The Growth of English Drama

by Arnold Wynne

Mannering. Why, who art thou?

George. Why, I am George-a-Greene,
True liegeman to my king,
Who scorns that men of such esteem as these
Should brook the braves of any traitorous squire.
You of the bench, and you, my fellow-friends,
Neighbours, we subjects all unto the king,
We are English born, and therefore Edward's friends,
Vow'd unto him even in our mothers' womb,
Our minds to God, our hearts unto our king;
Our wealth, our homage, and our carcasses
Be all King Edward's. Then, sirrah, we
Have nothing left for traitors but our swords,
Whetted to bathe them in your bloods, and die
'Gainst you, before we send you any victuals.

George-a-Greene brings us to the end of Greene's dramatic work. The qualities of that work have been pointed out as they occurred, but it may be as well to recapitulate them in a final paragraph. Foremost of all will stand the crowded medley of his plots, filling the stage with an amount of incident and action which is in striking contrast to Lyly's conversations and monologues. The public appetite for complex plots was stimulated, but unfortunately very little progress was made in the art of orderly dramatic arrangement and evolution. Indeed, this feature of Greene's plays may be thought to have been almost as much a loss as a gain to drama. Its popularity licensed an indifference on the part of lesser authors to clarity and restraint, and encouraged the development of those dual plots which are to be found, connected by the flimsiest bonds, in the works of such men as Dekker and Heywood. To the same influence may be traced Shakespeare's frequent but skilful use of subordinate plots. For the second quality of Greene's work we name the charm and purity of his romantic conceptions. The fresh air of his pastoralism, the virtue, constancy and patience of his heroines, entitle him to an honourable position among the writers who have reached success by this path. Thirdly, but of equal importance, is his sympathetic presentment of men and women of the middle and lower classes; he was here an innovator, and some of our most pathetic dramas may be traced ultimately to his example. His admirable 'low comedy' scenes, on the other hand, though they prove their author to have been gifted with considerable humour, merely continued the practice of Lyly, as his rant and noisy warfare echoed the thunder of Marlowe. The general soundness, even occasional excellence, of his verse and prose must be allowed to be largely his own.

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George Peele has left behind him a name associated with sweetness of versification and graceful pastoralism. When, however, we try to recall other features of his work, the men and women of his creation, or scenes from his plots, we find our memory strangely indistinct. It is not easy at first to see why; but probably the cause is in his lack of strong individuality. He had not the gift of his greater contemporaries of throwing vitality into his work. When they took up an old story they entered into possession of it, creating fresh scenes and introducing new and effective actors; above all, in their most successful productions, they grasped the necessity of having one or more clearly defined figures, which, by their strongly human appeal, or their exaggerated traits, should grip the attention of the spectators with unforgettable force. Marlowe was the supreme master of this art; Diogenes, Sir Tophas, Margaret of Fressingfield, Queen Dorothea, and others are examples of what Lyly and Greene could do. The same vitality is visible in their best known plots and scenes. Apelles loved Campaspe long ago in the pages of history, and was forgotten there; Lyly made him woo and win her again, and now their home is for ever between the covers of his little volume. Greene tells the story of Earl Lacy's love for Margaret, and the details of that delightfully human romance return to us whenever his name is mentioned. But what characters or scenes spring up to proclaim Peele's authorship? He dramatized the narrative of Absalom's rebellion, and, as soon as the end of the play is reached, the theme, with the possible exception of the first scene, slips back, in our minds, into its old biblical setting; it belongs to the writer of The Book of Samuel, not to Peele. He wrote a Marlowesque play, similar to Greene's Alphonsus, King of Arragon, but failed to create out of his several leaders a single dominant figure to compare with Alphonsus. The same might be said of his Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes and his Edward the First; and his Old Wives' Tale is a by-word for confusion. Only in the sub-plot of The Arraignment of Paris does he present a character that may be said to owe its permanence in English literature to him. The first love of Paris is there told so prettily, with so pathetic a presentation of the heart-broken Oenone, that at once the deserted maiden won a place in English hearts and minds; Tennyson's poem is an exquisite wreath laid at the foot of the monument raised by Peele to her memory. On the other hand, the main plot, retelling the old legend of the Apple of Discord, is painted in the same neutral tints as coloured his other plays. Such slight distinction as it may have it draws from association with a matter of extraneous interest, the conversion of the action into an elaborate compliment to Queen Elizabeth; the goddesses, and Paris in his relation to them, gain nothing at his hands, while Hobbinol, Diggon and Thenot are the dullest of shepherds. Unapt for witty or clownish dialogue, Peele rarely attempts, as Lyly and Greene did, to give fresh piquancy to an old story by the addition of subordinate humorous episodes; when he does, as in Edward the First, the result can hardly be termed a success.

