[1269] The 18th of January, 1561, to which date its representation is referred by Mr. Collier, seems to be 1562, according to the style of the age; and this tallies best with what is said in the edition of 1571, that it had been played about nine years before. See Warton, iv. 179.
[1270] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 194. Mr. Collier supports the claim of Norton to the first three acts, which would much reduce Sackville’s glory, ii. 481. I incline to Warton’s opinion, grounded upon the identity of style, and the superiority of the whole tragedy to anything we can certainly ascribe to Norton, a coadjutor of Sternhold in the old version of the Psalms, and a contributor to the Mirror of Magistrates.
Preference given to the irregular form. 25. The regular form adopted in Gorboduc, though not wholly without imitators, seems to have had little success with the public.[1271] An action passing visibly on the stage, instead of a frigid narrative, a copious intermixture of comic buffoonery with the gravest story, were requisites with which no English audience would dispense. Thus Edwards treated the story of Damon and Pythias, which, though according to the notions of those times, it was too bloodless to be called a tragedy at all, belonged to the elevated class of dramatic compositions.[1272] Several other objects were taken from ancient history; this indeed became the usual source of the fable; but if we may judge from those few that have survived, they were all constructed on the model which the mysteries had accustomed our ancestors to admire.
[1271] The Jocasta of Gascoyne, translated with considerable freedom, in adding, omitting, and transposing, from the Phœnissæ of Euripides, was represented at Gray’s Inn in 1566. Warton, iv. 196. Collier, iii. 7. Gascoyne had the assistance of two obscure poets in this play.
[1272] Collier, iii. 2.
First theatres. 26. The office of Master of the Revels, in whose province it lay to regulate, among other amusements of the court, the dramatic shows of various kinds, was established in 1546. The inns of court vied with the royal palace in these representations, and Elizabeth sometimes honoured the former with her presence. On her visits to the universities, a play was a constant part of the entertainment. Fifty-two names, though nothing more, of dramas acted at court under the superintendence of the Master of the Revels, between 1568 and 1580, are preserved.[1273] In 1574 a patent was granted to the Earl of Leicester’s servants to act plays in any part of England, and in 1576 they erected the first public theatre in Blackfriars. It will be understood, that the servants of the Earl of Leicester were a company under his protection; as we apply the word, Her Majesty’s Servants, at this day, to the performers of Drury Lane.[1274]
[1273] Collier, i. 193, et post, iii. 24. Of these fifty-two plays eighteen were upon classical subjects, historical or fabulous, twenty-one taken from modern history or romance, seven may by their titles, which is a very fallible criterion, be comedies or farces from real life, and six may, by the same test, be moralities. It is possible, as Mr. C. observes, that some of these plays, though no longer extant in their integrity, may have formed the foundation of others; and the titles of a few in the list countenance this supposition.
[1274] See Mr. Collier’s excellent History of Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakspeare, vol. i., which having superseded the earlier works of Langbaine, Reid, and Hawkins, so far as this period is concerned, it is superfluous to quote them.
Plays of Whetstone and others. 27. As we come down towards 1580, a few more plays are extant. Among these may be mentioned the Promos and Cassandra of Whetstone, on the subject which Shakspeare, not without some retrospect to his predecessors, so much improved in Measure for Measure.[1275] But in these early dramas there is hardly anything to praise; or, if they please us at all, it is only by the broad humour of their comic scenes. There seems little reason, therefore, for regretting the loss of so many productions, which no one contemporary has thought worthy of commendation. Sir Philip Sydney, writing about 1583, treats our English stage with great disdain. His censures indeed fall chiefly on the neglect of the classical unities, and on the intermixture of kings with clowns.[1276] It is amusing to reflect, that this contemptuous reprehension of the English theatre (and he had spoken in as disparaging terms of our general poetry) came from the pen of Sydney, when Shakspeare had just arrived at manhood. Had he not been so prematurely cut off, what would have been the transports of that noble spirit, which the ballad of Chevy Chase could “stir as with the sound of a trumpet,” in reading the Faery Queen or Othello!
[1275] Promos and Cassandra is one of the Six Old Plays reprinted by Stevens. Shakspeare found in it not only the main story of Measure for Measure, which was far from new, and which he felicitously altered, by preserving the chastity of Isabella, but several of the minor circumstances and names, unless even these are to be found in the novels, from which all the dramatists ultimately derived their plot.