CHAPTER XI THE DRAMATIC TASTE OF THE COURT: BEAUMONT AND INFLUENCE OF SPANISH ROMANCE ON FLETCHER. THE ENGLISH POETIC DRAMA. NOTHING is more curious and interesting in the history of the English poetic drama than the growing influence of the Court in determining the taste of the theatre. As I observed in a previous chapter, for some years after the Spanish Armada the enthusiasm of the popular part of the audience, as well as the genius of Shakespeare, prevented the courtiers from taking more than their fair share in dramatic criticism. As early as the year 1599, however, the evidence shows that the more fashionable spectators of plays were beginning to make their presence unpleasantly felt both by the dramatist and their neighbours in the theatre. The following very interesting passage describing the behaviour of the audience is found in Ben Jonson's The Case is Altered, a tragi-comedy exhibited in that year : VALENTINE. The sport is at a new play to observe the sway and variety of opinion that passeth it. A man shall have such a confused mixture of judgment poured out in the throng there, as ridiculous as laughter itself. One says he likes not the writing, another likes not the plot, another not the playing; and sometimes a fellow that comes not there past once in five years, at a parliament time, or so, will be as lief mired in censuring as the best, and swear by God's foot he would never stir his foot to see a hundred such as that is. ONION. I must travel to see these things; I shall never think well of myself else. JUNIPER. Fellow Onion, I'll bear thy charges, an thou wilt but pilgrimise it along with me to the land of Utopia. SEBASTIAN. Why, but methinks such rooks as these should be ashamed to judge. VALENTINE. Not a whit; the rankest stinkard of them all will take upon him as peremptory, as if he had been writ himself in artibus magister. SEB. And do they stand to a popular censure for anything they present. VAL. Ay, ever, ever; and the people generally are very acceptive, and apt to applaud any meritable work, but there are two sorts of persons that most commonly are infectious to a whole auditory. BALTHASAR. What be they? JUN. Ay, come let's know them. ON. It were good they were noted. VAL. Marry, one is the rude barbarous crew, a people that have no brains, and yet grounded judgments; these will hiss anything that mounts above their grounded capacities; but the other are worth the observation, i' faith. OMNES. What be they, what be they? VAL. Faith, a few capricious gallants. JUN. Capricious! stay, that word's for me. VAL. And they have taken such a habit of dislike in all things that they will approve nothing, be it never so conceited or elaborate ; but sit dispersed, making faces, and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and cry filthy! filthy! simply uttering their own condition, and using their wryed countenances, instead of a vice, to turn the good aspects of all that shall sit near them from what they behold.1 Nothing here shows in what part of the theatre the Court gallants gave expression to these feelings of disgust. But in 1600 they were beginning to mount upon the stage itself, as Jonson again testifies in the Induction to his Cynthia's Revels : 3RD CHILD. Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that are come in, having paid my money at the door, with much ado, and here I take my place and sit down: I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin. [At the breaks he takes his tobacco.] By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here. They do act like so many wrens or pismires-not the fifth part of a good face among them all. And then their music is abominable-able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten-pillories and their ditties—most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them-poets. 1 The Case is Altered, Act ii. Sc. 4. By VOL: IV X this vapour, an 'twere not for tobacco-I think—the very stench of them would poison me, I should not dare to come in at their gates. A man were better visit fifteen jails-or a dozen or two of hospitals-than once adventure to come near them. How is't? Well? IST CHILD. Excellent; give me my cloak. 