To desperate ventures and assur'd destruction. For want of means, poor rats, had hang'd themselves: And not these bastard Bretagnes; whom our fathers What says lord Stanley? will he bring his power? K.Rich. Off instantly with his son George's head. After the battle let George Stanley die. K.Rich. A thousand hearts are great within my bosom: Advance our standards, set upon our foes; Our ancient word of courage, fair saint George, Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! Upon them! Victory sits on our helms. SCENE IV. [Exeunt. Another part of the field. Alarum: Excursions. Enter NORFOLK, and Forces; to him CATESBY. Cate. Rescue, my lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue ! The king enacts more wonders than a man, Daring an opposite to every danger; His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, [8] That is, fright the skies with the shivers of your lances. JOHNS. Seeking for Richm ond in the throat of death : Alarum. Enter King RICHARD. K. Rich. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! I think, there be six Richmonds in the field; A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! [Exeunt. Alarums. Enter King RICHARD and RICHMOND; and exeunt, fighting. Retreat, and Flourish. Then enter RICHMOND, STANLEY, bearing the Crown, with divers other Lords, and Forces. Richm. God, and your arms, be prais'd, victorious friends; The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. Stan.Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee! Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty, From the dead temples of this bloody wretch Richm. Great God of heaven, say, amen, to all!- Stan. He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town; And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament, [9] Shakspeare had good ground for this poetical exaggeration; Richard, according to Polydore Virgil, was determined, if possible, to engage with Richmond in single combat. For this purpose he rode furiously to that quarter of the field where the Earl was; attacked his stand ird-bearer, sir William Brandon and killed him; then assaulted sir John Cheny, whom he overthrew having thus at length cleared his way to his antagonist, he engaged in single combat with him and probably would have been victorious, but that at that instant sir William Stanley with three thousand men joined Richmond's army, and the royal forces fled with great precipitation, Richard was soon afterwards overpowered by numbers, and fell, fighting bravely to the last moment. MAL. What traitor hears me, and says not,-amen? O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth, That would with treason wound this fair land's peace! [Exeunt. I shall here subjoin two Notes, one by Mr. Theobald, and one by Dr. Warburton, upon the Vice. KING RICHARD III. ACT III. SCENE I. Page 46. Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word.] By Vice, the author means not a quality, but a person. There was hardly an old play, till the period of the Reformation, which had not in it a Devil, and a droll character, a jester, (who was to play upon the devil,) and this buffoon went by the name of a Vice. This buffoon was at first accoutred with a long jerkin, a cap with a pair of ass's ears, and a wooden dagger, with which (like another Harlequin) he was to make sport in belabouring the devil. This was the constant entertainment in the times of popery, whilst spirits, and witchcraft, and exorcising held their own. When the Reformation took place, the stage shook of some grossities, and increased in refine ments. The master-devil then was soon dismissed from the scene; and this buffoon was changed into a subordinate fiend, whose business was to range on earth, and seduce poor mortals into that personated vicious quality, which he occasionally supported; as, iniquity in general, hypocrisy, usury, vanity, prodigality, gluttony, &c. Now, as the fiend (or vice,) who personated Iniquity, (or Hypocrisy, for instance) could never hope to play his game to the purpose but by hiding his cloven foot, and assuming a semblance quite different from his real character; he must certainly put on a formal demeanour, moralize and prevaricate in his words, and pretend a meaning directly opposite to his genuine and primitive intention. If this does not explain the pas sage in question, it is all I can at present suggest upon it. THEO. That the buffoon, or jester of the old English farces, was called the vice, is certain and that, in their moral representations, it was common to bring in the deadly sins, is as true. Of these we have yet several remains. But that the vice used to assume the personage of those sins is a fancy of Mr. Theobald's. The truth is, the vice was always a fool or jester: and, (as the woman in The Merchant of Venice calls the Clown, alluding to this char acter,) a merry devil Whereas these moral sins were so many sad serious ones. But what misled our editor was the name Iniquity, given to this vice: But it was only on account of his unhappy tricks and rogueries. As this reading hath occasioned our saying something of the barbarities of theatrical representations amongst us before the time of Shakspeare, it may not be improper, for a better apprehension of this matter, to give the reader some general account of the rise and progress of the modern stage. The first form in which the drama appeared in the west of Europe, after the destruction of learned Greece and Rome, and that a calm of dullness had finished upon letters what the rage of barbarism had begun, was that of the Mysteries. These were the fashionable and favourite diversions of all ranks of people both in France, Spain, and England. In which last place, as we learn by Stowe, they were in use about the time of Richard the second and Henry the fourth As to Italy, by what I can find, the first rudiments of their stage, with regard to the matter, were profane subjects, and, with regard to the form, a corruption of the ancient mimes and attellanes: by which means they got sooner into the right road than their neighbours; having had regular plays amongst them wrote as early as the 15th century. As to these Mysteries, they were as their names speaks them a representation of