Amenities of Literature Part 30

This lover of literature has favoured the curious with the interesting a.n.a.lysis of two rare French Protestant plays, _Le Marchand Converti_, in 1558; and _Le Pape Malade et tirant a sa Fin_, in 1561. Allowing largely for the gross invectives of the Calvinist--"_les impietes_"--they display an original comic invention, and sparkle with the most lively sallies.[23] It is remarkable that _Le Marchand Converti_, at such an early period of modern literature, is a regular comedy of five acts, introduced by a prologue in verse; odes are interspersed, and each act concludes with a chorus, whom the author calls "the company." The cla.s.sical form of this unacted play, instinct with the spirit of the new reform, betrays the work of a learned hand.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Warton's "Hist. of Eng. Poetry," iii. 195, 8vo edition; but it has been suggested that, as Saint Gregory composed more poetically, this earliest sacred drama was the production of a later writer, another Gregory, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 572. The dramatist, however, was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the present occasion.

[2] TERTULLIAN, CHRYSOSTOM, LACTANTIUS, CYPRIAN, and others, have vehemently declaimed against theatres and actors. It is doubtless the invectives of the Fathers which have been the true origin of the puritanic denouncement against "stage-plays" and "play-goers." The Fathers furnished ample quotations for PRYNNE in his "Histriomastix."

It is, however, curious to observe that at a later day, in the thirteenth century, the great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, greatly relaxed the prohibitions; confessing that amus.e.m.e.nt is necessary to the happiness of man, he allows the decent exercise of the histrionic art. See a curious tract, "The Stage Condemned," which contains a collection of the opinions of the Fathers, 1698. Riccoboni, "Sur les Theatres," does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman.

[3] "Tiraboschi," iv.

[4] These dramas subsequently formed no uncommon spectacle in the streets of Italy, whence some Italian critics have fancied that the Gothic poem of Dante--his h.e.l.l, his Purgatory, and his Paradise--was an idea caught from the threefold stage of a mystery which often fixed his musings in the streets of his own Florence. As late as in the year 1739, a mystery of _The d.a.m.ned Soul_, acted by living personages, was still exhibited by a company of strollers in Turin; we have the amusing particulars in a letter by Spence.--Spence's "Anecdotes," 397. They have sunk to the humble state of puppet-shows, and are still exhibited at Carnival time at Venice and elsewhere.

[5] See the note and this extraordinary blunder in _Fabliaux_, ii.

152.

[6] Mr. Wright has published a curious collection of Latin mysteries of the twelfth century. [For a detailed notice of other printed collections see note to "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p.

352.--ED.]

[7] Perhaps the very last remains of such rude dramatic exhibitions are yet to be traced in our counties--about Christmas-tide, or rather old Christmas, whose decrepit age is personified. In Lancashire and Yorkshire, and also in Dorsetshire, families are visited by "the great Emperor of the Turks" and St. George of England, or by the lion-hearted Richard. After a fierce onset, ringing their tin swords, the Saracens groan and drop. The Leech appears holding his phial; from some drops the dead survive their fate, and rise for the hospitable supper. The dialogue, however, has not been so traditional as the exhibition. The curious portion of these ancient exhibitions is, therefore, totally lost in the subst.i.tutions of the rude rustics.

The Wa.s.sail Songs, or the Christmas Carols, have come down with fewer losses than these ancient "Tales of the Crusaders;" for the language of emotion, and the notice of old picturesque customs, cling to the memory, and endure with their localities. But for these we must travel far from the land of the c.o.c.kneys.

[8] Bouterwek.

[9] The clergy long continued to a.s.sist at these exhibitions, if they did not always act in them. In 1417, an _English Mystery_ was exhibited before the Emperor Sigismund, at the Council of Constance, on the usual subject of the Nativity. The _English Bishops_ had it rehea.r.s.ed several days, that the actors might be perfect before their imperial audience. We are not told in what language their _English Mystery_ was recited; but we are furnished with a curious fact, that "the Germans consider this play as the first introduction of that sort of dramatic performance in their country."--"Henry of Monmouth,"

by the Rev. J. E. Tyler, ii. 61.

[10] The Spanish nation, unchangeable in their customs, have retained the last remains of the ancient Mysteries in the divisions of their dramas, called "Jornadas."

[11] "A sheep-skin for Jews, wigs for the Apostles, and vizards for Devils," appear in the churchwardens' accounts at Tewkesbury, 1578, "for the players' geers."--"Hist. of Dramatic Poetry," ii. 140. The same diligent inquirer has also discovered the theatrical term "properties," in allusion to the furniture of the stage, and which is so used by Shakspeare, employed in its present sense in an ancient morality.--Ib. ii. 129.

[12] "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," i. 129.

