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

by Unknown

R. Wever's Lusty Juventus, written about 1550,[74] is of the dramatic kindred of Mankynd and Nature. Its characters are allegorical in name but concrete in person; and one of them, Abhominable Living, passes, also, under the appellation of "litle Besse." The conversations are sprightly, and the songs show considerable lyric power. But the play is a protestant polemic, and its success must have depended to a large extent upon the bitterness of the satire against

"Holy cardinals, holy popes,

Holy vestments, holy copes,"

and various alleged hypocrisies and excesses of the Church of Rome. That this play had a long life is shown by its insertion, though under the designation of an interlude with which it had nothing in common,[75] as a play within a play in the tragedy of Sir Thomas More (about 1590). The "merye Enterlude" Respublica, 1553, a children's Christmas play, sustains somewhat the same relation to political Catholicism as King Johan to Protestantism—without the polemics of dogma. Here, as in the preceding political moral of King Johan, the Vice is used for a satirical purpose, and is not only the chief mischief-maker, but, also, the principal representative of the comic rôle. In this play, the Vice is so highly considered that the author, probably a priest, multiplies him by four, and, by way of foil, offsets the group with that of the four Virtues, daughters of God, whose presence in the eleventh Coventry play and in Mankynd has already been noticed. I don't see how Collier can call the construction of Respublica ingenious; it is childish, clumsy, and trite. The humour consists in old-fashioned disguises and aliases, equivoque, misunderstanding, and abuse. But the character of Avarice, who, with his money bags, anticipates the Suckdrys and Lucres of later comedy, is well conceived, the conduct natural, the language simple and colloquial. Of historical interest is the introduction of Queen Mary as Nemesis; of linguistic, the attempt to reproduce the dialect of the common people; of dramatic, the division into acts and scenes, which is to be found in but few other plays of the mid-century, such as Roister Doister, King Johan, Jacob and Esau, and the Marriage of Witte and Science.

11. Polytypic, or Fusion, Plays

With the plays just mentioned each of the dramatic kinds so far considered reaches its artistic limit. These kinds, however, during the decades roughly coincident with the years between 1545 and 1566, enter into combinations, by virtue of which English comedy is assisted to a still further advance. The plays that represent this stage of literary history may be called polytypic. Roister Doister and Jacke Jugeler subordinate the materials of academic interlude and classical farce to classical regulations. Into the Historie of Jacob and Esau enter characteristics of miracle play, moral, realistic interlude, and classical comedy. Gammer Gurton and Tom Tyler (of about the same date) subsume, under the domestic play of low life, native elements of both farce and moral. Misogonus combines elements of moral interlude and farce with qualities native and foreign, classical and romantic. These are followed by the biblical genre drama of Godly Queen Hester, partly political and partly pedagogical in intent. In the first five of these plays the tendency to teach is reduced almost to a minimum. In the Misogonus and Hester it is present, but is counterbalanced by romantic or satirical considerations. When, however, we reach the Damon and Pythias and The Supposes, the didactic has disappeared altogether in favour of the truly artistic motive. These plays at last combine the comic and serious, the real, the romantic, and the ideal. They are constructive, not primarily critical; in fact, they must be regarded as our first real comedies.

No play of this division better illustrates the impress of the classical model upon native material than Roister Doister. This "comedie" or "interlude" was certainly in existence by 1552; indeed, it has not yet been conclusively shown that it was not acted as early as 1534 to 1541. In the last contingency it may have anticipated the Thersytes; but, according to Professor Flügel's argument,[76] it was probably not composed till after 1545. With the Thersytes it has in common several points of detail, but the essential resemblance is, of course, in the Plautine personage of the braggart. Like Heywood before him, Udall aims to produce that which "is comendable for a man's recreation," but the masterpiece of Udall has the advantage of Heywood's "mery plays," in that its mirth "refuses scurilitie." In Roister Doister, also, more decidedly than in previous plays, the amusement proceeds not from the situation alone, but from the organism,—a plot essentially and substantially dramatic, because its characters are concrete, purposive, and interacting. But decided as was Udall's contribution to the art of comic drama, we must not credit him with producing comedy proper. The merit of Roister Doister is in its comic intent, its skilful characterization and contrivance. It is a presentation of humours,—corrective indeed, but farcical. It is not significant, constructive, poetic, grounded in the heart as well as in the head. A contribution to the classical type contemporary with the preceding, but of a much more farcical and juvenile appearance, is the "new interlued" named Jacke Jugeler, written not later than 1562 and perhaps as early as 1553-54 (after the reëstablishment of the Mass and before the terrifying revival of the sanguinary laws against heretics). It announces itself as a school drama, and in the prologue purports to have been derived from the Amphitruo of Plautus. I am inclined to think that the professed modesty of the author has led critics to undervalue the skill and fidelity of that which was not only the best "droll," but also the best dramatic satire produced in England up to date. Within a narrow compass he has developed a humorous action quite novel in English comedy, and has introduced us, not only to the first English double and one of the first English practical jokers, but, I believe, to our first victim of confused identity. The author is, of course, following his Plautus, but what could be more ludicrous than the scene in which Jenkin, uncertain and undesirous of his own acquaintance, covers himself with ignominy in the effort to discard it. We are led from interest to interest by means of anticipation, surprise, and the clever repetition of comic crises. Characters well drawn like Dame Coy and Alison, distinct like Jacke and Jenkin, suggestive of complexity like Bongrace, were not of everyday occurrence in the drama of 1553. The language, too, is idiomatic, and the wit, though vulgar, unforced. But perhaps more significant for our purpose than any other feature of the play is this, that in spite of its avowed æsthetic intent (even more outspoken than that of Roister Doister), it is a subtle attack upon the Roman Catholic Church. This interlude, says the maker, citing the authority of the classics, is written for the express purpose of provoking mirth, and for no other purpose: it is "not worth an oyster shell Except percase it shall fortune to make men laugh well"; but under the artifice we find a parable of the doctrinal Jacke Jugeler of the day, whose mission it was to prove that "One man may have two bodies and two faces, And that one man at one time may be in two places." I do not think that the satirical character of the play has heretofore been remarked, though the controversial allusions of the epilogue are, of course, well known. The innocence of the prologue and the profession of trifles fit for "little boys" are as shrewd an irony as the dramatic attack upon transubstantiation is a huge burlesque.

