Part 38

[938] See note 61, p. 309.

[939] The market-place. M.

[940] Bl. puts 'Diogenes' before 'Sylvius.'

[941] For the originals of this and the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth of Diogenes's speeches which follow see _Lives of Philosophers_, VI. 406, 415, 417, 418, 424, 428, 431.

[942] Dost thou _not_?

[943] Readiest.

[944] Bl. omits _to_. F. and M. insert it. Query, 'sings'?

[945] Of course the Song falls into three stanzas, with divisions at ll. 35, 39.--_Gen. Ed._

[946] These lines illustrate well how the memory of Shakespeare caught and held the best in the lines of others. Here, scattered through several lines, is the first line of the well-known song in _Cymbeline_:--

3 4 "None but the larke so shrill and cleare. 5 6 7 How at heavens gats she claps her wings, 8 The morne not waking till she sings! 1 2 Heark, heark, with what a pretty throat Poore Robin Red-breast tunes his note!"

[947] Not only _enraptured_, but with reference to the story of Philomela, Ovid, _Meta._ VI.

[948] Warbler.

[949]'Gate' as in Shakespeare? The 's' from 'she'?

[950] For the original of this see _Lives of Philosophers_, VI. 426.

[951] Studio of Apelles.

[952] Bl. and later editors, _Apelles alone_.

[953] "Be content to live with thy love unexpressed, and to die with it undiscovered."

[954] Quartos and Bl. _thy_. Corrected by Do.

[955] The market-place. M.

[956] Bl. adds 'Diogenes.'

[957] For the purpose.

[958] Bl. _know_.

[959] Contemptible.

[960] Steel cuirasses.

[961] In Kent _rate_ is used for call away, off. F.

[962] If nothing were paid.

[963] Milectus threatens to strike Diogenes.

[964] The market-place. M.

[965] Bl. adds 'Diogenes, Apelles, Campaspe.'

[966] Ovid, _Meta._ X. 9.

[967] Earlier editions, _his wooden swanne_, borrowing the first two words from the line above. See note, p. 305.

[968] M. suggests 'covet.'

[969] A. 'skilleth.'

[970] In Lyly's time 'cabin' seems to have been used vaguely for any rude dwelling.

[971] A sketch for a picture, or the plan for a building. F.

[972] M., phrasing as in the text, says: "In Bl. these two words (each standing at the end of a line) are interchanged. F. prints as I do, but, as he has no note, I do not know whether he followed one of the older editions, or corrects by conjecture."

[973] Frame your excuses clumsily.

[974] Bl., two words.

[975] "But my surmise is mischievous."

[976] Bl. _though conquer_. F. added the 'he.'

[977] See _Euphues and his England_, Arber, 256.

[978] Patching.

[979] "What good reckoning Alexander made of him, he shewed by one notable argument; for having among his courtesans one named Campaspe, whom he fancied especially in regard as well of that affection of his as her incomparable beauty, he gave commandement to Apelles to draw her picture all naked; but perceiving Apelles at the same time to be wounded with the like dart of love as well as himself, he bestowed her on him most frankly. Some are of opinion that by the patterne of this Campaspe, Apelles made the picture of Venus Anadyomene." Holland, XXXV. 10. The name really was Pancaste.

[980] Alexander refers to the unfavorable comment of Apelles on his drawing, p. 310, l. 109.

[981] F. _on_.

THE EPILOGUE AT THE BLACKE FRIERS

WHERE the rain bow toucheth the tree, no caterpillars will hang on the leaves; where the gloworme creepeth in the night, no adder will goe in the day: wee hope in the eares where our travailes be lodged, no carping shall harbour in those tongues. Our exercises must be as your judgment is, resembling water, which is alwayes of 5 the same colour into what it runneth. In the Troyan horse lay couched souldiers with children;[982] and in heapes of many words we feare divers unfit among some allowable. But, as Demosthenes with often breathing up the hill, amended his stammering, so wee hope with sundrie labours against the haire[983] to correct our studies. If the tree be blasted that blossomes, the fault is in 10 the winde and not in the root; and if our pastimes bee misliked that have beene allowed, you must impute it to the malice of others and not our endevour. And so we rest in good case, if you rest well content.

