in one shape or another, the drama, acting with or without written words, is always in existence, at least in the form of pantomime, even among the rudest peoples. the church permitted a kind of half-ritual, half-dramatic representation of sacred scenes at a very early period: but we have no earlier relic of english written plays than the very brief "harrowing of hell" of the first half of the fourteenth century. there are a few speeches between our lord and satan, and our lord and the released hebrew patriarchs. a good idea of the plays of the fifteenth century may be obtained from the set called the "townley plays" because the manuscript belonged at one time to the old jacobite family of townley. it is thought to have been originally the property of the abbey of woodkirk or widkirk near wakefield, and one play, the second play representing the shepherds at the birth of christ, contains allusions to the country scenes near woodkirk. the plays were acted on movable wooden stages, by the members of the various trade guilds, such as the glovers, the barkers (tanners, "there is brass on the target of barkened bull's hide," says scott in "bonnie dundee"), the grocers, and so forth.
the plays of one town are sometimes the basis of the plays of another town, some of those of york follow those of wakefield, and in places wakefield borrows from york. the authors are unknown; if they were priests, these clerics had much more of broad humour than of reverence as we understand it. no doubt the plays informed the spectators on points of the scriptural story, but the religion was highly recreative. nothing can have been more amusing to the crowd than the spectacle of their neighbours[pg 154] playing all manner of highly laughable pranks by way of illustrating the gross, grumbling, reckless, impudent cain; or the rustic waggeries of the local shepherds of bethlehem. even now the words of the plays make a man laugh aloud, in the comic parts, as he reads them. they are of the broadest farce, yet our mirth rises more from the character displayed than from mere practical buffoonery and clowning. the tanners enacted the "creation"; the glovers, the "death of abel". many old testament stories were played, the unaccomplished sacrifice of isaac, the story of abraham, and so on, with the birth, crucifixion, and ascension of our lord, and the soliloquy and suicide of judas, a fragment.
whoever the authors may have been, they took pains to represent the most unearthly characters as very human, though the opening soliloquy of the deity at the creation is orthodox and majestic. the cherubim then take up the tale, praising the works, especially praising lucifer, "he is so lovely and so bright!" lucifer enters and, accepting the praise, proposes to be lord of all and says that the throne becomes him rarely, taking his seat on it! the bad angels approve in the most colloquial style; the good dissent, and the bad, sent down below, express their lively regrets.
the slaying of abel is introduced by garcio, not a scriptural character, in an impudent speech; and then cain enters, ploughing, cursing his horses, and wrangling with his boy, who offers to fight him. abel enters, full of human kindness, but cain insults him in the coarsest rustic manner, "go to the devil and say i bade". abel insists that cain should offer a burnt-sacrifice of a tenth of his corn, but cain loves paying tithes no more than any other farmer. he grumbles in the true natural tone of the depressed agriculturist,
when all men's com was fair in field,
there was mine not worth a held.
the weather is such, says cain, that the farmer owes no gratitude to providence, no tithes. he selects his worst sheaves, as pay tithe he must. the deity intervenes, but cain treats him with the most serene insolence, kills the remonstrating abel with the jaw-bone of some animal, and, in short, is no more edifying than[pg 155] mr. punch, whose lawless and irreverent behaviour in the popular street drama is a survival of the humour of cain.
the "rejoicing of the shepherds," the second play, is much more human and various: the shepherds are full of the complaints of their condition with which piers plowman has made us familiar, but the provisions at their picnic are rich and various, and the adventure of mak, the sheep stealer, is of the best comedy. hospitably entertained by the shepherds, mak steals a sheep, flays it, and takes it home to his wife. they put it in a cradle, and cover it with blankets, next mak hies to the shepherds again, grumbling that his wife has a new baby. they suspect and follow him; he denies his theft, and will eat the child in the cradle, if the sheep can be found on his premises. it is found. this child, says a shepherd, has too long a snout. mrs. mak, with much presence of mind, admits the fact, but declares that her child is a fairy changeling: fairies stole the baby at midnight, and left this ugly substitute. the shepherds forgive mak, for the joke's sake, after tossing him in a sheet.
