that it is composed in the spirit not so much of a historical poet as of a religious partisan. For every real personage in the play there are two abstractions, with whom the human characters discourse without any sense of strangeness. There is a Vice, Sedition, but he is not a jester indeed the whole tone of the Interlude is so serious and didactic that we may reasonably conjecture, with Collier, that it was intended to gratify the ultra-Protestant taste of the Corporation of Ipswich, in whose archives the MS. was long preserved.1 King Johan furnishes an early example of the little importance attached by the English dramatist to mere external unity or probability in comparison with the unity of moral idea. Between the issue of the Interdict in the first act and its removal in the second seven years have elapsed; but there is nothing in the machinery of the action to explain this, and it is only signified to the audience by a casual observation of the Pope. One of the dramatis persone is Dissimulation, who conspires with Sedition to poison the king, and the resolute fanaticism of whose character is represented with considerable dramatic force. Suddenly, and without the slightest sense of impropriety, this abstraction changes into the historic person of Simon of Swinsett, who brings the king the poisoned cup : Symon of Swynsett my very name is per de; I am taken of men for monastycall Devocyon; And here have I brought you a marvellouse good pocyon, After King John's death the author still feels it necessary to continue the action, in order that the audience may be under no misapprehension as to the monarch's real character. Verity enters and, apostrophising the spirit of Leland, enters into a controversy with Clergy and Nobility, who are inclined to defame John's memory. His efforts are supported by Imperial Majesty, who expresses equal loathing for Papists and Anabaptists, and reads all the other personages a lecture on the duties of govern P. 6. 1 Collier's Introduction to Kynge Johan (Camden Society's Publications), 3 Ibid. p. 81. 2 Kynge Johan, pp. 42, 43. ment. It is noticeable that the ideal which Bale presents is still the old feudal theory of the orders, nearly two centuries before commended by Langland, but that the figure of the Ploughman is now omitted. The administracyon of a prince's governaunce In peace of the Lorde and in hys godly fredome, 1 Kynge Johan, p. 101. CHAPTER XII THE INFANCY OF THE ROMANTIC DRAMA: GREENE, PEELE, MARLOWE, KYD HITHERTO the art of the dramatist had found expression in forms consecrated by long popular usage or by scholastic tradition, but modified by the inward and spiritual changes which were gradually transforming the life of the English people. Influences alike of the Renaissance and the Reformation had altered without revolutionising these venerable precedents. The Morality, offspring of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, had been converted into an instrument for propagating the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. It had allied itself, without any sense of incongruity, with the forms of Latin comedy employed by Plautus and Terence. Tragedy had sought to unite the practice of Seneca, sanctioned by the approval of the mediaval schools, with the allegorical pageants, beloved by the people, in the representation of subjects chosen from the legendary periods of English history. There was so far no antagonism in the national mind between the idea of the drama and the idea of morals and religion. But the time had now come when these great forces in the life of the country were to be torn harshly asunder; when the movement of the Renaissance was to be opposed to that of the Reformation; when the stage, once regarded as a seminary of religious education, second only to the pulpit, was to be attacked by the bitterness of sectarian hatred as one of the principal schools of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. The beginning of the aggression undoubtedly came from the Puritans. As the rupture with the Papacy had been the result of political rather than of religious causes, the transfer to the Sovereign of the Headship of the National Church had been effected, even in spite of the spoliation of the monasteries, without any immediate convulsion in the religious framework of society. But we see, alike from the sermons of Wycliffe and the poems of Langland, that a very large part of the people of England, as was the case with all the Teutonic races, had for generations been strongly inclined to the Reformation on its spiritual side, and when the persecution arose under Mary, with all its attendant evils of forfeiture, banishment, and death, the suppressed antagonism to authority in Church and State broke into a flame. Many of the Protestant exiles took refuge, and some even received ordination after the Presbyterian fashion, in Geneva, the centre of all that was most extreme in the Reforming movement. Returning to England on the accession of Elizabeth, these men were often instituted in livings by patrons who sympathised with their opinions. They obtained lucrative posts in the Universities, and were even promoted to Bishoprics. Calvinism for the first half of Elizabeth's reign became the strongest organised intellectual force in the country, and as its advocates maintained not only Calvin's theoretical dogmas, but (in many cases) his theories of church government and his system of moral discipline, they naturally came into collision with every kind of established custom and institution, and more particularly with the stage. The Puritans objected to the stage much on the same ground as Tertullian had objected to the study of Greek and Latin literature. They held it to be popish and pagan in its origin; they pointed, with some reason, to the irreverence with which sacred things were exhibited on it for the amusement of the vulgar: but beyond this they were offended at it as a worldly mode of entertainment opposed to the "godly discipline." Political prejudice inflamed their feelings against it still further. The return of the Genevan exiles had spread a leaven of democratic feeling through the middle classes; and when the players, who were the licensed servants of the nobility, claimed their privileges of acting in the towns, they were opposed by the authorities, professedly on account of the injury they did to the public morals, but quite as often in reality because they were the representatives of some worldlyminded Jeroboam, who was infringing the rights of the godly citizens of Worcester or Norwich. Between 1570 and 1587 at least six violent attacks were made on the stage in the form of pamphlets. The first of which there is a record was John Northbrooke's Treatise wherein Dicing, Dancing, Vain Plays or Interludes are reproved, published in 1577. Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, appeared in 1579; and in 1583 the famous puritan, Philip Stubbes, wrote his Anatomy of Abuses, one division of which was devoted to Stage Plays and Interludes with their wickedness. This was followed in 1586 by Whetstone's Touchstone for the Time, but as that writer had himself published a play, Promos and Cassandra, he confined himself to protesting against the exhibition of plays on Sunday. In 1586 appeared an anonymous but very violent tract, A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres, while William Rankin's Mirror of Monsters, published in 1587, is full of abuse of plays and players. The Martin Mar-Prelate controversy, which began in 1587, and embroiled all estates in the country, drew into the melée the pens of Lyly and Nash, who fought on the side opposed to the Puritans. Bitter and illiberal as was the spirit in which these attacks were made they were not without justification. The Renaissance in England had begun to part company with the Reformation. As the standard of chivalrous manners decayed, a considerable portion of the higher classes in England strove to imitate the utterly corrupt morals of Italy. Among them were travelled sons of the nobility, scholars of the University, and the gentlemen of the Inns of Court. The object of their admiration was |