John Lyly Part 5

[94] Bond, I. p. 161.

It is however in Lyly's treatment of the subject of love that the change is most conspicuous. The subtleties of pa.s.sion are now realised for the first time. We are shown the private emotions, the secret alternations of hope and despair which agitate the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of man and maid, and, more important still, we find these emotions at work under the restraint of social conditions; the violent torrent of pa.s.sion checked and confined by the demands of etiquette and the conventions of aristocratic life. The relation between these unwritten laws of our social const.i.tution and the impetuous ardour of the lover, has formed the main theme of our modern love stories in the novel and on the stage. In the days of chivalry, when love ran wild in the woods, woman was the pa.s.sive object either of hunt or of rescue; but the scene of battle being shifted to the boudoir she can demand her own conditions with the result that the game becomes infinitely more refined and intricate. Persons of both s.e.xes, outwardly at peace but inwardly armed to the teeth, meet together in some lady's house to discuss the subject so dangerous to both, and conversation conditioned by this fact inevitably becomes subtle, allusive, intense; for it derives its light and shade from the flicker of that fire which the company finds such a perilous fascination in playing with. Lyly's work does not exhibit quite such modernity as this, but we may truthfully say that his _Euphues and his England_ is the psychological novel in germ.

Its latent possibilities were however not perceived by the writers of the 16th century. The style which had in part won popularity for it so speedily was the cause also of its equally speedy decline. Like a fossil in the stratum of euphuism it was soon covered up by the artificial layer of arcadianism. The novel of Sidney, though its loose and meandering style marked a reaction against euphuism, carried on the Lylian tradition in its appeal to ladies. The _Arcadia_, in no way so modern as the _Euphues_, lies for that very reason more directly in the line of development[95]; for, while the former is linked by the heroical romance of the seventeenth century to the romance of this day, the latter's influence is not visible until the eighteenth century, if we except its immediate Elizabethan imitators. And yet, as we remarked of Lyly's prose, a book which received so many editions cannot have been entirely without effect upon the minds of its readers and upon the literature of the age. This influence, however, could have been little more than suggestive and indirect, and it is quite impossible to determine its value. Its importance for us lies in the fact that we can realise how it antic.i.p.ated the novel of the 18th and 19th centuries. Not until the days of Richardson is it possible to detect a Lylian flavour in English fiction; and even here it would be risky to insist too pointedly on any inference that might be drawn from the coincidence of an abridged form of _Euphues_ being republished (after almost a century's oblivion) twenty years before the appearance of _Pamela_. A direct literary connexion between Lyly and Richardson seems out of the question: and the utmost we can say with certainty is that the novel of the latter, in providing moral food for its own generation, relieved the 18th century reader of the necessity of going back to the Elizabethan writer for the entertainment he desired. As a novelist, therefore, Lyly was only of secondary dynamical importance, by which I mean that, although we can rest a.s.sured that he exercised a considerable influence upon later writers, we cannot actually trace this influence at work; we cannot in fact point to Lyly as the first of a _definite_ series. The novel like its style coloured, but did not deflect, the stream of English literature. And indeed we may say this not only of _Euphues_ but of Elizabethan fiction as a whole. The public to which a 16th century novel would appeal was a small one. Few people in those days could read, and of these the majority preferred to read poetry; and though, as we have seen, _Euphues_ pa.s.sed through, for the age, a considerable number of editions, the circle of those who appreciated Lyly, Sidney, and Nash must have been for the most part confined to the Court. And this accounts for the brevity of their popularity and for its intensity while it lasted; a phenomenon which is not seen in the drama, and which is due to the susceptibility of Court life to sudden changes of fashion. Drama was the natural form of literature in an age when most people were illiterate and yet when all were eager for literary entertainment. Drama was therefore the main current of artistic production, the prose novel being quite a minor, almost an insignificant, tributary. Realising then the inevitable limitations which surrounded our English fiction at its birth we can understand its infantile imperfections and the subsequent arrest of its development.

