Care and utmost shifts

How to secure the lady from surprisal
Brought to my mind a certain shepherd-lad,
Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled
In every virtuous plant and healing herb

That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray.
He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing,
Which when I did, he on the tender grass
Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy,
And in requital ope his leathern scrip,
And show me simples of a thousand names,
Telling their strange and vigorous faculties.
Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect, he culled me out.
The leaf was darkish and had prickles on it,
But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil,
Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.
He called it Hæmony, and gave it me,

And bade me keep it as of sovran use

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp, Or ghastly furies' apparition.

I pursed it up, but little reckoning made,

Till now that this extremity compelled.
But now I find it true; for by this means
I knew the foul enchanter though disguised,
Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells,

And yet came off. If you have this about you-
As I will give you when we go-you may
Boldly assault the necromancer's hall;
Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood,
And brandished blade rush on him, break his glass,
And shed the luscious liquor on the ground;
But seize his wand.

Tongueless he stood, heart-wounded, weak to quell
The agony within; a dark dumb rain
Of weeping ever from his eyelids fell;
Much did we wonder and enquire his pain,

Till words at last he found his anguish to make plain.

"Searching as thou, Odysseus, didst command, We a fair palace in the woodland gain, Where one that plied the distaff with her hand Sang sweet-divine or mortal. Then my train Called her, and she, the brilliant portals twain Unfolding, bade them to her halls; but I, Doubtful of guile, without the doors remain. There all the rest are vanished utterly; Sitting long time I watched; not one could I descry."

Forthwith my silver-hilted sword I take,
Arrows and bow, and bid him go before;

But he with both hands clasped my knees, and spake
Accents of wingéd words, bewailing sore:
"Force me not, hero, to that hated door!
Drag me not hence to perish! for I know
Thou and thy comrades will return no more.
Rather with these right quickly let us go,

And save our souls through flight, and shun the evil woe."

But I: "Eurylochus, abide thou here Fast by the hollow ship, and drink and eat; But I will hence. Necessity severe Constrains me." Thus I passing turned my feet On through the glens for the divine retreat Of Circe; and a youth, in form and mould Fair as when tender manhood seems most sweet, Beautiful Hermes, with the wand of gold, Met me alone and there my hand in his did fold.

The Brothers, like the Lady, proceed to the house of Comus with a prayer for God's protection:

Thyrsis, lead on apace, I'll follow thee,

And some good angel bear a shield before us.

In the next scene the Lady in the stately palace of Comus, set amongst his revellers in the charmed chair, from which she cannot rise, was in the position of many an innocent youth in the days of Charles the First and after them, bound by what were regarded as the laws of hospitality to presence at a drunken revel. The dialogue between Comus and the Lady shows us the two principles represented by them reasoning out in argument Milton's plea for temperance. The brothers then rush in, break the Enchanter's glass, but let Comus himself escape. "Oh, ye mistook," the Spirit tells them,

Ye should have snatched his wand
And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the Lady that sits here
In stony fetters fixed and motionless.

Without reversal of the charming-rod that cheats the eye with false appearances-change of the social opinion that establishes under fair name an evil usage-Comus will still be master of his crew. But as the Lady must be rescued from her thraldom, the allegory is changed to a raising of the Spirit of Temperance, typified by pure water drops that might have been taken from any stream, but at Ludlow were taken from the river of Shropshire by raising the nymph of the Severn, who undoes the charm. Thus I sprinkle on thy breast

Drops that from my fountain pure

I have kept of precious cure,

"Whither," he said, "wouldst thou thy steps incline,
Ah! hapless, all unweeting of thy way?

Thy friends lie huddling in their styes like swine;
And these wouldst thou deliver? I tell thee nay-
Except I help thee, thou with them shalt stay.
Come, take this talisman to Circe's hall,
For I will save thee from thine ills this day,
Nor leave like ruin on thy life to fall,

Since her pernicious wiles I now will tell thee all.