Peele's eminence as a dramatist, then, must be sought for in the two features of his work mentioned in our opening sentence, namely, sweetness of versification and graceful pastoralism. Of these the latter is found only in a single play, The Arraignment of Paris, and is one of the few products of the author's originality. Lyly was possibly indebted to it for the background and minor figures of certain scenes in Gallathea, and Greene may have owed something to its influence. Certainly neither dramatist ever equalled its delicate descriptions of passive Nature.[56] The preponderance of mythology, however, the dearth of real human beings, the unnaturalness permitted to invade nature—so that even the flowers are grouped, as in an absurd parterre, to represent the forms of goddesses—make Peele's pastoralism, despite the undeniable charm of many passages, inferior to Greene's representation of English country life.

Turning next to his verse, we recognize that it is here above all that his excellence is to be found. Nevertheless a word of caution is needed. So many of his readers have been charmed by his verse that it seems almost a pity to remind them that he wrote more than two plays, and that the same brain that composed the favourite passages in David and Bethsabe also produced quantities of very indifferent poetry in other dramas. Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes is written in tedious alliterative heptameters. From Edward the First the most ardent admirer of Peele would be puzzled to find half a dozen speeches meriting quotation. The verse of The Battle of Alcazar is in all points similar to that of Greene's Marlowesque plays, imitating and falling short of the same model. In fact Peele's reputation as a versifier rests almost entirely on the contents of those two plays which most students of his work read, The Arraignment of Paris and David and Bethsabe. Of the first it may be said boldly, without fear of contradiction, that, considered metrically, the verse is unsuited to ordinary drama. The arbitrary and constantly changing use of heroic couplet, blank verse (pentameters), rhyming heptameters, alternate heptameters and hexameters rhyming together, and the swift transition from one form to another in the same speech, possibly help towards the lyrical effect aimed at; the nature of the plot licenses a deviation from the ordinary dramatic rules; but such metric irresponsibility would be out of place in any ordinary play. There is a rare daintiness in some of the lines; they are truly poetic; but we must remember that goddesses and the legendary dwellers about Mount Ida may be permitted to speak in a language which would be condemned as an affectation among folk of commoner clay. Setting these objections aside—though they are important, as demonstrating the limited amount of Peele's widely praised dramatic verse—we may offer one general criticism of the verse of both plays. The best lines and passages charm us by their exquisite finish, their seductive rhythm and imagery, not by their thought. Sometimes the warm glow of his patriotism, which was his most sincere emotion, inspired verses that move us; noble lines will be found in Edward the First and The Battle of Alcazar, as well as in the better known conclusion to The Arraignment of Paris. But we may look in vain through his dramas for lines like those quoted on an earlier page from Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (beginning, 'Why, thinks King Henry's son'), or these, placed in the mouth of Queen Dorothea, repudiating the idea of revenge:

As if they kill not me, who with him fight!
As if his breast be touch'd, I am not wounded!
As if he wail'd, my joys were not confounded!
We are one heart, though rent by hate in twain;
One soul, one essence doth our weal contain:
What, then, can conquer him, that kills not me?[57]

For the sake of comparison with these two passages let us quote the famous piece from David and Bethsabe.

Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair.
To joy[58] her love I'll build a kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests
In oblique turnings, wind their nimble waves
About the circles of her curious walks;
And with their murmur summon easeful sleep
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.