English Renaissance Drama 2 страница

By Shakespeare's time the state had asserted its right in attempting to gain authority in secular and spiritual matters alike. The so-called "Tudor myth" had sought to justify actions by the crown, and selections for the monarchy, as God-sanctioned: to thwart those decisions was to sin, because these people were selected by God. The population of the City quadrupled from Henry VIII's reign to the end of Shakespeare's life (1616), thus adding to the necessity for civil control and law. The dissolution of the monasteries had caused much civil unrest, and the dispossessed monks and nuns had been forced to enter the work force. Thus the employment, or unemployment, problem was severe. Puritanism, which first emerged early in Elizabeth's reign, was a minority force of churchmen, Members of Parliament, and others who felt that the Anglican Reformation had stopped short of its goal. Puritans used the Bible as a guide to conduct, not simply to faith, but to political and social life, and since they could read it in their own language, it took on for them a greater importance than it had ever held. They stressed particularly the idea of remembering the Sabbath day. The conflict between the Puritans and the "players" of the theatre—who performed for the larger crowds that would turn out for productions on the Sabbath—was established early.

The old Medieval stage of "place-and-scaffolds", still in use in Scotland in the early XVI c., had fallen into disuse; the kind of temporary stage that was dominant in England about 1575 was the booth stage of the marketplace—a small rectangular stage mounted on trestles or barrels and "open" in the sense of being surrounded by spectators on three sides. The stage proper of the booth stage generally measured from 15 to 25 ft. in width and from 10 to 15 ft. in depth; its height above the ground averaged a bout 5 ft. 6 in., with extremes ranging as low as 4 ft. and as high as 8 ft.; and it was backed by a cloth-covered booth, usually open at the top, which served as a tiring-house (short for "attiring house," where the actors dressed). In the England of 1575 there were two kinds of buildings, designed for functions other than the acting of plays, which were adapted by the players as temporary outdoor playhouses: the animal-baiting rings or "game houses" (e.g. Bear Garden) and the inns. Presumably, a booth stage was set up against a wall at one side of the yard, with the audience standing in the yard surrounding the stage on three sides. Out of these "natural" playhouses grew two major classes of permanent Elizabethan playhouse, "public" and "private." In general, the public playhouses were large outdoor theatres, whereas the private playhouses were smaller indoor theatres. The maximum capacity of a typical public playhouse (e.g., the Swan) was about 3,000 spectators; that of a typical private playhouse (e.g., the Second Blackfriars), about 700 spectators.

At the public playhouses the majority of spectators were "groundlings" who stood in the dirt yard for a penny; the remainder were sitting in galleries and boxes for two pence or more. At the private playhouses all spectators were seated (in pit, galleries, and boxes) and paid sixpence or more. In the beginning, the private playhouses were used exclusively by Boys' companies, but this distinction disappeared about 1609 when the King's Men, in residence at the Globe in the summer, began using the Blackfriars in winter. Originally the private playhouses were found only within the City of London (the Paul's Playhouse, the First and Second Blackfriars), the public playhouses only in the suburbs (the Theatre, the Curtain, the Rose, the Globe, the Fortune, the Red Bull); but this distinction disappeared about 1606 with the opening of the Whitefriars Playhouse to the west of Ludgate. Public-theatre audiences, though socially heterogeneous, were drawn mainly from the lower classes—a situation that has caused modern scholars to refer to the public-theatre audiences as "popular"; whereas private-theatre audiences tended to consist of gentlemen (those who were university educated) and nobility; "select" is the word most usually opposed to "popular" in this respect.

James Burbage, father to the famous actor Richard Burbage of Shakespeare's company, built the first permanent theatre in London, the Theatre, in 1576. He probably merely adapted the form of the baiting-house to theatrical needs. To do so he built a large round structure very much like a baiting-house but with five major innovations in the received form. First, he paved the ring with brick or stone, thus paving the pit into a "yard". Second, Burbage erected a stage in the yard—his model was the booth stage of the marketplace, larger than used before, with posts rather than trestles. Third, he erected a permanent tiring-house in place of the booth. Here his chief model was the passage screens of the Tudor domestic hall. They were modified to withstand the weather by the insertion of doors in the doorways. Presumably the tiring-house, as a permanent structure, was inset into the frame of the playhouse rather than, as in the older temporary situation of the booth stage, set up against the frame of a baiting-house. The gallery over the tiring-house (presumably divided into boxes) was capable of serving variously as a "Lord's room" for privileged or high-paying spectators, as a music-room, and as a station for the occasional performance of action "above" as, for example, Juliet's balcony.

