Part 39

A second element of humour in this realistic treatment of romance is the use of an induction, or rather of a combination of the induction and the play within the play, as a means of expressing dramatic irony. Although the induction springs from the prologue, and although the opening of _The Old Wives' Tale_ is technically an induction, like many another of the time, it has to our thinking a distinctly new vein. What Schwab[1003] calls the first example of the use of an induction--in _The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune_--makes both induction and play connected parts of a whole. It is a dramatic device, wholly objective in character, external, with no demand upon the sense of contrast. Different, but hardly a new idea,[1004] is the induction as employed by Greene in _Alphonsus_ and _James IV._; here is a return to the old notion of the prologue, a justifying of the playwright's way. Will Summer, the pet jester,[1005] who ushers in Nashe's play, calls himself outright a kind of chorus. In the old _Taming of a Shrew_, printed in 1594, Sly, while only a casual commentator upon the play, is entirely outside of the main action, which, as Schwab points out, thus becomes an actual play within the play. Still, even in these cases, the contrast is objective and direct. The induction is a clever device to heighten interest in the play. Before, it had served the playwright as an expression of his purpose in the main drama; later, as with Ben Jonson, it voiced his critical opinions. Whether objective or subjective, however, the contrast between play and induction is direct. Quite different is that induction, which Schwab rightly calls remarkable, in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_; and different, too, is that earlier attempt, which Schwab unaccountably fails to mention, in _The Old Wives' Tale_. These both appeal to a sense of humour awakened by the interplay of theme and treatment, of character and situation. In Peele's play this involution of epic, drama, and comment--a seeming confusion which has distressed many of the critics--really heightens the dramatic power of the piece. The induction is double. First come a bit of romance, with the lost wanderers in the wood, and a realistic foil in their own dialogue--by no means the "heavy prose" of Collier's censure. Secondly comes outright realism with Clunch, Madge, the bread and cheese, and the old joke about bedfellows, cleverly followed by Madge's abrupt raid upon romantic ground. She is well started, but stumbling, when the other actors break in; and the inner play, not without some confusion and mystification, runs its course. Perhaps the sense of huddling, abruptness, confusion, is intentional as part of an old wives' tale indeed; perhaps, again, this must be laid to the charge of Peele's carelessness in "plotting plaies." Be that as it may be, the interplay of these elements makes a new kind of comedy; and the humour of this play, crude and tentative as it seems when compared with the humour of Uncle Toby[1006] and of those lesser lights that revolve in the orbit of the Quixotic contrast, differs from earlier essays of the sort in that it is not a separate element of fun, but rather something which exists in solution with the comedy itself. _The Old Wives' Tale_ lies midway between the utter lack of coherence in Nashe's play and the subtlety of Beaumont and Fletcher. Will Summer is often irrelevant and tiresome; the main action, on which he comments, is now pathetic, now farcical, now merely spectacular; but in our play the thread of romance runs throughout unbroken and keeps the piece in a sort of unity, while the comment, whether direct or hinted, has a vastly finer vein of irony. The romantic side of folk-lore has its due withal, as in the test of fidelity at the end between Eumenides and Jack, with the proposed division of Delia--a _casus_ always acceptable to such an audience, and here of acute though subordinate interest. Moreover, Peele has a kind of reticence and control in his art; he suggests in a whisper what Will Summer would have roared into commonplace and horse-play.

