The Theory of Comic Drama in England Before 1625

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THE THEORY OF C O M I C , - E N G L A N D

BEFORE 1625

■byJuanita Jones

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of English, in the Graduate College of the State University of Iowa December, 1942

ProQuest N um ber: 10831766

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT The writer wishes to express appreciation to Doctor Seymour x

Maitland Pitcher, without whose

("(

encouragement and generous help

■■i

^

this dissertation could not have been written.

li i

CONTENTS

Chapter I II

III IV

Page On Laughter and the Cornic...........

1

Classical and Medieval Sources of ........... English Comic Theory

15

Theories of the C r i t i c s ...........

63

Theories of the Playwrights........... 133 i Comic Theory in the Miracle Plays 138 ii Comic Theory in Secular Dramas ......... 161 before Shakespeare iii Comic Theories of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries......... 186

V

Conclusion.......................... 848 Bibliography

259

Chapter I ON LAUGHTER AND THE COMIC There is a great deal of truth in the assertion of Socrates in the Symposium^ that the genius of comedy is the same as the genius of tragedy, because the comic and the tragic both depend upon a sense of order and proportion.

In a universe where all was chaos, where

there were no physical, mental, or moral laws, where ef­ fects did not follow causes, where, in short, there was no norm by means of which variations could be perceived, the disproportions which constitute both comedy and tragedy would be indistinguishable.

Many of the so-

called tragedies of the twentieth century are pathetic rather than tragic because their creators have envisioned life without form or purpose.

If a man is unaccountable

for his deeds, if the catastrophe which overtakes him is the result of blind chance and not the working out of a fundamental law, we may feel compassion, but we shall not feel either the pity which comes from seeing the suffering of one who does not deserve It or the fear

^Symposium 223; Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues, of Plato Translated into English with Analvses and Intro­ ductions (Oxford, 1892), vol. Plato does not, however, adduce the same reason for the identity of the genius of comedy and the genius of tragedy which we have sug­ gested here. He says that they are the same because In both comedy and tragedy pleasure and pain mingle. Cf. Philebus 48-50; Jowett, vol. IV*

which arises from an observation of the inexorable ful­ fillment of basic laws. Likewise in comedy; a perception of proportion is necessary before one can see dispro­ portion.

The man who is unable to appreciate the tragic

is unable to appreciate the comic. Comedy, as Aristotle perceived, consists of a deformity, a variation from the norm.

2

incongruity, exaggeration, and nonsense.

It depends upon It does not,

of course, depend upon complete nonsense, but rather, if we may coin a word, upon "anti-sense."

Complete non­

sense Implies an absence of pattern, of underlying order, and a miscellaneous collection of things is not funny. Comedy is evoked only when a pattern Is broken.

A man

leading a dog need not be funny; but an extremely large man leading an extremely small dog is funny because the spectacle breaks the pattern of man-1eading-dog which we have in our minds.

A very smell child leading a very

large dog, or, better still, being led by a very large dog, is funny for the same reason.

A jumble of non­

sense syllables is not funny; It is only when the words seem to express an idea and do not, as in the nonsense

^Poetics V. l(1449a). The translation of the Poetics used throughout this study is that of Professor Seymour Maitland Pitcher, Aristotle, on Poetic Art. A Translation (Iowa City, Iowa, 19427.

3

verses of Lewis Carroll, that they are laughable.

A pun,

or any other play on words, is laughable because it breaks the thought sequence which has been established. Upon some such fundamental conception of the nature of comic material, theorists from ancient times to the present have been fairly well agreed.

But when we

endeavor to take one step further and to state the nature of our reaction to comic material, and why we laugh, and how we feel when we laugh, we are confronted by diffi­ culties and by a bewildering variety of opinions.

Quin­

tilian says that it is Impossible to tell why we laugh because we do not appreciate a Jest by any rational faculty but by an emotion which it is perhaps impossible g to define. We do not laugh at all the things at which our forefathers laughed; we do not laugh at all the things at which children laugh; nor even at all the things at which our adult neighbors laugh.

One has

found the secret of laughter to lie in a sense of “superior adaptation”^; another has found it to lie in 5 delight in eluding the “censor” ; one has found it in

3 Instltutlo Oratoria VI, iii, translated by H. E. Butler (London and New York, 1921). 4 Anthony Ludovici, The Secret of Laughter (New York, 1933). 5 Sigmund Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, translated by A. A. Brill, (New York, 1916).

4 g love;

another has explained it physiologically as a dis7 charge of excess emotion ; and still another has found

that we laugh at behavior which is Inelastic and mechanical when we expect it to be intelligent.

8

In the opinion of the present author no single theory will account for all varieties of laughter and the laughable. basically,

We would suggest, rather, that there are,

three attitudes which the laugher may take

toward the object of his laughter, and that, corresponding­ ly, there are three kinds of laughter.

Two of these atti­

tudes toward the comic are directly opposed to one another; the third is half way between them.

Corresponding to the

two directly opposed there are two kinds of laughter, so different from one another that they might well be called by different names.

Because, however, our language does

not afford different names for them, we shall do our best to distinguish them from one another by attaching an ad­ jective to each.

We shall call one of them "satirical”

laughter and the other "sympathetic" laughter.

Satirical

6 J. Y. T. G-reig, The Psychology of Laughter, and Comedy (New York, 1923). 7 Herbert Spenser, "On the Physiology of Laughter," Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects (New York, 1916).

8 Henri Bergson, Laughter, an Essay o& the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Brereton and Rothwell Iliew York, 1 9 2 1 h ^

5

laughter and sympathetic laughter are not the same activity.

They are born from different emotions.

When we laugh satirically we feel antagonism, hatred, or scorn.

These emotions express themselves in sounds

and muscular activities which are different from the sounds and movements accompanying sympathetic laughter. The person at whom we are laughing can tell at once, without the need of words, whether or not our laughter is malicious, for we cannot prevent a note of harshness from being heard when we are laughing in derision. Be­ tween satirical laughter and sympathetic laughter is another kind, which we may call “detached1* laughter, and because (being midway between them) it furnishes a point of departure for discussions of the other two, we shall comment on this kind of laughter first. We have said that the middle kind of laughter is detached. emotions.

By that we mean it is detached from our

When Bergson says that emotion of any kind

will kill laughter,9 this is the kind of laughter of which he speaks.

It is laughter at incongruities, at

things that do not fit.

Aristotle is speaking of this

kind of laughter when he says that the comic consists of deformities which cause no pain. .

9

2a. on., p. 4,

10

Poetics V. 1.

1°

__

,

_

If we are pained

6

by what we observe, the comedy is destroyed.

This neutral

or detached laughter is the kind aroused by word play of all sorts, itfhether the result of wit or of ineptitude, provided, of course, that our laughter is not spoiled by too much of either disdain or pity for the one who speaks the words.

Many jests and so-called "funny stories"

give rise to this kind of laughter, for they are based either on words or on situations, and we are not likely to feel deeply about the persons concerned, because we know them only briefly.

It is essential to detached

laughter that we do not feel deeply about the persons concerned.

We must be kept at a distance.

It is for

this reason that, in England and America, at least, entire comedies which depend upon this type of laughter are rare. Certain speeches and certain situations within our comedies often give rise to this kind of laughter, but rarely does an entire English comedy keep the spectators at such a distance that they neither hate nor love the characters. Once a character is either hated or loved, disinterested laughter is gone. literature.

There are a few such comedies in English

Shakespeare wrote this type of comedy in Love1s

Labour* s Lost and perhaps in A Comedy of Errors: but such a way of working was not natural to him, and his later comedies depart from it.

Etherege and Congreve wrote

such comedies during the Restoration.

One cannot scorn

the vivacious Millamant; neither can one love her; but

7 one can laugh at her.

The stimulus to detached, laughter,

however, is not so likely to be found in character as in dialogue and in situation, and Restoration dramatists were supreme artists in writing both.

We are not, after

all, laughing at Millamant as much as we are laughing at her words and at the situations in which she finds her­ self.

Certainly we do not feel about her as we feel

about Rosalind.

To take another example from Restora­

tion comedy, we do not feel the same about Horner in The Countrv Wife as we do about Palstaff, although both are lewd individuals.

Neither do we feel the same about

Horner as we do about Volpone.

We hate Volpone, we love

Palstaff, but from Horner as a person we are detached. We realize that he is an extremely nasty and evil man, but our chief Interest in the play is not in him but in his intrigues.

He is not real enough to be hated, and

certainly not real enough to be loved.

The entire play,

like Restoration plays in general, is, as Charles Lamb recognized, artificial.

11

We laugh at it as we laugh at

a puppet show. A second theory of our reaction to comic material is that our laughter is rooted in malice.

When

11 Charles Lamb, w0n the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century,11 Essays of Ella (Edinburg, 1885).

8

the attitude which we take toward what we laugh at is one of scorn, dislike, or envy, the laughter which re­ sults is satirical.

The theory that laughter is rooted

12 in malice is to be found in Plato

and has been held

by many philosophers and critics since Plato*s day.

We

shall have occasion to examine many of these theories in the chapters which follow.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes

held this theory in the seventeenth century; he said that 13 laughter is due to a feeling of "sudden glory,11 that is, to a sudden perception of one's own superiority to another; the perception may be due to a recognition of one's own eminence in some matter or to a recognition of deformity in another.

We laugh, according to Hobbes, when something

suddenly causes us to see ourselves as superior to an­ other.

Ludovici designates this feeling of eminence as 14 "superior adaptation." We laugh, according to Ludo­

vici, in any situation in which we feel our adjustment superior to that of another.

When another loses his hat

in a high wind, we laugh because our own hats are secure

12 Phllebus 48-50; Jowett, ot>. clt.. vol. IV. 13

The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (London, 1839), vol. Ill, p. 46. The theory of Hobbes is similar to that of Gastelvetro, who says we laugh at those who are deceived, because we surpass them in reason. See Og, the Poetics, in Allan H. Gilbert, Literary Critic ism. Plato to Dryden (New York, 1940), p. 312. See also the treatment of Trissino's theory of the comic, chap.Ill, p.lS^fr., sunra. 140p. clt,. chap. 5.

9

upon our heads.

When we greet a friend we laugh, be­

cause friends are reinforcements and make us feel more secure, better adjusted.

In the latter case, of course,

we are not comparing our adaptation to that of the friend whom we are greeting, but to that of less fortunate persons, who do not have as many friends, or perhaps to our own former adaptation when we were not so well provided.

We

laugh at the foolishness of others because we are wise, and at the deformities of others because our bodies are normal. The comedy which arouses derisive laughter is, of course, satire.

It is designed either to make the ob­

ject of it unhappy or to cause him to change his behavior. It is a whip with which society lashes those who do not conform.

In this respect it differs from the comedy of 15 mirth, for the comedy of mirth, as Moore points out, is likely to direct laughter at conservatism, tradition, and conformity rather than at those who rebel against these things.

When we are asked to laugh at Pal staff *s dis­

sertation on honor we are asked to laugh at a convention which society has maintained for its protection.

Honor

is a social virtue; one is expected to die gladly for the good of his country.

When Falstaff questions the

^ J o h n B. Moore, The Comic and Realisable. AS, English Drama (Chicago, 1925, p. l ) .

10

validity of death for honor as a motive, his listener questions too, and his questioning is dangerous to organized society.

Laughter at Falstaff, or rather laughter with him,

is certainly not a whip by means of which observers lash him and others like him to make them better soldiers and more loyal citizens.

It is rather a relaxation for the

spectators, a sort of holiday from necessary but unpleasant social and moral laws.

We enter into Falstaff1s tirade

against honor in the same spirit in which we enter into Sir Toby*s praise of cakes and ale; both provide for us an occasion for a playful defiance of convention.

The

kind of laughter which serves as a whip for offenders is something far other than than our laughter at Toby and Falstaff; it is, for instance, our laughter at Volpone; for when we are asked to laugh at him we are asked to laugh at greed and villainy, certainly unsocial things. Moreover, we laugh &t Volpone (if we laugh at all), but we laugh with Falstaff; we laugh at the things he laughs at. There is not, after all, much of the truly laughable in satire.

Satirical laughter has its origin

in scorn and censure; it may be the raucous laughter of derision, the quiet sneer, or the dispassionate attack of a judge, but it partakes little or nothing of the nature of hearty laughter.

Satirical laughter, moreover,

11

has upon the laughter an effect which is the reverse of the effect- which sympathetic laughter has upon him. When one laughs at the misery or the ignorance of another his mind is filled with a sense of his ovm importance, or, often, with a sense of his own inferiority.

For many times

the laugher is conscious of defects in himself and laughs at another in order to rationalize his "belief in his 16 own eminence. He seizes eagerly upon a point of deformity in one who is actually his superior in order to reassure himself of his own importance.

In either case,

whether the one who laughs feels superior to the object of his laughter, or actually, perhaps subconsciously, feels inferior to him, his mind is filled at the time of his laughter with envy and bitterness. Satirical laughter is thus, in spite of the fact that society uses it for a whip, in itself anti­ social, for it divides a man from his fellows.

It sets up

walls of misunderstanding, because the man who laughs becomes hardened, embittered, and filled with hatred. He becomes more prejudiced and less wise than he was formerly. Satirical laughter was the kind of laughter of which Plato

T Pi

Such is the opinion of Hobbes, who says that laughter is "incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves; who are forced to keep themselves in their own favour by observing the imperfections of other men." 0p« cit.. vol. Ill, p. 46. See also Castelvetro, loc. cit.

12

spoke when he said that the guardians of the state ought 17 not to be given to laughter. Sympathetic laughter, on the other hand, exerts a unifying influence,

A group of people who have laughed

together, truly and heartily laughed, not jeered, are thereafter better friends. tion with malice.

Such laughter has no connec­

It is the laughter of a child at a

boisterous game; it is the laughter of any of us at the clumsy play of a puppy or the wild gestures of a fat man learning to skate.

In the field of literature, it is our

laughter at Bottom with the ass's head, or at Benedick and Beatrice as they taunt each other and mock at love. It is the laughter of high spirits and well-being, the laughter of one alert to the inconsistencies and in­ eptitudes of life. kindly.

This merry variety of laughter is

It laughs with its object.

If the fat

man on skates were in pain instead of in temporary and harmless insecurity, laughter would not be aroused. We feel no scorn for a. man in such a position. Neither do we scorn Bottom. No envy or malice enters our thoughts to embitter and harden us.

Although he is somewhat frighten­

ed at first,and has to sing to keep up his courage,he is in no real discomfort,either physical or mental, and we feel no pain in observing him. 17

On the contrary, we feel sympathy;

Republic III. 588; Jowett, op.clt..vol.III.

13

we, too, have blundered Into ridiculous situations. We feel the same laughing sympathy with Benedick and Beatrice.

In neither case does our laughter arise from

delight at the ignorance, pain, or misfortune of others. It arises, rather, from a perception of incongruity and lack of proportion, plus a sympathetic identifica­ tion of ourselves with the person who occasions the laughter. Two of the three attitudes toward comic material which

we have just discussed are to be ac­

counted for by

the theories of the ancients, as well as

by the theories of the English critics and dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the third, the sympathetic attitude, finds its best expression in the plays of Shakespeare. In introducing our study of the theory of comic drama in England before 1625 we must make clear at the outset that we shall not concern ourselves, except incidentally, with an examination of comedy as a genre; we shall confine ourselves to a study of ideas of the nature and function of the comic which were held by English dramatists and dramatic critics of the time. In order to understand English theories it will be necessary for us to ancient Greece

goback to the critics of

and Home and of the Middle Ages, because

14

English ideas developed from earlier conceptions.

We

shall divide our study into three sections; in the first of these we shall consider the theories of ancient and Medieval times as they are expressed in the works of philosophers and critics; in the second we shall con­ sider the remarks relative to comedy made in critical essays during the Elizabethan era; and in the third we shall consider the opinions of English dramatists writing before 1625, giving our attention, not only to theories expressed by the dramatists in prefaces, prologues, and epilogues, but to theories implied by dramatic practice.

15

Chapter II CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL SOURCES OP ENGLISH COMIC THEORY Because the method of literary criticism In Renaissance England derived so largely, both by direct and by indirect means, from classical crltioism, it is necessary, before making a study of English theories of the nature and function of comic drama, to examine the theories of Greece and of Rome.

When we have determined

what the ancients said upon the subject of comedy, we shall be in a position to analyze the English neo-classical writers who come within the scope of this study, to see where they followed their classical masters, where they diverged from them, and where they misinterpreted them. In other words, we shall see how, with respect to comedy, neo-classical ideas differ from classical.

Moreover,

because neo-classical ideas were often modified by Medieval conceptions, it is also necessary to investigate the comic theories of some of the writers of the Middle Ages. Although the early Greeks (before Plato) formulated no definite theory of the comic, there is 1 to be found In them certain suggestions which later find a place in comic theory: there Is to be found the Idea

16

that laughter provides a necessary relaxation and that it serves as a preparation for serious pursuits; there is also to he found the notion that an excess of laughter is to be avoided; and the idea that laughter directed at the unfortunate is to be condemned*'*'

It

is in Plato, however, that we find the first actual

analysis of the comic.

In the Symposlumr as we have

noted, he makes a significant remark upon the nature of the comic when he says that the genius of comedy is the 2 same as the genius of tragedy. In the Philebus he en­ larges upon the idea.

The genius of comedy is the same

as the genius of tragedy because in both comedy and tragedy pleasures and pains are mingled.

While witness­

ing a tragedy the spectator smiles through his tears. While witnessing a comedy the pain of envy mingles with the pleasure of laughter. inseparable from malice.

Laughter Is thus, for Plato, We laugh because we are

envious, because we take pleasure in the misfortunes of others.

The ridiculous man, the man at whom we laugh,

is the man who does not know himself; who fancies hlm-

^■Mary A. Grant, Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable in Cicero and Horace (Madison. Wisoonsln, 192477 PP. 6-7. ^Symposium 223; Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato Translated into Engllsh with Analyses and Intro­ ductions (5 vols.,Oxford, 1892/, vol. I.

self to be richer, or fairer, or wiser than he really is If the man who entertains such a mistaken notion of him­ self is powerful and able to avenge himself, he is de­ testable, and to be feared.

If, on the other hand, he

is weak, he may be called truly ridiculous, and is an object for our laughter.

If, then, this ridiculous

man, unable to avenge himself, is one of our enemies, there is nothing wrong in laughing at him; but if he is one of our friends, it is wrong to laugh at him, because 5 ignorance is a misfortune. It is in Plato, too, that we find the first statement of the function of comedy.

Comedy in Plato*s

opinion, in so far as it is to be admitted into the state at all, is to be used for purposes of education; as an educational device it is to be used sparingly and under strict supervision; the comic poet should be for­ bidden to direct ridicule at citizens.

Laughter, more­

over, especially if it be in excess, is harmful to a man Thus, in the Republic. Plato objects to comedies because they encourage a man to act the buffoon.

At the theater

a man is amused by jests he would be ashamed to make, and his risible faculty having been stimulated at the theater he is betrayed into acting the part of a clown at home.

Moreover the theater encourages the

Philebus 48-50; Jowett, op. clt.., vol. IV.

18

passions of men, which ought, instead, to be con4 _ trolled if men are to be virtuous and happy. In the Laws Plato acknowledges the need of knowing uncomely and laughable persons and thoughts in order to under­ stand beautiful and serious ones, since, in his opinion, nothing can be known unless its opposite be known.

But

he would have a man avoid taking a serious interest in such things and never be discovered taking pains to learn them.

He ought, rather, to command hired strangers

and slaves to imitate such uncomely actions.

The

representations, moreover, must be carefully regulated by the superintendent of general education.

Because the

comic poet must not be permitted to ridicule citizens, all verses directed at actual persons must be in jest, 5 and never meant in seriousness.

In turning from the comic theory of Plato to that of Aristotle, we are turning from a moralistic view to an aesthetic and ethical one.

It is unfortunate that 6

Aristotle did not, as he promised, "speak later"

of

-

Republic X.606;JowettT op. clt.. vol.III. 5 Laws VII.816, 817; Jowett, op. cit.. vol. V. 6 Poetics VI.l(l449b), translated by Seymour Maitland Pitcher, in Aristotle on Poetic Art, a Transla­ tion (Iowa City, Iowa, 1942).

19

comedy, or that if he did so, the manuscript should have been lost.

Nevertheless, his remarks in the

Poetics, though few, are highly suggestive, and taken together with his comments upon laughter in the Rhetoric and several pertinent passages in the Nlcomachean Ethics, constitute a rather fully developed theory. in chapter II of the Poetics he discusses the subject matter of comedy: "Now imitators imitate men acting, and these men must be relatively noble or base. Elements of character nearly always corres­ pond to these two categories, it being in wickedness and in virtue that all men differ in character. The men imitated must, then, be nobler than we are, or baser, or exactly like us...tragedy stands opposed to comedy, for comedy prefers to imitate men baser, tragedy men nobler than they now are.B7 Now when Aristotle says that comedy treats of men who are baser than we are and that tragedy treats of men who are nobler than we are, he has no reference to higher and lower social levels; the distinction between persons treated by tragedy and persons treated by comedy is an ethical distinction.

If, however, his words are

to be taken in their loose, present-day meaning the statement is indeed a strange one.

Tragedy, he would seem

to say, presents good men; comedy presents bad men.

7 Ibid.. II.1 (1448a).

20

Oedipus, then, is a good man, an assumption which we may grant; Trygaeus, in the Peace of Aristophanes, is a bad man, an assumption which we may not grant so readily.

In fact, judged by ordinary standards,

Trygaeus is a good man, a brave man, even a hero.

He

undertakes a difficult and dangerous mission for-the future good of himself and his fellow men.

He rides a

dung beetle up to the home of the gods to bring peace back to his war-troubled country.

And he succeeds.

Surely, whether he is to be judged by the good result of his action or by his personal good will and courage, he is a good man.

Yet that he is a comic figure, no

one who has read the play will deny.

Is he material for

comedy because he is a man of a lower social order, a farmer, and not a king?

Although we shall find such an

Interpretation of comic character held by later critics, that it is Aristotelian is not for a moment tenable; for Aristotle says plainly, in the passage quoted, that kinds of character are distinguished by nobility and base­ ness.

By “base" he means base as to moral character. What shall we say, then, of Trygaeus?

The

answer lies in the meaning which Aristotle attaches to the word “noble.a

A passage from his discussion of

tragedy will be helpful: “As for the elements of character, there are four things to aim at. One thing and fore-

21

most is that they be good.Now a person will have character if,as was said, his speech or his action makes clear some sort of choice. This is possible in every kind of human being, for certainly a good woman is possible, and a good slave; and yet, all the same, of the two the former is inferior pjrid the latter quite base."8 This passage takes us one step further; the goodness of a man depends upon the character of his choices, not upon the results of them.

The result of Trygaeus1 action

wa,s good, but the choice itself was not good.

In order

to make this point clear, we turn to the Nlofrmachean Ethics. Moral virtue, according to Aristotle, has the quality of aiming at the mean and avoiding both excess and defect.

For instance, a man who chooses

courage, of which the excess is rashness and the defect cowardice, is making a virtuous choice, the mean is determined by rationality.

The choice of Thus we find

Aristotiq summarizing1 "Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions consisting essentially in the observation of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principles, that is, as the prudent man would determine it. And it is a mean state between two vices, one of excess and one of defect."9

8

Ibid.. XV.l (1454a). 9

Njcomachean Ethics 110Y£3/5;17^■th^hslated . by H. Rackham, in the Loeb^Glass"i:cral/Li!bf’arVV'''U' '

22

Hence, because choices are determined by a rational principle, it follows that the man who has not chosen the mean, that is, the non-virtuous man, is the irrational man, the man without wisdom* Aristotle*s words,

In

"... all wicked men are ignorant of

.10

what they ought to do and refrain from doing* * * "

One

more sentence from the Nloomachean Ethics will be use­ ful to us: ". .* it is not possible to be good in the true sense without Prudence, nor to be prudent without

11 Moral Virtue*" The base man of comedy, then, may be inter­ preted as the man who is ignorant of what he ought to

12 do*

He chooses the excess or the defect rather than

the mean.

Trygaeus is thus a comic figure, not because

he is a farmer, but because he is foolish. irrationally.

His daughters think him mad*

He acts His deed

is not the result of bravery, which is a mean, but of rashness, which is an excess.

True, he succeeds in his

mission, but his success is the result of chance, not of wisdom*

His unexpected triumph does not make him

the more wise nor the less comic.

He is not a good

10 x Ibld-f 1110b 14.

11 Ibid.. 1144b 32. 12 Aristotle*s "ignorant man" is apparently the foolish man of Plato, the man who does not know himself* Gf* p . 16.supra.

S3

man because he has not deliberately, and by a process of reasoning, chosen the mean. Another passage upon comedy is to be found in the Poetics, chapter V.

Here we find Aristotle*s most

explicit definition of the comic; "Comedy is, as we said, imitation of men who are rather base; but not, of course, in every sort of wickedness. Ridiculousness is, however, one kind of ignominy, for it is a sort of failure to hit the mark and a deformity which causes no pain or harm; a handy example is the comic mask, which is a shameful and dis­ torted thing, but does not cause pain."13 We have said that for Aristotle the character proper to comedy is the foolish man, that is, the man who lacks wisdom to choose the mean, or virtue.

We now learn

that this man is not base "in every sort of wickedness." By this Aristotle qualifies what he has said: the man suitable for comedy is not wholly lacking in virtue— that is, he does not maliciously choose the bad thing, and his wrong choices are not always the extreme defect or the extreme excess.

He is not, in other words, a

vicious man.

Clytemnestra could not be the protagonist

of a comedy.

