Chapter 5

RISE OF COMEDY AND TRAGEDY

No great discernment is required to see that, after the appearance of _Johan Johan_, all that was needed for the complete development of comedy was the invention of a well-contrived plot. For reasons already indicated, Interludes were naturally deficient in this respect. Nor were the Moralities and Bible Miracles much better: their length and comprehensive themes were against them. There were the Saint Plays, of which some still lingered upon the stage; these offered greater possibilities. But here, again, originality was limited; the _dénouement_ was more or less a foregone conclusion. Clearly, one of two things was wanted: either a man of genius to perceive the need and to supply it, or the study of new models outside the field of English drama. The man of genius was not then forthcoming, but by good fortune the models were stumbled upon.

We say stumbled upon, because the absence of tentative predecessors and of anything approaching an eager band of successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus _Calisto and Melibaea_ (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, Celestine. True, the play is dull enough. But if dramatists had been awake to their defects, the value of the new importation from a foreign literature would have been noticed. The years passed, however, without producing imitators, until some time in the years between 1544 and 1551 a Latin scholar, reading the plays of Plautus, decided to write a comedy like them. Latin Comedies, both in the original tongue and in translation, had appeared in England in previous years, but only as strayed foreigners. Nicholas Udall, the head master of Eton School, proposed a very different thing, namely, an English comedy which should rival in technique the comedies of the Latins. The result was _Ralph Roister Doister_. He called it an Interlude. Posterity has given it the title of 'the first regular English comedy'.

Divided into five acts, with subordinate scenes, this play develops its story with deliberate calculated steps. Acts I and II are occupied by Ralph's vain attempts to soften the heart of Dame Christian Custance by gifts and messages. In Act III come complications, double-dealings. Matthew Merrygreek plays Ralph false, tortures his love, misreads--by the simple trick of mispunctuation--his letter to the Dame, and thus, under a mask of friendship, sets him further than ever from success. Still deeper complexities appear with Act IV, for now arrives, with greetings from Gawin Goodluck, long betrothed to Dame Custance, a certain sea-captain, who, misled by Ralph's confident assurance, misunderstands the relations between the Dame and him, suspects disloyalty, and changes from friendliness to cold aloofness. This, by vexing the lady, brings disaster upon Ralph, whose bold attempt, on the suggestion of Merrygreek, to carry his love off by force is repulsed by that Dame's Amazonian band of maid-servants with scuttles and brooms. In this extraordinary conflict Ralph is horribly belaboured by the malicious Matthew under pretence of blows aimed at Dame Custance. Act V, however, brings Goodluck himself and explanations. That worthy man finds his lady true, friendship is established all round, and Ralph and Merrygreek join the happy couple in a closing feast.

This bald outline perhaps makes sufficiently clear the great advance in plot structure. Within the play, however, are many other good things. The character of Ralph Roister Doister, 'a vain-glorious, cowardly blockhead', as the list of dramatis personae has it, is thoroughly well done: his heavy love-sighs, his confident elation, his distrust, his gullibility, his ups and downs and contradictions, are all in the best comic vein. Only second in fullness of portraiture, and truer to Nature, is Dame Custance, who--if we exclude Melibaea as not native to English shores--may be said to bring into English secular drama honourable womanhood. Her amused indifference at first, her sharp reproof of her maids who have allowed themselves to act as Ralph's messengers, her gathering vexation at Ralph's tiresome wooing, her genuine alarm when she sees that his boastful words are accepted by the sea-captain as truth--these are sentiments and emotions copied from a healthy and worthy model. Matthew Merrygreek, an unmistakable 'Vice' ever at Ralph's elbow, is of all Vices the shrewdest striker of laughter out of a block of stupidity: it is from his ingenious brain that almost every absurd scene is evolved for the ridiculing of Ralph. Thoroughly human, and quite assertive, are the lower characters, the maid-servants and men-servants, Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, Truepenny, Dobinet Doughty and the rest. Need it be added that the battle in Act IV is pure fooling? or that jolly songs enliven the scenes with their rousing choruses (e.g. 'I mun be married a Sunday')? _Ralph Roister Doister_ is an English comedy with English notions of the best way of amusing English folk of the sixteenth century. With all its improvements it has no suggestion of the alien about it, as has the classically-flavoured _Thersites_ (also based, like Udall's play, on Plautus's _Miles Gloriosus_), or _Calisto and Melibaea_ with its un-English names. Perhaps that is why it had to wait fifteen years for a successor. Quite possibly its spectators regarded it as merely a better Interlude than usual, without recognizing the precise qualities which made it different from _Johan Johan_.

