legged stools on the stage, which was strewn with rushes. There the most fashionable part of the audience would sit, drinking beer and smoking long pipes right through the performance. The prices of admission ranged from twopence to half a crown. It was not considered proper for ladies to visit the theatre, and if they did so, they could only go to the rooms or boxes, and invariably wore masks. The play began at three o'clock in the afternoon, and lasted about two hours. A flourish of trumpets announced that the play was about to begin. Playbills were in use, those for tragedies being always printed in red letters. There was no scenery of any consequence. A bed would signify a bed-chamber, a couple of trees a forest, but more often a placard would be displayed, on which was printed in big letters the name of the place the scene was supposed to represent. Much more was left to the imagination of the audience then than now. Shakespeare in the chorus to Henry V. asked his audience to Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts, Think when we talk of horses, that you see them And eke out our performance with your mind. Sir Philip Sidney, in the Apology for Poetry, writes: Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. While in the meantime two armies fly in represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field. In the The play frequently ended with prayer for the reigning sovereign said by the actors on their knees. epilogue to the Tempest the passage, And my ending is despair Unless I be relieved by prayer, is undoubtedly a reference to the custom. Actresses were not seen upon the stage until the time of the Restoration. Women's parts were played by boys, a fact at times only too apparent. When Hamlet (iii. 2) greets the players, he says: O my old friend, thy face is valanced (i.e. has a beard) since I saw thee last.. Your ladyship is nearer to heaven since I saw you Pray God your voice. . . be last (i.e. has grown taller). . not cracked. Thus it is clear that a very large demand was made on the imagination of the spectators. But the Elizabethan audience seems to have been equal to it. Their attention was entirely concentrated on the actors and the drama, and was not distracted by magnificent upholstery and finely painted scenic backgrounds. The dramatists took for the subjects of their plays the most varied materials. In almost the very words of one of them, the gods were brought down from heaven, the furies conjured up from Hades; history was ransacked; fairies, elves, and nymphs were pressed into the service; and ever careful to keep in touch with the life of the people, the playwright would turn to account a startling murder, or an appalling domestic tragedy of the day. In studying dramatic literature it must always be borne in mind that plays are written to be acted, and that it is from that point of view that they must be judged. Poets sometimes express their emotions in dramatic form, as, for example, Milton did in Samson Agonistes, without intending their compositions for representation on the stage. When this is the case the work should be judged as a poem in dramatic form, but it can never take high rank as a play. It is also quite impossible to form a correct judgment on a play by merely reading it; we must first of all see it on the stage. III. The First Comedies and Tragedies. A comedy has been defined as a play containing laughable characters and humorous incidents with a happy ending. It may have, and indeed often has, a serious interest, but all should end pleasantly. In the English drama comedy preceded tragedy; it was Definition of easier to write and easier to understand. comedy. The first English Doister". The first regular English comedy was Ralph Roister Doister, written by Nicholas Udall, and although not printed until 1566, it was probably acted between 1534 and 1541. Udall was headmaster of Eton, and it was the custom for the boys to act a Latin play on special occasions, a custom which survives in several of our great schools at the present time. Udall thought that it would be a good thing to act an English play, and he set to work to compose one. It is written in rime, and although its form is based on the Roman comedies of Terence and Plautus, it represents English middleclass life. But Cus Ralph Roister Doister, the hero, is a fashionable young man of the period, and is vain, stupid, and boastful. His name is taken from an old word meaning "swaggerer ". He is in love with a widow, Dame Custance, and takes for confidant his friend Matthew Merrygreek, who too easily makes Ralph do anything he wishes. tance has already promised her hand to a merchant, Gavin Goodluck, who is away on a journey. Unable to repulse Ralph and his unwelcome attentions, the widow determines to get as much fun out of the position of things as she can. But one of Goodluck's servants reports to him what is going on, describing Ralph's courtship as serious. Dame Custance is thus in difficulties, but thanks to the good offices of a friend, all is soon set right. The comedy offers a picture of London manners, and the characters, some ridiculous, others serious, are well defined. One of the funniest incidents is the ambiguous punctuation of a love letter sent by Ralph to Dame Custance. She is vastly astonished to read, If ye mind to be my wife, Ye shall be assured for the time of my life I will keep ye right well from good raiment and fare; Ye shall in no wise live at your own liberty. When ye seek your heart's ease, I will be unkind; Shall be done: otherwise, I will not be behind To speak. But with the proper punctuation the meaning is somewhat different If ye will be my wife Ye shall be assured for the time of my life, I will keep ye right well: from good raiment and fare Do and say what ye list; ye shall never please me Whether Udall intended this to show his boys the evils of bad punctuation we cannot say, but such a device for raising a laugh was not disdained by Shakespeare himself in the prologue to the play of the Athenian swains in Midsummer Night's Dream (v. I. 108). 66 Gammer The authorship of another early comedy, or rather farce, acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1566, is attributed to John Still, who in 1592 was Gurton's Bishop of Bath and Wells. His effigy is still Needle.' to be seen at Wells Cathedral. The play is called Gammer1 Gurton's Needle. Gammer Gurton, while 1 The word Gammer is a contraction of the A. S. gemeder, godmother, and means an old wife, just as Gaffer, an old man, is contracted from A. S. gefader, godfather. mending a pair of breeches, loses her needle, and Diccon, the bedlam beggar, accuses another woman of stealing it. A quarrel ensues in which the whole village joins, and presently the needle is found in the very place in the breeches where the Gammer left it. The character of Diccon is possibly evolved from the Vice of the Morality, but such persons were at that time familiar figures all over England. A number of poor and idle people had been accustomed to depend on the charity of the monasteries, and when those institutions were dissolved, the beggars resorted to many devices to obtain food and lodging. To excite greater pity, they often pretended to be mad, hence their name of bedlam beggars. Shakespeare used this character with great effect in the tragedy of King Lear. A tragedy usually represents the struggle of a noble nature against adverse fate or against some flaw in his own character, a struggle which inevitably Definition ends in death. Tragedy has been many of times defined. The classical definition is tragedy. that of Aristotle, who described tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is weighty, complete, and of a proper magnitude: it proceeds by action and not by narration: and it effects through pity and terror a purgation of like passions in the minds of the spectators". Professor Lewis Campbell explains most excellently that the aim of tragedy is "to express and call forth a collective sympathy with ideal sorrow, and thus, while relieving and enlarging the heart, and refining and elevating its emotions, to infix and deepen the truths of human experience". "Gorboduc". Tragedy began in England with translations of Seneca. In 1581 ten of his plays that had been translated and acted between 1559 and 1566 were printed. Early The first regular original tragedy in our native tragedy: tongue was Gorboduc, acted before the queen at Whitehall by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple on January 18th, 1567. The authors were Sackville, already mentioned in connection with the Mirror for Magistrates, and Thomas Norton. An unauthorized version was printed |