Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

at length begins. Darius tells his attendants that the three men who kept his chamber while he slept woke him by their disputing and murmuring,—

"Every man to say a weightier matter than the other."

The subject of their dispute was, what is the strongest thing; and their answers, as we are informed by the King's attendants, had been reduced to writing:

"The sentence of the first man is this,

Wine a very strong thing is;

The second also I will declare to you,

That the king is stronger than any other thing verily ;

The third also I will declare

Women, saith he, is the strongest of all,

Though by women we had a fall."

Of their respective texts the three young men are then called in to make exposition; and certainly, whatever defects of manners were exhibited by the audiences of that day, they must have possessed the virtue of patience in a remarkable degree to have enabled them to sit out these most prolix harangues. But they have an end; and the King declares Zorobabel to be deserving of signal honours, in his demonstration that, of all things, woman is the strongest. A metrical prayer for Queen Elizabeth, uttered by Constancy, dismisses the audience to their homes in such a loyal temper as befits the Corporation of Stratford and their friends on all public occasions to cherish. We doubt if William Shakspere considers "the pretty new interlude both pithy and pleasant of the story of King Darius" to be the perfect model of a popular drama.*

The sojourn of my Lord Strange's men at Stratford has been short; but now the Countess of Essex's players have arrived. We have seen that in previous years the players of Lord Warwick, of Lord Leicester, of Lord Worcester, have been at Stratford, and on each occasion they have been patronised by the Corporation. In a later period of the stage, when the actors chiefly depended upon the large support of the public, instead of receiving the wages of noblemen, however wealthy and powerful, the connection of a company of players with the great personage whose "servants" they were called was scarcely more than a licence to act without the interference of the magistrate. But in the period of the stage which we are now describing, it would appear that the players were literally the retainers of powerful lords, who employed them for their own recreation, and allowed them to derive a profit from occasional public exhibitions. In The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres' we have the following passage, which appears decisive upon this point:"What credit can return to the nobleman to countenance his men to exercise that quality which is not sufferable in any commonweal? Whereas, it was an ancient custom that no man of honour should retain any man but such as was as excellent in some one

*There is a copy of this very curious production in the Garrick Collection of Plays in the British Museum; and a transcript of Garrick's copy is in the Bodleian Library. Its date, as before mentioned, is 1565.

good quality or another, whereby, if occasion so served, he might get his own living. Then was every nobleman's house a commonweal in itself. But since the retaining of these caterpillars the credit of noblemen hath decayed, and they are thought to be covetous by permitting their servants, which cannot live by themselves, and whom for nearness they will not maintain, to live on the devotion or alms of other men, passing from country to country, from one gentleman's house to another, offering their service, which is a kind of beggary. Who, indeed, to speak more truly, are become beggars for their servants. For commonly the good will men bear to their lords makes them draw the strings of their purses to extend their liberality to them, where otherwise they would not." Speaking of the writers of plays, the same author adds,-" But some perhaps will say the nobleman delighteth in such things, whose humours must be contented, partly for fear and partly for commodity; and if they write matters pleasant they are best preferred in Court among the cunning heads.”—(Page 108.) In the old play of The Taming of a Shrew' the players in the Induction' are presented to us in very homely guise. The messenger tells the

lord

"Your players be come,

And do attend your honour's pleasure here."

The stage-direction then says, "Enter two of the players with packs at their backs, and a boy." To the question of the lord,—

"Now, sirs, what store of plays have you?"

the Clown answers, "Marry, my lord, you may have a tragical or a commodity, or what you will;" for which ignorance the other player rebukes the Clown, saying, "A comedy, thou shouldst say: zounds! thou 'lt shame us all." Whether this picture belongs to an earlier period of the stage than the similar scene in Shakspere's Induction,' or whether Shakspere was familiar with a better order of players, it is clear that in his scene the players appear as persons of somewhat more importance, and are treated with more respect :

"Lord. Sirrah, go see what trumpet 't is that sounds:

Belike, some noble gentleman, that means,

Travelling some journey, to repose him here.

[blocks in formation]

The lord, however, even in this scene, gives his order, "Take them to the buttery," a proof that the itinerant companies were classed little above menials.

[graphic][merged small]

The welcome of a corporate town was perhaps as acceptable to the players of the Countess of Essex as the abundance of the esquire's kitchen; and so the people of Stratford are to be treated with the last novelty.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The play which is now to be performed is something very different from King Darius.' It is A Pleasant Comedie called Common Conditions.' This is neither a Mystery nor a Moral Play. It dispenses with impersonations of Good and Evil; Iniquity holds no controversy with Charity, and the Devil is not brought in to buffet or to be buffeted. The play is written in rhymed verse, and very ambitiously written. The matter is "set out with sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories, hyperboles, amphibologies, similitude." It is a dramatized romance, of which the title expresses that it represents a possible aspect of human life; and the name of the chief character, Common Conditions, from which the play derives its title, would import that he does not belong to the supernatural or allegorical class of personages. The audience of Stratford have anticipated something at which they *Gosson. Plays Confuted,' second action.

[ocr errors]

+ Mr. Collier, in his History of Dramatic Poetry,' expresses an opinion that the character of

are to laugh; and their mirth is much provoked when three tinkers appear upon the stage singing,

[ocr errors]

Hey tisty toisty, tinkers good fellows they be;

In stopping of one hole, they use to make three."

