who has fallen violently in love with a lady whom we know by his description to be Clarisia. Conditions has discovered that his mistress is equally in love with Lamphedon; all which circumstances are described and not rendered dramatic: and then Conditions, for his own advantage, brings the two lovers together, and they plight their troth, and are finally married. The lost brother, Sedmond, next makes his appearance under the name of Nomides; and with him a Phrygian lady, Sabia, has fallen in love. But her love is unrequited; she is rejected, and the uncourteous knight flies from her. Lamphedon and Clarisia are happy at the Duke's court; but Conditions, as it obscurely appears, wanting to be travelling again, has irritated the Duchess against her daughter-in-law, and they both, accompanied by Conditions, fly to take ship for Thracia. They fall in with pirates, who receive them on ship-board, having been secretly promised by Conditions that they will afford a good booty. We soon learn, by the appearance of Lamphedon, that they have thrown him overboard, and that he has lost his lady; but the pirates, who are by no means bad specimens of the English mariner, soon present themselves again, with a seasong, which we transcribe; for assuredly it was fitted to rejoice the hearts of the playgoers of a maritime nation : Lustily, lustily, lustily, let us sail forth; The wind trim doth serve us, it blows from the north. All things we have ready and nothing we want To furnish our ship that rideth hereby; Victuals and weapons they be nothing scant; Like worthy mariners ourselves we will try. Lustily, lustily, &c. Her flags be new trimmed, set flaunting aloft; Our ship for swift swimming, oh, she doth excel : We fear no enemies, we have escaped them oft: Of all ships that swimmeth, she beareth the bell. Lustily, lustily, &c. And here is a master excelleth in skill, If Fortune then fail not, and our next voyage prove, We will return merrily and make good cheer, And hold altogether as friends link'd in love; The cans shall be filled with wine, ale, and beer. Lustily, lustily," &c. The action of this comedy is conducted for the most part by description; an easier thing than the dramatic development of plot and character. Lamphedon falls in with the pirates, and by force of arms he compels them to tell him of the fate of his wife. She has been taken, it seems, by Conditions, to be sold to Cardolus, an island chief; and then Lamphedon goes to fight Cardolus, and he does fight him, but finds not the lady. Conditions has however got rid of his charge, by persuading her to assume the name of Metræa, and enter the service of Leosthines. Hardship must have wonderfully changed her; for after a time her brother, Sedmond, arrives under his assumed name, and becomes a candidate for her affections. The good old man under whose protection she remains has adopted her as his daughter. Lamphedon is on the way to seek her, accompanied by Conditions; and thus by accident, and by the intrigues of the knavish servant, all those are reunited who have suffered in separation: for Leosthines is the banished father'*. How Conditions is disposed of is not so clear. He is constantly calling himself a little knave, and a crafty knave, a parasite, a turncoat; and he says, "Conditions? nay, double Conditions is my name, That for my own advantage such dealings can frame." It is difficult to discover what advantage he derives from his trickiness, yet he has always a new trick. It is probable that he was personated by some diminutive performer, whose grimaces and ugliness would make the audience roar with delight. The tinkers in the first scene say they know not what to do with him, except to “set him to And here is a boatswain will do his good will, keep crows." The object of the writer of the And here is a ship, boy, we never had leak. Lustily, lustily, &c. * A leaf or two is lost of the original copy, but enough remains to let us see how the plot will end. We learn that Nomides repents of his rejection of Sabia. tales, as 'Common Conditions' was, says, comedy, if he had any object, would appear | dramas formed upon romances and legendary to be to show that the purposes of craft may produce results entirely unexpected by the crafty one, and that happiness may be finally obtained through the circumstances which appear most to impede its attainment. This comedy is remarkable for containing none of the ribaldry which was so properly objected to in the plays of the early stage. It is characterised, also, by the absence of that melodramatic extravagance which belonged to this period, exhibiting power, indeed, but not the power of real art. These extravagances are well described by the author of "The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres;' although his notion that an effort of imagination, and a lie, are the same thing is very characteristic:-"The writers of our time are so led away with vain glory that their only endeavour is to pleasure the humour of men, and rather with vanity to content their minds than to profit them with good ensample. The notablest liar is become the best poet; he that can make the most notorious lie, and disguise falsehood in such sort that he may pass unperceived, is held the best writer. For the strangest comedy brings greatest delectation and pleasure. Our nation is led away with vanity, which the author perceiving, frames himself with novelties and strange trifles to content the vain humours of his rude auditors, feigning| countries never heard of, monsters and prodigious creatures that are not: as of the Arimaspie, of the Grips, the Pigmies, the Cranes, and other such notorious lies." Sidney, writing of the same period of the drama, speaks of the apparition of "a hideous monster with fire and smoke."* And Gosson, having direct reference to some romantic *Defence of Poesy.' 