The Century of Columbus Part 35

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CHAPTER V

ENGLISH LITERATURE

The English literature of Columbus' Century obtained some of its triumphs very early in the period in a literary department, that of dramatics, in which other nations achieved little success. England in the latter part of the fifteenth century produced a series of plays whose high place in literature was only recognized properly during the past two or three generations. Ordinarily it is a.s.sumed that dramatic literature of serious significance did not develop in any modern language until much later than this time. Indeed, as a rule, the English drama of Shakespeare's time is supposed to be the first development of any importance in this department. The Spanish drama developed almost immediately after our Shakespearean period, the French came half a century later, and curiously enough Italy and Germany did not develop a national drama until the nineteenth century.

The mystery and morality plays of the latter half of the fifteenth century in England have been revived in recent years and have ill.u.s.trated beyond all doubt the genius of their authors and the fine evolution of drama at this time. Specimens that have been played in many places, in public performances, have proved to possess a gripping power over audiences, surpa.s.sing the dramatic literature of our own time, and the dramatic ability and genius of the men who wrote them has now come to be generally recognized.

"Everyman," for instance, has been played to crowded houses in many of the large cities of the country, audiences listening intently for the two hours without an intermission and then paying the highest possible tribute by going out always in silence. The story is only a dramatic rendition of the place in life of the "four last things to be remembered"--death, judgment, heaven and h.e.l.l--of interest to every man. Such a subject would seem to be quite out of harmony {486} with the temper of our time and above all with the mood in which our people attend the theatre. The man who wrote it and was able to give it such enduring interest was a dramatic genius of the first order, for he was able to take the familiar things of life, even those to which men are not p.r.o.ne to give much attention, and make them compelling.

Mystery plays have come to have much more significance for us since the wide popularity of the Pa.s.sion Play at Oberammergau. Thousands of people go up to the little village of scarcely more than a thousand inhabitants every ten years to see and hear the simple villagers tell the old, old story of the Pa.s.sion and Death of Him that died on the Cross for us. Some, perhaps, of the attendance is due to the fact that it has become a fad to go, yet most of it is a real act of devotion, but to a shrine that is literary and truly dramatic as well as religious. From all over the world people have flocked to it and have confessed the dramatic force of the story in its simple setting in such a way as to make us realize what a powerful appeal the old mystery plays must have had for the people of the later Middle Ages when they came to their perfection of presentation. The appeal that the Pa.s.sion Play had to the older folk, the Nativity Plays had for the children, though also for their elders and especially the women.

It is exactly during Columbus' Century that these mystery and morality plays reached their highest development and greatest perfection of expression and presentation. In England this development proved to be the fertile field out of which sprang the great Elizabethan dramatic literature. There are all the elements of a great dramatic literature in them. There is simplicity and directness with the presentation of subjects that have the highest appeal and yet very humanly done, so that wit, and above all, humor, has its role, and the problems concerned are those which interest all mankind. So little is known about this phase of dramatic literature, though it represents such a charmingly simple expression of dramatic poetry, containing a lesson of sincerity, naturalness and occupation with the higher things, which our generation needs above all in order to be lifted out of the rut of over-attention to problem plays, that some review of it seems necessary not {487} only for a complete picture of the literature of Columbus' time, but also for the sake of the enduring social significance of this early dramatic literature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Page from early popular printed religious book (woodcut)]

While we have greater examples of this mode of literature from England, in nearly every country in Europe the Pa.s.sion Plays had a wonderful development toward the end of the fifteenth century. They were particularly striking, both in their literary value and their presentation in the Teutonic {488} countries and in England. There was a whole series of plays in England, many of which have come down to us. There is question whether "Everyman" was originally of Dutch or of English origin. The first production of it was as a translation of the Dutch _"Elkerlijk."_ In Germany, the period in which the Pa.s.sion Play reached its highest development was from about 1450 to 1550. The great Frankfurt Pa.s.sion Play, the Alsfelder and the Friedburger plays came at this time. Many other towns, however, had their special Pa.s.sion Plays written for them and presented in their own way. There was the Vienna Pa.s.sion, the St. Gall Pa.s.sion and the Maestricht Pa.s.sion. But there were Pa.s.sion Plays also at Eger, at Augsburg, Freising and Lucerne. From very early times Pa.s.sion Plays were given in various parts of the Tyrol, always attracting the deep attention of the people, and it is here that the single example which has survived still serves to show us how genuinely dramatic and how powerful in their appeal were these plays. [Footnote 46]

