the doctrine of regicide. Aspatia is a beautiful sketch of resigned and heart-broken melancholy; and Calianax, a blunt, satirical courtier, is a character of much humour 252and novelty. There are striking passages here and there, but fewer than in almost any of their plays. Amintor’s speech to Evadne, when she makes confession of her unlooked-for remorse, is, I think, the finest.

——‘Do not mock me:

Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs,

Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap,

Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness,

And do an outrage. Prithee, do not mock me!’

King and No King, which is on a strangely chosen subject as strangely treated, is very superior in power and effect. There is an unexpected reservation in the plot, which, in some measure, relieves the painfulness of the impression. Arbaces is painted in gorgeous, but not alluring colours. His vain-glorious pretensions and impatience of contradiction are admirably displayed, and are so managed as to produce an involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone of tragedy, particularly in the scenes in which he affects to treat his vanquished enemy with such condescending kindness; and perhaps this display of upstart pride was meant by the authors as an oblique satire on his low origin, which is afterwards discovered. His pride of self-will and fierce impetuosity, are the same in war and in love. The haughty voluptuousness and pampered effeminacy of his character admit neither respect for his misfortunes, nor pity for his errors. His ambition is a fever in the blood; and his love is a sudden transport of ungovernable caprice that brooks no restraint, and is intoxicated with the lust of power, even in the lap of pleasure, and the sanctuary of the affections. The passion of Panthea is, as it were, a reflection from, and lighted at the shrine of her lover’s flagrant vanity. In the elevation of his rank, and in the consciousness of his personal accomplishments, he seems firmly persuaded (and by sympathy to persuade others) that there is nothing in the world which can be an object of liking or admiration but himself. The first birth and declaration of this perverted sentiment to himself, when he meets with Panthea after his return from conquest, fostered by his presumptuous infatuation and the heat of his inflammable passions, and the fierce and lordly tone in which he repels the suggestion of the natural obstacles to his sudden phrenzy, are in Beaumont and Fletcher’s most daring manner: but the rest is not equal. What may be called the love-scenes are equally gross and commonplace; and instead of any thing like delicacy or a struggle of different feelings, have all the indecency and familiarity of a brothel. Bessus, a comic character in this play, is a swaggering coward, something between Parolles and Falstaff.

253The False One is an indirect imitation of Antony and Cleopatra. We have Septimius for Œnobarbas and Cæsar for Antony. Cleopatra herself is represented in her girlish state, but she is made divine in

‘Youth that opens like perpetual spring,’

and promises the rich harvest of love and pleasure that succeeds it. Her first presenting herself before Cæsar, when she is brought in by Sceva, and the impression she makes upon him, like a vision dropt from the clouds, or

‘Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love.’

are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accomplished villain, well-read in crooked policy and quirks of state; and the description of Pompey has a solemnity and grandeur worthy of his unfortunate end. Septimius says, bringing in his lifeless head,

‘’Tis here, ’tis done! Behold, you fearful viewers,

Shake, and behold the model of the world here,

The pride and strength! Look, look again, ’tis finished!

That that whole armies, nay, whole nations,

Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at,

And fled before, wing’d with their fear and terrors,

That steel War waited on, and Fortune courted,

That high-plum’d Honour built up for her own;

Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness,

Behold that child of war, with all his glories,

By this poor hand made breathless!’

And again Cæsar says of him, who was his mortal enemy (it was not held the fashion in those days, nor will it be held so in time to come, to lampoon those whom you have vanquished)—

——‘Oh thou conqueror,

Thou glory of the world once, now the pity,

Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus?

What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on

To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian?

The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,

That honourable war ne’er taught a nobleness,

Not worthy circumstance shew’d what a man was?

That never heard thy name sung but in banquets,

And loose lascivious pleasures? to a boy,

That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness,

No study of thy life to know thy goodness?

Egyptians, do you think your highest pyramids,

Built to outdure the sun, as you suppose,

Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes,

Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus,

254Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;

No pyramids set off his memories,

But the eternal substance of his greatness,

To which I leave him.’

It is something worth living for, to write or even read such poetry as this is, or to know that it has been written, or that there have been subjects on which to write it!—This, of all Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, comes the nearest in style and manner to Shakespear, not excepting the first act of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which has been sometimes attributed to him.

The Faithful Shepherdess by Fletcher alone, is ‘a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ The author has in it given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy was his most delightful and genial quality, where, to use his own words,

‘He takes most ease, and grows ambitious

Thro’ his own wanton fire and pride delicious.’

The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are luxuriant and delicate in a high degree. He came near to Spenser in a certain tender and voluptuous sense of natural beauty; he came near to Shakespear in the playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole composition is an exquisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry; where the local descriptions receive a tincture from the sentiments and purposes of the speaker, and each character, cradled in the lap of nature, paints ‘her virgin fancies wild’ with romantic grace and classic elegance.

The place and its employments are thus described by Chloe to Thenot:

——‘Here be woods as green

As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet

As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet

Face of the curled stream, with flow’rs as many

As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;

Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,

Arbours o’ergrown with woodbine; caves, and dells;

Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,

Or gather rushes, to make many a ring

For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,

How the pale Phœbe, hunting in a grove,

First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes

She took eternal fire that never dies;

How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,

His temples bound with poppy, to the steep

255Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,

Gilding the mountain with her brother’s light,

To kiss her sweetest.’

There are few things that can surpass in truth and beauty of allegorical description, the invocation of Amaryllis to the God of Shepherds, Pan, to save her from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd, for Syrinx’ sake:

——‘For her dear sake,

That loves the rivers’ brinks, and still doth shake

In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit!’

Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin—

‘Brightest, if there be remaining

Any service, without feigning

I will do it; were I set

To catch the nimble wind, or get

Shadows gliding on the green.’