Fourth, Burbage built a "cover" over the rear part of the stage, called "the Heavens", supported by posts rising from the yard and surmounted by a "hut." And fifth, Burbage added a third gallery to the frame. The theory of origin and development suggested in the preceding accords with our chief pictorial source of information about the Elizabethan stage, the "De Witt" drawing of the interior of the Swan Playhouse (c. 1596). It seems likely that most of the round public playhouses—specifically, the Theatre (1576), the Swan (1595), the First Globe (1599), the Hope (1614), and the Second Globe (1614)—were of about the same size. The Second Blackfriars Playhouse of 1596 was designed by James Burbage, and he built his playhouse in the upper-story Parliament Chamber of the Upper Frater of the priory. The Parliament Chamber measured 100 ft. in length, but for the playhouse Burbage used only two-thirds of this length. The room in question, after the removal of partitions dividing it into apartments, measured 46 ft. in width and 66 ft. in length. The stage probably measured 29 ft. in width and 18 ft. 6 in. in depth.

In the private theatres, act-intervals and music between acts were customary from the beginning. A music-room was at first lacking in the public playhouses, since public-theatre performances did not originally employ act-intervals and inter-act music. About 1609, however, after the King's men had begun performing at the Blackfriars as well as at the Globe, the custom of inter-act music seems to have spread from the private to the public playhouses, and with it apparently came the custom of using one of the tiring-house boxes over the stage as a music-room. The drama was conventional, not realistic: poetry was the most obvious convention, others included asides, soliloquies, boys playing the roles of women, battles (with only a few participants), the daylight convention (many scenes are set at night, though the plays took place in mid-afternoon under the sky), a convention of time (the clock and calendar are used only at the dramatist's discretion), the convention of "eavesdropping" (many characters overhear others, which the audience is privy to but the overheard characters are not), and movement from place to place as suggested by the script and the audience's imagination. Exits were strong, and when everyone departed the stage, a change of scene was indicated. There was relatively little scenery. Scenery was mostly suggestive; for example, one or two trees standing in for a whole forest. The elaborate costumes—for which companies paid a great deal of money—supplied the color and pageantry. Minimal scenery and limited costume changes made the transitions between scenes lightning-fast and kept the story moving.

There was often dancing before and after the play—at times, during, like the peasants' dance in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale. Jigs were often given at the end of performances, a custom preserved still today at Shakespeare's Globe. The jigs at the theatre were not always mere dances, they were sometimes comprised of songs and bawdy knockabout farces filled with commentaries on current events. Perhaps the most famous jig was the one performed by Will Kemp, the clown in Shakespeare's company, over a nine day period in 1599, on the road from London to Norwich. It was published in 1600 as Kemps nine daies wonder. After 1600, the bawdy jigs fell into derision and contempt and were only performed at theatres such as the Red Bull, which catered to an audience appreciative of the lowest humor and most violent action. The clowns were the great headliners of the Elizabethan stage prior to the rise of the famed tragedians of the late 1580s, such as Edward (Ned) Alleyn and Richard Burbage. Every company had a top clown along with the tragedian—Shakespeare’s company was no exception: Richard Tarleton was the clown until his death in 1588, Will Kemp was the clown until forced out of the company in 1599, to be replaced by another famous clown, Robin Armin. The clowns not only performed the aforementioned jigs, but also played many of the great comic characters; Kemp most likely played Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, Armin the parts of Feste in Twelfth Night and the Fool in King Lear.

