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diff --git a/3142-h/3142-h.htm b/3142-h/3142-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e910de5 --- /dev/null +++ b/3142-h/3142-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2680 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Plays and Puritans, by Charles Kingsley</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Plays and Puritans, by Charles Kingsley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Plays and Puritans + + +Author: Charles Kingsley + + + +Release Date: December 26, 2014 [eBook #3142] +[This file was first posted on January 2, 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAYS AND PURITANS*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from “Plays and Puritans and Other +Historical Essays”, 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>PLAYS AND PURITANS <a name="citation3"></a><a +href="#footnote3" class="citation">[3]</a></h1> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> British Isles have been ringing +for the last few years with the word ‘Art’ in its +German sense; with ‘High Art,’ ‘Symbolic +Art,’ ‘Ecclesiastical Art,’ ‘Dramatic +Art,’ ‘Tragic Art,’ and so forth; and every +well-educated person is expected, nowadays, to know something +about Art. Yet in spite of all translations of German +‘Æsthetic’ treatises, and +‘Kunstnovellen,’ the mass of the British people cares +very little about the matter, and sits contented under the +imputation of ‘bad taste.’ Our stage, long +since dead, does not revive; our poetry is dying; our music, like +our architecture, only reproduces the past; our painting is only +first-rate when it handles landscapes and animals, and seems +likely so to remain; but, meanwhile, nobody cares. Some of +the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question, in general, +a ‘sham and a snare,’ and whisper to each other +confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a +‘bore,’ and that Sir Christopher Wren was a very good +fellow after all; while the middle classes look on the Art +movement half amused, as with a pretty toy, half sulkily +suspicious of Popery and Paganism, and think, apparently, that +Art is very well when it means nothing, and is merely used to +beautify drawing-rooms and shawl patterns; not to mention that, +if there were no painters, Mr. Smith could not hand down to +posterity likenesses of himself, Mrs. Smith, and family. +But when ‘Art’ dares to be in earnest, and to mean +something, much more to connect itself with religion, +Smith’s tone alters. He will teach ‘Art’ +to keep in what he considers its place, and if it refuses, take +the law of it, and put it into the Ecclesiastical Court. So +he says, and what is more, he means what he says; and as all the +world, from Hindostan to Canada, knows by most practical proof, +what he means, he sooner or later does, perhaps not always in the +wisest way, but still he does it.</p> +<p>Thus, in fact, the temper of the British nation toward +‘Art’ is simply that of the old Puritans, softened, +no doubt, and widened, but only enough so as to permit Art, not +to encourage it.</p> +<p>Some men’s thoughts on this curious fact would probably +take the form of some æsthetic <i>à priori</i> +disquisition, beginning with ‘the tendency of the infinite +to reveal itself in the finite,’ and ending—who can +tell where? But as we cannot honestly arrogate to ourselves +any skill in the <i>scientia scientiarum</i>, or say, ‘The +Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works +of old. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He +set a compass upon the face of the deep;’ we shall leave +æsthetic science to those who think that they comprehend +it; we shall, as simple disciples of Bacon, deal with facts and +with history as ‘the will of God revealed in +facts.’ We will leave those who choose to settle what +ought to be, and ourselves look patiently at that which actually +was once, and which may be again; that so out of the conduct of +our old Puritan forefathers (right or wrong), and their long war +against ‘Art,’ we may learn a wholesome lesson; as we +doubtless shall, if we believe firmly that our history is neither +more nor less than what the old Hebrew prophets called +‘God’s gracious dealings with his people,’ and +not say in our hearts, like some sentimental girl who sings +Jacobite ballads (written forty years ago by men who cared no +more for the Stuarts than for the Ptolemies, and were ready to +kiss the dust off George the Fourth’s feet at his visit to +Edinburgh)—‘Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa +puellis.’</p> +<p>The historian of a time of change has always a difficult and +invidious task. For Revolutions, in the great majority of +cases, arise not merely from the crimes of a few great men, but +from a general viciousness and decay of the whole, or the +majority, of the nation; and that viciousness is certain to be +made up, in great part, of a loosening of domestic ties, of +breaches of the Seventh Commandment, and of sins connected with +them, which a writer is now hardly permitted to mention. An +‘evil and adulterous generation’ has been in all ages +and countries the one marked out for intestine and internecine +strife. That description is always applicable to a +revolutionary generation; whether or not it also comes under the +class of a superstitious one, ‘seeking after a sign from +heaven,’ only half believing its own creed, and, therefore, +on tiptoe for miraculous confirmations of it, at the same time +that it fiercely persecutes any one who, by attempting innovation +or reform, seems about to snatch from weak faith the last plank +which keeps it from sinking into the abyss. In describing +such an age, the historian lies under this paradoxical +disadvantage, that his case is actually too strong for him to +state it. If he tells the whole truth, the easy-going and +respectable multitude, in easy-going and respectable days like +these, will either shut their ears prudishly to his painful +facts, or reject them as incredible, unaccustomed as they are to +find similar horrors and abominations among people of their own +rank, of whom they are naturally inclined to judge by their own +standard of civilisation. Thus if any one, in justification +of the Reformation and the British hatred of Popery during the +sixteenth century, should dare to detail the undoubted facts of +the Inquisition, and to comment on them dramatically enough to +make his readers feel about them what men who witnessed them +felt, he would be accused of a ‘morbid love of +horrors.’ If any one, in order to show how the French +Revolution of 1793 was really God’s judgment on the +profligacy of the <i>ancien régime</i>, were to paint that +profligacy as the men of the <i>ancien régime</i> +unblushingly painted it themselves, respectability would have a +right to demand, ‘How dare you, sir, drag such disgusting +facts from their merited oblivion?’ Those, again, who +are really acquainted with the history of Henry the +Eighth’s marriages, are well aware of facts which prove him +to have been, not a man of violent and lawless passions, but of a +cold temperament and a scrupulous conscience; but which cannot be +stated in print, save in the most delicate and passing hints, to +be taken only by those who at once understand such matters, and +really wish to know the truth; while young ladies in general will +still look on Henry as a monster in human form, because no one +dares, or indeed ought, to undeceive them by anything beyond bare +assertion without proof.</p> +<p>‘But what does it matter,’ some one may say, +‘what young ladies think about history?’ This +it matters; that these young ladies will some day be mothers, and +as such will teach their children their own notions of modern +history; and that, as long as men confine themselves to the +teaching of Roman and Greek history, and leave the history of +their own country to be handled exclusively by their unmarried +sisters, so long will slanders, superstitions, and false +political principles be perpetuated in the minds of our boys and +girls.</p> +<p>But a still worse evil arises from the fact that the +historian’s case is often too strong to be stated. +There is always a reactionary party, or one at least which +lingers sentimentally over the dream of past golden ages, such as +that of which Cowley says, with a sort of naïve blasphemy, +at which one knows not whether to smile or sigh—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘When God, the cause to me and men +unknown,<br /> +Forsook the royal houses, and his own.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These have full liberty to say all they can in praise of the +defeated system; but the historian has no such liberty to state +the case against it. If he even asserts that he has +counter-facts, but dare not state them, he is at once met with a +<i>præjudicium</i>. The mere fact of his having +ascertained the truth is imputed as a blame to him, in a sort of +prudish cant. ‘What a very improper person he must be +to like to dabble in such improper books that they must not even +be quoted.’ If in self-defence he desperately gives +his facts, he only increases the feeling against him, whilst the +reactionists, hiding their blushing faces, find in their modesty +an excuse for avoiding the truth; if, on the other hand, he +content himself with bare assertion, and with indicating the +sources from whence his conclusions are drawn, what care the +reactionists? They know well that the public will not take +the trouble to consult manuscripts, State papers, pamphlets, rare +biographies, but will content themselves with ready-made history; +and they therefore go on unblushing to republish their old +romance, leaving poor truth, after she has been painfully haled +up to the well’s mouth, to tumble miserably to the bottom +of it again.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>In the face of this danger we will go on to say as much as we +dare of the great cause, Puritans <i>v.</i> Players, before our +readers, trusting to find some of them at least sufficiently +unacquainted with the common notions on the point to form a fair +decision.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>What those notions are is well known. Very many of her +Majesty’s subjects are of opinion that the first half of +the seventeenth century (if the Puritans had not interfered and +spoilt all) was the most beautiful period of the English +nation’s life; that in it the chivalry and ardent piety of +the Middle Age were happily combined with modern art and +civilisation; that the Puritan hatred of the Court, of +stage-plays, of the fashions of the time, was only ‘a +scrupulous and fantastical niceness’; barbaric and +tasteless, if sincere; if insincere, the basest hypocrisy; that +the stage-plays, though coarse, were no worse than Shakspeare, +whom everybody reads; and that if the Stuarts patronised the +stage they also raised it, and exercised a purifying +censorship. And many more who do not go all these lengths +with the reactionists, and cannot make up their mind to look to +the Stuart reigns either for model churchmen or model courtiers, +are still inclined to sneer at the Puritan +‘preciseness,’ and to say lazily, that though, of +course, something may have been wrong, yet there was no need to +make such a fuss about the matter; and that at all events the +Puritans were men of very bad taste.</p> +<p>Mr. Gifford, in his introduction to Massinger’s plays +(1813), was probably the spokesman of his own generation, +certainly of a great part of this generation also, when he +informs us, that ‘with Massinger terminated the triumph of +dramatic poetry; indeed, the stage itself survived him but a +short time. The nation was convulsed to its centre by +contending factions, and a set of austere and gloomy fanatics, +enemies to every elegant amusement and every social relaxation, +rose upon the ruins of the State. Exasperated by the +ridicule with which they had long been covered by the stage, they +persecuted the actors with unrelenting severity, and consigned +them, together with the writers, to hopeless obscurity and +wretchedness. Taylor died in the extreme of poverty, +Shirley opened a little school at Brentford, and Downe, the boast +of the stage, kept an ale-house at Brentford. Others, and +those the far greater number, joined the royal standard, and +exerted themselves with more gallantry than good fortune in the +service of their old and indulgent master.’</p> +<p>‘We have not yet, perhaps, fully estimated, and +certainly not yet fully recovered, what was lost in that +unfortunate struggle. The arts were rapidly advancing to +perfection under the fostering wing of a monarch who united in +himself taste to feel, spirit to undertake, and munificence to +reward. Architecture, painting, and poetry were by turns +the objects of his paternal care. Shakspeare was his +“closet companion,” Jonson his poet, and in +conjunction with Inigo Jones, his favoured architect, produced +those magnificent entertainments,’ etc.</p> +<p>* * *</p> +<p>He then goes on to account for the supposed sudden fall of +dramatic art at the Restoration, by the somewhat far-fetched +theory that—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Such was the horror created in the general +mind by the perverse and unsocial government from which they had +so fortunately escaped, that the people appear to have anxiously +avoided all retrospect, and, with Prynne and Vicars, to have lost +sight of Shakspeare and “his fellows.” Instead, +therefore, of taking up dramatic poetry where it abruptly ceased +in the labours of Massinger, they elicited, as it were, a manner +of their own, or fetched it from the heavy monotony of their +continental neighbours.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So is history written, and, what is more, believed. The +amount of misrepresentation in this passage (which would probably +pass current with most readers in the present day) is quite +ludicrous. In the first place, it will hardly be believed +that these words occur in an essay which, after extolling +Massinger as one of the greatest poets of his age, second, +indeed, only to Shakspeare, also informs us (and, it seems, quite +truly) that, so far from having been really appreciated or +patronised, he maintained a constant struggle with +adversity,—‘that even the bounty of his particular +friends, on which he chiefly relied, left him in a state of +absolute dependence,’—that while ‘other writers +for the stage had their periods of good fortune, Massinger seems +to have enjoyed no gleam of sunshine; his life was all one misty +day, and “shadows, clouds, and darkness rested on +it.”’</p> +<p>So much for Charles’s patronage of a really great +poet. What sort of men he did patronise, practically and in +earnest, we shall see hereafter, when we come to speak of Mr. +Shirley.</p> +<p>But Mr. Gifford must needs give an instance to prove that +Charles was ‘not inattentive to the success of +Massinger,’ and a curious one it is; of the same class, +unfortunately, as that with the man in the old story, who +recorded with pride that the King had spoken to him, +and—had told him to get out of the way.</p> +<p>Massinger in his ‘King and the Subject’ had +introduced Don Pedro of Spain thus speaking—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Monies! We’ll raise supplies +which way we please,<br /> +And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which<br /> +We’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The +Cæsars<br /> +In Rome were wise, acknowledging no law<br /> +But what their swords did ratify, the wives<br /> +And daughters of the senators bowing to<br /> +Their will, as deities,’ etc.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Against which passage Charles, reading over the play before he +allowed of it, had written, ‘This is too insolent, and not +to be printed.’ Too insolent it certainly was, +considering the state of public matters in the year 1638. +It would be interesting enough to analyse the reasons which made +Charles dislike in the mouth of Pedro sentiments so very like his +own; but we must proceed, only pointing out the way in which men, +determined to repeat the traditional clap-trap about the Stuarts, +are actually blind to the meaning of the very facts which they +themselves quote.</p> +<p>Where, then, do the facts of history contradict Mr. +Gifford?</p> +<p>We believe that, so far from the triumph of dramatic poetry +terminating with Massinger, dramatic art had been steadily +growing worse from the first years of James; that instead of the +arts advancing to perfection under Charles the First, they +steadily deteriorated in quality, though the supply became more +abundant; that so far from there having been a sudden change for +the worse in the drama after the Restoration, the taste of the +courts of Charles the First and of Charles the Second are +indistinguishable; that the court poets, and probably the actors +also, of the early part of Charles the Second’s reign had +many of them belonged to the court of Charles the First, as did +Davenant, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, Fanshaw, and Shirley +himself; that the common notion of a ‘new manner’ +having been introduced from France after the Restoration, or +indeed having come in at all, is not founded on fact, the only +change being that the plays of Charles the Second’s time +were somewhat more stupid, and that while five of the seven +deadly sins had always had free licence on the stage, blasphemy +and profane swearing were now enfranchised to fill up the +seven. As for the assertion that the new manner (supposing +it to have existed) was imported from France, there is far more +reason to believe that the French copied us than we them, and +that if they did not learn from Charles the First’s poets +the superstition of ‘the three unities,’ they at +least learnt to make ancient kings and heroes talk and act like +seventeenth century courtiers, and to exchange their old clumsy +masques and translations of Italian and Spanish farces for a +comedy depicting native scoundrelism. Probably enough, +indeed, the great and sudden development of the French stage, +which took place in the middle of the seventeenth century under +Corneille and Molière, was excited by the English cavalier +playwrights who took refuge in France.</p> +<p>No doubt, as Mr. Gifford says, the Puritans were exasperated +against the stage-players by the insults heaped on them; but the +cause of quarrel lay far deeper than any such personal +soreness. The Puritans had attacked the players before the +players meddled with them, and that on principle; with what +justification must be considered hereafter. But the fact is +(and this seems to have been, like many other facts, conveniently +forgotten), that the Puritans were by no means alone in their +protest against the stage, and that the war was not begun +exclusively by them. As early as the latter half of the +sixteenth century, not merely Northbrooke, Gosson, Stubs, and +Reynolds had lifted up their voices against them, but Archbishop +Parker, Bishop Babington, Bishop Hall, and the author of the +<i>Mirror for Magistrates</i>. The University of Oxford, in +1584, had passed a statute forbidding common plays and players in +the university, on the very same moral grounds on which the +Puritans objected to them. The city of London, in 1580, had +obtained from the Queen the suppression of plays on Sundays; and +not long after, ‘considering that play-houses and +dicing-houses were traps for young gentlemen and others,’ +obtained leave from the Queen and Privy Council to thrust the +players out of the city, and to pull down the play-houses, five +in number; and, paradoxical as it may seem, there is little doubt +that, by the letter of the law, ‘stage plays and +enterludes’ were, even to the end of Charles the +First’s reign, ‘unlawful pastime,’ being +forbidden by 14 Eliz., 39 Eliz., 1 Jacobi, 3 Jacobi, and 1 +Caroli, and the players subject to severe punishment as +‘rogues and vagabonds.’ The Act of 1 Jacobi +seems even to have gone so far as to repeal the clauses which, in +Elizabeth’s reign, had allowed companies of players the +protection of a ‘baron or honourable person of greater +degree,’ who might ‘authorise them to play under his +hand and seal of arms.’ So that the Puritans were +only demanding of the sovereigns that they should enforce the +very laws which they themselves had made, and which they and +their nobles were setting at defiance. Whether the plays +ought to have been put down, and whether the laws were necessary, +is a different question; but certainly the court and the +aristocracy stood in the questionable, though too common, +position of men who made laws which prohibited to the poor +amusements in which they themselves indulged without +restraint.</p> +<p>But were these plays objectionable? As far as the +comedies are concerned, that will depend on the answer to the +question, Are plays objectionable, the staple subject of which is +adultery? Now, we cannot but agree with the Puritans, that +adultery is not a subject for comedy at all. It may be for +tragedy; but for comedy never. It is a sin; not merely +theologically, but socially, one of the very worst sins, the +parent of seven other sins,—of falsehood, suspicion, hate, +murder, and a whole bevy of devils. The prevalence of +adultery in any country has always been a sign and a cause of +social insincerity, division, and revolution; where a people has +learnt to connive and laugh at it, and to treat it as a light +thing, that people has been always careless, base, selfish, +cowardly,—ripe for slavery. And we must say that +either the courtiers and Londoners of James and Charles the First +were in that state, or that the poets were doing their best to +make them so.</p> +<p>We shall not shock our readers by any details on this point; +we shall only say that there is hardly a comedy of the +seventeenth century, with the exception of Shakspeare’s, in +which adultery is not introduced as a subject of laughter, and +often made the staple of the whole plot. The seducer is, if +not openly applauded, at least let to pass as a ‘handsome +gentleman’; the injured husband is, as in that Italian +literature of which we shall speak shortly, the object of every +kind of scorn and ridicule. In this latter habit (common to +most European nations) there is a sort of justice. A man +can generally retain his wife’s affections if he will +behave himself like a man; and ‘injured husbands’ +have for the most part no one to blame but themselves. But +the matter is not a subject for comedy; not even in that case +which has been always too common in France, Italy, and the Romish +countries, and which seems to have been painfully common in +England in the seventeenth century, when, by a <i>mariage de +convenance</i>, a young girl is married up to a rich idiot or a +decrepit old man. Such things are not comedies, but +tragedies; subjects for pity and for silence, not for brutal +ribaldry. Therefore the men who look on them in the light +which the Stuart dramatists looked are not good men, and do no +good service to the country; especially when they erect adultery +into a science, and seem to take a perverse pleasure in teaching +their audience every possible method, accident, cause, and +consequence of it; always, too, when they have an opportunity, +pointing ‘Eastward Ho!’ <i>i.e.</i> to the city of +London, as the quarter where court gallants can find boundless +indulgence for their passions amid the fair wives of dull and +cowardly citizens. If the citizens drove the players out of +London, the playwrights took good care to have their +revenge. The citizen is their standard butt. These +shallow parasites, and their shallower sovereigns, seem to have +taken a perverse and, as it happened, a fatal pleasure in +insulting them. Sad it is to see in Shirley’s +‘Gamester,’ Charles the First’s favourite play, +a passage like that in Act i. Scene 1, where old Barnacle +proclaims, unblushing, his own shame and that of his +fellow-merchants. Surely, if Charles ever could have +repented of any act of his own, he must have repented, in many a +humiliating after-passage with that same city of London, of +having given those base words his royal warrant and +approbation.</p> +<p>The tragedies of the seventeenth century are, on the whole, as +questionable as the comedies. That there are noble plays +among them here and there, no one denies—any more than that +there are exquisitely amusing plays among the comedies; but as +the staple interest of the comedies is dirt, so the staple +interest of the tragedies is crime. Revenge, hatred, +villany, incest, and murder upon murder are their constant +themes, and (with the exception of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson in his +earlier plays, and perhaps Massinger) they handle these horrors +with little or no moral purpose, save that of exciting and +amusing the audience, and of displaying their own power of +delineation in a way which makes one but too ready to believe the +accusations of the Puritans (supported as they are by many ugly +anecdotes) that the play-writers and actors were mostly men of +fierce and reckless lives, who had but too practical an +acquaintance with the dark passions which they sketch. This +is notoriously the case with most of the French novelists of the +modern ‘Literature of Horror,’ and the two +literatures are morally identical. We do not know of a +complaint which can be justly brought against the School of +Balzac and Dumas which will not equally apply to the average +tragedy of the whole period preceding the civil wars.</p> +<p>This public appetite for horrors, for which they catered so +greedily, tempted them toward another mistake, which brought upon +them (and not undeservedly) heavy odium.</p> +<p>One of the worst counts against Dramatic Art (as well as +against Pictorial) was the simple fact that it came from +Italy. We must fairly put ourselves into the position of an +honest Englishman of the seventeenth century before we can +appreciate the huge <i>præjudicium</i> which must needs +have arisen in his mind against anything which could claim a +Transalpine parentage. Italy was then not merely the +stronghold of Popery. That in itself would have been a fair +reason for others beside Puritans saying, ‘If the root be +corrupt, the fruit will be also: any expression of Italian +thought and feeling must be probably unwholesome while her vitals +are being eaten out by an abominable falsehood, only half +believed by the masses, and not believed at all by the higher +classes, even those of the priesthood; but only kept up for their +private aggrandisement.’ But there was more than +hypothesis in favour of the men who might say this; there was +universal, notorious, shocking fact. It was a fact that +Italy was the centre where sins were invented worthy of the doom +of the Cities of the Plain, and from whence they spread to all +nations who had connection with her. We dare give no proof +of this assertion. The Italian morals and the Italian +lighter literature of the sixteenth and of the beginning of the +seventeenth century were such, that one is almost ashamed to +confess that one has looked into them, although the painful task +is absolutely necessary for one who wishes to understand either +the European society of the time or the Puritan hatred of the +drama. <i>Non ragionam di lor: ma guarda è +passa</i>.</p> +<p>It is equally a fact that these vices were imported into +England by the young men who, under pretence of learning the +Italian polish, travelled to Italy. From the days of +Gabriel Harvey and Lord Oxford, about the middle of +Elizabeth’s reign, this foul tide had begun to set toward +England, gaining an additional coarseness and frivolity in +passing through the French Court (then an utter Gehenna) in its +course hitherward; till, to judge by Marston’s +‘Satires,’ certain members of the higher classes had, +by the beginning of James’s reign, learnt nearly all which +the Italians had to teach them. Marston writes in a rage, +it is true; foaming, stamping, and vapouring too much to escape +the suspicion of exaggeration; yet he dared not have published +the things which he does, had he not fair ground for some at +least of his assertions. And Marston, be it remembered, was +no Puritan, but a playwright, and Ben Jonson’s friend.</p> +<p>Bishop Hall, in his ‘Satires,’ describes things +bad enough, though not so bad as Marston does; but what is even +more to the purpose, he wrote, and dedicated to James, a long +dissuasive against the fashion of running abroad. Whatever +may be thought of the arguments of ‘Quo vadis?—a +Censure of Travel,’ its main drift is clear enough. +Young gentlemen, by going to Italy, learnt to be fops and +profligates, and probably Papists into the bargain. These +assertions there is no denying. Since the days of Lord +Oxford, most of the ridiculous and expensive fashions in dress +had come from Italy, as well as the newest modes of sin; and the +playwrights themselves make no secret of the fact. There is +no need to quote instances; they are innumerable; and the most +serious are not fit to be quoted, scarcely the titles of the +plays in which they occur; but they justify almost every line of +Bishop Hall’s questions (of which some of the strongest +expressions have necessarily been omitted):—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘What mischief have we among us which we +have not borrowed?</p> +<p>‘To begin at our skin: who knows not whence we had the +variety of our vain disguises? As if we had not wit enough +to be foolish unless we were taught it. These dresses, +being constant in their mutability, show us our masters. +What is it that we have not learned of our neighbours, save only +to be proud good-cheap? whom would it not vex to see how that the +other sex hath learned to make anticks and monsters of +themselves? Whence come their (absurd fashions); but the +one from some ill-shaped dame of France, the other from the +worse-minded courtesans of Italy? Whence else learned they +to daub these mud-walls with apothecaries’ mortar; and +those high washes, which are so cunningly licked on that the wet +napkin of Phryne should he deceived? Whence the frizzled +and powdered bushes of their borrowed hair? As if they were +ashamed of the head of God’s making, and proud of the +tire-woman’s. Where learned we that devilish art and +practice of duel, wherein men seek honour in blood, and are +taught the ambition of being glorious butchers of men? +Where had we that luxurious delicacy in our feasts, in which the +nose is no less pleased than the palate, and the eye no less than +either? wherein the piles of dishes make barricadoes against the +appetite, and with a pleasing encumbrance trouble a hungry +guest. Where those forms of ceremonious quaffing, in which +men have learned to make gods of others and beasts of themselves, +and lose their reason while they pretend to do reason? +Where the lawlessness (miscalled freedom) of a wild tongue, that +runs, with reins on the neck, through the bedchambers of princes, +their closets, their council tables, and spares not the very +cabinet of their breasts, much less can be barred out of the most +retired secrecy of inferior greatness? Where the change of +noble attendance and hospitality into four wheels and some few +butterflies? Where the art of dishonesty in practical +Machiavelism, in false equivocations? Where the slight +account of that filthiness which is but condemned as venial, and +tolerated as not unnecessary? Where the skill of civil and +honourable hypocrisy in those formal compliments which do neither +expect belief from others nor carry any from ourselves? +Where’ (and here Bishop Hall begins to speak concerning +things on which we must be silent, as of matters notorious and +undeniable.) ‘Where that close Atheism, which +secretly laughs God in the face, and thinks it weakness to +believe, wisdom to profess any religion? Where the bloody +and tragical science of king-killing, the new divinity of +disobedience and rebellion? with too many other evils, wherewith +foreign conversation hath endangered the infection of our +peace?’