the same story is told of archy armstrong, the border reiver and jester. when the shepherds go back to their flocks, the angel sings gloria in excelsis; and the shepherds criticize the music learnedly, "there was no crochet wrong," and imitate the air. the sacred part of the play, the adoration, and offering of balls and toys to the new-born babe, is very brief. the play is a most humorous and lively representation of "our liberal shepherds," the sacred narrative merely affords a pretext for the gambol. england was merry england in the fifteenth century, in spite of defeats in france, murder and civil war at home, preachings and burnings of lollards, and all the grievances of piers plowman, the cruelty of the great, and the greed and cunning of the friars.
the play of "lazarus," on the other hand, is not only solemn, closely following the words of the gospel, but is as full as the anglo-saxon poem, "the grave," of sepulchral horrors.
of the costumes we may judge by that of st. paul on the road to damascus, in "the digby plays"—the apostle is "dressed like an adventurous knight," and is mounted. in place of scene-shifting[pg 156] the audience shifted from one open-air stage in the street to another. there were dances between the scenes. paul's servant has a scene of banter with an ostler. he maintains that he is a gentleman's servant, a superior person. says the ostler: "i saw such another gentleman with you, a barrowful he bare of horse dung... and such other gear".
there are forty characters and a crowd in the play of "mary magdalene," and much skill in stage management must have been needed. in this play of more than two thousand lines allegorical characters abound, including the seven deadly sins; much of the gospel story of the magdalene is introduced, with lively scenes from the unconverted career of the lady of the castle of magdala, and there is a long passage of sheer romance; we have a storm at sea; the abandonment of the king's wife and child on a rock; their discovery later, alive and well—in fact the story is akin to that in shakespeare's "pericles".
we see that the secular entertainment, the drama of romance, is ousting its religious occasion and pretext. in "mary magdalene," too, we observe that the "miracle play" on sacred subjects, is combined with the "morality," the drama with allegorical characters (as in the "romance of the rose"), presented in flesh and blood, and therefore more entertaining than they are in the endless allegorical poems. the morality of "everyman" has been revived with much success in our own time. in all these plays the verse takes many rhyming forms, mainly lyric. the chief collections are the townley, york, chester, digby, coventry, and a macro (named from an owner of the manuscript). in the macro play, "mankind," the actors make collections of money from the audience: they must have belonged to a professional strolling company, not to an honourable and disinterested trading guild. the piece is a gross burlesque of morality, full of blatant jests and dog-latin rhymes.
there is a scientific morality, an "interlude," "the four elements," in which nature, humanity, studious desire, sensual appetite, experience, and ignorance play their parts. much novel information about the dimensions of the earth and meteorology is given; studious desire is an apt pupil, but sensual[pg 157] appetite and the taverner offer instruction more palatable to "the man in the street". they introduce
little nell
a proper wench, she danceth well,
and jane with the black lace,
we will have bouncing bess also.
and humanity slinks out of the lecture room, being more concerned
to see a pretty girl,
it is a world to see her whirl
dancing in a round,
than to observe the gyrations of the terrestrial globe.
in "hickscorner," an interlude of the same kind, the hero has been in as many places as widsith himself, including
the land of rumbelow
three mile out of hell.
hickscorner and free will are worse roisterers than humanity, and their rude waggeries make the mirth, though free will speaks of forswearing sack and living cleanly.
heywood.
john heywood is one of the few known authors of these things; he was of what is now pembroke college, dr. johnson's college, in oxford, and was an acquaintance of sir thomas more, who frankly admits that by nature he was "a giglot," a gay fellow, though, by grace, devout. heywood was merry in mournful times, when henry viii began to make martyrs of protestants, and of catholics who were not, at any moment, of the same shade of belief as himself. the anecdotes say that heywood saved his skin by his jests, that after henry's death he amused mary tudor, who was not easily amused, and that he fled from persecution under edward vi, and died abroad in the reign of elizabeth.
his best-known piece is "the four p's," a pothecary, pardoner, palmer, and pedlar. why, asks the pardoner, should the palmer visit hundreds of remote shrines, while the pardoner, at his very door, can sell him forgiveness of sins at the lowest[pg 158] figure? he can cleanse a thousand souls for as small a sum as the palmer spends on one voyage. all four men are impudent rogues, and all, in the spirit of the morality, are rapidly converted; the pedlar becoming as pious as piers plowman. there is no action, and the great jest is that, in a lying competition, the pedlar says that he has never seen "a woman out of patience". the diversion must have been derived mainly from the antics of the players on the stage.
