Representative English Comedies, v. 1. From the beginnings to Shakespeare

by Unknown

Of the indebtedness of comedy to the parody of religious festivals I have already spoken, and I have little doubt that at later periods English comedy continued to draw devices, if not inspiration, from performances whose occasion was a revolt against the straitness of religion. One, at least, of the interludes of John Heywood is closely similar to the French Farce de Pernet, and that such farces were, in motive, first a gloss upon the lessons of the divine service, then a diversion, and finally a factor in the extra-ecclesiastical Feast of Fools, any reader of Petit de Julleville will readily concede. It is impossible that the comic features and comic characters of the farces acted by the clercs de la Basoche, such as that of the immortal Maître Pathelin, should not have affected the dramatic invention of contemporary and succeeding Englishmen, conversant as many of them were with the literature and society of France. And a like effect might naturally be expected to have been exercised by the sotties of the contemporary enfants sans souci; for, through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, drama of that kind convulsed the sides of merrymakers south of the Channel. Such were the occasion and motive of farces and sotties. So far as they employed the plot of domestic intrigue for their purposes of satire, I have little doubt that they drew freely upon the Latin elegiac comedies of which I have already spoken as the favourite dramatic species of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Farce de Pernet has connection with more than one of those imitations of Terentian intrigue. It has, also, like many of its kind and of elegiac comedies as well, a kinship with one and another popular tale. The church, then, seems to have furnished the opportunity for these farces, and for some as an object of satire the motive; the contes and fabliaux of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries furnished much of the material; Latin comedy, its mediæval and renaissance successors, cannot have failed to influence the form.

It will be, of course, recalled that as early as the Mak of the Towneley plays, a farce which is not unworthy of comparison with Maître Pathelin, the English Interludium de Clerico et Puella, probably of the thirteenth century, also indicated an acquaintance with the technique of the farce species. Undoubtedly such interludes were a common feature at entertainments of various kinds, and had matured in the ordinary course into fixed form. But they were frequently extemporaneous, were written for fleeting occasions, and might readily be lost. I am inclined therefore, to look upon the dramatized anecdotes assigned to Heywood as lucky survivals of a form which, since it had been long cultivated both in England and France, may have attained to a degree of excellence before he took it up. The resemblance of these farces to the French is often such that, as M. Jusserand says, one cannot but question whether Heywood had not some of the old French dramas of the type in his hands. Since Mr. Pollard has discussed the question in this volume, it is unnecessary for me to pursue it farther. In any case, it is to the honour of Heywood that he brought to focus the characteristic qualities of the Chaucerian episode, the farce and the dramatic debate. "This I write," says he, "not to teach, but to touch." In his work, accordingly, we find narratives of single and independent interest, if not exactly plot, and an adaptation of that which is abstract to purposes of amusement. We find characters with motive, and sometimes personality, contemporary manners, witty dialogue, satire; and in at least the Play of Love, an adumbration of the sentimental, dare we say romantic, possibilities of comedy, to be realized when it should have thrown allegory and scholasticism to the winds. The Laundress in the Wether envisages fleetingly the straits of life and the recompense; and in the Play of Love, the personification of various phases of that passion is a kind of glass through which we darkly divine the motives of many later comedies. There is, however, with the single exception of the Vice's trick in Love, no action which can be called dramatic in Heywood's undoubted plays; for, as Mr. Pollard reminds us, the Pardoner and Johan, although they avail themselves of "business" in order to develop a plot, have not the significance of comedy proper.

