protect him from the devil, whom he was permitted to buffet and baffle with his wooden sword, till the process of the story required that both the protector and the protected should be carried off by the fiend; or the latter driven roaring from the stage by some miraculous interposition in favour of the repentant offender."* The first words which Iniquity utters indicate, however, that he was familiar with the audience, and the audience familiar with him :— "How now, my masters; how goeth the world now? And in a most extraordinary manner he does talk; swaggering and bullying as if the whole world was at his command, till Charity comes in, and reads him a very severe lecture upon the impropriety of his deportment. It is of little avail; for two friends of Iniquity-Importunity and Partiality—come to his assistance, and fairly drive Charity off the stage. Then Equity enters to take up the quarrel against Iniquity and his fellows; but Equity is no match for them, and they all make way for King Darius. This very long scene has nothing whatever to do with the main action of the piece, or rather what professes to be its action. But the Stratford audience is a patient one; and the Vice, however dull was his profligacy, contrived to make them laugh by the whisking of his tail and the brandishing of his sword, assisted no doubt by some well-known chuckle like that of the Punch of our own days. King Darius, however, at length comes with all his Council; and most capital names do his chief councillors bear, not unworthy to be adopted even in Courts of greater refinement-Perplexity and Curiosity. The whole business of this scene of King Darius is to present a feast to the admiring spectators. Up to the present day the English audience delights in a feast; and will endure that two men should sit upon the stage for a quarter of an hour, uttering the most unrepeatable stupidity, provided they seem to pick real chicken-bones and drink real port. The Darius of the interlude feasted whole nations-upon the representative system; and here, at Stratford, Ethiopia, Persia, Judah, and Media, ate their fill and were very grateful. But feasts must have their end; and so the curtain closes upon the eaters, and Iniquity "cometh in singing: "- Again come his bottle-holders, Importunity and Partiality; and in the course of their gabble Iniquity tells them that the Pope is his father. Unhappily his supporters go out; and then Equity attacks him alone. Loud is their debate; and faster and more furious is the talk when Constancy and Charity come in. The matter, however, ends seriously; and they resolving that it is useless to argue longer with this impenitent sinner," somebody casts fire to Iniquity," and he departs in a tempest of squibs and crackers. The business of the play now * Ben Jonson's Works. Note on The Devil is an Ass.' at length begins. Darius tells his attendants that the three men who kept his chamber while he slept woke him by their disputing and murmuring, "Every man to say a weightier matter than the other." The subject of their dispute was, what is the strongest thing; and their answers as we are informed by the King's attendants, had been reduced to writing : "The sentence of the first man is this, Wine a very strong thing is; The second also I will declare to you, That the king is stronger than any other thing verily; The third also I will declare Women, saith he, is the strongest of all, Though by women we had a fall." Of their respective texts the three young men are then called in to make expo. sition; and certainly, whatever defects of manners were exhibited by the audiences of that day, they must have possessed the virtue of patience in a remarkable degree to have enabled them to sit out these most prolix harangues. But they have an end; and the King declares Zorobabel to be deserving of signal honours, in his demonstration that, of all things, woman is the strongest. A metrical prayer for Queen Elizabeth, uttered by Constancy, dismisses the audience to their homes in such a loyal temper as befits the Corporation of Stratford and their friends on all public occasions to cherish. We doubt if William Shakspere considers "the pretty new interlude both pithy and plea. sant of the story of King Darius" to be the perfect model of a popular drama.* The sojourn of my Lord Strange's men at Stratford has been short; but now the Countess of Essex's players have arrived. We have seen that in previous years the players of Lord Warwick, of Lord Leicester, of Lord Worcester, have been at Stratford, and on each occasion they have been patronised by the Corporation. In a later period of the stage, when the actors chiefly depended upon the large support of the public, instead of receiving the wages of noblemen, however wealthy and powerful, the connection of a company of players with the great personage whose "servants" they were called was scarcely more than a licence to act without the interference of the magistrate. But in the period of the stage which we are now describing, it would appear that the players were literally the retainers of powerful lords, who employed them for their own recreation, and allowed them to derive a profit from occasional public exhibiticns. In 'The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres' we have the following passage, which appears decisive upon this point:-"What credit can return to the nobleman to countenance his men to exercise that quality which is not sufferable in any commonweal? Whereas, it was an ancient custom that no man of honour should retain any man but such as was as excellent in some one There is a copy of this very curious production in the Garrick Collection of plays in the British Museum; and a transcript of Garrick's copy is in the Bodleian Library. Its date, as before mentione.l is 1565. good quality or another, whereby, if occasion