Henry Chettle (1565–1607) was a pamphleteer and dramatist who edited Greene's Groats-worth of Wit (1592; see above at page 327), wrote thirteen plays of considerable merit (one of which, Hoffmann, was reprinted in 1851), and was partauthor (with Dekker, Ben Jonson, Day, Webster, and others) of thirty-five others, including Robin Hood, Patient Grissill, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, and Jane Shore. Patient Grissill, apparently by Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton, is based on an English prose version of Boccaccio's story, and on a ballad founded on that; but there are marked alterations and great additions for dramatic effect. Many of the characters are Welsh, and speak the broken English we know from some of Shakespeare's plays. Besides the ordeal to which Grissill is subjected, there is a subordinate experiment (unsuccessful) by Sir Owen to subdue the spirit of Gwenthian. It has been argued (as by Hübsch in his edition of the play in the Erlanger Beiträge, xv., 1893) that both plots, as well as the phrase, 'To tame a shrew,' which occurs four times in this piece, may have influenced Shakespeare in his Taming of the Shrew; though, on the other hand, Shakespeare may have been first in the field- the dates of both plays are doubtful; and the too plentiful Welsh-English jargon in Patient Grissill, as well as single phrases like 'pribles and prables,' would, if we knew Grissill to be the earlier play, almost prove that it had helped to mould the talk of Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The marquis-lover thus describes the perfections of Grissill, the poor basketmaker's daughter : See where my Grissill and her father is ; Me thinkes her beautie, shining through those weedes, Seemes like a bright starre in the sullen night. How lovely povertie dwels on her backe! Did but the proud world note her as I doe, She would cast off rich robes, forsweare rich state, To clothe them in such poore abiliments. And later he complacently records the result of his experiments thus : I tried my Grissills patience when twas greene, Like a young osier, and I moulded it Like waxe to all impressions. Married men That long to tame their wives must curbe them in, Before they need a bridle; then they'll proove All Grissills, full of patience, full of love. His picaresque novel, Pierce Plainnes Seaven Yeres Prentishib (1595), came but a year after Nash's Jack Wilton. Anonymous Plays. From the diary of Philip Henslowe (d. 1616) it appears that between 1591 and 1597 upwards of a hundred different plays were performed by four of the ten or eleven theatrical companies which then existed. Henslowe, successively a dyer, money-lender, pawnbroker (who advanced money and dresses to the players), and owner of house property, had much to do with the building and management of theatres. Chapman, Drayton, Dekker, and other well-known dramatists had works of theirs produced under his management, but not Shakespeare, who was mainly connected with other management. Most of the plays named by him are lost; but several good dramas of this golden age have descended to us, the authors of which are unknown or only guessed at. Several there were, without authority, attributed to Shakespeare; a few possess merit enough to have by serious critics been considered first sketches by Shakespeare. Most of them were republished in Dodsley's Old Plays. Among the most notable are The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The London Prodigal, The Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cromwell, The Birth of Merlin, The Widow of WatlingStreet, Mucedorus, Locrine, Arden of Feversham, The Misfortunes of Arthur, Edward III., The Two Noble Kinsmen, &c. The latter two have scenes in which versification and dialogue are wonderfully Shakespearian: in the Noble Kinsmen Mr Lee thinks there are frequent and unmistakable signs of Shakespearian work. Of the comedies the Merry Devil of Edmonton is the best (edited by Warnke and Proescholdt, Halle, 1884, and by Walker for Dent, 1897). Hazlitt thought it was 'assuredly not unworthy of Shakespeare' (though the 'Merry Devil,' a magician called Fabell, has no real share in the plot); and Charles Lamb thought it written to make the reader happy.' The Birth of Merlin is probably an old play worked up by Rowley, possibly with help from Middleton; the Misfortunes of Arthur seems to be mainly by Thomas Hughes (page 333). Arden of Feversham (printed 1592), the most important of a series of what Mr Bullen calls murder-plays, is founded on the story, told at length by Holinshed, of a murder which took place in 1551. Alice, the unfaithful wife of Arden, a Kentish gentleman, joined with her paramour Mosbie and two assassins in murdering her husband. Alice was a step-daughter of Sir Edward North, father of the translator; Mosbie, a tailor by trade, was a servant of Lord North. In 1770 a local Faversham editor of the plays argued strongly that it was Shakespeare's. Tieck