To understand the nature of the movements that follow we must recur, though with the utmost brevity, to the history of later Latin comedy. The comic recitals of the twelfth century and thereabout were succeeded by the comedy of the Italian humanists, still in Latin, but dramatic in form and apparently in intent, which, though it availed itself, like the elegiac school, of the outworn situations and devices of scabrous amours, contributed considerably to the enrichment of the romantic strain by the passion with which it invested its material, sometimes, also, to the cause of realism by its unconscious, though often repulsive, accuracy of detail. Although Plautus is to some extent cultivated, the Terentian model was still the favourite with youthful imitators until study of the older poet was revived by the recovery of the twelve lost plays and their introduction to Roman circles in 1427. The Philologia of Petrarch's earlier years is accordingly fashioned in the style of Terence, and is even reported, for it is unfortunately lost, to have surpassed its classical forbears. Written about 1331, it was the first product of the new dramatic school, and was succeeded by a numerous train of ambitious effusions,—university plays we might call most of them,—a few witty, some sentimental, many libidinous, all very young, and still all, or nearly all, cleverly and regularly constructed. It concerns us here but to mention the Paulus of Vergerio, which Creizenach dates 1370, Aretino's Poliscene, about 1390, Alberti's Philodoxeos, 1418, Ugolino's Philogena, some time before 1437, and Piccolomini's Crisis, 1444.[64] Of these erotic comedies,—pornographic were perhaps a more fitting term,—the most popular seems to have been the Philogena; the most eminent, according to Creizenach (but I don't see why), the Crisis. The Paulus pretends to aim at the improvement of youth; one might for a moment imagine that it was intended to be a prodigal son play. But in none of these plays is there either punishment or repentance. In fact the unaffected verve with which they display the wantonness of life is not the least of their contributions to comedy. The Poliscene is notable for its modernity of manners and of morals. The sole instance among these plays, so far as I can ascertain, of noble sentiment and harmless plot is the Philodoxeos. The use of abstract names for the characters lends it, indeed, somewhat the appearance of a moral interlude.

Of much greater value, however, in the history of the acted drama, and of closer bearing upon the English comedy, were the representations of Plautus and Terence, first in the Latin and ultimately in the vernacular, which marked the last quarter of the fifteenth century in the courts of northern Italy. These in turn were but stepping-stones towards such dramatic dialogues as the Timone of Bojardo, 1494, and the still more significant experiments of Ariosto and Bibbiena—the first romantic comedies in prose and in the native tongue. The authors of the Suppositi (acted in 1509) and the Calandria (written in 1508, but not presented till six years later) derive much from Roman sources, but in general these comedies and their like were original. Their influence upon our own plays of romantic intrigue will presently appear. So, likewise, will that of a Spanish work, of even earlier date, the dramatic novel of Calisto and Melibœa; for this tragic production of Cota and De Rojas is the source of our first English romantic drama. The connection between other forms of Italian drama, the Commedia dell'arte, the pastoral drama, etc., and the later stage in western Europe has been ably discussed by Klein, Moland, Symonds, and Ward; and to them I must refer the reader of this more summary account.

The decade that saw the first of Heywood's virile plays was probably that which welcomed to England the ebullient, un-English passions of a dramatic species destined to develop the native stock in a far different manner. "A new commodye in englyshe, in maner of an enterlude," ordinarily called Calisto and Melibœa, is the earliest romantic play of intrigue in our language. It was "caused to be printed" by that excellent promoter of the dramatic art, John Rastell, about 1530, and was written—perhaps by him—not long before. The appellation "commodye" had been used during the same decade with reference to the English translation of the Andria (about 1520-29); it is here used for the first time on the title-page of an English play. And this interesting interlude may, indeed, well be called both English and comedy; for though it derives from romance sources (the Spanish dramatic composition by Fernando de Rojas, before 1500), and is affected by the Italian, it does not follow exactly the plot of its original; and though it is "reduced to the proportions of an interlude," it treats of an idea not farcical, but significant, and it develops the motives of real characters, by way of action, passion, and intrigue, to a happy conclusion within the realm of convention and common sense. It is, indeed, a comedy, perhaps our first well-rounded comedy, though in miniature. The Secunda Pastorum it excels in singleness of aim; the Pardoner and Frere and the Johan, in meaning for life. It excels all preceding interludes in the fulfilment of the purpose, now for the first time announced in English drama, "to shew and to describe as well the bewte and good propertes of women as theyr vyces and evyll condicions." For the first time since plays became secular, women are introduced, not as the objects of scurrility and ridicule, but as dramatic material of an æsthetic, moral, and intellectual value equal to that of men. What the author of Johan did for the amusing and real action desirable in a comedy, the author of this play did for vital characterization and passion. Melibœa is the first heroine of our romantic comedy; she is so fair that for her lover there is "no such sovereign in heaven, though she be in earth." She is, if the play was written before the Play of Love, our earliest heroine "loved, not loving." She is a woman and pitiful and to be wooed; frail and repentant; but then indignant and not to be won. Calisto is, likewise, our first lover in despair. This element of woman worship—not worship of the Blessed Virgin or traditional interest in the Magdalene or any other saint—is no slight contribution to the material of comedy. The intrigue of the play,—the foils of character and action, the go-betweens, the plot within plot introduced by Celestina, her realistic account of Sempronio's character, her device of the "girdle," the mysterious agency of the dream,—no better indication of romantic tendency can be detected until we reach Redford's play of Wit and Science, of which presently. But first, and that we may keep in mind the parallelism of dramatic tendencies in this momentous first half of the sixteenth century, let us turn to another stream, that of the school interludes and the classical influence.