[95] It was Sidney and Nash who set the fashion for the 17th century.

"The novel held in Elizabeth's time very much the same place as was held by the drama at the Restoration; it was an essentially aristocratic entertainment, and the same pitfall waylaid both, the pitfall of artificiality. Dryden's audiences and the readers of _Euphues_ both sought for better bread than is made of wheat; both were supplied with what satisfied them in an elaborate confection of husks[96]."

[96] Raleigh, p. 57. He writes _Arcadia_ for _Euphues_ but the subst.i.tution is legitimate.

CHAPTER III.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST.

So far we have been dealing with those of Lyly's writings, which, though they are his most famous, form quite a small section of his work, and exerted an influence upon later writers which may have been considerable but was certainly indirect. His plays on the other hand, in the production of which he spent the better part of his life, greatly outweigh his novel both in aesthetic and historical importance. To attempt to estimate Lyly's position as a novelist and as a prose writer is to chase the will-o'-the-wisp of theory over the mora.s.s of uncertainty; the task of investigating his comedies is altogether simpler and more straightforward. After groping our way through the undergrowth of minor literature, we come out upon the great highway of Elizabethan art--the drama. Let us first see how Lyly himself came to tread this same pathway.

There is a difference of opinion between Mr Bond and Mr Baker, our chief authorities, as to the order in which Lyly wrote his plays[97]. But though Mr Baker claims priority for _Endymion_, and Mr Bond for _Campaspe_, both are convinced that our author was already in 1580 beginning to look to the stage as a larger arena for his artistic genius than the novel. And from what I have said of his life at Oxford and his connexion with de Vere, we need not be surprised that this was so. It would be well however at this juncture to recapitulate, and in part to expand those remarks, in order to show more clearly how Lyly's dramatic bent was formed. Seats of learning, as we shall see presently, had long before the days of Lyly favoured the comic muse, and Oxford was no exception to this rule. Anthony a Wood tells us how Richard Edwardes in 1566 produced at that University his play _Palamon and Arcite_, and how her Majesty "laughed heartily thereat and gave the author great thanks for his pains"; a scene which would still be fresh in men's minds five years after, when Lyly entered Magdalen College. But it is scarcely necessary to stretch a point here since we know from the _Anatomy of Wit_ that Lyly was a student of Edwardes' comedies[98]. Again, William Gager, Pettie's "dear friend" and Lyly's fellow-student, was a dramatist, while Gosson himself tells us of comedies which he had written before 1577.

[97] Baker, p. lx.x.xviii, places _Endymion_ as early as Sept. 1579.

Bond, vol. III. p. 10, attempts to disprove Baker's contention, and in vol. II. p. 309, he maintains chiefly on grounds of style that _Campaspe_ was the earliest of Lyly's plays, being produced at the Christmas of 1580.

[98] Bond, II. p. 238.

Probably however it was not until he had left Oxford for London that Lyly conceived the idea of writing comedy, for we must attribute its original suggestion to his friend and employer the Earl of Oxford.

Edward de Vere, Burleigh's son-in-law, had visited Italy, and affected the vices and artificialities of that country, returning home, we are told, laden with silks and oriental stuffs for the adornment of his chamber and his person. He was frequently in debt and still more frequently in disgrace with the Queen and with his father-in-law.

Dilettante, aesthete, and euphuist, he would naturally attract the Oxford fop, and that Lyly attached himself to his clique disposes, in my mind at least, of all theories of his puritanical tendencies. Certainly a Nonconformist conscience could not have flourished in de Vere's household. One bond between the Earl and his secretary was their love of music--an art which played an important part in the beginning of our comedy.

