Chapter V · (continued 2)

The Famous Chronicle History of King Edward the First is almost as complete a medley as the most tangled play of Greene's. Peele's lack of power to concentrate interest makes itself lamentably felt throughout. We are conscious, as we read, that King Edward, or Longshanks, as he is always named, is intended to impress us with his sterling English qualities. He overcomes all difficulties, and if we could only unravel his thread from the skein of characters, we should acknowledge him to be a worthy monarch, brave, loving, wise, just and firm. One or two scenes, we feel, are inserted deliberately for the sake of heightening his character, notably that in which he elects to face single-handed a man whom he supposes to be the redoubtable Robin Hood and who proves to be no less than Llewellyn, Prince of Wales. Unfortunately these excellent intentions are not seconded by the rest of the play. Some of the scenes in which Edward takes part are not at all calculated to increase his dignity; in the last of all, for instance, it is hardly an English act on his part to conceal his identity in a monk's cowl and spy upon the secrets of his queen's dying confession. That, however, may have been pardoned by an Elizabethan audience; any trick may have been thought good enough which exposed Spanish villany. A more serious defect is the undue prominence given to Llewellyn and to Queen Elinor. This is not accidental, for the full title of the play states that it is to include 'also the life of Llevellen rebell in Wales; lastly, the sinking of Queene Elinor, who sunck at Charingcrosse, and rose againe at Potters-hith, now named Queenehith'. Peele chose three distinct points of interest because he knew no better. It seemed to him, just as it did to Greene, that by so doing he would treble the interest of the play as a whole; both were a long way from comprehending the wisdom underlying the dramatic law of Unity of Action.

If not famous, Peele's Chronicle History has become, in a small way, infamous, by reason of the representation it gives of the queen's character. A Spaniard, she figures as a monster of cruelty, pride and vanity, capable of wishes and deeds which we have no desire to remember. At this distance of time, however, righteous indignation at the injustice done to a fair name is perhaps uncalled for. The play is only read by the curious student, and it is quite apparent, as others have pointed out, that the attack is directed more against the Spanish nation than against an individual. We may still regret the injustice, but we know better than to wonder at any misconception sixteenth-century Englishmen may have formed of their hated foe.

As a specimen of Peele's rarely exercised broad humour the knavery of the Welsh Friar, Hugh ap David, should be noticed; his trick for winning a hundred marks from 'sweet St. Francis' receiver' is, perhaps, the best part of it. More worthy of remembrance is Joan, admirably chosen, for her innocence and gentleness, to stand in contrast to Queen Elinor; the story of her happy love and most unhappy death adds a touch of genuine pathos to the gruesome shadows of tragedy which darken the final pages. Much in her portrait, as in the prose scenes concerned with the Welsh Friar, may have been inspired by the success of Greene, whose influence is marked throughout the play.

For our illustrations we quote Gloucester's lament over his young wife—the closing speech of the play—, and one of several allusions to the English nation which testify to the poet's sincere and warm patriotism.

(1)

(2)

If Peele wrote The Battle of Alcazar, which seems probable, he benefited by the mistakes of the previous play. It is a martial tragedy, imitating the verse and style of Marlowe's Tamburlaine or Greene's Alphonsus, King of Arragon. Acts and scenes delimit the stages of the course of events, the distraction of humorous prose scenes is banished, independent plots are forbidden their old parallel existence, everything moves steadily towards the tragic conclusion. Lest there should still arise uncertainty as to the drift of the various incidents as they occur, a 'Presenter' is at hand to serve as prologue to each act and explain, not merely what must be understood as having happened off the stage in the intervals, but what is about to take place on the stage, and the purpose that lies behind it. The verse is regular and often vigorous, though the vigour sometimes appears forced, and the constant stream of end-stopt lines becomes monotonous. Murders that cannot find room elsewhere are perpetrated in dumb-show, ghosts within the wings cry out Vindicta!, and the leading characters suffer the usual inflatus of windy rant to make their dimensions more kingly. Still the play fails to achieve the right effect. There is no dominant hero, the central figure, if such there is, being the villain, Muly Mahamet the Moor. But his is not the career, nor his the character, at all likely to win either the sympathy or the interest of an English audience. Defeated, exiled, twice seen in desperate flight, treacherous, and incapable of anything but amazing speeches, he thoroughly deserves the ignominious fate reserved for him. Of the three other claimants to pre-eminence, Sebastian lends his aid to the base Moor and is defeated and slain; Stukeley, the Englishman, is a traitor to his country, and is murdered on the battlefield in cold blood by his comrades; while Abdelmelec, who is alone successful in war, does not appear in more than five of the thirteen scenes, and is killed in the last battle. In action, too, there is a divided interest. The first act is entirely devoted to the campaign which places Abdelmelec on the throne of the usurping Moor; not until the fourth scene of the second act does King Sebastian of Portugal come upon the stage; only from that point onward are we concerned with his unsuccessful attempt—in which he is assisted by Stukeley—to restore the crown of Morocco to Muly Mahamet. Once more we have to lament that absence of unity and grip, though under improved conditions, which we noticed in Peele's former plays.