It would be a task no less difficult than this, to follow the flight of the poet’s Muse, or catch her fleeting graces, fluttering her golden wings, and singing in notes angelical of youth, of love, and joy!

There is only one affected and ridiculous character in this drama, that of Thenot in love with Clorin. He is attached to her for her inviolable fidelity to her buried husband, and wishes her not to grant his suit, lest it should put an end to his passion. Thus he pleads to her against himself:

——‘If you yield, I die

To all affection; ’tis that loyalty

You tie unto this grave I so admire;

And yet there’s something else I would desire,

If you would hear me, but withal deny.

Oh Pan, what an uncertain destiny

Hangs over all my hopes! I will retire;

For if I longer stay, this double fire

Will lick my life up.’

This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, not genuine feeling. A pedant may hang his affections on the point of a dilemma in this manner; but nature does not sophisticate; or when she does, it is to gain her ends, not to defeat them.

The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a character in the end, and gives a shock to the gentle and pleasing sentiments inspired throughout.

The resemblance of Comus to this poem is not so great as has 256been sometimes contended, nor are the particular allusions important or frequent. Whatever Milton copied, he made his own. In reading the Faithful Shepherdess, we find ourselves breathing the moonlight air under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest side or fountain, among fresh dews and flowers, following our vagrant fancies, or smit with the love of nature’s works. In reading Milton’s Comus, and most of his other works, we seem to be entering a lofty dome raised over our heads and ascending to the skies, and as if nature and every thing in it were but a temple and an image consecrated by the poet’s art to the worship of virtue and pure religion. The speech of Clorin, after she has been alarmed by the Satyr, is the only one of which Milton has made a free use.

‘And all my fears go with thee,

What greatness or what private hidden power

Is there in me to draw submission

From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal:

The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,

And she that bore me mortal: prick my hand,

And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and

The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink,

Makes me a-cold: my fear says, I am mortal.

Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me,

And now I do believe it), if I keep

My virgin flow’r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,

No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,

Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,

Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion

Draw me to wander after idle fires;

Or voices calling me in dead of night

To make me follow, and so tole me on

Thro’ mire and standing pools to find my ruin;

Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew

Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats

Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,

Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there’s a pow’r

In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast

All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites

That break their confines: then, strong Chastity,

Be thou my strongest guard, for here I’ll dwell,

In opposition against fate and hell!’

Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd comes nearer it in style and spirit, but still with essential differences, like the two men, and without any appearance of obligation. Ben’s is more homely and grotesque, Fletcher’s is more visionary and fantastical. I hardly know which to prefer. If Fletcher has the advantage in general power and 257sentiment, Jonson is superior in naiveté and truth of local colouring.

The Two Noble Kinsmen is another monument of Fletcher’s genius; and it is said also of Shakespear’s. The style of the first act has certainly more weight, more abruptness, and more involution, than the general style of Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-up to sheathe the rough projecting points and piece the disjointed fragments together. For example, the compliment of Theseus to one of the Queens, that Hercules

‘Tumbled him down upon his Nemean hide,

And swore his sinews thaw’d’

at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more masculine vein than Fletcher usually aimed at. Again, the supplicating address of the distressed Queen to Hippolita,

——‘Lend us a knee:

But touch the ground for us no longer time

Than a dove’s motion, when the head’s pluck’d off’—

is certainly in the manner of Shakespear, with his subtlety and strength of illustration. But, on the other hand, in what immediately follows, relating to their husbands left dead in the field of battle,

‘Tell him if he i’ th’ blood-siz’d field lay swoln,

Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,

What you would do’—

I think we perceive the extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher, not contented with truth or strength of description, but hurried away by the love of violent excitement into an image of disgust and horror, not called for, and not at all proper in the mouth into which it is put. There is a studied exaggeration of the sentiment, and an evident imitation of the parenthetical interruptions and breaks in the line, corresponding to what we sometimes meet in Shakespear, as in the speeches of Leontes in the Winter’s Tale; but the sentiment is overdone, and the style merely mechanical. Thus Hippolita declares, on her lord’s going to the wars,

‘We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep,

When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,

Or tell of babes broach’d on the lance, or women

That have seethed their infants in (and after eat them)

The brine they wept at killing ’em; then if

You stay to see of us such spinsters, we

Should hold you here forever.’

258One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvel says of some sort of passions, that it is

‘Tearing our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life.’

It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who was ‘born only heir to all humanity,’ whose horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not harrow up the feelings for the sake of making mere bravura speeches. There are also in this first act, several repetitions of Shakespear’s phraseology: a thing that seldom or never occurs in his own works. For instance,

——‘Past slightly

His careless execution’—

‘The very lees of such, millions of rates

Exceed the wine of others’—

——‘Let the event,

That never-erring arbitrator, tell us’—

‘Like old importment’s bastard’—

There are also words that are never used by Shakespear in a similar sense:

——‘All our surgeons

Convent in their behoof’—

‘We convent nought else but woes’—

In short, it appears to me that the first part of this play was written in imitation of Shakespear’s manner; but I see no reason to suppose that it was his, but the common tradition, which is however by no means well established. The subsequent acts are confessedly Fletcher’s, and the imitations of Shakespear which occur there (not of Shakespear’s manner as differing from his, but as it was congenial to his own spirit and feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, and exalt our idea of the great original which could give birth to such magnificent conceptions in another. The conversation of Palamon and Arcite in prison is of this description—the outline is evidently taken from that of Guiderius, Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, but filled up with a rich profusion of graces that make it his own again.

‘Pal. How do you, noble cousin?

Arc. How do you, Sir?

Pal. Why, strong enough to laugh at misery,

And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners,

I fear for ever, cousin.

259Arc. I believe it;

And to that destiny have patiently

Laid up my hour to come.

