Page images
PDF
EPUB

A snowy feather spangled white he bears;
To siguify the mildness of his mind,
That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood:
But when Aurora mounts the second time,

As red as scarlet is his furniture;

Then must his kindled wrath be quenched with blood,
Not sparing any that can manage arms:

But if these threats move not submission,

Black are his colours, black pavilion,

His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes,
And jetty feathers, menace death and hell;

Without respect of sex, degree or age,

He razeth all his foes with fire and sword.

Detached lines and passages in 'Edward II.' possess much poetical beauty. Thus, in answer to Leicester, the king says:

Leicester, if gentle words might comfort me,
Thy speeches long ago had eased my sorrows;
For kind and loving hast thou always been.
The griefs of private men are soon allayed,
But not of kings. The forest deer being struck,
Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;
But when the imperial lion's flesh is gored,
He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw,
And highly scorning that the lowly earth
Should drink his blood, mounts up to the air.

Or Mortimer's device for the royal pageant:
A lofty cedar tree fair flourishing,

On whose top branches kingly eagles perch,
And by the bark a canker creeps me up,
And gets unto the highest bough of all.

The following is exactly like a scene from Shakspeare:
The Nobles Remonstrate with Edward II.
EDWARD.-KENT.-YOUNG MORTIMER.-LANCASTER.

YOUNG MORTIMER. Nay, stay my lord': I come to bring you news
Mine uncle 's taken prisoner by the Scots.

EDWARD. Then ransom him.

LANCASTER. 'Twas in your wars; you should ransom him.

Y. MOR. And you shall ransom him, or else

KENT. What! Mortimer, you will not threaten him?

EDW. Quiet yourself; you shall have the broad seal

To gather for him through the realm.

LANC. Your minion, Gaveston, hath taught you this.

Y. MORT. My lord, the family of the Mortimers

Are not so poor, but would they sell their land,

Could levy inen enough to anger you.

We never beg, but use such prayers as these.
EDW. Shall I still be taunted thus?

Y. MOR. Nay, now you 're here alone, I'll speak my mind.
LANC. And so will I, and then, my lord, farewell.

Y. MOR. The idle triumphs, masques, lascivious shows,

And prodigal gifts bestowed on Gaveston,

Have drawn thy treasury dry, and made thee weak:
The murmuring commons, overstretched, break.

LANC. Look for rebellion, look to be deposed:

Thy garrisons are beaten out of France,

And, lame and poor, lie groaning at the gates.
The wild O'Neil, with swarms of Irish kernes,
Lives uncontrolled within the English pale.
Unto the walls of York the Scots make road,
And unresisted draw away rich spoils.

Y. MOR. The haughty Dane commands the narrow seas,
While in the harbour ride thy ships unrigged.

LANC. What foreign prince sends thee ambassadors ?
Y. MOR. Who loves thee but a sort of flatterers?
LANC. Thy gentle queen, sole sister to Valois,
Complains that thou hast left her all forlorn.

Y. MOR. Thy court is naked, being bereft of those
That make a king seem glorious to the world;

I mean the Peers, whom thou shouldst dearly love:
Libels are cast against thee in the street-

Ballads and rhymes made of thy overthrow.

LANC. The northern borderers secing their houses burned,
Their wives and children slain, run up and down,

Cursing the name of thee and Gaveston.

Y. MOR. When wert thou in the field with banners spread?
But once; and then thy soldiers marched like players
With garish robes, not armour and thyself
Bedaub d with gold, rode laughing at the rest,
Nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest,
Where women's favours hung like labels down.

LANC. And therefore came it that the fleering Scots
To England's high disgrace have made this jig:
Maids of England, sore may you mourn

For your lemans you have lost at Bannocksbourn,
With a heave and a ho.

What weened the king of England

So soon to have won Scotland

With a rombelow?'

Y. MOR. Wigmore shall fly to set my uncle free.

LANC. And when 'tis gone, our swords shall purchase more.
If ye be moved, revenge it if you can;
Look next to see us with our ensigns spread.

