How Danaus' daughters ply their endless task, All these are old and known I know, yet, if thou wilt have any, Choose some of these, for, trust me, else Enone hath not many. Par. Nay, what thou wilt: but sith my cunning not compares with thine, Begin some toy that I can play upon this pipe of mine. En. There is a pretty sonnet, then, we call it Cupid's Curse, "They that do change old love for new, pray gods they change for worse!" The note is fine and quick withal, the ditty will agree, see Our music figure of the love that grows 'twixt thee and me. They sing; and while ENONE sings, he pipes. CUPID'S CURSE. En. Fair and fair, and twice so fair, The fairest shepherd on our green, Par. Fair and fair, and twice so fair, Thy love is fair for thee alone, My merry merry merry roundelay, Concludes with Cupid's curse,— They that do change old love for new, Pray gods they change for worse! Both. They that do change, &c. En. Fair and fair, &c. Par. Fair and fair, &c. Thy love is fair, &c. The storm being past of thunder and lightning, and ATE having trundled the ball into place, crying "Fatum Trojæ,"1 Juno takes it up. Juno. Pallas, the storm is past and gone, and Phoebus clears the skies, And, lo, behold a ball of gold, a fair and worthy prize! Ven. This posy wills the apple to the fairest given be; Then is it mine, for Venus hight the fairest of the three. Pal. The fairest here, as fair is meant, am I, ye do me wrong; And if the fairest have it must, to me it doth belong. The brief is this, Detur pulcherrimæ, Let this unto the fairest given be, Let this unto the fairest given be, Juno. My face is fair; but yet the Majesty Ven. That Venus is the fairest, this doth prove, If, then, this prize be but bequeath'd to beauty, Pal. To stand on terms of beauty as you take it, This beauty Wisdom hight, whereof am I, By heaven appointed, goddess worthily. And look how much the mind, the better part, Doth overpass the body in desert, So much the mistress of those gifts divine Excels thy beauty, and that state of thine. Then, if this prize be thus bequeath'd to beauty, The only she that wins this prize am I. T'en. Nay, Pallas, by your leave you wander clean: We must not construe hereof as you mean, But take the sense as it is plainly meant; And let the fairest ha't, I am content. Pal. Our reasons will be infinite, I trow, But first here's none, methinks, dispos'd to yield, 1 The Fate of Troy: because the favour of Venus won Prince of Troy, led to his carrying off Helen, the mos woman in the world, from her Greek husband Menelaus. the Greeks to besiege Troy, and leave it in ruin. O sage and sober dames, O shamefast maids, [The queen, with her train, cometh out of the palace. Joc. My servant dear, dost thou yet bring me news Of more mishap? Ah, weary wretch! alas! Nun. He lives, O queen, hereof have ye no doubt, From such suspect myself will quit you soon. Joc. The vent'rous Greeks have haply ta'en the town. Nun. The gods forbid! Joc. Our soldiers, then, perchance, Disperséd been and yielden to the sword. Nun. Not so; they were at first in danger, sure, But in the end obtainéd victory. Joc. Alas! what then becomes of Polynice? Oh, canst thou tell? is he dead or alive? Nun. You have, O queen, yet both your sons alive. Joc. Oh, how my heart is easéd of his pain! Well, then, proceed, and briefly let me hear How ye repulsed your proud presuming foes, That thereby yet at least I may assuage The swelling sorrows in my doleful breast, In that the town is hitherto preserved: And for the rest, I trust that mighty Jove Will yield his aid. In George Gascoigne's prose translation of "I Suppositi," there is often a rudeness of style that contrasts unfavourably with the grace of the original. But although in most of our earliest plays the art was obviously imperfect, there was the vigour in them of a sound mind, with worthiness of purpose that would lead in after years to higher things. With all the grace of Ariosto's comedy, the plot included a relation between Polynesta and the feigned servant which, by the manner of its treatment, reflected a low tone of morality; and although it gave more reason for the anger and grief of the father and the giving up of his suit by Cleander, it was, on the whole, so needless a degradation of the two chief characters that I have passed it over in the telling of the story. George Gascoigne reproduced it, but it was foreign to the nature of an English play. The bitterest opponents of the stage under Elizabeth admitted that the plays were very honest, and had healthy aims. In the year 1566, when Gascoigne's "Supposes and "Jocasta" were acted in the Hall at Gray's Inn, Richard Edwards's play of "Palamon and Arcyte" was acted before Queen Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford. At the beginning of the play part of the stage fell down, whereby five persons were hurt and three were killed. The scaffolding was reconstructed, the play went on, and the queen enjoyed it, giving eight guineas to one of the young leased her much. actors At court it was the business of the