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CHAPTER VIII.

SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES AND

SUCCESSORS.

THE more we read of Elizabethan literature, the more we become convinced of the vast superiority of Shakespeare. If one begins the study of the Elizabethan dramatists with a stern resolution to throw aside all prepossessions, and judge every man as if one had heard nothing whatever about him before, the first conclusion reached from dipping here and dipping there into choice passages may well be, that they all wrote with very much the same kind of power. But when we have lived in their company for some time, and studied their works in various lights, we become aware of immeasurable differences. Gradually we come to see that each man applies a different kind of power to the expression of every thought, the conception of every character, the construction of every scene; and the sum of these individualities is enormous.

But though no other Elizabethan dramatist could make the shadow of a claim to be the equal of Shakespeare, there were other men among them justly entitled to be called great. Why, it is often asked, was there such a cluster of great dramatists in that age? Why, we may reply, should there not have been? The drama at that time offered a new and exciting field to the English imagination; and the English imagination, finding the field congenial, rushed into it, and worked at the exalted pitch of energy which new things inspire. Marlowe was really the

Columbus of a new literary world. He emancipated the English mind from classical notions of stiff decorum-the necessary accompaniments of the large theatre and the cothurnus and the mask-and by so doing, opened up infinite possibilities to the dramatist. Now, indeed, the drama could be a representation of passionate life. Men struggling passionately after antagonistic aims could now be brought face to face; and the ups and downs, the hopes and fears, the shrinkings and the darings of the struggle and the characters of the combatants, could be placed in swift and dazzling and heart-shaking succession visibly before the eyes of the spectators. The stage even dared to show how men and women bore themselves in the presence of incensed Death-how their spirits quailed or remained constant in fierce defiance with the knife at their throat. Never was there an emancipation so calculated to excite the human intellect to the very utmost of its powers. No wonder that the age should have produced the largest cluster of great names in our literature.

Further, I believe it may be said that it is indispensable to the production of a very great man that a number of great men should work side by side. They not only stimulate one another to extreme effort, but they also, consciously and unconsciously, get from one another invaluable helps and suggestions. In literature, in art, in commerce, all through life, I believe this rule holds. In all things it is an infallible source of degeneration to keep company with inferior minds. You cannot even have a good whistplayer, or billiard-player, or croquet-player, without others to spur him on; remove the stimulus of competition, and he inevitably demoralises. Distinguished criminals do not occur singly. What great orator ever rose up from a low general level? When one man makes a tremendous fortune, you are certain to find others following hard in his wake. Greatness in the humblest walks as well as in the highest is so difficult an achievement, and demands such a persistence in heroic effort, that men cannot persevere unto the end, but fall away from the straight course unless they are kept

to it by the most powerful of human motives-the ambition of making or keeping a reputation.

The dramatists of greatest general repute next to Shakespeare are Ben Jonson and John Fletcher.1 There are good grounds for their pre-eminence. Among their contemporaries and competitors were men of higher and rarer qualities, men of more interesting character; but no others, excepting always Marlowe and Shakespeare, gave so much original impulse to the drama, established themselves so firmly and unmistakably as leaders of literature. We shall see that it is a mistake to regard Jonson as an imitator of classical models; and that he himself took a juster view of his position when he disclaimed adherence to Plautus and Terence, and declared himself the inventor of a new comedy. Jonson was the first English dramatist who found the whole materials of his comedy in contemporary life. He may have taken this idea from the Latin comedians, but his method as well as his spirit was essentially different from theirs. Chapman was an older man than Jonson, and Dekker excelled him in the fidelity and delicacy of his delineation of life; but both were his disciples. As regards Fletcher, who threw into the drama not only the high spirits and daring manner of aristocratic youth, but also a sweet odour of poetry brought from the vales of Arcadia and the gardens of the Faëry Queen, he is the real progenitor of the drama of the Restoration. Charles Lamb was not strictly correct in saying that "quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest came in with the Restoration." It was not strictly new it had at least been foreshadowed by Fletcher. Dryden was Fletcher's pupil in tragedy as Wycherley was in comedy. Their work was the natural development of his when relieved from the restraining influences of his agein tragedy, the competition of men who wrote with a high sense of artistic responsibility, and in comedy, the regard to decency imposed by a decorous female sovereign and her successor, a royal old wife. The young barbarians who

