CHAPTER V. THE PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE. I. FOUR Tudors had disappeared; Queen Elizabeth had been many years on the throne, and no signs could yet be discerned of the extraordinary development that dramatic art was to attain in England. During the main part of the sixteenth century, that country still had, so to speak, anybody's dramatic literature. The differences were unimportant; they have been noticed only because they became later so conspicuous. Until the last the last quarter of the century, nothing appeared in the island which could not be seen elsewhere too, and no particular merit was observable. Mysteries preserved their popularity; in spite of all the efforts to suppress them, they were performed up to the end of the Tudor period. The Creation, Epiphany, and Passion, the manger at Bethlehem, and the cross on Golgotha continued to edify the multitude; the rant of tetrarchs, sultans, and pagan emperors, the tricks and black deeds of devils, continued to amuse or terrify. Sir Thomas More speaks, with personal experience as it seems, of the "bragging boasts and frantic rages" of a "Soudan in a stage play"; in the early years of the seventeenth century, Shakespeare still makes fun of Herod, and speaks as one addressing an audience obviously familiar with the manners of the tyrant; Carew describes the Spanish language as a noisy speech, "like the Devill in a play." Religious subjects remained so popular that, after London had her theatres and her regular companies of players, professional dramatists of the time of Elizabeth continued to compose, in view of pleasing the many, quantities of "Jeffte," "Samson," "Abrame and Lotte," "Heaster and Asheweros," which brought in as much money as the plays of Marlowe himself: and the Puritans were denouncing this profane use of the Scriptures. In the inventory of the Lord Admiral's troupe figured, in 1598, this significant item: "One Hell mought" (mouth). The same tastes prevailed, of course, in the provinces. A biblical drama was played at Beverley in 1564, and among the properties figured the usual hell mouth," with a nether chap" (jaw), the "city of Jerusalem with towers and pynacles," and the King's Palace at Nineveh.3 Like the countries of the Continent, England had her moralities, wise, pious, and well-meaning plays, with a melancholy note of frequent recurrence, 4 a number of them being nothing but the debates and "disputoisons" "Epistle concerning the excellencies of the English tongue,” by Richard Carew (above, II. 323), published with Camden's "Remaines," in 1614. All mentioned in "Henslowe's Diary," years 1594 to 1602 (below, p. 62). Cf. Stubbes, "Anatomy of Abuses," ed. Furnivall, p. 140. 3 A. F. Leach, "Some English Plays and Players, 1220-1548," in "An English Miscellany presented to Dr. Furnivall," 1901, p. 228. Role of Time in the "Triall of Treasure," printed 1567, of Death in "Pride of Life," end of fourteenth or beginning of fifteenth century, in "Everyman," printed ab. 1529, ed. Goedeke, Hanover, 1865, or Sidgwick, London, 1902. On English moralities, and, generally speaking, on the early English drama, see, eg., Mézières, "Prédécesseurs et contemporains de Shakespeare," 1881; A. W. Ward, “A History of English Dramatic Literature," London, 1899, 3 vols. 8vo (a considerable work, with a tendency at times to admire perhaps too generously: a not unpleasant defect, if indeed it be one); Symonds, "Shakspere's Predecessors," 1900; E. K. Chambers, "Medieval Stage," Oxf. 1903, 2 vols. "Elizabethan Stage," 1923, 4 vols. (a of former days turned into dramas: Witty and Witless, Wealth and Health, Marriage and Celibacy, etc. There, as in the French examples of the same art, Virtues recommended virtue, Nature explained the mysteries of nature, and Satan advised the audience not to follow his advice. As late at least as the last years of the sixteenth century, abstract personages continued to be introduced into historical or real-life dramas, and even regular moralities were still composed for a public whom nothing wearied, whom every subject interested, and who enjoyed divining the purport of transparent allegories. On the same day theatre-goers might be seen reading the play-bills and hesitating whether they would go and listen to Newfangledness and Folly, in a morality by Robert Wilson,2 or to King Richard III. and Lady Anne in a drama by William Shakespeare. very full and important account of the subjects); F. E. Schelling, "Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642," Boston, 1908, 2 vols.; "Cambridge Hist. of English Literature," vol. V. Cf. above, vol. I. p. 439. Principal series of reprints: Dodsley's "Old Plays," ed. Hazlitt, 1874, ff. 15 vols.; J. S. Farmer, "Early English Dramatists," London, 1905, ff. (modernised, needs revising), “ Students” and “Tudor” “Facsimile Texts," by the same; the handsome and careful reprints of the Malone Society, London, 1907, ff.; Al. Brandl, "Quellen des weltlichen Dramas," Strasb., 1898 (three moralities, three interludes, two dramas on the Reformation, etc.); W. Bang, "Materialen zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas," Louvain and London; Manly, "Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama," Boston, 1897; Bullen, "Old Engl. Plays," 1882, 4 vols.; C. M. Gayley, "Representative English Comedies," N.Y., 1903. Cf. Greg, "A List of English Plays written before 1643." Bibliographical Soc., 1900. 1 De Silva writes to Philip II. that on March 12, 1565, was given at court "a comedy in English, of which I understood just as much as the Queen told me. The plot was founded on the question of marriage discussed between Juno and Diana, Juno advocating marriage and Diana chastity. Jupiter gave a verdict in favour of matrimony. The Queen turned to me and said: This is all against me.'" "State Papers [at] Simancas," year 1565, p. 404. As late as 1615 a play was performed at Cambridge, "Worke for cutlers, or a merry dialogue betweene Sword, Rapier, and Dagger," which was nothing but a "disputoison" (ed. Sieveking and Ward, Cambridge, 1905). In his "Coblers Prophesie," 1594. "The three Ladies of London," by the same (or, as some think, by a namesake), "as it hath been publiquely |