Literary Collections
Read books online » Literary Collections » A History of English Literature by George Saintsbury (best novels in english TXT) 📖

Book online «A History of English Literature by George Saintsbury (best novels in english TXT) 📖». Author George Saintsbury



1 ... 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 ... 91
Go to page:
their clumsy dramatisation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, with any other classical learning that Heywood could think of thrust in, presents (together with various minor pieces of a somewhat similar kind) as striking a contrast with Troilus and Cressida, as Edward IV. does with Henry VI. His spectacles and pageants, chiefly in honour of London (London's Jus Honorarium, with other metaphorical Latin titles of the same description) are heavy, the weakness of his versification being especially felt in such pieces. His strength lies in the domestic and contemporary drama, where his pathos had free play, unrestrained by the necessity of trying to make it rise to chivalrous or heroic height, and where his keen observation of his fellow-men made him true to mankind in general, at the same time that he gave a vivid picture of contemporary manners. Of this class of his plays A Woman killed with Kindness is undoubtedly the chief, but it has not a few companions, and those in a sufficiently wide and varied class of subject. The Fair Maid of the Exchange is, perhaps, not now found to be so very delectable and full of mirth as it is asserted to be on its title-page, because it is full of that improbability and neglect of verisimilitude which has been noted as the curse of the minor Elizabethan drama. The "Cripple of Fenchurch," the real hero of the piece, is a very unlikely cripple; the heroines chop and change their affections in the most surprising manner; and the characters generally indulge in that curious self-description and soliloquising in dialogue which is never found in Shakespere, and is found everywhere else. But it is still a lively picture of contemporary manners. We should be sorry to lose The Fair Maid of the West with its picture of Devonshire sailors, foreign merchants, kings of Fez, Bashaws of various parts, Italian dukes, and what not. The two parts make anything but a good play, but they are decidedly interesting, and their tone supports Mr. Bullen's conjecture that we owe to Heywood the, in parts, admirable play of Dick of Devonshire, a dramatisation of the quarter-staff feats in Spain of Richard Peake of Tavistock. The English Traveller may rank with A Woman killed with Kindness as Heywood's best plays (there is, indeed, a certain community of subject between them), but A Maidenhead well Lost, and The Witches of Lancashire, are not far behind it; nor is A Challenge for Beauty. We can hardly say so much for Love's Mistress, which dramatises the story of Cupid and Psyche, or for The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (Hoxton), a play rather of Middleton's type. But in The Royal King and Loyal Subject, and in Fortune by Land and Sea, the author shows again the sympathy with chivalrous character and adventure which (if he never can be said to be fully up to its level in the matter of poetic expression) was evidently a favourite and constant motive with him. In short, Heywood, even at his worst, is a writer whom it is impossible not to like. His very considerable talent, though it stopped short of genius, was united with a pleasant and genial temper, and little as we know of his life, his dedications and prefaces make us better acquainted with his personality than we are with that of much more famous men.

No greater contrast is possible than that between our last two names—Day and Tourneur. Little is known of them: Day was at Cambridge in 1592-3; Tourneur shared in the Cadiz voyage of 1625 and died on its return. Both, it is pretty certain, were young men at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and were influenced strongly by the literary fashions set by greater men than themselves. But whereas Day took to the graceful fantasticalities of Lyly and to the not very savage social satire of Greene, Tourneur (or Turner) addressed himself to the most ferocious school of sub-Marlovian tragedy, and to the rugged and almost unintelligible satire of Marston. Something has been said of his effort in the latter vein, the Transformed Metamorphosis. His two tragedies, The Atheist's Tragedy and The Revenger's Tragedy, have been rather variously judged. The concentration of gloomy and almost insane vigour in The Revenger's Tragedy, the splendid poetry of a few passages which have long ago found a home in the extract books, and the less separable but equally distinct poetic value of scattered lines and phrases, cannot escape any competent reader. But, at the same time, I find it almost impossible to say anything for either play as a whole, and here only I come a long way behind Mr. Swinburne in his admiration of our dramatists. The Atheist's Tragedy is an inextricable imbroglio of tragic and comic scenes and characters, in which it is hardly possible to see or follow any clue; while the low extravagance of all the comedy and the frantic rant of not a little of the tragedy combine to stifle the real pathos of some of the characters. The Revenger's Tragedy is on a distinctly higher level; the determination of Vindice to revenge his wrongs, and the noble and hapless figure of Castiza, could not have been presented as they are presented except by a man with a distinct strain of genius, both in conception and execution. But the effect, as a whole, is marred by a profusion of almost all the worst faults of the drama of the whole period from Peele to Davenant. The incoherence and improbability of the action, the reckless, inartistic, butcherly prodigality of blood and horrors, and the absence of any kind of redeeming interest of contrasting light to all the shade, though very characteristic of a class, and that no small one, of Elizabethan drama, cannot be said to be otherwise than characteristic of its faults. As the best example (others are The Insatiate Countess, Chettle's Hoffmann, Lust's Dominion, and the singular production which Mr. Bullen has printed as The Distracted Emperor) it is very well worth reading, and contrasting with the really great plays of the same class, such as The Jew of Malta and Titus Andronicus, where, though the horrors are still overdone, yet genius has given them a kind of passport. But intrinsically it is mere nightmare.

