Literature and Art characteristic of the periods of their production-First years of Elizabethan literature bore the impress of the two preceding reigns-Sackville-The early popular drama-Marlowe and the contemporary dramatists-Growing refinement-SpenserShakspere Lyrical poetry-Its association with Music-Rural images in the poets connected with the pleasurable aspects of country life-Architecture-The palatial mansion-Gardens-The gentleman's manor-house-Classical education.

THE historian Hume, in his desire to exhibit the reign of Elizabeth as a period of uncontrolled despotism, says, "It is remarkable that in all the historical plays of Shakspere, where the manners and characters, and even the transactions, of the several reigns are so exactly copied, there is scarcely any mention of civil Liberty!"* Mr. Hallam, without adverting to this passage, has furnished an answer to it: "These dramatic chronicles borrowed surprising liveliness and probability from the national character and form of government. A prince, and a courtier, and a slave, are the stuff on which the historical dramatist would have to work in some countries; but every class of free men, in the just subordination without which neither human society nor the stage, which should be its mirror, can be more than a chaos of huddled units, lay open to the selection of Shakspere."+ The "

"History," Appendix iii. vol. v.

manners

+"Literature of Europe," vol. ii. p. 395.

298

EARLY ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE.

[1558-1603. and characters," not only of Shakspere's historical plays, but of all his other dramas, are instinct with all the vitality that belongs to a state of social freedom, in which what we hold as tyranny was exceptional. The very fact which Hume alleges, but which must be taken with some limitation, that in Shakspere's historical plays "there is scarcely any mention of civil liberty," is really a proof of the existence of such liberty. In our own time a French writer has recorded, that after attending a debate in our House of Commons, he observed to an English statesman that he had heard no assertion of the general principles of constitutional freedom. The answer was, "We take all that for granted." We are not about to analyse the characters of Shakspere's dramas to show that "they comprise every class of free men." We believe of Shakspere, as we believe of Chaucer, that neither of these great poets could have existed except under a condition of society which permitted a very large amount of civil liberty. But this is not the place to set forth any detailed reasons for this belief; and we should scarcely have alluded to the assertion of Hume, except to show that he properly looked beyond Courts and Parliaments to discover the spirit of an age. All Poetry, as all other Art, must in a great degree be the reflection of the time in which it is produced. The Elizabethan Poetry, and especially the Drama; the Elizabethan Music; the Elizabethan Architecture; bear the most decided impress of their own time. The rapid, and therefore imperfect, view which we shall take of the most prominent indications of intellectual progress will be principally to exhibit them as characteristics of their period.

The stormy reigns of Edward VI. and of Mary were not favourable to the cultivation of Literature. Wyatt and Surrey belonged to the time of Henry VIII., before the elements of religious contention had penetrated much below the surface of society. But when the nation came to be divided into two great opposing classes, earnest in their convictions, even to the point of making martyrs or being martyrs, the sonneteer and the lyrist would have little chance of being heard. There were a few such poets-Vaux, Edwards, Hunnis-but even their pleasant songs have a tincture of seriousness. The poet who at the very beginning of the reign of Elizabeth struck out a richer vein-Thomas Sackville--breathes the very spirit of the gloomy five years of persecution and almost hopeless bigotry through which England had passed into a healthier existence. There was then a long interval, during which poetry was imping her wings for her noblest flights. The drama was emerging from the childishness and buffoonery of her first period of separation from the shows of Catholicism. The same Thomas Sackville, early in the reign of Elizabeth, produced his tragedy of " Gorboduc," of which it may be sufficient to say, that Sidney describes it as "full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style."* English Dramatic poetry was not born with the courtly Sackville. It was struggling into life when it first seized upon the popular mind as an instrument of education-" made the ignorant more apprehensive, taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of all our English chronicles."+ Roughly was that useful work

"Defence of Poesy."

+ Heywood's "Apology for Actors."-Shakspere Society, p. 52.

1558-1603.j

THE EARLY ELIZABETHAN DRAMA.

