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

by Unknown

The remaining classes of interlude are manifestly didactic; those of Wit and Youth derive, however, more directly from native sources, while those of the Prodigal Son have close affiliation with the Christian Terence of the continental humanists.

Redford's Wyt and Science, composed probably between 1541 and 1547, is, in form and intent, like Lusty Juventus and other survivals of the moral interlude. It differs, however, in company with the Four Elements and other Wit plays, in substituting a scientific for a religious purpose; and it adds a feature not to be found in earlier kinds of moral, a chivalrous ideal of love and adventure, academic, to be sure, but unmistakable. This appears in the wooing of Lady Science by Wyt, and his encounter with the tyrant or fiend Tediousness "for my dere hartes sake to wynne my spurres;" in the hero's inconstancy, defeat, and subsequent success, and in the dramatic employment of romantic instruments and tokens, such as the magic glass and the sword of comfort; also in the love songs. All of these and similar features of which the sources are not entirely continental make for the development of a romantic and humanistic drama. It may be worth noticing, moreover, that the fiend of the play is neither Vice nor Devil. He seems to be a cross between the Devil of the miracles and a monster of native as well as scriptural ancestry (an early draft of Giant Despair), who figures in a modernization of this play, The Marriage of Witte and Science. In chronological sequence the next of the Wit plays is the Contract of a Marrige betweene Wit and Wisdome (not Wit and Science, as Professor Brandl has it). This was probably written about the same time as the Lusty Juventus. The mention of the King's most "royal majestie" and the appearance of the Vice Idleness as a priest would point to a date earlier than 1553, while the resemblance to Redford's play, though by no means close, indicates posteriority to that much cruder production. The division into acts and scenes is, on the other hand, less elaborate than that obtaining in the latest play of this series, The Marriage of Witte and Science. The Contract is altogether the most meritorious of those academic predecessors of the drama of the Prodigal Son which introduce the indulgent mother as a motive force. While the conception is formal and didactic, the action avails itself, like Redford's play, of the romantic element involved in the perilous adventure for love. The Contract, moreover, startles the sober atmosphere of the moral interlude by a rapidity of movement, a combination of plots major and minor, a diversity of subordinate characters and incidents altogether unprecedented. The racy and natural wit, the equivoque, the actual, even if vulgar, humanity of the scenes from low life, and the skill with which the Mother Bees, the Dols and Lobs, Snatches and Catches, the Constable, and the thoroughly rustic Vice with his actual resemblance to Diccon the Bedlem, are dovetailed into the action,—these properties make this a very commendable predecessor, not only of Gammer Gurton, but of certain plays of Dekker and Jonson where similar features obtain. With the Contract, the interlude of this kind attains its climax. The Marriage of Witte and Science, which is a revision of Redford's play of similar name, must also be mentioned here, although it is a postliminious specimen of the type. Not licensed until 1569-70, and, according to Fleay, acted as Wit and Will, 1567-78,[69] it adds nothing vital to the plot or characters of its model. Still, in literary and dramatic handling, it is an example of the perfection to which the moral play could come. Collier, indeed, has said that it was the first play of its kind regularly divided into acts and scenes with indication of the same: but that is not true, for the Respublica of 1553 has five acts and the proper arrangement in scenes; and so have other plays of 1553 or earlier, though of different kind, like the Jacob and Esau.

If now we pass to the Youth plays, we shall find in the Interlude of Youth (about 1554) the culmination of dramatic efforts to portray the sowing of wild oats,—efforts avowedly moral in purpose, but with a reminiscent smack of the lips and a fellow-feeling for the scapegrace. The Interlude of Youth is characterized neither by the unbridled merriment of the Miles Gloriosus type nor by the depth or pathos of dramas portraying solicitous parents and prodigal sons; but it paves the way for 'tragical' comedies of this latter class, and is infinitely more dramatic, because more human, than the pedagogical onslaughts upon idleness, irksomeness, ignorance, and the like of which we have just treated. It has, perhaps, not been noticed that the Interlude of Youth holds about the same relation to Hyckescorner in matter of motive and treatment that Hyckescorner holds to the Four Elements and Mankynd,—indeed, a closer relation, for in many details of character, device, situation, as well as by literal transference of language, it borrows from Hyckescorner. This as indicating the descent of the species is in itself interesting. But the present play generally improves upon all that it derives. In addition, the vivid conversation, shrewd and waggish wit, local colouring, atmosphere of taverns, dicing, cards, and worse iniquities, justify, I think, the statement that it is at once the most realistic, amusing, and graceful specimen of its kind. It is, at any rate, as artistic as a didactic interlude could permit itself to be.