From contemporary documents, we know there were over a thousand actors in England between 1580-1642*. Most were poor, "starving actors", but a few dozen were able to make names for themselves and become shareholders in their respective companies, and make a good living. The repertory system was demanding—besides playing six days a week, a company would be in continual rehearsal in order to add new plays and to refresh old ones in their schedule. A player would probably learn a new role every week, with thirty to forty roles in his head. No minor feat, especially considering that an actor would only get his lines and cues (in a rolled up parchment, his "roll", from which we get the word "role"), not a whole script! Over a period of three years, a tragedian such as Edward Alleyn, lead player for the Admiral's Men, would learn not only fifty new parts but also retain twenty or more old roles.

GEORGE PEELE (1558 - c. 1598), English dramatist, was born in London in 1558. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, and entered Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1571. In 1574 he removed to Christ Church, taking his B.A. degree in 1577, and proceeding M.A. in 1579. In 1579 the governors of Christ's Hospital requested their clerk to "discharge his house of his son, George Peele." He went up to London about 1580, but in 1583 when Albertus Alasco (Albert Laski), a Polish nobleman, was entertained at Christ Church, Oxford, Peele was entrusted with the arrangement of two Latin plays by William Gager (fl. 1580-1619) presented on the occasion. He was also complimented by Dr Gager for an English verse translation of one of the Iphigenias of Euripides. In 1585 he was employed to write the Device of the Pageant borne before Woolston Dixie, and in 1591 he devised the pageant in honour of another lord mayor, Sir William Webbe. This was the Descensus Astraeae (printed in the Harleian Miscellany, 1808), in which Queen Elizabeth is honoured as Astræa.

Peele had married as early as 1583 a lady who brought him some property, which he speedily dissipated. Robert Greene, at the end of his Groatsworth of Wit, exhorts Peele to repentance, saying that he has, like himself, "been driven to extreme shifts for a living." The sorry traditions of his reckless life were emphasized by the use of his name in connexion with the apocryphal Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele (printed in 1607). Many of the stories had done service before, but there are personal touches that may be biographical. He died before 1598, for Francis Meres, writing in that year, speaks of his death in his Palladis Tamia. His pastoral comedy of The Araygnement of Paris, presented by the Children of the Chapel Royal before Queen Elizabeth perhaps as early as 1581, was printed anonymously in 1584. Charles Lamb, sending to Vincent Novello a song from this piece of Peele's, said that if it had been less uneven in execution, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess " had been but a second name in this sort of writing." Peele shows considerable art in his flattery. Paris is arraigned before Jupiter for having assigned the apple to Venus. Diana, with whom the final decision rests, gives the apple to none of the competitors but to a nymph called Eliza, whose identity is confirmed by the further explanation, "whom some Zabeta call."

His Famous Chronicle of King Edward the first, sirnamed Edward Longshankes, with his returne from the holy land. Also the life of Lleuellen, rebell in Wales. Lastly, the sinking of Queen Elinor, who suncke at Charingcrosse, and rose again at Pottershith, now named Queenehith, was printed in 1593. This chronicle history, formless enough, as the rambling title shows, is nevertheless an advance on the old chronicle plays, and marks a step towards the Shakespearian historical drama. Peele is said by some scholars to have written or contributed to the bloody tragedy Titus Andronicus, which is normally attributed to Shakespeare. This theory is in part due to Peele's predilection for gore, as evidenced in The Battell of Alcazar with the death of Captaine Stukeley (acted 1588-1589, printed 1594), published anonymously, which is attributed with much probability to him. The Old Wives Tale, registered in Stationers Hall, perhaps more correctly, as The Owlde wifes tale (printed 1595), was followed by The Love of King David and fair Bethsabe (written ca. 1588, printed 1599), which is notable as an example of Elizabethan drama drawn entirely from Scriptural sources. F.G. Fleay sees in it a political satire, and identifies Elizabeth and Leicester as David and Bathsheba, Mary Queen of Scots as Absalom. Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (printed 1599) has been attributed to Peele, but on insufficient grounds.

