11. Polytypic, or Fusion, Plays
With the plays just mentioned each of the dramatic kinds so far considered reaches its artistic limit. These kinds, however, during the decades roughly coincident with the years between 1545 and 1566, enter into combinations, by virtue of which English comedy is assisted to a still further advance. The plays that represent this stage of literary history may be called polytypic. Roister Doister and Jacke Jugeler subordinate the materials of academic interlude and classical farce to classical regulations. Into the Historie of Jacob and Esau enter characteristics of miracle play, moral, realistic interlude, and classical comedy. Gammer Gurton and Tom Tyler (of about the same date) subsume, under the domestic play of low life, native elements of both farce and moral. Misogonus combines elements of moral interlude and farce with qualities native and foreign, classical and romantic. These are followed by the biblical genre drama of Godly Queen Hester, partly political and partly pedagogical in intent. In the first five of these plays the tendency to teach is reduced almost to a minimum. In the Misogonus and Hester it is present, but is counterbalanced by romantic or satirical considerations. When, however, we reach the Damon and Pythias and The Supposes, the didactic has disappeared altogether in favour of the truly artistic motive. These plays at last combine the comic and serious, the real, the romantic, and the ideal. They are constructive, not primarily critical; in fact, they must be regarded as our first real comedies.
No play of this division better illustrates the impress of the classical model upon native material than Roister Doister. This "comedie" or "interlude" was certainly in existence by 1552; indeed, it has not yet been conclusively shown that it was not acted as early as 1534 to 1541. In the last contingency it may have anticipated the Thersytes; but, according to Professor Flügel's argument,[76] it was probably not composed till after 1545. With the Thersytes it has in common several points of detail, but the essential resemblance is, of course, in the Plautine personage of the braggart. Like Heywood before him, Udall aims to produce that which "is comendable for a man's recreation," but the masterpiece of Udall has the advantage of Heywood's "mery plays," in that its mirth "refuses scurilitie." In Roister Doister, also, more decidedly than in previous plays, the amusement proceeds not from the situation alone, but from the organism,—a plot essentially and substantially dramatic, because its characters are concrete, purposive, and interacting. But decided as was Udall's contribution to the art of comic drama, we must not credit him with producing comedy proper. The merit of Roister Doister is in its comic intent, its skilful characterization and contrivance. It is a presentation of humours,—corrective indeed, but farcical. It is not significant, constructive, poetic, grounded in the heart as well as in the head. A contribution to the classical type contemporary with the preceding, but of a much more farcical and juvenile appearance, is the "new interlued" named Jacke Jugeler, written not later than 1562 and perhaps as early as 1553-54 (after the reëstablishment of the Mass and before the terrifying revival of the sanguinary laws against heretics). It announces itself as a school drama, and in the prologue purports to have been derived from the Amphitruo of Plautus. I am inclined to think that the professed modesty of the author has led critics to undervalue the skill and fidelity of that which was not only the best "droll," but also the best dramatic satire produced in England up to date. Within a narrow compass he has developed a humorous action quite novel in English comedy, and has introduced us, not only to the first English double and one of the first English practical jokers, but, I believe, to our first victim of confused identity. The author is, of course, following his Plautus, but what could be more ludicrous than the scene in which Jenkin, uncertain and undesirous of his own acquaintance, covers himself with ignominy in the effort to discard it. We are led from interest to interest by means of anticipation, surprise, and the clever repetition of comic crises. Characters well drawn like Dame Coy and Alison, distinct like Jacke and Jenkin, suggestive of complexity like Bongrace, were not of everyday occurrence in the drama of 1553. The language, too, is idiomatic, and the wit, though vulgar, unforced. But perhaps more significant for our purpose than any other feature of the play is this, that in spite of its avowed æsthetic intent (even more outspoken than that of Roister Doister), it is a subtle attack upon the Roman Catholic Church. This interlude, says the maker, citing the authority of the classics, is written for the express purpose of provoking mirth, and for no other purpose: it is "not worth an oyster shell Except percase it shall fortune to make men laugh well"; but under the artifice we find a parable of the doctrinal Jacke Jugeler of the day, whose mission it was to prove that "One man may have two bodies and two faces, And that one man at one time may be in two places." I do not think that the satirical character of the play has heretofore been remarked, though the controversial allusions of the epilogue are, of course, well known. The innocence of the prologue and the profession of trifles fit for "little boys" are as shrewd an irony as the dramatic attack upon transubstantiation is a huge burlesque.
