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ENGLISH LITERATURE

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THE AGE OF TRANSITION

VOL. II



HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.

Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net each.



THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL,
M. A. With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 3rd
Edition, revised.

THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J.
SNELL, M. A. 2vols. Vol. I. The Poets. Vol. II. The
Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an Introduction
by Professor HALES. 2nd Edition.

THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS
SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN With an Introduction
by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. 1th Edition, revised.

THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. Canon
J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With Introduction, etc.,
by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th Edition.

THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GAR-
NETT, C.B., LL.D. 1th Edition.

THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS.
10th Edition.

THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS
SECCOMBE. 1th Edition, revised.

THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By Pro-
fessor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D. 12th Edition.

THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor
HUGH WALKER. 8th Edition.



LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

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1400 1580

BY

F. J. &NELL, M.A.

AUTHOR OF ' THE AGE OF CHAUCER,' ETC,

VOL. II
THE DRAMATISTS AND PROSE WRITERS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

JOHN W. HALES, M.A.

LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON ;
FORMERLY FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE




LONDON

G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1920



CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

THE DRAMATISTS.

CHAP.

I. MORALITY PLAYS AND INTERLUDES . .1

II. ORIGINS OF THE MODERN THEATRE . .22

THE PROSE-WRITERS.

I. LEADERS OF REFORM , , 43

II. CAXTON. ROMANCES AND NOVELS .... 76

III. THE RENAISSANCE IN PROSE ... .97

IV. HISTORICAL AND EPISTOLARY 130

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 15< 7

INDEX 161



INTRODUCTION.

CHAUCER'S Canterbury Tales assumed its present shape in
or about the year 1390; and the first three Books of Spen-
ser's Faerie Queene were published in 1590, so that almost
exactly two centuries separate these two great works. But
Chaucer lived on to 1400, and Spenser had made himself
a name some dozen years before the first part of his mag-
num opus was published; so that between the Epochs or
Ages of these poets a period of less than two centuries
only 179 or, in round numbers, 180 years intervenes. Yet
when Spenser looked back across the space of five genera-
tions that lay between him and Chaucer, the figure of his
famous predecessor stood out high and clear, unobstructed
by any forms of like or comparable dimensions. Many
forms were to be seen; but they were those of lesser though
not insignificant men. The dominating presence of our
literary past was undoubtedly Chaucer, and he had no
rival, however considerable the merits of many who had
flourished since his day and enjoyed a limited lordship,
which is still conceded them. Thus for Spenser as he grew
up there was no one whom he could call Master, no one to
whom he could do obeisance as to his king and sovereign,
except Chaucer; and at Chaucer's feet he was proud to sit
and his songs to ' lere.' In Spenser, his contemporaries
thought, and in spite of some carpings and some quite de-
fensible criticisms, his countrymen have ever since his



Vlll INTRODUCTION.

time thought, that poetry had revived again that a true
prophet had once more been raised up. He was welcomed
with acclamations, and at once placed on the throne that
had been so long empty. Whatever his defects and failures,
the Elizabethans and posterity recognized in him a
supreme imaginative power, and that in him the highest
poetic spirit that seemed to have passed away with Chaucer
was re-incarnated and re-instated.

Chaucer closes a great period; Spenser begins one; and,
as he begins it, confesses his reverence for the last great
monarch of English song, and how it is from him that he
has himself learnt to sing. Thus in the Shepherd's Calen-
dar he tells ' a tale of truth '

Which I conned of Tityrns in my youth,
Keeping his sheep on the hills of Kent,

and his friend ' E. K.' Edward Kirke notes that by
' Tityrus I suppose he means Chaucer, whose praise for
pleasant tales cannot die, so long as the memory of his
name shall live and the name of Poetry shall endure.'
Again, in the same poem, Spenser writes :

The God of Shepherds, Tityrus, is dead,
Who taught me homely, as I can, to make.
He, whilst he lived, was the sovereign head
Of shepherds all that been with love ytake.

Now dead he is, and lieth wrapt in lead,

(O ! why should Death on him such outrage show ?)

And all his passing skill with him is fled,

The fame whereof doth daily greater grow.