Two quotations will be sufficient to illustrate the opposing characters.

(1)

_Merrygreek_ (_alone_). But now of Roister Doister somewhat to express, That ye may esteem him after his worthiness, In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout, Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout. All the day long is he facing and craking[49] Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making; But when Roister Doister is put to his proof, To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof. If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye, Up is he to the hard ears in love by and by: And in all the hot haste must she be his wife, Else farewell his good days, and farewell his life!

(2)

[TRISTRAM TRUSTY, _a good friend and counsellor to_ DAME CUSTANCE, _is consulted by her on the matter of the sea-captain's_ (SURESBY'S) _misunderstanding of her attitude towards_ RALPH ROISTER DOISTER.]

_T. Trusty._ Nay, weep not, woman, but tell me what your cause is. As concerning my friend is anything amiss?

_C. Custance._ No, not on my part; but here was Sim. Suresby--

_T. Trusty._ He was with me, and told me so.

_C. Custance._ And he stood by While Ralph Roister Doister, with help of Merrygreek, For promise of marriage did unto me seek.

_T. Trusty._ And had ye made any promise before them twain?

_C. Custance._ No, I had rather be torn in pieces and slain. No man hath my faith and troth but Gawin Goodluck, And that before Suresby did I say, and there stuck; But of certain letters there were such words spoken--

_T. Trusty._ He told me that too.

_C. Custance._ And of a ring and token, That Suresby, I spied, did more than half suspect That I my faith to Gawin Goodluck did reject.

_T. Trusty._ But was there no such matter, Dame Custance, indeed?

_C. Custance._ If ever my head thought it, God send me ill speed! Wherefore I beseech you with me to be a witness That in all my life I never intended thing less. And what a brainsick fool Ralph Roister Doister is Yourself knows well enough.

_T. Trusty._ Ye say full true, i-wis.

In 1566 was acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, 'A Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt, and merie Comedie, intytuled _Gammer Gurton's Needle_.' The authorship is uncertain, recent investigation having exalted a certain Stevenson into rivalry with the Bishop Still to whom former scholars were content to assign it. Possibly as the result of a perusal of Plautus, possibly under the influence of the last play--for in subject matter it is even more perfectly English than _Ralph Roister Doister_--this comedy is also built on a well-arranged plan, the plot developing regularly through five acts with subsidiary scenes. Let us glance through it.

Gammer Gurton and her goodman Hodge lose their one and only needle, an article not easily renewed, nor easily done without, seeing that Hodge's garments stand in need of instant repair. Gib, the cat, is strongly suspected of having swallowed it. Into this confusion steps Diccon, a bedlam beggar, whose quick eye promptly detects opportunities for mischief. After scaring Hodge with offers of magic art, he goes to Dame Chat, an honest but somewhat jealous neighbour, unaware of what has happened, with a tale that Gammer Gurton accuses her of stealing her best cock. To Gammer Gurton he announces that he has seen Dame Chat pick up the needle and make off with it. Between the two dames ensues a meeting, the nature of which may be guessed, the whole trouble lying in the fact that neither thinks it necessary to name the article under dispute. No wonder that discussion under the disadvantage of so great a misunderstanding ends in violence. Doctor Rat, the curate, is now called in; but again Diccon is equal to the occasion. Having warned Dame Chat that Hodge, to balance the matter of the cock, is about to creep in through a breach in the wall and kill her chickens, he persuades Doctor Rat that if he will creep through this same opening he will see the needle lying on Dame Chat's table. The consequences for the curate are severe. Master Bailey's assistance is next requisitioned, and him friend Diccon cannot overreach. The whole truth coming out, Diccon is required to kneel and apologize. In doing so he gives Hodge a slap which elicits from that worthy a yell of pain. But it is a wholesome pang, for it finds the needle no further away than in the seat of Hodge's breeches.

If we compare this play with _Ralph Roister Doister_ three ideas will occur: first, that we have made no advance; second, that, in giving the preference to rough country folk, the author has deliberately abandoned the higher standard of refinement in language and action set in Udall's major scenes; third, that whereas the earlier work bases its comedy on character, educing the amusing scenes from the clash of vanity, constancy and mischief, the later play relies for its comic effects on situations brought about by mischief alone. These are three rather heavy counts against the younger rival. But in the other scale may be placed a very fair claim to greater naturalness. Taking the scenes and characters in turn, mischief-maker, churchman and all, there is none so open to the charge of being impossible, and therefore farcical, as the battle between the forces of Ralph and Dame Custance, or the incredibly self-deceived Ralph himself. In accompanying Ralph through his adventures we seem to be moving through a fantastic world in which Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio might feel at home; but with Dame Chat, Gammer Gurton and Hodge we feel the solid earth beneath our feet and around us the strong air which nourished the peasantry and yeomen of Tudor England.