The third of these fusion dramas is The Historie of Jacob and Esau. Although its title may suggest the dignity of a miracle or the didacticism of a moral play, it is the reduction of the miracle to modern conditions and of the moral to concrete and actual characters. This "newe, mery, and wittie comedie, or enterlude" was licensed in 1557, but its decidedly protestant character may indicate composition before Mary's accession to the throne. Collier is quite right in calling it one of the freshest and most effective productions of the kind to which it belongs. But in classifying it with early religious plays, because the subject happens to be scriptural, he is as far astray as Professor Brandl who classes it with plays of the Prodigal Son, because the nature of the subject suggests a faint resemblance to that species. It is an attempt at comedy by way of fusion. The plot is in general scriptural, but it introduces some half-dozen invented characters. The production aims, like a moral interlude, at inculcating the doctrine of predestination; but, like a classical comedy, it is regularly divided, dramatically constructed, and equipped with tried and telling comic devices. Proceeding with extreme care for probability, with elaboration of motive, with due preparation of interest, enhancement, and suspense, it attains a climax of unusual excellence, considering the date of its composition. The discovery and denouement are naturally contrived; and where the author avails himself of the staples of his trade, the asides, disguises, intrigues, eavesdropping, and the rest, he does so with the ease of the accustomed dramatist. The play, in fact, deserves as high esteem as Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton; in originality and regularity it is their equal, in development of a vital conception their superior. The language is idiomatic—of the age and soil; or dignified, when the mood demands. It is also free from obscenity; but it lacks nothing in wit on that account, nor the situations in humour. Viewed as a whole, it is a simple and unaffected picture of English rural life—the scene with its setting as well as its figures. And these are coloured from experience, forerunners, indeed, of many in our better-known comedy: the young squire given over to the chase, horses and dogs and the horn at break of day (much to the discomfort of the slumbering environment),—the careless elder born,—victim and butt of his unnatural mother and her wily younger son; the doting father, duped; the clown; the pert and pretty maid; the aged nurse. Consider, in addition, the more subtle characteristics of the Jacob and Esau,—the family resemblances, the racial policy with its ripe and ruddy upper layer of morals, the romantic touch, the sometimes genuine pathos, the naïve domestic revelations, the loves in low life, the unaffected charms of dialogue and verse,—and one must acknowledge that this play, no matter what its origin and name, is at least as indicative of the maturing of English drama as either of the plays with which I have placed it in comparison.
Of these Gammer Gurtons Nedle was the first to gather the threads of farce, moral interlude, and classical school play into a well-sustained comedy of rustic life. Mr. Henry Bradley has ingeniously shown that in all probability it was a Christ's College play, written by William Stevenson during his fellowship of 1559 to 1560. There may, indeed, be reason for believing that it was composed as early as the author's first fellowship, 1551-54.[77] In this play the unregulated seductions of earlier days are brought under the curb of the classical manner and form: the native element already evident in Noah's Flood and the Shepherds' Plays, the Judicium, the Conversion of St. Paul, the Johan, and the Pardoner, and about this same time in the Contract betweene Wit and Wisdome (parts of which suggest forcibly the manner of this same Stevenson); the rollicking humour of the Vice turned Bedlem, the pithy and saline interchange of feminine amenities; the Atellan, sometimes even Chaucerian, laughter,—not sensual but animal; the delight in physical incongruity; the mediæval fondness for the grotesque. If the situations are farcical, they at any rate hold together; each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and each act towards the denouement. The characters are both typical and individual; and though the conception is of less significance than that of Roister Doister, the execution is an advance because it smacks less of the academic. Gammer Gurton carries forward the comedy of mirth, but hardly yet into the rounded comedy of life.
Another "excellent old play," called Tom Tyler and His Wife,[78] deserves to be mentioned in this sequence because it combines characteristics of the farce in a peculiar fashion with reminiscences of the moral interlude. Tom Tyler was written probably between 1550 and 1560, and is an admirable portrayal of matrimonial infelicities in low life, the forerunner of a series of "shrew" plays, not of the nature of the Taming, but of the Tamer Tamed. The temporary revolt of the husband, "whose cake was dough," his fleeting triumph by the ruse of the doughty Tom Taylor, and his lapse into irremediable servitude, "for wedding and hanging is destinie," these alone would make the farce worthy of honourable mention. But the dialogue and songs are themselves of snap, verve, and wit not inferior to the best of that day; and the coöperation of solemn allegorical figures, such as Destinie and Patience, in the humorous programme of Desire the Vice, side by side with the three lusty "shrowes," Typple, Sturdy, and Strife, lends to the farce a mock-moral appearance which entitles it to a place among these polytypic dramas historically unique. For it should not be regarded as an example of the moral in transition from abstract to concrete, but as a conscious and cleverly ironical presentation of a comic episode from utterly unideal life, under the form, and by the modes and machinery, of the pious allegorical drama.