some scripture-story, to the life as may be seen from the following passage in an old French history, intitled, La Chronique de Metz composee par le cure de St. Euchaire; which will give the reader no bad idea of the surprising absurdity of these strange representations: "L'an 1437 le 3 Juliet (says the honest Chronicler) fut fait le Jeu de la passion de N S. en la plaine de Veximiel. Et fut Dieu un sire appele Seigneur Nicole Dom Neufchastel lequel etoit Cure de St. Victour de Metz, lequel fut presque mort en la Croix, s'il ne fut ete secourus ; & convient qu'un autre Pretre fut mis en la Croix pour parfaire le Personnage du Crucifiment pour ce jour; & le lendermain le dit Cure de St. Victour parsit la Resurrection, et fit tres hautement son person. age; & dura le dit Jeu-Et autre Petre qui s'appelloit Mre. Jean de Nicey, qui estoit Chapelain de Metrange, fut Judas: lequel fut presque mort en pendent car le cuer il faillit, et fut bien hativement dependu & porte en Voye. Et etoit la bouche d'Enfer tres bien faite ; car elle ouvroit & clooit, quand les Diables y vouloient entrer et isser; & avoit deux gross Culs d' Acier," &c. Alluding to this kind of representations archbishop Harsnet, in his Declaration of Popish Impostures, p. 71, says "The little children were never so afraid of Hell-mouth in the old plays, painted with great gang teeth, staring eyes, and foul bottle nose." Garew in his survey of Cornwal gives a fuller description of them in these words, "The Cuary Miracle, in English a Miracle Play, is a kind of interlude compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history. For representing it,they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the diameter of an inclosed playne, some forty or fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides many miles off, to hear and see it. For they have therein devils and devices, to delight as well the eye as the ear. The players conne not their parts without book, but are prompted by one called the ordinary, who followeth at theit back with the book in his hand." &c. &c. There was always a droll or buffoon in these Mysteries, to make the people myrth with his sufferings or absurdities: and they could think of no better personage than the devil himself. Even in the mystery of the Passion mentioned above, is was contrived to make him ridiculous. Which circumstance is hinted at by Shakspeare (who had frequent allusions to these things) in The Taming of the Shrew, where one of the players asks for a little vinegar (as a property) to make the devil roar," for after the sponge with gall and vinegar had been employed in the representation, they used to clap it to the nose of the devil; which making him roar, as if it had been holy-water, afforded infinite diversion to the people. So that vinegar in the old farces, was always afterwards in use to torment their devil. We have divers old English proverbs, in which the devil is represented as acting or suffering ridiculously and absurdly, which all arose from the part he bore in these Mysteries,as in that for instance of Great cry and little wool as the devil said when he sheared his hogs. For the sheep-shearing of Nabal being repre sented in the mystery of David and Abigail, and the devil always attending Nabal, was made to imitate it by shearing a hog. This kind of absurdity, as it is the properest to create laughter, was the subject of the ridiculous in the ancient mimes, as we learn from these words of St. Austin: Ne faciamus ut mimi solent, et optemus a libero aquam, a lymphis vinum. These Mysteries, we see, were given in France at first, as well as in England, sub dio, and only in the provinces. Afterwards we find them got into Paris, and a company established in the Hotel de Bourgogne to represent them. But good letters and religion beginning to make their way in the latter end of the reign of Francis the first, the stupidity and prophaneness of the mysteries made the courtiers and clergy join their interest for their suppression. Accordingly, in the year 1541, the procurer-general, in the name of the king, presented a request against the company to the parliament. The three principal branches of his charge against them were, that the representation of the Old Testament stories inclined the people to Judaism; that the New Testament stories encouraged libertinism and infidelity; and that both of them lessened the charities to the poor: it seems that this prosecution succeeded: for, in 1548, the parliament of Paris confirmed the company in the possession of the Hotel de Bourgogne, but interdicted the representation of the Mysteries. But in Spain, we find by Cervantes, that they continued much longer; and held their own, even after good comedy came in amongst them. To return: Upon this prohibition, the French poets turned themselves from religious to moral farces. And in this we soon followed them: the public taste not suffering any great alteration at first, though the Italians at this time afforded many just compositions for better models. These farces they called Moralities. To this sad serious subject they added, though in a separate representation, a merry kind of farce called Sottie, in which there was un Paysan (the Clown) under the name of Sot Commun (or Fool.) But we, who borrow. ed all these delicacies from the French, blended the Moralitie and Sottie together: So that the Payson or Sot Commun, the Clown or Fool, got a place in our serious Moralities: Whose business we may understand in the frequent allusions our Shakspeare makes to them: as in these lines of Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. sc. 2: "So Portent-like I would o'er-rule his state, But the French, as we say, keeping these two sorts of farces distinct, they became, in time, the parents of tragedy and comedy; while we, by jumbling them together, begot in an evil hour, that mungrel species, unknown to nature and antiquity, called tragi-comedy. WARBURTON. I have nothing to add to these observations, but that some traces of this antiquated exhibition are still retained in the rustic puppet-plays, in which I have seen the Devil very lustily belaboured by Punch, whom I hold to be the egitimate successor of the old Vice. JOHNS. END OF VOL. V |