The first extract is a verse from this comedy's one and famous song; the second is taken from Act I, Scene 4.

(1)

I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good; But sure I think that I can drink With him that wears a hood. Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old. Back and side go bare, go bare, Both foot and hand go cold: But belly, God send thee good ale enough, Whether it be new or old.

(2)

[HODGE _hears of the loss of the needle on his return home from the fields._]

_Hodge._ Your nee'le lost? it is pity you should lack care and endless sorrow. Gog's death, how shall my breeches be sewed? Shall I go thus to-morrow?

_Gammer._ Ah, Hodge, Hodge, if that ich could find my nee'le, by the reed, Ch'ould sew thy breeches, ich promise thee, with full good double thread, And set a patch on either knee should last this moneths twain. Now God and good Saint Sithe, I pray to send it home again.

_Hodge._ Whereto served your hands and eyes, but this your nee'le to keep? What devil had you else to do? ye keep, ich wot, no sheep. Cham[50] fain abroad to dig and delve, in water, mire and clay, Sossing and possing in the dirt still from day to day. A hundred things that be abroad cham set to see them well: And four of you sit idle at home and cannot keep a nee'le!

_Gammer._ My nee'le, alas, ich lost it, Hodge, what time ich me up hasted To save milk set up for thee, which Gib our cat hath wasted.

_Hodge._ The devil he burst both Gib and Tib, with all the rest; Cham always sure of the worst end, whoever have the best. Where ha' you been fidging abroad, since you your nee'le lost?

_Gammer._ Within the house, and at the door, sitting by this same post; Where I was looking a long hour, before these folks came here. But, wellaway! all was in vain; my nee'le is never the near.

_Hodge._ Set me a candle, let me seek, and grope wherever it be. Gog's heart, ye be foolish (ich think), you know it not when you it see.

_Gammer._ Come hither, Cock: what, Cock, I say!

_Cock._ How, Gammer?

_Gammer._ Go, hie thee soon, and grope behind the old brass pan, Which thing when thou hast done, There shalt thou find an old shoe, wherein, if thou look well, Thou shalt find lying an inch of white tallow candle: Light it, and bring it tite away.

_Cock._ That shall be done anon.

_Gammer._ Nay, tarry, Hodge, till thou hast light, and then we'll seek each one.

_Ralph Roister Doister_ and _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ mark the end of the Interlude stage and the commencement of Comedy proper. Leaving the latter at this point for the present, we shall return in the next chapter to study its fortunes at the hands of Lyly.

* * * * *

Morality Plays, though theoretically quite as suitable for tragic effect as for comic, since the former only required that Mankind should sometimes fail to reach heaven, seem nevertheless to have developed mainly the lighter side, setting the hero right at the finish and in the meantime discovering, to the relief of otherwise bored spectators, that wickedness, in some unexplained way, was funny. As long as propriety forbade that good should be overcome by evil it is hard to see how tragedy could appear. Had Humankind, in _The Castell of Perseverance_, been fought for in vain by the Virtues, or had Everyman found no companion to go with him and intercede for him, there had been tragedy indeed. But religious optimism was against any conclusion so discouraging to repentance. The lingering Miracles, it is true, still presented the sublimest of all tragedies in the Fall of Man and the apparent triumph of the Pharisees over Jesus. Between them, however, and the kind of drama that succeeded the Moralities, too great a gulf was fixed. Contemporaries of those original spirits, Heywood and Udall, could hardly revert for inspiration to the discredited performances of villages and of a few provincial towns. Tragedy had to wait until there was matured and made popular an Interlude from which the conflict of Virtues and Vices, with the orthodox triumph of the former, had been purged away, leaving to the author complete liberty alike in character and action. When that came, Tragedy returned to the stage, a stranger with strange stories to tell. Persia and Ancient Rome sent their tyrants and their heroines to contest for public favour with home-born knaves and fools. Nor were the newcomers above borrowing the services of those same knaves and fools. The Vice was given a place, low clownish fellows were admitted to relieve the harrowed feelings, and our old acquaintance, Herod, was summoned from the Miracles to lend his aid.