But, if on me some little drops would flow

Of that the Spring was in his learned head,

I soon would learn these woods to wail my woe,

And teach the trees their trickling tears to shed,

And again:



INTRODUCTION. IX

The gentle shepherd sat beneath a spring,

All in the shadow of a bushy brere,
That Colin hight, which well could pipe and sing,

For he of Tityrus his songs did lere.

When at last he sends his ' little Calendar ' into the world,
he bids it

Dare not to match thy pipe with Tityrns his stile.

No pupil ever revered and loved his master more fondly
than Spenser Chaucer. Their geniuses were profoundly
and utterly different, as is seen signally when Spenser
strangely essays to complete the story Chaucer has left
half told':

The story of Cambnscan bold
Of Camball and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride.

Spenser never dreamed of a more impossible thing than
that he could continue iu a harmonious manner anything
left unfinished by the poet so richly endowed with certain
gifts, as of humour and of dramatization, which he himself
so conspicuously lacked. As little, had their chronological
relations been reversed, could Chaucer have gone on with
the Fairy Queen in the Spenserian way; as little could
Thackeray have written a chapter of PickuricJc, or Tennyson
a page of the Ring and the Book. Yet such impossibilities
are quite consistent with fervent admiration. Dickens and
Thackeray, Tennyson and Browning highly appreciated
each other's work; but not one of them ever made the
mistake of attempting his compeer's manner. Conceive
Thackeray, had he been living, undertaking to complete
Edttrin Drood, or Dickens taking up and concluding Denis



X INTRODUCTION.

Duval\ But Spenser's passionate regard for the one great
lord of literature whose work he knew was such, that, not
without some misgiving and a humble apology it must be
allowed, he ventured to take up the reins that had fallen
abruptly from Chaucer's hands, and attempt to drive a
Chaucerian team:

Then pardon, most sacred happy spirit,
That I thy labours lost may thus revive,

[as if he fancied the Squire's Tale had once been written
to the end, but the latter part had not been preserved.]

And steal from thee the meed of thy due merit,
That none durst ever whilst thou was alive;
And being dead in vain yet many strive;
Ne dare I like, but, through infusion sweet
Of thine own spirit, which doth in me survive,

[a highly questionable assumption, to be soon very de-
cidedly negatived]

I follow here the footing of thy feet
That with thy meaning so I may the rather meet.

All these quotations bring vividly before us the fact that
to Spenser

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled,

On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed,

seemed the one regnant poet before him, and that the
years which had passed since his death had produced no one
of commanding eminence and distinction. So in a sense
Chaucer was still reigning, or rather he was the last of the
last dynasty of literature. He had left no heir, apparent or
presumptive. Thus the land was kingless, and was so to
remain till the advent of the very poet whose enthusiastic
appreciation of Chaucer's greatness we have just illus-
trated.



INTRODUCTION. xi

It is this interregnum this interval between Chaucer
and Spenser that the present work has for its subject-
matter. It is a period of profound interest and importance,
but not so much for the intrinsic and paramount excellence
of its productions, (for

' a Muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention '

inspired none of them, however real the charms and
at tractions of many) as for its being the age of transition
from the Middle Ages to modern times, and reflecting in
its literature this momentous movement, which affected
life in every department and direction, completely trans-
forming society in all its ways, habits, ideas. It was a
period of ruin and reconstruction, of falling to rise, of
dying to live, of perpetual decay and perpetual growth.

Now it is not to be expected that a great literature
should flourish in a period of this description. Inter arma
silent leges, says Cicero in one of his speeches. Certainly,
inter arma silent Musae; and, if we use the term arma in
the widest sense so as to include every variety of conflict,
not only military and material but intellectual and spirit-
ual, this adaptation of Cicero's saying is eminently applic-
able to long years of profound outer and inner revolution.
Now and then we may hear some sweet voice singing all
apart, but the song is short and is soon interrupted; that
is to say, lyrical poetry is not altogether extinct. One can
scarcely imagine its ever being so, whilst there is any life
at all in the nation. So long as there is not utter stagna-
tion and death, the lyrical cry must needs from time to
time escape meu's lips. But in ages of great disturbance
and convulsion nothing more in the way of poetry is likely
to be produced or can reasonably be listened for. No great
epic has a chance of being conceived and created in the



xii INTRODUCTION.

inidst of uproar and earthquake. Milton could uudertake
no such work amidst the clamour and confusion of the Civil
troubles of his day. He longed for ' a still time, when there
shall be no chiding.' He could not sing, however else he
could use his voice, ' in these noises.'