The comic figure is a blunderer, not a

villain. Before discussing the next statement in

Poetloa V.l (1449a).

24

the definition of comedy given in chapter V of the Poetics, it will he well to give some attention to the matter of translation.

In the passage which Professor

Pitcher has translated ’’Ridiculousness is, however, one kind of ignominy, " the phrase translated ’’one kind of ignominy” is in the original aloxpdv t i . This phrase has been translated variously.

S. H,

Butcher14 and Ingram Bywater15 speak of the ’’ugly.” Professor Gilbert

16

prefers “baseness.”

W. Hamilton

Fyfe, attempting to clarify the matter, uses the "base 17 or ugly.” The most satisfactory method of arriving at Aristotle’s meaning is to see in what sense the word is used In other passages.

For example, In the

Rhetoric to Alexander, in a discussion of the manner of accusing a wicked man, Aristotle writes: 61 nal

aiaxp&s updgeis

(puXdTToo

aloxpoTs 6v6phitrioT to modern ears the less objectionable part, the servant plot. This comedy, one of the liveliest and most interesting of its time, is fairly representative of the moral quality of English plays of the middle years of the sixteenth century. There is no immorality in the piece; Its “naughtiness" consists in some coarse speeches and rough play.

104

disapproval we do not know.

On the other hand, their

general disapproval of contemporary plays was due, not only to the failure of these plays to conform to "classical" standards, but to the need to justify the drama, itself; the defenders admitted points pressed hardest by their opponents, Important among them the matter of the indecency of the'contemporary stage, in order that their defence might stand on more solid foundations. As early as 1551, in The G-overnour. Thomas Elyot pointed out the moral value of comedies. He wrote: "First, comedies which they thejopponents of the drarna^J suppose to be a. doctrinall of rybs.uarie, they be undoubtledly a picture, or, as it were, a mirrour of man's life, wherein euil is not taught but discouered, to the intent that men beholdynge the promptnes of youth unto vice, the snares of harlotts and baudes la.id for yonge myndes, the deceipte of seruantes, the chaunces of fortune contrary, to mennes expecta­ tion, they beinge thereof warned may prepare themselfe to resist or preuente occasion semblably remembering the wisdomes, aduertisements, counsailles, dissuasion from vice, and other profitable sentences, most eloquently and familiarly shewed in those comedies, undoubtedly there shall be no little frute out of them gathered. And if the vices in them expressed shul&e be the cause that the myndes of the readers shulde be corrupted, than by the same argument, not only enterludes in english, but also sermones, wherein some vice Is declared, shulde be to the beholders and herers like occasion to encrease sinners../.-Therefore, sens good and wise mater may be picked, out of these poetes, it were no reason, for some lite mater thet is in their verses to abandone therefore all their workes, no more than it were to forbeare or prohibite a. man to come into a fair gerdein leste the redolent sauors of svete herbes and

105

floures shall meue him to wanton courage; or lest in gadring good and wholesome herbes he may happen to be stunge with a nettile. No wyse man entreth in to a gardein but he sone espiethe good herbes from nettiles, and treadeth nettiles under his feet, while he gadreth good herbes, whereby he taketh no damage, or if he be stungen he maketh lite of i t ...H7? Elyot is speaking of classical comedies,

those of

Terence and Plautus, and of their use in the schools, yet (if one accepts his major premise— that the function of comedy is to teach morality) his reasoning is sound and may be applied to public plays. Almost fifty years later Whetstone used the same argument: “For by the rewarde of the good, the good are encouraged in wel doing, and with the scowrge of the lewde the lewde are feared from euil attempts; mainetayning this my opinion with Platoes auc tori ty... .And to these endes 'Menander;, Plautus, and Terence them selues many yeares since Intombed (by their Commedies) in honor liue at this daye. The aunclent Romanes heald these showes of suche prise that they not onely allowede the publike exercise of them, but the graue Senators themselues countenaunced the Actors with their presence: who from these trifles wonne morallytye as the Bee suckes honny from weedes.1178

77 Edited from the first edition (1531) by H. H. Crofts (London, 1880), p. 13. 78 Dedication to Promos and Cassandra : in Smith, op. cit.. vol. I, p. 59.

106 The criticism of Sir John Harington is especially interesting because he defended, not only classical plays, but certain English plays as well. "Then for comedies," he wrote, "How full of harmeles mirth is our Cambridge Pedantius ... or to speak of a London Comedie, how much good matter, yea. and matter of state is there in that Comedie cald the play of the Cards, 9 in which it is showed how foure Parasitical knaues robbe the four principall vocations of the Realme, videl., the vocation of Souldiers, Schollers, Marchants, and Husbandmen?"80 Although Lodge* s Defence of Poetry.

Music.

and Stage Play s. (1579), written in answer to G-osson* s Schoole of Abuse, is inferior to Sidney’s Apology, it is not the poor "patchte pamphlet" that G-osson thought it.

The defence of comedy on grounds of satire is

spirited and interesting, if not entirely accurate.

In

giving a history of comedy he wrote: "...whereupon Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes began to write, and with their eloquenter vaine and perfection of stll dyd more seuerely speak agaynst the abuses then they the earlier writers of G-reek comedy ; which Horace himselfe wittnesseth. For, sayth he, there was no abuse but these men apprehended it; a thefe was loth to be sene at one of there spectacle w , a coward was neuer present at theyr assemblies, a backbiter abhord that company, and I my selfe could not have blamed you Jcossorfj for 79 The Plav of the Cards is not listed by Chambers, p£. cit.. vol. IV, among plays printed during the reign of Elizabeth. Preface, or Rather a Brief Apology of Poetry: in Smith, oiq. cit.. vol. II, p. 210.

107 exempting yourselfe from this theater.. .Yea, would God our realme could light vppon a Lucilius; then should the wicked bee poynted out from the good, a harlot would seeke no harbor at stage plaies, lest she shold here her owne name growe in question and the dis­ course of her honesty cause her to bee hated of the godly." He proceeded then to discuss later Greek comedy and Homan comedy, the comedy in which sin was reproved covertly, without mentioning the names of individuals: "Menander dare not offend the Senate openly, yet wants he not a parasite to touch them priuely. Terence wyl not report the abuse of harlots vnder there proper stile, but he can finely girde them vnder the person of Thais. Hee dare not openly tell the Rich of their couetousness and seuerity towards their children, but he can controle them vnder the person of Durus Demeas..*He must not shew the abuse of noble yong gentilmen vnder their owne title, but he wyll warne them in the person of Pamphilus. Wil you learne to knowe a parasite? Looke vpon his Dauus. Wyl you seeke the abuse of courtly flatterers? Behold Gnato. And if we had some Satericall poets nowe a dayes to penn our commedies, that might be admitted of zeale to decypher the abuses of the worlde in the person of notorious offenders, I knowe we should wisely ryd our assemblyes of many of your brotherhood... Surely we want not a Roscius, nether ar ther any great scarsity of Terence's profession, and yet our men dare not nowe dayes presume so much as the old Poets might.n81 These extravagant claims for the reformatory value of comedy remind us of Sneer, in Sheridan's Critic.,who had

^-A Defence of Poetry. Music, and Stage Plays: in Smith, op., cit.. vol. I, pp. 81 ff.

108

written a play called The Reformed Housebreaker and planned to drive crime from England by dramatizing the penal code. Sir Philip Sidney's argument is basically the same as that of Lodge.

He wrote:

"...Gomedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life which he (the poetj repre­ s e n t e d in the most ridiculous and scornefull sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one." Sidney agreed with Plato, that it is Impossible to learn the serious without the comic.

He went on:

f,Now as in Geomatry the oblique must bee knowne as wel as the right, and in Arithmetick the odde as well as the euen, so in the actions of our life who seeth not the filtiness of eull wanteth a great foile to perceiue the beauty of vertue. This doth Comedy handle so in our priuate and domestical matters, as with hearing it we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for of a nigardly Demea, of a crafty Dauus.of a flattering Gnato. of a vaine glorious Thraso. and not onely to know what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such by the signifying badge giuen them by the Comedian. And little reason hath any man to say that men learne euill by seeing it so set out; sith, as I sayd before, there is no man liuing but, by the force trueth hath in nature, no sooner seeth these men play their parts, but wisheth them in Plstrinum: although perchance the sack of his owne faults lye so behlnde hys back that he seeth not himselfe daunce the same measure; whereto yet nothing can more open his eyes then to finde his own actions contemptibly

82 For Plato's theory of comedy,

see p.16, supra.

109

set forth. So that the right vse of Comedy will (I thinke) by no body be blamed...“83 It is worth noting that Sidney1s defence Is based upon Latin comedy.

The characters which he

mentions not only do not have English names, but are not English types.

There were, of course, parasites

in England, but they were far more likely to be petty courtiers flattering great lords for place and patronage than to be like G-nato, penniless rogues fawniing ■ upon their betters for a dinner.

The lying,

is not an English servant type.

scheming Lauus

And Thraso underwent

considerable change before he appeared in English comedy as Babadill and Bessus. Thomas Nash, on the other hand, based his defence in Pierce Pennilesse upon English drama. He is one of the most independent of Elizabethan critics, taking little or nothing from continental thought. He made a resume of the general ideas of the theater of his day and judged that theater on its own merits.

He accept­

ed the idea that pleasure is its own justification. For him, mirth was not a sweet coating for a bitter medicine,

83 An Apologie for Poetrie: in Smith, op. cit.. vol. 1, pp. 176-177.-

110 but the medicine itself, and important for its own sake. In his Almond for a Farrot he wrote,

"Habelais dedicated

his works to the soul of the old queen of Navarre, many years after her death, for that she was a maintainer of mirth in her day.

84 Marry, God send us more of her making.”

In his defence of the English stage he gives us a lively picture of the times and makes a shrewd thrust at the real reason for Puritan opposition to the theater. After­ noon, he says, the time of the day when the plays were given, was an idle time of day.

Apprentices were off

duty and looking for a place to spend their leisure time. How much better for them to spend it at a. play than in gaming and drinking and following harlots?

Isn't it a

fine thing, he asked, to revive the history of Henry V on the stage? from It?

But the objectors say, What do we get

They think only of money.

vanity to them.

All the arts are

The vintners object to plays because if

there were none the people would spend the time drinking. Moreover, Nash said, no one ought to compare English actors, who were stately and honourable men, to the courtesans 85 . and whores who played on-the continental stage. Quoted in Collier's preface to Summer* s Last Will and Testament: I n W. Carew Hazlitt, A Select Collection of Old English Plays Originally Published by Robert Podsley in the Year 1774 (London. 1874). vol. VIII, p. 7, note 1. ^ P i e r c e Penniless's Sup-plication to the Devil (Printed for the Shakespeare Society from the first edi­ tion, 1692, London, 1842),pp. 59-62.

Ill

In 1612 Thomas Heywood defended the stage upon educational, moral, and recreational grounds.

Like Sid­

ney and Lodge he protested against the unfairness of con­ demning all plays because some were worthy of censure. Because a man has had his house burned, he asked, we condemn the use of fire?

Because one man has fallen

off his horse, shall all go afoot? eaten too much and proved a glutton, to eat?

shall

Because one man has shall all men cease

Let us rather use fire to warm us and to cook

our food, and not to burn our houses; let us eat and drink to satisfy ourselves, and not to prove ourselves drunkards and gluttons.

Plays,

says Heywood, are an

ornament to the city; strangers admire them.

Moreover,

the writing of plays has refined the English language, which was formerly rude and unpolished.

For another

thing, plays are an educational agency; they teach history and patriotism.

They are a good moral influence, because

they display faults and evil behaviour so that these may be avoided, and good and admirable actions so that these may be imitated.

And finally, comedies recreate those

who are melancholy and refresh those who are weary, sending them back to their work with renewed zeal and

86 earnestness.

86 An Apology for Actors (1612); in Gilbert, on. cit.r pp. 555-560.

112 In tracing the battle between Puritans and critics over the drama we have neglected another and equally important aspect of the anti-stage controversy. This was the quarrel between the critics and the stage; for while the neo-classical critics defended the drama on moral grounds, they attacked the Elizabethan theater on aesthetic grounds.

In the aesthetic theories of Sir

Philip Sidney we can see the advance of neo-classical criticism over the Medieval and we can also see the rela­ tionship between classical theories and neo-classical. In the present study no purpose would be served by examin­ ing all of Sidney’s theories relative to poetry. concerned only with his comments upon comedy.

We are

Of his

opinion with regard to the didactic function of come^r we have already spoken.

There remain for consideration

his attack on the indecorum of mingling comedy and tragedy in the same play, and his analysis of the comic. One of the chief objections of Sidney and other neo-classical critics of the time to Elizabethan drama was that it broke a rule of deoorum by mingling tragedy and comedy.

Aristotle had said nothing on the

matter, for the Greeks had not mixed forms of the drama. It is true that there are certain Greek plays which threaten to end unhappily, yet and happily after all, as the Aloestisr and Iohlgenla among the Taurians: but

113

according to Aristotelian conception these plays are tragedies.

It is true also that in Greek tragedies there

are characters who are humorous; of Euripides,

the nurse in the Hip-poly tus

the watchman in the Antigone, for example.

Yet in each case the comic effect is so slight that it serves more to humanize the play than to create real comedy.

Horace, we recall,

spoke of the great care with

which the stately figures of tragedy must be introduced into comedy or satyr play.

His account of the crowd

roaring for a bear in the middle of a play may also be mentioned, not because it is a critical opinion of the drama itself, but because it gives us such a lively pic­ ture of the Roman audience, and shows us that dramatists of all nations and ages face the same problems.

Eliza­

bethan theaters found bear baiting a formidable rival. Horace, however,, gave little attention to the problem of mingling the comic and the tragic, for Roman plays were apparently more rigid in structure than were Greek plays.

Comedy in a Senecan tragedy is unthinkable. In England, however, even in the Bible

plays, such as the Killing of Abel and the Second Shepherds1 Play. dramatists had always mixed the tragic and the comic.

They were doing it before the Renaissance,

before the powerful Senecan influence made itself felt,

114

and the practice had become so well established that they kept right on doing it, Seneca and all theories not­ withstanding.

This obstinacy of English dramatic

writers was a source of great annoyance to neo-classical scholars. rules.

Elizabethan drama refused to be hampered by

It was alive and growing, and it was almost a

law unto itself.

George Whetstone wrote:

"Many tymes

(to make mirthe) they make a Clowne companion to a Kinge; 87 in thyr graue Counsels they allow the aduice of fooles." He seems to be describing King Lear thirty years before it was written.

Fortunately such remarks had no effect

upon Shakespeare. Sidney wrote upon the subject: "...besides these grosse absurdities jjj[he violation of the unities) how all theyr Playes be neither right Tragedies nor right Comedies, mingling Kings and Clownes, not be­ cause the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in Clownes by head and shoulders to play a part in maiesticall matters with neither decencie nor discretion: So as neither the admiration and commiseration nor the right sportfulnes, is by their mungrell Tragycomedy obtained. I know Apulelus did some­ what so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; I know the Auncients haue one or two examples of Tragy-comedles, as Plautus hath Amnhltrio. But if we marke them well we shall find that they neuer, or very daintily, match Hornpypes and Funerals. So falleth it out that, hauing indeed no right comedy, in that comicall part of our Tragedy we have nothing but scurrility, q rp

Dedication to Promos and Cassandra: in Smith, op,, cit.. Vol. I, p. 59.

115

unwoorthy of any chast eares, or some extreame shew of doltishness, indeed fit to lift vp a loude laughter and nothing els: where the whole tract of a Comedy shoulde he full of de­ light, as a Tragedy shoulde he still maintained in a well raised admiration.”88 It is evident that Sidney’s objection to tragi­ comedy, that is, to the mingling of the tragic and the comic in a single play, is hased upon the idea that tragedy and comedy have different ends, and that if hoth the tragic and the comic are present in a play, neither will he permitted to attain its true end. Tragedy has for its aim admiration and commiseration; if comic material is inserted in tragedy, the proper admiration and commiseration will he rendered ineffective. purgation will not be achieved.

Tragic

Comedy, on the other

hand, has sportfulness as its end, and this sportfulness will he dulled by the presence of tragic events.

The

objections made by Sidney are valid up to a certain point. Certainly an unskllfull mixture of the tragic and the comic will fail to attain the true end of either. What Sidney did not see was that it is possible to use comedy to heighten the effect of tragedy, as Shakespeare used It in King Lear.

Neither did Sidney see the solu­

tion to the problem which was to be reached by Guarini

88 An Apologia for Poetrie: In Smith, 0£. cit.. vol. I, p. 199.

116 some twenty years later.

It is clear, however,

that

Sidney, in spite of his objections, is not entirely condemning the mixing of tragedy and comedy.

The mention

of the Amphltrlo and the admission that there are other such mixed plays go a long way toward Invalidating his contention, and another of his remarks is still more damaging.

He says that English dramatists bring in

clowns “not because the matter so carrieth It.1* Prom this statement it would seem that sometimes the matter in tragedy may necessitate the inclusion of the comic. If this is true, he cannot condemn English writers for mingling the types.

He can, and does,

inept and unnecessary mingling.

condemn them for

The full force of the

passage is directed at the inconsistency and lack of form in English drama. We have mentioned the defence of tragi-comedy made by Guarini, and it will be interesting to look into it at this point.

In 1590 he published Pastor Pido. a

Pastoral Tragicomedy.

The play was very popular, but was

widely attacked by those critics who insisted that tragi­ comedy was an illegitimate form, since Aristotle had written only of tragedy and comedy and of no third form of drama.

Guarini, who knew Aristotle as well as his

opponents did, justified himself by saying that his methods followed the course of development suggested by

117

the Poetics.

A tragi-comedy, he said is

"not a tragic story vitiated with the lowliness of comedy or a fable contaminated with the deaths of tragedy, for neither of these would be a proper component; for he who makes a tragi-comedy does not intend to compose separately either a tragedy or a comedy, but from the two a third thing that will be perfect of its kind and may take from the others the parts that with most verisimilitude can stand together. Therefore, in judging it, one does not need to confound the terms mixed and double, as do those of little understanding who do not realize that nothing can be mixed if it is not one and if its parts are not so mingled that one cannot be independently recognized or separated from the other..."89 He denies that it is contrary to nature and to poetic art in general for persons great and those not great to be introduced into one plot: "What tragedy has there ever been that did not have many more servants....than men of great consequence? Who unfastens the admirably tied knot in the Oedipus of Sophocles? Not the king, not the queen, not Creon, not Tiresias, but two servants, guardians of the herds,"90 In another portion of the Compendium he asks: "Can it not be that amusing events intervene between serious actions?

Are they not many times the cause of bringing 91 perils to a happy conclusion?" Commiseration and 6ft

Compendium of Tragicomic Poetry: in G-ilbert, op. cit., p. 507. 90 Ibid, . 7a, p. 50.8. 91

Ibid.. 7b, p. 508.

118 laughter, he says, do not seem so completely opposite that the same story cannot include them under diverse occasions and persons.

Not all of the elements of

tragedy can be used in tragi-comedy; terror can have no place there, for where terror is found there is never any room for laughter and sport.

But a poet,

if he so wishes, may make use of a subject which is by nature terrible if he will temper the events with laughter and other comic qualities in such a manner that it will not have the power of producing terror, much less of purging it, but will retain the single 92 virtue of delighting by imitation. Any such conception of the combination of tragedy and comedy as that of Guarini was, of course, entirely foreign to the thought of Sidney.

If he be­

lieved that tragic action sometimes might demand the inclusion of the comic, he formulated no theory as to how such an Inclusion might be carried out and had no idea that a third type of drama which would be neither comedy nor tragedy and would have its own separate end could result from such a commingling.

92 Ibid.. 22b, pp. 522-525.

119

Sidney’s chief contribution to comic theory is to be found in his discussion of the relation of laughter to comedy.

We recall that for Sidney the

function of all poetry is delightful teaching.

The

end of tragedy is admiration and commiseration; the end of comedy is "right sportfulness."

These two ends of the

two forms of drama are of course means to the final end of all poetry, which is delightful teaching.

Sportful­

ness, then, which seems when considered apart from Sidney's comic theory as a whole to indicate mere play and to have no bearing upon morality, is actually, in Sidney's opinion, a means toward teaching right be­ havior.

Delight is necessary to such teaching; laughter

is not enough. tickling,"

Laughter, he says, is only a "scornful

A study of the sentences in which Sidney

uses the word "scornful" will convince us that he does not always employ the word in its present-day meaning of "contemptuous."

He uses it, rather, in a sense now

obsolete, the sense of "contemptible." The New English 93 Dictionary gives as the first meaning of "scornful", 93 New Engllsh Dictionary(Oxford. 1914), vol. VIII, part ii, p. 244.

180

"Full of scorn, contemptuous, derisive."

As a second

meaning it gives, "Regarded with scorn, contemptible. Obsolete. 11

As an illustration of the second meaning

Sidney's A-pologje is quoted: "But I speake to this pur­ pose that all the end of the comical part be not upon such scornful matters as stirreth up laughter only." Another illustration quoted, one which makes the meaning unmistakable, is from John Donne, Devotions (ed. 2) 277: "And we haue heard of death vpon small occasions, and by scornfull instruments; a pinne, a. combe, a haire, pulled, hath gangred and kild. 11 When Sidney says, therefore, that laughter is a scornful tickling, he means that laughter is trivial, a light and unimportant thing. 'When he says that the comical part should not be upon matters so scornful that they stir up laughter but fail to teach with delightfulness, he means that the matters treated by comedy should not be so inconsequential that we learn nothing from them.

When he says that the comic poet

represents the common errors of our life in as scornful a manner as may be, he means that he represents them as contemptible, and as of little worth.

Sidney's "scorn­

ful", then, is not the equivalent of Aristotle's "base­ ness", for while Aristotle finds the laughable to be one subdivision of the base, Sidney finds the scornful to De

121

one subdivision of the laughable.

Keeping in mind, then, the sense in which Sidney uses the word ‘•scornful,11 and keeping in mind also Sidney's conception of the function of poetry as a whole, that it must teach delightfully, and of comedy in particular, that this teaching is brought about through sportfulness, we will examine the passage in the Aoologje in which Sidney discusses the relationship between laughter and comedy.

He wrote:

"...Our Comedians thinke there is no delight without laughter; which is very wrong, for though laughter may come with delight, yet corameth it not of de­ light, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together: nay, rather in themselues they haue, as it were, a kind of contrarietie: for delight we scarcely do but in things that haue a conueniency to ourselves or to the generall nature: laughter almost euer commeth of things disproportioned to ourselues and nature. Delight hath a ioy in it, either permanent or present, laughter hath onely a scornful tickling. For example, we are ravished with delight to see a faire woman, yet are far from being moued to laughter. We laugh at deformed creatures, wherein certalnely we cannot delight. We delight in good chaunces, we laugh at mischaunces; we de­ light to heare the happiness of our friends or country, at which he were worthy to be laughed at that would laugh; wee shall, contrarily, laugh sometimes to find a matter quite mistaken and goe downe the hill against the byas, in the mouth of some such men, as for the respect of them one shall be hartely sorry, yet he cannot chuse but laugh; so is rather pained than delighted with

122 laughter. Yet I deny not but that they may goe well together; for as in Alexander1s picture well set out wee delight without laughter, and in twenty mad Antics we laugh without delight, so in Hercules painted with his great beard and furious countenance, in woman's attire, spinning at Omphales commaundement, it breadeth both delight and laughter...But I speake to this purpose, that all the end of the commicall part bee not upon such scornfull matters as stirreth laughter onely, but mixt with it, that delightful teach­ ing which is the end of Poesie. And the great fault euBn in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainely by Aristotle, is that they stirre laughter in sinfull things,95 which are rather execrable then ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pittied then scorned. For what is it to make folkes gape at a wretched Beggar or a beggarly Clowne? Or against hospitality to iest at strangers, because they speake not English so well as we doe? What do we learne? sith it is certain Mil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, Quam quod ridiculos homines facit. But rather a busy louing courtier, a hartless threatening Thraso. a selfe-wise seeming school­ master, a awry transformed Traveler: These if we sawe walke in stage names which we play naturally, therein were delightfull laughter, and 94

Castelvetro says that we do not laugh if a neighbor is constrained by force or chance to do or suffer things against his will, but only if he la deceived into doing or suffering them. On the Poetics, chapter V; in Gilbert, op,, cit.. p. 313. 95 We laugh at the wickedness of others, says Castelvetro, because our nature has been corrupted by the sin of our first parents, so that we take pleasure in seeing sins in others which we ourselves do not possess, or do not possess in so great a degree. We do not, however, laugh at wickedness unless It is presented under a covering, so that we may seem.to be laughing at something else, for no one wishes it to appear that wicked­ ness pleases him. Likewise, according to Castelvetro,we laugh at the obscene when it is hidden,so that we may seem to be laughing at something else, or we laugh in such a way as to show those who are observing us that we are not pleased by the indecencies. Ibid.. pp.312-313.

123

96 teaching delightfulness.11 It is evident from the foregoing passage that Sidney thought himself in agreement with Aristotle, and he is in agreement with him up to a point: both defined the comic as the ludicrous. there the similarity ends.

But

When Sidney says that

Aristotle forbad laughter at the sinful he is both misquoting and misinterpreting.

Perhaps it is more

accurate to say that he is misquoting because he is misinterpreting. is sure he meant.

He is making Aristotle say what he The truth of the matter, as Professor

Spingarn pointed out in his Literary Criticism in the 97 Renaissance, is that Sidney was not working directly from Aristotle but from Trlssino.

Much of the passage

is directly imitated from a passage in Trisslno1s Poetlca.