Of a very different temper and complexion is the work of John Day, who may have been a Cambridge graduate, and was certainly a student of Gonville and Caius, as he describes himself on the title-page of some of his plays and of a prose tract printed by Mr. Bullen. He appears to have been dead in 1640, and the chief thing positively known about him is that between the beginning of 1598 and 1608 he collaborated in the surprising number of twenty-one plays (all but The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green unprinted) with Haughton, Chettle, Dekker, and others. The Parliament of Bees, his most famous and last printed work, is of a very uncommon kind in English—being a sort of dramatic allegory, touched with a singularly graceful and fanciful spirit. It is indeed rather a masque than a play, and consists, after the opening Parliament held by the Master, or Viceroy Bee (quaintly appearing in the original, which may have been printed in 1607, though no copy seems now discoverable earlier than 1641, as "Mr. Bee"), of a series of characters or sketches of Bee-vices and virtues, which are very human. The termination, which contains much the best poetry in the piece, and much the best that Day ever wrote, introduces King Oberon giving judgment on the Bees from "Mr. Bee" downwards and banishing offenders. Here occurs the often-quoted passage, beginning—

"And whither must these flies be sent?"

and including the fine speech of Oberon—

"You should have cried so in your youth."

It should be observed that both in this play and elsewhere passages occur in Day which seem to have been borrowed or stolen from or by other writers, such as Dekker and Samuel Rowley; but a charitable and not improbable explanation of this has been found in the known fact of his extensive and intricate collaboration. The Isle of Gulls, suggested in a way by the Arcadia, though in general plan also fantastic and, to use a much abused but decidedly convenient word, pastoral, has a certain flavour of the comedy of manners and of contemporary satire. Then we have the quaint piece of Humour out of Breath, a kind of study in the for once conjoined schools of Shakespere and Jonson—an attempt at a combination of humorous and romantic comedy with some pathetic writing, as here:—

"[O] Early sorrow art got up so soon?
What, ere the sun ascendeth in the east?
O what an early waker art thou grown!
But cease discourse and close unto thy work.
Under this drooping myrtle will I sit,
And work awhile upon my corded net;
And as I work, record my sorrows past,
Asking old Time how long my woes shall last.
And first—but stay! alas! what do I see?
Moist gum-like tears drop from this mournful tree;
And see, it sticks like birdlime; 'twill not part,
Sorrow is even such birdlime at my heart.
Alas! poor tree, dost thou want company?
Thou dost, I see't, and I will weep with thee;
Thy sorrows make me dumb, and so shall mine,
It shall be tongueless, and so seem like thine.
Thus will I rest my head unto thy bark,
Whilst my sighs ease my sorrows."

Something the same may be said of Law Tricks, or Who would have Thought it? which has, however, in the character of the Count Horatio, a touch of tragedy. Another piece of Day's is in quite a different vein, being an account in dramatised form of the adventures of the three brothers Shirley—a kind of play which, from Sir Thomas Stukeley downwards, appears to have been a very favourite one with Elizabethan audiences, though (as might indeed be expected) it was seldom executed in a very successful manner. Lastly, or first, if chronological order is taken, comes The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, written by Day in conjunction with Chettle, and ranging itself with the half historical, half romantic plays which were, as has been pointed out above, favourites with the first school of dramatists. It seems to have been very popular, and had a second and third part, not now extant, but is by no means as much to modern taste as some of the others. Indeed both Day and Tourneur, despite the dates of their pieces, which, as far as known, are later, belong in more ways than one to the early school, and show how its traditions survived alongside of the more perfect work of the greater masters. Day himself is certainly not a great master—indeed masterpieces would have been impossible, if they would not have been superfluous, in the brisk purveying of theatrical matter which, from Henslowe's accounts, we see that he kept up. He had fancy, a good deal of wit, considerable versatility, and something of the same sunshiny temper, with less of the pathos, that has been noticed in Heywood. If he wrote The Maid's Metamorphosis (also ascribed conjecturally to Lyly), he did something less dramatically good, but perhaps poetically better, than his other work; and if, as has sometimes been thought,[56] The Return from Parnassus is his, he is richer still. But even without these, his existing poetical baggage (the least part of the work which we know he accomplished) is more than respectable, and shows more perhaps than that of any other distinctly minor writer the vast

1 ... 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 ... 91
Go to page:

Free ebook «A History of English Literature by George Saintsbury (best novels in english TXT) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment