The prevailing turn for drollery and comic humour was at first so strong, that in order to gratify it even in more serious and solemn scenes, it was necessary still to retain the Vice or artful Buffoon, who (like his contemporary the privileged Fool in the courts of princes and castles of great men) was wont to enter into the most stately assemblies and vent his humour without restraint. We have a specimen of this character in the play of “Cambyses,” where Ambidexter, who is expressly called the Vice, enters “with an old capcase for a helmet and a skimmer for his sword,” in order, as the author expresses it, “to make pastime.”[230]
[Besides his play of “Cambyses,” Preston wrote and published two ballads,[231] of which Hazlitt gives the full titles, and perhaps other things lost or unrecovered.
The best parts of “Cambyses” are the comic scenes, or those portions of the dialogue which are spoken by Ambidexter; these seem to indicate that Preston would have been more successful if he had avoided the tragic vein altogether; but his language is harsh and unpolished even for the time, as if the play had been written some years before it appeared in type. Yet this is scarcely probable, from the allusion to Bishop Bonner towards the conclusion.
With the admirable comedy of “Ralph Roister Doister” before their eyes, it might seem strange that later writers should have relapsed into comparative barbarism, if we had not abundant evidence of such degeneracy in every period of the history of our dramatic literature, including that which followed the publication of the unrivalled works of Shakespeare himself.]
The Prologue entereth.
Agathon, he whose counsel wise
To princes weal extended,
By good advice unto a prince
Three things he hath commended
First is, that he hath government,