—Bishop Hall’s ‘Quo Vadis, or a +Censure of Travel,’ vol xii. sect. 22.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Add to these a third plain fact, that Italy was the +mother-country of the drama, where it had thriven with wonderful +fertility ever since the beginning of the sixteenth +century. However much truth there may be in the common +assertion that the old ‘miracle plays’ and +‘mysteries’ were the parents of the English drama (as +they certainly were of the Spanish and the Italian), we have yet +to learn how much our stage owed, from its first rise under +Elizabeth, to direct importations from Italy. This is +merely thrown out as a suggestion; to establish the fact would +require a wide acquaintance with the early Italian drama; +meanwhile, let two patent facts have their due weight. The +names of the characters in most of our early regular comedies are +Italian; so are the scenes; and so, one hopes, are the manners, +at least they profess to be so. Next, the plots of many of +the dramas are notoriously taken from the Italian novelists; and +if Shakspeare (who had a truly divine instinct for finding honey +where others found poison) went to Cinthio for +‘Othello’ and ‘Measure for Measure,’ to +Bandello for ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and to Boccaccio for +‘Cymbeline,’ there were plenty of other playwrights +who would go to the same sources for worse matter, or at least +catch from these profligate writers somewhat of their Italian +morality, which exalts adultery into a virtue, seduction into a +science, and revenge into a duty; which revels in the horrible as +freely as any French novelist of the romantic school; and whose +only value is its pitiless exposure of the profligacy of the +Romish priesthood: if an exposure can be valuable which makes a +mock equally of things truly and falsely sacred, and leaves on +the reader’s mind the fear that the writer saw nothing in +heaven or earth worthy of belief, respect, or self-sacrifice, +save personal enjoyment.</p> +<p>Now this is the morality of the Italian novelists; and to +judge from their vivid sketches (which, they do not scruple to +assert, were drawn from life, and for which they give names, +places, and all details which might amuse the noble gentlemen and +ladies to whom these stories are dedicated), this had been the +morality of Italy for some centuries past. This, also, is +the general morality of the English stage in the seventeenth +century. Can we wonder that thinking men should have seen a +connection between Italy and the stage? Certainly the +playwrights put themselves between the horns of an ugly +dilemma. Either the vices which they depicted were those of +general English society, and of themselves also (for they lived +in the very heart of town and court foppery); or else they were +the vices of a foreign country, with which the English were +comparatively unacquainted. In the first case, we can only +say that the Stuart age in England was one which deserved +purgation of the most terrible kind, and to get rid of which the +severest and most abnormal measures would have been not only +justifiable, but, to judge by the experience of all history, +necessary; for extraordinary diseases never have been, and never +will be, eradicated save by extraordinary medicines. In the +second case, the playwrights were wantonly defiling the minds of +the people, and, instead of ‘holding up a mirror to +vice,’ instructing frail virtue in vices which she had not +learned, and fully justifying old Prynne’s indignant +complaint—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The acting of foreign, obsolete, and long +since forgotten villanies on the stage, is so far from working a +detestation of them in the spectators’ minds (who, +perchance, were utterly ignorant of them, till they were +acquainted with them at the play-house, and so needed no +dehortation from them), that it often excites dangerous dunghill +spirits, who have nothing in them for to make them eminent, to +reduce them into practice, of purpose to perpetuate their +spurious ill-serving memories to posterity, leastwise in some +tragic interlude.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That Prynne spoke herein nought but sober sense, our own +police reports will sufficiently prove. It is notorious +that the representation in our own days of ‘Tom and +Jerry’ and of ‘Jack Sheppard’ did excite dozens +of young lads to imitate the heroes of those dramas; and such +must have been the effect of similar and worse representations in +the Stuart age. No rational man will need the authority of +Bishop Babington, Doctor Leighton, Archbishop Parker, Purchas, +Sparkes, Reynolds, White, or any one else, Churchman or Puritan, +prelate or ‘penitent reclaimed play-poet,’ like +Stephen Gosson, to convince him that, as they assert, +citizens’ wives (who are generally represented as the +proper subjects for seduction) ‘have, even on their +deathbeds, with tears confessed that they have received, at these +spectacles, such evil infections as have turned their minds from +chaste cogitations, and made them, of honest women, light +huswives; . . . have brought their husbands into contempt, their +children into question, . . . and their souls into the assault of +a dangerous state;’ or that ‘The devices of carrying +and re-carrying letters by laundresses, practising with pedlars +to transport their tokens by colourable means to sell their +merchandise, and other kinds of policies to beguile fathers of +their children, husbands of their wives, guardians of their +wards, and masters of their servants, were aptly taught in these +schools of abuse.’ <a name="citation27a"></a><a +href="#footnote27a" class="citation">[27a]</a></p> +<p>The matter is simple enough. We should not allow these +plays to be acted in our own day, because we know that they would +produce their effects. We should call him a madman who +allowed his daughters or his servants to see such +representations. <a name="citation27b"></a><a href="#footnote27b" +class="citation">[27b]</a> Why, in all fairness, were the +Puritans wrong in condemning that which we now have absolutely +forbidden?</p> +<p>We will go no further into the details of the licentiousness +of the old play-houses. Gosson and his colleague the +anonymous Penitent assert them, as does Prynne, to have been not +only schools but antechambers to houses of a worse kind, and that +the lessons learned in the pit were only not practised also in +the pit. What reason have we to doubt it, who know that +till Mr. Macready commenced a practical reformation of this +abuse, for which his name will be ever respected, our own +comparatively purified stage was just the same? Let any one +who remembers the saloons of Drury Lane and Covent Garden thirty +years ago judge for himself what the accessories of the Globe or +the Fortune must have been, in days when players were allowed to +talk inside as freely as the public behaved outside.</p> +<p>Not that the poets or the players had any conscious intention +of demoralising their hearers, any more than they had of +correcting them. We will lay on them the blame of no +special <i>malus animus</i>: but, at the same time, we must treat +their fine words about ‘holding a mirror up to vice,’ +and ‘showing the age its own deformity,’ as mere +cant, which the men themselves must have spoken tongue in +cheek. It was as much an insincere cant in those days as it +was when, two generations later, Jeremy Collier exposed its +falsehood in the mouth of Congreve. If the poets had really +intended to show vice its own deformity, they would have +represented it (as Shakspeare always does) as punished, and not +as triumphant. It is ridiculous to talk of moral purpose in +works in which there is no moral justice. The only +condition which can excuse the representation of evil is +omitted. The simple fact is that the poets wanted to draw a +house; that this could most easily be done by the coarsest and +most violent means; and that not being often able to find stories +exciting enough in the past records of sober English society, +they went to Italy and Spain for the violent passions and wild +crimes of southern temperaments, excited, and yet left lawless, +by a superstition believed in enough to darken and brutalise, but +not enough to control, its victims. Those were the +countries which just then furnished that strange mixture of +inward savagery with outward civilisation, which is the immoral +playwright’s fittest material; because, while the inward +savagery moves the passions of the audience, the outward +civilisation brings the character near enough to them to give +them a likeness of themselves in their worst moments, such as no +‘Mystery of Cain’ or ‘Tragedy of +Prometheus’ can give.</p> +<p>Does this seem too severe in the eyes of those who value the +drama for its lessons in human nature? On that special +point something must be said hereafter. Meanwhile, hear one +of the sixteenth century poets; one who cannot be suspected of +any leaning toward Puritanism; one who had as high notions of his +vocation as any man; and one who so far fulfilled those notions +as to become a dramatist inferior only to Shakspeare. Let +Ben Jonson himself speak, and in his preface to +‘Volpone’ tell us in his own noble prose what he +thought of the average morality of his contemporary +playwrights:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘For if men will impartially and not asquint +look toward the offices and functions of a poet, they will easily +conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man’s being +a good poet without first being a good man. He that is said +to be able to inform young men to all good discipline, inflame +grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and +supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to +their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and +arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, +a master in manners and can alone (or with a few) effect the +business of mankind; this, I take him, is no subject for pride +and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But +it will here be hastily answered that the writers of these days +are other things, that not only their manners but their natures +are inverted, and nothing remaining of them of the dignity of +poet but the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now, +especially in dramatick, or (as they term it) stage poetry, +nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemies, all licence of +offence toward God and man is practised. I dare not deny a +great part of this (and I am sorry I dare not), because in some +men’s abortive features (and would God they had never seen +the light!) it is over true; but that all are bound on his bold +adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and uttered, +a more malicious slander. For every particular I can (and +from a most clear conscience) affirm that I have ever trembled to +think toward the least profaneness, and have loathed the use of +such foul and unwashed . . . [his expression is too strong for +quotation] as is now made the food of the scene.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is a pity to curtail this splendid passage, both for its +lofty ideal of poetry, and for its corroboration of the Puritan +complaints against the stage; but a few lines on a still stronger +sentence occurs:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The increase of which lust in liberty, +together with the present trade of the stage, in all their +masculine interludes, what liberal soul doth not abhor? +Where nothing but filth of the mire is uttered, and that with +such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth +of sense, so bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with +(indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, and blasphemy to +turn the blood of a Christian to water.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So speaks Ben Jonson in 1605, not finding, it seems, +play-writing a peaceful trade, or play-poets and play-hearers +improving company. After him we should say no further +testimony on this unpleasant matter ought to be necessary. +He may have been morose, fanatical, exaggerative; but his bitter +words suggest at least this dilemma. Either they are true, +and the play-house atmosphere (as Prynne says it was) that of +Gehenna: or they are untrue, and the mere fruits of spite and +envy against more successful poets. And what does that +latter prove, but that the greatest poet of his age (after +Shakspeare has gone) was not as much esteemed as some poets whom +we know to have been more filthy and more horrible than he? +which, indeed, is the main complaint of Jonson himself. It +will be rejoined, of course, that he was an altogether envious +man; that he envied Shakspeare, girded at his York and Lancaster +plays, at ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and ‘The +Tempest,’ in the prologue to ‘Every Man in his +Humour’; and, indeed, Jonson’s writings, and those of +many other playwrights, leave little doubt that stage rivalry +called out the bitterest hatred and the basest vanity; and that, +perhaps, Shakspeare’s great soul was giving way to the +pettiest passions, when in ‘Hamlet’ he had his fling +at the ‘aiery of children, little eyases, that cry out on +the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for +’t.’ It may be that he was girding in return at +Jonson, when he complained that ‘their writer did them +wrong to make them complain against their own succession,’ +<i>i.e.</i> against themselves, when ‘grown to common +players.’ Be that as it may. Great Shakspeare +may have been unjust to only less great Jonson, as Jonson was to +Shakspeare: but Jonson certainly is not so in all his +charges. Some of the faults which he attributes to +Shakspeare are really faults.</p> +<p>At all events, we know that he was not unjust to the average +of his contemporaries, by the evidence of the men’s own +plays. We know that the decadence of the stage of which he +complains went on uninterruptedly after his time, and in the very +direction which he pointed out.</p> +<p>On this point there can be no doubt; for these hodmen of +poetry ‘made a wall in our father’s house, and the +bricks are alive to testify unto this day.’ So that +we cannot do better than give a few samples thereof, at least +samples decent enough for modern readers, and let us begin, not +with a hodman, but with Jonson himself.</p> +<p>Now, Ben Jonson is worthy of our love and respect, for he was +a very great genius, immaculate or not; ‘Rare Ben,’ +with all his faults. One can never look without affection +on the magnificent manhood of that rich free forehead, even +though one may sigh over the petulance and pride which brood upon +the lip and eyebrow,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of +scorn,<br /> +The love of love.