3RD CHILD. Stay, you shall see me do another now more sober or better gathered gallant; that is, as it may be thought, some friend, or well-wisher to the house and here I enter. : IST CHILD. What, upon the stage, too? 2ND CHILD. Yes, and I step forth like one of the children and ask you, Would you have a stool, sir? 3RD CHILD. A stool, boy! 2ND CHILD. Ay, sir, if you'll give me sixpence I'll fetch you one. 3RD CHILD. For what, I pray thee? What shall I do with it? 2ND CHILD. O lord, sir, will you betray your ignorance so much? Why, throne yourself in state on the stage as other gentlemen use.1 Finally in 1609 we have Dekker's lively description in The Gull's Hornbook of the height to which the courtiers in the theatre carried their contempt for public opinion : Whether therefore the gatherers of the public or private playhouse stand to receive the afternoon's rent, let our gallant (having paid it) presently advance himself up to the throne of the stage I mean not into the Lord's room (which is now but the stage's suburbs). No, those boxes, by the iniquity of custom, conspiracy of waiting women, and gentlemen ushers, that there sweat together, and the covetousness of sharers, are contemptibly thrust into the rear, and much new satire is there daubed by being smothered to death in darkness. But on the very rushes, where the comedy is to dance, yea, and under the state of Cambyses himself, must our feathered Estridge, like a piece of ordnance, be planted valiantly (because impudently) beating down the mews and hisses of the opposed rascality.2 From this it appears that the boxes near the stage were originally the "rooms" for the aristocracy, but that these had been forsaken for seats upon the stage itself; and Dekker goes on to describe the airs which his gallant should give himself before the play begins, exhibiting the splendour of his dress to the gaping crowd in the pit, ex 1 Cynthia's Revels, Induction. 2 Dekker's Non-Dramatic Works (Grosart), vol. ii. pp. 247-8. amining the boy actors, gambling and tearing the cards to pieces on the stage. Such outrages on all propriety were probably exceptional; but the fact that they should have been possible shows how great must have been the influence exerted on taste by the wealthier and more cultivated portion of the audience, which sat nearest to the players, and which the latter were naturally most anxious to please. For amongst these were not only such ill-bred mountebanks as Dekker's Gull, but (as we see from Cynthia's Revels) "the more sober, or better gathered gallant, the friend of the house," who really loved the drama, and was anxious to study the merits of the performance from the most advantageous point of view. It was the taste of reflecting judges like these, which, prevailing over the raw instinctive enthusiasm of the multitude in the pit, gradually changed the character of the English drama. Something of the same kind had previously been witnessed on the Attic stage. To the modern reader it seems strange that Aristotle in the Poetics, with the Agamemnon, the Chaphora, and the Eumenides of Eschylus before him, should have pronounced Euripides to be the most tragic of poets. Considered, however, in the light of history, the judgment is perfectly intelligible. When the Poetics were written the Attic drama was still a living institution; but the life of the performance had passed from the chorus into the plot of the play: the lyrical impulse was almost extinct. What Aristotle chiefly valued, as a spectator, was ingenious manipulation of incident and character, in which (whatever faults the philosopher was inclined to find in him) Euripides excelled. Beaumont and Fletcher were, in the history of the English drama, to Shakespeare what Euripides, on the stage of Athens, was to Eschylus. When Beaumont and Fletcher became the chief favourites of the English theatre, the passion for the drama was at its height. After the theatres were closed by order of Parliament, their collected plays were, for the first time, printed, and the folio edition of 1647 contains 1 Aristotle's Poetics, chap. xiii. 6. a number of commendatory poems from those who had witnessed the performance of them on the stage. The tone of these poetical tributes is full of admiration and regret. In some of the writers this expresses itself in vague hyperbole. Homer, says one enthusiast, if he were to read Fletcher's King and No King, would re-cast the character of Achilles, taking Arbaces for his model; Virgil would confess that his Dido could not compare with the Aspatia of The Maid's Tragedy. A second proclaims that Plautus and Aristophanes are "scurril wits and buffons" in comparison with Beaumont, and that— When thou'rt of Chaucer's standing in the tomb, Thou shalt not share, but take up all his room.2 But others are more discriminating, and give reasons for their taste. William Cartwright, a very ingenious poet, explains why Fletcher is to be preferred to Shakespeare Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lies As his, but without his scurrility; From whom mirth came unforced, no jest perplexed, Sir John Birkenhead, a sensible critic, commends Fletcher in the same spirit, for departing from the conceit and bombast of the stage style in the previous generation.* 1 See Commendatory Poem by H. Howard, Dyce's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. 14. 2 Ibid. by John Earle, vol. i. pp. 37-38. 3 Ibid. vol. i. p. 45. 4 Ibid. vol. i. p. 50:- Such boisterous trifles thy muse would not brook |