translated it into German as a genuine production of Shakespeare. Mr Swinburne inclines to the belief that it may have been the work of Shakespeare's youth; and Mr Bullen (who edited Arden in 1887) thinks Shakespeare may have revised and improved an older version into this shape (adding single lines and longer passages in the extract given below), though there is no evidence that he did. Symonds, who values the piece almost as highly as does Mr Swinburne, thought it safer meanwhile to be content to rank it amongst anonymous works. We subjoin one touching scene between Alice and her paramour-a scene of mutual recrimination, guilt, and tenderness : Mr Mosbie. How now, Alice? What, sad and passionat ? Make me partaker of thy pensivenes: Fyre divided burnes with lesser force. Alice. But I will damme that fire within my brest, Till by the force thereof my part consume, Ah Mosbie ! Mos. Such deep pathaires like to a Cannons burst, Discharg'd against a ruinated wall, Breake my relenting heart in thousand pieces. It is not love, that loves to anger love. Al. It is not love, that loves to murther love. Al. Thou knowest how dearely Arden loved me. Al. And then-conceale the rest, for tis too bad, Lest that my words be carried with the wind, And publisht in the world to both our shames. I pray thee, Mosbie, let our Spring-time wither, Al. Ay, to my former happy life againe : I was bewitched, woe worth the haples howre, Mos. Nay, if thou ban, let me breathe curses forth, And if you stand so nicely at your fame, Let me repent the credit I have lost. I have neglected matters of import, That would have stated me above thy state: Ay, fortune's right hand Mosbie hath forsooke, To take a wanton giglote by the left. I left the mariage of an honest maid, Whose dowry would have weyed down all thy wealth, Go get thee gone, a copsemate for thy hyndes, companion Al. Ay, now I see, and too soone find it trew, If thou cry warre, there is no peace for me, And burne this prayer booke, which I here use, And hould no other sect but such devotion. And hearde as quickly as the fearefull hare, Mos. Ah, how you women can insinuate, And cleare a trespasse with your sweete set tongue! I will forget this quarrel, gentle Ales, Provided I'le be tempted so no more. The word 'pathaires' is a crux. Some assume it to be a form of petarre or petard; others get a better sense by taking 'deep pathaires' as a misprint for 'deep-fet aires,' deep-fetched breaths or sighs, like Shakespeare's 'deep-fet groans.' Mr The Yorkshire Tragedy, another domestic tragedy or murder-play, coarser and cruder, was-impudently-printed with Shakespeare's name in 1608, and included in the 1664 folio. Schlegel, Dyce, and Collier thought they recognised passages which only Shakespeare could have written. Bullen thinks it stands apart from the other murderplays and has nothing in common with them : 'A storm of frenzy sweeps over the stage, and we see a maniac raging furiously, and shudder as the victims fall before his violence. The ravings of Bedlam are mellow music to the murderer's curses in the Yorkshire Tragedy. The play, based on Stow, turns on the actual murder of his two children and the attempted murder of his wife by Walter Calverley, a Yorkshire squire, who was pressed to death for the crime in 1605. This despairing utterance by the unhappy wife gives a powerful picture of a luckless, reckless gambler: What will become of us? That Riot's child must needs be Beggary. On Arden of Feversham and the Yorkshire Tragedy, see the chapter on 'Domestic Tragedy' in Mr J. A. Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors (1884), and Mr A. H. Bullen's introduction to his edition of Arden (1887). The first is given from the old text, the latter from the modernised version, edited by Collier, with the punctuation altered. William Warner, born apparently in Yorkshire about 1558, studied at Oxford and became an attorney of the Common Pleas, but from 1585 was known as an author, and died in 1609. He published a series of prose tales called Pan his Syrinx in 1585; he translated from Plautus; and in 1586 came before the public with his famous Albion's England, a kind of rhyming history with interludes and disquisitions; but the history is not exactly history, and the poetry very seldom what it nevertheless seems to have been taken for, though here and there are pithy lines and phrases and episodes well thought out. The work, written in long couplets of fourteen-syllable lines, is managed with some dexterity, but on the whole is shambling, tedious, and monotonous. Yet, though prohibited at first-on the ground of the indelicacy of certain passages, it is said-it was wonderfully well received; quite surprisingly so, since by the time it appeared Sir Philip Sidney's work was done (though not published), the Faerie Queene was being written, and Shakespeare was at work in London. Meres, one of the most often quoted of contemporary critics, expressly says Spenser and Warner 'be Our chief heroical