Representative English Comedies, v. 1. From the beginnings to Shakespeare

by Unknown

10. The Period of Transition: School Interlude and Controversial Moral

During the fifteenth century, and the early sixteenth, influences of importance to English comedy proceed not from the literature of Italy and Spain alone. In northern Europe additions most significant to the history of the type were making. To the crop of French sotties, moralités, and farces I have already referred. The German Reuchlin in 1498 put forth a roaring Latin comedy called the Henno, which, in modern Terentian style, embodied the chicaneries of Pathelin. About the same time the Germans began to make the acquaintance, through translations in their own tongue, of highly flavoured Italian Latin plays like the Poliscene and the Philogenia; while those of them who cared not for such things were favoured with a recrudescence of the Christian Terence school. In 1507 the young humanist, Kilian Reuter, in imitation of the nun of Gandersheim, produced in Latin his pious comedy depicting the passion of St. Dorothea. In Holland, meanwhile, were springing into existence the Latin prototypes of more than one of our own didactic interludes; for in the comedia sacra the attempt was made to combine the intrigue of the Italian university play with the moral of the prodigal son and the technique of the Terentian drama. The more important of these plays of the prodigal son, in respect of influence upon English comedy, are the Asotus of Macropedius, written before 1529, and his Rebelles, 1535, the Acolastus of Gnapheus, 1529, and the Studentes of Stymmelius, 1549. The most dramatic of them are the second and third as mentioned. The Acolastus, indeed, translated into English by Palsgrave in 1540, exerted a long-enduring influence upon our drama. To the same period belong also a species of biblical comedies dealing with heroes, like the Joseph of the Dutch Jesuit, Crocus, 1535, and the Susanna, Judith, Eli, Ruth, Job, Solomon, Goliath, etc., of Macropedius, the Swiss Sixt Birck, and others; and another kind of play that occupied itself with prototypes of the Roman Antichrist,—Haman, Judas, and the like. The former may be called the idyllic or heroic miracle, the latter the polemic. And of the latter the most influential development was the controversial interlude, Pammachius, written by the German Protestant Naogeorgos (Kirchmayer) and dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury. By 1545 this play, in which the Pope figures as the Antichrist, had not only been acted at Cambridge in the original, but translated into English by our own John Bale; and, as we shall presently see, it was, somewhere between 1540 and 1548, imitated by him in one of the most vigorous of our controversial dramas.[65]

Of the cultivation of the drama in Latin in England I have already made mention in treating of the saints' plays and the Terentian drama of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Other indications of a Latin drama occur, although infrequently. William Fitzstephen, who speaks of the ludus given by Geoffrey's boys at Dunstable, tells us, also, that it was customary on feast days for masters of schools to hold festival meetings in the churches, when the pupils contested, not only in disputations, but also with Fescennine license in satirical verses touching "the faults of school-fellows or perhaps of greater people"; a practice which could only with difficulty escape development into a rude Aristophanic comedy. We have mention also of perquisites for a comœdia in one of the Cambridge colleges as early as 1386, evidently of the Latin type, and of the presentation of a goodly comedy of Plautus at court in 1520. Between 1522 and 1532 the Master of St. Paul's produced a Latin school drama of Dido before Wolsey, and according to Collier's supposition,[66] the same John Ritwyse was the author of the satiric interlude, in Latin and French, of Luther and his wife, which was acted for the delectation of the not yet reformed Henry and his foreign guests in 1527. Of the nature of this play, unfortunately lost, some conception may be gathered from the still surviving list of its characters (allegorical, religious, and contemporary), from the analogous Ludus ludentem Luderum ludens, 1530, and the somewhat more recent and most scurrilous Monachopornomachia, both by Germans. Before 1530 and apparently with a view to acting, the Andria had been turned into English,[67] and by 1535 at least two Latin comedies of moral-mythological character had been written by Artour of Cambridge, and one, the Piscator, by Hoker of Oxford.[68] We have word of a dramatic pageant in English and Latin to which Udall contributed in 1532; in 1534 he issued a book of selections entitled Flowers of Terence. In 1540 Palsgrave had introduced the prodigal son drama from Germany; and by 1545 Bale had followed suit with a Latin play of Antichrist. During the same period Udall was producing his plures comœdiæ, now lost, and that other schoolmaster-dramatist, Radcliffe of Hitchin, was writing spectacula simul jucunda et honesta for his boys to present,—heroic miracles of the type affected by Macropedius, and a romantic comedy of Griselda, probably all in Latin, but unfortunately all vanished.