299

originally done; but it was a reflection of the national spirit, and it produced its effect upon the national character. The early dramatists, if we may credit one of their eulogists, proposed great moral lessons in their representations: "In plays, all cozenages, all cunning drifts, overgilded with outward holiness, all stratagems of war, all the canker-worms that breed on the rust of peace, are most lively anatomised: they show the ill-success of treason. the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissention, and how just God is evermore in punishing of murder." * Such passages have been again and again quoted; but we repeat them to show how thoroughly the English drama became adapted to its time, even before its palmy state. It went forth from the courtly direction of the Master of the Revels at Whitehall and Greenwich, to delight multitudes at the Belle Savage and the Bull. The bones of brave Talbot were new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least." It was a rude stage, in which the place of action was "written in great letters upon an old door; a stage without scenes, so that " a hideous monster came out with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it [the stage] for a cave."‡ And yet the most elaborate mechanism, the most gorgeous decoration, never produced the delight which the unassisted action and the simple dialogue of these early plays excited. The spectators were in a new world. They were there to believe, and not to criticise. "You shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden." The thousands who paid each their penny did so believe. They gave up their imaginations to the delusion, and were taken out of themselves into a higher region than that of their daily labours. When the transition period arrived, in which the first rude utterings of a mimetic life were passing into the higher art of the first race of true dramatists,-of which race Marlowe was the undoubted head-there was extravagance in action and character; bombast in language; learning, for Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, Kyd, were scholars but learning falsely applied; yet there was real poetical power. They dealt in horrors; their comedy was for the most part ribaldry. The Drama, says Sidney, "like an unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy's honesty to be called in question." But the bad education of the unmannerly daughter was to be greatly attributed to the examples of the outer world in which she was born. She asserted her divine origin when strength and refinement had become united, in the greater assimilation of character between the courtly and the industrious classes; when rough ignorance was not held to be the necessary companion of martial prowess; and elegance and effeminacy had ceased to be confounded.

Against the growing refinement which was a natural consequence of the more general diffusion of wealth, the satirist, whether he belonged to the severe religionists or to the class held by them as the licentious, directed his constant invectives. There was a general belief that luxury, as the use of the humblest comforts was termed, was lowering the national character. Harrison denounces the chimneys which had taken the place of the rere-dosse in the hall; the feather bed and the sheets which had driven out the straw pallet; the pewter vessels which were splendid at the yeoman's feasts, instead

• Nash.

+ Ibid.

+ Sidney.

300

SPENSER.

In

[1558-1603. of the wooden platters; the carpets and the tapestry, the bowl for wine, and the dozen silver spoons. The town wits held the growing riches of the citizens as the spoils of usury and brokery; and the lawyers who "fatted on gold" were counted the oppressors of the poor. All this is indicative of a great change of manners, resulting from the growing opulence of the middle classes, and the wide increase of competition. There was a general activity of intellect; and it was one of the fortunate circumstances of the social condition of England, that there was a great national cause to fight for, which lifted men out of the selfishness of unwonted industrial prosperity. At such a period arose the two greatest poets of that age, or of any age, Spenser and Shakspere. They each essentially belonged to their time. They each, in their several ways, reflected that time. Spenser dealt much more largely than Shakspere with the events and characteristics of his age. In his "Shepherd's Kalendar," he is a decided Church-reformer. the "Faery Queen" he shadows forth "the most excellent and glorious person" of Elizabeth; and many historical personages may be traced in the poem. Amongst the numerous allegorical characters we find Una, the true Church, opposed to Duessa, the type of Romanism. But it is not in these more literal marks of the time, that we discover in Spenser the spirit of the time. It is not in his "Mother Hubberd's Tale," where we find the boldest satire against courtly corruption-justice sold, benefices given to the unworthy, nobility despised, learning little esteemed, the many not cared for,-that we must look for the general reflection in Spenser's verse of the spirit of his age. His fate had been "in suing long to bide," and he took a poet's revenge for the neglect. It is in the general elevation of the tone of "the Faery Queen," and of the other poems of his matured years, that we may appreciate the moral and intellectual tastes of the educated classes of Elizabeth's latter period. Unquestionably the poet, by his creative power, may in some degree shape the character of an age, instead of being its mirror; but in the relations of a great writer to his readers there is a mutual action, each inspiring the other. The tone of Spenser's poetry must at any rate have been in accordance with the mental condition of those with whom "the Faery Queen" became at once the most popular of all books. It ceased to be popular after two generations had passed away, and the Rochesters and Sedleys were the great literary stars. The heroic age to which Spenser belonged was then over. "Fierce wars and faithful loves" had become objects of ridicule. The type of female perfection was not "heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb," but "Mistress Nelly" in the side-box. "The goodly golden chain of chivalry" was utterly worthless compared with the price paid for Dunkirk. Such were the differences of morals and intellect between 1600 and 1670. Spenser was the most popular of poets while the ideal of chivalry still lingered in the period that had produced Sidney, and Essex, and Raleigh, and Grenvillewhen the rough Devonshire captains fought the Spaniard with an enthusiastic bravery and endurance that the Orlandos and the Red Cross Knights of Ariosto and Spenser could not excel. The great laureate's popularity was gone when the Dutch sailed up the Medway; for the spirit of the Elizabethan "golden time" was gone.

