is a progress involving vast reformings, and some deformings,[996] in diction and in metre, of such sweep that Elizabethans put these qualities first when they went about to judge a play. "Your nine comœdies," writes Harvey to Spenser, come nearer to Ariosto's, "eyther for the finenesse of plausible Elocution, or the rareness of Poetical Invention," than the Faery Queene to the Orlando Furioso. In this ennobling of diction, Peele may not have led the column of playwrights, but he was certainly in the van. His achievement must not be dashed by a comparison with Shakespeare, who covered up absurdities of plot—as in the Merchant of Venice—by brilliant characterization, where this earlier group depended upon the art of words.[997] For the related art of brave metres, of a "flowing blank verse" in plays, we have no space to argue upon the claims of leadership. Enough is done for the matter if one remembers that Peele, who wrote admirable blank verse before Marlowe was out of his teens, had nothing to learn from the greater poet about the management of this metre in and for itself.[998] Certainly he got more music out of the pentameter than any earlier dramatist had done; witness such a movement as,—
"What sign is rainy and what star is fair,"
or,—
"And water running from the silver spring."
The Old Wives' Tale, an Innovation in Comedy.—It may be conceded that Peele "discovered no new vein" in diction and in metre, although his work in each was of a high order, not far removed from leadership. Different is the case when one considers his claims for innovation in comedy. He was the first to blend romantic drama with a realism which turns romance back upon itself, and produces the comedy of subconscious humour. The tragedies, and even the miracle plays, while extravagant in form, had not been altogether unnatural in action. The supernatural in that age was not unnatural. The unnatural was mainly confined to the diction. Gradually, as every one knows, the romantic element, in a wide sense, got upper hand and ruled the English drama. In The Old Wives' Tale this romantic spirit comes in, not as a new element, but as a new kind of "art" grafted upon the "nature" of the rough and comic stock; and to the reader's surprise draws away all unnaturalness from the dialogue, which is now plain, natural, commonplace.[999] Realism in diction was no new thing; romance in plot was not an innovation; it was the clash, the interplay, the subjective element, the appeal to something more than a literal understanding of what is said and done, a new appeal to a deeper sense of humour—here lay the new vein discovered by George Peele. The romantic drama, we repeat, was known; witness that little group of "folk-lore romances," as Mr. Fleay calls them, Common Conditions, Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, and Appius and Virginia; the two former are full of adventures, of amorous knights and wandering ladies, a Forest of Strange Marvels, an Isle of Strange Marshes, what not. In all of them, however, the romance is presented in unnatural diction, to suit such unnatural doings, and justifies those bitter words of the Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters,[1000] that "the notablest lier is become the best Poet ... for the strangest Comedie brings greatest delectation ... faining countries neuer heard of, monsters and prodigious creatures that are not...." A milder romantic drama, but without the humour which we mean, is Greene's Orlando Furioso. The other plays, however, have no humour at all except the traditional humour of the Vice; and of the three representatives, Conditions, who finally turns pirate, is certainly a far merrier person than Haphazard in Appius or Subtle Shift in Sir Clyomon. There is realistic setting in Common Conditions, with some lively dialogue, and a distinctly catching song and chorus[1001] of tinkers, at the opening of the play. It is "business" here, however, not that dramatic irony, springing from contrast of romantic plot and realistic diction, which makes a sufficiently timid beginning in The Old Wives' Tale, and grows so insistent in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Moreover, Peele's realistic work shows the control and consciousness of a higher art. There are no peasants like Hodge in Gammer Gurton, Corin in Sir Clyomon, and Hob and Lob in Cambyses.[1002] There is an outburst or two of yokel wit in Peele's play; but there is no breaking of heads, no chance for the clown to sing a song while drunk, as Hance does in the interlude of Like Wil to Like. These signs of a subtler conception of his art should be placed to Peele's credit; for while an obvious dialect marks Hodge and Corin and the rest, Clunch and Madge speak a plain English, reminding one irresistibly of the milk-woman's talk with Piscator: it smacks of cottage and field and hedge-rows and, as Nashe would say, has "old King Harrie sinceritie." There is a difference as between the exaggerated "hayseed" of a comic paper and the finer drawing in one of Hardy's peasants. Exaggeration would spoil the sense of contrast between honest Madge and the high pretences of the plot. In Huanebango there is girding not only at Harvey, but at the romance hero in general; this big-mouthed, impossible fellow, with Corebus as a foil, foreshadows, however dimly, the far more clever presentation of an English Don Quixote in the person of Ralph.