Pal. Oh, cousin Arcite,

Where is Thebes now? where is our noble country?

Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more

Must we behold those comforts; never see

The hardy youths strive for the games of honour,

Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,

Like tall ships under sail: then start amongst ’em,

And as an east wind, leave ’em all behind us

Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,

Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,

Outstript the people’s praises, won the garlands,

Ere they have time to wish ’em ours. Oh, never

Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,

Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses,

Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now

(Better the red-eyed God of war ne’er wore)

Ravish’d our sides, like age, must run to rust,

And deck the temples of those Gods that hate us:

These hands shall never draw ’em out like lightning,

To blast whole armies more.

Arc. No, Palamon,

Those hopes are prisoners with us: here we are,

And here the graces of our youth must wither,

Like a too-timely spring: here age must find us,

And which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried;

The sweet embraces of a loving wife

Loaden with kisses, arm’d with thousand Cupids,

Shall never clasp our necks! No issue know us,

No figures of ourselves shall we e’er see,

To glad our age, and like young eaglets teach ’em

Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,

Remember what your fathers were, and conquer!

The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,

And in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune,

Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done

To youth and nature. This is all our world:

We shall know nothing here, but one another;

Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes;

The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it;

Summer shall come, and with her all delights,

But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.

Pal. ’Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban hounds,

That shook the aged forest with their echoes,

No more now must we halloo; no more shake

Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine

Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,

260Struck with our well-steel’d darts! All valiant uses

(The food and nourishment of noble minds)

In us two here shall perish; we shall die

(Which is the curse of honour) lazily,

Children of grief and ignorance.

Arc. Yet, cousin,

Even from the bottom of these miseries,

From all that fortune can inflict upon us,

I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,

If the Gods please to hold here; a brave patience,

And the enjoying of our griefs together.

Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish

If I think this our prison!

Pal. Certainly,

’Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes

Were twinn’d together; ’tis most true, two souls

Put in two noble bodies, let ’em suffer

The gall of hazard, so they grow together,

Will never sink; they must not; say they could,

A willing man dies sleeping, and all’s done.

Arc. Shall we make worthy uses of this place,

That all men hate so much?

Pal. How, gentle cousin?

Arc. Let’s think this prison a holy sanctuary

To keep us from corruption of worse men!

We’re young, and yet desire the ways of honour:

That, liberty and common conversation,

The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,

Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing

Can be, but our imaginations

May make it ours? And here, being thus together,

We are an endless mine to one another;

We’re father, friends, acquaintance;

We are, in one another, families;

I am your heir, and you are mine; this place

Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor

Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience,

We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us:

The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas

Swallow their youth; were we at liberty,

A wife might part us lawfully, or business;

Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men

Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin,

Where you should never know it, and so perish

Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,

Or prayers to the Gods: a thousand chances,

Were we from hence, would sever us.

Pal. You have made me

(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton

261With my captivity; what a misery

It is to live abroad, and every where!

’Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here,

I’m sure a more content; and all those pleasures,

That woo the wills of men to vanity,

I see thro’ now: and am sufficient

To tell the world, ’tis but a gaudy shadow

That old time, as he passes by, takes with him.

What had we been, old in the court of Creon,

Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance

The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,

Had not the loving Gods found this place for us,

We had died as they do, ill old men unwept,

And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses!

Shall I say more?

Arc. I would hear you still.

Pal. You shall.

Is there record of any two that lov’d

Better than we do, Arcite?

Arc. Sure there cannot.

Pal. I do not think it possible our friendship

Should ever leave us.

Arc. Till our deaths it cannot.’

Thus they ‘sing their bondage freely:’ but just then enters Æmilia, who parts all this friendship between them, and turns them to deadliest foes.

The jailor’s daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic common-places to be found in Shakespear, love, madness, processions, sports, imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in earnest, to have a right to parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest.—The story of the Two Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer’s Palamon and Arcite; but the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of the principal events, and possesses little value or effect.—It is not improbable that Beaumont and Fletcher’s having dramatised this story, put Dryden upon modernising it.

I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas (52 in number), but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the excellences and defects of the rest may be judged of from these. The Bloody Brother, A Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and Theodoret, are among the best of their tragedies: among the comedies, the Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer, and Monsieur Thomas, come perhaps next to the Chances, the Wild Goose Chase, and Rule 262a Wife and Have a Wife.—Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding, is one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the last I shall mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought passion that I might quote, are out of number. One only must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia’s love to Philaster.

——‘Sitting in my window,

Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God

I thought (but it was you) enter our gates;

My blood flew out, and back again as fast

As I had puffed it forth and suck’d it in

Like breath; then was I called away in haste

To entertain you. Never was a man

Heav’d from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais’d

So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss

Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep

From you forever. I did hear you talk

Far above singing!’

And so it is our poets themselves write, ‘far above singing.’^[23] I am loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must,

‘Into a lower world, to theirs obscure

And wild—To breathe in other air

Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.’

Ben Jonson’s serious productions are, in my opinion, superior to his comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and painful industry; but sense and industry agree better with the grave and severe, than with the light and gay productions of the Muse. ‘His plays were works,’ as some one said of them, ‘while others’ works were plays.’ The observation had less of compliment than of truth in it. He may be said to mine his way into a subject, like a mole, and throws up a prodigious quantity of matter on the surface, so that the richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have. His fault is, that he sets himself too much to his subject, and cannot let go his hold of an idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in 263what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.

‘Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.’

He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and took the same, and even more successful pains to grovel to the lowest. He raised himself up or let himself down to the level of his subject, by ponderous machinery. By dint of application, and a certain strength of nerve, he could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than to mine Host of the New Inn. His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic. The principal character gives one the idea of a lofty column of solid granite, nodding to its base from its pernicious height, and dashed in pieces, by a breath of air, a word of its creator—feared, not pitied, scorned, unwept, and forgotten. The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked out the historian’s outline, so that the vices and passions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisoned atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more glowing colours.—I am half afraid to give any extracts, lest they should be tortured into an application to other times and characters than those referred to by the poet. Some of the sounds, indeed, may bear (for what I know), an awkward construction: some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed suspicion. But that is not my fault. It only proves, that the characters of prophet and poet are implied in each other; that he who describes human nature well once, describes it for good and all, as it was, is, and I begin to fear, will ever be. Truth always was, and must always remain a libel to the tyrant and the slave. Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two public informers in those days, are described as

‘Two of Sejanus’ blood-hounds, whom he breeds

With human flesh, to bay at citizens.’

But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating the point of his own character with two Senators whom he has entrapped, boldly asserts, in a more courtly strain,

‘——To be a spy on traitors,

Is honourable vigilance.’

This sentiment of the respectability of the employment of a government spy, which had slept in Tacitus for near two thousand 264years, has not been without its modern patrons. The effects of such ‘honourable vigilance’ are very finely exposed in the following high-spirited dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble Romans, who loved their country, but were not fashionable enough to confound their country with its oppressors, and the extinguishers of its liberty.

‘Arr. What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me)

That have preserv’d thy hairs to this white dye,

And kept so reverend and so dear a head

Safe on his comely shoulders?

Lep. Arts, Arruntius!

None but the plain and passive fortitude

To suffer and be silent; never stretch

These arms against the torrent; live at home,

With my own thoughts and innocence about me,

Not tempting the wolves’ jaws: these are my arts.

Arr. I would begin to study ’em, if I thought

They would secure me. May I pray to Jove

In secret, and be safe? aye, or aloud?

With open wishes? so I do not mention

Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must,

If I speak out. ’Tis hard, that. May I think,

And not be rack’d? What danger is’t to dream?

Talk in one’s sleep, or cough! Who knows the law?

May I shake my head without a comment? Say

It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown

Upon the Gemonies? These now are things,

Whereon men’s fortunes, yea, their fate depends:

Nothing hath privilege ’gainst the violent ear.

No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free

(Not our religious and most sacred times)

From some one kind of cruelty; all matter,

Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman’s rage,

The idleness of drunkards, women’s nothing,

Jesters’ simplicity, all, all is good

That can be catch’d at.’

’Tis a pretty picture; and the duplicates of it, though multiplied without end, are seldom out of request.

The following portrait of a prince besieged by flatterers (taken from Tiberius) has unrivalled force and beauty, with historic truth.

——‘If this man

Had but a mind allied unto his words,

How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome?

Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall

265Under a virtuous prince. Wish’d liberty

Ne’er lovelier looks than under such a crown.

But when his grace is merely but lip-good,

And that, no longer than he airs himself

Abroad in public, there to seem to shun

The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within

Are lechery unto him, and so feed

His brutish sense with their afflicting sound,

As (dead to virtue) he permits himself

Be carried like a pitcher by the ears

To every act of vice; this is a case

Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh

And close approach of bloody tyranny.

Flattery is midwife unto princes’ rage:

And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant

Than that, and whisperers’ grace, that have the time,

The place, the power, to make all men offenders!’

The only part of this play in which Ben Jonson has completely forgotten himself, (or rather seems not to have done so), is in the conversations between Livia and Eudemus, about a wash for her face, here called a fucus, to appear before Sejanus. Catiline’s Conspiracy does not furnish by any means an equal number of striking passages, and is spun out to an excessive length with Cicero’s artificial and affected orations against Catiline, and in praise of himself. His apologies for his own eloquence, and declarations that in all his art he uses no art at all, put one in mind of Polonius’s circuitous way of coming to the point. Both these tragedies, it might be observed, are constructed on the exact principles of a French historical picture, where every head and figure is borrowed from the antique; but somehow, the precious materials of old Roman history and character are better preserved in Jonson’s page than on David’s canvas.

Two of the most poetical passages in Ben Jonson, are the description of Echo in Cynthia’s Revels, and the fine comparison of the mind to a temple, in the New Inn; a play which, on the whole, however, I can read with no patience.

I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some account of Massinger and Ford, who wrote in the time of Charles I. I am sorry I cannot do it con amore. The writers of whom I have chiefly had to speak were true poets, impassioned, fanciful, ‘musical as is Apollo’s lute;’ but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford finical and fastidious. I find little in the works of these two dramatists, but a display of great strength and subtlety of understanding, inveteracy of purpose, and perversity of will. This is not exactly what 266we look for in poetry, which, according to the most approved recipes, should combine pleasure with profit, and not owe all its fascination over the mind to its power of shocking or perplexing us. The Muses should attract by grace or dignity of mien. Massinger makes an impression by hardness and repulsiveness of manner. In the intellectual processes which he delights to describe, ‘reason panders will:’ he fixes arbitrarily on some object which there is no motive to pursue, or every motive combined against it, and then by screwing up his heroes or heroines to the deliberate and blind accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive at ‘the true pathos and sublime of human life.’ That is not the way. He seldom touches the heart or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to hope to excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the will, or intricate contrivances of the understanding, to obtain that which is better left alone, and where the interest arises principally from the conflict between the absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with which it is persisted in. For the most part, his villains are a sort of lusus naturæ; his impassioned characters are like drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is extreme and outrageous, their motives unaccountable and weak; their misfortunes are without necessity, and their crimes without temptation, to ordinary apprehensions. I do not say that this is invariably the case in all Massinger’s scenes, but I think it will be found that a principle of playing at cross-purposes is the ruling passion throughout most of them. This is the case in the tragedy of the Unnatural Combat, in the Picture, the Duke of Milan, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and even in the Bondman, and the Virgin Martyr, &c. In the Picture, Matthias nearly loses his wife’s affections, by resorting to the far-fetched and unnecessary device of procuring a magical portrait to read the slightest variation in her thoughts. In the same play, Honoria risks her reputation and her life to gain a clandestine interview with Matthias, merely to shake his fidelity to his wife, and when she has gained her object, tells the king her husband in pure caprice and fickleness of purpose. The Virgin Martyr is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous conversions to and from Paganism and Christianity. The only scenes of any real beauty and tenderness in this play, are those between Dorothea and Angelo, her supposed friendless beggar-boy, but her guardian angel in disguise, which are understood to be by Deckar. The interest of the Bondman turns upon two different acts of penance and self-denial, in the persons of the hero and heroine, Pisander and Cleora. In the Duke of Milan (the most poetical of Massinger’s productions), Sforza’s resolution to destroy his wife, rather than bear the thought of her surviving him, is as much out of the verge of nature and probability, as it is unexpected and revolting, 267from the want of any circumstances of palliation leading to it. It stands out alone, a pure piece of voluntary atrocity, which seems not the dictate of passion, but a start of phrensy; as cold-blooded in the execution as it is extravagant in the conception.

Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person whose actions we are at a loss to explain till the conclusion of the piece, when the attempt to account for them from motives originally amiable and generous, only produces a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying the mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to seduce the wife of his benefactor, he then (failing) attempts her death, slanders her foully, and wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand of her husband, and has him poisoned by a nefarious stratagem, and all this to appease a high sense of injured honour, that ‘felt a stain like a wound,’ and from the tender overflowings of fraternal affection, his sister having, it appears, been formerly betrothed to, and afterwards deserted by, the Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Overreach is the most successful and striking effort of Massinger’s pen, and the best known to the reader, but it will hardly be thought to form an exception to the tenour of the above remarks.^[24] The same spirit of 268caprice and sullenness survives in Rowe’s Fair Penitent, taken from this author’s Fatal Dowry.

Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others, from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been lamented that the play of his which has been most admired (’Tis Pity She’s a Whore) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness of the story is what gives it its critical interest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of facts, and naked declaration of passions. It was not the least of Shakespear’s praise, that he never tampered with unfair subjects. His genius was above it; his taste kept aloof from it. I do not deny the power of simple painting and polished style in 269this tragedy in general, and of a great deal more in some few of the scenes, particularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband, which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and phrensy with consummate art and knowledge; but I do not find much other power in the author (generally speaking) than that of playing with edged tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons. And what confirms me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency of his other plays. Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think extravagant—others may think it sublime, and be right) they are merely exercises of style and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment. Where they have not the sting of illicit passion, they are quite pointless, and seem painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs. The affected brevity and 270division of some of the lines into hemistichs, &c. so as to make in one case a mathematical stair-case of the words and answers given to different speakers,^[25] is an instance of frigid and ridiculous pedantry. An artificial elaborateness is the general characteristic of Ford’s style. In this respect his plays resemble Miss Baillie’s more than any others I am acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the exuberance and unstudied force which characterised his immediate predecessors. There is too much of scholastic subtlety, an innate perversity of understanding or predominance of will, which either seeks the irritation of inadmissible subjects, or to stimulate its own faculties by taking the most barren, and making something out of nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He does not draw along with the reader: he does not work upon our sympathy, but on our antipathy or our indifference; and there is as little of the social or gregarious principle in his productions as there appears to have been in his personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John Suckling, who says of him in the Sessions of the Poets—

‘In the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat

With folded arms and melancholy hat.’

I do not remember without considerable effort the plot or persons of most of his plays—Perkin Warbeck, The Lover’s Melancholy, Love’s Sacrifice, and the rest. There is little character, except of the most evanescent or extravagant kind (to which last class we may refer that of the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart)—little imagery or fancy, and no action. It is but fair however to give a scene or two, in illustration of these remarks (or in confutation of them, if they are wrong) and I shall take the concluding one of the Broken Heart, which is held up as the author’s master-piece.

‘Scene—A Room in the Palace.

Loud Music.—Enter Euphranea, led by Groneas and Hemophil: Prophilus, led by Christalla and Philema: Nearchus supporting Calantha, Crotolon, and Amelus.—(Music ceases).

Cal. We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus; on whom attend they?

Crot. My son, gracious princess,

Whisper’d some new device, to which these revels

271Should be but usher: wherein I conceive

Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors.

Cal. A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes,

Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes

Is with the king?

Crot. He is.

Cal. On to the dance!

Dear cousin, hand you the bride: the bridegroom must be

Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous,

Euphranea; I shall scarcely prove a temptress.

Fall to our dance!

(They dance the first change, during which enter Armostes).

Arm. (in a whisper to Calantha). The king your father’s dead.

Cal. To the other change.

Arm. Is’t possible?

Another Dance.—Enter Bassanes.

Bass. (in a whisper to Calantha). Oh! Madam,

Panthea, poor Panthea’s starv’d.

Cal. Beshrew thee!

Lead to the next!

Bass. Amazement dulls my senses.

Another Dance.—Enter Orgilus.

Org. Brave Ithocles is murder’d, murder’d cruelly.

(Aside to Calantha).

Cal. How dull this music sounds! Strike up more sprightly:

Our footings are not active like our heart,^[26]

Which treads the nimbler measure.

Org. I am thunderstruck.

The last Change.—Music ceases.

Cal. So; Let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion

Rais’d fresher colours on our cheek?

Near. Sweet princess,

A perfect purity of blood enamels

The beauty of your white.

Cal. We all look cheerfully:

And, cousin, ’tis methinks a rare presumption

In any who prefers our lawful pleasures

Before their own sour censure, to interrupt

The custom of this ceremony bluntly.

Near. None dares, lady.