=The Background of Folk-Lore.=--Finally, the very _Old Wives' Tale_ itself, with its background of folk-lore, that tryst of ancient splendour with modern poverty and ignorance on the territory of a forgotten faith, is a thing of quietly humorous contrasts. Several elements are to be considered in the charming little medley which Peele has made from the folk-lore of his day--"that curious _mélange_ of nursery tales," as Mr. Joseph Jacobs calls it. The enchanter and his spells, the stolen daughter and her brothers' quest, make a familiar central group. Perhaps Madge set out to tell the story of _Childe Rowland_, familiar to Elizabethans,[1007] although _Jack the Giant Killer_ has his claims. The _fee-fa-fum_, as every one knows, occurs also in Shakespeare's _Lear_. The help of the White Bear--a transformation, like the saws and prophecies, sufficiently familiar in these tales--is similar to that of Merlin in _Childe Rowland_; but the ghost of Jack reminds one of the other story. Mr. Jacobs quotes Kennedy that in a parallel Irish tale "Jack the servant is the spirit of the buried man." One has only to make this substitution, and the vicarious gratitude of the Giant Killer[1008] is better explained. Perhaps, too, Peele has borrowed some of his thunder and lightning, as well as Huanebango's _fee-fa-fum_, from the giants; and the disenchantment at the hands of an invisible hero may belong, in part, to this tale. Two other folk-tales may be named--_The Well of the World's End_, mentioned, if a slight emendation be allowed, in _The Complaynt of Scotland_, and _The Three Heads of the Well_--as known, in some form, to Peele, and used directly in the story of the two daughters. The familiar theme of the so-called "death index"[1009] is touched but slightly; and perhaps it is unnecessary to go to the _Red Ettin_ for a parallel to Huanebango and Corebus, who respectively refuse and give a piece of cake to the helpful old man. The theme is common in folk-lore. It is interesting to note that Beaumont and Fletcher show a liking for folk-tales, as well as for traditional songs and ballads, in that play, which by its induction and general spirit most closely resembles this _Old Wives' Tale_. More dignified sources were long ago pointed out by Warton, who remarked that "the names of some of the characters ... are taken from the _Orlando Furioso_." Meroe, in Apuleius, was invoked. But it seems clear enough that English folk-lore must be the mainstay of critics who think all is done for a work of literature when they have found out every possible and impossible source for plot, sideplot, and allusion.

=Literary Estimate.=--The marvel, after all, is not that these materials are huddled and confused in the combination; the confusion is part of the artistic process, and if the figures move across the stage without firm connection one with the other, that, too, is done after the manner of the old tale. We are on romantic ground, and are to see by glimpses. Here is no comedy of incident, in the usual meaning of the term, no comedy of intrigue or of manners. It is rather a comedy of comedies, a saucy challenge of romance, where art turns, however timidly, upon itself. Perhaps Peele wrote this play, as Dryden wrote _All for Love_, to please himself. Unquestionably, until Mr. Bullen made a plea for mercy, _The Old Wives' Tale_ had been shamefully treated. Collier[1010] calls it "nothing but a beldam's story, with little to recommend it but heavy prose and not much lighter blank verse," a most inadequate summary from any point of view. The play, he thinks, has "a disgusting quantity of trash and absurdity." Dyce, while regarding Peele's "superiority to Greene" as "unquestionable," is not enthusiastic about _The Old Wives' Tale_. Mr. Ward speaks[1011] of "the labyrinthine intricacy of the main scenes," knows not whether to call it farce or interlude, and would pass it by save for the suggestion of _Comus_. But Mr. Bullen very properly objects to this unfair comparison. Symonds, to be sure, uses it even more unfairly. _The Old Wives' Tale_, he makes bold to say, is the sow's ear to Milton's silk purse.[1012] With an unusual blindness to literary perspective, Symonds goes on to judge this flickering little candle of romance, folk-lore, and half-roguish, half-ironical suggestion, by the sun-blaze of Milton's high seriousness and full poetic splendours. Peele, it seems, does not "lift his subject into the heavens of poetry.... The wizard is a common conjurer. The spirit is a vulgar village ghost." Why not, pray? What should they be for the purposes of this old wives' tale? What would be left, say, of Chaucer's charming little story, that "folye, as of a fox, or of a cok and hen," if one were to pulverize it with such critical tools? Peele is not trying to raise comedy into the heavens; he left that for his betters; and the ineffectual Delia is a long remove from Hermia and Helena in the "wood near Athens." What Peele, George Peele of the dingy jests, probably tried to do, and what he surely succeeded in doing, was to bring a new and more subtle strain of humour into the drama. _Itur in antiquam silvam._ Realism left shabby and squalid things, alehouse wit, and laid hold of a sweeter life. Reckless, good-natured scholar, George fairly followed the call which haunted so many academic outcasts, the call which Marlowe and Greene and Dekker answered with those sweet songs of country life, and which led Peele to the making of this play. He wove romance and realism into a fabric that may well show a coarse pattern and often very clumsy workmanship, but, on the whole, it is a pleasing pattern and a new. Moreover, it is all made of sound English stuff. The tales he used for his main drama were familiar to English ears; the persons of his framework play were kindly folk of any English village, and the air of it all is as fresh and wholesome as an English summer morning.