Captain Stukeley was a more interesting character off the stage than on; the details of his life may be found in Fuller, or in Dyce's prefatory note to the play in his edition of Peele's works. The surprising thing is that he was not hissed from the boards by indignant patriots. But his exploits, and his thoroughly English pride, seem to have awakened the sympathies of his countrymen, for his memory was cherished as that of a popular hero. His traitorous intention to conquer Ireland for the Pope, however, receives noble reproof from Peele in the mouths of Don Diego Lopez and King Sebastian. The latter's speech well deserves perusal. But we have quoted sufficiently already from Peele's patriotic eloquence.

The extravagant language of the Moor has been made immortal by Shakespeare: a line from one of his extraordinary speeches to his wife, Calipolis, in exile, is adapted by Pistol to his own rhetorical use (Second Part of Henry the Fourth, II. iv). To show the inconsistencies over which rant unblushingly careers, we give two consecutive speeches by this terrible fellow.

[The Moor's Son has just given a highly coloured description of the enemy's forces.]

[At this point a Messenger enters, reports general disaster, and urges flight.]

The Old Wive's Tale is much shorter than Peele's other plays and is written mainly in prose, without any division into acts. It appears to have been an experiment in broad comedy to the exclusion of all things serious, for wherever a graver tone threatens to direct the action some absurd character or incident is hastily introduced to save the situation. Regarded as such, it cannot be said to be either successful or wholly unsuccessful. The opening scene is certainly one of the most racy and homely Inductions to be found in dramatic literature, while one or two of the other scenes, though they make poor reading, are calculated to rouse laughter when acted; the lower characters, at least, display plenty of animation, and the creation of that fantastic person of royal pedigree, Huanebango—'Polimackeroeplacidus my grandfather, my father Pergopolineo, my mother Dionora de Sardinia, famously descended'—with his effort to 'lisp in numbers' of classical accentuation—'Philida, phileridos, pamphilida, florida, flortos'—reveals humour of a finer edge than the mere laughter-raising kind. Against this moderate praise, however, must be set some blame. It has been said before that the play is a by-word for confusion. An extraordinary recklessness rules the introduction of characters, participation in one scene being, apparently, sufficient justification for the inclusion of a fresh character at any stage of the play. As vital an error is the neglect to excite our pity for Delia, round whom the whole story revolves; she is represented as thoroughly happy with her captor and so utterly forgetful of her brothers that she is content to ill-treat them at the will of Sacrapant. True, we are told that magic has wrought the change in her. But a skilful dramatist would have left her some unconquered emotions of reluctance or distress to quicken our sympathy.

