Gosson, as we have seen, attacks the Stage, | Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and not only for its especial abuses, but because therefore never lieth; for, as I take it, to lie it partakes of the general infamy of Poetry. is to affirm that to be true which is false: So According to this declaimer, it is "the whole as the other artists, and especially the hispractice of poets, either with fables to show torian, affirming many things, can, in the their abuses, or with plain terms to unfold cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape their mischief, discover their shame, discre- from many lies: But the poet, as I said bedit themselves, and disperse their poison fore, never affirmeth, the poet never maketh throughout the world." Gosson dedicated any circles about your imagination to conhis 'School of Abuse' to Sidney; and Spen- jure you to believe for true what he writeth: ser, in one of his letters to Gabriel Harvey, He citeth not authorities of other histories, shows how Sidney received the compliment: but even for his entry calleth the sweet -"New books I hear of none: but only of Muses to aspire unto him a good invention: one that, writing a certain book called 'The | In troth, not labouring to tell you what is School of Abuse,' and dedicating it to Master or is not, but what should or should not be. Sidney, was for his labour scorned; if, at least, And therefore, though he recount things not it be in the goodness of that nature to scorn. true, yet, because he telleth them not for Such folly is it not to regard aforehand the true, he lieth not, unless we will say that inclination and quality of him to whom we Nathan lied in his speech, before alleged, to dedicate our books." We have no doubt that David; which as a wicked man durst scarce the 'Defence of Poesy,' or, as it was first say, so think I none so simple would say that called, 'An Apology for Poetry,' was intended Æsop lied in the tales of his beasts; for who as a reply to the dedicator. There is every thinketh that Æsop wrote it for actually true reason to believe that it was written in 1581. were well worthy to have his name chroSidney can scarcely avoid pointing at Gosson nicled among the beasts he writeth of. What when he speaks of the "Poet-haters " as of child is there that, coming to a play and seeing "people who seek a praise by dispraising Thebes' written in great letters upon an others," that they "do prodigally spend a old door, doth believe that it is Thebes? If great many wandering words in quips and then a man can arrive to the child's age, to scoffs, carping and taunting at each thing know that the poet's persons and doings are which, by stirring the spleen, may stay the but pictures what should be, and not stories brain from a thorough beholding the worthi- what have been, they will never give the lie ness of the subject." We have seen how the to things not affirmatively, but allegorically early fanatical writers against the stage held and figuratively, written; and therefore, as that a Poet and a Liar were synonymous. in history, looking for truth, they may go To this ignorant invective, calculated for the away full fraught with falsehood, so in poesy, lowest understandings, Sidney gives a brief looking but for fiction, they shall use the and direct answer:-" "That they should be narration but as an imaginative ground-plat the principal liars, I answer paradoxically, of a profitable invention." but truly, I think truly, that, of all writers ¦ under the sun, the poet is the least liar, and, though he would, as a poet can scarcely be a liar. The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry? And no less of the rest which take upon them to affirm:

the

The notion of Sidney's time evidently was, that nothing ought to be presented upon stage but what was an historical fact; that all the points belonging to such a history should be given; and that no art should be used in setting it forth beyond that necessary to give the audience, not to make them comprehend, all the facts. It is quite clear that such a process will present us little of the poetry or the philosophy of history. The play-writers of 1580, weak masters as they were, knew their art better than Gosson;

C

have tasted like torment: some, having noted the ensamples how maidens restrained from the marriage of those whom their friends have misliked, have there learned a policy to prevent their parents by stealing them away: some, seeing by ensample of the stage-player one carried with too much liking of another man's wife, having noted by what practice she has been assailed and overtaken, have not failed to put the like in effect in earnest that was afore shown in jest. . . . The device of carrying and recarrying letters by laundresses, practising with pedlars to transport their tokens by colourable means to sell their merchandise, and other kind of policies to beguile fathers of their children, husbands of their wives, guardians of their wards, and masters of their servants, is it not aptly taught in 'The School of Abuse?"" Perhaps the worst abuse of the stage of this period was the licence of the clown or fool -an abuse which the greatest and the most successful of dramatic writers found it essential to denounce and put down. The author of "The Blast of Retreat' has described this vividly:-" And all be [although] these pastimes were not, as they are, to be condemned simply of their own nature, yet because they are so abused they are abominable. For the Fool no sooner showeth himself in his colours, to make men merry, but straightway lightly there followeth some vanity, not only superfluous, but beastly and wicked. Yet we, so carried away by his unseemly gesture and unreverenced scorning, that we seem only to be delighted in him, and are not content to sport ourselves with modest mirth, as the matter gives occasion, unless it be intermixed with knavery, drunken merriments, crafty cunnings, undecent jugglings, clownish conceits, and such other cursed mirth, as is both odious in the sight of God, and offensive to honest ears."