makers,' and tells us the best wits of Oxford and Cambridge call Warner our English Homer,' and compare him with Euripides! Nash felt confident that Warner had 'in no whit disparaged' English poetry. Before 1612 there had been six editions of Albion's England, every new issue having additions bringing the work down to date, or introducing foreign matters; so that, whereas the first edition had but four books, the sixth had sixteen. The dedication explains the name of the work and its scope: This our whole Iland, anciently called Brutaine, but more anciently Albion, presently containing two Kingdomes, England and Scotland, is cause (right Honourable) that to distinguish the former, whose onely occurrents I abridge from our Historie, I entitle this my book Albion's England.' It begins, nevertheless, with the division of the world after the Flood, takes in some classical mythology, and so reaches the fabulous history of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Brute (whence the spelling Brutaine), the grandson of Eneas and founder of the British monarchy. Arbitrary and elliptical selections from actual history appear from the fifth book on, with curious episodes. Thus Curan, a Dansk prince, falls in love with Argentile, a princess of Northumberland, dispossessed by a cruel uncle; turns 'kitchin drudge' that he may woo her, but is rejected; loses sight of her when she flees from court, and, becoming a shepherd, makes love to her (successfully) under the impression that he is making suit to a 'countrie wench.' The story, given as part of the history of Northumbria, occupies five out of the twenty pages devoted to the whole history of the Heptarchy and of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England. It seems impossible to believe that Warner is not here giving a rechauffé of some version of the old English poem Havelok the Dane (see page 44). The cruel uncle, the Danish prince who becomes a kitchen drudge, and other elements even the parallel between Argentile and Goldburgh, though Curan rather suggests Horn-seem to put out of court Mr Sidney Lee's belief that the coincidence is accidental. This episode has been specially praised and reprinted or imitated. William Webster plagiarised it in 1617; it was used for the plot of a play attributed to John Webster and Rowley, and for another by William Mason; it was made into a ballad; and it was included by Percy in his Reliques, as was also the episode of the Patient Countess.' In Warner's account of the reign of Henry VII., the unfortunate daughter of the Earl of Huntly who was married to Perkin Warbeck is permitted to tell, to the length of six pages, the sad tale how a Scottish knight became distraught through his wife's disloyalty, and to record the distraught conversation of the poor man. Hereon follow the loves, jealousies, and feuds of the Owl, the Cuckoo, the Swallow, and the Bat, with arguments between them and adventures that to them befell. This again is so foreign to Warner's native turn of mind that it seems he was working up relics of some old allegorical poem of the Owl and Nightingale type. There is a good deal about the King of Spain and the Pope, the Inquisition, and the Civil Wars in France; the adventures of Sir John Mandeville fill a long series of chapters; and the first part of the work winds up with a disquisition against atheists, and a summary of physics, ethics, and natural theology. The Continuance of 1606 wandered away from England to the Picts and Scots, Macbeth and Fleance, and to the history of Wales, but returns to contemporary English history in the Gunpowder Plot. Occasional 'merrie jestes' are of unconventional broadness. Warner sometimes introduces a story in the words of a northerner, and wields the Yorkshire dialect with good effect. The story of the execution of Mary cares, And fitteth finging care away, till he to bed be got. There fleeps he foundly all the night, forgetting Morrow [wares, Nor fears he blafting of his corne nor vttering of his Or ftormes by feas, or stirres of land, or cracke of credite loft, [the coft. Nor fpending franklier then his Flocke fhall ftill defray Well wot I, footh they fay that fay more quiet nights and daies [doth graze. The shepheard fleeps and wakes then he whofe Cattel he Beleeue me, Laffe, a king is but a man, and so am I : Content is worth a Monarchie, and mischieses hit the hie. The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. This nature frended Lady (had she bin as wife as wittie, Who by the Massacres in France had learnt to leaue of pittie, [blame) Made there too apt for bloody acts, the Pope for it to She bids commend her to her fonne, and will him to When Meluin (vnto whom the spake) did, weeping, thus She, kiffing him, fayes, Pray for me, and bids him fo and pray In faith to Chrift, in only whom her whole faluation lay, And, offring then to pray with her, that Offer she withftood, Alleaging that our prayers can doe Catholique no good. So doth the Popes false Calendar of faints of sense bereaue Our Traytors, who dye Papifts that therein it them receaue. Was neuer yet Religion heard so peftilent as this, Were meritorious, which the Pope would honor so at last. Then to her wofull feruants did she passe a kinde a-dew : Robert Southwell, Jesuit martyr and poet, was born at Horsham St Faith's, near Norwich, about 1561, his father's family being still represented by Lord Southwell, while his maternal grandmother was a Shelley of the house whence the poet sprang. He was educated at Douay, at Paris, at Tournay, and at Rome, being received into the Society of Jesus as one of the 'children' in 1578, and took the vows of a scholastic in 1580. He distinguished himself so highly in philosophy and theology as to be appointed prefect of the English College. He was ordained priest in 1584, and two years later, arriving in England with Garnet, was sheltered by Lord Vaux, and became chaplain to the Countess of Arundel, whose husband was an imprisoned Catholic. The savage laws of 1584 declared it treason for any native-born subject of the queen who had been ordained a Roman Catholic priest since her accession to reside in England forty days, the penalty being death and disembowelment. For six years he ministered secretly but zealously to the scattered adherents of his creed; meanwhile he wrote his Consolation for Catholics and most of his poems. In 1592 he was betrayed, and imprisoned at Westminster and in the Tower. After three years' captivity, and after having been agonisingly tortured no less than thirteen times without betraying any of his fellowlabourers, he was put on trial; the inevitable sentence followed, and on 22nd February 1595 he suffered bravely at Tyburn, frankly declaring himself, as he had done throughout, a priest of the Catholic and Roman Church, and of the His longest poem is St Society of Jesus.' Peter's Complaint; his most famous, The Burning Babe, a singular piece of spiritualised fancy, of which Ben Jonson said to Drummond of Hawthornden, that ‘if he had written that piece, he would have been content to burn many of his own poems.' St Peter's Complaint, Mæoniæ, and a third volume of verse all appeared after Southwell's death, and were repeatedly reprinted, but spite of Ben Jonson's praise fell into almost complete oblivion. Waldron, a Catholic actor, reprinted a few of Southwell's poems; Walter edited the poems in 1816, and Turnbull in 1856; but the most complete edition is Grosart's. Opinion is divided as to his merits: Mr Sewell, the harshest of his critics, said St Peter's Complaint was a 'drawl' of thirty pages of 'maudlin repentance in which the distinctions between the north and north-east sides of a sentimentality are worthy of Duns Scotus.' But Archbishop Trench and Dr George Macdonald have given him high praise; though everybody must admit that many of his conceits are extravagant, his hunt after alliteration and antithesis strained. His wording is often odd and at times grotesque-'Day full of dumps' sounds far from solemn. But many of his images are striking, and many of his lines terse and impressive; while, in spite of oversentimentality, the devotional feeling is sincere and the utterance genuinely poetic. His prose papers, some six in number, are of less interest. As a poet he expressly designed to show that virtue and piety were as suitable subjects for poetry as worldly ambitions and sensual joys. He was at pains to write, in contrast to Dyer's 'Fancy' dealing with the torments of love, a more edifying Dyer's Phancy turned to a Sinner's Complainte. The Image of Death. Before my face the picture hangs, That daily should put me in mind Of those cold names and bitter pangs But yet, alas! full little I Do thinke hereon, that I must die. I often looke upon a face Most vgly, grisly, bare, and thinne; I often view the hollow place Where eyes and nose had sometime bin ; I see the bones acrosse that lie, Yet little think that I must die. I read the labell vnderneath, That telleth me whereto I must; A hearse doth hang, which doth me tel That I ere morning may be dead, Though now I feele my selfe ful well; My ancestors are turnd to clay, And can I thinke to 'scape alone? If none can 'scape Death's dreadfull dart; As I in hoary Winter's night Which made my hart to glow; As though His floodes should quench His flames, In fiery heates I frye, Yet none approch to warm their hartes The fuell, woundinge thornes; And Mercy blowes the coales, To washe them in my bloode.' Tymes goe by Turnes. The lopped tree in tyme may grow againe, Most naked plants renewe both frute and floure; The soriest wight may finde release of payne, The dryest soile sucke in some moystning shoure: Tymes go by turnes, and chaunces change by course, From foule to fayre, from better happ to worse. The sea of Fortune doth not ever floe, She drawes her favours to the lowest ebb; Her tide hath equall tymes to come and goe, Her loome doth weave the fine and coarsest webb; Not allwayes fall of leaf, nor ever springe, |