Halleck's New English Literature · Chapter 32The English Drama
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The Early Religious Drama.—It is necessary to remember at the outset that the purpose of the religious drama was not to amuse, but to give a vivid presentation of scriptural truth. On the other hand, the primary aim of the later dramatist has usually been to entertain, or, in Shakespeare's exact words, "to please." Shakespeare was, however, fortunate in having an audience that was pleased to be instructed, as well as entertained.
Before the sixteenth century, England had a religious drama that made a profound impression on life and thought. The old religious plays helped to educate the public, the playwrights, and the actors for the later drama.
Any one may to-day form some idea of the rise of the religious drama, by attending the service of the Catholic church on Christmas or Easter Sunday. In many Catholic churches there may still be seen at Christmas time a representation of the manger at Bethlehem. Sometimes the figures of the infant Savior, of Joseph and Mary, of the wise men, of the sheep and cattle, are very lifelike.
The events clustering about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection furnished the most striking material for the early religious drama. Our earliest dramatic writers drew their inspiration from the New Testament.
Miracle and Mystery Plays.—A Miracle play is the dramatic representation of the life of a saint and of the miracles connected with him. A Mystery play deals with gospel events which are concerned with any phase of the life of Christ, or with any Biblical event that remotely foreshadows Christ or indicates the necessity of a Redeemer. In England there were few, if any, pure Miracle plays, but the term "Miracle" is applied indiscriminately to both Miracles and Mysteries.
The first Miracle play in England was acted probably not far from 1100. In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries these plays had become so popular that they were produced in nearly every part of England. Shakespeare felt their influence. He must have had frequent opportunities in his boyhood to witness their production. They were seldom performed in England after 1600, although visitors to Germany have, every ten years, the opportunity of seeing a modern production of a Mystery in the Passion Play at Oberammergau.
The Subjects.—Four great cycles of Miracle plays have been preserved: the York, Chester, and Coventry plays, so called because they were performed in those places, and the Towneley plays, which take their name from Towneley Hall in Lancashire, where the manuscript was kept for some time. It is probable that almost every town of importance had its own collection of plays.
[Illustration: MIRACLE PLAY AT COVENTRY. From an old print]
The York cycle contains forty-eight plays. A cycle or circle of plays means a list forming a complete circle from Creation until Doomsday. The York collection begins with Creation and the fall of Lucifer and the bad angels from Heaven,—a theme which was later to inspire the pen of one of England's greatest poets. The tragedies of Eden and the Flood, scenes from the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, the manger at Bethlehem, the slaughter of the Innocents, the Temptation, the resurrection of Lazarus, the Last Supper, the Trial, the Crucifixion, and the Easter triumph are a few of the Miracle plays that were acted in the city of York.
The Actors and Manner of Presentation.—At first the actors were priests who presented the plays either in the church or in its immediate vicinity on sacred ground. After a while the plays became so popular that the laity presented them. When they were at the height of their popularity, that is, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the actors were selected with great care from the members of the various trades guilds. Each guild undertook the entire responsibility for the presentation of some one play, and endeavored to surpass all the other guilds.
[Illustration: HELL MOUTH.From a Columbia University Model.]
Considerable humor was displayed in the allotment of various plays. The tanners presented the fall of Lucifer and the bad angels into the infernal regions; the ship carpenters, the play of Noah and the building of the ark; the bakers, the Last Supper; the butchers, the Crucifixion. In their prime, the Miracle plays were acted on wooden platforms mounted on wheels. There were two distinct stories in these movable stages, a lower one in which the actors dressed, and an upper one in which they played. The entrance to the lower story, known as Hell Mouth, consisted of a terrible pair of dragonlike jaws, painted red. From these jaws issued smoke, flame, and horrible outcries. From the entrance leaped red-coated devils to tempt the Savior, the saints, and men. Into it the devils would disappear with some wicked soul. They would torture it and make it roar with pain, as the smoke poured faster from the red jaws.
In York on Corpus Christi Day, which usually fell in the first week in June, the actors were ordered to be in their places on these movable theaters at half past three in the morning. Certain stations had been selected throughout the city, where each pageant should stop and, in the proper order, present its own play. In this way the enormous crowds that visited York to see these performances were more evenly scattered throughout the city.
The actors did not always remain on the stage. Herod, for example, in his magnificent robes used to ride on horseback among the people, boast of his prowess, and overdo everything. Shakespeare, who was evidently familiar with the character, speaks of out-Heroding Herod. The Devil also frequently jumped from the stage and availed himself of his license to play pranks among the audience.