Master of the Revels to have plays rehearsed before him, and to choose the best for the queen's entertainment. In the course of 1571, Elizabeth had represented before her "Lady Barbara," by Sir Robert Lane's men; "Iphigenia," by the children of Paul's; "Ajax and Ulysses," by the children of Windsor; "Narcissus," by the children of the chapel; "Cloridon and Radiamanta," by Sir Robert Lane's men; "Paris and Vienna," by the children of Westminster. The children were in each case boys of the choir trained also to act. In May, 1574, the Earl of Leicester, who was a good friend to the stage, procured for those of his servants forming his own company of players the first royal patent to a dramatic company. By this patent James Burbage, John Perkyn, John Lanham, William Johnson, and Robert Wylson were privileged to act within the City of London and its Liberties, and in any other city; "provided that the said Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes, and Stage Plays be by the Master of the Revels for the time being before seen and allowed; and that the same be not published or shown in the time of Common Prayer, or in the time of great and common Plague in our City of London." Reservation of the time of Common Prayer points to the fact that the earliest plays were presented to the people chiefly on Sundays and saints' days. Before the Reformation, usage that still prevails in Roman Catholic countries gave the holiday-time after church to sports and entertainments of the people. In the reformed Church of England the discipline of Calvin, who laid stress upon the keeping holy of the Sabbath Day, was not accepted at all points, though insisted upon by that large section of the Church called by Archbishop Parker Puritan or Precisian. Tolerance of Sunday sports became, indeed, in after years one of the grounds of contest between Puritans and their opponents. In 1574, the Mayor and Corporation of London represented Puritan opinion, and objected strongly to the forcing of the players on the City. Then Leicester procured the writing of a letter from the Privy Council that required the Lord Mayor "to admit the Comedy Players within the City of London, and to be otherwise favourably used." The Corporation argued against this, objecting to performances on sacred days; to the unmeet drawing of young men and maids to the inns; to the waste of money; to the seditious matter that might be spoken on the stage; to the danger by occasional fall of the scaffolding, as well as by chance hurt of the players with weapons and gunpowder used in performances; to the risk of contagion by bringing together crowds, among whom would be some sick of plague or other infectious disease. The Common Council framed regulations that required each exhibition of a play to have its separate licence from the mayor, and half its profits to be given to the poor; but had not long patience even with this limited toleration, and in December, 1575, issued a complete prohibition of the performance of plays in the City, and prayed the Lords that they would issue a like prohibition for all "places near unto the City." The Justices of Middlesex had joined the Corporation in its opposition to the players, who then appealed for protection to the Privy Council. In its answer to their appeal, the City said: "It may be noted how uncomely it is for youth to run straight from prayers to plays, from God's service to the devil's." If the Earl of Leicester's company, known as the Queen's Players, was to be forced on the City, let the names of these actors be registered, and none but just these be suffered to appear upon a stage in London; and, it was urged, let them not act when the death-rate is over fifty a week. Forty or fifty being then the average deathrate when there was no plague, and plague or other spread of sickness being very common in those days of unwholesome dwellings, this was another way of getting an approach to prohibition. In 1576, the City desired to stop acting at inns, and proposed that the players should be required to perform in private houses (where there would be no room for an audience large enough to pay them for their skill); that they should never act on the Sabbath, nor on holidays of the Church till after evening prayer, and then never so late as to make it impossible for every one of the spectators who stayed to the end to reach home before dark. Moreover, there was to be no acting unless the death-rate had been for twenty days below fifty a week. Breach of these orders was to be followed by forfeiture of toleration. Upon such terms it was impossible for any actors to live under the jurisdiction of the City of London. James Burbage and his companions were, therefore, driven to look for a place outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction where they might still be within reach of the considerable audiences to be drawn from London. Such a place they found among the houses built upon the ground that had once belonged to the great monastery of the Dominicans or Black Friars. The