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

by Unknown

7. The Older Morals in their Relation to Comedy

The remaining dramas within the compass of this survey may be considered in the following order: first, the older morals and moral interludes, between the years 1400 and 1520; second, various experiments of native and foreign, classical and romantic, origin which distinguish a period of transition extending approximately from 1520 to 1553; and, third, some nine or ten plays of prime importance which succeed these and unite, in one way or another, qualities of structure and aim hitherto distinctive of separate dramatic kinds. The period during which these plays, which I shall venture to call polytypic, were produced, roughly coincides with the years 1545 to 1566, and among these plays are the first English comedies really worthy of the name. We must then notice a group of rudimentary survivals, some of which, falling between 1550 and 1570, illustrate simply an artificial adaptation of the 'moral' species, while other few, appearing between 1553 and 1580, are a persistent flowering of the decadent stock, fruitless in kind but genuine in comic quality. We shall finally pass in brief review the crude romantic plays of morals or intrigue or popular tradition written between 1570 and 1590. And if it were not for lack of space, we should also glance at the satirical comedies which appeared when Shakespeare was beginning and Greene was ceasing; but, so far as possible, I must omit all subjects to which any consideration has elsewhere been accorded in this volume.

A sympathetic examination of the older morals—those that were produced before 1520—will reveal, even though the period is comparatively early, a twofold character of composition. We find, on the one hand, plays interpretative of ideals of life, constructive in character, relying upon the fundamentally allegorical, and making principally for a didactic end. We find, on the other hand, plays that deal with the actual have a critical aim, reproduce appearances and manners, and tend toward the amusing and satirical.

Of the half-dozen morals that made for the development of constructive or interpretative comedy, one of the earliest (about 1400) and most important was the Castell of Perseverance. In the quality of its dramatic devices it sustains a close relation to the Digby Magdalene,—the siege of the Castell by the Seven Deadly Sins, and their repulse under the roses which the Virtues have discharged. It also makes use of characters already prominent in the eleventh Coventry play, the Pax and Misericordia, who there, as here, intercede for mankind. Collier calls this a well-constructed and much varied allegory, and says with good reason that its completeness indicates predecessors in the same kind. It is itself an early treatment of a fruitful theme, variously handled in later plays like Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and in narratives like The Holy War. Though the abstractions are not of a highly dramatic character, still one or two of them,—for instance Detractio, the Vice, who is a cousin of the Coventry Backbiter, and of Invidia, "who dwellyth in Abbeys ofte," foreshadow the comedy of manners and satire, that is to say, the comedy of criticism. Other morals or moral interludes of the constructive kind, which I must forbear to describe, even though they contributed in one way or another to the improvement of dramatic consciousness or skill, are the Pride of Life, of antiquity perhaps as high as the preceding; the Wisdom that is Christ, 1480-1490, a comedy in the mediæval sense, insomuch as it portrays the ultimate triumph of a hero in his contest with temptation; Mundus et Infans, printed 1522, but written perhaps by the beginning of the century, which, beside giving us a vivid satirical picture of low life, makes a twofold contribution to the technique of comedy,—an iteration of crises in plot, and a sequence of changes in the character of the hero; Skelton's Magnyfycence, 1515-1523, significant for "vigour and vivacity of diction," and his Nigromansir, written somewhat earlier, which, though now lost, appears by Warton's account to have contributed, by its attack upon ecclesiastical abuses, to the beginnings of satirical comedy; the Moralle Play of the Somonynge of Everyman, printed before 1531, but of uncertain date of composition,—a tragedy to be sure, but "one of the most perfect allegories ever formed." All these, even when not purposively comic or even entertaining, assist the dramatic presentation of an imaginative ideal; occasionally also, though less directly, they contribute to dramatic satire and the portrayal of manners.

Of moral plays written before 1520 that contributed to the comedy of real life and critical intent we still have three or four. Mankynd—somewhere between 1461 and 1485—is of prime importance to the comedy of the actual, for practically its only claim to consideration as an allegorical or didactic production is that it maintains the plan and purpose of the moral play. Its dramatic tendency is altogether away from the abstract. In spite of its stereotyped Mercie and Myscheff, its minor Vices, and its Devil, it is a somewhat coarse but amusing portrayal of the manners of contemporary ne'er-do-weels. Attach no more meaning to the names Newgyse, Nowadays, and Nowte than the chuckling audience did, or change them to Huntyngton of Sanston, Thuolay of Hanston, and Pycharde of Trumpyngton, and you perceive at once that the individuality, conversation, and behaviour of these characters, and even of the hero, when he is not "holyer than ever was ony of his kyn," are hardly less natural and concrete than those of Englishmen immortalized by Heywood, Udall, and William Stevenson. The plot, to be sure, is dramatically futile, the incidents farcical, the merriment anything but refined; but there are few merrier successors of the Wakefield Tutivillus than his namesake here, who, coming "invysybull," cometh for all that "with his legges under him" and "no lede on his helys" to inform the sanctimonious hero that "a schorte preyere thyrlyth hewyn" and the audience that "the Devil is dead." Like the devil-judge of the Nigromansir and the devil-sailor of the Shipwrights' Play, he has shaken off his biblical conventions (if he ever had any), he associates familiarly with characters of all kinds, and is marked by his grotesque devices as a wilful worker of confusion, the marplot of the play. The dog-Latin of the Vice Myscheff stands half-way between that of the Wakefield plays and that of Roister Doister and Thersytes; and the Sam Wellerisms of Newgyse are a fine advance in the reproduction of the vulgar. His "Beware! quod the goode-wyff, when sche smot of here husbondes hede," and his "Quod the Devill to the frerys," and other gayeties perilous to quote—there is something Rabelaisian in all this. So Nowte and Nowadays, with their racy idioms, their variegated oaths, and "allectuose ways," are to the manner born, neither new nor old; they are of the picaresque drama that finds a welcome in every age and land. It is worth while to notice also the parallelism of crudity and progress in the technical devices of the action: on the one hand, the exchange of garments by which a change of motive is symbolized, a ruse that only gradually yields to the manifestation of character by means of action; and on the other hand, the legitimate and dramatic parody of a scene in court.