One cannot consider the so-called Prodigal Son interludes, without observing that the theme itself supplies an opportunity for the enlargement of dramatic endeavour. For these productions are directed as much against parental indulgence as against filial disobedience. The "Preaty Interlude called Nice Wanton," printed in 1560, was written before the death of Edward VI. Though it may have derived suggestions from the Rebelles[70] of Macropedius, 1535, it is of its own originality and dramatic merit, in my opinion, the best of its class in English at the time of writing. While it presents a mixture of scriptural, classical, and moral elements, it is essentially a modern production. The allegorical lingers only in the character of Worldly Shame. If this be eliminated, there remains a play with realistic, romantic, and ideal qualities, an air of probability, and a plot well conceived and excellently completed. Iniquity, or Baily errand, is a concrete Vice, working by actual and possible methods. The unfortunate heroine and the well-contrasted pairs of mothers and sons are manifest not only by their deeds but by the opinions of those who know them. The plot, in other words, grows out of the characters; it is full of incident, and it falls naturally into acts, which have been elaborated in various and dramatically interesting scenes. The movements, on the one hand toward a catastrophe, on the other toward the triumph of right living, are conducted with skilful suspense, surprise, discovery, and revolution, and are well interwoven. The conversations and songs are racy or sober according to the conditions; the combination of æsthetic qualities, comic, tragic, and pathetic, is an agreeable advance upon the inartistic extremes afforded by most of the contemporary interludes of moral intent. The next of these plays, the "pretie and mery new interlude called The Disobedient Child, by Thomas Ingeland, late Student at Cambridge," was acted, Mr. Fleay thinks, before Elizabeth in March, 1560-61. Though it was not published till 1564, it was certainly, like the Nice Wanton, written before 1553. The purpose is serious and the conclusion almost tragic, but the play contributes to the comedy of domestic satire. If the main characters were but indicated by name, like those below stairs, Blanche and Long-Tongue, this picturesque and wholly dramatic interlude would have attracted more notice than has been vouchsafed it. Its literary merits, verse, poetic feeling and expression, and its natural dialogue entitle it to high consideration; its decidedly novel dramatic qualities, even though they bear a general resemblance to the Studentes[71] of Stymmelius, rank it with the Nice Wanton as one of the most vigorous of our early representatives of the dramatic actualities of family life.

For reasons which I have already indicated, the controversial plays of the period between 1520 and 1553 may be considered here. The first of these in chronological order is Bale's King Johan, about 1540-47, with later insertions in the author's hand. Its relation to Lyndsay's satire of the Thrie Estatis is well known; and Professor Herford[72] has indicated its indebtedness also to the Pammachius and the Protestant version of the antichrist legend. It is a dramatic satire on the abuses of the church, its riches, orders, brotherhoods, confessionals, simony, free thought, mummery (judaistic and pagan), Latin ritual, hagiolatry, and papal supremacy. Few more excellent embodiments of the Vice have been preserved than the Sedycyon of this play, who in every estate of the clergy plays a part, sometimes monk, sometimes nun, or canon, or chapter-house monk, or Sir John, or the parson, or the bishop, or the friar, or the purgatory priest and every man's wife's desire:—

"Yea, to go farder, sumtyme I am a cardynall;

Yea, sumtyme a pope and than am I lord over all,

Both in hevyn and erthe and also in purgatory,

And do weare iij crownes whan I am in my glorye."

In spite of Professor Schelling's[73] recent rejection of King Johan from the list of chronicle plays, I cannot but agree with Dr. Ward that this moral is of considerable importance in the history of that species. That it uses history merely as the cloak for a religio-policical allegory, and that it does not quite succeed in drawing together the points of fact and fiction in the development of action and character,—these defects do not alter its significance as the first English play to incarnate the political spirit of its age in a form imaginatively attributed to an earlier period of native history. Although it is not a comedy, it concerns us here as a drama of critical and satirical intent. It is succeeded by plays like Lusty Juventus and Respublica, which deal more or less with political affairs, and interest us because they enliven the controversial by the introduction of the realistic and comic, and, accordingly, in an age when polemics was politics, contribute to the improvement of comedy by shaping it more or less to a medium for the dissemination of practical ideas. Moreover, though Bale had no disciples in the attempt to construct an historical protestant drama, he may be said to have prepared the way for a protestant series of another kind. This is what Professor Herford has well called the biblical genre drama; it is pedagogical and controversial, and, like the King Johan, its representatives, also, such as the Darius and Queen Hester, had their precursors, and probably their models, more or less distant, in the idyllic or heroic miracle of the Dutch and German humanists.