[13] "Dictionnaire de l'Academie Francaise."--The proverbial phrase is accompanied by a very superfluous remark--"Ce mot a pa.s.se d'usage avec les moeurs de ces temps anciens." See also "Dict. de Trevoux,"

art. _Mystere_.

[14] That the translation of the "Chester Plays" was made from the _French_, and not from the _Latin_, as Warton supposed, is ingeniously elucidated by Mr. Collier. In the English translation, some of the original French pa.s.sages have been preserved.--"Annals of the Stage," ii. 129.

When Warton found that these plays were translated into English, he concluded that they were from the Latin. He totally forgot that the French was long the prevalent language of England. And this important circ.u.mstance, too often overlooked by preceding inquirers, has thrown much confusion in our literary history.

The best account we have of Ralph Higden may be found in the _first_ volume of Lardner's Cyclopaedia on "The Early History of the English Stage," a work of some original research, at page 193.

[15] The earliest and rudest known miracle-play in English has been published by Mr. Halliwell--_The Harrowing of h.e.l.l_. It was written in the reign of Edward the Second, and is a curious instance of the childhood of the drama.

[16] The reign of Henry the Sixth may he fixed upon as the epoch of a new species of dramatic representation, known by the name of a moral.--_Collier_, i. 23.

[17] The reader may gratify his curiosity, and derive considerable amus.e.m.e.nt, from the skilful a.n.a.lysis of primitive dramas, both ma.n.u.script and printed, which Mr. COLLIER has drawn up with true dramatic taste. There are also copious specimens in a curious article on Heywood in the volume on "The English Drama" of Lardner's Cyclopaedia,--the labour of a learned antiquary. [One of Heywood's Interludes was printed by the Percy Society from his MS. in the British Museum, under the editorial care of Mr. Fairholt; who prefixed an a.n.a.lysis with copious extracts from his other Interludes.] The progress of the drama was similar both in France and England, yet our vivacious neighbours seem to have invented a peculiar burlesque piece of their own, under the t.i.tle of _Sotties_, and whose chief personage takes the quality of _Prince des Sots_; and _La Mere Sotte_, who is represented with her infant _Sots_. These pieces still retained their devout character, with an intermixture of profane and burlesque scenes, highly relished by the populace. "Ils le nommerent par un quolibet vulgaire, _Jeux de Pois pilez_, et ce fut selon toutes les apparences a cause de melange du sacre et du profane qui regnait dans ces sortes de jeux." The cant phrase which the people coined for this odd mixture of sacred and farcical subjects, of _Mashed Peas_, may lose its humour with us, but we find by Bayle, art. "D'a.s.soucy," that they were collected and printed under this t.i.tle, and fetched high prices among collectors. These _Sotties_ were acted by a brotherhood calling themselves _Enfans sans Soucy_.--Parfait, "Hist. du Theatre Francais," i. 52. One of their chief composers was PIERRE GRINGOIRE, of whose rare _Sotties_ I have several reprints by the learned Abbe Caron. Gringoire invented and performed his _Sotties_, in ridicule of the Pope, on a scaffold or stage, to charm his royal master, Louis the Twelfth, in 1511; for an ample list of his gay satires see "Biog. Universelle," art.

"Gringoire."

[18] Strype's "Mem. of Eccles. Hist.," iii. 379.

[19] "Annals of the Stage," i. 107.

[20] Warton's "Hist. of Eng. Poetry," iii. 428, 8vo.

[21] Rastell's "Collection of Statutes," fo. 32--d.

[22] Both these ancient dramas are reprinted in Hawkins' "Origin of the English Drama." Many such dramas remain in ma.n.u.script.

[23] "Bibliotheque du Theatre Francais," iii. 263, ascribed to the Duke de la Valliere. He has preserved many pa.s.sages exquisitely humorous. He felt awkwardly in performing his duty to his readers, after what his predecessors, Messieurs Parfait, had declared;--and, to calm the terrors of _les personnes scrupuleuses_, it is amusing to observe his plea, or his apology, for noticing these admirable antipapistic satires:--"They are outrageous and abound with impieties; but they are extremely well written for their time, and truly comic. I considered that I could not avoid giving these extracts, were it only to show to what lengths the first pretended reformers carried their unreasonable violence against the holy Father, and the court of Rome." The apology for their transcription, if not more ingenuous, is at least more ingenious than the apology for their suppression.

THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, THE COURT JESTER.

BALE, Bishop of Ossory, and JOHN HEYWOOD, the court jester, were contemporaries, and both equally shared in the mutable fortunes of the satiric dramas of their times; but they themselves were the antipodes of each other: the earnest Protestant BALE, the gravest reformer, and the inflexible Catholic HEYWOOD, noted for "his mad merry wit," form one of those remarkable disparities which the history of literature sometimes offers.