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A Michael Angelo who could laugh, which that Italian one, one +fancies, never could. One ought to have, too, a sort of +delicacy about saying much against him; for he is dead, and can +make, for the time being at least, no rejoinder. There are +dead men whom one is not much ashamed to ‘upset’ +after their death, because one would not have been much afraid of +doing so when they were alive. But ‘Rare Ben’ +had terrible teeth, and used them too. A man would have +thought twice ere he snapt at him living, and therefore it seems +somewhat a cowardly trick to bark securely at his ghost. +Nevertheless it is no unfair question to ask—Do not his own +words justify the Puritan complaints? But if so, why does +he rail at the Puritans for making their complaints? His +answer would have been that they railed in ignorance, not merely +at low art, as we call it now, but at high art and all art. +Be it so. Here was their fault, if fault it was in those +days. For to discriminate between high art and low art they +must have seen both. And for Jonson’s wrath to be +fair and just he must have shown them both. Let us see what +the pure drama is like which he wishes to substitute for the foul +drama of his contemporaries; and, to bring the matter nearer +home, let us take one of the plays in which he hits deliberately +at the Puritans, namely the ‘Alchemist,’ said to have +been first acted in 1610 ‘by the king’s +majesty’s servants.’ Look, then, at this +well-known play, and take Jonson at his word. Allow that +Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome are, as they very probably are, +fair portraits of a class among the sectaries of the day: but +bear in mind, too, that if this be allowed, the other characters +shall be held as fair portraits also. Otherwise, all must +he held to be caricature; and then the onslaught on the Puritans +vanishes into nothing, or worse. Now in either case, +Ananias and Tribulation are the best men in the play. They +palter with their consciences, no doubt: but they have +consciences, which no one else in the play has, except poor +Surly; and he, be it remembered, comes to shame, is made a +laughing-stock, and ‘cheats himself,’ as he complains +at last, ‘by that same foolish vice of honesty’: +while in all the rest what have we but every form of human +baseness? Lovell, the master, if he is to be considered a +negative character as doing no wrong, has, at all events, no more +recorded of him than the noble act of marrying by deceit a young +widow for the sake of her money, the philosopher’s stone, +by the bye, and highest object of most of the seventeenth century +dramatists. If most of the rascals meet with due disgrace, +none of them is punished; and the greatest rascal of all, who, +when escape is impossible, turns traitor, and after deserving the +cart and pillory a dozen times for his last and most utter +baseness, is rewarded by full pardon, and the honour of +addressing the audience at the play’s end in the most smug +and self-satisfied tone, and of ‘putting himself on you +that are my country,’ not doubting, it seems, that there +were among them a fair majority who would think him a very smart +fellow, worthy of all imitation.</p> +<p>Now is this play a moral or an immoral one? Of its +coarseness we say nothing. We should not endure it, of +course, nowadays; and on that point something must be said +hereafter: but if we were to endure plain speaking as the only +method of properly exposing vice, should we endure the moral +which, instead of punishing vice, rewards it?</p> +<p>And, meanwhile, what sort of a general state of society among +the Anti-Puritan party does the play sketch? What but a +background of profligacy and frivolity?</p> +<p>A proof, indeed, of the general downward tendencies of the age +may be found in the writings of Ben Jonson himself. +Howsoever pure and lofty the ideal which he laid down for himself +(and no doubt honestly) in the Preface to ‘Volpone,’ +he found it impossible to keep up to it. Nine years +afterwards we find him, in his ‘Bartholomew Fair,’ +catering to the low tastes of James the First in ribaldry at +which, if one must needs laugh—as who that was not more +than man could help doing over that scene between Rabbi Busy and +the puppets?—shallow and untrue as the gist of the humour +is, one feels the next moment as if one had been indulging in +unholy mirth at the expense of some grand old Noah who has come +to shame in his cups.</p> +<p>But lower still does Jonson fall in that Masque of the +‘Gipsies Metamorphosed,’ presented to the king in +1621, when Jonson was forty-seven; old enough, one would have +thought, to know better. It is not merely the insincere and +all but blasphemous adulation which is shocking,—that was +but the fashion of the times: but the treating these gipsies and +beggars, and their ‘thieves’ Latin’ dialect, +their filthiness and cunning, ignorance and recklessness, merely +as themes for immoral and inhuman laughter. Jonson was by +no means the only poet of that day to whom the hordes of +profligate and heathen nomads which infested England were only a +comical phase of humanity, instead of being, as they would be +now, objects of national shame and sorrow, of pity and love, +which would call out in the attempt to redeem them the talents +and energies of good men. But Jonson certainly sins more in +this respect than any of his contemporaries. He takes a low +pleasure in parading his intimate acquaintance with these poor +creatures’ foul slang and barbaric laws; and is, we should +say, the natural father of that lowest form of all literature, +which has since amused the herd, though in a form greatly +purified, in the form of ‘Beggars’ Operas,’ +‘Dick Turpins,’ and ‘Jack +Sheppards.’ Everything which is objectionable in such +modern publications as these was exhibited, in far grosser forms, +by one of the greatest poets who ever lived, for the amusement of +a king of England; and yet the world still is at a loss to know +why sober and God-fearing men detested both the poet and the +king.</p> +<p>And that Masque is all the more saddening exhibition of the +degradation of a great soul, because in it, here and there, occur +passages of the old sweetness and grandeur; <i>disjecta membra +poetæ</i> such as these, which, even although addressed to +James, are perfect:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">‘3<i>rd</i> +<i>Gipsy</i>.</p> +<p>Look how the winds upon the waves grow tame,<br /> + Take up land sounds upon their purple wings,<br /> +And, catching each from other, bear the same<br /> + To every angle of their sacred springs.<br /> +So will we take his praise, and hurl his name<br /> + About the globe, in thousand airy rings.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * *</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Let us pass on. Why stay to look upon the fall of such a +spirit?</p> +<p>There is one point, nevertheless, which we may as well speak +of here, and shortly; for spoken of it must be as delicately as +is possible. The laugh raised at Zeal-for-the-land +Busy’s expense, in ‘Bartholomew Fair,’ turns on +the Puritan dislike of seeing women’s parts acted by +boys. Jonson shirks the question by making poor Busy fall +foul of puppets instead of live human beings: but the question is +shirked nevertheless. What honest answer he could have +given to the Puritans is hard to conceive. Prynne, in his +‘Histriomastix,’ may have pushed a little too far the +argument drawn from the prohibition in the Mosaic law: yet one +would fancy that the practice was forbidden by Moses’ law, +not arbitrarily, but because it was a bad practice, which did +harm, as every antiquarian knows that it did; and that, +therefore, Prynne was but reasonable in supposing that in his day +a similar practice would produce a similar evil. Our firm +conviction is that it did so, and that as to the matter of fact, +Prynne was perfectly right; and that to make a boy a stage-player +was pretty certainly to send him to the devil. Let any man +of common sense imagine to himself the effect on a young +boy’s mind which would be produced by representing +shamelessly before a public audience not merely the language, but +the passions, of such women as occur in almost every play. +We appeal to common sense—would any father allow his own +children to personate, even in private, the basest of +mankind? And yet we must beg pardon: for common sense, it +is to be supposed, has decided against us, as long as parents +allow their sons to act yearly at Westminster the stupid low art +of Terence, while grave and reverend prelates and divines look on +approving. The Westminster play has had no very purifying +influence on the minds of the young gentlemen who personate +heathen damsels; and we only ask, What must have been the effect +of representing far fouler characters than Terence’s on the +minds of uneducated lads of the lower classes? Prynne and +others hint at still darker abominations than the mere defilement +of the conscience: we shall say nothing of them, but that, from +collateral evidence, we believe every word they say; and that +when pretty little Cupid’s mother, in Jonson’s +Christmas masque, tells how ‘She could have had money +enough for him, had she been tempted, and have let him out by the +week to the king’s players,’ and how ‘Master +Burbadge has been about and about with her for him, and old Mr. +Hemings too,’ she had better have tied a stone round the +child’s neck, and hove him over London Bridge, than have +handed him over to thrifty Burbadge, that he might make out of +his degradation more money to buy land withal, and settle +comfortably in his native town, on the fruits of others’ +sin. Honour to old Prynne, bitter and narrow as he was, for +his passionate and eloquent appeals to the humanity and +Christianity of England, in behalf of those poor children whom +not a bishop on the bench interfered to save; but, while they +were writing and persecuting in behalf of baptismal regeneration, +left those to perish whom they declared so stoutly to be +regenerate in baptism. Prynne used that argument too, and +declared these stage-plays to be among the very ‘pomps and +vanities which Christians renounced at baptism.’ He +may or may not have been wrong in identifying them with the old +heathen pantomimes and games of the circus, and in burying his +adversaries under a mountain of quotations from the Fathers and +the Romish divines (for Prynne’s reading seems to have been +quite enormous). Those very prelates could express +reverence enough for the Fathers when they found aught in them +which could be made to justify their own system, though perhaps +it had really even less to do therewith than the Roman pantomimes +had with the Globe Theatre: but the Church of England had +retained in her Catechism the old Roman word ‘pomps,’ +as one of the things which were to be renounced; and as +‘pomps’ confessedly meant at first those very +spectacles of the heathen circus and theatre, Prynne could not be +very illogical in believing that, as it had been retained, it was +retained to testify against something, and probably against the +thing in England most like the ‘pomps’ of heathen +Rome. Meanwhile, let Churchmen decide whether of the two +was the better Churchman—Prynne, who tried to make the +baptismal covenant mean something, or Laud, who allowed such a +play as ‘The Ordinary’ to be written by his especial +<i>protégé</i>, Cartwright, the Oxford scholar, and +acted before him probably by Oxford scholars, certainly by +christened boys. We do not pretend to pry into the counsels +of the Most High; but if unfaithfulness to a high and holy trust, +when combined with lofty professions and pretensions, does (as +all history tells us that it does) draw down the vengeance of +Almighty God, then we need look no further than this one neglect +of the seventeenth century prelates (whether its cause was +stupidity, insincerity, or fear of the monarchs to whose tyranny +they pandered), to discover full reason why it pleased God to +sweep them out awhile with the besom of destruction.</p> +<p>There is another feature in the plays of the seventeenth +century, new, as far as we know, alike to English literature and +manners; and that is, the apotheosis of Rakes. Let the +faults of the Middle Age, or of the Tudors, have been what they +may, that class of person was in their time simply an object of +disgust. The word which then signified a Rake is, in the +‘Morte d’Arthur’ (temp. Ed. IV.), the foulest +term of disgrace which can be cast upon a knight; whilst even up +to the latter years of Elizabeth the contempt of parents and +elders seems to have been thought a grievous sin. In Italy, +even, fountain of all the abominations of the age, respect for +the fifth commandment seems to have lingered after all the other +nine had been forgotten; we find Castiglione, in his +‘Corteggiano’ (about 1520), regretting the modest and +respectful training of the generation which had preceded him; and +to judge from facts, the Puritan method of education, stern as it +was, was neither more nor less than the method which, a +generation before, had been common to Romanist and to Protestant, +Puritan and Churchman.</p> +<p>But with the Stuart era (perhaps at the end of +Elizabeth’s reign) fathers became gradually personages who +are to be disobeyed, sucked of their money, fooled, even now and +then robbed and beaten, by the young gentlemen of spirit; and the +most Christian kings, James and Charles, with their queens and +court, sit by to see ruffling and roystering, beating the watch +and breaking windows, dicing, drinking, duelling, and profligacy +(provided the victim be not a woman of gentle birth), set forth +not merely as harmless amusements for young gentlemen, but (as in +Beaumont and Fletcher’s play of ‘Monsieur +Thomas’) virtues without which a man is despicable. +On this point, as on many others, those who have, for +ecclesiastical reasons, tried to represent the first half of the +seventeenth century as a golden age have been altogether +unfair. There is no immorality of the court plays of +Charles II.’s time which may not be found in those of +Charles I.’s. Sedley and Etherege are not a whit +worse, but only more stupid, than Fletcher or Shirley; and +Monsieur Thomas is the spiritual father of all Angry lads, +Rufflers, Blades, Bullies, Mohocks, Corinthians, and Dandies, +down to the last drunken clerk who wrenched off a knocker, or +robbed his master’s till to pay his losses at a +betting-office. True; we of this generation can hardly +afford to throw stones. The scapegrace ideal of humanity +has enjoyed high patronage within the last half century; and if +Monsieur Thomas seemed lovely in the eyes of James and Charles, +so did Jerry and Corinthian Tom in those of some of the first +gentlemen of England. Better days, however, have dawned; +‘Tom and Jerry,’ instead of running three hundred +nights, would be as little endured on the stage as +‘Monsieur Thomas’ would be; the heroes who aspire +toward that ideal are now consigned by public opinion to +Rhadamanthus and the treadmill; while if, like Monsieur Thomas, +they knocked down their own father, they would, instead of +winning a good wife, be ‘cut’ by braver and finer +gentlemen than Monsieur Thomas himself: but what does this fact +prove save that England has at last discovered that the Puritan +opinion of this matter (as of some others) was the right one?