The age of Elizabeth may pre-eminently claim the distinction of having called up a great native literature. The national mind had already put forth

1558-1603.]

SHAKSPERE.

301

many blossoms of poetry, and in the instance of Chaucer the early fruit was of the richest flavour. But in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign England' had a true garden of the Hesperides. It has been most justly observed that "in the time of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., a person who did not read French or Latin could read nothing or next to nothing."* Hence the learned education of the ladies of that period. The same writer asks, “over what tragedy could lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library ?" Lady Jane Grey meekly laid her head upon the block in 1554. Had she lived fifty years longer she would have had in her library all Shakspere's historical plays, except King John and King Henry VIII.; she would have had Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, the Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet,for all these were printed before that period. She might have seen all these acted; and she might also have seen As you Like it, All's Well that Ends Well, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, Othello. Her pure and truly religious nature would not have shrunk from the perusal of these works, which might worthily stand by the side of her Terence and her Sophocles in point of genius, and have a far higher claim upon her admiration. For they were imbued, not with the lifeless imitation of heathen antiquity, but with the real vitality of the Christian era in which they were produced; with all the intellectual freedom which especially distinguished that era from the past ages of Christianity. The deities of the old mythology might linger in the pageants of the court; but the inspiration of these creations of the popular dramatist was derived from the pure faith for which the lady Jane died. From no other source of high thought could have originated the exquisite creations of female loveliness which Shakspere, and Spenser equally, presented. Some portion of what was tender and graceful in the Catholic worship of "Our Lady," passed into the sober homage involuntarily paid to the perfectness of woman by the two great Protestant poets. In Shakspere was especially present a more elevated spirit of charity than belonged to the government of his times, although his toleration must have abided to a great extent amongst a people that had many common ties of brotherhood whatever were their differences of creed. Hence the patriotism of Shakspere-a considerate patriotism founded upon that nationality by which he is held "to have been most connected with ordinary men."+ But Shakspere lived in an age when nationality was an exceeding great virtue, which alone enabled England, in a spirit of union, to stand up against the gigantic power which sought her conquest through her religious divisions. All around the dramatist, and reflected by him in a thousand hues of "many-coloured life," were those mixed elements of society, out of whose very differences results the unity of a prosperous nation. There was a great industrious class standing between the noble and the peasant, running over with individual originality of character, and infusing their spirit into the sovereign, the statesman, and the soldier. The gentlemen of Shakspere are distinct from those of any other poet in their manly frankness; and the same quality of straightforward independence may be traced in his yeomen and his peasants. + Frederick Schlegel.

* Macaulay, "Essays, "-art. "Bacon.”