[Footnote 46: It is almost amusing to be told that knowledge of the Scriptures was kept from the people at this time, before the Reformation, when these popular plays to which all the countryside flocked, and in which so many took part, were making them thoroughly familiar with all the details of Christ's life. There was much more than this, however, for connected with many of the Pa.s.sion Plays were cycles of tableaux or presentations of special scenes in which, beginning with the Creation, the whole story of the Bible, and particularly those portions which are related to the coming of Christ, were set clearly before them. No better way of impressing upon the people the great truths of Christianity or the life of Christ as the central fact of the world's history could possibly have been imagined. The people were not encouraged to read difficult pa.s.sages, which even the profoundest theologians find it hard to understand, to take their own meaning out of them and to argue about them, convicting everyone of heresy who did not agree with their interpretations of them, but they were taught the deep moral and religious significance of all the Old and New Testament. They learned the value of the Scriptures as literature as well as their quality as the underlying doc.u.ment of religion, but above all they were taught their relation to life. All this was so put before them that it came as an amus.e.m.e.nt and not a task, and from their earliest years they became familiar with the great thoughts underlying religion so as to secure its influence over them.]

Dodsley's collection of Old English Plays, which, in its {489} fourth edition as edited by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1874), contains a number of old plays little known, is particularly rich in material from this century of Columbus. The series of morality plays, "The Interlude of the Four Elements," "Everyman," "The Pardoner and the Friar," "The World and the Child," "Hick's Corner," "G.o.d's Promises,"

and the "Four P's," are typical examples. They all show the true dramatic spirit, and while lacking the theatrical technique of modern plays, are almost infinitely superior in their expression of the realities of human interest and their revelation of the depths of human sympathy to the presentation of superficialities which now pa.s.s for drama.

It was towards the end of Columbus' Century that the "Marriage of Witte and Science," which was not published until 1570, was written.

This was marked off into five acts and the scenes designated, being the first play in which such an arrangement had been made. The modern dramatic mould was thus created. It is easy to understand that on the deep foundations, literary and technical, thus laid in the century before 1550, the great structure of the Elizabethan drama could be built up.

How much the appreciation for the morality plays has risen may be judged very well from some recent expressions with regard to them by students of the drama. Everyone is particularly loud in praise of "Everyman." In the introduction to "Everyman with other Interludes" in the Everyman series, the writer says that "to turn from Bayle's play (one of the later moralities, 'G.o.d's Promises') to the heart-breaking realities of 'Everyman' is like turning from a volume of law to the edifying sermons of one of the gospels." He adds:

"It was written, no doubt, like most of the plays in this volume, by a churchman; and he must have been a man of profound imagination and of the tenderest human soul conceivable. His ecclesiastical habit becomes clear enough before the end of the play, where he bids every man go and confess his sins. Like many of the more poignant scenes and pa.s.sages in the miracle plays that follow it, this morality too leaves one exclaiming on how good a thing was the plain English of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

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It would be a mistake to think that only the serious side of life was portrayed in these old dramas. Quite the contrary, they were full of humor, and the writer of the Introduction to Everyman, already quoted, says in this regard: "In these religious and moral interludes, the dramatic colouring, however crude, is real and sincere. The humours of a broad folk-comedy break through the Scriptural web continually in the guild plays like those in which Noah the ship-builder, or the proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling wife in the 'Chester Deluge,' and Mak's canny wife in the Wakefield's shepherd's play, where the sheep-stealing scenes reveal a born Yorkshire humorist, offer a pair of gossips not easy to match for rude comedy. Mak's wife, like the shepherd's in the same pastoral, utters proverbs with every other breath: 'A woman's avyse helpys at the last!' 'So long goys the pott to the water, at last comys it home broken!'

"'Now in hot, now in cold, Full woeful is the household That wants a woman!'

And her play upon the old north-country a.s.severation, 'I'll eat my bairn,'

"'If ever I you beguiled, That I eat this child That lies in this cradle,'

(the child being the stolen sheep), must have caused townsfolk and countryfolk outrageous laughter. Mak's wife is indeed as memorable in her way as the Wife of Bath, Dame Quickly, or Mrs. Gamp."

Some idea of the extent to which the men of this time went in attempting spectacles on a large scale may be appreciated from "Mary Magdalen," which combines elements of all the various kinds of religious plays of the time. It was a miracle play because it treats of the life and death of St. Mary Magdalen. It is a mystery play inasmuch as it introduces scenes from the Life of Christ.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: PICTURE OF THEATRE ON t.i.tLE PAGE OF COMEDIES OF TERENCE, STRASBURG (1490)]

{492} It is a morality play because abstract personages are introduced upon the stage in the presentation of the struggle between good and evil in human life. Dr. Furnivall has divided the play into two parts, with fifty-one scenes altogether, twenty in the first and thirty-one in the second part. There is some evidence that some of the scenes were inserted only to give time for a shift of scenes. Probably they had two pageants or movable trucks which would remind one somewhat of the movable stage that was attempted in the last generation. The burning of the temple and some of the incidents of the wanderings at sea may very well have provided opportunity for spectacular effects of ambitious character. We have no record of how far they went in this regard, though some hints of attempts in the direction of surprising scenic introductions are to be found in contemporary doc.u.ments, and we know that in Italy they staged an earthquake very effectively.