Much of the acting was undoubtedly excellent. In 1476 the council at York ordained that four of the best players in the city should examine with regard to fitness all who wished to take part in the plays. So many were desirous of acting that it was much trouble to get rid of incompetents. The ordinance ran: "All such as they shall find sufficient in person and cunning, to the honor of the City and worship of the said Crafts, for to admit and able; and all other insufficient persons, either in cunning, voice, or person, to discharge, ammove and avoid." A critic says that this ordinance is "one of the steps on which the greatness of the Elizabethan stage was built, and through which its actors grew up."[10]
Introduction of the Comic Element in the Miracle Plays.—While the old drama generally confined itself to religious subjects, the comic element occasionally crept in, made its power felt, and disclosed a new path for future playwrights. In the Play of Noah's Flood, when the time for the flood has come, Noah's wife refuses to enter the ark and a domestic quarrel ensues. Finally her children pull and shove her into the ark. When she is safe on board, Noah bids her welcome. His enraged wife deals him resounding blows until he calls to her to stop, because his back is nearly broken.
The Play of the Shepherds includes a genuine comedy, the first comedy worthy of the name to appear in England. While watching their flocks on Christmas Eve, the shepherds are joined by Mak, a neighbor whose reputation for honesty is not good. Before they go to sleep, they make him lie down within their circle; but he rises when he hears them begin to snore, steals a sheep, and hastens home. His wife is alarmed, because in that day the theft of a sheep was punishable by death. She finally concludes that the best plan will be to wrap the animal in swaddling clothes and put it in the cradle. If the shepherds come to search the house, she will pretend that she has a child; and, if they approach the cradle, she will caution them against touching it for fear of waking the child and causing him to fill the house with his cries. She speedily hurries Mak away to resume his slumbers among the shepherds. When they wake, they miss the sheep, suspect Mak, and go to search his house. His wife allows them to look around thoroughly, but she keeps them away from the cradle. They leave, rather ashamed of their suspicion. As they are going out of the door, a thought strikes one of them whereby they can make partial amends. Deciding to give the child sixpence, he returns, lifts up the covering of the cradle, and discovers the sheep. Mak and his wife both declare that an elf has changed their child into a sheep. The shepherds threaten to have the pair hanged. They seize Mak, throw him on a canvas, and toss him into the air until they are exhausted. They then lie down to rest and are roused with the song of an angel from Bethlehem.
To produce this comedy required genuine inventive imagination; for there is nothing faintly resembling this incident in the sacred narrative. These early exercises of the imagination in our drama may resemble the tattering footsteps of a child; but they were necessary antecedents to the strength, beauty, and divinity of movement in Elizabethan times.
[Illustration: FOOL'S HEAD. State properties of the Vice and Fool.]
The Morality.—The next step in the development of the drama is known as the Morality play. This personified abstractions. Characters like Charity, Hope, Faith, Truth, Covetousness, Falsehood, Abominable Living, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil,—in short, all the Virtues and the Vices,—came on the stage in the guise of persons, and played the drama of life.
Critics do not agree about the precise way in which the Morality is related to the Miracle play. It is certain that the Miracle play had already introduced some abstractions.
In one very important respect, the Morality marks an advance, by giving more scope to the imagination. The Miracle plays had their general treatment absolutely predetermined by the Scriptural version of the action or by the legends of the lives of saints, although diverting incidents could be introduced, as we have seen. In the Morality, the events could take any turn which the author chose to give.
[Illustration: AIR-BAG FLAPPER. Stage properties of the Vice and Fool.]
In spite of this advantage, the Morality is in general a synonym for what is uninteresting. The characters born of abstractions are too often bloodless, like their parents. The Morality under a changed name was current a few years ago in the average Sunday-school book. Incompetent writers of fiction today often adopt the Morality principle in making their characters unnaturally good or bad, mere puppets who do not develop along the line of their own emotional prompting, but are moved by machinery in the author's hands.
[Illustration: LATH DAGGER. Stage properties of the Vice and Fool.]
A new character, the Vice, was added as an adjunct to the Devil, to increase the interest of the audience in the Morality play. The Vice represented the leading spirit of evil in any particular play, sometimes Fraud, Covetousness, Pride, Iniquity, or Hypocrisy. It was the business of the Vice to annoy the Virtues and to be constantly playing pranks. The Vice was the predecessor of the clown and the fool upon the stage. The Vice also amused the audience by tormenting the Devil, belaboring him with a sword of lath, sticking thorns into him, and making him roar with pain. Sometimes the Devil would be kicked down Hell Mouth by the offended Virtues; but he would soon reappear with saucily curled tail, and at the end of the play he would delight the spectators by plunging into Hell Mouth with the Vice on his back.
[Illustration: FOOL OF THE OLD PLAY.]
