tragedy of real art was devised. But this state of the drama is shortly passed over. There is something more defined. By the side of this false tragic, sit "ugly Barbarism and brutish Ignorance." These are not the barbarism and ignorance of the old stage; they are "Ycrept of late Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm." They "now tyrannise;" they now "disguise" the fair scene "with rudeness." This description was published in 1591; it was probably written in 1590. The Muse of Tragedy, Melpomene, had previously described the "rueful spectacles" of "the stage." It was a stage which had no true tragedy." But it had possessed "Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort," Now "the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism." The words of Gabriel Harvey, and Edmund Spenser agree in this. The bravos that "have the stage at commandment can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure," says Harvey. This describes the Vetus Comedia-the old comedy of which Nashe boasts. Can there be any doubt that Spenser had this state of things in view when he denounced the "Ugly Barbarism, And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late Out of dread darkness of the deep absym? He denounced it in common with his friend Harvey, who, however he partook of the contro versial violence of his time, was a man of learning and eloquence; and to whom, only three years before, he had addressed a sonnet of which the highest mind in the country might have been proud. But we must return to the "Thalia." The four stanzas which we have quoted are immediately followed by these four others : - V All these, and all that else the comic stage Was limned forth, are wholly now defac'd; And he, the man whom Nature self had made Instead thereof scoffing Scurrility, And scornful Folly, with Contempt, is crept, But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow, Scorning the boldness of such base-born men, Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw, Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell Than so himself to mockery to sell.". -07T09011 TO AN Here there is something even stronger than what has preceded it, in the direct allusion to the state of the stage in 1590. Comedy had ceased to be an exhibition of "seasoned wit," and "goodly pleasure;" it no longer showed "man's life in his likest image." Instead thereof, there was Scurrility' "scornful Folly”"shameless Ribaldry; "—and "each idle wit" "doth the Learned's task upon him take." It was the task of "the Learned" to deal with the high subjects of religious controversy - the "matters of state and religion," with which the stage had meddled. Harvey had previously said, in the tract quoted by us, it is "a godly motion, when interluders leave penning their pleasurable plays to become zealous ecclesiastical writers." He calls Lyly more expressly, with reference to this meddling, "the foolmaster of the theatre." In this state of things the acknowledged head of the comic stage was silent for a time: "HE, the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself, and Truth to imitate, With kindly counter, under mimic shade, Our pleasant WILLY, ah! is dead of late." And the author of "The Fairy Queen" adds, Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow, The love of personal abuse had driven out real comedy; and there was one who, for a brief season, had left the madness to take its course. We cannot doubt that "HE, the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself, and Truth to imitate," was William Shakspere. In 1592 was published a pamphlet, entitled "Groat's worth of Wit," a posthumous tract of the dramatist Robert Greene. The entire pamphlet of Greene is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary fragments of autobiography that the vanity or the repentance of a sinful man ever produced. The recital which he makes of his abandoned course of life involves not only a confession of crimes and follies which were common to a very licentious age, but of particular and especial depravities, which even to mention argues as much shamelessness as repentance. The portion, however, which relates to the subject before us stands alone, in conclusion, as a friendly warning out of his own terrible example:-"To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities." To three of his quondam acquaintance the dying man addresses himself. To the first, supposed to be Marlowe "thou famous gracer of trage dians from he speaks in words as terrible as came "that warning voice, which he who saw Th' Apocalypse heard cry in heav'n aloud." In exhorting his friend to turn from atheism, he ran the risk of consigning him to the stake, for Francis Kett was burnt for his opinions only three years before Greene's death. That Marlowe resented this address to him, we have the testimony of Chettle the editor of Greene's posthumous pamphlet. With his second friend, supposed to be Lodge, his plain speaking is much more tender: "Be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words." He addresses the third, supposed to be Peele, as one "driven as myself to extreme shifts; " and he adds, "thou art unworthy better hap sith thou dependest on so mean a stay." What is the stay? Making plays." The exhortation then proceeds to include the three "gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making plays."- "Baseminded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned: for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths; those antics garnished in our colours." Up to this point the meaning is perfectly clear. The puppets, the antics, by which names of course are meant the players, whom he held, and justly, to derive their chief importance from the labours of the - |