The story is this. Three lads, Antic, Frolic and Fantastic, having lost their way, are given shelter by a countryman, Clunch—a smith, by the way, like our old friend, Adam—whose goodwife, Madge, entertains two of them with a tale while the other sleeps with her husband. She begins correctly enough with a 'Once upon a time', but soon lands herself in difficulties amongst the various facts that require preliminary explanation before the story can be properly launched. At the right moment the people referred to themselves appear and the story passes from narration to action. We learn from two brothers that they are seeking their sister, Delia, who has been carried off by a wicked magician, Sacrapant—not to be confused with Greene's Sacripant. This same sorcerer has also separated a loving couple; by his art the lady, Venelia, has gone mad, and the youth, Erestus, is converted into an old man by day and a bear by night. The aged-looking Erestus is regarded throughout the countryside as a soothsayer. His neighbour, Lampriscus, cursed by two daughters, one of whom is frightfully ugly while the other is a virago, consults him about their marriages. By his advice they take their pitchers to a magic well, where, by a coincidence, each finds a husband. She of the hideous face easily satisfies Huanebango, while the vile-tempered maiden as readily contents the heart of Corebus, for Sacrapant has previously hurled blindness upon the former, and upon the latter deafness, because they dared to enter his realms in search of Delia. Meanwhile the brothers continue their quest and eventually come upon Sacrapant and their sister making merry together at a feast. At once the lady is sent indoors, thunder and lightning herald disaster, and Sacrapant's magic takes them captive. Subsequently they are set to a task, with Delia standing over to speed their labours with a sharpened goad. It now becomes known that Sacrapant's power depends on the continued existence of a light enclosed within a glass vessel and buried in the earth. Delia has a lover, Eumenides. Acting on a generous impulse, this youth pays for the burial of one, Jack, whose friends are too poor to find the sexton's fees. Jack's ghost, in no more horrible form than that of an honest boy, forthwith repays the kindness by appointing himself Eumenides' guide, leading him to Sacrapant's castle, and obligingly slaying the magician at the critical moment by a touch of his ghostly hand. The buried light is dug up, Venelia, qualified by her madness to fulfil the conditions imposed by an old prophecy, breaks the glass and blows out the flame, and instantly all Sacrapant's wickedness is nullified. Venelia and Erestus are re-united, Delia is restored to her brothers and lover; we are not told of the shocks that must have come to Huanebango and Corebus when they suddenly became conscious of their respective wives' most prominent qualities. Into the midst of the rejoicing comes a demand from Jack's ghost for the fulfilment of Eumenides' compact that he should have half of whatever was won. Resolute to keep faith, Eumenides prepares to cut his lady in twain, when the ghost, satisfied with his honesty, restrains his arm. Thus the play ends happily.

We have given the story in full on account of its association, in the minds of some critics, with the plot of Comus. Because Milton, in another work, has shown himself acquainted with Peele's writings, they feel encouraged to see in the Ghost of Jack, Sacrapant, and Delia the prototypes of the Attendant Spirit, Comus, and the Lady. One may suppose that the same foundation of resemblance establishes Peele as also the inspirer of the first book of The Faerie Queene through his Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, with its knight and lady and dragon and magician, Sansfoy. Professor Mason, on the other hand, prefers to regard as mere coincidences those points which are common to both. By the outline given, the reader who has not Peele's comedy at hand will be assisted in making his own choice between the two opinions.

David and Bethsabe presents the two stories of David's love for Bathsheba and of the revolt of Absalom, as found in the Second Book of Samuel (Chapters xi-xix). The succession of events is carefully observed, each least pleasant detail jealously retained, and in some places even the language closely imitated. Except in the old Bible plays, one does not often meet with such rigorous adherence to the original in the transference of facts from a narrative to a drama. To this adherence are due certain features which any one not fresh from reading the account in Samuel might easily attribute to the dramatist's skill—the differentiation of the characters, the varying moods of joy, sorrow, indignation, hope and despair, besides the unusual vigour of some of the scenes. Dramatic art, however, is frequently as severely tested in an author's selection of a subject as in his invention of one. From this test Peele's talent would have emerged triumphantly had he only possessed the ability to construct a plot; for there is an abundance of the right dramatic material in his subject, and in his best moments he displays wonderful mastery in the moulding of hard facts to his use. Nothing could be more perfectly done than the sublimation of the contents of three plain verses (Chapter xi. 2-4) to the delicate poetry of his famous opening scene. Unfortunately the method adopted is that of the chronicle history-plays or of the nearly forgotten Miracles, to which class of drama David and Bethsabe, as a late survival, may be said to belong. It has other marks of retrogression to methods already old-fashioned in the year 1598, such as the introduction (twice) of a Chorus, and the absence of any division into acts, notwithstanding Peele's effective adoption of them in his previous tragedy. There is also, despite the occasional vigour shown in the portrayal of David, Absalom and Joab, the familiar weakness in concentration, the old lack of a dominant figure. We cannot help feeling that the author lost a great opportunity in not recognizing more fully the tragic potentialities of such a character as the rebel prince. And yet the play holds, and will continue to hold, a worthy place in Elizabethan drama on account of its poetry. The special qualities of Peele's poetic gift have been discussed in our consideration of his work as a whole. All that need be added here in praise is that had he written nothing else but David and Bethsabe and The Arraignment of Paris he might have challenged the right of precedence as a poet with Marlowe. But between those two plays what an amount of inferior workmanship lies!

