POST-SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA
In the following section it will be found that, although much of the work was composed during Shakespeare’s lifetime, the most typical of the plays appeared after his death. On the whole, moreover, the work marks a decline from the Shakespearian standard, and so we are probably justified in calling this type of drama post-Shakespearian.
1. Ben Jonson (1573–1637) was born at Westminster, and educated at Westminster School. His father died before Jonson’s birth, and the boy adopted the trade of his stepfather, who was a master bricklayer. Bricklaying did not satisfy him for long, and he became a soldier, serving in the Low Countries. From this he turned to acting and writing plays, engaging himself, both as actor and playwright, with the Lord Admiral’s company (1597). At first he had little success, and the discouragement he encountered then must have done much to sour a temper that was not at any time very genial. In his combative fashion he took part freely in the squabbles of the time, and in 1598 he killed a fellow-actor in a duel, narrowly escaping the gallows. On the accession of James I in 1603 there arose a new fashion for picturesque pageants known as masques, and Jonson turned his energies to supplying this demand, with great success. After this period (160315) he commanded great good-fortune, and during this time his best work was produced. In 1617 he was created poet to the King, and the close of James’s reign saw Jonson the undisputed ruler of English literature. His favorite haunt was the Mermaid Tavern, where he reigned as dictator over a younger literary generation. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and over him was placed the epitaph “O rare Ben Jonson!”
Jonson’s works, extremely voluminous and of varying merit, can be classified for convenience into comedies, tragedies, masques, and lyrics. His one considerable prose work, a kind of commonplace book, to which he gave the curious name of Timber, is of much interest, but does not affect his general position.
He began with the comedy Every Man in his Humour, which was written in 1598; then followed Every Man out of His Humour (1599), Cynthia’s Revels (1600), and The Poetaster (1601). These earliest comedies are rather tedious in their characters, for they emphasize unduly the “humor” or peculiar characteristic of each individual. They are, however, ingenious in plot, rich in rugged and not entirely displeasing fun, and full of vivacity and high spirits. The later group of comedies shows a decided advance. The characters are less angular, livelier, and much more convincing; the style is more matured and equable. Such comedies, perhaps the best of all Jonson’s dramatic work, are Volpone, or The Fox (1605), Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609), and The Alchemist (1610). His last comedies are lighter and more farcical, and show less care and forethought. They include Bartholomew Fair (1614), The Devil Is an Ass (1616), and The Staple of News (1625). His last unfinished play, The Sad Shepherd, a pastoral comedy, is unapproached among his dramas for its combination of sober reflection, lightness of fancy, and delicacy of touch. In nearly all his comedies Jonson opened up a vein that was nearly new and was to be very freely worked by his successors—the comedy of London life and humors, reflecting the manners of the day.
His two historical tragedies, Sejanus his Fall (1603) and Catiline his Conspiracy (1611), are too labored and mechanical to be reckoned as great tragedies, though their author would fain have had them so. They show immense learning, they have power, variety, and insight, but they lack the last creative touch necessary to stamp them with reality, and to give them a living appeal.
As for his masques, they are abundant, graceful, and humorously ingenious. Into them Jonson introduced the device of the anti-masque, which parodied the principal theme. The best of them are The Masque of Beauty (1608), The Masque of Queens (1609), and Oberon, the Fairy Prince (1611).
The lyrics, which are freely introduced into his plays, and the elegies, epitaphs, and other occasional pieces, many of which appeared in a volume called Underwoods (“consisting of divers poems”), represent Jonson’s work in its sweetest and most graceful phase. His song, a translation from Philostratus, beginning “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is deservedly famous. We cannot resist quoting two brief but typical pieces:
(1) Have you seen but a bright lillie grow,
Before rude hands have touch’d it?
Have you mark’d but the fall of the snow
Before the soyle hath smutch’d it?
Have you felt the wooll of the bever?
Or swan’s downe ever?
Or have smelt of the bud of the brier?
Or the nard on the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!
The Triumph
(2) Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother:
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee!
Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke[99]
In the estimation of his own age Jonson stood second to none; to a later generation he is overshadowed by the towering bulk of Shakespeare. But even the enormous prestige of Shakespeare cannot or ought not to belittle the merits of Jonson. Of Jonson we can justly say that he had all good literary gifts except one, and that the highest and most baffling of all—true genius. He had learning—perhaps too much of it; industry and constancy well beyond the ordinary; versatility; a crabbed and not unamiable humor, diversified with sweetness, grace, and nimbleness of wit; and a style quite adequate to his needs. But the summit of it all—the magical phrase that catches the breath, the immortal spirit that creates out of words and buckram “forms more real than living man”—these were lacking; and without these he cannot join the circle of the very great.
2. Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John Fletcher (1575–1625) combined to produce a great number of plays, said to be fifty-two in all. How much of the joint work is to be assigned to the respective hands is not accurately known.
