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diff --git a/old/plpur10.txt b/old/plpur10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5af014 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/plpur10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2460 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext Plays and Puritans, by Charles Kingsley +#9 in our series by Charles Kingsley + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. "Plays and +Puritans and Other Historical Essays" edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +PLAYS AND PURITANS {1} + +by Charles Kingsley + + + + +The 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 'AEsthetic' +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. + +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. + +Some men's thoughts on this curious fact would probably take the form +of some aesthetic a priori 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 scientia scientiarum, 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 aesthetic 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.' + +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 ancien +regirne, were to paint that profligacy as the men of the ancien +regime 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. + +'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. + +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 +naive blasphemy, at which one knows not whether to smile or sigh - + + +'When God, the cause to me and men unknown, +Forsook the royal houses, and his own.' + + +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 praejudicium. 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. + + +In the face of this danger we will go on to say as much as we dare of +the great cause, Puritans v. 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. + + +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. + +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.' + +'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. + +* * * + +He then goes on to account for the supposed sudden fall of dramatic +art at the Restoration, by the somewhat far-fetched theory that - + + +'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.' + + +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."' + +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. + +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. + +Massinger in his 'King and the Subject' had introduced Don Pedro of +Spain thus speaking - + + +'Monies! We'll raise supplies which way we please, +And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which +We'll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Caesars +In Rome were wise, acknowledging no law +But what their swords did ratify, the wives +And daughters of the senators bowing to +Their will, as deities,' etc. + + +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. + +Where, then, do the facts of history contradict Mr. Gifford? + +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 Moliere, was excited by +the English cavalier playwrights who took refuge in France. + +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 Mirror +for Magistrates. 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. + +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. + +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 mariage de +convenance, 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.e. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 praejudicium +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. Non ragionam di lor: ma guarda e passa. + +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. + +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):- + + +'What mischief have we among us which we have not borrowed? + +'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. + + +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. + +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 - + + +'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.' + + +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.' {2} + +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. {3} Why, in all fairness, +were the Puritans wrong in condemning that which we now have +absolutely forbidden? + +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. + +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 malus animus: +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. + +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:- + + +'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.' + + +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:- + + +'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.' + + +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.e. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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, + + +'Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, +The love of love.' + + +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. + +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? + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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; disjecta membra poetae +such as these, which, even although addressed to James, are perfect:- + + +'3rd Gipsy. + +Look how the winds upon the waves grow tame, + Take up land sounds upon their purple wings, +And, catching each from other, bear the same + To every angle of their sacred springs. +So will we take his praise, and hurl his name + About the globe, in thousand airy rings.' + +* * * * + +Let us pass on. Why stay to look upon the fall of such a spirit? + +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 protege, 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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +'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. + + +'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.' + + +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 + + +'Shakspeare to thee was dull, whose best wit lies +I' th' ladies' questions, and the fool's replies. +* * * * * +Whose wit our nice times would obsceneness call. +* * * * * +Nature was all his art; thy vein was free +As his, but without his scurrility;' {4} + + +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? + +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.' + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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' {5}--and 'seeming to +see that matchless beauty of her face, which inspires such gay +confidence in her,' and so forth. + +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, Cui bono? 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? + +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. + +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,--'ne valant pas la peine qui se donne pour lui.' 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 - + + +'Cariola. Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers! Alas +What will you do with my lady? Call for help! +Duchess. To whom? to our next neighbours? they are mad folk. +Farewell, Cariola. +I pray thee look thou giv'st my little boy +Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl +Say her prayers ere she sleep.--Now, what you please; +What death?' + + +And so the play ends, as does 'Vittoria Corrombona,' with half a +dozen murders coram populo, 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. + +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.' + +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."' + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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, + + +'A man careless +Of wounds; and though he have not had the luck +To kill so many as another, dares +Fight with all them that have.' + + +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. + +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. + +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 OEschron the poet, that 'he could not tell what +OEschron 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 + + +'In thee Ben Jonson still held Shakspeare's style'; + + +or that he possest + + +'Lucan's bold heights match'd to staid Virgil's care, +Martial's quick salt, joined to Musaeus' tongue.' + + +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. + + + ''Tis the good man's office +To serve and reverence woman, as it is +The fire's to burn; for as our souls consist +Of sense and reason, so do yours, more noble, +Of sense and love, which doth as easily calm +All your desires, as reason quiets ours. . +Love, then, doth work in you, what Reason doth +In us; here only lies the difference, - +Ours wait the lingering steps of Age and Time; +But the woman's soul is ripe when it is young; +So that in us what we call learning, is +Divinity in you, whose operations, +Impatient of delay, do outstrip time.' + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 + + +'The state is now past fear; and all that we +Need wish besides is perpetuity'; + + +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 + + + 'A son of Mirth, +Of Peace and Friendship; 'tis a quiet birth.' + + +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 - + + +'They are good silly people; souls that will +Be cheated without trouble: one eye is +Put out with zeal, th' other with ignorance, +And yet they think they're eagles.' + + +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.' + + +'But, after all, what Poetry and Art there was in that day, good or +bad, all belonged to the Royalists. + +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. + + +'Of gorgeous tragedy, +Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line, +Or the Tale of Troy divine, +Or what, though rare, of later age, +Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage.' + + +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. + +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 - + + +'The hemisphere of earth, in clearest ken, +Stretched to the amplest reach of prospect, lies.' + + +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 experimentum crucis, when he trenches upon ground heathen and +questionable, and tries the court poets at their own weapons - + + +'Or whether (as some sager sing), +The frolic wind that breathes the spring, +Zephyr, with Aurora playing, +As he met her once a-Maying, +There on beds of violets blue, +And fresh-blown roses washed in dew--' + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.' + +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.e. 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 daedalian +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. + +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. + +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 Manichaeism 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. + +But as for these Puritans having been merely the sour, narrow, +inhuman persons they are vulgarly supposed to have been, credat +Judaeus. 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 'carent vate sacro,' 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? + +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 paean 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? + +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? + +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? + +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. + + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} The North British Review, 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. + +{2} 'The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres.' Penned by +a Play-poet. + +{3} This was written sixteen years ago. We have become since then +more amenable to the influences of French civilisation. + +{4} 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. + +{5} 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext Plays and Puritans, by Charles Kingsley + diff --git a/old/plpur10.zip b/old/plpur10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b54f30 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/plpur10.zip |