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CHAPTER IV

THE PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE

We have now arrived at the threshold of the literary movement which has given the age of Elizabeth rank among the most important intellectual epochs of the world. Its drama, and its drama alone, has bestowed upon it a place importance of in literature corresponding to that which it has earned in political history the English by its deliverance of Europe by the discomfiture of the Armada and in science by the method of Bacon and the discoveries of Gilbert and Harvey. Without its drama it would still have been a rich and glorious literary epoch for England, but no world-wide significance could have been attributed to it. Even without Shakespeare it would have vied not unsuccessfully with the dramatic literatures of France, Spain, and Germany, and attracted students and admirers from all those countries. With Shakespeare, it has obtained naturalisation in every civilised land, and more or less metamorphosed every national drama. Leaving theologians and philosophers and men of science out of the question, and confining our attention to letters, it may safely be affirmed that more has been written about Shakespeare than about all other European writers together between Dante and Goethe.

The drama a

the miracle

play

Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Elizabethan drama than development of the extreme suddenness of its development. We seem to pass in an instant from an atmosphere of barbarism to an atmosphere of art. The transition was indeed abrupt, yet seemed more sudden than was really the case. It had been slowly prepared by a long succession of antecedent developments, according, by a rare felicity, with the development of the nation itself. It has already been described in a previous chapter on the Miracle Play how the origin of the English drama was, like that of the Greek, religious; how the growing taste for pomp and show in church services, partly arising from the language in which they were conducted having become unintelligible to the people, generated spectacular performances of a religious cast too elaborate and too much leavened with profane elements to be suitable for performance in church, thus laying the foundation of the modern theatre. The circumstance that these representations were given on holidays greatly favoured the mirthful element they had included from the first, and at the zenith of the miracle play its constituent elements included precursors alike of the more dig nified tragedy and the more refined comedy of the coming age. Side by side with this entirely democratic form of drama existed another, the toy of the learned, but unknown to the people, the scholarly imitation of

MIRACLE PLAY AND MORALITY

155

Terence, written by professors and schoolmasters for representation by their pupils. On the Continent this form of drama flourished greatly during the later Middle Age; in England the evidences of its existence are few and far between, but it certainly did exist. The preponderating elements of the

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began to assert for itself an independent of the miracle play were comic, and it might be expected that the English drama would begin with comedy. Before, however, this step could be taken, it had to pass through a transition stagethe morality, corresponding to the Spanish and Portuguese auto, in which, although Man and his subtle Enemy play their part, and celestial and infernal personages may be called upon to enrich the action and redress its balance, the characters are for the most part abstractions, personified Vices and Virtues. Perhaps the earliest example of the morality is The Pride of Life, written probably about 1400, and printed in Professor Brandl's Quellen. It is a very rude and imperfect production. Mankind, also edited by Professor Brandl, was certainly written under Edward IV. We have already referred to a more elaborate example in The Castle of Perseverance, where Man is represented as hesitating between his good and his evil angel, and standing a siege in a stronghold garrisoned by all the Virtues. It was remarked that this development of the miracle play or mystery was favourable to the dramatic

First page of "Everyman" From the Britwell copy

The Morality

art, rendering the poet more independent of conventionalities, and compelling him to rely mainly upon his own invention. It served as a steppingstone for the Portuguese Gil Vicente, incomparably the greatest dramatic poet of the first half of the sixteenth century, to rise into the regions of purely secular comedy and farce, where, as well as in his moralities, more amusing than devout, he displayed the unflagging humour and the unflagging melody

Title-page of "Hickscorner," 1510

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of Aristophanes. No English writer of moralities was an eminent poet like Gil Vicente, nor did any venture upon the decisive step he took; yet the productions of this transition period evince a decided advance in art over the old miracle play.

