Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

but at the same time real. The lowest art embodies a principle opposite to nature; something purely conventional, and consequently always uninteresting, often grotesque and ridiculous. Locrine' furnishes abundant examples of the characteristics of a school of art which may be considered as the antithesis of the school of Shakspere.

We hopelessly look for any close parallel of the fustian of Locrine' in the accredited works of Greene, or Marlowe, or Kyd, who redeemed their pedantry and their extravagance by occasional grandeur and sweetness. The dialogue from first to last is inflated beyond all comparison with any contemporary performance with which we are acquainted. Most readers are familiar with a gentleman who, when he is entreated to go down, says, "to Pluto's damned lake, to the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also." The valiant Pistol had, no doubt, diligently studied 'Locrine;' but he was a faint copyist of such sublime as the following:

"You ugly spirits that in Cocytus mourn,
And gnash your teeth with dolorous laments;
You fearful dogs that in black Lethe howl,
And scare the ghosts with your wide-open
throats;

You ugly ghosts, that flying from these dogs
Do plunge yourselves in Puryflegethon ;
Come all of you, and with your shrieking notes
Accompany the Britons' conquering host.
Come, fierce Erinnys, horrible with snakes;
Come, ugly furies, armed with your whips;
You threefold judges of black Tartarus,
And all the army of your hellish fiends,
With new-found torments rack proud Locrine's
bones!"

[blocks in formation]

Cease off your hasty chase of savage beasts!
Prepare to see a heart oppress'd with care;
Address your ears to hear a mournful style!
No human strength, no work can work my
weal,

Care in my heart so tyrant-like doth deal.
You Dryades and lightfoot Satyri,

You gracious fairies, which at even-tide
Your closets leave, with heavenly beauty stor'd,
And on your shoulders spread your golden
locks;

You savage bears, in caves and darken'd dens, Come wail with me the martial Locrine's death;

Come mourn with me for beauteous Estrild's

death!

Ah! loving parents, little do you know What sorrow Sabren suffers for your thrall."

According to Tieck, Locrine' is the earliest of Shakspere's dramas. He has a theory that it has altogether a political tendency: "It seems to have reference to the times when England was suffering through the parties formed in favour of Mary Stuart, and to have been written before her execution, while attacks were feared at home, and invasions from abroad." It was corrected by the author, and printed, he further says, in 1595, when another Spanish invasion was feared. We confess ourselves utterly at a loss to recognise in

Locrine' the mode in which Shakspere usually awakens the love of country. The management in this particular is essentially different from that of King John' and 'Henry V.' 'Locrine' is one of the works which Tieck has translated, and his translation is no doubt a proof of the sincerity of his opinions; yet he says, frankly enough, "It bears the marks of a young poet unacquainted with the stage, who endeavours to sustain himself constantly in a posture of elevation, who purposely neglects the necessary rising and sinking of tone and effect, and who, with wonderful energy, endeavours from beginning to end to make his personages speak in the same highly-wrought and poetical language, while at the same time he shakes out all his school-learning on every possible occasion." To reduce this very just account of the play to elementary

[ocr errors]

criticism, Tieck says, first, that the action | passion, but first and last they speak out of the play is not conducted upon dramatic principles; second, that the language is not varied with the character and situation; third, that the poetry is essentially conventional, being the reflection of the author's school-learning. It must be evident to all our readers that these characteristics are the very reverse of Shakspere. Schlegel says of 'Locrine, "The proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not altogether unambiguous; the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, are entitled to attention. However, this question is immediately connected with that respecting Titus Andronicus,' and must be at the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative." We dissent entirely from this opinion. It appears to us that the differences are as strikingly marked between 'Locrine' and Titus Andronicus' as between 'Titus Andronicus' and 'Othello.' Those productions were separated by at least twenty years. The youth might have produced Aaron; the perfect master of his art, Iago. There is the broad mark of originality in the characterization and language of Titus Andronicus.' The terrible passions which are there developed by the action find their vent in the appropriate language of passion, the bold and sometimes rude outpourings of nature. The characters of Locrine' are moved to