It is interesting to note, however, that

while the theory of laughter is derived essentially from Trissino, the misinterpretation of Aristotle is Sidney's own.

Whether it is a misinterpreta­

tion of Aristotle himself, or, as is more likely, a misinterpretation of Trissino1s interpretation, we cannot, of course, be certain.

96

It Is worth mentioning

Smith, on. cit.. vol. I, pp. 199-201.

97

P. 288.

124

that

Sidney does not name Trissino In connection with

the matter.

Trissino1s discussion is the following:

"It is evident that laughter comes from the delight and pleasure of him who laughs, and this pleasure cannot come to him except through the senses, that is from seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, or from the memory of the pleasure they have had from something, or from the hope that they are going to have them. Such pleasure does not come from every, object that delights and pleases the senses but merely from those objects that have some share of ugliness, for if a man sees a beauti­ ful lady or a beautiful Jewel or something similar that pleases him he does not laugh, nor does he laugh on hearing music in pral se of him, nor on touching, tasting, and smell­ ing things that to the touch, the taste,and the smell are pleasant and grateful; rather these together with pleasure bring admira­ tion and not laughter. But if the object that is presented to the senses has some mixture of ugliness, it moves laughter, as an ugly and distorted face, an inept move­ ment, a silly word, a mispronunciation, a rough hand, a wine of unpleasant taste, or a rose of unpleasant odor moves laughter at once, and those things especially cause laughter from which better qualities were hoped, because then not merely our senses but also our hopes are slightly offended, and such pleasure as this comes to us be­ cause man is by nature envious and malicious, as is clearly seen in little children, for almost all of them are envious and always delight to do evil, if they are able. It can be observed also that man never natural­ ly delights in the good of others, except through accident, that is, through some good which he hopes from it for himself, as Plautus says: 'There is no one who would not envy the obtaining of something pleasant.' Hence if anyone sees that someone finds some money, he does not laugh or take pleasure, but

125

rather Is envious, but if he. sees that some­ one falls into the mud and soils himself, he laughs, because that evil which does not come on ourselves, as Lucretius says, is always pleasant to observe in others. But if we have like sufferings the sight of them in others does not move us to laughter, for no hunchback laughs at another hunchback, nor a lame man at another lame man, unless he thinks that these ills are in him less ugly than in the other. If the evils then that we see in others are deadly and painful, as are wounds, fevers, and injuries, they do not move laughter, but rather pity through fear that similar ills may come to ourselves or to some of our circle, for we think those who belong to us part of ourselves. The small ill, then, not painful or deadly, that we see or hear in others, as ugliness of body, and folly of mind, when it is not, or we believe it is not in ourselves, is what pleases us or makes us laugh...As man is composed of mind and body, so ugliness in him is double, of the mind and of the body, and the special deformities of the mind are ignorance, imprudence, credulity, and the like, which often depend one on the other, and therefore In jokes we laugh at the ignorance, imprudence, credulity, of someone else, and especially when we see them in persons who are thought substantial and of good intelligence, for in such as these many times opinion and hope are deceived...It is well to know that If the ugliness and deformity of mind we have spoken of are great, such as betrayals and perjuries, they do not move laughter, but disdain, and are condemned and rebuked, as are lies, exhibitions of ignorance, and similar awkward things of mind or body. But if they are slight they move laughter and are mocked at and delight is taken in them. 98

98 Poetica; on-Gilbert, p£. cit., pp. 226-

228.

126 It is evident from the similarity of the two passages that Sidney’s theory owes much to Trissino. Both men distinguish between admiration at the beautiful and laughter at the ugly, both find human nature envious, 99 and hence both hold that laughter comes of malice.. Yet the difference between the two theories is as significant as the similarity.

Trissino followed Aristotle in ex­

cluding the truly painful, or deadly, such as “betrayals and perjuries1*, from the realm of the comic. did not.

Sidney

The word which gives us the key to Sidney1s

misinterpretation of Aristotle is the word “forbidden.11 Laughter at the miserable and the sinful, he says, is forbidden by Aristotle.

But Aristotle forbids nothing;

his approach to comedy is analytical.

He says, in

effect, that the painful is not laughable.

This is

not to forbid laughter at the painful, but to state as a matter of fact that men do not laugh at it. It is necessary to point out, however, that when Aristotle excluded pain from the comic he was referring to pain on the part of the spectator.

This is made

99 Trissino finds laughter to arise from de­ formity of body or mind; from ambiguity; and from de­ ceived expectation. The last, deceived expectation, is the most appropriate, for it reveals the imprudence or ignorance of the one who waits, the one who is deceived. Ibid.. 227-232.

127

evident by his use of the comic mask as an example, for with the mask there is no question of pain to the thing laughed at.

When the object of the laughter is

human, however, there is

present in the object, ac­

cording to Aristotle, an

element of the ignominious or

shameful.

general is not present, only

Wickedness in

the base or ugly.

Neither is misery comic, for

misery, and pity is a kind of pain.

we pity

In theRhetoric

Aristotle says: “Pity may be defined as a feeling of pain caused by the sight of some evil, de­ structive or painful, which befalls some­ one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friend of ours...“100 If then we are pained by the misery of others we do not laugh at it, for the comic, in Aristotle’s opinion, excludes pain to the spectator.

This is a very differ­

ent thing from saying with Sidney that if an action upon the stage is bad (sinful) or painful, men ought not laugh at it.

Sidney has changed what was in Aristotle a

statement of fact to a prohibition.

The whole tenor

and purpose of the two discussions of the nature of the comic are different.

Aristotle defines the comic by

100 1385a 15, translated by W. Rhys Roberts, in The Works of Aristotle (Oxford,1924), edited by W. D. Ross, vol. XI.

128 analyzing what men laugh at and what they are prevented from laughing at by the fact that It is wicked (not merely ignominious) or by the fact that the misery in­ volved in It causes pain to the observer.

Sidney, on

the other hand, like Plato, believes that in laughter the pain of envy mingles with the pleasure of the laughter Itself, and that therefore things which are wicked or miserable ought not to be represented upon the stage, not because they are not laughable, but because men ought not to laugh at them.

For Sidney laughter must

be restrained from attack upon the truly painful, the miserable. That such is the case is plain from the passage quoted earlier.

We laugh, Sidney says, at de­

formity; here he definitely allies laughter with pain, for he does not, as does Aristotle, exclude deformities which give pain to the spectator.

The laughter of

Aristotle is disinterested laughter; its object has in it an element of the shameful and is certainly not to be admired or imitated.

Nevertheless,

the laughter of

Aristotle is not the laughter of ridicule; it is not

101 the public whip of which Tzetzes speaks.

101 See Chap.II, p.56, supra.

It is

129 rather due to the perception of deviations from the mean of virtue which are not extreme enough to be truly wicked not painful enough to the character in the comedy to cause the spectator to pity him.

The

laughter of which Sidney speaks, on the other hand, is antagonistic.

In his opinion, we often laugh,

although unwillingly, at the complications and mis­ haps in the affairs of a man who deserves our pity, and when we do so our laughter is painful to us.

The

laughter of Sidney, like that of Plato, constitutes an attack upon its object, and if it is directed at the miserable, it is cruel.

It is entirely conceivable

that a man might be ashamed of this kind of laughter, for it is an indication of his own insensitivity to the pain of those who are unfortunate. Satirical laughter is anti-social; it is a weapon which must be controlled.

Hence Sidney admits

it as a tool of teaching but asks that it be directed at those who deserve it, as do the vain-glorious, and that it be used for the purpose of emphasizing errors which ought to be avoided.

We must take care to dis­

tinguish Sidney's position from the position of those who advocate satire as a method of chastizing evil. Actual wickedness ought not be represented in comedy,

130

neither ought misery to he represented, not because men will not laugh at them, but because laughter, being born of malice, will destroy the sportfulness which is essential to comedy.

The subject matter of comedy, more­

over, ought not to be mere scurrility and "doltishness% for such things give rise to laughter only and not to delight.

When Sidney asks that the end of the comicall

part "bee not upon such scornfull matters as stirreth up laughter onely, but be mlxt with that delightful teach­ ing which is the end of Poesie" he is asking the comic dramatist to direct the laughter of the audience toward objects from which they can learn, and not toward ob­ jects whose ridicule has no end beyond the laughter of the moment.

In minimizing the importance of laughter

Sidney has, of course, the authority of Horace, who said that it was "not enough to make your hearer grin

102 with laughter."

As illustrations of characters which

arouse both laughter and delight Sidney cites the self­ wise seeming school master and the busy-loving courtier* When we see types such as these on the stage we recog­ nize them as types from life.

Our delight lies in the

102 Satire. X> translated by H. R. Fairclough, In Horace Satires. Epistles. and Ars Poetica (Loeb Classical Library).

131

Imitation.

As Aristotle says, men enjoy seeing a 103 likeness and say, “This man is so and so." We shall not quarrel with Sidney's inclusion of delight in his definition of comedy, for without it there would be not only no comedy, but no literature, no art of any kind.

We may possibly be of the opinion that Sidney

has not made delight important enough; we may think that while laughter certainly does not always come of delight, yet delight may come of laughter, real laughter, not ridicule. If, then,we think of comedy as a form of poetry which through sportfulness teaches delightfully, which avoids a representation of wickedness and misery on the one hand, and mere scurrility on the other, which aims at something higher than laughter (in Sidney's opinion a trivial thing), we arrive at a definition of comedy in agreement with the one which Sidney gave earlier in the Apologle:

comedy is an imitation of

the common errors of our life, represented in a ridiculous and "scornful” manner, for the purpose of persuading the beholder to avoid such errors.

103 Poetics IV.5 (14481)).

132 Although the comic theory of Sidney was more fully developed than the theories of other Elizabethan critics (with the exception of Jonson), in general he was in agreement with them.

For the

majority of Elizabethan critics, comedy was satire, whether the mild and sportive satire of Sidney, or the satirical treatment of vice which was advocated by Lodge; its subject matter was the common errors of common men; its style and language were such as are appropriate for common men; it observed certain de­

corums— for instance, it must not portray indecencies, and it must not be mixed with tragedy; and finally, its object was to teach a moral lesson.

In the chapter

which follows we shall see how these critical measure­ ments fit the comedies then being written in England.

133

Chapter IV THEORIES OF THE PLAYWRIGHTS When we turn from the formal criticism of the English Renaissance to look at the comedies, our first impression is one of contrast.

There seems to be no

relation between the rules of such a classicist as Sir Philip Sidney and the confused mass of moralities, inter­ ludes, farces, comedies, stage.

and tragi-comedies of the English

Scholarship was ashamed of these plays. They

failed to observe the unity of place,

taking the specta­

tor from Africa to Asia in a moment's time, letting the stage represent now a garden, now a battle field; and the unity of time, covering twenty years of a man's life in the space of two hours.

They mingled tragedy and comedy,

thrusting clowns among kings.

They made audiences laugh,

but failed to produce that delightful teaching which, according to neo-classical theory, is the aim of all poetry.1

Yet it is possible to find in the sixteenth

century, and in the early years of the seventeenth, a

1 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry.; in G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays. (2 vols. Oxford, 1904), vol. I, pp. 196-199.

134

criticism which took these plays into account, which was written about them and for them.

This criticism

is to be found in the utterances of the dramatists themselves. There was no unified theory; in no playwright before 1625, except Ben Jonson, is it possible to find a complete theory of comedy.

But these practicing play­

wrights, in contact with the life and popular taste of their times, did occasionally talk about what they were doing.

In prologues and epilogues, sometimes within the

play itself, these writers expressed themselves upon the subject of their art, and because they were the men who were actually writing the plays of this prolific period in English literary history, interest to us.

their words are of extreme

In interpreting the comments of the

dramatists, made within the plays, we must, of course, take care not to give their utterances a dignity and significance which they do not possess.

Prologues and

epilogues were a dramatic convention, and sometimes expressed conventional ideas not completely in accord with the play to which they were attached.

We must take

care, moreover, not to formulate for the dramatists, on the basis of their comic methods, a theory of what we think they ought to have said, or must have meant to say*

Nevertheless,

they did say a number of

135

significant things, and certain principles of comic theory are implied beyond reasonable doubt by the comic devices employed in the plays. The Elizabethan dramatists were, as we know from their own words, conscious of a classical tradi­ tion.

They were in agreement with this tradition in cer­

tain matters and opposed to it in others.

They agreed

for the most part with the neo-classical tradition in defining comedy as a picture of life, and all except the writers of romantic comedy and tragi-comedy agreed in defining it as a picture of everyday life.

They did

not, with the notable exception of Ben Jonson,

p

agree

that the so-called dramatic unities should be observed, maintaining that the imagination of the spectator was able to transport him wherever the action of the play

3 should lead.

They agreed with the neo-classical

critics that drama had a twofold purpose,to teach and Ben Jonson, because he was both a critic and a dramatist, occupies here an anomolous position. His well-developed theory of drama aligns him with the critics, but because of his importance as a dramatist we have chosen to discuss him among the playwrights.

3 A well-known expression of the attitude of the Elizabethan dramatist toward the observation of the unities of time and place occurs in the Prologue to Shakespeare1s Henry V: M...'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years into an hour glass."

136

to delight, but (again with the exception of Jonson) they emphasized delight and used the didactic aim as a defence against their Puritan attackers. For the most part, however, while accepting the didactic as one aim of comedy, they did not agree with the critics that moral teaching should take the form of satire, especially of personal satire.

Instead we find them repeatedly de­

fending themselves against the charge that their plays carried satirical implications.

Even Jonson, whose

avowed aim was to satirize vice, protested against the accusation that his satirical portraits were modeled 4 upon individuals. Another question upon which the dramatists and the critics did not agree was the question of whether comic and tragic materials ought to exist in the same play. The critics objected to such mingling, but the dramatists defended it upon grounds of utility, for by such mingling the playwright is able to present something pleasing to every member of his audience. It is the purpose of this chapter, therefore, to examine some of the comments made upon comedy by English dramatists writing before 1625, expressed for 4

of In at of

In The Poetaster Jonson1s characters are, course, modeled upon certain of his fellow playwrights. Bartholomew Fair, according to his own assertion, least, they do not represent real people. See page this study.

137

the most part In the prologues and epilogues of the plays, in order to see how much of a conscious theory of the comic it is possible to find in them and how it differs from the comic theory of the critics.

It is

our purpose, also, to consider, in addition to the di­ rect expressions of comic theory,

the comic methods

employed in the plays - that is, the comic characters,, actions, situations, and language for the purpose of determining the comic theory Implied in the plays. Because of the length and complexity of the period which we propose to examine (from the beginning of English drama to the death of Fletcher in 1625)it will be convenient to divide our study into three sec­ tions.

We shall consider first the comic theory im­

plicit in the religious plays of England;

second, the

comic theory expressed and implied in secular dramas during the latter half of the sixteenth century;

5

and

finally, the comic theories of Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and some of their contemporaries and immediate successors.

5 No precise boundary line can be drawn between dramatists writing in the late years of the sixteenth century and those writing in the early years of the seventeenth. For convenience we have chosen to leave Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, ©ekker, Beaumont, and Fletcher for consideration in the third section, al­ though all were writing before 1600.

138

1 Comic Theory in the Miracle Plays In spite of the religious tenor of the English liturgical play,

there was in it much of the comic. This

comedy did not derive from the classics; it was the na­ tive fun of the people breaking forth in the midst of the seriousness of the plays.

No theory was formulated,

no critics devised laws; but what the theory was can be seen plainly in the plays themselves, through charac­ ters, actions, and speeches, and through occasional state­ ments of purpose made by the unknown playwrights themselves. The mystery and miracle plays were not ncomedies11, and they did not, as a rule, have comic subplots; they offered, rather, comic episodes, probably to provide relief from the heavy moral!sm of the dramas and to give vent to that spirit of boisterous play which is the birthright of the Englishman.

The comedy was usually supplied by a clown­

ish character, often foreign to the Bible story being represented.

The actions and words of this character,

and the situations into which he blundered, furnished the fun. One of the earliest comic characters in the Biblical plays is Herod, who had been, no doubt, in the earliest dramatic versions of the Christmas story,

139

a serious and even a terrible figure. century, however,

By the sixteenth

the raging of Herod had become one of

the stock comic scenes of the mystery plays. Herodes.

In the

a Latin play of the twelfth century, although

no longer terrible, he is not comic; yet in this play one can see how he later became so.

After the scribes

have shown him the prophecy of the birth of Christ, the stage directions read: "Then let Herod, having seen the prophecy, kindled with rage, hurl the book to the floor . .."6 Although the words which Herod speaks upon the occasion are mild, that angry gesture marks him for future laughter.

In the Chester play, The Three Kings. stage

directions indicate that he is to cast down his sword 7 and break it ; moreover, in the latter play, his words are so boastful that we can consider them only as a laughter provoking device.

He says:

...I am kinge of all mankinde, I byde, I beate, I lose, I bynde, I maister the moone, take this in mynde That I am moste of mighte, I am the greateste above degree That is, that was, that ever shalbe; The sonne It dare not shine on me And I byde hym goe downe ..."8

6 Joseph Quincy Adams, Chief Pr e-Shake so ear.ean (Cambridge, 1924), p. 37. 7 Chester Plavs. Shakespeare Society Publica­ tions no. 17, edited by Thomas Wright (London, 1843),p.158. Drama

8 I b id . ,

p.

153.

140

In the Pageant of the Sfejgaaitram and Tavlors. a Coventry Corpus Christ! play, Herod is less boastful but com­ pletely mad in his anger.

He says:

"Another wey? owt! owt! owt! Hath those fawls tray tors done me this ded? I stampel I stare! I loke all abowttT Myght I them take, I schuld them bren at a glede! I rent] I rawe! and now run I wode! Ai thatt these velen trayturs hath mard this my mode! The [jr] shal be hangid yf I ma cum them to! "9 In this final conception of the character of Herod

as

a "partto tear a cat in" one can see plainly enough the

10 native English conception of the comic. wit and it is not satire.

It is not

Herod is funny because he is

exaggerated, because, although he is a king, he acts like a spoiled child. Herod is so changed from his scriptural charac­ ter as to be unrecognizable as the New Testament monarch. Other comic characters in these plays are persons not to be found in the scriptures, or minor figures left

9

John Mathews Manly, Specimens of PreShake so ear ean Drama (Boston, 1897), vol. I, pp. 146f.

10 We have spoken of the comic element in the English religious plays as being peculiarly English. Bartlett Jere Whiting says in Proverbs in Earlier English Drama (Cambridge, 1938), "There is humor enough in the French plays, but it is almost exclusively occupational and given to non-Biblical characters...The grimness of much of the humor is noticeable, as well as the absence of pagan potentates in comic roles."pp. 56-57.

141 uncharacterized there; they are often drawn from village life.

Such characters, although exaggerated, are often

extremely realistic.

A notable example is the shrewish

woman, represented by Noah* s wife in Noah1s Flood. Noah speaks to her in a genial manner: wife, how fayre y e ? ” tongue: see.”

"G-od spede, dere

She answers him with a quick, biting

”Now as euer myght I thryfe, the wars I thee She appeals to the women of the audience,

telling

them of the brutality of her husband, and of how she must beat him; "We women may wary all ill husbandis, I have oone, bi Mary, that lowsed me of my bandisl If he teyn, I must tary, how-so-euer it standis, With seymland full sory wryngand both my handis ffor drede, Bot yit other while, What with gam and with gyle, I .shall smyte and smyle And qwite hym his mede.”ll In the Chester version, on refusing to enter the ark, she says to her husband: "Be Christe!

Not or

12 I see more neede,

though thou stande all daye and stare.”

This woman is not in G-enesis. but her English neighbors all recognized her.

11 Manly, 0 £. clt.. p. 19 f., 11. 208-

216. 12

Chester Plays, p. 48.

142 The wife of Mak in the Second Shepherds 1 Play, acted at Wakefield, is another shrew.

Although not

quite so harsh to her husband, nor so stubborn, she is sharp-tongued enough.

When Mak knocks at the door she

shouts: ,fWho makys sich a bere? Now walk in the wenyandj "13 Upon learning that the intruder is her husband, she is nevertheless unable to refrain from giving the remainder of her tirade: “Then may we se here the dewill in a bande, Sir Gyle. Lo, he commys with a lote As he were hoiden in the throte, I may not syt at my note A hand-lang while."14 Another village character used in the mysteries is the clownish or impertinent servant.

Shrewd and witty,

he is nevertheless very different from the scheming slaves of Latin comedy.

He is not, as is the slave in

the Latin play, a factor in the working out of the plot. His function is solely to cause laughter.

A good

illustration of the clownish servant is Pikeharness, the servant of Cain in the Killing of Abel. of pranks and of impudent speeches. thehorses pull;

He is full

Cain cannot make

Pikeharness comes in and starts them

13 Adams, o~p. olt.. p. 152, 1 . 405. 14 Ibid., 1 1 . 407-412. He comes with a noise as if he were being held by the throat (hanged?). I may not sit at my work a. little while.

1 43

immediately, and Cain says: "Gog gif the sorrow, boy.

Want of mete it gars."

Pikeharness replies: "Thare prouand, sir, for-thi, I lay behynd thare ars And tyes them fast bi thare nekis, With many stanys in there kekis." Cain strikes him for his impudence, the boy strikes back, and Cain says: "I am thi master; wilt thou fight? " Pikeharness replies; "Yai, with the same mesure and weght That I boro will I qwite.n15 Mak, in the Second Shenherdfe1 Play. although not a servant, is of the same general class of laughterprovoking rustics.

He is a shepherd and a thief.

words and his trickery combine to make him funny.

His Like

the wife of Noah, he is of a type that Was all too common in English village life. Sheep were wealth, and in those days in England a man could be legally hanged for steal­ ing a sheep.

Yet the offence of Mak is made comic; for

his thievery he is tossed in a blanket, certainly the mildest punishment that could be meted out for so grave

15 Adams, op,, pit,., p* 94 f., 1 1 . 44-52. "Want of mete it gars" is interpreted by Manly to mean that want of food causes their unwillingness to work.

144

a crime, and. we may be sure that the audience roared with laughter at his screams a.nd protests.

His thievery

is made comic instead of criminal by the clever manner by which he goes about stealing the sheep and by the ridiculous device of hiding his booty in the cradle. There is no sharpness of reprimand in the picture of Mak and his activities; there is no attempt to teach men not to steal sheep; neither is Mak a factor in the develop­ ment of the real plot of the drama.

In himself he is

essentially funny; he is timelessly funny, as funny to­ day as he was centuries ago.

The comedy lies deeper

than words and deeds; it is in the character of the man, quick-witted, unscrupulous, naive, disarming.

As he

leaves the shepherds, having stolen the sheep and se­ creted it while they slep£, he says to them guileless­ ly: MI pray you looke in my slefe that I steyll noght. I am loth you to grefe or from you take oght. 16 Mak is not the only comic thief in the liturgi­ cal plays.

Cain himself, murderer, ancient tragic villain

16 Adams, op. clt. . p. 151, 11. 396-397.

145

of the Biblical story, is in the The Qreatlon and Fall and the Death of Abel, more a comedian than a criminal. One sympathizes with his rebellion against the pious superiority of Abel and is prepared to laugh when he steals from God.

As he places his grain upon the altar,

he sorts the sheaves, giving God only the imperfect ones, those.from which grains have fallen and those part­ ly eaten by cattle,

saying as he does so:

"Suche as the frute is faline froo Ys good enoffe for hym; This corne standinge, as mote I thee! Was eaten with beastes, men maye see, God, thou getteste noe better of me, Be .thou never so gryme."17 We cannot doubt that men and women laughed at that scene, and that each nudged his neighbor. cheated episode*

God?

When have men not

Yet we do not feel a moral purpose in

the

Cain1s sin was murder, for which he was punished;

the sacrifice scene is sheer comedy. A different and much more conventional type of comic character appears in the morality plays. the devil, or vice.

He is

Originally an awesome figure, he

became a precursor of the present day circus clown, an intermediator between performers and audience.

17 Chester Plays, p. 38.

He was

146

noisy, lively, bold, one who, as Hamlet complained of his Elizabethan successor, spoke more than was set down for him.

Yet conventionalized and unrealistic as

he was in person and function, the comedy which he pur­ veyed in his speech and activities was genuinely Eng­ lish.

Tytivallus shouted from off stage: “I come with 18 my leggls vndur m e." He walked among the crowd collecting money, approaching one man after another with a personal appeal, with railery, or with bold flattery:

"What is in thi purse?

Thou art a stout 19

fellow .... Herke now, I say, thou hast many a peny." He ran off merrily when called, shouting with homely figure of speech: "I promes; yow I haue no lede on my

20 helys." One of the most frequently used comic de­ vices in the early plays is quarreling, usually ac­ companied by blows.

Often, but by no means always,

these combats were between husband and wife; for, as we have seen, the shrew is a frequent figure in the

18 Mankind. Adams, on. cit., p. 313, 1.47. 19 Ibid.. p. 314, 1 . 475 ff.

20 I b id .. p.

316, 1 . 548.

14?

miracle play, and shrews are quarrelsome. Flood presents some lively battles.

Noah 1 s

Noah is forced

to resort to the whip in order to persuade his wife to enter the ark. He threatens her: “In fayth, and for youre long taryyng Ye shall lik.on the whyp1. ” She taunts him: “Spare me not, I pray the, but even as thou thynk Thise grete wordis shall not slay m e . H He continues to threaten the whip if she continues drink­ ing with her friends instead of taking refuge with her family in the boat: "Abide, dame, and drynk, ffor betyn thou shall be with this staf to thou stynk, Ar strokis good? say me." She asks casually,

"What say ye, Wat Wynk?”

