Bishop Bale used Scripture-plays seriously for the purpose of disseminating his own views of Biblical truth. It is to his plays that we must go if we wish to keep up the idea that the object and function of mysteries was to diffuse among the people a knowledge of Holy Writ. Moral-plays were also utilised by the champions of the Reformation. In the battle against the old faith, mysteries and moralities may be said to have served two separate functions -mysteries being employed in the constructive work of spreading the light of the Bible, and moralities in the destructive work of ridiculing the priests and tenets of Roman Catholicism. In the moral-play of "Lusty Juventus," written during the reign of Edward VI., the ministers and the ritual of Roman Catholicism are represented as being the offspring of hypocrisy, the daughter of the devil, and he is represented as complaining that the Reformation is taking away his choicest instruments. It was natural that when Mary ascended the throne, her party should employ the same organ to play a very different tune. Under Mary it was the new faith and its professors that had to be discredited and made odious. In the "Interlude of Youth," Youth is seduced by the ordinary means of Riot and Pride, and reclaimed by Charity with sound Catholic doctrine. And in a "merry interlude, entitled Respublica," Reformation figures as an alias of Oppression, with Insolence and Adulation as his comrades; and the three behave so badly, that Nemesis comes down from heaven with her four fair ladies to chastise them, and redress their perversion of "all right and all order of true justice." The three iniquities pay court to Avarice, a touchy old gentleman. Reformation says "And to you have we borne hearty favours alway." To which Avarice replies shortly and sharply "And I warrant you hanged for your labours one day." Whereupon Reformation and Adulation chime in together, but get little encouragement from their irascible patron— R. & A. R. & A. Even as our God we have alway honoured you. This employment of a rude drama for political and religious purposes is heavy reading, now that the freshness of its applications is gone. It has little interest as literature side by side with the poetry of Wyat and Surrey. Occasionally, however, the dreary waste is relieved by a sparkling interval. There are two songs in "Lusty Juventus" which step out of their lifeless sur roundings, and challenge comparison with the new poetry of the period. They appeal to us as things of native growth against the imports of the Italian school. They are genuinely English, and have something of the quality of the snatches of song interspersed through the mature Elizabethan drama. The first of them is the opening of the play, and is sung by Lusty Juventus himself upon his entrance :— "In a herbere green asleep whereas I lay, The birds sang sweet in the midst of the day; I dreamed fast of mirth and play. In youth is pleasure-in youth is pleasure. Methought I walked still to and fro, In youth is pleasure—in youth is pleasure. Therefore my heart is surely pight, Which is my joy and heart's delight. In youth is pleasure-in youth is pleasure." "Why should not youth fulfil his own mind, Do not the flowers spring fresh and gay, Be not the trees in winter bare ? What should youth do with the fruits of age Why should not youth fulfil his own mind, IV. JOHN HEYWOOD: "Merry Interludes"-The Four P'sThersites. The "merry interludes" of John Heywood, an epigrammatist and noted jester or wit, in great favour with Mary, but driven been sent out on a message, and has loitered, as he usually does, playing at bucklers, overturning the fruiterer's wife's basket and stealing her apples, losing his money at dice, and so forth, Jack Juggler puts on a suit of the same livery, takes possession of the house gate, and swears to the delinquent idler, that he is Jenkin Careaway, and boldly calls the real Jenkin a drunken knave for pretending to that name. Juggler beats the puzzled Jenkin till he denies his own identity, and bewilders him by telling him all that he has done that day, till the boy is disposed to think as well as to say that he is not himself. When left alone, he cries— "Good Lord of heaven, where did I myself leave? That I did in no place leave myself behind. If I had my name played away at dice, Or had sold myself to any man at a price, Or had made a fray and had lost it in fighting, Or it had been stolen from me sleeping, It had been a matter and I would have kept patience, But it spiteth my heart to have lost it by such open negligence." In his anxiety about his personality, he forgets all the lies he has invented to excuse his delays to his mistress and his master, and tells them what he has done; so that Juggler has the satisfaction of seeing "the calf" soundly thrashed, Dame Coy shouting to her enraged husband— Lay on and spare not for the love of Christ, Now, for my sake, sweetheart, spare and favour your hand, The interlude concludes with moralisings by Jenkin on the wrongs inflicted on innocent simplicity by strength and subtlety. The well-known play of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' (which is entitled a right pithy, pleasant, and merry comedy, and is divided into Acts and Scenes), is supposed to have been written about 1560, and, before the discovery of 'Roister Doister,' enjoyed the distinction of being considered our first regular comedy. It is said to have been written by "Mr S., Master of Arts"; and its humour, which is certainly more robust than the humour of 'Roister Doister,' may have been considered suitable to the expanded tastes of Eton boys after they became undergraduates. It has, however, less of the character of a comedy than 'Roister