6

of books. In Shakspere, high poetry is the most natural language of passion. It belongs to the state of excitement in which the character is placed; it harmonizes with the excited state of the reader or of the audience. But the whole imagery of 'Locrine' is mythological. In a speech of twenty lines we have Rhadamanthus, Hercules, Eurydice, Erebus, Pluto, Mors, Tantalus, Pelops, Tithonus, Minos, Jupiter, Mars, and Tisiphone. The mythological pedantry is carried to such an extent, that the play, though unquestionably written in sober sadness, is a perfect travesty of this peculiarity of the early dramatists. Conventional as Greene and Marlowe are in their imagery, a single act of Locrine' contains more of this tinsel than all their plays put together, prone as they are to this species of decoration. In the author of Locrine' it becomes so entirely ridiculous, that this quality alone would decide us to say that Marlowe had nothing to do with it, or Greene either. It belongs, if not to a period scarcely removed from the rude art of the early stages, at least to a period when the principles of real dramatic poetry had not been generally received. It is essentially of the first transition state, in point of conception and execution.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DRAMATISTS OF SHAKSPERE'S FIRST PERIOD. THE royal patent of 1574 authorized in the exercise of their art and faculty "James Burbadge, John Perkyn, John Lanham, William Johnson, and Robert Wilson,” who are described as the servants of the Earl of Leicester. Although on the early stage the characters were frequently doubled, we can scarcely imagine that these five persons were of themselves sufficient to form a company of comedians. They had, no doubt, subordinate actors in their pay; they being the

proprietors or shareholders in the general adventure. Of these five original patentees, four remained as the "sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse" in 1589, the name only of John Perkyn being absent from the subscribers to a certificate to the Privy Council, that the company acting at the Blackfriars "have never given cause of displeasure in that they have brought into their plays matters of state and religion." This certificate

which bears the date of November, 1589—

exhibits to us the list of the professional | at least a year before the date of this certicompanions of Shakspere in an early stage of his career, though certainly not in the very earliest. The certificate represents the persons subscribing it as "her Majesty's poor players," and sets forth that they are "all of them sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse." Their names are presented in the following order :

:

1. James Burbadge.
2. Richard Burbadge.
3. John Laneham.

4. Thomas Greene.
5. Robert Wilson.
6. John Taylor.
7. Anth. Wadeson.
S. Thomas Pope.
9. George Peele.

10. Augustine Phillipps.
11. Nicholas Towley.

12. William Shakespeare. 13. William Kempe. 14. William Johnson. 15. Baptiste Goodale.

16. Robert Armyn.

In the Account of GEORGE PEELE and his Writings,' prefixed to Mr. Dyce's valuable edition of his works (1829), the editor says, "I think it very probable that Peele occasionally tried his histrionic talents, particularly at the commencement of his career, but that he was ever engaged as a regular actor I altogether disbelieve." But the publication, in 1835, by Mr. Collier, of the above certificate of the good conduct in 1589 of the Blackfriars company, which he discovered amongst the Bridgewater Papers, would appear to determine the question contrary to the belief of Mr. Dyce. Mr. Collier, in the tract in which he first published this important document*, says, with reference to the enumeration of Peele in the certificate, "George Peele was unquestionably the dramatic poet, who, I conjectured some years ago, was upon the stage early in life." The name of George Peele stands ninth on this list; that of William Shakespeare the twelfth. The name of William Kempe immediately follows that of Shakspere. Kempe must have become of importance to the company *New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare.'

ficate; for he was the successor of Tarleton in the most attractive line of characters, and Tarleton died in 1588. We hold that Shakspere had won his position in this company at the age of twenty-five by his success as a dramatic writer; and we consider that in the same manner George Peele had preceded him, and had acquired rank and property amongst the shareholders, chiefly by the exercise of his talents as a dramatic poet.