they made history attractive by changing it | secret friends, whom they have thought to into a melo-drama :-" The poets drive it (a true history) most commonly unto such points as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical speeches, or set the heroes agog with discourses of love, or paint a few antics to fit their own humours with scoffs and taunts, or bring in a show to furnish the stage when it is bare. When the matter of itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out. So was the history of Cæsar and Pompey,' and the play of 'The Fabii,' at the theatre both amplified there where the drums might walk or the pen ruffle. When the history swelled or ran too high for the number of the persons who should play it, the poet with Proteus cut the same to his own measure: when it afforded no pomp at all, he brought it to the rack to make it serve. Which invincibly proveth on my side that plays are no images of truth." The author of "The Blast of Retreat,' who describes himself as formerly "a great affector of that vain art of play-making," charges the authors of historical plays not only with expanding and curtailing the action, so as to render them no images of truth, but with changing the historical facts altogether:-" If they write of histories that are known, as the life of Pompey, the martial affairs of Cæsar, and other worthies, they give them a new face, and turn them out like counterfeits to show themselves on the stage." From the author of "The Blast of Retreat' we derive the most accurate account of those comedies of intrigue of which none have come down to us from this early period of the drama. We might fancy he was describing the productions of Mrs. Behn or Mrs. Centlivre, in sentences that might appear to be quoted from Jeremy Collier's attacks upon the stage more than a century later :—“ Some, by taking pity upon the deceitful tears of the stage-lovers, have been moved by their complaint to rue on their plays, who are not unfitly so called."

The editor of the tract appends a note :-"He meaneth

CHAPTER V.

THE EARLIEST HISTORICAL DRAMA.

WHEN the ancient pageants and mysteries had been put down by the force of public opinion,-when spectacles of a dramatic character had ceased to be employed as instruments of religious instruction, the professional players who had sprung up founded their popularity for a long period upon the old habits and associations of the people. Our drama was essentially formed by a course of steady progress, and not by rapid transition. We are accustomed to say that the drama was created by Shakspere, Marlow, Greene, Kyd, and a few others of distinguished genius; but they all of them worked upon a rough foundation which was ready for them. The superstructure of real tragedy and comedy had to be erected upon the moral plays, the romances, the histories, which were beginning to be popular in the very first days of Queen Elizabeth, and continued to be so, even in their very rude forms, beyond the close of her long reign.

In the controversial writers who, about 1580, attacked and defended the early Stage, we find no direct mention of those Histories, "borrowed out of our English Chronicles, wherein our forefathers' valiant acts, that have been long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books, are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence." This is a description of the early Chronicle Histories of the stage, as given by Thomas Nashe, in 1592. Nashe goes on to say:-" In plays, all cosenages, all cunning drifts, over-gilded with outward holiness, all stratagems of war, all the cankerworms that breed in the rust of peace, are most lively anatomised. They show the ill success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissention, and how just God is evermore in punishing murder. And to prove every one of these allegations could I propound the circumstances of this play and

that." In the same pamphlet Nashe describes the plays to the performance of which "in the afternoon" resorted " men that are their own masters, as gentlemen of the court, the inns of court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London." To this audience, then,-not the rudest or least refined, however idle and dissipated,-the representation of some series of events connected with the history of their country had a charm which, according to Nashe, was to divert them from grosser excitements. In another passage the same writer says, "What a glorious thing it is to have King Henry V. represented on the stage leading the French king prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dauphin to swear fealty." Something like this dramatic action is to be found in one of those elder historical plays which have come down to us,

The Famous Victories of

Henry V., containing the Honourable Battle of Agincourt.' Nothing can be ruder or more inartificial than the dramatic conduct of The Famous Victories:' nothing grosser than the taste of many of its dialogues. The old Coventry play of 'Hock Tuesday,' exhibited before Queen Elizabeth in Kenilworth Castle, in 1575, did not more essentially differ in the conduct of its action from the structure of a regular historical drama, than such a play as 'The Famous Victories' differed, in all that constitutes dramatic beauty and propriety, from the almost contemporary histories of Marlow and Shakspere. To understand what Shakspere especially did for English History, we may well bestow a little study upon this extraordinary composition.

"The Famous Victories' is a regal story; its scenes changing from the tavern to the palace, from England to France; now exhibiting the wild Prince striking the representative of his father on the seat of justice, and then, after a little while, the same Prince a hero and a conqueror. A raised floor furnishes ample room for all these dis

having this hint for a clown's licence, soon
renders the Chief Justice a very insignificant
personage. The real wit of Tarleton pro-
bably did much to render the dullness of
the early stage endurable by persons
of any
refinement. Henry Chettle, in his curious
production, 'Kind-Hartes Dreame,' written
about four years after Tarleton's death, thus
describes his appearance in a vision ;—“The
next, by his suit of russet, his buttoned cap,
his tabor, his standing on the toe, and other
tricks, I knew to be either the body or re-
semblance of Tarleton, who, living, for his
pleasant conceits was of all men liked, and,
dying, for mirth left not his fellow." The
Prince enters and demands the release of
his servant, which the Chief Justice refuses.
The scene which ensues when the Prince
strikes the Chief Justice is a remarkable ex-
ample of the poetical poverty of the early
stage. In the representation, the action
would of course be exciting, but the dialogue
which accompanies it is beyond comparison
bald and meaningless. The audience was,
however, compensated by Tarleton's iteration
of the scene:-" Faith, John, I'll tell thee
what thou shalt be my lord chief justice,
and thou shalt sit in the chair; and I'll be
the young prince, and hit thee a box on the
ear; and then thou shalt say, To teach you
what prerogatives mean, I commit you to
the Fleet." The Prince is next presented
really in prison, where he is visited by Sir
John Oldcastle. The Prince, in his dialogue
with Jockey, Ned, and Tom, again exhibits
himself as the basest and most vulgar of
ruffians; but, hearing his father is sick, he
goes to Court, and the bully, in the twink-
ling of an eye, becomes a saintly hypocrite :