For the printing of the next play in this series, the Misogonus, heretofore accessible only in manuscript at Chatsworth, we are indebted to Professor Brandl.[79] This interesting moral comedy was written in 1560, probably by Thomas Richardes,[80] whose name followes the prologue. Brandl points out certain resemblances to the Acolastus of Gnapheus, printed 1534. The contrast of the good and wayward sons might likewise be traced to the Studentes of Stymmelius[81] (1549), but the more evident sources are Terence, the biblical parable, common experience, and dramatic imagination, Professor Brandl thinks that the play is connected with The Supposes or its source, but I must confess that I cannot see the remotest relation. In Mr. Fleay's opinion this is the earliest English comedy. I suppose because it not only applies a classical treatment to certain elements of romantic form,—the Italian scene and baronial life,—and of romantic content and method such as the ideal friendship, the discovery and recognition, but combines therewith a realistic portrayal of native character, and various technical qualities vital to both the serious and comic kinds of composition. If, however, the names of the principal characters had been English, the relation to the moral interlude would at once be evident. This is a Prodigal Son play of the humanist school, save that it has supplemented the general characteristics of the Christian Terence and of Plautus by episodes and minor characters from the native farce. Although it is not superior in technique to Roister or Gammer Gurton, it is more distinctively polytypic than either. It is, also, of broader ethical significance. But this dominant didactic intent renders it less of a comedy than they, and much less than the Jacob and Esau—which is as good a representative of the fusion of dramatic kinds and qualities as the Misogonus, and a better specimen of workmanship. The simpler characters of the Misogonus, Codrus, poore, but "trwe and trusty"; the stammering Madge Mumbelcrust, who "coude once a said our lordyes saw—saw—sawter by rote"; and her gossip "Tib, who has tongue inough for both"; Alison, who knows "what a great thinge an oth is"; and Sir John, the priest, who knows how to use one,—these, their ways and colloquies, are of a piece with Stevenson's work and Heywood's and the world that their work represents. The conditions and conduct of the leading dramatis personæ are, on the other hand, more closely akin to the Plautine and Terentian, to the school of Udall and the humanists. Cacurgus, the domestic parasite and fool, remotely connected with the Vice, but actually a counterfeit-simple and wag, is as good a Will Summer as the early comedy can boast. When Greene made his Nano, Adam, and Slipper, he had in mind a generation of such creatures. If one could eliminate the sermonizing, there would remain a plot as satisfactory in unity, in situations, recognitions, crises, and denouement as any produced during the next twenty years. But, as I have said above, the moral urgency of the play injures the art. Since the Prodigal Son is reclaimed, we are, however, justified in ranking the production among early attempts at English comedy.
Godly Queen Hester, published 1561,[82] is exactly described as a "newe enterlude drawen out of the Holy Scripture." According to Fleay, it is the latest "scriptural morality" extant to be acted on the English stage.[83] But it is much more than a scriptural morality. Not only by its fusion of biblical characters, like Assuerus and Hester, with allegorical types, like Pride and the half-moral, half-native Vice, does the play give evidence of its polytypic nature, but by its atmosphere, which is charged with local and personal allusions and ironical references to the economic abuses of the day. In nervous energy of style and in forthright dramatic movement, the play is an improvement upon its predecessors; and as a satirical drama of political purpose, it should have had a numerous progeny. Strange to say, however, this kind of scriptural satire has had no great success in the field of English drama. Its bloom, as in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, has been in the by-paths of poetry. Of a peculiar historical importance is the character of Hardy-dardy. Mr. Fleay regards him as a domestic fool, and remarks that this interlude and the Misogonus are the only two early plays in which the Vice is replaced by such a personage. But neither of these statements is correct, for Hardy-dardy and Cacurgus do not totally abandon the quality of Vice, and various other plays yet to be mentioned have characters closely resembling them. Hardy-dardy is, indeed, a professed jester dressed in a fool's coat; in his assumption of stupidity and his proffer of service to Aman, he resembles Slipper in Greene's James the Fourth; and in his shrewd simplicity, repartee, and indirection he anticipates some of Shakespeare's fools. But he still retains characteristics of his ancestry. He stands, in conception, half-way between the minor Vices of the play, Ambition, Adulation, and Pride, to whose jocosities and deviltries he succeeds,—for he appears only when they have departed,—and the waggish weathercocks of later interludes, Haphazard and Conditions.