Cal. Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver’d to me

How that the king was dead.

Arm. The king is dead,’ &c. &c.

272This, 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.

‘Cal. Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow

Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all,

I put my mother’s wedding-ring upon

His finger; ’twas my father’s last bequest:

(Places a ring on the finger of Ithocles).

Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am:

Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords,

I but deceiv’d your eyes with antic gesture,

When one news strait came huddling on another

Of death, and death, and death: still I danc’d forward;

But it struck home and here, and in an instant.

Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries

Can vow a present end to all their sorrow’s,

Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.

They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings:

Let me die smiling.

Near. ’Tis a truth too ominous.

Cal. One kiss on these cold lips—my last: crack, crack:

Argos, now Sparta’s king, command the voices

Which wait at th’ altar, now to sing the song

I fitted for my end.’

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 will dance: music: we will dance....

Enter Prepasso.

Who saw the Duke? the Duke?

Aurelia. Music.

Prepasso. The Duke? is the Duke returned?

Aurelia. Music.

Enter Celso.

The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not.

273Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves.

Enter a Page.

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.

Enter Malevole and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit.

Malevole. The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead.

Aurelia. Music!’

Act IV. Scene 3.

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 274recluseness and austerity of a college-life, must have appeared like Armida’s enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like

‘Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount,

Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,

Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth

Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’

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!’

LECTURE V ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC., THE FOUR P’S, THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, GAMMER GURTON’S NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS.

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 275devotion 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.

‘Pard. By the first part of this last tale,

It seemeth you came of late from the ale:

For reason on your side so far doth fail,

That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail.

Wherein you forget your own part clearly,

For you be as untrue as I:

But in one point you are beyond me,

For you may lie by authority,

And all that have wandered so far,

That no man can be their controller.

And where you esteem your labour so much,

I say yet again, my pardons are such,

That if there were a thousand souls on a heap,

I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep,

As you have brought yourself on pilgrimage,

In the last quarter of your voyage,

Which is far a this side heaven, by God:

There your labour and pardon is odd.

With small cost without any pain,

These pardons bring them to heaven plain:

Give me but a penny or two-pence,

And as soon as the soul departeth hence,

In half an hour, or three-quarters at the most,

The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.’

276The 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.

‘No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-gate,

‘Till from the body he be separate:

And whom have ye known die honestly,

Without help of the Poticary?

Nay, all that cometh to our handling,

Except ye hap to come to hanging....

Since of our souls the multitude

I send to heaven, when all is view’d

Who should but I then altogether

Have thank of all their coming thither?’

The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously—

‘If ye kill’d a thousand in an hour’s space,

When come they to heaven, dying out of grace?’

But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts—

‘If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied;

When come they to heaven, if they never died?

· · · · ·

But when ye feel your conscience ready,

I can send you to heaven very quickly.’

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.

‘Now have I found one mastery,

That ye can do indifferently;

And it is neither selling nor buying,

But even only very lying.’

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 277folly. 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)—

‘Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen,

For ghostly riches they have no cousin;

And moreover, to me they bring

Sufficient succour for my living.

And here be relics of such a kind,

As in this world no man can find.

Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing,

Who list to offer shall have my blessing.

Friends, here shall ye see even anon,

Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone.

Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper;

My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper

Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure.—

Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk:

Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work,

May happily lose part of his eye-sight,

But not all till he be blind outright.

Kiss it hardly with good devotion.

Pot. This kiss shall bring us much promotion:

Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss’d a worse.

· · · · ·

For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh,

That All-Hallows’ breath stinketh.

Palm. Ye judge All-Hallows’ breath unknown:

If any breath stink, it is your own.

Pot. I know mine own breath from All-Hallows,

Or else it were time to kiss the gallows.

Pard. Nay, Sirs, here may ye see

The great toe of the Trinity;

Who to this toe any money voweth,

And once may roll it in his mouth,

278All his life after I undertake,

He shall never be vex’d with the tooth-ache.

Pot. I pray you turn that relic about;

Either the Trinity had the gout;

Or else, because it is three toes in one,

God made it as much as three toes alone.

Pard. Well, let that pass, and look upon this:

Here is a relic that doth not miss

To help the least as well as the most:

This is a buttock-bone of Penticost.

· · · · ·

Here is a box full of humble bees,

That stung Eve as she sat on her knees

Tasting the fruit to her forbidden:

Who kisseth the bees within this hidden,

Shall have as much pardon of right,

As for any relic he kiss’d this night....

Good friends, I have yet here in this glass,

Which on the drink at the wedding was

Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly:

If ye honour this relic devoutly,

Although ye thirst no whit the less,

Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless.

After which drinking, ye shall be as meet

To stand on your head as on your feet.’

The same sort of significant irony runs through the Apothecary’s knavish enumeration of miraculous cures in his possession.

‘For this medicine helpeth one and other,

And bringeth them in case that they need no other.

Here is a syrapus de Byzansis,

A little thing is enough of this;

For even the weight of one scrippal

Shall make you as strong as a cripple....

These be the things that break all strife,

Between man’s sickness and his life.

From all pain these shall you deliver,

And set you even at rest forever.

Here is a medicine no more like the same,

Which commonly is called thus by name....

Not one thing here particularly,

But worketh universally;

For it doth me as much good when I sell it,

As all the buyers that take it or smell it.

If any reward may entreat ye,

I beseech your mastership be good to me,

And ye shall have a box of marmalade,

So fine that you may dig it with a spade.’

279After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift’s boast with respect to the invention of irony,

‘Which I was born to introduce,

Refin’d it first, and shew’d its use,’

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.

‘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 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 fire-brand;

Wherewith they play’d so prettily,

That Lucifer laugh’d merrily.

And all the residue of the fiends

Did laugh thereat full well like friends.