The period that now concerns us has perhaps scarcely
any parallel in English history in the multiplicity, the
profundity, the effectiveness of the changes through which
the country passed. There was indeed no solution of con-
tinuity; but the England of 1580 was wonderfully differ-
ent from the England of 1400. What a contrast between
the crushed Lollardry of the earlier era and the triumph-
ant Protestantism of the later. In the year 1408 Wycliffe's
translations of the Bible were directly condemned as un-
authorized 1 and inaccurate. Less than a century and a half
later the Bible in English was set forth with the King's
most gracious licence; and shortly afterwards an injunc-
tion issued by the King's authority, required the clergy to
provide in each parish ' one book of the whole Bible of the
largest volume in English,' the expense to be shared by the
priest and the parishioners. The Bible was to be set up in
some convenient place within the church, and the clergy
were directed to ' expressly provoke, stir and exhort every
person to read the same.' The removal of obstructions to
the free access to the Bible was an event of far more than

i The attempt recently made to disattach from "WyclifFe and his
followers the translations so long known as the Wycliffite seems
to us a complete failure. We have not time here to discuss the
question. We will only say that we rejoice it should have been
raised and thoroughly examined. The final result is undoubtedly
to make clearer than ever how great was the service done by
Wyclifl'e, Hereford and Purvey in making the Bible accessible to
all readers, and so acquainting them directly with the primary
documents of Christianity, that they might judge for themselves
of the relation of ' the Scriptures ' to the current Sacerdotalism.



INTRODUCTION. Xlll

ecclesiastical importance. It was a part orf an immense
movement for the enfranchising of the human spirit, not
yet perhaps completely effected, but which then made
memorable progress.

Briefly, the period now under our survey was one of
perpetual agitation and change in several essential respects.
Now and then the repressive and conservative forces may
seem to have prevailed. Some old tyranny or another may
seem for a time to have succeeded in holding its own
against the rising tide of inquiry and independence; it may
seem to have proclaimed with authority not to be denied,
' Thus far shalt thou go and no further,' or even ' Thus far
thou shalt not go, but backward thou shalt go to thy old-
time frontiers.' But on the whole, whatever occasional
misadventures and collapses there may have been, or seem
to have been, in the earnest revolt against long established
bondages, the march forward went steadily on; and at last
we find ourselves in a new era an era strangely contrast-
ing with the medieval. Certainly one cannot say that the
change was an unmixed good; what change ever is so?
What past centuries are there that had no virtues and excel-
lences ? at whose funerals no tear was shed, even by those
who welcomed most heartily the coming age? But we may
confidently say that the change was in the main unutter-
ably good, whatever irresistible admixture or taint of evil
may have stained its perfection and qualified its benefi-
cence.

How infinitely unquiet and turbid the times were we
may vividly assure ourselves by merely recalling the well-
known facts that in them took place the loss of our French
possessions, the Wars of the Roses, the death of Feudalism,
the consolidation of the kingdoms of Western Europe, the
application of gunpowder to warlike purposes, the capture
of Constantinople by ' the unspeakable Turk/ the inven-



JUV INTRODUCTION.

tion of the Printing Press, the rise of the New Learning
and 'the Oxford Reformers,' the Reformation, the dis-
covery of the New World and the exploration of little
known parts of the Old. Each one of these events, or
series of events, might well have a volume devoted wholly
to it. Certainly what is called 'the Renaissance' has as
yet not received adequate literary treatment. It is indeed
an enormous subject; and if, as is well urged, the re-
sults of it are not even yet finished and consummated,
an adequate literary treatment cannot, of course, yet be
expected. But to look onlj at those other events recapitu-
lated who could easily exaggerate their importance, their
power of transforming Church and State, and life in all its
shapes and aspects? To name any one of them is to suggest
a vast metamorphosis, political or social or ecclesiastical
or material or intellectual.