Among his occasional poems are The Honour of the Garter, which has a prologue containing Peele's judgments on his contemporaries, and Polyhymnia (1590), a blank verse description of the ceremonies attending the retirement of the Queen's champion, Sir Henry Lee. This is concluded by the sonnet, "His golden locks time hath to silver turnd," quoted by Thackeray in the 76th chapter of The Newcomes. To the Phoenix Nest in 1593 he contributed The Praise of Chastity. Fleay (Biog. Chron. of the Drama) credits Peele with The Wisdom of Doctor Doddipoll (printed 1600), Wily Beguiled (printed 1606), The Life and Death of Jack Straw, a notable rebel (1587?), a share in the First and Second Parts of Henry VI, and on the authority of Wood and Winstanley, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany. Peele belonged to the group of university scholars who, in Greene's phrase, "spent their wits in making playes." Greene went on to say that he was in some things rarer, in nothing inferior, to Christopher Marlowe. Thomas Nashe, in his preface to Greene's Menaphon, called him "the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of Poetrie and primus verborum artifex, whose first encrease, the Arraignement of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexteritie of wit and manifold varietie of invention, wherein (me judice) hee goeth a step beyond all that write." This praise was not unfounded. The credit given to Greene and Marlowe for the increased dignity of English dramatic diction, and for the new smoothness infused into blank verse, must certainly be shared by Peele.

Professor F.B. Gummere, in a critical essay prefixed to his edition of The Old Wives Tale, puts in another claim for Peele. In the contrast between the romantic story and the realistic dialogue he sees the first instance of humour quite foreign to the comic business of earlier comedy. The Old Wives Tale is a play within a play, slight enough to be perhaps better described as an interlude. Its background of rustic folklore gives it additional interest, and there is much fun poked at Gabriel Harvey and Richard Stanyhurst. Perhaps Huanebango, who parodies Harvey's hexameters, and actually quotes him on one occasion, may be regarded as representing that arch-enemy of Greene and his friends. Peele's Works were edited by Alexander Dyce (1828, 1829-1839 and 1861); by A.H. Bullen (2 vols., 1888). An examination of the metrical peculiarities of his work is to be found in F.A.R. Lammerhirts Georg Peele, Untersuchungen bei sein Leben und seine Werke (Rцstock, 1882). See also Professor F.B. Gummere, in Representative English Comedies (1903); and an edition of The Battell of Alcazar, printed for the Malone Society in 1907.

Robert Greene (c.1560-1592)

ROBERT GREENE (c.1560-1592), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Norwich about 1560. The identity of his father has been disputed, but there is every reason to believe that he belonged to the tradesmen's class and had small means. It is doubtful whether Robert Greene attended Norwich grammar school; but, as an eastern counties man (to one of whose plays, Friar Bacon, the Norfolk and Suffolk borderland owes a lasting poetic commemoration) he naturally found his way to Cambridge, where he entered St John's College as a sizar in 1575 and took his B.A. thence in 1579, proceeding M.A. in 1583 from Clare Hall. His life at the university was, according to his own account, spent "among wags as lewd as himself, with whom he consumed the flower of his youth." In 1588 he was incorporated at Oxford, so that on some of his titlepages he styles himself " utriusque Academiae in Artibus Magister "; and Nashe humorously refers to him as " utriusque Academiae Robertus Greene."

Between the years 157,8 and 1583 he had travelled abroad, according to his own account very extensively, visiting France, Germany, Poland and Denmark, besides learning at first-hand to "hate the pride of Italie" and to know the taste of that poet's fruit, "Spanish mirabolones." The grounds upon which it has been suggested that he took holy orders are quite insufficient; according to the title-page of a pamphlet published by him in 1585 he was then a "student in phisicke." Already, however, after taking his M.A. degree, he had according to his own account begun his London life, and his earliest extant literary production was in hand as early as 1580. He now became "an author of playes and a penner of lovepamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in that qualitie, that who for that trade growne so ordinary about London as Robin Greene?" "Glad was that printer," says Nashe, that might bee so blest to pay him deare for the very dregs of his wit."