so served, he might get his own iving. Then was every nobleman's house a commonweal in itself. But since the retaining of these caterpillars the credit of noblemen hath decayed, and they are thought to be covetous by permitting their servants, which cannot live by themselves, and whom for nearness they will not maintain, to live on the devotion or alms of other men, passing from country to country, from one gentleman's house to another, offering their service, which is a kind of beggary. Who, indeed, to speak more truly, are become beggars for their servants. For commonly the good will men bear to their lords makes them draw the strings of their purses to extend their liberality to them, where otherwise they would not." Speaking of the writers of plays, the same author adds," But some perhaps will say the nobleman delighteth in such things, whose humours must be contented, partly for fear and partly for commodity; and if they write matters pleasant they are best preferred in Court among the cunning heads."-(Page 108.) In the old play of The Taming of a Shrew' the players in the Induction' are presented to us in very homely guise. The messenger tells the lord "Your players be come, And do attend your honour's pleasure here." The stage-direction then says, "Enter two of the players with packs at their backs, and a boy." To the questions of the lord, "Now, sirs, what store of plays have you?" the Clown answers, "Marry, my lord, you may have a tragical or a commodity, or what you will;" for which ignorance the other player rebukes the Clown, saying, "A comedy, thou shouldst say: zounds! thou 'lt shame us all." Whether this picture belongs to an earlier period of the stage than the similar scene in Shakspere's Induction,' or whether Shakspere was familiar with a better order of players, it is clear that in his scene the players appear as persons of somewhat more importance and are treated with more respect : The lord, however, even in this scene, gives his order, "Take them to the buttery,"--a proof that the itinerant companies were classed little above menials. The welcome of a corporate town was perhaps as acceptable to the players of the Countess of Essex as the abundance of the esquire's kitchen; and so the people of Stratford are to be treated with the last novelty. The play which is now to be performed is something very different from 'King Darius.' It is A Pleasant Comedie called Common Conditions.' This is neither a Mystery nor a Moral Play. It dispenses with impersonations of Good and Evil; Iniquity holds no controversy with Charity, and the Devil is not brought in to buffet or to be buffeted. The play is written in rhymed verse, and very ambitiously written. The matter is "set out with sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories, hyperboles, amphibologies, similitude."* It is a dramatized romance, of which the title expresses that it represents a possible aspect of human life; and the name of the chief character, Common Conditions, from which the play derives its title, would import that he does not belong to the supernatural or allegorical class of personages. The audience of Stratford have anticipated something at which they *Gosson. Plays Confuted,' second action. Mr. Collier, in his 'History of Dramatic Poetry,' expresses an opinion that the character of are to laugh; and their mirth is much provoked when three tinkers appear upon the stage singing, "Hey tisty toisty, tinkers good fellows they be; In stopping of cne hole, they use to make three." These worthies are called Drift, Unthrift, and Shift; and, trade being bad with them, they agree to better it by a little robbing. Unthrift tells his companions, "But, masters, wot ye what? I have heard news about the court this day, That there is a gentleman with a lady gone away; And have with them a little parasite full of money and coin." These travellers the tinkers agree to rob; and we have here an example of the readiness of the stage to indulge in satire. The purveyors who, a few years later, were denounced in parliament, are, we suppose, here pointed at. Shift says, "We will take away their purses, and say we do it by commission ;" to which Drift replies, "Who made a commissioner of you? If thou make no better answer at the bar, thou wilt hang, I tell thee true." The gentleman and lady from the court, Sedmond and Clarisia, then come out of the wood, accompanied by their servant, Conditions. It appears that their father has long been absent, and they are travelling to seek him. Clarisia is heavy-hearted; and her brother thus consoles her, after the fashion of "epithets, metaphors, and hyperboles : "You see the chirping birds begin you melody to make, But you, ungrateful unto them, their pleasant voice forsake: The lady will have no comfort. She replies to her brother in a long echo to his speech, ending— "And therefore, brother, leave off talk; in vain you seem to prate : Conditions ungallantly takes part against the lady, by a declamation in dispraise of women; which is happily cut short by the tinkers rushing in. Now indeed we have movement which will stir the audience. The brother escapes ; the lady is bound to a tree: Conditions is to be hanged; but his adroitness, which is excessively diverting, altogether reminding one of another little knave, the Flibbertigibbet of Scott, is setting the Stratford audience in a roar. They Common Conditions is the Vice of the performance. It appears to us, on the contrary, that the ordinary craft of a cunning knave—a little, restless, tricky servant-works out all the action, in the same way that the Vice had formerly interfered with it in the moral plays; but that he is essen. tially and purposely distinguished from the Vice. Mr. Collier also calls this play merely an inter lude: it appears to us in its outward form to be as much a comedy as the Winter's Tale. |