The importance of the English school drama has been well presented by Professor Herford and Dr. Ward, but there is something in the name that leads the ordinary reader to underrate the genus. A word or so by way of classification may be of assistance. These interludes fall naturally into four kinds. Those that ridicule folly, vain pretension, and conceit, or Mirth plays,—plays after the model of Plautus, mock-heroic, or purely diverting, like the Thersytes. Those that are pedagogical in tendency, directed against idleness and ignorance, or Wit plays. They began with Rastell's Four Elements, and reached their highest mark in the Contract between Witt and Wisdome. Those that portray the conflict with the excesses and lusts of the flesh, or Youth plays. They consist of such productions as Mankynd, Nature, Hyckescorner, and reach their climax, about 1554, in the Interlude of Youth. The school drama includes, in the last place, a series corrective of parental indulgence and filial disobedience, aptly called Prodigal Son plays. These are patterned upon Terence, but follow the manner of Dutch school plays like the Acolastus or of the still earlier French moralités, Bien-Avisé et Mal-Avisé, L'Homme pêcheur, and Les Enfants de Maintenant. They make more or less use of the scriptural motif and are sometimes tragical. In the period under consideration their best representatives are the Nice Wanton and the Disobedient Child. From the point of view of comedy the first of these kinds, the Mirth play, occupies a place by itself; for, though it may sometimes intend to teach, it always aims at, and achieves, laughter. To the three remaining kinds, we must for convenience, join, however, another which, though not of the school species, is primarily didactic,—I mean the controversial interlude. This includes Bale's King Johan, Wever's Lusty Juventus, and the Respublica.

In the Mirth play, Thersytes, the influence of Plautus is evident,—a school play, to be sure, but written with a view to amusement or rollicking satire rather than instruction. Acted in 1537, this "enterlude" has for its hero a "ruffler forth of the Greke lande" whose "crakying" stands half-way between the classical Pyrgopolinices and Thraso and the modern Roister Doister. For all its academic flavour, the burlesque is coarse and crude, but still genuinely humorous. It deserves notice, in especial, for the variety of its contents, chivalric, romantic, popular, scriptural as well as Greek and Latin; also for its artistic exhibition of the braggart,—the leisurely proceeding of his discomfiture, the subordination of other characters to that end; and for its mastery of technical devices,—concealment, magic, the play upon the word, and that hunting of the word and letter which was so soon to drive conversation out of its wits. As an interlude of foreign origin, the Thersytes has a place in the development of the comic element somewhat analogous to that of the Calisto in the development of the romantic. As far as the quality of mirth is concerned it might be classed with Roister Doister and Jacke Jugeler; but those plays are much more highly developed in form and spirit, and must be reserved for consideration with the polytypic, and early regular, comedy.

The remaining classes of interlude are manifestly didactic; those of Wit and Youth derive, however, more directly from native sources, while those of the Prodigal Son have close affiliation with the Christian Terence of the continental humanists.

Redford's Wyt and Science, composed probably between 1541 and 1547, is, in form and intent, like Lusty Juventus and other survivals of the moral interlude. It differs, however, in company with the Four Elements and other Wit plays, in substituting a scientific for a religious purpose; and it adds a feature not to be found in earlier kinds of moral, a chivalrous ideal of love and adventure, academic, to be sure, but unmistakable. This appears in the wooing of Lady Science by Wyt, and his encounter with the tyrant or fiend Tediousness "for my dere hartes sake to wynne my spurres;" in the hero's inconstancy, defeat, and subsequent success, and in the dramatic employment of romantic instruments and tokens, such as the magic glass and the sword of comfort; also in the love songs. All of these and similar features of which the sources are not entirely continental make for the development of a romantic and humanistic drama. It may be worth noticing, moreover, that the fiend of the play is neither Vice nor Devil. He seems to be a cross between the Devil of the miracles and a monster of native as well as scriptural ancestry (an early draft of Giant Despair), who figures in a modernization of this play, The Marriage of Witte and Science. In chronological sequence the next of the Wit plays is the Contract of a Marrige betweene Wit and Wisdome (not Wit and Science, as Professor Brandl has it). This was probably written about the same time as the Lusty Juventus. The mention of the King's most "royal majestie" and the appearance of the Vice Idleness as a priest would point to a date earlier than 1553, while the resemblance to Redford's play, though by no means close, indicates posteriority to that much cruder production. The division into acts and scenes is, on the other hand, less elaborate than that obtaining in the latest play of this series, The Marriage of Witte and Science. The Contract is altogether the most meritorious of those academic predecessors of the drama of the Prodigal Son which introduce the indulgent mother as a motive force. While the conception is formal and didactic, the action avails itself, like Redford's play, of the romantic element involved in the perilous adventure for love. The Contract, moreover, startles the sober atmosphere of the moral interlude by a rapidity of movement, a combination of plots major and minor, a diversity of subordinate characters and incidents altogether unprecedented. The racy and natural wit, the equivoque, the actual, even if vulgar, humanity of the scenes from low life, and the skill with which the Mother Bees, the Dols and Lobs, Snatches and Catches, the Constable, and the thoroughly rustic Vice with his actual resemblance to Diccon the Bedlem, are dovetailed into the action,—these properties make this a very commendable predecessor, not only of Gammer Gurton, but of certain plays of Dekker and Jonson where similar features obtain. With the Contract, the interlude of this kind attains its climax. The Marriage of Witte and Science, which is a revision of Redford's play of similar name, must also be mentioned here, although it is a postliminious specimen of the type. Not licensed until 1569-70, and, according to Fleay, acted as Wit and Will, 1567-78,[69] it adds nothing vital to the plot or characters of its model. Still, in literary and dramatic handling, it is an example of the perfection to which the moral play could come. Collier, indeed, has said that it was the first play of its kind regularly divided into acts and scenes with indication of the same: but that is not true, for the Respublica of 1553 has five acts and the proper arrangement in scenes; and so have other plays of 1553 or earlier, though of different kind, like the Jacob and Esau.