[Exeunt nobles.

The works of Marlowe have been edited by the Rev. Alex. Dyce (1859), and by Lieutenant-colonel Francis Cunningham (1869). The latter has added some excellent illustrative and explanatory notes.

The taste of the public for the romantic drama, in preference to the classical, seems now to have been confirmed. An attempt was made, towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, to revive the forms of the classic stage, by DANIEL, who wrote two plays, ' Cleopatra and Philotas,' which are smoothly versified, but undramatic in their character. LADY PEMBROKE CO operated in a tragedy called 'Antony,' written in 1590; and SAMUEL BRANDON produced, in 1598, a tame and feeble Roman play, ' Virtuous Octavia.'

ANTHONY MUNDAY-HENRY CHETTLE.

In the throng of dramatic authors, the names of ANTHONY MUNDAY (1554-1633) and HENRY CHETTLE (known as author between 1592 and 1602) frequently occur. Munday was an author as early as 1579, and he was concerned in fourteen plays. Francis Meres, in 1598,

calls him the best plotter' among the writers for the stage. One of his dramas, ‘Sir John Oldcastle,' was written in conjunction with Michael Drayton and others, and was printed in 1600, with the name of Shakspeare on the title-page. 'The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington,' printed in 1601, was a popular play by Munday, assisted by Chettle, though sometimes ascribed to Thomas Heywood. The pranks of Robin Hood and Maid Marian in merry Sherwood are thus gaily set forth:

Sport in Sherwood.

Wind once more, jolly huntsmen, all your horns,
Whose shrill sound, with the echoing woods' assist,
Shall ring a sad knell for the fearful deer,

Before our feathered shafts, death's winged darts,
Bring sudden summous for their fatal ends.

Give me thy hand; now God's curse on me light,
If I forsake not grief in grief's despite.

...

Now make a cry, and yoemen, stand ye round:
I charge ye, never more let woful sound
Be heard among ye; but whatever fall,
Laugh grief to scorn, and so make sorrow small.
Marian, thou seest, though courtly pleasures want,
Yet country sport in Sherwood is not scant.
For the soul-ravishing delicious sound
Of instrumental music, we have found
The winged quiristers, with divers notes,

Sent from their quaint recording pretty throats,
On every branch that compasseth our bower,
Without command contenting us each hour.
For arras hangings and rich tapestry,
We have sweet nature's best embroidery.

For thy steel glass, wherein thou wont'st to look,
Thy crystal eyes gaze in a crystal brook.

At court, a flower or two did deck thy head,

Now, with whole garlands it is circled;

For what in wealth we want, we have in flowers,
And what we lose in halls, we find in bowers.

Chettle was engaged in no less than thirty-eight plays between the years 1597 and 1603, four of which have been printed. Mr. Collier thinks he had written for the stage before 1592, when he published Greene's posthumous work, A Groat's Worth of Wit.' Among his plays the names of which have descended to us, is one on the subject of Cardinal Wolsey, which probably was the original of Shakspeare's 'Henry VIII.' The best drama of this prolific author which we now possess is a comedy called 'Patient Grissell,' taken from Boccaccio. The humble charms of the heroine are thus finely described:

See where my Grissell and her father is

Methinks her beauty, shining through those weeds,
Seems like a bright star in the sullen night.

How lovely poverty dwells on her back!

Did but the proud world note her as I do,

She would cast off rich robes, forswear rich state,

To clothe her in such poor habiliments.

1

The names of Haughton, Antony Brewer, Porter, Smith, Hathaway-probably some relation of Shakspeare's wife-Wilson, &c. also occur as dramatic writers. From the diary of Henslowe, it appears that, between 1591 and 1597, upwards of a hundred different plays were performed by four of the ten or eleven theatrical companies which then existed. Henslowe was originally a pawnbroker, who advanced money and dresses to the players, and he ultimately possessed a large share of the wardrobe and properties of the playhouses with which he was concerned. The name of Shakspeare does not once occur in his diary.

