Every taste has delivered its variable decision on these our old plays, each deciding by its own standard; and the variance is occasioned not always by deficiency in critical judgment, but in the very nature of the object of criticism, in the inherent defect of our ancient drama itself. These old plays will not endure criticism. They were not written for critics, and they now exist even in spite of criticism. They were all experiments of the freest genius, rarely placed under favouring circumstances. They were emanations of strong but short conceptions, poured forth in haste and heat; they blotted their lines as rarely as we are told did Shakespeare; they revelled in their first conceptions, often forgotten in their rapid progress; the true inspiration was lodged in their breasts, the hidden volcano has often burst through its darkness, and flamed through a whole scene, for often have they written as Shakespeare wrote. We may look in them for entire scenes, felicitous lines, and many an insulated passage, studies for a poet; anthologies have been drawn from these elder dramatists.[16] We may perceive how this sudden generation of poets, some of whose names are not familiar to us, have moulded our language with the images of their fancy, and strengthened it by the stability of their thoughts.
[1] This Patent, corrected from a former copy in Rymer, has been recovered by Mr. Collier.—Annals of the Stage, i. 211.
[2] This singular document, incorrectly given by Strype, Mr. Collier has completed. “It throws much new light on the state of the drama at this period;” and still more on the strange arguments which the Puritans of the day alleged against players and plays.—Mr. Collier has preserved an old satirical epigram which had been perilous to print at that day; it was left for posterity on the fly-leaf of a book. It is addressed to—
| “‘The Fooles of the Cittee,’— They establish as a rule, Not one shall play the fool, But they—a worthy school!” |
[3] At the inferior playhouses the admission was as low as a penny for “the groundlings” who stood in the roofless pit, which still retained the name of “the yard”—evidently from the old custom of playing in the yards of inns. In the higher theatres “a room,” or box, varied from sixpence to two shillings and sixpence. They played in daylight, and rose from their dinner to the playhouse. It was one of the City regulations, that “no playing be in the dark, so that the auditory may return home before sunset.” Society was then in its nursery-times; and the solemnity of “the orders in common council” admirably contrasts with their simplicity; but they acted under the terror that, when they entered a playhouse, they were joining in “the devil’s service!”
[4] Two such poor scholars are introduced in “The Return from Parnassus” alternately “banning and cursing Granta’s muddy bank;” and Cambridge, where “our oil was spent.”
[5] The popular taste at all times has been prone to view in representation the most harrowing crimes—probably influenced by the vulgar notion that, because the circumstances are literally true, they are therefore the more interesting. One of these writers was Robert Yarrington, who seems to have been so strongly attracted to this taste for scenical murder, that he wrote “Two Lamentable Tragedies,” which he contrived to throw into one play. By a strange alternation, the scene veers backwards and forwards from England to Italy, both progressing together;—the English murder is of a merchant in Thames-street, and the Italian of a child in a wood by ruffians hired by the uncle; the ballad deepens the pathetic by two babes—but which was the original of a domestic incident which first conveyed to our childhood the idea of an unnatural parent? It appears that we had a number of what they called “Lamentable Tragedies,” whose very titles preserve the names of the hapless victims. Taylor, the Water-poet, alludes to these “as murders fresh in memory;” and has himself described “the unnatural father who murdered his wife and children” as parallel to one of ancient date. Acts of lunacy were not then distinguishable from ordinary murders.—Collier, iii. 49.
[6] Not many years ago Isaac Reed printed The Witch of Middleton. Recently another manuscript play appeared, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. To the personal distresses of the actors in the days of the Commonwealth we owe several dramas, which they published, drawn out of the wrecks of some theatrical treasury; such was The Wild-Goose Chase of Fletcher, which they assured us was the poet’s favourite. It is said that more than sixty of these plays, in manuscript, were collected by Warburton, the herald, and from the utter neglect of the collector had all gone to singe his fowls. When Theobald solemnly declared that his play, The Double Falsehood, was written by Shakespeare, it was probably one of these old manuscript plays. This drama was not unsuccessful; nor had Theobald shot far wide of the mark, since Farmer ascribed it to Shirley, and Malone to Massinger.
[7] See the last and enlarged edition of Charles Lamb’s “Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets.” In the second volume, in “Extracts from the Garrick Plays,” under the odd names of ”Doctor Dodypol, a comedy, 1600,” we have scenes exquisitely fanciful—and Jack Drum’s Entertainment, 1601, where “the free humour of a noble housekeeper” may be placed by the side of the most finished passages even in Shakespeare. Yet Doctor Dodypol has wholly escaped the notice even of catalogue-scribes—and Jack Drum is not noticed by the collectors of these old plays. I only know these two dramas by the excerpts of Lamb; but if the originals are tolerably equal with “The Specimens,” I should place these unknown dramas among the most interesting ones.