In relieving the action of his plays by those songs of woodland beauty unmatched in literature Shakespeare was only following a custom set by his predecessors, Udall, Edwardes, and Lyly, who being schoolmasters (and the two latter being musicians and holding positions in choir schools), embroidered their comedies with lyrics to be sung by the fresh young voices of their pupils. De Vere, though unconnected with a school, probably followed the same tradition. For the interesting thing about him is that he also wrote comedy. Like many members of the n.o.bility in those days he maintained his own company of players; and we find them in 1581 giving performances at Cambridge and Ipswich. His comedies, moreover, though now lost were placed in the same rank as those of Edwardes by the Elizabethan critic Puttenham[99]. Now as secretary of such a man, and therefore in close intimacy with him, it would be the most natural thing in the world for Lyly to try his hand at play-writing, and, if his patron approved of his efforts, an introduction to Court could be procured, since Oxford was Lord High Chamberlain, and the play would be acted. It was to Oxford's patronage, therefore, and not to his subsequent connexion with the "children of Powles," that Lyly owed his first dramatic impulse, and probably also his first dramatic success, for _Campaspe_ and _Sapho_ were produced at Court in 1582[100]. His appointment at the choir school of course confirmed his resolutions and thus he became the first great Elizabethan dramatist.

[99] _Dict. Of Nat. Biog._, Edward de Vere.

[100] Bond, II. p. 230 (chronological table).

But a purely circ.u.mstantial explanation of an important departure in a man's life will only appear satisfactory to fatalists who worship the blind G.o.d Environment. And without indulging in any abstruse psychological discussion, but rather looking at the question from a general point of view, we can understand how an intellect of Lyly's type, as revealed by the _Euphues_, found its ultimate expression in comedy. Comedy, as Meredith tells us, is only possible in a civilized society, "where ideas are current and the perceptions quick." We have already touched upon this point and later we must return to it again; but for the moment let us notice that this idea of comedy, though he would have been quite unable to formulate it in words, was in reality at the back of Lyly's mind, or rather we should perhaps say that he quite unconsciously embodied it. He was _par excellence_ the product of a "social" atmosphere; he moved more freely within the Court than without; his whole mind was absorbed by the subtleties of language; a brilliant conversation, an apt repartee, a well-turned phrase were the very breath of his nostrils; his ideal was the intellectual beau. Add to this compound the ingredient of literary ambition and the result is a comic dramatist. Lyly, Congreve, Sheridan, were all men of fashion first and writers of comedy after. In the author of _Lady Windermere's Fan_ we have lately seen another example--the example of one whose ambition was to be "the first well-dressed philosopher in the history of thought."

Poems, novels, fairy stories, he gave us, but it was on the stage of comedy that he eventually found his true _metier_. "With _Euphues_,"

writes Mr Bond, "we enter the path which leads to the Restoration dramatists ... and in Lucilla and Camilla we are prescient of Millamant and Belinda[101]." This is very true, but the statement has a nearer application which Mr Bond misses. Camilla is the lady who moves under varied names through all Lyly's plays. The second part of _Euphues_ and the first of Lyly's comedies are as closely connected psychologically and aesthetically, as they were in point of time.

[101] Bond, I. p. 161.

SECTION I. _English Comedy before 1580._

But when Lyly's creations began to walk the boards, the English stage was already some centuries old and therefore, in order to appreciate our author's position, a few words are necessary upon the development of our drama and especially of comedy previous to his time.

Though the _miracle_ play of our forefathers frequently contained a species of coa.r.s.e humour usually put into the mouth of the Devil, who appears to have been for the middle ages very much what the "comic muse"

is for us moderns, it is to the _morality_ not to the _miracle_ that one should look for the real beginnings of comedy as distinct from mere buffoonery.

