Others again are more restrained, though almost all have a certain charming artlessness about them. A verse may be quoted from the Spring Song.
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And hear we aye birds tune this merry lay,
Cuckow, jug, jug, pu-we, to-wit, to-whoo.
Regarded as a show, then, the performance is deserving of all praise, its fresh pastoralism confirming the hold upon the stage of unaffected country scenes. It must have followed not long after Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. It makes no claim to belong to regular drama, so that we need waste no words in uninvited criticism of its weakness in plot, action and character. Approving mention must be made of Will Summer—no relation to Summer, the season of the year, who is referred to in the title—Henry the Eighth's Court Jester, who plays the part of 'presenter' and general critic, standing apart from the main action but thrusting in his remarks as the spirit moves him. He is responsible for the description of the performance as a show. His purpose is fully declared at the start, when he announces that he will 'sit as a chorus and flout the actors and him (the author) at the end of every scene'. Forthwith he proceeds to offer advice to the actors about their behaviour: 'And this I bar, over and besides, that none of you stroke your beards to make action, play with your cod-piece points, or stand fumbling on your buttons, when you know not how to bestow your fingers. Serve God, and act cleanly.' Always his honesty exceeds his consideration for the feelings of others. Three clowns and three maids have barely ended their rustic jig when he calls out, 'Beshrew my heart, of a number of ill legs I never saw worse dancers. How bless'd are you that the wenches of the parish do not see you!' And his yawn carries a world of disgust with it as he murmurs, over one of Summer's lectures, 'I promise you truly I was almost asleep; I thought I had been at a sermon.' Historically he is interesting as being another example of the attempts made at this time, as in James the Fourth and The Old Wives' Tale, to provide a means of entertainment, more popular than formal prologues, epilogues or choruses, to fill up unavoidable pauses between scenes.
Far more than most plays Summer's Last Will and Testament contains references to contemporary events,—the recent plague, drought, flood, and short harvests are all mentioned. Satire, too, enlivens some of the longest speeches; for the writer was primarily and by profession a satirist. Although the finer graces of poetry are not his, his verse indicates the gradual advance that was being made to greater ease and freedom; his lines are not weighted with sounding words, nor is the 'privilege of metre' restricted to the expression of beautiful, wise or emotional thought, as was commonly the case elsewhere. The country freshness of his lyrics has been already praised. Altogether, despite the slight amount of his work in drama, Nash is not a dramatist to be dismissed with a mere expression of indifference or contempt. Several things in it make Summer's Last Will and Testament a production worth remembering. The following extract illustrates the qualities of Nash's blank verse.
Orion. Yet in a jest (since thou rail'st so 'gainst dogs)
I'll speak a word or two in their defence.
That creature's best that comes most near to men;
That dogs of all come nearest, thus I prove.
First, they excell us in all outward sense,
Which no one of experience will deny;
They hear, they smell, they see better than we.
To come to speech, they have it questionless,
Although we understand them not so well:
They bark as good old Saxon as may be,
And that in more variety than we,
For they have one voice when they are in chase,
Another when they wrangle for their meat,
Another when we beat them out of doors....
That dogs physicians are, thus I infer;
They are ne'er sick but they know their disease
And find out means to ease them of their grief.
Special good surgeons to cure dangerous wounds:
For, stricken with a stake into the flesh
This policy they use to get it out;
They trail one of their feet upon the ground,
And gnaw the flesh about where the wound is,
Till it be clean drawn out; and then, because
Ulcers and sores kept foul are hardly cur'd,
They lick and purify it with their tongue,
And well observe Hippocrates' old rule,
The only medicine for the foot is rest,—
For if they have the least hurt in their feet
They bear them up and look they be not stirr'd.
When humours rise, they eat a sovereign herb,
Whereby what cloys their stomachs they cast up;
And as some writers of experience tell,
They were the first invented vomiting.
Sham'st thou not, Autumn, unadvisedly
To slander such rare creatures as they be?
CHAPTER VI
TRAGEDY: LODGE, KYD, MARLOWE, ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM.
Great as was the advance made by Lyly and Greene in Comedy, the advance made by Kyd and Marlowe in Tragedy was greater. Indeed it may almost be said that they created Tragedy as we know it. We have only to recall the dull speeches of Gorboduc, the severe formality of The Misfortunes of Arthur, to recognize the change that had to take place before the level of such a tragedy as Romeo and Juliet could be reached. Yet between the two last-mentioned tragedies, if 1591 be accepted as the date of Shakespeare's play, there lies a period of but four years. The nature of the change was foreshadowed by the tragi-comedy, Damon and Pythias. In an earlier chapter we dealt with the divergence of that play from the English Senecan school of tragedy. This divergence, accepted as right, set Tragedy on its feet. Great things, however, still remained to be done.