=Sources, Title, Text.=--The sources of the play, so far as one may speak of sources, are indicated in general above, and in particular by notes to the following text. The plural form of the title ought probably to be singular, in spite of common usage, the gloss _ealdra cwéna spel_ (Wright, _Voc._), and 1 Timothy iv, 7; Mr. Fleay, perhaps as a concession to Madge, prints _Old Wifes' Tale_ (_Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama_, II. 154).[1013] He puts the date of composition "clearly 1590," on the theory that Harvey--Huanebango--is here satirized by Peele as a consequence of Harvey's attack upon Lyly in 1589,--circulated then in manuscript though not printed until 1593. Lämmerhirt[1014] argues, but not conclusively, that the play was written before 1588,--partly because of the allusions to Harvey, and partly because style and form point to an early period in the author's development. Until a surer date can be established, however, 1590 will serve as the time of composition for this play. _The Old Wives' Tale_, says Dyce, "had sunk into complete oblivion, till Steevens ... communicated to Reed the account of it which appeared in the _Biographia Dramatica_." In 1783 Steevens writes to Warton: "All I have learned in relation to the original from which the idea of Milton's _Comus_ might be borrowed, I communicated to Mr. Reed.... Only a single copy of his [_sic_] _Old Wives' Tale_ has hitherto appeared, and even that is at present out of my reach...."[1015] As to the rhythmic structure, E. Penner notes[1016] that of 964 lines of this play 192 are five-stress or ordinary heroic verse, 7 are hexameters, and 100 short verses. The rest is prose.

The best edition is, of course, that of Bullen, in 3 vols., 1888-[B]; but there were excellent editions by Dyce, one in 1828 ff., and another in 1861-[Dy.]. The present text of _The Old Wives' Tale_ is from the 1595 quarto in the British Museum; the title-page is, with the exception of the vignettes, a fair representation of the original.

F. B. GUMMERE.

FOOTNOTES:

[989] "To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities," prefixed to Greene's _Menaphon_, a well-known passage. Little, if anything, can be made of Meres when (Haslewood, II., 153) he couples Peele now with Ariosto, now, as tragical poet, with Apollodorus Tarsensis. He does not name Peele among the writers of comedy. Later, in _Have with You to Saffron Walden_ (Grosart, III. 196), Nashe, with no mention of Peele, concedes to Greene mastery, above all the craft, in "plotting of plaies." This dramatic art of words, by the way, must not be confused with Euphuistic feats. Greene, Nashe, even Harvey, turned with Sidney against mere "playing with words and idle similies," and Peele is anything but a follower of Guevara.

[990] _Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele, Gentleman, sometimes a Student in Oxford Wherein is shewed the course of his life, how he lived: a man very well knowne in the Citie of London and elsewhere...._ There was an edition in 1607, hardly ten years after Peele's death.

[991] _The Looking Glasse for London and England_ has some boisterous comedy, but no humour. In _George-a-Greene_, good play that it is, the ballad material is taken quite seriously. In _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ there is exquisite idyllic work, a dash of passable, though quite traditional, comedy, but no trace of the peculiar element, presently to be described as the dominant note of treatment in _The Old Wives' Tale_.

[992] _Fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 109 f. So in his _Geburt der Tragödie_, p. 89, speaking of the prologue as used by Euripides, which told in advance the action of the play, Nietzsche asserts that the Athenians were less interested in the plot than in the pathos of situations and the rhetoric of the players.

[993] "The romantic play, the English Farsa, may be called in a great measure his discovery." _Shakespeare's Predecessors_, p. 580.

[994] "A matter in which he certainly anticipated Marlowe," _Biog. Chron._ II. 151.

[995] Ed. Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 52.

[996] Peele is not of the extreme group whose feats in diction remind one of what Dr. Johnson said about the metaphysical poets, that "their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before."

[997] Gosson, in a well-known passage, puts brave language first among dramatic attractions: "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories...."

[998] Lämmerhirt counts nearly 84 per cent of the verses in the _Arraignment of Paris_ as rhymed; _David and Bethsabe_ has less than 7 per cent, and _The Battle of Alcazar_ barely 3 per cent.

[999] The diction of _The Old Wives' Tale_ differs from Lyly's comic prose much as Nashe's style in his pamphlets differs from the periods of Lyly's _Euphues_.

[1000] Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Roxburgh Library, 1869, p. 145.

[1001] See the song in _Appius_, "Hope so and hap so."--In _Misogonus_, the Vice appears as a domestic fool.

[1002] Compare the French and broken English in _Three Lords and Three Ladies of London_, the dialect of Boban the Scot in Greene's _James IV._, and the inevitable Welshman.