A second element of humour in this realistic treatment of romance is the use of an induction, or rather of a combination of the induction and the play within the play, as a means of expressing dramatic irony. Although the induction springs from the prologue, and although the opening of The Old Wives' Tale is technically an induction, like many another of the time, it has to our thinking a distinctly new vein. What Schwab[1003] calls the first example of the use of an induction—in The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune—makes both induction and play connected parts of a whole. It is a dramatic device, wholly objective in character, external, with no demand upon the sense of contrast. Different, but hardly a new idea,[1004] is the induction as employed by Greene in Alphonsus and James IV.; here is a return to the old notion of the prologue, a justifying of the playwright's way. Will Summer, the pet jester,[1005] who ushers in Nashe's play, calls himself outright a kind of chorus. In the old Taming of a Shrew, printed in 1594, Sly, while only a casual commentator upon the play, is entirely outside of the main action, which, as Schwab points out, thus becomes an actual play within the play. Still, even in these cases, the contrast is objective and direct. The induction is a clever device to heighten interest in the play. Before, it had served the playwright as an expression of his purpose in the main drama; later, as with Ben Jonson, it voiced his critical opinions. Whether objective or subjective, however, the contrast between play and induction is direct. Quite different is that induction, which Schwab rightly calls remarkable, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle; and different, too, is that earlier attempt, which Schwab unaccountably fails to mention, in The Old Wives' Tale. These both appeal to a sense of humour awakened by the interplay of theme and treatment, of character and situation. In Peele's play this involution of epic, drama, and comment—a seeming confusion which has distressed many of the critics—really heightens the dramatic power of the piece. The induction is double. First come a bit of romance, with the lost wanderers in the wood, and a realistic foil in their own dialogue—by no means the "heavy prose" of Collier's censure. Secondly comes outright realism with Clunch, Madge, the bread and cheese, and the old joke about bedfellows, cleverly followed by Madge's abrupt raid upon romantic ground. She is well started, but stumbling, when the other actors break in; and the inner play, not without some confusion and mystification, runs its course. Perhaps the sense of huddling, abruptness, confusion, is intentional as part of an old wives' tale indeed; perhaps, again, this must be laid to the charge of Peele's carelessness in "plotting plaies." Be that as it may be, the interplay of these elements makes a new kind of comedy; and the humour of this play, crude and tentative as it seems when compared with the humour of Uncle Toby[1006] and of those lesser lights that revolve in the orbit of the Quixotic contrast, differs from earlier essays of the sort in that it is not a separate element of fun, but rather something which exists in solution with the comedy itself. The Old Wives' Tale lies midway between the utter lack of coherence in Nashe's play and the subtlety of Beaumont and Fletcher. Will Summer is often irrelevant and tiresome; the main action, on which he comments, is now pathetic, now farcical, now merely spectacular; but in our play the thread of romance runs throughout unbroken and keeps the piece in a sort of unity, while the comment, whether direct or hinted, has a vastly finer vein of irony. The romantic side of folk-lore has its due withal, as in the test of fidelity at the end between Eumenides and Jack, with the proposed division of Delia—a casus always acceptable to such an audience, and here of acute though subordinate interest. Moreover, Peele has a kind of reticence and control in his art; he suggests in a whisper what Will Summer would have roared into commonplace and horse-play.
The Background of Folk-Lore.—Finally, the very Old Wives' Tale itself, with its background of folk-lore, that tryst of ancient splendour with modern poverty and ignorance on the territory of a forgotten faith, is a thing of quietly humorous contrasts. Several elements are to be considered in the charming little medley which Peele has made from the folk-lore of his day—"that curious mélange of nursery tales," as Mr. Joseph Jacobs calls it. The enchanter and his spells, the stolen daughter and her brothers' quest, make a familiar central group. Perhaps Madge set out to tell the story of Childe Rowland, familiar to Elizabethans,[1007] although Jack the Giant Killer has his claims. The fee-fa-fum, as every one knows, occurs also in Shakespeare's Lear. The help of the White Bear—a transformation, like the saws and prophecies, sufficiently familiar in these tales—is similar to that of Merlin in Childe Rowland; but the ghost of Jack reminds one of the other story. Mr. Jacobs quotes Kennedy that in a parallel Irish tale "Jack the servant is the spirit of the buried man." One has only to make this substitution, and the vicarious gratitude of the Giant Killer[1008] is better explained. Perhaps, too, Peele has borrowed some of his thunder and lightning, as well as Huanebango's fee-fa-fum, from the giants; and the disenchantment at the hands of an invisible hero may belong, in part, to this tale. Two other folk-tales may be named—The Well of the World's End, mentioned, if a slight emendation be allowed, in The Complaynt of Scotland, and The Three Heads of the Well—as known, in some form, to Peele, and used directly in the story of the two daughters. The familiar theme of the so-called "death index"[1009] is touched but slightly; and perhaps it is unnecessary to go to the Red Ettin for a parallel to Huanebango and Corebus, who respectively refuse and give a piece of cake to the helpful old man. The theme is common in folk-lore. It is interesting to note that Beaumont and Fletcher show a liking for folk-tales, as well as for traditional songs and ballads, in that play, which by its induction and general spirit most closely resembles this Old Wives' Tale. More dignified sources were long ago pointed out by Warton, who remarked that "the names of some of the characters ... are taken from the Orlando Furioso." Meroe, in Apuleius, was invoked. But it seems clear enough that English folk-lore must be the mainstay of critics who think all is done for a work of literature when they have found out every possible and impossible source for plot, sideplot, and allusion.