But of my friend I saw no whit,

Nor durst not ask for her as yet.

Anon all this rout was brought in silence,

And I by an usher brought to presence

Of Lucifer; then low, as well I could,

I kneeled, which he so well allow’d

That thus he beck’d, and by St. Antony

He smiled on me well-favour’dly,

Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors;

Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs;

Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels;

Flashing the fire out of his nostrils;

280Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously,

That methought time to fall to flattery,

Wherewith I told, as I shall tell;

Oh pleasant picture! O prince of hell!’ &c.

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!

‘But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing,

Believing the best, good may be growing.

In judging the best, no harm at the least:

In judging the worst, no good at the best.

But best in these things it seemeth to me,

To make no judgment upon ye;

But as the church does judge or take them,

So do ye receive or forsake them.

And so be you sure you cannot err,

But may be a fruitful follower.’

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—

‘That like a trumpet, makes the spirits dance:’

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.

281‘Ingenioso. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.

Edmund Spenser,

Henry Constable,

Thomas Lodge,

Samuel Daniel,

Thomas Watson,

Michael Drayton,

John Davis,

John Marston,

Kit. Marlowe,

William Shakespear;’ and one Churchyard [who is consigned to an untimely grave.]

‘Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure: what’s thy judgment of Spenser?

Jud. A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po;

A shriller nightingale than ever blest

The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.

Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,

While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy.

Attentive was full many a dainty ear:

Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,

While sweetly of his Faëry Queen he sung;

While to the water’s fall he tuned her fame,

And in each bark engrav’d Eliza’s name.

And yet for all, this unregarding soil

Unlaced the line of his desired life,

Denying maintenance for his dear relief;

Careless even to prevent his exequy,

Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.

Ing. Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,

Where thick-skinn’d chuffs laugh at a scholar’s need.

But softly may our honour’d ashes rest,

That lie by merry Chaucer’s noble chest.

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.

Jud. Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear,

And lays it up in willing prisonment:

Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage

War with the proudest big Italian,

That melts his heart in sugar’d sonnetting.

Only let him more sparingly make use

Of others’ wit, and use his own the more,

That well may scorn base imitation.

For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert,

Yet subject to a critic’s marginal:

Lodge for his oar in every paper boat,

He that turns over Galen every day,

To sit and simper Euphues’ legacy.

Ing. Michael Drayton.

Jud. Drayton’s sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye,

Able to ravish the rash gazer’s eye.

282Ing. 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. Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,

That jerk in hidden charms these looser times:

Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,

Is graced with a fair and sweeping train.

John Marston—

Jud. What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up man, put up for shame,

Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,

Withouten bands or garters’ ornament.

He quaffs a cup of Frenchman’s helicon,

Then royster doyster in his oily terms

Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe’er he meets,

And strews about Ram-alley meditations.

Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch’d terms,

Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?

Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts,

That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.

Ing. Christopher Marlowe—

Jud. Marlowe was happy in his buskin’d Muse;

Alas! unhappy in his life and end.

Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,

Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.

Ing. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got

A tragic penman for a dreary plot.

Benjamin Jonson.

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.

William Shakespear.

Jud. Who loves Adonis’ love, or Lucrece’ rape,

His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life,

Could but a graver subject him content,

Without love’s lazy foolish languishment.’

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 283of 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.

‘Phil. Bann’d be those hours, when ‘mongst the learned throng,

By Granta’s muddy bank we whilom sung.

Stud. Bann’d be that hill which learned wits adore,

Where erst we spent our stock and little store.

Phil. Bann’d be those musty mews, where we have spent

Our youthful days in paled languishment.

Stud. Bann’d be those cozening arts that wrought our woe,

Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro....

Phil. Curst be our thoughts whene’er they dream of hope;

Bann’d be those haps that henceforth flatter us,

When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye,

From our first birth until our burying day.

In our first gamesome age, our doting sires

Carked and car’d to have us lettered:

Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent:

Us our kind college from the teat did tent,

And forced us walk before we weaned were.

From that time since wandered have we still

In the wide world, urg’d by our forced will;

Nor ever have we happy fortune tried;

Then why should hope with our rent state abide?’

‘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:

‘I was not train’d in Academic bowers;

And to those learned streams I nothing owe,

Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow:

Mine have been any thing but studious hours.

Yet can I fancy, wandering ‘mid thy towers,

Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap.

My brow seems tightening with the Doctor’s cap;

And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.

Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech;

Old Ramus’ ghost is busy at my brain,

284And my skull teems with notions infinite:

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach

Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen’s vein;

And half had stagger’d that stout Stagyrite.^[28]

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?

285Im. 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—

286Sir 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.

287‘Gog’s crosse, Gammer’ (says Cocke the boy), ‘if ye will laugh, look in but at the door,

And see how Hodge lieth tumbling and tossing amidst the floor,

Raking there, some fire to find among the ashes dead’

[That is, to light a candle to look for the lost needle],

‘Where there is not a spark so big as a pin’s head:

At last in a dark corner two sparks he thought he sees,

Which were indeed nought else but Gib our cat’s two eyes.

Puff, quoth Hodge; thinking thereby to have fire without doubt;

With that Gib shut her two eyes, and so the fire was out;

And by and by them open’d, even as they were before,

With that the sparks appeared, even as they had done of yore:

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

Gib, as he felt the blast, strait way began to wink;

Till Hodge fell of swearing, as came best to his turn;

The fire was sure bewitch’d, and therefore would not burn.

At last Gib up the stairs, among old posts and pins,

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

Cursing and swearing oaths, were never of his making,

That Gib would fire the house, if that she were not taken.’

Diccon the strolling beggar (or Bedlam, as he is called) steals a piece of bacon from behind Gammer Gurton’s door, and in answer to Hodge’s complaint of being dreadfully pinched for hunger, asks—

‘Why Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set?