</p> +<p>There is another aspect in which we must look at the Stuart +patronage of profligate scapegraces on the stage. They +would not have been endured on the stage had they not been very +common off it; and if there had not been, too, in the hearts of +spectators some lurking excuse for them: it requires no great +penetration to see what that excuse must have been. If the +Stuart age, aristocracy, and court were as perfect as some fancy +them, such fellows would have been monstrous in it and +inexcusable, probably impossible. But if it was (as it may +be proved to have been) an utterly deboshed, insincere, decrepit, +and decaying age, then one cannot but look on Monsieur Thomas +with something of sympathy as well as pity. Take him as he +stands; he is a fellow of infinite kindliness, wit, spirit, and +courage, but with nothing on which to employ those powers. +He would have done his work admirably in an earnest and +enterprising age as a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk, an Indian +civilian, a captain of a man-of-war—anything where he could +find a purpose and a work. Doubt it not. How many a +Monsieur Thomas of our own days, whom a few years ago one had +rashly fancied capable of nothing higher than coulisses and +cigars, private theatricals and white kid gloves, has been not +only fighting and working like a man, but meditating and writing +homeward like a Christian, through the dull misery of those +trenches at Sevastopol; and has found, amid the Crimean snows, +that merciful fire of God, which could burn the chaff out of his +heart and thaw the crust of cold frivolity into warm and earnest +life. And even at such a youth’s worst, reason and +conscience alike forbid us to deal out to him the same measure as +we do to the offences of the cool and hoary profligate, or to the +darker and subtler spiritual sins of the false professor. +But if the wrath of God be not unmistakably and practically +revealed from heaven against youthful profligacy and disobedience +in after sorrow and shame of some kind or other, against what sin +is it revealed? It was not left for our age to discover +that the wages of sin is death: but Charles, his players and his +courtiers, refused to see what the very heathen had seen, and so +had to be taught the truth over again by another and a more +literal lesson; and what neither stage-plays nor sermons could +teach them, sharp shot and cold steel did.</p> +<p>‘But still the Puritans were barbarians for hating Art +altogether.’ The fact was, that they hated what art +they saw in England, and that this was low art, bad art, growing +ever lower and worse. If it be said that Shakspeare’s +is the very highest art, the answer is, that what they hated in +him was not his high art, but his low art, the foul and horrible +elements which he had in common with his brother +play-writers. True, there is far less of these elements in +Shakspeare than in any of his compeers: but they are there. +And what the Puritans hated in him was exactly what we have to +expunge before we can now represent his plays. If it be +said that they ought to have discerned and appreciated the higher +elements in him, so ought the rest of their generation. The +Puritans were surely not bound to see in Shakspeare what his +patrons and brother poets did not see. And it is surely a +matter of fact that the deep spiritual knowledge which makes, and +will make, Shakspeare’s plays (and them alone of all the +seventeenth century plays) a heritage for all men and all ages, +quite escaped the insight of his contemporaries, who probably put +him in the same rank which Webster, writing about 1612, has +assigned to him.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I have ever cherished a good opinion of +other men’s witty labours, especially of that full and +heightened style of Master Chapman; the laboured and +understanding works of Mr. Jonson; the no less witty composures +of the both wittily excellent Mr. Beaumont and Mr. Fletcher; and +lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and +copious industry of Shakspeare, Mr. Dekker, and Mr. +Heywood.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>While Webster, then, one of the best poets of the time, sees +nothing in Shakspeare beyond the same ‘happy and copious +industry’ which he sees in Dekker and Heywood,—while +Cartwright, perhaps the only young poet of real genius in Charles +the First’s reign, places Fletcher’s name +‘’Twixt Jonson’s grave and Shakspeare’s +lighter sound,’ and tells him that</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Shakspeare to thee was dull, whose best wit +lies<br /> +I’ th’ ladies’ questions, and the fool’s +replies.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Whose wit our nice times would obsceneness call.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Nature was all his art; thy vein was free<br /> +As his, but without his scurrility;’ <a +name="citation46"></a><a href="#footnote46" +class="citation">[46]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>while even Milton, who, Puritan as he was, loved art with all +his soul, only remarks on Shakspeare’s marvellous lyrical +sweetness, ‘his native wood-notes wild’; what shame +to the Puritans if they, too, did not discover the stork among +the cranes?</p> +<p>An answer has often been given to arguments of this kind, +which deserves a few moments’ consideration. It is +said, ‘the grossness of the old play-writers was their +misfortune, not their crime. It was the fashion of the +age. It is not our fashion, certainly; but they meant no +harm by it. The age was a free-spoken one; and perhaps none +the worse for that.’ Mr. Dyce, indeed, the editor of +Webster’s plays, seems inclined to exalt this habit into a +virtue. After saying that the licentious and debauched are +made ‘as odious in representation as they would be if they +were actually present’—an assertion which must be +flatly denied, save in the case of Shakspeare, who seldom or +never, to our remembrance, seems to forget that the wages of sin +is death, and who, however coarse he may be, keeps stoutly on the +side of virtue—Mr. Dyce goes on to say, that ‘perhaps +the language of the stage is purified in proportion as our morals +are deteriorated; and we dread the mention of the vices which we +are not ashamed to practise; while our forefathers, under the +sway of a less fastidious but a more energetic principle of +virtue, were careless of words, and only considerate of +actions.’</p> +<p>To this clever piece of special pleading we can only answer +that the fact is directly contrary; that there is a mass of +unanimous evidence which cannot be controverted to prove that +England, in the first half of the seventeenth century was far +more immoral than in the nineteenth; that the proofs lie patent +to any dispassionate reader: but that these pages will not be +defiled by the details of them.</p> +<p>Let it be said that coarseness was ‘the fashion of the +age.’ The simple question is, was it a good fashion +or a bad? It is said—with little or no +proof—that in simple states of society much manly virtue +and much female purity have often consisted with very broad +language and very coarse manners. But what of that? +Drunkards may very often be very honest and brave men. Does +that make drunkenness no sin? Or will honesty and courage +prevent a man’s being the worse for hard drinking? If +so, why have we given up coarseness of language? And why +has it been the better rather than the worse part of the nation, +the educated and religious rather than the ignorant and wicked, +who have given it up? Why? Simply because this +nation, and all other nations on the Continent, in proportion to +their morality, have found out that coarseness of language is, to +say the least, unfit and inexpedient; that if it be wrong to do +certain things, it is also, on the whole, right not to talk of +them; that even certain things which are right and blessed and +holy lose their sanctity by being dragged cynically to the light +of day, instead of being left in the mystery in which God has +wisely shrouded them. On the whole, one is inclined to +suspect the defence of coarseness as insincere. Certainly, +in our day, it will not hold. If any one wishes to hear +coarse language in ‘good society’ he can hear it, I +am told, in Paris: but one questions whether Parisian society be +now ‘under the sway of a more energetic principle of +virtue’ than our own. The sum total of the matter +seems to be, that England has found out that on this point again +the old Puritans were right. And quaintly enough, the party +in the English Church who hold the Puritans most in abhorrence +are the most scrupulous now upon this very point; and, in their +dread of contaminating the minds of youth, are carrying +education, at school and college, to such a more than Puritan +precision that with the most virtuous and benevolent intentions +they are in danger of giving lads merely a conventional +education,—a hot-house training which will render them +incapable hereafter of facing either the temptations or the +labour of the world. They themselves republished +Massinger’s ‘Virgin Martyr,’ because it was a +pretty Popish story, probably written by a Papist—for there +is every reason to believe that Massinger was one—setting +forth how the heroine was attended all through by an angel in the +form of a page, and how—not to mention the really beautiful +ancient fiction about the fruits which Dorothea sends back from +Paradise—Theophilus overcomes the devil by means of a cross +composed of flowers. Massinger’s account of +Theophilus’ conversation will, we fear, make those who know +anything of that great crisis of the human spirit suspect that +Massinger’s experience thereof was but small: but the fact +which is most noteworthy is this—that the ‘Virgin +Martyr’ is actually one of the foulest plays known. +Every pains has been taken to prove that the indecent scenes in +the play were not written by Massinger, but by Dekker; on what +grounds we know not. If Dekker assisted Massinger in the +play, as he is said to have done, we are aware of no canons of +internal criticism which will enable us to decide, as boldly as +Mr. Gifford does, that all the indecency is Dekker’s, and +all the poetry Massinger’s. He confesses—as +indeed he is forced to do—that ‘Massinger himself is +not free from dialogues of low wit and buffoonery’; and +then, after calling the scenes in question ‘detestable +ribaldry, ‘a loathsome sooterkin, engendered of filth and +dulness,’ recommends them to the reader’s supreme +scorn and contempt,—with which feelings the reader will +doubtless regard them: but he will also, if he be a thinking man, +draw from them the following conclusions: that even if they be +Dekker’s—of which there is no proof—Massinger +was forced, in order to the success of his play, to pander to the +public taste by allowing Dekker to interpolate these villanies; +that the play which, above all others of the seventeenth century, +contains the most supralunar rosepink of piety, devotion, and +purity, also contains the stupidest abominations of any extant +play; and lastly, that those who reprinted it as a sample of the +Christianity of that past golden age of High-churchmanship, had +to leave out one-third of the play, for fear of becoming amenable +to the laws against abominable publications.</p> +<p>No one denies that there are nobler words than any that we +have quoted, in Jonson, in Fletcher, or in Massinger; but there +is hardly a play (perhaps none) of theirs in which the +immoralities of which we complain do not exist,—few of +which they do not form an integral part; and now, if this is the +judgment which we have to pass on the morality of the greater +poets, what must the lesser ones be like?</p> +<p>Look, then, at Webster’s two masterpieces, +‘Vittoria Corrombona’ and the ‘Duchess of +Malfi.’ A few words spent on them will surely not be +wasted; for they are pretty generally agreed to be the two best +tragedies written since Shakspeare’s time.</p> +<p>The whole story of ‘Vittoria Corrombona’ is one of +sin and horror. The subject-matter of the play is +altogether made up of the fiercest and the basest passions. +But the play is not a study of those passions from which we may +gain a great insight into human nature. There is no +trace—nor is there, again, in the ‘Duchess of +Malfi’—of that development of human souls for good or +evil which is Shakspeare’s especial power—the power +which, far more than any accidental ‘beauties,’ makes +his plays, to this day, the delight alike of the simple and the +wise, while his contemporaries are all but forgotten. The +highest aim of dramatic art is to exhibit the development of the +human soul; to construct dramas in which the conclusion shall +depend, not on the events, but on the characters; and in which +the characters shall not be mere embodiments of a certain +passion, or a certain ‘humour’: but persons, each +unlike all others; each having a destiny of his own by virtue of +his own peculiarities, and of his own will; and each proceeding +toward that destiny as he shall conquer, or yield to, +circumstances; unfolding his own strength and weakness before the +eyes of the audience; and that in such a way that, after his +first introduction, they should be able (in proportion to their +knowledge of human nature) to predict his conduct under those +circumstances. This is indeed ‘high art’: but +we find no more of it in Webster than in the rest. His +characters, be they old or young, come on the stage ready-made, +full grown, and stereotyped; and therefore, in general, they are +not characters at all, but mere passions or humours in human +form. Now and then he essays to draw a character: but it is +analytically, by description, not synthetically and dramatically, +by letting the man exhibit himself in action; and in the +‘Duchess of Mall’ he falls into the great mistake of +telling, by Antonio’s mouth, more about the Duke and the +Cardinal than he afterwards makes them act. Very different +is Shakspeare’s method of giving, at the outset, some +single delicate hint about his personages which will serve as a +clue to their whole future conduct; thus ‘showing the whole +in each part,’ and stamping each man with a personality, to +a degree which no other dramatist has ever approached.</p> +<p>But the truth is, the study of human nature is not +Webster’s aim. He has to arouse terror and pity, not +thought, and he does it in his own way, by blood and fury, madmen +and screech-owls, not without a rugged power. There are +scenes of his, certainly, like that of Vittoria’s trial, +which have been praised for their delineation of character: but +it is one thing to solve the problem, which Shakspeare has so +handled in ‘Lear,’ ‘Othello,’ and +‘Richard the Third,’—‘Given a mixed +character, to show how he may become criminal,’ and to +solve Webster’s ‘Given a ready-made criminal, to show +how he commits his crimes.’ To us the knowledge of +character shown in Vittoria’s trial scene is not an insight +into Vittoria’s essential heart and brain, but a general +acquaintance with the conduct of all bold bad women when brought +to bay. Poor Elia, who knew the world from books, and human +nature principally from his own loving and gentle heart, talks of +Vittoria’s ‘innocence—resembling +boldness’ <a name="citation53"></a><a href="#footnote53" +class="citation">[53]</a>—and ‘seeming to see that +matchless beauty of her face, which inspires such gay confidence +in her,’ and so forth.</p> +<p>Perfectly just and true, not of Vittoria merely, but of the +average of bad young women in the presence of a police +magistrate: yet amounting in all merely to this, that the +strength of Webster’s confest master-scene lies simply in +intimate acquaintance with vicious nature in general. We +will say no more on this matter, save to ask, <i>Cui +bono</i>? Was the art of which this was the highest +manifestation likely to be of much use to mankind, much less able +to excuse its palpably disgusting and injurious +accompaniments?