[1003] _Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel_, Wien and Leipzig, 1896.

[1004] "A new _motiv_," says Schwab. Fleay (work quoted, I. 266) thinks _The Old Wives' Tale_ fairly parodies the induction in _James IV._

[1005] See a similar bit of horse-play in _Wily Beguiled_.

[1006] The delicate irony of later triflings with romance--as in Wieland's _Oberon_--is, of course, quite out of the question.

[1007] See _English Fairy Tales_, J. Jacobs, edition of 1898, pp. 243, 245. A monograph could be written on the folk-lore of this play, where, it is to be conjectured, Peele has followed no single tale, but has combined parts of separate stories, and flung in bits of rhyme and fragments of superstition, as fancy bade him.

[1008] _English Fairy Tales_, p. 104. This theme of the _Thankful Dead_ is extremely common. It is found in an old English romance, _Sir Amadace_, and has been treated by Max Hippe, in Herrig's _Archiv_, Vol. LXXXI, p. 141.

[1009] Jacobs, _English Fairy Tales_, Notes, p. 252. See also Frazer's _Golden Bough_.

[1010] _Annals of Stage_, etc., III. 197.

[1011] _Eng. Dram. Lit._ I. 372.

[1012] _Shakespeare's Predecessors_, p. 563 ff. Mr. Jacobs thinks that both poets went to folk-lore for their materials. _Childe Rowland_ is the probable source.

[1013] It is entered on the Stationers' Registers to Raphe Hancock, April 16, 1595, _the owlde wifes tale_. Cf. "an olde wives tale," Greene, _Groatsw._ (Grosart XII. 119).--Gen. Ed.

[1014] _G. P. Untersuchungen_, etc., Rostock, 1862, pp. 62 ff.

[1015] _Biogr. Mem. of the late Jos. Warton, DD._, London, 1806, p. 398.

[1016] _Metrische Untersuchungen zu George Peele_, in the _Archiv fur das Studium d. neueren Spracben_, etc. (1890), LXXXV. 279.

[Decoration]

THE

Old Wiues Tale.

A pleasant conceited Comedie played by the Queenes Maiesties players

Written by _G. P._

VIGNETTE

Printed at London by _Iohn Danter_, and are to be sold by _Raph Hancocke_, and _Iohn Hardie_, _1595_.

[The Persons of the Play[1017]

SACRAPANT. First Brother, named CALYPHA. Second Brother, named THELEA. EUMENIDES. ERESTUS. LAMPRISCUS. HUANEBANGO. COREBUS. WIGGEN. Churchwarden. Sexton. Ghost of JACK. Friar, Harvest-men, Furies, Fiddlers, etc. DELIA, _sister to_ CALYPHA _and_ THELEA. VENELIA, _betrothed to_ ERESTUS. ZANTIPPA, } _daughters to_ LAMPRISCUS. CELANTA, } Hostess. ANTIC. FROLIC. FANTASTIC. CLUNCH, _a smith_. MADGE, _his wife_.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1017] Not in Q.; inserted by Dy. On the history of the characters see Appendix _A_.

The Old Wives Tale.

_Enter_ ANTICKE, FROLICKE, _and_ FANTASTICKE.

ANTICKE.

HOW nowe fellowe Franticke,[1018] what, all a mort?[1019] Doth this sadnes become thy madnes? What though wee have lost our way in the woodes, yet never hang the head, as though thou hadst no hope to live till to morrow: for Fantasticke and I will warrant thy life to night for twenty in the hundred. 5

_Frolicke._ Anticke and Fantasticke, as I am frollicke franion,[1020] never in all my life was I so dead slaine. What? to loose our way in the woode, without either fire or candle so uncomfortable? _O caelum! O terra! O maria! O Neptune!_[1021] 10

_Fantas._ Why makes thou it so strange, seeing Cupid hath led our yong master to the faire Lady and she is the only saint that he hath sworne to serve?

