"Jocasta," by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, acted 1566 by the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn, demands little attention. It is a translation in blank verse of Lodovico Dolce's "Giocasta," itself an adaptation of the "Phœnissæ" of Euripides. It thus furnishes additional evidence of the influence of Italian tragedy on English. The chorus numbers four, as in "Gorboduc," and the dumb shows, apparently of Gascoigne's invention, are notably elaborate and spectacular.[2]
"Tancred and Gismunda," acted before the queen at the Inner Temple in 1568, under the title "Gismond of Salerne," was written in rhymed quatrains by five gentlemen of the Temple, and afterwards revised and put into blank verse by the author of the fifth act, Robert Wilmot, and first published in 1591.[3] In both versions Cupid appears before the first and third acts as the director of the action, and Magæra comes on before the fourth act to superintend the revenge and murder. The play is based on Painter's version of Boccaccio's novella, which is followed closely, but the base-born lover becomes a count according to the prevailing theory of tragedy. The story itself has an obvious dramatic power and a certain dramatic structure which it imposes on the play. Gismunda's passion for the Count Palurin runs counter to her father's wishes; at the end of the third act love is triumphant, but in the fourth is defeated, and the gruesome catastrophe follows, Tancred and Gismunda dying on the stage. This is the earliest extant English play based on an Italian novella, and the first tragedy to adopt a romantic love story and to make the passion of love its central motive; and the authors accomplished their experiment with evident enthusiasm and some gracefulness and force of diction. They were, however, very conscious of their models. Seneca's "Thyestes," and "Phædra," itself presenting a story of passionate love, were perhaps their chief inspirations; but Buchanan's "Jephthes" and Beza's "Abraham," translated into English in 1577, are mentioned in Wilmot's dedication, and, together with other plays, supplied precedents for the treatment of the favorite tragic theme, the sacrifice of a child by a father. Moreover, Italian tragedies had, since Giraldi's "Orbecche," been turning to romantic fiction for their subjects instead of to history and mythology; and some of these, "Orbecche" itself, and, as Professor Creizenach notes,[4] Dolce's "Dido," doubtless influenced the young templars. There had, indeed, already been Italian tragedies based on Boccaccio's novella, and one by Frederigo Asinari (1576) had added an Œdipean horror by making Tancred put out his eyes before killing himself, an augmentation adopted by Wilmot in his revision. The play was thus not only thoroughly Senecan, but the result of a tangle of derivative Senecan influences. The authors were probably unconscious of the incongruity so obvious to us between the classical form and the romantic material. They were interested in their story and were eager to give it all the advantages that erudition could discover; their intentions were doubtless perfectly reflected in the praise which William Webbe gave them for a play that "all men generally desired, as a work, either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman Seneca the censurer."
"The Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes, was acted and published in 1588. The story from "The Morte D'Arthur" was suggested by its likeness to Senecan plots; and the play was an ambitious attempt to use British legend as Seneca had treated classical myth. The strife between father and son, with its accompaniments of adultery and incest, is viewed as constituting a Nemesis for the crimes of Arthur's father, Pendragon; and the ghost of the wronged Gorlois appears in the first scene to promise revenge, and in the final scene to triumph over its fulfillment. The author knew his models by heart, borrowed much, availed himself of all the particulars of the Senecan technic, and imitated everywhere with a good deal of spirit and success. The play has dramatic and poetic merits beyond its predecessors, but its late date makes it of small importance in our effort to trace the beginnings of English tragedy. Acted twenty-six years after "Gorboduc," it testifies less to the progress of dramatic art than to the conventionalizing effect of Senecan models. Though perhaps the most successful of English imitations of Seneca, it marks the failure of amateur actors and courtly audiences to revive the classical drama on the English stage. On the occasion of its performance before the Queen at Greenwich, its actors and authors may very likely have thought it full of significance for the future of the drama; but "Tamburlaine" had already been acted, and poetry had taken up its abode in the despised public theatres. The chief interest for us in "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is that it furnishes further illustration of the use of English history and of stories of revenge.
To understand the full importance of the attempt to domicile Seneca in England, we must turn to the universities. Two English plays, which would be of interest, have not been preserved, "Ezechias," a tragedy by Udall, acted in 1564 at Cambridge, and "Palamon and Arcyte" by Edwards, the author of "Damon and Pithias," acted 1566. These are the only English plays at all tragical that are recorded; but the practice of giving Latin plays continued and grew in popularity.[5] We hear of "Dido" and an "Ajax Flagellifer," apparently a translation of Sophocles, both in 1564, and a "Progne" in 1566. The extant Latin tragedies are of a later date. Gager's "Meleager," "Œdipus," and "Dido," all acted in the early eighties, are modeled strictly on Seneca, the first two showing direct borrowings. In the fragment which we possess of the third, the ghost of Sichæus appears to warn Dido, and is followed by the storm, represented, we learn, by sugar for snow, sweetmeats for hail, and rose-water for rain. Gager's "Ulysses Redux," acted in 1591, a little beyond the limits of our period, presents a somewhat freer treatment of the Senecan form, the number of characters and of scenes being larger than in the earlier plays. Of uncertain date are a "Herodes," which takes the form of a revenge play introduced by the ghost of Mariemma, and "Solymannidæ" and "Tonumbeius," which apply Senecan methods to Eastern instead of to classical atrocities. "Roxana" (1632), acted before 1592, is a translation of "La Dalida" of Luigi Groto, and won some contemporary distinction and the praise of Dr. Johnson two centuries later. It is a revenge play with a ghost, combining Senecan gruesomeness with the motives of romantic comedy.