</p> +<p>The ‘Duchess of Malfi’ is certainly in a purer and +loftier strain: but in spite of the praise which has been +lavished on her, we must take the liberty to doubt whether the +poor Duchess is a ‘person’ at all. General +goodness and beauty, intense though pure affection for a man +below her in rank, and a will to carry out her purpose at all +hazards, are not enough to distinguish her from thousands of +other women: but Webster has no such purpose. What he was +thinking and writing of was not truth, but effect; not the +Duchess, but her story; not her brothers, but their rage; not +Antonio, her major-domo and husband, but his good and bad +fortunes; and thus he has made Antonio merely insipid, the +brothers merely unnatural, and the Duchess (in the critical +moment of the play) merely forward. That curious scene, in +which she acquaints Antonio with her love for him and makes him +marry her, is, on the whole, painful. Webster himself seems +to have felt that it was so; and, dreading lest he had gone too +far, to have tried to redeem the Duchess at the end by making her +break down in two exquisite lines of loving shame: but he has +utterly forgotten to explain or justify her love by giving to +Antonio (as Shakspeare would probably have done) such strong +specialties of character as would compel, and therefore excuse, +his mistress’s affection. He has plenty of time to do +this in the first scenes,—time which he wastes on +irrelevant matter; and all that we gather from them is that +Antonio is a worthy and thoughtful person. If he gives +promise of being more, he utterly disappoints that promise +afterwards. In the scene in which the Duchess tells her +love, he is far smaller, rather than greater, than the Antonio of +the opening scene: though (as there) altogether passive. He +hears his mistress’s declaration just as any other +respectable youth might; is exceedingly astonished, and a good +deal frightened; has to be talked out of his fears till one +naturally expects a revulsion on the Duchess’s part into +something like scorn or shame (which might have given a good +opportunity for calling out sudden strength in Antonio): but so +busy is Webster with his business of drawing mere blind love, +that he leaves Antonio to be a mere puppet, whose worthiness we +are to believe in only from the Duchess’s assurance to him +that he is the perfection of all that a man should be; which, as +all lovers are of the same opinion the day before the wedding, is +not of much importance.</p> +<p>Neither in his subsequent misfortunes does Antonio make the +least struggle to prove himself worthy of his mistress’s +affection. He is very resigned and loving, and so +forth. To win renown by great deeds, and so prove his wife +in the right to her brothers and all the world, never crosses his +imagination. His highest aim (and that only at last) is +slavishly to entreat pardon from his brothers-in-law for the mere +offence of marrying their sister; and he dies by an improbable +accident, the same pious and respectable insipidity which he has +lived,—‘<i>ne valant pas la peine qui se donne pour +lui</i>.’ The prison-scenes between the Duchess and +her tormentors are painful enough, if to give pain be a dramatic +virtue; and she appears in them really noble; and might have +appeared far more so, had Webster taken half as much pains with +her as he has with the madmen, ruffians, ghosts, and screech-owls +in which his heart really delights. The only character +really worked out so as to live and grow under his hand is +Bosola, who, of course, is the villain of the piece, and being a +rough fabric, is easily manufactured with rough tools. +Still, Webster has his wonderful touches here and +there—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘<i>Cariola</i>. Hence, villains, +tyrants, murderers! Alas<br /> +What will you do with my lady? Call for help!<br /> +<i>Duchess</i>. To whom? to our next neighbours? they are +mad folk.<br /> +Farewell, Cariola.<br /> +I pray thee look thou giv’st my little boy<br /> +Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl<br /> +Say her prayers ere she sleep.—Now, what you please;<br /> +What death?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And so the play ends, as does ‘Vittoria +Corrombona,’ with half a dozen murders <i>coram populo</i>, +howls, despair, bedlam, and the shambles; putting the reader +marvellously in mind of that well-known old book of the same era, +‘Reynolds’s God’s Revenge,’ in which, +with all due pious horror and bombastic sermonising, the national +appetite for abominations is duly fed with some fifty unreadable +Spanish histories, French histories, Italian histories, and so +forth, one or two of which, of course, are known to have +furnished subjects for the playwrights of the day.</p> +<p>The next play-writer whom we are bound to notice is James +Shirley, one of the many converts to Romanism which those days +saw. He appears, up to the breaking out of the Civil War, +to have been the Queen’s favourite poet; and, according to +Laugbaine, he was ‘one of such incomparable parts that he +was the chief of the second-rate poets, and by some has been +thought even equal to Fletcher himself.’</p> +<p>We must entreat the reader’s attention while we examine +Shirley’s ‘Gamester.’ Whether the +examination be a pleasant business or not, it is somewhat +important; ‘for,’ says Mr. Dyce, ‘the following +memorandum respecting it occurs in the office-book of the Master +of the Records:—“On Thursday night, 6th of February, +1633, ‘The Gamester’ was acted at Court, made by +Sherley out of a plot of the king’s, given him by mee, and +well likte. The king sayd it was the best play he had seen +for seven years.”’</p> +<p>This is indeed important. We shall now have an +opportunity of fairly testing at the same time the taste of the +Royal Martyr and the average merit, at least in the opinion of +the Caroline court, of the dramatists of that day.</p> +<p>The plot which Charles sent to Shirley as a fit subject for +his muse is taken from one of those collections of Italian novels +of which we have already had occasion to speak, and occurs in the +second part of the ‘Ducento Novelle’ of Celio +Malespini; and what it is we shall see forthwith.</p> +<p>The play opens with a scene between one Wilding and his ward +Penelope, in which he attempts to seduce the young lady, in +language which has certainly the merit of honesty. She +refuses him, but civilly enough; and on her departure Mrs. +Wilding enters, who, it seems, is the object of her +husband’s loathing, though young, handsome, and in all +respects charming enough. After a scene of stupid and +brutal insults, he actually asks her to bring Penelope to him, at +which she naturally goes out in anger; and Hazard, the gamester, +enters,—a personage without a character, in any sense of +the word. There is next some talk against duelling, +sensible enough, which arises out of a bye-plot,—one +Delamere having been wounded in a duel by one Beaumont, mortally +as is supposed. This bye-plot runs through the play, giving +an opportunity for bringing in a father of the usual play-house +type,—a Sir Richard Hurry, who is, of course, as stupid, +covetous, proud, and tyrannical and unfeeling, as play-house +fathers were then bound to be: but it is a plot of the most +commonplace form, turning on the stale trick of a man expecting +to be hanged for killing some one who turns out after all to have +recovered, and having no bearing whatsoever on the real plot, +which is this,—Mrs. Wilding, in order to win back her +husband’s affections, persuades Penelope to seem to grant +his suit; while Mrs. Wilding herself is in reality to supply her +niece’s place, and shame her husband into virtue. +Wilding tells Hazard of the good fortune which he fancies is +coming, in scenes of which one can only say, that if they are not +written for the purpose of exciting the passions, it is hard to +see why they were written at all. But, being with Hazard in +a gambling-house at the very hour at which he is to meet +Penelope, and having had a run of bad luck, he borrows a hundred +pounds of Hazard, stays at the table to recover his losses, and +sends Hazard to supply his place with the supposed +Penelope. A few hours before Penelope and Hazard have met +for the first time, and Penelope considers him, as she says to +herself aside, ‘a handsome gentleman.’ He +begins, of course, talking foully to her; and the lady, so far +from being shocked at the freedom of her new acquaintance, pays +him back in his own coin in such good earnest that she soon +silences him in the battle of dirt-throwing. Of this sad +scene it is difficult to say whether it indicates a lower +standard of purity and courtesy in the poet, in the audience who +endured it, or in the society of which it was, of course, +intended to be a brilliant picture. If the cavaliers and +damsels of Charles the First’s day were in the habit of +talking in that way to each other (and if they had not been, +Shirley would not have dared to represent them as doing so), one +cannot much wonder that the fire of God was needed to burn up +(though, alas! only for a while) such a state of society; and +that when needed the fire fell.</p> +<p>The rest of the story is equally bad. Hazard next day +gives Wilding descriptions of his guilt, and while Wilding is in +the height of self-reproach at having handed over his victim to +another, his wife meets him and informs him that she herself and +not Penelope has been the victim. Now comes the crisis of +the plot, the conception which so delighted the taste of the +Royal Martyr. Wilding finds himself, as he expresses it, +‘fitted with a pair of horns of his own making;’ and +his rage, shame, and base attempts to patch up his own dishonour +by marrying Penelope to Hazard (even at the cost of disgorging +the half of her portion, which he had intended to embezzle) +furnish amusement to the audience to the end of the play; at +last, on Hazard and Penelope coming in married, Wilding is +informed that he has been deceived, and that his wife is +unstained, having arranged with Hazard to keep up the delusion in +order to frighten him into good behaviour; whereupon Mr. Wilding +promises to be a good husband henceforth, and the play ends.</p> +<p>Throughout the whole of this farrago of improbable iniquity +not a single personage has any mark of personal character, or +even of any moral quality, save (in Mrs. Wilding’s case) +that of patience under injury. Hazard ‘The +Gamester’ is chosen as the hero, for what reason it is +impossible to say; he is a mere nonentity, doing nothing which +may distinguish him from any other gamester and blackguard, save +that he is, as we are told,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A man careless<br /> +Of wounds; and though he have not had the luck<br /> +To kill so many as another, dares<br /> +Fight with all them that have.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He, nevertheless, being in want of money, takes a hundred +pounds from a foolish old city merchant (city merchants are +always fools in the seventeenth century) to let his nephew, young +Barnacle, give him a box on the ear in a tavern, and (after the +young cit has been transformed into an intolerable bully by the +fame so acquired) takes another hundred pounds from the repentant +uncle for kicking the youth back into his native state of +peaceful cowardice. With the exception of some little +humour in these scenes with young Barnacle, the whole play is +thoroughly stupid. We look in vain for anything like a +reflection, a sentiment, even a novel image. Its language, +like its morality, is all but on a level with the laboured +vulgarities of the ‘Relapse’ or the ‘Provoked +Wife,’ save that (Shirley being a confessed copier of the +great dramatists of the generation before him) there is enough of +the manner of Fletcher and Ben Jonson kept up to hide, at first +sight, the utter want of anything like their matter; and as one +sickens at the rakish swagger and the artificial smartness of his +coxcombs, one regrets the racy and unaffected blackguardism of +the earlier poets’ men.</p> +<p>This, forsooth, is the best comedy which Charles had heard for +seven years, and the plot, which he himself furnished for the +occasion, fitted to an English audience by a Romish convert.</p> +<p>And yet there is one dramatist of that fallen generation over +whose memory one cannot but linger, fancying what he would have +become, and wondering why so great a spirit was checked suddenly +ere half developed by a fever which carried him off, with several +other Oxford worthies, in 1643, when he was at most thirty-two +(and according to one account only twenty-eight) years old. +Let which of the two dates be the true one, Cartwright must +always rank among our wondrous youths by the side of Prince +Henry, the Admirable Crichton, and others, of whom one’s +only doubt is, whether they were not too wondrous, too +precociously complete for future development. We find Dr. +Fell, some time Bishop of Oxford, saying that ‘Cartwright +was the utmost man could come to’; we read how his body was +as handsome as his soul; how he was an expert linguist, not only +in Greek and Latin, but in French and Italian, an excellent +orator, admirable poet; how Aristotle was no less known to him +than Cicero and Virgil, and his metaphysical lectures preferred +to those of all his predecessors, the Bishop of Lincoln only +excepted; and his sermons as much admired as his other +composures; and how one fitly applied to him that saying of +Aristotle concerning Œschron the poet, that ‘he could +not tell what Œschron could not do.’ We find +pages on pages of high-flown epitaphs and sonnets on him, in +which the exceeding bad taste of his admirers makes one inclined +to doubt the taste of him whom they so bedaub with praise; and +certainly, in spite of all due admiration for the Crichton of +Oxford, one is unable to endorse Mr. Jasper Mayne’s +opinion, that</p> +<blockquote><p>‘In thee Ben Jonson still held +Shakspeare’s style’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>or that he possest</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Lucan’s bold heights match’d to +staid Virgil’s care,<br /> +Martial’s quick salt, joined to Musæus’ +tongue.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This superabundance of eulogy, when we remember the men and +the age from which it comes, tempts one to form such a conception +of Cartwright as, indeed, the portrait prefixed to his works (ed. +1651) gives us; the offspring of an over-educated and pedantic +age, highly stored with everything but strength and simplicity; +one in whom genius has been rather shaped (perhaps cramped) than +developed: but genius was present, without a doubt, under +whatsoever artificial trappings; and Ben Jonson spoke but truth +when he said, ‘My son Cartwright writes all like a +man.’ It is impossible to open a page of ‘The +Lady Errant,’ ‘The Royal Slave,’ ‘The +Ordinary,’ or ‘Love’s Convert,’ without +feeling at once that we have to do with a man of a very different +stamp from any (Massinger perhaps alone excepted) who was writing +between 1630 and 1640. The specific gravity of the poems, +so to speak, is far greater than that of any of his +contemporaries; everywhere is thought, fancy, force, varied +learning. He is never weak or dull; though he fails often +enough, is often enough wrong-headed, fantastical, affected, and +has never laid bare the deeper arteries of humanity, for good or +for evil. Neither is he altogether an original thinker; as +one would expect, he has over-read himself: but then he has done +so to good purpose. If he imitates, he generally +equals. The table of fare in ‘The Ordinary’ +smacks of Rabelais or Aristophanes: but then it is worthy of +either; and if one cannot help suspecting that ‘The +Ordinary’ never would have been written had not Ben Jonson +written ‘The Alchemist,’ one confesses that Ben +Jonson need not have been ashamed to have written the play +himself: although the plot, as all Cartwright’s are, is +somewhat confused and inconsequent. If he be Platonically +sentimental in ‘Love’s Convert,’ his sentiment +is of the noblest and the purest; and the confest moral of the +play is one which that age needed, if ever age on earth did.</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘’Tis the good +man’s office<br /> +To serve and reverence woman, as it is<br /> +The fire’s to burn; for as our souls consist<br /> +Of sense and reason, so do yours, more noble,<br /> +Of sense and love, which doth as easily calm<br /> +All your desires, as reason quiets ours. . . .<br /> +Love, then, doth work in you, what Reason doth<br /> +In us; here only lies the difference,—<br /> +Ours wait the lingering steps of Age and Time;<br /> +But the woman’s soul is ripe when it is young;<br /> +So that in us what we call learning, is<br /> +Divinity in you, whose operations,<br /> +Impatient of delay, do outstrip time.