FOOTNOTES:

[982] Knights.

[983] Against the grain. F.

The Epilogue at the Court

WE cannot tell whether wee are fallen among Diomedes[984] birdes or his horses,--the one received some men with sweet notes,[985] the other bit all men with sharpe teeth. But, as Homer's gods conveyed them into cloudes whom they would have kept from curses, and, as Venus, least Adonis should be pricked with the stings of 5 adders, covered his face with the wings of swans, so wee hope, being shielded with your Highnesse countenance, wee shall, though heare[986] the neighing, yet not feele the kicking of those jades, and receive, though no prayse--which we cannot deserve--yet a pardon, which in all humilitie we desire. As yet we cannot tell what we should tearme our labours, iron or bullion; only it 10 belongeth to your Majestie to make them fit either for the forge or the mynt, currant by the stampe or counterfeit by the anvill. For, as nothing is to be called white unlesse it had beene named white by the first creator,[987] so can there be nothing thought good in the opinion of others unlesse it be christened good by the 15 judgement of your selfe. For our selves, againe, we are like these torches of waxe, of which, being in your Highnesse hands, you may make doves or vultures, roses or nettles, laurell for a garland or ealder for a disgrace.[988]

FOOTNOTES:

[984] A king of Thrace who fed his horses with human flesh.

[985] "Birds called Diomedæ. Toothed they are, and they have eies as red and bright as the fire: otherwise their feathers be all white. Found they be in one place, innobled for the tombe and Temple of Diomedes, on the coast of Apulia. Their manner is to cry with open mouth uncessantly at any strangers that come aland, save only Grecians, upon whom they wil seem to fawne and make signs of love ... as descended from the race of Diomedes." Holland, X. 44.

[986] F. following Do. unnecessarily prints 'wee heare.'

[987] Bl. _creature_. F. first printed 'creator.'

[988] Disgrace attached to the elder because it was the tree on which Judas hanged himself. F.

_George Peele_

THE OLD WIVES' TALE

_Edited with Critical Essay and Notes by F. B. Gummere, Ph.D., Professor in Haverford College._

CRITICAL ESSAY

=Life.=--George Peele, probably sprung from a Devonshire family, and the son of James Peele, clerk of Christ's Hospital, is known to have been in 1565 a free scholar of the grammar school connected with that foundation. He went to Oxford in 1571; studied at Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, and at Christ Church; took his B.A. in 1577, his M.A. in 1579, and went up to London about 1580. At Oxford he already had the name of poet, scholar, and dramatist. He was married, it would seem, as early as 1583, to a wife who brought him some property; this, however, soon vanished, and left the poet dependent upon his wits. Although the stories in the _Jests_ are musty old tales, fastened upon Peele, it is unlikely that they settled on his name without a sense of fitness on the part of a public that had known his ways,--his hopeless lack of pence, his good nature and popularity, his shifts to beg, borrow, and cozen. With Greene, Nashe, Marlowe, and a few lesser lights, he belonged to that group of scholars who wrote plays, translations, occasional poems, pageants, and whatever else would find a market. Now and then, it is almost certain, he appeared as an actor. Of his dissolute course of life, its misery and squalour, there can be no doubt whatever; "driven as myself," says Greene, "to extreme shifts." As early as 1579 Peele had made trouble for his father; he lived in poverty; and the curtain falls upon an ignoble end. Dying before 1598, the poet barely saw his fortieth year.