'Plays Confuted.' CHAPTER IV. THE LAWFULNESS OF PLAYS. THE Controversy upon the lawfulness of stageplays was a remarkable feature of the period which we are now describing; and pamphlets were to that age what newspapers are to ours. The dispute about the Theatre was a contest between the holders of opposite opinions in religion. The Puritans, who even at that time were strong in their zeal if not in their numbers, made the Theatre the especial object of their indignation; for its unquestionable abuses allowed them so to frame their invectives that they might tell with double force against every description of public amusement, against poetry in general, against music, against dancing, associated as they were with the excesses of an ill-regulated stage. A Treatise of John Northbrooke, licensed for the press in 1577, is directed against "dicing, dancing, vain plays, or interludes." Gosson, who had been a student of Christchurch, Oxford, had himself written two or three plays previous to his publication, in 1579, of 'The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such-like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth.' This book, written with considerable ostentation of learning, and indeed with no common vigour and occasional eloquence, defeats its own purposes by too large an aim. Poets, whatever be the character of their poetry, are the objects of Gosson's new-born hostility:"Tiberius the Emperor saw somewhat when he judged Scaurus to death for writing a tragedy; Augustus when he banished Ovid; and Nero when he charged Lucan to put up his pipes, to stay his pen, and write no more." Music comes in for the same denunciation, upon the authority of Pythagoras, who "condemns them for fools that judge music by sound and ear." The three abuses of the time are held to be inseparable :-"As poetry and piping are cousin-germans, so piping and playing are of great affinity, and all three chained in links of abuse." It is not to be | 66 ; thought that declamation like this would produce any great effect in turning a poetical mind from poetry, or that even Master Gosson's contrast of the ". manners of England in old time and "New England," would go far to move a patriotic indignation against modern refinements. We have, on one hand, Dion's description how Englishmen went naked and were good soldiers they fed upon roots and barks of trees; they would stand up to the chin many days in marshes without victuals;" and, on the other hand, "but the exercise that is now among us is banqueting, playing, piping, and dancing, and all such delights as may win us to pleasure, or rock us in sleep. Quantum mutatus ab illo!" In this his first tract the worthy man has a sneaking kindness for the Theatre which he can with difficulty suppress: 6 "As some of the players are far from abuse, so some of their plays are without rebuke, which are easily remembered, as quickly reckoned. The two prose books played at the Bel Savage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain. The Jew,' and 'Ptolemy,' shown at the Bull; the one representing the greediness of worldly choosers, and bloody minds of usurers; the other very lively describing how seditious estates with their own devices, false friends with their own swords, and rebellious commons in their own snares, are overthrown; neither with amorous gesture wounding the eye, nor with slovenly talk hurting the ears, of the chaste hearers. The Blacksmith's Daughter,' and 'Catiline's Conspiracies,' usually brought in at the Theatre: the first containing the treachery of Turks, the honourable bounty of a noble mind, the shining of virtue in distress. The last, because it is known to be a pig of mine own sow, I will speak the less of it; only giving you to understand that the whole mark which I shot at in that work was to show the reward of traitors in Catiline, and the necessary go- | thing forgot that might serve to set out the vernment of learned men in the person of Cicero, which foresees every danger that is likely to happen, and forestalls it continually ere it take effect." The praise of the "two prose books at the Bel Savage," that contained "never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain," is quite sufficient to show us that these prose books exhibited neither character nor passion. The 'Ptolemy' and the Catiline,' there can be no doubt, were composed of a succession of tedious monologues, having nothing of the principle of dramatic art in them, although in their outward form they appeared to be dramas. Gosson says, “ These plays are good plays and sweet plays, and of all plays the best plays, and most to be liked, worthy to be sung of the Muses, or set out with the cunning of Roscius himself; yet are they not fit for every man's diet, neither ought they commonly to be shown." It is clear that these good plays and sweet plays had not in themselves any of the elements of popularity; therefore they were utterly barren of real poetry. The highest poetry is essentially the popular poetry: it is universal in its range, it is unlimited in its duration. The lowest poetry (if poetry it can be called) is conventional; it lives for a little while in narrow corners, the pet thing of fashion or of pedantry. When Gosson wrote, the poetry of the English drama was not yet born; and the people contented themselves with something else that was nearer poetry than the plays which were 'not fit for every man's diet." Gosson, in his second tract, which, provoked by the answer of Lodge to his 'School of Abuse,' is written with much more virulence against plays especially, thus describes what the people most delighted in: | "As the devil hath brought in all that Poetry can sing, so hath he sought out every strain that Music is able to pipe, and drawn all kinds of instruments into that compass, simple and mixed. For the eye, beside the beauty of the houses and the stages, he sendeth in garish apparel, masks, vaulting, tumbling, dancing of jigs, galliards, moriscos, hobby-horses, showing of juggling casts; no 66 matter with pomp, or ravish the beholders with variety of pleasure." Lodge, in his reply to Gosson's 'School of Abuse,' had indirectly acknowledged the want of moral purpose in the