Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Leatherhead. No. I have entreated Master Littlewit to take a little pains to reduce it to a more familiar strain for our people.

Cokes. How I pray thee, good Master Littlewit.

Littlewit. ....I have only made it a little easy and modern for the times Sir, that's all. As for the Hellespont I imagine our Thames here; and then Leander I make a dyers son about Puddle Wharf, and Hero a wench o' the Bankside, who, going over one morning to Old Fish Street, Leander spies her land at Trig stairs and falls in love with her. Now do I introduce Cupid, having metamorphosed himself into a drawer, and he strikes Hero in love with a pint of Sherry and other pretty passages. (ν. 3.) 1614. Then follows a skit on Hero and Leander parallel to the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It is usually a correct assumption that the Clergy are the best educated class in the community. Certainly in the Elizabethan epoch this was so; yet from the record of the Chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury we learn that in the year 1563, of 116 clergymen in the Archdeaconry of London, 42 were almost Latinless, 13 had no tincture of classic learning whatever and 4 were indocti,' so uniformly ignorant and untrained that their tenure of clerical offices was scandalous. Of the other 57 ecclesiastics, 3 were described as "docti latine et graece," 12 as "docti," 2 as "mediocriter docti," 9 as "latine docti," whilst against the names of the remaining 31 were appended the words "latine mediocriter intell." 1

If the London clergy were thus unlearned, it would be superfluous to deprecate the ignorance of Cokes the " Esquire of Harrow." To the plebeian crowd fully one half of the Elizabethan drama must have been caviare utterly beyond their reach. Even the titles were too much for Henslowe the proprietor of the Rose Theatre. We find him for instance gravelled by Titus Andronicus "Titus and Ondronicus" as he styles it in

-or

his Diary.

It is strange that the actor dramatists display a contrariety in nature by depicting their profession, not as the salt of the Earth, but in colours as contemptible as public estimation regarded it. Everywhere with the exception of perhaps in Hamlet and The Roman Actor we find the stage player exhibited as an ignorant and ridiculous windbag, raising a tempest with his lungs and thundering with his heels; arriving on the stage with a huge word and a great trample; tearing a passion to rags; leering with a saucy glavering grace and exhibiting neither the gait nor accent of a Christian. The anonymous author of The Taming of a Shrew (1594) represents him as incapable of speaking the Queen's English.

Now Sir, what store of plays have you ? Ist Player. Marry my Lord, you may have a tragical or a commodity, or what you will. 2nd Player. A comedy thou should'st say. Zounds thou't shame us all !

The abundance of similar testimony adds to our

I See "A Book about the Clergy," Jeaffreson. vol. 11. p. 286

perplexity not merely as to how an Elizabethan audience appreciated the superfluity of foreign quotations and classical allusions, but how the players ever succeeded in mouthing them.

But the dramatists were not satisfied with mere naked and pedantic references to the tales and fables of antiquity; they infused these with metaphorical meanings and embroidered them with imagery. In this respect their treatment of the story of Orpheus is noteworthy as it coincides to minute detail with the "deep and rich interpretation placed upon it by Francis Bacon in De Sapientia Veterum.

[ocr errors]

Bacon observes, "Upon deliberate consideration, my judgment is that a concealed instruction and allegory was originally intended in many of the ancient fables. This opinion may, in some respect, be owing to the veneration I have for antiquity, but more to observing that some fables discover a great and evident similitude, relation, and connection with the thing they signify, as well in the structure of the fable as in the propriety of the whereby the persons or actors are characterized ; insomuch, that no one could positively deny a sense and meaning to be from the first intended, and purposely shadowed out in them."

names

In the prefatory dedication he states. "But if any one should reckon trite the things set before him, I reply that plainly it is not for me to judge of the result of my efforts; but my object has been to pass beyond the obvious, the ordinary and the common-place, and to throw some light upon the difficult things of life, and the secrets of science. Thus though to the vulgar comprehension my work will seem vulgar, yet perhaps

it will not fail the loftier understanding, but rather, as I hope, lead it onwards."

I am convinced that Bacon regarded his treatment of the Orpheus legend as his expository chef d'œuvre : he alludes to it so frequently and so lovingly. In his Discourse on the Plantation in Ireland he says that the fable was " anciently interpreted of the reducing and plantation of kingdoms; when people of barbarous brought to give over and discontinue their customs of revenge and blood and of dissolute life and of theft and rapine, and to give ear to the wisdom of laws and goverments.

2

[ocr errors]

manners are

1

But I have not been able to trace the "ancient interpretation " to which, in what I think is merely a modest figure of speech, he thus refers. In De Sapientia Veterum, published a year later in 1609, he unequivocally asserts that, "The fable of Orpheus though trite and common has never been well interpreted. That his exposition was new, deep, rich, and original he evidently believed. "For myself therefore I expect to appear new in these common things, because, leaving such as are sufficiently plain and open I shall drive only at those that are either deep or rich." The exposition he then puts forward is as follows :

"The meaning of this fable appears to be thus : Orpheus music is of two sorts.... the first may be fitly applied to natural philosophy, the second to moral or civil discipline.... Philosophy.... by persuasion and eloquence insinuating the love

I

Discourse on the Plantation in Ireland 1608. Spedding IV.

[blocks in formation]

of virtue, equity, and concord in the minds of man, draws multitudes of men to a society, makes them subject to laws, obedient to government.

[ocr errors]

How profoundly deep a hold this notion had upon his mind is testified by the fact that in the grounds of his home at Gorhambury he erected a statue of Orpheus inscribed PHILOSOPHY PER

SONIFIED.

It has already been shewn that Bacon and the dramatists regarded the Soul as a musical instrument. It is a pregnant fact that Bacon viewed the Stage as the archet or bow with which to play upon this instrument; Poetry, apparently as the resin with which to make this bowstring bite. His words are, "True History through the frequent satiety and similitude of things works a distaste and misprision in the mind of man; Poesy cheereth and refresheth the soul, chanting things rare and various and full of vicissitudes. So, as Poesy serveth and conferreth to Delectation, Magnanimity and Morality; therefore it may seem deservedly to have some participation of Divineness, because it doth raise the mind and exalt the spirit with high raptures by proportioning the shews of things to the desires of the mind; and not submitting the mind to things, as Reason and History do. And by these allurements and congruities, whereby it cherisheth the soul of man; joined also with consort of Music, whereby it may more sweetly insinuate itself, it hath won such access that it hath been in estimation even in rude times and barbarous nations when other Learning stood excluded. Dramatical or Representative Poesy which brings the World upon the stage is of excellent use if it were not abused.

« AnteriorContinuar »