The _morality_ was not so much an offshoot as a complement of the _miracle_. They stood to each other, as sermon does to service. To say therefore that the _morality_ secularized the drama is to go too far; as well might we say that Luther secularized Christianity. What it did, however, was important enough; it severed the connexion between drama and ritual. The _miracle_, treating of the history of mankind from the Creation to the days of Christ, unfolded before the eyes of its audience the grand scheme of human salvation; the _morality_ on the other hand was not concerned with historical so much as practical Christianity. Its object was to point a moral: and it did this in two ways; either as an affirmative, constructive inculcator of what life should be,--as the portrayer of the ideal; or as a negative, critical describer of the types of life actually existing,--as the portrayer of the real. It approached more nearly to comedy in its latter function, but in both aspects it really prepared the way for the comic muse. The natural prey of comedy, as our greatest comic writer has taught us, is folly, "known to it in all her transformations, in every disguise; and it is with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox, that it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having her, allowing her no rest." Thus it is that characters in comedy, symbolizing as they often do some social folly, tend to be rather types than personalities. The _morality_, therefore, in subst.i.tuting typical figures, however crude, for the mechanical religious characters of the _miracle_, makes an immense advance towards comedy. Moreover, the very selection of types requires an appreciation, if not an a.n.a.lysis, of the differences of human character, an appreciation for which there was no need in the _miracle_. In the _morality_ again the action is no longer determined by tradition, and it becomes inc.u.mbent on the playwright to provide motives for the movements of his puppets. It follows naturally from this that situations must be devised to show up the particular quality which each type symbolizes. We need not enter the vexed question of the origin of plot construction; but we may notice in this connexion that the _morality_ certainly gave us that peculiar form of plot-movement which is most suitable to comedy. To quote Mr Gayley's words: "In tragedy, the movement must be economic of its ups and downs; once headed downwards it must plunge, with but one or two vain recovers, to the abyss. In comedy, on the other hand, though the movement is ultimately upward, the crises are more numerous; the oftener the individual stumbles without breaking his neck, and the more varied his discomfitures, so long as they are temporary, the better does he enjoy his ease in the cool of the day.... Now the novelty of the plot in the _moral_ play, lay in the fact that the movement was of this oscillating, upward kind--a kind unknown as a rule to the _miracle_, whose conditions were less fluid, and to the farce, which was too shallow and superficial[102]."

[102] Gayley, p. lxiv.

If all these claims be justifiable there can be no doubt that the _morality_ was of the utmost importance in the history not only of comedy but of English drama as a whole. Though it was the cousin, not the child of the _miracle_, though it cannot be said to have secularized our drama, it is the link between the ritual play and the play of pure amus.e.m.e.nt; it connects the rood gallery with the London theatre. When Symonds writes that the _morality_ "can hardly be said to lie in the direct line of evolution between the _miracle_ and the legitimate drama"

we may in part agree with him; but he is quite wrong when he goes on to describe it as "an abortive side-effect, which was destined to bear barren fruit[103]."

[103] Symonds, p. 199.

The real secularization of the drama was in the first place probably due to cla.s.sical influences--or, to be more precise, I should perhaps say, scholastic influences--and it is not until the 16th century that these influences become prominent. I say "become prominent," because Terence and Plautus were known from the earliest times, and Dr Ward is inclined to think that Latin comedy affected the earlier drama of England to a considerable extent[104], although good examples of Terentian comedy are not found until the 16th century. Humanism again comes forward as an important literary formative element. The part which the student cla.s.s took in the development of European drama as a whole has as yet scarcely been appreciated. It is to scholars that the birth of the secular Drama must be attributed. Lyly, as we said, made use of his mastership for the production of his plays, but Lyly was by no means the first schoolmaster-dramatist. Schools and universities had long before his day been productive of drama; our very earliest existing saints' play or _marvel_ was produced by a certain Geoffrey at Dunstable, "de consuetudine magistrorum et scholarum[105]." And this was only natural, seeing that at such places any number of actors is available and all are supposed to be interested in literature. It is a remarkable fact, however, and ill.u.s.trative of the connexion between comedy and music, that of all places of education choir schools seem to have usurped the lion's share of drama. John Heywood, the first to break away from the tradition of the _morality_, was a choir boy of the Chapel Royal, and afterwards in all probability held a post there as master[106].