Noah commands: "Speke 1 Cry me mercy, I say!” Instead of asking for mercy she turns to the audience with a dissertation on the troubles of wives, conclud­ ing with the statement that many of them wish their hus­ bands dead, as she does hers.

Noah responds with axL-

vice to young husbands to clmstize the tongues of their wives before it is too late or they will always have trouble.

He proposes to chastize his wife right

148

at that moment.

And he does.

The fight continues a d .

lib, until the sons interfere and succeed in getting

21 both of their parents into the ark. In the Slaughter of the Innocents the women who defend their children from the soldiers of Herod fight valliantly and accompany blows with vituperation. The slaughter scene is, of course, pitiful rather than comic, yet the activities of the women before the children are taken are designed as comic relief. A woman holding a baby in her arms says to a soldier: "Be thou so hardye, I thee behette, To handle my sonne that is so sweete This disaffe and thy heede shall meete . . . " 2 2 The soldier persists in trying to take the child and she carries out her threat, beating him and some of his com­ panions repeatedly over their heads with the distaff and screaming: "Have thou this, thou fowle harlot! And thou knight to make a knotte And on buffite with this bote Thou shall have to bowte; And thou this, and thou this*."23

|^Manly, op.. clt., p. 25f., 11. 375 ff. O h g ita r

Plays, p. 182.

23 Ibid.. p. 183.

149 In the Conversion of Saint Paul a man provides the comic abuse in a speech more subtle but no less biting.

Stabularyus has protested against being called

a hostler,

saying that he is a gentleman's servant,

and threatening a blow.

Servus replies in mock

humility: "I cry yow mercy, sir. I wyst well sum what you were, Owther a gentylraan— or a knaue me thynkyth by your physnomyi Yf on loke yow in the face that never se you ere, Would thynk ye were at the next dore by, In good fayth, I wenyd you had bene an hosteler, verely: I sye suche a nother ientylman with you a barowfull bare Of horsdowng & dogges tordes and sych other gere."24 Quarreling and fighting are, indeed, so frequently used to provoke laughter in the early plays that they need no further illustration.

They are

prevalent not only in the religious plays but in the folk plays.

Friar Tuck throws Robinhood into the stream, after

which the two men fight until Robinhood admits the friar 25 into his service. It is possible, of course, to con­ sider the Robinhood scene as dramatic rather than comic; yet surely that splash into the stream and the angry 24 Manly, op,, cit.. p. 218 f., 11. $2-98. 25 Robinhood and the Friar. Adams, op. clt^.,

p. 348.

150

resort to blows must have caused laughter. Another very popular source of the comic in the early plays was the ridicule of women and marriage. We have already noted some of the words of Noah on the subject of his wife's foibles,

Adam himself voices his

complaint, along with his theory of the etymology of the word 11woman”: "Yes, south sayde I in prophescye, When thou wast taeken of my bodye, Mans who thou woulde he witterlye, Therefore thou was soe named.”26 The third shepherd in the Plav of the Shepherds expresses to his audience a husband's philosophy: "For to good men this is not unknowne, To husbands that he heare aboutes, That iche man must to his wife bowne. And commonlye for feare of a clowte.”27 The husbands that were thereabout no doubt laughed in sympathy, and their wives said in mock peevishness, "And you deserve it." In the Townley version the second shepherd warns young men who are courting: "Bot yong men of wowyng, for God that you boght, Be well war of wedyng and think in your thought: ’Had I wyst' is a thyng it seruis of noght, Mekyl styll mowrnyng, has wedyng home broght, And grefys. 26 The Creation and Fall, and the Death of. Abel., Chester Plays, p, 29. 27

Chester Plavs. p. 122.

151 With toany a sharp showre; ffor thou may each In a o w e That shall savour fulle sowre as long as thou lyffys."28 Like the ridicule of women, drinking seems to be an eternal subject for mirth.

At the close of

Three Kings Herod consoles himself for his defeat with his bottle: "This boste doth me so greate anoye That I waxe cleane dulle and drye: Have done, and fill the wyne in hie, I dye but I have drinke. Fill faste, and let the cuppes flye, For I must ordayne curyouslye, Againste these kinges cominge."29 Such a scene is, of course, not hilariously funny, but the sight of raging Herod comforting himself with drink must have been, to say the least, amusing. The same may be said of the first shepherd in the Plav of the Shepherds. when he solaces his loneli­ ness: "But no fellowshippe heare have I Save myselfe alone, in good faye; ' Therfore after one faste will I crye, But first will I drinke, yf I male." His audience knew exactly how he felt; and when the second and third shepherds entered and the three drank together for fellowship, they understood that, too, and 28 The Shepherds. Adams, 11. 91-99. 29

Chester Plays. p. 161.

op.

cit.. p. 146,

152

agreed with the conclusion of the third shepherd: “And of this bottlll nowe will I bibbe, For heare is but of the beste; Such liccore makes me to live, This game maye nowher be lefte."30 The drinking song of the gossips of Noah's wife is an excellent expression of conviviality: "The flude comes flittinge in full faste, On everye syde that spreades full farre; For feare of drowninge I am agaste; G-ood gossippes lett us draw nere, And lett us drinke or we departe; For ofte tymes we have done soe; For att a draughte thou drinkes a quarte, And soe will I doe or I goe. Heare is a pottill full of Malmsine good and stronge; Itt will rejoyce bouth harte and tonge; Though Noye thinke us never so longe, Hears we will drinke alike."31 From the mirth of conviviality to laughter at drunkenness is but a step.

Mak acauses his wife of

neglecting her children and her housework because of her love of drinking: "Lyys walteryng, by the roode, by the fyere, loi And an Howse full of brude. She drynkys well to; Yll spede otherc good that she wyll do..."32

30 Ibid., p. 124. 31 Noah1s Flood. Chester Plays, p. 53. 32 The Shepherds. Adams, op., ol.t.. p. 149, 11. 236-238.

153 Another subject for jesting was lying. and his wife had hidden the stolen and when

Mak

sheep in the cradle,

the shepherds came looking for it, told them

that they had not seen it, and that the covered object in the cradle was a newborn child.

Their story would

have saved them, had not one of the shepherds, desiring to kiss the baby, lifted the covering of the cradle and discovered the missing sheep.

Mak and his wife then

offered a number of lies to save themselves.

They first

explained that their child was misshapen, and then, see­ ing that this story received no credence, had exchanged their baby for a sheep.

that an elf

As they offered

their confused and anxious defence, the shepherds paid no attention, but continued to talk among themselves, examining the sheep for the ear mark.

When they found

what they sought, they punished Mak by tossing him in

33 a blanket. Another comic device used the mock use of spells and magic.

in the same play is Mak planned to steal

a sheep during the night, and after the shepherds had lain down on the ground and gone to sleep he drew a circle about them, saying as he did so:

33 ° Ib id .

. p. 149, 11. 278-284.

154

”Bot abowte you a serkyllas rownde as a moyn, To I haue done that I wyll tyll that it be noyn That ye lyg stone styll to that I haue doyne And I shall say thertyll of good wordys a foyne, On hight; Ouer youre hedys my hand I lyft, Out go youre een, for do your syght.”34 The spell evidently worked, for although they did not sleep until noon, they did sleep until he had taken the sheep, hidden it in his home, and returned to his place among the shepherds undetected. Noah, in Noah1s Flood, makes mirth upon the sub­ ject of his own old age.

Many an old man in the audience

must have grinned in sympathy. HAl my bak, I traw, will brast’ this is a sory note! Hit is wonder that I last, such an old dote All dold To begyn sich wark, My bonys ar so stark No wonder if they wark, ffor I am full old."35 Noah was laughing at himself, and his audience, we are sure, laughed with him. The stubbornness of animals, as well as of women, was used for comedy. been mentioned.

Cain’s horses have already

The ass of Balaam is another illustra­

tion: "G-oe fourth, burnell, goe fourth, goe! What the devill* my asse will not goe Served shee me never sa, 34 Ibid,., p. 149, 11.278-284. 35 Manly,

ojd.

cit.. vol. I, p. 21, 11.265-270.

155

What sorowe soe ever yet ys: What the devill, nowe is shee faline downei,l56 Farmers in the audience must have chuckled and turned to their neighbors to relate similar experiences with farm animals. Much of t h e vcomic effectiveness in old English plays is brought about through language,

sometimes

through what is said and sometimes through the way it is said.

Prominent among comic devices depending upon what

is said is name calling, or vituperation.

Some instances

of this have already been noted in the discussion of quarreling. plays.

Tongues were sharp and lively in the miracle

Cain shouts in the Creation and Fall, and the 37

Death of Abel."Save, thou caittiffe, thou congion..." In the Slaughter of the Innocents one of the women 38 cries: 11Who callest thou queine, skabde bichej “ Misquoting is used with excellent effect in the Killing of Abel. Cain has just killed his brother, and in order to protect himself from the populace has asked his boy, Pikeharness, to make a public proclama­ tion of their Innocence in the name of the king.

Pike­

harness is to cry loudly each line as Cain gives it to —

_

Balaam and His Ass. Chester Plays, p. 84 f. 37

33

Chester Plays, p. 40.

Ibia.. p. 181 .

156 him.

The boy, of course, miseries each line.

Gain: I commaund you in the kingis nayme. Boy: And in my masteres, fals Cayne Cain: That no man at thame fynd fawt ne blame Boy: Yey, cold rost is at ray masteres hame. Cain: Nowther with hym nor with his nafe, Boy: What I hope my master rafe. Cain: For they ar trew full many fold, Boy: My master suppys no coyle bot cold, Cain: The kyng wrytis you vntil, Boy: Yit ete I neuer half my fill. Cain: The kyng will that thay be safe. Boy: Yey, a draght of drynke fayne wold I hayfe. Cain: At there owne will let them wafe Boy: My stomak is ready to receyfe. Cain: Loke no map say to theym on nor other Boy: This same is he that slo his brother."39 The use of "catch" lines and by-words by certain characters is found in the Bible plays. Herod has two such:

"By Mahounde full of might" and "By 40 cockes soule." Among comic effects depending upon the way

a thing is said we may mention irony.

A good instance

of this is found in the Second Shepherds 1 Play.

The

shepherds have awakened to find that a sheep has been stolen.

Mak, who apparently has also just awakened,

says boastfully: "Syrs, drynkys! Had I bene thore Some shuld haue boght it full sore." 39 Adams, p£. cit.. 99, 1 1 . 418-432. 40 The Three Kings. Chester Plays, p. 146 passim.

157

The first shepherd replies dryly:

40 "Mary, som men trowes that ye wore..." Rhyme capping is occasionally used to good effect.

As the shepherds look down at the covered ob­

ject in the cradle, Mak says: "Nay, do way! he siepys." The third shepherd answers: "Me thynk he pepys." Mak caps the rhyme: 41 "When he wakyns he wepys!" An interesting verbal device in the liturgical plays is the pun.

In the Slaughter of the Innocents

Herod says: "Marye that mysbegotten marmosette That thinkes to marre me..."42 That speech, displaying alliteration as well as punning, has a true Elizabethan ring. Affected diction has always been a good comic device.

It is found as early as the Second Shepherds 1

Play. Mak joins the others pretending to be a tax

40 Adams, op., clt.. p. 153, 11. 507-510. 41 Ibid., p. 154, 1 1 . 580-582. 42Chester Plavs. p. 172.

158

collector and using the speech of a region not his own. When they refuse to believe his story he says: '■Ich shall make complaynt and make you all to thwang At 3. worde; And tell euen how ye doth.H The first shepherd says scornfully: "Bot, Mak, is that sothe? Nowe take outt that sothren tothe...w43 Mak took out his southern tooth, and the "ich" instead of "I" never appeared again in his speech. From the foregoing illustrations of comic verbal devices, comic actions, and comic character, it is possible to arrive at an idea of the comic concept implicit in the liturgical plays.

It may be seen at

once that their comedy does not depend upon refinement of wit, upon verbal fencing.

Word play is present in

the give and take of lively dialogue, but the language is coarse and bold, there is no subtlety, no scintilla­ tion,

It is noise rather than light.

Moreover, it

may be seen that in the minds of these unknown but certainly skilled playwrights, comedy in general was not satire.

It may be objected that the portrait of

43 Adams, on. oit.. p. 148, 11. 211-215.

159

Noah’s wife is satirical; but she is too lively, too able to hold her own, too human. to be scorned.

There

is no bitterness in the treatment, no note of serious reprimand for the women of the audience.

She takes the

crowd into her confidence and tells of her difficulties with her mate.

And finally,

there is no moral purpose

in the comedy of the miracle play.

The purpose of the

play as a whole was instruction, but the comic episodes have no end beyond themselves.

They depend in a large

measure upon realistic treatment of village types, upon noisy combat, shrewd, homely dialogue, and exaggera­ tion.

No lesson is to be learned from Pikeharness or

from Mak.

Laughter in itself is good; it needs no other

justification. Banes,

In the Proemium. the Heading of the

for the Chester Plays (1600) we read concerning

the author of the plays and his work: "This moonke, moonke-like, in scriptures well seene, In storyes travilled with the best sorte, In pagents set fourth apparently to all eyne The olde and newe testament, with livelye comforth, Interminglinge therewith, onely to make sporte, Some thinges not warrented by any writt, Which to gladd the hearers he would men to take it."44

44 Chester Piavs. p . i . The monk to whom the speaker refers was Done Rondall, a monk of Chester Abbey, who, according to the account given in the Proemium*composed the twenty-four plays which comprise the Whitsun plays of Chester.

160

Although these words were composed, very late In the history of the liturgical play, too late to be of di­ rect import in the study of pre-Elizabethan drama, they express the spirit which was present in the comic episodes of the religious plays in England almost from the beginning.

Comic eDisodes were inserted to make

sport and to gladden the hearers.

This identification

of comedy with mirth and laughter, which constitutes the comic spirit of the liturgical play, is an early manifestation of the comic theory which we find ex­ pressed by many of the dramatists of the Elizabethan era.

161

11 Comic Theory in Secular Dramas before Shakespeare As the sixteenth century advanced,

the influence

of Homan drama made itself felt, not only in the school plays, which were modeled directly upon Latin plays, but in plays of all sorts; references to the plays of Plautus,. Terence, and Seneca became frequent in prologues and epi­ logues, as they already were in treatises of the critics. Sixteenth century translations of Plautus and Terence have already been mentioned.

The translation of Seneca's Tenne

Tragedies, edited by Thomas Newton, appeared in 1581, but all of the plays composing it, except the fragmentary Thebias. had been published almost twenty years previous­ ly.

The influence of Roman practice was felt in England

particularly in matters of form and convention.

English

tragedy adopted the five act division of Roman drama, the set, moralistic speeches of Seneca, the revenge 45 motive, the chorus, and the introduction of the ghost. English comedy adopted the five act division and certain

45 For a discussion of the influence of Seneca on Elizabethan tragedy see John W. Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy (London and New York,

189377

162.

stock characters of Homan comedy,

such as the boasting

soldier, the parasite, and the garrulous nurse.

The

comedy of intrigue, in which laughter arises from dis­ guise, mistaken Identity, and general complication of plot, was also patterned on Homan comedy.

It appeared

late in the sixteenth century and early in the seventeenth in such plays as Looke About Y o u . Wily Beguiled, and Ram Aliev.

Yet important as was the influence of Latin

practice upon English plays, it made itself felt, particularly in the case of the comedies, in external matters.

The notion of the function of the comic which

was Implicit in the comic episodes of the liturgical drama continued to dominate in the majority of the plays, and even when overlaid by other conceptions of the comic, as in the romantic comedies and the "humour” comedies, it remained important.

The aim of comedy, the English play­

wrights said in effect, is laughter, and laughter is good for the soul.

They wished, moreover, to please everyone, 46 even "the leste that standeth here." Indeed, all the

laughter provoking devices employed in the liturgical plays are still present, enriched but not changed, in ^ H e n r y M&dwall, Fulgens and Lucres; a Fifteenth Century Secular Play. edited by F. S. Boas and A. W. Reed (Oxford, 1926)7 p. 56, 1. 43.

16S the secular comedies of the sixteenth century. Thus, among comic characters shrewish women are still prominent; for instance, the quarreling wives 47 in Two Angry Women of Abington. Comic servants are numerous; one of the funniest of these is Jenkin, the servant of George a Greene.

Far removed from the

scheming slaves of Roman comedy, he is wholly loyal to his master.

He uses no "catch” phrases, no ridiculous

gestures; he is not made comic by any impudence, or by any trick of speech.

Like Mak, he is funny in himself; 48 but unlike Mak, he is funny because of his naivete. To the comic characters of the religious plays, the sixteenth century added other types. Some of these owe their introduction to Latin comedy.

The talkative 49 and slightly bawdy nurse in Wily Beguiled doubtless owes much to her numerous predecessors in classical drama.

47 Henry Porter, The Pleasant Hjstorie of the Two Angry Women of Abington (printed in 1 5 9 9 ) ; in W. Carew Haxlit,_A Select Collection of Old English Piays Originally Published by Robert Dodsley in the year 1774 (London, 1874), vol. 9, p. 219. 48 George a Greene, The Pinner of Wakefield (c. 1588); in Joseph Quincy Adams, Chief Pre~Shake s p earean Dramas (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 692-699. The play has been attributed to Greene. For a discussion of its author­ ship see Charles Mills Gayley, Representative English Comedies (New York, 1912), vol. I, pp. 418-420. 49 Wily Beguiled (printed in 1606); in Hazlitt, op_. clt.j vol. 9, p. 219. For a discussion of date and authorship see Baldwin Maxwell, Wily Beguiled (Chicago, 1922).

164

For the most part, however, although they are super­ ficially the same as the originals, the characters borrowed from Roman comedy are basically true English 5° types. Ralph, in Roister Bolster (1534-41?), is, of course, modeled upon the braggart soldier of Terence, but he has been Anglicized.

There is more of laughter

in the representation than satire.

Ralph is so complete­

ly ridiculous, his actions are so grotesque that, like Falstaff, he is beyond our censure.

There is a naivete,

a lovableness about Ralph, which Thraso does not possess, Mathewe Merygreeke, in the same play, also has a proto­ type in classical comedy.

He is the parasite.

Yet, like

Ralph, he has been developed far beyond his model.

He

has few of the traits of the parasite in Roman comedy. In spite of his declaration, upon his first appearance,

that

he follows Ralph because he wishes to obtain a meal and a new coat, the motive for his activities is not selfishness, but a desire to make sport for himself and for everyone else.

He is good-natured.

Although he manipulates the

affairs of Ralph in such a way as to produce laughter at Ralph's expense, he does so in such a way that Ralph is not harmed, but helped.

Ralph is never permitted to see

50 Nicholas Udall, Roister Dolster (date un­ certain); in Adams, on. cit.. p. 423.

165 the full extent of his own foolishness, and at the end of the play, through the manipulations of Merrygreeke, the delusion of love has given place to the delusion of power, and Ralph's vanity has not suffered. Another nextf character to be introduced into English comedy during the sixteenth century was the foreigner, who provoked laughter by his broken English. His appearance was not due of course to classical in­ fluence, but to the increasing tendency of Englishmen to travel on the continent, and to the increasing numbers of continental Europeans to be found in England.

Some very

funny foreigners, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and an Italian, appear in Englishmen for My Money.

The comedy in this

case is increased by a clownish servant, Frisco, who speaks mock Dutch, French, and Italian in imitation of 51 them. Among comic actions, quarrels and brawls continue to be popular and, largely because of the influence of 52 French farce , become more complicated. Instead of simple, vigorous fights, we find farcical situations, as 51 William Haughton, Englishmen for My Money (entered by Henslowe, 1597-98); in Hazlitt, ojd. clt.. vol. 10, p. 469. 52 For the influence of French farce upon English comedy see Karl Young, "The Influence of French Far’ce upon the Plays of John Heywood", Modern Philology. vol. 11, 1904. See also John B. Moore, The Comic and the Realistic in English Drama (Chicago, 1925), p. 67 ff.

166 53 In Grammer Gurtons Nedle,

(1533-41)

when the curate

falls into the trap set for the chicken thief and is beaten.

Another very funny scene occurs in Mucedorus.

Mouse, the clown, has stolen a pot of drink from an old woman; while she searches him, he, being the taller of the two, continues to drink, finishes the ale, throws the pot down, and they both fall over it.

Such a scene is

“low” comedy, of course, but it is true comedy, for it depends upon the incongruous and the unexpected, and has 54 in it nothing of either moralizing or satire. Another type of comic situation to be found in many of these pre-Shakespearean comedies is the comic examination, as a culprit by a Judge, or a school boy by a master.

A scene in How p Man May Choose & Good Wife

from p Bad (date unknown) resembles the examination con­ ducted by Dogberry and Verges in Shakespeare's Much Ado.

Justice Reason is trying the case of Young Lueam:

Old Arthur: What can you say, Sir, in this doubtful case? Young Lusam: Why, nothing, Sir.

53 Gammer Gurtons Nedle. "Made by Mr. S. Mr, of Art"; in Adams, pp. cit., p. 469. For a note on possible authorship see Adams, p. 469. 54 Mucedorus, anonymous, sometimes attributed to Lodge; in Hazlitt, op. cit.. vol. 7, p. 235.

167

Justice Reason:

We cannot take him in contrary takes For he says nothing still, and that same nothing Is that which we have stood on all tills while; He hath confessed even all, for all is nothing. Since nothing, then, so plainly is confessed And we by cunning answers and by wit Have wrought him to confess nothing to us, Write his confession. Old Arthur: Why, what should we write? Justice Reason: Why, nothing: heard you not as well as I What he hath confessed? I say, write nothing down.55 In the same play a school boy is examined in Latin. When asked how many cases there are, he replies that there are a great many: bow cases, cap cases, comb cases, lute cases, and candle cases. The master, Aminadab, com56 placently agrees. This scene has a parallel in the 57 Merry Wives of Windsor. The physical peculiarities of characters are often used for comic effect.

In Endimlon. Sir Topas,

55 How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, perhaps by Joshua Cooke (printed in 1602); in Hazlltt, cit., vol. 9, f>. 34, 56 Ibid., p. 59. 57 Merry Wives of Windsor. IV, i.

168

who is very large, and the page, who is very small, are placed in juxtaposition for comic contrast, much as Falstaff is given a tiny page in Henry I V . cart I I . Sir Topas says to the page: "Friends?

Nego Argumentum."

The page asks: "And why not friends?" Sir Topas answers: "Because amicitia (as in old annals we find) is inter -pares. Now, my pretty com­ panion, you shall see how unequal you be to me; but I will not cut you quite off; you shall be my half friend for reaching to my middle*..."58 Ugliness of person is made comic in the same play: "0 what a fine thin hair hath Dipsas! What a pretty low forehead! What a tall and stately nose! What little hollow eyes! What great and goodly lips! How harmless she is, being toothless, her fingers fat and short, adorned with long nails like a bittern...."59 In Look about You stuttering is used for comedy, Redcap stutters, and when Skink, the villain, a kind of Vice, disguises himself to represent Redcap,

John Lyly, Endlmion. (printed in 1591), Act I, sc. iii; The Dramatic Works of John Lilly, edited by F. W. Fairholt (London, 1892), vol. I, p. 13. 59

Ibid., IV, iii, pp. 36-37.

169 he, of course, adopts the stutter, which renders the 60 device double effective. In the miracle plays we found certain, verbal devices used to provoke laughter,

such as the mock

dialect of Mak and the '’catch1' phrases of Herod.

In

these later plays many additional devices appear. The use of a foreign accent in Englishmen for My Money has already been mentioned.

Another example of such usage is 61 to be found in Three Ladies of London, where Mercatore speaks a fal.se Italian dialect, using "me" instead of "I", adding "a" to many of his words, and pronouncing "g" as if it were "sh", as "shentlyman" for "gentle­

man. "

In The Hare Triumphs of Love and Fortune (1581)

Bomelio disguises himself as a doctor and speaks incorrect French, as well as Italian mixed with English.

62

Scraps of Latin are used by Hance, in Like Will to 63 Like, and in How a Man May Choose a G-ood Wife

60 Looke About You (printed in 1600); in Hazlitt, o p . cit.. vol. 7, p. 484. 62. Three Ladies of London, by R. W., probably Robert Wilson (printed in 1584FT""in Hazlitt, o p . cit. , vol. 6. 62 The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, anonymous (Printed in 1589, probably played in 1581); in Hazlitt, pp. cit.. vol. 6. 63 Ulpian Fulwell, Like Wil to Like Quod the Bevel to the Colier. printed in 1568; in Hazlitt, op. cit., vol. 3.

170

from a Bad. Aminadab, the school master, 64 speech with Latin phrases.

sprinkles his

The misuse of words for the purpose of produc­ ing a comic effect is very common. In The Wounds of 65 Civil War Curtail says: "These be very indiscreet counsels, neighbor Poppey, and I will follow your misa&visement."

Once again we think of Dogberry.

Misquotations and puns become more popular as the Elizabethan age progresses.

Simplicity, the

fool, or clown, in Three Ladies of London is another lesser Dogberry.

He is given the command to carry to

a certain person three or four ducats. “Duck eggs?” he

66 asks.

"Yes, I'll carry 'em.”

The clown in Mucedorus

is another expert at misunderstanding words. says: "I am an hermit."

Mucedorus

"An emmet?" asks the clown.

67 "I never saw such a big emmet in all my life before. " Name calling has become a fine art in these

64 How a Man Mav Choose a (food Wife from p Bad: in Hazlitt, op., cit,., vol. 9. See especially Act II, scene i. 65 The Wounds of Civil War. Lodge (acted before 1594, printed in 1594); in Hazlitt, or>. cit. t vol. 7, P, 189.