heywood's "thersites" (the impudent orator in the "iliad") was written about 1537, to make mirth for the birth feast of the prince of wales, afterwards edward vi. thersites asks mulciber (heph?stus) to make him a helmet (sallet) as he made the arms of achilles. this enables mulciber to vent many puns on salad; they look like the very first puns ever devised, and occupy two pages. the pun seems to have been a novelty in tudor england. thersites is a rough-hewn predecessor of shakespeare's pistol. there is much mockery of sacred relics and some buffoonery by way of action. telemachus brings a letter from ulysses (such a thing, said j. j. rousseau, very foolishly, would have been useful in the "odyssey") and miles, the knight, ends all with a pious speech.
in early tudor england the drama had sunk many fathoms below the level of the miracle plays, such as that of the shepherds. the rise of the drama, under elizabeth, is a kind of miracle, like the sculpture of phidias appearing after the rude art of the artists who worked at athens before the victories of marathon and salamis.
in "jack juggler," however, we find the influence of roman comedy faintly dawning, for the play is plautus's comedy of "amphitryon," "without amphitryon," the hero, and with the mischievous and much-beaten jack juggler as the source of the fun.
the infant drama had wandered out of biblical and allegorical subjects into touch with actual ancient roman comedy, and, with bale's "king john," was preluding to shakespeare's chronicle plays. in the dawn of the reformation, disputants on both sides addressed the people in interludes, just as to-day a person[pg 159] "with a purpose" puts it into a novel, in place of writing a sober and reasonable treatise which would not be read. among the plays with a purpose none is more absurd than the "king john" of john bale (1495-1563). bale, whose best work is a kind of history of english literature in latin, was a fiery hot gospeller; he had to leave the country under mary tudor. in "king john" that profane and licentious but astute prince appears as a kind of protestant martyr. attacked by stephen langton, he says that the church hates him because he does not found abbeys, and is in favour of an open bible. so he is poisoned by the wicked priests!
in the interests of history no less than of her church, queen mary issued proclamations against plays with a protestant purpose, while elizabeth was equally severe against catholic interludes.
we must think of these interludes, whether moral, religious, scientific, or amusing, being played from the reign of henry viii till the middle of the reign of elizabeth. till 1575 or 1576 there were no theatre-houses; stages were erected in halls of palaces, castles, colleges, and in open spaces of towns. the king or queen had interlude players in their service, as they had musicians. companies calling themselves "the servants," and wearing the liveries of nobles and gentlemen, strolled about the country, protected by their more or less nominal masters, and supporting themselves by their skill in their profession. the "children," that is the boys, of various schools, especially of st. paul's, acted under the managership of their teachers. the undergraduates of the universities also acted, at first in latin, before queen elizabeth, who did not conceal her distaste for what did not amuse her. the language of the plays was cast into all sorts of rhyming measures, and "the vice" or lively buffoon of the interludes was the germ of the shakespearean clown. there was abundance both of writers and players, but the plays had little merit as literature.
ralph roister doister.
among the unforgotten of these dwellers on the threshold of the elizabethan drama is "ralph roister doister," by nicholas[pg 160] udall (1505-1556) (of corpus christi college, oxford, later headmaster of eton, and next of westminster; he died in the reign of mary tudor). the vice, so to speak, or clever buffooning parasite, of the piece is matthew merrygreek, who in a long rhyming prologue describes his own way of life and his intention to befool the braggart ralph roister doister. ralph enters melancholy, he is in love: he has met the lady at supper, but forgets her name. she is rich (says matthew), a widow, and betrothed to another man. ralph is a fatuous ass, like malvolio, and thinks all women in love with him. merrygreek fools him to the top of his bent, and presents the lady with a forged love-letter from ralph, who is drubbed by the maid-servants and generally disgraced, while the true love of the heroine returns from a voyage to be happy with her. there is plenty of noise, singing, and beating, and some intrigue in the case of the genuine wooer and his suspicious jealousy.
