This brings to mind Shakespeare's fools and clowns, who are always singing the foot of many songs; and we see the making them do so was no device of his, but a mere faithful copying of the living models before him; though the lyric sweetness and the art and the wisdom which he puts into their mouths were in most instances, we may be sure, his own. The other moral-play in question, The Marriage of Wit and Science," is remarkable not only for its very elaborate and ingenious, though equally dull and wearisome, allegory, but for the fact that it is regularly divided into acts and scenes, which is not the case with even many of the early comedies and tragedies by which the miracle-plays were succeeded. One of the very latest of the moral-plays was The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, which was written after 1588, and printed in 1590. But, as its title would indicate, this is in reality a kind of comedy; and it is also remarkable as being written for the most part in blank verse. III. As allegory had crept into the miracle-plays, and, by introducing the impersonation of abstract qualities, had worked a change in their structure and their purpose, which finally produced the moral-play, so personages intended as satire upon classes and individuals, and as representations of the manners and customs of the day, took, year after year, more and more the place of the cold and stiff abstractions which filled the stage in the pure moral-play, until, at last, comedy, or the ideal representation of human life, appeared in English drama. Thus in Tom Tyler and his Wife, which, according to VOL. I. * Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society. k Ritson, was published in 1578, and which contains internal evidence that it was written about eight years before that date, the personages are Tom Tyler, his good woman, who is a gray mare of the most formidable kind, Tom Tailor, his friend, Desire, Strife, Sturdy, Tipple, Patience, and the Vice. In The Conflict of Conscience, written at about the same date, among Conscience, Hypocrisy, Tyranny, Avarice, Sensual-suggestion, and the like, appear four historical personages-Francis Spiera, an Italian lawyer, who is called Philologus, his two sons, and Cardinal Eusebius. Mr. Collier also mentions a political moral-play written about 1565, called Albion Knight, in which the hero, a knight named Albion, is a personification of England, and the motive of which is satire upon the oppression of the commons by the nobles. But before this date, and probably in the reign of Edward VI., Bishop Bale had written his Kynge Johan, a play the purpose of which was to further the Reformation, and which partook of the characters of a moralplay, and a dramatic chronicle-history. Indeed, neither the reformers nor their opponents were slow to take advantage of the stage as a means of indoctrinating the people with their peculiar views; and as the government passed alternately into the hands of Papists and Protestants, plays were suppressed, or dramatic performances interdicted altogether, as the good of the ecclesiastical party in power seemed to require. In the very first year of Queen Mary's reign, 1558, a politico-religious moralplay, called Respublica, was produced, the purpose of which was to check the Reformation. The kingdom of England is impersonated as Respublica, and, by the author's own admission, Queen Mary herself figures as Nemesis, the goddess of redress and correction.* Described in Collier's edition of Shakespeare's Works. 1843. Vol. I. p. xviii. John Heywood, whose interludes have been already mentioned, produced his first play before the year 1521. Yet, in turning our eyes back two generations to glance at his compositions, we may obtain, perhaps, a more correct view of the gradual development of the English drama than if we had examined them in the order of time. Heywood was attached to the court of Henry VIII. as a singer and player upon the virginals. His interludes were short pieces, about the length of one act of a modern comedy. Humorous in their motive, and dependent for all their interest upon their extravagant burlesque of every-day life, upon the broadest jokes and the coarsest satire, they were, indeed, but a kind of farce. That which is regarded as Heywood's earliest extant production is entitled A mery play between the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and neybour Pratte. The Pardoner and the Friar have got leave of the Curate to use his church, the former to show his relics, the latter to preach; both having the same end in view money. They quarrel as to who shall have precedence, and at last fight. The Curate, brought in by this row between his clerical brethren, attempts to separate and pacify them; but failing to accomplish this single-handed, he calls the neighbors to his aid. In vain, however; for the Pardoner and the Friar, like man and wife interrupted in a quarrel, unite their forces, and beat the interlopers soundly. After which they depart, and the play ends. In The Four P's, another of Heywood's interludes, the personages are the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and the Pedlar. In this play there is little action; and the four worthies, after gibing at each other's professions for a while, set out to see which can tell the biggest lie. After much elaborate and ingenious falsehood the Palmer beats by the simple assertion that he never saw a woman out of patience in his life; at which his opponents "come down" without another word. The satire in these plays is found in the inconsistency between the characters of the personages and their professions, and particularly in the absurd and ridiculous pretensions of the clergymen as to their priestly functions, and the nature of their relics. In The Pardoner and the Friar, the Pardoner produces "the great too of the holy trynyte," and "of our Ladye a relyke full good, Her bongrace, which she ware with her French hode, Whan she wente oute al wayes for sonne bornynge; also, 66 of all halowes the blessed jaw bone;" and in The Four P's there is a " buttocke-bone of Pentecoste." And yet Heywood was a stanch Romanist. There are certain passages in Heywood's plays, which, considering the period at which he wrote, are remarkable for genuine humor and descriptive power, as well as for spirited and lively versification.* And coarse and * See the following description of an alleged visit to hell by the Pardoner in The Four P's: "Thys devyll and I walket arme in arme So farre, tyll he had brought me thyther, As for that day there metely fell. Theyr hornes well gylt, theyr clowes full clene, Theyr taylles wel kempt, and as I wene, The master devyll sat on his jacket, Did laugh thereat ful wel like freends. indecent as his productions must be pronounced, they exhibit more real dramatic power than appears in those of any other playwright of the first half of the sixteenth century. Heywood founded no school, seems to have had no imitators; there is no line of succession between him and the man who must be regarded as the first writer of genuine English comedy. We have seen that plays in which characters drawn from real life, mingled with the allegorical personages proper to moral-plays, were written as late as 1570. Such were Tom Tyler and his Wife and The Conflict of Conscience, mentioned above. But as early as the year 1551, Nicholas Udall, who became Master of Eton, and afterward of Westminster, had written a play divided into acts and scenes, with a gradually developed action tending to a climax, and the characters of which were all ideal representations of actual life; a play which was, in short, a comedy. The Anone all this rout was brought in selens, Of Lucyfer: then lowe, as wel I could, I knelyd whiche he so well alowde, That thus he beckte, and by saynt Antony He smyled on me well favouredly, Bendynge his browss as brode as barne durres, Shakynge his eares as ruged as burres; Rolyng his eyes as rounde as two bushels; |