10. The Period of Transition: School Interlude and Controversial Moral

During the fifteenth century, and the early sixteenth, influences of importance to English comedy proceed not from the literature of Italy and Spain alone. In northern Europe additions most significant to the history of the type were making. To the crop of French sotties, moralités, and farces I have already referred. The German Reuchlin in 1498 put forth a roaring Latin comedy called the Henno, which, in modern Terentian style, embodied the chicaneries of Pathelin. About the same time the Germans began to make the acquaintance, through translations in their own tongue, of highly flavoured Italian Latin plays like the Poliscene and the Philogenia; while those of them who cared not for such things were favoured with a recrudescence of the Christian Terence school. In 1507 the young humanist, Kilian Reuter, in imitation of the nun of Gandersheim, produced in Latin his pious comedy depicting the passion of St. Dorothea. In Holland, meanwhile, were springing into existence the Latin prototypes of more than one of our own didactic interludes; for in the comedia sacra the attempt was made to combine the intrigue of the Italian university play with the moral of the prodigal son and the technique of the Terentian drama. The more important of these plays of the prodigal son, in respect of influence upon English comedy, are the Asotus of Macropedius, written before 1529, and his Rebelles, 1535, the Acolastus of Gnapheus, 1529, and the Studentes of Stymmelius, 1549. The most dramatic of them are the second and third as mentioned. The Acolastus, indeed, translated into English by Palsgrave in 1540, exerted a long-enduring influence upon our drama. To the same period belong also a species of biblical comedies dealing with heroes, like the Joseph of the Dutch Jesuit, Crocus, 1535, and the Susanna, Judith, Eli, Ruth, Job, Solomon, Goliath, etc., of Macropedius, the Swiss Sixt Birck, and others; and another kind of play that occupied itself with prototypes of the Roman Antichrist,—Haman, Judas, and the like. The former may be called the idyllic or heroic miracle, the latter the polemic. And of the latter the most influential development was the controversial interlude, Pammachius, written by the German Protestant Naogeorgos (Kirchmayer) and dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury. By 1545 this play, in which the Pope figures as the Antichrist, had not only been acted at Cambridge in the original, but translated into English by our own John Bale; and, as we shall presently see, it was, somewhere between 1540 and 1548, imitated by him in one of the most vigorous of our controversial dramas.[65]