If now we pass to the Youth plays, we shall find in the Interlude of Youth (about 1554) the culmination of dramatic efforts to portray the sowing of wild oats,—efforts avowedly moral in purpose, but with a reminiscent smack of the lips and a fellow-feeling for the scapegrace. The Interlude of Youth is characterized neither by the unbridled merriment of the Miles Gloriosus type nor by the depth or pathos of dramas portraying solicitous parents and prodigal sons; but it paves the way for 'tragical' comedies of this latter class, and is infinitely more dramatic, because more human, than the pedagogical onslaughts upon idleness, irksomeness, ignorance, and the like of which we have just treated. It has, perhaps, not been noticed that the Interlude of Youth holds about the same relation to Hyckescorner in matter of motive and treatment that Hyckescorner holds to the Four Elements and Mankynd,—indeed, a closer relation, for in many details of character, device, situation, as well as by literal transference of language, it borrows from Hyckescorner. This as indicating the descent of the species is in itself interesting. But the present play generally improves upon all that it derives. In addition, the vivid conversation, shrewd and waggish wit, local colouring, atmosphere of taverns, dicing, cards, and worse iniquities, justify, I think, the statement that it is at once the most realistic, amusing, and graceful specimen of its kind. It is, at any rate, as artistic as a didactic interlude could permit itself to be.

One cannot consider the so-called Prodigal Son interludes, without observing that the theme itself supplies an opportunity for the enlargement of dramatic endeavour. For these productions are directed as much against parental indulgence as against filial disobedience. The "Preaty Interlude called Nice Wanton," printed in 1560, was written before the death of Edward VI. Though it may have derived suggestions from the Rebelles[70] of Macropedius, 1535, it is of its own originality and dramatic merit, in my opinion, the best of its class in English at the time of writing. While it presents a mixture of scriptural, classical, and moral elements, it is essentially a modern production. The allegorical lingers only in the character of Worldly Shame. If this be eliminated, there remains a play with realistic, romantic, and ideal qualities, an air of probability, and a plot well conceived and excellently completed. Iniquity, or Baily errand, is a concrete Vice, working by actual and possible methods. The unfortunate heroine and the well-contrasted pairs of mothers and sons are manifest not only by their deeds but by the opinions of those who know them. The plot, in other words, grows out of the characters; it is full of incident, and it falls naturally into acts, which have been elaborated in various and dramatically interesting scenes. The movements, on the one hand toward a catastrophe, on the other toward the triumph of right living, are conducted with skilful suspense, surprise, discovery, and revolution, and are well interwoven. The conversations and songs are racy or sober according to the conditions; the combination of æsthetic qualities, comic, tragic, and pathetic, is an agreeable advance upon the inartistic extremes afforded by most of the contemporary interludes of moral intent. The next of these plays, the "pretie and mery new interlude called The Disobedient Child, by Thomas Ingeland, late Student at Cambridge," was acted, Mr. Fleay thinks, before Elizabeth in March, 1560-61. Though it was not published till 1564, it was certainly, like the Nice Wanton, written before 1553. The purpose is serious and the conclusion almost tragic, but the play contributes to the comedy of domestic satire. If the main characters were but indicated by name, like those below stairs, Blanche and Long-Tongue, this picturesque and wholly dramatic interlude would have attracted more notice than has been vouchsafed it. Its literary merits, verse, poetic feeling and expression, and its natural dialogue entitle it to high consideration; its decidedly novel dramatic qualities, even though they bear a general resemblance to the Studentes[71] of Stymmelius, rank it with the Nice Wanton as one of the most vigorous of our early representatives of the dramatic actualities of family life.

