"Let soft sleep, Binding my senses lose my working soul, As regards the other feature in the rival poet, the proud full sail of his great verse, that applies with almost too literal exactness to the Alexandrines of Chapman's Homer, part of which appeared in 1596; and as for its being bound for the prize of Shakespeare's patron, both Pembroke and Southampton were included in the list of those honoured with dedicatory sonnets in a subsequent edition. Chapman's chief patron was Sir Francis Walsingham, whose daughter Sir Philip Sidney had married, and nothing could have been more natural than that the old man should introduce his favourite to the Countess of Pembroke or her But apart from Alexandrines and proved or probable connection with Southampton and Pembroke, I contend that the other reference to Chapman is too pointed to be mistaken; and though Chapman's name has not received due prominence in the manuals of our literature, no one who has read any of his poetry, and who knows his own lofty pretensions and the rank accorded him in his own generation, will think that his "proud sail" has been unduly honoured by the affected jealousy and good-humoured banter of the "saucy bark" of Shakespeare. 293 CHAPTER VI. DRAMATISTS BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. A VERY natural question to ask, in beginning the study of the Elizabethan drama, is, What were the causes of that extraordinary outburst of creative genius? No satisfactory answer has yet been given to that question: perhaps none can be given. There the literature stands full grown; but when we are asked how it came there, we can do little more than point to the names of its creators, and say that their genius was equal to the task of producing it. We may, besides, interest ourselves in studying circumstances that may be presumed to have been favourable to its development, and may make a very good show in the way of general explanation. England had very recently passed through the crisis of the Reformation, and was still excited and exalted to an unusual pitch of energy by apprehensions of intestine plots and foreign invasion: the pulse of the country beat high with success and thirst for new enterprise. When men are unfortunate and despondent, they have no heart to go and look at the mimicry of action and passion: it is only when their enterprises succeed that they can go with free hearts and applaud the heroics of Tamburlaine or weep over the sorrows of Desdemona. The Elizabethans were prosperous in war and in commerce: they repelled the Spaniard, and brought home richly-laden argosies from east and west: they were strong, thriving, hopeful men, with nerves that could bear a good thrill of tragic horror, and sides that the most boisterous laughter was unable to shake too rudely. But one must have no small confidence in the power of general conditions over specific effects who would venture to say that our dramatists would never have come into existence, or would have sought some other line of activity, had Mary remained upon the throne instead of Elizabeth, and had England continued at peace with Spain. Doubtless a material basis of prosperity was indispensable to the support of dramatic entertainments: it was absolutely necessary that there should be enough free wealth to fill the theatres. But one fails to see what the stir of the Reformation had to do with the dramatic tendencies of Marlowe, or how the defeat of the Armada was concerned in the migration of Shakespeare from Stratford to the London stage. One thing is clear from the study of the literature preceding the great dramatic outburst, and that is, that there was abundance of material lying ready to the shaping and inspiring genius of the dramatist. There were numberless tales and chronicles of love and war to furnish him with plots or suggestions of plots: even if he knew no language but his own, the enterprise of printers had furnished him not only with the works of native poets and chroniclers, but with hosts of translations from Italian, French, and Latin. Observation of men was a prevailing passion, and literature was crowded with sententious maxims of character and politics. The passion of love had been expressed in many different moods and phases, and attempts had been made to treat with becoming gravity the tragic themes of disaster and death. Literature was undoubtedly ripe for dramatic embodiment. But why the accumulated wisdom and sentiment was thrown into the form of dramas and not into the form of prose tales, and why the dramatic form rose to such greatness, are problems that refuse to be solved by a study of general conditions: they throw us back for explanation upon the power of individual genius. The adoption of the dramatic form by no means began with Marlowe. We have seen how tragedies and comedies were written by Sackville, Edwards, and Gascoigne, in imitation and emulation of the Italians. Between 1568 and 1580, Mr Collier tells us, some fifty dramas from various sources, modern and classical, were presented at Court. But these, it may be presumed, were on the classical model, and the art of the classical drama is in a large measure narrative; the most moving incidents are related, not acted. Gascoigne and the translators of Seneca were unable to rise in their narrative above the level of the Mirror for Magistrates.' And if we may judge from the more original works of Sackville and Daniel, no productions on the classical model could have engaged public interest. Many tragedies were composed in English before Marlowe's "Tamburlaine;" but Marlowe may be called the founder of English tragedy, inasmuch as he gave the first conspicuous example of the fresh form that was taken up with such ardour by the great line of Elizabethan dramatists. Marlowe was not exactly the first to represent on the stage actions that the Greek dramatist supposed to take place behind the scenes and communicated to the audience in a subsequent narrative by an eyewitness. Among Mr Collier's reprints is an example of a mixed morality and history, containing the revenge of Orestes upon his mother and her paramour, and mixing up personified abstractions, Vice, Nature, Truth, Fame, Duty, with Orestes, Clytemnestra, Ægisthus, Menelaus, and other actual personages. In this drama there is a lively battle upon the stage, with a direction, "let it be long ere you can win the city ;" and though Clytemnestra is dismissed under custody, Ægisthus is seized, dragged violently, and hanged before the audience in spite of his entreaties for mercy. The date of this drama is 1567, and from it we may conclude that as early as that date the popular instinct had broken through the restrictions of Horace, founded as they were upon the natural limitations of a stage wholly different in structure and appointments from our own. While, at Court, frigid and artificial restrictions were maintained when the necessity for them no longer existed, they were cast aside in performances for the entertainment of the rude vulgar. Marlowe's position, therefore, is this: he did not originate the idea of bringing tragic action on the stage, but he was the first writer of plays whose genius was adequate to the powerful situations introduced by the popular instinct for dramatic effect. I. JOHN LYLY (1554-1606). John Lyly, the Euphuist,1 "the witty, comical, facetiously quick and unparalleled John Lyly," was our first extensive writer of comedies. He produced no fewer than nine pieces-one in blank verse, seven in prose, and one in rhyme. "The Woman in the Moon" (which is in blank verse, and which he calls "his first dream in Phoebus' holy bower," though not printed till 1597); "Alexander and Campaspe" (printed in 1584); "Sappho and Phao" (1584); "Endymion" (1591); "Galathea" (1592); "Midas" (1592); "Mother Bombie" (1594); "The Maid's Metamorphosis" (in rhyme and only probably his, 1600); "Love's Metamorphosis" (1601). Lyly's plays are the sort of gay, fantastic, insubstantial things that may catch widely as a transient fashion, but are too extravagant to receive sympathy from more than one generation : critics in general set their heels on his delicate constructions. His plays were acted by the children of the Revels, and he would seem to have indulged in airy and childish caprices of fancy to match. Perhaps he wrote with an abiding consciousness that ladies were to make the chief part of his audience, and thought only of bringing smiles on their faces with pretty quibbles and mildly sentimental or childishly jocular situations. In "Endymion," Tellus expresses surprise that Corsites, being a captain, "who should sound nothing but terror, and suck nothing but blood," talks so softly and politely. "It agreeth not with your calling," she says, "to use words so soft as that of love." And 1 I have given some account of his Euphuism in my Manual of English Prose Literature. Lyly was a great tobacco-taker: one wonders that no devoted champion of the weed has ever remarked the coincidence between its introduction and the beginning of the greatness of the English drama. |