INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE TRYALL OF CHEVALRY.
This play was printed in 1605, and is stated on the title-page to have been "lately acted by the right Honorable the Earle of Darby his servants." It has not been reprinted, and copies of the old quarto are exceedingly rare. There is an air of old-fashionedness about the diction and the metre that would lead us to suppose the play was written several years before the date of publication. The wearisome practice, in which the characters so freely indulge, of speaking in the third person is very characteristic of the earlier dramatists, notably of Greene. Yet it is clear, from more than one passage, that the author was acquainted with Shakespeare's historical plays. Dick Bowyer's puns on the sentinels' names (ii. 1) were certainly suggested by Falstaff's pleasantries with the recruits in Henry IV., Part II. Winstanley absurdly ascribes the piece to William Wager, who flourished (?) when Shakespeare was a child. If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both. It is not altogether improbable that the Tryall of Chevalry may be the play by Chettle and Wentworth Smith, entitled Love Parts Friendship, acted in 1602[108]. Bourbon and Rodorick are just such a pair of villains as young Playnsey and Sir Robert Westford in Chettle and Day's Blind Beggar. The low comedy in both pieces might well have come from the same hand, though Dick Bowyer is certainly more amusing than the roystering companions in the Blind Beggar.
I make no claim for high excellence on behalf of this unknown playwright. The writing is at times thin and feeble, and the versification is somewhat monotonous. But with all its faults, the language is dramatic. The writer was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and something of Shakespeare's spirit breathes through the pages of this forgotten play. Take such a speech as the following, from the second scene of the opening act:—
Must I be spokesman? Pembrooke plead for love?
Whose tounge tuned to the Instruments of war
Never knew straine of fancy; on my breath
Affection never dwelt, but war and death!
But if thou lov'dst to have thy soldiers fight,
Or hearten the spent courages of men,
Pembrooke could use a stile invincible.
Lov'dst thou a towne, Ide teach thee how to woo her
With words of thunder-bullets wrapt in fire,[109]
Till with thy cannon battry she relent
And humble her proud heart to stoop to thee.
Or if not this, then mount thee on a steed
Whose courage never awde an yron Bit,
And thou shalt heare me hollow to the beast
And with commanding accents master him.
This courtship Pembrooke knows, but idle love,
The sick-fac't object of an amorous brayne,
Did never clothe mine eye-balls, never taught
This toung, inurde to broyles and stratagems,
The passionate language of a troubled heart:
I am too blunt and rude for such nice service.
Yet since my friend injoynes me to this taske,
Take courage, Ile both speake, plead, woo for thee,
And when I want fit words to move her mind,
Ile draw my sword and sweare she must be kind.
One may smile at the notion of holloaing "to the beast," but the whole passage is vigorous, and some single lines (e.g. "The passionate language of a troubled heart") are excellent.
THE HISTORY of the tryall of CHEUALRY,
With the life and death of Caualiero Dicke Bowyer.
As it hath bin lately acted by the right Honourable the Earle of Darby his servants.
LONDON Printed by Simon Stafford for Nathaniel Butter, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules Church-Yard, neere S. Austens Gate. 1605.
The Historie of the triall of Chevalry.