The concrete element so noteworthy in Mankynd is further developed in the "Goodly Interlude of Nature, compylyde by" Archbishop Morton's chaplain, Henry Medwall, between 1486 and 1500. This author must have possessed a remarkably vivid imagination, or have enjoyed a closer acquaintance than might be expected of one of his cloth with the seamy side of London; for there are few racier or more realistic bits of description in our early literature than the account given by Sensuality of Fleyng Kat and Margery, of the perversion of the hero by the latter, and of her retirement when deserted to that house of "Strayt Religyon at the Grene Freres hereby," where "all is open as a gose eye." Though the plot is not remarkable, nor the mechanism of it, for almost the only device availed of is that of feigned names, still the author's insight into the conditions of low life, his common sense, his proverbial philosophy, his humorous exhibition of the morals of the day, and his stray and sudden shafts at the foibles of his own religious class, would alone suffice to attract attention to this work. And even more remarkable than this in the history of comedy is Medwall's literary style: his versification excellent and varied, his conversations witty, idiomatic, and facile. Indeed, he is so far beyond the ordinary convention that he writes the first bit of prose to be found in our drama.

Several of the characteristics of Mankynd are carried forward also in the moral "interlude," named, not for its hero Free Will, but for its Vice, Hyckescorner. It appears to have been written between 1497 and 1512. The upper limit of production is fixed by the reference to Newfoundland, and perhaps by the fact that in the same year Locher's translation of the Narrenschiff appeared; the lower limit by the mention of the ship Regent, which would not probably have been referred to as existing after 1512.[63] Indeed, the mention of the ship James may associate the lower limit with 1503, the date of the Scotch marriage. The tendency of this moral is distinctively didactic,—to denounce the folly that scoffs at religion,—but in quality it smacks more of comedy than any preceding play. Its value was long ago acknowledged by Dr. Percy. "Abating the moral and religious reflections and the like," says he, "the piece is of a comic cast, and contains a humorous display of some of the vices of the age. Indeed, the author has generally shown so little attention to the allegorical that we need only to substitute other names to his personages, and we have real characters and living manners." The plot is insignificant, but the situations are refreshingly humorous, and one of them, the setting of Pity in the stocks, is new. The local references are frequent, and the dialogue is more sprightly than even that of Nature. Hyckescorner is in many ways the model of another important play of which we shall soon have reason to speak, the Interlude of Youth.

While the plot of the New Interlude and Mery of the Nature of the Four Elements, calls for no special notice, it interests us because in purpose it is not moral, but scientific, and in conduct makes use of comic and commonplace means not previously availed of. The humour proceeds not simply from the jumble of oaths, nicknames, proverbs, gibes, bad puns, transparent jokes, mimicry, Sam Wellerisms, and nugae canorae of which the talk of most Vices consists, but from the cleverly managed verbal misunderstanding between the Vice and the Taverner, the irrelevant question, and the humorous employment of snatches and tags from popular songs. The introduction of a character representing a trade, such as that of the Taverner, who enumerates sixteen kinds of wine, and "by his face seems to love best drinking," is, of course, novel, but is not without precedent in the miracle plays. This interlude was printed in 1519 by its author, John Rastell, evidently soon after it was written.

When we consider that the Four Elements was written by a friend of Sir Thomas More, and that, like the plays of John Heywood, another of More's friends, it depends for much of its effect upon its gibes at womankind, we are, perhaps, assisted in realizing the extent to which the literary taste of the day still indulged in this primitive form of amusement, and the distance which was yet to be covered before comedy could safely avail itself of the feminine element as it is,—witty and practical, as well as tender,—and so prepare to fulfil its peculiar function as the conserver of society. For, until it recognizes that women constitute the social other-half, the comic spirit has not come into full possession of its possibilities; it has not produced comedy, for it has not given us a full and undistorted reflex of life. This is a fact so rarely considered that I cannot refrain from quoting Mr. George Meredith. "Comedy," he says, in his excellent essay on its Idea—"comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it.... The heroines of comedy are like women of the world, not necessarily heartless for being clear-witted: they seem so to the sentimentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition of their battle with men, and of men with them: and as the two, however divergent, both look on one object, namely, life, the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. The comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness; he is for saying that, when they draw together in social life, their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the nursery." Of course, if the ways of man and maid in society ever grew to be exactly alike, comedy would die of inanition. Consequently, though I say that comedy requires for the sexes equality of social privilege, I do not mean identity. The synalœpha of the sexes—such as some extremists, political and pedagogical, project—would just as surely destroy comedy as in former days the inequality of the sexes dwarfed it. The sentimental and romantic give-and-take is as essential to society as the intellectual, and as essential to comedy as to society.