There can be little doubt that upon the early stage, the occupations of actor and "maker of plays" for the most part went together. The dialogue was less regarded than the action. A plot was hastily got up, with rude shows and startling incidents. The characters were little discriminated; one actor took the tyrant line, and another the lover; and ready words were at hand for the one to rant with and the other to whine. The actors were not very solicitous about the words, and often discharged their mimic passions in extemporaneous eloquence. In a few years the necessity of pleasing more refined audiences changed the economy of the stage. Men of high talent sought the theatre as a ready mode of maintenance by their writings; but their connexion with the stage would naturally begin in acting rather than in authorship. The managers, themselves actors, would think, and perhaps rightly, that an actor would be the best judge of dramatic effect; and a Master of Arts, unless he were thoroughly conversant with the business of the stage, might better carry his taffeta phrases to the publishers of sonnets. The rewards of authorship through the medium of the press were in those days small indeed; and paltry as was the dramatist's fee, the players were far better paymasters than the stationers. To become a sharer in a theatrical speculation offered a reasonable chance of competence, if not of wealth. If a sharer existed who was excellent" enough in "the quality" he professed to fill the stage creditably, and added to that quality "a facetious grace in writing," there is no doubt that with "uprightness of dealing" he would, in such a company as that of the Blackfriars, advance

66

rapidly to distinction, and have the counte- | brought to the task a higher poetical feeling, nance and friendship of " divers of worship." Such was the character given to Shakspere himself in 1592. One of the early puritanical attacks upon the stage has this coarse invective against players: "Are they not notoriously known to be those men in their life abroad, as they are on the stage, roysters, brawlers, ill-dealers, boasters, lovers, loiterers, ruffians? So that they are always exercised in playing their parts and practising wickedness; making that an art, to the end that they might the better gesture it in their parts?" By the side of this silly abuse may be placed the modest answer of Thomas Heywood, the most prolific of writers, himself an actor: "I also could wish that such as are condemned for their licentiousness might by a general consent be quite excluded our society; for, as we are men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so should our manners, gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and modesty, to deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the sharpest censure even of those that are the greatest opposites to the quality. Many amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and temperate | carriages, housekeepers, and contributory to all duties enjoined them, equally with them that are ranked with the most bountiful; and if, amongst so many of sort, there be any few degenerate from the rest in that good demeanour which is both requisite and expected from their hands, let me entreat you not to censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some, but rather to excuse us, as Ovid doth the generality of women :'Parcite paucarum diffundere crimen in omnes; Spectetur meritis quæque puella suis.'

Those of Peele's dramatic works which have come down to us afford evidence that he possessed great flexibility and rhetorical power, without much invention, with very little discrimination of character, and with that tendency to extravagance in the management of his incidents which exhibits small acquaintance with the higher principles of the dramatic art. He no doubt became a writer for the stage earlier than Shakspere. He

*Apology for Actors.'

and more scholarship, than had been pre-
viously employed in the rude dialogue which
varied the primitive melodramatic exhibi-
tions, which afforded a rare delight to au-
diences with whom the novel excitement of
the entertainment compensated for many of
its grossnesses and deficiencies. Thomas
Nash, in his address 'To the Gentlemen Stu-
dents of both Universities,' prefixed to
Greene's 'Menaphon,' mentions Peele amongst
the most celebrated poets of the day, “as
the chief supporter of pleasance now living,
the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum
artifex; whose first increase, the 'Arraign-
ment of Paris,' might plead to your opinions
his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold
variety of invention, wherein (me judice) he
goeth a step beyond all that write." "The
Arraignment of Paris,' which Nash describes
as Peele's first increase, or first production,
was performed before the Queen in 1584, by
the children of her chapel. It is called in
the title-page a pastoral." It is not im-
probable that the favour with which this
mythological story of the Judgment of Paris
was received at the Court of Elizabeth
might in some degree have given Peele his
rank in the company of the Queen's players,
who appear to have had some joint interest
with the children of the chapel. The
toral possesses little of the dramatic spirit;
but we occasionally meet with passages of
great descriptive elegance, rich in fancy,
though somewhat overlaboured. The god-
desses, however, talk with great freedom, we
might say with a slight touch of mortal vul-
garity. This would scarcely displease the
courtly throng; but the approbation would
be overpowering at the close, when Diana
bestows the golden ball, and Venus, Pallas,
and Juno cheerfully resign their pretensions
in favour of the superior beauty, wisdom,
and princely state, of the great Eliza. Such
scenes were probably not for the multitude
who thronged to the Blackfriars. Peele was
the poet of the City as well as of the Court.
He produced a Lord Mayor's Pageant in
1585, when Sir Wolstan Dixie was chief ma-
gistrate, in which London, Magnanimity,
Loyalty, the Country, the Thames, the Sol-