Doister;' it is essentially a farce, designed throughout for the free play of lungs and diaphragm, and the broadening and empurpling of long and pale countenances. An irascible old gammer, such as Noah's wife, has always been a favourite character on the farcical stage: we see at the present day in Christmas Pantomimes how much can be got out of such a personage when enacted by a man, and in those days when greater freedom was allowed, we may imagine how laughter was made to hold both his sides. Gammer Gurton's temper is sorely tried. One day when she is mending her husband's breeches, Gib, the cat, seizes the opportunity of indulging herself with a little milk. Gammer starts up and flings the breeches at the thief. On taking them up again, she cannot find the needle, and turns the house topsy-turvy in the search for it, interfering sadly with the comfort of goodman Hodge, who makes desperate suggestions as to possible places of concealment. A mischievous neighbour Diccon is tickled by the loss, and devises sundry practical jokes out of it. He tells the Gammer that Dame Chat has stolen it, and then goes to Dame Chat and tells her that Gammer Gurton accuses her of stealing her cock in consequence of which malicious misinformation the two dames proceed to words, and from words to blows. Again, Diccon informs Dr Rat the curate that, if he goes to Dame Chat's, he will find her sewing with the very needle; and then informs Dame Chat that that evening Hodge intends to make a return visit to her roost: the result of which plot is that the curate's skull is nearly fractured by the enraged dame with a door-bar. Ultimately the needle is discovered by accident embedded in the part of Hodge's apparel on which he usually sits. VI. THOMAS SACKVILLE (1536-7-1608): The In 1559, two years after the publication of Tottel's Miscellany, was published a collection of poems more sombre in their hues than the gay songs and sonnets of Surrey and Wyat. Instead of Love, their burden was the mutability of Fortune as shown in the rise and fall of kings, rebels, and noble ministers of state; and the gloomy record of ambition and disaster was called 'The Mirror for Magistrates'-a glass wherein rulers might see the dangers that wait on greatness. : The work was projected in 1555, about the middle of the reign of Mary and critics have not failed to remark how naturally the time called for such a mirror. It should, however, be borne in mind, that in the same year, 1555, appeared an edition of Chaucer; and that Tottel's Songs and Sonnets first saw the light in print during the same "bloody" reign. I have already (p. 70) made some remarks on the dubiety of the connection between literature and politics. The origin of the 'Mirror for Magistrates' is one of the facts that most strikingly illustrate how quietly literary operations proceed in the midst of political disquietude. In 1554 or 1555, Wayland the printer was producing an edition of Lydgate's translation of Boccaccio's 'Fall of Princes' (in rivalry to an edition by Tottel), and was advised by several of his patrons, “both honourable and worshipful,” “to have the story continued from whereas Bochas left unto this present time, chiefly of such as Fortune had dallied with here in this island, which might be a mirror to all men as well nobles as others." Wayland applied to one William Baldwin—a graduate of Oxford, who in 1549 described himself as 66 'servant with Edward Whitchurch" the printer,1 and who was prepared to write plays and philosophical treatises as well as poems; but Baldwin would not undertake the task without assistance. Accordingly, learned men, to the number of seven, were invited to a consultation, to which Baldwin resorted with Lydgate's translation under his arm; and there and then they agreed to supplement Boccaccio (who had left off with the capture of the King of France at Poictiers) by calling up the shades of unfortunate English kings and ministers, from the time of Richard II., and making them bewail "their grievous chances, heavy destinies, and woful misfortunes." It was agreed that Baldwin should "usurp Bochas' room," the ghostly figures being supposed to address themselves to him, and that each of the company should take upon him some unfortunate's lament. George Ferrers—a lawyer who maintained himself in Court favour under Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, and who was noted as a director of dramatic pageants-undertook the first of the tragic series, the fall of Chief-Justice Tresilian, remarking on the abundant material in our earlier history, but deferring to the printer's wish to have merely a continuation of Boccaccio as an experimental speculation. This was the origin of the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' An enterprising printer was eager for trade, ready to print anything, whether grave or gay, that was ready to sell; and when he had in hand an edition of Lydgate's translation of the Fall of Princes,' one of his customers suggested a continuation of the work to modern times. This is what it comes to when we scrutinise the phantom of a gloomy book rising out of a gloomy reign. It rises side by side with another bookseller's speculation of gayer aspect, both fitted to gratify interests that never die out among the reading portion of any community. The imagination can never live upon comedy alone; some of us are more mirthful than others, and more mirthful at sometimes than at other times, but nearly all of us desire to alternate the gay with the grave. As the Mirror' itself was designed to show, no period in our 1 Printers now began to be, to some extent, the patrons of literary men; who still, however, depended more upon the munificence of noble patrons. |