Having already quoted an example of his verse in tender mood, we offer a favourable specimen of his more impassioned style:

Thomas Nash assisted Marlowe in The Tragedy of Dido, but Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592) is the only example of his independent dramatic work preserved for us. ''Tis no play neither, but a show', says one of its characters in describing it; and the same person, continuing, supplies this brief summary to its contents: 'Forsooth, because the plague reigns in most places in this latter end of summer, Summer must come in sick; he must call his officers to account, yield his throne to Autumn, make Winter his executor, with tittle-tattle Tom-boy.' The officers thus called to account are Ver, Solstitium, Sol, Orion, Harvest and Bacchus. Each enters in appropriate guise, with a train of attendants singing or dancing. Thus we have such stage-directions as, 'Enter Ver, with his train, overlaid with suits of green moss, representing short grass, singing': 'Enter Harvest, with a scythe on his neck, and all his reapers with sickles, and a great black bowl with a posset in it, borne before him: they come in singing': 'Enter Bacchus, riding upon an ass trapped in ivy, himself dressed in vine leaves, and a garland of grapes on his head; his companions having all jacks in their hands, and ivy garlands on their heads; they come singing.' Several of the songs have the true ring of country choruses; probably they were such, borrowed quite frankly by the dramatist, who would expect his audience to be familiar with them and even possibly to join in the singing. Such a one is this harvesting song—

Others again are more restrained, though almost all have a certain charming artlessness about them. A verse may be quoted from the Spring Song.

Regarded as a show, then, the performance is deserving of all praise, its fresh pastoralism confirming the hold upon the stage of unaffected country scenes. It must have followed not long after Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. It makes no claim to belong to regular drama, so that we need waste no words in uninvited criticism of its weakness in plot, action and character. Approving mention must be made of Will Summer—no relation to Summer, the season of the year, who is referred to in the title—Henry the Eighth's Court Jester, who plays the part of 'presenter' and general critic, standing apart from the main action but thrusting in his remarks as the spirit moves him. He is responsible for the description of the performance as a show. His purpose is fully declared at the start, when he announces that he will 'sit as a chorus and flout the actors and him (the author) at the end of every scene'. Forthwith he proceeds to offer advice to the actors about their behaviour: 'And this I bar, over and besides, that none of you stroke your beards to make action, play with your cod-piece points, or stand fumbling on your buttons, when you know not how to bestow your fingers. Serve God, and act cleanly.' Always his honesty exceeds his consideration for the feelings of others. Three clowns and three maids have barely ended their rustic jig when he calls out, 'Beshrew my heart, of a number of ill legs I never saw worse dancers. How bless'd are you that the wenches of the parish do not see you!' And his yawn carries a world of disgust with it as he murmurs, over one of Summer's lectures, 'I promise you truly I was almost asleep; I thought I had been at a sermon.' Historically he is interesting as being another example of the attempts made at this time, as in James the Fourth and The Old Wives' Tale, to provide a means of entertainment, more popular than formal prologues, epilogues or choruses, to fill up unavoidable pauses between scenes.

Far more than most plays Summer's Last Will and Testament contains references to contemporary events,—the recent plague, drought, flood, and short harvests are all mentioned. Satire, too, enlivens some of the longest speeches; for the writer was primarily and by profession a satirist. Although the finer graces of poetry are not his, his verse indicates the gradual advance that was being made to greater ease and freedom; his lines are not weighted with sounding words, nor is the 'privilege of metre' restricted to the expression of beautiful, wise or emotional thought, as was commonly the case elsewhere. The country freshness of his lyrics has been already praised. Altogether, despite the slight amount of his work in drama, Nash is not a dramatist to be dismissed with a mere expression of indifference or contempt. Several things in it make Summer's Last Will and Testament a production worth remembering. The following extract illustrates the qualities of Nash's blank verse.