66 Three Ladies of London(printed in 1584); in Hazlitt, op. cit.. vol. 6, p. 313. 67 Mucedorus: in Hazlitt,op,, cit,., vol. 7, p. 939.

171 plays.

Brabo, in How a Man May Choose a G-ood Wife from

a B a d jasks a maid servant if she has seen the "starve­ ling school master" and describes him thus: "That That That That That

rat, that shrimp, that spindle-shank wren, that sheep-biter,that lean chitty face, famine, that lean envy, that all-bones, bare anatomy, that Jack-a-Lent. ghost, that shadow, that moon in the wane

When next I find him here, I 111 hang him up Like a dried sausage in the chimney top; 68 That stock fish, that poor John, that gut of men.11 Proverbs furnish comedy in Two Angry Women of Abington.

for they comprise the sole conversation of

69 Nicholas Proverbs.

His speeches resemble those of

the old man in Franklin* s Wa.v to Wealth. The use of "catch" lines, or identifying phrases is well illustrated by Blague in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, who keeps repeating:

“I serve the good duke

of Norfolk," and by Sir John, a priest in the same play, whose "catch" line is: "Grass and hay!

We are all

mortal; let*s live till we be hanged, and be merry, and 70 there's an end."

68 How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad. Act II, scene iii; in Hazlitt, op., cit.. vol. 9, p. 40f. 69 Henry Porter, The Two Angry Women of Abington; in Hazlitt, op. cit.. vol. 7. 70 The Merry Devil of Edmonton, anonymous, printed in 1608, probably played about 1598; in Hazlitt, o p . cit.. vol. 10. See Charles Mills Gayley, pp. cit.. for a discussion of the date of this play.

172 The words of Sir John,

"Let us he merry, " may

almost he said to he the theme of the comic elements in Elizabethan drama.

The value of mirth is championed

hy many of the playwrights in their prologues and epi­ logues.

The unknown author of Jack Juggler (1553?)

says in the prologue to that play: "As now he ^he authorj hath done this matter, Not worth an oyster shell Except, percasse, it shall fortune to make you laugh well." And a little later: "Thus,then (as I have said) it is a thing natural And naturally belonging to all living creatures And unto man especially above all To have at times convenient pastime, mirth and pleasures."71 In Nicholas Udell1s prologue to Roister Doister the

value of merriment is even more plainly stated. Ralph

is,

of course, modeled on the boasting soldier of Roman

comedy, and there is an element of satire in the representa­ tion, but the spirit of goodnatured fun predominates in the play, as the prologue promises that it will: "What creature is in health, eyther yong or olde, But som mirth with modestie wll be glad to vse--As we in thys enterlude shall now vnfolde?

71 Jack Juggler, annonymous; in John S. Farmer, Anonymous Plays. third series (London, 1906), p. 3.

173 Wherein all scurllitie we vtterly refuse; Auoiding such mirth wherein is abuse; Knowing nothing more commendable for a mans recreation Then mirth which is vsed in honest fashion. For mirth prolongeth lyfe and causeth health; Myrth recreates our spirites, and voydeth pensuienesse; Myrth increaseth amitie, not hindring our wealth; Mirth is to be vsed both of more and lesse, Being mixt with vertue in decent comlynesse.”72 In the remark that mirth recreates our spirits and voids pensiveness Udall approaches a statement of the cathartic theory of the function of comedy, a theory which, it will be remembered, was held by the writer of the Tractatus 73 Coisllnianus and by John Tzetzes. In Act I, scene 3, of the Downfall of Robert Earle of Huntington, we find find a definite statement of the idea of purgation. Queen Elinor says: “How now, my Lord Huntington? The mistress of your love, fair Marian, Tells us your sudden rising from the banquet Was but a humour which you mean to purge In some high tragic lines or comic tjests.,,74

72 Nicholas Udall, Roister Doister: in Adams, o n . cit.. p. 424. 73 See page 34, sunra for a discussion of comic purgation. 74 Anthony Munday, The Downfall of Robert Earle of Huntington. Act I, scene lii; in Hazlitt, op. ci_t.. vol. 8, p. 117.

174 In the epilogue to Summer1s Last Will and Testament. (1592), Thomas Nash defends merriment: “To make the gods merry the Celestial clown Vulcan tuned his polt foot to the measure of Apollo*s lute and danced a limping galliard in Jove's starry hall; to make you merry, that are gods of art and guides unto heaven, a number of rude Vulcans, unweildly speakers, hammer-headed clowns (for so it pleaseth them in modesty to name themselves) have set their deformities to view, as it were, in a dance here before you."75 Resentment at being forced to listen to a sermon in the theater is also referred to in this play: "Hur come to Powl"; as the Welshman says, 'and hur pay an half penny for hur seat, and hur hear the preacher talg, and hur talg very well, by *gis; But yet a cannot make hur laugh; go to theater and hear a queen's Fice, and hur make hur laugh and laugh hur belly full! 'So we come hither to the theater to laugh and be merry and we hear a filthy beggarly oration in praise of beggary.“76 In the prologue to Lingua (about 1600) the conventional subjects of Roman comedy are renounced as being either wanton or satirical: “Our muse describes no lover* s passion, No wretched father, no unthrifty son;

76 Thomas Nashe, Summer* s Last Will and Testa­ ment (1592?); in Hazlitt. op. cit., vol. 8, pp. 91-92. In his reference to the “deformities" of comic characters Nash makes use of Aristotle's idea of comedy. C!£. pp. 18-52, supra.

76 Ibid., p. 30.

175 No craving subtle whore or shameless bawd. No stubborn clown or daring parasite, No lying servant or bold sycophant. We are not wanton or satirical. These have their time and places fit,but we Sad hours and serious studies to reprieve, Have taught severe philosophy to smile. Here's all; judicious friends, Accept what is not ill. Who are not such, let them do what they will.77 The praise of mirth and laughter is found again and again in these sixteenth century plays, often combined with a reference to the healthfulness of laughter.

For these dramatists the pleasure provided

by comedy was more than a sugar coating; it was the medicine itself.

This is a psychological, really a

physiological, defence of the comic.

"It is good to be

merry," as the singer expresses the idea at the close 78 of the Nice Wanton. The words "mirth" and "merry" 79 often appear on title pages. An Interlude of Wealth

77

Lingua, anonymous; in Hazlitt, pp. cit.., vol. 9, p. 335. This play was not painted until 1607, but according to Hazlitt it was acted before the death of Elizabeth. 78 Anonymous, printed in 1560, written before the death of Edward VI; in Hazlitt, pp. cit..,vol. 2, p. 183. 79 Title pages were sometimes composed by the printers rather than by the authors, and were designed, of course, to attract buyers for the plays. The presence of the words "mirth" and "merry" on the title pages shows how great was the demand for such qualities in the plays. See J. Payne Collier's introduction to Pi ere e P ennll.e s s_'_s -Supplication, by Nashe (London, 1842, reprinted for the Shakespeare Society), p. 12.

176

and Health is designated on the title page as "very merry and full of pastime. 11 Gammer Cur tons Neflle is called a "right pithy, pleasing and merry comedy. 11 Another title page reads: "A new interlude, no less witty than pleasant, entitled New Customs." Here are others: "A pretty new interlude, both pithy and pleasant

King Darius.

'ifThe Foure PP (a New and a Very Mery Interlude of a Potecsry,

a Palmer, a Pardoner, and a Pedler) 11; "The Pardoner and the Friar (A Merry Play between the Pardoner, and the Friar, and Neighbor Pratte)".

The authors of the Play of Plays.

in which the actors defended their profession against the accusations of the Puritans, showed allegorically the dependence of life upon Recreation and Delight as 80 protection from Glut and Tediousness. It is sufficiently evident from the foregoing quotations that the primary aim of many of the comic writers of the sixteenth century was to please their audiences.

Pleasing the audience as a whole meant,of

course, not displeasing the more godly.

Consequently

references to the didactic aim of comedy are not absent from these plays.

The Puritans had accused the comedies

80 For a. discussion of The Play of Plays note on p. 96, supra.

see

17?

of teaching vice, and It would be only reasonable to expect the playwrights to answer the charge by maintain­ ing that their plays were moral, or, at least, not im­ moral.

To say, however, that a dramatic action is moral

is not the same thing as to say that its primary purpose is to teach morality.

The theorists, as well as the

Puritan detractors, made instruction the more imports.nt aim, with delight to serve as a sweet coating for the bitter but wholesome pill.

The dramatists, on the other

hand, considered pleasure itself the important thing. They said, in effect:

Here is a play for your delight;

and you need not be afraid of it, for it teaches a whole­ some lesson. The prologue of Resoublica

(1553) will illustrate

their attitude: "We that are th' authors, have ourselves dedicate With some Christmas devise, your spirits to recreate. And our poet trusteth, the thing we shall recite May without offence the hearers' minds delight." The play is to show by allegory, he goes on to say, that: "...time trieth all, and time bringeth truth to light; That wrong may not ever still reign in place of right."81 81 Hesr>ublica. anonymous; in John S. Farmer, Recently Discovered "Lost" Tudor Plays (London,1907)p.179.

178

Deference to the Puritans and attempts to placate them are sometimes made explicit*

In the pro­

logue to Ham-Alley (1592?) the author pledges himself: 11To spend his time, his lamps, his oil, And never cease his brain to toll, Till from the silent hours of night, He doth produce for your delight Conceits so new, so harmless free That Puritans themselves may see A play, yet not in public preach, That players such lewd doctrines teach, That their pure joints do quake and tremble When they do see a man resemble The picture of a villain..."82 There is, of course, a note of satire to be detected in the reference to the “pure joints" of the Puritan.

And, as we said earlier, there was a certain

amount of satire on the Puritans in the plays.

Aside from

the satire on the Puritans, however, who after all were the foes of the stage and its legitimate prey, and aside from the feud between Jonson and Marston and Dekker, there was not very much satire in Elizabethan comedy as a whole. Ben Jonson, of course, was a satirist, but for the most part Elizabethan comic writers had a different attitude toward satire than the critics had.

Far from

advocating satire, as had Sidney, they were concerned

82 Ludowick Barry, Ham Allev. or Merry. Tricks (1592? Printed 1611); in Hazlitt, op., cit., vol. 10, p . 269.

179 with avoiding any charge of it.

Again and again they

explain that no underlying satire is intended.

Edwards

makes this point of view very clear in the Prologue to Damon and Plthias

(1564-65);

"We talk of Dionysius court; we mean no court but that! And that we do so mean, who wisely calleth to mind The time, the place, the author here most plainly it shall find, Lo, this I speak for our defence, lest of others we should be shent, But, worthy audience, we you pray, Take things as they be meant."85 One of the accusations which Sir Philip Sidney made against the drama of his day was that it injudiciously mingled the comic and the tragic.

Such a

practice had been followed from the early days of the miracle plays, at first without comment from the dramatist, later, as writers became more conscious of critical dis­ approval, with apologies.

We have already noted the

justification made in the Proemium. the Reading of the 84 Banes. Medwall, in Fulgens and Lucres (1497), one of the very earliest secular plays, wrote: "All be it that there was Dyvers toyes mingled yn the same To styre folke to myrthe and game and to do them solace The which tryfyllis be unpertinent to the matter principall, 85

Richard Edwards, Damon and Plthias,; in Adams, cit., p. 572. ^^ r o e m l u m . the Readings of the Banes: In Chester Plays, edited by Thomas Wright, (London,1845) printed for the Shakespeare Society),p. 1, See p.159,supra.

180 But rjtever the less they be expedient But to satisfy and content many a man withall."85 Uipian Fulwell wrote in the prologue to Like Will to Like (1568): "And the Devil with the Collier, the thief that seeks the thief, Shall soon make you merry, so shortly you shall see; And sith mirth for sadness is a sauce most sweet, Take mirth then with measure, that best sauceth it."86 It was Edwards, apparently, who first used the 87 term "tragi-comedy," although he did not use it in the same sense in which it came later to be used.

He used it

to name a play which had in it both tragic and comic elements.

In the prologue to Damon and Plthias. played

before the Queen, probably in the winter of 1564-1565, he wrote: "Which matter, mix'd with mirth and care, a Just name to apply As seems most fit, we have it termed a 'tragical comedy .IM©8 Strong as was native tradition, however, it would be inaccurate to say that Medieval and classical ideas had no influence upon the critical declarations of comic writers of the sixteenth century.

We have already noted the

powerful influence wielded by Roman drama upon matters of form.

Other aspects of both Medieval and classical 85

Medwall, o p . cit.. p. 55, 11.SI-26. ®^Ulpian Fulwell, Like Will to Like. Hazlitt, cit.. vol. 3, p. 307. 87 See Adams.o p .clt .. p.571, note.See p . 223,infra for a discussion of the use of the term in the 3eventeenth century. 8Q Adams.op. cit.. p.572.

181

theory were important also.

The idea that comedy is a

mirror, an idea deriving ultimately from Cicero, is found repeatedly in the comments of the dramatists, often coupled with the idea that by seeing life in this mirror the spectator will be deterred from doing evil.

The

epilogue of Impatient Poverty (1560) expresses the idea: HWe have here showed this simple Interlude; Beseeching you of your benevolenoe to take patience, It is but a mirror, vice to exclude, The maker hereof, his Intent was good, No man to displease, old nor young. !,89 The notion that humble men are the proper sub­ jects for comedy, kings for tragedy, is expressed by Hieronimo in K y d 1s Span!sh Tragedy (licensed in 1592): HA comedy? Fie, comedies are fit for common wits; But to present a Kingly troupe withall Give me a stately written Tragedie; Tragedia Cothurfaata. fitting Kings, Containing matter, and not common things."90 The popular conception of death as matter for tragedy and love for comedy is expressed in the speech of Death in Sollman and Perseda (anonymous, 1583):

89 Farmer, Recently Recovered >lLost11 Tudor Plavs. p. 347. 90 Kyd, The Span!sh Tragedy (licensed 1592), Act IV, sc. i, 11.155-160. The Works of Thomas Kyd, edited by Frederick Boas (Oxford, 190lT7 See Boas op. cit.. for a discussion of the date.

182

"Pack, Love and FortuneI Play in comedies, For Powerfull Death best fitteth tragedies.N91 The neo-classical conception of decorum is also occasionally mentioned by the dramatists.

It is

mentioned by Edwards,, who applies it to the matter of the appropriateness of speech to character and names Horace as his authority; "In comedies the greatest skill is this; rightly to touch All things to the quick, and eke to frame each person so That by his common talk you may his nature know. A roister ought not preach that were too strange to heare--But, as from virtue he doth swerve, so ought his works appear. The old man is sober; the young man rash; the lover triumphing in joys; The matron grave; the harlot wild, and full of wanton toys; Which all in one course they no wise do agree, So correspondent to their kind their speeches ought to be. Which speeches, well pronounc*d, with action lively framed, If this offend the lookers on, let Horace then be blamed, Which hath our author taught at school, from whom he doth not swerve, 92 In all such kind of exercise decorum to observe." In this speech of Edwards we can see a conventionalized version of the idea of Horace.

It Is well, of course, to

91 Soliman and Perseda. anonymous, sometimes ascribed tolCyd (printed in 1599). Hazlitt, or), cit., vol. 5, p. 373. 92 O p . cit.. Adams, o p . cit.. p. 572.

183 suit words to characters, but it is not well to stereo­ type the characters so that all those of one age speak alike.

Gaunt and Lear are both old men, and they are

good men, that is, they are not roisterers, yet Shakes­ peare would have been doing violence to truth had he made them speak alike.

English drama developed in

spite of such notions. As a matter of fact, after the time of the early school plays and Inns of Court dramas, very few of the English comic playwrights were hampered by neo93 classical rules. Even among the school plays there were some which owed little to Roman drama except division into acts and scenes.

Roister Doister was

modeled on Plautus; Ralph himself is the boasting soldier of Latin comedy; yet even here the native in­ fluence is stronger than the classical.

Madge Mumble-

crust and Tib Talkapace are as English as Noah's wife. The combat scene is purely English.

The extension of

the comic material into an entire play is, of course, 94 due to Plautine influence. Gammer Gurtons Nedle is almost wholly native; only the mischief maker,

93 Ben Jonson‘s indebtedness to the ancients will be discussed later. See pp.193-19§,infra. 94 Roister Doister and Gammer Gurtons Nedle were the first full length English comedies and they were both written by men trained in Roman comic tradi­ tion. Such plays took their inspiration for sustained plots concerned with secular affairs chiefly from Plautus.

184

Dlccon, owes anything to the Roman comedy of intrigue, and he comes nearer to being a development of the native Vice than he does to being the parasite of Latin comedy. Crammer, Dame Chatte, and Doctor Rat owe nothing to foreign influence.

They are village people, akin to

those found in the comic portions of the miracle plays. In summarizing the comic theory of pre-Shakespearean drama we may say that, while the structure of comedy was greatly influenced by Roman comic practice and neo-classic­ al theory, the idea of the comic was not.

Despite a few

dissenting voices in the early years of the Elizabethan era, and despite the assertions of certain later drama­ tists that they purposed through comedy to teach a moral lesson, the English theory of the comic remained what it had been before Roman influence made itself felt. Mirth and laughter remained the dorainent aim of the comic.

This idea of the comic is not Roman, it is not

Medieval, it is not neo-classical.

It is not entirely

Aristotelian, for there is a kind of ignominy attached to the comic character as conceived by Aristotle which we do not feel in English comedy.

Ridiculous as they

are, we feel a fondness for Mak, for Roister Doister, and for Jenkin, and this element of sympathy for the comic figure becomes more pronounced in the great

185

comic characters of Shakespeare.

The English comic

spirit, however, is akin to the Aristotelian conception of the comic in that English comedies present, for the most part, men who are ridiculous because they do not choose the mean, but who are neither so wicked nor so pitiful as to cause us pain.

They blunder in their

speech; they fight clumsily and have their heads cracked. In the English comedy of the period there are few of the clever bawds and harlots of Plautine comedy.

There are

some, as those in How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, but even here the real comedy does not lie in the intrigue, but in the simple-mindedness of Justice Reason, the lumpishness of Pipkin, and the way in which Old Lusam echoes all the words of Old Arthur.

The

characters in these plays are foolish men and women, and no pain deters us from laughing at them.

186

ill Comic Theories of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries In the rich and varied comedy of the age of Shakespeare, of Ben Jonson, of Beaumont and Fletcher, it is possible to find several distinct conceptions of the comic and to see their relationship to earlier theories.

We find in this period ideas of the comic

which are in harmony with the ideas of the ancients, others which show their relationship to certain Medieval theories, and others which seem to be indigenous to Eng­ land.

In Ben Jonson* s comedy of "humours’1 for instance,

we can see the influence of Horace and of Roman comic practice, as well as of earlier comic practice in Eng­ land; in the romantic comedies and tragi-comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher and of Shakespeare we can see the outcome of the Medieval idea that a comedy is a piece of literature which begins in calamity but ends in tran­ quillity; and in the lusty comedy of Dekker and of cer­ tain scenes in Shakespeare, we can see the further de­ velopment of the English comedy of mirth and laughter. This is not to say, of course, that the comic dramatists of this period can be classified in any final way, or in such a manner that there will be no overlapping.

187 Shakespeare, for instance, wrote romantic comedy,

tragi­

comedy, and the comedy of intrigue, as well as the comedy of gusto, which we find in the Falstaff scenes.

Not even

the comedies themselves can be so classified, for there is to be found in many of them, perhaps we may say in most of them, more than one kind of comic material. Yet certain general trends are present in the comedy of the Elizabethan age; they can be identified, and they can be related to conceptions held by earlier writers. At this point we may recall certain conceptions of the comic which were defined earlier.

There is, in

the first place, the idea of Plato that the laughter of comedy arises from a perception of the ignorance of the man who does not know himself, who fancies that he is fairer, or richer, or wiser than he is.

Such a man may

be represented on the stage for the purpose of teaching others to avoid being like him. is didactic.

This theory of comedy

Horace, who thought that poetry ought

either to delight, or to teach, or to combine delight­ fulness and teaching, gave his highest praise to poetry which serves a useful purpose and so may be classified among those who champion the didactic aim of the drama. Tzetzes, who considered that comedy ought to be, not only a means of dissuading men from evil and folly, but

188

actually a kind of public whip for punishing vice, is also a representative of the didactic theory.

In Eng­

land, as we have seen, the theory that a comedy should teach morality was held by Sidney, who, like Horace, combined his belief in the didactic aim of comedy with an aesthetic theory. A second theory of the comic found among ancient writers is that of Aristotle; it is an aesthetic and ethical theory rather than a moralistic one.

Comedy, in

the opinion of Aristotle, represents the man who has a deformity in person or an irregularity in behavior which does not give pain to the spectator.

Such a man is ugly

or ignominious, and certainly not to be admired or imitated.

The spectator feels a certain contempt for

him, but he does not hate him, and certainly he does not love him.

Comedy, according to this way of thinking, is

neither a means of punishing wrong doers nor a school of manners and morals for the citizenry.

It is an aesthetic

experience, and the laughter which results from It is one of the pleasures of life. Another theory of comedy which we have previous­ ly considered is that one which evolved from certain Greek traditions by way of Diomedes and other Latin grammarians and reached its culmination in the theory of Dante. It is

189 a theory of comedy as a kind of writing rather than a theory of the comic as such.

A comedy, according to

Dante, is a narrative written in the popular style and moving from troubled circumstances to happiness. The fourth theory which we have need to con­ sider is the one which we find illustrated in the comic episodes of the English religious plays, a theory which seems to be indigenous to England.

The aim of. comedy,

according to this theory, Is mirth and laughter, for mirth and laughter are wholesome.

This theory is similar

to the Aristotelian theory in several ways. thing, its aim is pleasure.

For one

For another, it finds

laughable the same things that Aristotle found laugh­ able

men who fail of the mean of beauty in their per­

sons or the mean of virtue in their behavior, but whose deformities and irregularities cause no pain to the spectator.

But the English comic spirit likewise differs

from the Aristotelian in several respects.

It differs

in its conception of the attitude of the laugher to the thing laughed at.

For Aristotle, the ridiculous man is

ignominious, and ignominy is a kind of wickedness. It Is a deviation from the mean of virtue.

Such a man, as we

have said, is not to be admired and certainly not to be imitated.

The English comic theory is free of such

ethical implications.

Moreover, in the Aristotelian

190 theory, the attitude of the spectator is detached. He neither rails at the comic figure nor loves him.

The

English attitude toward the comic figure is not de­ tached, but sympathetic.

The English temper is not

the same as the Greek temper, and the Englishman, for the most part, is incapable of the disinterested point of view necessary to the type of comedy which Aristotle described.

The difference may be illustrated by refers*-

ring to M-ensonder and Shakespeare.

We laugh in a detached 95 way at Demeas, but we love Fad staff. In studying the comic theory of the age of Shakespeare we shall make no attempt to study all of the comic writers of the period.

Such a task would be

gigantic; moreover, it lies outside the scope of our present purpose.

Our interest is not so much in individual

writers as in prevailing theories.

Neither, certainly,

shall we attempt to study all of the comedies, nor even all of the kinds of comedies, written during the era. Our interest is in the nature and function of the comic as such, and our purpose will be served best by confining our attention to those dramatists a.nd those plays which

.

__

Characters in the plays of Aristophanes make a greater appeal to our sympathies than do those of Menander. We take somewhat the same delight in Xanthias, in the Frogs, that wre do in Shakespeare's comic servants.

191

most clearly express or illustrate comic theory.

Because

Ben Jonson wrote so fully and specifically upon the sub­ ject of comedy, both in his plays and in his more formal criticism, and because, more clearly than in any other playwright of -the period, one can see in him the re­ lationship between classical dramatic theory and English dramatic theory, it will be advantageous to begin our study of the comic theories of the greater Elizabethans with him.

The name of Ben Jonson is associated with a type of comedy which reached its highest point of develop­ ment in his work —

the comedy of "humours.11 Before study­

ing this type, however, and the comic concept which it represents, it will be helpful to survey briefly Jonson*s dramatic theory as a whole. In his critical theories he owes much to the 96 ancients, to Sidney, and to Heinsius. He asked, as did Sidney, that English drama become more conformable

96 Some of the passages in Discoveries are translations from Daniel Heinsius, De, Tragoediae Constitutions, published at Leyden in 1611. See "Sources of Jonson* s Piscoverieslt. by J. E. Spingarn, Modern Philology. 2:451 ff., 1905.

192

to classical rules and less fantastic in subject matter. He expressed the opinion that the primary function of comedy is to teach morality.

In his practice, too, he

owes much to neo-classical theory, but he is also indebted to native and realistic tradition.

His theories and his

practice do not always precisely coincide*

It is a mis­

take, therefore, to accept the sum of his remarks upon comedy as an adequate expression of his comic theory as a whole; his comic sense often carried him outside the bounds set by his critical ideas.

His expressed aims were

to reform the drama of his day so that it should be more realistic and more exact in form, and to write comedies that would satirize and castigate vice.

He wished to

"strip poetry of those rotten and base ranges wherewith the times" had "adulterated her forme, restore her to her primitive habite, feature, and maiestie, and render her worthy to be kist of all great and Maister Spirits" 97 of the world. While it is scarcely possible to overestimate the influence which classical and neo-classical Ideas had upon the criticism of Jonson, it is well to note that

97 Dedicatory Epistle to Voloone: The Works of Ben Jonson (London, 1756), vol. II, p. 269.

193

he did not advocate a slavish imitation of the ancients. What tie took from the past he took because he believed it to be true and right, and not merely because it had the weight of classical authority in its favor. robust and independent critic.

