"SCENE-A Room in the Palace. A Flourish.-Enter EUPHRANEA, led by GRONEAS and HEMOPHIL: PROPHILUS. led by CHRISTALLA and PHILEMA: NEARCHUS Supporting CALANTHA, CBOTOLON, and AMELUS. Cal. We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus. On whom attend they? Whisper'd some new device, to which these revels Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors. Cal. A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes, Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes Cousin, hand you the bride: the bridegroom must be Euphranea; I shall scarcely prove a temptress. Fall to our dance! (They dance the first change, during which enter ARMOSTES.) Arm. (In a whisper to Calantha.) The king your father's dead. They dance the second change.-Enter BASSANES. Boss. (Whispers Calantha). Oh! Madam, Penthea, poor Penthea's starv'd. Cal. Beshrew thee! Lead to the next! Bass. Amazement dulls my senses. They dance the third change.-Enter ORGILUS. Org. Brave Ithocles is murder'd, murder'd cruelly. Cal. How dull this music sounds! Strike up more sprightly Our footings are not active like our heart,* Which treads the nimbler measure, Org. I am thunderstruck. The last change. Cal. So; let us breathe awhile. Rais'd fresher colours on our cheek? Near. Sweet princess, A perfect purity of blood enamels The beauty of your white. Cal. We all look cheerfully: (Music ceases.) Hath not this motion And, cousin, 'tis, methinks, a rare presumption * "High as our heart."-See passage from the Malcontent.' 6 In any who prefers our lawful pleasures Before their own sour censure, to interrupt Cal. Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver'd to me Arm. The king is dead," &c. &c. This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade. Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed by her solemn address at the altar to the dead body of her husband. "Cal. Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow (Places a ring on the finger of ITHOCLES.) Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am: Of death, and death, and death: still I danced forward; Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries Can vow a present end to all their sorrows, Yet live to court new pleasures, and outlive them: They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings: Let me die smiling. Near. 'Tis a truth too ominous. Cal. One kiss on these cold lips-my last: crack, crack Argos, now Sparta's king, command the voices Which wait at th' altar, now to sing the song I fitted for my end." And then, after the song, she dies. This is the true false gallop of sentiment: anything more artificial and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt, however, the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the author on the truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the whole scene is a forced transposition of that already alluded to in Marston's Malcontent.' Even the form of the stage directions is the same. Enter MENDOZo, supporting the DUCHESS; GUERRINO; the Ladies that are on the stage rise. FERRARDO ushers in the DUCHESS; then takes a Lady to tread a measure. Aurelia. We will dance. Music! we will dance. Enter PREPASSO. Who saw the Duke? the Duke? Aurelia. Music! Prepussa. The Duke? is the Duke returned? Enter CELSO. The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not. Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves. Enter a PAGE. Celso. Boy, thy master? where's the Duke? he Page. Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless limbs; told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for the strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I strait obeyed, nor ever saw him since; but wheresoe'er he is, he's sad. Aurelia. Music, sound high, as is our heart; sound high. Enter MALEVOLE and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit. Malevole. The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead. Aurelia. Music!" Act IV. Scene 3. The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy from this. That a woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the death of her husband whom she hates, without regard to common decency, is but too possible: that she should dance on with the same heroic perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her father, and of every one else whom she loves, from regard to common courtesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The passions may silence the voice of humanity, but it is, I think, equally against probability and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from necessity, for some great purpose, which is not the case in Ford's play; or it must be done for the effect and eclat of the thing, which is not fortitude but affectation. Mr. Lamb, in his impressive eulogy on this passage in 'The Broken Heart,' has failed (as far as I can judge) in establishing the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the story of the Spartan boy. It may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of the period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one other,) were men of classical education. They were learned men in an unlettered age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age. This circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakspeare, nearly all of them, indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began to write for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to London in those days must have had a singular effect upon a young man of genius, almost like visiting Babylon or Susa, or a journey to the other world. The stage (even as it then was,) after the recluseness and austerity of a college life, must have appeared like Armida's enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount, Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear: At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds." So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of the scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder and the scholar's pride: and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng, still has left a long lingering glory behind it; and though now "deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue," lives in their eloquent page, "informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!" LECTURE V. On Single Plays, Poems, &c.—The Four P's, The Return from Parnassus, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and other Works. I SHALL, in this lecture, turn back to give some account of single plays, poems, &c.; the authors of which are either not known or not very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical excellence. There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, than I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim at, will be to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it. 'The Four P's' is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours' profession, with much humour and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood, the Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry VIII., was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems to have had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his devotion to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1565. His zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have blinded his judgment, or to have prevented him from using the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have looked" with the malice of a friend.' 'The Four P's' bears the date of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of the wit, the manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in the dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on credulity and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact, they all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes a jest, and it ends in a wager who shall tell the greatest lie, when |