For reasons which I have already indicated, the controversial plays of the period between 1520 and 1553 may be considered here. The first of these in chronological order is Bale's King Johan, about 1540-47, with later insertions in the author's hand. Its relation to Lyndsay's satire of the Thrie Estatis is well known; and Professor Herford[72] has indicated its indebtedness also to the Pammachius and the Protestant version of the antichrist legend. It is a dramatic satire on the abuses of the church, its riches, orders, brotherhoods, confessionals, simony, free thought, mummery (judaistic and pagan), Latin ritual, hagiolatry, and papal supremacy. Few more excellent embodiments of the Vice have been preserved than the Sedycyon of this play, who in every estate of the clergy plays a part, sometimes monk, sometimes nun, or canon, or chapter-house monk, or Sir John, or the parson, or the bishop, or the friar, or the purgatory priest and every man's wife's desire:—

"Yea, to go farder, sumtyme I am a cardynall;

Yea, sumtyme a pope and than am I lord over all,

Both in hevyn and erthe and also in purgatory,

And do weare iij crownes whan I am in my glorye."

In spite of Professor Schelling's[73] recent rejection of King Johan from the list of chronicle plays, I cannot but agree with Dr. Ward that this moral is of considerable importance in the history of that species. That it uses history merely as the cloak for a religio-policical allegory, and that it does not quite succeed in drawing together the points of fact and fiction in the development of action and character,—these defects do not alter its significance as the first English play to incarnate the political spirit of its age in a form imaginatively attributed to an earlier period of native history. Although it is not a comedy, it concerns us here as a drama of critical and satirical intent. It is succeeded by plays like Lusty Juventus and Respublica, which deal more or less with political affairs, and interest us because they enliven the controversial by the introduction of the realistic and comic, and, accordingly, in an age when polemics was politics, contribute to the improvement of comedy by shaping it more or less to a medium for the dissemination of practical ideas. Moreover, though Bale had no disciples in the attempt to construct an historical protestant drama, he may be said to have prepared the way for a protestant series of another kind. This is what Professor Herford has well called the biblical genre drama; it is pedagogical and controversial, and, like the King Johan, its representatives, also, such as the Darius and Queen Hester, had their precursors, and probably their models, more or less distant, in the idyllic or heroic miracle of the Dutch and German humanists.

R. Wever's Lusty Juventus, written about 1550,[74] is of the dramatic kindred of Mankynd and Nature. Its characters are allegorical in name but concrete in person; and one of them, Abhominable Living, passes, also, under the appellation of "litle Besse." The conversations are sprightly, and the songs show considerable lyric power. But the play is a protestant polemic, and its success must have depended to a large extent upon the bitterness of the satire against

"Holy cardinals, holy popes,

Holy vestments, holy copes,"

and various alleged hypocrisies and excesses of the Church of Rome. That this play had a long life is shown by its insertion, though under the designation of an interlude with which it had nothing in common,[75] as a play within a play in the tragedy of Sir Thomas More (about 1590). The "merye Enterlude" Respublica, 1553, a children's Christmas play, sustains somewhat the same relation to political Catholicism as King Johan to Protestantism—without the polemics of dogma. Here, as in the preceding political moral of King Johan, the Vice is used for a satirical purpose, and is not only the chief mischief-maker, but, also, the principal representative of the comic rôle. In this play, the Vice is so highly considered that the author, probably a priest, multiplies him by four, and, by way of foil, offsets the group with that of the four Virtues, daughters of God, whose presence in the eleventh Coventry play and in Mankynd has already been noticed. I don't see how Collier can call the construction of Respublica ingenious; it is childish, clumsy, and trite. The humour consists in old-fashioned disguises and aliases, equivoque, misunderstanding, and abuse. But the character of Avarice, who, with his money bags, anticipates the Suckdrys and Lucres of later comedy, is well conceived, the conduct natural, the language simple and colloquial. Of historical interest is the introduction of Queen Mary as Nemesis; of linguistic, the attempt to reproduce the dialect of the common people; of dramatic, the division into acts and scenes, which is to be found in but few other plays of the mid-century, such as Roister Doister, King Johan, Jacob and Esau, and the Marriage of Witte and Science.