More famous than any of these in its own day was "Richardus Tertius," a tragedy in three parts, each part acted on a separate night in 1579 at St. John's, Cambridge, the work of Thomas Legge, Master of Caius and afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the university. Legge seems to have felt the incongruity between the material of the chronicles, which he followed closely, and a strict Senecan form, and to have striven to overcome this by the mechanical expedient of prolonging the action over three plays. But the problem of presenting on the stage the events of a whole reign could not be solved in the terms of the Senecan formula. Legge copied the Senecan rhetoric, interpreted historical events and persons under the guidance of the formula, and retained much of its technic, the narration of deaths instead of their presentation, counsel scenes between hero and advisers, frequent use of the nuntius, and a vestige of a chorus. But the play departs as widely as popular dramas from the unities of time and place, contains many scenes with more than three speakers, is full of dramatic action, and presents processions, pageants, and battle scenes after the fashion of later chronicle plays in the public theatres. Its influence on popular drama may well have been considerable; though, on the other hand, its adherence to sources and its looseness of structure may have been reflections from the public stage. Whether the first chronicle play or not, it is the earliest extant play to indicate the result of the inevitable conflict between a narrow and stereotyped dramatic form and the wide range of material which the chronicles afforded.[6]
In these university Latin plays there is evident a development similar to that traced in the English Senecan drama. Biblical themes disappear; close imitations of Seneca on classical themes give way to freer treatment of romantic or historical material. Revenge and the ghost are ever prominent; and English history introduces a host of events, varied, incongruous, panoramic, and bursting the bounds of the traditional structure. Nash, Marlowe, and others of the later dramatists were university men, and saw some of these plays performed, and perhaps took part in them. Their scenic spectacle, choices of themes, handling of situation, and general effect must have had an appreciable influence upon the subsequent course of the drama. To the various influences which we have denominated humanistic, and especially to the derivative influences reinforcing that of Seneca, we must add this of the Latin plays at Oxford and Cambridge. Latin tragedies continued to be acted at the universities for many years, but their influence on the popular drama can have been potent only during its formative period.
When we turn from these academic and amateur productions to the more popular performances,[7] we have to deal with a very different class of plays. The four to be considered were all written by men of scholarly training, and all deal with classical themes, but the Senecan influence is slight and mainly discernible in the figurative and hyperbolic diction and the fondness for sententious maxims. None of the four are divided into acts; none have choruses or other characteristic marks of Senecan structure; all present action to the exclusion of reflection, and all are in rhymed verse, the favorite metre, at least in the serious portions, being doggerel. All admit comic and farcical scenes, and three are in a large measure moralities. In the tragic portions all admit violence and murders of all kinds on the stage; there is a beheading, a hanging, and, in the case of "Cambyses," a flaying, accomplished, the stage direction reassures us, "with a false skin."
"Damon and Pithias" (1571), by Richard Edwards, was acted by the Children of the Chapel at court in 1563-64, and, judging from the title-page, probably also in public. The prologue, which contains a discussion of "decorum," explains that the term "tragicall comedy" is used because the story is a matter "mixed up with mirth and care." The serious portion of the play presents the tyrant Dionysius as well as the two faithful friends, and shows evidence of a study of Seneca; but it is intermixed with comedy, where the influence of Plautus is noticeable, and indeed with scenes of broadest farce. Carisophus, the parasite, is hardly distinguishable from the vice of the moralities, and is not only clown and mischief-maker, but the villain, whose infamy brings about the tragic entanglements. The play contains a number of songs, and this mixture of tragedy, farce, and musical comedy seems typical of the children's plays of this period.
"Appius and Virginia" (S. R. 1567-68), by an unknown R. B., was also evidently acted by one of the children's companies, perhaps, as Mr. Fleay plausibly conjectures, by the boys of the Westminster school. It is much shorter than "Damon and Pithias," but, like that play, is styled a tragical comedy, is written in rhymed verse, mostly doggerel, and contains farcical scenes and many songs. The vice Haphazard is a clown and mischief-maker; and, in addition, a number of personified abstractions, Conscience, Justice, Comfort, Doctrina, etc., indicate the close relation of the play to the moralities. The main plot, however, is tragic and has no integral connection with the comic scenes. It begins with the domestic happiness of the family of Virginius, and proceeds promptly to the action. Virginia is beheaded, and the head is afterwards exhibited; Appius Claudius and Haphazard are executed out of the sight of the audience; and in the closing scene the tomb of Virginia is shown upon the stage, Memory inscribes her renown, while Justice, Reward, Doctrine, and Fame apparently join in a song "around about the tomb in honor of her name."