He was a

He wrote in Discoveries:

“Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the schools have done to Aristotle. The damage is infinite knowledge receives by it; for to many things a man should owe but a temporary belief, a suspension of his own judgment, not an absolute resignation of himself, or a perpetual captivity. Let Aristotle and others have their dues; but if we can make farther discoveries of truth and fitness than they, why are we envied?“98 One* s own judgment,

according to Jonson,

ought to be the guide to excellence in literature. “Who should teach us the right or wrong of a play?11 Damplay asks in The Magnetic Lady.

"If your own science cannot

do it, or the love of modesty and truth," the boy replies, 99 "all other entreaties or attempts are vain." Consequently rules are not to be too slavish­ ly followed by the dramatist.

In Every Man out of His

Humour Mitis asks concerning a play:

"Does he

the

playwright observe all the laws of comedy in it?"

98 Works. vol. VII,

dp

.

137-138.

99 Act II, chorus following scene 7; Works.,. vol. IV, p. 413.

19 4

Cordatus Informs him that the so-called laws (the unities, the use., of the chorus, and the division into acts and scenes) were the result of development and invention, and that the moderns have as much right to

100 invent as had the ancients. Some of the rules of the ancients ought to be followed, because they are wise and right. ought, for instance,

to have its fit bounds.

A play In a

passage which paraphrases Aristotle rather closely he

101 writes: "For as a body without proportion can­ not be goodly, no more can actions, either in comedy or tragedy, without his fit bounds: and every bound, for the nature of the subject, is esteemed best that is largest, till it car increase no more: for it behooves the action in tragedy or comedy to be let grow, till the necessity ask a conclusion; wherein two things are to be considered; first, that it exceed not the compass of one day; next, that there be place left for digression and art."102 The chief function of comedy, in the opinion of Jonson, is to teach, although he agrees with Sidney that the teaching should be accompanied by delightful­ ness.

In Every Man out of His Humour Cordatus says

10G Works, vol. I, p. 149 ff.

101 Cf. Poetics VII. 5, 6, 7 (1450b - 1451a).

102 Discoveries: Works, vol. VII, p. 158 f.

195 that if the "autumn judgments" of his day cannot de­ fine comedy let them content themselves with the de­ finition of Cicero: imitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis. imago veritatis.

He then adds that comedy is

a thing throughout pleasant and ridiculous and accomodated 103 to the correction of manners. In Discoveries he says: "The parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy, and 104 the end is the same, for they both delight and teach." In the Dedicatory Epistle to Voloone he defines the poet as "an interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of 105 things divine, no less than human, a master of manners" In the prologue to The Alchemist he writes: "But when the wholesome remedies are sweet And in their working, gaine, and profit meet, He hopes to find no spirit so much diseas'd 106 But will with such fair correctives be pleased." A more complete expression of Jonson1s aims as a comic writer is set forth in the prologue to Volpone: "Here is rhyme, not empty of reason, Whose true s c o p e a u t h o r ' s ) , if you will w it, In all his poems still hath been this measure

103 Act III, Grex following scene 6; Works. vol. I 104

.Works. vol. VII, p. 155.

105 Works. vol. II, p. 269.

106 Works, vol. Ill, p. 6.

196 To mix profit with your pleasure, Yet this much I can give you as a token Of his play's worth, no eggs are broken, Nor quaking custards with their fierce teeth affright Wherewith your rant are so delighted; Nor hales he in a gull, old ends reciting, To stop gaps in his loose writing, With such a deal of monstrous forced action As might make Beth'lem a faction; Nor made he his play for jests stole from each table, But makes jests to fit his fable And so presents quick comedy refined As best critics have designed. The laws of time, place, person, he observeth, From no needful rule he swerveth, All gall and coperas from his ink he draineth, Only a little salt remaineth Wherewith he'll rub your cheeks till red with laughter 107 They shall look fresh a week after.”108 Perhaps the best single expression of Jonson1s idea of the function of the comic is to be found in the Dedicatory Epistle to Volpone: "I have laboured, for their instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the ancient formes but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last the doctrine, which is the princlpall end of poesy, to inform men in the best reason of living, and though my Catastrophe may,in the strict rigour of Comlck L a w , meet with censure as a turning back to my promise, I desire the learned and charitable Critick to have so much faith in me, to think it was done with indus­ try...my special aim being to put the snaffle in their mouths that crie out, We never punish vice in our Enterludes, etc., I took the more

107 For an account of Jonson's theory of laughter see pp. 208*-22U3:x&fra. 108 ----Works, vol. II, p. 274 ff.

197 liberty; though not without some lines of example drawne even in the ancients them­ selves, the goings out of whose Comoedies are not always ioyfull, but oftimes the Bautes, the Seruants, the Riuals, yea, and the Maisters are mulcted, and fitly, it being the office of a comick Poet to imitate iustice and instruct to life, as well as purity of language, or stir up gentle af­ fection. "109 As may be seen from some of the foregoing passages, Jon.son was out of sympathy with the plays of his contemporaries.

He disliked slovenly writing,

improper jests, and fantastic plots.

He hated the

dramatists for yielding to the demands of popular audiences, and he hated the audiences for delighting in inferior plays.

He disliked the fashionable gallants

who went to the play house to be seen and admired,

"to

make a general muster of themselves in their clothes of

110 credit,"

as much as he did the groundlings.

Perhaps

he disliked them more, for in the introduction to the New Inn he says to the reader:

"I do trust myself and

109 Dedicatory Epistle to Volpone: Works, vol. II, p. 269. The notion that a comedy should arouse gentle affections in the mind of the specta­ tor seems to be out of harmony with the general trend of the theory of Jonson. It is similar to the idea of Minturno that comedy awakens humane feelings in the spectator. See p. 85, supra.

110 The New Inn, address prefixed; Works., vol. IV, p. 251.

198

my book rather to thy rustic candor than to all the pomp

111

of their pride and solemn ignorance to boot.11

In

Dlscoverles he says that the multitude commend writers as they do wrestlers,

those who come in "robustiously"

and with a show of violence are considered the best: "But in these things the unskillful are naturally deceived and judging wholly by bulk, thinke rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed. Nor do I think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort of G-allants. for all are the multitude only they differ in cloathes, not In judgment or understanding."112 His distaste for the ignorance of audiences, and his scorn of dramatists who cater to it, is no­ where more plainly shown than In the description of the puppet show in Barthoiomew Fair.

Cokes, an ignorant

bumpkin (though an esquire), has entered the booth where the puppets are to play Hero and Leander. Cokes: But do you play it according to the printed book?... Leatherhed: By no means, sir. Cokes: No* How then? Leatherhed: A better way, sir; that is too learned and poetical for our audience; what do they know of what Hellespont is, guilty of true love1s blood, or what Abydos is, or the other. Sestas hight? Cokes: Thou art in the right; I do not know myself.

111 Ibid.

112

Works, vol. VII, pp. 90-91.

199

The author, Littlewit,

then explains to Cokes that .he

has substituted the Thames for the Hellespont and has changed Leander to the son of a dyer of Puddle-Wharf 113 and Hero to a wench of Bankside. The attraction which the bawdy and indecent had for the public is frequently satirized by Jonson. Poetaster Histrio assures Tucca, the boaster:

"We

have as much ribaldry in our plays as can be, as you would wish, captain; all the sinners in the suburbs come 114 and applaud our action daily." In the epilogue to The New Inn we read: "He (the'authorj could have haled in The dru ikards and the noises of the Inn, In his last act; if he had thought it fit To vent his vapours in the place of wit: But better 1twas that they should sleep or spue, Than in the scene to offend or him or you."115 Instead of presenting noise, ribaldry, and drunkenness on the stage, Jonson wished to inculcate morality.

Again and again he repeats the words of Horace,

"to profit and delight."

This moral teaching he thought

could best be done by means of satirizing evil.

In Every.

Man out of His Humour Asper says: "...I'll strip the ragged follies of the time Naked && at their birth... 113 Act V, scene iii; Works. vol. Ill, pp. 292-293, ■^^Act III, scene iv; Works, vol. II, p.51. Work s . vol. IV, p. 359.

200

And with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs I will scourge those apes And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror As large as is the stage whereon we act Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomized in every nerve and sinne With constant courage and contempt of fear."ll6 Jonson was accused of being personal in his satire (and he sometimes was), and is consequently often forced to defend himself on that score.

In the speech

of Virgil in the Poetaster we find such a defence.* 111 Tis not the wholesome sharp morality Or modest anger of a satiric spirit That hurts or wounds the body of a state; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant and base Interpreter: who will distort and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen."117 In the Induction to Bartholomew Fair Jonsbn regrets that any would be so "solemnly ridiculous as to search out who was meant by the gingerbread woman, who by the hobby-horse man, who by the costard monger, nay, who by their wares...what Mirror for Magistrates is meant by the justice, what great lady by the pig wroman, what con118 cealed statesman by the seller of mouse traps." 116 Induction; Works. vol. I, p. 124. 117 Works, vol. II, p. 99. 118 Induction; Works, vol. Ill, p. 283.

201

The grave citizen and the modest matron,

says Cordatus,

in Every Man out of His Humourf will not be offended by the folly of Deliro and his wife, but will apply it as a foil to their own virtues.

Sordide does not represent

all farmers any more than a representation of Nero on

119 the stage is intended to signify all emperors. Yet the words of Cordatus on this matter can­ not be taken at their exact face value, for while Sordide does not represent all farmers, he is certainly intended to represent all men of a certain temperament and character.

That is the way in which Jonson worked. His

method of chastizing evil was to create a character dominated by the quality which he wished to satirize. These "humourous" characters he substituted for the Vice, long popular with English audiences.

That Jonson

himself thought of the "humourous" character as a de­ velopment of the Vice is made plain in The Staple of News.

Several of the characters are watching a play:

Censure; Why, this is duller and duller. Intolerable, scurvy, neither a devil nor a fool in the play. Mirth; How like you the Vice in this play? Expectation; Which is he? Mirth: Three or four; Old Covetousness, the sordid Pennyboy, the Money-bawd, who is a flesh bawd, too, they say.

119 Works, vol. I, p . 201.

202

Tattle: But here is never a fiend to carry him away. Besides he has never a wooden dagger.... Mirth: That was the old way, gossip, when Iniquity came in Hokos Pokos in a juggler's jerkin...but now they are attired like men and women of the time... Prodigality like a young heir, his mistress Money...pranked up like a prime lady... .120 The comedy of humours, characteristic,

then, presents a human

such as boastfulness, gullibility, or

avarice, dressed in the castume of a man.

Boastful­

ness is represented by Bobadill; gullibility by Abel Drugger; greed by Sir Epicure Mammon.

Such a method of

creating characters looks back to the English morality play in which each character represents a human vice or virtue.

Jonson shows his indebtedness to the

morality very plainly in the names of his characters. Sir Epicure

Mammon's name tells us what he is; we know

the ladyPecunia before we read of

her actions; Zeal-

of-the-Land Busy needs no description.

Like the human

qualities personified in the moralities, too, these characters are represented on the stage for the purpose of instructing men to avoid being like them.

120 Second Intermean after the second act; Works, vol. IV, p. 179.

203 But the humour comedy as It was written by Ben Jonson is something more than a development of the morality play. plaining. sense.

The word “humour" itself needs ex­

In the Middle Ages it had had a medical

A m a n ’s body, it was thought at that time, was

composed of four elements, or humours: blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile.

One of these elements usually

predominated— giving a man a certain physical and temperamental bent.

If the blood predominated he was

said to be of a sanguine nature; such a man had a red face, a bluff, hearty manner, a positive, generous, and determined disposition. man.

Chaucer's Franklin was a sanguine

If phlegm predominated, a man was said to be crabbed,

mean-natured, and cold.

Bile and black bile, when pre­

dominant in a man's body, likewise made their corre­ sponding impressions on his disposition.

Thus the term

“humour", having at first a purely physical and medical significance,

came to be applied to temperament, so that,

for instance, a man of sanguine temperament came to be spoken of as a man of sanguine "humour."

But the term

humour as applied to a man's entire temperament or dis­ position is still not the term as it was used by Jonson and some of his contemporaries.

In their usage it re­

ceived still another extension in meaning, and came to indicate, not the general nature of a man, but a ruling

204

idiosyncrasy.

Jealousy was thus considered to be a

humour, as were boastfulness, avarice, and other human characteristics.

The humourous characters in Jonson1s

comedies are thus arrived at in a different manner than were the characters in the moralities; for the character in the morality is a human quality personified, while the Jonsonian character is a man whose character has been simplified, reduced to its lowest terms, so that one quality may be seen in relief. Just as the humourous characters of Jonson are something like the characters in the morality plays, although they are created in a different manner,

so they

are something like the characters of Homan comedy, the ’’subtle bawds, wily harlots, and unthrifty sons," and represent^

in a sense, an extreme development of Horace's

dictum that a character ought to act and speak in a manner befitting his age, profession, and station in life. let the humourous characters of Jonson differ in a very important respect from the characters of which Horace speaks.

They have more of singularity; they are not so

much types of persons, drawn according to the general conception of what such persons ought to be, and repre­ senting professions, ages, and social positions, as they are individuals dominated by idiosyncrasies which are to be found in men of all professions and in all ranks of society.

205 Hike the characters in the morality, and like the characters in the plays of Plautus and Menahdep, the characters in the comedy of humours suffer from two defects.

In the first place, they are static.

They

do not really change from the beginning of the play un­ til the end.

If, as in Every Man in His Humour. Jon­

son causes them to reform at the end of the comedy, so that Kitely will be no longer jealous, nor Kno'well so unsympathetic a father, we are not convinced, for the change is entirely external; there is no inward de­ velopment of character.

Heal men and women do not change

character over night by being "in" or "out" of a humour. In the second place, and this is the other defect to be found in the characters of these plays, real men and women are not so simple in nature.

Few people are so

completely dominated by one trait of character as are the people in Jonson*s humour comedies.

The actions of

such plays, moreover, instead of growing out of the characters of the men and women concerned, are plainly invented by the author for the purpose of displaying the humours. In the hands of a lesser dramatist than Ben Jonson such a method would have produced characters which were completely unlifelike, mere automatons to

206

illustrate human qualities.

In Jonson, however,

they

are made to live by a sure sense of the comic and by a realistic treatment of them and their surroundings. Realism was one of Jonson1s professed aims. of a kind, he certainly has. souls, but of bodies.

And realism,

It is not the reality of

He does not deal, as does Shakes­

peare, with fundamental truths, but with surface actual­ ities.

The locale of his comedies is restricted and

solidly built. and theaters

City streets, domestic interiors, inns, these are the places in which his charac­

ters move and speak. not for Jonson.

Green fields and the open sky are

The forest of Arden and the island of

Prospero are foreign to him. but he gains actuality.

He loses poetry thereby,

The same realism is evident in

his choice of characters.

Princes and dukes find little

place in his comedies.

His people are gulls and rogues,

tradesmen, playwrights,

soldiers and citizens.

His de­

sire for the realistic treatment of characters is ex­ pressed in Discoveries: "The true artificer will not run away from nature as he were afraid of her; or depart from life and the likeness of truth; but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar, somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and

207

vociferations to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. "121 Here, of course, Jonson is in accord with the tradi­ tional conception of comic subject matter. It was his realism which saved Jonson from the logical outcome of his comic method, and it was this same realism which prevented his moralistic aim from dom­ inating all his plays.

For while Jonson declared that he

wrote his comedies to chastize evil, they do not always do it.

In the Alchemist the rogues escape punishment.

Indeed, Jonson had a fondness for rogues, merry quick­ witted rogues.

It is not they who are lashed in

Bartholomew-Fair.

The pickpocket goes unscathed; it is

the hypocritical Puritan who is ridiculed.

Human follies,

as he said in the prologue to Every Man in His Humour. were his real target, not crimes. morality?

Is this to teach

What does one learn from the Alchemist? Is

it not "Don't be a gull" rather than "Don't be a rogue"? Do not the victims suffer more than those who victimize them?

As a matter of fact, in such plays as Every Man

in His Humour and Bartholomew Fair Jonson is closer to the position of Aristotle than he Is to the position of those who hold that it is the function of comedy to teach morality.

The minor defects and follies of his

Work s. vol. VII, p. 95.

208 characters correspond to the deformities of which Aristotle spoke, for they do not give pain to the spectator. Moreover, despite his moralistic theory, Jonson has Illustrated in many of his comedies the traditional English theory that the aim of the comic Is laughter. Bartholomew Fair is one long merrymaking.

It is true,

of course, that Zeal-of-the-Land Busy is satirized, and bitterly satirized; but In the fun and excitement of the fair, in the activities of the pig woman,

the hobby

horse man, and the "roarers", we almost forget his bigotry. When we remember it, moreover, we do not so much scorn him as laugh at him. that, he is funny.

He is despicable, but more than So strong was Jonson1s grasp of

actuality, and so great was his appreciation of "low" characters,

that had he not been hampered by his fervent

desire to reform the manners of the stage and the morals of the people, he might have written some of the supreme­ ly great comedies of the world. Believing as he did, however,

that the chief

function of comedy is to teach morality, Jonson, as we may expect, held no very high opinion of laughter for its own sake.

It is true that in prologues to his plays

he sometimes speaks approvingly of laughter.

We quoted

earlier the prologue to Volnone. in which he says that

209

he has drained all gall from his ink and left only a little salt with which he will rub the cheeks of the spectators until they are red with laughter.

But it

is worth noting that even here he is not praising laughter for the sake of laughter because in itself it is wholesome and healthful; he is speaking of laughter a$ vice, of laughter as a tool of morality. The play to which this statement is prefixed probes human depravity with pitilessness that has scarcely been equalled in literature.

Jonson agreed with Sidney that

the arousing of laughter is too low an aim for comedy; when laughter is the sole aim of the comic it is a bid for the favor of the multitude, who are able to appre­ ciate nothing which is right and proper, or which is designed for their own improvement.

In support of

his opinion he cites Plato and Aristotle! "For as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude, that depraves some part of a man's nature without disease, as a wry face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed, vizzard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit, and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations, which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter un­ fitting a wise man. And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he represented the gods sometimes laughing, as also it is divinely said of

210

Aristotle, that to seem ridiculous is a part of dishonesty and foolish."122 The opinion of laughter which he attributes to Plato is accurate, for, as we have seen, Plato be­ lieved that laughter is a kind of intemperance and is beneath the dignity of men and gods.

The quotation from

Aristotle, however, is in part accurate and in part garbled.

When he quotes Aristotle as saying that to

seem ridiculous is a part of dishonesty and foolish, he is quoting accurately, but when he says that laughter is a fault in comedy, and that laughter "depraves" the man who laughs, he is quoting inaccurately.Aristotle did not say that the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy.

On the other hand, he found laughter one of 123 the pleasant things of life, a good. He did not say that laughter has the effect of depraving the laugher ..

Jonson1 s phrase "without disease" seems to

echo Aristotle's phrase "without pain," but for Aristotle the deformity of the comic character is with­ out pain to the spectator, while for Jonson it is the

122 Ibid., p. 155.

123 See P. 32,

supra.

211 laughter itself which depraves a man, albeit "without disease"

that is, without permanent injury to him.

The error came about because of a mistranslation on the part of Jonson.

He confused the one laughing

with the object at which he laughs. the laughter,

The object of

that is the ridiculous, is indeed, in

Aristotle's opinion, a kind of baseness which does not involve suffering for the spectator; but the laughter itself is not base, nor is the man who laughs. Like Sidney, Jonson joins ridicule with laughter, and the laughter of which Jonson speaks is the kind of which Sidney speaks.

It is the laughter of

satire, for Sidney, as we have noted, a mild satire, for Jonson, a whip with which to punish men.

As such

it must be controlled, and as such it is capable of a de­ gradation of which mirthful laughter is incapable. It is directed at that which is scorned, and scorn knows no bounds.

A well-informed man may scorn an ignorant

man; a man sound in body may scorn a deformed man; a filthy-minded man may scorn decency; a traitor may scorn love of country.

The laughter that comes of

hatred and scorn is capable of gradations, and is often directed at the wrong things.

If it is to be directed

at the right things the laughers

must be educated. And

212

it was toward the aim of educating the people that Jonson bent his efforts.

He wished them to scorn evil

and foolishness; they laughed instead at the boisterous and the indecent.

Thus it is that we find Jonson speak­

ing of the attempt to move laughter as a device to seek the favor of the multitude.

And thus it comes about

that Jonson thought the best comedies to be those which 6.0 not have laughter as their aim, at least as their principal aim.

The laughter of satire is the sneer, the

•’scornful tickling" of which Sidney spoke. upon the laugher,

It reacts

so that he becomes more bigoted and

self-important than he was before he laughed. the l a u g h e r "becomes laughable.

In short,

It was for this reason

that Plato thought laughter unworthy of the guardians of the state. The one of Jonson1s plays which best fits his theory of the comic is Yoloone. the F ox, in which, indeed, he does chastize human meanness and cupidity, and in which most readers find little that is laughable. If any laughter is awakened it is the sneer of the cynic at the whole race of man. In the matter of laughter, however, once more Jonson1s practice is wider than his theory.

There is an

abundance of laughter in Every Man in His Humour, in Bartholomew Fair, and in A Tale of a Tub.

And it is

213

true laughter, not scorn.

One cannot avoid the suspicion

that Jonson1s theory of laughter was based on his knowledge of classical comedy and classical criticism and did not represent his personal feelings in the matter.

The man

who awakened the broad and hearty laughter of the people at Bobadill must certainly have joined in that laughter himself. Ben Jonson was a great comic drama­ tist in spite of his theory of laughter. Jonson was not the only Elizabethan drama­ tist to write realistic comedy for purposes of satire. Chapman's An Humerous Daves Mirth,

a realistic comedy

124 of humours, apparently preceded Every Man in His Humour. Marston wrote satires, and like Jonson, protested that he did not aim them at particular persons.

In the

prologue to The Malcontent (1603) he wrote: "To wrest each hurtless thought to private sence, Is the foul use of ill-bred impudence.11 In an address to the reader, written the following year, he wrote: "I have not glanced at disgrace of any ... unto every worthy mind it will be approved so general and honest as may modestly pass with freedom of satire." Although the plays of Massinger are not satires, satirical figures are present in them, figures which

I24por a discussion of the relative dates of the two plays see the Cambridge History of. English Literature, vol. VI, p. 17.

214 correspond to Jonson*s humourous characters. G-reedy, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts,

Justice

is such a figure;

his love for good food is his "humour. 11 In The Homan Actor Massinger presents the dramatist* s defence against the charge of personal satire.

Paris says:

"....... And, for traducing such That are above us, publishing to the world Their secret crimes, we are as innocent As such as are born dumb. When we present An heir that does conspire against the life Of his dear parent, numbering every hour He lives as tedious to him; if there be Among the auditors,one whose conscience tells him He is of the same mold, we cannot help it.125 The dramatistwho, next to Jonson, wrote the most bitterly satirical realistic comedy of the age was Middleton.

In A Chaste Maid in Cheap side

we have pictures

of lower class life in London that are almost too grim to be comic.

Pickpockets, dishonest usurers, whores,

and bawds people these plays. An honest character is a rarity.

The people, moreover, are not characterized by

"humours"; they are individualized. are drawn.

No generalizations

Middleton 'does not preach; but here, if any­

where in literature, comedy is a mirror 11......... of base conceits and damned roguery; The very sink of ill-bred villainy."126 125 Act I, scene iii. 126

Spectrum, the prologue to Wily beguiled; in W. Carew Hazlitt, A Select" Collectlon of Old English Plays (London, 1874), vol. 9.

215

The chaste maid is an odd flower indeed in her sordid surroundings,

so odd that one doubts her reality.

the rogues are real.

But

Middleton's tone is cold and hard

but his implications are clear; his plays, like the pictures of Hogarth, need no explanatory comment from their creator.

An idea of comedy similar to the idea held by Aristotle also finds expression in the age of Shakespeare.

In the opinion of Aristotle, as we have

said, comic characters are ignominious men, and comic actions are foolish actions which give no pain to the spectator because they are neither piteous nor truly wicked.

Such comedy is not didactic, for no attempt is

made in it to satirize the baseness represented. Neither is it the comedy of humor and goodnatured mirth, for we have no fellow feeling for the persons involved. beholding such comedy we feelneither scorn our emotions are not engaged.

On

nor love;

This kind of comedy has

never been much at home upon English soil.

It was

present in the Renaissance in

such plays as Love. Vs

Labour's Lost

of Errors:it made a

and the Comedy

brief appearance during the Restoration in the plays of

216 Etherege, and to a lesser degree In those of Congreve, when French influence was strong; it is present in the novel,s of George Meredith, and is the basis for the "comic spirit" which he defined in his Essay on Comedy: but it is a visitor in England, not a resident.

The

true comic spirit of England is the comic spirit of Chaucer, of much of Shakespeare, of Fielding, and of Dickens.

It loves its rogues ana its fools. Love1s Labour1s Lost is fundamentally a comedy

of the type that gives rise to detached laughter.

This

is not to say, of course, that it resembles any comedy which Aristotle might have had in mind when he wrote his definition.

The spirit of Shakespeare's England was

very different from the spirit of Aristotle's Greece. The subject of the play, romantic love, would have been in­ conceivable to Aristotle, and the excessive use of verbal humor would have amazed him.

Yet essentially Love* s

Labour1s Lost, in characterization and in plot, falls within the Aristotelian definition.

Four men, worldly

men, men of the court, who, in spite of the alleged reputation of the king, are not primarily scholars, vow to study for three years, immured in a court to which no women are to be admitted.

The idea is obviously ridicu­

lous, the more so because the men are aware before they

217

make their vows of the Impending visit of the princess of France and her attendants.