Yet even so--and probably because it was so--Tragedy was ill at ease. She had called in low comedy and rant to please the foolish, only to find herself infected and degraded by their company. Moreover, the bustle of incident, the abrupt changes from grave to gay and to grave again, jangled her sad majestic harmonies with shrill interrupting discords. It had not been so in Greece. It had not been so even in Italy, where Roman Seneca, fearing the least decline to a lower plane of dignity and impressiveness, had disciplined tragedy by an imposition of artificial but not unskilful restraints. In place of the strong unbroken sweep of a resistless current, which characterized the evolution of an Aeschylean drama, he had insisted on an orderly division of a plot into acts and scenes, as though one should break up the sheer plunge of a single waterfall into a well-balanced group of cascades. Yet he was wise in his generation, securing by this means a carefully proportioned development which, in the absence of that genius which inspired the Greek dramatists, might otherwise have been lost. Once strong and free in the plays of Aeschylus and his compeers, hampered and constantly under guidance but still dignified and noble in the Senecan drama, Tragedy now found herself debased and almost caricatured in the English Interlude stage. Fortunately the danger was seen in time. English writers, face to face with self-conscious tragedy, realized that here at least was more than unaided native art could compass. Despairing of success if they persisted in the old methods, they fell back awkwardly upon classical imitation and, by assiduous study tempered by a wise criticism, achieved success.

Only two plays with any claim to the designation of tragedies have survived to us from the Interludes, neither of them of much interest. _Cambyses_ (1561), by Thomas Preston, has all the qualities of an imperfect Interlude. There are the base fellows and the clowns, Huff, Ruff, Snuff, Hob and Lob; the abstractions, Diligence, Shame, Common's Complaint, Small Hability, and the like; the Vice, Ambidexter, who enters 'with an old capcase on his head, an old pail about his hips for harness, a scummer and a potlid by his side, and a rake on his shoulder'; and the same scuffling and horseplay when the comic element is uppermost. Incident follows incident as rapidly and with as trifling motives as before. In the course of a short play we see Cambyses, king of Persia, set off for his conquests in Egypt; return; execute Sisamnes, his unjust deputy; prove a far worse ruler himself; shoot through the heart the young son of Praxaspes, to prove to that too-frank counsellor that he is not as drunk as was supposed; murder his own brother, Smirdis, on the lying report of Ambidexter; marry, contrary to the law of the Church and her own wish, a lovely lady, his cousin, and then have her executed for reproaching him with the death of his brother; and finally die, accidentally pierced by his own sword when mounting a horse. All these horrors, except the death of the lady, take place on the stage. Thus we have such stage-directions as, 'Smite him in the neck with a sword to signify his death', 'Flay him with a false skin', 'A little bladder of vinegar pricked', 'Enter the King without a gown, a sword thrust up into his side, bleeding.' Of real tragedy there is little, the hustle of crime upon crime obliterating the impression which any one singly might produce. Yet even in this crude orgy of bloodshed the melancholy voice of unaffected pathos can be heard mourning the loss of dear ones. It speaks in the farewells of Sisamnes and his son Otian, and of Praxaspes (the honest minister) and his little boy; throughout the whole incident of the gentle lady whose fate melts even the Vice to tears; and in the outburst of a mother's grief over her child's corpse. We quote the last.

O blissful babe, O joy of womb, heart's comfort and delight, For counsel given unto the king, is this thy just requite? O heavy day and doleful time, these mourning tunes to make! With blubb'red eyes into my arms from earth I will thee take, And wrap thee in my apron white: but O my heavy heart! The spiteful pangs that it sustains would make it in two to part, The death of this my son to see: O heavy mother now, That from thy sweet and sug'red joy to sorrow so shouldst bow! What grief in womb did I retain before I did thee see; Yet at the last, when smart was gone, what joy wert thou to me! How tender was I of thy food, for to preserve thy state! How stilled I thy tender heart at times early and late! With velvet paps I gave thee suck, with issue from my breast, And danced thee upon my knee to bring thee unto rest. Is this the joy of thee I reap? O king of tiger's brood, O tiger's whelp, hadst thou the heart to see this child's heart-blood? Nature enforceth me, alas, in this wise to deplore, To wring my hands, O wel-away, that I should see this hour. Thy mother yet will kiss thy lips, silk-soft and pleasant white, With wringing hands lamenting for to see thee in this plight. My lording dear, let us go home, our mourning to augment.

