a declaration of loyalty to none, save the Pope. And the "wobblings," as modern politicians would say, of Nobility between Pope and King are drawn with a good deal of liveliness, and with less deviation from strict truth than one could wish.

The central conspiracy of Sedition, Dissimulation, Private Wealth, and Usurped Power, with the transmogrification of three of them into the Pope, Cardinal Pandulph, and Stephen Langton, is effected with much less outrage to theatrical probability than might be thought; and the outspoken Dissimulation, who remains, performs useful work, in the "Messenger spirit of the classical drama, by revealing their conceit and purposes with a frankness which makes the Pope justly call him a blab. There is a rather amusing survival of an old quarrel in the part assigned to "Civil Order”—the Civilian or Lawyer, who is as rotten a reed to King as Nobility, and for less creditable reasons and in the appearance of "Commonalty," too poor and blind, oppressed as he is by the other orders, to do any good, and deserting the King, like the rest, at the ecclesiastical threats of Pandulph and the terror of the French and other threatened invaders. Nor is real dramatic force lacking in the outburst of vulgar triumph with which Sedition greets the King's enforced submission in spite of the protests of England. The middle of the play is in a very confused condition, and the poisoning of the King and himself by Simon of Swynset (Swinestead), introduced by a curious wassail-song,1 is slightly "promiscuous "; while the

1 Compare Still again.

conclusion, in which Imperial Majesty restores order, reduces the erring Estates to obedience, and punishes the malefactors, lacks the combination of Morality and History which has hitherto been effective. But on the whole the piece is one of great idiosyncrasy, and, as is not invariably the case with curiosities of literature, deserves rather more praise than it has usually had.

Stress has been laid upon Heywood and Bale, because they show us, rather more definitely than is done by writers of any other country, the transition stages between the medieval and the modern drama. In Italy and in Germany, as we have seen, the revived ancient forms step more or less simply into the place of the medieval. In France, this is also the case in the Latin plays; while those in the vernacular show hardly any differences at all from the old mediæval models. But here we have forms of indigenous theatrical performance which, whether influenced by ancient models or not (in Heywood's case probably not, in Bale's probably a good deal, directly or indirectly), indicate an advance upon the medieval and an approach to the modern. The value in each case lies not so much in the actual productions or the actual form which they present, as in the probabilities, or rather certainties, of improvement which that form possesses. The lively realist action of the Interludes is sure, by degrees, to push the abstractions of the Morality from their seats; the Vice will become the Clown, the Fool, the living comic character generally. So, too, when political or historical action of

interest and complexity (the story of which, or some part of it, may be known to the audience) is brought upon the stage, it must, little by little, be intolerable to have Deadly Sins and Theological Virtues elbowing peers of the realm and members of Parliament. The fatalis machina has been introduced, full of live combatants, into the city of medieval drama of the artificial kind, and we know that it will do its work. During the sixty or seventy years which passed from the Four Elements, the forty or fifty that passed from Kyng Johan, to Marlowe, every year was making audiences more eager for action on the stage, for the comic intermixed with the serious, for bustle and variety and stir. The very admixture of realism with the improbabilities and abstractions of the Morality and Mystery may have inclined them to tolerate those other improbabilities which shocked the classical critics. If a mystery covered the whole life of Christ, why might not a chronicle or a tragedy cover the whole life of some secular hero? And so, in our own and usual way, driving the nail where it would go, caring nothing for anomaly and a great deal for precedent, going never by rule, except of thumb, disdaining "technical education," working supra grammaticam in the royal English fashion, we produced-Shakespeare.

373

CHAPTER VII.

THE REVIVAL OF CRITICISM.

THE MIDDLE AGES NECESSARILY UNCRITICAL-THE RENAISSANCE NECESSARILY CRITICAL, BUT WITH LIMITATIONS-CHARACTER AND REASONS OF THESE-THE ACTUAL RISE AND PROGRESS OF ITALIAN CRITICISM ITS FAR-REACHING IMPORTANCE, AND CONNECTION WITH THE FORMATION OF MODERN LITERATURE-UPSHOT OF IT-VIDA-LILIUS GIRALDUS - GIRALDI CINTHIO-J. C. SCALIGER-HIS 'POETIC'CASTELVETRO-HIS IDEAS ON DRAMA AND EPICS.

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IT has been said that in literary kinds (as distinguished from individual works on the one hand, and from the general tendencies and character of literature on the other) the period with which we here deal, under the head of the Earlier Renaissance, is chiefly remarkable in respect of two-Criticism and the Drama. We have just seen how, during these fifty years (with the decent fringes and margins necessary in the case of individual countries), the powerful influence of the classical drama was brought -for good mainly, if also for ill-to bear upon the existing materials and methods of the European theatre. But we have also seen how, enormous as

this influence was, and vital as were the changes which it effected, it did not succeed in obliterating the characteristics of the medieval stage in any country as regards comedy; while, in respect to tragedy, two great literatures, the Spanish1 and the English, were very mainly rebel to classicism and faithful to romance, if not exactly to any direct medieval tradition.

The case of criticism is different.

The Middle Ages necessarily

For that branch of literature the Middle Ages are almost non-existent. With the single great exception of the De Vulgari Eloquio, one of these exceptions uncritical. which do, in the best and fullest sense, prove the rule, not a single critical text of excellence dates from the thousand years between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500; while texts, not merely of excellence, but of any kind, are mostly wanting. The Middle Ages were nothing if not uncritical, and, from some points of view, very fortunately so. Criticism was not their business: they had neither the temper nor the opportunity for it; and, if they had tried it, it would have interfered with what was their business-their precious, their inestimable, contribution to the original literature of the world.2

On the other hand, the Renaissance was, and could be, nothing if not critical, "after a sort"-the qualification being most important. Its dissatisfaction with medieval, and its enthusiastic quest of

1 See The Later Renaissance.

2 I hope I may without impropriety refer to vol. i. Book III. of my History of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1900) for facts and arguments in support of this paradox.