Heywood's brilliant, but farcical interludes are too slight to merit the t.i.tle of comedy, yet he is of great importance because of his rejection of allegories and of his use of "personal types" instead of "personified abstractions[107]." It was not until 1540, a few years after Heywood's interlude _The Play of the Wether_, that pure English comedy appears, and we must turn to Eton to discover its cradle, for Nicholas Udall's _Roister Doister_ has every claim to rank as the first completely constructed comedy in our language--the first comedy of flesh and blood. Roister smacks of the "miles gloriosus"; Merygreeke combines the vice with the Terentian rogue; and yet, when all is said, Udall's play remains a remarkably original production, realistic and English.

[104] Ward, I. p. 7.

[105] Gayley, p. xiv.

[106] I put this interpretation upon the account of Heywood's receiving 40 shillings from Queen Mary "for pleying an interlude with his children."

[107] Ward, _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, Heywood.

Next, in point of time and importance, comes Stevenson's _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, still more thoroughly English than the last, though quite inferior as a comedy, and indeed scarcely rising above the level of farce. Inasmuch, however, as it is a drama of English rustic life, it is directly antecedent to _Mother Bombie_, and perhaps also to the picaresque novel. Secular dramas now began to multiply apace. But keeping our eye upon comedy, and upon Lyly in particular as we near the date of his advent, it will be sufficient I think to mention two more names to complete the chain of development. From Cambridge, the nurse of Stevenson, we must now turn to Oxford; and, as we do so, we seem to be drawing very close to the end of our journey. Thus far we have had nothing like the romantic comedy--the comedy of sentiment, of love, the comedy which is at once serious and witty, and which contains the elements of tragedy. This appears, or is at least foreshadowed for the first time, about four years after Stevenson's "first-rate screaming farce," as Symonds has dubbed it, in the _Damon and Pithias_ of Richard Edwardes, a writer with whom, as we have seen, Lyly was thoroughly familiar. Indeed, the play in question antic.i.p.ates our author in many ways, for example in the introduction of pages, in the use of English proverbs and Latin quotations, and in the insertion of songs[108]. With reference to the last point, we may remark that Edwardes like Lyly was interested in music, and like him also held a post in a choir school, being one of the "gentlemen of the Chapel Royal." In the _Damon and Pithias_ the old _morality_ is once and for all discarded. The play is entirely free from all allegorical elements, and is only faintly tinged with didacticism. But we cannot express the aim of Edwardes better than in his own words:

"In comedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch All thynges to the quick; and eke to frame each person so That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know."

To touch lightly and yet with penetration, to reveal character by dialogue, this is indeed to write modern drama, modern comedy.

[108] Bond, II. p. 238.

It would seem that between Edwardes and Lyly there was no room for another link, so closely does the one follow the other; and yet one more play must be mentioned to complete the series. This time we are no longer brought into touch with the cla.s.sics or with the scholastic influences, for the play in question is a translation from the Italian, being in fact Ariosto's _Suppositi_, englished by George Gascoigne[109].

Though a translation it was more than a transcript; it was englished in the true sense of that word, in sentiment as well as in phrase. Its chief importance lies in the fact that it is written in prose, and is therefore the first prose comedy in our language. But Mr Gayley would go further than this, for he describes it as "the first English comedy in every way worthy of the name." It was written entirely for amus.e.m.e.nt, and for the amus.e.m.e.nt of adults, not of children; and if it were the only product of Gascoigne's pen it would justify the remark of an early 17th century critic, who says of this writer that he "brake the ice for our quainter poets who now write, that they may more safely swim through the main ocean of sweet poesy"; for, to quote a modern writer, "with the blood of the New comedy, the Latin comedy, the Renaissance in its veins, it is far ahead of its English contemporaries, if not of its time[110]."

The play was well known and popular among the Elizabethans, being revived at Oxford in 1582[111]. Shakespeare used it for the construction of his _Taming of the Shrew_: and altogether it is difficult to say how much Elizabethan drama probably owed to this one comedy, which though Italian in origin was carefully adapted to English taste by its translator. There can be no doubt that Lyly studied this among other of Gascoigne's works, and that he must have learnt many lessons from it, though the fact does not appear to have been sufficiently appreciated by Lylian students; for even Mr Bond fails, I think, to realise its importance.

