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An apt instance of this is furnished in A Knack to Know a Knave, entered at the Stationers' in 1593, but written several years before. It was printed in 1594, and the title-page states that it had been acted "sundry times by Edward Alleyn and his company," and that it contained " "Kempe's applauded merriments of the men of Gotham." Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, was the leading actor of the Lord Admiral's company; and after the death of Richard Tarlton, in 1588, William Kempe, who at a later period was of the same company with Shakespeare, bore the palm as an actor of comic parts. The play is made up partly of allegorical personages, and partly of historical; the chief of the latter being, King Edgar, St. Dunstan, Ethenwald, Osrick, and his daughter Alfrida. From reports of Alfrida's beauty, Edgar gets so enamoured of her, that he sends Ethenwald, Earl of Cornwall, to court her for him. The Earl, being already in love with the lady, is distressed that he cannot court her for his own bride: he arrives, is introduced by her father; his passion gets the better of his commission; he wooes and wins her for himself, and has her father's full consent. returns to Edgar; tells him she will do very well for an earl, but not for a king: Edgar distrusts his report, and goes to see for himself, when Ethenwald tries to pass off the kitchen-maid upon him as Alfrida: the trick is detected; Dunstan counsels forgiveness; whereupon the King generously renounces his claim. There is but one scene of "Kempe's applauded merriments" in the play, and this consists merely of a blundering dispute, whether a mock petition touching the consumption of ale shall be presented to the King by a cobbler or a smith.

He

As to the allegorical persons, it is worthy notice that several of these have individual designations, as if the author, whoever he might be, had some vague ideas of representative character, that is, persons standing for classes, yet clothed with individuality, — but lacked the skill to work them out. Such is the Bailiff of Hexham, who represents

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tne iniquities of local magistrates. He has four sons, Walter, representing the frauds of farmers; Priest, the sins of the clergy; Coneycatcher, the tricks of cheats; and Perin, the vices of courtiers. Besides these, we have Honesty, whose business it is to expose crimes and vices. The Bailiff, on his death-bed, calls his sons around him, and makes a speech to them :

"Here have I been a bailiff threescore years,
And us'd exaction on the dwellers-by;
For, if a man were brought before my face
For cozenage, theft, or living on his wit,
For counterfeiting any hand or seal,
The matter heard, the witness brought to me,
I took a bribe and set the prisoners free.

So by such dealings I have got my wealth."

The Devil makes his appearance several times, and, when the old Bailiff dies, carries him off. At last, Honesty exposes the crimes of all classes to the King, who has justice done on their representatives. This part of the play seems intended as a satire on the vices of Court and country.

The piece is in blank-verse, and in respect of versification makes considerable improvement on the specimens hitherto noticed. A short passage, which is all we have room for, will show that the writer was not wholly a stranger to right ideas of character and poetry. It is where Ethenwald, on being introduced by Lord Osrick to his innocent daughter, complains of a "painful rheum" in his eyes, so that he cannot look up:

“Osrick. I am sorry that my house should cause your grief.➡ Daughter, if you have any skill at all,

I pray you use your cunning with the earl,
And see if you can ease him of his pain.
A.frida. Father, such skill as I receiv'd of late
By reading many pretty-penn'd receipts,
Both for the ache of head and pain of eyes,
I will, if so it please the earl to accept it,
Endeavour what I may to comfort him.-

My lord, I have waters of approved worth,
And such as are not common to be found;
Any of which, if please your Honour use them,
I am in hope will help you to your sight

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CHAPTER V.

SHAKESPEARE'S IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS.

TOUCHING the general state of the Drama a few years before Shakespeare took hold of it, we have some contemporary notices which must now be produced. In 1578, George Whetstone published his History of Promos and Cassandra, a drama in two parts, upon which the Poet founded his Measure for Measure, as may be seen at length in our Introduction to that play. In the Dedication of his work, Whetstone has the following passage, where he evidently has in view some particular plays which he had seen performed:

"The Englishman, in this quality, is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossi bilities; then in three hours runs he through the world, marries, gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdoms, murder monsters, and bringeth gods from heaven, and fetcheth devils from hell. And, that which is worst, their ground is not so unperfect, as their working indiscreet; not weighing, so the people laugh, though they laugh them, for their follies, to scorn: many times, to make mirth, they make a clown companion with a king; in their grave councils they allow the advice of fools; yea, they use one order of speech for all persons, -a gross indecorum; for a crow will ill counterfeit the nightingale's sweet voice: even so affected speech doth misbecome a clown. For, to work a

comedy kindly, grave old men should instruct, young men should show the imperfections of youth, strumpets should be lascivious, boys unhappy, and clowns should speak disorderly; intermingling all these actions in such sort as the grave matter may instruct, and the pleasant delight; for without this change the attention would be small, and the liking less."

Some further points of information are supplied by Ste phen Gosson, whose School of Abuse, which was a general invective against the stage, came out in 1579. Only two years before, Gosson himself had written two plays, one called The Comedy of Captain Mario, the other a Moralplay entitled Praise at Parting. He also avows himself the author of an historical play called Catiline's Conspiracies, of which he speaks as follows: "The whole mark I shot at in that work was, to show the reward of traitors in Catiline, and the necessary government of learned men in the person of Cicero, which foresees every danger that is likely to happen, and forestalls it continually ere it take effect." And he mentions several other dramas; one called The Blacksmith's Daughter, setting forth "the treachery of Turks, the honourable bounty of a noble mind, and the shining of virtue in distress;" also, one called The Jew and Ptolemy, having for its subject “the greediness of worldly choosers, and the bloody mind of usurers." Besides these, he speaks of "two prose books played at the Bell Savage," describing "how seditious estates with their own devices, false friends with their own swords, and rebellious commons with their own snares, are overthrown.” From all these he admits that good moral lessons might be drawn, and so marks them out for exception from his attack. From his specifying two of them as "prose books," it is to be presumed that all the others were in verse.

The School of Abuse was taken in hand by Thomas Lodge, and in 1581 Gosson made a rejoinder in his Plays Confuted in Five Actions, where we have the following:

"Sometimes you shall see nothing but the adventures of an amorous knight, passing from country to country for the love of his lady, encountering many a terrible monster made of brow paper; and at his return is so wonderfully changed, that he cannot be known but by some posy in his tablet, or by a broken ring, or a handkerchief, or a piece of a cockleshell." Again, he refers to the mode of treating historical subjects, thus: "If a true history be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, longest at the rising and falling of the sun, shortest of all at high noon. it most commonly unto such points as majesty of their pen in tragical speeches, or set the hearers agog with discourses of love, or paint a few antics to fit their own humours with scoffs and taunts, or bring in a show to furnish the stage when it is bare: when the matter of itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of the cobbler and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out."

For the poets drive may best show the

In another part of the same tract, he gives the following account of the sources whence dramatic writers commonly derived their plots and stories: "I may boldly say it, because I have seen it, that The Palace of Pleasure, The Golden Ass. the Ethiopian History, Amadis of France, and The Round Table, bawdy comedies in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been thoroughly ransacked, to furnish the play-houses in London." This shows very clearly what direction the public taste was then taking; that the matter and method of the old dramas, and all "such musty fopperies of antiquity," would no longer go; and that there was an eager and pressing demand, not knowing exactly what to seek, nor how to come by it, for something wherein men might find, or at least fancy, themselves touched by the real vital currents of nature. And, as prescription was thus set aside, and art still ungrown, the materials of history and romance, foreign tales and plays, any thing that could furnish incidents and a plot, were blindly and ignorantly pressed into the service.

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