Of the cultivation of the drama in Latin in England I have already made mention in treating of the saints' plays and the Terentian drama of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Other indications of a Latin drama occur, although infrequently. William Fitzstephen, who speaks of the ludus given by Geoffrey's boys at Dunstable, tells us, also, that it was customary on feast days for masters of schools to hold festival meetings in the churches, when the pupils contested, not only in disputations, but also with Fescennine license in satirical verses touching "the faults of school-fellows or perhaps of greater people"; a practice which could only with difficulty escape development into a rude Aristophanic comedy. We have mention also of perquisites for a comœdia in one of the Cambridge colleges as early as 1386, evidently of the Latin type, and of the presentation of a goodly comedy of Plautus at court in 1520. Between 1522 and 1532 the Master of St. Paul's produced a Latin school drama of Dido before Wolsey, and according to Collier's supposition,[66] the same John Ritwyse was the author of the satiric interlude, in Latin and French, of Luther and his wife, which was acted for the delectation of the not yet reformed Henry and his foreign guests in 1527. Of the nature of this play, unfortunately lost, some conception may be gathered from the still surviving list of its characters (allegorical, religious, and contemporary), from the analogous Ludus ludentem Luderum ludens, 1530, and the somewhat more recent and most scurrilous Monachopornomachia, both by Germans. Before 1530 and apparently with a view to acting, the Andria had been turned into English,[67] and by 1535 at least two Latin comedies of moral-mythological character had been written by Artour of Cambridge, and one, the Piscator, by Hoker of Oxford.[68] We have word of a dramatic pageant in English and Latin to which Udall contributed in 1532; in 1534 he issued a book of selections entitled Flowers of Terence. In 1540 Palsgrave had introduced the prodigal son drama from Germany; and by 1545 Bale had followed suit with a Latin play of Antichrist. During the same period Udall was producing his plures comœdiæ, now lost, and that other schoolmaster-dramatist, Radcliffe of Hitchin, was writing spectacula simul jucunda et honesta for his boys to present,—heroic miracles of the type affected by Macropedius, and a romantic comedy of Griselda, probably all in Latin, but unfortunately all vanished.

The importance of the English school drama has been well presented by Professor Herford and Dr. Ward, but there is something in the name that leads the ordinary reader to underrate the genus. A word or so by way of classification may be of assistance. These interludes fall naturally into four kinds. Those that ridicule folly, vain pretension, and conceit, or Mirth plays,—plays after the model of Plautus, mock-heroic, or purely diverting, like the Thersytes. Those that are pedagogical in tendency, directed against idleness and ignorance, or Wit plays. They began with Rastell's Four Elements, and reached their highest mark in the Contract between Witt and Wisdome. Those that portray the conflict with the excesses and lusts of the flesh, or Youth plays. They consist of such productions as Mankynd, Nature, Hyckescorner, and reach their climax, about 1554, in the Interlude of Youth. The school drama includes, in the last place, a series corrective of parental indulgence and filial disobedience, aptly called Prodigal Son plays. These are patterned upon Terence, but follow the manner of Dutch school plays like the Acolastus or of the still earlier French moralités, Bien-Avisé et Mal-Avisé, L'Homme pêcheur, and Les Enfants de Maintenant. They make more or less use of the scriptural motif and are sometimes tragical. In the period under consideration their best representatives are the Nice Wanton and the Disobedient Child. From the point of view of comedy the first of these kinds, the Mirth play, occupies a place by itself; for, though it may sometimes intend to teach, it always aims at, and achieves, laughter. To the three remaining kinds, we must for convenience, join, however, another which, though not of the school species, is primarily didactic,—I mean the controversial interlude. This includes Bale's King Johan, Wever's Lusty Juventus, and the Respublica.

In the Mirth play, Thersytes, the influence of Plautus is evident,—a school play, to be sure, but written with a view to amusement or rollicking satire rather than instruction. Acted in 1537, this "enterlude" has for its hero a "ruffler forth of the Greke lande" whose "crakying" stands half-way between the classical Pyrgopolinices and Thraso and the modern Roister Doister. For all its academic flavour, the burlesque is coarse and crude, but still genuinely humorous. It deserves notice, in especial, for the variety of its contents, chivalric, romantic, popular, scriptural as well as Greek and Latin; also for its artistic exhibition of the braggart,—the leisurely proceeding of his discomfiture, the subordination of other characters to that end; and for its mastery of technical devices,—concealment, magic, the play upon the word, and that hunting of the word and letter which was so soon to drive conversation out of its wits. As an interlude of foreign origin, the Thersytes has a place in the development of the comic element somewhat analogous to that of the Calisto in the development of the romantic. As far as the quality of mirth is concerned it might be classed with Roister Doister and Jacke Jugeler; but those plays are much more highly developed in form and spirit, and must be reserved for consideration with the polytypic, and early regular, comedy.