The most important of the pure moralities, primitive drafts of the Spanish autos, which became popular in England towards the end of the fifteenth century, and form a transition from the miracle play to the interludes of Heywood, without, however, any approximation to the secular drama or any but a strictly moral and religious purpose, are Everyman and Hickscorner, the former of which has become well known from its recent revival and republication. The circumstance argues some literary merit, and, in fact, although nothing can be

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balder or less quotable than the diction of Everyman, it is a remarkable instance of dramatic effect obtained by simple adherence to an interesting action. The subject of this piece," says Bishop Percy, "is the summoning of man out of the world by death; and its moral that nothing will then avail him but a well-spent life and the comforts of religion." After giving a brief analysis, Percy observes with justice: "It is remarkable that in this old simple drama the fable is conducted upon the strictest model of the Greek tragedy. The action is simply one, the time of action is that of the performance, the scene is never changed, nor the stage ever empty. Except in the circumstance of Everyman's expiring on the stage, the Samson

THE MORALITY AS A PHASE OF THE DRAMA 157

Agonistes of Milton is hardly formed on a severer plan." Hickscorner has greater variety and more of a comic cast. The personage from whom it takes its name is a ruffling blade who plays dire tricks with Imagination and Free Will, who are eventually set right by Perseverance and Contemplation. There is local colouring as well as humour in this description of a thief's profitable evening :

Sirs, he walked through Holborn,

Three hours after the sun was down,

And walked up towards Saint Giles in the Fields,

He hoved still, and there beheld;

But there he could not speed of his prey,

And straight to Ludgate he took the way;

Ye wot well, that 'pothecaries walk very late,

He came to a door and privily spake

To a prentice for a penny-worth of euphorbium,
And also for a halfpenny-worth of alum plumb;
This good servant served him shortly,

And said, is there aught else that you would buy?
Then he asked for a mouthful of quick brimstone,'
And down into the cellar when the servant was gone,
Aside as he cast his eye,

A great bag of money did he spy;

Therein was a hundred pound :

He turned him to his feet, and yede his way round.

He was lodged in Newgate at the Swan,

And every man took him for a gentleman.

These pieces belong to the early part of the sixteenth century, as does the very curious play of The Four Elements, in which the discovery of America (called by this name) is said to have been made within the last twenty years. It might almost be considered a scientific drama, and is really valuable as an index to the popular physical science of the day, but ranks among moralities nevertheless. The only extant copy is mutilated, and breaks off just as Nature is admonishing Humanity :

Though it be for thee full necessary

For thy comfort sometime to satisfy
Thy carnal appetite :

Yet it is not convenient for thee

To put therein thy felicity,

And all thy whole delight.

The World and the Child is of the same date and character; but Lusty Juventus, New Custom, God's Promises, and The Trial of Treasure are of considerably later date, being all composed in support of the Reformation, probably in the reign of Edward VI. Lusty Juventus begins with a pretty song:

In an arbour green asleep where I lay,

The birds sang sweet in the midst of the day;

I dreaméd fast of mirth and play :

In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.

Methought I walked still to and fro,

And from her company I could not go;

1 Gunpowder. The peculiar system of measure is not to be taken too literally.

But when I waked, it was not so:

In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.

Therefore my heart is surely pight

Of her alone to have a sight,

Which is my joy and heart's delight:

In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.

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Two writers previously mentioned among poets, John Skelton and Sir David Lindsay, wrote moralities, or pieces hardly distinguishable from moralities. About Skelton's Magnificence there can, indeed, be no hesitation, the conception and machinery are entirely that of the moral drama. Magnificence, deserted, like Everyman, by his false friends, is, like Everyman, preserved by following the admonitions of a new set of counsellors, though not till he has made acquaintance with Mischief and Despair. Another morality attributed to Skelton, The Necromancer, has only been seen by Warton, if Warton himself ever saw it, which some doubt. According to him, it was an attack on abuses in the Church, the redressing of which seems to have been confided to the Devil.' Lindsay's Satyre of the Three Estaits (1540) must also be reckoned among moralities, most of the characters being impersonations

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of abstract qualities. It takes, however, a much wider range than any of the pieces we have been considering, dealing with all the most crying abuses in Church and State, and occupying, it is affirmed, nine hours in the representa

1 It might have been mentioned previously that Skelton's ballad on Flodden Field is the earliest ballad known to have been printed separately.

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