The play of "The Four Elements" was written just at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The date of its writing is designated by one of the speeches of Experience in this play, who says:

"Till now, within this twenty years.

Westward be found new lands, That we never heard tell of before this By writing nor other means."

The pa.s.sage ill.u.s.trates the tendency to make these plays instructive as well as entertaining, and many similar pa.s.sages might be quoted to show that a definite effort was made to convey information by means of them, though, as a rule, this had much more reference to religion and to social life than to things more distant from every-day living.

One of the important dramatic writers of the first half of our Columbus' Century was John Skelton, born about 1460, and who was one of the most prominent of literary men of England of his time. He had a series of literary quarrels with many of the prominent writers, Alexander Barclay and William Lily, the grammarian, among others, and for a time he {493} enjoyed the patronage of Wolsey, but apparently could not restrain his tendency to satire and so fell into the Cardinal's bad graces. Alexander Dyce edited his works in two volumes in 1843 and called particular attention to the genuine worth of his four dramatic compositions, the "Interlude of Virtue," the comedy called "Achidemoios," the "Nigramansir" (necromancer) and "Magnyfycence." Only one of these, the last, now remains, though there are traditions with regard to the others, and the single one left shows what precious material was lost.

An even more important contributor to this mode of dramatic literature and very significant predecessor of Shakespeare was John Heywood, a friend and neighbor of Sir Thomas More in Hertfordshire, who wrote a series of dramatic works, consisting of five interludes. Of these the "Four P's" is the best known and is the typical example of this form of dramatic literature. Its full t.i.tle is "A Very Mery Enterlude of A Palmer, A Pardoner, A Pothecary and A Pedlar," and the story turns on the contest arranged between them, and especially the first three, as to which could tell the greatest lie. Palmers were real or supposed returned pilgrims from the Holy Land, bearing palms as a symbol of their pilgrimage, and were noted as a rule for their ability to tell strong stories. Pardoners were wandering merchants who sold printed prayers and various objects of devotion to which indulgences, pardons, in the language of the day were attached. They too were noted for drawing the long bow. The Pothecary and the Pedlar, because of their familiar gossip with the people, knew all the news of the neighborhood in which they lived, and had the reputation of being able to add to the vividness and sensational qualities of stories so that the Four P's might very well be expected to give some fine ill.u.s.trations of the ability to lie.

The Palmer takes the prize in the contest with the very first story.

All are agreed at once that no one can even hope to surpa.s.s it. The pa.s.sage in which he does so is worth while quoting because it gives an ill.u.s.tration at once of the language and style as well as of the kind of humor to be found in Heywood's interludes:

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"And this I would ye should understand, I have seen women five hundred thousand; And oft with them have long time tarried.

Yet in all places where I have been, Of all the women that I have seen, I never saw or knew in my conscience Any one woman out of patience."

Thus, quietly, and with this force of earnest a.s.severation, does the largest and most palpable lie leap out of the Palmer's lips. The contestants themselves are at once unanimous in their decision.

Pothecary: "By the ma.s.s, there is a great lie!"

Pardoner: "I never heard a greater, by our Lady!"

Pedlar: "A greater! Nay, know ye any so great?"

In his account of the Pardoner, Heywood does not hesitate to satirize many of the pretensions of this cla.s.s and especially their catering to the superst.i.tion of the ignorant by the sale of impossible relics of all kinds. Catholics realize very well that such frauds are practised at all times. Even in our day men go around selling prayers, the recital of which is supposed to give thousands of years of indulgence and other like absurdities. Besides, the trade in manufactured relics is well known, and the ecclesiastical authorities have tried to regulate it at all times. Heywood has his Pardoner offer for sale such relics as a bit of the thumb nail of the Holy Trinity and a feather from the wing of the Holy Ghost and like impossible absurdities.

Impositions in the name of religion are still with us. It is interesting to know that before the religious revolution they were fought with that best of weapons, satire.