The third of these fusion dramas is The Historie of Jacob and Esau. Although its title may suggest the dignity of a miracle or the didacticism of a moral play, it is the reduction of the miracle to modern conditions and of the moral to concrete and actual characters. This "newe, mery, and wittie comedie, or enterlude" was licensed in 1557, but its decidedly protestant character may indicate composition before Mary's accession to the throne. Collier is quite right in calling it one of the freshest and most effective productions of the kind to which it belongs. But in classifying it with early religious plays, because the subject happens to be scriptural, he is as far astray as Professor Brandl who classes it with plays of the Prodigal Son, because the nature of the subject suggests a faint resemblance to that species. It is an attempt at comedy by way of fusion. The plot is in general scriptural, but it introduces some half-dozen invented characters. The production aims, like a moral interlude, at inculcating the doctrine of predestination; but, like a classical comedy, it is regularly divided, dramatically constructed, and equipped with tried and telling comic devices. Proceeding with extreme care for probability, with elaboration of motive, with due preparation of interest, enhancement, and suspense, it attains a climax of unusual excellence, considering the date of its composition. The discovery and denouement are naturally contrived; and where the author avails himself of the staples of his trade, the asides, disguises, intrigues, eavesdropping, and the rest, he does so with the ease of the accustomed dramatist. The play, in fact, deserves as high esteem as Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton; in originality and regularity it is their equal, in development of a vital conception their superior. The language is idiomatic—of the age and soil; or dignified, when the mood demands. It is also free from obscenity; but it lacks nothing in wit on that account, nor the situations in humour. Viewed as a whole, it is a simple and unaffected picture of English rural life—the scene with its setting as well as its figures. And these are coloured from experience, forerunners, indeed, of many in our better-known comedy: the young squire given over to the chase, horses and dogs and the horn at break of day (much to the discomfort of the slumbering environment),—the careless elder born,—victim and butt of his unnatural mother and her wily younger son; the doting father, duped; the clown; the pert and pretty maid; the aged nurse. Consider, in addition, the more subtle characteristics of the Jacob and Esau,—the family resemblances, the racial policy with its ripe and ruddy upper layer of morals, the romantic touch, the sometimes genuine pathos, the naïve domestic revelations, the loves in low life, the unaffected charms of dialogue and verse,—and one must acknowledge that this play, no matter what its origin and name, is at least as indicative of the maturing of English drama as either of the plays with which I have placed it in comparison.

Of these Gammer Gurtons Nedle was the first to gather the threads of farce, moral interlude, and classical school play into a well-sustained comedy of rustic life. Mr. Henry Bradley has ingeniously shown that in all probability it was a Christ's College play, written by William Stevenson during his fellowship of 1559 to 1560. There may, indeed, be reason for believing that it was composed as early as the author's first fellowship, 1551-54.[77] In this play the unregulated seductions of earlier days are brought under the curb of the classical manner and form: the native element already evident in Noah's Flood and the Shepherds' Plays, the Judicium, the Conversion of St. Paul, the Johan, and the Pardoner, and about this same time in the Contract betweene Wit and Wisdome (parts of which suggest forcibly the manner of this same Stevenson); the rollicking humour of the Vice turned Bedlem, the pithy and saline interchange of feminine amenities; the Atellan, sometimes even Chaucerian, laughter,—not sensual but animal; the delight in physical incongruity; the mediæval fondness for the grotesque. If the situations are farcical, they at any rate hold together; each scene tends towards the climax of the act, and each act towards the denouement. The characters are both typical and individual; and though the conception is of less significance than that of Roister Doister, the execution is an advance because it smacks less of the academic. Gammer Gurton carries forward the comedy of mirth, but hardly yet into the rounded comedy of life.