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For the sake of such words, in the midst of an evil and +adulterous generation, we will love young Cartwright, in spite of +the suspicion that, addressed as the play is to Charles, and +probably acted before his queen, the young rogue had been playing +the courtier somewhat, and racking his brains for pretty sayings +which would exhibit as a virtue that very uxoriousness of the +poor king which at last cost him his head. The ‘Royal +Slave,’ too, is a gallant play, right-hearted and lofty +from beginning to end, though enacted in an impossible +court-cloud-world, akin to that in which the classic heroes and +heroines of Corneille and Racine call each other Monsieur and +Madame.</p> +<p>As for his humour; he, alas! can be dirty like the rest, when +necessary: but humour he has of the highest quality. +‘The Ordinary’ is full of it; and Moth, the +Antiquary, though too much of a lay figure, and depending for his +amusingness on his quaint antiquated language, is such a sketch +as Mr. Dickens need not have been ashamed to draw.</p> +<p>The ‘Royal Slave’ seems to have been considered, +both by the Court and by his contemporaries, his +masterpiece. And justly so; yet our pleasure at +Charles’s having shown, for once, good taste, is somewhat +marred by Langbaine’s story, that the good acting of the +Oxford scholars, ‘stately scenes, and richness of the +Persian habits,’ had as much to do with the success of the +play as its ‘stately style,’ and ‘the +excellency of the songs, which were set by that admirable +composer, Mr. Henry James.’ True it is, that the +songs are excellent, as are all Cartwright’s; for grace, +simplicity, and sweetness, equal to any (save Shakspeare’s) +which the seventeenth century produced: but curiously enough, his +lyric faculty seems to have exhausted itself in these half-dozen +songs. His minor poems are utterly worthless, out Cowleying +Cowley in frigid and fantastic conceits; and his varied addresses +to the king and queen are as bombastic and stupid and artificial +as anything which bedizened the reigns of Charles II. or his +brother.</p> +<p>Are we to gather from this fact that Cartwright was not really +an original genius, but only a magnificent imitator; that he +could write plays well, because others had written them well +already, but only for that reason; and that for the same reason, +when he attempted detached lyrics and addresses, he could only +follow the abominable models which he saw around him? We +know not; for surely in Jonson and Shakspeare’s minor poems +he might have found simpler and sweeter types; and even in those +of Fletcher, who appears, from his own account, to have been his +especial pattern. Shakspeare however, as we have seen, he +looked down on; as did the rest of his generation.</p> +<p>Cartwright, as an Oxford scholar, is of course a worshipper of +Charles, and a hater of Puritans. We do not wish to raise a +prejudice against so young a man by quoting any of the +ridiculous, and often somewhat abject, rant with which he +addresses their majesties on their return from Scotland, on the +queen’s delivery, on the birth of the Duke of York, and so +forth; for in that he did but copy the tone of grave divines and +pious prelates; but he, unfortunately for his fame, is given (as +young geniuses are sometimes) to prophecy; and two of his +prophecies, at least, have hardly been fulfilled. He was +somewhat mistaken when, on the birth of the Duke of York, he +informed the world that</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The state is now past fear; and all that +we<br /> +Need wish besides is perpetuity’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and after indulging in various explanations of the reason why +‘Nature’ showed no prodigies at the birth of the +future patron of Judge Jeffreys, which, if he did not believe +them, are lies, and if he did, are very like blasphemies, +declares that the infant is</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘A son of Mirth,<br /> +Of Peace and Friendship; ’tis a quiet birth.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nor, again, if spirits in the other world have knowledge of +human affairs, can Mr. Cartwright be now altogether satisfied +with his rogue’s augury as to the capacities of the New +England Puritans, when he intends to pick pockets in the New +World, having made the Old too hot to hold him—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘They are good silly people; souls that +will<br /> +Be cheated without trouble: one eye is<br /> +Put out with zeal, th’ other with ignorance,<br /> +And yet they think they’re eagles.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Whatsoever were the faults of the Pilgrim Fathers (and they +were many), silliness was certainly not among them. But +such was the court fashion. Any insult, however shallow, +ribald, and doggrel (and all these terms are just of the +mock-Puritan ballad which Sir Christopher sings in ‘The +Ordinary,’ just after an epithalamium so graceful and +melodious, though a little warm in tone, as to be really out of +place in such a fellow’s mouth), passes current against men +who were abroad the founders of the United States, and the +forefathers of the acutest and most enterprising nation on earth; +and who at home proved themselves, by terrible fact, not only the +physically stronger party, but the more cunning. But so it +was fated to be. A deep mist of conceit, fed by the shallow +breath of parasites, players, and pedants, wrapt that unhappy +court in blind security, till ‘the breaking was as the +swelling out of a high wall, which cometh suddenly in an +instant.’</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>But, after all, what Poetry and Art there was in that day, +good or bad, all belonged to the Royalists.</p> +<p>All? There are those who think that, if mere concettism +be a part of poetry, Quarles is as great a poet as Cowley or +George Herbert, Vaughan or Withers. On this question, and +on the real worth of the seventeenth century lyrists, a great +deal has to be said hereafter. Meanwhile, there are those, +too, who believe John Bunyan, considered simply as an artist, to +be the greatest dramatic author whom England has seen since +Shakspeare; and there linger, too, in the libraries and the ears +of men, words of one John Milton. He was no rigid hater of +the beautiful, merely because it was heathen and Popish; no more, +indeed, were many highly-educated and highly-born gentlemen of +the Long Parliament: no more was Cromwell himself, whose delight +was (if we may trust that double renegade Waller) to talk over +with him the worthies of Rome and Greece, and who is said to have +preserved for the nation Raphael’s cartoons and Andrea +Mantegna’s triumph when Charles’s pictures were +sold. But Milton had steeped his whole soul in +romance. He had felt the beauty and glory of the chivalrous +Middle Age as deeply as Shakspeare himself: he had as much +classical lore as any Oxford pedant. He felt to his +heart’s core (for he sang of it, and had he not felt it he +would only have written of it) the magnificence and worth of +really high art, of the drama when it was worthy of man and of +itself.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Of gorgeous tragedy,<br /> +Presenting Thebes’ or Pelops’ line,<br /> +Or the Tale of Troy divine,<br /> +Or what, though rare, of later age,<br /> +Ennobled hath the buskin’d stage.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>No poet, perhaps, shows wider and truer sympathy with every +form of the really beautiful in art, nature, and history: and yet +he was a Puritan.</p> +<p>Yes, Milton was a Puritan; one who, instead of trusting +himself and his hopes of the universe to second-hand hearsays, +systems, and traditions, had looked God’s Word and his own +soul in the face, and determined to act on that which he had +found. And therefore it is that to open his works at any +stray page, after these effeminate Carolists, is like falling +asleep in a stifling city drawing-room, amid Rococo French +furniture, not without untidy traces of last night’s ball, +and awaking in an Alpine valley, amid the scent of sweet +cyclamens and pine boughs, to the music of trickling rivulets and +shouting hunters, beneath the dark cathedral aisles of mighty +trees, and here and there, above them and beyond, the spotless +peaks of everlasting snow; while far beneath your feet—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The hemisphere of earth, in clearest +ken,<br /> +Stretched to the amplest reach of prospect, lies.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Take any—the most hackneyed passage of +‘Comus,’ the ‘Allegro,’ the +‘Penseroso,’ the ‘Paradise Lost,’ and see +the freshness, the sweetness, the simplicity which is strangely +combined with the pomp, the self-restraint, the earnestness of +every word; take him even, as an <i>experimentum crucis</i>, when +he trenches upon ground heathen and questionable, and tries the +court poets at their own weapons—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Or whether (as some sager sing),<br /> +The frolic wind that breathes the spring,<br /> +Zephyr, with Aurora playing,<br /> +As he met her once a-Maying,<br /> +There on beds of violets blue,<br /> +And fresh-blown roses washed in dew—’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but why quote what all the world knows?—where shall we +find such real mirth, ease, sweetness, dance and song of words in +anything written for five and twenty years before him? +True, he was no great dramatist. He never tried to be one; +but there was no one in his generation who could have written +either ‘Comus’ or ‘Samson +Agonistes.’ And if, as is commonly believed, and as +his countenance seems to indicate, he was deficient in humour, so +were his contemporaries, with the sole exception of +Cartwright. Witty he could be, and bitter; but he did not +live in a really humorous age: and if he has none of the +rollicking fun of the foxhound puppy, at least he has none of the +obscene gibber of the ape.</p> +<p>After all, the great fact stands, that the only lasting poet +of that generation was a Puritan; one who, if he did not write +dramas in sport, at least acted dramas in earnest. For +drama means, etymologically, action and doing: and of the drama +there are, and always will be, two kinds: one the representative, +the other the actual; and for a world wherein there is no +superabundance of good deeds, the latter will be always the +better kind. It is good to represent heroical action in +verse, and on the stage: it is good to ‘purify,’ as +old Aristotle has it, ‘the affections by pity and +terror.’ There is an ideal tragedy, and an ideal +comedy also, which one can imagine as an integral part of the +highest Christian civilisation. But when +‘Christian’ tragedy sinks below the standard of +heathen Greek tragedy; when, instead of setting forth heroical +deeds, it teaches the audience new possibilities of crime, and +new excuses for those crimes; when, instead of purifying the +affections by pity and terror, it confounds the moral sense by +exciting pity and terror merely for the sake of excitement, +careless whether they be well or ill directed: then it is of the +devil, and the sooner it returns to its father the better for +mankind. When, again, comedy, instead of stirring a divine +scorn of baseness, or even a kindly and indulgent smile at the +weaknesses and oddities of humanity, learns to make a mock of +sin,—to find excuses for the popular frailties which it +pretends to expose,—then it also is of the devil, and to +the devil let it go; while honest and earnest men, who have no +such exceeding love of ‘Art’ that they must needs +have bad art rather than none at all, do the duty which lies +nearest them amid clean whitewash and honest prose. The +whole theory of ‘Art, its dignity and vocation,’ +seems to us at times questionable, if coarse facts are to be +allowed to weigh (as we suppose they are) against delicate +theories. If we are to judge by the example of Italy, the +country which has been most of all devoted to the practice of +‘Art,’ then a nation is not necessarily free, strong, +moral, or happy because it can ‘represent’ facts, or +can understand how other people have represented them. We +do not hesitate to go farther, and to say that the now past +weakness of Germany was to be traced in a great degree to that +pernicious habit of mind which made her educated men fancy it +enough to represent noble thoughts and feelings, or to analyse +the representations of them: while they did not bestir +themselves, or dream that there was a moral need for bestirring +themselves, toward putting these thoughts and feelings into +practice. Goethe herein was indeed the type of a very large +class of Germans: God grant that no generation may ever see such +a type common in England; and that our race, remembering ever +that the golden age of the English drama was one of private +immorality, public hypocrisy, ecclesiastical pedantry, and regal +tyranny, and ended in the temporary downfall of Church and Crown, +may be more ready to do fine things than to write fine books; and +act in their lives, as those old Puritans did, a drama which +their descendants may be glad to put on paper for them long after +they are dead.</p> +<p>For surely these Puritans were dramatic enough, poetic enough, +picturesque enough. We do not speak of such fanatics as +Balfour of Burley, or any other extravagant person whom it may +have suited Walter Scott to take as a typical personage. We +speak of the average Puritan nobleman, gentleman, merchant, or +farmer; and hold him to have been a picturesque and poetical +man,—a man of higher imagination and deeper feeling than +the average of court poets; and a man of sound taste also. +What is to be said for his opinions about the stage has been seen +already: but it seems to have escaped most persons’ notice, +that either all England is grown very foolish, or the Puritan +opinions on several matters have been justified by time.</p> +<p>On the matter of the stage, the world has certainly come over +to their way of thinking. Few highly educated men now think +it worth while to go to see any play, and that exactly for the +same reasons as the Puritans put forward; and still fewer highly +educated men think it worth while to write plays: finding that +since the grosser excitements of the imagination have become +forbidden themes, there is really very little to write about.</p> +<p>But in the matter of dress and of manners, the Puritan triumph +has been complete. Even their worst enemies have come over +to their side, and the ‘whirligig of time has brought about +its revenge.’</p> +<p>Most of their canons of taste have become those of all +England. High Churchmen, who still call them Roundheads and +Cropped-ears, go about rounder-headed and closer cropt than they +ever went. They held it more rational to cut the hair to a +comfortable length than to wear effeminate curls down the +back. We cut ours much shorter than they ever did. +They held (with the Spaniards, then the finest gentlemen in the +world) that sad, <i>i.e.