[4] “Edinburgh Review,” vol. vii. p. 215.
[5] Book III. canto viii.
[6] It has been observed of Upton that, though an excellent classical scholar, he was little versed in the romances of chivalry. In the romance of “Gyron le Courtois” he would have found the original of the farcical Knight Braggadochio; a fact, long after I had written the above, which I owe to Mr. Southey. Such ludicrous caricatures are unusual with the delicacy and elegance of Spenser; and they seem never to have been struck in his mint. I suspect we should not have had such farcical personages in the “Faery Queen,” had not Spenser’s propensity to imitation induced him to follow his beloved patron, who has not happily introduced in the “Arcadia” the low comic of Damœtas and his ugly daughter Mopsa.
[7] Upton’s note at the close of the fifth book of “The Faery Queen.”
THE FIRST TRAGEDY AND THE FIRST COMEDY.
In the transition from the simpler interlude to the aggrandizement of a more complicate scene and more numerous personages, so indistinct were the notions of tragedy and comedy, that the writer of a morality in 1578, declaring that his purpose was to represent “the manners of men, and fashion of the world now-a-days,” distinguishes his drama both as “a Pleasant Tragedy” and “a Pitiful Comedy.”[1] This play, indeed, may be placed among the last of the ancient dramas; and it is probable that the author considered that these vague expressions might serve to designate a superior order of dramatic productions.
The term Comedy was as indefinite in France as with ourselves. Margaret of Valois, in 1544, gave the title of comedy to such scriptural pieces as The Nativity, The Adoration of the Kings, and The Massacre of the Innocents; and in Spain, at the same period, they also called their moral pieces comedies. The title of one of these indicates their matter, La Doleria del Sueño del Mundo; Comedia tratada por via de Philosophia Moral,—“The Anguish of the Sleep of the World; a Comedy treated in the style of Philosophic Morality.” Comedy was the general appellative for a play. Shakspeare himself calls the play of the players in Hamlet both a tragedy and a comedy. It is quite evident that at this period they had no distinct conception of comedy merely as a pleasant exhibition of society. Aristotle had not afforded them a correct description in our sense, drawing his notions from the old comedy, those personal satires or farcical lampoons acted on the Athenian stage.
To this day we remain still unsatisfied what Dante meant by calling his great poem a “Commedia.” Dante throws the same sort of mystery over the species of his poem as he has done over the creation of a classical diction for his own Italy. According to his interpretation, the lofty style was denominated tragic, and in opposition to it he has called his work “Commedia,” as of a more humble style; and on another occasion he describes comedy as something that begins sadly and ends happily, as we find it in his great poem. We must, however, accept the definition as very obscure, when we consider that both his subject and his diction so often led him to sublimity of conception and expression; but the style of criticism was yet unformed in the days of the Italian Homer.