Hodge. Gog’s bread, Diccon, I came too late, was nothing there to get:

Gib (a foul fiend might on her light) lick’d the milk-pan so clean:

See Diccon, ’twas not so well wash’d this seven year, I ween.

A pestilence light on all ill luck, I had thought yet for all this,

Of a morsel of bacon behind the door, at worst I should not miss:

But when I sought a slip to cut, as I was wont to do,

Gog’s souls, Diccon, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too.’

Hodge’s difficulty in making Diccon understand what the needle is which his dame has lost, shows his superior acquaintance with the conveniences and modes of abridging labour in more civilised life, of which the other had no idea.

‘Hodge. Has she not gone, trowest now thou, and lost her neele?’ [So it is called here.]

‘Dic. (says staring). Her eel, Hodge! Who fished of late? That was a dainty dish.’

Hodge. Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man, ’tis neither flesh nor fish:

A little thing with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller [silver],

Small, long, sharp at the point, and strait as any pillar.

Dic. I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bring’st me more in doubt.

288Hodge. (answers with disdain). Know’st not with what Tom tailor’s man sits broching through a clout?

A neele, a neele, my Gammer’s neele is gone.’

The rogue Diccon threatens to shew Hodge a spirit; but though Hodge runs away through pure fear before it has time to appear, he does not fail, in the true spirit of credulity, to give a faithful and alarming account of what he did not see to his mistress, concluding with a hit at the Popish Clergy.

‘By the mass, I saw him of late call up a great black devil.

Oh, the knave cried, ho, ho, he roared and he thunder’d;

And ye had been there, I am sure you’d murrainly ha’ wonder’d.

Gam. Wast not thou afraid, Hodge, to see him in his place?

Hodge (lies and says). No, and he had come to me, should have laid him on his face,

Should have promised him.

Gam. But, Hodge, had he no horns to push?

Hodge. As long as your two arms. Saw ye never Friar Rush,

Painted on a cloth, with a fine long cow’s tail,

And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nail?

For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his brother:

Look even what face Friar Rush had, the devil had such another.’

He then adds (quite apocryphally) while he is in for it, that ‘the devil said plainly that Dame Chat had got the needle,’ which makes all the disturbance. The same play contains the well-known good old song, beginning and ending—

‘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.

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 nothing am a-cold:

I stuff my skin so full within

Of jolly good ale and old.

Back and side go bare, &c.

I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast,

And a crab laid in the fire:

A little bread shall do me stead,

Much bread I not desire.

No frost nor snow, no wind I trow,

289Can hurt me if I wolde,

I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt

In jolly good ale and old.

Back and side go bare, &c.

And Tib, my wife, that as her life

Loveth well good ale to seek;

Full oft drinks she, till ye may see

The tears run down her cheek:

Then doth she troll to me the bowl,

Even as a malt-worm sholde:

And saith, sweetheart, I took my part

Of this 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.

Such was the wit, such was the mirth of our ancestors:—homely, but hearty; coarse perhaps, but kindly. Let no man despise it, for ‘Evil to him that evil thinks.’ To think it poor and beneath notice because it is not just like ours, is the same sort of hypercriticism that was exercised by the person who refused to read some old books, because they were ‘such very poor spelling.’ The meagreness of their literary or their bodily fare was at least relished by themselves; and this is better than a surfeit or an indigestion. It is refreshing to look out of ourselves sometimes, not to be always holding the glass to our own peerless perfections: and as there is a dead wall which always intercepts the prospect of the future from our view (all that we can see beyond it is the heavens), it is as well to direct our eyes now and then without scorn to the page of history, and repulsed in our attempts to penetrate the secrets of the next six thousand years, not to turn our backs on old long syne!

The other detached plays of nearly the same period of which I proposed to give a cursory account, are Green’s Tu Quoque, Microcosmus, Lingua, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Pinner of Wakefield, and the Spanish Tragedy. Of the spurious plays attributed to Shakespear, and to be found in the editions of his works, such as the Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John Oldcastle, The Widow of Watling Street, &c. I shall say nothing here, because I suppose the reader to be already acquainted with them, and because I have given a general account of them in another work.

Green’s Tu Quoque, by George Cook, a contemporary of Shakespear’s, is so called from Green the actor, who played the part of Bubble in this very lively and elegant comedy, with the cant 290phrase of Tu Quoque perpetually in his mouth. The double change of situation between this fellow and his master, Staines, each passing from poverty to wealth, and from wealth to poverty again, is equally well imagined and executed. A gay and gallant spirit pervades the whole of it; wit, poetry, and morality, each take their turn in it. The characters of the two sisters, Joyce and Gertrude, are very skilfully contrasted, and the manner in which they mutually betray one another into the hands of their lovers, first in the spirit of mischief, and afterwards of retaliation, is quite dramatic. ‘If you cannot find in your heart to tell him you love him, I’ll sigh it out for you. Come, we little creatures must help one another,’ says the Madcap to the Madonna. As to style and matter, this play has a number of pigeon-holes full of wit and epigrams which are flying out in almost every sentence. I could give twenty pointed conceits, wrapped up in good set terms. Let one or two at the utmost suffice. A bad hand at cards is thus described. Will Rash says to Scattergood, ‘Thou hast a wild hand indeed: thy small cards shew like a troop of rebels, and the knave of clubs their chief leader.’ Bubble expresses a truism very gaily on finding himself equipped like a gallant—‘How apparel makes a man respected! The very children in the street do adore me.’ We find here the first mention of Sir John Suckling’s ‘melancholy hat,’ as a common article of wear—the same which he chose to clap on Ford’s head, and the first instance of the theatrical double entendre which has been repeated ever since of an actor’s ironically abusing himself in his feigned character.