Read Ebook: From Chaucer to Tennyson With Twenty-Nine Portraits and Selections from Thirty Authors by Beers Henry A Henry Augustin

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Ebook has 555 lines and 101392 words, and 12 pages

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

THE AGE OF SHAKSPERE.

That very time I saw--but thou could'st not-- Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal thron?d by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on In maiden meditation, fancy free--

an allusion to Leicester's unsuccessful suit for Elizabeth's hand.

heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song.

Sidney was our first writer of poetic prose. The poet Drayton says that he

did first reduce Our tongue from Lyly's writing, then in use, Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, Playing with words and idle similes.

Underneath this sable herse Lies the subject of all verse, Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; Death, ere thou hast slain another Learn'd and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Even such is Time, that takes in trust, Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with earth and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days; But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust!

England was still merry England in the times of good Queen Bess, and rang with old songs, such as kept this milkmaid company; songs, said Bishop Joseph Hall, which were "sung to the wheel and sung unto the pail." Shakspere loved their simple minstrelsy; he put some of them into the mouth of Ophelia, and scattered snatches of them through his plays, and wrote others like them himself:

Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song. That old and antique song we heard last night. Methinks it did relieve my passion much, More than light airs and recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The knitters and the spinners in the sun And the free maids that weave their threads with bones Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth And dallies with the innocence of love Like the old age.

The wind is high on Helle's wave, As on that night of stormy water, When love, who sent, forgot to save The young, the beautiful, the brave, The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter.

From his bright helm and shield did burn a most unwearied fire, Like rich Antumnus' golden lamp, whose brightness men admire Past all the other host of stars when, with his cheerful face Fresh washed in lofty ocean waves, he doth the sky enchase.

Suave, mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.

...with his dagger of lath In his rage and his wrath Cries 'Aha!' to the Devil, 'Pare your nails, Goodman Evil!'

He survives also in the harlequin of the pantomimes, and in Mr. Punch, of the puppet shows, who kills the Devil and carries him off on his back, when the latter is sent to fetch him to hell for his crimes.

There were also private companies of actors maintained by wealthy noblemen, like the Earl of Leicester, and bands of strolling players, who acted in inn-yards and bear-gardens. It was not until stationary theaters were built and stock companies of actors regularly licensed and established, that any plays were produced which deserve the name of literature. In 1576 the first London play-houses, known as the Theater and the Curtain, were erected in the suburb of Shoreditch, outside the city walls. Later the Rose, the Hope, the Globe, and the Swan were built on the Bankside, across the Thames, and play-goers resorting to them were accustomed to "take boat." These locations were chosen in order to get outside the jurisdiction of the mayor and corporation, who were Puritans, and determined in their opposition to the stage. For the same reason the Blackfriars, belonging to the company that owned the Globe--the company in which Shakspere was a stockholder--was built, about 1596, within the "liberties" of the dissolved monastery of the Blackfriars.

Fresh plays were produced every year. The theater was more to the Englishmen of that time than it has ever been before or since. It was his club, his novel, his newspaper, all in one. No great drama has ever flourished apart from a living stage, and it was fortunate that the Elizabethan dramatists were, almost all of them, actors, and familiar with stage effect. Even the few exceptions, like Beaumont and Fletcher, who were young men of good birth and fortune, and not dependent on their pens, were probably intimate with the actors, lived in a theatrical atmosphere, and knew practically how plays should be put on.

It had now become possible to earn a livelihood as an actor and playwright. Richard Burbage and Edward Alleyn, the leading actors of their generation, made large fortunes. Shakspere himself made enough from his share in the profits of the Globe to retire with a competence, some seven years before his death, and purchase a handsome property in his native Stratford. Accordingly, shortly after 1580, a number of men of real talent began to write for the stage as a career. These were young graduates of the universities, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Lyly, Lodge, and others, who came up to town and led a bohemian life as actors and playwrights. Most of them were wild and dissipated and ended in wretchedness. Peele died of a disease brought on by his evil courses; Greene, in extreme destitution, from a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herring, and Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern brawl.

O proud revolt of a presumptuous man,

At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt, And his fair spouse, with bright and fiery wings, Sit ever burning on his hateful bones.