=Plays assigned to Peele.=--The best plays of Peele are _The Arraignment of Paris_, published in 1584, and, in Fleay's opinion, played as early as 1581,--a "first encrease," Nashe calls it, written in smooth metres which doubtless had influence on Marlowe's own verse; _The Old Wives' Tale_, published 1595; and the saccharine _David and Bethsabe_, beloved of German critics. _Edward I._, with wofully corrupt text, is good only in parts; _The Battle of Alcazar_, published anonymously in 1594, is almost certainly Peele's, but does not help his reputation; while _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ is quite certainly not Peele's in any way. Fleay, _Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, II. 296, assigns it, along with _Common Conditions_ and _Appius and Virginia_, to R. B. (Richard Bower?), whose initials appear on the title-page of the last-named play. Professor Kittredge, however, _Journal of Germanic Philology_, II. 8, suggests, as author of _Sir Clyomon_, Thomas Preston of _Cambyses_ fame. By way of compensation for this loss, Fleay (work quoted, II. 155) attributes to Peele _The Wisdome of Doctor Doddipoll_, published in 1600; there is dialect in the play, but overdone, good blank verse, and an indifferent plot. The song, _What Thing is Love_, hardly makes foundation enough for the assumption that Peele wrote the play, even with the aid of an enchanter among the characters, and a metre like that of _David and Bethsabe_. Further, Fleay presents our author with _Wily Beguiled_, possibly, he thinks, a university play; but his proof is not convincing. Kirkman, in a catalogue of plays added to his edition of _Tom Tiler and his Wife_, 1661, credits George Peele not only with _David and Bethsabe_, but with _Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany_, while Will Shakespeare has the _Arraignment of Paris_. _The Old Wives' Tale_ is set down as anonymous.

In regard to Peele's miscellaneous and occasional poetry there need be noted here only his clever use of blank verse in shorter poems, his charming lyrics, and those noble lines at the end of the _Polyhymnia_, beginning--

"His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd."

=Peele's Place in the Development of English Drama.=--Although we had a text of absolute authority and a minutely accurate life of the author, we should gain with all this lore no real stay for a study, a critical understanding of _The Old Wives' Tale_, regarded as an element in the making of English comedy. Peele and his play, along with any hints of sources and models that are to be heeded, and with whatever help may come from study of his other works, must be fused into a single fact and compared with those "environmental conditions" which influence all literary production. This will determine the equation between art and nature, between the centrifugal forces, which are always expressing themselves in terms of what is called genius or originality, and the centripetal forces of a great literary and popular development. It will determine the relation of Peele's comedy to the line of English comedies.

Such a critical process leaves one with two qualities in mind that seem to have had an initial force. They belong to Peele on contemporary testimony confirmed by a study of his works. Tom Nashe, more in eulogy than in discrimination, yet surely not without a dash of critical discernment, calls Peele "the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the atlas of poetry, and _primus verborum artifex_...."[989]

Nashe undoubtedly flatters, but another of the "college," Greene, in that death-bed appeal to his brother playwrights, was in no mood for flattery; and it is probably sincere, even if mistaken, praise when he calls Peele "in some things rarer, in nothing inferior," to Marlowe, and to that "young juvenall" who may be Nashe or Lodge. In what things Peele was "rarer," Greene fails to say, but a study of _The Arraignment of Paris_, of _David and Bethsabe_, even of portions of _Edward I._, and of the _Battle of Alcazar_, supports the reputation of Peele as an artist in words, and in prose as "well-languaged"; while in _The Old Wives' Tale_ there greets the critic, not too openly, it is true, but unmistakably, the quality of humour. Moreover, there are the _Jests_ which, apocryphal as they doubtless are, and sorry stuff by any reckoning, nevertheless show that to people of his day Peele was counted a merry fellow, a humourist in our sense of the word.[990] Perhaps Shakespeare's jests would seem as stale and flat if we had the anecdotes that passed current among his successors at the playhouse. In any case, George had a sense of humour which found utterance in this _Old Wives' Tale_; it is not the classical humour of _Roister Doister_, not the hearty but clumsy mirth of _Gammer Gurton_, but rather a hint of the extravagant and romantic which turns upon itself with audible merriment at its own pretences, a hint, not of farce or of wit merely, but of genuine humour, something not to be found in Greene's lighter work,[991] or in Lyly's _Mother Bombie_, or in any of those earlier plays that did fealty to the comic muse. Such, then, is the contemporary formula for Peele as a power in the making of English drama: "_primus verborum artifex_," and "chief supporter of pleasance." He was an artist in words, and he had the gift of humour.

