Tayler. Strife. Strife. T. Tyler. Strife. For howsoever it goes, I beare the blowes Though I chide, I strike not, I beshrew his knaves heart, that last stroke me. For I will not away, To make you gree friendly, that now chafe Come on Strife I finde, your churlish kinde. 820 For els it were vaine, to take any paine. Take Tom by the fist, and let me see him kist. I will though Tom beate me, Well wife, I thanke you. Nay whither away prank you? Tom Tayler also, shall you kiss ere you go, I would he had kist both the endes. Nay, there a hoate coale Now see this wilde Foale. 830 Be quiet I pray you, for therefore I stay you. A Song. Patience entreateth good fellows all, Where Folly beateth to break their brawll, Though Strife be sturdy to move debate, If froward Fortune hap so awrie, To make thee marry by Destenie, If fits unkindly do move thy mood, Take all things patiently, both ill and good. Patience perforce if thou endure, It will be better thou mayst be sure, In wealth or wo, howsoever it ends, The end of this Song. 850 Here they all go in, and one cometh out, and singeth this Song following all alone with instruments, and all the rest within sing between every staffe, the first two lines. The concluding Song. When sorrowes be great, and hap awry, A Song. Though pinching be a privie pain, Subdue the worst with patient mind. 860 Who sits so hie, who sits so low? Who feels such joy, that feels no wo? To marrie a sheep, to marrie a shrow, To meet with a friend to meet with a foe, These checks of chance can no man flie, But God himself that rules the skie. Which God preserve our Noble Queen, To serve her Highnesse patiently. God save the Queen. 870 XII. THE EPISODES IN SHAKESPEARE'S I. HENRY VI. The present paper is drawn from a number of notes gradually collected and is intended to be one of a series of studies upon those plays of Shakespeare belonging to his earliest dramatic period. It is a period of vital interest in Shakespeare's work, because artistically it is his formative one and historically it connects our greatest dramatist with his predecessors and with characteristic contemporary fashions and productions. Whatever may be the exact date on which Shakespeare came to town or began his dramatic career, as is well known, there were three sorts of plays current and fashionable at the time. There was the English history or chronicle play; the Senecan tragedy of blood; and the Plautean comedy of dialogue and situation, both of these last formed upon classic models. Shakespeare is at first no innovator, but in his beginning work is connected with all these and other modes. I. Henry VI is an illustration of the history or chronicle play, closely followed by the Second and Third Parts and by Richard III. The example of the tragedy of blood based on Senecan models is Titus Andronicus, which, from certain points of view, is a necessary link in the chain of structural and character development from the crude Senecan imitation, through Marlowe's vehement creations and Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, to the masterful Hamlet and Lear. And thirdly, the Comedy of Errors is an adaptation of the bustle and wit of the Plautean comedy of sparkling dialogue and equivocal situation. But comedy was very close to the native English genius. It had perked itself up long before in the face of the sacred background in the Noah's Wife and the Shepherds of the Miracle Plays; and it could not be expected now that a made-to-order pseudo-classic type should pre scribe a stiff jacket for constant wearing. Love's Labour's Lost may derive ultimately from classic comedy, but is more immediately the product of artificial court-life and manners and speech best associated with the name of John Lyly. Of a phase suggesting the manner of Robert Greene, The Two Gentlemen of Verona adopted the formal and exaggerated love versus friendship romance from some one of its many applications in Southern Europe. Indeed, if anything seems to be true of the beginner Shakespeare, he is very precocious at trying conclusions with competitors of every sort and catching up any contemporary literary fashion that may be in favor. As he became better acquainted with courtiers and court-life, he wrote for the young nobles, and surely ladies, too, of London and Elizabeth's court two love narratives derived from Ovid: Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. And it was probably not far from the same time that the young and now successful poet was led, after well-known imitations of Italian models, to indulge in the first of" his sugred sonnets among his private friends." Such was the spirit of the young Shakespeare in his early work. It is the first natural step in his development into his later individual mastery. The play of I. Henry VI. shows Shakespeare under the influence of one of the earliest of these contemporary literary fashions: he is at work upon the materials for a history drama. A good plea can be made, as it is made by Mr. Halliwell-Phillips and Professor Sarrazin,1 even if the matter cannot be definitely determined, on behalf of I. Henry VI. as the earliest of all the early works ascribed to Shakespeare. Certainly the history play is the form in which Shakespeare's genius first fruited and soonest became exhausted. It cannot have been far from the historic year of the Spanish Armada that Shakespeare began his literary work in London. While 1J. O. Halliwell-Phillips: Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1890, 9th ed., vol. I, p. 97. G. Sarrazin: William Shakespeare's Lehrjahre, 1897. |