Before the end of Columbus' Century the first English comedy in the modern sense had been written. It was by Nicholas Udall and was called, from its hero, "Ralph Royster Doyster." He was a swaggering simpleton, a conceited fop of the time who is played upon by one Matthew Merrygreek, a needy humorist who represents the parasite of the old Latin drama under the influence of which this first English comedy was written. For Nicholas Udall was the Headmaster of Eton School, and the play in lively rhyming couplets, {495} interspersed with merry songs, was written to be played by the Eton boys according to their custom of having several plays each year. The play partakes somewhat of the nature of farce and contains a number of situations of the kind that have always drawn a laugh and will doubtless always continue to do so. In one of the scenes in the play, Ralph and his man are beaten in a brisk battle by the women of the play armed with broomsticks. A lesson in the need for punctuation is introduced, showing how completely the sense of writing can be reversed by putting the stops in the wrong places. Udall wrote some other plays, notably one called "Ezekias," used for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Cambridge.

The other form of literature besides the drama which came to ripe fruition at this time in England is also of a popular character. It consists of the stirring English ballads which were gathered into a volume by Bishop Percy in his "Reliques" at the end of the eighteenth century. There probably has never been more stirring martial singing than is to be found in the "Ancient Ballad of Chevy Chase" or "Adam Bell" or "Clym of the Clough." It has been well said that "in graphic terseness, in poetic simplicity, in fiery fervor, in tenderness of pathos, our modern poetry does not approach these old ballads." Sir Philip Sidney said of "Chevy Chase," "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet." While the language is simple, the verse rude, the thoughts rugged and the story over-full of sympathy for the outlaw, at all times, even the most refined, these ballads have stirred English hearts. The writers of them are unknown, but they had the genius of true poets, the power of vision and striking ability of expression.

The ballads will live as long as our English tongue and will continue to be read even by the cultured, distant in every way from the rudeness of the time in which and the men for whom these ballads were written.

After the Ballad Poetry of this period came quite naturally Sir Thomas Malory's _"Morte d'Arthur."_ There have been many and varying expressions of opinion with regard to the merit of this work, and it is at best a medley from many {496} sources. What Mr. Andrew Lang has called its "splendid patchwork" is harmonized and solemnized by the dignified conclusion "in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow." In spite of its many sources there is a unity of spirit and feeling, and Malory was an admirable narrator. Malory's vitality is attested by edition after edition in the nineteenth century. The book has an appeal to human nature that is eternal and that will always give it a distinguished place among the books of the educated at least. Of style in the literary sense of that term there is very little, and Malory's anomalous constructions have always puzzled grammarians, but as Garnett says in his English Literature, [Footnote 47] "These do not render him obscure for the readers of any period." Caxton laid English literature under an immense obligation by insuring the preservation of the work, through his selection of it to be one of his early-printed books. It has done credit to his taste in popular literature ever since.

[Footnote 47: "English Literature: an Ill.u.s.trated Record in Four Vols." Garnett and Gosse: New York, 1903.]

In the latter part of the fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth century a wonderful development of English poetry took place in Scotland. Just before Columbus' Century opened, James First of Scotland, who had been detained in an English prison for nineteen years, began the literature of Scotland in glorious fashion. The loneliness of these years prompted him to seek and gain that literary culture which has made his name famous in the world of letters. It is possible that the "King's Quair" (a quire or book), which is a poetical record of his sight of Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, from his prison window, and his winning her as his queen, may not be from his hand. There is no doubt at all, however, of his taste in literature, his patronage of it and of his establishment of the tradition which has made the English literature of Scotland so important during most of the centuries since. Four poets of the middle of Columbus' Century in Scotland deserve to be named, Blind Harry, Robert Henryson, Gawin Douglas and William Dunbar. All of them are still read affectionately by Scotchmen, but there are very few among the educated people of the English-speaking countries who would {497} care to confess ignorance of them, and to many they are favorite poets. Dunbar is the greatest of poets in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare, and Scottish critics at least have been loud in its praise. Mr. Craik says:

"This admirable master, alike of serious and of comic song, may justly be styled the Chaucer of Scotland, whether we look to the wide range of his genius, or to his eminence in every style over all the poets of his country who preceded and all who for ages came after him. Burns is certainly the only name among the Scottish poets that can yet be placed on the same line with that of Dunbar; and even the inspired ploughman, though the equal of Dunbar in comic power and his superior in depth of pa.s.sion, is not to be compared with the older poet either in strength or in general fertility of imagination."

The two English poets of our period are Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who, in spite of inequality in merit, possess so much in common that their names are closely a.s.sociated. How well they were appreciated in Elizabeth's time and how much their influence meant for Shakespeare's contemporaries may be judged from Puttenham's expression, who said in 1589: