Spanish for a friend, was haled before the Inquisitors and
spent five years in their dungeons, where he wrote his
beautiful book of devotion called ' The Names of Christ.'
It was impossible that a great or original literature should
flourish under such cramping terrors. Everywhere outside
the domain of mere frivolity we find a timidity, a shrinking
from full expression, from serious inquiry. When we look
through the books, * from the abject title-pages and dedi-
cations of the authors themselves, through the crowd of
certificates collected from their friends to establish the
orthodoxy of works that were often as little connected
with religion as fairy tales, down to the colophon suppli-
cating pardon for any unconscious neglect of the authority
of the Church, or any too free use of classic mythology, we
are continually oppressed with painful proofs, not only how
completely the human mind was enslaved in Spain, but
. how grievously it had become cramped and crippled by the
chains it had so long worn.' *
^ Ticknor, History of Spanish Literatwre, vol. i. p. 480.
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Thus did the Catholic Eeaction, which, with its Jesuits
and its Inquisition, formed the * last great phenomenon ot
the Spanish Renaissance/ crush out all that was best and
most living in the national literature.
Section V. — In Germany
We need not pause over the German literature of this
period. Even in Art, where Germany most felt the stir-
rings of the Eenaissance spirit, the dominant note was still
Gothic and mediseval. Her best literary activity was, for
the most part, either squandered in the interminable dis-
putes of the Humanists, or swallowed up in the quagmire
of religious controversy. There was, it is true, a vigorous
undergrowth of popular literature ; but even here, whether
in such famous satires as * Das Narrenschiff ' (by Sebastian
Brandt, published 1494), or ' Eulenspiegel' (by Murner,
published 1519), or in the innumerable homely verses
of Hans Sachs, the shoemaker and Meistersinger, or even
in the hymns of the Protestants, we find very little that
is modern in its tone, very little that marks out this
period as the beginning of a new era.
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CHAPTER V
THE BI8E OF THE DBAMA
The most characteristic of the direct products of the
Renaissance, with the exception of Italian art, was the
national Drama, as it was developed in England and Spain.
Characteristic, because life itself was to the men of the
Renaissance of the nature of a pageant, a splendid show.
Their passionate, vehement spirits, their sensuous beauty-
loving natures, could best find utterance and satisfaction
in the rant and fury, and in the voluptuous strongly-
painted scenes of love and passion of their Theatre. Their
affected euphuistic speech, their very dress, with its
picturesque extravagance, show how stroi^g in them was
the dramatic instinct.
The magnificent drama of the sixteenth century was
not the climax of a gradual development; we can put
The quick o^^ hands on the first tragedy and the first
^^^^t^^ comedy. It sprang into existence as the result
the drama of the meeting of two elements, an old and a
new. The old element was of course the religious repre-
sentation, with such rudimentary secular drama as had
grown out of it ; and the new was the influence of the
classic dramatists, especially Seneca and Plautus. To
these elements we must add a third, in the vigorous
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national genius which could take the two and fuse them
in the fire of its imagination, giving them strength and
glow and vitality. It can easily be shown that neither
from the religious plays alone, nor yet from the classical,
could the modern drama have been evolved.
Wherever the Catholic faith spread, with its festivals
and its significant, almost dramatic, ceremonial, it was
found helpful, in days when few could read, and
religious minds were not very receptive, to supplement
^*^*^ and emphasize the teaching of the Church by
acting the simple stories of the Bible before the people.
At first these were represented by the clergy in the
churches, and were in Latin. They were as simple and
devout as the visit to the crib at Christmastide in Roman
churches now. But, as time went on, they became longer
and more elaborate. Latin gave place to the vernacular,
a certain amount of scenery was required — especially if it
was desired to represent Heaven, Earth, and Hell, in a
stage of three stories ; and it was found more convenient to
hold the performances in secular buildings. In England,
where these plays were ruder than in France, they were
often played on a rough stage, which was wheeled about
the streets, into which the action was allowed to overflow.
It will easily be understood how, in order to popularise
these plays among an ignorant people, a certain amount of
licence was permitted to creep into the dialogue — lively
repartee between the good and bad characters, or a bit of
rough-and-tumble play among the bad or less important
ones. There was nothing incongruous to the mediaeval
mind in this mingling of pure buffoonery with the most
sacred subjects.
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The fifteenth century was the most flourishing time for
the religious plays. By this time they were divided, in
France, and less regularly in England, into three dijBTerent
kinds : the ' Mystery,' representing scenes from the life of
our Lord ; the ' Miracle,' which dealt with the acts of the
saints ; and the * Morality ' (a later development), in which
abstract personifications of vices and virtues were intro-
duced. The ' Moralities,' dull as they seem to us, were in
accord with the allegorizing temper of the age, and were
extremely popular. They were often of inordinate length,
taking days and even weeks to perform. They were
enlivened by the tricks of a stock comic character, the Vice
(prototype of the Fool of the regular drama), between
whom and his master, the Devil, a lively interchange of
words and blows was kept up. These plays retained their
popularity long into the sixteenth century. It was not
until 1547 that the Confrairie de la Passion (who had
been licensed in 1402 to perform Mysteries in Paris) had
their licence taken away on account of their buffoonery
and irreverence. Thenceforward religious plays were for-
bidden in Paris, but they survived long afterwards in other
parts of France.
Other plays existed, however, closely allied to these.
It was only a step from enlivening a religious theme with
its secular * comic interlude, to presenting such an interlude
ofEshoots Qj. farce by itself. In France, these farces were
particularly good ; one of the best known is * Maitre Pierre
Pathelin' (published 1490), a very amusing little play,
written in octosyllabic metre, in which the wit and satire
compare well with the clumsy buffoonery of its English
contemporaries. The Morality lent itself very easily to
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secularization, and was an admirable vehicle for satire.
Many of the later specimens contain hardly any moral
teaching, but are directed against political or social evils.
These plays were acted in Paris by the Basochiens^ the
law-clerks of the Basoche, who were formed into a guild
by Philip the Fair in 1303, and who became so personal
and unbridled in their satire that, in 1516, they were for-
bidden to refer to princes or princesses of the Court. In
1536 all personal reference was forbidden, and in 1538
they were required to submit the MSS. of proposed plays
to a Court censor. A peculiar development of the Morality
was the * Sotie ' or ' Folly,' played by a company of young
Parisian gentlemen calling themselves Les Enfans sans
Scmci, A very interesting play, which unites in a tetralogy
all these species, was * Le Prince des Sots et la M^re Sotte,'
Gringore, c. ^7 Grringore, who himself took the stock part of
1475-1688 the ' M^re Sotte.' The play was produced in
1511, and consists of (1) the ' Cry,' summoning all fools to
see the prince of fools play on Shrove Tuesday ; (2) the
' Folly,' a satire directed against the Pope and the clergy ;
(3) the ' Morality,' chiefly political ; (4) the * Faroe,' which
was of a licentious character.
The English had the equivalent of these secular plays in
their farces and interludes. A famous writer of the latter
Henry species in the beginning of the century was
Heywood Henry Hey wood. One of his interludes, which
was played before Henry VIII. in 1535, bore the title * Of
Gentylnesse and Nobylyte : a Dialogue between the Mar-
chaunt, the Ejiyght and the Plowman, compiled in manner
of an Enterlude with divers Toys and Gestes added thereto,
to make mery Pastime and Disport.'
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The old plays of Germany were much the same as those
in England, except that the religious and the comic ele-
ments were less mixed together, the latter being
Sachs, confined to the Fastnachts-sjdel or carnival play
(e.g, the ' Apotheosis of Pope Joan,' 1480). The
most famous producer, both of these plays and an enor-
mous number of others, sacred and profane, was Hans
Sachs^ the Meistersinger of Nuremberg.
In Italy the development was somewhat different.
Instead of miracle and mystery plays (though the Passion
was occasionally represented from early times) we
plays in find Lavdesi, a species of dramatic religious office,
*^ chaunted by confraternities such as the Bisci-
jplinati di OesH, As the dramatic element in these increased
they were called Divozioni, and were represented with more
elaborate staging ; and finally they were developed into the
Sacra Bappresentazione, an extremely elaborate religious
pageant peculiar to Florence in and after the days of Lorenzo
the Magnificent, who himself wrote the words for one which
was acted by his children. The words of most of these
shows possess little dramatic force, the interest all centring
in the pageant, and the costly elaborate staging, such as
Florence had always been famous for. A nearer approach
was made to the true drama when it became a frequent
thing to dramatise — instead ofan orthodox religious legend
— a romantic story in which the hero or heroine displays
in a high degree some Christian virtue. The Italian
religious plays had nothing of the grotesque popular
element of those in the North. The popular play of the
Interlude type is there best represented by the Neapolitan
fa/rsa^ which might well, under more favourable circum-
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stances, have developed into true national comedy. That
it did not, and that the true drama arose neither in Italy,
where the religious representation had most of pomp and
splendour, nor in France, where it was most scientifically
organised, is significant, as showing that it is not in the
mediaeval play alone that we must look for its origin. It
needed the electrifying contact of the strength, the skill,
the constructive power of the old drama to take up the
human interest and the raciness of the native stage, and
shape it into regular comedy or tragedy. The failure of
French and Italian dramatists of the Renaissance lay in
the fact (among other causes too psychological to be dis-
cussed in this brief outline) that they could not realise
that the classic form was inadequate by itself, without
the popular native element.
In Italy the presentation of plays in Latin, either
those of Seneca, Plautus, and Terence, or others written in
The imitation of them, was as old as Humanism
classical itself. Petrarch is said to have written a Latin
play
{a) tragedy comedy. When, in the revival of Italian at the
end of the fifteenth century, plays began to be written in
the native tongue, the same models were retained. In
their unfortunate choice of Seneca, the Humanists, who
never seemed to appreciate the pre-eminence of Greek over
Latin, were actuated by a belief that he had improved upon
the form of the Greek drama, forgetting that his plays
were written for recitation not acting. Scorning native
humour as provincial, they produced plays on the
strictest classical lines: i,e, with close attention to the
unities; division into five acts; few characters; little
or no change of scene ; no action except in the reports
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of messengers ; a moralising chorus ; and interminable
monologues. Trissino was one of the first of these writers
of regular drama. His tragedy * Sofonisba/
though not acted until 1562, was probably
written about the same time as Rucellai's * Rosmunda/
which was performed before Leo X. at Florence in 1515.
Speron Sperone's * Canace ' belongs to the same category
of plays written by pedants in their studies : plays con-
cocted by a strict mechanical following of the rules of
Aristotle and Horace — scholastic exercises, showing how
well the author knew his lesson, but how little he knew or
cared about human nature; their characters are mere
automata, with no vitality, no sympathy, no pulse of blood
in them. It is not that the plots are wanting in excite-
ment. Horrible tales of murder and lust were dramatised.
But from a mistaken zeal for Horace's warning dogma,
none of these stirring events are permitted to happen on
the stage. The usual plan is something of this sort :
Act I. consists of a lengthy conversation full of senten-
tious rhetoric between the hero and his valet; Act II.
of a similar conversation between the heroine and her
confidante ; in Act III. one of the parents discusses
the situation with his or her own servant ; in Act IV.
two of the servants moralise together on the subject;
and in Act V. a messenger enters and announces all
the catastrophes that have happened at last, but out of
sight. This is the type to which our own first tragedy,
' Gorboduc,' belongs. This play, which is usually
ascribed to Sackville and Norton, was produced
in January 1562, at the Christmas festivities of the Inner
Temple, when the Lord of Misrule rode through London
J^ 2
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in gilt harness with a hundred horse, and gentlemen
* riding gorgeously with chains of gold/ In France, Du
Bellay's call for good drama was responded to by a
young member of the PUiade^ Etienne Jodelle,
another of those ardent Renaissance spirits whose
short lives burnt themselves out, consumed by a hunger
for mastery in every domain of human knowledge. Jodelle
produced, in 1552, at the same time and with great ^daty
the first French tragedy and the first French comedy.
The tragedy was ' Cleopatre,' which has all the character-
istics mentioned above, and especially the interminable
soliloquies. Six years later he produced another tragedy,
* Didon,' written entirely in Alexandrines, a metre which
was thenceforward established in France as the correla-
tive of our blank verse. The classical tragedy was
Gamier, brought to perfection by Gamier, who made a
1584-1590 ^Q^ departure in his choice of a story from
Atriosto for his play * Bradamante,' as well as in the
combining of tragic and comic elements, and who reached,
in ' Les Juives ' and others of his eight tragedies, a very
high level of impassioned dignified poetry.
In Spain the classical drama met with as little encourage-
ment as in England. Two tragedies on the Senecan model
were produced by Bermudez (1577), who called them the
first Spanish Tragedies ; but a far more living and national
drama was, as we shall see, already in possession of the stage.
The classical comedy was inevitably less artificial than
the tragedy. Plautus was the model, and, in Italy,
Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Aretino the principal
authors. In their plays, instead of the real, if
undeveloped, humour of the native farce, we find the stock
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classic situations — the changing of children, confusions of
sex, discoveries of lost relatives — always complication
instead of plot; and the stock comic characters — the
parasite, the slave, the courtesan. We may ask how it
was that an Italian audience, however courtly and learned
it might be, could find enjoyment in the presentment of
plays so formal and unreal, for the Italians had their full
share of the Renaissance love of gaiety and life. We find
the answer, partly in the real enthusiasm for the classics
which was diffused among them ; partly in the extreme
licentiousness of these plays, which, though revolting to a
modem reader, probably stimulated the jaded appetite of
that corrupt society ; partly in the fact that the classical
plays were frequently presented in a setting of music and
dancing, of scenery painted by a Raphael — in fact, of all
the accessories of an elaborate masque. These were not
woven into the comedy, but were introduced at the begin-
ning and end and between the acts. Aretino, as one
would expect from his combined audacity and ignorance,
broke away from the stereotyped form, and refused to be
fettered by classical restraints. It is unfortunate that he
did not possess suflScient genius to set going a real
national comedy ; but he was entirely occupied in giving
pictures of the basest side of the private life of dissipated
prelates and vicious nobles. There was a third species of
drama in Italy which contained far more promise
pastoral than either the tragedy or the comedy ; this was
drama ^j^^ pastoral drama (the parent of the Opera) of
which Politian's exquisite 'Orfeo' (1472) is the first
example, and which was brought to perfection in the
* Aminta ' of Tasso, and the ' Pastor Fido' of Guarini. Here
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we find the music and pageantry of the masque wedded
to the sweetest lyric poetry, forming an idyllic whole,
which, in its enervating beauty, was far better suited to the
Italian temperament of the sixteenth century than was
the strenuous activity of the real drama.
Jodelle's first comedy was entitled 'Eugene.' It is
much more interesting and more in tune with national
sentiment than his tragedies. Real originality and humour
appear in the comedies of Larivey ; but, instead of applying
his vigorous wit and literary power to the production of
original plays, he contented himself with free translations
from Italian. The French comedy was certainly the least
spiritless of the products of the Humanistic drama ; but
classical and Italian influence lay heavily on all the writers,
and their work is always foreign and artificial. It was only
in England, and in a less degree in Spain, that the full
tide of Renaissance vigour was turned into a national
drama.
For a while in England the two streams flowed side by
side. The people had their rough-and-tumble interludes
in the inn-yards and on the village greens, while
drama in at the Court, at the Universities, at the Inns of
^^ *^ Court, and in great houses, classical plays were
enacted, and plays from the Italian, such as Gascoigne's
* Supposes ' from the ' Suppositi ' of Ariosto. To all
appearance the English stage was in the same condition
as those of France and Italy, except that here the
popular plays were even ruder, and the classical plays
more formal. But the attitude of the middle-class to-
wards the drama was different in England from what it
was in those countries. There was not the same wide-
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spread enthusiasm for the ancients as in Italy ; Humanism
had shaken oflF much of its pedantry before it reached
our shores, and had become identified with general culture ;
but general culture had not permeated far enough to
make books a popular source of entertainment. Again,
the drama is ill-suited to a languid, enervated race. It is
more strenuous than other forms of literature, and makes a
greater demand upon the intellectual powers both of author
and audience. England was the youngest and strongest of
the nations. If it had been the most straitly bound under
the Feudal yoke, the reaction was all the more violent. The
exuberance and intoxication which we associate with the
Eenaissance were especially English. The turbulent pas-
sionate spirit of the people demanded a popular drama, and
it was oflfering it a stone for bread to put before it * Gor-
boduc ' and plays of its type. The formless but lively
chronicle plays and farces were preferred. But already
(about 1540) a genuine English comedy was in existence.