In all these ante-Shaksperian dramatists there was a defect of art proper to the first comers in a new literary departure. As compared not only with Shakspere, but with later writers, who had the inestimable advantage of his example, their work was full of imperfection, hesitation, experiment. Marlowe was probably, in native genius, the equal at least of Fletcher or Webster, but his plays, as a whole, are certainly not equal to theirs. They wrote in a more developed state of the art. But the work of this early school settled the shape which the English drama was to take. It fixed the practice and traditions of the national theater. It decided that the drama was to deal with the whole of life, the real and the ideal, tragedy and comedy, prose and verse, in the same play, without limitations of time, place, and action. It decided that the English play was to be an action, and not a dialogue, bringing boldly upon the mimic scene feasts, dances, processions, hangings, riots, plays within plays, drunken revels, beatings, battle, murder, and sudden death. It established blank verse, with occasional riming couplets at the close of a scene or of a long speech, as the language of the tragedy and high comedy parts, and prose as the language of the low comedy and "business" parts. And it introduced songs, a feature of which Shakspere made exquisite use. Shakspere, indeed, like all great poets, invented no new form of literature, but touched old forms to finer purposes, refining every thing, discarding nothing. Even the old chorus and dumb show he employed, though sparingly, as also the old jig, or comic song, which the clown used to give between the acts.

It was a stirring time when the young adventurer came to London to try his fortune. Elizabeth had finally thrown down the gage of battle to Catholic Europe, by the execution of Mary Stuart, in 1587. The following year saw the destruction of the colossal Armada, which Spain had sent to revenge Mary's death; and hard upon these events followed the gallant exploits of Grenville, Essex, and Raleigh.

That Shakspere shared the exultant patriotism of the times, and the sense of their aloofness from the continent of Europe, which was now born in the breasts of Englishmen, is evident from many a passage in his plays.

This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in a silver sea, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, England, bound in with the triumphant sea!

Shakspere is the most universal of writers. He touches more men at more points than Homer, or Dante, or Goethe. The deepest wisdom, the sweetest poetry, the widest range of character, are combined in his plays. He made the English language an organ of expression unexcelled in the history of literature. Yet he is not an English poet simply, but a world-poet. Germany has made him her own, and the Latin races, though at first hindered in a true appreciation of him by the canons of classical taste, have at length learned to know him. An ever-growing mass of Shakespearian literature, in the way of comment and interpretation, critical, textual, historical, or illustrative, testifies to the durability and growth of his fame. Above all, his plays still keep, and probably always will keep, the stage. It is common to speak of Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan dramatists as if they stood, in some sense, on a level. But in truth there is an almost measureless distance between him and all his contemporaries. The rest shared with him in the mighty influences of the age. Their plays are touched here and there with the power and splendor of which they were all joint heirs. But, as a whole, they are obsolete. They live in books, but not in the hearts and on the tongues, of men.

What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life.

The inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey is simply

O rare Ben Jonson!

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

Earine, Who had her very being and her name With the first buds and breathings of the spring, Born with the primrose and the violet And earliest roses blown.

THE AGE OF MILTON.

I must have one To father children, and to bear the name Of husband to me, that my sin may be More honorable.

This scene is, perhaps, the most affecting and impressive in the whole range of Beaumont and Fletcher's drama. Yet when Evadne names the king as her paramour, Amintor exclaims:

O thou hast named a word that wipes away All thoughts revengeful. In that sacred name "The king" there lies a terror. What frail man Dares lift his hand against it? Let the gods Speak to him when they please; till when, let us Suffer and wait.

And the play ends with the words

On lustful kings, Unlooked-for sudden deaths from heaven are sent, But cursed is he that is their instrument.

Alas, my lord, my life is not a thing Worthy your noble thoughts. 'Tis not a life, 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.

She would not after the report keep fresh As long as flowers on graves.

We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves, That, ruined, yield no echo. O this gloomy world I In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!

Webster had an intense and somber genius. In diction he was the most Shaksperian of the Elizabethan dramatists, and there are sudden gleams of beauty among his dark horrors which light up a whole scene with some abrupt touch of feeling.

Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young,

The one who set the fashion was Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, whom Dryden pronounced a great wit, but not a great poet, and whom Ben Jonson esteemed the best poet in the world for some things, but likely to be forgotten for want of being understood. Besides satires and epistles in verse, he composed amatory poems in his youth, and divine poems in his age, both kinds distinguished by such subtle obscurity, and far-fetched ingenuities, that they read like a series of puzzles. When this poet has occasion to write a valediction to his mistress upon going into France, he compares their temporary separation to that of a pair of compasses:

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

If he would persuade her to marriage he calls her attention to a flea--

Me it sucked first and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

He says that the flea is their marriage-temple, and bids her forbear to kill it lest she thereby commit murder, suicide and sacrilege all in one. Donne's figures are scholastic and smell of the lamp. He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the school-men for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, parodoxes, the very casuistry and dialectics of love or devotion.

Thou canst not every day give me my heart: If thou canst give it then thou never gav'st it: Love's riddles are that though thy heart depart It stays at home, and thou with losing sav'st it.

Donne's verse is usually as uncouth as his thought. But there is a real passion slumbering under these ashy heaps of conceit, and occasionally a pure flame darts up, as in the justly admired lines:

Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheek, and so divinely wrought That one might almost say her body thought.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

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