stage exhibitions; but he contends that, as the ancient satirists were reformers of manners, so might plays be properly directed to the same end. "Surely we want not a Roscius, neither are there great scarcity of Terence's profession: but yet our men dare not nowadays presume so much as the old poets might and therefore they apply their writings to the people's vein; whereas, if in the beginning they had ruled, we should nowadays have found small spectacles of folly, but of truth. You say, unless the thing be taken away, the vice will continue; nay, I say, if the style were changed, the practice would profit." To this argument, that the Theatre might become the censor of manners, Gosson thus replies: "If the common people which resort to theatres, being but an assembly of tailors, tinkers, cordwainers, sailors, old men, young men, women, boys, girls, and such-like, be the judges of faults there pointed out, the rebuking of manners in that place is neither lawful nor convenient, but to be held for a kind of libelling and defaming." The notion which appears to have possessed the minds of the writers against the stage at this period is, that a fiction and a lie were the same. Gosson says, "The perfectest image is that which maketh the thing to seem neither greater nor less than indeed it is; but, in plays, either the things are feigned that never were, as Cupid and Psyche played at Paul's, and a great many comedies more at the Blackfriars, and in every playhouse in London, which, for brevity sake, I overskip; or, if a true history be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, longest at the rising and fall of the sun; shortest of all at high noon.” It has scarcely, we think, been noticed that the justly celebrated work of Sir Philip Sidney forms an important part of the controversy, not only against the Stage, but against Poetry and Music, that appears to have commenced in England a little previous to 1580. Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth; for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false: So as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies: But the poet, as I said before, never affirmeth, the poet never maketh any circles about your imagination to conjure you to believe for true what he writeth: but even for his entry calleth the sweet Muses to aspire unto him a good invention : In troth, not labouring to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should not be. And therefore, though he recount things not true, yet, because he telleth them not for true, he lieth not, unless we will say that Nathan lied in his speech, before alleged, to David; which as a wicked man durst scarce say, so think I none so simple would say that Æsop lied in the tales of his beasts; for who thinketh that Æsop wrote it for actually true were well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth of. What child is there that, coming to a play and seeing Thebes' written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes? If then a man can arrive to the child's age, to know that the poet's persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and not stories what have been, they will never give the lie to things not affirmatively, but allegorically and figuratively, written; and therefore, as in history, looking for truth, they may go away full fraught with falsehood, so in poesy, looking but for fiction, they shall use the narration but as an imaginative ground-plat of a profitable invention." Gosson, as we have seen, attacks the Stage, | not only for its especial abuses, but because it partakes of the general infamy of Poetry. According to this declaimer, it is "the whole practice of poets, either with fables to show their abuses, or with plain terms to unfold their mischief, discover their shame, discredit themselves, and disperse their poison throughout the world." Gosson dedicated his 'School of Abuse' to Sidney; and Spen- | ser, in one of his letters to Gabriel Harvey, He citeth not authorities of other histories, shows how Sidney received the compliment: | "New books I hear of none: but only of one that, writing a certain book called 'The School of Abuse,' and dedicating it to Master Sidney, was for his labour scorned; if, at least, it be in the goodness of that nature to scorn. Such folly is it not to regard aforehand the inclination and quality of him to whom we dedicate our books." We have no doubt that the Defence of Poesy,' or, as it was first called, 'An Apology for Poetry,' was intended as a reply to the dedicator. There is every reason to believe that it was written in 1581. Sidney can scarcely avoid pointing at Gosson when he speaks of the “ "Poet-haters as of "people who seek a praise by dispraising others," that they "do prodigally spend a great many wandering words in quips and scoffs, carping and taunting at each thing which, by stirring the spleen, may stay the brain from a thorough beholding the worthiness of the subject." We have seen how the early fanatical writers against the stage held that a Poet and a Liar were synonymous. To this ignorant invective, calculated for the lowest understandings, Sidney gives a brief and direct answer:-"That they should be the principal liars, I answer paradoxically, but truly, I think truly, that, of all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar, and, though he would, as a poet can scarcely be a liar. The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry? And no less of the rest which take upon them to affirm: The notion of Sidney's time evidently was, that nothing ought to be presented upon the stage but what was an historical fact; that all the points belonging to such a history should be given; and that no art should be used in setting it forth beyond that necessary to give the audience, not to make them comprehend, all the facts. It is quite clear that such a process will present us little of the poetry or the philosophy of history. The play-writers of 1580, weak masters as they were, knew their art better than Gosson; C |