By his own account he rapidly sank into the worst debaucheries of the town, though Nashe declares that he never knew him guilty of notorious crime. He was not without passing impulses towards a more righteous and sober life, and was derided in consequence by his associates as a "Puritane and Presizian." It is possible that he, as well as his bitter enemy, Gabriel Harvey, exaggerated the looseness of his conduct. His marriage, which took place in 1585 or 1586, failed to steady him; if Francesco, in Greene's pamphlet Never too late to mend (1590), is intended for the author himself, it had been a runaway match; but the fiction and the autobiographical sketch in the Repentance agree in their account of the unfaithfulness which followed on the part of the husband. He lived with his wife, whose name seems to have been Dorothy ("Doll"; and cf. Dorothea in James IV.), for a while; "but forasmuch as she would perswade me from my wilful wickednes, after I had a child by her, I cast her off, having spent up the marriage-money which I obtained by her. Then left I her at six or seven, who went into Lincolnshire, and I to London," where his reputation as a playwright and writer of pamphlets of "love and vaine fantasyes" continued to increase, and where his life was a feverish alternation of labour and debauchery.

In his last years he took it upon himself to make war on the cutpurses and "conny-catchers" with whom he came into contact in the slums, and whose doings he fearlessly exposed in his writings. He tells us how at last he was friendless "except it were in a fewe alehouses," where he was respected on account of the score he had run up. When the end came he was a dependant on the charity of the poor and the pitying love of the unfortunate. Henri Murger has drawn no picture more sickening and more pitiful than the story of Greene's death, as told by his Puritan adversary, Gabriel Harvey - a veracious though a far from unprejudiced narrator. Greene had taken up the cudgels provided by the Harvey brothers on their intervention in the Marprelate controversy, and made an attack (immediately suppressed) upon Gabriel's father and family in the prose-tract A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, or a Quaint Dispute between Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches (1592). After a banquet where the chief guest had been Thomas Nashe - an old associate and perhaps a college friend of Greene's, any great intimacy with whom, however, he seems to have been anxious to disclaim - Greene had fallen sick "of a surfeit of pickle herringe and Rennish wine." At the house of a poor shoemaker near Dowgate, deserted by all except his compassionate hostess (Mrs Isam) and two women - one of them the sister of a notorious thief named "Cutting Ball," and the mother of his illegitimate son, Fortunatus Greene - he died on the 3rd of September 1592. Shortly before his death he wrote under a bond for £10 which he had given to the good shoemaker, the following words addressed to his longforsaken wife: "Doll, I charge thee, by the loue of our youth and by my soules rest, that thou wilte see this man paide; for if hee and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streetes. - Robert Greene."

Four Letters and Certain Sonnets, Harvey's attack on Greene, appeared almost immediately after his death, as to the circumstances of which his relentless adversary had taken care to inform himself personally. Nashe took up the defence of his dead friend and ridiculed Harvey in Strange News (1593); and the dispute continued for some years. But, before this, the dramatist Henry Chettle published a pamphlet from the hand of the unhappy man, entitled Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance (1592), containing the story of Roberto, who may be regarded, for practical purposes, as representing Greene himself. This ill-starred production may almost be said to have done more to excite the resentment of posterity against Greene's name than all the errors for which he professed his repentance. For in it he exhorted to repentance three of his quondam acquaintance. Of these three Marlowe was one - to whom and to whose creation of "that Atheist Tamberlaine" he had repeatedly alluded. The second was Peele, the third probably Nashe. But the passage addressed to Peele contained a transparent allusion to a fourth dramatist, who was an actor likewise, as "an vpstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart wrapt in a player's hyde supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Iohannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceyt the onely shake-scene in a countrey." The phrase italicized parodies a passage occurring in The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York, &c., and retained in Part III. of Henry VI. If Greene (as many eminent critics have thought) had a hand in The True Tragedie, he must here have intended a charge of plagiarism against Shakespeare. But while it seems more probable that (as the late R. Simpson suggested) the upstart crow beautified with the feathers of the three dramatists is a sneering description of the actor who declaimed their verse, the animus of the whole attack (as explained by Dr Ingleby) is revealed in its concluding phrases. This "shake-scene," i.e. this actor had ventured to intrude upon the domain of the regular staff of playwrights - their monopoly was in danger!