Clearly, one cannot reasonably expect a high artistic
literature from a period so utterly engrossed in such a
strange variety of far-reaching dissolutions and recoveries,
Its ideas were all in a state of unsettlement and uncer-
tainty. It was reluctant to let go its hold on the past, which
after all had done so much for it; and the face of the
future it could not distinctly see, whether it was to bless
or to curse. Naturally, it clung to the good it seemed to
have, and had some misgivings as to what would come in
its place. But, whatever its perplexities and fears, the
great world rolled on its appointed course ; and God ' ful-
filled himself ' in a new way one of His ' divers ways and
manners.'

No doubt this period was very imperfectly, or scarcely
at all, conscious of the illimitable changes through which
it was passing. It had no definite perception of what was
going away, and what was coming one day as it went by
seemed like another. The barons, who were hewing each



INTRODUCTION. XV

other to pieces on the York-and-Lancaster battle-fields,
iiever thought but their houses would endure for ever.
The teachers in their schools never imagined that the
quadrivium and the trivium would soon cease to satisfy
all the requirements of higher education. No one dreamt
of the revolution to be brought about by the vagrant Greek
scholars who were fleeing from falling Constantinople. Our
expulsion from France, where indeed we had no business
to be, afflicted England with deep shame and disgust; but
who ever calculated the consequences, social and national,
of what at the time stirred such hot indignation? The
act De Haeretico comburendo seemed to have answered its
narrow-minded purpose ; but what was the ultimate fruit
of it and of all such nefarious processes?

' Full oft 'tis seen

Oar means secure us, and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.'

That is, men and sects make themselves safe, as they
think, by the very enactments that finally undermine and
ruin them that make them detestable and infamous.
Who had any vision of the new England that was to spring
out of the ruins of the old? Who that felt the thick
darkness of the time, if any one did, had any anticipation
or hope of the bright Elizabethan dawn that was in course
of time to follow not a fleckless or cloudless dawn per-
haps, but a splendid exchange for the Marian horrors and
the many grievous troubles that had preceded them ?

The old system of things was waxing old as a garment.
As a vesture it was being changed, and changed for ever
changed for good. But few men, or none, had eyes to per-
ceive how the robes still in fashion were becoming thread-
bare and torn, a mere ' loop'd and window'd raggedness,'
v, holly unfit to defend their wearers from the seasons that

ii. 6



XV] INTRODUCTION.

were at baud. Sartor now, if ever, needed ito be resort us;
the world, if ever, needed a new suit of clothes, though it
it was not aware of the nakedness and destitution that
threatened it, and thought it might still make the old
tatters serve as a covering, by darning and patching and
piecing.

Those who were most serviceable in helping to provide
the new clothes, that were so sorely needed, showed often
the least apprehension of what they were about. Caxton,
for instance, had no idea whatever that he was ushering in
a new age. ' The Kingdom of God cometh not with obser-
vation.' Many great ameliorations of life come in un-
noticed and unsung. The famous printer was an earnest
admirer of the age of chivalry and all its habits and cus-
toms. It was one of his chief objects to perpetuate that
age to impart vigour to its fainting energies and to recall
the days of its glory. He had no inkling that its sun was
setting to rise no more. He saw what he thought was a
temporary languor, to be overcome by will and resolution.
In his Book of the Order of Chivalry, printed in or about
1484, he fervently appeals to his knightly contemporaries
to rouse themselves, and revive their ancient discipline
and fame:

1 Oh, ye Knights of England, where is the custom and usage of
noble chivalry that was used in those days [the days of the
heroes of the old Romances]? What do ye now but go to the
baynes [batbs], and play at dice? And some, not well advised,
use not honest and good rule, against all order of knighthood.
Leave this, leave it! and read the noble volumes of St. Graal,
of Lancelot, of Galaad, of Tristram, of Perse Forest, of Per.
cival, of Oawain, and many more; there shall ye see man-
hood, courtesy, and gentleness. And look in latter days of the
noble acts sith the Conquest, as in King Richard's days Cosur
de Le"on, Edward I. and III. and his noble sons, Sir Robert
Knolles, Sir John Hawkwood, Sir John Chandos, Sir Qualter



