The drama of “Aylmere” is founded on the famous insurrection of 1450, in which the English peasantry were headed by a physician, known indifferently as Jack Cade, Aylmere, Mendall and Mortimer. The theme is one peculiarly fitted for a republican poet. Goaded by intolerable wrongs, social as well as political—insults to their women, contumely to themselves, public taxes that reaped them to the last stubble, and private exactions on the part of the nobility, that gleaned what little regal rapacity had left—the people, in which we comprise the yeomen and burghers, as well as the villeins, rose in a body, marched on London, exacted the death of the infamous lord-chamberlain, and procured a charter from the king, guarantying to the commonalty the rights and privileges demanded by their leader. But scarcely had these concessions been granted, when a collision, provoked probably by the royal party, occurred between the citizens of London and the followers of Cade: the insurgents met with a repulse; and the late terrified aristocracy rallying, a total defeat and dispersion of the peasantry ensued. Aylmere himself was hunted down, like a wild beast, and mercilessly put to death. The concessions granted were revoked. And, for centuries after, English historians in the interest of the upper classes, blackened the name and misrepresented the motives of the ill-fated Kentish reformer.
What nobler task could a republican poet set before himself, than to rescue the reputation of this martyred hero from obloquy and shame? Well, too, has Judge Conrad fulfilled his pious labor. The principal character of the play is Aylmere, of course; indeed he may be said, in one sense, to be the entire play. His lofty courage, his abhorrence of wrong, his high aspirations after liberty, and the fiery enthusiasm which he breathes into his followers, form, as it were, the deep undertone, whose thunders roll incessantly through this grand anthem of freedom. Other characters, however, contribute materially to the action of the piece, and furnish the author with opportunities to display his dramatic powers. The portrait of Marianne, the wife of Aylmere, is drawn with great tenderness of feeling, and delicacy of touch: she is, like her own native Italy, a vision of immortal beauty hallowed and sanctified by wo. The cruel, vindictive and insolent Say; the gay, careless, yet not wholly wicked Clifford; the friend of the people, Friar Lacy; and the yeomen, Wat Worthy and Will Mowbray, all stand prominently out from the canvas.
The drama is full of noble poetry. It would give us pleasure to quote more largely from it, in proof of this; but the quantity of books upon our table, requiring notice, forbids a monopoly of our limited space by one. We cannot, however, resist making a few extracts. Here is one, in which Aylmere, after his return from Italy, eloquently describes the bondage which he shared in common with his fellow-Englishmen.
Ten years of freedom have not made me free.
I’ve throttled fortune till she yielded up
Her brightest favors; I have wooed Ambition,
Wooed with a fiery soul and dripping sword,
And would not be denied; I turned from her,
And raked amid the ashes of the past,
For the high thoughts that burn but cannot die,