pas

dier, the Sailor, Science, and a quaternion of | pany in 1589. He is one of the three to nymphs, gratulate the City in melodious verse. Another of his pageants before "Mr. William Web, Lord Mayor," in 1591, has come down to us. He was ready with his verses when Sir Henry Lee resigned the office of Queen's Champion in 1590; and upon the occasion also of an Installation at Windsor in 1593. When Elizabeth visited Theobalds in 1591, Peele produced the speeches with which the Queen was received, in the absence of Lord Burleigh, by members of his household, in the characters of a hermit, a gardener, and a mole-catcher. In all these productions we find the facility which distinguished his dramatic writings, but nothing of that real power which was to breathe a new life into the entertainments for the people. The early play of 'Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes' is considered by Mr. Dyce to be the production of Peele. It is a most tedious drama, in the old twelve-syllable rhyming verse, in which the principle of alliteration is carried into the most ludicrous absurdity, and the pathos is scarcely more moving than the woes of Pyramus and Thisby in A 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' One example of a lady in distress may suffice:

whom Robert Greene in 1592 addressed his dying warning. Peele was, according to the repentant profligate, driven, like himself, to extreme shifts. He was in danger, like Greene, of being forsaken by the puppets "that speak from our mouths." The reason | that the players are not to be trusted is because their place is supplied by another: "Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."

[blocks in formation]

In a few years, perhaps by the aid of better examples, Peele worked himself out of many of the absurdities of the early stage; but he had not strength wholly to cast them off. We shall notice his historical play of Edward I.' in the examination of the theory that he was the author of the three Parts of Henry VI. in their original state; and it is scarcely necessary for us here to enter more minutely into the question of his dramatic ability.

It is pretty manifest that a new race of writers, with Shakspere at their head, was rising up to push Peele from the position which he held in the Blackfriars com

ROBERT GREENE has been described by his friend Henry Chettle as a "man of indifferent years, of face amiable, of body well-proportioned, his attire after the habit of a scholarlike gentleman, only his hair somewhat long." Greene took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge in 1578, and his Master's degree in 1583. The "somewhat long hair" is scarcely incompatible with the "attire after the habit of a scholar." Chettle's description of the outward appearance of the man would scarcely lead us to imagine, what he has himself told us, that "his company were lightly the lewdest persons in the land." In one of his posthumous tracts, "The Repentance of Robert Greene,' which Mr. Dyce, the editor of his works, holds to be genuine, he says, "I left the University and away to London, where (after I had continued some short time, and driven myself out of credit with sundry of my friends) I became an author of plays, and a penner of love pamphlets, so that I soon grew famous in that quality, that who for that trade grown so ordinary about London as Robin Greene? Young yet in years, though old in wickedness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was profitable: whereupon I grew so rooted in all mischief, that I had as great a delight in wickedness as sundry hath in godliness; and as much felicity I took in villainy as others had in honesty." The whole story of Greene's life renders it too probable that Gabriel Harvey's spiteful caricature of him had much of that real re

« AnteriorContinuar »