INTRODUCTION. xvii

Manny. Read Froissart; and also behold that victorious and
noble King Henry V. and the captains under him, his noble
brethren, the earls of Salisbury, Montagu, and many other,
whose names shine gloriously by their vertuous noblesse and
acts that they did in the honour of the order of chivalry. Alas I
what do ye but sleep and take ease, and are all disordered
from chivalry? How many knights be there now in England
that have the use and the exercise of a knight ? that is to wit,
that he kuoweth his horse and his horse him; that is to say, he
being ready at a point to have all things that belongeth to a
knight, an horse that is according and broken after his hand,
his armour and harness suit, and so forth ei cetera. I suppose an
a due search should be made, there should be manyfounden that
lack; the more pity isl I would it pleased our sovereign Lord
that twice or thrice a year, or at the least once, he would cry
jousts of peace, to the end that every knight should have horse
and harness, and also the use and craft of a knight, and also to
tourney one against one, or two against two; and the best to
have a prize, a diamond, or a jewel, such as should please the
prince. This should cause gentlemen to resort to the ancient
customs of chivalry to great form and renown; and also to
be always ready to serve their prince when he shall call them,
or have need.'

Yet Caxton, for all his adjurations in favour of a social
order that was vanishing, was doing more than anybody
else to bring in a new and quite different culture. The re-
sult of the printing press was, so to speak, to relay the
bases of society. It was to destroy the exclusiveness that
was the baneful characteristic of the old knighthood. It
was to extend the sense of brotherhood, and so to diminish
and suppress the privileges of a class often insolent and
overweening in its self-importance. It was to give scholar-
ship and learning a new and a worthier place in the esti-
mation of men. In fact, of chivalry in the old mediaeval
sense as an oligarchic body, who but Caiton hastened the
ise; who but Caxton rang the



xviii INTRODUCTION.

Not that anything Caxton could have done or abstained
from doing, could have kept alive the order of chivalry, as
he conceived it. When he was working in his ' chapel ' at
Westminster, full of enthusiasm as to his imported inven-
tion, but without the faintest dream of what it was to
accomplish in the future, chivalry, as he knew it, was
quickly and irrevocably passing away. It lay sick and
swooning and dying:

' All his face was white
And colourless, find like the wither'd moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'cl with drops
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls,
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from his dais- throne, were parch'd with dust;
Or clotted into points and hanging loose
Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.
So like a shatter'd column lay the King;
Not like that Arthur, who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro' the lists at Gamelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of Kings.'

The characteristic conservatism of the human and of the
English race unquestionably retarded the development of
all the various changes we have mentioned. Caxton was
indeed a typical Englishman. We were slow to abandon
our old idols and leave their shrines unfrequented. Cer-
tainly it is not well to be too hasty in burning what was
adored and in adoring what was burnt. And no such mis-
take was made in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Very slowly were new temples erected, and
crowded with worshippers who were finally dissatisfied
with the old ritual. How slowly, to lay aside metaphor,
changes were made is excellently illustrated by the history



INTRODUCTION. xix

of certain innovations in our military equipment by the
history of fire-arms:

More than two centuries elapsed, [writes Eichard Brooke
in his well-informed paper on The General Use of Fire-arms ly
the English in the Fifteenth Century,] after the common appli-
cation of gunpowder to warlike purposes in Europe, before the
English and other European nations entirely relinquished the
use of bows and arrows, and in lieu of them but by slow degrees
adopted the use of fire-arms.

Archery J 'or the purposes of war had notbeen altogether abandoned
in (his country, even at tJte breaking out of the Civil War in the
reign of Charles I. [The italics are ours.]

It has been correctly remarked by Mr. Grose in his Military
Antiquities that there is amongst old soldiers a great dislike to
innovations, because, by adopting new weapons and conse-
quently a new exercise, the old and expert soldiers find them-