The second play, _Appius and Virginia_ (1563), by R.B. (not further identified), is, in some respects, weaker; though, by avoiding the crowded plot which spoilt _Cambyses_, it attains more nearly to tragedy. The low characters, Mansipulus and Mansipula, the Vice (Haphazard), and the abstractions, Conscience, Comfort and their brethren, reappear with as little success. But the singleness of the theme helps towards that elevation of the main figures and intensifying of the catastrophe which tragic emotion demands. Unfortunately, from the start the author seems to have been obsessed with the notion that the familiar rant of Herod was peculiarly suited to his subject. In such a notion there lay, of course, the half-truth that lofty thoughts and impassioned speech are more befitting the sombre muse than the foolish chatter of clowns. But, except where his own deliberately introduced mirth-makers are speaking, he will have nothing but pompous rhetoric from the lips of his characters. His prologue begins his speech with the sounding line:

Who doth desire the trump of fame to sound unto the skies--

Virginius's wife makes her début upon the stage with this encouraging remark to her companion:

The pert and prickly prime of youth ought chastisement to have, But thou, dear daughter, needest not, thyself doth show thee grave.

To which Virginia most becomingly answers:

Refell your mind of mournful plaints, dear mother, rest your mind.

After this every one feels that the wicked judge, Appius, has done no more than his duty when he exclaims, at his entrance:

The furrowed face of fortune's force my pinching pain doth move.

Virginius slays his daughter on the stage and serves her head up in a charger before Appius, who promptly bursts into a cataclysm of C's ('O curst and cruel cankered churl, O carl unnatural'); but there is not a suggestion of the pathos noticed in _Cambyses_. Instead there is in one place a sort of frantic agitation, which the author doubtless thought was the pure voice of tragic sorrow. It is in the terrible moment when, after the heroic strain of the sacrifice is over, Virginius realizes the meaning of what he has done. Presumably wild with grief, he raves in language so startlingly akin to the ludicrous despairs of Pyramus and Thisbe that the modern reader, acquainted with the latter, is almost jarred into laughter.

O cruel hands, O bloody knife, O man, what hast thou done? Thy daughter dear and only heir her vital end hath won. Come, fatal blade, make like despatch: come, Atropos: come, aid! Strike home, thou careless arm, with speed; of death be not afraid.

Of such eloquence we might truly say with Theseus, 'This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.'

In 1562 Tragedy, as we have said, took refuge in an imitation of the Senecan stage: translations of Seneca's tragedies had begun to appear in 1559. _The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex_, or _Gorboduc_, as it was originally and is now most commonly named, marks a new departure for English drama. To understand this we ought perhaps to say something about the essential features of a Greek tragedy (Seneca's own model), and make a note of any special Senecan additions. What strikes one most in reading a play of Aeschylus is the prominence given to a composite and almost colourless character known as the Chorus (for though it consists of a body of persons, it speaks, for the most part, as one), the absence of any effective action from the stage, the limited number of actors, and the tendency of any speaker to expand his remarks into a set speech of considerable length. This tendency, especially noticeable in the Chorus, whose speeches commonly take the form of chants, encouraged the faculty of generalizing philosophically, so that one is constantly treated to general reflections expressive rather of broad wisdom and piety than of feelings directly and dramatically aroused; much also is made of retrospection and relation, whether the topic is ancient history, the events of a recent voyage, or a barely completed crime. The sage backward glance of the Chorus is quick to discover in present ruin a punishment for past crime; so that the plot becomes in a manner a picture of the resistless laws of moral justice. Speeches, a moralizing Chorus, actions not performed but reported in detail, a sense of divine retribution for sin, these are perhaps the qualities which, apart from the poetry itself, we recall most readily as typical of a Greek tragedy. These Seneca modified by the introduction of acts and scenes, a subordination of the Chorus, and an exaggerated predilection for long sententious speeches; he also added a new stage character known as the Ghost. Seneca's elevation, to the dogmatic position of laws, of the unities of Time, Place and Action, rules by no means invariable among his older and greater masters, has been the subject of much debate, but, on the whole, the verdict has been hostile. According to these unities, the time represented in the play should not greatly exceed the time occupied in acting it, the scene of the action should not vary, and the plot should be concerned only with one event. This last law was generally accepted, by Elizabethans, in Tragedy at least. The other two, though much insisted on by English theorists, such as Sir Philip Sidney, met with so much neglect in practice that we need devote no space to the discussion of them.

Having thus hastily summarized the larger superficial characteristics of classical drama, we may return to _Gorboduc_ and inquire which of these were adopted in it and with what modifications. We find it divided into five acts and nine scenes. A Chorus, though it takes no other part, sings its moralizing lyrics at the end of each act except the last. Speeches of inordinate length are made--three consecutive speeches in