</i> dark colours, above all black, were +the fittest for all stately and earnest gentlemen. We all, +from the Tractarian to the Anythingarian, are exactly of the same +opinion. They held that lace, perfumes, and jewellery on a +man were marks of unmanly foppishness and vanity. So hold +the finest gentlemen in England now. They thought it +equally absurd and sinful for a man to carry his income on his +back, and bedizen himself out in reds, blues, and greens, +ribbons, knots, slashes, and treble quadruple dædalian +ruffs, built up on iron and timber, which have more arches in +them for pride than London Bridge for use. We, if we met +such a ruffed and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by dozens up +and down Paul’s Walk, not knowing how to get a dinner, much +less to pay his tailor, should look on him as firstly a fool, and +secondly a swindler: while if we met an old Puritan, we should +consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal +in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we +discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the +harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one +pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbroker’s duplicates +in the other; that his thoughts were altogether of +citizens’ wives and their too easy virtue; and that he +could not open his mouth without a dozen oaths: then we should +consider the Puritan (even though he did quote Scripture somewhat +through his nose) as the gentleman; and the courtier as a most +offensive specimen of the ‘snob triumphant,’ glorying +in his shame. The picture is not ours, nor even the +Puritan’s. It is Bishop Hall’s, Bishop +Earle’s, it is Beaumont’s, Fletcher’s, +Jonson’s, Shakspeare’s,—the picture which every +dramatist, as well as satirist, has drawn of the +‘gallant’ of the seventeenth century. No one +can read those writers honestly without seeing that the Puritan, +and not the Cavalier conception of what a British gentleman +should be, is the one accepted by the whole nation at this +day.</p> +<p>In applying the same canon to the dress of women they were +wrong. As in other matters, they had hold of one pole of a +double truth, and erred in applying it exclusively to all +cases. But there are two things to be said for them; first, +that the dress of that day was palpably an incentive to the +profligacy of that day, and therefore had to be protested +against; while in these more moral times ornaments and fashions +may be harmlessly used which then could not be used without +harm. Next, it is undeniable that sober dressing is more +and more becoming the fashion among well-bred women; and that +among them, too, the Puritan canons are gaining ground.</p> +<p>We have just said that the Puritans held too exclusively to +one pole of a double truth. They did so, no doubt, in their +hatred of the drama. Their belief that human relations +were, if not exactly sinful, at least altogether carnal and +unspiritual, prevented their conceiving the possibility of any +truly Christian drama; and led them at times into strange and sad +errors, like that New England ukase of Cotton Mather’s, who +is said to have punished the woman who should kiss her infant on +the Sabbath day. Yet their extravagances on this point were +but the honest revulsion from other extravagances on the opposite +side. If the undistinguishing and immoral Autotheism of the +playwrights, and the luxury and heathendom of the higher classes, +first in Italy and then in England, were the natural revolt of +the human mind against the Manichæism of monkery: then the +severity and exclusiveness of Puritanism was a natural and +necessary revolt against that luxury and immorality; a protest +for man’s God-given superiority over nature, against that +Naturalism which threatened to end in sheer animalism. +While Italian prelates have found an apologist in Mr. Roscoe, and +English playwrights in Mr. Gifford, the old Puritans, who felt +and asserted, however extravagantly, that there was an eternal +law which was above all Borgias and Machiavels, Stuarts and +Fletchers, have surely a right to a fair trial. If they +went too far in their contempt for humanity, certainly no one +interfered to set them right. The Anglicans of that time, +who held intrinsically the same anthropologic notions, and yet +wanted the courage and sincerity to carry them out as honestly, +neither could nor would throw any light upon the controversy; and +the only class who sided with the poor playwrights in asserting +that there were more things in man, and more excuses for man, +than were dreamt of in Prynne’s philosophy, were the Jesuit +Casuists, who, by a fatal perverseness, used all their little +knowledge of human nature to the same undesirable purpose as the +playwrights; namely, to prove how it was possible to commit every +conceivable sinful action without sinning. No wonder that +in an age in which courtiers and theatre-haunters were turning +Romanists by the dozen, and the priest-ridden queen was the chief +patroness of the theatre, the Puritans should have classed +players and Jesuits in the same category, and deduced the +parentage of both alike from the father of lies.</p> +<p>But as for these Puritans having been merely the sour, narrow, +inhuman persons they are vulgarly supposed to have been, +<i>credat Judæus</i>. There were sour and narrow men +among them; so there were in the opposite party. No Puritan +could have had less poetry in him, less taste, less feeling, than +Laud himself. But is there no poetry save words? No +drama save that which is presented on the stage? Is this +glorious earth, and the souls of living men, mere prose, as long +as ‘<i>carent vate sacro</i>,’ who will, forsooth, do +them the honour to make poetry out of a little of them (and of +how little!) by translating them into words, which he himself, +just in proportion as he is a good poet, will confess to be +clumsy, tawdry, ineffectual? Was there no poetry in these +Puritans because they wrote no poetry? We do not mean now +the unwritten tragedy of the battle-psalm and the charge; but +simple idyllic poetry and quiet home-drama, love-poetry of the +heart and the hearth, and the beauties of everyday human +life. Take the most commonplace of them: was Zeal-for-Truth +Thoresby, of Thoresby Rise in Deeping Fen, because his father had +thought fit to give him an ugly and silly name, the less of a +noble lad? Did his name prevent his being six feet +high? Were his shoulders the less broad for it, his cheeks +the less ruddy for it? He wore his flaxen hair of the same +length that every one now wears theirs, instead of letting it +hang half-way to his waist in essenced curls; but was he +therefore the less of a true Viking’s son, bold-hearted as +his sea-roving ancestors who won the Danelagh by Canute’s +side, and settled there on Thoresby Rise, to grow wheat and breed +horses, generation succeeding generation, in the old moated +grange? He carried a Bible in his jack-boot: but did that +prevent him, as Oliver rode past him with an approving smile on +Naseby field, thinking himself a very handsome fellow, with his +moustache and imperial, and bright red coat, and cuirass well +polished, in spite of many a dint, as he sate his father’s +great black horse as gracefully and firmly as any long-locked and +essenced cavalier in front of him? Or did it prevent him +thinking, too, for a moment, with a throb of the heart, that +sweet Cousin Patience far away at home, could she but see him, +might have the same opinion of him as he had of himself? +Was he the worse for the thought? He was certainly not the +worse for checking it the next instant, with manly shame for +letting such ‘carnal vanities’ rise in his heart +while he was ‘doing the Lord’s work’ in the +teeth of death and hell: but was there no poetry in him +then? No poetry in him, five minutes later, as the long +rapier swung round his head, redder and redder at every +sweep? We are befooled by names. Call him Crusader +instead of Roundhead, and he seems at once (granting him only +sincerity, which he had, and that of a right awful kind) as +complete a knight-errant as ever watched and prayed, ere putting +on his spurs, in fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath ‘storied +windows richly dight.’ Was there no poetry in him, +either, half an hour afterwards, as he lay bleeding across the +corpse of the gallant horse, waiting for his turn with the +surgeon, and fumbled for the Bible in his boot, and tried to hum +a psalm, and thought of Cousin Patience, and his father, and his +mother, and how they would hear, at least, that he had played the +man in Israel that day, and resisted unto blood, striving against +sin and the Man of Sin?</p> +<p>And was there no poetry in him, too, as he came wearied along +Thoresby dyke, in the quiet autumn eve, home to the house of his +forefathers, and saw afar off the knot of tall poplars rising +over the broad misty flat, and the one great abele tossing its +sheets of silver in the dying gusts; and knew that they stood +before his father’s door? Who can tell all the pretty +child-memories which flitted across his brain at that sight, and +made him forget that he was a wounded cripple? There is the +dyke where he and his brothers snared the great pike which stole +the ducklings—how many years ago?—while pretty little +Patience stood by trembling, and shrieked at each snap of the +brute’s wide jaws; and there, down that long dark lode, +ruffling with crimson in the sunset breeze, he and his brothers +skated home in triumph with Patience when his uncle died. +What a day that was! when, in the clear bright winter noon, they +laid the gate upon the ice, and tied the beef-bones under the +four corners, and packed little Patience on it. How pretty +she looked, though her eyes were red with weeping, as she peeped +out from among the heap of blankets and horse-hides; and how +merrily their long fen-runners whistled along the ice-lane, +between the high banks of sighing reed, as they towed home their +new treasure in triumph, at a pace like the race-horse’s, +to the dear old home among the poplar-trees. And now he was +going home to meet her, after a mighty victory, a deliverance +from heaven, second only in his eyes to that Red Sea one. +Was there no poetry in his heart at that thought? Did not +the glowing sunset, and the reed-beds which it transfigured +before him into sheets of golden flame, seem tokens that the +glory of God was going before him in his path? Did not the +sweet clamour of the wild-fowl, gathering for one rich pæan +ere they sank into rest, seem to him as God’s bells chiming +him home in triumph, with peels sweeter and bolder than those of +Lincoln or Peterborough steeple-house? Did not the very +lapwing, as she tumbled, softly wailing, before him, as she did +years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the name of +heaven?</p> +<p>Fair Patience, too, though she was a Puritan; yet did not her +cheek flush, her eye grow dim, like any other girl’s, as +she saw far off the red coat, like a sliding spark of fire, +coming slowly along the strait fen-bank, and fled upstairs into +her chamber to pray, half that it might be, half that it might +not be he? Was there no happy storm of human tears and +human laughter when he entered the courtyard gate? Did not +the old dog lick his Puritan hand as lovingly as if it had been a +Cavalier’s? Did not lads and lasses run out +shouting? Did not the old yeoman father hug him, weep over +him, hold him at arm’s length, and hug him again, as +heartily as any other John Bull, even though the next moment he +called all to kneel down and thank Him who had sent his boy home +again, after bestowing on him the grace to bind kings in chains +and nobles with links of iron, and contend to death for the faith +delivered to the saints? And did not Zeal-for-Truth look +about as wistfully for Patience as any other man would have done, +longing to see her, yet not daring even to ask for her? And +when she came down at last, was she the less lovely in his eyes +because she came, not flaunting with bare bosom, in tawdry finery +and paint, but shrouded close in coif and pinner, hiding from all +the world beauty which was there still, but was meant for one +alone, and that only if God willed, in God’s good +time? And was there no faltering of their voices, no light +in their eyes, no trembling pressure of their hands, which said +more, and was more, ay, and more beautiful in the sight of Him +who made them, than all Herrick’s Dianemes, Waller’s +Saccharissas, flames, darts, posies, love-knots, anagrams, and +the rest of the insincere cant of the court? What if +Zeal-for-Truth had never strung two rhymes together in his +life? Did not his heart go for inspiration to a loftier +Helicon when it whispered to itself, ‘My love, my dove, my +undefiled, is but one,’ than if he had filled pages with +sonnets about Venuses and Cupids, lovesick shepherds and cruel +nymphs?</p> +<p>And was there no poetry, true idyllic poetry, as of +Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline’ itself in that trip +round the old farm next morning; when Zeal-for-Truth, after +looking over every heifer, and peeping into every sty, would +needs canter down by his father’s side to the horse-fen, +with his arm in a sling; while the partridges whirred up before +them, and the lurchers flashed like gray snakes after the hare, +and the colts came whinnying round, with staring eyes and +streaming manes; and the two chatted on in the same sober +businesslike English tone, alternately of ‘The Lord’s +great dealings’ by General Cromwell, the pride of all +honest fen-men, and the price of troop-horses at the next +Horncastle fair?</p> +<p>Poetry in those old Puritans? Why not? They were +men of like passions with ourselves. They loved, they +married, they brought up children; they feared, they sinned, they +sorrowed, they fought—they conquered. There was +poetry enough in them, be sure, though they acted it like men, +instead of singing it like birds.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3" +class="footnote">[3]</a> <i>The North British Review</i>, +No. XLIX.—1. ‘Works of Beaumont and +Fletcher.’ London, 1679.—2. ‘Works of Ben +Jonson.’ London, 1692—3. +‘Massinger’s Plays.’ Edited by William +Gifford, Esq. London, 1813.—4. ‘Works of John +Webster.’ Edited, etc., by Rev. Alexander Dyce. +Pickering, London, 1830. 5. ‘Works of James +Shirley.’ Edited by Rev. A. Dyce. Murray, +1833.—6. ‘Works of T. Middleton.’ Edited +by the Rev. A. Dyce. Lumley, 1840.—7. +‘Comedies,’ etc. By Mr. William +Cartwright. London, 1651.—8. ‘Specimens +of English Dramatic Poets.’ By Charles Lamb. +Longmans and Co., 1808—9. +‘Histriomastix.’ By W. Prynne, Utter-Barrister +of Lincoln’s Inn. London, 1633.—10. +‘Northbrooke’s Treatise against Plays,’ +etc. (Shakspeare Soc.), 1843.—11. ‘The Works of +Bishop Hall.’ Oxford, 1839.—12. +‘Marston’s Satires.’ London, 1600. +13. ‘Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Profaneness, +etc., of the English Stage.’ London, 1730.—14. +‘Langbaine’s English Dramatists.’ Oxford, +1691.—15. ‘Companion to the Playhouse.’ +London, 1764.—16. ‘Riccoboni’s Account of +the Theatres in Europe. 1741.</p> +<p><a name="footnote27a"></a><a href="#citation27a" +class="footnote">[27a]</a> ‘The Third Blast of +Retreat from Plays and Theatres.’ Penned by a +Play-poet.</p> +<p><a name="footnote27b"></a><a href="#citation27b" +class="footnote">[27b]</a> This was written sixteen years +ago. We have become since then more amenable to the +influences of French civilisation.</p> +<p><a name="footnote46"></a><a href="#citation46" +class="footnote">[46]</a> What canon of cleanliness, now +lost, did Cartwright possess, which enabled him to pronounce +Fletcher, or indeed himself, purer than Shakspeare, and his times +‘nicer’ than those of James? To our generation, +less experienced in the quantitative analysis of moral dirt, they +will appear all equally foul.</p> +<p><a name="footnote53"></a><a href="#citation53" +class="footnote">[53]</a> C. Lamb, ‘Specimens of +English Dramatic Poets,’ p. 229. From which +specimens, be it remembered, he has had to expunge not only all +the comic scenes, but generally the greater part of the plot +itself, to make the book at all tolerable.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAYS AND PURITANS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 3142-h.htm or 3142-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/4/3142 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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