would the stormy time that followed be without its nurture for such minds. A boyhood or youth passed in the days of Shakespeare and Bacon, and a manhood in those of the Great Rebellion, was a training which could not fail to rear high powers to their highest capabilities.

us.

SHIRLEY, AND THE END OF THE OLD DRAMA.

The chief glory of our Elizabethan literature, however, belongs almost exclusively to the time we have already gone over. The only other name that remains to be mentioned to complete our sketch of the great age of the Drama, is that of James Shirley, who was born about the year 1594, and whose first play, the comedy of The Wedding, was published in 1629. He is the author of about forty dramatic pieces which have come down to "Shirley," observes Lamb, "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common. A new language and quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest came in with the Restoration."* Of this writer, who survived till 1666, the merits and defects have been well stated, in a few comprehensive words, by Mr. Hallam:-"Shirley has no originality, no force in conceiving or delineating character, little of pathos, and less, perhaps, of wit; his dramas produce no deep impression in reading, and of course can leave none in the memory. But his mind was poetical: his better characters, especially females, express pure thoughts in pure language; he is never tumid or affected, and seldom obscure; the incidents succeed rapidly; the personages are numerous, and there is a general animation in the scenes, which causes us to read him with some pleasure."†

A preface by Shirley is prefixed to the first collection of part of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, which, as already mentioned, appeared in 1647. "Now, reader," he says, "in this tragical age, where the theatre hath been so much outacted, congratulate thy own happiness that, in this silence of the stage, thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays,-to dwell and * Specimens, ii. 119.

Lit. of Eur. iii. 345.

converse in these immortal groves,-which were only showed our fathers in a conjuring-glass, as suddenly removed as represented." At this time all theatrical amusements were prohibited; and the publication of these and of other dramatic productions which were their property, or rather the sale of them to the booksellers, was resorted to by the players as a way of making a little money when thus cut off from the regular gains of their profession; the eagerness of the public to possess the said works in print being of course also sharpened by the same cause. Before the commencement of the civil war there appear to have been no fewer than five different companies of public players in London:-1. That called the King's Company (the same that Shakespeare had belonged to), which acted at the Globe, on the Bankside in Southwark, in the summer, and at the Blackfriars Theatre in winter. 2. The Queen's Players, who occupied the Cockpit (or the Phoenix, as it was also called), in Drury Lane, the origin of the Theatre Royal there. 3. The Prince's Players, who played at the Fortune Theatre, in Golden or Golding Lane, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate. 4. The Salisbury Court Company. 5. The Children of the Revels, who are supposed to have performed at the theatre called the Red Bull, at the upper end of St. John's Street. It had been usual to shut up the theatres when the plague was in London, with the view of preventing such concourses of people as it was thought might help to spread the disease, and on such occasions the players were wont to go down and act in the provinces; but their absence from town when protracted beyond a few weeks was very impatiently borne. In May, 1636, when the plague was raging with great violence, an order was issued by the privy council, forbidding the representation of all "stage-plays, interludes, shows, and spectacles;" and the prohibition was not removed till the end of February in the following year. In the mean time, it appears, the craving of the public for their customary enjoyment, in one shape if not in another, had tempted certain booksellers to print a number of plays, surreptitiously procured, as we learn from an edict of the lord chamberlain, addressed to the Stationers' Company, in June, 1637, in which he states that complaints to that effect had been made to him by the players, the legal proprietors of those "books of comedies, tragedies, interludes, histories, and the like, which they had (for the special service of his majesty and for their own use) bought and provided at very dear

and high rates." The players added, that, by these unfair publications, "not only they themselves had much prejudice, but the books much corruption, to the injury and disgrace of the authors."* At this time the most favourite acting plays were in general carefully withheld from the press by the theatrical companies whose property they were; and the only way in which a perusal of them could be obtained was by paying a considerable sum for a loan of the manuscript or a transcript of it. Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of the collection of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays in 1647, after observing in his prefatory address, that his charges in bringing out the volume had been very great, seeing that the owners of the manuscripts too well knew their value to make a cheap estimate of any of them, adds, "Heretofore, when gentlemen desired but a copy of any of these plays, the meanest piece here (if any may be called mean where every one is best) cost them more than four times the price you pay for the whole volume." The missing comedy of The Wild Goose Chase had been lost, he tells us in another passage, by being borrowed from the actors many years before by a person of quality, and, owing to the neglect of a servant, never returned. Sometimes, too, it appears from another of his remarks, an individual actor would write out his part for a private friend, or probably for any one who would pay him for it.