_Frollicke._ What resteth then but wee commit him to his wench, and each of us take his stand up in a tree, and sing out our ill 15 fortune to the tune of _O man in desperation_.[1022]

_Ant._ Desperately spoken, fellow Frollicke in the darke: but seeing it falles out thus, let us rehearse the old proverb.[1023]

_Three merrie men, and three merrie men, And three merrie men be wee. 20 I in the wood, and thou on the ground. And Jacke sleepes in the tree._

_Fan._ Hush! a dogge in the wood, or a wooden dogge.[1024] O comfortable hearing! I had even as live the chamberlaine of the White Horse had called me up to bed. 25

_Frol._ Eyther hath this trotting cur gone out of his cyrcuit, or els are we nere some village, which should not be farre off, for I

_Enter a_ SMITH _with a lanthorne & candle_.

perceive the glymring of a gloworme, a candle, or a cats eye, my life for a halfe pennie. In the name of my own father, be thou oxe or asse that appearest, tell us what thou art. 30

_Smith._ What am I? Why I am Clunch the Smith; what are you, what make you in my territories at this time of the night?

_Ant._ What doe we make, dost thou aske? Why we make faces for feare: such as if thy mortall eyes could behold, would make thee water the long seames of thy side slops,[1025] Smith. 35

_Frol._ And in faith, sir, unlesse your hospitalitie doe releeve us, wee are like to wander with a sorrowfull hey ho, among the owlets, & hobgoblins of the forrest: good Vulcan, for Cupids sake that hath cousned us all, befriend us as thou maiest, and commaund us howsoever, wheresoever, whensoever, in whatsoever, for ever and ever.[1026] 40

_Smith._ Well, masters, it seemes to mee you have lost your waie in the wood: in consideration whereof, if you will goe with Clunch[1027] to his cottage, you shall have house roome, and a good fire to sit by, althogh we have no bedding to put you in.

_All._ O blessed Smith, O bountifull Clunch. 45

_Smith._ For your further intertainment, it shall be as it may be, so and so.

_Heare a dogge barke._

Hearke![1028] this is Ball my dogge that bids you all welcome in his own language; come, take heed for[1029] stumbling on the threshold. Open dore, Madge, take in guests. _Enter old woman._ 50

_Cl._ Welcome Clunch & good fellowes al that come with my good man; for my good mans sake come on, sit downe; here is a peece of cheese & a pudding of my owne making.

_Anticke._ Thanks, Gammer; a good example for the wives of our towne. 55

_Frolicke._ Gammer, thou and thy good man sit lovingly together; we come to chat and not to eate.

_Smith._ Well, masters, if you will eate nothing, take away. Come, what doo we to passe away the time? Lay a crab[1030] in the fire to rost for lambes-wooll. What, shall wee have a game at trumpe or 60 ruffe[1031] to drive away the time, how say you?

_Fantasticke._ This Smith leads a life as merrie as a king[1032] with Madge his wife. Syrrha Frolicke, I am sure thou art not without some round or other; no doubt but Clunch can beare his part.

_Frolicke._ Els thinke you mee ill brought up;[1033] so set to it 65 when you will. _They sing._

SONG.

When as the Rie reach to the chin, And chopcherrie,[1034] chopcherrie ripe within, Strawberries swimming in the creame, And schoole boyes playing in the streame: 70 Then O, then O, then O my true love said, Till that time come againe, Shee could not live a maid.

_Ant._ This sport dooes well: but me thinkes, Gammer, a merry winters tale would drive away the time trimly. Come, I am sure 75 you are not without a score.

_Fantast._ I faith, Gammer, a tale of an howre long were as good as an howres sleepe.

_Frol._ Looke you, Gammer, of the Gyant and the Kings Daughter,[1035] and I know not what. I have seene the day when I was a little one, 80 you might have drawne mee a mile after you with such a discourse.

_Old woman._ Well, since you be so importunate, my good man shall fill the pot and get him to bed; they that ply their worke must keepe good howres. One of you goe lye with him; he is a cleane skind man, I tell you, without either spavin or windgall; so I am 85 content to drive away the time with an old wives winters tale.

_Fantast._ No better hay in Devonshire,[1036] a my word, Gammer, Ile be one of your audience.

_Frolicke._ And I another: thats flat.

_Anticke._ Then must I to bed with the good man. _Bona nox_ Gammer; 90 God night, Frolicke.

_Smith._ Come on, my lad, thou shalt take thy unnaturall[1037] rest with me.

_Exeunt_ ANTICKE _and the_ SMITH.

_Frollicke._ Yet this vantage shall we have of them in the morning, to bee ready at the sight thereof extempore.[1038] 95

_Old wom._ Nowe this bargaine, my masters, must I make with you, that you will say _hum_ & _ha_ to my tale, so shall I know you are awake.

_Both._ Content, Gammer, that will we doo.