"Drink will she mix, and in thy food will charm
Drugs, but in vain, because I give thee now
This antidote beyond her power of harm.
When she shall smite thee with her wand, do thou
Draw thy sharp sword, and fierce design avow
To slay her. She will bid thee to her bed,
Fearing thy lifted arm and threatening brow.
Nor thou refuse, that so her heart be led

To loose thy luckless friends, and on thee kindness shed

"But by the grand oath of immortals blest
First bind her, ere thou yield, that she no wrong
Scheme for thy ruin in her secret breast,
Lest, naked and unmanned, thou linger long
Pent in vile durance with her swinish throng."
Therewith the root he tore up from the ground,
Black, with a milk-white flower, in heavenly tongue
Called Moly, and its nature did expound-
Hard to be dug by men; in gods all power is found.

Then to the far Olympus Hermes went.
Sheer through the woodland isle; but I repaired
Onward to Circe's halls magnificent,
And with a heaving heart the danger dared.

Bird. Law grows partial,

And finds it but chance medley; and their comedies
Will abuse you, or me, or anybody;

We cannot put our moneys to increase

By lawful usury, nor break in quiet,

Nor put off our false wares, nor keep our wives
Finer than others, but our ghosts must walk
Upon their stages.

Flow. Is not this flat conjuring,

To make our ghosts to walk ere we be dead?

Bird. That's nothing, Mistress Flowerdew, they will play

'The knave, the fool, the devil, and all for money.

Flow. Impiety! Oh, that men endued with reason .Should have no more grace in them!

Bird. Be there not other

Vocations as thriving, and more honest ?
Bailiffs, promoters, jailors, and apparitors,

Beadles, and marshals' men, the needful instruments

Of the republic; but to make themselves

Such monsters? for they are monsters, they are monsters,
Base, sinful, shameless, ugly, vile, deformed,
Pernicious monsters ?

Flow. I have heard our vicar

Call playhouses the Colleges of Transgression,
Wherein the Seven Deadly Sins are studied.

Bird. Why, then, the city will in time be made
An University of Iniquity.

We dwell by Black Friars College, where I wonder
How that profane nest of pernicious birds
Dare roost themselves there in the midst of us,
So many good and well-disposed persons.
Oh, impudence!

Flow. It was a zealous prayer

I heard a brother make concerning playhouses.
Bird. For charity, what is it?

Ros. My spleen is up. And live not you by sin?
Take away vanity, and you both may break.
What serves your lawful trade of selling pins,
But to joint gewgaws, and to knit together
Gorgets, strips, neckcloths, laces, ribbons, ruffs,
And many other such-like toys as these,
To make the baby bride a pretty puppet?
And you, sweet featherman, whose ware, though light,
O'erweighs your conscience. What serves your trade
But to plume folly, to give pride her wings,
To deck vainglory? spoiling the peacock's tail
To adorn an idiot's coxcomb: Oh, dull ignorance!
How ill 'tis understood, what we do mean
For good and honest; they abuse our scene,
And say we live by vice: indeed 'tis true,
As the physicians by diseases do,
Only to cure them. They do live we see
Like cooks by pampering prodigality,
Which are our fond accusers. On the stage

We set an usurer to tell this age
How ugly looks his soul: a prodigal
Is taught by us how far from liberal
His folly bears him. Boldly I dare say,
There has been more by us in some one play
Laughed into wit and virtue, than hath been
By twenty tedious lectures drawn from sin
And foppish humours: hence the cause doth rise,—
Men are not won by the ears so well as eyes.
First see what we present.

How near our shapes approach divinity.

Ladies, let those who will your glass deride,
And say it is an instrument of pride;
I will commend you for it: there you see
If you be fair how truly fair ye be;
Where finding beauteous faces, I do know
You'll have the greater care to keep them so.
A heavenly vision in your beauty lies,
Which nature hath denied to your own eyes;
Were it not pity, you alone should be
Debarred of that others are blessed to see;
Then take your glasses, and yourselves enjoy
The benefit of yourselves; it is no toy,
Though ignorance at slight esteem hath set her,
That will preserve us good, or make us better.
A country slut (for such she was, though here

I' th' city may be some, as well as there),

Kept her hands clean (for those being always seen,
Had told her else how sluttish she had been),

But had her face as nasty as the stall

Of a fishmonger, or an usurer's hall

Daubed o'er with dirt: one might have dared to say
She was a true piece of Prometheus clay,

Not yet informed; and then her unkembed hair
Dressed up with cobwebs, made her hag-like stare;
One day within her pail (for country lasses,
Fair ladies, have no other looking-glasses),
She spied her ugliness, and fain she would

Have blushed, if thorough so much dirt she could:
Ashamed, within that water, that, I say,

Which showed her filth, she washed her filth away.
So comedies, as poets do intend them,

Serve first to show our faults, and then to mend them.
Upon our stage two glasses oft there be,

The comic mirror, and the tragedy:
The comic glass is full of merry strife,
The low reflection of a country life.
Grave tragedy, void of such homely sports,
Is the sad glass of cities and of courts.