Literary Estimate.—The marvel, after all, is not that these materials are huddled and confused in the combination; the confusion is part of the artistic process, and if the figures move across the stage without firm connection one with the other, that, too, is done after the manner of the old tale. We are on romantic ground, and are to see by glimpses. Here is no comedy of incident, in the usual meaning of the term, no comedy of intrigue or of manners. It is rather a comedy of comedies, a saucy challenge of romance, where art turns, however timidly, upon itself. Perhaps Peele wrote this play, as Dryden wrote All for Love, to please himself. Unquestionably, until Mr. Bullen made a plea for mercy, The Old Wives' Tale had been shamefully treated. Collier[1010] calls it "nothing but a beldam's story, with little to recommend it but heavy prose and not much lighter blank verse," a most inadequate summary from any point of view. The play, he thinks, has "a disgusting quantity of trash and absurdity." Dyce, while regarding Peele's "superiority to Greene" as "unquestionable," is not enthusiastic about The Old Wives' Tale. Mr. Ward speaks[1011] of "the labyrinthine intricacy of the main scenes," knows not whether to call it farce or interlude, and would pass it by save for the suggestion of Comus. But Mr. Bullen very properly objects to this unfair comparison. Symonds, to be sure, uses it even more unfairly. The Old Wives' Tale, he makes bold to say, is the sow's ear to Milton's silk purse.[1012] With an unusual blindness to literary perspective, Symonds goes on to judge this flickering little candle of romance, folk-lore, and half-roguish, half-ironical suggestion, by the sun-blaze of Milton's high seriousness and full poetic splendours. Peele, it seems, does not "lift his subject into the heavens of poetry.... The wizard is a common conjurer. The spirit is a vulgar village ghost." Why not, pray? What should they be for the purposes of this old wives' tale? What would be left, say, of Chaucer's charming little story, that "folye, as of a fox, or of a cok and hen," if one were to pulverize it with such critical tools? Peele is not trying to raise comedy into the heavens; he left that for his betters; and the ineffectual Delia is a long remove from Hermia and Helena in the "wood near Athens." What Peele, George Peele of the dingy jests, probably tried to do, and what he surely succeeded in doing, was to bring a new and more subtle strain of humour into the drama. Itur in antiquam silvam. Realism left shabby and squalid things, alehouse wit, and laid hold of a sweeter life. Reckless, good-natured scholar, George fairly followed the call which haunted so many academic outcasts, the call which Marlowe and Greene and Dekker answered with those sweet songs of country life, and which led Peele to the making of this play. He wove romance and realism into a fabric that may well show a coarse pattern and often very clumsy workmanship, but, on the whole, it is a pleasing pattern and a new. Moreover, it is all made of sound English stuff. The tales he used for his main drama were familiar to English ears; the persons of his framework play were kindly folk of any English village, and the air of it all is as fresh and wholesome as an English summer morning.
Sources, Title, Text.—The sources of the play, so far as one may speak of sources, are indicated in general above, and in particular by notes to the following text. The plural form of the title ought probably to be singular, in spite of common usage, the gloss ealdra cwéna spel (Wright, Voc.), and 1 Timothy iv, 7; Mr. Fleay, perhaps as a concession to Madge, prints Old Wifes' Tale (Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, II. 154).[1013] He puts the date of composition "clearly 1590," on the theory that Harvey—Huanebango—is here satirized by Peele as a consequence of Harvey's attack upon Lyly in 1589,—circulated then in manuscript though not printed until 1593. Lämmerhirt[1014] argues, but not conclusively, that the play was written before 1588,—partly because of the allusions to Harvey, and partly because style and form point to an early period in the author's development. Until a surer date can be established, however, 1590 will serve as the time of composition for this play. The Old Wives' Tale, says Dyce, "had sunk into complete oblivion, till Steevens ... communicated to Reed the account of it which appeared in the Biographia Dramatica." In 1783 Steevens writes to Warton: "All I have learned in relation to the original from which the idea of Milton's Comus might be borrowed, I communicated to Mr. Reed.... Only a single copy of his [sic] Old Wives' Tale has hitherto appeared, and even that is at present out of my reach...."[1015] As to the rhythmic structure, E. Penner notes[1016] that of 964 lines of this play 192 are five-stress or ordinary heroic verse, 7 are hexameters, and 100 short verses. The rest is prose.
The best edition is, of course, that of Bullen, in 3 vols., 1888-[B]; but there were excellent editions by Dyce, one in 1828 ff., and another in 1861-[Dy.]. The present text of The Old Wives' Tale is from the 1595 quarto in the British Museum; the title-page is, with the exception of the vignettes, a fair representation of the original.