66 in English for themselves the miracle plays became unnecessary, and the morality, which could easily be made the means of appealing to the people on the questions of the day, took its place. A morality has been defined as a play enforcing a moral truth or lesson by means of the speech and action of characters which are personified abstractions-figures representing virtues and vices, qualities of the human mind, or abstract conceptions in general". A character called the Vice is a very important personage in the plays. He is there to do the comic business, to relieve the seriousness by his jests and fun, which consist chiefly in tormenting and playing tricks on the devil. This character developed into the clown or fool we are familiar with in Shakespeare's plays. In Twelfth Night (iv. 2) the clown refers to the Vice Who with dagger of lath, In his rage and his wrath, Cries, Ah, ha! to the devil. He wore a visor and carried a wooden dagger. The nearest approach to him in the modern drama is the harlequin of the pantomime with his visor and magic. wand. The oldest of the moralities dates from the reign of Henry VI., and they continued to be written during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "Every As an Man", a example of them we may take Every-Man. morality. Every-Man represents all mankind summoned before the judgment-seat to give an account of his life. He is forsaken by all who have hitherto borne him company, by Fellowship, Jollity, Strength, Pleasure, Beauty, Fine Wits, and Discretion. Good Deeds, and her sister Knowledge, however, remain true to him. He has to do penance at the bidding of Confession, and finally, by the assistance of Good Deeds, his soul is saved. The morality sometimes dealt with the questions of the day. Hick Scorner, a morality printed soon after 1522, is full of allusions to the follies and vices of the time. The characters are Pity, Contemplation, Free-will, Imagination, and Hick Scorner himself. In- Other deed, except for the comic elements, the moralities. whole reminds us more of a sermon than a play. Skelton's Magnificence, written in the reign of Henry VIII., is a very good example of a morality with a purpose, and although it lashes the court for its evil ways, was actually played before the king and court. Lyndsay's Satire of the Three Estates is a morality of equal excellence. Moralities lasted well on to the beginning of the seventeenth century, side by side with the regular drama. The English love for spectacles. By and by people began to grow tired of the stories they knew so well; they found the allegory lifeless, and demanded something that contained more of human interest, more of everyday life. By degrees, then, the authors of dramatic compositions began to take their plots from profane history instead of from Scripture history, and no longer sought their characters from among the vices and virtues, preferring to depict human beings in their habit as they lived. A love of spectacles was native to the English people, and on great occasions, such as the entry of a king into London, or rejoicings after some great victory, there would be pageants and processions of great magnificence in the streets. At court and in the houses of the great nobles entertainments partly dramatic and partly spectacular were greatly favoured. Under Edward IV. the Duke of Gloucester kept in his pay a company of of players players; Henry VII. maintained three companies of actors, known as players of interludes, the prince's players, and the gentlemen of the chapel. The choir-boys of the great cathedrals were trained to act, and were known as the children of Paul's, or the children of Westminster, as the case might be. Many of the great nobles had their own companies, and companies of players were often attached to the towns. Companies formed. Henry VIII. introduced masques, poetical plays accompanied with music and dancing. They were usually composed for and acted on particular occasions, such as a wedding or a birthday. The ladies and gentlemen for whom they were written were generally the Masques. actors, and most elaborate scenery and dresses were required. All through her reign Elizabeth delighted in such entertainments, and as late as 1634 we find Milton writing his masque of Comus. Heywood and the interlude. II. Interludes. Another form of dramatic piece, which belongs neither to the old miracles and moralities nor to the regular drama, is the interlude; it is perhaps a step on the way to comedy evolved from the vice in the morality. It was written in its best form by John Heywood (d. 1565), a favourite of Henry VIII. The interlude is a dramatic piece of secular character, generally comic, intended for performance in the intervals between the courses at state banquets, and generally acted by the retinue of the household. The Four P's. The most famous of Heywood's interludes is that known as the Four P's, acted soon after 1530. The characters are a Palmer1, a Pardoner2, a Poticary (apothecary), and a Pedlar. The Palmer and Pardoner quarrel as to which of them offers the best means The Palmer begins by describing himself: of salvation. I am a Palmer, as you see, Which of my life much part have spent In many a fair and far country: As pilgrims do, of good intent. On which the Pardoner replies that such journeying is useless, for Ye will come home as wise as ye went. The Poticary then appears, and asserts that if they can A palmer was a pilgrim who had visited all the shrines and lived on alms. 2A pardoner was one who sold indulgences from the Pope. Cf. Chaucer's Prologue. teach men how to meet death, he, by his poisons, can cause death. The apothecaries were forbidden by law to sell poisonous drugs, but they would often evade it. Shakespeare has drawn in Romeo and Juliet (v. 1), a famous picture of the needy apothecary of Elizabethan days. The dispute continues, and when the Pedlar enters, after displaying the wares in his pack and finding no purchasers, he is asked to decide the quarrel. He declares that having no knowledge, he is not fit to judge of such high matters, but seeing that they all possess one quality that of lying-he is quite able to judge which is the greatest liar of the three. Whereupon the Palmer and Pardoner and Poticary each tell incredible tales, but no one can beat the Palmer's statement that he had seen many a mile, And many a good woman in the while. I never saw nor knew in my conscience, Thus the Palmer comes off victorious. Songs and rude jesting are freely interspersed, and the whole offers an excellent example of the sort of mirthful interlude that was so popular at the time. It in no way resembles a regular play, but its effect on the regular drama was not the less important. Its popularity shows that a taste for dramatic representations was growing up among all sorts and conditions of the people, and that companies of regular actors would easily find opportunities for the frequent practice of their art. Before passing on to the first comedies and tragedies of our drama, it will be well to describe the conditions (M 205) M the building of regular under which they were performed. At first there were no theatres. Plays represented before the court and the Plays as per- nobles would be performed at the king's formed before palace, in the house of some great noble, or in the hall of one of the inns of court; theatres. plays intended to be witnessed by the public were generally performed in the courtyards of inns. A platform erected at the end opposite the arched entrance of the courtyard did duty for the stage. There was a gallery running round the first floor of the inn, and the portion of that taken in by the stage served to represent any place raised above, or separated from the scene of action, such as a balcony, a hill, an upper room, the battlements of a castle. Beyond this there was no attempt at scenery. The audience stood on the ground in the inn yard (the original of the pit of the modern theatres), while the more distinguished spectators paid for one of the rooms (the original private box) opening on to the inn gallery, whence they witnessed the perform ance. The first The first playhouse built in London was known as The Theatre. It was erected before the summer of 1577 in Shoreditch by James Burbage, the father of the celebrated actor, Richard Burbage, who theatres. performed the chief parts in many of Shakespeare's plays. In that year, and in the same neighbourhood, was built also the Curtain1 Theatre. By the end of Elizabeth's reign there were at least eleven theatres in London. The most famous was the Globe, built by Richard Burbage in December, 1598, or the following month, on Bankside, Southwark, a theatre of which later on Shakespeare became part proprietor. Built of wood, as indeed were all the theatres of the time, it was hexagonshaped outside and round within. Except for a roof that covered the stage it was open to the air; sometimes, however, the rooms or boxes round the theatre were roofed in. The general audience stood in the central part of the building. The best seats were three 1 The name is from Low Lat. curtina, a little court. |