BALE was originally educated in a monastery; he found an early patron, and professed the principles of the Reformation; and, like Luther, sealed his emanc.i.p.ation from Catholic celibacy by a wife, whom he tenderly describes as "his faithful Dorothea." It was a great thing for a monk to be mated with such constancy at a time when women were usually to be described as shrews, or worse. From the day of marriage the malice of persecution haunted the hapless heretic; such personal hatreds could not fail of being mutual. He seems to have too hastily antic.i.p.ated the Reformation under Henry the Eighth, for though that monarch had freed himself from "the bishop of Rome," he had by no means put aside the doctrines, and Bale, who had already begun a series of two-and-twenty reforming interludes in his "maternal idiom," found it advisable to leave a kingdom but half reformed. He paused not, however, till he had written a whole library against "the Papelins," the last production always seemed the most envenomed. On the death of Henry he unexpectedly appeared before Edward the Sixth, who imagined that he had died. Bale had the misfortune to be promoted to the Irish bishopric of Ossory--to plant Protestantism in a land of Papistry! Frustrated in his unceasing fervour, Bale escaped from martyrdom by hiding himself in Dublin. The death of Edward relieved our Protestant bishop from this sad dilemma; for on the accession of Mary he flew into Switzerland. There he indulged his anti-papistical vein; the press sent forth a brood, among which might have been some of better growth, for he laboured on our British biography and literature; but as there were yet but few Protestants to record, it flowed, and sometimes overflowed, against all the friends of the Papacy; Pits, who subsequently resumed the task, a sullen and fierce Papist, in revenge omitted in the line of our ill.u.s.trious Britons, Wickliffe and every Wickliffite. Such were the beginnings of our literary history. On the accession of Elizabeth, his country received back its exile; but Bale refused to be reinstated in his Irish see, and sunk into a quiet prebendary of Canterbury. Fuller has called our good bishop "Bilious Bale." Some conceive that this bishop has suffered ill-treatment merely for having thrown out some remarkable, or abominable, invectives. Proselytes, however sincere in their new convictions and their old hatreds, both operating at once, colour their style as some do their faces, till by long use the heightened tint seems faint, and they go on deepening it, and thus at last the natural countenance is lost in the artificial ma.s.s.

If Bale were no poet, in the singular dramas we have, he at least displays a fluent invention; he tells plainly what is meant, which we like to learn; and I do not know whether it be owing to his generally indifferent verse that we sometimes are struck by an idiomatic phrase, and a richness of rhymes peculiar to himself, which sustain our attention.[1]

Of JOHN HEYWOOD, the favourite jester of Henry the Eighth and his daughter Mary, and the intimate of Sir Thomas More, whose congenial humour may have mingled with his own, more table-talk and promptness at reply have been handed down to us than of any writer of the times. His quips, and quirks, and quibbles are of his age, but his copious pleasantry still enlivens; these smoothed the brow of Henry, and relaxed the rigid muscles of the melancholy Mary. He had the _entree_ at all times to the privy-chamber, and often to administer a strong dose of himself, which her majesty's physicians would prescribe. He is distinguished as Heywood the epigrammatist; a t.i.tle fairly won by the man who has left six centuries of epigrams, collected and adjusted as many English proverbs in his verse, besides the quaint conceits of "crossing of proverbs."[2] Of these six hundred epigrams it is possible not a single one is epigrammatic: we have never had a Martial. Even when it became a fashion, to write books of epigrams half a century subsequently, they usually closed in a miserable quibble, a dull apophthegm, or at the best, like those of Sir John Harrington, in a plain story rhymed. Wit, in our sense of the term, was long unpractised, and the modern epigram was not yet discovered.

Heywood, who had flourished under Henry, on the change in the reign of Edward, clung to the ancient customs. He was a Romanist, but had he not recovered in some degree from the cecity of superst.i.tion, he had not so keenly exposed, as he has done, some vulgar impostures. It happened, however, that some unlucky jest, trenching on treason, flew from the lips of the unguarded jester; it would have hanged some--but pleasant verses promptly addressed to the young sovereign saved him at the pinch,--however, he gathered from "the council" that this was no jesting-time, and he left the country in the day that Bale was returning from his emigration under King Henry. On Mary's accession, Bale again retired, and Heywood suddenly appeared at court. Asked by the queen "What wind blew him there?" "Two specially; the one to see your majesty!" he replied. "We thank you for that," said the queen, "but I pray you what is the other?" "That your grace might see me!" There was shrewdness in this pleasantry, to bespeak the favour of his royal patroness. Four short years did not elapse ere Elizabeth opened her long reign, and then the merry Romanist for ever bid farewell to his native land, while Bale finally sat beside his English hearth. These were very moveable and removeable times, and no one was certain how long he should remain in his now locality.

The genius of HEYWOOD created "The Merrie Interlude;" unlike BALE, as in all things, he never opened the Bible for a stage-play, but approaching Comedy, he became the painter of manners, and the chronicler of domestic life. Warton certainly has hastily and contradictorily censured Heywood, without a right comprehension of his peculiar subjects; yet he admired at least one of Heywood's writings, in which, being anonymous, he did not recognise the victim of his vague statements. Warton and his followers have obscured a true genius for exuberant humour, keen irony, and exquisite ridicule, such as Rabelais and Swift would not have disdained, and have not always surpa.s.sed. One of his interludes is accessible for those who can revel in a novel scene of comic invention.

This interlude is "The Four P's; the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and the Pedler." Each flouts the other, and thus display their professional knaveries.[3]

The ludicrous strokes of this piece could never have come from a bigot to the ancient superst.i.tion, however attached to the ancient creed. We cannot tell how far the jester may have been influenced by a proclamation of 28th of Henry the Eighth, to protect "the poor innocent people from those light persons called pardoners by colour of their indulgences," &c. He has curiously exhibited to us all the trumpery regalia of papistry; as he also exposed "The Friery" in another interlude which has all the appearance of a merry tale from Boccaccio.

So plays the jocund spirit of Heywood the Jester, in his minstrel-verse and pristine idiom; but we have now to tell another tale. Heywood is the author of a ponderous volume, and an interminable "parable" of "The Spider and the Fly." It is said to have occupied the thoughts of the writer during twenty years. This unlucky "heir of his invention" is dressed out with a profusion of a hundred woodcuts--then rare and precious things--among which starts up the full-length of the author more than once. Warton impatiently never reached the conclusion, where the author has confided to us the secret of his incomprehensible intention. There Warton would have found that "we must understand that the spiders represent the Protestants, and the flies the Catholics; that the maid with the broom sweeping away the cobwebs (to the annoyance of their weavers) is Mary armed with the civil power, executing the commands of her Master (Christ), and her mistress (Mother Church)." We see at once all the embarra.s.sments and barrenness of this wearying and perplexed fancy. Warton contents himself with what he calls "a sensible criticism," taken from Harrison, a Protestant minister, and one of the partners of Holinshed's Chronicle; it is as mordacious as a periodical criticism. "Neither he who made this book, nor any who reads it, can reach unto the meaning." Warton, to confirm "the sensible criticism,"

alleges as a proof of its unpopularity, that it was never reprinted; but it was published in 1556, and Mary died in 1558. A vindication of "the maid with the broom" might be equally unwelcome to "spiders and flies."

How it happened that the court jester who has sent forth such volumes of mirth could have kept for years hammering at a dull and dense poem, is a literary problem which perhaps admits of a solution. We may ascribe this aberration of genius to the author's position in society. Heywood was a Romanist from principle; that he was no bigot, his free satires on vulgar superst.i.tions attest. But the jester at times was a thoughtful philosopher. One of his interludes is _The Play of the Weather_, where the ways of Providence are vindicated in the distribution of the seasons. But "mad, merry Heywood" was the companion of many friends--Papists and Protestants--at court and in all the world over.

His creed was almost whole in broken times, perhaps agreeing a little with the Protestant, and then reverting to the Romanist. In this unbalanced condition, mingling the burlesque with the solemn, unwilling to excommunicate his friend the Protestant "spider," and intent to vindicate the Romanist "fly;" often he laid aside, and often resumed, his confused emotions. It might require dates to settle the precise allusions; what he wrote under Henry and Edward would be of another colour than under the Marian rule. His gaiety and his gravity offuscate one another; and the readers of his longsome fiction, or his dark parallel, were puzzled, even among his contemporaries, to know in what sense to receive them. Sympathising with "the fly," and not uncourteous to "the spider," our author has shown the danger of combining the burlesque with the serious; and thus it happened that the most facetious genius could occupy twenty years in compounding, by fits and starts, a dull poem which neither party pretended rightly to understand.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One of these interludes has been recently published by the Camden Society, under the skilful editorship of Mr. Collier, from a ma.n.u.script corrected by Bale himself in the Devonshire collection--it is ent.i.tled "Kynge Johan," [and founded on events in his reign, made subservient to the ultra-protestantism of Bale.] Others have been printed in the "Harleian Collection," vol. i.; and in Dodsley's "Old English Drama."

[2] That is, proverbs with humorous answers to them. See the "Bibliographical and Critical Catalogue," by Mr. Payne Collier, of Lord Francis Egerton's "Library of Early English Literature," p. 2.

[3] Dodsley's "Old Plays," vol. i.