UdaU, c. * Ralph Royster Doister ' was written by Nicholas
1506-1656 UdaU, head-master of Eton, for his boys to act
at Christmas time. Udall had already written and trans-
lated Latin plays, and so had caught the classical spirit
(which is shown in the regularity of the plot of * Ralph
Royster Doister,' and in the characters, two of whom belong
to the classic stock) ; but this is a thoroughly national
comedy. It is a merry, decent play, much superior in
language and construction to our second comedy * Gammer
Gurton's Needle.' This was the first English play to be
represented at either University, being played at Cam-
bridge about 15G&. It is ascribed to John Still, Bishop of
Bath and Wells, and contains the famous drinking song.
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'Back and sides go bare, go bare.' Both these early
comedies are in a loose rhyming metre.
The courtly, scholarly plays were performed before the
Queen (who had a keen appreciation of them) and other
rpi^Q fashionable people, by the Children of the Chapel
players Eoyal, of whom Richard Edwards, the dramatist,
was Master, and by the Children of St. Paul's, of Windsor,
and of Westminster. But there were other players, who
formed themselves into companies as the ' servants ' of this
or that noble, and who played for the public entertainment ;
and these did not confine themselves to classical plays,
rpi^g Their theatres were most often the courtyards of
theatre inns, a stage being erected at one end, while the
gallery of the floor above helped to form the setting. In
May 1574, the Earl of Leicester, in spite of the opposition
of the civic authorities, procured for his own * servants '
(who included the famous Burbadge) the first royal patent
to play comedies, etc. in London, 'except in time of
common prayer or plague.' Passionately devoted as the
mass of English people were to pageantry of every kind,
there was a very strong Puritan section which was as
violently opposed to it, and which, especially by its repre-
sentatives in the City Council, contested every step of the
way in the ensuing rapid advance of the drama. The
consequence of this opposition was that when Burbadge
built the first theatre, in 1576, it was erected at Blackfriars,
outside the City walls. In the same year two other
theatres were erected outside the walls, at Shoreditch, the
* Theatre ' and the * Curtain ' In the next year, a year of
plague, a preacher at St. Paul's Cross speaks of the
* sumptuous theatre houses,' and adds : * The cause of
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THE RISE OF THE DRAMA 163
plagues is sin, and the cause of sin are playes, therefore
the cause of plagues are playes.' Plays were performed by
daylight, and at first only on Sundays and Holy days ; but
in 1583 Sunday performances were forbidden. Ten years
later the theatre which we most associate with Shakespeare,
a hexagonal building called the * Globe,' was commenced by
the Blackfriars Company at Bankside, and the old Black-
friars theatre was given up to the use of the Children of
the Chapel Royal. Before we pass from the buildings to
the plays, we may remind the reader that female parts
were still played by boys, and that the people's theatres
had none of the gorgeous dressing and elaborate scenery
of the Court masques, the name of the place painted on a
board serving as often as not to indicate the scene. There
were few properties and few supers ; a troop of cavalry
might be represented by two or three men, each astride ot
a broomstick hung with cloth. The common people stood
in the pit, exposed to the weather, while the * quality ' sat
about the stage. Such were the primitive conditions
under which the most magnificent drama of the world was
produced.
Early in the eighties the English stage was still in a
chaotic condition, and Sidney — feeling the rudeness of the
farce, the shapelessness of the chronicle, and the hopeless
(and, in his opinion, undeserved) unpopularity of the
classical plays— penned his censure of it as * observing
rules neither of honest civility nor skilful poetry.' But