plays. A painted board leads the imagina- | bar to the prisoner;" but what he adds, tion of the audience from one country to another; and when the honourable battle of Agincourt is to be fought," two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?" (Sidney-‘De- | fence of Poesy.') The curtain is removed, and without preparation we encounter the Prince in the midst of his profligacy. Ned and Tom are his companions; and when the Prince says, "Think you not that it was a villainous part of me to rob my father's receivers ?" Ned very charitably answers, "Why no, my lord, it was but a trick of youth." Sir John Oldcastle, who passes by the familiar name of Jockey, joins this pleasant company, and he informs the Prince that the town of Deptford has risen with hue and cry after the Prince's man who has robbed a poor carrier. The accomplished Prince then meets with the receivers whom he has robbed; and, after bestowing upon them the names of villains and rascals, he drives them off with a threat that if they say a word about the robbery he will have them hanged. With their booty, then, will they go to the tavern in Eastcheap, upon the invitation of the Prince :-"We are all fellows, I tell you, sirs; an the king my father were dead, we would be all kings." The scene is now London, with John Cobbler, Robin Pewterer, and Lawrence Costermonger keeping watch and ward in the accustomed style of going to sleep. There is short rest for them; for Derrick, the carrier who has been robbed by the Prince's servant, is come to London to seek his goods. Tarleton, the famous Clown, plays the Kentish carrier. It matters little what the author of the play has written down for him, for "Pardon me, sweet father, pardon me: his "wondrous plentiful pleasant extemporal good my lord of Exeter, speak for me; parwit" will do much better for the amusement don me, pardon, good father: not a word: of his audience than the dull dialogue of ah, he will not speak one word: ah, Harry, the prompt-books. In the scene before us now thrice unhappy Harry. But what shall he has to catch the thief, and to take him I do? I will go take me into some solitary before the Lord Chief Justice; and when place, and there lament my sinful life, the Court is set in order, and the Chief Jus- and, when I have done, I will lay me down tice cries, Gaoler, bring the prisoner to the and die". The scene where the Prince bar," Derrick speaks according to the book, removes the crown possesses a higher in——“ Hear you, my lord, I pray you bring the | terest, when we recollect the great parallel

:

scene of Shakspere's Henry IV. Part II., | Now trust me, my lords, I fear not but my son beginning Will be as warlike and victorious a prince As ever reigned in England."

"I never thought to hear you speak again.”

"The Famous Victories' was printed in 1594. In that copy much of the prose is chopped up into lines of various lengths, in order to look like some kind of measure :

Hen. V. Most sovereign lord, and well-beloved father,

Henry IV. dies; Henry V. is crowned; the evil companions are cast off; the Chief Justice is forgiven; and the expedition to France is resolved upon. To trace the course of the war would be too much for the patience of our readers. The clashing of the four swords and bucklers might have rendered its

I came into your chamber to comfort the melan- stage representation endurable.

choly

Soul of your body, and finding you at that time
Past all recovery, and dead to my thinking,
God is my witness, and what should I do,

But with weeping tears lament the death of you,
my father;

And after that, seeing the crown, I took it.
And tell me, my father, who might better take
it than I,

After your death? but, seeing you live,

I most humbly render it into your majesty's

hands,

And the happiest man alive that my father lives;
And live my lord and father for ever!

Hen. IV. Stand up, my son;

Thine answer hath sounded well in mine ears,
For I must needs confess that I was in a very
sound sleep,

And altogether unmindful of thy coming:
But come near, my son,

And let me put thee in possession whilst I live,
That none deprive thee of it after my death.

Hen. V. Well may I take it at your majesty's
hands,

But it shall never touch my head so long as my
father lives.
[He taketh the crown.
Hen. IV. God give thee joy, my son;
God bless thee and make thee his servant,

And send thee a prosperous reign;

'The True Tragedy of Richard III.' is the only other History, of which we possess a printed copy, that we can assign to the period before the first real dramatists. This old play is a work of higher pretension than 'The Famous Victories.' Like that play, it contains many prose speeches which are printed to have some resemblance to measured lines; but, on the other hand, there are many passages of legitimate verse which are run together as prose. The most ambitious part of before the battle: and this we transcribe :— the whole performance is a speech of Richard

For God knows, my son, how hardly I came by it, The moon by night eclipseth for revenge;

And how hardly I have maintained it.

Hen. V. Howsoever you came by it I know not;

The stars are turn'd to comets for revenge;
The planets change their courses for revenge;
The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge;

And now I have it from you, and from you I The silly lambs sit bleating for revenge;