Court Plays.—In the first part of the sixteenth century, the court and the nobility especially encouraged the production of plays whose main object was to entertain. The influence of the court in shaping the drama became much more powerful than that of the church. Wallace says of the new materials which his researches have disclosed in the twentieth century:—
"They throw into the lime-light a brilliant development of this new drama through the Chapel Royal, a development that took place primarily under the direction of the great musicians who served as masters of the children of the Chapel and as court entertainers, the first true poets-laureate, through the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth."[11]
In 1509 Henry VIII. appointed William Cornish (died 1523) to be Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. This court institution with its choral body of men and boys not only ministered "by song to the spiritual well-being of the sovereign and his household," but also gave them "temporal" enjoyment in dances, pageants, and plays. We must not forget, however, that the Chapel Royal was originally, as its name implies, a religious body. Cornish was a capable dramatist, as well as a musician and a poet; and he, unlike the author of Everyman, wrote plays simply to amuse the court and its guests. He has even been called the founder of the secular English drama.[12]
The court of Henry VIII. became especially fond of the Interlude, which was a short play, often given in connection with a banquet or other entertainment. Any dramatic incident, such as the refusal of Noah's wife to enter the ark, or Mak's thievery in The Play of the Shepherds, might serve as an Interlude. Cornish and John Heywood (1497?—1580?), a court dramatist of much versatility, incorporated in the Interlude many of the elements of the five-act drama. The Four P's, the most famous Interlude, shows a contest between a Pardoner, Palmer, Pedlar, and Poticary, to determine who could tell the greatest lie. Wallace thinks that the best Interludes, such as The Four P's and The Pardoner and the Frere, were written by Cornish, although they are usually ascribed to Heywood.
Cornish had unusual ability as a deviser of masques and plays. One of his interludes for children has allegorical characters that remotely suggest some that appear in the modern Bluebird, by Maeterlinck. Cornish had Wind appear "in blue with drops of silver"; Rain, "in black with silver honeysuckles"; Winter, "in russet with flakes of silver snow"; Summer, "in green with gold stars"; and Spring, "in green with gold primroses." In 1522 Cornish wrote and presented before Henry VIII. and his guest, the Roman emperor, a political play, especially planned to indicate the attitude of the English monarch toward Spain and France. Under court influences, the drama enlarged its scope and was no longer chiefly the vehicle for religious instruction.
Early Comedies.—Two early comedies, divided, after the classical fashion, into acts and scenes, show close approximation to the modern form of English plays.
Ralph Royster Doyster was written not far from the middle of the sixteenth century by Nicholas Udall (1505-1556), sometime master of Eton College and, later, court poet under Queen Mary. This play, founded on a comedy of Plautus, shows the classical influence which was so powerful in England at this time. Ralph, the hero, is a conceited simpleton. He falls in love with a widow who has already promised her hand to a man infinitely Ralph's superior. Ralph, however, unable to understand why she should not want him, persists in his wooing. She makes him the butt of her jokes, and he finds himself in ridiculous positions. The comedy amuses us in this way until her lover returns and marries her. The characters of the play, which is written in rime, are of the English middle class.
Gammer Gurton's Needle, the work of William Stevenson, a little-known pre-Shakespearean writer, was acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. This play borrows hardly anything from the classical stage. Most of the characters of Gammer Gurton's Needle are from the lowest English working classes, and its language, unlike that of Ralph Royster Doyster, which has little to offend, is very coarse.
Gorboduc and the Dramatic Unities.—The tragedy of Gorboduc, the first regular English tragedy written in blank verse, was acted in 1561, three years before the birth of Shakespeare. This play is in part the work of Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), a poet and diplomat, the author of two powerful somber poems, the Induction and Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham. In spite of their heavy narrative form, these poems are in places even more dramatic than the dull tragedy of Gorboduc, which was fashioned after the classical rules of Seneca and the Greeks. Gorboduc requires little action on the stage. There is considerable bloodshed in the play; but the spectators are informed of the carnage by a messenger, as they are not permitted to witness a bloody contest on the stage.
[Illustration: THOMAS SACKVILLE.]
If Gorboduc had been taken for a model, the English drama could never have attained Shakespearean greatness. Our drama would then have been crippled by following the classical rules, which prescribed unity of place and time in the plot and the action. The ancients held that a play should not represent actions which would, in actual life, require much more than twenty-four hours for their performance. If one of the characters was a boy, he had to be represented as a boy throughout the play. The next act could not introduce him as one who had grown to manhood in the interval. The classical rules further required that the action should be performed in one place, or near it. Anything that happened at a great distance had to be related by a messenger, and not acted on the stage.
Had these rules been followed, the English drama could never have painted the growth and development of character, which is not the work of a day. The genius of Marlowe and Shakespeare taught them to disregard these dramatic unities. In As You Like It, the action is now at the court, and now in the far-off Forest of Arden. Shakespeare knew that the imagination could traverse the distance. At the beginning of the play Oliver is an unnatural, brutal brother; but events change him, so that in the fourth act, when he is asked if he is the man who tried to kill his brother, Oliver replies:—
"'Twas I; but 'tis not I."