ting him to consider their cases with humanity and to lend them £5. A second document shews Field "unluckily taken on an execution for 30” and begging for £10. Of Dekker we know nothing definite, but according to Ben Jonson, he too was a rogue. There is an entry in Henslowe, "Lent unto the company the 4 of February 1598 to disecharge Mr Dickers owt of the cownter in the powltrey the some of fortie shillings, "Mr Dickers' " misfortunes seem to have been chronic, Oldys informing us that from 1613 to 1616 he was again in jail. Even the refined and courtly Lyly is described as "a mad lad as ever twang'd, never troubled with any substance of witt, or circumstance of honestie. "" 1 1 Gabriel Harvey (Pierce's Supererogation) 1593. CHAPTER II. THE SWEETNESS AND GRAVITY OF THE DRAMATIC MIND It has been the opinion of biographers that the Elizabethan dramatists wrote simply and solely for a livelihood. Of Shakespeare, Mr Sidney Lee considers that Pope had just warrant for the surmise that he, "For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight And grew immortal in his own despite. Halliwell-Phillipps is of the opinion that Shakespeare's "sole aim was to please an audience most of whom, be it remembered, were not only illiterate, but unable to either read or write. We learn from the Diary of Philip Henslowe the theatrical financier, how persistently he was dunned by the dramatists, and the various sums which he advanced to them from time to time. It would be rational to expect that plays written for popularity by such writers for such auditors, would reflect the prevailing ignorance and obscenity. There is reason to suppose that in the acting versions such was probably the case. Ben Jonson, in the dedication of Volpone (1605-1607), remarks: "Now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to role God and man, is practised..... I have ever trembled to think towards the least prophaneness, have loathed the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry as is now made the food of the scene. The printed plays which have come down to us display, however, few, if any, traces of this license; neither is there perceptible any suggestion of their having been written with a primary view to making money; but on the other hand, much evidence of a contrary spirit. Instead of mercenary motives the writers were apparently actuated by a religious fervour and a pitiful compassion for their fellow men. We find, for instance, the young trickster George Peele writing, "Then help Divine Adonai to conduct Upon the wings of my well tempered verse The hearers minds above the towers of Heaven." In a similar strain Massinger writes, Prosper thou Great Existence my endeavours as they religiously are undertaken and distant equally from servile gain. The profligate and disreputable dramatists were, apparently, inspired by the same humility as led the philosopher Bacon to believe he was born for the service of mankind, and to conclude the preface of his Great Instauration with the prayer, May Thou therefore O Father guard and direct this work which issuing from Thy goodness seeks in return Thy glory. "As In his Essay Of Discourse Bacon says: for jest there be certain things which ought to be privileged from it, namely, religion, matters of state, great persons.... and any case that deserveth pity, a sentiment which we find acted up to throughout all published plays of this period. It is, in point of fact, peculiarly emphasized; Webster, for example, writing, "I do not like this jesting with religion; " Massinger, "I much wonder you can raise mirth from his misery ; and Bird, "Who will venture on a jest that can rail on anothers pain, or idly scan affairs of state. The authors of The Age of Shakespeare, after reminding us that most, if not all the popular actors of the day were facial contortionists or jiggers, continue : "Aiming first and foremost at popular applause our early dramatists had of necessity to provide these popular favourites with suitable opportunities, which they often abused by introducing 'gag' of their own. Hence the strong and often exaggerated element of jigging and clownage in all our serious drama from Faustus even to Lear. There is admittedly much worthless and offensive farce in our old Drama, but it is relatively fractional. The majority is of such a character that it is an everlasting subject of wonder how the illiterate and disorderly rabble, for whose entertainment it was written, ever could have possibly endured it. What meaning was attached by "the shouting varletry" to such phrases as, for instance, " deracinating savagery, " "exsufflicate surmises, "the discandying of this pelleted storm," and "the multitudinous seas incarnadine ?" Was it acceptable to the groundlings, capable for the most part of nothing but inexplicable dumbshew and noise, to hear a crown described as an "inclusive verge of golden metal," and "sigh" as as a 'windy suspiration of forced a breath? " In pomp of speech Shakespeare is run very closely by most of his fellow dramatists; and in comparison with some of the Elizabethan Drama the Novum Organum is light reading. What scope for declamation or for " saucy and glavering grace was afforded by such a passage as, for instance, the following from Chapman's Admiral of France ? "I mean not sleep, which the philosophers call a natural cessation of the common, and consequently, of all the exterior senses, caused first and immediately by a detention of spirits, which can have no communication, since the way is obstructed by which these spirits should commerce, by vapours ascending from the stomach to the head, by which evaporation the roots of the nerves are filled, through which the animal spirits to be poured into the dwellings of the external senses; - but sleep, I take for death, which all know to be ultima linea. Rant and Rhetoric must have flagged and waxed feeble in face of lines such as: "That power of rule philosophers ascribe Of sublunary creatures, when themselves What ! |