monastery had been built in the time of Edward I. ; and had a handsome church with privileges, including right of sanctuary. Its large precinct enclosed many shops, and had been entered by four gates. Its inhabitants, exempt from City law, were subject only to the king, to the Superior of the monastery, and to their own justices. Several Parliaments had been held in the great church of the Black Friars, and there in 1529 Wolsey and Campeggio had heard the question of divorce between Henry VIII. and Katharine of Arragon. At the dissolution of the monasteries, Black Friars was surrendered to the king in 1538. In 1547, the Prior's lodgings and the Hall were sold to Sir Francis Bryan, and afterwards Edward VI. granted the rest to Sir Thomas Cawarden. The site of the monastery and its precincts-not included within the liberties of the City till the reign of James I.-became, in Elizabeth's day, a fashionable quarter; and when James Burbage and his fellow-players, to escape control of the Corporation, took a house in Blackfriars, and converted it into a theatre of their own, they could not do so without combating much opposition from the polite neighours, who were averse to noise and crowd. But they achieved their object, and opened, in 1576, the Blackfriars Theatre, the first place set apart in England for performances of plays. About the | same time, two other buildings were erected, for the distinct purpose of presenting plays in them. These were outside the City bounds, in the pleasant fields at Shoreditch, a quarter then preferred for the houses and gardens of rich foreign merchants trading in London. These houses were called "The Theatre" and "The Curtain," built on the south-western side of the site of the suppressed Priory of St. John the Baptist, called Holywell. One recommendation of the place chosen for them was that, outside Bishopsgate, a well-kept street (now Bishopsgate Street Without) extended for some way into the open country, and thus gave easy and safe way of approach for the play-goers. Four years afterwards, such acting within the City as still lingered in its inn-yards was finally suppressed. At one of the innyards-that of the Belle Sauvage in Ludgate Hill, where now these pages are printed--it was said that the devil in person appeared one day on the stage to play his own part for himself among his friends. In 1576, when the first theatres were built, Shakespeare was twelve years old. In that year, Stephen Gosson, a young man of Kent, who had been educated at Christ Church, Oxford, came to London at the age of twenty-one, wrote poetry, and attached himself as author and player to the new Curtain Theatre. He wrote a tragedy on "Catiline's Conspiracies," and a comedy called "Captain Mario," now lost. But while young Gosson was among the actors, his religious mind inclined more and more to the side of the preachers who condemned the stage. In a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, on the 3rd of November, 1577, in time of plague, the Rev. T. Wilcocks said:"Look but upon the common plays in London, and see the multitude that flocketh to them and followeth them: behold the sumptuous theatre-houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly. But I understand they are now forbidden because of the plague. I like the policy well if it hold still, for a disease is but botched or patched up that is not cured in the cause, and the cause of plagues is sin, if you look to it well; and the cause of sin are plays; therefore the cause of plagues are plays." On the 24th of August, 1578, the Rev. John Stockwood, of Tunbridge, preaching at Paul's Cross, said :-" Will not a filthy play, with the blast of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand than an hour's tolling of the bell bring to the sermon a hundred?" And he said of the plays:-" Have we not houses of purpose built with great charges for the maintenance of them, and that without the liberties, as who would say, There! Let them say what they will say, we will play. I know not how I might, with the godly learned especially, more discommend the gorgeous playing places erected in the fields than to term it, as they please to have it called, a Theatre. . . . I will not here enter this disputation, whether it be utterly unlawful to have any plays, but will only join in this issue, whether in a Christian commonwealth they be tolerable on the Lord's Day." Stephen Gosson was convinced by 1579 that he should not only quit the theatre, but join with his own voice in the denunciations of it, and he published in that year a pamphlet called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invec tive against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such-like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth." Here he condemned alike poets and players. But it is noticeable that in speaking of the dramatists he deals with the probable answer of "some Archplayer or other that hath read a little," who might say that the immorality of the old comedies was no part of the plays then seeking