LIFE ABOUT TOWN. 313 The gallant's father dies; and he inherits the paternal lands. Then he plunges into new extravagance ; buys coach and horses; maintains mistresses; decks himself out in silks and satins and Bristol diamonds, bought by him for Oriental gems. His former haunts are abandoned for more fashionable places of resort: The Cockpit heretofore would serve his wit, As might be expected, our gallant's whirligig runs I have only selected those lines from the satire which illustrate the manners of the theatre. With regard to the habit of carrying fine clothes to the stage, for exhibition and effect, a parallel passage might be quoted from Ben Jonson's 'The Devil is an Ass' (Act I. sc. 3). One of the personages in the play, Fabian Fitzdottrel, a squire of Norfolk, is speaking : Here is a cloak cost fifty pound, wife, Which I can sell for thirty, when I have seen That 50, though an extravagant, was no extraordinary price for a cloak, is certain from the items paid out of the privy purse for masquing dresses.1 In one bill the wife of Charles I. discharged 1,630% for embroidery alone. No wonder the old dramatists so frequently exclaim that gentlemen and city madams carried farms and acres on their backs, and stowed estates away in their wardrobes. It is not to be imagined-putting these direct witnesses aside that the theatres of Elizabethan were much purer than the theatres of Victorian London. Customs in that epoch were far more strongly marked ; manners coarser; vice more open and avowed. Therefore we may well believe that City scruples, Court restrictions, and Puritan prejudices were in a measure justified. It is also certain that an appreciable social stigma the stigma under which his sonnets show that Shakspere smarted, the stigma of which Jonson bluntly speaks in his Hawthornden Conversations'attached to poets who wrote for the stage, and to players who interpreted their works. When the Puritans took the upper hand, scruples, restrictions, and prejudices became persecution, prohibition, and crusade. The theatre was then summarily and abruptly put an end to. XII. These were the conditions under which our Drama came to its perfection. This was the theatre for 1 See details in the following chapter on Masques. 2 This fact is proved by the curious character of the Player drawn in The Rich Cabinet, 1616, republished in Roxburghe Library, 1869, p. 228. ENGLISH AND ATTIC DRAMAS. 315 which Shakspere wrote, where Shakspere acted, where Shakspere gained a livelihood and saved a competence. In slums and suburbs, purlieus and base quarters of the town, stood those wooden sheds which echoed to the verses of the greatest poet of the modern world. Disdainfully protected by the Court, watched with disfavour by the City, denounced by Puritans and preachers, patronised by prentices and mechanics, the Muse of England took her station on the public boards beneath a misty London daylight, or paced, halfshrouded in tobacco smoke, between the murky torches of the private stage. Compare her destiny with that of her Athenian elder sister. In the theatre of Dionysos, scooped for a god's worship from the marble flanks of the Acropolis, ringed with sculptured thrones of priests and archons, entertained at public cost, honoured in its solemn ceremonials with crowns and prizes worthy of the noblest names, the Muse of the dramatic art in Athens dwelt a Queen confessed. To serve her rites with costly liturgies, conferred distinction on the foremost citizens. To attend her high-tides, was the privilege and pleasure of a congregated nation. To compete for her rewards was the glory of warriors, ambassadors, men of birth and fashion, princes-of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Agathon, of Dionysius. Religion, national enthusiasm, public expenditure, private ambition, combined with the highest genius in art and literature to dignify, consecrate, enrich, immortalise the clients of the Attic stage. For scenery, there were the sea and mountains, the Parthenon and Propylæa, over-arched with skies of Hellas. For audience, the people of Athens, 'ever delicately marching through most pel lucid air.' It is not to be wondered that a monumental splendour and sublimity distinguishes what still survives of Attic tragedy and comedy. It is not to be wondered that the works of our Elizabethan playwrights should be incomplete and fragmentary, grandiose by accident, perfect only in portions, imposing in their mass and multitude more than in single masterpieces. The marvel rather is that on such a theatre as that of London, Shakspere should have risen like a sun, to give light to the heavens of modern poetry. The marvel is that round him should be gathered such a constellation-planets of Marlowe's, Jonson's, Webster's, Fletcher's magnitude, each ruling his own luminous house of fame. In the history of literature, the Elizabethan Drama is indeed a paradox and problem. Nothing so great and noble has emerged elsewhere from such dishonour. Those who seek to harmonise this paradox, to solve this problem, find their answer in the fact that England's spirit, at that epoch, penetrated and possessed the stage. The fact itself is scarcely explicable. Yet the fact remains. At some decisive moments of world-history, art, probably without the artist's consciousness, gives self-expression to a nation. One of these moments was the age of Elizabeth and James. One of these elect nations was England. The art whereby we English found expression, was the Drama. CHAPTER IX. MASQUES AT COURT. I. Definition of the Masque-Its Courtly Character-Its Partial Influence I. THE Masque in England was a dramatic species, occupying a middle place between a Pageant and a Play. It combined dancing and music with lyric poetry and declamation, in a spectacle characterised by magnificence of presentation. It made but little demand on histrionic talent. The persons who performed a |