1 I shall show reason for believing that injustice is done to Fletcher by writing his name with Beaumont's.

enjoyed the obscenities of Fletcher would not have been shocked by the indecent wit of Wycherley or Congreve, and probably looked upon Shakespeare as old-fashioned and stilted.

I have said nothing about the influence of the Spanish drama on Elizabethan dramatists, because I do not believe that it could have exercised, or did exercise, any appreciable influence. It may have been that Marlowe was induced to write for the public stage by hearing of a great popular drama in Spain-news which he might have had from his friend Greene if he did not know it otherwise; but once the Elizabethan drama was in full career, it was no more possible to turn it into the channels of the Spanish drama, than to turn the Rhine at Frankfort into the Rhone, or to sensibly change the waters of the Ganges by bucketfuls from the Volga. Much of the material of the English drama was taken from Southern Europe, where intrigue and passion have freer play than with us; but the mode of representation was wholly indigenous.

I. GEORGE CHAPMAN (1559-1634).

George Chapman is conspicuous among the mob of easy and precocious writers in his generation for his late entrance into the service of the Muses, and his loudly proclaimed enthusiasm and strenuous labours in that service. He made no secret of the effort that it cost him to climb Parnassus, or of his fiery resolution to reach the top; he rather exaggerated his struggles and the vehemence of his ambition. He refrained from publication till he was thirty-five years old, and then burst upon the world like a repressed and accumulated volcano. The swelling arrogance 1 and lofty expectations with which he had restrained his secret labours

1 A profession of contempt for critics was quite a commonplace in those days; but Chapman is peculiarly earnest. His fury at some exceptions taken to his Homer was boundless: he fairly gnashed his teeth at the frontless detractions of some stupid ignorants that, "no more knowing me than their own beastly ends, and I ever (to my knowledge) blest from their sight, whisper behind me, vilifying of my translation."

display themselves without reserve in the 'Shadow of Night' his first contribution to print. The dedication of that poem and the poem itself strike the key-note of his literary character. "It is," he bursts out, "an exceeding rapture of delight in the deep search of knowledge . . . that maketh man manfully endure the extremes incident to that Herculean labour: from flints must the Gorgonian fount be smitten." "Men must be shod by Mercury, girt with Saturn's adamantine sword, take the shield from Pallas, the helm from Pluto, and have the eyes of Graia (as Hesiodus arms Perseus against Medusa), before they can cut off the viperous head of benumbing ignorance, or subdue their monstrous affections to a most beautiful judgment." If Night, "sorrow's dread sovereign," will only give his "working soul" skill to declare the griefs that he has suffered, she will be able to sing all the tortures of Earth,— "And force to tremble in her trumpeting

Heaven's crystal spheres."

He adjures Night, the mother of all knowledge, to give force to his words :

"Then let fierce bolts, well ramm'd with heat and cold,

In Jove's artillery my words unfold

To break the labyrinth of every ear,

And make each frighted soul come forth and hear.
Let them break hearts, as well as yielding airs,

That all men's bosoms (pierced with no affairs
But gain of riches) may be lanced wide,

And with the threats of virtue terrified."

One cannot wonder that this fiery aspirant to fame, so lofty in his pretensions, so novel in his strain, drew all men's eyes upon him, and found many admirers eager to support his claim to stand among the greatest poets. Englishmen have never been deficient in the worship of force: and the vehement enthusiasm of George Chapman exerted a strong fascination.1

Very little is known concerning Chapman prior to 1594, the date of the publication of his 'Shadow of Night.' He is believed to have been born at Hitchin, and to have

1 See above, p. 292.