gammer gurton's needle.
the equally renowned "gammer gurton's needle," was acted sixteen years after "ralph roister doister," at christ's college, cambridge. it is usually attributed to john still (born 1543) a member of christ's, master of arts in 1565, and later master of that college, vice-chancellor of the university, and finally bishop of bath and wells (died 1608). as vice-chancellor, still was a stickler for latin plays at cambridge, which were more educational but not so popular as dramas in english. the plot turns on the loss of a needle by old gammer gurton, the suspicion, raised by a wag, that another old woman has stolen it; the search for the needle; combats about the needle, and the final discovery of that implement in the seat of a man's breeches. a sturdy beggar, diccon, is "the vice," and sets gammer gurton and another gammer to a scolding match. hodge, a servant, with his broad dialect, and insistent demand for the needle, that a large and unseemly hole which ventilates his breeches may instantly be patched, has perhaps the most comic part, and when somebody slaps hodge and drives the needle (which had stuck in his breeches), into a safe part of his person, the joy of a cambridge[pg 161] audience knew no limits. the play is thoroughly rustic, the language is of an amazing breadth, and no doubt the drama made abundant mirth among the cantab wits. members of the sister university, where poets have been rare in comparison with these glories of cambridge, need not covet still, unless he wrote the famous drinking song in the second act, "back and side go bare, go bare!"
the bishop of bath and wells probably looked back with mingled feelings on the jolly, noisy achievement of his youth, which has made him immortal, for all have heard of "gammer gurton's needle". it is written in rhyming lines of from fourteen to sixteen syllables.
"gorboduc."
"the gammer," though low, is lively; not so is "gorboduc"; it is a tragedy of unspeakable dullness composed in blank verse which has no merit except that of regularity, the sense usually, though not always, ending at the close of each line. the author, thomas sackville, later lord buckhurst and earl of dorset, and high treasurer under james vi and i, was born at buckhurst, sussex, in 1536. his grandmother was aunt of anne boleyn, so he was a second cousin of queen elizabeth. at the inner temple, as a young man, he met thomas norton, and the pair composed "gorboduc," which was acted in the inner temple in 1561. the authors were inspired by no other muse than that of seneca, the moral philosopher, roman tragedian, and tutor of the emperor nero. the play tells how gorboduc, a mythical king of britain, abdicated, and, dividing his realm into two parts, gave the country north of the humber to the younger, and the portion south of the humber to the elder of his two sons, ferrex and porrex. each had a kind of tutor, and each had a favourite. they were both discontented, the younger slew the elder son, and the mother of both avenges the elder on the younger of her children. the result was national ruin, in which "fergus duke of albany" (apparently king of scotland is meant) took an active part. there are very long speeches, no action; a messenger brings the news of the distressing occurrences, and a chorus moralizes on them. carried[pg 162] away by grief when his wife murders his surviving boy, gorboduc pronounces the name of eubulus with the penultimate syllable short, and expires with decency behind the scenes. eubulus then utters a political forecast in more than a hundred lines, and the drama concludes.
"gorboduc" was printed in 1565: translations of seneca's plays were also being written: george gascoigne translated a piece named "jocasta" (the wife of ?dipus) from the italian, and a prose comedy, "the supposes" from ariosto. this great italian poet and his countrymen adapted to italian manners the plots and characters which the ancient comic dramatists of rome, terence and plautus, derived from late greek comedy of everyday life. thus an element of orderliness in comedy was introduced in england from adaptations of italian adaptations of roman copies of late greek plays. such stock characters as the austere father, the spendthrift son, the cunning servant, the boastful soldier, the nurse, soft of heart and loose of tongue, invaded the comedy of france, and, to a slighter degree, that of england.
meanwhile richard edwards produced a curious interlude of a classical nature, "damon and pythias," the characters being greek, sicilian and english—a dash of buffoonery is mixed with very lamentable matter. the drama was formless, unable to attain definite shape, till some twenty-five years had passed when we reach the date of the immediate predecessors of shakespeare, such as marlowe, greene, lyly, peele, and the other university young men about town. the influences of the old waggish or controversial interludes, of the senecan school of stiffness, and of translations or imitations of italian comedies, were seething in the cauldron of the age.