the favour of the people. "The comedies that are exercised in our days are better sifted. They show no such bran. The first smelt of Plautus, these taste of Menander. The lewdness of gods is altered and changed to the love of young men; force to friendship; wooing allowed by assurance of wedding. Nor are the abuses of the world revealed; every man in a play may see his own faults, and learn by this glass to amend his manners. Deformities are checked in jest and mated in earnest. The sweetness of music and pleasure of sports temper the bitterness of rebukes." In such wise Gosson, while attacking the stage, represents the claim it then put forward to be a teacher of duty and upholder of all that was honest and of good report. The plays that have come down to us from those times bear witness to the truth of such a plea, and Gosson does not contradict it. For what is his reply? They are either so blind that they cannot, or so blunt that they will not, see why this exercise should not be suffered as a profitable recreation. For my part, I am neither so fond a physician nor so bad a cook but I can allow my patient a cup of wine to meals, although it be hot; and pleasant fancies to drive down his meat if his stomach be queasy. Notwithstanding, if people will be instructed, God be thanked, we have divines enough to discharge that, and more by a great many than are well hearkened to." The substantial ground of offence was retention of the old custom of Sunday entertainment-Sabbath conflict between the trumpets summoning to plays and the bells summoning to prayers. 66 Gosson dedicated his "School of Abuse" to Philip Sidney. Edmund Spenser, who was then a young man of about six-and-twenty, publishing his "Shepherd's Calendar" while for a short time in employment of the Earl of Leicester, wrote in October, 1579, to his friend, Gabriel Harvey, "New books I hear of none, but only of one that, writing a certain book and dedicating it to Master Sidney, was for his labour scorned; if at least it be in the goodness of that nature to scorn. Such folly is it not to regard aforehand the inclination and quality of him to whom we dedicate our books." There can be little doubt that a Puritan outcry against poets, brought home to him by the dedication of Gosson's pamphlet, caused Philip Sidney to write, in 1580 or 1581, his "Apologie for Poetrie," which was not published until 1595, after its author's death. This book reasoned boldly and calmly for the poet's art that it is first among the exercises of man's intellect. The poet must delight and teach. All worthy pursuits of men "one and other, having this scope, to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying of his own divine essence." "Now, thereon," said Philip Sidney, "of all sciences (I speak still of human and according to the human conceit) is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of grapes; that full of that taste you may long to pass farther. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulness; but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportions, either accompanied with or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimneycorner. And pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such others as have a pleasant taste, which if one should begin to tell them the nature of aloes or rhubarb they would sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth. So it is in men (most of which are childish in the best things, till they be cradled in their graves), glad they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, and Æneas, and hearing them must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice; which, if they had been barely, that is to say philosophically, set out, they would swear they be brought to school again." Philip Sidney spoke here for his fellow-poets and for his time as well as for himself. In that spirit every good poet of Elizabeth's reign approached his work. The crudeness of construction in the early plays is criticised in Sidney's "Apologie for Poetrie.” He wrote before there was a play written by Lyly, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, or any one of the chief precursors of Shakespeare; when the plays were such as have been represented thus far by our specimens. Of Comedy and Tragedy in themselves Sidney wrote :— Sir To the arguments of abuse I will after answer; only thus much now is to be said, that the Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so, in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for, of a niggardly Demea, of a crafty Davus, of a flattering Gnatho, of a vain-glorious Thraso; and not only to know what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such, by the signifying badge given them by the comedian. And little reason hath any man to say, that men learn the evil by seeing it so set out, since, as I said before, there is no man living, but by the force truth hath in nature, no sooner seeth these men play their parts, but wisheth the m in "pistrinum;" although perchance the sack of his own 1 |