These worthies are called Drift, Unthrift, and Shift; and, trade being bad with them, they agree to better it by a little robbing. Unthrift tells his companions, "But, masters, wot ye what? I have heard news about the court this day,

That there is a gentleman with a lady gone away;

And have with them a little parasite full of money and coin."

These travellers the tinkers agree to rob; and we have here an example of the readiness of the stage to indulge in satire. The purveyors who, a few years later, were denounced in parliament, are, we suppose, here pointed at. Shift says,

"We will take away their purses, and say we do it by commission ;"

to which Drift replies,

"Who made a commissioner of you?

If thou make no better answer at the bar, thou wilt hang, I tell thee true." The gentleman and lady from the court, Sedmond and Clarisia, then come out of the wood, accompanied by their servant, Conditions. It appears that their father has long been absent, and they are travelling to seek him. Clarisia is heavy-hearted; and her brother thus consoles her, after the fashion of " thets, metaphors, and hyperboles :"—

"You see the chirping birds begin you melody to make,

But you, ungrateful unto them, their pleasant voice forsake :
You see the nightingale also, with sweet and pleasant lay,
Sound forth her voice in chirping wise to banish care away.
You see Dame Tellus, she with mantle fresh and green,
For to display everywhere most comely to be seen;
You see Dame Flora, she with flowers fresh and gay,
Both here and there and everywhere, her banners to display."

The lady will have no comfort. his speech, ending—

"epi

She replies to her brother in a long echo to

"And therefore, brother, leave off talk; in vain you seem to prate :
Not all the talk you utter can, my sorrows can abate."

Conditions ungallantly takes part against the lady, by a declamation in dispraise of women; which is happily cut short by the tinkers rushing in. Now indeed we have movement which will stir the audience. The brother escapes; the lady is bound to a tree: Conditions is to be hanged; but his adroitness, which is excessively diverting, altogether reminding one of another little knave, the Flibbertigibbet of Scott, is setting the Stratford audience in a roar. They Common Conditions is the Vice of the performance. It appears to us, on the contrary, that the ordinary craft of a cunning knave—a little, restless, tricky servant-works out all the action, in the same way that the Vice had formerly interfered with it in the moral plays; but that he is essentially and purposely distinguished from the Vice. Mr. Collier also calls this play merely an interlude it appears to us in its outward form to be as much a comedy as the Winter's Tale.

are realizing the description of Gosson,-" In the theatres they generally take up a wonderful laughter, and shout altogether with one voice when they see some notable cozenage practised."* When the tinkers have the noose round the neck of Conditions, he persuades them to let him hang himself, and to help him up in the tree to accomplish his determination. They consent; arguing that if he hangs himself they shall be free from the penalty of hanging him; and so into the tree he goes. Up the branches he runs like a squirrel, halloo ing for help, whilst the heavy tinkers have no chance against his activity and his Sheffield knife. They finally make off; and Conditions releases his mistress. The next scene presents us Sedmond, the brother, alone. He laments the separation from his sister, and the uncertainty which he has of ever finding his father; and he expresses his grief and his determination in lines which seem to have rested upon the ear of one of that Stratford audience :

"But farewell now, my coursers brave, attrapped to the ground;
Farewell, adieu, all pleasures eke, with comely hawk and hound:
Farewell, ye nobles all; farewell each martial knight;
Farewell, ye famous ladies all, in whom I did delight." +

And, continuing his lament, he says,—

"Adieu, my native soil; adieu, Arbaccas king;

Adieu each wight and martial knight; adieu each living thing:
Adieu my woful sire, and sister in like case,

Whom never I shall see again each other to embrace ;

For now I will betake myself a wandering knight to be,

Into some strange and foreign land, their comeliness to see."

When Conditions released the lady we learnt that the scene was Arabia :"And, lady, it is not best for us in Arabia longer to tarry.”

It is to Arabia, his native soil, that Sedmond bids adieu. But the Stratford audience learn by a very simple expedient that a change is to take place: a board is stuck up with the word "Phrygia" upon it, and a new character, Galiarbus, entereth "out of Phrygia." He is the father of the fugitives, who, banished from Arabia, has become rich, and obtained a lordship from the Duke of Phrygia; but he thinks of his children, and bitterly laments that they must never meet. Those children have arrived in Phrygia; for a new character appears, Lamphedon, the son of the Duke, who has fallen violently in love with a *Plays Confuted,' &c.

We have analysed this very curious comedy from the transcript in the Bodleian Library made under the direction of Malone from the only printed copy, and that an imperfect one, which is supposed to exist. In the page which contains the passage now given Malone has inserted the following foot-note, after quoting the celebrated lines in Othello, "Farewell the tranquil mind," &c. "The coincidence is so striking that one is almost tempted to think that Shakspeare had read this wretched piece." It is scarcely necessary for us to point out how constantly the date of a play must be borne in mind to allow us to form any fair opinion of its merits. Malone himself considers that this play was printed about the year 1570, although we believe that this conjecture fixes the date at least ten years too early. It appears to us that it is a remarkable production even for 1580; and if, as a work of art, it be of little worth, it certainly contains the elements of the romantic drama, except the true poetical element, which could only be the result of extraordinary individual genius.

« ElőzőTovább »