As regards this artistry in words, it is well known that the conditions of English life, the vigour of speech as quickened by intercourse in the street, the market-place, the exchange, where a spoken word even in traffic and commerce still counted better than a written word, dialogue and conversation better than oratory, and the conditions of the stage itself, with its slender resources of scenery and its confident appeal to the imagination, all helped to push this pomp and mastery of phrase into the forefront of an Elizabethan playwright's qualifications. Probably the spectator at a play felt something of the interest which was then so rife in the world of books and learning,--the interest in words as words, in the course of a sentence as indicating more or less triumph over a still untrained tongue. Nietzsche is extravagant but suggestive in certain remarks that bear upon this verbal artistry in the drama. Speaking of Nature and Art,[992] he insists that the Greeks taught men to like pompous dramatic verse and an unnatural eloquence in those tragic situations where mere nature is either stammering or silent. The Italians went further and taught us to endure, in the opera, something still more artificial and unnatural--a passion which not only declaims, but sings. Tragic eloquence, sundered from nature, feeds that pride which "loves art as the expression of a high heroic unnaturalness and conventionality." "The Athenian," Nietzsche goes on to say with cheerful heresy, "went into the theatre not to be roused by pity and terror, but to listen to fine speeches." One is inclined to think that this desire for fine speeches had a large share in the motive which sent an Elizabethan to the play. Certainly the drama responded to this demand more quickly than to any demand for coherence of plot and delicacy of characterization. Who led in this movement? Most critics brush aside all rivals from the path of Marlowe and credit him alone with the "mighty line," the pomp of diction, the sweep of word and figure, which brought the drama from those puerilities of phrase and manner up to its noble estate. This is true in the sense that Marlowe was infinitely greater as a poet and a tragedian than either Greene or Peele. But as _verborum artifex_ it is probable that Marlowe has had considerable credit which belongs to the others, particularly Peele; and the testimony of Nashe and Greene, who knew the craft, must not be rejected so utterly. Campbell, it is true, praised Peele as "the oldest genuine dramatic poet of our language"; but Symonds, and with him are such scholars as Mr. A. W. Ward, asserts that Peele "discovered no new vein." Symonds is inclined to look on Greene as herald[993] and Marlowe as founder; Peele is a pleasant but unimportant maker of plays and verse. Greene, he thinks, began the school of gentleman and scholars who wrote for the stage at a time when rhyming plays were in vogue; but none of those which Greene wrote has come down to our day. Marlowe now comes imperiously upon the scene, forces his blank verse into favour, and is at last reluctantly admitted by Greene and the others into their "college." So runs the theory of Symonds. Quite opposed to this view of the case is Mr. Fleay, who declares that Marlowe followed George Peele in the article of "flowing blank verse."[994] There can be no question, moreover, that certain critics have exalted Greene too high and put Peele too low. Peele had quite as much as Greene to do with the refining and energizing of English dramatic diction, a process aptly described by Thomas Heywood in his _Apology for Actors_:[995] "Our English tongue ... is now _by this secondary meanes of playing_ continually refined, every writer striving in himselfe to adde a new florish unto it." Plots remained clumsy, crude; but what change in the diction of plays! In _Appius and Virginia_ there is still puerile diction and jog-trot metre,--

"They framèd also after this, out of his tender side, A piece of much formosity, with him for to abide."

From this to blank verse and compressed or energetic diction, as (_Jeronimo_),--

"My knee sings thanks unto your Highness bounty,"--

is a progress involving vast reformings, and some deformings,[996] in diction and in metre, of such sweep that Elizabethans put these qualities first when they went about to judge a play. "Your nine comœdies," writes Harvey to Spenser, come nearer to Ariosto's, "eyther for the finenesse of plausible Elocution, or the rareness of Poetical Invention," than the _Faery Queene_ to the _Orlando Furioso_. In this ennobling of diction, Peele may not have led the column of playwrights, but he was certainly in the van. His achievement must not be dashed by a comparison with Shakespeare, who covered up absurdities of plot--as in the _Merchant of Venice_--by brilliant characterization, where this earlier group depended upon the art of words.[997] For the related art of brave metres, of a "flowing blank verse" in plays, we have no space to argue upon the claims of leadership. Enough is done for the matter if one remembers that Peele, who wrote admirable blank verse before Marlowe was out of his teens, had nothing to learn from the greater poet about the management of this metre in and for itself.[998] Certainly he got more music out of the pentameter than any earlier dramatist had done; witness such a movement as,--

"What sign is rainy and what star is fair,"

or,--

"And water running from the silver spring."

=The Old Wives' Tale, an Innovation in Comedy.=--It may be conceded that Peele "discovered no new vein" in diction and in metre, although his work in each was of a high order, not far removed from leadership. Different is the case when one considers his claims for innovation in comedy. He was the first to blend romantic drama with a realism which turns romance back upon itself, and produces the comedy of subconscious humour. The tragedies, and even the miracle plays, while extravagant in form, had not been altogether unnatural in action. The supernatural in that age was not unnatural. The unnatural was mainly confined to the diction. Gradually, as every one knows, the romantic element, in a wide sense, got upper hand and ruled the English drama. In _The Old Wives' Tale_ this romantic spirit comes in, not as a new element, but as a new kind of "art" grafted upon the "nature" of the rough and comic stock; and to the reader's surprise draws away all unnaturalness from the dialogue, which is now plain, natural, commonplace.[999] Realism in diction was no new thing; romance in plot was not an innovation; it was the clash, the interplay, the subjective element, the appeal to something more than a literal understanding of what is said and done, a new appeal to a deeper sense of humour--here lay the new vein discovered by George Peele. The romantic drama, we repeat, was known; witness that little group of "folk-lore romances," as Mr. Fleay calls them, _Common Conditions_, _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_, and _Appius and Virginia_; the two former are full of adventures, of amorous knights and wandering ladies, a Forest of Strange Marvels, an Isle of Strange Marshes, what not. In all of them, however, the romance is presented in unnatural diction, to suit such unnatural doings, and justifies those bitter words of the _Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters_,[1000] that "the notablest lier is become the best Poet ... for the strangest Comedie brings greatest delectation ... faining countries neuer heard of, monsters and prodigious creatures that are not...." A milder romantic drama, but without the humour which we mean, is Greene's _Orlando Furioso_. The other plays, however, have no humour at all except the traditional humour of the Vice; and of the three representatives, Conditions, who finally turns pirate, is certainly a far merrier person than Haphazard in _Appius_ or Subtle Shift in _Sir Clyomon_. There is realistic setting in _Common Conditions_, with some lively dialogue, and a distinctly catching song and chorus[1001] of tinkers, at the opening of the play. It is "business" here, however, not that dramatic irony, springing from contrast of romantic plot and realistic diction, which makes a sufficiently timid beginning in _The Old Wives' Tale_, and grows so insistent in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_. Moreover, Peele's realistic work shows the control and consciousness of a higher art. There are no peasants like Hodge in _Gammer Gurton_, Corin in _Sir Clyomon_, and Hob and Lob in _Cambyses_.[1002] There is an outburst or two of yokel wit in Peele's play; but there is no breaking of heads, no chance for the clown to sing a song while drunk, as Hance does in the interlude of _Like Wil to Like_. These signs of a subtler conception of his art should be placed to Peele's credit; for while an obvious dialect marks Hodge and Corin and the rest, Clunch and Madge speak a plain English, reminding one irresistibly of the milk-woman's talk with Piscator: it smacks of cottage and field and hedge-rows and, as Nashe would say, has "old King Harrie sinceritie." There is a difference as between the exaggerated "hayseed" of a comic paper and the finer drawing in one of Hardy's peasants. Exaggeration would spoil the sense of contrast between honest Madge and the high pretences of the plot. In Huanebango there is girding not only at Harvey, but at the romance hero in general; this big-mouthed, impossible fellow, with Corebus as a foil, foreshadows, however dimly, the far more clever presentation of an English Don Quixote in the person of Ralph.