The elder, Fletcher, was a cousin of Giles and Phineas Fletcher (see (p. [101]), and was born at Rye, Sussex. He was educated at Cambridge, and lived the life of a London literary man. He died of the plague in 1625. His colleague Beaumont, who was probably the abler of the two, was the son of a judge, Sir Francis Beaumont, was educated at Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple (1600), but was captivated by the attractions of a literary life. He died almost within a month of Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
They excelled in comedy, especially in the comedy of London life. Theirs is not the heavy “humorous” comedy of Jonson, but is lighter and more romantic. Their characters are slighter, but more pleasing and human; their humor is free and genial, and their representation of contemporary life is happy and attractive. Their plots are ingenious and workmanlike, and their incidents numerous and striking. Their style shows a distinct decline from the high standard of Shakespeare. They have a greater fondness for prose, their blank verse is looser and weaker, but they are capable of poetical lines and phrases. Typical comedies are A King and No King (1611), esteemed by Dryden the best of them all, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1611), a very agreeable farce, and The Scornful Lady (1616). Their tragedies, such as The Maid’s Tragedy (1619), Philaster (1620), suggesting Twelfth Night, and The Faithful Shepherdess (by Fletcher alone), are not too tragical, and they are diversified by attractive incidents and descriptions.
3. George Chapman (1559–1634) was born at Hitchin. Beyond this fact little is known of him. He took part in the literary life of his time, for his name appears in the squabbles of his tribe. He died in London.
His first play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596) was followed by many more, both comical and tragical. Among them are Bussy d’Ambois (1597), Charles, Duke of Byron (1608), and The Tragedie of Chabot (1639). These are historical plays, dealing with events nearly contemporary with his own time. Chapman’s comedies include All Fools (1605) and Eastward Hoe! (1605), in the latter of which he combined with Jonson and Marston. Chapman writes agreeably and well; he has firmness, competence, and variety, and his comic and tragic powers are considerable. His translation of Homer has something of the pace and music of the original.
4. John Marston (1575–1634) was born at Coventry, was educated there and at Oxford, became a literary figure in London, and later took orders. Latterly he resigned his living in Hampshire, and died in London.
Marston specialized in violent and melodramatic tragedies, which do not lack a certain impressiveness, but which are easily parodied and no less easily lead to abuse. They impressed his own generation, who rated him with Jonson. For a later age they are spoiled to a great extent by exaggeration, rant, and excessive speeches. Typical of them are Antonio and Mellida (1602) and Antonio’s Revenge (1602), which were ridiculed by Jonson in The Poetaster.
5. Thomas Dekker (1570–1641) was born in London, where his life was passed as a literary hack and playwright. His plays, chiefly comedies, have an attraction quite unusual for the time. They have a sweetness, an arch sentimentality, and an intimate knowledge of common men and things that have led to his being called the Dickens of the Elizabethan stage. His plots are chaotic, and his blank verse, which very frequently gives place to prose, is weak and sprawling. The best of his plays are Old Fortunatus (1600), The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600), and Satiromastix (1602). He collaborated with other playwrights, including Ford and Rowley, with whom he wrote The Witch of Edmonton (about 1633), and Massinger, in The Virgin Martyr (1622).
6. Thomas Middleton (1570–1627) was born in London, wrote much for the stage, and in 1620 was made City Chronologer.
He is one of the most equable and literary of the dramatists of the age; he has a decided fanciful turn; he is a close observer and critic of the life of the time, and a dramatist who on a few occasions can rise to the heights of greatness. His most powerful play, which has been much praised by Lamb and others, is The Changeling (1624); others are Women beware Women (1622), The Witch, which bears a strong resemblance to Macbeth, and The Spanish Gipsy (1623), a romantic comedy suggesting As You Like It. Along with Dekker he wrote The Roaring Girle, or Moll Cutpurse (1611), which is a close dramatic parallel to the earliest novels.
7. Thomas Heywood (1575–1650) was born in Lincolnshire about 1575, was educated at Cambridge, and became an author and dramatist in London. He himself asserts that he had a hand (“or at least a main finger”) in two hundred and twenty plays, of which twenty-three survive.
Like so many more dramatists of the time, he excelled in his pictures of London life and manners. He was a rapid and light improviser, an expert contriver of stage situations, but otherwise content with passable results, and caring little about the higher flights of the dramatist. His best play is A Woman Killed with Kindnesse (1603), which contains some strongly pathetic scenes; The English Traveller (1633) is only slightly inferior. Other plays of his are The Royall King (1600), The Captives (1624), and a series of clumsy historical dramas, including King Edward the Fourth (1600) and The Troubles of Queene Elizabeth (1605).
8. John Webster, who flourished during the first twenty years of the seventeenth century, excels his fellows as a tragical artist. Next to nothing is known regarding his life, and much of his work has been lost, but what remains is sufficient to show that he was a writer of no mean ability. Selecting themes of gloomy and supernatural horror, of great crimes and turbulent emotions and desires, he rises to the height of his argument with an ability equal to his ambition. In several respects—in bleak horror and in largeness of tragical conception—he resembles Marlowe; but he is terse and precise when Marlowe is simply turgid; his plots have the inexorable march of Fate itself; and he far excels Marlowe in brief and almost blinding flashes of sorrow and pity. His two great plays are The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfy (1623). Other and inferior plays ascribed to him are The Devil’s Law Case (1623) and Appius and Virginia.
9. Cyril Tourneur (1575–1626) seems to have been a soldier and to have served in the Low Countries. He took part in Buckingham’s disastrous expedition to Cadiz, and on his return died in Ireland.
In the work of Tourneur we have horrors piled on horrors. His two plays The Revenger’s Tragedy (1600) and The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611) are melodramatic to the highest degree. He attempts much, but achieves little. He does not lack a certain poetic sensibility; but he lacks grip, method, and balance, and he is weakest where Webster is strongest.