The play afterwards following the doctrine of Aristotle, that Virtue is seated in the mean, and that each vice is either the too much or too little of a virtue, shows the Vices by characteristic dialogue between pairs of extremes. After which, Miocrity, the Golden Mean, Mother of Virtue, introduces her daughter with a long speech, and Bird and Flowerdew are treated to a Masque of the Virtues

But angry Puritans still warred against the stage, and as the civil troubles gathered strength the drama saffered more and more neglect. Young poets who would have written many plays had they been born in the preceding reign, wrote songs, and each a play or two. Shakerley Marmion published in 1632 a play called "Holland's Leaguer," and in 1633 his "Fine Companion." Holland's Leaguer was a place of garden entertainment within the moat that surrounded the old Manor House of Paris Garden. John Suckling wrote "Aglaura." "Brennoralt," and "The Goblins" before his death in 1641. William

Sir

HOLLAND'S LEAGUER.

From the Title-page of a Pamphlet dated 1632,

day, a "seraphical preacher" as well as a lyric poet, dramatist, and a loyal friend to the king, died of camp-fever in 1643, when he was but thirty-two. years old. One of his four plays was

THE ROYAL SLAVE,

first acted on the 30th of August, 1636, before the king and queen at Oxford, by students of Cartwright's own college, Christchurch, and first printed at Oxford in 1639. The habits Persian, the scene Sardis, its plot is founded on a notion "that 'tis the custom of the Persian kings, after a conquest, to take one of the captives and adorn him with all the robes of majesty, giving him all privileges for three full days, that he may do what he will, and then be certainly led to death." After a victory over the Ephesians, from among the enslaved prisoners from Ephesus, Cratander, who excels his fellows in nobility of character, is chosen and invested with this three days' royalty. Thus he becomes "the Royal Slave."

ACT I., SCENE 1.-Philotas, Stratocles, Leocrates, Archippus, Ephesian captives of a baser nature, drink and riot in their prison, and mock Molops their gaoler.

SCENE 2.-Arsamnes, King of Persia, accompanied by his four lords Praxaspes, Hydarnes, Masistes, and Orontes, with Priests, enter the prison to select the captive who is to be the chosen sacrifice to their god, and made royal for three days before his death. They scorn the prisoners they see, "their blood runs thick;" but the gaoler is sent for one whom he had set apart as, in his opinion, "wondrous heavy and bookish, and therefore unfit for any honour." Molops then brings Cratander, at whose approach Arsamnes says,

Come from the dungeon to the throne,

To be a King and straight be none.
Reign, then, awhile that thou mayst be

Fitter to fall by Majesty.

Chorus. So beasts for sacrifice we feed; First they are crowned, and then they bleed.

Priest. Wash with thy blood what wars have done Offensive to our God, the Sun:

That as thou fallest we may see

Him pleased, and set as red as thee.

Enjoy the glories then of state

Whiles pleasures ripen thee for fate.

Chorus. So beasts for sacrifice we feed;

First they are crowned, and then they bleed.

Arsamnes. Now then, Cratander, I do here indulge thee

All the prerogatives of Majesty

For three full days; which being expired, that then
Thou mayst fall honourably, I intend
To strike the blow myself.

Cratander remains master of himself. His first order is for the release of his fellow-captives, and for reinforcement of battle to complete the victory over the Ephesians. The Persian lords obey unwillingly.

SCENES 3, 4.-Atossa, Queen of Persia, talks of the three days' king with the Persian lords and her ladies, Mandane and Ariene. His recognised nobility of thought and bearing causes the queen, when she hears of it, to say—

If he do well,

And keep his virtues up until his fall,
I'll pay a good wish to him as he's going,
And a fair mention of him when he's gone.

SCENE 5.-Arsamnes enters to the lords after Atossa and her ladies have departed.