Here, then, is an action

(and it is the basis of the entire play), which is cer­ tainly far from the mean and exposes the fact that the men taking the vows are far from wise. itself ridiculous.

The act is in

Moreover, it is not a foolish act

of the type to give pain to the spectator.

It is the

kind of irregular action which will necessarily give rise to laughter, a laughter which has in it neither scorn nor sympathy. By virtue, then, of its characters and its plo'fcj Love1s Labour1s Lost illustrates the idea of comedy to be found in Aristotle's Poetics. As we have suggested, however, much of the comic effect of the play Is produced by comic language and the language of wit. Punning, alliteration, and word play of all kinds are used frequently, so frequently, in fact, as to annoy many modern readers. been annoyed;

Aristotle, too, no doubt would have

such an emphasis upon verbal humor would

have been strange to him.

Yet, in a sense, the comedy

of words, as well as the comedy of ludicrous situation, may be said to fall within Aristotle's definition of the comic.

Words turned from their true meanings are

but another kind of irregularity, another way of missing

218

the mark, of swerving from the mean.

Only when the af­

fections of the reader are engaged, when the words make him feel a positive sympathy with the character, as is the case with the words of Falstaff, or, on the other hand, when the words are such that he feels hatred, as in the case of Jonson1s Mosea, does the idea become unAristotelian.

Such a line of differentiation is, of

course, a fine one, and not always clearly drawn.

In

the case of Armado, whose vocabulary is so learned as to be wide of the mark of everyday usage, we feel, perhaps, the Aristotelian detachment; but in the case of Costard our feelings are engaged.

Perhaps this is true because

he is one of our own; in spite of his French surround­ ings, he is the familiar type of English comic servant. On the whole, however, characters, actions, and words in Love* s Labour1s Lost are all variations from the mean, either ethical or aesthetic, and give rise to dis­ interested laughter. The Comedy of Errors. with its plot from Homan comedy, is another play in which the chief aim is to produce laughter by means of mistakes made by the characters. Lost,

It differs, however, from Lave1js Labour1s

and from the comedies which Aristotle must have

had in mind, by the fact that the mistakes do not re­ sult from the imperfections of the characters.

The

219 characters themselves are not Ignominious.

It is due

to no fault of the Antipholi and the Droraios that they are identical twins, that they were separated in child­ hood, and that when they are finally brought together in the same city they miss meeting one another for a long enough time to permit a great deal of comic entanglement. In the Comedy .of Errors situations rather than men fail of the mean of perfection.

The comedy is produced by

errors, not through errors in morality but through errors In judgment, unavoidable errors, perhaps, but errors nevertheless.

Antipholus of Ephesus, a reputable

citizen of the place, is roughly treated, his honesty questioned, his domestic troubles aired in the city, and finally he is adjudged mad, is bound and placed in a dungeon.

This abuse does not come about as a result

his conscious' misdoing but as a result of his Ignorance. Therefore, although he himself is not ignominious, he finds himself near the end of the play in an ignominious position.

Certainly throughout the play he represents

the man who is Ignorant of what he ought to do, and cer­ tainly the situations represented in the play are wide of the mean of perfection. The Comedy of Errors, like Love1s Lab our V.s Lost, is neither satire nor humor.

We feel no malice

toward the characters; neither do we feel any deep

220

sympathy for them.

We are not very much Interested in

them as people; our concern is in what they do and in what happens to them.

In our study of the comic theories of the Elizabethans it becomes necessary at this point to give some attention to a type of comedy which is not in it­ self comic, and has, therefore, no real place in a con­ sideration of comic theory as such.

Yet because plays

of this type were called comedies, and because the type is so largely represented in the age, a discussion of it cannot be avoided.

We refer the tragi-comedy. Tragi­

comedies often have comedy in them, comedy in abundance, but essentially, and in themselves,

they are not comic.

Such plays as Oymbellne and the Tempest are comedies according to the definition of Dante, for they begin in trouble, with exile and threat of death, and end in restoration, reconciliation, and marriage.

Moreover,

their chief subject matter is love, and twelve hundred years before,

the grammarian Diomedes had defined comedy 127 as a kind of drama, which treats of love.

127 See p. 51, supra.

221

Yet tragi-comedy does not exactly adhere to the Medieval conception of comedy, for although, accord­ ing to the Medieval idea, it accepts love as its sub­ ject, and advances from trouble to good fortune, it does not always, nor indeed often, use common men as charac­ ters. ances.

Kings, princes, and dukes make frequent appear­ Moreover, many of the subjects which were earlier

allotted to tragedy are made use of by tragi-comedy. Exile, banishment, usurpation, murder, used as subjects.

and incest are

Sometimes these terrible events have

taken place before the opening of the play, and some­ times they occur during the action, but always they are necessary to the unfolding of the plot.

We recall Isidore

of Seville's remark that tragedy concerns the deeds and misdeeds of famous kings; in tragi-comedy the misdeeds of kings, princes, and dukes play an important part. It is evident, therefore,

that the tragi­

comedy of the English Renaissance had some ancestor other than the critical precepts of the Middle Ages. This ancestor was the Medieval romance, chivalrous love.

the tale of

In such tales the protagonist is of

gentle blood, a knight or a prince.

He loves with an

ideal love a maiden of his own social class.

For her

sake he fights battles and endures hardships; to her

222

he remains true, even though she loves another, and if she dies he vows life-long chastity.

The lady whom he

adores is the most beautiful lacly upon earth; when she smiles, he is filled with.bliss; when she frowns he wishes to die.

His love is ethereal; it has no commerce

with housekeeping.

Courage, loyalty, and chastity are

his ideals. Whether the lover gains his desire, the love of his lady, or whether he fails of it, such a story is high romance, and never, when taken seriously, is it comic.

The romances of Tristan and Isolde, of

Lancelot and Guenivere, and of Aucassin and Nicolette are the chivalric tales of which we speak. With the coming of the Renaissance the popu­ larity of the tale of love and chivalry did not die. The Elizabethan public loved romantic fiction of the type, for instance, of G-reene’s Arbasto. in which sieges, imprisonments,

treachery, escapes, usurpation,

exile,

and death for love follow one another in rapid suc­ cession.

Ho adventure was too marvelous, no coincidence

too absurd.

In deference to the vogue, Shakespeare

dramatized G-reene1s Pandosto in A Winter1s Tale. In tragi-comedies, as in prose or verse narratives of romance, the traditions of the tale of chivalry were followed.

As the lover must pass through many perils

223

before reaching his final reward in the love of his lady, so the true prince or king must suffer many misfortunes before his final triumph at the end of the play* The term tragi-comedy, as it was used by Fletcher and illustrated by many of the plays written by him and his collaborator Beaumont, and by some of the plays of Shakespeare, did not mean,

then, a play in

which comic and tragic elements were mingled, as it had 128 meant in the definition of Edwards, but rather it signified a play in which a happy ending follows great difficulties and dangers.

John Fletcher wrote:

"A tragi-comedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killings, but in respect it wants death, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet it brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy."129 This conception of comedy is an outgrowth of the Medieval idea that the characterizing feature of a comedy is that it end with the success and fortune of the "good" charac­ ters, those with whom the reader is in sympathy.

It

also has something in common with the idea that comedy

^ ^ R i c h a r d Edwards, Prologue to Damon and Pithias: in Joseph Quincy Adams, Chief Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Cambridge. 1924), p. 542, 11.37-38. See PJ.8D,supra

129 John Fletcher, To the Reader, prefixed to The Faithful Shepherdess.

224 ought to show opposite endings for the evil and for the good characters, an idea which would seem to derive 130 ultimately from Aristotle* s comments upon the Odvssev. Consequently, in the tragi-comedy events and characters are wrenched from the truth and the entire atmosphere is one of unreality.

This is true because no system of

rewards and punishments, at least of any worldly or external sort, is observable in the affairs of men, and if such a system is to be imposed, it must be imposed at the expense of truth.

Tragic events in such dramas are

not permitted to work themselves out to their logical conclusions.

Reversals of fortune are frequent, and

often a catastrophic ending is avoided by means that are almost miraculous. love, intrigue,

Romantic interests predominate, with

and incest as common themes.

The

characters in such a play are types, and are placed in pairs for contrast, ideal,

such as the wicked woman and the

sentimental girl, or the faithful friend and the

knave. The setting is usually a faraway kingdom, a kind of Utopia, in which the wicked are always punished and the good rewarded before the curtain falls.

Indeed, if

the curtain were to fall a little earlier, before the happy reversal of fortunes, the tragi-comedy would be a tragedy.

No one laughs at A King and No King. or at 130

Poetics XIII.7-9.

225

A Winter1s Tale. or at Measure for Measure.

The suffer­

ing in these plays is too intense ever to he healed by a fortunate ending.

Indeed, it is only on the stage that

the denaument of A Winter1s Tale could be called happy. Twenty years of pain cannot be wiped out as though they had not been.

Men and women are not so constituted.

Many as are the elements of greatness in A Winter1s Tale, and it is a very moving play, it suffers from the faults of its kind: unreal characterization and insufficient motivation.

Although Leontes and Othello are both

studies in jealousy, Othello is by far the greater. It is as though Shakespeare said when he created Leontes: 'Here is the type of the jealous man, and here are the results of his jealousy.'

But when he created Othello

he said: 'Here is a good man, brave,

somewhat self-

centered, and naive; we shall see what happens when a mischief maker tries to arouse Jealousy in him.'

Leontes,

as well as Othello, is a character better suited to tragedy than to comedy. When we turn from matters of characteriza­ tion and motivation to look for the truly comic element in tragi-comedy we look in vain, for this type of drama is not in itself comic.

Comic episodes may be inserted

in the same manner in which they are inserted in tragedy,

226

and comic characters may be added; in A King and No King all the comedy is furnished by the cowardly braggart Bessus and his swordsmen.

Among the lascivious villainy,

wicked queens, pure maidens, and noble heroes there are often found soldiers, citizens, and servants who are from the real world and bring some of their work-a-day actuality with them.

They exert little influence upon

the romantic characters, and they are usually unimportant to the plot, but it is in them and their doings that the really comic portions of such plays are to be found. We must not minimize the comic talents of Beaumont and Fletcher.

They knew the London of their day, and their

characterizations of tradesmen and citizens are always excellent.

The citizen, his wife, and Rafe in The

Knight of the Burning Pestle (a burlesque, not a tragi­ comedy) are genuine residents of London, and very funny in their bustling self-importance and ignorance.

But

the kind of comedy represented by the lower classes in these plays is no different from the kind which we have found present throughout English comedy; it is not a kind peculiar to tragi-comedy.

The kind of comedy which we have called "English", the comedy which arises from a sympathetic

227

perception of the ridiculousness of a man and his deeds, arouses a kind of laughter which differs from the laughter of satire, not in degree, hut in kind,

Whether it is

the laughter of the unlettered man at the tumbling of a clown, or of a scholar at the wit of a courtier, its essence is good will.

It is free from the acid of scorn.

Sometimes such comedy is romantic; we think of Viola and Rosalind,

citizens of no actual land.

it is realistic.

Often, however,

The comedy of gusto, of delight in

the thing at which one laughs, perhaps finds its most congenial subjects among men and women of the real world, into whose lives we can enter with understanding. Often, too, such characters are men who know the rough side of life— ’’l o w ” characters; we think of Chaucer's Miller, of the habitues of East Cheap, of Burns' jolly beggars. But they are not necessarily such; Don Quixote is not vulgar, far from it; yet he Is a ridiculous character who engages our sympathy.

It Is not necessary, of

course, that we admire such characters as Falstaff or Don Quixote, or that we desire to imitate them, but it is necessary that they engage our sympathetic interest and our affection. Although it is not necessary for the charac­ ter who arouses our sympathetic laughter to be a person

228

whom we can admire, it is possible for him to be such. No one has succeeded so well as Shakespeare in creat­ ing characters who are both comic and admirable.

Rosa­

lind, Viola, Beatrice, and Benedick all are such, and their creation is one of the major triumphs of Shakes­ peare* s art.

The type of play in which they appear,

the romantic comedy, is itself a triumph, because romance does not ordinarily lend itself to laughter and remain romance.

When we laugh at Aucassin, desiring Hell

instead of Heaven if only his beloved Nicolotte be there, we cease to see him as a figure in high romance; he has become for us only a love sick boy.

The romance of

chivalry was not comic, and the Plautine comedy was not romantic.

The problem,

therefore, which the Eliza­

bethan writer of romantic comedy had before him was that of satisfying at once the Renaissance hunger for romance 151 and for laughter. When young love is used in comedy instead of sex intrigue, when pure girls are used instead of prostitutes, when marriage Instead of purchase becomes the goal, morality is no doubt the gainer, but comedy

151 See H. E. Charlton, Shakes-pearean Comedy (New York, 1938) for an account of the de­ velopment of Shakespeare1s conception of comedy.

229 will disappear unless the writer be a. genius.

One may

laugh at prostitutes and procurers without damaging the mood of a Homan comedy

one is expected to laugh at

them; but one cannot laugh at the whole complicated system of courtly love without seeing it as a very much sentimentalized version of life.

Love and laughter are

not incompatible, but romanticized love and laughter are mutually repellent. Shakespeare accomplished the diffi­ cult task of reconciling comedy and romance partly by the use of comic subplots and partly by the method of humanizing love and making his heroines, if not his heroes, of real and earthy materials.

Rosalind is no

Medieval lady in a bower waiting with saintlike patience for her true knight to come and rescue her.

She goes

out to rescue her knight, or at least to seek his company in exile, and she is very shrewd and determined in her pursuit of him.

That is not, of course, to say that

she is bold or immodest;

she is an altogether fine and

desirable young woman, but she is a woman to be loved and married, not an ethereal being to be served and worshipped.

She is full of whim and wit, of sympathy

and pity, of common sense and courage. She is not comic according to classical definitions, for she is neither the ignorant person of whom Plato spoke, nor the ignominious one whom Aristotle found comic.

She claims

230

our admiration as well as our laughter, and because of this fact,

she is Shakespeare's solution to the problem

of the use of romantic love in comedy. The same things may be said of Viola, and to a lesser degree of Beatrice.

The latter, although the

effect of her impudent tongue is nullified by her gen­ uinely warm heart, is much nearer the Aristotelian idea of the comic character.

One laughs at her denial of

love, knowing all the while that she will submit. Al­ though not ignominious,

she may well be classified among

persons who are comic because they do not know themselves. All of these women, however, have a sanity, a basic harmony of nature, which permits them to adjust them­ selves to life as it is lived in the actual world, and to b e n d comic.

it to their purposes.

They have a sense of the

They are among the laughers of the world, in

themselves a vindication of the comic point of view. We laugh at them sometimes, we laugh with them always, and with our laughter, we love and admire them. It is not necessary, however, as has been said, that we admire the character who arouses our sympathetic laughter.

There is a kind of comedy which

may be called the comedy of gusto, a robust, hearty, sometimes coarse sort of comedy, found in the plays of Dekker, of Shakespeare, in some of the plays of Jonson,

251

and in many other plays of the era, in which we delight in the characters, perhaps even love them, but see their faults none the less clearly.

One of the best plays in

which to study this type of comedy is Dekker1s Shoemakers1 Holiday.

While there is a romantic plot, the Lacie-Rose

story, the significant part of the play, and the part which provides the title, is the story of the rise of Simon Eyre,

the shoemaker of Tower Street, to the office

of Lord Mayor of London.

The setting, of course, is

London, the actual London of Dekker1s day.

We enter

the shop where the journeymen and apprentices are at work; we hear their chatter, we learn something of their tools and their craftsmanship, we are permitted to see the domestic arrangements of the Eyre household. We become acquainted with their love of their craft, with their ideals of good workmanship,

with their

notions of fun and sport, and with their essential kindliness.

The entire atmosphere of the play is a

healthy, wholesome one. The comedy of the play is partly dependent upon the speeches of the characters.

Lacie, disguised

as a Dutch shoemaker, Hance, sneaks with a Dutch dialect,

152 and Pirke delights in hearing him and in imitating him. 132 A woman comes into the shop asking for Hance. Firke calls out: HHearke,butterboxe,nowe you must yelp out some spreken." Hance speaks to the woman in a mixture of Dutch and English: “Vat begai you? Vat wod you, Frister?" Act III, scene ii, lines 54-55.

232 Simon Eyre’s wife is provided with a catch phrase, "Let that pass, " and tempers all her scolding with it. The speech of Eyre is characterized both by a repetition 133 of phrases and by an exclamatory, even an explosive, style.

Early in the morning his lively tongue arouses

his workmen, his wife, and her maids: "Where be these boyes, these girles, these drabbes, these scoundrels? They wallow in the fat brewisse of my bountye and licke the crums of my table, yet will not rise to see my walks cleansed. Gome out, you powder-beefe queanes! What, WanI What, Madge Mumble-crusti Come out, you fat mid-riffe, swag belly whores, and sweepe me these kennels that the noysome stench offend not the noses of my neighbours. What, ^irke, I say! What, Hodge1 Open my shop window©si What, Firke, I sayI"134 But his ranting speech is harmless, as his household well knows.

Firke enters,

saying:

"0 master, ist you that speake bandog and bedlam this morning? I was in a dream, and muzed what madde man was got into the streete so earlie; have you drunke this morning that your throate is so cleare?"l35

133 The following speech will illustrate several of his favorite phrases. His wife has been scolding his workmen, when he breaks in: "Peace, Firke; not I, Hodge; by the life of Pharao, by the Lord of Ludgate, by this beard, every haire whereof I value at a king's ransome, shee shal not meddle with you Peace, you bumbast, cotton-candle queane; away queane of clubs; quarrel not with me and my men, with me and my fine Firke; lie firke you, if you do." Act III, scene i,lines 34-39. 134 Act II, scene iii, lines 1-9. 135

Act III, scene iv, lines 141-144.

233

It may be seen by the speeches of Eyre and Firke that the comedy in this play lies deeper than words. It lies in character, of which the words are only an indica­ tion.

Simon Eyre is one of the finest comic characters in

Elizabethan drama.

Like Falstaff, he is not only witty in

himself, he is the cause of wit in others. is not free from foibles and irregularities.

His character He lacks the

dignity which one expects in a business man who is able by his own efforts and merit to raise himself to the posi­ tion of Lord Mayor.

He is excitable; he has a quick temper;

he is easily persuaded (as when he consented to hire Hance, whom he did not need, because Firke wished to learn some ngibble-gabbleH); he is boisterous and irrepressible when dining at the home of the Lord Mayor (his predecessor in office).

But it is these same childish qualities which

endear him to us.

His kind heart excuses his quick

temper; his evident business ability tells us that he is no fool in the world of affairs; his childish delight in his craft, in his own accomplishments, in his men, and even in his new clothes, we forgive because of his largehearted desire to share his good things with others. He is fundamentally healthy and good.

His workmen love him,

his neighbors respect him, in spite of his madcap humours. He advises his men:

234 "Bee as mad knaves as your master Sim Eyre hath bln and you shall live to be sherives of London."136 If the promise was not literally true, we are sure that at any rate the advice was good.

The kind of “madness"

Eyre was recommending has some relationship to the kind of mirth of which Dekker speaks in the preface to the play when he says that "mirth lengthenth long life, " If it does not actually lengthen It in days and years, we are certain that it makes it happier, that it acts as a stabilizer, a mental purge, and a defence against mis­ fortune. In The Shoemakers* Holiday English comedy reached a very high point of development.

The realistic treat­

ment of comic characters which began in the miracle plays culminated in Simon Eyre and his workmen. people in a busy commonplace world, labor, of shops and apprentices,

They are real

a world of manual

of food and drink, of

the sights and sounds and smells of London.

Here is no

romantic world of wicked queens, noble heroes, and senti­ mental maidens.

Neither is it a world where men and women

are "humourous",

each dominated, by a foible.

Rather it is

a world of actuality, where good and bad mingle, where

136

Act III, scene iv, lines 141-144.

235

people work and love and laugh, and meet their problems in a common sense human way.

The people of the Shoemakers1

Holiday are people Chaucer i^ould have loved.

Simon Eyre is

not unlike the Franklin in his love of good living and his wholesome attitude toward life.

Hodge and Firke are like

the tradesmen, all of one livery, who were worthy to be aldermen, and Mrs. Eyre is like their wives, who would well assent to the political advancement of their hus­ bands.

It may be that Dekker is somewhat sentimental,

that his characters are too persistently good natured, too free from the vices of men. But they are robust and human, and our laughter at them is spontaneous and sympathetic. To see the difference between sympathetic comedy and satire, one needs only to compare the Shoemakers1 Holiday with Middleton* s Chaste Maid In Cheaoslde.

Both

are realistic comedies of London life, but in tone and effect they are totally different. Cheapside is Hogarthian. to scourge it.

The Chaste Maid in

It uncovers filthiness in order

The best scene in the play, and the most

bitterly satirical, is the christening scene.

The mother

of the child to be christened, Mrs. Allwit, has had seven children by a man who is not her husband, Sir Walter Whorehound.

Allwit accepts the situation with satisfaction,

because he and the entire family, one cannot say "his"

236

entire family, are kept in luxury by the real father of the children.

His only fear is that Sir Walter will

marry and cut off the liberal allowance.

The real father

and the nominal father together plan the christening and invite the guests.

Both of them are smug and complacent

about the whole affair.

The mother is likewise content.

The guests, Puritan women and other "gossips", praise the child, eat sweetmeats, and drink too much.

A realiza­

tion of the enormity of the whole grotesque farce comes when one remembers that this is a religious ceremony, upon which, presumably, rests the benediction of the church.

There is little in English literature to equal

the cold, ironical bitterness, of this scene.

It is

comedy, of a sort; it is the comedy of Voloone. the comedy of Moliere; but it is not the comedy of Dekker.

There

is no mirth in the scene; we do not delight in these people; we scorn them. The supreme achievement of comedy in the age of Shakespeare,

if not in any age, is Palstaff.

Such

numbers of books have been written about the fat old man that it seems supererogation to write of him; but if we are to complete our study of English comic theory before 1625 we cannot avoid doing so.

It must be understood at once

that we have no intention of considering the matter of his origin.

We do not propose to determine whether Shakespeare's

257

model was a historical person, whether it was Sir John Old-Castle and Dericke of the Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth,

whether it was the boasting soldier or the

parasite of Homan comedy, or whether it was the Vice of the English Morality play.

For our purpose it does not

matter what Shakespeare1s model for the fat knight was; whatever it was, he did not follow it. is acreation, not with

a copy.

Sir John Falstaff

Our concern, moreover, is not

his ancestry, nor even with his type (if he has one);

we shall consider him as an individual and try to find out why he is comic.

Not only why he is comic, but why

he belongs to that peculiar kind of the comic which de­ pends upon delight in the ridiculous. Falstaff has many enemies. For the most part, so greatis his reputation, exist.

they do not say much; but they

By the enemies of Falstaff we mean people who do

not like him; who find him an obscene old man; who think that Hal did well to reject him.

And indeed, we must

admit, he is compounded of faults.

He is a roister­

er, a liar, a thief, and a coward.

His lies, his cowardice,

and his drinking may be forgiven; we may even find the tak­ ing of purses a matter to be overlooked.

But he does worse

things, things which seem to be incmmpatable with our sympathies.

He accepts money for the release of conscripted

238

soldiers; he abuses the prince in his absence; on hearing of the death of Hal's father, his only thought is of the advancement which he himself will gain. In short, when looked upon dispassionately, Falstaff is a wicked old man.

Why then is he comic?

Let us go back to the definition of Aristotle: a comic character is a man who fails of the mean of beauty in his person or of virtue in his behavior, but who does not give pain to the spectator. enough.

Falstaff's deformities are obvious

He is fat; a mountain of a man.

his knees since he was a lad. without misery.

He cannot walk fifty yards

If he were to lie on the ground it would

take levers to lift him up. old.

He hasn't seen

Not only is he fat, he is

Old age is, ordinarily, no deformity.

But in

Falstaff's case it is, for his age and his actions do not agree.

He acts like a boy in his teens.

himself a youth. a deformity? iS3s person.

He calls

Does not such a discrepancy constitute

His actions are as much without bounds as He lies,

steals, cheats, and boasts.

Surely

in person and in behavior, he is the ignominious man. Does he, then, give us pain? we may say no at once.

As to his person,

Obesity is not one of the de­

formities most of us find painful to observe.

Moreover,

in this case, we have not the slightest occasion to be

239

troubled by it, because Falstaff himself uses it to make mirth.

Many of his jests are upon the subject of

his own fatness.

It was he who admitted that he couldn’t

see his own knees; it was he who told his companions that if he lay down they must get levers to lift him up again; it was he who blamed his huge stomach upon sighing and care, which blow a man up like a bladder.

If, then, he

laughs a,t his own defect, why should we not laugh at it? And how can we be pained?

For the laugh of Falstaff at

his deformity is a genuine laugh.

It is not the sad-faced

smile of the patient sufferer. We cannot grieve when he does not. In examining the reason why we are not pained by the physical deformities of Falstaff, we have uncovered the reason why we are not pained by his behavior. not concerned about it because he is not. science.

ly —

He has no con­

If he were once to regret, to repent (serious­

he often does so to make sport) the spell would be

broken. he-is

We are

We should see him for the miserable sinner that

because he had so seen himself.

But as long as he

has no conscience, neither have we. Let us look at some of his vices and see how we are disarmed by Shakespea.re's skillful treatment of this rogue.

Let us examine his lying to see why we are

not troubled by it. are gross.

How does he lie*?

His falsehoods

They are cut from the whole cloth.

Fifty

armed men become two men in buckram and then eleven. A man already dead by the hand of the prince becomes the man Falstaff killed.

