[1263] Ibid.
Comedies of Larivey. 21. We may consider the comedies of Larivey, published in 1579, as making a sort of epoch in the French drama. This writer, of whom little is known, but that he was a native of Champagne, prefers a claim to be the first who chose subjects for comedy from real life in France (forgetting in this those of Jodelle), and the first who wrote original dramas in prose. His comedies are six in number, to which three were added in a subsequent edition, which is very rare.[1264] These six are Le Laquais, La Veuve, Les Esprits, Le Morfondu, Les Jaloux, and Les Ecoliers. Some of them are partly borrowed from Plautus and Terence; and in general they belong to that school, presenting the usual characters of the Roman stage, with no great attempt at originality. But the dialogue is conducted with spirit; and in many scenes, especially in the play called Le Laquais, which, though the most free in all respects, appears to me the most comic and amusing, would remind any reader of the minor pieces of Molière, being conceived, though not entirely executed, with the same humour. All these comedies of Larivey are highly licentious both in their incidents and language. It is supposed in the Biographie Universelle that Molière and Regnard borrowed some ideas from Larivey; but both the instances alleged will be found in Plautus.
[1264] The first edition itself, I conceive, is not very common; for few writers within my knowledge have mentioned Larivey. Fontenelle, I think, could not have read his plays, or he would have give him a place in his brief sketch of the early French stage, as the father of comedy in prose. La Harpe was too superficial to know anything about him. Beauchamps, vol. ii. p. 68, acknowledges his pretensions, and he has a niche in the Biographie Universelle. Suard has also done him some justice.
Theatres in Paris. 22. No regular theatre was yet established in France. These plays of Garnier, Larivey, and others of that class, were represented either in colleges or in private houses. But the Confrères de la Passion, and another company, the Enfans de Sans Souci, whom they admitted into a participation of their privilege, used to act gross and stupid farces, which few respectable persons witnessed. After some unsuccessful attempts, two companies of regular actors appeared near the close of the century; one, in 1598, having purchased the exclusive right of the Confrères de la Passion, laid the foundations of the Comedie Française, so celebrated and so permanent; the other, in 1600, established by its permission a second theatre in the Marais. But the pieces they represented were still of a very low class.[1265]
[1265] Suard.
English stage. 23. England at the commencement of this period could boast of little besides the scripture mysteries, already losing ground, but which have been traced down to the close of the century, and the more popular moral plays, which furnished abundant opportunities for satire on the times, for ludicrous humour, and for attacks on the old or the new religion. The latter, however, were kept in some restraint by the Tudor government. These moralities gradually drew nearer to regular comedies, and sometimes had nothing but an abstract name given to an individual, by which they could be even apparently distinguished from such. We have already mentioned Ralph Royster Doyster, written by Udal in the reign of Henry VIII., as the earliest English comedy in a proper sense, so far as our negative evidence warrants such a position. Mr. Collier has recovered four acts of another, called Misogonus, which he refers to the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign.[1266] It is, like the former, a picture of London life. |Gammar Gurton’s Needle.| A more celebrated piece is Gammar Gurton’s Needle, commonly ascribed to John. Still, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells. No edition is known before 1575, but it seems to have been represented in Christ’s College at Cambridge, not far from the year 1565.[1267] It is impossible for anything to be meaner in subject and characters than this strange farce; but the author had some vein of humour, and writing neither for fame nor money, but to make light-hearted boys laugh, and to laugh with them, and that with as little grossness as the story would admit, is not to be judged with severe criticism. He comes however below Udal, and perhaps the writer of Misogonus. The Supposes of George Gascoyne, acted at Gray’s Inn in 1566, is but a translation in prose from the Suppositi of Ariosto. It seems to have been published in the same year.[1268]
[1266] Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 464.
[1267] Mr. Collier agrees with Malone in assigning this date, but it is merely conjectural, as one rather earlier might be chosen with equal probability. Still is said in the biographies to have been born in 1543; but this date seems to be too low. He became Margaret’s professor of divinity in 1570. Gammar Gurton’s Needle must have been written while the protestant establishment, if it existed, was very recent, for the parson is evidently a papist.
[1268] Warton, iv. 304. Collier, iii. 6. The original had been first published in prose, 1525, and from this Gascoyne took his translation, adopting some of the changes Ariosto had introduced when he turned it into verse; but he has invented little of his own. Ibid.
Gorboduc of Sackville. 24. But the progress of literature soon excited in one person an emulation of the ancient drama. Sackville has the honour of having led the way. His tragedy of Gorboduc was represented at Whitehall before Elizabeth in 1562.[1269] It is written in what was thought the classical style, like the Italian tragedies of the same age, but more inartificial and unimpassioned. The speeches are long and sententious; the action, though sufficiently full of incident, passes chiefly in narration; a chorus, but in the same blank verse measure as the rest, divides the acts; the unity of place seems to be preserved, but that of time is manifestly transgressed. The story of Gorboduc, which is borrowed from our fabulous British legends, is as full of slaughter as was then required for dramatic purposes; but the characters are clearly drawn and consistently sustained; the political maxims grave and profound; the language not glowing or passionate, but vigorous; and upon the whole it is evidently the work of a powerful mind, though in a less poetical mood than was displayed in the Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates. Sackville, it has been said, had the assistance of Norton in this tragedy; but Warton has decided against this supposition from internal evidence.[1270]