The permanent suppression of theatrical entertainments was the act of the Long Parliament. An ordinance of the Lords and Commons passed on the 2nd of September, 1642,-after setting forth that "public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation, this being an exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the other being spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious mirth and levity,”-ordained, "that, while these sad causes and set times of humiliation do continue, public stage-plays shall cease and be forborne." It has been plausibly conjectured that this measure originated, "not merely in a spirit of religious dislike to dramatic performances, but in a politic caution, lest playwriters and players should avail themselves of their power over the minds of the people to instil notions and opinions hostile to the authority of a puritanical parliament."† This ordinance cer

* See the edict in Chalmers's Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers, p. 513.

+ Collier, Hist. Dram. Poet. ii. 106.

tainly put an end at once to the regular performance of plays; but it is known to have been occasionally infringed; and there is reason to believe that after a few years it began to be pretty frequently and openly disregarded. This would appear to have been the case from a new ordinance of the Lords and Commons published in October, 1647, entitled, "For the better suppression of stage-plays, interludes, and common players," by which the lord mayor, justices of the peace, and sheriffs of the city of London and Westminster, and of the counties. of Middlesex and Surrey, were authorized and required to enter into all houses and other places within their jurisdiction where stage-plays were acted, and to seize the players and commit them for trial at the next sessions, "there to be punished as rogues, according to law." On the 22nd of January following, however, the House of Commons was informed that many stage-plays were still acted in various places in the city of London and in the county of Middlesex, notwithstanding this ordinance. The subject was then taken up with furious zeal both by Commons and Lords; and, after a great bustle of message-sending, debating, and consulting in committees, an act was agreed upon and published on the 11th of February, 1648, which, after declaring stage-plays, interludes, and common plays to be " condemned by ancient heathens, and much less to be tolerated amongst professors of the Christian religion," and denouncing them as being "the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God's wrath and displeasure, which lies heavy upon this kingdom, and to the disturbance of the peace thereof," proceeded to ordain-first, that all players should be taken to be rogues within the meaning of the statutes of the 39th of Elizabeth and 7th of James; secondly, that the authorities of the city of London and counties of Middlesex and Surrey should " "pull down and demolish, or cause and procure to be pulled down and demolished, all stage-galleries, seats, and boxes, erected or used, or which shall be erected or used, for the acting or playing, or seeing acted or played," any species of theatrical performance within their jurisdictions; thirdly, that convicted players should be punished for the first offence with open and public whipping, and, for the second, should be dealt with according to law as incorrigible rogues; fourthly, that all the money collected from the spectators of any stage-plays should be seized for the use of the poor of the parish; and, lastly, that every person present at any

such performance should forfeit the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor. Even this severe measure was not perfectly effectual; for, in the following September, we find the House of Commons appointing a provost-marshal, with authority, among other things, "to seize upon all ballad-singers and sellers of malignant pamphlets, and to send them to the several militias, and to suppress stage-plays." And, more than a year after this, namely, in December, 1649, it is noted by Whitelock that "some stageplayers in St. John's Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison." It appears, also, that in some of the country parts of the kingdom strolling players continued for some years to set the law at defiance, and to be connived at in their disregard of it. At so late a date as February, 1654, it is recorded that plays were performed by a company of strollers at Witney and other places in Oxfordshire. It is, perhaps, more probable, however, that the statute had only in course of time come to be less rigidly enforced, than that it had been thus violated from the first. We are informed by the historians of the stage, that, though the public exhibition of stage-plays in London was effectually put down by the act of 1648, yet the players "still kept together, and, by connivance of the commanding officer at Whitehall, sometimes represented privately a few plays at a short distance from town." They also, it is added, were permitted to act at the country houses of some of the nobility; and even obtained leave at particular festivals to resume their public performances at the Red Bull. Finally, we are told, “amidst the gloom of fanaticism, and whilst the Royal cause was considered as desperate, Sir William Davenant, without molestation, exhibited entertainments of declamation and music, after the manner of the ancients, at Rutland House. He began in the year 1656, and two years afterwards removed to the Cockpit, Drury Lane, where he performed until the eve of the Restoration."† Rutland House was in Charter House Square; and it is said that Davenant's performances there were countenanced by Whitelock, Sir John Maynard, and other

* See the facts connected with the shutting of the theatres for the first time accurately stated in Mr. Collier's History, ii. 104–119.

View of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage, prefixed to Reed's edition of Baker's Biographia Dramatica, p. xxii. Mr. Collier (ii. 119) says:The performance of Davenant's 'opera,' as he himself calls it, of The Siege of Rhodes, in 1656, is to be looked upon as the first step towards the revival of dramatic performances."