[109] 1566.

[110] Gayley, p. lx.x.xv.

[111] _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, Gascoigne, George.

This, in brief outline, is the history of our comedy down to the time when Lyly took it in hand; or should we not rather say "an introduction to the history of our comedy"? For true English comedy is not to be found in any of the plays we have mentioned. Heywood, Udall, Stevenson, Edwardes, are the names that convey "broken lights" of comedy, hints of the dawn, nothing more; and Gascoigne was a translator. The supreme importance of a writer, who at this juncture produced eight comedies of sustained merit, and of varying types, is something which is quite beyond computation. But if we are to attempt to realise the greatness of our debt to Lyly, let us estimate exactly how much these previous efforts had done in the way of pioneer work, and how far also they fell short of comedy in the strict sense of that word.

The fifty years which lie between Heywood and Lyly saw considerable progress, but progress of a negative rather than a constructive nature, and moreover progress which came in fits and starts, and not continuously. It was in fact a period of transition and of individual and disconnected experiments. Each of the writers above mentioned contributed something towards the common development, but not one of them, except Ariosto's translator, gave us comedy which may be considered complete in every way. They all display a very elementary knowledge of plot construction. Udall is perhaps the most successful in this respect; his plot is trivial but, well versed as he is in Terence, he manages to give it an ordered and natural development. But the other pre-Lylian dramatists quite failed to realise the vital importance of plot, which is indeed the very essence of comedy; and, in expending energies upon the development of an argument, as in _Jacke Jugeler_, which was a parody of transubstantiation, or upon the construction of disconnected humorous situations, as in _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, they missed the whole point of comedy. Again, though there is a clear idea of distinction and interplay of characters, there is little perception of the necessity of developing character as the plot moves forward.

Merygreeke, it may be objected, is an example of such development, but the alteration in Merygreeke's nature is due to inconsistency, not to evolution. Moreover, stage conventions had not yet become a matter of fixed tradition. "We have a perpetual conflict between what spectators actually see and what they are supposed to see, between the time actually pa.s.sed and that supposed to have elapsed; an outrageous demand on the imagination in one place, a refusal to exercise or allow us to exercise it in another[112]." Further, English comedy before 1580 was marked, on the one hand, by its poetic literary form and, on the other, by its almost complete absence of poetic ideas. Lyly, with the instinct of a born conversationalist, realised that prose was the only possible dress for comedy that should seek to represent contemporary life. But even in their use of verse his predecessors were unsuccessful. Udall seemed to have thought that his unequal dogtail lines would wag if he struck a rhyme at the end, and even Edwardes was little better. The use of blank verse had yet to be discovered, and Lyly was to have a hand in this matter also[113]. As for poetical treatment of comedy, Edwardes is the only one who even approaches it. He does so, because he sees that the comic muse only ceases to be a mask when sentiment is allowed to play over her features. And even he only half perceives it; for the sentiment of friendship is not strong enough for complete animation, the muse's eyes may twinkle, but pa.s.sion alone will give them depth and let the soul shine through. But, in order that pa.s.sion should fill comedy with the breath of life, it was necessary that both s.e.xes should walk the stage on an equal footing. That which comedy before 1580 lacked, that which alone could round it off into a poetic whole, was the female element. "Comedy," writes George Meredith, "lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it." But the dramatist cannot lift them far; the civilized plane must lie only just beneath the comic plane; the stage cannot be lighted by woman's wit if the audience have not yet realised that brain forms a part of the feminine organism. In the days of Elizabeth this realisation began to dawn in men's minds; but it was Lyly who first expressed it in literature, in his novel and then in his dramas. Those who preceded him were only dimly conscious of it, and therefore they failed to seize upon it as material for art. It was at Court, the Court of a great virgin Queen, that the equality of social privileges for women was first established; it was a courtier who introduced heroines into our drama.

[112] Bond, II. p. 237.

[113] George Gascoigne, whose importance does not seem to have been realised by Elizabethan students, also produced a drama in blank verse.