Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle mark the end of the Interlude stage and the commencement of Comedy proper. Leaving the latter at this point for the present, we shall return in the next chapter to study its fortunes at the hands of Lyly.
Morality Plays, though theoretically quite as suitable for tragic effect as for comic, since the former only required that Mankind should sometimes fail to reach heaven, seem nevertheless to have developed mainly the lighter side, setting the hero right at the finish and in the meantime discovering, to the relief of otherwise bored spectators, that wickedness, in some unexplained way, was funny. As long as propriety forbade that good should be overcome by evil it is hard to see how tragedy could appear. Had Humankind, in The Castell of Perseverance, been fought for in vain by the Virtues, or had Everyman found no companion to go with him and intercede for him, there had been tragedy indeed. But religious optimism was against any conclusion so discouraging to repentance. The lingering Miracles, it is true, still presented the sublimest of all tragedies in the Fall of Man and the apparent triumph of the Pharisees over Jesus. Between them, however, and the kind of drama that succeeded the Moralities, too great a gulf was fixed. Contemporaries of those original spirits, Heywood and Udall, could hardly revert for inspiration to the discredited performances of villages and of a few provincial towns. Tragedy had to wait until there was matured and made popular an Interlude from which the conflict of Virtues and Vices, with the orthodox triumph of the former, had been purged away, leaving to the author complete liberty alike in character and action. When that came, Tragedy returned to the stage, a stranger with strange stories to tell. Persia and Ancient Rome sent their tyrants and their heroines to contest for public favour with home-born knaves and fools. Nor were the newcomers above borrowing the services of those same knaves and fools. The Vice was given a place, low clownish fellows were admitted to relieve the harrowed feelings, and our old acquaintance, Herod, was summoned from the Miracles to lend his aid.
Yet even so—and probably because it was so—Tragedy was ill at ease. She had called in low comedy and rant to please the foolish, only to find herself infected and degraded by their company. Moreover, the bustle of incident, the abrupt changes from grave to gay and to grave again, jangled her sad majestic harmonies with shrill interrupting discords. It had not been so in Greece. It had not been so even in Italy, where Roman Seneca, fearing the least decline to a lower plane of dignity and impressiveness, had disciplined tragedy by an imposition of artificial but not unskilful restraints. In place of the strong unbroken sweep of a resistless current, which characterized the evolution of an Aeschylean drama, he had insisted on an orderly division of a plot into acts and scenes, as though one should break up the sheer plunge of a single waterfall into a well-balanced group of cascades. Yet he was wise in his generation, securing by this means a carefully proportioned development which, in the absence of that genius which inspired the Greek dramatists, might otherwise have been lost. Once strong and free in the plays of Aeschylus and his compeers, hampered and constantly under guidance but still dignified and noble in the Senecan drama, Tragedy now found herself debased and almost caricatured in the English Interlude stage. Fortunately the danger was seen in time. English writers, face to face with self-conscious tragedy, realized that here at least was more than unaided native art could compass. Despairing of success if they persisted in the old methods, they fell back awkwardly upon classical imitation and, by assiduous study tempered by a wise criticism, achieved success.
Only two plays with any claim to the designation of tragedies have survived to us from the Interludes, neither of them of much interest. Cambyses (1561), by Thomas Preston, has all the qualities of an imperfect Interlude. There are the base fellows and the clowns, Huff, Ruff, Snuff, Hob and Lob; the abstractions, Diligence, Shame, Common's Complaint, Small Hability, and the like; the Vice, Ambidexter, who enters 'with an old capcase on his head, an old pail about his hips for harness, a scummer and a potlid by his side, and a rake on his shoulder'; and the same scuffling and horseplay when the comic element is uppermost. Incident follows incident as rapidly and with as trifling motives as before. In the course of a short play we see Cambyses, king of Persia, set off for his conquests in Egypt; return; execute Sisamnes, his unjust deputy; prove a far worse ruler himself; shoot through the heart the young son of Praxaspes, to prove to that too-frank counsellor that he is not as drunk as was supposed; murder his own brother, Smirdis, on the lying report of Ambidexter; marry, contrary to the law of the Church and her own wish, a lovely lady, his cousin, and then have her executed for reproaching him with the death of his brother; and finally die, accidentally pierced by his own sword when mounting a horse. All these horrors, except the death of the lady, take place on the stage. Thus we have such stage-directions as, 'Smite him in the neck with a sword to signify his death', 'Flay him with a false skin', 'A little bladder of vinegar pricked', 'Enter the King without a gown, a sword thrust up into his side, bleeding.' Of real tragedy there is little, the hustle of crime upon crime obliterating the impression which any one singly might produce. Yet even in this crude orgy of bloodshed the melancholy voice of unaffected pathos can be heard mourning the loss of dear ones. It speaks in the farewells of Sisamnes and his son Otian, and of Praxaspes (the honest minister) and his little boy; throughout the whole incident of the gentle lady whose fate melts even the Vice to tears; and in the outburst of a mother's grief over her child's corpse. We quote the last.
O blissful babe, O joy of womb, heart's comfort and delight,
For counsel given unto the king, is this thy just requite?
O heavy day and doleful time, these mourning tunes to make!
With blubb'red eyes into my arms from earth I will thee take,
And wrap thee in my apron white: but O my heavy heart!
The spiteful pangs that it sustains would make it in two to part,
The death of this my son to see: O heavy mother now,
That from thy sweet and sug'red joy to sorrow so shouldst bow!
What grief in womb did I retain before I did thee see;
Yet at the last, when smart was gone, what joy wert thou to me!
How tender was I of thy food, for to preserve thy state!
How stilled I thy tender heart at times early and late!
With velvet paps I gave thee suck, with issue from my breast,
And danced thee upon my knee to bring thee unto rest.
Is this the joy of thee I reap? O king of tiger's brood,
O tiger's whelp, hadst thou the heart to see this child's heart-blood?
Nature enforceth me, alas, in this wise to deplore,
To wring my hands, O wel-away, that I should see this hour.
Thy mother yet will kiss thy lips, silk-soft and pleasant white,
With wringing hands lamenting for to see thee in this plight.
My lording dear, let us go home, our mourning to augment.
The second play, Appius and Virginia (1563), by R.B. (not further identified), is, in some respects, weaker; though, by avoiding the crowded plot which spoilt Cambyses, it attains more nearly to tragedy. The low characters, Mansipulus and Mansipula, the Vice (Haphazard), and the abstractions, Conscience, Comfort and their brethren, reappear with as little success. But the singleness of the theme helps towards that elevation of the main figures and intensifying of the catastrophe which tragic emotion demands. Unfortunately, from the start the author seems to have been obsessed with the notion that the familiar rant of Herod was peculiarly suited to his subject. In such a notion there lay, of course, the half-truth that lofty thoughts and impassioned speech are more befitting the sombre muse than the foolish chatter of clowns. But, except where his own deliberately introduced mirth-makers are speaking, he will have nothing but pompous rhetoric from the lips of his characters. His prologue begins his speech with the sounding line:
Who doth desire the trump of fame to sound unto the skies—
Virginius's wife makes her début upon the stage with this encouraging remark to her companion:
The pert and prickly prime of youth ought chastisement to have,
But thou, dear daughter, needest not, thyself doth show thee grave.