Several good dramas of this golden age have descended to us, the authors of which are unknown. A few of these possess merit enough to have been considered first sketches of Shakspeare, but this opinion has been gradually abandoned by all but one or two German critics. Most of them have been published in Dodsley's 'Collection_of Old Plays. The best are the Merry Devil of Edmonton,' the London Prodigal,' the Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cromwell, the Birth of Merlin,' the Collier of Croydon,' Mucedorus,' 'Locrine,' 'Arden of Feversham.' the Misfortunes of Arthur,' 'Edward III.,' &c. The most correct and regular of these anonymous dramas is "Arden of Feversham,' a domestic tragedy, founded on a murder which took place in 1551. Alice, the wife of Arden, proves unfaithful, and joins with her paramour Mosbie, and some assassins, in murdering her husband. Tieck has translated this play into German, as a genuine production of Shakspeare, but the style is different. In the earliest acknowledged works of the Warwickshire bard, there is a play of wit, and of what Hallam calls analogical imagery,' which is not seen in 'Arden of Feversham,' though it exhibits a strong picture of the pas sions, and indicates freedom of versification and dramatic art. We subjoin one touching scene between Alice and her paramour—a scene of mutual recrimination, guilt and tenderness:

Scene from Arden of Feversham.

ALICE ARDEN.-MOSBIE.

MOSBIE. How now, Alice! What! sad and passionate?
Make me partaker of thy pensiveness;

Fire divided burns with lesser force,

ALICE. But I will dam that fire in my breast,

Till by the force thereof my part consume.

Ah, Mosbie!

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

AL. And then-conceal the rest, for 'tis too bad,
Lest that my words be carried to the wind,
And published in the world to both our shames.
I pray thee, Mosbie, let our spring-time wither;
Our harvest else will yield but loathsome weeds.
Forget, I pray thee, what has passed betwixt us:
For now I blush and tremble at the thoughts.
Mos. What are you changed?

AL. Ay, to my former happy life again;
From title of an odious strumpet's name
To honest Arden's wife, not Arden's honest wife
Ha, Mosbie! 'tis thou hast rifled me of that,
And made me slanderous to all my kin.
Even in my forehead is thy name engraven.
A mean artificer, that low-born name!

I was bewitched; woe-worth the hapless hour

And all the causes that enchanted me.

Mos. Nay, if thou ban, let me breathe curses forth; And if you stand so nicely at your fame,

Let me repent the credit I have lost.

I have neglected matters of import,

That would have 'stated me above thy state;

For-slowed advantages, and spurned-at time;

Ay, fortune's right hand Mosbie hath forsook,

To take a wanton giglot by the left.

I left the marriage of an honest maid,

Whose dowry would have weighed down all thy wealth; Whose beauty and demeanor far exceeded thee.

This certain good I lost for changing bad,

And wrapt my credit in thy company.

I was bewitched; that is no theme of thine;
And thou unhallowed hast enchanted me.
But I will break thy spells and exorcisms,
And put another sight upon those eyes,
That shewed my heart a raven for a dove.
Thou art not fair; I viewed thee not till now:
Thou art not kind; till now I know thee not:
And now the rain hath beaten off thy gilt,
Thy worthless copper shews the counterfeit.
It grieves me not to see how foul thou art,
But mads me that ever I thought thee fair.
Go, get thee gone, a copesmate for thy hinds;
I am too good to be thy favourite.

AL. Ay, now I see, and too soon find it true,'
Which often hath been told me by my friends,
That Mosbie loves me not but for my wealth;
Which too incredulous I ne'er believed,
Nay, hear me speak, Mosbie, a word or two:
I'll bite my tongue if I speak bitterly.
Look on me, Mosbie, or clse I'll kill myself.
Nothing shall hide me from thy stormy look;
If thou cry war, there is no peace for me.

I will do penance for offending thee;
And burn this prayer-book, which I here use,
The holy word that has converted me.
See, Mosbic, I will tear away the leaves,
And all the leaves; and in this golden cover
Shall thy sweet phrases and thy letters dwell,

« PreviousContinue »