I wish I could have included among the reprints of the present volume both of the plays next to be mentioned, but limitations of space and other reasons have forbidden. When Puttenham said that for comedy and interlude such doings as he had "sene of Maister Edwardes deserved the hyest price," and Turberville, that "for poet's pen and passing witte," that poet "could have no English Peere," I think that they were not greatly exaggerating. Richard Edwardes' Damon and Pithias, written before 1566, maybe as early as 1563-65, takes steps significant in literary history. It is not only entirely free from allegorical elements, and almost from didactic, but it is rich in qualities of the fusion drama. The subject of a classical story is handled in a genuinely romantic fashion, although no previous drama of romantic friendship had existed in England. Comic and serious strains flow side by side, occasionally mingling. A quick satire, dramatic and personal, pervades the play. The names and scenes may be Syracusan, and types from Latin comedy may walk the streets, but the life is of the higher and lower classes of England; and the creatures of literary tradition are elbowed and jostled by children of the soil. The farcical episodes may be indelicate, but they have the virility of fact. The plot as a whole is skilfully conducted; while it proceeds directly to the goal, it encompasses a wider variety of ethical interests, dramatic motives, and attractions, than that of any previous play. The relation to an interlude of which we shall presently speak, Like wil to Like, is beyond doubt. In both a crude psychological pairing and contrasting of characters may be observed; but in the development of the characters, Damon and Pithias is decidedly superior. The author calls this "a matter mixt with myrth and care ... a tragical comedie"; but while he thus aims at a fusion of the ideal with the commonplace, he makes a close approximation, always, to probability of incident and character, and so observes the criterion which he himself enunciates:—
"In commedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch
All thynges to the quicke; and eke to frame each person so
That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know."
In its defects, such as the disregard of time and place, as in its merits, the Damon and Pithias is a commendable experiment in romantic comedy—a contribution worthy of more attention than historians have ordinarily accorded it. Undoubtedly Edwardes' "much admired play" of Palamon and Arcite, which the queen witnessed in hall at Christ Church, Oxford, 1566 (and laughed heartily thereat, and thanked "the author for his pains"), was of the fashion and vogue of the drama which we have discussed, though it had not the abiding influence.
If it were not for the fact that The Supposes (acted 1566) is a translation of Ariosto's play of the same title, I should be inclined to say that it was the first English comedy in every way worthy of the name. It certainly is, for many reasons, entitled to be called the first comedy in the English tongue. It is written, not for children, nor to educate, but for grown-ups and solely to delight. It is done into English, not for the vulgar, but for the more advanced taste of the translator's own Inn of Court; it has, therefore, qualities to captivate those who are capable of appreciating high comedy. It is composed, like its original, in straightforward, sparkling prose. It has, also, the rarest features of the fusion drama: it combines character and situation, each depending upon the other; it combines wit of intellect with humour of heart and fact, intricate and varied plot with motive and steady movement, comic but not farcical incident and language with complications surprising, serious, and only not hopelessly embarrassing. It conducts a romantic intrigue in a realistic fashion through a world of actualities. With the blood of the New Comedy, the Latin Comedy, the Renaissance in its veins, it is far ahead of its English contemporaries, if not of its time. Without historical apology or artistic concessions it would act well to-day. Both whimsical and grave, its ironies are pro bono publico; it is constructive as well as critical, imaginative as well as actual. Indeed, when one compares Gascoigne's work with the original and observes the just liberties that he has taken, the Englishing of sentiment as well as of phrase, one is tempted to say, with Tom Nashe, that in comedy, as in other fields, this writer first "beat a path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since his departure." He did not contrive the plot; but no dramatist before him had selected for his audience, translated, and adapted a play so amusing and varied in interest, so graceful, simple, and idiomatic in its style. It was said by R. T., in 1615, that Gascoigne was one of those who first "brake the ice for our quainter poets who now write, that they may more safely swim through the main ocean of sweet poesy"—a remark which would lose much of its force if restricted to the poet's achievements in satire alone; in the drama of the humanists he excelled his contemporaries, and in the romantic comedy of intrigue he anticipated those who, like Greene and Shakespeare,[84] adapted the Italian plot to English manners and the English taste. Nor are these the only claims of Gascoigne to consideration: The Supposes, as Professor Herford has justly remarked, is the most Jonsonian of English comedies before Jonson.