The moralities retained their place as legitimate drama throughout the sixteenth century, and indeed after the modern drama appeared. It is recorded that Queen Elizabeth, in 1601, then an old woman, witnessed one of these plays, entitled "The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality." This was written by Lodge and Greene, two of the regular dramatists, after Ben Jonson had written "Every Man in his Humour," and while Shakspeare was writing Hamlet. Thus the various progressive forms of the drama overlapped each other, the older retaining its place until the younger gained strength to assert its rights and supersede its rival.
The Interlude.—While the moralities were slowly dying out, another form of the drama had appeared as a connecting link between them and the legitimate drama of Shakspeare. This was the interlude, a short play, in which the dramatis personæ were no longer allegorical characters, but persons in real life, usually, however, not all bearing names even assumed, but presented as a friar, a curate, a tapster, etc. The chief characteristic of the interlude was, however, its satire; it was a more outspoken reformer than the morality, scourged the evils of the age with greater boldness, and plunged into religious controversy with the zeal of opposing ecclesiastics. The first and principal writer of these interludes was John Heywood, a Roman Catholic, who wrote during the reign of Henry VIII., and, while a professed jester, was a great champion of his Church.
As in all cases of progress, literary and scientific, the lines of demarcation cannot be very distinctly drawn, but as the morality had superseded the mystery, and the interlude the morality, so now they were all to give way before the regular drama. The people were becoming more educated; the greater spread of classical knowledge had caused the dramatists to study and assimilate the excellences of Latin and Greek models; the power of the drama to instruct and refine, as well as to amuse, was acknowledged, and thus its capability of improvement became manifest. The forms it then assumed were more permanent, and indeed have remained almost unchanged down to our own day.
What is called the first comedy in the language cannot be expected to show a very decided improvement over the last interludes or moralities, but it bears those distinctive marks which establish its right to the title.
The First Comedy.—This was Ralph Roister Doister, which appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century: (a printed copy of 1551 was discovered in 1818.) Its author was Nicholas Udall, the master of Eton, a clergyman, but very severe as a pedagogue; an ultra Protestant, who is also accused of having stolen church plate, which may perhaps mean that he took away from the altar what he regarded as popish vessels and ornaments. He calls the play "a comedy and interlude," but claims that it is imitated from the Roman drama. It is regularly divided into acts and scenes, in the form of our modern plays. The plot is simple: Ralph, a gay Lothario, courts as gay a widow, and the by-play includes a designing servant and an intriguing lady's-maid: these are the stock elements of a hundred comedies since.
Contemporary with this was Gammer Gurton's Needle, supposed to be written, but not conclusively, by John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells, about 1560. The story turns upon the loss of a steel needle—a rare instrument in that day, as it was only introduced into England from Spain during the age of Elizabeth. This play is a coarser piece than Ralph Roister Doister; the buffoon raises the devil to aid him in finding the lost needle, which is at length found, by very palpable proof, to be sticking in the seat of Goodman Hodge's breeches.
The First Tragedy.—Hand in hand with these first comedies came the earliest tragedy, Gorboduc, by Sackville and Norton, known under another name as Ferrex and Porrex; and it is curious to observe that this came in while the moralities still occupied the stage, and before the interludes had disappeared, as it was played before the queen at White Hall, in 1562. It is also to be noted that it introduced a chorus like that of the old Greek drama. Ferrex and Porrex are the sons of King Gorboduc: the former is killed by the latter, who in turn is slain by his own mother. Of Gorboduc, Lamb says, "The style of this old play is stiff and cumbersome, like the dresses of the times. There may be flesh and blood underneath, but we cannot get at it."
With the awakened interest of the people, the drama now made steady progress. In 1568 the tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda, based upon one of the stories of Boccaccio, was enacted before Elizabeth.
A license for establishing a regular theatre was got out by Burbage in 1574. Peele and Greene wrote plays in the new manner: Marlowe, the greatest name in the English drama, except those of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, gave to the world his Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, which many do not hesitate to compare favorably with Goethe's great drama, and his Rich Jew of Malta, which contains the portraiture of Barabas, second only to the Shylock of Shakspeare. Of Marlowe a more special mention will be made.
Playwrights and Morals.—It was to the great advantage of the English regular drama, that the men who wrote were almost in every case highly educated in the classics, and thus able to avail themselves of the best models. It is equally true that, owing to the religious condition of the times, when Puritanism launched forth its diatribes against all amusements, they were men in the opposition, and in most cases of irregular lives. Men of the world, they took their characters from among the persons with whom they associated; and so we find in their plays traces of the history of the age, in the appropriation of classical forms, in the references to religious and political parties, and in their delineation of the morals, manners, and follies of the period: if the drama of the present day owes to them its origin and nurture, it also retains as an inheritance many of the faults and deformities from which in a more refined period it is seeking to purge itself. It is worthy of notice, that as the drama owes everything to popular patronage, its moral tone reflects of necessity the moral character of the people who frequent it, and of the age which sustains it.