Two other prose pamphlets of an autobiographical nature were issued posthumously. Of these, The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts (1592), must originally have been written by him on his death-bed, under the influence, as he says, "of Father Parsons's Booke of Resolution" (The Christian Directorie, appertayning to Resolution, 1582, republished in an enlarged form, which became very popular, in 1585); but it bears traces of having been improved from the original; while Greene's Vision was certainly not, as the title-page avers, written during his last illness.

Altogether not less than thirty-five prose-tracts are ascribed to Greene's prolific pen. Nearly all of them are interspersed with verses; in their themes they range from the "misticall" wonders of the heavens to the familiar but "pernitious sleights" of the sharpers of London. But the most widely attractive of his prose publications were his "love-pamphlets," which brought upon him the outcry of Puritan censors. The earliest of his novels, as they may be called, Mamillia, was licensed in 1583. This interesting story may be said to have accompanied Greene through life; for even part II., of which, though probably completed several years earlier, the earliest extant edition bears the date 1593, had a sequel, The Anatomie of Love's Flatteries, which contains a review of suitors recalling Portia's in The Merchant of Venice. The Myrrour of Modestie (the story of Susanna) (1584); The Historie of Arhasto, King of Denmarke (1584); Morando, the Tritameron of Love (a rather tedious imitation of the Decameron (1584); Planetomachia (1585) (a contention in storytelling between Venus and Saturn); Penelope's Web (1587) (another string of stories); Alcida, Greene's Metamorphosis (1588), and others, followed.

In these popular productions he appears very distinctly as a follower of John Lyly; indeed, the first part of Mamillia was entered in the Stationers' Registers in the year of the appearance of Euphues, and two of Greene's novels are by their titles announced as a kind of sequel to the parent romance: Euphues his Censure to Philautus (1587), Menaphon. Camilla's Alarum to Slumbering Euphues (1589), named in some later editions Greene's Arcadia. This pastoral romance, written in direct emulation of Sidney's, with a heroine called Samila, contains St Sephestia's charming lullaby, with its refrain "Father's sorowe, father's joy." But, though Greene's style copies the balanced oscillation, and his diction the ornateness (including the proverbial philosophy) of Lyly, he contrives to interest by the matter as well as to attract attention by the manner of his narratives. Of his highly moral intentions he leaves the reader in no doubt, since they are exposed on the title-pages. The full title of the Myrrour of Modestie for instance continues: " wherein appeareth as in a perfect glasse how the Lord delivereth the innocent from all imminent perils, and plagueth the blood-thirsty hypocrites with deserved punishments," &c. On his Pandosto, The Triumph of Time (1588) Shakespeare founded A Winter's Tale; in fact, the novel contains the entire plot of the comedy, except the device of the living statue; though some of the subordinate characters in the play, including Autolycus, were added by Shakespeare, together with the pastoral fragrance of one of its episodes.

In Greene's Never too Late (1590), announced as a "Powder of Experience: sent to all youthfull gentlemen" for their benefit, the hero, Francesco, is in all probability intended for Greene himself, the sequel or second part is, however, pure fiction. This episodical narrative has a vivacity and truthfulness of manner which savour of an 18th century novel rather than of an Elizabethan tale concerning the days of "Palmerin, King of Great Britain." Philador, the prodigal of The Mourning Garment (1590), is obviously also in some respects a portrait of the writer. The experiences of the Roberto of Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592) are even more palpably the experiences of the author himself, though they are possibly overdrawn - for a born rhetorician exaggerates everything, even his own sins. Besides these and the posthumous pamphlets on his repentance, Greene left realistic pictures of the very disreputable society to which he finally descended, in his pamphlets on "connycatching": A Notable Discovery of Coosnage (1591), The Blacke Bookes Messenger. Laying open the Life and Death of Ned Browne, one of the most Notable Cutpurses, Crossbiters, and Conny-catchers that ever lived in England (1592). Much in Greene's manner, both in his romances and in his pictures of low life, anticipated what proved the slow course of the actual development of the English novel; and it is probable that his true métier, and that which best suited the bright fancy, ingenuity and wit of which his genius was compounded, was pamphletspinning and story-telling rather than dramatic composition. It should be added that, euphuist as Greene was, few of his contemporaries in their lyrics warbled wood-notes which like his resemble Shakespeare's in their native freshness.

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