Are these lies to be believed? Doe

Falstaff expect that any one will believe him?

The

incident of the death of Percy will serve as an illustra tion. field.

The prince approaches Falstaff on the battle Falstaff says: "0 Hal, I prithee, give me leave to breathe awhile. Turk Gregory never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day. I have paid Percy, I have made him sure.”

Does Falstaff think by any chance that Hal will believe that lie?

Does Hal think for a moment the Falstaff ex­

pects him to believe it?

Hal's answer tells us.

He

says casually: ”He is indeed; and living to kill thee, I prithee, lend me thy sword. IS1 37 Obviously the whole thing is a joke between them. Falstaff's claim to have slain Percy is another jest. He has seen Hal and Percy fighting; he has seen Percy

137 Act V, scene iii, lines 44-49.

241 lying dead at the place of the encounter.

Moreover, in

his counterfeit death he has without doubt heard the words which Hal addressed to dead Percy as well as the farewell Hal addressed to him, when Hal thought him dead.

If

Falstaff had told the king that he had killed Percy we might consider the statement a lie, a falsehood told with intent to deceive.

But when the person whom he tells is

Hal, the one man who knew the truth of the matter, we can scarcely call the statement a lie.

It is a jest, a

grotesque one, it is true, for he bears the dead man on his back - perhaps a jest in bad taste, but a jest, never­ theless.

Can one be pained at lies that have so little

malice in them, that are told so obviously for comic effect?

Sober prince John, who had no sense of humor,

and no love for Falstaff, as the jolly knight well knew, found the story bewildering: "This is the strangest tale I ever heard.11 But Hal, who knew his friend, and who knew a jest from a lie, replied: "This is the strangest fellow, brother."138

138 Act V, scene iv, lines 155, 156.

242 Falstaff’s other vices have likewise been softened by Shakespeare, or in some way neutralized, that they give us no pain.

so

We are sorry, if we stop to

think about it, that he was unfair to Mistress Quickly. But our sorrow does not last long. rather absurd person.

She herself is a

Moreover, did she not forgive him,

and make a supper for him, and invite Doll to keep him company?

If she forgave him, cannot we?

Is there not

this t’o be said for him, that despite all his faults, his friends loved him? loved.

Men who are truly base are not

Who loved Volpone? Falste.ff has merry and loyal

friends, who lie for him and pay his bills.

He is a

parasite but his victims are willing ones, Falstaff,

then, is an ignominious man whose

actions do not pain us; but we can say morel

he is a

comic character in whom we actually delight.

He is

not a comic figure of the type of Volpone, or even of Bodadill, whose ludicrous actions are satirized. He is not even the type of character at whom we laugh in a detached sort of way. are actually fond.

He is a character of whom we

We take delight in his ridiculous­

ness, not because we hate him, but because we like him. It is possible, of course, to imagine an egotistical, lying, cheating, ungrateful, obscene old man as the object of satirical laughter; but it is impossible to

243 imagine Falstaff as such.

He would be no longer Falstaff.

We can no more hate the old knight than the prince could hate him; as Falstaff himself said of Poins, he has given us medicines to make us love him. One of humor.

his medicines is his own complete good

It is his armor, his defence against the world

and against our censure.

Where he is, men are merry.

Mistress Quickly and Doll forgive him; his subordinates and inferiors adore him; even the chief justice succumbs to his wit and his charm. Can the reader or the specta­ tor do less? Indeed, although we are aware of his vices, in his presence we have the disease of not marking them. This is partly due, as we have said, to his charm. It is also partly due to the fact that his character is per­ fectly balanced.

He is in harmony with himself.

If

the fool will persist in his folly, says William Blake, he will

be wise.

Falstaff persists.

There is no

vantage

point in him from which we can see his follies.

His faults are all in harmony with one another.

He

does not diverge from the mean of virtue in one respect, or in many, but in all* foolish.

He is Ignominious but not

Unlike the comic figure of Plato, he is not

244

ignorant of himself; he has no illusions about himself; he knows the world and is perfectly adjusted to it.

He

is not like other men, and the laws of other men do not apply to him.

We see him through M s

own eyes, and can­

not break: through the armor of his good humor. to judge him by other men's laws.

We refuse

He does not so much

break the mora.l law as refuse to acknowledge its validity. We are fond of him as we are fond of a mischievous child. There is, indeed,

something very childlike about

Falstaff, a kind of dependence upon the good nature of the world which endears him to us.

He is so sure of himself,

so skillful in evading those who would catch him in knavery,so confident that the world exists for his own peculiar

pleasure,

that we delight in his triumphs.

But what finally most attracts us to Falstaff is his delight in living.

Old and poor and ill, he

drinks with gusto the last drops in the cup.

He enjoys

food and drink, witty talk, adventure, female society, bouts with the chief justice, and sleep.

So little fear

has he of punishment for his part in the G-adshill robbery that

he falls asleep while the officers are searching the

inn.

So great is his zest for life that he jokes in the

midst of battle.

Coward he may have been —

we do not

propose to enter the controversy upon the subject of his

245

courage — his wit.

but even his cowardice must stand aside for This is perhaps his secret; his delight in

living towers over all his faults, and uses them all for its own purposes. of it.

Life exists so that he can make a jest

Such great joy in living cannot fail to appeal,

at least to Englishmen;

such delight breeds delight.

Falstaff does not live to drink and boast and lie and steal and run away.

He drinks and boasts and lies and

steals and runs away for the joke.

Life is his toy, and

when it explodes in his face at the king’s rejection of him, we are shocked and grieved.

In discussing the comedy of gusto, of delight in the ridiculous, we have made use principally of two characters as illustrations, Simon Eyre of The Shoem:ak.ersfl Hoiidav. and Falstaff. one another in many respects.

These men differ from Falstaff is a knight, de­

cayed in fortunes; Eyre is a commoner, a craftsman, in comfortable circumstances.

Falstaff is selfish,

taking all that he can get from others; Eyre is generous, a free-handed host, a. liberal employer. of heart and body as Falstaff is unsound. and Eyre have many qualities in common.

Eyre is as sound Yet Falstaff Both are old,

246

and "both find old age a subject for jesting.

The king

asks Eyre how old he is, and Eyre replies: "My liege, a verie boy, a stripling, a yonker; you see not a white hair on my head, not a. gray in this beard. Everie haire, I assure thy majestie, that stickes in this beard, Sim Eyre values at the king of Babilons ransome. Tamar chams beard was a rubbing brush toot: yet lie shave it off and stuffe tennis balls with it, to please my bully king." The king answers: "But all this while I do not know your age. " Eyre replies: nMy liege, I am sixe and fiftye yeare olde, yet I can crie humpel with a sound heart for the honour of Saint Hugh. Marke this olde wench, Qiis wife] my king; I dauncde the shaking of the sheetes with her sixe and thirtye yeares agoe, and yet I hope to get two or three yong lord maiors, ere I die. I am lustie still, Sim Eyre still. Care and colde lodging brings white haires. My sweete m.ajie £ tie, let care vanish, cast it upon thy nobles, it will make thee looke alwayes young like Apollo, and crye humpe!" Eyre had in common with Falstaff, as may be in­ ferred from the speeches just quoted, a zest for living. He liked food and drink,

though he was no glutton; he

liked to provide good food for others and to see them enjoy it.

As with Chaucer’s Franklin, when he did the

providing, it snowed meat and drink.

He gave a breakfast

on Shrove Tuesday for all the apprentices of London, and when he was told that the food was insufficient, he cried:

247

"Want they meat! Where's this swag-belly, this greasie kitchen stuffe cooke? Call the varlet to meI Want meat? Firke, Hodge, lame Rafe, runne, my tall men, beleager the shambles, beggar al Eastcheape, serve me whole oxen in chargers, and let sheepe whine upon the tables like pigges for want of good felowes to eat 1S9 them. Want meate? Vanish, Firke'. Avaunt, Hodge!" In Eyre, as in Falstaff,

there is a delight in

life to be lived on this earth; food, drink, people, and laughter— all are enjoyed to the utmost.

These two

old men have large, free natures; there is no pettiness about them.

They are individualists and do not trouble

themselves about consequences or about what others think of them.

At fifty-six, Sim Eyre is Sim Eyre still; at

almost seventy, Falstaff is Falstaff still. for their mirth.

Life exists

We delight in them because they delight

in themselves.

159 Act V, scene v, lines 19-24.

248

Chapter V CONCLUSION With the death of Fletcher in 1625 the great period of English Renaissance drama, ended.

The comedies

written between that date and the closing of the theaters in 1642 possess less vigor and originality than do the plays written earlier and add nothing to our con­ ception of English comic theory.

We have noted in

English Renaissance criticism, and in Renaissance plays themselves,

three attitudes which a dramatist may take

toward his material.

We have seen that he may look upon

the objects by means of which he proposes to arouse laughter (whether men, actions, or words) with a feeling of hostility.

He may present them in such a manner that

satirical laughter is awakened.

Such a representation

of comic material is usually didactic in purpose. Jonson's Voloone is a comedy of this type.

On the other hand,

the writer may take a disinterested attitude toward his material, as Shakespeare did in Love1s Labour1s Lost, with the result that the laughter which is aroused is also detached, neither malicious nor sympathetic. And finally, sympathy,

the playwright may present his comedy with so that the laughter of his audience will be

mingled with affection and delight.

Such a method was

249

used by Shakespeare when he created Beatrice and Falstaff. In addition to these three ideas of the comic, we have found in the Elizabethan era a conception of comedy as a kind of play which treats of trouble and sorrox* but ends in the happiness of the characters.

Such a play

is usually called a tragi-comedy, and is not, in itself, comic.

As a conclusion to this study of English comic

theory before 1625 we propose to comment briefly upon the development of these four theories in the closing years of the Renaissance, and to glance at their re­ appearance after the reopening of the theaters in 1660. In the comedies of Ben Jonson we found a fusion of the comedy of humours with the realistic comedy of city life. successfully made.

Such a fusion was never again Moreover, although humourous charac­

ters appear from time to time in subsequent plays (justice Greedy in A New Way to Pay Old Debts

Is such

a character) the true comedy of humours never found an­ other such master as Jonson. the stage.

As a type it vanished from

Realistic comedy, however, especially the

realistic comedy which employs city life as its subject, had a long history after Jonson.

We have already mentioned

two of the realistic plays of Middleton and Marston,Jonson1s

250

contemporaries.

The Chaste Maid in Cheapside and The

Dutch Courtesan are not, perhaps, more bitter and un­ pleasant pictures of low life in London than are the comedies of Jonson, but they are more immoral.

Cer­

tainly there is wickedness enough in the plays of Jonson, but it is represented as wickedness. strongly moral position.

Jonson takes a

If the rogues sometimes go un­

punished, they are none-the-less rogues, as we are well aware.

In The Chaste Maid in Cheapside, however, and

in The Dutch Courtesan,morality is lost sight of in un­ savory Intrigue.

No moral attitude toward the charac­

ters is evident; no moral standards are anywhere in evi­ dence.

A world of cheating, bawdry, and even murder

is accepted as natural .

In commenting on realistic

comedy after Jonson, we may also mention James Shirley and Richard Brome.

In the comedies of Shirley, in Hyde

Park, for instance, and in The Ladv of Pleasure,

there

is a turning from low life to life in fashionable circles. There is no less immorality, no less realism, but the characters are of a different social class from the characters of most earlier realistic comedy.

In the

plays of Richard Brome there is a continuation of the use of fashionable characters, but a return to Jonson in the matter of moral attitude.

In A Mad Couple Well

Matched, for instance, although there is much of whoring

251

and cuckoldry,

there is preserved throughout the play

a consciousness that wicked characters are wicked, ajid in the last scene there occurs a general reforma­ tion of all who have done wrong.

This quick shift

from roguery to virtue is a device which looks forward to the sentimental comedy of the next century,

the

comedy of Gibber and Steele, in which rakes face about and become the model lovers and husbands of pure women. Pure women, however, are noticeably absent in A Mad Couple Well Matched: in its materials this comedy looks ahead to Restoration comedy, as well as backward to the comedy of Marston and Middleton.

Indeed, in subject

matter it may be said to -be closer to The Plain Dealer and The Wav of the World than to the earlier comedy of manners.

*Instead of the boisterousness of the Elizabethan

play of London life, wTe find here, as in the comedies of Shirley, more attention paid to the conventions of polite society.

If, however, the subject matter is Restoration,

the treatment of the subject matter is not. plete absence of moral considerations,

The com­

the light hearted

wit, the delightful sparring between men and women which makes the plays of Congreve so entertaining, are not present in the comedies of Brome.

252 The tragi-comedy likewise changed during the reigns of James I and Charles I.

Shirley wrote

tragi-comedies somewhat in the old manner, but with a new emphasis upon the dignity and sacredness of king­ ship.

In his idealization of loyalty and honor he took

a step toward the heroic play of the age of Dryden. A much greater step in this direction, however, was taken by D'Avenant.

His tragi-comedies, like those of Beaumont

and Fletcher, of Shakespeare, and of Shirley, are set in unreal lands, or in romantic lands such as Italy, and his characters are kings, queens, princes, and dukes. War, Imprisonment, and intrigue are his subjects, as they were the subjects of his predecessors.

His plays

are not more improbable than earlier tragi-comedies, but more artificial.

Reversal of fortune is still an

essential, but instead of being treated as mere coinci­ dence it has become the result of character.

One may

think that actions which are the result of character will be more natural, more true to life, than actions which are unmotivated.

Such will be the case If the

characters are real, but in D'Avenant, and in later writers of tragi-comedy and of the heroic play, charac­ ters as well as actions are unreal.

They are not un­

real in the sense that they are types rather than

253

individuals, as in the ease in Phllaster: they are un­ real because they are sentimentalized and refined un­ til no longer human.

The hero of the tragi-comedy be­

comes the man of sensibility, and above all, the man of honor.

In Love and Honor three men and two women,

individually,

attempt by means of disguise and intrigue,

not to save their own lives, but the lives of the others. Melora and Evandra are jealous of one another, not be­ cause of a man, but because each covets the honor of dying in order to free the other persons from imprison­ ment and death.

Melora says of Evandra, who plans to

die for the princes 111 am astonished at her excellence, and scarce have humble grace enough to keep Ambitious envy from my thought s.I: As they leave the dungeon in order to offer their lives, Evandra says: "Melora, come; we are too slow in such An act as will outlive history." g The men are no less noble than the women, and when one stops to think of so much eager nobility, one is a little amused.

The language of the play is rhetorical.

Alyaro

reproaches Prospero for taking Evandra captive:

Act III, scene iv, lines 188-190; in Whalley and 'Wilson, Early Seventeenth 0 entury Plays (New York, 1930), p. 954.

2 Ibid.. lines 249-250.

254 "A choleric bear or hungry panther would Have used her with more soft remorse! Had I Encounter'd her in the mad heat of chase, In all the fury of the fight, I would Have taught my angry steed the easy and The peaceful motion of a lamb. She should have sat his back soft as the air, And in her girdle bridled him, more curb'd Than in his foaming bit, whilst I, her slave, Walk'd by, marking what hasty flowers sprung up, Invited by her eye beams from their cold roots; And this would each true soldier do, that had Refin'd his courage with the sober checks Of sweet philosophy." * Tragi-comedy of this, type is very close to the heroic drama.

The happy union of romance and comedy which

Shakespeare achieved in The Tempest appeared no more in English comedy.

The type of comedy which we have called Aristotelian found little or no place in the latter years of the Renaissance.

There are in the era no

plays designed to amuse by comic entanglement and ridiculous persons without arousing the emotions of the spectator or causing him pain.

The satirical comedy

of manners, in which one takes an antagonistic attitude toward the characters, and the tragi-comedy, which is not comedy at all, were the ruling types.

In the

3 Ibid.. Act I, scene i, lines 255-268.

255 Restoration, as has been suggested, detached comedy is to be found in Etherege, in Congreve, and to a lesser degree in Wycherley. We are amused by Sir Foppling Flutter, by Mirabel, and by Millamant, and we do not feel strongly about them one way or another. In the eighteenth century we perhaps find this kind of comedy in the plays of G-oldsmith and Sheridan.

No

one dislikes Tony Lumpkin, but certainly no one is extremely fond of him.

In The Critic Sheridan says

that the purpose of comedy is to entertain; certainly his own comedies fulfill that purpose admirably.

Lord

and Lady Teazle very well illustrate the Aristotelian idea of comic character, for they have deformities in character which call forth our laughter and do not cause us pain.

As there is little of detached laughter in the Jacobean and Caroline periods, of sympathetic laughter.

so there is little

The gusto, the lusty de­

light in living which characterized much of the comedy of the Elizabethan age proper has gone.

There are

political and social reasons for its departure.

For one

thing, as the nation approached civil war, the people and the court drew farther and farther apart.

In greater

256

and greater numbers the lower class of London residents joined the Puritan faction end stayed away from the play houses.

As the theaters became more and more the

plaything of the aristocracy, the dramatists wrote more to please the court, and cared less to obtain the coarser, but perhaps more wholesome, laughter of the mob. another thing, the nation was uneasy.

For

Wholehearted

laughter was no longer popular in the dangerous days before the outbreak of the War.

The comedies of the

period were, as we have said, either satiric or romantic and heroic.

Palstaffian laughter is possibly awakened

by Vasca, a comic soldier in D'Avenant*s Love and Honor, but Sir John's delight in living is not in him.

He is

witty, and his speeches are funny.

The plot, too, which

centers about him, is a comic one.

He attempts to marry

a rich but decrepit old woman, who is his captive, in order to obtain her fortune.

He succeeds in marrying

her, but cannot persuade her to die, and, finding her too unpleasant to be lived with, he is constrained to relinquish the fortune and divorce her.

It is a good

plot, and at times laughable, but we do not delight in it as we do in the comic plots of Shakespeare. Vasca, after all, lacks Falstaff's great good humor, his posi­ tive attitude toward life.

In comparison with the fat

257

knight, Vasca is a barren fellow. The Shakespearean kind of laughter did not reappear during the Restoration.

In the sophisticated

and artificial life of the latter part of the seven­ teenth century there was place for nothing so natural. In the closing years of the century, however, we find something of the kind in Vanbrugh, who took comedy once more to the country.

Miss Hoyden is a breezy,

somewha.t

crude person but delightful; and our laughter at her father, Sir Tunbelly, is touched with sympathy. We find something of the comedy of mirth, too, in The Recruiting Officer ^nd %he Beaux! Strategem of Farquhar, likewise laid outside London.

But after the days of Shakespeare

and Dekker the hearty laughter of sympathetic mirth finds a more congenial home in the novel than in the drama.

Parson Adams is no mean successor to Sim Eyre

and Falstaff.

His unworldly devotion to classical

learning and his naive faith in humanity involve him in many ludicrous predicaments, and we love him while we laugh.

Wilkins Mlcawber,

too, and Mr. Pickwick,

claim both our laughter and our affection. And finally, it seems as we look back over the comic drama of the English Renaissance that although

258 there was in it much of satire, and something of the pure comedy of which Aristotle spoke, there was even more of gay, uncensorious laughter.

The comic spirit

of England before 1625 was not the sardonic spirit of Moliere, laughing the laughter of gods at the follies of men; it was the laughter of the priest in The Merry Devil of Edmonton: "Grass and hay I We are all mortal; let’s live till we are hanged and be merry."

259

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266 Woodbridge, Elizabeth, The Drama. Its Law and Technique. & Translation of Freitas1s Technique of the Drama: Boston,Aiiyn {c. 1898).

B. Periodicals Brewer, E. V., ’’Lessing and the Corrective Virtue in Comedy, " Journal of English and German Philology. 26: l-23,( January, 1927) . Crawford, Bartholow V . ,’’High Comedy in Terms of Restora­ tion Practice," Philological Quarterly. 8:339-344 (October, 1929). Draper, J. W . , "Theory of the Comic in Eighteenth Century England", Journal of English and German Philology. 37 : 207- 223,( April 1938) . Emerson, A,,"Aristophanes' Conception of Low Comedy," American J ournal of Philology. 10: 265-279, (1889). Greene, W. C., "The Spirit of Comedy in Plato", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 31: 63-123, (1920) . McMahon, A. P., "On the Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics and the Source of Theophrastus' Defini­ tion of Tragedy," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 28: 1-46, (1917) McMahon, A. P., "Seven Questions on Aristotlellan Defini­ tions of Tragedy and Comedy," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 40: 97-198, (1929jl Spingarn, Joel Elias, "Sources of Jonson's Discoveries," Modern Philology. 2: 451-460, (April, 1905) . Starkie, W. J. M., "An Aristotelian Analysis of the Comic, Illustrated from Aristophanes, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Moliere, "Hermathena,. number 42,Volume 19, pp. 26-57, Dublin and London (1920).

267 Young, Karl, “The Influence of the French Farce upon the Plays of John Heywood," Modern Philology 11, (1904).

II.

Plays

Adams, Joseph Quincy, Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas. A Selection of Plays Illustrating the History of the English Drama from Its Origin Down to Shakespeare: (Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Press (1924). Aristophanes, The Comedies of Aristophanes, literally translated with notes and extracts from metrical versions, by William Hames Hickie, ( 2 volumes) ;London, G-. Bell and Sons (1910). Aristophanes, The Frogs, edited by Benjamin Bickley Rogers: London, G-. Bell and Sons (1902) . Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John, The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. (10 volume sF: Cambridge", Cambridge University Press (1905 -1912). Brome, Richard, Dramatic Works...containing fifteen comedies now first collected in three volumes; kbndon, Pearson (1873). Chapman, George, The Comedies and Tragedies of George Chapman. now first collected, with illustra­ tive notes and a memoir of the author: London, J, Pearson 1873) . Chester Plays, A Collection of Mysteries Founded Upon Scriptural Subjects, and Formerly Represented by the Trades of Chester at Whitsuntide, edited by Thomas Wright: London, printed for the Shakespeare Society (1843). Congreve, William, The Complete Works of William Congreve, edited by Montague Summers: Soho, the None­ such Press (1923).

268

D'Avenant, Sir William, The Dramatic Works of Sir William D* Avenant. with -prefatory memoir and notes (5 volumesV: Edinburgh. W. Paterson

0 ^ 211874).

Dekker, Thomas, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. now first collected with Illustrative notes and a memoir of the author • London, J. Pearson (1873). Etherege,

Sir G-eorge, The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege. edited with introduction and notes by H. P. B. Brett-Smith: Oxford, B. Blackwell (1927).

Parmer, John S., Six Anonymous Plays, first series: London, privately printed for subscribers by the Early English Drama Society (1905). Farmer, John S., Six Anonymous Plays, second series: London, privately printed for subscribers by the Early English Drama Society (1906). Farmer, John S., Recently Recovered "Lost" Tudor Piays: London, privately printed for subscribers by the Early English Drama Society (1907). Farmer, John S., Five Anonymous Pla.ysf fourth series: London, privately printed for subscribers by the Early English Drama Society (1908) Farquhar, George, The Complete Works of George Farquhar. in two volumes, edited by Charles Stonehill: London, Bloomsbury, the Nonesuch Press (i960). Gayley, Charles Mills, Representative Engli sh Comedies with Introductory Essays and Notes, an Historical View of Qur Early Comedy. and Other Monographs by Various Writers: London and New York, Macmillan Co. Cl912). Hazlitt, W. Carew, A Select Collection of Old English Piays, Original 1y Publi shed bv Robert Podsiey in the Year 1744. (15 volumes), fourth edition: London, Reeves (1844). Jonson, Ben, The Works of. Ben Jonson, edited by Peter Whalley (7 volumes): London, printed for D. Midwinter (1756).

Kyd, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Kyd. edited by Frederick Boas: Oxford, Clarendon Press (1901) Lyly, John, Dramatic Works of John Lilly, edited by F. W. Fairholt: London, Reeves (1892). Manly, John Mathews, Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama, with an Introduction. Notes, and a Glossary,.. 12 volumes): Boston, Ginn Tc7 1897). Marlowe, Christopher, The Plays of Christooher Marlowe 1 London, J. M. Dent and Company; New York, E. P. Dutton and Company (1929, 1909). Marston, John, The Plays of John Marston. edited from the earliest texts with introduction and notes by H. Harvey Wood: Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd (1934-1939). Massinger, Philip, The Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford,with an introduction by Hartley Coleridge: London, C. Maxon (18561. Medwall, Henry, Fulgens and Lucres. A Fifteenth Century Secular Play. edited by F. S. Boas and A. W. Read: Oxford, Clarendon Press (1926). Menander, Lately Discovered Fragments of Menander. Edited with English Version. Revised Text. and Critical and Explanatory Notes. Unus Multorura, second edition: Oxford, James Parker and Co. (1909). Middleton, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Middleton, edited by A. H. Bullen, in eight volumes: Boston, Houghton (1885-1886). Shakespeare, William, Shakespeare: a Historlcal and Critical Study with annotated texts of twenty-one plays, by Hardin Craig: Chicago, Atlanta etc., Scott Foresman and Company (1931) Shirley, James, The Dramatic Works of James Shirley. now first collected;with notes by the late William Gifford, esquire, and additional notes and some account of Shirley and his writings, by the Reverend Alexander Dyce, six volumes: London, J. Murray (1833).

270 Vanbrugh, Sir John, -The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh: the plays edited by Bonamy Dobree; the letters edited by G-eoffrey Webb: London, Bloomsbury, the Nonesuch Press (1927-1928), Walley, Harold Reinoehl, and John Harold Wilson, Early Seventeenth Century Plays (1600-1642): New York, Harcourt Brace and Co.(l930). Wycherley, William, The Complete Works of William Wycherley, edited by Monta.gue Summers: Scho, the Nonesuch Press (1924).